Floor Statements

Madam President, if this body were to look at the tests and the homework, the quizzes, and the essays of the Department of Homeland Security and give them a grade based on their performance for the last year and a half, what would the grade be?

DHS says they have six missions, and they detail out those missions. One of those missions reads: Secure U.S. borders and approaches. Then they give this little piece behind it to describe that.

The Department of Homeland Security secures the Nation's air, land, and sea borders to prevent illegal activity while facilitating lawful travel and trade. What would their grade be on that? And is anyone going to hold them to account for their grade or is this body going to continue to just ignore what is happening on the southern border?

It is the role, it is the task, it is the responsibility of the Department of Homeland Security to help secure our Nation, but this Department is currently facilitating illegal immigration, not stopping illegal immigration.

I wish I was wrong on that, but I am not. In fact, as recent as the last 2 weeks, I met with DHS leadership who described to me the new method they have laid out so you can apply for asylum, come to the United States and come to any airport in the country. So you wouldn't have to come through the southern border; you would just come in. But it would be the same process as what is happening on the southern border where people from 150 countries just this year have crossed our border. They have been checked in by Border Patrol, who know full well they are not legally present here. Then they are released into the country and given 8 years until their hearing--8 years.

Instead of responding to be able to slow down the more than 2 million people who have illegally crossed in just the last year, this administration is actually working to say it is actually not enough people. They are increasing the access points to increase the number of people rather than decrease.

The administration was proud to be able to say in May and in June that the numbers went down slightly from what they were in the previous months. The problem with that is, the previous month was a record, and so was the month before that. If you look at just the June number that, yes, was slightly down from May, it is still the highest June ever recorded by the administration.

We are being overwhelmed with the number of people coming in illegally across our border. The administration is currently releasing people, and their sole focus seems to be on making illegal immigration more efficient rather than more enforced.

What grade would you give DHS? A more specific question: Mr. President, do you want to stop illegal immigration? Because I don't think you do. And I think it is clear that the policies you put in place are directly leading to this record influx of illegal immigration from all over the world.

I wish you could even say: Well, at least we vetted them, but I know that is not true, and so do you. Not a single one of these people entering the country has their criminal background check from the country they are from. We are doing a quick fingerprint analysis to see if they have committed a crime here, but we have no idea of the 150 countries-plus that they are coming from because right now the goal is not to check their criminal history; it is to get them released in the country within 8 hours. Keep it moving. Keep it moving. You don't want to have a clog up at the border. When they cross the border, the goal is to just keep them moving into the country.

Last weekend, I spent the weekend again at our southern border. Serving on the Homeland Security Committee, I spend a lot of time back and forth across that border to be able to evaluate what is happening now because it changes from week to week.

I was in the Rio Grande Valley last weekend spending time with CBP, the Border Patrol, individuals from Air and Marine Operations, from the Department of DPS in Texas, from the National Guard. All of them expressed incredible frustration.

When I got there last Thursday night late, we went on a midnight patrol with Border Patrol. Literally within minutes, we ran through our first group of folks coming across the border, a group of teenagers. Minutes later, literally while that group was being processed, another group was interdicted coming across the border not far away. This time it was 6- and 7-year-old children and a couple of families. While we watched them being processed, they called us on the radio and said that about 2 miles down, they just picked up another group. This time, it was adults, including one pregnant lady who was deep into her eighth month coming across the border to make sure she delivered here in the United States.

One hundred fifty-plus countries just this year are crossing the border because it is open.

I hear the Secretary of DHS say they have secured the border. As I just came from the border, I wonder when the President of the United States is going to actually go to the border to be able to see what is actually happening on the border and the policies they put in place, because so far the President has been able to make it to Saudi Arabia but has not been able to make it to our own southern border to even look once at what is happening on our southern border.

If he goes--someday, I hope--I hope he meets with Border Patrol because the Border Patrol agents I talk to tell me about a time when the border was secure. They tell me about a time not long ago that we added forcible borders and where the policy wasn't to release within hours and the enforcement priority wasn't to get them moving as fast as possible; it was to actually secure the border.

You could meet with the landowners, like I did last weekend, who live in that area. Some of them have lived there for generations, and they are absolutely furious because although they have lived there--and their family--for generations, they have never ever experienced this.

They tell me about how, when they were children, they used to play in this area, and now literally they will not walk out their own door without a firearm on their hip. They told me about multiple vehicles being stolen from their property, windows being smashed at all hours of the day and night, and people walking up to their windows and peering inside.

One rancher told me about his wife, who is pregnant, and his child, who is 2--how they literally fear for their lives every day because of the number of people who are coming across their property and for him personally, the number of dead bodies that they found on their property just this year. This wasn't happening before.

They had a very simple request. Their simple request was: I am an American. Why does my property not count? Why do my rights not count?

The only rights that seem to count are people who are illegally crossing the border. Their rights seem to count, but the rights of Americans do not.

Mr. President, would you be willing to answer his question? Would you be willing to talk to his wife and explain to her why there are bodies on their ranch and people are peering in their windows at all hours and they can't live in safety on their own ranch? That was different just 3 years ago. Would you be willing to explain to them what has changed in your policies, because the goal of this administration seems to be efficient movement of illegal immigration, not stopping illegal immigration.

I met this Monday with leadership from the Oklahoma Bureau of Narcotics, who explained to me about the

overwhelming amount of methamphetamine that is coming into my State and the number of people who are dying in my State because much of the meth is laced with fentanyl, and it is killing people in my State.

I asked them if the meth is being cooked in Oklahoma, as it used to be, and they said: No, we hardly ever find a lab making meth anymore. It is all coming from Mexico--all of it.

Mexican cartels are actively working in my State to distribute methamphetamine, partnering with Chinese groups who are doing not only the supplies but the distribution network in my State.

When I was in the Rio Grande Valley this weekend, individuals with Customs and Border Protection showed me the numbers. Just this year, just in the Rio Grande Valley, 144 pounds of fentanyl has come in and 27,550 pounds of meth that they have interdicted just in the Rio Grande Valley just this year. Let me run that past you again: 27,550 pounds just in that one area, just this year.

Oklahoma Bureau of Narcotics has explained to me that if you go back to 2020, we didn't have the drugs moving this way because the border was not open at that time. Now the drugs are flooding into our State because the border is open.

What grade would you give the Department of Homeland Security when they are allowing our country to be flooded with drugs, when they are choosing to make illegal immigration more efficient rather than stopping illegal immigration? What grade would you give them?

When is this going to change?

I have to tell you, I believe one of the main roles of the Department of Homeland Security is to be able to shut down transnational criminal organizations from functioning inside my State, but instead, just in the Rio Grande Valley, when I talked to them this week, just in that one sector, they estimate that the cartels make $153 million a week-- $153 million a week just in that area of the Rio Grande Valley, moving people across the border illegally, because each of them has to pay the cartels. In fact, we saw the wristbands that they all wear. Once they pay the cartels, they are marked that they can actually be moved across the border; they paid their amount.

That is $153 million a week the Biden administration is facilitating in payment to transnational criminal organizations just moving people, based on a liberal policy of ``We are going to open the border up to be nice.'' That policy is facilitating the cartels in Mexico being enriched. They make more a week--a week--in moving people than is the budget for Border Patrol in a year in that area. That is all being facilitated based on this administration making it easier to cross the border and more efficient to cross the border than stopping it.

I am tired of hearing about the number of people who illegally cross the border. And many in this body just ignore it. I am tired of hearing from the FBI in my State that the price of methamphetamine is going down in my State. It seems like the price of gasoline has soared, the price of food has soared, the price of housing has soared, but the price of meth is going down. Why would that be? Because the supply of meth is going up because it is coming from the cartels in Mexico, and this administration is just looking the other way.

When is this administration going to talk to the landowners in South Texas like I did and hear from them the threats that they face? They are American citizens. When does their life matter?

It is time we address this issue. It is time we actually step up and say that DHS is failing in its most basic task of securing the Nation.

It is time we stopped the illegal drugs coming into our country and killing our kids. It is time. And I am going to continue to come to this floor and to show what the media will not show anymore. They have looked away, and my Democratic colleagues have done the same. They just look away like it doesn't exist, while 2 million people illegally cross the border.

One more stat: Right now, we have somewhere between 4,500 and 8,000 people a day illegally crossing the border--between 4,500 and 8,000 a day illegally crossing the border. May I remind you, President Biden, years ago, called it a humanitarian crisis when 2,000 people a day crossed the border. Now we have between 4,500 and 8,000 a day, day after day after day.

This administration is not only opening up the borders, they have also changed the enforcement priorities here in the United States. So we have round numbers--6,000 people a day illegally entering the country. The Biden administration has changed the role for ICE in deportations. We are currently allowing 6,000 people a day to cross the border, but we are only deporting 161 people a day from the country.

Six thousand a day, every day, day after day after day, illegally coming into the country; 161 people now that we are deporting a day. What would be your grade for DHS in their task of securing the country?

I know what mine is. It is time this body actually does something rather than just look away.

I yield the floor.

Reserving the right to object, this is my first time to be able to stand and speak since the Court made its decision in Dobbs. I have been on this floor I actually don't know how many times talking about the value of every single child.

The conversation today is not just about the right to travel and the right to healthcare. It is deeper than that. It is the right to live.

The conversation today is not just about women. There are two people in this conversation--a child with 10 fingers and 10 toes and a beating heart and DNA that is uniquely different than the mom's DNA or the dad's DNA. They have a nervous system. They feel pain. There is a child in this conversation as well.

In my conversation when I have come to the floor over and over again, it has been to say that at some point our Nation should look at basic science and to say when you have DNA and you have a functioning nervous system and you have cell division, in every health book everywhere in the country, they call that life, but for some reason, on this floor, it is just tissue.

I actually come to be able to thank millions of women and millions of men who for five decades have not written off children, who have walked out, who have marched, who have silently prayed, who have gathered in places and said: When are we going to recognize what is self-evident? That child in the womb is a child, and that child may be inconvenient, but that is a child. When are we going to recognize that basic thing?

For 50 years, that conversation has gone on with the simple statement of, at what point will we be able to speak out for the value of every person, and I do mean every person, including the mom?

It has been interesting to be able to hear all the misinformation in the past couple of weeks. I have read story after story and seen all these breathless news reports about how women with an ectopic pregnancy will not be able to get care; they will be doomed to die--except there is no State law that would prohibit someone getting treatment that is lifesaving for an ectopic pregnancy in any State. I have seen all these breathless reports about how there will be miscarriages and you won't be able to get care--except that is not true in a single place, not one. This over and over riling people up.

What I have seen are 50 churches that have been attacked. What I have seen are 57 crisis resource centers for pregnancy resource that have been attacked and firebombed. I have seen that. Now, we don't seem to discuss that here on the floor. No one is actually saying that all this conversation, all this misinformation, all this noise is actually leading to actual violence across the country. Everyone is like: Oh, no, no; that is not related. Oh really? So when a pregnancy resource center is firebombed and spray painted on the side of it ``If abortions aren't safe in America, neither are you''--we should probably just ignore that? Because that is what is actually going on across the country right now as well.

To be very clear, no State has banned interstate travel for adult women seeking to obtain an abortion. No State has done that. Now, am I confident there are some people who are out there talking? Yes. But there are also in this Senate 5,000 bills that have been filed. And how many of them are actually going to move--as it is in every legislature across the country, and everyone in this body knows it. Everyone knows it. But this seems to be just trying to inflame, to raise the what-ifs.

It has been interesting to me that there is another bill that is actually being discussed that would literally--if you are a pregnancy resource center

dealing with crisis pregnancies, if you don't perform abortions, they would call that misinformation. In the other bill that is being discussed right now, they would fine you $100,000.

I can't even begin to explain my emotion when I think, if you take the life of a child, there is pressure to say: We want Federal funding to take the life of a child. If you protect the life of a child, we are going to fine you $100,000. Is that really where we are? Is that really what this debate has become?

This administration has quickly become the most pro-abortion administration in American history and has rapidly moved to accelerate abortions across the country, while millions of other Americans just ask a simple question: Does that child in the womb have the right to travel in their future? Do they get to live?

Some would say: No. They are terribly inconvenient. They need to die.

Others would say: Why don't we actually live by our values, including the right to life?

So while there is conversation about how to put a piece of legislation out that may very well protect individuals who are being trafficked to go to other States to get an abortion or all kinds of other issues that are there, I come back to the most basic thing: There is a child in this conversation, and maybe this body should pay attention to children as well and to wonder what their future could be to travel in the days ahead as well.

I look forward to the day when we are talking more about that little girl and less about misinformation.

I object.

Mr. President, I want to give today's reality check. The Federal Reserve today raised interest rates 75 basis points--three- quarters of a point--with a statement they may come back and do that again in another month.

A point and a half in 2 months is a pretty dramatic effect. It is going to be a situation where many people, 40 and younger, are about to face interest rates they have never faced in their lifetime. The cost of buying a car that is already high is about to get higher. The cost of buying a home that is already really high is about to get much higher.

Inflation is now at 8.6 percent. A lot of people are beginning to feel what that really means. This is not some strange anomaly. This is inflation over the last decade. It has bounced around about the same level, basically, for a decade until right there--March of 2021--and then it just skyrockets at that point.

This is the reality that we are facing at this point. What does inflation really look like when you say it is 8.6 percent? Well, people know what that feels like. The cost of eggs has gone up 32 percent in the past year--32 percent for eggs. The cost of milk is up 16 percent; the cost of butter, also 16 percent; the cost of coffee, 15 percent; the cost of baby formula, if you can find it, is up 13 percent.

And gas prices? Oh, hello. Gas prices--that really has had an effect. This is gas prices since January of 2017. Again, we look, and it stays about the same until January of 2021. I wonder what happened then.

And then look at this.

Then, with the conversation about gas prices that, per the administration lately, has been about, ``Well, it is all Putin's fault,'' well, here are the rising gas prices since President Biden's inauguration--right there--and right there is the war that began in Russia. So this little increase right here is the part that is actually there.

This is our consumer price inflation. This is on gas prices. It is the same thing. To be able to see this flat line on gas prices, that spike--that is the invasion of Ukraine happening right there--and to be able to see what has been added onto it since then. So this is not just about the invasion in Ukraine. This has been ongoing since late January 2021.

