A resolution condemning the extreme anti-vaccine policies of Secretary of Health and Human Services Robert F. Kennedy, Jr., strongly opposing the policies of the State of Florida that roll back immunization requirements, and expressing the sense of the Senate that vaccines are critical to protecting public health, eliminating preventable illness and death, and reducing hospitalizations and severity of illness, work best when adopted at a high level within each community, and must be made available to the public.

Mr. President, I am going to speak in just a moment about the border, but just to kind of set the stage a little bit on sort of where things stand, you just heard the Democrat leader talk about their willingness to fund the government--something he said repeatedly in the past. In fact, in the past, as I used quotes on the floor yesterday, he said that he likes clean CRs--clean CRs--and that we need to keep the government open for all kinds of reasons, including people who are served by the VA hospitals, for example.

I agree with him. I think that is important. I don't think anybody benefits from a government shutdown, which is why we are trying to advance a clean CR--a CR that incorporates anomalies that have been requested by his side of the aisle, some on ours, things that we normally incorporate into a continuing resolution.

But the objective in all this would be to fund the government into the foreseeable future. What is being talked about is somewhere in the November timeframe--pre-Thanksgiving, perhaps--which would give us, after the end of the fiscal year on September 30, another 6 to 7 weeks to consider individual appropriations bills and to fund the government the way it is supposed to be funded: under regular order, where the committees are doing their work and where we are doing our work on the floor.

As the Chair knows, earlier this year, we already passed three appropriations bills across the floor of the Senate--something that hadn't been done before the August recess going back as far as 2018, I believe. So it has been a long time since we have enacted under regular order appropriations bills, and that ought to be the goal. The goal here should be to fund the government the way it was intended to be funded--through the normal appropriations process.

Now, I realize that is a little out of the ordinary, given the past few years under the Democrat leadership or the Democrat leader's leadership here in the Senate, where these issues, a lot of times, got decided behind closed doors in his office. That seems to be what he wants to have happen again.

He is suggesting that he would like to have conversations about this. Well, he knows my office is right down the hall. He knows my phone number. I haven't heard from him.

All we are simply doing is asking for the very thing that in the past he has said he wants, and that is a clean funding resolution to fund the government. That is what we are proposing here. That is what I hope we will have the votes to pick up later this week.

If the Democrat leader chooses to oppose it, that is his prerogative, but I would hope there would be Democrat Senators who would give us the requisite number of votes to get to 60 in order to keep the government open. That is my objective in all of this.

I would say that we have, I think, a process whereby the Appropriations Committee and our chair Senator Collins have been working with the ranking Democrat, Senator Murray, and with their House counterparts on funding the government in this way, in this fashion. Those discussions, to the degree that they are occurring, are occurring because we allow them to have those conversations and don't get in the way of that.

I think what the Democrat leader is suggesting is that he wants to interject himself into those discussions and perhaps even instruct his ranking member not to participate. I hope that isn't the case.

But my expectation is that we will proceed to fund the government in a way that keeps it open for that foreseeable time period. I think right now what they are talking about in the House of Representatives is somewhere in the November 21 timeframe. That would give us an additional 6 to 7 weeks in which to move individual appropriations bills, which is the way we should be funding the government and

which is the way historically, prior to the Democrat leader's term as majority leader, we used to do it. Now, he moved that behind closed doors into his office. Frankly, I don't think that is in the best interest of this institution and certainly not in the best interest of Members on my side or on his side, who, frankly, want an open process and have requested that.

That was one of the issues, when I was running for this job, that Senators on our side of the aisle had suggested--that we want to do this in the light of day; we want an open process; we want regular order to work; we want the chairs to be empowered and individual members of the committees to be empowered and, just as importantly, individual Senators to be empowered to be able to have their voices heard in that appropriations process.

So that is where we are right now. Now, what is being suggested by the Democrat leader is that they are willing--he is willing--I hope they aren't--he is willing to shut the government down over a clean CR--something that last year and the year before he said he wanted because that is the way to do this, not with all kinds of things attached to it and poison pills but clean, straight-up fund the government. That is what he has wanted.

