Floor Statements

Mr. President, a billion dollars goes a very long way, especially in a State like Hawaii. With a billion dollars, we could cover out-of-pocket costs for insulin for every person in the State who relies on it for almost 20 years. We could help to provide healthy meals to women, infants, and children in need for almost 40 years. We could cover the cost of childcare for nearly every child under 3 in Hawaii for an entire year, or we could cover tuition for every instate undergraduate student at the University of Hawaii for close to a decade.

But instead of doing any of that, this week, Republicans plan to give Donald

Trump a billion dollars for, of all things, a ballroom. Now, let's be perfectly clear, I have no problem investing in our great Capital City or its infrastructure. I was the top Democrat on the legislative branch appropriations subcommittee when we provided funding to restore this Capitol's dome.

We are the greatest Nation on Earth, and our physical infrastructure should reflect that. So if you want to clean up the parks or turn on the fountains or restore the monuments, count me in. But that is not what this is. This is not a normal beautification project in the District. This is a President who is about to turn 80 and nearing the end of his political career, and all he can think about is building monuments to himself.

Other leaders in this position might be thinking about their legacy in policy terms, but not this President. He is single-mindedly focused on building ballrooms and arches and golf courses, while the rest of the country struggles to put food on the table or to even see a doctor.

The ballroom started out in Trump's own words as ``taxpayer free.'' I will fund it, he said, I am not going to ask the government for money. A year later, he has realized that he needs government money, taxpayer money. And because the administration lost a court case on the basis that this project was never authorized by Congress, they are now looking for any statute that they can use to defend themselves in the future.

This is a priority for one person and one person only, and I know my colleagues are in a very tough spot because it is their President. They agree with him about a bunch of stuff, and it is really important to him. But I can tell you, I have not met a Republican Senator who likes this idea. I have met lots of them who are going to vote for it anyway.

Why are we spending a billion dollars on a ballroom when gas is at $4.53 nationally and $5.64 in Hawaii? What possible justification is there for, on the one hand, ending subsidies that help 22 million Americans to afford healthcare and then turning around and bankrolling a new building just so Donald Trump can throw fancy parties for his rich friends?

And that sounds like something that I am making up, but that is literally what this is. It is a billion-dollar ballroom so he can throw fancy parties for his rich friends. People in Hawaii and all across the country are struggling just to get by. Grocery prices are rising at the fastest rate in years because Trump's war in Iran is driving up shipping and fertilizer costs.

Electricity bills continue to outpace inflation with no end in sight, leaving 1 in 3 Americans struggling to pay their utility bills. More than 900 hospitals, nursing homes, and other facilities are at risk or have already reduced services or shut down altogether because Republicans gutted healthcare last year; and because of those very same cuts, 1 in 5 Americans who used to get their healthcare through the ACA Marketplace no longer have coverage.

Millions of others are paying thousands more for the same plan. We could be working to solve any of those issues, but we are not.

Now, here is the thing, the way this weird place works is that in order to enact most statutes, you need a combination of Democrats and Republicans. You need 60 votes. However, there is this weird thing called reconciliation where basically twice a year, if it is budgetary, if it adds to the deficit or it reduces the deficit, so spending counts, you get to do something without the other party.

The majority party basically gets to ignore the minority and pass what it wants. And so when we were in power, we used this unique tool to reduce the cost of prescription medicine. We enacted a corporate minimum tax. We took climate action. We gave people cash benefits so they could survive during COVID.

Look, you can argue about what we did or how we did it. That is fine. That is fair. But it certainly reflected the priorities of the day. But given the chance to do the same, you get these two kind of golden tickets where you get to ignore us, you would think that when you are passing major legislation, one of your two big opportunities, that it would address the cost of healthcare or the cost of fuel or the cost of food or the cost of prescription medicine or the cost of gasoline. But they are using this golden ticket, this twice-a-year opportunity to increase funding for ICE at nearly four times their normal levels and give the President a ballroom.

People are struggling everywhere in red States and blue States, but there is not a dime for you in the bill they are about to pass tomorrow, and it is not by accident.

I yield the floor.

I ask for the yeas and nays.

Mr. President, on Monday, the University of Hawaii men's volleyball team won the national championship, prevailing over the University of California at Irvine in a four-set thriller. Every player played his part, and the win caps off one of the most successful seasons in the team's history. It also marks the third NCAA championship in men's volleyball.

As head coach Charlie Wade said after the game, ``Volleyball is a big deal in our community, it just is.'' For many at home, volleyball is life. If you didn't grow up playing the sport yourself, you had a cousin or a friend or an auntie or an uncle who did. And every person in Hawaii--and I mean everybody--has been to a middle school or high school or college volleyball game.

That kind of love for this sport is what has made UH a volleyball powerhouse, and it is why we continue to attract and produce some of the best players in the world. Monday's win wasn't just for the incredible athletes on the court. It was a win for the coaches, the staff, the family, the friends, and the fans who supported them along the way. And it was a win for the entire State of Hawaii. This victory belongs to Hawaii.

