Floor Statements

Mr. President, in watching from the sidelines and since we are not directly involved and because the Democrats decided to go it alone, our Democratic colleagues appear to be playing a game of whack- a-mole to keep their reckless tax-and-spending spree from falling apart.

After months and months of intra-party negotiating--again, talking among themselves, not to us--they hit the gas pedal last week when they knew that President Biden was going to the U.N. Climate Summit in Glasgow, Scotland, and they wanted to give him something that he could actually deliver on.

So, last Friday, they finally settled on a framework, but the cracks quickly began to show. We don't even have a pricetag on this proposal, but some have estimated its cost at $1.75 trillion--an absolutely staggering amount of money. The truth is no one knows because the bill hasn't even been finalized yet, much less scored by congressional scorekeepers.

Unsurprisingly, yesterday, one of our colleagues, the Senator from West Virginia, expressed some of his skepticism about the proposal; and I imagine more are in the wings, wringing their hands in private. After all, this bill spends trillions of dollars on radical priorities that are out of step with where most Americans are: expanded healthcare subsidies; handouts for labor unions; government-funded childcare; and an all-out attack on American-made, affordable energy.

On Friday, the President touted the $555 billion that this agreement would put forward to support clean energy efforts, but these, upon further inspection, are mainly subsidies--taxpayer subsidies--for corporations and the well-off.

I am reminded of France's yellow jacket protests a few years ago. In 2018, hundreds of thousands of demonstrators took to the streets in Paris to protest a hike in gas taxes. At the time, President Macron said the increase was critical to pushing the French people to buy cleaner vehicles, but for most hard-working families, pricey electric vehicles simply were not and are not an option. The yellow jackets felt disenfranchised by the urban elite, saying leaders were talking about the end of the world while they were worried about the end of the month.

It sounds pretty familiar. Here in the United States, families are being pounded by inflation. Prices are going up on everything from groceries to home appliances. Gas prices alone have gone up 60 percent from just 1 year ago, and families are doing their best to prepare for an expensive winter. Energy bills are expected to soar by as much as 54 percent.

Despite the serious financial strain that families are feeling, our Democratic colleagues are pushing policies that will drive up those costs even more.

But here is the real kicker: Often under these proposed policies, the wealthiest of Americans will stand to benefit the most on the backs of hard-working American families.

One of the most clear-cut examples is the aggressive push toward subsidizing electric vehicles, which are among the most expensive cars on the market. Now, with 280 million cars on the road, only 2 percent of which are electric vehicles, this will not benefit most hard-working American families. It will benefit those who can afford these expensive vehicles, and the cherry on top is the up to $12,500 taxpayer subsidy that will help those wealthy Americans buy these expensive vehicles that are out of reach for most hard-working families.

It doesn't matter if the vehicle is completely or substantially made in China, for example, or if the buyer makes hundreds of thousands of dollars a year--they are still eligible for the tax credit. The most generous benefit is reserved for vehicles built in--you guessed it-- union shops. We know the labor unions are among some of the biggest supporters of our friends on the other side of the aisle, and they are set to receive their reward. Buyers could receive up to a $12,500 tax credit for purchasing an electric vehicle from a union shop.

I have nothing against union shops. I support people who choose to be part of a labor union, but this idea that taxpayers should have to underwrite a benefit that goes exclusively to one part of the electric car business, to me, is offensive, and it is just unjustified.

I haven't seen any evidence either that union-made electric vehicles are somehow more green than their nonunion-made competitors', but those companies are certain to gain financial benefits because of these generous taxpayer-funded handouts. Wealthy Americans and Big Labor win; hard-working American families not so much.

Then there is a long list of government handouts to make homes more energy efficient. Similar to those electric vehicles, the high cost of retrofitting a home makes it infeasible for most families--certainly, the middle-class families. Outfitting a home with solar panels will cost you well over $10,000; and, of course, the bigger the house, the more the cost.

The Biden administration is, once again, happy to let taxpayers subsidize these expenditures. The Democrats' proposals include billions of dollars in rebates and grants to help cover the cost of retrofitting homes, even for the well-to-do, who will be the ones who will primarily be able to afford, even with these subsidies, this sort of retrofit.

At the end of the day, the family with the means to spend thousands of dollars on these products will spend less on their monthly electricity bill, which I assume is the point, but everybody else will pay more in taxes without having the benefit of a lower electricity bill. If our colleagues on the other side of the aisle get their way, monthly electricity prices are likely to increase for everyone else.

As I mentioned, gas prices are up significantly from last year. If you filled up your pickup truck a year ago, today you will find out that you will spend about $33 more for each tank of gas that you pump. And energy prices for homes this winter are expected to go up as much as 54 percent.

These are incredible numbers. This is what happens when you throw so much money at limited goods and services--prices go up; inflation goes up. It is a silent tax on people who must pay for these goods and services and have nowhere else to turn.

With this as a backdrop, our Democratic colleagues have proposed to raise taxes on energy companies and drive those prices even higher. Now, only in a fantasy world can you impose greater costs through tax increases on a business and not have them transferred directly to the consumers who buy these goods and services. They are going to be passed along to the people who pay for these goods and services.

This bill will include a new methane tax, which would require oil and gas producers to pay hefty fees if they emit more methane than the government allows.

Natural gas accounts for 40 percent of our electricity--double the amount as renewable sources. Hitting those companies with a methane fee and other proposed tax hikes isn't going to change the fact that we need natural gas to keep the lights on.

By the way, we need natural gas in order to produce the electricity that you use to charge your electric vehicle.

As we hope to move to cleaner forms of energy--obviously, coal being the one that most of us believe emits the most emissions--moving to natural gas just makes sense, and as a matter of fact, the United States has reduced our emissions, not by banning access to any particular energy source but by producing more natural gas.

If we need an example of what a natural gas shortage in America would look like, just take a look at Europe. The supply shortage has caused electricity prices in Europe to skyrocket, plus the fact that they have banned the use of coal and even nuclear power, which is emissions-free. But after the Fukushima nuclear meltdown and the

tsunami that followed, Europe basically decided to hang up on any additional nuclear production. So natural gas prices, which are going to sustain the greatest demand, will go up about 600 percent. Since the start of the year, they have. The situation is so dire that utility companies have switched from natural gas and now begin to burn coal and fuel oil because they simply don't have access to enough natural gas.

This is the problem with the push to quickly move away from fossil fuels before we are ready to transition into other types of energy sources and when you punish the producers of that affordable energy.

Renewables, as laudable as they are--and in Texas, we are an ``all of the above'' State. We produce more electricity from wind turbines than any other State in the Nation. But renewables don't come close to generating enough energy to power our world.

If the United States and our allies scale back production to pursue arbitrary emission benchmarks, that leaves the world turning to countries like Russia and organizations like OPEC, led by Saudi Arabia, to provide that energy. So it is no wonder that Russia is a no-show at the U.N. climate summit. They are actually the ones that will stand to benefit the most if other countries eliminate fossil fuels from their fuel mix because other countries around the world will have no choice but to buy more and more Russian energy.

In his remarks yesterday, President Biden said we should view the current price volatility as a call to action rather than a reason to back off our clean energy goals. Well, I disagree. Families are being pummeled by high prices across the board. We don't need to increase that burden by driving up costs or potentially adding an energy crisis to the mix.

As I said, Texas has always been a proud supporter of the ``all of the above'' energy strategy. We are often recognized for the might of our oil and gas sector. But a lot of folks don't know, as I said, that Texas is a leader in wind energy. Well, we produce about one-quarter of all the wind energy in the United States. If we were a country, we would be the fifth-largest wind energy producer in the world. We don't plan on stopping there. We are also making serious strides in energy innovation through cutting-edge carbon capture and storage projects.

Texas is proof positive that we can strike a balance between conservation, productivity, and economic power, and you can embrace low-emission energy sources without hammering the middle class. But those are not the types of proposals we see from the tax-and-spending spree bill now pending before the House of Representatives. This bill would simply drive up costs for hard-working American families, hurt our energy independence, and benefit our adversaries.

This may impress President Biden's peers in Glasgow, but it is sure to fall flat with the American people.

I yield the floor.

I suggest the absence of a quorum.

Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent to have my bill printed in the Record. The bill ensures the maintenance of critical supply lines within the defense industrial base.

Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent to have my bill printed in the Record. The bill ensures the maintenance of critical supply lines within the defense industrial base.

Mr. President, communities across our great Nation are dealing with a startling spike in violent crime. Last year, the murder rate soared by nearly 30 percent, the largest single-year jump on record.

The American people are paying close attention, and they are concerned. A poll this summer found that nearly 60 percent of Americans are worried about crime. The percentage of those who say they are extremely concerned is at the highest point in more than two decades, and folks largely think not enough is being done to address this spike.

A separate poll found that 65 percent of Americans are dissatisfied with policies to reduce or control crime. That is up more than 16 percent from 2020. Perhaps this is an offshoot of the ``defund the police'' movement that we have seen in radical circles over the last year or so.

With such a dramatic and shocking jump in homicides and violent crime and the clear belief that more should be done to address it, you would expect that the U.S. Department of Justice would be in an all-hands-on- deck posture. After all, this is the highest law enforcement agency in the country. You would think it would take a leading role in finding ways to keep our country and our communities safe.

Unfortunately, leaders at the Department of Justice in the Biden administration believe that they have bigger fish to fry. Forget stopping murderers and violent criminals. The most forceful language we have seen recently from the Attorney General hasn't been about stopping dangerous criminals; it is about going after concerned parents at school board meetings. That is right--communities across the country are worried about violent crime, and the Biden Justice Department is worried about parents who are concerned about what their kids are learning in school.

This all started with a deeply misguided letter from the National School Boards Association about heated school board meetings across the country.

Parents who are concerned about things like critical race theory and other controversial topics, who are simply worried that their kids aren't learning about American history and civics and the foundations upon which this great country was built, they have taken their concerns to school board meetings--something they have every right; indeed, a constitutional right--to do.

I want to be clear: there is no place for violence or threats of violence in our public discourse. It doesn't matter who you are or what you are fighting for; violence is not the answer.

But rather than allow State and local law enforcement authorities to intervene in those rare circumstances when things go off track, the school board leaders at the National School Boards Association went nuclear. They encouraged the Biden administration to treat these parents like something akin to domestic terrorists. They advocated for unleashing the full arsenal and might of the Department of Justice and the Federal Bureau of Investigation on concerned parents--concerned parents. And the Attorney General was, apparently, happy to oblige their outrageous demands.

The National School Boards Association letter argued that a parent who disagrees with the curriculum in their children's school could be investigated under the PATRIOT Act.

You will remember the PATRIOT Act was passed after 9/11/2001 to address radical extremists who had just killed 3,000 Americans in attacks at the Pentagon and in New York.

Unsurprisingly, this letter from the National School Boards Association was met with fierce and immediate blowback. I don't know how they didn't see it coming. Concerned parents and terrorists don't share anything in common.

Well, after the negative press, the National School Boards Association eventually retracted their letter and apologized. They admitted that there was ``no justification for some of the language included in the letter,'' but the damage had already been done.

A few days later, after the letter was sent, Attorney General Garland decided to get into the game, and he published a memo directing Federal law enforcement to inject itself into local school board elections.

Well, we had a chance to question Attorney General Garland last week, when he appeared before the Senate Judiciary Committee, and he conceded that his decision to send out a memo to the Federal law enforcement was based almost entirely on the letter from the National School Boards Association and ``news reports.''

Of course, the Attorney General could not cite any specific examples that he relied upon before unleashing the awesome power of the Federal Government on parents, nor could he provide any data or evidence that local enforcement was incapable of handling any incidents that might occur.

In his memo, the Attorney General also encouraged the Federal authorities to take action far beyond any

threats of violence and references to intimidation of school officials.

But you have to ask: What counts as intimidation to the Attorney General? Is an angry, frustrated parent raising their voice at a school board meeting intimidation?

I think not.

What if one of the parents tells a school board member they plan to run against them in the next election or donate to their opponent in the next election; is that intimidation?

Well, to his credit, the Attorney General did finally concede that parents' right to speak their minds at school board meetings are protected by the First Amendment to the United States Constitution. It is their constitutional right.

But I ask you, put yourself in the shoes of a parent who reads about this Department of Justice memo--from the Attorney General, no less--at the kitchen table.

Is it going to have an impact on their decision to attend the next school board meeting? Will it cause them to shy away from advocating for their children's education and speaking up about misguided policies that they think have no place in their child's school?

I ask you to consider the chilling effect that this had, and will continue to have, on parents who just want to have a say in their children's education.

Instead of raising their voices in opposition to things like critical race theory or other radical educational policies, parents are more likely to be intimidated and to stay at home for fear of being labeled domestic terrorists by the highest law enforcement officer in the land.

They certainly can't afford to hire a lawyer to defend themselves against these sorts of charges by the Federal Government, were the Federal Government to come after them for exercising what Attorney General Garland said were their First Amendment rights under the Constitution.

