Floor Statements

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 President, I ask unanimous consent that the order for the quorum call be rescinded.

Mr. President, just over a month ago, a video went viral on the internet that exposed a shocking fraud scheme by Somali nationals in Minnesota. An organization that went by the name of ``Quality Learning Center''--or ``Quality Learing Center,'' as they misspelled it--was receiving massive amounts of Federal funding--by some estimates, more than $1 million--under the pretext of providing childcare. However, as the video shows, the facility was not, in fact, a daycare center, and there were no children present.

The mainstream media may have moved on from this scandal, but our job here in Congress on this scandal is not done. As a matter of fact, it is just beginning.

I applaud President Trump and his administration for quickly freezing Federal childcare funds to Minnesota in the wake of this alleged fraud scheme. This will give government officials a chance to conduct a thorough investigation to find out exactly what was going on before more money is shoveled out the door to potential swindlers.

These are U.S. taxpayer dollars, and they were intended to fund a program to help make childcare more accessible to those who needed it. Instead, these tax dollars were lining the pockets of a group of charlatans and fraudsters.

Now, the radical left, of course, has villainized the young, independent journalist who uncovered this scandal, calling for his death--his death--on social media. They have accused him of ``bringing ICE to Minnesota'' and put up posters encouraging people to tell him to kill himself if they see him.

But as we all know, the American people voted in record numbers last fall for President Trump, who ran on a program of immigration enforcement, and we all know that what President Trump says, he means and he will follow through on. I don't think there was ever a doubt in the minds of the American people about where Donald Trump stood on illegal immigration.

If anyone is responsible for bringing ICE to Minnesota, it would be the criminal aliens who came into the country illegally and the feckless politicians, including President Joe Biden, who refused to enforce our immigration laws.

President Trump is simply keeping his word to the American people who elected him.

But the notion that this young man should be somehow ashamed for shining a light on this fraud that occurs in Minnesota is simply absurd.

The mainstream media once again is failing the test of objectivity. It is not telling the truth about who ICE is targeting, particularly the criminal aliens, including fraudsters that were responsible for this scandal. This deception encourages leftwing radicals to target young men, young journalists like Nick Shirley.

It is important to note that the fraud scheme in Quality Learning Center is hardly an isolated case. The State of Minnesota has been under Federal investigation on multiple occasions for fraud schemes with Federal taxpayer dollars.

In 2022, the Department of Justice investigated a Minnesota nonprofit, nongovernmental organization, NGO, known as Feeding Our Future. The Department ultimately charged 47 defendants associated with Feeding Our Future for participating in a massive fraud scheme. These defendants took advantage of taxpayer-funded programs intended to provide food for needy children and used it to enrich themselves, buying luxury cars, jewelry, and vacation properties in other countries.

More recently, last September, eight defendants were charged by the Federal Government with participating in a housing stabilization fraud scheme.

That same month, another woman was charged for participating in a fraud scheme involving an autism program. This woman was also participating in the Feeding Our Future fraud scheme and allegedly stole nearly half a million dollars.

There is clearly a problem here and a pattern. When describing the full extent of fraud cases in Minnesota, this is what one Federal prosecutor said:

What we see are schemes stacked upon schemes, draining

resources meant for those in need. It feels never ending. . .

. I have spent my career as a fraud prosecutor and the depth

of the fraud in Minnesota takes my breath away.

But while the State of Minnesota has a longstanding history of widespread fraud, we would be foolish to assume that this is an isolated event, and it is high time for Congress to address it. These instances of fraud are an illegal diversion of Federal tax dollars so it should be of concern to all taxpayers, not just those in the State of Minnesota.

In the last year, we have seen dozens of arrests, charges, and convictions of illegal aliens who have committed public benefit and other types of fraud all across America. For this reason, as chair of the Judiciary Subcommittee on Immigration and Border Security, I am hosting a hearing tomorrow entitled: ``Somali Fraud in Minnesota--the Tip of the Iceberg.''

In this hearing, we will begin by examining the most recent case of childcare fraud in Minnesota, but we will not limit our inquiry to this recent scandal that has dominated the headlines. We will also go a step further and look at the longstanding, endemic cases of fraud committed by illegal aliens all over the United States. We will hear from several witnesses, including Rebecca Gambler, Chief Quality Assurance Officer and Managing Director of Audit Policy and Quality Assurance with the Government Accountability Office. She will be able to offer GAO's perspective on these longstanding abuses of taxpayer dollars. Simon Hankinson, a former Foreign Service Officer who currently serves as a research fellow on border security and immigration at the Heritage Foundation will also testify. We will hear from another Foreign Service Officer, Phillip Linderman, who is now a fellow at the Ben Franklin Fellowship. And, finally, Matt O'Brien, deputy director at the Federation for American Immigration Reform, or FAIR, will speak to this issue.

All of these witnesses will help us get a better handle on the full breadth of the problem posed by illegal immigration and the aliens who are abusing our country's welfare system in order to send money back home to their home countries.

But let me be clear: It is not racist or xenophobic to target fraud wherever it is found. Fraud is not a victimless crime, and neither is identity theft. And Democrat attempts to deflect discussions of fraud are an injustice to the victims of these crimes, which happen to be all of the American taxpayers.

Furthermore, these incidents raise questions about the prevalence of government grants and contracts to nongovernmental organizations. For us here in Congress, we will consider whether it is wise to continue to dole out funds to nongovernmental organizations without sufficient accountability mechanisms in place.

Recently, I introduced the Stop Fraud by Strengthening Oversight and More Accountability for Lying and Illegal Activity Act, or Stop Fraud by SOMALIA Act, to amend the Childcare and Development Block Grant Program and impose strict penalties on childcare providers who commit fraud.

But as we know, this issue touches virtually every industry. It is nothing short of an insult to the generosity of the American taxpayer that aliens are able to enter the country and enrich themselves by taking advantage of Federal programs that are intended to help needy Americans.

Hard-working American citizens who paid taxes to the U.S. Government deserve accountability for how their dollars are being spent, and tomorrow's hearing will help shine a light on just how rampant this abuse is. I look forward to tomorrow's hearing so we can get to the root of this rampant abuse that is happening, not just in Minnesota but all over the country, and begin to take concrete and positive steps to stop it.

Waiving Quorum Call

Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent to waive the mandatory quorum call in relation to the Burrows nomination.

I yield the floor.

I suggest the absence of a quorum.

Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent to speak for up to 15 minutes prior to the scheduled rollcall vote.

I would like to talk about a topic that may seem irrelevant to the average person at first glance, but it actually affects all of us a great deal more than we might imagine. A tiny but vicious parasite known as the New World screwworm is infecting cattle across Mexico, and it is getting closer and closer to the United States by the minute. Of course, many know that Texas ranks first in the Nation for cattle production. We proudly represent nearly 15 percent of total cattle production in the United States, generating more than $11 billion in cash receipts, so the Texas cattle industry is obviously very concerned about the spread of the New World screwworm.

This parasite lays its eggs in the wounds of warmblooded animals, particularly livestock. The larvae burrows into the openings creating infections that, left untreated, can cause animals to die within 1 week. We do not have vaccinations, unfortunately, to prevent screwworm infections. So outbreaks in cattle herds require labor-intensive daily inspections of livestock to make sure they have not been infested.

Now, some may be wondering: That sounds pretty horrific, but what does it have to do with me? Well, the truth is, this little pest, this vicious pest, touches all of our lives one way or the other. If the New World screwworm spreads to Texas infecting cattle and killing livestock, the already high price of beef will continue to increase. And, of course, as we are all focused on kitchen table issues and affordability, that is the last thing we need. That means that anyone who enjoys a steak or a hamburger will be staring at higher prices in their local restaurant or at the drive-through at their favorite fast- food chain or at the grocery store. Anyone planning a nice Valentine's Day dinner in a few weeks should listen up and perhaps budget accordingly.

Unfortunately, the New World screwworm is quickly spreading. Since 2023, there have been outbreaks of this

deadly insect in Panama, Nicaragua, Honduras, Guatemala, Belize, El Salvador, and Costa Rica. Costa Rica declared the New World screwworm a national emergency in 2024. That same year, the fly made its way to Mexico which, of course, given our proximity to Mexico, has raised concerns among Texas cattle ranchers that it may soon make its way across the border and lead to an outbreak in our State and not stop there.

At the end of last year, a case of New World screwworm was reported less than 400 miles south of the U.S.-Mexico border. Fortunately, President Trump and U.S. Department of Agriculture Secretary Brooke Rollins have made defeating the New World screwworm a priority. Our Federal Government's response to this threat spans multiple avenues, including emergency response plans, sterile fly production and dispersal levels, as well as targeted initiatives in surveillance and research. I have been working closely with the USDA and other stakeholders to promote these efforts, and I have introduced legislation to authorize funding to deal with these measures.

First of all, the USDA is partnering with State and local governments to ensure that the United States is prepared for a potential outbreak. This means working across Federal, State, local, Tribal, and territorial agencies to update emergency response plans, ensuring that responders are trained and ready.

They are also supporting hands-on training and simulations at all levels of government to practice rapid, coordinated responses in the event of an outbreak. They are ensuring that we have effective treatments available for both animals and humans so that veterinarians and healthcare professionals can act quickly, if necessary. This parasite doesn't just affect cattle. It affects human beings, too, and it is a horrific, horrific thing.

Secondly, USDA is investing significantly in the renovation and construction of new sterile fly facilities in both the United States and Mexico to stop the screwworm. We know that the use of sterile flies was effective during the last outbreak of the New World screwworm in North America, which happened in the 1960s.

The sterile male fly mates with female flies who mate only once during their lifetime, so by releasing large numbers of sterile male flies, the population can be stopped in its tracks. This approach worked to eradicate these deadly infestations in the '60s, and I am hopeful it will work again. I am confident it will, once implemented, now in the 2020s.

