Floor Statements

Madam President, we are back in the Senate and kicking off a new year, which will undoubtedly be busy and certainly challenging. There is a lot of work for us to do, and one of our most crucial tasks is to address the national security supplemental appropriations bill that President Biden has requested.

As you know, that bill includes relief for not only Israel but also additional

assistance to Ukraine and provides additional money for the Indo- Pacific--hopefully to deter potential Chinese aggression in that region--and, of course, the border, which is another story for another day.

But today, I would like to talk about the challenges we face in the Middle East. Today, the global threat environment is unlike any we have seen in recent memory, perhaps in our lifetime.

I just returned from a trip to the Middle East with a bipartisan group of colleagues from the Senate Intelligence Committee. We had an extremely busy schedule, but it was very productive. We had 22 separate meetings with leaders across the region, from Jordan to Saudi Arabia, to Israel.

We also had the opportunity, as I indicated, to travel to Israel to meet with Prime Minister Netanyahu and the Minister of Defense, Galant, and also members of the intelligence community there in Tel Aviv--the Shin Bet, which is responsible for domestic security, and, of course, Mossad, the legendary intelligence agency of the Israeli Government.

We all know that on October 7, the world shifted and changed in a dramatic way in Israel when Hamas entered Israel by air, land, and sea. They committed horrific acts of murder of babies and children and innocent civilians. They raped and tortured and beheaded innocent people--beheaded innocent people. They dismembered the bodies of their victims and captured hostages to use as human shields and bargaining chips. It was a day of infamy that will live in the minds of Israelis for the rest of their lives, and it should be a warning again--if we need another warning--to the rest of the region and the rest of the world.

For the people of Israel, this was not unlike our experience on September 11, 2001, when nearly 3,000 Americans were killed by a terrorist attack here in Washington, DC, and, of course, the plane lost in Pennsylvania when brave passengers on that plane prevented an attack, perhaps on the very Capitol Building here in Washington. Of course, on September 11, thousands of families lost husbands, wives, parents, and children because of evil terrorists in pursuit of a fanatical ideology. That is what Israel experienced 3 months ago.

Compared to the United States, of course, Israel is a very small country. It is home to roughly 9.3 million people. I represent a State of 30 million people. So Israel has roughly about a third of the population of the State of Texas. But in Israel on that day, October 7, the lives of 1,200 people were lost. Based on the population, this would be equivalent to roughly 36,000 Americans dying on 9/11--an absolutely mind-boggling thought.

Just as most Americans can remember where they were and what they were doing on that terrible day of 9/11/2001, nearly every single Israeli who is old enough to remember the attack will forever recall the events of that terrible day. They will never--they will never-- forget the pain that their country and their people have endured and the threat to their very existence that terrorist attack represents.

As might be expected, I am proud to say that over the last 3 months, the United States has stood strongly in support of Israel--one of our closest allies; the only democracy, really, in the Middle East. We provided military assistance and repeatedly affirmed that Israel has a nonnegotiable right to defend itself.

In recent months, as has occurred throughout America's history, some Americans have voiced skepticism: Why should we care? Why should America be involved in these conflicts so far away from our shores? They ask, and it is a fair question: Why should we care about the outcome of a war that is happening thousands of miles away? Given the challenges we face here at home, they ask, why should the United States invest in Israel's victory and the defense of Ukraine against the invasion by Russia? The threats that are occurring in the Indo- Pacific--why should we care about those threats?

Well, the answer when it comes to Israel is simple: Terrorism will not be confined to Israel or the Middle East as a region. What happens there will not stay there.

Now, I know that sometimes we have to relearn the lessons we learned the hard way many years ago, but the lesson of 9/11 is that our oceans, the Pacific and Atlantic Oceans, do not protect the United States against terrorist attacks on our own soil. That is the hard lesson we learned on 9/11, and we should not forget it.

The evil that the world witnessed on October 7 is not limited to Hamas. Hamas, of course, is a terrorist organization committed to the destruction of Israel and the elimination of the Israeli people from the map. This is a sickness, a perversion of a great religion that is shared by terrorist organizations throughout the Middle East.

But we should not be distracted by looking at just Hamas because it is Iran that is the head of the octopus. Its tentacles of terror--its proxies--extend throughout the region and threaten to destabilize the Middle East and potentially start a much larger war.

Iran's terrorist proxies include not only Hamas but also Hezbollah in Lebanon, to the north of Israel; the Houthis in Yemen, on the Arabian Peninsula; the Palestinian Islamic Jihad in Gaza and the West Bank; and, of course the Shiite militias in Syria and Iraq, who have attempted as many as 100 different attacks on American troops and America's interests in the region. Iran provides these groups with funding and with weapons and training to enable these attacks like the one that was committed by Hamas on Israel.

But that is only one example. Iranian-led proxies in Iraq and Syria are attacking U.S. forces, as I said. Hezbollah is launching consistent assaults on northern Israel. The Houthis are disrupting global commerce and freedom of navigation in the Red Sea, as well as launching unmanned aerial vehicles in an attempt to essentially assault and bomb Israel.

Iran is a country driven by an ideology that calls for the destruction of Israel, but Iran would not stop there.

The Supreme Leader of Iran once labeled the United States as Iran's ``No. 1 enemy.'' We see that view borne into action today as Iran supports Russia in its ongoing war on the people of Ukraine and through its strategic cooperation with China.

Yes, this war is about the future of Israel, but it is also about the future of Iran. Tehran stands to gain a lot from Hamas's war against the Israelis, and the United States must continue to stand for the unequivocal defeat of Hamas. Anything less would embolden Iran and its terrorist proxies and aid them in their ambitions for regional hegemony.

Our colleagues are working hard to reach an agreement on a national security supplemental appropriations bill that will include aid for four security national priorities, as I mentioned: Israel, Ukraine, the Indo-Pacific, and the southern border.

When it comes to Israel, some want to set conditions on U.S. aid and thus attempt to micromanage Israel's fight for its very survival. This, I would suggest, is nothing but hubris, plain and simple.

Imagine if other countries tried to tell the United States how we should have conducted our fight against al-Qaida after 9/11, right after the smoke had cleared and after the bodies of 3,000 Americans had been buried; if other countries had told us ``No, you can't go after the terrorists' threat this way; you have to do it that way.'' Our Nation had just lost 3,000 innocent lives through a series of terrorist attacks. Imagine if others tried to dictate the means by which we defeated that threat and protected our country. Would we have allowed them to tie our hands when it comes to our own defense? Absolutely not. We would have chided them for their naivety and dismissed any attempt to treat terrorist organizations with kid gloves or to treat them as a rational power.

A number of Americans are concerned--we are all concerned, I would suggest--by the number of civilian casualties in Gaza.

But the primary cause of civilian casualties in Gaza and in Israel is Hamas, the terrorist organization. There is no question that when war is declared as Hamas declared war against Israel on October 7, that innocent people will be hurt, perhaps even killed. But there is no question that Hamas's own tactics are the reason the loss of life in Gaza is so high.

These terrorists have a long history of using Palestinian civilians as human

shields to protect themselves. Hamas operates a vast network of tunnels beneath Gaza--some 500 kilometers by one estimate--and they shield their terrorist overlords in those tunnels from the dangerous fighting above ground. This is where they store critical supplies like water, food, and fuel, which are being kept from the Palestinian civilians who need that humanitarian assistance. It seems likely that these tunnels are the hiding place for more than 130 remaining hostages.

I met with the grieving families here in Dallas, TX, who lost loved ones to this conflict on October 7, whose loved ones are hostages of Hamas today in Israel. And we also met with another group of Americans who have family members who are currently hostages of Hamas in Gaza.

Well, a video was shared online of a Hamas gunman who was captured and interrogated by Israeli officials. He said that Hamas shelters in tunnels and basements under clinics, schools, and hospitals because they know the Israelis will not target those locations because of their concern about collateral damage and the injury and, perhaps, death of innocent people. So Hamas deliberately places innocent Palestinians between its terrorist foot soldiers and incoming rockets.

We should remember that it was Hamas that initiated this war with their brutal massacre of Israeli civilians, including women and children--even infants--that were just going about their daily lives that represented no threat to them. It is Hamas that knowingly uses the Palestinian people as human shields. It is Hamas that rejoices at every Palestinian killed because it broadens their support and strengthens their narrative and helps them recruit more support.

The world should not condemn Israel for defending itself against terrorist attacks, just like the world did not condemn the United States when we defended ourselves against al-Qaida following the terrorist attacks of 9/11. The world should condemn Hamas for its indiscriminate use of civilian infrastructure to protect its own foot soldiers.

As the fighting continues, we can't lose sight of the jarring difference between two sides of this conflict. There is no moral equivalence between Israel and the terrorist organization known as Hamas or, as I mentioned earlier, the head of the octopus, which is the regime in Iran.

This is not a battle between two nations. This is a battle between good and evil. Additional assistance for Israel is crucial to not only the future of the Jewish State but to the stability of the region and the future ambitions of Iran. If Hamas emerges from this war with nothing more than a black eye, it will send a message to Iran and its terrorist proxies that their war against Israel and the Western world is worthwhile. And it will continue and it will intensify and it will expand.

Given the chaos that is unfolding in the Middle East today, the very last thing the world needs is an emboldened Iran. I hope in the coming weeks, the Senate can finally make progress on the need for assistance for Israel. The House passed an Israel aid bill on November 2--November 2, more than 2 months ago--and the Senate has done nothing except preach to Israel on the means by which some believe it should defend itself from those determined to wipe it from the face of the Earth.

This is not a time for preaching to Israel, our most steadfast ally in the Middle East, about how to defend themselves. It is a grave disservice, I believe, to do so.

So there is a lot at stake, and the eyes of the world are on the United States. Again, as I said earlier, no American wants to see us involved in conflicts around the world. But, unfortunately, it is our responsibility, not just because we come to the aid of others who have been innocent civilians and people who have been viciously attacked by terrorists but because this virus, this contagion, will spread beyond Israel, beyond the Middle East, and to other parts of the world, including the United States.

If there is a lesson we learned from 9/11, it is that our oceans--the Pacific and Atlantic Oceans--will not protect us. So what happens in Gaza, what happens in Israel will not stay there.

Taking action to ensure our top ally in the Middle East has its back would be a great place for us to start this new year. The clock is ticking, and the Senate needs to act soon to ensure that Israel has what it needs to defeat Hamas and confront the growing threat from Iran.

I yield the floor.

I suggest the absence of a quorum.

Mr. President, it is the 13th of December and, of course, with the holidays coming up, my thoughts today are with the families who will have an empty seat at their dinner table this year. The pain of losing a loved one never goes away. But for many families, the feelings of grief are only magnified by a lack of closure.

More than 22 years have passed since the attacks on September 11, and the families of victims of that terrorist act are still fighting for justice.

To support that fight, Senator Schumer--the majority leader--and I introduced the Justice Against Sponsors of Terrorism Act--otherwise known as JASTA--which became law in 2016. This made it possible for the people affected by 9/11 to bring a civil suit against foreign sponsors of terrorism. It didn't say who they were or make a judgment as to the outcome, but it made it possible for them to go to court and attempt to make their case.

Like any other victim of a horrific attack, the 9/11 families deserve justice; and that is exactly what JASTA has sought to provide.

Over the last several years, it has become clear that JASTA needs technical fixes, primarily because of the mixed interpretation about exactly what Congress intended. Some parties, including countries accused of financing and sponsoring terrorism, have exploited these perceived loopholes in the law and claimed total immunity from lawsuits. It is certainly not our intention.

This flies in the face of the text, the structure, and the intent of Congress. And we need to enact these technical fixes so this law can carry out its original promise, which is to provide victims with a path toward justice.

So earlier this year, I introduced legislation to make these important technical corrections. And I appreciate, in particular, Senator Blumenthal--the Senator from Connecticut--Congressman Van Drew, and Congressman Nadler in the House for working with us.