In response to the Attorney General's memo, the U.S. attorney from Montana sent out a list of Federal statutes that could serve as a basis for prosecution. He took the Attorney General at his word. Among the Federal statutes that he thought could serve as a basis for prosecution included repeated telephone calls.

Well, last week, I asked the Attorney General if he considered the chilling effect that his memo might have on parents exercising their constitutional rights. He evaded the question. So I asked him again. His answers became more evasive. So I asked him again.

Ultimately, the Attorney General--although he was sworn in under oath, testifying in front of the Senate Judiciary Committee--refused to answer the question. He wouldn't tell me, wouldn't tell the Judiciary Committee, wouldn't tell the country, whether he had put any thought at all into how his actions would impact concerned, law-abiding parents.

Even though the National School Boards Association retracted and apologized for its letter, the Justice Department--the Biden Justice Department--still refuses to do so. Attorney General Garland has doubled down on this colossal overreach and still refuses to take ownership or consider how his swift and uninformed action has harmed public discourse in our country.

But, clearly, it is not only where we are headed, because we are already there. The President and the leaders in his administration aren't making decisions on the basis of the law of the land, but based on demands of their radical left.

Amid an alarming spike in murder and violent crime rates, the Justice Department is focused on the threat of concerned parents, because that is what the radical left wants.

The Department is filing meritless lawsuits against State election laws, like those in Georgia and Texas, because that is what their radical base wants.

The Secretary of Homeland Security has told Immigration and Customs Enforcement officers not to enforce our Nation's immigration laws, because that is what the radical left and the Democratic Party want.

President Biden has signaled that he is not only OK with this kind of selective law enforcement, he actually wants more of it.

One of the most controversial nominees being considered by the Senate right now is Rachael Rollins, who the President has nominated to serve as the U.S. Attorney for Massachusetts. Ms. Rollins currently serves as a district attorney for Suffolk County, MA, where she is embroiled in her own controversy.

Shortly after taking office in 2019, Ms. Rollins released a memo outlining more than a dozen crimes that she said should be ignored by local law enforcement. According to Ms. Rollins, individuals who commit offenses like trespassing, shoplifting, larceny, wanton or malicious destruction of property, and even possession with intent to distribute drugs, she said her office would not prosecute them, so law enforcement should not arrest them.

Now, I have no issue with law enforcement using limited resources to prioritize the biggest threats, but there is a big difference between prioritizing dangerous criminals and offenses and exempting wholesale classes of crimes from enforcement.

What happens when the message is sent that government will not enforce its laws? As being played out in California now, where many businesses are simply withdrawing from places like San Francisco, where, if you steal or shoplift something under $950 worth of merchandise, law enforcement will not arrest you; they will not prosecute; and thus the stores are left without recourse and, as you can imagine, thievery runs riot.

Well, leaders certainly shouldn't tip their hat to criminals as to what crimes may be committed free of any consequences, and that is exactly what is happening. The Justice Department's priorities are completely out of whack, and radical, partisan U.S. attorneys will only make things worse.

The Biden administration cannot continue to take their marching orders from the radical base of their political party. And the United States should never be a place where concerned parents are treated like criminals and actual criminals get a free pass.

I yield the floor.

Mr. President, after months of--well, I won't call it infighting; I will call it intraparty negotiating, our Democratic colleagues are still trying to reach an agreement on their multitrillion-dollar tax-and-spending spree legislation. They have yet to decide how much money they want to spend. I think they started--the Senator from Vermont started at $6 trillion, and then we heard it was $3.5 trillion. Now we are hearing that it may be more on the order of what the Senator from West Virginia said was his cap of $1.5 trillion. We still also don't know how much they are willing to raise taxes to cover the cost or how far they want to move America into a European welfare state.

Still, our colleagues are trying to reach a deal in a matter of days. Our colleagues are rushing to compile the largest peacetime tax hike in American history and see just how much government overreach those hard- earned tax dollars can buy.

Some Members experienced buyer's remorse before even swiping the taxpayers' credit card, so our colleagues are trying to scale back this massive spending bill. We read, but we don't know, but it is reported that they have cut certain programs, like free college, which, despite the name, we know that free programs actually cost money because somebody has to pay for them. We also read that they are scaling back other plans, including paid leave and the expanded child tax credit, to reduce the short-term costs and hope for more money down the line.

I think, if truth be told, once these policies are established, many times they are very difficult to repeal later on, which is why they are trying to establish a toehold even for a short period of time. But even with these pared-down proposals, there is still plenty of government overreach to go around.

One of the biggest dreams of our Democratic colleagues is government- run healthcare. We have heard the left embrace Medicare for All as its rallying cry. Well, the Senator who popularized that policy is now chairman of the Senate Budget Committee, Senator Sanders, and he wields a lot of power when it comes to this particular tax-and-spending bill. It is no surprise that his top priority is a dramatic expansion of Medicare.

Initially, we read that our colleagues wanted to lower the age of Medicare eligibility by 5 or 10 years, making tens of millions of younger Americans eligible for this benefit. This, of course, comes at a time when Medicare is in financial trouble already. In just 5 years, the trust fund for Medicare Part A is scheduled to go insolvent.

It hardly seems right, while your boat is in danger of sinking, to add more and more people into the boat. Instead of fixing those problems or providing stability for Medicare, our colleagues want to spread those waning dollars even thinner.

The sky-high cost of expanding eligibility seems to have eliminated that provision. Again, this is based on reporting since no one has actually seen the documents, but a massive expansion of benefits apparently is still being discussed. The Congressional Budget Office has estimated that this expansion would cost more than $350 billion in the first 10 years. We will see if the chairman of the Budget Committee is able to keep this provision off the chopping block.

But this is only part of the plan to put the government in greater control of our daily lives--of all Americans' daily lives. Another big- ticket item which certainly must poll well is free childcare. Again, nothing is free; it just means somebody--not you--is having to pay for it. But free programs, as it turns out, don't come cheap. In this case, the original pricetag was pegged at $450 billion.

The American people won't just pay more in taxes to cover this program; many families will end up spending more on childcare. One left-leaning think tank analyzed the impact of this free childcare bill and found that it is likely to have a devastating impact on middle- class families. According to the People's Policy Project, the Democrats' childcare plan would cause middle-class families to pay more than $13,000 more a year in childcare. That is not just a price increase for 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 of four who brings home $62,000 a year having an extra $13,000 to spend on childcare, especially when they are already being pummeled by inflation and rising costs.

We will see all the ways that President Biden was wrong when he said that ``my Build Back Better agenda costs zero dollars.'' Of course, nobody believes that, but the President keeps saying it over and over and over again. But the American people are pretty smart, and they understand when the wool is being pulled over their eyes or when they are being sold a bill of goods by saying: Yeah, we are going to spend $3.5 trillion, but it is actually going to cost zero. It is really an insult to their intelligence.

Our colleagues across the aisle have also proposed a litany of tax increases on families, workers, and small businesses to cover part of the costs of this massive spending bill, and they hope the increase in the size and power of the Internal Revenue Service will make sure that Big Brother doesn't miss anything.

The administration wants to double the size of the Internal Revenue Service by increasing the number of agents by 15 percent every year for the next decade. Well, we have already seen what a politically motivated IRS can do. We know about the leaking of taxpayer information recently, and we remember the IRS targeting controversy during the Obama administration. IRS bureaucrats subjected conservative groups to a double standard when it came to scrutiny compared to left-leaning nonprofit groups, and it looks like the Biden administration may want to dust off that old playbook.

The administration also wants to give the IRS unprecedented power to snoop in your bank account. The administration proposed requiring banks to give the IRS data on accounts with more than $600 in annual transactions. So that means every time you bought a washing machine or a refrigerator, you paid your rent, maybe paid your mortgage, maybe bought a car, that information would be reported to the IRS. The IRS already knows how much you earn because that is reported, but that is apparently not enough for the IRS surveillance. They want to make sure that the IRS, like Big Brother, knows everything you do, everywhere you go, and who you associate with.

Well, this was a $600 annual transaction minimum, and, of course, that is for an entire year. It is easy to see how that would swoop up virtually everybody in this new government surveillance program. This obviously is not designed to catch billionaires evading their tax responsibilities. It is tough to imagine somebody who wouldn't get caught up in that threshold over the course of an entire year. A single month of rent is higher than 600 bucks in most Texas cities.

Well, we know what happened. The blowback was so fierce that our Democratic colleagues said: Well, it is not going to be $600 a year. We will up it to $10,000 a year. But, yeah, we will continue the surveillance of your personal private financial information just so we are sure we don't miss anybody.

Well, even at a threshold of $10,000, a widow who gets a monthly stipend from Social Security for $1,500 a month would obviously be a target of IRS snooping under this proposal.

It is pretty obvious this is a huge violation of personal privacy, and people are rightfully angry about it. I think people are angry because they don't want to be presumed to be a tax cheat by their own government. I have received letters from nearly 60,000 of my

constituents who are opposed to such massive government overreach and invasion of their privacy.

We know it is also an incredible financial and paperwork burden on financial institutions--community banks, credit unions, and the like. Imagine the time and the people and the hours necessary to comply with this new surveillance by your own government. Transmitting the sensitive financial information of almost every customer of a bank or financial institution to the IRS would involve a lot of time and a lot of money that these banks or credit unions may or may not have.

I have cosponsored a bill with Senator Tim Scott from South Carolina to prevent the IRS from monitoring American citizens' private financial information, and I was pleased to see our colleague from West Virginia, Senator Manchin, cast doubt on the future of this controversial and unnecessary provision.

The truth is, it doesn't matter if the pricetag of this bill is $5.5 trillion, $3.5 trillion, or $1.5 trillion; the goal is the same: to permanently transform America and the role that government plays in our everyday lives. Whether that is through the healthcare system, childcare, or through the IRS, there is no line too sacred to cross in pursuit of this ideological nirvana. Our colleagues continue working behind closed doors to determine just how much socialism they want to force on the American people.

We still don't know how much this bill will cost--again, nobody has seen it yet outside of the small group of Democrats who are actually negotiating--or how much harm it will actually inflict. But we do know one thing: This is not what the American people bargained for in the last election. The American voters elected a 50-50 Senate, reduced the Democratic majority in the House, and took President Biden at his word when he promised to work in a bipartisan fashion across the aisle. This is not what the American people bargained for. They did not vote to make Joe Biden the next FDR, and they did not vote to have this Build Back Better bill be the next New Deal.

We will continue, once we are able to find out precisely what is in this bill, to do everything we can to fight against this irresponsible taxing-and-spending bonanza.

Mr. President, I yield the floor.

Mr. President, after failing to pass any radical climate proposals this year, it appears our colleagues across the aisle are in a panic mode. The reason is, later this week, President Biden will be traveling to Glasgow, along with a dozen or more U.S. officials and Members of Congress, for a U.N. climate summit, and it looks like they are going to show up empty-handed.

The President has talked a big game when it comes to climate change. On the campaign trail, he promised that the electric sector would be carbon pollution-free by 2035. He committed to building 1.5 million energy-efficient homes and public housing units, and he said the United States would transition from oil and gas.

Of course, he will be long gone from office, so he will never be held accountable for these projections, even if they miss by a mile, which I predict they will. But the fact is he has failed to make good on his promises to fundamentally transform the energy landscape in America, and I would suggest that that is for a very good reason.

Policies that drive up costs for the American people, hurt our energy security, and enrich our adversaries don't typically get a lot of traction here in the U.S. Congress.

Two-and-a-half years ago, we saw a great example of how unpopular these policies were when the pie-in-the-sky Green New Deal came to the Senate floor for a vote. Not a single Senator voted for that bill. Even the Members who introduced it were too afraid to vote yes because of the blowback.

But now that our Democratic colleagues control all levers of the Federal Government, afraid of their radical base, their calculus seems to have changed, so they are trying to jam these radical policies into the multitrillion-dollar tax-and-spending spree bill, otherwise known as reconciliation.

Despite working on this bill for months and only needing Democrat support to get it to the President's desk, our Democratic colleagues are still struggling to reach an agreement among themselves. But now that President Biden has a deadline and he wants to look good in front of other world leaders in Glasgow, it is, apparently, crunch time.

But they have a problem: no bill has even been written or even seen the light of day. There is a steady stream of reporting about which outrageous policies are in and which are out, but none of us have seen a bill--we haven't seen it in writing--if it exists at all.

Based on reporting, though, massive tax hikes on the energy sector appear to be in the mix. Energy companies would pay higher taxes on income earned in the global marketplace and be subjected to the double taxation of their foreign incomes. And we know that when producers have higher overhead because of the higher tax burden, they don't absorb that; they pass it along to consumers in terms of higher prices.

Our Democratic colleagues want to also add a Superfund excise tax, which would force energy companies to pay more on every barrel of crude oil that is sold. Tax hikes on oil and gas companies won't increase the output of renewables, and renewables only accounted for 20 percent of the electricity generation last year while natural gas accounted for double that.

