Floor Statements

Mr. President, I was happy to be back home last week, as were, I am sure, all the Members of the Senate. And as typically happens--as I was explaining to my constituents--typically, we are in session here about 3 weeks out of the month, and then we have a week back home where we can travel our States. Whether you are in North Carolina or you are in Texas, usually, you have a lot of ground to cover in a relatively short period of time, but it is always good to be back home.

I want to report a little bit on some of my travels because it was a very, very productive week. From Corpus Christi, which is on the gulf coast of Texas, and Houston, also along the gulf coast--now, the Gulf of America--to Midland, to Dallas, to San Antonio, to Austin, I had great conversations with folks that are praising the work we are doing here in Congress. It is nice to get some good reviews now and again, but particularly our support for President Trump's agenda and for his team.

The last time the President got elected, Democrats dragged out the confirmation process, and it took, literally, months before the President had his Cabinet in place. But as a result of keeping the Senate in session for an extended period of time without breaks, we finally broke the opposition and got, basically, most of the President's Cabinet confirmed to this point, and people are excited.

Of course, energy security is national security, and President Trump, unlike his predecessor, said he wants to usher in an era of American energy dominance, which is also important not only for our national security but also for our economy, bringing down gasoline prices at the pump so working families can feel that. It is already beginning to work.

During the week, I traveled out to Midland, TX, which is where the Permian Basin is located. This is a region that is famous for its energy production. It actually extends from Texas west into New Mexico. I went on a tour of a field where the oil is literally being produced from the ground and then processed and then injected into a pipeline where it heads to refineries and other parts of the State and the country. This impressive facility is making a lot of headway thanks to the most advanced technology, delivering affordable and reliable energy while using state-of-the-art technology.

One of the issues that had been raised in the past because of environmental concerns is a release of various methane emissions into the atmosphere. This is as a result of loose connections in pipe and other designs that needed to be improved upon, and, indeed, they have been. New emissions monitoring systems use everything that include the use of helicopter-mounted sensors and other improved technology to help improve efficiency and reduce those emissions, which means cleaner air and lower costs.

I went down to Corpus Christi, which is on the gulf coast of the Coastal Bend region of Texas, and met with energy businesses located there. Primarily, they are in the export business. They are exporting American LNG and oil to our friends and allies around the world. Corpus Christi is home to a number of impressive and innovative projects. One of the things they are working on that I intend to do more to help them with is to put in place a desalinization plant.

(Mrs. BRITT assumed the Chair.)

One of the challenges we have in Texas because of the huge development of our State--31 million people and growing, 1,600 people a day moving into the State--is that our development is outstripping our ability to provide water to communities all across the State, and because of permitting problems, it takes forever to build a new reservoir. So one of the things that Corpus Christi is doing is using state-of-the-art desalination plants, modeled after what they have observed in Israel, for example, and it has six of these impressive facilities. Desalinization uses nanofiltration to remove salt and other minerals from seawater. One thing we have an abundance of on the gulf coast of Texas--in Alabama as well--is we have a lot of seawater, which allows, in using this technology, our State and that region to meet future water needs.

This is something I want to engage in here in Washington with my friends and colleagues who may have similar issues in their home States. As I tell my constituents back home, usually when they identify a problem, I go on a hunt to try to find Senators from States that have similar issues and concerns and then build a consensus and support for solutions that we might be able to offer in cooperation with our State and local authorities. The technology is impressive, and it has the potential to address significant needs in a growing region. As I said, it is not even just in the Corpus Christi area; it is throughout the State and, perhaps, even throughout other parts of the Nation.

In addition to desalination, we had a great discussion about the importance of the Port of Corpus Christi and the product that passes through that port that helps America's energy independence and helps our friends and allies around the world.

I heard firsthand of the benefits that have come to the Coastal Bend from the Corpus Christi Ship Channel Improvement Project. Because of these ultralarge oil tankers, they are able to carry up to 30 percent more oil in these tankers to our friends and allies around the world than our existing ships, but the problem is, they need to deepen and widen the port, which is why the Corpus Christi Ship Channel Improvement Project is so important. This will dramatically increase the capacity for crude oil to our friends and allies and will save the port up to $150 million every year. In 2015, Congress approved the lifting of the ban on crude oil exports, which has allowed the Port of Corpus Christi to become the third largest port for oil exports in the world.

America is one of the most significant energy producers, and in large part, it is because of what happens in the Lone Star State. The ship channel project will make the Port of Corpus Christi one of the deepest and widest in the Gulf of America. When America has the capacity, I believe, under the current administration, to drill and export more oil and gas, it means the rest of the world becomes more reliant on America and less reliant on our adversaries, like Russia. I have been a longtime advocate for the Corpus Christi Ship Channel Improvement Project, and after decades of hard work by so many, it is exciting to see this project move forward and come to completion here in the next few weeks.

But increasing energy production wasn't the only one of President Trump's agenda items we discussed when I was back home. Another important opportunity I had during the State work period was to meet with my constituents to talk about the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act and how it has helped their small businesses and their employees thrive.

I remember 2017, during President Trump's first term, when we passed the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act. Democrat colleagues at the time said: Well, this is only going to help the rich. Well, it didn't just help the rich. It literally helped everybody in every tax bracket. So I thought it was important to go back and talk to my constituents and say: OK. What was your experience, and how important is it to you that we continue by renewing the expiring provisions of that legislation--some of which expire in 2025.

Well, not surprisingly, the folks back home disagreed with those who are reading from the talking points from the Democratic National Committee. For example, I met with the good folks at Southland Hardware in Houston, TX. Now, this is one of the original hardware stores that you don't find very much anymore, where you can literally buy almost everything that you can imagine. We also had representatives from Empire Tools and Sylvia's Enchilada Kitchen and Tejas Office Products-- all thriving small business owners who shared their support for the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act and explained why it needed to be extended.

I heard the same thing from business owners all across the State, including Austin, where I live. We went to Wally's Burger--even in Austin--right at the start. I went there in 2018, and I went back. Robert Mayfield, who employs a single franchise there in Austin, 7 years later, reported that the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act had been very, very helpful, allowing him to provide better benefits and bonuses to his employees whom he considers to be part of his family.

So I would encourage the naysayers of our Democratic colleagues to actually talk to real people about what their experiences have been. I would bet what I learned was not isolated. I am sure it is common throughout the country. I am sure they would find that the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act did not, contrary to our Democratic colleagues, just help a bunch of rich people. The Tax Cuts and Jobs Act has, in fact, allowed people in communities from Austin to Houston and everywhere across the country to provide more of what they have earned to their families; to provide employment opportunities for their neighbors, and contribute to their communities, which is just another way of saying: Help them to help contribute to the American dream.

So that is why we have no option but to extend the expiring provisions of the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act. Many are already benefiting-- ordinary working families and small business owners--as I said, but if Congress fails to extend these expiring provisions, these same people who have sacrificed so much will no longer be able to offer the same benefits to their workers, making it harder for them to attract the talent they need and making it harder for them to literally keep their doors open.

If we fail to extend the tax cuts, 62 percent of American taxpayers will see a tax increase in 2026, including people like the ones I mentioned back home in Texas--small business owners, in particular, because they pay a business income, typically, on an individual tax return--their so-called passthrough organizations, not corporations. They will be particularly hard-hit. They would see their Federal tax rates increase nearly 50 percent. Working parents would see the child tax credit cut in half, and Texans, whom I represent, would see their taxes increase on an average of $3,000 next year.

I would be happy to introduce our Democratic colleagues to these folks, and they can learn what I learned if they are willing to listen. Hope springs eternal. I am sure these same folks would be happy to give them an earful about why their view of the tax cuts only benefiting millionaires and billionaires is dead wrong.

So I look forward to continuing to work with my colleagues here in the Senate and our House colleagues to pass a budget resolution, then to get the necessary reconciliation instructions in order to make this happen. There is so much more we have to do. We have to get our country back on a sane fiscal path. We are now at, roughly, $36.4 trillion in debt. In other words, the current generations and previous generations have racked up debt that our kids and grandkids and great-grandkids are going to be responsible for paying, which strikes me as profoundly immoral.

We know how to fix this. We should, and we can now thanks to President Trump's election and his commitment not only to reducing waste and inefficiency in the government, as identified by the Department of Government Efficiency, but also to looking at programs that we haven't revisited in decades: to look at whether they still make sense, whether there need to be some reasonable work requirements for able-bodied adults for means-tested programs. All of these things are on the table, and we need to roll up our sleeves and get to work here in the coming weeks so we can get this done without delay.

So I was delighted to be home, but now we are back at work. We need to roll up our sleeves and get the job done because failure is not an option.

I yield the floor.

I suggest the absence of a quorum.

I yield the floor.

I suggest the absence of a quorum.

Mr. President, a lot has changed in Washington, DC, in the last 6 weeks. That is an understatement, perhaps. But one of the things that President Trump has done is shifted the Overton window when it comes to the People's Republic of China.

Years ago, when the Clinton administration invited China to join the World Trade Organization, the idea behind that was that somehow communist China would change with being part of the rules-based international order. Well, of course, we know China doesn't follow the rules and has taken advantage of the United States for decades. But under President Trump, that will no longer be the case. For example, last month, the White House announced its America-first investment policy, which will be critical for holding China to account.

One of the avenues that China has exploited to gain the upper economic hand is through both inbound and outbound flows of capital. By investing in U.S. companies, the People's Republic of China and the Chinese Communist Party can obtain access to intellectual property and know-how. And, of course, they have no shame. Again, they don't play by our rules. They are not afraid to cheat or steal our technology if it is possible.

On the other side of the coin, U.S. investments from the United States are flowing into China and have for a long time. A 2021 estimate was that the market value of U.S. investments in China was valued at more than $1 trillion.

Now, the reason why that is important is that China has used that investment to build their economy and their military. It has allowed them to advance technologies that one day might be used against the United States.

So I am very glad that President Trump, by his Executive order, has brought this issue from the back burner to the front.

It is no secret to any of my colleagues that I have been working on this issue for a while now. I was proud to partner with President Trump during his first administration to update CFIUS, the Committee on Foreign Investment in the United States. This interagency committee reviews foreign investments and real estate transactions to determine whether they pose any security risks for the United States.

Through the Foreign Investment Risk Review Modernization Act, or what was known as FIRRMA, we strengthened and modernized CFIUS to rise to the occasion of new threats coming from the People's Republic of China. The President's America-first investment policy builds on this by directing CFIUS to restrict PRC investments in U.S. tech, agriculture, energy, raw materials, and more.

But as Chinese companies get richer and richer from American investment, it is clear that restricting inbound investment is not enough. We need to prevent the People's Republic of China from using capital investments by the United States to gain access to and copy our technological advances--most importantly, in certain critical sectors.