I am disappointed that the Senate has not yet taken up and passed JASTA, but I remain as committed as ever to continuing to support the 9/11 families and hold sponsors of international terrorism accountable.

This measure has strong bipartisan support. It passed twice. The original JASTA passed twice by unanimous vote in the Senate. We actually overrode a Presidential veto. But these additional technical fixes need to be done. And I will continue to fight to pass the bill when we return next month.

Senate Legislative Agenda

Mr. President, on another matter, we all know from our school experience that students across America come home from school with a report card in hand to show their parents the grades they earned-- whether it is math, science, English, or other subjects. Of course, report cards aren't the be-all and end-all, but they do provide parents with a good snapshot of how their children are doing and where they might be struggling.

Here in the Senate, we are nearly halfway through the 118th Congress. And this seems like a good opportunity for our majority party who are in charge of the agenda here to receive the same sort of evaluation. After all, their ability to run this Chamber impacts every State, city, and community across the country. And, unfortunately, they haven't earned high marks.

So here is the report card for the Democratic majority in 2023. Let's look at government funding first. Thanks to the chair and vice chair of the Senate Appropriations Committee, the Senate was on track to return to regular order this year.

It, actually, was really good work by Senator Murray and Senator Collins to get the Appropriations Committee back to work again. The committee actually passed all 12 appropriations bills before the Senate adjourned for the August recess, giving the majority leader plenty of time to move these bills across the Senate floor.

Despite that long runway, the majority leader didn't even attempt to put an appropriations bill on the Senate floor until mid-September, nearly 3 months after the first funding bill passed the committee.

Well, it is no surprise, given the late date that the majority leader finally sought to determine to act, that we didn't have enough time to complete the job. So at the end of the fiscal year, which is the end of September, we had to pass a short-term continuing resolution to fund the government until November. And then that November deadline came and went once again. And we had to kick the can down the road once more, to January 19.

So when the Senate returns in January, we will have to hit the ground running because we are up against not just one but two funding deadlines. One is January 19 and the other is February 2.

So we will see whether the majority leader allows the Senate to actually make some progress toward considering those appropriations bills before we run up against one or both of those deadlines.

Well, the next major piece of legislation we have is the National Defense Authorization Act--otherwise known around here as the NDAA--one of the most important bills that the Senate considers every year.

The NDAA should have been signed into law by the end of September, but the majority leader decided to delay it until now. We will finally complete that work either later today or tomorrow. The Senate will finally pass this bill--which should have been passed by the end of the fiscal year in September--this week, more than 2 months behind schedule.

Once again, the delay was completely avoidable. Our colleagues on the Senate Armed Services Committee, on a bipartisan basis, completed their work in June, and this legislation passed the full Senate in July. We had plenty of time to resolve the differences between the Senate and the House version; but, unfortunately, we squandered that time. So here we are.

The majority leader waited until November 16--nearly 4 months after the Senate bill passed--to begin the formal conference process. So there is just simply no reason why we have had these delays, especially when something as critical as national security is on the line.

But, unfortunately, that is only one of our priorities--national priorities--that has been neglected. The other has to do with the request made from our friends in Israel and our friends in Ukraine for additional assistance--a national security supplemental.

The President, in October, asked Congress to vote on this emergency supplemental. Well, we have been abundantly clear from the get-go that since the President included money for the border, that that was certainly germane to our consideration of this supplemental bill. We will not, though, merely fund the current open-border policies of the Biden administration, which has been an absolute disaster--millions of people coming across the border being released into the United States, drugs that took the lives of 108,000 Americans last year alone, and then, of course, the 300,000 unaccompanied children placed with sponsors in the United States that the administration has simply lost track of.

You may recall that the New York Times did an investigative piece which pointed out that in 85,000 cases, when a call was made to the sponsor 30 days after the child was placed with that sponsor, there was no answer. And the administration did not follow up at all. So they can't tell you whether they are going to school, whether they are getting the healthcare that they need, whether they are being trafficked for sex or forced into involuntary labor.

The New York Times did document that too many children are being put in dangerous jobs at an underage in violation of State and Federal law.

So my point is that when the President asks for border security money, talking about border security and how to fix the broken border is certainly relevant and germane to that topic, since the President initiated it in the first place.

So people wonder: Why is the money for Israel and Ukraine being held up? I think the majority leader actually said it was being held hostage, which is an unfortunate use of that term. But I point out that the House passed a $14.3 billion supplemental appropriations to benefit Israel on November 2. Again, here we are, 6 weeks later, and there has been no action on this bill that has already passed the House.

Now, I understand the majority leader may not like all of what is in that bill but certainly could put it on the floor and let the Senate work its will and pass that and send it to the President's desk. Certainly, that would be helpful to our allies in Israel.

So we know that the border crisis has become so severe that major American cities--like New York and Chicago--are now crying uncle because they have had to deal with a few thousand migrants who have, ultimately, ended up in their city.

And you have had people like Mayor Adams in New York say that these migrants were going to destroy New York City. Well, what about the 7 million migrants who have crossed the border in my State and in other border States who are now dispersed throughout the United States? This is also a blinking green light saying to anybody and everybody who has the money to pay the smugglers to bring them to the border: Keep coming.

Well, it is a disaster. And we are going to do everything in our power to address the broken border as part of the supplemental. Unfortunately, we will not be able to complete that work before the end of this month because, No. 1, the majority leader decided to wait until the holidays to put it on the floor in the first place.

And then there is the Federal Aviation Administration Reauthorization, which was set to expire again at the end of September, last September. Over the last few years, travelers have dealt with widespread flight cancelations, paralyzing staffing shortages and rising prices. They have also witnessed--we have witnessed--some jarring safety issues, including near collisions on airport runways, including cities like the one I live in, in Austin, TX.

The Senate passed a short-term extension that provides for 3 more

months to advance a longer-term reauthorization that addresses these and other issues. But, unfortunately, that work hasn't been done either, which has earned another incomplete.

So the Senate is expected to pass another short-term extension this week so the Agency can keep up and running through at least March 8.

Now, that is another item which we should have finished this year which we did not finish, and so it has been kicked over into next year.

We have also failed to complete the work on the farm bill, which affects agriculture and food programs throughout the country. This legislation is critical to America's food supply as well as to the hard-working men and women who grow and produce it.

The previous farm bill expired on September 30. Does that sound familiar? Well, it is a familiar theme where the majority fails to tee up these issues until the deadline, and then we can't get it done, and another extension has to be passed. Now we know that the farm bill has been extended for a year because the Senate Agriculture Committee has been unable--and the majority--to get that bill on the floor.

Finally, we have a law that most people have not heard of until recently, perhaps--section 702 of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act. The Presiding Officer, of course, is very familiar with this. The intelligence community calls this the crown jewels of American intelligence gathering because it is absolutely vital to our national security. It allows the intelligence community to obtain information with which to combat everything from terrorism to cyber attacks and to prevent our adversaries from developing weapons of mass destruction.

This authorization for this critical national security tool is set to expire at the end of this month, and our Nation's most senior intelligence officials have been pleading with Congress for months to take action. They have issued warnings in the starkest possible language about the consequences of failing to reauthorize section 702.

Unfortunately, ultimately, the House was forced to kick the can down the road once again because we simply have not done our work on time. So that is what is in the NDAA, the National Defense Authorization Act. It includes a temporary extension of section 702 until April 19, adding to the growing list of tasks we should have done this year which we will have to do next year.

As we know, legislating only gets harder as the election approaches, and the 2024 election is less than 11 months away--hardly a conducive environment to getting this work done and certainly not any easier than it would have been to do it on time.

So we have a lot of work to do when we return in January. We have two government funding deadlines--January 19 and February 2. The FAA will need to be reauthorized or extended by March 8. Section 702 of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act will need to be reauthorized or extended by April 19.

The first 4 months of next year will be spent working through the backlog of items that should have been completed this year. Given this lackluster performance, this is one report card that our Democratic colleagues should be embarrassed to take home to their constituents.

I yield the floor.

Mr. President, this week, at long last, the Senate will vote on the National Defense Authorization Act conference report.

Each year, the Defense Authorization Act is how we demonstrate our support for the men and women in uniform--how they are paid, how they are equipped, how they are trained--and how our alliances are strengthened.

Given the incredible number of threats that exist in today's world, preserving our military readiness has never been more important. There is a war in the Middle East, a war in Europe, and growing tensions in the Indo-Pacific. I was reading this morning there are more wars and conflicts today than there have been literally at almost any time in history. We live in a dangerous world, and maintaining our paramount strength and the deterrence that flows from that is absolutely imperative.

That is why the Defense Authorization Act is so important. Each year, it allows us to take stock of the evolving threat landscape and to take corrective actions. This year's Defense bill prioritizes long-term strategic competition with China. It will help replenish our defense stockpiles from the weapons that we have been supplying Ukraine so that they can defend themselves against unjustified Russian aggression, and it will help us maintain our own state of readiness and the deterrent effect that goes along with it. This bill will also support modernization efforts across the board, from the nuclear triad to next- generation weapons.

This year's NDAA also authorizes military construction projects across the country, including $230 million for military construction projects in Texas alone. That includes $48 million for a cyber operations center and $20 million for a child development center at Joint Base San Antonio. It is really important to understand that in an All-Volunteer military, it is important not only to view this as service by just the member who wears the uniform but also the entire family. So trying to make sure that we take care of things like a child development center at Joint Base San Antonio ensures our ability to continue to recruit and retain highly qualified individuals to serve in our All-Volunteer military.

This bill also has $20 million for barracks improvements and nearly $6 million for tactical equipment maintenance facilities at Fort Cavazos. It has $74 million for a new rail yard spur at Fort Bliss. This is so, should troops need to be deployed from Fort Bliss, they can almost immediately be loaded onto a rail and then sent to the port at Beaumont and other ports for disembarkation.

And this is just scratching the surface. So, simply put, the NDAA will support our troops, strengthen our military readiness, and implement a raft of reforms to strengthen our national security.

Included in this bill is the Intelligence Authorization Act, which includes the Sensible Classification Act that I introduced with Senator Warner earlier this year. It had become apparent to me that our classification system had been overused, and too many people were able to classify documents and keep them out of public view without any real rhyme or reason.

This is particularly important given the nature of our Republic where the public has a right to know what their government is doing. Now, certainly--and this bill does protect sensitive classified information when it is important to our national security, but it is important to make sure that that classification process extends no further than is absolutely necessary and

that once the risk of public disclosure lapses, that that information be subject to declassification, which is what the Sensible Classification Act does.

The classification of sensitive information gives us an invaluable edge when it comes to planning and preparing for threats all around the world, but there is a very thin line between strategic classification and excessive secrecy. Of course, political accountability is a critical part of self-government, and given the all-too-human, natural incentive to trumpet successes and hide mistakes, excessive secrecy undermines that accountability, which is essential to our system of government. If too much information is withheld from the public, it can sow distrust.

Without transparency, there can be no accountability, and without accountability, there is no confidence that the government is acting in the best interest of the American people. It is obvious that there is a need to recalibrate the balance between the public's right to know and the need to protect and defend our Nation, and that is what this important provision of the National Defense Authorization Act does. It will increase accountability and oversight of the classification system by requiring training to promote sensible classification and efficient declassification. Declassification, as I indicated, after the need for secrecy goes away, will allow information to become public so we can learn from our history, and we can learn our history as well.

This bill requires Federal Agencies to justify security clearances. Too many people have security clearances, which actually contribute to the overclassification of information. We need to limit security clearances and access to classified information to those who truly need it in order to keep our Nation safe. This legislation will help protect the integrity of America's classification system and help provide some additional trust in the government, I hope, and I am glad it will soon be heading to the President's desk for his signature.

There is another important provision in the National Defense Authorization Act that is very important as well, and that is an extension of section 702 of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act, which is set to expire at the end of this year unless it is extended. But we all know this law is not without some controversy.

Still, the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act and section 702, in particular, is one of the most important and consequential laws that most Americans have never even heard of. This authority is the key to detecting and disrupting threats to our safety and our security. For example, information acquired through section 702 has helped identify threats to our own troops and thwart planned terrorist attacks both here at home and abroad.

