Floor Statements

Mr. President, by my watch, today is September 20. The fiscal year for the U.S. Senate and for the U.S. Government ends in 10 days. Congress, which is required to fund the government by passing appropriations bills, has not passed a single appropriations bill 10 days before the end of the fiscal year.

The obvious point is that, unless Congress acts to fund the government in the next 10 days, the government will be without funds, and large portions of the Federal Government will shut down; notwithstanding the fact that some people think maybe that is a good idea and that we are spending too much money here, so let's just shut it down. Well, tell that to the members of the U.S. military and their families. Tell that to the men and women who serve bravely as members of the Border Patrol and of the Customs and Border Protection, who are responsible for processing the goods that enter into our country from our trading partners who create millions of jobs. Tell that to Immigration and Customs Enforcement, or ICE. Tell them that they will have to work and not get paid. Programs that support our seniors, veterans, children, and some of the most vulnerable Americans will be paralyzed, and a range of services from passport processing to opioid treatment will be delayed. Good luck if you want to take a vacation and need your passport renewed.

Well, as may be obvious from my statements, I am not a fan of government shutdowns. I have noticed from my experience that when that happens, the same problems that caused you to shut down the government are still there staring you in the face when the government reopens, and it creates a lot of collateral damage and a lot of collateral expense. It doesn't actually save money; it actually costs more money because of the disruption. And shutdowns harm innocent people and create needless uncertainty for our economy.

I don't need to tell Members of the Senate that our economy is in a precarious position right now. Inflation is at a 40-year high--or it has been at a 40-year high--and the Federal Reserve continues to raise interest rates in order to try to deal with inflation. One of the largest autoworker unions in the country, the UAW, is currently on strike; and we don't know how long that strike will last or how far it will spread. So notwithstanding the fact that President Biden likes to talk about the virtues of Bidenomics, I think if you ask most people whether they are feeling good about the economy and their personal and family prospects, they will tell you they are a little nervous--and with good reason.

I mentioned that shutdowns are not a useful tool nor do they provide leverage for negotiations. I know, here in the Senate, we are always looking for leverage to try to persuade people to do what we want or to vote for the things we like or to vote against the things we don't like. Leverage is part of the way we operate. But shutting down the government does not provide leverage, certainly not to the people who, ultimately, contribute to that shutdown. But, sadly, that seems to be the direction we are heading in.

It has been pretty clear for a long time now that the Senate majority leader--the only person who can actually bring bills to the floor and schedule them for a vote--is trying to play the old Washington blame game: It is not my fault. It is somebody else's fault. In this case, he wants to put the blame solely on the shoulders of the House of Representatives and the Republicans who have a thin majority there.

Before the August recess even ended, Senator Schumer began pointing the finger at House Republicans, referring to their desire to secure spending cuts--the horror of trying to save money, of trying to reduce the debt and annual deficits. Our debt-to-GDP ratio is 100 percent. We have been writing checks here in Washington that somebody is, ultimately, going to have to cover, and it probably won't be us. It will probably be our children and grandchildren. So I applaud the House

of Representatives for trying to find ways to save money.

But the Senator from New York, the majority leader, called those--the angling for spending cuts--political games. Over the past few weeks, he has continued to try to sell this narrative to the press. Unfortunately, he has found some traction. Some of the press is saying: Oh, it is all the Republicans in the House. He even called the process here in the Senate the ``gold standard.'' The ``gold standard.'' We are in big trouble. If the way that the majority leader has handled this appropriations process is the gold standard, we are in big trouble. He has even gone so far as to call it a MAGA shutdown.

Well, Senator Schumer is in a very powerful position as the majority leader, but that power comes with responsibilities, which he has completely abdicated. The majority leader sets the schedule in the Senate, as I mentioned. He determines which bills come to the floor, whether they will receive a vote, and how many amendments will be considered. That is a lot of power in one person, and that is the benefit of being the majority leader--being able to set the schedule, to schedule votes, and decide who gets to vote on amendments and the like. It also comes with responsibility--and I don't mean just a responsibility to the Senate; I mean a responsibility to the American people and to the institutions that work for them, like the Senate, like the House.

So the Senate can only take up and pass legislation when Senator Schumer is on board, and when it comes to funding the government, it is obvious he is clearly not on board.

I see the chairwoman of the Senate Appropriations Committee on the floor. I want to just, once again, commend her and the ranking member, Senator Collins, and all 14 of the Senate Appropriations Committee members for doing their job and doing it on a timely basis.

I think all of us sort of hoped maybe this would be the beginning of a crack in the broken system and that maybe we could get the Senate to work again as it is supposed to. Well, it was a great plan. As I said, they did their part. The committee passed all of its 12 appropriations bills by the end of the summer--or, actually, by the end of July-- marking the first time that has happened in 5 years. Each bill passed with bipartisan support--some of them unanimously. That is impressive, and I know that Senator Murray and Senator Collins worked hard to achieve that.

But the committee's productivity was no accident. The chair and the vice chair of the committee promised a return to the regular way we have been appropriating money for time immemorial, consistent with the rules of the Senate. They followed through on their promise. They used the power that they have as the Appropriations Committee, and they also embraced their responsibilities. I applaud them for it. They gave the majority leader exactly--exactly--what he needed in order to restore the Senate appropriations process to its normal function, according to the rules. But you can't do that by not passing a single appropriations bill in the U.S. Senate 10 days before the end of the fiscal year.

Despite the fact that the Appropriations Committee began passing funding bills on June 22, the majority leader did not even attempt to put the first funding bill on the floor until mid-September. I think it was 18 days before the end of the fiscal year. Now it is 10 days, and we still haven't voted on a single bill. He could have tinkered with the Senate's 2-week recess for the Fourth of July. He could have said: Well, instead of 5 weeks for an August break or a summer break, let's make it 4 weeks, because this is important. We need to get our work done. But he did none of those things. He could have adjusted the priorities as the majority leader.

All we have been doing here--it is not like we have been voting on legislation. All we have been doing is doing nominations. When you are doing nominations, it is not that they are unimportant, but you are not using that time--which is coin of the realm here in the Senate, which is floor time--in order to pass legislation.

Well, it is pretty obvious--it should be obvious--to everybody that the majority leader has decided to run out the clock. He has orchestrated this crisis here in the U.S. Senate. I say ``crisis'' because of the disruption that it will cause, the unnecessary disruption this shutdown will cause, if it occurs, but he allowed months to pass without making any effort--any effort--to move appropriations bills.

So the majority leader can criticize our colleagues across the Capitol as much as he wants. He does it a lot. He tries to shift the blame from himself to them. Again, this is a world-class sport here in Washington, DC. It is called the blame game. Years ago, someone said, ``Well, whoever has got the best narrative wins in Washington, because the press will go along with it, and they will ignore the real or, at least, the whole story,'' which is the complicity of the majority leader in creating the circumstances that we find ourselves in now.

We find ourselves with an impossible task given this heel-dragging by the majority leader. We cannot get these appropriations bills passed through the Senate. We cannot get a bill that the House will agree to. We cannot get a Presidential signature before the deadline. It is impossible, and the majority leader knows that. He created the problem. He orchestrated it. This was intentional.

So the Senate is rushing to pass some appropriations bills, this so- called minibus, but there is no scenario--none at all--in which the Senate will pass all 12 appropriations bills before September 30. There is just not enough time. Again, I am confident that this truncated timeline was no accident. It was all part of the majority leader's plan.

Now, you might ask me: Why in the world would he do something like that?

Well, when he basically undermines the work of the Appropriations Committee on a bipartisan basis, when he doesn't give all 100 Members of the Senate an opportunity to participate in the process by offering amendments, debating those amendments, and getting votes on those, it actually increases his power and influence. We saw that last December when, basically, three or four people negotiated an omnibus appropriations bill. And he likes that because it enhances his power, but we should not be asked to like it, because that means we are unable to do our job on behalf of the constituents we represent--in my case, 30 million Texans.

Over the last few months, back when the debt ceiling vote occurred, it sounded like Senator Schumer was on board with what Chairman Murray and Ranking Member Collins were trying to do. He applauded the bipartisan work of the Appropriations Committee and talked about the importance of working together in good faith. But here is another lesson I have learned here in Washington: Don't just listen to what people say. Watch what they do.

When given the opportunity to restore the Senate appropriations process to its customary function and put individual bills on the floor in a timely manner, he took a pass. He let months go by without even attempting to put a funding bill on the floor.

I know, after the minibus came to the floor, there has been an attempt to try to get this thing going, and we are still working on that. But this is all entirely predictable if you wait until the last minute to try to do the work you should have done months ago.

We are just months away from a potential government shutdown, something that I am hopeful we can avoid. But, of course, what is the majority leader's tune? Not my fault.

He called the process here in the Senate the ``gold standard.'' If this is the gold standard, we are in big trouble.

The majority leader bears responsibility for the Senate's failure to pass a single appropriations bill so far. The Appropriations Committee gave Senator Schumer exactly what he needed in order to do his job on a timely basis. The fact that Senator Schumer fumbled the ball is no one's fault but his own. This is not a ``MAGA shutdown.'' This is a Schumer shutdown. He ignored his own commitment to return to regular order.

I wasn't privy to the conversations the majority leader had with the chair and the ranking member of the Appropriations Committee, but, based on what they did, my impression is that they held the hope that, somehow, we would have an orderly and timely process. I know that is what they want.

That is what I want. But Senator Schumer made sure that was not possible. And, ultimately, he will carry much of the blame if the government shuts down next Saturday.

I yield the floor.

I suggest the absence of a quorum.

Mr. President, I remember when title 42 went away--the COVID public health order that the Border Patrol used to expel people from the border region in the interest of public health. There were many people who expected a surge of migration recognizing what a moneymaking opportunity that human smuggling and drug smuggling is for the cartels that control much of the U.S.-Mexican border.

And for a while it looked like maybe--just maybe--that surge would not happen. But despite the administration's best efforts to downplay or distract from the situation at the southern border, we now see the Biden border crisis in full flower.

Preliminary data secured by the Washington Post shows that last month--last month--a record number of migrant families illegally crossed the southern border.

In August, the Border Patrol arrested more than 91,000 migrants--in August--people who entered the United States as part of a family unit, the highest number we have seen in a single month. But it is not just the families; apprehension numbers have increased dramatically over the past couple of months in all categories.

We have gone from just under 100,000 detentions in June to 132,000 in July, to more than 177,000 in August. I would point out that much of the migration we have seen into Texas has been seasonal because it has been very hot, and it is dangerous for migrants to make the dangerous trip from their home to our border. But that hasn't happened this year. It got worse and worse the hotter the summer months got.

So when you include migrants processed through the ports of entry, the Washington Post is estimating roughly 230,000 migrant encounters in August--230,000.

This would make it the busiest month for border crossings this calendar year. As I said, since title 42 ended in May, the Biden administration has tried to spike the ball and declare victory. They pointed to a temporary drop in border crossings and said this is the proof that their situation was under their control, but that is obviously not the case.

We have just experienced the busiest month in family crossings on record and likely the busiest month for overall crossings this calendar year. As the New York Times reported, in August alone, nearly 82,000 migrants passed through the Darien Gap, the sole land route to the United States from South America, describing it as ``by far the largest single-month total on record.''

And the border crisis isn't getting any better. If anything, it is getting worse, and communities in Texas and those across the Nation are beginning to feel the strain. El Paso, for example, right across the border from Juarez, in West Texas, is in the midst of a surge in border crossings. It is seeing an average of 1,200 encounters per day.

The leader of Rescue Mission El Paso, which provides migrants with food, clothing, and shelter, said:

We've lost track of what capacity means. We are beyond

full.

Further down the Texas-Mexico border is Eagle Pass, which experienced a mass crossing earlier this week. Between midnight on Sunday and Monday morning, more than 2,200 migrants crossed illegally. That is 2,200 in 1 night. The migration surge is happening along the entire U.S.-Mexico border, but two areas in particular are under tremendous strain. One is the Tucson Sector, which covers most of the Arizona- Mexico border. Border crossings in this sector have been on the rise, with agents apprehending as many as 2,000 migrants a day. This includes migrants from all over the world, even those from Senegal.

It reminds me of, when I was in Yuma, AZ, with four Democratic Senators and four Republican Senators, we were welcomed by the Acting Border Patrol Chief, who said: Welcome to the Yuma Sector. Last year, we encountered people from 174 countries, speaking more than 200 languages.

Senator Kelly, the Senator from Arizona, was there and noted that Mexicali is a city in Northern Mexico with an airport. And so it was explained to us that what likely was happening is that human smugglers were facilitating the travel of migrants to Mexicali, where they could simply Uber over to the Border Patrol and claim asylum, and the Biden administration would make sure they were successfully deposited in the United States of America, perhaps to await an asylum hearing that may never occur.

Well, given the spike in border crossings, the Border Patrol--it is no surprise--is struggling. The Agency doesn't have the facilities, the resources, or the personnel to manage an influx this large, and, actually, that is part of the plan.

If you are a transnational criminal organization that profits from smuggling migrants and drugs across the border, what a tremendous idea: Let's flood the zone with migrants, and then when the Border Patrol is distracted or diverted elsewhere, then here come the drugs. And we saw last year alone 108,000 Americans died of drug overdoses, 71,000 from synthetic opioids like fentanyl.

We know where it is coming from. The precursors come from China. It goes to Mexico. It is manufactured there, largely, to look like traditional pharmaceuticals, but they are contaminated with fentanyl. I was in Houston just last week, meeting with some parents who lost their children to fentanyl poisoning. I wear on my wrist--I typically don't wear things like this, but I have for the last 9 months. A father in Carrollton-Farmers Branch asked me to wear this band around my wrist in memory of his daughter who lost her life to fentanyl poisoning. It says, among other things, ``One pill can kill.''

Now, the children who die of fentanyl poisoning, they don't know they are taking fentanyl. They think it is maybe something more innocuous, and that is part of the insidiousness of what the cartels are doing. They are using industrial-sized pill presses to make it look like things that certainly wouldn't kill you. Maybe it is not optimal, things like Xanax or Percocet or some other pharmaceutical drug, but, in fact, it is counterfeit and contaminated with fentanyl. And as I said, 71,000 Americans died last year alone as a result of synthetic opioid poisoning.

