Floor Statements

Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that Eva Friedlander, an intern in my office, be granted floor privileges until June 10, 2026.

Mr. President, on rollcall vote 139, I voted nay, my intention was to vote yea; therefore, I ask unanimous consent that I be permitted to change my vote since it will not affect the outcome.

Mr. President, I call up my amendment No. 5812 and ask that it be reported by number.

Mr. President, even though Attorney General Blanche says that the anti-weaponization fund will not be used, it is still part of an active settlement and absolutely can be used. But the fund is not needed for someone wronged by the Federal Government. The Federal Tort Claims Act allows any citizen wrongly targeted by the government to file a claim.

The one group that cannot are police officers attacked in this Capitol on January 6--the police officers who were protecting the public, the Senators, and the Representatives. Now, this does not threaten the bill's privileged status, but it does help police officers injured while protecting us.

I urge a ``yes'' vote.

Mr. President, this is germane to the bill. It is in the Judiciary section. And by the way, it does not detract from our ability. And there is a fund out there that could be funded to use as an anti-weaponization fund.

We should make the same ability, the same access to redress to the officers who protected us.

I urge passage.

Mr. President, it does not kill the bill. But pursuant to section 904 of the Congressional Budget Act and all budget resolution discipline that applies, I move to waive all points of order for purposes of the pending measure, and I ask for the yeas and nays.

Vote on Motion

Mr. President, look at this card. Whoa, talk about something of convenience. I can go down right now and buy some coffee and put a chip. Boom, I have got my coffee. The money just goes out like that.

I can go online to Amazon and order something, click in my number. Boom, I get that good delivered. It is so easy and so seamless.

Now, this which makes our lives so much better--so much better--can be perceived as a lifeline for a family struggling to pay their bills because they can swipe and pay the bill when they don't have the money in the account to cover with a check.

Now, the problem is, that lifeline can become a noose around the neck and drag them to the bottom of the ocean--an ocean of debt. This is not a theoretical.

We know that debt is a major driver of marital problems. They can't agree on money; the young couple breaks up. They have a child; the child grows up in a broken home. Money debt can just drive a wedge into a marriage with generational effects upon how future generations do.

Now, it is convenient, and it is a weight. So let's talk about whether this is theoretical or not. The typical middle-income family in our Nation has an average of almost--somewhere around--$10,000 of credit card debt.

Now, if we are speaking about a family making $80,000 a year, which is kind of an average income, and they have got $10,000 of credit card debt, they are not paying off that debt every month. They are sitting on that, paying 18 to 22 percent in interest. They are the ones who are suffering with that noose that gets tighter and tighter and tighter.

So where does the debt come from? Some of it is groceries. Some of it is gasoline. A lot of it is medical expenses.

Somebody who has a health insurance policy with a $6,000 deductible, they would have to pay 6k. They don't have 6k, and they use their credit card, and that credit card debt mounts up.

Mr. President, 60 percent of personal bankruptcies have to do with medical

bills. Think about that. Nearly half of credit card debt is related to money spent taking care of a family's medical expenses--half. And then that leads to that 60 percent personal bankruptcy.

Now, we have got to do something, and Congress can't do it by itself. The executive branch can't do it by itself. It is something that we must do together.

Whenever I see the executive branch put out another Executive order, I kind of smile. Executive orders will be repealed by the next President of a different party, who will do a word search and, boom, every one is redone. And the family who thought they were getting relief gets no relief whatsoever.

It has got to be something that we in Congress do, but we can only get something done if the executive branch engages.

Now, Mr. President, I am not speaking to you just a second. I am speaking to President Trump.

Mr. President--Mr. President Trump--get engaged. Mr. President, too many people have this debt--$10,000 on their credit card, related to paying, in part, for things such as medical expenses, and they are going down. That is something that we, Mr. President--you, the President, and we, as Congress--must engage upon.

And, by the way, Mr. President, I just so much want to work with you on that. If you invite me to the White House to bring a plan, which I am about to describe, to work with you to have your impression upon it, let's do it.

We may have differences. I have no difference with anyone who wants to truly help the American people and who truly acknowledges that they are putting expenses on this because they don't have the money in their banking account, and then they are paying 22 percent in interest.

Mr. President, let's do it together.

