Floor Statements

Mr. President, one of the things we have to do before we open our Christmas presents in a couple of weeks is to pass the National Defense Authorization Act. This is one of the rare instances-- and you can count them on maybe one hand--where we actually have good bipartisan cooperation, and it is for a good cause. It is in the defense of our Nation and in support of the men and women who wear the uniform and who keep us safe.

The Senate and the House have now released a final text that has been reconciled between the House and the Senate versions. All that remains now is for the House and then the Senate to pass the final version and send it to President Trump for his signature.

The National Defense Authorization Act is one of the most important pieces of legislation we pass each year. I believe we have done it-- without exception, I want to say--for 63, 64 years in a row.

Now, I wasn't here for each of those years, but that is the history that has been handed down.

As I said, this legislation is critically important because it makes sure that our military has the necessary resources to achieve the missions of today and rise to the challenges of tomorrow. As we have seen even in the battlefield in Ukraine, the nature of modern warfare has changed dramatically with the advent of the ubiquity of drones. With even poor countries like Yemen, where the Houthis send drones into countries like Israel or attack merchant ships in the Red Sea, we have had to use million-dollar missiles to shoot down basically cheap drones. Well, you can't continue that, you can't sustain that, so it is important that we update and modernize our military according to the threats and the technology available today.

Given our rather inconsistent record in other must-pass legislation, this is an impressive run of 56 years, my notes remind me, underscoring the importance the U.S. Congress has always placed on ensuring the fact that we have the strongest military in the world. We have the strongest military in the world not in order to fight but in order not to have to fight--in order to maintain deterrence. That is what President Reagan talked about and what President Trump has talked about--peace through strength. That comes with deterrence.

We are demonstrating the fact that we are committed to the defense of our Nation and our friends and allies around the world and that we are not afraid to make that investment. Any country that might decide to change the status quo and start a military conflict knows from the outset they are likely doomed to fail.

This year's NDAA, the Defense authorization bill, includes numerous important policies to strengthen our national defense, but perhaps the biggest success in this year's annual authorization bill is a significant win against the Chinese Communist Party. What I am referring to specifically is a provision that is in the reconciled bill that creates a vehicle for transparency on outbound investment from the United States into China.

We have known for decades now that China has attracted manufacturing from around the world into that country, to the detriment of manufacturing jobs here in America, and that they have used that technology they have learned and the workforce training that has gone along with it in order now to build weapons systems and threaten peace in the Indo-Pacific and threaten the United States--our position of dominance--when it comes to national security.

This provision that I will speak more to in a moment has been many years in the making. It goes back to 2021.

I tell people that the most important lesson I have learned here in the U.S. Senate is perseverance. If at first you don't succeed, try, try again, and that is what we did here. So in 2021, I partnered with then-Senator Casey on the initial outbound legislation. We worked through several different iterations of this legislation and listened to the input from stakeholders around the Nation--all with the goal of having notification, prohibition with regard to the investment of American dollars in China.

In 2023, I introduced the Outbound Investment Transparency Act and pushed for its inclusion in the Defense authorization bill that year. The Senate voted 91 to 6 to include my amendment in the annual Defense bill that year. Obviously, this enjoys broad bipartisan support in recognizing the challenge and indeed the threat that China could pose. It is highly unusual, as we know now, to see that level of agreement in Congress, but given the preeminence of the threat, nearly every one of my colleagues supported that provision.

Unfortunately, after nearly unanimous consensus that this amendment was needed to counter the rise of the Chinese Communist Party, that provision was dropped when the House and the Senate went to conference.

Then, last year--back again--I continued to push for this provision and was adamant that we had no time to lose. Even so, the language on outbound investment was once again dropped from the Defense authorization bill.

I want to credit Speaker Johnson, who has led a valiant effort in the House to include this provision in the end-of-year continuing resolution, but of course, when everybody tried to add their favorite policy rider to the continuing resolution at the end of last year, the bill collapsed under its own weight, and all of those outside provisions were stripped out. Once again, we kicked the can down the road.

Now, if we were simply talking about some relatively routine function, like funding a bridge, this might have been something par for the course, but that is not what we are dealing with here. I am confident in saying we are living in one of the most dangerous times since the Second World War, and China is our most significant adversary.

President Xi has signaled that he intends to reincorporate Taiwan in 2027 into the Chinese nation. As we approach the end of 2025, this is just a little more than a year away.

China has made no secret also of joining hands with Russia in conducting joint military exercises. We see now, when it comes to Ukraine, where North Korea, Russia, China, and even Iran--sort of the hit list of greatest military threats--are joined together in opposition to the United States and Europe in supporting the people of Ukraine. So they have now locked arms against us.

Meanwhile, in the South China Sea, which is a very important international lane of commerce, China continues to aggressively expand its control by conducting military drills and creating islands out of shoals and other pieces of territory. They have deployed surveillance tools and inflamed tensions with their neighboring countries, like Vietnam and the Philippines, in an attempt to intimidate them.

Let's not forget they are the powerhouse behind the drug crisis we are facing at home as well. I am talking about the fentanyl crisis. It is well established that fentanyl has been the leading cause of death in America of young

people between the ages of 18 and 45. It is perhaps less well- understood or -known that these drugs are smuggled across our southern border by Mexican drug cartels, but they are manufactured from chemicals imported from China to Mexico--so-called precursor chemicals.

But one thing is abundantly clear from all of this: China is not a threat we can ignore.

Failure to address this provision on outbound investment is not just to ignore the threat of China but to actively help them build up their own defense arsenal and threaten peace in the Indo-Pacific.

At this very moment, U.S. companies are investing money in China. They are bankrolling China's capabilities in semiconductors, quantum computing, hypersonic systems, and artificial intelligence. We are in a competition with China in each of those areas, so why in the world would we blindly allow American investors to invest in our opponent and help them defeat us in the race in each of these areas of technology? It is estimated that U.S. investments in Chinese companies currently total about $2.3 trillion in market value. That was by the end of 2020. It included $21 billion in semiconductors, $54 billion in military companies, and $221 billion in artificial intelligence.

Part of the problem is that China doesn't recognize a separation between commercial enterprises and their military. They have a law that forces their commercial enterprises to share information with their military. It is called military-civil fusion. So there is no way to just say ``Well, we are just investing, in America, in Chinese businesses; we are not investing in the military.'' It is impossible for that to be true given the Chinese law enforcing military-civil fusion. So when you invest in China to help them build their capacity in any one of these areas, you are helping the Chinese military that one day may be an adversary--an open adversary--of the United States and our friends and allies.

How can we expect the United States to dominate in the artificial intelligence frontier if our companies are investing in the rise of our biggest competitor? We have heard in the Foreign Relations Committee, in a subcommittee that Chairman Ricketts chaired recently, that this is the No. 1 race between China and the United States. It is who is going to perfect the use of artificial intelligence and to use it not only for commercial purposes but to defend the Nation or to use it for aggressive offensive purposes. So wouldn't we want to know if American companies are investing in the very technology China will try to use to defeat us?

Again, China is more than just a commercial competitor. Every dollar that the United States invests in a Chinese company is a dollar that is going toward the potential production of weapons that may one day be used to kill American soldiers.

Let me say that once more. Every dollar invested in China by a U.S. investor into a Chinese company is a dollar that is going toward the potential production of weapons and technology that one day may be used to kill Americans.

It is mind-boggling to me that anyone in the U.S. Government would not see the urgency of this policy of outbound investment transparency. Once we have a good picture of exactly what is going on, we as policymakers can decide what, if any, other policies we need to enact to protect our country, but if we don't know because there is no requirement to notify the government about what those investments look like and what the nature of those investments is, we are completely blind--I would say willfully blind--to that growing threat.

Those who have thrown up roadblocks against this provision over the last 3 years are working directly, whether they know it or not, in the interests of the Chinese Communist Party and directly, whether they know it or not, against the interests of the people they represent--the American people. But now, after nearly 5 years of work from Members in both Chambers, I am proud to say the language that we have proposed to address outbound investment transparency is in the final version of this year's National Defense Authorization Act. The House, as I said earlier, will vote this week, and I look forward to supporting that provision again in the Senate.

This has been a marathon, and I am thankful to the majority leader, Senator Thune. I mentioned the Speaker of the House, Mike Johnson. I would add a number of other names: Senator Tim Scott, Senator Cortez Masto, Senator Dan Sullivan, and Representative Andy Barr in the House of Representatives--all of whom will have contributed to this success when we pass the bill.

The Chinese Communist Party may have successfully evaded our scrutiny for the past few years, but this is the year we will finally put the nail in the coffin and open our eyes to the growing challenge that China represents--again, not just as a commercial, economic competitor but as a potential military competitor on the battlefield. That is something none of us want. The best way for us to prevent that from happening is to deter China, and you don't deter them by having American dollars invested in the very military capability that they could use to fight us and defeat us and our allies in the Indo-Pacific.

I yield the floor.

I suggest the absence of a quorum.

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

Mr. President, I ask that the vote scheduled here soon occur immediately.

I ask for the yeas and nays.

I ask unanimous consent that the Senate proceed to legislative session and be in a period of morning business, with Senators permitted to speak therein for up to 10 minutes each.

Mr. President, we have a little over 2 weeks before the Christmas recess, and we still have a lot of work to do here in the U.S. Senate, including passing a fully conferenced National Defense Authorization Act bill--by that, I mean reconcile the differences between the House version and the Senate version and get it to the President for his signature. There are many different players across both the House and the Senate, and they have to come together to make this happen.

Of course, we all have different priorities, but our main priority ought to be the welfare and the training and the equipment of our men and women in the military and their ability to protect all of us. But we can't forget about the real-world consequences of the

policies we are legislating. It matters, what ends up in and what ends up out of this bill at the end of the day. With something like the annual Defense bill, these decisions can have life-or-death consequences.

So as the National Defense Authorization Act comes to a close, I have been pushing to ensure that several provisions, including addressing outbound investment transparency, are included in the final legislation.

It is no secret to any of us that China is our near-peer competitor, and they don't have benign intentions with regard to the United States. They want to dominate the United States economically and militarily.

