Floor Statements

Mr. President, he is right. He is asking for unanimous consent, and we don't have unanimous consent. We do not have unanimity.

What we do have, and Senator Lankford is right, is now a critical mass of people who are willing to entertain changes to the way that we process nominees. That is a pretty big deal. That is a pretty big deal.

This would be the first major bipartisan rules reform, I think, in a political generation, maybe several political generations. And it is not your usual suspects of moderates who might be able to get you guys to 60 but a pretty wide swath of U.S. Senators on the Democratic side to try to reform the rules on a bipartisan basis. And we are achingly close to doing this like adults.

It is not lost on me on 9/11 and after the terrible political assassination of Mr. Kirk that we have a special obligation to demonstrate that politics is a substitute for violence and not a precursor to violence. We have to demonstrate that we can be adults.

So we were achingly close to a deal, but I am afraid that my colleagues on the other side of the aisle have run out of patience.

I understand the overall argument about the number of nominees who are in a backlog. I understand that argument. I am not talking about that. I am talking about they just want to go today. They want to leave today. People have flights today. It is Thursday, and it is not 5 p.m.

So were we to work a weekend to try to land this airplane, that would be beneficial to the country, to the body, to Republicans and Democrats alike. We are actually very close, and Senator Lankford knows that. I think he is as frustrated as I am about how achingly close we are to behaving like adults.

I don't know who it is or what the dynamic was, but about an hour ago, everybody just said: Nah, I don't care how close we are. We are just going to do this because we are going to start to lose Members. We are going to start to lose momentum. The weekend is hard. Maybe we are going to get yelled at from the left; you are going to get yelled at from the right; and we can't withstand that so we just have got to go through with it. It is a damn shame.

Maybe this exercise builds a little muscle memory for at least exploring how to have a bipartisan negotiation. Maybe there is some silver lining to this. Maybe there is some understanding that this institution actually matters, especially in this polarized and divided time. But I have to tell you, I am deeply disappointed at the extent to which Members on our side of the aisle and your side of the aisle put themselves in a position of some political peril to try to stabilize the country and be the ballast that everybody needs across America.

We were trending well. We were trending well. I know how negotiations go. They go up and down. They go sideways. They stall a bit. People get a little irritated. But we really were trending well. And I am legitimately shocked that we are like 94 percent of the way there, and somebody just woke up and said: Do you know what? Never mind. We are going to do the thing we were planning on doing originally.

So hope springs eternal, but this is a deep disappointment. And it didn't have to be this way. All we had to do--and I am going to offer this consent later, but I want everybody to understand what this consent means. I am going to ask unanimous consent that the cloture vote upon reconsideration with respect to Executive Calendar No. S. Res. 377 be at a time to be determined by the majority leader, in consultation with the Democratic leader, no earlier than Monday; and that if cloture is invoked upon reconsideration, the postcloture time be deemed expired.

What does that mean? It means that you would have kept your optionality to go nuclear on Monday and not have lost a thing. The leader would have been able to go nuclear on Monday if negotiations never went anywhere, if they went sideways, if they tanked, and no time would have been lost.

So the imperative to kind of get this done on a certain timeframe, we tried to respect and said: Fine. We will just deem the 30 hours expired. We will accommodate your imperative to get this done if you needed to get it done by the end of next week. We said: Sure, keep negotiations open. And we ran a hotline on that, and it cleared our hotline.

We had some very difficult conversations with Members who hate this idea. But just to keep the aperture open to renegotiate and to preserve the majority's prerogative to move forward with some pace, we accommodated that.

I thought, Great. We are trending well. We are going to wake up in the morning; we are going to get on some conference calls; and we are going to see whether there is a pathway.

I don't know whether there would have been a pathway, but I know today that the majority party in the U.S. Senate decided to foreclose the possibility of bipartisanship, and that is a real disappointment to me.

Mr. President, reserving the right to object--and I won't belabor the point except to say, if you have 60, 65, 70 votes for something, just

file cloture. Right? That is what you do. If you have got the votes, you just sort of move through the process of taking the vote.

What they are asking for is unanimity, and we don't have it. And so if you are interested in enacting this on a bipartisan basis, there is a process for doing that. It is available to you. But, again, it is more a matter of running out of patience than running out of time. We are leaving probably this evening, and then we have Friday, Saturday, Sunday off--not off. I understand people work weekends. Whatever. But not here, let's say. And then our first vote will be 5:30 on Monday. There is time. There is just no desire to go through the process. Right?

So it is true--I am not actually sure that you would have 60 votes for that, but there is a way to test it, and that is to file cloture on a new standing order or a new resolution or whatever the procedural pathway is.

What Senator Lankford is asking us to do is to have unanimity for a rules change to have the Senate not vote on individual nominations. Right? That is 15 at a time, and you have to go yes on all of them or no on all of them. And I don't love that idea, but I was willing to entertain it as a sort of matter of principle to try to sort of stabilize this body. But they have run out of patience, not run out of time. So, therefore, I object.

Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the cloture vote, upon reconsideration, with respect to Executive Calendar No. 1, S. Res. 377, be at a time to be determined by the majority leader in consultation with the Democratic leader, no earlier than Monday, September 15; further, that if cloture is invoked upon reconsideration, the postcloture time be expired; finally, that it be in order for the majority leader to make a point of order prior to the cloture vote upon reconsideration of Executive Calendar No. 1, S. Res. 377.

This would buy us the time we need and not cost the leader anything.

Mr. President, I was listening to the majority whip, and I have got to say, I have a little whiplash. I mean, I was here. I was negotiating. It was late July. We were passing paper back and forth between the Democratic and Republican caucus. The cloakrooms were working together, and we had a deal. That is the way you get nominations confirmed in batches.

The majority party wants to get them all done, fair enough. It is their President. And the minority party has this really unique authority in this place, which is to slow things down. And the rhythm of this place is that the majority party goes to the minority party and says: What is it going to take for us to confirm a batch of these nominees? We have got a backlog. We have got to get some of these through.

And so there are a couple of ways that that normally happens. First of all, you pair Democrats and Republicans together so that each party is getting a little bit of what they need.

The problem with pairing in the Trump era, and it is different from Trump 1.0, is that President Trump hasn't even nominated Democrats to Commissions like the SEC, the FTC, the FEC, the CFPB. All of those Agencies usually have Democrats and Republicans nominated, and then they kind of languish on the floor until we cut a deal and we confirm them all.

We had no deal space because there were no Democrats to deal out. And by the way, many Republicans with whom I talked said: Yeah, that is a fair point. Let me go and talk to the Chief of Staff of the President. Let me go talk to the White House team. We should get you some Democrats so that we can do some nominations in what they call the wrapup script, right?

Second thing is on the ambassadorships, usually, we are able to confirm a bunch of the career State Department officials, people who work in the Foreign Service who are not political at all; and then it is the donors and the friends of the President. And I think the whole process of how we decide our ambassadorships is totally bananas, but both parties do this where donors and friends of the President are the political nominees for ambassadorships. OK.

So those are the ones that we usually require a vote on. And the civil servants--the longtime, some charge d'affaires for Mozambique or whatever it is--like, we are not going to fight over that, and we just confirm that. The problem is there were, like, I think, fewer than five career State Department people nominated to these positions. And so, again, not a lot of deal space.