So congratulations to the `Bows on their well-deserved victory. We are all so proud of you. Aloha.

Now, I would like to yield the floor to my great partner representing Hawaii in the U.S. Senate, Senator Hirono.

Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the Senate proceed to the consideration of S. Res. 730, submitted earlier today.

I ask unanimous consent that the resolution be agreed to, the preamble be agreed to, and the motions to reconsider be considered made and laid upon the table with no intervening action or debate.

I yield the floor.

Mr. President, Hawaii experienced its worst flooding in more than 20 years last month. Two storms, less than 2 weeks apart, whipped up hurricane force winds of up to 135 miles per hour and dumped more than 62 inches of rain in parts of the State.

All told, nearly 2 trillion gallons of water fell from the sky statewide, enough to fill 3 million Olympic-sized swimming pools, and the resulting damage was widespread and it was severe.

It all started on March 10 when the first storm known as a Kona low brought close to 10 inches of rain over 4 days and broke daily rainfall records on Oahu, Maui, Hawaii Island, and Kauai. The powerful winds and heavy rain flooded homes, toppled power lines, and shuttered schools and businesses.

Over 100,000 people lost power, but before people could even begin to recover, a second storm quickly followed just days later delivering more than a foot of rain. But the ground was still saturated from the previous storm and drainage capacity was overwhelmed, and so flooding got worse across the State.

More than 5,000 residents were forced to evacuate and seek cover in shelters and schools. Homes were lifted off of their foundations, cars floated out of driveways, roads and highways became inaccessible, crops washed away on farms and fields.

But amid the devastation, rocked by relentless rain, Hawaii's aloha spirit prevailed. We saw it in the heroic emergency responders who rescued hundreds of people who were stuck in danger with no way to get out. We saw it in all the people rushing to check in on their neighbors, sharing information on social media in realtime, and helping to clean up the debris and the mud once the rain passed.

Farmers who lost their own fields instead went to help their neighbors to rebuild.

Businesses spring into action to hand out supplies and hot meals, despite losing sales and incurring damages of their own. That is Hawaii. No one is a stranger, especially in time of need. And everybody pitches in.

Recovering from a disaster of this magnitude will take months and years. Homes, roads, schools, and hospitals were flooded and badly damaged and will need to be rebuilt. And doing so requires resources, which is why the Trump administration's approval of Governor Josh Green's disaster declaration request was so important.

As with disasters in the past, these Federal dollars will support cleanup and repairs, as well as help residents to get back on their feet through individual assistance.

The State and county governments are doing everything that they can to help people recover fully and quickly, but they cannot do it alone. They need help.

The Federal Government has a responsibility to share the burden of rebuilding. And while the approval of a disaster declaration is a very important and good first step, it is just that. It is a first step.

In the months and the years ahead, we will need to be there to provide support and resources in any way we can, until the affected people and communities are made whole once again.

I yield the floor.

Mr. President, there is a lot going on in the country and the world. Gas is at 4 bucks a gallon nationwide, and it is 5.65 at my corner Shell station in Honolulu. Groceries are expensive. Electricity bills are rising at double the rate of inflation, and millions of Americans have lost their health insurance this year. People really are struggling just to get by, and we, in the U.S. Congress, have got to be focused on helping them.

We have this very limited tool called reconciliation, and it is a way to circumvent the filibuster. It is a way to do things on just a purely partisan basis, and both parties have used this tool. It is really only available once every fiscal year. And without getting into the terribly boring details, it is basically spending or tax cuts. And that is the tool that we can use without having to compromise with the other side.

Now, when we had the House and the Senate and the Presidency, we used that tool for the American Rescue Plan. In the middle of COVID, mass unemployment, we decided to stabilize everybody's salary so they wouldn't be unable to make their rent or their mortgage or put food on the table.

And then we did the Inflation Reduction Act, which focused on reducing the cost of prescription medicine and attacking the climate crisis and providing tax credits for those who are working but not wealthy but not poor enough to qualify for an array of government programs.

And so the most important thing to understand about what is happening today and tomorrow is not that Republicans are about to spend $70 billion to fund an Agency that already has 7 years of prefunding, not that they are trying to make ICE--and will make ICE--more well-funded than the U.S. Marine Corps; it is not that Republicans refuse to make even the most reasonable reforms to hold ICE to the same standard that every local police department is held to--that you have to get a warrant before you conduct a search, that you have to introduce yourself, that you have to have a name and badge number, that there are very, very rare circumstances under which an officer should be permitted to wear a mask and conceal their face, and that there should be training in excess of 47 days.

I want everybody to understand the reason ICE trainees were given 47 days of training is to match up with the fact that this is the 47th President of the United States. It used to be many months of training. There used to be use-of-force training. They used to be treated like a normal law enforcement agency.

Now, we can have a disagreement about the degree and extent of immigration policy and who should be in this country and who shouldn't, but I think what happened was they mistook people's dissatisfaction with the Biden border policy for license to go and terrorize communities.

