Floor Statements

Mr. President, Happy New Year. Congress has a full plate of issues to work on this year. I look forward to rolling up my sleeves and continuing my work for the people of Iowa this year, as I always do.

One issue that is on my mind is lowering healthcare costs, expanding access to high-quality care, and supporting research and innovation. The U.S. healthcare needs more reform and accountability, but we don't need to turn it into a socialized, government-run healthcare system.

I would like to point out another example, as I have before, of how socialized medicine fails patients. Recently, a Canadian woman named Jolene Van Alstine made headlines because of Canada's socialized single-payer healthcare system.

Jolene can't access a healthcare specialist to get the lifesaving surgery that she needs. Jolene has a rare disease, and she needs surgery. Yet there is not a surgeon available in her province to perform that surgery. You would think she would look elsewhere in Canada to get the surgery, but she can't do that. Jolene must get permission from a local specialist first due to government rules running the socialized healthcare system in Canada.

Yet getting an appointment with a specialist isn't possible because no one is accepting new patients. Now she is considering ``medical assistance in dying'' because Canada's healthcare system doesn't have a surgeon or a specialist that she needs to get that lifesaving care.

American conservative radio commentator Glenn Beck has offered to cover the patient's travel expenses to America if an American surgeon is able to perform the surgery. I sure hope

someone will step up to help Jolene in this way.

So Canada does, however, have an alternative healthcare system. It is called the United States of America, if the patient can afford to come here and pay for the services. I have highlighted before how Canadians' cancer patients are coming to America for treatment. Socialized medicine leads to longer wait times and scarce resources. Let this be another reminder of socialized medicine's failures.

I yield the floor.

Mr. President, I come to the Senate floor to give an update on one of my oversight projects. This is about an Office within the Department of Health and Human Services that many people may not know much about. It is called the Office of National Security or, in Washington-speak, ONS for short.

This Office informs HHS leadership about the threat landscape and also manages intelligence and counterintelligence. In addition, ONS also aims to protect HHS from disclosure of confidential information and other efforts that undermine U.S.-led research.

I have done oversight of ONS since my chairmanship on the Finance Committee during the 116th Congress. During the COVID pandemic, I successfully fought to ensure that ONS had a seat at the table with the intelligence community so it could lend its expertise however it was needed.

To fulfill its duties to the taxpayers, ONS needs to collaborate closely with national security partners, and the United States needs to be ready to fight health threats head-on--especially that includes domestic and foreign threats. That threat landscape isn't going to go away anytime soon, and it certainly isn't getting any better as pathogens evolve, which means the right hand of government must talk with the left hand of government.

So as part of my continuing oversight, on December 3 of this year, I wrote to HHS Secretary Kennedy and Director of National Intelligence Gabbard. I asked Secretary Kennedy and DNI Director Gabbard for updates on their level of coordination, and I asked them about their efforts to ensure that ONS is engaged with the broader intelligence community to ensure robust information sharing. In the new year, I look forward to their responses to my investigation.

I yield the floor.

I suggest the absence of a quorum.

Mr. President, had I been present for the rollcall vote No. 648, on the motion to concur in the House amendment to S. 1071, the National Defense Authorization Act for Fiscal Year 2026, my vote would have been in the affirmative.

My absence is due to my attendance at the dignified transfer ceremony at Dover Air Force Base to receive the remains of the two Iowa National Guard servicemembers who were killed in Syria this past week. I appreciate the opportunity to record my position.

Had I been present for the rollcall vote No. 651, on the motion to invoke Cloture on the Nomination of Douglas Weaver, of Maryland, to be a member of the Nuclear Regulatory Commission, my vote would have been in the affirmative.

My absence is due to my attendance at the dignified transfer ceremony at Dover Air Force Base to receive the remains of the two Iowa National Guard servicemembers who were killed in Syria this past week. I appreciate the opportunity to record my position.

Mr. President, I understand that representatives of the Russian Orthodox Church are on Capitol Hill this week falsely claiming persecution by the Ukrainian Government. This is because of a law requiring churches in Ukraine to stop taking directions from the patriarch in Moscow, who was a KGB agent and reports directly to Vladimir Putin.

Two years ago, I met with Ukrainian faith leaders in my office--about 30 of them--from many backgrounds, including Orthodox, Catholic, Evangelical, Jewish, and Muslim. They told me everyone in Ukraine can freely practice their religion, but in occupied Ukraine, Russians have turned churches into a secular, Russian Ministry of Culture. They have also tortured pastors, and the faithful are forced to worship in secret. That is what I heard from religious leaders of Ukraine 2 years ago.

In September, I highlighted a report by the Free Russian Foundation titled ``The Russian Orthodox Church and the War.'' That report showed how this body supports the invasion of Ukraine through propaganda, rituals for invaders, diplomatic manipulation, and espionage.