The USDA is investing $21 million to help renovate and convert an existing fruit fly facility in Metapa, Mexico. Once complete, this facility is expected to produce an additional 60 to 100 million sterile flies per week. With continued support from technical experts at USDA, Mexico expects production to begin as early as the summer of 2026.

Last November, the USDA opened a sterile fly dispersal facility in Tampico, Mexico. This facility allows USDA to disperse sterile flies aerially across northeastern Mexico, including Nuevo Leon.

In addition to revamping and developing facilities in Mexico, the USDA is also working to ensure that we have a sterile fly facility here in the United States. Planning is currently underway with the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers to construct a domestic sterile fly production facility in south Texas. This facility has a projected capacity of 300 million sterile flies per week. It will be the only U.S.-based sterile fly production facility and will work in tandem with facilities in Panama and Mexico to help eradicate this pest and protect American agriculture.

But Secretary Rollins' efforts haven't stopped there. USDA is also investing in surveillance capabilities to try to monitor the spread, as well as research to identify new solutions. The USDA has deployed over 100 traps and lures across high-risk areas in the border States and is leveraging thousands of insect traps all along the southern border. Tens of thousands of flies from traps in all locations have been submitted to our National Veterinary Services Laboratories for identification, thankfully with zero New World screwworm detections so far.

In Texas, the USDA examines all wildlife for signs of an infection. To date, more than 6,600 wild animals across 28 species have been examined--here again, thankfully, with no evidence of New World screwworm found.

Finally, the USDA has announced a New World Screwworm Grand Challenge, which will prevent the pest's northward spread and safeguard America's food supply by investing in projects that enhance sterile fly production, develop new traps and lures, and develop increased understanding of potential treatments that could be stockpiled and used here in the United States, if necessary.

So while the New World screwworm poses a direct threat to cattle ranchers, for all of us who enjoy a good hamburger or steak, I think this should be encouraging news. So the fly has yet to land here in the United States, but it is close, and we are taking active steps to prevent its continued northward spread.

I am confident that under Secretary Rollins' and President Trump's leadership, we will be prepared to meet this nasty parasite if it arrives in the United States. Texas cattle ranchers and beef lovers alike can rest assured knowing that Secretary Rollins and President Trump and the U.S. Congress are on the job.

I yield the floor.

Mr. President, I know the midterm elections aren't until November 2026, but there have been some surprising results recently in some of the special elections that have been held around the country, most recently in a State senate seat in Texas, over the weekend.

Taylor Rehmet, a Democrat, won handily in a district won by President Trump by 17 points, in 2024. Some people are calling this a warning sign to Republicans, suggesting that support for the GOP is waning in Texas.

Even the New York Times--maybe I should say, especially the New York Times--is trying to sound the death knell for the GOP, describing the race as an ``upset'' that has ``rattled Republicans.''

Of course, our Democratic friends and the mainstream media will take any opportunity they can to paint President Trump and Republicans in a bad light, in an effort to raise expectations for their own electoral success at the ballot box. But there is something more going on here that does not just affect Republicans but, literally, all Americans, and we should all find this development alarming.

What is so alarming, may you ask? Well, it is people sitting on the couch and not voting, not participating in the process of self- government.

This particular special election in Texas that surprised so many was decided by 15 percent of registered voters. That is less than 95,000 people in a district of over 600,000 eligible voters.

Unfortunately, this is not an isolated event. It has happened, time and time again, around the country.

Over in Houston, another special election was held to fill the House seat of the late Sylvester Turner, in the 18th District, and it demonstrated a similar anemic turnout. Christian Menefee won this seat with only 5.6 percent of registered voters--5.6 percent. Of course, when such a small group of people have such a disproportionate voice in the outcome of an election, they essentially are choosing their candidate, who may or may not be the candidate that would be supported by a broad coalition of registered voters if they had simply decided to participate.

In this case, the winning Democratic candidate in District 18 is-- this was a solid blue district. But even though the results may not be shocking, the small proportion of voters who actually participated in the election should be.

This is not just a warning sign to Republicans. This is a warning sign to us all. When too many people sit on the sidelines, the consequences are election results that are not actually representative of the people who are being governed by these officials.

Well, some folks may say: Well, it is just a small election, and it doesn't really matter. Or I only vote when it really matters, and that is for President of the United States.

But the truth is every Federal, State, and local election matters. It matters because it affects every aspect of our daily lives: your work, how much you get to take home in your paycheck, what your kids are taught in school, and on and on and on.

We are blessed to live in what is called a democratic republic. It is not a pure democracy, and it is not a pure republic. But our government derives its powers from the consent of the government. The primary mechanism by which self-government actually works is through elections, and it is shocking to see so few people participating in our elections.

If Americans don't turn out to vote, including in special and midterm elections, then we are essentially forfeiting or giving up our right to a voice in self-government.

Make no mistake, our Democrat colleagues have a well-organized ground game, and they will stop at nothing to undermine the gains we have seen just in a single year, since President Trump came into office. That is the way our system works.

To top it off, Democrats have built a nationwide lobby to support their efforts, otherwise known as the mainstream media. But this brings me to another problem that undermines our system of self-government, which is that it is too easy for people who can't legally vote to cast a ballot--in other words, voter fraud.

When a ballot is cast by someone that is not qualified to vote in an election, it undermines the integrity of the ballot for the people who are qualified to vote--for example, an illegal alien. Illegal aliens, noncitizens are technically barred from registering to vote, but in some States, people are not even required to show proof of citizenship at the time of registration.

Every time we talk about voter ID, the left says we are trying to disenfranchise minorities and the underrepresented, but that is not consistent with the facts. In Texas, where voter ID is required, you don't have to have a driver's license. You can get a government-issued identification at no cost.

Democrats know that if you actually require people to show that they are qualified to vote, their voter base will shrink, especially in sanctuary States that have been havens for illegal aliens for years.

Not a single person in this country, I think, truly believes that you cannot get a valid identification if you are a U.S. citizen.

Again, this used to be a bipartisan consensus.

You need identification to buy a car, to buy a phone, to get on an airplane, to open a bank account, to cash a check. So I find it hard to believe that any rational person would object to requiring a person to show that they are a citizen to vote in elections that are meant to represent all of us at all levels of government.

With the dramatic rise in mail-in voting that happened during COVID- 19, many Americans had concerns about this particular method of voting and that it might be abused. But if the truth be told, it was, but you don't hear much about the convictions across the country against those who committed voter fraud.

After all, if the ballot is mailed to the wrong address, there is not much stopping the wrong person from filling it out, pretending to be someone they are not, forging a signature, and dropping it in the mail. It is pretty easy. It is too easy.

Nor is there anything to stop ballot harvesting, which is actually legal in some States, and collection by ``well-meaning'' organizations and individuals who are just trying to ``help out their fellow citizens.''

Well, this is a very disturbing pattern. I believe the American people deserve better than to have their concerns about election security swept under the rug.

I want to commend my friends, the leadership in the State of Texas-- the legislature, the Governor, the Lieutenant Governor, and the speaker--for taking this issue seriously and working hard to make sure that mail-in voting is secure.

But, unlike Texas, many blue States are, unfortunately, not doing their part to make sure only legally qualified voters can cast a ballot. So I am thankful to our colleague Senator Mike Lee of Utah for introducing the SAVE America Act, which will require proof of citizenship at the time of registration, as well as photo identification at the time of voting.

It doesn't seem like a big burden for voters to be able to show that they are qualified to vote and that they are who they say they are through voter ID.

I am a proud cosponsor of the SAVE America Act, which I believe is long overdue, to strengthen the integrity of our election systems. If you think about it, all of us have a stake in this battle, whether we live in a red State or a blue State--particularly in Federal elections--because for every unqualified voter who casts a ballot, it undermines or dilutes the vote of those of us who are legally qualified to vote. So I hope the U.S. Senate will take up and pass this legislation, and I and others have been discussing it with the majority leader.

But something much simpler that each and every one of us can do that will strengthen our system of representative government is to get to the polls and vote.

Now, in Texas, the primary is on March 3, coming up here very soon. We start early voting on February 17. So there is a lot of time, a lot of opportunity for people to cast their ballot and to participate in their primary, whether it is on the Democratic side or the Republican side.

I know voting is voluntary, but if you think about what is good for our country and what is good for representative democracy, you would agree with me that voter participation is far below what it should be.

If you walk out the doors of this Chamber and down the hall into the Capitol Rotunda, you will see a famous painting by John Trumbull, the Declaration of Independence. This painting depicts our Founding Fathers gathered around to sign the monumental document that would set the United States apart on a new course in history.

Thomas Jefferson, of course, wrote in the Declaration of Independence that governments derive ``their just Powers from the Consent of the Governed.'' Those who signed risked their very lives because, by doing so, they were committing an act of treason against Great Britain, at the time.

This year, of course, we celebrate the 250th anniversary of the signing of the Declaration of Independence. So it is worth reflecting, once again, not only on the principles of self-government that our country was founded on but also the sacrifices made by our Founders and others to protect those rights.

If these men and women, over time, in the armed services and elsewhere, were willing to risk their lives in order to secure representation, surely each and every one of us ought to do our part to participate in self-government by exercising our right to vote that so many have fought and died for.

I urge each and every one of my constituents in Texas, but I would like to speak to all 330 million Americans: Please participate in your elections. Ours happens to be one of the earliest this midterm election season on March 3.

We all need to appreciate the privilege of self-government. So just don't sit at home and complain or yell at the TV set about what is happening. Make a difference. Let your voice be heard. Participate in this incredible experiment now we have had for 250 years in self- government that has served us so well.

I yield the floor.

Mr. President, it has certainly been an eventful several days. Of course, across the country, people are still shoveling out roads and sidewalks from the dramatic snowfall we had, and, of course, many of us have struggled to get back to work because of disrupted flights. Some parts of Texas, believe it or not, had as much as 10 inches of snow. I know that is not a big deal in the great State of Nebraska, but it is a big deal in Texas because Texans cannot drive on the snow and ice. Anybody who has seen some of the videos of people trying to drive on the ice in Texas knows we are not used to that.

