A joint resolution providing for congressional disapproval under chapter 8 of title 5, United States Code, of the rule submitted by the Bureau of Ocean Energy Management relating to "Protection of Marine Archaeological Resources".

Mr. Speaker, by direction of the Committee on Rules, I call up House Resolution 177 and ask for its immediate consideration.

Mr. Speaker, for the purpose of debate only, I yield the customary 30 minutes to the gentleman from Colorado (Mr. Neguse), pending which I yield myself such time as I may consume. During consideration of this resolution, all time yielded is for the purpose of debate only.

General Leave

Mr. Speaker, I ask unanimous consent that all Members may have 5 legislative days to revise and extend their remarks.

Mr. Speaker, I yield myself such time as I may consume.

Mr. Speaker, I remind my Democratic colleague that the rule we are debating today provides for consideration of H.J. Res. 42 regarding a Department of Energy appliance rule, H.J. Res. 61 regarding an EPA National Emission Standards rule on rubber tire manufacturing, and S.J. Res. 11 regarding the EPA's Bureau of Ocean Energy Management rules requiring burdensome archaeological reports on energy producers.

There will be ample opportunities to debate, amend, and provide suggestions when the appropriate authorizing committees move forward when we begin our work on spending reforms in a budget reconciliation package. We should focus on the legislation before us this week.

I encourage my colleagues to engage in regular order as our authorizing

committees begin to work on our reconciliation and not prejudge their outcomes and make baseless assumptions.

My colleagues across the aisle have mentioned how they find these measures not worthy of our time. This certainly isn't the first time they have mocked House Republican efforts to curb regulations on appliances, from heating systems to dishwashers, refrigerators, and freezers.

If this were such an unserious endeavor as my colleagues across the aisle claim, then why did the administration they supported for 4 years issue at least 31 regulations covering a vast array of different appliances and other products out of the DOE and the EPA? Is $60 billion foisted on to our Nation's manufacturers and consumers in new regulatory and compliance costs not serious enough for Congress to thoroughly scrutinize?

Democrats seem to be confused about what it is that the American people voted for in November, and one of those items was lowering day- to-day costs that are hurting workers and families. Reversing these regulations is something that House Republicans are deeply committed to doing, and we are working with the administration to actually get this done.

I would also recommend that my colleagues across the aisle speak with the fellow Democrats in their Caucus about how harmful these regulations are and why CRAs to reverse Biden's anti-energy and economically harmful regulations are so important.

Last Congress, Democrats voted with Republicans to pass at least five measures to halt Biden administration green energy regulations, including the following:

A CRA to halt the Biden definition of the Waters of the United States. Nine Democrats voted ``yes.''

A CRA to halt draconian emissions standards on heavy-duty vehicles. Four Democrats voted ``yes.''

A CRA to halt draconian emission standards on light-and medium-duty vehicles. Eight Democrats voted ``yes.''

In this Congress, a whopping 11 Democrats voted just last week in support of a CRA on the Biden administration's rule on conservation standards for consumer gas-fired instantaneous water heaters, one of those appliance-related regulations that my colleagues here today claim is not worth our time in the House, but their colleagues voted ``yes.''

Finally, six Democrats voted ``yes'' on last week's CRA to halt the Biden-era implementation of a natural gas tax that would harm our Nation's energy producers and consumers.

The Democratic Party is busy pulling their hair out over President Trump, Elon Musk, DOGE, whatever else is their outrage of the day. However, they have lost sight of the kitchen-table issues affecting everyday Americans. They ignore the rising costs hurting workers and families in order to cater to their own extreme leftwing base. It is so bad that even Members in their own Caucus are breaking ranks to vote for commonsense reforms such as the rolling back of these radical anti- energy agenda items that the Biden administration foisted upon us in the eleventh hour of their administration.

Mr. Speaker, I reserve the balance of my time.

Mr. Speaker, I yield myself such time as I may consume.

Mr. Speaker, we listen to calls from our Democratic colleagues for compassion and concern. I must ask the question, where was the compassion and concern while they watched prices skyrocket over our constituents over the 4 years of the Biden administration?

Where was the compassion and concern where the Biden regulatory environment smothered the U.S. economy with regulation after regulation, trillions of dollars in off-budget spending,

which soared inflation for the American people? Where was the compassion then?

Where was the outrage when House Republicans were calling for relief for the American people in the last Congress?

They said that we were following the wishes of only President Trump. They followed the Green New Deal playbook to a t, and that is what we are here to debate today are these important rollbacks of the Green New Deal agenda.

We sat idly by and watched our country get invaded by at least 10 million people that came across our country's borders with the direct will of the President to do it. President Trump has proven in just less than 2 short months the ability for a President to roll this all back with executive orders. Yet, the cost to New York alone was $7 billion in costs on New York taxpayers. Where was the outrage then?

For 8 years, this hysteria has cost them. While they persisted in their witch hunt of President Trump in 2022, Americans contended with 40-year high inflation, after Democrats and President Biden dumped trillions of dollars into a recovering post-COVID economy, which even one of their chief economists told us would create massive inflation. They ignored that guidance.

Did they seek to address everyday Americans' concerns about the direction of our economy? They did not. They doubled down on lawfare against President Trump, and it lost them the House in 2022. In 2024, when the world was on fire with our borders flung open to the invasion of millions of illegal aliens into this country that prompted a crisis in countless communities, including my own, Americans' top concerns coming back time and time again, poll after poll, were the economy and our border. Democrats did no work to address those concerns.

Did Vice President Kamala Harris address them? No, she did not. She didn't make that sale to the American people when she was campaigning across this country. Instead, all we heard was about Kamala brat summer and the last-ditch jittery attempt at once again trying to convince Americans that Trump was somehow a threat to democracy. Democrats lost, historically, on November 5, 2024. They lost the electoral vote, the popular vote, and they lost every swing State on the table.

Did Democrats learn from this smarting defeat since President Trump took office? They clearly have not. Instead, they focus their time again defending USAID slush funds, flat-out government waste, and pretty much every problem, trying to lay it at President Trump's feet, including what he is doing every single day as well as DOGE and how they are trying to fix the crisis and the mess that was left behind by the Biden years.

Mr. Speaker, the American people have time and again responded to Democratic hair-pulling with, at best, disinterest. Yet, here we are today on the House floor with more of the same.

The rule before us considers legislation focused on ridding American consumers in an industry of harming regulations that are truly impacting their wallets and their financial well-being and our Nation's economic future. I urge my colleagues to quit the hysterics and for once listen to the voices of the American people after years of refusing to do so.

Mr. Speaker, I reserve the balance of my time.

Are you yielding me your time?

Mr. Speaker, we have seen a lot of masterful theatrics out of the Democratic Party recently, and we are seeing nothing different from that today. It is amazing that people who are so concerned about burdensome regulations and costs on people offer no solutions.

We are here doing the work of that today. We are taking price concerns off of the back of industries. We are preserving jobs. We are creating a brighter future for our communities by getting rid of this eleventh hour rulemaking that was put forward by the Biden administration.

They had all the power to make this country move in the right direction when Democrats controlled all of Congress and the White House following the 2020 elections. They had the ability to make those changes, but they took the country in the wrong direction.