The Atlantic Council hosted an event about the Free Russia report featuring a discussion with Orthodox priests titled ``How the Russian Orthodox Church supports the Kremlin's war against Ukraine.'' You can view it online.

It is no wonder that only between 4 to 8 percent of Orthodox Ukrainians still identify with the Moscow church. The overwhelming majority of Orthodox Ukrainians identify with the Orthodox Church of Ukraine, which is recognized by the Ecumenical Patriarch of Constantinople, the First Among Equals in the Orthodox tradition.

The Ecumenical Patriarch is also head of the largest Orthodox Church in the United States, the Greek Orthodox Archdiocese of America. So we should listen to what he said in response to the Russian Patriarch blessing the war and claiming that Russian soldiers who die invading Ukraine will have their sins washed away.

His All-Holiness Ecumenical Patriarch Bartholomew said this:

It is damaging to the prestige of the whole of Orthodoxy,

because Orthodoxy doesn't support war, violence, terrorism.

Do not believe anyone who claims the Russian Orthodox Church is somehow a victim of religious persecution in this war in Ukraine that was started when Russia invaded in February 2022. The Russian Orthodox Church is a leading perpetrator of the persecution of fellow Orthodox believers, as well as Catholics, Evangelicals, and others.

You can learn about real religious persecution in the occupied parts of Ukraine at russiatortureschristians.org, and you can watch the documentary ``A Faith Under Siege'' on YouTube.

I yield the floor.

Recognition of the Majority Leader

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

Mr. President, this summer marks an important milestone in the great American experiment. On July 4, 2026, our country will celebrate the 250th anniversary of our founding--a nation founded on the universal principle that all people have inherent God-given rights. To protect those rights, our forefathers established a democratic republic.

Throughout the year, communities from sea to shining sea will hold events celebrating our rights and freedoms.

This is also a fitting time to reflect on our Nation's history. The story of America is filled with acts of courage and righteous struggles. America has

not always lived up to its high ideals; however, the principles laid out in its founding document have proved enduring.

The Declaration of Independence states:

All men are created equal . . . endowed with certain

unalienable Rights . . . life, liberty, and the pursuit of

happiness.

This has been successfully wielded to secure freedom for those overlooked at our Nation's founding.

One of those overlooked things that we are not very proud of--not proud of at all--is slavery. In a speech delivered in 1852, the great abolitionist Frederick Douglass quoted these words to land a damning blow against slavery. His Fourth of July speech made it patently clear that the practice of slavery was an affront to the universal principles enshrined in the Declaration of Independence.

The Declaration of Independence was also influential to the women's suffrage movement. It was used as a model for the movement's Declaration of Sentiments, which was signed at the first women's rights convention, organized by women in 1848.

The history of the suffrage movement has a special place in my heart, so I am going to show you a front-page story of the Des Moines Register of August 30, 1920. You can see the same picture in the Waterloo Courier.

This woman is Mrs. Louis Grassley--Ruth Grassley, my mother. August 30 is 1 or 2 days after the Secretary of State of the U.S. Government informed the secretary of state of Iowa that women could vote. And there was an election in Black Hawk and Grundy Counties that my mother participated in 1 day after the Secretary of State said that women could vote. I think this goes back a couple of weeks before that because Tennessee, by a 1-vote margin, was the 36th State out of the 48 States at that particular time--the last State--to ratify the 19th Amendment. Then, I presume, it took a couple of weeks to get it out to the States that they could vote. So I presume that on August 29 or maybe even as late as August 30, through a telephone call to this meeting that women could vote, my mother was voting.

My mother was Ruth Corwin Grassley. She was, as I just told you, one of the very first women--for sure in Iowa but maybe in the entire United States--to cast a vote after the ratification of the 19th Amendment. As I just showed you in the Des Moines Register and also the exact same picture in the Waterloo Courier--it verifies what I just told you.

The Waterloo Times Tribune reported this quote:

Black Hawk and Grundy County women gained fame Friday by

being the first in the state and probably the first in the

nation to take advantage of the privilege of equal suffrage.

Growing up, I was unaware that my mother took part in this history. In fact, this picture came to my attention probably 20 years after my mother's death. She never bragged about anything, so it is not surprising that we did not hear about this part of her life in history.

She took great pride in being a dedicated schoolteacher. She instilled in her students and in her own children lifelong lessons of civic responsibility. I imagine she saw herself as simply exercising her freedom to vote to make sure her voice was counted.

To honor my mother and all suffragettes, I proudly cosponsored the Women's Suffrage Centennial Commemorative Coin Act. It was enacted at the end of 2019. The bill authorized the U.S. Mint to issue special- edition silver-dollar coins commemorating the adoption of the 19th Amendment in 1920. This program resulted in the sale of over 56,000 coins, with a portion of the proceeds being directed toward the Smithsonian Institute's American Women's History Initiative.