So the Border Patrol can't keep up with the flooding of the zone, and here come the drugs, only to be distributed across the country in each of our communities by various criminal gangs. Well, because the Border Patrol can't keep up with the influx of people, they simply are now releasing them. That is right. Instead of returning them across the border, they are releasing them onto U.S. streets every day.

And it is unclear, really, who these individuals are or how they are being released. How many of these migrants are asylum seekers who have completed a credible fear screening? How many are simply being paroled into the country with flimsy instructions and told to appear at an ICE office, Immigrations and Customs office, in the interior at their destination.

How many are given a date to appear before an immigration judge, and how far away is that court date? I read recently in New York, an immigration court date could be as far as 10 years off. We don't have answers to these questions because the Biden administration has not been candid about exactly what is happening.

They basically have hoped nobody is noticing what is going on, but we are noticing. And, oh, by the way, people like the Governor in Massachusetts, the mayors of New York City, of Chicago, and Washington, DC, they are noticing because these migrants, once they pass the border region, they go somewhere, and what we are seeing is the impact on cities very far away from the southern border.

Well, the Biden administration keeps sweeping the problem under the rug and expecting us not to ask questions and conduct appropriate oversight. Last week alone, agents released 100 to

200 migrants a day near Nogales, AZ. The Tucson Sector is not alone. San Diego is also seeing a spike in border crossings. Last week, Customs and Border Protection closed one of two pedestrian crossings at the San Ysidro Port of Entry so personnel could help with the migration surge.

Again, the Border Patrol doesn't have the space or the personnel to accommodate the flood of humanity coming across. Videos show hundreds of migrants are being released into the streets and sidewalks of San Diego, including migrants from as far away as Pakistan and China.

Now, one of the things that amazes me, when President Biden appointed Vice President Kamala Harris as the border czar, she claimed that all of the flow of illegal immigration was as a result of local circumstances in Mexico or South America and as if we couldn't fix our border problems without basically nation building in one of those states. But either she does not understand or is unwilling to acknowledge that this is a global phenomenon. And who can blame some of these people coming across? If you think, Well, for a few thousand bucks, maybe I can make my way into the United States and stay there-- well, maybe it is a good bet.

But it is a disaster when our immigration system is basically handed over to transnational criminal organizations that care nothing about the people and that care nothing about the drugs that are coming across; all they care about is the money. And they are getting richer by the day as a result of Biden border policies.

Well, if there was any question about whether the Biden administration understands what is going on, recently, a migrant asked an agent if he could travel to Chicago, and the agent replied:

You can do whatever you want. You're free.

That is the Biden administration's border enforcement policies.

You can do whatever you want. You're free.

If there was any confusion about the Biden administration's catch- and-release policies, well, that statement cleared it up.

You can do whatever you want. You're free.

This interaction happened to be captured on video, and it has made the rounds on social media and national news. And it has been viewed by people around the world. And, you know, when other people see that, do you think they are discouraged or deterred from coming to the United States through this illegal route? No. They are encouraged. It is like a magnet, which is why we are seeing the huge numbers that we continue to see.

Again, it makes me think the Biden administration simply does not understand the dynamics at the border or, which is more likely the case, they simply don't care. You have to imagine there are people out there who are debating whether or not to make this dangerous journey.

If they had any doubts about whether or not their journey would be successful, well, this video statement pretty much cleared that up. The secret is out.

You know, it is ironic when I hear Secretary Mayorkas of the Department of Homeland Security or the President or the Vice President say: ``Don't come. Don't come,'' when almost every other message that people around the world are receiving is ``Come. You can make it. Just pay the money; take the dangerous journey; take the risk; pay these criminal organizations the cash they demand; and you can make it into the United States.''

And, boy, have they come. People around the world see that America's borders are open. They see videos of migrants from all over the world being released in the United States and told ``you're free.''

The Biden administration continues to create new incentives for migrants to make the dangerous journey to the border. President Biden has proven he is not only incapable of addressing this crisis, he is completely uninterested. He doesn't care. He apparently has no desire to enforce the law and secure the border. And the reason I conclude that is because if he did care, if he were willing to work with us to solve that problem, we are here ready to meet him halfway, but all we hear are crickets.

He would rather appease the open borders base in his political party than take the steps needed to protect the American people.

Border communities have endured the Biden border crisis for more than 2\1/2\ years now, and they are bracing for yet another migration surge.

Given the administration's complete and utter failure to address the crisis, it is time for Congress to step up. I am proud to cosponsor the Secure the Border Act, which was introduced by my friend and fellow Texan, Senator Cruz. This legislation would give the Border Patrol the tools they need in order to secure the border and safeguard the American people. It includes more agents to enforce the law to stop anyone or anything that doesn't legally enter the United States.

It restricts the Biden administration's ability to release thousands of migrants into the United States under the weak guise of parole. This is not parole in the criminal law sense where somebody is released from jail. This is a mechanism under our immigration laws where people are simply released and told: You have 2 years in the United States, and come back and check with us later on about staying longer. There is no such thing as a temporary program. All of this becomes permanent.

But this legislation tightens asylum standards that prevent migrants with frivolous asylum claims from gaming the system. This legislation implements a range of reforms that address the humanitarian and security crisis at the border. It passed the House in May and has been cosponsored by more than half of the Republican conference in the Senate.

My hope was that this would serve as a starting point for the Senate to begin discussing ways to secure the border and protect the American people. It would also be nice--and I have had this conversation with the chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee, on which I serve, the Senator from Illinois, who so far has declined to consider a markup of any immigration bills or border security bills. In the Senate, that is the committee of jurisdiction on which I sit, and I happen to be the ranking member of the Immigration and Border Security Subcommittee.

Well, it is clear that President Biden's approach to the border is not sustainable. His administration has rolled out one incentive after another to encourage--not discourage, not deter, but to encourage-- people from around the world to come to our borders and enter our country.

That is the reason we are experiencing a humanitarian and security crisis. The record migration levels of the last year have tested law enforcement, tested our cities and nonprofits in ways that I have never seen before--a record number of migrants, soaring demands for resources, dwindling budgets, overworked personnel--and we haven't even talked about the impact of this uncontrolled migration on our local hospitals and our education systems and the like. All of them have been operating under incredible strain for more than 2 years. So it is past time to adopt policies that impose consequences. That is what the Border Patrol said we need, is we need consequences to illegal immigration.

Look, I think that legal immigration--orderly, humane legal immigration--has been one of the greatest things that America has ever embraced. It has made us the country we are today, the most prosperous in the world, the most diverse. But surrendering our legal immigration system to drug cartels and human smuggling organizations is a recipe for disaster--what we are seeing right now.

Well, any time the Biden administration would like to engage on this topic, I am standing ready, willing, and able to do that, but so far, even when we have bipartisan legislation like the Bipartisan Border Solutions Act that Senator Sinema and I and Congressman Cuellar and Congressman Tony Gonzales introduced a couple of years ago, there has been zero interest by the Biden administration and no markups in the Judiciary Committee simply to consider that and come up with some consensus on how to deal with this disaster.

I yield the floor.

Madam President, the end of the fiscal year is just 12 days away, and the Senate has not yet voted on a single one of the 12 appropriations bills that have passed on a bipartisan basis out of the Appropriations Committee.

The majority leader, who controls the agenda of the Senate and the timing at which we consider matters, has had all year to plan and prepare for the September 30 deadline. But here we are, less than 2 weeks before a shutdown, with no clear path to funding the government.

At the start of last week, this Chamber was preparing to take up a three-bill minibus. In other words, having not started to vote on any single bill, the majority leader put a bill on the floor that combines 3 of those 12 appropriations bills. This is something the Senate has done before; but to be clear, this is not a feature of the regular order of things. Following the regular order involves taking up and passing each appropriation bill one at a time.

Had the majority leader taken this process seriously, he would have had time to do that. The Appropriations Committee passed the first funding bills on June 22, which is nearly 3 months ago. The Senate could have been processing those funding bills at any point over the summer. We could have followed the regular order and debated, amended, and passed all 12 bills ahead of the September 30 deadline. Sadly, that didn't happen, which is now why we find ourselves in this situation. It didn't have to be this way; but, apparently, the majority leader Senator Schumer, the Senator from New York, wanted it this way.

Diverging from regular order to take up a minibus requires unanimous consent because it is in violation of rule XVI of the Standing Rules of the Senate. And we know there are objections to waiving the provisions of rule XVI, hence we are where we are today.

In politics, we sometimes talk about the art of the possible. We take stock of different Members' positions, time constraints, procedural hurdles, and determine what is possible, what is feasible. Now, plan A should have been to follow the regular order and pass these bills one at a time through regular order, as I said, consistent with the Standing Rules of the Senate. But since that ship has sailed, we now have to figure out what plan B is.

Like many of my colleagues, I want the Senate to work the way the rules provide for. And finding ourselves in the predicament we are in, which is entirely predictable, I think the best course of action is to move forward with all three of these bills.

Each of these bills passed the Appropriations Committee unanimously. They are products of a thorough bipartisan committee process, and they are ready for a thorough bipartisan floor process. Unfortunately, we know that with only 12 days to go, how this movie will end. Ultimately, there are two choices. One is we pass a continuing resolution to give the House and the Senate more time to work on the underlying appropriation bills, or we will end up in a government shutdown. It didn't have to be this way.

But if it is not possible to move forward on all three of those bills contained in the minibus, which it currently is not possible, we need to move forward with the Military Construction-VA funding bill. There is no objection to doing that, and we are wasting valuable time by not processing that appropriation bill.

But with just 12 days before the end of the fiscal year, I know we are all anxiously watching the calendar because our country is barreling toward a shutdown, and the American people are confounded by the fact that the United States Senate has not even yet--even with all this time--has not even yet started to vote on any funding bills.

Again, this is not inevitable. We didn't have to deal with it this way. Senator Schumer could have put the first appropriations bill on the floor in June, July, August; but here we are on September 18 trying to map out the process for the first funding bill.

There is bipartisan bewilderment at why we have landed here. After all, the Appropriations Committee put us in the strongest possible position to advance these funding bills on a timely basis.

Senator Murray and Senator Collins--the chairman and ranking member of the Senate Appropriations Committee--promised to return to regular order, and that is exactly what they delivered. What they didn't figure on is that their principal obstacle would prove to be the majority leader of the Senate who sabotaged their bipartisan regular order effort by not bringing these bills to the floor on a timely basis.

As I said, all of the appropriations process happened in June and July, and there is no reason why it should have taken this long for the majority leader to start mapping out the floor process. This is no way to run a railroad, much less the U.S. Senate; and I am frustrated we find ourselves just 12 days before a government shutdown.

So I hope we will be able to find a path to process appropriation bills. But if that is not possible, we need to do what we can while we can. One bill is better than nothing, which seems to be Senator Schumer's preferred outcome--nothing. So if there is a shutdown, which I hope there is not, it doesn't serve the interests of the American people or either of the political parties--the House or the Senate. But if there is, then it has to be called a Schumer shutdown.

22nd Anniversary of the September 11, 2001, Attacks

Madam President, on another matter, last week marked the 22nd anniversary of the terrible terrorist attacks against the United States of America on September 11, 2001. The 9/11 attacks are one of those events that we will always remember where we were and what we were doing--just like I remember when I was 11 years old, when John F. Kennedy was assassinated in Dallas, TX.

Even though more than two decades have passed since 9/11, the pain our Nation endured on that day is still fresh in the minds of many Americans and, certainly, all of us who were old enough to remember it. We remember the images that covered the front pages of the newspaper and the scenes we saw depicted on our television sets. We remember the bravery of the firefighters who ran into the buildings and the Good Samaritans who put their lives on the line to save others.

But most of all, we remember the people who lost their lives that day--the 2,977 innocent lives, the thousands more who were injured, and the countless people whose lives were changed in an instant.

As a country, we came together and vowed to never forget the events of September 11 and ensure that those responsible would be brought to justice. As part of that commitment, Senator Schumer and I introduced legislation called the Justice Against Sponsors of Terrorism Act, or JASTA, which became law in 2016. It amended the Federal law so that foreign sponsors of terrorist attacks could be held accountable. What this meant, in practical terms, was that the people impacted the most, who lost families, loved ones, property, or businesses, could bring a civil suit against the foreign nation that sponsored and financed terrorist attacks on our soil on that day. This includes the parents who lost their children, wives who lost their husbands. This legislation provided a path forward for families who lost everything so they could have their day in court. This law made clear that any country, any person, or entity that finances terrorists for attacks on American soil could be expected to be hauled into a U.S. court to face justice.

There was a sigh of relief from the victims of 9/11, but over the last several years, it has become clear that the law needs technical fixes. Some defendants, including countries accused of financing and sponsoring terrorism, have exploited perceived loopholes in the law to claim total immunity from lawsuits, which was not our intention. This flies in the face of the text, the structure, and the intent of this law, and prevents the 9/11 families and survivors from pursuing justice.

Earlier this year, Senator Menendez, the chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, and I introduced new legislation to make important technical corrections to JASTA. Actually, I think the law doesn't need a correction, but it does deserve a clarification, where a court listening to an argument made by a country, perhaps,

that financed these terrorist attacks, says: Well, it doesn't include some categories of recovery for damages. Our bill simply clarifies who can sue and who can be sued to ensure JASTA operates the way we originally intended it to back in 2016.

So when Congress debated JASTA several years ago, folks were divided into two distinct camps. In one camp were the supporters of the bill. This included the 9/11 families, obviously, whose lives were forever changed because of the attacks on our country. They wanted foreign nations and entities to be held liable if they aided and abetted terrorists, and I was proud to stand shoulder to shoulder with them and help move this legislation through the Senate. The majority of our colleagues in Congress--Democrats and Republicans--fell into that one camp. We wanted to see justice for the 9/11 families.

In another camp--let's call it camp 2--were opponents of this law. This included the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia, which did not want to be held accountable for any role it might have played in spreading terrorism or financing these attacks on American soil. It launched an extensive lobbying campaign and promoted bogus narratives in an attempt to defeat or weaken support for JASTA. Sadly, camp 2 included some members of the Obama administration, which parroted a lot of the Saudi talking points and tried to stop the bill from becoming law. As a matter of fact, President Obama vetoed JASTA, but this legislation had such overwhelming support, it gave way to the only veto override of the Obama administration.

