Floor Statements

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 President, I ask unanimous consent that the order for the quorum call be rescinded.

Mr. President, we are nearing the halfway point of the 117th Congress, and it is time to look back and see what our Democratic colleagues now in the majority have accomplished.

Unfortunately, we have seen a lot of wasted valuable time and ignoring of critical tasks and failing to meet some of the most basic requirements of government. Our colleagues used the first few months of the year to ram through a partisan $2 trillion spending bill, and then they wasted the summer on the majority leader's designed-to-fail agenda.

It wasn't about actually getting anything done. It was about messaging. And then they threw it in cruise control this fall, refusing to let the Senate vote on anything other than low-level nominees and, again, those messaging bills.

Well, unsurprisingly, this partisan approach to governing--despite the fact that we have an evenly divided Senate and perhaps an evenly divided government, this partisan approach, unsurprisingly, did not lead to any good results.

One of the biggest unforced errors in this tardiness so far has been the national defense authorization bill. Now, I happen to believe that providing for the common defense and supporting our men and women in the military, keeping the American people safe, protecting our freedoms is the most important work that we do here. And, indeed, that is reflected by the fact that the National Defense Authorization Act has been passed for 60 years, I believe it is--60 consecutive years.

Well, this is not a particularly controversial bill. In fact, it came out of the Armed Services Committee with an impressive 23-to-3 vote. You have to look long and hard to find any bill that passes the Senate that enjoys as much bipartisan support.

For some unknown reason, though, the Democratic leader refused to bring the Defense authorization bill to the floor. But then when he finally did, after it had been sitting around waiting for action for literally months, then he attached a controversial provision--a bill, the so-called Endless Frontiers Act, which had not been processed by the House, but in an attempt to force the House to take that bill.

Well, as it turned out, after broad bipartisan support for the Defense authorization bill, he couldn't get the votes here in the Senate to advance that bill, so he had to basically pull it down. Well, when you try to add something as big as the Endless Frontiers bill that did pass the Senate to a bipartisan Defense appropriations bill, that created a lot of problems.

So you can't sit on a bill for months and then at the last moment try to jam another bill onto it without at least giving people an opportunity for a robust debate and amendment process. And, as we know, during the time that I have been here, and I am sure during the time that the Presiding Officer has been here, we have less and less of that robust debate and less and less of actually offering and voting on amendments on the Senate floor. It is very different from the time I came here, when it was commonplace.

So I am disappointed that it has taken the leader this long to bring the NDAA to the floor and that, so far, we have been thwarted in our attempt to get this bipartisan bill done. I hear rumors that, in fact, there may be a bill being preconferenced with the House. So my hope is we will get a chance to vote on this bill in the coming days.

Of course, as I indicated, this legislation sends critical support to our servicemembers and their families and ensures that our military bases in Texas, Connecticut, and elsewhere have the funding they need to support the missions they serve in around the world.

But it also provides the military the means to take stock in the global threat landscape. Since 9/11, we have been very focused on the terrorism threat. Unfortunately, at the same time, we have seen China and Russia continue to assert themselves more aggressively around the world. So now we are in the so-called ``great powers competition'' once again, and it is critical that we have this tool known as deterrence that only comes through strength.

Passing this bill and providing the resources and authorities needed for our military are essential to providing that strength, which will lead, hopefully, to deterrence and greater peace.

So the NDAA, as I said, is one of the most important assignments that we have, and there is simply no excuse for leaving this in the cleanup pile to be done between now and Christmas. But having said that, I hope we do get it done.

As I said, there are other past-due assignments--something as basic as funding the functions of the government through passing 12 separate appropriations bills that go through a committee process and are open to amendment in the committee.

Congress's deadline to pass the funding bills doesn't pop up out of nowhere. It hits the same day every year. Back in September, when the Senate should have passed a group of those appropriation bills to fund the government for the next fiscal year, our colleagues on the other side, led by the Democratic leader, kicked the can down the road for 2 months. Rather than use that time to play catch-up and pass those annual appropriations bills, they simply lollygagged.

The funding deadline came last week, and what happened?

Well, there was another continuing resolution. They kicked the can down the road yet once again.

This year, our colleagues have found the time to vote on partisan, dead-on-arrival messaging bills, but they have yet to bring a single appropriations bill to the floor for a vote. We will see if that changes before February, when the current continuing resolution runs out.

Then there is another assignment that our colleagues have ignored for months, and that is the debt ceiling. While they are more than happy to spend money like they did at the first part of this year--another $2 trillion--and add to the national debt and plan to spend at least another--anywhere from probably close to $4.5 trillion additional more money on the Build Back Better program--I know it has been advertised as $1.7 trillion, but outside entities like the Wharton business school at the University of Pennsylvania have said that if you ignore the stops and starts that are set up in the bill as gimmicks that make it scoreless and if you actually extend the bill for the full 10-year budget window, it really is spending closer to $4.8 trillion.

We are trying to get the Congressional Budget Office and the Joint Committee on Taxation to give us a realistic score. But if you see this $2 trillion spent at the beginning of the year with another anticipated potential up to 4.5, 4.8, $5 trillion, you can see why raising the debt limit is so critical. The Treasury Secretary said that we will hit the debt limit by December 15, just a week from tomorrow.

Again, this crisis did not just pop up out of nowhere. Since July, the Republican leader has told our friends across the aisle that they need to raise the debt ceiling on their own.

Some have asked: Why do we insist that Democrats raise the debt ceiling on their own when ordinarily this is a bipartisan effort?

Well, part of this is just a necessary political accountability. If our colleagues are going to spend trillions of dollars in borrowed money and add to the debt ceiling, at some point there has to be some transparency and electoral accountability.

I am told now that Senator Schumer and Senator McConnell have agreed on a process that will allow our Democratic colleagues to fulfill their responsibilities to raise the debt ceiling on their own and to suffer the accountability that goes along with it.

All along there was a clear roadmap that could have avoided this confusion if our colleagues had simply used the budget reconciliation process. Debt ceilings are routinely raised using the reconciliation process. There is no problem with the Byrd bath or any other concerns. It is something that is written into the Budget Act of 1974 that they could have done on their own earlier, but by delaying here to the last minute, when Secretary Yellen says we are going to hit the debt ceiling here by the 15th of December, they have created another crisis--again, of their own making.

The reason our colleagues have essentially failed at the fundamentals of governing over this last year is that they have been distracted by their own

partisan ambitions. Again, you would think, after the election of 2020--when you have an evenly divided Senate wherein the Vice President is the one who breaks ties and actually determines, because of that, who is in the majority and who is in the minority--that it would council up some bipartisan consensus-making when the Senate is split, essentially, evenly.

Instead, we have seen one of the most aggressive, radical agendas that we have seen since I have been in the Senate, and not surprisingly, our Democratic colleagues have had trouble convincing even Members of their own caucus to go along with it.

The Build Back Better program--or what I would call ``Build Back Bankrupt''--is a bill that gives millionaires and billionaires massive tax breaks. Strangely, from the party that claims to be representing the working class and the middle class of the country, they want to prioritize the tax breaks for millionaires and billionaires while forcing middle-class families, who can't afford to buy expensive electric cars, to subsidize these fancy cars driven by others who can afford them.

Our colleagues say the spending spree will cost taxpayers about $2 trillion, which, of course, is hardly a bargain to begin with. I remember when a billion dollars used to be a lot of money around here, and now trillions of dollars are casually tossed around like it is an insignificant--or not as serious--a matter as it is.

Yet we know the spending spree--as I said, the ``Build Back Bankrupt'' or ``Build Back Broke,'' whatever you want to call it, or ``Build Back Bad,'' and there are other names you can give it--could cost as much as $5 trillion, as I said, which is more than 2\1/2\ times what has been advertised.

We started at $6 trillion from the chairman of the Budget Committee, Senator Sanders. Then it was paired down, supposedly, to $3.5 trillion, and then to $1.75 trillion. The only way that was done was to propose a piece of legislation that was chock-full of gimmicks and cliffs and phony, false starts in programs that will, in all likelihood, be continued should our Democratic colleagues stay in the majority or achieve a true majority.

This multitrillion-dollar bill will drive up energy costs. We have already seen inflation eating away at the income of working families. When you go fill up your gas tank at the gas station or when you sit down to Thanksgiving dinner, everything is more expensive now because of inflation, making it even tougher for Texas families, among others, to make ends meet.

Of course, then, there is the President's falsely representing the cost of this piece of legislation--actually having the temerity to say that this costs zero. I don't know what he takes the American people for, but they are not stupid. They understand that, when somebody stands up there and says we are going to do something that has been scored to the trillions of dollars and that it is going to cost zero, it really is an insult to their intelligence.

For the past several months, our colleagues have devoted almost all of their energy to this ``Build Back Bankrupt'' plan and, of course, in the process, have failed to meet any of the most basic responsibilities of governing. Now that it is finals season and we are running out of time before the Christmas holidays, they are trying to salvage their poor performance of accomplishment this year.

Our colleagues are quick to point the finger and blame Republicans for the Senate's failures, but Republicans aren't the ones setting the schedule, and, frankly, the message being sent from the Democratic side of the aisle is: We don't want to work with Republicans; we want to do this all by ourselves.

If they get the votes, they can, but they are having some difficulties now--particularly on the ``Build Back Broke'' plan--of even getting Democrats to vote for it. I, actually, think our colleagues from West Virginia and Arizona are doing some of their Democratic colleagues a favor because, I dare say, there are other Members of the Democratic caucus who are going to be on the ballot in 2022, who would prefer not to vote on some of these very controversial provisions.

Our colleagues, though, do control the Senate, the House, and the White House, and every aspect of the legislative process is under their control. So they bear responsibility for the delay in the Defense authorization bill; they bear responsibility for not passing regular appropriations; and they bear responsibility for the concerns that have been expressed by reaching the debt limit, as Secretary Yellen has said, and then, finally, by trying to pass through the House this reckless tax-and-spending spree bill--Build Back Better, ``Build Back Broke,'' ``Build Back Bankrupt''--by focusing so much on these pieces of legislation that will, in my estimation, never pass or certainly not in their current forms.

In ignoring their other basic responsibilities of governing, they are the ones who, ultimately, will get this report card for their performance during the first year of their majority.

So, in being presented with this reality of an evenly split Congress, our colleagues can make a choice as to whether to try to work together and build consensus and do things that can actually pass or to continue down this pathway of purely partisan attempts to legislate. The choice is theirs.

I yield the floor.

Mr. President, in my lifetime, the People's Republic of China has gone from a poor and isolated country to one that now accounts for 20 percent of global domestic product. There is no question that the driving force behind this dramatic shift is the ruthlessness of the Chinese Communist Party led by President Xi. The CCP's ruling strategy can best be described as win at all costs, which means that China never thinks twice about disregarding basic values and international norms. But there is no question that the most immediate and grave threats are against countries close to China's borders.

Last month, I led a congressional delegation to visit the Indo- Pacific to learn more from the people on the ground doing the hard work about the challenges they face and that we face in the Indo-Pacific. In my conversations with leaders in the Philippines, Taiwan, and India, I noticed they used a different vocabulary to describe China's behavior than what we hear in Washington, DC. They didn't just talk about China's ambitions; they warned of its threats of aggression. They didn't just share concerns about China's unification with Taiwan; they spoke of the potential for an invasion. They didn't just bring up human rights abuses; they condemned the blatant genocide committed against the Uighurs and other ethnic minorities in China.

Words matter, of course, and the soft lexicon that is often used to describe the Chinese Communist Party and the People's Republic of China here in the United States and particularly inside the beltway has the potential to create a false impression about China's objectives, and it plays right into their hands.

I think we should not continue to downplay the risks to the global world order and to peace itself by what China is doing. This isn't just a government interested in competing with the United States and other countries by playing by the rules of the international order; the Chinese Communist Party is an aggressive, even belligerent and hostile power that has made economic gains through stealing intellectual property and other activities that belie its stated ambitions to become part of the liberal world order.

