A joint resolution to direct the removal of United States Armed Forces from hostilities within or against the Islamic Republic of Iran that have not been authorized by Congress.

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 President, I ask unanimous consent that the order for the quorum call be rescinded.

Mr. President, people following the Senate floor will know that hundreds of times I have come to the floor with my trusty, increasingly beat up ``Time to Wake Up'' poster to describe the various manners in which the fossil fuel industry has corruptly obstructed our ability to solve the problem of climate change that is caused by fossil fuel emissions.

They might also remember that I have come to the floor dozens of times to give my ``Scheme'' series of speeches about the corrupt manner in which the Supreme Court has been captured and put into the service of a gang of rightwing billionaires who tend to be fossil fuel billionaires.

In this speech, the ``Time to Wake Up'' series and the ``Scheme'' series converge. I don't know quite how to describe it, but maybe it is ``Time to Scheme Up'' because, for sure, that is what has been done in this country by the fossil fuel industry to blockade our efforts to solve the pollution hazard that they have created for our people--a pollution hazard that is now real and immediate in our economy.

Look no further than the State of Florida, where climate risk has thrashed the home insurance markets to the point where the home insurance market collapse has cascaded into mortgage markets, which has, in turn, cascaded into real estate values--property values.

Last year, Florida led the country in lost property values. This year, there was an article in Newsweek just a few days ago about how 6 to 8 percent losses are predicted in Florida real estate values because of that cascade. Property is very hard to sell if you can't get a mortgage on it, and it is impossible to get a mortgage on it if you can't get insurance on it. And even if

you can get insurance, if the insurance costs $14- or $15- or $20- or $30,000 a year, you add all that up, and it comes off the value of the home, which is why you are seeing people unsuccessfully trying to sell homes in Florida for hundreds of thousands of dollars or more less than they paid for it.

So this is on its way. It is coming right now. I am just going to continue to dig into how it is that we got here because how we got here involves a lot of mischief, a lot of real problems. One of those problems came to light just recently in the form of a number of memos from within the Supreme Court from the Justices to each other that were released or leaked--somehow came to the New York Times--that describe how it was that the captured Court put an end to the Clean Power Plan of the Obama administration before it even came to life.

Before even a court decision had been made about the merits of the rule, five Republican-appointed Supreme Court Justices stepped in and killed that rule in the crib before it could have any real effect.

Charles Pierce has written a pretty good summary of that New York Times article. He said:

The New York Times published a trove of personal memos from

the members of the Supreme Court outlining the court's

promiscuous use of the so-called shadow docket. It has become

the carefully constructed conservative majority's favorite

work-around to kill policies it doesn't like and support

causes that it and its corporate patrons do.

What appears to have happened here is that the shadow docket was born in the crib-killing of the Clean Power Plan.

This is quoting the New York Times story:

By a 5 to 4 vote along partisan lines, the order halted

President Barack Obama's Clean Power Plan, his signature

environmental policy. They acted before any other court had

addressed the plan's lawfulness.

Not a Court of final impression, a Court of first impression--the first one to look at it. That is not the way it ordinarily works.

The decision consisted of only legal boilerplate, without a

word of reasoning.

That is similar to the way the shadow docket has been working--before briefing, before argument--a decision without legal reasoning provided.

It continues about the Chief Justice:

Chief Justice John G. Roberts, Jr., has cultivated a

reputation for care and caution. [These] papers reveal a

different side of him. At a critical moment for the country

and the court, the papers show, he acted as a bulldozer in

pushing to stop Mr. Obama's plan to address the global

climate crisis.

I will get into this a little bit further as I continue through my remarks, but the basic summary is that the Court concluded that without stopping the EPA's rule before it went into effect, before any court had actually considered it, that would cause irreparable harm to the fossil fuel industry--specifically, mentioning that private industry will suffer irreparable harm--this, at a stage in the proceedings, where the question of whether that harm even existed had still not been properly litigated.

So I go back a ways on this. In 2015, in one of my ``Time to Wake Up'' speeches, I said:

The Supreme Court has handed the polluters a heavy cudgel

with its misguided Citizens United decision, allowing big

corporations to spend--or more important, threaten to spend--

unlimited amounts of undisclosed money in our elections. More

than anyone, polluters use that leverage to demand obedience

to their denial script.

Another one, 2017:

The Supreme Court's Republican appointees got in the habit

of doing what they were told by the forces that appointed

them (which include the fossil fuel industry, which asked for

the Citizens United decision), and in a fateful combination

of obedience and political ignorance, they wrecked our

politics.

A year later, I described how:

Republican strategists are expanding their grip to the

Supreme Court, building there a reliable Republican majority.

I warned that we mustn't try to replicate that apparatus. We must expose it. And when we expose one part of the apparatus, we expose all because it is the same crew behind packing the courts and denying climate change and running the dark money machine.

In January of 2010, I said:

The five Republicans on the Supreme Court gave the fossil

fuel industry the Citizens United decision.

I said:

In January 2010, the five Republicans on the Supreme Court

gave the fossil fuel industry the Citizens United decision;

the industry instantly turned its new political weaponry on

the Republican Party; and bipartisanship on climate change

was stamped out by fossil-fuel threats.

This integration between the fossil fuel industry and the Supreme Court and the dark money power that the fossil fuel industry has used to crush climate action in Congress is something that has been apparent for some time.

In 2020, I added:

Citizens United unleashed toxic doses of money, and

unprecedented doses of virulent dark money, into our

political atmosphere. [Once] democracy is poisoned, stunned

by secret fossil fuel money and threats, [it fails] to listen

to plain warnings.

In 2022, I called this ``the Court that dark money built.''

In 2022, I said:

[I]t is probably more accurate to say that we now have the

Court that dark fossil fuel money built.

So it comes as little surprise that these memos from within the Court should reveal that linkage between the Republican-appointed Justices and the fossil fuel industry. And, of course, it should come as no surprise that the roots of this shadow docket that has been used so politically by the Republican majority on the Court--the roots are found in an act of service to the fossil fuel industry billionaires who captured the Court.

If you look at the scheme to maintain the fossil fuel industry's free-to-pollute business model where they get away with polluting as much as they like with no cost or consequence, you have to look at the Supreme Court facilitating this.