Several years have passed, and the camps haven't changed, but the occupant of the White House has. President Biden still hasn't taken a public position on fixing JASTA, but his administration seems to be leaning toward camp 2, siding with the Saudis over the 9/11 families.

High-ranking Biden officials have dusted off the Saudi talking points that we once heard from the Obama administration. One of the arguments I have heard against this bill is that we do not enact laws that affect pending litigation. But that simply is not true. Every statute that amends the United States Code alters current litigation unless we state that it is only prospective in application.

JASTA was enacted while there was an appeal pending in the Second Circuit relating to the ability of the 9/11 plaintiffs to sue them under the tort exception to the Foreign Sovereign Immunities Act. JASTA itself is the example of Congress viewing errors in judicial interpretation and stepping in to fix them. It is the law we passed, and we need to see that our intent--congressional intent--is actually enforced by the courts. Nobody complained that we were doing this then, and every Member of this body who was serving in 2016 voted for JASTA. It passed twice, 100 to 0.

JASTA maintains strong bipartisan support today. My bill with Senator Menendez to make technical corrections has that same strong bipartisan support. President Biden and his administration need to make a decision, is he in camp 1 or camp 2--a foreign government that is accused of helping carry out the deadliest attack on American soil or the thousands of Americans and families who lost everything on 9/11? It is embarrassing that this is even a question because the correct choice is so obvious.

Earlier this month, the families of the 9/11 victims sent a letter urging Congress to pass this legislation to, as they wrote, ``fulfill Congress' promise to the American People.'' That letter had more than 4,000 signatures.

I want to thank two women, in particular, who have been fierce advocates of this legislation: Terry Strada and Angela Mistrulli. They both lost loved ones on 9/11, and they have made it their mission in life to ensure that victims of terrorism can finally have their day in court. I know they will not stop fighting until they get justice, and it has been an honor to stand alongside them and hold sponsors of terrorism accountable.

I am disappointed that the Senate was not able to pass this bill ahead of the anniversary of September 11, but that doesn't mean the urgency has gone away.

The majority leader, despite our differences on other things like the appropriations process--the majority leader was my partner on JASTA several years ago, and he is an original cosponsor of the legislation that I am talking about today that would make these critical technical fixes. I know he is committed to passing this legislation, and I hope he will put this bill on the floor soon so we can deliver on the promise Congress made to the 9/11 families and to the American people.

I yield the floor.

I suggest the absence of a quorum.

Mr. President, would the Senator yield for a question?

I just want to ask the Senator from Oklahoma--9,000 a day. I had to get out my calculator to figure out what that means. Are you talking about 3 million, 3.285 million----

--a year----

--if the current rate----

Mr. President, here we are, 16 days before the end of the fiscal year, and the Senate has finally begun--we are not finishing; we are just beginning--taking up the annual appropriations process.

Just to remind everybody, there are 12 individual appropriations bills. There is no time for us to finish this process before the end of the fiscal year, which is actually part of the majority leader's plan. He never intended to have a normal process by which the appropriations bills would be considered because what we call the regular order around here means you take them up one at a time, all 12. It is a transparent, open process where the American people can see it, where every Senator--all 100 Senators--gets to participate in crafting those bills. If they believe the spending needs to be cut in a certain area, they can offer an amendment to do that. If we need different priorities in the spending bills, well, you can do that by offering an amendment and getting it passed.

Earlier today, the Senate voted 91 to 7 to begin debating this legislation that funds military construction projects and supports America's veterans. This bill is important because it bolsters our military readiness by investing in new and existing facilities at our military bases around the world. That includes, in Texas, places like Fort Bliss, Joint Base San Antonio-Lackland, and Fort Cavazos. It also helps us fulfill the promise we made to America's veterans by investing in mental health care, telehealth, housing, and other critical services.

Today, Texas is the proud home of 1\1/2\ million veterans, and this is one important way we keep our commitment and honor their service and the many sacrifices they have made for our country.

This legislation passed the Appropriations Committee earlier this summer with unanimous support. Every Democrat, every Republican voted for it--all 28 members. But this is just 1 of 12 funding bills the committee passed this summer with strong bipartisan support.

Earlier this week, the majority leader, the Senator from New York, spoke about the Senate appropriations process thus far, and he referred to it as ``the gold standard in good governance.'' When I read that, I nearly fell out of my chair. He calls this process, which is doomed to failure because of his refusal to bring these bills to the floor on a timely basis, the gold standard of good governance.

Given the fact that we are 16 days from a government shutdown unless the House and the Senate can agree on a continuing resolution, I would say this is far from the ``gold standard.'' As a matter of fact, I think you could say we have sunk about as far as we can.

But it is important to remember that this funding deadline didn't surprise us. It didn't pop up out of nowhere. It arrives every year on September 30. So the majority leader had plenty of time to plan, prepare, and to carve out time to pass all 12 appropriations bills, just like the rules contemplate. But here we are, September 14, 16 days ahead of the funding deadline, and the Senate has not passed a single funding bill for the government.

If the majority leader's gold standard comment had been in reference to the committee process, I would have agreed with him. The Appropriations Committee did their job. Senator Murray, the chair of the Appropriations Committee, Senator Collins, the ranking member, and all 28 Senators on a bipartisan basis did their job on a timely basis-- the first time they have done that in 5 years. But the committee's productivity was no accident. The chair and vice chair of the committee, Senator Murray and Senator Collins, promised to return to regular order, and that is exactly what they delivered.

Our colleagues on the Appropriations Committee worked across the aisle, which is the way you are supposed to work around here, to pass all of these bills by the end of July. They put the Senate in a strong position to debate, vote, amend, and then finally pass appropriations bills before the end of this month. So the committee process certainly was the gold standard of good governance, but that outstanding product has been squandered. You might even say this whole process was designed to fail because the majority leader refused to bring those bills to the floor on a timely basis.

Let's look at the MILCON-VA--Military Construction-VA--funding bill as an example. This legislation was approved by the committee on June 22, more than 2\1/2\ months ago. The majority leader, the Senator from New York, could have brought this legislation to the floor anytime between then, June 22, and now. He could have said, well, this is important work, so we maybe need to shorten the Senate's 2-week recess for the Fourth of July so we can get our work done, or he could have scheduled a vote during the July 4th period instead of working on nominations.

He could have canceled or--my preference would have been--delayed the 5-week August recess. If we had to cut that back to 4 weeks, do you think anybody would have suffered? Well, it would have given us an extra week to actually get our work done. But that didn't happen.

He could have adjusted the Senate work schedule in any number of ways and would have gotten cooperation from the minority leader, Senator McConnell, because we all understand--or at least most of us understand--the importance of getting our work done on a timely basis. But, as we know, none of that happened.

Days, weeks, months have passed as the Senate did nothing--nothing-- to advance any of the 12 bipartisan appropriations bills. And I want to be just crystal clear: It didn't have to be that way.

Again, this end-of-the-fiscal-year deadline is not a surprise to any of us. It is not as if the appropriations bills weren't ready on time-- they were--or that the Senate has been preoccupied with other priorities. The majority leader is the only person who can set the agenda of the Senate. He is the only one who could call up these bills and schedule a vote, but he has done nothing but squandered the opportunity.

I know that many of our colleagues are frustrated that the Senate has not obtained consent to consider two additional funding bills as part of a so-called minibus, bundling three bills together, but that is the rule. Rule XVI of the Standing Rules of the Senate requires a unanimous consent vote before you can bundle those individual appropriations bills together. But the majority leader knew that. He knew what the Senate rules were, and all along he was taking the risk that one Senator--maybe a handful of Senators--would want to consider the bills one at a time, which is the normal process. It is just not normal to do it starting 16 days before the end of the fiscal year.

Well, while the majority leader has preached the virtues of regular order,

he has refused to actually engage in a process where we can be successful. As a matter of fact, he knows, by delaying the appropriations bills to this point, that we will not be successful because he has undermined it; he has sabotaged it.

Now, you might ask: Why would the majority leader do that? Well, two reasons. One is when you do a continuing resolution, it actually maximizes the power of the leadership because they are the ones that actually negotiate it, and then rank-and-file Members get to vote up or down. But the other reason he did it was because he wants to point to the House and claim that somehow they are trying to shut down the government.

Now, admittedly, the House is having their challenges, but Speaker McCarthy has pulled a rabbit out of the hat more than once this year, and I am hoping he can do so again. But if we do have a shutdown because the House and the Senate can't agree, it will be a Schumer shutdown--a Schumer shutdown.

Well, Members on both sides of the aisle want an opportunity to participate in the process. They want an opportunity to shape this legislation, even at this late hour, to do as much as we can in the truncated time that the majority leader has allowed us. So I urge the leader to let the Senate vote on this underlying bill, the MILCON-VA bill. It is important. We shouldn't act like it is a throwaway or inconsequential. We ought to do our work, even under the impossible timeframe that the majority leader has given us.

I think it is dangerous when Congress circumvents the normal process when it comes to funding the government. It is no secret that our debt is about 100 percent of our GDP. We are going to spend more money just paying interest to bondholders on our debt that is at some point more than we spend on national defense. Interest rates are high, we know, because the Federal Reserve is fighting inflation caused by too much reckless spending, but, as a result, we are also paying more money to our creditors to finance our national debt. And I think that is another symptom of the broken system by which we fund the government.

It has become all too common for short-term funding bills and large spending packages to be negotiated by a handful of leaders and rushed through both Chambers before the clock runs out. There is a growing sense of frustration among Members of this body on both sides of the aisle and a strong appetite to return to a normal, regular, transparent, participatory process, one that will give us at least a chance to try to get our fiscal house in better shape. But we have no chance to do that when, in essence, the majority leader creates an emergency situation, claims that he is the gold standard, and tries to blame the House and say they want a shutdown.

Well, I am not for a shutdown. I agree with the Senator from Oklahoma. The same problems that cause you to shut down the government are always there staring you in the face when you reopen. So we need to do our work. We need to solve those problems and avoid a shutdown, but it is really hard to do when the majority leader of the U.S. Senate, the only one who can schedule votes on the floor and the agenda of the Senate, sabotages the process.

The majority leader has purposely wasted more than 80 days that could have been spent debating funding bills and left the Senate with only two options: shut down the government or kick the can down the road with a continuing resolution. Of course, that is just a temporary measure, and then, when that expires, we have to deal with the consequences of that by figuring out, OK, how do we continue to fund the government at some appropriate level.

He knows we can't move 12 appropriations bills through the Senate and the House in the next 16 days, so this exercise will certainly end with another spending bill that is crafted at the last minute and jammed through both Houses. If this is the gold standard for anything, it is a gold standard for political theater. This is drama scripted by the majority leader. He is trying to put on a show or, I would say, a pretense of regular order in the Senate so he won't get the blame if the government shuts down; he can blame his political opponents in the House.

Well, suffice it to say, I am disappointed we find ourselves where we do, especially in light of the hard work done by our colleagues on the Appropriations Committee. They have done their job, but the majority leader has blown that up.

This is not an accident. This is by design. If the government shuts down at the end of the month, the majority leader won't be able to escape the blame for what will be a Schumer shutdown. Despite the political theater and the Kabuki dance, he will have to own that shutdown because he will have been the primary author of it.

I yield the floor.

I suggest the absence of a quorum.

Madam President, I want to thank our friend Senator Capito for bringing us together to discuss national security and the many challenges that we see on the horizon. When we think about national security, we often picture the brave men and women in our uniformed military who have made immeasurable sacrifices to protect our freedom. We envision the ships, the tanks, the aircraft, and the weapons that they use to keep us safe. We think about the greatest threats to our country, including countries like Russia and China.

But today I want to talk about a lesser known but no less important aspect of our national security apparatus, which is section 702 of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act, FISA, as it is sometimes called. In short, section 702 allows the intelligence community and the Department of Justice to obtain intelligence on foreigners located outside of the United States.

As we know, different rules apply here in the United States and particularly insofar as it involves U.S. persons and U.S. citizens. All of the protections of our criminal justice system, including the requirement of a warrant and a showing of probable cause for a search and that sort of thing, that applies to American citizens and U.S. persons on American soil, but overseas, when it involves foreigners, this is an important tool, section 702.

Congress enacted section 702 in 2008 in response to threats posed by terrorist groups in the wake of 9-11. It tore down some of the walls between the criminal justice system and our intelligence community and made sure that we could share--legally share--information that could be used to keep America safe. There is no question that it has been a success.

When talking about section 702, the FBI Director, Chris Wray, said several years ago, ``The fact that we have not sustained another 9/11- scale attack is not just luck.''

He noted that it is a product of diligence, teamwork, information sharing, and connecting the dots, and much of that dot-connecting occurs and is made possible by section 702. This authority has been vital to detecting potential terrorist attacks; but, also, it is important for applications that reach far beyond America's counterterrorism missions.

Section 702 has helped the United States understand and combat drug trafficking, including the scourge of fentanyl, which is affecting so many people in this country as I speak.

Section 702 has helped us to identify multiple foreign ransomware attacks on our critical infrastructure--for example, the attack on the Colonial Pipeline that shut down gasoline deliveries on the east coast for days on end.

It helped prevent components of weapons of mass destruction from reaching foreign adversaries.

Section 702 has helped to uncover Russian war crimes in Ukraine.

It has even helped to disrupt our adversaries' efforts to recruit spies on American soil or to send their operatives to the United States.

Section 702 is a critical tool in America's national security toolbox, but its future is in question. Unless Congress acts in the next few months, section 702 is set to expire at the end of this year. If this happens, it will deprive America's dedicated intelligence professionals of the laws and the authority they need to keep us safe.

Director Wray recently said that allowing section 702 to expire would be an ``act of unilateral disarmament in the face of the Chinese Communist Party''--``unilateral disarmament in the face of the Chinese Communist Party.''

Given the threat that China poses to the United States and to peace in the region, an unforced error is the last thing we need. In the coming months, I hope we can pass a bipartisan law to preserve section 702 and, at the same time, promote greater trust in the Agencies that use it.

GEN Paul Nakasone, who heads both the National Security Agency and the U.S. Cyber Command, has been very clear about the need to preserve section 702 authorities. Last month, he summed up its importance rather succinctly when he said 702 ``saves lives and protects the homeland.'' It ``saves lives and protects the homeland.''

