Floor Statements

Mr. President, I know of no further debate on the nomination.

I ask for the yeas and nays.

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 President, I ask unanimous consent that the order for the quorum call be rescinded.

I yield the floor.

I suggest the absence of a quorum.

Madam President, I ask unanimous consent that the order for the quorum call be rescinded.

Madam President, I know of no further debate.

Mr. President, this week, I filed a bill, as I do multiple different weeks. I don't come every week

to be able to talk about the bills that I file, but I want to be able to talk about this a little bit and some context that comes into it.

I also don't come to this floor very often and read an entire bill to this body, but I want to do that today. It is not long. It is literally just half a page. But it reaffirms something that I think should be pretty simple for all of us but for some reason has become controversial in the past few decades.

Here is the whole bill. It says:

None of the funds made available under this Act may be

provided to any public institution of higher education that

denies to a religious student organization any right,

benefit, or privilege that is otherwise afforded to other

student organizations at the institution (including full

access to the facilities of the institution and official

recognition of the organization by the institution) because

of the religious beliefs, practices, speech, leadership

standards, or standards of conduct of the religious student

organization.

Now, this should be pretty simple for us as Americans. We should treat religious organizations on a college campus the same as every other organization. The university shouldn't be able to reach into some organizations and say ``Because you are religious, we need to tone you down'' or ``Because you are religious, we need to pick your leadership for you because we want to pick your leadership.''

I will tell you, most Americans would say ``No one does that anyway''--except they did. Under the Biden administration, this became an issue, where multiple different colleges and universities would reach into different religious organizations on campus and would deny them access to be able to be on campus and use campus facilities at all or they would say: We don't like the way you pick your leadership. You need to have a broader perspective of leadership from multiple different perspectives of the campus. It can't just be your particular faith in your religious organization.

It became the most bizarre set of ideas that came out of the Department of Education to say a Jewish organization had to pick non- Jewish leaders to be the leadership of their organization or non- Christians had to also be selected as leaders of their Christian organization on campus.

We are like, what in the world? What happened to the basic right of association and affiliation that is a constitutionally protected right?

That never happened to nonreligious organizations; it seemed to only happen to religious organizations.

So while we have common agreement on this as Americans and while that rule is now not being applied under the Trump administration, I raise a very simple bill to say: Why can't we, as all Americans, agree that religious organizations on college campuses should be treated exactly the same as every other organization on any college campus? That should be basic.

So I bring a very simple bill to be able to resolve that one big issue and to say let's make this once and for all just a policy that we have as Americans.

Now, I bring this up because it needs to be addressed, but I also bring this up because next week, there is a significant event that is going to happen all around the country--quite frankly, all around the world--that some people won't even notice but, quite frankly, is Earth- shattering.

Thirty-five years ago, a group of students gathered around a flagpole early in the morning to be able to pray for their school. It was in 1990. It ended up being about 46,000 total students in 4 different States, including my State of Oklahoma, that just kind of gathered. The word kind of spread organically that one Wednesday morning in September, students--high school and middle school students--would just go and do one day publicly what they do privately other days; that is, pray for their teachers, pray for their faculty at school, pray for each other, pray for their parents, and pray for the Nation.

So in September of 1990, around 46,000--we don't know the exact number--students in 4 different States just quietly gathered to pray. Now, that may not seem like a big deal, but in 1990, there was a great debate that was still spinning on this issue. In fact, that year, that September day, at at least one of those gatherings, the sheriff's department came out and arrested the students for praying--praying--on their school campus before class started.

The result of that was that the next September, a million students showed up to pray--a million, documented. From almost every State in America, teenagers showed up at their high school or their middle school campus just to be able to pray. They didn't have teachers with them; they didn't have youth pastors with them--just students. They gathered at their pole. It was a simple thing called See You at the Pole--just that simple. They would encourage each other just to be able to show up that one day in September to be able to pray publicly for their parents, for their Nation, for their campus, and for what was going on in their community.

It became the largest student prayer movement that we know of in the history of the Nation. Year after year in September, one Wednesday, students from around the Nation would gather. It was about 3 years later that it started spreading globally, to where literally students from around the world were just going to their flagpole, and they would just gather to be able to pray.

Now, people have said over the years: Why a flagpole? Well, it is because every school has a flagpole, and so it became just a common cry. It kind of seems like ``See you at the principal's office'' doesn't ring as true. But it was just like, what does every single campus have? Every single campus has a flagpole. So that simple statement, ``See you at the pole,'' became really a challenge to say ``See you at a spot where we can pray.''

There is a lot going on in the country right now--a lot. There is a lot of anger, there is a lot of frustration, and there are a lot of questions about what happens next.

For 35 years, students have gone to their flagpole and have prayed for the Nation. My simple request of them again this year is to do it again. This Nation could use some prayer. This Nation could use a generation rising up to be able to say: No one is going to stop us from praying.

It is the most simple request that we have--to not go to government but to go to God and say: We need your help. We need your intervention.

I am always proud of a group of students at a high school football game that finish the game or that start the game just taking a knee to be able to pray for each other, pray for safety, and then go out and hit each other as hard as they possibly can on the football field. But it is always fun for me to be able to watch the sportsmanship that begins with two teams that gather together to pray, and it is almost always just one player on each of the teams that drops that idea and says: We should do this. Our team should do this.

It is not led by the coaches. It is not led by the teachers. It is led by students that just say: Let's ask God to help us in this.

I am always impressed when I am on high school and junior high campuses as I walk around the campus during lunch, and I see everyone kind of gathering for lunch and all the conversation happening, and I will see a couple students over in the corner, as they sit down at their lunch, to be able to just bow their heads for just a simple moment to be able to thank God for their food.

I am always impressed when I hear about groups of students that get together on a regular basis just to be able to have Bible study together, just to be able to pray for each other. They face a lot of pressure. They face a lot of challenges in this day and age. It is resetting and centering when they actually stop to say: Let's pray about that.

I am tremendously impressed that for 35 years--now a second generation of students are gathering at their flagpoles the fourth Wednesday of September to be able to just pray for each other, pray for their teachers, pray for their school, and this time, an earnest plea to God to help our Nation.

I am proud of students of faith and how they gather to be able to say: These days are dark, but we believe in a God who gives light, and we will choose to be a light on our own campus and do what we can to be able to serve each other and to be able to serve our schools.

Those are the role models that we need in a new generation. Those are the folks that we look forward to seeing what they do in the days ahead.

As fun as it is to me, students that are gathering this year are the children of the first generation that gathered 35 years ago to start a movement to be able to pray. Thirty-five years ago, I was a youth minister. I was a part of that first See You at the Pole in 1990. I was in leadership, helping organize students in getting the word out, to be able to say ``What can we do''--what can we do--``to serve each other and the Nation?'' The obvious answer began with ``Let's pray.''

See You at the Pole was born. It wasn't my idea. It was a group of students' idea. I just got to help fan the flame.

Students of this Nation need the encouragement of this body to be able to say ``well done'' and set a fresh new example; be the next generation of leaders; be the people who will rise up and do what is right; be the role models that are desperately needed; be individuals who will actually not only have a faith but live your faith--all the principles of the faith.

We can certainly use individuals in our Nation right now who are living the most basic principles of loving God with all your heart, soul, mind, and strength and loving your neighbor as yourself.

To the students of this Nation, I would encourage them to ``see you at the pole'' next Wednesday morning.

