Floor Statements

Madam President, I ask unanimous consent that the order for the quorum call be rescinded.

Madam President, this week, the Senate is expected to vote on legislation that would repeal the authorization for use of military force in Iraq.

The bill before the Senate would repeal two separate authorizations-- one from 1991, which authorized U.S. intervention in Iraq, better known as the Gulf war, to stop the dictator, Saddam Hussein, from invading and terrorizing Kuwait. The second one passed in 2002 in response to Saddam's persistent violations of the peace agreement that came out of the Gulf war, including intelligence that he was pursuing weapons of mass destruction.

In the decades since these authorizations passed, America's relationship with Iraq has changed dramatically. Iraq has gone from a hostile and unpredictable authoritarian government to become a strategic partner with the United States. In recent years, our countries have worked together to end the occupation of ISIS in Iraq.

In December of 2017, Iraq declared victory, though we have seen a resurgence of some of those terrorists recently. Two years ago, President Biden welcomed the Iraqi Prime Minister to the White House, a friendship that would have been unimaginable 20 or 30 years ago.

Put simply, Iraq is a key partner in the Middle East. Our governments and militaries cooperate to promote security and prosperity for the Iraqi people. More broadly, we work together to counter Iran's malign influence and continue to root out terrorism in the Middle East.

While there is still an American military presence in Iraq, it looks dramatically different today than it did 10, 20, or 30 years ago. Today, our soldiers serve solely in an advise and assist role. They are there at the invitation of the Iraqi Government to support Iraqi troops and military leaders as they defend their own security interests.

In short, American forces are no longer there to counter threats from Iraq. We are now there to counter threats to Iraq. That includes threats from Iran, the No. 1 state sponsor of international terrorism, with its hired henchmen, terrorist groups, or other adversaries that could disrupt peace and stability in Iraq.

Those who support repealing the Iraqi military authorizations point to this evolution in our relationship as evidence that the AUMFs are no longer needed. It has been 20 years since the U.S. invasion of Iraq, and they say the

authorizations are outdated. Our relationship is shifting, they argue, so it is time for those AUMFs to go.

Unfortunately, it is not that simple. Despite the fact that Iraq is now our partner, that doesn't mean it is time to abandon our security interests in the region. America still has very real adversaries in the Middle East who would do us and our allies harm if they got the chance. Today, Iran-backed militias operate in Iraq, Syria, Lebanon, and other countries throughout the Middle East. They are proxies of the Iranian military, with the goal of spreading Iranian political influence far and wide.

This isn't just some warmonger conspiracy theory. There is clear and absolute linkage between the Iranian regime and the militias operating throughout the Middle East. They are, in effect, hired guns, which are fighting to take territory that has been no-man's land since the drawdown of U.S. forces in the Middle East. And in many cases, they continue to target U.S. troops.

Just last Thursday, an Iranian drone targeted a U.S. facility in Syria, killing an American contractor and wounding five American servicemembers. The U.S. responded the following day by conducting an airstrike against an Iran-backed militia in Syria. And then, within hours, Iran's proxies launched another attack on a U.S. military base in Syria.

Despite the fact that we know a great deal about these groups and their capabilities and the threat they pose to the Middle East, we are relatively limited in our efforts to counter their aggression.

Counterterrorism missions rely on the 2001 authorization for the use of military force, which was passed in the wake of the terrorist attacks on 9/11. Since many Iran-backed militia have not been designated as terrorist organizations, the 2001 AUMF doesn't apply to them. That means we can only use the 2002 AUMF to counter Iran-backed militia and other groups that pose threats to the stability of Iraq and to U.S. national security interests.

If we were to repeal the 2002 AUMF, we limit the President's ability to target these groups. We, in effect, have withdrawn congressional consent. That applies to President Biden today, and it would apply to future commanders in chief as well. In effect, this would tie their hands when it comes to countering threats posed by Iran and its proxies.

To state the obvious, we can't dispose of any tools that could be used to protect the United States or our partners.

Three Presidents have cited the 2002 AUMF as an authorization for the use of military force. In 2003, President Bush used his authority to justify the invasion of Iraq. In other words, this was with congressional consent. In 2014, President Barack Obama cited the 2002 AUMF to justify strikes against Islamic state terrorists in Iraq and Syria. Then, in 2020, former President Trump relied on this authority to justify the strike that killed Iranian General Qasem Soleimani in Baghdad.

Given the growing threats from Iran, it would be absurd to toss this authorization out the window today. If Congress repeals the Iraqi war authorizations, it prompts a lot of questions about what comes next. Without the 2002 AUMF, the President would lose the ability to contain Iran and its aggression. Iran's influence in the region would swell and Iranian-backed militia would terrorize Syria and Iraq with impunity. Iran would be free to focus on its maniacal desire to destroy Israel. And without having to contend with the United States, it would be free to spend even more money financing terrorist groups like Hamas and Hezbollah.

Russian influence in Syria would grow, giving Putin a launch pad to further project power into the Middle East. Our friends and allies, no longer safe with America at their side, could succumb to coercive partnerships with China, giving Xi Jinping another region in which to compete with the United States for global primacy.

In short, passing this legislation would create a power vacuum in the Middle East that could be filled by Iran, Russia, and China. We would be ceding the region back to competition after working for years to promote stability.

Of course, there are costs to maintaining our position in the Middle East, but the cost-benefit analysis clearly shows that we have to leave every authority in place to defend American and allied interests in the Middle East.

Over the last few decades, as I said a moment ago, America's relationship with Iraq has changed for the better. It is a valuable partner. We work together to support security for Iraq and the region as a whole. The U.S. military works with Iraqi forces to counter threats from Iran and to reduce its influence in the region. These authorizations for the use of military force are key to our continued success.

It also means that we will continue to work with the executive branch, rather than have the executive branch rely strictly on the President's constitutional powers. They give the President of the United States the flexibility needed to counter these threats and the threats that they pose from Iran. We would be doing Iran a huge favor by repealing these AUMFs.

Suffice it to say, I oppose the effort to repeal these Iraqi war authorizations, and I encourage my colleagues in the Senate to join me in that opposition.

I yield the floor.

I suggest the absence of a quorum.

Mr. President, every day, I hear from my constituents, the people I represent in Texas--some of the 30 million people I have the honor of representing--and they ask me why they aren't seeing more solutions offered by the U.S. Congress to the problems that they confront in their everyday lives.

Family budgets are being clobbered by inflation. People are spending significantly more money just to get by on housing, groceries, utilities, and other basic expenses. Inflation has remained at 5 percent or higher for each of the last 22 months. Of course, we have seen it soar to the highest level in 40 years, but it consistently outpaces wage growth, giving the average worker a pay cut, and folks-- too many of them--feel like they just can't catch a break.

As if that weren't a big enough financial headache, some are now questioning the stability of the U.S. banking system. In the last 2 weeks, two U.S. banks--big banks--have collapsed, and a group of major banks has now launched a rescue mission to save another from meeting the same fate. Texans are wondering: Are these isolated events or a sign of worse things to come? The memories of the 2008 financial crisis are fresh in many people's minds, and they are terrified that we will soon find ourselves in familiar territory.

But families aren't just stressing about their finances; they are also worried about their safety. The surge in violent crime that began in 2020 hasn't let up. In many places, it is getting worse. Given the wave of fentanyl overdoses, especially among teens, parents are terrified that their child could become the next victim. They are outraged that fentanyl and illegal drugs are flowing across the southern border, and they want to know why more isn't being done to stop it.

Of course, folks in Texas and across the country aren't just worried about the illegal drugs that came across the border and took the lives of 108,000 Americans last year. That is bad enough. They are also worried about the flood of unchecked migration across the border. Over the last couple of years, the Biden administration has broken nearly every record in the books when it has come to border crossings. We have seen a complete breakdown of law and order as thousands of migrants cross the southern border each and every day. And, yes, my constituents are baffled when they read news stories that say that some of the migrants will have to wait 10 years before they can even begin immigration court proceedings. With all of these problems, folks are trying to understand, how did we get here, but, more importantly, they want to know what are our leaders doing about it.

Across the country, each and every day our constituents are asking for answers, and they want to see some action. Every day, I get phone calls from folks back home or people who write to me about these problems, whether it is inflation or crime or drugs or the border crisis or one of many other topics.

They ask me: When will the U.S. Senate take action? Unfortunately, I can't offer them much reassurance based upon the Democratic-led Senate's track record so far this Congress.

No doubt about it, the majority gets to control the agenda here in the Senate, whether it is at the committee level or here on the floor. As a Member of the minority, there is not anything I can do under the Senate rules to force the majority leader to take action on a particular topic or to insist that a chairman of a committee that has jurisdiction actually mark up legislation or hold hearings.

So, clearly, Democrats control the Senate. Their leadership continues to put all of these important and pressing issues on the back burner.

Just look at what the Senate has done or, rather, look at what it has not done since the beginning of this year. The Senate confirmed several Federal judges and a handful of other nominees in the last 4 weeks. We overturned a dangerous DC crime bill, which would have softened penalties for criminals and endangered the lives of residents and visitors to our Nation's Capital. We nullified a Department of Labor rule that encouraged fiduciaries to support woke policies at the expense of Americans' retirement accounts and pensions. That is the end of the list.

Those are the only items the Democratic-controlled Senate has passed in the last 4 weeks--nothing to address the border crisis, nothing to combat inflation, nothing to stem violence, nothing to deal with the drugs that are taking the lives of our sons and daughters all across America.

The irony is, the two resolutions that did pass were Republican priorities. These weren't even things that our Democratic colleagues initiated. We were able, under the Senate rules, to force action, fortunately, on those. But we have seen in one case that the President has already vetoed one of those congressional review actions. Senator Hagerty from Tennessee led the effort to overturn the dangerous DC crime bill. Senator Braun from Indiana pushed to stop the administration from gambling away Americans' retirement savings.

If you look at every vote the Senate has taken since the start of this Congress, you won't find much more--lots of nominations, a resolution designating January as National Trafficking and Modern Slavery Prevention Month, which rightfully passed unanimously, but that is about it. That is what the American people have gotten from this Democratic majority in the Senate.

To be fair, it appears the Senate will soon vote on a bill to repeal the authorization for use of military force in Iraq. We took that procedural vote on this legislation last Thursday, which marked the first time this Chamber voted to even consider a standard piece of legislation this Congress--the first time. We voted on many nominations and a few resolutions, but that was the first true piece of legislation. It took 2\1/2\ months for our Democratic colleagues to put a bill on the floor--2\1/2\ months.

At the start of the 116th Congress, Republicans held the majority in the Senate. Members were sworn in on January 3, a Thursday. The following Tuesday, the Senate voted on a bill related to U.S. policy in the Middle East--sworn in on Thursday; Tuesday we were voting on substantive legislation. That is what leadership looks like: Identify your priorities; hold hearings; build consensus; put bills on the floor; and let Members do what they came here to do, which is to legislate, which is to address the priorities of the American people, which are being ignored by this Democrat-led Senate.

When voters put your party in charge, you are expected to lead, but that is not what we are seeing. As we witnessed over the past 2 years, our friends across the aisle haven't used their majority to address the problems facing American families. They have simply been missing in action.

While inflation, crime, and the border crisis were raging, our Democratic colleagues who controlled the Senate agenda, the House, and the White House for the last 2 years had the power to pass just about any bill they wanted to address these priorities of the American people, but here is what the American people got instead: $2.6 trillion in partisan spending bills, tax increases, handouts for labor unions, subsidies for wealthy people to buy electric vehicles, and nothing to address the concerns of working families.

