J. D. Vance

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 President, I ask unanimous consent that the order for the quorum call be rescinded.

Mr. President, I rise today to talk about a program of critical importance to my State and to a number of people all across the country, and that is the Affordable Connectivity Program--something that doesn't generate a lot of headlines; something that doesn't generate a lot of partisan debate; and something for which, gratefully, there is a bipartisan group of Senators who would, I think, extend the Affordable Connectivity Program for this country, but, unfortunately, it looks like the leadership does not want to give us a vote on it.

So I want to talk about why this program is important and talk about why it is important that we hopefully, sometime in the future, authorize this important program, which just expired a matter of a few days ago.

Now, this is a town where, often, the things that generate headlines are sometimes the most partisan fights, the things that are most pressing and most relevant. And, of course--the Presiding Officer knows me--I participate in those debates just as well or just as much as anybody.

But sometimes--hopefully, most of the time--this body should be geared toward actually accomplishing things for the constituents that we represent. In the State of Ohio, the Affordable Connectivity Program benefits over a million households. That is not a million people. A million households in the State of Ohio benefit from this program. And my cosponsors from Vermont, from New Mexico, Democratic colleagues, and from a number of Republican States as well, I think, testify to how important this program actually is.

Let me just sort of try to identify a couple of the reasons why it is important. So the first reason it is important is because we know that connectivity is actually one of the important and necessary parts of living life in the 21st century. We may not like this. We may think that this is a negative trend. But, look, kids can't do their schoolwork without access to high-quality broadband. A lot of parents can't do their work from home if they don't have access to high-quality broadband. Teachers can't prepare lessons for the next day.

And, increasingly, especially in a country that is as constrained by budget and fiscal matters as ours, one of the great ways to lower healthcare costs in our country is telemedicine. Yet you can't do telemedicine, of course, if you don't have an internet connection at home.

The Affordable Connectivity Program solves this problem by ensuring that our low-income residents all across the country can afford their internet bills.

Now, it is not just about the consumers; it is not just about our citizens who need a high-quality connection because the guarantee that consumers will be able to pay their internet bills, regardless of their income level, is one of the things that makes it possible for a lot of companies to invest in rural broadband infrastructure.

Now, I talked to a number of companies, a number of businesses that do rural broadband infrastructure just in the State of Ohio, and it costs a lot of money. Right? You lay a mile of fiber in a place like Cleveland, Columbus, or Cincinnati, and you instantly have thousands upon thousands of people who are ready to tap into that connection; but you lay a mile of fiber in rural southeastern Ohio, and maybe, if you are lucky, you have a few people who are willing to tap into that connection. So it is more expensive in the parts of our country that are more sparsely populated.

I think it is one of the reasons my Democratic colleague from New Mexico is as passionate about this as I am--Senator Lujan because you have, of course, large numbers of reservations

all over New Mexico and a large number of rural areas that are in reservations. And, look, you need to be able to access the stuff. You need to be able to access internet connection in the 21st century. It is important for economic development. It is important for people to be able to live their lives.

But in order to ensure that people are willing to actually invest in that broadband infrastructure, to pay for that mile of fiberoptic cable, we have to make sure that, on the other end, there are customers who are willing to actually access and pay for those services.

So this is an important thing, and it is already expired. And it hasn't expired because of partisan bickering. This is a bipartisan piece of legislation that wants to reauthorize this program. It hasn't expired because we don't have the resources. This is a very, very small amount of money in the grand scheme of the Federal budget. The reason it is expired is because sometimes in Washington, people are too busy arguing about public policy and not actually busy enough doing public policy.

We have the votes. We have the need. We have the necessity. But the reason why this program has fallen, the reason why this program has lapsed, the reason why it has gone offline--if you will forgive a pun-- is because we can't actually vote on it. And that, unfortunately, I think, is a reflection on Senate leadership; it is a reflection on the brokenness of this town; and it is a reflection on the fact that, too often, so many good public policies for the people of our country fall through the cracks because other things take priority.

Well, this should take priority. This is important. And I think, unfortunately, a lot of people in Ohio are about to find out how important it is when they start to see the effects of it expiring.

So one of the things, Mr. President--I am mindful a little bit of the time here. I received a number of letters about this. One of the really fascinating dynamics of becoming a U.S. Senator--I have been here for all of 18 months--is that your constituent letters very often tell you the issues that the people you represent, the people you serve, actually care the most about. I expect a lot of constituent mail-- positive and negative--and sometimes I am surprised by it.

I am always surprised that anytime an issue of animal rights comes up, that is when I get maybe the most mail. People in Ohio really love animals, and rightfully so. And this issue I have gotten a lot of letters on. Again, it doesn't gather a lot of headlines, but it matters to a lot of people.

This is one letter I received from a constituent:

Senator Vance: I am writing to you today to stress the

importance of Congress providing continued funding for the

Affordable Connectivity Program (ACP) as soon as possible. My

household, along with a special needs person that relies on

GPS for tracking his whereabouts could be life-threatening if

I cannot find him.

Think about that, right?

I am his legal guardian and look over his well-being so as

when he wanders off, I would not be able to find him through his cell phone device. More than 21 million other vulnerable households in the United States--

Mr. President, 21 million, 8 percent or so of our population, rely on this program to pay for broadband services.

Without the support provided by this program, my home and

many others would struggle to afford a broadband

subscription.

The support provided by the ACP program has kept my family

and families like mine online through these difficult

economic times.

I am going to read a second letter here, but I just want to highlight what an extraordinary testament that is: the legal guardian of a special needs person who needs broadband access to be able to keep tabs on this person when they need to. And the program that they desperately need has already expired, and they are about to start feeling it. It only expired a week ago, so they haven't maybe noticed it yet, but they certainly will. And this person needs access to this program to keep track of a special needs person. And you wonder, Will they have it without this continued program?

I am going to read another letter here. This is from Poland, OH:

Dear Senator Vance, I represent the Ohio Connectivity

Champions, a group of technology experts who were hired by

the Management Council of the Ohio Education Computer Network

during the pandemic to help Ohio families find affordable

internet.

We originally focused on parents of students who needed

internet so that their children could complete schoolwork.

Since then, we have focused on all Ohioans and helping them

with enrollment in the Affordable Connectivity Program as

well as other technology related assistance.

We have heard from thousands of Ohioans on how much the ACP

has helped them with affordable internet.

I know that budgetary issues are very difficult right now

and that government expenditures are at the top of everyone's

list of priorities, but the ACP is one of the most successful

social programs in a long time.

The pandemic opened everyone's eyes to the digital divide

in this country and the ACP has allowed for millions of

Americans to participate in the 21st century economy. I know

that the ACP will most likely be adjusted through

negotiations in Congress, and that is fine, but to not fund

the program completely would affect many Ohioans. We would

appreciate your support of the ACP as we continue to help

Ohioans with finding affordable internet.

Another letter comes from Columbus, OH. And though one of the things I really admire and like about the ACP program is it induces investment in rural broadband infrastructure, we also know that there are a lot of people in our urban areas who could not afford their internet bills without the ACP program.

So this is from Natalie in Columbus, OH:

We receive a $30 credit each month on our internet

connection. This is scheduled to end in early 2024 unless the

Affordable Connectivity Program is fully funded. This makes a

significant difference in our monthly budget as we are on

food stamps. Both my husband and I are disabled. This credit

makes a significant difference in our lives. Without it that

$30 will have to come out of our food budget as we don't have

anywhere else to squeeze the budget. Food costs have gone up.

Every month, we end up spending more on food than we get in

food stamps. When we got that extra $95 at the end of the

month it really helped. However, that program was

discontinued. Now, another program is scheduled to end that

directly impacts those Americans on the bottom end of the

economic scale.

So two people--a husband and wife--disabled, who are actually going to forgo food because this program has expired in my home State of Ohio. What a shame that we have failed Natalie and her husband by failing to reauthorize this program, and what an opportunity to actually get off our rear ends and make sure that we do it when we get the opportunity.

This is another letter I am going to read from Mansfield, OH:

I am 73 years old.

Mansfield, OH. Speaking of pets, this is actually where my wife and I got the very first dog that we ever owned together.

Without the ACP, I would not have internet.

So, I am writing to you today to stress the importance of

Congress providing continued funding for the Affordable

Connectivity Program (ACP) as soon as possible.

The support provided by the ACP program has kept my family

and families like mine online through these difficult

economic times. We use it to stay connected to work, school,

and healthcare providers, in addition to family and friends.

Without ACP, the reality is we may no longer be able to

afford to be connected and that would be an added hardship.

Think about this. I know that, like a lot of Americans with young kids at home, probably the most important thing that I use my broadband connection for is so that my three little kids can call their grandparents and call their aunts and uncles.

So this 73-year-old from Mansfield, OH, I wonder whether she will be able to contact her grandkids, whether she will be able to keep connected with her family who are not easy to get to if this program disappears.

One final letter I want to read. I am sorry. Mr. President, given the time, I will not read the last letter that I have. But the point that I think these letters drive home is that real people are going to suffer when this program goes away. You have people who have to pick between food service and internet connectivity. You have an elderly woman who may not be able to connect to her friends and family. You have people worried about their telemedicine and healthcare visits.