Everybody now agrees: Get the bad guys who don't belong here out of the country. Deport people who are committing violent crimes or dangerous crimes. Get them out of here. But everybody also understands that what ICE has done over the last year has been inhumane and made all of us less safe.

And so we were at a negotiation about--again, these are not like some progressive wish list full of reforms; these are literally the things that the Honolulu Police Department, that the New York City Police Department, that any police department in a rural State or an urban State or anywhere across the country has to adhere to. And most law enforcement officers--Federal, State, county--are perfectly fine being well-trained, are perfectly fine having to get a warrant, are perfectly fine when there is an officer-involved shooting to have an independent investigation. All of that is normal, and most law enforcement officers say: Yeah, these guys are unusually poorly trained.

And so we were in a negotiation to provide funding with reforms, but the Republicans ran out of patience. And so what we said was: Why don't we just go ahead and fund the Agencies that we all agree on--FEMA, the Cybersecurity function, the Coast Guard. So we passed this over on a bipartisan--not just a bipartisan basis, a unanimous basis out of this Chamber, and then the House killed it.

And so they are stuck now trying to figure out how they are going to fund this Agency. So they are using their one legislative opportunity that comes only once every fiscal year to fund ICE and CBP for 3 years going forward.

Why does that matter so much? First, it is a failure of just, like, basic legislating to solve a problem that everybody saw with their own eyes. When Alex Pretti and Renee Good were killed by Federal employees, it transcended politics; it transcended immigration policy. That is for sure. Nobody wanted to see that. But they didn't have the appetite to enact the most basic reforms, and so here we are. But that is not the most important part.

The most important part is this: People are paying more for gas, for utilities, for food, for lumber, for housing, for healthcare, for every single aspect of their lives. And you would think even if--I am not accusing anybody of anything--but even if you didn't care about the actual material condition of your constituents, you would care that they were mad at you that everything was up. You would care that everything has gotten more expensive during Donald Trump's second term, especially since, by most accounts, he was elected because everything was too expensive.

And so you would think these guys--they have the trifecta: They have the House; they have the Senate; they have the Presidency. And so they are going to go charging up the mountain and try to reduce the cost of living. That is what you should do with this reconciliation opportunity. That is what you should do. And, instead, they are spending $70 billion on this rogue Agency.

So over the next couple of days, we are going to give them opportunities to enact good policy that would reduce the cost of living. There are a number of ways we could do that: We could restore the tax credits for the Affordable Care Act. We could reverse the tariffs that are attacks on every consumer across the United States of America. We could end this preposterous war, which is costing about $2 billion a day and raising the price, by the way, not just of gasoline but of diesel, and not just of diesel but of fertilizer, which is an input for our agricultural industry. So everything is getting more expensive at the same time that we are spending $2 billion a day.

Just to give you context, last year when the government was shut down over a healthcare fight, the amount in question was $23 billion for a year's worth of the Affordable Care Act tax credits. That is about 11 days' worth of this war. And so don't let anybody tell you that there is not enough money. There is enough money. They are spending $2 billion a day on this war that nobody asked for, nobody expected. It is not even working out--$2 billion a day. No end in sight. And then $70 billion prefunding a Federal Agency that has already been prefunded.

And so don't let anybody tell you there is not enough money. What there is not enough of is moral clarity. People are going broke, and we are, in fact, lighting money on fire in the government. It is just for all the wrong things.

I yield the floor.

I ask for the yeas and nays.

I object.

I object.

Mr. President, I suggest the absence of a quorum.

What is wrong with that?

Is that a request?

I object.

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

Mr. President, I want to read excerpts of a letter of March 17 to Senators Collins and Britt from the border czar and the Director of

Legislative Affairs for the Trump administration. I won't read the whole thing, except to point out that there are five substantive areas in which the administration expressed a willingness to enact reforms.

Now, that sounds kind of encouraging, but I want to read the five points. I will summarize.

The first is, we will expand the use of body-worn cameras by DHS law enforcement undertaking immigration enforcement operations.

Fine. Let's codify that. I think the retention of data is important. I think the last time we talked about body-worn cameras, there was a willingness to fund body-worn cameras. There was a willingness to indicate that it was the policy that people should wear body-worn cameras, but there was not yet a willingness to codify that requirement in Federal law. But that is workable.

The second thing is, the administration will limit civil immigration enforcement activities in certain sensitive locations, like hospitals and schools--like hospitals and schools.

There are more sensitive locations than hospitals and schools-- churches, synagogues, mosques, polling locations. There are multiple sensitive locations where we have just decided--until now--as a society that that is not a good place for law enforcement, especially a roving patrol, to be. The government should not be in a church or a synagogue or a mosque or a temple. The government should not be in a hospital conducting immigration enforcement. The government should not be in a polling location or near a polling location conducting immigration enforcement.

So the idea of limiting civil immigration enforcement activities at certain sensitive locations is a reasonable start; however, I would like to rule out all of the sensitive locations and not just say ``like hospitals and schools.''

