Floor Statements

Mr. President, last week, I held 12 Q&As in 12 different counties during our Senate recess. Not in every county, but in some counties, a question like this comes up: What are you going to do about the national debt?

I usually say to the person asking the question: You could have asked me an easier question.

So I come to the floor to speak to an announcement that was made last week--an announcement that ought to scare all Americans but particularly those of us in the Congress of the United States--and it was not a surprise announcement. The United States recently eclipsed a fiscal milestone. At the end of March, the Nation's publicly held debt surpassed the value of all goods and services produced in our economy. Another way to say that is that our national debt as a percentage of our gross national product was more than 100 percent.

Outside of a momentary blip during the pandemic, the Nation hasn't exceeded this mark since 1946. Passing this threshold should be a wake- up call to Congress to get the Nation's fiscal house in order. In 1946, debt relative to the economy hit its peak and precipitously declined thereafter thanks to the end of World War II. Today, it is just the opposite. Our debt is expected to grow faster than the economy indefinitely, and it ought to be a wake-up call to all of us in the Congress of the United States. In fact, interest on the debt alone is costing American taxpayers $1 trillion annually, and within 10 years, interest costs will top $2 trillion a year.

The nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office that does this scoring reminds us with every budget update that this fiscal path is unsustainable.

Economist Herb Stein famously quipped:

If something cannot go on forever, it will stop.

Our debt cannot grow faster than the economy forever. It eventually will stop. The question is, When and how?

We have this choice as Members of Congress representing the people of this country that are very concerned about this situation: We can either work together today to gradually turn the corner or wait until there is a crisis where draconian austerity measures are forced upon us by the national creditors. For the good of the Nation, we must embrace the former option.

I yield the floor.

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

Mr. President, this is National Police Week--something we have been celebrating for decades. And you could sure tell it was National Police Week with the finely dressed in the best of uniforms of the police that were meeting people off the plane, lined up maybe three or four dozen at a time, greeting people as they came off the plane.

So I want to recognize just some of the police that we honor all week, and that is to recognize the hard-working men and women of the U.S. Capitol Police Force. Importantly, the Capitol Police protect the millions of people that visit the Nation's Capital each year for tours and for the official business they come to Washington to have with their representatives.

As the Senate President pro tempore, Barbara and I are fortunate to see the professionalism of the Capitol Police Force firsthand as the agents serve those of us in the Presidential line of succession.

Simply put, this historic body of Senators would not function without the watchful eye of law enforcement. Their service does not come without personal sacrifice, and we often don't thank them enough. So today, I recognize the Capitol Police for their efforts. We ought to carry out our commitment to back the blue every day, not just during Police Week.

I yield the floor.

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

Mr. President, I have two short messages.

Strong families build a strong society and a strong America. Along that thought, for the second year, I have led a bipartisan resolution in the Senate to recognize National Home Visiting Week.

Evidence-based home visiting programs--as an example, programs like the Federal Maternal, Infant, and Early Childhood Home Visiting Program--are examples of programs offering important services that support pregnant women, new moms, and entire families.

The positive outcomes that families demonstrate in areas like maternal, mental, and behavioral health issues illustrate just how important these services are.

Evidence-based home visiting programs also reduce child abuse, reduce neglect, and reduce family conflict. Targeted intervention of this kind is very important and key to preventing a family's involvement with the child welfare system, and that is a very noble goal that I have long worked to help families achieve.

Strengthening families and supporting parents as they raise the next generation is paramount. In many areas, my State leads. So I am proud to say that Iowa was one of the early adopters of home visiting programs, and it has proven successful--very successful--in our State.

In fact, an Iowan from Sioux City was named a ``2025 Home Visitor of the Year'' by the Institute for the Advancement of Family Support Professionals.

I would like to thank the home visitors and their supervisors, who provide evidence-based services that help families build a strong foundation.

Mr. President, my last point that I would like to make this morning is to take a minute to discuss what is going on in the other body. So I take a little while here now to thank Iowa Members of the House of Representatives--Congressman Feenstra, Congressman Nunn, and Congresswomen Hinson and Miller-Meeks--for their very good efforts, fighting for Iowa farmers during the farm bill negotiations in the House of Representatives; and part of that discussion involved the biofuel issue of E15.

E15 is a top priority for not only Iowans but for people generally in the Midwest, where we have abundant corn crops that make the ethanol that ends up being E15.

E15 will expand markets for farmers, help consumers at the pump, and, according to the economists for the Iowa Corn Growers, add $14 billion to an already hurting ag economy--and when I say ``already,'' already for the last 3 or 4 years.

