Floor Statements

You have to object.

Mr. President, I appreciate the colloquy and the dialogue here on this issue because this is an important issue. We have to break through this logjam. We have people across the country that are TSA, that are Coast Guard, that are cyber security professionals, that are FEMA professionals, that are, yes, ICE professionals, that are Homeland Security customs professionals that are doing a job they need to get paid for. Right now, they are not getting paid because my Democratic colleagues are blocking their pay. They have been very clear on this.

If I can reiterate what my colleague just said--just said: My Democratic colleagues do not want to fund ICE.

The concern from so many Republicans is that Democrats want to be able to pass a bill right now that funds Homeland Security except for ICE, except for CBP. That means they want to cut off funding and basically drain it out and have folks go to their workplace every day but not get paid, week after week, so eventually they quit and no longer can ICE function and no longer can Border Patrol function.

That is the concern here, is that--you are right, as has been stated on this floor just 2 minutes ago--they don't want to fund those entities at all. So what it seems like my Democratic colleagues are pursuing is a way to be able to fund everything else and to be able to starve out what they don't want. They don't want border protection. They don't want ICE removal.

But can I remind my colleagues and anyone else who wants to hear it: What they are blocking funding for currently right now is more than just deportations. Even what they are proposing right now--to say ``We will fund everything else but ICE, but CBP''--they are blocking out Homeland Security investigators; that is, Federal law enforcement that goes after drug cartels, weapons smuggling, money laundering, soliciting. HSI are the folks that are actually going after child exploitation. These are the Federal agents that go after human trafficking networks. These are the individuals that actually enforce the counterproliferation in sanctions enforcement. These are the folks that investigate the cyber crimes.

So they are saying: We are defunding ICE. They are also defunding the investigations for human trafficking, for drug smuggling, for cyber crimes, workforce investigations. They are also blocking out the customs professionals that are actually at our ports of entry handling our produce, keeping different diseases from coming into our country based on soil samples and agricultural pieces that are coming in. That is what they are also defunding.

They are saying to Republicans: Just give up. Just don't fund our customs professionals. Just don't fund the ICE professionals. Just don't fund them. We don't plan on ever paying them so they will quit.

I think that is a terrible idea because--help me understand the moment when we get back together and then my Democratic colleagues suddenly say: We have changed our mind; now we want to fund ICE.

It is not going to happen. I saw it during the Biden administration up close and personal. They do not want to fund border protection. I saw it.

The American people do want to have sane border policy. We do want to have sane enforcement.

Now, just a little history here. Thirteen days ago, the White House sent over a proposal. And it wasn't just a secret; the President of the United States posted on social media and made very clear that these are the things he is willing to be able to make the change on that Democrats have asked for. Now 2 weeks later, they are still saying: We are thinking about it. Why? Because it is good politics to say: We are still thinking about it.

What are the things they actually asked for that the President came out and made a public social media post saying: These are the things we will do.

He came out immediately and said: We will do a full investigation of the two American citizens that died--a full public investigation of that. He made that very clear.

Pulled out of a surge that had happened in Minnesota. The President said: In good faith, we are going to pull out entirely from that.

The President then said: We are going to do body-worn cameras and make sure they are all required. That is what Democrats were asking for. The President has already agreed to that. He has already sent over a dollar amount with the requirement on that.

The President already came out and publicly made a statement where-- Democrats said: We want identification on every Federal agent. The President came out and said: I will agree to putting identification on every single agent.

That has all been agreed to.

There was also a statement made by Democrats that ICE agents would not go into what they call sensitive sites to do an arrest. The President already came out and said: We are not going to go into sensitive sites except for one.

One of the demands that were made was ICE could not go into a polling place. Of all things, help me understand why someone illegally present should be in a polling place. But Democrats demanded that ICE agents not go into polling places, which, by the way, is why we want to bring the SAVE America Act up next week. The President said: No, I won't agree on a polling place because someone not legally present shouldn't be there in the first place.

The President came out and said: I will agree to deescalation training.

All those things have already been agreed to 13 days ago--13 days ago--and now, because of good politics, the White House just has to sit and wait, I guess.

And TSA agents get paid when they feel like it, and, in the meantime, the strategy to just try to just not pay ICE agents, indefinitely, until they quit, continues to linger.

So, no, let's fund DHS. There are lots of agreements that the White House has already announced publicly that they want to do on this. They have been sending paperwork over. They have been sending legislative language over. And so far, it has been radio silence.

So let's actually solve this problem. This is a room full of grownups. Let's have the grownup conversation, whether it is on this floor or off this floor, but the last thing we should do is leave this place and not have this thing resolved.

Last Thursday, I was on this same floor, at this same desk, saying: Why are we leaving town without this being resolved? All of our DHS professionals are not getting paid, and everybody is just going home like the situation is the same. It is not the same.

Let's stay here until we actually get it worked out. But instead, we just walked away as if nothing was happening.

So let's stay here until we work it out. That would be the right thing to do for all of those families, regardless of what they are, regardless of what their task is, even the Federal agents that are actually right now not being paid or on furlough that are working on child trafficking, even those folks, which in the current proposal from my Democratic colleagues, they are saying: We will fund everything but them.

I think we should be paying the folks that are actually going after child trafficking. I think we should be paying the people that are going after drug smuggling. I think we should be paying all the folks in HSI. I think we should. So let's do it.

I yield the floor, and let's solve the problem.

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

Mr. President, it is the end of February, but it sure feels like the beginning because it feels like Groundhog Day. We are in yet another partial government shutdown. We are in it right now.

What is interesting is we just had our last vote of the week, and this is still not resolved, and Members are all heading back home as if everything is normal, but it is not. Next week, we will have people who work for the Department of Homeland Security not get a paycheck because it is not funded because this body has not resolved this.

Now, I understand my Democratic colleagues want to defund ICE. I get that. I hear from them over and over again: Let's defund ICE. And their way of defunding ICE is to be able to cut off funding to this particular part of our Federal budget.

But I think some of my colleagues have lost track of what this means to be able to cut off DHS funding. It is not just cutting off ICE. In fact, ICE is a very small portion of the Department of Homeland Security. There are about 250,000 total employees across all entities in the Department of Homeland Security. ICE has 21,000 of that 250,000- plus. It is a very small group. But they are determined they are going to defund ICE.

What they are actually defunding is not just ICE. They have also defunded U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services. They have defunded the U.S. Coast Guard. They have defunded Customs and Border Protection--those are all the folks that actually handle customs duties and produce coming across our border. They defunded the Cybersecurity & Infrastructure Agency. They defunded FEMA, the Federal Emergency Management Agency. They defunded the Federal law enforcement training centers. They have defunded U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement-- that is ICE, what they were targeting. They have also defunded the Secret Service. TSA--those folks that a lot of Members are going to go check in with to get on a flight right now--they are not getting a paycheck next week, although they are still working this week. They defunded the Countering Weapons of Mass Destruction Office.

Listen, this is a big deal. We just had a shutdown of 43 days--the longest in American history. Those TSA agents lost two paychecks during that time period. There are a lot of Americans who can't miss one and make it; they missed two.

The TSA agent I walked past a couple of weeks ago caught me as I came through and said: I feel like my paycheck is bipolar--I never know whether it is going to be there or not.

All I could say to them was: I am so sorry. We are trying to get this open.

But my Democratic colleagues are so mad at ICE and so determined that they don't want enforcement across the country that TSA agents in my State are not getting a paycheck.

What in the world do the TSA agents in my State have to do with the rage against ICE? What in the world do the Coast Guard folks have to do with the rage against ICE? What in the world do the FEMA folks that are handling emergencies, in preparation for spring storms, and dealing with wildfires across the country--what do they have to do with their rage against ICE?

If we want to have an argument about ICE, let's have it, but why are we cutting off the paychecks of folks that work for FEMA because somebody is mad at ICE? That makes no sense to me, and it certainly doesn't make sense to those folks at the airport in my State who work every single day, who show up way earlier than most Americans actually wake up and get up. They are already at their spot early that morning taking care of passengers and making sure everybody is safe. They have nothing to do with ICE--except now they are not getting a paycheck because somebody is mad.