This coming Wednesday morning, September 24, you can be assured I am going to be parked across the street from a campus watching a group of students pray for a Nation that needs help. I will join them and say, ``God help us. We need your help.'' I will see you at the pole.

Mr. President, this week, I filed a bill, as I do multiple different weeks. I don't come every week

to be able to talk about the bills that I file, but I want to be able to talk about this a little bit and some context that comes into it.

I also don't come to this floor very often and read an entire bill to this body, but I want to do that today. It is not long. It is literally just half a page. But it reaffirms something that I think should be pretty simple for all of us but for some reason has become controversial in the past few decades.

Here is the whole bill. It says:

None of the funds made available under this Act may be

provided to any public institution of higher education that

denies to a religious student organization any right,

benefit, or privilege that is otherwise afforded to other

student organizations at the institution (including full

access to the facilities of the institution and official

recognition of the organization by the institution) because

of the religious beliefs, practices, speech, leadership

standards, or standards of conduct of the religious student

organization.

Now, this should be pretty simple for us as Americans. We should treat religious organizations on a college campus the same as every other organization. The university shouldn't be able to reach into some organizations and say ``Because you are religious, we need to tone you down'' or ``Because you are religious, we need to pick your leadership for you because we want to pick your leadership.''

I will tell you, most Americans would say ``No one does that anyway''--except they did. Under the Biden administration, this became an issue, where multiple different colleges and universities would reach into different religious organizations on campus and would deny them access to be able to be on campus and use campus facilities at all or they would say: We don't like the way you pick your leadership. You need to have a broader perspective of leadership from multiple different perspectives of the campus. It can't just be your particular faith in your religious organization.

It became the most bizarre set of ideas that came out of the Department of Education to say a Jewish organization had to pick non- Jewish leaders to be the leadership of their organization or non- Christians had to also be selected as leaders of their Christian organization on campus.

We are like, what in the world? What happened to the basic right of association and affiliation that is a constitutionally protected right?

That never happened to nonreligious organizations; it seemed to only happen to religious organizations.

So while we have common agreement on this as Americans and while that rule is now not being applied under the Trump administration, I raise a very simple bill to say: Why can't we, as all Americans, agree that religious organizations on college campuses should be treated exactly the same as every other organization on any college campus? That should be basic.

So I bring a very simple bill to be able to resolve that one big issue and to say let's make this once and for all just a policy that we have as Americans.

Now, I bring this up because it needs to be addressed, but I also bring this up because next week, there is a significant event that is going to happen all around the country--quite frankly, all around the world--that some people won't even notice but, quite frankly, is Earth- shattering.

Thirty-five years ago, a group of students gathered around a flagpole early in the morning to be able to pray for their school. It was in 1990. It ended up being about 46,000 total students in 4 different States, including my State of Oklahoma, that just kind of gathered. The word kind of spread organically that one Wednesday morning in September, students--high school and middle school students--would just go and do one day publicly what they do privately other days; that is, pray for their teachers, pray for their faculty at school, pray for each other, pray for their parents, and pray for the Nation.

So in September of 1990, around 46,000--we don't know the exact number--students in 4 different States just quietly gathered to pray. Now, that may not seem like a big deal, but in 1990, there was a great debate that was still spinning on this issue. In fact, that year, that September day, at at least one of those gatherings, the sheriff's department came out and arrested the students for praying--praying--on their school campus before class started.

The result of that was that the next September, a million students showed up to pray--a million, documented. From almost every State in America, teenagers showed up at their high school or their middle school campus just to be able to pray. They didn't have teachers with them; they didn't have youth pastors with them--just students. They gathered at their pole. It was a simple thing called See You at the Pole--just that simple. They would encourage each other just to be able to show up that one day in September to be able to pray publicly for their parents, for their Nation, for their campus, and for what was going on in their community.

It became the largest student prayer movement that we know of in the history of the Nation. Year after year in September, one Wednesday, students from around the Nation would gather. It was about 3 years later that it started spreading globally, to where literally students from around the world were just going to their flagpole, and they would just gather to be able to pray.

Now, people have said over the years: Why a flagpole? Well, it is because every school has a flagpole, and so it became just a common cry. It kind of seems like ``See you at the principal's office'' doesn't ring as true. But it was just like, what does every single campus have? Every single campus has a flagpole. So that simple statement, ``See you at the pole,'' became really a challenge to say ``See you at a spot where we can pray.''

There is a lot going on in the country right now--a lot. There is a lot of anger, there is a lot of frustration, and there are a lot of questions about what happens next.

For 35 years, students have gone to their flagpole and have prayed for the Nation. My simple request of them again this year is to do it again. This Nation could use some prayer. This Nation could use a generation rising up to be able to say: No one is going to stop us from praying.

It is the most simple request that we have--to not go to government but to go to God and say: We need your help. We need your intervention.

I am always proud of a group of students at a high school football game that finish the game or that start the game just taking a knee to be able to pray for each other, pray for safety, and then go out and hit each other as hard as they possibly can on the football field. But it is always fun for me to be able to watch the sportsmanship that begins with two teams that gather together to pray, and it is almost always just one player on each of the teams that drops that idea and says: We should do this. Our team should do this.

It is not led by the coaches. It is not led by the teachers. It is led by students that just say: Let's ask God to help us in this.

I am always impressed when I am on high school and junior high campuses as I walk around the campus during lunch, and I see everyone kind of gathering for lunch and all the conversation happening, and I will see a couple students over in the corner, as they sit down at their lunch, to be able to just bow their heads for just a simple moment to be able to thank God for their food.

I am always impressed when I hear about groups of students that get together on a regular basis just to be able to have Bible study together, just to be able to pray for each other. They face a lot of pressure. They face a lot of challenges in this day and age. It is resetting and centering when they actually stop to say: Let's pray about that.

I am tremendously impressed that for 35 years--now a second generation of students are gathering at their flagpoles the fourth Wednesday of September to be able to just pray for each other, pray for their teachers, pray for their school, and this time, an earnest plea to God to help our Nation.

I am proud of students of faith and how they gather to be able to say: These days are dark, but we believe in a God who gives light, and we will choose to be a light on our own campus and do what we can to be able to serve each other and to be able to serve our schools.

Those are the role models that we need in a new generation. Those are the folks that we look forward to seeing what they do in the days ahead.

As fun as it is to me, students that are gathering this year are the children of the first generation that gathered 35 years ago to start a movement to be able to pray. Thirty-five years ago, I was a youth minister. I was a part of that first See You at the Pole in 1990. I was in leadership, helping organize students in getting the word out, to be able to say ``What can we do''--what can we do--``to serve each other and the Nation?'' The obvious answer began with ``Let's pray.''

See You at the Pole was born. It wasn't my idea. It was a group of students' idea. I just got to help fan the flame.

Students of this Nation need the encouragement of this body to be able to say ``well done'' and set a fresh new example; be the next generation of leaders; be the people who will rise up and do what is right; be the role models that are desperately needed; be individuals who will actually not only have a faith but live your faith--all the principles of the faith.

We can certainly use individuals in our Nation right now who are living the most basic principles of loving God with all your heart, soul, mind, and strength and loving your neighbor as yourself.

To the students of this Nation, I would encourage them to ``see you at the pole'' next Wednesday morning.

This coming Wednesday morning, September 24, you can be assured I am going to be parked across the street from a campus watching a group of students pray for a Nation that needs help. I will join them and say, ``God help us. We need your help.'' I will see you at the pole.