President Xi, the head of the People's Republic of China, and the Chinese Communist Party have threatened time after time after time to forcibly attack Taiwan and to consolidate Taiwan with mainland China.

We also know that the battle for the future of the world will literally be determined by who wins the race for artificial intelligence, which is heavily reliant on the production of advanced semiconductors and other advanced microelectronics.

These technologies--and this is really important--have both commercial and military applications, but in China, anything that is developed or possessed by a commercial entity has to be shared with the Chinese Communist Party and the People's Liberation Army. They call that military-civil fusion. So it means that any progress that they make, including on something as sophisticated and cutting edge as artificial intelligence, has to be shared and will be shared with their military.

On Tuesday, the Senate Foreign Relations Committee Subcommittee on East Asia, the Pacific, and International Cybersecurity Policy held a hearing on China's challenge to America's leadership when it comes to artificial intelligence. We heard expert testimony from four witnesses on the challenges that the United States faces in staying ahead of China in this critical sector.

Each of these witnesses emphasized the importance of export controls, controlling what technology goes from the United States into China, where they can then use that to compete with us and potentially even beat us in the AI race.

One quoted a senior executive at a Chinese AI firm, who said that Chinese companies have to use two to four times the computing power to achieve the same results for large model training because of U.S. restrictions on AI chips. Now, this is a good thing; however, export controls, while an effective tool, are not simple or straightforward, and the Chinese Government is really good--like the Russians--at circumventing sanctions and different restrictions--in this case, on cutting-edge technology.

The United States must take care to ensure that our export controls are properly enforced as PRC shell companies have ways of working around these trade controls in order to acquire American semiconductors and other controlled products. Unfortunately, sometimes it seems like a game of Whac-A-Mole because one company will pop its head up, and we will deal with that, but then they change the name, and it is the same thing under a different name.

It is not just the chips themselves that we have to keep a tight grip on but the machinery we use to make them. Many of the intermediary parts, such as lithography machines, are produced by our allies, like the Dutch ASML, which makes the leading-edge, advanced, ultraviolet lithography that is necessary to produce the most advanced semiconductor chips, but other countries, like South Korea, Japan, and Germany, are also part of that supply chain of critical equipment and machinery. Working and winning the AI race means we have to work hand in glove with our allies to ensure that these technologies are not acquired by the PRC, and we know the stakes if we don't accomplish that job.

In the same way that China has captured the supply chain for the production of processing critical minerals, they have designs to capture the manufacturing capacity for advanced semiconductors. Then they will do what they have always done, which is undercut worldwide competitors with government subsidies and then corner the market so that they become the only supplier, holding the rest of the world hostage.

Of course, there is the fact that China has never seen a piece of intellectual property that they aren't willing to steal, so by hook or crook, they are going to try to outcompete us, and we need to maintain our diligence and be vigilant when it comes to this threat.

China is aggressively investing resources towards winning this race for artificial intelligence, and we cannot aid them in winning the race through U.S. investments in China. That is where this piece of legislation called outbound investment transparency comes in.

One of the ways that China has built its mammoth manufacturing capacity is when American companies go into China and massively invest in manufacturing capabilities there. There is plenty that has been written on this topic. Apple, Tesla, and other major companies have gone into China because of the lower cost of manufacturing, and the Chinese, unsurprisingly, have learned these manufacturing processes to now where they have become some of the very best in the world. But we have to make sure at minimum that we aren't blindly watching American investments into China in technology that could later be used to kill American marines or American soldiers in a future conflict in the Indo- Pacific.

Some estimates show that as of 2020, a total of U.S. investments in Chinese companies totaled $2.3 trillion. Now, that is a lot of money, and if it wasn't available to the Chinese economy and Chinese manufacturing, it would make it harder for them to compete against us. This $2.3 trillion in market value includes $21 billion in semiconductor investment, $54 billion in military companies--U.S. companies investing in Chinese military companies to the tune of $54 billion--and $221 billion in artificial intelligence.

Again, because of China's military-civil fusion policy, we are not just investing in commercial applications of these technologies; every American dollar that is invested in these critical sectors in China is directly fueling the arsenal of our greatest strategic adversary.

Let me say that again. Every dollar that Americans invest in China in these critical sectors is directly fueling the arsenal of our greatest strategic adversary.

It is suicidal for the United States to see American dollars flow to China for the development of military technologies that very well could be used one day to kill American soldiers.

This is not a priority we can afford to kick down the road. Anyone who dismisses the threat of outbound investment is blind--blind--to the threat of the Chinese Communist Party and, I would argue, is working against the best interests of this country.

I have been working for years to try to make sure that we have this provision in the Defense authorization bill. We had one vote I think 3 years ago on a defense authorization bill; it was 92 to 6. So this is a bipartisan concern, as it should be, but for one reason or another, every time a bill comes across from the House through a conference, this provision seems to drop out, and that is because, frankly, of some of the people who financially benefit from the status quo and who do not want us to have, as policymakers, any transparency into Americans who invest in China to help them defeat us, whether militarily or in the race for AI.

(Mr. MORENO assumed the Chair.)

So I am glad that, at this point in the negotiations, the House and the Senate are prioritizing this provision in the final version of this year's NDAA. If we do not address outbound investment transparency, then we are playing to lose the AI race and risk the lives of American servicemembers and a potential conflict in the Indo-Pacific.

The time to act was yesterday, but the next best time to act is today. This fight to address outbound investment transparency has been going on for many years, but I look forward to finally declaring victory when President Trump signs the National Defense Authorization Act into law, which I hope is very soon.

I yield the floor.

I suggest the absence of a quorum.

Mr. President, I spoke earlier this week about the tragic incident that happened over the week of Thanksgiving here in Washington, DC, when two National Guardsmen were shot in the line of duty, and one of them died of her wounds.

Today, I would like to spend a little bit more time discussing the perpetrator of this act of violence and how he happened to be in the country in the first place.

The man who committed this crime was a 29-year-old Afghan national by the name of Rahmanullah Lakanwal. The Biden administration paroled him into the United States in 2021 as part of Operation Allies Welcome. He was not the recipient of any special immigrant visa process or processed through the overseas Afghan SIV Program. He was later granted asylum after his parole period expired.

But I would like to dwell on the word ``parole'' for a minute so that people understand exactly how this shooter made his way into the United States and how he had come to stay here and commit these crimes.

Ordinarily, under immigration law, Congress would be engaged and pass certain immigrant visa legislation saying that you need to meet these criteria, these standards, in order to qualify. That is not what happened to the shooter of these two West Virginia National Guardsmen. He was paroled into the country, which means that the Biden administration simply allowed him into the country without any sort of background check or any sort of vetting.

We are more familiar with the word ``parole'' in the criminal law context, which comes to mind when people are released from prison following demonstrating good behavior, but in immigration law, ``parole'' is a provision under U.S. law that allows the Secretary of Homeland Security to allow certain aliens--and that would be foreigners--on a case-by-case basis--and that is important. It would allow certain aliens, on a case-by-case basis, to temporarily enter the United States.

Aliens who have been paroled into the United States are usually not eligible for entry into the United States or for a visa because they are barred by certain grounds of inadmissibility or removal that apply.

Parole is not a lawful immigration status or formal admission to the United States. I know this is fairly technical, but it is really important in this context. This shooter was not admitted into the United States as a result of any legislation that Congress passed or any of us voted for. It was solely done by the Biden administration and by the Department of Homeland Security during his administration.

Just as importantly, this power--this parole power--is only to be used in very limited circumstances, such as a medical emergency or because we find it is in our Nation's best interests, such as an individual alien cooperating with law enforcement or in a criminal prosecution.

Aliens who are paroled into the United States are only allowed to be here temporarily and under certain conditions prescribed by the Secretary of Homeland Security. Significantly, they do not--they do not--undergo the same formal screening process as those who apply for a green card or a visa.

Parole was never meant to be a vehicle for massive numbers of immigrants coming into the country or the sort of categorical parole done by the Biden administration, where people from certain countries were admitted by the tens of thousands, literally, each month. It is supposed to be done on a case-by-case basis.

So what I am suggesting is these sorts of categorical paroles that the Biden administration issued--including the parole which resulted in this shooter being in Washington, DC, and attacking these two National Guard members--were illegitimate. It was an illegitimate use of this parole authority under U.S. law.

The Biden administration's abuse of the immigration laws, of course, is well known, and their abuse of parole authority. The very notion of mass parole is what you might call an oxymoron. In other words, it is inconsistent--mass, or categorical, and parole. There is an inherent contradiction. Using this authority illegitimately to allow massive numbers of immigrants into the country defies the very nature and purpose of this authority.

The Biden administration created a number of programs to extend parole status to immigrants from around the world. Under a program known as the CHNV, the Biden administration allowed as many as 30,000 individuals per month from Cuba, Haiti, Nicaragua, and Venezuela, as well as their immediate family members. They were admitted under this program of the Biden administration, again, illegitimately, using the parole authority to grant categorical or massive entry of these individuals into the United States. Under that program, they were allowed into the United States for a 2-year period of time and received a work permit. The Trump administration rightfully terminated this program in March of this year.

But that was not the only misuse of parole. After the disastrous fall of Afghanistan and the bungled evacuation, the Biden administration added insult to injury. Under Operation Allies Welcome, the Biden administration rolled out the welcome mat to Afghan nationals. As of 2023, the Biden administration had brought more than 70,000 Afghan nationals into the United States under this claimed parole authority. Again, parole is only supposed to be used on a case-by-case basis. But the Biden administration, by illegitimately exercising this authority, allowed 70,000 Afghan nationals into the country.

What that also means--and in particular relevance to this crime committed against these two National Guardsmen--is that there was not the normal sort of vetting process that you would see for refugees or anybody else coming into the country. We knew very little about these individuals, and we didn't check up on them once they got here. We didn't know whether they were criminals, whether they had ties to radical terrorist groups or anything. Of course, that is pretty consistent with the Biden administration. Their open border policies for 4 years let basically anybody and everybody who wanted to come into the United States in, including people who were determined to commit crimes and do us harm.

