Floor Statements

Mr. President, if I were to choose a title for the remarks which I plan on making here briefly, I would call the title of these comments ``The Case of the Vanishing American Paycheck.''

Over the last few years, inflation has walloped family budgets. As we all know, prices have grown; they have grown again and grown some more, forcing people in Texas and all across America to scrimp and save just to try to get by. They have cut the number of trips to their favorite restaurant. They've made budget-friendly swaps at the grocery store by trading for less expensive items--maybe the store brand rather than your favorite brand. They have scrapped family vacations in favor of more affordable staycations. In many instances, they have had to make hard decisions between two competing, important expenses. For example, a couple of years ago, nearly 45 percent of Texans said they had to cut spending on basic necessities, including food and medicine, in order to pay their energy bill.

Polls continue to show that Americans believe they are even worse off today than they were 4 years ago, and it is easy to see why. Inflation is what has caused this basic shrinking of the great American paycheck. Real wages have fallen. Nominal wages seem to have gone up, but because of inflation, you actually have less purchasing power than you did 4 years ago. People who once lived comfortably are now living paycheck to paycheck.

Our Republican colleagues on the Joint Economic Committee recently analyzed economic data to determine just how much inflation is costing the average American family each month. They found that the average household in Texas is spending $1,000 a month more today than they did in January of 2021 when President Biden was sworn into office--$1,000 a month.

Biden economics, which, apparently, the President is so proud of that he has named his economic policies after himself--Biden economics is costing Texas families more than $1,000 more each month, or $12,000 in a year. On a monthly basis, that is up more than $200 from a year ago-- more than double the monthly inflation from 2 years ago.

Since President Biden took office, he and the leaders of his administration have tried to downplay the impact of inflation, but the American people aren't buying it. After all, the President gets to live in free government housing, otherwise known as the White House. He gets a nice fat paycheck each month. The President and the upper classes in America--the elites--are doing just fine. This kind of inflation doesn't change their lifestyles one bit; but for average Americans, it has a very real and negative impact.

For example, last week, the Wall Street Journal took a look at what $100 could buy 4 years ago in the grocery store and compared that to what those same items would cost today. Four years ago, this grocery run would have cost you $100. This includes many of the common items that families buy every week--bread and butter, eggs and milk, fresh and frozen fruits and vegetables, laundry detergent, dish soap, chicken, bread, and a whole lot more. This isn't a shopping trip for champagne and caviar; these are the basic grocery items that most people buy every single week to feed and provide for their families.

Over the past 4 years, though, the price of every single one of these items listed here has gone up. The cost of chicken, which is, frankly, a cheaper cut of meat than you might eat if you want to eat a steak on a rare occasion--well, you may have to trade down to chicken, but even chicken has gone up by 40 percent. The price of flour has gone up 43 percent, and sugar has increased 52 percent. A bottle of dish soap costs 46 percent more. Laundry detergent is 36 percent more, and a carton of eggs is up a whopping 63 percent.

Now, again, this probably doesn't affect President Biden. As I said, he gets to live in a very nice house at taxpayer expense, and he gets a big paycheck each month. He is doing just fine and so are most of the people who live in this area of the country; but where I come from and where the Presiding Officer comes from, there are a lot of people who are not part of that top 1 percent, who are experiencing the negative impact of Bidenomics and runaway inflation--the highest in 40 years.

Well, overall, this trip to the grocery store would have cost $100 4 years ago but, today, $136.89. In only 4 years, the price of a pretty standard grocery run has increased by 36 percent. It is a pretty startling data point, but the truth is most individuals and families in Texas and around the country don't need to see the data to know that their standard of living has decreased because of Bidenomics and 40- year-high inflation.

Folks I represent come face-to-face with higher prices every day, and it is not just at the grocery store, as we all know. Families are dealing with higher costs for electricity, for rent, for car insurance, for home insurance, and countless other everyday expenses. These costs invariably add up, and they are having a big impact on the financial health and welfare of the people of every State, including mine.

The challenges of inflation are even more severe for those living on a tight budget or a fixed income. Think about those folks living on their Social Security benefits or maybe a pension from a job they held for 30 or more years. Keeping up with rising costs just keeps getting harder and harder and harder because of the policies of the Biden administration.

As I mentioned, people try to manage their budget. They cut down on expenses and make more budget-friendly swaps at the grocery store, and they take on additional jobs. Many Americans have simply decided that, in order to keep up, they need to get another job. So many are performing more than one.

But for many families, that still isn't enough to pay the bills and keep the lights on. Folks are exhausting their savings just to keep up with expenses, and many have been left with no choice but to take on new debt.

Where do they do that? They reach into their wallet, and they pull out their credit card. They say: I don't have the cash to pay the bills. So I will just put it on my credit card.

The average credit card debt increased by 10 percent last year--10 percent. The average credit card balance is now more than $6,500. In Texas, the average is even higher, more than $7,000.

So people unable to meet their rising costs of living, because of inflation, simply have no alternative other than to borrow money on their credit card.

It is easy to assume that credit card debt is caused by excessive spending on nonessential items, but that is not always the case. Experian surveyed credit card holders to understand what is driving this big increase in credit card debt. Nearly 68 percent of respondents said they had recently experienced a significant increase in their monthly bills. Among them, 75 percent said their new or increased bills have impacted their ability to pay down their credit card balances. We all know credit cards carry a much higher interest rate than you pay on your mortgage or other forms of debt.

Of course, folks aren't just taking on new debt. They are also struggling to make payments on existing debt, including student loans. When borrowers take out a loan, they know they will need to repay it. That is the deal. It is a contract. It is a legally enforceable agreement. But inflation has made that exponentially more difficult for many student loan borrowers.

I recently read a news article about how borrowers are struggling to repay their loans, given the growing cost of

living. For example, a high school teacher in Pennsylvania had two master's degrees and owes more than $300,000 in student loans. She said: ``If I pay this five, six, seven hundred dollars this month, how am I going to afford to buy food for the family for the month--[or] for the week?'' That is a familiar struggle for many families.

After the ``pause'' on student loan payments ended, the first payment was due in October of this last year. The Education Department said that roughly 40 percent of borrowers still have not made that payment by mid-November.

Inflation is about far more than groceries or gas prices. It is a cancer that eats away at our entire economy and the standard of living of 330 million Americans. Inflation impacts the cost of living--as I said, student loan payments, credit card debt, mortgage rates, housing affordability, retirement planning, market volatility, economic growth, and so much more.

This is exactly--this is exactly--what Republicans and many leading economists predicted when our Democratic friends went on not one but two partisan spending sprees during the pandemic. First came the American Rescue Plan, which included a long list of progressive social policies.

You remember, back during the pandemic, there were bipartisan efforts to help develop a vaccine and treatments to save lives. Those were bipartisan. And then there were also programs like the Paycheck Protection Program and others, which were bipartisan efforts to throw an economic lifeline to people during the pandemic.

But after that had largely subsided, our Democratic colleagues just could not give up spending more borrowed money. As I said, it was primarily in pursuit, on a purely partisan basis, of pursuing progressive social policies--backdoor funding for Planned Parenthood, a blank check for mismanaged union pension plans, money for ``climate justice''--whatever that is.

Our colleagues tried to brand this liberal utopia of a bill as ``pandemic relief,'' but the pandemic had largely subsided. But they saw, in the immortal words of one former Member of Congress--he said an emergency is a terrible thing to waste, and our Democratic colleagues simply couldn't give up and let go to waste the emergency of the pandemic, even though it had largely subsided. And what they chose to do, then, was to add $2 trillion of spending to the debt and to an already volatile economy. It was like pouring gasoline on a fire. What do you expect?

As Democrats pushed this bill forward, they ignored warnings from leading economists that this level of spending could trigger inflation. There is more and more money in the economy chasing the same or fewer goods and services. So, naturally, prices go up.

Harvard economist Larry Summers even predicted this package could ``set off inflationary pressures of a kind we have not seen in a generation.'' He was exactly right.

We could not convince our Democratic colleagues to change course. Instead, they chose to double down. After the so-called ``American Rescue Act''--a partisan spending bill of almost $2 trillion--our Democratic colleagues said: Well, we are not through yet. They went on a second partisan spending spree and gave it an embarrassingly out-of- touch title. They called it the Inflation Reduction Act. The truth is, it was not an Inflation Reduction Act. It was an ``Inflation Nonreduction Act.'' It misleadingly suggested that, somehow, we had to spend another $740 billion to bring down inflation, when, actually, spending that more money--pouring that gasoline on the economic fire-- actually made things worse.

This bill included even more liberal priorities, including hundreds of billions of dollars for climate projects. In total, the second partisan spending bill added $740 billion.