Mr. President, I ask consent for myself and Senator Schatz to speak for up to 6 minutes, equally divided time.

I would ask for Senator Schatz and I to speak for up to 10 minutes of time, equally divided.

Mr. President, the Senate is stuck. We have had an enormous number of nominations that have tried to be able to work through this body. Quite frankly, it is the same number that we have every time when it is the first term for a new President to be able to work its way through the body.

But this time is different. And it is not just accidentally different; it has been intentionally different.

I understand my Democratic colleagues have problems politically with President Trump. I get that. Respectfully, we have differences of opinion on that. But this time it has been different. Every single nominee has been blocked. Every single nominee has required a vote for a motion to proceed, 2 hours of debate, and another vote.

The current status where we are right now to just do the nominees who are backlogged, where we currently sit right now, will take about 900 hours of floor time to be able to just do those. That doesn't include the ones who are coming next for the next nominations. We are stuck.

If every single one of them requires this kind of time, the Senate is no longer functioning. So what we had proposed was a pretty straightforward proposal; that is, that we actually can move nominees in small batches--let's say 15--once they come out of committee. So they have had vetting in committee; they had had a hearing in committee; they have passed out of committee; they are now coming to the floor. In the past, those individuals were then passed by what is called en bloc or by voice vote or unanimous consent.

It is very common to be en bloc. In fact, during President Biden's time, there were 277 nominees who moved en bloc. Do you know why? Because Republicans allowed them to be able to move en bloc.

Do you know what is interesting? During President Trump's first term, more than 500 nominees moved en bloc. Do you know why? Because Democrats allowed them to move en bloc because this was normal to be able to do. But now we are in a new political age where nothing seems to be normal.

So we proposed a very simple thing; that this would be helpful to do in what is called a standing rule. It would take 60 votes to be able to move this, and we would have a standing rule to say here is how this could be done. Up to 15 out of a committee would come to the floor en bloc. We would have a single vote to be able to pass those 15, very similar to how it has been done in the past. It is just structured that way.

This was an idea that percolated around for a while and then began to grow. Then we had multiple of our Democratic Senators who came on board and said that that is a reasonable proposal. In fact, it is similar to something that we proposed a couple of years ago for several Members.

So after a while of discussion, more and more Democrats came on board. And now we have a supermajority of Members of this body right now to be able to vote on it today who are willing to say let's vote on it. We have a supermajority. We have plenty of folks who are willing to be able to step up and say that is a reasonable thing to be able to do. The problem is, it takes consent to actually bring it to the floor. It is just a simple issue of do we have the ability to be able to vote on this today? If we don't, we are stuck.

Now, it only takes 60. We definitely have 60 votes in this body today to be able to pass it. What we don't have is consent to be able to actually bring it.

We have been asked: Well, what if we just did it next week? The challenge is this body has just broken down trust. So we are not confident there is not going to be a next week and a next week and a next week. In the meantime, we are still not moving nominees. We are still stuck.

So we have asked a very simple thing: Let's move this idea today, where we know we have 60 of our colleagues ready to be able to pass it today, in regular order in the process. We are just asking one thing; that is, consent to be able to do it.

I am planning to bring that request for consent in just a moment, but I would like to be able to yield time to my colleague Senator Schatz from Hawaii to be able to speak on this same issue because he has also worked very hard on rules and trying to be able to make this Senate work.

So, with that, I yield the floor.

Mr. President, I want to bring a unanimous consent request, but I would say I represent--every single Republican is in agreement to this. Every single Republican was ready today to be able to move on what was an agreed-upon bipartisan agreement--not by all; understanding that. But, again, we have a supermajority of Members of this body that are being blocked by a small group of the minority party saying they don't want to allow consent to vote on it--just to vote on it. So we are stuck.

So, as if in legislative session, I ask unanimous consent that the Senate proceed to the immediate consideration of the Lankford resolution, S. Res. 384, which is at the desk. I further ask that there be up to 30 minutes of debate on the resolution, equally divided between the two leaders or their designees; further, that following the use or yielding back of that time, the Senate vote on an amendment from Senator Merkley, if offered, and following disposition of the Merkley amendment, the Senate vote on the resolution, as amended, if amended, with no further intervening action or debate, with 60 affirmative votes required for adoption of the resolution.

Mr. President, I want to tell you a story about Tina Pierce. Tina grew up on a farm in Idaho. She was the first in her family to earn a college degree.

After earning her degree in accounting, she served in the U.S. Marines. She was deployed in Kuwait as the comptroller for the contingency Operation Desert Thunder.

She earned her MBA from Colorado State University. She graduated at the top of her class. She then became a CPA, a certified public accountant. She has been married 26 years. She has four children. Her husband also served in the U.S. Marine Corps as a colonel.

Why do I bring her up? Well, here is why. President Trump nominated Tina Pierce to be the Chief Financial Officer for the Department of Energy. She went through the process with the Committee on Energy and Natural Resources, where she was voted out in May of this year 13 to 7--pretty strong bipartisan vote.

She passed out of the committee and then has sat waiting. What is interesting for this is the Chief Financial Officer for the Department of Energy has actually never had a vote in the Senate on the floor of the Senate. It has always been a position that, in the past, went through committee, was approved in committee, and then passed on the Senate floor either by unanimous consent, a voice vote, or what is called en bloc, grouped together with other nominees and passed all in a group.

This is not the Secretary of Defense; this is not the Secretary of Energy or the Secretary of State. This is the CFO for the Department of Energy. It is one of those 1,200 positions that the Senate must confirm but, historically, has always been confirmed in a very fast-track process after they passed out of committee. Especially when they pass out 13 to 7 out of a committee, everyone knows they are going to pass.

You see, that is the way it used to be--but not anymore. My Democratic colleagues have determined that Tina Pierce should be filibustered. So this marine, married to a marine, mom, highly qualified, graduated top of her class has to sit at home and wait as Democrats block every single nominee on the floor. So she waits since May of this year to see if the Senate can open up enough time to have a vote.

Well, that is not the only one. Jonathan Morrison was President Trump's nominee to be the Administrator of the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration. Jonathan was the first in his family to go to college. He graduated from the University of Pittsburgh in 2001, went on to law school at Notre Dame. He also got a master of laws degree in international business law from University College London.

Over his career, he has worked with automobiles. He has also served as Chief Counsel at the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration. He is supremely qualified to be able to lead this part of the administration.

He came out of the committee in a vote of 16 to 12, but he also just sits and waits because there is not enough time.

In every administration, there are lots of nominees. There is 1,200 nominees. And everyone knows there are so many nominees, so you pick and choose which nominees you actually want to be able to debate. That is normal in every single administration.

They all have to go through the committee process, but when it comes to the floor, you don't dedicate all the floor time to different, what are called, sub-Cabinet officials. Those get fought out in committee, and then they come to the Senate floor and either pass en bloc or they pass by voice vote or unanimous consent. Or if they are highly controversial individuals, maybe we will have a floor vote on them.

It has been 200 days of this administration. Let me give you some examples of this. What is called a cloture vote, a demand to be able to go through this full, long process--under Bill Clinton, there was zero of those--zero. Were there controversial nominees? Sure, there were. But they worked through the process on that.

Under G.W. Bush, zero cloture votes that were required in the Senate. There were nine under President Obama, but then under the first President Trump administration--38, all of a sudden.

You know what we did as Republicans? We pushed back. And there were 71 under President Biden. It was kind of a tit for tat. Now our Democratic colleagues have determined this is not going to be tit for tat anymore. We are just going to shut the whole place down.