The U.S. Mint is now set to commemorate like coins for the 250th anniversary of our Declaration of Independence. This includes five quarter designs emblematic of this historic anniversary and commemorative dollar coins. My understanding is the original five quarter designs will depict historic American events, such as women's suffrage and abolition.

I am obviously here because I am very much interested in the fact that it doesn't look like they are going to have a women's suffrage coin. The current Treasury Department abandoned the designs that were first suggested, and the women's suffrage coin was one of those. In my view, this is a very big mistake. The forthcoming anniversary is a perfect time to honor historical events that have made America what it is today. The historic victory won by suffragettes after more than 140 years of fighting for the right to vote is as worthy as any.

While the Treasury has since finalized five different quarter designs, it has yet to announce the final designs for other commemorative coins. To correct the mistake that was recently made, Treasury officials should consider honoring the suffrage movement and other worthy events as part of the 250th anniversary commemorative dollar coin program.

You can see that I am kind of shocked that the executive branch of government would change what was studied for a while and suggested. It didn't meet the ideology of this administration. I don't think that what they want to substitute is not worthy of consideration, but I think we have to remember that in the preamble of the Constitution, it didn't say that we were going to create a perfect Union; it was that we were going to work toward a more perfect Union. And when we forget the work of women for 140 years who tried to get the right to vote and one of them--the suffragettes--is from the county next to the county I spent 92 years in, living in Iowa, we take great pride in what it took to get the 19th Amendment adopted.

So I hope I can get some reconsideration on the part of the administration about honoring the suffragettes with a coin at this particular time.

I yield the floor.

Mr. President, I am happy to join Senator Ossoff in support of our bill, the Prevent Child Trafficking Act. This is an important bill with an important objective: fostering communication between the Department of Justice and Health and Human Services with the result, we hope, of preventing children from falling prey to the evils of human trafficking.

It does this, as Senator Ossoff just said, by implementing recommendations from the Government Accountability Office and requiring these Agencies to set performance goals that reflect best practices. Preventing future instances of trafficking is very, very essential, and I am happy to support this bill's advancement today.

I yield the floor.

Mr. President, it is with a heavy heart that I come to the floor of the Senate today. Over the weekend, on December 13, two members of the Iowa National Guard, alongside a civilian interpreter, were killed by ISIS terrorists in Syria. SGT William N. Howard and SGT Edgar B. Torres-Tovar, both part of the 2nd Infantry Brigade Combat Team, 34th Infantry Division, paid the ultimate sacrifice. We are forever indebted to them for their dedication and service to Iowa and to the United States.

I would like to take a moment to speak about each of these remarkable young men.

SGT Nate Howard of Marshalltown, IA, has served the Iowa National Guard for 11 years. His admiration for his grandfather's service enkindled his patriotic spirit and ultimately led to his joining the Guard.

This past May, Sergeant Howard was among the brave Iowans to deploy to the Middle East in support of Operation Inherent Resolve--a counterterrorism mission in Syria to fight against ISIS. Prior to this, he was deployed to Kosovo in 2020.

Sergeant Howard is a graduate of Marshalltown High School and worked as a laser engraving specialist at a company in his hometown before answering the call to serve.

His wife Arianna has shared that she wishes her husband will be remembered for his courage and bravery. I believe it is safe to say he will be so remembered.

My wife Barbara and my prayers are with Arianna, his parents, and all his family.

I would also like to recognize Sergeant Torres of Des Moines, IA. Sergeant Torres was deployed in the Middle East in support of Operation Inherent Resolve. A dedicated patriot, he served in Kosovo prior to his deployment to the Middle East.

Sergeant Edgar Torres was the first person in his family to serve in the U.S. military. His family and fellow servicemembers describe him as a selfless individual who put others before himself and cared deeply for his family.

Barbara and I--our hearts and prayers are with his family and loved ones.

Until Saturday, which was also the 339th birthday of the National Guard, it had been over a decade since we lost an Iowan in combat.

Our prayers for continued safety are with the many Iowans and Americans abroad, including those who remain in the Middle East to combat the evils of terrorism and stand as a symbol of freedom and hope.

The loss of these lives is an unfortunate reminder of the dangers of terrorism that are ever present. The United States must continue to strengthen our ability to combat the horrors of terrorism while preserving the liberties that make our country special.

I once again extend my gratitude to Sergeant Howard and Sergeant Torres, who served with honor, and my deepest condolences to their families.

I yield the floor.

Mr. President, former Governor Branstad is being honored today. Before I read that tribute about his honoring today, I thought I would give a little bit of background about what I know about former Governor Branstad.

I first met State Representative Terry Branstad in January 1973, when he was a new member of the legislature. He would tell you that I actually spoke to a group of Republicans who were at the University of Iowa in 1966. I will take his word for that.

