Floor Statements

Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that when the Senate completes its business today, it stand adjourned until 10 a.m. on Wednesday, February 19; that following the prayer and pledge, the Journal of proceedings be approved to date, the morning hour be deemed expired, the time for the two leaders be reserved for their use later in the day, morning business then be closed, and the Senate resume consideration of Calendar No. 13, S. Con. Res. 7; further, that at 12 noon, the Senate execute the order of February 13 in relation to the Loeffler nomination and that following disposition of the Loeffler nomination, the Senate recess until 2:15 to allow for the weekly conference lunches; finally, that all time during recess and adjournment count equally towards Calendar No. 13, S. Con. Res. 7; and that if any nominations are confirmed during Wednesday's session, the motions to reconsider be considered made and laid upon the table and the President be immediately notified of the Senate's action.

Mr. President, is it Wednesday yet? It feels like it. I got over here to vote at 5.

Mr. President, if there is no further business to come before the Senate, I ask that it stand adjourned under the previous order following the remarks of Senator Merkley.

To whom I apologize for him having to wait so long because of our inefficiencies.

Mr. President, with me this afternoon are three of my colleagues from my office: Ms. Jess Andrews, my communications director; Mr. Henson Webre; and Mr. John Lowery. As I said, they are three of my colleagues in my office. I depend on their counsel and their advice and their good judgment every day.

I want to talk for a few minutes about public broadcasting in America, but first I want to make a brief comment about the continuing saga that our new President is doing, in my judgment, a good job of prosecuting here in Washington. I am talking about his audits of Federal Government spending and all of the wasteful spending--I call it spending porn--that he is finding.

I want to make two quick points.

No. 1, it strikes me as breathtakingly ironic--the Senate might say cynical--that the people who are screaming so loudly about President Trump's decision to audit Federal spending are the very same people who, under President Biden, wanted to hire 80,000 new IRS agents--with guns--to audit the American people. As I have said before, if it weren't for double standards, there wouldn't be any standards at all in this town.

The battle lines are drawn. The battle lines are drawn. Some of my colleagues have decided to support the bureaucracy and the spending porn over the American taxpayer. That is what they have done. And some of the same people--it is not just my Democratic colleagues. There are many people in Washington, DC, who have grouped together. They have circled the wagons, and they have decided to support the spending porn and the bureaucrats over the American taxpayer. That is their right. It is not against the law or unconstitutional to be foolish in America. But these are the same people--these are the same people--who chose to support illegal immigration over the rule of law. These are the same people who have chosen to support teachers unions over parents and kids. These are the same people who have chosen to support criminals over cops and victims. These are the same people who have chosen to support transgender athletes over women's sports. These are the same people who have chosen to support Hamas over Israel.

They think they are winning. Maybe in this town--in this town--they are if you listen to a lot of the pundits up here, if you listen to a lot of the members of the ``wokerati'' in Washington, but they are not winning in America. The justice stick is coming, and I am very proud to be a part of that effort.

Mr. President, now, let me say a word about public broadcasting.

There was a time--I don't know if the Presiding Officer remembers it, but I do--when families, in the evening, would gather around a single radio--they just had one radio in the house--or a single TV, often a black-and-white TV, to hear the evening news. For many Americans, particularly in rural areas, public broadcasting was the only option for them. That was true in some parts of our country. They could only access public broadcasting to get up-to-date news and information.

Those days are gone. Things are much different today. Today, Americans get their news everywhere--everywhere: websites, podcasts, social media posts, radio shows, cable TV, streaming, broadcast television. The world has changed, particularly the world of mass communications.

I think back 10, 15 years ago in my State, Louisiana. Newspapers were king, followed closely by local television stations. Newspapers led with the news, and everybody else followed in terms of what was newsworthy.

Boy, have those days changed. I polled recently in Louisiana to find out where my people in Louisiana get their news. And 4 percent--4 percent of the

people in Louisiana get their news from the newspapers. That is just a fact. No. 1, as you might imagine, is the internet.

The world has changed. This trend is not partisan. It is not a Republican thing; it is not a Democratic thing. President Trump and former Vice President Harris, they both did popular podcasts in their election, and many of my fellow Senators and many of my friends in the House running for election also did podcasts as well. A lot of the pundits have even called the 2024 race the podcast election.

No American today--not one that I know of--is dependent on a single source of news to remain informed, and that is a good thing.

It might have made sense many, many, many years ago for the Federal Government to subsidize and fund public broadcasting. So 50 years ago, that might have made sense, but the ability of the American people today to access whatever news they would like to hear from whatever form of media they choose is no longer limited. It is it virtually unlimited--only by the imagination.

So here is my question, Mr. President. It is something we need to think about. If all this is true, if media has changed and it is accessible to everyone, why is the U.S. Congress--why is the U.S. Congress still spending half a billion dollars a year--not half a million a year--half a billion dollars a year to fund the Corporation for Public Broadcasting? It makes no sense.

The Corporation for Public Broadcasting--we call it CPB--as the Presiding Officer knows, is a nonprofit entity that takes taxpayer money that it gets from Congress and distributes it to local TV and radio stations.

Now, you might not have heard of CPB, but you probably heard of two of its--I won't call them subsidiaries but two of its closely affiliated entities. I will call them the public broadcasting station-- we call it PBS--and National Public Radio, NPR.

Now, here is how it works. Every year, Congress gives the Corporation for Public Broadcasting $500 million, and the Corporation for Public Broadcasting takes that money and gives it to a lot of the local TV and radio stations. And a lot of those local TV and radio stations are encouraged to and, indeed, do buy programming, if they are radio stations, from NPR; or, if they are television stations, they buy prerecorded, predeveloped programming from PBS.

Congress established this system and established the Corporation for Public Broadcasting in 1967--what--over 50 years ago. At the time, Congress tasked CPB--and I am not saying it didn't make sense then. It probably did make sense then. But Congress tasked the CPB with a mission to ensure that the American people had--and I want to quote here to be precise--``universal access to non-commercial, high-quality content and telecommunications services.''

And, indeed, CPB boasts on its website that 99 percent of Americans have access to public media. Hell, they ought to; we are spending half a billion dollars of your taxpayer money to make sure they do.

That is not the question, because Americans have access to all different types and forms of media today. They don't need to get their news from public broadcasting. This isn't the old days when people had one television set or one radio and lived in a rural area and that was the only source of news. The world has changed.

The issue today is whether the American people need taxpayer-funded public broadcasting to access high-quality content anymore. And they don't, and we all know they don't. You don't have to be Walter Cronkite's cousin to figure that out. Everybody has got a cell phone. Everybody is on the internet. Everybody has heard of podcasts. Everybody has heard of cable. Many people have streaming services.

Today, 97 percent of Americans have access to the internet. Why do we need public broadcasting? That is more than double the number of Americans who could access the internet two decades ago. Things have quickly changed. People now have a bottomless supply of news sources right at their fingertips, whenever they need them. Why do we have to give a half a billion dollars a year to subsidize a certain small, favored section of the media?

Parents can also, very easily, find free educational programming if they want to. They don't have to go to public broadcasting. All they have to do is go to YouTube. All they have to do is go to other streaming services. The popular YouTube series ``Crash Course,'' for example, has more than 16 million subscribers. ``PragerU'' is another educational content provider. It has 3.3 million subscribers.

For comparison, PBS only has 1.4 million subscribers. You know what the difference is? You give them half a billion dollars of your hard- earned money. That is the difference.

Now, some may argue: Well, we still need public broadcasting because it offers noncommercial programming. They argue it is really cool because you don't get interrupted by commercials. Well, the new Chairman of the Federal Communications Commission, Mr. Brendan Carr, has just called that into question. He has called into question whether NPR and PBS are really noncommercial broadcasts. Mr. Carr has noted that NPR and PBS regularly run commercial advertisements during their shows and broadcasts, in contravention of Federal law.

No advertising? All you have to do is turn on the stations. Give me a break. And, in fact, the FCC has launched an investigation into NPR and PBS to determine whether they have been violating Federal law. There seems to be no distinction between the advertiser-funded content on PBS or NPR and the content Americans can access for free anywhere else.

But there is a key difference. I am going to keep coming back to it. PBS and NPR receive a truckload--a bucketload--of cash from the American people. In total, Congress will send the Corporation for Public Broadcasting and, indirectly, NPR and PBS, $535 million in 2025. That is an increase of 20.2 percent since 2020. Has your income gone up 20.2 percent since 2020? I know your expenses have. By 2027, CPB wants Congress to send it nearly $600 million. For what? For what?

PBS alone received roughly $130 million last year in taxpayer-funded grants from the Federal Government through the Corporation for Public Broadcasting. That is 35 percent of its total budget. NPR, similarly, receives $96 million through taxpayer-funded grants from CPB. That is also roughly 32 percent of NPR's total budget. Why? Why? Why CPB? Why NPR? Why any of these alphabet-soup entities? Why not the New York Times? Why not the Washington Post? Why not FOX News? Why these three particular entities? That is a question we have to ask. And we are not talking chump change here. We are giving them half a billion dollars a year.

NPR is one of the few--as far as I know, they are the only newsroom in the country that gets taxpayer funding. And you would think that after receiving nearly $100 million--I want to single out NPR for a second. You would think that after receiving nearly $100 million from taxpayers, that would motivate NPR to play it right down the middle, to only publish fair reporting. You would think that, with the American taxpayer giving NPR 100 million bucks every year like clockwork, you should be able to go to NPR and look at the news and say: I don't know what party these folks are in. I don't know whether they are liberals. I don't know whether they are conservatives. I don't know whether they are left of center or right of center. I just know that they fairly report the news.