Now under President Trump, 134.

What does this really mean? This really means that we are not moving anyone across the floor unless they actually have 3 hours of floor time. That is a vote on a motion to proceed. That is 2 hours of debate time here on the floor for that person and then another vote after that. It takes a total of 3 hours to be able to do that whole process-- 3 hours for every single person, when you have got 1,200 people.

You would think during that time--that is, the 2 hours of debate time--we would have massive amounts of debate because if these are highly controversial nominees, of course, there is going to be debate on this floor to be able to discuss all these highly controversial people.

Well, let's talk about that. For these sub-Cabinet officials that are there--there has been 109 of them--all of them have been filibustered through the process to say they demanded. The average Democratic debate time for these 109 people has been 2 minutes--actually, technically, 2 minutes 12 seconds.

So 2 hours of time that they have demanded to debate these highly controversial people, and they have allocated 2 minutes 12 seconds, on average.

Well, interestingly enough, 81 of those 109 Democrats actually did zero debate on the floor. This was just about shutting the Senate floor down. That is all it was. This was about attacking President Trump, not acknowledging the fact that he won the election and that he should be able to actually go through the process to be able to have his staff like every other President has had.

Interestingly enough, I have had folks that have said to me: How do you actually fix this? How does this get better? Well, the first way this gets better is, typically, in the past, Republicans and Democrats would sit down together and would say: This is intolerable; we can't actually get to other bills.

You see, right now, to be able to do the 3 hours that it takes to be able to move it just with the nominees that we have in the backlog right now--not counting the 700 more nominees that are still coming in the days ahead--it would take 900 hours the rest of this year to actually move those through across the floor--900 hours.

Well, if you look at the rest of the year, the Senate would have to be actively voting and in process 80 hours a week every single week, only on nominations. That would mean we would not do the National Defense Authorization; we would not do the 12 appropriations bills; we would not do a farm bill, we would not do an FAA reauthorization; we would not do a new tax policy.

We wouldn't do anything else except nominees 80 hours a week. If we did that, we could get caught up on the

backlog. But oh, wait. We have to keep doing that the next year and the next just to be able to maintain this.

So when I say this is intolerable and it has never been done in the past, that is what it means. The Senate has to do legislation as well as nominations. This is a situation that my Democratic colleagues have broken the Senate structure. We have got to figure out a way to be able to fix this that works for Republican or Democrat Presidents in the future. Regardless of party, the President has got to be able to move their nominees. And this should not be an issue that once they have gone through committee and been resolved, that they literally can't get to the floor, or that people wait for months and months and months to be able to get a vote on the floor because there is so little time and we are so backed up.

So here is a simple idea: Just like has been done in the past, move folks in groups just like it happened in the past. You go to the first Trump administration, there were the 22 separate votes that were taken en bloc, groups of folks that have all been passed out of committee.

Under the Biden administration, that happened 17 times where Republicans allowed Democrats to be able to lump these individuals together to be able to pass them together.

Under this administration, so far, zero. None.

Under the first Trump administration, 559 of the 1,200-plus people all went through that process. Under Biden administration, 277. This is Republicans and Democrats alike. Now it is zero because my Democratic colleagues, I assume, have just determined they are going to be the resistance. But what they are setting up is a process where in the future, as soon as there is a Democrat President, this is going to be the same thing because Republicans are just going to go tit for tat on that.

That is not right for the country; it is not right for then; it is not right for now.

Very simply, we have got to get back to legislating, which means we have got to allow the President to be able to have his nominees go through the process. We have a constitutional responsibility to advise and consent. Let's do that in the committee process. Let's bring those to the floor in a debate. Let's actually pass or not pass those individuals, whatever this body may determine. But let's, at least, get an up or down vote on every single one of these individuals to be able to get this part of our responsibility checked off.

Because this week, we are also trying to work on the National Defense Authorization. That is an essential piece of legislation we have got to get done. By the 30 of this month, we are supposed to have 12 appropriations bills done. We can't get on appropriations bills, can't work on the National Defense Authorization, the time that it needs, while we are backed up with hundreds of nominees and my Democratic colleagues are blocking, literally, a mom and a marine who is a highly qualified CPA to say they can't be the CFO. Please.

This is all about trying to attack Trump, but what they are doing is actually stopping the country from getting its business done. So let's get this fixed. That is my request.

My colleagues are coming to the floor in the next hour. We are all going to make our case. This is so important that we actually get resolved--not some time--right now, get this resolved.

I yield the floor to my colleagues who will continue to be able to make the case. The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Alabama.

Mr. President, I want to compliment my colleague from Alabama Senator Britt. I can't begin to tell you how hard she has worked through the August time period.

There is this sense of we are just trying to be able to ram this solution through the Senate. She spent hours on the phone talking to different Democratic Senators--as I did, as multiple other members of our group did--to try to be able to find a pathway to be able to resolve this because that has always been the way it has been resolved. Eventually, it just gets to a point that you talk to each other enough, you figure out a way to be able to work it out; you work it out; and you figure out how to be able to do that. We reached an impasse the first days of August.

Typically, before we actually have a gap to be able to be back home in August, we will pass dozens on what is called an en bloc vote.

That didn't happen this time. We couldn't find that pathway to be able to actually get there. So in frustration, Senator Britt, myself, Senator Budd, Senator Cornyn, Senator Schmitt, Senator Johnson all spent lots of time over August trying to be able to figure out how do we weave out of this, and the idea became: There is a Democratic proposal that is out there that was brought to the Rules Committee in 2023. It was never voted on in the Rules Committee when Democrats actually ran and chaired the Rules Committee. But it was brought to the Rules Committee to say: Let's see if we can figure out how to be able to do this in a better way, and that was to be able to put in the rules to do en bloc voting, to be able to say: If they have come out of committee, they passed out of committee, we know they are going to get passed on the floor. Instead of holding up sub-Cabinet individuals--we are not talking about the Cabinet level--these sub-Cabinet individuals, put them all together in a group and be able to pass them.

We agreed the least partisan way to be able to do this, that is fair to both Republicans and Democrats, is to be able to literally take a Democrat proposal in 2023 and say: Let's finish that out. Let's actually bring that and to be able to bring it for a vote.

The response we got back, overwhelmingly, from our Democratic colleagues was: Yes, we still believe that is a good idea. Let's start it when the next President comes in place.

So in other words, we want to block every single one of President Trump's nominees, but we want to make sure this doesn't happen to us.

It will. So we have got to be able to fix this now.

Interestingly enough, many of my Democratic colleagues that I have spoken to over the past several weeks about this, when I brought up this proposal to say: This is a way to fix it that we think is the best solution for the Senate long-term, they have quietly over the phone said: Yes, we need to get this fixed. We just don't want to be the people to actually fix it. You fix it for the Senate.

We think it is better long term to be able to find a rule that works in a nonpartisan way that resolves it for everybody. We understand full well there will be a Democrat President and Democrat Senate in the future; that they will do en bloc voting like this. Fine. That is the way we did for a century. We didn't have to have a rule to be able to do that. We just came to agreement and did it.

So let's get back to actually operating because we do have serious issues to argue over. We have got lots of arguments about budget. We have $37 trillion in debt. We need to spend more time arguing about that and less time arguing about who the CFO for the Energy Department is going to be when they have already passed out of committee in a large bipartisan vote. So let's have the argument over the hard issues, and let's move the nominees that we know are going to get moved across the floor in a way that makes sense to everybody, regardless of party.