Now, E15 is a no-brainer that is supported by President Trump. In fact, when President Trump visited Iowa in early March, he said he would like to have Congress present an E15 bill to him to sign.

So I hope the leadership of the House of Representatives keeps its word to get E15 a floor vote and do that in very short order.

In fact, I don't really know what all the problem is about E15, because by Presidential waiver, we have had E15 the last 2 years of Trump 1, 4 years of the Biden administration, and now 2 years in this Trump administration; and I have never heard any controversy about that.

Then, secondly, we have had the Governors of eight Midwestern States petition the EPA for E15 year-round and throughout all those eight States; and I have never heard any controversy about that.

But when we want to pass legislation that would avoid a Presidential waiver and allocate E15 in the other 42 States

that don't have it year-round, all of a sudden, it becomes quite a controversial issue, something I just don't understand.

I think it is the case that now we are having some legislation to bring certainty to the issue of E15, and it is going to make it possible for retailers to invest in the very expensive pumps that it takes to distribute E15, and that certainty is very necessary for that investment. But, all of a sudden, it becomes a very controversial issue, where it has not been a controversial issue by Presidential waiver or by those eight State Governors petitioning EPA to have it in those States.

It ought to be done now and help American agriculture and reduce the price of gasoline tremendously through E15.

Now, I hear from some States that don't have E15 that their people don't want it because it is going to raise the price of gasoline.

Come to Iowa. Come to other Midwestern States where we have E15 year- round, and you will find the gasoline that has ethanol with a 15- percent mixture cheaper than any other grade of gas that you can buy.

I yield the floor.

I suggest the absence of a quorum.

Mr. President, the illegal drug fentanyl kills tens of thousands every year. Today marks National Fentanyl Awareness Day. I want to thank the senior Senator from New Hampshire for her collaboration with me in recognizing this day and the dangers that come from fentanyl.

In recent years, we have become too familiar with fentanyl's dangers. Hundreds of thousands of Americans have lost their lives, with the number totaling tens of thousands each year. That is why I worked with Senator Cassidy of Louisiana in getting legislation that we entitled the HALT Fentanyl Act passed into law and signed by the President last year. So now fentanyl is permanently scheduled, and law enforcement has more tools to remove the dangerous drugs from Americans' streets.

I want to commend President Trump and the Department of Justice for using those tools. Under President Trump's leadership, fentanyl seizures continue to reach record highs, and countless Americans are safer as a result.

I also want to thank law enforcement for their tireless efforts to keep Americans safe and their daily choice to protect all of us from dangerous drugs like fentanyl.

Now, there is another recent problem that has come up with fentanyl being mixed with another dangerous drug, xylazine. As chairman of the Judiciary Committee, I am committing to continue to combat dangerous drugs mixed with fentanyl. Again, xylazine is an example.

Under my leadership, our committee recently reported an important, as well as bipartisan, bill that would do just that. I will continue to push for passage of that legislation to stop the xylazine and fentanyl mixture.

Today, though, I join many in raising awareness concerning fentanyl's impact and in expressing my solidarity with those affected by this poison.

I yield the floor.

I suggest the absence of a quorum.

Mr. President, 2026 is an opportunity to talk about the centennial progress in American agriculture and a famous Iowa family that was involved in that.

Before I give my remarks on that centennial, I would like to give a little history of the Wallace family of Iowa--three generations.

Grandfather Henry Wallace, I don't have a lot of history on, but Henry C. Wallace, his son, was President Harding's Secretary of Agriculture, from 1921 until Henry's death in 1924. And then Henry C. Wallace had a son, Henry A. Wallace, who was Secretary of Agriculture and Secretary of Commerce from 1933 to 1941, under Franklin Roosevelt's first two terms.

Unlike his father, who was presumably a Republican under President Harding, Henry A. Wallace was obviously a Democrat to serve in Franklin Roosevelt's Cabinet, and then he went on to be a Vice President during Franklin Roosevelt's third term.

In 1948, this same Henry A. Wallace was the Progressive Party's candidate for President of the United States, a time when Harry Truman was reelected President of the generation.

So that is kind of the politics of the people I am talking about, but I am talking about their role in American agriculture and what it has meant for the production of corn today in the United States.

So we celebrate the work of an Iowan who pioneered new frontiers in American agriculture. That pioneer was Henry A. Wallace.

Like many farm kids, Henry grew up with soil, the very soul of Iowa running through his veins. Henry's dad and grandfather--both named, as I said, Henry--cofounded a publication called ``Wallaces Farmer,'' a trusted farm journal for farmers across the Midwest.