And on the point about Federal spending, it sort of breaks my heart when a constituent who can't afford internet service is writing to us apologizing for a program's budgetary hit

when it is a tiny, tiny slice of the American Federal budget. And I know this is a controversial comment with some of my colleagues, but if we can afford to fund military conflicts the world over, can't we afford to provide basic connectivity and services for our own people? Disabled people choosing between food and internet connection--that is the choice that we have foisted upon them by not authorizing this program. I am disappointed by that, Mr. President, and again I will say that it presents an opportunity for us to do the right thing--to make reforms to the ACP program where it needs to be reformed but to do the right thing: Reauthorize this program, and ensure that Ohioans and people all over our country don't have to choose between internet service and food. We can do that. We just have to do our jobs.

I yield the floor.

Mr. President, with respect to my colleagues who voted in the other direction on this particular piece of legislation, let me offer some serious concerns about the direction we are headed as a country and about what this vote represents in terms of American readiness; American capacity to defend itself and its allies in the future; and, most importantly, the American leadership's ability to acknowledge where we really are as a country: our strengths, our weaknesses, what can be built upon, and what must be rebuilt entirely.

I am extraordinarily aware of a couple of historical analogies that should inform this debate, one that seems to always inform debate and another that seems to never come up. Now, opponents of further aid in Ukraine--and I count myself among them--say that this is a Chamberlain vs. Churchill kind of moment. You just heard my distinguished colleague from Delaware make this observation.

With no disrespect to my friend from Delaware, we need to come up with some different analogies in this Chamber. We need to be able to understand history as not just World War II replaying itself over and over and over again. Vladimir Putin is not Adolf Hitler. It doesn't mean he is a good guy, but he has significantly less capability than the German leader did in the late 1930s. America is not the America of the late 1930s or the early 1940s. We possess substantially less manufacturing might, in relative terms, than we did almost 100 years ago. And most importantly, there are many ways in which the analogy falls apart even if you ignore America's capacity, Russia's capacity, and the like.

There are ways in which we should be looking at other historical analogies, and I would like to point to just a couple of those right now. The Second World War, of course, was the most devastating war, arguably, in the history of the world. Close behind it is the First World War. And what is the lesson of the First World War? It is not that there are always people appeasing the bad guys or fighting against the bad guys. The lesson of World War I is that, if you are not careful, you can blunder yourself into a broader regional conflict that kills tens of millions of people, many of them innocent. In 1914, alliances, politics, and the failure of statesmanship dragged two rival blocs of militaries into a catastrophic conflict.

In the past week alone, the Council on Foreign Relations has published an essay calling for European troops to sustain Ukraine's lines as Ukraine struggles to raise troops. Some European leaders have said they might send troops to support Ukraine in a conflict.

Perhaps the history lesson we should be teaching ourselves isn't Chamberlain vs. Churchill. Perhaps we should be asking ourselves how an entire continent, how an entire world's set of leaders allowed itself to blunder into world conflict.

Is there possibly a diplomatic solution to the conflict in Ukraine? Yes, I believe that there is. Indeed, as multiple people--both critics of Vladimir Putin and supporters of Ukraine--have pointed out, there was, in fact, a peace deal on the table approximately 18 months ago. What happened to it? The Biden administration pushed Zelenskyy to set aside the peace agreement and to engage in a disastrous counteroffensive, a counteroffensive that killed tens of thousands of Ukrainians, that depleted an entire decade's worth of military stocks, and that has left us in the place that we are now, where every single objective observer of the Ukraine war acknowledges today that the war is going worse for Ukraine than it was 18 months ago.

Could we have avoided it? Yes, we could, and we should have avoided it. We would have saved a lot of lives, we would have saved a lot of American weapons, and we would have had this country in a much, much more stable and much better place if we had.

Now, there is another historical analogy that I think is worth pointing out, and that is the historical analogy of the early 2000s. Now, in 2003, I was a high school senior, and I had a political position back then. I believed the propaganda of the George W. Bush administration that we needed to invade Iraq, that it was a war for freedom and democracy, that those who were appeasing Saddam Hussein were inviting a broader regional conflict.

Does that sound familiar to anything that we are hearing today? It is the same exact talking points, 20 years later, with different names. But have we learned anything over the last 20 years? No, I don't think that we have. We have learned that if we beat our chest instead of engage in diplomacy, that it will somehow produce good outcomes. That is not true. We learned that if we talk incessantly about World War II, we can bully people and cause them to ignore their basic moral impulses and lead the country straight into catastrophic conflict.

Now, as one of the great ironies of my time in the U.S. Senate for the last 18 months, I have been accused by multiple people of being a stooge of Vladimir Putin. Well, I take issue to that because in 2003, yes, I made the mistake of supporting the Iraq war. I also, a couple months later, enlisted in the U.S. Marine Corps, one of two kids from my small block on McKinley Street in Middletown, OH, to enlist in the marines just that year. I served my country honorably, and I saw when I went to Iraq that I had been lied to, that the promises of the foreign policy establishment of this country were a complete joke.

Just a few days ago, we saw our friends in the House waving Ukrainian flags on the floor of the U.S. House--which, I would love to see them waving the American flag with such gusto. And I won't complain about the fact that it was a violation of the rules of decorum, though it certainly was. But it reminded me--it reminded me--and I believe, 2005, maybe it was 2006--when that same exact Chamber, the Members were raising their fingers, stained with purple ink, to commemorate the incredible Iraqi elections that had happened in 2005.

I was in Iraq for both the constitutional referendum of October of 2005 and the parliamentary elections of December of 2005. And I remember the people in Iraq, happily voting, raising their fingers in the air.

What I am saying is, not that the people of Iraq were bad or that they were bad for voting in their elections, what I am saying is the obsessive focus on moralism--democracy is good, Saddam Hussein is bad; America, good; tyranny, bad--that is no way to run a foreign policy, because then you end up with people waving their fingers on the floor of the U.S. House of Representatives, even though they have walked their country into a disaster.

And I say this as a proud Republican. I say this as somebody who supports Republican colleagues who agree with me and disagree with me on this issue. It is, perhaps, the most shameful period in the Republican Party's history of the last 40 years that we supported George W. Bush in the prosecution at military conflict.

Now, my excuse is that I was a high school senior. What is the excuse of many people who were in this Chamber or in the House of Representatives at the time and are now singing the exact same song when it comes to Ukraine?

Have we learned nothing? Have we updated nothing about our mental thinking, about the standard that we apply for when we should get involved in military conflicts? Have we learned nothing about how precarious and precious U.S. life is and other life around the world and that we should be a little bit more careful about protecting it?

Back then, in 2003, we actually had an anti-war left in this country. Now, nobody, really, is anti-war. Nobody is worried about prosecuting military conflicts overseas. Nobody seems to worry about unintended consequences. But Iraq had a lot of unintended consequences--a lot of consequences that were, maybe, foreseen by a few smart people; a lot of them that weren't foreseen by anybody--one of which is that we gave Iran a regional ally instead of a regional competitor.

Did George W. Bush stand before the American people and say: We are going to invade this country and give one of our strongest enemies in the region a massive regional ally? Did we think that 20 years later, Iraq would become a base to attack American troops in the Middle East? Did we think it would empower one of the most dangerous regimes in that area of the world?

We are now funding Israel, as I think that we should, to defend itself against attacks that are originating in Iran when the same people who are calling for more war all over the world were the same people who caused us to start a war that empowered Iran.

There is a certain irony in this, a certain sadness that I have that we never seem to learn the lessons of the past. We never seem to ask ourselves why it is that we keep on screwing up American foreign policy, why it is that we keep on making our country weaker, even though we say we intend to make it stronger.

Here is another thing that we should learn from the Iraq war, something that I as a Christian care a lot about and I think that even many of my colleagues who are not Christians, many of my fellow Americans who are not Christians, should care about. The United States remains, to this day, the world's largest majority Christian nation. We are the largest Christian nation by population in the entire world. And yet what are the fruits--``By your fruits ye shall know them,'' the Bible tells us. What are the fruits of American foreign policy when it comes to Christian populations all over the world over the last few decades?

Well, in Iraq, before we invaded, there were 1.5 million Christians in Iraq. Many of them were ancient communities--Chaldeans, people who trace their lineage and their ancestors to people who knew the literal Apostles of Jesus Christ.

Now, nearly every single one of those historical Christian communities is gone. That is the fruits of American labor in Iraq--a regional ally of Iran and the eradication and decimation of one of the oldest Christian communities in the world.

Is that what we were told was going to happen? Did the American people--the world's largest majority Christian nation in the world--did they think that is what they were getting themselves into? I certainly didn't. And I am ashamed that I didn't, but we did. We did all of those things because we weren't thinking about how war and conflict lead to unexpected places.

Now, it sounds farfetched, I am sure, when we apply these lessons to the Ukraine conflict. Certainly--certainly--this has no risk of spilling over into a broader regional or even world conflict. Well, certainly not, in fact. I was being sarcastic. It obviously does. As European allies propose sending troops to fight Vladimir Putin, drawing NATO further into this conflict, yes, the Ukraine war threatens to become a broader regional conflict.