I have multiple other colleagues that are coming to the floor here in just a moment. We want to be able to make the argument to the American people.

I have to tell you, I have lots of phone calls that have come to my office that say: Why can't the President actually move his nominees? Why is this? This seems to be different.

And people may not know all the numbers and the details, but they feel it and go: Why does it feel like he is being treated differently? Well, it is because President Trump is being treated differently by not having a single voice vote, not a single unanimous consent, and not a single time to be grouped together into groups that we know are going to pass. That has not ever happened in this Senate.

And I have had multiple colleagues say: And we are going to keep blocking every single one.

Do you know what? Every action has an equal and opposite reaction. We are trying to figure out how to be able to get back to our functioning again and to be able to actually operate.

So I have multiple colleagues that will come to this floor, and we will keep making the argument to say: Let's get the nomination process fixed because we have got to get back to legislating more.

I yield the floor.

Mr. President, when my girls were little--and they are not little anymore; they are adults now. When they were little, I can remember, at times, I would be working from the house, in our little office space in the house, and one of the girls would crawl up in my lap.

She would look at me while I would be working on the computer, and she would say the same thing every time:

What'cha doin'?

Every time.

What'cha doin'?

I think about that when I think about the last 7 months here in the Senate. I have folks at home who will look at the U.S. Senate and say: What have you been doing for a while? ``What'cha doin'?''

What has been good is to have been able to answer the question a lot. This has been the most productive beginning point for a new President in the first 7 months of the Senate in decades. Let me just walk through just a little bit of what we have been doing. We began this year by passing the Laken Riley Act, which requires ICE to start arresting illegal migrants who have committed crimes. Amazingly enough, that wasn't a requirement before. We fixed that.

We passed and made law the TAKE IT DOWN Act. This is about the revenge porn that we are seeing that has affected so many young lives. They are posting their images and sometimes using AI to destroy the lives of people they either hate, used to date, or whatever it may be. We now passed that and made that Federal law to be able to protect the youngest generation from that kind of vulnerability.

We passed the HALT Fentanyl Act, permanently classifying fentanyl- related substances as schedule I drugs.

Amazingly, we had to do that year after year. It was always a challenge. We started dealing with fentanyl in the serious manner that it needed to be dealt with. We passed that and made that law.

We passed the GENIUS Act, which puts the United States on the forefront of digital currency. This is not cryptocurrency. This is dealing with stablecoins, which is similar to a traveler's check only in digital form, to say, dollar for dollar, this creates new competition for credit cards and online shopping. It creates a way to do this to be able to put the United States and American currency in the lead in the digital world while still protecting physical currency and guaranteeing that physical American currency continues to exist.

Just those alone would be significant to get out when beginning a session, but we are not close to being done. The Senate has held more than 440 votes just this year so far. That is more than most years of the Senate, in total, in the last 30 years that we have done just in the first 6 months. That is more votes in the beginning of any session since the Reagan administration. We began with 10 straight weeks--day after day after day--of just pounding away to get stuff done.

We have worked on nominations, and this body is still working on confirmations even right now. We have confirmed, so far, 119 of President Trump's nominees. To compare that to this same spot 8 years ago in the first term of the first Trump Presidency, they had 56 who were done at this point. We have now done 119. We have done twice as many confirmations now as what we did under the first Trump administration, but we still have quite a few to go. This has been, though, doing this the easy way or the hard way for the past 7 months.

You see, confirmations typically are done by voice vote here in the U.S. Senate because we have work to do on legislative work as well. Unlike the House, we do personnel, and we do policy. We have to switch back and forth between the two often, but every time we are working on the personnel side--the confirmation side--every single nomination takes about 3 hours to file on them and to go through the whole period. There is also a day of waiting for those. But those are typically done just for the high-profile nominees. They are not typically done for every nominee. There are about 1,200 people who have to be confirmed. So, typically, things are done by voice vote.

Under President George W. Bush, 90 percent of his nominees were actually done by voice vote in the Senate. Under President Obama, 90 percent of those were done by voice vote. Under the first President Trump term, 67 percent of his nominees were done by voice vote. So far, in this Senate, zero--zero for every single nominee, even if it were the protocol officer for the State Department or a legislative affairs person in an Agency or the deputy secretary assistant of something-- literally those who no American other than their families know who they are. They had to go through the full 3-hour process and the intervening day to slow this down.

That has not happened to any President ever in the history of the country--ever. No President has ever faced this kind of obstruction ever for their nominees. We have still done 119 of those by staying and working at night and by staying and working on weekends. We will continue to do this the hard way or the easy way.

Quite frankly, President Trump should have the same respect as every other President in American history. He should be able to get his staff, so we will continue on this process as we already have. We will just keep moving through the process because what we are doing is trying to get the work done for the U.S. Senate.

We have taken on some issues that haven't been taken on in a long time. We did a rescissions package. That has not been done in 35 years. We not only talked about it, but we passed it, and we made it law. We as a body examined some areas, and we said: This seems like wasteful spending to me; we shouldn't do it.

We literally voted, took it out, and saved the American taxpayers $9 billion from this year's budget. That has not happened in 35 years to be able to do that. How did we do that? Well, we identified some areas of waste in foreign aid and said: Do we really need to have this as a top priority?

We took away the funding that was used last year to create environmentally friendly reproductive health education for children in foreign countries. We took away the funding for Iraqi Sesame Street and for the Melanesian Youth Climate Corps. We took away the funding that created the grant for vegan food in Zambia. We took away the funding for the pride festival in southern Africa. We took away the funding for social media mentorships in Serbia and Belarus. We took away the funding for gender diversity for the Mexican street lighting industry.

We took away $1 billion of funding from the Corporation for Public Broadcasting. When many people said, oh, gosh, this is going to lead to the end of NPR and PBS--and it absolutely is not because, with NPR, 90 percent of it is funded by corporate and private funding already. This was the last 10 percent. Literally, this was something that was attempted to be done in 1983 under the Reagan administration to say: Why do we have federally taxpayer-paid journalists? Why don't we have that in the free market? If it made sense in 1983, it certainly makes sense now. In 1983, there were about four channels. Now, there are thousands. So what Reagan couldn't get done, we just got done.

That is a pretty productive Senate, but we are not close to being done with the things that have already been accomplished just in the last 7 months.

Mr. President, in the past month, my great folks in Oklahoma have started learning a new term around here that is an old term, actually, but it is a term we use all the time, ``vote-arama.''

I have to tell you, it makes me sleepy just to say the word because vote-arama is a part of the 1974 Budget Act that allows for unlimited debate on an issue of certain types of budget process, rescissions, that we did yesterday, and then trying to be able to go back even farther to be able to deal with a reconciliation.

I want to spend just a couple of minutes talking about it because so many folks that I talk to have no perspective on this. It is good to be able to get some context.

The 1974 Budget Act set out 12 different appropriations bills that are done. That is how our budget is actually done. That is how we actually spend. When the House and the Senate and the President sign that, those 12 bills are now law so they have to be done; that has to be spent. But if the President were to say: I don't want to spend this amount; I don't think that it is necessary, it is the law so it has to be done. But the President can actually send back over to Congress a rescissions and say: I would like permission to turn this part off, and, literally, make a new law to be able to say we are not going to spend this.

That is what has happened here in the last 24 hours. The President sent over, about 40 days ago, a rescissions for $9 billion and said: I don't think this needs to be spent.