Citizens United, of course, signaled the end of climate legislation because the unlimited dark money that the fossil fuel industry could use to shut down climate action in this body was successful. Unlimited fossil fuel dark money was brought to bear on Congress, and our ability to solve this problem collapsed.

Look before the Citizens United decision. Look back to 2007, 2008, 2009. My first years here, there was robust negotiation on major climate legislation--four different strategies here in the Senate; three major bills, bipartisan bills; and a Presidential candidate in John McCain who ran on a perfectly legitimate climate platform. All of that dead--dead--the day the Citizens United decision came down and the fossil fuel industry pounced with its new dark money power.

But it is not enough to stop legislation. If you want to protect your free-to-pollute business model, you also have to stop regulation, and that is where this Clean Power Plan decision came in. That is where the subsequent major questions doctrine came in. That work by the Supreme Court signaled the end of climate regulation as the Supreme Court intruded into a decades-long regulatory process and rebooted it to protect against regulation that would limit the free-to-pollute business model of the fossil fuel industry.

As I have said in other speeches, that major questions doctrine did not pop from the heads of the Supreme Court Justices in that decision. It was cooked up in fossil fuel-funded doctrine factories, massaged, maneuvered into conferences, propagated by the Federalist Society, called up at conferences. It was groomed and grown so that the Supreme Court could pick it up in a decision, which, of course, they did.

So if you shut down climate legislation and you shut down climate regulation, what is left is climate litigation--that people harmed by all this damage, by all this pollution, usually have a right to bring a lawsuit. And sure enough, lawsuits are emerging. So the next project of the Court is to attack climate litigation, and sure enough, the fossil fuel industry is all over that Court, asking for it to shut down the prospect of climate litigation.

And guess what. That little rascal Leonard Leo, who was the fixer, the implementer of the Court capture scheme, who worked with Trump's counsel, McGahn, to get the three Supreme Court Justices Trump supposedly appointed--separate argument: I think they were actually selected by the Koch brothers' political operation, and Trump was the chump at the end of the deal who signed off on it.

But Leonard Leo and his billionaires were the ones who put that whole

scheme together. They put the whole concept of a Federalist Society list together and the completely untrustworthy President Trump being obliged to say publicly that he would pick off that Koch brothers' list. They called it the Federalist Society list because calling it a fossil fuel billionaires list wouldn't sell so well. And then they ended up with these Justices. The guy in the middle of all of that was this little fixer, Leonard Leo.

Guess what Leonard Leo is doing now. He has an array of maybe 25 front groups that he orchestrates. Some of them are actual corporate entities. Some of them are what are called fictitious names for his corporate entities. So you have a front group, which has a fictitious name, that you operate through. Why you need to do that is a little hard to say, but if you are up to no good, I suppose you want as much camouflage as possible.

What Leonard Leo and his front groups are all over right now is trying to shut down climate litigation, to make it a clean trifecta so that one industry is free to pollute as much as it wants with no legislation, no regulation, and no litigation that can stop it.

Again, it goes without saying that pollution is not something that should be allowed. It is certainly not something that should be allowed for free. But money will buy you a lot, and the fossil fuel-funded phony flotillas of front group amici who come into the Court to tell it what to do--and have, I would say, a 100-percent winning record before the Court--are starting to gather around shutting down climate litigation as well as regulation and legislation. In other words, a captured Court is delivering the goods for the billionaires who captured it.

So let's go through these different memoranda as they came out. The first is from Chief Justice John Roberts dated February 5, 2016. He is responding to emergency applications seeking to have the EPA's Clean Power Plan stayed.

On the very first page, he communicates to the other Justices:

Absent a stay, the Clean Power Plan will cause (and is

causing) substantial and irreversible reordering of the

domestic power sector.

That is a factfinding. It is a factfinding made without any court having found that fact. It is a factfinding by a Court that is not supposed to engage in factfinding in the first place. It is a disputed fact in the case before the case is even litigated. Yet here is the Chief Justice of the United States going with the factual argument of one of the parties even before arguments related to an emergency stay.

He has to admit to his colleagues that ``the rule does not require emissions reductions until 2022.'' It is dated 2016. Six years later, it might require emissions reductions. But then, February 5, 2016, he says that ``its impact is being felt now.''

He is taking the side of one party on a contested fact and saying that the impact of that contested fact, as he sees it, is actually being felt now, 6 years ahead of when anything has to happen.

He says that ``the applicants indicate''--again, an assertion by a party--the applicants untested, unchallenged--``applicants indicate that they are currently in the process of committing time and resources to compliance.''

That is the reason to shut down the Clean Power Plan?

He says that ``the impact of the rule will reduce coal production for power sector use by 2.0 percent.''

Over a 2-percent reduction, he jumps completely out of his lane, makes factfinding, and shuts down the regulation before it has even been considered by the lower courts.

Then he says that the ``harm . . . is irreversible.''

Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent to have the Chief Justice memorandum printed in the Record at the end of my remarks.

That memorandum was responded to rather quickly by Justice Breyer, who noted:

First, it is unusual for this Court to issue a stay of an

agency's order during the time that the Court of Appeals is

considering its lawfulness.

It is a live legal dispute in the court of appeals, and the Supreme Court is jumping in to stay it? That was not just unusual; it was unprecedented. As Justice Breyer points out, ``it is difficult at this point to say that the absence of a stay will cause irreparable harm.''

Even among the Justices, that is a contested fact, and yet the Chief Justice is willing to rely on his view of that contested fact even though it is supposedly not a factfinding body in the first instance.

As I mentioned a moment ago and as Justice Breyer points out, ``the order does not require any company to take action for six years.'' So it was hardly an emergency.

Finally, he pointed out that ``all of the applicants'' were ``free to renew their applications for a stay'' once the DC court of appeals had done its work and come right back to the Court and get the stay then rather than to jump ahead of the circuit court of appeals. And it notes that the circuit court of appeals has agreed to proceed on an expedited basis.

Well, it didn't take long for the Chief to respond to that. He wrote right back saying that ``private industry will suffer irreparable harm from a rule that is--in my view--highly unlikely to survive.''

So now he is not only making factfindings that are contested even within his Court and that he shouldn't be making in the first place, but he is also predicting the legal conclusion of how this is going to end up in his Court.

He says that the ``Court will not issue a decision until 2018 at the earliest''--still 4 years before that date--``long after the real-world impacts of the rule would have been felt in the absence of a stay.''