It is no surprise that it certainly didn't do anything to reduce inflation. As I said, it made it worse. All it did was drive up costs for folks all across the country and add to the mountain of debt--now roughly $35 trillion--that our grandchildren will inherit.

And now President Biden and many of our Democratic colleagues want to spend even more money. They are not done yet. They want to spend more money to address the problems created by their own unchecked spending habits.

As I mentioned a moment ago, student loans are a fact of life for many, many people. But rather than try to figure out how to work through this debt to help people actually meet their legal and moral obligations to repay the money that they borrowed, the President has proposed spending roughly another half a billion dollars to ``forgive'' student loans.

But everybody knows there is no forgiveness of the loan. You are just transferring that obligation from the person who borrowed the money and agreed to repay it back to everybody else--the taxpayers across America, many of whom either worked at a job and paid for their college, so they didn't have to borrow money, or else they didn't go to a 4-year liberal arts college. They went to a community college so they could pay the tuition costs and not have to rack up a bunch of debt. So, once again, the Biden administration has decided to pour more gasoline on the fire by effectively transferring that obligation to the taxpayer.

The bottom line is, under Democratic leadership, Texans and the lives of 330-plus million Americans have just gotten harder.

The average Texas household is spending $1,000 more a month compared to when President Biden took office. As I said, they are grappling with higher costs for food, for energy, for housing, for insurance, and other basic expenses.

Here is the bottom line. For your $100 package or cart full of groceries 4 years ago, now you are paying $136.89 for that. That is probably the most real and dramatic and tangible impact on most Texans and most Americans.

When the American people look at inflation and what misguided government policies have done to make their lives harder and to reduce their standard of living, it is no surprise that they are turning pessimistic about the state of our economy--certainly, about their own economic circumstances.

In a recent New York Times poll, more than half the respondents rated the economy as ``poor.'' That was the worst option they were given.

A Wall Street Journal poll found that nearly three-quarters of voters say inflation is headed in the wrong direction. Maybe you could just call that a statement of the obvious.

What is also obvious is that Biden economics and Biden inflation is wreaking havoc on family budgets, and it is clear that President Biden has absolutely no plan, other than to continue to spend more and more money--to pour more and more gasoline on the fire.

He has had 3 years to address inflation, 3 years to tamp down rising costs, which are a hidden tax on most Americans' income. He has had 3 years to return to the 1.4 percent inflation rate that he inherited-- 1.4 percent inflation when he inherited the office.

Sadly, he has proven himself either unwilling or incapable of addressing the crisis. I suspect he is, frankly, just oblivious to the crisis because it doesn't affect him, living in 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue, collecting a large paycheck each month. It doesn't affect him one bit. But it affects hundreds of millions of Americans.

For the sake of families across the country who are still being crushed by the weight of inflation, we need a change in management. We need a change in direction because, as I said, the American people are not fooled. They know we are on the wrong course, and we need to correct that course come November.

I yield the floor.

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

Madam President, as we all know, 2 months ago, the House of Representatives impeached Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas, who has led the Department of Homeland Security since the beginning of the Biden administration.

For 3 years, Secretary Mayorkas has overseen the record-breaking crisis at the southern border. During that time, Customs and Border Protection have logged more than 7.4 million migrant encounters--more than two previous administrations combined--and that was over a period of 12 years. In 3 years, the Biden administration has accomplished what took 12 years for the Obama and Trump administrations.

Law enforcement's focused response on migrant crossings has caused security missions, including drug interdiction, to take a hit. Staffing shortages

have led the Agency to temporarily close international bridges and ports, which have had a severe and negative impact on Texas border communities. And cities across the country, including those located thousands of miles from the border, are being crushed by the weight of caring for migrants.

Well, that is hardly a positive reflection on Secretary Mayorkas's tenure as DHS Secretary. Throughout the Secretary's tenure, rather than acknowledge the reality and double down on efforts to deal with it, he essentially tried to gloss over it or ignore it. The American people have watched as he has repeatedly downplayed the severity of the border crisis, using watered-down language like it is a ``challenge'' or ``situation.'' They have disputed his claims that the border is secure as they saw footage of migrants walking virtually unimpeded across the border and filling shelters to capacity and beyond.

The American people have raised their eyebrows as he tried to blame Congress for the crisis, even though there are no new laws in effect or no fewer laws in effect than there were during the Trump administration, certainly nothing that Congress has done or did not do which has prompted the dramatic spike in illegal immigration.

The truth is, Secretary Mayorkas is bad at his job. That is not news to anyone. But incompetence, by itself, is not an impeachable offense. We have had a number of inept Cabinet Secretaries throughout our country's history who ended their career without the stain of impeachment.

Well, despite what some of our Democratic colleagues have claimed, Secretary Mayorkas was not impeached because he is unpopular or just because he is incompetent. He was impeached for two serious offenses, in my opinion, the first of which is his willful and systematic refusal to enforce our immigration laws. Secretary Mayorkas has consistently defied the laws that Congress has passed and which have been signed into law by the President of the United States. He has defied the law and the will of Congress by ignoring detention mandates.

Before the U.S. Supreme Court, his lawyer said the words ``shall detain'' are permissive; it really means ``may.'' Earlier this year, he told Border Patrol agents in Eagle Pass, TX, that the current release rate for migrants caught crossing the border illegally was above 85 percent. So you had a 15-percent chance of not being detained even if you were caught. Apparently, he is proud of that.

Secretary Mayorkas has made catch-and-release the de facto policy of the U.S. Government, which is in direct contravention of our immigration laws. And we can't ignore the Secretary's unprecedented abuse of a process known as parole. Parole was designed to grant temporary entry to foreign nationals in rare and dire circumstances, such as someone experiencing a medical emergency at a port of entry or donating a kidney or being a witness in a trial. It was never designed to be used categorically or more than on a case-by-case basis.

Congress has made clear that parole is intended for urgent circumstances and should be only granted in extraordinary individual cases. But the Secretary violated that law, too, and has used parole to wave broad classes of migrants into the United States.

In less than 2 years, the Biden administration has used this case-by- case authority to grant parole for more than 1.6 million migrants. That is in clear and blatant violation of the law, but that is OK with Secretary Mayorkas, apparently.

The Secretary's failures, though, extend far beyond policy decisions. As I noted, he was impeached for two offenses, the second of which is breaching the public trust. The American people have watched as Secretary Mayorkas went on cable news programs or testified under oath before congressional committees repeatedly proclaiming that the border was secure. It was clearly a lie. It doesn't take an immigration policy expert to see that his claim has no basis in reality.

Day after day, the American people have seen footage that shows how insecure America's southern border is. From the roughly 15,000 migrants who set up camp in Del Rio, TX, a few years ago to the hundreds of migrants who rushed Texas National Guard troops in El Paso last month, there has been no shortage of evidence about our insecure border.

It is not just the misleading and false statements on cable news networks. On more than one occasion, Secretary Mayorkas lied under oath to Congress. He told Members of Congress that the border was secure when, clearly, it was anything but.

The United States will be dealing with the consequences of this crisis for years, maybe even decades. And Secretary Mayorkas must be held accountable. The House of Representatives was completely correct to impeach Secretary Mayorkas, and now the Senate has a duty under the Constitution to hold a trial.

Unfortunately, this has become a familiar process for a majority of our Senate colleagues. In both 2019 and 2021, the Democratic-controlled House impeached President Trump. At the time, my Republican colleagues and I criticized the motivations and process behind these impeachment inquiries, but those concerns didn't impact the process on the Senate floor.

Despite our personal views about the House's actions, the Republican- led Senate still carried out our constitutional duty to convene a Court of Impeachment. In both cases, Senators were sworn as jurors. We listened patiently to both sides as they presented their arguments. And, in the end, we had a fair ``guilty'' or ``not guilty'' vote.

Prior to the impeachment of Secretary Mayorkas, the House had sent impeachment articles to the Senate 21 times, and the Senate has held a full trial in all but four instances. In three cases, all of whom were Federal judges, the person resigned before the Senate could vote to convict or acquit. And in the final case, the impeached Senator was expelled from this Chamber before his trial.

There has never ever in U.S. history been a case in which the Senate dismissed or tabled impeachment articles and moved on. Not once. Unfortunately, if reports in the news are correct, that is likely to change this week. The House is expected to transmit the Articles of Impeachment this Wednesday.

Senators haven't received direct guidance, but according to the press, the majority leader is expected to take the completely unprecedented step of voting to table the impeachment articles and eliminate a trial entirely, in violation of the Constitution. As I said, this would be the first time in our Nation's history that the Senate failed to do its duty to consider evidence, hear witnesses, and allow Senators to vote guilty or not guilty.

This would be a dangerous precedent to set. It would give future Senates carte blanche to dispense with serious charges against our Nation's most senior officials. What goes around comes around. If Secretary Mayorkas's impeachment articles are tabled, that will become the common practice in the future.