But, still, we found 35 that we were willing to do in exchange for things--

and we did not ask for anything that was unreasonable in the sense of something that would be objected to by large numbers of Republicans. This was NIH funding and releasing funds for--even when we did that rescissions package, now about 6 weeks ago, on the foreign aid stuff. There were a couple categories on the foreign aid that everybody said they liked.

And so we just said: Why don't you release the previously authorized and appropriated funding because people are literally dying around the world? And you guys say UNICEF, PEPFAR, the World Food Programme, you are still for that. You didn't like the stuff happening at USAID, but there are categories of foreign aid that you are still in favor of. So we found these relatively small discrete things that everybody in this place--maybe 95 of us--are in favor of in exchange for 35 nominees. Great, looks like we have got a deal. We are trending towards a deal.

Donald Trump gets on the phone with the leadership of the U.S. Senate and says: Everybody go home. Everybody go home.

And so the reason we don't have all of these nominees confirmed is the lack of the ability to conduct business in the U.S. Senate. And there are a lot of talented legislators, but what they have done is removed their frontal lobe and just substituted Donald Trump's judgment for their own. And so they don't want to cut deals with Democrats anymore.

And that goes for the Big Beautiful Bill. That goes for their approach to appropriations. That goes for their approach for basically everything.

And so it is true that we put some sand in the gears on purpose. That is what minority parties are supposed to do. That is how the U.S. Senate is supposed to work. And the way you untangle that is through the hard work of negotiating across the aisle, and they just didn't want to do it.

Like, I have been in many bipartisan negotiations over the last 3 or 4 months, and they have mostly all failed because, in the end, we can only find a handful of people who are open to a deal. And this time we had everybody saying: OK, this looks like a reasonable solution. And then Donald Trump himself blew it up. Why? Because he doesn't want expediting the Senate's consideration; he wants to adjourn. He wants this place to adjourn.

Now, why is that a big deal? Adjournment sounds like something you just kind of do to, like, OK, we will see you tomorrow. No. Adjournment for the month of August would have meant that Donald Trump himself would have been in a position to appoint whomever he wanted to any Senate-confirmed position; by the way, remove any member of the Cabinet or sub-Cabinet; and then appoint that person, and then that person could serve till the end of the Congress without the Senate ever weighing in. That is what he wants.

And, you know, it is kind of part of a piece, isn't it? He finds the Senate to be a nuisance. And I remember this, I wasn't in the Federal Government executive branch, but I was in the State government executive branch. And once you are in the executive branch, you find legislators to be annoying, to be an impediment to the kind of stuff you want to do. But the architecture of the Constitution provides that we are supposed to be annoying, we are supposed to put sand in the gears, and then we are supposed to deal with each other.

And so what is going to happen this week or next with this rules change is the result of two things: It is an abject failure of the willingness to negotiate at all, of the willingness to interact with Democrats for fear of being seen as too soft and insufficiently compliant with Donald Trump.

The other thing I would just like to say is, it is a little rich, it is a little rich that we fly out at 1:45 on a Thursday, and our first vote is at 5:30 on a Monday. And I know Senators work hard. I am not trying to say it is terrible that people go home. They should go home. They should interact with their constituents. But these are 2-hour nominations. We should probably exhaust the possibility of working Fridays and Mondays before we go through with changing the rules on a partisan basis.

We should probably consider, Do we need a 5-week home work period in the summer, or could we do a 4-week home work period and plow through nominations?

And so it is true that there is a big backlog, and it is actually true that Democrats helped to create it. What is different about this year is that there is just no effort to untangle the backlog.

When we were in the majority, I would walk over to Chuck's nominations staffer, figure out what was stuck and walk over to the other side and try to make a deal every week to try to get some of these confirmations.

And as I had a blanket hold on State Department nominees, not a single person approached me once. Once, Jim Risch talked to me, that is fair. But I don't know if it is a muscle memory thing or if it is a Donald Trump thing but they have simply forgotten how to work with Democrats.

I yield the floor.

Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that following my remarks, the senior Senator from Texas Senator Cornyn be recognized.

Mr. President, the numbers do not lie. The job market is practically frozen. Unemployment is at its highest level in 4 years. Inflation is rising. Homebuilding is stagnant. The manufacturing sector is shrinking.

To top it all off, Trump is raising the price of everything. Vegetables are up 40 percent; coffee, 15 percent. Everything from toothpaste, to detergent, to shoes, to video game consoles costs more. More price hikes are on the way this fall and holiday season as businesses exhaust their inventories and give up on eating billions of dollars of added costs.

This is America's golden age under Donald Trump.

If it wasn't clear before, it is abundantly clear now that unless you are a billionaire getting enormous tax cuts and generous corporate giveaways, this economy sucks. Costs are piling up, saving money is nearly impossible, and just getting by, let alone buying a home or raising a family, is a lot harder.

The worst part of it is that there was actually no reason for any of this. There is no pandemic. We are not in the middle of a war. There is no ongoing emergency. This is a crisis of the President's own making, and we are all paying the price.

Donald Trump has made shortages the cornerstone of his economic agenda, and it is working. We now have shortages of nearly everything-- food, electricity, healthcare, workers. With less supply to go around, everything costs more. It does not take a genius to work that out. In fact, people have worked it out. Trump's approval rating on inflation and the cost of living is 24 points underwater. His approval rating on the economy overall is at negative 13. More than half of Americans think the economy is getting worse, and less than a quarter of Americans think it is improving.

We are on a speedrun to become Venezuela, and people can see it.

This is a deliberate economic program. There is this sense that he just wakes up in the morning and does whatever he feels like doing. And to some extent, he is improvisational, but make no mistake, he has a coherent economic theory, which is, we should shrink the supply of everything. He thinks it strengthens the dollar, he thinks it helps with manufacturing, and I think he thinks that the less there is of stuff, the more people have to go and petition the King for mercy.

This is a deliberate economic program predicated on shortages across American society. In turn, the United States is set to shrink for the first time in our history. Think about that. The United States--the greatest Nation that the world has ever known, the indispensable Nation, the leader of the free world, the leader of the world--is shrinking. We are becoming smaller and weaker in more ways than one under Trump. But in this way, we are quite literally following Donald Trump's plan, and there is no escaping the consequences.

I yield the floor.

Mr. President, I send an amendment numbered 3854 to amendment No. 3849 to the desk.

I suggest the absence of a quorum.

I suggest the absence of a quorum.

I ask for the yeas and nays.

Mr. President, I join people on Maui and across Hawaii in honoring the life and service of Maui Police Department officer Suzanne O, who was tragically killed in the line of duty on August 15, 2025.

Over the course of her service with the Maui Police Department, Officer O protected the Kihei and Wailuku communities with honor and an abiding commitment to helping others. She went above and beyond to support her colleagues and neighbors, volunteering for duty during busy periods and supporting the dispatch team even on her days off. Fittingly, she was remembered by those who knew and worked with her as a compassionate and dedicated servant to her community.

In times of crisis, Officer O demonstrated remarkable courage and integrity. Her bravery was beyond measure, and she was duly awarded a Certificate of Merit for her heroic efforts during the fires in Upcountry Maui in August of 2023. Officer O's generosity and sacrifice were an example to everyone, and they will not be forgotten by her fellow officers whom she stood shoulder-to-shoulder with or the communities she so valiantly served.

I extend my deepest condolences and heartfelt aloha to the family and loved ones of the late Officer O. May her memory be a blessing.