As of 2023, U.S. investors were investing close to $2 billion in Chinese critical technology sectors, including semiconductors, quantum computing, and artificial intelligence. A report from the U.S.-China Economic and Security Review Commission noted: ``The United States is the most important foreign source of investment to semiconductors, quantum computing, and AI in China.''

Let me say that again. ``The United States is the most important foreign source of investment to semiconductors, quantum computing, and AI in China.''

So it is these investments, which are largely opaque to us, as policymakers, that are helping China basically compete with us. We know, of course, it is not just about economic competition. We know that China has a strategy of military-civil fusion, which means that these investments are not simply benefiting China's economy and consumer tech sector; they are directly helping build China's military strength.

It is not too dramatic to say that as I stand here, U.S. dollars are funding the development of technologies that could one day be used against Americans, potentially even to kill Americans or American troops.

Inbound and outbound investments are simply two sides of the same coin. We can't be giving away all of our intellectual property and our incredible innovation for Chinese companies to copy at will, and we can't be giving them the capital to recreate our ideas or reverse- engineer and then use them against us.

How can we expect to outcompete our most significant competitor on the world stage if we are sending billions of dollars directly into their arsenal?

President Trump has been a great partner with Congress on ending this exploitative relationship with China. Again, this is not dealing with another country on the basis of good faith and a knowledge that everybody is operating from the same set of rules and norms. China does not, and we have recognized that more recently, but it is important to reemphasize because some people, I think, still naively assume China operates by the same rules the United States does.

So I am glad the President is as excited as I am to finish the job we started with CFIUS reform.

Today, I am proud to announce that I am introducing legislation to finally tackle this issue called the Foreign Investment Guardrails to Help Thwart China Act. The acronym is FIGHT China. Two years ago, I sponsored an amendment to the NDAA requiring transparency for these outbound investments. It passed the Senate overwhelmingly with a final bipartisan vote of 91 to 6. We don't see many votes here in the Senate these days where there is such strong bipartisan support, so I am grateful for that.

Regrettably, even in the face of such overwhelming consensus, this amendment did not make its way into the final version of the bill for reasons I won't dwell on now. But, as my colleagues can attest, I am not one to give up easily, and this issue is simply too important to American national security to take no for an answer, so I have continued to work with great partners in the House, in the Senate, and in the Trump administration to continue to make progress on this and bring us to where we are today.

The legislation we are introducing today has been the culmination of years of work, and I believe it is stronger as a result of the input and the collaboration that have occurred.

The FIGHT China Act will establish a program at the Department of Treasury to prohibit U.S. investments in certain sensitive technologies in the PRC.

Now, some people may say: Well, if you stop all U.S.-based investment in China, that is a big problem. But we are not talking about that. I could care less how many Starbucks or Burger Kings are built in China. It only addresses certain of the most sensitive technologies. These include advanced semiconductors, artificial intelligence, quantum computing, and hypersonics. Of course, all of these have a military application.

So this is not just an economic question; this is a national security issue. We know that all of these critical industries directly support the Chinese military, and this is the military that has been instructed by President Xi to be ready to invade Taiwan or to absorb Taiwan one way or another, either by force or by coercion, by 2027. It is simply foolish to continue to send money to fuel these technologies that could be used perhaps in the next few years against the United States and our allies.

This legislation would create a notification regime to create more transparency around investments that are not prohibited. You know, as long as we are blind to how much money is

being invested in China and in what technology and in what sectors it is being invested in, we as policymakers can't do our job and the administration can't do its job, which is primarily to keep our country safe and the American people safe.

This legislation will authorize the President to impose sanctions against any PRC entity that engages in PRC military or intelligence sectors.

I want to express my gratitude to our colleagues, people like Senators Cortez Masto, Warren, Banks, Slotkin, Ricketts, Bennet, Hagerty, Kim, McCormick, Schumer, Sullivan, Fetterman, and others for their partnership on this legislation.

I especially want to recognize the chairman of the Banking Committee, which has principal jurisdiction over this subject matter, Senator Tim Scott, and thank him for working with me and cosponsoring this legislation.

Last but not least, President Trump has been a great partner to see this project to the finish line. Everything we are doing here is working hand in glove with the administration to ensure that the People's Republic of China is not allowed to meddle with the United States under the guise of simply doing business.

But time is running short. We know that China, as I said, has an interest in reincorporating Taiwan as early as 2027, not 2 years from now. Now is not the time to continue to allow them access to copy all of our work, in particularly the most sensitive areas. Nor is it the time to allow them to continue to benefit from U.S. investment dollars now that they are no longer a developing country, but they are one of the most advanced economies in the world and certainly a rising military power.

We know that China, Iran, and Russia have conducted joint naval drills in the Middle East, called the Maritime Security Belt 2025. These exercises took place in the Gulf of Oman near the strategic Strait of Hormuz, the narrow mouth of the Persian Gulf through which nearly a fifth of all crude oil traded in the world passes. This is an ominous sign. We know they are strengthening their cooperation together in a way to undermine and challenge the West, including the United States. The last thing the United States should do is to join this cooperation by investing in the Chinese military, and that includes not just the Government of the United States but all Americans and American businesses and investors.

So the President has been right to highlight this growing threat, and I look forward to continuing to work with President Trump and Secretary Bessent to ensure that U.S. dollars no longer are able to help build the Chinese military and line the pockets of the country that is working to undermine the international rules-based order and the United States first and foremost.

Mr. President, a lot has changed in Washington, DC, in the last 6 weeks. That is an understatement, perhaps. But one of the things that President Trump has done is shifted the Overton window when it comes to the People's Republic of China.

Years ago, when the Clinton administration invited China to join the World Trade Organization, the idea behind that was that somehow communist China would change with being part of the rules-based international order. Well, of course, we know China doesn't follow the rules and has taken advantage of the United States for decades. But under President Trump, that will no longer be the case. For example, last month, the White House announced its America-first investment policy, which will be critical for holding China to account.

One of the avenues that China has exploited to gain the upper economic hand is through both inbound and outbound flows of capital. By investing in U.S. companies, the People's Republic of China and the Chinese Communist Party can obtain access to intellectual property and know-how. And, of course, they have no shame. Again, they don't play by our rules. They are not afraid to cheat or steal our technology if it is possible.

On the other side of the coin, U.S. investments from the United States are flowing into China and have for a long time. A 2021 estimate was that the market value of U.S. investments in China was valued at more than $1 trillion.

Now, the reason why that is important is that China has used that investment to build their economy and their military. It has allowed them to advance technologies that one day might be used against the United States.

So I am very glad that President Trump, by his Executive order, has brought this issue from the back burner to the front.

It is no secret to any of my colleagues that I have been working on this issue for a while now. I was proud to partner with President Trump during his first administration to update CFIUS, the Committee on Foreign Investment in the United States. This interagency committee reviews foreign investments and real estate transactions to determine whether they pose any security risks for the United States.

Through the Foreign Investment Risk Review Modernization Act, or what was known as FIRRMA, we strengthened and modernized CFIUS to rise to the occasion of new threats coming from the People's Republic of China. The President's America-first investment policy builds on this by directing CFIUS to restrict PRC investments in U.S. tech, agriculture, energy, raw materials, and more.

But as Chinese companies get richer and richer from American investment, it is clear that restricting inbound investment is not enough. We need to prevent the People's Republic of China from using capital investments by the United States to gain access to and copy our technological advances--most importantly, in certain critical sectors.

As of 2023, U.S. investors were investing close to $2 billion in Chinese critical technology sectors, including semiconductors, quantum computing, and artificial intelligence. A report from the U.S.-China Economic and Security Review Commission noted: ``The United States is the most important foreign source of investment to semiconductors, quantum computing, and AI in China.''

Let me say that again. ``The United States is the most important foreign source of investment to semiconductors, quantum computing, and AI in China.''

So it is these investments, which are largely opaque to us, as policymakers, that are helping China basically compete with us. We know, of course, it is not just about economic competition. We know that China has a strategy of military-civil fusion, which means that these investments are not simply benefiting China's economy and consumer tech sector; they are directly helping build China's military strength.

It is not too dramatic to say that as I stand here, U.S. dollars are funding the development of technologies that could one day be used against Americans, potentially even to kill Americans or American troops.

Inbound and outbound investments are simply two sides of the same coin. We can't be giving away all of our intellectual property and our incredible innovation for Chinese companies to copy at will, and we can't be giving them the capital to recreate our ideas or reverse- engineer and then use them against us.

How can we expect to outcompete our most significant competitor on the world stage if we are sending billions of dollars directly into their arsenal?

President Trump has been a great partner with Congress on ending this exploitative relationship with China. Again, this is not dealing with another country on the basis of good faith and a knowledge that everybody is operating from the same set of rules and norms. China does not, and we have recognized that more recently, but it is important to reemphasize because some people, I think, still naively assume China operates by the same rules the United States does.

So I am glad the President is as excited as I am to finish the job we started with CFIUS reform.

Today, I am proud to announce that I am introducing legislation to finally tackle this issue called the Foreign Investment Guardrails to Help Thwart China Act. The acronym is FIGHT China. Two years ago, I sponsored an amendment to the NDAA requiring transparency for these outbound investments. It passed the Senate overwhelmingly with a final bipartisan vote of 91 to 6. We don't see many votes here in the Senate these days where there is such strong bipartisan support, so I am grateful for that.

Regrettably, even in the face of such overwhelming consensus, this amendment did not make its way into the final version of the bill for reasons I won't dwell on now. But, as my colleagues can attest, I am not one to give up easily, and this issue is simply too important to American national security to take no for an answer, so I have continued to work with great partners in the House, in the Senate, and in the Trump administration to continue to make progress on this and bring us to where we are today.

The legislation we are introducing today has been the culmination of years of work, and I believe it is stronger as a result of the input and the collaboration that have occurred.

The FIGHT China Act will establish a program at the Department of Treasury to prohibit U.S. investments in certain sensitive technologies in the PRC.

Now, some people may say: Well, if you stop all U.S.-based investment in China, that is a big problem. But we are not talking about that. I could care less how many Starbucks or Burger Kings are built in China. It only addresses certain of the most sensitive technologies. These include advanced semiconductors, artificial intelligence, quantum computing, and hypersonics. Of course, all of these have a military application.

So this is not just an economic question; this is a national security issue. We know that all of these critical industries directly support the Chinese military, and this is the military that has been instructed by President Xi to be ready to invade Taiwan or to absorb Taiwan one way or another, either by force or by coercion, by 2027. It is simply foolish to continue to send money to fuel these technologies that could be used perhaps in the next few years against the United States and our allies.