It has enabled the U.S. Government to stop components for weapons of mass destruction from reaching our foreign adversaries. It has helped us disrupt our adversaries' efforts to recruit spies on American soil or send their operatives to the United States once recruited overseas.

It has also helped us understand and combat fentanyl trafficking, a drug which took 71,000 American lives last year alone.

It has helped us identify foreign ransomware attacks on U.S. critical infrastructure and uncover war crimes and gruesome atrocities in places like Ukraine.

For virtually every national security threat America faces, section 702 is an essential asset. There is a reason why it is known as the crown jewel of America's intelligence-gathering capabilities. But as I said a moment ago, despite the importance of this law, this authority is not without some controversy, and unfortunately we have been unable to resolve all of that controversy into an agreed statute with appropriate reforms. So this temporary extension is important to give us the time and the space to be able to do that.

In recent years, we have learned of some abuses of our intelligence authorities. But I want to be clear: The targeting of Americans is expressly prohibited in section 702. In fact, you can't target foreign adversaries on American soil--only overseas. This is very limited in its application. This authority allows the intelligence community and the Department of Justice to obtain intelligence on foreigners located outside the United States. It cannot be used to target U.S. citizens, whether on American soil or elsewhere.

Now, where this issue gets thorny is because of the so-called incidental collection of the identity of Americans. So when a foreign national communicates with somebody in the United States--obviously, a U.S. person, defined as a legal permanent resident or a U.S. citizen-- there will be incidental collection of that communication between the foreigner and the American.

As an example, let's say the intelligence community is using 702 to monitor the communications of a Hamas terrorist in Gaza who is believed to pose a danger to our national security. He is not on American soil, and he is not an American citizen, but he is using U.S.-based communication networks.

One of the people that Hamas terrorists in our hypothetical is communicating with is an American on U.S. soil, and through a series of text messages, the intelligence community is able to discern that the two are planning an attack on civilians in New York City.

This is a fairly typical sort of collection using this important authority, and you can understand why it is important to be able to retain that ability to discern these sorts of attacks and this sort of planning by our adversaries against us.

So in this case, even though the American is not the target of the collection, the conversation would be visible because the person he is communicating with is a foreign target. But the intelligence community has a whole set of protocols and procedures to protect American citizens and U.S. persons even in this sort of incidental collection. There is a series of minimization procedures intended to limit the distribution of this information to make sure that it is not subject to abuse.

So let's say that the FBI wants to get some more information about that U.S. citizen on American soil. They then have to go to the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court and demonstrate probable cause that that American citizen or U.S. person is a threat to U.S. public safety. And they have to get a warrant involving that U.S. citizen--U.S. person.

So in this hypothetical terror plot, we are looking at a clear and imminent threat to people on American soil, and clearly that is something that the FBI would want to take a closer look at.

Congress has designed this authority to provide intelligence professionals with timely and actionable intelligence in a way that protects the privacy and the rights of American citizens, but unfortunately we know that occasionally we will find abuse of those authorities. For example, in 2020 and early 2021, it was revealed that hundreds of thousands of improper searches had been made using the 702 database.

Now, I, like most other people I know, were outraged by these abuses, and the American people should be outraged when these authorities, as important as they are, are used improperly. This represents a violation of trust by some of our Nation's most powerful law enforcement Agencies.

Given these abuses, some of our colleagues have suggested that we simply allow this authority to lapse, but the truth is, we can't cut off our nose to spite our face. Instead of nixing it, we need to fix it, and that is what we need the time to do that this temporary extension will provide.

Losing section 702 authority would make the American people vulnerable to a range of threats. Instead of tossing this authority aside, we simply need to reform it. I say ``simply''--we need to reform it.

Last week, FBI Director Christopher Wray testified before the Senate Judiciary Committee and talked about the abuses of 702 authority. He described these failures appropriately as ``unacceptable'' and spoke about the raft of reforms he has implemented to address the problem.

The FBI has improved its systems, enhanced training, added oversight and approval requirements, and adopted new accountability measures. It has also launched a new Office of Internal Auditing that is focused specifically on FISA compliance. The data show that these reforms are actually working.

The Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court found that agents complied with FISA requirements 98 percent of the time. And the number of searches of the 702 database fell by 95 percent from 2021 to 2022. Obviously, this is not 100 percent. It is not perfection. But these are commendable signs of progress.

(Ms. BUTLER assumed the Chair.)

Given the understandable concern here in Congress with reforming the way section 702 operates, primarily as it applies to American citizens, the NDAA gives us more time to get it right--something we have not had to this point. Once it is signed into law, Congress will have until April 19 to advance a longer term 702 reauthorization.

In both the House and the Senate, Members are diligently working to reauthorize this authority in a way that protects the foundation of this intelligence-gathering tool while strengthening privacy protections for the American people.

As always, we have to ensure these enhanced protections don't create new problems. We don't want to create inadvertently loopholes that could be exploited by our adversaries or hamper law enforcement's ability to hold criminals accountable.

I hope we can build on the progress that has been made by codifying the FBI's changes and taking additional measures to protect the privacy of the American people.

The information and dot-connecting that is made possible through 702 is absolutely essential. It allows us to stay a step ahead of our adversaries and mitigate threats to the United States and the American people. It is an invaluable and irreplaceable component of our national security, and we need to be thoughtful and deliberate about the steps we take to preserve it and, more importantly, to reform it.

I yield the floor.

Madam President, I am here on the floor to join my colleagues in support of Israel, and we are willing to do more than just speak those words. We are willing to do something about it-- something that, miraculously, the majority leader has been unwilling to do since November 2, when the House passed a $14.3 billion bill to provide aid to Israel.

And, for some reason, the only person who has the authority to bring a bill like that to the floor to vote has refused to do so. It makes me wonder why. Why in the world would the majority leader, who I know supports Israel, refuse to bring a bill to the floor to provide that aid? So far, it is almost 5 weeks since the House passed an appropriations bill to do exactly that.

Well, it could be that he doesn't like the pay-for, that he doesn't want us to quit adding to our national debt. But if that is the case, he could suggest another offset or pay-for. He could have tried to bring the bill to the floor and eliminate the pay-for that the House provided.

Frankly, I think it makes plenty of sense to keep the House pay-for in the bill so we don't add to our national debt, which is now about 100 percent of our economy. This last year alone, the United States Government paid over $600 billion in interest to our bondholders who own our national debt. And, apparently, the majority leader and our Democratic colleagues want to add to that and not stop this march toward bankruptcy or insolvency.

So here we had a vote. The majority leader brings a bill to the floor to deal with Israel, Ukraine, the Indo-Pacific, and to provide more money to pay for the current broken border policies by the Biden administration.

You might wonder: Why would he bring that bill to the floor with those four pieces, those four components, but yet refuse to bring a bill to the floor to fund Israel?

You would think, well, at least it is a step in the direction he apparently wants to go. But the truth is that he is holding this Israel aid hostage to his desire to pass this other $106 billion appropriations bill, this supplemental.

Now, don't get me wrong. Many of us support aid to Ukraine, but we also are going to insist on policy solutions to help prevent and stop and reverse what we see happening at our border, which is historically catastrophic.

So this is really a very strange way of doing business. Here we are, almost 5 weeks after the House passed an Israel aid bill. You would think, well, the majority leader would say: Let's pass that and send it to the President, and then we can focus on the rest of the bill that was on the floor this afternoon--Ukraine, the Indo-Pacific, and the border. But, apparently, he wants to use the support for the Israel aid to build the vote for the larger bill, understanding that, while support for Israel is virtually universal among both parties and in both Houses, there are some divisions on the Ukraine aid or the terms under which that aid is provided.

So it is clear to me that he is holding up aid for Israel in order to achieve other objectives. That is his prerogative as majority leader, but I have to ask to our pro-Israel supporters around the country whether they think this is a legitimate leverage that could be used in order to achieve a larger objective, or whether it would make more sense, if you truly are a supporter of Israel, to go ahead and get this to the President and to get that aid to Israel and then come back and do the rest of what I know the majority leader wants to do.

So the other part of this--which is amazing to me--is we know the Speaker passed the Israel aid because he knows he has concerns, and he doesn't know if he has the votes in the House to pass the larger package. So why would you not take up and pass the Israel aid as opposed to send the House this larger $106 billion package when it is unlikely that the Speaker is going to be able to pass that, at least based on his experience. Doesn't that also delay aid to Israel even more by packaging it with other items?

Frankly, it is mysterious to me why all this time--2 months after Israel was attacked by Hamas, 5 weeks after the House has passed an Israel aid bill--that, finally, here we are coming to the floor, offering to take up and pass the Israel aid, and we are going to get an objection from the Democratic side.

It is really mysterious to me. It is very puzzling. Why in the world would our Democratic colleagues, if they truly support Israel, if they truly want to fight--give Israel the tools they need to fight Hamas, a terrorist organization, bought and paid for by Tehran--why in the world would they object to it?

Well, Washington, DC, in many ways, is a parallel universe that is very much unlike any of the rest of the country. What makes sense here, inside the beltway, makes no sense to our constituents back home, and this is just another example of that.

So I applaud my colleague from Kansas for taking the initiative here and calling us together, and not just saying we support Israel but actually being willing to do something about it.

That is another phenomenon here in Washington, DC. There are a lot of people who say the right words, but, when it comes to actions, they are missing in action.

So I thank my colleague from Kansas.

Madam President, the majority leader has said he plans to schedule a vote on President Biden's $106 billion supplemental funding request as soon as this week. He knows, as well as I do, that, as written, this proposal stands zero chance of becoming law. If Senator Schumer puts this funding request on the floor of the Senate, I believe the cloture vote--the requirement here that 60 Senators agree to cut off debate--will fail. In the

House, the legislation is so unpopular that it will never even make it to the floor for a vote.

The strong opposition to the President's proposal is completely warranted, not for what it includes so much as for what it does not include. The supplemental is supposed to be all about national security, but it fails to deliver anything on one of the most urgent national security priorities, and that is the crisis at the southern border. National security begins with homeland security, right here at home, and we have a major security vulnerability right here on our Nation's doorstep.

Since President Biden took office, we have logged more than 6.5 million illegal crossings at the southern border. On top of that, there have been roughly 1.7 million people who have gotten away. They call them ``got-aways,'' the Border Patrol does. They are people who have been identified--at least by their physical presence--on a camera or a sensor, but when the Border Patrol shows up to try to find them, they are nowhere to be found.

The truth is, the Biden administration has zero idea of who these 1.7 million people are or what they are capable of or what their intentions are. They could be people just simply coming here to work. They could be terrorists. They could be carrying illegal drugs that took the lives last year alone of 108,000 Americans. They could be people with long rap sheets. They could be convicted murderers or child abusers. We simply have no idea, and that is the point. Uncontrolled illegal immigration is dangerous.

The migration crisis has precipitated another crisis. When thousands of people are pouring across the border each day, it provides a perfect diversion for drug cartels in allowing them to move fentanyl, for example, across the border. Fentanyl alone took the lives of 71,000 young people last year alone. Fentanyl poisoning is the No. 1 cause of death for those Americans between the ages of 18 and 45 years old. As I have said, we are losing somewhere around 110,000 Americans a year.

In all the time I have been working on this issue, I have never seen anything like the current situation at the border. Texas, as you know, has a 1,200-mile common border with Mexico, so this is ground zero for the Biden border crisis, but this is unlike anything we have ever seen before.

President Biden, during his time in office, has shattered every record on the books when it comes to illegal border crossings. In less than 3 years, he has set new records for the most crossings in a single day, in a single month, in a single year. I say ``he'' has because this would not happen if President Biden would simply use the laws that are already on the books to try to bring some control out of this chaos.

It is important to realize this didn't just materialize out of thin air. It was a direct result of the Biden administration's refusal to enforce the law. Instead, the Biden administration has sent a signal that our borders are open to anyone who can show up at our borders, and that message has gotten through loud and clear.