Now that the Republicans hold the majority in the House, the era of one-party rule has come to an end, which is, frankly, great news. This new chapter of divided government requires Republicans and Democrats to work together. Unfortunately, we can't make any progress in the Senate or in the Congress unless the majority leader allows us to take up, amend, and to vote on legislation--legislation that addresses the priorities of our constituents, the people we represent.

I hope this sluggish pace, this snail's pace, will change. At some point in the coming months, Congress will need to address the debt ceiling. Given the current status of inflation and the instability of the banking system, defaulting on our debts is the last thing we need to do.

Given the current state of our fiscal house, it is also critical that we pass regular appropriations bills on time and through regular order in a transparent and open manner, unlike the bill the majority leader put on the floor last December, an omnibus appropriations bill which was the only way to fund the Federal Government because he would not allow the Senate to do its work in a transparent and orderly sort of way. So Members of the Senate had two choices: vote yes or vote no and shut down the government.

We also need to pass an annual defense authorization bill--something we have done for more than the last 60 years in each year--to make sure that our military leaders have the certainty they need to address the threats of today and prepare for the threats of tomorrow. I don't recall a more dangerous time for our country and for the world than we currently are living in; certainly, not in my time in the Senate, probably not since World War II, where you have a major power--the Russian Federation--invade a sovereign neighbor, as the Russians did in Ukraine; you have North Korea shooting off long-range missiles with nuclear weapons' capability; you have

Iran seeking to build a bomb; and then you have China threatening to invade a neighbor in Taiwan. So we need to pass that Defense authorization bill.

The Federal Aviation Administration needs to be reauthorized by the end of September; hopefully, addressing some of the near misses we have seen in some of the air traffic recently. My friend Senator Cruz from Texas is leading these efforts on our side of the aisle.

We also need to reauthorize the tools that we need--namely, section 702 of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act--to know what our enemies are doing, to prepare for those, and to deploy countermeasures.

We need to take action to address the humanitarian and security crisis at the southern border, to bring down drug prices for consumers, and to unleash the power of American energy.

We have seen what happened when Europe was dependent almost entirely on Russian oil and gas and then when Putin weaponized that dependency, what that meant to the countries of Europe as they scrambled for alternative sources of energy. The United States, as an energy producer, is part of the answer to that energy security problem, but we can't solve that problem, we can't continue to provide good, well- paying jobs for people who work in that industry, unless the government is willing to get out of the way and take its boot off the neck of the producers.

There is a lot of work that needs to be done, and I know the Presiding Officer wants to be part of that solution. We need more people in this Chamber, in this city, in this country who want to be part of solving these problems, but we can't do it until the majority leader who controls the Senate is willing to put bills on the floor that actually address the priorities and concerns of the people we represent. I hope he will give us that chance.

I yield the floor.

I suggest the absence of a quorum.

Mr. President, families and businesses across the country are worried about the safety and stability of our banking system.

Two weeks ago, Silicon Valley Bank--a bank that many people had never heard of--rocketed from relative obscurity to infamy when it suddenly and unexpectedly collapsed. The bank, which reported $212 billion in assets last quarter, is now known as the biggest bank failure since the 2008 financial crisis. It is the second largest bank failure in American history.

The American people quickly learned that Silicon Valley Bank had made some pretty risky investment decisions. When interest rates were low, it purchased long-term Treasury bonds and mortgage-backed securities. As the Federal Reserve raised interest rates to fight record inflation, the value of those investments tumbled. SVB attempted to stop the bleeding by selling $21 billion worth of assets at a loss of nearly $2 billion. Well, it didn't take long for this entire house of cards to come tumbling down. When customers

learned about its financial troubles, it caused a run on deposits. And, of course, no bank can withstand a run on its deposits where people demand to get paid back immediately when many of the investments that were made are longer term investments.

Shortly after the Silicon Valley Bank implosion, Signature Bank, a regional bank in New York, collapsed as well. And, now, major banks have pledged to help rescue First Republic Bank from potentially succumbing to the same fate. My assumption is this isn't done out of the goodness of their hearts; but they realize if this contagion continues to spread across the country, it could imperil our entire economy.

Given the potential implications of this situation, the administration and Federal regulators quickly jumped into damage- control mode. The Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation, otherwise known as FDIC, quickly announced that depositors at Silicon Valley Bank and Signature Bank would have full access to their funds, even above the insured deposits.

Of course, under existing law, FDIC insures deposits only up to $250,000; but FDIC quickly announced that that cap on insurance would be lifted.

President Biden also attempted to assure the American people that the banking system was safe. Secretary Yellen did the same. In a speech yesterday, she said the U.S. banking system ``remains sound.'' But the truth of the matter is that it is impossible to make guarantees when you are dealing with something as uncertain as human behavior and the wildfire-like spread of information across social media and elsewhere where people can, with a click of their phones, withdraw all their deposits from an institution. So while these are hopeful statements by the President and Secretary Yellen, it doesn't guarantee anything.

The health of the banking system doesn't just depend on objective measures of financial health, but also on public perception and public confidence. Even a bank with a rock-solid financial ground wouldn't be able to withstand a run on deposits. That is not how the banking system is designed to operate. They have to keep a certain amount of reserves so they can respond quickly to a demand for deposits, but no bank is prepared to pay all depositors 100 percent of what they have deposited on demand.

Fears of contagion are very real in the banking industry, which is why everyone is eager to understand what went wrong. When it comes to Silicon Valley Bank, which as one of my constituents described it, he said: Oh, that is Mark Zuckerberg's bank. Of course, it was guaranteed deposits above the insured amount.

We need to make sure there is not cherry-picking when it comes to the policies that apply here, lest people think there is a double standard. For example, if you were a bank in Midland, TX, lending primarily to the oil and gas industry, do you think the FDIC and the Biden administration would step up and guarantee those deposits above the $250,000 mark? Well, that is an unanswered question, but there shouldn't be a double standard.

The problem really is, it looks like there were multiple points of failure at Silicon Valley Bank. First is with the bank's management. Making these long-term investments in the face of rising interest rates because of the Federal Reserve's efforts to combat inflation, it is clear they failed to adjust their investment strategy to take into account the depreciation of the value of those longer term bonds. They either didn't recognize the impact that rates had on its assets or they simply were negligent or willfully ignored the reality. I am not sure what it was, but none of it was good. Given the fact that the bank was without a chief risk officer for more than a year, it seems clear that risk management was not Silicon Valley Bank's top priority.

In addition to the bank's failures, there were also major regulatory failures. Reports indicate that the Federal Reserve raised concerns about Silicon Valley Bank's risk management multiple times over the past few years. The first red flag was raised in January of 2019, more than 4 years ago. Once that happens, the Fed is supposed to monitor the bank and ensure these problems are being addressed. We simply don't have information to confirm whether or not that happened; but based on where things stand now, it seems like it did not happen.

While SVB executives and regulators carry some of the blame for the current banking system chaos, we cannot ignore the role played by the administration and by some of the policies that have been promoted by our colleagues on the Democratic side of the aisle. As our country battled the pandemic and the ensuing economic crisis, our Democratic colleagues alone, without any Republican votes, appropriated about 2.6 trillion more dollars, using a budget resolution that did not require any Republican votes. It wasn't a bipartisan effort. This was strictly a spending spree by our Democratic colleagues under the benign headings of the American Rescue Plan and the Inflation Reduction Act--$2.6 trillion. That was like gasoline on the inflation fire.

Republicans warned our colleagues that this kind of spending would lead to more problems than solutions. There were a lot of warnings about what impact this kind of spending would have after dealing with the COVID crisis, what the impact would be on the economy, particularly with constrained supply chains and a smaller workforce. Putting that kind of financial stimulus into our economy was guaranteed to fan the flames of inflation.

Well, as I said, the first round was a $1.9 trillion so-called American Rescue Plan, which our colleagues tried to brand as pandemic relief. But as the American people learned, less than 10 percent of that legislation was even remotely related to the pandemic, and the rest was exactly the type of things you would expect to see in a bill that was supported only by our Democratic colleagues--everything from funding for climate justice to backdoor money for Planned Parenthood.

Leading economists warned at the time that this was not a recipe for economic recovery. Even Larry Summers cautioned that that package could ``set off inflationary pressures of a kind we have not seen in a generation.''

Still, our colleagues couldn't be convinced to change course, show a little self-restraint, a little bit of prudence, a little bit of caution. They abused the rules of the Senate to pass the partisan spending bill that, again, only depended on Democratic votes. And, lo and behold, this is where we landed.

Our country has experienced inflation at a level we have not seen in 40 years. Prices have skyrocketed for gas, groceries, housing, and just about everything else. For some reason, our colleagues did not connect the dots between this reckless spending spree and the growing strain on our economy or its impact on the price of groceries or the price at the pump you pay for gasoline or diesel. So rather than tap the brakes, they opted to put the pedal to the metal.

Well, the second bill was even more absurdly named the Inflation Reduction Act, which all the outside studies showed would not reduce inflation any time in the near term. Our colleagues wanted the American people to forget the fact that unchecked spending would help usher in this terrible inflationary pressure. And somehow, counterintuitively, they seemed to think that even more spending would solve the problem.

Our colleagues' solution to inflation included handouts for wealthy people buying electric vehicles. Why in the world would you pay rich people to buy an electric vehicle when most working families couldn't afford one? They are handing out tax subsidies to rich people. And then there was the $80 billion supersizing of the IRS so it can squeeze every penny possible from working middle-class families and small businesses. You know this, to me, is just malpractice.

We had the new IRS Commissioner in front of the Finance Committee, and we said, you know, when can we expect your plan on how to spend the $80 billion and this plan to hire 87,000 new IRS agents? And he said: Oh, it is coming.

But our Democratic friends got it backward. Instead of saying: Here is the plan and how much does it cost to implement the plan, they said: Here is the money, you come up with a plan. Only in Washington, DC, does the world operate that way.

But between those two bills, our colleagues spent roughly $2.6 trillion on a partisan spending spree, just as some

economists, including Democratic economists like Larry Summers--just like they predicted, these bills did nothing to reduce inflation; they made it worse.

Of course, we know that the Federal Reserve has the responsibility to try to address inflation; and one of their few tools is to raise interest rates, to slow the economy down to increase unemployment in order to bring that inflation down.

Higher borrowing costs slow down the economy and curb demand, but they also--it requires the United States to pay our bondholders who purchase our debt even more money for the debt we incur--now roughly around a trillion dollars in interest on a $31 trillion national debt.

So over the last year, in order to combat inflation, the Federal Reserve has hiked interest rates nine times--nine times. We have witnessed the fastest series of rate increases since the early 1980s, but it still hasn't been enough to cool the red-hot inflation contributed to by our colleagues' reckless spending.

While I appreciate the administration's effort to stop the contagion from spreading, I would like to see our colleagues acknowledge the circumstances that led us here. Despite warnings that trillions of dollars in spending would lead to record inflation, our colleagues seemed to just run through that red light anyway. As a result, this is something that, to be blunt, they own. It has driven up the cost of everything from basic expenses, like groceries and electricity.

Then, of course, there are the subsequent interest rate hikes which have made it more expensive to buy a house or borrow money to buy a car, for example, or to finance your small business. That is a direct result of the inflationary pressures caused by excessive Washington spending. Again, it is like pouring gasoline on the fire.

Now we know this same inflation has contributed to the failure of banks like Silicon Valley Bank. Admittedly, it is due, in part, to the mismanagement by the bank and the lack of appropriate supervision by regulators, but the reason why Silicon Valley Bank got in trouble in the first place is because the value of their Treasury bonds where they had invested some of their reserves kept going down because it is inversely proportionate to interest rates.