For example, it squashes opposition by committing genocide against its own people and muzzling--even murdering--dissidents. China has literally become a police state, where the volumes of data that they have vacuumed up in that country and the ubiquitous technical surveillance that is mainly cameras that chronicle every aspect of the lives of their citizens and the use of things like artificial intelligence have allowed them to essentially control everything that does go on in China. And these are the same tools that they intend to use on other parts of the world.

We know China has spent a lot of money developing its military resources. It has come a long way, while the United States and other countries were focused post-9/11 on the Global War on Terror. While we were focused on the Middle East, the PRC and the CCP wasted no time in rebuilding their capabilities from a military standpoint.

And they are now aggressively claiming other parts of the region, not just Taiwan, but contested islands in the South China Sea that are claimed by Japan, by the Philippines, and other countries as well.

Well, as I mentioned, one of the greatest looming threats in the region is a potential invasion of Taiwan by the People's Republic of China.

Of course, as you can see, Taiwan is just a small island of about 24 million people, just off the coast of mainland China. It is not much larger than the State of Maryland.

In every possible way you can imagine, Taiwan is a stark contrast with China. For one, it is a true democracy. Voters go to the polls with the confidence that the election results are not predetermined. Successful businesses--and there are many of them--are built on good old-fashioned hard work, not government favoritism. And the people in Taiwan--the Republic of China--enjoy the same freedoms that we do here in the United States: freedom of speech, freedom of press, freedom of religion, and freedom of assembly.

Taiwan has been a self-governing entity for more than 70 years, but the Chinese Communist Party falsely asserts that the island republic is part of its territory. Indeed, Taiwan faces China as the last outpost of democracy, standing watch against authoritarianism.

Our congressional delegation met with the commander of the Indo- Pacific Command who described the current power dynamic rather succinctly. He said it is not a question of if China moves on Taiwan, but a question of when.

Indeed, the language we heard from our military leadership and others in the region was far more urgent in terms of the threat of the People's Republic of China against Taiwan than anything I have heard here in Washington, DC.

According to our top military leaders, we have an idea how long Xi might wait. He himself has said that he wants to be ready by 2027. But there is absolutely no guarantee that President Xi and the Chinese Communist Party of the People's Republic of China--there is no guarantee they won't move at another time of their choosing.

As I said, Taiwan is not the only nation on the CCP's list. China has territorial claims against a number of its neighbors. If you closed your eyes and just threw a dart at this region, you would likely hit one or more of those contested areas. Japan, the Philippines, Vietnam, Bhutan, India--all of those countries claim sovereign territory that is also contested and claimed by the Chinese Communist Party of the People's Republic of China.

Of course, it hasn't even been 25 years since China took control of Hong Kong under the ``one country, two systems'' framework. China had promised Hong Kong it would retain a high degree of autonomy for at least a half a century, but, obviously, Beijing eroded the freedoms and independence of Hong Kong to the point of basically hijacking that city and that entity.

The Indian Minister of Foreign Affairs in Delhi told our delegation that Taiwan isn't the problem; it is a China problem. And I think he has a point.

In other words, what is at stake here is much larger than the future of just one nation. It is the entire scope of Beijing's power and its ambitions in the region. Taiwan is not the final goal. It is the next step in a quest to reach regional dominance.

Taiwan will likely be the first target because it has been identified by President Xi and the Chinese Communist Party, but it certainly won't be the last. I think it would be the ultimate in naivety, first, to think, well, this is just about Taiwan. It is not just about Taiwan. China will continue to threaten; intimidate; and, unfortunately, I think, ultimately threaten and invade its neighbors. And if that aggression goes unchecked, the CCP's power grab will reach further and further.

Plus, I believe in the power of deterrence, what Ronald Reagan called

peace through strength. Nobody wants a military conflict in this region--nobody.

If the CCP can attain its goals without a shot being fired, they will try to do that. They are already trying to do that. But the fact of the matter is, if the People's Republic of China and the Chinese Communist Party worked to conduct a military invasion of Taiwan, there are a multitude of risks of mistakes, miscalculations, and other dangers that could lead to a larger conflict.

And I believe we have a responsibility in the United States to make sure, to the extent humanly possible, that that does not happen. We want peace, but we also want to stand up to the kind of aggression that we are seeing in practice and being threatened in the Indo-Pacific region. I believe that countering and first confronting the threats from the PRC is one of the greatest national security imperatives of our generation.

Russia, obviously, is a significant power, mainly because it holds nuclear weapons; but it mainly tries to find places where the United States is having a hard time and tries to make those situations more challenging for us. It doesn't compare to the Chinese Communist Party and the PRC in terms of its regional ambitions, its attempt to project its power and its control over the region.

We need to reorient the way that our country views and responds to this threat, and I believe that time is of the essence. As I said, some people have said that President Xi could wait until as late as 2027 to try to take Taiwan, but there is no guarantee that it couldn't happen earlier if they deem it an opportunity to exist for them to do so.

The longer Beijing is treated as a reasonable, goal-oriented country by the international community, the more aggressive it will become. One seemingly small step we must take is to describe China's actions with accurate terms. We can't do the CCP any favor using watered-down euphemisms like human rights abuses when what we are really talking about is genocide. Here in the Senate, as we know, words are important, but those words need to be accompanied with action.

We will soon vote on the National Defense Authorization Act, which will help us raise the issue and visibility of this potential conflict and raise the opportunity for deterrence in response to growing threats posed by China. We can do good work here on the Defense authorization bill to raise the cost to the PRC in the event they decided to invade Taiwan.

The Defense Authorization Act includes a bipartisan bill I introduced with Senator Duckworth called the Taiwan Partnership Act. This bill would establish a formal partnership between the U.S. National Guard and the Taiwanese defense forces to strengthen Taiwan's preparedness.

Should troops need to deploy quickly in the event of a crisis, they would be armed with the same knowledge and skills as our dedicated U.S. National Guardsmen. This would also help Taiwan build up much of its asymmetric defenses.

The Defense Authorization Act also includes legislation I introduced with Senator King, from Maine, to ensure that the United States and Taiwan can improve defense interoperability. There shouldn't be any barriers to cooperating on important security measures like integrated air and missile defense systems.

The Defense Authorization Act includes other provisions to increase defense cooperation with Taiwan and equip the U.S. Indo-Pacific Command with greater resources. It also ensures that the United States will take a stronger approach and confront the threats being made by the Chinese Communist Party.

This is not a partisan issue, as you can tell. After the delegation I led to Taipei, it was followed on by a bipartisan coalition mainly from Members of the House, and I think it is absolutely critical that that spirit of bipartisanship and the reality of bipartisanship continues to exist when it comes to the threat posed by the People's Republic of China and the Chinese Communist Party.

I appreciate colleagues on both sides of the aisle who have championed the provisions I mentioned and those who may have other ideas about how we can deter acts of aggression, not only against Taiwan but against other countries in the region when it comes to disputed islands and other territory.

I want to thank Chairman Reed, Ranking Member Inhofe, and our colleagues on the Armed Services Committee for all the work they have put into this bill so far. One of our most solemn responsibilities is to provide for the common defense, and this is the best way to ensure that our national defense is prepared to meet the challenges on the horizon.

I yield the floor.

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

Mr. President, back in September, a small little Texas border town, Del Rio, TX, was thrown into the national spotlight. This is a small town on the U.S.-Mexico border of 35,000 people, and over the course of several days they had 15 to 20,000 Haitian migrants show up, camping out underneath a bridge.

Migrants huddled under the bridge to escape triple-digit temperatures. It is still hot in September in Texas. And they had minimal access to sanitation, food, and clean water. The images of this crisis looked like they were taken from a Third World country, not from the United States of America.

This massive surge should not have caught the Biden administration off guard. As a matter of fact, they should know that their policies have incentivized and encouraged this sort of influx of humanity across our border.

Border Patrol had been asking their leadership for more resources as far back as June, but come September, those resources weren't available; and despite the warnings, the Biden administration was completely unprepared.

So what is the Border Patrol supposed to do when you see this mass influx of humanity come across the border for which the administration is completely unprepared in a town that lacks the infrastructure to deal with this influx?

Well, the Border Patrol did what they needed to do. They were pulled off the front lines to provide humanitarian relief. But what that means is it leaves huge stretches of the border unprotected against illegal immigration or, perhaps even more dangerous, illegal drug smuggling coming across the border.

And the criminal organizations that operate these smuggling operations, whether they are migrants or they are drugs, they understand this. This is part of their game plan. But it is like they are playing three-dimensional chess while the U.S. Government is playing checkers. It is just not a fair fight or a fair matchup. But so far it has not, apparently, sunk into the Biden administration.

Fortunately, we did have some organizations, like the Val Verde Border Humanitarian Coalition, step up to feed, house, and arrange transportation for these migrants. You could imagine what the challenge was just to feed 15 to 20,000 people. There wasn't a Porta-Potty to be had for 300 miles after they consolidated there to deal with the sanitation issues alone.

If not for the dedicated Border Patrol agents, U.S. Customs and Border Protection, and the incredible community organizations in Del Rio, this crisis could have been much, much worse. As a matter of fact, the sector chief of the Del Rio Sector told me that the fact that they did not have a loss of life was a miracle.

I want to publicly express my gratitude to those who, in countless ways, went above and beyond the call of duty to mitigate this crisis the best they did. They don't receive the gratitude they deserve, but they need more than our gratitude. They need our help. After the makeshift camp under the bridge was cleared, the national news died down. The reporters and cameras went away, but the problem did not. It is not a question of ``if'' there will be a repetition of what we saw in Del Rio in September; it is a question of ``when'' because none of the reasons those 15,000 to 20,000 Haitian migrants have shown up has been fixed.

Last week, I visited Del Rio, and I met with leaders in the community who told me about the challenges they are facing. The new chief of the Border Patrol sector, whom I mentioned a moment ago, told me that, while there were 15,000 to 20,000 migrants in that one episode in September, they are still averaging about 1,000 migrant encounters a day. So, in about 2 weeks' time, they had the equivalent of what we saw last September in terms of the 15,000 to 20,000 migrants because they are still getting 1,000 people a day. Yet it doesn't command the attention of the news media and of the Nation like this incident in September did.

So things are not getting any better. Agents are still being diverted from their normal duties to care for migrants, including unaccompanied children, which leaves, again, vast swaths of the border unprotected through which drugs are run--drugs that last year alone took the lives of more than 100,000 American citizens, because the vast majority of fentanyl, methamphetamine, heroin, cocaine, and other illegal drugs come across our southwestern border.

The cartels understand, if you flood the zone and overwhelm the capacity of the local Border Patrol to deal with it, you are going to leave unprotected areas, and that is exactly the plan of these transnational criminal organizations.

I spoke with a group of about 30 Border Patrol agents at muster. That is when they show up for their shift, from one shift to the next, where they learn, sort of, what is the latest information they need to know before they go out on patrol. When they were asked to raise their hands if they would be working out in the field that day, patrolling the border, not a single hand was raised. That is because these 30 Border Patrol agents were going to be pushing paper and processing migrants instead of being out on the frontlines, protecting our country against illegal immigration and the influx of illegal drugs.

Again, the cartels understand this. This is part of their game plan, but, apparently, the Biden administration and the powers that be here in Washington, DC, are completely oblivious to what the push and pull factors are for illegal immigration and illegal drugs across our border.

These men and women of the Border Patrol are brave professionals, and they would normally be out on the frontlines, stopping dangerous people and substances from sneaking across the border, but now they are primarily tackling administrative duties--processing paperwork, watching children, transporting migrants--and trying to clean up the mess created by a failed border security policy by the Biden administration. This is a dangerous situation that puts our entire country at risk.

While these highly trained and dedicated agents are pushing paper, who knows what is coming across the border?

There is a clear and urgent need for Congress to take action to address this crisis in a meaningful and responsible way. Everybody, from Secretary Mayorkas on down, says that this is what is required under current policies. So my humble suggestion is those policies need to change, and that means only Congress can pass new laws to change those policies.