Impeachment is one of the most solemn features in our democracy, and the majority leader must not brush these articles under the rug. I can understand why he may want to because the evidence that will be adduced at trial will be damning, both for Secretary Mayorkas and for the Biden administration's policies, which are essentially open-border policies. But at least House impeachment managers and Secretary Mayorkas's defense team deserve the opportunity to present their best case before the Senate. And the majority leader should not prevent that from happening.

I would like to remind the majority leader of some words he spoke himself back in 2019. At that point, the balance of power in Washington was completely the inverse of what it is today. We had a Republican majority in the Senate, a Democratic majority in the House, and a Republican in the White House.

After House Democrats impeached President Trump, the majority leader, the Senator from New York, came to the Senate floor to talk about the process he would like to see in a Republican-led Senate. He said:

To my Republican colleagues: Our message is a simple one.

Democrats want a fair trial that examines the relevant facts

. . . The message from Leader McConnell, at the moment, is

that he has no intention of conducting a fair trial, no

intention of acting impartially, no intention of getting the

facts.

But contrary to what Senator Schumer predicted, the Senate went on to

fulfill its constitutional responsibility to hold a trial. We spent more than 2 weeks hearing arguments from both sides--so the American people could judge for themselves--before holding a vote at the conclusion of the presentation of the evidence.

So now I would like to echo the Senator's statement from a few years ago, but with a few small changes. To my Democratic colleagues, our message is a simple one: Republicans want a fair trial that examines the relevant facts.

The message from Leader Schumer, at the moment, is that he has no intention of conducting a fair trial, no intention of acting impartially, and no intention of getting to the facts.

It would be completely unprecedented and unjustified for the Senate to shirk its constitutional role as a Court of Impeachment. The House voted to impeach Secretary Mayorkas, and the Senate has a duty to hold a trial. The majority leader should perform his duty and should not impede or ignore that constitutional requirement.

So I urge the majority leader to take his own advice from 2019 and to give the Senate an opportunity to hold a thorough and fair impeachment trial and let the chips fall where they may.

Mr. President, clearly it is an election year, because we are hearing more and more political speeches from the floor of the Senate and precious little work doing the hard things that we actually are elected to do, which is to legislate.

Here we find ourselves dealing with appropriations bills that should have been completed last September. I don't know if people really understand that. What we are doing today, lurching from one shutdown to the next, is dealing with last year's work. But you would think that, under the leadership of Majority Leader Schumer, we would have enough things to do rather than squander the opportunity to deal with those because we are dealing with last year's work.

I think we can do better next year. Hopefully, with a different majority, we can actually pass a budget. We can take up and pass appropriation bills on a timely basis, and we can get our work done on time--something that has not happened under the current leadership.

I want to mention one hopeful sign, where, at least, one branch of the legislature is actually moving things through committee and across the floor and allowing votes, amendments, and debate. That would be the House of Representatives, not the U.S. Senate, sometimes called the world's greatest deliberative body.

To their credit, earlier this year, the House passed a bill that made significant changes in our tax system, and that is what I want to talk about for the next few minutes.

This legislation was negotiated by the chairman of the Senate Finance Committee, on which I am privileged to serve, Senator Ron Wyden, and House Ways and Means Committee Chairman Jason Smith. They released a framework of this agreement in mid-January, and our colleagues in the House immediately began work on the bill.

The Ways and Means Committee, for example, held hearings--actual hearings, legislative hearings--and then a markup to debate the legislation. Members offered and voted on amendments, and, ultimately, this package passed the committee and the full House with strong bipartisan support.

Given the polarization and partisanship that often grips Congress, advancing a bipartisan bill is no small feat, especially during an election year. But that doesn't mean the work on the bill is finished. As every high school student knows who takes civics or American history--they know that Congress is a bicameral body. The House and the Senate have to work together. There are two Chambers, two sets of Members with diverse views, Senators representing whole States--in my case, 30 million Texans. The House Members represent a much smaller Congressional District. But the process means that both Chambers need to work through these bills to improve them and make sure they are as good as we can make them before they are signed into law.

So my point is that the Senate is not a rubberstamp for the House, and the House would say that they are not a rubberstamp for us. And that is the

way it is. So be it. Members of both Chambers have a responsibility to evaluate and shape legislation before it is sent to the President's desk.

Congratulations to the Members of the House for doing their job. They sent a bipartisan bill to the Senate at the end of January, and now it is the Senate's turn to take a closer look at this legislation and see how it might be improved.

I had hoped that Chairman Wyden would schedule a markup in the Finance Committee and allow members to ask questions and offer amendments to the bill. I am sure he thinks his negotiated bill with Chairman Smith is perfect and doesn't need any improvement, but others may have a different point of view.

After all, members of the House Ways and Means Committee had that opportunity. That is called the legislative process. That is what we are supposed to do.

So you would think that Chairman Wyden would want members of his own committee to have the same opportunity that the members of the House Ways and Means Committee had, but apparently that is not the case.

Nearly 2 months have passed since that bill passed the House, and Chairman Wyden has shown zero interest in moving this bill through the Finance Committee and across the floor of the U.S. Senate, giving all Senators a chance to participate in the process and hopefully improve the final outcome. In fact, the chairman has refused to schedule a hearing or even a markup, as I mentioned, and has rejected commonsense proposals by Ranking Member Mike Crapo and Senate Republicans.

Earlier this week, the majority leader virtually guaranteed that the bill will not go through the regular order in the Senate. He took a procedural step to put this bill on the fast track for a vote here on the Senate floor, without any opportunity for the Senate Finance Committee, which has jurisdiction over tax matters, to engage--no hearing, no markup, just ``take it or leave it.''

Well, I have reviewed this bill, and while I will concede that there are some portions that are very promising, there are problematic areas that need more work. For example, this bill aims to incentivize research and development here at home by easing the tax burden on America's innovators.

Cutting-edge research and development is absolutely critical to our competitiveness, and Congress needs to promote new investments in the capabilities that will propel our economy and our national security into the future. This legislation, to its credit, restores full and immediate expensing for equipment and machinery purchases, which will enable small businesses to make new investments in their business and boost domestic manufacturing.

I have spoken to a number of my small business constituents in Texas about the need for these types of reforms, and the House-passed bill is a great starting point for a full debate here in the Senate.

I believe there is a lot of potential here, but I share Ranking Member Crapo's concerns about some of the remaining provisions in the bill. One example is the watered-down work requirement for the child tax credit. Under the proposed change, parents with zero earnings would still be eligible for a government check.

In other words, historically, tax credits have been tied to work and have been a credit against taxes that you would otherwise owe. But a refundable tax credit is merely a check from the Federal Government, regardless of whether you worked or created any income whatsoever.

Under the proposal by Chairman Wyden and Chairman Smith, as long as a person worked during one of the last 2 years--one of the last 2 years-- they would be eligible for the child tax credit. As I said, historically, the child tax credit has been tied to work. I would think we would want able-bodied people to be working, if work is available. But this change would completely undermine that basic principle.

When the Joint Committee on Taxation analyzed this bill, they found that the expanded child tax credit would cost more than $33 billion over the next 3 years.

You heard my colleague--our colleague--Senator Rand Paul talk about the fact that our national debt is approaching $35 billion. This would add another $33 billion to that. And despite what the authors of this proposal have said, the vast majority of that cost is not due to tax relief.

According to the Joint Committee on Taxation, 91 percent of the cost of this legislation is spending. It is writing a check. It may be called a tax credit, but really it is a welfare payment. It is a transfer payment. Mr. President, 91 percent of the money will be sent as a check to people with zero tax liability because they have insufficient income to cause them to have any kind of tax liability. So it is not a credit against earnings or work; it is essentially a welfare check.

Only 9 percent of that $33 billion cost is true relief for hard- working taxpayers with children. The rest is a new welfare program by another name. And it is not limited to the 3 years of the R&D tax credit and the expensing of interest; it is permanent. And I have every confidence that our colleagues across the aisle will come back for another bite at the apple.

We would be doing a great disservice to taxpayers by allowing the child tax credit to morph into another welfare program. We should not set the stage for it to become a permanent fixture of entitlement spending.

Again, you heard our colleague from Kentucky talk the fact that the money that we are appropriating here today and that we did a couple of weeks ago--this is only about a third of what the Federal Government spends. The rest of it is on autopilot. It is mandatory spending. We don't even vote to appropriate that money; it is automatic. Proponents of this tax bill want us to add another $33 billion over 3 years to that number.

The truth is, when it comes to the discretionary spending, the money we appropriate, we have done a much better job controlling the rate of increase of that spending, but right now, entitlement programs grow at 6, 7, 8 percent a year. That is one reason why our national debt is approaching $35 trillion.