That is why the country, at the ballot box, made the changes that they made. They took the House out of Democratic hands and made Republicans lead the House of Representatives. Then, they did the same with the Senate and the White House in 2024.

That is the report card that the Democratic Party earned because they prioritized the things that the American people did not want prioritized. They haven't read the room. They answer to their woke and angry mobs that they are foisting on Members of Congress and people all over the country right now. It is a very coordinated effort. They deny it, but make no mistake, every U.S. Senator today released a video that has the exact same script. It is very clearly a theatrical performance that the American people are seeing out of Democrats in the U.S. Senate.

We are here with solutions to problems created by the last administration. We are putting them forward to get the job done. We have a timeline that we have to focus on, and that is why these CRAs are so important for us to tackle right now. We have limited legislative days in order to roll back these unnecessary, burdensome regulations that no one asked for and no one wanted. We are getting the job done that we were sent here to do.

Let's look again at the numbers. The Biden administration has issued at least 31 regulations for residential and commercial appliances and equipment, totaling $60 billion. If my friends on the other side of the aisle don't think that added regulatory costs filter into the price of new appliances, then we

have several bridges available for them to purchase.

Let's look further at some of the regulations that will reap financial savings for American consumers. In one example, under the Biden DOE's dishwasher efficiency standards, Americans are expected to save a whopping $1.12 under that regulation. Was that necessary to put out there? Of course, it wasn't.

These are savings that the left expected the American people to be excited about as they racked up more regulations and more restrictions that cost us jobs from the results of the Biden years.

Under the latest DOE rule that H.J. Res. 42 would fortunately curb, home appliance manufacturers have already outlined how the rule requires their industry to provide a myriad of unnecessary information and data that is meaningless when demonstrating efficiency but simply is required to meet compliance with the rules.

It is regulations for the sake of regulations, and the American people are left to pay higher prices and have fewer choices.

At the end of the day, Mr. Speaker, my colleagues simply refuse to acknowledge the natural dynamics of the marketplace. When left to their own devices, the American people will seek out the most efficient model of an appliance that they can afford.

I agree with my colleagues when they say that the American people want cost savings, both at sale and with efficiency over the lifecycle of an appliance. What they don't want is government intervention that limits their ability to make those choices themselves. They want to have more affordable options available to fit tighter budgets, not fewer, more expensive choices because unelected bureaucrats at Biden's DOE needed to micromanage what refrigerators, dishwashers, heaters, air-conditioners, you name it, were permissible under unrealistic efficiency standards.

H.J. Res. 42 will help curb these costly, limiting, and anti-natural gas standards from the final days of the gasping Biden administration that were finalized at the behest of his radical climate lobby.

Mr. Speaker, I reserve the balance of my time.

Mr. Speaker, I yield myself such time as I may consume.

Mr. Speaker, the epiphany that those on the other side of the aisle now have--and they are so concerned about costs and economic concerns-- when they fought us tooth and nail on every single action that we tried to take to curb the Biden administration's uncontrollable regulatory environment is just laughable.

We watched, warned, and fought in the 118th Congress to stop an administration that created a regulatory environment that has added about $1.5 trillion in needless regulations that have stifled the growth of industry and jobs in this country. Now, we are seeing them all of a sudden change their tune.

As our new administration is less than a month and a half old, things are moving in the right direction. People have a new view of what the future is. We are fighting hard to preserve a predictable tax code in this country. We are extending the current tax code so that we can have regulatory certainty, tax certainty, so that businesses can thrive and grow and not fear the hammer of government that they did in the Biden years.

There was an explosion after election day of people ready, willing, and able to invest in America. We have seen unprecedented investment come in from overseas, bringing new jobs, new opportunities, and new future creation here to the United States since election day. That will continue because that is what President Trump campaigned on. That is what House Republicans fight for and what we will achieve together.

Mr. Speaker, this epiphany that we have had on the other side of the aisle, that they are now all of a sudden concerned with the costs of everyday Americans, was nowhere to be found for 2 years in the 118th Congress, as we fought every day about the costs of gas and groceries and how it was pinching away because of Biden's inflation and what it had done to the purchasing power of everyday Americans' accounts.

People in probably both of our districts said the same exact thing, that they were watching the American Dream slip away from our kids and grandkids because we couldn't necessarily be certain that the future would be brighter under the current trajectory of this country.

We have saddled the country with $36.5 trillion in debt. It is a debt service that is higher than what we spend on our national defense. It is an unacceptable legacy that we are leaving to our future generations. We are working every day toward our budget reconciliation to get that under control so that we can be the era that bent the curve on spending and got this country back on track.

Yet, we have other people on the other side of the aisle who want to keep spending levels at the COVID era. COVID fell upon us 5 years ago this week, yet they still want to spend like we are in the midst of an emergency.

It is time that we have a commonsense revolution in this country, commonsense like what we are doing here today: rolling back needless regulations that hurt jobs, hurt workers, and hurt consumers. That is what we were asked to do by our constituents.

These CRAs this week are important because they reinstitute choice in the marketplace. They take the bureaucrats that DOGE is fighting every single day out of the equation and put the

American consumer back in the driver's seat so that we can have choice in our consumer goods, not creating a standard just to justify someone's job in a cubicle somewhere. That is what this government has been about for far too long, but those days are over.

Mr. Speaker, we are now putting common sense in the driver's seat in this country. We are working toward a brighter future for our kids and grandkids.

Mr. Speaker, I am prepared to close, and I reserve the balance of my time.

Mr. Speaker, I yield myself the balance of my time.

For 4 years, Democrats gaslit the American people in a vain attempt to convince them that costs weren't going up, inflation wasn't real, our economy wasn't in trouble, and there wasn't a crisis at our borders. The American people saw past that deception, and they voted for a President and a Congress that promised to put our country back on track.

Part of fulfilling that promise includes unwinding a slew of burdensome rules, prohibitions, restrictions, and other ticky-tacky attempts to micromanage everyday life for Americans. It also includes ensuring that the woke mob and their radical environmental NGOs can no longer call the shots at these Federal agencies at the expense of our manufacturers, our domestic energy producers, and good-paying jobs.

Mr. Speaker, I strongly support the rule before us today.

Mr. Speaker, I yield back the balance of my time, and I move the previous question on the resolution.

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

Mr. President, I would like to speak about DOGE.

The verdict is in: It has been a colossal failure. It has done immense damage to many of our institutions and inflicted immense pain on innocent people. Also, it is not going to be successful in its stated goal of reducing spending and wasteful spending.

But before I go on, let me just say what all of us know. Every single person in this U.S. Senate is all in when it comes to attacking waste, fraud, and abuse. Every single one of us knows that we should kick the tires on every program we have in the Federal Government and look to see how we can make it be more efficient. And there may even be some programs where we say: You know what, its purpose has been served; it is time to move on.

So those of us who are being critical of DOGE are just looking at what DOGE is doing but not at all quarrelling with the notion that every one of us, Republican and Democrat and Independent, has a responsibility to be the best stewards of taxpayer money that we can be.

But here is my problem with DOGE: They are not looking in the right places. There is so much rip-off that is going on. Let's just talk about a couple of examples in our healthcare system. United Healthcare is rigging the system on Medicare Advantage Programs. Our seniors--we want them to have the healthcare they need. But they have set up these billing systems where they have paid nurses and forced doctors essentially to overanalyze and overprescribe and overstate what medical conditions were. This was not to help the senior on a Medicare Advantage Program; this was to pad their bottom line and make billions of dollars.