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

Mr. President, people voted for Donald Trump for all kinds of reasons, but the main reason was that they thought he would bring down the price of goods, groceries, food, housing, gas. Whatever his other faults, he was good for your money, people thought.

But it has been almost 8 months now, and the persistent economic uncertainty and pessimism are no longer a temporary blip. It is now abundantly clear: Trump is not making anything cheaper; in fact, he is purposefully making everything more expensive--healthcare, groceries, toys, cars, housing, electricity, computers, clothes, booze, video games.

Whether you are shopping at your local grocery store or Walmart, prices are continuing to go up, and that reality is catching up with the President. He is underwater with the public on his handling of the economy with a 57-percent disapproval rating, according to the latest polling.

Now, Democrats learned this lesson over the last few years. Saying the economy is great or not as bad as it could have been while people struggle to afford basic necessities is not a winning strategy. So Trump is ruining the economy on purpose, but are people better off in other ways? Is the country better off in other ways?

The answer is no.

A month ago, Trump federalized the local police department in Washington, DC, and deployed thousands of National Guardsmen and Federal agents because of a so-called ``crime emergency.''

What does that look like? It looks like masked men with no identification walking up to people on the street, arresting them, and disappearing them into unmarked vehicles. Up until a few months ago, that would have sounded like a chilling scene possible only in a

Third World country, but now it is happening here in our cities, in our communities.

Now, whether you supported or hated the previous administration's immigration policies is not the point anymore. What possible justification is there for masked men showing up and abducting people without a trace?

Anyone who has encountered law enforcement in DC or Arkansas or Honolulu knows that officers are typically trained to identify themselves by face and badge as a standard practice.

So why should Federal agents be any different? Worse, the fact that you now only need a black T-shirt and a face mask to look like an ICE agent means that there are a bunch of vigilantes running around impersonating law enforcement and terrorizing communities.

This is exactly the kind of tyranny and government overreach that the people on the right worried about for many, many years, except they thought it would happen under a Democratic administration. They worried about socialism. They worried about the government impeding free markets. They worried about power concentrating in the executive branch.

All of that is happening now under Donald Trump.

We have the U.S. Government taking a 10-percent stake in a private company, picking winners and losers in one of the most important industries for America's future. We have the leader of the free world forming a secret police of sorts to kidnap people and send them to foreign gulags. We have the President of the United States making $5 billion in one day by launching a new crypto product on the side. We have an entire administration more focused on tormenting private institutions into submission--universities, law firms, media companies--than delivering public services and making people's lives better.

Here is the thing. All of this is part of the same project. There is this tendency, particularly among liberal pundits, to wave off parts of Trump's agenda as distractions. He may be decimating American foreign assistance and starving kids around the world, but that is a distraction. He may be sending armed troops and masked men into American cities without justification, but we are supposed to treat that as another distraction, but we don't need to outsmart ourselves here.

We can acknowledge that two things are true at once: Donald Trump is trashing the economy and creating shortages of everything--shortages of everything--electricity, food, workers, healthcare.

He is singlehandedly ruining people's personal finances and the American economy on purpose because he believes in shortages. He wants there to be not enough workers, not enough healthcare, not enough electrons, not enough food. He believes in shortages. This is his economic philosophy. And his illegal actions and brazen takeovers of the media and the private sector institutions and American cities are the stuff of authoritarians throughout history and across the planet.

These things are not intention. They work together. They are the same thing. They are the same project.

So the question for us, and especially my Republican colleagues, is: When is it going to be too much?

We have blown past redline after redline these past 8 months. And it begs the question: Is there any line that we won't cross? Because if not, we all know how this ends.

I yield the floor.

I suggest the absence of a quorum.

Mr. President, on rollcall vote No. 493, I voted no. It was my intention to vote yea; therefore, I ask unanimous consent that I be permitted to change my vote since it will not change the outcome.

Mr. President, on rollcall vote No. 494, I voted no. It was my intention to vote yea; therefore, I ask unanimous consent that I be permitted to change my vote since it will not change the outcome.

Mr. President, I ask for the yeas and nays.

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

Mr. President, the mass starvation and death sweeping through Gaza is a moral tragedy and a strategic abomination.

What started as a war with a just cause--to go after Hamas for the unspeakable atrocities it committed on October 7 and bring home the hostages--quickly turned unjust and immoral.

Now, everybody knows how complicated and fraught the Middle East is. Everyone knows that navigating this generations-long conflict requires nuance and depth and a historical understanding in order to try to get it right. Everyone knows that smart and sincere and decent people can disagree on this issue. But what is happening today is entirely different. There is no excuse for this horrific suffering. It is not making Israel or Israelis or Jews any safer, nor is it helping to bring home the 50 remaining hostages who have been in brutal captivity for almost 2 years.

The fact that this catastrophe was preventable is precisely what makes it so indefensible. People have been warning for months that the Israeli Government's actions would result in exactly this kind of tragedy, where children are dying by the dozens and hundreds of thousands of people have been starving for days.

The Gaza Humanitarian Foundation, which Israel scrambled to set up 2 months ago, has failed. According to the BBC, where there used to be 400 U.N. aid distribution sites all across Israel and Gaza, there are now just 4 run by the GHF. As a result, a third of Gazans--a third of Gazans--are going multiple days in a row without eating.

The World Health Organization reports that at least 63 people--many of them children--have died from malnutrition this month alone, and more than 1,000 Palestinians have been killed while seeking aid at GHF sites, according to the U.N.

In May, the GHF's first executive director resigned, saying:

It is clear that it is not possible to implement this plan

while also strictly adhering to the humanitarian principles

of humanity, neutrality, impartiality, and independence.

Whether you believe this organization was set up to fail intentionally from the start or, more charitably, that the Israeli Government established it without understanding that it couldn't succeed, it doesn't matter. What is plainly obvious now is that it is not working.

You don't have to be some leftwing organization or get your data from the Hamas government to acknowledge that the GHF is failing at its fundamental mission of feeding people, which raises the question, why?

Here we have an Israeli security apparatus that can and did synchronize an attack of exploding pagers across an entire country. They can reach and gather intelligence from the high command of their greatest adversaries. The IDF is widely viewed as punching way above its weight in almost every way. Yet Israel is asserting that, given all of those capabilities, the one thing they can't do is facilitate aid distribution. That is too hard for them.

Food and medical assistance routinely get into conflict zones around the world--Yemen, Sudan, Syria, Iraq, the Democratic Republic of Congo. Gaza should not be any different.

What is different are the stated goals of the extremists in the Israeli Government:

The only way to win the war and bring back the hostages is

to completely stop the ``humanitarian'' aid, conquer the

entire Gaza Strip, and encourage voluntary migration.

That was the National Security Minister of the Government of Israel-- completely stopping humanitarian aid, conquering the entire Gaza strip, and encouraging migration. These are their words; these are not my words.

As the starvation takes hold, their response is to deny that it is even happening. There is no starvation in Gaza. Who said that? The Prime Minister of Israel.

Ben Gvir added--I have to collect myself before saying what Ben Gvir said:

If they were hungry, they would have returned the hostages

home.

``If they were hungry, they would have returned the hostages home.'' It is worth pausing on that for just a moment. Too many people in the Netanyahu government make no distinction between the actual enemy that is Hamas and innocent civilians.