That is why, in my State, we believe in the all-of-the-above approach--all forms of energy--knowing that the Sun doesn't always shine and the wind doesn't always blow. We found out last year, because of extremely cold weather, we couldn't even put natural gas in the pipeline because we didn't have the electricity to run the compressors, and so it was--no pun intended--a perfect storm.

What we learned from that experience--and I think what we should all learn--is that renewables have their place. They are important, and their role is growing, but you have to have a reliable base load of energy, which renewables cannot supply. The only outcome of these tax hikes will be to drive up costs for working families and send more business to foreign energy producers.

I remember recently that President Biden, in looking at the high price of gasoline--which has gone up dramatically--looked to OPEC--the Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries--led by Saudi Arabia and Russia, and asked them to produce more oil.

Well, how about American energy producers and the jobs that go along with that and the pipelines that move that oil and gas safely around the country?

He is OK with Nord Stream 2, which is a Russian gas pipeline over in Europe; but when it comes to the Keystone XL Pipeline here in America, ``shut her down'' is his attitude.

Massive tax increases aren't the only provisions that seem to have survived negotiations, the best we can tell from the reporting. Handouts to wealthy Americans to buy electric vehicles appears to be safe. Talk about socialism for rich people. These aren't cars that average working families can afford to buy. They are, roughly, double or more expensive than regular cars operating on an internal combustion engine. Nevertheless, this bill, apparently, will provide for $12,500 in tax credits for electric vehicle purchases--again, for some of the most expensive cars in the marketplace.

So, for those people working for a living, who cannot afford to buy these expensive electric vehicles even with this very generous tax credit, they are going to be asked to subsidize the purchase of these vehicles by wealthy Americans who don't need the tax credit or the subsidy coming from hard-working American families.

This subsidy isn't only set up to reward buyers purchasing American- made vehicles; you can still receive a taxpayer handout even if the vehicle is completely or substantially made overseas, in countries like China.

On top of that, a bigger tax credit is available to electric cars built in union shops. Well, maybe union-built vehicles are somehow more green than other electric vehicles. I doubt that. Or maybe it is a favor doled out to a favored interest group by our friends across the aisle. That seems like the more likely conclusion.

While electric vehicles don't use gasoline, they still require a lot of energy to run. Our colleagues don't, apparently, know where electricity needed to run these vehicles comes from. Well, I will tell them. It comes from coal; it comes from natural gas; it comes from renewables; it comes from hydropower and nuclear power or some mixture of all of those. Yet these are the very energy sources they say they are seeking to avoid by incentivizing more use of electric vehicles.

Well, if Democrats raise taxes on companies that produce natural gas, which accounts for 40 percent of our electricity production, what is the plan to power the fleet of taxpayer-subsidized electric vehicles?

Renewables don't generate enough energy to power our country today, let alone the amount we need to charge millions of new electric vehicles. Still, the Democrats are eager to push America toward renewables and punish those who don't jump on board.

One of the most controversial parts of the Democrats' energy push appears to be in peril, if you can believe the reporting. Again, none of us have seen this. We just know what we read. That program is known as the Clean Electricity Performance Program, or the CEPP. This program would reward utility companies that already use renewable electricity sources and punish those that do not.

So, if you are wondering how that switch would go, just look at some of the energy policies out West, in California. That State made an aggressive push to transition to push 100-percent renewables by 2030, but as I said, renewable energy is not always reliable energy, and it certainly isn't affordable energy. In recent years, California has implemented rolling blackouts to ration limited energy supplies during the hot summer months; and, on average, Californians pay twice as much as Texans for electricity. That is where those higher prices go--they get passed on to the consumer. Twice as much is the cost of electricity in California as compared to Texas.

So imagine what would happen if every utility company across the country were forced to use only renewable sources.

Last month, the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission's Commissioner testified before the Senate, and he said this proposal would be an ``H bomb'' for electricity markets. It would blow it up.

Our colleague, Senator Manchin, from West Virginia, has said he won't support this proposal; and good for him, but other Democrats have not given up yet.

President Biden recently insisted ``nothing has been formally agreed to.''

Again, this whole process is opaque to Republicans because we haven't been invited to the table or welcomed to the table to try to come up with a bipartisan policy. Our Democratic colleagues have insisted they want to do this all on their own because they know only then will they be able to come up, presumably, with something that will appease the most radical elements of their political base, and if they negotiated with the Republicans, they wouldn't be able to do that because we would have to negotiate toward the center rather than on the fringes of political ideology.

Despite the fact that these policies that I have mentioned would radically transform the energy landscape and drive up costs to consumers and hurt our energy security, our colleagues are rushing-- rushing--to reach a deal before the President is wheels up to Europe. Forget sound public policy; President Biden wants a new talking point at the United Nations climate summit in Glasgow, Scotland.

This rush job comes at a time when energy prices are already skyrocketing. Talk about inflation. Gasoline is up more than 55 percent from a year ago. With winter fast approaching, heating bills, including heating oil that many Northern States use, are expected to rise as much as 54 percent from last year. This is really an invisible tax on people, where the value of your dollar that you earn is diminished by the increase in cost--54 percent over last year for heating bills in the northern part of our country. Well, it is all across the country, but it is, obviously, needed more there than in my part of the country.

Of course, these aren't the only higher prices that families are facing. Inflation continues to pummel the American people, putting a tight squeeze on family budgets. For seniors, for veterans, and others who operate on fixed incomes, those price hikes are a threat to their livelihoods. There could not be a more dangerous or costly time to wage war on American energy. No family should have to choose between buying groceries and turning on the heat in the wintertime.

President Biden is eager to put a show on in Glasgow and impress world leaders with dubious commitments that he can't keep, but these measures have the potential to inflict real and lasting harm on the American people.

I am not opposed to renewable energy, electric vehicles, or efforts to preserve our greatest natural resources for future generations. I support efforts to capture carbon and sequester it. All of these policies need to strike a delicate balance based on prudence, based on science, and based on logic, not based on some ideology about the way that you wish the world was; it is how the world is.

Democrats want to force the American people to pay more for less reliable energy and endanger our own energy security to meet these arbitrary net zero deadlines. As I said, they are rushing to meet a deadline so that President Biden can have a good applause line in Glasgow.

This is just the latest example of how the reckless tax-and-spending spree is not helping the American people at all but, rather, it is about forcing Democrats' vision on every city, State, and family in the country.

I yield the floor.

Madam President, in the coming days, thousands of politicians from 200 different companies will convene in Glasgow, Scotland, for the U.N. climate summit. They will step off their private planes and into meetings about the need to reduce global emissions, and I am not sure many of them will see the irony of their actions. These leaders will try to paint fossil fuels as the world's greatest enemy. They will make lofty and, yes, unrealistic commitments to eventually transition to clean energy sources. At the same time, they will completely ignore the realities of the current energy landscape.

Around the world, energy shortages are having a costly impact on working families. Here at home, Americans are experiencing sticker shock at the gas pump. Gas prices, after all, have gone up by more than 55 percent from just 1 year ago. If you are driving a pickup truck, you will spend almost $32 more to fill up your tank today than you did last October.

In States like California, the problems are even worse. Last week, the price of a gallon of regular gas in one town hit $7.59 a gallon, and premium was nearly $8.50 a gallon. It is hard to imagine how somebody operating on a fixed income or working a minimum-wage job would cover those sorts of expenses, especially since it is lower income Americans who typically have to travel farther because of the high cost of living and housing in our major urban areas. So low gas prices are the only thing that will allow them to get by.

But gas prices are not the only growing energy expense in family budgets. As we head into winter, heating bills are expected to soar. Households could pay up to 54 percent more than they did last winter. It will cost more to heat your home, more for your family to visit for the holidays, more to put holiday meals on the table, and more to buy gifts for under the Christmas tree. This holiday season is shaping up to be a pricey one.

Costs at home are growing by the day, and our friends across the Atlantic aren't faring any better. Europe, in fact, is in the midst of an unprecedented energy crisis. A supply shortage has caused prices to skyrocket. For example, since the start of the year, natural gas prices are up almost 600 percent. The situation is so dire that utility companies have switched from natural gas, which is the cleanest burning fossil fuel, to coal and fuel oil.

This global energy crisis serves as the backdrop for this summit in Glasgow, where the world leaders will discuss plans to further reduce the use of fossil fuels. They are not saying what they would do as an alternative; they just want to kill the goose that laid the golden egg when it comes to low cost, cleaner burning energy like natural gas. Now, making promises to curb emissions sounds pretty good if you could, in fact, do it. It sounds good until you realize this is what you get: unreliable and unaffordable energy.

In Europe's case, there is also a very dangerous power dynamic at play. The supply of energy to the continent could

be increased, but the guy controlling the spigot--his name is Vladimir Putin. One of Russia's top priorities is Nord Stream 2, a pipeline to carry more gas directly from Russia to Europe. This project, of course, has been years in the making and has faced considerable opposition around the world, especially among our colleagues on this side of the aisle.

President Biden has already handed Moscow a massive victory by stepping aside and refusing to impose sanctions on the company building Nord Stream 2. Now Putin is withholding desperately needed gas from Europe until the pipeline is approved. Yes, he is using energy as a weapon against those who are totally dependent on Russia for that energy.

This is a problem with the global efforts to quickly move--too quickly--before we are ready, away from fossil fuels. Phrases like ``energy transition'' appeal to some activists but fail to deliver results in the real world in real time. Renewables are great, but they don't come close to generating enough reliable energy to power our world because the wind doesn't always blow, and the Sun doesn't always shine.

We can't just sit in the dark until Mother Nature lets us turn the lights back on. We need a base supply of reliable energy, and as much as some of our colleagues hate to admit it, natural gas is our best current option. If the United States and our allies scale back production to pursue arbitrary emission benchmarks, they will leave the world turning to countries like Russia, Iran, and Venezuela for their energy. Today, we are experiencing how costly that reliance is, and in years past, we acknowledged how downright dangerous it is. In January 2009, Russia effectively turned the gas off to Ukraine for almost 3 weeks, and at least 10 countries in Europe were affected.

By transitioning solely to renewables before the output matches the demand, we are placing ourselves in a very, very vulnerable position, and the same is true for our allies. President Putin has demonstrated as much.

Unfortunately, I don't expect those kinds of real-world concerns to dominate the conversations at this summit in Glasgow, and President Biden certainly won't be advocating for America's energy independence-- to the contrary. We were only a few hours into the Biden administration when they launched the first attack on American-produced energy. Within hours of taking the oath of office, President Biden canceled the permit for the Keystone XL Pipeline. For some strange reason, he is OK with Nord Stream 2 from Russia to Europe, but he is not OK with the Keystone XL Pipeline here in America. I don't get it.

There is no question that the biggest losers from this decision were the energy workers whose jobs evaporated and the communities that stood to benefit from the tax revenue. The biggest winners, unfortunately, from President Biden's decision include countries like Russia and Saudi Arabia, who now hold too much power on the global energy market. We will see how that is playing out.

That same day, the Biden administration halted all new leasing permits on Federal lands and waters. Rather than responsibly harvest our greatest natural resources and share those resources with the rest of the world, the administration sent more business to our adversaries and to OPEC producers.

President Biden piled on with another attack on our energy producers by rejoining the Paris climate accord--an agreement that no one seems to follow. Yes, they will pay lipservice to it, but they actually don't do anything about it. A report published last week found that countries around the world aren't sticking to the lofty commitments that they made. The world's major economies are not on track to meet the climate goals set in the Paris accord. In fact, according to this report, by 2030, these countries are expected to produce more than double the amount of fossil fuels required to meet the goals of the Paris climate accord.

Then there is the fact that China, which plays by nobody's rules except their own, which also happens to be the world's leading polluter, is completely AWOL from any of these efforts. Not only is China ignoring global efforts to curb emissions, the country is in the process of building hundreds of new coal-powered powerplants. Last year, China built three times as many new coal powerplants as any other country in the world combined--three times all the other countries in the world combined.

Rather than pull out of the agreement that is weakening our global energy security, President Biden is making even bigger promises-- promises that he cannot keep. He nearly doubled the emissions reduction goals set by President Obama in 2015. President Obama pledged to reduce emissions by 26 to 28 percent by 2025, and we are nowhere close to meeting that goal. But President Biden has doubled down and vowed to cut emissions by 50 to 52 percent by 2030--a complete fantasy. He hasn't explained how he would accomplish meeting that goal, nor, if he tried, would he be able to explain it because it is simply infeasible.

To be clear, I am a strong supporter of efforts to reduce emissions. There are more ways than one to skin the cat. Texas has been a leader, in fact, in efforts to develop cleaner and more diverse sources of energy. We are truly an ``all of the above'' State. We produce more electricity from wind turbines than any other State in the Nation. New solar farms are being built all across our State, and private companies are making incredible investments in carbon capture and other emission- reducing technologies. I am proud of this work and a staunch supporter of efforts to preserve our greatest natural resources for future generations. But what we are seeing from the administration isn't a thoughtful effort to reduce emissions; it is virtue signaling.