Of course, I am referring to the series of articles that was in the Wall Street Journal that documented the rip-offs and what I think were corrupt practices by United Healthcare.

Where is DOGE? All that money is just wasted. It has gone into the pockets of executives at United Healthcare. It has gone into shareholder payouts and dividends, but it hasn't gone into improving healthcare for seniors.

Another one: the pharmacy benefit managers. They are ripping us off so badly. We had a bipartisan bill with enormous Republican support and Democratic support to curb the rip-offs in the PBM industry. That was in our final budget deal last year. It got derailed. Why? Elon Musk. He was against it, and he gave the word that this has got to go down. The thing blew up, and we don't have the PBM reform that both sides of the aisle knew was necessary--something that was going to save hundreds of billions of dollars for American taxpayers and allow us to reinvest in healthcare and make things better.

So my first question with DOGE is, Why don't you look where the money is, where the rip-offs are, instead of just sending out emails overnight telling people they are fired whose performance has been absolutely exemplary?

So that is the core question I have about DOGE. Why are you leaving these practices that we know are really corrupt and a rip-off untouched, unexamined, and allowing them to continue when it is hammering taxpayers and citizens?

We have work to do on saving money, and we have places where it is absolutely essential that we act. DOGE is blind to all of those, all of those situations, and that is disgraceful, especially when you have Elon Musk as the person who sabotaged our effort for PBM reform.

The second thing is, there is a basic question if you are going to go about examining a program. You can ask hard questions. You can look under the hood. How is it working? How is it not working? Where do we have too many personnel? Where can we actually improve the practices and the performance by some reforms?

DOGE is not doing that. It literally is not doing that. It has not even taken a day, an hour, to come up with a plan on how to examine the various programs they are engaging with. What they are doing is firing people. People are waking up in the morning, and they are getting an email that says: Due to your poor performance, you are gone.

Now, this is a situation that obviously is incredibly cruel. You are working at the Department of Agriculture, you are working at the NIH, you are working on a USAID program, and life is going on, and suddenly you get this email out of the blue that clearly is a mass email but has a very specific impact on you, your life, your livelihood, and your hopes and dreams. That is just a savage, savage way to treat people who have been working in our various governmental Agencies, and it has enormous impact on our communities.

By the way, DOGE is picking on veterans. Literally thousands of veterans have been fired. The VA has announced the dismissal of more than 1,000 employees. That includes researchers working on cancer treatments, opioid addictions, prosthetics, and burn pit exposure.

So the issue here was not ``How do we help them do that job better? Where are there ways we can economize?'' The procedure is ``You are gone; that is it.''

President Trump and Elon Musk fired around 350 employees at the National Nuclear Security Administration. These are folks who safeguard nuclear weapons. Now, it was so embarrassing that even Musk had to acknowledge it was a mistake, and those people are now back on their job.

But what it does I think very clearly is show how there is nothing about a plan to execute a thoughtful way to save taxpayer money. It is just shoot first and aim later. And 4,000 employees at the U.S. Department of Agriculture.

By the way, this is incredibly important: These are all things that affect red States and blue States. This has no political orientation on one side or the other because the impacts of these are going to be felt by the farmers in Indiana just as they are going to be felt by the farmers in Vermont.

Another example that is really pretty cruel, and I just don't understand this: We have farmers across the country that I have spoken to--farmers in Vermont--who entered into contracts with the Federal Government under the provisions of the Inflation Reduction Act. What the deal was is the farmer agreed, say, to install solar panels or create a buffer zone between cattle grazing in a streambed or change the tillage practices to try to improve the soil.

I get it that President Trump and Mr. Musk are against the Inflation Reduction Act, and they have a right to do everything they possibly can to try to reverse that policy. So this is not about their right to use Executive authority. But here is what I don't understand: How do you stiff farmers who went out and borrowed money because they had a contract, they agreed to do certain things around their farm, and then they get an email saying: Just kidding. We, the Federal Government, are not going to honor our contract.

I am thinking of one farm in my own town of Norwich, VT, where folks did borrow the money and they did the work, and it was in anticipation of the Federal Government keeping its part of the bargain and coming through with the cash that it had agreed to, and they are told: No, we are not doing it anymore.

I know that the Presiding Officer is like me when it comes to keeping your word. You give your word; you keep your word. The folks you represent, the folks I represent, that is what they do, that is what they expect. But we have DOGE saying: Well, that doesn't apply to us because we want to ``save money.'' That is just flat out disgraceful and unacceptable.

FEMA. FEMA is absolutely essential to help folks respond to a catastrophic event. We need reform in FEMA, and I

want to work with colleagues in order to do that. But when that disaster comes--you know, a fire in Hawaii or California, floods in Vermont or North Carolina, hurricanes down south, or drought--the response from FEMA is essential because the local community doesn't have the infrastructure in place to provide that immediate emergency assistance that folks need for saving lives and keeping themselves together during that immediate storm event.

We are hearing that DOGE and the President want to just abolish FEMA. We have to be there for one another when it is our community that is affected by a catastrophic event where our citizens, the folks we represent, to whom we have a real duty--it is no fault of their own-- they are on the receiving end of Mother Nature. It has always been the tradition in the Senate that we help one another on that. That is not a partisan deal. DOGE is hammering us on that.

The people who get hurt--it is the everyday people whom we represent that are working hard, who are struggling each month to pay their bills. They are anxious about the safety of their kids, they are anxious about inflation, they are anxious about meeting the challenges of daily life, and they want to make a contribution to strengthening their community as well as their family, and they are getting hammered.

I mentioned, too, that among them are the 6,000 veterans who have been fired by DOGE across the Federal workforce. I mean, that just astonishes me. How do we say to a veteran who showed up to serve us and protect our country and to whom we claim we have great respect and allegiance--how do we send them an email that says ``You are fired,'' with no explanation, no sitdown, no face-to-face, just contempt for the value of what they contribute and how hard they are working? I do not understand that. I just don't.

Even in a tough business environment where some of our employers have to make tough decisions because they just know their business can't handle the workforce they have and they may have to make, against their desires, some reductions in force, our employers will sit down with folks face to face: Here is what we can do. Let's work out a plan. We know you need healthcare.

DOGE just dispenses with that when it has no plan. So the cruelty-- the cruelty of this is so abhorrent to me.

We as a society, really, despite whatever our differences are, have to have some mutual respect, and is it so essential to people that they have meaningful work. If we are going to make adjustments, we have to have a plan to include them, where DOGE says: We don't have to do that.

This isn't just about Elon Musk being a multibillionaire. No matter what happens, it is not really going to affect him. It is about Elon Musk treating people with what I think is the utmost cruelty. You are gone--you are gone--such disrespect for people who work hard at the VA, work hard in the NIH, work hard in the Department of Agriculture, work hard in the Department of the Treasury. So that element of this, we should all be shocked at.

You know, I can give a few examples of people in Vermont, but I know I am like every single Member of the U.S. Senate: We can give examples of people in the States we represent.