The challenge now is, Is this something intentional or is this something accidental? Quite frankly, I think it is a bit of both.

We all remember very well this moment during the Presidential campaign. It was when President Biden was

campaigning, and he walked over to a young lady on the campaign stop and said:

[L]ook in my eyes. I guarantee you . . . we are going to

end fossil fuel.

I guarantee you.

That was this moment that happened here.

This was not something totally accidental. It was a drive to say, We have got to shift to solar; we have got to shift to wind; we have got to shift to hydro; we have got to shift to other things; we are going to get rid of fossil fuels; and we are going to accelerate that as fast as possible.

I have to tell you that I live in a State in which we use a lot of wind power. We use a lot of solar power. We use hydropower. We have a very diverse energy portfolio. But right now, the people in my State are paying much higher prices for gasoline, much higher prices for natural gas, and much higher prices for electricity because the policies that have been put in place are driving up the costs, and people feel it.

This is what it looks like at this point. This is the last 24 months of retail average prices--right there, January 2021--and then to be able to see what is happening with prices all over the country.

Now, the administration's response, just in the past couple of weeks, has been this statement.

President Biden has said:

My administration will continue to do everything it can to

lower prices for the American people.

I love the words ``continue to do'' in there. They are going to continue to do everything that they can. They are going to keep doing these things that clearly have driven up prices overwhelmingly for the American people.

It was, let's say, Putin's fault. It has been the oil companies' fault. It has been the refineries' fault. That is the new one that he actually just put out in the last 24 hours--that it is all the fault of the refineries that are just taking in too much profit.

The challenge has been an ongoing attack on American energy from the very beginning. Literally, on day 1, when President Biden canceled the Keystone Pipeline, he started his process of fulfilling his promise that he made during the campaign: ``I guarantee you I am going to end fossil fuels.'' So day 1 was canceling the Keystone Pipeline and getting crude oil from Canada--about 800,000 barrels a day. What he didn't announce on this day is that we still have to have that same 800,000 barrels a day from somewhere because it is heavy crude. We purchase some of our heavy crude from other places, so we still have to get it. His announcement, though, on day 1 was, We are not going to get it from Canada.

What people don't realize is that this announcement on day 1 was, We are not going to get it from Canada. We are going to get it from Russia.

How did that foreign policy work out? Terribly.

On day 1: We are not going to get oil from Canada. We are going to get it from Russia. We are going to get it from other places instead.

He put a moratorium on new Federal oil and gas leasing. That moratorium, by the way, still stays in place in multiple areas, and 24 percent of our oil and gas in the United States comes from Federal lands and waters--24 percent. So what this did was say, for the future of how we are going to develop, we are not going to develop in those areas anymore. I am going to cut off 24 percent of the supply coming in. Again, this goes back to his campaign promise of ``I guarantee you I am going to end fossil fuel.''

He declined to defend the gulf lease sale 257. That is offshore. Basically, an environmental group went in and sued and said: We don't think they followed the process.

The administration was, like, We are not going to challenge that. We are going to let the environmental group just take this whole thing down, and we are not going to increase our supply of oil coming from the gulf.

He limited the seismic studies necessary for new production in the gulf.

What does that matter?

Well, he has opened up some areas and said: You can drill for more oil in these areas. Oh, but, by the way, you are allowed to do that, but if you want to do seismic testing before you do it--which is a standard that you have to do seismic testing--oh, we are not doing any more seismic testing this whole year. We are not going to allow you to actually prepare a site. We are just going to tell you that you can do it.

That is this mode that the administration is in: Produce more oil, but I am not going to actually allow you to do that with the permitting.

He has failed to implement a 5-year offshore leasing program.

What difference does that make?

By law--by law, now--the administration is required to be able to put a 5-year offshore leasing proposal in place. The current one expires on June 30 of this year. That is days away. There is no present plan in place to be able to replace it.

In fact, I personally asked Secretary Haaland, the Secretary of the Interior, and she said: ``We plan by June 30--the deadline to have a new one in place--to be able to put out a comment of what we could do if we do a new plan.''

I said: ``When will that be complete?''

Her response to me was, ``We don't have a deadline as to when that will be complete.''

So, what is required by law to have a plan for how we are going to do offshore leasing, they are going to, instead, by the day it should be in place, begin discussing when they might do it in the days ahead.

Again, it goes back to: We are going to talk about it, but we are actually not going to put this lease sale plan in place.

He canceled a lease sale in Alaska's Cook Inlet, which is where oil comes from. He closed off half of the National Petroleum Reserve in Alaska to any future energy development.

He pushed regulations that would slow or halt a buildout of natural gas pipelines and liquefied natural gas export infrastructure. This is a FERC piece. They actually put a new leader in place in that spot, and then the first action they took was to make putting pipelines that were heading to the gulf to be able to sell natural gas to Europe harder to do and more expensive to do. If we wanted to put natural gas pipelines across our country, he would also make it more expensive and more complicated. So, literally, as the price is going up for natural gas, he has made it even more expensive to be able to transport natural gas and harder to be able to sell it to our allies.

He proposed new financial regulations designed to drive investment for traditional energy projects. This body will remember nominees who were put up by the Biden administration to go to the Federal Reserve who stated out loud that their goal of going to the Federal Reserve was to cut off access to capital for any kind of energy development that was a fossil fuel. They are literally saying: You can't get loans and money to get access to that.

So they will make it harder to actually move it when you get it, if you can get it at all on Federal lands; and they will make it harder to be able to get access to capital.

He has also proposed raising taxes on oil and gas development. Do you remember my comment--or his comment, actually--saying he is going to continue to do everything he can to lower the prices of energy for the American people? Well, what he has actually done is he has proposed a whole new set of taxes on all energy companies. In fact, even recently, there was a conversation about a windfall profits tax on energy companies.

Now, here is the basic economics that this group knows well: If you tax it more, you get less of it. If you get less of it, the price goes up. This is not hard. This is basic economics. Yet this administration has proposed multiple new taxes in their budget that they just put out in the previous month. At the same time, he said: I am going to continue to do what I can to lower prices, at the same time he put out proposals to dramatically increase oil and gas costs.

Nominate anti-traditional energy activists for key posts. We have seen that. He has turned to hostile nations like Iran and Venezuela to meet the U.S. energy demand instead of turning to U.S. producers.

It has been interesting. I have heard several people say: Well, we have got high numbers of production of oil and gas here in the United States. But the fact is, we are still a half a million barrels less now of production than what we were prepandemic. We have not caught up on actual production here; and the Biden administration has made it even harder to go get it.

While the Biden administration is planning a trip to Saudi Arabia to talk to them about getting more oil, our friends in Canada are saying: Why don't you come to Canada and talk to us about production? We can increase supply to the United States.

American producers are saying: We can increase supply to the United States if you will lift regulations, allow us to get permits, stop making it harder to move it, stop making it more expensive to get it, and stop adding more taxes onto us. We can produce more in the United States.

Listen, the price of oil right now is about $117 a barrel. There is plenty of incentive to go get it, but the administration continues to make it harder and harder and harder and more and more unpredictable to actually go get it, so folks are not going to get more. While the Biden administration blames speculators on Wall Street and rich oil companies and everyone else, the basic facts are that the administration's policies are what are driving this problem.

Are there solutions to this? Of course, there are. There are ways to be able to resolve this. We can restart Federal leasing onshore and offshore. I am not talking about having massive rigs everywhere. We do oil drilling and gas drilling better than anyone else in the world.

While the administration is going over to Saudi Arabia to go get oil to be able to use in the United States, don't we think that we produce it cleaner than Saudi Arabia does? What in the world?

If we are going to need to use it, then why aren't we producing it here in the United States? If this is all about a global climate challenge, then why aren't we focused on production here rather than running overseas and trying to be able to get it there?

Restart the permitting process. Restart the leasing onshore and offshore. Stop all of the regulations that are designed to limit and to punish oil and gas production--the administration just did a moratorium on this; it would make a significant difference--actually put in timelines for permitting and litigation.

Again, I have mentioned Canada several times, but if there is a mine that is going in in Canada for things like lithium and other things that we need and the whole world needs--they have deadlines and timelines to be able to do that--it takes about 5 years to be able to do a mine in those areas. It takes 15 years to be able to do that in the United States, if you can get it done at all, because there are no timelines and deadlines.

It is the same thing with the production of oil and gas. When there is this constant litigation challenge all of the time, it makes it more difficult to go get it.

People need to be engaged in the process. The community needs to be heard--Tribes, local governments. People need to be heard and consulted in the process. But with no deadlines out there, there is no incentive to be able to actually go after it.

Promote projects that enhance mutual security like the Keystone Pipeline and like other pipelines. We learned, when there was a security problem on the Colonial Pipeline--coming out last year to North Carolina--and North Carolina suddenly didn't have refined products, gasoline, the whole east coast discovered: We are dependent on one pipeline--one.

If that one pipeline actually has a structural failure, what happens to the east coast? Listen, you can multiply that all over the country.

While this administration fights every pipeline company that is trying to put in a pipeline, they increase our risk of having a major problem and large sections of the country losing access to energy. They are gambling with our future at this point, while we are watching prices exceed $5 a gallon. Focus on the solutions that don't raise taxes on energy or limit U.S. energy production.

I did have to laugh last week when the President made a speech and said he was working on bringing down the cost of energy. So the announcement was, I am going to bring down the cost of energy by dropping tariffs on solar panels coming from the Far East.

Talk about out of touch. That is out of touch. That is out of touch. Because, if we are going to produce solar panels, then why aren't we incentivizing the production of solar panels here in America rather than encouraging the production of solar panels overseas in the Far East? How in the world is dropping tariffs on solar panels from the Far East going to help folks filling up their tank with gas next week?

The President said he was going to solve energy issues and the price at the pump by increasing the amount of ethanol that we would use. Remember that one? That was about 5 months ago. He said that we would just have more ethanol. He went to Iowa and made a big announcement: We will just do more ethanol. And the prices continue to be able to skyrocket and rise.

The President then came on and said: All right, we still have a higher and higher and higher price. So the ethanol whole thing didn't work when he put that out here, and so he came back and said: We are going to do this Strategic Petroleum Reserve. We are going to release a million barrels a day from this Strategic Petroleum Reserve. Remember that announcement? That announcement was made right about there on this chart. That is when that announcement was made.

How is it going for gas prices since his announcement that we are going to release a million barrels a day from this Strategic Petroleum Reserve? It still continues to be able to rise.

These prices aren't based on short-term input from the Strategic Petroleum Reserve. They are based on long-term supply. That is basic economics.

Now the talk has been a temporary gas tax holiday: We will do a temporary gas tax holiday, and that is going to give people relief.

Can I remind everyone that we are over $5 a gallon? The temporary gas tax holiday would drop the price 18 cents. Eighteen cents is what it would drop the price. We are not trying to get an 18-cent drop. We are trying to get it back to where it was over here, or how about over here, where we were at $2 a gallon, not 18 cents. Besides the fact, if you drop the price by 18 cents just for this year, it puts a $20 billion hole in our infrastructure--in our building for bridges and highways and roads--to get an 18-cent bump.

There has also been the proposal out there that he is going to take over refineries. That was today. Again, it seems like every week there is a new thing that they throw out. Now it is a letter that he sent to the major refineries. In the letter that the President sent to the major refineries, he wrote:

[M]y administration is prepared to use all reasonable and

appropriate Federal Government tools and emergency

authorities to increase refinery capacity and output in the

near term . . . to ensure that every region of this country

is appropriately supplied.

Great. So the President is going to go into the refineries, and he is going to take them over. The same administration that is managing our baby formula is now going to manage our refineries. That is going to work out terrific.

Our refineries right now are running at 95-percent capacity--95 percent. The interesting thing about our refineries is that America has not built a new refinery since 1977. And just in the past 3 years, we have lost almost a million barrels a day of refining capacity in the United States from refineries shutting down.

Maybe the better question the President could ask is ``How do we start increasing our ability to refine,'' not how is he going to take over refineries and run it himself.

We have a major structural problem right now. This is just evidence of what is going on across the whole economy.

There are answers. There are solutions. But they are not raising taxes, and taking over refineries, and putting oil out from the Strategic Petroleum Reserve, or running to Saudi Arabia. That is not going to solve our energy problems.

And I can assure us, we are not going to solve our 8.6-inflation rate until we solve the price of energy, because the price of energy is baked into every single product that we buy--everything. And if this doesn't get solved, this doesn't get better.

Mr. President, do what needs to be done to increase supply in America so that the price will go down. We all believe--we all believe--that, in the decades ahead, we are going to have more electric vehicles; we will have more renewable energy. We all believe that. But 98 percent of the vehicles on the

road right now run on oil and gas, and fulfilling your promise--your promise--that you are going to get rid of fossil fuels right now by making it harder to do pipelines, harder to get capital, harder to do permitting, and more complicated regulations is causing this mess. Thirty years from now, we may all be driving electric vehicles--great. We don't today. Today, we need solutions for how we are going to move in the country. That involves increasing supply. That will get down inflation. That will help us as a nation.

With that, I yield the floor.

Madam President, over Memorial Day weekend, I spent a chunk of it in Yuma, AZ. In Yuma, AZ, it is 107 degrees in daytime, 102 at sundown. Those of us from Oklahoma are not used to that kind of heat, but it was very helpful to be there, to be on the ground and to see what is happening at that particular border area.

You see, each area of the border is a little bit different. But what we are experiencing right now on our southern border is a continual rolling, chaotic crisis there.

I have people who will catch me occasionally in Oklahoma and will say: It seems like things are going better because I don't hear the media talking about what is happening at the border anymore. And I will smile at them and say: Well, you remember last summer when the media was focused on the southern border? We had 6,000 people illegally crossing a day at that time. Now we have 8,000 people illegally crossing a day--8,000. In fact, last month, we had a quarter million people that illegally crossed the border in 1 month. That was a record, by the way. The previous record for a 1-month illegal crossing was the month before. Things continue to get worse.

