Laken Riley Act

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 President, I ask unanimous consent that the order for the quorum call be rescinded.

Mr. President, I would ask unanimous consent of the Presiding Officer to set aside the pending amendment so I may offer my amendment No. 90; that there be up to 15 minutes for debate on the amendment; and that upon the use or yielding back of time, the Senate vote on the amendment without further intervening action or debate.

Mr. President, I thank the Senator from Alabama for her work on the Senate floor and for coming over. I know this is a big day around the Senate. It is a big day for America, and it is appropriate, I think, that we should be here on this issue today because, over the coming months and years, we are going to be confronting a lot of choices to make. And I think it is critically important that, as we make these choices, we do it in a way that is consistent with our values.

Throughout our history, generations of Americans have tried to secure our heritage as a nation of immigrants and a nation committed to the rule of law. Both of those are important. And when we have fallen short, which we have from time to time, we have battled back to reclaim these moral values.

Our enduring commitment to this imperfect but principled work is why 21st century America has one of the most dynamic economies, vibrant cultures, and an important reputation throughout the world as a beacon of freedom. That reputation, by the way, is not assured. That is a reputation that has to be earned by our Nation every single day.

Although our Founders were famously suspicious of overreaching by the Federal Government, they recognized the obvious national imperatives-- the national security and foreign policy imperatives--and the problems that would arise if every State and county and city were to enforce its own immigration laws. And that is why the Constitution of the United States says that the Congress, working with the President, should administer those laws, and, therefore, logically assigned the responsibility to our national government--not to our State government, not to our local government--to enforce our immigration law.

Throughout our history, the American people have been welcoming to new immigrants--and sometimes less so. Understandably, chaotic and changing circumstances like the ones we face today sometimes raise alarms among the American people. Unfortunately, in

our time--and I would agree with the Senator from Alabama on this--we have not addressed the chaos at the southern border of the United States, and politicians have used this crisis for years to divide the American people on one side of the partisan divide and as another. And as a result, the failing immigration system that we have has only become more broken.

The thing that I want to make sure of is that, as we think about the chaos that we are facing, the complexity that we are facing, is that we don't--as we have occasionally in the past--abandon our values and our commitment to the rule of law.

In more inspired times, we have used these crises to actually burnish our great global advantage as a nation of immigrants that is committed to the rule of law.

In 2013, we had what was, in my view, an important chance to embrace those values with the Senate's work on the Gang of 8. The Senator of Alabama might remember it. To her, that seems like ancient history. I was one of the members of the Gang of 8. I was a lot younger than I am today and so were the other members of that gang too. But we seriously tried to take on meaningful immigration reform in this Chamber.

We had a tough but fair pathway to citizenship for those who could earn it in the United States. We included the Dream Act. We had a massive overhaul--massive overhaul--of our visa system so our farms and ranches and high-tech industries, even our ski industry, could continue to compete with the rest of the world. We had $46 billion of border security money in there--I hate to think what that money was in real dollars today, what that $46 billion would look like today; I bet you it is around $60 billion--that 68 people in this Chamber agreed to support together.

There was so much money in that bill that Lindsey Graham--Senator Graham from South Carolina, who was another member of the Gang of 8, used to say there were going to be so many border patrol agents that they could literally hold hands from one end of the border to the other across the United States of America.

I can see that the Senator from Alabama has heard that story before.

There has been a huge cost of inaction, not just the money that if we had spent it then would have made such a huge difference but the painful consequences the Senator from Alabama and others have talked about, I have talked about, for the American people and for our country.

In the end, after months of going through the legislative wringer, as I mentioned, we got 68 votes over here in the Senate. If it had been given a chance--read Speaker Boehner's book; he will tell you this. If it had gone to the floor, it would have gotten a majority vote on the floor of the Senate. But the Freedom Caucus killed that bill in a legislative back alley before it could see the light of day on the House floor.

And since then, like with so many of the American people's most fundamental concerns, the Federal Government and this Congress has been immobilized on the subject of immigration, for sure, under both Republican and Democratic Presidents.

In the meantime, transnational gangs have seized full opportunity of our inaction, raking in billions of dollars smuggling human beings and drugs and weapons to the southern border of the United States. These criminal syndicates have perfected their worldwide smuggling operations. They have trained people how to exploit our asylum system, and they have weaponized social media to enable thousands of people to travel all over the globe to present themselves at the southern border of the United States or to come through the southern border. And the result of that paralysis has been, at times, an overwhelmed southern border.

For this reason, in 2022, I urged the Biden administration never to lift title 42 without a plan and without the resources to execute it. They were unprepared for what was to come, and they were too slow to act.

It is clear to almost everybody today that our system isn't built for today's conditions. We need to fix it, and we need to give the American people confidence that we have a fair and secure system in place.

So how do we do that? Well, tonight, we are going to vote on the first response from the Congress, the Laken Riley Act, which I think is neither focused on driving resources to the border or establishing a more robust and rigorous system of immigration. Instead, contrary to our constitutional obligation, today's bill devolves authority away from the President and Congress to 50 State attorneys general, in ways that seem extremely counterproductive to me.

I hope I am not right about this; although, you can already see a battle brewing in the administration about this.

This bill provides State attorneys general the power to seek nationwide injunctions to completely block certain countries, like India and China and El Salvador, from sending immigrants here.

Imagine a Salvadorian farmworker on an H-2A visa living in Florida or Louisiana committing a violent crime leading to a deportation order.

He should be deported. I am not here to dispute that. I don't dispute that.

But with this bill, if El Salvador doesn't accept his deportation, Florida's attorney general could ask a court to force the Federal Government to ban all visas from El Salvador or all H-2A visas or all H-1B visas for high-tech workers for all that matters.

Nearly 5,500 people in Colorado today are working on an H-2A visa. Why should Florida's attorney general be able to dictate Colorado's need for these workers? Why should any State attorney general be able to hammer the economies of 49 other States? It doesn't make any sense.