Now, here is where it gets a little--like, those are fine. That is workable. That is negotiable.

I want to take you through the next three bullet points.

This is the third bullet point, which starts with ``The administration will adhere to current law that affords Congress oversight of DHS detention facilities.'' It is literally saying: We have five concessions we are willing to make, and one of them is to adhere to current law.

What in the hell is happening to this country where it is a concession from one political party to the other to adhere to Federal statutory law? That is not a concession. That is not something we have to negotiate for. That is not a show of good faith.

It is also a concession that they were not adhering to current law until now.

This is an offer. We offer that we are going to follow the law.

The fourth point is that the administration will enforce the use of visible officer identification.

I think that is also referring to a current Federal statute.

By the way, the question of masks is a little sticky. There is no question in my mind that masks are being overused, and if there is no reason that ICE officers and ICE officers alone all have to not reveal their face, their badge number, even what Agency they work for--the reason people trust their local police department is because when something happens, you see their face.

Hello, I am Officer So-and-So. How can I be useful?

There are some very narrow circumstances--an undercover operation or if an agent has been doxed--where you may want to protect their privacy, but that is not the norm, and it has become the norm within

Mr. President, first of all, I didn't get a chance to thank the Senator from Oklahoma for keeping the Senate the Senate last week. There was a moment where there was an exchange of views, and actually, the majority leader had a perfect right to kind of monopolize the time and make it so that it would have been six Republicans in a row and we would have been just standing there, but he is the one that said: Look, it is the Senate, we have to have a debate, and caused us to take turns.

That seems like a small thing, but it is not a small thing because we ought to be hard on the issues and easy on each other. And I just appreciate his steadfastness in being decent while being extremely conservative at the same time.

I will just make a couple of final points. On HSI, in particular, I think a lot of us would feel more comfortable carving that out if it weren't for the fact that so many of these HSI people are actually being taken off of their current assignment to help conduct immigration enforcement.

And so people are literally being taken off of preventing child pornography, preventing arms trafficking and drug smuggling, and they are now in these immigration enforcement actions. Three hundred remain in Minnesota. There is a little bit of the devil being in the details as it relates to getting our arms around this because we don't want whatever we do to only apply to the narrow question of the appropriations bill.

For instance, when Members said: I have a right under the appropriations law to go and visit this detention center, the people of the detention center who turned away Members of Congress said: We are not funded by the appropriations bill; we are funded by the OBBBA. Different pot of money, different set of rules that attach.

And so whatever agreement that we achieve, if we achieve one, we can't mess around with color of money and detailees from HSI or CBP. As these operations manifest themselves on the ground, nobody is tracking what the color of money is.

So all of the reforms that we are talking about have to attach to OBBBA money, have to attach to detailees from either the FBI or HSI or any other Federal law enforcement Agency. We are trying to actually get this Agency under control.

But my basic problem is, this is cordial, this is constructive, but you and I both know we are not that close, and people have to make their rent and their mortgage now.

And so the idea that nothing is agreed to until everything is agreed to sounds good in diplomacy, but the practical effect is that our coastguardsmen and women, our TSA, our FEMA employees, our CISA employees are going to miss paychecks because we are still in an argument about a very, very narrow swath of the Federal Government.

I yield the floor.

Mr. President, reserving the right to object.

Mr. President, I will be brief. I always enjoy our exchanges, and this one, I think, was particularly constructive on substance. I will just say, my job is to count, and the votes do not exist for what the Senator from Oklahoma is asking for. They just don't exist, not if I wanted it, not if Senator Schumer wanted it.

The votes are not there. I think that one of the things that I have tried to convey to my Republican colleagues is the depth of feeling, not because there is some group demanding that we be tough on this, but because American citizens have been deported, American citizens have been killed at the hands of this Agency.

It doesn't mean everybody in this Agency is not trying their best. It does mean that this Agency is in desperate need of reform, and we do not have the votes to extend funding for this Agency without reforms, whether it is 1 day, 1 month, or 1 year.

I object.

I yield the floor.

Mr. President, in my 13 years serving in the U.S. Senate and before that as Lieutenant Governor in Hawaii, I have met military officers at every level. And no matter age or rank, regardless of what they do or where they serve, they are every bit as disciplined, principled, committed, and brave as you could possibly imagine. They are patriots in every sense of the word, and you can't help but be impressed and inspired by them.

But the same can't be said about the man who commands them, the Secretary of Defense. Particularly in recent days since the war on Iran began, Secretary Hegseth has demonstrated a shocking lack of emotional maturity and a basic understanding of the gravity of the situation. And instead of characterizing what he said, I want to read verbatim a few recent statements:

[D]eath and destruction from the sky all day long. This was

never meant to be a fair fight, and it is not a fair fight.

We are punching them while they're down, which is exactly how

it should be.

They are toast and they know it, or at least soon enough

they will know it.

America is winning decisively, devastatingly and without

mercy.

What happened to ``walk softly and carry a big stick''?