This legislation would create a notification regime to create more transparency around investments that are not prohibited. You know, as long as we are blind to how much money is

being invested in China and in what technology and in what sectors it is being invested in, we as policymakers can't do our job and the administration can't do its job, which is primarily to keep our country safe and the American people safe.

This legislation will authorize the President to impose sanctions against any PRC entity that engages in PRC military or intelligence sectors.

I want to express my gratitude to our colleagues, people like Senators Cortez Masto, Warren, Banks, Slotkin, Ricketts, Bennet, Hagerty, Kim, McCormick, Schumer, Sullivan, Fetterman, and others for their partnership on this legislation.

I especially want to recognize the chairman of the Banking Committee, which has principal jurisdiction over this subject matter, Senator Tim Scott, and thank him for working with me and cosponsoring this legislation.

Last but not least, President Trump has been a great partner to see this project to the finish line. Everything we are doing here is working hand in glove with the administration to ensure that the People's Republic of China is not allowed to meddle with the United States under the guise of simply doing business.

But time is running short. We know that China, as I said, has an interest in reincorporating Taiwan as early as 2027, not 2 years from now. Now is not the time to continue to allow them access to copy all of our work, in particularly the most sensitive areas. Nor is it the time to allow them to continue to benefit from U.S. investment dollars now that they are no longer a developing country, but they are one of the most advanced economies in the world and certainly a rising military power.

We know that China, Iran, and Russia have conducted joint naval drills in the Middle East, called the Maritime Security Belt 2025. These exercises took place in the Gulf of Oman near the strategic Strait of Hormuz, the narrow mouth of the Persian Gulf through which nearly a fifth of all crude oil traded in the world passes. This is an ominous sign. We know they are strengthening their cooperation together in a way to undermine and challenge the West, including the United States. The last thing the United States should do is to join this cooperation by investing in the Chinese military, and that includes not just the Government of the United States but all Americans and American businesses and investors.

So the President has been right to highlight this growing threat, and I look forward to continuing to work with President Trump and Secretary Bessent to ensure that U.S. dollars no longer are able to help build the Chinese military and line the pockets of the country that is working to undermine the international rules-based order and the United States first and foremost.

Mr. President, last night, the House of Representatives passed a short-term government funding bill that would extend funding through the end of this fiscal year. That is the end of September.

I was surprised to see only one Democrat in the House, Jared Golden from Maine, saw the light that a shutdown is a bad choice. Nevertheless, 212 Democrats voted against the continuing resolution, effectively voting to shut down the government.

It remains to be seen whether our colleagues here in the Senate, our Senate Democrats, will vote for a Schumer shutdown or not. The cognitive dissonance, though, is striking and I think worth commenting on.

If I listen to our colleagues across the aisle, they claim to have a lot of

concern for the Federal workers that depend on government funding. They talk a pretty good game. So I find it interesting that so many of them in the House cast a vote that would put thousands, even hundreds of thousands, of Federal workers out of work, which is what results when the government shuts down.

Of course, I don't like continuing resolutions any more than the next person. They are certainly not the ideal way to govern, and I will talk about that in a minute. But it remains the second worst choice, a shutdown being the worst of all.

So let's take a look at how we got here in the first place. Last year, the Senate Appropriations Committee, on a bipartisan basis, passed all but 1 of their 12 appropriations bills. What did the majority leader--Senator Schumer at the time--what did he do? He simply refused to schedule any of those appropriations bills for a vote.

So it is because of Democratic dysfunction that we find ourselves now in a continuing resolution situation rather than having already attended to what in effect was last year's business and passing appropriations bills for the entire fiscal year.

Well, if our Democratic colleagues don't like voting for another CR, I would encourage them to take that up with their now-minority leader, as this falls squarely on his shoulders.

But the truth is, most of all, our Democratic colleagues are just mad about the outcome of the November 5 election.

Here in the Senate, I am glad that Senate Republicans are working to pass this necessary CR that will ensure that we prevent a government shutdown.

Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent to complete my remarks prior to the scheduled rollcall vote.

Mr. President, it is another week in Washington and I think maybe the 52nd day since President Trump was inaugurated, and we are seeing the compliant mainstream media continue to spread falsehoods about the work of the Department of Government Efficiency and Elon Musk.

As I have said before, the Federal Government has a spending problem, and, like with any addiction, getting

clean and solving that problem is not necessarily easy or comfortable, but it is long overdue and absolutely necessary. With the national debt at $36.2 trillion and counting, we have to start somewhere, and little things add up. What better place to start than the waste, fraud, and abuse that DOGE is identifying?

This has long been a bipartisan issue--I can think of everything dating back to the Grace Commission, where waste, fraud, and abuse was a bipartisan target--but apparently not with President Trump in the office and not with Elon Musk in charge of the effort to identify the spending.

If you take a look at most things that the Federal Government is cutting at the recommendation of DOGE, it becomes harder and harder to become a DOGE skeptic unless you are just blind to what they are doing.

Last week, I mentioned the waste that DOGE had identified with subscriptions and software licenses. People may think, well, that is no big deal, but there is no reason taxpayers should be footing the bill for expensive subscriptions that go unused.

DOGE uncovered the potential for massive fraud with an audit they conducted of government credit cards. At the beginning of the audit, there were 4.6 million active government credit cards--4.6 million. After 2 weeks, DOGE identified nearly 150,000 credit cards that were thankfully unused or unneeded and closed both down. I am sure there is more to be done with 4.6 million active credit cards.

There is no reason for so many government employees to have direct access to spending taxpayer money at the click of a button or the swipe of a credit card. This is basic and would never happen in the private sector or in our individual lives, but in the Federal Government, before this administration and before DOGE, this was commonplace and has been overlooked for way too long.

There are some instances of fraud that we have known about for some time, but it has taken the Trump administration and DOGE to identify and fix them. For example, the Government Accountability Office submitted a report to Congress last April estimating that the Federal Government loses between $223 billion and $521 billion every year as a result of improper payments. The Federal Government is making improper payments and spending potentially up to half a trillion dollars. Naturally, this was an opportunity for DOGE to identify this waste of taxpayer dollars.

DOGE found payments to illegal immigrants using multiple Social Security numbers to submit Medicare claims, something for which they are not legally entitled.

They found $57,000 in Medicare payments in 2020 for a patient who actually was recorded to have died 14 years earlier. It is amazing you can continue to charge for Medicare payments 14 years after your death.

In one particularly egregious instance, an illegal immigrant with a warrant out for her arrest was receiving more than $100,000 in loans from the Small Business Administration, but the waste and abuse of tax dollars goes beyond mere inefficiencies.

Some of the other line items on the DOGE cutting floor are so patently absurd it would make your blood boil. For example, last week, the National Institutes of Health canceled more than a half billion dollars in grants for transgender experiments on mice. You can't make this stuff up. It is stranger than fiction.

In a similar vein, NIH also canceled millions in woke grants ranging from promoting healthy relationships among transgender youth to delivering transgender services via telehealth. I think if you ask most taxpayers how they would like their money to be spent, these programs would not make the cut, but that is not all.

NIH is also canceling research grants that were going to universities in China. They canceled a grant for $1.7 million going to the Peking University in Beijing for the ``China Health and Retirement Longitudinal Study.''

Once again, I think American taxpayers would prefer to focus on the things here at home, including their own retirement savings rather than sending millions of dollars to China to study health and retirement security in a country which is our chief geopolitical rival, but that is not all.

The list goes on. A group called the Inter-American Foundation has been significantly reduced after DOGE found egregious misuse of tax dollars, including over $900,000 going toward alpaca farming in Peru. That is on top of $800,000 for vegetable gardens in El Salvador and more than $700,000 to improve the marketability of mushrooms and peas in Guatemala.

I know that children frequently squirm at the dinner table when they are told they have to eat their vegetables, but I don't think this is an area where most people think our tax dollars should be spent. Unfortunately, this waste doesn't stop at the vegetable aisle.

This foundation also spent more than $600,000 to expand the sales of fruit and jam in Honduras as well as nearly half a million dollars on improving the production of artisanal salt in Ecuador--artisanal salt in Ecuador.

Well, thank goodness the Department of Government Efficiency and Mr. Musk were key to identifying these egregious abuses of the taxpayer, but they have been going on for a long time until the Trump administration came along. So I am grateful that now some of these outrageous expenditures of tax dollars are being exposed and dealt with.

As I said earlier, Washington, DC, has a spending problem. And like any addiction, it is hard to kick the habit, especially after you become adjusted to it, but it is time for a little cold turkey when it comes to this addiction. Many people who benefit from this gravy train don't want it to end.

So, naturally, many of our colleagues on the other side are concerned about DOGE, and they want to suggest that everything the Federal Government does is absolutely perfect. They wouldn't change a thing. But they don't really have any real substantive response to these outrageous examples that I am mentioning here. They wouldn't change a thing.

They see these stats, and they tell you don't believe your lying eyes. But those of us who have looked into it, who have taken the time to study what has been exposed, know otherwise: The government is not infallible.

We have an unsustainable level of Federal debt that threatens our economy and our national security, and the truth is, the Trump administration and Republicans are hard at work trying to address it to make the government more efficient and more affordable for American families.

So, once again, I would like to do something that you don't hear very often here in DC these days and thank Elon Musk for his service to our country in performing this essential and long overdue role.

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

Madam President, last week, I came to the floor to debunk some of our Democratic colleagues' myths, disinformation, mistaken information about the work of Elon Musk and the Department of Government Efficiency.

Ronald Reagan liked to say that facts are stubborn things. It is important to talk about the facts because, hopefully, even in Washington, DC, we can agree on the basic facts. We may have some different interpretations, different policy preferences; but facts are facts are facts.

Today, I want to do the same thing about the Republican efforts to extend the upcoming expiration of the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act, or what is sometimes called the Trump tax cuts, through the budget reconciliation process.

Now, I don't blame the American people or anybody else, when listening to all the process we talk about, and just their eyes glazing over and just tuning us out. But the truth is, if we don't extend the expiring provisions of this tax bill that we passed back in 2017, during President Trump's first term, a vast majority of the American people will experience a tax increase. And that, of course, is on top of a 40-year high inflation during the Biden administration.

I guess nobody likes to talk about taxes because, on one hand, people say: Well, you know, people need to keep more of their hard-earned money. On the left, what they like to say is, you are giving billionaires a tax cut and leaving average wage earners and working families high and dry.

The truth is, on the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act bill that we passed in 2017, the individual rates that will expire at the end of this year, if we don't continue the current policy using the budget reconciliation process, 62 percent of American taxpayers will experience a tax increase. That is not just millionaires and billionaires. That is everybody across the income spectrum.