It is because Congress and the administration have abandoned their responsibility here that we find ourselves in this position.

Second, this bill creates mandatory detention policies for immigrants accused of committing nonviolent and also violent crime. And as I said, I believe we should be going after transnational gangs, street gangs, and people who pose a threat to our community. When a brutal crime is committed, as in the case of Laken Riley, we should respond. We have to respond. And we should stand with her family--as the Senator from Alabama has done--and her community and ensure that something like that never happens again.

But in my opinion, this bill is not targeted enough. It would force ICE, working with local law enforcement, to detain immigrants who are accused--not just convicted but accused--of a very broad set of crimes, including shoplifting, without regard to how young they are or, more important, whether they are a threat to our community or a threat to public safety.

There is a good reason--and I know the presiding officer may not agree with this, but I know he knows the logic. There is a good reason why we seldom pass legislation with mandatory detention or jailing. We tend to believe that law enforcement is in the best position to determine in realtime who the threat to public safety actually is. And we know we don't have the resources--we never have the resources--to lock up every nonviolent offender without regard to whether they are a threat to public safety or not.

I know this sounds crazy, but this bill is so broadly drafted that it would compel law enforcement to put a mandatory detention on--you heard it--an 11-year-old immigrant in New York accused of stealing a soda from a gas station. I think most law enforcement agents across the country would tell you that their time would be much better spent tracking down and detaining, for example, a violent criminal who has bludgeoned their neighbor with a hammer. But this bill doesn't distinguish between those two cases. Instead, it strips law enforcement of their ability to make their best judgment about whom to arrest and not to arrest, whom to detain and not detain, and how to focus their precious resources on protecting our public safety.

The proponents of this bill do not deny that children will be swept up in its administration. This is not a drafting error. In this bill, every undocumented person accused--not just convicted but accused--of a list of crimes that is in this bill must be detained. That might sound like law and order,

but it is easy to see how this encroachment on law enforcement's ability to do its job could spiral out of control.

To make matters even worse, this bill does not provide ICE with the resources it needs to implement what is now a massive unfunded liability. And I know that the proponents of the bill say they are going to fix that problem. But just so you understand, ICE says this bill is going to cost $27 billion a year. That is their number. I have heard much higher numbers than that. Let's take their number: $27 billion a year. That is three times ICE's annual budget of $9 billion.

Many of us are used to Congress passing bills without ever paying for them, but this may be one of the worst cases that we have seen.

And I know there may be an attempt here through reconciliation--you know, a tax measure to try to fund this in some way or to pick some other place to do it--but choices are going to have to be made between the mandatory detention of people who may not be a threat to our community and other choices like the funding for border patrol or the Countering Weapons of Mass Destruction Office at the Homeland Security, the disaster relief fund--just three that come to mind.

Put another way, every dollar that ICE spends incarcerating kids is a dollar the border patrol doesn't have to spend on the border itself. Wouldn't the American people be a lot better off if Homeland Security were left to focus on violent criminals and enforcing the border, not on kids accused of nonviolent crimes?

I assume no one here really thinks that mandatorily incarcerating children accused of nonviolent crimes is the best, most strategic way to fix our immigration system. We certainly don't want a repeat of the images of children caged in chain-link enclosures screaming out for their parents.

Federal law enforcement does not want a repeat of that, least of all, least of anybody, and I doubt any of us would want private prisons managing that outcome either. That episode was a shameful part of our history. It falls into that chapter of our history.

In another one of our more shameful immigration failures, Congress has never addressed the status of the Dreamers. The Senator from Alabama made this point when she said that there isn't a Dreamer in the country that is less than 17 years old. That is because notwithstanding the American people's overwhelming support for Dreamers who know no country other than the United States, that we have been unable to rationalize their presence in the country.

But 3 million Dreamers--who, after all these years, are now middle- age nurses and teachers and small business owners with families of their own--are also vulnerable.

Mr. President, I ask for 2 additional minutes.

Madam President, we are here in the second week of the 119th Congress with enormous work to do. We have a border to secure; we have streets to make safe; we have an economy to resurrect. We have, in short, a great nation to rebuild.

And nothing could be more central to that rebuilding than the strengthening of the American family, and nothing could be more urgent for our future than the revival of the American working class. And those two things go precisely together.

The truth is we have been living these last 40 years or so in the great American decline. Our economy has declined. We were once the manufacturing and trade capital of the world. Everybody wanted to trade with us. We were the envy of the world in every possible way economically. That is not true any longer. Now we are a debtor nation. Our standing in the world has declined. We were the leader of the free nations not so long ago. Now, the nations of the world rush to court China and regard the United States as yesterday's news.

Our cities have declined. They are not safe. Our health has declined. Our hope for the future has eroded. And all the while, this town has plowed ahead with the failed policies of the last 40 years. This town has assured us that everything is fine. We only need to spend a little bit more, issue a little bit more debt, give our giant corporations a few more tax breaks, maybe get involved in another foreign war or two. This town has pursued the projects of the governing class and neglected the weightier matters, the well-being of our families and of our working people.

And let's be honest. My party, the Republican party, has too often in these years been part of the problem. The Republican party has too often spoken up for corporate interest rather than for the interest of families. The Republican party has too often cooperated with a corporate agenda rather than an agenda to empower workers.

We need a change in this town. We need a change in this Congress. We need a change in this party, and that is the opportunity that we have in the moment before us, because I submit to you the fact is this: You can measure the strength of a nation in the strength of its families, and you can study the struggles of a nation in the struggles of its working people. And right now, our families and our working people in this country are struggling.

There was a time not so long ago in this country when a man got a high school degree and then got a job and then worked at it decidedly and learned a skill and worked hard and saved where he would be able to provide for a family, start a family, get married, provide for kids, have a future, have something to look forward to. That is just not true anymore. Those days, in fact, are long since gone.