For some of these parolees, the U.S. Government under the Biden administration even allowed them to collect cash welfare benefits, such as Supplemental Security Income, SSI; Temporary Assistance for Needy Families,

TANF; and Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program. So not only did they come in unvetted and were allowed to stay here for 2 years, but they were given a work permit and given benefits that are paid for by you and me and the rest of the American taxpayers.

A video on the DHS website with information for Afghan nationals details that U.S. Immigration and Citizenship Services will expedite asylum applications for those paroled under Operation Allies Welcome and that they may not even need to comply with the regular application filing deadline.

A cursory review of this program on the website--the Operation Allies Welcome website--exposes that the Biden administration was much more concerned with testing these immigrants for COVID-19 than ensuring they would not otherwise pose a threat to the American people.

The Department of Homeland Security inspector general reported that DHS paroled in at least two people who were known national security risks--known national security risks. And the Department of Defense inspector general wrote, in another report, that ``Afghan refugees were not vetted by the National Counterterrorism Center using all DOD data prior to arriving in'' the continental United States.

Now, when I have learned about this abuse of parole authority within Operation Allies Welcome, I raised the alarm bell. In October of 2024, I co-led a letter, along with my colleagues on the Judiciary Committee, to DHS Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas, back in the Biden administration. In this letter, we pressed the administration for answers on how foreign extremists, such as one Afghan national, Nasir Ahmad Tawhedi, who was arrested for his connection to an ISIS plot to commit a violent attack within the United States on election day--how people like that were slipping through the cracks in our immigration system. I guess the answer is there weren't cracks; there were yawning gaps that you could drive a truck through--that anybody and everybody who was determined to come here could abuse and commit acts of violence and harm against the American people.

The Biden administration had claimed that Tawhedi, who had ties to ISIS, had a special immigrant visa, but that was not true. He never had been vetted for a special immigrant visa and was allowed into the country on parole. Here we go again.

And throughout the criminal investigation, the Department of Homeland Security continued to say that ``no red flags were raised'' during the parole vetting process. Well, of course not--if the parole vetting process is virtually nonexistent, how do you expect red flags to be raised?

The fact that a foreign national, who would later collaborate with ISIS on a terrorist plot within the United States, raised no red flags during DHS's parole vetting process tells us all we need to know about what that vetting process consisted of. It was obviously not sufficient. At minimum, it was insufficient to ensure that those entering the country did not pose a threat.

The letter I referred to a moment ago also referenced the Office of Inspector General report that found that the Department of Homeland Security had no established process for monitoring the Afghan parolee population as their parole periods expired. In other words, they were allowed into the country, ostensibly, for a 2-year period of time, given a work permit, given social service benefits, and no followup to make sure that, after their parole period ended, they returned to their country of origin or pursued some other legitimate pathway to allow them to stay legally in the United States.

Now, we sent this letter back in 2024 because of our concern that another foreign extremist might make their way into our country via this parole process and commit some act of violence. And it became increasingly clear, during Thanksgiving week, that our concerns were not unwarranted.

A 29-year-old Afghan national entered our country through the Biden administration's abuse of parole authority under Operation Allies Welcome and murdered one of our National Guardsmen on duty.

Last week, Attorney General Bondi, alongside Federal and State law enforcement, arrested another Afghan citizen residing in Fort Worth, TX, for threatening to build a bomb and carry out a suicide attack against Americans.

There are many lessons to be learned from this sad experience, this sad episode. We simply cannot ignore the importance of thoroughly vetting for each and every person who enters our country to make sure that we are keeping out radicals who may want to harm Americans or criminals or other people who have no business being in the United States in the first place.

These horrific incidents should be a reminder to all of us that the decisions that are made here in Washington have real life implications on the lives of the people that we represent. And, I must say, the Federal Government failed this young National Guardsman who lost her life during Thanksgiving week, and we don't know how many more potential threats are still out there because 70,000 Afghan nationals were paroled under this bogus Operation Allies Welcome program by the Biden administration. We don't know how many more potentially dangerous individuals are spread around the country.

Last week, an American service woman lost her life because of the Biden administration's abuse of parole authority. President Biden is no longer in office, but the consequences of his reckless immigration policies are still with us. And I fear they will be with us not for days, not for weeks, not for months, but for years and possibly longer.

I commend President Trump for freezing the processing of asylum and visa applications from Afghan nationals while we figure out what happened and figure out how to fix it. We have to get to the bottom of this in order to make sure that such a tragedy never happens again.

Mr. President, I yield the floor.

Madam President, as we all know, we are back from the Thanksgiving holiday where most of us--I hope all of us--had a chance to spend some time with our family and show thanks for the blessings that we have experienced, first and foremost of which is to live in a country like the United States of America. We truly won the lottery when we became Americans by virtue of birth or getting here as fast as we could.

After a weekend of turkey and football, we return to some somber news. As the Senator from West Virginia recounted just a moment ago, on Wednesday, two of our National Guard servicemembers stationed near the White House were shot in a targeted ambush. One of these victims, Army SPC Sarah Beckstrom, was only 20 years old and passed away the following day, while another victim, SSgt Andrew Wolfe, remains in critical condition, and I know we all continue to pray for his recovery.

The perpetrator was an Afghan parolee--that has special significance--who entered the country under the Biden administration's Operation Allies Welcome Program, which was notorious for insufficient vetting of Afghan refugees.

I raised alarm bells about this mass parole of Afghan refugees back in 2024 when I co-led a letter to Department of Homeland Security Secretary Mayorkas, pressing the Biden administration for their inadequate screening processes for Afghan refugees, including some who were later found to have had ties to ISIS.

I ask unanimous consent to have this letter printed in the Record at the end of this statement.

Madam President, I would like to point out that this risk and the threat of these kinds of deadly results was something that many of us were concerned about and raised with the Biden administration a long time before the tragic incidence of this Thanksgiving season.

We wrote in this letter:

In the chaos following the withdrawal [from Afghanistan],

the Biden-Harris administration paroled into the U.S. over

77,000 Afghans with no or significantly incomplete security

checks done on them prior to their arrival.

The reason why ``parole'' is an important word is because this particular shooter who shot these two West Virginia guardsmen did not come into the country on any one of the Special Immigrant Visa Programs. He was simply paroled, which is an exercise of Executive or Presidential authority allowing an immigrant into the country without adjudicating any sort of asylum or refugee claim or anything else.

As we point out in this letter of October 18, 2024, we raised concerns about the Biden administration passing this massive parole of 77,000 Afghan nationals with no or insignificant or significantly incomplete security checks done on them prior to their arrival.

The letter goes on to say:

In the three years since, the Department of Homeland

Security . . . has failed to conduct proper vetting of these

parole recipients.

People like the shooter who shot the two West Virginia National Guardsmen.

A DHS Office of Inspector General report from May of 2024

found that [the Department of Homeland Security] has no

established process or dedicated component for monitoring

parole expiration for the Afghan parolee population, and that

there are significant gaps in how DHS responds to potential

derogatory information discovered in the recurrent vetting

process.

But here is perhaps the most important line in this letter. We said:

This ongoing failure to protect Americans from potential

terrorist threats is unacceptable and it is only a matter of

time before it yields deadly results.

Well, unfortunately that prediction of this massive parole of 77,000 Afghans into the United States under the Biden administration's Operation Allies Welcome Program, that prediction proved to be true and come to pass.

Our prayers continue to go out to the family of Sarah Beckstrom, an American hero who gave and made the ultimate sacrifice for her country, and we continue to pray for the full recovery of Andrew Wolfe. These young men and women in uniform put their lives on the line day in and day out so that the rest of us can sleep safe and secure.

When tragic events like this take place, it is a reminder to all of us of

the sacrifices they make in order to protect our freedom and public safety.

I am grateful to President Trump and to FBI Director Patel for their swift response and for their commitment to bring the perpetrator of this heinous event to justice; but even more than that, we need to make sure it does not reoccur through other poorly or insufficiently vetted Afghan parolees. Unfortunately, this is part of the legacy of the Biden administration's open borders and immigration policies where they defied the law which reserves parole through a case-by-case basis to do it on a categorical basis along the southern border and now with the Afghan parolees.

Madam President, on another matter, we have only three scheduled workweeks before Christmas. Compared to what the Senate had left on its plate last year, I think a great deal of praise is in order for our leadership--Senator Thune and Senate Republicans generally--for getting so much done in the last 11 months.

We started the year off with an impressive clip, confirming President Trump's Cabinet at a record speed. We successfully passed a reconciliation package, which will extend President Trump's tax cuts for working families, known as the One Big Beautiful Bill or the Working Families Tax Cuts Act, which contains far more than just tax relief for the American people. We passed our first draft of the National Defense Authorization Act in the Senate.

In addition to these impressive accomplishments, the Senate has also passed the first tranche of government funding bills and a continuing resolution to keep the lights on through January. While it may seem odd to commend Congress for just doing its job, this has become a notable achievement because it means we will not be here on Christmas Eve voting on a massive omnibus spending package. That, unfortunately, has happened too often in the past.

Suffice it to say, the first year of the 119th Congress, led by Republicans, has been far more productive than recent years, but now we have more work to do because we are not quite finished. We have a few more tasks to complete before Saint Nick comes to fill up our stockings.

First and foremost, we need to finish the National Defense Authorization Act. This is a must-pass piece of legislation. It is absolutely critical to providing the men and women who protect this country with the finances and the resources and the training they need in order to do their job.

The House and the Senate have passed their own respective versions, which means now, the task is for a conference between those two versions to reconcile any differences and pass that version in both Chambers. Then the final version, of course, as we all know, can go to President Trump.

As part of the process to finalize the NDAA this year, I remain adamant in my provisions to address outbound foreign investments that they be included in the final version.

We all know that the Chinese Communist Party is the greatest national security threat--not just to the region but globally--at this time. What many of us did not fully appreciate is how American investors are directly supporting the Chinese economy and the Chinese military through outbound investments to the tune of billions of dollars.

The U.S.-China Economic and Security Review Commission noted that the United States is ``the most important single source of investment to semiconductors, quantum computing, and AI in China.'' In other words, we are funding our principal competitor, and that competitor is not only an economic competitor but is vying for hegemony in the Indo- Pacific and threatening a military conflict to take Taiwan any day, week, or month in the future.