I will talk a little bit about the context of that in a moment, but it was on foreign aid, and it was on National Public Radio and PBS. It was $1 billion for PBS and National Public Radio, and it was $8 billion for foreign aid. He sent it over and said: I don't think this needs to be spent.

What has been interesting is to be able to see the national conversation on this on social media as if this cuts off all foreign aid everywhere. I have to tell you, I have some of my good friends at home who would be fine with all foreign aid being cut off, but that is not what happened. What happened was actually going through and examining what foreign aid do we want to keep and what foreign aid do we think is wasteful, that we shouldn't keep in it.

So what actually happened? Let me set some context on this first.

There are things like PEPFAR, which I have been very supportive of. For the last couple of decades, the United States has made one of the biggest impacts in the world on slowing down the spread of AIDS worldwide. The work that has been done in Africa, through PEPFAR, on AIDS, on tuberculosis, and on malaria has literally saved millions of lives and has dramatically slowed down that virus movement. The innovation that not only affects Americans who suffer with those but also affects the entire world and the movement of that disease has led us to actually engage in areas like Ebola and other areas to be able to go and fight them and make sure that diseases that are happening there that are highly communicable don't spread to us or to other parts of the world. All of us who have experienced COVID know full well that it is better to be able to attack it early than it is to be able to fight it later. PEPFAR has been that entity that has done that. This bill that we just walked through in the rescission didn't affect that aid at all. We said: No. We are going to continue to be able to do that.

Programs like Food for Peace and the McGovern-Dole Program that actually feed the hungry around the world--some of my farmers and ranchers in Oklahoma even and some of the mills that are there actually take some of the food that is grown there--it is literally packaged in the Midwest, and it is shipped all over the world to feed hungry folks--that is still in place. That has not changed.

I know a lot of folks on social media say: Oh, my gosh. This is cutting off all food aid everywhere else.

No, that is actually not what happened. We have worked through our foreign aid programs to counter the Chinese Communist Party's influence around the world, but that wouldn't affect it. In fact, that was specifically isolated out to say: No, we are going to continue to do that because we have got to push back against the communism that has spread across the world.

What about combating anti-Semitism, human trafficking, and religious persecution? No, no. We protected all

of those and made sure those were not affected.

Polio eradication efforts around the world, especially for children, is protected. We didn't make any change to that. All of that foreign aid is still going out.

Again, I have folks at home who say that is somebody else's problem, but the vast majority of Americans and Oklahomans say: Hey, we need to make sure that we are engaging in humanitarian needs in the places where we can as we are also fighting our debt and deficit.

But what are some of the areas we actually did cut? Because we actually did eliminate $8 billion. Let me give you a couple of examples of that.

We actually did a 25-percent reduction in the resettlement fund that is run through the State Department. Now, why would we cut 25 percent of the resettlement fund? Well, 18 months ago, the United States was facing 2.5 million people a year illegally crossing our border, and there was work across all of government that the Biden administration was doing to try to manage these people in very mass numbers. Well, guess what. We have fewer than 200 now a day even attempting to cross our southern border. So there is not a need for this massive resettlement fund anymore because the borders are under control, so this fund was cut 25 percent.

Now, we are still involved in some resettlement efforts in other places for refugees around the world, and we are still involved in disaster aid, but we don't need near as large a fund for this because there is not near the problem that there used to be because our border is more secure.

The Office of Management and Budget literally went through the State Department, line by line, and identified all of these different line items and said: What did we spend our money on in this account last year? This went to humanitarian aid.

But then they also identified different areas that the State Department took for some of these funds and said they spent it on these areas. For instance, the State Department spent $2.5 million to teach children how to make environmentally friendly reproductive health decisions. Well, we cut that, and I think most Americans would say: What in the world are we doing with that?

They spent $3 million creating an Iraqi version of ``Sesame Street'' to be able to use in Iraq.

They spent $4.5 million on the Melanesian Youth Climate Corps.

They spent a ton of money on a pride parade, with the U.S. taxpayer sponsoring a pride parade in Southern Africa.

There was money that was spent to promote vegan food in Zambia.

There was money spent for social media mentorships in Serbia and Belarus.

There was $18 million spent to improve gender diversity in the Mexican street lighting industry. Do you know what? We cut that. What we saved was aid for polio, for AIDS, for food. What we cut was money for gender diversity improvements for the Mexican street lighting industry.

So, yes, we did cut some funds back, but it was very intentional to go back and identify the areas that most folks at home would scratch their heads and say: Tell me again why we spent our tax dollars on that. Tell me again why I worked overtime to pay for my family to be able to make more money and pay more taxes so that my money would go to be able to teach children how to make environmentally friendly reproductive health decisions overseas.

That is what we went after, and I am grateful that we actually didn't just talk about doing something; we did it.

Not only did we do that on the State Department's side, but we engaged in something that a lot of people have talked about for a long time: NPR and PBS. Now, I have got nothing against ``Sesame Street.'' I have got nothing against the ``Antiques Roadshow.'' I have got nothing against NPR programs. If people want to be able to listen to that, well, that is fine. They are in America, and they can have the opportunity to be able to listen to it. This has been interesting just to be able to hear their conversation about it because the conversation has been that we shut the whole program down, that NPR is closing down tomorrow. Well, that is just not true. Let me tell you what we actually did with this rescission.

We gave about a year and a half of time to NPR and to PBS to find some additional funding because, with NPR, 90 percent of their funding right now--90 percent of their funding--comes from private sources. The Federal taxpayer just pays 10 percent of it. That 10 percent for PBS and for NPR equals $1 billion. It is a big number, but it is just 10 percent of the funding. They provide sponsorships.

I asked the question: How does every other television station and every other radio station seem to operate and find enough sponsors to be able to cover them but that somehow, magically, NPR will not be able to cover the last 10 percent of their costs? That is absurd. Of course, they will be able to do that.

I have smiled and jokingly said to folks: If MSNBC can find enough sponsors to cover it, NPR can as well.

Listen, they will be able to find enough sponsors, and they have got time to be able to actually do that. We didn't cut them off tomorrow. We gave them about 18 months of time and said: You need to start finding some other sponsorships to be able to get ready for that because some people really like PBS. That is great. They will still be out there.

I grew up in a time period like some folks in this room grew up in. I was the remote control when I was growing up, OK? We would sit on the couch, and Mom would say to me: Go up to the TV and turn the dial, because I was the remote control in our family because we had four stations. We had ABC, NBC, CBS, and PBS. Those are the four stations that we had. We established that as a nation we need to be able to get emergency information out because that was the best way to communicate because we had four stations in America. That was it.

Well, that is not true anymore. There are thousands of stations that are available over the air for free, and there are streaming platforms galore if you want to be able to spend a hundred bucks a month for each of them. We have got lots of things on our cell phones and have access to it. There are lots of different options now that are very different. I think some people don't realize that, in 1983, Ronald Reagan proposed taking the funds away from PBS and from NPR, saying it was not needed-- in 1983--because we had enough options, much less now, when thinking about all of the options we have.

It has been fascinating for people to be able to say: If we don't have PBS, people will not know how to respond in an emergency. They desperately need that for an emergency.

I have to tell you, I live in a rural State, the great State of Oklahoma. We have, occasionally, a few storms that roll through Oklahoma. I actually don't know a person who says: Oh, my gosh. It looks stormy. I think I will turn on NPR.

I actually don't know that person. They pull out their cell phones, and they look and see what is going on, on the radar or they track through unlimited numbers of great options for meteorologists in our State, and that is true all over the country.