During the last 40 years, real wages for working people have flatlined. And during the last 4 years, real wages for working people have declined. Here is just one measure of that. The Bureau of Economic Analysis reports that disposable income--that is income after taxes-- fell almost 10 percent--10 percent--during Joe Biden's Presidency. And that was, I might emphasize, for all earners. That drop was even higher, more steep and more devastating, for America's working people and for America's working families.

The fact of the matter is there is no such thing as a family wage any longer, not in this economy. Now parents have to work multiple jobs to support just one or two kids, if they can afford to have children at all. I mean, let's just think. In the 1960s, the average family had just shy of four children. Today, that number has fallen by more than half. And here is the really interesting thing: Families today tell researchers they would like to have more children. To be specific, more than half, approaching 60 percent of American families, tell researchers that they would like to have more kids, but they don't. Why not? Because they can't afford it. And that is all families. The numbers are higher, once again, for working-class families.

Here is what I would say. There is something fundamentally wrong with an economy when the working people who power that economy cannot afford to have children that they want. There is something fundamentally wrong with an economy when the working people who are the strength and source of all of its might cannot provide for the children they have with the labor of their own hands. But that is our reality. That is where we are today. And it is time to do something about it.

The test of this Congress will not be what we do for foreign nations. It will not be what we do for our largest corporations. It will not even be what we spend on defense or how we increase the Nation's GDP, though those are important priorities. The test of this Congress will be whether we strengthen America's families and whether we deliver for America's working people.

Because in those families lies the hope of this Nation. And in those working people resides the wellspring of our great national strength.

The well-being of our families and of our working people is not one priority among many, I submit to you. It is not one more interest to satisfy. It is a moral imperative. It is our overriding moral obligation, and it is, for this Congress, a moral test.

And for every Republican who went out and campaigned on strengthening families, on delivering for working people, for every Republican who has hailed the new working-class coalition that President Trump has assembled, this is the time to deliver. This is the time to stand up and be counted. Rhetoric on the campaign trail is cheap. Delivering actual solutions, delivering actual results here in this body, that is the acid test, and that is where we are today.

Now, it is time for this new majority, this Republican majority, to stand up and be counted. It is time to deliver on the agenda that we ran on. It is time to realize the promise that our voters have invested in us. It is time to realize the hope for the future that our voters are counting on us to deliver.

And to meet that test, to meet this moral priority, we must reshape our Nation's tax policy and, indeed, rebuild our Nation's economy around our Nation's families. And the surest way to do that is to reform and expand the child tax credit.

You know, the child tax credit was first proposed in its earliest form by President Ronald Reagan, who was looking for a way back in the 1980s in circumstances not so dissimilar from ours, to deliver real, meaningful tax relief to working families with children. And then, in 1994, the famous Contract with America promised what became today's modern child tax credit to deliver once again real tax relief for every working family in this country. And now it is time for us again to strengthen that pledge and that promise and to deliver new and powerful tax relief for every family that will help strengthen our working families, help put our workers on a firmer foundation, help get our economy working again for the people who make it work for the entire Nation.

Now under current law, the child tax credit is available to eligible families with up to $2,000 in tax credit relief per child. Here is my suggestion. Here is my proposal: We should more than double that amount. We should dramatically increase it. We should make it $5,000 per child. And more than that, we ought to allow families to apply this tax relief against payroll taxes.

Currently, even families who are paying into the payroll tax system-- that is, families who have a job, workers who have a job, a mom and dad who are paying taxes--they can't begin to claim the child tax relief until they meet a certain threshold of income.

My view is this: We ought to allow them to start applying this tax relief against every dollar that they pay into the payroll tax system. Most working-class families pay considerable sums in payroll taxes but relatively little in income taxes. And there is a lot of misinformation about this, a lot of misnomers out there, many of them, sadly, repeated by some who call themselves conservatives. You all heard that old saw that 47 percent of American taxpayers, American workers, don't actually pay into the tax system. That is just not true. Every worker who has a job is paying payroll taxes; that is over 15 percent. And many of them are paying full freight because they are self-employed or they are gig workers.

My point is this: If you have got a job and are working, you are paying into America's tax system. You are paying payroll taxes. And for families, many working-class families, they are paying significant sums in payroll taxes. But because of the increased threshold for income taxes, they don't have a whole lot of income tax liability.

So the challenge is: How do we deliver real and meaningful tax relief to these working-class families who are paying significant amounts of money in payroll taxes but yet don't qualify for those income tax deductions and benefits that higher earners get, like the home mortgage deduction, for instance. That only kicks in if you are at a certain level of income. For many working-class families, they don't qualify for those deductions. They don't qualify for those tax expenditures. But yet they are paying significant sums in payroll taxes every single year.

This proposal delivers significant tax relief to them. It allows them to claim tax relief for every child who they are raising as they go out there and they work their jobs. And I would just say to you, this is how it was meant to be. The child tax credit as it was proposed in its current form by that Republican Congress in the 1990s, as it was proposed in the Contract with America back in 1994 was supposed to be credited against payroll taxes. That was the original proposal, and there is good reason for that. These families are contributing to our economic system, to Social Security and Medicare. They are paying taxes, along with everybody else, but right now they are not getting tax relief. The Contract with America was supposed to change that. It is time to deliver on that promise: Make the child tax credit available against the first dollar earned in payroll taxes.

Here is another change. We ought to deliver the credit to families in regular installments throughout the year. The truth is many working families can't afford to wait until the end of the year to tally up and figure out how much tax credit they might get back, how much relief they might qualify for. They are paying their taxes in every

single paycheck that they earn. It is coming out of their paycheck every couple of weeks or every month. We ought to be returning real tax relief to them in the same increments. So let's make it advanceable. Let's give it to families in installments that they can use across the year as they go out there and earn a living and pay their taxes.