On the left, our Democratic colleagues, some of them have been claiming that extending these tax cut provisions, as I said, will benefit the very rich at the expense of the rest of us. Our colleague from Massachusetts, Senator Markey, said:

Instead of fighting for working people, Trump is selling

them out to give billionaires tax breaks.

There they go again.

And to no one's surprise, our colleague from Vermont, Senator Sanders, accused President Trump and Elon Musk of being ``oligarchs''-- ``oligarchs.'' He went on to say: ``The oligarchs''--that is the very rich people who have accumulated massive wealth, primarily in Russia and in Europe.

He said:

The oligarchs, with their tremendous resources, are waging

a war on the working class of this country . . . the needs,

the concerns, the ideas, the dreams of ordinary people are

simply an impediment to what they, the oligarchs, are

entitled to.

This accusation, if true, would be serious. But it is not true.

Representative Neal from Massachusetts, on the other side of the Capitol, went so far as to describe the Trump tax cuts as a ``reverse Robin Hood scam.''

And the list goes on and on and on. It is almost as if there is a concerted or orchestrated effort to use disinformation and propaganda to try to prejudice the American people against what it is we need to do in order to avoid this huge tax increase on the vast majority of Americans.

But let's set aside for a moment the fact that President Trump won this last election--promising to do what? Well, to extend the tax cuts that passed in 2017.

We know, before COVID hit, our economy was hitting on all cylinders. All cohorts of the population--African Americans, Hispanics, everyday working Americans--were experiencing record-high levels of employment, and the economy was the best it has been in my lifetime.

We know what happened these last 4 years. We know that Biden economics, or Bidenomics, as they like to call it--I don't know why in the world President Biden embraced the name ``Bidenomics,'' because it was associated with just so much misery and pain and a reduced standard of living by average working-class families across the country.

But we know that inflation--again, the 40-year high inflation that we have experienced in the last few years--has a disproportionate effect on low-income families. Now, that is no surprise because for your purchasing power, if you are on a fixed income or if you are just getting by paycheck to paycheck, the more inflation goes up, the more everything you buy costs.

And households across the spectrum are affected. We have seen that with our own eyes. And, in fact, I believe that was one of the reasons President Trump was elected in 2024.

When you spend a higher percentage of your paycheck on necessities, you have less of a cushion as prices increase. It is just common sense.

To add insult to injury, what did our Democratic colleagues do, when they were in the majority, in response to this massive inflation, which was the direct result of their policies? Well, they poured gasoline on the fire of inflation by using reconciliation to pass something called the Inflation Reduction Act.

Hold that thought for a minute because the Inflation Reduction Act, even at the time it passed, was evaluated and calculated not to reduce inflation.

Again, this is deception, really, at the outset, claiming that this Inflation Reduction Act maybe would have a negative impact on inflation. But President Biden himself later admitted it ``has less to do with reducing inflation''--that is what President Biden said--and was full of even more spending.

Milton Friedman, the Nobel Prize-winning economist, would say the main cause of inflation is too much spending. You flood the economy with more dollars, and then, naturally, the price of everything tends to go up.

You don't need a Ph.D. economist like Dr. Larry Summers, who was probably the most prominent Democratic economist in our country, to tell anyone, especially not the President of the United States, that the answer to runaway inflation is not more government spending. But that is exactly what the Inflation Reduction Act did.

But that is not all. Not only did the Inflation Reduction Act do nothing for inflation, it actually did what Democrats have wrongly accused Republicans of doing. It benefited high earners at the expense of ordinary Americans.

You don't have to take my word for it. Just look at the data. Look at the facts.

By some estimates, the Inflation Reduction Act's electric vehicle and charging infrastructure provisions are projected to cost $180 billion over the next decade. The average cost of an electric vehicle was nearly $7,000 more than an internal combustion engine in 2023. So most working-class families, rather than pay $7,000 more for an electric vehicle--assuming they wanted an electric vehicle--have opted for the lower price internal combustion engine. So the ones who were taking advantage of the subsidy of $7,500, if you bought an EV, were wealthy people, by definition. So our Democratic colleagues, contrary to their propaganda and misinformation, have been the ones who have been providing your hard-earned dollars to subsidize wealthy people to buy luxury items like an electric vehicle.

Households that earn more than $200,000 reportedly represent 42.6 percent of electric vehicle sales. So people who make more than $200,000 a year represent 42.6 percent of electric vehicle sales, while those earning between $100,000 and $200,000 represented 32.9 percent. So if anything deserves to be called ``reverse Robin Hood,'' it would be the Democrats' Inflation Reduction Act.

Given the inflationary and regressive policies that the Democrats promoted during the last 4 years, it is ironic--and maybe you would say even laughable--to hear them accuse Republicans of being disconnected from everyday Americans. The reason why Republicans won the majority in both Houses and President Trump was reelected is because he connected with the concerns of everyday Americans, and particularly their concerns about overspending and inflation, not to mention the border.

So our Democratic colleagues really don't have a leg to stand on when it comes to the facts.

Failing to extend the Trump tax cuts would mean--this is according to the Wall Street Journal--that 62 percent of Americans would see a tax increase in 2026. On the other hand, extending the tax cuts would result in a 3.4 percent increase in after-tax incomes in 2026, by some estimates.

In the 2 years after President Trump signed his tax cuts into law, the median household income grew by $5,000. That is more money to spend on the necessities of life. And in the same period, real wages grew by nearly 5 percent.

Again, those are the facts. You would think that the facts would be something we could agree on, and then we can talk about policies. But, unfortunately, our Democratic colleagues seem to gloss right over those facts, while making wild accusations, which, frankly, are way off the mark.

Contrast this with President Biden's policies, slapping working families with an effective pay cut. With higher prices for food, gasoline, and other necessities, inflation-adjusted disposable income per capita during the Biden Presidency went down 7.7 percent. No wonder people felt squeezed, particularly if you earn a relatively modest income or you were a senior on a fixed income. Your purchasing power went down 7.7 percent.

The stark reality and the fact is, if Congress fails to extend the Trump tax cuts that expire at the end of this year, the average family of four making $75,000 a year will face a $1,500 tax increase next year. Working families will see the child tax credit cut in half.

So the facts are pretty obvious, as plain as the nose on your face: Extending the Trump tax cuts will actually benefit working families, and doing nothing, which is what our Democratic colleagues seem to want, will make them worse off.

At the end of the day, we work for the people we represent in our respective States. And, certainly, the voters in Alabama and Texas and in the majority of the country have made their preference clear. President Trump campaigned on extending these tax cuts. Republicans in the House and the Senate did the same. And we were rewarded with majorities in both Houses and with President Trump being reelected to the White House.

Working families in Texas and across the country voted for the President and the political party they thought would benefit them the most, especially their pocketbooks and their standard of living, and they voted resoundingly for President Trump and congressional Republicans. So it is simply not true to say that Republicans are somehow out of touch with the voters that gave us the majority in both Houses and President Trump reelected to the White House.

I know our Democratic colleagues are angry. They don't like being in the minority. It is not a lot of fun. But there is a reason. And they still haven't learned that the policies they promoted and that they sold to the American people were rejected on November 5. So sometimes, as Ronald Reagan liked to say--again--facts are stubborn things. So I would invite our colleagues across the aisle to look at the facts and maybe look in the mirror and say: What we were doing didn't work out so well, so maybe we ought to work with Republicans to change our policies.

The American people simply cannot afford a tax increase on top of 40- year-high inflation. I look forward to working with my Republican colleagues in the House and the Senate to deliver by extending the Trump tax cuts and to make life better for working families in Texas and across the country. And I would invite our Democratic colleagues to join us, if they will. I am not sure they are there yet. They are still pretty angry. They are still pretty upset. They are still--what do they call it? They call it the resistance. They are the party of the resistance. Well, right now, they are resisting what is best for the American people, and that is a bad place to be.

I yield the floor.

I suggest the absence of a quorum.

Mr. President, I was glad to see President Zelenskyy clearly express his gratitude to President Trump and the American taxpayer for our support for the country of Ukraine over the last 3 years.

There has been much discussion in international communities and here at home on the war between Russia and Ukraine, which has now been going on for 3 long years. It has cost hundreds of thousands of lives on both sides, with millions of people displaced as a result

of the war. Through it all, the Ukrainian people have demonstrated extraordinary courage and resilience.

But one thing is clear: It is time for the war in Ukraine to end. President Trump is right. But the more difficult question is, How?

Years ago, I recall GEN David Petraeus, the leader of our military and Central Command, heading up our efforts in Iraq and Afghanistan, was asked the question: How does the war end?

He said: You tell me how the war ends. Wars are easy to start and hard to conclude.

This is the most difficult question of all--how does it end?

We should all be grateful to President Trump for taking on the difficult but essential task of brokering a peace agreement to end this devastating war. During the contentious meeting at the Oval Office last week, President Trump commented that he hoped to ``be known and recognized as a peacemaker.'' Well, this would be no small feat, but it is the right position to take.

It is not hard to look at this incredible devastation--the massive casualties, the human misery and suffering of the last 3 years--and understand that it is time for the bloodshed to end. But it will take both sides, Ukraine and Russia, to accomplish this goal. Ukraine cannot do it on its own.

President Trump was correct to point out to President Zelenskyy last week during this high-intensity meeting in the Oval Office--he said: I have to align myself with both of you in order to make a deal.

President Trump's skill at making deals is famous, but this would be the crowning achievement of his life if he is able to make this happen.

But the point is, in order to achieve a lasting peace, both sides of the conflict must be willing to sit down and negotiate and make concessions no matter how hard that is.

I am glad to see that President Zelenskyy has indicated a willingness for Ukraine to do so in part through a critical minerals arrangement with the U.S. Government. Such a deal would compensate the United States and its taxpayers for our many years of military and economic support for Ukraine. It would actually be a vested interest that the United States would have every reason to want to protect in the future. Some have called that an implicit security arrangement.

Perhaps most importantly, though, in order to ensure a lasting peace, there must be some real and tangible and enforceable security assurances for Ukraine. To put this in the proper context, we have to consider history, the events that led us up to this point.

In 1994, the United States, Russia, and Britain signed something called the Budapest Memorandum. This was shortly after the fall of the Soviet Union. As the Soviet Union broke up, it turned out that Ukraine, which was formerly part of the Soviet Union, had the third largest nuclear weapons stockpile in the world.

The Budapest Memorandum was an agreement between the United States, the United Kingdom, and Russia that if Ukraine would give up its nuclear weapons, its territorial integrity and independence would be preserved and respected.

This was a historic point in world history. It was an important step toward nuclear nonproliferation and prevented the rise of a major third nuclear power in Eastern Europe. But, unfortunately, Russia proceeded to violate that same agreement in 2014 with the annexation of the Crimean Peninsula, and then, as we know, the Russian Government, led by Mr. Putin, violated that agreement a second time in February of 2022 with its invasion of Ukraine.

