Floor Statements

I ask for the yeas and nays.

Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the Senate resume legislative session and be in a period of morning business, with Senators permitted to speak therein for up to 10 minutes each.

Mr. President, I understand the Chair has an announcement to make.

Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that, notwithstanding rule XXII, all postcloture time be expired and the Senate vote on confirmation of the McDonald nomination at 2:15 p.m. tomorrow, and if any nominations are confirmed during Tuesday's session of the Senate, the motion to reconsider be considered made and laid upon the table and the President be immediately notified of the Senate's action.

Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the Senate proceed to the immediate consideration of Calendar No. 307, S. 921.

Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the committee-reported substitute amendment be considered and agreed to; that the bill, as amended, be considered read a third time and passed; and that the motion to reconsider be considered made and laid upon the table.

Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the Senate proceed to the immediate consideration of S. 4164, which is at the desk.

Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the bill be considered read a third time and passed, and that the motion to reconsider be considered made and laid upon the table.

Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the Senate proceed to the consideration of S. Res. 660, which is at the desk.

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

Mr. President I ask unanimous consent that the Senate proceed to the immediate consideration of S. Con. Res. 29.

Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the concurrent resolution be agreed to and the motion to reconsider be considered made and laid upon the table.

Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that when the Senate completes its business today, it stand adjourned until 12 noon on Tuesday, March 24, that following the prayer and pledge, the Journal of proceedings be approved to date, the morning hour be deemed expired, the time for the two leaders be reserved for their use later in the day, morning business be closed, and the Senate resume the House message with respect to S. 1383; further, that the Senate recess from 1 to 2 p.m. to allow for the weekly conference meetings; finally, at 2:15 p.m., the Senate proceed to executive session and execute the order in relation to the McDonald nomination.

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

Mr. President, reserving the right to object, my friend from Hawaii makes a great case in a lot of areas, and he is correct-- this has been incredibly frustrating for TSA, for the Coast Guard, and for so many other folks that are national security professionals.

DHS has a quarter-million Federal employees--a quarter-million. ICE has 20,000 of that quarter-million. And the argument has been about those 20,000 somewhat, but the problem is those 20,000 also do a pretty vital job for the country.

Let me give you an example. Homeland Security investigators are part of ICE. Those Homeland Security investigators are the Federal agents that actually investigate human trafficking. They are the Federal agents that do drug smuggling across the border. Homeland Security investigators are the investigators that actually prohibit American arms sales going out of the country to foreign nationals. These individuals are very important to us.

Now, a fraction of ICE is what they call ERO, which is actually doing the arrests here, but a large portion of ICE, of those 20,000 folks, are actually doing a lot of our drug smuggling, human trafficking, arms trafficking--all those functions.

So to be able to say ``I am defunding ICE'' is one thing, but you are also defunding all those Federal entities that are homeland security entities on it as well. That is our challenge in this.

As I have said to my colleagues before, when they defund ICE, at what point does it ever turn back on? At what point do they ever come back to my Democratic colleagues and say: It is time to actually fund ICE.

The pressure from the hard left outside has been so focused on defunding ICE, defunding ICE, defunding ICE that it is going to make it very, very difficult for any of my colleagues to ever vote and say they are going to do this.

Now, as far as the negotiation process, my colleague from Hawaii is correct. There have been some letters that have been exchanged. Part of my frustration, and I have shared it with him before, is that the offer he was dictating was actually made, and there was no response that came back for 18 days.

So the offer was made to say: Let's talk about this. Here is a proposal.

Eighteen days later, there was a response. We lost 2\1/2\ weeks of time in negotiation to be able to do it.

Now, thankfully, it has moved past just that letter. There is actually legislative language. That language is being debated behind closed doors now, finally, to be able to talk about it. There have been Democratic Members that are meeting with the White House and with Republican Members here in the Senate to be able to go more in depth to be able to figure out what to do.

It is deescalation training. Yes, it is definitely body-worn cameras and including how they are going to be used, to try to be able to mandate those. It is identification for officers. It is when they step out of their vehicle, to identify who they are, to be able to track that. It is a lot of the aspects that have been discussed, including the warrant issue. My Democratic colleagues have said it is really important. We want to be able to deal with the warrant issue as well.

All those things are in current negotiation around legislative language.

Last week, I stood here and said: Why aren't we staying through the weekend to be able to work to solve this? Why are we leaving and going home? We should stay at the wheel and keep working until it is actually resolved--not just for the quarter-million folks that are in DHS but also those 20,000 folks that also work with ICE. They have families as well. They have mortgages as well. They also want to be able to get paid, the same as everybody else.