And we ought to make the credit available to expecting parents as well. We should say that parents who are expecting children, a child not yet born, ought to be able to claim that tax credit up to $5,000 depending on the amount of payroll taxes that they pay, even if the baby has not yet arrived.

Pregnancy is costly. Hospital bills are outrageous, and working families who are expecting children should be able to claim tax relief on the same basis as families with older kids.

This plan would provide major generational tax relief for working families with children. And I emphasize ``working.'' What I propose is not social assistance. It is not social insurance even. It is a tax cut. You have to work a job and pay taxes in order to earn the credit.

But under our current system, too many families do work. Under our current system, too many do pay considerable sums in taxes but do not qualify for tax relief in any meaningful way. It is time to change that and make this relief available for working families.

And this proposal advances a second important principle as well. And that is the principle that everyone who pays taxes ought to get relief, and relief ought to be available on the basis of family.

Conservatives have said for years that family is the cornerstone of society. We have said for years that it is the first and irreplaceable building block of our Nation.

Well, our tax policy ought to reflect that. Our whole national policy ought to reflect that, and we shouldn't shy away from saying that we ought to deliver tax relief and tax cuts on the basis of family formation, on the basis of family size, and, yes, on the basis of family need.

Madam President, this is only the beginning. There is much more to do. We have years of decline of the American family to reverse. We have years of neglect of the American worker to undo. The challenges are indeed formidable, but this is the moment for the revival that we seek. And so let us not delay. Let us begin.

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, for almost 4 years now, Joe Biden has subjected our country to economic misery, uncontrolled crime, and international humiliation. And now, on the way out of his failed and scandal-plagued Presidency, he is showering gifts and favors to some of the most depraved human beings.

It started last month with Hunter Biden, pardoning his own son not just for the crimes he was convicted of and pleaded guilty to but for all crimes that he may have committed. Lord only knows what Joe Biden was trying to cover up.

The hits continued when he issued 1,500 blanket commutations for criminals whose records, by his own aide's admission, he did not review, whose victims he did not consider--an affront to the pardon process envisioned by our Founders, intended to correct specific and limited errors in the criminal justice system.

Among the beneficiaries of these commutations was a corrupt judge who sent hundreds of kids to jail for bribes. Yes, a judge took bribes to imprison children. The victims of the so-called ``kids for cash'' judge included a young man who later killed himself.

These 1,500 commutations also benefited hundreds of drug dealers, fraudsters, and thieves. Joe Biden and those who control him, though, didn't seem to care about the victims of these criminals. Instead, they just continued their uncaring, offensive giveaway to criminals.

It has continued. In just the last 2 weeks, we learned that the Biden administration released 11 Yemeni terrorists from Guantanamo Bay, including two suspected bodyguards of Osama bin Laden. We also learned that Khalid Shaikh Mohammed and two other architects of the 9/11 attacks will avoid the death penalty as a result of the Biden administration plea deal.

That plea bargain is an insult to the sacrifice of thousands of young Americans who left their homes, their families, and their professions after 9/11 and volunteered to go fight on behalf of our country. That is an absolute disgrace, and it alone would blacken the legacy of any Presidency.

There should be a Senate resolution condemning every single one of these commutations and the release of every single terrorist. Unfortunately, Senate Democrats would block every single resolution.

Case in point: Last month, I introduced a resolution condemning the Democrats' commutation of that ``kids for cash'' judge. Surely, we could agree on that. But, no, Senate Democrats, led by the Senator of Illinois, objected to even that limited bill.

Therefore, I have come to the floor today not to condemn all of these atrocious actions, though they all deserve condemnation. I am simply here to judge the depth of the Democratic fealty to a disgraced President halfway out the door.

I am asking the Senate to condemn just two of President Biden's latest and most inexcusable commutations of all--his commutations of death row inmates' death sentences. Just 2 days before Christmas--2 days before Christmas--when most kids had visions of sugarplum fairies dancing in their heads, the President announced that he was commuting the death sentence of 37 rapists, murderers, and sadists. With that action, he brought relief to 37 depraved monsters on death row and despair to the families of their victims during the holiday season.

It is difficult to express the cruelty of reminding these families of the worst days of their lives and robbing them of justice right before Christmas--a Christmas gift to 37 savage murderers and a reminder to those families that, not only will they never spend Christmas with their loved ones again, but they won't get justice for their loved ones.

The President showed disdain for the victims of these crimes and their families, presumably and cynically hoping that the Christmas holiday would suppress media attention and public backlash against his commutation. I don't think so.

Now, the President and his defenders would like the American people to think that President Biden made these commutations out of some principled objection to the death penalty. I could respect that. I know people who are opposed to the death penalty, no matter how heinous the crime, in all cases, usually founded in a deep-seated religious conviction. I can respect that. I certainly disagree with it, but I understand it.

But that is not what Joe Biden did. That is a lie. He commuted the sentences of 37 death row inmates, and he left 3 killers on death row. Who are they? You may have heard of them. The Mother Emanuel Church shooter in Charleston, the Tree of Life synagogue shooter in Pittsburgh, and the Boston Marathon bomber. So, clearly, he believes in the death penalty for some criminals but not most.

He made a choice, a moral judgment, that the victims of 37 depraved murderers and their families didn't deserve justice. He also made a choice that not even he, doddering out of the White House, could defend the commutations of racist murderers and terrorists on political grounds or inflict that kind of grave political damage on his own party.

But he wasn't motivated by principle. He was motivated by politics and guided by leftwing ideologues. He handpicked 37 murderers to save from death row. Unlike the rest of his pardons and commutations, you can't hide behind the excuses of staff, incompetence, personal ignorance, or the affection of a father. He knew who he was pardoning, and he knew the evil crimes they committed.