He served 6 years in the State legislature. Then, we used to elect our Lieutenant Governor separate from the Governor, and he served 4 years as Lieutenant Governor. Then he was elected Governor of Iowa in 1982 and served 16 years, until 1998.

Then he decided to have a private life and a business life, and during those 12 years that he was not Governor, we had 12 years of Democratic Governors. They left a big fiscal hole. There was a real feeling among Iowans that only former Governor Branstad, then, could get us back on a strong fiscal path to fiscal sanity in Iowa.

So he decided to run for Governor again, and he selected now-Governor Reynolds as his running mate. And Terry Branstad served until the Trump administration, when he was appointed Ambassador to China.

The second Branstad administration, continued by Governor Reynolds, has had Iowa on a strong fiscal path, not with any deficits, and reducing taxes, having balanced budgets, and having several billions of dollars in reserve funds.

So now I would like to, with that background, talk about the honor that he is getting today.

It is an honor for me, today, to congratulate my good friend Terry Branstad. This very day, he will become the 26th recipient of what is called the Iowa Award, our home State's highest citizen award.

Governor Branstad is the longest serving Governor in U.S. history, who also served Americans as U.S. Ambassador to China during the first Trump administration.

Like me, Terry grew up on a family farm. Throughout his lifetime of public service, Terry applied the bone-deep work ethic of an Iowa farmer, with extra elbow grease, fiscal conservatism, and rock-solid tenacity. He is famous for his retail politicking and his political skill.

I am proud to say that Terry has been a supporter of mine in every one of my congressional campaigns, dating back to 1974.

He joins an esteemed group of Iowans--examples like President Herbert Hoover to Norman Borlaug and Grant Wood--who have helped make our State the best place to call home.

Barbara and I congratulate Governor Branstad on his well-deserved award and thank him for his friendship and decades of service.

I yield the floor.

Mr. President, a few times every year I come to the floor to compliment the University of Iowa Carver College of Medicine. I am here again to do it. It has, once again, shown that it is a leader in medicine and advancing new treatments.

As the cofounder and cochair of the Senate's Cystic Fibrosis Caucus, I take a keen interest in cystic fibrosis treatment advances.

Dr. Michael Welsh at the University of Iowa has recently received several awards for his research on cystic fibrosis that has paved the way for new therapies, which is transforming the lives of people with cystic fibrosis. Most recently, Dr. Welsh received the 2025 Lasker- DeBakey Clinical Medical Research Award.

Dr. Lasker's awards are sometimes called ``America's Nobels'' and are among the world's most prestigious biomedical and clinical research awards.

Cystic fibrosis is a lethal genetic disease that affects a person's lungs, pancreas, and other organs and typically results in morbidity and even mortality.

Until recently, living with cystic fibrosis was challenging and often led to infections in lungs that were very difficult to treat. Thanks to Dr. Welsh's research, we can now target cystic fibrosis at the molecular level that has resulted in 90 percent of cystic fibrosis patients benefiting from the new and improved treatments.

Doctors no longer treat only a person's symptoms, they actually correct a person's defective gene through treatment discovered by Dr. Welsh. I would like to thank Dr. Welsh as his Senator and as chair of the Cystic Fibrosis Caucus for his decades of pioneering work on the fundamental biology of cystic fibrosis and also to congratulate him on winning this prestigious Lasker award. His landmark discoveries have led to new lifesaving therapies that correct the effects of genetic disorders.

Mr. President, on Monday, the Wall Street Journal editorial board published an article titled ``ObamaCare is a Mecca For Fraud.''

It articulates the waste, fraud, and abuse in the ObamaCare Program, so I am going to read this article on the floor today and do it for the benefit of my colleagues that maybe don't always read these editorials.

So quoting, and I will try to leave out commentary comment. If I do that, I will identify it as such.

The Minnesota Medicaid grift illustrates how open-ended

government welfare can easily become an inducement for fraud.

A new Government Accountability Office report finds the

pandemic-era sweetened ObamaCare subsidies are . . . ripe for

gaming.

The GAO last fall began an undercover test in which it

submitted insurance applications for fictitious individuals

to the federal ObamaCare exchange and insurance brokers.

Nearly all of its invented people were able to enroll in

subsidized plans despite submitting false or no records to

verify their identities and incomes.

Of GAO's 24 applications, 23 were approved. Eighteen

enrollees were still covered as of September, suggesting that

the exchange and insurers didn't verify information even

after enrollment. The subsidies paid to insurance companies

for those 18 applicants totalled more than $10,000 per month,

equivalent to a $6,700 annual subsidy for each enrollee.

GAO says in some cases ``we were not prompted to provide

documentation'' to verify an applicant's identity. No Social

Security number? No problem. In another instance, the

ObamaCare exchange ``notified us that it had verified the

applicant's estimated income based on documentation we

submitted. However, we did not submit documentation.''

