Floor Statements

The following Senators are necessarily absent: the Senator from Texas (Mr. Cruz) and the Senator from Kansas (Mr. Moran).

The following Senator is necessarily absent: the Senator from Kansas (Mr. Moran).

The following Senator is necessarily absent: the Senator from Kansas (Mr. Moran).

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 President, I ask unanimous consent that the order for the quorum call be rescinded.

Mr. President, Senate Democrats have now dragged us into the Schumer shutdown. When I say ``us,'' I mean all of us as Americans. It didn't have to happen, and it certainly doesn't need to continue. Americans are overwhelmingly against the shutdown of our government.

New polling from the New York Times and Siena just came out, and the polling proves it. Here is the key finding: Two out of three Americans believe that Democrats should not shut down the government, even if they don't get their trillion-dollar ransom fee paid, which of course they won't. Only 47 percent of Democrats support the shutdown. That is not even a majority of Democrats.

Senate Democrats are on the wrong side of Republicans, they are on the wrong side of Independents, and they are on the wrong side of their own party.

There is only one good option to reopen the government, and that option is a bipartisan, clean continuing resolution that we will vote on this morning.

The House already passed it with bipartisan support. President Trump is ready to sign it. Senate Republicans voted yesterday in an attempt to pass it. It failed yesterday, and we are going to offer it again today.

All it takes to reopen the government is cooperation from just five more Senate Democrats. We picked up three Democrats last night, so there are clearly cracks on their side of the aisle and movement toward our side. That will continue.

We are ready to vote for it again and again and again to make sure we can reopen the government for the American people. And there is bipartisan--broad bipartisan support to open the government. That is what the New York Times revealed, and that is what the vote revealed last evening. If five more Democrats join us today, the shutdown is over because, remember, it takes 60 votes in the Senate to get something like this passed and accomplished.

And all we are asking is to reopen the government for the next 7 weeks. Democrats supported these same funding levels before; now they claim the levels aren't good enough. Democrats are now demanding $1.5 trillion in new spending--new spending--for just reopening the government for 4 short weeks. That is $48 billion of new spending each and every day of the 4 weeks in the Democrats' proposal.

This is a direct attack on hard-working American taxpayers who voted against wasteful Washington spending in the elections in November.

Think back to previous continuing resolutions just like this one. I can think back to 13 of them during the time Joe Biden was in office at the White House. Thirteen of these passed. The minimum number of votes was 65. We voted to keep the government open, bipartisan. When Joe Biden and Barack Obama were President, Democrats said shutdowns were dangerous, destructive, and desperate. Those are the words of the Democrats: ``dangerous,'' ``destructive,'' ``desperate.''

Listen to those words. Listen to what Chuck Schumer said. He said:

Passing a clean CR . . . [would] avert a harmful and

unnecessary government shutdown.

He also said:

If the government shuts down, it will be average Americans

who suffer [the] most.

But yesterday he stood here in the well and then voted to shut down the government. Senator Patty Murray of Washington is the top Democrat on the Senate Appropriations Committee. She has said that ``a shutdown solves nothing.'' She went on to say, and it ``hurts everyone.''

Yesterday, she voted to shut down the government.

Senator Elizabeth Warren of Massachusetts has said that a shutdown ``is the last resort for those who can't otherwise win their fights through elections [and] can't win their fights in Congress.'' Well, yesterday, she voted to shut down the government.

Senator Chris Murphy of Connecticut said:

There is a time and place to debate health care . . . but

not when the funding of the federal government, and all the

lives that are impacted by it, hang in the balance.

Well, yesterday he voted to shut down the government.

Senator Amy Klobuchar of Minnesota is a Member of the Senate Democrat leadership. She said:

Shutdowns are not good for the economy.

Yesterday, she voted to shut down the government.

Senator Brian Schatz of Hawaii said:

I've seen the same thing over and over again.

He said:

Shutdowns don't work. . . . No one wins, but Americans have

a lot to lose.

Yesterday, he voted to shut down the government.

Those were Senate Democrats' words when there was a Democrat in the White House. Yet last night, when it mattered, Democrats ignored their own warnings. Either their memories are short or their principles are situational. The costs they described are now a reality.

Border Patrol agents are showing up to work; they are not getting paid. The Border Patrol union warns that shutdowns threaten their ``capacity to maintain the most secure border in our Nation's history.''