That is what national security is all about: saving lives and protecting the homeland and our very freedoms that we cherish. We have a clear and urgent opportunity to do just that, and we can't let it slip through our fingers.

I yield the floor.

I suggest the absence of a quorum.

Mr. President, as the Members of the Senate know, this week, we are expected to vote on a series of three appropriations bills--3 out of the 12 appropriations bills that passed out of the Senate Appropriations Committee a couple of months ago. With just 2\1/ 2\ weeks left before the end of the fiscal year, time is of the essence. Unless Congress funds the government in the next 18 days, the government will shut down.

Now, you might ask yourself, if these appropriations bills passed out of the committee with strong bipartisan votes months ago, why are we waiting until 18 days before the deadline to begin the debate and vote on these appropriations bills--and not all of the appropriations bills, just a subset of three.

Well, we know shutdowns do not benefit anybody. I notice on social media there is a lot of anger out there in Washington, and people say: Yes, let's shut down the government. That is a good thing. It is too big. It is too intrusive. It is doing things I don't like.

But, if you think about this for a moment, with a shutdown, servicemembers--members of our military--will have to work without pay. Veterans won't get the benefits or services that they have earned. Mortgages and other loan applications will be delayed. Passport processing will grind to a halt. Maybe there is even a risk that Medicare and Social Security payments will not be delivered on time. So shutdowns are a blunt instrument. I think we have realized that, with a shutdown, when the government reopens, the same problem is staring you right in the face, so you might as well deal with it on the front end rather than on the back end.

From minor inconveniences to major disruptions, the American people are affected by lapses in government funding. We have learned that lesson before. The surest way to avoid any funding drama, which is what we are experiencing now, drama--the surest way to avoid that is to pass spending bills on time and in a transparent, normal process, something we call regular order around here. That means using the processes that are already in place to write, debate, and pass quality legislation. And it is done in a transparent sort of way, where every Senator--all 100 Senators--can participate. If they have got a better idea, they can offer an amendment. They can try to persuade colleagues, and they can get a vote.

Well, at the start of this summer, I was feeling somewhat optimistic about the government funding process. The day the Senate passed legislation to lift the debt ceiling and curb government spending, Leader Schumer and Leader McConnell issued a joint statement about the funding process. They asked the chair and vice chair of the Appropriations Committee to get the regular process back on track. They also pledged to work in a bipartisan fashion to advance funding bills and noted ``expeditious floor consideration would be key to preventing automatic funding cuts.''

Well, there is no question our friends on the Appropriations Committee, led by Senator Murray and Senator Collins, have done their job. They did. As a matter of fact, I think three of these bills--maybe the three in front of us--passed with unanimous votes in the Appropriations Committee, and all of them passed with broad bipartisan support. The point is the Appropriations Committee passed all 12 regular appropriations bills before the Senate adjourned for the August recess. To show you how rare that is these days, this is the first time in 5 years that the Appropriations Committee actually processed all 12 bills.

I want to commend Senator Murray and Senator Collins and the entire Appropriations Committee, on a bipartisan basis, for doing their job and for doing it on a timely basis.

Well, thanks to their hard work, the Senate was in a strong position to advance these appropriations bills on an individual basis or, if necessary, to combine a few of them in what sometimes are called minibuses. We were well positioned to do that well in advance of the September 30 deadline.

As Senator Schumer affirmed in that joint statement earlier this summer, expeditious floor consideration is key, but his actions don't match those words. Today, more than 80 days after the Appropriations Committee passed its first spending bill, the full Senate is beginning--beginning--to consider the first batch of those bills. This is 80 days after the first bill passed. That is not what anybody would call expeditious.

The American people may or may not know it, but the majority leader has tremendous power. He has near-full ball control in terms of the Senate's agenda and the timing of legislation. He actually determines which bills come to the floor, when they receive a vote, and how many amendments will be considered. The majority leader is in the driver's seat. Senator Schumer could have called any of these bills up for consideration, debate, and a vote at any time in the last couple of months, starting with the first one that was passed 80 days ago.

Senator Schumer has been around here a long time. He is a smart guy. He is a shrewd operator and a worthy adversary when it comes to politics, but he knows the Senate can't complete its work in 18 days. Plus, in addition to the 12 funding bills, we need to pass the farm bill, the Federal Aviation Administration reauthorization, and the final version of the National Defense Authorization Act. That is a lot of work in an impossibly short amount of time. The majority leader knows that, and he knows, if he actually wanted to keep his commitment to the Senate, to Senator Collins, and to Senator Murray, that he should have started this process far earlier than today.

The Senate had a 2-week recess over the Fourth of July, and we had a 5-week recess in August. There has got to be some time in there that we could have used on something other than routine nominations, whereby Senator Schumer could have put these bills on the floor, and we could have kept to his commitment of the expeditious consideration of the bills. I understand that these recesses are sacrosanct. I am not sure we needed 5 full weeks for the August recess. Maybe 4 weeks would have been good but with a little notice so that everybody could plan.

My point is that Senator Schumer, apparently, had no interest in seeing each of these 12 bills being voted on on the Senate floor before the deadline. So here we are.

Now, you may ask: Why would Senator Schumer sabotage the regular order process for the appropriations bills? Well, there are a couple of reasons. One is that it maximizes his power because he knows, once you get down to the deadline, that four or five people are the ones who are going to basically figure out how to get out of this box canyon.

Meanwhile, the rest of the Members of the Senate, all 98 or so of us, are left with no options. We can't engage on behalf of our constituents. We can't cut what needs to be cut. We can't prioritize the spending. We can't offer amendments. We can't vote. All of that goes down the drain when the majority leader sabotages the timing of this appropriations process.

Senator Schumer waited 18 days before a potential government shutdown before putting the first funding bill on the floor. Now, if there is a shutdown, and I don't recommend it, it was engineered by the majority leader himself, which is why it should be called a Schumer shutdown.

I hope that doesn't happen, but he knows that the House is in a different place than the Senate in terms of the spending levels. He knows that Speaker McCarthy has a razor-thin majority. He knows the politics of what is happening in the House. He has already been quick to blame the House for a potential shutdown. But, as I have explained here, any potential shutdown is Senator Schumer's own making.

The press has already taken hook, line, and sinker the narrative that this is somehow the fault of Republicans in the House.

While the majority leader is quick to say the Senate passed 12 bipartisan appropriations bills through the committee, we are engaging in a bipartisan process this week, maybe next week. Well, he knows we can't get through this process between now and the end of this month. So he knows that basically what he has engineered is one of two options: He has either engineered a shutdown, or he has engineered a continuing resolution, which essentially means postponing or continuing the funding at current levels to some future date. Of course, that is going to have to be negotiated, what that date looks like.

This is not a genuine effort to return to regular order. It is, frankly, political theater. It is an attempt to make good on the promise to return to regular order without actually doing it.

I have been fortunate to have been in the Senate for some time now. I have seen this place work well, where every Senator gets to contribute to the process, where the committees do their

work, where the majority leader gives the Members of the Senate an adequate time to debate bills and to vote on amendments and to pass legislation. When you do that, it is much easier to build consensus, bipartisan consensus, to actually get things done, and the work product is far superior because everybody has had a hand in crafting it.

Every Member of this Chamber--and by extension, all 330 billion of our constituents--deserves a say in this legislation. Regardless of where they are from, which committees they sit on, or how long they have been in the Senate, all 100 Senators should have a voice in this process.

The majority leader has squandered valuable time that could have been spent debating, amending, and passing appropriations bills on a timely basis. That is why everyone knows that a continuing resolution is the probable outcome of this disaster.

It did not have to be this way. And if there is a shutdown, which I hope there is not for the reasons I have tried to explain, I think it should be called the Schumer shutdown.

I yield the floor.

I suggest the absence of a quorum.

Mr. President, I find it ironic that we are talking about government shutdowns when it is as a result of Senator Schumer's handling of this matter that we find ourselves here 2 weeks before the end of the fiscal year without having a chance to vote on appropriations bills. This is by design. This is not a bug. This is a feature of his strategy.

These bipartisan appropriations bills were passed out of the Senate Appropriations Committee weeks ago, and then Senator Schumer put the Senate in a 40-day recess during the month of August. Now, with the clock ticking, September 30 just right around the corner, we will start with a minibus appropriations bill next week, but we won't able to finish. We won't be able to reconcile the House and the Senate versions before the end of the fiscal year, so we will be forced to do some form of continuing resolution.

You might ask, why would the majority leader of the Senate sabotage the normal, expected procedure by which the appropriations process should work? Well, one, it maximizes his power because he knows that only a handful of people will ultimately negotiate the final product, and it will disempower 98 other Members of the U.S. Senate, rank-and- file Members who will not have a chance to debate, vote, and amend various appropriations bills as they come across the floor.

So this is a part of Senator Schumer's strategy. His political strategy is to create this crisis and then to blame somebody else-- namely, the House of Representatives. And you heard it from our friend from Michigan, the Senator from Michigan. This is all about talking about shutdowns. Well, we tried that before, and we figured out it doesn't really work because when you reopen, the same problems that you found difficult to deal with beforehand are still in front of you.

So we need to do our work here, but we need to do it on a basis where we can actually have an opportunity to shape these appropriations bills and not go through this unnecessary but entirely predictable drama because the majority leader refused to give us an opportunity to put these bills on the floor and to go through them in an orderly and transparent way.

Our national debt is about $38 trillion. Excuse me, I forgot what the exact number is, but it is at a historic high. One reason that spending is out of control is because of this gamesmanship. So we need to do better.

With the government funding deadline just a few weeks away, the Biden administration has adopted a puzzling messaging strategy.

This week, the White House launched an attack against House Republicans, accusing them of turning a blind eye to the fentanyl crisis. Well, it is tough to peel back the many layers of irony and hypocrisy in that accusation. After all, this administration has been asleep at the wheel for more than 2\1/2\ years as fentanyl has continued to pour across our border.

Last year alone, 71,000 Americans died of fentanyl poisoning. We know where it comes from. We know what we need to do to stop it. But the administration has done none of those things to try to save the lives of Americans and now has the temerity--audacity, really--to blame House Republicans for its own failure. How hypocritical is that?

In the last 12 months, Customs and Border Protection has seized nearly 28,000 pounds of fentanyl. I know occasionally you will see it in social media where people will say: Well, good for them; they got it. And I agree--good for them--but that is only a fraction of the fentanyl that has come across the border.

We know--because 1\1/2\ million migrants got away from law enforcement, ran away from law enforcement, we will never know what they were carrying on their persons. This fentanyl powder is so powerful that even small amounts that can be contained in a backpack or in some similar carrying case can kill hundreds of thousands of people.

We know from the sad fact that 71,000 Americans died of fentanyl poisoning

last year that, notwithstanding their heroic efforts, Customs and Border Protection is unable to stop all of it. A lethal dose of fentanyl, after all, fits on the tip of the sharpened end of a pencil. So when you consider the fact that Customs and Border Protection has seized nearly 28,000 pounds, it is enough to wipe out the entire U.S. population 20 times over.

I have been in too many sad meetings with too many grieving parents who lost their teenage son or daughter to fentanyl poisoning. One of those fathers gave me this wristband that I still wear that he has handed out to others in memory of his daughter. It says: ``One pill can kill.''

These kids don't know they are taking this deadly drug. They think they are taking something like a Xanax or Percocet, something relatively innocuous, but, in fact, it is a counterfeit pill contaminated with this poison that kills them.

I am grateful to the brave men and women who work hard to stop these drugs every day. We know they aren't able to interdict all of the contraband that comes across the border, but thanks to President Biden's border strategy--otherwise known as the Biden border crisis-- their already-tough job has become even more challenging.

Over the last couple of years, the unprecedented border crisis has affected all of our missions at the southern border, even those that have nothing to do with immigration. Law enforcement has been shifted from the frontlines in order to process the migrants who continue to come in the millions. Instead of stopping dangerous drugs and criminals, many agents are now pushing paper, changing diapers, and arranging for transportation, so they are not able to be on the frontlines to stop this scourge of illegal drugs, including fentanyl.

Of course, no one profits more from the status quo than the drug cartels. With fewer agents on the frontlines, these cartels have a clear and easy path to move fentanyl, heroin, methamphetamine, and other deadly drugs into the United States.

Our communities are being ravaged by this overdose epidemic, and the Biden administration apparently does not care, because if they did care, they would do something different.

By ignoring the border crisis for more than 2\1/2\ years, President Biden has given the cartels a clear and easy pathway to move drugs into the United States. The fact that the White House has decided that the best defense is an offense and to turn around and try to attack House Republicans isn't just dishonest, it is completely incoherent. It is cynical, and it is wrong.

In its memo, the White House cited a Morning Consult poll that found that nearly 60 percent of voters want Congress to make fentanyl trafficking a top priority. This may have surprised the White House, but it isn't news to anybody else in America who has been keeping track of the fentanyl epidemic.

As I said, the fentanyl epidemic is terrorizing our communities. No one, no community is safe. This doesn't respect how rich you are, how poor you are, the color of your skin, your ethnicity. All of our country is being affected.

Since President Biden took office, he has made every effort to ignore, underplay, or misrepresent what is happening at the border.

Over the last few months, we have seen another effort to try to downplay his failure to meet the challenge at the border. When title 42, for example--the public health title that allowed the Border Patrol to expel people for public health reasons--when it expired, the Biden administration tried to assure the American people that it had a plan to manage the crisis, and there is no reason to worry. And for the first few weeks, we saw a drop in border crossings, and the administration was quick to declare victory. The Department of Homeland Security bragged that the Biden administration border plan was ``working as intended.''

Well, as I and others pointed out at the time, the dip was likely to be only temporary. There was a lot of uncertainty how cases will be handled in a post-title 42 world, and it made sense that migrants--but even more so the criminal organizations that smuggle these migrants-- would take a wait-and-see approach, sort of get the lay of the land before they decide the next method they would use.

And as an added deterrent, the growing summer heat made the journey to and across our border even more dangerous. Either way, it was tough to tell how much things had really changed as a result of the administration's gimmicky accounting.