In two cases, brokers called the ObamaCare help center

because applicants had submitted invalid Social Security

numbers. The center let brokers submit the

fraudulent applications anyway. This suggests the Centers for

Medicare and Medicaid Services, which runs the federal

ObamaCare exchange, was ignoring fraud.

GAO also analyzed enrollment data in 2023 and 2024 for data

anomalies. It found more than 29,000 Social Security numbers

in 2023 and nearly 68,000 in 2024 that were used to receive

more than one year's worth of insurance coverage with

subsidies in a single year--meaning the same Social Security

number was used by more than one person.

In 2023 one Social Security number was used to apply for

more than 125 policies. Perhaps this was identity theft, but

it's also possible brokers submitted fake Social Security

numbers to enroll ineligible or phantom people in plans.

Brokers earn more in commissions from insurers if they enroll

more people in ObamaCare.

The Justice Department has charged numerous brokers with

enrolling people in ObamaCare plans, or switching them to new

plans, without their consent. GAO identified at least 30,000

applications in 2023 and 160,000 in 2024 that had ``likely

unauthorized changes by agents or brokers.''

GAO also found that incomes weren't later verified for

enrollees who received $21 billion in subsidies in 2023. That

means they might have received bigger subsidies than they

were eligible for. The Paragon Health Institute's Brian Blase

has warned that ObamaCare's lax verification controls

encourage people to understate income to get bigger

subsidies.

Using Census Bureau data, Mr. Blase estimates that about

6.4 million people this year were improperly enrolled in

subsidized ObamaCare plans, costing taxpayers $27 billion. He

has also found that about 40 percent of enrollees in plans

fully subsidized by the government filed no medical claims.

GAO's report suggests many may not be real people. Others may

have employer coverage and been enrolled by brokers without

their knowledge.

This year's GOP tax bill included modest reforms to prevent

ObamaCare fraud, such as requiring the exchange to verify

Social Security numbers and income data before enrolling

applicants in plans. It also requires people to repay the

government if their incomes turn out to be higher than

what they estimated on their applications. The

Congressional Budget Office projected that the tax bill's

ObamaCare fraud controls could result in about one million

more people going uninsured, but most aren't eligible for

subsidies--and some might not even exist.

Democrats want to boost enrollment in ObamaCare no matter

the cost because they view the subsidized and regulated plans

as a way-station to a single-payer system. Senate Minority

Leader Chuck Schumer plans to tee up a vote this week to

extend the pandemic-era subsidies, which have been an

inducement for fraud.

Republicans would be wise to remind voters that Democrats

sold ObamaCare on false pretenses--e.g., it would make

healthcare ``affordable.'' Extending the subsidies would

perpetuate that fraud.

That is the end of my reading of the Wall Street Journal of Monday of this week.

I yield the floor.

I suggest the absence of a quorum.

Mr. President, if you hear the term ``Arctic Frost,'' for most of us in Washington, DC, it is not a meteorological term. It is a name that the Biden administration put on the efforts through Special Counsel Jack Smith to put then-citizen Trump in prison so he could never run for President again.

I have been trying to make as much of this information that we discover public. So I come to the Senate floor now to discuss this now- infamous Arctic Frost investigation that I and Senator Johnson of Wisconsin have exposed.

As we have shown through our investigation, Arctic Frost was not just about putting President Trump in prison, but it was a means to an end. That end that the Arctic Frost investigation sought was a vehicle by which partisan FBI agents and partisan Department of Justice prosecutors could improperly investigate the entire Republican political apparatus.

As Arctic Frost became Special Counsel Jack Smith's election case, it also targeted over 400 Republican groups and individuals. Recently, Senator Johnson and I have exposed that the Special Counsel's office obtained phone records of at least 11 Senators and 6 Members of the House of Representatives--all of them Republican. I expect there will be more Members of Congress added to that list. Each of these subpoenas included a court-issued nondisclosure order.

Recently, I made public Department of Justice documents, including emails. These documents showed that Special Counsel Smith's office knew of the constitutional implications of issuing a subpoena for congressional data.

A May 17, 2023, email shows that Molly Gaston from Special Counsel Smith's office emailed John Keller, one of the heads of Biden's Department of Justice Public Integrity Section. In that email, Gaston consulted Keller about issuing subpoenas for Members' phone records. Keller, from the Department of Justice, told her that there might be litigation risk if you do that.

So Smith's staff was warned.

And the reason why? Keller said subpoenaing congressional information could violate the speech or debate clause of the Constitution.

As we all know, the speech or debate clause protects Members of Congress from any retaliation or civil action for what is said right here on the floor of the House and Senate.

Well, no kidding--they were warned.

Of course, the Department of Justice knows that core constitutional activity of constitutional officers is protected in the Constitution.

Keller's email to Gaston also notes case law saying legislators asserting an invasion of speech or debate may intervene and oppose subpoenas. So it is a constitutionally based opposition. However, affected Members--remember they are all Republicans--weren't afforded the opportunity to challenge the subpoenas, as the law would give them the right to do.