Veterans' healthcare is going to be impacted. Low-income families will lose vital benefits to help buy groceries.

Republicans are committed to reopening the government with a clean continuing resolution. That will allow us to finish the appropriations process the right way.

When he was majority leader, Senator Schumer broke that process, the appropriations process. Last year, the Senate Appropriations Committee passed--the committee, not Chuck Schumer, but that committee passed 11 of 12 appropriations bills, many of them unanimous, always bipartisan, and what happened? Senator Schumer let each and every one of them rot and die in his Senate desk drawer. He shut down the appropriations process, and now he wants to shut down the government.

Republicans have restored the appropriations process. For the first time in 4 years, the Senate passed appropriations bills in August, passed three of them. Senator Susan Collins of Maine deserves special praise and thanks for this achievement.

Passing a clean CR will allow the Senate to finish our bipartisan work. The American people want their government open. They want it reopened. They want it to remain open. They want it working. So today Democrats are facing a clear choice; they can govern in the best interest of the American people or they can continue to grandstand for their retweets and their likes from their liberal base.

Republicans are united in our commitment to reopen the government. How long it takes, how costly it is, that is entirely up to the Senate Democrats.

A bipartisan offer, a bipartisan bill that already passed the House is right here in the Senate for a vote today. The President is ready to sign it to reopen the government. It is time to pass the bill today and end this Schumer shutdown.

Waiving Quorum Call

Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent to consent to waive the mandatory quorum calls with respect to Calendar No. 167, S. 2882, Calendar No. 168, H.R. 5371.

I yield the floor.

Mr. President, we just heard the minority leader come to the floor of the Senate, once again, refusing to admit it is the Democrats who are driving America into a shutdown. Let me remind everyone what Senator Schumer, himself, said in 2013. That was when the government faced another government shutdown. This is his quote. He said:

What if I persuaded my caucus to say, ``I'm going to shut

the government down unless I get my way?'' It's a politics of

idiocy.

His words--a shutdown is ``idiocy.'' They are his words, not mine.

So, today, Republicans are committed to keeping the government open. We are going to vote to do that again today. The House has already passed a clean continuing resolution with bipartisan votes, and it keeps the government open and functioning for the next 7 weeks. It allows Republicans and Democrats on the Appropriations Committee to continue their bipartisan work on a full year of funding for our Nation.

This is where Senators from both parties have a very important part to play. The continuing resolution is now in the Senate. Senate Republicans support it. Senate Democrats should join us and vote yes to keep the government open because, if not, the government shuts down at midnight tonight. Democrats have no problem voting for 13 clean continuing resolutions, just like the one we have here today. They did that when Joe Biden was President. Now they refuse to do what they did 13 times for Joe Biden. Instead, they are demanding a ransom.

Senator Schumer has come to the Senate with a ransom note. He is asking for $1 trillion just to keep the government open for 4 short weeks. This proposal is a far-left wish list. The Democrats in this body know that they are responding to the demands of the far-left, radical wing of their party--radical, extreme, dangerous, scary people who want to take this country far, far to the left and are happy to see a government shutdown. They are demanding a government shutdown by the Democrats in this body.

So what do they want to do with this trillion dollars that is in this wish list--this ransom note--from the minority leader? Well, they want to spend $400 billion to keep Biden bonus COVID payments forever-- forever. They want to repeal reforms that strengthen Medicaid. It strengthens Medicaid for the people who need it the most. That is not what the Democrats want. They want it to go to people who are unwilling to work, want to sit home, want to get free healthcare. These are able- bodied individuals who refuse to work. Democrats say: Give them healthcare, no responsibility, none whatsoever.

Oh, and they want to spend billions of dollars for overseas projects related to their obsession with extreme climate policies.

The minority leader made a statement today on healthcare that I found to be preposterous because I am a doctor. I practiced medicine for 24 years. I was in a rural hospital in Wyoming just this past week. The Democrats' proposal--the ransom note that they have provided--wants to repeal the critically important $50 billion rural hospital fund. Every Democrat in this body voted against a $50 billion rural hospital fund.

Just a few minutes ago, the Senate minority leader came to the floor. He said one of his Members went to some rural communities in his home State and said that the healthcare providers there are really concerned. Well, then those healthcare providers haven't been informed by the Democrat Senators from that State about what is in the bill that passed this summer and the incredible resources that are being made to make sure that rural hospitals can be sustained, to stay afloat, to stay open to provide healthcare.