Again, more and more factfinding.

He says there will be ``on-going, cumulative, and irreversible harms that private parties are incurring each day.''

Again, that is a contested fact, but he is willing to say that as if it were an actuality and not a point in contention.

Justice Kagan comes back to him to say:

As far as I can tell, it would be unprecedented for us to

second-guess the D.C. Circuit's decision that a stay is not

warranted, without the benefit of full briefing or a prior

judicial decision.

She calls this a ``drastic and unusual remedy'' and points out that this fact that Chief Justice Roberts has so readily lurched to--the applicants' assertion--``is both entirely speculative and highly doubtful.''

So now you have another Justice challenging the fact that the Chief Justice offers as Gospel.

She says:

It is implausible that such a minor emissions reduction--

Two-percent reduction in coal--

to be achieved six years hence will require substantial and

irrevocable commitments of resources in the coming months.

Then in comes Justice Sotomayor.

I agree with Steve's [Breyer] proposal and Elena's [Kagan]

supplement to that proposal. As Elena notes, it would be

unprecedented for us to grant a stay before any court has

reviewed this complicated and complex case.

She says:

[N]o applicant has identified a single real plant--

An actual, real facility--

as opposed to a hypothetical ``model plant''--that is in

immediate danger of closure absent a stay.

She challenges the costs that have been discussed by the Chief Justice, and she points out that ``an emergency stay on limited briefing before the D.C. Circuit will hear argument on this regulation in just four months.''

Just wait 4 months and get the proper order--circuit court of appeals, then Supreme Court.

Faced with that, in chimes Justice Alito, brought onto the Court with Leonard Leo at the White House helping make the selections. He concludes saying:

A failure to stay this rule threatens to render our ability

to provide meaningful judicial review--and by extension, our

institutional legitimacy--a nullity.

Instead of robust judicial review, our opinion will be a

mere postscript.

Remember, this is a rule that won't have effect for 6 years, where there will be a proper appellate court decision below in 4 months, and all of that is intolerable to Justice Alito, a product of the ``billionaires/Leonard Leo'' court-packing operation.

And the closer is Justice Anthony Kennedy, who writes an unusually brief

decision, compared to all the others, or a memorandum, compared to the others, simply concluding: ``[F]airness to the parties counsels that we should grant [the stay] now,'' and ``I agree with the recommendation of the Chief.''

That gave the Chief the votes. They granted the stay, and the Clean Power Plan died.

Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the remaining memoranda that I referred to be printed in the Record at the end of my remarks in the sequence in which I described them.

Mr. President, what is the backdrop to all of this? The backdrop to all of this is the massive amount of harm that is caused by fossil fuel emissions. The pollution is really astounding.

The International Monetary Fund most recently assessed the cost of fossil fuel pollution and of its free-to-pollute business model in the United States of America at $770 billion in 1 year--$770 billion in benefit to the fossil fuel industry, a form of subsidy, from being allowed to pollute for free and not being obliged to clean up its mess. They are allowed to cause $770 billion worth of harm to Americans for zero dollars.

When you are allowed to cause $770 billion worth of harm to ordinary Americans for zero dollars, you have a massive motive to corrupt. You have a massive motive to apply political influence. You have a massive motive to take advantage of the dark money that you pressed the Supreme Court to allow and authorize, and bring that to bear on Congress to make sure that your $770 billion annual pollute-for-free subsidy is protected.

What did you note about my discussion about the Court's conversation on harm? What you should have noted is that 100 percent of the Court's conversation on harm was on harm to the polluters. It was the only harm that the Chief Justice mentioned or considered.

The entire argument about staying the Clean Power Plan hinged on analysis of harm that only looked at the harm to the polluter. There was no mention of climate change. There was no mention of the harm of emissions. There was no discussion of the health damage from climate change and what it is doing now and could be projected back then to do to insurance markets; what it was causing in sea level rise; what the ancillary pollution of fossil fuel that isn't climate change pollution but is lead, mercury, SOX, NOX, particulate matters, is doing.

They literally turned a blind eye to fossil fuel pollution measured at $770 billion worth of harm, most recently--total blind eye to it-- and focused only on the harm that would be done to the fossil fuel industry from having to comply with clean power rules.

Other studies have shown that the amount of money spent on the operation to capture the Court--a short word on Court capture, it goes back to the well-acknowledged notions of Agency capture or regulatory capture in the bad old days. Mining interests would make sure that all their friends were appointed to the mining safety commission so they could know the mining safety commission would always give them the answer that they wanted.

That is Agency capture.

In the bad old days, railroad barons would make sure that all their friends and lackeys were appointed to the railroad rates commission so they could be sure that all the railroad rates that were set were advantageous to them and that they could make sure that they got the rates that they wanted. That was called Agency capture.

It is a renowned phenomenon. It is written about constantly in administrative law. There is a whole field of economics that studies it.

What happened here is that Agency capture or regulatory capture was brought to bear on the Supreme Court, and it has now turned into, in essence, a captive body that does this bidding.

The number that I am referring to is the amount that was spent on that Court-capture operation. People who do really good research have dug into this, and at this point--more research will make the number bigger certainly. But at this point, it looks like about $600 million-- million with an ``m''--was spent on the Court-capture operation.

Now, that is a lot of money. But it is not a lot of money if you are defending a $770 billion annual subsidy that lets you pollute for free when you shouldn't be allowed to do that and nobody else is allowed to do that.

Protecting that $700 billion for $600 million is probably the most lucrative investment the fossil fuel industry has ever made.

And if you pile up the years since the Clean Power Plan was stopped-- that was in 2016. Now, it is 2026--so 10 years. That subsidy number has grown over the years as the International Monetary Fund has done a more and more detailed and better job of figuring out all the added harms, as harms are piling up.

So if you look at 10 years, it is not $7.7 trillion. It is probably a number closer to $6 trillion. But think about that. What the Supreme Court did in this one decision, by breaking all of its own rules and looking only at the fossil fuel industry's harm, is to set loose $6 trillion worth of harm over the next 10 years that all of us have had to pay for in health, in harm, in lost property values, in increased insurance, in a myriad of different ways--$6 trillion, call it, over those 10 years.

That makes $600 million to capture the Court that made that decision an amazing payback, but a really, really dangerous payback for the American public.