If Russia was unwilling to honor the commitments it made in the Budapest Memorandum in 1994 by its invasion of Crimea in 2014 and its invasion of Ukraine as a nation in 2022, how can Ukraine be assured that Russia will honor a peace agreement brokered in 2025? That, perhaps, is the single most important question that we need to ask.

Given the history and pattern of behavior by Russia, if Zelenskyy does not receive adequate security assurances, will this incentivize him to do other things to protect and preserve his nation--for example, to reacquire a nuclear weapons program against an existential threat? We know that President Zelenskyy himself has floated this as a possibility, and more recently, the newly elected Chancellor of Germany had suggested that both Germany and the United Kingdom would share, perhaps, their nuclear weapons capabilities with Ukraine, which would be a dramatic and dangerous development.

But that is not all. We have to keep in mind that both President Zelenskyy and President Putin are not fighting this war in some sort of vacuum. Allies of the United States and adversaries alike around the world are watching.

Will our actions in Ukraine suggest to allies in South Korea, for example, that they should pursue their own nuclear weapon capability, especially in light of the North Korean nuclear program, which receives Russian assistance?

Will more citizens of Taiwan cast their vote for representatives pushing closer alignment with the People's Republic of China as the most prudent way for their people to maintain a guarantee against a catastrophic war in the Indo-Pacific?

Seeing that unanswered aggression is awarded, would President Xi be emboldened to seize Taiwan, as he has made clear he intends to do one way or the other?

These are just a few of the unintended consequences that could play out depending on how these peace negotiations transpire and how they develop.

We, the duly-elected representatives of the American people, must ask ourselves: Will a world of unreliable security assurances, of greater prospects of nuclear proliferation, of insufficient deterrence in the face of unprovoked aggression, result in a safer world for our children and grandchildren?

Well, given these difficult but necessary questions, I would once again applaud President Trump for taking the initiative of embracing peace through strength. His approach is the correct one, and he is right that an important piece of this is that our NATO allies--who, in fact, live in Europe, where Ukraine is located--need to increase their contribution to our collective security under the North Atlantic Treaty alliance. It is through strength we can guarantee peace both in Europe and around the world.

The suffering resulting from the Russian invasion of Ukraine on two occasions--2014 and 2022--has been devastating not only for Ukrainians but also for Russians as well, who have lost hundreds of thousands of casualties in the process.

President Trump pointed out during the meeting with President Zelenskyy that both sides are losing ``1,000, 2,000`` soldiers a week. ``As we sit here and talk, people are being shot and dying on the battlefield.''

What President Trump is doing to secure peace in this dangerous world is an act of moral leadership and I believe divinely inspired.

Jesus said in the Beatitudes:

Blessed are the peacemakers, for they will be called sons

of God.

If President Trump is successful in securing a lasting peace, I, for one, think he will have earned the Nobel Peace Prize.

As President Zelenskyy himself said in the Oval Office--he said:

If President Trump [can] bring peace to our country, I

think he will be on this wall.

He was, of course, referring to the walls of the Oval Office. They have pictures of historic American Presidents who have done great and important things.

It is my sincere hope that President Zelenskyy and President Putin will both accept the olive branch offered by President Trump by coming to the table and by making the necessary, enforceable concessions to ensure a lasting peace.

I yield the floor.

Mr. President, I suggest the absence of a quorum.

Mr. President, there is a lot going on here in Washington, DC. That is an understatement. But I want to highlight the meeting that I had--that I attended, along with many of my Senate colleagues--last week, with Elon Musk and the Department of Government Efficiency team. That is a topic that has gotten a fair amount of information and visibility in the press, but much of it has been misinformation. I would like to address some of that and the importance of this effort, here, in the next few minutes. We had a very informative meeting with Mr. Musk and his team about the work they are doing on behalf of the American people.

I first met Elon Musk maybe 15 years ago, when he came to my office and said he had a new company called SpaceX, and he wanted to be able to compete with other companies that had all of the NASA contracts for space. I guess, looking back on it, that was quite a long time ago, but we see how far SpaceX has come, which now

covers the vast majority of payloads into space for the U.S. Government and for the private sector.

Interestingly, and to the point of the Department of Government Efficiency, Mr. Musk had to sue the Federal Government in order to compete, which tells you a lot about the problems that the Federal Government has; that it is not open to competition and, thus, creates a lot of the problems now that I think the Department of Government Efficiency is now looking at.

But in addition to all of that, Mr. Musk has now moved personally his family and his businesses to Texas. So I am happy to have him as a constituent. He has created a lot of jobs in my State, anywhere from Boca Chica in South Texas, in Cameron County--which is now, I think, officially renamed Starbase--and the Tesla gigafactory, which is right outside of Austin, which I visited a few months ago with Mr. Musk; Starlink, obviously, providing internet access to people in remote parts of the planet that would never hope to have that access--all sorts of interesting things that he is involved in.

Certainly, I think we can all acknowledge, whether you like Mr. Musk and what he is doing or you don't like him, he is obviously a brilliant individual and, certainly, among the most brilliant people I know.

So you have to ask yourself: Why would a guy, maybe one of the richest--maybe the richest--human beings on the planet, do what he is doing for the U.S. Government? I think that is an important question to ask.

Certainly, he is not doing it for the money. He is certainly not doing it for the glory, because anytime you start messing with the status quo here in Washington, DC, you can be assured you will become a target. You will be criticized. You will be demagogued against. You will be lied about. It just goes with the territory, and it is something, I am sure, he has not necessarily experienced before. Frankly, I am glad he is willing to put up with all of that in order to do some important things.

But, of course, what the Department of Government Efficiency is focused on is efficiency--something that we purport and claim to be focused on here in Washington, DC: waste, abuse, and fraud. We talk about it a lot, but that is basically what we end up doing--talking about it and not doing much, if anything, about it.

Right now, the U.S. national debt--that is like our credit card--sits at over $36.4 trillion. I am sure that the American people--certainly, it is true in my case--can't really get your heads around how much money that really is. To me, one of the most telling indications of how big a number that is, is that we are now spending more money on interest on our national debt than we are on our defense, which is the most fundamental and important role that the Federal Government plays.

I know, sometimes, when you have such a big number or a big challenge or a big problem, it is easy to say: Well, it is just too hard. We can't do anything about it.

In the case of politicians, some may say--and I bet there are more than a few: Well, it is too politically risky to try to deal with the status quo because I am sure there are going to be some sacred cows or some pet projects that individual Members of Congress or maybe constituent groups or special interest groups want to preserve. So they don't want you looking at that. They don't want you disrupting the status quo.

But the reality is--and as we heard from President Trump last night, as well as news reports--there are many examples of outrageous expenditures of taxpayer dollars that need to be exposed, and they need to be addressed. We have to start somewhere, and I would submit that there is no time like the present.

If you spoke to someone struggling with a substance abuse problem, an addiction, you would never say to that person: Well, the situation with your addiction is just so bad that it is hopeless. It is simply too hard to change. There is nothing you can do.

The truth is, Washington, DC, is addicted to spending and has been for a long, long time. And we have no responsible choice but to address it.

So I am glad that Mr. Musk and his team have stepped up. And while DOGE may not erase that national debt overnight, they are certainly highlighting the problems that those taxpayer expenditures present. And I think this effort will be part of the answer to how we get back on track and correct our fiscal challenges here in our country.

Now, of course, there are many in Washington who want nothing to change. I think we saw some of them last night sitting on their hands during the President's State of the Union speech. They like the way things are. They like the status quo. As a result, there has been a lot of wailing and gnashing of teeth and, frankly, dissemination of a lot of erroneous information, again, which is just simply not reality.

Now, some in the media have created, for their own reasons, misperceptions that Mr. Musk and his team are going in and making personnel and financial decisions on their own or forcing these decisions on the respective Agencies that they are researching, but that is simply false. Let me say that again. Some may have the perception that Mr. Musk and the Department of Government Efficiency team are themselves making personnel or financial decisions on their own. That is false. The reality is that those working for the Department of Government Efficiency are doing so in compliance with the law.

Each Agency's DOGE employees have gone through the Presidential personnel office onboarding process. They have appropriate security clearances and are direct contract employees of these Agencies, and they must abide by the same guidelines and rules as other employees to ensure the protection of sensitive information.

The reality on the ground is that DOGE employees are reviewing systems, processes, data, personnel, and making recommendations-- recommendations--to the Agency heads. Then the Agency head--in most cases, a Cabinet member appointed by President Trump and confirmed by the Senate--is the one with the authority to make those discretionary calls.

Now, of course, it is a tremendous project, as I indicated earlier, to reform our government's giant bureaucracy, and with any undertaking of this size, it is a given that there will be some trial and error, some mistakes that are made. But, hopefully, those can be readily addressed once pointed out. And the administration has made those course corrections, and they should continue to do so and, I believe, will do so. But there is much to be hopeful about.

One example that DOGE identified--and it is just, to me, a symptom of the problem--is reforming software licenses and subscriptions. We were told at the meeting at the White House with Mr. Musk and the Department of Government Efficiency that some Agencies are finding out that they are paying for as many as 37,000 software licenses but only about 10,000 employees are responsible for functions that require those licenses--37,000 licenses but only 10,000, arguably, would be required. Now, think about what this means for a minute. And, again, this is just a symptom, I think, of a larger problem. This means taxpayers are paying for a lot of software licenses that are sitting around and are not being used.

Imagine if a private company let something like this go unaddressed. Of course, they wouldn't, because if they did, they eventually would go out of business. They would go bankrupt and cease to exist. But the Federal Government doesn't work that way. Some of these things that Mr. Musk and his team are finding should be an embarrassment.

I can tell you that my constituents back in Texas are paying close attention and mainly like what they see. But the perennial problem is that the Federal Government just is very slow to change, and part of that has to do with the incentives that exist in the private sector that don't exist in the public sector. As I indicated, a private business couldn't do what the Federal Government does, or they would go belly up.

This is part of the reason that our national debt has been growing by leaps and bounds without any credible effort by the Congress or the Federal Government to change. And change we must. It is unsustainable.

Now, here in Congress, we have a certain amount of accountability because we run for election. We have to stand

for reelection. Our constituents get to vote for us or against us, and we, naturally, want to be responsive to what our constituents are telling us. There is always a sensitivity, for example, in what we spend in our offices. We take great care--I bet, to a person--not to waste the taxpayers' dime. Now, that is the sort of accountability that democracy provides: government of the people, by the people, for the people.