Democrats kicked off an economic crisis, and now everybody is paying the price. I would like to know, as they look back on it now, whether they think it was worth it?

Mr. President, I yield the floor.

Mr. President, my State, the great State of Texas, shares 1,200 miles of common border with America's southern neighbor. Along the border, you will see big cities, small towns, rural farms, and ranches. You will find successful businesses that depend on free- flowing, legitimate trade and travel with our southern neighbor. You will meet countless people who are proud of the strong ties our country has with Mexico and many who have relatives on both sides of the border. These influences can be seen throughout our State, from the names of cities, like San Antonio, to the food we eat, to the music we enjoy and the diversity of people in our communities.

A strong U.S.-Mexico relationship has been a boon to Texas, but it is also vital to the rest of the country. Mexico is our second largest trading partner for both imports and exports. It is a major market for American energy, machinery, chemicals, and agricultural products. We import everything from transportation equipment to avocados. It is not uncommon for certain products, such as automobiles, to cross the border multiple times throughout the production process before eventually making their way to consumers in the United States.

A strong relationship with Mexico is important to our economy, but Mexico isn't just a trading partner. It is not just about the economics between our countries. Mexico is also a necessary and vital security partner because our countries share, in total, a 2,000-mile border and work together to protect the safety and security of our communities on both sides of the border. It is critical that we work in a complementary fashion.

The United States has supported Mexico's efforts to counter cartel violence and root out corruption in its judicial system. Mexico, in turn, has worked with the United States to ensure orderly migration and stop illicit drugs from coming into our country. Obviously, what we are doing is not nearly enough on either side of the border.

Over the years, our security cooperation has promoted safety and security in both countries. As the American people are seeing every day, the Mexican Government is, unfortunately, failing to meet its side of the responsibilities. We can see that because people coming through Mexico, coming to the United States, have come in unprecedented numbers, which is a devastating humanitarian and public safety crisis. Then there are things like fentanyl and other dangerous drugs that are being manufactured in clandestine labs in Mexico and smuggled across our border every day.

Of course, these same criminal organizations are terrorizing law- abiding citizens in Mexico through their violence and their territorial disputes. Earlier this month, an out-of-control cartel violence incident harmed American citizens who were visiting Mexico. Four Americans were caught in a deadly shootout and kidnapped, and two of those individuals were killed.

In the face of these growing problems, the Mexican Government has not shown, in my view, enough willingness to work together to address these problems. Make no mistake, this is not something we can do or they can do alone; we have to do it together.

The Government of Mexico hasn't expressed adequate concern, in my opinion, over the cartel violence, the drug trafficking, or the migration crisis. Unfortunately, in public, Mexican President Lopez Obrador underplayed the security problems in his own country. I believe he knows differently based on the conversations we had when the TV cameras were not present. He has falsely claimed that Mexico is safer than the United States. We know that is not true. He said that Mexico was not responsible for the fentanyl coming into our country. We know that is also not true. It is a well-known fact that the vast majority of illicit fentanyl comes to the United States from Mexico, manufactured by precursor chemicals coming from China.

Well, here is the disparity between what you see in public to the TV cameras and what actually happens on the ground. Just weeks before claiming Mexico doesn't have a fentanyl problem, the Mexican Government raided what its army described as the ``highest-capacity synthetic drug production lab on record.'' That is what the Mexican Army, SEDENA, said. It seized nearly 630,000 fentanyl pills, along with hundreds of pounds of powdered fentanyl and methamphetamines.

At that time, President Lopez Obrador said the lab seized by elements of the Mexican Army--that that lab had a value of roughly $80 million, but just a few weeks later, the same government said it had no record of fentanyl production in Mexico.

It doesn't take a detective or an investigative journalist to see that the

Mexican Government is not taking these problems seriously enough, and it is to the detriment of their own citizens. Throughout Mexico, law- abiding citizens are being terrorized by these cartels. Migrants, we know, are being extorted and abused by the very people who are smuggling them up through Mexico into the United States. We know that communities across this country are experiencing waves of drug overdose or what some call fentanyl poisoning from the drugs that are smuggled from Mexico into the United States.

Frankly, the Lopez Obrador administration is not doing nearly enough to work together with us on this problem that we share in common, sadly to say. Given the severity of these challenges, there is a clear need for action. But we have to proceed carefully because while Mexico ultimately has many problems, it is our southern neighbor, and our economies are interconnected through the U.S.-Mexico-Canada trade agreement, the successor to NAFTA. We know that its success, Mexico's success, will ultimately benefit the United States in terms of a better economy, more prosperity, more trade, more jobs. Our countries are inextricably linked together in terms of security and prosperity, and we need to find a productive path forward.

Countering cartel violence will require more cooperation with the Mexican Government. Stopping the fentanyl epidemic will require Mexico's cooperation. Addressing the border crisis will require Mexico's cooperation.

Although it may make us feel good at times, we can't just simply lash out in anger or say, we are going to do this, knowing that maybe it might get you a hit on TV, but it doesn't actually solve any problems. We need to make strategic decisions together with Mexico that will lead to real change.

As the Presiding Officer knows, we had a bipartisan congressional delegation to Mexico this weekend to learn more about the ongoing security challenges so we can figure out with our Mexican counterparts what kinds of changes need to be made and what exactly those changes would look like.

We had 12 Members of Congress--House and Senate--join the trip. From the Senate, we had Senator Moran, Senator Lee, Senator Capito, Senator Coons, Senator Murphy, Senator Sinema, Senator Welch, and myself. From the House, we had a bipartisan delegation: Congressman Cuellar, Congressman Tony Gonzales, Congresswoman Escobar, and Congresswoman Salazar.

Suffice it to say, between the 12 of us--Democrats and Republicans, House and Senate--we have varying political views and many differences of opinion on a host of topics, but on this weekend trip to Mexico, we all agree the ongoing crisis in Mexico is unsustainable and something needs to change. We wanted to visit Mexico so we could learn for ourselves what the facts are, not as they are spun by either elected officials or by the media. Before you solve a problem, you have got to understand the full scale of what you are up against, and that was the goal of this trip.

We got briefings from American intelligence officials, leaders from the Drug Enforcement Administration, and others about their work in Mexico. The U.S. Embassy in Mexico is the largest Embassy in the world and employs 3,400 people and 9 consulates in the main Embassy in Mexico City.

We spent some time with our outstanding Ambassador, Ken Salazar, a former colleague of ours in the Senate who went on to be Secretary of the Interior and now serves as our Representative in Mexico.

Ambassador Salazar was delighted we could come visit because he knows firsthand the challenges that Mexico faces and the challenges that the U.S.-Mexico relationship create and the importance of finding solutions to those differences and those challenges.

I want to thank President Lopez Obrador, even though I have said some critical comments here about how he has misrepresented the security situation in Mexico and the United States. I want to thank him publicly for meeting with us for a total of 4 hours. We not only met with Lopez Obrador; we met with the entire Cabinet. That would be as if a delegation, let's say, from Mexico of 12 senators and House of Deputies members came up and sat down with President Joe Biden and his Cabinet for 4 hours. It was an unprecedented exchange of information and points of view, and I think it demonstrated the Mexican Government's desire to have a closer working relationship with the U.S. Congress and the United States of America.

At the top of the list of the things we have talked about were the ongoing security challenges, which have had a deadly impact on both countries. Members of our delegation didn't pull any punches. We did it respectfully, but we forcefully presented our frustration with the ongoing cartel violence, the drug trafficking, and unchecked migration. That is what friends do, Mr. President; we have frank exchanges even when we disagree. We are friends with Mexico, and we have to work this out together, and we have to start with a common understanding of what the facts and the challenges are.

We told President Lopez Obrador that his administration must do more to address these challenges, and we emphasized that the failure to do so will have a negative impact on our historically strong and important partnership.

There are many ways to improve the security cooperation between our countries, and our delegation stressed our willingness to work with President Lopez Obrador's administration and the Government of Mexico to support their efforts to defeat the cartels.

Overall, our conversations with the Mexican President were extremely candid and tough, but they were respectful--respectful of not only the high office that President Lopez Obrador holds but also of the fact that we were dealing with the head of a sovereign country.

We have seen the positive impact in my State of a strong relationship with Mexico, but it also redounds to the benefit of the Nation. And as I said earlier, the better Mexico does by defeating the cartels, by interdicting the drugs and the precursors that come from other parts of the world, the better the quality of life, the safety and security will be for the people who live in Mexico--the Mexican people--and it will also be to our benefit here in the United States.

Ultimately, what I believe both countries want are a safe and prosperous country, and we can do this together. Our close ties are extremely beneficial to both countries, and I hope President Lopez Obrador took our good faith and candid comments about the failures to deal with security and migration to heart. We certainly expressed our views, as I said, in a candid, a civil, and respectful way, but I think we delivered the message clearly, and I hope he will take that to heart.

I yield the floor.

Mr. President, over the past few decades, the United States has experienced a steady drop in domestic semiconductor manufacturing. Now, I guess we all might be forgiven for not being experts in what advanced microcircuits are all about, but the truth is these microcircuits, or semiconductors, are part of our everyday lives in ways that perhaps we don't fully appreciate. Everything from your smartphone to the most advanced weapons that we are providing to Ukraine to defeat Russian aggression, to the Joint Strike Fighter, the F-35--all of these require a large number of these mini-circuit processors, or semiconductors.

Well, over these last few decades, we have gone from producing 37 percent of the world's chips in 1990 to just 12 percent today. In other words, we are more dependent than ever on supply chains of semiconductors in order to keep our economy going and to defend ourselves from a national security perspective.

This, obviously, is a concerning trend, and one of the things we have learned about during COVID is this idea of globalization, that just because somebody can make something cheaper--in China, let's say--than in the United States, that that answered all the questions, that that checked all the boxes.

Well, you might say the same thing about Europe's dependency on Russian oil and gas when, once Mr. Putin decided to invade Ukraine, they realized they were the captive of the Russian Federation when it came to their basic energy needs. Well, the same thing is happening in other places, including semiconductors.

Thirty years ago, China manufactured none of the world's chips, but today it commands nearly a quarter of the global market. And just off the

coast of mainland China, you will find a global powerhouse when it comes to chip making: Taiwan. Taiwan manufactures 92 percent of the most advanced semiconductors in the world, and given China's aggressive threats against Taiwan, that is a blinking red light.

But just like the Europeans found that it is going to take a while for them to diversify their energy sources from Russia, it is going to take a while for us to get diversity in sources so that we don't only rely on imported chips from the Far East. For a long time, this has been recognized as a problem and, of course, people said: Well, something needs to be done. But that ``something'' wasn't at the top of everyone's priority list.

But then, of course, the pandemic hit, as I said, and we found ourselves dependent on everything from masks, or personal protective equipment, which was all made in China, and we couldn't get it when we needed it when the pandemic hit. And now we have become more aware of our vulnerabilities when it comes to these supply chains.

My constituents in Texas and, I am sure, those in Michigan and New Jersey and elsewhere were shocked to see empty car lots, for example, because of backorders of semiconductors. Because of the disrupted supply chain, they couldn't even make cars, which are, of course, more and more dependent upon these microelectronics. Suddenly, consumers who have never needed to know what a semiconductor was found themselves impacted by this global shortage.

So, in many ways, this was a wake-up call that we didn't even know we needed, and it is not the last. If you start looking around at other things like rare Earth elements, things like the active ingredients in pharmaceuticals, we are dependent on China to produce those, and that is another vulnerability we need to address.