Exactly 100 years ago, on April 20, 1926, Henry's hybrid seed corn business was incorporated. At that time, Iowan corn farmers planted seeds that they saved from the previous year, called open-pollinated corn. Yields were about 20 bushels per acre, from one year to the next, year after year.

In fact, history tells us that the production of corn in the United States is about 25 bushel per acre, from the Civil War until the 1930s. That is when Wallace researched and made great progress in increasing yields.

So Henry A. Wallace, the famous Secretary of Agriculture and Vice President of the United States, revolutionized corn yields by crossing open-pollinated corn varieties. Together with an Iowa State University professor, he developed the Iowa Corn Yield Test. In 1924, Henry A. Wallace won the contest with a hybrid called Copper Cross.

Like many American innovators, Henry had an idea and put that idea to work to accomplish his goals. His efforts would transform production agriculture, but, first, Henry needed markets for his new research and his product that resulted from that research.

So using famous Iowa ingenuity, he cultivated trust with his customers. Those customers, of course, were the family farmers of that day. He adopted a farmer-to-farmer sales model.

In 1935, Henry renamed Hi-Bred Corn Company to the name of Pioneer, and Pioneer is still a famous name for farmers in Iowa. And that company was the Pioneer Seed Corn Company until recently. A company named Corteva took it over.

So, Iowa, of course, is known as the ``Tall Corn State,'' thanks in large part to the adoption of hybrid corn. Henry A. Wallace helped corn farmers go from 20 bushels of corn per acre to now the average being over 200 bushels of corn per acre.

And we have some people, in contests over the United States, that on 5-acre plots they do a lot of extra things to

accomplish it and have even produced corn yielding 350 bushels of corn per acre. And I don't know if that is going to be something that is going to be common, 20 years from now or maybe even 10 years from now, but we sure have made great progress.

When I started farming, in 1960, when my dad died, I was probably producing about 50 bushels of corn per acre. More recently, we have reached the 200-bushel level.

I yield the floor.

I suggest the absence of a quorum.

Mr. President, I often come to the floor to talk about milestones in the history of this institution, the U.S. Senate. Today, I pay tribute to a member of our Senate family who has devoted half a century of service to this institution.

In 1976, Mario D'Angelo was hired by the Senate Sergeant at Arms to manage all barbershops in the U.S. Capitol, including the Senate barbershop. As manager, he supervised a remodel of what was then called the ``Senators only'' barbershop, before it closed in 1981. I think, today, we wonder: Why would they ever have a ``Senators only'' barbershop? So, finally, Senators had to sit with every other client to get a haircut.

Prior to his job in the U.S. Senate, Mario worked briefly on the House side, helping prepare mail and other documents for distribution.

Now, Mario was born in Italy. You might say he was born with a pair of silver scissors in his hand. His dad Domenico was also a barber.

Mario came to America at the age of 12. Eventually, he followed in his father's footsteps. For nearly a decade, Mario worked as a barber with his dad and uncle, before his employment here on U.S. Capitol Hill.

At some point in the 1990s, the Senate barbershop merged with the women's beauty shop, located in the basement of the Russell Senate Office Building. To this day, Senate Hair Care serves lawmakers, employees, and residents here on Capitol Hill.

I have been a regular customer of Mario's for many, many years. With my busy schedule in Washington and traveling back and forth to Iowa when the Senate is not in session, I am grateful to be able to get a quick haircut. I don't like to waste time like, hopefully, my fellow Senators don't want to. And when I sit down in Mario's barbershop, I know I can count on quick, competent service, delivered with professionalism and precision.

Some Americans think Congress gets free haircuts. I can assure you that is not the case. I hope the Iowans that come to my town meetings and ask me a question, from time to time--they get this question off the internet: How come you Senators don't pay Social Security taxes? And how come you get free haircuts?

I have been telling them for 45 years that has never been the case, but they still tend to believe what they read on the internet.

So, finally, I am here to, once again, congratulate Mario on 50 years of service here in the U.S. Senate. I consider Mario a friend. I have no doubt that his work ethic carries on through his sons Michael and Nicholas and four grandchildren: Alexander, Isabella, Gabriel, and Lio.

I yield the floor.

I suggest the absence of a quorum.

Mr. President, the SAVE America Act has been a discussion for quite a few days on the floor of the U.S. Senate, and I would like to give my update on that. I have already spoken once on the subject. But before I speak, I would like to ask unanimous consent to have printed in the Record after my speech some of the remarks that my constituents have been sending to my office on this issue so that they have direct quotations from letters backing up what I am saying here on the Senate floor today.