What about the assault on traditional Christian communities? Just today, the Ukrainian parliament is considering enacting a law that would dispossess large numbers of Christian churches and Christian communities in the country of Ukraine.

Now, they say it is because these churches are too close to Russia. That is what they say. And maybe some of the churches are too close to Russia. But you don't deprive an entire religious community of their religious freedom because some of its adherents don't agree with you about the relevant conflict of the day.

I believe, standing here, that this war will eventually lead to the displacement of a massive Christian community in Ukraine. And that will be our shame--our shame in this Chamber for not seeing it coming; our shame in this Chamber for doing nothing to stop it; our shame for refusing to use the hundreds of billions of dollars that we send to Ukraine as leverage to ensure and guarantee real religious freedom.

The other thing--one final point on this historical contingency point. It was true then, and it was true today, there is this weird way where the debate in this country has gotten warped, where people can't engage in good-faith disagreement with our Ukraine policy. You will immediately be attacked for being on the wrong team, for being on the wrong side.

I remember, as a young conservative high schooler, how opponents from the conservative side of the Iraq War: Well, you are just all for Saddam Hussein, and you believe that Saddam Hussein should be allowed to continue to brutalize the Iraqi people; you have no love for these innocent Iraqi people; you don't believe in America. And the same exact arguments are being applied today, that you are a fan of Vladimir Putin if you don't like our Ukraine policy, or you are a fan of some terrible tyrannical idea because you think maybe America should be more focused on the border of its own country than on someone else's.

This war fever, this inability for us to actually process what is going on in our world to make rational decisions is the scariest part of this entire debate.

You see people who served their country, who have been advocating for good public policies--agree or disagree with them--for their entire careers smeared as agents of a foreign government simply because they don't like what we are doing in Ukraine. That is not good-faith debate; that is slander. And it is the type of slander that is going to lead us to make worse and worse decisions.

It should make us all feel pretty weird when you see your fellow Americans making an argument, and the response to that argument is not: Well, no, no, here is why you are wrong, or, Here is substantively why I disagree with you. But they fling their finger in your face and say: You are a Putin puppet; you are an asset of a foreign regime.

This way of making decisions democratically is how we bankrupt this country and start a third world war. We should stop doing it.

So let me make some arguments for why our Ukraine policy doesn't make any sense. The first, we do not have the manufacturing base to support a land war in Europe. This must be appreciated. And it is interesting, when I was making this argument that we didn't have the manufacturing base to support a military conflict in Eastern Europe, to support a military conflict in East Asia, and then also to actually support our own national defense, that America was spread too thin, I was commonly met 18 months ago with a very common rejoinder. I was told that the Ukraine war represented a fraction of a fraction of American GDP, that we could do everything all at once and it would not stress America's capabilities.

Now, everyone seems to agree with me. Now, everyone seems to acknowledge that we are severely limited, not in the number of dollars that we can send to Ukraine--because there are limits there--but in the number of weapons, of artillery shells and missiles, that we don't make enough of the critical weapons of war to send them to all four corners of the world and also keep ourselves safe.

But people will say: Well, J.D. is right, we need to rebuild the defense industrial base; we need to rebuild our capacity to manufacture weapons. But now the desire and the need to manufacture more weapons is an argument for the Ukraine conflict instead of an argument against it.

It is interesting how advocates of this conflict always find a new justification when the justification of a few months ago falls apart.

So let's deal with some very cold, hard facts. Ukrainians have argued publicly--their defense minister has said this--that they require thousands of air defense interceptor missiles every single year in order to keep themselves safe from Russian attack. Do we make thousands? No.

If this supplemental passes, as I expect it will in a few hours, we will go from making about 550 PAC-3 interceptor missiles to about 650. And there are a few other weapons systems that could provide protection in terms of air defense. But Ukraine's air defenses are being overwhelmed right now because

we don't make enough air defenses. Europe doesn't make enough air defenses. And, by the way, we are being stretched in multiple different directions.

The Israelis need them to push back against Iranian attacks. The Ukrainians need them to push back against Russian attacks. We may, God forbid, need them. And the Taiwanese would need them if China ever invaded. We don't make enough air defense weapons and neither do the Europeans. And so rather than stretching ourselves too thin, America should be focused on the task of diplomacy and making it possible for our friends and our allies to do as much as they can but to recognize the limitations and to ensure that we--most of all, our own people in our own country--can look after our own defense.

It is not just air defense missiles. Martin 155mm artillery shells-- these are one of the most critical weapons for the land war in Europe, maybe the single most critical weapon for the land war in Europe. The United States makes a fraction of what the Ukrainians need. And if you combine what the United States provides with what the Europeans are able to provide and what other figures are able to provide, we are massively limited in whether we can help Ukraine close the gap it currently has with Russia.

Now, you have heard senior figures in our defense administration say that unless this bill passes--unless this bill passes--the Ukrainians will face a 10-to-1 disadvantage when it comes to critical munitions like artillery--10 to 1.

What gets less headlines is that currently the Ukrainians have a 5- to-1 disadvantage, and there is no credible pathway to give them anything close to parity. And I am not even talking about this year; I am talking about next year too. During a conversation with the senior national security official of the Biden administration, I was told that if the United States radically ramps up production and if the Europeans radically ramp up production, the Ukrainians will have a 4-to-1 disadvantage in artillery by the end of 2025. And that was treated as good news.

You cannot win a land war in Europe with a 4-to-1 disadvantage in artillery, especially when the country that you are going up against has four times the population that you do.

And, of course, the most important resource in war, even in modern war, is not just air defense missiles and is not just artillery shells; the most important resource is human beings. Human beings still fight our wars, as tragic as that is and as much as we wish that it wasn't true, and Ukraine has a terrible manpower problem too.

The New York Times recently wrote a story about how they had conscripted--perhaps accidentally; I certainly hope so--they conscripted a mentally handicapped person into service in their conflict. They have now dropped the conscription age. And, still, they are engaged in draconian measures to conscript people into this conflict. That says nothing about the fact, by the way, that approximately 600,000 military-age men fled the country.

This war is often compared, as I said earlier, to the UK's fight against Nazi Germany. In the height of World War II, did a million Brits--over a million Brits leave Britain to avoid being conscripted by the Germans? I highly doubt it. So there is a deep reserve problem--a reserve of weapons, there aren't enough of them; a reserve of manpower, there aren't enough men.

This is the problem that Ukraine confronts. I say this not to attack the Ukrainians who have fought admirably--many of them have died defending their country. But if we want to respect the sacrifice of the people who have died in this conflict, we have to deal with reality. And the reality is that the longer that this goes on, the more people will needlessly die, the fewer people will actually be left to rebuild the country of Ukraine, and the less capable Ukraine will be of actually functioning as a country in the future.

But I am not just worried about that; I am not just worried about whether Ukraine can win. I also worry about, as I said earlier, unintended consequences. And now we should spend a little bit of time discussing some more of those.

A few things come from our obsessive focus on Ukraine. No. 1, we have, at multiple levels in this Congress, passed pieces of legislation that deal with Ukraine that attempt to explicitly curtail the diplomacy powers of the next Presidential administration. I know we don't often talk so directly about politics, and I am sure I disagree with my friends on the other side of the aisle about who the next President should be, but we want to empower the next President, whoever that is, to actually engage in diplomacy, not make it harder to engage in diplomacy.

Multiple provisions of this legislation--but also other legislation this Chamber has passed and I opposed--try explicitly to tie the next President's hands. Let's just say that the next President, whoever that might be, decides that he wants to stop the killing and engage in diplomacy. This Chamber will be giving a predicate to impeach that next President for engaging in basic diplomacy. Hard to imagine a more ridiculous judgment on the priorities of American leadership that we are already trying to make it impossible for the next President to engage in any measure of diplomacy. That is not leadership, and that is not toughness; that is a blind adherence to a broken foreign policy consensus, which is unfortunately exactly what we have.

The Ukraine supplemental that is, again, likely to be passed in the next few hours, funds Ukraine's border while turning a blind eye to the United States own border crisis. The bill includes hundreds of millions that could be used to strengthen Ukrainian border security and support the State Border Guard Service of Ukraine. Good for them. I am glad that they care about their own border security.

The supplemental extends benefits for Ukrainian parolees in the United States. It includes $481 million for refugees and interim assistance, which could be used, in part, for the Office of Refugee Resettlement to provide resettlement assistance to Ukrainians arriving in the United States and also to other organizations that also, because money is fungible, could resettle other migrants from other countries into our country.

So the very same moment that we are supporting the Ukrainians to secure their own border, we are not just ignoring our own border, we are funding NGOs that will worsen Joe Biden's migration crisis. It is completely senseless. Yet that is what we are doing.

Let's talk about something else. This bill includes a provision that is wildly popular called the REPO Act. In short, the REPO Act does something very simple. The REPO Act allows the Treasury Department to seize Russian assets to help them pay for the war. That sounds great. Of course, Russia shouldn't have invaded Ukraine and, of course, they should have to pay for some of the consequences--all of the consequences--that they have created. But ask yourself, are there unintended consequences that come from seizing tens of billions of dollars from foreign assets? In fact, there are.