But if China were to act on its threats to invade Taiwan and block the world's access to these advanced semiconductors, empty car lots would be the least of our worries.

Without chips, we wouldn't be able to maintain the energy grid or communications systems. We can't build rocket interceptors, or, as I said, F-35s for our military. And our national security missions would take a hit, both on the ground and in cyber space. So, clearly, the time had come to make advanced chip manufacturing in America a top priority.

In June of 2020, Senator Warner--the senior Senator from Virginia-- and I introduced the CHIPS for America Act to incentivize chipmakers to build or expand their operations here in America. Given the significance of this effort to our national security, the Senate adopted this bill as an amendment to the National Defense Authorization Act with overwhelming bipartisan support--a vote of 96 to 4. Six months after it was introduced, the CHIPS for America Act became law. And a year and a half later, it was fully funded by the bipartisan CHIPS and Science Act.

So it took a little over 2 years from the time Senator Warner and I introduced the legislation until it was finally authorized. And it is going to take another couple of years before the funding that we provided is granted by the Commerce Department to incentivize that manufacturing here.

But as in so many other areas--permitting snafus, bureaucratic delays--it is going to be a while before we can totally relieve our dependence on imported semiconductor supply chains. This ought to be a wakeup call, as I said, again, to our other dependencies, one that had been nurtured by the People's Republic of China and where they have actively undermined development of diverse alternatives in other parts of the world, from friendly countries and from the United States itself.

Well, 2 years is a long time from a bill being filed until it becomes law. But that is actually not an unusual pace. It takes a while for this body to act. And we are not known for our speed. So the fact that we were able to stand up the CHIPS Program and fully fund it officially shows how critical this investment is and how a bipartisan consensus believed that time was not on our side, and we needed to act without delay.

Well, despite bipartisan support for the CHIPS Program, it has not been immune from criticism. Some have criticized it as industrial policy, even comparing it to the Chinese Communist Party's intervention in the China economy. But there is a big difference between propping up favored industries in order to protect your domestic industries, as China does. There is a big difference between that and safeguarding an essential supply chain that is vital to our economy and our national security.

One of Congress's most fundamental responsibilities is to provide for the common defense. Traditionally, it involves timely Defense bills and appropriations, but we no longer live in a world where those tasks alone can cut it.

Authorizing the manufacture and purchase of new F-35s, the most advanced stealth Joint Strike Fighter in America's Air Force-- authorizing that or appropriating the money for that is meaningless if we don't have the electronics we need in order to manufacture them, including semiconductors. Supporting the development of artificial intelligence or quantum computing or 5G is useless if we can't get access to the technology we need.

So we no longer have the luxury of endless supplies of chips. And we have to adjust accordingly. And the CHIPS Program is just one way that we have done that.

From the beginning of this process, I have had the pleasure of working closely with Commerce Secretary Gina Raimondo to ensure Congress and the administration are on the same page. And by and large, we are. I congratulate Secretary Raimondo for the great work she and her team at the Commerce Department have done. And they have been good partners in the actual passage of the CHIPS and Science Act.

But I am concerned--and I have communicated that to her--about some of the components of the application guidance the Commerce Department released last month. The Department outlined the application process from eligibility to timelines. It provided details about the types of incentives available and the way they could be used. And it laid out extensive information applicants must provide; for example, a detailed financial model for proposed projects and clear execution plans.

So far so good. The Department needs to understand the viability and lasting impact of each of these projects before awarding these financial incentives--again, to bringing that manufacturing back to America's shores. That is how we ensure each project will benefit our national security, which was the main purpose of the legislation.

But Commerce laid out additional requirements that have nothing to do with that goal or congressional intent. One example is the childcare mandate. So who could be against a childcare mandate? Well, my fear is that this is just the beginning of unauthorized additional requirements that the Biden administration is going to impose for people to be able to compete for the grant funding.

The Department of Commerce said it requires applicants who request funding over specific amounts to provide a plan for access to childcare. These requirements were not in the statute. That wasn't even part of our congressional debate.

And as a practical matter, I am pretty confident that these sophisticated companies are going to provide a generous package of incentives to their future workforce, including, probably, childcare.

But even the New York Times, when they saw these extra requirements, described these strings as ``ambitious and unusual.'' If a company wants to offer childcare to its employees, if it needs to do so in order to compete for the kind of workforce that it wants, that is great, and many semiconductor companies already do so.

The market for highly skilled employees is extremely competitive, and companies recognize that they need to offer benefits to attract the best candidates. That is the beauty of the free market.

But if the Commerce Department wants to consider that information when we are reviewing applications, that is fine. But there is a big difference between taking it into consideration and mandating it.

We know that some of the debate here on Capitol Hill about childcare--we have been down this road before--some in this Chamber would like to

outlaw faith-based organizations from providing that childcare or require that if they are going to take the Federal money, that they are going to have to hire a workforce that doesn't believe in the same things they do.

That is how we go from what seems to be a relatively innocuous requirement into big trouble and into the executive branch trying to legislate new requirements that are not part of the underlying legislation.

Recent reporting indicates that companies of all types are preparing to make the play for CHIPS funding. This isn't limited to chips manufacturers. We are talking to every industry under the Sun--so- called ecosystem built around these fabs or manufacturing facilities.

The director of general economics at the Cato Institute explained why companies that don't make chips could be making a play for funding. Well, for one thing, I think it should be obvious that people are attracted to the opportunity of qualifying for these grants for this funding. But the director of general economics at Cato pointed to the Commerce Department's unrelated requirements as a suggestion that the administration isn't prioritizing national security. In other words, this should not be a Trojan horse to pass other policy priorities under the guise of protecting our national security.

And we don't want other, perhaps even more concerning, requirements to be added which were not part of the legislation that Congress passed or part of legislative intent.

Companies that do not manufacture chips now believe they have a shot at funding as long as they meet the other unrelated requirements. I want to be absolutely clear that that cannot be the case. In order for the CHIPS Program to succeed--in order to protect our economy and our national security--this needs to be a merit-based application process, with no additional requirements imposed as a condition to receive these grants that was certainly not part of legislative intent or even the debate here in Congress. It should not be used as a Trojan horse to get other policy priorities actually implemented when Congress had no such intent.

So these decisions to make these grants should not depend on relationships with labor unions or any other unrelated factors. It should be based solely on how each project will strengthen our national security and shore up this vulnerable supply chain.

We can't be in a situation where applicants that provide free childcare are favored over those who will do more to strengthen our national security. Again, that is fine if these companies want to do so. And I dare say many, if not all of them, will anyway. But it is a beginning that is concerning because this is a slippery slope to try to shoehorn other policy priorities into something which will actually distract the Commerce Department and the U.S. Government from doing what needs to be done when it comes to semiconductor manufacturing.

The CHIPS Program received strong bipartisan support and should remain far above the political fray. The ultimate goal is to boost domestic chip manufacturing, and I am glad to say we are beginning to move in the right direction.

Samsung from South Korea, Texas Instruments, and GlobiTech are expanding their footprint in Texas. Taiwanese Semiconductor Manufacturing Company is growing its presence in Arizona; Intel is putting down roots in Ohio; and Micron is expanding in New York. These are just a few of the announcements that have been made so far, and I expect more to come now that the CHIPS Program is up and running.

Texas has already been a leader in the semiconductor industry. And we are cementing that reputation with the addition of new and expanded chip fabs.

Gov. Greg Abbott is pushing to attract even more chip manufacturers to the Lone Star State. He has been working with leaders in the Texas Legislature this session, including Representative Greg Bonnen and Senator Joan Huffman, to help bring new semiconductor businesses to Texas.

The Texas Legislature recently introduced the Texas CHIPS Act, which would support all chip-related activity in the State--from research and development to design and manufacturing.

I appreciate their leadership on this front, and I am eager to see the positive impact of the chips on communities all across our State and, indeed, all across our Nation.

These are just a few of the investments that will support jobs, our economy, and our national security. The CHIPS Program is key to that success, and I hope the administration will avoid attaching controversial and additional requirements that could imperil or impede its success.

I yield the floor.

Mr. President, over the years, I have heard President Biden share a favorite expression of his father's. He said his dad would tell you:

Don't tell me what you value. Show me your budget and I'll

tell you what you value.

Well, there is a lot of wisdom in that statement. A person's budget shows what they truly value, whether that is supporting those who are less fortunate, saving for the future, or achieving a certain type of lifestyle. The same is true for the Federal Government. It is easy for leaders to say they value a strong military or fiscal responsibility, but a budget shows whether they really mean it.

Last week, of course, President Biden released his budget for the next fiscal year, which gave us an unvarnished view of what he truly values. In countless ways, it stands in stark contrast to what he has told the American people.

The President spoke about the need to rein in out-of-control spending, but he proposed more than $2 trillion in new spending.

Given the growing threats from China and Russia, he says he cares about a strong national defense, but he proposed a mere 3.2-percent increase in defense spending--far below the level of inflation. So it actually is a cut.

He has spoken about the importance of growing our economy, but he proposed additional job-killing tax hikes on Main Street businesses and other job creators.

He says he is concerned about energy costs but proposed $37 billion in new energy taxes--taxes that will be paid ultimately by the consumer in increased costs.

Despite saying he cares about the border, President Biden made it absolutely clear he isn't serious about addressing the crisis at our southern border. For 2 years, law enforcement and border communities have struggled to keep up with the overwhelming number of migrants who are crossing every day. During President Biden's first 2 years in office, Customs and Border Protection encountered 4.7 million--4.7 million--migrants at the southern border. That is astonishing, a breathtaking figure.

Well, there is a clear need, an obvious need to strengthen our border security, and the President's budget request includes $535 million for border security technology at and between the ports of entry. At ports, this could include advanced equipment to efficiently scan cargo and passenger vehicles.

Mexico is our second largest trading partner, and that binational trade is important to both of our economies. But this same technology could be key to stopping illicit drugs, weapons, and currency from coming across the border.

Between the ports of entry, this funding could go toward sensors, cameras, and other surveillance tools that allow Border Patrol agents to monitor unpatrolled portions of the border and to spring into action when necessary.

Given the ongoing migration crisis and fentanyl epidemic which is killing 70,000 Americans every year, there could not be a more important time to invest in border security. While the President's request for $535 million may sound like a lot of money--and it is a lot of money--when you compare it to other line items in his budget, it starts to look a whole lot smaller. For example, the White House wants to spend $1 billion trying to address the ``root causes'' of migration in Central America and Haiti. That is nearly double the amount he wants to spend on border security technology.

Over the last few years, we have seen failed attempts to alleviate what are called the push factors--violence and poverty--that cause people to leave their home countries and come to the United States. But don't forget that these migrants are not just coming from Central America and Haiti; they are literally coming from all over the world. Best case scenario, it would take years, if ever, before these efforts would translate to even 1 inch of progress at the border.

I have said before what I learned at the Yuma Border Patrol Sector in southwestern Arizona when the Border Patrol chief said that in this sector alone, a sleepy little agricultural community, we have people coming across the border from 176 countries, speaking 200 languages. This is a global phenomenon not just isolated to Central America and Haiti.

Well, worst case scenario, the administration flushes $1 billion down the drain while the border remains in a state of crisis.

The White House wants to spend even more money on the Department of Homeland Security's climate resilience program--climate resilience. A whopping $4 billion is what they want for that. That is more than seven times higher than what the President has proposed for border security technology. Now, the mission of the Department of Homeland Security isn't to fight climate change; it is to safeguard the American people. It cannot achieve that mission with the meager budget proposed by President Biden and the lack of priorities.