I will conclude by saying that whether you look at this as an aspect of the scheme to capture the Court or whether you look at it as an aspect of the endless fossil fuel pollution that is causing us to need to wake up before it is too late--either way you look at it--the rot runs deep around fossil fuel, and it seems to have infected the Court right over there.

I yield the floor.

Mr. President, it has been 13 months to the day since the House first passed Donald Trump's ``One Big Ugly Bill,'' 290 days since it was signed into law--the largest cut to healthcare in American history; $1 trillion slashed for families, children, seniors, our most vulnerable; billions taken away from hungry families; millions of Americans pushed closer to poverty, closer to financial ruin; rising costs.

And for what? To pay for tax cuts for the richest Americans, to give big corporations another leg up, and to give ICE and CBP a budget so astronomical it rivals the military budget of many industrialized nations.

For the average American, it has been 290 days of lost opportunities and less affordable healthcare; of harder conversations at the kitchen table; of more sleepless nights worrying about how to get by; more skipped meals; more doctor visits postponed; week upon week of American families hoping against hope that this President and this Congress might recognize the difficulty that they are facing, the struggle they are enduring, the central promise that this President is breaking.

Day one of Donald Trump's final term is long past, but the prices-- much to the contrary of what he has promised--have not dropped. His first 100 days are now 15 months ago, and still, inflation persists. Indeed, it is worse.

Two hundred and ninety days into the lifespan of the President's supposed signature legislative achievement, this ``Big Ugly Bill,'' and life for so many Americans is not bigger, and it is not more beautiful. At gas stations across America, the reality of Donald Trump's America is clear. At grocery stores in California to the Capitol, that reality is hitting people in their pocketbooks.

And we are not on the right track either--an illegal war in Iran that has neither a clear goal nor an endgame, that has pushed prices higher, that has rocked markets on a daily basis and made the summer road trip that so many families were looking forward to the latest victim of Trump's economy; a misguided tariff agenda that has been struck down by the highest Court. But now this administration will only take steps to return the billions in illegal duties it levied to the corporations that charged them, not the Americans who paid them.

This body recognizes the immense strain that our constituents are under. I know it does because people are making their discontent loudly known at the ballot box and at public fora all over the country in the red States and the blue States alike.

I can assure each and every one of you watching that Members of Congress understand the American dream is slipping out of reach. We know that you are worried about making ends meet. We understand that you are agonizing over whether you can keep your business afloat or what opportunities will be there for your kids.

We have heard your stories. We understand the dread you feel as you near the first of the month, the fear that is all too real when you open the mailbox, unsure of what surprise bill will arrive and tip your family into bankruptcy, the terrible math that you must use to decide which dose of medicine or which meal you can afford to skip just to keep the lights on. This is the reality for so many Americans, and we understand that.

It might be--I don't know--worse, if you could just accuse the Congress of

being in the dark, if we were somehow blind, rather than a majority of this body willfully turning a blind eye to the struggles of regular people.

But as I stand here recounting to you the myriad ways in which the past year of Trump's America has gotten harder--a reality that you live every day--Republicans are getting ready to act on their next big budget resolution, not to help drive down costs, not to address the healthcare crisis, not to do something to help. No, their grand plan to address our Nation's challenges is asking the American taxpayer to give even more money out of their pocket, out of their bank account, to ICE and Border Patrol agents.

An out-of-control police force that has killed Americans and terrorized our streets, and they want more money for CBP and ICE without even a modicum of reform. Now, how is that supposed to help your life? And the short answer is: It isn't. There is nothing in this bill to make your healthcare, your energy, or your housing more affordable. Nothing.

So if there is no money, no billions in this bill to improve the quality of your life, just what are my colleagues proposing to spend these billions on? And it is this: on Agencies that have shot and killed American citizens in our streets, in broad daylight, on video, for exercising their constitutionally protected right to free speech; the agents that have broken into homes, refused to show their faces or their badges, and taken children from their parents; this run-amok force that has defied court orders, detained citizens and people with lawful status, denied them basic medical treatment, which has resulted in an unprecedented number of deaths in immigration custody and denied their constitutional rights.

ICE and CBP get $140 billion in this bill after getting close to $170 billion less than a year ago, for a whopping total of $340 billion. I am sorry, but that is an insane amount of money. That is more than we give to the Marine Corps and the FBI and the DEA and all the other Federal law enforcement Agencies combined.

So if you take the money from the Marine Corps, one of our incredible military services, and you add it to the money for law enforcement Agencies like the FBI and the DEA and the ATF, and you add it all together, it isn't a fraction of what we are giving to just these two pieces of immigration enforcement. That is what they get.

That is what these Agencies get: $340 billion. And you? You get nothing. You get not a dime. After putting more than $3 trillion on the Nation's credit card to give tax breaks to the rich and to give these Agencies the funding to arm themselves to the teeth, after taking your healthcare dollars and plowing them into heavily armed and ill-trained ICE agents, they want to put even more money into what is becoming Trump's private army.

A Gallup poll released last month found that about 1 in 3 adults, U.S. adults, the equivalent of about 82 million people, reported having made at least 1 daily life trade-off in the past year to pay for healthcare expenses. That is 39 million Americans stretching a prescription longer than the doctor recommended; it is 38 million Americans going into debt to pay a medical bill; it is 28 million Americans skipping a meal. One in nearly every 10 Americans reporting the cutback on utilities or on the amount they are driving. And that was even before gas prices spiked thanks to Trump's Iran war with no solution in sight.

And we see these impacts playing out across the country in realtime, month after month, week after week, hospitals are shutting down, clinics are closing, workers are laid off, services are canceled, and families are paying more out of pocket and going without the care they need.

Earlier this year, a hospital in Oakland, CA, announced plans to lay off 300 medical staff because it is projected to lose more than a hundred million a year thanks to the ``Big Ugly Bill.'' Another hospital in Santa Rosa, CA, had to shutter its pediatric unit; Corona, CA, lost its labor and delivery unit; clinics in Madera and Fresno had to lay off staff. There are so many of these stories, and thanks to the trillion-dollar Medicaid cut forced by Republicans in their last budget.

And where layoffs or service cuts were not enough to balance the budget, a worse fate awaited these healthcare providers. Clinics in Compton, Gilroy, Santa Cruz, San Mateo, and South San Francisco all closed their doors thanks to Donald Trump.