It is all about the subpoenas having a nondisclosure order in it.

Now, these nondisclosure orders, rubberstamped by a judge named Boasberg and others on the same court, kept secret Jack Smith's action against the Republican Members. So far, almost all of the nondisclosure orders for Members' own records were signed by Judge Boasberg.

On November 20, 2025, I, along with Chairman Johnson and Mr. Jordan, chairman of the House Judiciary Committee, wrote to Judge Boasberg. We asked what information Special Counsel Smith's office presented, if any, to the court that led to the approval of the nondisclosure orders of Members' phone records, in violation of Federal law.

We also asked Mr. Boasberg if he ever denied any Department of Justice nondisclosure order requests.

Now, Judge Boasberg never answered our letter. He had Judge Robert Conrad, the Director of the Administrative Office of the U.S. Courts, responding on his behalf. Judge Conrad failed to fully answer our questions. The letter claimed that responding to our letter fully would ``encroach upon the separation of powers.''

Now, the court ought to have raised that concern when Special Counsel Smith requested the nondisclosure orders for the legislative branch phone records--not after it became public as a result of our getting these documents.

But the limited response by the judge shows that the Federal court, including Judge Boasberg, essentially acted as a rubberstamp in approving Special Counsel Smith's nondisclosure orders.

Judge Conrad's letter stated that the Department of Justice typically doesn't include a subpoena with a nondisclosure order request and only provides a signifier, like a phone number, to the court. Thus, the information before the court would reveal that a phone number belonged to a Member of Congress.

Judge Conrad's response appears to indicate that Special Counsel Smith's office failed to disclose to the court that any subpoenas sought phone records for Members of Congress. Jack Smith took this egregious action even though Smith and his team knew case law was clear that legislators could challenge the grand jury subpoena on grounds it violated the speech or debate clause of the Constitution. The letter from Judge Conrad raises serious questions about Special Counsel Smith's candor--or lack thereof--before the court.

But the volume of subpoenas issued by the special counsel's office should have raised alarms with Judge Boasberg and any other judges involved in issuing those subpoenas--alarms that maybe congressional records could have been swept up by the government's conduct.

So there are some questions: Did Judge Boasberg and others even ask the question? Was even a small amount of due diligence done? Boasberg and others won't say. Not asking these simple questions appears to be a clear dereliction of duty.

The actions by the Biden Justice Department and the Federal court raise more questions that Congress and the American people deserve answers to.

These things are very important because when the power of the Federal Government, particularly through the Department of Justice prosecutors and the FBI to be politically weaponized to put anybody in prison--and if they can attempt to do it to a former President then and now President Trump for 4 years, it could be done to anybody. And we need to know that this should never happen again in the United States of America.

So I am giving you this update. Accordingly, my oversight will continue.

I yield the floor.

Mr. President, since 2023, Sudan has been engulfed in a civil war between the Sudanese Armed Forces under the government of that country and the paramilitary Rapid Support Forces, it is called. It is termed in the paper and reports regularly--Rapid Support Forces-- as ``RSF.''

After an 18-month siege of El Fasher in the Darfur region, RSF forces took control, and the Sudanese Armed Forces retreated.

Now, the RSF controls roughly half of the country of Sudan. Following the violent takeover of El Fasher, there have been reports of mass killings, reports of executions, and reports of sexual violence.

According to the Humanitarian Research Lab at Yale University, satellite imagery found evidence of mass killings and executions. The Humanitarian Research Lab also alleges war crimes, including the targeting of health facilities, targeting of workers, patients, and even humanitarian aid workers.

Through the curse of this conflict, millions have been displaced and tens of thousands have been killed. The United Nations has determined that the conflict in Sudan is one of the worst humanitarian crises in the world.

Our own country, the United States, has condemned reports of mass atrocities committed by the RSF in El Fasher. The United States has gone as far as in January 2025 to declare that the RSF and its allied militias are committing genocide in Sudan.

The atrocities in Sudan are not just a foreign tragedy. I have been hearing from Sudanese Iowans who have families in Sudan.

I wish the Trump administration well as it attempts to bring the violence to a halt. I have heard President Trump, in his many news conferences, sometimes bring the Sudan atrocities to our attention, indicating he wants to take some action to bring peace to that country. I thank him for doing that. The Sudanese people have been through enough over the years and deserve a chance at a peaceful and prosperous life.

I yield the floor.

Mr. President, when the Affordable Care Act became law, President Obama promised affordable healthcare. Contrary to Obama's promises, in reality, ObamaCare has spiked health insurance premiums and led to higher costs.