A recent story in the New York Times highlighted just how far the President's open borders message has traveled. In the past year, more than 24,000 Chinese citizens have been apprehended at the southern border. That is more than the previous 10 years combined. Many of these individuals claim asylum, but whether or not their claims are successful really doesn't impact on their ability to stay in the United States. As the New York Times noted, those who are not granted asylum end up staying anyway because China usually will not take them back.

It is no secret that word travels fast. When a group of migrants reaches the southern border and is allowed to remain in the United States, then people watching on television or people on the other end of a telephone call are told: I made it. You can too. So they keep coming. Chinese citizens now represent the fourth largest group making the trek to our southern border. That is astonishing, and it ought to be concerning.

The reason so many people from around the world are making this expensive and dangerous trip is that they are all but guaranteed by Biden administration policies to be able to stay. There is absolutely no deterrence, no consequence. The Border Patrol has told me countless times that the migrants used to run away from them, but now they run to them and turn themselves in, knowing that they will be able to stay. Migrants used to go to great lengths to avoid being arrested because, once it happened, it was most likely game over. Law enforcement would detain the migrants and determine whether they had a legitimate cause to remain in the United States, but if they didn't, they would be removed or repatriated to their home countries. If someone wanted to claim asylum, law enforcement would conduct a credible fear screening to determine whether they had a colorable case for asylum, but if they did not, they would be returned to their home country. That is what the Border Patrol calls consequences and what I would call a deterrent for people coming who know they don't have any arguable legal basis to be able to stay.

But, today, that entire story has been flipped on its head. Personnel and detention facilities are so underwater that the normal processes have gone out the window. When thousands of migrants are crossing the border every day, law enforcement simply doesn't have the ability to detain each and every person long enough to determine if their claims to stay in the United States are legitimate. Today, migrants want to be arrested or detained by Border Patrol because they know they are highly unlikely to be removed. In fact, they are all but guaranteed a yearslong stay, probably, even openly, with a work authorization.

Today, migrants are quickly processed and released while they await a court date that is years away. Recently, we had a hearing in the Senate Judiciary Committee where some of the immigration judges who have the most experience in considering these cases testified that only about 15 percent of the people who ultimately appear in front of an immigration judge legally qualify for asylum. That means 85 percent of the people in that line do not. Yet what is causing this huge backlog is the 85 percent who prevent the 15 percent from getting their cases heard on a timely basis.

Since President Biden took office, the immigration court backlogs have more than doubled; now it is more than 2.9 million cases. As a result, the wait for a court date just keeps on growing.

You know, that is part of the plan of the smuggling organizations that get rich by smuggling individuals into the United States. The more people they can move into the United States, the more money they make, and the more they can stack up immigration court hearings, the more they can ensure that people are actually released rather than detained. Then the smugglers win, and we lose.

Earlier this year, the Associated Press reported that, in New York, court dates were being assigned in the year 2033--not 2023, the present year, but 2033, a decade away.

With each day that passes, it becomes clearer and clearer that money alone will not fix the problem. After all, the border crisis isn't the result of scarce resources but of an intentional refusal by the Biden administration to actually enforce the law. It is clear we need more than funding to solve this crisis. What we need are policy changes that will lead to real change--in other words, stop the exploitation of our asylum laws and of our catch-and-release policies. President Biden has proven he is not up to the job. He apparently doesn't care. He has had nearly 3 years to do something meaningful to stop this crisis, but he has simply refused to do so.

Congress has a responsibility to act, and this national security supplemental is the best place to force action. Whether or not Democrats will admit it, the border crisis is a major national security risk, and it has to be addressed. I know it is not easy, as border security and immigration are some of the thorniest issues we debate here in Congress, but we will not continue to fund broken policies that have contributed to the situation we find ourselves in today. We need and will insist on real, substantive changes.

This side of the aisle has been clear that a security supplemental must include funding and policy reforms to address the crisis at the southern border, and if that doesn't happen, we will not proceed to the rest of the supplemental. Yes, there is a bipartisan

group of our colleagues working on a border provision that includes both funding and policy changes. I am eager to see what they come up with, but unfortunately it looks like we are running out of time. That means that if Senator Schumer, the majority leader, puts a bill on the floor that fails to address the crisis at the border with real, substantive policy reforms, we will not proceed to that bill.

National security begins at home. Our security cannot come second to that of other countries around the world, our allies, even those like Ukraine and Israel.

I yield the floor.

I suggest the absence of a quorum.

Mr. President, we are nearly halfway through the 118th Congress--you know, it is hard to believe. And despite the challenges that confront this Chamber, working with the House and the President to get legislation passed, the Senate has managed to advance some great bipartisan bills this year.

All of this attention the media gives tends to focus on where we disagree. And there is no question there are a lot of disagreements. But there are areas where we have found the chance to work together to do important things.

While some of the bills I have talked about actually passed this Chamber unanimously and will have a positive impact on our constituents in communities from Maine to Texas to Nebraska and while a number of these bills have been signed into law, many are still awaiting action in the House. And I would like to provide a few examples.

Project Safe Childhood is a bill that I introduced with Senator Klobuchar, the Senator from Minnesota, to provide greater protection for our children online. The anonymity and accessibility afforded in the digital realm have allowed predators to infiltrate our homes and target our children. This, of course, is the dark side of the internet, and it has been a problem since the advent of the digital age.

But it gets worse. Last year, the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children received 32 million reports--32 million reports--of suspected child sexual exploitation, an alltime record.

One of our most valuable tools for combating these crimes is the Project Safe Childhood Program at the Department of Justice.

This program was created in 2006 to bolster law enforcement efforts and to

invest in education and prevention strategies. Since its inception, the number of cases and defendants prosecuted by the U.S. Attorney's Offices has increased by 40 percent.

This is a positive sign we are moving in the right direction despite the dismal facts that I have recounted here, but it is clear more needs to be done.

This bill reauthorizes and strengthens this program by modernizing the investigation and prosecution of these crimes. It will provide law enforcement with additional tools they need to bring more predators to justice.

This bill passed the Senate unanimously last month, but it is currently awaiting action in the House. I have been proud to work with Representatives Wesley Hunt and Debbie Wasserman Schultz--Republican and Democrat alike--on this legislation. Again, this is bipartisan consensus legislation that just needs a vote in the House.

Another example is Project Safe Neighborhoods. This bill reauthorizes this program at the Department of Justice. Now, at a time when we are all concerned about violent crime in our neighborhoods, this is one of the most efficient, one of the most effective ways of combating violent crime in our neighborhoods that we have devised.

It is inspired by a successful program that I appropriated when I was attorney general of Texas that started in Richmond, VA, called Project Exile. What they realized is that if they targeted the most violent criminals, the ones who, in violation of the law, possessed and used firearms in the commission of a crime--that if they were prosecuted under mandatory minimums, that this would prove as a big deterrent for people using firearms to commit crimes or carrying firearms when they are prohibited by law.

Since this nationwide program was launched in 2013, we have seen more than a 13-percent decrease in violent crime in cities with a high rate of program participation. This is a partnership between State, local, and Federal. Today, the American people are increasingly concerned about crime, more concerned here in the Nation's Capital where the number of carjackings have gone through the roof, including some of our colleagues in the House of Representatives who have been a victim of carjacking.

A Gallup poll earlier this month found that 63 percent of Americans view crime as either an ``extremely'' or ``very'' serious problem, marking a new record for the poll. So it is clear we need to focus on crime and violence reduction strategies like Project Safe Neighborhood, but, again, this legislation passed the Senate unanimously after being voted out of the Judiciary Committee and is awaiting action in the House.

Finally, I want to mention another critical piece of legislation that is stuck in purgatory--at least, hopefully, temporarily--and that is the Debbie Smith Act. Years ago, we learned that 400,000 rape kits were sitting in evidence lockers or at forensic labs and had gone untested.

This, unfortunately, is the evidence that has to be collected from the victim of a sexual assault, and using DNA technology we are able to figure out, with basically certitude, who the perpetrator was. But 400,000 of them were sitting in lockers and untested.

Now, Debbie Smith is a heroic figure. She has made it her life's work to eliminate this rape kit backlog, and her work is directly responsible for the testing of hundreds of thousands of rape kits and locking up countless violent criminals.

Her advocacy was born of a personal tragedy. She was raped at home in 1989 and immediately reported the crime to police and went to the emergency room for a sexual assault forensic exam. That is the rape kit. But she said while waiting for answers, she was overcome by fear. She was terrified for herself and her family and even became suicidal. It wasn't until 6\1/2\ years later that Debbie finally received the answer she desperately wanted from this rape kit test. And it happened when a DNA hit revealed the identity of her rapist because what they can do is take that information, match it against CODIS, which is an FBI-maintained database, to identify the perpetrator.

She later said in an interview that DNA gave her her life back, and she chose to harness her pain and use it to prevent others from facing years of fear and uncertainty like that that controlled her. So she is the namesake of the Debbie Smith Act originally signed into law in 2004.

As a result, more than 860,000 DNA cases have been prosecuted-- 860,000. It is hard to imagine how one person can make more of a difference than Debbie Smith has, in terms of bringing closure and making sure that the guilty are investigated and prosecuted. But 860,000 cases have been processed. Sadly, we are still facing a 90,000- case backlog. Each of those hold the key and an answer to bringing a violent criminal to justice.

The Senate, again, unanimously has passed the Debbie Smith Act reauthorization, and, unfortunately, the House recently took it up and passed a version of the bill that inadvertently deauthorized existing funds for the Debbie Smith Act. I encourage the House to take whatever action they need to swiftly take up and pass the Senate version to reauthorize the Debbie Smith Program for a full 5 years without jeopardizing any existing funds that are being used by law enforcement to take violent criminals off the street.

So these are just a few examples of bipartisan legislation that has enjoyed nearly unanimous support here in the Senate that is simply waiting for the House to act.

I know we are coming up on the end of the year, and there is not a lot of time, but my suspicion is, if the Speaker would put these bills on the floor of the House, that they would pass overwhelmingly, but we can't get these bills to the President to actually sign into law until the House acts.

So my wish, my request, my prayer is that the House simply take up these bipartisan bills and act.

I yield the floor.

Madam President, I appreciate the comments of my colleague from Kansas.

Coming from Texas, this is a familiar topic because we have a 1,200- mile common border with Mexico, and illegal immigration, drug smuggling, and everything that goes along with it has been something we have had to live with pretty much alone for a long time.

But now, as we have heard some people say, every State has become a border State, and every city is a border city, because what happens at the border does not stay at the border. You get migrants who ultimately make their ways to big cities like New York, Washington, DC, and Chicago.

The mayor of New York says a few thousand migrants showing up in New York will destroy New York City. Well, what about the 7 million people who have come across the southern border and then released into the interior of the United States, released at the Texas-Mexico border?

There is not a lot of empathy, not a lot of sympathy for what we have had to endure in our border communities and by the people of Texas, not to mention the billions of dollars that we have had to spend of taxpayer money, by Texans, to do the Federal Government's job. It is outrageous.

The part that is most tragic is, of course, all the lives lost to the drugs that come across the southern border. What the Biden administration does not seem to understand--or they seem to be in willful suspense of their power of disbelief--is that the 71,000 Americans who died of fentanyl overdoses last year, those drugs come from synthetic opioids made from precursors that come from China, go to Mexico, and are made into something that looks like a pharmaceutical product--relatively innocuous. But fentanyl poisoning is the leading cause of death of Americans 18 to 45 years of age.

I keep asking myself: What is it going to take? What is it going to take for the Biden administration to wake up and do something about it, to do its job? Well, obviously, 7 million migrants--that is not enough; 108,000 dead Americans--apparently that doesn't get President Biden's attention. How about the 300,000 children, the unaccompanied minors who have been placed with sponsors in the interior of the United States?