The idea that a desperate mother, malnourished herself and out of breast milk for her infant, or a 7-year-old running to the front of an aid line to get whatever scraps he can for himself and his siblings-- the idea that these people are in charge of which hostages are released and when, that they suddenly are being held to account for the actions of Hamas on October 7, is preposterous. It is another example of the casual dismissal of civilian death and suffering as if it is an inevitable consequence--war is hell and all of that. But what possible explanation is there for letting infants and 2- and 3-year-olds starve? What tactical advantage is being gained?

Standing up for our shared humanity, whatever our other differences and preferences, should not be a matter of controversy, but too often, when someone is critical of Israel and they are a Jew, they are characterized as a self-hating Jew. And if someone is critical of Israel and they are not a Jew, they are characterized as anti-Semitic.

I want to be crystal clear. Anti-Semitism is among the oldest and most vile prejudices that exist. It is real, it is scary, and it is on the rise in the United States. It should be fought at every turn--left, right, and center. Anyone who simply waves it away or denies the urgency of addressing it is either not paying attention or lying.

But criticizing the conduct of this war; criticizing Minister Ben Gvir, who talks about ethnic cleansing; criticizing the withholding of aid; criticizing the excessive tolerance for civilian casualties; criticizing Prime Minister Netanyahu's apparent willingness to cling to power at the expense of Israel, Israelis, and Jews everywhere--that is a separate matter. Everybody gets to do that, just like Americans get to criticize their President without hating America or the people within it. People are more than their governments.

The Government of Israel is behaving terribly. The conduct of this war is indefensible. And it is not in spite of my Jewishness and my Judaism that I say that; it is because of it.

There are a lot of people, including people I know personally--and I believe this--who believe in the sacred idea of Israel.

They are good people, and this cannot be about vanquishing one side of the political spectrum, whether that is the left and center left or the right and the alt right. This is about grounding ourselves in a very basic principle, which is, whatever else we are fighting about, can we please hold the children harmless?

I yield the floor.

Mr. President, when it comes to one of the most basic necessities in life for people--housing--both political parties have failed. Both political parties have failed.

Housing costs more than ever today, with the median home costing five times as much as the median income for your average American. First- time home buyers are fewer and older than ever. One in four renters is being forced to spend more than half of their income on rent, and homelessness is plaguing more people than ever before.

This crisis was not inevitable; it is a problem that the government has created. There is not enough housing in this country because we have made it virtually impossible to build housing. Ask anyone who has tried to build anything--a shed, a patio, an accessory dwelling unit for their in-laws. They will tell you that the moment you try to do something, there are endless procedural hurdles and regulatory barriers that immediately get in the way--exclusionary zoning; minimum lot sizes; height restrictions; requirements for multiple staircases; environmental reviews; dozens of public meetings, where the grouchiest people in your neighborhood can stop the most virtuous project in your neighborhood; extensive permitting paperwork; years-long battles with community organizations and boards. And if you want to expedite your permit, you can pay a permit expediter. If you have 10 grand, they will put your thing on the top of the pile.

Nobody should like this system.

I cannot think of something so essential to American life--housing, whether you rent or you want to own--so essential to American life where the government has created the shortage on purpose, and then it strokes its chin, confused as to why there is a shortage. There is a shortage because of us. There is a shortage because of the government itself making it hard to construct the thing we all say we want.

But the good news is this: If the government got us into this mess in the first place, it can help to get us out. Mainly, that means getting out of our own way and not preventing the very things we say we like.

A lot of progressives in my own party like to say ``We are for housing. We are for clean energy. We are for transit and infrastructure,'' but you can't be for something if you don't want it near you. If you are for housing, you have to see the housing. If you are for clean energy, you are going to see a windmill or wind farm or a nuclear powerplant somewhere.

As we envision a just and sustainable and wealthy country, we have to actually make the things that make us more sustainable and wealthy. There is nothing progressive about preventing a nurse or a firefighter or a teacher or a small business owner from actually living in the community in which they work. There is nothing progressive about making people drive an hour to work or, in Hawaii, forcing people to leave the State.

Lawn sizes and building heights don't make neighborhoods; people do. Yet you will often hear people who oppose new housing say things like: We want to preserve the unique character of the neighborhood.

And this is something that I am embarrassed to say I didn't know until I came to the U.S. Senate. I didn't understand what those words mean and where they came from. They are echoing a dark time in American history of the Jim Crow era. It was a time when communities specifically codified into law language that prohibited Black people and other racial minorities from moving into certain neighborhoods. The racial covenants would literally say:

No lot covered by this indenture, or any part thereof,

shall ever be sold, resold, conveyed, granted, devised,

leased or rented to or occupied by, or in any other way used

by, any person or persons not of the Caucasian Race.

That is from a covenant in St. Louis from 1949. And there were contracts just like that one in neighborhoods all across the country. Then, racial covenants were outlawed, but their legacy continues today because what happened was the racists, after this was outlawed, figured out a proxy for race. They figured out a way to keep people separated, figured out a way to keep people out of their neighborhoods, figured out a way to make housing more constrained. And that is exclusionary zoning. That is minimum lot sizes. That means you need interior staircases. All of these things that sound virtuous--safety, sanitation, environmental review, historic preservation--all of those things actually matter, but understand that they are being weaponized against the working class. They are being weaponized against the working class.

I am not sure if this is permissible under the rules, but I am looking at a bunch of Senate pages, all 16 years old, trying to figure out: Where am I going to live when I get a job? Do I have to live with my folks and for how long? Am I going to be able to move to a suburb or a city or stay in my hometown? Where am I going to live?

So how do we fix it? First of all, government has a role that is not just getting out of the way. On the financing

side, on the public housing stock side, on vouchers, on section 8, on HUD-VASH, there are lots of programs that work--on the low-income housing tax rate. There are a lot of government things that we do that have helped and can help more.

But the truth is that the throughput capacity of the system is being constrained by the government itself. We could allocate $3 trillion to affordable housing, and if it is still hard to build a house in an individual neighborhood, all that money would get stuck. Actually, the State of California tried that. They allocated an enormous amount of money to housing, and they didn't get very much built.

The county of Maui, many years ago, said: No new housing unless it is affordable--which kind of lands on the ears in a wonderful way, right? No new housing unless it is affordable. Do you know what happened? There was no new housing at all for a full decade.

So we just have to embrace, on the left--the reason I care about this is because I think it is the single most impactful economic policy that we could implement, to make it easier to build housing for working people, for students, for the disabled, for the elderly, for the entrepreneurs, for cities, for towns, for rural neighborhoods. This is important because I care about that.

Now, if you are a conservative, the basic principle is almost even more simple, which is: It is your damn property. You should be permitted to do what you want with your property within certain safety boundaries and all the rest of it.

But if it is your property and you have a quarter of an acre and you want to build an accessory dwelling unit for your kids because they are adults and they just had a baby, you should be allowed to do pretty much whatever you want with your property. But we have inverted the presumption so that it is your neighbors that get to decide what you get to do with your property.

So if you are a private property rights person, you should love the idea of deregulating the housing market. If you are a progressive and you see how much people are struggling right now, you should love the idea of deregulating the housing market.

We need to reform land-use laws for upzoning to allow higher density, reducing minimum lot sizes, deploying manufactured homes, enabling single-room occupancy development wherever multifamily housing is allowed. We know all this works because it is working in certain places.

It is hard to keep any issue out of the partisan crossfire. It really is. It is hard to keep anything out of the partisan crossfire. Everyone retreats to their own corner and starts talking past each other and trying to light the algorithm on fire.