Instead of fixing ObamaCare and lowering costs, Democrats established a new, temporary COVID subsidy for wealthy households--temporary. That ``temporary'' ends December 31. Democrats want to extend it way beyond that. It is another example of a temporary program never being very temporary. So this temporary subsidy has driven more taxpayer dollars into broken systems where premiums keep going up and more money is shoved to insurance companies.

Now, remember the promises of 2010--ObamaCare's passage that year. It promised to bring down healthcare costs by $2,500, and we see now, 15 years later, it is up at least $5,000. So you can see the promise in 2010 by President Obama was off by $7,500.

I want to explain how we got here, discuss my concerns about fraud, waste, and abuse in ObamaCare, and provide some commonsense solutions to bring down healthcare costs.

When ObamaCare became law, it established taxpayer-funded subsidies through the Federal Health Insurance Marketplace to reduce a household's monthly insurance premiums. However, these subsidies go directly to insurance companies, not to the consumer.

In the United States today, the median household income is $84,000 a year. Permanent law gives ObamaCare premium subsidies to a family of three making up to four times the Federal poverty line, which is about $106,000 a year. That means that someone making $20,000 more than the median household income is eligible for a subsidy under permanent law.

I assume the ObamaCare authors probably figured households making much more than the median household income made enough money to buy insurance without taxpayers subsidizing it.

Nothing in this debate takes away middle-income households' subsidies. A family making up to $106,000 is at 400 percent of the poverty line. Let me make it very clear, those families are eligible for a subsidy today, next year, the year after, and so on until the law is changed, and I don't expect it will be changed.

In 2021, things changed. It was supposed to be temporary. As I pointed out, temporary laws in this country soon become permanent. In 2021, the Democrats passed their partisan reconciliation law that temporarily lifted the income cap on ObamaCare subsidies. Now, that was supposed to be temporary. The cap, which was at four times the poverty line, was removed temporarily in the name of COVID. In other words, the country was facing a very dramatic health issue. The Federal Government shut down the economy, 22 million people were unemployed, and we didn't really know what it was all about.

Now, we learned a lot of lessons from that, and those lessons will not be repeated hopefully. But this temporary program was set up in this time of great distress about what the future held.

Now, as a result of this temporary program because of ObamaCare and COVID, wealthy households making $600,000, which is well above the median household income, are eligible for the temporary taxpayer-funded ObamaCare subsidies or better known as COVID bonuses. The expansion of ObamaCare subsidies for wealthy earners has cost billions, and the Congressional Budget Office, CBO, projections for its costs keep going up.

In 2021, anticipating some of these problems, I wrote a letter to the then-Health and Human Services Secretary and also the IRS Commissioner. In that letter, I expressed concern about the lack of fiscal responsibility in the ObamaCare subsidy expansion and how that expansion would lead to more waste, fraud, and abuse. At the time, the DHS Secretary responded saying:

HHS and the IRS take program integrity seriously.

The Health and Human Services Secretary outlined all the ways that the Agency was preventing fraud, waste, and abuse.

I can only conclude that the Biden administration's response was just empty rhetoric. Since my letter to the HHS Secretary, the Government Accountability Office has found ongoing fraud risks in these ObamaCare subsidies.

In the last 2 years, the Government Accountability Office successfully enrolled 96 percent of its fictitious applicants in ObamaCare. I really mean fictitious people. This was a test by the Government Accountability Office to see how easy it was to defraud.

Now, when they started it out, they didn't know that that might be the result, but I am going to tell you that that is the result. For example, the Government Accountability Office succeeded in enrolling these fake people despite rules requiring documentation to confirm citizenship status and income. The Government Accountability Office also found that HHS had let Social Security numbers be misused by allowing the same number to be used more than once. The Agency also failed to match enrollment data with Social Security's death data and chose not to reconcile tax credit overpayments with IRS tax data.

Fraud, waste, and abuse don't stop with those examples. This summer, the Trump administration found that 1.6 million people were dually enrolled in 2024 in Medicaid and ObamaCare, leading to billions in waste. Now, understand, 1.6 million people having 2 sources of healthcare and then, at the same time, we keep telling the public how many people in this country--the millions that don't have any insurance at all, and here we have 1.6 million people who were enrolled in 2 healthcare systems.

My own oversight has shown how billions in ObamaCare subsidy overpayments were not collected and--can you believe this?--rules let billions go uncollected.

The COVID bonuses created incentives to misestimate income to qualify for larger ObamaCare subsidies, leading to billions of wastes--yes, higher income people reporting lower income than they actually had just to get a government subsidy.

Lastly, insurance agents are using targeted internet ads to fraudulently enroll consumers with false income verification extension requests.

Extending the COVID bonus permanently increases the deficit by $350 billion and lets billions more go to fraud, waste, and abuse.

CBO has found that 3.9 million Americans would lose their employer- sponsored health insurance if we make these subsidies for wealthy earners permanent. In other words, because of a government program that was supposed to be temporary--if it is continued, employers are smart enough to stop their healthcare program, health insurance program, and turn it over to the government and the government subsidy that goes with it.