So why in the world would we engage in willful blindness, not knowing what American investors are doing to help prop up the Chinese economy and the Chinese military?

Failure to address outbound investment transparency is to pretend that national security doesn't matter. And we don't have any more time to procrastinate. The best time to act on this was years ago when my initial outbound investment legislation was proposed and passed as part of the Senate NDAA, but now, we need to finish the job we started back then in this year's NDAA.

The last item on our plate, in addition to securing our national defense, is to address our Nation's healthcare. The so-called Affordable Care Act--better known as ObamaCare--was as dubiously named as the Inflation Reduction Act, which did not reduce inflation, just like the Affordable Care Act did not make healthcare affordable.

When ObamaCare was crafted, debated, and passed, Democrats refused to work with Republicans to make it a bipartisan law.

So this failed experiment in ObamaCare that is now proposing 18 percent premium increases in places like the State of Texas this upcoming year has been a complete failure.

President Obama said that if you like your doctor, you can keep your doctor; he said that if you like your healthcare plan, you can keep your healthcare plan; and he also said that it would reduce healthcare costs by an average of $2,500 per American consumer--none of which has proven to be true. Democrats preferred to write the bill all by themselves and then misrepresent to the American people about their being able to keep their doctor or existing insurance plans.

ObamaCare was a massive failure that left Americans disappointed and our healthcare system virtually bankrupt. Ignoring this reality, Democrats came back for more during the COVID pandemic, using a national healthcare crisis as an opportunity to serve up more of the same bad recipe for our healthcare needs.

Of course, we all know the Senate's secret sauce is deliberation and debate. That is what we are supposed to do. The Senate is a forum where colleagues

who may have different party affiliations and different ideas about how we should solve problems can come together to try to build consensus and to work through our differences to arrive at a policy framework that gets at least 60 percent support in this body. The result of that process is a product that has been stress-tested by Members on both sides and one that works out better in the long-term for the American people.

But with the COVID-era enhanced ObamaCare credits set to expire according to a timetable set by Democrats since no Republican voted for it in the first place--instead of working through the regular order to come up with a bipartisan solution, the Senate Democrats have chosen to play hardball. They shut down the government, denying paychecks to millions of Americans, in an attempt to beat Republicans into accepting their terms unilaterally. This is simply not the way the Senate is supposed to work.

The Democrats' use of a government shutdown as a tactic to get what they wanted--to extend this failed policy in ObamaCare--is a shameful tactic, but now that the shutdown is over, Democrats have an opportunity to reconsider and do the right thing.

President Trump has already given us some great ideas about how to accomplish this and made the point, which I think is an important one, that rather than send the money to insurance companies that have, by the way, done very, very well and made a lot of money, let's send the money directly to the consumer so they can choose what suits their needs the best.

There are many good ideas that have been circulated. Senator Bill Cassidy, a physician from Louisiana and a member of the Finance Committee, has put forward a framework based on the administration's proposals--bypassing the insurance companies and sending the money directly to the consumer. I know others who have a lot of experience in the healthcare field, like Senator Rick Scott of Florida, have introduced legislation as well. So there are a lot of great ideas out there.

We know that ObamaCare itself has failed and is unsustainable in its current form, so we have a lot of work to do and not much time to get it done. The goal, of course, is to make sure that everybody in America can get access to healthcare and to make sure we don't bankrupt the country in the meantime.

So all these ideas are a solid step in the right direction toward righting the wrongs of ObamaCare and ensuring we put dollars in the hands of the consumer or American families rather than in the coffers of insurance companies and insurance company executives.

But to actually solve the healthcare challenges that this country faces, we need to have a robust debate between our Members, and I hope our colleagues on the other side of the aisle will approach this discussion in good faith. Based on history, I am not overly confident that will happen, but I remain hopeful.

So I look forward to working with all of our colleagues, as well as President Trump, to come up with the right solution for healthcare that actually relieves the burden of rising health costs on American families, primarily caused by the abomination known as ObamaCare.

I yield the floor.

I suggest the absence of a quorum.

Mr. President, it has been a little over a year since President Trump was elected in his second term of office. The key part of the campaign and mandate was to secure the border and to reverse the disastrous open-border policies of the Biden administration.

As we see, President Trump is delivering on that campaign promise by implementing the very policies that the American people voted for, not to mention the fact that these policies and these laws were passed by Congress and signed into law, and our law enforcement Agencies are merely enforcing laws that Congress itself has passed.

The President is doing this by securing the United States-Mexican border to prevent more illegal aliens from coming into the country and also removing illegal aliens who entered our country during President Biden's open-border disaster.

Aggressive immigration enforcement is not unprecedented. President Obama, who has been praised by the left for unifying the country, deported more than 2\1/2\ million illegal immigrants, earning him the title ``Deporter-in-Chief.'' Democrats seem to have forgotten this data point, but I am happy to remind them.

Perhaps unsurprisingly, the progressive left in the Democratic Party these days has lost its mind in the face of enforcement of current immigration laws--again, which the American people voted for and Congress has passed. They haven't hesitated to spread misinformation and vilify the very men and women in law enforcement who are enforcing our immigration laws. These groups have not stopped spreading lies. They are actually inciting violent mobs to impede the enforcement of laws that Congress has passed.

Inciting mob violence against any law enforcement officer is unacceptable, and those who do so have to be held accountable. For this reason, I am holding a hearing, as chairman of the Senate Judiciary Subcommittee on Immigration and Border Security, to examine these unfounded attacks on our law enforcement agents.

In particular, we will consider what is unfolding in America's so- called sanctuary cities.

Under President Biden, millions of unvetted illegal immigrants entered our country across the U.S.-Mexico border. These included criminal aliens, violent gang members, including MS-13, Tren de Aragua, and individuals on the Terror Watchlist that came not just from Mexico or Central America but from literally every corner of the world.

And where did they go after they crossed the border? These individuals found refuge primarily in America's sanctuary cities-- places like Los Angeles, Portland, and Chicago.

According to the Center for Immigration Studies, there are currently 12 sanctuary States and more than 200 sanctuary cities in the United States. Many of these States and communities have passed laws that actually prevent local police officers from cooperating with Federal law enforcement officers employed by ICE, or Immigration and Customs Enforcement.

This means that, in some instances, these local law enforcement officers can't share information about detained or incarcerated aliens, or honor DHS--Department of Homeland Security--detainers placed on criminal aliens. So ICE, or Immigration and Customs Enforcement, has no alternative but to conduct raids on various sites to detain illegal aliens and then see that they are removed from the country.

So just to explain that a minute, when an illegal alien is arrested and placed in a local jail, if local authorities are allowed to and do, in fact, cooperate with Immigration and Customs Enforcement, that transfer from the local jail to the immigration officials can occur in the jail, and then ICE doesn't need to conduct dangerous raids in our communities in these sanctuary cities.

But in the sanctuary cities, that is not possible. They have no alternative, since there is no cooperation at the local level. So in those jurisdictions, in the so-called sanctuary cities, criminal aliens are released back into their communities and inevitably reoffend--that means they commit other crimes--rather than being detained by the Department of Homeland Security and allowing them to take custody.

This practice not only defies common sense; it makes the role of immigration enforcement officers more difficult and, in the end, more painful for each of these communities.

I would hope, at least, that some of my colleagues across the aisle would agree that criminal aliens should be detained and deported. I am not sure they would agree with that. It seems, by their conduct and by their votes, they are suggesting that illegal aliens have just as much right to be in the United States as you and me.

So once these criminals are picked up off the streets and detained in jails, why wouldn't we want Federal law enforcement officers with Immigration and Customs Enforcement to be able to accept them, transfer them from the jail authorities to ICE custody, and then deport them?

Any alien who has already shown a complete disregard for U.S. law should not be allowed to stay in the United States.

Sanctuary cities, instead, have the practice of actually releasing these very people--sometimes dangerous people whom we all know should be first in line for deportation.

ICE would not have to go into communities and find criminal aliens if elected officials and local governments would simply cooperate with Federal law enforcement authorities. These cities could have facilitated enforcement the easy way, but, instead, they chose the hard way.

Instead of reporting this unfortunate reality truthfully, mainstream media outlets like CNN, MSNBC, and ABC have ignored the real harm that these criminal aliens have caused in these communities and instead directed their ire toward law enforcement. This is sort of a manifestation of what used to be called the ``defund the police'' movement, which has made so many communities in our States and Nation unsafe, because ICE, or Immigration and Customs Enforcement officials, which are employed by the Department of Homeland Security, are Federal law enforcement officials.

And, basically, when the mainstream media accuses them of what, in essence, is just doing their job, they are suggesting that the laws should not be enforced and that the fault, if there is fault, lies with the Federal law enforcement officers that are simply doing their job as mandated by Congress.

The mainstream media and Democratic elected officials have used incendiary rhetoric to fan the flames of public protest that are anything but ``mostly peaceful.'' The result has been widespread assault on our law enforcement officers.

Protestors and criminal aliens have physically attacked them in some instances. They have rammed officers

with vehicles, thrown tear gas, smoke grenades, rocks, bottles, and even punched and shot at these law enforcement officers for simply doing their job.

Leftwing protestors have laid down on the street in an attempt to prevent vehicles belonging to law enforcement from entering or leaving detention facilities and even slashed government vehicle tires, all in an effort to prevent ICE and Customs and Border Protection from doing their job.

Officers have been pepper-sprayed, choked, punched, and injured to the point of hospitalization in some cases. These individuals who seem to be celebrated and certainly given a lot of publicity in the mainstream media, as if they were in the right--these groups have prevented the arrest and removal of criminals--documented criminals-- including facilitating the escape, in one case, of a convicted child rapist who is now out there somewhere in the community at large.

The Democratic Party claims to be the party of the people, but when it comes to protecting the American people from violent gangs like Tren de Aragua, pedophiles, and rapists, they simply look the other way or claim that the fault lies with law enforcement, not the people who have already violated our laws.

Progressive activists have done everything they can imagine to impede immigration enforcement officers from carrying out their duty, including doxing them, putting their personal information on the Web, and even making death threats.