When the President addressed a joint session of Congress earlier this year, he spoke about the challenges to reduce carbon emissions. He said: If we do it perfectly, it is not going to matter. How he expects to do it perfectly, he did not say, nor could he. But if that is what he is thinking, why drive up energy costs to the point that Americans can't afford to turn the heat on in winter? Why would he give Putin the power to regulate Europe's only source of energy--natural gas? Why curb domestic energy production and let China run wild? These actions may earn votes in support from some corners, but they will inflict serious pain on the American people, as well as our allies around the world.

As an armada of Biden administration officials pack their bags for Glasgow, I want to remind them that there is far more at stake than just the President's credibility on this score. It is our future economy. It is our ability to provide good, well-paying jobs to hardworking American families, and it is our ability as Americans to export energy, which allows some of our friends and allies around the world not to depend solely on the tender mercies of Vladimir Putin.

I yield the floor.

I suggest the absence of a quorum.

Mr. President, earlier this week, one of President Biden's nominees for a very important office testified before the Finance Committee. Actually, I was a little surprised. It is the nominee for Customs and Border Protection, but, apparently, according to the arcane rules of the Senate, rather than the Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee or the Judiciary Committee, it was the Finance Committee that conducted that hearing. Perhaps there will be sequential referrals, but that surprised me a little bit.

But I met, at least over the phone, Chris Magnus, who is currently the police chief in Tucson, AZ, who had been nominated to lead--who has been nominated to lead U.S. Customs and Border Protection, the Agency responsible for managing security and trade and commerce at the border, among other places.

Suffice it to say the Customs and Border Protection are overwhelmed, given the current numbers of migrants making their way to the southwestern border. In the last year, CBP has encountered more than 1.7 million migrants along the southern border, the highest number on record.

To be clear, this is not the fault of the dedicated law enforcement officials who are putting their lives on the line to protect our children and our country from the influx of illegal drugs but to also enforce our immigration laws. By the way, these are not policies that they make, these are policies that Congress makes.

These men and women make incredible sacrifices to secure our border and try to keep our communities safe, and we owe them our gratitude. But we also owe them responsible policies and other support to give them a fighting chance to succeed at the difficult job we have asked them to do.

Unfortunately, the current crisis is a direct result of Biden administration words and actions and outright refusal to fix the policies that are being manipulated by the transnational criminal organizations that smuggle people and drugs into our country.

We have seen a steady parade of messages and policies and inactions and some actions in some cases, all of which crystalize into a clear message to migrants that if you come to the southwestern border and enter the country illegally, you will be likely able to stay.

I am reminded of the widespread shoplifting issues that we have seen in San Francisco. Under State law, which has recently changed, if someone is caught stealing merchandise for $950 or less, it is only a misdemeanor, and rarely are those cases prosecuted.

But--surprise--people paid attention, and there is no shortage of videos online showing individuals committing criminal offenses, filling garbage bags full of items and walking right out the front door. This is what happens if you send the message that you can violate the law with impunity.

This problem in San Francisco became so expensive that a number of businesses, including Walgreens, for example, started closing stores in the city because they just couldn't afford the loss due to these thefts.

The message is that if leaders send a message that says the law won't be enforced, more people will break the law because there are no repercussions, and that is exactly what is happening today at the southern border.

The administration has essentially given the playbook to the migrants and the cartels--the transnational criminal organizations that smuggle people and drugs into the United States. It boils down to this: Cross the border, surrender to Border Patrol, repeat these specific lines, and you will be released to the interior of the country with virtually no supervision.

And it doesn't surprise anybody that a huge percentage of those individuals never show up for their future court hearing.

Earlier this week, I asked Mr. Magnus if he agreed that the administration's stated policy of nonenforcement is a pull factor, encouraging more illegal immigration.

We talked about the push factors: violence, crime, a desire for a better life, maybe the smugglers whispering in your ear, ``For a few bucks you can go stay with your family in the interior of the United States.'' But he agreed that the nonenforcement policy of the Department of Homeland Security was a pull factor that actually encouraged more illegal immigration.

I was surprised but honestly grateful to hear the President's nominee admit the truth. It is obvious. But it is still somehow a taboo statement--taboo statement for the Biden administration officials to make.

It is undeniable that the administration's actions have encouraged the surge of illegal immigration and the humanitarian crisis that exists on our border.

One example is the process by which migrants undergo--the process they undergo before they are returned or released. Before the Biden administration existed, there was a clear process for migrants who crossed the border to claim asylum.

The individual would be processed by Border Patrol and undergo a credible fear assessment. That is to see if they qualify for the statutory definition of asylum, which essentially determines, at least in a preliminary fashion, whether they qualify.

If the asylum officer determines the applicant had a credible fear of persecution, that person would then be issued a notice to appear for a future court hearing. That is a critical document that formally commences immigration court proceedings because if they don't show up, a default order of deportation will issue.

Well, I have heard concerns from a number of folks in my State 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 called a notice to report. This is a document that says when you get where you are going, turn yourself in to the local Immigration and Customs Enforcement office to start your removal proceedings.

These migrants haven't undergone a credible fear screening. We have no information on the validity of their asylum claims, and it is unclear whether the administration has given any teeth to the warning that failure to contact the local ICE office may result in your arrest.

So the Biden administration has made it easier for migrants to disappear and melt into the great American landscape.

Last month, Secretary Mayorkas, the Secretary of the Department of Homeland Security, made things worse. He issued a directive, new guidance, at the end of September that strongly discourages Immigration and Customs Enforcement removal proceedings officers from carrying out their duties unless a migrant meets specific criteria.

You can read it yourself. It talks about mitigating factors and aggravating factors, and somehow an ICE officer, a Border Patrol agent, is supposed to make an individualized determination whether this individual migrant qualifies or does not qualify to be admitted into the United States.

According to Secretary Mayorkas, recent border crossers should be a priority, but it is only if they have been apprehended for some other reason. He has basically said if your only crime is illegally entering into the United States, we are not going to detain you. We are not going to deport you.

The Secretary's guidance says that individuals convicted of serious criminal conduct should be a priority for removal, but it is unclear what crimes meet the criteria.

For example, is distributing or receiving child pornography considered a serious criminal conduct? What about crimes like wire fraud, racketeering, embezzlement, a whole host of other crimes that you or I might think of?

It defies common sense to ask these law enforcement officers, charged with enforcing our laws, to turn a blind eye when they encounter individuals who have come here illegally and committed other crimes because those crimes just aren't serious enough in the opinion of the bureaucracy at the Department of Homeland Security or in the Biden administration.

I am reminded of the controversial directive issued by another one of President Biden's nominees to enforce our Nation's laws.

Rachael Rollins has been nominated to serve as the U.S. attorney for Massachusetts and is currently the district attorney for Suffolk County, Boston.

Shortly after taking her job as DA in Suffolk County, she released a memo outlining a dozen crimes that should be ignored by law enforcement. According to Ms. Rollins--this is a district attorney-- according to Ms. Rollins, individuals who commit offenses like trespassing, shoplifting, larceny--which is essentially stealing-- wanton or malicious destruction of property or even possession with intent to distribute drugs should not be prosecuted in Suffolk County.

Now, I have no issue with law enforcement using limited resources to prioritize the threats to the community. But they can't exempt wholesale classes of crimes from enforcement, and they certainly should not tip their hat to the criminals as to what crimes can be committed free of any consequence.

But under the Biden administration, unfortunately, we are seeing similar action.

We are also seeing a record low number of deportations. In April, as border crossings hit the highest level in 2 years--excuse me--two decades, ICE removed the lowest number of illegal immigrants on record. So not only are more people coming at historic numbers, but historic numbers of people are--low numbers of people are being deported.

This, again, is part of an overall message that sends an unequivocal message to the world that if you come to the United States illegally, you are likely to be able to get away with it. There is a good chance migrants will be released with a flimsy notice to report, and once that happens, they won't be removed unless they are caught committing another crime.

The Department of Homeland Security is charged with safeguarding the American people and enforcing our laws. But its employees are largely handcuffed because of the Department's own leadership and the guidance they have handed down.

Again, there is no problem in my book with prioritizing the removal of dangerous criminals who are in the United States illegally. But it is another thing to send a message that if you break some of our laws, we are going to enforce them; if you break other laws, we won't enforce them--and thus encourage more and more people to come to the United States illegally.

It isn't clear that enforcement and removal operations officers will truly retain the discretion they need to remove illegal immigrants who don't fall under some of the categories laid out by the Secretary and his guidance that he issued in late September.

Considering everything we have heard from our friends across the aisle when it comes to immigration enforcement, this radical action by the administration is not completely surprising.

Vice President Harris, who was appointed by the President to deal with the crisis at the border, once compared ICE to the Ku Klux Klan. And a number of our colleagues have sided with radical activists who want to defund the police.

With violent crime and murder rates on the rise across the country, it is no surprise that the American people overwhelmingly disagree with this idea of defunding the police.

I was gratified to see after this defund movement hit--had its heyday, that a year later, most of the jurisdictions around the country had restored the funding because of the disastrous consequences of defunding the police. But it is harder to resurrect a police department to recruit new people and train them than it is to defund them and shrink the size of the department.

But now we have gone from defunding law enforcement to defanging law enforcement. Slowly, we have seen the tools law enforcement needs to keep our communities safe being taken away from them, and our law enforcement officers are being told: You cannot do your job.

Liberal activists can throw out their ``Abolish ICE'' posters because the administration is effectively nullifying the policy from the inside.

The reality of the situation, however inconvenient it may seem, is that by entering the United States illegally, migrants are violating U.S. law. Again, it is not something that is dictated by the Department of Homeland Security or by Border Patrol; these are laws that Congress has passed and previous Presidents have signed into law.

As I said at the beginning, we are fortunate to have the hard-working men and women of ICE and CBP who are committed to enforcing our laws and safeguarding the American people, but this policy of nonenforcement and of providing additional pull factors to encourage people to illegally enter the United States has to be demoralizing to the very people we are depending upon to keep our country safe.

Make no mistake, the President bears full responsibility for this crisis. He is the one who could make the difference. He could change it with the stroke of a pen.

January was the only full month this year that President Biden was not President of the United States. It is also no coincidence that it was the only month in which fewer than 100,000 migrants crossed our southern border. The Biden administration has made nonenforcement the de facto response to the border crisis, and as a result, annual apprehensions have hit an alltime high. Until the Biden administration changes the playbook, migrants will continue to flood the zone using the very plays that the administration has laid out for them.

Mr. President, I yield the floor.

I suggest the absence of a quorum.

Madam President, over the last couple of years, our Democratic colleagues have suggested a range of unrealistic and downright harmful policies in our shared goal--and I emphasize the words ``shared goal''--to reduce carbon emissions. But it is not just a question of what you are doing; it is a question of how you are going about doing it. The way they are going about doing it is going to raise the prices of electricity, gasoline, and all forms of energy on people on fixed incomes, people who are seniors living on Social Security, and others. They have proposed everything from the socialist agenda that is the Green New Deal to more targeted, but no more realistic, zero net emission mandates.

Now, we all know that energy transition occurs at all times. I have traveled to India--perhaps the Presiding Officer has--and to other countries where people literally cook their food using cow manure patties, dried cow manure. I remember Prime Minister Modi coming to Houston, TX, during an event that we called ``Howdy, Modi!'' when he heralded the use of increased access to cooking gas so that his constituents, Indians, wouldn't have to use dried cow dung to cook their food--that represents progress--or wouldn't have to use wood chips anymore.

Then the transition was to coal, then to natural gas, nuclear, and other forms of energy. So energy transition occurs at all times. The only question is how it comes about, whether it is as a result of higher taxes and forced government mandates or whether it is which form of energy competes favorably for consumers because of its cost and availability.

Well, of all of the dangerous policy proposals, I think the reckless tax-and-spending-spree bill takes the cake. This is the so-called reconciliation bill that is now pending over in the House, or is being negotiated. Nobody has actually seen it yet, but we keep hearing what is in it, and we keep hearing that the left is negotiating with the far left. This is what happens when our Democratic colleagues don't include people in the opposing political party to try to build consensus. It is pretty hard, particularly when you only have 50 votes.

This isn't like FDR's New Deal after the Great Depression, wherein he had huge majorities. I think what our Democratic colleagues are finding out is that, when they try to go it alone, passing these radical policies is really, really hard to do because you have no room for error.

This reminds me of the yellow jackets protests in France, starting back in 2018, as to what is happening now with some of these mandates and these higher taxes. This was, as you may recall, a social movement of French working-class families who felt disenfranchised from the urban elite, who ``can focus on the end of the world,'' they said, ``while we're worrying about the end of the month.'' I think it is pretty apt to where we are today. This reckless tax-and-spending spree not only compiles the most irresponsible policies into one massive bill, as I said, but our Democratic colleagues, along with the White House, are trying to pass it in a 50-50 Senate, on a party-line vote.