We should be able to resolve our differences in this body and not have other people not get a paycheck because of that. I have worked literally for years across the aisle and in conversation in this body to be able to come up with a very simple, straightforward bill that says: When we get to a moment that we haven't resolved everything in funding, when we get to that moment, instead of having the government shut down, everyone would still be paid. We would go to what is called a continuing resolution automatically. Everyone would still get paid. The status quo would continue except one thing: We would not leave. We would be here, the House and the Senate, 7 days a week. We would have to be in session and keep working until we solve the problem.

Put the pressure on us. Rather than cutting off the paycheck of somebody who has no ability to be able to make the decision to solve this, why don't you put the pressure on us, where it should be, to be able to stay here until it is resolved?

Now, I want to see my family like everybody else does. There are folks that have all kinds of issues that are happening this weekend. Some are going on codels. Some are heading overseas. Some are going home. Some have elections coming up. There are lots of things that are happening this weekend, and I totally understand everyone wanting to be able to get to those spots, but we have unfinished business. We should be here until it is done, and we should hold harmless the folks in Oklahoma airports who are just getting up every day and going to work to protect our country and protect travelers. We have to figure this out.

So we have two issues. One is, let's solve the immediate one right now. Let's actually get the government back open, and let's actually get people paid.

My Democratic colleagues have demanded that we have body-worn cameras on ICE agents. We as Republicans have said: We agree.

In fact, the bill that you are blocking literally has $20 million and a requirement to have body-worn cameras for law enforcement in the bill that you are blocking. We agree. Body-worn cameras are helpful for law enforcement and for the public to tell the complete story of what actually happened.

My Democratic colleagues have demanded that we get deescalation training for Federal officers. We as Republicans have said: Yes, we agree with that as well.

In fact, the bill that you are blocking, that you refuse to even take up, actually includes money for deescalation training in it. And there is not some trick in it; it is the actual issue everyone seems to be addressing right now.

This is about the drama of the moment and trying to be able to prove that you oppose Trump. OK. We get it. You don't like President Trump. But what I don't get is, why are the folks that work for the Federal Emergency Management Agency, why are the folks that work at TSA, why are the Coast Guard members, why are the folks that handle weapons of mass destruction, why are the folks that handle cyber security for our Nation--why are we not paying them while we are having this political fight?

This may be good political drama, but for the quarter-million Federal employees that are getting up and going to work without a paycheck this week, it is not drama; it is a problem that we need to solve.

So let's finish up these negotiations, and let's actually pass a bill that long term says we will never have another one of these.

I long for the day when I sit with my grandchildren one day and they say ``Tell me about the time that the government used to shut down when Congress had arguments,'' and I would say ``Yes, there was a time that used to happen, but we fixed that, so that doesn't happen anymore.''

Let's solve this. We are supposed to be the adults in the room to be able to

resolve our differences. Let's figure this out for the sake of all those folks that are working every day to protect our Nation.

Mr. President, I yield the floor.

I suggest the absence of a quorum.

Mr. President, this body disagrees on a lot of things-- a lot. But we should have at least one thing we can agree on. It is pretty simple. Kids are different.

You get three kids in a room and all three of those kids are very, very different. I know. I have two daughters, and they are different. I love them both deeply, but they are very different. I find that in a lot of different families.

Students and kids are different. One kid likes football. One kid likes baseball. Another kid doesn't like any sports at all. One likes the band. One likes choir. One likes drama. One doesn't like any clubs at all. One is in Latin club and another is in chess club and the other thinks chess club is dorky. You know why? Because people are different.

That seems normal for us to be able to think about that most basic thing, that not everyone is the same and not everyone chooses the same things that they like or has the same needs. But sometimes when we get into school, we will say: Oh, but they all need to go to the same school. I just disagree.

In America this week--this is actually School Choice Week. Some people may or may not even track that. That is fine. There is a week designated for everything across the country. But in Oklahoma, we really prioritize the ability for every family to be able to make their own choices for education for their kids. We have strong homeschooling. We have strong private schools. We have strong public charter schools. And we have public education. All of them are important to us, and all of them provide different options for families. Now, we have still got a long way to go in education in Oklahoma, but we are investing more and more and more into education. And I am proud of our State legislators prioritizing--in this coming session--reading for early childhood education and to make sure that we are doing the things that we need to do to improve our public education.

In the meantime, we want to continue to provide options to every single family and to every single kid to be able to make sure that the best education environment is out there for that particular child because we want every child to be able to thrive in America. We want every child to be able to have the opportunities that they need to be able to be successful in the days ahead, and that starts with a great education.

Quite frankly, some of our districts are doing not as well as others. Some are doing great, and some are struggling. I don't want a single family in my State, though, to have to think: My kids have to go to a certain school because of the ZIP Code that I live in and that is the only option. Quite frankly, I don't even want for families to say, ``Every one of my kids has to go to the same school,'' because sometimes it just doesn't work the same.

Now, I have heard some folks that are very passionate about public education, which, by the way, I am too. My mom was a lifelong public school educator. My degree was in secondary education. My family is very, very involved in education, and I am very passionate about public education. I think it is vitally important that we do it and that we do it very, very well. But I want to make it very clear for all of the folks whom I meet who say: If you will just give us a couple more years, this will improve. Give us a couple more dollars and a couple more semesters and this will get better for this particular school. I want to remind them that the kid growing up next to that school doesn't have a couple more years. It has to be right now for them. They can't wait until things get better. They only have today. So that is why school choice is so incredibly important, that every family and that every kid has the options to be able to get a better education or to get an education that exactly fits them best. That works better.

This past July, we passed the historic Working Families Tax Cuts Act. In that act, we did a lot of investment in education.

We expanded the 529 savings account to allow more parents to be able to set aside funding for private education if they choose to do that and put that in their 529 so it can grow tax-free.

We invested more into Pell grants and expanded the growth of Pell grants.

Now, you might say: Why does that matter for K through 12?

Well, Pell grants have been really targeted towards institutions that do what is called terminal degrees. So, if you are a kid in poverty and you want to get a degree in philosophy, we would help you do that. But if you are a kid in poverty and you want to get a certification in welding or in plumbing or in carpentry or as a truckdriver, we would say: You are on your own. Well, what in the world? For years, we have been fighting this to be able to say: If we are going to help somebody, give them more options than just a 4-year degree. If they want to do certification programs to be able to get into a vocation faster, why wouldn't we help them do that to be able to rise out of poverty? We fixed that in the Working Families Tax Cuts Act to expand the use of Pell grants so that more individuals who are in poverty can get access to education that helps them get a job even faster.

We actually reversed some changes that were done in the FAFSA. I am not even going into all of the issues of the FAFSA and for getting into higher education, but it actually blocked out kids from agricultural families because of the land and the equipment that they owned. They may be land rich, but they are often cash poor, and they were still blocked out of getting Federal assistance and getting a higher education. We finally fixed that, and there are a lot of other areas we fixed.

We also set up a new program where individuals could actually give to school choice for other families they will probably never ever meet. It is to help them in the days ahead be able to have an option for private education when they couldn't get there.

I have folks who catch me on this occasionally and will say: You talk about school choice all the time and the different options for families. Do you just hate public education or why is this such a big deal to you?

I smile at them and remind them of my mom and of my own past and that I am very, very passionate about public education and that we need to make sure we are investing in doing that well. But if I have a quiet moment with folks when they say to me, ``Why do you care so much about school choice?'' I will tell them there are two reasons. One is that my State cares about this a lot. Our homeschool programs and our programs for private education are thriving, and we have great public charter schools. We have a lot of great districts around, but in many of our districts, according to our State law--even in our public education in Oklahoma--you can choose from one district to another district even if you don't live in that ZIP Code for that district so that you even get school choice in Oklahoma even in public education. It is a big deal to us, but it is a big deal to me personally because I have personally experienced it.