I would like to discuss in a little more detail just two of the depraved savages that Joe Biden saved from death row. The first is Anthony Battle, who broke into his ex-wife's home and raped her, stabbed her to death with a butcher knife. She was heard screaming: ``Help me, help me, rape.'' She was a U.S. marine, and Anthony Battle raped and murdered her.

Yet that murder wasn't even the crime for which he was on Federal death row. He wasn't done. While he was in prison, he beat a 31-year- old correctional officer to death with a hammer, hitting him in the back of the head three times until he was soaked in the officer's blood.

The corrections officer hadn't even done anything to provoke or confront Battle. Battle beat him to death anyway. When he was given a chance to apologize for the killing, Battle said the officer ``died like a dog.''

This is why we have the death penalty for correctional officers; so inhumane monsters who are stuck in prison for life have some reason not to start open hunting season on correctional officers.

This is the man that Joe Biden decided deserved mercy 2 days before Christmas, a man who raped and murdered a U.S. marine and bludgeoned a police officer to death.

Joe Biden also saved the life of Marvin Gabrion, another rapist and serial killer. While facing trial for raping 19-year-old Rachel Timmerman--yes, that is right. He was on trial for raping a 19-year-old girl. Gabrion kidnapped her.

He bound her body with duct tape, he chained her to a concrete block, and he threw her into a lake while she was still breathing. Her last moments were filled with terror and agony.

In addition, he also killed her 11-month-old baby--11 months old. He allegedly confessed in prison that he ``killed the baby because there was nowhere else to put it.''

This is the man that Joe Biden also decided deserved clemency 2 days before Christmas.

It is an ancient truth that some crimes are so evil that the scales of justice can never balance so long as the perpetrator lives. Every day that men like Marvin Gabrion and Anthony Battle draw breath at the expense of American taxpayers is a day that justice is denied. There is no forgiveness in this world for what they did, and there is no redemption. The sooner they exit this world, the sooner they will face the full measure of justice next.

And that is just two. I could give you 35 more examples as well. That is all I am asking for today--unanimous consent for two resolutions. The first one condemns the commutation of Marvin Gabrion, a rapist and serial killer. The second condemns the commutation of Anthony Battle, who raped and murdered a U.S. marine and bludgeoned a correctional officer to death.

Madam President, I ask unanimous consent that the Senate now proceed to the en bloc consideration of the following Senate resolutions, which are at the desk: S. Res. 24 and S. Res. 25; further, I ask unanimous consent that the resolutions be agreed to, the preambles be agreed to, and that the motions to reconsider be considered made and laid upon the table with no intervening action or debate, all en bloc.

Mr. President, reserving the right to object, which I certainly will, I want to briefly address what the Senator from Illinois said about my resolution condemning these two death sentence commutations.

I want to acknowledge that the Senator from Illinois is a longtime and principled opponent of the death penalty, based I believe in part on genuine and deep faith convictions. He has had that conviction for years. As I have said, I can respect that.

The Senator from Illinois presumably wants to see the commutation of the Mother Emanuel Church shooter, the Tree of Life synagogue shooter, and the Boston Marathon bomber. I strongly disagree. I can respect it. It is not what Joe Biden did. Joe Biden picked and chose which depraved murderers and rapists deserved to live and deserved to die, denying justice to the families of all those who were killed by anyone who wasn't totally politically toxic.

Second, the Senator from Illinois said that he did not hear five words in my remarks. He repeatedly said he didn't hear five words in my remarks. Those five words he didn't hear are ``life without the possibility of parole.'' That is true--he didn't hear those words in my remarks. That is not what these murderers were sentenced to. They were sentenced by a jury of their peers to the death penalty. And one of them that I offered the resolution on, Anthony Battle, murdered a correctional officer while he was in prison for life.

Giving these 37 depraved murderers life in prison without the possibility of parole doesn't solve the problem; it creates 37 new potential problems--open hunting season on correctional officers at every facility where they are incarcerated. Again, that is why we have the death penalty for the murder of a correctional officer--because otherwise there is nothing for these depraved men to lose.

Senator Durbin also mentioned a few of President Trump's pardons of Medicare fraudsters or political allies or others. I haven't reviewed every one of those cases. I am not prepared today to say whether I would support them or not. Some of them sound pretty bad. Here is what they aren't, though: heinous murderers who duct-taped a woman alive, tied her to a concrete block, and threw her in a river while the murderer was on trial for her rape and then killed her 11-month-old baby because he didn't have anything better to do with it.

He mentioned the January 6 defendants. President Trump said he is going to likely issue pardons in some of those cases. I think that is appropriate. Many of these men and women have been convicted of misdemeanor crimes like parading and picketing on public grounds without a permit, and they had the book thrown at them, including a 70- year-old great-grandma who was just walking around wearing a red MAGA hat. I expect, I hope, the President will review these cases on a case- by-case basis. I think all Presidents should do that. But whatever President Trump does with the January 6 defendants through commutations or pardons will pale in comparison to eliminating the judgment of these 37 depraved murderers' fellow citizens to impose the death penalty on them, will pale in comparison to depriving these families of some measure of justice 2 days before Christmas.

So I do object to this resolution, and I cannot believe that this Senate--our Democratic colleagues cannot bring themselves to condemn some of these pardons over the last 2 months of Hunter Biden or the ``kids for cash'' judge who sold kids into juvenile detention centers for bribes or, now, depraved murderers.

I object.

Mr. President, it is nearing the end of the week, and normally, that is when I come down to the Senate floor to do my weekly--I try to make it weekly--Alaskan of the Week speech.

Now, I know for the pages, this is their favorite speech of the week. You get to hear about Alaska; you get to hear about some great Alaskan doing some great stuff. I usually try to give a little update about what is going on in our great State because it is always something interesting. And then I encourage people watching on TV: Come on up to Alaska; you are going to have the trip of a lifetime if you do it.