A number of economists from across the political spectrum have argued that the REPO Act could potentially make it harder to sell U.S. Treasuries. This is something a lot of Americans don't care about. I am sure their eyes might glaze over a little bit. But this country is running almost $2 trillion deficits every single year. You ask: Where do those $2 trillion come from? They come from selling Treasury bonds on the open market. That is how we pay for the deficit spending in this country. And what happens when people start to worry that U.S. Treasuries are not a good investment? Well, we have already seen the consequences over the last couple of years. Interest rates go up. Inflation goes up. Home mortgages become more expensive. Are we at least a little bit worried that the bond markets could react negatively to us seizing tens of billions or hundreds of billions of dollars from assets? We should certainly be worried about it because we already can't afford the deficit spending in this country to begin with. Treasury yield rates are already extraordinarily high. Thanks to the Biden spending programs, they have actually shown a remarkable stubbornness over the last few months.

Here is another unintended consequence. Germany is an important American ally, and it has, by some

standards, the fourth or fifth largest economy in the entire world. It is a very, very important country, a very important ally. By the way, it is a beautiful country with beautiful people. But Germany, under the influence of a series of so-called green energy policies, is rapidly deindustrialized.

Germany, by the way, was one of the few countries in the wake of World War II--especially in the seventies, eighties, and nineties--that actually kept its industrial might largely intact. Think about German cars and all the other manufacturing things that come from the country of Germany. Well, Germany is much less powerful in terms of manufacturing today than it was 10 years ago. Why? Because it takes cheap energy to manufacture things. You need cheap energy if you want to manufacture steel. You need cheap energy if you want to manufacture cars. That is one of the reasons, by the way, the manufacturing economy has done so poorly under the Biden administration--because their energy policies don't make any sense.

But Germany should be told that the United States will not subsidize its ridiculous energy policies and its policies that weaken German manufacturing. We should send a message to the Germans that they have to manufacture their own weapons; they have to field their own army; and they have the priority and they have the responsibility to defend Europe from Vladimir Putin or anyone else.

I ask the question: How many mechanized brigades could the German army field today? By some estimates, the answer is zero; by other estimates, the answer is one. So the fourth most powerful economy in the world is unable to field sufficient mechanized brigades to defend itself from Vladimir Putin. Now, this isn't 5 years ago or 10 years ago; this is yesterday. So for 3 years, the Europeans have told us that Vladimir Putin is an existential threat to Europe, and for 3 years they have failed to respond as if that were actually true.

Donald Trump famously told European nations they have to spend more on their own defense. He was chastised by Members of this Chamber for having the audacity to suggest Germany should step up and pay for its own defense. Even today, Germany, by some estimates, fails to hit its 2-percent-of-GDP threshold where it is supposed to spend 2 percent of its economy on military. And even if it hits that 2-percent threshold in 2024, it will have hit it barely after, literally, decades of being chastised. Is it fair that the Americans are forced to front this burden? I don't think that it is.

But I am actually less worried about the fairness and more worried about the signal this sends to Europe. If we keep on carrying a substantial share of the military burden, if we keep on giving the Europeans everything that they want, they are never going to become self-sufficient, and they are never going to produce sufficient weapons so they can defend their own country.

You hear all the time from folks who support endless funding to Ukraine that unless--that unless--we send resources to Ukraine, Vladimir Putin will march all the way to Berlin or Paris. Well, first of all, this don't make any sense. Vladimir Putin can't get to western Ukraine; how is he going to get all the way to Paris? Second of all, if Vladimir Putin is a threat to Germany and France, if he is a threat to Berlin and Paris, then they should spend more money on military equipment.

Some of my fellow Americans have been lucky enough to travel to Europe. It is a beautiful place. But one of the things that Europeans often say about Americans is that we have way too many guns and way too little healthcare. One of the reasons why we have less healthcare access than the Europeans do is because we subsidize their military and their defense. If the Europeans were forced to step up and provide for their own security, we could actually take care of some more domestic problems at home. No, too many in this Chamber have decided that we should police the entire world. The American taxpayer be damned.

Let me make one final point here, cognizant I have colleagues who wish to speak.

May I ask, how much time do I have?

I see my colleague from Florida, so I will be relatively brief here.

For 40 years, this country has made, largely, I would say, a bipartisan mistake. It has allowed our manufacturing might to get offshored and to get outsourced, while simultaneously increasing the commitments that we have all over the world. We basically outsourced our ability to manufacture critical weapons while stepping up our responsibilities to police the world. And, of course, if we are going to police the world, then it is American troops who need those weapons.

With one hand, we have weakened our own country; with the other, we have overextended. There is a certain irony that if you look at the voting records and the commitments of this Chamber, the people who have been most aggressive--my colleagues, some of them my friends--who have been most aggressive sending our good manufacturing jobs to China are now the ones who are most aggressive to assert we can police the world.

What are we supposed to police the world with? Our artillery manufacturing, our weapons, our air defense manufacturing, our basic military industrial complex has become incredibly weakened. And this bill, you will hear people say, fixes it. It doesn't fix it at all. This bill, while it does invest some--and this is a good thing, by the way, it is not all bad--while it does invest some in critical manufacturing of American weapons, it sends those weapons overseas faster than it even replenishes them. This is not a bill to rebuild the defense industrial base; this is a bill to further extend this country.

I will yield the floor, recognizing my friend from Florida wants to speak.

Madam President, I am mindful here that we have 30 hours of debate, if we want it, on a problem and on a question that has completely devastated our country. I think it is worth actually starting out by observing some of the procedural background that actually led us here.

If you go back a few months ago, there was pretty broad consensus that this country has a very serious problem at the southern border. Even some of my Democratic friends admit this and worked I think in good faith in an effort to help us try to solve that problem.

The legislation that came out of that bipartisan negotiation had a couple of problems, the first of which is that the negotiation itself was completely shrouded in secrecy from some of my colleagues on my side of the aisle. That naturally breeds mistrust of the process. So when you see a process unfolding where you don't actually know what is in the legislation, you don't actually know what you are voting on, I think you are understandably worried that what you are voting on is not going to be that good for your constituents or for the country at large.

The second problem with that piece of legislation is that the details weren't revealed to my colleagues and me until right up to the moment we were expected to vote for it. My memory is a little foggy, but I believe we were given some sense of the details in a very high level a couple of weeks before the text of the legislation dropped. The text of the legislation--confirming some of those details and disconfirming other of those details--we were given on a Sunday, and then we were expected to vote on that legislation just a few short days later.

Now, we have to ask ourselves whether the bipartisan compromise that wasn't actually that bipartisan because I believe it had a few Republicans and universal Democratic support--near universal Democratic support--whether it actually would have solved the underlying crisis. I think you can make a very good--indeed, a completely airtight argument that it would not have solved the crisis at the American southern border.

Let me walk through three problems with that legislation.

The first is that the legislation did nothing on the question of parole. If we go back to the Obama administration, the last Democratic President this country had--no fan of Republican border policy--Barack Obama paroled and his administration paroled about 5,000 people per year. What that does is effectively grant some measure of legality to people who cross the border illegally.

Now, that is meant to be used in a narrow and tailored way. You have one person coming across the border illegally, and maybe some special circumstance necessitates that we should give that person parole and temporarily relieve them from immigration enforcement.

What the Biden administration has done is radically different. So if Barack Obama paroled 5,000 illegal aliens every single year, Joe Biden is paroling close to 1 million illegal aliens every single year.

Now, we know that isn't just bad for the direct reason that that is a million people who are coming into the country illegally who should not be here, but we also know that it invites others. In fact, if you go to the southern border or you watch a media report of someone going to the southern border and sticking a microphone in the face of somebody who is crossing the border illegally, they will say: Well, we are coming here because Joe Biden and Kamala Harris have thrown open the American southern border. They have invited everyone in, so that is what we are doing.

You don't just legalize a million people every single year; you also invite people en masse to come into your country illegally, with the knowledge that their conduct will not be penalized and that the immigration laws of the country will not be enforced.

So the compromise on border security did nothing on parole--perhaps the single biggest problem of the Biden administration.

The second thing that it did is that it actually imposed a so-called border shutdown that would run for 270 days per year, but there were a couple of big exceptions. First of all, the shutdown only applied when nearly 5,000 people per day crossed our southern border. That is close to 2 million people per year. So why are we shutting down the border only after 2 million people cross illegally in a given year? Why shouldn't we shut it down much, much sooner than that? I would say as close to zero as possible, but I recognize reasonable minds disagree. But certainly we can all agree that 2 million border crossings per year is a significant problem. We should shut down the border far before that.

Now, that shutdown authority had a couple of other big problems. First of all, it allowed the President of the United States an emergency exception to the shutdown authority for 45 of the 275 days that applied. It also gave the Secretary of Homeland Security--a man whose job performance has been so terrible that the House of Representatives has impeached him--it gave him 180 days of discretionary authority to limit that border shutdown in the law.

So you have 365 days in a year. You have shutdown authority that only applies once you hit a threshold of 2 million illegal aliens every single year. On top of that, for the 270 days out of 365 that the shutdown authority can even be applied, you give discretionary authority to Joe Biden and Secretary Mayorkas for 235 of those 275 days, to waive it.