So far, our Democratic colleagues, especially the leadership, have shown zero interest in engaging at all on how to solve this problem. They have spent the bulk of this year trying to figure out how you could break the rules of the Senate to reform our entire immigration system by using the budget. This process wasn't designed to fast-track partisan legislation or to circumvent responsible policymaking. It is not a loophole that allows the majority party to do whatever it wants.

The Senate Parliamentarian has already confirmed several times that our Democratic colleagues cannot use this budget reconciliation process to grant citizenship to millions of undocumented immigrants, but they keep coming back, and, for some reason, the very people who would benefit from these policies don't seem to hold our Democratic colleagues accountable for showing up empty-handed, notwithstanding their promises of help to people who are here in an undocumented status.

Our Democratic colleagues continue arguing among themselves about how much of the population should receive some form of legal status without their putting one ounce of thought or ounce of effort into how the population got so big in the first place. They are certainly not considering what we need to do to prevent the number of people living in the shadows from continuing to increase.

I have said repeatedly that there is a clear and urgent crisis on our southern border, and President Biden and his administration have proven to be either unwilling or incapable of addressing it. The numbers tell the tale. Last year, border crossings hit a record high--more than 1.7 million border crossings in a single year. That is a 30-year high. The backlog of immigration court cases has grown to nearly 1.5 million-- that is 1.5 million pending court cases before immigration judges--and the average wait time for a single case to be decided is more than 2\1/ 2\ years.

Congress has a duty to take action to create change in this broken system, and it can only be done in a bipartisan way. It is not too late for our friends on the other side of the aisle to work with us and to abandon this attempt to do an ``amnesty by partisan vote'' on a Budget Act. It is not too late for them to work with us to address the crisis at hand, and I have a suggestion about a good place to start.

Earlier this year, I introduced a bipartisan-bicameral bill with a fellow border State Senator, Ms. Sinema, called the Bipartisan Border Solutions Act. We have also been proud to work with two of our House colleagues, Congressman Henry Cuellar, a Blue Dog Democrat from Laredo--as the Presiding Officer knows in having been to Laredo recently--and Tony Gonzales, who represents the 23rd Congressional District, the largest contiguous congressional district to the U.S.- Mexico border. This legislation makes two modest but important changes to alleviate the strain on law enforcement and improve the way we process and care for these migrants.

One would establish four regional processing centers in high-traffic areas along the border. These would be, in effect, a one-stop shop for the various government Agencies involved in processing the migrants. Migrants can receive medical screenings, have their identities verified, and go through a criminal history check--all in one place. They can also begin the legal process of seeking asylum. They will complete their ``credible fear'' interviews, go through legal orientation, and receive the documents and information they need for their future court dates.

Right now, in the absence of regional processing centers, that all takes place wherever the bodies come across at a given location along the border. That is what takes the Border Patrol off the frontlines, opening up these huge gaps in our border security for illegal drugs to come across. So the very modest step of creating regional processing centers will at least help with that.

Second, our bill addresses staffing shortages that have made this situation even more challenging, and, indeed, that is the goal of these criminal organizations that move millions of migrants across our border. But it will require the hiring of hundreds of Customs and Border Protection officers and Border Patrol processing coordinators so agents, like those I spoke of in Del Rio, can get back on the frontlines.

This legislation calls for 150 new immigration judges. Given the size of the backlog of the immigration docket, we need more help. We need 300 asylum officers, ICE litigation teams, and other personnel to help adjudicate asylum claims and work through the immigration court backlog.

But make no doubt about it. These criminal organizations are smart, they are well organized, and they understand the gaps and know how to exploit them. It is because they have become experts at exploiting the gaps, in the absence of any action by Congress, that what we have seen in this last year is going to continue into the foreseeable future. What we saw in Del Rio last September will be repeated at some point unless we change the way we handle these migrants.

These are commonsense reforms, like I said, that have received bicameral and bipartisan support, which, for 10 months, has completely bewildered the Biden administration. It is not a solution to every problem we are facing today, but it is a place to start. I would yield to anybody who has a better idea or to anybody who has any ideas at all, but, so far, all we hear from the Biden administration is crickets--pretending like the problem doesn't exist and will, hopefully, go away.

Meanwhile, the President's poll numbers, when it comes to the border and illegal immigration, continue to plummet. You would think self- interest alone and the political future of the Democratic Party and of this administration would cause them to wake up and decide: Hey, what we are doing now isn't working; so let's try something different.

Well, I hope that Senate Democrats, who have the majority in the Senate and who set the agenda both here on the floor and in committees, will consider the bipartisan-bicameral bill that Senator Sinema and Congressmen Cuellar and Gonzales and I have proposed.

Only the chairman of the committee--the Judiciary Committee--can actually set a hearing on a bill and schedule a markup where we can vote on it, where we can offer amendments and shape the bill according to the will of the Members of the Senate. So far, Senator Tillis from North Carolina and I have written a letter to Senator Durbin, the chairman of the Judiciary Committee, asking him to hold such a hearing and a markup. We are not suggesting we can dictate the outcome, because every member of the Judiciary Committee would be able to offer any additional suggestions or amendments that they might have, but we are asking him to get off the dime, to get out of neutral, and actually do something to help improve the broken situation at the border.

Senate committees used to be the usual place for debates on critical issues and legislation, but now it seems like the Democratic chairmen have ceded all of their power to the authors of the reckless tax-and- spending spree bill that has now passed the House. They complain about which policies were cut out of the latest bill without stopping to consider the fact that they could move these same policies through the normal committee process.

After the Parliamentarian confirmed that Democrats cannot grant legal status or citizenship through the budget process, the chairman of the Judiciary Committee professed to be deeply disappointed, but he wasn't surprised. He knows the rules as well as anybody else, and it seems disingenuous to me to say he was deeply disappointed in not being able to move immigration law changes through a partisan budget reconciliation process when he himself has the authority to schedule a markup and a hearing of a bill that would actually make things better. There is nothing that prevents Chairman Durbin from holding a hearing on these proposals in the Judiciary Committee this week.

Make no mistake. Republicans want the Judiciary Committee to start working on legislation to address the failures of our immigration system and not just the border crisis. As I suggested a moment ago, this summer, Senator Tillis from North Carolina and I asked the chairman of the committee to take up a targeted DACA bill, Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals, that only addresses the active DACA population.

We weren't holding these young people who have done nothing wrong but find themselves now in an unstable future because of the litigation that is still pending. We didn't ask for anything for that. We just asked that the Senate Judiciary Committee actually do its job by taking up a bill and voting on a piece of legislation and making it available for floor action.

Many of our Democratic colleagues have been promising the Dreamers, sometimes known as the DACA population--same difference. These are people who came across the border illegally as children, but in America we don't hold children responsible for the mistakes their parents make. There are many of us on our side of the aisle who would be happy to engage in a discussion and debate and vote on relief and a more stable future for these young people who, as I have said, did nothing wrong but now find themselves in a legal conundrum. These are the young men and women whose fate has hung in the balance of every court ruling for the last 10 years, and the chairman of the Judiciary Committee is advocating giving them legal status.

Now he has two Republican Senators asking him to bring up a bill that achieves that goal, but he refuses, even went so far as to say he was disappointed we asked him to do his job. Instead, he insists on tying the fate of these young people to the Democrats' impossible-to-pass mass legalization proposal.

Our Democratic colleagues seem to think this massive partisan bill is the only way they can prove to voters that they know how to govern, but they have got it backward.

In reality, Democrats' burning focus on this one reckless bill has kept them from achieving anything else, including immigration reform.

Our colleagues have done nothing to address the border crisis, so far have done nothing to fund the government, have done nothing to lift the debt ceiling, have done nothing to support our military, and have done nothing to meet the Senate's most basic responsibilities.

It is true that by virtue of a 50-50 Senate and a Democrat Vice President that our Democratic colleagues control the majority in this body and they control a majority in the House of Representatives and they have the White House. But one thing is for sure, this is a far cry from living up to our responsibilities to govern wisely and appropriately for the American people.

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, our Democratic colleagues in the House and, to some extent, here in the Senate have talked about how the so- called Build Back Better legislation is popular, but I think the main reason it is popular is because, frankly, many Members of Congress and certainly the public at large don't know what is in it. So I would like to spend just a few minutes talking about that.

First of all, there is the size of the bill. Originally, the Budget Committee chairman, the Senator from Vermont, floated a $6 trillion spending bonanza. This, of course, was on top of about $5 trillion we spent last year in a bipartisan fashion dealing with the COVID-19 pandemic. But, of course, this $6 trillion more was designed to be passed with a pure party-line vote through the reconciliation process.

After some pushback, the $6 trillion figure that Chairman Sanders proposed was cut back to 3.5, and now our colleagues in the House and elsewhere are touting a new pared-down bill which spends only--and I underline the word ``only''--$1.75 trillion. I dare say that is a number that none of us can fully comprehend given its magnitude, but it has become--sort of rolls off our tongues like everybody understands what a trillion dollars is like everybody knows what a million is or a thousand or a hundred or ten dollars. But it is an enormous number.

As our colleagues have slimmed and trimmed this bill to reach a pricetag that could get consensus in the House, some of their favorite provisions have fallen off the chopping block. They realize that programs like free college actually cost a whole lot of money. So to live within this new number, which I will talk about in a moment, Democrats in the House kept cutting and cutting, but they found-- instead of real cuts, they found another solution to their problem of a topline. What they have basically done is to create the illusion of a lower pricetag without making any real, substantive, long-term cuts. How do you do that? Well, it is the old-fashioned way; it is called budget gimmicks.

Rather than remove these expensive programs entirely, they chose to create a number of arbitrary cliffs, sunsets, and expirations. That way, they could pretend to pass these bills at a lower cost with the tacit promise to continue them at another time and on another day.

One example of this was the expanded child tax credit. Our Democratic colleagues originally crafted this as a temporary measure in their partisan bill that became law in March, just 8 months ago. The first payments had barely gone out the door when they decided to call for making those temporary provisions permanent in the BBB, the so-called Build Back Better bill. Our colleagues knew that a permanent extension and expansion would have been far too expensive to meet their topline, so they pretended to cut it by making it a temporary extension.

Earlier drafts of this bill would have extended this policy through 2025. As time went on, the pricetag was still too high, so it was scaled back to a 1-year extension. But the truth is, nothing has really changed. Calls to make the expansion permanent have not gone away. I have seen no indication that our colleagues across the aisle are content to let this extension expire after just 1 year.

The same is true of the earned income tax credit, which also was expanded in March. A number of our colleagues have spoken here on the Senate floor about the need to make this expansion of the earned income tax credit permanent.

But the not-so-temporary extensions don't end there. This bill extends the Affordable Care Act's premium tax credits through 2025, which our colleagues claim will enable more Americans to afford healthcare coverage. But at the same time, this bill cuts funding to safety net hospitals and States that did not expand Medicaid. If their goal was to expand access to low-income individuals under the Medicaid Program, their bill cuts that funding to safety net hospitals in States like mine that did not expand Medicaid. These cuts specifically target hospitals that treat underinsured and uninsured patients.

In short, our colleagues are manipulating the budget process in a way that appears to extend access to healthcare while at the same time cuts funding to our most vulnerable patients--all in the cause of pushing America closer to a single-payer system, something like Medicare for All. I have no doubt that our colleagues across the aisle will, if possible, not let these temporary provisions expire.

In the immortal words of Ronald Reagan, though, ``The closest thing to eternal life on earth is a [temporary] government program.''

We have seen this movie before, time and again. It is smoke and mirrors. It is budget gimmickry. It is starting new programs and claiming to cut them off after a year, knowing that, inevitably, Congress will be tempted to extend them much, much longer.

Well, before this bill comes to a vote in the Senate, I hope our Democratic colleagues will agree with me that we need to know precisely how much this bill will cost the American people. We know that our colleagues across the aisle have struggled to try to make a $6 trillion bill appear to be a $3.5 trillion and now a $1.75 trillion bill, but I don't think anybody is really fooled or confused. Because they have strategically chosen start dates, sunsets, and expiration dates to make it appear that these programs cost less, we know that eventually, if they have the votes, they will be extended through eternity.