But each area of the border is a little bit different. Now I had not been to this particular border crossing in Yuma, AZ, to be able to see how things are different there, but this is either the No. 1 or No. 2 most trafficked areas for illegal traffic across the entire southern border at this point.

What you see first when you are in Yuma, AZ, when you get there to the fencing area, you notice this: You notice in Yuma, AZ, that you have got a port of entry there; and at that port of entry, you have miles and miles of border fence and then a gap in the fence, where on January 20, 2021, construction was on to be able to complete this, but literally, that day, it stopped. And so that gap has never been closed, and so border crossings look like this.

Another picture of it is a picture like this. This scenario where there is a dam on the Mexico side, and on the American side there is the fencing--or at least there was going to be fencing. There is fencing on both sides of this. So individuals literally step over the dam, walk over and walk right up into the country. And you ask, well, why is this not complete? Is it because we ran out of materials? Actually, if you go just a mile from that last picture, in the desert you will see this: just stacks and stacks and stacks of steel, 30-foot sections all cut and ready to go to be able to close those gaps. But those gaps are not being closed because the Biden administration a year and a half ago determined they were not going to close those gaps; they were just going to leave them open. So there they sit open.

So that is one of the issues. That is different in Yuma than in some of the other areas where they just literally left the steel sit horizontally in the desert rather than being installed vertically--what it was designed for.

The second big issue is in this area because of those gaps in the fence, individuals, as they fly into Yuma--they are not coming in long caravans to come in--they are literally flying into Mexicali, Mexico, taking a charter bus that the cartels have organized for them, where they will pick them up at the airport, load up into a charter bus. They will drive them up to the gaps in the fence with the bus and allow them to be able to step across the border. They were literally--I could see it--they will literally step across the border and wait for the Border Patrol to come and pick them up, like it's Uber XL coming to be able to pick them up at their spot. And they know if they just stand here on this side of the fence and wait long enough, Border Patrol will come by, pick them up in a van. They will take them to the processing area where they get processed and then within a couple of days released into the country wherever they want to go.

These individuals are traveling from all over the world. In fact, when I met with some of the leadership there in Yuma, AZ, I just asked the question: How are things going? What is happening in different spots? What are you seeing?

One of the folks there said: Well, last week--last week--we encountered people from 50 different countries crossing just in this spot.

Why is that? Because the border remains open and people from all over the world know they can fly to Mexicali, Mexico, pay the cartels--and the current rate is between $7,000 and $15,000 a person for that section of the border. They get on the buses, drive up to the border, and then they step across.

It is a different kind of thing. We see sometimes pictures of people who have traveled 3,000 miles in a caravan. And by the way, there is another caravan that is actually organizing through Central America right now and coming through Mexico. The current caravan has an estimated 6,000 people in it that are walking their way up and traveling their way up through Central America and Mexico right now.

But the folks coming through Yuma, AZ, are not like that. They step across

the border, and they are carrying luggage with them. In fact, Border Patrol has had to actually limit the weight that they can actually bring in luggage to no more than 50 pounds. They come into the process area. They are bringing their luggage with them. They are dressed in nice clothes. They are clean. They just got a shower the day before.

They come across the border. They wait on Border Patrol. We take them to the processing area. In fact, when I got to the processing area, one of the Border Patrol agents walked up to me and said, ``Do you see the lady behind you?'' And I turned around and said, ``Yes.''

She said, ``She is wearing a Versace dress.''

I said that probably should mean something to me as a guy, but it currently doesn't. And my wife later explained to me, ``That is a pretty expensive dress.''

Why are we seeing people like that crossing the border? Because it is easier to come in illegally into the country now than it is legally.

Most years we have a million people a year that legally cross our border--legally--that go through the process, fill out the paperwork. We do a background check on those individuals. They come through and come into our country, and we celebrate people who come legally into our country and have for over two centuries. These individuals are finding it faster and cheaper to just pay the cartel, fly to Mexico, walk across the border. And when you walk across the border, you are in the country not just for a few months. Right now, when you cross the border and enter into this area, as you walk across the border you are given a work permit and the ability to stay in the United States for 8 years until your asylum hearing comes up.

Why do we have people coming from all over the world? We have a million people doing it legally, but last year we had 2 million people do it illegally because it is faster to just illegally come into the border.

Let me ask a simple question to this body: Do we really want a system that incentivizes illegal activity as the entrance into the United States of America, because right now the incentive is to come into the country illegally?

Let me phrase it this way. For the individuals who come across this border, we do not do a background check on these individuals. We have no idea any criminal history they have in the country from where they are coming. We do a background check with American records. We know if they committed a crime here in the past, but we have no idea from any of the countries that they are coming from. And let me remind you, in Yuma, when I was there a week ago, the week before, 50 different nations crossed that border that week. We have no criminal background check on any of those individuals.

What else happens with this? Because of the chaos that is happening here and Border Patrol are having to run their Uber XL vans to be able to pick people up and take them to processing, and they have to come off the line to be able to come into the processing center. What else is happening? The open desert areas not far from here, where they know the drug traffickers are actually moving large quantities of drugs, they don't have enough agents to be able to patrol that anymore. They can see them on cameras. They just don't have enough people to get to it.

The checkpoints that are on the highways typically leading out from this area to try to pick up the gun and drug smugglers coming in and out of the country, those checkpoints don't exist anymore. Why? Because they don't have enough staff anymore because they are managing this chaos at the border.

We are losing our security presence on our southern border because the President is incentivizing illegal immigration, and it is taking everybody that is there for our national security to actually be on the border to manage the check-in staff for people coming in.

This is a ticking time bomb. It is solvable.

Let me give you just some very basic things on this. No. 1, keep title 42 in place. The Border Patrol that I speak to when I talk to the folks on the line, their No. 1 fear is the Biden administration is going to cancel title 42. Now, currently, the court is prohibiting them from doing that, but their biggest concern is, if the Biden administration cancels title 42, even more people will come across, and this chaos will be even worse. That is their No. 1 issue. Keep title 42 authority in place.

The second thing is, stop giving people that cross the border between the port of entry and illegally cross, stop giving them work permits that incentivizes people to come between the ports of entry in an illegal fashion. The administration can do that right now.

Third thing: Stop giving people a free pass to come into the country for 8 years to stay in the country while they await their asylum hearing.

Whoever is last in, first up for the asylum hearing, and do it right there at the border. The asylum hearings can be done in less than a month, and do it right there at the border so they have to remain in place to have their hearing.

What happens is, these individuals cross the border, they cross the border, they get their 8-year pass in the country, they get their work permit. They snap a picture of it. They send it to their family back home and say: I paid this cartel member this much money. I crossed in this spot. I stood in this line. When I got there, I got into the country. Come join me. And it keeps accelerating. That is a policy decision that the administration could stop now, and they are choosing not to stop now.

And the final thing on this. Again, it is not hard. Close that gap.

Why is this so hard? Close that gap.

We have fewer people crossing in California right now than we do in Yuma. Why is that? Because the gap is closed in California. And while many of my colleagues scream ``fences don't work,'' why do we have fewer people crossing in California than we do in Yuma, AZ? Well, it is because there is a functioning fence in California and a big, giant gap in Yuma. This does work, and everybody knows it. That is why the Biden administration leaves it open--because they are facilitating this. This is something that is going to bite our Nation. It is a national security issue, and we should not ignore it.

Again, I celebrate legal immigration. I want more of it in our country. This is unchecked, illegal activity, and we had better pay attention to it.

I yield the floor.

Madam President, later on today, we are going to be voting on a Congressional Review Act dealing with the title 42-- actually, more specifically, the asylum rule dealing with what is happening at our southwest border right now.

Let me first say something I don't normally say on this floor. I am pleased the Biden administration is trying to address this. It is a step that--someone in the administration has noticed there is a problem with the asylum rule, and they are trying to address it. This solution will not fix the problem, but at least we are working on the problem.

I can say this to the Biden administration and to this body: If we do not legislatively fix the asylum rule, what is happening on our southern border will never get better. We have to address what is the problem there. It is not that there are root causes in Central America. We are the United States of America; everyone in the world wants to be here. If all you have to do is cross the border and say the magic words ``I have credible fear'' and the Biden administration hands you a piece of paper and you are in the country for the next 8 years--8 years-- until your hearing, the whole world is going to keep coming here.

Now, right now, literally right now, we have 8,000 people a day who are illegally crossing our border--8,000.

Last summer, in the midst of all the chaos, when all the cameras were focused on our southern border, there were 6,000 people a day who were illegally crossing our border. It is literally worse now than it was a year ago, but the cameras have all moved on and said ``nothing to see here'' when it continues to be able to get worse literally every month. Last month, a quarter-million people illegally crossed the border--a quarter-million. Half of those were turned away with title 42 authority, which the Biden administration is trying to end to allow everyone to be able to come across the border.

But this asylum rule gives me some sense of hope that they are at least identifying what the problem is and trying to start working on it. Here is the problem, though: The way that this rule is actually set up, almost every negative determination made under this expedited asylum process gets appealed under the normal process anyway. So while they are creating an expedited process, all they have to do is say ``I disagree with the expedited process,'' and they get through the long, protracted, 8-year process anyway. It doesn't solve the problem.

So while the executive branch is trying to do something, their ``something'' that they are doing doesn't actually fix the issue. We have to change this issue in law.

Secretary Mayorkas was on the Hill 2 weeks ago. He came and presented the new plan in place for what they are going to do on the border. Part of that plan was this new asylum rule. But when you read the summary, at the very end of it--they go through all their details, these high- level points of six different areas where they are going to work to be able to decrease. At the end of it, the summary statement ends with ``Despite our best efforts, we anticipate an increase in migration.'' What they are saying is, the policies that they currently have in place are going to continue to increase migration even with things like this new asylum rule that they are trying to be able to put in place because they know this doesn't actually fix the problem.

MPP, the ``Remain in Mexico'' program that a Federal court has required them to maintain--they are doing MPP only in such a way to say to the Federal courts: We are doing something.

We have 8,000 people a day who are illegally crossing the border. We have about 2,000 people a month whom they are putting through the MPP program. We have 8,000 people a day who are illegally crossing the border. Currently, ICE is deporting 203 people a day. With 8,000 people a day crossing and 203 people actually being deported, you see the math here. They are not trying to stop the flow. They are not trying to disincentivize this.

We need to actually get serious about this. So, yes, I am going to support a Congressional Review Act on this individual piece because it doesn't actually fix the problem. Let's actually sit down and fix the problem actually in the statute. That is what needs to be done.

I yield the floor.

Madam President, in tracking through what is happening on our southern border, it is interesting I still have folks that catch me and say, ``I don't see anything about it in the news anymore, so what is happening?''

So I try to periodically come here to the floor to be able to describe what is happening. Interestingly enough, just yesterday, the leadership of CBP did their news release that they normally do to kind of outline what is happening at the border.

In their news release they released out:

CBP works to secure and manage our borders while building a

fair and orderly [im]migration system.

This is what they put out yesterday--while we build an orderly and fair migration system.

Interestingly enough, this was a picture taken the day before their press release. This was taken in the Eagle Pass area of Texas in the Rio Grande Valley, and, yes, that line you see are people coming across the river in Eagle Pass.

Now, you don't catch everything because you can't see how much farther it goes this way and how much farther it goes that way.

This was the day before CBP released this statement: We work to secure and manage our borders while building a fair and orderly migration system.

Earlier in the report, the very first page of the news release, CBP leadership said:

After many months of planning, we are executing a

comprehensive strategy to safely, orderly, and humanely

manage our borders. CBP is surging personnel and resources to

the border, increasing processing capacity, securing more air

and ground transportation, and increasing medical supplies,

food, water and other resources to ensure a humane

environment for those being processed, screened, and vetted.

By the way, just south and west of this, just the day before this was taken, Border Patrol picked up two child sex predators, four MS-13 gang members, and an 18th Street gang member--just right before this, just the day before this was released.

This is our frustration with the administration right now. Because the media has turned away and decided they are not going to look at this, that they are not going to pay attention to it, everyone seems to think everything has just gotten fine.

What is really happening on our southern border, again, from current statistics right now, they are only able to handle 44 percent of the flow coming across the border. At 44 percent of the flow, right now, they are releasing thousands of people directly into the country with a notice to report saying: ``Turn yourself in to an ICE facility anywhere in the country, and they will process you there,'' because they can't handle the backlog of the thousands of people coming across.

What are we talking about, thousands of people? Well, remember last year when the cameras were all focused on the southern border? Last year, there were 6,500 migrants coming across a day at this time, and all the cameras were focused on the southern border because it was such a massive influx of people because 6,500 migrants were crossing a day. Right now, 7,800 migrants are crossing a day--7,800 a day.

Last month, the CBP released that almost a quarter million people illegally crossed our southern border in 1 month. That beat the old record of the month before when there was just under that by a couple thousand people--a quarter million people a month illegally crossing the border.

Now, to their credit, about half of those are turned away under what is

called title 42 authority because of the pandemic. Those single adults, half of them are turned back, but the interesting thing is the administration says on May 23--yes, next week--on May 23, they want to end title 42 authority, and so they are not turning anyone away at the border--so literally all quarter million cross into the country and no one gets turned away. When that happens, DHS's own numbers have estimated that when that occurs, they estimate that they will see a million people surge through the border in 6 weeks--6 weeks.

So what is happening on interior enforcement? Well, at the border right now, they are allowing a quarter million people to cross the border, turning half of them away, but their plan is, next week, they are going to stop turning anyone away. Everyone is going to cross in.

How many people are being deported? Criminal aliens, individuals that have a final order of removal from a court, how is that going? Well, currently, under this administration, we have a record low number of deportations that are happening. While we have 7,800 people a day illegally crossing the border, ICE is now deporting 203 people a day from the Nation.

So let me run those numbers past you again: 7,800 people a day illegally crossing the border, 203 people being turned around due to ICE custody and releasing them back into their country where they came from.

Now, these aren't folks just from Central America. In fact, now about half of the people coming are not from Mexico or Central America. They are coming from all over the world. Last year, we had people from every single country on the planet illegally cross the border in the 2 million people that crossed the border. They came from every single country in the world--yes, including Iran and North Korea, all of it.