Earlier this year, the administration stood up a new program that allows migrants from four countries to enter and remain in the United States for up to 2 years and to receive work permits. All they have to do is submit their information online and wait for the administration to give them a green light. Now, this is not a small program. You would think after the 7 million migrants who have crossed our border since President Biden became President, that he would try to tamp down the flow of even more migrants across the border. But this program is open to up to 30,000 individuals a month. That is 360,000 migrants a year.

Until recently, the American people had a pretty good idea about the number of migrants who crossed the border each month. The administration is required to report the number of apprehensions each month, and this data provides a great snapshot of what the facts actually are.

By standing up a new program, the administration effectively opened an additional loophole that allows it to hide the true scale of this crisis. They just basically quit counting some people. They said: Well, we are creating a program where 30,000 people a month can come across under this program so we are going to cut them from the total so that makes us look like we are doing better.

We do not know the full extent of the administration's programmatic use of parole to hide the effects of their immigration nonenforcement policies. What that means is even if people do not claim asylum when they come to the border, the Biden administration is simply waving them through, granting what is known in immigration law as parole--not based on individual circumstance but by the hundreds and thousands. They simply are refusing to enforce the immigration laws that Congress passed on the books.

Despite the smoke-and-mirrors accounting and a range of other factors that contribute to the post-title 42 decrease, the administration had the temerity to declare victory.

But it is becoming clear there was no reason to celebrate. Preliminary data published in the Washington Post shows that last month, a record number of families illegally crossed the southern border--a record number. In August alone, Border Patrol detained more than 91,000 migrants who ended up in the United States as part of a family unit. This is the highest number we have ever seen in a single month.

But it is not just what is called family units. Apprehension numbers increased dramatically over the past couple of months. We have gone from just under 100,000 in June to 132,000 in July, to more than 177,000 in August. To be clear, these are not overall encounters. These are just the arrests by Border Patrol.

I already mentioned that since President Biden became President, there have been 1\1/2\ million ``got-aways,'' people who were evading law enforcement--up to no good, I am sure. We won't see the full picture until the administration releases its data later this month. But the Washington Post is estimating roughly 230,000 migrant encounters in August when you include migrants processed through the land ports of entry. This would make it the busiest month for border crossings this year.

Time and time again, the Biden administration has refused to accept responsibility. The administration has cooked the books, manipulated the numbers, in order to hide the pace of border crossings. It has ignored frontline officers' plea for support. It has attacked States like mine for providing transportation to migrants to help them reach other States rather than to have them settle in our States. And now, it is trying to blame House Republicans for turning a blind eye to the fentanyl crisis. This is a new low, a new low even for the Biden administration.

The reason so many Americans see, understand, and care about fentanyl is because the crisis has ballooned under

President Biden's watch. It is going to continue to get worse, not better. Under this administration, fentanyl has poured across the southern border and into our communities across America. If anyone should be named and shamed for ignoring this crisis, it is not the House of Representatives, it is the gentleman sitting at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue.

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, following a busy summer in the Senate, it was great to spend a little bit of time back home in Texas and, for at least a couple of days, in the great State of Vermont courtesy of the Presiding Officer's recommendation.

I always look forward to the Washington break here in Washington because it gives me time to travel across my State and to hear from many of the 30 million Texans I am honored to represent. I enjoy getting an update from them on what is happening, to hear their concerns, and to talk to them about what I am working on.

One example of that is the Carla Walker Act. This bill carries the name of a 17-year-old Texan who was tragically murdered in 1974 and whose case went unsolved for many decades--nearly five decades. It wasn't until September of 2020 when Carla's family finally received the answers they had been searching for. DNA evidence that was collected at the crime scene was sent to the State DNA testing facility in the The Woodlands, TX, called Othram.

Now, just a little bit of detail. Traditional DNA testing frequently will not tell you everything you need to know about who this is a sample from, but thanks to forensic genetic genealogy, or FGG, enhanced DNA testing was able to identify Carla's killer, and justice was served.

FGG--this enhanced DNA testing analysis--has the potential to provide answers for countless victims and their families, and I am working on legislation to make it more widely available when needed, especially for criminal investigations.

As this legislation is being worked on, it is great to hear about the usefulness of this DNA testing technology from law enforcement as well as forensic DNA experts.

I also had the pleasure of meeting Carla's family, who finally received closure after decades because of this enhanced DNA testing process.

But it is not just the bills that are in the works; I also appreciate the chance to hear firsthand about how the laws that we passed recently are actually being implemented. One great example of this is the CHIPS Act.

Last week, I visited the University of Texas at Austin for its first annual Semiconductor Day. The University of Texas has built strong partnerships with companies and other academic institutions across the State and Nation and is eager to do its part to help revitalize America's semiconductor industry.

Just a refresher: We used to produce about a third of the advanced semiconductors in the world, but now that is down to about 10 percent. Ninety percent of the world's advanced semiconductors are manufactured in Asia. We all can imagine what would happen if, because of natural disaster--Heaven forbid, another pandemic--or an invasion by the PRC of Taiwan--what that would mean to our access to advanced semiconductors, things that power everything from your mobile phone to the Joint Strike Fighter, the fifth-generation Joint Strike Fighter. Everything these days requires semiconductors, these microcircuits.

Well, the university launched the Texas Institute for Electronics, or TIE, as it is called, which will support the future of semiconductor manufacturing through education, training, and collaboration with industry leaders. The Department of Commerce staff who are responsible for actually implementing the CHIPS Act were there to learn about the incredible public-private partnerships that are driving the chip industry already forward in Texas.

This is exactly the kind of collaboration I think we envisioned when I first introduced the CHIPS Act more than 3 years ago, together with our colleague Senator Warner from Virginia. It is gratifying to see this vision becoming a reality in the Lone Star State, as I am sure it is in other parts of the country.

Over the last several weeks, I have also heard from my constituents about the many challenges that families and businesses are facing, starting with high prices on everything from food to housing, exacerbated by what President Biden calls Bidenomics. Like Texas Governor Ann Richards said in the summer of 1992 at the Democratic National Convention--she said: ``Well, you can put lipstick on a hog and call it Monique, but it's still a pig.''

Nevertheless, I have come back to the Senate refreshed and ready to get back to work. So I listened to what the majority leader has said and written about his agenda for this period between now and the end of the month. We face a number of deadlines to fund the government and reauthorize critical Federal programs.

This year, four major deadlines arrive on September 30, just 25 days from now or 16 legislative days--16 days. Of course, none of these deadlines popped up out of nowhere. We have had plenty of warning and plenty of time to advance each of these bills. But the Senate majority leader--the one responsible for the Senate agenda and who is the only person in the Senate who can actually schedule floor action--has created this mash-up and dysfunction.

As it turns out, some of the biggest legislative achievements of the year have actually been led by this side of the aisle, by Republicans, who fought to overturn damaging Biden administration rules.

The Senate did pass legislation to raise the debt ceiling and place caps on discretionary spending, but it is important to remember that this was a deal cut between the Speaker, Speaker McCarthy, and President Biden. The Senate was essentially a bystander.

The biggest accomplishment of the year so far has been passing the annual Defense bill--not a small thing--but it is still a long way from reaching the President's desk.

I would say that considering the number of must-pass bills still on our agenda for the year, that is an embarrassingly short list of accomplishments. So now we have a lot that needs to be done in the next 4 weeks, but really I think you would have to acknowledge that this schedule is designed to fail--designed to fail.

One of the biggest tasks we have to complete in that time is to fund the government, and it looks like we are in for a bumpy few weeks. But I would hasten to point out that this is not a bug but a feature of the majority leader's plan. In other words, it didn't have to be this way. This is all according to Senate Majority Leader Schumer's plan.

Why? Well, it maximizes his leverage on the final product to the detriment of every other Senator on our side and on yours. Why, Senator Schumer might ask, would I let 99 other Senators participate in the appropriations process when I can hold it hostage for my demands?

And, to be clear, the Senate Appropriations Committee has done its job, passing 12 bipartisan appropriations bills out of committee, and they did that before the August recess.

You know, when you look at the schedule and what it is that hasn't been done and needs to be done in such a short period of time, it is incredible to me that the Senate majority leader decided that the Senate would be out of session for 40 days--40 days; that is how long it has been since we were here last--especially with all this work to do. And we have not been in session on most Mondays recently, starting on Tuesday and then wrapping up 2 days later on Thursday afternoon. So I think the picture of the majority leader's plan is becoming very clear.

Party-line disagreements over funding levels are nothing new, but the path to success is especially muddy this year. Several months ago, Speaker McCarthy and President Biden reached a deal that raised the debt ceiling in exchange for deeply needed spending cuts. The national debt has ballooned to more than $32.8 trillion, and the American people are unhappy with Washington's out-of-control spending. Well, that is exactly what the Speaker sought to address during the debt ceiling negotiations with the White House this spring, and it is no question that he made substantial progress toward that goal. He negotiated across-the-board spending cuts, marking a small but significant step to curb Democrats' reckless spending habits.

Now, with the funding deadline just 3\1/2\ weeks away, Republicans on both sides of the aisle are eager to make good on our promise to return to responsible government spending bills. House Members are knee deep in discussions over the best way to pursue those spending cuts, and I expect we will hear more when the House returns to Washington next week.

But still, that hasn't stopped the majority leader from criticizing them. Just last week, he referred to the Republicans in the House and their spending cuts discussions as political games. Well, if this isn't a game, I don't know what is--planning for the failure of the appropriations process and trying to jam through a spending bill with 16 legislative days left. I suggest the majority leader look in the mirror for the identity of the person who has brought us to this point, the one who has been playing the games.

As I said, he is already trying to blame Republicans in the House for a potential shutdown, and, right on cue, the press has started the drumbeat driving that narrative. That is all you are going to hear between now and the end of the fiscal year--is there going to be a shut down or is there not going to be a shut down?--all of which is absolutely unnecessary if the majority leader had used the authority he has to schedule a vote on 12 appropriations bills that we could take up and pass out of the Senate. The House could do the same. We could reconcile the differences and avoid all of this drama.

Well, thank goodness our Democratic colleagues no longer control all levers of government. Senator Schumer and the President now only have some say, not total say, over legislation. With divided government, Democrats no longer have the power to jam spending bills through both Chambers of the Congress, like they did last year. The American people elected a Republican majority in the House, which has pledged to rein in reckless Federal spending. Well, I hope that Speaker McCarthy and our other Republican colleagues in the House will succeed in their efforts this time on appropriations bills.

It is nothing unusual for the House and the Senate to have a different approach when it comes to spending money, what those priorities are, and what the top line should be. It is entirely within their authority and their responsibility. But they have to have a dance partner. Senator Schumer has to be willing to engage in a negotiation in good faith, not play these kinds of games and threaten another government shutdown.

If Senator Schumer wants to avoid a shutdown, he needs to drop the preemptive blame game and actually listen to the concerns of House Republicans on the Federal government's out-of-control spending and then negotiate a compromise. He needs to accept his responsibility.

Funding is only one major item on the to-do list. Congress also needs to pass a farm bill, as you can see on the list.

My State is home to nearly a quarter of a million farms and ranches, more than any other State in the country. One out of every seven working Texans has an ag-related job. I had a chance to sit down with some of these constituents in Lubbock last month and hear how their lives and livelihoods are affected by the farm bill. It is important to them, which means it is important to me.

This legislation is critical to America's supply of food and fiber, as well as to the livelihoods of the hard-working men and women who grow and produce it. We simply can't let this legislation continue to shift and be delayed. I know Senator Boozman and, I suspect, Senator Stabenow are committed to passing a strong bill that will meet the growing needs of our ag industry. That is on this list, and that is not going to happen either between now and the end of the month.

Then there is another item on the list: reauthorize the Federal Aviation Administration. We all heard news of some of the near misses or collisions of some of the aircraft at our airports, which is harrowing to listen to, especially for those of us who do a lot of flying. It is important that we update and reauthorize the Federal Aviation Administration in the reauthorization bill.

Over the last couple of years, travelers--millions of travelers--have dealt with widespread flight cancellations, paralyzing staffing shortages, and rising prices. As I said, we witnessed or read about some jarring safety issues, including these near collisions on runways in Austin, where I live, and in Minneapolis and New York. The Agency is clearly lacking when it comes to safety, efficiency, and reliability. I hope we can address these and other issues with the FAA reauthorization.

But it ain't going to happen between now and the end of September, when the current authorization expires. Again, this is part of a design--a design to fail--to meet our responsibilities to do things like pass the FAA reauthorization.

I know Senator Cruz and Senator Moran are leading the effort on our side of the aisle on the FAA reauthorization, and I know they are committed to helping the Agency meet the challenges of today and the future. I am sure Chairman Cantwell feels exactly the same way.

But last and, certainly, not least, the two Chambers need to resolve the differences between the two bills that we passed--our respective versions of the National Defense Authorization Act--so we can send the final bill to President Biden. Thanks to the hard work of Senator Reed and Senator Wicker and the bipartisan effort in the Armed Services Committee, the Senate bill received an overwhelming vote of support, 86 to 11. It invests in our military bases, our defense stockpiles, our modernization efforts, and, of course, American servicemembers.

The NDAA is vital to our military readiness, and there is no reason it couldn't be completed before the end of the month. But under Senate Majority Leader Schumer's leadership, the Senate has developed a major legislative pileup. If these were cars, this would be

a major pileup. The majority leader has procrastinated when it comes to the Senate's most important duties.

In the next few weeks, we need to pass government funding, the farm bill, FAA reauthorization, and the final version of the NDAA. These are some of the most fundamental responsibilities of Congress, each of which comes with a clear deadline, which we are preparing to blow through.

I am disappointed that we are now rushing to complete an impossible task of completing all of these bills before September 30. It is impossible. It is not going to happen.

As I said, it didn't have to be this way. There is only one person with the authority and the responsibility to avoid this situation: the senior Senator from New York, the Senate majority leader. He is the only one who can set the Senate agenda and move a bill across the floor. The Presiding Officer and I can't do it as rank-and-file members, but the majority leader can, and he simply has failed to do so.

There is a lot riding on the Senate's productivity this month, and we owe it to the American people to do our best to get the job done with the cards that the majority leader has dealt us.

I yield the floor.

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

Mr. President, on Monday, President Biden's Department of Justice filed suit against my State, Texas, over our efforts to secure our border. Of the 2,000-mile southern border, Texas has a 1,200-mile border with Mexico; and, of course, that has been the epicenter of the humanitarian and public safety crisis that we have seen get nothing but worse over the last 2 years.