Our colleagues gamed the Tax Code to partially fund the bill while handing out massive tax breaks to millionaires and billionaires. I am glad to see the chairman of the Budget Committee say that we really shouldn't be focused on tax cuts to millionaires and billionaires in blue States and cities like New York or San Francisco, which is exactly what the Democratic bill tries to provide--tax cuts to millionaires and billionaires in blue States.

This bill is really chock-full of inconsistencies. It claims to extend access to healthcare while cutting off access to Medicaid or some of the safety net programs in States like mine. It claims that, well, we are going to tax the rich folks while at the same time providing

tax cuts to millionaires and billionaires in blue States by lifting or eliminating the SALT deduction--the State and local tax deduction-- which allows taxpayers, these millionaires and billionaires in blue States, to deduct their State and local taxes, which means not only do they get a tax cut, but the rest of us end up subsidizing them because, in order to get the revenue needed, that means regular working folks are going to have to pick up the gap.

The best evidence of this maneuvering is the fact that there is not a single year over the next decade in which each tax provision would be used at the same time. Let me say that again. Of all of the gaming in the Tax Code, the fact is, under the proposal by the House of Representatives--that we at some point will consider here--the fact is there is not a single year over the next decade in which each of these tax provisions would be used at the same time. This is nothing but gimmicks and sleight of hand accounting.

In my previous life, I was the Attorney General of Texas. We had something called the Consumer Protection Division. If anybody in the private sector would falsely advertise, like the Federal Government and Congress are trying to do in this so-called Build Back Better bill, we would go after them with a vengeance for defrauding consumers. Unfortunately, that doesn't apply to Congress. I wish it did.

We often talk, at least intermittently, about needing to know what is in a bill before we actually vote on it. At one time or another, Senators on both sides of the aisle have griped about voting on thousand-page bills that were completed just hours before the vote. Knowing the true cost of this legislation is no different. Before voting on it, we have the duty to understand how it will impact our debt and deficits and how big of a bill the American people will be stuck with.

There is also this ugly animal rearing its head called inflation. Seventy percent of the public said--I think in a recent public opinion poll I have seen--that inflation is eating away more and more of their income and is actually reducing their standard of living. It is a silent tax on working families. I would think that, if we are concerned about the welfare of those families, we ought to be very concerned about making inflation worse by pouring more and more money into our economy, chasing fewer and fewer goods and services.

That is part of the problem now. There is so much money sloshing around as a result of the spending by Congress--much of it associated with COVID-19, but not all of it. Some of it is with the American Recovery Act that was passed with the $1.9 trillion in the early days of the Biden administration. But the truth is inflation is eating our lunch, and we should not be making it worse by spending a lot more money, as our Democratic colleagues are proposing we do in the Build Back Better bill.

So we need a cost estimate by the Congressional Budget Office, the official scorer of these spending bills, because we know that what we have seen so far is full of gimmicks, tricks, phony cliffs, phony expiration dates, as I have said, and is, basically, a misleading of the public and Congress into knowing what exactly is in this bill and how much it will cost.

Well, the cost estimate provided by the CBO, we know, given these phony assumptions, is not an accurate statement of the true cost of the bill. This isn't a reflection of the folks who work at the CBO but of the scoring rules they must follow. So, despite the fact that our Democratic colleagues have explicitly said that temporary programs will be extended at the first opportunity beyond the terms laid out in the bill, the Congressional Budget Office has to play along and act like that is true, but we know it is not true.

Fortunately, there are groups on the outside that have conducted their own analysis. Assuming all of these phony cliffs and expiration dates and the 1-year creation of programs that will later be extended, they don't have to buy this sort of smoke-and-mirrors approach to the budget. These groups have conducted their own analyses and have told us what they think the true cost of this $1.75 trillion bill, so-called, that passed the House will be.

For example, the budget experts at the University of Pennsylvania's Wharton School of Business have analyzed this legislation as if these temporary provisions would be made permanent, which, I think, is the safest assumption to make. So, instead of $1.75 trillion, they have pegged the cost as close to $4.6 trillion over 10 years--more than 2\1/ 2\ times the amount the Democrats have claimed.

Then there is the Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget that thinks that the number could even be a few hundred billion higher than that. They estimate the true cost of this bill, now claimed to be $1.75 trillion, to be approximately $5 trillion. This is a massive, massive jump from what the Democrats have said the cost of this bill will be.

Even one of our colleagues on the other side of the aisle has acknowledged that this is disingenuous--and I would just use the word ``false''--advertising. The true cost of this legislation is much closer to Chairman Sanders' original $6 trillion request than the so- called scaled-back proposal of the current bill.

Before this legislation comes to the Senate floor, we need to see a true cost estimate based on reasonable assumptions, not a fairy tale scenario. It defies all common sense to vote on a bill without knowing how much it is going to cost ahead of time.

To this end, last week, I sent a letter to the leaders of the Congressional Budget Office and of the Joint Committee on Taxation requesting an updated estimate based on more reasonable assumptions. If the temporary provisions of this bill are extended--and I fully expect them to be if our Democratic colleagues have the votes to do it--this legislation will cost a whole lot more than what the American people have been told; and we need to know, as close as we can, exactly how much that will be.

Well, it is obvious what is going on here. These not-so-temporary provisions won't expire in a year or 4 years or 10 years. We need to operate under rational assumptions that our Democratic colleagues, when the chance is provided to them, will make these programs permanent and come up with a true and honest score for the bill. If this legislation is all of a sound investment as our Democratic colleagues claim, they shouldn't have anything to be afraid of.

We do have a duty, I believe, as Members of Congress, in voting on legislation of this magnitude, to know what we are doing before we are asked to vote on it. I don't think anybody, really, should have anything to be afraid of, unless they are afraid of a true accounting as opposed to the smoke and mirrors we see so far on this phony, gimmickry bill.

I yield the floor.

Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the Senate stand in recess.

Mr. President, I want to start by thanking my colleagues for being willing to stand up and defend innocent human life.

I remember, recently, watching a young woman walk across one of the downtown bridges in Austin, TX, carrying a sign that read: ``Abortion-- any time, any reason.''

That is what she was advocating for. I was shocked when I saw it because I thought even the most ardent advocates of abortion would not take that position of denying the humanity of this unborn child, but, apparently, that is what it has become here--48 years after the Supreme Court first created a right to abortion out of whole cloth as a constitutional right.

You look, in vain, in the Constitution of the United States, as well as in the amendments to the Constitution, for any reference at all to abortion. What you will find, if you read the Declaration of Independence, is a familiar statement to all of us. On July 4, 1776, the 13 States then that made up America wrote: ``We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty, and the pursuit of Happiness.''

By the way, there is no asterisk--there is no footnote--that says, if you are an unborn human life, that you are denied this unalienable right to life.

Such noteworthy figures as Ruth Bader Ginsburg, who was probably one of the most aggressive advocates for abortion rights on the U.S. Supreme Court, later in life decried the fact that, by the Supreme Court's holding a right to abortion as a constitutional right, it denied the very sort of give-and-take debate by which our differences are resolved in the States and at the national level.

I would just like to point out some of the misinformation that you hear and read about Roe v. Wade.

If Roe v. Wade is no longer the precedent by which abortion rights are decided, it will not mean that abortion will not be available in many, if not all, of the States. What it will mean is that it will be decided, under our Federal system, on a State-by-State basis,

according to the decisions made by elected State leadership, including the legislature.

In 1973, Richard Nixon was inaugurated for the second time as President of the United States. Suffice it to say that a lot has happened since then--a lot. I think it is entirely appropriate that the U.S. Supreme Court revisits its precedents, including Roe v. Wade-- decided in 1973--and decide if that precedent has stood the test of time.

By the way, in serving on the Judiciary Committee, we frequently have nominees for the Supreme Court of the United States come before the committee, and many of my pro-choice colleagues will say: Do you agree, Judge or Future Judge, that Roe v. Wade is the precedent of the U.S. Supreme Court?

Of course, that is along with Casey and the other decisions that have been decided since then, but they act as if the U.S. Supreme Court cannot revisit bad decisions and correct those bad decisions.

To act as though Supreme Court precedent is somehow sacrosanct would still leave us with the likes of Dred Scott, which treated African Americans as less than fully human. Obviously, we fought a Civil War, and 600,000 Americans died--that would be the equivalent of 3 million people today--in a bloody Civil War that tore our country apart.

So being able to revisit those precedents, especially in light of the passage of time and over long experience, is entirely within the purview and entirely appropriate for the Supreme Court to do.

Well, we have heard from my other colleagues that, since Roe was decided in 1973, more than 60 million abortions have been performed in the United States. As originally was decided, Justice Blackmun wrote an opinion and established an event he called viability. Basically, the argument by the proponents of Roe is that somehow, in this decision by Justice Blackmun's saying that abortion should be widely available pre- viability, we should not be able to reconsider or take a look at that. The truth is, Justice Blackmun admitted this was an arbitrary standard.

What does ``viability'' mean?

We have heard that seven countries around the world have more permissive or equally permissive abortion laws as the United States. I, frankly, don't want to be in the same company as North Korea or the People's Republic of China, governed by the Communist Party. I would hope that America would aspire to something different and better and more humane, more in line with our fundamental statement about the unalienable right to life.

But, as to the fact that America is only one of seven countries that allows elective abortions after 20 weeks, which, as I said, puts us in the same category as communist China and North Korea, you would think that would raise a huge red flag as to say something is terribly wrong here.

How is it that we are in the same category as communist North Korea and as communist China when it comes to the value we place on unborn life?

Well, unfortunately, we have seen the right to life become a partisan issue in the U.S. Congress when you take a look at the pro-life legislation which has been introduced over the last years.

We saw last year, for example, our Democratic colleagues filibuster legislation to outlaw elective abortions after 20 weeks, which is when science tells us that an infant can feel pain. Then they blocked a bill requiring physicians to provide lifesaving care to infants who survive abortions. This is care that any other newborn baby would receive, and yet our colleagues--so concerned about the backlash among their pro- abortion constituents--blocked it, denying a child born alive after a botched abortion the same sort of care that any other newborn would be entitled to. They blocked it.

And the latest attack on an unborn baby's right to life is the Women's Health Protection Act. This bill would undermine State laws limiting abortion, even after viability, and undercut the Supreme Court's ruling that defines our current definition of ``viability.''

What does ``viability'' mean?

Even at 20 weeks, can an unborn child live without medical attention and support from their mother or medical personnel?

Of course not.

This was an arbitrary line drawn by the Supreme Court in 1973. As we have heard from many of my colleagues, medicine has, thankfully, advanced considerably since that time.

Well, even though the U.S. Congress seems to be stuck when it comes to the issue of abortion and respecting the right to life of unborn babies, thankfully, the States have taken the issue up, which is why States, like Mississippi, have passed their own legislation to protect unborn babies.

Pro-abortion advocates say, well, 15 weeks--which is what the Mississippi law says. They say that a right to abortion only for the first 15 weeks of a pregnancy violates constitutional rights. But it is interesting. It is no less arbitrary than this notion of viability, which suggests that a child can live--which they cannot--outside the mother's womb even if they are 20 weeks or 24 weeks of gestational age. Interestingly, in a number of States, like Massachusetts and Nevada, abortions are restricted after 24 weeks. California, Washington, Illinois are among States that explicitly restrict abortions after viability.

The American people clearly stand behind the protection of unborn life. This summer, a poll found that 65 percent of Americans believe that abortion should be illegal in the second trimester. That is the second 3-month period of a 9-month pregnancy.

Opposition to third-trimester abortion is even stronger, as 80 percent of Americans are opposed to a third-trimester abortion. Indeed, the Supreme Court of the United States upheld a Nebraska law banning late-term abortion, which is essentially producing a delivery while the child is still alive, killing the fetus, and then completing that abortion. The Supreme Court of the United States upheld a ban on that third-trimester, late-term abortion--that brutal and barbaric practice that even the Supreme Court could not abide.