Our Small Business Administration Office has been a real help to Vermonters--very effective. One employee there got a performance review that--this is shortly after the performance review:

In a very short period of time, you established yourself as

an invaluable asset.

That was the performance review. The next day, February 7, she was fired because the email said:

Your performance has not been adequate to justify further

employment at the Agency.

So arbitrary, so unfair, so Elon Musk-like. We have a scientist at the Department of Agriculture, Caitlin Morgan. She studies sustainable agriculture and food systems at the ag services Food Systems Research Center. She was fired despite glowing performance reviews.

So what we have with DOGE is an assertion that they are seeking to cut waste, fraud, and abuse. Who is to argue? There is not a person here that wants to vote in favor of waste, fraud, and abuse, but the reality is they do have a plan. It is not to look at each Agency and then make adjustments so that the Agency, at the end of the operation, will be fit for purpose and better able to do its job.

They have a very simple plan: Kill the headcount, reduce the headcount, fire people. That is it. That is the plan.

So we are going to be left with a decimated FEMA, a decimated Department of Agriculture, a decimated National Institutes of Health, and then who is going to put it back together? This brings me back to the cruelty of a guy like Musk. He doesn't have to worry about that. That is not his concern. Tesla is doing fine. SpaceX is doing fine. You know, things are great for him.

But they won't be great--not just for the people whose jobs have been savagely terminated, it will be bad for the cancer research that scientists are doing. It will be bad for our Vermont farmers who now find themselves deeply in debt because the Federal Government stiffed them. It will be bad for our FEMA response to the next community in our country that gets hit hard by a natural disaster.

So we have got to wake up here and be honest about what is going on with DOGE. We do agree--we do agree, I believe, Republicans and Democrats--that we have got to kick the tires on programs in government, and it is everything from food programs to commodity programs to the Defense Department. And we may have some fierce debates about what the priorities are and what we think is important and what we don't think is important, but that has got to be an on-the-level debate.

What Musk has done is just said: Hey, leave it to me. Let me send out a bunch of emails. Let me fire a lot of people in a lot of Agencies. Let's move fast and break things, and it will come back together.

It doesn't work that way. You know, you destroy the foundation of your house just like you destroy the foundation of a government program like FEMA or the National Institutes of Health, it just doesn't come back overnight because the organizations that we are trying to build, institutions that are essential to the well-being of our own country, those often take generations to create. It takes the commitment, the service, the dedication, and hard work of Americans of all kinds in all States.

This guy Musk is just destroying it all and cavalier about it and contemptuous to the rest of America about what he is doing. We can pay the price.

It is wrong what they are doing and how they are doing it. My view is that we do, in fact, have an opportunity here because both sides are quite willing to come to the table and ask these questions: How can we do it better?

But you know, if we came to the table and we asked how can we do it better, we would be looking at the long-term function: How do we have FEMA work better; how do we have our NIH work better; how do we assess grants better; how do we help our Small Business Administration be more effective in helping our young entrepreneurs? We would be asking those questions.

The other thing we would be doing--and I believe this because I have such respect for all of my colleagues here--we care about how it affects the people. We might have to make some tough decisions because this program could be cut; this one might have to be expanded. But we wouldn't just send off an email telling people to get lost. We wouldn't just be sending off an email to a farmer who just went to the bank and got a loan based on the credit of the United States of America promising to contribute a grant.

We would be considering that. DOGE isn't. In my view, we should all be outraged at the cruelty with which DOGE is operating. It is cruel to the institutions that are important for each of our States, and it is cruel to the people who have been doing this work in good faith for so long.

We have got to speak up and acknowledge that DOGE is destructive. We can embrace the effort to address waste, fraud, and abuse. We can embrace the opportunity to streamline and save money, make things work better, but we can never abandon our commitment to the people of this country who work so hard. We can

never abandon, in a cavalier way, the veterans to whom we have an immense debt of obligation.

Mr. President, DOGE is pretty dumb and pretty cruel and pretty destructive the way that it has operated under Elon Musk.

I yield the floor.

Mr. Speaker, I thank the gentleman from New York (Mr. Langworthy) for the customary 30 minutes, and I yield myself such time as I may consume.

Mr. Speaker, I will try to clarify for the American people, those who may be tuning in, certainly the individuals who have joined us in the gallery today, what this debate is all about.

Just by way of context, let's consider what is happening in the world today. I don't know if my colleague from New York has checked his phone, but the stock market is plummeting. The 401(k)'s of residents in New York and residents in Colorado are wiped out. The massive tariffs that the President of the United States applied to our neighbors at midnight we know will increase the price of everything: groceries, fuel, energy, you name it.

There were mass layoffs of Federal workers, mass purges of veterans at different Federal agencies, mass terminations of Forest Service employees in my district working on wildfire mitigation, scientists at NOAA, individuals doing cancer research, all of that is happening as we speak. Yet, here we are in this august body debating what? Labeling requirements for appliances.

That is what the Republicans have decided to spend today debating, labeling requirements for pool heaters. I don't know if the gentleman from New York has a pool. I don't have a pool. I don't understand why we are wasting time in the House of Representatives debating regulatory requirements for pool heaters or labeling requirements for coolers and air-conditioners. Seriously.

The stock market is crashing, and this is how House Republicans choose to spend their time. Government funding is about to dry out 10 days from now and we want to spend our time talking about pool heaters.

Give me a break, Mr. Speaker. Let's get serious. This isn't what the people of the United States elected us to do. I implore my Republican colleagues to come to the table, work with us in good faith, and stand up to the Trump administration that is dismantling Federal agencies in your own districts.

Social Security offices are being shut down. There are constituents who can't get services from the Federal Government because this President has decided to dismantle these agencies piece by piece.

It is time to get our priorities right, Mr. Speaker. I can assure you that the priorities that the House Republicans are pursuing today and have been pursuing for the better part of the last 2\1/2\ months are grossly out of step with the values of the American people.

It is why I would hope every Member of this body would oppose the rule.

Mr. Speaker, I reserve the balance of my time.

Mr. Speaker, I yield myself such time as I may consume.

Mr. Speaker, it feels like I am living in the twilight zone again. I understand the gentleman from New York very much wants to spend a half hour debating labeling requirements for pool heaters. I get it. We all get it. It is important to you. It is not important to me and not important to the people who I represent. In the 5 minutes that you just spent describing the reasons for this bill in your view, the stock market has continued to go down. More corporations have announced that they will be increasing prices later this week because of President Trump's tariffs. I don't understand how you believe that that is lowering costs.

Again, I would implore my colleagues, let's get serious. There are plenty of substantive challenges facing this country that merit and warrant the attention of lawmakers here in Washington. For the record, House Democrats are not scared to debate any single one of them.

Apparently, reports this morning indicate that in the Republican Conference meeting, a member of Republican leadership stood up in the meeting and supposedly told his Conference a simple instruction: Not a single one of you should attend or participate in a townhall.

Why? It is because they are scared of their own constituents, Mr. Speaker. They understand that if they hold a townhall with their community, they will hear outrage from everyday American citizens who are pissed off, who are angry that the prices for everything are going up because of this reckless Trump administration's policies.

Again, you want to spend a half hour, an hour, 8 hours debating labeling requirements for pool heaters? Be my guest. However, don't expect House Democrats to participate in it.