Here is another quote:

Israel has clear missions as well for which we are

grateful, capable partners, as we've said since the

beginning, capable partners are good partners, unlike so many

of our traditional allies who wring their hands and clutch

their pearls, hemming and hawing about the use of force.

America, regardless of what so-called international

institutions say, is unleashing the most lethal and precise

air power campaign in history. B-2s, fighters, drones,

missiles, and of course classified effects. All on our terms

with maximum authorities. No stupid rules of engagement . . .

no politically correct wars.

And this one might be the most bizarre:

We're going to go on offense, not just on defense. Maximum

lethality, not tepid legality . . .

This is from the Secretary of Defense:

Maximum lethality, not tepid legality. Violent effect, not

politically correct. We're going to raise up warriors, not

just defenders.

This is the man overseeing the most powerful military force in the history of the world spelling out his unique and unlawful theory of action. He finds the Geneva Conventions and our rules of engagement, not just logistically inconvenient, but--to use his own word ``stupid''--``stupid.''

And as we are seeing in real time, there are moral and strategic consequences for the callousness and the sloppiness atop the chain of command. It is very likely a school being blown up, leaving 168 children dead. It is the botched evacuation of American diplomats and servicemembers in the region who are stranded while Iranian missiles fly into American facilities.

But even if you somehow accept the administration's unusually high tolerance for casualties and bad outcomes, this carelessness resulted in them killing the very people they were hoping would take over.

This is not: War is hell and bad things happen. War is hell. We all know that, and that is why most people--but especially our servicemembers--oppose it unless absolutely necessary.

It was Dwight Eisenhower only months after he had helped lead the allies to victory in World War II who declared:

I hate war as only a soldier who has lived it can, only as

one who has seen its brutality, its futility, its stupidity.

War presents impossible choices, and wanting precision planning and professionalism does not make you weak. It means that you grasp the gravity of the war. It means that you are not casual about using kinetic force--not because you are afraid, but because you understand exactly what comes next, that for all our military might and capability, war is not something to revel in. Violence is not to be glorified. Death, whether of an Army Reserve officer from Des Moines or an Iranian schoolgirl, cannot be shrugged off.

Immaturity and incompetence are a lethal combination on a battlefield. And if Secretary Hegseth's alarming behavior continues, it will not end well for us.

Mr. President.

Mr. President, I thank the leader and Senator Lankford for the deference.

In trying to turn this into a little bit more of a debate, I want to ask unanimous consent that we turn this into a colloquy between myself and the leader for 5 to 8 minutes.

Mr. President, I think Senator Schmitt said it perfectly. We

are actually not very close as it relates to the question of ICE funding, and he made that crystal clear. I won't repeat his words. They were forceful. They were not conciliatory. And he said, essentially: We will be damned if we adopt those Democrats' demands.

So what has been happening is the White House and Democrats in Congress have been trading paper, submitting offers back and forth, and it was relatively professional. But, on substance, we are actually as far apart as Senator Schmitt is describing. We are not that close.

So if everybody agrees on that, that we are not that close, that it is not like negotiations have shut down, but they are a little stalled--these things sometimes stall. Sometimes they pick up again, and sometimes they stall. Sometimes you are trading offers every 6 to 12 hours, and sometimes you are trading offers every 6 to 12 days. It doesn't mean a negotiation is not happening; it means it is happening as we transmit legislative text from one party to the other.

The idea that the only way we can convey that we are negotiating is with a meeting in person is like literally not the way this place works. There are a million ways to negotiate. Sometimes you negotiate live fire drill, Senate floor. Sometimes it is in the cloakroom. Sometimes it is in the leader's office. Sometimes it is in committee. Sometimes it is by email. We are in a negotiation; however, we are not close.

So if you stipulate to that, then the question is, What the hell do we do about the Coast Guard in the meantime? Do you think we are going to cut a deal tonight to reopen those portions of DHS? There is nobody in Congress--staff, journalist, citizen, Member--who thinks we can cut a deal in time to fund the Coast Guard, the TSA, CISA, and FEMA.

So we can continue this negotiation about ICE, and we should. If someone is going to complain about what manner we use, what modality we use to have that negotiation, fine, but that is actually a separate question from, in the meantime, TSA is going to miss paychecks; in the meantime, our cyber security function at the Department of Homeland Security has a lapse in appropriations; in the meantime, the Coast Guard has a lapse in appropriations; in the meantime, FEMA has a lapse in appropriations.

So all we are asking is to say we continue to disagree about this one relatively narrow thing. We have already funded 96 percent of the government. Let's fund another increment of the government to keep everybody safe. Let's just do that while we continue these negotiations.

Then the real answer on the Republican side to why they don't want to do that is they think that once we fund those other Agencies, the Democrats will walk away from this negotiation about ICE. My view is that we really shouldn't keep the Coast Guard or TSA or FEMA or cyber security hostage while we continue to disagree about this.