But that is not the case, Mr. President. That is not the case. I want to give you a few examples of stories that NPR has published using taxpayer money. I will just read the headlines. The first headline, NPR News Service:

Michael Avenatti: A Profile of the Media-Savvy Attorney.

They love Michael Avenatti. You know where Michael Avenatti is today? He is in jail. You know why? He is a crook. But for a while, he was a media darling on NPR.

Here is another headline from NPR:

How racism became a marketing tool for country music.

I kid you not. The American taxpayers are spending half a billion dollars a year to pay a local station to buy content that says country music is racist.

Here is another headline from NPR:

Donald Trump's Long Embrace of Vladimir Putin.

Remember the Russiagate, the Steele dossier? NPR was right in there promoting it.

A couple more headlines that NPR is putting out there using your tax dollars. This headline:

Monuments and Teams Have Changed Names--

Let me say it again.

Monuments and Teams--

Presumably sports teams--

have Changed Names as America Reckons With Racism. Birds Are

Next.

I don't know any birds that are racist.

Here is another headline:

Eating less beef is a climate solution.

I don't have anything against vegetarians. I am a semivegetarian myself: I eat beef, and cows eat grass. So that makes me a semivegetarian, but that is my choice.

Not on NPR.

Eating less beef is a climate solution. Here is why that is

hard for some American men.

Here is a final headline. I could go on the rest of the evening.

How the Taliban adds to Afghanistan's woes when it comes to

climate-fueled disasters.

Boy, I can tell you that is on the mind of every person in Afghanistan today, is climate change--and the Taliban, I can guarantee you.

I don't have a problem with these headlines. This is America. If you want to publish articles like this--which no person with a brain above a single-cell organism would call fair and balanced--if you are a news outlet and you want to publish this kind of stuff, that is your right as an American. We have freedom of the press. We have the First Amendment. You are not free in our country if you can't say what you think. You are not free in our country if you can't express yourself.

I am all for this if that is what these outlets want to do, but I am not for taking $500 million every single year and giving it to these stations to the exclusion of everybody else so they can do it. That is immoral. That is illegal, as far as I am concerned--or should be.

Now, I am sure that there is an audience in some campus coffee shop that wants to learn about racist birds or the different ways in which cheeseburgers and the Taliban are contributing to climate change. But most American taxpayers would probably prefer that Congress spend their money on something other than these controversial points of view that appeal to only a small segment of America's population while the rest of us foot the bill.

Now, that is not just my opinion; a former editor at NPR, someone by the name of Uri Berliner, Mr. Berliner--he used to be an editor at NPR. He published a column last year, and in the column, he outlined the extreme bias at NPR. He detailed how NPR decided to censor the Hunter Biden laptop story. They wouldn't run stories about it; they said it wasn't real.

Mr. Berliner, the former editor at NPR, said that NPR told its readers:

We don't want to waste our time on stories that are not

really stories, and we don't want to waste the listeners' and

readers' time on stories that are just pure distractions.

The Hunter Biden laptop is real. The FBI has it. It is there at the FBI Headquarters bigger than Dallas. Of course, we now know that the laptop was not just a distraction. Every bit of it was real. But NPR censored it using American taxpayer money.

NPR also similarly covered the COVID-19 lab leak theory as though it was a conspiracy. That is how the news coverage reads, in my opinion, that if you believe that COVID-19 originated from a lab leak, you are a conspiracy theorist.

I would point out that we are going to have to get some new conspiracy theories in America because all the old ones turned out to be true. The conspiracy theorists are up something like 37 to nothing-- but not if you read NPR. They say or said that the COVID-19 lab leak theory--you had to be some kind of cone head, some kind of meathead, some kind of whack job to believe in that stuff. Now the Federal Government, the CIA, the FBI--they have stated publicly that the pandemic likely originated from--what?--a lab leak. I can't make this stuff up.

Now, other independent analysts have shown that NPR's content also leans left, and that is fine. As I say, that is fine. Many Americans lean left. I have got a lot of friends who lean left. I lean left on some issues. I think it is great. But I will tell you what isn't great: having American taxpayers spend half a billion dollars a year to fund a news service that, in turn, we all have to pay for. That is not right.

Since 1970, the U.S. Congress has given NPR more than $14.5 billion. With all those taxpayer dollars, the NPR bought a $201 million office space just up the road from the Capitol. It is swell office space, 200 million bucks' worth. NPR pays its hosts as much as $532,000 a year. It pays its chief diversity officer $320,000 a year. Pretty good work if you can get it. Not NPR's money. It came from you. You paid those salaries. Despite all the spending, NPR's audience continues to decline because they are obsolete.

Now, Congress does not send taxpayer money to the most popular podcast host in America. We don't. The anchors on FOX News, the anchors on CNN, the anchors on MSNBC, nor their stations--they don't get any taxpayer dollars, nor do any of the journalists that ask me questions every day in the hallway in this building--unless they work for NPR or PBS or their affiliates or the Corporation for Public Broadcasting.

Congress should not be picking winners and losers in the news media, but that is what we are doing.

The United States of America is $36 trillion in debt. We can't afford anymore to blow half a billion dollars for public broadcasting when Americans can find the same content--and in many cases better content-- online for free.

Now, if you want to support NPR and PBS or any other public media outlet, that is great. God bless you. This is America. You are free to do it. You are free to donate to those nonprofits as you see fit. Donate to them. But Congress should not compel taxpayers to fund a service that the American people don't need, especially when the content--well, you can read what the content is, and maybe you agree with it, but a whole bunch of Americans don't. A whole bunch of Americans don't think that birds are racist.

President Trump's Department of Government Efficiency is looking for fat to trim. As far as I am concerned, this gravy train, this gravy train with biscuit wheels called the Corporation for Public Broadcasting is the perfect example of a project the American people no longer need and should not fund.

I yield to Senator Peters, my good friend.

Mr. President, with me today is one of my colleagues from my Senate office, Mr. James Shea. He is one of my right-hand people and does great work. And I am honored that he could join me today.

Gosh, I don't know where to begin. I have been in the Senate for 8 years. In dog years, that is 56 years, and it feels like 56 years. I have learned a lot, met a lot of interesting people. You know, before I got here, everybody told me about the Washington bubble, and I said, you know, how serious could they be.

Well, it is true; there is a Washington bubble. This place is different. It is in its own way sometimes disappointing, sometimes refreshing. It is deeply weird. For one thing, common sense is illegal in Washington. It is illegal.

For another thing, I have discovered that this is a town of very frustrated ex-class presidents, and there is a Washington way of doing things. And when things aren't done that way, when somebody challenges the status quo, many--not all--but many of these frustrated ex-class presidents in Washington, on the Hill and otherwise, they get excited, not in a good way.

They can't get their mind around doing anything other than the Washington way. Some of them, particularly in the media, they go almost catatonic, or the exact opposite, they foam at the mouth. And they really get upset. They can make a Valium nervous. It is like we are not doing things the way we have always done them, and the world is going to spin off its axis.

I want to try to put in perspective what many of my Democratic friends have been talking about today. They are very, very, very upset at President Trump, and they are very, very, very upset at Elon Musk.

President Trump ran for President on a number of issues. One of the issues he ran on--he said it almost every day. He said: If you make me President, I am going to go through the entire budget and review all the spending, line by line. If I heard him say that once, I heard him say that a thousand times. And that is what he has been doing.

He went out and appointed, through an Executive order, Elon Musk--who some people like him, some don't, but he is not a dummy. He is a very successful business person. He has got a top secret security clearance. President Trump issued an Executive order, and he turned to Mr. Musk, and he said: Mr. Musk, I want you to do for me what I said I was going to do in the election. I want you to go through all the spending line by line.

Now, let me ask you something: How are you going to review the spending without reviewing the spending? How are you going to audit the spending by an Agency without auditing the Agency? That is what I mean when I say common sense is illegal in Washington, DC. That is what Mr. Musk is doing.

He has put together a crackerjack team, and they are going through everybody's spending line by line, item by item. And my Democratic colleagues are very, very, very upset, and they have been very eloquent. They have talked about the process, and President Trump's Executive orders supposedly violates the Constitution. And they have accused Mr. Musk of having conflicts of interest. And I have heard people say he is sitting over there with a notepad copying down everybody's Social Security number, and he is going to go use it to make money.

I mean, people in this town--not just my Democratic colleagues--they are really upset. They have never had anybody question their spending. But that is what Mr. Musk is doing. But you know what, I have listened, this has been going on for a week. People have been screaming like they are part of a prison riot. Oh, my God, look at what Musk is doing. He is looking at the spending.

And I have listened to the people talk about the process and debate whether it is constitutional and discuss how many lawyers can dance on the head of a pin, but you know what I haven't heard one single person who is upset with President Trump or Mr. Musk talk about? What he has found. They don't want to talk about the spending, the spending porn, the waste of taxpayer money that he has found. I mean, that is the point of all of this.

I tell you who is interested, the American people, the people in America who get up every day and go to work and obey the law and pay their taxes and try to educate their kids and try to do the right thing by their kids and try to save a little money for retirement. And they have had to live through 20 percent inflation under President Biden. They understand what Musk is doing. They understand spending porn and wasting taxpayer money.

Now, Mr. Musk started with USAID. It handles a lot of foreign aid for America. The American people are very generous. In our country, when you are homeless, we will house you. When you are hungry, we will feed you. In our country, when you are too poor to be sick, we will pay for your doctor. And we send a lot of money overseas to help our world's neighbors. And USAID is a part of that.

