Floor Statements

Madam President, on another matter, we have just arrived back in the Nation's Capital following a couple weeks back home, and I am glad to report that I was able to put that time to good use.

It is no secret that Texas is one of the best places in the country to do business, and that was certainly confirmed by my visit back home these last couple of weeks. I had the opportunity to visit with some of our most impressive businesses, from major manufacturing facilities to local, family-owned small businesses.

One such visit was to Daikin Texas Technology Park in Waller County, a suburb of Houston. There, I had the opportunity to tour their facility and attend a townhall with many of their employees. It is a truly impressive facility, employing more than 10,000 workers in our State and leading the world in the engineering and manufacturing of heating and air-conditioning products.

I also visited Alliance, TX, which is actually in Tarrant County or Fort Worth, which is now a massive, master-planned, mixed-use development in North Texas. Alliance is home to a number of important businesses, residential neighborhoods, and a thriving island inland port that boosts our country's supply chains. Located along an interstate with rail and air access, at 27,000 acres, Alliance is nearly double the size of Manhattan. From its inception in 1990 until today, Alliance has had an incredible $130 billion economic impact on our State.

Now, as you might imagine, one of the major themes of my discussion back home was the importance of our major task at hand here in the Senate, which is extending the expiring provisions of the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act. While we made an important first step by passing the budget resolution in the House and the Senate, now the various committees of jurisdiction have their work cut out for them to pencil in the details of the precise policies that will then require the President's signature.

I spent a great deal of time back home hearing about the importance of these tax cuts and how they have benefited not just Texas families but small businesses throughout the State.

I know most of the time when we think about job creators, we think about Fortune 500 companies, but the fact is, in Texas and across the Nation, it is our small businesses that are the primary engine of job creation.

In the Dallas area, I met with Andy Ellard, the owner and general manager of Manda Machine Company, a third-generation, family-owned company in Dallas. Andy's grandparents founded the company in 1950, operating the business out of a back room in their house. Eventually, when the time came for them to retire, they sold the business to their daughter and her husband, who in turn sold it to their children. Now more than seven decades later, Andy and his siblings are the third- generation owners of Manda Machine Company. Now, if that is not the American dream, I don't know what is.

Andy told me how beneficial the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act was for his family business. He said that over the last 3 years, he has been able to invest $80,000 in improving his business as a result of that legislation. So if the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act is not extended at the end of this year, Andy and his employees in this small business will lose out on these benefits that have helped his business grow and thrive and provide employment for other families.

I visited another place in the Rio Grande Valley, this one called 5x5 Brewing Company. This is a veteran-owned, as it sounds, brewery which is dedicated to brotherhood, tradition, and, yes, you guessed it, great beer. This tradition is reflected on their menu as many of their signature beverages have names of military significance.

There at 5x5, we had a panel discussion of small business owners, including Luis Espindola, who is one of the coowners of 5x5 and a Marine Corps veteran. I met with other business

owners at that panel, like Sarah Hammond, who owns Atlas Electrical Air Conditioning, Refrigeration & Plumbing Services. Sarah is known as a pillar of her community, serving as chair of the Rio Grande Valley Hispanic Chamber of Commerce and helping to oversee the management of Hummingbird Trailer Park. On top of this, she is involved with an organization dedicated to helping develop and empower other women business owners.

Then there was Jessica Delgado, who, having worked in the restaurant industry since age 16, now owns multiple restaurants, and she serves on the board of the Texas Restaurant Association and is a former chairwoman of the Texas Restaurant Foundation.

Another impressive woman small business owner was Hortencia Camargo, the owner of C4 Transport and Hacienda La Hortencia and a licensed Realtor in McAllen, TX, and she is also the founder of GRASP, which advocates for safe gun storage practices around children.

I also had the chance on this same panel to visit with representatives of the agricultural sector, including Dante Galeazzi--I am going to butcher Dante's name--Galeazzi, who is president and CEO of Texas International Produce Association, who emphasized to me how beneficial the Trump tax cuts were for Texas farmers and ranchers.

The message I heard from all of these impressive Texas entrepreneurs, job creators, and pillars of the community was simple: The Trump tax cuts helped their businesses grow and flourish, providing benefits not only to themselves and their families but to their employees and their broader communities.

Stories I heard from my fellow Texans like Andy, Luis, Sarah, Hortencia, Jessica, and others show how patently false the accusation is of our Democratic colleagues who somehow claim that this is just to benefit rich people. The fact of the matter is, the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act is not about helping the wealthy few at the expense of ordinary Americans, contrary to the Democratic talking points.

You know, I have been here working in Washington--or what I like to call the forward operating base in hostile territory--for some time now, and the truth is, you get these prevailing narratives that get repeated over and over and over again and written about by the press that simply have no basis in fact or reality.

The truth is, if we fail to extend the expiring provisions of the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act, 62 percent of American taxpayers will see their taxes go up. Obviously--on top of a 40-year high inflation, which has raised input costs across the board by about 20 percent or more as a result of the policies of the previous administration, that obviously would have a tremendously negative impact on our economy and the standard of living, like the folks I mentioned back home.