Again, I don't belittle what they are doing--people can choose to be able to listen--but to say the only way a television station or a radio station is going to function in America is if taxpayers pay for it means you ignore the thousands of other options that are out there.

So, no, we are not cutting them off except for the funding and saying: Hey, decades ago, this might have been an appropriate use of funds, but when we have $2 trillion in overspending, maybe we should start looking for billions of dollars to be able to reduce our spending. We are not just talking about it; we actually did it and said: OK. Let's start finding strategic ways to be able to do this. So, in the last 24 hours, the House and the Senate agreed, and we are reducing our total spending by $9 billion in very strategic ways. Now, that is the rescission package. That is one vote-arama for our long night last night.

Mr. President, I do rise to be able to speak in opposition to this motion to recommit. It would kill the entire bill. I understand that is the intent of it, and I can appreciate that.

The Senator from Virginia is my friend, and the list that he listed off of faith-based organizations I strongly support, and so does he.

This particular section that is being reduced is being reduced about 25 percent of the total amount. So I can speak with great confidence. This is not cutting off all those faith-based entities. What this is doing is adjusting for the dramatic shift that has happened on our southern border. Much of the refugee work that has been done has been assisting refugees moving through Central and South America and Mexico into the United States.

A year and a half ago, we had a quarter million people a month that were illegally crossing our border, asking for asylum at our border. Now we have, many days, less than 200 even attempt. The need has dramatically dropped from what it was 18 months ago. This adjusts that account by 25 percent. It does not eliminate faith-based organizations.

There are great needs around the world, and I am incredibly grateful to the faith-based organizations that do remarkable work that partner with our government.

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

Mr. President, just like you do, I get a lot of requests in my office. I get about 150,000 emails a year. I don't know how many different requests that I get to come in for personal meetings, both instate and here in Washington, DC, but a few weeks ago I got a video request from a bow-tied 8-year-old asking for a meeting with me--a person I had never met before, but he said he wanted to be able to come in and talk to me about rare childhood diseases. And I have to tell you, you would have to see the video to be able to see the meeting request that I got in from Christian Jaspersen.

He is from Keota, OK, which no one can find here without using Google Maps, I promise you. But he was enthusiastically wanting to be able to share his story about a complex medical history and how things have gone for him. So we said yes.

Christian was born with a very rare medical condition that most of us couldn't pronounce, much less want to be able to live with. He was born with his intestines outside of his abdomen. That impacts about 1,500 babies a year. It is extremely rare.

Patients are born sometimes with their intestines or other organs outside their abdomen. You can imagine the damage that that does, even while they are still in the womb.

Well, he required a ton of surgeries. Several surgeries were required immediately after birth. Several digestive impacts on him will be felt for a lifetime. He spent 5 months in NICU after birth. He lost a significant portion of his intestinal tissue during those different surgeries. It has impacted his nutritional intake and his bowel function, as you can imagine.

There were some clinicians that had recommended to go ahead and remove all of it, and he would spend the rest of his life living on IV nutrition. But he was able to get a second opinion from Boston Children's Hospital. They left out from beautiful Oklahoma and headed for Boston for that second opinion.

They provided some alternative care for him, and he is growing and doing well at now 8\1/2\. He is not just 8; he is 8\1/2\. He credits his doctors for saving his life and allowing him to live his best life now. He still has to go back to Boston often, and there are unique challenges that he faces with insurance and with all the challenges of travel and, quite frankly, the finances that go along with that, but he is a very spunky young man with an extremely large personality.

He played the role of Christopher Robin in a youth production of ``Winnie the Pooh'' recently, and I bet people would pay to see that twice. He also has political aspirations. When I had the opportunity to be able to meet him and his brothers, Noah and Lane, and his mom Rachel yesterday, we had that opportunity to be able to sit down and talk. Christian told me all about the disease that he has struggled with, the treatments that he has had, the heroes at Boston Children's who have worked alongside of him, but he also informed me to be prepared to see him again because he will be a Supreme Court Justice in the days ahead. And he just might be.

So for Christian and for his wonderful family and for all that has happened and the heroes at Boston Children's and for the research that they have done, I have to express the gratitude of my State for all of that work because that is a lot of work to invest in that young man. And he is determined not to waste the investment that has been put into him but to live his best life and to be extremely productive in the days ahead.

I am grateful to the Oklahomans that spent so much time with him, working to guard his life in the earliest days, and for the folks at Boston Children's.

I look forward to ``Chief Justice Christian'' in the days ahead and seeing the work that he does and how that pans out for all of us as a country.

I yield the floor.

Mr. President, I wanted to just give a quick update on a project I was working on last week to my fellow Senators.

I spent the last week, during Memorial Day week, in the Middle East. Angus King and I actually traveled to Baghdad, Erbil, Beirut, and Oman. And then Angus left out for Turkiye, and I left out for Jerusalem.

It is exceptionally helpful to be able to walk through the different countries of the region right now. Obviously, there is a tremendous amount of instability around Syria. We had the opportunity to be able to ask leaders in every single one of those countries about the future of Syria and the options that are there and what could happen.

It is to America's best interest to be able to have a stable Middle East and a functioning relationship in all of those countries.

Just a quick walk-through of a couple things that I think are important there: In Baghdad, they are actively working to be able to reach out to American companies. There is a real interest there and, quite frankly, a growth in Baghdad's economy, in Iraq's economy. They are trying to be able to stabilize, though they are still very close to Iran and to Tehran.

As chilling as it is, when I went in to meet with the Prime Minister, you can't go to the Prime Minister's office without going through the large traffic circle right outside his office, where he has a giant depiction of the martyr Soleimani in front of his office. That is the Iranian head of the IRGC that actively worked to kill as many Americans as possible. It was a reminder that there are still challenges in this region, while they are still welcoming to American businesses.

In Erbil, in the Kurdish Regional Government, they truly love America, and there is a true Western feel when you get to Erbil. They are open for commerce. They are open for capitalism.

They are still a part of Iraq, but they are very interested in turning their attention toward the Western world and toward engaging in a great deal of American business. In fact, one of the most prideful moments of the conversation were on the American businesses that are coming through and engaging in the Kurdish Regional Government, in that area. To be able to see--I counted 15 cranes across Erbil, with the construction that is happening there. It is remarkable to be able to see the investment that is coming into that area.

It is good for us to continue to be able to maintain relationships with that region, and they are grateful to be able to be a partner to the United States. But even they are saying to their Kurdish friends that are over on the eastern side of Syria that they should turn their attention toward Damascus in forming a unified Syrian Government.

In the broad diversity that is Syria, with Kurds, with Turks, with Alawites, with Sunnis, with Shias, with Christians that are all in Syria in multiple areas and then in the broad swath of the desert area in the south, to still see a stronghold for ISIS that remains in Syria--it was a reminder again of the challenges this new Syrian Government has.

It was interesting as well to me that every single one of the leaders that I met in the area all raised to me their gratitude for President Trump canceling the sanctions on Syria. They all said: We don't know exactly which way the Syrian Government is going to go. It is too early to be able to tell.

But American sanctions would have prevented them from ever being successful in the future. So they expressed their gratitude over and over again to the United States for giving Syria a shot to be able to form its own country and its own nation.