But this administration is now working towards next week saying we are going to lift title 42 authority, and we are not going to turn anyone around.

Currently, what is happening? When individuals come across the border, they are given notification. They will request for asylum, all they have to say is, ``I have credible fear.'' They will say, ``What city would you like to go to in the entire U.S.? You can go to any city you want to go to.'' They pick their city, they are given a piece of paper, and on that piece of paper, they are told here is your court date 8 years in the future--8 years in the future. And they go anywhere they want to in the country for the next 8 years.

And they are told to keep that piece of paper with them. If they are ever pulled over, they can pull it out and show: I am awaiting my court date. I am here for the next 8 years.

Now, let me ask you a simple question: If I have to go through the legal process to be able to get a visa or a work visa and go through all of that process and fill out paperwork, or--and I will be here just temporarily for a season, or I can illegally cross the border and I will be here for the next 8 years, which would you pick?

This administration is literally incentivizing this and encouraging more people to illegally cross the border. Is there a way to be able to handle this? Yes, there is. Some of it is overly simplistic, I understand. Let's start with finish building the wall system because there are gaps in the fence and everyone heads towards those gaps in the fence.

I am not the only one saying that. The career professionals at Border Patrol are saying that is one of the prime things that they need.

Do they say that is the only thing they need? No. There is a lot more they need, but they are saying that is a really important element that they need is that fencing. That slows people down; that funnels people towards gaps. Build a wall system.

No. 2, don't lift title 42, keep it in place. I am not the only one saying that. I had an ambassador from a Central American country contact me this week and say: We are asking the White House not to lift title 42 authority because, in Central America, we are facing thousands of people migrating through our country from all over the world that are headed to the United States, and it is causing economic turmoil in their country. And their fear is, if President Biden lifts title 42 authority, it is going to make a bad situation in their country even worse.

And while President Biden talks about root causes in Central America, Central America is telling the United States: Enforce your border; stop incentivizing people to illegally travel to your border; that is one of the root causes of migration.

Finish building the wall system. Don't lift title 42 authority. Have cooperative agreements with other countries. This has been done by multiple Presidents before to be able to have engagement with other countries so that they enforce their border. And I don't mean just say to them: Go enforce your border. Help them. If they don't enforce their southern border and their southern border and their southern border, it all piles up here, and right now, the Biden administration is just letting them all in.

Asylum hearings: Individuals that request asylum are legally bound to actually have asylum. There is lots of changes that need to happen in asylum laws, but let me just say this simply. This administration right now with current asylum laws could do last in, first up for hearings. Instead of handing people a piece of paper and say, You are here for the next 8 years until the next asylum hearing if you cross the border illegally right now, they say, you have to stay right here at the border for the next 2 weeks; your hearing is in 2 weeks, and it is in that courtroom right over there here at the border.

They go through the legal process to be able to request asylum. When they do not qualify, they are returned. That sends an entirely different signal--because what the Border Patrol tells me now is, when individuals cross the border, get a piece of paper that says you are going to be here for the next 8 years, they quickly pull out their cell phone, snap a picture of it, text their family back home and say: I paid this cartel member, I crossed at this spot, I said these words, and I got this piece of paper; come join me. And the next person comes, and the next person comes.

If what happens instead when they cross the border is they get there and their hearing is in 2 weeks and then they find out they don't qualify for asylum and they are returned, they instead text their family members and say: Don't come. The border is closed.

Nothing has changed at that point other than the enforcement. That can be done right now.

Fourth, Federal courts have required the Biden administration to put what is called MPP or what some people call ``Remain in Mexico'' back in place. So the Biden administration, following the court order, has spent millions of dollars standing up facilities, putting up courtrooms, and they are putting almost no one through them, so they can tell the Federal court they are doing it.

What do I mean by that? I mean 7,800 people crossing a day illegally, the Biden administration is putting about 2,000 people a month through the MPP process simply so they can say they followed the court order, but they are not.

So 7,800 people a day and they are doing 2,000 a month through MPP. That is decorative; that is not border enforcement. It is why I tell people the Biden administration is getting in illegal immigration exactly what they designed the system to do: to have more people come.

Finally, deport people that a court has ruled they should be deported--this does not mean this is following the law.

We have literally thousands of people in the United States that a Federal court has ruled a final order of removal on individuals and said: You are not legal in this country, and you have gone through all of the process; you need to be removed. Currently, ICE is not removing them. Again, sending the signal to everyone that wants to come here illegally that if you pay the cartels, you get across. You stay for 8 years, and then after 8 years, no one is looking for you.

That is why we had 2 million people last year illegally crossing the border. That is why we had a quarter million people last month illegally cross the border, because this administration just keeps saying, I don't want to be mean. We are going to open this up.

We are not asking for something crazy. We are just asking for the law to be enforced.

What is mean? What is inhumane? I will tell you what is inhumane. In February of this year, Reuters did a story on a young girl named Amelia. Amelia borrowed $10,000 to pay the smugglers from Guatemala to be able to cross into the United States in Arizona. She borrowed $10,000 from the human traffickers.

She got across the border. She was referred to the HHS Office of Refugee Resettlements, unaccompanied minors, after crossing. That is right, Amelia is under 18. So HHS processed her through, moved her into the location that she had as a piece of paper to say this is the location I need to go. She traveled to that location and got to that spot, and HHS said: Our duty is done.

When Reuters found her, she was working on a poultry processing farm in rural Alabama with her sister Rosa. When they asked her why she wasn't in school, she responded: School isn't for me; I have debt-- because she is working in a poultry processing facility in Alabama to pay off the cartel's $10,000--she and her sister both.

She also, by the way, paid $1,500 to get a false Social Security card and a false ID, and she is working to pay off that debt as well.

While the administration continues to call this humane and leadership of CBP calls this orderly this week, I don't think it is humane or orderly for us to open up our borders to individuals being trafficked into our own country to pay cartels $10,000 a person that then they come into this country and work their debt off in labor camps for the cartel.

By the way, for Amelia and for her sister Rosa, this story can be repeated all over again with multiple individuals who pay off their debt to the cartels by trafficking in illicit materials because the cartel will say: If you took the loan out from us, you pay us back our way.

That is what we are facilitating in America, and all we are asking the Biden administration to do is enforce the law. That is what it means to be President of the United States.

I yield the floor.

Mr. President, I call up my motion to instruct, which is at the desk.

Mr. President, we are about to go into conference on what we are basically calling the China bill, but this bill does not address China's practice of purchasing and stockpiling sanctioned Iranian oil on the black market.

This procurement spike by China is directly correlated with the spike in terrorist activities by Iran and its proxies in the Middle East. Iran is laundering these petroleum products and illicitly transferring the oil at sea to Iranian tankers and foreign-flagged vessels. Three- quarters of this oil is ultimately exported to China, which purchased 310 million barrels of oil from Iran last year. All of this is happening while China is actually negotiating directly with Iran on our behalf in Vienna.

This particular motion to instruct goes straight at this illicit activity from Iran that is facilitating the terror activities and also addresses the designation that Iran is asking if they are going to negotiate with the Biden administration on the Iran nuclear deal. Iran is specifically asking that they get a lift of the ``foreign terrorist organization'' on the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps. That is the group that was attacking our troops in Iraq and facilitating their death.

We need to address this and take it off the table so that Iran does not get by with this and the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps does not.

I urge a ``yes'' vote on my motion to instruct.

I ask for the yeas and nays.

Madam President, about 6 years ago, I came to this floor and presented an idea: How do we get on top of our debt and deficit? Are we going to get on top of our debt and deficit?

Interestingly enough, for each of us and our own families, we can all tell a story about a season in our life that we really hit hard times. I have had several where the money was really tight and our family was very attentive to what we were spending--very--those moments when we would literally make sure that every time we went to the grocery store, we only spent this much because we knew we had an electric bill coming in; we knew we had our rent coming due.

My family has most definitely been there. My wife and I, when we were first married, we had a rule that we couldn't ever spend more than $25 without the other person knowing it because our fear was when we were first married that one of us would spend $30 and the other would spend $35 that day and we would blow up our bank account because we were living that close to the edge and just getting by while I was at school and we were just getting started. A lot of families have been that way.

You can tell how serious a family is about dealing with their debt by how seriously they take their expenses. There are some individuals that have massive debt that still keep running up their credit card. They keep buying more and more product. They still use their credit card and go get additional electronics and get extra stuff on it and max out this card and then I will max out another one, not with essentials, just with fun--not paying attention to the fact that someday that comes due.

When I started presenting the idea of the ``Federal Fumbles,'' my whole concept was simple: Where is it the Federal Government is dropping the ball; that we are not paying attention to the areas we need to be able to pay attention to in our spending? It is a well-known fact that we have trillions in debt. In fact, as a nation, we have now crossed $30 trillion in total debt--$30 trillion. It is interesting that the conversation doesn't seem to be serious. We don't seem to be in a dialogue about how we are going to actually bring our debt down. We are still spending on other things and still saying, not we are limited in what we can do; we seem to be adding more to the mix. It is not necessarily on essential things; it just seems to be on things.

The ``Federal Fumbles'' book that I released this week, put on our website, just details several different items. One is, where are we in our debt and how did we get here? But I also try to walk through some of our trust funds on this because I think it is important.

Where are we on Medicare trust funds? By the way, we are 4 years away from insolvency on Medicare--4 years. Where are we on Social Security? We are 12 years away from insolvency in Social Security--12. Where are we on the highway trust fund? We are well past insolvency on the highway trust fund, and we have been accelerating our borrowing to try to cover more and more. In fact, that was done even recently.

I laid out a set of ideas of how do you actually solve some of these things and how are we going to address it. But I also laid out some of my frustrations that said, at some point, this body is going to be serious about dealing with debt and deficit, but apparently we are not yet.

So I laid out some areas and just got a chance to be to be able to talk through some of those in the book. And I encourage folks to be able to look at it and, quite frankly, everyone is welcome to disagree with me on it.

For instance, we spent $2 billion--billion with a ``b.'' We spent $2 billion this last year not building the border wall. The contracts had already been let out. The steel was already purchased. The steel, in fact, is lying on the ground in the desert still today. Everyone was already hired, and there were literally individuals on the ground ready to do installation because the contract was there because career professionals at the Department of Homeland Security had made recommendations on certain areas of our southern border that desperately needed fencing. Those career professionals had worked with private contractors and had put a contract in place to be able to put fencing in those areas. And they were underway until the Biden administration stepped in on day 1 and stopped it all, though the contracts had already been let out. We spent $2 billion not building border fencing--$2 billion.

Now, I ask the simple question: What would it hurt to go ahead and finish those contracts out that career professionals had signed off on and that career security individuals from the Department of Homeland Security had said was desperately needed in those areas? What would it have hurt to finish those contracts out? Instead, we sent messaging that we are not going to build a fence and spend $2 billion not doing that.

What did we do instead? Well, we started doing robot dogs along the border instead. I wish I was kidding. These robot dogs would instead be hired to be able to help our border folks and Border Patrol and CBP to be able to help identify and carry things. So instead of border fencing, it is robot dogs that are now being contracted to be able to put in there.

What else did we actually deal with? Well, of the trillions of dollars of debt that we have, recently, we put $2.6 million into China to help pay for some of their health programs. Now, follow the irony of this. We actually borrow a trillion dollars from China to pay our bills. So we borrowed money from China to be able to then send money to China to help pay their medical expenses.

Does anyone else think this is a bad idea; that if we were serious about dealing with debt and deficit, we would start going line by line through all of this and to be able to identify that maybe this is not a good idea; that if we have $30 trillion in debt, maybe we need to find some areas to cut back on. We could cut back on that or maybe we could cut back on the grant that was given out to write about Russian screenwriters. We actually paid someone to do research on Russian screenwriters to be able to release this project out so people could study Russian directors and screenwriters.

Again, I am fine if anybody wants to be able to do that, but my concern is if we are going to do this, this should probably be a private project that we release out, not have a Federal Government project when we are dealing with $30 trillion in debt.

But what else did we do with our additional money while we have extra spending and time on this? How about lobster pot removal? We spent half a million dollars in a special earmark to do lobster pot removal.

Now, initially, this is actually listed in the bill as derelict lobster pots. Derelict lobster pots. That sounds really ominous, doesn't it? But my understanding is it is lobster traps that are just out there that someone abandoned at some point.

I would tell you, for those of us in Oklahoma, if you told me there is a lobster trap and there may be a lobster in it and you could keep the trap and the lobster if you wanted to go get it, we would go get it. But, instead, we are paying half a million dollars in Federal dollars to go pick up derelict lobster pots.

Now, again, I would say to you, in Oklahoma, when we have a derelict well in Oklahoma, an oil and gas well, our oil and gas companies all pool money together and put a little bit in to be able to go clean that site up. And, year by year, we are cleaning up abandoned well sites, because our companies actually kicked the money in to go clean up their own messes that are out there.

I don't understand how the State didn't do this or a city didn't do this or the industry didn't take it on. Now, I do have some frustration because there was some money set aside for parks as well. I am a big fan of parks. My kids go to the park. We are glad to be able to go to the park. I went to the park a lot. But there was a project for 2.3 million in Federal money to be able to renovate a pool, a swimming pool, in Rhode Island.

Now, I am not opposed to swimming pools, and I am not opposed to Rhode Island having swimming pools; I am just trying to figure out with Federal dollars, why the Federal government is paying to fix a swimming pool in Rhode Island. Shouldn't this be the State of Rhode Island--if it is a State park, shouldn't it be the State or the community or the city to be able to take this on? Cities in my State, if they have problems with their pool, the city pays to be able to fix the pool or the community pays to be able to do that, rather than the Federal taxpayers pay to do that. We have the same issue, actually, with a ski jump, that there was a State park, that it needed a renovation for a ski jump, and so instead of the State actually paying for their State park, people in my State are paying for our State park, and we are paying to fix the ski jump in this State park as well.

Why are we paying for both? Why don't the people of Oklahoma pay for our State parks and the people in other States pay for their State parks? Again, I have nothing in opposition to ski jumping, other than it seems like a particularly terrible thing for me to do, but if somebody wants to be able to do it and they want to pay for that, that is fine. Just, why should Oklahoma taxpayers do that?