This is really about lifting up hard-working men and women across the country. The tax cuts are about helping every hard-working American achieve their dreams. If President Trump's tax cuts are not extended, as I say, virtually everybody or at least a significant supermajority of American working families will see a tax increase. Texans specifically will see taxes increase about $3,000 on average. I am sure every single one of my constituents can think about somewhere better to spend that $3,000 than to write a check to the IRS. Small business owners like many of the folks that I met with these last 2 weeks would see tax hikes of nearly 50 percent, and working families could see their child tax credit cut in half, along with the standard deduction, which was dramatically increased in 2017.

Despite these hard facts, our Democratic colleagues continue to peddle the myth that President Trump's tax cuts are just for rich folks. It couldn't be more clear that these claims are nothing more than just that--myths.

So I urge my fellow Republican colleagues to never mind the naysayers across the aisle. The American people, on November 5, gave us a job to do. We took the important first step by passing the budget resolution just before the Senate adjourned, and now that we are back in Washington, it is time that we finish the job.

I yield the floor.

I suggest the absence of a quorum.

Mr. President, there has been a lot of wailing and gnashing of teeth in the mainstream media about President Trump's commonsense immigration enforcement agenda. That is one of the reasons he got elected on November 5. It is because the American people were fed up with open borders and with the 70,000 Americans who died of fentanyl poisoning, not to mention all of the criminals who came across the border along with everybody else. But to listen to some of my Democratic colleagues talk, one would think that Kristi Noem is deporting grandmothers. Well, this couldn't be further from the truth. So I want to take just a minute to correct the record to talk about exactly what is happening.

The Trump administration is rightly carrying on one of the most basic functions of the government, and that is to keep our people safe. This isn't rocket science. This isn't partisan warfare. In order to keep the American people safe, we need to keep criminals and gangs off our streets, and that is exactly what the Trump administration is doing.

The Department of Homeland Security recently announced they made more than 32,000 enforcement arrests in just 50 days--32,000. This is nearly as many arrests as Immigration and Customs Enforcement, otherwise known as ICE, made in the entirety of fiscal year 2024 when border crossings and ``got-aways'' were at an alltime high. Obviously, this was not a priority for the Biden administration, and we are all living with the consequences.

Of these arrests that have been made under Secretary Noem, nearly half of them have been convicted criminals and others with final orders of deportation. These are people who were either criminals and did not want to appear in front of law enforcement, who were apprehended, or people who claimed asylum or some other legal benefit and lost their cases and are under final orders of deportation but were allowed to remain in the country under the Biden administration. Of these arrests that have been made under Secretary Noem, as I said, nearly half are convicted criminals. One-third of them have pending criminal charges. Nearly 1,200 of them are criminal gang members, and 39 are known as suspected terrorists.

The Department of Homeland Security isn't carrying out this critical mission alone. This is a whole-of-government approach, as it should be. The Department of Justice is partnering with the Department of Homeland Security on a new interagency initiative to crack down on international organized crime, known as Operation Take Back America. International gangs, like MS-13 and Tren de Aragua, have been wreaking havoc, death, and destruction in communities across America.

MS-13, for those who are not familiar with that particular gang, is reputed to be the most dangerous gang on the planet. It is composed primarily of Salvadoran criminal aliens and has 30,000 members around the world, including 10,000 here in the United States. Their

motto is ``kill, rape, control.'' As I said, they are one of the largest and most dangerous street gangs in the United States. Many of their leaders are currently in prison in El Salvador for crimes like murder, kidnapping, and extortion.

However, some on that side of the aisle or in the mainstream media have actually gone so far as to describe MS-13 as Boy Scouts in comparison with the destruction and devastation that has happened at the hands of Tren de Aragua, a Venezuelan gang known for human trafficking, kidnapping, and drug trafficking. This particular Venezuelan gang has been particularly aggressive in my home State of Texas, where the Department of Public Safety arrested more than 40 of the gang's suspected members just last week. In New York, Tren de Aragua has been recruiting gang members from New York migrant shelters, increasing cell phone robbery activities, and trafficking stolen phones back to their headquarters in South America.

But the reason this gang became the topic at dinner tables across America was that they were responsible for the murders of both Laken Riley and a fellow Texan, Jocelyn Nungaray. I can't imagine anyone would be anything except relieved that the Trump administration has prioritized the removal of these gang members from our country.

The Department of Homeland Security and the Department of Justice have shown an ability and a commitment to lock up these dangerous international terrorists at breakneck speed. As part of this initiative, a recently created task force in Virginia--just across the river--arrested 247 individuals in 2 weeks. So this is not just a phenomenon in border States like mine. These people are embedded around the country--literally, in every State.

Among these arrests in Virginia was Henrry Josue Villatoro Santos, one of MS-13's top gang leaders, who was charged, in this instance, with illegal gun possession.

Another MS-13 leader, Joel Vargas-Escobar, was arrested in New York just last week. This particularly dangerous criminal was most recently arrested for his alleged involvement with 11--11--murders, but this was not his first run-in with the law. He was previously arrested and deported back in 2018, but due to the Biden administration's open border policies, he was able to illegally enter the country again.

The Department of Homeland Security recently announced that, in less than a week, ICE has arrested 68 gang members of the Venezuelan gang that I mentioned a moment ago.