But a severe snowstorm was not the only thing to hit our country over the last weekend. As we all know too well, an ICU nurse for the VA named Alex Pretti was killed in an interaction with Border Patrol agents in Minneapolis. We are still learning more about what transpired that day, but, unfortunately, what we see too often when tragic events like this occur is that people jump to conclusions early without knowing all the facts.

Regardless of what we don't yet know, what we do know is that it is always a tragedy when a human life has ended.

I applaud President Trump for taking the steps to review this and for sending Tom Homan to Minneapolis to try to deescalate and restore law and order in that State. The President has also indicated that he has talked to Governor Walz and that they are working toward a productive solution to what has become an untenable state of affairs in Minneapolis.

One thing is absolutely clear: We need better collaboration and cooperation--maybe a little more cooperation

than collaboration--between Federal and local law enforcement in order to ensure that our laws are being followed while preventing further loss of life in our country.

When State and local officials, like the Governor of Minnesota and the mayor of Minneapolis, use their positions of authority to vilify Federal law enforcement officials, bad things can happen. The Governor of Minnesota has compared Federal agents to a modern-day Gestapo. How reprehensible and irresponsible is that, particularly coming from a guy who wanted to be the Vice President of the United States. Obviously, Governor Newsom in California has used similar language. Governor Walz has described his State as fighting a war against the Federal Government, and he called the Trump administration's enforcement operations ``dangerous'' and ``sensationalized.''

I will tell you what makes situations like those that happened in Minneapolis two times now where American citizens have lost their lives--what makes that more likely to happen is when Governors and mayors, people who are supposedly in positions of responsibility, actually encourage people to interfere with law enforcement operations. And we know that now, on at least two occasions, they can end with tragic results. This is completely unacceptable conduct by a Governor and a mayor. What they should do is stop their sanctuary policies. We don't see the same sort of law enforcement operations in Texas or in Nebraska; we see it in sanctuary States and sanctuary cities, where local and State law enforcement are denied the chance to collaborate and cooperate with Federal law enforcement authorities. What happens in States like Texas, which does cooperate with law enforcement, is when somebody is detained, let's say, by the police in the local jail and if they find out they are wanted by ICE, they will simply transfer them from the local jurisdiction to the custody of ICE so that ICE doesn't have to go out on the street and conduct raids in order to detain people who are not lawfully here in the United States.

All this may seem like fun and games to blue State Governors and sanctuary city mayors until somebody gets hurt, but now, as I said, two people have tragically lost their lives. We have the Governor and the mayor cheering people on to do more of the same.

This has to deescalate, and I am optimistic that Tom Homan, given his long career as a professional law enforcement officer, somebody applauded by President Obama for his work but obviously who also has the confidence of President Trump--I am glad he is there in Minneapolis, talking to the mayor, talking to the Governor, and hopefully trying to get them to tone down their rhetoric and not encourage more actions which could also result in tragedy.

While we are waiting to learn more details--yes, still waiting to learn more details--about what exactly happened, I believe State and local officials have an obligation to tone down their rhetoric because what they are doing is they are vilifying the brave men and women who actually are enforcing the laws that Congress has passed. They are calling them Nazis or the Gestapo.

Of course, maybe you should expect this from the same crowd that called for defunding the police--how did that work out?--or for abolishing ICE. Abolish ICE? Are these people who want no enforcement of our immigration laws? Well, apparently so.

ICE--Immigration and Customs Enforcement--and Customs and Border Protection officers whom I know personally and know well by reputation have an incredibly difficult and dangerous job to do, especially in the face of well-organized and paid-off leftwing agitators.

But again, underlying all of this, are the sanctuary city policies implemented by Governor Walz and others that have prevented law enforcement officials from conducting their work in a safe and orderly fashion.

We have seen what happens when the local police are instructed not to protect ICE officers and Border Patrol agents doing their job as happened in Chicago. Ordinary citizens have been encouraged to interfere with law enforcement operations. The incendiary rhetoric from the Governor encouraged ordinary citizens to put themselves into harm's way.

Ultimately, the confrontations between citizens and law enforcement culminated in last week's incident that ended in tragedy, and I sincerely hope--I know we all do--that this does not happen again. None of us want to see lives lost, whether at the hands of law enforcement or at the hands of criminals.

What happened to Alex Pretti was tragic, but we also need to remind people what happened to Laken Riley, Kayla Hamilton, and Jocelyn Nungaray, that what happened to them was also tragic and could have been prevented. Their deaths could have been prevented if the immigration laws currently on the books had simply been enforced. Each of them were killed by people who had no business being in this country illegally and committed these murders because of the Biden administration's open border policies that just opened the door to anybody and everybody who wanted to come to the United States.

That is what sensible enforcement of our immigration laws is designed to prevent, to allow people into the country who play by the books, play by the rules, and follow the law whom we welcome into this country.

The United States still is the most generous country in the world when it comes to welcoming immigrants. We naturalize roughly 1 million people a year who raise their hand and pledge allegiance to the United States and their willingness to support the Constitution and laws of this great country.

Legal immigration is a great boon and great advantage the United States has, but illegal immigration has been an unmitigated disaster.

As I think back on the Biden era of open borders, what breaks my heart is the fact that 500,000 children were welcomed into the United States, so-called unaccompanied minors, placed with sponsors, frequently unvetted and without adequate supervision or followup, and were simply lost. We don't know whether they were recruited into gangs, used for sex trafficking, or forced into involuntary labor.

Those half-a-million children were victims of this open border, lawless immigration policy of the Biden administration. President Trump was elected based on a promise to secure the border, which he has done, but we also need to make sure that people who have exhausted all of their legal remedies or have criminal records need to be prioritized and removed from the country.

Right now, there are roughly 280,000 people who are in that category. But to have the Governor and the mayor encourage people to interfere in a lawful enforcement operation can result in tragedy, as we have seen.

We now know that these two tragedies are being exploited by Democrats in the Senate who refuse to pass the normal appropriations bills that have now passed the House and have come here in order to pay the bills, keep the lights on, and keep the government operational. They are using these incidents to threaten another closure, another shutdown of the Federal Government like they did a short time ago--the longest shutdown in American history.

Democrats are using this tragedy as a scapegoat to try to force changes to government funding that they know cannot be done in the time we have left before the current continuing resolution expires.

This is nothing but an excuse--a lame excuse--by Senate Democrats to delay and disrupt the work that the American people elected us to do. We know that Senate Democrats have used this playbook recently, and the American people have seen how it ends.

It solves nothing. When the government reopens, you have the same problems you had beforehand that you just are ignoring or kicking the can down the road, and it imposes an unnecessary burden on so many Americans who don't get paid, who get furloughed.

It created not only financial hardship for millions of Americans, but this was all for what? To simply make a political statement. But I hope for the sake of the Texans I represent, the 32 million Texans, that Democrats have learned something from their recent lesson. We are using their livelihoods--holding their livelihoods as a hostage for political purposes. This is not the

time for another government shutdown.

In order for President Trump to continue the work he started to restore trust between local and Federal officials in Minnesota, the Department of Homeland Security--and, yes, that includes ICE and Border Patrol--must be funded.

We can have conversations about what additional oversight is required, what additional laws we should consider, but not at the expense of shutting down the government.

Again, what happened over the weekend was a tragedy, but it is not a reason to punish 330 million Americans by shutting down the government as a political stunt.

I yield the floor.

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

Mr. President, we all remember the tragic murder of SPC Sarah Beckstrom on the eve of Thanksgiving. She was, as we all will recall,

one of the National Guard servicemembers working here in the District of Columbia. We are continuing to pray for the recovery of Staff Sgt. Andrew Wolfe, who was injured in the shooting. But, of course, Specialist Beckstrom lost her life.

The news cycle moves very quickly, and it seems like while something happens today, tomorrow, it is something new. But it is important that we not allow the mistakes that were made by the Biden administration when it came to vetting Afghan nationals to be forgotten. We cannot ignore the reality that Sarah Beckstrom was another victim--an unnecessary victim--of President Biden's careless immigration policies.

The man who committed this heinous act was an Afghan national whom President Biden allowed to enter the country after our disastrous withdrawal from Afghanistan. Unfortunately, it is too late to bring Sarah's life back, but her death should not be meaningless, relegated to headlines with no action. It is not too late to look back on the flawed decisions that allowed her killer to enter the United States in order to correct these mistakes and to prevent future harm.

Furthermore, this crime at the hands of an Afghan national parolee was not a one-off occurrence. The following week, another parolee--and I will define that further, but this is not pursuant to any law actually passed by Congress, like the Special Immigrant Visa Program. This was done outside of that program, with even fewer protections and less vetting.

But the following week after Thanksgiving, another parolee nearly committed a terrorist attack in Fort Worth, TX. Thanks to the Federal and local law enforcement, they were able to apprehend him and prevent him from carrying out that attack.

I am grateful to the Department of Justice, including the FBI, and our State and local law enforcement officials who prevented this attack from happening. But the fact that the perpetrator is here in the United States in the first place underscores yet again the failure to vet the individuals who came into this country via the Biden administration's parole.

The repeated incidents--and there are many more--committed or attempted by Afghan nationals demonstrate that something has gone terribly wrong with the way government has been vetting or failing to vet aliens who have entered the country, and I believe that these questions deserve answers.

For that reason, I am chairing a Judiciary Committee subcommittee this afternoon, alongside our colleague Senator Hawley from Missouri, entitled ``Biden's Afghan Parole Program--A Trojan Horse with Flawed Vetting and Deadly Consequences.''

At this hearing, we will carefully examine the policies implemented or those failed to be implemented by the Biden administration that led to these tragic events, particularly the flaws in President Biden's mass immigration and parole programs that were not just limited to Afghan nationals. As I have said, ``parole'' is a unique term under immigration law. But it is worth revisiting exactly how this happened, because, again, this happened not because of any program passed by the Congress but unilaterally by President Biden.