Mr. President, as I said, I am a cosponsor of the SAVE America Act. This SAVE America Act ensures only U.S. citizens are registered to vote in Federal elections, and it also requires voter ID when voting. Now, that is pretty simple. It is so simple that 85 percent of Americans generally support those principles of voter ID and only citizens voting. Even 71 percent of the Democrats in polls also support that.

Now, what I have inserted in the Record is what I have heard from some Iowa constituents who would say that while election integrity is important, noncitizen voting is not an issue. Some of my constituents even accept that noncitizen voting happens, but at the same time, they say it is not that often, so we should just ignore it.

That is not how the rule of law works, and we all take an oath to uphold the rule of law. And I will bet every one of our constituents say the rule of law is a principle applying in America and it should be fully supported.

It is a fact that nobody's vote should be diluted by people voting who are not eligible to vote and that voter fraud should not be ignored, no matter the scale.

I want to share some recent examples of noncitizens registering to vote and voting in elections. The first one is the State of Montana. In a State where elections have been decided by only a handful of votes, 23 potential noncitizens cast nearly 150 votes in various elections.

Then let's go to the State of Ohio. In 2024, Ohio found 597 noncitizens registered to vote--138 of whom voted in recent elections-- that lacked citizenship status.

Then in Texas--Texas removed over 6,500 noncitizens from their voter rolls between the years 2020 and 2024. That is a larger population than some small Iowa towns.

Then let's go to New Jersey. In January, two people in New Jersey were charged with illegal voting in the 2020 elections. This is in addition to other foreign nationals charged last year for registering to vote and voting in Florida and Massachusetts.

My home State of Iowa takes pride in civic participation and election integrity. Even so, in my State, our secretary of state found 277 noncitizens registered to vote and 35 who actually cast ballots in 2024.

Maybe you would say this doesn't really matter because most people win by thousands or at least hundreds of votes, but I want to give you an example in Iowa where we had a very close election and just a handful of people not registered legally to vote--either they were noncitizens or they weren't the people that said they were going to vote. So we know elections can be decided by just a handful of votes. Iowa experienced that firsthand in 2020 when one of our congressional seats was decided by six votes. That is Miller-Meeks, presently a Congresswoman from southeast Iowa. So we have that election demonstrating how every single vote matters and why only legally cast ballots ought to be counted.

Citizen participation is a sacred cornerstone of representative government. The SAVE America Act gives Americans absolute confidence that their elected representatives won fair and square, by the people who are legally eligible to vote.

I yield the floor.

I suggest the absence of a quorum.

Mr. President, I am here to honor a fellow Iowan, a person that I know very well--not necessarily because I talk to them often. So I want to celebrate an Iowan's advocacy to prevent cancer.

Athena Porter, from Leon, IA, is a proud graduate of my university, the University of Northern Iowa, and she also served on my staff for a considerable amount of time. She has now been working for a long time in the rural health clinic there in Leon, IA. She is also a community leader.

In 2023, she was diagnosed with cervical cancer. Unlike most cancers, cervical cancer can be prevented by taking an HPV vaccine. Through proactive preventive care, Athena found out in her twenties that she was HPV positive, making her at risk for cervical cancer. In partnership with her doctors, Athena routinely checked on the status of the virus in her body. After giving birth to her second child, Athena found out news you never want to hear: that she had cervical cancer. Thanks to early detection, Athena was able to get care to eliminate the cancer.

Today, as a result of her bout with cancer, Athena is an advocate for vaccine use, early screening, and proper treatment--all because she appreciates being a cervical cancer survivor.

So I want to thank Athena for publicly sharing her story. Also, let her experience be an encouragement for others to get early care--and get early care as often as you can.

I yield the floor.

I suggest the absence of a quorum.

I have two items I would like to discuss. During the Easter break when the Senate was not in session, I was holding in Iowa Q&A's in 25 of our 99 counties. My annual practice allows me to hear directly from the grassroots. At my meetings, Iowans set the agenda. No issue is off limits.

I had a chance to hear from the Rural Health Transformation Fund--how it is working out for our hospitals and helping our communities. For example, in Pella, IA, they are using the Federal dollars to invest in a PET scan machine and an oncology nurse.

Then I also had the working families tax cuts coming up and how that is making a difference in rural America.

I also heard from farm families and rural bankers about the high costs of impacting farmers' bottom line.

To relieve some pressure on this farming situation in the Midwest and, of course, my State of Iowa, I am calling on President Trump to use his emergency powers to suspend the countervailing duties on phosphate fertilizers. I also appreciate the President's recent tweet in regard to his concern about high fertilizer costs for farmers, so I am suggesting one way to him of how he could fix that.