Last June, a baby born at 21 weeks and 2 days, this last summer, celebrated his first birthday. That is what is at stake here when you are dealing with more than just one person--or you are dealing with more than just one person.

The question is: How do you balance and deal with the rights not only of the woman seeking the abortion, but also of the unborn child?

Right now, under its current jurisprudence, that unborn child is not even considered a human.

America cannot be its best if we devalue the lives of the most vulnerable among us. I believe that babies with heartbeats, fingerprints, and taste buds deserve some protection under the law.

I am proud of the efforts led by our colleague Senator Lankford and others to make sure that we actually have a discussion about this issue and don't just sweep it under the rug and we don't just let the pro- abortion lobby mischaracterize what we are talking about, as if eliminating Roe would eliminate abortions in America. It would just allow the States to do it on a State-by-State basis.

But, actually, Roe was made up right. It created a constitutional right that is not even stated in the Constitution itself, and it created an arbitrary time limit in which abortions could be performed or not as a matter of constitutional right.

So I join the rest of the body and this country awaiting the Supreme Court's ruling. I believe that it is more than appropriate for the Supreme Court to revisit its precedence that essentially disparaged and denigrated the right to life of an unborn child.

I would yield the floor to my friend from Oklahoma.

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

Madam President, here we are, following the Thanksgiving holiday, where I hope that people got to get together with friends and family and enjoy a little respite from the hectic schedule here in Congress. But here we are now, with just a few short days intervening between now and Christmas, and the end-of-the-year legislative mad dash is officially upon us.

This year, our Democratic colleagues, who control the Senate agenda, have ignored some of the Senate's most important and basic responsibilities, leaving us with a whole lot to do and not a whole lot of time in which to do it.

In September, when the Senate should have passed a group of bills to

fund the government for the next fiscal year, our colleagues instead kicked the can down the road. You would have thought they would have used the past couple of months to pass the annual appropriations bills, which is one of most basic and fundamental responsibilities of Congress; but, no, they chose not to do that.

Instead, our Democratic colleagues found time for partisan, dead-on- arrival messaging bills while they failed to bring a single appropriations bill to the floor with a December 3 deadline.

As things stand today, it looks like these funding bills are nowhere near ready. This risks leaving millions of Americans without a paycheck right before the Christmas holidays or punting on our funding responsibilities once again.

And that is not the only potential fiscal disaster we are careening toward. At some point in the coming days, weeks, or months--we don't know exactly when; only Secretary Yellen knows--the U.S. will run up against the debt limit. That is, we have maxed out our credit card and, unless our Democratic colleagues decide to raise that credit limit, we will exhaust the credit of the United States Government.

It kind of feels a little like ``Groundhog Day'' because we saw this movie just about 2 months ago.

Democrats had a clear roadmap and ample time to increase the debt ceiling on their own and avoid a financial crisis, but they stubbornly refused. They said they didn't have enough time. Well, they don't have that excuse now.

And, even then, they have known since July that Republicans would not help them with another partisan spending spree. So we find ourselves staring down the barrel of a potential economic crisis, but our colleagues can't blame the calendar for not having enough time again.

If our Democratic colleagues want to exclude Republicans and continue spending on a purely partisan basis, they will have to raise the debt ceiling in a partisan fashion. They have proven they are OK with spending trillions of dollars of borrowed money without a single Republican vote. It is not too much to say that they should be held accountable for that reckless course of conduct.

Of course, before the Senate addresses either one of those crises, there is another item on the agenda: The National Defense Authorization Act.

Congress has passed the National Defense Authorization Act each year for the last 60 years, and for good reason. It is the case, I believe, that our national security is the single most important duty that we have here in the Senate. But this bill has been waiting in the wings for months, ready for floor action, and both the chairman of the Armed Services Committee and the ranking member have had to push the majority leader to actually bring this to the Senate floor, even at this late date.

So 2 weeks ago, before the Thanksgiving holidays, the Senate finally began consideration of the Defense Authorization Act, and we hope we can actually do what the Senate is supposed to do, which is to vote on amendments to that bill and then pass it in the coming days. But the fact is, it is nearly December, and the fact that it has not been done yet is simply inexplicable.

Now, with such a big to-do list and so little time to do it, you would think our colleagues would be laser focused on this hefty end-of- the-year agenda: funding the government, avoiding a debt crisis, strengthening our military, and supporting our volunteer military forces and their families.

None of the Senate's most basic responsibilities have been attended to; and, as it stands today, the Senate is only scheduled to be in session for a handful of days before the Christmas holidays.

Well, unfortunately, our Democratic colleagues think they have an even more important job to do. Forget the millions of government employees who could be left without a paycheck before the holidays, or the economic crisis that will cripple our country if we defaulted on our debt. Our Democratic colleagues are laser focused on their multitrillion-dollar tax-and-spending spree.

After months of party infighting and countless iterations of this bill, the Democratic leaders in the House--most notably Speaker Pelosi--finally managed to pass a partisan version of this bill. They couldn't even convince every Democrat to vote for the bill, which is an indication of how problematic it is.

What we are talking about is an absolutely massive bill that would increase the role and power of the Federal Government and Americans' lives in an unprecedented fashion. It would reshape how we take care of our children, our healthcare system, our energy, our educational systems. Virtually every aspect of American citizens' daily lives would be affected by this monstrosity.

And, of course, these programs don't come cheap, but Democrats have pulled every gimmick in the book to hide the true cost. They have filled this bill with arbitrary sunsets and cliffs and expirations that make these programs appear to cost less than we know they actually will.

One example is the expanded child tax credit. As originally drafted, this policy was a temporary measure in their bill that became law in March, just 8 months ago. Earlier drafts of the so-called Build Back Better legislation would have extended that policy through 2025, even though it seemed all but certain that Democrats would later try to make it permanent.

When Democrats needed to cut the overall pricetag of the bill to convince their own Members to vote for it, the expanded child tax credit was scaled back to a 1-year extension. But nothing has really changed. I have no expectation that this or a number of other so-called temporary programs in this bill will actually expire.

As President Ronald Reagan once famously said, the closest thing to eternal life on Earth is a temporary government program.

If all the temporary provisions in this bill are made permanent, it will cost a whole lot more than is advertised. And the budget experts at the University of Pennsylvania's Wharton School of Business have given us an estimate of how much more it will cost.

Of course, there is President Biden, who said it will cost zero. Nobody believes that. Others have said, well, it is a $1.75 trillion bill. And I would argue that, based on all the budget gimmickry, you can't really believe that either.

The University of Pennsylvania's Wharton School of Business pegs the price at close to $4.6 trillion over 10 years--that is the budget window--more than 2\1/2\ times the amount Democrats have previously stated.

The Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget agrees with that estimate. They estimate that the true cost of this bill would be approximately $5 trillion over the next 10 years. That is $5 trillion in largely borrowed money that would have to be paid back by somebody. That is a whole lot more than the $1.75 trillion pricetag that the press has reported based on the incredible estimates that our Democratic colleagues have provided.

Of course, that flies in the face of President Biden's estimate that it would cost nothing. Well, again, we understand that is not true, and the 1.75 trillion pricetag is not true either.

Last week, I sent a letter to the leaders of the Congressional Budget Office and the Joint Committee on Taxation requesting a true cost estimate for this bill. The American people deserve a full and complete picture of the real-world price of this legislation. And before voting on the bill, every Member of the Senate, both Republicans and Democrats, should want to know how much this legislation is going to end up costing the American people.

The pricetag of this bill is deeply concerning, but that is only part of what makes this legislation so dangerous. As I said earlier, it dramatically increases the role of the Federal Government in every aspect of our lives. It drives up taxes on working families; it harms our energy security; and it hurts our competitiveness on the global stage, which hands a big win to China.

That, apparently, is the priority for our Democratic colleagues right now, not the looming debt crisis or potential government shutdown. They are focused on legislation that actually does more harm than good.

Our Democratic colleagues control the Senate agenda. They control the House, and they control the White House. They control every lever in the

legislative process here in Washington, DC, and this is how they have chosen to use that power.

Our Democratic colleagues continue to prove that they are not doing what is best for the American people. If it was, then there would be an effort to build a bipartisan consensus for this legislation.

Instead, they are using raw partisan political power to jam through an agenda that they know will end up costing somewhere around $5 trillion and that will permanently alter the relationship of the American people to the Federal Government.

For our country's sake, I hope something changes between now and the time we actually take up this partisan tax-and-spending spree bill that has been passed by the House of Representatives.

I yield the floor.

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

Mr. President, families back home in Texas are planning their Thanksgiving menus, but they are also bracing for steep grocery bills. Prices are up for just about every part of a typical Thanksgiving meal. The cost of a frozen turkey is the highest in history. Things like potatoes, butter, pumpkin pies, even salt, cost more than they did a year ago.

It is not just going to cost more to eat; it is going to cost more to cook. Appliance prices have skyrocketed over the past year, as have electricity bills, and family members will have to

pay a lot more just to visit their friends and relatives because gas prices are up 60 percent from last year.

As families are being pummeled by higher prices and inflation, our Democratic colleagues are planning to hand major savings to a select group of Americans, just not the ones you think and certainly not the ones who need the help.

Despite their cries of taxing the rich, the Democrats are plotting an absolutely massive handout to the wealthiest Americans. This windfall is not distributed through stimulus checks or lower tax rates. That would be far too obvious. Instead, our Democratic colleagues are relying on a range of gimmicky sunsets and expirations to dole out the millionaire tax break.

If they thought no one would notice, well, they would be wrong. For example, The Washington Post headline says it all. It reads: ``The second-biggest program in the Democrats' spending plan gives billions to the rich.''

That is not how our colleagues have tried to brand their legislation. They would portray themselves as modern-day Robin Hoods--stealing from the rich to give to the poor.

Strange in that it is really just the opposite. They talk about the wealthy paying their fair share and giving working families free programs, but the reality of the situation is far different from the picture they paint, and the wealthiest Americans stand to reap big benefits under this legislation.

For example, the Democrats have included a provision that will allow millionaires and billionaires in blue States to pay less in Federal taxes. As the headline notes, this handout comes with a big pricetag of $285 billion in tax breaks for the wealthiest Americans. It is more expensive than the clean energy and climate provisions in their bill; more expensive than paid family leave; more expensive than the combined cost of the child tax credit and home-based services.

And there is no denying that the beneficiaries of this ultraexpensive provision are the wealthiest Americans. According to the Tax Policy Center, about 70 percent of the benefit goes to the top 5 percent of wage earners--70 percent goes to the top 5 percent. That is people making more than $366,000 a year, roughly six times the median household income of Texans. We were not talking about saving a few dollars here and there. The top 1 percent would save an average of $14,900 next year, and the bottom 40 percent of taxpayers wouldn't be given a dime's worth of a break in their taxes.

The rich in America who stand to gain the most from this change are those who live in blue States, like New York and California that have higher State and local taxes. They would, under this legislation, get to deduct up to $80,000 in their State and local taxes from next year's Federal tax return, leaving everybody else to fill up the gap.

Working families in Texas should not have to subsidize the tax bill for Manhattan millionaires. If the wealthiest people in New York or California think their State and local taxes are too high, there is a pretty simple solution: Tell your elected officials to cut taxes or you can do like many people are doing these days, vote with your feet and move to places like Texas.

Over the last decade, Californians have flocked to my State by the hundreds of thousands. People do vote with their feet, and they clearly support what we are doing in Texas.

We have been happy to welcome folks from all around the country who are in search of lower taxes, affordable homes, and a better standard of living.

Blue State millionaires can't expect my constituents to subsidize their tax bills. They need to either pay their taxes or maybe they need to decide to move to someplace where they are not taxed at such a high rate.

Under this bill, two-thirds of those making more than $1 million will receive a tax cut next year. Let me say that again. The vast majority of millionaires will, under the Democratic legislation, receive a tax break, and nearly 90 percent of those earning between $500,000 and $1 million will receive a tax cut. This is a sharp contrast from how middle-class working families are treated.