The question of whether or not we fund these Agencies is very, very time sensitive, and so that is why we are pushing for this. This is not an unreasonable--and one of the things that is weird to me is, in another world, in this same context, you could actually see a bunch of Republicans coming to the floor and saying: Why don't we fund this? Why don't we fund that?

These UCs to fund different portions of the government are a tool that both parties have used. But we are in a very unique situation where there is some danger.

So I would just like to understand the leader's thought process--and the Senator from Alabama and the chairman of the Ethics Committee. Why in the world wouldn't we just fund the stuff that we all want to get funded and then keep arguing about the thing we are arguing about?

Mr. President, just 1 minute, through the Chair, with your permission.

Mr. President, I can understand what the leader is saying. I understand what the Senator from Alabama is proposing. But I think what the vice chair of Appropriations said should not be glossed over as some sort of talking point.

If you are trying to understand why in this particular situation we don't have the votes to provide for a 1-week CR, for a 3-week CR, for any funding for ICE, it actually is that Americans have been killed by an Agency that now has more funding than most militaries around the world, more funding than the U.S. Marine Corps.

You may think this is some issue that we think we are going to turn to our political advantage, but I promise you, when we saw Renee Good and Alex Pretti killed, this became an issue that was beyond politics. There are a lot of us who are not going to provide resources to this Agency that is acting in such a way that makes citizens of the United States so unsafe.

I yield the floor.

Madam President, this is a war of choice. It did not have to happen. There was no imminent threat from Iran. The indications right up until the attacks were that negotiations were actually trending well. And remember, if Donald Trump hadn't pulled out of the JCPOA to begin with, Iran's nuclear program would have continued to be managed. This is the President of the United States asserting that he can do whatever he wants, wherever he wants, with the most powerful military in history at his disposal.

It is important to point out that a lot of people put Donald Trump in office because he promised to oppose forever wars. It was central to his foreign policy pitch as a candidate for over a decade. But what we have seen over the past 2 months alone is a President that is eager to use kinetic force as a first option and then figure it out from there. The challenge with the Venezuela action was that our men and women in the military and intelligence agencies executed that thing so efficiently and effectively that I think Donald Trump got it into his head: This is great. What else you got? This is great. Are we doing this in Cuba? Are we doing this in Iran? What else you got?

So he gets on an airplane, and he starts shooting the breeze with Members of the Republican Congress, and he decides in that moment on Air Force One to start a war--to start a war. In the days after capturing Nicolas Maduro, the administration offered up confusing and contradictory claims. They said the United States was going to run Venezuela indefinitely but then left most of the illegitimate Maduro regime in place.

They said American companies would go in and build the refineries, even though most of the American companies said they wanted nothing to do with it.

Maybe, most confusingly, they said the United States would control oil sales but not the revenue of those sales.

Two months later, we still don't know what their plan is. And that was easy compared to this. That was easy compared to this. There is no coherent strategy, much less an attempt to even explain it.

I want everybody to understand how unique this is in American history--maybe world history--to have a leader say: I declare war, and I will let you know why later. I am going to send Secretary Hegseth out there to say some things that are kind of indecipherable, then Secretary Rubio, certainly a better communicator, but also indecipherable. Then the President of the United States has a press conference, presumably to explain himself, and he is personally so distracted by the ballroom renovation that it makes me sound like I am some person who is so obsessed with Donald Trump that I watch MSNBC, I have an IV drip of MSNBC and TikTok to make me hate this President. But actually, that is what he did. He took a kinetic action against another country and then when it was his time to explain why, he sort of talked a bit about it, but then he was really passionate about the curtains that he chose, about the color of the ballroom, about the jackhammers running from 6:30 a.m. to 11 p.m. That is his passion, and he is letting these neoconservatives run wild within his administration.

I want to make a very specific point about tomorrow's--hopefully tomorrow's--War Powers Resolution introduced by Senator Kaine and others to block the use of American forces in Iran. I will support that, of course. But make no mistake, if a War Powers Resolution is defeated, that does not constitute an authorization of the use of military force.

The way this works is that a President has some flexibility to basically take a kinetic action to use the U.S. military to protect American interests if there is an imminent threat. What do we mean by imminent threat? It is what it sounds like. They are about to attack us. And Secretary Rubio--again, very good communicator and I talk to him all the time--he said it about an hour and a half ago. He said it. The imminent threat--I want you to listen to this logic chain--the imminent threat to the United States was that Israel was going to attack Iran, and we anticipated that in retaliation, Iran was going to attack our interests, therefore, imminent threat. That is not what we mean by imminent threat. There are no bank shots when we are describing an imminent threat.

If we want to conduct a war of choice--and we have in the past--we need hearings, we need briefings, we need a proper debate, and then we need a vote on the authorization of the use of military force that is foundational to the oath of office that we took when we became U.S. Senators. This is actually not a particularly controversial point, except that we are in this very weird moment where I think the public was sort of not tracking at all that maybe the President was going to wake up one morning and go: Why don't we go to war with Iran? I will explain it to you over a period of time. I understand that his method of communication is, if nothing else, rather unconventional and meandering and contingent and that he thinks he is preserving his optionality: Maybe it will be short. Maybe it will be long. We will see what happens--all that stuff.