With Secretary Noem and Attorney General Bondi at the helm, I think we can all sleep more easily knowing that law enforcement is finally able to do their job, which is to enforce the law--something the Biden administration seemed positively allergic to. As a result, our homeland will be safer and more secure.

The Trump administration is committed to dismantling these international criminal organizations that have created so much havoc and heartache throughout our country. It should be obvious and universal that keeping our citizens safe is not a partisan exercise. It is nothing more than common sense, and it is actually the responsibility of government to enforce the laws that Congress passes. Refusing to arrest and lock up criminals who never should have been in the country in the first place will go down in history as one of the biggest mistakes the Biden administration and Democrats have ever made. The Trump administration is rightly correcting the terrible mistakes of the Biden administration.

The American people deserve to live in a country where they don't have to be fearful for their safety, and that is what they voted for last November 5. Parents should not have to worry about their children never being seen or heard from again simply because they go for a jog like Laken Riley did. Far too many innocent people have lost their lives because of the Biden administration's open border policies and failure to keep criminals and gangs out. It is incomprehensible to me that the President of the United States refused to enforce the laws, and it has resulted in so much pain and misery and heartache among so many people in this country.

The Trump administration's, by contrast, arrests and deportations of criminal migrants here is part of the solution, not part of the problem.

I am confident the American people know nonsense when they hear it, even when it is broadcast over mainstream media, and the fearmongering that we hear on the left about the Trump administration's efforts to keep all Americans safe are nothing more than that.

Mr. President, I have six requests for committees to meet during today's session of the Senate. They have the approval of the Majority and Minority Leaders.

Pursuant to rule XXVI, paragraph 5(a), of the Standing Rules of the Senate, the following committees are authorized to meet during today's session of the Senate:

committee on armed services

The Committee on Armed Services is authorized to meet during the session of the Senate on Thursday, April 10, 2025, at 8 a.m., to receive testimony in open and closed session.

committee on banking, housing, and urban affairs

The Committee on Banking, Housing, and Urban Affairs is authorized to meet during the session of the Senate on Thursday, April 10, 2025, at 10:10 a.m., to conduct an open session hearing on nominations.

committee on commerce, science, and transportation

The Committee on Commerce, Science, and Transporation is authorized to meet during the session of the Senate on Thursday, April 10, 2025, at 10 a.m., to conduct a hearing.

committee on energy and natural resources

The Committee on Energy and Natural Resources is authorized to meet during the session of the Senate on Thursday, April 10, 2025, at 10 a.m., to conduct a business meeting.

committee on finance

The Committee on Finance is authorized to meet during the session of the Senate on Thursday, April 10, 2025, at 10 a.m., to consider pending nominations.

committee on the judiciary

The Committee on Judiciary is authorized to meet during the session of the Senate on Thursday, April 10, 2025, at 10:15 a.m., to conduct an executive business meeting.

Madam President, as the Presiding Officer will recall, it was 2:30 in the morning on Saturday--just a few short hours ago, it seems like--that the Senate voted to pass a budget resolution amending the House budget resolution, the next important step to passing President Trump's ``America First'' agenda.

The budget will go back--and has gone back--to the House, and then it will be time for the committees to do really the hard work. This was the easy part, passing the framework, but now we have to write the bills to implement not only the continuation of the current tax provisions but also the spending cuts that are so important and to help the President keep his other promises that he made on the campaign trail. And we are on our way to what President Trump likes to call ``one, big, beautiful bill.''

Well, a lot of important conversations have been taking place, on both sides of the Capitol, about what the result will be. But while these questions and some differences are natural, the critical matter at hand in this budget resolution is to make sure that we don't impose a multitrillion-dollar tax increase on the American people.

Now, there have been a lot of crazy allegations made about what the budget actually did or did not do, while some of our colleagues have said that the American people don't want to see their tax cuts extended, which is false, and I don't know who they are talking to. And then they claim that the extension would benefit the wealthy few at the expense of the middle class. That is also another false statement.

As I said, if the President's tax cuts are not extended, we will see a multitrillion-dollar tax hike, the largest in history, and 62 percent of American taxpayers will see a tax increase in 2026. Working parents will see the child tax credit cut in half, and the average family of four that earns $80,000 a year will face a $1,700 tax increase. Back home in Texas, my constituents would see their taxes increase by $3,000 on average next year.

Now, imagine this. If we failed to follow through on President Trump's campaign promises and on our campaign promises, if we agreed with the Democrats who were demagoguing this issue, can you imagine what that would do to the standard of living of hard-working American families? And that would be on top of 4-year high inflation--actually the highest in 40 years. So that would be, to me, insult added to injury, to add a huge tax increase on top of all of the inflation that Americans experienced during the last 4 years--roughly, on average, about a 21-percent increase in the cost of living.

But not just families would be affected. Small businesses would see their Federal tax rates increase by almost 50 percent. One recent survey found that 61 percent of small business owners said they would have to increase prices as a result of the tax increase on them. Can you imagine what that would do to already high prices as a result of inflation?

Nearly half of these small businesses reported that they would have to postpone or cancel capital investments; in other words, they couldn't grow their business, hire more employees, or improve their equipment.