You may think that climate resilience is an important matter, but it certainly doesn't rise to the level of the crisis we are experiencing today on the border, with an overwhelming number of migrants and illegal drugs that killed 108,000 Americans last year alone.

Of course, the funding level requested for technology is only part of the problem. The question isn't just how much do you want to spend but what do you need to spend it on?

As I mentioned, this is one pot of funding that would support two purposes: security at the border and security between the ports of entry. Both of those functions are essential to our security and our economy, but the White House didn't delineate how it would split that funding. Would it be divided 50-50? Would it be distributed based on need? How would the administration ensure that it was closing the highest priority security gaps first?

We have a responsibility to taxpayers to ensure that every dollar is maximized and serves the greatest purpose possible. A few years ago, Senator Sinema, the Senator from Arizona, and I introduced something called the Southwest Border Security Technology Improvement Act to help understand the best way to do that.

It required the administration to assess technology needs at the border and issue a report within a year. Our bill was signed into law at the end of 2020, and the deadline for that final report was December 27, 2021. Well, 15 months has passed, and we still have no report. I have repeatedly asked for updates from the administration but received zero response.

In short, the administration has failed to provide an assessment that is necessary for Congress to determine what the technology gaps are at the border and what the priority should be. Instead, they just ask Congress for a $535 million blank check. They have offered zero assurance that they plan to use those funds to increase operational control over the border. They haven't even assured us they know what those needs are. Once again, the administration isn't trying to solve the problem--just to create an illusion of effort.

But technology funding isn't the only problem with the President's budget; it also falls short when it comes to personnel.

I have been to the southern border more times than I can count--but I do count 10 times--since President Biden took office, and I have spoken with every law enforcement officer and local elected official, nonprofit, and small business owner I could find. When I ask them what is needed the most to combat this crisis, there is a recurring answer: We need more boots on the ground. We desperately need more Border Patrol agents on the frontline.

The administration wants to hire an additional 350 Border Patrol agents, which would be a great start, but the White House isn't taking any action to address underlying barriers to hiring those agents.

For years, the Agency struggled to meet its staffing goals, and one of the biggest obstacles is the polygraph requirement. Roughly half of new applicants fail the polygraph, which one officer described as ``high-tech voodoo.'' Applicants have shared stories of aggressive and condescending examiners. They talk about being stereotyped based on their background and traveling to other States in hopes of having a different experience.

Still, failing a polygraph or receiving an ``inconclusive'' result disqualifies a potential agent. So it wouldn't matter if the White House called for 10,000 new Border Patrol agents in its budget; the Agency would not be able to fill those spots until the administration fixes the broken application process, and we have seen no indication of their plans to do so.

The White House is also calling for 460 processing assistants at Customs and Border Protection and Immigration and Customs Enforcement. These would be the men and women who would help process the migrants. Based on my conversations with folks at the border, I can tell you these additions are desperately needed, but that is only one piece of the solution.

A huge part of the solution lies in deterrence. If people with frivolous asylum claims see they will quickly be removed from the United States, they aren't likely to attempt the journey to our border in the first place. That is why we just can't staff up on processing coordinators; we need more personnel to actually enforce the law and deliver consequences to those who break it.

The Biden administration has refused to do so time and time again, and the Biden budget only makes insignificant changes to staffing for Immigration and Customs Enforcement and Removal Operations, as well as Fugitive Operations team members. These are the dedicated men and women who do the difficult but important job of removing people who have no legal right to enter the country. But right now, the system is so overwhelmed with migrants who will not be ultimately granted asylum. So what happens when their claim is denied? It is an important question to ask because I can assure you, ICE does not have the sufficient manpower to enforce the law given the scale of this crisis.

In short, the White House has proposed adding more personnel to process migrants and then release them, but it doesn't want to hire more people who will actually remove people who break our laws. Based on his own assessment strategy, President Biden does not value border security because his budget certainly does not reflect it. His budget is not a serious proposal to gain operational control of the border. It is more talk with no action.

Our country is experiencing an absolutely unprecedented migration crisis. The southern border has become an open highway instead of a secured checkpoint. The administration is essentially waving everyone through--from migrants with frivolous asylum claims to the drug runners who are carrying fentanyl that kills our fellow Americans. Based on President Biden's budget, he appears content for it to stay that way.

I yield the floor.

Mr. President, the overdose epidemic is ravaging communities all across this country and leaving a trail of death and destruction. The latest data shows we lost nearly 107,000 Americans last year alone. The majority of those deaths were attributed to fentanyl, a synthetic opioid made from precursors shipped from China, mainly, to Mexico, where they are then manufactured. Fentanyl alone is killing 70,000 Americans a year.

On average, we are talking about more than 190 people dying each day due to fentanyl. That is more people than a commercial 737 airliner can hold. So imagine the public outrage if, day after day, commercial airliners fell out of the sky, killing everyone aboard. Well, you can imagine what the reaction would be. Social media would erupt. People would protest. Our constituents wouldn't just ask us to intervene; they would demand it.

Unfortunately--and this is a mystery to me--the fentanyl epidemic and the drug overdose deaths we have seen in the last year don't get the same sort of response. It is as though our threshold for outrage now is so high that even the death of 107,000 Americans would not achieve that threshold.

We know this epidemic does not discriminate. It kills people of all ages and backgrounds from major cities and small towns all across America. But one of the most alarming trends we see is the appalling trend of fentanyl-related deaths among teenagers. These teens frequently think they are buying something else, such as Percocet or OxyContin or Xanax, and unknowingly they end up with a counterfeit pill contaminated with a deadly dose of fentanyl.

This is the case for students in Hays County, which is just southwest of Austin, where I live. Since last summer, the Hays Consolidated Independent School District has lost five students to fentanyl poisoning.

In October, I had the chance to meet with the parents of one of those students, Shannon McConville, who lost her 17-year-old son Kevin to fentanyl poisoning. She told me that Kevin was full of promise, a talented person, an artist. After graduating, he wanted to join the Navy and become an underwater welder. But, sadly, Kevin was never able to realize his dream. He died just a few weeks before the beginning of his senior year.

A couple of weeks ago, I traveled to Hays County to speak with more families who have lost their children to fentanyl poisoning, as well as law enforcement personnel, school officials, and medical professionals, trying to figure out what do we need to do.

I saw Shannon and her husband Darren, as well as the parents of another young victim, 15-year-old Noah Rodriguez. Noah's parents, Brandon and Janel, told me that Noah was a genuine, kind young man and something of a jokester. He was an athlete, a devoted friend, and a big brother to his three siblings, the youngest of whom was only 2 weeks old when Noah died.

Despite their profound loss, these parents and countless others are committed to raising awareness. You can imagine the courage it takes to overcome your grief and pain to try to share your story with others so that others might live.

I had the opportunity to learn about the Fighting Fentanyl public awareness campaign in Hays County, as well as the work being done by school leaders and law enforcement. We all acknowledged that there is no single action that will end this epidemic. We can't just focus on prevention or treatment or drug diversion; a successful strategy will involve all three of those. We need buy-in from leaders at every level of government, as well as healthcare providers, schools, nonprofits, law enforcement, and, of course, the general public, just like the approach we are seeing in Hays County. This has to be an all-in effort.

But during our discussion, there was broad agreement that the starting point should be the source of these drugs, which is our southern border. All four parents stressed the importance of securing the border and preventing fentanyl from ever reaching our communities.

Shannon McConville said that when it comes to the border, the Biden administration is failing. I agree.

Last week, five of my Republican colleagues joined me for a series of tours and meetings in the Rio Grande Valley, where they got to see the administration's security failures firsthand. By my calculation, that is about the 10th delegation that either I or Senator Cruz or both of us have hosted of colleagues coming to the border in Texas.

Border Patrol agents told us last weekend about the tactics cartels use to traffic fentanyl and other dangerous drugs into the country. First and foremost, they distract and overwhelm agents by coordinating a surge of migrants, which provides a golden opportunity to sneak across the border undetected--overwhelm the Border Patrol with a swarm of migrants and distract them while the drugs make their way north.

This isn't news, of course, to the Biden administration. It is a well-known maneuver used by the cartels, acknowledged by the Attorney General of the United States last week when he came before the Senate Judiciary Committee. But for some reason, the administration seems determined to just simply look the other way.

President Biden's apathetic approach to the southern border must change in order for us to have a chance at addressing this public health crisis. Just think about a burst pipe in your home. If water is pouring from the ceiling, what do you do first? Well, you aren't going to go grab buckets and towels to start cleaning the water while it is still raining down; you are going to turn the main water supply off and stop the leak at its source. That is what we need to do here: Cut off the supply. Until that happens, we are going to be fighting a losing battle, and more people will die.

It is well known that the southern border is a major gateway for illegal drugs. In the last 12 months, Customs and Border Protection have seized 23,000 pounds of fentanyl at the southern border, enough to wipe out the entire U.S. population many times over.

That is a daunting statistic, but we know this number isn't the full story. It only includes the drugs that our law enforcement officials were able to stop. We know from all the deaths and wide availability of fentanyl and other illegal drugs in America that much more than that makes its way into the interior of our country. So there is no exact way to know how much fentanyl has slipped through the cracks, but the fact that we are losing 70,000 Americans a year to fentanyl is proof that we aren't batting a perfect game--far from it.

Let's not forget the fact that law enforcement at every level is also encountering and attempting to stop the fentanyl proliferation. Last month, the Collin County Sheriff's Office and North Texas Sheriff's Criminal Interdiction Unit arrested a Dallas man with about 6,000 fentanyl pills in his vehicle during a traffic stop. Last year, the Drug Enforcement Administration seized more than 379 million lethal doses of fentanyl--enough to kill every American.

Drug trafficking is obviously a lucrative business, and cartels take advantage of every security gap in order to make money. There is no question that the ongoing border crisis has provided the perfect opportunity for these cartels, who care nothing about people. All they care about is the money.

If Border Patrol agents are changing diapers and passing out meals, as they have had to do to manage the volume of migrants coming across the border, they can't control the frontlines and stop cartels from trafficking these dangerous drugs into the interior.

I want to be clear. I am not suggesting that every migrant who comes across is responsible for the drugs coming across the border--far from it. But the mass movement of people orchestrated by these transnational criminal organizations, even including people with legitimate asylum claims, opens the opportunity--gateways, if you will--for truly dangerous criminals and substances to come across the border. Unless something changes, it is going to get worse. In order to save lives, we have got to secure the border and stop fentanyl from reaching our communities. That should be the first step.

As a matter of fact, the President, in his State of the Union last month, said that he wanted Members of Congress to pass his plan to provide the officers and equipment needed to secure the border. Now, that surprised me because I wasn't aware that the President had a plan, but there is no question that border security legislation is needed and those resources are necessary.

We need to strengthen this combination of technology, boots on the ground, and infrastructure that Border Patrol tells me is the key to successfully securing the border, and that is the only way to stop dangerous drugs and criminals who mingle in with economic migrants and other asylum seekers to make their way across the border into the interior of the United States.

There is no doubt we also need to reform the asylum process to ensure that personnel, technology, and infrastructure can properly focus on interdicting narcotics and other contraband.

Anyone who questions the need for these measures should talk with the parents who have had to bury their children; talk with the brothers and sisters who have lost a sibling; talk with the teenagers who are grieving at the unexpected losses of healthy and vibrant friends. We owe it to them and to the countless people who are terrified by this looming threat to stop these drugs at the source.