You see, my mom--a single mom, a public school educator--did not make much. There was a time when I was in elementary school, and so was my brother, that education was not working for us. So my single mom sacrificed everything for my brother and me to go to private school. I went to private school for 2 years, and then she ran out of money. My brother continued on for a while, but I went back into public school, which there is no complaint there, but I watched, even in my own family, my mom say: I wish we had different options. As a public school educator and a single mom, she made the hard call to say: I have got to figure out a better place because my kids will only get one shot at education, and it has got to count.

I could not tell you how grateful I am for my mom and the sacrifices that she made for my brother and me because it made all the difference for us, but it is because she made a choice, where you would have looked at her and said she had no choice. She figured it out. We all sacrificed a lot, but education was just that important to her.

I don't want that to just be for my family. I want that option for every family. I want the option for every kid to have the opportunity to get the best possible education for who they are, because my brother and I--I love him--

but we could not be more different because we are two different kids, which is just like a lot of other families. So please don't say every kid has to do education exactly the same way when we all know every kid is different.

Why don't we give families the option to choose what is the best education environment for that particular kid and to allow them to thrive in the days ahead? I think that is better for kids--to allow them to have a choice--and for every family to get that choice as well.

I yield the floor.

Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent, for myself as chairman of the Select Committee on Ethics and for Senator Coons, vice chairman of the committee, that the annual report of the Select Committee on Ethics for calendar year 2025 be printed in the Record.

The committee issued this report on January 31, 2026, as required by the Honest Leadership and Open Government Act of 2007.

Mr. President, this year, 2026, is the 50th anniversary of the Hyde amendment. Now, that may not mean a lot to a lot of people, but 50 years ago, the U.S. Senate and the U.S. House and the President of the United States came to a compromise agreement over the issue of abortion. It was a long, drawn-out process. At the end of that long, drawn-out debate, they came to a compromise agreement that Americans would not have to pay for elective abortions. It didn't outlaw abortion in America, but it said: We have disagreements on abortion as Americans, but at a minimum, we should agree American tax dollars should not pay for the taking of human life; that healthcare is about protecting life, not taking life; that in a controversial issue like abortion, at least we should all agree we don't use tax dollars to pay for abortion. That was 50 years ago this year.

It is amazing to think about how many things have changed in American attitudes in 50 years. But what hasn't changed is we still haven't come to an

agreement about abortion. We still haven't been able to resolve that issue.

Now, science has resolved that issue, but we in American values and culture have not. Science would say that a child's life begins at conception, that that is the moment the DNA is different than the mom's DNA. Every single cell in the mom's body has the same DNA except for those cells. Those cells are different. They have a unique DNA in the world because that is a different person that is there. The cells are dividing and growing. There is no difference between a child in the womb and a child outside the womb other than time. That is a separate child.

Science has settled that issue, but, culturally, we haven't been able to settle this issue: Are some children valuable and are some children disposable? Our culture still believes there are some children that are disposable. I don't. I think every child is valuable. Whether you are a child born in a wealthy household or in poverty, that child has opportunity in America if they are allowed to live.

It is this ongoing dialogue that we have as a country: Do we value the most vulnerable in our society? It is a conversation that has been going on now five decades, and next week, there will be tens of thousands--probably, actually, hundreds of thousands--of students and adults that will all come to Washington, DC. I am sure, as it always is on that January day, it will be cold outside. And they will walk down the Mall and gather for a rally that is simply called the March for Life. They will talk about the beauty of life. They will talk about the value of every child. There will be testimonies of people that their family has personally experienced abortion. There will be testimonies of folks that they directly have experienced the pain of abortion. There will be folks who will stand up as physicians and talk about the medical issues. But, ultimately, there will be conversations about every single child being valuable and beautiful.

There will be people in the crowd that were born in poverty, people in the crowd that were born in wealth--just like every other child in America that is in the womb--except those folks that will be at the rally will be celebrating the fact that they were born, No. 1, and that they had an opportunity to be able to speak out for the next generation of people that so much desires to be born and to have the same opportunities all of us in this room have: to grow, to learn, to love. That is all that child wants, and they had the opportunity to be able to have that.

As I mentioned, 50 years ago, the Hyde amendment was put in place. Every single part of our healthcare operation with Federal dollars is all covered by the Hyde amendment. Whether it be Department of Defense healthcare, whether it be Veterans' Administration, whether it be Indian healthcare services, whether it be CHIPS services for children, all of those are covered by Hyde protections with this basic compromise agreement that we will not fund abortions with American taxpayer dollars--well, except for one area, and that is actually ObamaCare.

When the Affordable Care Act was passed, there was an attempt to be able to have the Hyde amendment actually included in that. That was actually put in in the House of Representatives when they sent it over to the Senate to say: No, let's include the Hyde amendment in this like we do every other part of our healthcare agreement.

When it came to this body, though, my Democratic colleagues stripped that out, and they included in a different section saying: No, we are actually going to create a workaround around the Hyde amendment so that we can quietly fund elective abortion, for the first time, with Federal tax dollars. That workaround still exists today.

The original agreement and the conversation was that every State would allow some options that would have elective abortions for your healthcare coverage and some options that you could choose without that--except now that there are 12, maybe 13 States working that don't allow any option of the Affordable Care Act, of ObamaCare, to be in their State that doesn't also require abortion coverage. So even people that are morally opposed to abortion and the taking of human life don't have an option to buy coverage in their State for healthcare without having abortion coverage built into it.

Now, the issue became, well, there will be some kind of set-aside dollars that will be separate, that you will have a separate premium that you will have to pay, and that separate premium will pay for the abortion coverage--except the insurance companies can't actually show where that separate premium is. In fact, after the law passed that required a separate payment for abortion coverage there so there would be a type of Hyde, is what they called it, the Obama administration immediately came out and said: Actually, the word ``separate'' actually means ``together''--I am not making this up--and so you now have your premiums together, but it is defined as being separate.

Only in government can you define ``separate'' as meaning ``together.''

So we still have this one form of healthcare in America that violates this 50-year-old compromise: We don't use taxpayer dollars and compel Americans who actually value children to pay for the taking of the life of a child.

We are still working on that. Ironically enough, there is still an ongoing debate on the Affordable Care Act--on ObamaCare--still raging in this body, even this week, and much of it circles around ``Is this going to be about healthcare or is this going to be about the taking of human life?''

I have no issue if we are working on a healthcare policy. I have a big issue if we are working on taking the life of an innocent child.

There is also an ongoing debate that is happening right now over chemical abortions--``mifepristone'' if you want to use the medical term, and there are several generics that are out there as well. This is an abortion drug that is literally now mailed to you without seeing a physician. Now, that didn't used to be so. It is a prescription drug; it is not an over-the-counter drug. It is a prescription drug for a reason--because it has very, very serious side effects.

But this prescription drug--during the COVID time period, the Biden administration said: You know, there is a COVID crisis. People can't get in to see their doctor right now, so we will allow them to call in, and there will be this medicine mailed to them.

So for the first time, suddenly mifepristone, which actually causes an abortion for a woman--that drug is now being mailed without ever seeing a doctor.

Now, some folks have alleged ``Oh, that is no big deal. It is used all the time, so it must be completely safe.'' In fact, my favorite term that I hear--I hear it even from some folks in this body--is that mifepristone is as safe as Tylenol. I have heard that so many times: It is as safe as Tylenol. It is as safe as Tylenol. It is as safe as Tylenol.

Let me start with some basics. When you take Tylenol, it doesn't take a child's life. Mifepristone, by design on the label, takes the life of a child. So let's just start there.

The second issue, though, is also interesting. If you follow the label instructions for mifepristone and take it exactly as it is labeled and if you take a Tylenol and take that exactly as it is labeled--if you take mifepristone, though, you are 8,000 times more likely to end up in the hospital than taking a Tylenol.

Let me run that past you again. For all the folks that say it is as safe as Tylenol, mifepristone, according to the stats that we have that are public--you are 8,000 times more likely to end up in the hospital taking mifepristone than you are taking a Tylenol.