Thousands of Californians, all now without a place to go for medical care; that is if they can afford care at all.

Our insurance Marketplace in California saw a 30 percent decline in enrollment as premiums spiked to sometimes double what they were paying for their healthcare before the ``Big Ugly Bill.''

But healthcare--let's face it--it is not the Republican priority. This is something they are not willing to fund. This is not something in this bill.

Instead, we are asked to fund immigration Agencies that have already seen their budgets explode and their accountability erased by this administration.

For months, Democrats have sought on behalf of the families and communities terrorized by ICE to enact basic guardrails, reforms, and oversight of their conduct; to mandate they wear body cameras and clear identification, just like any other law enforcement agency; to stop the use of excessive and deadly force, and to guarantee that when they do there is accountability in the form of truly independent investigations; to mandate the use of judicial warrants so that when they are going to someone's home, as the Constitution requires, they have a judicial warrant; to stop racial profiling and the targeting of schools and churches.

All of this for a reason: So we don't have more tragic victims like Alex Pretti or Renee Good or the people that have died in detention centers like Luis Beltran Yanez-Cruz or Gabriel Garcia-Aviles, a list that is already far too long.

Now, bear in mind, these reforms that I have mentioned are all wildly popular with the American people, and we have worked in good faith to try to secure these very basic guardrails, saying clearly until these commonsense measures can be implemented, we would vote not for one more dime for these Agencies that have taken lawless instructions from the likes of Stephen Miller and Greg Bovino.

But the administration and my Republican colleagues don't want to solve the problem of excessive use of force from ICE and CBP; they don't want the accountability; they don't want the reform. And so they will use this budget and reconciliation process to bypass the need for changes to how ICE and CBP operate, to jam more money through without Democratic support, and to advance a budget that contains literally not a single dime for healthcare, hospitals, food and groceries, energy bills, nothing but more money for ICE and CBP.

And the terrible tragedy is that we in this Chamber, we here could meet this challenging moment in our Nation when people cannot afford the cost of living.

We could meet that need with a budget that would help people in need. John F. Kennedy on his first day of office stood on the west steps of the Capitol and said:

If a free society cannot help the many who are poor, it

cannot save the few who are rich.

For every day of Donald Trump's second term, he has sought only to save the rich, to help those that already have so much, to line pockets that are already so deep; and in doing so, he has revealed his campaign rhetoric to be just that, just words.

My Republican colleagues may see this as a convenient way to avoid our demands for accountability, but the American people will see this as a failed opportunity for the GOP as it squanders perhaps the last chance in the 119th Congress to act meaningfully on making America affordable again.

The attempt to sell the ``Big Ugly Bill'' has failed. The American people were not fooled, neither will they be fooled now, because the billions wasted and the millions hurt will not go unnoticed. There will be an accounting, if not now, then in November.

And the American people's rejection of this President's agenda will be big, and in its own way, it will be beautiful. It will certainly be necessary.

If we are ever to make this economy work for people again, we must reject more money for lawless agents in favor of more money for healthcare for the American people.

I yield the floor.

Mr. President, we are at a critical moment. It is a crossroads for the American people.

The President is waging a war of choice. It is really a war of impulse, a war of whim and illusion without the support of the American people and without approval from the U.S. Congress, representing the American people. Meanwhile, the costs of food and fuel--gasoline at the pump and produce at the grocery store--all have soared. Healthcare is unaffordable. Gas prices are going to continue to skyrocket.

The Secretary of Energy told us just last weekend that prices will not come down appreciably before the end of the year. Of course, since then, he has contradicted himself. His chain was yanked by the President. But the reality is--and we need to stay in touch with reality--that the costs of living for the everyday American are skyrocketing out of sight.

Instead of doing something to lower those costs, Senate Republicans just introduced a budget resolution to give $140 billion to ICE and the CBP without any reform and without any changes in practices or policies that will make them legal and humane. In fact, Senate Republicans are willing to work overtime to deliver huge tax breaks to billionaires and siphon hundreds of millions--in fact, billions--to ICE with no strings attached.

When it comes to lowering costs for Americans, helping working families, or making good on our promises to veterans, Republicans say: We can't afford it. In fact, Senate Republican leadership has continuously refused to advance bipartisan legislation to deliver for combat-injured veterans that I have advocated for repeatedly and twice asked for unanimous consent on the floor of this body to pass. Why? They claim we can't afford those benefits.

Let's be very clear. The Major Richard Star Act will cost $1 billion a year for the next 10 years. We are spending $2 billion a day on the Iran war, and that figure probably is lowballed. The benefits equate to 1/14th of the money Republicans want to send to ICE. The same Republicans who say we can't afford the time or the $13 billion to ensure our combat-injured veterans receive their full earned benefits will keep us here all night to spend $140 billion on ICE and CBP.

My legislation, the Major Richard Star Act, would finally deliver to some 50,000 combat-injured veterans their full military benefits. Currently, they are receiving a dollar-for-dollar reduction of their VA retirement pay for every dollar of compensation for disability. That is just plain wrong. They have earned both retirement pay and disability benefits. One should not be docked dollar for dollar for the other. In fact, it shouldn't be reduced at all. Most of this body--79 of my Democratic and Republican colleagues--agree. They joined the legislation. But the bill is still blocked from a simple floor vote by Senate Republican leadership--the same leadership that is willing to bend over backward to pass another partisan law to fund ICE.

Meanwhile, the President continues to send more servicemembers into harm's way. Thousands more are heading to the Middle East right now. But it falls on deaf ears for Republicans that claim veterans initiatives like the Major Richard Star Act are too expensive while they push hundreds of billions into Trump's rogue Agency or a war of choice.

It seems to me Republicans can always find more money for tax cuts. They can always find more money for benefits that go to the billionaires, but not so much when we are talking about working families or veterans.

The simple fact is--and remember this point if you remember nothing else of what I say here--the cost of our taking care of veterans is the cost of war. It is one that always must be paid. When we send a servicemember into war, we are incurring an obligation. We have made a promise. Those injuries result in disability benefits that should not be reduced, nor should retirement pay, just because they are injured. In

fact, they should not be punished for being injured. The President may think veterans are suckers, but that is not what the American people think.