So the challenge now becomes--we are not going to just defund ICE and then never turn it back on, so ICE agents quit because they know they are not getting paid, and it just drags on for a long time. We need to actually resolve the differences.

My colleague and I agree on body-worn cameras. We agree on deescalation. Now, we disagree somewhat on the mask issue because the problem has become unique. There are now activists who have apps. They are snapping pictures and saying: There is an ICE agent here. They are snapping a picture of their vehicle. They are putting it together. And other people are snapping where they are, tracking, using facial recognition to be able to identify where their family is. ICE agents, for the first time that I know of ever, now literally put their families at risk from Americans. In the past, ICE agents knew there were cartels that were pursuing them. Now it is not just cartels; it is leftwing activists that are now trying to snap a picture of them.

So while they are in one city, you can actually have an activist show up in their hometown, at their home address, and to be able to torment their family there.

For the sake of the ICE agent and for their kids, why would we not allow them to be able to protect themselves and to be able to protect their family? They are doing a job that the Federal Government has asked them to do, to go pick up criminals and to go pick up criminal aliens. Let's protect our family in the process of actually doing that.

So I do object to this, but I would love to be able to offer a second alternative to this in the days ahead.

So I object.

Mr. President, my friend from Hawaii is actually correct on the color of money issue. There shouldn't be a difference. Those are taxpayer dollars, all of them, so the taxpayers should have accountability in that, and there shouldn't be a limitation on that. That is one of the areas that I have also expressed frustration with DHS on because I am also one of those folks that have made a call, that I want to make a quick drop-in on one of the DHS detention facilities to be able see it, and I was also told no. That should not be so.

So I agree with my colleague from Hawaii on that, that whatever rules that apply should apply no matter what account that it comes from because the account is actually the American taxpayer, so that should apply in every single spot on that.

I do agree as well that we have got to be able to finish this out. We have tried to offer several opportunities to be able to do it, want to continue to be able to do that as well. At the very beginning of this, we couldn't reach an agreement, so we did what was called a continuing resolution, saying let's pay everybody short term until we can actually get through this. That is how we started this. That actually ended, and now, we don't have anything on it as well.

So I would like to offer a 4-week version of that to say for the next month, let's try to work through this. I think we are closer. That is my opinion on this. I think we are closer to the debate and being able to get this done. But if it is my family trying to be able to get to a paycheck, they just want to know it is going to get done.

So I would like to offer a simple amendment, that is take DHS funding, do a continuing resolution for the next month, and be able to have it all funded. Let's keep debating. Let's keep working this out but make sure that everybody gets paid.

So I ask unanimous consent that the Senate proceed to the immediate consideration of Calendar No. 156, H.R. 4553. I further ask that the substitute amendment at the desk be considered and agreed to; that the bill, as amended, be considered read a third time and passed; and that the motion to reconsider be considered made and laid upon the table.

Mr. President, reserving the right to object, I do thank my colleague for coming to the floor to be able to talk about this today. He and I are both on airplanes a lot.

The comment that has been made here on the floor, though, is: Before we leave here this week, this should be resolved. I could not agree more on that principle.

In fact, last Thursday, I came and said we should not leave at all this weekend; we should commit to stay. In fact, Senator Hassan and I, my Democratic colleague from New Hampshire, she and I have a bill that says when we get to a moment like this and we have an impasse, we stay; we don't leave.

I brought that to the floor last Thursday and said: Let's stay.

And everybody left, went right past TSA officials who are not being paid and went wherever people went over the weekend.

I am saying the same thing again. We should stay here and work out our differences. The easiest way to actually resolve this long term is to say, when we get to an impasse on funding, those workers are still paid. There is an automatic continuing resolution that kicks in to make sure they are paid, but we stay in session 7 days a week until we resolve the issues.

We shouldn't have weekends when there is a problem somewhere in funding around the country. The pressure should be on us to be able to get things resolved, to debate it out.

We are the grownups that are supposed to be talking about all these things and working out all of our differences, but that is not happening. And that has been frustrating.

Last Thursday, I brought up that the White House had sent over a counterproposal. There was a proposal that was sent over at the very beginning of this closedown of DHS, and the White House said: Here are some ideas we want to have.

The Democrats then said: No, we want this instead.

They sent it back over to the White House.

The White House then said: OK, we will take some of your ideas, and we will send this back to you.