I hope his Members are smart enough to know that it is a really bad idea, for lots of reasons, to shut the government down over a clean funding resolution extended to a foreseeable date in the future that would enable the Appropriations Committee and this institution, the Senate, working with our colleagues in the House, to fund the government the way it was intended to be funded--through the normal appropriations process. I sincerely hope we can do that.

That is what we are advocating: a clean funding resolution--not with all kinds of ornaments and attachments to it but a handful of anomalies that both sides agree to--that would fund the government into November, until such time as we have the opportunity here to debate and hopefully report out and actually move annual appropriations bills so the Senate's voice--Senators' voices--can be heard in that process.

That is a very, I know, foreign concept to the Democrat leader and certainly something--at least right now--that it doesn't sound like he is open to. But the alternative is a government shutdown.

If you refuse to move a clean CR so the Appropriations committees can do their work and we can do our work here in the Senate, essentially, you are advocating for a government shutdown, and I don't know how that doesn't fall on you.

He is suggesting that is going to fall on Republicans, but if, in fact, the House of Representatives can act on this, the President is prepared to sign a continuing resolution that funds the government--a clean resolution--for the foreseeable future, and we have the number of votes here in the Senate to pass it, then it will be only the Democrat leader who is standing between this country and a government shutdown and all that means. So I would hope he will come to a different conclusion.

To the question of whether or not he would like to sit down with me, my office is right down here, and he has my cell phone number. At any time, we can do that. It doesn't seem necessary given the fact that if we hand the ball to the appropriators, which is where this should be decided, and they negotiate this and then we have a clean CR to fund the government for the next 7 weeks, that, to me, seems like a very straightforward solution to this, at least in the near term, and one which in past Congresses the Democrat leader has supported.

That is what we are trending toward, and if the Democrat leader wants to chat about that or any other subject, he knows where to find me. By the way, as many of his colleagues were out here trying to negotiate the bipartisan compromise of nominations last week, he was nowhere to be found. So this is time if you want to actually engage and try and come up with some bipartisan solutions to some of these problems, I certainly welcome that.

I look forward to those conversations in the future.

Border Security

Mr. President, if there is one thing for sure, it is that things look very different at the southern border these days than they did a year ago. Encounters at the southern border have dropped precipitously to as low as just 7,832 encounters in July.

Now compare that to the southern border under the Biden administration when U.S. Customs and Border Protection was encountering more than 100,000 illegal immigrants per month and sometimes many more. In a number of months, that number was up over 200,000. And in one memorable month in 2023, the number of encounters at the southern border exceeded 300,000--300,000 in just one month. Many of those individuals were processed and then allowed to take up residence in the United States.

Well, no longer.

Under President Trump, illegal border crossings have slowed to a trickle, and border communities that were once overwhelmed are quiet. Border Patrol's El Paso sector, which covers 268 miles in western Texas and all of New Mexico, is emblematic of the progress that has been made.

The sector chief says agents there are currently encountering about 40 to 50 people per day. Now, compare that to the 2,700 per day that they would see not that long ago.

Then there is the known ``got-aways.'' These are individuals that Border Patrol saw but was unable to apprehend. The current daily average in the El Paso sector is nine--nine; nine known ``got-aways'' per day. Last summer, it was 400 per day in that sector--400.

One has to wonder just how dangerous some of these individuals were who were avoiding law enforcement, considering that a lot of illegal immigrants encouraged by catch-and-release policies actually sought out Border Patrol during the Biden years.

Under President Trump, the situation at the southern border has been turned around. Our laws are being enforced. The wall is being built, and criminal illegal immigrants who had taken up residence in our country are being arrested, detained, and deported. Thanks to President Trump's leadership, we have made an incredible amount of progress, and we need to sustain that progress for long term.

That is why Republicans made the generational investment in border security in the One Big Beautiful Bill. That includes funding to finish the border wall and hire more Border Patrol and ICE agents, plus additional detention space and deportation capacity.

We also included funding for the Department of Justice to hire more immigration judges to address the massive backlog of immigration cases, a backlog made exponentially worse by the Biden administration's policies.

The open border policies of the past were a danger for everyone. The chaos at our southern border under the Biden administration was an invitation to terrorists, criminals, and other dangerous individuals to enter our country.