Less than a third of those earning between $20 and $100,000 a year will receive a significant tax cut. And the following year, 2023, those savings dramatically decrease.

Year over year, the tax provisions in this bill change dramatically. In fact, there is not a single year over the next decade in which each tax provision will be used at the same time.

Democrats aren't rewriting the Tax Code to make millionaires pay their fair share; they are gaming it to create the illusion of fairness.

Some programs begin immediately and end after 1 year. Some don't even take effect for a couple of years. These are plain budgetary gimmicks. After all, they can't afford to give billionaires a tax break and dole out increased social welfare programs. The fact of the matter is, the millionaire tax break in their legislation is the largest handout for wealthy Americans. But it is not the only one in the bill.

This legislation would allow people earning hundreds of thousands of dollars to receive up to $12,500 from the taxpayers if they buy an electric vehicle. They also can receive up to $900 to purchase an e- bike, which is obviously less green than a good old-fashioned regular bike.

The Democrats' reckless tax-and-spending bill also creates handouts for union bosses, trials lawyers, wealthy media corporations, and a host of powerful friends of the Democratic Party. All of these handouts may appease some of our colleagues' wealthiest supporters, but it will only make life harder for working families.

Families earning just over the median household income, which is just under $62,000 in Texas, could see their childcare costs soar by as much as $13,000.

And the climate policies in this bill are sure to drive energy prices even higher. Gasoline already costs 60 percent more today than it did a year ago. That is a combination of inflation and the policies of this administration which attack the very energy industry that we depend upon to provide affordable energy.

If the Democrats manage to get this grab bag of radical climate policies signed into law, prices at the pump will go even higher.

So this bill will not, as advertised, help America to build back better. It will ensure that we never reach the prepandemic recovery that was the envy of the world.

No public relations campaign can hide the truth about this bill. This is a reckless tax-and-spending spree that will benefit the wealthiest of Americans at the cost of working families.

The last thing we need to do is to line the pockets of wealthy Americans while driving up the costs of the middle class.

I yield the floor.

I suggest the absence of a quorum.

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

Madam President, yesterday, the Secretary of Homeland Security, Mr. Mayorkas, testified before the Senate Judiciary Committee. It is the first time he has been before the Judiciary Committee for an oversight hearing. Of course, our minds were all on the crisis that is currently underway--and has been since the beginning of this year--at the border.

When our colleague Senator Lindsey Graham asked him how he would rate his own performance so far, he gave a bizarre answer. He said: ``I [would] give myself an A for effort.'' Well, that is the type of rating you would give yourself if you offered to cook dinner and completely bungled the recipe, or if you ordered a really thoughtful Christmas gift for your spouse, but it didn't arrive on time, you would give yourself an A for effort. But when you are talking about the person who is responsible for some of our Nation's most critical responsibilities for which there are life-and-death consequences, an A for effort is hardly acceptable, and in this case, it is an overly generous assessment.

Over the last year, Customs and Border Protection has encountered more than 1.7 million migrants along the southern border--the highest on record. In 1 month alone, more than 213,000 migrants crossed the border, including 19,000 unaccompanied children. The Secretary may think he is worthy of an A for effort, but the numbers certainly do not reflect that.

The American people are clearly concerned about the way things are going. A recent poll found that more than 80 percent of voters think illegal immigration is a serious issue. Nearly two-thirds believe that the President's Executive orders actually encourage more illegal immigration, and, as a result, only 35 percent of voters approve of the President's handling of the border.

Leaders in the administration have tried to play the blame game, saying, well, they inherited policies from the previous administration that led to the crisis. That seems to be part of the playbook--let's blame Trump; let's blame the previous administration and absolve ourselves of any responsibility--but they have simply failed to provide an explanation to why those policies led to 460,000 fewer encounters in fiscal year 2020 but more than 1.7 million in 2021.

There is no question at all that this crisis is a direct result of the Biden administration's words and deeds. Back in February, just a few weeks after President Biden took his oath of office, migrants who were interviewed in their trek from their homes across our border said as much. One woman who crossed the Rio Grande River on a smuggler's raft said that she and her 1-year-old son only came to the United States because of the Biden administration. She said: ``That gave us the opportunity to come.'' The administration has signaled that it is not only OK with the record levels of illegal immigration but that it is actively encouraging more people to make the trek.

Prior to the Biden administration's border crisis, there was a clear and sensible process for migrants who crossed our border to claim asylum. That individual would be processed by the Border Patrol and undergo a credible fear assessment, which is the standard for claiming asylum, essentially determining, at least as a preliminary matter, whether they would qualify for asylum. If so, that person would be issued a notice to appear at a future court hearing--a critical document that tells asylum seekers when and where to show up for their day in court.

But under Secretary Mayorkas's leadership, that is not happening anymore. I have heard from many folks in Texas about the fact that huge numbers of migrants are now being released without a notice to appear. Thousands of migrants have been released with what is now called a notice to report--essentially, a document that says: When you get where you are going, turn yourself in to your local Immigration and Customs Enforcement office.

Well, these migrants haven't undergone a credible fear screening, so we have no way of knowing how many of them will likely, potentially, qualify for asylum. We do know, based on decisions from immigration courts, that only about 10 percent of the people who claim asylum actually qualify under the prevailing legal standard.

Because these migrants haven't undergone preliminary screening, we have no information about the validity of their asylum claims. And it is unclear whether the administration has given any teeth at all to the warning that the failure to contact the local ICE office may result in your arrest. In other words, there are no consequences for not showing up.

The Department of Homeland Security is now telling us that they have stopped issuing notices to report, but the truth is, they have just changed the title. They are still paroling migrants into the United States without issuing a notice to appear. When these migrants inevitably fail to turn themselves in to the nearest ICE office--and ICE's internal figures suggest the compliance rate is unsurprisingly low--it isn't clear that the Department of Homeland Security will do anything at all to locate them and remove them from the United States even though they haven't complied with the process that they have been told they must comply with. The Biden administration has made it even easier for migrants to disappear into the great American heartland.

Several weeks ago, Secretary Mayorkas gave migrants another reason to believe that they could make it across our borders and be able to stay. According to Secretary Mayorkas, illegally entering our country is no longer reason enough for ICE to begin removal proceedings. The Secretary's guidance provided a few exemptions. In theory, illegal border crossers are a priority for enforcement but only if they are apprehended in the United States after unlawfully entering after November 1, 2020. It is unclear what the magic is with that date. In other words, ICE agents can't touch them unless another law enforcement agency picks them up first.

It says individuals convicted of serious criminal conduct who pose a current threat to public safety should be a priority for removal, but it is unclear what crimes meet those criteria. Is distributing or receiving child pornography considered serious criminal conduct? What about crimes like embezzlement? larceny? breaking and entering? sex offenses? It is unclear exactly what the standard is, and I think that is on purpose because clearly Secretary Mayorkas does not want the Border Patrol and Immigration and Customs Enforcement to actually enforce the law that Congress has written. We are the ones who make the policy, and the Border Patrol and Immigration and Customs Enforcement simply execute that policy. Clearly, Secretary Mayorkas is trying to confuse things such that no apprehension and detention takes place at all.

What if the distribution of child pornography, let's say, happened 4 years ago? Is the perpetrator no longer a priority for apprehension and removal now that the threat isn't ``current''? In fact, the Secretary explicitly says the threat shouldn't be determined according to bright lines or categories. In other words, he wants to continue to fuzz it up and make it ambiguous. I don't understand why if you are actually serious about enforcing our laws. Is there a reason that any migrant convicted of possessing or distributing child pornography should be allowed to remain in the United States?

The Secretary indicates that even certain migrants, like those who are elderly or provide for their families, should be exempt from the law. That clearly is not within the authority of the Secretary to decide against whom the laws should be enforced. Does that mean that someone who committed a sexual assault 20 years ago but now has a family who depends on him should be able to remain in the United States?

It defies all common sense to ask our law enforcement officers to turn a blind eye when they encounter individuals who have clearly broken the law. Imagine calling the police to report an intruder in your home and being told, unless this person is young, childless, and murdered a member of your family, we can't do anything or we won't do anything.

The reality of the situation, however inconvenient it may seem for our colleagues on the other side of the aisle, is that, by entering the United States illegally--by doing that--migrants have broken the law, and there have to be consequences. The Secretary cannot, consistent with his oath of office, refuse to enforce those laws in order to appease his party's political base.

In fact, by clearly outlining who will and who will not be able to remain in the United States, notwithstanding what the law says, the administration is actually encouraging even more migrants to put themselves in harm's way to come to the United States. This is known as pull factors, which actually encourage more illegal immigration. Under this guidance, visa overstays aren't a priority for enforcement at all. If somebody comes in on a visa but overstays that visa, they are illegally present in the United States, but they don't have to worry about the Biden administration actually enforcing the law and removing them. In other words, the guidance is an open invitation for migrants to disregard the terms of their entry into the United States.

When President Biden's nominee for the Customs and Border Protection testified before the Senate Finance Committee, I asked the police chief from Arizona if he agreed that the Biden administration's policy of nonenforcement is a pull factor that is encouraging more illegal immigration. He admitted that, yes, it is.

So, yesterday, I asked Secretary Mayorkas the same question: Does this guidance of nonenforcement send a signal to criminal organizations, human smugglers, and migrants that if they illegally enter the United States and commit no other crimes, they can stay?

He said: No. That is 100 percent false.

But I disagree with Secretary Mayorkas. He is clearly not telling the truth. There is a clear correlation between the Biden administration's reckless policies and the record level of illegal migration.

Any administration, of course, has a certain amount of discretion when it comes to enforcement, but what we are seeing from Secretary Mayorkas isn't an exercise of discretion, and it is certainly not A- for-effort worthy. I don't think anyone expected Secretary Mayorkas to lead the charge to secure our borders and crack down on illegal immigration, but he is not even doing the bare minimum that his job description requires.

The truth is, the Biden administration has fumbled the border crisis at every turn. The President sent smoke signals about open borders before he even took office, and his administration has rolled out incentive after incentive for migrants to continue to break the law, and it has tied the hands of dedicated law enforcement officers who put their lives on the line to protect the American people.

We have got a border czar who once compared ICE to the Ku Klux Klan, and we have a DHS Secretary who gives himself an A even though more than 1.7 million migrants have crossed the border since he took office in February. So, while Secretary Mayorkas thinks he is entitled to an A for effort, there is no question that, on balance, the Biden administration has earned an F for its response to the border crisis.

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, after months of delay, I am glad Senator Schumer has finally indicated he will allow the National Defense Authorization Act to come to the Senate floor this week.

For each of the last 60 consecutive years, Congress has passed an NDAA to ensure that our servicemembers and military leaders had the resources they need to safeguard our democracy and our freedoms.

This bill is how we maintain our military bases, modernize our force, and invest in the next generation of weapons that we hope we will never need to use but which are necessary for deterrence. It is how we strengthen our relationship with old allies and forge strong partnerships with new ones. It is how we address the global threat landscape and ensure our troops have the training, equipment, and the resources they need to counter adversaries of today and tomorrow.

From threats by an increasingly hostile Iran to those by an unpredictable North Korea, there are many challenges on the horizon, but there is no question that the greatest threat to the world order and to peace itself is the People's Republic of China.

The Chinese Communist Party has made no secret of its desire to continue to squash democracy, as they did in Hong Kong, and impose its economic, political, and military power on the rest of the world.

Here at home, we are intensely aware of how China's aggression can impact our economy and supply chains for critical components of everything from cell phones to our fifth-generation stealth fighter, the F-35. Our dependency on advanced semiconductors manufactured in Taiwan and in Asia is a threat to America's economic and national security, but the most urgent and grave threats are against countries closer to China's borders.

Last week, I had the chance to lead a congressional delegation visiting Southeast Asia to gain a better understanding of the threats and challenges in the region. The area spanning from Pearl Harbor all the way to the western border of India is the largest military theater in the world and is overseen by the U.S. Indo-Pacific Command and is home to 40 percent of the world's population. My colleagues and I had the opportunity to hear from our military leadership and key foreign partners in the region and gain a better understanding of ongoing and anticipated security threats, mainly from China.