Now, these are not massive corporations, as we hear from folks on that side of the aisle. They talk about businesses as if they were all Fortune 500 companies. Most businesses in America are small businesses, the owners of which pay business income on an individual tax return-- so-called passthrough entities. And these are the folks--these local entrepreneurs are the ones--that create jobs and help employ hard- working Americans who are pursuing their American dream.

Republicans, it is good to announce or report or reassure that we are united against these defenseless claims coming from the other side. That doesn't mean they will stop. They are depending on low-information voters, people who just read the headlines or read certain propaganda to carry the day on their false allegations about this just helping the rich people. Or one of my favorite is they were arguing during the budget vote-arama, as it was called, that this was going to affect Social Security.

They know and we know that the law prevents Social Security from being even included in these discussions. So how could it possibly be true? It can't be true.

So we have to get this bill over the finish line by sometime this summer. In addition to preventing the biggest tax increase in history, this bill will provide an opportunity for us to take important steps in controlling spending and addressing our national debt.

Now, I noticed the chairman of the Armed Services Committee just came into the Chamber, and he knows, like I know, as the Presiding Officer knows, that we are now paying more for interest on the national debt than we are on defense, in a very dangerous world--perhaps the most dangerous since World War II.

So we have to begin the process of controlling our spending, and the only way we do that is by looking at everything that the Federal Government spends.

The Federal Government spends about, I think, roughly $6.7 trillion a year, but it is crazy to acknowledge that we only typically look at about 28 percent of what the Federal Government spends--so-called discretionary spending. So we have to find a way to reduce our spending, not only on the discretionary side but on the mandatory side, so we can fund our Nation's priorities.

And our top priority as the Federal Government has to be to defend and protect the American people and our way of life. But we can do this without tampering with essential programs like Social Security, as I said, and programs like Medicare that our seniors rely on.

Now, one of the ways we can do this, which I hope we will embrace wholeheartedly, is to look at means-tested Federal programs. So what does it mean to have a means test?

Well, it depends on your income. Wealthy people don't qualify. People of modest and lower income brackets can qualify for these means-tested programs. But they need to have work requirements for able-bodied adults because there are a lot of able-bodied adults that are simply living off of the American taxpayer, costing billions and billions of dollars for the taxpayer, running up our national debt, when they should be contributing to our economy and contributing to their families and their communities by doing meaningful work.

For a long time, there was a bipartisan consensus around work requirements. In 1996, for example, President Clinton and Newt Gingrich, when he was Speaker of the House, came together to pass monumental reforms on the way our welfare system works in America, and one of the key components of that was that welfare assistance depended on work for able-bodied adults.

We are not talking about children. We are not talking about the elderly. We are not talking about the disabled. We are talking about able-bodied adults.

The Welfare Reform Act of 1996 replaced AFDC, as it was called, with TANF, or Temporary Assistance for Needy Families, which imposes a 5- year limit on cash assistance and required recipients to either work or participate in some type of job training. The bipartisan goal of this policy was to promote self-sufficiency rather than dependency, something the Federal Government ought to encourage and incentivize as much as we possibly can.

And here is the good news: It actually worked. It worked.

It is not just a theory. Within 5 years of passing the law, welfare's caseloads declined close to 50 percent--the first significant decline since World War II. Employment and earnings increased among low-income individuals, with employment among single mothers increasing from 50 to 100 percent 7 years after President Clinton signed it into law. During the same time period, child poverty declined by 2.9 million people.

But despite the success of this bipartisan policy, the Obama administration began to roll back these requirements by issuing TANF work requirement waivers. In other words, they said to the various States: You don't need to impose this work requirement on able-bodied adults in order to collect temporary assistance for needy families.

The Trump administration built on previous successful work requirement policies by issuing a rule that would condition SNAP, or food stamps as they are sometimes called, on similar work requirements. After all, why should somebody be able to qualify for food stamps if they are able to work and simply refuse to do so--and, in fact, when it is good for them to actually go back to work and provide the dignity that goes along with that, to self-sufficiency supporting themselves and their families and their communities.

The U.S. Government spends about a trillion dollars on means-tested assistance programs, and work requirements are a commonsense step forward for reform.

But setting aside the budgetary impact of work, there is a moral reason for these work requirements. Gainful employment has dignity. People feel better about themselves. They are more productive. They are happier. They are able to contribute not just to their own well-being but to that of their community and their family.

So it is more than just a paycheck. It can help address the loneliness epidemic that we saw, particularly post-COVID, and it is proven to improve mental health outcomes across the board.

So I would encourage my Republican colleagues to join me in strengthening work requirements across means-tested programs when the time comes to identify these savings within our committees.

The American people voted overwhelmingly for President Trump, and now it is our turn to deliver the ``America First'' agenda that our constituents voted for and take this opportunity to address our national debt and encourage more Americans to pursue gainful employment instead of solely relying on government benefits.

The Senate has completed our next step by passing President Trump's budget, and it is time for the House to do the same.

I yield the floor.

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

Mr. President, I have seven requests for committees to meet during today's session of the Senate. They have the approval of the Majority and Minority Leaders.