But I will tell you what Mr. Musk discovered--I will tell you it fascinated me. He discovered that the American taxpayers are giving money to Afghanistan. He found that we are giving money to Yemen. He found that we are giving money to Syria. I didn't know that. Some of our foreign aid is going to Yemen, Afghanistan, Syria.

He found that USAID has 10,000 people--10,000 people--employees, and every year, they give away $40 billion. Mr. Musk also found--and I am not saying that all of this money is wasteful; I am not. Some of this money, I am sure, does some good. That is why Secretary Rubio is going to revamp the Department and separate the good from the bad.

But this is the kind of stuff Mr. Musk found: He found that USAID gave money to support electric vehicles in Vietnam--our money, taxpayer money. He found that USAID gave money to a transgender clinic in India--I didn't know that. I bet you the American people didn't know that.

He found that USAID gave $1.5 million to a Serbian LGBTQ group called Grupa Izadji. I probably mispronounced that. My apologies. Anyway, they got 1.5 million to ``advance diversity, equity, and inclusion in Serbia's workplaces and business communities.''

What else did Mr. Musk find that my colleagues don't want to talk about? Well, he reviewed a study and then went and checked it. The study was done by the Middle East Forum. They found that USAID spent $164 million to support radical organizations around the world. We are not talking Cub Scout troops here. We are talking about radical organizations around the world. They gave $122 million of that to groups aligned with foreign terrorist organizations--our taxpayer money.

According to this report and Mr. Musk, the USAID has given millions of dollars to ``organizations . . . in Gaza controlled by Hamas.'' Why aren't my colleagues talking about that?

Recipients of the money, they found, have ``called for their lands to be `cleansed' from the `impurity of Jews.' '' That is who we are giving our foreign aid to? What else? I am not going to spend my whole time talking about this, but nobody else is talking about it. They are just talking about the process and Mr. Musk and he is a mean guy and he shouldn't be looking at our spending. Well, he is, and I kind of find what he found out interesting.

He found that we gave $2 million--USAID did--for sex changes in Guatemala. He found that we gave $20 million to produce a new ``Sesame Street'' show in Iraq. He found that we gave $4.5 million of taxpayer money to combat disinformation in Kazakhstan. He found that we gave $10 million--USAID did--of meals to an al-Qaida-linked terrorist group called the al-Nusrah Front. Mr. Musk found that we gave $7.9 million of taxpayer money to a project that would teach Sri Lankan journalists to avoid binary-gendered language. We took--the USAID took 8 million bucks and gave it to a bunch of journalists in Sri Lanka to teach them how to avoid binary-gendered language. I don't know what the hell binary- gendered language is. I think I do. You think most taxpayers would support that? Why aren't we talking about that? USAID gave $1.5 million to promote LGBT advocacy in Jamaica. They gave $1.5 million to rebuild the Cuban media ecosystem. They gave $1.5 million for Art for Inclusion of People with Disabilities in Belarus, another $3.9 million for LGBT causes in Macedonia, $8.3 million for equity and inclusion education in Nepal. I could go all night.

And many of my colleagues are upset. They are really mad at Mr. Musk. Hell, I think we ought to give him a medal. All he is doing is what President Trump said he was going to do. President Trump said he was going to audit the spending. So Trump goes and hires Musk--again, with a top-secret security clearance. Nobody can quibble with his intelligence, you know. The guy is as smart as Einstein's cousin. He is a very successful businessman. Some say he is the richest guy in the world. And he is doing the auditing. And, man, he is finding a lot of stuff. I call it spending porn.

Now, I am not saying everything that USAID does is wasted, but I am saying a lot of it is--a hell of a lot of it is. And we ought to be on the floor of this U.S. Senate thanking Mr. Musk, and we ought to be asking him to go through every Agency and look at everybody's budget-- everybody's budget.

That is what the American people want. They don't want to talk about process. They don't want to continue with the Washington way. They want to save some money.

Now, let me tell you what is really going on here too. For 4 years under President Biden and for, what, 8 years under President Obama--and I respect both of them. I don't hate anybody. I don't. When I say my prayers at night, one of the things I ask God: God, don't let me hate, because it is hard in Washington. Don't let me hate. I have all the respect in the world for President Biden and President Obama. Tough job. But between them, they spent 12 years in Washington. And Presidents set the tone; they control the questions that are asked.

And here is the question that President Obama and President Biden asked for 8 years--for 12 years. I heard it every single day: Who needs to pay more in taxes? Is it you? Is it you? Who needs to pay more in taxes? We need more money. Who needs to pony up more? That was the issue.

But that is not the issue today. We have a new President. You know what the issue is today? What the hell happened to all of the money? What the hell happened to all of the money? And that is what Mr. Musk is finding out. That is all this is about.

I am just shocked that my colleagues have decided that this is the hill they are going to die on. How can you look the American people in the eye and support this kind of waste? Support this kind of spending porn?

I mean, the election, to me, made at least one thing clear, that the American people are sick and tired of people in Washington denying reality. The last administration tried to convince us that we were living in a crime-free world where inflation was temporary and the border was secure, and the American people didn't buy it. You know why? Because it wasn't true.

And the administration, our last administration, tried to argue that Bidenomics was making our lives better, but the American people knew differently. They understood Bidenomics to mean: I get to spend more to live worse. And they voted.

Now, I mean, the American people were poorer under the last administration, but they didn't become stupid. They could see that the government was creating the problem, not trying to fix it. And they noticed the national debt too.

Put up that first chart for me.

You know what our national debt is? $36 trillion. Not million, not billion--$36 trillion. It takes my breath away. Highest it has ever been, over 100 percent of our gross domestic product. Our debt is growing faster than our economy. And we toss around these numbers--a trillion, a billion, a million, a squillion--like it is nothing. I want to try to put this in context.

If I started counting right now and I counted one numeral, if you will, per second--1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7--and I kept counting all day and all night, I didn't sleep, I counted between bites of oatmeal at breakfast, I just counted continually one numeral per second, it would take me 32 years to count to 1 billion--32 years to count to 1 billion. It would be 2057. I would be dead as Woodrow Wilson. I wouldn't live that long, and that is just a billion.

Our debt is $36 trillion. Do you know how long it would take me to count to a trillion? It would take 31,000 years if I counted one numeral per second. About as old as Chuck Grassley--31,000 years.

It would take me 1 million years to count to 36 trillion.

Those are the kind of numbers we are talking about, and the American people understand it.

Since 2019, America's population has grown 2 percent. We are not having babies--2 percent. And that is after massive immigration.

You know how much our budget has grown? It has grown 55 percent--55 percent. Yeah, we have had inflation, but we haven't had 55-percent worth of inflation. That is how we got to this $36 trillion in debt.

Put up the next chart for me.

Now some of this money we had to spend during the pandemic, and it was a bipartisan effort during the pandemic. Republicans voted for it, and Democrats voted for it because we had no choice. I was there. I saw it from the inside. We came this close to losing the American economy.

And you know who helped a lot, doesn't get enough credit? Jay Powell with the Federal Reserve. I watched it. The whole world wanted to go into a cave and retreat.

Back in the great recession, I remember all the other countries in the world looked to us. They may hate us, but they know we are the greatest country in all of human history. They look to America.

And you know what? Back in the great recession, all the other countries wanted treasuries, treasury notes, treasury bonds. Not this time. They were so scared; they didn't want treasuries. They wanted dollars, cash dollars. So Jay Powell--thank the Lord--he goes over to the Federal Reserve. He opens what is called a currency swap line. And he told every country: You want dollars? I will trade you dollars for your currency. Everything calmed down. He doesn't get any credit for that, but it was a gutsy thing to do.

But on top of that, to save the American economy--that wasn't helping the American economy. We had to keep the economy going. We spent a lot of money.

But then COVID ended. And what we should have done was go back to pre-COVID spending, but we didn't do that.

President Biden, after the shutdowns and the coronavirus, the pandemic was over, passed the American Rescue Plan. COVID was over. He spent $1.9 trillion. Never let a good crisis go to waste. I didn't vote for it.

Then he came back and passed what he called an infrastructure deal. It was really just the green new deal. I know what is in that bill. That was another $1.2 trillion.

And then he passed the Inflation Reduction Act. I didn't vote for it. But that was another $1.0 trillion.

And then he passed the CHIPS Act. This is really special. He said: Big Tech, the semiconductor companies, need our money. They need taxpayer money. They are not making enough money. And he gave them money.

He didn't give hardware stores money. President Biden didn't give the healthcare industry money. He said: I want to help Big Tech, and, boy, they sucked it up like a Hoover Deluxe. We spent $280 billion subsidizing Big Tech.

And you add it all up, and that is 4.3, almost $4.5 trillion, and that is how we got $36 trillion in debt. And that is why Donald Trump said: I am going to look at every single line item we are spending. And that is why he gave the job to Elon Musk. And that is why Musk is altering these accounts. But nobody wants to talk about what he is finding. Nobody wants to talk about the spending part, except the American people. They get it, Mr. President. They get it.

I hope Mr. Musk continues. My colleague and friend--we had a little discussion in Banking today. Senator Warner makes a good point. He wants Mr. Musk to come over and talk to Congress about how he is doing this. I am all for that. I am all for that. I would love to have him come over and walk us through what he is doing and how he is discovering all this spending part. We need all the help we can get in reducing our spending because we can't continue at this pace.

I just want to spend a few minutes putting all this in perspective. The world is not going to spin off its axis, folks. Every business that I know of goes through an audit. Now we are being audited. But we are being audited by--not by the usual auditors--but we are being audited by a person appointed by the President of the United States.