Well, supporters of this proposal have tried to downplay concerns about the cost of the bill because they say: It is only a temporary change. Well, that reminds me of Ronald Reagan's observation that the closest thing to eternal life on Earth is a temporary government program. There is no such thing as temporary around here. People come back either to reauthorize it or to extend it or to grow it. Once created, it doesn't go away.

As soon as the temporary change expires, supporters will argue it has to be extended. They will frame anyone who opposes another extension as trying to increase taxes on hard-working families. Well, as I said and as the Senator from Kentucky said, our national debt is currently $34.5 trillion. A lot of that was money we spent during the COVID pandemic trying to deal with the public health crisis and the economic crisis caused by that virus. We did whatever we had to do to make our way through that, but in doing so, we added a lot of money to the national debt. We should not continue that.

The national debt is increasing by almost $1 trillion every 100 days, and the permanent tax credit expansion would only fuel the debt crisis we are facing. Someday--someday--there will be a terrible crisis as a result of the trending national debt. Already you are hearing we are spending more money this year on interest on the national debt than we are on our own defense.

Well, according to the Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget, this child tax credit expansion would cost $180 billion over the next 10 years. We need to pump the brakes on this expansion, this runaway debt train, not stomp on the accelerator, which is what this proposal would do.

Mandatory spending already represents nearly two-thirds of Federal spending, and a permanent child tax credit expansion would drive that number even higher. That is just one of the concerns that I and many of my Republican colleagues have with this legislation.

Over the last several weeks, as we have been able to analyze the text of the bill, even other concerns, more concerns, have come to light.

This legislation would have major impact on families and job creators

across the country. We need to be careful, we need to be deliberate, and we need to make sure we understand what the impact of this legislation would be before a vote on the Senate floor, which is the reason why committees like the Finance Committee exist. Getting it right is far more important than doing it fast.

If Chairman Wyden's goal is to build consensus, which is the way we do things around here, he can't shut everybody else out of the process. I understand building consensus in a diverse body like this is not easy--it is hard--and I think some people are positively allergic to the difficulty of that job. But that is the way we govern. That is the way the Senate operates. We need an open forum to debate this bill and make changes at the committee level, and I am disappointed that the chairman of the Finance Committee himself has refused to do so.

Just as our counterparts in the House had their chance to evaluate this legislation and make improvements at the committee level, Senate tax writers need to have the same opportunity.

As each of our colleagues knows, Congress has developed a very bad habit of abandoning the procedures that were designed to give every single Senator a voice in the legislative process. For too long now, we have had bills cooked up behind closed doors and plopped here on the Senate floor, facing another deadline, another cliff, and being told: You have no choice. You can't change it. All you can do is vote up or down or else there will be dire consequences, like a shutdown.

Committees have been sidelined, and we have moved toward a process in which a small number of Members make decisions and try to bully or threaten everyone into voting yes.

Well, I can tell you that I, for one--and I know I am not the only one--am tired of being cut out of the process and being treated like a potted plant.

That cannot happen with this bill, so I will not vote to move this bill on the Senate floor until we have a process that allows all Senators to participate but starting with members of the Senate Finance Committee. I hope my Republican colleagues will join me in requesting that the Finance Committee be given an opportunity to do its job. Until that time, I hope there are 41 Senators who will deny the majority leader's request that we proceed to consider this legislation after bypassing the Finance Committee process. But once we do that, the majority leader must allow a robust floor debate and amendment process. That is what we do. That is our job.

All Senators deserve a chance to participate, as I said, first in the committee and then on the floor.

Many supporters of this bill are pushing for a truncated process in the Senate because the tax season is already well underway. They suggested that the Senate should just abdicate its job and rush to get the bill done. But, as our colleagues know, the tax season began before this bill even passed the House, and the chairman of the Finance Committee completely undermined the urgency argument by sitting on this bill for the last 2 months.

The majority leader and the chairman of the Finance Committee want to ram this bill through the Senate without proper debate or amendment, and Republicans must not allow that to happen. The way we gain leverage and force a negotiation rather than being run over and treated as a mere speed bump is for 41 Senators to stick together to deny cloture on a motion to proceed.

Members deserve the chance to shape a bill before a final up-or-down vote on the floor, and I urge Chairman Wyden and Leader Schumer to give us that opportunity.

I yield the floor.

Mr. President, following Hamas's brutal attack against Israel on October 7, some 5 months ago, Republicans and Democrats came together, along with the President of the United States, and declared our support for Israel. We all condemned the Hamas terrorists, as well as Iran, which is the main support for this proxy of the number one state sponsor of international terrorism.

We all watched in horror at the videos we saw of Hamas attacking innocent men, women, and children, and we all vowed to stand in solidarity with Israel as they did whatever they needed to do to defeat this evil.

As time passed, it seems like the roar of support among some of our friends across the aisle, including the Senate majority leader, has softened, to say the least. Some of our colleagues have even gone so far as to cast blame on Israel for the violence that is unfolding in the Middle East. They are blaming the victim, not the perpetrator. More than two dozen Senate Democrats have even joined with liberal activists to demand a cease-fire.

The quickest way to a cease-fire is for Hamas to lay down its weapons, but we know they are not going to do that because they are committed to the eradication of the State of Israel. ``Wipe them off the face of the planet'' is their goal.

This once rock-solid support on a bipartisan basis has slowly eroded, and it reached a new low last week when the Senate majority leader came to the floor to excoriate not Hamas, not Iran, but Israel and its leadership.

Israel, we know, is our single closest friend and ally in the Middle East, one of the very few democracies. Yes, they have messy politics. By the way, we have messy politics, too, here in this country, but we respect--we should respect--the sovereignty of that nation and their ability to make hard decisions on their own behalf without being lectured by the President of the United States and by the Senate majority leader.

The majority leader criticized Israel's response to the October 7 attack. He condemned Prime Minister Netanyahu's leadership, and he called--get this--he called for an election in Israel to replace him. In my time in the U.S. Senate, I have never seen anything quite like this. The majority leader's comments mark a sharp departure from his previous stance solidly in support of Israel. And, unfortunately, I presume for political reasons, he has decided to undermine our support on a bipartisan basis for Israel and to make it a partisan issue and to attack the leader of a sovereign ally and one dealing with the horrific aftermath of a terrorist attack.

Can you imagine, in the wake of 9/11, if our closest allies had called upon the American people to change our President to align with their political preferences? We would have been insulted. We would have been offended and completely outraged. The suggestion that the leader in a foreign country knows the needs of a country better than its own citizens is appalling.

On top of that, it undermines Israel's most critical job at this moment, which is to eliminate the terrorist threat against its own people. This is not like al-Qaida, thousands of miles away across an ocean. This is in the backyard of Israel. By browbeating Israel and criticizing its leaders, the majority leader has undermined the trust and confidence Israel needs in our commitment to continue to help them complete this job of eliminating the terrorist threat.

Yes, innocent people are getting hurt, but that is not the fault of the victim. That is the fault of the perpetrator of this violence. And, yes, maybe some of us would like to see different tactics chosen on the battlefield, but that is not our call. We have to trust our friend and ally Israel to make the best decisions in defense of its own sovereignty and its own existence. And, yes, we can all have private opinions about how they are going about it.

But the truth is America's role in this conflict should not be confused. We should not be saying: Well, on one hand, we support Israel. On the other hand, we think they are being too tough on Hamas.

We need to support our closest friend and ally in the region. It is just that simple. It is the choice between good and evil.

If you watch the videos of Hamas's attack against Israeli civilians on October 7--as I know the Presiding Officer has, and all of us have been exposed to it--you will recoil in horror as babies are killed, where women are sexually assaulted. I, actually, for the first time in my life, saw a video of a Hamas terrorist behead an innocent Israeli civilian--behead.

That is what we are dealing with. That is what Israel is dealing with.

There should not be confusion. We should be approaching this with complete clarity. For those of us who said we stand with Israel, we ought to lock arms on a bipartisan basis and reaffirm their right to exist and their right to make choices for their nation and their people, and we ought to support them as they go through what has to be a horrible experience for Israel.

It is not just Hamas. Again, as the Presiding Officer knows and we know, in Lebanon, in the northern part of Israel, Hezbollah--another proxy for Iran--is shooting into Israel and attacking Israeli Defense Forces. We know that Houthi rebels in Yemen are also supported by Iran. Iran is the octopus. Hamas, Hezbollah, and the Houthis are the tentacles or the proxies they use to do their evil. Then there are the Shia militias who have attacked American troops hundreds of times in Iraq and Syria.

There should not be any confusion about this. There is the right side and the wrong side. There is the good, and there is the evil. America stands with Israel. The vast majority of Americans feel exactly as I do. We should trust the people of Israel to make decisions, certainly, about their own leaders.