I have long been beating the drum on another issue affecting our family farmers, and that is for the nationwide, year-round E15. There has never been a more important time to infuse markets with $14 billion to boost the farm economy. That $14 billion is not my figure. It comes from the economists for the Iowa corn growers.

Finally, at these 25 county Q&A's I held, Iowans told me they are sick and tired of government shutdowns. As a cosponsor of the Prevent Government Shutdowns Act, I hope that we will consider that it costs money to shut the government down, and it costs money to reopen government. We ought to applaud Senator Lankford on his legislation for a continuing resolution that he has been trying to push Congress to adopt for maybe the last 5 or 6 years. There is no better time to use an example of the need for Senator Lankford's legislation than the fact that we had a 43-day, all-government shutdown last year, and this year we have already, for the Department of Homeland Security, had a 45- or 46-day shutdown so far. Senator Lankford has the best idea that that will never happen again in our government--any shutdown.

Congress' failure to fund the government shouldn't be penalizing the hard-working men and women of this country.

At my 99 county meetings, I promise to bring Iowans' views back to the policymaking tables, and I intend to roll up my sleeves and keep working on behalf of Iowans.

FISA Section 702 Reauthorization

Now, on another subject--and more critical because of timing--deals with FISA Section 702 reauthorization. In 5 short days, Section 702 of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act--FISA for short--is set to expire.

Section 702 is an essential national security tool. That law is responsible for over 60 percent of the intelligence in the President's daily brief. Section 702 enables our intelligence and law enforcement community to thwart attacks before they occur. It is, as I see it, a preventative national defense-national security issue.

Section 702 has saved countless lives in the United States and even abroad. It gives our military a strategic edge, allows us to hunt down foreign terrorists and rescue hostages, and helps us defend critical infrastructure from cyber attacks.

More recently, Section 702 has enabled more than 90 percent of CIA- driven synthetic drug disruptions abroad and prevented a mass casualty terrorist attack at a Taylor Swift concert overseas.

So there is no doubt that this is a powerful, critical tool to protect Americans. But there is also no doubt that powerful tools like this require strong oversight and accountability.

I have put a lot of attention into the fact of congressional oversight as it applies to Section 702. I have and will continue to demand transparency. I will faithfully make sure that we execute in Congress its duty to encourage oversight, but we must balance our oversight responsibilities with our responsibility to protect our country and our countrymen. I refuse to incapacitate our intelligence community at a time of conflict and when threats to our national security and prosperity continue to multiply.

Two years ago, the Reforming Intelligence and Securing America Act-- RISAA for short--added critical and successful reform to section 702 in response to some abuse and overreach. I have been monitoring the implementation of these reforms for 2 years, and so I want to discuss with you some of my concerns.

One important RISAA reform was a provision that grants access to select Members of Congress to attend and conduct oversight of ``any proceeding of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court.'' This ensures that these hearings, which necessarily occur in secret because of national security, are subject to congressional oversight in a secure way. That was intended in our legislation.

But at the end of the Biden administration, the Justice Department imposed a set of unlawful restrictions on congressional access to these proceedings. Among other things, the rules DOJ imposed allowed the Justice Department to kick Members out of the courtroom at will, also prohibiting them from even taking notes and even prohibiting them from requesting information or sharing what they learned with their colleagues. And from my standpoint of emphasis upon oversight and following the law, this was an untenable position and situation and, of course, contrary to the compromise that was worked out during the last reauthorizations 2 years ago.

I have been fighting to fix this issue for months. I even wrote a letter to Attorney General Bondi with my Democratic colleague Senator Durbin, demanding change. We both recognize that transparency and congressional oversight is not a Republican or Democrat responsibility or issue, but it is rather a separation of powers issue--something that you learn in eighth grade civics or high school government classes-- that we call checks and balances. Around here, we don't use that term. We use the term of ``oversight.'' In other words, Congress passes laws that appropriates money, and we have a responsibility after we do that to make sure that the executive branch faithfully executes these laws.

So today, I am happy to say that this issue has now been resolved, and an important transparency and accountability tool has been returned to the Congress. So I am really grateful to the Trump administration and the Department of Justice for revising and repairing the misguided and noncompliant procedures that were written in the previous administration. This new Department of Justice policy restores the intent of RISAA and the constitutional separation of powers to its proper boundaries with Congress as a coequal branch.

Additionally, because of my oversight, the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court is working to create overflow space to ensure that all eligible Members and their staff will be able to attend proceedings and thus exercise their oversight authority.

I have no reason to understand how the Department of Justice under Biden thought they could get away with violating this responsibility that the compromise gave us to exercise our oversight responsibility. But that is the way it worked out, and now we have that corrected.