As we were digging through the different pieces that were actually done, I would tell you it was painful the moment when we ran across the monkey opera. We spent Federal tax dollars on something called a ``monkey opera.''

Now, I am not sure why we spent Federal tax dollars on a monkey opera. I am not sure what a monkey opera sounds like. But I would tell you, I think I have listened to a monkey opera on people's at-hold music before when I have called certain companies, that I think the hold music they have was actually monkey opera. But I have to ask the hard question: Is this national defense? Is this educating our children? Is this healthcare?

With $30 trillion in debt, at some point, we as a Nation have to stop and say, ``OK, let's do what is essential and not what's not.''

Two weeks ago, a staff member called me and said she was in line at the grocery store, and the woman in front of her with her kids pulled out all the stuff in her basket and put it on the scanner area and said to the lady that was going to be the cashier, ``Hey, tell me when it gets to $150 because I can't spend anymore. That is all I have.''

And so the cashier kept ringing things up. She held things back that she thought were the nonessentials at the end because she knew, this is all I have, and though I would like to get more, I can't. It sent me two messages. One is, every family knows how to do this. Why we can't as a Federal government look at it and say, with $30 trillion, maybe the monkey opera is not one of our essentials, I don't know.

But the second thing it reminded me of is, every family is dealing with the real effects of inflation right now. It is very real for them. They are saying to the cashier at the grocery store, ``Tell me when it gets to this dollar amount, because that is all I have.''

When we continue to spend more and more and more as a Federal government, it drives inflation higher and higher. I am very aware there are a lot of folks in this room who are just trying to help. But we are causing real problems with inflation, with overspending as a nation. That has got to pull back, and we have got to get serious about what we are spending on, because this kind of stuff drives the American people crazy, when they are saying to the cashier, ``I could only do $150. Please tell me when it gets there, because everything else I can't do today.'' And we borrowed more money from China so we could do this.

We put out the Federal fumble book every year for one reason: I want to remind everybody in this body that debt

is still a problem. This is still an issue, wasteful spending, whether it is in the billions or whether it is in the thousands, is wasteful spending. And at the end of the day, we need to understand, the American people are counting on us to make hard decisions, and there are lots and lots of hard decisions. But currently as a body, we are not even discussing $30 trillion in debt. So I bring it to us again: We have $30 trillion in debt. Let's start working on this.

I yield the floor.

Mr. President, there has been a lot of conversation in the past several weeks about Judge Jackson's judicial philosophy-- rightfully so. This is a lifetime appointment on the U.S. Supreme Court. It is a serious position. I don't know a single Senator in this room that doesn't take their responsibility seriously. This is a big issue when you put anyone on the Supreme Court for a life appointment.

Everyone has had the opportunity to be able to go through case law, cases that she has handled, things she responded to, things that she has written, ways that she has responded. Actually, I had time last week to sit down with her for about 45 minutes in the office just to be able to talk and to be able to get back-and-forth with her a little bit.

I want to give a little bit of context to that because many Americans watched all the hearings that happened last week--a full week of just conversation with her, asking her all kinds of different questions. I don't serve on the Judiciary Committee so I am on the outside looking in. That is why I got time individually with her for about 45 minutes to be able to ask her questions and get to know her.

By the way, I had folks in Oklahoma say: You had the opportunity to sit down with her; what is she like?

To all of them, I answered the same way. She is actually the kind of person you would want to invite over for dinner, just to be able to sit and visit with--extremely pleasant, outgoing, personable, smart, sharp, wonderful smile and interaction. You would want to invite her over to dinner to be able to visit with.

But my decision is not about whether to invite her over for dinner to be able to spend time with. My decision is, How will they handle a lifetime appointment on the Supreme Court and how will they handle the law?

The difficult part of this conversation has been interesting. It really circled around judicial philosophy. How would you handle cases?

We can't ask: How are you going to actually rule on this specific case? Because if she answers, then she has to recuse herself from that case in the days ahead, and everyone knows that.

So we are always trying to determine: How will you treat cases in the days ahead and what lens will you look through? That is a reasonable conversation.

Her response has been interesting. Her response was that she had a ``methodology'' as a judge, and it has three aspects to it: Neutrality, which is a good thing; receiving all the appropriate inputs, which is making sure everyone is heard; and looking at the factual record and the text of the statute. That is actually a very good starting point with this.

The question then goes to the next set of questions on it: How do you handle the U.S. Constitution and where does that document fit in? Is it living? Is it changing? Is it the original text and the meaning of it, or does it have a living version that changes?

That is a reasonable conversation because there have been different Justices on the Supreme Court that have handled that differently.

The late Justice William Brennan wrote:

For the genius of the Constitution rests not in any static

meaning it might have had in a world that is dead and gone,

but in the adaptability of its great principles to cope with

current problems and current needs.

Well, that is not an original meaning in the original context and locked into that.

Justice Antonin Scalia wrote:

The Constitution that I interpret and apply is not living,

but [it is] dead, or as I prefer to call it, enduring. It

means, today, not what current society, much less the court,

thinks it ought to mean, but what it meant when it was

adopted.

In other words, those words had meaning at that time. They couldn't

predict what those words might mean 100 years from now. They could only deal with what those words mean right now. And if it is going to have a different meaning at a different time, well, then, there has to be different law to be able to deal with that at a different time. We never got a really clear answer on that. We get things toward her methodology. That is a critical issue to be able to deal with.

There were issues about sentencing that came up and how she chose to do sentencing when she was at the district court level and handled cases. They were all over the news about some cases that she handled that were very lenient in the sentencing.

There were also a lot of questions about the Second Amendment or about due process.

There was kind of the moment of the judicial hearings when Senator Blackburn asked--not a trick question but a real conversational question--about how you handle the law and culture. And that is, Can you define a woman?

I honestly don't think that Senator Blackburn meant for that to be a trick question, but it really is a question in culture at this point. It will determine how you are going to handle the law and to be able to read the law.

Her response was she couldn't answer the question of how to define a woman because she is not a biologist. Well, I am not a biologist either, but I think I can define that question. And it is just a conversational issue that we have as a nation to be able to determine: Let's deal with things that are self-evident.

There were all those issues that were dealt with during the hearing time, but when I got with her, I didn't want to go back and revisit those issues. I wanted to spend time with her talking through the things that weren't actually discussed.

Obviously, it was over days of her hearings. There were several issues discussed about how she handles the law. One of those is Tribal law. In some areas of the country, this is a very big deal and in some areas, not at all. So I understand why it didn't come up in the hearings.

In her past history in her cases, she has had one case to deal with Tribal law. So there are a lot of questions to be able to talk about.

Oklahoma is very proud of who we are as a State. We have great diversity as a State. We have a unique relationship in Indian Country in our State. I thought it was important for us to be able to talk about the relationship that our State has with 39 Tribes and, quite frankly, the history our State has, as we were the State where Tribes were relocated to from the Southeast. We spent a lot of time talking about that.

We talked about issues of religious liberty, First Amendment issues, how you handle those cases. There are differences even in the Court, even on what is the more liberal side of the Court. Sotomayor and Kagan often disagreed on issues of religious liberties. They handle it with a different perspective, and it is not uncommon for a religious liberty case to come up and Sotomayor and Kagan to be on either side. So, quite frankly, I was trying to discern: Is this person more like Sotomayor or more like Kagan on how to handle the issues of religious liberty?

It didn't come up a lot in the hearings, but I really think that is a foundational issue.

Quite frankly, this is the fourth Supreme Court Justice I have had the opportunity to be able to sit down with personally, and with each of them, the issues that I just brought up were the issues that I talked with all four of them about because they don't often come up in the other issues, but to me it is foundational.

We have three branches of government defined by our Constitution. Those branches are coequal, and they check each other. And it is exceptionally important that they really do check each other; that the legislative branch doesn't just give it away to the executive branch or to the courts or that the legislative branch doesn't run over the courts or the executive branch and neither can the executive branch or the judicial branch do for either. But if the judicial branch sits passive at a moment that they should engage, the other two branches are not checked or if the judicial branch engages in a moment when they should be silent, they have exceeded their authority as well.

It is exceptionally important that the three branches both check each other and also know their lane and do their lane well.

There are two cases that popped out that became very significant to me and were part of our conversation as well. There was a case that came up during the Trump administration when Judge Jackson was at the district court level and dealt with this issue of expedited removal. Now, it is my guess that she doesn't like the expedited removal process in immigration, but I didn't ask that; I didn't drill down on that, so it was only my guess. But what was interesting was she ruled on a case on expedited removal and forbid the Trump administration from actually putting in place what they did and did it nationwide.

The problem was, when that was appealed up to the DC Circuit Court, the DC Circuit Court actually reversed Judge Jackson's preliminary injunction and reminded Judge Jackson, at that point, that the way the law was written made this statement: that the Secretary had ``sole and unreviewable discretion.''

She literally reviewed a decision made by a Secretary, where specifically in the law it stated a judge cannot review this decision, though she overturned it, only to go to the circuit court and have them overturn her. That tells me a balance of power issue, of knowing what your lane is and determining how that lane is taken on.

There is another case that came up, actually during the Trump administration as well, when Judge Jackson was also in the district court, and she dealt with the issue about what unions could do and what the executive branch could do in relationship to unions.

It has been a contentious issue, quite frankly, for decades. It is entirely reasonable to be able to have that kind of dialogue about it. She ruled in the favor of the unions, and the DC Circuit, again, reversed her decision when it came there, but it is not just that they reversed her decision, it is that they reversed her decision, and this was the statement from the DC Circuit:

We reversed because the district court lacked subject

matter jurisdiction.

In other words, that is not your responsibility in that lane. Specifically, that kind of issue has to be taken up by the Federal Labor Relations Board. In statute, it says it can't go to a district court; it has to go to a different place. Typically, other judges look at it and say, ``You can't be in this spot to be able to argue this,'' and send it to the correct place. Instead, she ruled on it in favor of the unions and declared it done, until the circuit came back and said: That is not your lane. That is actually the executive branch's lane.

And one of the most interesting dialogues we had to be able to talk through things was the issue about deference.

Now, why does this matter? Well, for about 80 years, Congress has been writing a law that gets broader and broader and broader. Quite frankly, it has been a problem with both parties. If we want to see something done, we write a broad law; we send it to the executive branch; and we say figure it out.

And each executive branch is getting more and more creative on how they figure it out. And we deal with all kinds of regulations, and both parties argue with the executive branch and say: Why do you do that? And the executive branch responds back sometimes: Well, you gave me the ability to make that decision on my own and so I did.

This issue of deference and of delegation is a very significant constitutional principle. It is an issue that we have got to resolve here as a body--quite frankly, on both sides of the aisle--to be jealous of the responsibility that we are given in the Constitution.

But it is also an issue, I think, that is very important for the courts to be able to engage in because the courts are able to step in uniquely to the executive branch in a way the legislative branch cannot. The legislative branch can complain about it, but the courts actually can look at it and say, ``You are out of your lane,'' to the executive branch.

And if the court is passive in this, then whoever the executive is gets to run. One of the clearest examples of those is something that is called Chevron deference or our deference. I won't go into all the details on it, but it basically says, if a piece of legislation, the

way that it is written, is ambiguous, then the executive branch can interpret it the way that they choose.

I have a problem with that interpretation because I believe if the law was written poorly, we shouldn't just give it to the executive branch and say: Figure it out. What do you want it to mean? If it doesn't mean something clearly, it doesn't mean anything at all.

Now it is about two issues: One is a constitutional issue. If you go back to 1803, Marbury v. Madison is a foundational piece for the Supreme Court. This is the piece that has come up over and over again over the last two centuries.

The foundational statement that came out of Marbury v. Madison was this simple statement:

It is emphatically the duty of the judicial department to

say what the law is.

If the judicial hands to the executive and says, ``We can't tell what the law says, so we will give it to you,'' it is literally the judicial handing to the executive something that is uniquely the judicial's power.

Now, this is no simple issue. This goes back to our balance of power. What we have is a situation now over the past several decades where Congress has given its power to the executive branch. If the judicial branch does the same, giving its power to the executive branch, we have a rising executive branch and the other two bodies will look at it and say: How did that happen? Because we gave it away is how it happened. And we have a more and more powerful President of either party and a less and less powerful Congress and judicial branch.

In my conversation with Judge Jackson, she repeated over and over to me that the court is limited, the court is limited, the court is limited. And I said, yes, they are limited, but they have a responsibility, and the court's responsibility is to say what the law is.

And at the moment--as I said to her, if I threw letters on the table, the executive branch doesn't have the ability to say: I will make them say whatever I want to.

I can't--if a law was written and the law said, ``Orange, penny, Ford, desk, Reagan,'' now all those are English words, but, quite frankly, they don't really make a sentence. The authority shouldn't be given to the executive branch to be able to figure out what they could make of that. The responsibility should be in the judicial branch to be able to look at that and say: That means nothing. Congress, go do your homework. Clean it up.

The executive branch can't just make it mean what they want it to say and say what the law is. Congress has to say make it clear and the judicial branch has to say what the law is and the executive branch has to apply it.

Now, again, this is very philosophical, but it is also foundational in our constitutional construct. It is why I find myself in the position of voting no for someone I personally liked when I met her but do not align with on how you handle the Constitution, separation of powers, and the responsibility of the court to align with original intent of the Constitution.

This is not a new dialogue for us in the Senate body. It is a conversation we have had for two centuries that is still unresolved for us. But we cannot select individuals that are not committed to the original meaning of the Constitution and can hand to the executive branch what the law says. This is one that we need to guard.

And so for that reason, when the vote comes tomorrow on Judge Jackson, I will vote no.

I yield the floor.

Madam President, a lot of Americans are tracking day by day what is happening in Russia and Ukraine, as we watch the Russian Army continue to be able to roll its way through Ukraine and, city by city, pummel innocent people--so, literally, to shell homes, apartments, businesses; to level whole cities to the ground for the sake of Russia's aggression.