As Memorial Day approaches, prove to veterans and Americans that you really do appreciate their service. And remember that words, without actions, are meaningless--totally meaningless.

And that is why I have introduced an amendment to strike the reconciliation instruction and focus on providing for our combat- injured veterans who were forced to retire because of their injuries. Give them the benefits they earned, the benefits they deserve, the benefits they were promised.

Today, we have an opportunity to act and to do something meaningful for the thousands of combat-injured veterans who have sacrificed on our behalf. I urge my colleagues to make the right decision and support this amendment to advance the Major Richard Star Act.

It isn't lost on me that while I am speaking here, urging for the passage of an amendment that would help our veterans, the Trump administration is actively harming them. Over the past year, the Trump administration has begun deporting procedures for 34 former members of the military and 248 relatives of former military members. This number doesn't include the countless former military members that have been swept up into detention by roving patrols and lawless arrests.

These individuals are real people. They are veterans who chose to wear the uniform. They are not abstract entities. They are not numbers or statistics. They are people who raised their right hand, willing to give their lives for our country, veterans who served and sacrificed so that we could celebrate Memorial Day, so that we could stand here and speak as we wish and worship as we would like in the days ahead.

Take William Vermie, for example. He is an Army veteran, a Purple Heart recipient, who served as a combat solder in Iraq. On January 13, 2026, he was on a public sidewalk, observing ICE arrest two young men in his neighborhood. He was tackled. He was arrested. He was driven to detention. He was held in a cell for 8 hours.

Or George Retes, a disabled Iraq War veteran who was detained for 3 days and 3 nights after being arrested on his way to work--on his way to work. He has a job. He is a citizen. He is a veteran. He was arrested and detained.

Family members of U.S. servicemembers and veterans have fared no better. U.S. SSG Matthew Blank recently married his wife Annie and brought her to his base, Fort Polk, LA, to begin their lives together. Within hours, ICE entered his base and detained Annie, who was brought to the United States as a toddler and has applied for DACA status. Annie was released only after public outcry shamed the administration.

Last June, Narcisco Barranco, the father of three marines, was clearing his weeds when immigration agents attacked him from behind and placed him in deportation proceedings. Mr. Barranco has no criminal record. He has been in the United States for 3 decades.

And just this week, Sergeant First Class Serrano's wife, Deisy Rivera Ortega, was arrested by ICE during her appointment at an immigration office in Texas.

None of these people sought to hide or conceal themselves or run. They were there. And she was at an appointment at an immigration office in Texas. She had been in the United States for over a decade and has legal protection that prohibits her deportation to El Salvador and allows her to legally work. She was at the immigration office, interviewing, as part of an application for parole in place, a program specifically designated to offer protections to military spouses and their parents.

This stuff is just unbelievably cruel. It is illegal. It is inhumane. But it is also savagely mean and wrong. To encourage the men and women of our armed services to apply for protection for their spouses or their parents, only to have those applications entrap their loved ones, spirit them away to detention, and wreak havoc in their lives--is that the America that we want?

It is not the America I recognize as my country, nor would most Americans.

These servicemembers, veterans, and their family members were not convicted of any crime. They were not committing any crime. They were doing the right thing--in the offices of the U.S. Government, some of them--when they were tackled, arrested, and detained by the same government that gave them so much to serve.

Marine Corps cadets could not even enjoy their graduation this year without fear after the Marine Corps issued a warning that ICE agents would be conducting ``enhanced screening and lawful immigration status inquiries'' outside the Parris Island base, prior to graduation events.

What did that mean? Marine Corps privates, graduating from Parris Island--and I have been there--had to fear that their relatives coming to watch their graduation on that drill field could be arrested and detained.

Some cadets were forced to forgo celebrating because they feared for their loved ones. That is not how we honor courage and sacrifice. That is not how we plan to commend the individuals who choose to serve. Such efforts will not help us to recruit the next generation of brave and bright men and women for our military. It only demonstrates how little the Trump administration values people who put their lives on the line.

As Republicans propose sending another $140 billion to ICE and CBP, let's ask them whether they share the same disregard for our troops and veterans. I hope they will join me in saying: Enough is enough.

The absence of reform, in connection with this huge amount of funding--$140 billion--is absolutely reprehensible and unacceptable. It is unconscionable to shovel more money--$140 billion--without fundamental changes that will stop the abuses and many others of the kind I have just described.

I ask my colleagues on the other side of the aisle to join me in saying: America is still the land of the free and the home of the brave because of the brave who protect the free. And let us cherish those freedoms and make them real, not just in rhetoric but in the reforms we demand of the U.S. Government when it is engaged in lawless and reckless conduct.

I yield the floor.

I suggest the absence of a quorum.

Mr. President, we are going to start reconciliation. I think we all know what that means; that is Latin for ``a long night.''

But why are we here? We are here to make sure that the Department of Homeland Security, the ICE division and Border Patrol, are funded.

Now, why are we here? Our Democratic colleagues have refused to provide funding for the Border Patrol and ICE at a time of great threat to our country.

So what are we doing? We are trying to use the reconciliation process to get money to secure the border and not shut down enforcement of our immigration laws.

Our friends on the other side sat on the sideline and watched the Joe Biden administration allow 11 to 15 million illegal immigrants to come into this country in a 4-year period. We have been dealing with that mess ever since we have been in charge.

ICE--count me in for reforming ICE. We tried to have some reforms, but you refused. You refused to give a dollar, guys, because, in your view, ICE is the problem. I think the illegal immigration invasion that was allowed by Joe Biden and condoned by you is the problem. It is not the ICE agents that are the problem; it is the millions of people who came here illegally, and only God knows who they are and exactly where they are.

So we are not going to stop trying to enforce immigration laws. We have to. We are trying to clean up a mess, a national security threat.

Let me be really clear. In 2022, 2023, and 2024, we had a tremendous spike of people that came into the country under Biden on the Terrorist Watchlist. We don't know where all these people are. It went from, like, nothing to a bunch. Everybody in the world was told: If you can get to the American border, you are home free. Good guy, bad guy; good gal, bad gal--they came. They came by the millions.

One reason they came is because there was a policy called sanctuary cities. It is really sanctuary States. There are about 15 States that refuse to enforce Federal immigration law. There are cities that will not turn over an illegal immigrant to the Federal Government for deportation when they are eligible to be deported. It is creating chaos.