Our ability to come together, use common sense, and find a way forward will affect how people live and succeed for generations to come.

Just this week, Senator Banks and I introduced legislation to incentivize local governments to build more housing near federally funded transit projects. Senator Young and I introduced the YIMBY Act, the Yes in My Backyard Act, which encourages localities to cut onerous regulations and adopt pro-housing policies.

We can and we do disagree about almost everything, but on this, we should all be able to agree that in the richest country in the history of the world, people should not have to worry about having a roof over their heads. We can fix this, and we must.

I yield the floor.

Mr. President, Dr. Fredrick ``Skip'' Burkle, Jr., is a distinguished veteran, physician, and humanitarian whose service to our Nation exemplifies the highest ideals of courage and compassion. Throughout his career, Dr. Burkle has selflessly dedicated his life to graciously serve not only the American people, but countless others who his influence and expertise extended to.

Dr. Burkle was drafted into the U.S. Navy at the height of the Vietnam war as a military physician at Delta Med, a Forward Casualty Receiving Facility for the 3rd Marine Division near the Demilitarized Zone. Under relentless mortar fire and nightly combat, Dr. Burkle provided lifesaving care to wounded marines, civilians, and enemy combatants alike. While serving at Delta Med, Dr. Burkle came under an incoming enemy attack which caused him to collide into the wall of a bunker, resulting in a traumatic brain injury. However, Dr. Burkle did not let this injury stop him from continuing his career of service.

His valor and dedication earned him the Bronze Star with Combat V, a testament to his extraordinary service in an extremely dangerous engagement of the war. In 1975, Dr. Burkle returned to Vietnam to serve as the medical director for Operation Babylift, a daring humanitarian mission that evacuated thousands of orphans from Saigon in the final days of the war. His leadership during this operation saved countless lives and demonstrated the enduring commitment of American compassion in times of crisis. During the Persian Gulf War, Dr. Burkle served as senior medical officer at Al Khanjar Navy-Marine Trauma Center, one of the largest field hospitals in the Marine Corps' history.

Dr. Burkle retired as a captain in the U.S. Naval Reserve, but his commitment to public service did not end there. He went on to become one of the

world's experts in disaster response, global health, and humanitarian assistance. Dr. Burkle further offered his expertise in disaster and emergency medicine by serving as the Deputy Assistant Administrator for Global Health at the U.S. Agency for International Development, where he was notably tasked to organize preparations for postconflict humanitarian assistance following the U.S. invasion of Iraq. His work has spanned continents and crises, earning him well-deserved recognition.

Dr. Burkle's life is a testament to the values we hold dear: service above self, healing in the face of destruction, and unwavering dedication to the betterment of humankind. I commend Dr. Burkle for his service to this country; we are a nation forever in gratitude for his accomplishments. I ask my colleagues to join me in honoring Dr. Fredrick ``Skip'' Burkle for his military service, his humanitarian legacy, and his enduring impact on global health and diplomacy.

Mr. President, it all started with the stroke of a pen. Within hours of taking office, in January, the President signed what can only be called a death sentence to millions of people all over the world.

Executive Order No. 14169 simply read:

It is the policy of United States that no further United

States foreign assistance shall be disbursed in a manner that

is not fully aligned with the foreign policy of the President

of the United States.

The order directed a 90-day pause in payments, while foreign assistance was reviewed. But it became clear that this was not a process for reviewing or reforming programs. It was the beginning of the end--a wholesale destruction of the enterprise, from top to bottom, in defiance of the law and of logic.

Presidents can save lives. They can also cost lives. And while almost every President has chosen to do the former, Donald Trump, aided by a band of loyalists and ideologues, has chosen, instead, to inflict death and disease and starvation on the world's most vulnerable.

We used to be the indispensable Nation that people around the world counted on for help. People would see the American flag, whether on the side of a truck, a sticker, or a food parcel, and think: The good guys are here. Help is coming.

But not anymore. We are causing death now. We are spreading disease now. We are deepening starvation now.

It is not because it is saving us huge sums of money or because saving lives somehow stopped being in our national interests. All of this suffering and misery is because a few people were hell-bent on ransacking the government and tearing down whatever it is that they didn't like or they didn't understand--to hell with the consequences. To them, the lives lost are just the cost of doing business.

``Move fast and break things'' is the ethos of Silicon Valley entrepreneurs. But when you move fast and you break things in the U.S. Agency for International Development, tens of thousands of people perish.

Let's start with how we got here.

Following Trump's Executive order, Secretary Rubio and Peter Marocco, the new Director of the State Department's Office of Foreign Assistance, issued a stop work order on all 6,200 grants and contracts worldwide. They also ordered an immediate pause on new foreign assistance spending. That meant that partners who had already completed work were not getting paid. Contracts that had already been signed couldn't be executed.

Days later, Marocco, along with a bunch of DOGE staffers, including a 19-year-old and a 23-year-old, physically barged into USAID and forced dozens of senior career officials to be put on leave over so-called insubordination. These people were just doing their jobs.

His issue seemingly was with payments that had been approved before the Executive order and were then making their way through the USAID payment system. Nevertheless, the career civil servants were escorted out of the building and locked out of their emails. Anyone who dared to push back or speak up was sidelined, including the Acting Administrator, who was pushed out to make way for Marocco to become Deputy Administrator.

As he and his team looked for not just savings or efficiencies but what they called ``viral abuse'' that would be easy to mock out of context, FOX News stepped into the breach to help. For days on end, their chyrons blared:

``Viper's nest": USAID accused of corruption . . . long

before Trump admin took aim.

More ridiculous USAID spending repealed.

Elon purged DC's slush fund.

As the smear campaign kicked into overdrive, DOGE locked

out all of the Agency's employees, including those working in

conflict zones, from their phones and emails.

In early February, Musk tweeted:

USAID is a criminal organization. Time for it to die.

Days later, after carrying out the destruction, he wrote:

We spent the weekend feeding USAID into the wood chipper.

And just like that, one of the United States' primary instruments of soft power over the last 60 years--which has done everything from curing diseases to thwarting terrorism--was decapitated overnight.

USAID's success in moral, political, economic, and security terms was made possible by scores of public servants who felt a responsibility to alleviate suffering even if that meant putting themselves in harm's way, but in the end, it was torn down by a bunch of crazed ideologues who saw foreign assistance as an easy target to test-drive their project of crippling the government.

Perhaps abolishing the Health Department or the VA in the first few weeks was a bridge too far. But here was money going to help people in, as Madeleine Albright used to say, faraway places with hard-to- pronounce names. And no matter how much good it was doing for the people whose lives were saved and communities that were built but also for our national security, none of that mattered when all you had to do was make up some lies to justify the vandalism.

It has been only a few months, and already the loss of USAID and its critical work around the world has been catastrophic. More than 360,000 people have died as a result of the cuts--360,000 deaths. And so I will be damned if I let a pundit or a Democratic strategist or a Republican strategist tell me that the American people signed up for allowing 360,000 people to die--on purpose. For what? Deficit reduction? And to Patty Murray's point, 2 weeks ago, they just blew up the deficit by trillions--trillions of dollars.

The amount of money that it takes to save a starving child or to prevent the transmission of HIV-AIDS from mother to child is minuscule. And we do this because we are the good guys. And we do this because it is cheap. And we do this because when we need something from a friend in a foreign land, they would think of us well because we are always on the scene to be helpful.