The New York Times documented that in 85,000 cases, when a call was made 30 days after the child was placed with a sponsor, there was no answer. There have been some terrible stories about forced labor and very dangerous jobs. But it doesn't take imagination to realize that what the Biden administration has done is lose basically 300,000 children. We don't know whether they are going to school. We don't know whether they are getting the healthcare they need. We don't know whether they are being trafficked for sex, forced into involuntary servitude. We don't know.

The only conclusion I can reach is that the Biden administration and the President of the United States don't care. He doesn't care because if he did care, he would do something about it.

Well, because we have been met with complete intransigence by the Biden administration and by the majority here in the Senate when it comes to solving some of these problems on a bipartisan basis--there are many of us who would be willing to work on a bill. We have worked on bills. I see the Senator from South Carolina, who bears the scars of having worked on the immigration issue many years, as have I. This is a tough, hard issue.

But enough is enough. We are not going to proceed to this emergency supplemental that the President has asked for unless and until policy changes are made to our asylum policy, the catch-and-release policies, that will stem the flow of millions of migrants across the border only to be released into the United States. It will not happen, I am confident of that.

I won't go through the statistics. Let me just mention one example. It makes no sense for migrants who come from places like Haiti to move to South America--to avoid what are admittedly dire circumstances in Haiti--only to live in South America and then, when the opportunity presents itself, to show up in Del Rio, TX, and claim asylum. They have escaped the circumstances which caused them to leave Haiti and are living in a safe third country. So why is it that under the current policies, we say: OK. If you make it to the U.S. border, we will let you in if you claim asylum.

Well, you are claiming a credible fear of persecution based on what happened to you in Haiti, not what happened to you in South America. Yet this is a huge flashing green light and a ``welcome'' mat for people anywhere around the world who want to make their way to our southern border.

Eagle Pass Mayor Rolando Salinas has said the city of Eagle Pass has lost at least $500,000 during the closure of a bridge due to the influx of migrants.

One of the things we did during President Trump's tenure in office, which I think was one of the most significant, was we passed the U.S.- Mexico-Canada Trade Agreement in recognition of the fact that our economies in North America are intertwined and that millions of American jobs depend on that flow of legitimate trade and commerce across our international bridges.

But, again, one of the other consequences of President Biden's border crisis is that even the benefits of that trade and legitimate commerce are being denied because resources at our bridges and ports of entry are being overwhelmed.

I mentioned New York City. Last year, more than 130,000 migrants arrived in New York City. That city spent $2 billion to manage the crisis. That is a drop in the bucket compared to what the State of Texas has had to do over recent years. But it is no surprise that the mayor and others in New York have taken notice. I think that is the point.

Governor Abbott knew that if the Biden administration was going to ignore the plight of border States like Texas, Arizona, New Mexico, and California, that maybe he would care if these migrants showed up in New York City.

Now, polls have shown that New Yorkers are overwhelmingly concerned about the influx of migrants in their State and in their city. Eighty- two percent said it was a serious problem.

So why doesn't President Biden--maybe he doesn't care about a red State like Texas, but he should care about a blue State. The truth is, he should care about the entire United States, but let's just maybe question why he would ignore the pleas of Mayor Adams and the voters in New York State--a State that probably was responsible for his margin of victory in

the last Presidential election. Well, he continues to ignore it.

In fact, the Senate majority leader, from New York, where Mayor Adams is mayor--a major capital city there--despite the fact that Senator Schumer represents that same State, he has criticized the Republican effort to actually address the Biden border crisis. He has called it partisan and hard right.

Well, frankly, that is all the majority leader and our Democratic colleagues have been willing to do. But we are not going to miss this opportunity to get true policy changes which help stem the flow of illegal migration across the border.

It is clear that the President and Secretary Mayorkas, who has been an absolute, unmitigated disaster as Secretary of Homeland Security--I told him at the last hearing we had: I have lost confidence, any confidence, in your willingness to do your job. You should resign.

Well, he continues to show up and testify under oath and to lie when he says the border is secure. Well, anybody with eyes in their head can tell that that is not true. And he has told the Border Patrol: Don't actually tell anybody what is happening at the border.

Well, enough is enough. We are not going anywhere on this supplemental appropriations bill until and unless acceptable provisions are made to change the policies that currently implement the Biden border crisis and to staunch the flow of drugs and people across the border.

I yield the floor.

Madam President, Texas is home to many unique festivals that celebrate the food, music, and culture that have shaped our State. This year marks the 50th anniversary of an event ``Texas Monthly'' once dubbed ``one of the most beloved and bizarre holiday traditions in Texas''--Dickens on the Strand.

Each December, the Galveston Historical Foundation hosts the Dickens on the Strand Festival, which celebrates the life and work of renowned novelist Charles Dickens. Throughout its history, this holiday festival has played a critical role in revitalizing and restoring the Strand National Historic Landmark District. This year's festival is expected to welcome more than 50,000 guests to the island.

Though Charles Dickens never set foot in Galveston, his descendants have attended the festival every year since 1986, and this year will be no exception.

Eight descendants of Charles Dickens are expected to attend this year's festival and provide readings of Dickens' work.

The festival also honors our proud and historic ties between Texas and the United Kingdom. In 1846, the first British Consulate in the Lone Star State was established in Galveston, and it remained open until 1939. The Second British Consul-General to Texas, Arthur Lynn, is buried in Galveston's City Cemetery.

I am pleased that the British Consulate-General in Houston will be the presenting sponsor for this year's festival. Events will take place in multiple locations across the city, including the Salute to Sunset on the Official Tall Ship of Texas, the Elissa, which was built in the United Kingdom.

Galveston's holiday tradition has won 24 International Festival and Events Association Pinnacle Awards in its history. It has also brought much happiness and pride to the community and the visitors who come to take part in the celebration.

Congratulations to all involved in organizing the 50th Dickens on The Strand Festival, and I wish all of its guests, staff, and honorees a very successful weekend.

Mr. President, I confess, it was great to be back home last week for Thanksgiving in Texas. Like so many other families, I got together with my family and enjoyed that time together. But now we are back here in the Nation's Capital with a lot of work to do.

The end of the year is always a busy time here in Congress, and this year is no exception even though the usual appropriations process has been kicked over to January 19. Because the majority leader has not scheduled earlier votes either on the Israel aid, which was passed by the House some weeks ago and has been sitting here in the Senate with no action--the majority leader has announced his intention to put a $106 billion package benefiting Ukraine, Israel, and also the Indo- Pacific.

For the record, I support the efforts to make sure the brave Ukrainians can continue to fight and defend their country against the invasion of Putin's Russia. I certainly support Israel's right to defend itself against Hamas terrorists, a proxy for the No. 1 international state sponsor of terrorism--Iran. Of course I support our efforts to deter President Xi from doing what he said he intends to do, which is to take Taiwan one way or the other at a time of his choosing.

Well, fortunately, we aren't staring down the barrel of a spending deadline, so there are no threats of a government shutdown, but we do have these very important issues to attend to.

First, Congress needs to do something that we have done for 62 consecutive years, and that is, finally pass the National Defense Authorization Act.

Just before Thanksgiving, the Senate finally voted to begin that formal conference process to work out the differences between the House and the Senate. Our colleagues on both sides of the Capitol are now hard at work trying to iron out that agreement so we can pass a strong National Defense Authorization Act and send it to the President for his signature.

I started off my remarks talking about the challenges we face and our allies face around the world. Nothing would be more disappointing to us but more emboldening to our adversaries than our failure to deal with this necessary task, which, as I said, we have done for 62 years previous.

The second thing we need to do is to address the supplemental funding bill the President has proposed.

Again, I am a little mystified why the majority leader decided not to take up the Israel funding that was passed several weeks ago. I understand he doesn't like the pay-for the House has proposed, but I think one logical thing to do would be to propose a different pay-for and to put it on the Senate floor so we can talk about it, vote on

it, and get it done, because obviously that situation--although there seems to be a temporary lull in the conflict between Hamas and Israel, we know that once this temporary period passes, Israel will have no choice but to destroy Hamas's ability to commit future terrorist attacks.

Well, as I said, this supplemental funding will include assistance to Israel, Ukraine, and the Indo-Pacific, but the part that I think our Democratic leadership is in denial about is that the price of getting this done will also include major policy changes at the border.

We have been talking about immigration reform for the entire time I have been here in the Senate, and that is all it has been, is talk and no action. But my State is on the frontline of the Biden border crisis, and it is getting worse by the day because all of the signals that are being sent by the administration are that if you make it to the border by any means necessary, you are going to be released into the interior of the United States. So it is like a big, flashing green light or a big welcome mat saying ``Come to the United States.''

Obviously, we know it has not only been a huge burden on States like mine, which has a 1,200-mile common border; we have had people like Mayor Adams, the mayor of New York City, saying that unless something is done about this, it will destroy New York City. Those are some rather stark and jarring words. But it has finally come to the attention of even some Democratic leadership that this is something that is unsustainable and must be addressed, and we are going to do that in the context of these funding bills.

Well, these are some of the most consequential security challenges we are facing today. It is critical that we actually get to work on them and not just talk about them, and hopefully that will happen soon. But one issue I wanted to highlight was that Congress needs to reauthorize perhaps one of the most important laws that no one has ever heard of-- or at least not many people have heard of outside of Washington, DC-- and that is, we need to reauthorize section 702 of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act before it expires at the end of the year.

When you think about America's national security, this probably is not the first thing that comes to mind. We typically talk about our brave servicemembers and our weapons or air platforms and the deterrence that is so important to keep the peace. We think of threats all around the world, like the ones I mentioned--those in the Middle East, those in Asia, and those in Europe and elsewhere.

But one of the most important tools available to our national security and our national defense is our ability to understand those threats and use section 702 of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act.

This is a unique tool, but it is absolutely essential, according to the FBI Director and other members of the intelligence community. And, most importantly, it is what it says it is. It is a foreign intelligence surveillance tool. In other words, it is only used to gain information and intelligence on foreigners--not located here in the United States, but those located outside of the United States.

That is an important distinction, because we don't allow those sorts of investigations to take place here in the United States. We have a constitutional protection against unreasonable searches and seizures--a requirement that if you are going to get a search warrant or you are going to get a warrant for somebody's arrest, that you have to go in front of an impartial judge and show probable cause why a crime was committed by this person.

That is critical to our authorities to protect ourselves as laid out in the Bill of Rights for American citizens but not for foreigners who are spying on the United States. That is something entirely different.

So this is not authority used to target U.S. citizens, whether on American soil or elsewhere. It is specifically aimed at foreigners or non-Americans overseas who could pose a threat to our national security.

Congress enacted section 702 in 2008 in response to threats by various terrorist groups in the wake of 9/11. It tore down some of the walls that prevented government Agencies from sharing information among themselves, and there is no question that it has been a success.

When talking about section 702 several years ago, the FBI Director said:

The fact that we have not suffered another 9/11-scale

attack is not just luck.

He noted it is a product of intelligence, teamwork, diligence, and ``dot-connecting.'' And that is much of what section 702 does: It allows collection of the dots so the dots can then be connected to facilitate investigations into foreign terrorist threats and other actions by foreign adversaries.

This authority has been vital to detecting potential terrorist attacks, but the application reaches far beyond counterterrorism missions.

Earlier this year, Deputy Attorney General Lisa Monaco testified before the Senate Judiciary Committee and said that this law allowed the United States to uncover what she called ``vitally important'' intelligence about the war in Ukraine.

So it is not just a counterterrorism tool; it has much broader application. She told the Judiciary Committee that section 702 has helped uncover gruesome atrocities, war crimes, in Ukraine. That includes the murder of civilians, the forced relocation of Ukrainian children into Russia, and the detention of refugees.

It is also important at a time when 71,000 Americans died of synthetic opioid poisoning last year alone--fentanyl being the most common variety--that 702 has helped the United States combat fentanyl trafficking here in the United States.

Fentanyl poisoning is the No. 1 cause of death for Americans between the ages of 18 and 45. This is a terrible scourge, and we have got to use all the tools in our toolbox, including section 702, to fight it.