So if we had been lucky, we would have gotten 45 days of emergency shutdown authority--again, with the baseline of 2 million people coming into the country illegally every single year. That doesn't sound like border security to me; it sounds like more recipe for an open border.

The third and final problem, something that I have to say my colleagues on my side of the aisle, who negotiated in good faith--they negotiated a border provision that--it is hard to imagine anyone who takes border security seriously being more critical or more skeptical of that border security provision.

In particular, it took the question of whether to grant asylum away from immigration law judges, commonly called ILJs, and put it with USCIS agents--people who are generally considered some of the least interested in border enforcement in our country. So you are taking it away from immigration law judges and giving the ability to grant asylum to some of the most leftwing people within our immigration bureaucracy. We know exactly what would happen. Whatever standard those folks are meant to apply to the immigration system, whatever standards are meant to limit them in granting asylum, if they are committed to granting asylum, they are going to find way to grant asylum, and that is exactly what they would have done.

That single provision made this the worst border security law perhaps that has ever been attempted in this country. It is the opposite of border security to give the right to grant asylum with the wave of a pen to the people in our bureaucracy who are most committed to open borders.

So those three problems created a border enforcement package that would have made the crisis at our southern border much worse. Now, I don't say that because I think that was the intent of everybody who negotiated it, but sometimes when these things get translated from high-level policy talking points into actual legislative text, the details are terrible. In fact, the details of this particular piece of legislation were terrible.

That led us to this brave new world in the border security debate in our country where, having had a complete and utter failure for a border security package that would have made the border crisis worse, my friends on the other side of the aisle have now pivoted to a new talking point that, in fact, because of this border security proposal that was terrible, they are the ones who are actually interested in border security.

Now, we know anybody who has paid attention to this problem knows the reason why we have a problem at the U.S. southern border. In fact, the Biden administration, when they took over a little over 3 years ago, openly bragged about changing every single policy from the previous administration that actually did something meaningful on border security. They ended ``Remain in Mexico,'' and they bragged about it. They radically increased parole, as we have already discussed, and they bragged about it.

On issue after issue after issue, the Biden administration has taken a series of Executive orders and has put those orders in place knowing they would cause border security problems, predicting they would cause border security problems, and then doing them anyway because they didn't want to enforce the border laws of this country.

They wanted to throw the border open for a whole host of reasons. They accomplished it, they were effective, and now, in the runup to an election, with the President's poll numbers sagging, they have decided that they really care about an issue they haven't cared about for 3 years and that, in fact, if the Republicans had just gone along with their legislation that would have made the border security problem worse, then somehow the border security problem would magically go away. This doesn't make any sense.

Right now on the books, immigration law in our country allows the President of the United States to issue an emergency border shutdown. He does not need additional statutory authority from this Chamber. He doesn't need a single piece of policy change. He could do it with the wave of a pen. Immigration law in this country grants the President of the United States extremely broad discretion to shut down the border when he believes that he must do so. So if the President actually cares about this problem, as he now pretends that he does, why doesn't he actually implement the authorities he currently has under existing law?

Well, the reason, of course, is he doesn't actually care about the border; or if he does, he feels politically constrained from the left wing of his party. He cannot care about border security because certain members of his own party would go after him.

That is not just hypothetical.

For those who watched the State of the Union last night, they will know that the question of the murder of Laken Riley came up. To recap, Laken Riley was a beautiful young woman with a lot of promise. She was a nursing student, and she was brutally murdered by somebody who was illegally in this country. She was brutally murdered by somebody who shouldn't have been in this country in the first place. Indeed, if Joe Biden had done his job, Laken Riley would still be with us today, may God rest her soul.

I can't help but feel not just a sense of heartbreak over the loss of somebody who shouldn't have been taken from us, but also a sense of anger over the way in which this young woman's death has been used politically by the other side to avoid taking responsibility for the border crisis.

Let's just recap. The person who killed Laken Riley was in this country having been granted parole. Remember what I said, that Barack Obama granted parole 5,000 times, and Joe Biden has granted parole a million times. Those additional parole cases all--call it 900,000 because it is just short of a million people that Joe Biden is paroling every single year--approximately 900,000 additional parolees every single year, and it is probably going to be closer to 995,000 parolees this year because he is doing even more paroles this year than he was doing last year. If you take those additional people, some of them are, unfortunately, going to be criminals. Some of them are going to commit crimes of violence, and some of them are going to do terrible things like murder young nursing students who deserve to have a chance at life and certainly deserve to be safe and protected in their own country.

Not only was this person granted parole--the person who murdered Laken Riley--but this illegal immigrant also had lived in multiple sanctuary cities. Policies that have been promoted in this Chamber-- policies adopted by some very leftwing people at the local level--gave sanctuary to this person who should not have been in our country to begin with. Because that person was granted sanctuary, they weren't deported; they weren't sent back to their home country. They were in our neighborhoods and in our communities, and this person committed a terrible crime.

Now, we should ask ourselves, if you were serious about border security, why not do something about the parole problem that Joe Biden has completely blown up? If you go from 5 million parole cases a year, you add 995,000, you get to a million parole cases a year, that seems like a pretty bad set of policies, especially when we know some of the people receiving those paroles are actually going and killing American citizens.

Why don't we do something about that? Why can't this Chamber pass legislation that would make it impossible for Joe Biden to grant so many paroles every single year? Well, we don't do that.

Why wouldn't we do something like limiting funding for sanctuary cities, legislation that has broad support--bipartisan support, I should say, in the House of Representatives and, frankly, I think, even has bipartisan support in this Chamber? But we are not going to vote on it. I want to talk about that later because the procedural part of this really does matter.

If we wanted to fix the border crisis, why not make it harder for people to come and access asylum in this country instead of easier for people to come and access asylum in this country? Remember, asylum exists for the purpose of protecting people who are fleeing tyranny. Most of the people who are coming across our southern border, they may be perfectly good people, but they are classically understood as economic migrants. They are coming to this country in search of better opportunities and higher wages and better living conditions; they are not coming into this country because they are fleeing tyranny and persecution. They should not be able to claim asylum. Yet the Biden administration has facilitated them claiming asylum, and this body has refused to do anything meaningful about it.

Why aren't we working on the obvious roots of the border problem? Why aren't we fixing it? Why aren't we doing something about the incredibly pressing challenges that confront us at the southern border?

Instead, we have a political party in this country that has, for 3 years, ignored border security and wants to use it as a political tool these days instead of actually solving the problem. And, again, the way we know they are using it as a political tool is because if they wanted to solve it, the President has every single emergency authority he has right now to solve it.

Because of this, because we have a President who has the authority to solve this problem but chooses not to, one of the things that we are confronted with in this Chamber is how to force his hand. Indeed, if you try to understand American immigration policy in 2024 under the administration of Joe Biden, Congress needs to fundamentally ask the question: How do we force the President to do the job he refuses to do--not, how do we give him additional discretionary authorities, because he won't use those discretionary authorities; not, how do we give him additional powers, because we know he won't use those powers. The question is, How do we ensure Joe Biden does the job he doesn't want to do? How do we force his hand to engage in commonsense border security? There are a number of things we could do, a number of things we have already discussed, but, unfortunately, this Chamber refuses to do it.

That brings me to my procedural point. Why did you have the gross majority of Republicans opposing cloture on this bill? It is not because we like government shutdowns or want to shut the government down; it is because my colleagues on the other side of the aisle refuse to give us some amendment votes on immigration policy that were germane to this legislation and would have addressed the problem at the southern border.

Some of my colleagues will talk about those amendments, but there are a couple in particular I want to point out. One, legislation--I believe an amendment from my colleague, Senator Ron Johnson--that would have made it much harder to have sanctuary cities in this country. It would have significantly defunded the sanctuary cities in this country that were the source of the protection given to the person who killed Laken Riley.

Why should these municipalities receive unlimited resources from their Federal Government if they are actively fighting the Federal Government in the enforcement of immigration laws? Just defund them.

And what is going to be more likely is you are not going to defund them, but the threat of defunding them will actually make them undo their terrible policies and get serious about border enforcement. But when you have a violent criminal living in your city who happens to be an illegal immigrant, maybe you report them to immigration authorities so that person could be deported as opposed to protect them. That is what this legislation would facilitate--getting criminal migrants out of our country and protecting our citizens. If that bill came to a vote, you might say I am frustrated because that bill would not pass this Chamber. But, in fact, the reason it is not coming for a vote is not because it wouldn't pass this Chamber but because it would. If that bill was voted, a bipartisan majority of the U.S. Senate would vote for it. So why aren't we voting on it? Well, we are not voting on it because my colleagues on the other side of the aisle who are the majority won't actually let us vote on it.

There is a second provision, a second amendment that really matters here from my colleague, Senator Bill Hagerty of Tennessee. Now, I won't say that none of the other amendments matter, but these two amendments, I think, are really important and meaningful. Senator Hagerty's amendment would do something very, very simple. It would say that for the purposes of apportioning congressional representation, you can only count lawful permanent residents, meaning American citizens plus people who are in this country legally. That is what Senator Hagerty's legislation would do.

Now, you might ask: Who could possibly oppose only counting people who are legally in this country for purposes of apportioning congressional representatives? And the answer, of course, is people who believe that they benefit politically from counting illegal immigrants as part of congressional apportionment.