It placed an incredible burden on our Border Patrol agents, many of whom were pulled off the essential work of guarding the border to process the flood of illegal immigrants. And it placed a big burden on border cities, and nonborder cities as well, who struggled to deal with an influx of migrants.

Then there were the dangers to illegal immigrants themselves who were encouraged by President Biden's policies to put themselves at the mercy of human smugglers and the cartels, criminals who profited off of the open southern border.

In fact, the New York Times reported in 2022 that human smuggling had become a $13 billion business for the cartels--ballooning from $500 million just a few years earlier. New border security measures, however, have cost the cartels an estimated $1 billion since the start of this year.

Now law enforcement has the bandwidth to go after these criminals and disrupt the networks whose activities endanger immigrants and Americans alike. We have a responsibility to keep America safe, and that starts with security at our borders. President Trump takes that responsibility seriously.

He has acted swiftly to turn the disaster at the southern border around, and Congress has acted to support that mission and make the success we have seen these last few months the new normal. That work continues.

I am grateful to the men and women on the frontlines carrying out the important work enforcing the law and making America safer.

I yield the floor.

I suggest the absence of a quorum.

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

Mr. President, when parents send their kids to school, they rightfully expect that they will be safe and protected. Parents expect their kids to bring home knowledge, not polio. They expect them to share stories, not measles. They expect them to get smart, not smallpox.

The reality is, this has been the case for decades because we have had vaccines to safely and efficiently keep students protected against these terrible, terrible diseases.

Unfortunately, there is an extreme movement that relies on conspiracy theories that is trying to overturn commonsense, science, vaccination guidelines, and make children vulnerable to life-threatening illnesses.

Earlier this month, Florida announced it was rolling back longstanding vaccine requirements--longstanding vaccine requirements-- for schools; requirements that have prevented the death of more than 1 million children in the last 30 years alone--1 million children. Think about that number. Protecting them from devastating diseases like measles, polio, and whooping cough.

Removing these safeguards will cost kids' lives. There is no other way of putting it, parents will bury their children.

It will bring us back to a time before vaccines, when parents prayed their child would be spared from polio so they wouldn't have to spend the rest of their life in an iron lung. That is not freedom. Living inside of an iron lung because someone refused to get a vaccine is anything but being free.

As my dad used to say: When you don't have your health, you don't have anything. These extreme policies will lead people to die as a result.

Let's also be clear: This is not what parents want. In fact, more than 80 percent of parents support vaccine requirements for schools to prevent diseases like polio, measles; to prevent

diseases like mumps, rubella, smallpox, hepatitis, and a number of other diseases that we don't even think about anymore on a daily basis.

That support crosses party lines. In fact, three-quarters of Republican parents agree schools should require vaccines for measles and polio, including 73 percent of parents who identify themselves with the MAGA movement.

Even my Republican colleagues have spoken up about this, saying:

It's a horrible idea. . . . It's been policy.

I am going to quote again:

Vaccinations have proven to be helpful in preventing the

spread of [diseases like] measles, polio, and other things.

This was a Republican:

My children are vaccinated, my grandchildren are

vaccinated. I don't agree with that.

These extreme policies are not only way out of step with science, they are way out of step with the very families that these Florida politicians claim to represent.

What is happening in Florida is not an isolated case. And what happens there, it won't stay there. It is part of a broader effort to weaken our Nation's health. Disease knows no boundary and is, unfortunately, an equal opportunity predator.

At the heart of this dangerous misinformation campaign are people like the Secretary of Health and Human Services, R.F.K., Jr., who has built a career by spreading lies about vaccines and spreading rhetoric that has been debunked time and time again by doctors and scientists.

In fact, he fired, just recently, the Director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention because she allegedly stood up to his anti-vax efforts. Since then, the CDC has made it practically impossible for healthy adults in many States to receive the COVID-19 vaccination if they so choose--if they so choose.

This goes beyond getting rid of COVID vaccine mandates. It actually imposes a new Republican mandate that no one can receive the vaccine, and it does not matter even if they want to. This goes above and beyond, forcing everyone to bend to their will. It is not freedom. It is imposing their radical beliefs on everyone else.

Because of Secretary Kennedy's willingness to push lies and conspiracies that will hurt our health, the Senate must speak out against what he is doing and what Florida is doing and make it clear we support making vaccines accessible and that we support making sure our children are vaccinated against polio, smallpox, rubella, and other life-threatening illnesses.