Well, talk about bad timing. This comes at a time when Texans and other Americans are already being pummeled by rising costs, especially at the gas pump. Inflation is rearing its ugly head everywhere in terms of energy costs, groceries, commodities, and with things like a washing machine or a new refrigerator. Try buying a new house, and you will see the cost has just jumped dramatically.

It is a demonstrable fact that, in the last year, gasoline costs have gone up 55 percent. The average price today is about $3.33 a gallon. A year ago, it was $2.16 a gallon. For somebody who drives a pickup truck--and we have a lot of pickup trucks in Texas--it would have cost $56 for a tank of gas a year ago, but, today, it is $87--a $31 increase.

Unfortunately, sky-high gasoline prices aren't the only growing drain on family budgets. As I mentioned, electricity, groceries, clothing, eating out occasionally at a restaurant, and countless other expenses are on the rise. Prices are so high that inflation is outpacing wage growth, essentially giving workers a pay cut. Let me say that again. If you are earning, let's say, $10,000 a year--just to pick a number--and inflation rises like it does with gasoline costs, you are effectively getting a pay cut because of the rising costs of goods and services.

But that doesn't seem to deter our Democratic colleagues from moving full steam ahead on legislation that would drive these costs even higher. After spending nearly $2 billion earlier this year on a party- line vote, our colleagues are back for round 2, and this time they are prepared to take a wrecking ball to one of our crown jewels in this country, which is our energy sector. By drowning the energy sector in tax hikes or in increased regulations and costs, our Democratic colleagues think that they can achieve their green

energy dreams with no consequences, but, of course, that is just a dangerous fantasy.

It sort of reminds me of what I saw reported today by NPR. NPR reports: ``Despite climate change promises, governments plan to ramp up fossil fuel production.'' Indeed, the President and members of this body are going to be heading to a climate conference in Glasgow, Scotland, starting on October 31. As you know, usually what happens at those conferences, just like at the Paris climate conference in 2015, is that governments make extravagant promises to reduce emissions and to eliminate fossil fuels, including coal and oil and gas, in favor of clean energy.

Now, I am not deprecating clean energy. In Texas, we believe in an ``all of the above'' energy policy. We produce more electricity from wind turbines than any other State in the Nation. So I am certainly not bad-mouthing clean energy, but it has to play a role and not dominate to the exclusion of other forms of energy.

But, as the NPR article points out, ``despite lofty commitments [made] by governments to reduce greenhouse gas emissions, they are still planning,'' according to this U.N. report that was just issued, ``to extract huge amounts of energy from fossil fuels in the coming years.''

This report was published on Wednesday, today, and it details how the world's largest fossil fuel producers plan to carry on using coal, gas, and oil despite promises made in Paris in 2015. So it really makes you wonder what is going on when these political leaders go to places like Glasgow or Paris, make extravagant promises, and then come back home and break those promises.

Well, I think I know what is happening here because, just like in France in 2018, when the government tried to impose a new fuel tax on consumers, the yellow jackets protested. They said: You are worried about the end of the world. We are worried about how we will pay our bills through the end of the month.

I think a similar phenomenon is occurring now because none of these green energy fantasies come cheap. That is another reason energy costs are going higher. Whether you are talking about energy or agriculture or any other sector of the economy, higher taxes, which are what our colleagues are attempting to assess against the energy sector, always mean higher prices for consumers.

Companies don't absorb those costs. They pass them right along to consumers in the form of increased costs. In fact, many businesses can't absorb increased taxes and keep their prices stable because they simply can't operate in the black, and they will go bankrupt. So businesses just don't take the hits that keep on coming. They will raise prices; they will lay off employees or will implement any combination of cost-cutting measures, and that is exactly what this pie-in-the-sky, green energy fantasy bill contained in the reconciliation legislation would spur.

This year, as I have pointed out, has already given us the highest gas prices since 2014. Now, I just did this year over year, but they are the highest prices we have seen since 2014, and I have no doubt that President Biden's tax hikes will send those prices at the pump even higher just at a time when we are beginning to sound the alarm bells over inflation, including by Democratic-leaning economists like Larry Summers, who sounded the alarm over inflation.

I am old enough to remember when inflation was ranked at about 20 percent, and interest rates were up almost at 20 percent. People had to pay huge amounts of money or borrow huge amounts of money and pay exorbitant interest rates because of inflation.

We are in danger of getting back to those bad old days. The proposal our Democratic colleagues are trying to ram through Congress would increase taxes--already paid by energy companies--on income earned not in the United States but globally. It also adds a new tax, the Superfund excise tax, which was eliminated 25 years ago. They want to add that back on top. The Democrats want to resurrect this tax and force energy companies to pay more on every barrel of crude oil that is used in the United States.

Once again, the burden won't be, ultimately, on the energy and chemical companies. It will fall on consumers, who are already struggling post-COVID to get back on the job and pay the bills and provide for their families--only to be met with a kick in the teeth known as Bidenflation.

The middle class won't just be footing the bill for tax hikes on companies. This is, really, sort of an elitist irony. The Biden reconciliation bill would force middle-class families to subsidize the purchase of electric vehicles for wealthy Americans. Not only are we going to raise prices on you through tax increases, but we are going to take money out of your pocket and give it to rich people who can afford to buy these expensive electric vehicles. This bill provides a tax credit for electric vehicle purchases even if the vehicle is made completely or substantially in China. Won't they love that.

On top of that, you get a bigger tax credit for electric cars built in union shops--some of the greatest political friends of the Democratic Party. Our colleagues haven't provided a very good explanation for this, but I, for one, find it hard to believe that union-built electric vehicles are any greener or cleaner or emit less than nonunion-built vehicles. This is just a big wet kiss for a political constituency.

As a reminder, unlike gas-powered vehicle drivers, EV drivers don't pay any money into the highway trust fund. Now, if you buy a gallon of gasoline, I think it is 18 cents on the gallon that goes into the highway trust fund that is used to build and maintain our bridges and roadways.

Because of more use of electric vehicles that don't pay any money into the highway trust fund, that trust fund is going broke.

So the tax breaks for the rich just keep on coming. They take money from middle-class families, give it to rich folks so they can buy fancy electric vehicles, courtesy of the American taxpayer.

I also have concerns about how the proposal that is being considered by the White House and our Democratic colleagues--how it would impact our energy security.

Over the last several decades, we have made incredible strides. Thanks to great investment, innovation, and expertise in the energy sector, we have made great strides to reduce our dependency on other countries to keep the lights on in the United States.

After all, we don't want a repeat of the 1970s energy crisis.

Now, I know a lot of these young folks who are here serving as pages may not have been around in the 1970s, but they can look it up online.

Here is what happened: When the U.S. supported Israel in the Yom Kippur war in 1973, the Arab members of OPEC--the Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries--they weren't happy.

What did they do?

They banned the sale of crude oil to the United States--cut us off-- and it sent shock waves throughout our country. As you might imagine, such was our dependency on imported oil from the Middle East. Despite some strong domestic oil production, we were still relying at that time heavily on imports, and once the supply was cut off, prices quadrupled.

Many gas stations simply couldn't serve the demand, and when they could, they basically made you get an appointment to come fill up your gas tank.

Some States banned neon signs to cut down on energy use, and a number of towns asked their citizens not to put up Christmas lights because of the drain on the grid.

It was a slap across the face, a hard dose of reality that brought America's energy dependence to light and underscored the need to increase our domestic production and resources and wean ourselves off of this dependency--this dangerous dependency on imports.

And that is what we did. Thanks to incredible investment and innovation in the energy sector and something that has come to be known as the shale revolution--named for a way to basically get oil and gas out of a rock--the tide of the energy landscape geopolitically turned in our favor.

These efforts were so successful that in 2015, the U.S. lifted the crude oil export ban that was put in place in the seventies. Back when we were dependent on imports, we said: You can't export it because we need not only what

we can produce, but what we can import.

We lifted that in 2015 because American energy producers were producing so much oil and gas.

And, in fact, rather than import energy, including natural gas, we turned around what were built originally as LNG--liquefied natural gas--import terminals and created export terminals so we could send that low-cost energy to our friends and allies around the world.

But our Democratic colleagues seem to have a short-term memory problem. They seem to have forgotten about our history.

After years of building our energy independence and strengthening our energy security, they want to turn back the clock. The tax hikes they are trying to impose on energy producers would ensure that the United States, once again, is reliant on other countries, like Russia, Iran, Saudi Arabia, and Venezuela, for our energy needs. The dangers ought to be obvious.

We should never ever put ourselves in a position where we are reliant on any other country for us to keep our lights on, to operate our vehicles, for our small businesses to be able to operate, for us to be able to get electricity from a wall socket when we plug in an appliance.

So we shouldn't be dependent on our adversaries or any other country for our energy needs when we can produce it here in America; and by exporting it to friends and allies around the world, we can actually liberate them.

Recently, I was in on a trip with some Senate colleagues to the Balkins, in a number of countries that used to be part of the old Soviet Union but which are now independent countries, many of which are part of NATO and the European Union.

And one of the things they brought up time and time again is their desire to have a diverse source of energy because they know--they know--that if they depend on Russian gas, that Mr. Putin could turn off the spigot and put them in mortal jeopardy. And that is why it is important for us to be able to continue to export and not be dependent on imported energy ourselves.

President Biden unintentionally demonstrated the hypocrisy of some of his policies earlier this year when he literally begged OPEC to increase production to bring down these prices.

An American President basically shutting down American energy production and begging Russia and Saudi Arabia to please sell us the oil and gas we need so we can bring down prices at the pump--it is unbelievable.

If the President is worried about affordable energy, he needs to stop pushing policies that will drive up these prices.

And it is not just gasoline. It is electricity, you name it.

Well, Texans are already facing high gas prices. Household energy bills, your utility bill, is on the rise. This is not the time to make it more expensive for families to pay for the energy they need.

As I mentioned, Texas has always been a proud supporter of an all-of- the-above energy strategy. We are recognized for the might of our oil and gas sector for sure, but a lot of folks don't realize we are a leader in renewable energy as well. In fact, we produce one-quarter of all of the wind energy in the United States. If we were a country--and we were once--we would be the fifth largest wind energy producer in the world.

And we have no plans of stopping there. We are also making serious strides in energy innovation through cutting-edge carbon capture and storage projects. That is the answer. It is called innovation. Not more taxes, not more regulations that raise prices, but innovation, things that literally suck carbon out of the environment, deposit it in the ground in some of these injection sites so we can actually produce more oil and gas, and keep the carbon sequestered in the ground permanently.

So we need to find a balance--something that is too often missing here in Washington, DC--between conservation, production, and economic power. That balance will not be found by imposing heavy-handed regulations or taxes that drive up the cost for consumers and that benefit our adversaries.

Like the rest of the reckless tax-and-spending spree, the cost of this energy proposal far, far exceeds its benefits. There is a better way to do this.

The Biden administration has managed to compound the already unprecedented challenges facing our energy sector here in America. American energy keeps America and much of the rest of the world running, and the administration and Congress need to take action to support a strong, post-pandemic recovery, and not get in the way.

I yield the floor.

Mr. President, I thank my friend, the senior Senator from Vermont, for his courtesy.

Tomorrow, the Senate will vote on the latest iteration of what has come to be known as the Democrats' partisan power grab over our elections conducted overwhelmingly by the States--actually, exclusively at the State and local level.

The legislation that prompted this discussion first popped up in 2019, when the newly elected majority in the House went on a messaging bill spree. Over the last 2 years, they have tried a number of different marketing strategies to convince the American people that this overhaul was needed.

This latest version is proof that Congress isn't buying what they are selling, and that is for good reason.

Those who were advocating for a national takeover of our State-run elections, at one point they said it was a matter of election security. Then they said this was designed to help restore voter confidence. Then they said this is a way to remove obstacles that prevented people from voting.

But facts are stubborn things. In 2020, we saw record turnout. Two- thirds of eligible voters cast a ballot, and that was the highest turnout in 120 years.

I was on the ballot in 2020. The last time I had been on the ballot, 6 years previously, there were 4.8 million voters in Texas. In 2020, there were 11.3 million voters in Texas. Compared to the 2016 Presidential election, 17 million more Americans cast a vote, and we saw historic turnouts by Black, White, Asian, and Hispanic voters.

So facts being stubborn things, clearly it is time for the advocates for this Federal takeover to come up with a new sales pitch. So our Democratic friends attacked election integrity bills being passed by State legislatures, like Texas, all across the country.

The Constitution itself gives States the power to determine how their elections should be run, and States are using that authority to make it easier to vote and harder to cheat.

Our Democratic friends have tried to frame these new State laws as somehow suppressing voting rights. As we have seen, if that is the objective, they certainly are doing a lousy job at it because people are voting in unprecedented numbers.

Well, it is interesting to contrast some of the changes that our Democratic colleagues, including the Merrick Garland's Department of Justice, comparing the reforms they have attacked and those that they believe are just fine.