Obviously, what we are doing now is not sufficient. It is not working. I heard, again, Attorney General Garland say: Well, we are doing everything we can. And that is not true. He may think he is doing everything he can, but, obviously, it isn't working.

We can't accept failure. We have got to come up with a formula to address this as we did yesterday during an open hearing in the Intelligence Committee where I asked the leaders of our national security Agencies: What else can you offer? what other resources? What other authorities do you need in order to stop this dying of people who are taking fentanyl and other illegal drugs coming across the border?

But it starts with securing the border, and we will be fighting a continuing losing battle until that is done.

I yield the floor.

Nomination of James Edward Simmons, Jr.

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

Mr. President, communities across the country have paid the price of Democrats' soft-on-crime policies. The Democratic Party has backed woke prosecutors who refuse to enforce broad swaths of the Criminal Code. It has endorsed ``defund the police'' policies and candidates, and it has consistently shown more sympathy for the criminals who commit crimes than for the victims who were hurt by them.

It is no surprise that these decisions carry very dangerous consequences, which are being felt across America. Businesses are fleeing Portland, OR, due to surging crime. The mayor of Chicago was just defeated in her primary because she failed to address rampant crime in that city.

One city that is not immune to these consequences is our Nation's Capital, Washington, DC. So far this year, the District of Columbia has seen more than three dozen homicides--a nearly 40 percent increase compared to last year. Forty percent. Sex crimes have more than doubled compared to last year, and there have been more than 1,200 motor vehicle thefts, including carjackings, which is more than double the number at this point last year. In total, the Nation's Capital, where we are located, reported a 25-percent increase in crime compared to last year.

With crime on the rise, you would expect that the elected leaders of the DC City Council would take steps to improve public safety, but that is not what they did. In fact, council members took the exact opposite approach. Forget deterring criminal conduct; the DC City Council responded to this crime wave by reducing penalties for violent crimes. It actually passed legislation that decreases punishment for many of the same crimes that have been on the rise over the last year--lower penalties for carjackings, home invasions, and robberies and lower penalties for convicted felons who illegally carry firearms and for felons who use guns to commit other crimes. There are no mandatory minimum sentences for any crime other than first-degree murder.

It is a slap in the face of every law-abiding resident and visitor to this city; every person who worries about getting carjacked on their way home from work, like the people who work for us here in the Nation's Capital; or being robbed on the Metro, like the visitors from our States who come to the Nation's Capital who don't expect to be assaulted and robbed; or individuals who have their residence targeted by a serial burglar.

This is not the kind of legislation that is meant to keep people safe; it is just the latest iteration of failed soft-on-crime policies. It is no surprise that DC's Criminal Code rewrite was met with severe backlash.

Even the Washington Post published an editorial entitled ``DC's crime bill could make the city more dangerous.'' Well, I give them credit for stating the obvious.

The U.S. attorney for the District of Columbia warned that this measure prevents courts from imposing penalties that appropriately reflect the seriousness of the offense and the defendant's criminal history.

One local elected official used especially harsh words to describe a portion of the bill that would allow someone convicted of sexual assault to petition for early release after 20 years. She said:

I don't think the DC Council should be helping rapists get

out of prison early. That's crazy.

Crazy indeed--so crazy, in fact, that the city's liberal Mayor, Muriel Bowser, even vetoed this measure when it reached her desk, saying it ``does not make us safer.''

I don't find myself agreeing with the Washington Post editorial board or the Mayor of the District of Columbia often, but they are both right here.

DC Council members should have viewed her veto and the public outrage as a sign that they should go back to the drawing board, but unfortunately they doubled down. DC City Council overrode the Mayor's veto. They ignored the deep concerns of citizens of this city and the dire warnings from public safety advocates and plowed ahead.

Fortunately, that is not the end of the road for this dangerous and deeply misguided bill. The Constitution of the United States gives Congress exclusive legislative jurisdiction over the District of Columbia. It is a Federal district. We must take action to prevent

this criminal-friendly measure from going into effect.

As we have seen, this effort has broad bipartisan support, starting at the White House. Last month, the House of Representatives passed a resolution of disapproval by a vote of 250 to 173, with more than 30 Democrats crossing the aisle to support it. Thanks to the Senator from Tennessee, Senator Hagerty's leadership, that resolution will receive a vote on the Senate floor this week. I expect it will pass with strong bipartisan support, as it should, and put a final nail in the coffin of this dangerous and deeply misguided legislation.

Soft-on-crime policies have had a devastating impact on cities across America, and we can't let our Nation's very Capital become a consequence-free playground for lawbreakers. So I appreciate Senator Hagerty's leadership on this resolution and his work to ensure that it receives a vote in the Democrat-led Senate.

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

Madam President, last Thursday and Friday, I hosted several of our Senate colleagues for a visit to Texas's southern border. As you can see, Senators Thune, Wicker, Fischer, Britt, and Ricketts joined me for a series of tours and meetings in the Rio Grande Valley. This followed a bipartisan visit that we made to El Paso and Yuma just a few weeks ago.

So far, I have been happy to host, along with Senator Cruz, about 10 separate delegations to the border. Each of those Senators saw a beautiful and vibrant region overwhelmed by the burden it has been handed by the Federal Government.

Since President Biden took office, border communities and our entire State, for that matter, has been forced to carry the massive weight of a humanitarian and security crisis. Border communities are left with no choice but to provide food, clothing and shelter, medical care, and transportation for tens of thousands of migrants each week. And they are forced to use their local tax dollars toward costs that really should be borne by the Federal Government. And, of course, they are left to wonder how this crisis is impacting the safety of their communities.

During our conversations last week, law enforcement officers shared their concerns about the security breakdowns along the border. Given the overwhelming number of people entering our country every day, Border Patrol has to respond and reposition with its limited personnel. As a result, highly trained law enforcement officers are shifted from the frontlines to pushing paper. Agents who should be arresting cartel members who attempt to traffic drugs in our country are now spending their days on administrative duties.

And 108,000 Americans died just last year alone from drugs coming across the border. Of course, this isn't a coincidence; this is a plan. The cartels are smart. They are shrewd. They are scheming, and they are in pursuit of the almighty dollar. They orchestrate migration surges in specific areas to flood the zone and overwhelm law enforcement so they can take advantage of unpatrolled areas nearby.

When we arrived Thursday night, we saw firsthand the sheer volume and diversity of migrants whom agents were apprehending, from a 6-month-old baby to single adult males. And previously, we had seen sections of the border, like Yuma, AZ, where migrants from more than 150 countries show up and claim asylum.

Of course, this is part of the overwhelming strategy of the cartels. Their strategy is to distract and overwhelm. While professional law enforcement agents are busy processing and transporting migrants, cartels can smuggle heroin, fentanyl, and Heaven knows what else across the border. It is all part of a game plan by the cartels, and the Biden administration is getting played.

But this isn't news to the people who live and work along the border. They have seen this happening for the last 2 years, but without the support of President Biden, they are powerless to stop it on their own.

On Friday, we spoke with local, State, and Federal law enforcement about the far-reaching security impact of this broken border. The fentanyl that comes across the border doesn't stay in border communities. It moves to cities and towns across the country, mainly distributed by criminal street gangs that then battle each other for market share, for territory, and, of course, engage in a whole host of other crimes, too, but selling drugs is how they pay for much of it.

These local and State and Federal officials weren't just concerned about this poison slipping across the border but dangerous criminals who come across too. Last year, Customs and Border Protection arrested more than 750 criminal gang members and 98 people who were on the terrorist watch list. We all remember what happened not that long ago-- 20 years ago now, I guess--on 9/11, when fewer terrorists than that hit the World Trade Center and the Pentagon, killing 3,000 Americans. But the Biden administration seems to be completely oblivious to the potential threat of people on the terrorist watch list making their way into the United States undetected. You can't help but wonder how many people are able to sneak into our country undetected while law enforcement is distracted caring for migrants--hundreds of thousands of migrants or what Border Patrol calls ``got-aways,'' people who are running away from law enforcement, and it doesn't take any imagination to wonder why.

The current state of affairs is unsustainable, but President Biden continues to promote the false narrative that only Congress can fix this

border crisis. During his State of the Union last month, President Biden even said:

America's border problems won't be fixed until Congress

acts.

But that myth is easy to debunk. Just compare what we are seeing now to what we saw during the previous administration.

During President Biden's first 2 years in office, Customs and Border Protection encountered nearly 4.7 million migrants at the southern border, an absolutely unprecedented and astonishing figure. But during the first 2 years of the Trump administration, the Agency reported fewer than 950,000 encounters. From one administration to the next, we saw from 950 to 4.7 million. Congress did not pass any sweeping immigration laws in the interim. There hasn't been any major legislation that might have caused this dramatic increase or restricted the administration's ability to respond to it.

Despite the fact that President Biden was dealt the exact same hand when it comes to his authorities at the border, we have experienced nearly 4\1/2\ times as many border crossings under his Presidency--4\1/ 2\ times.

So this crisis wasn't created by Congress, and Congress is not the problem when it comes to solutions. It is the Biden border crisis, and only he can fix it.

We don't need to completely rewrite our immigration laws in order to fix the humanitarian and security crisis at the border. President Biden needs to do what other administrations have done: enforce the laws already on the books. The administration needs to get serious about things like expedited removals and ensure that those with invalid asylum claims are quickly removed from the United States. The administration needs to increase detention space so frontline personnel have the capacity to actually carry out their job. They need to stop paroling or essentially waving people into the United States to wait for an appointment with Immigration and Customs Enforcement that is years away because of the backlog.

Time and time again, the Border Patrol tells me that what is missing now that existed previously were consequences--consequences with coming to the United States illegally or by exploiting our asylum system. There were consequences, and that offered a deterrent effect on millions of people who are now coming to the border.

By taking a few simple actions, the Biden administration could send a clear message to anyone considering crossing our border: Unless you have a legitimate reason to be here, you will not be able to stay. That is the very essence of consequences. Deterrence is a key component of a safe and secure border, and until the administration starts deterring would-be migrants with frivolous asylum claims from crossing the border, we will remain in a constant state of crisis.

To be clear, I am not suggesting Congress should just sit on the sidelines. We have an important role to play too. For one thing, there is obviously a need to improve border security. We need to strengthen the combination of technology, infrastructure, and boots on the ground that is the recipe for closing the security gaps that are being exploited every day.

Last week, law enforcement told us, in no uncertain terms, that they need additional resources, and providing those resources should be a top priority. But Congress also needs to address the glaring problems with our asylum system that are being exploited massively.

In the Yuma sector, where I traveled with the bipartisan delegation just weeks ago, the Border Patrol Sector Chief told us that 17 people from 176 countries, speaking 200 languages, were coming through the Yuma Border Patrol Sector and claiming asylum because they knew they would be released to the interior of the United States.

That is a broken asylum system, especially when, once people ultimately do appear in front of an immigration judge, no more than 15 percent to 20 percent of those will have those asylum claims validated, which means 75 percent to 80 percent or so are staying in the country awaiting a future asylum hearing without any legitimate claim to asylum.

One of the places we visited was a Border Patrol processing center. You can see that here. We saw just how overwhelmed the Border Patrol is by the number of people they have to process. We discussed the growing backlog of cases and the fact that it will be years, if ever, that these cases will ultimately appear in front of an immigration judge. That is unfair to the individuals and families with legitimate asylum claims who have to live in a constant state of uncertainty for years because this system is simply so underwater and dysfunctional. It is also unfair to those who do not qualify for asylum and whose claims will ultimately be rejected. They will end up spending years living and working in the United States only to be told at some point in the future that they have to leave.

