Floor Statements

Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that when the Senate completes its business today, it stand adjourned until 10 a.m. on Thursday, July 23; that following the prayer and pledge, the Journal of proceedings be approved to date, the morning hour be deemed expired, the time for the two leaders be reserved for their use later in the day, and the Senate be in a period of morning business, with Senators permitted to speak therein for up to 10 minutes each; further, that if Senator Van Hollen or his designee makes a motion to discharge S.J. Res. 180 from the Foreign Relations Committee, the Senate vote on the motion to discharge at 11:30 a.m.; further, that at 1:45 p.m., the Senate execute the order of Tuesday, July 21, with respect to the Pozos nomination; finally, that if any nominations are confirmed during tomorrow's session of the Senate, the motions to reconsider be considered made and laid upon the table, and the President be immediately notified of the Senate's action.

Mr. President, if there is no further business to come before the Senate, I ask that it stand adjourned under the previous order, following the remarks of my Democratic colleagues.

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 President, I ask unanimous consent that the order for the quorum call be rescinded.

Mr. President, I rise today to talk about a bill that, at its core, asks for something almost embarrassingly simple: That the person registering to vote in an American election is actually an American citizen and that the person showing up to cast the ballot is actually who they say they are.

The SAVE Act does not reinvent our elections. It does not add redtape for the sake of redtape. It asks for documentary proof of citizenship at registration and identification at the ballot box--the same basic verification we already accept without complaint when we board an airplane, open a bank account, or pick up a prescription.

If we trust that system to protect a checking account, we should trust it enough to protect the vote. That is not extremism. That is common sense, and it is long past time this Chamber treated it that way.

This past Saturday, I was riding in the Cheyenne Frontier Days parade alongside Senator Barrasso. Cheyenne is my hometown. It is the world's largest outdoor rodeo. And we have great parades--four of them--during the course of the week of the world's largest outdoor rodeo. It is an exceptional tradition in my hometown.

Senator Barrasso and I are riding along the parade route, the same parade route Wyoming has watched for generations. And as we came down the street, I could hear it from my constituents over and over: Pass the SAVE Act, Senator. Pass the SAVE Act. Not once. Not from just one corner of the crowd, all along the parade route. That is not a talking point; that just happened last weekend. That is the people of Wyoming telling us what they want.

So, I came home from that parade wondering if Wyoming was maybe a little ahead of the country on this.

It turns out, Wyoming is right where the country already is. And it turns out these constituents aren't just in line with the people of Wyoming; they are in line with the country.

A Gallup poll found 84 percent of U.S. adults favor requiring photo identification to vote. In that same poll, 83 percent--just one less-- support requiring proof of citizenship for new voter registrants. Mr. President, 83 percent. That includes 71 percent of self-identified Democrats and an overwhelming majority of Independents. In this town, we can't get 83 percent of anybody to agree on the weather.

This is not controversial outside the walls of this building. It has simply become controversial inside them.

Would we expect to go to Mexico or Canada and walk into an election booth and have them let us vote in their elections without an ID, without proving we're a Canadian citizen or a Mexican citizen? They would have nothing to do with the process that allowed a U.S. citizen to vote without identification in their elections. No country would.

So is the opposition to this bill just another symptom of Trump derangement syndrome, where any policy this administration touches becomes reflexively toxic the moment it reaches this floor? Or do my colleagues across the aisle actually believe it is bad policy for only American citizens to decide American elections? Because, really, those are--as near as I can tell--the only two explanations on offer.

The same is true of protecting girls' and women's sports. Gallup has found 69 percent of Americans believe athletes should compete on teams that match their biological sex. I am surprised it is not a higher number, but it is 69 percent. This is not a fringe position. It is the plainly stated view of most people in this country, arrived at through a basic, widely shared sense of fairness: That girls who train and compete deserve a level playing field where they can compete safely. They don't have to worry about a man who identifies as a woman or as a transperson spiking a volleyball so hard that it does brain damage and causes concussions and lifelong injury to a young high school athlete. We owe that to our female athletes.

Wyoming didn't send me here to just spew political jargon, to play politics, because these things are simple; they are timeless; they are understood values. We can't bend and shape thousands of years of common sense with new, woke ideology. Wyoming sent me here to conduct myself in a manner that reflects their common sense, their values.

So it is time to send the SAVE Act to President Trump's desk. I heard that on the parade route in Cheyenne, WY, last weekend, and I hear it on this floor. We need to pass the SAVE Act.