The Georgia law, which the Department of Justice has sued under section 2 of the Voting Rights Act, actually expanded early voting in person to 17 days. But if you live in Massachusetts, you can only vote for 11 days. I haven't heard many complaints about the Massachusetts voting laws restricting people's access to the polls. And the President's home State of Delaware, they

don't even offer in-person early voting, but they will in 2022. But even then, they are even more restrictive than Massachusetts. It will only be for 10 days.

So somehow a short period of early voting in Delaware is acceptable-- actually, currently is not available but soon to be acceptable for 10 days--but 17 days of early voting in Georgia is an assault on voting rights. Both cannot be true.

Of course, our Democratic friends believe the only answer to this manufactured assault is an unconstitutional, partisan power grab that they have been pushing for years, as I said. Well, the initial iteration of this came up for a vote in June, and it was sadly rejected, for good reason. The bill would have turned the bipartisan Federal Election Commission into a Democrat-controlled Commission. This is supposed to be evenly split and nonpartisan, but that would change under the proposal that we voted on in June.

It would have also allowed ballot harvesting--a dubious practice that is a recipe for mischief and wrongdoing, as a ballot could be harvested by paid campaign staffers, political operative, or anyone who had a stake in the outcome of the election. Just go to your closest nursing home or community center, get people to sign a ballot, and harvest away. That would have been permitted. And, actually, prohibitions against ballot harvesting would have been prohibited under the Democrats' bill.

And the bill would have commandeered States' constitutional authority to draw their own congressional districts. The only thing this proposal would have done for the people, as it is called, would be to help make sure that the outcome of virtually every future election meant that Democrats win and Republicans lose; thus, Republicans would be relegated to a permanent minority status. That was the goal.

If this bill weren't so dangerous, it would have been laughable. Nobody would have taken it seriously. It is no surprise that the only thing bipartisan about this legislation is the opposition. In both the House and the Senate, Republicans and Democrats voted against this legislation.

Still, our Democratic colleagues--I admire their perseverance--they refused to throw in the towel. They decided to work on what they now call a compromise.

Well, generally, a compromise indicates that you have found common ground with somebody who holds a different view. But the so-called compromise bill we are scheduled to vote on tomorrow isn't the result of negotiations between Republicans and Democrats; it is a compromise between the left and the radical left. You really can't call something a compromise when your negotiating partner is sitting on the same side of the table with you.

All this is done to create the illusion or a narrative that the partisan pieces have been stripped out of the bill and it now includes mainstream reforms. But that is far from the truth.

Just like its predecessor, this bill seizes States' constitutional authority to make decisions on matters like voter registration and early voting. It contains invasive disclosure requirements that would undermine citizens' privacy and chill free speech. It places Federal standards on States for redistricting, and threatens action from the Democratic-controlled Attorney General's Office if those standards aren't met. And it makes it harder to root out election fraud, and easier to cheat.

If that is not bad enough, it also takes tax dollars from the American taxpayer and would require it be given to candidates for public office that those taxpayers disagree with. They call that public funding of elections.

Nothing about the bill is a compromise. They may have stripped out some of the most outrageous provisions, but certainly overtly partisan provisions remain.

Republicans uniformly oppose the first attempt at this partisan power grab, and it is no surprise we will oppose this one as well.

This is not a good-faith attempt to ensure our elections are secure from fraud and interference and accessible to all eligible voters. It is rather a political stunt and statement designed to mislead the American people and appeal to the most radical members of the Democratic base.

I am certainly not one to tell the majority leader how to do his job, but it seems like show votes ought to be pretty low on our list of priorities.

Our Democrat colleagues narrowly averted a debt crisis 2 weeks ago, and they have less than 2 months to figure out how to increase the debt ceiling and avoid an economic disaster.

In the coming months, the Senate needs to do what has become an annual tradition, which is to pass the National Defense Authorization Act to give our troops the support they deserve and our commanders the predictability they need for the future. And we need to pass a full slate of appropriations bills to avoid a government shutdown just before the holidays. Those are the things we need to do, at a bare minimum.

We should also be advancing legislation to avert--or to address the border crisis, which has been raging on since January. We need to reauthorize the Violence Against Women Act. We need to bring down sky- high drug prices, and approve accountability and transparency in policing.

There is a lot we should be doing to solve real problems that deserve action from the country and which our constituents deserve as well.

There is a strong appetite for bipartisan work on both sides of the aisle, but the leadership of the Democratic Party has effectively stonewalled bipartisan legislating in favor of a completely partisan approach. It is really a head-scratcher.

Our Democratic colleagues don't have the kind of majorities that FDR had during the New Deal. We have a 50-50 Senate, with the Vice President as the tie-breaker. Common sense ought to tell you that that demands and requires bipartisan legislating, not these kinds of show votes.

We have a long list of tasks that are far more important than virtue signaling. So I hope our colleagues will reevaluate the wisdom of this parade of partisan bills and spend time working with us to find where we have common ground, where we can actually pass legislation and make a difference for our country.

Until that time, we will continue to oppose partisan attacks on our Nation's elections and any other damaging, politically motivated bills Democrats bring to the Senate floor.

I yield the floor.

Mr. President, if I may respond to the Senator from Maine.

I am always interested in working on bipartisan bills and finding common ground. I think my record--and as the Senator knows, we have worked together on a number of things. The fundamental problem with our Democratic friends' approach to election reform is they want to nationalize the election. They want to take the authority away from the States, which is clearly given to the States under the Constitution.

But if we can take that off the table and talk about some other areas, we could work together in that area, I would be more than happy to work with my friend from Maine.

Madam President, less than a month ago, President Biden made a surprising statement--or maybe I should say, another surprising statement. He said: My Build Back Better agenda costs zero dollars-- zero dollars. That is a big, you might even say unbelievable claim.

For starters, half of his agenda is a trillion-dollar infrastructure bill that will increase the deficit by more than $250 billion over 10 years. The other part is a multitrillion-dollar tax-and-spending spree, which leans on damaging tax hikes to cover a long list of social welfare programs to make the United States of America look more like, say, a European social welfare state. Now, how could that possibly cost zero dollars? Well, the answer is pretty simple: It can't. Even the Washington Post fact checkers gave this claim two Pinocchios.

This strategy of misleading, misstating, and--I hate to say it, but there is no other word for it--downright lying to the American people is a tried-and-true strategy of the Biden administration. Whether it is advancing legislation or dodging a crisis, there is no promise that is too big to make, even if it is patently false.

Another example. Dating back to the campaign trail, President Biden has repeatedly promised the American people: If you make over $400,000 a year--excuse me--if you make under $400,000 a year, you will not pay more income tax. Well, we have heard the same talking points from the Treasury Secretary, Secretary Yellen, and the White House Press Secretary dutifully comes out and parrots the same position again and again and again. It is almost as if, if you say something often enough, people will begin to believe it even if it is not true.

Considering the enormous amounts of spending that the Biden administration has promised, I understand why they are a little worried about the truth. All of us like free stuff, whether it is a free T- shirt at a football game or free samples at a grocery store. What folks don't like, though, is learning that they are being played and that they are still paying but maybe by different means. So when it comes to free college, free childcare, and other free programs under President Biden's agenda, most people realize there is no such thing as a free lunch. Somebody somewhere is going to have to pay for it, even if it is borrowed money. The next generation, like our pages here, when they enter the workforce, they are going to be the ones who have to pay that money back. Somebody is going to have to pay it back. There is no such thing as free.

Contrary to the promises made by President Biden and his administration, the middle class will help to foot the bill for this spending bonanza. An analysis by the nonpartisan Joint Committee on Taxation found that many families will see their taxes increase under President Biden's Build Back Better agenda.

In 2023, 2 years from now, 18 percent of those earning between $75,000 and $100,000 will pay more in taxes, not $400,000 or more. More than a third of the folks earning between $100,000 and $200,000 a year will see a tax increase, not people making $400,000 or more. If this trend continues into 2027, well over half of taxpayers earning between $75,000 and $100,000 will pay more in taxes. And a whopping 86 percent of folks earning between $100,000 and $200,000 will see a tax increase.

Now, you might wonder, how can the President have it so wrong? This is not news to President Biden. He knows better. He is surrounded by world-class economic advisers, analysts, and tax experts who scrutinize and scrub every single policy before it comes to see the light of day. Yet, you might wonder, why does the President persist in claiming that his tax hikes won't impact the middle class even as he is trying to slip them a massive tax bill? I hate to state the obvious, but it is just dishonest.

Of course, all of this comes at a time when many family budgets are already underwater, struggling to recover from the fiscal impact of COVID-19. Now, from gas stations, to grocery stores, to electricity bills and restaurant checks,

the American people are being pummeled by inflation, paying more for the things they used to pay less for.

What is the Biden administration's response? Well, the President's Chief of Staff, Ron Klain, dismissed inflation as something he called a high-class problem, which I guess means that only rich people are suffering or experience that inflation. Again, this is clearly not true. My constituents in Texas don't see it that way. They see inflation outpacing their wage increases and essentially giving them a pay cut. They are paying 10 percent more at the butcher counter than they were a year ago and 42 percent more on gasoline. If you are a senior operating on a fixed income, you have to spend more of that fixed income to end up with less.

So, no, this isn't just a problem for the high class. Unfortunately, it is not going away soon either. You remember when concerns were raised with the Federal Reserve Chairman, Jay Powell, about inflation, and he said: Well, it is probably only transitory--meaning it is a passing moment. Well, now we see that economists expect inflation rates to remain steady through the end of next year, which would mark the longest period of inflation above 5 percent in three decades. So if inflation is at 5 percent, that means you are having to pay $1.05 to get what you used to pay $1 for, and it is compounded each year.

While inflation is expected to ease some--or at least we are hoping and praying that is the effect--by the middle of next year, rates are still likely to be higher than they were before the pandemic.

Folks who can't afford to fill up their gas tanks to get back and forth to work or buy what they need at the grocery store don't need to be told that things are just fine when they know they are not. The American people need to see real leadership here that addresses the root causes of inflation, not pouring gas on that inflation as the $3\1/2\ trillion reckless tax-and-spending spree would do. It would just create more money chasing the same goods and services, driving prices up. And the American people certainly deserve better than false statements that ignore the magnitude of their pain.

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

Mr. President, over the last few months, the American people have watched in disbelief and then in anger as the Biden administration has completely fumbled the response to the border crisis.

In the spring, the biggest concerns were the thousands of children coming across the border. We lacked the facilities, the personnel, and the resources to provide proper care for those children, particularly in those kinds of numbers. At one point, one of the processing centers in Donna, TX, in the Rio Grande Valley was at 1,600 percent of capacity.

Then, in the summer, the scale and scope of the crisis grew. In addition to the thousands of unaccompanied children entering our country each month, the number of family units has skyrocketed.

I should pause to add, Mr. President, that the reason why the smugglers send in unaccompanied children is because they know they will simply be placed with sponsors in the interior of the country and most of them will fail to return to the immigration courts for their asylum hearing. So they will have been successfully placed in the United States, sometimes with relatives, sometimes with noncitizens, sometimes with foster families who don't know them at all. That is why the smugglers have been smuggling unaccompanied children.

But in August alone, more than 86,000 members of families--typically women with young children--have crossed the border. Now that we have reached the fall, the crisis has shifted once again.

I think what really grabbed people's attention was when they saw the little town of Del Rio, TX, with 15,000 Haitian migrants under a bridge in Del Rio, TX. First of all, they were shocked. They thought this was a Central American phenomenon or Mexican migrants. But the reality is, as Border Patrol will tell you and has told me, we literally have people coming from around the world across the southern border, including some countries of particular concern.

So the Haitians got people's attention and completely overwhelmed the border region and our capacity to deal with them. That is why 400 Border Patrol agents had to be shipped in from other parts of the border or from interior checkpoints, which means that those other locations were understaffed or perhaps had no staff at all. That, in turn, is an invitation to the drug smugglers to smuggle more drugs across the border.

I have mentioned time and time again this shocking number: 93,000 Americans died of drug overdoses last year. The vast majority of those drugs come across the southern border. So the cartels--these criminal organizations that smuggle people, drugs, and other contraband--they are pretty smart. They understand where the weaknesses are, where the gaps are both in our policy and in our physical ability to secure the border, and they play us just like a fiddle.

The individuals and families huddled under the Del Rio Bridge--they were

trying to escape triple-digit temperatures.

It is hot in August and September in Texas, and they had little, if any, access to food, clean water, or restrooms. It took a number of days before the Department of Homeland Security was able to remove them from what the New York Times described as squalid conditions--truly, Third World conditions.

Now, President Biden has said to the migrants: Don't come to the United States. But the fact is, what he says with his mouth, with his lips, is contradicted by all of his policies and all of his action and inaction.

Here, let me share a few headlines from the last several months: ``Overwhelmed Texas border community begins busing migrants to Austin''; ``Migrants freed without court notice--sometimes no paperwork''; ``Haitian migrants released in U.S. on `very, very large scale'.''