I am betting you, when he is through--and he is going to go through all these Agencies. He is starting on the Department of Education next. I think he will end up finding that some of our money is being well spent, but he is also going to find that some of our money is being stolen and it is being wasted, and that is an insult to every taxpayer in this country.

I am going to end like I began. We ought to be giving Mr. Musk a medal. We ought to be thanking him. Maybe nobody else wants to hear about the

spending part, but I can't wait to read the book. I hope he finds all of it and compiles it. I hope Marco Rubio, the new Secretary of State, takes USAID and shakes them by the shoulder and lifts up the good people there and fires the bad people--the people that wasted taxpayer money like this, giving money to terrorist organizations, giving money to organizations that support Hamas. I hope he gets rid of every single one of them.

I think, if we listen to Mr. Musk, we can save a lot of money. And I hope he does come over and explain what he is doing.

Mr. President, I have eight requests for committees to meet during today's session of the Senate. They have the approval of the Majority and Minority Leaders.

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

committee on agriculture, nutrition, and forestry

The Committee on Agriculture, Nutrition, and Forestry is authorized to meet during the session of the Senate on Wednesday, February 5, 2025, at 10:30 a.m., to conduct a hearing and an organizational business meeting.

committee on banking, housing, and urban affairs

The Committee on Banking, Housing, and Urban Affairs is authorized to meet in executive session during the session of the Senate on Wednesday, February 5, 2025, to vote on the committee budget resolution.

committee on banking, housing, and urban affairs

The Committee on Banking, Housing, and Urban Affairs is authorized to meet in open session during the session of the Senate on Wednesday, February 5, 2025, to conduct a hearing.

committee on commerce, science, and transportation

The Committee on Commerce, Science, and Transportation is authorized to meet during the session of the Senate on Wednesday, February 5, 2025, at 10 a.m., to hold an executive session.

committee on environment and public works

The Committee on Environment and Public Works is authorized to meet during the session of the Senate on Wednesday, February 5, 2025, at 10:30 a.m., to conduct a business meeting.

committee on indian affairs

The Committee on Indian Affairs is authorized to meet during the session of the Senate on Wednesday, February 5, 2025, at 2:30 p.m., to conduct an organizational business meeting.

committee on small business and entrepreneurship

The Committee on Small Business and Entrepreneurship is authorized to meet during the session of the Senate on Wednesday, February 5, 2025, at 11:15 a.m., to conduct a business meeting.

select committee on intelligence

The Select Committee on Intelligence is authorized to meet during the session of the Senate on Wednesday, February 5, 2025, at 2:30 p.m., to conduct a closed briefing.

Mr. President, with me this evening is Mr. Nick Ayers, who is one of my colleagues in my office on whose judgment, counsel, and advice I rely regularly.

As you know, on any given day, the halls of the Senate office buildings and the Capitol itself are teaming with people. We have a lot of visitors, which is a great thing. We have a lot of staff members, very able. We, obviously, have a hundred Senators, and we have many, many, many--did I mention many?--members of the press.

And today many of those folks--not the tourists, not the members of the public, our visitors, our people who are visiting us--but some staff members, some Senators, and some members of the media have been catatonic--catatonic. They have been foaming at the mouth, and it all has to do with a simple memorandum issued by the Office of Management and Budget dealing with spending, and I want to talk about that for a few minutes and try to put it in perspective.

I thought about starting my talk today off by saying: If it weren't for double standards around this place, there wouldn't be any standards at all. And, actually, that is true, but that is

too cynical for the point I want to make today.

The point I want to make today is that, in Congress, we are headed for a multiple-vehicle pileup--a multiple-vehicle pileup, which I will describe in a moment. And it is going to be messy, and dealing with it is going to be messy, and we have got to deal with it in accordance with the Constitution and our law, as passed by Congress.

But we are also going to have to try to do some things a different way, and it is not going to be altogether pretty.

Now, we can all debate--I haven't met a dummy yet in the U.S. Senate. Some people would disagree with that, but that has been my experience. Every single Member of this body is very clever, and they can get us bogged down in procedure and debate forever about how many lawyers can dance on the head of a pin. And all of that is important. I have done that myself before. But we are also dealing with reality.

Did I mention we are dealing with a multiple-vehicle pileup?

I remember back when President Obama was President. He repeatedly refused to enforce laws that he didn't like. When certain provisions--I remember it like it was yesterday--when certain provisions of the Affordable Care Act proved to be controversial--it was law, but some of those provisions of law that he passed were controversial. I will give you an example of a mandate that large employers provide insurance to their employees or else pay a big penalty. President Obama just unilaterally delayed implementation; said: I am not going to enforce it.

Nobody went catatonic around here. Nobody started foaming at the mouth. Maybe everybody had taken their meds that day. I don't know. But there was no hue and cry, like we have heard today as a result of that OMB memorandum.

I remember also when Congress took up the issue, at President Obama's suggestion, of Dreamers. Remember the DREAM Act? Congress wouldn't pass it. Dreamers are children brought to the United States of America illegally by their parents who have come here illegally. But the children are children; they don't know better.

President Obama proposed the DREAM Act. Congress didn't pass it. So President Obama just ignored the law. He protected them from deportation through Executive action. It is called the 2012 Deferred Action For Childhood Arrivals Program.

It broke the law. Nobody around here foamed at the mouth. Nobody around here went catatonic, including but not limited to the media.

I remember when President Biden did a very similar thing. He sought to preserve and fortify DACA, as we called it. And he also took a number of steps unilaterally to weaken immigration enforcement.

We know that. That is why the border under President Biden was an open, bleeding wound. He didn't--he refused to follow the law. Nobody foamed at the mouth around here. Members of the press didn't become catatonic.

I don't remember anyone, Democrat or Republican, calling for President Obama's impeachment after a Federal court criticized his administration for spending money unlawfully. You remember that? President Obama decided to pay subsidies to health insurers in 2014, decided to give them money. There is just one problem: Congress hadn't appropriated the money. The GOP House, the Republican-controlled House, sued him. A Federal judge ruled against President Obama. But the money was spent.

I remember when the GAO concluded that the Obama Health and Human Services Department in 2016 illegally spent money--Congress didn't appropriate it--by paying insurers instead of sending the money to the Department of Treasury.

Nobody around here foamed at the mouth, including members of the press. Nobody around here went catatonic.

Now, I didn't come here today to debate the ``take Care'' clause of the U.S. Constitution. We are all familiar with it. The President has a constitutional duty to ``take Care that the Laws be faithfully executed.'' That is the law. It is in our Constitution, bigger than Dallas, right there. And I believe in it. I didn't come here today to debate it.

I didn't come here today to debate the 1974 Impoundment Control Act, which the courts have ruled to be constitutional, which says that Congress gets to appropriate the money and the President has to spend it. I don't want to get into all of that.

But I guess my point, in light of this OMB memorandum--which I will talk about in a moment. My point is that having embraced nonenforcement when they like the results under President Biden and President Obama, my Democratic friends have very little standing--in fact, none, zero, zilch, nada--no standing to complain when President Trump employs the same legal theory for different purposes. I am not saying--I am not suggesting that we ought to follow the rule: Two wrongs don't make it right, but they do make it even.

I am just gently suggesting that maybe I should have started this speech with: If it weren't for double standards around this place, there wouldn't be any standards at all.

Let me say it again. I support the ``take Care'' clause in the Constitution, and I can read the law. I know a lawbook from a J.Crew catalog. I know what the Impoundment Act says, and I can read the court opinions holding that it is constitutional.

Why am I talking about all this stuff? As you know, since he has been President--I don't know, a week, 10 days--President Trump has issued about a squillion Executive orders. I think it is the most Executive orders issued by a President in this short period of time, in the history of ever. I am still trying to read them.

And most of his Executive orders--this is a general statement, but I think it is fairly accurate--intend, as is his right, to reverse many of the policies implemented by President Biden.

I think it was yesterday that the Office of Management and Budget, under President Trump--under an Acting Director--issued a memorandum. And the memorandum went out to all Agencies of the Federal Government, and it said: Look, you have seen the President's Executive orders changing Federal policy, which he has the right to issue. So hold up spending any money--OBM said to the various Agencies--that would implement President Biden's policies as have been changed by President Trump.

And OMB was very careful in its initial memorandum and in its explanation later to say: Look, we are not talking about direct payments to people. We are not talking about Medicaid. We are not talking about Medicare. We are not talking about Social Security. We are not talking about SNAP benefits. Very careful.

Well, people around here, today, have been screaming like they are part of a prison riot: Oh, my God, the President is not following the law--like this had not happened before.

Again, I am not saying that two wrongs don't make it right, but they do make it even. I am just trying to give you a little context for this.

My good friend Senator Schumer--and he is my good friend. I went on a trip with Chuck to China. I don't want to personalize this about Chuck. Let me put it another way. Some of my Democratic friends have and some of my friends in the media have been running around like a 5-year-old in a Batman T-shirt screaming that the world is coming to an end and the Impoundment Act is being violated and the ``take Care'' clause of the Constitution has been thrown into the garbage bin, as if this sort of hesitation to spend money has never happened before in Washington,

Mr. President, last week, President Biden--I wish him well--gave his farewell address to America. He said a number of things, but one in particular got my attention. He warned America about--his words, not mine--``a dangerous concentration of power in the hands of a very few ultra-wealthy people.''

President Biden went on to say:

Today, an oligarchy is taking shape in America of extreme

wealth, power, and influence that literally threatens our

entire democracy, our basic rights and freedoms, and a fair

shot for everyone to get ahead.