Mr. President--Mr. President Trump--your instincts were correct as we were debating the extension of the enhanced premium tax credits. You said we should not send money to insurance companies; we should send them to the patient. I am all with you on that, Mr. President. Right now, I am all with you because, right now, we are sending taxpayer money to the insurance companies, and premiums are going up.

The employer is paying more to provide employer-sponsored insurance for the employee, who is paying higher premiums but the deductibles are higher.

Hospitals are doing well. Insurance companies are doing really well. Mr. President Trump, it is the consumer, the patient, the employee at the firm who is doing poorly. And it is the employer who can't afford to hire more workers because the employer is putting more and more money into benefits--not into salary, not into raising wages--into paying higher premiums to the insurance company.

We can do better than that.

So the idea I have, I call it the MVP Plan--the Money and Value for Patients Plan. And just like that, Mr. President Trump, you argued in the debate over the enhanced premium tax cut renewal: Let's give money to the individual, not to the insurance company, because if you give money to the insurance company, they take at least 20 percent of it for profit and overhead.

If you give it to the patient, 100 percent goes to the care they know they need. It takes power from the bureaucrats and middlemen, and you give it to the patient.

I am a physician. I learned long ago: You give power to the patient, and the patient does better. Let's give the power of the purse to the patient.

And we call it the V because you can have price transparency. And there are people in the private sector right now coming up with apps, and you scan your phone: urgent care center near me. It will tell you where that urgent care center is that is the best value for your dollar, because they have been able to figure out how much these urgent care centers charge.

By the way, we are working in the Health Committee, the committee that I chair, to improve the power of price transparency so the patient will have even more information.

So money in the pocket with value to the patient--that is the MVP Plan.

What is happening now? Well, we send money to the insurance company. As we said earlier, the employer is paying more, the patient is paying more, and insurance companies are making more money. Indeed, at some point, it seems like the patient is the excuse for profit for those providing the care, not the reason for the care in the first place. We have got to do better by the patient.

Now, in this part, giving money to the patient, we acknowledge that, right now, the Federal Government heavily subsidizes insurance premiums. What both the employer pays on behalf of the employee and what the employee pays toward his or her policy is heavily subsidized by the Federal Government. We change that subsidy so that money goes into a health savings account.

And for those who are not familiar with a health savings account, it is like money in your wallet. You may have a card, but the card pulls away from your bank account.

And when you go to your phone and say, ``Give me the best place to take my daughter with an earache,'' and they tell you this place is $50 and that place is $150, you go to the place that charges you $50, you swipe your card, and it is paid for. It doesn't go on a credit card. It comes out of your account, but your account has been prefunded by this mechanism.

This, Mr. President, is a way to give immediate relief to a family who is currently struggling with the cost of living. We can do this in this Congress and get it ready for next year. That is what we must do.

And, one more time, instead of putting more money toward an insurance company, which takes 20 percent for profit and overhead, we are giving money to the patient so that she can use 100 percent for the care she needs.

By the way, when we give somebody a policy with a $6,000 deductible or a $3,000 deductible, families don't have $3,000. That is why they are putting it on their credit card.

No, this gives them money up front to pay for that upfront expense, and that is the value in the MVP Plan. We give the power to her, to the mom, who is taking care of her family. We give her the power of price. We give her the power of knowing where the most value is.

And, one more time, this echoes what President Trump advocated in the debate about enhanced premium tax credits.

Mr. Presiding President and President Trump, we can help people from using this credit card as a financial lifeline, which ultimately drags them down to death in an ocean of debt into bankruptcy. We can give them the power.

Mr. President, I stand ready to meet with you or your administration. Mr. President, let's do it together. If we don't do it together, it won't be done. If it is not the President and the Congress working together, we will not save the American people with $10,000 of credit card debt, on average, going into medical bankruptcy.

Mr. President, show that you care about the people.

I yield the floor.

Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the following interns in my office be granted floor privileges through June 4, 2026: Hayden Jackson, Madison Albright, and Stella Israelite.

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

Madam President, hurricane season is less than 3 weeks away--3 weeks--and we have to act to make flood insurance affordable again before it is too late.

Last year, thankfully, no hurricanes hit my State. Now, no hurricanes hitting my State is good news for everyone in my State but especially for homeowners who do not have flood insurance.

Every year, more and more people have to drop the National Flood Insurance Program coverage because it is too expensive and too unreliable. So this is about making flood insurance affordable again.