This Congress and this body in particular, in the Senate, have spoken out often on this issue. I am grateful that the President has engaged to be able to apply sanctions, to be able to cut off purchases with Russia, to be able to slowly open up the weaponry that we are giving to the Ukrainians, as they continue to ask for more. They are looking for help. The Oklahomans whom I talked to want us to provide help.

But it is ironic, and some people may not know, that while we are isolating Russia in every way that we possibly can, right now, this administration is working with the Russian representatives to be our spokesmen to Iran negotiating a revised nuclear deal with Iran. We are not doing face-to-face negotiations with Iran. We are working through the Russian representative to represent our beliefs to the Iranians.

Now, if anyone in this room could say they trust the Russians to represent our values at the table with Iran, please, rise, because we don't and we shouldn't, and it makes absolutely no sense that a revised nuclear deal is

being done with Iran through the Russian negotiations while Russia is currently pummeling Ukraine. I wish I could tell you that is even the worst part of this deal.

Iran has a couple of things that they need to be able to get to a nuclear weapon. The two things they need are time and money. They have the technology. They have the know-how. They have the facilities. They have the advanced centrifuges. They just need time and money. My frustration with the Iranian nuclear deal that was done under the Obama administration was that it gave them both time and money. It set a 10- year window where they couldn't have nuclear material that could be usable for a nuclear weapon, but it allocated $100 billion in relief of sanctions to the Iranians--$100 billion to the Iranian regime.

Now, I have no beef with the Iranian people. They are remarkable people, extremely well educated, but they live under the thumb of a horrible regime.

What did the Iranian regime do with the $100 billion that they were given?

Well, we saw the advance of the war in Yemen that happened as the Iranians were supplying the Houthis to be able to attack the Saudis and the Emiratis. We saw what happened in Lebanon with the support for Hezbollah to be able to attack Israel and to continue to destabilize. We saw what the Iranians did in Syria, supporting Bashar al-Assad and becoming his army in many areas across Syria, and that ruthless dictator is still there today because of Iranian support, because of the $100 billion that was given to Iran so they could prop up Assad and so he could stay in place. That is what happened with the $100 billion that Iran was given last time.

Then, the Trump administration came in and took away that and imposed maximum pressure on the Iranians, walked away from the deal, and said: We are not going to give the largest state sponsor of terrorism in the world billions of dollars of access to capital; that seems like a terrible idea.

And I can assure you, the people of Syria understood that was a terrible idea.

But now, what? President Biden has reopened negotiations, as I mentioned before, by using Russia as our proxy to be able to negotiate this. Today, we had negotiators that were brought on by the Biden administration, who are former negotiators under the Obama administration, to renegotiate this deal, who have quit the negotiating team and who have said that this negotiation is going so badly that they will not be a part of it, and they walked away.

We don't know everything that is in this deal, and I would say to you, quite frankly, I am not encouraged by what bit of rumors that I am hearing in this deal. I am hearing that this deal puts us back into the timetable that was done years ago under the Obama administration to give the 10-year window, that we are back into that same window that allows them to move to a nuclear weapon at an end-time period, that it doesn't challenge their terrorist activities, that it doesn't challenge their missile development.

Literally, they are developing ballistic missiles designed to carry a nuclear warhead, and that is not part of this agreement, apparently, to restrict their development of a missile capable of carrying nuclear material, as long as they don't actually work to develop that nuclear material.

It releases sanctions to them. So, again, they get billions of dollars. And in the negotiations we hear, at this point, it lifts sanctions on the entities in Iran that took away the property and the homes from Iranian Jews in 1979, which we have had sanctions on. We understand it takes the sanctions off of those responsible for the Beirut bombing in 1983 that killed 243 Americans, mostly marines.

We also understand that it changes the status of Iran from being recognized as a state sponsor of terrorism--even though they are--and that there is a negotiation to take the Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps off the list of a foreign terrorist organizations.

Are you kidding me?

This is not a good deal for the peace of the region. This does not prevent Iran from becoming a nuclear power. This continues to destabilize our relationships with our allies in the region, as Saudi Arabia and the Emiratis and the Israelis and everyone stare at the Americans and say: Why in the world would you make this deal that would allow Iran to become a nuclear power in the days ahead?

Let me tell you, this is personal for many American families who lost a loved one in the battle in Iraq, when Iran engages the Iranian Revolutionary Guard to provide lethal equipment to the Iraqis so they could kill more Americans. Many Americans died in Iraq because of Iranian actions.

On March 11, 2020, Technical Sergeant Roberts from Owasso, OK, was killed in Iraq when an Iran-backed militia group, equipped by Iranians, supported by the regime, arbitrarily launched rockets at American forces in Iraq, killing Technical Sergeant Roberts.

Listen, this is personal for a lot of families. This is not some theoretical negotiation. This is a problem.

Why we would say to the Russians, ``Negotiate on our behalf,'' while they are slaughtering Ukrainians and we are sanctioning those same Russians. Makes no sense. But a deal that lifts the sanctions on the Iranian Revolutionary Guard, on those that killed Americans in 1983 in Beirut, to give access to missile technology and to look away from their terrorist activities with Hezbollah and Hamas and in Yemen and in multiple other places in the world is not a deal Americans should make.

Mr. President, walk away from this. There is a reason that your own staff is walking out of the conversation--because you are headed the wrong way.

Madam President, there is a lot going on in the world right now: Ukraine; what is happening in China; what is happening with the Iran nuclear conversation right now with Russia and the United States and China; record inflation here in the United States. There is so much going on that I am concerned that we are not also focused on an area at our southwest border.

It is interesting; I have had folks who have caught me and have said: Things must be going better at our southwest border because I don't hear about it as much.

Actually, there is just so much other news that it is drowning it out.

So what is actually happening at our southwest border right now, and where are we? Let me give you a little bit of context and then to be able to talk through some of the issues that are happening.

Today, on our southwest border, about 6,300 people have already illegally crossed. Now, a day that they can manage is about 3,500 people. So we are still hearing record numbers of people illegally crossing the border.

To set this in context, during the 4 years of the Trump Presidency, there were 2.4 million people who were encountered illegally crossing the border during the 4 years of the Trump Presidency. During the first 14 months of the Biden Presidency, we have already exceeded that number. We have had more illegal encounters in the first 14 months than there were in the previous 4 years.

In this process of all these individuals crossing the border, it has been interesting. There was something that was put in place in January of 2020 called title 42 authority. Now, let me explain this briefly. Because of the pandemic that was happening, in March of 2020, the Trump administration put in place that, for single adult individuals who were crossing the border, they would be turned around at the border based on the pandemic that was happening. The Biden administration agreed with that policy, and when they came in, they kept title 42 in place. In fact, last year, 1.1 million people were turned around at the border under title 42 authority.

Title 42 authority was always intended to be temporary. It is not a permanent immigration policy; it is during the pandemic, although it is ironic that the administration is looking to lift title 42 authority on the border at the same time--this month--members of the National Guard are being forced to resign if they don't have their vaccine. So if you don't take your vaccine and you are in the National Guard, you are being forced out, or if you are in the military and you haven't taken it, you are being forced to resign the military, but people illegally crossing our border can come into the United States.

At the same month that there is conversation about dropping the title 42 authority, we are still wearing a mask on our planes, in buses, and in trains based on a requirement of the administration on a threat to COVID. At the same time that is occurring, the administration is looking to lift the title 42 issues at our southern border.

They have had a year to be able to plan for this. I have been in conversation with Ali Mayorkas and with DHS. We have had multiple conversations with the leaders. I have been on the border multiple times to be able to talk to the leadership there, to say we have all known that at some point, title 42 authority is going away, so when that occurs, what is the plan to deal with illegal immigration or what they call irregular migration? What is the plan at that point?

Well, we are finally getting bits and pieces of the plan. The plan is, apparently, from the notes that we are getting and the conversations we have had at the staff level and that I can piece together from multiple conversations with multiple leaders, after a year of considering what to be able to do about illegal immigration and increasing numbers at the border, apparently, within the next couple of weeks, they are going to stop title 42 to be able to more rapidly move people into the interior of the country faster so the border looks less chaotic. The plan is to move people into the country faster so there is not a camera shot on people backed up at the border. That is the plan.

I wish I was kidding on that, but in a briefing with my staff last week, DHS

Office of Intelligence and Analysis told our team that as soon as they release title 42, they anticipate tens of thousands of migrants crossing the border within hours; that they are literally camped up on the south side of the border and that they will flood the border. DHS Office of Intelligence anticipates hundreds of thousands of migrants crossing within 2 weeks and as many as a million crossing within 6 weeks of when they lift title 42 authority.

May I remind us, last summer, when we saw all the chaos on our southern border, that was 900,000 for an entire year. They are anticipating as many as a million in 6 weeks illegally crossing our border, and their plan is not to turn them around; their plan is to bus them to towns and cities all over the United States so they would move away from the border quickly. That does not feel like a plan to me; that feels like a recipe for chaos and frustration from American citizens across the country.

The plan continues to be able to give individuals a piece of paper that they would have a court hearing 6 years in the future--6 years. I wish I was kidding about this. They will come across the border, be given a piece of paper, told they have a hearing 6 years in the future, and if they would like to apply for a work status, they can get that after they are here 6 months.

Last year, we had the highest number of illegal crossings in the history of our country--last year. The administration is now planning for that number to skyrocket this year. Their solution is to give work permits, move people faster to the interior of the country, and repeat. That is not a plan; that is a formula for disaster. That is individuals and families moving into the country who don't have legal status by the millions.

May I remind this body that last year, we had individuals from every single country on the planet who were encountered on our border last year illegally crossing--every single country. Yes, that includes Iran, North Korea, Russia. You name it, every country on the planet illegally crossed our border. The plan this year is not to turn them around; the plan this year is to expedite them into the interior of the country, hand them a form, and say: Show up at court 6 years from now. Oh, by the way, while you are waiting, you can have a work permit.

That is going to just drive even more illegal immigration into our country. That is going to drive people from all over the world to be able to come here and to cross our border illegally. That is an invitation to chaos. And I cannot even believe, even with this administration, that after a year of planning, this is the plan for what they are going to do for illegal immigration on our southern border.

Last summer, we found out through a series of rumors that ICE was planning to put up what they were calling a surge overflow temporary processing facility in Western Oklahoma, at a private prison there. I contacted DHS, confirmed that they were actually planning this, and told them the obvious issues with that. There was no bus station in that area. There was no airport in that area. They were literally looking to move thousands of people from the border into Western Oklahoma, into a small town, and just release them at that point, and they can figure out what to do and where to go from there.

The administration, after 48 hours of our back and forth, of me pushing, pulled back their plan and said they weren't going to do it. But I have noted their response back to me at the end of that. They said that they had decided not to pursue this facility at this time.

What was threatened in my State a year ago is very likely coming to many States that are represented in this room in the weeks ahead, where individuals are moved all over the country, into small towns and large towns, to be able to move people away from the border--what even DHS estimates may be a million people in 6 weeks to every part of the country so the border doesn't look chaotic. Can I ask you, is your town set up to receive people coming from all over the world to come into your town--a million in a 6-week time period?

Interior processing is a terrible idea. It is a terrible idea. And after a year, DHS can do better than this. So what do we need to do about this? My Democratic colleagues have a unique relationship with this President. You have the opportunity to be able to call the office, to sit down with the leadership team, and to say: This looks like a particularly bad idea. The American people do not like chaos, and they do not like illegal immigration. The American people love legal immigration. We cheer at nationality events. We show up in droves and watch people pledge allegiance to the flag for the first time as an American citizen. But the American people do not like illegal immigration, especially one that is unlimited, chaotic, and from every country in the world.

So I made contact with the administration. I am laying this marker down. We are going to do everything that we possibly can as a team to be able to make it clear that this administration plans to bring chaos to the United States in the next several months, and we are going to do everything we can to be able to stop that. This is not some random threat.

The President of the United States has a unique responsibility to enforce the law. That is what Presidents do. And the people in my State are not asking for something odd or peculiar; they are asking simply for the President of the United States to enforce the law of the United States.

May I remind this body of a statistic you may or may not remember. Last year, ICE deported 57,000 people total in a year. We had 2.3 million people illegally encountered at the southern border, and ICE deported 57,000 total in a year. It was a record-low number of deportations and a record-high number of illegal crossings. And now they are planning to lift title 42. All 100 of us should be addressing this administration and telling them this is a bad idea, and I pray they hear us out.

To the President of the United States: Just enforce the law.

I yield the floor.

Mr. President.

Reserving the right to object.

Mr. President, I do object to this nomination moving at this point to be able to do a unanimous consent on this. The reason for that is, at OMB, we have consistently gone back to them and asked for just basic information, and OMB continues to be the spot where things are held up, and they are not turning the information over to us.

We have been exceptionally patient with OMB. Let me give you a couple of examples on this.

We worked with DHS to try to get some additional information on some of the detention beds and to be able to ask about this. We submitted specific questions for the record to DHS in July of last year and then again in November of last year. We still do not have the answers to those.

It is our understanding DHS has turned those over to OMB to be able to evaluate. OMB still is not turning those over to anyone else so they are locked up into the system.

I have had numerous conversations with OMB and with the White House on trying to get the information on how they are handling religious exemptions and religious accommodations for the vaccine mandates. This is an entirely new process that they have created for all of the Agencies and an entirely different process that is running through the U.S. military right now.

There are around 23,000 people who have made a request in the military for religious accommodation, about 23 of them have actually been given an answer. Most of them are just getting no answer. Across the Federal Agencies and all the Federal families, they are asking the questions about what do we do on a religious accommodation. They are just not getting an answer at all or they are getting answers that are different.

We have asked OMB specifically for the information, just how are you handling it? How are decisions being made? What is the timing on it? We are not getting answers on that.

We have gone to the task force. We have gone to OMB. We have gone to the White House. We have gone to Agencies. They all point back to OMB, saying they are the ones that are going to actually release that. We are not getting it, basic clarity of information.

I can go on and on and on. I have got pages of questions that we put in that we are either not getting an answer at all or they have released to us something that is publicly available but not the actual information on it. We are not asking for unreasonable things. We are just asking for an answer.

So, yes, I do object, but I would really like to be able to get this information from OMB.