I mean, we don't like it when foreign countries try to interfere with our elections. What is the speech of the majority leader but an attempt by a leader of a foreign government to interfere with their elections? We need to maintain our position that Israel has a right to defend itself against Hamas, against Hezbollah, against any Iranian proxy or any entity or country or group that wants to destroy the Jewish State.

So I regret the fact that this has become, it seems, like a partisan issue. This is the last thing that our Israeli friends and allies would want. They don't want this to be partisan politics because we know what happens here when things become partisan. One side supports an action, and the other side reflexively opposes that action. We can't afford to play politics with the U.S.-Israel alliance. Our support for Israel must remain unwavering regardless of whom they choose for their own leaders. We must support democracy. We must support sovereignty. We must support the enduring bond and the common values shared between our two countries.

I yield the floor.

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

Mr. President, over the weekend, the Russian Federation held a Presidential election. And surprise, surprise, officials declared a landslide victory for President Vladimir Putin. By their account, Putin won a fifth term in office with a whopping 87 percent of the vote--the highest level of support in any previous elections.

This reminded me of a story--I think maybe true, maybe apocryphal--of a reporter who was traveling with a driver in Iraq in the run-up to the Iraq war. And as was typically the case in dictatorships, the report was that Saddam Hussein won 100 percent of the vote. And the reporter asked the driver, he said: Well, you have been with me; clearly, you haven't been able to go and cast your ballot. To which the driver responded: Well, I guess Saddam knew what was in my heart.

As implausible as that result was and as implausible as this result is, it is entirely predictable. After all, elections in Russia are unlike elections here in the United States or any other democracy.

In Russia, elections are carefully orchestrated by the Kremlin. The candidates are hand-selected. The results are predetermined. And the opportunity for change is nonexistent.

In short: Russia's elections are a sham. They are neither free nor fair, and it is no surprise that Vladimir Putin will continue to lead the corrupt and morally bankrupt Kremlin.

The result of this election was always guaranteed. And the only real question is: What comes next? What, if anything, will change with the start of Putin's new term in office?

Well, there is widespread speculation this could signal the beginning of a new military mobilization into Ukraine. The Kremlin has made a habit out of rolling out unpopular policies in the period after a Presidential election.

Following 2018, for example, the Kremlin raised the retirement age--a move that was deeply unpopular among the Russian people.

Putin even alluded to this new strategy when speaking to reporters in Moscow. He said:

All the plans we have created to develop Russia will

certainly be carried out and their goals achieved.

He added:

We have come up with grandiose plans and will do everything

to carry them out.

Well, this should be an additional warning sign that cannot be ignored by the United States or our allies. We are at a critical juncture in Russia's war against Ukraine, and more support is desperately needed.

It is in America's national security interest to help Ukraine because Vladimir Putin will not stop in Ukraine, just as he did not stop with the invasion and annexation of Crimea in 2014.

He will keep coming and coming and coming. And he doesn't have very far to go after Ukraine to encounter NATO, the North Atlantic Treaty Organization. And we have a treaty obligation with those countries under article 5 to come to the defense of any one

of those countries that are attacked. So this is very close and near and dear to the United States' national security interests.

Over the past few months, the United States has provided Ukraine with unprecedented defense aid: Javelins, Stingers, grenade launchers, small arms, ammunition, and more.

A few weeks ago, the Senate passed a security supplemental that, among other things, provided additional support for Ukraine as it battles Russian forces. That legislation passed the Senate with overwhelming bipartisan support. But it awaits action in the House of Representatives.

The Senate, as we know, is not a rubberstamp for the House, and the House is not a rubberstamp for the Senate. Neither Chamber is under any obligation to take up bills that originated in the other Chamber and pass them as is. But we also have a duty to address the biggest threats that our country is facing--one posed by Russia's aggression in Ukraine and in Europe, generally.

I am glad that our friends in the House are working on their own security supplemental. I appreciate the comments being made by the Speaker that we will not leave Ukraine hanging out to dry.

We know that the House is working on ideas that include a number of policies that were not part of the Senate's legislation. One of them is called the REPO Act--REPO for Ukrainians Act--which would repurpose seized Russian assets to help finance aid for Ukraine. It would shift some of the financial burden of supporting Ukraine from U.S. taxpayers to Putin and the Russian oligarchs, whose assets have been seized.

This is a bipartisan bill introduced by Senator Risch, the ranking member on the Senate Foreign Relations Committee; and it has been cosponsored by a quarter of all Senators, myself included.

Now, the House version of the bill was introduced by my friend and fellow Texan, Chairman Michael McCaul, chairman of the House Foreign Relations Committee. And it has more than 75 bipartisan cosponsors. This is a smart and effective way to continue supporting Ukraine without sticking American taxpayers with the bill.

I am disappointed that these measures weren't included in the Senate supplemental, but I hope our colleagues in the House will pass this bill--the REPO Act--as part of their security supplemental.

I am also encouraged to hear that the House is likely to include language to extend the lend-lease authority. This authority was created, as pertains to Ukraine, by legislation I introduced with Senator Cardin, the chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, called the Ukraine Democracy Defense Lend-Lease Act, which became the law nearly 2 years ago.

It was rooted in the same principle as President Roosevelt's Lend- Lease Act in World War II, which allowed the United States to supply Great Britain and other allies with military resources.

President Roosevelt recognized how critical it was to support Great Britain, which lacked what it needed to protect its people and to fend off German aggression. He famously vowed to transform the United States into the arsenal of democracy and worked with Congress to get the Lend- Lease Act passed to achieve that goal.

The original Lend-Lease Act was signed into law in March of 1941 and allowed the United States to supply its allies with resources at a critical moment during World War II.

Later that year, Winston Churchill said the bill ``must be regarded without question as the most unsordid act in the whole of recorded history.''

The circumstances we find ourselves in today are not the equal of March 1941, thank goodness. But they could be. In fact, the circumstances today look eerily similar to the circumstances in 1939 when Hitler invaded Czechoslovakia for many of the similar reasons that Putin claims he has a right to invade Ukraine.

If the world had stood up to Germany then, we may have avoided global calamity and prevented the loss of millions of innocent lives.

The lessons of the past must inform the present. And I believe we have a duty to exercise our role--America's unique role--as the arsenal of democracy to help Ukraine defend its sovereignty and to prevent further spread of military aggression and Russian desires to restore the Soviet Union, which is what Vladimir Putin said: The failure of the Soviet Union in 1991 was the greatest geopolitical tragedy of the last 100 years.

You know, I have thought about that and contrasted that statement with the fact that Russia lost between 20 and 30 million people in World War II. Putin says the failure of the Soviet Union was the greatest geopolitical tragedy in the last 100 years; and he must mean a greater tragedy than the loss of 20 to 30 million Russians.

That is how he thinks. And he wants to restore that golden age for the Soviet Union. And so he will not stop with Ukraine.

Given the aid provided by Congress over the past couple of years, the Biden administration hasn't relied on the lend-lease authority to aid Ukraine, but that doesn't mean it isn't needed now.

Ukraine is willing to fight. President Zelenskyy is willing to lead the Ukrainian people in that fight. But it needs additional assistance from the United States and our NATO allies to fend off this Russian invasion.

Ukraine's arsenal is shrinking by the day. It is rationing its artillery shells and its other ammunition, and it has asked the United States for additional help.

Now, there are different points of view, but there is broad bipartisan agreement that America should continue to support Ukraine. But there is also a growing concern over the cost of that assistance. I understand that. That is a concern that I share, which is why I introduced the modern Lend-Lease Act in the first place. Because lend- lease is not a blank check, it gives the administration the option to lease or rent defense articles to Ukraine. It would allow us to answer Ukraine's call to provide more of what they need and ensure it is done in a more fiscally responsible way.

The weapons the United States and our allies have provided thus far have allowed Ukraine to punch above its weight against the Russian Army. But one thing the Russian Army is capable of doing is to engage in a war of attrition, simply to wear down the opposition, both militarily and politically.

But Ukraine has punched above its weight against the Russian Army, but it can't do so without ammunition and without defense articles. Additional American assistance is vital to Ukraine's success in this war, and we need to reauthorize the lend-lease authority as soon as possible.

This legislation was attempted to be added to our security supplemental, and, for some reason, it didn't make the cut. But I hope now that our colleagues in the House will pass a security bill that includes both the lend-lease extension and the REPO Act and send that bill back here to the Senate without further delay.

The future of Ukraine is at stake, but that is not all. The rest of the world is watching to see how the United States and our NATO allies respond to a power-hungry dictator. If the United States fails to support Ukraine in this pivotal moment, other authoritarian governments will take note. America's response to this war will likely affect Iran's calculations when it comes to Israel and its other proxies that it supports throughout the Middle East, being the No. 1 state sponsor of terrorism. And it will also figure into China's calculations when it comes to Taiwan. If they see the United States respond with passivity, they can expect to be met with the same level of weakness when these other autocrats and dictators act.