I wasn't here January 6, 2021. But to hear my colleagues who were here, especially on the other side of the aisle, January 6 was the biggest threat to American democracy in our country's history. Hundreds of thousands were killed in the Civil War, but that doesn't compare to January 6. World War II saw 330,000 Americans die--not nearly as big a tragedy as January 6. September 11, 3,000 innocent civilians were brutally murdered by terrorists, but a walk in the park compared to the terrible incident of January 6, 2021. It was a threat to democracy--an assault on democracy--the worst threat to democracy that this country has ever seen. I have actually seen people repeat that phrase multiple times who are representatives of this Chamber, and they do it with a straight face.

Here is the problem with that. What is a bigger threat to democracy? Is it

what happened on January 6, which, of course, was not a good thing? There are people who committed violent crimes, and they ought to be prosecuted. But what is a bigger threat to democracy, that day or giving congressional representatives to people who shouldn't be in this country in the first place?

California has five additional representatives in the U.S. House of Representatives relative to my home State of Ohio. Why? Because California has a large illegal immigrant population and those are counted for purposes of congressional apportionment. So they are destroying the democratic value of the people of Ohio's participation in their own country by giving congressional representation to people who shouldn't be in the country in the first place.

How does that make an ounce of sense? How is that not a major assault on democracy? What if we have a Democratic administration for the next 4 years and another 50 million people come into this country illegally? You rapidly get to a point where the people who belong here--the people who are in this country legally--have a significantly lower representation from their own Congress than they otherwise should. Why is it that if you come into this country and break its laws, you get rewarded with greater congressional representation; whereas if you are in this country legally, you actually have your congressional representation stolen from you? It is not just the inflation of Congress's value, which is to say the destruction of the actual democratic power of people; it is also the vote.

Multiple municipalities all across our country have proposed giving illegal aliens the right to vote in this country. I am sure--though it hasn't, I believe, happened in this Chamber--it will eventually happen where somebody in this Chamber proposes we should give illegal aliens the right to vote in this country. Isn't that a threat to democracy? I think so. In fact, I think it is a far bigger threat to democracy than anything we have seen in the last few years--maybe the single biggest threat to democracy we have seen in the history of this country.

Never before have you had Senators and representatives of the people refusing to allow a vote on whether we should only count U.S. citizens for purposes of doling out Congressmen. I just can't believe it.

I can't believe that anybody would disagree that Congressmen and women should be given to the American people, not to criminal migrates in this country. Does Laken Riley's killer deserve a congressional representative? Well, that person gets one now, thanks to the failure of this body to even vote on Senator Bill Hagerty's amendment. Again, it is not because they wouldn't support it; it is not because this Chamber would refuse to vote on Senator Hagerty's amendment. It would. And that is why it is not being allowed to vote because certain people in this Chamber--certain Senators of this Chamber--do not want to force their colleagues to take tough votes. And for that reason, Senator Bill Hagerty's amendment will not even be voted on, though it is germane and though it would make this country much safer, much more secure, and much more democratic.

Bear to point in this immigration debate where you have to believe some pretty absurd things to actually continue to operate immigration policy in this country with a straight face. Who would have believed--I am 39 years old--who would have believed you would have a major political party that is committed to the basic principle that illegal aliens should have congressional representation? I can't believe that. In fact, I am shocked that we are here, and yet we are. Not only so committed to it, not only do they believe in it, but they are so dedicated to it they won't even let amendments that would correct that problem come to the floor for a vote.

I want to talk a little bit about one of the core problems here with immigration in our country. I want to get a little more philosophical here. I am going to read something from the Center for Immigration Studies about the political importance of solving the immigration debate in the minds of the American people. This is from the Center for Immigration Studies:

Biden's Executive Actions: President Unilaterally Changes

Immigration Policy.

Let's talk about all the Executive actions the President of the United States has taken to make the border more open and less secure. We are just going to run through a laundry list of them because I couldn't possibly remember all of them, there are so many--in fact, over 90--only some of which I am going to actually report on here today.

I might ask, Madam President, how much time do I have remaining?

Thank you, Madam President.

So these are a reminder, a laundry list--but not a complete laundry list--of all of the executive actions taken by the Biden administration over the last 3 years--especially in the early part of his administration.

This was issued on January 20, 2021, the very day that Joe Biden took office as President of the United States, just 14 days after January 6, which we just talked about.

Now, the Trump policy--one of Trump's major immigration policies during his administration--was to complete the construction of a wall along the southern border to help thwart illegal aliens from entering the country. When Congress refused to appropriate the money necessary to accomplish this task, the Trump administration declared a national emergency at the southern border, which allowed it to reprogram unspent money from the Department of Defense toward the building of the border wall.

As of October 23, 2020, the Trump administration completed construction of 386 miles of physical infrastructure, with 195 miles under construction and 157 miles in the preconstruction phase. DHS states that illegal drug border crossings and human smuggling activities have decreased in areas with the barriers.

You often hear my colleagues on the other side say that walls don't work. Well, of course, they don't work perfectly. Nothing is perfect. But walls do substantially reduce the flow of sex trafficking, of drug trafficking, and of illegal migration across the places where the wall exists.

But here is the Biden policy--here to rescue the open borders agenda. On January 20, the Biden administration fully rescinded the Trump administration's proclamation that declared a national emergency at the southern border. Biden's proclamation explicitly states that ``no more American taxpayer dollars be diverted to construct a border wall,'' and ``authorities invoked in [the Trump] proclamation will no longer be used to construct a wall at the southern border.'' It also calls for an ``assessment of the legality of the funding and contracting methods used to construct the wall.''

This immediately and instantly ended further construction of the border wall. In fact, further wasting American taxpayer dollars, there are pieces of the border wall that are just like lying in the desert in certain parts along the border between Mexico and Texas, Mexico and New Mexico, and Mexico and Arizona that could just be easily built up. It actually costs more money to leave them rotting there in the desert, and yet the Biden administration refuses to put them up.

And we know, of course, that over 100,000 Americans a year die from the fentanyl that the Mexican drug cartels bring into this country, that untold thousands of children and young adults are sex trafficked into the country by those drug cartels. It is just an unbelievably tragic situation.

Why you would stop completion of the physical border wall is perhaps the least rational of all the Biden administration policies, besides the fact that they want to give Congressional representation to illegal aliens.

This is No. 2, question of interior enforcement. This is Executive Order 13993, Revision of Civil Immigration Enforcement Policies and Priorities.

Now, the Trump policy was that President Trump issued an Executive order enhancing public safety in the interior of the United States. This EO scrapped the Obama administration's immigration enforcement priority, which exempted nearly all aliens from removal, and replaced it with a policy that made all removable aliens an enforcement priority. This Trump order also targets sanctuary cities and made

them ineligible for Federal grants, except when deemed necessary by law enforcement. Imagine that, defunding sanctuary cities rather than paying municipalities to thwart the immigration laws of our country.

The Biden policy fully rescinds this Executive order. In the policy section, President Biden generically says:

The task of enforcing the immigration laws is complex and

requires setting priorities to best serve the national

interest.

Well, who disagrees with that?

However, this EO fails to detail new enforcement priorities and merely says the Biden administration will reset the policies and practices for enforcing civil immigration laws. In other words, they completely undid a set of immigration policy that was actually facilitating the enforcement of our border laws. They kind of promised that they would eventually return to it. They said enforcing the border is in our national interest--well, thank you for stating the obvious-- and then they did nothing to actually reimplement the policy--maybe adjust it a little bit, make it a little bit better, make it a little bit different, make it a little bit worse, in my view, but to actually do something meaningful. They just rescinded an order and let it lie, and now, of course, we are living with additional terrible consequences.

The Trump administration--this is the third of these. The Trump administration implemented policies that focused on benefits integrity, ensuring that illegal immigration did not harm American taxpayers.

In the ``public charge'' final rule, the Trump administration instituted for the first time the regulatory definition of this ground of admissibility found in the Immigration and Nationalization Act section 212(a)(4). Through Trump's Presidential Memorandum on Enforcement of Legal Responsibilities of Sponsors of Aliens, relevant Federal Agencies were directed to update procedures, guidance, and regulations to comply with current law and ensure that ineligible immigrants did not receive Federal means-tested benefits.

In accordance, USCIS required sponsors to reimburse the benefits- granting Agency for every dollar of benefits received by sponsored immigrants. USCIS--this is the U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services--and other Federal Agencies thus placed the responsibility on sponsors and employers, rather than American taxpayers, to finance foreign workers benefitting from social programs, such as SNAP, Medicaid, and Temporary Assistance for Needy Families.

Now, here is an interesting thing about this. We live in a world of scarce resources. And though I know some people disagree, I would hope that most of the Members of this Chamber--I think it is true of both Republicans and Democrats--believe that we ought to have social insurance in this country. People fall down on their luck. They get hurt at work. Some things happen. Bad things happen, and people sometimes suffer for no reason and certainly through no cause of their own.