The Democrats are so against rural communities of this country. They view them as the enemy, the red counties. They are so fixated with the big cities and kowtowing to the big city mayors that they actually introduced a bill in July. It is stunning. They call it Protecting Health Care and Lowering Costs Act. It is preposterous because that act alone repeals the $50 billion for the rural hospital communities. They didn't just do it once with their bill in July; they have done it again with a ransom note from Chuck Schumer to the Republicans, saying that if you want to keep the government open for 4 short weeks, get rid of this rural healthcare hospital lifeline.

Hospitals all across my State and yours realize it is important for their sustainability to provide healthcare in rural communities where the next hospital may be 100 miles away. That is something foreign to the other side of the aisle who ignore, so often, the rural communities in their own States, who can say they can ignore them; don't campaign there; don't go there; don't talk to those people. It is the big cities that sustain us, and we are going to actually punish the rural communities by stripping from a successful piece of legislation $50 billion set aside for rural healthcare in this country.

What the Democrats are proposing is an outrageous shakedown, and that is why we are going to have a shutdown because they refuse to keep the government open while we are working on bipartisan funding bills. Everything they are doing is focused on satisfying the most radical, extreme, dangerous, scary part of their party.

In March, I believe, Senator Schumer did the right thing. He voted with Republicans to keep the government open. What happened? The far left immediately attacked him for doing the right thing.

Nancy Pelosi said:

I myself don't give anything away for nothing.

She was even against it.

AOC questioned why he would ``hand away our leverage for free.'' Eighteen of Democrats' own candidates who are running right now in open seats for the Senate in 2026 were questioned by one of the newsletters in town. They all said they refused to say whether they were going to vote for him as leader of the Democratic Party.

So now, according to an Axios report from last week, what we have seen the minority leader do is he built a private war room--their quote, ``private war room''--with liberal groups to orchestrate a shutdown. When I hear the minority leader come to the floor say: Oh, we don't want to do it, he has been orchestrating this, according to this news report, for months, orchestrating with his liberal private war room. He and his staff have been meeting with these groups every week for the past 2 months to plan the shutdown that begins tonight at midnight.

Senator Schumer is doing exactly what he once called the politics of idiocy. He is threatening to shut down the government unless he gets everything that he wants. Well, Republicans are not going to pay the ransom, and the American people aren't going to pay the ransom. We are not going to sell out our Nation's servicemembers, our law enforcement officers, our seniors, our air traffic controllers.

Let me remind everyone who pays the price for a Schumer shutdown. The American Legion warns of a shutdown that will ``directly affect the lives of veterans and their families.'' They will pay a price for the Schumer shutdown.

Vietnam Veterans of America put it plainly:

For veterans, a shutdown is . . . an immediate disruption

of care, support, and progress on life-saving initiatives.

They will pay a price for the Schumer shutdown.

The National Fraternal Order of Police says a shutdown ``will cause major disruptions for programs that fund public safety efforts in our communities.'' They will pay a price for the Schumer shutdown.

The National Association of Police Organizations adds:

Federal law enforcement officers, who are working to

protect our cities and communities from violent crime, drugs,

and guns, will be putting their lives on the line without

getting paid.

They will pay a price for the Schumer shutdown.

The Association of Mature American Citizens warns that seniors on fixed incomes will face ``backlogs and service disruptions.'' They will pay a price for the Schumer shutdown.

The National Cattlemen's Beef Association says farmers and ranchers will lose ``predictability and stability'' as harvest season begins. They will pay a price for the Schumer shutdown.

The National Grocers Association warns that vital programs feeding low-income families and children will run out of money. This is the reality of a Schumer shutdown.

Here is the bottom line: Republicans are fighting for veterans, for servicemembers, for law enforcement, for Border Patrol agents, for senior citizens, and for rural hospitals. Democrats are willing to shut down the government for illegal immigrants, climate extremism, and wasteful Washington spending.

Twelve years ago, Senator Schumer decried the politics of idiocy. If Democrats shut down the government at 12 midnight tonight, the idiocy will be theirs.

The House has done its job. It passed a continuing resolution to fund the government. President Trump is ready to sign it. It is time, today, for the Senate to pass it. The American people are watching.

I urge my Democrat colleagues to join with us. Tear up the ransom note. Keep the government open. Otherwise, Democrats will own the Schumer shutdown. The American people will suffer the costs and the consequences.