Information acquired because of this authority has informed our understanding of China's role, for example, in providing the precursor chemicals that are necessary to produce the finished product. And it has also helped expose smuggling techniques by the drug cartels that smuggle the synthetic opioids, the fentanyl, into the United States across--yes--across our southern border.

So for virtually every national security threat that the United States faces, section 702 is an essential asset. Earlier this year, Attorney General Merrick Garland and Director of National Intelligence Avril Haines sent a letter to Congressional leaders highlighting even more examples that show why this authority is so important.

Information acquired through section 702 has allowed the United States to identify multiple foreign ransomware attacks on U.S. critical infrastructure, like the Colonial Pipeline ransomware attack a year or so ago. It has enabled the United States to stop components for weapons of mass destruction from reaching foreign actors, and it has identified threats to U.S. troops and thwarted planned terrorist attacks both at home and abroad.

It has helped disrupt our adversary's efforts to recruit spies on American soil and send their operatives to the United States.

Section 702 is a critical tool in America's national security toolbox, but its future is uncertain, because unless Congress takes action before the end of this year, that authority will expire.

This is as if we would intentionally blind ourselves to these threats that I have described for Congress to fail to take action and reauthorize section 702.

If that happens, it will deprive America's dedicated intelligence professionals of the laws that they need, the authorities they need in order to keep our country safe.

Director Wray, I think, said it best when he said that allowing section 702 to expire would be ``an act of unilateral disarmament in the face of the Chinese Communist Party''--``an act of unilateral disarmament in the face of the Chinese Communist Party.''

Given the threat that China poses to the United States, especially in the Indo-Pacific, an unforced error by failing to reauthorize this necessary legislation would be the last thing we need. Allowing section 702 to expire would only benefit our most dangerous and capable adversaries. It would embolden China and Russia while hamstringing our ability to understand the threats we are facing, until it is too late.

General Paul Nakasone, who leads both the National Security Agency and

the U.S. Cyber Command, has been very clear about the need to preserve section 702.

Earlier this year, he summed up its importance rather succinctly when he said that ``702 saves lives and protects the homeland.''

That is what we are focused on at the moment when it comes to funding the vast national security threats we do face: saving lives and protecting the homeland. That is true, I believe, of the war in Ukraine. It is in our Nation's national interest, I believe. It is true in the war being fought by Israel for its survival in the Middle East. It is true for China's saber-rattling in the Indo-Pacific. And it is true for the crisis we face at the border.

Achieving our definition of success in each of these situations will require far more than just money. It will require reliable and timely information or intelligence, and we simply will not have access to that if 702 were to expire.

It is absolutely imperative that Congress reauthorize section 702 before the end of the year. And I know we have the time, if we only have the will to get it done.

This is a priority for members on both sides of the aisle and both sides of the Capitol. This is not a partisan issue. It is the ultimate nonpartisan issue. And we have seen a number of constructive proposals to preserve and modernize this authority while enhancing privacy protections.

I understand concerns about abusing these various authorities against Americans, something that is illegal, something that should be investigated and prosecuted to the fullest extent of the law.

But just because a few rogue actors have misbehaved is no reason to relinquish this necessary tool when it comes to foreign actors who wish us ill.

As Congress continues working to address the range of national security threats that our country faces, reauthorizing section 702 must be a top priority.

I yield the floor.

I suggest the absence of a quorum.

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

Mr. President, earlier this week, the U.S. Supreme Court issued an official code of conduct. This is really an update over existing rules that govern the ethics and operations of the Judiciary, not only at the Supreme Court but throughout the Judiciary throughout the country. This document was important because questions have been raised about the practices of the Court and about public disclosures of some of their activities.

But the good news is, this was adopted by all nine members of the Court and codifies ethics rules and principles that guide the Justices' conduct.

I am glad that the Court took this step to make clear to the American people that they were committed to operating with the highest ethical standards. But I get the impression that some of our colleagues here in the Congress think that it is the job of another branch of government to tell an independent branch of government what it ought to do. Obviously, it is basic government. We have three coequal branches of government: the legislative branch, the executive branch. Those are the so-called political branches. Then there is the independent judiciary, which is, frankly, I believe, the crown jewel of our system.

I think there are those who sometimes feel like they don't like the decisions made by the Federal judges and that the best way to control that or to have an impact on it is to undermine public confidence in the Judiciary. As my Republican colleagues and I have said for months, any decision about the Supreme Court's rules, including their recusal rules or formal code of conduct, should not come from the Congress; it should come from the Court itself. And now it has done so.

The Senate has a limited, albeit important, role when it comes to the Supreme Court. That is through the confirmation process that we are all familiar with. As we know, all nine members of the Supreme Court underwent a rigorous confirmation process; they endured hours and hours of questions from members of the Judiciary Committee; they had FBI background checks and other background checks; they met with each Senator who was willing to meet with them one-on-one; and they were ultimately confirmed to a seat on the highest Court in the land. That is where the Senate's role ends.

It is not Congress's responsibility or authority to force the Justices to adopt a specific code of conduct or to dictate how the Supreme Court conducts its business. As I said, the Supreme Court and the Federal Judiciary is a separate--separate--and coequal--those are important words--separate and coequal branch of government. And it falls squarely outside the legislature's authority to tell the Supreme Court how to run its business.

There is another constitutional function that is available to us that, fortunately, we haven't had to use in a long time, which is impeachment. That is the role of the Senate and the House. The Senate confirms, but the House can vote Articles of Impeachment, and then there is a trial in the Senate in the most egregious set of circumstances, which, thankfully, we are not presented with.

Many of our friends across the aisle have been particularly vocal about

their desire to see a specific code of ethics for the Supreme Court. As a matter of fact, our Democratic colleagues, the majority, have even cosponsored a bill that would force--force--a coequal branch of government, the Federal judiciary, to adopt a certain specific code of conduct. This was introduced by our colleague from Rhode Island, Senator Whitehouse, under the guise of ``ethics reform.''

In addition to the code of conduct, it would impose strict new rules for recusal. That means when judges should withdraw from and not participate in the decision of a case. It would also subject the Justices to a never-ending stream of ethics complaints by politically motivated groups. The bill itself would incentivize frivolous ethics complaints against Justices to prevent that specific Justice from actually sitting on a particular case.

The Wall Street Journal Editorial Board called this the ``Supreme Court Control Act,'' which is certainly an appropriate description.

This bill is not designed to promote ethics and good governance. It was about forcing an independent branch of government to bend to the Senate's will. In July, Democrats on the Judiciary Committee banded together to pass this potentially unconstitutional bill, but the majority leader has yet to bring it to the floor for a vote because I think he understands it would be dead on arrival.

Now that the Supreme Court has adopted an official code of conduct, I hope our colleagues across the aisle will finally lay this bad idea to rest. They said they wanted the Supreme Court to adopt a code of conduct. The Justices have now done that, and so, now, this should be a moot issue.

I hope this development will also encourage the chairman of the Judiciary Committee to abandon his latest partisan attack on the Court. In the Judiciary Committee last Thursday, Chairman Durbin and Senator Whitehouse planned to expand their so-called ethics investigation by issuing subpoenas to private individuals.

To be clear, the targets of these subpoenas are not government officials. They are not judges. They are not elected officials. They are private citizens.

Democrats want to bully, interrogate, and, potentially, embarrass these individuals for committing what, in their eyes, amounts to a serious crime, which is being friends with a Supreme Court Justice.

Senators Durbin and Whitehouse claim this is about transparency and rebuilding trust, but the evidence suggests the opposite. I find it telling that the only subpoena targets are known to donate to Republican candidates and conservative causes. Democrats seem to have zero interest in hearing from liberal billionaires and dark-money groups that have made it their mission to rig the Supreme Court in Democrats' favor.

If our colleagues wanted to hear from folks who actually jeopardize the legitimacy of the Court, my Republican colleagues and I planned to provide a range of options. We planned to provide a range of options at last week's meeting, but then, abruptly, Senator Durbin gaveled us out, without taking up these subpoenas.

But I did file an amendment to subpoena liberal billionaire George Soros, for example, who is one of the biggest benefactors of the Democratic Party and a major contributor to the dark-money group known as Demand Justice. This isn't your typical public interest advocacy group. The entire goal of the misnamed Demand Justice is to pack the Court and install a permanent liberal majority.

Last year, one of the cofounders of Demand Justice tweeted:

It's time for [the Democrats] to see the Court as a

political opponent, just as much as any [Republican] elected

official, and run against it.

So Demand Justice, funded by George Soros, was saying that we need to target these lifetime-tenured, nonpolitical officeholders as political opponents and run against them. If we want to talk about depoliticizing the Court and rebuilding faith in the judiciary, this is where the Judiciary Committee should look.

The millionaires and billionaires who are bankrolling the effort to brand the Court as a political opponent are far more relevant to this debate than longtime personal friends of the Justices.

I was eager to see if Democrats' commitment to ``transparency'' held up when wealthy Democrats were on the receiving end of a subpoena, but we never found out. As I said, just before the committee was supposed to vote, the chairman of the Judiciary Committee abruptly adjourned the meeting--I would like to think, because he finally had second thoughts about how dangerous and inappropriate this entire effort was. After all, the Senate Judiciary Committee has no business issuing subpoenas for private citizens under the guise of transparency.

There was no legitimate legislative purpose for conducting this witch hunt. Maybe our Democratic colleagues realized that Republican amendments were likely to pass, too, causing their partisan smear campaign to backfire. But the chairman claimed that it was just a matter of timing, and he has put the subpoena authorizations on the docket for the Judiciary Committee meeting tomorrow morning--Thursday, this week.

Democrats claim that the Justices are to blame for distrust and lack of confidence in the Court, but let's take a look at some facts. The Justices already file, like we do, annual financial disclosure reports. They recuse themselves, under their rules, from cases when it is inappropriate for them to sit. They go to great lengths to avoid even the appearance of impropriety. To assuage any remaining concerns about ethical standards, as I said, the Justices just adopted a code for the first time in history.

Meanwhile, Senate Democrats, who claim to care about public trust and confidence in the Court, are on the warpath. The Democratic leader, the majority leader of the U.S. Senate, stood on the steps of the Supreme Court just months ago and threatened two sitting Justices by name, saying they would pay the price and they didn't know what would hit them if they didn't reach his preferred decision in an abortion case-- unbelievable.

A group of five Democratic Senators made a not-so-subtle threat to the Court, claiming it could be restructured if it didn't deliver the preferred outcome in a case involving the Second Amendment.

Fifteen Democratic Senators, including several members of the Judiciary Committee, recommended slashing the Supreme Court's budget if it failed to meet their demand to implement a new code of ethics that had the Democrats' stamp of approval on it.

And, now, the chairman of the Judiciary Committee wants to interrogate private citizens over their personal finances, something he claims is imperative to restoring trust in the Supreme Court.

Well, it is pretty clear that the so-called ethics crisis in the Supreme Court isn't really about ethics at all. It is about exerting control and domination over a separate, coequal branch of government, as the Constitution itself provides. So it is time for the Judiciary Committee to abandon its partisan charade and focus on the actual crises facing our country.

While the chairman spends valuable time--limited time--dealing with this made-up controversy, we have seen nearly 2.5 million border crossings in the past year. We are losing 70,000 Americans a year to fentanyl poisoning. The Biden administration has also lost track of hundreds of thousands of migrant children.

You would think that would be a matter of some urgency to the Judiciary Committee, and its chairman, that has jurisdiction over those matters. But these aren't problems that have earned the time and attention of the Judiciary Committee. Rather, it has chosen partisan attacks on the independence of the Supreme Court.

I urge my colleagues to abandon their partisan attacks on the Supreme Court and to get back to doing the work of the American people, and a good place to start would be at the southern border.

I yield the floor.

I suggest the absence of a quorum.

Mr. President, tomorrow, President Biden is scheduled to meet with Chinese President Xi Jinping, and it is safe to say their meeting comes at an especially fraught time. There is a war in the Middle East, a war in Europe, and growing tensions in the Indo-Pacific.