I yield the floor.

Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the previously scheduled recess begin immediately.

Mr. President, I have three requests for committees to meet during today's session of the Senate. They have the approval of the Majority and Minority Leaders.

Pursuant to rule XXVI, paragraph 5(a), of the Standing Rules of the Senate, the following committees are authorized to meet during today's session of the Senate:

Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent for the following interns in my office to be granted floor privileges until July 22, 2026: Petra Cernicek, Spencer Killpack, Elise Newton, Megan Terrell, Aaron Bujan, and Isabel Young.

Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent to waive the mandatory quorum call with respect to the Flowers nomination.

Mr. President, I rise today to talk about the basic duty we all took an oath to carry out--and whether we are living up to it.

The U.S. Senate was never designed to be easy. It was designed to be deliberate, to force people who disagree to sit in the same room and work something out anyway. That only works if everyone here still believes in the underlying premise that we were sent to govern no matter who is the President. The goal is not to defeat the other side for its own sake but to do the hard, unglamourous work of running this country together, in good faith, even when we would rather not.

Americans did not send Republicans and Democrats to Washington expecting us to agree on everything. In fact, my constituents would be very concerned if we did. They sent us here expecting us to take the job seriously. That means engaging with the substance in front of us, debating it, amending it, fighting for it on the merits, rather than reflexively blocking whatever comes to the floor simply because of who sits in the White House.

Last week, this Chamber fell short. There is a real difference between principled opposition and blind obstruction, and the American people can tell which one they are watching. Opposing a policy because you believe it is wrong for the country is exactly what this institution is built for. Opposing something simply because you dislike the President and you are trying to jam him when there is international conflict is something else entirely, and it corrodes the very system we are sworn to protect.

I was very troubled to watch every Senate Democrat vote against even beginning the debate on the National Defense Authorization Act, a bill that has, historically, enjoyed strong bipartisan backing.

Now, I am not suggesting Members can't or shouldn't oppose the NDAA when they have genuine concerns; that is a legitimate part of the process. Voting no is often the easy move around here, and I have done it myself when I thought it was warranted. But this looked less like principled opposition and more like reflexive obstruction, a decision to block the process itself rather than engage with the substance of an important bill.

I also think of the SAVE America Act when I say this because it is a case in point. Here is a bill built around a premise that 83 percent of the American people--Democrats, Republicans, and Independents alike-- already agree on, that only citizens should decide American elections and that voters should be able to prove who they are when they cast a ballot. This is not fringe. This is not one party's obsession. It is about as close to consensus as the American people get on anything these days.

And yet it cannot get a real hearing on the merits in this Chamber-- not a real debate, just a wall. That is not principled opposition. That is the process itself being blocked on a question the country has largely answered.

Good faith is not a partisan virtue. It doesn't belong to one side of the aisle or the other. It is the minimum the American people are owed by everyone who serves here. They are watching to see whether we can still disagree honestly, argue our positions openly and persuasively, and still find a way to get the Nation's business done. When we can't, when the obstruction becomes the default setting instead of the exception, we are not defending the Constitution. We are quietly letting it fail.

We are stewards of something bigger than any one bill or any one election cycle. We are stewards of a system that only survives if the people who serve in it still believe in doing the work, in doing the right thing, in doing what the Constitution outlines is our duty to the American people. That is what Americans expect of us. It is time we start living up to it every single day, not just when it is politically convenient.

I yield the floor.

(Mr. ROUNDS assumed the chair.)

Reserving the right to object, I will be completely unaffected by the bill the gentleman from Georgia is proposing because I won't be here next year, but I reserve the right to object because there are alternatives.

For example, when I arrived here, I was placed on the Banking Committee, and the Banking Committee has issues that might conflict with my financial assets. So I put my meager--stress on ``meager''-- assets in a blind trust. That blind trust was approved by the Senate Ethics Committee. The specific language was approved by our own Senate Ethics Committee.

I don't know whether the investments that I placed in that blind trust are still there. I don't know whether they sold some and traded them for better investments. I won't find out until next January when I leave here and get my assets out of the blind trust and see what is left.

In other words, there are ways to avoid conflicts of interest in the committees on which we work.

There are also many restrictions on what Members of Congress can do and not do while they are in office. For example, as a rancher in the West, half of my State is public land. I am not allowed by law to have a Bureau of Land Management grazing lease. It is an issue that very few people in the Senate have to deal with, but several of us do, and so we had to divest of that

while no one else has a similar restriction.