Pursuant to rule XXVI, paragraph 5(a), of the Standing Rules of the Senate, the following committees are authorized to meet during today's session of the Senate:

committee on armed services

The Committee on Armed Services is authorized to meet in open session during the session of the Senate on Thursday, March 27, 2025, at 9:30 a.m., to conduct a hearing on nominations.

committee on banking, housing, and urban affairs

The Committee on Banking, Housing, and Urban Affairs is authorized to meet in open session during the session of the Senate on Thursday, March 27, 2025, at 10 a.m., to conduct a hearing on nominations.

committee on commerce, science, and transportation

The Committee on Commerce, Science, and Transportation is authorized to meet during the session of the Senate on Thursday, March 27, 2025, at 10 a.m., to conduct a hearing.

committee on commerce, science, and transportation

The Committee on Commerce, Science, and Transportation is authorized to meet during the session of the Senate on Thursday, March 27, 2025, at 2:15 p.m., to conduct a hearing on a nomination.

committee on foreign relations

The Committee on Foreign Relations is authorized to meet during the session of the Senate on Thursday, March 27, 2025, at 11 a.m., to conduct a business meeting.

committee on health, education, labor, and pensions

The Committee on Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions is authorized to meet during the session of the Senate on Thursday, March 27, 2025, at 10 a.m., to conduct a hearing.

committee on small business and entrepreneurship

The Committee on Small Business and Entrepreneurship is authorized to meet during the session of the Senate on Thursday, March 27, 2025, at 9:30 a.m., to conduct a business meeting.

Mr. President, I further ask unanimous consent that the Senate proceed to the consideration of S. Res. 148, submitted earlier today.

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

Finally, Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that when the Senate completes its business today, it stand adjourned until 3 p.m. on Monday, March 31, that following the prayer and the pledge, the morning hour be deemed expired, the Journal of proceedings be approved to date, the time for the two leaders be reserved for their use later in the day, morning business be closed, and the Senate proceed to executive session and resume consideration of Calendar No. 40, Matthew Whitaker; further, that at 5:30 p.m., the Senate vote on the motion to invoke cloture on the Whitaker nomination; and, finally, if cloture is invoked on the Whitaker nomination, all time be considered expired and the Senate vote on confirmation of the nomination at a time to be determined by the majority leader, in consultation with the Democratic leader.

Mr. President, if there is no further business to come before the Senate, I ask that it stand adjourned under the provisions of S. Res. 148.

Mr. President, I have spoken before about my constituent, my fellow Texan, Elon Musk here on the floor and recounted the fact that it was really, maybe, probably--at least 15 years ago, maybe a little longer, when he came to my office here in Washington, DC, and said he had a new company called SpaceX, and he wanted to compete for the business of NASA and commercial space.

And as it turned out, Mr. Musk had to sue the U.S. Government just for the privilege of competing with the United Space Alliance, I believe it is called, the existing entity that had an exclusive contract on space flight with the U.S. Government.

I read recently that now SpaceX carries about 90 percent of the payloads in the world into space. It is a remarkable testament to not only his incredible innovation but resilience and persistence to build such a successful company.

And that is not the only one he has built. Tesla is headquartered in Texas. I have been out to the Gigafactory right outside of Austin, TX, and he is building cars that are very popular and employing an awful lot of Texans--which I am all in favor of--and they continue to grow and hire more of my constituents.

Mr. Musk has done something here in Washington, DC, in the last couple of months which is heresy; it is heresy. He has actually said the Federal Government spends too much, and he said a lot of what the Federal Government spends is waste and fraud and abuse. And much of it, as we have seen, are things that most of us had no real awareness of. But as he has targeted some of the most egregious examples of waste and abuse of the taxpayer dollar, I think there are many people across the country--certainly where I come from--who have applauded that effort. They feel like this has been long coming and long overdue.

One of the major challenges we face here in Washington, DC, is that spending money is very popular, and, of course, people who spend money--even though it is not theirs, it is the taxpayers' dollars--can go home and say: Guess what I did for you. And most of it involves spending. But we are now having to come to grips with the fact that we are $36.4 trillion in debt, and we have kicked the can down the road so long that we have run out of road.

And, indeed, many of us have talked over the years about the fact that this is immoral. We basically are writing checks that our children and grandchildren will have to cash. Somebody is going to have to pay that money back.

And now we are spending more money on interest on the national debt than we are to defend the Nation, which is a very dangerous set of circumstances, given the situation we find ourselves in, which is the most dangerous time since World War II.

Now, it is no secret that Elon Musk is perhaps the richest man in the world. I don't begrudge him that. It looks like he has done some amazing things and continues to do so. I know that with that sort of money, he doesn't have to be up here volunteering to do some of the work that needs to be done in terms of identifying the waste and abuse. He could go relax on an island somewhere. He could buy an island. He could do whatever he wants and he wouldn't have to lift a finger to help anybody else and he could just live a life of luxury and leisure for the rest of his existence, but I don't believe he is wired that way. I am grateful for that because, instead, he is volunteering his time to serve not only the President of the United States but the American people.

You don't have to agree with everything that Mr. Musk recommends to recognize that this is an incredible public service, and this is long overdue, identifying all of the waste and abuse and egregious expenditures of taxpayer dollars.