Folks beyond our borders are reading this. Friends and family in the United States are communicating with potential migrants who have come across. Certainly, the human smugglers--the coyotes--who get rich and are getting richer with every person they smuggle into the United States, are reading these headlines and watching cable TV and talking to people inside the heartland of our country. The message they see with their own eyes or they hear from others contradicts this lip service, really, that President Biden has been paying to border security.

Like I said, this is especially true among the cartels and criminal organizations that charge thousands of dollars a head to bring folks from literally anywhere around the world. It just gets a little more expensive. If you want to come from, let's say, the Middle East or if you want to come from, let's say, Iran or Afghanistan, it is a little more expensive than if you just want to come from Mexico or Central America, but you can do it because the same networks and criminal organizations run those networks in those countries around the world.

Last week, the Biden administration handed the cartels a big recruiting tool.

Let me read you another headline: ``U.S. Will No Longer Deport Illegal Immigrants Based on Undocumented Status Alone.''

That is what Secretary Mayorkas, the Secretary of the Department of Homeland Security, said: The U.S. Government will not enforce U.S. law.

As if we needed to add any more to the chaos and the crisis on the border, Secretary Mayorkas has provided explicit confirmation that the Department of Homeland Security will not enforce our immigration laws. His directive strongly discourages Immigration and Customs Enforcement from even carrying out their most basic duties.

I know it seems like a long time ago, but it wasn't that long ago when people said: ``Abolish the police.'' Before that, they said: ``Abolish ICE,'' Immigration and Customs Enforcement. But now they are, maybe, not so much intent on abolishing ICE as just telling them don't do your job. Don't enforce the very laws that we in Congress have made.

Considering the fact that the border czar, Vice President Harris, once compared ICE to the Ku Klux Klan, we probably should have seen this coming. Liberal activists can throw out their ``Abolish ICE'' posters because the administration is, effectively, nullifying the Agency from the inside.

The reality of the situation, however inconvenient it may be, is that, by entering the United States illegally, migrants are breaking U.S. laws. We are fortunate, indeed, and grateful to the hard-working men and women of ICE and Customs and Border Protection, who are committed to enforcing our laws and keeping the American people safe, but they can't do it when they are told don't do your job or if the administration continues to denigrate these officers to try to shame them and to publicly criticize them for doing what we have asked them to do.

Secretary Mayorkas's decision not to enforce our immigration laws isn't an example of prosecutorial discretion, which is the usual excuse; it is a violation of his oath. The Department of Homeland Security is charged with safeguarding the American people, but it can't do it because of the direction of its own leadership--a member of President Biden's Cabinet.

There is nothing wrong with prioritizing the removal of the most dangerous criminals who are here illegally. Previous administrations have prioritized certain categories, like those suspected of terrorism or others who could be a threat to our national security or public safety, but there is a difference between prioritizing and exempting entire categories from enforcement altogether.

Under this new guidance from Secretary Mayorkas, ICE officers are discouraged from arresting or removing illegal immigrants unless they have been convicted of a serious crime. It is unclear, though, whether domestic violence meets this criteria. Certainly, other crimes don't. So it defies all common sense to ask our law enforcement officers--that is what ICE officers are; they are law enforcement officers--to turn a blind eye to illegal conduct and not do what they have sworn to do in a professional oath.

I am reminded of a controversial directive issued by another one of President Biden's nominees to enforce our Nation's laws. Rachael Rollins was nominated to serve as the U.S. attorney for Massachusetts and is currently the district attorney for Suffolk County--home to Boston. She is a current nominee from the Biden administration.

Shortly after taking office as the Suffolk County district attorney for the State and local office, she released a memo that outlined more than a dozen crimes that should be ignored by law enforcement. This was the district attorney, who was charged with enforcing the laws, saying to law enforcement: Ignore the laws.

According to Ms. Rollins, individuals who committed offenses like trespassing, shoplifting, larceny--that is stealing--wanton or malicious destruction of property or even possession with intent to distribute drugs should not be prosecuted.

Again, I have no issue with law enforcement using limited resources to address the biggest threats and to prioritize their prosecution decisions, but they cannot, I believe, consistent with their oaths, exempt wholesale classes of criminals from enforcement.

Under the Biden administration, we are already seeing a record-low number of deportations for people who violate our immigration laws. Back in April, as border crossings hit their highest level in 20 years, ICE removed the lowest number of illegal immigrants on record. There is no coincidence there. The guidance from Secretary Mayorkas sends an unequivocal message to the entire world that, if you want to come to the United States illegally, you will be able to stay as long as you don't get caught committing a murder or some other crime of a similar nature.

The administration has tried to claim that this will not serve as a pull factor. That is what the Border Patrol talks about with the push factors--poverty, violence, and maybe things like that which are the push factors for immigration--but they also talk about the pull factors, which are things that the migrants see and the smugglers see that will actually attract more illegal immigration to the United States. The administration has tried to claim that this refusal to enforce our immigration laws won't act as an additional pull factor because, they say, the order only applies to immigrants who entered the United States before November 2020.

But let's consider some of the other things that have been said. For example, Vice President Harris said migrants should not come to the United States because they will be turned back. That is clearly not happening. That is clearly not the case.

We were told that the Department of Homeland Security would use title 42, a public health law, to return the vast majority of Haitian migrants because, after all, while we are still dealing with the pandemic of COVID-19, these migrants, by and large, aren't vaccinated, and they are not tested for COVID-19 when they are released into the interior of the United States. You would think that would be a problem for the Biden administration, but Secretary Mayorkas just flat lied to the American people when he said what would happen to the migrants from Haiti. Some 13,000 migrants from that group have been released into the interior of the United States before even appearing in front of an immigration judge.

Clearly, that was a lie when he said they would be repatriated to their country of origin. So we have no reason to believe that things will be any different this time.

The President can't have it both ways. He can't say he is taking a tough stance on illegal immigration to appease one wing of the Democratic Party while implementing policies that just encourage more illegal immigration to appease the other wing.

The only way to address this crisis is to enforce our laws, not as the Biden administration wishes they were written. If we are going to have any hope of managing the current crisis and the additional crisis that will necessarily follow, deterrence is a key.

As the Border Patrol told me, there have to be consequences for illegal immigration. If there are no consequences, people are going to continue to come in greater and greater numbers.

Albert Einstein reportedly once said: Insanity is doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results.

Unless the administration backs up their ``do not come'' statements with actions which actually send the same message, we are going to continue down this very dangerous road.

What will need to happen next before the administration takes this crisis seriously? More than 200,000 border crossings during each of the last 2 months didn't get their attention nor did the group of 30,000 migrants in Del Rio, TX, in a matter of days. So you can't help but ask: How many more migrants will have to suffer before President Biden and Vice President Harris finally back up their empty statements with action?

We stand ready to help and to work on a bipartisan basis. As a matter of fact, Senator Sinema and I, along with our colleagues Henry Cuellar and Tony Gonzalez in the House, have a bipartisan-bicameral border solutions bill. It is not perfect, and it doesn't answer all the questions, but it is a good place to start. So far, we have heard nothing but crickets from the administration. Apparently, they don't care about the status quo and, so far, seem unwilling to do anything differently to correct it.

I yield the floor.

Mr. President, from gas stations to grocery stores, to utility bills and restaurant checks, the American people are being pummeled by inflation. The cost of everything is going up.

Last week, the Commerce Department reported that a key indicator of inflation had reached the highest level in three decades--30 years.

The Chairman of the Federal Reserve has said that we are unlikely to turn a corner on this until sometime next year. How he knows that, I don't know. Previously, he said, well, this inflation would be merely transitory, a passing thing. But it is beginning to look like that is not the case. And, clearly, he is mainly guessing.

With this as a backdrop, our Democratic colleagues are apparently trying to figure out how to inflict even more economic pain on the American people. They spent months negotiating solely among themselves in order to bring about a radical transformation in our country by spending money on programs we don't need or want--things like permanent welfare for no work requirements; things like tax increases that, contrary to President Biden's promise, will hit Americans earning less than $400,000 a year; subsidies for millionaires; buying electric vehicles that most average wage earners can't afford; taxes that will hurt American businesses and help our major nation-state competitor, China; as well as provide a range of so-called free--they like that word ``free''--social safety-net programs that really aren't free at all.

Now, this isn't critical funding necessary to lead America out of the pandemic like we did last year on a bipartisan basis. This isn't even designed to revive our struggling economy. I would argue that it would do just the opposite. It would suppress the recovery from the recession that was caused by the pandemic. This is merely a reckless, partisan spending spree designed to grow the size of government's role in our daily lives.

In recent weeks, I have heard from more than 50,000 of my constituents--that is a lot--about one absurd example of government overreach proposed by the administration and which is part of the reconciliation bill that is now sitting in front of the House of Representatives. The IRS already knows how much money you make, but now the Biden administration wants to know how you spend it too. This isn't a safeguard to stop illicit activity like money laundering or tax fraud. That already exists. Any taxpayer who receives a transfer of $10,000 or more in a single transaction has to report that to the IRS. But what our Democratic colleagues want to do is to invade the privacy of everyday Americans who rarely make five-digit transactions. So tucked in the President's budget is a new IRS reporting requirement with a much lower threshold, $600.

If you use your bank accounts to spend or receive more than $600 in a year's time, our Democratic colleagues think that should be reported to the IRS. So if you are writing a check for your mortgage or your rent or maybe you are buying a new washer or dryer or refrigerator, the IRS wants to know that you are spending that money.

This is an Agency that has already been plagued by scandals and has hardly been a responsible steward of personal financial data.

Earlier this year, an unknown source within the IRS leaked more than 15 years' worth of taxpayer information to journalists. And we all remember the IRS targeting conservative-leaning groups during the Obama administration. But the IRS has given even more

personal financial data, literally conducting surveillance on the American people. The trove of information that could be abused gets a lot bigger.

Democrats want to give the IRS more manpower to sift through all of this by doubling the size of the Agency, adding to an army of Internal Revenue agents out searching for more revenue with which to grow the government. So instead of a chicken in every pot, every household will get an audit.

This is, I submit, a fundamental attack on the privacy and financial freedom of everyday Americans and puts all Americans' data at risk of being hacked or leaked.

It also places a huge new burden on our community banks and credit unions. Having to organize and transmit all this additional data to the IRS in a secure way is no easy task. Does the administration plan to help local banks, credit unions do this? I doubt it. It is just going to add to their overhead and to their administrative burdens.

Our Democratic colleagues also want to reinstate the so-called SALT deduction, which allows wealthy individuals in blue States--it is no coincidence--to pay less in taxes. According to the liberal Tax Policy Center, 93 percent of those making a million dollars or more would get a tax break.

So much for our Democratic colleagues' rhetoric about millionaires and billionaires getting a tax break. They want to make sure that each one of them gets about a $48,000 tax cut under their proposal. This isn't an attempt to support those who are struggling to make ends meet; it is a financial lifeline for millionaires and billionaires.

This type of legislation our colleagues are trying to pass includes a massive, ill-conceived tax plan; government overreach; irresponsible spending; and radical policies that put unnecessary burden on beleaguered American workers and families.

Earlier this year, our Democratic friends charged nearly $2 trillion to the taxpayer credit card in a party-line vote. Unlike the COVID-19 relief bills we passed last year virtually unanimously, one after the other, when the Biden administration came into office, the first thing they did was spend $2 trillion in borrowed money, only 10 percent of which was related to COVID-19.

So they did that without any Republican help. Now they are trying to figure out how to go on an even bigger spending blowout--once again, all alone. But they think upping the credit limit should be a bipartisan task. Our friends across the aisle have talked about how, historically, lifting the debt ceiling has been a bipartisan endeavor, but they failed to mention that so has spending.

There has never been a time in our country's history when one party has spent trillions of dollars and aspires to spend trillions of dollars more without the support of a single person on the other side of the aisle.

Why would Republicans vote to increase the debt limit and sign off on this reckless spending? If someone stole your credit card and ran up the bill, would you up your own credit limit so they could continue shopping? No way. But that is exactly what Democrats are asking Republicans to do by upping the debt limit.

They have the votes. They have a process by which they can raise the debt limit, and they need to do it before we risk a default, according to the timeline given to us by Secretary Yellen.

So our Democratic colleagues have chosen to light taxpayer dollars on fire, but we are not going to hand them another match. We have been clear on that point since at least July. Unsurprisingly, our friends on the other side don't like this plan. They see the dangers in continuing to drive up the debt without any action to address the root causes, and they want to have Republicans to share the blame.

But what needs to happen is some accountability because accountability will bring with it some fiscal responsibility. But as long as our Democratic colleagues can continue to spend trillions of dollars in borrowed money on their reckless tax-and-spending spree and have us join them in raising the debt limit, then no one--no voter, no taxpayer--can actually know who is to blame.

Well, if Democrats want to spend alone, they have to up the debt ceiling alone, too, and we know they have the tools and the votes to do it. But rather than addressing this problem in July or August or September, our Democratic colleagues have waited until the last minute and march us closer and closer to a debt crisis. They have had the time to up the debt limit on their own, and they have had the means to do it. So they need to stop playing chicken with an economic crisis and do what they know needs to be done.