But when you look at the bureaucracy--a word that literally means ruled by the desk--there are no such incentives; there is no accountability--until now. So to have someone like Elon Musk and DOGE come in and shake things up is just exactly what Washington needs. And, again, it should be no surprise to any of us that there are some folks here in town who don't like what they see. There are many people who want nothing to change.

And we are definitely hearing a lot of speculation, in addition to the misinformation, about what this means and where it will ultimately lead, but many of these stories have turned out to be nothing more than that: stories.

We know there has always been waste, fraud, and abuse within the government, but it does not have to be that way. The problem is big, but it is our job as elected Members of Congress--working as part of the Federal Government, working for the American people--not to ignore it, not to give pretty speeches talking about how bad the problem is; but, actually, our job is to do something about it.

That is why I appreciate what the Department of Government Efficiency and the Trump administration are doing. I truly believe this is a once- in-a-generation opportunity to actually get our fiscal house in order. This is not easy. If it were easy, we would have done it before. This is hard. It is politically risky. But it is absolutely critical that we do so.

If we look at what the voters told us on November 5 of last year, we saw an overwhelming desire of the American people to change the direction of the country. They gave President Trump and us a mandate for change, and I think what DOGE is doing, along with the Trump administration, is very much in line with the mandate that we got from the voters on November 5.

So I support the efforts that the Department of Government Efficiency are undertaking, and I look forward to continuing to work with Mr. Musk and President Trump, as a member of the Senate Caucus for DOGE, the Department of Government Efficiency, so that we can get our Nation's fiscal trajectory back on track. It is absolutely essential that we do so.

I yield the floor.

I suggest the absence of a quorum.

Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the following Members be permitted to speak prior to the lunch recess: Myself, for up to 15 minutes; Senator Murray, up to 10 minutes; Senator Cantwell, up to 5 minutes; and Senator Britt, for up to 10 minutes.

Mr. President, as everybody knows, tonight, President Trump will give an address to a joint session of Congress. I look forward to attending the President's address, and I am happy to welcome my friend Abraham George, who will join me as a guest tonight.

In addition, three other Texans will be joining the President tonight as his guests. Alexis Nungaray from Houston, TX, is an angel mom who lost her lovely 12-year-old daughter Jocelyn. Jocelyn was tragically murdered by two illegal immigrants who, just weeks before, were apprehended and released by the Biden administration.

Next from Texas, Roberto Ortiz from Weslaco is one of our brave veterans who has served nearly a decade in the U.S. Border Patrol. Roberto's courage in the face of danger has been tested repeatedly as he has been shot on multiple occasions by cartel members while on the line of duty near the Rio Grande River in my home State.

And, finally, Elliston Berry from Aledo, TX, is a 15-year-old victim of computer-generated deepfakes. I applaud Elliston for her courage in joining us here tonight and for using her voice to speak out against the dangers posed by new technologies.

Border Security

Mr. President, President Trump has rightfully turned the page on a wide array of President Biden's disastrous policies, from reforming our runaway spending through DOGE, the Department of Government Efficiency, to prioritizing investment in semiconductors and manufacturing, to bringing our hostages held in Gaza back home to their families. But perhaps one of his most significant accomplishments thus far--and it has only been about 6 weeks--has been when it comes to border security, something near and dear to my heart and the heart of my 31 million constituents who call Texas home.

Border security played a significant role in the mandate that the President got last November. The past 4 years were marked by President Biden's failure to enforce the law and to secure our border. And this was, without a doubt, a crisis--a humanitarian and public safety crisis--of the former administration's own making. This was truly a manmade crisis.

Starting from the campaign trail, President Biden invited the massive wave of migration by promising a ``surge to the border'' for asylum seekers. Can you imagine a President inviting a surge to the U.S. border of asylum seekers? This is one promise that, unfortunately, he kept.

But President Biden's failures went far beyond just his rhetoric. In the early days of his Presidency, President Biden basically reversed every policy President Trump had put in place, including the ``Remain in Mexico'' policy, which has been remarkably effective. In other words, people seeking asylum need to remain in Mexico while their claim is being processed.

And the truth is, only about 15 percent of people who claim asylum in America who appear in front of an immigration judge ultimately are granted asylum. They meet the legal criteria; whereas, the other 85 percent do not.

The Biden administration also halted construction of President Trump's border wall and instead used Federal funds to store already- paid-for wall materials. So not only did the taxpayer pay for those materials, they had to pay for the storage of those materials when they weren't used for their intended purpose.

As the border crisis continued to evolve for the worse, President Biden ended title 42, the COVID 19-era policy that was our last line of defense to keep a lid on the migrant crisis when

President Biden refused to enforce other laws.

After undoing the successful Executive orders made by the first President Trump administration, President Biden then decided to circumvent Congress and attempt to make illegal immigration legal using temporary programs that were never intended for that purpose. His Department of Homeland Security created the CBP One app--short for Customs and Border Protection--an app for your phone which allowed migrants to literally schedule a visit to a port of entry so they could then claim asylum and then enter the country.

Another Biden-Harris administration program allowed up to 30,000 migrants a month to enter from four countries--Cuba, Haiti, Nicaragua, and Venezuela. So that was 360,000 migrants who were basically told, if you come, you can stay in the United States. But they were conferred a temporary status that left them all in legal limbo.

Let's not forget the Biden White House cooking the books on illegal immigration by abusing the parole system. ``Parole'' is a word that people who are familiar with the criminal justice system understand. But this is different. In immigration terms, parole means simply you were released into the United States even if you didn't claim a right to be able to stay--for example, a right to asylum. You are just simply released as a border control measure to avoid bad publicity at the border when people were sleeping in the streets and lines were stacking up.

Of course, we know what the tragic consequences of these misguided policies look like--a crisis of mass illegal immigration, human trafficking, drug trafficking across our southern border.

Approximately, 100,000 Americans die each year as a result of drugs that come across the southern border--approximately, 70,000 from synthetic opioids, like fentanyl, which is the leading cause of death for young people between the ages of 18 and 45. During all 4 years of the Biden administration, a number of illegal migrant encounters with CBP totaled over 10 million. That is basically 10 million people showing up and saying let me into your country, and the Biden administration said: Come on in.

But on top of that, there were about 1.7 million ``got-aways.'' ``Got-aways'' are people who were evading law enforcement who appear on some sensor--a camera or some other sensor--and evade law enforcement. Of course, now we know they are freely roaming the interior of the United States.

Let me ask you this. If you know that you could show up at the border and be allowed to enter--basically, ushered into the country--why in the world would you evade Border Patrol? Well, I think the simple answer is these are people who knew that they would not be able to enter because of criminal records because they were transporting drugs or engaged in some other illegal activity. Yet they made their way into the interior of the United States.

Fentanyl, which I mentioned a moment ago, was manufactured from Chinese precursor chemicals, smuggled through the open border, which has taken tens of thousands of lives. And the people in Texas--the 31 million people that I am honored to represent--have felt the burden of President Biden's disastrous border policies most acutely because we are closest to the problem. We are ground zero.

Governor Abbott, our outstanding Governor, and the Texas Legislature filled the gap when the Federal Government refused to do its job along the border. An international border is the responsibility of the Federal Government, not the State government. But what is the State supposed to do if the Federal Government says: ``We don't care about the law. We are not going to enforce it. It is up to you''?

Well, Governor Abbott and the Texas Legislature stepped up, and they spent roughly $11.1 billion to fill the gap that should have been filled by the Federal Government. For that reason, I am insisting that Congress fulfill Governor Abbott's request to be reimbursed $11.1 billion that the State taxpayers had to spend, that rightfully should have been the expense of the Federal Government and Federal taxpayers all across the country.

There can be no doubt that this historic crisis was the direct result of President Biden's policies. That is one of the reasons why I believe not only did he not run but that Vice President Harris lost the election. It was a rejection of those open-border policies.

I am looking forward to hearing the President discuss tonight the incredible strides his administration has made in just about 6 weeks since his inauguration. Nowhere is that success more apparent than when it comes to border security.

After 4 years of record highs, CBP is now facing record lows. The Border Patrol tells me: Now we can do our job. We are not relegated to changing diapers or transporting migrants from one facility to another. We can actually keep out the worst of the worst and enforce the laws when it comes to border security.

As soon as President Trump was elected, even before he took office, the migrant flows began to subside. That is called deterrence. If you know the law is going to be enforced and you know you are not going to be successful making your way into the country, why would you spend thousands of dollars in order to pay off a cartel member to smuggle you up to the border?

During November and December of last year after the election, encounters were at their lowest levels between the ports of entries-- the lowest levels since August of 2020. In the first 2 weeks of January, Customs and Border Protection encounters were nearly 50 percent lower than they were at the same point in January 2021--50 percent lower. During the latter half of the month, when President Trump actually took office, apprehensions fell by a staggering 85 percent compared to the same period in 2024.

You know, the statement is often said: Elections have consequences. One of the most important consequences of President Trump's election on November 5 was we are now reestablishing border security. And the people of this great country are safer for it.

During the entire month of January, there were less than 1,500 apprehensions a day, a nearly 40-percent decline from December of last year. And just 1 week ago, Customs and Border Protection hit a 15-year low of only 200 encounters in 1 day at the southern border. These numbers are pretty impressive, but they are not at all surprising. They are a direct result of the deterrent effect created by President Trump and Secretary Noem's policy changes. Migrants know that a Trump administration means our laws will be enforced.

If you can make your way into our country using legal means, by all means, do so. As I mentioned earlier, our country is the most generous in the world when it comes to legal immigration. We naturalize about a million people a year. So if you have a desire to come to America, do it through legal means, not through illegal means.

Instead of rolling out the welcome mat like President Biden, President Trump started his second administration by turning the traffic light red instead of green. On day one, President Trump declared a national emergency--which it was--at the southern border, giving him greater flexibility to implement his Executive orders. He reinstated the ``Remain in Mexico'' policy and ended President Biden's disastrous catch-and-release policies.

Secretary Noem, our new Secretary of Homeland Security, began her tenure in the President's Cabinet by sending a clear video message to migrants that she intends to enforce the laws that prevent illegal immigration. But she didn't stop there. Under President Trump and his administration, ICE arrests--Immigration and Customs Enforcement--ICE arrests have increased more than 600 percent, which include arrests of criminal migrants which have doubled. They returned to a commonsense, case-by-case approach to humanitarian parole, which had been abused under the Biden administration, where it was used as a way to have mass releases of migrants at the border who had made no legitimate claim to be able to stay. They were just released.

Secretary Noem has also clawed back the $80 million a month spent by FEMA to house illegal migrants in luxury hotels in New York City. That is where your tax dollars went--to put people who had no legal claim to stay in the United States in hotels in New York City to the tune of $80 million.

These policies are welcome. They are good news to my constituents in Texas and I believe to people across the country.