In fact, I am a little shocked that our Democratic colleagues don't join us in this effort. I happen to be a member of what we call the DOGE Caucus, the Department of Government Efficiency. We are making recommendations to DOGE to look at different departments of the government and say: Can you find savings here? Can you find expenditures that don't make any sense?

I am kind of shocked our Democratic colleagues refuse to join us in that. It seems like, in a normal world, they would be concerned about this too. Instead, they just say: The status quo is just fine. We don't need to change a thing--$36.4 trillion and counting.

And, in fact, they seem to be in denial of the fact that President Trump and Republican majorities in both Houses were elected on November 5. Hopefully, that won't continue indefinitely.

But what I want to mention is some of the violence and the acts of vandalism that have occurred around the country that have been focused primarily on Tesla owners.

Now, by the way, most of these Teslas aren't owned by Elon Musk anymore. They have been sold to private citizens, and yet they have been the target of a lot of the vandalism and violence that we have seen around the country.

Just 2 days ago, police officers found what they called multiple incendiary devices at a local Tesla dealership in North Austin, where I live. Now, this prompted a full bomb squad to respond, and an investigation is still underway. Thankfully, there were no injuries, but it is ridiculous that the state of our public discourse has reached this point.

The North Austin Tesla dealership bomb threat, unfortunately, is not the first of its kind. It comes on the heels of another attack in Las Vegas where several Teslas were set on fire outside of a service center. I have no idea what that was supposed to accomplish.

The protesters vandalized the building by spray-painting the word ``resist'' on the front doors, while at least one protester reportedly threw a Molotov cocktail.

Over on the west coast in Seattle, four Cybertrucks were set on fire earlier this month.

The Associated Press has reported that there have been at least 50 demonstrations around the country focused on Tesla, while more are planned, not just here in the United States but around the world in countries like England, Spain, and Portugal.

Some Tesla owners have reported incidents of vandalism of their personal vehicles. Some have been even spray-painted with swastikas. Now, why anyone would think that would be a good idea is beyond me.

It should go without saying, but I will say it anyway, that that kind of violence and vandalism of private property is unacceptable. But I know not everybody is speaking up to condemn these attacks.

Now, I support the First Amendment. Obviously, I take an oath to support and defend the Constitution of the United States--all of us do here in the Congress--and I will defend the right of all Americans to express their views about government, even when they and I may disagree. But the First Amendment, we know, does not protect activities like placing explosive devices or damaging private property. Those are simply crimes, and I would hope that much is obvious.

It is certainly understandable, and perhaps inevitable, that some people will disagree about reducing government spending. Our Democratic friends are the party of government. They got us 40-year high inflation because, during the last 4 years, we have seen an unprecedented expenditure of taxpayer dollars, which is inherently inflationary. And every single American has seen an increase in their cost of living and a decrease in their quality of life because they are paying about 21 percent more today than they did 4 years ago.

But there are people who think that spending money without any sort of second thought is a good idea--maybe people who benefit from that government spending--but they also have a right to express their concerns. I am not suggesting that they don't. But what is far from understandable and, in fact, is inexcusable is what we are seeing in the examples that I mentioned: this expression of political disagreement in the form of vandalism, destroying private property, and especially using potentially fatal means like the incendiary devices that were found in Austin. We should not hesitate to call this what it is: domestic terrorism.

Now, I wish I could say that this kind of behavior is an anomaly and has

never happened before and is unlikely to happen again, but, unfortunately, this has happened before, and it is reminiscent of the violent unrest that plagued our Nation with the BLM riots that happened during the summer of 2020.

We live in a democratic republic, not a banana republic. We are blessed to live in a country where we value and protect the rights of citizens to speak freely. We live in a country with universal suffrage, where citizens can bring their disagreements with their government officials to the ballot box.

But placing bombs and lighting cars on fire is not an appropriate means of expressing dissenting views in a country like the one we are blessed to live in. We are so much better than that.

For this reason, I was disappointed to see one of my fellow Texans in our congressional delegation go so far as to condone these kinds of activities. Congresswoman Jasmine Crockett recently made comments encouraging violent protests at a virtual rally. She said, and I quote--these are her words, not mine. She said:

All I want to see happen on my birthday is for Elon to be

taken down.

Well, that could be interpreted any one of a number of ways, but I believe it is wrong to wish on any American, much less a fellow Texan, and I would expect better than this sort of incendiary rhetoric from a Member of Congress who was elected to her position because of the very democracy we are fortunate to enjoy.

But this isn't the only thing she said recently that has raised eyebrows and resulted in condemnation. Congresswoman Crockett recently commented that our Governor, Gov. Greg Abbott--who happens to be a paraplegic as a result of a terrible accident years ago--she referred to him as ``Governor Hot Wheels,'' presumably because he is in a wheelchair due to an accident decades ago.

And then Senator Cruz, my colleague, the junior Senator from Texas, she said should ``be knocked over the head, like hard.''

This is disgraceful, and we should call it for what it is. We have a duty as elected officials to bring out the best in our country, not to take the low road. And, particularly, we should not encourage harm against people we don't particularly agree with. This is a disturbing trend in political rhetoric, one that has turned to violence--again, not for the first time, but we should condemn it, and we should shut it down now.