The leftwing media has been intent on giving this behavior a pass, but Senate Republicans will not give them a pass.

So I encourage all of my colleagues and all of my constituents back home in Texas to tune into the hearing that we intend to have this afternoon in the Senate Judiciary Committee. In this hearing, we will hear testimony from Sheriff Boyd, who will give an update on Texas's cooperation with immigration enforcement and how it protects their officers and local communities. Danielle Carter-Walters will offer insight into how leftwing policies are failing Chicago residents and other Americans living in sanctuary cities, and Mia Cathell, an investigative journalist from the Washington Examiner, will offer a journalist's perspective on how leftwing groups are funding these protests against ICE.

While the mainstream media, apparently, will stop at nothing to spread lies and vilify the very people who have sworn to uphold our laws, my Republican colleagues and I are not afraid to push back in order to let the American people know the truth.

I yield the floor.

I suggest the absence of a quorum.

Mr. President, next July, we will celebrate the 250th anniversary of the founding of this great country.

As we approach this monumental commemoration, it is worth reflecting from time to time on the enduring principles that have made our Nation unique in the world. Perhaps the most foundational of these ideas are enshrined in the Declaration of Independence itself, that all of us are created equal and we are endowed by our Creator with certain unalienable rights.

The notion that we are all of equal dignity and must be treated equally under the law was somewhat of a revolutionary idea, but it does provide the basic foundation for our constitutional Republic. All other rights and freedoms that we hold dear flow from that idea.

Americans defend the right to free speech because we believe in the equal dignity of every human being and their right to speak as they wish.

So our Constitution prohibits government from infringing upon we the people's ability to speak our mind, and as a country, we welcome open dialogue and debate about even the most controversial issues.

It almost goes without saying, but sometimes I think we need to remind people that free speech is essential to our democratic Republic, to the whole idea of self-government. If people cannot have open conversations and even arguments, then it becomes impossible for us to be informed about the most important issues and to be able to make decisions as we the voters--we the people--decide at our elections or in petitioning our government, another right guaranteed by the Constitution.

But as I indicated earlier, not every country or culture shares these commitments. In fact, many are riddled with ideologies that run directly counter to these ideals that have sustained our democratic Republic for nearly 250 years. In the 20th century, totalitarian ideologies like communism and Nazism began to emerge. These radical schools of thought run counter to American ideals of liberty and equality, placing the state--not the person but the state--at the center of society, while sidelining the individual, the family, and, most especially, religion. Totalitarian belief systems defy American principles of freedom of speech and association, the protection of private property, and the rule of law.

Unfortunately, we have seen a resurgence of another vile ideology in recent times: anti-Semitism, the world's oldest form of hate. A recent report from the FBI showed a nearly 6-percent increase of religiously motivated incidents against Jewish Americans between 2023 and 2024. In 2024, the same report found that 70 percent of religiously motivated hate crimes targeted Jews, who make up only 2 percent of our population. Let me repeat that. This report found that 70 percent of religiously motivated hate crimes were directed at Jews--70 percent-- even though Jews only make up 2 percent of our population. And 41 percent of young American Jews between the age of 18 and 29 said they had experienced anti-Semitism at least once in the last year.

As we can all recall with horror, 2 years ago, on October 7, Hamas terrorists conducted the deadliest terrorist attack against Israel in history, the worst cause of death since the Holocaust for Jews, resulting in the murder of 1,200 people, the brutal raping of women and young girls, and hundreds of hostages taken at the same time.

Unimaginably, in the wake of this horrible tragedy and the ensuing war in Gaza, many elite educational institutions in the United States shockingly responded with a flurry of anti-Semitism. We saw faculty at some of the most prestigious universities in America openly celebrating this devastating attack while some students blatantly threatened to slit the throats of Jewish students on campus.

The president of Harvard, we may recall, was forced to resign as a result of her lack of moral clarity on this issue. There should be no confusion between good and evil, and this was clearly motivated by evil and hate. When pressed in committee hearings on anti-Semitism on whether Harvard policies prohibited students from calling for the genocide of Jews, she said, ``It can be, depending on the context''-- shameful.

Republicans in the House and the Senate rallied to the defense of American Jews facing this rising tide of hatred from the radical fringes of the left, while, unfortunately, too many of our colleagues across the aisle left them out to dry. For example, in 2024, in May, we introduced a resolution led by Senator Tim Scott of South Carolina condemning anti-Semitism on American college campuses. Yet this was blocked by Senators on the other side of the aisle for some reason. Some Democratic House Members even visited these protests to show solidarity with the very people spreading hateful rhetoric, such as ``Zionists don't deserve to live.''

Vice President Kamala Harris even chose not to preside over the joint address to Congress of the Prime Minister of Israel, instead preferring to keep a previously scheduled commitment to address a sorority gathering in Indianapolis, in an obvious snub of the Prime Minister and Israel.

There are increasing signs that the Democratic Party has lacked conviction to stand up to the most vile elements of their base. Some have even openly embraced anti-Semitism. The newly elected mayor of New York City refused to condemn terrorism in an interview on national television, saying he doesn't ``really have opinions about the future of Hamas in Israel.''

I find it too curious that, just 2 years ago, he said, ``When the boot of the NYPD is on your neck, it has been laced by the IDF,'' the Israel Defense Forces. This is the newly elected mayor of New York City. And when asked how he would have handled the protests on Columbia's campus, he said: ``I would have not sent the police to Columbia.''

Despite his refusal to use police to quell these campus riots, Mamdani has expressed on multiple occasions a willingness to direct the police to arrest Prime Minister Netanyahu if he were to ever visit New York City.

The left has openly embraced this radical candidate, and now he has been elected as mayor of America's largest city.

But while the Democratic Party has, unfortunately, embraced anti- Semitism in too many instances, Republicans under President Trump have continued to make clear what we stand for and have not shied away from making clear what we stand against. President Trump's leadership in the fight against anti-Semitism has been undeniable. In his first term, he signed a landmark Executive order giving new authorities to the Department of Education to investigate anti-Semitism complaints on college campuses and university campuses. When he was returned to office in 2025, one of his first actions was to sign another Executive order to address anti-Semitism that reaffirmed and built on the successes of his 2019 order.

In February, President Trump's Department of Justice formed a new task force to combat anti-Semitism, particularly at our Nation's schools. So President Trump has made clear that anti-Semitism has simply no place in America--on the right or on the left. Unfortunately, his predecessor wasn't so clear. But President Trump, unlike his predecessor, has had no hesitation directly confronting the anti- Semitism working still in our higher education system.

President Biden has been gone from the Oval Office for months now, but, unfortunately, there are still forces capitulating to the radicals who embrace this vile ideology. I am thankful that, by and large, Republicans have not done the same. Even when storied institutions like the Heritage Foundation have sent mixed messages about their commitment to individual liberty and freedom of speech and opposition to this vile form of hatred directed at Jews, prominent voices in the Republican Party have courageously condemned those who ascribe to anti-Semitism, including some who claim to be conservatives.

Standing up for the truth and condemning evil does not amount to canceling people. Freedom of speech and

freedom of association both allow institutions and individuals to condemn evil when they see it. I believe that all Americans should continue to stand with Jewish Americans against the rising tide of anti-Semitism.

As we approach the 250th anniversary of this great country of ours, I hope all of us will recommit ourselves to upholding the dignity of every individual in this country and around the world.

I yield the floor.

I suggest the absence of a quorum.

Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent to waive the mandatory quorum call with respect to Tung nomination.

Mr. President, we are now over a month into a shutdown caused by the refusal of Senate Democrats to vote for a short-term, stopgap spending bill that expires November 21. So much time has passed that we are now only 3 weeks out from that new deadline even if they were to vote to pass this short-term funding bill that has passed the House of Representatives.

This cannot be explained by logic or reason; this can only be explained by politics and by the Democratic leader's desire to keep his job and to survive in the next election because he is afraid of his own political party and that they will throw him overboard if he were to agree to a short-term, stopgap spending bill, which we did 13 times when President Biden was in office.

But we are also hearing that they want us to negotiate the expiring Biden COVID-era subsidies for the ObamaCare exchange. Since they want to talk about that, I would just reiterate what President Trump has said, what Speaker Johnson has said, and what the majority leader of the Senate has said: We are happy to talk about anything and everything you want to talk about once you reopen the government.

But since Democrats brought it up and since they still insist on keeping the government shut down, endangering people flying, causing enormous inconvenience at the international Bush Airport in Houston-- there is a 3-hour wait for people to simply get through the security line at TSA.

We know that 42 million people have been denied access to supplemental nutrition--some of the most vulnerable people in our country--and we know that Federal Government employees are not being paid even though they are obviously working.

I have not heard a Senate Democrat say ``Well, I am going to withhold my pay during this shutdown,'' as those of

us on this side of the aisle have done, including yours truly, so presumably they are continuing to get paid while everybody else is not being paid and while enormous numbers of the most vulnerable of our population, who depend on supplemental nutrition for food on the table, are being denied that relief--all because they are afraid to deal with the politics associated with simply passing a short-term, stopgap spending bill.

But they also say they want this conversation to be about health insurance. Since they want to talk about ObamaCare, I figured I would oblige them.

Now, we know that health insurance rates have certainly continued to go up. The Wall Street Journal recently reported that the cost of a family health insurance plan in 2025 is nearly $27,000.

If you are 1 of the 16 million people on the Affordable Care Act exchanges, your premium is scheduled to go up 18 percent next year--18 percent. At the same time, if you are on an employer-provided insurance plan, premiums will go up roughly 6 or 7 percent--6 or 7 percent versus 18 percent. Well, there must be a good reason for that astronomical figure for the ObamaCare plans, and I plan on mentioning a few reasons why that is so.

Well, employers are paying for much of the health insurance premiums for their employees, but increased costs eat away at the budget they have to pay wages and other benefits. So employee salaries will become stagnant as employers have to pay more each year for health insurance.

For small businesses, the margin is even greater--or I say the margin should be smaller. The increased costs of healthcare for their employees might mean they can't offer generous raises or might mean they can't afford to hire as many people as they previously did.