Stop saying it is as safe as Tylenol. The facts do not bear that out. It is not.

Mifepristone also has a strong likelihood of and a side effect of causing infertility among women. If the baby has a different blood type than the mom and if the combination is not correct, the mom then suffers from infertility the rest of her life. Now, if you go see a doctor, they can tell you that, but if you just get it in the mail, you have no idea.

How about this issue: If you have an ectopic pregnancy, which you don't know unless you have an ultrasound, taking mifepristone can not only kill the baby but could also kill the mom.

This is a big issue. The Biden administration became flippant about this chemical abortion drug because the

Biden administration was focused on having more abortions in America. They weren't just pro-choice; they were pro-abortion, trying to increase the number of abortions in America, but to do that, they did not take into account the health and life of the mom because they were so eager to increase the number of abortions.

Even in my State--in my State, we made a decision based on the Dobbs decision from the Supreme Court that now each State can make their own decisions about what they are going to do about this issue of life. After decades under Roe v. Wade, the Court has now said that this is up to every State.

So in my State, we would say this is a settled issue, except for doctors out of State now were mailing abortion pills to women my State, intentionally going around our State laws--intentionally.

This morning, the Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions Committee, chaired by my friend Dr. Bill Cassidy, held a hearing talking about mifepristone.

One of the witnesses that was there was the attorney general from Louisiana talking about the number of women who have experienced coercive abortions, where a parent or a boyfriend or some other loved one compelled them to be able to take these chemical abortion drugs against their will--compelled them to do that--or slipped it into their food or into a drink to be able to sneak it into their system, literally taking the life of that child.

Do you know how they could do that? Because you don't have to see a doctor to get access to these drugs. They can just be mailed to you as if they are a Tylenol when they are not.

We have to have an ongoing conversation here. Decades into this dialogue about the value of children, we are still talking about this issue. Are children valuable? Let's keep talking about it because at some point, as a country, we have to resolve this most simple, scientific, ethical decision: Are some children valuable and some children disposable or is each child valuable?

I am going to stand with the marchers that are coming in next week to joyfully celebrate the beauty of every child.

Yesterday, I was emailed the photo of a longtime friend of mine who just had her first child. It has been a long process for her and her husband. I got a beautiful picture of baby Benjamin yesterday, and he is adorable. I know you are not supposed to say that about a boy, but he is adorable, and we are excited to see him.

Last year, there were a million abortions that were done in America-- a million. We will never see their faces. Those children either were thrown away in the trash or ended up in a toilet after a chemical abortion. What is the difference between those two children? Not a thing. Not a thing.

All children are valuable, all of them, and I pray for the day when all of them have an opportunity to live, to experience this glorious Nation that we get to experience the freedom of every day.

Thanks to the marchers who will speak out next week for life and for all those around the country that continue to look at the science and continue to look at the face of a child and say: You are beautiful.

I yield the floor.

Mr. President, we are getting ready to turn the page into 2026, which is hard to process in some ways because so much has happened in 2025.

I have a habit when I approach the end of the year to look back and also take a quick look forward where things might be going. But just thinking about this year, we have had more votes in this body this year than any Senate since 1976. We have been in session more days than any Senate in the past 50 years. We actually confirmed more nominations in the first year of a new Presidency than any Senate in decades and decades. It has been a lot of work that has happened in this Chamber this year.

Just reflecting back on that, I see what still needs to be done, but I think there is some benefit just for us to be able to pause for a moment and think about what has already occurred in this incredibly busy year.

We talk a lot about the Working Families Tax Cut Act that we passed this past summer. The regulations are being written out by the IRS and multiple others to be implemented for this coming tax season. But there are so many things that actually went into that, and the debate around it was so noisy, I think people lose track of the things that are actually in it.

I talked to some teachers in Oklahoma who have no idea that next year, when they buy school supplies, they will be able to write off a deduction for the school supplies that they purchase because of the Working Families Tax Cut Act. We are literally treating every classroom as if it is their own small business and they have their own small business expenses. They can deduct from their taxes their expenses from their classroom. That has never happened before, and we think that will be a tremendous gain for classrooms all over the country and will be a direct help to teachers. That was one of many things that were in the bill as well as things like no tax on tips to be able to help service- related employees all over the country and no tax on overtime, which is especially beneficial to our first responders and our law enforcement who work so much overtime, including the Capitol Police who are right here. There are a lot of overtime hours, and that is going to be a direct help to them.

I was talking to a person at a checkout line not long ago who was a working senior adult. As I am checking out, she said: Hey, that bill that y'all passed? That is going to keep me from paying taxes on my income after Social Security, after I am receiving that, and that is going to be a huge help to me.

She just couldn't thank us enough because, as a working senior, she just needed a little bit of help.

There are so many different things that we were able to get done in that Working Families Tax Cuts bill. We were able to provide a new child tax credit. We were able to provide a tax incentive to businesses that actually provide quality childcare for their employees so that so many employees who want to have their kids near them at work could actually have that opportunity. I am grateful that we are able to do some things that are substantial for a lot of those families.

Within the past hour--it is kind of funny--even just walking the floor on this, I had someone who just made a random comment. They had no idea of my connection to it, but they just made a random comment about a part of the bill that I actually helped author in that Working Families Tax Cuts bill, and that is the area where we deal with full expensing.

If you are not a business owner, you have no idea what that is, but if you own a farm or a ranch or a business, you know exactly what it is. If you have got big capital expenses--think, for a farm or a ranch, a tractor or a truck or think, for manufacturing, a big piece of equipment--when you are able to purchase that, that is a business expense, but in the past, in the Tax Code, you would have to write that business expense off over several years. You do eventually get to write it off, but all of the expense is actually in the first year when you had to buy it. You were prohibited from writing it all off in your first year.

I was able to get that changed in this bill, in the section that I authored, so that those businesses and farmers and ranchers, in the year that they purchase that big equipment, can also write it off on their taxes in that 1 year rather than having to stretch it out over several years. It is exactly the same to the Federal Government as far as income that is coming in as tax revenue to the Federal Government. There is no difference. But to that business and that farm and ranch, it is a huge difference for them.

As for many of those small businesses that have big capital expenses, literally, if they have a big capital expense that year, they also have to go to the bank and borrow money to help pay their taxes that year because it takes several years to be able to depreciate that out. That is gone as of this year. That is no longer going to be an issue.

Literally, every economist has said that it is one of the most significant parts of the bill as far as economic activity across the country because it incentivizes more people to buy another piece of equipment to be able to use. It makes a business more efficient--and guess what. The person who sold them the piece of equipment also gets more business. It literally churns our economy and gets us up into a higher speed economically, providing more jobs and more opportunity for more people.

I also worked a lot on a section of the bill that a lot of people don't talk about, but it is very important to me, and I found it has been very important to a lot of other folks as well in the nonprofit sector.

In 2017, we made a change in the tax law. That change doubled the standard deduction, simplifying the tax filings for about 91 percent of Americans, which is much more straightforward than it used to be. But the tradeoff for that was, if you donated to a nonprofit and you didn't itemize your taxes, that nonprofit donation was no longer tax deductible for you, meaning the top 9 percent of people in the country in income who itemize their taxes get to write off their nonprofit donations, but no one else does. That may not seem like a big deal, but in the past decades, nonprofits have lost $20 billion--$20 billion going into nonprofits. That is a very significant issue.

America has three safety nets: The third of those safety nets is government. The first safety net is the family. The second safety net are churches and nonprofits. The third safety net is government. The government can never keep up with all of the issues and the social needs. We have got to have strong families. We have got to have strong churches and nonprofits. They are the ones that are actually taking care of the homeless and the hurting and the hungry. They are the ones who do it every single day. They are the volunteers who are out there who are supported in what they are doing by usually small-dollar donations.

So, as of January 1 of next year, we will have made a permanent change in tax policy to say, if your family donates to a nonprofit of your choice--pick whichever one you want to--if your family donates to a nonprofit, as of next year, you will be able to write off up to $2,000 of that donation on your taxes whether you itemize or not.