And then they waited 18 days for Senate Democrats to respond to the White House. For 18 days, the White House just had to wait for a counteroffer. As my Senate colleagues were just saying, we are thinking about it.

Well, that response did finally come on Monday, but it was a response back to the White House of the same thing they had said before.

The White House is trying to get this resolved, not just for TSA. But how about for the Coast Guard? My Democratic colleagues came and said: Well, OK, we will fund the Coast Guard, as well, and TSA, and the Secret Service.

Do you know who has not been funded? There is no offer to fund Customs officials that actually work at all of our ports of entry. Their pay is going to be blocked. For Homeland Security individuals, there has been no offer to be able to pay those folks at all. For the Homeland Security investigators that actually handle child trafficking, human smuggling, and all of our investigations along the border dealing with drug smuggling, there has been no offer to fund them at all.

This is silly to try to break this up into different aspects of who is going to get funding and who is not going to get funding. TSA is going to get funding, but the Customs officials aren't going to get funding. Coast Guard is going to get funding, but the people investigating human smuggling are not going to get funding.

Let's sit down and figure this out. Let's not have 18 days between an offer and a counteroffer. Let's actually figure this out. Senator Warnock and I could probably sit down this afternoon and solve this.

All that everyone is looking for is: How do we actually get people in the room, willing to make the decision and making the decisions on this, so we can get this all worked out and done?

I was incredibly humbled because, when I walked through TSA this week, I walked through with grief as I walked through, because all I can think is, these folks are busting it. When I get there early in the morning, they have been there for hours already, and they are not getting paid.

The folks in Oklahoma are still showing up. We are not seeing the long lines and sick calls and all that, because that is not happening in my State. People are still showing up. And I walk past them embarrassed, saying: I am so sorry we have not been able to get everybody together to be able to get this solved.

But when I came through this week, as I walked through, the first TSA agent that I encountered said to me: We have something for you. And the second person, as I came through the line, said: Don't walk away. We have something for you.

And then, when I got to my gate, the head of the TSA group in my city walked out and handed me their challenge coin from my local TSA group. And he handed it to me, and he said: We see what you are doing. You are trying to get us paid. You are trying to get everybody paid. And we are really grateful that you are actually trying to get this solved. And we just want to say thanks because it has been a really hard year of sometimes funding happening and sometimes not.

In fact, one of the agents in Oklahoma City, last month, told me they feel like their check is bipolar because they never know where it is going to be at any moment. That just shouldn't be so. That just shouldn't be.

So my challenge, this week, is the same as it is every week. Let's stay here until this actually gets done. Let's not walk away. Let's sit down. Let's figure out how we actually solve this. Let's not take 2\1/ 2\ weeks to do a counteroffer to a legitimate offer from the White House.

And can I just remind my colleagues, the White House's counteroffer expanded the use of body-worn cameras dramatically. It required ID on every single officer. These were all requests that my Democratic colleagues have made to be able to put in. They said that they won't do enforcement activities in sensitive locations and make sure that all Members of Congress can do oversight and get access to detention facilities.

I mean, the list goes on and on and on. This is the list of what my Democratic colleagues all asked for. But it never seems to be enough, and my fear is that it is because the politics are better than the resolution.

Well, it is not if you are a TSA officer. It is not if you are in the Coast Guard. It is not if you are a Customs official. It is not if you are a Homeland Security investigator. Your family is not getting fed. It is not getting better for them. So the politics may be helpful for some, but it is not helpful for all.

So let's do it, at least while we are in the debate, where we started this debate. We didn't start with a shutdown. We started with, OK, let's at least agree we will keep the government open in all these areas while we are debating.

We started with just 2 weeks here, and said: For 2 weeks, let's do a continuing resolution. Let's keep our argument going but pay everybody.

That is where we began on this, but it seems like the easiest thing that we could literally do today and keep our argument going, because, hopefully, we are close, at least, on all this agreement, if we can ever get everybody to sit down in one room and to solve them.

So I am just going to ask--to repeat--what we did at the start of this.

I ask the Senator if he would modify his request so that the Senate can proceed immediately to the consideration

of Calendar No. 156, H.R. 4553, which is a 2-week continuing resolution for Homeland Security. I ask that Senator Warnock would substitute his amendment No. 4353 to be considered and agreed to, that the bill be amended and be considered read a third time and passed, and the motion to reconsider be considered made and laid upon the table.

Painfully so, I do object.