I yield the floor.

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

Mr. President, the government is on the verge of a Democrat-caused shutdown, a shutdown of the Government of the United States of America.

Senator Schumer has sent us a ransom note. It is not about a negotiation; it is about a shakedown. That is what we are facing here today in the U.S. Senate. Schumer's ransom note, it is not about keeping the government open; it is about caving to the far left, the radical wing of his party. It is pure politics; it is political theater; and every Democrat in this body knows it.

This afternoon, my colleagues are going to be meeting at the White House with the President of the United States. The American people deserve to know what the Democrats are demanding. So let's take a look at this trillion-dollar demand note.

They are demanding more than a trillion dollars in new spending to keep the government open for just 4 weeks. They want permanent new spending to continue the Biden COVID bonus payments.

If you could believe it, they want sanctuary cities to continue to give free healthcare to illegal immigrants. At the same time, they threaten to defund the Border Patrol.

They want to send billions of dollars to foreign countries, but they want to slash billions of dollars to help rural hospitals right here in America. That is what the Democrats are proposing in their ransom note.

They want to subsidize free healthcare for people who refuse to work, who are working-age individuals and are healthy and ought to have a job. Yet they threaten the paychecks of the people whose job it is to keep our country safe.

They demand this far-left wish list or else, they say, they are going to shut down the government at midnight tomorrow.

The biggest scam in this ransom note is the COVID-era Biden bonus payments. Democrats are demanding $400 billion to continue these subsidies forever. Let's remember that Democrats created these Biden bonus COVID subsidy payments during COVID in 2021. It was part of their reckless tax-and-spending bill. They passed it when they controlled the House, the Senate, and the White House.

At the time that Biden started these bonus payments, most people realized that COVID was already behind us, but that didn't stop them. Democrats extended the payments again in 2022, and they set the expiration date for December of 2025. That is about 3 months from now.

Democrats promised at that time, when they put them into place, that the Biden COVID bonus payments would be temporary. They weren't intended to last forever. Now the Democrats, in their ransom note to the Republicans and to President Trump, say they want these temporary payments to go on forever.

I have here the House report that came out on this 2021 reckless tax- and-spending bill. It is called ``American Rescue Plan of 2021.'' This is a report of the Committee on the Budget, House of Representatives, H.R. 1319, dated February 24, 2021.

Instead of going through the whole thousand-page document and bringing it here and throwing it on the floor, which is where it belongs, I copied pages 215 and 216. What does it say about these bonus payments? They say right here, it applies ``during the public health emergency.'' The public health emergency is over. And it says in the payments, when you turn to the next page, they would go ``temporarily''--``temporarily.'' That is their word, not mine. Well, COVID is over. Joe Biden lost. Democrats are in the minority. These Biden COVID bonus payments, they need to go away as well.

They were just one more part of a big government giveaway, and now Chuck Schumer is here demanding that we make these bonus payments permanent. To me, ``temporary'' means ``temporary.'' That is what the Democrats are demanding just to keep the government open for 4 short weeks. It is preposterous.

Twelve years ago, in 2013, America faced another shutdown. At that time, Senator Chris Murphy of Connecticut sent out a press release-- 2013, 12 years ago. In his press release, Senator Murphy of the minority from Connecticut said this:

There is a time and a place to debate healthcare--

He went on to say--

but not when the funding of the federal government--and all

the lives that are impacted by it--[are hanging] in the

balance.

He is not here today to hear those words, but his party needs to recognize that is exactly what they said 12 years ago. And, today, Democrats like Senator Murphy are doing the very thing that he condemned in his press release 12 years ago.

Stunningly, the Democrats want to eliminate, of all things, the $50 billion Rural Health Transformation Fund. This is the fund that Republicans created to keep rural hospitals open.

I am a doctor. I practiced medicine in Wyoming for more than 20 years. I know what affordable, reliable, quality care means to our communities. They are lifelines to small communities.

Yet, yesterday, on ``Meet the Press,'' the minority leader, Chuck Schumer, said rural hospitals are closing. So he wants to put the noose around their neck. This makes it worse. He is threatening, as part of his demand, to eliminate the $50 billion set aside for rural hospitals in America.

Last week, I was at home in Wyoming. I attended a ribbon cutting in Pinedale for a new hospital. This is the first hospital ever in Sublette County, WY. The nearest hospital is 85 miles away. There is another one 100 miles away. Depending on, in the winter, which roads are open, people in that community had to either drive 85 or 100 miles seeking healthcare.