The goal is to have stronger nonprofits, which means more people getting assistance in their communities face to face. The government writes checks. Nonprofits meet people face to face--mentor, help--in a way that the government never can.

So this body made a decision together in their Working Families Tax Cuts Act to say we are going to do something to be able to strengthen our nonprofits all around the country, and I am very proud to be able to be a part of that.

We forget about this, but we started this year by passing a very simple piece of legislation. It says, if someone is illegally present in the country and has committed a crime, if he is arrested, he has to be removed from the country. As strange as it is, that didn't used to be the law. We literally had people arrested who were illegally present in the country. Then they were just released right back out again. Many of those individuals had committed crimes over and over and over, and they were just released again, released again, released again.

This body voted this past January and said that that is not going to ever happen again. We are never going to have individuals who are victims of crime in just this repetitive nature of it over and over again.

We have done a lot to just talk about the value of every single child. This body and my colleagues who are here will know that I speak out often on this issue. I am one of those crazy people who thinks children are valuable--all of them. I don't think some children are valuable and some children are disposable. I think all of them are valuable. So we have done a lot to be able to just talk about this issue and to be able to bring it up.

There are several bills that we have actually worked through, one being the MOMS Act, which bolsters access to resources and assistance to help moms and children thrive.

We have actually tried to work through multiple different things dealing with conscience protections. There is a bill that I have that actually works to protect the conscience rights of those who are in the medical profession and are going through training.

As odd as it sounds right now, in medical training, you are now brought to a point that it is assumed that abortion is going to be part of your medical training unless you opt out of it. Even at that point, they can still bring you in and say: You have got to be able to choose right now.

I can tell you stories of medical students who have actually reached out to our office and said that they literally were brought into an abortion as a part of their medical training and were told, if they left, they would have a mark on their educational record saying that they abandoned the patient. This is even when they had said they did not plan to ever do elective abortions in their practices--ever--and wanted to be able to opt out of it.

Listen, there is a simple way to be able to do this. Change the perspective on it to say that, automatically, everyone is opted out and that, if you wanted to do elective abortions, you would have to choose to opt into that in your residency.

But the abortion folks want to make sure as many people as possible are trained to be able to do elective abortions because they want to keep that going--violating the conscience rights of many people who go into medicine to save life, not to take it. So we are working through the process to be able to now protect that.

Cindy Hyde-Smith, the great Senator from Mississippi, and I are working on a bill called the RESTORE Act to deal with infertility issues and to be able to find multiple different ways to walk alongside families.

We have a bill that deals with pastors and nonprofits that have been targeted by the IRS for simply speaking their minds. It should not be so in America.

Senator Jacky Rosen, my Democrat colleague from Nevada, and I lead the anti-Semitism task force here in the Senate. Anti-Semitism should not be a partisan issue--it should be a nonpartisan issue--and it should not be a part of who we are in America. The problem is we have rising anti-Semitic conversation happening all around our Nation right now from the left and from the right, and it is disheartening in a nation that values every single person.

Of the many people who actually speak out openly about diversity in our Nation and about protecting the rights and opportunities of every person no matter where they are from--for them to have equal opportunity and an equal ability to be able to rise--they seem to have no problem, at times, ranting anti-Semitic tropes, sometimes flippantly and sometimes in a hostile way.

We have had folks just during this year, in public settings, talking about how much they love Hitler or making jokes about the gas chambers. We have folks talking about organized Jewry or folks talking about, if you support Israel, maybe you have some kind of brain virus. We have folks chanting ``from the river to the sea'' and ``liberation by any means.'' On a college campus even this year, a Jewish student was confronted with someone saying: If I see another pig female Jew, I will drag you away, rape you, and throw you off a cliff.

This is the United States of America. We stand for the rights of every individual to have any faith of their choosing and to live that faith openly and without fear. So why is it that, when I go to Hanukkah festivals, there have to be so many police there? Do you know why? It is because some people hear these dumb statements and they do dumb things. Acts of violence come out of that.

Just this year, we had two Israeli Embassy staff members who were murdered while they walked out of an event here in Washington, DC--just this year. Just this year, we had, in Boulder, CO, a gathering of folks there just to stand in support of Israel, and someone came by with incendiary devices and literally set a group of Jewish people peacefully speaking out for Israel--they set them on fire in the street. Just this year, a Chabad Jewish center was set on fire overnight in Florida. That is in our country. I could go on and on--not to mention the incredibly painful first day of Hanukkah with the attack in Sydney, Australia.

Anti-Semitism has no place in our Nation. Now, I understand you have a First Amendment right to be able to say any dumb thing that you want to say, but I also have the right to call it out for what it is. It is anti-Semitic hatred. Don't try to shape it in some way to say: This is my right to be able to speak out.

It is. It is also my right to call it out and say: In my party, as a Republican, we have no place for anti-Semitic hatred. In our Nation, we should make no space for someone to be able to intimidate someone because of their faith or their background no matter who they are.

This year--this year--we were able to pass a bill assisting rural hospitals with $50 billion--$50 billion. I don't know what the rural hospitals are like in everybody else's State, but I can tell you what they are like in Oklahoma. They take care of some great people. They are dedicated folks in the medical profession, but they struggle because they don't have a high patient count. They are not trying to do intricate surgeries; they are trying to help someone who just got hit on the road in an accident or to help someone who had a heart attack or someone who had a stroke. They are trying to stabilize them and to help them. Yes, they are going to transfer them to a big hospital somewhere else, but they are desperately needed all across rural Oklahoma. They really struggle to keep up because of the incredible price of medical technology now. So we just passed a bill dealing with $50 billion to be able to help rural hospitals all over the country get caught up and then to be able to maintain what they are doing.

We were able to help rural nursing homes as well, rural nursing homes that were actually facing a Biden-era rule that Biden-era folks--they told me they meant well by it, but basically they were requiring a bunch of additional 24-hour nursing assistants and nurses to be able to be on sight at any point in those nursing homes.

Now, that sounds like a great idea, but understand that there are physically not that many nurses that live in rural areas across the country. What that really was going to mean--although they seem to have meant well, what that really meant was they were going to close down a bunch of rural nursing homes all over my State, distancing people at one of the most vulnerable moments of life away from their families. That is a terrible idea.

This body was able to flip that and say: We are not going to allow that to be able to happen. We are going to change that to where that is different.

This body just passed the national defense authorization. Thankfully, we have now gone six decades, and every single year, we have passed it.

In my State, we were able to do several things to be able to make sure we are protecting national security in the work we continue to do in Oklahoma.

Tinker Air Force Base is the largest Air Force depot we have in the country. It is critical for the maintenance of all those aircraft and the strength of our warfighters.

Tinker Air Force Base has struggled with civilian hiring--we have thousands of people there--not because we don't have great Oklahomans that want to serve our Nation as a civilian at Tinker Air Force Base but because of foolish hiring rules that were set aside and created that slowed down the process of hiring.

In the national defense authorization, I was able to put in an amendment to be able to get that changed so that we are able to actually do the civilian hiring that our Nation requires so that we can actually continue to be able to defend ourselves and our Nation anywhere in the world.

We want to make it very clear that we have the most lethal, most moral fighting force in the history of the world, and we want to make sure we are strong and ready enough that no one ever would challenge us--ever. That is what brings us greater national security.

This year, in a moment probably no one here saw--and that is OK. We all have different issues in our States. In a solemn moment in April of this year, we gathered on the Capitol grounds right over there, around the enormous, 100-year-old trees that are planted all over the Capitol grounds, and we were able to plant a tiny, little live oak. Most folks probably won't even notice, but you will. Next to that little live oak--it is just about that tall now--is a little plaque saying it is a seedling from the Oklahoma City Survivor Tree.

Thirty years ago this past April, a person with deep hatred for the Federal Government drove up to the Federal building in Oklahoma City with a truck loaded with fertilizer and diesel fuel, ignited it, and killed 168 people that day. It was 30 years ago this year.