So far, Democrats have not been held back by their razor-thin majority. It didn't stop them from spending $2 trillion in borrowed money at the beginning of this year. It hasn't slowed their plans to try to spend trillions more this fall. And now it shouldn't stop them from increasing the debt limit on their own so the American people can see who is responsible and hold those elected officials accountable in the 2022 election.

The Democratic majority of the Senate has embraced a go-it-alone attitude on legislating all year, and these are just some of the examples of what that has produced: tax increases on the middle class; car subsidies for millionaires; taxes that hurt American businesses and American jobs but actually help China; providing so-called free, taxpayer-funded social safety net programs to try to turn the United States into a European welfare state; increased IRS surveillance of the everyday finances of average Americans; and I mentioned, finally, tax breaks for millionaires and billionaires.

So now is the time to reap what our Democratic colleagues have sown, and I hope they will act sooner rather than later.

I yield the floor.

Mr. President, this morning, the Senate Judiciary Committee had a hearing to discuss two of our Democratic colleagues' biggest headaches: the Supreme Court of the United States and State laws that protect the right to life.

This wasn't the first time we have seen an attack on both waged by Members of the Senate. Last year, the majority leader, Senator Schumer, walked across the street to the Supreme Court and threatened two Supreme Court Justices by name based on an abortion case that they were considering.

Sadly, it seems that our Democratic colleagues have simply given up when it comes to protecting innocent life. In 2020, February 2020, the Senate voted on a bill that would outlaw elective abortions after 20 weeks, when science tells us that a fetus can actually feel pain. Had this bill become law, it would have put U.S. domestic policy in line with that of most of the rest of the world.

Unfortunately, we happen to be in a small category, including North Korea and communist China, when it comes to the ability to get an abortion well into the period of gestation, including up to late-term abortions. As it stands today, the United States is currently one of only seven countries to allow elective abortions after 20 weeks. As I said, those seven countries include the Communist Party China and North Korea. But our Democratic colleagues filibustered that bill too.

Then came one more opportunity to protect the most vulnerable among us. The Senate voted on legislation requiring doctors to provide lifesaving care to infants who survive abortions, just like any other newborn child would receive. That sounds like common sense, right? Well, if you ask the American people, they say yes. More than three- quarters of the American people, when it comes to polling, said they support providing medical treatment for babies who survive abortions. But there are no Federal laws requiring healthcare providers to care for these children just as they would any other infant in their care. And, yes, you guessed it--Democrats blocked that bill too.

The attack on innocent life has been years in the making, but we have never seen anything quite like the latest endeavor that has come from the House of Representatives. The so-called Women's Health Protection Act is actually ``Nancy Pelosi's Abortion Protection Act.''

This isn't just about messaging. The Senate version of the bill is cosponsored by all but two of our Democratic colleagues. Clearly, the provisions included in this bill don't represent the beliefs of just some small subset of the Democratic Party. Apparently, it is mainstream within the Democratic Party.

But it is clear that this is a no-holds-barred attack on the right to life. One of the most outrageous and unprecedented aspects of the bill is it limits State laws limiting abortion even after viability. This goes far beyond where the Supreme Court went in Roe v. Wade. It also undermines another landmark abortion case, Planned Parenthood v. Casey. In Casey, the Supreme Court abandoned the trimester framework of Roe, replacing it with a viability standard to determine a State law's constitutionality. Even the author of Roe v. Wade and of Casey agreed that this viability standard was largely arbitrary. But this decision came in 1992, when a baby was considered viable after 23 or 24 weeks. But the marvels of modern medicine continue to challenge this estimate. Last June, a baby was born at 21 weeks and 2 days, and this past summer, he celebrated his first birthday.

The extreme legislation attacking the right to life coming out of the House and now embraced by Senate Democrats would undercut the Supreme Court's ruling in Casey v. Planned Parenthood and would invalidate State laws that limit abortions after 20 weeks, which is now the consensus period of viability.

A number of States have passed laws to restrict access for different gestational periods--for example, in Massachusetts and Nevada, for example, abortions are restricted after 24 weeks. In California, Washington, and Illinois--they are among the many States that restrict abortions after viability. But the Democratic proposal is so extreme, it would invalidate the laws passed in each of these blue States.

If this proposal, the Pelosi abortion bill, became law, it would allow healthcare providers to perform abortions at any point so long as it is done to preserve the mother's health. This actually undermines the decision of the Supreme Court of the United States that said it is constitutional to limit so-called partial birth abortions as a barbaric practice that does not have constitutional protection.

But the provision that would allow abortion at any point in the pregnancy so long as it is done to preserve the mother's health--that doesn't mean the pregnancy actually threatens the life of the mother. Let's be clear on that point. If a single healthcare provider determines that the birth of the baby would impact on the mother's mental health, an abortion would be legal at any point in the pregnancy up to birth.

This is way out of step with where most Americans are. A poll this last summer found that 65 percent of Americans believe that abortion should be illegal during the second trimester, the second 3-month period of pregnancy. An abortion opposition, I should say, to a third- trimester abortion is even stronger. These are the so-called late-term abortions where the fetus is fully formed and even viable outside of the mother's womb. Eighty percent of Americans oppose third-trimester abortions but not Pelosi's abortion act, embraced by all but two of the Democrats here in the U.S. Senate.

The American people clearly do not want abortion laws that put us in the same league as China and North Korea--two of the world's most aggressive human rights abusers. Until 2016, China had a strict one- child policy. Families who didn't comply with that policy could be fined, lose their jobs, and the baby would even be the subject of a forced abortion. And it became common in China, as a result of this limitation on pregnancy, for families to prefer a son and undergo gender-selection abortions. If you are pregnant with a female child, well, abortion is fair game because they preferred to use abortion as a means to select the gender of their child.

Democrats' legislation doesn't simply remain silent on gender- selective abortions; it goes so far as to prohibit States from outlawing abortion as a method of gender selection. Not only that, it undermines State efforts to protect unborn babies with disabilities or Down syndrome. Unborn children being killed solely on gender or disabilities is a devastating problem in other countries. We cannot allow such a grotesque practice to become mainstream here in the United States. We are better than that.

The list of atrocities included in this legislation is a long one. It requires healthcare providers who hold deep religious objections to abortion to violate their own deeply held religious beliefs and kill unborn babies. It invalidates informed consent laws, which require healthcare providers to share accurate information with their patient about the baby and whether specifically the child can feel pain. It gives the Attorney General of the United States sweeping authority to block State laws that try to protect innocent human life. So this radical proposal from the House, now embraced by all but two of our Senate Democrats, would overturn existing State laws and allow abortions on a scale our country has never seen before.

I think it is a sad commentary on the conscience of America when all but a handful of our Democratic colleagues are fighting to implement these radical policies. But we cannot and we will not stay silent at a time when our most vulnerable are being attacked in such a manner. We have a moral imperative to defend those who cannot defend themselves, born or unborn, to protect those who cannot protect themselves. Babies with heartbeats, fingerprints, taste buds--they deserve to have protection of the law too. The Declaration

of Independence, after all, says that we hold these truths to be self- evident, that all are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable rights, including the right to life. I have always been proud to defend that right, and at no time in my lifetime has it ever needed more defense than right now in the face of these outrageous proposals.

I yield the floor.

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

Madam President, later this evening, the Democrat- controlled Senate will hold a vote on another dead-on-arrival bill.

This time, though, it isn't just a messaging bill designed to put on a show for their far left. This is legislation that is actually critical to the stability of our government, our economy, and the livelihood of millions of public servants.

For months now, Republicans have made clear, though, we will not split the ticket when it comes to Democrats' reckless tax-and-spending spree. We will not vote to raise the debt limit just so Democrats can spend another $3.5 trillion and add that to the American people's credit card in a purely partisan exercise.

If this was ever a secret, it was the worst kept secret in Washington, DC.

But our Democratic colleagues simply can't resist a chance to virtue signal even if it wastes valuable floor time here in the Senate.

We have seen this before. In fact, Democrats' designed-to-fail agenda practically dominated the Senate's calendar this summer. There was a bill to exploit the cause of gender pay fairness in order to line the pockets of trial lawyers. There was legislation to overhaul America's election system and hand Democrats a permanent governing majority. The latest version of this bill, which will also fail, will come up for a vote in a matter of days.

Senator Schumer has even forecasted votes on other bills that were so unpopular, as it turned out, that they didn't even make it to the Senate floor. There was one that would have eroded American's Second Amendment rights and another that would punish schools and hospitals that refused to comply with ``woke'' social norms.

Now, this isn't an agenda to better the lives of the American people or protect the country from global threats. It is pandering, pure and simple. While pandering to their radical base is the focus of the Democrat-led Senate, there are a number of threats this body should actually address. The most obvious is the need to prevent another government shutdown.

Let's not forget the Biden border crisis on our southern border. For the entirety of President Biden's term of office, Democrats have refused to acknowledge any sort of problem at all with our southern border because, apparently, they don't actually believe in borders or apparently care little about the drugs smuggled into this country that took the lives of 90,000 Americans last year alone. Even as hundreds of thousands of migrants poured across our border every month, Democrats showed no concern or didn't even acknowledge that there was a problem.

Then things came to a head. Finally, the news media began to pay attention to Del Rio. Within a matter of days, 30,000 migrants--nearly 30,000, primarily from Haiti--crossed the border and set up camp under the International Bridge in Del Rio, TX. Early statements indicated that the administration would make heavy use of title 42, which is a public health title designed to protect the American people against the spread of COVID-19. Early statements indicated the administration would make use of that public health title and expedited removal to return these individuals to their home countries. It sounded like a pretty remarkably sensible strategy.

But now that the migrant camp has been cleared, we know that is not what happened. Only about 2,000 migrants were returned to Haiti, a small percentage of the nearly 30,000 who crossed into Del Rio. Some 8,000 voluntarily returned to Mexico, but I expect many of those migrants and their families will make another attempt to reenter the United States. Another 5,000 of that number are currently being processed by the Department of Homeland Security.

In a television appearance this weekend, Secretary Mayorkas said 10 to 12,000 migrants, the ones that were huddled under the bridge in Del Rio, TX--10 to 12,000 migrants--have been released into the United States, untested for COVID-19, unvaccinated, when, in fact, the Biden administration has said that the public health title 42 was going to be used to exclude them.

Well, those numbers are likely to grow in the coming days because, frankly, all the Biden administration was concerned about, apparently, was the bad optics of 30,000 migrants huddled under a border bridge in Del Rio, TX.

What the Biden administration did, as opposed to what they said they were going to do, is an open invitation for more migrants to illegally come to the United States. Individuals who are trying to decide whether to make the dangerous journey to our borders are reading the same headlines and watching the same TV news shows that we are, and many of them are simply calling their relatives in the United States saying: Should I still come?

And they are being given the green light because of the failure of the Biden administration to do anything to deter or to sway or to add costs to people illegally entering the United States. In so doing, the Biden administration is sending an unmistakable message to more migrants to come to the United States because, if you do, there is a good chance you will be released into the American countryside and disappear into that great American heartland. Migrants will ignore what President Biden is saying because they know what his administration is doing or, in this case, not doing, which is not securing the borders.

Unless something changes, the Haitian migration and the crisis in Del Rio that fixated the attention of the news media and all America-- unless something changes from a policy perspective, this is going to happen again.

We already know that border crossings are at their highest levels in 20 years. Now the administration is apparently opening the door to even more illegal migration. And the smuggling organizations--the organized crime syndicates that profit from charging these migrants thousands of dollars to get them into the country--will continue to get rich because of the administration's unwillingness to enforce our immigration laws.

Well, Congress has a duty to take action and address this crisis before it grows even more out of control. Democrats cannot ignore the responsibility to enforce our laws and secure our borders just because it upsets part of their political base.

There are a lot of things we need to do in the Senate, and this parade of dead-on-arrival bills does nothing to move us in the right direction. Clearly, our Democratic colleagues are finding their newfound majority--they are having a lot of trouble using this power to actually govern. They have a wide gulf between the so-called moderates of their party--what they can stomach and what the progressive leftwing demands.

They are up against the government funding deadline in just the next few days that could risk a shutdown during what is already tough economic times for many Americans because of the pandemic. They are trying to use a partisan budgetary process to pass trillions of dollars of more deficit-spending while also trying to get another trillion- dollar infrastructure bill signed into law. To top things off, they have fanned the flames of the crisis at our border, struggled to defend an indefensible, disastrous withdrawal from Afghanistan, and offended America's oldest ally. This is not what governing looks like.

There is no spotlight on a party like there is when you hold all the cards--when you control the White House, the House, and the Senate. The American people know who is responsible for the status quo. When the majority party all but refuses to work with the minority party, that spotlight grows even brighter.

I hope--but frankly I don't expect--that our Democrats will reevaluate the wisdom of this parade of failed bills and spend a little bit of time working with Republicans on legislation that could actually pass and make a positive difference for our country.

Madam President, I yield the floor.

I suggest the absence of a quorum.