China has already co-opted, as I said, a formerly democratic Hong Kong.

It is building missile batteries and aircraft runways for its bombers on artificial islands. It threatens freedom of navigation in international waters. It is guilty of gross human rights abuses against its own people; namely, the Muslim minority Uighurs. It is engaged in a border war with India. And it threatens to invade the Republic of China, otherwise known as Taiwan.

Here at home, there is no question that China is a looming presence, but it is not in our backyard. We don't see its warships on our coastlines, or worry about an imminent military invasion on our shores.

But that is not the case in the Indo-Pacific. In the Philippines, we caught a ride on a Navy P-8 aircraft over disputed waters. Within minutes of leaving Philippine airspace, we spotted a Chinese spy ship engaged in intelligence gathering operations off the Philippine coast.

We traveled to India, where we met with Prime Minister Modi and Cabinet officials to discuss threats posed by China, as well as other shared priorities. But one of the main topics was the timetable for a Chinese invasion of Taiwan.

In every way possible, Taiwan is a stark contrast to the People's Republic of China. It is a true democracy, with elections whose results are not predetermined. It is a free-market economy that adheres to the rule of law. And it shares the same basic values we embrace in the United States: freedom of speech, freedom of press, religion, and assembly.

Despite the fact that Taiwan has been a self-governing entity for more than 70 years, the Chinese Communist Party continues to claim the island nation as part of its territory. But as the Indian Minister for Foreign Affairs said, Taiwan isn't just a Taiwan problem; it is a China problem.

In other words, what is at stake here is much larger than the future of one nation; it is the entire scope of Beijing's power and ambitions in the region. If China is able to capture Taiwan, there is no reason to believe that the Chinese Communist Party would stop there.

China also has territorial claims against the Philippines, Japan, Vietnam, and India. We shouldn't view Taiwan as the CCP's ultimate goal, but as the first domino in a quest to reach regional and global dominance. If Taiwan falls, it will not be the end, but, rather, a beginning.

As the Taiwanese Minister of Foreign Affairs told us, Taiwan is democracy's outpost standing watch against authoritarianism.

I believe we have a legal and moral obligation to stand with Taiwan and deter China from invading. And we also have our own national security at stake.

There is an old saying that an ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure. In defense parlance, that means peace through strength; deterrence. There must be a strategy to dissuade China from an attempt to seize Taiwan. And there is no question that time is of the essence.

Our delegation met with the commander of the Indo-Pacific Command, who described the current power dynamic rather succinctly. He said it is not a question of if China invades Taiwan, but when.

According to our top military leaders, we have an idea of how long that might happen, because Xi Jinping himself has said he wants to be ready to invade by 2027.

But we have been wrong before. I remember when people said that the Taliban--the intelligence community said it would take 2 years for the Taliban to take over Afghanistan, and we saw that happen almost in the blink of an eye. No one thought that country would fall to the Taliban before we even hit the withdrawal deadline, and we certainly did not expect the withdrawal in Afghanistan to turn into a rapid emergency evacuation mission.

Taiwan might be safe for 6 years, but we can't operate on that assumption. We need to work with Taiwan and our friends and allies in the region to raise the costs, such that the PRC decides it is not worth its time and effort.

The defense authorization bill is one critical way we can do that. It includes a bipartisan bill I introduced with Senator Duckworth, called the Taiwan Partnership Act. It would establish a partnership between the U.S. National Guard and Taiwanese defense forces to strengthen Taiwan's preparedness.

Should troops need to deploy quickly in the event of a crisis, they would be armed with the same knowledge and skills as our dedicated U.S. National Guardsmen.

The NDAA includes other provisions to increase defense cooperation with Taiwan and equip the U.S. Indo-Pacific Command with more resources. I appreciate my colleagues on both sides of the aisle who have championed these provisions.

As I said earlier, we have a moral imperative to stand with Taiwan and show China that the costs of invading are far greater than the benefits. But we have our own national security interests at stake because, if the supply of semiconductors from Taiwan were cut off, it would be a body blow to the American economy and our national security.

I am glad Australia has already signaled its support for Taiwan, and I hope more of our international partners will follow suit-- particularly the quad composed of Australia, Japan, and India and the United States.

Beijing can try to exert its muscle around the world, but the United States has one thing that China never will have, and that is friends and allies.

I am grateful to our partners in the Indo-Pacific and around the world who have fought and who will continue to fight to preserve freedom and democracy. It is an honor to spend time with them. And on behalf of our entire delegation, I want to thank all of our hosts for their hospitality.

Our trip to the Indo-Pacific was a timely reminder of the critical need to invest in our national defense and support our allies, new and old.

As the Senate prepares to begin consideration of the Defense authorization bill, I would encourage all of us to keep

in mind our solemn responsibility to support our national defense. That is our No. 1 priority. All of our other freedoms flow from our ability to protect and defend the American people.

Whether our servicemembers are guarding against threats from China, Russia, Iran, North Korea, or terrorist groups, they need the backing of a strong National Defense Authorization Act to succeed.

I appreciate the bipartisan work of the Armed Services Committee, chaired by Chairman Reed and Ranking Member Inhofe, and appreciate their hard work in getting this bill ready for our consideration. The committee, during its markup, adopted 143 bipartisan amendments and reported out the final bill by a vote of 23 to 3. You don't get much more bipartisan than that around here.

This legislation has been waiting in the wings for months, and I am glad we can finally begin consideration of this critical legislation this week.

I hope we can continue the legacy of bipartisanship that guides this legislation through the Senate. This debate should be about how to defend our national security, how to deter tyrants and bullies from around the world, and guarantee the blessings of liberty to all democracies--those that share our values.

I yield the floor.

Mr. President, I am sure I am not alone in expressing concern for what the next few weeks in the runup to Christmas are going to look like, and certainly the Senate and the Congress have not operated as a well-oiled machine, to be sure.

Back in September, when the Senate should have passed a group of bills to fund the government for the next year, we saw the can get kicked down the road.

Last month, when our Democratic colleagues, the majority, had ample time and a clear roadmap to raise the debt ceiling, they punted and really depended on 11 of us on this side of the aisle to avoid a threat to the full faith and credit of the United States.

Despite a strong push from both the distinguished Presiding Officer, the chairman of the Armed Services Committee, and the ranking member, the majority leader has so far refused to bring up the National Defense Authorization Act even though it has been ready for months. I am hoping that will change this week. I am advised that it will change and it will be taken up.

These are not necessarily lofty goals we are talking about. We are talking about the bare minimum when it comes to doing the work of the Nation: funding the government, paying our bills, strengthening our military. But none of these basic responsibilities have been accomplished yet.

These delays weren't out of necessity. After all, the Senate hasn't been debating and voting on important legislation--just a series of nominations and dead-on-arrival messaging bills.

With such a long yearend to-do list, our colleagues on the other side of the aisle, who control the agenda, don't have a lot of time. The Senate is only scheduled to be in session for 2 weeks before government funding expires, and there is just another additional week of scheduled legislating before the end of the year. You would think that would mean it is time to buckle up and start checking off these high-priority items, but our Democratic colleagues believe they have an even more important job. Forget the millions of government employees who would be left without a paycheck before the holidays or the economic crisis that would cripple our country if we defaulted on our debts or the servicemembers and their families who deserve a pay raise; our Democratic colleagues, the majority, are devoting all their time and agenda to a spending spree and the largest tax increase in American history, which apparently is the top item on the House agenda this week.

The size and scope of this bill has changed a lot over the last several months. The chairman of the Budget Committee, the Senator from Vermont, initially floated a $6 trillion spending spree and tax increase. It was later ostensibly pared back to $3.5 trillion, and now our colleagues claim it would cost a mere $1.75 trillion--hardly a bargain and certainly hardly for sure when it comes to the amount of spending and taxing because, until the bill is finalized and the Congressional Budget Office has time to score it, we don't know actually how much this beast of a bill will actually cost.

But the budget experts at the University of Pennsylvania's Wharton School of Business say that the Democratic proposal has been dramatically understated in terms of its cost and its scope. Indeed, the folks at the Wharton School say the ultimate cost of this bill is really somewhere on the order of $4 trillion--more than double the amount that the advocates for this bill have stated.

The Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget concurs. They estimate the true cost of the bill would double to almost $5 trillion over 10 years because of arbitrary sunsets and expirations and other gamesmanship when it comes to this expensive government proposal. That is a whole lot more than the President's promise of zero dollars in cost.

The President continues to insist that this bill costs nothing, but the American people are not deceived. They understand, when you talk about $1.75 trillion or $4 trillion, that somebody, somewhere, is going to have to pay for it; hence, the largest tax increase in American history.

Then there is the so-called temporary nature of some of these government programs. This is all designed to mislead the public and Congress into thinking these bills are cheaper than they actually are. As President Reagan famously said, ``Nothing lasts longer than a temporary government program.''

Despite the lofty promises that have been made, millionaires and billionaires won't be the only ones footing the bill for this spending spree. In fact, one of the last-minute provisions would actually give the ultrawealthy a tax cut, and that is from our Democratic colleagues. One of the latest additions to the bill allows blue-State millionaires and billionaires to pay less in Federal taxes. A former economic adviser to President Obama and current Harvard professor described this provision as ``even worse than [he] had feared.''

Under this tax break for millionaires and billionaires, nearly two- thirds of those making more than $1 million would get a tax cut. So we are not just talking about a few bucks; the wealthiest Americans would save an average of $16,800 next year alone. The party that talks about the need to tax the rich is actually plotting a massive tax cut for the rich.

While this bill will help the wealthiest Americans pay less in Federal taxes, it will ensure the middle class actually ends up paying more. Dating back to the campaign trail, President Biden has repeatedly said that ``if you make under $400,000 a year, I will never raise your taxes one [cent].'' His Treasury Secretary has made the same pledge, and the White House Press Secretary has restated this commitment again and again and again.

Well, I understand why the White House is so concerned about this huge tax increase, but the more we learn about this bill, the clearer it becomes that the middle class will be required to help foot the bill for this spending bonanza. The nonpartisan Joint Committee on Taxation found that significant numbers of families will see their taxes increased under the plan. In 2027, well over half of taxpayers earning between $75,000 and $100,000 will be paying

more in taxes under this proposal. That is a violation of President Biden's promise that families earning less than $400,000 will not pay a single penny more in taxes. You just can't reconcile those two positions.

That is only the beginning of the mounting costs this bill creates for hard-working American families and my constituents in Texas. The so-called free childcare in this bill will end up costing many families a lot of money. A left-leaning think tank found that middle-class families could pay up to $13,000 more a year for childcare. That is not a price increase on the top 1 percent; that is for people who earn more than their State's median income, which in Texas is just under $62,000. It is hard to imagine a family who brings home $62,000 a year being able to absorb another $13,000 in childcare expenses.

Then come the mounting energy costs. We all know, when we go fill up the tanks of our vehicles, that gas prices are up more than 60 percent from 1 year ago, and this year, energy bills are expected to soar by as much as 54 percent. Our Democratic colleagues, by pushing so much money out the door, chasing so many limited goods and services, are pushing for policies that will actually exacerbate inflation and make these prices climb even higher.

Specifically, they want to attack the fossil fuel industry by imposing a so-called methane fee on gas companies and resurrect an excise tax on each barrel of crude oil. But these price increases won't just be absorbed by the companies that produce oil and gas; this will be an expense that is passed on to customers. If families are struggling to cover their transportation costs today, they will be up the creek without a paddle once these new taxes and fees go into effect.

The cash grab does not end there. This bill would also require hard- working Texas families to subsidize the cost of our colleagues' preferred green initiatives. It provides hundreds of billions of dollars in so-called green subsidies for massive corporations to become eco-friendly. That is right--our Democratic colleagues are proposing more subsidies for corporations, as if Fortune 500 companies need taxpayer assistance to go green.