Across the street from the Federal building there was a tree that was just a gangly little tree that was in a parking lot, quite frankly, growing up through the asphalt. The detonation itself literally twisted the tree across the street and blew every single leaf off of it-- literally blew every single one of them off of it.

No one paid any attention to that. Obviously, through the recovery and all that happened in trying to recover families, taking care of people, and trying to stabilize the community, no one really noticed until the next year, literally a year later, that that twisted, bent tree budded. It survived that blast, and it has become the signature of Oklahoma City, the Survivor Tree. It is still doing well, by the way.

A seed pod was taken from that tree, was grown in some soil, and then it was transplanted here to the Capitol grounds so that every person that walks past it for centuries from now will walk past and see that little plaque and remember those who were lost and those who survived and those who were changed forever in April of 1995.

We have to do that this year because we never want to forget.

We have gotten a lot done this year. There is still a lot more to do next year. We have to finish appropriations, we have a lot of work to do on housing costs, we have a lot of other bills that are still pending, but we have been able to accomplish much.

I understand full well that we are divided. I understand full well that we don't agree on everything. I get that. But where we can find agreement, let's get moving. Let's solve the issues.

One last thing. Many folks in this body know my friend Jim Inhofe. Jim Inhofe served in this body literally for decades. He used to sit right there.

Jim Inhofe and I several years ago worked on a new formula for veterans hospitals--to partner a veterans hospital with another hospital so they would share resources. So the veterans hospital would never have to keep up with other hospitals; they could share resources and physicians in a brandnew way.

It had never been done quite like this before. We were able to partner together to be able to do that in Tulsa, OK, where Oklahoma State hospital and a new veterans hospital would rise up right in conjunction with it so that the best researchers, the best equipment, the best physicians could share that space back and forth so that our veterans would never hear someone say ``Well, we are going to have to send you to a different VA hospital, a different place, to be able to get that type of care.'' They could get it right there at home.

It is a new model. I am pleased the Veterans' Committee and other leadership, including my colleague Jerry Moran, who is sitting on the floor today, were a part of it.

For Jim and I to be able to work through that process was an honor, for us to be able to get that in Tulsa.

Never did I ever think that a couple of years later--this year--I would be dedicating that hospital as the James Mountain Inhofe Tulsa Veterans Medical Center after my friend Jim Inhofe passed away. That hospital that he and I worked together on now bears his name.

Veterans, in the days ahead, will continue to get quality care in Northeast Oklahoma from the legacy of Jim Inhofe but also from the commitment of this body to say that we are going to do what it takes to take care of our veterans, as we continue to do.

I am grateful to this body for the work that we get done because it matters to people, but we have lot more to do, so let's get after it.

I yield the floor.

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

Mr. President, the Senate is talking a lot about healthcare right now for good reason. There are major cost increases going up on insurance all across the country but especially for some folks that are in ObamaCare Marketplace plans.

I talked earlier this week with a gentleman from my State who is in his early sixties. He runs a small business, works his tail off. His insurance plan that he has taken on, he took on in the last few years because of the enhanced premium tax credit subsidies that were added in 2021. Those temporary tax gifts to insurance companies expire in just a few weeks.

Now, he knew that they would expire. As he told me in our conversation we had this week, he said he knew they were temporary, but now he is trying to figure out what to do to find affordable healthcare options for himself because his healthcare is going to go up about $500 a month. That is an enormous amount.

And his frustration was pretty clear. He is just looking for a plan that he can afford. He is just looking for an option. He is not asking for something unrealistic. He is just trying to figure out what to do. He asked me the question: How did we get here? How did this happen?

Well, let me just walk through that because the interesting thing about all of this is how confusing it has really been in the process. Everyone that I talked to about healthcare, they all say: It is incredibly confusing. I can't figure out any of this.

Let me try to explain just a couple of things we are talking about.

My Democratic colleagues are asking for a multibillion-dollar extension, not of ObamaCare but of a subsidy that was put on top of ObamaCare. And it doesn't apply to 320 million Americans. It applies to about 20 million Americans. If I want to make it even more specific than that, it is not just 20 million Americans because most of those qualify for the full subsidy; it is just for a certain group-- typically, folks that are 50 to 64--that it applies to.

It is that particular group that are on the ObamaCare Marketplace that are in that age bracket that are facing very high premiums that are coming up very, very soon. It is a big deal to them, as well it should be for any American.

Let me set the context for this. The Kaiser Family Foundation lists the average cost for healthcare insurance on the individual market--the average cost for healthcare insurance on the individual market--at $215 the year before ObamaCare came into effect. Let that set in for a minute. People in this room know how much your health insurance is now. If we went back to prior to ObamaCare's passage, the average cost for the individual marketplace for health insurance was $215. Not so any more. It has more than doubled--more than tripled for many people.

President Obama said at that time that ``it will cut the cost of the typical family's premium by about $2,500 a year.''

It has not been reduced for the typical family by about $2,500 a year. It has dramatically increased. It has become more and more complicated. There are more and more entities that are involved in healthcare decisions.

And the challenge for healthcare right now is the absolute complexity that has been created in the cost that continues to overwhelm. That is where we are as the baseline that every American is facing right now.

In 2021, my Democratic colleagues saw the skyrocketing costs. And in what they called the American Rescue Plan during COVID, they added in an additional subsidy on top of ObamaCare for about 10 million people. That was called the enhanced premium tax credit that got added on top of ObamaCare because the ObamaCare costs were skyrocketing so fast.

They called it, at the time, a temporary plan to be able to help during COVID. But then a year later, they added another 2 years on top of it. That is now what is expiring at the end of this year, their temporary COVID extension. The problem is, the price continues to go up so rapidly that now no one can afford the plan anymore.

In my State in Oklahoma, we asked our insurance commissioner to take a 6-year snapshot and tell us what is happening to the Marketplace, the ObamaCare Marketplace, without the subsidies. If the subsidies went away, what was the increase? And for the commercial insurance from my State, what changed during that time period?

For ObamaCare, the rates had gone up 198 percent in 6 years. In commercial insurance in my State, it has gone up 29 percent--apples-to- apples comparison.

There is a very real problem with the structure of how ObamaCare actually works. The request has been: Let's put more subsidies on top of it, more subsidies on top of it and add billions and billions more in taxpayer dollars to cover up the problem that is underneath. There is a problem in the way that ObamaCare was actually created and how it is actually operating and what it is causing not just for that group in the Marketplace but for what it is causing for everybody else, even people that are not in the Marketplace at all--how that is driving up premiums.

We are debating the next 24 hours, trying to be able to come to two sets of solutions here. My Democratic colleagues are bringing a proposal tomorrow to say: Let's just take the subsidies that we did during COVID and let's extend those 3 more years, and we will just do that, no reforms, no changes, no anything else. Let's just do that for 3 more years.

It was interesting. I asked about the 3 more years and the exact timing on that, how that would work. It is fascinating. When you pull back the politics of that 3-year extension, the 3-year extension goes through the end of 2028. But what they don't tell you is, it would actually set up to announce the new insurance rates for 2029 that would not have the subsidies anymore in it the week before the Presidential election in 2028.

Well, that was clever. They set up a little political timebomb for the Presidential election in 2028, saying they chose this certain date in this certain time to do it so that right before the next Presidential election, we would have the same argument all over again-- no reforms, no changes, political date-setting.

Republicans are actually bringing forward a proposal and saying: We see you. We see what has been dropped on you. We see individuals in my State and all over the country that have now fallen prey to what has happened in ObamaCare that they can't get options for different healthcare insurance, they can't get cheaper rates, and they certainly can't go back to what the rates were in 2010 at $215 a month anymore because under ObamaCare, if you are in the individual market, that is not allowed anymore. That is absolutely prohibited in Federal law now.

So we have a very simple proposal: We do want to assist folks who are stuck in this ObamaCare Marketplace to try to figure out how we help them through this, but we don't want to send the dollars to the insurance companies. That is a hole. We want to send it to the individuals who are there and give them some greater choice on it.