These are not hypothetical or distant outcomes. We are no longer arguing about what might happen in the future; we are talking about what is happening across the planet right now. People are dying right now not in spite of us but because of us. We are causing death. We have gone from being the good guys--flaws, mistakes, and all--to being a conduit for death and sickness and hunger.

A 10-year-old boy named Peter in South Sudan had contracted HIV from his mother at birth. His parents died while he was young, but medication through PEPFAR kept him alive. That was until February, when, without access to medication, Peter fell severely sick and later died. The health outreach worker who had cared for him said simply:

If USAID would be here, Peter would not have died.

A pregnant woman in a Liberian village hemorrhaged and began to bleed heavily while in labor, but without gas because of funding cuts, USAID ambulances stood idle, unable to help. And despite her neighbors' best efforts to carry her 10 miles on foot through the jungle to the nearest hospital, she died midjourney, along with her unborn son.

Dorcas, a 10-year-old in Zambia, had gotten so used to her routine of taking HIV medication every night with her mom that she was confused when it ran out a few months ago. Her mom recounted:

In the past week, she'll open the tin [where the medicine

is kept] and find that it's empty. She'll run down to the

clinic to go and check if she can collect her medication. And

then she'll come back home and say, ``Oh, you are right. The

clinic is closed. They're not there anymore.''

In Sudan, which has been ravaged by war and gripped by famine, a mother watched two of her children under the age of 3 wither from malnutrition and die after a soup kitchen that had been supported by USAID closed overnight. Days before he died, the older of the two children had asked for porridge. ``I told him we don't have any wheat to make that,'' his mother recalled, adding that the soup kitchen's daily meal, which the family had shared, was a godsend.

A mother in Nigeria worried about how she would keep her infant alive, having just lost the other twin to malnutrition in the wake of funding cuts. A peanut paste supplemental that had been paid for by American foreign assistance had been used to treat her newborns for malnutrition. She wondered about how she would feed her child, and she said:

I don't want to bury another child.

There are thousands and thousands of gut-wrenching stories just like these from every corner of the planet, with newborns and children and families and communities. And this is only what has happened in the last few months. Just imagine what is going to happen if we codify these cuts.

We are not going to prevent every death. We know that. We are not going to be able to feed every child. We understand that. We cannot feasibly help every community that needs help. We accept that. But this is something different altogether. This is knowingly and willingly and needlessly inflicting horrific suffering on millions and millions of the most vulnerable people alive anywhere on the planet. And for what? To save money? The idea that any of this is about finding savings while at the same time Republicans are exploding the national debt by $4 trillion to cut taxes for billionaires just doesn't pass the smell test.

To top it all off, the administration is about to incinerate, is about to light on fire--is about to incinerate--500 metric tons of food aid because they let it expire while sitting in a warehouse for months. They are lighting food on fire. They lit food on fire--food grown in the United States, manufactured in the United States, to be sent out to the most vulnerable people on the planet, with a sticker with the U.S. emblem on it. And ``Make America Great Again'' apparently is doing all of that and then letting it rot in a warehouse and then incinerating it.

What the hell are we doing here?

You want to have a conversation about debt and deficits? You want to have a conversation about aligning our foreign policy better? You want to have a conversation about whether or not the State Department--not the USAID Agency--should have been funding operas and cultural enterprises in foreign countries? Fine, we can have that conversation. But I dare you to justify lighting food on fire.

It wasn't so long ago that a Republican Senator stood on this very floor talking about those in his party who claimed that cutting foreign aid was an easy way to save money.

A lot of times people say, ``Well, cut foreign aid.''

Foreign aid is less than 1% of our budget. But foreign aid

can make a difference when properly used. And if you ever

have a chance, travel to the African continent and you will

meet people who are alive today because the American taxpayer

funded antiviral HIV medications . . . kept them alive. It

will not be easy to radicalize people who are alive because

[of] the American taxpayer.

That was Secretary Rubio, as Senator Rubio.

Why is this happening at all?

I worry that there is a very specific and rather dark view about what the United States is capable of. It is a view of our military, it is a view of our economic power, it is a view of our cultural power, and it is a view of our moral authority, which is, the best path forward, as we decline, is to lock it down; is to not engage with the world; is to not project power militarily, culturally, economically, morally.

We are going from the indispensable Nation--and, by the way, this is a real thing. If you ever do foreign policy trips, people hang on the words of U.S. Senators who sit on the Foreign Relations Committee. First among equals. People want to know: What is the United States doing? What is the United States doing? It doesn't matter what the issue is. It could be fighting malnutrition. It could be economics and trade. It could be military strategy. Everyone wants to know: What is the United States doing?

Do you know what has changed in the last 6 months? They are moving on

from us. They are not waiting to hear what the United States is doing; they have seen what the United States is doing.

In Trump 1.0, we could basically be reassuring and say: We will be back. Don't worry. We are going through a rocky time.

Now China is in the breach. China has stepped up. It is not just that America's retreat is bad for us. It is really good for China. It is great for Russia. It is great if you are Hungary. The Kremlin was nearly instantaneous with its praise, calling the dismantling of the foreign aid enterprise a ``smart move.'' Autocrats in Hungary and El Salvador also celebrated USAID's demise.

Now, there is a basic principle in political campaigns, which is that if you are doing something that your opponent loves, you may want to reconsider whether it is a good strategy. The moment we did this, all the bad guys were like: Very smart. Good job. We are very happy for you. Excellent.

China has seized this opportunity with a little more specificity because they have the opportunity to step into this role. They are working on child nutrition and landmine clearing in Cambodia, health and education in Nepal, disaster response in Myanmar, and climate resilience in Mongolia.

It doesn't take a great deal of imagination to understand what this will look like in a few years' time. China will become the partner of choice for countries big and small all around the world. It will have increased its funding to global bodies like the World Health Organization, enabling it to win leadership posts and rewriting the rules in its favor. And we will have facilitated that process.

(Mr. RICKETTS assumed the Chair.)

So that is the background. Now let's talk about the specifics of what is in this package. And this point I want to make really clear, and I made this point in the Appropriations Committee.

There were a bunch of controversial programs that precipitated this effort to cut USAID. Two points to be made: One, the total dollar amount of all of the controversial programs was like in the $100 million to $200 million range. That is No. 1. No. 2 is, all of those programs were discontinued.

This is a budget that was enacted in March. This is Trump's budget. This is Trump's State Department. This is Trump's U.S. Agency for International Development. So there was not a single thing that was on that FOX chyron that Marco Rubio is continuing to do. So this rescissions package doesn't have any of that stuff.

By the way, some of my Republican colleagues who understandably weren't super engrossed in the details--I had to send them a line-by- line of what these rescissions do, and they are sitting there going: Where is the opera in Ecuador? Where is the cultural exchange program or the parade in South Africa? Where is all the goofy-sounding stuff?

And the answer is, a lot of that stuff was made up in the first place. But even if you stipulate to the idea that there was inappropriate spending, it is literally not in this package.

(Mr. RICKETTS assumed the Chair.)

What is in this package is stuff that every--I wouldn't say every--90 out of 100 of us have asked for--have asked for. What do I mean by that? I mean as the ranking member of the State, Foreign Operations, and Related Programs Subcommittee--basically, as the chair or ranking member of any of the subcommittees--you get a bunch of letters from your colleagues saying: This program is important to me. Could you please take care of it in the coming appropriations cycle?