It is almost laughable, if it wasn't so serious. The administration filed suit over what it called humanitarian concerns, which is more than a little ironic. This is the same administration whose policies have ushered in an unprecedented humanitarian and public security crisis at the southern border.

I have talked previously about the 300,000 children--unaccompanied children--who have been placed with sponsors in the interior of the United States by the Biden administration during the last 2\1/2\ years and the fact that the administration has lost track of at least 85,000 of those 300,000 children. When they were contacted or attempted to be contacted by the Office of Refugee Resettlement and Health and Human Services, 30 days after they were placed with a sponsor, there was no answer and no followup by the administration.

This is the same administration that turned a blind eye when countless young migrants were being exploited on American soil. The New York Times has run two investigative pieces pointing out that, essentially, the administration doesn't know where any of these 300,000 unaccompanied children are--whether they are going to school, whether they are getting their healthcare attended to, whether they are being recruited into gangs or sexually abused or otherwise neglected. They don't know, and, apparently, they don't care because, if they did care, then they would make the effort to find out and do something about it.

Vice President Harris was designated as the administration's border czar during this unprecedented crisis, which has taken a devastating toll on migrants, law enforcement, and border communities, and it has affected every city in the country, from New York to Washington, DC, to Chicago. Every State, in a sense, has been affected by the border crisis and has become a border State in that sense.

Vice President Harris, despite her effort to do anything to address this crisis at the border, has had the audacity to criticize Governor Abbott's actions as ``inhumane,'' ``outrageous,'' and ``un-American.'' Of course, she can't be bothered to actually go to the border and find out what is happening there on her own.

Now, there are a lot of misconceptions about the border. People who haven't been there haven't learned for themselves or from the experts at Border Patrol and the nongovernmental organizations that do their best to try to take care of these people. Vice President Harris simply hasn't bothered to learn, yet she has the audacity to criticize Governor Abbott for doing what he has to do because of the failure of the Biden administration to do its job. The unavoidable reality is we wouldn't be in this situation if it

weren't for President Biden abdicating his responsibilities.

This is an international border, as we all know. That, by definition, is the Federal Government's responsibility, but the Biden administration has simply, as I said, abdicated its responsibilities, with tragic consequences. Unlike President Biden, Governor Abbott took action. His constituents--my constituents--30 million Texans, insisted upon it, and he put measures in place to try to deter migrants from attempting the dangerous journey from their home across the border into the United States.

We know, particularly now with temperatures in the triple digits, that migrants face a brutal environment: heat, dangerous waters, treacherous terrain. And, sadly, many migrants do not survive the journey.

Does President Biden understand that, last year alone, at least 748 people died making their way across the southern border?

I know he has never been to Brooks County, which is the location of one of the interior checkpoints where the coyotes will drive people up from the stash houses along the border, short of the checkpoint, and tell the migrants, ``Get out of the vehicle, and here is a gallon jug of water''--and maybe a candy bar--``and meet me on the top side, on the north side of the border checkpoint,'' in order to evade the interior checkpoints.

Well, Brooks County had so many migrants who died under those circumstances, making that trek around the checkpoint, that they didn't have the money to actually bury the bodies, and so we actually had to try to provide some additional resources to help them do that.

Again, the hypocrisy of the Biden administration complaining about the State trying to do its best to deal with a vacuum when it comes to Federal responsibility is absolutely ridiculous. So 748 people, we know, died trying to come across the southern border, and they are complaining about efforts to try to deter or dissuade people from making that dangerous trip in the first place. That is what Governor Abbott is trying to do and being criticized by the very people who are not doing their job.

If the President is unhappy with the actions Texas has taken, there is a clear solution: Do your job. If the President and his administration did their job, there would be no need for the State to use its resources and its tax dollars to do the job that the Federal Government should be doing. Until then, Governor Abbott has every right to use the powers available to him to keep our State safe, to protect our citizens. That is his right as an elected head of a sovereign State.

I want to make a point of thanking all the countless Federal, State, and local law enforcement officers as well as the National Guardsmen from Texas, the Department of Public Safety, and others who have been deployed to the border for their tireless work to protect our State and our country. They deserve our commendation and our appreciation, not criticism, particularly when it is so misguided and unfair.

The Biden administration may not appreciate the efforts of the State of Texas, but the vast majority of us see, understand, and are grateful for everything Texas guards, local law enforcement, DPS, and others are doing to keep our country safe.

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

Mr. President, is it timely for me to call up my amendment No. 931?

I would do so and ask that it be reported by number.

Mr. President, Deng Xiaoping often repeated a Chinese proverb:

Hide Your strength. Bide your time. Never take the lead.

As a result of that strategy, which worked beyond anybody's imagination, whether by the People's Republic of China or the Chinese Communist Party, America slumbered during the economic rise of the People's Republic of China. American companies invested. Chinese students studied here and then went home to use their new education to compete against us while intellectual property theft, forced technology transfers, and cyber crime emanating from the People's Republic of China have become rampant.

Well, I think it is fair to say that the colossus that is America has finally awakened from its slumber and realized what a challenge China is to us and to world peace.

Today, the market value of American investments in the PRC numbers in the trillions of dollars. Those are American companies that invested in China that helped them to grow their economy. It is no exaggeration to say that we have helped to build their economy into a near-peer status and helped them to finance a military that threatens us and our allies in the Indo-Pacific.

What this amendment does that Senator Casey and I have been pursuing is to seek transparency. We need to understand as policymakers exactly what is going on. We are not asking for any sort of limitation on investments in the PRC. It just makes sense to me that we should know what is going on so that we can consider whether there are any policy options that we ought to embrace.

We policymakers need to know what American companies are doing to help finance an aggressive, authoritarian adversary. What we do know about this and what we do about this is a debate for another day. First, we need to know the facts.

I ask my colleagues to join us in supporting this commonsense amendment.

Vote on Amendment No. 931

Mr. President, under President Biden's leadership, the United States has shattered virtually every record in the book when it comes to uncontrolled illegal migration flows across the border. We have seen new records in border crossings in a single month, a single year, and in a single day, all on President Biden's watch.

The busiest day on record came 2 months ago, just before title 42, the public health title that was imposed as a result of the pandemic-- the busiest day came just 2 months ago, just before that title was lifted or expired, when Border Patrol apprehended 10,300 migrants a day.

The pace of migration exceeded anything we have ever experienced under previous Presidents, and of course law enforcement, not knowing exactly what would happen once title 42 expired, braced for the worst.

Federal officials and immigration experts predicted an increase in border crossings when it was lifted. At one point, even the President's Department of Homeland Security said we could expect up to 18,000 migrants a day. Just to remind you, at its height, it was 10,300, but even President Biden's Department of Homeland Security said that could go to 18,000 now that title 42 went away.

It is not as if the President and Homeland Security don't have the tools necessary to control illegal immigration, but they simply lack the will to do so.

Fortunately, that surge that could have happened didn't happen, and we are left with a lot of opinions and guesses as to why that is true. One possibility is the drop could be seasonal. It is really hot in Texas and along that border triple-digit numbers and traveling across the open range of South Texas can be downright dangerous. If you have gone to the border crossing or Border Patrol in Falfurrias in Brooks County, which is just about 70 miles from the border, where the coyotes--the smugglers--will tell the migrants to get out of the vehicle, give them a jug of water and maybe a PowerBar, and they will say: You can walk around the border checkpoint, and we will catch you on the north side.

Unfortunately, as the cemetery in Brooks County will attest, many of those migrants don't make it because they simply die from exposure to the elements, particularly after experiencing a long trek from their homes.

So we don't know, due to the hot weather, whether in the fall and in the spring these numbers will jack back up again. So the lull could be temporary. Migrants may be waiting to see how some of the cases are handled under President Biden's new border policies now that title 42 is gone.

Plus, we have to recall that we are dealing with very shrewd and smart operators in the criminal cartels. They understand that a massive flood of migrants may well finally trigger some reaction from the administration and authorities, and they may be just metering the flow of migrants across the border so as to not attract undue attention.

Well, it could be that this lull in numbers is just gimmicky accounting. The administration has set up what it calls new legal pathways in order to reduce the number of illegal migrants it encounters. In other words, it has quit counting some of the migrants who come across the border.

For example, the Biden administration, as part of this program, said: We are going to allow up to 30,000 migrants from Central America to come into the United States, give them a work permit, and we will make this for the next 2 years. The problem is, there is never anything temporary about temporary status, and in fact this is part of the gimmicky accounting. You simply subtract 360,000 migrants admitted under this new program over the course of a year, and it makes your numbers look a whole lot better than they really are. It remains to be seen whether this program is legal at all.

I can't imagine Congress, which has been given the main authority to deal with immigration law matters--whether this could be considered within the President's authority or power, but that remains to be decided perhaps in a court of law.

But I suspect that this drop in encounters is a result of a culmination of factors. My own personal opinion, living in Texas and having spent a lot of time at the border and talking to a lot of experts who serve there, like the Border Patrol--my own view is this is not likely to last long, this lull, but it is long enough for some of the mainstream media to accept what the administration is selling, which is that their new border policy is solving the problem.

I will go back and say what I said earlier, which is, even at 3,360 a day, that is more than three times what Jeh Johnson, the former Secretary of Homeland Security under Barack Obama, said was a real problem. Back in that day, he said if there were 1,000 people encountered at the border, that would be a serious problem. But the Biden administration, apparently, has no problem with more than three times the number of migrants currently being encountered at the border, even if it is temporary.

Well, you can see the administration trying to spike the football. Last May, the Department of Homeland Security said the drop in numbers is proof--

proof--that the administration's plan is working as intended. They boasted that the number of unlawful entries between the ports of entry had declined more than 70 percent since title 42 ended. Well, that may be true, but it is tough to brag when the starting point is an alltime record that happened on this administration's watch.

In other words, the argument of the administration seems to be: Well, it has been as high as 10,000 a day. Now that it is down to only 3,400 a day, it is not as bad as it could be so let's pat ourselves on the back and say: Job well done.

Well, 4 years ago, in July of 2019, Customs and Border Protection apprehended an average of 2,600 migrants a day. The July prior, we saw fewer than 1,300 a day, and the July before that, only about 800 migrants were apprehended per day. So, in other words, the argument the administration is making and the celebratory popping of the champagne cork that all of a sudden their new policies have solved the problem is, I think, an illusion. We have gone from 800 migrants a day in 2017 to 3,300 a day in 2023.

The Biden administration wants to argue that this is a good thing. They are supposed to applaud--stand up and applaud the Biden administration's failed efforts to deal with uncontrolled immigration and the flow of drugs across the border.

As I said, former Secretary of Homeland Security Jeh Johnson once said that even 1,000 a day overwhelms the system, and we are currently operating at more than 3,000 a day.

Even Attorney General Merrick Garland acknowledged that flooding the border with migrants, as we have seen--obviously, that is a big moneymaker for the cartels that smuggle these people from their country of origin, across the border, into the United States--that overwhelming the Border Patrol and requiring then some of the Border Patrol--in my experience, as many as 40 percent of the online Border Patrol officers then have to go off the frontline to take care of the migrants, to transport them, to feed them, to house them, to clothe them, to take care of the unaccompanied children who are coming across the border, which means they are not on the frontlines when the drug smugglers bring the drugs through.

This is a pretty shrewd business model, and the Biden administration is accepting it hook, line, and sinker.

When migration levels are as high as they are, it impacts all of our missions at the southern border, even those that have nothing to do with migration. Since President Biden took office, Customs and Border Protection has seized more than 1.6 million pounds of illicit drugs, including more than 41,000 pounds of fentanyl.

Now, we talked about this in Judiciary Committee today, the scourge of fentanyl and the fact that last year alone it took 71,000 American lives. Unfortunately, many of those lives were the age of some of our pages--high school students who thought they were taking something relatively innocuous only to find out it was a counterfeit drug laced with fentanyl which took their lives tragically and prematurely.

Some would point to the seizures of drugs and say: We are successful. We are being successful. We are stopping the drugs from coming across, which I submit is looking at this the wrong way. We ought to look at the volume of drugs seized and recognize that there is a whole lot more that has gotten through.

Just during the Biden administration there have been what the Border Patrol calls 1.5 million ``got-aways.'' These are people who are not turning themselves in, claiming asylum. These are people who are fleeing from law enforcement who are being picked up on cameras and other sensors but then simply evading detention and detection by the Border Patrol.

I can't possibly buy the argument that these people are up to good. I think they are up to no good. They are either people convicted with criminal records--or other law enforcement problems--or simply drug mules carrying more of this poison across the border.

I am grateful to our hard-working officers and agents who interdict these drugs, but we know these data points do not tell the full story. These are only the drugs that they were able to identify and to stop. Given the fact that countless agents were taken off the frontlines in order to care for the flood of humanity--what President Obama said even under much smaller numbers, he called it a humanitarian crisis--there is no question that more drugs have slipped through the cracks. While the agents are busy processing and transporting migrants, it clears a highway across the border to smuggle fentanyl, heroin, and heaven knows what else across the border.

So there is no way to know what we don't know. The fact that we are losing more than 108,000 Americans a year to drug overdoses is proof that we are not being successful in interdicting the drugs that come across the border. That seems obvious.

One of the many victims of fentanyl poisoning was a 17-year-old from Texas named Kevin McConville. Last fall, just 2 weeks before the start of the school year, his senior year, Kevin took a pill he thought would help him fall asleep. Little did he know that it was laced with a deadly dose of fentanyl, and he didn't wake up the next morning. His mom Shannon found him the next morning. It was too late.

Like many parents and family members who have lost a loved one to fentanyl, Shannon and her husband Darren are on a mission to end the fentanyl epidemic.

As a matter of fact, in Farmers Branch, TX, a father who lost a young daughter gave me this bracelet, which says, among other things, ``One pill can kill.'' That is part of the public education efforts that many of our school districts and others and public health officials are undertaking to make sure our children understand that there is no such thing as an innocuous or a safe illicit drug.

When I spoke with Shannon and Darren in February, Shannon was adamant about the need to do more to stop fentanyl from entering our country in the first place. The most critical place to do that is where it crosses our southern border, from Mexico, where it comes from. The vast majority of the fentanyl comes to the United States from Mexico, made from chemical precursors imported from China. If we are going to have a shot at ending the fentanyl epidemic, we have to go to the source rather than just deal with the symptoms.