Between 2022 and 2024, 70,000 people in Louisiana dropped coverage. And last year, another 52,000 did. Why? They need it. They are trying to be responsible. They are being priced out. And they are being priced out of flood protection by the rising costs of a post-Biden era flood insurance program. Under President Joe Biden, FEMA implemented Risk Rating 2.0 as a new risk assessment program, even though Congress never gave approval.

Now, look at this.

Since 2023, rates have increased, making people's flood insurance premiums so high they cannot afford them. They have got a certain amount of money to pay for their mortgage, their flood insurance premium, and their property and casualty.

Now, these are hard-working families trying to do the right thing, but having to choose between paying their mortgage, the property and casualty, the flood insurance--oh, by the way, buying food and gasoline, health insurance, taking care of their children, as well as any kind of ancillary expenses.

Now, these are some expenses here. And you can see, after the implementation of Risk Rating 2.0 to Calcasieu Parish, which is in the southwest portion of my State, Property 1 would have almost a $12,000 a year risk of insurance. They would try and decrease their risk of flooding. That is premitigation, before they decrease their risk of flooding. They get a $758 increase, and the post-risk Risk Rating 2.0 is here, and that is their percent increase.

On Property No. 2, instead of a 1,183-percent increase, there is an 867-percent increase.

This is unaffordable for a middle-income family trying to make ends meet.

Now, people want to go to sleep at night knowing they are protected and they have taken care of things, in case a terrible event happens which affects them, for example a flood.

In 2016--it is one example--a 46-foot river crest swept the land completely out from underneath a Cypress Point home, even though they had elevated it above the base-flood elevation. That means, if your average flooding is here, they had built their house above that area--I shouldn't say ``average''--of maximal flooding. What the worst case could be, they had built their house above that. Despite that, the family doing everything right, a natural disaster still wiped out their home.

This is when you want flood insurance. The family has done everything right, but, nonetheless, through an act of God, they lose it all.

But it is possible this family cannot afford their flood insurance. So if Congress has the power to guarantee reliable flood insurance that people can afford--and we do have that power--why don't we do it?

Instead, nearly one-fifth of the people in my State--almost 100,000-- can no longer afford their insurance. And it is not just my State. Millions of Americans across the Nation rely on the National Flood Insurance Program. They are all getting pounded across the Nation by Risk Rating 2.0.

I am leading a group of Republicans who, last year, tried to end the policy, and I recently followed up with FEMA, asking that they would be urgent in addressing the harm Risk Rating 2.0 is doing the National Flood Insurance Program for people in my State and across the Nation.

And President Trump has begun to speak about how we make things more affordable. He understands this. The American people need to be able to afford to live, and right now, the component of their life which is flood insurance is not working.

In 2019, President Trump and I worked together to delay Risk Rating 2.0 for a year. I ask that we do it again, but let's make it permanent. The American people need flood insurance which is affordable and also reliable.

Right now, the NFIP relies on Congress to both fund and authorize the program. Now ``to fund'' means that if funding is ever withheld by Congress, like the Democrats have done multiple times this Congress, the National Flood Insurance Program cannot operate, and that leaves millions of Americans hanging in uncertainty.

Now, Congress must vote every year to reinstate the National Flood Insurance Program. I have introduced legislation to automatically extend the program to operate during a lapse in authorization. It can still issue policies, renew contracts, pay claims, and access funding. Coverage should be there whether politicians decide to act responsibly or not.

And speaking of acting responsibly, Congress needs to act responsibly now and soon because Federal support is critical.

In President Trump's first administration, he created a program called BRIC, B-R-I-C, short for Building Resilient Infrastructure and Communities, which provided costs and lifesaving grants that States across the Nation, including Louisiana, benefited from.

In President Trump's second administration, they assured me they would release more of these funds, and I am pleased to say that a new round has just been released: $1 billion to help States impacted by natural disasters such as Louisiana.

Now, I have been fighting to get these BRIC grant dollars released. I am pleased that it is done.

And this is a picture of one of those projects, which is helping to mitigate the risk of flooding, building storm and flood protection in the West Shore Lake Pontchartrain or the Morganza to the Gulf, two areas of my State which are at risk of flooding.

But as much as we need recovery assistance, we also know that the best way to lower the cost of flood insurance is by trying to make sure you don't flood in the first place. That is why, through my work negotiating the Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act, Louisiana has received so far $3 billion--I am sorry--hundreds of millions of dollars for flood mitigation and hundreds of millions for coastal restoration.