Now, these letters are private, and I will protect the confidentiality of these interactions. But suffice it to say, a lot of the people voting for the rescissions are also privately asking for me to fund the thing that they are defunding.

So this is all about the momentum that came from DOGE and Trump and some tweets and some animus--real animus--to the foreign aid enterprise.

Let's go through what is in it.

$4.15 billion for economic support and development assistance. Our economic and development assistance is not charity. It is for countering the influence of the People's Republic of China or promoting regional stability. This work is in our economic and security interests.

If this administration disagrees with some of the projects pursued by the previous administration, the good news is they have pretty broad authority to reprogram the money. Like, if we are doing program--I don't want to name what country because it will have foreign policy implications. If we are doing a program in a country, and this administration says: You know, that is not as important.

They don't have to rescind the money. They can reprogram it to China or Russia or Ukraine, or whatever it is. They have that flexibility. What they are saying is they want less money to counter foreign influence.

Mr. President, $563 million for treaty dues. Now, we are members of organizations with whom we disagree. That is kind of the deal, right? Because if we want to be in an international forum--even arguing for our interests, even arguing against other countries or being frustrated with the body with which we are interacting--we have two choices: We can either participate; or if we don't pay our dues, we relegate ourselves to something called observer status, which basically means we are on the outside looking in.

In order to get in the room, you have got to pay your dues to the relevant organization.

That is what we are doing here. We are rescinding all of the funds to all of the payments to all these international organizations. Why? Not because it is in our foreign policy interests--it is actually not--but because a bunch of ideologues don't actually understand how foreign policy works.

That is the thing here. You can have a different view under whatever it is to have an ``America first'' foreign policy. But this isn't that. This is just vandalism, right? I am not having a disagreement with Jim Risch about how hawkish to be or how much to prioritize global health versus something else. We are just literally cutting off our nose to spite our face because what they want is vandalism to the enterprise.

The tools of foreign policy are being shredded. So this isn't about policy unless you think the policy is: I wish my State Department were weaker; I wish the tools in our tool kit were more limited; I wish our ability to prevent war and keep nations stable was less well-funded; I wish that the only tool in our toolkit was military might.

And it is not a small thing that many former Secretaries of Defense have said something along the lines of: If you defund foreign aid, I am going to need more ammunition, because this is the cheapest way to prevent war.

Mr. President, $500 million for global health programs. Now, the new Republican proposal protects some of those programs funded by this account, but it leaves out pandemic prevention, family planning, and work on a wide range of issues; $1.3 billion for migration and refugee assistance and international disaster assistance. This funding supports our efforts to help refugees and other displaced people in conflict zones around the world.

You know, most of us, at some point, out of the 100 of us do some sort of codel--some sort of foreign travel--and this is the kind of stuff we visit. And this is the stuff on a bipartisan basis that we all nod approvingly about ``it is great that we are doing this; it is great that we are providing this kind of assistance.''

And $1.3 billion for refugee assistance is being cut. I will tell you why. It is because it has the word ``refugee'' in it. I mean, that is how they figured out what they wanted to cut, right? They ran word searches. They are pretending it is sophisticated AI. Maybe it was, maybe it wasn't. But all they were doing was looking for words like ``gender''; or looking for words like ``climate''; looking for words like ``equity''; looking for words like ``refugee.'' And if the program was named in such a way that it mentioned, it just used those words, it was out. Just totally preposterous.

Our contributions to and participation in organizations like UNICEF is being cut. I mean, good luck explaining why you cut UNICEF because I can't--like, I am pretty good at imagining what my political competitors on the other side of the aisle would say. But why did you cut UNICEF?

Are you trying to pretend that some number of hundreds of millions of dollars to prevent starvation among children is like going to do the trick in

terms of getting debt and deficits under control? Nobody actually believes that.

Why are you cutting UNICEF? If this is about tightening our belts, why cut UNICEF?

Mr. President, $460 million for the assistance for Europe, Eurasia, and Central Asia. This account funds a whole bunch of bipartisan foreign policy priorities, including energy security in Ukraine that will be cut completely if this rescission is enacted.

If there were programs under the previous administration that the current administration agrees with, good news, they literally have the authority to reprogram those dollars. This is 2-year money. It doesn't actually have to be spent by the end of the Federal fiscal year. They have pretty good authority to reprogram it.

But they don't want to reprogram to something that they consider important. They want to shred the enterprise.

Mr. President, $125 million for the U.S. Agency for International Development operating expenses. Now, this administration is illegally dismantling USAID and functionally merging it under the State Department.

Here is the problem with this $125 million. Yes, it is admin expenses. I have been in the nonprofit sector, and I have been in the grant-giving side. Nobody loves the idea of paying for administrative expenses, but I know for a fact the State Department didn't want this in the rescissions package because now that they have merged USAID under the State Department, they literally don't have the money and they have got to absorb a $125 million hit.

Mr. President, $100 million for the transition initiatives and the Complex Crisis Fund. This is flexible funding in contingency accounts that didn't expire, and the administration can program it any way they want.

Mr. President, $83 million for the Democracy Fund--$83 million. Promoting democratic values is directly in our interest and supporting resistance to dictators--resistance to dictators. We are cutting resistance to dictators. Good for us. ``Make America Great Again.''

Ronald Reagan would be proud. The party of Cold Warriors, the party that vanquished the Soviet Union, the party that claims a hawkish mantle is now saying: You know what, this thing, which is probably .00- whatever of the entire Federal spend and an even tinier amount of the debt and deficit of the United States, let's defund that because it is none of our business if dictators maintain power.

It is a real change in policy here.

Mr. President, $27 million for the Inter-American Foundation. This provides small, cost-effective grants, and technical support for locally led development projects. Strengthening stability and self- reliance in partner countries is in our interests. This is another one that I get a lot of letters from these guys saying: Please fund it.

``Dear Chairman Graham and Ranking Member Schatz, this program is super important, and would you please fund it in the next appropriations cycle?''

That is the private letter that we get. The public action is to rescind the money.

Mr. President, $22 million for the African Development Foundation. The administration says the African Development Foundation's work is duplicative of the State Department's work, but the kind of grants and technical support that the African Development Foundation provides is not available through the State Department.

Mr. President, $15 million for the U.S. Institute of Peace--a creature of stature, a creature of one of the first Senators from the great State of Hawaii, Mr. Sparky Matsunaga.

The through line between all of this is that there is no correlation between the rationale provided by the administration for these cuts and what is actually in the package.

I have talked to Eric Schmitt, with whom I have a reasonable, functional relationship. But we are talking past each other because every time I talk about what is actually in this package, he pivots back to what is actually not in this package and starts naming line items of things that are not in the 8-page rescissions bill.

This is not the BBB, which took--I forget how--11\1/2\ hours to read. This thing is 8 pages. You can go and see there is no line item for $1.8 billion for operas and festivals and underwater basket weaving and whatever else nonsense people wanted to characterize as the U.S. foreign aid enterprise.

This is economic support funds; this is global public health; this is humanitarian assistance; this is helping our friends in Jordan and elsewhere to maintain the basic stability so that there is not a conflagration in a region.

That is what is in this package. That is what is being rescinded from this package.

I understand that there is some obligation as a party member to oblige the requests of this party's President. I get it. But we are still a system with separate and coequal independent branches of government. The problem is: If you don't assert your authority, you don't functionally have it.