I appreciate my friend Raphael Warnock coming to the floor, the Senator from Georgia, and being able to talk about these issues.

The challenge of this is that the request has been made to say: Let's reform ICE.

You referred to law enforcement families who get up every day and put their lives on the line to be able to protect the country as paramilitary officers jumping out on people. I don't refer to them that way.

But I would only say, the White House has said: We agree with you; let's reform them.

They put in writing: new deescalation training, requirements for badges, requirements for individuals that step out of the vehicle to then identify themselves on it, changes in the way they handle uniforms, body-worn cameras, changes in processing.

My colleague is saying: I can't agree to move and just ignore this didn't happen.

No one is asking for that--no one. What we are saying is we agree with you. Let's make changes in this. I don't like what I have seen. You don't like what you have seen. So let's change it. Let's require body-worn cameras. Let's require badges. Let's require a change in uniforms. Let's require differences in how we actually identify officers and uniforms and vehicles. And those are all reasonable things.

So the offer has been made. Then let's make that change. The problem has been there has been no answer back. We are OK to make those changes. We have literally put in writing, in legislative language, that this could go into appropriations today to say: Let's actually do these changes and things that you are recommending on it.

But, at the end of the day, that isn't what moves.

What moves is back and forth, on different things like this, to try to identify TSA and divide TSA folks from Customs folks and say: Customs folks are bad, but TSA agents are good.

I think both of them are good families, because CBP is included in this as well. Those are the folks working on our docks at Long Beach right now. Those are the folks working in our international Customs, trying to be able to bring stuff off a ship and get inspections on it. They are not being paid. In fact, they are not even going to offer to pay them because they are looped into Border Patrol folks.

That is the problem. Once you slice it all up and say, ``This person gets this; this person doesn't,'' it doesn't work. So because that doesn't work, the offer has been made: Let's fix the way we are handling ICE and the way we are handling patrols. But we have got to have somebody say yes. In the meantime, offers keep getting sent over, and we are waiting on a yes to be able to actually move to resolve the issues.

I yield the floor.

Mr. President, I rise today to recognize Dr. Joe Leverett of Altus, OK, whose lifelong commitment to community service and support for our Nation's military has left a lasting impact on southwest Oklahoma, the men and women who serve at Altus Air Force Base, and our U.S. Air Force.

A fourth-generation resident of Altus, Dr. Leverett calls himself ``just a country doctor.'' Yet, as a board-certified physician in internal medicine and geriatric medicine and former chief of staff at Jackson County Memorial Hospital, he has spent decades caring for patients in Altus and the surrounding region, improving the health and well-being of Oklahomans while embodying the highest ideals of his profession.

His contributions to the Altus community and southwest Oklahoma extend far beyond his medical career. Following in the footsteps of his late father, Darill Leverett, he has been a dedicated civic leader, volunteering countless hours to strengthen the partnership between the people of Altus and the airmen stationed at Altus Air Force Base.

As chairman of the Altus Military Affairs Committee, Dr. Leverett has long championed the understanding that the success of the base and the vitality of the surrounding community are deeply connected. Through his leadership, he has helped foster a culture of support and appreciation for those who serve our country, ensuring that the base and the community continue to thrive together to meet the mission at hand.

In recognition of his tireless advocacy for Altus Air Force Base, the KC-46 Flight Training Center at Altus Air Force Base bears Dr. Leverett's name, a lasting tribute to the profound role he has played in strengthening the relationship between the installation and the surrounding community.

Dr. Leverett's leadership extends far beyond the city limits of Altus. He has served as a member of the Oklahoma Strategic Military Planning Commission, was appointed to the Secretary of the Air Force's Air and Space Force Civic Leader Program, received the respected Tampa Bay Trophy during the Airlift/Tanker Association Convention in 2016, and, in 2023, was honored with the Distinguished Public Service Award presented by the Secretary of the Air Force. Dr. Leverett's selection for these honors reflects the profound impact he has had in building enduring ties between Altus Air Force Base and the community it calls home.

Dr. Leverett's life is a testament to the power of service--to his neighbors, to his community, and to the men and women of the U.S. Air Force. His leadership has strengthened the bond between Altus and the airmen stationed there, and his work will benefit both his community and Nation for years to come.

As he steps back from his leadership role with the Altus Military Affairs Committee, I ask my colleagues to join me in recognizing Dr. Joe Leverett for his remarkable dedication and in thanking him for the many ways he has served the people of Oklahoma and the United States. We are deeply grateful for his service.