Washington Republicans cannot and should not stay silent while extremists in Washington and in Florida are trying to make it more likely that children--children--won't receive critical vaccines.

That is why I introduced a resolution opposing these extreme policies, reaffirming something the overwhelming majority of Americans already know, and this is this: Vaccines save lives. Vaccines protect kids. Vaccines protect every American, and every American deserves the freedom to access them.

This is about the safety of our children. It is about making sure diseases like polio and smallpox remain eradicated. It is about standing up for the overwhelming majority of parents--Republican, Democrat, Independent alike--who want their children just protected from these horrific, terrible illnesses.

So, today, I am calling on my colleagues in the Senate to join me in this effort. Let's send a strong bipartisan message that we reject this extreme, dangerous agenda.

If all of my Republican colleagues disagree with what Florida is doing, let's do more than just give a disapproving statement to reporters. They have something they can do about it. I am going to give them the opportunity--Washington Republicans--to do something to protect our kids. Let's pass my resolution by unanimous consent right now to protect the children of the United States.

So, Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the Senate proceed to the consideration of S. Res. 389, which was submitted earlier today; further, that the resolution be agreed to, the preamble be agreed to, and that the motions to reconsider be considered made and laid upon the table, with no intervening action or debate.

Mr. President, this is very disappointing. We know that childhood diseases have been eradicated in so many ways because of these vaccinations. And we often know that the way that they are available or the way they are paid for relies on the recommendations from the U.S. Government. So we do put children at risk, and we are saying, in the case of COVID, that people may not get them.

But I remain disappointed. This is really disappointing. By blocking my resolution, Washington Republicans are saying they are OK with extreme policies that can make vaccinations inaccessible, unaffordable, roll back vaccine requirements for schoolchildren, and put us all at risk for diseases like measles, polio, and smallpox, to our families, to our communities, to those most vulnerable.

I don't believe this is a partisan issue. Disease is an equal opportunity predator. Diagnosis can change your life this fast. So it isn't partisan.

The overwhelming majority of parents, including three-quarters of Republicans, support school vaccine requirements. Blocking my resolution ignores parents, ignores science, and it puts kids at risk.

Before some Washington Republicans try to insinuate that because they didn't personally block this resolution, they may support it--it has been introduced, and everyone is welcome to support it today. So if you believe schoolchildren should be able to access vaccines, you can cosponsor my resolution today.

I yield the floor.

Mr. President, reserving the right to object, Senator, we do agree that cracking down on outsourcing and supporting American workers is an important goal and one that does deserve serious debate. I am willing to work with you in a bipartisan way to help address this issue that is hurting our country.

But for some things, this isn't the way we make laws. There is a process. A bill is introduced. It gets reviewed and considered by committee, brought to the floor, worked on with colleagues. We may have different considerations in Nevada than we do in Ohio versus Mr. President's State of Utah.

So what we want to do is work together in a bipartisan way, not rush this complex legislation through by unanimous consent. So you have my commitment to move forward. I am with you, but I am objecting today.

I suggest the absence of a quorum.

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

Mr. President, I further ask unanimous consent that I be allowed to complete my remarks before the scheduled recess.

Mr. President, it seems these days--and this is not a great development, but it seems these days as if Democrats love to hate anything that Republicans--and particularly President Trump--suggest or propose or do, especially when it comes to ways to try to shrink the size of our government and rightsize bloated Federal programs.

They have spent a lot of time and energy catastrophizing about all the supposed dangers of the One Big Beautiful Bill--one of the most important achievements of this administration and Congress so far. The truth about the One Big Beautiful Bill is that it prevented the largest tax hike in American history and puts more money back in the pockets of hard-working Americans.

Now, you would think that alone would be a good reason to support the One Big Beautiful Bill, but there is more.

The main way they have opposed that bill is by mischaracterizing it and outright misrepresenting what is contained in it. One of the accusations made is that it will take away healthcare coverage from people who need it.

Democratic Leader Senator Schumer said of the bill:

There is nothing beautiful about stripping away people's

healthcare, forcing kids to go hungry, denying communities

the resources they need, and increasing poverty.