So today the Alaskan of the Week is someone very special to me and my wife. I am going to talk in detail about all she has done for our State. Her name is Kathlene Rowell. And she has worked for me in Alaska going on 15 years. The Presiding Officer understands that as a former Governor, where you have great staff that do amazing things, not just for you and your team but for the whole State.

Her title in the office has been deputy State director, but she has been so much more than that. She has literally been the glue that has kept my whole team together, not just since I have been in the Senate but even before I became a Senator.

So I am going to talk about Kathlene real quick here in a minute as the Alaskan of the Week. She so much deserves it. Just wanted to mention a few things.

We are all, of course, praying for the people impacted by the fires in California. We are all ready to stand by to help. The States are coming together. My State is certainly a State that understands natural disasters, and, you know, even in Alaska right now, Anchorage just last week--didn't make any news down here--was hit with hurricane-force winds on Sunday, up to 130 miles an hour. A lot of people--hundreds-- were without power, a lot of property damage. So, you know, we are thinking about our Alaskan colleagues who were hit by that hurricane-- there is no other word--typhoon.

And, of course, praying for everybody in Los Angeles. You know, with a State and population that big, we all know people. I have a good college roommate

buddy of mine Tom McMillin, my two sisters-in-law Janine and Jennifer, they are all being real negatively impacted by that. So we are thinking about them.

In Alaska, I always like to give an update. The Sun is actually coming back. We hit the winter solstice. In Anchorage, we are gaining about 4 minutes of sun a day; in Fairbanks, we are gaining about 5 minutes of sun a day; and in about a week, January 22, the Sun will rise again in Utqiagvik, AK--Barrow, AK--the top of North America. That will be the first time the sun comes up over the horizon in 2 months. So they get a dark winter, and it is cold up there.

The Iditarod, the Last Great Race, is coming up March 2. If you are thinking about coming to Alaska, don't think just this summer. Come up in the winter, too; it is great. So that is a little bit of update to tell what is going on.

Now, back to Kathlene Rowell, the rock in our office whose last day-- oh, it breaks my heart, breaks my wife Julie's heart. Her last day was yesterday.

So little bit of background about Kathlene. She moved with her family to Alaska from Chicago when she was 3 years old. Her father worked in the oil fields and had been commuting to Alaska, Illinois, Chicago-- back and forth. He thought it was time for the family to come together, so they settled in beautiful Eagle River, AK, a gorgeous--and I mean gorgeous--patriotic community, mountainous community right outside of Anchorage.

Kathlene went to Chugiak High. Go Mustangs. She was an excellent, driven student. Anyone who knows Kathlene knows that ``excellence'' is her motto. Everything she does is excellent.

But we got confirmation from her good friend Robyn Engibous--on my staff, my deputy chief of staff here in DC--who went to school with Kathlene and remains very close, that, yes, Kathlene was a straight-A student. We knew that. She showed horses. She worked at the coffee shop in Eagle River called Jitters, a mainstay in that great community. She excelled academically.

Went to college first in Colorado, then in Washington State. Did a semester with the National Outdoor Leadership, which she loved, and then came back to Alaska, finished up, and graduated from Alaska Pacific University which, very importantly, she did well there. But really, really importantly, she met her husband Ben who is a great guy. Great guy. They are a great couple.

So that is Kathlene's early background. She then worked in the parks division, division of parks and rec, right at the department of natural resources. That is when I first met her. I was the new commissioner at DNR--we call it DNR in Alaska; that covers everything in Alaska. We worked in the same building. I was a brandnew commissioner, and I was looking for a special assistant--a young, smart, talented, special assistant--as the commissioner of the department of natural resources.

Now, this is a big job, right? If Alaska were its own country, it would be the envy of the world in terms of resources, strategic location, critical minerals, our military, you name it. DNR has a lot of responsibility over all these things.

Matter of fact, not to go on a tangent here, but I had an op-ed in the Wall Street Journal today titled ``Greenland Is Nice, but Alaska Is Better.'' Goes into all this stuff about how great Alaska is.

Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the Wall Street Journal Op-Ed, ``Greenland Is Nice, but Alaska Is Better,'' be printed in the Record at the end of my remarks. Just to give you a sense of our great State there.

So I needed a special assistant. And I was looking at all these resumes and these lawyers and stuff, and here, for the young pages, this is the value of what they call an elevator speech. You have heard of an elevator speech, right? You have to make a pitch; you have to make it quick. So I am getting on the elevator, Kathlene at the time she is probably mid, early twenties. She is very young-looking, so then she looked a lot younger than her early twenties.

And she gets on the elevator, and, boy, oh, boy, it was the elevator pitch: Commissioner Sullivan, I understand you are looking for a special assistant.

The elevator is going up, all these people are listening: I believe I have the qualities, the hard work, the ethics, the commitment to excellence to be your special assistant. I would like to come by your office and interview.

Boom, the door opens. I was like, dang, that was impressive. Elevator pitch. So she made that. Came in, interviewed, and I am like, I am hiring her--none of these gung ho, high-falutin lawyers; I am going to put my trust in this young Alaskan. And, boy, oh, boy, I am so glad I did. It was the best elevator pitch I have ever seen.

Kathlene rolled up her sleeves and learned everything she could, and before you knew it, she was running the department of natural resources, which in Alaska is the giant organization of hundreds and hundreds of people, the key to our economy.

She was working with my other special assistant John Katchen. She was hugely essential to the things we got done at our department of natural resources. We negotiated against ExxonMobil for a giant natural gas deal. You want to talk about a tough thing. Exxon brings in like 25 lawyers to negotiate against a group of 3 of us, right? We took them down.

She organized summits. She helped us redo our State's oil tax regime, which is creating a big spur of development right now. Kathlene was essential in all of this, bringing more producers up to Alaska, a great teammate. Her heart was in serving our State.

Fast-forward a few years, I am going to run for the U.S. Senate--not an easy run. A lot of good Republicans in the primary. There was a Democrat incumbent here; that is never easy. And the first person I said I am going to hire on my campaign team, first person, was Kathlene.