Mr. President, 250 years ago--actually, 250 years ago this summer--we wrote a letter to good King George III, and in that letter we now call the Declaration of Independence, we complained about foreign intervention into the activities of Americans, the colonists. We wanted the right to be able to actually control our own destiny. We wanted the ability to be able to speak for our own future, decide for our own families, without having foreign interference coming across an ocean to be able to affect us. We determined that we wanted to run our own Nation.

Now, 250 years later, we still want to run our own Nation. We want to make our own decisions without foreign interference, without anyone stepping in and telling us, as Americans, whom we are going to be and what we are going to do. We disagree with each other enough; we don't need individuals from the outside coming in and expressing their opinion. We handle this as Americans, and the way that we do that is with elections.

Elections have been routinely done through the history of our country since our Constitution was ratified in 1789. It has been a distinguishing mark of the United States. We are the oldest functioning constitutional democracy in the world. And in our Republic, we choose representatives. Those representatives speak on our behalf. And if we decide we don't like them for whatever reason, we choose different representatives. But we, as Americans, choose our own path through our own elected officials. That is what we do, and we do it on a regular, consistent basis.

Now, in the earliest days, it was literally a wooden box and slips of paper. We have improved that over the years. Step by step, decade after decade, we have done elections a little bit differently.

Now, they are done differently all over the country on it, but we have some basic foundational rules that are also guidance. We choose our own leaders, but we do it the right way.

It wasn't always that way. But as we have improved, we make our elections more transparent, better, with faster responses, giving more trust.

Many folks in my generation will never forget the photograph of staring at a hanging chad from the Bush election, with a person in an election board closely staring through a magnifying glass to try to figure out if there was a dimple on a piece of paper.

There is no election system in the country that does chads anymore because we all determined that is a terrible idea. It is just a bad way to be able to prove the intent of a vote. And the whole younger generation has no idea what a hanging chad would even be because we no longer do that anymore.

We protect the right of all individuals to vote--every American citizen--because in the middle of the 1960s, we as a Nation passed the Voting Rights Act, determining that every person in America has the right to be able to vote and that would be protected, that if there would be any jurisdiction in the country that would violate that, a Federal court could literally step in and just say: No, every single citizen of the country would have a protected right to vote.

In fact, if you want me to read it to you, the Voting Rights Act actually begins with this simple statement:

All citizens of the United States who are otherwise

qualified by law to vote at any election by the people, in

any State, Territory, district, county, city, parish,

township, school district, municipality, or other territorial

subdivision, shall be entitled and allowed to vote.

But the simple statement that the Voting Rights Act begins with-- ``All citizens''--what is interesting is the Voting Rights Act protected the ability of a court to step in and say, if some citizen is not being allowed to vote, the courts can step in and mandate that that actually occur. But it did not set up a way to say: Are you a citizen at all?

It was just assumed that only citizens would actually be the ones to vote. It is the baseline of the civil rights in that time period and in the Voting Rights Act--that our elections would be protected only for citizens. But this is a ``trust'' bill in that way, and there is no ``verify.''

What we as Republicans have brought--we have brought out of the House and brought to the floor of the Senate--is not a ``trust'' bill. It is a ``trust and verify'' bill. It takes the next step from the Voting Rights Act of 1965, which mandated that it would only be citizens that would vote.

In fact, there was a penalty actually established that if you are a noncitizen, you get up to 5 years in prison if you vote in a Federal election. That is a big deal.

The challenge is, we have no way to be able to track it. That doesn't actually occur anymore. So we want to just be able to bring a most basic thing that all Americans can agree on--we would hope--that only citizens of the United States would be able to vote, and that before you register to vote, we would have some way to be able to show you actually are a citizen. That is, the Voting Rights Act of 1965 said that all of those American citizens have a protected right to be able to vote, and they can choose to--hopefully, they do--or not. That is up to them as an American.

So let me walk through this.

The first thing I wanted to be able to say is thank you to the State election board folks and all the State election officials and the poll workers that work for every election all across the country. We lose track of this at times.

It takes almost three-quarters of a million people just to run a Federal election--three-quarters of a million. Those are poll workers. Those are poll watchers. Those are State election officials. Those are folks that work behind the scenes in every county and parish, in cities and municipalities all across the country--three-quarters of a million people just to be able to pull together an election.

Those folks are incredibly important to be able to protect the most basic rights of individuals to be able to vote and to protect the basic right of one person, one vote.