Minority whip Senator Durbin claimed that we are going to be taking coverage away from 16 million families.

Now, if true, these accusations would be serious, but they are not true. In the more than 2 months since the One Big Beautiful Bill became law, the Congressional Budget Office has shed some light on this matter and I think done a tremendous job of truth-telling, and it is important to delve deeper into what they have said about this so the American people can know what the truth is.

CBO estimates that 10 million people will lose coverage due to the One Big Beautiful Bill. Now, again, that estimate without context seems pretty serious, but we have to ask, who are these 10 million people? Are they elderly grandmothers? Are they disabled citizens? Are they children? people who have no access to other resources? In fact, they are not. And I have no doubt that my colleagues will argue that they are in the coming months. In the coming months, ahead of the midterm elections, we will hear more about that, which is one reason why I wanted to come in and present the facts.

According to the Congressional Budget Office, 3.7 million of this 10 million--3.7 million of this 10 million--already had access through another form of federally subsidized healthcare. That is more than a third of that 10 million.

When we take this examination of the facts a step further, we see that the Congressional Budget Office estimates that 5.3 million Americans out of that 10 million are individuals who choose not to work, which is one of the new requirements of the One Big Beautiful Bill.

These programs are supposed to go to the deserving and the needy, not to people who like to sit on the couch and play video games or otherwise not contribute to their own welfare. Work requirements for able-bodied adults were an important provision that I championed in this bill, and I am glad we

got it done as part of this legislation. So able-bodied adults who willingly refuse to work shouldn't expect a handout from the Federal Government or the taxpayers who do work. It is only right that those who are able to work do so or at least demonstrate they are actively looking for a job or participating in some sort of job training or volunteer services.

Those are other alternatives to work: looking for a job or volunteering or training for work. Seems like a reasonable requirement to me.

There is just no reason for taxpayers to continue to pick up the tab for able-bodied Americans who choose not to enter the labor force.

And the truth is, we need them in the workforce. We need more people in the workforce, which is one of the issues I hear people talk about as I travel my State and around the country. We need the workforce to be able to keep our economy going and to provide for those who need help.

So able-bodied adults who are choosing not to comply with these work requirements make up more than half of those 10 million who will lose coverage, but they can change that. They can simply choose to work or study or go to school or volunteer, and they would get those benefits. But if you consciously choose not to, it makes sense to me that taxpayers should not be required to subsidize that.

Next, the CBO also estimates that 2\1/2\ million of the 10 million are not actually eligible for the program to begin with. That is a quarter of that 10 million aren't even eligible.

If we want to make sure that our safety net programs work and are stable, we have to ensure the benefits are actually going to people whom Congress has made eligible for these programs in the first place.

As the Presiding Officer knows, one of the biggest issues confronting our country is that we are $37 trillion in debt, and we can't just keep printing money and spending money and bankrupting our country and threatening the welfare of future generations. We have a present-day responsibility to address that, and we know that the status quo was not sustainable.

Assuring those who do not actually qualify are not taking benefits away from those who do is only common sense. It is the least we can do.

But that is not all. The Congressional Budget Office estimates that 1.4 million of those who would lose coverage are actually not citizens in the first place, which is another category of ineligible individuals. So Congress has never authorized federally subsidized health coverage for noncitizens.

I don't think the American people who voted overwhelmingly for President Trump last November did so because they want to see taxpayers subsidize illegal aliens' healthcare.

In addition to the categories I just mentioned, the Congressional Budget Office estimates that the remaining loss of coverage will be the result of reducing waste, fraud, and abuse within these programs-- again, something that is not particularly controversial, and I can't think of a single Texan I have talked to who was supportive of spending more of their hard-earned money for fraudulent or wasteful programs. In fact, the opposite is the case.

So at the end of the day, when we look at the numbers from the Congressional Budget Office that keeps the official scorecard for the U.S. Government, the story it tells is far different from the tale that our Democratic colleagues are trying to tell the American people.

The One Big Beautiful Bill is not taking healthcare coverage away from grandmas who are on a fixed income or single mothers. Rather, the reforms to the Medicaid Program in the One Big Beautiful Bill will ensure that the money that is spent goes to people who are eligible and who need it the most. That is the truth about the One Big Beautiful Bill.