This morning, as the Presiding Officer knows, in the Judiciary Committee, we talked about people selling drugs by using social media platforms. Certainly, that is something we all abhor, and we ought to do what we can to stop it, and we will be debating that more. Yet, as important a step as that is, it is only one brick in the wall. It is only a baby step in terms of dealing with the fentanyl crisis because we have to stop it at the source, not deal with it once it has made its way into our country. Until that happens, law enforcement and drug treatment facilities across this Nation will be fighting a losing battle.

Shannon told me that when it comes to the border, the Biden administration is failing, and I agree with her. President Biden has completely abdicated his border security responsibilities for more than 2\1/2\ years, with its leading to catastrophic and deadly consequences: 5.4 million border crossings; in addition to that, another 1.5 million ``got-aways'' of the almost 7 million migrants transiting our southern border; 108,000 drug overdoses last year; 85,000 migrant children lost--lost--after having been placed with sponsors in the interior of the United States by the Biden administration.

When officials tried to contact those sponsors to check on the welfare of those children, there was no answer, and there was also no followup by the Biden administration. We don't know whether these kids are going to school, whether they are getting the healthcare they need, whether they are being forced into involuntary servitude, whether they are being sexually abused or neglected. We just don't know, and the Biden administration cannot tell you.

That is completely unacceptable. If any official did that to an American citizen child, they would be prosecuted and, I believe, convicted of child endangerment, human trafficking, and other sorts of offenses, but because these are migrant children, the Biden administration says: Hey, we have done our job. We put them with sponsors.

Now it is somebody else's responsibility.

Well, there is nobody else to deal with that. The child protective services in New Jersey, in Texas, and elsewhere are already overwhelmed. So to say to the States ``now it is your job to protect these children'' once we have allowed 300,000 of them into the United States and placed them with sponsors because of misguided border policies is a complete abdication of responsibility.

Well, 2\1/2\ years of failed border policies cannot be erased by a couple of months of reduced migration. It is premature, to say the least, to declare victory, to spike the ball, to pop a cork. The fact that we are not currently experiencing recordbreaking migration levels is, admittedly, a step in the right direction, but it is not a victory. There is still a crisis occurring. The number of border crossings is still historically high. Law enforcement remains under tremendous strain, and the southern border is far from secure. If the administration were to spend half as much time trying to solve the problem as it does trying to spin it, we would be in a much better place.

I have to say that there are those of us here--the Presiding Officer included--who would like to be part of the solution. We have asked the administration. We have asked the chairman of the Judiciary Committee, Senator Durbin, to bring legislation to the Judiciary Committee, which has jurisdiction over these matters. Give Senators on the Republican side and the Democratic side a chance to debate it and amend it and pass a bill out of the Judiciary Committee that would address this crisis. We have asked the majority leader, Senator Schumer, to encourage the chairman of the Judiciary Committee to take a bill out of committee and bring it to the floor.

Let us do our job. There is nobody else to fix this problem other than us--those of us who have the enormous privilege of serving our constituents here in the Nation's greatest deliberative body--the U.S. Senate--or in the House of Representatives, but all we get are crickets.

I keep asking myself: What will it take? What will it take to get the President's attention? What will it take to get the attention of our Democratic colleagues who are in leadership positions and who are able to put this on the agenda and do something about it?

Obviously, 6.9 million migrants coming across the border for the last 2\1/2\ years isn't enough to get their attention. Obviously, 108,000 dead Americans is not enough to get their attention. Also, 300,000 unaccompanied children who have been lost to an administration that can't tell you where they are or what is happening to them has so far not gotten their attention. But it should get our attention. We are in a position of responsibility in our being given the privilege of serving in this body and in the U.S. Congress, and we ought to do something about it.

So if it doesn't start at the White House, if it doesn't start with the leadership here in the U.S. Senate, rank-and-file Members of the Senate can do something about it. We can force the leadership--the White House and the Congress--to accept their responsibilities and do something about the devastation and death that is occurring as a result of these uncontrolled borders.

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, since the President of the United States, President Biden, took office, America's southern border has faced unprecedented challenges. Unfortunately, none of these struggles seems to have captured President Biden's attention--not the 5.4 million border crossings or the more than 1.5 million ``got-aways''; not the 1.6 million pounds of illicit drugs that were seized by Border Patrol, the 108,000 Americans who died last year from drug overdoses; not the tractor/trailers filled with the bodies of dead migrants or city sidewalks lined with people who have nowhere to go; not even the fact that the cartels are making a fortune off the backs of vulnerable migrants and fueling America's drug crisis.

The American people have been stunned by the scope and the scale of President Biden's border crisis--and I call it that because it is a result of his policies. But it has been going on for 2\1/2\ years now, and the Biden administration doesn't seem to care. The administration has tried to deflect, distract, even deceive the American people into thinking things are just not that bad or maybe they could be worse. But the spin doctors can only accomplish so much. We have continued to learn about the many ways the Biden administration has fumbled its mission at the southern border. And the consequences have been absolutely devastating.

Reporting from the New York Times earlier this year looked at what has happened to unaccompanied migrant children once they arrive into the United States. Since President Biden took office, 300,000-- 300,000--unaccompanied children have arrived at the border. To be clear, these children did not cross the border with their parents, but they did get some help--mainly the coyotes or the human smugglers who, for a fee, will smuggle people into the United States. But these children, as we might expect, are particularly vulnerable as they make this dangerous journey north in the custody of these criminal organizations.

The sad reality is that many come to the United States in the care of these criminals, and parents who paid smugglers thousands of dollars to bring their children into the United States are taking an incredible risk with their children. We know this journey is not safe, and it is not easy. Many children are subjected to violence, exploitation, even sexual abuse at the hands of these criminal smugglers. Many, as you might expect, arrive in the United States traumatized and in poor physical health.

Now, you would think that once these children have made this dangerous journey across the southern border and they are taken from the custody of the cartels to that of the U.S. Government, that they would be safe. Unfortunately, we know that is not the case.

Of the more than 300,000 migrant children who arrived in the United States on President Biden's watch, roughly 85,000 could not be accounted for 30 days after they were placed with a sponsor.

Just to be clear, the process is, the Border Patrol receives these unaccompanied children and has a responsibility to turn them over to Health and Human Services and the Office of Refugee Relocation, or ORR, who then proceeds to identify a sponsor in the United States where this child may be sent to await an asylum hearing that will likely never occur. But the problem is not just that this asylum hearing will not likely ever be held, it is that these children may never be heard from again as far as the Federal Government is concerned.

So the practice is, 30 days after the children are placed with sponsors, the Federal Agency in charge is supposed to make a call, a wellness call, to see how the child is doing. But as this chart indicates, one out of three--in one out of three of these cases, there is no answer. Nobody responds.

And that is the last contact or attempted contact the Biden administration would have with these children or their sponsors, because beyond that, they would say: Our job is done. It is up to the child protective services agencies in the various States to take care of these children. But we know they are already overwhelmed with foster children and others just coming from the United States, much less adding another 300,000 to that list.

So, of the 300,000 migrant children placed by this administration, there are 85,000 cases where the child and the sponsor have never been heard from again.

We don't know where these children are. The Biden administration doesn't know where they are. We don't know whether they are being fed. We don't know whether they are going to school. We don't know whether they are being recruited into gangs. We don't know whether they are being abused or neglected or sexually exploited, and the Biden administration is fine with that because they don't care. I know that may sound harsh, but the fact is, if they did care, they could fix it, but they refuse to do so. The Biden administration has no idea what has happened to these migrant children. It has effectively abandoned them.

Well, the obvious question is, How did this happen? Aren't there policies in place that are designed to prevent this from happening? In short, the answer is yes, there are, but nearly all of those guidelines are set by the Agencies involved, not by Congress.

The Biden administration has full discretion to change its policies regarding the placement of migrant children. They don't need to wait on Congress to tell them; they can do it themselves. They have the ability to determine who can actually sponsor these children and the sort of vetting or background checks that would be necessary for the sponsors to pass. They have the ability to set guidelines for followup calls and wellness visits and other services that would ensure that these children are not being exploited and that they are not being neglected. The Biden administration has the complete authority to remove children from the custody of a sponsor if the sponsor refuses to cooperate or presents any sort of risk to the child.

In other words, the Biden administration made 85,000 phone calls to sponsors with children they had placed with those sponsors. There was no answer, and the sponsors cut off contact with the Agency. The Biden administration could go and take those children away from the sponsors because they have violated their agreements to cooperate with the U.S. Government. Well, they haven't done that.

The short answer is, the Biden administration could do as much or as little as it wants to protect these vulnerable children. Clearly it has made the decision to do as little as possible to protect them.

Unsurprisingly, the administration's negligence has led to the widespread mistreatment of migrant children. The New York Times has documented story after story of young people who are working in dangerous jobs in violation of State child labor laws--of children working in meat processing plants, on construction sites, in factories, and doing other dangerous jobs that are meant for adults, not children. These children obviously aren't going to school. They are not furthering their education. They are being forced into labor in violation of State child labor laws. The New York Times has documented it.

We also know from the New York Times' investigative stories that the Health and Human Services Department--the Agency responsible for this program--has received warning after warning that these children are at risk. These warnings have come through government staffers, outside contractors, and the Department's own hotline. Not only were whistleblowers ignored, but many were silenced. They were pushed out of their jobs. Some were retaliated against for trying to protect these vulnerable migrant children.

Yes, once again, the Biden administration was well aware of this. Health and Human Services Secretary Xavier Becerra knew about credible reports about trafficking and abuse, but he continued to push for the speedy placement of migrants with sponsors with little regard for the dangers that created.

In other words, when the Biden administration had a public relations problem--when we saw the crush of humanity at the border--their first reaction was, let's move these migrants out of the border region as fast as we can, and our public relations problem will go away.

So rather than making sure these children were protected, they actually relaxed the vetting requirement for the sponsors. They haven't even gone so far as to require background checks, criminal background checks or otherwise, of other people living in the same households as these children. They may have checked the sponsor himself or herself, but if a house is full of other people, they need to check everybody in the household to make sure they are not registered sex offenders or that they don't have backgrounds of abusing or neglecting children or otherwise. To solve the administration's public relations problem, they just decided to move these kids through the system as fast as possible and then wash their hands.

Then-Labor Secretary Marty Walsh was well aware of this situation. Last year, the Department's investigators identified major instances of child labor violations that took place in auto part factories and meatpacking plants, and all of this information was made available to the White House.

Until recently, Susan Rice served as the Director of the White House's Domestic Policy Council. Her job required her to oversee virtually every aspect of domestic policy matters, including the placement of migrant children. Both Health and Human Services and the Labor Department shared concerns about labor trafficking and child labor violations, but those reports were either ignored by the White House or were intentionally swept under the rug.

The Biden administration knew that countless numbers of migrant children were in danger, but it did absolutely nothing. The administration didn't just turn a blind eye; it intentionally tried to cover up the widespread exploitation of migrant children. It is a coverup.

In the wake of these damning reports, I wrote a letter to Chairman Durbin of the Senate Judiciary Committee that was cosigned by every Republican member of that committee, and we asked for a hearing on this matter. We urged him to invite Biden administration leaders who failed to act on these warnings to testify in person in front of the committee, under oath. That included Secretary Becerra, former Labor Secretary Walsh, and former White House adviser Susan Rice.

The chairman scheduled a hearing last month, but none--none--of these officials bothered to show up, further indicating that they simply don't care. In fact, this so-called oversight hearing did not include a single Biden administration witness. How do you hold people accountable for their negligence or their intentional acts that harm innocent, vulnerable children if they can't be held accountable to show up for a hearing and testify, if they are proud of what they did, to the committee and the American people about what they did to protect these vulnerable children? But they didn't bother to show up, indicating once again that they simply don't care.

Now, after we pointed out to the chairman that the Biden administration's witnesses were no-shows, he promised to hold a followup hearing to make sure the Biden administration's witnesses appeared. I intend to hold him to that promise, and I look forward to the opportunity. I actually said: ``Thank you very much for doing that.'' He didn't have to do that, but I think Chairman Durbin understands that this is the right thing to do. So I appreciate his willingness to hold a followup hearing with the Biden administration's witnesses, and I look forward to the opportunity to ask those officials who are charged with the care and custody of these vulnerable children why they have shirked their responsibilities.

Now, the Biden administration may be fine with abandoning migrant children in order to avoid a bad news cycle, but I am not, and I think all fairminded Members of the Senate and the Congress are not.

I really question whether people are aware of what the situation is, which is why I am here on the floor of the Senate today to talk about it. I hope that once they become aware, they will become like me-- concerned that something has to change, that people need to be held accountable, and that these children need to be protected.

If you were an American citizen and you treated an American citizen child like the Biden administration has treated these migrant children from other countries, you would be charged and convicted of the reckless endangerment of a child or of human trafficking. In other words, you would go to jail or prison if you treated an American citizen child this way. So how is it the Biden administration gets off with treating these migrant children with any less dignity and safety?

Well, in light of all of this reporting in the New York Times and elsewhere, we need answers, we need accountability, and we need policy changes to ensure that these practices come to an end. The Biden administration owes the American people answers, not just Members of Congress and not just members of the Senate Judiciary Committee. They need to tell us what is being done to keep track of these children. How are they ensuring their welfare? What is going to change to ensure that these migrant children are not victims of inhumane labor practices or worse?

Given everything that has happened over the last 2\1/2\ years, I have no confidence in Secretary Becerra, Secretary Mayorkas, or President Biden, because they know about the problem. They were warned about the problem, but they didn't do anything about it, which tells me they just don't care.

President Biden lives in a very nice government-provided house--the White House. He is not personally affected by this unprecedented level of human migration and the baffling pace of drug trafficking. He is not personally affected by the fact that 108,000 Americans died last year after consuming drugs that came across our southwestern border, and he is certainly not personally affected by the mistreatment of these migrant children, but it is his job. It is his responsibility. It is our responsibility to make sure this comes to an end because this is simply unacceptable.

Children endure abuse and exploitation on their journeys to the United States. The current system is not compassionate, but they sure shouldn't be met here on American soil with more of the same. We need to prioritize the safety of these children as they await their immigration court hearings. President Biden and his administration must change and take responsibility for this gross exploitation of these vulnerable children, and they need to take immediate action to end it.