You can't do that with the American people. The American people are not his negotiating counterpart. They are the foundation that you need if you are going to take military action. If you are going to go to war, you need the American people behind you, and you need them to understand: Why in the heck are we doing this?

Do I think Iran is a malevolent actor in the region and even across the planet? Of course, I do. But that is not the question at hand. The question at hand

is, Why in the world are we trying to do another regime change?

Iraq, Libya, Vietnam--I don't care what you think should happen. This is a question of what is very likely to happen based on what always happens when our best designs and our extraordinary, trained, courageous military executes well. In the first couple of days, there are two things that everybody does. They correctly praise our U.S. servicemembers, and then they say--if anybody raises any objections, they go: Oh, do you want that bad guy still in power? Is that what you want?

Of course, I don't want a bad guy in power. However, the world is full of bad guys in power.

So the question at hand is not ``Do I wish there were better people in charge of other countries?'' but, rather, ``Has it met the threshold for the U.S. Government to declare war against another country, especially in a region where we keep screwing it up?'' That is not a rhetorical question.

I sound like Donald Trump a year and a half ago. He just is so fixated. I don't know if it is the ballroom or his legacy or some sort of revenge fantasy about Iran, but this man is not thinking clearly either politically or geostrategically. Geostrategically, this is a terrible decision, and he has no plan for what happens next.

His view is just like it was in Venezuela: We are going to decapitate the person we don't like. We will get a client state--not so easy in Iran, not so easy in Iran. And these things have a terrible tendency to metastasize. They really do.

After the Iraq war--my goodness--I thought there was going to be bipartisan consensus that we are not going to go into a war of choice again. Congress has a duty not just to check a reckless President but also to represent the will of the people, and the American people-- left, right, and center--do not want another regime-change war in the Middle East. It is about time our President started paying attention to the American people.

I yield the floor.

Mr. President, where is the redline? You know, a lot of us wake up every day trying to figure out, exactly how bad is it? Is this the moment that Republican Members of the U.S. Senate are going to stand up for not our rights but their rights and not just U.S. Senators but everyone who put us in office?

Last night, there was a failed indictment of two U.S. Senators, and the indictment--we don't know what they were charged with, but it was about a 90-second video in which they reiterated the guidance from the Uniform Code of Military Justice.

By the way, even if you don't like what they said; even if you thought it was unwise, what they said; even if you thought it was provocative, what they said, it was not illegal. They have a perfect right under the Constitution, the First Amendment, to express themselves. That is not illegal. That is not seditious. That is not worthy of a court-martial. That is literally them doing their jobs. You can criticize them in the manner in which they do their jobs, but you may not incarcerate them.

In addition to the First Amendment, they have specific constitutional rights for Members of Congress under the speech and debate clause. In other words, if you are doing something as a U.S. Senator--and they very clearly were--you have additional protections. Why does that matter? Not because we are overly concerned with 100 of the most privileged people on the planet but because this place represents U.S. citizens who put us all into office, and then we get to say what we want.

So I ask my colleagues, where is the redline? Apparently not this one. Why?

I have had several interactions with my Republican colleagues, and it basically comes down to ``Well, the system held. This was a failed indictment.''

So here is my question for my Republican colleagues: What if it is successful? What if Pam Bondi instructs Jeanine Pirro to try again and again and again until they perp-walk Elissa Slotkin and Mark Kelly and incarcerate them? Is that your redline?

It is not obvious to me that anybody has even contemplated where exactly the line is. For me, it has been crossed. For me, it has been crossed. But I just ask my colleagues, do you even have a line? Is there some Rubicon that, if they cross it, you will say ``My God, I don't want to speed-run this place into turning into Belarus''?

It is not that important to have this job if what it means is we are collapsing American-style democracy on purpose. And whatever irritation I have with another Member from another party at what they said or did, that is not illegal, and they should not be incarcerated.

The fact that they failed in their attempt to incarcerate a U.S. Senator should not obviate our outrage. They tried to incarcerate two of us.

I am not entirely sure that the U.S. Senate can survive this if we do not have Republicans standing up for our most basic principles.

Tomorrow night, very likely, a bunch of people are going to go to the Munich Security Conference, and on a bipartisan basis, they are going to say: American-style democracy is still intact. Look at this bipartisan coalition. We still want to be part of the world. We still want to be engaged with Europe. We still want to protect democracies.

They are going to say nothing about the fact that the President tried to jail one of us.

So spare me the high-minded panel discussions and bilats and press availabilities about the United States as the indispensable Nation when we are dispensing with our most sacred constitutional obligations.

You know, now it was a long time ago, but it feels like yesterday that I was first sworn in right in that corner. I don't remember exactly, but you swear an oath to the Constitution and laws of the United States of America

and that you take that obligation freely and without any mental reservation or purpose of evasion. And I am afraid we are evading our most fundamental responsibilities.