And here we see some of that activity. This is a bargain for the Federal taxpayer. It is easier and cheaper to prevent a flood than to provide recovery afterward.

Right now, if you go from the New Orleans area to Baton Rouge on the I-10, you pass LaPlace, and you will see construction of a huge flood control structure, which I have toured last August. This has received over a billion dollars to build this. It is going to protect flooding, which indeed protects the liability of Federal taxpayers. And this is money which I have helped--a portion of which I helped--to obtain.

And, by the way, if you never flood, the National Flood Insurance Program has less money to pay out. I know that an ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure. In this case, this money for this levee could prevent billions of dollars in recovery.

If you go to Terrebonne and Lafourche Parishes, you will go by the Morganza to the Gulf levee project--tremendous local support, the locals putting up hundreds of millions of dollars to build. But I have been able to

get $615 million through the infrastructure bill and other mechanisms, including a funding package recently signed into law by President Trump.

And as an example of the positive thing that can occur, this being partially completed--not completely, but partially--when Hurricane Ida came, there were 10,000 homes that did not flood that would have flooded if the flood control structure built at that time had not been built. Put differently, it wasn't completed, but enough of it was built that it prevented 10,000 homes from being flooded that would have flooded had it not been started.

This is how you save money for the Federal taxpayer. This is how you preserve communities. A mother will rest more easily knowing that the home in which she lives will stay safe and dry, even if the rains come, the winds blow, even if the hurricane hits the shore. And the funding that I am delivering gives her that peace of mind.

But there is more to come. I tell folks I wake up every morning and think about how to make life better for the people in my State and my country. And I can tell you that reliable, accountable, affordable flood insurance is part of that. That is what I am working toward as I continue taking Federal investment back to my State for flood prevention to help protect the Federal taxpayer from paying excessive dollars in the future.

I yield the floor.

Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that James Pomian, an intern in my office, be granted floor privileges until May 14, 2026.

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

Madam President, the Jones Act is a law that we have had for over a hundred years, enacted by Congress, and it simply says that cargo moving between two points in the United States should move on an American-built, American-owned, and American-crewed ship. It supports American workers, American shipyards, and American national security.

The Presiding Officer represents the State of Alabama. Mobile has some very good shipyards; Louisiana, some tremendous shipyards. But they are scattered around our Nation. It could be in Florida, Mississippi, Washington State--I am sure California--Maine.

And the places that build those things that go into the ships, into the boats, could be maritime manufacturing in Illinois, software in San Diego.

This supports American industry.

In my State, Louisiana ports, shipyards, energy producers, and maritime workers are a large portion of the State's economy. I could list you the towns: Houma, Lockport. Thousands of people in Louisiana depend on this industry for jobs that actually support the families.

Now, companies employ Louisiana's skilled workers, and they build vessels for the oil industry, for NOAA, for the Marines, for portions of ships that go to the Navy. And why do we have this workforce and these companies that can build these boats? Because of the Jones Act.

When we waive the Jones Act, like the administration just did and now is doing for another 90 days, we are saying that foreign-built vessels by foreign workers with foreign components--not from San Diego or Illinois or Mobile or Lockport or Houma but someplace else--can put together a vessel that moves goods between one point of the United States and another.

Now, the rationale for waiving the Jones Act was that we need to lower energy prices for California, and when gasoline and diesel go from the gulf coast to California, we are going to magically decrease the price paid at the pump in Los Angeles.

But although waiving the Jones Act can export our jobs to China and to Korea and to India, when you waive the Jones Act, it does not, by any--any--significant amount, lower the prices at the pump in California. Why? California pays $6 a gallon for gasoline because they have shut down refineries. They will not allow them to be expanded. They require a special mix of gasoline.

You could never get a pipeline built from Louisiana to California. It would never have been permitted under the Obama or Biden administrations.

They have taxes upon taxes, deliberately trying to make gasoline more expensive in California, in order to encourage people to buy electric vehicles.

So that is on top of the fact that, because of the hostility in Iran, the international price of oil is much higher.

Put it all together. The high prices of the oil, regulations, lack of refineries in California, no pipeline--that is the reason they are paying over $6 a gallon for gasoline.