Let me share this with this body. Here is how we do it in Oklahoma. In Oklahoma, we have one of the highest rated, secure election systems in the country--in the country. And we encourage people to come out and to vote and to participate in the entire process.

Some of the things that we choose to do is, in all of our polling locations and every time ballots are actually presented, there is always a Republican and a Democrat poll worker that is always there in every area--always--so both parties are always represented in that and so everyone can look at each other and constantly be able to check the system.

We are still old school. We do a piece of paper and a marker, and you mark your ballot. And it runs through an optical scanner, and it registers that ballot was actually fully handled. So at the end of the night, if there is any challenge at all to that ballot, we can go back to the paper ballots and actually count them by hand and be able to verify all of them, because we want to make sure, every single election, we can verify every single vote, every single time.

In fact, at the end of the night, when machines are finished, we literally print out on a piece of paper and post on the window of the election board location, wherever this was that the election was being held--we actually publicly post, at the instant the election was done that night, at 7 p.m., so that it is public information immediately how many votes were taken in this area. So if, at some point, it shows up later that it was a different number, everyone could see it.

We have full verification through the entire process.

In Oklahoma, we have voter ID at every single location, at every single vote. How do we do it? If you vote in

person and you show up to vote on election day, you pull out an ID, and you show an ID--every single person.

If you vote early, absentee--we have that all over our State in county election boards everywhere--as you walk up, you have to pull out an ID and to be able to show that ID to vote.

And if you are going to mail in your ballot, we welcome that, but you have got to show ID when you actually do it. That means actually going into a location where you can get a notary that, before you put your ballot in the mail, it shows your envelope, you show the ID, it shows on the envelope who the person is on it, and you actually have a notary to do that.

We have voter ID at every single stage. We don't allow ballot harvesting at all. We are a very, very secure system, and we are proud of that. We want every single person to be able to vote, but we want to make sure it is one person, one vote.

We occasionally still do have some folks who try to vote twice in Oklahoma. I am sure that happens in other States, as well, where they will do a request for a mail-in ballot, they will mail it in with a notary and verify that it is them, and then, on election day, they will show up and vote again.

During the last Presidential election, we had a little over 1.5 million people that showed up to vote on that. We found 2 people that double-voted in multiple counties and 27 people that actually double- voted in the same county--29 folks total that double-voted in over 1.5 million people.

By the way, we didn't ignore those 29. They were all referred for prosecution because according to Federal law--Federal law, now-- according to Federal law, it is up to 5 years in prison if you vote twice.

So we refer folks for prosecution to say we don't allow that. We are careful in how we do the balloting and the voting on this. But we have a voter ID, and we walk through the process to make sure that every person actually has that opportunity to be able to vote.

Interestingly enough, in Oklahoma, we asked a question several years ago: How many folks showed up for jury duty and, when they showed up for jury duty, were excused from the jury duty because they went before the judge and said: I am not a citizen of United States?

This happens all the time, actually, where someone comes in and says: I am not a citizen of the United States, and so I need to be excused.

They are not eligible for a jury if they are not a citizen of the United States. We had about 40 people in Oklahoma that made that claim and said: I am not a citizen of the United States.

But when we checked voter rolls, they were registered to vote--40. They were excused from jury duty but were also registered to vote.

So in Oklahoma law, do you know what we do? Anytime, in any county, if someone says, I am not a citizen of the United States in the jury duty, that now gets turned into a list. And if they are registered to vote, their registration gets purged because we are serious about only Oklahoma U.S. citizens voting in Oklahoma.

Do you know why? Because 250 years ago, we fought a war against good King George to say: We make our own decisions, not someone else outside our country. We make our own.

So we make sure that we purge our own voter rolls. In fact, that is State law, to be able to do that.

Listen, we have a very simple, straightforward proposition. It is called the SAVE America Act. The two most basic features of the SAVE America Act should not be controversial. They are simple and straightforward.

We have to verify you are an American citizen. It is already Federal law--already right now--that you have to be an American citizen. We just don't verify it. So this is the ``trust and verify'' portion of the bill. We trust you that you are an American citizen. How about we just check?

So you have to show that you are an American citizen to be able to register to vote.

The second part of it is you have to have ID to be able to vote. Again, we have done this in Oklahoma for years. This can be done and should be done, and it just shouldn't be that controversial.

I have to share, though, just as who I am as a person. Mr. President, as a personal note of privilege on this, I had to smile when I saw the title of our bill, when it started working its way through the very calm House of Representatives and was sent over to us: The SAVE America Act.