So our main proposal is, yes, we want to help them, and we want to help them immediately, but we don't want to send dollars to insurance companies and trust in them that it is going to be taken care of. We want to get the dollars to those particular individuals and say: Let us help you in this process and get through this next year as we, hopefully, reopen this whole debate about healthcare.

The second thing that we want to do is increase the options for coverage for those individuals and increase them right away so that they get greater flexibility in what they can choose. We trust the American people as they are shopping in the marketplace for healthcare insurance to be able to make better decisions.

Long term, what I would love to see is let's open up the conversation about how we have associations of healthcare plans. Right now, the small business owner I talked to earlier this week is limited to only choosing things in the ObamaCare Marketplace, and the price is absolutely skyrocketing for him. He doesn't have the option to actually join together with other small businesses to negotiate for a better rate. A big company can do that. If you are Walmart, you can do that, and if you are JPMorgan Chase, you can do that, but if you are my small business owner in Oklahoma, you cannot. They are prohibited from doing that. Well, that is ridiculous. They should be allowed to join together and be able to negotiate for better rates so they can get greater options on that.

We want to help expand health savings accounts. Health savings accounts allow individuals to actually talk to their physicians or their hospitals and say: How much does this cost, and actually try to find a way to be able to compete for cost on it. Greater price transparency allows people to choose, if they have got to get an MRI, a CT scan, or whatever it may be, to say: What are the best options to be able to do this that actually bring the cost down?

Most of the time when people go to the hospital, they never know what the cost is for anything. They have no idea because ``insurance'' is covering that until, suddenly, they don't, and then it becomes a big issue. That should be something we can all agree on as greater flexibility and greater options on plans do nothing but help people.

There is an issue that I have worked on with several of the folks in this room, and that deals with pharmacy benefit managers. We have got to be able to actually land this. We all know of the rising costs of pharmaceuticals that are out there. We all experience that, and everybody says: What is the problem? It is the middleman in the middle of this who is actually controlling the formulary and controlling a lot of the pricing, and that completely hides the cost of everything on it.

The pharmacy benefit managers are destroying our independent pharmacies in our rural areas all around the country as they continue to make more and more profits on Wall Street. We have got to say: We are not trying to destroy you, but you have got to stop destroying our independent pharmacies around the country, and you have got to actually be more transparent in the process on this.

We have a bill that is a bipartisan bill that has come out of the Finance Committee that we have unanimous support for--tell me how often that happens in this body--but that we can't seem to get to the floor. We should be able to agree that, if someone is trying to dramatically jack up the cost of pharmaceuticals on our individual constituents and on the families in our neighborhoods and is destroying our independent pharmacies, we should all be able to agree that that is anticompetitive. That has got to stop. We should be able to do that.

Listen, we already passed this last July--a $50 billion amount going to rural hospitals to stabilize those rural hospitals. We have already engaged in ways to be able to stabilize Medicaid in the long term and make sure that the program continues to work well. We have already taken on some of these things to be able to make things better. We have got to deal with the issue of individuals and their healthcare options and their opportunities to find better insurance to be able to take care of their healthcare.

Let's increase competition, and let's increase options for individuals in the days ahead; but in the short term, let's at least get immediate assistance to those folks who need the help right now by giving dollars to those individuals, not by sending cash to the insurance companies and setting up a political timebomb right before the Presidential election. That doesn't sound like that is actually helping people. That sounds like that is perpetuating the same problem that we have dealt with already. These are options that we should be able to have grownup conversations about and resolve. There is a way to resolve this. Let's get busy doing it.

With that, I yield the floor.

Mr. President, I move to proceed to Calendar No. 280, S.J. Res. 91.

Mr. President, I ask for the yeas and nays.

Mr. President, I would love to introduce the Senate to a couple that I know: husband, wife. Both work for the Federal Government--young couple, expecting their first child. This week, they will miss a paycheck--both of them.

You tell me how many people, in their early days of marriage, both spouses could miss a paycheck while they are preparing for their first child. But that is the reality that is being faced by that couple and, I am sure, a lot of other folks that stepped up to serve their Nation, serving in a Federal Agency, but because of a government shutdown, they are not going to get paid.

I would love to introduce this body to a single mom that just, a couple of weeks ago, got the invitation to go to the FAA Academy and to become an air traffic controller--very difficult to get into that school--but has been accepted, is in the process, has quit her job, has canceled her lease and, as a single mom, is taking the risk to be able to step out in a new, great career. But right in the process of stepping out to do that new, great career, there is a government shutdown, and now she has no idea what is about to happen. She has quit her job already. She has canceled her lease already. She was preparing to move to get to the academy. Now what does she do?

For all the folks out there that say this government shutdown is no big deal--or, as my Democratic colleagues in the House have said, some families are going to have to suffer to give us leverage--here are the families that are actually suffering to give my Democratic colleagues leverage so they can discuss healthcare.

But let me not just talk about the healthcare they want to discuss. Their focus seems to be on a COVID-era subsidy that they created for the Affordable Care Act to try to make it more affordable--because here is the problem in my State. In my State--in Oklahoma--the Affordable Care Act, the cost for it has increased 200 percent in 6 years, while commercial insurance has increased 29 percent in those same 6 years. So the ``Affordable'' Care Act is only affordable if there is just one subsidy on top of another, on top of another, on top of another, because the structure of the Affordable Care Act is not affordable. It is only affordable if there is more and more and more tax dollars sent to insurance companies to try to cover more and more and more.

My Democratic colleagues say: We are going to keep the government closed until we even get more money on that, and we don't want to discuss anything.

Well, here is the problem. We have a 200-percent increase for one area, a 29-percent increase in the other, and they say just keep dumping more money into it. We actually know, and my Democratic colleagues have told me privately: We know there is a lot of fraud, that there is money being sent to insurance companies that they are then covering people that actually don't even know they have coverage, just because it is cheap for the insurance company.

Everybody knows that exists in it, but they don't want to discuss that; they just want to add more money into it.

We have people making a quarter million dollars a year that are getting subsidies with these additional subsidies they created several years ago. And we have said: ``What in the world'' that people making a quarter million dollars a year are getting these subsidies.

We also know, the way that my Democratic colleagues created these subsidies, that it went around the Hyde Amendment, which has been very clear: Federal tax dollars do not go to pay for abortions. But they created this very creative system of tax credits so that they could send money to insurance companies to pay for elective abortions. They are asking every Republican now to jump on board and to be able to vote for that.

Listen, there are big issues with this. My Democratic colleagues say: Well, just fund more healthcare; just take care of it. We know there is fraud. We know there are people making half a million. We know there is abortion funding going. We know all these aspects.

So, no, we are not just going to dump more money into it.

We have said something pretty straightforward: Let's keep the government open, at its current status quo,

and let's keep debating all these issues. But why should next week's SNAP recipients no longer get SNAP benefits because there is a fight over all these healthcare issues on this that we have very strong actual policy issues with? Why are they cutting off SNAP benefits? Why are they telling this young couple with an infant child on the way: No, neither of you are going to get paid. Why is that happening?

So here is what we have done. I have proposed a bill that I put out last session. It was very straightforward. This bill just says we will never have another government shutdown--never. Every time we get to another moment like this, automatic funding kicks in. But here is the kicker: Members of Congress are in session 7 days a week, and we can't do anything but appropriations. We have to do appropriations, and we have to be here 7 days a week, House and Senate, until we actually get this solved.

Now, that seems like a pretty reasonable thing.

My Democratic colleagues have been bemoaning the House is not in session. If you would have voted for my bill last session, we would all be here right now negotiating this out. I had 57 votes on that last session--57. We were three votes short of never ever having a government shutdown again--never.

So I am going to bring it again and to say: Let's end the potential of government shutdowns ever, and let's actually stay here and debate the issues and to be able to work things out like grownups.

In the meantime, until we can get that done and until we can get my Democratic colleagues to agree, my colleague Ron Johnson has brought forward a very simple proposal: Let's pay the people who are working, like this young couple that I mentioned. They are still working, both of them. Let's pay them while they are working, while we continue to be able to negotiate this out.