Under U.S. immigration law, ``parole'' in laymen's terms is kind of like an E-ZPass, like speeding through a toll booth. U.S. immigration service defines ``parole'' as ``the discretionary decision that allows inadmissible aliens . . . [who] are not admitted to the United States . . . to be physically present in the United States.'' It is sort of like a permission slip.

Parole is an authority that allows the Department of Homeland Security Secretary to waive people into the country who otherwise would not be allowed in.

Under Operation Allies Welcome, President Biden extended this immigration E-ZPass to hundreds of thousands of aliens who weren't eligible to come to the United States. This discretionary authority was only supposed to be used on a case-by-case basis. It is an authority that President Biden repeatedly abused not only in this program but at the southern border as well to admit hundreds of thousands, even millions of individuals into the country during the Biden years and their open border policies.

But even though this authority is supposed to be used only on a case- by-case basis, the Biden administration turned this exception into the rule. Now we also know that when it came to the Afghan parole program, Operation Allies Welcome, the Biden administration allowed in many aliens who had not been fully vetted, including the man who drove across the country to murder this young National Guardsman and the man who threatened to carry out the suicide bombing in Fort Worth, TX, who were not eligible to enter the United States but for this discretionary E-ZPass issued by the Biden administration without adequate protections for the American people.

As we will learn at the hearing, in most, if not all, cases, the Biden administration did not know exactly who these people were. Many of them could not say when they were born or even their own last name.

I think we sort of fail to recognize that the population we are dealing with, the individuals in Afghanistan--many of them are functionally illiterate. And, of course, many of them are coming from this country that was war-torn and literally run by the Taliban, which is an international terrorist organization. Consequently, many of these aliens have likely committed acts of terror or have ties to terror groups.

In some cases, the U.S. Government was asking the Taliban to verify information on these individuals. Now, that strikes me as rather bizarre. The Taliban, a terrorist organization that would kill many of the Afghans who cooperated with the U.S. military--we are actually asking them to verify the identity and eligibility of these individuals to enter the United States. In any event, the Taliban is hardly a reliable source of information.

The lack of information on these parolees also raises the possibility of a preliminary background check coming back clean because there simply wasn't enough information available to determine whether this person was safe or not.

Essentially, the policy of the Biden administration was--the default was, come on into the country, in the absence of derogatory information. But the fact of the matter is, in war-torn Afghanistan, now run by a terrorist organization, where you have literally functionally illiterate individuals, the absence of derogatory information is not any proof that these individuals could safely be allowed into the United States. So the default was, let them in, even in the absence of any information whatsoever.

At today's hearing, we will learn more about this and other problems with the Biden administration's mass parole of Afghan nationals into the United States.

Once again, let me just reiterate that tens of thousands, hundreds of thousands, even millions of individuals were admitted into the United States due to President Biden's open border policies, using this same claimed discretionary authority, which should be used only on a case- by-case basis. But the Biden administration opened its arms and allowed hundreds of thousands of individuals--indeed, more likely, a million or more individuals--to come in on the parole program.

So the Afghan parole program was simply a subset of the larger policy of the Biden administration to welcome foreign nationals with open arms into our country without our knowing enough about them to know whether they would be a threat to public safety.

We will hear from two panels of experts who will help shine a light on the missteps of the Biden administration. Our first panel will include Mr. Craig Adelman, deputy inspector general at the Department of Homeland Security; Michael Roark, deputy inspector general with the Department of Defense, and Mr. Arne Baker from the Office of Inspector General at the Department of State. We have a second panel where we will hear from researchers and policy experts who will speak to the nuances of the vetting--or the lack of vetting--that the Afghan parolees underwent.

While it is important to treat our friends and allies with proper consideration, assuming that they are not a threat to the American people, if we want the cooperation of other foreign nationals in the future in some of our

conflicts, the bottom line is the nonnegotiable demand has to be the American people being able to sleep safe at night knowing they are safe from criminal aliens and terrorist sympathizers. That is the nonnegotiable bottom line.

They deserve to know--we all deserve to know what actions the Biden administration took or did not take that risked their safety. At this afternoon's hearing, we will give the American people the answers or at least begin to give them the answers that they and we deserve.

I yield the floor.

I suggest the absence of a quorum.

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

Mr. President, my Republican colleagues and I spent a great deal of time this Congress focused on securing justice for victims of crimes committed by illegal aliens.

Unfortunately, during the last administration, the Biden administration was completely what I would call willfully blind to the threat posed by people coming unvetted across our borders.

From Laken Riley, to Kayla Hamilton, to Jocelyn Nungaray, the victims of illegal aliens are numerous and must not be forgotten. What makes these tragedies so heartbreaking is the knowledge that many of these victims could have lived but for the Biden administration's open border policies and its failure to act responsibly and enforce the law. These good Americans died at the hands of criminal aliens who should never have set foot in our country.

But there is another category of illegal alien criminals who perhaps are not so widely known, largely because the mainstream media outlets refuse to report on the many heinous crimes committed by illegal aliens each year. These are individuals who have endangered Americans by drunk driving.

Every 42 minutes, someone dies in a crash involving alcohol. As we have seen in the news, many of these crashes

have been caused by illegal aliens who jeopardize the safety of law- abiding Americans. They have killed or severely maimed U.S. citizens and other lawful residents, depriving families of their loved ones and causing untold human misery. Some of these aliens have driven with expired licenses, suspended licenses, or no license at all and have shown complete disregard for the danger this may pose.

Last January, two college students in Illinois named Katie Abraham and Chloe Polzin were killed in a hit-and-run crash involving an illegal alien who was drunk driving. Their killer, an illegal alien from Guatemala, was charged with leaving the scene of a crash resulting in death, aggravated driving under the influence of alcohol, and reckless homicide.

Last October, Secretary Noem highlighted more than 140 illegal alien truckdrivers who were arrested in Northwest Indiana during Operation Midway Blitz. These aliens were found guilty of numerous crimes, including driving under the influence, drug trafficking, theft, burglary, assault, child abuse, domestic battery, prostitution, and fraud. More than 40 of them had been issued a commercial driver's license by States like California, Illinois, and New York. It is clear that these States are not conducting due diligence if they are issuing commercial driver's licenses to illegal aliens who threaten the safety of American citizens on our roads and highways.

Of course, Texans have not been spared the harm committed by such aliens, as we saw in the case of Arturo Cruz-Badillo. Cruz-Badillo is a Mexican national who had seven--seven--DWI convictions, a conviction for battery, and was removed from the United States three separate times. But despite all of these criminal convictions and removal for illegal entry in the United States, he was once again found reentering illegally last August, hiding in a commercial cargo trailer. He was sentenced to jail earlier this year for his crimes.

On top of the revolving door of removals because of how different States treat DUI and DWI offenses, some aliens are convicted multiple times but never removed from the United States.

As recently as last month, ICE arrested 118 illegal aliens in California, including pedophiles, burglars, domestic abusers, and serial drunk drivers. One of these offenders had four separate DUI convictions, including one that caused bodily injury. He was also convicted of driving with a suspended driver's license. Another was convicted of a DUI, a hit-and-run, and driving without a license. Yet another was convicted of causing injury to a child, a hit-and-run causing property damage, and two DUIs, driving under the influence. Finally, one of these criminals was convicted of DUI causing great bodily injury, a hit-and-run causing property damage, and a separate

Mr. President, I have two requests for committees to meet during today's session of the Senate.

They have the approval of the Majority and Minority Leaders.

Pursuant to rule XXVI, paragraph 5(a), of the Standing Rules of the Senate, the following committees are authorized to meet during today's session of the Senate:

Mr. President, we are back for a short workweek, following the holidays, and, boy, is our plate full. But I think it is appropriate to take just a few minutes to reflect on the incredible progress we have made last year under the leadership of President Trump, Senate Majority Leader Thune, and Speaker Mike Johnson.

Of course, one of the most important things we had to do in the Senate was to confirm the President's Cabinet and various nominees. Of course, our Democratic colleagues resisted at every turn, requiring that we actually change some of the rules of confirmation to allow the President to fulfill his mandate following his election and to get his team on the field. Democrats not only were sore losers when it came to the election of President Trump, but they wanted to deny him the team he needed in order to actually do what the American people elected him to do.

The most important piece of legislation we passed--actually, there are a couple that come to mind, but one is the working family tax cuts act. I heard the Democratic leader talk about all sorts of ``affordability'' issues, and, of course, that has now become the buzzword. Affordability is really nothing new in politics, as the Presiding Officer knows. It is all about kitchen table issues. That is what people care the most about. And there are a lot of things that we have already done, without any Democratic help, to try to make life more affordable for working families in Texas, in Nebraska, and across the Nation.

But, obviously, we have a lot of work left to do. First, we have to finish a full year of government funding. Democrats have prevented us from passing normal appropriations bills, which have caused us to lurch from potential shutdown to shutdown. And, indeed, they ultimately pulled that trigger to the detriment of the American people and shut down the government for a historically long period of time.

And for what effect? Well, a lot of people got hurt. A lot of people got inconvenienced. Many people didn't get paid.

And what did the Democrats get? A talking point about healthcare. That is all they care about. They did not care about solving any of these problems, working together in a bipartisan way, which is what I believe we should do, but rather to try to score political points and try to embarrass the Trump administration and Republicans.

But we have to finish that full year of funding because we do have another short-term continuing resolution deadline that expires on January 30. But I know Senator Collins, chair of the Senate Appropriations Committee, and Senator Murray and their counterparts in the House have been working very diligently to try to get the first tranche of appropriations bills across the floor so we can avoid staring another government shutdown in the face on January 30.

Can you imagine how much actual work we could get done if we didn't exhaust ourselves in the fights over shutdowns and lurching from one deadline to the next? Well, maybe that is something we ought to think about, and that is the opportunity cost of going from shutdown to shutdown and all the spending cliffs.