So it is true that we hold the purse strings. It is true that we are the article I branch. It is true that we are in charge of whether a bill passes or not. But I will tell you the thing that is most alarming to me is not the bad policy outcomes--and there are terrible policy outcomes. The thing that is most alarming to me is that I have not yet seen in the last 6 months in this final term of Donald Trump what I saw in the first term of Donald Trump, which is quietly--not rudely, not provocatively--but occasionally, this branch of government on a bipartisan basis stood up for itself.

Those guys would say: Look, we love you Mr. Trump, we love you Mr. President, but on this one, I can't be with you.

On BBB, I understand. It is very hard to reject the President's signature policy accomplishment. But this seemed like one where we could have gotten four ``no'' votes. This really did seem to me like one where it would be a good opportunity to stand up to the President and just say: We are going to do the appropriating over here. Let me show you what article I says and what article II says, and we are going to defer to you on lots of matters but not 100 percent of matters.

So my question is: If they are going to have the votes to enact this rescission package, when is it that Republicans are going to stand up for their own prerogatives?

Why would you run for office; would you put your family through all of that; would you go through the difficulty of a campaign; would you go through the difficulty of being a public figure and subject to scrutiny and criticism and all the late nights and the kind of uncomfortable interactions and all of that? It really is a sacrifice. It is certainly an honor, but it is also a sacrifice.

Why would you do that if you don't get to make up your own mind?

I don't pretend to be able to get into the mind or the position of a Republican colleague of mine. I am from Hawaii. It is different. But I do think that there is a point at which it is just not worth it to give this guy every single thing that he wants. And it would be important and it will age well and your family will be happy and your staff will be secretly happy--at least some of them--if, at some point, you establish that there are some limits to the executive branch's power.

I yield the floor.

I ask for the yeas and nays.

Mr. President, Republicans don't actually have to do this. I understand, as well as anybody, wanting to go along with your party's President, especially in the early months. But being part of an independent and coequal branch has to mean something. Being part of the article I branch means something very specific, and it means that we are the legislature, and we control the purse strings.

Nowhere in the Constitution does it say that if the President wants something, you must do it.

What worries me the most about this rescissions package, if it passes, is that it is one thing for the President's signature accomplishment--signature policy priority--to be supported by Republicans in the legislature. I understand that. I understand the inevitable political momentum behind that. But this isn't that.

We have now gone 6 months without a single instance of Republicans and Democrats coming together and establishing that there are some limitations on this President's power.

If you remember the first Trump term, there were a couple of moments when the legislature actually stood up to the President, overrode a veto of his, rejected a rescissions package. They stood up for their prerogatives.

Do you know what happened next? Nothing. Why? Because that is actually how the system is supposed to work.

We are not a parliamentary system. We are not a monarchy, where the President says, by tweet--by tweet: If you don't adopt this exactly how it is written, you will not receive my political support. Thank you for your attention to this matter.

And that set us on a course toward passing this legislation, which I know a dozen--at least a dozen--Republicans hate, hate.

It reduces funding for Jordan. It reduces funding for Ukraine. It reduces funding for global health. It did reduce funding for PEPFAR. It continues to reduce funding for public television and public radio.

By the way, public radio is not just National Public Radio. If you are on a reservation, if you are in a very rural part of your State, it is often not just the only radio station but the only communications infrastructure that exists in a rural area. So it is the only platform for news; that is true. It is also the only emergency communications infrastructure because, still, many places across the United States lack internet.

So Mike Rounds got his deal so that his Tribes will be taken care of. I am glad for him. But there are 49 other States where your emergency communications infrastructure is about to be defunded. Nobody likes that.

Some people are pissed off about NPR's coverage or PBS's coverage. Come on. You defund an Agency because you disagree with their editorial choices? Which country is this? Which country is this?

I want to tell you something a little technical, but I think it gives away the whole game.

So I am the top Democrat on the Foreign Ops Subcommittee. What does that mean? We do funding for USAID, the State Department, and a few other things. When we do the appropriations process, we get letters from every other Member. They are private letters. A lot of people sign them, and they say: Could you please give more money to whatever it is--maternal and child health, or malaria prevention or the PEPFAR Program, the initiative to prevent HIV-AIDS transmission. We get a bunch of letters saying: Please, plus-up this; please plus-up that-- bipartisan letters.

And we are trying to write a bill that accommodates all these needs. A lot of people who are about to vote to cut all this stuff are, on the side, writing me a letter saying: Please, increase these accounts.

And why does this matter? This matters because nobody is voting--I shouldn't say ``nobody.'' Many, many people are not voting their conscience tonight, and that is just a fact.

There is a characterization in poker: When you know you are beat and someone puts money in on the river, and you call anyway, it is called a crying call. You give away your money sort of crying.

This is a crying call. This is a ``I know I am beat; I vote aye.''

And here is the thing: We don't actually have to do this. President Trump's attention is famously divided. If something pops up next week, he will be on that thing next week. He did not wake up every morning thinking: I want to defund UNICEF; I want to defund PEPFAR.

His attention will be divided. And the moment the legislature stands up for itself, usually what he does is--he understands power--he says: OK, those guys were asserting themselves. They are a coequal branch of government, and I am going to have to move on from this.

Why do I know this? We literally did the same thing. There was a rescissions package, which nobody remembers. Why? Because we quietly-- with Dick Shelby and others, appropriators all--said: No, we hold the purse strings here. We write the laws that determine appropriations. We are not going to do this thing on a bipartisan basis--enact a spending plan--and then come in on a partisan basis and say: You know, that wasn't actually the spending plan; that was just the spending cap. And the administration is going to come in and do whatever it wants on a partisan basis.

So what happened? They rejected the rescissions package on the motion to discharge, which is happening in about an hour and 5 minutes.

Then, do you know what happened? Nothing--nothing politically, nothing substantively, except that we kept the appropriations process alive. We kept the filibuster alive. We kept bipartisanship alive.

And in this instance, it is not just about this institution. It is literally about people being kept alive.

For the last 5 months, because of the United States' actions, tens of thousands at least--maybe hundreds of thousands--of babies have gotten HIV-AIDS from their moms because we pulled funding, because Elon Musk had some bug in his ear about USAID, and one weekend he said, ``We are going to feed this thing to the wood chipper,'' and because Democrats, too, and pundits decided: Do you know what? Foreign aid isn't so important to voters.

I don't care if it is important to voters, if it ranks No. 1, No. 2, or No. 3. We are the United States of America, and one of the reasons that we have such a strong reputation is because we do things that are right because they are right, not because our voters are going to reward us immediately, not because we get some geopolitical advantage but because we are the damn good guys. And right now, we are ratifying a bunch of decisions against our will.

We don't have to do this. Donald Trump will move on to the next thing tomorrow. And if it is not on this thing, which has low salience for the voters and is 18 months from the next election--if it is not on this--at what point are my Republican colleagues going to stand up for this branch of government?

I remain ready to work with anybody on anything. I have talked to Chairman Graham about the possibility of literally enacting these rescissions, or at least a portion of them, in the State and Foreign Ops markup, and yet they choose this legislative violence.

We don't have to do this. We don't have to operate under the assumption that this man is uniquely so powerful. He is the most powerful President. He owns the legislature in a way that no President has ever owned the legislature, and we all act like we are just sort of observers, like clicking on the TV and seeing how our fantasy football team is doing this Sunday.

We have agency tonight to reestablish that we are the article I branch of government, and that means something.

I yield the floor.