To do something cosmetic like waive the Jones Act, to say that you are doing something, actually is more of an excuse to waive the Jones Act than it is to actually lower the price of gasoline in California.

And while you are doing this kind of philosophical ``we don't like the Jones Act,'' it hurts Louisiana workers. It costs Louisiana jobs, and jobs in Mobile, jobs in Illinois, jobs in San Diego. I could keep going down the list. It hurts the American worker for a kind of ``it ain't going to happen'' decrease of gasoline prices in California.

I will point out that the administration is making a big push to restore shipbuilding to the United States. Now, there is a difference between a boat and a ship. A boat is something below a certain size, but it can be really big, and a ship is like what the Navy uses. If you want more shipbuilding in the United States, you don't start doing that by hurting boatbuilding in the United States because the same workers who build boats build ships, the same technology that supports building boats supports building ships, and in some cases, components of that bigger Navy ship are built in a boatyard.

So in our policy of trying to support the American worker, we are actually trying to do things that are important to national security; that support our ability to make a Navy--a blue-water Navy--using American workers and not having to buy an aircraft carrier from Korea with all the kind of ``Are we sure we are getting what we want to get?''

My concern is that the original rationale for the waiver just doesn't make sense to me; it is just not logical. But now it has been extended. So it tells me that there is something motivating that waiver beyond the imagination that it is going to significantly lower gas prices in California. It is somebody who doesn't like the Jones Act, who doesn't like the support that Congress deliberately gave to the workers in our boatyards, the people who are building the engines in Illinois that go into those boats or in any of the other places that are scattered around the country, in our heartland or on the coastline, that support our workers. Somebody philosophically doesn't like it, and they are using this as an excuse in order to kill the Jones Act.

Well, Louisiana cannot afford for this to happen and neither should the country. Once waivers become routine, companies stop investing, workers leave the industry, and America becomes more dependent on foreign operators, and it becomes less prosperous for our Nation's workers.

I agree with the administration in that we should be doing everything we can to lower gas prices--oh, my gosh; families back home are feeling the price at the pump--but let's focus on solutions that work, that provide real relief and protect an industry that Louisiana, the gulf coast, and many in our country rely on.

With that, I yield the floor.

I suggest the absence of a quorum.

Mr. President, you and I are the elected representatives of our States, and sometimes we speak not on behalf of ourselves but on behalf of our entire State. Now is one of those times.

Everyone in Louisiana felt grief at the mass shooting in Shreveport that I spoke to on this floor last week. Now I speak for all in Louisiana who feel grief at the mass shooting in Baton Rouge last week, and our whole State feels this grief. We all grieve.

I have a friend Collis Temple--famous in Louisiana--the first African American who played basketball for LSU. He called to say that he, as a parent, felt the grief of this young lady's family, and it was Collis who compelled me to speak today because every family can imagine no longer having their child or their sibling.

We all grieve. Every classmate can picture walking to school and seeing an empty chair where their classmate once sat.

We all grieve. Every friend can imagine going on a carefree senior skip day. If you are older than 18, you can remember when you were once 18 and something awful happened--indeed, every friend grieves.

What do we say when words fail? We can say that all, in my State, in my country, are deeply and profoundly sorry and that all of Louisiana grieves with Martha's family.

So I ask that this body and all who are here join in a quiet moment for the life of Martha Odom, for everyone who loved her, loves her still, and will always love her.

I yield the floor.

Madam President, the Democrats have held the Department of Homeland Security hostage for 68 days with the shutdown. This discussion is about funding ICE, Border Patrol, and paying the men and women who keep our country safe. The Senator is using childcare as a distraction.

Republicans have supported reducing childcare costs for families through multiple provisions of the Working Families Tax Cut, including the expansion of tax credits for childcare expenses for working families.

I am--we are--open to conversations about other ways to increase access to affordable childcare options, but that must include an acknowledgement from colleagues across the aisle that flaws in the childcare system steal money from taxpayers, steering money away from families who need it the most.

Ultimately, this amendment is not germane to the underlying bill to fund the Department of Homeland Security, and I urge a ``no'' vote.

Under the provisions of section 305(b)(2) of the Congressional Budget Act of 1974, I raise a point of order that the amendment offered is not germane.

Madam President, protecting the integrity of elections is a constitutional principle. That is why I am a proud cosponsor of the SAVE America Act requiring a photo ID when someone goes to vote.