I would hope our Democratic colleagues have learned a lesson from

their last misadventure, which resulted in the shutdown, and I hope they will spare the American people and a lot of folks who didn't get paid, who were inconvenienced, and for no real reason other than to provide them a talking point in the upcoming election.

Again, we are happy to solve problems--that is why we serve here--and even on a bipartisan basis, but we are not interested in government shutdowns, which do nothing but try to advantage the Democratic Party in pursuing a talking point leading to the midterm elections.

We have a lot of things to do between now and November of 2026. On the healthcare front, we offered an alternative to the disaster known as ObamaCare. There is incredible fraud against U.S. taxpayers in the ObamaCare subsidy regime and, particularly, the enhanced subsidies that were bumped up during the Inflation Reduction Act as part of the COVID era.

But, unfortunately, insurance companies got rich, and the American people were not well served when it came to access to their healthcare. And the taxpayers were positively gouged by the fraud and mischief that occurred under the ObamaCare enhanced subsidy regime.

We offered an alternative. President Trump said the money shouldn't go to insurance companies; it ought to go to the consumer, because who knows better than the consumer what they actually need in terms of their health insurance coverage.

But, of course, our Democratic colleagues wouldn't countenance that. They don't actually believe in consumer choice. They don't believe in free enterprise. What they believe in is more government, more expensive government, and we know that is not the answer to the challenges that face working families when it comes to access to healthcare.

Having choice to make a decision, not making young people subsidize old people, not making people buy something they don't need, and not foisting the bill on taxpayers by extravagant subsidies which do nothing but enrich insurance companies.

Well, we know we have got a lot of work to do in that area, and we stand ready to work in good faith to come up with a workable bipartisan solution that will lower the cost of healthcare in the long term, if our Democratic colleagues are willing.

Suffice it to say, we have our work cut out for us, though, in the Senate. While this year has barely started, President Trump has lost no time in defining the year with his usual strength and decisiveness.

You know, back in the Federalist Papers, they debated what the Office of President should look like. And one of the things they talked about is the need for an energetic President and head of the executive branch. And, I must say, that is exactly what we got with the election of Donald J. Trump to his second term of office--a President who does what he says and is willing and has the courage to act decisively in the face of various threats.

And, of course, the one that is now looming large is Operation Absolute Resolve. This past weekend, in the middle of the night, in Caracas, Venezuela, our brave servicemembers successfully accompanied law enforcement personnel in detaining the illegitimate President of Venezuela, someone who had become the head of a drug cartel and who was working with our most concerning adversaries all around the world, whether it is Cuba, whether it is Iran, whether it is Russia or China.

And, in fact, Venezuela had become a hub for illegal drug trafficking, along with everything else that goes with that. And it also had become a foothold for Iranian terrorist organizations like Hezbollah and was using the money they were able to raise from illicit drug trafficking to then send it to terrorist organizations in the Middle East and to threaten peace around the world.

I want to say that what we saw demonstrated by the U.S. military, working in cooperation with the intelligence community and the Department of Justice and law enforcement personnel, was nothing short of magnificent. It gives me a great deal of pride to know that only the United States could have pulled off such an operation and brought someone so despicable as Nicolas Maduro to justice in a Federal court in Manhattan.

I wanted to thank all of our personnel who participated in the operation. I hope and wish and pray for the speedy recovery of the handful who were injured, and I think it is a proud day for the United States.

It was a challenging decision, I am sure, to make, and there will be many hard days ahead as Venezuela has to correct its course of actions. And under President Rodriguez, hopefully, with the levers that are available to the Trump administration and our friends and allies, they will learn from some of their mistakes and allow a transitional government, which will then be able to represent the hopes and the dreams and the aspirations of the Venezuelan people.

President Trump's New Year's message to friends and enemies could not be more clear. American strength is back, and we will stop at nothing to ensure that the American people are safe from foreign threats and especially here in our own hemisphere.

Walter Russell Meade put it well when he recently wrote:

The operation was a dazzling and magnificent act, and the

competence and resolve that it demonstrated will do more to

shore up American power and world peace than all the best

speeches President Obama ever made.

President Trump has made it clear to dictators around the world that if they try their hands at making mischief, there will be consequences. And I can guarantee that the illegitimate heads of the governments of Nicaragua, Cuba, and others in the region took note of what the U.S. Government is capable of doing if it is determined to do so under the leadership of a decisive, energetic President like President Trump.

And I think it sends an enormous message of deterrence to adversaries around the world and potential adversaries like China, North Korea, Iran, Russia. When they see a demonstration of competence and professionalism that is really second to none in the world, I think it sends an enormous message of deterrence and helps make our country safer and helps keep the peace.

But, of course, this represents a stark contrast with the status quo under the previous administration. I think that is one of the things that makes this so startling to so many people. After all the words with no action, all the breast-beating about America under President Biden, to see what President Trump is able to do, with the incredible contributions made by the intelligence community, our military, and law enforcement, has got to get the attention of our adversaries around the world. We know, during the Biden administration, the world had become a much more dangerous place because when our adversaries sense weakness, it is actually an incentive for them to act.

I think it has been said before, and I think it is true, that Putin would not have invaded Ukraine again if President Trump had been in office. But with President Biden and then previously with President Obama in office, he knew that paper tigers weren't going to hold them accountable, and so they kept coming and taking whatever they could grab. That makes the world a much more dangerous place.

From the first year of his Presidency, President Biden signaled weakness and incompetence on the world stage, especially with his disastrous withdrawal from Afghanistan. His failure to secure the southern border in Texas and in New Mexico and California and Arizona invited the drug trafficking crisis that is continuing to have downstream effects in our country even today. Hundreds of thousands of Americans have lost their lives to the illegal drug trafficking coming across our southern border.

And these failures, of course, do not happen in a vacuum. Our friends and enemies around the world are watching--our friends to see whether they can rely on the United States and our enemies to see whether we will stand up for ourselves and defend our interest and our values. And, of course, that shapes their actions and their decisions.

In February 2022, Russia invaded Ukraine, escalating a war that had started back in 2014 and continues today with massive casualty figures on both sides now ranging into the millions. October 7, 2023, Hamas terrorists,

who are Iranian proxies, launched the deadliest attack in history against the nation of Israel.

And all the while, China prepares for war. They have actually threatened to forcibly take Taiwan. President Xi has ordered the People's Liberation Army to be ready to do so by 2027, of course, escalating tensions in the Indo-Pacific and engaging in provocative joint military exercises with Russia.

Notwithstanding the chaos around the world, America was suffering direct consequences from the drug war, as I alluded to a moment ago. Cartels in Mexico and Latin America took advantage of President Biden's open border policies and refusal to act where action was required. Of course, they made untold millions of dollars selling these drugs and transporting them beyond their borders into the United States, taking countless lives and inflicting untold misery.

Now the Department of Justice has charged Maduro and his coconspirators with transporting tons of cocaine into the United States by moving the drug under the protection of Venezuelan officialdom, including the law enforcement and their military, by providing diplomatic passports to drug traffickers and facilitating diplomatic cover from planes to move drug proceeds from Mexico to Venezuela.

Iran, through its proxy Hezbollah--which operates primarily in Lebanon, north of Israel--they were embedded in Venezuela working with the Maduro administration and helped collaborate to provide those elaborate trafficking networks. And, of course, Hezbollah used the drug trafficking proceeds to finance their own nefarious activities around the world.

Back in 2022, Venezuela signed a 20-year economic cooperation agreement with Iran, the No. 1 state sponsor of international terrorism, an agreement between two of the most heavily sanctioned regimes in the world, all designed to defy the United States and expand their criminal enterprise.

In a hearing before the Senate Caucus on International Narcotics Control that I chaired late last year, one of our witnesses described Venezuela as playing a very important role in what they called the ``axis of evasion,'' a global sanctions-defying network that also includes Russia, China, Iran, and North Korea.

And, of course, Maduro was an important part of that within this ``axis of evasion'' because he is the one that gave them a foothold in our backyard in the Western Hemisphere.

And, of course, all of this went on during the Biden administration and right under their nose, but they did nothing--virtually nothing-- about it. President Biden and Secretary Mayorkas turned a blind eye, allowing these illicit happenings to continue while drugs poured into the United States and totalitarian dictators and terrorists enriched themselves and spread their misery.

But President Trump has now begun to turn the tide. He began on day one of his administration with an aggressive immigration enforcement, rounding up and deporting members of MS-13, one of the most dangerous gangs in the world; Tren de Aragua, another dangerous Venezuelan gang; and other criminal networks who had set up shop here in the United States in our neighborhoods and in our communities.

Given the vast networks of these international gangs, it became clear to President Trump that it was not enough to simply send them back from where they came so they could regroup and reorganize. President Trump and Secretary Rubio and President Trump's administration, rightly, determined that further action was necessary. And, of course, that began, most notably, with a series of strikes on drug boats in the Caribbean designed to deter the cartels and disrupt their evil trade.

Now, by capturing Maduro, by enforcing an indictment made by a U.S. grand jury in a Federal court in Manhattan, President Trump has shown, without a doubt, that he means business.

Of course, the radical left is losing their mind, as they usually do every time President Trump acts decisively and with boldness. Protestors outside the courthouse held signs reading ``Free President Nicolas Maduro'' and ``Hands Off Venezuela.''

I guess any jurisdiction that would elect a new mayor like a democratic socialist, Mamdani, that is probably what you would expect. So I don't think anyone was surprised.

But the message of Operation Absolute Resolve to our allies and adversaries around the world could not be more clear: America is back. The Trump administration will act with boldness and decisiveness. And if you threaten the American people with drugs or terrorism or any other sort of criminal or military attack, you better watch your back because you could be next.

I yield the floor.

I suggest the absence of a quorum.

Mr. President, I honor today Mr. Dennis E. Nixon for his commitment as one of our Nation's leading banking authorities and executives, particularly for his 50 years of extraordinary service to the broader Texas communities and Texas banking industry.