We cannot allow America's global leadership to be diminished in this way because it is dangerous. This isn't a status symbol or something that we want to be able to brag about. This is about our own safety and our own national security, and that comes from strength. As Ronald Reagan said, peace comes through strength.

The tyrants and the madmen around the world must see the United States and our allies with strength, and a strong security supplemental is one key to demonstrating that strength and that commitment.

I yield the floor.

I suggest the absence of a quorum.

Mr. President, I was shocked to hear the comments of the Senate majority leader this morning excoriating our closest ally, the only democracy in the Middle East. You know, we don't appreciate it when other countries tell us how we ought to govern our country. I am sure that feeling is reciprocated by our Israeli allies.

Here is what the former Ambassador of Israel said on social media:

Regardless of my opinion of Netanyahu and his fitness to

serve, Senator Schumer's call for new Israeli elections is

deeply disrespectful of our democracy and sovereignty. Israel

is an ally, not a vassal state. Along with the U.S., we're

one of the few countries [that have never] known a non-

democratic government, and the only democracy never to have

known a moment of peace. We [certainly] deserve that respect.

I think Ambassador Oren is exactly right. The majority leader's speech this morning was deeply disrespectful of our ally, which is, indeed, as I said, a sovereign nation and a democracy.

I traveled to Israel and Saudi Arabia and Jordan in January with five other members of the Senate Intelligence Committee. We met in Jordan and then in Saudi Arabia with Mohammed bin Salman and then with Prime Minister Netanyahu and the Defense Minister Gallant in Israel.

Of course, war involves collateral damages to innocent people. But the people responsible for initiating that war in Israel was Hamas, a proxy of the Iranian regime--one of many. And for somehow to say now, 5 months after that horrible attack on October 7, that Israel ought to stay its hand and allow Hamas potentially to reconstitute in Gaza is not only deeply disrespectful, it undermines the ability of the Israelis to do what they must do, which is destroy that threat.

I know 3 months after the attack on October 7, when I was in Israel, when I heard some of my colleagues say we need to have a cease-fire-- well, I know if Hamas had not started the shooting, that Israel would not have started and we would not find ourselves with all of these casualties on both sides.

But we know that Iran is the head of the octopus and the tentacles reach far and wide. We all learned more about world geography and how the world works in recent years since America--we thought we were safe on our own continent, and we had an ocean to protect us on each side. But 9/11 was a reminder that not even Americans are safe from the hand of terrorists.

And Iran is the No. 1 state sponsor of terror--no doubt about it. They sponsor the Houthis in Yemen. They help Shia militias in Iraq and Syria. They help Hamas in Gaza and Hezbollah in Lebanon on the northern border. Israel is under attack by people who want to wipe that country and those people off the face of the Earth. Of course, they have a right to defend themselves. Of course, they need to eliminate the terrorist threat that killed so many innocent civilians on October 7.

And so for the majority leader to come here and say, ostensibly as a supporter of Israel, that we don't like the current government; that the Israeli people need new elections and to select new leaders; and oh, by the way, you need to quit being so tough on the terrorists known as Hamas--it is shocking to me.

We need to stand with Israel. They need to be able to finish the job, not because they want to, but because they must in order to continue to exist.

Mr. President, also today, I was shocked to hear the Secretary of Health and Human Services, Secretary Becerra, say that when it comes to the 400,000 unaccompanied children that have come to America, come to our shores and been placed with sponsors by the Office of Refugee Relocation under Health and Human Services--he said: We don't have any responsibility to those children after they are placed with sponsors.

Just to remind everybody, under current law, if an unaccompanied child shows up at the border--smuggled to the border by criminal organizations that get rich smuggling migrants to the border--they are then turned over by the Border Patrol to Health and Human Services Office of Refugee Relocation. They then identify a sponsor for that child in the interior of the United States. Sometimes it is a family member; sometimes it is not.

There has been precious little vetting of the households in which those children are ultimately placed. And the New York Times, in 2023, wrote several investigative articles documenting the fact that the Biden administration had simply lost those children. In 85,000 cases where the reporters contacted the sponsors of these children, there was never an answer.

Secretary Becerra said this morning: I don't have the authority to do anything after we turn them over to the sponsor.

I said: OK. You can't tell us where these children are? You can't tell us are they going to school? Are they being trafficked for sex? Are they being forced into child labor in violation of the laws that are designed to protect children as has been documented by the New York Times and one of the Senate's own investigating committees?

He said: It is not my job.

Frankly, my conclusion is he simply doesn't care about the welfare of these 400,000 children living in communities all across America. We don't know

whether they have been forced into gangs or whether they dropped out of school. Secretary Becerra and President Biden don't know, and they don't care.

Mr. President, I want to thank Senator Cruz for his leadership on this legislation, which I am, of course, proud to cosponsor. We represent a booming State. We represent in excess of 30 million people, and because of geopolitical shifts of manufacturing from China back to near shore or places like Mexico, thanks to the USMCA--the U.S.-Mexico-Canada trade agreement--we are mutually dependent with Mexico and Canada for trade, which creates millions of jobs right here in America, and principally in Texas.

The first time I went to Lubbock, TX, when I ran for statewide office, a former Congressman, Randy Neugebauer, before he was a Member of Congress, said: There are three things you need to remember about Lubbock, TX: cotton, Texas Tech University, and ports to plains. It was that important back then, and it is even more important today.

So the ports-to-plains system, as Senator Cruz pointed out, is a 963- mile transportation corridor. And building on the success we had in passing a bill to designate the Ports-to-Plains Corridor in Texas and New Mexico as an interstate, this I-27 Numbering Act does exactly that.

I look forward to seeing the Ports-to-Plains Corridor fuel more trade, more jobs, more energy security, and agricultural production for years to come.

Mr. President, as my colleague from West Virginia has noted, and as the Nation knows--the world knows--President Biden will deliver his third, perhaps final, State of the Union address tonight.

Obviously, the border is a major issue confronting the Nation, and I have to say that, coming from Texas with the 1,200 mile common border with Mexico, Washington has just recently acknowledged--the President has just recently acknowledged something that we have known has been a problem for a long, long time without really any help to deal with this flood of humanity and drugs across our southwestern border.

I expect that President Biden will do as he always does--blame somebody else for this problem, even though he has had the same tools that President Trump has had with which to deal with it from the day he stepped into the Oval Office.

The American people are pretty smart and they are pretty perceptive and they understand that the crisis at our border is a man-made crisis, and that man is President Biden. He has opted, rather than secure the border, to issue dozens of Executive orders dismantling piece by piece the border security protections that President Trump had put in place, things like the ``Remain in Mexico'' policy where people who would otherwise be released into the interior of the United States would have to remain in Mexico while their asylum claims have been determined.

Under President Biden, U.S. Customs and Border Protection has encountered nearly 7 million migrants. I have heard numbers as high as 9 million. The truth is we don't really have an accurate number because it is virtually uncontrolled, but we know that it is more than the past two administrations combined. In 3 years, President Biden has allowed more illegal migrant encounters across the border than in 12 years of President Obama's term and President Trump's.

Well, you would think, with President Biden knowing he has a huge political liability, that he would seek advice from the experts. But former U.S. Border Patrol Chief Raul Ortiz said that President Biden and Vice President Harris never even spoke to him during his time in office. This is the man, the expert, who is in charge of the border for the U.S. Government, and the President and the Vice President didn't even speak to him.

Well, because of the welcome mat that has been laid out by the Biden administration, border officials are preparing for yet another spike in the record levels of migration.

The Biden administration is under fire for reports that it flew 320,000 migrants from foreign countries directly into the United States without vetting them first.

Words fail to describe the unprecedented nature of this crisis. It is so bad, I keep asking myself: What is it going to take before the President wakes up? Mr. President, 7 to 9 million illegal entries into the country; 300,000 children placed with sponsors in the interior of the country and, as the New York Times noted, many of them forced into involuntary labor. And then when wellness checks were made to see where these children are after they are placed with these sponsors, in the case of the New York Times, they said that ``85,000 of those sponsors didn't even answer the phone or the door.'' So we don't know what happened to those children, those 300,000 children.

And then there are the drugs that flow across the border when the Border Patrol is overwhelmed with mass numbers of migrants.

Well, here is another problem. Those who are old enough to remember September 11, 2001, when 19 Saudi nationals flew two planes into the World Trade Center and crashed another one at the Pentagon--19. Four nationals killed 3,000 Americans that day.

So far this year, the Border Patrol has apprehended--apprehended--169 individuals who were on the Terror Watchlist. So far this fiscal year, they have apprehended 49. But here is what should keep all of us awake at night: approximately 1.7 million ``got-aways.''