These events should serve as a wake-up call that it is past time to turn down the temperature. I believe that all Americans and all Texans deserve better.

I yield the floor.

I suggest the absence of a quorum.

Mr. President, I have seven requests for committees to meet during today's session of the Senate. They have the approval of the Majority and Minority Leaders.

Pursuant to rule XXVI, paragraph 5(a), of the Standing Rules of the Senate, the following committees are authorized to meet during today's session of the Senate:

committee on environment and public works

The Committee on Environment and Public Works is authorized to meet during the session of the Senate on Wednesday, March 26, 2025, at 10 a.m., to conduct a hearing on nominations.

committee on foreign relations

The Committee on Foreign Relations is authorized to meet during the session of the Senate on Wednesday, March 26, 2025, at 10 a.m., to conduct a hearing.

committee on foreign relations

The Committee on Foreign Relations is authorized to meet during the session of the Senate on Wednesday, March 26, 2025, at 2:30 p.m., to conduct a hearing.

committee on the judiciary

The Committee on the Judiciary is authorized to meet during the session of the Senate on Wednesday, March 26, 2025, at 10:15 a.m., to conduct a hearing on nominations.

select committee on intelligence

The Select Committee on Intelligence is authorized to meet during the session of the Senate on Wednesday, March 26, 2025, at 2:30 p.m., to conduct a closed briefing.

subcommittee on personnel

The Subcommittee on Personnel of the Committee on Armed Services is authorized to meet during the session of the Senate on Wednesday, March 26, 2025, at 2:30 p.m., to conduct a hearing.

subcommittee on strategic forces

The Subcommittee on Strategic Forces of the Committee on Armed Services is authorized to meet during the session of the Senate on Wednesday, March 26, 2025, at 9:30 a.m., to conduct a hearing.

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

Mr. President, for some reason, the Presiding Officer has drawn the short straw to be the Presiding Officer during my daily or frequent speeches here on the floor, though I appreciate your patience and indulgence.

This morning I come to the floor to talk about the Intelligence Committee's ``Worldwide Threats'' hearing that is ongoing now in the Hart Office Building. We have all the leaders of the intelligence community, including the Director of National Intelligence, there.

We hold this hearing once a year. It serves as an important reminder of where the United States stands in terms of the rest of the world and what you should be concerned about and what we should protect against.

Key among the threats that have been testified to already in open session--and we will be going to a closed, classified session here shortly--but key among the threats discussed this morning was the threat of Russia.

Russia is engaged, of course, in an ongoing hot war with Ukraine, a conflict that President Trump is rightly seeking to end. While this is perhaps toward the forefront of many people's minds when they think about Russia, it is not the only threat Russia poses to the West, and I use the term ``West'' advisedly. That is not just the United States. That includes the United States, but it is far broader than that.

Some have described--and I think even the Director of National Intelligence, Tulsi Gabbard, this morning confirmed--that Russia is engaged in a shadow war against the West.

One of the ways that they have engaged in this shadow war is through sabotage. That, again, was also confirmed by the Director of National Intelligence this morning. She said these have included attacks against transportation targets like trains, airplanes, and other vehicles, attacks against government and military targets. And some of these attacks have been directed toward critical infrastructure like pipelines, undersea fiberoptic cables, and the electric grid.

Russia has also targeted industries like defense companies and the leaders of such companies that support their adversaries. These attacks have accelerated in recent years.

Between 2022 and 2023, Russia has quadrupled its orchestrated sabotage attacks in Europe. And then they nearly tripled again in 2024.

And while this behavior has escalated in recent years, it should come as no surprise to anyone who is familiar with Russian history or the history of Russian actions when it comes to their adversaries.

Given Russia's geography, it has always been part of their strategy to extend their westernmost border to provide a larger buffer and a smaller border for Moscow to have to defend. But above and beyond their history of aggressive expansionism, trying to restore, really, the now- collapsed Soviet Union, Russia also has a history of using tactics outside of conventional warfare.

These are tactics that advance Russia's strategic interests and weaken those of its adversaries but may not rise to the level that would merit countermeasures by the target of these efforts.

The Soviet Union, the predecessor to the Russian Federation, has historically heavily relied upon such tactics during the Cold War; for example, the KGB, which was the name of the premier Russian intelligence agency back during the Cold War. The KGB led a campaign to influence public opinion among certain populations to advance Soviet interests. And, of course, that has continued today under Vladimir Putin and the Russian Federation.

One of the reasons the KGB and now the modern intelligence agencies of the Russian Federation use these methods is they do not necessarily trigger article 5 of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization agreement. Article 5 is the agreement that an attack against one member of NATO will be considered an attack against all, which is why it is called a collective defense agreement. And the United States, of course, is one of the signatories to that North Atlantic Treaty Alliance.

And one of the risks of Russia triggering article 5 is that it would necessarily risk a broader war, regional or even worse. And, of course, I know we are all acutely aware of the dangers posed by any country triggering article 5 of NATO.

This is, in part, why President Trump has rightly insisted that our NATO allies increase their defense spending in line with their NATO commitments. It is just not fair or appropriate or, actually, in NATO's self-interest for those countries to depend entirely on the United States, which is why President Trump has said the 2 percent of GDP defense spending requirement is really out of date and that really NATO countries should be spending somewhere closer to 5 percent of their gross domestic product on their defense. Again, that is also to relieve the burden on the American taxpayer who has been picking up the tab for far too long.