A Pittsburgh, PA, native, Dennis grew up in many different places across the United States due to his father's military service. His family eventually moved to Corpus Christi, TX, where Mr. Nixon graduated from high school. He then attended the University of Texas at Austin, where he graduated in 1964 with a degree in finance. Following graduation, Mr. Nixon spent 6 years as a bank examiner with the U.S. Treasury Department before joining the Union National Bank in 1970. In 1975, he joined the Bank of Commerce, the predecessor of the International Bank of Commerce, IBC, and International Bancshares Corporation, where he currently serves as the president and chief executive officer of the International Bank of Commerce in Laredo, TX, and as chairman of the International Bancshares Corporation.

Since joining the International Bank of Commerce, Mr. Nixon has played a vital role in International Bancshares Corporation's ranking as the largest minority-owned bank organization in the United States and one of the largest independent banks in Texas. Mr. Nixon's knowledge across all areas of banking was pivotal in the development of IBC's acquisition and expansion efforts. His tenure at IBC has been marked by visionary strategies and a commitment to excellence, transforming the company into an industry-leading financial institution with assets reaching approximately $16 billion and serving 75 communities from Del Rio to Brownsville, TX, and into Oklahoma.

Beyond his duties as chief executive officer of the International Bank of Commerce and chairman of the Bancshares Corporation, Mr. Nixon is a member of the Texas Business Leadership Council, a network of CEOs and business executives that aims to advance Texas prosperity in a globally competitive business environment. Most notable is his stewardship in raising $11 million for MD Anderson Cancer

Center, where he serves as a senior member of the board of visitors, demonstrating his commitment to improving the health and quality of life for all citizens.

In 2006, Mr. Nixon was inducted into the Texas Business Hall of Fame. In 2007, he was elected to serve on the board of directors of the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, and in 2008, he was named ``International Citizen of the Year'' by the World Affairs Council of San Antonio. The Texas Bankers Association awarded him the 2015 Texas Bankers Foundation's 50- Year Banker Award. In 2016, Mr. Nixon and his wife received the Distinguished Community Service Award from the Chabad Center for Jewish Life and Learning. In 2018, he received the Distinguished Business Leader Award from the Texas Association of Business.

Mr. Nixon has been widely recognized for his generosity to communities in Texas and around the globe. He received the Paul Harris Fellow Award by Rotary International and the Eleanor Roosevelt Humanities Award by the State of Israel for his outstanding community and philanthropic service. He is also involved in the American Heart Association, the American Cancer Society, United Way of Laredo, the Boys and Girls Club of Laredo, and Legatus. He serves as a founding member of the Association of South Texas Communities and the Alliance for Security and Trade. Mr. Nixon's service has received well-earned praise from organizations that strive to improve the health and quality of life of south Texans.

Mr. Nixon's exceptional career and his relentless efforts toward economic development are defined by intentionality, dedication, and success. He has dedicated his life and career to serving others and improving the communities in Texas and beyond. For his remarkable work, and all that he has yet to accomplish, I would like to recognize him.

I offer my thanks and appreciation to Dennis Nixon for 50 years of steadfast service to Texas communities and the Texas banking industry. I send him my best wishes for the years ahead.

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

Mr. President, after Mayor Mamdani was elected in New York City, the word ``affordability'' became all the buzz among the political classes and among the media as if this were something new. Obviously, affordability is not something new. It has, actually, always been the most important issue that voters and my constituents in Texas and Americans, generally, have felt was important because, of course, it deals with their quality of life and their standard of living. It has always been an important issue.

But, a year ago in November, the American people delivered a clear message that the Biden administration, which presided over 40-year high inflation, was taking the country in the wrong direction. President Trump received the electoral vote and the popular vote, and he won every swing State. Republicans secured majorities in both the House and the Senate.

This year, it has been up to the Republicans to course-correct. One of the most significant factors that has guided us is the need to address the burden of rising costs on everything: inputs into farming and ranching and the cost of commodities--food on the kitchen table. All of these are very real and important and urgent issues that we have tried to address, and there is more we can and should do.

But, under President Biden, the country experienced, as I said, historic levels of inflation not seen since Jimmy Carter was President of the United States. The cumulative inflation from the time President Biden took office until he left was 20.6 percent. Stated another way, everything cost more than 20 percent more from the time President Biden took office to the time he left. That is a huge cut in the standard of living and a huge increase in the cost of living for all Americans.

By the time he left the White House, a typical family in Texas, for example, would have to pay an additional $12,427 every year just to maintain the same standard of living that they had enjoyed when President Biden first took office. So that is like getting a $12,427 pay cut each year for the average Texas family.

Last November, when President Trump was reelected, 58 percent of Americans said they thought the country was on the wrong track. So it is no surprise that they voted for a new direction. Actually, I think two things helped President Trump the most. One was his pledge to secure the border, which he has done. Secondly, it was his pledge to deal with this issue of rising inflation and the increasing cost of living.

President Biden's policy, no doubt, contributed to the pain that families were and still are feeling in their paychecks.

Of course, it is one thing to identify a problem, but it is harder still to do something about it. There is, obviously, no silver bullet that can magically make inflation disappear. The Federal Reserve continues to struggle with this issue when they deal with the monetary policy, with what the interest rates are. The good news is the rate of inflation has gone down, but we still have the higher baseline sticking around from the Biden era. In other words, prices are rising more slowly, but they are still high.

The good news is that Republicans have taken important steps that will help ease the affordability crunch for all Americans, particularly when it comes time to file their taxes next year. The Working Families Tax Cuts Act was signed into law by President Trump on July 4. This is one of the most significant pieces of legislation that we have seen in a long, long time, and one of the challenges we have had in trying to explain it is there is so much in there that it is really hard to break it down into digestible pieces that folks can understand.

The truth is, this legislation will help Americans keep more of what they earn by lowering taxes across the board, and not a single Senate Democrat voted for it. Essentially, by voting against it, they voted for a $3,000 tax increase on most families back in Texas.

The Working Families Tax Cuts Act permanently increased the standard deduction to $15,750, including an annual adjustment for inflation. Without our legislation, the standard deduction would have dropped to $8,300 next year. This means that the 12 million Texas families who claim the standard deduction each year would have had to pay an additional $7,450 in taxes next spring without that legislation having passed. The lower rates from the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act from 2017 were set to expire at the end of this year, but the Working Families Tax Cuts bill made these lower rates permanent.

In addition to the increased standard deduction and lower rates across all income brackets, our legislation delivered targeted relief to those who were feeling squeezed the most. One of these groups is families with children. Those with small kids often have to choose between living on one income or incurring the increasingly high cost of childcare. If we hadn't passed the Working Families Tax Cuts bill, these families would have been slapped with a tax increase, with the child tax credit scheduled to decrease from $2,000 to $1,000. Our legislation prevented this from happening. We raised the child tax credit up to $2,200 and indexed it to inflation so that it will continue to go up year after year.

We also permanently strengthened the employer-provided childcare credit. This tax credit will incentivize businesses to provide childcare for their employees.

Of course, for some families, these credits seem like a drop in the bucket compared to the cost of raising a family, but I hope these small steps are a step in the right direction toward making family life more affordable, which we must do.

Another area my colleagues and I have been discussing on both sides of the aisle, which is a real issue for most Texans, is the rising cost of healthcare.

Now, if you have only been listening to our Democratic colleagues, you would be forgiven for thinking Republicans have done nothing to address the cost of healthcare in this country. But that is not true.

In the working families tax cuts, we expanded access to health savings accounts, also known as HSAs. These savings accounts allow individuals to save pretax dollars and then use those funds to cover eligible medical expenses. These accounts are particularly useful in the case of a medical emergency when an unexpected bill arrives.

We expanded eligibility for these health savings accounts to individual bronze market and catastrophic plans starting in 2026. We also ensured that high-deductible health plans cover telehealth and other remote access or virtual healthcare services before the deductible kicks in, while remaining HSA-eligible.

I know we are all concerned about access to healthcare, and actually one of

the biggest, most important things that came out of the COVID pandemic and the way we responded, in addition to Operation Warp Speed, was the broader application of telehealth.

Most places around the country are being served by broadband. Many people have access to the internet. Now we have provided the incentives and the reimbursement for more people to get access to healthcare through the internet using telehealth. Not every medical condition requires people to show up at a hospital or emergency room or a doctor's office. Many people can more conveniently, more inexpensively be served by accessing telehealth, and we made that more available.

Of course, there is a lot more work that needs to be done, and I look forward to working with all of our colleagues next year to continue to develop policy solutions that will lower costs for patients and families. But one of the things we should not and we must not and we will not do is expand the fraud-riddled ObamaCare enhanced subsidies that were provided during the Biden administration.

The Biden administration and Democrats at the time took the cap off of the subsidies for healthcare for people making well in excess of half a million dollars a year. That is crazy. We ought to be focused on the vulnerable, the people who need access to care, and not people who can afford to buy healthcare on their own.

In addition to medical bills, many families struggle to deal with their car payments. You have to have a way to get around. Not everybody has access to mass transportation.

Interest rates have remained high because of the historic levels of inflation during the Biden administration and the efforts by the Federal Reserve to combat that inflation through keeping interest rates high. But these interest rates mean that the monthly loan payments for cars have been higher and that buying a new car for most families is more expensive.

For those making less than $100,000 a year, the working families tax cuts introduced a new deduction that will ease this burden when it comes time to buy a new car. These individuals--those who make less than $100,000 a year--can now deduct up to $10,000 for interest paid on a new vehicle if that vehicle was made here in the United States.

This was a much needed course correction from President Biden's so- called Inflation Reduction Act--which did nothing to reduce inflation, by the way--which offered tax credits for electric vehicles that are produced with reliance on Chinese supply chains and, perversely, taxed low-income and working-class families in order to provide the subsidies for rich people who could buy electric vehicles. Just bizarre.

Instead of incentivizing the purchase of these exotic vehicles that undermine American manufacturing, Republicans are rightly delivering tax relief to the working middle class who are struggling just to make ends meet and, in this case, to afford a new car.