There are a lot of things that can save America, and this bill is incredibly important. It is vital that we get it done. But just as a personal privilege, can I just say: I personally believe what saves America is that more people had a personal relationship with Jesus Christ. I think that would be the greatest thing ever to be able to save the nature of our country.

Our country has become incredibly divided and angry. People are mad and screaming at each other and don't even know why anymore.

Two thousand years ago, a young lawyer walked up to Jesus, and said: Rabbi, of all the teachings, of all the commandments that are out there, what is the heaviest? What is the greatest commandment?

And he said: The biggest one is to love God with all your heart, soul, mind, and spirit.

And then he said: You didn't ask me for two, but let me give you the second one. The second one is just like the first one--he said--to love your neighbor as yourself.

If we are going to save America, protecting our voting integrity is incredibly important, and let's get that done. But if we are really going to save America--not just a bill--I think we need to get back to the most basic truth, to restart again and ask ourselves, as individuals that make up a nation, if we are going to love God with all our heart, soul, mind, and strength, and love our neighbor as ourself.

And as the old joke says, when the person says, ``Who is my neighbor?'' the response is, ``probably the person you wish I wouldn't say.'' That is the person who is your neighbor.

Jesus was headed toward his execution. He knew it, but the people around him didn't. And he was heading through Jericho, and as he approached Jericho, there was a tax collector there. His name was Zacchaeus. He was up in a tree because he was a little guy and because he wanted to see Jesus come by.

Now, he was a wretched guy who had stolen from everybody in town, and everybody knew it. When Jesus saw this wretched guy, he looked at him and he said: Why don't you come down? I want to spend some more time with you.

And the one person in town that everybody thought Jesus would ignore, Jesus actually pointed him out and said: I want to spend more time with you.

At the end of the conversation, everybody looked at him and said: Why did you spend time with that broken, depraved person?

Jesus responded: Because I came to seek and to save what was lost. That is why.

Just a personal privilege, if we are going to talk about saving America, maybe we should start with our own souls.

But in the meantime, as we contemplate that as individuals, why don't we just do the most basic thing? Why don't we verify that only American citizens are voting--because we all know it is happening, and I just told you stories from my own State.

Why don't we just verify, as we go through the polls, to increase the trust of all Americans for our election process? I am looking forward to the debate on the floor this week and for folks to have the opportunity to be able to talk this through. This is something important that we need to be able to finish, and it is something strongly the American people are supportive of.

I yield the floor.

It feels like ``Groundhog Day'' here on the Senate floor, trying to bear with all the problems. I wish we could all get in one room and be able to actually talk to each other like human beings and people rather than just rant.

Fourteen days ago--2 weeks--14 days ago, the White House sent over a proposal to my Democratic colleagues and said: We understand there are issues with ICE. We understand there are issues with CBP. So let me make a proposal to you of some options that we can do that we should be able to agree on--14 days ago.

Those options included mandatory body-worn cameras for ICE agents and CBP--mandatory--name tags for every single agent, to be able to have an identifier for every single agent that is

out there; to be able to make sure that selective sensitive sites did not have ICE involvement in those selective sites; deescalation training for all of our Federal officers to be able to know the techniques for how to be able to step down from a violent protester that is screaming in their face and waiving a camera in their face; a full, open investigation of the two shootings that happened in Minneapolis; reducing the footprint of the number of agents in Minnesota; a change in the way that warrants are actually used across the country.

The White House laid all of those things out, 14 days ago, that one of my Democratic colleagues, who is on this floor, said to me was an entirely reasonable offer from the White House--14 days ago. And since that time period, radio silence from my Democratic colleagues. The White House had no response.

TSA agents are not being paid, FEMA agents are not being paid, and Cybersecurity folks are not being paid while we wait for the counteroffer.

What is happening is good politics from my Democrat colleagues. They feel like this is good politics to be able to continue and to be able to press in that some folks on the far, far, far left want to defund ICE and want to show there is a huge fight to be able to take on ICE.

The result of that is 250,000 people--families, individuals--that work with DHS wait for an answer--wait. This has got to get resolved. The politics in this moment have got to stop.

I was here last Thursday saying all of us should stay and stay over the weekend and not leave until this is resolved, and everybody just left.

A quarter million DHS employees are looking at this room right now and saying: Stop bickering about this. Just solve it. Whoever has got the paper, just answer it. Just go back and forth.

Let's figure this out. Let's actually just solve this.