Mr. Speaker, I yield 4 minutes to the distinguished gentleman from California (Mr. Tran), a veteran who served our country honorably who can speak to the reasons why this amendment is so important.

If we defeat the previous question, I will be offering an amendment to the rule to bring up H.R. 1637, the Protect Veteran Jobs Act.

Mr. Speaker, I yield myself such time as I may consume.

Mr. Speaker, I have great respect for the gentleman from New York. We have a lot of folks who come to Washington, D.C., to observe these proceedings. I suspect it might seem a little rote to them. I would love to have an actual debate. Maybe there are some folks here from New York, some folks from Colorado who would like to see us engage in some substantive debate.

Therefore, I might ask the gentleman from New York because he ended his last remarks by appealing to the voices of the American people and that he and his Conference, in his view, are standing up for the voices of the American people.

I wonder if the gentleman might answer a question. Mr. Langworthy, have you held a townhall this year? It is not a rhetorical question. I am just asking.

Mr. Speaker, if I might ask the gentleman from New York, I believe colloquies are permitted in this Chamber.

I am not. I am asking, rather, through the Speaker to the gentleman from New York if he has held an in-person townhall with the people of New York that he represents this year. I am just curious.

He doesn't have to answer if he doesn't want to answer. It is a yes or no question. It is not a complicated question.

Okay, I will take it as a ``no.''

Clearly, he has not held a townhall in 2025. I would think he would be jumping up to clarify the record that he, in fact, had met with his constituents, Mr. Speaker, if that were the case. He clearly has not held a townhall. I understand why. I get it, because at this juncture, if House Republicans held townhalls, as their constituents express their outrage and indignation at the mass layoffs of Federal workers, of civil servants and at the tariffs that are increasing prices and at the stock market crashing, if their only response is: We took up a really important bill this week on labeling requirements for pool heaters, I could understand why one would have some trepidation about hosting a townhall under those circumstances.

Again, let us be serious about the work that we are called to do in this body. We are here to lower costs for working families, to build safer communities, to ultimately ensure that the American people, the American taxpayers, the Constitution is vindicated. It is unfortunate that my colleagues don't feel the same way.

I reserve the balance of my time.

Mr. Speaker, I yield myself such time as I may consume.

Mr. Speaker, we have heard a lot about so-called theatrical performances. I didn't realize that asking the simple question of whether or not the gentleman had held a townhall this year counts as theater. I understand it is a forbidden question in the House Republican Conference now as to whether or not one has held a townhall, for obvious reasons.

My constituents certainly don't find that to be an offensive question. We have held five townhalls in the last 2 months. We look forward to holding more because we are going to be responsive to the American people. I wish my colleagues would do the same.

What I won't do, and I think what the American people won't do, is be lectured by Republicans about rising costs when literally, as we speak, Trump's tariffs are taking hold and beginning the process of increasing prices, which already started 30 days ago, and putting it into overdrive.

These are just a couple of headlines from the last 8 hours. ``New England, New York grid operators prepare to collect millions in tariffs on Canadian electricity.'' The New York Post says that car prices could potentially surge by $12,000 because of these tariffs.

House Republicans have the audacity to lecture us about increased costs when they are increasing the costs of everything?

By the way, this is not some foreign debate. I represent Colorado. I am proud to represent the great State of Colorado. I have never been to the gentleman's district in upstate New York, but my understanding is that it is pretty close to the Canadian border. There are billions of dollars of economic development in New York and commerce that is transacted between Canada and the United States a mere few miles from the gentleman's district. He describes this as theater?

I am not so sure that the folks in his district and that the people of New York will feel that way as these tariffs begin to kick in. I am sure that the farmers and the ranchers in Colorado that I represent, I can assure you, won't call it theater.

Mr. Speaker, I understand that my colleagues on the other side of the aisle would like to spend every second of every minute of every day talking about the prior President. It has been a half hour now of my colleague on the other side of the aisle starting and ending every sentence with Joe Biden. Donald Trump is the President of the United States.

My colleague reminds us, yes, Republicans have a majority in the House and in the Senate. All I am suggesting is that maybe they should use that majority to do better things than waste everyone's time on labeling requirements for pool heaters. That is it. Maybe we ought to be a little bit more concerned with the 401(k)'s of our constituents, of working families in Buffalo and in Fort Collins, Colorado.

Mr. Speaker, I don't think that is too much to ask, and I reserve the balance of my time.

Mr. Speaker, I yield myself the balance of my time.

Mr. Speaker, as expected, we have a rebuttal replete with references to the 118th Congress, what Democrats did in the last Congress, assigning blame, and all the rest. I remind my colleague that the Republicans are in charge. They have the majority. They have the ability to shape events. They have a Republican President and a Republican majority in the U.S. Senate.

I can certainly assure my colleague that my constituents, who are seeing their 401(k) balances vanish in real time, would not describe these policies as common sense. The stock market tanking, prices of fuel going up, prices of food going up, prices of cars and vehicles going up, car insurance, home insurance, you name it, under Trump's economy, everything goes up.

By the way, he is unabashed about it. I watched some of his press conference yesterday. He is not hiding it. He has acknowledged it. He has said outright that he knows these tariffs will increase prices in the short term, according to him, and he expects the Republican Conference to defend him tooth and nail as these prices go up.

The gentleman talks about economic growth. The Federal Reserve, the Atlanta branch, just yesterday forecasted negative GDP growth for this quarter. That is the first time in a long time there has been negative GDP growth under President Trump. This is the commonsense agenda that my colleague from New York sells to farmers and ranchers in Colorado? We are not buying it. The American people aren't buying it.

It is why I implore every Member of this body to oppose this rule.

Mr. Speaker, it is also why I would implore everyone to support the amendment to the rule that we would like to pursue by bringing up H.R. 1637, the Protect Veteran Jobs Act, which was brought up previously.

I ask unanimous consent, Mr. Speaker, to insert the text of my amendment into the Record, along with any extraneous material, immediately prior to the vote on the previous question.

Mr. Speaker, I am prepared to close, and I reserve the balance of my time.

Mr. Speaker, I yield myself the balance of my time.

I will direct my comments to the Chair, to you, Mr. Speaker, to express my frustration, which is the frustration felt by so many of the hardworking people of the great State of Colorado that I have the privilege of representing in the House of Representatives. It is a frustration borne from the realities that they are facing each and every day.

As I mentioned, we have an economy that is in free fall, a stock market that is tanking. They are seeing their neighbors, their friends, public servants, being purged from Federal agencies, hardworking civil servants who do wildfire mitigation work in Colorado and across the Rocky Mountain West, unceremoniously fired.

There are scientists at the NOAA and NWS facilities in Boulder and elsewhere being subject to these mass terminations by a Federal executive who seems intent on dismantling agency after agency. We have a House Republican caucus that is walking with him in lockstep every step of the way as they prepare to slash Medicaid to the tunes of hundreds of billions of dollars.

The frustration that my constituents feel is justified, because notwithstanding every single one of those transgressions, every single one of those challenges, those obstacles that Republicans have manufactured and created in their daily lives, if they tune in to this debate, they will see that the focus is on none of that and instead on the matters that we have discussed today.