In other words, a large number of these migrants turn themselves in knowing they are going to be released, and that is the easiest way to make it into the United States and probably end up staying for the rest of your life. But 1.7 million people who came across the border evaded law enforcement. They call those ``got-aways,'' people caught on cameras or some sensor.

How many more people on the Terror Watchlist were among those 1.7 million ``got-aways''? It should alarm all of us to think about those who made it into this country who have not yet been caught.

Then there are the drugs. Last year, 108,000 Americans died of drug overdoses, 71,000 of those from fentanyl poisoning. Last week, the Border Patrol seized 2,800 pounds of meth, fentanyl, and heroin. That is great, but how many more of those drugs have made their way into the United States undetected? That is $12 million worth of narcotics in just 1 week.

Of course, who is reaping the benefits of the current border policies? It is the drug cartels. It is the smuggling networks. They continue to get richer and richer and more powerful.

Over the weekend, Border Patrol arrested six sexual predators who were illegally crossing the border. Again, we don't know how many more were among the ``got-aways'' I mentioned earlier. This follows a nationwide law enforcement effort last month where U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement apprehended 275 known sex offenders who had entered the country illegally.

All this while the country continues to mourn the death of 22-year- old nursing student Laken Riley. As we all know by now, she was killed while jogging in broad daylight on the campus of the University of Georgia. Jose Antonio Ibarra, a 26-year-old Venezuela national who entered the United States illegally and was released by the Biden administration, has been charged with her murder.

This week, White House Press Secretary Karine Jean-Pierre was asked if President Biden plans to address Laken's death during his State of the Union speech. She said she had nothing to share on that topic.

If the Biden administration had not abused the parole system--that means the catch-and-release by which individuals like Mr. Ibarra were simply released into the interior of the United States--Laken's death might have been prevented. But President Biden has no plans to even acknowledge her death, let alone take responsibility for it.

In the last 3 years, I have spoken on the floor of the Senate about these

issues more times than I can count because Texas is on the frontline but with precious little assistance from the Federal Government. That is why Governor Greg Abbott has used the National Guard and the Department of Public Safety to do what the Federal Government should have already been doing, and that is to provide security for our border.

This is one of the most urgent catastrophes of our time, and it is a huge political liability for the President and his party because they have been watching this catastrophe get worse and worse and worse and done next to nothing about it.

We reached a breaking point a long time ago, and now every State is paying the price for President Biden's failed policies, from Texas all the way to New York.

As long as the President refuses to do his job and enforce the laws already on the books, deadly drugs will continue to flow into our communities, dangerous criminals will threaten our citizenry, and many more lives will be lost.

I hope the President accepts responsibility for what has happened the last 3 years, and I hope his remarks reflect the urgency of this crisis that he created, but the truth is, I won't be holding my breath.

I yield the floor.

Madam President, last year the Center for Missing & Exploited Children received 32 million--32 million--reports of suspected child sexual exploitation.

As we are demonstrating here on a bipartisan basis, the Senate Judiciary Committee, chaired by the Senator from Illinois, passed six bipartisan bills that aim to protect those children, and you have heard of some of them.

Two of the bills have already passed the Senate, including my Project Safe Childhood Act. Four others still need to pass, including the SHIELD Act, which Senator from Iowa just mentioned, which I introduced with Senator Klobuchar, from Minnesota, to ensure that criminals who share explicit photos of children online are held accountable.

Children are our Nation's most valuable resource, and yet we neglect them far too often when they fall prey to predators on line and in our streets.

But we need to move on these bills. It is not enough for us to pat ourselves on the back and say the Judiciary Committee did its job on a bipartisan basis. We need these bills to be taken up, passed, and sent to the President of the United States without further delay.

I want to thank Senator Graham for his leadership on this issue, and I hope the Senate can finally advance these bills.

Madam President, yesterday, my good friend Leader McConnell shared some big news. At the end of this year, he will step down as the Republican leader of the U.S. Senate after having served the longest tenure of any leader in Senate history. For more than 17 years, he has been the steady hand at the helm, guiding us through some of the most consequential debates in recent history. He steered us through multiple wars, through a pandemic and countless high-stakes political battles under four different Presidents. Under his leadership, Congress rewrote the Federal Tax Code to help families across the country, unleashed American-generated power, and reshaped the Federal judiciary for a generation--and so much more.

It has been an honor to serve alongside Leader McConnell and witness a modern-day ``Master of the Senate.'' I will have more to say about our friend from Kentucky at a later date, but the good news is he is not going anywhere. Senator McConnell will lead our conference through the end of this Congress, but he will remain in the Senate through the rest of his term. During that time, he will do as he has always done: represent the State of Kentucky and put his expert knowledge of this Chamber to use on their behalf.

For now, let me just say thanks to Leader McConnell for everything he has done for this body and our great country.

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

Mr. President, tomorrow President Biden will do something he has done only once before in his term as President of the United States, he will travel to the U.S.-Mexico border to Brownsville, TX, in an attempt to address his biggest political liability. Since the President took office 3 years ago, U.S. Customs and Border Protection has logged more than 7.2 million migrant encounters at the southern border. By that, we mean people who have shown up at the border and, by and large, have simply been released into the interior based on an initial claim of asylum which has yet to be put in front of an immigration judge. And it may be as long as, in places like New York, 10 years in the future before they ever get in front of an immigration judge; or, as we have seen tragically here most recently, these migrants will be paroled or simply released into the interior of the country--even without a claim of asylum--given a work permit, and stay here indefinitely.

Mr. President, 7.2 million is higher than the total number of migrants who came across the southern border under President Obama, who served 8 years, and President Trump, who served 4 years. So the Biden administration has done in 3 years what it took 12 years for the two previous administrations to accomplish. We have experienced more illegal immigration in the last 3 years than in the last 12.

The American people have become increasingly concerned at the southern border because they see with their own eyes that this is a humanitarian crisis, and it is a public safety crisis. And they overwhelmingly--and quite appropriately--blame Biden administration policies and the President himself. They see that his policies and his rhetoric, rather than deter illegal immigration, have actually encouraged it.

Let me say that again: They understand that the policies of this administration and the rhetoric that has been used are the driving force behind America's most serious border crisis in history.

But, as usual, the President refuses to accept any responsibility. He has tried to blame everybody but himself. He has blamed congressional dysfunction. He has blamed MAGA Republicans. He has blamed anybody and everybody that he can possibly think of, rather than accept responsibility himself. Not only that, he has, at different times, claimed that he lacks the tools to fix this crisis. At different times, he has claimed that his hands are tied unless Congress passes new laws.

The problem with that storyline, that narrative, is the facts simply don't support it. For one, the suggestion that only Congress can fix the crisis implies that Congress created the crisis. I would point out the same laws that were in effect during President Trump's administration are still in effect during President Biden's administration with far different outcomes.

As each of our colleagues knows, Congress has struggled to pass any immigration laws in recent years; and, certainly, it has not passed any that would cause the dramatic surge in immigration that began the day that President Biden took office. The President was dealt exactly the same hand as his recent predecessors. The only difference is he used these authorities entirely differently and sent an entirely different message.

As I have spoken before on the floor, the Border Patrol, which are the experts on border security, tell me that there are two main drivers of illegal immigration: One is push factors, they call it--poverty, violence, a desire for a better life. And we understand that. America is a nation of immigrants, of legal immigrants.

But there is also the pull factors, like a magnet encouraging people to make the dangerous journey to our border, even in the form of unaccompanied children designed to exploit gaps in Biden administration policies and permanently reside in the United States.

Earlier this week, I was surprised by a New York Times article that acknowledged the fundamental hypocrisy behind President Biden's efforts to shift the blame once again. This is a quote from February 26, 2024, the New York Times. David Leonhardt is the columnist. He said, in part:

Biden is the president, after all, and a president has

significant authority to shape immigration policy even

without new legislation. Biden himself has been aggressive

about using this authority--albeit to loosen immigration

policy rather than tighten it.

So the current phenomenon, this crisis--humanitarian and public safety crisis--is as a result of President

Biden's own policies. It is not the laws that are broken or inadequate; it is his will to actually enforce the law and his active encouragement for people to come to the border because they know they will successfully be able to stay in the United States.

I have mentioned before about a trip that several of us colleagues on a bipartisan basis went to Yuma, AZ, a little sleepy agricultural community in southwest Arizona right across the border from Mexico. The Border Patrol Chief said: Welcome to the Yuma sector. Last year we welcomed people from 140-plus countries--not Mexico, not Central America, but from 140-plus countries that speak more than 200 languages.