In each case, the United States and China have aligned with opposing powers. China is financing the Russian war while America is supporting Ukraine. China is propping up the Iranian regime and terrorist proxies while the United States is backing Israel's righteous defense. China is threatening its own invasion of Taiwan while the United States stands firmly in support of Taiwan's defense.

In addition to these conflicts on the world stage, the United States is facing more direct threats from the People's Republic of China and the Chinese Communist Party. Economic relations have deteriorated due to China's subversive trade practices.

The Chinese Communist Party is holding three American hostages, including Houston native Mark Swidan, who has been imprisoned and tortured for more than a decade.

More than 70,000 Americans a year are being killed by a synthetic opioid, fentanyl, which is manufactured using precursor chemicals that come from--you guessed it--China.

Earlier this year, a Chinese surveillance balloon traveled across the United States, marking a new level of bravado for the Chinese Communist Party.

So suffice it to say this is an especially fraught time for U.S.- China relations, but President Biden should not give the Chinese Communist Party or President Xi a free pass. I hope the President will deliver a clear message to President Xi that China's aggressive and hostile actions will not be met with kid gloves. We have a responsibility to the American people and to our allies to deal with threats from China straightforwardly and head-on.

Strong leadership from the President is important, but Congress has an important role to play too. For example, we have a major piece of unfinished business that is a key to our efforts to counter threats from China, and that is the National Defense Authorization Act. This year's National Defense Authorization Act--or NDAA, as we call it-- includes a range of provisions related to long-term strategic competition with China, and it is time to finish that bill and send it to the President's desk for his signature.

The Senate passed the NDAA at the end of July, and here we are in November. I hope this week, after more than 3\1/2\ months of waiting, we can finally begin to vote on the formal conference process. This will be key to ironing out the differences between the House and the Senate so we can deliver a bill to the President's desk that is truly tough on China and deals with the threat in a realistic and clear-eyed fashion.

The Biden administration has moved away from the idea of decoupling from China and now focuses on derisking. Frankly, that makes a lot of sense to me because it is hard to ignore a population of 1.4 billion people on the other side of the planet. But we do need to derisk, and that requires some very specific tasks.

We want to reduce America's reliance on China for key national security interests, but we don't necessarily want to completely decouple. I couldn't care less how many businesses want to invest in Starbucks or Burger Kings in China, but I care a lot about American investment in artificial intelligence, quantum computing, and advanced semiconductors.

We know that derisking is harder than it sounds because China does not play by the rules, as we know. The Chinese Communist Party has become increasingly aggressive in its efforts to gain power and influence, embracing illicit tactics like intellectual property theft, for which it is infamous, forced technology transfers, and predatory lending.

It is important to understand that this strategy by the Chinese Communist Party doesn't just benefit China's economy but also its military. In China, there is no bright line separating the military and civilian sectors. This is part of a very intentional strategy known as military-civil fusion, which promotes development of dual-use technologies. In short, the Chinese Communist Party is focused on shoring up technologies that bolster its military strength and its economic power at the same time.

Unfortunately, American investors are fueling the success of Chinese military-civil fusion, possibly unwittingly, without even knowing exactly what is happening. I am not talking about covert theft of intellectual property; I am talking about direct investments in Chinese companies. American investors are funneling money into companies that are developing artificial intelligence, quantum computing, and next- generation semiconductors, all of which benefit the People's Liberation Army. Intentionally or not, these American investors are fueling China's military strength and funding capabilities that could eventually be used against the United States and our allies.

Joseph Stalin reportedly said:

We will hang the capitalists with the rope they sell us.

Metaphorically, the United States has provided the Chinese Communist Party with a lot of metaphorical rope.

At the end of 2020, U.S. investments in Chinese companies totaled $2.3 trillion in market value. That includes $21 billion in semiconductors, $54 billion in military companies, and a whopping $221 billion in artificial intelligence. That is American investors in China, in those sectors.

We now know China as the single largest national security threat of our time, and it is clear that the United States entities are helping bankroll its rise. While we have some information--anecdotal really-- that illustrates the scope of the problem, we need more information. We need more visibility. We need a better understanding of how certain U.S. investments benefit the Chinese Communist Party and its military buildup and its belligerent and aggressive actions.

Thankfully, this is a bipartisan priority, and I am glad the Senate took action over the summer. The Senator from Pennsylvania, Senator Casey, and I introduced an outbound transparency provision that was adopted as an amendment to the National Defense Authorization Act, and it passed by a vote of 91 to 6. You don't get that kind of bipartisan vote around here very often. So I think it sends a very strong message.

This measure simply requires companies to notify Treasury of investments in specific sectors, including advanced semiconductors, artificial intelligence, and hypersonics. This is not a broad bill that prohibits investments in the People's Republic of China. This is designed to provide information to Congress's policymakers about where that money is going in particular sectors where we are in the greatest level of competition with China.

This is all about visibility, about transparency. It will help us understand where the money is going and allow us to take appropriate action, if required.

Our colleagues in the House are overwhelmingly supportive of outbound investment transparency, though there isn't the same level of consensus that there is here in the Senate. Members of the House have suggested everything from notification requirements to sanctions, to outright prohibitions on some investments.

We work very diligently with stakeholders here in the Senate to try to build consensus. And I think we have achieved that on our outbound transparency provision. But I do expect our colleagues in the House will have a thorough debate about various options. And I have to say, we are fortunate that we have two experts on this topic in the conference committee of the House.

Chairman Michael McCaul leads the House Foreign Affairs Committee and is a powerful and trusted voice on matters related to China. He recently introduced his own outbound investment legislation and is committed to including a strong outbound provision in the NDAA.

The conference committee for the Defense authorization bill also includes Chairman Mike Gallagher, who leads

the House Select Committee on the Chinese Communist Party. His committee has been investigating problematic investments in Chinese companies, and he has been clear, based upon those investigations, that Congress needs to enact strong guardrails around investments in China.

But before you do that, you need good information, which is what our outbound investment transparency provision provides. I am glad Chairman Gallagher and Chairman McCaul will bring their expertise to the Defense authorization bill conference committee. And I am optimistic they can work out with our Senate colleagues a provision that will earn strong bipartisan support.

After 3\1/2\ months of waiting, I hope the Senate will finally vote to begin the NDAA conference committee process this week. Once that happens, the two Chambers can work together in earnest to reach an agreement on a final version of the bill.

Here in the Senate, I appreciate Chairman Reed and Ranking Member Wicker for their leadership throughout this process and their support of this amendment with Senator Casey.

I also want to express my gratitude to Senator Sullivan of Alaska for his support and his commitment to putting a strong outbound investment provision in this year's NDAA.

There is a lot of work that remains to be done, but there is clearly--clearly--an overwhelming bipartisan desire to counter threats from China through an outbound investment measure. As I noted, this amendment passed the Senate by 91 to 6.

In the House, Members on both sides have endorsed varying proposals that address the same problem from different angles. I don't understand why anyone would be opposed to outbound investment transparency. All we are asking for is information that may or may not require us to take further action.

This information is key to our national security and will help the United States manage risks related to China. And I hope we can get the job done soon.

I yield the floor.

Madam President, as we all are painfully aware, at home and around the world, America is facing a vast array of security threats. There is war in the Middle East, war in Europe, growing instability and threats of conflict in the Indo-Pacific, and, of course,

there is the unprecedented security crisis at our own southern border.

Unlike threats in other parts of the world, the border crisis wasn't caused by our adversaries. It wasn't caused by the actions of an authoritarian leader or events beyond our control. The border crisis is an unforced error. It is a result of intentional decisions and policy positions taken by the Biden administration.

For nearly 3 years, President Biden and leaders in his administration have sent a signal to people around the world that America's southern border is open. All you need to do is show up. Clearly, their message came through loud and clear, much to the delight of the criminal organizations that transport people--human smuggling--and the drug dealers who have exploited this vulnerability. Clearly, they got the message, too, and they are getting richer every day.

Since President Biden took office, we have logged nearly 6.3 million illegal border crossings, plus at least 1.7 million known ``got- aways.'' Now, the Border Patrol calls a ``got-away'' somebody who has been detected on a camera or on a radar screen, but when they show up to try to detain them, they simply have vanished. Those are the ``got- aways,'' and there were 1.7 million known ``got-aways'' in just 3 years. So that is, all told, roughly 8 million people crossing our border during the Biden administration.

People from every part of the globe are showing up at our border. In a single year, migrants from 174 different countries crossed our southern border. What they have learned to do is to claim asylum, and then they know they will be released to await a potential future court date that may be as long as 10 years in the future. In the meantime, they get on with their lives. They marry. They have children who are American citizens. And the simple truth is, they are not going anywhere. We know that if they did show up for their immigration court hearing, only about 15 percent would legally qualify for asylum under the current law.

So word has gotten out that under the Biden administration, our southern border is open, and if you show up, you will be released into the interior. That has provided an enormous magnet or, in the nomenclature of the Border Patrol, they call that a pull factor. It is a huge pull factor or magnet for people around the world, saying: All have you to do is show up, and the Biden administration will release you into the interior of the United States.

So it should be no surprise that migrants are pouring across the border in record numbers. So is fentanyl, which took the lives of 71,000 Americans last year alone.

We also know there are people on the Terrorist Watchlist who are showing up at the border, but what I really worry about are those on the Terrorist Watchlist who were part of the 1.7 million ``got-aways.'' In other words, we don't know how many people on the Terrorist Watchlist have made their way into the interior of the United States as a result of the Biden border crisis.

So what do we do? Well, the Biden administration thinks that all we need to do is spend more money on the current system. We know that tends to be a common response around here--just throw more money at a problem. They tried to solve the inflation problem by spending hundreds of billions of dollars on things like EV tax credits and a supersized IRS. That gave us a 40-year high inflation rate that still hasn't abated yet. Then they tried to address the student loan crisis by shifting the debt from the people who owed it and who borrowed it and who are legally responsible for it to taxpayers--another massive fail. Now they claim they can solve the border crisis by writing another big check. Needless to say, we should all be skeptical.

To be clear, funding is important, but funding for the right things is even more important. In order for anything to change at the border, we need real, substantive policy changes.

Last month, the White House issued a supplemental funding request to respond to major national security threats we are facing today, including the border, but, as I and others have pointed out, the border portion of President Biden's funding request is completely inadequate. His request would actually worsen the border crisis--such as a request for more noncustodial housing options for migrants in expedited removal proceedings. This would allow migrants who are on the verge of being deported to be released into the United States--the opposite of what we should be doing. It would constitute yet another pull factor for anyone considering a journey to the border.

On the whole, the Biden administration's request demonstrates exactly how nonserious they are about solving this crisis. One example is their request for more detention beds. Now, to be clear, more detention beds are needed, but I think it would be helpful for President Biden and some of our colleagues to review the math here. Border Patrol has roughly 20,000 detention beds now, which are strictly for short- term detention. ICE, or Immigration and Customs Enforcement, has another 20,000 beds for migrants in expedited removal. Now, those may sound like big numbers, but the beds fill up quickly. In September, nearly 270,000 migrants crossed the southern border. That is an average of 9,000 a day. If we were to start with a clean slate, all the Border Patrol beds would be filled in 2 days.

Migrants who are placed in expedited removal and are seeking asylum are supposed to complete a credible fear screening--a process which takes approximately 13 days. If the administration wanted to do things by the book--in other words, if they wanted to follow the law--we would need the capacity to hold every person who crossed the border for 2 weeks just to figure out whether they had a serious claim for asylum and then a longer period to evaluate those claims, and what they have requested clearly will not allow that to happen. Just to reemphasize the point, that is just to figure out if an asylum claim is plausible on its face before an immigration court determines whether it is supported by adequate evidence. That success rate is roughly 15 percent, which means the people who are waiting in line--those 15 percent who have legitimate claims--can't even get their claims heard because of all the people who have no legitimate claims clogging the dockets of the immigration courts.