My constituents, Mr. Speaker, do not want to see me debating labeling requirements for pool heaters. They don't. I won't speak for what the people of New York have to say about their Representatives. I will just say for Colorado and Coloradans, they expect me to be here pursuing policies that will make their lives easier, that will promote economic growth and a better quality of life. They are not getting it from this House under Republican control. I can assure you of that.

I understand House Republicans, I am sure, will pass the rule and they will get their bill on water heaters and pool heaters and air conditioners passed through the House. They will have a big fancy signing ceremony at the White House where they will celebrate the fact that they repealed a labeling requirement rule that was promulgated a year ago.

I fear for what the broader economic trends will be when they have that signing ceremony. Who knows. But if past is prologue, I am reasonably confident that the economy will continue the free fall unless Republicans work with us, Democrats, in good faith, to pursue policies that would advance opportunity in our country.

That is my humble request, Mr. Speaker. The best way to get started is by opposing the previous question, opposing the rule, opposing the underlying bills, and getting back to the business of this House.

Mr. Speaker, I yield back the balance of my time.

Mr. Speaker, on that I demand the yeas and nays.

Mr. President, over the years, Federal funding for medical and scientific research has helped split the atom, defeat polio, create the internet, map the human genome, and so much more. No nation has ever made such a significant investment in science and medicine--none. And no nation's researchers have done more to approve the quality of life, not only here but around the world.

But we are in a pivotal moment in history. All the progress we have made--all the progress we hope to make--is in danger because of Donald Trump and Elon Musk. That is right. These two men promised to bring down the price of eggs and gasoline and make housing more affordable. Well, none of that has happened. Instead, they are carrying out an unprecedented and devastating campaign to cut research on cancer, ALS, Alzheimer's, dementia, and infectious diseases.

Instead of making life better for Americans, they want to slash research funding for the National Institutes of Health. If you have never heard of this Agency, I hope you will Google it or take a look and research to figure out who they are and what they do. It is the premier medical research agency in the world.

If you or someone you love receives a dreaded diagnosis, you turn to the doctor and ask: Is there a cure? A surgery? A medicine? I know I have been there and asked those very questions.

There is a difference between the doctor saying, ``I'm sorry, there is nothing we can do'' and ``I have got some good news; there has been some research at NIH we should look into.''

You know all the miracle drugs you see on TV? You can't get away from them, can you? And 99 percent of those drugs approved in the last 10 years were the product, in some way, of NIH research. NIH funding is why people are beating cancer, why babies are being spared from preventable diseases, why HIV is no longer a death sentence, why progress is being made on dementia and other neurological diseases.

Since the start of this administration, we have seen the White House unleash a lawless chaotic attack on everything from funding for farmers to biomedical research. Planes are crashing, and they are cutting aviation safety. Avian flu is on the rise and threatening to make that leap to humans, and we are cutting public health experts. Elon Musk dances across the stage with a chain saw; people laugh and cheer. First, let me tell you this: There is nothing to cheer about when it comes to medical research.

It was this bizarre memo from Office of Management and Budget that illegally froze Federal grant funding. They even prohibited the recipients of Federal grants and medical research from physically meeting in the same place. Oh, you are going to hear arguments: We have got to cut back on the waste and fraud and abuse. I am all for that. But having researchers unable to even sit down and talk about the next breakthrough, how can that possibly be good for our country?

These cuts that were announced by this administration were quickly halted by a Federal judge in a Federal court. There was comment on the floor earlier today that too many people are going to courts. Thank God they went to courts to keep this policy from being implemented by this administration.

But it seems, even though the court made a ruling, this administration is still holding up funding in violation of the court's order. As a result, NIH is delayed awarding approximately $1 billion in grant funding, delaying research at institutions nationwide. Does the delay hurt? Not unless you are the one sitting in that waiting room at a doctor praying to God there is a breakthrough to save your child.

Listen to what is at stake for one of my constituents, Dr. Timothy Koh, professor of kinesiology and nutrition at the University of Illinois in Chicago. For 15 years, Dr. Koh has been researching why people with diabetes develop wounds that do not heal, as well as researching treatments to address these wounds.

While having steady Federal funding for his research through the years, Dr. Koh was recently informed in the last few weeks that his NIH grant application is on hold because of the Trump-Musk Federal funding freeze. His current grant is scheduled to end on Friday of this week. And if his grant is not renewed, he will have to lay off his lab staff and will see major setbacks in the research he has been involved in. Dr. Koh said:

It's going to potentially put an end to my research career

and we won't be able to develop these new therapies for

diabetic [patients].

Is diabetes research important? If it is someone in your family, it is very important.

Make no mistake, under the Constitution, Congress is supposed to have the power of the purse--that is what it reads. But over the decades, bipartisan Members of Congress have worked in concert on a bipartisan basis to do something about NIH funding. It was a little over 10 years ago--Francis Collins, I consider to be an American hero and a saint. He headed up the NIH. And I went out to see him, and I said: I can't double your appropriation. I would do it if I could. What can I do to help you?

He said: Give the NIH Agency 5 percent real growth every year, and I will tell you this: Two things will happen. We will line up the scoreboard with breakthroughs and cures for diseases in America; and, secondly, my researchers will take heart because one of the things that destroys their interest in pursuing a career is the uncertainty of Federal funding.

Well, we went from $30 billion to $48 billion in 10 years because we had a bipartisan team to do it. Patty Murray joined me on the Democratic side. She has always been a champion of medical research; and on the Republican side, Senator Blunt of Missouri was the leader. He was the best. When he chaired a subcommittee on Appropriations that funded this Agency, he was committed to the 5 percent. And then Lamar Alexander of Tennessee--both of those gentlemen have retired. The four of us put together an effort to raise the NIH funding from $30 billion 10 years ago to $48 billion--a dramatic, dramatic increase.

We did it because we all agreed this is not a partisan issue. It should never be. We knew that NIH funding leads to new cures and treatments for patients in need. It supports well-paying jobs nationwide. And it cements our global leadership.

Illinois universities and hospitals receive approximately $1.2 billion in NIH funding a year, which supports 14,000 jobs in our State and 3.5 billion in economic activity. But I will tell you, Mr. President, virtually every State in the Nation can tell that story in one form or another.

Each year, the State of Wyoming receives approximately $12 million in NIH funding. Now, Wyoming is a small State, but they clearly have good research facilities that merit NIH grants. This money supports 265 jobs in Wyoming and $49 million dollars in economic activity. The top NIH funded institution in Wyoming is the University of Wyoming.

With this NIH funding, researchers at the University of Wyoming have recently conducted the following projects. See if any of these sound close to home or close to your family:

No. 1, why Alzheimer's disease and dementia can worsen at specific hours of the day.

No. 2, a project in Wyoming, links between menopause and cardiovascular disease in women.

And developing a new noninvasive tool to help treat people suffering from epilepsy, schizophrenia, anxiety, and autism.

They all sound like worthy projects to me.

Unfortunately, President Trump and Elon Musk aren't finished there. They tried indiscriminately to slash how NIH pays for indirect costs. Without funding, universities wouldn't be able to afford the technology that allows them to conduct research. Cuts to indirect costs are, simply, cuts to research, period.

The other day, we had a debate on the floor on this NIH. One of the Republican Senators talked about the outrageous outlying indirect cost in this country. Let's look at them. Let's review them.