If you won't, at least, open the government--as we have the last 13 times when we got to this moment--and just have a continuing resolution, at least, pay the people who are working. This is a baby step and an offer to our Democratic colleagues to say: Let's at least do the minimum on this to not punish those folks.

There are folks, today, that are on the road, working for the Federal Government, that are in critical positions, that they are not being paid and they are actually putting their expenses on their credit card, not knowing if they are going to get the chance to pay that off. It is not right.

So let's take the steps. My recommendation is, long-term, let's never have a shutdown ever again. Let's fix the process. We were three votes short last session. Let's actually fix that permanently. Let's get us back open again. But at a minimum, let's at least, while we are arguing, pay Federal workers that are still at the task. That should be the easiest threshold to be able to step over.

Me and my colleagues are on the floor today because we want to get a chance to be able to offer this to our Democratic colleagues and say: We are going to reach an olive branch out to you; let's get started on some things.

I yield the floor to my colleagues.

Mr. President, I rise today to honor the retirement announcement of Joe Castiglione or ``Joe C'' as Sooner fans like to call him. Under his watch, Oklahoma has won 26 national championships and 117 conference championships in a span of 27 years. Roughly 58 percent of OU's national championships were won under his impeccable leadership.

Originally a native of Fort Lauderdale, FL, Joe attended college at the University of Maryland, graduating in 1979. After serving in previous roles at Rice, Georgetown, and the University of Missouri, in July 1998, he was hired as director of the OU Athletics Department. In the 27 years that followed, he went on to completely transform the athletics program.

From Joe's strategic coaching hires like Bob Stoops, K.J. Kindler, and Lon Kruger, to unprecedented fundraising and facilities construction, Joe created and sustained a culture of excellence at OU Athletics. The athletic department raised $109 million in the 2021-2022 year, $79 million in 2022-2023, and $110 million in 2023-2024. The Gaylord Family-Oklahoma Memorial Stadium underwent a $160 million renovation prior to the 2016 season, and new facilities like the Griffin Family Performance Center and Love's Field, the new softball stadium, have been built.

Joe's calm and steady response to the Covid-19 pandemic is emblematic of his vision for the athletics department. During the fear and uncertainty of the pandemic, Joe was intent that OU Athletics would overcome and persevere through the difficulty. More recently, Joe has helped navigate the changing landscape of college athletics, which include the transfer portal and name, image, and likeness, NIL.

In 2024, Joe oversaw the Sooners' move from the Big 12 to the Southeastern Conference, SEC. Additionally, in the 2024-25 academic year alone, the women's gymnastics team shared the SEC regular season title and won its seventh national title; softball captured the regular season SEC title; men's gymnastics won the Pacific Sports Federation Championship; and men's and women's track were in the top 15 of the NCAA Outdoor Championships.

With immense success on the field, it would have been easy to push academics to the side, but Joe has always

maintained that the student-athletes come first. He helped ensure that student-athletes maintained a strong academic focus. The student- athlete GPA for the last 27 consecutive semesters has remained a 3.0 and above.

In 2018, Joe was named Co-National Athletic Director of the Year. A 2017 Sports Illustrated survey named him the best athletics director in the country. He has also been the recipient of the LEAD1 Association Pearl Award of Excellence, the John L. Toner Award from the National Football Foundation, and has been inducted into the Oklahoma Sports Hall of Fame. He is also the only person in history to have served on the College Football Playoff Committee and the NCAA Division I Men's Basketball and Baseball Committees.

His wife Kristen has supported his endeavors for 30 years. Retirement will give both of them the chance to spend a bit more time together in the years ahead. They have two sons Joseph Jr. and Jonathan.

In his nearly three decades at OU, Joe C's vision for Sooner magic created the gold standard of athletics at OU today. Since Joe will not be officially retiring until 2028, this is not the final goodbye, but an opportunity to thank Joe for his decades of service and dedication to a program that owes him so much. Joe, thank you for your leadership.

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

Mr. President, today is October 7, 2025. It has been 731 days--2 years--that the war has been raging in Israel.

On October 7, 2023, Hamas terrorists stormed through a fence line separating Gaza and Israel, and early that morning, they brutally slaughtered over 1,200 people--men, women, children, moms and dads, grandparents. There were 4,000-plus people injured, and there were 251 people taken hostage. Forty-eight still remain today, 2 years later.

It is hard to process what it is like for those hostages--living in tunnels, stored underground, moved from place to place. Who knows what has happened to them.

Two years--for 2 years, Israel has said one simple thing: This war ends when Hamas, that terrorist organization, is not in charge of Gaza--because, clearly, they cannot be trusted--and when our hostages come home. For 2 years this war has raged unnecessarily because a terrorist organization is determined to drive Jews out of Israel--for 2 years.

I have been in Israel a couple of times during the war. I have been able to visit with senior leadership there to be able to get a status update, but I also took the opportunity to drive south, right along to the Gaza border, to visit the kibbutzim that are now empty, which were previously full of families and children. I was there in the springtime last year and saw the flowers popping up just organically, on their own, in an empty kibbutz, and I realized the horror of what happened that day.

I visited the Nova music festival--just a big, open field with trees around it. You can look across the horizon and see Gaza. The Nova music festival site of that field was just a gathering place for literally an all-night set of concerts that were running early into the next morning. People were just there enjoying the music, until terrorists came onto that field and started killing as many people as they could, raping as many women as they could, tormenting as many people as they could, and grabbing folks and taking them back into Gaza as hostages.

Elkana was one of those men. He was a husband. He was a dad of a young son. He was actually taken hostage back to Gaza from the Nova music festival while he was literally trying to help the wounded. But he remains a hostage still today, one of those 48.

President Trump has laid out a 21-point plan and has presented it between the folks in Gaza and Hamas and Israel to leadership all along the Arab world and has made a very simple statement: We have to find a way to be able to end the fighting, and when the fighting ends, Hamas cannot be in leadership in Gaza. Not only do they not have the trust of Israel; they don't have the trust of anyone in the region. They have to go. The hostages have to be released. There will have to be restoration in Gaza in the days ahead that should be led by the Arab communities around them. But there has to be a different path, and there has to be a recognition that Israel has a right to exist.

In the last 2 years, we have seen not only Hamas attacking Israel, the Palestinian Islamic Jihad attacking Israel, Hezbollah attacking Israel, the Houthis attacking Israel, and then missiles and rockets being fired and drones being fired from Iran; and all the while, we hear some protesters in the streets of America, out on college campuses, chanting ``from the river to the sea,'' literally in support of some of those terrorists who are trying to kill as many Jews and drive the Jews out of Israel.

So on this day, October 7, I want to remind this body and Americans that we continue to stand by Israel. We continue to be able to stand by their right to not only exist but to be able to thrive and to live in peace. That is their right as a nation.

As we have faced terrorism and the threats of terrorism that come to us, we as a nation have pushed back against terrorism around the world and said: We will live in freedom and in peace.

Regardless of their opinions of us, we have the right to be able to live in freedom and in peace, and we stand with Israel's right to be able to do the same, to be able to live in freedom and in peace.

Now, we all grieve for innocent civilians that are living in Gaza right now, as Hamas literally uses them as a shield to protect their terrorist ambitions. No one wants to see civilians killed. But leave no doubt, Hamas cannot exist, as an organization and an entity.

And the folks in Hezbollah should hear clearly, and the Houthis should

hear clearly: If you stand with Hamas and the Palestinian Islamic Jihad, you are a threat to the security of the entire world and the region. You cannot continue to function as a terrorist organization and think that Israel will look away or that America will look away. We will not and cannot and will not.

So I encourage this body to pause and realize what is happening on the other side of the world right now and what has been raging for 2 years today; and for those hostages that are still being held today, that we would remember and we would continue to be able to stand against anti-Semitism and with the nation of Israel.

Mr. President, reserving the right to object, as you know, the CISA reauthorization is also included in the clean CR that we are also trying to be able to pass, this continuing resolution.

On behalf of Chairman Paul, he has asked me to be able to come and object, so I object.