So, as you can see, at current levels, we would need hundreds of thousands of detention beds. That is because the Biden administration has allowed this crisis to grow to such epic proportions that it can't be fixed by just more officers or a small increase in detention beds. Nine thousand illegal border crossings a day is evidence of a policy problem, not just a funding problem. More funding would actually be useless until we address the pull factors that are bringing these people here.

Last week, a group of Senate Republicans released a proposal that could serve as a starting point for negotiations in the Senate, but, unlike the President's request, it includes real, substantive policy changes to address the pull factors that are drawing people from around the world to our southern border.

In order to restore some control, we need deterrence. We need consequences for people breaking the rules and trying to come in illegally. We need to show people who have no legitimate claim to remain in the United States that if they come, they will not be able to stay. That is what will provide the consequences and deterrence that will prevent massive numbers of additional migrants from attempting the trip to our border.

If they know they are unlikely to be successful, they are unlikely to spend the thousands of dollars they have to spend now to the criminal organizations to transport them to our border. If they don't come, that will alleviate some of the massive influx of humanity which has prevented the Border Patrol from interdicting the drugs that took the lives of 108,000 Americans last year alone. That is where the criminal organizations or cartels are also getting rich--smuggling people, smuggling drugs.

I continue to be dumbfounded by the unwillingness of our Democratic colleagues and the President of the United States to recognize what a disaster this really is. Since President Biden took office, our country has logged more illegal border crossings than it did under the previous two administrations combined.

We know that migrants are placing a massive strain on many of our major

American cities, including sanctuary cities like New York and Chicago. At the same time, fentanyl and other dangerous drugs are killing our youth.

Fentanyl or synthetic opioids are now the leading cause of death for 18- to 45-year-olds in America. Do you think that will get somebody's attention here in the Nation's Capital or at the White House? No community has been spared from the devastation of these drugs.

As I said, last fiscal year so far, we have seen about 169 people on the Terrorist Watchlist encountered at the border. Last year, the Border Patrol detained more people on the Terrorist Watchlist than it did in the previous 6 years combined. So our adversaries clearly see this as an opportunity to enter the United States with nobody the wiser. And, of course, as I said, this doesn't account for all the people who came in who were on the Terrorist Watchlist or who do have evil designs on our country who were part of the 1.7 million ``got- aways.''

It is no overstatement to say that a border crisis is a massive security threat to our country. It is putting every community in America at risk. If our Democratic colleagues are willing to help America's friends and allies like Israel and Ukraine, they should be willing to help their own constituents and help defend their own country against this influx of humanity.

Biden's mishandling of the border has created a major national security risk, and the Senate deserves and needs to treat this matter with all seriousness. Republicans are not interested in just throwing money at the current system. Wasteful, inefficient spending is not the solution here. We need to fundamentally shift the dynamics at the southern border, and that will require real, substantial policy changes.

I yield the floor.

I suggest the absence of a quorum.

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

Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the following Senators be permitted to speak prior to the scheduled rollcall votes: Myself for up to 15 minutes, Senator Gillibrand for up to 5 minutes, Senator Cotton for up to 5 minutes, and Leader Schumer for up to 5 minutes.

Mr. President, 1 month ago today, Hamas launched its unprovoked attack on the State of Israel, on innocent men, women, and children, civilians all. Hamas entered the country by land, air, and sea, and they brutally murdered more than 1,400 Israelis. They also took hundreds of hostages, some of whom were American citizens. They abused and assaulted innocent civilians and left a trail of devastation in their wake.

In the face of Hamas's barbaric attack, Israel has done what any country would do and defended its citizens and its sovereignty, and it has every right to do so. This basic truth has somehow become a point of confusion in some circles, but we should not be confused.

Many on the far left--including at least one Member of the House of Representatives--have pointed to Israel's defense as an example of what she calls genocide. They act as though Israel was the aggressor here, not Hamas. They called on the President to speak out against the actions of the victim, not the aggressor. It is as though they think Israel is somehow the moral equivalent of the terrorist group Hamas.

It is especially disturbing to see this rhetoric spreading on social media because many people who were not familiar with the facts, the circumstances, and the history of Hamas and Israel, Iran, and Hezbollah--they may actually believe the disinformation and propaganda they see on social media. It is also very deeply disturbing to see how it is absorbed and embraced by many college campuses, and it is downright disturbing, of course, to see it repeated here in the Halls of Congress.

There should be no confusion. Hamas is the aggressor, and Hamas bears ultimate responsibility for the pain and suffering in Israel and in Gaza. Hamas's own tactics are the very reason for the loss of life in Gaza and that it has been so high, because these terrorists, who care nothing about the individuals, have a long history of using Palestinian civilians as human shields for their own benefit.

And then Hamas operates a vast network of tunnels underneath Gaza. The tunnels shield terrorists from the dangerous fighting above ground. They also store critical supplies like water, food, and fuel, which are being kept from the Palestinian civilians. As many of us are concerned about the humanitarian disaster caused by Hamas's attack on Israel, it is Hamas itself that is exacerbating and making the humanitarian crisis worse.

It seems likely that the tunnels are also the hiding place for more than 200 hostages taken by Hamas last month. A video recently shared online of a Hamas gunman who was captured and interrogated by the Israeli officials was particularly revealing. He said that Hamas shelters in tunnels and basements under clinics, schools, and hospitals because they know the Israelis will not target those locations out of concern for the collateral damage or damage to innocent civilians. That is why Hamas deliberately places innocent Palestinians between its terrorist foot soldiers and incoming rockets.

As a result of Hamas's human shield strategy, the number of civilian casualties in Gaza is devastating. There is no denying that. It is important, though, to remember that the pain and suffering that is occurring throughout Israel and Gaza is directly attributable to Hamas, a U.S.-designated terrorist organization serving as a proxy for the No. 1 state-sponsor of terrorism, which is Iran. The blood of this war is clearly on Hamas's hands.

As the fighting continues, I am reminded of a saying that has been around for years: If Hamas laid down its weapons today, there would be no more violence. If Israel laid down its weapons, there would be no more Israel.

Hamas is not fighting for peace. It is trying to wipe Israel off the map--again, as a proxy for its sponsor, which is the Supreme Leader in Tehran. They all share a desire to wipe the Jewish State off the map entirely.

The United States cannot equivocate between good and evil. We must stand with Israel. There is no question that words are important. We have a responsibility to voice our support, speak out against Hamas, and call out dangerous anti-Semitic slander when we see it.

But words alone are not enough. America has a responsibility to come to the aid of our ally with the resources it needs not only to fight but to actually win this war. This includes air defense systems that safeguard Israeli people from rocket attacks. It includes intelligence support to stay one step ahead of the terrorists. And it includes military aid to find and eliminate the Hamas threat.

As part of that commitment, Congress has a big job to do. We need to pass a supplemental funding bill to ensure Israel has the tools it needs to defeat Hamas terrorists, and, last week, the House of Representatives did just that. They passed an Israel aid bill with bipartisan support. Their legislation would provide up to $14.3 billion to ensure that Israel has the resources they need to defend themselves.

Our friends across the Capitol offset the spending by reallocating a portion

of the bloated IRS funding from the Democrats' massive so-called Inflation Reduction Act. I would add that that was $14.3 billion out of an $80 billion appropriation to the Internal Revenue Service, hardly the majority of that funding.

But if our colleagues on the other side of the aisle don't like those pay-fors, then they are free to come up with an alternative. But the truth is, they don't believe in paying for anything. And we saw, just this last year, about $670 billion paid by the United States to our bond holders to help finance this national debt, and that is not getting any better by the day. Certainly, if we were to pass another supplemental appropriations bill to aid Israel or Ukraine, or for any other purpose, and actually make our national debt worse, it would put us on a perilous path.

Well, President Biden, who said, ``We stand with Israel; we will do anything that they need us to do,'' has actually threatened to veto the $14.3 billion supplemental appropriations bill that was passed by the House. How he can reconcile his stated support for Israel and his threat to veto a supplemental appropriations bill escapes me.

Then there is the majority leader here in the Senate--the Senator from New York, Senator Schumer--who said that the House bill is dead on arrival in the Senate, and he took his opposition a step further, blasting this legislation as ``stunningly unserious'' and ``a joke.''

Well, I have to respectfully disagree with the majority leader. There is nothing funny about denying Israel the assistance it needs in defending itself against this terrorist threat. It is no secret that America's national debt has put us in an extremely vulnerable position.

Thirteen years ago, Admiral Michael Mullen, who was Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, warned that ``the most significant threat to our national security is our debt.'' That actually struck me as a little unusual at the time. But, at that time, the national debt was roughly $13.5 trillion. Since then, it has more than doubled to $33.6 trillion and counting.

So I think that what he was getting at is that the more we end up spending money that we are borrowing from subsequent generations and the more interest we have to continue to pay to people willing to buy our debt, we are going to have a whole lot less financial resources and flexibility that we need when unexpected things occur, like the Russian invasion of Ukraine or Hamas's invasion of Israel. We simply won't have the money and the flexibility to do what we expect America to do, which is to always lead and be an agent for peace and stability.

If we continue at this pace, our children and grandchildren will have no chance of digging out from under this debt. There is an old saying that ``the best time to start was yesterday; the next best time to start is now.'' We have a responsibility to start chipping away at the national debt now and certainly not to make it any worse. Every single spending bill is an opportunity to make tough but necessary choices to achieve that goal.

I am disappointed that the majority of our Democratic colleagues don't seem to have any interest in addressing this threat to our national security. Over the last couple of years, they have spent, on a party-line basis, $2.6 trillion without a single Republican vote, and now they blast an attempt to address the growing debt as ``unserious.''

Well, that $2.6 trillion in spending that our Democratic colleagues did on a party-line basis was partly responsible for our 40-year high inflation rate that is eating up the standard of living of hard-working Americans across the country. I think the figure I saw indicates that, if this is broken down per capita, it is roughly worth slightly under $1,000 in additional costs for the average family.

Our Democratic colleagues, if they didn't like the pay-for provided by the House of Representatives, they could have suggested different offsets. You can't tell me, given the amount of money the Federal Government spends, that it couldn't find offsets for $14.3 billion. Or the majority leader could have simply put the bill on the floor and left room open for an amendment process. But, instead, he resorted to name-calling and trying to belittle the serious efforts that the House has undertaken, both to deal with the emergency in Israel and the national debt.

In the next couple of weeks, the Senate and the House are going to have to work together to address the major issues that are swirling in front of Congress right now, which include Israel, Ukraine, the border, and, yes, keeping the government funded. This is hardly the way to start off on a good foot.

Republicans and Democrats in Congress overwhelmingly support Israel. We agree that the United States needs to provide support for our ally. At the same time, we need to get serious about addressing another massive national security threat, which is our growing national debt and the crowding out of our ability to spend money on other necessary priorities instead of paying China and Japan, who own that debt.

Washington has a spending problem. That is the first thing we need to acknowledge. Unfortunately, many of my colleagues are unwilling to acknowledge it. We have to get it under control.

Today marks 1 month since Hamas attacked Israel, and I am disappointed that the Senate has yet to act on support--financial support--for our closest ally in the Middle East. I have no idea what Senator Schumer's plans are to actually process this supplemental appropriation. I don't know how long Israel will have to sustain the onslaught of Hamas's rockets and terrorist attacks on its people before the U.S. Congress and the U.S. Government will respond, as President Biden said we would.

Under the leadership of Speaker Johnson, the House did its job. It passed legislation to provide $14.3 billion for Israel with bipartisan support. So I come to the floor profoundly disappointed that Senator Schumer refuses to take up this emergency supplemental appropriations bill to aid Israel.

The United States has a responsibility to stand with Israel. I think that is the consensus position here in Congress on a bipartisan basis. But it takes more than just words. It takes action.

One month after the war began is too long to respond to the needs that the people of Israel have to defend their country and their way of life. I hope we can see movement on this aid package for Israel sooner rather than later.

I yield the floor.

I suggest the absence of a quorum.