But that is not all. This legislation also delivered a historic win for the working class with no tax on tips and no tax on overtime. Many folks--me included--at some point in their adult lives end up working waiting tables or in some sort of service industry. So the idea now is that more folks working their way up the economic ladder can now enjoy no tax on tips and no tax on overtime, which will actually incentivize people to work more, which we need, without seeing their tax bill go up.

Employees and self-employed individuals can now deduct up to $25,000 in qualified tip income through 2028.

Next time you go to a restaurant or a bar, why don't you ask the waitstaff what they think about President Trump's no tax on tips and no tax on overtime. I have done that, and it is no surprise that they welcomed that with open arms.

Single filers can now deduct up to $12,500 on qualified overtime income. A lot of our law enforcement personnel and first responders work more than one job. They may work a side job in security or something like that. Now, if they choose to work overtime, they can now deduct up to $12,500 in qualified overtime income.

Now seniors can deduct an additional $6,000 on their Social Security benefits.

All of these enhanced deductions will ensure that those who are experiencing the brunt of the affordability burden will have a little more breathing room when tax day comes around next year.

The Biden administration created long-lasting harm with its profligate spending habits. It is wasteful Washington spending which drove inflation and prices high and inputs for everybody who makes anything in America or grows anything, for that matter.

So while we tackle the 40-year high inflation rate--and it is coming down, thankfully--these steps we have taken in the Working Families Tax Cut Act I think will help us nudge the economy where it matters most-- which is at the kitchen table--in the right direction and make life more affordable and the standard of living better for our constituents.

The working families tax cuts may seem abstract right now, but when it comes to next year, I think folks back home in Texas, Pennsylvania, California, and all around the country are going to welcome the good work that we did, together with President Trump, to pass the Working Families Tax Cuts Act because it will improve their standard of living and make life more affordable for them.

There is still more work to be done, but I believe Republicans have delivered an important first step toward making life more affordable for the people we represent.

I yield the floor.

Recognition of the Minority Leader

Mr. President, I have long been, like many of us, an advocate for protecting the victims of child sexual abuse, and I have long believed that anybody who commits such a heinous crime must be held accountable.

As technology has evolved over the last several decades, so have the methods being used by those who would exploit our children. Starting in 2023, child safety researchers noticed a rise in the use of visual generative machine learning models to create highly realistic child sexual abuse material, otherwise known as CSAM, as well as other obscene visual depictions of minors.

While there are many good and practical uses for artificial intelligence, this is not one of them. Anyone who uses this kind of technology to harm children deserves to receive the most severe penalties our laws provide for, but our Criminal Code has not kept up with the advanced methods used by some of these offenders.

Under current law, those who use AI to create explicit images of minors do not receive the same penalties as similarly situated offenders who created other forms of child pornography. My legislation called the ENFORCE Act addresses this discrepancy by amending two provisions of the United States Code that deal with child obscenity. Our legislation clarifies the confusing and duplicative definition of modified or computer-generated child sexual abuse material and makes persons who create or distribute Gen-AI CSAM subject to the same penalties as those who create or distribute other forms of child pornography. I shudder to think that our society will be judged based on how we prioritize the protection of our most vulnerable, and it is hard to think of anyone more vulnerable than a child victim of sexual assault.

Our bipartisan legislation ensures that anyone who participates in the sexual exploitation of children is held accountable, and I hope it will advance out of the Chamber today.

Mr. President, in that regard, notwithstanding rule XXII, I ask unanimous consent that the Committee on the Judiciary be discharged from further consideration of S. 3021 and that the Senate proceed to its immediate consideration.

Mr. President, I yield the floor.

I suggest the absence of a quorum.

Madam President, a few weeks ago, I spoke about the tragic death of a National Guard servicemember here in Washington, DC, on the eve of Thanksgiving.

While I salute and we should all salute the bravery of those who risk their lives to keep us safe, we can't ignore the reality that this woman was yet another unnecessary victim of President Biden's careless immigration policies. The man who committed this heinous crime was an Afghan national who President Biden allowed to enter the United States without proper vetting after our disastrous withdrawal from Afghanistan. He did this via a procedure known as parole, which I will explain more about in a minute, but this was not in accordance with any law or any visa recognized by Congress or passed through a legislative act. This was done on a wholesale abuse of something called parole authority.

As I said, I will explain a little bit more, but parole allows inadmissible

aliens--that means people from other countries--to be physically present in the United States. It is designed to be used on a case-by- case basis but was widely abused by the Biden administration to circumvent Congress.

So I asked my friendly AI assistant to give me a summary of some of the parole programs that were used by President Biden to circumvent Congress and the legislative process.

There was a process known for Cubans, Haitians, Nicaraguans, and Venezuelans. Up to 30,000 people a month were basically waved into the United States due to the abuse of this so-called parole process.

Then there was Uniting for Ukraine, which allowed roughly 267,000 Ukrainians to be paroled into the United States.

There was Operation Allies Welcome, which this individual who perpetrated this crime against these two guardsmen here over Thanksgiving was part of. Over 77,000 Afghans were evacuated and paroled into the United States.

There was another one called Keeping Families Together, which was enjoined by a Federal court.

Then there was one called the Family Reunification Parole Programs, which expanded the program for Cubans and Haitians and for certain other family-based visa beneficiaries facing long waits.

Finally, there was Central American Minors Program expansion to allow more minors from El Salvador, Guatemala, and Honduras to apply for refugee status or parole to reunite with their families here in the country.

So the point is, by abusing the parole process, which is supposed to be used on a case-by-case basis, President Biden waved them through, gave them essentially an E-ZPass into the United States--about 1 million people from foreign countries. And this particular shooter who killed one National Guard man and injured another was a product of this parole program--the one that had to do with Afghans.

But that was just a piece of a larger puzzle of 1 million illegal immigrants admitted to the United States through the parole program by Joe Biden because he wanted to circumvent Congress.

Well, this young woman who was killed during the Thanksgiving holidays--her sacrifice demands that we look for the mistakes and the flawed decisions that allowed her killer to enter the United States and that we take swift corrective action.

I want to remind my colleagues that this crime was at the hands of an Afghan national parolee, and it was not a one-off incident. For example, the next week, another parolee nearly committed a terrorist attack in Fort Worth, TX. In this instance, the man created a video threat where he described his plans to carry out a suicide mission to kill Americans. This is in Fort Worth, TX. The man explained in the video how he would use a particular cooking oil container preferred by the Taliban to build a bomb inside his car and then use this handcrafted device to murder Americans.

This individual's intentions were clear. In the video, he expressed his affection for the Taliban, which is a terrorist organization now governing Afghanistan, and he stated that he had entered the United States for the explicit purpose of killing Americans.

Thankfully, Federal and local law enforcement were able to apprehend him before he was able to carry out the attack. I am grateful to Attorney General Pam Bondi and our State and local law enforcement officials who prevented this attack from happening--in all likelihood, killing some of my constituents back home in Texas.

However, the fact that this individual was here in the first place underscores yet another failure of the Biden administration to properly vet individuals who entered the country, again, not through any law but through this abuse of something called parole. How could someone like this intended suicide bomber, who, in his own words, came into the country with the express intent of killing Americans, slip through the cracks? Well, we know there were more than just ``cracks'' in the Biden administration's vetting process; in many cases, it was virtually nonexistent.

The repeated incidents committed and attempted by Afghan nationals in the very same week demonstrate that something has gone terribly wrong with the way the U.S. Government during the Biden administration was vetting or failing to vet aliens who entered our country. But, again, as you heard me go through the various categories of individuals that came into the country under this abuse of parole authority--about 1 million--how in the world could the Biden administration have adequately vetted 1 million paroled immigrants? They can't do it. And that is one reason why this young National Guard woman is dead.

For this reason, I am chairing a joint Judiciary subcommittee hearing later this week, alongside Senator Hawley from Missouri, entitled ``Biden's Afghan Parolee Program--A Trojan Horse with Flawed Vetting and Deadly Consequences.'' We will examine the policies implemented by the Biden administration that led to these catastrophic events and particularly the flaws in President Biden's mass immigration parole programs.

As I said earlier, parole--ordinarily, we would think of it in the criminal law context, somebody who has gone to prison who then is paroled. But this is a totally different term used in immigration and essentially constituting of an E-ZPass--waving people into the country without the normal procedures.

U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services defines the word ``parole'' as ``the discretionary decision that allows inadmissible aliens . . . [who] are not admitted to the United State . . . to be physically present.'' In other words, these individuals are ostensibly physically present legally, but they are not admitted for purposes of immigration.

Well, under Operation Allies Welcome, President Biden essentially gave an E-ZPass to 77,000 aliens who weren't eligible to come to the United States by law as it existed in the first place. This so-called discretionary immigration authority was only supposed to be used, again, on a case-by-case basis for exceedingly rare and extreme circumstances, but the Biden administration turned this ``rare'' exception into the categorical rule. Just like he opened the floodgates at the southern border, he opened the floodgates for hundreds of thousands of ineligible aliens to come to the United States and presumably stay.

Now we know that when it comes to the Afghan parole program Operation Allies Welcome, the Biden administration allowed in many aliens who had not been properly vetted.

I would venture to say that the man who drove across the country to murder one of our National Guard servicemembers and the man who threatened to carry out the suicide mission in Fort Worth were not eligible to enter the United States, but the Biden administration let them in anyway.

As we will learn at the hearing, in most, if not all, cases, we quite literally did not know who these people were. Many of them could not say where they were born. Many of them did not speak English. In some cases, they did not even know their own last name. I know that is hard to imagine, but it is true. Many of them were coming from a country whose government was literally run by a terrorist organization--the Taliban. Consequently, it is quite possible that some of these aliens had previously committed acts of terror or had ties to terror groups.

The lack of information on these parolees also raises the possibility of a preliminary background check coming across as clean because there simply wasn't enough information available to know whether this person was a safety risk or not.