Now, it was a risk. She had a 1-year-old at home at the time, Benjamin, who is now joined by his brother Niles. By the way, Kathlene is a great mom. Her boys are now 12 and 8. When she first started working for me, she had no kids. She has got a beautiful family with her husband Ben and her two wonderful boys.

But it was a risk. She had a great State job, and she is going to, you know, join this guy throwing his hat in the ring. You know, I am not so sure it was looking like an easy deal, but she left her easy-- not easy--her secure State job, the first person I hired on my campaign. Organized it. Traveled. And I am pretty sure I would not have won without Kathlene's great work. That was in 2014.

And then she stayed in our office in Alaska, became the deputy State director. And you know how it is, she has been with me and my team, my wife, longer than any other staff member, and she has done an incredible job.

Now, we all know how important staff are, both here in DC and especially back home. They work hard. Let's face it, you know, government jobs aren't always the best: You certainly could probably be making more money in the private sector; the hours can be grueling. But great staff, they are vital to what we do.

They are vital to the work that we get done here in the Senate, in DC, and really vital back home where the work they do for our constituents and the places they travel to are essential. They are essential.

And here is a big thing: As you know, the help that our offices back home do to work for the people we are honored to represent is vital because there are so many giant Federal Agencies--Social Security, the VA, IRS, the Department of Defense, Immigration--that are giant labyrinths that people don't know how to get through.

Our Federal Government can be unwieldy and often unforgiving. So when Alaskans need help on all those things--Social Security checks; VA benefits, we are the State with more veterans per capita than any State in the country; Medicare; the IRS comes screwing up something--they come to us and we work on these cases.

This is a rough number, but since I have been in office, our Alaska staff has worked on more than 12,000 of these cases, and they are really complicated and take hours and hours. We always have at least one person attached to these cases, something they will always remember, and their lives are impacted by whether they are resolved in a good way or bad way.

And as I am sure you probably believe, you don't always hear about this

part of the job of representing people in our great Republic; but in my view, it is probably the best part of the job because you have a direct impact on someone you represent, and you can literally change their lives.

We do that, we put our heart and soul into it, but nobody has put their heart and soul into it more than Kathlene. She has made all of this happen, 12,000 cases.

Now, I also have a fantastic director of constituent services in Anchorage, Carrie Keil, who has completed more than 3,600 of these cases herself. She is amazing. But here is what Carrie said about Kathlene: Kathlene is at the helm of the ship. She is the captain of the ship. She makes all of this possible. She is a master communicator. Her loyalty and integrity to the people of Alaska are unmatched.

That is what you want with great staff.

Margaret Sharpe, she runs our Mat-Su Valley regional area, our regional director, Margaret, who does a great job. She calls Kathlene our hero: She is our conscience. She is the gatekeeper of decorum. She is all about kindness and respect. She keeps all of us kind.

Isn't that a great compliment? That is from Margaret on my team.

Elaina Spraker, another great member of my team, our Kenai regional director on the Kenai Peninsula. Covers Kodiak as well. Elaina does a great job. She says that she has never worked

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.

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

Mr. President, today, our prayers are with the people of Southern California who have been impacted by the wildfires that have spread over the past few days. The images of homes, schools, places of worship burning are terrifying and almost surreal.

I have been briefed on the latest efforts by Federal and State officials to contain these fires. Sadly, there is a lot of work left to do before this crisis is over. Right now, it is vital that our firefighters and medical workers and first responders have everything they need from the Federal Government to combat the flames and rescue people from danger.

The Senate just passed, fortunately, a sweeping disaster aid package precisely for these kinds of emergencies, but now we must ensure all necessary disaster aid goes out the door as quickly as possible and is given to the people who need it and need it the most.

Finally, the fact that the worst wildfire in Los Angeles's history should happen in the dead of winter is another warning of the dangers of climate change. Extreme weather events will continue to happen regularly and will get worse if we don't tackle the climate crisis head-on.

We pray for the people of Southern California, and we thank all of our brave first responders working without rest to keep people safe.

Laken Riley Act

Mr. President, on today's vote, this afternoon, the Senate is going to hold its first procedural vote on the Laken Riley Act. I expect that this bill will have enough votes from both parties to proceed. If we get on the bill, Democrats want to have a robust debate where we can offer amendments and improve the bill.

On the first day of the 119th Congress, my good friend the Republican leader, Senator Thune, said he wants to make the Senate a place ``where all members should have a chance to make their voices . . . heard.'' Well, this bill will be a fine place to start.

We should allow debate and amendments on the bill. This is an important issue. We should have a debate and amendments, and that is why I am voting yes on the motion to proceed.

To remind my colleagues, this is not a vote on the bill itself. This is a motion to proceed, a vote that says we should have a debate and should have amendments.

Democratic Legislative Priorities

Mr. President, now, on the GOP taxes and our Democratic agenda, each day it is becoming clearer that the new Trump administration will look a lot like the old one: chaos for Republicans, bad news for working Americans. That is what this new Trump administration already looks like, just like they did 4 years ago.

All week long, Republicans have tripped over themselves to try to figure out how they are going to hurt everyday Americans through their agenda. All this talk about ``one bill'' or ``two bills'' is irrelevant. That is just Washington-insider machinations.

Americans need to know the real story: Republicans are united on using their new majorities to cut taxes for the ultrawealthy at the expense of working people. It doesn't matter if it is one bill or two bills when they are doing so much to hurt working Americans and only helping those who probably need help the least--the very least, by and large.

All these promises we heard from Republicans about fighting for the working class didn't even make it to Inauguration Day. They are back to trying to cut taxes for the ultrawealthy and megacorporations.