Now, when that happens, they can't afford healthcare because of something terrible that happened, or they can't afford to put food on the table because something bad had happened. We have a social insurance system in this country to ensure that we take care of the neediest people in our country. Certainly, for children who through no fault of their own are suffering from poverty, we want to make sure these kids are able to get a bite to eat or go to the doctor when they have to. That is a good thing, and I think most of my colleagues, to be fair, on both sides of the aisle agree with that.

Here is the problem with that: We have scarce resources. The American social welfare system--that social insurance system that ensures that down-on-their-luck kids and parents are able to access food and medicine--that thing is funded by money that doesn't grow on trees. It is funded by American taxpayers.

And if you poll the American taxpayer, paying for healthcare for children is one of those things that they are actually enthusiastic about being taxed for. Most people don't like taxes for most reasons. I am certainly no different. But when it comes to putting food on the table or giving medicine to a kid who needs it, most Americans think they are OK with supporting that. I am certainly among them.

But what happens when you take the number of needy children in our country and you magnify it and multiply it by two times or three times or five times because you have a number of illegal immigrants coming into this country who need those same benefits--again, through no fault of their own? Many of these children did not ask to be trafficked into this country. They were allowed to be trafficked into this country by the terrible, porous border policies of the Biden administration.

But we have to pick and choose, and we have to prioritize. And my way of prioritizing would be this: that you give resources to people who are citizens of this country.

All of us are members of an American national community, and we take care of our own. We take care of our fellow Americans, but we cannot and should not take care of every person who is down on their luck who wants to come into this country even if they violate our laws to do so.

So on a Trump administration policy that would set the simple standard that Americans take care of Americans, that we prioritize our food stamps and our Medicaid for American citizens, did the Biden administration say, yeah, that is actually a pretty good idea that Americans should take care of Americans? No, the Biden administration rescinded this policy too.

On February 2, 2021, Groundhog Day of 2021, the Biden administration issued Executive Order 14012 which fully revoked the Presidential Memorandum on Enforcing the Legal Responsibilities of Sponsors of Aliens and took steps to rescind the public charge rule.

This Executive order announced the review of many standard procedures in the existing naturalization process, including the N-400 application, fingerprints, background security checks, interviews, civics and English language tests, and the oath of allegiance. It also seeks to prevent the Trump era USCIS fee schedule from going into effect and to find ways to further reduce the cost of naturalization, while simultaneously increasing the use of fee waivers.

Finally, the Executive order created a Task Force on New Americans, ``which shall include members of agencies that implement policies that impact immigrant communities.''

Now, the effect of this Biden administration policy is predictably that a lot of people who are here in this country illegally are receiving benefits and receiving benefits that ought to go to American citizens first. This is predictable. In fact, it was, you might argue, an explicit design and purpose of the Biden administration policy.

Now, my friends on the other side of the aisle will sometimes counter that, well, there are certain benefits that illegal aliens can't get, and we all agree with that. At least, I would hope all of us would agree with that. But it is not so simple. For example, section 8 housing vouchers--I have known a lot of people in my life, a lot of friends and family in my community, who have benefitted at one time in their lives from a section 8 housing voucher. Now, under the letter of the law, just to be clear, the section 8 housing voucher ensures that people who are, again, down on their luck are able to keep a shelter over the heads of themselves and their children--an important program for people who need it.

Now, the section 8 voucher program cannot be used by illegal aliens. OK, that is a good policy. Again, I would hope most of my Democratic colleagues would agree. However, if a person is related to an illegal alien, even a minor child, then an illegal alien can receive the section 8 benefit on behalf of the minor child.

So there are millions of people receiving housing benefits and other government benefits that shouldn't be receiving them because they are enjoying and benefitting from this particular loophole.

So the idea that illegal aliens don't benefit from some of our most generous welfare programs is just false. They do. And, again, I say this not because we are angry at them but because we are angry at our own country's leaders for allowing our citizens to be taken advantage of.

Just to pose a hypothetical to make this point especially clear, could we possibly--could we possibly--support the generous American social welfare

system if our country had a billion people in it? We have 300 million people now.

Given our funding problems, given our budget deficit, could we possibly support a billion people, meaning three times as many people receiving Medicare, Medicaid, Social Security? Of course, we couldn't. The math simply doesn't make sense.

So, at some level, we have to say: These benefits were paid for by American citizens. These benefits ought to go to American citizens, and we should limit them to American citizens.

Another problem with inviting the entire world to come and benefit from generous American social insurance is that it encourages people to come to the country. If you, sort of, send a release out to the entire world saying, ``If you come into the United States--even if you come in illegally, even if you break this country's laws--if you come into our country, you will receive generous food, medical, and dental benefits, even though you broke the laws of the country in coming here,'' that is going to bring in a lot of people that ought not be in the country in the first place.

Again, you have got to set a standard, and you have got to set some limits, and I propose that we set the limit at American citizens and lawful residents.

When you become part of our community, we take care of each other. That is part of the deal. But if you are not part of this national community and you violated the laws to become part of it, then you shouldn't benefit from Americans' generosity.

No. 4, the fourth Executive order the Biden administration has talked about--by the way, the Biden administration took over 90 Executive orders in the immediate aftermath of Joe Biden's being sworn in as President of the United States. I am only on No. 4--only on No. 4.

Executive Order 14010, Creating a Comprehensive Regional Framework to Address the Causes of Migration, to Manage Migration Throughout North and Central America, and to Provide Safe and Orderly Processing of Asylum Seekers at the United States Border.

Again, the Trump policy was to take numerous steps to combat the surge of fraudulent, frivolous, or otherwise non-meritorious asylum claims; discourage illegal aliens from taking the journey from the Northern Triangle to the United States; and refine the standards for asylum eligibility.

First, the Trump administration implemented the Migrant Protection Protocols, also known as ``Remain in Mexico,'' which required non- Mexican aliens seeking asylum in the U.S. to wait in Mexico until they were able to be seen by an immigration judge.

Now, why does this matter? Because when people come into our country illegally, they are often released for 6 years, for 8 years, for 10 years, with no consequences and with no enforcement action. So if you know you can come into the United States illegally and, even if it is acknowledged that you came into the country illegally, you can be released into the Nation to await a court date for sometimes over a decade, it is a massive invitation to illegal migration in this country. And what the Trump administration very smartly did is it said: If you come into the country illegally, we are not going to release you in the United States, and you come back for your court date in 10 years, but you are going to have to stay in Mexico. You can await your court date there.

And, of course, a lot of people, knowing they wouldn't be able to benefit from this massive loophole, didn't come to begin with. It is one of the reasons why border crossings were so much lower during the Trump administration. The Biden policy was--portions of Biden's EO are substantive, while other sections merely call for reviewing certain Trump policies. Through this particular Executive order, Biden has ended ``Remain in Mexico'' and a number of other title 42 authorities that allowed the President--you might even say forced the President--to engage in some commonsense border security. So that is No. 4.

No. 5, Executive Order 14011, establishment of interagency task force on the reunification of families. The Trump administration reversed the catch-and-release policies of the Obama administration that fueled a surge of family units and those fraudulently posing as family units coming to the southern border with no lawful basis to enter the United States.

And the ``posing'' word is really, really important because, of course, all of our hearts break when we see children separated from their moms and dads, but we also know that the cartels traffic children into this country and tell them to pretend that some person they are coming with is a mom or a dad. That is, in fact, one of the ways in which they benefit from our charity. It is one of the ways they benefit from our kindheartedness, and it is one of the ways that they manipulate and get around our immigration laws.

Now, an overly broad application of the Flores settlement ordered by Judge Dolly Gee frustrated these efforts by severely limiting the ability and length of time the Department of Homeland Security could detain family units. In response, in 2018, Attorney General Sessions issued a memorandum entitled ``Zero-Tolerance for Offenses'' under this particular provision of the law, which resulted in the decoupling of family units. The children were sent to HHS custody and treated as unaccompanied minors, while the adults were treated as single adults for enforcement purposes.

Due to a disjointed--sorry. One of the problems--Madam President, you will forgive me--as you get older is that your eyesight gets worse and worse, and I should have had my reading glasses.

This Biden Executive order officially rescinds then-Attorney General Session's zero-tolerance policy memo and establishes a task force to identify all children who were separated from their families in the United States and the Mexican and southern border between January 20, 2017, and January 20, 2021, in connection with the operation of the zero-tolerance policy.

Now, again, we have to remind ourselves here that the people who are claiming that they are bringing their children in are very often not bringing their children at all. They are someone else's children. A number of my colleagues have visited the border and talked with young people--sometimes under the age of 12--who have been brought in by people who claim to be their parents, but, in fact, are sexually abusing them. They haven't seen their parents in months, maybe in years.

Eliminating the Trump administration policies on this issue facilitates the very kind of predation that the Trump policy prevented in the first place. It actively encourages the cartels to traffic children and to coach these children to tell U.S. Customs and Border Patrol that the people who are abusing them, the people who sometimes abducted them are, in fact, their parents, and these poor children don't know any better. What an absolute travesty and a humanitarian disaster.

Madam President, may I ask how much time I have?

Madam President, I am not sure which of us is happier about that reality.

I will make one more observation here from a report before I make some concluding remarks, being mindful of time. So this is something published by the Center for Immigration Studies report: ``Three Years of Biden Immigration Policies Have Benefitted Criminal Aliens.'' This was published by Jon Feere on January 9 of 2024.