Wealthy Americans earning hundreds of thousands of dollars each year could receive up to $12,500 in taxpayer assistance if they buy an electric vehicle. Unfortunately, this also includes a little bit of cronyism in it because our Democratic colleagues are making sure that their party's most loyal supporters reap the benefits of this taxpayer- backed handout. The electric vehicle tax credits are even more generous if the car is made in a union shop even though there is no evidence that these vehicles are somehow better for the environment.

We all know what is happening here. It is all too clear. But, again, hard-working American families will be the ones footing the bill for these tax credits that disproportionately benefit the wealthy and organized labor.

To help cover the sky-high price of this bill, our Democratic colleagues want to ensure that Uncle Sam will be able to squeeze each and every penny possible out of middle-class families and small businesses. This bill gives the Internal Revenue Service, which has been notorious for its abuse of power, even more money and more authority. This bill would give the IRS $80 billion, more than half of which will build an army of auditors to poke and prod working families' finances. Instead of building back America, this builds up the bureaucracy, much to the detriment of Texas families. After all, it is going to take a lot of taxpayer money to pay for President Biden's zero-dollar bill.

This reckless tax-and-spending spree is not what our country needs, particularly not at this time, Mr. President. Families don't want an even bigger government that reaches deeper into their pockets and exerts more and more control over their daily lives. They want the freedom to make their own decisions for themselves and their families and the opportunity to succeed based on their hard work. That is not what we are seeing today from the national Democratic Party.

Our Democratic colleagues' bill takes steps toward Medicare for All by harshly penalizing States that didn't expand Medicaid. When the Affordable Care Act mandated a Medicaid expansion, the Supreme Court of the United States characterized that as a gun to the head for the States and said that was unconstitutional. But we know that Medicare for All will discourage medical innovation by slapping arbitrary price controls on things like prescription drugs.

It turns the IRS into the government's No. 1 welfare Agency by extending no-strings-attached welfare checks into perpetuity. It proposes the highest income tax rate in the developed world. It gives Washington bureaucrats unprecedented power to punish States that fail to meet arbitrary climate mandates. It forces hard-working taxpayers to cover the bill for another unnecessary partisan spending spree.

This far-left turn is not what the American people thought they were voting for in 2020, and, frankly, it is members of the President's own party who are beginning to tap the brakes in resisting this huge government expansion and huge spending spree, which will do nothing to address the rising concern of inflation in the country.

So we are simply not going to join our colleagues in voting for this reckless tax-and-spending spree, and we will continue to do everything we can to expose the components of this bill because, frankly, I think the more the American people learn about what is in the bill, the less likely they will be to support it.

I yield the floor.

I suggest the absence of a quorum.

Mr. President, later today, the Senate will vote on the latest power grab by our friends across the aisle, a bill that is called the John Lewis Voting Rights Advancement Act of 2021.

The most important reason to vote against this legislation is that it is clearly unconstitutional.

I know it is unusual for Members of the legislative branch to make statements like that, but we do take an oath to uphold the Constitution and laws of the United States, and I think it is part of our responsibility to assess the constitutionality of legislation that is being proposed and to make a judgment on whether it is constitutional or not.

One reason why I say that is because the Supreme Court has made very clear that it is within the authority of the States to conduct elections, and that those elections must be run subject to the Voting Rights Act; but that is section 2 of the Voting Rights Act, which applies across the entire country.

One of the reasons we find ourselves in this position today is because, in 2006, our Democratic colleagues proposed an extension of the Voting Rights Act but did not update the formula by which covered States were being determined. In other words, in 2006, they did not reflect the huge improvement and advances made in minority voting strength since 1965.

I think you could say without fear of contradiction that the Voting Rights Act is one of the most important and most successful pieces of legislation ever passed in this country. The good news is that it has worked exactly as Congress had hoped. So our colleagues are really trying to pass an unconstitutional law, which would require States to change their voting rules to ask permission of the Biden Justice Department before they do so.

As Chief Justice Roberts laid out in the Shelby County case, that is a departure from the norm, to be sure, and can only be justified to remedy past discrimination. But if you look at the current numbers of minority voting strength around the country, you see minorities voting at historically high numbers and even in many instances exceeding that of the majority. So this is really a piece of legislation that is being sold under false pretenses.

Based on the way our Democratic colleagues talk about the state of voting rights in America, you would think the Supreme Court had struck down the Voting Rights Act. The chairman of the Judiciary Committee, who just spoke, the Democratic whip, described the current law as an ``insidious effort to suppress the right of voters of color.''

The majority leader, Senator Schumer, recently said that the right to vote was ``under attack in ways we have not seen in generations.''

And the Speaker of the House has said ``voting rights are under relentless attack.''

But the facts do not align with this doom and gloom picture of America. In 2020, roughly two-thirds of all eligible voters cast a ballot. In Texas, 66 percent of registered voters cast a ballot, 11.3 million voters. Compared to 2016, 17 million more people voted in 2020. This includes a higher turnout in Black, White, Hispanic, and Asian- American communities.

When Congress passed the Voting Rights Act back in 1965, the goal-- the laudable goal, which we all share--was to eliminate discriminatory practices, and there is no question that it ultimately has worked.

In 2012, for the first time on record, the turnout among Black voters was higher than that of White voters--higher. And in 2012, Hispanic and Asian voters turned out at the highest rate on record.

So, clearly, thankfully, we have come a long way since 1965. And despite what Democrats would have you believe, the Voting Rights Act is alive and well and continues to protect minority Americans from discrimination.

Even though the facts don't align with the Democrats' sky-is-falling depiction of voting rights in America, that hasn't stopped them from pushing this false narrative of widespread voter suppression. As our colleagues have demonstrated over the past few years,

they have one tried-and-true strategy: if you can't win the game, change the rules.

They failed to stop conservative nominees from reaching the Supreme Court, so their solution is to pack the Supreme Court with additional Justices--just add more liberal Justices. They are uninterested in bipartisanship, so they proposed ending the legislative filibuster. We have heard that time and time again. The Democratic whip just talked about the filibuster. And since they failed to secure a mandate in Congress, they want to forever change the rules of America's elections to rig the game in their favor.

We have seen a steady stream of bills designed by our Democratic colleagues to achieve this end. This current bill, I think, is about the third iteration. First came the so-called For the People Act.

Who could be against the For the People Act?

It was so unpopular among Democrats that they had to go back to the drawing board and rewrite it. When the updated version came to the floor for a Senate vote, it went down with bipartisan opposition. So they came back from their drawing board once again, giving their legislation a new and different name: the Freedom to Vote Act.

They stripped out some of the most egregious provisions, but not nearly enough to change the fate of this partisan bill; and like its predecessor, it failed to pass the Senate.

But now our Democratic colleagues, they really do have the answer: a bill that perverts the cause of voting rights to give the Democratic Party unprecedented control over America's elections.

At the heart of this legislation is the preclearance regime. In other words, the States would have to ask the Federal Government: Can we pass laws in our State?

And it would be up to the Biden Justice Department and Merrick Garland to say yes or no.

Now, back in 1965, the original Voting Rights Act did have a preclearance requirement, but it is clear that, according to the Supreme Court, that was only justified based on a history of past discrimination, which has now been essentially eradicated, if you believe the numbers of minority voters who are casting their ballots now.

So think about the children's game, ``Mother, may I?'' All the kids line up on one side of the room except one who stands on the other side and acts like the mother. Before anyone can move forward, they have to ask, ``Mother, may I?'' Sometimes the mother says ``yes, you may,'' and sometimes she says ``no, you may not.'' Sometimes she even orders the children to take a step backward.

That is eventually what Democrats are proposing in this legislation, to make the Biden Justice Department the mother, and the States have to ask, ``Mother, may I?'' before they could even fulfill their constitutional responsibilities.

In 2013, the Supreme Court struck down the portion of the law that set the formula for when a State or local jurisdiction would have to seek preclearance. But, to be clear--and you can't tell this from the rhetoric on the left--the Court did not strike down the Voting Rights Act in its entirety; just the formula that determined which States would be covered. Because, as the Supreme Court said, that formula had to reflect current conditions, and, instead, Congress chose not to update the formula from 1965. That was section 4 of the Voting Rights Act, which the Supreme Court of the United States held unconstitutional.

Chief Justice Roberts, in his opinion, speaking of the formula in that legislation, said: `` . . . history did not end in 1965.''

Well, here's an example. The formula set in 1965 required States to receive preclearance if they had any ``test or device'' that restricts voting. That would include things like literacy tests or subjective determinations of good moral character, which are, thankfully, nowhere to be found today.

Democrats have tried to market this bill as a response to the Supreme Court's decision, but the truth is this legislation goes far beyond updating that outdated formula.

It would make the formula so broad that virtually every State would have to ask of the Biden Justice Department, ``Mother, may I?'' before making any changes in their election laws. So if a county or municipal utility district or the State itself wanted to do something as simple as clean up voter rolls and remove the names of dead people, they would have to ask the Federal Government and the Biden Justice Department for permission to do so.

Well, this is the same organization--the Biden Justice Department-- that recently took aggressive actions to discourage parents from exercising their constitutional right to speak out at local school board meetings.

Clearly, we don't need to vest States' authorities in the hands of these unanswerable bureaucrats who are willing to abuse their power to discourage parents from exercising their constitutional rights.

Based on this broad formula, you would think there has been countless unenforced instances of voter discrimination. If Democrats are willing to go this far to stop discrimination, it must be a widespread problem, right?

Wrong.

The Justice Department, as I said, retains the right to enforce section 2 of the Voting Rights Act, which applies to the entire United States, and it prohibits discrimination on the basis of race, color, or membership in a language minority group.

During the entire 8 years of the Obama administration, the Justice Department only filed four--four--enforcement cases under section 2.

Well, if you think that discrimination against minority voters is rampant, don't you think you would see more than four enforcement actions by the Obama administration over an 8-year period of time?

Well, the power grab doesn't stop there.

This legislation also gives the Department of Justice veto power over State voter ID laws. Now, we all know you have to show a photo ID to open up a bank account; buy tobacco, alcohol; get married; board a plane; and do countless other things in our country. But our Democratic colleagues have this thing about requiring voter ID to vote, to make sure that you are actually qualified and authorized to cast a ballot.

The American people overwhelmingly support voter ID laws. Four in five people believe voters should be required to show a voter ID in order to cast a ballot. But this legislation would override the will of 80 percent of Americans and allow the Justice Department to veto those laws for basically any reason that they choose.

In so many ways, this legislation is a solution in search of a problem. It interferes--and I would say it usurps--the States' constitutional authority to manage their own elections and set their own congressional districts.

You would have to ask ``Mother, may I?'' of the Biden Justice Department to redo any redistricting, which is currently underway now, in advance.

And it makes it virtually impossible for the States to take actions to prevent fraud, essentially encouraging them to wait for large-scale voter fraud before they can take any action. And it arms the Department of Justice with new powers that will surely be used against those of the Democratic Party.

We are still seeing the consequences of the Justice Department's blatant attack on concerned parents in our schools. Why on Earth would we hand a politically motivated Department even more power to abuse, especially when that power could shape the result of our elections?

From city councils and school boards, all the way up to the President of the United States, the American people have a right--and I would argue a duty--to make their voices heard. A ``government of the people, by the people, for the people''--as Abraham Lincoln phrased it--is only possible if all Americans are free to participate in public life.

Despite what the radical left might lead you to believe, there is no nationwide assault on minority voting rights. If there were, every single person in this building would be lined up together, arm's length, to fight against it.

As I said before, the Voting Rights Act of 1965 is one of the most important laws in modern American history, and it has actually worked, and it continues to protect all persons of color from any sort of discrimination when

it comes to their right to cast their ballot.

This bill isn't about supporting disenfranchised voters, though, or fighting voter suppression. This is a politically motivated power grab that would allow Democrats to determine and Washington to determine how elections in Texas would run.

The narrative of widespread voter suppression is nothing but a scare tactic designed to support a political outcome.

Republicans have blocked every iteration of this partisan power grab so far, and we will stand together to oppose this one as well at the next vote.

I yield the floor.

I suggest the absence of a quorum.