But the dirty secret--and it is not a secret--is that many people will simply not show up for that future court date, knowing that, thanks to the Biden administration's open borders and nonenforcement policy, they will likely be able to stay in the United States, even though they don't appear in front of an immigration judge at some point in the future.

There are a lot of problems that Congress can and should solve, but the current border crisis does not hinge on all those reforms.

I appreciate my colleagues coming to Texas to visit our southern border, the ones who did last week and the many others who joined recently on a bipartisan basis. I think it is important for every Senator to see what is happening at the southern border. But the constant refrain I hear is because of the drugs being imported into the United States that are being distributed virtually throughout the country--what I keep hearing people say is every State is now effectively a border State, and every city, including Washington, DC, New York, and Chicago, where many of these migrants have been bused because that is where they requested to await their future hearing--all those are border cities, in effect, as well. The problem does not stay at the border. The problem is all across the country, thanks to the message that the Biden administration is sending that there is no reason not to come. In fact, if you do come, you are likely to be successful in staying.

It is simply unfair to the professionals who work on the border who are overwhelmed by the burden they have been asked to carry and frustrated beyond belief by the lack of support that they receive from this administration. Essentially, what the Border Patrol has been told, in so many words, is: You hired on to do a job, an important law enforcement job, but we are going to shackle you and prevent you from actually doing the job that you entered the Border Patrol to do because we are not going to embrace the right policies, and we are not going to provide enough resources for you to actually do your job and succeed in doing your job.

Communities across the U.S.-Mexico border are dealing with the fallout from the administration's policy failures and, as I said a moment ago, the Biden administration has tools at its disposal to address this crisis without any action from Congress, and it is time to put those to use.

I yield the floor.

I suggest the absence of a quorum.

Mr. President, during my time in the Senate and even prior, when I had the honor of serving as Texas attorney general, I spent a lot of time in our border communities working with the mayors, county judges, private land owners, nongovernmental organizations, and law enforcement at every level. The majority of these men and women have lived along the Texas-Mexico border for their entire lives. They have witnessed the impact of policies from Washington from different administrations. They have seen spikes and dips in migration. They have reaped the benefits of legitimate trade and commerce, and they have dealt with the consequences of security failures. In short, they have seen a lot. But virtually everyone agrees that they have never seen anything like President Biden's present border crisis.

Over the first 2 years of the Biden administration, we have broken one record after another when it comes to migration. Here are some shocking statistics. U.S. Customs and Border Protection logged nearly 2.4 million border

crossings during a single year. During 1 month alone, the Agency encountered more than a quarter of a million migrants.

The scope and scale of this crisis is absolutely unprecedented, and it is having a major impact on our border security missions. When highly trained and professional Border Patrol agents are spending their time passing out meals and doing administrative tasks, they aren't able to do what they train for, what they want to do, which is to stop drugs like fentanyl, which killed more than 70,000 Americans last year alone.

I was able to meet with some parents who lost their teenage children to fentanyl poisoning last week in Hays County school district right outside of Austin, TX. It was among the most emotional events I have ever attended, because these parents had happy, healthy teenage children going to high school, who took something they thought was a relatively innocuous pill, only to find out it was contaminated with a minute amount of fentanyl, and it took their lives. These parents want us to stop the flow of these drugs across the southwestern border.

When the Border Patrol is not on the frontlines, they are not able to stop the transnational criminals, the cartel members, or other people on the terrorist watch list from sneaking into the United States.

A few weeks ago, I traveled with a bipartisan delegation of Senators to El Paso and then to Yuma--Yuma, AZ, a southwestern part of Arizona-- a sleepy, little agricultural community. The Border Patrol Sector Chief told us that they encountered people speaking as many as 200 languages from 176 different countries at that little, sleepy border community in southwestern Arizona.

As it turns out, there is a major airport in Mexicali, in northern Mexico, just across from Yuma, and people were literally flying there from around the world and turning up at the Border Patrol sector and claiming asylum, people from 176 different countries. These are people who are exploiting the vulnerabilities in our asylum system--something we can and we should fix, but so far, there has been no cooperation in order to fix our broken asylum system.

Over the years, I have had the pleasure of taking a number of colleagues to the Texas southern border to see these dynamics up close and learn from the experts on the ground.

The distinguished Presiding Officer comes from a border State. I must say, my impression is that for many people who don't live in a border State or have the experience we have as border State Senators, most of what they think they know about the border they have learned in the movies or by reading novels; in other words, it is not reality. That is why it is so important to go to the border.

As I mentioned, in January, a bipartisan group of seven of our colleagues joined me in El Paso and then Yuma. But in El Paso, a place where President Biden finally visited the day before we got there, the circumstances were so severe that migrants were sleeping on city sidewalks in freezing temperatures because shelters were at capacity. They have been overwhelmed like everything else on the border. My colleagues were able to see for themselves the impact of this crisis on law enforcement and on the nonprofit organizations like Catholic Charities and others, which were trying to help these migrants in very difficult circumstances.

It was a busy and productive trip. But I am eager to return this evening to the Texas southern border with another group of colleagues. Senator Thune from South Dakota, Senator Wicker from Mississippi, Senators Fisher and Ricketts from Nebraska, and Senator Britt from Alabama will join me for a series of tours and meetings in the Rio Grande Valley starting this evening. We will receive a tour of the border from some of the dedicated law enforcement officials who protect it. We will get an up-close look at one of the Border Patrol's processing centers and learn more about the challenges they are facing due to the sheer volume of migrants crossing the border every day.

One reason for this increased volume is not because of increased poverty or violence in communities in Mexico or Central America; it is because of what the Border Patrol calls the pool factors--that is, the impression that you can come to America's doorstep, and you can make your way into the United States and live the rest of your life because there are no consequences to coming to the United States outside of a legal, orderly, humane process. That is why we are seeing this unprecedented border crisis as a result of those policies and that perception, which is reality.

We will talk to local law enforcement officials as well--the sheriffs--and the private land owners on how this flood of humanity is impacting their communities. We will receive briefings from Federal, State, and local law enforcement about efforts to secure the border.

We had Attorney General Garland testify in front of the Judiciary Committee yesterday, and we asked him about the 108,000 Americans who died as a result of overdoses from drugs that come across the southwestern border. He said: Well, we are doing everything we can. Then eventually he said: Well, we need more money. Then he said: Well, this isn't really my job. He said that is the job of the Department of Homeland Security. In other words, he was passing the buck. Meanwhile, the flood of humanity continues, and the flood of deadly drugs continues as well.

It is important that as many Senators as possible see and understand the dynamics of what has happened. If we are going to have a shot at fixing this mess, which can only happen on a bipartisan basis, then everyone needs to know what we are up against.

I appreciate my colleagues--these colleagues, as well as other colleagues--who have taken the time to visit the border and learn from the people who know it best. They are the true experts. I am grateful for everything they do to promote the security and prosperity of our border communities.

I am especially thankful that they take the time to share their perspective with our other Senate colleagues so we can work together to, hopefully, finally address this crisis.

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

Madam President, last week, Vladimir Putin's war on Ukraine hit the 1-year mark--1 year of death and destruction across Ukraine, 1 year of lives and gaslighting from the Russian Government and its paid-off cronies, 1 year of atrocious war crimes committed against innocent people. It has been an unimaginable year of hardship for the Ukrainian people, and it has ushered in a period of global unity not seen in a generation.

One year ago, democracies around the world united in support of the Ukrainian people. The United States and our allies condemned President Putin's unwarranted invasion and took decisive action to help the Ukrainians shape the outcome of this war: sanctions against Russia, military aid for Ukraine, humanitarian assistance for the innocent people who are bearing the true cost of Russia's brutality. It has been a difficult year fueled by both victories and setbacks, but I remain confident and inspired by the courage and the capabilities of the Ukrainian people.

At the start of this war, no one expected Ukraine to keep up the fight as long as it has lasted. They were outmanned, outgunned; and it seemed like a matter of when Ukraine would be defeated, not if.

Over the last 12 months, though, we have witnessed heroic strength and fortitude by the Ukrainian forces and civilians. We have seen a series of setbacks by the Russian Army which was once thought to be among the most capable in the world.

As we marked the 1-year anniversary of this war, the big question in everyone's mind is, What comes next? GEN David Petraeus once said the most important question to ask in any conflict is: How does this end? And in this case, we don't have a clear answer. There is no resolution on the horizon, which has caused many people to doubt America's involvement.

Over the last year, our country has made serious investments in a Ukrainian victory in the form of weapons, equipment, training, and humanitarian aid. These contributions have been integral to Ukraine's success so far, but they have not come without cost. There is the financial cost, which is always a big concern--particularly with a $30- trillion debt--as well as the prospect of a recession as a result of the Federal Reserve's tightening interest rates in order to stave off the impact of inflation.

There is also the impact on our own military readiness. Our weapons stockpiles have dwindled, and the timeline for replenishment is far too lengthy.

I have heard from my constituents back home in Texas who are deeply concerned about what these costs will mean here at home, and I understand exactly where they are coming from.

This is a tough time for American families due to the ravages of inflation and the uncertainty about their economic future. Our own interests must always come first.

The point that keeps getting lost in this war is that a Ukrainian victory is in our national interest. It is important to our security here at home. America's assistance is not a handout. It is not a charity project. And as much as we want to see Ukraine prevail in this war, our financial support is not entirely altruistic.

The United States isn't just investing in Ukrainian victory, we are also putting our resources toward the defeat of Russian aggression. If history has taught us anything, it has taught us that power-hungry dictators do not accept small gains and call it a day. They just keep on pushing. You don't have to go back very far in our history books to find a good example.

In 2005, President Vladimir Putin said that the collapse of the Soviet Empire ``was the greatest geopolitical catastrophe of the century.'' Clearly, he is doing everything he can to try to reconstitute the former Soviet Union.

President Putin has used his time in power to rebuild Russia's military and try to redraw the map of Europe. In 2008, Russia invaded the Nation of Georgia. In 2014, it invaded Ukraine for the first time since the end of the Cold War, taking the Crimea region. Of course, true to form, Putin's appetite for conquest is not satisfied. If anything, it made him more hungry for power. And the message that we sent by doing nothing in 2005 and 2014 was he could take all he wanted and there would be no consequence. This time, we can't make the same mistake. Putin must understand that Russian aggression will not be tolerated.

The outcome of this war will determine how Putin's quest proceeds in the future. Will he continue to intimidate neighbors in Europe and invade sovereign nations, or will he crawl back to Moscow, tailed tucked between his legs?

The answer to those questions are very important. Despite the fact that American troops are not engaged in this war, that could change in an instant.

If the next chapter of Putin's war includes the invasion of a NATO partner, the United States and our allies will no longer be on the sidelines; we will be part of the starting lineup. Collective defense is at the heart of NATO's founding. Article 5 of that founding treaty makes clear that an attack against one member nation is an attack against all. Suffice it to say, I hope and pray we will never reach the point where the collective defense clause is invoked.

The most effective way to keep American troops out of the line of fire is to help the Ukrainians stop Putin now before his conquest moves even further west.

As though the stakes weren't high enough already, we know it is not just the scope of Putin's power that is at stake here. The rest of the world is watching as well to see how the United States and our NATO allies respond to this power-hungry dictator. If we fail to support the Ukrainians in this pivotal moment, other authoritarian governments will take note. Today, the problem is Russia. Tomorrow, the problem could be the People's Republic of China.