My colleagues on the other side of the aisle will suggest that they are only asking for another ``temporary'' extension of the COVID bonuses for wealthy households. Yet their bill will cost taxpayers nearly $300 billion, and there are no reforms to stop fraud, waste, and abuse.

Despite warnings from the Government Accountability Office, the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services last issued a comprehensive fraud risk assessment of ObamaCare subsidies in 2018. Now, the law doesn't require that report every year, but the Government Accountability Office said it ought to be issued every year. So by not issuing that on a regular basis--the Agency failing to update its fraud risk assessment plan--it doesn't surprise me that we have a lot of fraud.

My oversight in 2013 found the Obama administration at that time tried to exempt ObamaCare from certain Federal anti-fraud provisions. Yes, the administration at that time wanted anti-fraud provisions to be ignored. So any wonder why you have an environment for fraud.

The full arsenal of civil and criminal anti-fraud protections must be used. I have introduced the Fraud Risk Assessment of ObamaCare Subsidies Accountability Act. My bill simply requires the Agency to update its fraud risk assessment of ObamaCare and update it yearly.

I am glad the Agency is already working to update its fraud risk assessment, but we must hold the Agency accountable to complete this.

I am glad the Republican-led Congress and the Trump administration have begun cracking down on ObamaCare fraud, waste, and abuse, thanks to the One Big Beautiful Bill that the President signed on July 4. The new law stops resources from going to illegal immigrants and those not here permanently, establishes improved preenrollment verification, and requires excess subsidies to be repaid. It is a start, but more work needs to be done.

We can lower healthcare costs and increase quality. It starts with expanding access and competition to high-quality, affordable health insurance through health saving accounts, association health plans, and other consumer-driven health plans.

Lowering healthcare costs requires action to reduce prescription drug prices through pharmacy benefit managers and reforming that program. I have been leading the charge to hold PBMs accountable and put sunshine on their opaque business practices.

We also need price transparency. I am a cosponsor of a bill that is entitled Patients Deserve Price Tags Act and supported the Trump administration's efforts to establish price transparency on hospitals and health insurance companies through regulations.

Just like all of my colleagues on this side of the aisle, I am committed to finding solutions to bring down healthcare costs for American families and not extending government handouts to insurance companies.

I yield the floor.

Mr. President, in early November, the U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Service announced improvements to their voter verification system. Now, States can use a program named the Systematic Alien Verification for Entitlements to verify that only citizens are voting in the Federal elections. This is welcome news.

So here is why it is welcome news: During the 2024 election, Iowa's election official, Secretary of State Paul Pate, sought confirmation of citizenship status for 2,176 voters that, based on driver motor vehicle records, may have been noncitizens.

The Biden-Harris administration refused--yes, refused--to give Secretary Pate the information he needed to confirm whether these 2,176 voters were eligible to vote, which kind of proves that the previous administration was not interested in verifying citizenship for voting.

Now that the Trump administration has allowed Secretary Pate access to the SAVE Program, we know that 277 people from Iowa's 2024 voter registration list were noncitizens. In other words, potentially, 277 people could have voted if they wanted to, and I will tell you that some did.

While the Biden-Harris administration refused to verify the citizenship of these voters, 40 noncitizens attempted to vote in Iowa. Five of those attempts were caught before the ballots were counted, but 35 unlawful ballots were actually tallied.

Thanks to President Trump's Executive order concerning election integrity and the U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Service's needed upgrades to the SAVE system, other States can avoid the uncertainty that Iowa had in last year's election, and the voters in those States can have peace of mind that noncitizens won't be voting because when noncitizens vote, it reduces the value of every legal vote.

I would encourage these States to participate in this program. I want to thank the U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Service for their improvements to the SAVE Program, and I also want to thank Iowa's Secretary of State Paul Pate for his commitment to election integrity and the Trump administration for providing Iowa the information needed to confirm the citizenship of its voters.

I yield the floor.

Mr. President, there is real concern in rural America, particularly among family farmers. Farmers know that margins matter. Farmers don't want to see their revenue continue being eaten up by input suppliers.

So we need to do what we can to ensure that competition in seed and fertilizer industries is fair and that markets are transparent to our farmers. That is a very important consideration, at this very time, as the Trump administration and we Members of Congress look to provide aid to farmers.

This is a top concern that I hear from many family farmers. My farmers are concerned that Federal dollars meant to help the farmers will simply get passed on to seed and fertilizer companies.

That concern brings me to my legislation and bringing it to the attention of my fellow Senators. Passing the Fertilizer Research Act is the first step in addressing those concerns. I hope my colleagues on the Agriculture Committee will join me to provide transparency for farmers through this very important legislation that I am offering.

So please take a good look, a very hard look, at the Fertilizer Research Act.

I yield the floor.