If this was a nominee on the other side, Democrats would certainly be asking for information and saying: Why did we make a request in July and it is now March and we can't get an answer because OMB won't release the answer that has been submitted by the Agency? So I do object.

Madam President, there are a lot of things going on in the world right now--a lot. What is happening in Ukraine; Russian aggression; continuing talk about the continual challenges of communist China; dealing with COVID-19 and its effects still worldwide, still here in the United States; still lots of people very frustrated on transportation mandates--on the masks, I should say; other vaccine mandates that are still out there; we have a 7--almost 8--percent now inflation rate that is in the country; cost of living is going up; all the energy issues--there are so many things that we are dealing with around this body of late.

I want to bring something to the middle of this conversation that I don't want us to forget about because the media seemed to have pushed it all to the back burner. And I have even had people recently catch me and say, Apparently, things are going much better on our southern border because I don't hear about it anymore. Well, it has not gotten better. And I want to bring a couple of issues and one in particular that I am very concerned about of where things are going right now, on our enforcement on the southern border.

This chart walks through the last 10 years of illegal crossings that had been actually apprehended, engaged--the new term is ``encountered'' that the Biden administration is using. This is over the last 10 years, and this is quarter by quarter of what has actually occurred.

You will see the rise and fall over multiple times. You will see spikes that have happened. But right there, that spot, is when President Biden was elected. That is that date. His election is there, and this is what has occurred since that time period.

Instead of seeing a big dropoff just in the last couple of months, we have only seen it go down, but not even close to the highest peaks in the past.

To give you a point of reference on that, since January of 2021, we have had 2,355,000 people whom we have ``encountered'' on the southwest border--folks who have illegally crossed our border. These are not just record numbers; these are alltime high numbers--nothing even close to the number of people who are illegally crossing the border.

Now, this is on the southern border. And there are two facts I want to be able to add to this, the first of which is what is happening inside the country: That would be ICE removals.

This is since 2015, the ICE removals that have been done every year during the Obama administration, during the Trump administration, and then during the first year of the Biden administration. So not only do we have 2.3 million people who have illegally come to our border and crossed it that we have encountered, but it is an alltime low of actual deportations that are happening right now as well.

So not only on our southern border are we seeing record numbers of high coming in inside the country, it is record-low numbers actually being deported out.

This is by design. This is not accidental. The policies that have been put in place on our southern border were put in place to encourage people, quite frankly, to be able to cross the border, knowing full well that when you get inside, you won't actually be deported.

There is only one policy that is set out there that has been in the middle of this that has changed the dynamic at all, and it is a policy most Americans never even heard of. It is called title 42 expulsions. Quite frankly, probably most of the folks in this room have never heard of title 42 expulsions. It is a new term, so I want to be able to walk through it a little bit.

Starting in March of 2020--just 2 years ago--when COVID started to accelerate worldwide, the Surgeon General made a recommendation through the CDC, through HHS, to the President to be able to say we have a worldwide pandemic that is occurring. Here is title 42 of the Public Health Service Act. It says:

Whenever the Surgeon General determines that by reason of

the existence of any communicable disease in a foreign

country, there is serious danger of the introduction of such

disease into the United States, and that . . . danger is so

increased by the introduction of persons or property from

[that] country that a suspension of the right to introduce

such persons and property is required in the interest of the

public health, the Surgeon General, in accordance with

regulations approved by the President, shall have the power

to prohibit . . . the introduction of persons and property

from such countries or places [that they] shall designate . .

. to [avoid] such danger.

In March of 2020, the Trump administration said: We have got a concern dealing with individuals crossing our border illegally. They are coming from all over the world. There is COVID all over the world. There are some authorities that you go through that you can actually say some of these folks can be turned around immediately.

The Surgeon General, HHS, and the President agreed that we are going to turn people around at the border immediately. So the Trump administration did that.

And, by the way, right there is President Biden's inauguration. His HHS also agreed with this same policy of title 42 to say: We have a serious risk from COVID, so we should also turn people around in numbers at the border and send them back home.

This is the number under the Biden administration of individuals who have been turned around.

Let me give you a perspective. Of the 2.3 million people who have been encountered at our border since the beginning of the Biden administration, 56 percent of those folks have been literally turned around at the border and told, You cannot enter under title 42 authority--56 percent of the people. So 44 percent of the people have been allowed to be able to come into our country.

Let me set this in context because I am throwing a lot of numbers out at everybody. I want you to remember all the news reports from last year, all of the overcrowding in the Donna, TX, facility that we saw, all of the people crammed underneath the bridge in the Rio Grande Valley, all of those folks who piled across the border in massive numbers that we saw coming into the United States--that represented only 44 percent of the people illegally crossing our border because they were allowed in.

I bring this up because as of right now, we have heard that DHS, the President, and HHS are considering canceling title 42. If that occurs, we won't have 1 million people illegally crossing our border and released into the United States; within months, we will have 2 million. And all that you saw last summer of the flood of people--that 44 percent--imagine what that looks like more than doubled this summer.

The conversation is we are getting toward the backside of COVID. Ironically enough, while the President just extended the transportation requirement for masks--again--while the President just asked for billions of dollars of additional money because we need vaccines worldwide to be able to distribute more vaccines worldwide to be able to fight COVID, while we are still dealing with all the additional surge rise and falls in other countries--in fact, just within the last couple of days, China has gone back into lockdown based on new COVID cases in China--while all of that is occurring worldwide, apparently, the President is looking to cancel title 42.

And when I have asked what will replace that policy, the answer has come back to me: We are not sure yet. That tells me nothing is actually the plan to replace this. That is a problem.

What happens when title 42 goes away? An extra million people come into the country illegally, remembering that when all of those folks come into the country, apparently, the Biden administration also has no plan to deport them.

Where are we right now with the number of people that have illegally crossed our border, and where are they from? Let me give you a quick map.

This is a map of all the countries in the past year--just in the past year--who have illegally crossed our border. In the white there is the United States. In the red are the countries that we have seen people illegally cross our border. If you want to squint at that map, let me just give you shorthand for it. It is every country in the world.

Last year, we had individuals from literally every country in the world illegally cross our southern border. Yes, that includes China; that includes North Korea; that includes Iran. It includes them all.

Interestingly enough, just in the last--well, not the last 3 months but the last 4 months that we have had records on it--that would be October, November, December, and January--just in those last 4 months that we have those records, we have 6,400 Russian citizens who illegally crossed our southern border. Just in the last 4 months we have records, there were 6,400 Russian citizens.

We have people from all over the world who are illegally crossing our southern border because people know, if you get across the border, you are in. When title 42 goes away, this accelerates even more. It is an open invitation because 56 percent of the people were turned around, 44 percent of the people were released into the country--by the way, that is over a million so far--that goes away. Then they all get in.

What happens at that point? Those individuals are told that they can make a request for asylum, even though our statistics show 91 percent of the people who request asylum are actually coming for economic reasons, not actually true asylum--91 percent.

Those individuals are released into the country. They are told to be able to sign up for a hearing date, and they can do their hearing anywhere they want in the United States. They are given a hearing date, currently, 6 years in the future--6 years. So they will be traveling in our country anywhere they want to go for the next 6 years waiting on their hearing.

By the way, if they don't show up for their hearing, apparently there is no plan to be able to actually go get them, if they don't show up for their hearing, because, right now, ICE is not removing people. So they are just released, and when they are released into the country, they can immediately text friends back home and say: I am in. Here is what I said. Here is where I crossed. Here is the cartel member whom I paid on the southern border to be able to get me through. I am in. Follow my same path; you will have the same result.

What can be done about this? Well, let me just highlight a couple of things, and then I want to talk about this more.

First things first--don't end title 42. We still have a worldwide pandemic. Until there is a plan of what is actually going to occur next on our southern border, don't end title 42.

This is the time for the President and Ali Mayorkas and all the leadership to put up a pause and to say: The chaos that happened last year was only 44 percent of the people crossing our southern border. We do not have, physically, the capability to be able to handle that many people. Do not cancel title 42.

The second thing is the ``Remain in Mexico'' policy. The ``Remain in Mexico'' policy that actually started under President Trump, President Biden set aside, and Federal courts stepped back in and told this administration: You have to put back in place the ``Remain in Mexico'' policy. So they chose to do it.

I have talked to this body before about what they did. The Biden administration said: OK. We will follow the court order. We will reinstate the ``Remain in Mexico'' policy.

They have reinstated that policy the last 3 months. They have put up three different facilities. Actually, now there are four total facilities. I visited one of them in Brownsville, TX. That facility has six courtrooms. Each courtroom is set up to handle 22 people at a time, plus their attorneys, plus all the ancillary services. Six of those they have got set up. They have individual meeting spaces set up for 120 people to meet individually with their attorney. So 120 rooms, 6 courtrooms that are all set up, and all the ancillary everything around it as well, and we have now got 4 different locations for that.

Of the half a million people who have illegally crossed our border in the time that they have set up the new MPP courtrooms--of the half a million people who have crossed illegally during that time period, so far, the Biden administration has pulled out 1,569 of them to evaluate if they would go into the ``Remain in Mexico'' policy. Of those, 893 they actually put in the system. Of those, they have actually had 494 of those who at some point came back and said: We have changed our mind. We talked to attorneys. We have a new way to be able to get out of it.

We are trying to get the actual number of people who have actually gone through the ``Remain in Mexico'' policy and who have actually qualified for it, while we have 4 different locations, each of them with 6 courtrooms, 120 meeting spaces. But what we are finding is, really, a handful of people actually have ``qualified'' for the ``Remain in Mexico'' policy out of half a million people during that time period.

The simple answer is that the Biden administration is spending millions and millions of taxpayer dollars setting up the MPP Program that the court has required them to do, but they have made so many exceptions to it, no one actually qualifies. So they are trying to please the court by saying ``We are following your order,'' waste American tax dollars, while we continue to see record numbers of people crossing the border. That is a waste.

If we are going to stop this, keep title 42 in place until you have a response to what you are going to do instead. Actually run the MPP Program as the court has instructed you to do rather than playing games with American tax dollars and with the system here.

I would also encourage you to put the ``Safe Third Country'' policy back in place. The previous administration had actually created a relationship with multiple other countries so that as individuals traveled through other countries to get to the United States, they could make asylum requests in those locations, because we understand-- because we know the law in this body--the law is very clear on the international standards on this.

If you are going to request asylum, you go to the next safe country, and you request asylum. If they are traveling through five countries or they are traveling literally across the globe to get to the United States from everywhere else so they can request asylum, that is not asylum; that is economic opportunity.

By the way, don't blame them for coming to the greatest country in the world to get economic opportunity--except that is not asylum, and we all know it. So why don't we actually treat it exactly as we all see it?

If you would like to come to the greatest country in the world, wonderful. Go through the legal process of that. We allow a million people a year to legally become citizens of the United States, going through the legal process. Do that. But for the billions of people who wake up every day wishing they were in the United States, I don't blame you. But we welcome people when they come through legally in this process, and we do with open arms welcome people who come through legally.

There are ways to be able to address this, but my first concern today is to be able to speak to this administration and to be able to say: The title 42 piece is essential to maintain. Do not let go of this until you have a solution to what is happening at the border, or the chaos at the border will be even worse this summer than it was last summer, and it is on you for not enforcing the border.

I want to keep this conversation going in the days ahead, but as of now, I yield the floor.

Mr. President, I come today to the floor with a very simple unanimous consent request.

This is a resolution. It doesn't allocate any dollars, doesn't change any policy. It is just a statement of belief from the U.S. Senate. It is a statement to be able to say we hold certain things very important.

I will talk through some of the resolution part of it--the resolve at the beginning of it--but it ends with a very simple statement. It ends with:

Resolved, That the Senate--(1) recognizes and promotes the

importance of parental involvement in their child's

education; and (2) recognizes the necessity of school choices

as a tool to empower all parents with the freedom to choose

the best educational environment for their children and to

reject destructive ideologies promoted by many public

schools, such as Critical Race Theory.

This comes from a basic conversation that happens in my State and, quite frankly, in States all around the country. Parents should be the primary decision-makers for their children--not only where they are educated so that they don't live in a certain neighborhood and they say, I am sorry, you live there so you have to go here.

This is so the parents have the maximum amount of flexibility knowing one child may be a great fit for one school, and the younger child may be a better fit for a different school, whether that be a public school that allows flexibility within a district to be able to move place to place or, as it happens in my State, where you can even change district to district within public schools.

If a parent maybe works in one area--one school district--but lives in another, that parent can choose to be able to have their child go into a different district. Though it is a public school setting, it gives them the flexibility and the choice to do that. Why? Because not every kid is the same and not every educational environment is the same.

I would say in my State--and I would assume in other States as well-- not every school district is the same. It is important to us in our State that every school district is successful. There is no place that we don't want any child to be able to be successful.

But we should all admit the facts: Not every school district is thriving. As we invest dollars and time and encourage great teaching in that district, that child who is in that district that is not being successful is trapped in a location that is currently not successful. Maybe they can be successful in 5 years from now when they work through the different issues they have, but that child doesn't have a second shot.

If that child has no other opportunity to be able to choose and their parents are locked into that spot, we basically say, We will fix everything in this district in a few years, and that child is just not allowed to get an option out. I don't think that is helpful for that child and that parent at that time.

Giving parents the ability to be able to make choices--whether public schools, charter schools, private schools--whatever may work best for their school and for their State and the policies their State has created seems like a smart thing to be able to do.

Any kind of teaching that is within a school that actually promotes one kid as the oppressor and the other kid as the oppressed simply because of the color of their skin should not be taught in our schools. Why don't we teach every child is equal? Why don't we teach every child should have opportunity? Why don't we teach every family has the opportunity in this great country of ours; and where we have weaknesses, we work on our weaknesses? But we don't label a child as an oppressor or as oppressed based on the color of their skin--at least we used to not in America.

But that is what is rising up with this critical race theory as it rises up from place to place. I have had many of my colleagues on both sides of the aisle saying: That is not true. That is not being taught.

Great. Let's make the resolution. Let's say that we as a Senate don't believe that this should be taught. Let's teach every child. Let's love every child.

This resolution also affirms the rights of parents to be able to speak out--not in a violent way, not in a destructive way, but for parents to be able to speak out.