There is a reason why Secretary Mayorkas, the former Secretary of Homeland Security who was responsible for implementing the border security measures of the Biden administration--there was a reason why he was impeached by the House of Representatives. He simply did not do the job he had sworn to do. Well, Texans have had to bear the brunt of open borders for 4 years, which includes rampant crime and deadly fentanyl.

I look forward to working with President Trump and Secretary Noem to continue the important work they have begun to keep Americans and Texans safe.

I yield the floor.

Mr. President, I know there is a lot going on in Washington, DC, these days given the speed and the aggressiveness with which President Trump and his administration have attacked his agenda, and I use that in a very positive way. It gets a little confusing to figure out what is important and what is maybe not quite so important.

But I would like to talk about one thing that has been very top of mind for a lot of us here in the House and the Senate; and that, of course, is the process to implement President Trump's ``America First'' agenda.

This is what the election was about, just on November 5. And, of course, a lot of ink has been spilled on the mechanics of the process, talking about budget resolutions, reconciliation instructions, and things that are gibberish to most Americans, but this is the process by which we do the job of implementing President Trump's ``America-First'' agenda.

Last week, my Senate colleagues and I were here late into the night and into the early morning voting on amendments to the budget passed out of the Senate Budget Committee on which I serve.

Our colleagues in the House voted to pass their version last night, so now we find ourselves at a critical juncture with a different budget resolution in the House from that passed by the Senate.

And, of course, as I said, we have been spending a lot of time and energy talking about procedural questions up to this point. Questions over whether the Republicans will enact President Trump's agenda in one bill or two, whether the bill that eventually reaches the President's desk would originate in the House or the Senate. A great deal of discussion and debate has been ongoing about all of these details and more.

But what is most important is to keep our eye on the prize, what we are actually trying to accomplish. As I mentioned at the beginning, last November, millions of Americans went to the polls and elected President Trump and to turn the page on the last 4 years of the Biden administration's disastrous inflationary policies.

We finally reached a point where, as Admiral Mullen, the former chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff about 10 years ago, when asked what our biggest threat to our national security was, he said it was the debt. And at the time, I think many of us, me included, thought, well, that is kind of an interesting take. Well, we have finally come to a point where Admiral Mullen's statement and reality have converged, where we are now paying more interest on the national debt than we are on defense of our Nation, in a dangerous world which seems to be getting more dangerous all the time.

We spend about 2.8 percent of our gross domestic product on national defense, and there is no question in my mind that we are going to have to up that figure substantially, but we can't do it by continuing to borrow against our Nation's credit card and to crowd out other investment and to pass that debt on to our children and grandchildren. That is just flat immoral.

So now the task at hand is to enact the policies that the American people voted for. And what are those policies? Well, first and foremost, we have to secure the southern border. I represent a State of about 31 million people with a 1,200-mile common border between the United States and Mexico.

We know in Texas what the price that we have had to pay--not just at the border, not just in Texas, but throughout the Nation--for the open border policies of the Biden administration. Customs and Border Protection encounters with illegal migrants increased more than 40 percent from fiscal year 2021 to fiscal 2023, totaling more than 10 billion encounters nationwide.

And when we say this is an encounter, this is people showing up, claiming asylum, only to be released into the interior of the United States and given a

court date that may be 10 years off or simply paroled, which means released into the United States, given a work permit. In other words, in the words of the Border Patrol when I asked them, what do you think the best solution is to deal with this flood of humanity coming across the border, they used one word. They said ``consequences.'' There have to be consequences to coming to the United States outside of legal immigration channels.

And during the Biden administration, there simply were no consequences. It was like having a big, green traffic light on the border telling people from anywhere around the world: Come on in.

And, of course, the people who facilitated that are these criminal organizations, the cartels that have now been designated as foreign terrorist organizations by the Trump administration. And, oh, by the way, not only did they traffic in human beings for all sorts of purposes--including human trafficking of children, young girls, young boys--these were the same people who facilitated the movement of drugs across the border in massive quantities that took the life of more than 100,000 Americans last year alone. About 70,000 of those were from fentanyl, a word that has become more common lately because it is ubiquitous; it is everywhere. It is in States like Montana, States like Texas. And many of my colleagues have said: Well, as a result of the disastrous border policies of the Biden administration, every State is now a border State.

Well, on top of all the people who were simply released--basically enriching the cartels, who charge by the head, and making it easier for them to smuggle drugs into the United States--more than 1.7 million ``got-aways'' evaded Border Patrol. What that means, basically, is they were seen on a camera or some sort of sensor, but by the time the Border Patrol showed up, they were gone.

And, of course, these are the people who, frankly, are up to no good. Whether they have criminal records, whether they were carrying drugs, whether they had some other reason to evade law enforcement, these are not honest, hard-working people who just simply wanted a better way of life--1.7 million ``got-aways.''

The human and drug trafficking facilitated by the Biden administration's open border policies have caused immeasurable suffering to the people of Texas and the people of the Nation. The fentanyl manufactured with Chinese precursors smuggled through the open borders has taken tens of thousands of American lives. It is a shocking statistic to me that, out of the 70,000 or so--young people, mainly-- who died as a result of ingesting fentanyl, unbeknownst to them, they thought they were actually consuming something else--a Percocet, some other relatively innocuous drug--only to find out the hard way that it was contaminated with fentanyl, a deadly drug, which is now the leading cause of death for young people between the ages of 18 and 45.

We know where it comes from. The chemicals come from China. We know where it goes to be manufactured and made to look like relatively innocuous pills that are then taken by our young people. It comes across the border from Mexico. And yet the Biden administration's open border policies made it easier, not harder, for that to happen, and the results, as I said, have been disastrous.

Well, now it is up to us to right the ship by enacting President Trump's border security agenda, but we also have other work to do. We have to extend the expiring tax provisions of the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act, a bill that we passed in 2017. And after 5 years, many provisions of that tax bill expire.

If Congress fails to extend the tax cuts championed by President Trump in his first term and passed by Republican majorities in the House and Senate, Americans will face the highest tax increase in recent history. A family of four making around $80,000 a year will see a $1,700 a year tax hike if these provisions expire.

Let me say that again: A family of four making $80,000 a year will see a tax increase of $1,700 next year if these provisions expire.

Now, the reason why I emphasize that is because to listen to our Democratic colleagues, you would think it is all about billionaires and millionaires. But, no, 62 percent of American taxpayers would pay more taxes if we experience a multitrillion-dollar tax increase as a result of the expiration of these provisions in 2025.

Well, after 4 years of the highest inflation we have had in the last 40 years, families have struggled to keep up. In fact, many of them have been stuck with an effective pay cut and a reduction in their standard of living because the same dollars in their pocket have had less purchasing power than they used to, as a result of this insidious, secret, or invisible tax known as inflation.

So now is not the time to slap these American families with a tax increase. That would be insult to injury. After Washington Democrats eroded the purchasing power of American families, it would only add insult to injury to go back to those same families in Texas and elsewhere and insist that the government needs to take even more of their hard-earned paycheck come tax day.

I was proud to work with President Trump in 2017, along with all of my colleagues. I happened to be the chief vote counter back then, as majority whip, when we passed the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act and made sure that it had the necessary support to get across the finish line. It wasn't easy, but it was important. And it had a huge impact on the quality of life and the standard of living of millions and millions of Americans.

And so I look forward to working with my colleagues here in the Senate to extend those expiring provisions, now during President Trump's second term.

Last but not least, we have to begin the process of getting our spending and debt under control in order to get a grip on the historic, runaway inflation caused by President Biden and Washington Democrats' reckless spending spree, and I also mentioned the impact it has on our ability to provide for the common defense and our national security. Ronald Reagan famously said: Peace--which is something we all aspire to--peace comes through strength. Weakness is a provocation and an invitation to the world's tyrants and bullies--people like Vladimir Putin, people like President Xi in China. If they sense weakness, they will take advantage of it. And what we would need to do in America and with our allies is to reestablish deterrence. That is what ``peace through strength'' means, and we can't do it by continuing to spend borrowed money and racking up debt on our Nation's credit card.

We have a once-in-a-generation opportunity to address not only discretionary spending--which is what we do on an annual basis, which is about 28 percent of what the Federal Government spends--but mandatory spending. The Federal Government spends an enormous amount of money each year. It is in excess of $6.5 trillion.

Now, I don't have the brain capacity to conceive of what $6.5 trillion is, and I doubt anybody does. But it is a lot of money, and there is no way we are going to be able to get our spending problem and our debt problem under control by addressing 28 percent of what the Federal Government spends.

So we need to look not only at the discretionary spending; we need to look at the so-called mandatory spending, which is on auto pilot. And, yes, Medicare and Social Security are off the table. We are not going to be talking about those. We need to address those at some point, but we can only do that with bipartisan support.

And then there are things like the Tax Code, which is more than just deductions and credits. Our Democratic colleagues have now turned the Tax Code into a welfare benefit scheme. The child tax credit and the earned income tax credit are refundable tax credits, which means it is not a credit against income. It is not a deduction. It is a check that is handed out. And there are $200 billion worth of refundable tax credits paid out on an annual basis by the Federal Government--$200 billion. We need to get ahold of that. We need to get that under control.

We also need to return to commonsense requirements that were bipartisan back in the days of Bill Clinton, which is meaningful work requirements for means-tested programs. We need to help people who need help. But if people are able to help themselves by working and providing for their family

and they don't need to be a burden on the taxpayers, then they should be contributing like everybody else and not living off of the American taxpayer.

Americans across the country voted to end the reckless policies of the Biden administration. So now it is up to us to deliver. We have kicked the can down the road so far, we have run out of road, and now we have a once-in-a-generation opportunity, with President Trump and Republican majorities in both Houses, to do something about it.

The House and the Senate have the same goal. The American people have given this administration a mandate, and the clock is ticking. At the end of the day, what matters is not whether the talking heads in the media or people across the country see this as a Senate bill or a House bill. That is inconsequential. What matters is that it is President Trump's agenda that we are implementing, as mandated by the American people last November 5.

We need to get this across the finish line to secure the border, to provide for the common defense, to avoid a massive tax increase on middle-class families, and to get our national debt under control once and for all. That is what Texans voted for on November 5, and I believe that is what Americans voted for on November 5. That is our mandate, and we have no option but to get this job done.

I yield the floor.

I suggest the absence of a quorum.

Madam President, it has been a little over a month since President Trump was inaugurated as the 47th President of the United States. One of his key promises on the campaign trail--and, really, throughout his service in the White House--has been to confront the threat of the Chinese Communist Party and to hold China accountable for failing to play by the rules. The American people voted resoundingly for that agenda this past November, delivering both the electoral vote and the popular vote to President Trump, as well as Republican majorities in both the House and the Senate. Now, the task at hand is to actually begin to implement those promises to hold China to account.