I don't know who President Biden was talking about, but I know one particular circumstance about which I am going to speak that fits his warning. Again, I don't know if the circumstance I am about to describe is what President Biden meant, but if the shoe fits, wear it, Cinderella.

Let me cut to the chase. Mr. George Soros is an oligarch. He is one of the wealthiest people in the world. He is a friend of President Biden's--nothing wrong with that. In fact, President Biden just gave him I think the highest civilian honor that a President can give to a civilian--the Presidential Medal of Freedom.

Mr. George Soros is buying WWL AM radio in New Orleans. Let me say that again. That may not mean much to you, Mr. President, but it means a lot to my people in Louisiana. Mr. George Soros is buying WWL AM radio in New Orleans.

WWL AM radio is practically an institution in my State. It has been around since 1922--1922--over 100 years. It is a clear channel--what the communications experts call a clear channel class A station. Its transmitter output is about 50,000 watts. That is a lot, folks. That is the maximum for commercial AM stations in the United States. It is the lead station on the New Orleans Saints Radio network. It is an important station, and Mr. George Soros is buying it.

What does that mean, and how did this happen? WWL is owned by a national company called Audacy. Audacy has about 220 radio stations nationwide, one of which, of course, is WWL--the second largest radio network in America. It reaches I think 45 different markets throughout our country, 165 million Americans. It is huge.

Audacy borrowed too much money. They took on too much debt. They took on about $1.9 billion worth of debt, and they couldn't service that debt with their revenues. So what did they do? They did what many other corporations do when they can't service their debt: They went into what is called chapter 11 bankruptcy--not chapter 7. Chapter 7 is when they liquidate the company. Chapter 11 bankruptcy is when a company goes into bankruptcy in front of a bankruptcy judge and says: Judge, we want to get all of our creditors and debtors together and restructure our cash flow and our debt so we can come out of this bankruptcy a surviving entity.

They went into chapter 11 with a bankruptcy plan. Mr. George Soros immediately pounced. Of that $1.9 billion in debt, he bought about $415 million of it; cash on the barrelhead; paid 50 cents on the dollar.

One of the tenets of the reorganization was that all the current shareholders would be wiped out. The new creditors would assume equity positions in the company. I know that sounds complicated, and it can be, but really what it means is that the bondholders--one of which is Mr. Soros after he bought it, bought the $450 million worth of debt-- became a shareholder, and Mr. Soros is now the largest single shareholder in Audacy radio stations, including WWL AM in New Orleans, an institution.

In America, you can't just go do this. Why is that? Because those airwaves on which WWL and the other radio stations broadcast--they don't belong to the radio stations. They belong to you and you and you and you. These airwaves--the spectrum, if you will--are owned by the American people.

Years ago, we created the Federal Communications Commission, the FCC. We set it up to be in charge of the airwaves that belong to the American people to make sure that those airwaves were being used prudently by radio stations. For example, if a radio station is bought by a bunch of foreign nationals or foreign entities, the FCC has to approve it. For example, anytime a broadcast license, as is the case with Audacy, is transferred, the FCC has to approve it. So Mr. Soros's purchase of WWL Radio and the 219 other

radio stations had to go before the FCC, and it did, and it went--the approval for Mr. Soros went through the FCC like green grass through a goose. It was a party-line vote. It was last September. All three Democrats--there are five people on the FCC--all three Democrats said let it go, and they short-circuited the normal process.

Now, I am not an FCC expert, and I am not a communications law expert, but this has been widely reported, and I have read about it in many reports. Normally, on a deal of this size, when 220 radio stations are being transferred--their licenses--using airwaves that belong to the American people and there is a substantial percentage of foreign owners, it would take about a year to get through the FCC. The FCC would do a complete investigation. Not this time--no. This time was special. What happened was what some members of the media have called the Soros shortcut. They just got together and rammed it through. Did I mention it was like green grass through a goose--3 to 2?

Now, the two Republicans on the Commission--they are screaming the whole time: Whoa, Nellie! Whoa! Whoa! Why aren't we taking this seriously? Why aren't we investigating this? Why aren't we doing our due diligence?

They were outvoted 3 to 2.

You know, even in a democracy, when you have the votes--you can make a porcupine like hot peppers if you have the votes. That doesn't make it right.

A number of people petitioned the FCC and said: Please don't do this.

One of the groups that petitioned the FCC was a group called Media Research Center. The FCC--three Democrats, two Republicans--dismissed them. But this is what the Media Research Center said--their words, not mine:

There is no question that George Soros and his affiliated

businesses are looking to control these radio stations to

advance their particular brand of activism.

The MRC urged the FCC not to create a ``special Soros shortcut'' that would circumvent their rules and allow the deal to move forward. They did it anyway.

Here is what Mr. Troy A. Miller, NRB president and CEO, said. He said--his words, not mine:

The fact that the FCC is apparently willing to bypass the

usual protocols--

That means the normal procedures--

to get this transaction done just weeks before a presidential

election--

And right after the President of the United States gave Mr. Soros the Presidential Medal of Freedom--

seriously undermines the Commission's credibility and raises

warranted questions of whether administrative processes are

being manipulated--

Manipulated--

to exert political [interference and] preference.

Here is what one of the Republican members of the FCC, in dissent, said--Commissioner Brendan Carr, who is soon to be Chairman of the FCC now that there is a new sheriff in town. Here is what Mr. Carr said:

The Commission's decision today [approving Mr. Soros's

plan] is unprecedented. Never before has the Commission voted

to approve the transfer of a broadcast license--let alone the

transfer of broadcast licenses for over 200 radio stations

across more than 40 markets--without following the

requirements and procedures codified in federal law.

Pass me the sick bucket. This isn't right, but they did it.

Now, this is America. You are entitled to believe what you want. If it is legal, you are entitled to do what you want. And Mr. Soros is certainly entitled to his opinion. He is. I don't agree with him, but he is certainly entitled to it in America. I am not much into this cancel culture, and hopefully we have seen the end of it, but when you are acquiring radio licenses which can influence public opinion and you are doing it in part--not exclusively but in part--with foreign money, well, that is why we have the FCC.

But I want to make this clear: I believe in free speech and free expression. You are not free if you can't say what you think. You are not free if you can't express yourself. Mr. Soros has that right. But here is where he stands. I want my people in Louisiana to know who is buying WWL Radio in New Orleans. Mr. Soros is a billionaire. God bless him. He made his money himself. He has poured much of his wealth into what, in my opinion, are radical causes.

He is now working with his son, who I understand is a very smart young man. His name is Alex Soros. Mr. George Soros and Mr. Alex Soros hold some--how should I put this?--nonmainstream American beliefs.

For example, Mr. George Soros has called the United States ``the main obstacle to a stable and just world.'' Mr. Soros believes that our country is ``the main obstacle to a stable and just world,'' not China, not Iran, not North Korea--the United States of America.

Pass me the sick bucket.

Mr. Soros has also said that China has--his words, not mine--that China has a ``better functioning government than the United States of America.''

Mr. Soros does not believe that the United States should have secure borders. He once called national borders an ``obstacle'' to his plan for widespread immigrant resettlement.

Mr. Soros and his family, as you probably know, have spent millions and millions of dollars to elect prosecutors throughout America who believe that violent criminals are the real victims. These prosecutors believe for the most part that if a cop has to shoot a criminal, it is always the cop's fault, but if a criminal shoots a cop, it is always the gun's fault. These prosecutors whom Mr. Soros has backed with millions of dollars all believe that if you are concerned about crime, you are automatically a racist.

Mr. Soros and his son Alex--Alex in particular--have called for softer sentences on violent criminals. This is what he has said--his words, not mine. Mr. Alex Soros said:

But if we are serious about ending mass incarceration, we

must also rethink our response to crimes that are more

serious, including violent ones. Even those who have been

victims of violence increasingly do not believe in long-term

prison sentences.

In short, Mr. Soros--both George and Alex believe that America would be better off if we had open borders. They believe that America would be better off, in my opinion--this is how I read their writings--if we ended jails and if we ran our government like the Communist Party of China. I don't agree with that, but Mr. Soros--both of them are entitled to their opinion.

But my people in Louisiana are entitled to know whose opinion they are hearing on the radio, and this has not been reported once in Louisiana. Let me say it again.

Mr. George Soros, through an expedited procedure--I am trying to be evenhanded here--who received the Presidential Medal of Freedom from President Biden and who is close to President Biden and all of my Democratic colleagues, on a 3-to-2 vote at the FCC, has been able to buy over 200 radio stations throughout America, including WWL Radio. I want my people to know about it, and I want us to make sure that it was done legally. I am not saying it wasn't done legally; I am saying that it looks funny. Not funny ha-ha--it looks weird the way this was done. It has the aroma of politics, and I hope the new FCC revisits this issue.

These licenses and these airwaves do not belong to me or to the FCC or to Audacy or to WWL; they belong to you and you and you--the American people. We are supposed to make sure, through our FCC--that is why God created the FCC--that these licenses are not just given to anybody.

Chagos Islands

Mr. President, let me say one other thing quickly. I didn't mean to go on this long. You have heard me talk about this before, and I am going to talk about it again.

This is India. This is China. Right here are the Chagos Islands-- right now owned by the United Kingdom. America, the United States of America, with your tax dollars, has a very important military base out in the Chagos Islands, on an island called Diego Garcia.