President Xi Jinping has made no secret of his desire to capture Taiwan. He has called it ``unification,'' and he has even offered details about what sort of timeline we might expect. Of course, we found, as with Mr. Putin, when one person is making that decision, that person can make a decision to go at any time. But President Xi says he wants to be ready to unify the People's Republic of China with Taiwan by 2027, just 4 years from now.

There is no question that President Xi is paying close attention to the world's response to Russian aggression. If the United States and its allies respond with passivity, the Chinese Communist Party will expect to be met with the same level of weakness. As a matter of fact, I believe that President Putin was shocked to see the Ukrainians demonstrate their will to resist Russian aggression and that the other democracies in the world have come to its aid, particularly after the embarrassing precipitous withdrawal from Afghanistan by the Biden administration without even notifying our NATO allies. Of course, we know what happened--the leadership of the Afghan Government was spirited off in an airplane to another country, and the Taliban walked in without a shot being fired. I think after Mr. Putin saw that in Afghanistan, he thought: Well, maybe I could do the same thing in Ukraine.

Well, a passive response to this sort of aggression would risk further instability and hurt the cause of peace, to say the least. And it would inevitably diminish America's leadership position in the global order. That is why the tyrants and the madmen of the world must see the United States and our allies respond with strength. That is the only way to ensure long-term security and stability.

Last spring, like many of our colleagues, I had the opportunity to travel to Ukraine. This time, last May, was with Senator McConnell, the Republican leader; Senator Collins; and Senator Barrasso. We had the pleasure of meeting with President Zelenskyy and affirming America's commitment to a Ukrainian victory.

One year into this war, my resolve has not softened. Our resolve cannot soften either. The United States and our allies must remain steadfast in our support of the Ukrainian people, not just for their sake but for our sake as well.

Through strategic investments, with ample oversight and accountability--those were important--we will continue to shape the outcome of this war by giving the Ukrainian people everything they need in order to prevail. In doing so, we will send a clear message to Russia and China and any other authoritarian dictator that aggression against the sovereign nation will not be ignored.

Again, it is our own national interest that is at stake here. This war cannot end with a Russian victory.

I yield the floor.

Mr. President, in January, monthly border crossings dropped below 200,000 for the first time since last March. Last month, U.S. Customs and Border Protection logged more than 156,000 illegal border crossings. This was the busiest January in more than two decades. Yet, somehow, the Biden administration is trying to claim victory for this temporary dip in illegal border crossings. If you ask me, the President is popping the cork a little early.

For starters, these numbers are artificially reduced thanks to the administration's new parole program. Now, ``parole'' is not a commonly used word, but what the parole does in this context is it allows up to 30,000 people from specific countries per month into the United States. Basically, they are waved on through. If migrants enter the country on a legal basis, which is exactly what this program creates, they will never be tallied as part of the illegal migration statistics. So how better to make something illegal legal than to simply wave your magic wand and create a new category by which migrants are admitted to the United States?

In short, this new policy has allowed the administration to roll out the welcome mat for tens of thousands of migrants while pretending that the humanitarian and public safety crisis at the border is abating. It is not. It is not abating.

Second, January is a historically slow month for migration. During the previous administration, Customs and Border Protection logged an average of about 43,000 illegal border crossings each January. As a reminder, last month, we encountered 156,000--43,000 during the previous administration; this administration, 156,000 in January.

Now, as we head into spring, those numbers are sure to climb again. Warming temperatures and seasonal work always leads to increased migration, and I don't expect this year to be an exception. The numbers may have dropped temporarily last month, but there is no reason for the President to spike the football or to claim victory.

Every single day, thousands of migrants cross the United States- Mexico border. The overwhelming majority arrive here with only what they can carry on their backs. When they reach the United States, they need food, shelter, clothing, medical care, transportation, and the like.

Since President Biden took office, the pace of illegal border crossings has made this already-tough job of caring for migrants increasingly more challenging just by the sheer volume of humanity coming across the border. So law enforcement, nonprofits, and folks in my State who live and work on the border have begged the Biden administration to take action. It is not even fair to say that they were met with a shrug. Rather, they were just ignored.

In order to ease the burden on border communities in Texas, Governor Greg Abbott began transporting migrants to other States and cities last year. If the Biden administration is going to give them a piece of paper and say, ``Show up for an immigration court hearing at some indefinite date in the future''--perhaps years in the future--then Governor Abbott's theory was that, rather than have them wait there in the border communities, give them a bus ticket and let them go to the place where they have told the U.S. Government they intended to relocate pending their court hearing.

But the moment the challenges spread from these small border towns in Texas to liberal enclaves in the Northeast, the outrage machine fired up big time. President Biden didn't care about the border crisis when it affected the Rio Grande Valley or Laredo or Del Rio or El Paso, but the moment it reached Manhattan and Martha's Vineyard or Chicago or Washington, DC, it was somehow a crisis.

And, of course, we know who the President blamed. He blamed Republicans. Forget the fact that nonprofits have a longstanding practice of using Federal funds to transport migrants all over the country to await their future court hearing. But once the State of Texas or the State of Arizona or the State of Florida began offering transportation to these same migrants, the President and our Democratic colleagues had an absolute meltdown.

Our colleague from Illinois, Senator Durbin, called the practice ``cruel and inhumane.'' The White House Press Secretary said it was ``shameful'' and ``reckless.'' Vice President Kamala Harris went so far as to call this ``the height of irresponsibility'' and ``a dereliction of duty.''

When it hurts my constituents, my border communities, the people I represent here in the Senate, they are simply ignored. But once that problem begins to show up on the doorstep of the Vice President or Mayor Bowser or Mayor Adams or the mayor of Chicago, you would think the roof was falling in.

I don't think Vice President Harris recognized the many layers of irony in the statement that somehow this was ``a dereliction of duty'' and ``the height of irresponsibility.'' What it shows is simply how little she understands the nature of the problem, much less any way to try to fix it.

Now, it is not just the nonprofits and the Republican Governors that are transporting migrants. It is the Democratic mayor of New York City.

Eric Adams is the mayor of the largest city in the United States. New York City is home to roughly 8.5 million people, and its annual budget exceeds $100 billion. That is higher than all but a handful of States. Once busloads of migrants began to arrive in New York City last year, Mayor Adams quickly realized what border mayors had been saying all along: that this is a big problem.

After welcoming a few thousand migrants, Mayor Adams said his city was near the breaking point. Again, this was the reaction when a few thousand migrants arrived into a major city with a $100 billion annual budget.

Can you imagine what it has been like in small towns like Del Rio, TX, of 35,000 people, where they had 15,000 Haitians under a bridge in that small city and, frankly, without the resources to deal with them?

So, frankly, I am not all that sympathetic to Mayor Adams' quandary because of what my constituents have been living with for the entirety of the Biden administration. New York City has vast resources and a long list of folks willing to help, and still it is struggling to care for the migrants arriving on its doorstep.

Meanwhile, communities across Texas--small in comparison to New York--were absorbing thousands of migrants in a single day with only a fraction of the resources.

Over the last several months, the number of migrants arriving in New York City has grown dramatically. It has received more than 40,000 migrants, and the challenges have only grown. I am not surprised by that, but this is a taste of what we have been experiencing for years, thanks to the Biden administration's dereliction of duty.

Mayor Adams started doing what Republican Governors of Texas and the Democratic mayor of El Paso had already done. He offered these migrants free transportation elsewhere.

So they have come to New York City. Mayor Adams said this is terrible. And what does he do? He then offers the migrants a free bus ticket to go somewhere else.

New York City has purchased bus tickets for migrants headed in all directions around the country. Migrants were offered a free ride, and many willingly accepted.

This is exactly what has happened in border States like Texas, but the reaction has been completely different. I haven't heard Vice President Harris, for example, call this ``the height of irresponsibility'' or ``a dereliction of duty.'' Certainly, our Democratic colleagues haven't repeated their claims that this is somehow cruel and inhumane, no matter how erroneous they were in the first place.

When migrants receive free bus tickets from conservative States like Texas, it is framed as a human rights abuse. But when it happens in Manhattan, it is viewed as an act of charity or kindness. The hypocrisy is simply breathtaking.

To be clear, I don't fault Mayor Adams for helping migrants reach other parts of the country. I am sure he is trying to manage with this new phenomenon. But I would hope that he would recognize that this has been something we have been having to cope with as a result of the failure of the Federal Government to deal with this humanitarian and public safety crisis.

The influx of tens of thousands of migrants can certainly place a strain on local health systems and emergency response services. It could put a dent in a city's budget. It can overwhelm the nonprofits and hurt the vulnerable locals who already rely on those services. But that is exactly what we have been seeing in States like mine for years, but to no avail. It is unfair to expect any city or any State to carry the burden of this crisis because it is the Federal Government's responsibility.

We now learn that every community in America is now a border community. This morning, during a Finance Committee hearing, the chairman of the Finance Committee, the Senator from Oregon, Mr. Wyden, and the ranking member from Idaho, Senator Crapo, both were recounting about the influx of fentanyl and synthetic opioids into their States and the impact it is having on crime and overdose deaths of the people they represent and care so much about.

But last year alone, 108,000 Americans died of drug overdoses, and 71,000 of those from synthetic opioids. Virtually all of the 108,000 deaths were caused by drugs that came across the southern border.

So it is not just economic migrants looking for a job and a better way of life. It is people with criminal records, sex offenders. It is people smuggling drugs into the United States. It is the criminal gangs who distribute those drugs in major cities all across the country, including in New Jersey, and who are responsible for much of the violence--particularly the gun violence--as they fight for market share and territory.

So every community in the country now is a border community and a border State.

This is not what successful immigration or border security policy looks like. The number of border crossings may have temporarily dipped, but communities across the country are still being crushed by the weight of President Biden's border crisis.

The one silver lining in all of this is that it appears the President is finally--finally--acknowledging the crisis at the border. With a possible reelection for President just around the corner, it looks like he is finally giving at least lipservice to this major political liability.

In his State of the Union Address last week, President Biden urged Members of Congress:

If you won't pass my comprehensive immigration reform

[bill], at least pass my plan to provide the equipment and

officers to secure the border.

I was wondering what plan the President was referring to. None of us have seen it, to my knowledge. I have asked many of my Senate colleagues, and they don't know what the President is even talking about because none of them have seen his plan to secure the border.

He hasn't shown a serious interest in using the existing authorities to stop the flow of illegal immigration. But if the President's views have changed and now he is serious about dealing with this crisis, he will find a lot of allies here in Congress, and I would be one of them.

Senators on this side of the aisle want to reform the processes by which migrants are handled to quickly remove unlawful migrants who have invalid asylum claims and ensure that the cartels are not able to overwhelm the Border Patrol by directing migrants to key strategic locations while, then, the drug cartels move illegal drugs into the country that take the lives of innocent Americans.

The experts I listen to--the Border Patrol, mainly--have advocated for a combination of personnel, technology, and infrastructure to ensure that the Border Patrol is capable of stopping dangerous criminals and contraband at the border. And we need to fix the broken asylum system along with its characteristic catch-and-release because if there are no real consequences for people coming into the country, even though they don't qualify for asylum, they are going to continue to come. And that has been the case during the entirety of the Biden administration.

So if the President is serious now, at long last, I encourage him to pick up the phone. Communities across Texas and across the country are suffering because of the Biden administration's failure to simply do the job of the Federal Government.

Mayor Adams said while visiting El Paso last month:

Our cities are being undermined, and we don't deserve this.

Migrants don't deserve this and the people who live in the

cities don't deserve this.

I agree with Mayor Adams, and I hope President Biden has finally learned that lesson as well.

I yield the floor.

I suggest the absence of a quorum.