Now, Americans have to show a photo ID or proof of citizenship on a weekly basis--sometimes on a daily basis. The Presiding Officer and I both fly regularly to Washington, DC, and then back home. You have got to show who you are. You open a bank account, you show a photo ID. You cash a check, you show a photo ID. We mentioned boarding a plane.

To require doing the same thing when you go to polls to vote in a Federal election is merely common sense. It is also not new. It is already a requirement in many States.

The SAVE America Act does not make it harder to vote; it ensures that only American citizens vote in American elections, and that is constitutional.

By the way, this is incredibly popular with the American people. Madam President, 71 percent of Democrats and 95 percent of Republicans agree you should have to show a photo ID when you go to vote, so why hasn't it passed? Why isn't it popular in Congress? Because Senate Democrats are dead set on pleasing, appeasing a small leftwing base of the 16 percent of the American people who oppose, so they come up with reasons not to pass the SAVE America Act, but these concerns have been addressed.

As an example, what about people who have lost their documents and cannot prove citizenship? Well, the legislation says that if you are a citizen and you have lost your documents, or never had them, you can go to a State election official, swear to the details of your birth date and location or naturalization details, and register to vote. We have that option in Louisiana. That alternative process is built into the SAVE America Act so lack of documentation is not an issue.

But rather than accepting that, Senate Democrats ignore the solution and get back to work finding another reason to oppose it, ignoring the fact that 70 percent of their party wants the SAVE America Act passed into law.

We should be here to serve the will of the American people, and folks are asking for the assurance of a secure election. The SAVE America Act helps get that done. We should pass it.

Now, some have said we need to go to a talking filibuster in order to get this done. I have supported the talking filibuster since my first day as a Senator in 2015, drawing inspiration from ``Mr. Smith Goes to Washington''--watching that movie when I was a child and seeing just kind of that, wow, when somebody gets up here and talks for 36 hours and everybody else is inconvenienced, somehow you come to a solution faster. I support using it now to pass the SAVE America Act to restore trust in our elections and carry out the will of the people.

Madam President, all of us have experienced someone in our life who has died, but the murder of a child defies comprehension and can't be measured, understood, or compared to anything else. It is, in a word, awful.

Today, the Shreveport community in Louisiana grieves the loss of eight children. A man shot seven of his own and a cousin between the ages of 3 and 11. He shot the mothers. I am told they are hospitalized and in serious condition but expected to survive. A 13-year-old was injured jumping off the roof to escape.

Now, I asked people in my office: Why do we grieve so much? People die all the time. And I think what we agreed upon is that they look to their parents for protection and not to be killed.

And it is, if you will, a sacrifice of a sacred bond between a parent and a child. And, of course, when that comes to mind, what is sacred? And then also when we read of these dying, we think of our own children, and we feel protective of them. And we know, no matter how much emotion we feel, they died.

Now, we thank the officers who acted quickly and bravely to pursue the shooter and stop him from doing it again. We pray for the families, for the communities, that they can recover as much as family and communities can recover from something so horrific.

I request a moment of silence for these eight young souls, for Shreveport, and for us all.

(Moment of silence.)

I yield the floor.

Mr. President, I rise today to honor a good friend Sheriff William Hilton, who was tragically killed Monday. Sheriff Hilton was a sheriff in every positive meaningful sense of the word.

He was steady. He was committed. He was there to answer the call when the community needed him. That kind of service is more than just a job, it was his life's calling, and he lived that calling every day.

He was a devoted husband to his wife Billie, a loving father to Shane and Kristy, and a proud grandfather to Slade.

But behind a man with such heavy responsibility is always a strong family, and, indeed, his family loved him, supported him, and stood by him through long, difficult, often 7-day workweeks. A true servant, a man others leaned on.

As Sheriff Wood his deputy and mentee said, ``I talked to him almost every day. If I had any questions, who else [could I ask but him]?''

It tells you what you need to know about Sheriff Hilton. He just had lots of wisdom. He retired in 2008. He could have lived a comfortable life fishing. His community asked him to come back as sheriff, and he served two more terms.

By the time he retired for good in 2020, he had served in law enforcement for 50 years. Again, he could have lived comfortably in retirement, but he came back because of his sense of duty.