Now, the United Nations, as I have said before, has said to Britain, the UK, which acquired the Chagos Islands from France--the folks at the United Nations, with their whey protein powder and man purses, say: Bad United Kingdom. Bad United Kingdom. You are a bunch of colonialists. Give it back. Give the Chagos Islands back--not ``give them back to the people of the Chagos Islands''; give them back to this island down here, Mauritius, over 1,000 miles away. Give it back to Mauritius. That is who had it when France

transferred--Mauritius was a province of France when France transferred all of its ownership to Mauritius and to the Chagos Islands in the early 1800s.

The new government in the United Kingdom said: Oh, we feel so guilty. We are going to give it back. We are going to give it back--and our Air Force base with it, which we use to rearm and restock our submarines in Indochina--in the Indian Ocean to combat China.

This kind of stupid takes a plan, folks. This kind of stupid takes a plan.

The United Kingdom said: OK. We feel guilty. We are going to give it back. We are going to give it to Mauritius, and we are going to start paying Mauritius 9 billion over 10 years. And you know who went along with it? The prior administration.

Now, I have talked to President Trump about this, and I have talked to Marco Rubio about this--our esteemed new Secretary of State--and I am hoping they are going to do something about it.

The United Nations has no jurisdiction over the United Kingdom or us in America, and this is our military base. And, already, if we give the Chagos Islands to Mauritius, Mauritius says they will lease to us our own base for about 9 billion pounds over 10 years. Already, China is circling Mauritius. Already, China is trying to be Mauritius' best friend.

And I don't have anything against the Government of Mauritius. They are wonderful people. I understand they want the money. They want our money. They want your money. They want us to pay them for our own military base.

We need to stop this deal. President Trump and Secretary Rubio need to pick up the phone and call Prime Minister Starmer in the United Kingdom and say to the Prime Minister: Mr. Prime Minister, with all due respect, stop dipping into your ketamine stash. Put down the bong. We need this military base to combat China. Don't do it.

And if the President will do that and the Secretary of State will do that, I believe Mr. Starmer, who tried to ram this through the week before President Trump took office but was stopped--I believe that he will give in.

I don't have anything against Mr. Starmer. I don't have anything against the people of Mauritius Island. I am sure they are all wonderful people.

But our struggle with China is serious. It is as serious as four heart attacks and a stroke. And it is bone-deep, down-to-the-marrow stupid for us, because of guilt over colonialism, to bow to the wishes of the United Nations and give a military base that we built to Mauritius, which eventually will end up in the hands of the Communist Party of China. That is why I say that kind of stupid takes a plan.

Southern California Wildfires

Mr. President, on a final point, I want to just highlight this. The people of Mexico have sent some of their firefighters to help us in California, and I want to thank our friends in Mexico for doing that. Other countries have sent their firefighters too. But because we are proximate to Mexico, their fighters were able to get here earlier, and I just want to thank the people of Mexico for their generosity.

My work here is done. I will show myself to the door.

And before I do that, I will suggest the absence of a quorum.

Mr. President, I have four requests for committees to meet during today's session of the Senate. They have the approval of the Majority and Minority Leaders.

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

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

Madam President, as we know, our colleagues in the House of Representatives are, at the moment, trying to pass a continuing resolution to keep government open. As we also know, our government is supposed to shut down if the House and the Senate don't act tonight, I think, at midnight.

Part of the efforts of our colleagues in the House would be, of course, not only to keep government open but to extend the National Flood Insurance Program, which is also scheduled to expire, I think, tonight at midnight.

The National Flood Insurance Program, as I think most people know, is hardly perfect, but it is important. It is almost impossible to buy flood insurance in the private sector. Many people, unfortunately, when they buy homeowner's insurance, think their homeowner's insurance covers them for flood. It does not.

Many Americans, unfortunately, found that out, for example, with the horrible flooding in Appalachia. Virtually all of our friends and neighbors in the Appalachia area and in South Carolina and Kentucky and in Florida who were victims of Hurricane Helene did not have flood insurance. I think many of them had homeowner's, but they were not covered for flood.

The private sector--I don't want to overstate this--but for the most part, it is almost impossible to get flood insurance in the private sector. That is why we have a National Flood Insurance Program. The National Flood Insurance Program is not exactly a model of efficiency. Under President Biden, it has been screwed up even more. FEMA, which is in charge of our Flood Insurance Program, implemented something called Risk Rating 2.0. It has been a disaster. It is a mess. It looks like something that my beagle used to hide under my back porch. But it is better than nothing. It is better than nothing.

We are going to have a new chair of our Banking Committee in the Senate, as you know, Madam President, Senator Tim Scott. Senator Scott has asked Senator Mike Rounds and I to work on trying to start over with our National Flood Insurance Program, maybe even extend to some other hazards. But Tim has asked Mike and I to try to design a brandnew program that looks like somebody designed it on purpose. And we are going to get started on that. Indeed, we have already started.

But in the meantime, the current program, as bad as it is, expires tonight at midnight, and we want to continue it. What would be the result of that? It would mean that as of 12:01 tonight, the Flood Insurance Program can no longer write new policies.

I don't want to scare people. If you already have flood insurance through what we call the NFIP, which is just an acronym for the national program, your policy won't expire. If it is not at its termination date, you will continue to have coverage. But you can't buy a new policy. That will have a huge impact on the real estate market in America. Many institutions will not loan money to a new homeowner or a homeowner who is trying to buy a home if they can't get flood insurance because the mortgage companies just don't want to take that risk.

We have already seen, for a variety of reasons, the extraordinary increase in the price of a home in America. I was reading the other day that 10, 15, 20 years ago, the average age of a first-time home buyer in America was 28. Today, it is 38. Why are people having to wait so much longer to buy a home? It is not because they don't want to buy a home. It is because they need time to save up the money for a home.

But my point is that the price of homes, for a variety of reasons--in part because of inflation--the price of a home has just risen dramatically. I don't think any of us want to do anything to make the price of a home go up even further.

I want to say a word about Louisiana. We have about 5 million people who have flood insurance in our Flood Insurance Program. About 10 percent of those are in Louisiana. Those who have flood insurance in Louisiana are, for the most part--I am trying to think of a stronger way of saying it--the vast majority of the people in Louisiana who have flood insurance are working men and working women. Our coast, for example, is a working coast. Some people like to paint the picture of the National Flood Insurance Program serving multimillionaires with multimillion-dollar homes on the coast. That is not Louisiana, I can assure you.

My people are working people. We don't even have a coast like some States that have those type of homes. If you travel to Grand Isle or Port Fourchon in my State, you would see that. These are middle-class Americans that depend on the National Flood Insurance Program.

I worked very hard--many of us have--to try to improve the National Flood Insurance Program through the years. I have been working on it since the first day I came to the U.S. Senate. Frankly, I didn't get a lot of cooperation from leadership of the Banking Committee, which has jurisdiction over the National Flood Insurance Program.

I don't want to make a promise I can't keep, but our Banking Committee is going to be under new leadership, as I just said. And Senator Scott, the new chairman, has directed Senator Rounds and I to try to come up with a program that is a vast improvement over what we have.

I sum up by saying, what I am going to propose to do here in a moment is to extend the status quo until September 30. It will extend the National Flood Insurance Program that we have right now, imperfect as it may be, ugly as it may be. And it is. It really does look like something my beagle used to hide under the back porch. The American people deserve better, but it is better than nothing. Without it, it will have a huge impact on the real estate market.

So my bill would extend the program--no changes--until September 30,

2025. Hopefully, by then we will have a new bill to present to you, Madam President and my colleagues. And it will contain a National Flood Insurance Program that is much better than what we have right now.

As if in legislative session, Madam President, notwithstanding rule XXII, I ask unanimous consent that the Committee on Banking, Housing, and Urban Affairs be discharged from further consideration of S. 4772-- that is the bill I just talked about--and the Senate proceed to its immediate consideration; and I further ask that the bill be considered read a third time and passed and that the motion to reconsider be considered made and laid upon the table.

Reserving the right to object, Madam President, to the request by my colleague from Kentucky to modify--reserving the right to do that--I wanted to make a couple of points.

First, the majority of the homes covered under the Flood Insurance Program are not second homes, and it is not a giveaway for millionaires. If you just come and spend some time in Louisiana and in other States that aren't even on the coast, you will see that these are working people--working men and working women.

Point two, the most that you can receive--the most coverage that you can buy--under the National Flood Insurance Program is $250,000. That is it, and that is for structural damage. You can buy an extra hundred thousand dollars for contents.

Point three, everybody in America is not rich who owns a home. The median--median--cost of a home in America today is $406,000. That means that half of homes cost less, but half cost way more. That is the result of a lot of factors, including, but not limited to, inflation. As I said earlier, it is one of the reasons that the average first-time home buyer in America today is no longer 28; it is 38. It just costs a lot to buy a home today.

So when someone talks about a $500,000 home and somebody being rich who owns a $500,000 home, I don't think that accurately reflects reality. I just don't.

No. 2, the idea to extend this only to a primary residence, I know a lot of hard-working women and men who work a day job and have also saved their money and bought rental homes that they rent out and try to build equity in to give them something to live on during retirement.

These are not wealthy people. These are working women and working men. And I don't know--they are not millionaires living on the coast. That is just a jaundiced view of the Flood Insurance Program, at least in Louisiana.

And I don't know why we would deny those people the right to buy two or three more rental homes to rent out and build equity in for their retirement. They are not going to be able to borrow the money to buy those homes if they can't get flood insurance. No institution will loan it to them.

Finally, the point I will make--and I say this with all due respect. I just spent 4 years listening to some of my colleagues talking about the big, bad, nasty, rich people in America. You know, when I came up, success--financial success and otherwise--and, certainly, there are ways to define success other than finances. But one of the ways in America we do so--we do assign success--is financially.