So as much as my Democratic colleagues love to hate it, at the end of the day, this single legislative achievement of President Trump's second term of office delivers necessary reforms that will make life better for the American people.

Republicans will continue to never mind the naysayers and keep telling our constituents the truth about the One Big Beautiful Bill.

I yield the floor.

Mr. President, reserving the right to object, let me say to my colleague from Nevada that neither one of us represent Florida.

The 10th Amendment to the Constitution is clear that the Federal Government has a limited set of powers, and most powers are delegated to the States. I think we should let decisions for the people of Florida be made by the elected representatives of the people of Florida.

Let me just also address real quickly some of the statements that were just made about children going to school.

It is decently ironic, given that during COVID, kids were prevented from going to school because schools were closed. Schools were closed, in some cases, up to a year and a half.

If we look at the epidemic of childhood violence, youth violence in this country, we can directly trace that to the enormous mistakes made during COVID by locking kids up, by forcing children to get a COVID vaccine that we now know, objectively, absolutely should not have been given to children.

Let me make also another point. You can't, on one side, bemoan the termination of a CDC Director and, on the other side, having not voted to confirm said CDC Director--so when you voted no, you can't also say: Well, why was that person fired, because you wouldn't have hired him in the first place. That doesn't make any sense.

Let me just make one final point. This is very important. Any vaccine that any parent wants to get is available. What R.F.K. is saying--our Secretary of Health is saying is: We are not going to mandate that people have to put things into their body that they choose not to put in their body.

In fact, I believe over my lifetime, what I have seen the Democrats say is: My body, my choice. I guess that only applies when you are murdering babies.

It is very simple. If we don't have sovereignty over what goes in our body, we are not free people.

I believe that people should make a choice, an educated choice. I have faith in the American people that they can make the decisions that they feel are right for them. For that reason, I object.

Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the Senate proceed to the immediate consideration of my bill, the HIRE Act, which is at the desk; further, that the bill be considered read a third time and

passed, and that the motion to reconsider be considered made and laid upon the table.

I withhold my request with some remarks.

I think one of the things that I can agree on with my colleague from Nevada--and there are a lot of things I think we can work together on. I think she is a good person--the one thing we can agree on is we want stronger families. We want strong family structures. That means that a mom or a dad can have one job that allows them to provide a family-sustaining wage to be able to raise kids so that parents could stay home with their kids--again, a mom or a dad-- and provide those kinds of resources that are necessary.

But, right now, corporations are taking a lot of good jobs and shipping those jobs overseas. For example, where I started my career, believe it or not, right out of college, was in a call center. I helped start the Saturn Corporation's customer assistance center. I can tell you firsthand, those are good jobs. I can also say that the people who do the best job at call centers are people with some form of disability. Whether it is blindness, they are in a wheelchair, they don't have a lot of other opportunities for good, high-paying jobs. That used to be the case. They have much higher levels of empathy. They speak our language. They know our culture.

But corporations, unfortunately, chase slave wages in other parts of the world where they can pay people $5 a day. And our calls--our American consumers that need help and assistance are calling these foreign countries. They have a language barrier, a culture barrier, and more importantly, that money is leaving our country to go into those communities versus having that money stay here in America. So that call center operator can go pay rent, go to the grocery store, buy a car, et cetera. We could create that ecosystem.

I know having been in your State just recently, that there are a lot of needs for jobs there--a lot of needs for jobs. Let's agree that we want these jobs to stay here in America. My bill is very simple. We are not going to control what corporations do, but we can create guardrails.

So what my bill does is very simple. If you outsource American jobs to a foreign country, you will pay a 25-percent fee for the value of that contract. And here is the best part, we take that 25-percent fee that we collect, and we use it to fund trade schools to upskill workers to be able to step up into a better, higher paying job.

The bill is called the HIRE Act.

Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the Senate proceed to the immediate consideration of my bill, the HIRE Act, which is at the desk; further, that the bill be considered read a third time and passed and that the motion to reconsider be considered made and laid upon the table.

Mr. President, I appreciate the Senator from Nevada's willingness to work with me to get this bill across the finish line. You have my commitment that my team will reach out to yours. Let's get this bill going.

I think this is something that we can all agree on that we want to do. Let's put the thoughtfulness into it. I look forward to working with you to make this happen.