I yield the floor.

I suggest the absence of a quorum.

Mr. President, I would like to talk for a few minutes about what is happening at the southern border.

Coming from Texas, we have a 1,200-mile common border with Mexico. That is 1,200 out of 2,000 miles of a border with Mexico, most of which has been in the midst of a humanitarian and public safety crisis for-- well, for many years. But nowhere at no time has it been worse than it has been during the Biden administration.

You will recall during the COVID crisis, title 42 was issued, which is a public health order which allowed the Border Patrol to expel individuals coming across the border in certain categories--mainly adult males. Family units and children were handled differently under court orders. But title 42 went away this last spring, 2 months ago. For 3 years prior, it had allowed the Border Patrol to quickly expel migrants who had illegally crossed the southern border. With detention facilities and shelters bursting at the seams, title 42 was the only tool the Biden administration was willing to use to prevent even more chaos from unfolding.

In the weeks and months leading up to its end last spring, there was widespread fear that a post-title 42 border would look even worse than it did at the time, which was a historically bad time. Would the newly set records for illegal immigration be replaced? Would we see up to 18,000 migrants a day as the Department of Homeland Security officials once predicted? Would more law enforcement officers be removed from the frontlines in order to process and care for migrants under the flawed policies of the Biden administration?

The migration levels over the last 2 months haven't been as bad as some had expected, but they certainly have not been good either. Last week, the New York Times reported that since May 12, the average number of illegal crossings has been around 3,360. Well, that is an improvement from where we were a few months ago, but it is hardly reason to pop a champagne cork and celebrate. For one, the drop is likely seasonal, temporary. Officials and immigration experts believe many migrants are in a wait-and-see mode. They are paying close attention to the legal challenges and other migrants' journeys in order to determine their best courses of action.

That is also true of the criminal cartels that control the flow of migrants across the U.S.-Mexico border. This is a business proposition for them. They are continuing to get rich in moving people and drugs across the border, and they are taking a wait-and-see attitude to see: OK, what is public opinion going to look like? Are we going to create a backlash and even a more dramatic response by the U.S. Government or can we just sort of go slowly, and they won't notice as we gradually ramp up the numbers of migrants and drugs coming across the border?

It is also likely that many migrants are holding out for a highly sought after appointment with Customs and Border Protection through the CBP One app, as it is called. It is an app for your phone. As that wait grows longer and frustration grows higher, the decision of many to wait and to use that app in order to schedule a time to meet with Customs and Border Protection officials means that their decision to wait is likely to change. Some areas, indeed, along the border are already seeing an increase, including the Tucson sector. During the week that ended June 2, agents apprehended roughly 4,300 migrants, while 4 weeks later they apprehended 7,000--an increase of nearly 65 percent. So we can see the way this trend is headed.

We don't know what the coming weeks and months will bring, but we do know that more than 3,300 migrants are being apprehended at the border every day, which is still a very high and unacceptable number.

Back in 2019, Secretary of Homeland Security Jeh Johnson, who served under the Obama administration, reflected on his time in leading the Department of Homeland Security. He

said that every morning he would review the border apprehension numbers from the day before. He considered under 1,000 apprehensions a day to be a relatively good number and anything above 1,000 to be a relatively bad number. When the numbers were bad, he said it would put him in a bad mood for the whole day.

As former Secretary Johnson noted at the time, 1,000 migrants a day overwhelm the system. Well, fast-forward to today, and that is still true. We don't have the personnel. We don't have the facilities or the resources to manage the sort of historic levels of illegal immigration that we are seeing in a fair or humane way.

Today, we are encountering more than three times as many migrants as the CBP did on a bad day during the Obama administration, and the Biden administration is trying to celebrate, saying: Look at what we did. We brought it down to three times the unacceptable level of the Obama administration's. Unfortunately, many in the mainstream media are eating up this spin or narrative of success, and unfortunately this number represents only a portion of the migrants entering the United States each day.

Of course, there are what we have come to call the ``got-aways''-- migrants who are detected by cameras, sensors, and other forms of surveillance but who are not arrested or processed by the Border Patrol. You can only guess what they are up to, but clearly they do not want to encounter Federal law enforcement agents at the border.

My suspicion is, and I think it is a reasonable suspicion, that they are up to illegal activities. They are probably people who have criminal records who know they won't be allowed to come across. It probably includes a significant number of drugs that contributed to the deaths of 108,000 Americans last year alone.

These individuals, these ``got-aways,'' could be drug traffickers, human smugglers, or they could be terrorists. There have been a number of individuals on the Terrorist Watchlist who have been detained at the southern border, and, of course, many are known gang members--MS-13-- one of the most violent gangs on the planet. The truth is, we really don't know because they were able to slip into our country and disappear into the great American heartland.

Since the start of the Biden administration began, Customs and Border Protection has logged 1.5 million known ``got-aways.'' Those are the people who have been detected by sensors or cameras or others but have been unable to be apprehended by the Border Patrol--1.5 million. Again, these are people more likely than not to be engaged in some sort of illegal or dangerous activities. That is in addition to the 5.4 million illegal border crossings since the start of the Biden administration. So you have to add the acknowledged number, which is 5.4, with the unacknowledged ``got-aways,'' and that is obviously almost 7 million migrants.

The post-title 42 drop in border crossings doesn't just ignore those who snuck into the United States but also those the Biden administration simply waved through the turnstile. Now, this is another way of hiding the ball or cooking the books to make it look like the situation at the border has vastly improved when it has not.

Earlier this year, the Biden administration rolled out a new plan that allowed migrants from four nations--Cuba, Haiti, Nicaragua, and Venezuela--to remain in the United States for up to 2 years and receive a work authorization.

Before this hat trick that the Biden administration performed, those individuals were treated like every other migrant and were subject to being removed under title 42 or were subject to other immigration enforcement measures, but now, because of the wave of the wand, the magic wand, 360,000 individuals from Cuba, Haiti, Nicaragua, and Venezuela have been subtracted from that top-line number because what was illegal is now, due to the sleight of hand by the Biden administration, presumably legal. All they have to do is to submit their information online before crossing the border and wait for the administration to give them the green light.

So instead of making the situation better, the Biden administration has taken 360,000 individuals from Cuba, Haiti, Nicaragua, and Venezuela and welcomed them with open arms. This isn't a small program that is limited to the most vulnerable individuals; it is open to 30,000 individuals a month.

Of course, the Biden administration took this major step without consulting with Congress. It acted unilaterally to offer work status to up to 360,000 people a year.

We have talked about this before, but it is worth remembering that the Border Patrol says illegal immigration is a combination of push factors and pull factors. The push factors are things like poverty and violence, the desire for a better life, and we certainly all understand that. But the pull factors for illegal immigration are incentives that are provided to the migrants to come to the United States, whether they be social welfare benefits or, in this case, work permits.

Instead of making things better in reducing the number of migrants by enforcing the law, the Biden administration is offering additional incentives for people to migrate from these four countries into the United States because, lo and behold, they will get a work permit.

Of course, there is no situation as to what happens to these individuals 2 years on; this is a 2-year provision. And rest assured, if the Biden administration were still to be in charge, there would never ever be any effort to try to return individuals who overstay after their 2 years are up. These are individuals who likely will remain in the United States for the rest of their lives under this new wave of the wand by the Biden administration.

This new policy lets the administration roll out the welcome mat. That is one of those pull factors encouraging people to make the dangerous journey in the hands, in the custody, of some of the most dangerous people on the planet--these criminal cartels. This policy lets the administration roll out the welcome mat for tens of thousands of migrants while making it seem like the numbers have gone down. They say, ``Look, the top line is down,'' but they don't tell you that they have taken people out of that category and welcomed 360,000 migrants a year from these four countries. That is cooking the books where I come from.

When you look at the total number of migrants encountered at the border during any given month, these migrants are not included in the total. For example, in May, Customs and Border Protection reported more than 204,000 border crossings, but they didn't include the 30,000 migrants who were admitted under the administration's new wave of the wand or the potentially tens of thousands of ``got-aways'' who were up to no good because they had simply evaded the Border Patrol and law enforcement.

Still, the Biden administration has tried to claim victory when it comes to the border when its policies have been a demonstrable, abject failure. Three times more migrants are currently being encountered at the border than Jeh Johnson, the Secretary of Homeland Security under the Obama administration, said would be a real problem--more than three times more--and the trend line shows that number going up and up and up.

I just think the Biden administration is not being honest with the American people. I am sure Director Mayorkas is patting himself on the back with some of the stories that are being printed, saying: Well, the problem has been resolved. Title 42 went away, but the number didn't skyrocket even higher.

I am sure he is more than happy with only about 3,600 coming across the border, together with the ``got-aways,'' under the magic trick by which people who previously would have been considered to have illegally entered the country are then deemed legal by the Biden administration.

In May, the Department of Homeland Security said the drop in numbers is proof ``the administration's plan is working as intended.'' And I can tell you exactly what that plan is. It appears our Democratic colleagues are using the same playbook that President Obama used to create deferred action for childhood arrivals. Those are the Dreamers, the young people who came to the United States as children who were then unilaterally given deferred action for childhood arrivals, or DACA, as we frequently call it.

Step 1, the President acts outside of his legal authorities to extend status to a massive population of undocumented immigrants. He is applauded by the left for taking the action even though it is based on the shakiest of legal grounds, which, by the way, has been held illegal by a Federal district judge in the Southern District of Texas.

To take from that same Obama DACA--or Dreamers'--playbook, the Biden administration's step 2 watches more and more people take advantage of the program as lawsuits are brought against the government.

The debate will wind its way through the courts as tens or even hundreds of thousands of people put down roots in the United States, which is where we are now. And step 3 will come later down the road.

Mr. President, I used to, at one point, just think this was mere incompetence, but now I think it is actually part of a plan because we have seen this play out before, and we know where this ends.

So step 3 will come later down the road. At that point, the individuals who came to the United States through this program will likely have been here for many years. They will have jobs, homes, probably even American-citizen children. Our Democratic colleagues will then point to them and say it is unfair for them to live in a second- class status so we need to provide an amnesty so that they can enjoy the benefits of full American citizenship. They will say it will be cruel to force these individuals to return to their home countries after years of living and working in the United States, and they will frame anyone who refuses to go along as just plain heartless.

So we have seen this movie before, and I can guarantee you that migrants who enter the United States under this new, made-up program of the Biden administration will experience the same level of uncertainty and fear as the DACA recipients currently are. Their legal status is the result of Executive overreach. And as legal challenges are considered, these individuals will be left to wonder whether they will be able to remain here in the United States.

For a party that talks so much about compassionate immigration, this is not compassionate. It is cruel and manipulative and dishonest. The Biden administration is cooking the books in order to make the American people think the border crisis isn't so bad after all. It is deceiving migrants by offering legal status that the Biden administration has no authority to offer, and it is unfair to the individuals who follow the law and who are naturalized as American citizens each year.

I have said it before; I will say it again. We should celebrate the fact that we are a nation of legal immigrants. It is what has made our country so strong and resilient and prosperous. But what is happening at the border is not legal immigration; it is simply hiding the ball, pretending that things aren't so bad, and hoping that the press will move on to look at something else.

And it is unfair to those migrants, to those immigrants, to those would-be American citizens to say: I am sorry; we can't process your legal immigration application because we are too busy taking care of this flood of humanity coming across the border through these made-up programs like the Biden administration is foisting on the American people. And, of course, finally, it is setting the table for another battle over how to handle a massive population of immigrants with legally dubious immigration status.

So, Mr. President, it may appear superficially that the Biden administration is making progress on the border crisis, but it is just an illusion. It is deception. It is manipulation. It is dishonest. And it won't last forever. So the simple answer, as the Presiding Officer knows, is that at some point things are going to get so bad that we are actually going to have to do the hard work. After all, immigration law is Congress's prerogative and bailiwick.

But as long as the Biden administration can take a crisis at the border with title 42 in place--once it expires--and substitute essentially a green light for anybody and everybody who wants to come to the United States outside of a legal immigration process, they are going to say: What problem? We don't have a problem at the border.

Meanwhile, States like mine continue to experience a flood of humanity coming across, overwhelming not only the capacity of Border Patrol to deal with it but diverting those resources away from their primary job, which is to enforce the law, including our drug laws.

Again, I don't know what it is going to take. Almost 7 million migrants during the Biden administration's tenure--that doesn't seem to bother them. What about the 108,000 Americans who died last year due to drug overdoses--71,000 of those from synthetic opioids like fentanyl.

I have been in very emotional settings with parents who have lost their children because they thought they were taking a Percocet or a Xanax or some other more relatively innocuous pharmaceutical drug, when, in fact, it was laced with fentanyl, and they didn't wake up the next morning. These parents are distraught at losing their child who had so much potential and such a wonderful future, only to be killed because the administration is unwilling to do what it should do to be able to stop more of those drugs, including synthetic opioids, from making their way across the border. But apparently that is not enough: 7 million border encounters, 108,000 dead Americans.

We know where the drugs are coming from, and we know how to do a better job of stopping it, but the Biden administration looks the other way. And now we will talk more about this. The facts are coming into view with the 300,000 unaccompanied children whom the Biden administration has welcomed into the United States. And once they are placed with sponsors--people who are maybe not even their family members--they simply say: We are done. We have no responsibility.

The New York Times and other established news organizations have reported these children are subject to labor exploitation, recruitment into gangs, being neglected or abused. And the Biden administration said: It is not our responsibility. Once these children are placed with sponsors--300,000 of them--we have nothing left to do.

Well, as I said, we will talk more about that later, but we do know that in 85,000 of those cases, when Health and Human Services, the Office of Refugee Resettlement that is responsible for getting the sponsors--in 85,000 of those 300,000 cases, when the U.S. Government official calls the sponsor to check in on that child, there is no answer--no answer at all.

I think this constitutes abandonment of these children who are welcomed into the United States as unaccompanied children, placed with sponsors, then simply abandoned by the U.S. Government--unacceptable. If you were to do that with an American citizen child, you would be in prison. You would be charged and convicted of child endangerment or worse. But that is what the Biden administration is doing almost on a daily basis, and it needs to be held to account.