This is going to help the communities in Pinedale. It is going to save lives. It matters to those people.

Yet the ransom note from Senator Schumer and the Democrats would shut it down, prevent all of these rural hospitals that are struggling that we have provided for in our comprehensive economic plan that we passed in July. Schumer wants to pull the plug on all of it. It is part of their bill. It is part of the ransom note. It is what the Democrats are trying to do.

Let's be honest. The Democrats have a political problem. The far left, their radical wing, is demanding a shutdown of the government. Their caucus is divided. The American people overwhelmingly want the government to remain open to provide vital services to the people. They know that it costs

money to shut down the government. It costs even more to reopen the government. Democrats don't seem to care.

What we have here is a clean, bipartisan, continuing resolution to fund the government for the next 7 weeks. The House of Representatives has already passed it with a bipartisan vote, and it keeps the government open for 7 weeks at the current funding levels. So it doesn't cut anything.

It says: Let's just continue to work on appropriations bills. It gives Republicans and Democrats an opportunity to work on the budgeting for next year, the appropriations process, to keep the government open for the next year. President Trump is ready to sign it. It is here before the Senate, and it is time to pass it.

Senator Schumer has repeatedly bragged that Democrats never shut down the government when they were in the majority. I would remind the minority leader today that 13 times under Joe Biden, the Senate passed a clean continuing resolution to keep the government open. We should do the same right now. Senator Schumer ought to remember those 13 times. Today should be no different. If this government shuts down--and it should not--it will clearly be a Schumer shutdown.

I yield the floor.

The following Senator is necessarily absent: the Senator from Alabama (Mr. Tuberville).

The following Senator is necessarily absent: the Senator from North Carolina (Mr. Tillis).

The following Senators are necessarily absent: the Senator from Kansas (Mr. Marshall) and the Senator from North Carolina (Mr. Tillis).

Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent to have printed in the Record the GAO opinion letter dated September 18, 2025.

Mr. President, 2 years ago, when the government was on the brink of a shutdown, the then-majority leader, now-minority leader, Senator Schumer of New York, wrote a letter to his colleagues--I have it here--dated September 2023. It says:

Dear Colleague.

In his letter, Senator Schumer wrote:

We cannot afford . . . brinkmanship or hostage-taking.

He went on to say:

The only way to avoid a shutdown is through bipartisanship.

Well, I am happy to announce that just in the last hour, the House of Representatives passed, in a bipartisan vote, a continuing resolution to keep the government funded.

That is not what we are seeing today, though, from the minority leader. Senator Schumer has written this time not a ``Dear Colleague'' letter but the biggest ransom note in American history.

Regular order? No.

One trillion dollars in ransom for 4 weeks of keeping the government open. It is filled with partisan, political poison pills that will never become law.

What we are seeing today from the minority leader is exactly what he once condemned. He is holding the American people hostage. What he is promoting today is not a spending bill; it is a shakedown--the Schumer shakedown, the Schumer strategy to lead to a Schumer shutdown.

Let me break down this ransom note line by line because the American people deserve to know what the Democrats are demanding. Their $1 trillion demand includes $500 billion to continue the COVID-era spending spree. We were originally told that the COVID bonus subsidies would be temporary. Democrats now want to turn them into a permanent government giveaway. This is in spite of the fact that the COVID crisis ended years ago.

The Nobel Prize-winning economist Milton Friedman was right. He said:

Nothing is more permanent than a temporary government

program.

Additionally, Democrats want to weaken Medicaid for those who need it the most. Republicans' comprehensive economic plan strengthens Medicaid. We reduce waste, fraud, abuse, and corruption. Democrats want to kill those reforms. They want to repeal the entire healthcare section of the law.

Democrats would rather shut down the government than stop States from paying for free healthcare for illegal immigrants. Democrats want to continue to give Medicaid to able-bodied, working-age adults who refuse to work. Democrats are holding America hostage for people who broke our laws and for people who refuse to get jobs.

Now let's talk about money that the Democrats want to send overseas. This bill spends billions of dollars on radical climate projects: Zimbabwe, $13 million for ``civic engagement''; Honduras, $25 million for ``climate resilience''; West Africa, $40 million for ``low- emissions development.'' Let that sink in. Republicans want to keep the government open, pay our troops here at home. Democrats would rather fund climate projects overseas and are willing to shut down the government if we are not willing to do that.