And we see the success that President Trump has had by urging our NATO allies to provide more for their self-defense, with France and Germany leading the charge to reinvigorate their defense budgets. That is encouraging, but it takes time. But it needs to start, and it has already started.

But in any case, it is clear that Russia is concerned about anything that might trigger article 5 treaty obligations. Russia, in fact, knows that in a conventional war, it is no match for the West or NATO. And so they resort to behind-the-scenes activities to indirectly advance their own interests and harm those interests of their adversaries without triggering a reaction from the West.

Now, some of these are the reasons why--because Russia knows that it cannot win a conventional war in Europe, were one to break out, is why it continues to rattle the nuclear saber and why Putin, over and over and over again, threatens the possibility of the use of tactical nuclear weapons, which, of course, would be catastrophic for everybody involved.

Some of my colleagues may be familiar--I am sure the public is--with the analogy of a frog in boiling water. If you drop a frog in a pot of boiling water, it will immediately jump out, but if you put a frog in a pot of lukewarm water, you can slowly acclimate the frog to that temperature and it will not jump out. But, of course, once the water comes to a boil again, it will kill the frog and, obviously, be too late.

That analogy, I believe, applies to the threat that Russia continues to pose to the United States and our friends and allies around the world.

This could, in fact, be the West, if we are not vigilant, because we know that the approach and the tactics and the intentions of the Russian Federation have really not changed over time.

They are slowly, however, turning up the temperature to weaken us and perhaps to lull us into complacency. But this is not the only tactic that Russia has employed in its war against the West. They also have a history of more blatant war crimes.

In 2014, Russia violated its commitments in the 1994 Budapest Memorandum by annexing Crimea, which is part of Ukraine. The Budapest Memorandum, which, again, was dated in 1994, was a treaty signed by Russia, the United States, and the United Kingdom. Under this agreement, Ukraine, which had become newly independent after the fall of the Soviet Union, Ukraine would dispose of its nuclear arsenal in exchange for an agreement to protect its territorial integrity and independence.

And at the time, Ukraine had the third largest nuclear weapons stockpile in the world. So it was certainly in the interest of the United States and world peace to see Ukraine dispose of that nuclear stockpile.

But then, again, in 2022, Russia violated its commitments under the Budapest Memorandum by launching a full-scale invasion of Ukraine. These actions are a clear signal to the West that Russia has a history of reneging on its agreements and simply cannot be trusted.

And so the task at hand for the West, including the United States, is to reestablish deterrence of Russia and to make sure that we do everything we can to disincentivize them from continuing this long train of abuses.

And, of course, one of the consequences of rising feelings of insecurity in Europe is that now you have countries like Poland talking about acquiring nuclear weapons. You have the incoming chancellor of Germany saying that perhaps the UK and Germany should share its nuclear weapons with Ukraine.

Now, I had the chance to question the head of the Defense Intelligence Agency, and I asked whether this threat of proliferation of nuclear weapons made the world a more dangerous place. It seems like an obvious question. But, of course, he confirmed that that would be the case.

So proliferation of nuclear weapons in Europe is a bad thing and something we ought to seek to avoid at all costs. So I know President Trump has a big task in front of him, and I personally will do everything I can to support his efforts.

But we need to reestablish deterrence without seeing nuclear weapons proliferate, which will, in fact, make the world more dangerous and not safer.

As I have said before, and I think is obvious to all of us, we are living in the most dangerous time since World War II. And, certainly, this morning's hearing on the world threat assessment before the leaders of the intelligence community have driven home this reality and confirmed what we already knew.

Mr. President, on another related matter, today is the National Medal of Honor Day, where we honor the bravery of our military heroes who have been awarded the Medal of Honor. Last Saturday, I had the chance, along with the Presiding Officer, to attend the grand opening of the Medal of Honor Museum in Arlington, TX, where I was moved by, among other things, the words of General Rainey, the head of Army Futures Command, headquartered in Austin, TX. General Rainey reminded us:

Nobody hates war more than the men and women who served in

it, but we all hope that when we find ourselves at that

moment, the darkest hour of the darkest day when it is our

turn to [be] tested, we hope that we will measure up to the

courage and valor of these men.

So as we consider the challenges that face not only the United States, but the rest of the free world, I think the words of General Rainey can serve as a reminder in this moment. And while we may have some differences among us about our preferred approaches and tactics, we should all be united in our goal of preventing the proliferation of nuclear weapons and, Heaven forbid, another reoccurrence of the world war that my dad fought in many years ago.

And hopefully, to be able to keep our young men and women out of harm's way, rather than to have them exposed to the same dangers that previous generations were exposed to in two world wars in the European continent.

Again, I applaud the efforts of President Trump and Vice President Vance to do everything possible to wind down the current conflict in Eastern Europe in order to avoid it from morphing into a larger regional or even global conflict.

And I think those of us who believe in a higher power would do well to continue to say our prayers that that ultimately is a successful effort, and I certainly will join in that effort.

I yield the floor.