And I was raised in America to admire people who worked hard and saved their money and invested their money and became successful financially. I regret that we have reached the point in America--and I hope it ends under the new administration--where we just constantly go around denigrating success in America, including but not limited to financial and otherwise.

And for that reason, with respect, I decline the request to modify.

Madam President, reserving the right to respectfully respond to my colleague's request for a modification, let me just say that I love Cher. I mean, I just remember Sonny and Cher when they were both on TV. Sonny was a Congressman for a while. But I think Cher is what cool looks like. I don't agree with much of her politics, but Cher is equaled in her coolness only by Nick Cage.

I love Nick Cage. I just saw a movie that he did not long ago. I can't remember the name of it. But he was--typically in his movies, he plays these deeply weird characters, you know. He was a truffles hunter, and he had a pig, a special pig that would hunt for truffles, and the bad guys hurt his pig. Well, Nick hurt them. I think he ended up killing them, but before he killed them, he hurt them the entire time they were dying. It was a great movie. I love Nicolas Cage, and I appreciate Rand reminding me of it. I might go home tonight and watch a Nick Cage movie.

But let me get out of la-la land and go back to reality. No. 1, I know my friend didn't mean to give you this impression, but nobody gives you flood insurance. Let me say that again. Nobody gives you flood insurance; you have to buy it. So this idea that the government is somehow giving Cher and Nick Cage and President Biden and--I don't know--who else did you mention? I don't know. Whoever else he mentioned, they don't get free insurance from the government; they have to buy it. That is point one.

No. 2, the price of flood insurance under Risk Rating 2.0--boy, anybody who has bought flood insurance lately is going to see how high the prices have gone. There was a time when the program was subsidized, but it is not being subsidized anymore. In fact, a lot of people have had to drop their flood insurance because they just can't afford it anymore. It is just way too expensive.

I guess point three that I would make is that 99 and 9999 tenths percent of the people who buy flood insurance in America--we are not talking about Phil Collins here. We are not talking about Cher. We are not talking about Nick Cage. We are talking about working men and working women. And this idea that we are going to cap the price of a home--I know places in America today where a $2 million home gets you virtually nothing. Go check out California. Go check out Manhattan. I mean, the housing inflation has just been dramatic. If it hadn't been, I might consider what Rand is proposing.

But the truth is, and I would like the record to reflect this, what Senator Paul is proposing to do is that we gut a program that doesn't give anything to anybody. You have to buy the insurance that is not available for most people in the private sector, without which they can't buy a home because their lender won't loan them money. If you let this program expire, you are not going to only hurt working women and working men who are trying to buy a home, you are going to destroy the real estate market as well.

Finally--I will say it again--I really hope we come to a time when we don't spend our time on the Senate floor denigrating success in America, trying to say: If you are rich, you are bad. You must have gotten rich because you stole the money or oppressed somebody.

That is not an America I want to live in.

For that reason, Madam President, respectfully, I object to the modification, even though I still do believe that Cher and Nick Cage are what cool looks like.

Thank you, Madam President.

Mr. President, may we have order.

Thank you, Mr. President.

I am laughing because it was Senator Hoeven over there probably talking about you and me, Mr. President, and I just couldn't let that go unchallenged.

Tribute to Paloma Chacon

Mr. President, with me today is one of my able colleagues from my Senate office, Ms. Paloma Chacon. Behind my back, some of my staffers call Paloma ``Kennedy's brain.'' They think I don't know that they are saying that, but it is probably true, and I want to thank her for her good judgment, counsel, and advice.

New Orleans Mass Shooting

Mr. President, what I want to talk about briefly tonight breaks my heart, but it also makes me mad. But it does break my heart.

On Thursday, November 21, we had another mass shooting in New Orleans--this time in the French Quarter. It happened at the corner of Iberville and Royal Streets, across from Dickie Brennan's Steakhouse. Three masked men pulled up in a car and started firing. Bystanders testified they fired about 40 rounds. One person was killed. Three others were injured.

Some people, particularly back home, are probably thinking: OK. What else is new? Another mass shooting in Louisiana and in New Orleans. But this one was preventable.

One of the shooters, who was arrested--his name is Nicholas Miorana. Mr. Miorana is 28 years old. He has spent most of his adult life in prison. He is, based on his record, a career criminal. He served 7 years in prison for armed robbery. He got out. Shortly thereafter, in 2023, Miorana was arrested for a bunch of things: domestic battery, child endangerment, a series of gun charges, including being a felon with a firearm.

What happened next is disgusting.

In January of 2024, our district attorney offered Mr. Miorana a really sweet deal. Forget about the child endangerment. Forget about the domestic battery. Forget about all the gun charges.

The DA said: You can plead guilty.

He said this to Mr. Miorana: You can plead guilty to attempted possession of a firearm by a felon--attempted possession of a firearm by a felon.

What? Attempted possession?

I don't mean to be metaphysical here or teleological, but you either possess a firearm or you don't. I don't understand the ``attempted'' possession of a firearm. Maybe it was because, had Mr. Miorana been offered a deal--take it or leave it--for possession of a firearm as opposed to attempted possession of a firearm, which I didn't even know exists, it would have carried a 5-year sentence. Obviously, Mr. Miorana took the deal, and he appeared before Judge Leon Roche in our criminal court in New Orleans. Mr. Roche gave him probation.

Eight months later, while he was on probation, Mr. Miorana violated his probation, and his probation officer sought to revoke his probation. Then, 1 month later--nobody did anything about revoking his probation. So, 1 month later, Miorana was arrested for domestic abuse battery. He went back before Judge Roche. Judge Roche didn't revoke his probation. He just gave him house arrest and told him he had to wear an ankle monitor. That was in September of 2024. Then, a little bit later, Judge Roche decided to lighten even those conditions. He allowed Mr. Miorana to be free every day from 9 to 6--every day from 9 to 6-- supposedly, to go to work.

Beginning on October 8, Mr. Miorana violated the judge's orders every single day--every single day for 45 days. How do we know this? He had on an ankle monitor, and the monitor company reported to the district attorney and to Judge Roche that Mr. Miorana was violating the terms of his house arrest and ankle monitoring--45 days.

Do you know what the district attorney did? Do you know what Judge Roche did? Nothing. Zero. Zilch. Nada. I have already told you how this story ends. Allegedly--I have to say ``allegedly''--he has been arrested for it anyway. Mr. Miorana and three of his buddies put on a mask, got in a Honda, killed somebody in the French Quarter, and shot three others. Mr. Miorana was caught. Do you know how he was caught? He had on an ankle monitor. He was caught within hours. This was a system failure.

I love New Orleans. I used to live in New Orleans. I earned a living in New Orleans. I met my wife in New Orleans. My son lived the first couple of years of his life in New Orleans. I love New Orleans.

What did Tennessee Williams say? ``America has only three cities: New York, San Francisco, and New Orleans. Everything else,'' Tennessee Williams said, ``is Cleveland.''

Now, before my friends in Cleveland get mad at me, I didn't say it; Tennessee Williams said it. But I think what Mr. Williams was trying to convey is what an extraordinary, unique, city New Orleans is. Every other State in America would kill to have a New Orleans. Twenty million people from all over the world come to visit the city in America which is perhaps the most European city and the most diverse city in our country. And I love New Orleans. But New Orleans deserves better.

I wish this hadn't happened. I wish there weren't more people in this world like Mr. Miorana. But there are some people in this world who just habitually, consistently hurt other people, and they take other people's stuff. I wish they wouldn't, but they do. I don't know why they do. If I make it to Heaven, I am going to ask. But they do, and they have got to be separated from society. And our judges and our district attorneys are not doing anybody--anybody--in New Orleans a favor by not putting those folks into jail. It breaks my heart. It also makes me mad.

Turkiye

Mr. President, the second thing I want to just mention briefly, and I say this gently--respectfully, but gently--to President Erdogan, the distinguished President of Turkiye: Leave the Kurds alone. Leave the Kurds alone.

The Kurds, as you know, are wonderful people. There are probably 30 to 40 million Kurds throughout the world. Some we are blessed to have here in the United States. They live mostly in Turkiye, Iran, northern Iraq, and Syria. The Kurds are a distinct ethnic group. They are sort of a stateless country because they are spread all over the world.

The Kurds are America's friends. It hadn't been that many years ago since ISIS was rising high. ISIS had established a caliphate in the Middle East. That is a fancy word for a country. They established their own country in the Middle East, and America and other countries beat them back. We destroyed ISIS. They are still there, but we destroyed their caliphate.

The people most responsible for helping us, most responsible for destroying ISIS, were the Kurds. We lost less than 20 American lives in destroying ISIS in the Middle East. Our friends the Kurds lost over 10,000--10,000--fighting alongside of us. Over 30,000 Kurds were wounded. Without the Kurds, ISIS would still be there.

Now, Mr. Erdogan, the President of Turkiye, does not like the Kurds. I am not going to go into why. He is entitled to his opinion. But, right now, Mr. Erdogan has troops and tanks and weapons marshaled on the border between Turkiye and Syria.

As we know, the people in Syria finally had enough, and they overthrew Mr. Assad, their President. Predictably, Assad, who we think stole billions of dollars from the good people of Syria, is now, predictably, living in Russia. We are going to try to find his money.

Mr. Assad, like his father, is a butcher. He killed tens and tens of thousands of Syrians, and many of them he hurt the entire time they were dying.