Democrats are willfully wasting billions of hard-working Americans' tax dollars on their liberal fantasies. Republicans are proposing 7 weeks of clean funding. It is what passed the House in a bipartisan way just an hour ago, and Democrats instead are demanding seven figures for foreign slush funds.

Mr. President, let me point out that Democrats do make some spending cuts. Regrettably, those cuts target our Nation's most vulnerable hospitals in rural communities. Democrats want to eliminate the $50 billion Rural Hospital Stabilization Fund. It is something we just passed earlier this year--passed it this summer. It is something that I hear about from our hospitals at home and how grateful they are. And I am a doctor. I practiced medicine in my home State of Wyoming for more than 20 years. I was president of the Wyoming Medical Society. I know the stresses and strains on rural hospitals, and that is why this was passed.

Mr. President, your home State of West Virginia experiences exactly the same thing. We both know how many small community hospitals need the kind of help that we were able to pass that the Democrats now want to strip away. With rural hospitals under significant stress, the last thing Congress should do is remove the funds designated to help keep them open, and they want to instead spend this money in foreign countries. That is what the Democrats want to do.

Let me return to Senator Schumer's own words:

We cannot afford . . . brinkmanship or hostage-taking.

Yet hostage-taking is exactly what he is doing today.

Senator Schumer is demanding a trillion dollars in new spending for keeping the government open 4 weeks. He is sending billions of dollars to foreign countries but slashing billions of dollars for rural hospitals in our own country; subsidizing free healthcare for people who refuse to get jobs but threatening the paychecks of the people whose job it is to keep our Nation safe.

He is demanding a far-left wish list or else he wants to shut down the government. That is the Democrat strategy today; make no mistake. Republicans will hold Democrats accountable for supporting this dangerous political theater.

The good news is Congress can keep the government open and functioning without hostage-taking and without shakedowns. Republicans' clean continuing bipartisan resolution that just passed the House with a bipartisan vote is ready to go; 7 weeks long, it gives Republicans and Democrats on the Appropriations Committee the time they need to finish their work.

I see the chairman of the Appropriations Committee and ranking member on the floor right now.

The House passed it today, bipartisan; President says he will sign it. Senate Democrats voted for similar bills not once, not twice, but 13 times when Joe Biden was President. There is only one person standing in the way of keeping the government open. That is the Minority Leader.

He has said it himself: We cannot afford hostage-taking. I would say to the Minority Leader: Stop holding the government hostage; stop holding the American people hostage; get rid of the ransom note; keep the government open. The American people deserve better than a trillion-dollar shakedown.

I yield the floor.

The following Senators are necessarily absent: the Senator from Indiana (Mr. Banks), the Senator from Tennessee (Mrs. Blackburn), the Senator from Louisiana (Mr. Cassidy), the Senator from Wisconsin (Mr. Johnson), the Senator from Utah (Mr. Lee), the Senator from Oklahoma (Mr. Mullin), the Senator from South Carolina (Mr. Scott), and the Senator from Alaska (Mr. Sullivan).

The following Senators are necessarily absent: the Senator from Indiana (Mr. Banks), the Senator from Tennessee (Mrs. Blackburn), the Senator from Louisiana (Mr. Cassidy), the Senator from Wisconsin (Mr. Johnson), the Senator from Utah (Mr. Lee), the Senator from Oklahoma (Mr. Mullin), the Senator from South Carolina (Mr. Scott), and the Senator from Alaska (Mr. Sullivan).

The following Senators are necessarily absent: the Senator from Indiana (Mr. Banks), the Senator from Tennessee (Mrs. Blackburn), the Senator from Louisiana (Mr. Cassidy), the Senator from Wisconsin (Mr. Johnson), the Senator from Utah (Mr. Lee), the Senator from Oklahoma (Mr. Mullin), the Senator from South Carolina (Mr. Scott), and the Senator from Alaska (Mr. Sullivan).

The following Senators are necessarily absent: the Senator from Indiana (Mr. Banks), the Senator from Tennessee (Mrs. Blackburn), the Senator from Louisiana (Mr. Cassidy), the Senator from Wisconsin (Mr. Johnson), the Senator from Utah (Mr. Lee), the Senator from Oklahoma (Mr. Mullin), the Senator from South Carolina (Mr. Scott), and the Senator from Alaska (Mr. Sullivan).