When we landed in Beirut, we landed on a Sunday. It was the Sunday before Memorial Day Monday. It was a sober reminder to wake up in Beirut at the Embassy compound and to just walk that half block from where I was staying there over to the memorial that is on the Embassy compound for the many, many lives that have been lost over the years in Beirut, including the 241 marines that died in the marine barracks in 1983. To be there on that ground on Memorial Day was sobering to say the least.

But I have to tell you, I have been to Lebanon multiple times. I have met with the Lebanese leaders multiple times and with the Lebanese Armed Forces. I have never left Lebanon more optimistic than when I left Lebanon, when I took off. The new leadership there--President Aoun, the new Prime Minister there--is focused on fixing the banking system in Lebanon, fixing the port, repairing the airport, and getting a new economic infrastructure in place.

They said over and over again: We are not looking for assistance coming to us; we are looking for investors to be able to be here. We want to be open for business and have people from all over the world to be able to come here to be able to do business, so we are going to get our systems right and get rid of corruption.

They also said something that was a pretty remarkable statement. They said they want to have a monopoly on military weapons. Now, that may not

seem like a big deal to us as Americans, but there have been two militaries in Lebanon for decades: Hezbollah's military and the Lebanese Armed Forces. The places where Hezbollah's military stands, the Lebanese Armed Forces don't go--until now.

With Israel's bombardment of Hezbollah in the south, what is south of the Litani River, the Lebanese Armed Forces have moved into that area, and now the Lebanese Army is actually defending Lebanon--not some terrorist organization trying to be able to defend southern Lebanon; the Lebanese Armed Forces are actually stepping up to be able to do that. They are taking the lead in those areas, setting up posts.

The government there is very focused on getting weapons out of the Palestinian refugee camps that are there in Lebanon and defanging Hezbollah in the south and Hezbollah in the Beqaa Valley bordering with Syria. They are serious about taking on drug interdictions along their border with Syria. They are serious about trying to be able to balance things out.

I have to give kudos to Morgan Ortagus. She has done a phenomenal job there, and her name came up over and over again in my meetings with the Lebanese leaders as they saw her as a straight shooter and a good negotiator between Israel and Lebanon to be able to establish a lasting border and a lasting peace and relationships.

There are American leaders--what they call the mechanism--there as well.

That mechanism is helping monitor the cease-fire between Israel and Lebanon, and they have become a trusted partner to both sides of that border.

We as the United States do make a difference when we engage in different parts of the world. Lebanon and Israel would not be experiencing the peace they are experiencing right now if it was not for American engagement.

No other country in the world walks in and has the reputation that the United States of America does, so it allows us to be able to step in and help provide stability by just our presence and our engagement to be able to be there.

There are not large numbers of Americans that are there, but it is to America's benefit to see peace between Lebanon and Israel, not just because of two countries far away in the Middle East, but in Israel-- there are 700,000 Americans in Israel right now--right now. If we want to be able to stand with those Americans that are right now in Israel, we don't want to see Hezbollah's rockets coming at our citizens from the north. We also have hundreds of thousands of Lebanese Americans and their families and Americans living in Lebanon.

We should continue to be able to have our relationships and our engagement there to be able to provide a stable, lasting peace, and there is a shot for that like there has not been for decades between Lebanon and Israel.

When we left out from Lebanon, we went to be able to meet the King in Amman, Jordan. He is a trusted partner with the United States, and he is passionate about bringing a peaceful relationship with the entire region. He is somebody who actively wants to see stable relationships and a stable region, and he is doing the work that it takes, hard work in that region on things like water. It is not a simple thing everywhere in the world like it is in most places in the United States. When you are in Jordan, that is a tough challenge.

But the ability to be able to bring nations together, to be able to provide that kind of engagement with the country of Jordan and our friendship with the King there, matters.

We left out from Amman, and I drove to Jerusalem. Israel is facing very real risks. This body knows it well, and we have had plenty of conversations about it for a very long time.

The United States stands with our ally Israel. It was interesting for me to be able to see Israeli press there that has a whisper going out among the Israeli press that the United States is walking away from Israel. That is far from the truth. The United States continues to stand with our ally and friend Israel. But Israel is facing a multifront war. What they are dealing with day after day after day, we as Americans would never put up with.

We are now about 612 days past October 7 of last year. There are still hostages being held in Gaza today. Today, there are still hostages. There are still challenges being faced every single day.

The day that I arrived in Israel happened to be the first day that a new strategy for getting humanitarian aid into Gaza started--that day. It was a chaotic day of a brandnew plan of, how do we not have huge bags of flour and food be delivered and then Hamas scoops those up and then Hamas tries to be able to portion it out as they choose and instead deliver boxes of food to a family where they have a week's worth of food there, to a group of people who have no chance to be able to get to a grocery store, no chance to be able to get options for food?

So they experimented with a brandnew way to be able to do that--which was, by the way, an American-Israeli partnership--to be able to deliver that food into Gaza.

That first chaotic day, tens of thousands of boxes of food were delivered to Gazans who are desperate. That led to the second day, a little better; the next day, a little better; the next day, a little better. Each day, they tried to figure out how to maintain security, how to maintain order, how to register people, and to be able to make sure as many people as possible are getting as much food as possible and to be able to get that out to people who desperately need the help.

Each day, that humanitarian aid is getting better and better as they are learning how to be able to do it more effectively now. That is important to us because we care about all human life. We are Americans. We have people that we disagree with, people that we disagree with strongly, but we still care about the dignity of human life.

So we are watching that aid actually go into the country, and I am proud, actually, that we as the United States, as private citizens in the United States, are a part of delivering that aid that is desperately needed there.

But I will tell you, my conversation in Israel with key leadership there, including with the Prime Minister, always circles around the threat of Iran--always--because the rockets that are coming in from Gaza were paid for by Iran. The rockets and missiles and unmanned drones that were coming in from southern Lebanon were paid for by Iran. The missiles and rockets that are coming in from Yemen against Israel are paid for by Iran.

As they face all the challenges that are around them--and I could go on and on and on--as they face all the challenges that are around them, we cannot forget that the Iranian people live under the thumb of an oppressive Iranian regime that is not just oppressive to their own people, they are the destabilizing force in the entire region.

The one thing that is clear in this is that we have to make sure we strengthen our sanctions against the Iranian regime so that they cannot have more money to do more acts of terrorism.

They can never ever have a nuclear weapon. That means no enrichment. That means no centrifuges. That means no opportunity to be able to create a nuclear weapon. Iran has used their centrifuge technology to be able to enrich uranium up to 60 percent. There is zero purpose for highly enriched uranium other than a weapon. They cannot in one moment say they are not trying to weaponize and in the next moment brag about how much they have enriched uranium. Those two don't go together.

So we as Americans have to be vigilant because if you look at the flag of the Houthis in Yemen, the flag of the Houthis in Yemen has five phrases on it. Let me give you two of them: ``Death to the Jews'' and ``Death to the Americans.'' That is not a banner; that is their national flag. They are serious about it, and I think we shouldn't just say: No, they are kidding. They are not.

So we cannot allow the Iranians to continue to be able to arm the rest of the area and to be able to bring the fight to us and pretend that is never going to happen. We have learned the lesson of 2001. People that are far away will do what they can in their deep hatred to come to us. So we should make sure that the Iranian regime never gets a nuclear weapon and that we remain clear and concise on that.

There are a lot of things that we can continue to be able to talk about as we talk about multiple regions around the world, but as we focus on so many areas around the world, we cannot lose focus on the Middle East--the opportunities and the promise that are there but also the threats that still remain. So let's stay vigilant.

I yield the floor.

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

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