So now that DOJ has made this right, the reforms from the last reauthorization are in full effect. In the last public audit, the FBI achieved a 99-percent compliance rate with the U.S. persons queries, which have also decreased sharply overall in recent years.

The reforms that we imposed in RISAA are working. If it expires, so do its civil liberties protections and many of the oversight mechanisms.

The Privacy and Civil Liberties Oversight Board recently reported that section 702 targeting and querying compliance remains at nearly 100 percent throughout the intelligence community. FISA, including section 702, remains subject to intense Agency, judicial, and congressional oversight and

scrutiny. So if section 702 expires, so do its civil liberties protections.

I have spent my career in the Senate holding the government accountable. I will never stop asking questions or abandon my oversight duties. That doesn't mean that we should blind ourselves and gamble with the safety of our communities. So with these oversight reforms fulfilling the intent of the previous reauthorization, I will support this year's reauthorization. Let's reauthorize 702 before it expires.

I yield the floor.

Mr. President, I want to make some remarks about Iran. I do it in light of the fact that diplomacy ought to be used before war, and I am well aware of the hard work of our Vice President and other people on his team in Pakistan last week--working almost 24 hours--to reach an agreement. It was not reached. Some reports late last night and early this morning indicate that maybe Iran is willing to sit down and talk again, so in light of that and what we know and what we hope happens, I make these remarks.

On February 28, 2026, the United States began combat operations in Iran--action taken to protect U.S. Americans by preventing Iran from ever having a nuclear weapon. That is not only to protect the United States, but that weapon could be used anyplace on this globe, and we don't want that to happen. But the most important thing is the President, as Commander in Chief, is exercising his responsibilities, and the No. 1 responsibility that he has and our Nation has is to protect the American people.

Now, these operations have demonstrated the unmatched strength, precision, and professionalism of the U.S. military. America is very fortunate to have the strongest military in the world, capable of not only projecting power but of doing so with discipline, coordination, and a clear sense of mission.

I want to express my gratitude and pride in the men and women in uniform who are carrying out this mission and to let the families of SGT Declan Coady, a young man from West Des Moines, and MAJ Jeffrey O'Brien, a man from Indianola, IA--who both paid the ultimate price to protect us--know that we think about their families at this time. But it also is a reminder--these men who lost their lives as well as people who are still fighting--that the courage, skill, and commitment to protecting our Nation reflect the very best of our men and women in uniform.

What we have known for a long period of time is that Iran has used their money to finance terrorism around the world and even in the United States, as has been demonstrated by three or four actions since the war happened. They are the No. 1 supporter of terrorism financially, and they use their missiles to blackmail that part of the globe. But what we have learned is they have more capability than just effecting blackmail in the Middle East because we have learned that they have longer range missiles that could reach Berlin, Paris, and London. And when is the next step that those missiles could reach the United States?

So under the leadership of President Trump, the United States is taking decisive action to provide safety and certainty for the American people. More than 85 percent of Iran's defense industrial base has been destroyed, 150 warships have been destroyed, and 70 percent of Iran's facilities and ground control stations have been destroyed or degraded. In total, over 13,000 targets have been struck, and over 1,000 attack drones and 700 ballistic missiles have been intercepted.

Preventing war through diplomacy is very important, but when diplomacy doesn't work, we have seen in this instance that, in total, over 13,000 targets have been struck and over 1,000 attack drones and 700 ballistic missiles have been intercepted.

Preventing Iran from ever acquiring a nuclear weapon isn't just a policy objective; it is a national security priority. I am encouraged that military

operations have been successful in advancing this goal and that Iran has now agreed to a cease-fire as this administration continues to negotiate a broader peace agreement.

This success sends a clear signal: The United States will act when its security is at stake, and we will do so with strength and with resolve. The progress made so far underscores both the capability of our military and the importance of sustained leadership by President Trump as our Commander in Chief. I stand firmly behind our servicemembers and remain committed to ensuring that Iran never poses a nuclear threat to the United States.

I yield the floor.

I suggest the absence of a quorum.

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

Mr. President, for several Congresses, I and others in this body have been trying to bring attention to Swiss banks trying to hide assets that they accumulated during World War II and joining my colleagues in efforts to make sure that justice is done for the wealth and other private property that was taken from Jewish people who died in the Holocaust. So once again, I am back to give a report and an update on that effort.