So clearly the rising cost of healthcare and health insurance is a problem for individuals and employers, but a fair question is, How did we get here?

Well, the first place we have to look is ObamaCare, popularly known as the Affordable Care Act. The fact of the matter is, it is the ``Unaffordable Care Act.''

When President Obama signed this highly controversial signature healthcare plan into policy, he promised that it would make health insurance affordable for the American people.

In 2016, in a speech to students in Florida, President Obama said:

The Affordable Care Act has done what it was designed to

do: It gave us affordable healthcare.

Now 15 years later, this claim has aged like spoiled milk. Since 2013, the year before ObamaCare took effect, the average ObamaCare enrollee has faced a premium increase of 221 percent. That is since 2013 until today--a 221-percent increase in the premium. This mind- boggling number is only for those who receive health coverage through the Affordable Care Act, which is, of course, as I indicated, a misnomer for the ages. Those who received their coverage through their employer-sponsored plan were not affected by these premium hikes. As I mentioned, the Wall Street Journal said their premiums will go up roughly 6 or 7 percent.

From 2013 to 2019, individuals buying health insurance on the private market faced 143 percent increases in their healthcare premiums. And this number does not account for all Americans who kept their plans but faced increased premiums or less comprehensive coverage.

President Obama knew but he refused to say that for many people, even though this new healthcare law claimed to make healthcare affordable, it did just the opposite. So what did he do? He tried to shift the blame.

The claim that the ``Unaffordable Care Act'' would make healthcare affordable was far from President Obama's only broken promise. In a quip that was later described by a political fact-checking site as the lie of the year for 2013, President Obama said that ``if you like your health care plan, you can keep it.'' A 2013 political fact-checking site called that the lie of the year.

But we know how the story has ended. By the fall of 2013, 4 million Americans received letters informing them that their then existing healthcare plan would be canceled.

In the same 2016 speech, he said:

Now, some people may say, well, I've seen my copays go up,

or my networks have changed. But these are decisions that are

made by your employers. It is not because of Obamacare.

They're not determined by the Affordable Care Act.

Now, that was a complete and utter abdication of responsibility for the disruption that ObamaCare caused. And while it may be true that they were not directly determined by the Affordable Care Act, it is because of the Affordable Care Act that people lost their coverage, and, thus, they could not keep the coverage they had if they wanted it.

ObamaCare did not make healthcare affordable. It created a tangled web of regulations alongside taxpayer-funded subsidies that ultimately only led to higher costs for taxpayers and those receiving care.

The only party that stood to gain the benefit from the ObamaCare chaos was the health insurance companies themselves. They have enjoyed a windfall as a result of ObamaCare. By now, insurance companies have figured out how to use the muddled mess that is the Democrats' healthcare system to lobby for government subsidies, including the continuation of the expiring COVID-19 era subsidies that the Biden administration imposed.

They knew that Democrats would not want to be responsible for the increased premiums and lower coverage. So they threatened premium increases while lobbying Congress to give these insurance companies even more money in the form of enhanced subsidies.

In 2025 alone, U.S. government healthcare subsidies paid directly to insurance companies totaled more than $130 billion. That is your tax dollars paid to insurance companies--$130 billion in 2025 alone.

In some cases, these subsidies pay for phantom enrollees who are likely not even to know that they are covered by one of these policies.

In 2024, there were approximately 12 million Affordable Care Act marketplace enrollees who made zero medical claims, a highly unusual circumstance--12 million, no claims. Roughly 40 percent of those fully subsidized by the Biden-era COVID credits made zero claims, meaning that these insurance companies received these very generous subsidies but incurred zero costs.

Since 2021, the cost taxpayers have incurred to subsidize ObamaCare plans has increased a staggering 150 percent, and many of the ones on these policies are far from the most vulnerable in our population. In 2021, when the Democrats lifted the cap on these subsidies, removing the income eligibility limit, households earning upward of $500,000 were made eligible for taxpayer-subsidized plans.

So you tell me why taxpayers should have to subsidize somebody who makes a half a million dollars a year and buy their health insurance policy for them.

These increasingly expanded subsidies for high earners proves the point that was perhaps the only promise that ObamaCare actually kept-- that the Affordable Care Act was ``just a first step'' toward a taxpayer-funded healthcare system, a single-payer system.

Back in 2016, President Obama compared his signature law to a starter home that would later be upgraded into one that would be much bigger. But based on the way the law actually worked, it is clear that expanding it is not going to make people better off, just the contrary.

So here we are in 2026, and what happened? Are we living in a utopia where healthcare is free or suddenly affordable? Well, just the opposite. Healthcare is now more expensive than ever, with analysts warning that increased costs will continue to eat away at workers' paychecks.

Millions of Americans have faced cancellations of their private insurance plans, while many more are facing devastating premium increases.

And then there are the insurance companies that have reaped hundreds of billions of dollars in taxpayer subsidies while continuing to raise premiums on patients.

I think it is safe to say that ObamaCare was a golden promise that turned out to be almost entirely false.

So when we look for a solution to rising healthcare costs, we should be wary

of listening to the same people who sold us ObamaCare on false premises and not trust those who would prefer we continue to prop up a failed system that enriches insurance companies while leaving Americans to pick up the pieces.

I yield the floor.

I suggest the absence of a quorum.

Mr. President, it is hard to believe, even in a place like the Nation's Capital that seems so detached from the rest of the country--but it is hard to believe we have now reached the 30th day of this completely pointless, profoundly dumb government shutdown at the hands of Senate Democrats. Senate Democrats have now voted 13 times to keep the government shut down, blocking the continuing resolution that has been passed by the House of Representatives weeks ago. That is the key to unlock the door to this government shutdown.

We are nearing a full month of that shutdown, a shutdown in search of a rationale. My suggestion is, to our friends across the aisle, that they need to look in the mirror and listen to their own people. The American Federation of Government Employees, or AFGE, the largest union that represents Federal Government employees, called on Congress to ``Reopen the government immediately under a clean continuing resolution that allows continued debate on larger issues.''

That is exactly what we have asked for, time after time after time, but to no avail.

Families across America, including the 31 million-plus Texans that I have the privilege of representing, are continuing to deal with this uncertainty.

Now, it is true that many people are not directly affected by the government shutdown, but a lot of people are, including the very people who are here in this Chamber--our staff, government employees. But it is much bigger than that. It is not only the Federal employees' union; it is the military; it is our Border Patrol; it is TSA, the air traffic controllers. All of these people are working, because their jobs are deemed essential, without any pay.

One in six Americans live paycheck to paycheck. I haven't heard a single Senator on that side of the Chamber who said they are withholding their pay during the government shutdown, which leads me to conclude that they continue to get paid while they deny the same benefit to their own staff and the U.S. military and all the other Federal employees that I have mentioned. If that isn't hypocrisy, I don't know what is.

And now, at the first of the month, November 1, 42 million Americans who rely on SNAP, WIC, other nutrition assistance programs--food stamps--will stop receiving the benefits they rely on as a safety net to put food on the table. This includes 3.5 million of my constituents in Texas, 1.7 million of whom are children.

These are among the most vulnerable people in our country. Our Senate Democrat colleagues are literally taking food out of the mouths of hungry children because of their stubbornness. It is shameful.

I have been hearing from food banks in Texas who are writing in with their concerns, saying they will require a 50-percent increase in food supplies next month in order to keep up with the increased demand for people who aren't getting paid and people who are being denied this basic assistance.

Well, what is the rationale? I mentioned a moment ago that our Senate Democratic colleagues seem to be in search of a rationale for this profoundly idiotic and dumb shutdown. Well, the Senate Democratic leader, the fearless leader of our Senate Democrats, said to a news outlet:

Every day gets better for us.

Of course, that leads to the question, Who is ``us''? Not the 31 million Texans I represent; not the 800,000 Federal Government workers who are part of the union; not the children who depend on nutrition assistance to be able to eat.

Well, not to be outdone, House Democratic whip Katherine Clark recently said:

Of course there will be families that are going to suffer--

As if that is no big deal.

She said:

But it is one of the few leverage times we have.

So all of these Americans, our fellow citizens, who are being harmed by this shutdown are leverage, political leverage.

I was disappointed to even hear one of the Members on the other side who I look to as sort of a rare person of common sense among the crazed Democratic Party these days who said that

this shutdown would prove to be ``unpleasant'' but then reiterated that it would somehow give Democrats ``leverage.''

And now Democrats are trying to turn the tables and say it is Trump's fault. This is surreal.

The American people are the ones paying the price for the intransigence, the stubbornness, and the idiocy--that is what Chuck Schumer once called government shutdowns. He called it idiocy. The American people are paying for the idiocy of the Democrats who continue to vote against reopening the government. I have to wonder, what do they say to a mother who can't feed her own child because of their intransigence and their stubbornness? ``Sorry for the inconvenience; you are part of our leverage.''

We get paid--they get paid--not me, not people on this side of the aisle who have had their paychecks withheld in solidarity with the government employees who aren't getting paid. They get paid, and you can't feed your kids?

What do they say to the Federal worker, including members of our staff, people working here in the Senate, who wonder: Can I pay the utility bill? How about my rent or my mortgage payment? Can I buy gasoline for my car to take my child to school?

I guess their response is, well, you should expect some unpleasantness during this shutdown because you are part of our political leverage.

The best way in this disaster--this nightmare, really--for many Americans who are directly affected is for just five of our colleagues on the other side--just five--to vote with Republicans to reopen the government, to pass this continuing resolution that will take us at least to November 21. But we have burned so much of the time already because of the shutdown--it is the 30th of October. This continuing resolution would open the government until 3 weeks from now, and then what happens? Are we going to go through this movie again and again and again?

And then how about those Americans who depend on safe and timely air travel for their jobs, or maybe they just want to take some time off if they have some vacation plans. We can no longer depend on the timeliness, and I fear for the safety of our air traffic control system because so many air traffic controllers are overstressed and so many airports are understaffed that they are literally having to shut down some of the air traffic, and flights are being delayed. And I have no doubt--or at least I worry that public safety is being endangered.