To keep power and his money--a lot of which he made by dealing drugs--he used chemical weapons against his own people. And now the people in Syria are free of him.

Everybody else, stay out of Syria. President Trump has already talked about it. It doesn't mean we can't offer our advice, but we all need to stay out of Syria.

The defeat of Mr. Assad in Syria would not have happened but for Israel. We know that. You don't have to be a graduate of Cal Tech to know that. Israel destroyed Hezbollah, which was working with Iran, which was working with Russia to keep Assad in power.

Russia and Iran and Hezbollah were on the side of the butcher. But Russia is tied up in Ukraine. Hezbollah was holding down the fort while Russia was tied up in Ukraine. And Israel ignored the advice of many and just went out and destroyed Hezbollah.

Thank you, Israel.

But that is why the people of Syria today are free, and they are entitled to self-determination.

Mr. Erdogan in Turkiye, I worry, is going to invade Syria. I am not accusing him of anything, but I worry that he is because we have intelligence that he has many soldiers and many tanks and much equipment and many weapons right now stationed on the border between Turkiye and Syria. And our Kurd friends are afraid that Mr. Erdogan, because of his hatred for the Kurds, is going to attack now. The Kurds live very peacefully in northeast Syria.

My message today is: President Erdogan, I don't want to mess in the affairs of your country, but don't do it. Leave the Kurds alone. Leave the people of Syria alone.

Turkiye has problems now. Turkiye is supposed to be our friend. Turkiye is a member of NATO. Lately, they haven't been acting like our friend. Turkiye has its own problems. If we think interest rates are high in America, they are close to 50 percent in Turkiye. Some people think they are in a recession. Their inflation is between 40 and 50 percent.

If you invade Syria and touch a hair on the head of the Kurds, I am going to ask this U.S. Congress to do something, and our sanctions are not going to help the economy of Turkiye. I don't want to do that. Leave the Kurds alone.

My work here is done. I will show myself to the door, and I will suggest the absence of a quorum.

Mr. President, with me today are two of my colleagues from my Senate office, Mr. John Lowery and Mr. Jackson Bewley. I am grateful for their good judgment, counsel, and advice.

I am delighted to see so many Members of Congress--and I mean this sincerely--so many Members of Congress embrace the call for a less wasteful Federal Government, for a more efficient Federal Government. We spend a little over $6 trillion a year, as Senator Sanders so eloquently pointed out. When you spend $6 trillion a year, somebody is getting $6 trillion a year.

Every penny in our budget has a constituency, and that constituency will fight us. They will fight us. And I recognize that, and it is something that as we go about downsizing government, we have to be mindful of. However, there is one constituency that is not going to be able to fight us in our quest to scrutinize Federal spending, and I am referring to dead people, and that is what I want to talk about today. I want to talk about dead people and the fact that they are getting money from the Federal Government.

In fiscal year 2023 alone--this is just 1 year--our government sent $1.3 billion--not $1.3 million--we sent $1.3 billion in checks to dead people. Those aren't my numbers. Those numbers come from the Office of Management and Budget. That is just 1 year.

Not only is the Federal Government sending checks to dead people, those checks are being cashed. Now, I have heard of dead people voting, but cashing the checks? You don't have to be God's perfect idiot to realize that there is fraud happening with respect to all this money.

Here is how this problem arises. When you die in America, your name is sent to the vital records office in your State. And at that point, the Social Security Administration pays each State to give an ongoing list of deceased Americans in that State. So far, so good.

The Social Security Administration takes this down, this list of deceased people, and they compile on an ongoing basis a list called the Death Master File. The Death Master File. That is just a list of everybody, updated daily, of people in the United States who are deceased.

Why does the Social Security Administration do this? Well, so the SSA, the Social Security Administration, can stop sending people who have died checks. So far, so good.

There is just one problem. I discovered this about 7 years ago. The Social Security Administration refuses to share that list with anybody else in the Federal Government. They won't share it with any other Federal Agencies, many of which send out checks.

The Department of the Treasury, for example, sends out checks. SSA won't share the information with them. The Small Business Administration sends out a lot of checks. The Social Security Administration has a list of all deceased Americans, but SSA will not share that information with the SBA.

I will give you some examples. You remember when we were in the coronavirus crisis, and we had an economic meltdown. We sent stimulus checks to Americans to try to keep the economy on its feet. We paid $1.4 billion to dead people, and they cashed the checks.

The Paycheck Protection Program, which was a part of our stimulus program, paid out $38 million in loans to dead people. These were people who were using--live people, obviously--who were using dead people's Social Security numbers to collect payments.

The COVID-19 Economic Injury Disaster Loans fund--another culprit-- was involved in sending checks to dead people.

The Department of Veterans Affairs--and I am not blaming them. In many respects, it is not their fault. A couple of years ago, a scam artist stole the Social Security number of a deceased person--a deceased veteran--and received about $825,000 in checks from 1997 to 2024.

Now, the person committing this fraud was just quietly accepting the checks. Somehow, the Department of Veterans Affairs, for some reason, stopped sending that person the checks. So the fraudster just picked up the phone and called the Department of

Veterans Affairs, impersonated the dead person, and convinced them to start sending the checks again.

Again, it was not necessarily the fault of the Department of Veterans Affairs. The VA didn't know that the Social Security number belonged to a deceased person.

Another example: A person in Ohio was able to collect her deceased mother's Veterans Affairs benefits for 48 years--48 years. Of course, she was caught.

The truth is, it is sort of like being asked: You didn't go fishing on Saturday; how many fish do you think you didn't catch?

We don't know how much money we are sending out every year to dead people.

Let me give you an example of how screwed up the data is. This is a strong indicator of what is wrong.

The Social Security Administration, if you asked them, will tell you that there are, according to their records, 6.5 million Americans living today in America who are 112 years of age or older. They say there are 6.5 million Americans who are at least 112 years old or older.

Now, I don't know about you, but I don't know anybody who is 112 years old. And I checked. At any given time, there are about 40 people on an ongoing basis in the world who are fortunate enough to live to be 112. The data is so screwed up. According to SSA, 6.5 million people are 112 years old.

A number of years ago--7 years ago--I started working with Senator Tom Carper, a fine American if there ever was one. I started working with Tom on this issue. I went to Social Security, and I said: Look, this problem is easily solved. Just share the Death Master File with other Agencies and especially share it with the Department of the Treasury.

I don't want to confuse anyone, but the Department of the Treasury has a ``Do Not Pay'' list of people who aren't supposed to receive checks for a variety of reasons that other Agencies consult. But I said to my friends at Social Security: Why don't you just give the Death Master File to other Agencies?

They said: We can't. It is illegal. The way we construe our enabling statutes, we don't have the authority.

Well, I said, OK, I am not going to argue with them; we will just go pass a law. It was harder than I thought. But we did. In 2020, Senator Carper and I passed a bill. The bill was called Stopping Improper Payments to Deceased People Act, and it gave the Social Security Administration permission and, indeed, directed the Social Security Administration to start sharing its list of dead people with other Agencies in the Federal Government.

I don't want to get down in the weeds, but--believe it or not--we had people oppose the legislation, and many people within the Federal Government. So in order to get our bill passed, we had to compromise. We had to agree to only implement this requirement that Social Security share the list of dead people with everybody else--we could only get them to agree to do it for 3 years, in a trial program.

This clock started ticking on our 3-year period in December of 2023. So, obviously, 3 years is right upon us. And if we don't make this program permanent, it is going to expire in 2026.

So Senator Carper and I have introduced another bill. It does basically the same thing as the 2020 bill, but it makes the program permanent. This new bill is called Ending Improper Payments to Deceased People Act, and we need to pass it.

There has been a lot of squabbling back and forth. I don't want to do anything to step on too many toes to jeopardize my bill, about how much the States are going to be paid and who is going to pay Social Security for sharing their dead persons list with the rest of the government. I think we have a lot of it worked out. But we need to go pass this bill.

I mean, this makes no sense whatsoever. I can understand if we talk about changing the Medicaid Program, for example--what is fair, what is unfair. I can understand debating that, and I can understand reasonable people disagreeing over what changes, if any, we ought to make to the Medicaid Program. I get it.

I just listened to Senator Sanders, once again, speak very eloquently about the waste at the Department of Defense. That is something that reasonable people, all of whom agree that we ought to have a strong defense--but reasonable people--can disagree over how to achieve that.

But, my God, you don't have to be Euclid to figure out that this is just fraud. It is abuse. It is low-hanging fruit, and it is so easily solved. All we have to do is direct the Social Security Administration, on a permanent basis--not a 3-year trial basis, on a permanent basis-- to start sharing the list of dead people with the Department of the Treasury and everybody else in the Federal Government who wants it. And then everybody is on the same page, and we know who is deceased. And we can stop sending the money to dead people who cash the checks.

Now, I am talking about this now--I have talked about it before on the floor. I am not going to try to pass the bill this year. I am not. We are running up against a clock, and we have the NDAA. We have a CR to pass, and we have to keep government open. We have to renew the flood insurance program. And you know all that. But I am going to be back. I am like ``The Terminator.'' I will be back as soon as the new Congress is sworn in.

Many of my colleagues have said to me: You know, it is time we stop talking about who needs to pay more in taxes and start talking about and asking the question with respect to ``What the hell happened to the money?'' And I agree with that. I can't think of an easier place to start.

Let's just pass this simple bill. Let's stop sending money to dead people. Again, we can debate about the wisdom of dead people voting. We all know it happens. But cashing checks is a bridge too far.

I suggest the absence of a quorum.

Madam President, I ask unanimous consent to use a prop during my remarks.