Xi Jinping has made clear his plans to ``reincorporate'' Taiwan in 2027, just 2 years away. We don't know exactly what that entails, but the threat is ominous.

Time is running short to make any potential conflict with China undesirable from their standpoint--in other words, to reestablish deterrence. But the good news is, we have a number of tools available to us and a track record of success on confronting the threat of the CCP during the Trump administration.

Back in 2018, I was proud to work with President Trump on modernizing the Committee on Foreign Investment in the United States, otherwise known as CFIUS. This interagency committee reviews foreign direct investment into the United States for potential national security concerns.

The bill we ultimately passed and that was signed into law by President Trump was called FIRRMA, the Foreign Investment Risk Review Modernization Act. In that law, we updated CFIUS to expand its scope and process to ensure that we are more comprehensively reviewing any investments that might allow influence by foreign entities for nefarious purposes in the United States.

This bipartisan legislation was signed into law by President Trump as part of the 2019 National Defense Authorization Act. FIRRMA was a critical step toward derisking from China.

While this was a big win for Republicans and for President Trump, the truth is we still have more work to do. The top of our to-do list now is to address outbound investment flowing into China by American investors.

At this very moment, American investors--some of these are businesses; some of these are individuals. The investments they are making are fueling China's military buildup and modernization by funneling capital into potentially dual-use technology and military capabilities that could eventually be used against the United States and our allies.

According to the U.S.-China Economic Security and Review Commission's 2024 Report to Congress, U.S. investments in China's semiconductors, quantum computing, and AI alone totaled about $2 billion in 2023.

In 2020, more than 90 percent of these investments were concentrated in the semiconductor industry. And from 2015 to 2021, U.S. investors made up 37 percent of China's global funding for artificial intelligence.

Congress is acutely aware of the threat posed by China's rapid capture of the autonomous vehicle market, advanced cellular technologies, and semiconductor manufacturing. We have acted on these issues before, and it is time to do so again.

I was proud to lead the CHIPS for America Act to help the United States reestablish manufacturing for advanced semiconductors here in America, where the percentage of advanced semiconductors that fuel everything from our cell phones to the avionics in an F-35 Joint Strike Fighter--only 12 percent of those were made here in the United States. The rest of them were made in Asia, principally in Taiwan and South Korea. But we are in the process of turning that around.

But there is another side to this coin. How can we expect to outcompete or even catch up to Chinese companies if, unbeknownst to us, American dollars are continuing to fuel their rise, economically and militarily?

We are simply not being serious about confronting our greatest strategic adversary if we continue to be blind to the investment of billions of dollars in the very technologies that could be potentially used to kill American soldiers, sailors, airmen, and marines.

Now, we have an opportunity on a bipartisan basis to finish the job we began with CFIUS reform just a few short years ago. We can do this by passing legislation to address outbound investment into China. To start with, we need greater transparency. We need some sort of accountability so we know exactly what the facts are.

It is no secret to any of my colleagues that I have been working on this issue for some time now. During the previous Congress, my amendment to the National Defense Authorization Act with provisions to increase transparency around outbound investment passed by a vote of 91 to 6, demonstrating the high level of consensus in this Chamber on this issue. But, unfortunately, this amendment was dropped from the National Defense Authorization Act when it went to conference, and it didn't make it into the final version that was sent to the President's desk and ultimately signed into law.

Then, last year, we made progress along a bipartisan path and in a bicameral manner, with Speaker Johnson and Congressman Michael McCaul, who was then the chairman of the House Foreign Affairs Committee, working on the House's legislative provisions around outbound investment. But, unfortunately, that didn't make it across the finish line before the end of the year.

But there are reasons for optimism that this year will be the time we get these provisions over the finish line. We have worked hard to work with the House's version and to work with the Senate version that passed overwhelmingly, previously, to make sure we marry those up and we establish a bill that enjoys bipartisan, bicameral support.

I have been working with everyone, from the Speaker of the House to the chairman of the Select Committee on the CCP, John Moolenaar, to Congressman McCaul, as well as Tim Scott, chairman of the Banking Committee here in the Senate. We have all made input into a piece of legislation that will finally accomplish what we have been working on for these last few years.

We know time is of the essence, and we are working hand in glove with the Trump administration to ensure this legislation actually accomplishes the goals that we set out for it.

I can't emphasize what a great opportunity this is and what a great win it will be for all parties involved. Addressing U.S. outbound investment in China will be a great opportunity for all of my colleagues here in the House and the Senate to deliver a big win for our country and for our national security.

It will be a home run for all Americans, who can feel safe that American companies and investors are not helping China not only rebuild its economy but also its military as well. And, of course, China continues to be our greatest strategic adversary on the planet.

The only party that stands to lose from this legislation will be the Chinese Communist Party, and it is high time that they be held accountable.

I yield the floor.

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

Mr. President, 2 weeks ago, President Trump issued an Executive order titled ``Protecting Second Amendment Rights.'' This Executive order reaffirmed constitutional rights of law-abiding citizens to keep and bear arms, which, of course, is part of the Bill of Rights--the most precious of those rights and liberties that have been protected since the beginning of our country.

This Executive order directs Attorney General Pam Bondi to review and develop a plan to rescind President Biden's overreach when it comes to firearm regulation.

The President's Executive order comes on the heels of 4 years of President Biden's Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives-- otherwise known as ATF--from trampling on Americans' Second Amendment rights. It started in 2021 with the Biden administration's so-called zero-tolerance policy. President Biden's ATF used this policy to revoke the licenses of firearms licensees, or FFLs, over minor bookkeeping violations.

For decades, the ATF had a history of working with the FFLs to address minor, unintentional violations and actually help correct them. Historically, they would only revoke an FFL license in more extreme situations where the FFL had engaged in major, willful violations of the law and where these violations presented a threat to public safety.

But the Biden administration violated decades of precedent by directing the ATF to engage in a zero-tolerance policy by simply pulling the plug on any licensee who made an honest mistake on their paperwork.

Any of us who pay taxes, which would be most of us, know how tedious Federal processes can be. I can't imagine anyone who would want to be investigated for tax fraud for making a simple mistake on their tax forms if it could simply be cured or rectified. But this is essentially what the Biden administration did with their zero-tolerance policy at the ATF.

The truth is, it was just a start. In April of 2022, the Biden administration decided to target law-abiding citizens who exercised their Second Amendment rights to build their own firearms with the so- called ghost gun rule. What the Biden administration failed to recognize and failed to distinguish between were criminals or people who were suffering from mental illness and the rest of the law-abiding gun owners in America.

As the National Rifle Association pointed out, the policy of allowing private individuals to make their own guns as a hobby is a longstanding tradition that goes back to the colonial era.

Again, a gun in the hands of a law-abiding citizen is no threat to public safety, but the Biden administration didn't care, paying no heed to our country's longstanding history and traditions and instead preferring to please the gun control activists by issuing regulations to end this practice--again, even for law-abiding citizens.

The ghost gun rule is currently being challenged in the courts, but the Trump administration doesn't have to wait for the Supreme Court to weigh in before rescinding this illegal and unconstitutional regulation.

The Biden administration's rogue ATF continued down this path in January of 2023 when they finalized the so-called pistol brace rule. This action reclassified pistols with a stabilizing

brace as ``short-barreled rifles,'' something it is not. As a consequence, pistols would be subject to much more stringent regulations and penalties simply for being used with a stabilizing brace. This happened after the ATF had already previously determined that a stabilizing brace would not render a pistol a short-barreled rifle. So there is, obviously, inconsistency in the way they have approached this issue.

All this reckless back-and-forth from the Federal Government causes needless uncertainty and confusion for law-abiding citizen gun owners, who want to follow the law but are not quite sure what the law is since they are being whipsawed back and forth. As a consequence of this reclassification, millions of law-abiding gun owners were no longer able to purchase a stabilizing brace, including people like disabled combat veterans who cannot shoot heavy pistols without a stabilizing brace.

Overnight, law-abiding Americans who had lawfully purchased a stabilizing brace for their pistols became felons. This regulation is also being challenged in court, and multiple courts have found it to be what it is: arbitrary and capricious. I hope that, under the leadership of President Trump and Attorney General Pam Bondi, the ATF will act swiftly to end this disastrous and illegal regulation.

As if this weren't enough, in April of 2024, the Biden administration's ATF finalized a rule known as the ``Engaged in the Business'' rule. This was an attempt to rewrite a statute that was passed by the Congress and signed into law by the President of the United States; but this was an attempt to go further than what Congress and the White House had agreed upon in that statute. It was an attempt to impose a nearly universal background check on law-abiding citizens and was a direct affront to their constitutional rights. There are already background checks required by current law for anybody who purchases a firearm, but this was an attempt to go even further.

Once again, this rule presents a golden opportunity for President Trump and the Attorney General to reverse the tide of the Biden administration's unconstitutional attacks on the rights of law-abiding citizens under the Second Amendment to the U.S. Constitution.

I have long been a defender of Second Amendment rights for the 31 million people I have the honor of representing in Texas and for law- abiding citizens generally around the country. The Second Amendment is as much a part of our Constitution as the right of free speech or the freedom of the press. That is why it is included in the first 10 amendments, known as the Bill of Rights, to the Constitution.

This is why I introduced the Concealed Carry Reciprocity Act, which would allow people with concealed carry privileges to exercise those privileges in other States that allow concealed carry. It doesn't change the law of the individual States. It just prevents a ``gotcha'' from occurring when a gun owner inadvertently crosses into another jurisdiction that doesn't have the same laws as their home jurisdiction. It would literally treat State concealed carry permits the same way we treat State-issued driver's licenses. If you have a driver's license from Montana or Texas or South Carolina and you drive to New York, you can't be arrested for the failure to have an appropriate license. Our Concealed Carry Reciprocity Act would act as a driver's license, in effect, for gun owners. If someone has a driver's license, as I said, from Texas, for example, it would allow that person to drive to another State as long as they follow that State's speed and road laws. It is the same way with this legislation.

In addition to introducing this legislation, I will very soon send a letter to the Deputy Director of the ATF, encouraging him to work with President Trump on rescinding many of these regulations in order to reverse the Biden administration's reckless attacks on the Second Amendment.

So while the last 4 years have been a lot of headache for law-abiding citizens who simply want to exercise their constitutional rights, I have no doubt that President Trump and Attorney General Pam Bondi will right this ship. I look forward to working with both of them to reform and redirect the energies of the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives to safeguard, rather than to attack, the Second Amendment rights of American citizens.

I yield the floor.

I suggest the absence of a quorum.