But to stop all meetings of all medical researchers while we do this, to stop the funding for all the grantees, to stop all of the medical research because there might be 1 or 2 or 10

schools that ask for too much or hospitals--thankfully, the Illinois Attorney General, along with 21 other States' leading attorneys general, sued and secured a temporary reprieve for universities and researchers.

Trump and Musk illegally froze Federal medical research funding. They tried to illegally cut funding for medical research, and now they are firing the medical researchers themselves.

Reports indicate that 1,200 NIH employees have been fired so far, from experienced vaccine researchers to the next generation of scientists to the Acting Director of the NIH's Alzheimer's and dementia program.

Further, Trump and Musk have reportedly ended a popular trainee program that brought 1,600 young scientists just out of college to the NIH world-renowned campus in Maryland to get them started working in labs and eventually running labs. They are our future when it comes to medical research, and the Trump and Musk chain saw of chaos of budget cuts has made them victims.

How does this make us a greater nation? How does this make us a healthier nation? A better nation? It doesn't.

NIH research leads to new cures and treatments that extend, improve, and save lives, which is why I am introducing this resolution today to simply say to Senators of both sides of the aisle: Let's pledge our support to make NIH an exception. Let us not let wanton cuts stop something very valuable.

The resolution is straightforward. It says: The work of NIH should not be subject to interruption, delay, or funding disruption in violation of the law--in violation of the law. And it reaffirms that the workforce at NIH is essential to sustaining medical progress.

Can we really debate that point? Do we think the best medical research Agency in the world is being staffed by people who aren't the best? This is not controversial. It shouldn't be. Americans get sick on a bipartisan basis; shouldn't we support medical research on a bipartisan basis?

For as long as I can stand and for as long as I can speak, I will fight to protect NIH and medical research. I hope my Republican colleagues wake up and join me before it is too late.

So, Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the Senate proceed to the consideration of S. Res. 93, submitted earlier today; further, that the resolution be agreed to, and that the motion to reconsider be considered made and laid upon the table with no intervening action or debate.

Mr. President, if standing in this Senate and asking Republicans and Democrats to come together to preserve and build medical research is a waste of time, what in the world are we doing here?

If you were asked to take the Federal budget and put your priorities in there, maybe No. 1 would be national defense. Well, I might make that No. 1 as well; but I can tell you, No. 2 is medical research.

Because what happens when you reach a point where you cut off medical research? These researchers leave the laboratories and say: Honey, I don't know if I will have a job here next year. Let's start looking someplace else.

That is not an unusual thing to occur. So the next generation of researchers are being discouraged by the uncertainty of funding, and this notion that we have to get spending under control--how much does it cost to find a cure? What does it cost to have no cure? Let's get down to the bottom line here. We are talking about how long people stay in the hospital or whether they are alive at the end of the experience or not.

Some of these medical treatments they have to turn to are extremely expensive, unless you can find a cure at the front end of it. And you don't find it by saying, Well, maybe next year we will spend some money on medical research. That isn't the way it works. You want to have a good doctor you can trust from year to year, not a new one every year with a question mark.

The same thing is true with researchers. If you have the best researchers, why in the world would you discourage them from their continued work?

I listened to this comment about $48 billion. It is a lot of money, for sure. That is taxpayers' money, and I take it very seriously. But how much do you think it would cost if we didn't find these cures, didn't find these drugs? What would it cost in human terms and the experience of families who would give up hope because there is no place to turn? That is the reality.

We all have friends--and I had one today--I won't get into the details--who has just learned that he has pancreatic cancer. We don't have a cure yet. If we could find one, do you know how that would change the lives of so many people and their families? Is that worth putting our research into, our tax dollars into, or is it, as the Senator who objected to my resolution said, just wasting time here on the floor?

Well, I am going to come back and waste time over and over again. I am not giving up on this. I am not giving up on families who are waiting for cures and research. I am not giving up on the researchers who dedicate their lives to finding them.

Of course, if we have some overspending, whether it is at Harvard or Illinois or even the University of Wyoming, let's clean it up. But is it possible to clean that up without jeopardizing the basic mission of the National Institutes of Health? I certainly hope so. To think that we would have to close down the whole Agency because a handful of schools are overcharging the Federal Government--and there is no

proof that they are--I think that is part of the reality.

This is an issue that is important to every single American whether they know it or not. We can get spending under control and do it thoughtfully but not at the expense of the best researchers in the world and the expense of cures which would give families hope once and for all.

I yield the floor.

I suggest the absence of a quorum.

Mr. President, we are dealing with a crisis that all hundred Members of this body understand has taken the lives of hundreds and hundreds of thousands of people, and that is the scourge of fentanyl.

One of the things we have been doing as a result of that is temporarily scheduling fentanyl analogs, these horrific substances that are manufactured in order to pour onto our streets. Such a small amount of this drug--it literally could be the size of one pill--as they say, one pill can kill. It is very important to me that we see the temporary scheduling of this continue until the Senate finds a more wholesome response to this crisis. We must rise to meet this crisis in a wholesome way, in way that meets the gravity of the crisis and does not just continue to do the things we have done over and over again.

So as we are working in a bipartisan way in the Senate Judiciary Committee with the understanding that the temporary scheduling may expire in the coming weeks--in order to remove that pressure and allow us to work in a bipartisan fashion, I have come to the floor today to ask for unanimous consent that we continue that temporary scheduling while we work in a bipartisan fashion to make sure that we give the most fulsome response possible to this crisis.

I ask unanimous consent that the Senate proceed to the immediate consideration of S. 724, the Temporary Extension of Fentanyl-Related Substances Scheduling Act, which is at the desk; I further ask unanimous consent that the bill be considered read a third time and passed and that the motion to reconsider be considered made and laid upon the table.

In reserving the right to object, this is why I am down here today--really, literally, at this point--and I want to jump here.

I thank the Presiding Officer for recognizing me. I truly appreciate that, but this gets me excited because this is the point that I want to illustrate.

My colleague is far smarter than I on medical issues. I could not have passed organic chem at Stanford. I am sure he passed it with flying colors. Of my colleague, who is truly one of my more favorite colleagues in this place because of how rational and pragmatic he is on approaching real crises like this, I am begging and hoping he will listen to me, and I am begging this body to listen to me.

We have had a fentanyl crisis in this country of monumental proportions. It is one of the greatest killers in America. Fentanyl and fentanyl analogues have literally been responsible for lowering the life expectancy for Americans. It is one of the greatest crises we have seen to human life in America in my lifetime. There is so much data- driven evidence and evidence-based answers to this, of how we can approach this crisis, but yet the only bill that we seek to do is a bill that does what we have already done on a temporary basis. I support classwide scheduling for fentanyl analogues, but here we have this bill, the HALT bill, that my colleague pointed out did pass in a bipartisan way and now is in the Judiciary Committee.

The reason I am down here is not to drag my dear friend down here because he is a busy man, and I wanted to go over to him before this conversation started to apologize, but I needed to make this point on the floor in this kind of standoff.

He is asking us to pass the HALT bill, which would give classwide scheduling to fentanyl analogues, which we have already done. For years, it has been temporarily scheduled, and what

has happened to opioid deaths in America when we have used this that law enforcement has called for, ``Schedule. Schedule. Give us these tools''? Well, we have had these tools, and deaths in the Presiding Officer's State, deaths in my colleagues' States, and deaths in my State have continued to go up.