There are 10,000 criminals who were released by sanctuary policies who went on to be arrested for additional crimes and $9 billion in fraud stolen by Somali immigrants in Minnesota alone. Fifty-nine percent of illegal immigrant households are on government welfare programs, costing taxpayers $42 billion a year.

These sanctuary cities create a magnet. People all over the world believe that if you can get to one of these cities or States, you will never get deported. Why? Because the people running those cities and those States refuse to turn illegal immigrants over to the Federal Government--laws that were established long before Donald Trump became President of the United States. Some of these people they refuse to turn over are dangerous--very dangerous.

Abdul Jalloh comes in illegally in 2012; 30 arrests, including rape, malicious wounding, and assault. ICE submits a formal detainer to deport Jalloh. The request is blocked by the Virginia attorney for Fairfax County, a Soros-backed prosecutor and defender of sanctuary cities who ignored the detainer. In May of 2025, he is arrested one more time for stabbing an individual in the leg, but he is released again. In February 2026, Jalloh brutally murders Stephanie Nicole Minter.

Look at this. If that doesn't disgust you, something is wrong. This is disgusting. This is what happens when you have sanctuary policies. This is what happens when people fail to enforce Federal law.

The Virginia attorney for Fairfax County refused to work with the Federal Government. This guy stayed out. In May, he commits a crime, stabs a guy in the leg. In February 2026, he brutally murders Stephanie Minter.

That happens all the time, way too much.

Last week in Spartanburg, SC, two boys were killed by an illegal immigrant in a drunk-driving car crash. He was a ``got-away.'' He came across the border, and he literally got away. He was able to take advantage of lawless open borders to enter the United States undetected.

The victims were 12-year-old Dereon James Robinson and 9-year-old Mikhail'Lee Smith--killed by somebody who shouldn't have been here to begin with, an illegal drunk driver.

In April 2025, a University of South Carolina student was killed in a hit-and-run crash by an illegal alien. Fernandez-Cruz, a native of El Salvador, illegally crossed the U.S.-Mexican border on an unknown date but was arrested by the Border Patrol in Hidalgo, TX, on December 24, 2016. He was released the next day, which I guess was Christmas, and issued a notice to appear as DHS initiated removal proceedings. The victim was 21-year-old Nathaniel Baker. They had him and let him go.

In March 2025, a mother of two was murdered in Rock Hill by a group of six illegal immigrants. This heinous crime was committed by a gang of six illegal aliens in a random robbery attempt that ended deadly. The victim was Larisha Sharell Thompson, 40 years old, a mother of two.

On and on and on--I can read you too many of these things.

Laken Riley was a young lady killed in Georgia. The man was detained at the border--her killer, Jose Ibarra--and was released because they had no bedspace in 2022. He went to New York, found his way back to Georgia, and killed this young lady. He was loose because of the lack of detention space.

All I can tell you is that--what are we trying to do to make sure this never happens again? It happens over and over and over. So we are here tonight to do something Democrats won't let us do that must be done.

Seventy billion dollars will be allocated to fully fund the Border Patrol and fully fund ICE through the entire term of President Trump's second term, for 3\1/2\ years--one and done. I wish we could do more, but we are going to do for 3\1/2\ years. We are going to give DHS--the Border Patrol and ICE--the money to pay their people and to conduct operations to make sure what I described never happens again.

Why are we here? We passed everything in the appropriations bill in a bipartisan manner except this. Our Democratic friends wanted to pick a fight about this. No money for the Border Patrol. No money for ICE. No reforms of ICE; just no money.

We are not going to let that stand. We are going to fix that. So Republicans, starting today and hopefully by the 1st of June, will create a process so that we can get the money that ICE and the Border Patrol need to keep your families safe, to enforce illegal immigration violations--ICE--to have money and people on the border at a time when terrorism is through the roof.

We are having to do this through reconciliation because the appropriations process failed only here. These are the two accounts we couldn't get money for. It says a lot about the state of play where our Democratic colleagues are. In their world, not paying the Border Patrol seems to be an acceptable outcome. Really? With terrorism rampant all over the world, a war with the largest state sponsor of terrorism, Iran, heated up and fully running? Really?

ICE. We tried to have--we had reforms, but you said no to the reforms. You said no money at all. Putting these people out of business really is dangerous when you have millions of people still in this country illegally.

So, tonight, we are going to start the process to pass a budget resolution that will instruct two committees--Homeland Security and Judiciary--to report back to us a reconciliation bill that will be $70 billion in spending. That will allow the Border Patrol and ICE to be fully funded through the rest of President Trump's term so we can be safe.

I am sad we are having to do this, but you gave us no choice. The day that you said no to funding the Border Patrol and the day you wanted to put ICE out of business is the day that, as the Budget chairman, I and my colleagues acted. We are not going to let this happen. We can fix this with Republican votes, and we will.

Every Democrat has opposed money for the Border Patrol and ICE in a time of great peril and we are going to fix that and it starts tonight. And in the coming weeks, we are going to get it done.

We are going to make sure that the Federal Government honors its obligation to protect the American people.

And there is no bigger responsibility of the Federal Government than to secure our own border, to enforce our laws that have been on the books for decades. This is the primary job of the Federal Government. We will be talking about everything but this over the coming days, tonight, and into the future.

This needs to be done. And I am not saying other things don't need to be done. But this has to be done. It will be done. We are going to get this right. We are going to fully fund for 3\1/2\ years the Border Patrol so they have money they need to pay their people to protect us, and we are going to continue to enforce immigration law by fully funding ICE. We are going to do that, and we are not going to fail. We cannot fail. The world is too dangerous to fail.

So to my Democratic colleagues, you have taken a path that blows my mind in this regard. Don't you see the same world we do? Reform makes sense. We had reforms. You threw them out because, I guess, the hardest of the hard on your side insists not one dime for the Border Patrol, not one dime for ICE.

The American people are not where you are at, and I hope the American people will understand tonight that we, the Republicans, fixed this problem, and we couldn't find a partner on the other side. Sad but true.

We are going to succeed. We are going to fix this problem. Working with the Trump administration, we are going to secure that border. It is the most secure I have ever seen it in my life. What President Trump has done is amazing.

We are not going backward. What the Democrats want us to do is not fund ICE, not fund the Border Patrol, to go back to the policies that reigned during the Biden years. We are not going back to the Biden years. We are going forward.