Why is it that several months ago, the Department of Justice in our Nation starts a whole investigation on parents to be able to say: Are there parents who are actually maybe closet terrorists who are showing up at school board meetings, complaining about what is being taught, complaining about a mask mandate in their school, complaining about a vaccine mandate, complaining about critical race theory, or just saying ``I don't like this particular curriculum''?

That used to be the rights of parents, to engage, and now we hear: Really, parents don't know enough about these difficult things. Parents need to just sit down over there. We will take care of this as professionals.

So, again, this resolution doesn't add additional funding. It doesn't change the structure of our schools. But it does say: We as the Senate believe in the power of the parent to be able to make the right choice for their children.

So, with that, as if in legislative session, I ask unanimous consent that the Committee on Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions be discharged from further consideration and the Senate now proceed to my resolution, S. Res. 493. I further ask unanimous consent that the resolution be agreed to, the preamble be agreed to, and that the motions to reconsider be considered made and laid upon the table.

Mr. President, reserving the right to object, I appreciate the dialogue on education. A degree is an education. My mom is a lifelong educator. I spent my summers growing up in the school library, putting books in the Dewey Decimal System, putting the new piece of tape on the outside of it, and actually, back in the old days, filing a new card in the card catalog, which half the people listening to me right now have no idea what that is.

I am passionate about education. I have two daughters, and I stay very engaged in the issue of education. So it is always interesting to me when my Democratic colleagues say: When Republicans get serious about education.

It is always interesting. We will pass a bill, like what happened in the omnibus or what happened in any Education bill before, and there will be billions and billions of dollars in education, but the comment will always be ``Well, if you really loved kids, you would do just $1 billion more, but because you don't love kids, you did $1 billion less.'' It is never enough on it.

This resolution that I brought today was not about an extra $1.3 billion in education to be able to hire more people; it was just about empowering parents.

It is an interesting side by side to say what families need more is more employees at school, and what I am seeing is that we need more empowerment of parents.

One costs $1.3 billion; the other one is just free. One says: Let's have folks at school know how to be able to take care of your kids best. The other one says: Well, let's make sure there are certain things, like critical race theory, that we don't teach at school to make sure every child is taught the same. And if that parent wants to teach that at home, they are welcome to teach that at home, but let's not impose that on every child. Let's not call some children oppressors because of the color of their skin.

Why don't we do that?

So the resolution I brought is not about a billion dollars; it is just a statement of support of parents, a statement of support of what parents want to be able to teach. It is not about more school employees; it is about stronger parents. That is what I think that we ought to continue to be able to address.

This is not about who loves education more. Quite frankly, I know my colleague from Washington is passionate about kids and about education. She has lived it as a mom, as a leader in the Senate, and as someone I watched negotiate with Lamar Alexander some of the toughest education policy conversations. She is a remarkable legislator and is passionate about this.

We have some disagreements on some of these issues. I am just passionate about doing whatever we can to be able to honor parents as often as we can and to tell them: No, you are not going to be investigated.

She mentioned parents in Texas being worried about being investigated. I will tell you, parents in Oklahoma have said to me: I no longer go to school board meetings because I am afraid the FBI is going to be there and they are going to open a case on me. I have heard that the Attorney General is looking for parents who are problems across the country, and so I don't feel comfortable going to a school board meeting anymore because the U.S. Attorney General may open a file on me.

Now, that is a real conversation with a parent at home.

So let's find a way to be able to empower parents and do whatever we can. So I object.

Mr. President, I was at the State of the Union Address, as was the Chair and most of the folks in this room.

In the State of the Union Address, the President made a very strong statement. I was pleased to be able to hear him say--he made this statement: We will buy American to make sure everything--everything-- from the deck of an aircraft carrier to the steel on the highway guardrails is made in America from beginning to end. All of it. All of it.

Great. What he left out is what we have marked as little asterisks here on the ``everything,'' ``all of it,'' ``all of it,'' it seems to be, except oil and gas.

Oil and gas is one of those things that is essential for us. It is not just transportation. It is not just electricity. The carpet I am standing on has petroleum products in it. The finish on this desk has petroleum products in it. The suit that people are wearing often will have some petroleum products in it--maybe the buttons on the jacket, paint on the walls. There are petroleum products all over this room, and it is needed for all kinds of things.

Our economy is connected to petroleum. That doesn't mean we can't do it cleaner. That doesn't mean we can't do it better. But it is interesting to me to be able to note that when we talk about ``Buy American'' and ``Doing American,'' now, when there is the conversation and now decision finally from the Biden administration that we are going to cut off Russian oil and gas coming into the United States-- good--that it immediately turns to let's get it from Venezuela or from Iran or find some other source.

We are all saying: Time out. There is this country called the United States. We also produce oil and gas, and we should be focused on what does it take to be able to do it more here so that we are not dependent on any country, especially a country that is run by an autocratic dictator.

I wish this was the only statement that I would challenge him on, but I was quite shocked that President Biden's envoy for climate, John Kerry, as the Russians were invading Ukraine, made this statement:

I hope [that] President Putin will help us to stay on track

with respect to what we need to do for the climate.

And then he said that a Russian war could cause ``massive emission consequences.''

Wow. The focus seemed to be on emissions consequences of a war, rather than the people of Ukraine. And the focus seemed to be on, ``I hope President Putin will stay on track with respect to climate change,'' rather than stop.

Listen, when I just talk to normal folks on the street in Oklahoma, they are frustrated by the price of gas. No matter how small their car is or how big their truck is, they are ticked at the high price of gasoline. They have been upset for a while. It is not just based on Ukraine. The price of gasoline just in the past 13 months has gone up over $1 a gallon. That wasn't because of Russia and Ukraine. That was directly because of policies that are of the Biden administration.

And now, it is accelerating even more. We need to find a way to be able to create greater energy security for the United States of America, and that does involve actually producing more oil and gas.

I would say that the Biden administration and I disagree on this, but the little-known fact is we don't disagree on this. I do agree with the Biden administration because if you look at the Biden administration's official numbers that they actually put out from the energy information, when they put out their official numbers and they have to estimate how much oil and gas we will use globally, the official estimate from the Biden administration is, between now and 2050, we will continue to need progressively more and more natural gas and petroleum products--by the way, also more coal in their estimates as well. Where we are different from the Biden administration is they do acknowledge, privately, the facts and lay the data out and say we are going to need more oil and gas and more coal, not less, to provide the basic energy needs of the world.

Where I disagree with them is how they are trying to be able to push the world into other energy solutions by raising the price of oil and gas, which directly punishes consumers, and to be able to meet American climate goals, saying, if we are going to meet our American climate goals, we need to push production out to other countries and have them produce the oil and gas and send it to us so that we can show a good score for our climate while we still actually need to be able to purchase that oil from someone else.

Let's admit the obvious. We need all kinds of energy, and in the next 30 years, according to even the Biden administration, we are going to need more gas, natural gas, more petroleum, more oil, and more coal worldwide.

We are also going to need all kinds of other forms of energy. Unlike others, I am not opposed to every type of energy. Let's also make it as clean as we possibly can. We need to have all forms of energy out there, but we also need to admit the basic facts. We need oil and gas production.

And that doesn't mean we go get it from Venezuela. Venezuela is a ruthless human rights violator. The leadership of Venezuela tortures his own people. We need to not go run to Venezuela to be able to get additional oil.

We certainly don't need to go run to Iran. No, I don't know that this administration is running to Iran, but there

are great rumors that are flying around currently about the final negotiations of an Iran nuclear deal, and we are waiting to see what the actual details are, whether that is going to include putting Iranian oil on the world market. I hope it does not. I hope also that they deal with, in an Iran nuclear deal--they actually deal with the weapons that Iran is producing to actually deliver a nuclear warhead, as they continue to be able to test more and more missiles, with more and more range, with a larger and larger warhead size that is specifically designed for a nuclear warhead.

We shouldn't pay attention to nuclear material and ignore the delivery system that they are actually experimenting with.

I hope we pay attention to what is happening in Yemen. Iran is the largest state sponsor of terrorism, and they are actually delivering the products of war to Yemen that is actually trying to destabilize all their neighbors around them.

I hope we don't lift sanctions on Hezbollah, on Hamas, on those individuals who were part of actually murdering our marines in 1983 in Beirut.

Those individuals who took away the property of Jewish citizens in Iran in 1979, I hope all of those sanctions remain and that those aren't up for bid and that we are also not talking about buying Iranian oil. Solving our need for energy should not be running to dictators around the world to go get it from them.

So what is happening now? The administration has done a release of 30 million barrels from the United States Strategic Petroleum Reserve, which, by the way, is a day-and-a-half of our oil usage. It does have some effect, but it is a day-and-a-half of our oil usage.

It is not the long-term solution. Long term, that is not even a bump in prices. Long term, we have to have stable supply to meet the demands that we have in the country.

This administration is saying that there is more oil production now in the United States than there was 2 years ago. That is factually true. During the time of COVID, production of oil plummeted in the United States, so there is definitely more oil being produced now than there was during the peak of the time during COVID.

But they have also taken on multiple different items, from the very beginning of the administration, to do what they could to be able to attack the production of American oil and gas. From day 1, with cutting off the Keystone Pipeline, which, by the way, I have folks who catch me and say what difference would the Keystone Pipeline make? Well, let me give you an example. The Keystone Pipeline would deliver more oil to Houston, TX, a day than what Russia does a day to the United States.

We could literally replace Russian oil with what would have come through the Keystone Pipeline, but they killed it because they had environmental goals. And why should we worry about where we buy our oil from? Why should we buy it from the Canadians when we can buy it from the Russians--was the theory.

Well, I think we know why I would much rather be buying from the Canadians today than buying from Putin's Russia. That was done right off the bat.

The Federal Energy Regulatory Commission, just 2 weeks ago--not ancient history, just 2 weeks ago--announced a new restriction on natural gas pipelines and said they will make decisions on export facilities of natural gas and natural gas pipelines on a case-by-case basis based on their mitigation plans that they will present--no definition of what that would mean.

It is basically, if you are going to sink billions of dollars into doing a pipeline, we will make our decision when you are in process. What does that do? That discourages any company from actually doing a natural gas pipeline or certainly an export facility. When right now Europe is screaming at us to export more natural gas, FERC, literally, during the war, announced they are going to make it harder to do natural gas exports.

The Obama-era rule on waters of the United States destabilized a lot of investment because no one knew what was going to be the issue and what was not going to be the issue. The Biden administration is now saying they want to be able to reopen all of that and to create less certainty on investment.

There was a pause on oil and gas lease sales. They said they were going to do a temporary moratorium. They started that on January 20, 2021. It hasn't reopened yet, their temporary moratorium.

Every 5 years there is a plan that has to be presented for offshore leases and how they are actually going to do offshore work. That plan is due in June of this year. As far as we can tell, the administration has taken up nothing on it, meaning offshore will have no ability to be able to continue permitting because they are just apparently not going to do the plan, which means you don't get access to those leases.

So whether it is offshore, whether it is onshore, they are cutting off future supplies.

If that is not hard enough, the administration nominated Sarah Raskin to be Vice Chair of Supervision for the Federal Reserve, who has made public statements that she wants to be able to use the Federal Reserve to be able to help cut off capital to anyone who handles fossil fuels.

So, basically, if you can't get loans and you can't transport from here to there through a pipeline and you can't get additional leases offshore or onshore on Federal lands, you have severely limited the locations that you can actually get energy long term, while Biden's own energy information group says we are going to continue to need more oil and gas, more coal in the days ahead--the facts versus the reality of what they are actually putting into place.

Now, again, electric vehicles don't offend me. For those folks who can afford an expensive electric vehicle, that is great. It is 2 percent of the vehicles on the road, and they are fine. I don't have a problem with them. But even when they talk about, let's do what we can to double the number of electric vehicles that are on the road, great, we will be at 4 percent of the vehicles on the road will be electric.

The other 96 percent of the people in the country want to go to school, want to go to work, want to go to the grocery store, want to travel on vacation, and right now to do that, they are paying the price for it.

Let's have all forms of energy. Let's have some realism in our conversation. Let's do what we can to be able to open up energy production.

What am I doing? I have a specific piece of legislation that deals with the permitting processes. It deals with some of the Executive actions that President Biden has put into place to be able to slow down the production of American energy. It opens up the process so we can actually get back to producing more American energy.

I am also promoting some very key things that the administration can do right now. For instance, when energy companies are looking to do investment for additional drilling, they are asking the question how long is the war going to happen? When is all this going to fall apart? And no one knows that.

The administration today could announce we are doing a moratorium on buying Russian oil for the next 12 months, lay out a firm date on it, and then say 12 months from now we will review it. What difference does that make? That tells energy companies, if you are going to invest and you are planning to come online in the next year, we are not going to cut your legs out from under you by the United States buying Russian oil again in a few months; that we actually do American investments to be able to actually replace the Russian oil that is coming in.

This administration could also today say we are not going to make any changes to any of the rules that are out there that will affect any of the process for developing American oil and gas for the next 12 months, just a pause on making any changes on that.

And this administration could actually open up Federal leasing, which, by the way, is not a radical idea. It is the law. The law says that the administration has to do it every quarter, and so far four quarters in a row the Biden administration has ignored the law of the United States and just not done the leases, saying: They have plenty. I don't want to do more.

Four quarters in a row they violated the law.

So what could the Biden administration do to be able to help American

production? Follow the law; put a pause on new restrictions; declare how long they are going to actually hold off on Russian oil and how long that will be to give certainty for people in their investment; and pause all these new restrictions on capital.

If the Biden administration did that today, we would see an even greater increase in oil. Listen, there is no incentive that needs to be put in place. I have had folks say: What incentives do we need to put in place to be able to increase American production? Can I just say oil is at $120 a barrel.

There is no incentive that needs to be put in place. The problem is not the incentive; the problems are the restrictions on the other side. With that certainty in a constantly changing environment, very few people want to be able to take the risk for it.

So if Secretary Granholm is serious when she is calling out oil companies to ramp up production, do the work behind the scenes to open the path for them so that they have that kind of certainty.

I yield the floor.