In February of this year, I chaired a bipartisan hearing on my ongoing Credit Suisse Nazi accounts investigation. That hearing was supposed to, in part, highlight the collaborative and cooperative work of the bank UBS, which bought Credit Suisse, along with Neil Barofsky, the Simon Wiesenthal Center, and the Senate Judiciary Committee, and what we had achieved up to that point.

UBS had committed to fully exposing the wrongs committed by Credit Suisse. After all, the information about Nazi evils belongs to humanity. But when UBS was informed that my committee may potentially hold a hearing, the previous cooperation that we got from UBS was scaled back.

Mr. Barofsky testified this to the committee:

Shortly after I told UBS that this committee was

considering holding this hearing, UBS informed me that it

would for the first time conduct a privileged review and

withhold certain relevant privileged material from me and my

team.

This is from Mr. Barofsky, the chief investigator of the information that we are trying to get from UBS.

According to Mr. Barofsky, UBS leadership provided misleading information to the committee even after being warned that they were misleading the Judiciary Committee.

For example, at the hearing, UBS testified that it had withheld fewer than 150 documents from Mr. Barofsky.

But Mr. Barofsky said his team emailed UBS before our hearing, ``expressing concern that using the word `document' was misleading.''

Mr. Barofsky said, in this instance, the word ``document'' actually meant ``hundreds or even thousands of pages of many different documents together.''

Following the hearing, Mr. Barofsky told the committee that he urged UBS to ``correct any misimpression it may have made upon the Committee when it referenced the number of withheld and redacted documents as being only 150.'' And according to Barofsky, these documents are ``relevant to the question of whether a Nazi had an account or didn't have an account with Credit Suisse.''

To date, UBS hasn't provided a true account of the amount of pages at issue. However, Mr. Barofsky informed the committee that, as of March 11, 2026, approximately 23,000 pages of materials had been redacted or withheld from him.

UBS also took legal action against the Simon Wiesenthal Center. Last week, thank God, a Federal court in New York issued a ruling against UBS's efforts. However, if the bank were successful in that court case, it could have blocked the Simon Wiesenthal Center from fully speaking on all Holocaust issues--very much a violation of First Amendment rights of freedom of speech.

Following the committee hearing, UBS failed to fully and completely respond to all questions for the record submitted by members of the Judiciary Committee.

Now, I am going to talk about a Mr. Karofsky, different than Mr. Barofsky. Mr. Karofsky is president of UBS Americas. He literally failed to answer any questions posed directly to him. His disrespect for the committee is noted.

So be on notice, Mr. Karofsky.

So I kept the hearing record open, and this week, I have sent additional questions for the record to the bank, UBS, and to others. Mr. Barofsky, as opposed to Mr. Karofsky, has since provided supplemental responses.

He has informed the committee that UBS has refused to investigate credible leads on Nazis and their facilitators, looting of Jewish assets, and facilitation of ratlines. He has also told the committee that UBS has imposed an arbitrary July 31, 2026, deadline for completing this investigative work.

Certainly, as I am an investigator, I understand timelines and deadlines. But I also know that you can't enforce deadlines at the expense of quality of the investigation.

UBS has taken the position that it, in and of itself, will decide what they are going to do to cooperate after the current investigation concludes, whether to investigate remaining leads.

Now, this Senator was born at night, but not last night. UBS needs to quit playing games and get the job done right away. UBS has spent millions of dollars on investigative work. Why not investigate these Nazi evils right now? What are they trying to hide? UBS's current position will unnecessarily create a cloud of doubt over the final report of investigation.

As I said in March, I plan to call a followup hearing before the end of this year. My goal is that this hearing will bring closure to the investigation in a way that brings justice to the Jewish community and the victims of the Holocaust.

UBS's conduct is interfering with that ultimate goal. And given their recent national chartered bank approval by the U.S. Government, UBS has a heightened responsibility to be fully forthcoming on this matter.

I urge them to get back on the right side, where they once were, because it looked like we had very faithful and dedicated communication by the bank to our investigation. And why all this impeding of further investigation, I don't understand.

I encourage Mr. Barofsky and the Simon Wiesenthal Center to keep my investigative team updated on all ongoing matters, whether it is good or whether it is bad. This Senator's efforts to expose Nazi evils will not stop.

I yield the floor.

Mr. President, as I traveled Iowa during this Easter recess, holding Q&A's in 25 counties, I ran into what I think all my colleagues do: concern about inflation.

We have to remember that inflation let loose by the reckless spending policies of the Biden administration has been proven to be anything but transitory. And that word ``transitory'' we heard so much during the previous administration.

Remember, it shot up to 9 percent. It is still not low enough. Inflation endures to this day, acting as a hidden tax on working-class Americans.