Now, here is the beauty of the conversation we are having and why we should be passing the temporary one to let us go back to work, and I know this because I know his heart and I know your heart. There are evidence-based, bipartisan amendments to that HALT Act that are widely supported. My colleague's partner Senator from his State, in committee, said: I don't understand why we are not putting the test strips on this. Why? Because kids who are using fentanyl right now don't know that they are using this fentanyl analogue. Kids in your State and my State think they are taking Adderall, not realizing that this has those toxic things that can kill.

Here we were in committee, with a bipartisan test strip bill, and my colleague's partner Senator said: This makes sense to me. And the one excuse they were using for not doing a bipartisan bill to give us more of a response than doing what we are already doing and wiping our hands and saying, ``We did great things,'' was saying, ``We didn't have time'' because of this artificial deadline.

So I am down here to say: Wait a minute. Let's do the temporary extension and take time to do bipartisan bills.

But don't take my word for it. Take the word of the Republican witnesses who came to our hearing. We just had a painful hearing of law enforcement leaders and other Republican witnesses who told us the scourges of fentanyl that we all know. Those people all said that this can't be all Congress does; that the HALT bill cannot be our only response because the whole bill permanently schedules what we have already scheduled temporarily.

I believe in the 99 Members here who know that our response to this crisis cannot be what we have already been doing for the last 5 years when there are bipartisan bills that we could be putting on this bill to show America that we are not going to just puff ourselves up and make permanent something that was already done in a temporary way.

Let me read some of this pleading from Republican witnesses.

Republican witness Jaime Puerta, a courageous parent who lost his child to an overdose, testified:

It is imperative that we educate our children on the

dangers of any kind of drug use due to the lethality that can

come with any kind of experimentation or self-medication . .

. we must have specific fentanyl education introduced to . .

. our schools as soon as possible; otherwise, more children

will . . . die.

That doesn't even cost money.

We could be doing things through the Department of Education in supporting education campaigns. Bipartisan support for that idea--is it on the HALT bill? No. Let me go on.

Republican witness Sheriff Donald Barnes highlighted the successes of a multifaceted strategy to address both supply and demand for illicit drugs. These are the bullet points he said that we should do, imploring Congress: Don't just do what you have already done. Do something more. Give law enforcement officers naloxone to reduce overdoses; education for fifth and sixth graders; ensure the continuity of care and successful reintegration of people who are returning to the community from the scourge of these drugs.

Witness after witness--from law enforcement to scientists to doctors--have offered up bipartisan supportive ideas so that our response to one of the biggest scourges of our country isn't just to do what we have been doing for the last half decade or more.

I have got bipartisan bills on the committee, and my colleagues from Texas have bipartisan bills on the committee, and the only excuse that people gave for us not to have more consideration was: Oh, well, the deadline is coming up in a few weeks for temporary passage. But I realize we have passed temporary scheduling by unanimous consent before. It is not hard to do.

I beg of my colleagues--I beg of my colleague who is here and others: We have a moving bill that has to go back to the House because we have already added a managers' package to it. I promise you, if we add truly bipartisan things that give a more fulsome approach--a more comprehensive approach--to stop our children from dying, it will pass in the Republican-controlled House of Representatives because it was a bipartisan year. I am in agony over the deaths in New Jersey. I have met with parents who have looked at me and said: What are you going to do?

Let me read to you the words from one of these parents.

Susan Ousterman, who is a courageous mother who lost her son to an overdose--I beg of my colleagues listen to this--said:

I urge you to stop crafting policies based on stigma, false

narratives, and political loyalty, and most of all, stop

using our dead children to justify these failed approaches.

Harsher penalties for drugs, like those for the HALT Fentanyl

Act, do not deter drug use. They only push people into

riskier behaviors, increase the likelihood that someone will

die rather than call for help, and make our communities less

safe. How many more Americans must die before we finally

admit that the War on Drugs was a failure?

I am a former mayor. I oversaw a police department that had to answer the calls with children dying on floors. They had these law enforcement tools. They would tell me more needs to be done. The HALT Fentanyl Act will get passed. Fentanyl analogues will never again be unscheduled in our country. That is not the challenge right now to save lives. The challenge to save lives in America right now is, What are we going to do more than is being done right now? Fentanyl analogues are scheduled right now, and if the only thing we can do--the only bill that is moving through here--is to just do what we have been doing, shame on us.

I am asking this body to give time. Extend the temporary scheduling so that we can work in a bipartisan fashion, like Senator Kennedy, who said: I want more time to look at this. This seems rational; this seems logical; it seems like something we should do. Then, when bipartisan Senators step up like that and say, ``I want to work with the man or the woman across the aisle,'' we will have the time to do it.

So, God, I am sorry that my friend who is truly a great American leader and one of the smarter people in here--I am sorry that he objected to my bill, but I will stand up in our committee meeting on Thursday and make this same plea; that we don't just pass the HALT Fentanyl Act but that we actually put things in it that aren't partisan ideas. They are the ones that law enforcement is calling for. They are the ones that scientists are calling for. They are the ones that doctors are calling for--bipartisan bills.

Dear God, the parents of dead children are calling for us to step up and do more than the same old thing we have been doing around the War on Drugs since I was a kid myself.

With that, I object.

Mr. President, I just want to clarify because my colleague pounded on the desk, and that was hard for me to watch. I am not here because we haven't been trying to get a bipartisan consensus on this and calling and doing all the work. I have watched this now for three Congresses. Number 2, I am here not because I am trying to stop the HALT Act. I am here because I heard two Republicans in our committee say the only reason we can't consider bipartisan approaches, even if they are good ideas, is because of the urgency of this moment.

All I am saying is--this is, obviously, a fait accompli--I just don't want my colleague to walk away thinking this is some kind of stunt. This is my attempt to take away an argument for us to do the work on Thursday. Clearly, it has been objected to. I am going to go back and try my hardest on Thursday to do something more.

The one prediction--I don't want to call it a ``prediction.'' But my colleague says we have a lot more time. I have watched now for at least three Congresses that I have worked on trying to get a larger approach to meet the fentanyl crisis; and in three Congresses, this body has failed to rise to the challenge.

I am dying to be here when my colleague tells me: I told you so--and I give him permission to do that--that this body would do something beyond just scheduling. Because, as I have read, law enforcement, scientists, doctors, and parents are not just asking for the HALT Fentanyl Act; they are asking for us to do more to save lives.

Now, I have only been here 12 years, but I know the window is open to get things done when something is a must-pass bill to move. This is an opportunity to put some things on to show the larger public that we are not going to do what we always do.

I am really worried when this window closes, there will be a lot of people thumping their chests and saying: We have dealt with the fentanyl crisis, and all these other ideas won't have vehicles to go through.

I will not stop working until this body does more than just scheduling what has already been scheduled. People on both sides of the aisle are demanding us to do more. And we don't need to go left; we don't need to go right. We need to do the commonsense, evidence-based approaches that are being supported and called for. In fact, some of the commonsense amendments are already bipartisan supported by Senators. So I am grateful.

I yield the floor.