So we have tried multiple times to say: Let's fund it.

The White House has made good-faith offers to say: Here are offers to be able to get some dialogue going if somebody will actually talk back to me.

But while we wait on the politics to cool, in the meantime, I need to offer again what we started with at the very beginning, and that was just this: Can we at least open things up for 2 weeks, like we did at the beginning?

We started this battle weeks and weeks and weeks ago, and we started it with: OK, we agree on all of the other appropriations bills. We don't agree on this one because it has funding for ICE, because it has funding for CBP in it. And so we can't get agreement on that.

Can we at least just keep the status quo and keep debating so that the fight is here in this room, rather than affecting families that literally are trying to get grocery coupons and gift cards from people so they can feed their families. Can we at least, at a minimum, do 2 weeks, like we did at the start of this? If we can't agree on everything, let's at least keep this open.

Now, this body knows I have been fighting for years to say: We should never have a government shutdown at all.

I literally don't know how many times I have been on this floor talking about this issue, saying government shutdowns should be a thing of the past.

We should be here 24/7 until we solve the problem and hold all those Federal workers harmless.

If we can't get to that, which we have not been able to get an agreement to at least do that, then let's at least have a continuing resolution that pays everyone at DHS for the next 2 weeks while we keep arguing until we can resolve our issue.

I ask unanimous consent that the Senate proceed to the immediate consideration of Calendar No. 156, H.R. 4553. I further ask that the substitute amendment, No. 4353, be considered and agreed to; that the bill, as amended, be considered read a third time and passed; and that the motion to reconsider be considered made and laid upon the table.

Mr. President, reserving the right to object, I will be brief with some comments on this.

I just wish all that was so that was just stated. The White House presented a set of ideas on paper on reform, put them into legislative text, and handed them to Democrats 2 weeks ago--2 weeks ago--and said: Here are the reforms we would agree with that you have asked for: badges, body-worn cameras, deescalation training, process reforms--all those things they put out there. For 2 weeks, my Democratic colleagues have determined that politics is better than the actual solution, and so they have just said: Let's do the politics.

The problem with politics on this is that a quarter million DHS employees are not being paid right now, so it doesn't make good politics for them. They are trying to figure out how to feed their families.

By the way, again, I had a TSA agent from Oklahoma City--who do, by the way, a great job--say to me just last week: I feel like my paycheck is bipolar; I just never know whether it is going to be there or not. That is because my Democratic colleagues have shut down the government just over and over again as their protest against Trump. I get it. They don't like President Trump. They voiced that. But I don't know what my FEMA agents that are working on tornado relief in Oklahoma have to do with their frustration with ICE.

So they come to bring a proposal and to say: Well, FEMA has had a bias and President Trump has had a bias against California with FEMA. And I smile honestly and think: You know, last year--or a year and a half ago, I guess, now--President Biden's FEMA instructed FEMA agents not to go to the houses in disaster areas that had a Trump yard sign in their front yard. So if you want to talk bias of FEMA, the Biden administration FEMA not going to help on disaster relief on houses that had a Trump yard sign--let's talk bias. So I don't agree with that at all.

Here is what we need to do: Stop this, sit down like grownups, and actually solve the problem--because this whole issue of ``I will fund everything but ICE and CBP'' doesn't really work for the ICE and CBP families. I know you may be mad at them, but, you know what, those secretaries and those assistants and those folks that work in all those offices have lives and families as well.

Can I tell you what CBP does? It is not just border patrol. CBP also is managing what is happening at our ports of entry. Let me be specific on this. There are 9,000 CBP agents that work in California, and 2,000 of those CBP agents are working at the Los Angeles-Long Beach port of entry. They are handling the port stuff coming in and out right now. They are not dealing with border patrol. They are not dealing with ICE. But my Democratic colleagues say ``We can't fund CBP,'' including those families that are in California at the Long Beach port. They have nothing to do with all of this. They just want to get a paycheck and to be able to know where they are going.

It has been very, very clear that if we don't fund ICE and CBP--my Democratic colleagues have been very clear: We are not going to fund them. We see the strategy. The strategy is very clear. Those folks won't be paid. They will eventually quit. And they will get what they want--no Border Patrol, no ICE--because all the families have quit.

So listen, I object to this, but I encourage this body to actually sit down and look at what the White House presented 2 weeks ago. Make a counterproposal if you disagree. Do something. But let's get off the dime on this and actually get this resolved for those quarter million families.

I object.