Our Ethics Committee and our Rules Committee can ensure that Members comply. A blind trust is sufficient to ensure conflicts of interest are appropriately mitigated.

Further, the House is currently working on the Stop Insider Trading Act, which is another vehicle to address concerns similar to the gentleman's from Georgia.

So this issue is an important issue to bring up, but it should go through regular order so it can be thoroughly discussed.

Another point with the bill under consideration at the moment is the language does not define cryptocurrency. So what is cryptocurrency? Are stablecoins used for payments included? Are nonfungible tokens included? So this language needs clarification.

This should go through regular order. This should go through committee. It should be thoroughly vetted. The language should be clarified. For these reasons, I object.

Mr. President, I object. And excuse me. Let me start with this: I reserve the right to object.

I have respect for the Senator's tenacity in making these arguments, but we are being asked, through this resolution, to accept the most dire narrative that is built on projections and models rather than proven causation. The data cited here conflates correlation with causation.

The U.S. Senate should legislate based on evidence, not based on unrealized projections and fear. The resolution cites a $7.4 billion real estate loss in five southeastern States, between 2005 and 2017, and attributes it to sea level rise.

But we shouldn't forget what also happened during those years. We lived through the 2008 financial crisis and the housing collapse, the worst real estate market in generations. Property values fell across the entire Nation, but they were particularly bad in Florida.

So future projections and predictions are a troubling thing upon which to base legislation. Models are tools, not crystal balls. Models predict outcomes based on assumptions fed to them, and those assumptions can be wrong.

There were many projections that cattle cause climate to be worse. At Oxford, in England, and in Italy, studies were done that changed the projections, and the new projections determined that cattle are good for the environment. They not only are not making things worse, but they are making things better.

So if you change the assumptions and the projections, models can produce a different result. So we should not assume that every model has been fed the right information. We cannot make policy based on worst case scenarios from computer models.

Mr. Chairman, I actually do believe that climate is changing. But even during the Obama administration, when I was on the House Science, Space, and Technology Committee, we had some witnesses come to the committee from National Labs and testify. And one of them was asked what percentage of climate change is caused by mankind, the activities of mankind. And the response was it is a single-digit number. And that scientist, from a U.S. National Lab, was never allowed to testify in front of our committee again because he gave an answer that didn't comport with the narrative that the administration was trying to sell.

Climate change is happening, and I wish the Senator were making his remarks in China, rather than the United States, where the air is so bad that--I was in South Korea, in Seoul, and one day the weather was beautiful, the climate was beautiful, the air was fabulous. And the next day, you couldn't see two blocks because there was so much pollution.

And I said: What happened here?

They said: We know what our air quality will be in Seoul, South Korea, when we look at what the air quality was in China 48 hours ago.

So it is coming from a very polluted environment.

The United States has been exemplary, since the passage of the Clean Air Act, in cleaning up its air. We have extremely clean air, and especially so since we are an industrialized nation. I am proud of what the United States has done to address the Senator's concerns, but climate cannot be used to address the issue of concern to the Senator. Therefore, I object.

Mr. President, I understand that there is a bill at the desk, and I ask for its first reading.

Mr. President, I now ask for a second reading and, in order to place the bill on the calendar under the provisions of rule XIV, I object to my own request.

Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent the Senate proceed to the consideration of S. Res. 786, which is at the desk.

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

Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that when the Senate completes its business today, it stand adjourned until 10 a.m. on Wednesday, June 24; that following the prayer and pledge, the Journal of proceedings be approved to date, the morning hour be deemed expired, the time for the two leaders be reserved for their use later in the day, morning business be closed, and the Senate proceed to executive session to resume consideration of the Marck nomination; further, notwithstanding rule XXII, the cloture motions filed during Monday's session of the Senate ripen at 11:30 a.m. and that the Senate recess following the cloture vote on the Marck nomination until 2:15 p.m.; further, that if cloture is invoked on the Marck nomination, the Senate vote on confirmation of the nomination at 2:15 p.m., and if cloture is invoked on the Hendershot nomination, the Senate vote on confirmation of the nomination at 5:30 p.m.; finally, if any nominations are confirmed during Wednesday's session of the Senate, the motions to reconsider be considered made and laid upon the table and the President be immediately notified of the Senate's actions.

Mr. President, if there is no further business to come before the Senate, I ask that it stand adjourned under the previous order.