I yield the floor.

Mr. President, if you look anywhere across the country right now, what you will see more than anything else is working families, countless Americans struggling just to get by; struggling with skyrocketing prices at the pump; struggling with rising costs of healthcare premiums; struggling to afford groceries, their prescriptions, to pay their rent or their mortgage. Many struggling just to keep the lights on at home.

You would think that the Republican majority would recognize that and dedicate time on this floor of the Senate to prioritize a discussion and proposals to bring down costs for working families; but, no, instead we are focusing once again on immigration and, specifically, whether or not to give even more money to ICE and CBP.

So I think it is important for us to lay out to the American people why we are in this position. Republicans created this mess last year when they passed their ``One Big Anything But Beautiful'' bill.

But rather than fix that mess through commonsense reforms, as we have suggested, their solution is to throw even more money at these Agencies that have been acting for a year now with little regard to the rule of law, to dump $140 billion in the same out-of-control immigration Agencies that have created chaos in American communities for the past year, the very same ICE and CBP that Republicans already gave $140 billion to last year.

That is over seven times ICE's typical annual funding and more than four times the typical annual appropriations for CBP. That was last year.

And what did they do with that money? Before we entertain should we give them even more, let's see what they did. They went on a so-called Defend the Homeland hiring spree. They brought on unqualified recruits who were deployed into communities across the country with clearly insufficient training. Let me lay it out. Let me break it down for us.

In just 6 months, ICE doubled its number of agents from 10,000 to over 22,000--more than doubled. And the only way to reach those numbers is to cut a bunch of corners and to lower standards. And so that is what they did.

They dropped the minimum age for ICE officers to just 18 years old, and they reduced the required training to 47 days--47 days. Let me put that figure into context.

To be a DC Metropolitan Police officer here in the streets of our Nation's Capital, it takes 28 weeks of training. Basic training at the Federal Law Enforcement Training Center is 12 weeks. The Los Angeles Police Department, where I am from, that takes 6 months of training before you are on the job. But to be an ICE officer, just 47 days, and then you are given a gun and a badge and deployed into the field.

We have seen the records that DHS has rushed applicants through a very sloppy vetting process. It has led to the hiring of numerous officers with questionable backgrounds, clearly unfit to do these jobs.

We have also seen reports that about a third of the recruits at the ICE training academy failed what is considered a relatively easy physical test. And a number of others were sent home because they failed a written exam which, by the way, a written exam on which they could use textbooks and notes, but they still failed.

Here is a quote from an article by the Associated Press that really shines a light on what is happening with this hiring spree:

Two bankruptcies and six law enforcement jobs in three

years.

This is a description of one officer.

Here is another:

An allegation of lying in a police report to justify a

felony charge against an innocent woman--an incident that led

to a $75,000 settlement and criticism of his integrity.

How is that for a description of an ICE officer?

A third job candidate once failed to graduate from a police

academy, then lasted only three weeks in his only job as a

police officer.

Their common bond: All were hired recently by U.S.

Immigration and Customs Enforcement during an unprecedented

hiring spree . . . after the agency received a $75 billion

windfall from Congress.

Don't take my word for it, colleagues--actual reporting.

So let's, again, assess where we are. Republicans gave ICE and CBP $140 billion. And the Trump administration used it to hire people with questionable qualifications, questionable histories, questionable temperaments, and questionable ability to do the job.

And you are going to tell me you are surprised by the chaos and the violence that we have witnessed unfolding in the streets across America this last year? If you are hiring all these unqualified people, encouraging them to act with impunity, you throw out the rule books and the training manual and ensure that there is little or no oversight and accountability, it is entirely predictable that chaos will ensue and especially when they are led from the top by people who regularly dehumanize others, whose goal is to inflict pain and cruelty on immigrants and refugees as deterrents. It is exactly what we are seeing.

We are seeing agents knocking down doors to homes without a judicial warrant in violation of the law. We are seeing cars being driven off the road, their windows smashed in, their occupants literally dragged out through broken windows, and some, like Marimar Martinez, shot multiple times.

We are seeing indiscriminate raids sweeping up hard-working people who are just trying to provide a better life for their family, including legal immigrants with work authorizations.

We are seeing American citizens hurt simply for exercising their First Amendment rights, like 21-year-old Kaden Rummler, who permanently lost his vision in one eye after being shot by agents at close range.

And, of course, we saw--we all saw, the whole country saw, the whole world saw--two U.S. citizens, Renee Nicole Good and Alex Pretti--killed by Federal agents on camera in broad daylight.

So, yes, Democrats are demanding commonsense reforms to address this outrageous behavior. You should be too. And the commonsense reforms we are talking about are nothing other than policies that State and local law enforcement officers across the country already have to abide by.

Instead, Republicans continue to refuse, and that is why we are here today, because as Democrats, we refuse to give a single dollar more to an out-of-control, unaccountable Agency.

We are demanding oversight. We are demanding these commonsense reforms, not just to protect people's rights but to protect people's lives.

Instead, what do our Republican colleagues want to do? They want to hand over another--another--$140 billion of taxpayer money, even though, by the way, for the fiscally responsible ones of you, the Congressional Budget Office says that ICE and CBP still have $103 billion in unspent funds from last year's bill. That is right. ICE is sitting on $63.2 billion of its funding from last year's bill. That is 84 percent of the funding from last year. And CBP is still sitting on $40 billion--62 percent of its funding--from last year's bill.

So what are we even doing here? They have a ton of money left over from last year's bill they haven't even spent--they can't spend it fast enough--and you want to give them more. You would rather give them more when they don't need it than negotiate necessary changes to these Agencies.

That is outrageous, and it comes at a time when President Trump says: Oh, we don't have enough money to help people with daycare. We don't have enough money for Medicare and Medicaid. We have to cut those programs.

But, clearly, he and you all believe we have enough money to give another $140 billion to these ICE Agencies. By the way, that is on top of the $1 billion a day that we are spending in this unauthorized war in Iran.

If we are going to use this budget reconciliation process for anything right now, we would rather be using it to help working families afford the basics. Let's use it to help bring down healthcare costs. Let's help bring down gas prices. Let's bring down the cost of food and housing and utilities. That would be worthy of our time, not this sham--not this sham.

I yield the floor.