Senator Kelly, our colleague from Arizona, pointed out that there was an airport in northern Mexico, in Mexicali--which is a fairly large city in northern Mexico--and, apparently, what happens is people fly into Mexicali and literally Uber over to the Border Patrol and declare amnesty--well, declare ``asylum'' is the right word.

Well, I know the President will have a hard time with this, his second drive-by of the American-Mexico border during his term as President, but, of course, his goal is to try to shift the blame once again. As this journalist wrote, President Biden is the President. He wanted to be President. He got elected President. He ought to do the job that Presidents do, which is to enforce the laws. That is what the executive branch of government does: Congress passes laws. The judicial branch decides disputes about those laws as applied to given facts, but it is the President and the executive branch--the Department of Justice, Department of Homeland Security--that are responsible under our constitutional order for actually enforcing the law.

And what has President Biden done with that authority? He has loosened immigration policy rather than tightened it. This is what I have been saying for 3 years; and, even now, I can't tell you how surprised and pleased I am to see this stated in the New York Times. But President Biden could listen to Mayor Adams, the mayor of New York City. He has said: This has been a disaster for New York. You hear the similar complaints from people like the Mayor of Washington, DC, the mayor of Chicago. These are self-styled sanctuary cities that you think would welcome these migrants, but they have been overwhelmed.

Well, what about 7.2 million that are showing up on our back doorstep in Texas? It is hard to have much sympathy for the mayors of New York and Chicago and Washington, DC, when they have dealt with just a fraction of the numbers that we have had to deal with in Texas without any help from the Federal Government.

And the Federal Government has been actively undermining efforts by the State of Texas to reduce illegal immigration.

During his first few days in office, President Biden signed a raft of Executive orders related to immigration and border security: He halted construction of the border wall. He dismantled the agreement we had with Mexico that migrants could remain in Mexico while they waited for their asylum claim to be adjudicated. But he ripped that up too. He ended an asylum agreement with Northern Triangle countries and even issued a 100-day pause on deportations. So even if you were here illegally, you knew, at least for 100 days--and very likely for the rest of your life--that you would not be deported because of President Biden's policies.

These are just a few examples of the Executive orders President Biden issued within days of taking office. In the 3 years since, he and other leaders in the administration have gone to great lengths to roll out the welcome mat.

One of the most egregious examples is the administration's widespread use of parole. Parole, in this context, means that is a temporary entry for foreigners under rare and dire circumstances. It was never meant to be used categorically or in a blanket fashion as the Biden administration has done. It is meant to be used on a case-by-case basis in extreme cases--someone experiencing a medical emergency at a port of entry; somebody is donating a kidney or serving as a witness in a trial. It was meant to be used on a case-by-case basis which, by nature, gives the administration a good amount of discretion. But to provide some comparison, during the two previous administrations, an average of 5,600 migrants were paroled into the United States each year--5,600. Once President Biden took office, that number skyrocketed.

The Biden administration has used parole to facilitate catch-and- release at the border at an unprecedented pace, but its use of parole extends beyond illegal crossings at the southern border. The Biden administration announced a new program which allows individuals from four countries--Cuba, Haiti, Nicaragua, and Venezuela--to enter and remain in the United States, all under the guise of parole. You don't need to claim asylum. If you can make it to the border, if you pay the smugglers enough money to get you there, you know you are going to be able to stay here. This program that the Biden administration set up intentionally and with great deliberation provides 2 years of legal status and work authorization to 30,000--30,000--migrants from these four countries each month. That is 360,000 a year. The Biden administration: Roll out the welcome mat. Give them a work permit. Say ``You can stay,'' knowing that they probably will be able to stay indefinitely.

In total, the Biden administration has used its case-by-case parole authority to grant parole to 1.6 million migrants in less than 2 years--1.6 million. As President Biden has shown repeatedly, if you give him an inch, he will take a mile.

Another example of gratuitous discretion came from Secretary Mayorkas, who has been impeached by the House of Representatives. Secretary Mayorkas issued a final directive for immigration enforcement priorities in the fall of 2021. This really should be called--instead of immigration enforcement priorities, this should be immigration nonenforcement priorities. That would be a more accurate title.

But under this guidance--one headline summed up the contents rather succinctly. It said the ``U.S. Will No Longer Deport Illegal Immigrants Based on Undocumented Status Alone.'' We are not going to deport people who are illegally entering the country? What kind of message does that send?

But the memo went on to explicitly discourage ICE officers. ICE is Immigration and Customs Enforcement. Once you get past the border, ICE is the one responsible for repatriating or returning people who are here illegally. This memo explicitly discouraged ICE officers from arresting or removing illegal immigrants unless they have been convicted of a serious crime.

It defies all common sense to ask law enforcement officers, who take an oath to uphold the Constitution and laws of the United States--it makes no sense to tell them at the same time to turn a blind eye when you encounter people who are here illegally just because the Biden administration doesn't want to enforce the law.

Secretary Mayorkas went further. He laid out mitigating factors that should be considered before arresting or removing illegal immigrants, including their age, how long they have been in the United States, and the impact the removal would have on their family. Even in the case of an alien convicted of a very serious offense, like murder, like rape, receipt and possession of child pornography, ICE would have to consider these mitigating factors before they could take action and remove that person.

The reality of the situation, no matter how inconvenient it may be for our Democratic colleagues, is that by entering the United States illegally, these migrants are breaking the law.

There is nothing wrong with prioritizing the removal of the most dangerous criminals. Previous administrations have prioritized certain categories of illegal immigrants, like those suspected of terrorism or those who could be a threat to national security or public safety. But there is a difference between prioritizing certain groups for removal and exempting entire categories from enforcement.

Given everything we have witnessed over the past 3 years, President Biden has no right--no right--to claim that

his hands are tied when it comes to addressing the border crisis by Executive action.

From day one, President Biden made clear that he was willing to use Executive action, as David Leonhardt notes here, but he did it to loosen illegal immigration, make it easier, not harder. He used Executive action to stop border wall construction, end the ``Remain in Mexico'' policy, halt deportations, exclude broad classes of migrants from removal, parole more than 1.6 million migrants into the United States, and so much more. So this is a crisis of President Biden's making. This is a manmade disaster, and that man is President of the United States.

If the President believed that he had this much latitude to loosen immigration policy, he shouldn't feel constrained by Congress when it comes to tightening immigration policy. It would be good politics for him. I pointed out that this is a major political liability for the President going into an election. He could fix it, just like he broke it.

Executive actions have been used in the past to address migration surges--and with a great deal of success.

Back in 2005, then-DHS Secretary Michael Chertoff testified before the Senate Judiciary Committee that I serve on and spoke about the Department's response to a surge of migrants from Brazil.

All of a sudden, a bunch of migrants from Brazil showed up at the border. But what did they do? What did the Bush administration do? They used their existing authorities to expand the use of expedited removal, which allows agents to quickly remove migrants who have no legal basis to remain in the United States. As Secretary Chertoff noted, word spread fast. After 30 days, the number of Brazilians dropped by more than 50 percent. After 60 days, it dropped more than 90 percent.

President Biden can do precisely the same thing, but he won't do it. President Biden has the exact same authority to replicate that effort today. He could expand expedited removal, send a clear message that our southern border is no longer an open corridor. But, as Mr. Leonhardt points out, all the messages he is sending are ``You can come. You can stay.'' What more powerful magnet, what more powerful pull factor for illegal immigration can you imagine?

As I pointed out time and time again, it is not just about illegal immigration; it is about the drugs, because the cartels have figured out that if you flood the border with people, you can overwhelm the Border Patrol. Many of them would have to leave the frontlines to process paperwork, provide transportation, food, shelter, clothing to migrants in order to treat them humanely while they are here, but they are not on the border.

Last year alone, 108,000 Americans died from drugs that come across that border, 71,000 of them from fentanyl, the synthetic opioid pressed into counterfeit-looking pills that high school-age children are taking across the country, thinking that they are taking something relatively innocuous, but, in fact, it kills them. Fentanyl is the leading cause of death for young people between the ages of 18 and 45. We know where it comes from. It comes across that border. It is manufactured in Mexico from precursors shipped in from China. But that is part of the disaster that the Biden administration's open border policy has wrought--108,000 dead Americans last year alone.

Well, news reports are that President Biden could announce new Executive actions on his trip to the border tomorrow. I am eager to see whether he will reverse course and issue an Executive order that will actually tighten the border or actually do his duty of securing the border or whether these are measures more designed to loosen immigration policy.

Of course, I expect that the American people, being very smart, will understand why President Biden has chosen this time to take this trip-- the second driveby of the border since he has been President. It is all about the election in November, and he understands that this is a gaping political liability, and he is trying to plug that. Not only is he trying to plug that hole, he is also trying to blame others for his failure, and that will not work. The American people, being very smart and perceptive, can see through that smoke screen.

I yield the floor.