In this week's hearing, we will learn more about this and other problems with President Biden's mass parole of Afghan nationals into the United States. We will hear expert witnesses, including deputy inspectors general from the Department of State and the U.S. Department of Homeland Security, as well as researchers and advocates, who will help shine a light on the missteps of the Biden administration and hopefully the lessons we should learn from those mistakes.

The American people deserve to live in a country where they are safe from criminal aliens and terrorist sympathizers, and they deserve answers about what the Biden administration did or did not do to make their lives more risky and more dangerous by abusing this so-called parole authority.

We must expose the previous administration's mistakes so we can learn from those, and together we can ensure that the awful tragedy that happened on November 26 will not happen again.

I yield the floor.

I suggest the absence of a quorum.

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

Mr. President, in Texas, my constituents who are on the Affordable Care Act exchanges, otherwise known as ObamaCare, are experiencing an 18-percent increase in their insurance premiums. Now, if you look at employer-provided coverage, which covers many, many more Americans, those increases in costs are going up, roughly, in the 5- to 6-percent range. So you might wonder why the huge disparity between ObamaCare and the rest of healthcare.

Of course, our healthcare system is pretty fragmented. We have people who have employer-provided coverage, seniors who have Medicare, low- income individuals who qualify for Medicaid, veterans who qualify for the VA system, or TRICARE. But for the group of people who believed what President Obama said when he sold ObamaCare

about 15 years ago now, they have been deceived.

I still remember like it was yesterday, the President said: If you like your policy, you can keep your policy.

That was a lie.

If you like your doctor, you can keep your doctor.

Well, that was not true either.

Then he said that average premiums would go down about $2,500 for people on these Affordable Care Act exchanges. Well, that wasn't true either.

Years ago, I was attorney general of the State of Texas. We had a consumer protection division where we would sue people who would consciously defraud consumers, and if this isn't one of the biggest consumer frauds perpetrated in our lifetime--maybe in history--I don't know what is.

No Republican voted for ObamaCare as we didn't think that was the best solution to provide access to healthcare. Only Democrats voted for it. Now they have created this incredible mess--this unworkable, unsustainable, unaffordable healthcare system within the rest of our healthcare system. They look to us, the Republicans--the people who did not create this problem--and ask: OK. Now how are you going to fix it?

They don't have any better ideas. As a matter of fact, what they want is more of the same. They want zero reforms. They want more waste, fraud, and abuse. They want more money to go to insurance companies. They want 100 percent of the tax dollars that paid for the Affordable Care Act, or the ObamaCare exchanges, to continue going to insurance companies.

President Trump has said: Let's get the money to the consumers so they can choose what they want.

I think that is a better idea.

Plus, insurance companies skim about 20 percent off of those taxpayer-provided subsidies for their administrative costs and profits. And do you know what? Insurance companies are among the most profitable companies in America--certainly since ObamaCare started.

Then, finally, they want to break what has been, roughly--let me see--a 50-year consensus on whether tax dollars should be used to pay for abortions. We know that the issue of abortion divides much of America, but one area that we have agreed on is this consensus named after Henry Hyde, who was a famous legislator and House Member from Illinois. It is something called the Hyde amendment, which says that no tax dollars can go for abortions, and Democrats want to throw that out the window.

Well, rather than just point the finger at our Democratic colleagues, we actually have come up with a better idea, and I am grateful to our colleagues Senator Crapo, who is chairman of the Finance Committee, and Senator Cassidy, a medical doctor, who is head of the Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions Committee, for coming up with an alternative proposal that is predicted to bring premium prices down about 11 percent. Now, that is real money that people can use to spend on other things.

Again, an 18-percent increase each year after year, after year? This is a train wreck for people on these Affordable Care Act policies.

As I said, the proposal by Senator Crapo and Senator Cassidy aligns with what President Trump has said, which is, let's get the money to the people. Wouldn't you rather have the money to buy the kind of coverage that you want and need? We are not all the same. We have people of different ages with different healthcare needs. Some young and healthy people may figure they don't need as comprehensive a coverage as older folks do. But our Democratic colleagues believe that we are all cut out of the same cloth and that we are all the same when it comes to a need for healthcare, and it is just not true.

This legislation that has been proposed is not by the Democrats, who want more of the same--a broken system. The alternative that Senator Crapo and Senator Cassidy proposed, we voted on, and our Democratic colleagues did not support it at all. We sure didn't vote for this mess, what we call Dems' dirty ObamaCare bill. This is a disaster, and it was sold under false pretenses. We need to do better for our constituents who need access to affordable healthcare.

Well, our Democratic colleagues are calling for a clean extension of the enhanced ObamaCare subsidies because they don't want any changes in what I have described here, and that is the heart of the problem. We know there is a whole host of problems with this ObamaCare subsidy, and any extension that fails to address it is more apt to be described as what I would call a dirty bill. It doesn't solve the problem.

So what are the issues?

Well, first of all, we know that these subsidies are rife with fraud; in other words, your tax dollar is being misappropriated to fraudsters. We have been saying that all along.

Now we have a new report from the Government Accountability Office which demonstrates beyond a shadow of a doubt what we have always suspected to be true. They have documented it. The report paints a picture that makes the notion of a so-called clean extension, with no changes, outright laughable. That is not a clean extension.

The investigators at the GAO created fake identities and Social Security numbers for 24 individuals who did not exist. They did this in order to find out what would happen when they took advantage of these ObamaCare subsidies.

They took these imaginary 24 and tried to enroll them in Affordable Care Act plans through the ObamaCare exchanges for 2024 and 2025. Shockingly, they were able to successfully enroll almost all of these imaginary individuals in subsidized coverage because the insurance companies were more than happy to take those tax dollars in exchange for providing this phantom coverage.

For 2024, the auditors were able to secure health coverage for all four of the applicants submitted, worth approximately $2,350 per month. In 2025, 19 of the 20 applicants were able to qualify for subsidized coverage worth more than $10,000 per month--and these people didn't exist.

Of the 24 fake identities, 1 of them was not allowed to be enrolled. All the incentives for the insurance companies are: Let's issue the policy. We don't care if this is a real person or not. What we want is the premium dollar, and we want the taxpayer to pay for it.

The notion that someone can enroll in a taxpayer-subsidized health insurance policy with a nonexistent identity should be enough to stop us dead in our tracks and say: We need to change it. We need to fix this. But the fraud does not stop there.

GAO also found more than 29,000 instances in 2023 and nearly 68,000 instances in 2024 of a single Social Security number being used to enroll in more than 1 plan in a given year. So you had people with the same Social Security number able to enroll in multiple plans in a given year; meaning, these Social Security numbers were being traded and assigned to more than one person.

Again, all the incentives are for the insurance companies to issue as many policies as they can because that is how they make more money.

During its probe, GAO discovered that the Federal Marketplace does not prohibit multiple enrollments per Social Security number. So under the status quo, which Democrats want to continue, one person could enroll in multiple policies. Again, in some instances, they might not even know that they are enrolled in multiple policies.

The excuse given for this practice is it protects the Social Security number's holder from fraud or identity theft, but I am sure we could find a better safeguard against Social Security fraud than simply letting multiple people enroll in healthcare with the same Social Security number without raising any questions or any red flags.

So imagine if you were a victim of identity theft. Wouldn't you want to be notified if somebody was using your identity, your Social Security number, in order to get health insurance?

Democrats have been telling us, time and time again, that illegal immigrants cannot access taxpayer-subsidized healthcare. But we know from the GAO report that there are no mechanisms that prevent an illegal alien from enrolling in coverage if they have access to somebody else's Social Security number.

As if this isn't enough, the list of offenses go on and on and on.

In 2024, CMS reported approximately 275,000 reports from consumers that

they were either enrolled or had made changes to their insurance without their consent. Now, this is a problem. If you are taking a medication or even if you have a particular doctor you like, having your plan change without your knowledge or consent could result in the loss of coverage altogether or force you to change doctors unnecessarily.

But this underscores one of the most significant problems that my Republican colleagues and I have raised with these so-called ObamaCare enhanced subsidies. They directly line the pockets of insurance companies without lowering the costs for consumers and taxpayers, and they do so in a way that is rife with fraud.

When insurance brokers are enrolling patients or making changes to their coverage without their consent, the insurance company receives those tax dollars for the enrollee. But since the patient doesn't--or may not--have knowledge that they have even been enrolled, or perhaps they are already enrolled in some other policy elsewhere, the insurance company will have to pay out zero in claims.

That is what insurance companies like. They like to collect the premium, and they like to pay as few claims as possible. So it is a perfect arrangement for them, but it is not for the taxpayer.

These ObamaCare-enhanced subsidies are rife with fraud and should not be extended without meaningful reforms. In addition, the problems raised by the GAO report, the subsidies don't contain Hyde protections. I mentioned that a moment ago.

People who have a conscientious objection to abortion policies shouldn't have to be forced, using their tax dollars, to subsidize it for people who want to fund abortions and transgender procedures.

Again, this used to be the 50-year-long consensus known as the Hyde amendment. Many hard-working taxpayers who elected us have religious or moral objections to these operations--myself included. And the government should not be forcing Americans to participate or subsidize practices that violate their deeply held beliefs by financing them with their tax dollars.

The Democrats' plan does nothing to address rampant fraud, the use of tax dollars to line the pockets of insurance companies, and the lack of Hyde protections in these subsidies. The lack of these changes does not mean this extension proposed by Democrats is clean--far from it.

We understand--I understand--that Texans need access to affordable healthcare, but this is not it. We look forward to working together to find a real workable solution to healthcare affordability.

What I worry about is that our Democrat colleagues really don't want to solve this problem. They want to have a political issue they can ride all the way to the midterm elections. That is not just a cynical view of mine, I think that is a very likely reality.

We can do better. We need to do better. Our constituents expect us to do better by working together to come up with affordable solutions for them without taking advantage of the taxpayers and lining the pockets of wealthy insurance companies.

I yield the floor.

I suggest the absence of a quorum.