We rode together once. There was a police ambush in 2016 in Baton Rouge, and a gunman killed four officers. Sheriff Hilton and I rode down to the ceremony for one of them, a lawman paying tribute to a fellow lawman. I always appreciated that.

And there is something to be said about a lawman's realism. Sheriff Hilton certainly had it. He once told me: When you are fighting crime, it is like mowing the grass. You never stop. You just keep on going.

There wasn't any anger. There wasn't any bitterness, just a realism. And it was the task before him, and it was a task he was going to do.

There is a quote about losing a friend that says: The melody he played upon the lives of those around him will never be played quite the same way again.

So while the melody may not be played quite the same way, it will be echoed by his family, by his community, and by all of us.

I ask that we take just a moment of silence to honor the life of Sheriff William Earl Hilton.

Mr. President, someone asked me today: Since Senate Democrats keep moving the goalpost on DHS funding, what kind of frustration is there among Republicans?

I replied: Ask the American people how frustrated they are.

Americans are being hurt for some political gain that some Senate Democrats seem to enjoy.

This is the New Orleans Airport. These are the lines. At one point, it was out of the building and into the parking garage. That is on the second floor. They had to come through the parking garage, through the second floor, and down to the mezzanine level in order to get into this line.

It was a 5-hour wait for people to be able to go through the TSA checkpoint. At that point, people had missed their flights. You came to the airport 3 hours early, and you missed your flight after standing in that line.

Now, I am just asking the folks at the airport who came to visit New Orleans--maybe a destination wedding, something for their family, and then they return to whatever State they are from, having a great time-- call up the Senate Democrats who are opposing ending the shutdown.

By the way, the rate of callouts from TSA staff exceeded 40 percent over the weekend. You know, they have bills to pay. I am not quite sure what they are doing. It could be that they are driving for Uber or they are driving for Lyft. They are trying to pay their bills. That is the issue here.

By the way, it is not just TSA agents. It is the FEMA agents, the people who help process the claims to rebuild communities after natural disasters. It is the Coast Guard, the people that rescue you when your boat breaks down, the people who are in the boats protecting our naval ships--protecting our naval ships right now on deployment outside of Iran. It is the people protecting us from cyber attacks--the cyber attacks that are coming right now from Iran.

Now every time an offer is made, Democrats say: Nope. It is not quite there yet.

As someone said, they are now rejecting deals which are better than their first offer.

Now, put this in context. Republicans and Democrats negotiated a funding bill for the Department of Homeland Security months ago. At some point, that deal was broken. They said: No, this is not good enough.

Then, 6 weeks ago, they refused to fund the Department of Homeland Security, at which point folks like TSA agents stopped getting paid and FEMA and Cybersecurity and Coast Guard, et cetera.

So Republicans have leaned forward and offered, for example, body cameras. They said they wanted body cameras. I think they wanted $20 million. I am told the White House has offered over $100 million for body cameras.

No, now we want something different.

I will just say that at some point, you have to be willing to make an agreement. At some point, you have to decide that a line this long, inconveniencing that many Americans, and not paying TSA agents, FEMA, Coast Guard, and others, is wrong, and you have to accept a deal.

Now, maybe you don't. Clearly you don't. But at some point, you should consider the pain that you are exacting upon fellow Americans, upon people who are not getting paid for 6 weeks even though they have bills to pay.

I want to compliment right now the people who are able to work, whether it is TSA, FEMA, Coast Guard, or Cybersecurity. Let us just thank them. Let us just thank them for doing what they are able to do to protect us even though they have not been paid for 6 weeks.

I will point out that the Department of Homeland Security covers FEMA. I would like the FEMA agents to be paid. Hurricane season starts in 10 weeks. In my State, in the gulf coast, the Atlantic coast, we know what that means. Planning should be taking place now in case a hurricane hits in 10 weeks. That planning is not taking place because people cannot go to work if their Department is shut down.

So if you start to wonder how frustrated Republicans are, ask these people how frustrated they are, and ask the people who are at the end, right where they would be getting checked in, how frustrated they are.

I ask my Democratic colleagues in the Senate to accept ``yes'' for an answer. If we have actually come to where you were, and you move back, and we have come forward still yet, and you move back once more, maybe at some point, you must examine your priorities. Is it to serve the American people? Is it to make sure that hard-working public servants are paid? Or is it to gain a political objective? I ask you, please, to put the American people first.

I yield the floor.

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