Thank you.

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

Mr. President, once again, Senate Democrats are threatening to shut down the government. A government shutdown is bad for everyone. The cost of a Democrat shutdown is staggering.

Reopening the government after a shutdown is even more costly. And who pays the price of a Schumer shutdown? Well, it is the American people.

It is not the people in this room. No. It is hard-working Americans. It is seniors who rely on Social Security; they are going to be impacted. People living on a fixed income; they budget down to the last dollar. They need to pay for rent; they need to pay for groceries; they need to pay for prescriptions. Democrats don't seem to worry about that. Oh, they say they can wait.

Because a Democrat shutdown means that customer service applications to the Social Security Administration--well, they will be delayed.

Now, many military families also live paycheck to paycheck. They are going to face a lot of uncertainty. The men and women who protect our families will be left to wonder how they can protect their own families. Border Patrol agents, they put their lives on the line every day to protect the American people. They are going to be forced to live without a paycheck.

Democrats already tried to defund the Border Patrol. Now they want Border Patrol agents to go home without a paycheck until the government reopens.

National parks, they risk being closed as well. In my home State of Wyoming, we have Yellowstone National Park; we have the Grand Teton. These are more than parks; they are part of our State and our Nation's rich history and heritage.

Families from across America and around the world visit Wyoming, our national parks, and other national parks. They do it every year.

Under a Schumer shutdown, those plans will be forced to be canceled.

Local businesses like hotels, restaurants, they will lose revenue. Park staff are reduced to skeleton crews. Trash piles up. That is not stewardship. That is neglect.

That is what the Democrats are risking. It is what Democrats are threatening with this reckless talk of a shutdown.

The American people shouldn't be forced to pay the cost of Democrats' political games. That is what it is. Shutdowns are political games. Political acts are choices.

Congress has the tools to avoid this chaos. It requires, however, cooperation from the Democrats.

The appropriations process, it exists. It exists for a reason. It is how Congress fulfills its basic mission--the power of the purse. That is our duty, and that is what Republicans are doing.

For the first time in 4 years, the Senate passed bipartisan appropriations bills before the August recess.

More are on the way.

Appropriations Committee Chairwoman Susan Collins is working hard to get each and every bill passed. That is something that the current Minority Leader refused to do when the Democrats were in the majority.

Last year, 11 out of 12 funding bills passed the Senate Appropriations Committee. They passed many along bipartisan ways, many were unanimous, all done in regular order. That was last year when Schumer was, at that time, majority leader, but he refused to bring a single one of them to the floor of the U.S. Senate for a vote. He let those 11 bipartisan appropriations bills die in the drawer of that desk rather than let the Senate vote on them.

He shut down the appropriations process, and now he and the Senate Democrats are threatening to shut down the government. He himself has recently suggested a shutdown. He said: It is preferable to accepting bipartisan solutions.

Senator Cory Booker, who is another member of the Senate Democrat leadership, went even further. When asked about a short stopgap measure that we are talking about now to keep government open so we can proceed with additional appropriations bills, he said:

I am going to block it.

That is what he said--block the normal process to regular order.

And it is not just the Democrat-elected officials calling for a shutdown. Liberal columnist Ezra Klein recently wrote in the New York Times and he was on television urging Democrats to shut down the government. He did it despite the costs and consequences to the American people, but that is where the radical left is.

He said joining Republicans to fund this government is worse, he said, than failing at opposition.

That is what they think their job is: to disrupt, to make it harder on the American people's lives. That is not what we ought to be doing here in the U.S. Senate. Democrats are ignoring the needs of keeping the essential functions of our Nation open. And what are those essential needs? Securing the border, Social Security, supporting our military--doesn't seem to care if you are a Democrat these days. What is so wrong with doing the job voters elected us to do?

To my Democrat colleagues, I would say: Stop this political theater. The Republican message is simple: Let's fund the government; protect Social Security; keep servicemembers and border agents paid; keep the government open in order to serve the American people.

Senate Republicans are ready. Ready to keep the government open. Senate Democrats are bragging about being ready to shut it down. The choice is theirs, and the consequences of that choice will be felt by the people of our Nation.

I yield the floor.

I suggest the absence of a quorum.