Look, I have no problem against those who are fortunate enough to have a lot of money. God bless them. But they need to pay their fair share. Almost all Americans would agree with that. So it is truly stunning--it is revealing--that Republicans are already spending so much energy trying to figure out the best way to make taxes for the very wealthy even lower.

We are already seeing a glaring contrast between how Republicans use their time in power and what Democrats believe in. A little later this afternoon, Senate Democrats will convene on the Senate steps for our first major press conference, where we will outline our priorities and where they lie in the 119th Congress.

We need to lower costs for working and middle-class people, not reward the ultrarich and America's biggest corporations. If Republicans want to work with us on real policies that lower costs for real working Americans, we are glad to partner with them. But if Republicans try to sell out our children's future with multitrillion-dollar tax cuts that only help those at the very top, we will fiercely, fiercely oppose them.

Nominations

Mr. President, now, on nominations, the American people have a right to know if President-elect Trump's Cabinet nominees are going to fight for them. Will they lower people's costs? Will they be loyal to the country and the Constitution? Or will they cater to their wealthy benefactors, like the first Trump administration? Will they try to undo the wellsprings of democracy?

We can answer these questions through a robust nomination process in the Senate. But when Republicans like the chairman of the Energy and Natural Resources Committee try to rush nominees before Senators have even received basic information, such as background reports, Americans have to ask: What are Republicans trying to hide when they don't want their nominees to have background checks and don't want to have full information about them?

These nominees will have enormous power. Every American has to go through a background check and is asked questions when they are applying for a job. These jobs are so important. Of course, this should happen here. But so far, some of the Republican chairs of committees are resisting, and that doesn't speak well for the qualifications or the confidence they have in their nominees.

In the last 2 days, the chairman of the Committee on Energy and Natural Resources has noticed hearings on not one but two of President Trump's nominees without minority consent:

Governor Doug Burgum to be Secretary of the Interior and Chris Wright to be the Secretary of Energy. These two positions--Secretary of the Interior, Secretary of Energy--will be tasked with managing our natural resources and our clean energy future. They will be responsible for protecting the good-paying, clean energy jobs created under President Biden. And I would remind my Republican colleagues: Those jobs are in red States as much as they are in blue States.

The American people deserve to know if these Cabinet nominees will protect good-paying, clean energy jobs; or will they kill these jobs and put a lot of people out of work for some ideological thing they are chasing?

Yet Senate Democrats on the committee have yet to receive basic information about either of these nominees' backgrounds.

Republicans choosing to rush nominees is quickly becoming a pattern. It is hard not to wonder: What are the Republicans trying to hide about these nominees from the American people? What are they trying to hide? What are they afraid of?

Tribute to Matt Fuentes

Now, finally, I want to end on a more personal but also a bittersweet note.

Mr. President, I have had great staff through all my years in the Senate and in the House. I owe everything to them. They work so damn hard. They are so dedicated, and they are so smart and so creative and so caring. So to say that this is one of the best I have ever had is really high tribute. But Matt Fuentes, my top health policy adviser for 8 years, is one of the very, very, very best I have ever, ever, ever had--8 years, amazing.

Matt, I want to thank you for your amazing work. I am so proud of what you have accomplished for us, for New York, and for the country.

As I said before, I have the best staff in the world, and Matt was no exception. He joined my team and immediately got to work helping defend the ACA when Republicans tried to repeal it in 2017. He was instrumental in passing COVID relief, which saved thousands of lives. He led insulin reform policy. Now, people are getting insulin, and Medicare recipients, for $35. I don't think it would have happened without this guy sitting right here next to me. He figured out the ways to get it done. It is not easy.

And he helped us lower drug prices for millions of other Americans, because, as you know, as of January 1, there is a cap on how much any senior citizen can pay for all the drugs they use, as well as negotiations that would have been now allowed so that Medicare can negotiate with the drug companies, and 10 of the most popular drug prices are going way down.

Anyone who has worked with Matt would agree on one thing: He possesses a rare gift. It is true. It is amazing. He can translate the most complex policy into clear and direct essentials, while grasping the core, difficult political issues at play.

I can recall many times--probably more than either of us would want to admit--when I called Matt at 7 in the morning, at midnight: Matt, what about this? What about that?

He never got mad. He was always very factual and matter of fact and would answer and solve the problem.

So he is amazing. And despite all the stressful situations that the job put him in, Matt always radiated calmness and confidence. He never wavered under pressure. In fact, that is when he was at his best. When everyone else in the room was trying to prove they were right and others were wrong, he had the special ability to bring people together on both sides of the aisle. So much of what we did was bipartisan, and that is the reason right here. It was a sight to behold to watch Matt.

Again, I just have to say, with all the pressure and everything going on and having a new family--a new young family, a beautiful child; now there are two--he stayed cool as a cucumber. I don't know if they use that expression these days. My mother uses that one. It is probably out of date.

Have you heard it, Mr. President, from your mother, too--``cool as a cucumber''?

Matt was cool as a cucumber throughout all of it--thoughtful, kind, generous. He knows when to be serious but doesn't take himself seriously. He is always seeking to help but is never afraid to hold strong for what he believes is right.

You know, my wish for every Senator, regardless of our ideology, is that you have a Matt Fuentes--sometime, someplace--on your staff, working on some important issue.

I do want to say one thing. I hate seeing Matt leave. He is one of the best, as I said, I have ever had, but we have a new successor to Matt, who is his deputy, who I know will fill his large shoes.

So thank you very much.

Matt, from the bottom of my heart, thank you, thank you, thank you, not just for me but for everything you have done for America and Americans. Your legacy, no matter what else you do in life, is there. There are literally going to be huge numbers of people--tens of thousands, hundreds of thousands, maybe millions--who are alive, who are healthier because of you. What an amazing legacy.

God bless you, Matt. Good luck. Good luck to your nice wife, to your great little kids. I know you will do other great things, but forever, forever, forever, you will be part of the Schumer family and one of the best members of it.

I yield the floor.