While inflation is well down from the 40-year high that we knew throughout history, that is of little comfort to working families struggling to make ends meet. In the first 6 months of this new administration, the Republican-led Congress acted early to shield Americans battling rising prices from the additional burden of a record tax hike that would have happened if we had not intervened.

The Working Families Tax Cut Act prevented the largest tax increase in our Nation's history. It also included additional working-class tax cuts. As a result, for working men and women, the average tax refund is up 11 percent over last year. Moreover, thanks to no tax on tips and overtime, workers keep more of their hard-earned dollars with each paycheck as the taxman takes less. This means Americans have more money in their pockets to provide for their families.

Still, much work remains to be done, and with other colleagues, we are addressing the rising cost of living. We are all working to lower costs on healthcare, food, gasoline, and housing, to name a few.

Congress recently passed reforms to rein in powerful drug middlemen called pharmacy benefit managers, or PBMs for short. This will lower drug costs. Now, more needs to be done in the area of getting prescription drug costs down, but what we did about a month ago with PBMs, through more transparency, should lead to lower drug costs. But out of the bills I have introduced, there are still several more provisions dealing with pharmacy benefit managers that we need to pass.

I am also working to increase access to more affordable health insurance plans, increase competition and access to cheaper drugs, and establish healthcare price transparency, which works very well for consumers that want to look to the marketplace. There is a wide variety of prices for a lot of operations and a lot of other healthcare costs. If people would compare prices, it would save a lot of money.

Another area of focus for me is the cost of groceries. We can lower food costs by supporting American agriculture and passing a farm bill. Farmers have been hit by a sharp rise in costs to their inputs, which eventually the consumer pays for. Reducing these costs through transparency and competition on inputs, such as fertilizer, would also help ease food prices. In this area, I was happy to read that, finally, the Department of Justice is looking at anti-competition in agriculture, particularly in fertilizer and seed companies generally, not just seed corn.

A top priority of mine is enacting year-round E15 legislation. This policy

would deliver lower prices at the gas pump and boost the farm economy. Anybody who believes that E15 won't reduce prices ought to check prices at the pumps in the eight States of the Midwest that have already received permission from the EPA for E15 year-round in those eight States. What we need to do is make sure it is, by law, year-round--E15 year-round--and nationwide.

At the top of the list of expenses for most families is housing. It used to be that the average first-time homeowner was 30 years old. Today, he or she is 41 years old. We have to get housing costs down for first-time homeowners.

The Senate has passed the 21st Century ROAD to Housing legislation. This should increase the supply of affordable housing by cutting redtape and unlocking private capital.

Last but not least, affordability requires fiscal sanity. Fiscal recklessness by the Biden administration caused inflation, and fiscal restraint is the ultimate antidote. Last year's reconciliation bill took a step in the right direction by trimming $1 trillion in mandatory spending. Yet uncommonly high deficits and mounting debt continue to fuel inflation and put upward pressure on interest rates. To finally stamp out inflation, Congress must recommit to sound budgeting.

I yield the floor.

I suggest the absence of a quorum.

Mr. President, you remember the tragic loss of life, about 3,000 Americans, as a result of the attack we had in New York and Washington, DC, on 9/11. One of the conclusions we came to afterward of how drastic things like that can happen in America is that there wasn't cooperation and communication between the FBI and the CIA. In fact, it was prohibited by law. Now, that has changed; so there is supposed to be that communication going on between the dual Agencies so 9/11 never happens again.

I am here to talk about a couple of other Agencies that need to cooperate to make sure that the policy of our Federal Government is carried out properly.

So, last December, I spoke about one of my long-running oversight projects. That oversight project is ensuring maximum coordination between the Department of Health and Human Services Agency entitled Office of National Security, or ONS for short, and the intelligence community. By coordination, at the very least we ought to have dialogue and cooperation.

Part of ONS's responsibility is to protect against foreign threats that undermine tax-funded search. Now, to be effective, ONS must collaborate closely with national security partners.

So as part of my oversight, I wrote to HHS Secretary Kennedy and Director of National Intelligence Gabbard to learn about their recent efforts to ensure robust information sharing and that it is done in an effective way.

Last week, my investigate staff hosted a classified briefing with both ONS and the intelligence community staff. I am told that the meeting was very productive, that both parties have a like-minded approach to information sharing, and that improvements have been made.

I have also been told that more can be done to enhance information- sharing capabilities between ONS and the intelligence community.

So, today, I urge the administration to make that cooperation and coordination and information-sharing to be enhanced. Doing so will further help detect and deter adversaries trying to take advantage of American research and innovation.

I yield the floor.

I suggest the absence of a quorum.