Earlier this week, Austin Airport, where I live, issued a ground delay due to air traffic control staffing problems. The same day, over at Dallas-Fort Worth, one of the largest airports in the country, they experienced 413 flight delays and multiple flight cancellations due to staffing shortages.

Air traffic controllers--the people who keep these airplanes flying safely--will miss their first full paycheck this week. TSA screeners-- the people who are supposed to make sure that air travel is safe--are similarly working without pay.

One air traffic controller recently said:

The job is stressful enough as it is. [And] now you're

adding this factor of, ``Hey, when am I going to get my next

paycheck?''

They will miss their first one this week, but they don't know if they are going to get the next one because they don't know how long this profoundly stupid idea of a government shutdown is going to last.

One Transportation Security Administration worker said that ``morale is crumbling.''

You know, it is not just imposing a hardship on these innocent Americans. What does this say about America and our ability to work together to solve the Nation's problems? It is embarrassing. It should be embarrassing. In the world's greatest deliberative body--that is what the U.S. Senate is sometimes called--what a joke. What a joke Democrats have made of the world's greatest deliberative body when they have shut down the U.S. Senate and made it impossible for us to pass a simple, stopgap spending bill that would take us to November 21.

Well, I applaud the men and women who are continuing to go to work to keep the planes in the air and trains running on time even though they are not being paid, but it is entirely unfair, unjustified for Democrats to impose this burden on these individuals. They didn't do anything wrong.

This is only weeks before the holidays and holiday travel begin in earnest. If Senate Democrats don't let up soon, you might have to ditch your Thanksgiving visit with your friends and family. And then who knows how long this will go on--maybe Christmas. They will be responsible for families having to cut back on their celebrations during our holiday season--not just because of delayed air travel or canceled flights but because they can't afford it. If they are not getting paid, how are they going to buy the food items that we typically enjoy during holidays like Thanksgiving and Christmas?

What will Senate Democrats tell parents who haven't been paid for an extended period of time when they have to tell their children ``Well, Santa isn't coming this year because your mom and dad haven't gotten paid; we don't have the money''?

Well, all this goes to show the utter callousness, the insensitivity, and the wrongheaded motivation behind this government shutdown, all so our friends on the other side can gain leverage. They don't have any leverage. It is on them.

The American people deserve better than for their elected officials to treat their livelihoods as political playthings, and that is what is happening.

So it is high time for our Democratic colleagues to come to their senses and vote to reopen the government. Is this going to go on forever? What is their endgame? They don't know. They can't say because they don't know. They know they have gotten themselves stuck in a supremely stupid idea, and they can't find their way out of it.

I can make a suggestion. Three of them have already voted for the House-passed continuing resolution to end this nonsense. We need five more. Are those five Democratic Senators going to continue to listen to the Democratic leader, the Senator from New York, who led them into this box canyon in the first place? He is worried about being thrown under the bus by a political opponent in the next Democratic primary election.

This is about retaining power, using innocent Americans as leverage, with no plan on how to exit this supremely dumb government shutdown.

I yield the floor.

Madam President, the name ``Hezbollah'' has become increasingly familiar in recent years to Americans as one of Iran's main proxy groups committed to the destruction of Israel and even the United States.

Beyond the horrific bombings of the U.S. Embassy and marine barracks in Beirut, Lebanon, in the 1980s, many of us now associate the name with Iran, of course, which has been the principal financial supporter of Hezbollah, to the tune of 70 to 90 percent of its budget. In return, Hezbollah acts as one of Iran's proxies in the so-called Axis of Resistance.

We all know that Hezbollah is one of the terror groups in the Middle East, responsible for numerous violent attacks over the past several decades. But lesser known is their influence in the Americas-- specifically in Latin America. Perhaps lesser known is the broad extent of Hezbollah's activities in the Western Hemisphere, which includes illicit drug trafficking and other criminal enterprises. Hezbollah uses these activities to generate cash to help finance terrorism back home in the Middle East.

So while many in the West are focused on Iran's proxy terrorism around the world, we cannot afford to ignore our own backyard.

Last week, I chaired a hearing for the Senate Caucus on International Narcotics Control to examine the role that terrorist networks played in creating the drug crisis that we face here in the United States, which has taken hundreds of thousands of lives over recent years. In this hearing, expert witnesses testified about Hezbollah's activities in Central America and in South America and how they have strengthened drug cartels and other criminal organizations that are actively trafficking drugs into our country across the southern border.

This illicit drug trafficking in Latin America is one of Hezbollah's primary sources of income used to finance terrorism, as I said earlier. As we learned at the hearing, now more than ever, Hezbollah will be looking to increase its cash flow and revenue from drug trafficking and other illegal activities in Latin America as they seek to rebuild from Israel's impressive campaign to rid the world of this terrorist threat.

We learned that Hezbollah takes advantage of free-trade zones in Central America, where they can carry out their illegal operations under minimal law enforcement and oversight. Then there is the triborder region between Argentina, Brazil, and Paraguay, long known to be a hotbed of terrorist financing because it has a minimal law enforcement footprint and is a hub for commerce. It is a black market for all sorts of illicit activities, from drug trafficking, to arms trafficking, to identity theft, and even to real estate schemes. Hezbollah, when it comes to its fundraising, like many, many criminal organizations, is commodity-agnostic, meaning they will do anything for money.

The border of these three countries, known as the triborder region, is isolated and hard to monitor, making it possible for easy transit between them. It boosts a robust network of roads that connect the area to major cities as well as international airports. These attributes, paired with high levels of corruption and lack of good governance, create the perfect petri dish for both licit and illicit trade to flourish.

It was in this region in 2008 where the U.S.'s Operation Titan arrested upwards of 130 suspects and seized roughly $23 million associated with a joint operation between Hezbollah and Colombian cartels that were engaged in cocaine smuggling and money laundering. This operation uncovered about 700,000 wiretapped conversations revealing drug cartels' association with--working hand in glove with Hezbollah--700,000 wiretapped conversations tying these drug cartels to this terrorist organization.

For example, one key cartel leader was known as Taliban and was given permission to freely import drugs and launder cash into Lebanon in exchange for a 12-percent tax on his proceeds paid to Hezbollah.

Hezbollah's operations extend to other free-trade zones, like Margarita Island in Venezuela and Maicao in Colombia. It was in Maicao were Ali Mohamad Saleh, a designated Hezbollah facilitator, led a ``support cell'' that raised money for the broader Hezbollah network. His activities included transporting money from Colombia to Hezbollah in Lebanon through Venezuela.

The Venezuelan Government has openly embraced this illicit commerce and these criminal organizations. At last week's hearing, one of our witnesses described the regime of President Maduro as ``a key enabler of Hezbollah's malign activity in the Western Hemisphere.''

From providing passports to Hezbollah operatives, allowing them to travel more freely, to creating transportation pipelines, to intelligence collaboration, Venezuela has developed a partnership with Iran and Hezbollah, allowing them to finance their terror operations around the world while they engage in illicit money laundering and the transportation of drugs and other illegal activities in the Americas.

The U.S. Treasury Department has uncovered key evidence that the Maduro regime and Iran are collaborating at the state level. For example in 2020, Adel El Zabayar, a former Venezuelan official and political ally of

Nicolas Maduro, was indicted in the Southern District of New York for facilitating cocaine and weapons trafficking between his own government and Hezbollah. A Venezuelan businessman was also found to have provided resources to Hezbollah, including ideological and military training and networks for illicit trafficking of drugs and weapons.

Notwithstanding the impressive work of the U.N.'s intelligence community, Maduro has not exactly been secretive about who his friends and who his enemies are. In 2022, Maduro openly bragged about his ``exemplary relationship'' and ``increasing cooperation'' with Iran in an interview where he said:

All of us who fight against colonialism, all of us who

fight to decolonize our minds and our people, are part of the

Axis of Resistance that stands against the methods of

imperialists for imposing hegemony on the world.

Now, if you didn't know that this was the President of Venezuela speaking, you might have mistaken the quote from a leader of Iran or some other state sponsor of terrorism or you might have mistaken it for one of America's elite universities or a slogan from one of the pro- Hamas clubs protesting on Columbia's campus, for example, last spring, who pride themselves in resisting ``western colonialism.'' Well, obviously, they are all drinking the same Kool-Aid.

In addition to aiding and abetting Hezbollah, Maduro has been criminally indicted based on his leadership of the Cartel of the Suns-- probably one of the least known cartels. Better known are the Mexican cartels. But Cartel of the Suns is actually headed up by Nicolas Maduro, the President of Venezuela, and it includes a network of Venezuelan military officials, including the army, navy, air force, and the Bolivarian National Guard.

Named for the insignias that Venezuelan military officials wear on their uniforms, the Cartel of the Suns--or the ``Cartel de los Soles''--is involved in everything from gasoline smuggling to illegal mining, drug trafficking, and a whole raft of other illegal activities in Central and South and North America.

The U.S. Treasury Department sanctioned the Cartel of the Suns this past July for its materiel support of Tren de Aragua and the Sinaloa Cartel in their illegal drug and criminal activity here in the United States.

This gives you an idea of how interconnected these networks are that seek to undermine our country and to threaten our people--not just in America but also our friends and allies in Central and South America. This is a network that chants threats to Israel--``Death to Israel''-- and also chants ``Death to America.''

We have known for a long time that much of the fentanyl trafficked through our southern border was manufactured using Chinese precursor chemicals. We also know that China, Russia, Iran, and North Korea have been working in concert for a long time to undermine the West. So it is no surprise that Maduro's despotic regime in Venezuela aspires to join that list as part of the Axis of Resistance. We should not be shocked when our enemies work together.

The crisis of drug trafficking and human trafficking and other crimes in the hands of international criminal networks that the Biden administration ignored at the southern border is another scheme that our enemies have devised to harm the United States. The Biden administration was asleep at the switch--and that is being kind--when it came to the threat of a porous southern border and their open border policies, allowing criminal networks, along with their poison, to be freely transported into the United States and take tens of thousands of lives and help enrich our adversaries in Iran and Hezbollah.

The deaths in America resulting from drug overdose and the violent crime that our people are suffering is not an accident; it is directly connected to this axis of resistance.