For three years the Biden administration has claimed that

its policies are designed to focus on criminal aliens to a

greater degree than the policies under the Trump

administration. As DHS Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas put it in

a September 2021 memo, ``By exercising our discretionary

authority in a targeted way, we can focus our efforts on

those who pose a threat to national security, public safety,

and border security and thus threaten America's well-being.''

It is now clear that the promised outcome has not been met

and that the Biden administration's policies have gutted the

nation's immigration enforcement system, with no concern

about the number of criminal aliens that are being released

into our communities.

Official data from U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement

. . . reveals that the Biden administration has arrested and

removed significantly fewer criminal aliens than the Trump

administration. (This data comes from both ICE public

releases as well as a Freedom of Information Act . . .

request by the Center for Immigration Studies.) Contrary to

Secretary Mayorkas's claim, public safety and national

security have been significantly undermined by the Biden

administration's reckless policies, and the threats

the administration has created will continue to inflict

damage on American society for many years to come.

This analysis compares the first three years of ICE

criminal alien data under the Trump administration--

Which was 2017, 2018, and 2019--

to the first three years of ICE criminal alien data under

the Biden administration--

Which was 2021, 2022, and 2023--

and finds that criminal aliens have been top beneficiaries

of the Biden administration's immigration agenda. A criminal

alien is one who--

To define this term--

has a criminal conviction or pending criminal charges.

These aren't people, again, who just came across the country illegally, which no person should do. These are people who actually have criminal charges on top of the fact that they came across the border illegally.

The data shows the Biden administration is responsible for

the following when comparing . . . years 2017, 2018, and 2019

to . . . 2021, 2022, and 2023:

57 percent decrease in arrests of criminal aliens

They are arresting far fewer of these criminal migrants.

68 percent decrease in at-large arrests of criminal aliens

44 percent decrease in detainer requests issued on criminal

aliens

67 percent decrease in deportations of criminal aliens

[And a] 55 percent decrease in immigration-related criminal

convictions

They are explicitly undoing the previous administration's immigration policies, and they have the gall to say that this is all the Republican Party's fault.

I wish that we had a Republican in charge of the White House right now who could undo these things, but we don't. We have President Biden, who refuses to enforce the border policies.

It should be noted that total annual arrests and removals

are larger than the numbers discussed here as this analysis

looks only at data related to aliens with criminal histories

and does not include data on aliens without known criminal

histories.

The Biden administration has cut arrests of criminal aliens by 57 percent. I just want to dig into this just a little bit more in greater detail.

In the first three fiscal years under the Trump

administration, ICE made 389,237 administrative arrests of

aliens with criminal convictions or pending criminal charges.

That is 389,000 during the Trump administration.

In the first three fiscal years under the Biden

administration, ICE made [165,000] administrative arrests.

Now, remember that during this time--2021, 2022, and 2023--crime has been going up relative to 2017, 2018, and 2019. In fact, 2021 and 2022 were the most violent years in about three decades, not just for assaults and other things but also for murders. I believe 2022 was one of the worst years for murders in this country in a very, very long time. And yet the Biden administration is arresting fewer than half of the criminal migrants in this country compared to the Trump administration.

They can't say it is lower crime because the crime is a lot worse in 2022 than it was in 2018. What they can say is that it is lower enforcement, lower enforcement that is endangering the people of this country and endangering the citizens of our Nation.

Now, I have heard some say--and I want to address this comment--that, in fact, crime is going down in this country. And it is one of those things that is, like, half true but is completely and utterly dishonest to the actual reality that we confront.

So if you look at the number of murders that exist in the United States--the statistics aren't final, by the way--but in 2023, there were less murders in this country than 2022, right? Good news. That is the half-true part of the statistic, and that is why many of my colleagues on the other side of the aisle will say it is hoax to say that we have a problem with criminal aliens. There is a problem with that.

Madam President, 2022 is one of the worst years on record for murders in this country. Thirty-nine years old, it is one of the worst years of my life for murders in this country, and 2021 was not much better.

So the 2 years of the Biden administration, they had skyrocketing murders, some of the worst violent crime statistics in the history of the country, and they are patting themselves on the back because it came down a little in 2023.

That is not how this works. That is not a good thing to be a little bit lower than the record highs of 2022. In fact, the number of murders we saw in this country in 2023 is still much higher than what we would have expected in this country 5 years ago, 10 years ago, 20 years ago.

We have too much crime in this country. We have too many young people like Laken Riley who are being killed or assaulted simply for living their lives in their country, and the reason why we have this problem is, at least in part, right here, because Joe Biden refuses to deport criminal aliens. It has been the explicit policy of his administration.

And I have to say that Secretary Mayorkas said something I actually agreed with here in referencing the discretionary authority of the Biden administration because it is the discretionary authority of the Biden administration that is the problem. The Biden administration refuses to use that discretionary authority to actually do its job.

It is so funny to me, coming from outside of politics and spending the last year in this Chamber talking to people, almost every single one of my colleagues from across the political spectrum is fundamentally a good person, but, in private, there is a broad recognition that what we are trying to do is force the Biden administration's hands. We are trying to identify tools that will force Joe Biden to do what he already has the authority to do under existing law.

We talk about the border shutdown in the border security deal that went down just a few weeks ago in this Chamber. The border shutdown authority was triggered at a point when nearly 2 million illegal aliens came into this country every single year. Why do we need to wait for 2 million illegal aliens to come into this country before we shut down the border? Can't we shut it down a lot earlier?

But, again, this makes sense in the very weird and deranged world that we live in where we have a President who is less committed to border enforcement than almost any President--probably any President that we have ever had.

I was no fan, largely, of the policies of the last Democratic President, Barack Obama, but say what you will about Barack Obama, he was substantially more committed to border enforcement than Joe Biden is.

Now, there is one last point that I want to make for some of my friends and colleagues, especially those on the other side of the aisle. We have a real problem of social stability in this country. A lot of people talk about our rancorous political debates. A lot of people talk about politics seems more zero-sum today than it has been in a very long time. Well, I believe that one of the reasons why we have such a broken political debate is because we have a set of policies that has promoted social division.

I hear from constituents all the time who will walk into an emergency room--and they go to an emergency room because their kid, you know, they broke their leg on the playground or they hurt themselves in some way or maybe it is a Sunday and you couldn't get into the doctor and your kid has a bad sore throat. We all go to the emergency room for a whole host of reasons, some serious and some a little bit less so.

Emergency room wait times in this country are near alltime highs, and we know why they are at alltime highs: because there are 30 million people who might be good people, but they shouldn't be in this country, and they are making American citizens wait in line for healthcare.

This is a big problem in the State of Ohio: rural school districts, districts that are already incredibly stressed by the fentanyl problem and by a lack of funding, school districts that have a family or maybe multiple families of migrant children who are dropped at their doorstep. These kids don't speak a lick of English. These kids have never been in the country. Many of them are traumatized because they were brought into this country by drug cartels and sex traffickers. These kids are not bad people, but why are we expecting American citizens who are already working in overstressed public

schools to educate these kids? And do we honestly think that when you take a rural school district and you drop a dozen kids who can't speak a lick of English, that it actually makes life easier for the rural kids in those districts to get a good education? Of course it doesn't. Of course it doesn't.

You don't have to believe anything bad about the children who are in those school districts. You just have to believe that every country has its limits, and the thing that we need to be focused on right now is the education of our own children and the well-being of our own citizens.

That doesn't make us heartless. That just means that we recognize that the first and most important obligation that we owe is to our families, our communities, our neighborhoods, and our country, not to people who have illegally crossed the border to come into this Nation.

We don't have enough services. We don't have enough resources, and we don't have enough wealth to support the entire world at the level of generosity that we support the American citizen. Overcrowded hospitals, overcrowded schools, rising violent crime rates--all of these things are the recipe for social dysfunction and social disaster.

We are dividing our citizens against one another. We are taking away some of the critical resources and supports that make living in this country a good and nice thing. And then we are surprised when our politics is angrier than it used to be, or we are surprised when Americans feel like their elected leaders don't care about them. Well, if you are flooding rural Ohio schools and rural Ohio hospitals with a bunch of people who shouldn't be there in the first place, then they are right to think that their leaders don't care about them. If you are creating an immigration system that is seeing rapid murder rates, even as you radically reduce the amount of criminal migrants that you arrest, then they are right to think that their leaders don't care about them.

I don't know what is wrong with this President, but he seems to care far more about the people who live outside of this country than he does the people who live inside of this country. They don't just feel that something is wrong with the political leadership in this country, they are right that there is something wrong with the political leadership in this country. And we could have taken real steps--very real steps-- to fix some of the problems that exist if only we were allowed to vote on Senator Hagerty's amendment, on Senator Johnson's amendment, on a number of other amendments that were offered by my colleagues that would receive bipartisan majorities in this chamber if only we were allowed to vote on them.

So with that, I say what a travesty that we haven't had the debate the American people deserve and what a tragedy that we haven't voted on legislation that would make their lives better and would make the criminal migration problem improved in this country. They certainly deserve it. I wish we would have done our jobs.

With that, I yield to my friend from Kentucky.