So I don't have any illusions that this speech is going to change everybody's mind, but I would just start the dialogue. What is it going to take for you to say enough is enough?

I yield the floor.

Mr. President, among the bills in the funding package that was signed into law yesterday was the State and Foreign Operations appropriations bill. And while people are understandably focused elsewhere, I want to take a moment to talk today about what is in the so-called SFOPS bill and why it matters because, simply put, this bill will save lives all around the world. It will strengthen our alliances and partnerships at a moment when global instability is at an alltime high. And, crucially, it will make Americans safer here at home.

As ranking member of this subcommittee, I saw in realtime the destruction and devastation wrought by Donald Trump's illegal dismantling of the U.S. Agency for International Development. Estimates are that more than 760,000 people, including 500,000 children, have died over the past year since American assistance suddenly vanished-- 760,000 people. Worse, millions more are expected to die in the next 5 years if the current trend continues.

So it is in that context that this bill is essential. It is proof that there is still broad bipartisan support for America showing up in the world, not just with tanks and guns but with food and lifesaving care and economic assistance. And we do that not just because we are the indispensable Nation and that is the right and moral thing to do-- although that would be enough--but also because projecting power in all of its forms is smart, it is strategic, and it makes us more safe and more competitive.

In this bill, there are vital investments in global health, humanitarian aid, and economic and development assistance. There is more than $9 billion for global health programs to help to fight HIV/ AIDS, malaria, TB, and polio. The funding also supports vaccination efforts that the administration tried to eliminate and strengthens maternal and child health programs.

The bill includes close to $7 billion for development programs focused on economic resilience, education, water and sanitation, and disaster mitigation. And there is a reason why we have funded these programs for decades. Yes, our partners want them. Yes, they employ tens of thousands of Americans. But more than that, these programs benefit our national interests in unique ways. For instance, it is because of USAID's war legacy work in Vietnam that we share a strong security partnership today. It is thanks to our disaster risk mitigation programs in the Pacific islands that we have as much access to the region as we do.

So it is not as if we just invest this money and hope for the best. This is not charity. This is not charity. It pays off over years and decades.

This bill also rejects the administration's efforts to retreat from multilateral institutions like the United Nations. It ensures that we can pay our treaty dues to international organizations, restores voluntary funding for organizations like UNICEF, and fully meets our commitments to multilateral development banks that focus on economic development.

Relatedly, the bill includes billions of dollars in funding to allies and partners across the globe, including those in the Indo-Pacific and Eurasia who are working to counter Chinese influence and Russian aggression.

Now, I want to be clear: This bill is definitely not the bill that I would have written if it were up to me. There are steep cuts to really important programs, and we are asking our diplomats and our partners to navigate a riskier world with fewer resources. The cuts to humanitarian assistance are especially disappointing, and they are the result of the administration effectively shutting down the U.S. Refugee Admissions Program, slowing assistance for those impacted by conflict, and reprioritizing funds for its own agenda. Our international broadcasting grantees are also experiencing significant cuts even as they try to provide essential information and services in Ukraine, Iran, and across the Indo-Pacific.

And I want us to understand that what happened in the spring around DOGE and USAID--a lot of people are not tracking some of these funding areas, but, for instance, this is about getting our message out in Ukraine, this is about countering the Government of China's propaganda in the Indo-Asia Pacific, and this is about people in Iran having access to the internet through VPNs that we helped them to get.

And so some of these programs--if you are just a tech guy and you have been assigned to find things to cut and you read a line item and you say: 75 million for what? VPNs in the mid--what is that? That is what this is. All of these programs serve our national interests.

That said, there was nothing inevitable about this bill. We are here today, a year on from the wholesale evisceration of the American foreign assistance enterprise, enacting a bipartisan law because Members on both sides were committed to preserving this enterprise. So I want to thank Senators Graham, Murray, and Collins as well as Representatives Diaz-Balart and Frankel for their partnership in negotiating the bill. It was one of the toughest negotiations and most important negotiations I have ever been involved in.

And I also want to thank the incredible staff here in the Senate who worked tirelessly to get this done. On the Democratic side, that is Alex Carnes, Sarita Vanka, Kali Farahmand, and Drew Platt, and on the Republican side, Paul Grove, Paul Denaro. This would not have been possible without all of you.

And now the hard work of implementation and oversight begins. We can appropriate as much money as we want,

but we need experienced people to administer these funds. So, to that end, while rejecting the administration's request to close USAID as an independent Agency, this bill sustains investments in our diplomatic workforce that provides new hiring authorities for the State Department in order to properly manage the additional assistance. And on oversight, we have closed loopholes and added new transparency requirements so that Congress can better track the use of funds and ensure that they are being spent as intended.

Just last week, Secretary Rubio committed to faithfully implementing this bill, and now it is on all of us to work together to make that true. There will be a lot more work to do in the months and years ahead to rebuild American foreign assistance, but this week marks a very important first step.

I yield the floor.

I suggest the absence of a quorum.