And while it may be easy to think we can ignore these terrorists in the Middle East because, well, there is an ocean between us and them, the fact of the matter is, there is not. They are operating right here in our own backyard.

Iran's proxy terrorist operations have contributed to and profited from the instability and corruption in South America that has led to a mass migration crisis in South America and Mexico, which has flooded our southern border with unprecedented numbers of illegal crossings during the Biden administration. This phenomenon, paired with the strengthening of the criminal cartels in Latin America, has led to much more criminal activities here in the United States, where street gangs distribute the drugs exported from these countries to America, to our border, then to be distributed across the United States to the detriment of the American people.

So the reason this hearing was so important is because we need to connect the dots. We need to make sure we understand the nature of the threat to our way of life, and it is not just about over there; it is about right here in our backyard that our enemies are collaborating and threatening the safety and security of the American people.

I yield the floor.

I suggest the absence of a quorum.

Mr. President, reserving the right to object, it is an amazing picture to me to see our Democratic colleagues resisting restoration of law and order in these communities across our country, including in the Nation's Capital--here--where the Mayor, Mayor Bowser, has welcomed the deployment of National Guard to help keep the peace and support local law enforcement in enforcing the law.

I won't go through the statistics, but one I remember, in particular, after an episode of carjacking by juveniles who basically had impunity because they weren't prosecuted by the U.S. attorney here in the District of Columbia, the previous U.S. attorney--once President Trump deployed the National Guard, those carjackings went down 87 percent--87 percent.

And as I drive through some of the areas of Washington, DC, like Barracks Row, over near the Marine barracks, or Lafayette Park, I see more people out enjoying the weather and the beautiful city that we happen to be in, unconcerned for their personal safety now that President Trump has taken this important, important step to deploy the National Guard.

Now, I would just point out to my colleague--he knows this--that the National Guard is organized under State authority ordinarily, under title 32 of the United States Code, but they can be federalized under title 10. And there is no question that President Trump, as Commander in Chief, has the authority to call up the National Guard to enforce Federal law and to protect Federal facilities.

Federal law applies to the entire Nation. It really is amazing to me to see our colleagues on the other side of the aisle employ some of the same arguments made by the pro-slavery States back before the Civil War--this doctrine of nullification is what it was called; it was sort of back in the heyday of States' rights--where the Federal law would apply to the Nation but southern legislators, Governors, and Members of Congress would say: Well, the State has a right to nullify Federal law.

Well, that obviously is a discarded theory that has no weight whatsoever. President Trump is well within his constitutional bounds to enforce the law--Federal law--in cities across the country. In fact, just yesterday, the Ninth Circuit panel authorized President Trump's deployment of the National Guard in Portland, staying the lower court's unlawful order.

It is mind-boggling to me to see now Senate Democrats, who have sworn an oath to uphold the Constitution like all of us have, opposing Federal efforts to intervene in cities to enforce Federal law and to protect Federal property, just as they have done here in Washington, DC. But the response has been dramatically different in cities like Portland or Chicago, led by Democratic mayors. Even though in Washington, DC, Mayor Bowser, I think, is not exactly a rock-ribbed conservative, but she understands the importance of law and order to a prospering city where everybody feels safe.

Last year, Portland was ranked in the top three largest cities in the country with the highest property crime rates, with nearly 1 incident for every 25 residents, a staggering amount. More than 5,000 car thefts were reported across the city of Portland. I can't imagine that any individual resident of Portland or any other crime-ridden city wouldn't welcome the opportunity to live in a safe environment.

I encourage the mayor of Portland and the mayors of other blue cities rife with violent crime to look to Mayor

Bowser as an example, here in DC, of how to work with the Federal Government to enforce the laws and make their cities safer.

As I indicated earlier, here in the District of Columbia, it is like day and night, compared to how it was under the previous administration.

Here are some statistics: Compared to 2024, homicides have declined 25 percent; robberies have gone down 35 percent; and overall violent crime has gone down by 28 percent. I already mentioned the reduction in carjackings.

So President Trump is making our cities and streets safer by enforcing Federal law, and I would hope our Democratic colleagues would not try to thwart those efforts, which will make our cities less safe.

There can be no legitimate argument that President Trump does not have this authority to enforce Federal law using Federal officials, and we know this has happened by our various States in the past. For example, during the 4 years of the Biden administration, where we essentially had open borders, Governor Abbott, the Texas Governor, ordered the National Guard and the department of public safety to back up the Border Patrol, who were overwhelmed by the open border policies of the Biden administration.

Now, they weren't actually doing police work, but they were taking a huge burden off of the Border Patrol that allowed them to do their job and to focus on securing the border. That is largely the role the National Guard is playing now. They are not doing police work. They are supporting local law enforcement, freeing them up so they can do their job to keep their communities safer, something I would think that we would all applaud.

Mr. President, I object to the unanimous consent request.

Madam President, today is the 20th day of the Schumer shutdown, and people around the country are beginning to feel the effects of the shutdown. For example, here, nearly all Federal employees from government Agencies to those working here in the Senate Chamber will have missed their first paycheck.

One out of every six Americans lives from paycheck to paycheck. It is not uncommon. This means that this shutdown is preventing those individuals from paying their basic expenses: food, shelter, clothing, utilities.

Normally, Americans who aren't able to put food on the table for themselves and their families can fall back on government programs, should they qualify. However, the U.S. Department of Agriculture recently sent a letter to the States, including Texas, announcing they will not be able to continue funding the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, or SNAP, due to the lapse in congressional appropriations.

According to Federal law, food programs like SNAP and WIC--the Women, Infants, and Children Program--may continue to operate even during the shutdown, as long as funds are available. But once those funds are dried up, it is simply not possible for them to continue providing benefits.

The guidance from the U.S. Department of Agriculture directs States to pause those payments for the program. This means that Texans who rely upon SNAP as a safety net to buy their groceries and feed their children will not have those benefits until this deranged shutdown comes to an end.

During the negotiations on the One Big Beautiful Bill--the working families tax cut act--I was happy to champion certain reforms to ensure that those benefits were targeted on the

truly poor and vulnerable. Chief among those reforms were enhanced eligibility verification and work requirements for able-bodied adults, ensuring that those who can work do work in order to continue to receive benefits.

Throughout those negotiations, Democrats accused Republicans of taking food from the mouths of the poor and needy. But, of course, this is not what we did with the One Big Beautiful Bill at all. The reforms we implemented in the One Big Beautiful Bill ensured that these programs were financially secure for the long haul so we can continue to provide those benefits for those who truly need them.

But, now, Senate Democrats have voted nine times against a House- passed, short-term funding bill that would immediately reopen the government, and, now, they are preventing these programs from operating at all. So what Democrats falsely accused Republicans of just a few weeks back, they themselves are doing by forcing these programs to end or to pause.

Senate Democrats are literally taking food from the mouths of hungry children. These programs are designed to ensure that those who have come across hard times are able to get the food they need for themselves and their children, and, now, Senate Democrats are the reason why Texans, particularly those in need, are unable to do so now.

But that is not all. This shutdown is creating a particularly severe consequence for rural health clinics across America, many of which are unable to continue their full telehealth services to patients during the shutdown.

One of my constituents wrote in to say:

Not being able to offer telehealth has put us at a huge

disadvantage with patients. There are many who will seek care

elsewhere and some who won't seek care at all.

One of the only good things that come out of COVID-19 is the expansion of access to telehealth, and, now, because of the shutdown, Democrats are denying patients that need that access--denying them that access altogether.

This constituent that I mentioned a moment ago, which I quoted, described immunocompromised Texans who were discharged from the hospital who require followup appointments, but the risk of infection from other patients in the waiting room makes it actually too risky for them to appear in the hospital in person. Telehealth appointments are a good solution for such patients, but due to the shutdown, they are simply not available.

For other patients who live in rural areas or who are homebound from severe illnesses, telehealth could be the difference between receiving care and receiving no care.

My office recently heard a devastating story about one such patient in a Texas hospital who has stage IV cancer and who has missed his last two appointments. This individual lives 45 minutes from care--in the Panhandle, in North Texas--and is a model patient for telehealth. But thanks to Senate Democrats, that is no longer an option for him.

Imagine the devastation of having a loved one suffer from late-stage cancer and knowing that this person is missing out on access to healthcare because of the Schumer shutdown. It is simply indefensible. And these are real people, real patients, and real Texans.

Now, this government shutdown may not affect the Democratic leader or some Members of Congress who are independently well off, but for those people who depend on these services and live paycheck to paycheck, it has real-world consequences. This government shutdown is, in other words, not a game, and yet Senate Democrats refuse to treat this matter with the seriousness that it deserves.

It has been quoted many times now, but the minority leader has said to the news media:

Every day gets better for us.

Well, clearly, he is not talking about the individuals I have been referring to. I would like to see the minority leader, the Senator from New York, say those words to the cancer patient who is unable to get access to treatment or to telehealth services, or to the family who relies on food stamps who is unable to put groceries on the table to feed their family, or to the Capitol Police officers who provide security in this very building who are not receiving a paycheck.

I can guarantee the Democratic leader that those people will not say to him that every day is getting better. The people who we work for, our constituents, the folks who sent us here, are growing more apprehensive by the day, not knowing when this will end. And while many people simply don't feel the effects of a government shutdown, very real people, like the ones I mentioned, definitely feel this shutdown.

And it doesn't have to be this way. All we have to do, as we have said time and time again, is pass the short-term funding bill that will only take us to November 21. It has already passed the House of Representatives.

Three Democrats in the Senate have joined Republicans in voting to reopen the government. Are there not five more Democrats willing to buck the heartless display of the minority leader and put the American people first, rather than their political party and their political aspirations?

Well, I hope that the cries of those children who are without food and homebound cancer patients without access to healthcare will carry more weight with Senate Democrats than the ruthless partisanship coming from the Democratic leader.

This is called the Schumer shutdown for a reason, because there is, in fact, one person ultimately responsible in this Chamber.

The House has passed the bill. All Republicans are willing to support it, and we just need a few more Senate Democrats to put an end to this foolishness.

I yield the floor.

I suggest the absence of a quorum.