Floor Statements

Mr. President, I send a cloture motion to the desk.

Mr. President, I move to proceed to legislative session.

Mr. President, I understand that there is a bill at the desk, and I ask for its first reading.

Mr. President, I now ask for a second reading, and in order to place the bill on the calendar under the provisions of rule XIV, I object to my own request.

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

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

Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that when the Senate completes its business today, it stand in recess until 11 a.m. on Friday, September 19, and that following the prayer and pledge, the Journal of proceedings be approved to date, and the time for the two leaders be reserved for their use later in the day.

Mr. President, if there is no further business to come before the

Senate, I ask that it stand in recess under the previous order, following the remarks of the Democratic leader.

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 President, I ask unanimous consent that the order for the quorum call be rescinded.

Mr. President, Republicans continue to move forward on funding the government through a short-term CR, something that is routinely done around here in order to allow for more time for the Appropriations Committee to report bills out and for us to consider them on the floor and to fund the government in the way it should be funded.

And Democrats--well, Democrats seem intent on shutting it down. For what reason I cannot imagine do they actually think that hard-working Americans are going to thank them for shutting down the government.

I understand that Democrats' far-left base is desperate to pick a fight with President Trump, but really, I don't think Democrats are going to win the next election by shutting down the government over a short-term, clean nonpartisan funding measure.

It is particularly hard to understand Democrats' determination to shut down the government when we are simply asking for a few more weeks to complete bipartisan--bipartisan--appropriations work.

I made it very clear from the moment that I became the leader that I wanted to fund the government through regular order, a process that gives voice to Members of both parties. That means taking appropriations bills through the committee process, where they have a chance to be discussed, debated, and amended, and then bringing them to the Senate floor for more debate and amendments.

We made a very good start on this before the August State work period, passing three appropriations bills by robust, bipartisan margins--something that hadn't been done here since 2018.

The reason we are considering a short-term, clean continuing resolution is to allow this process to continue so that we can fund the government the way it should be funded, under regular order. Regular order is good for Members of both parties, and it is good for the American people. I think a lot of Democrats, as well as Republicans, know that.

I could stand here on the floor for a long time and read quotes from the Democrat leader and other Democrat Senators on the many problems with shutdowns and what they cost Americans. I won't do that today, as I think the costs to the American people are pretty well established.

But it is incredible to me that Democrats are ignoring these very real costs and continuing to push ahead with shutdown threats over this clean continuing resolution.

As I said on Monday, I do not think it is likely that mainstream voters--the same voters that Democrats lost in the last election--are going to be thanking Democrats for shutting down the government over a short-term, clean nonpartisan CR--a short-term, clean nonpartisan CR with, I would remind my Democratic colleagues, much needed funding for Member security.

Democrats, of course, have decided to try and deflect blame by complaining that we are looking at a partisan CR--a partisan CR. Give me a break.

Republicans have deliberately chosen to keep the CR clean to ensure that there can be no possible reason for Democrats to object to funding the government. We are not looking at a vehicle for new Republican policies; we are looking at nothing more than a continuation of the status quo when it comes to funding the government.

Do the Democrats think that by calling this a partisan CR that they can somehow make it so? We all know Democrats have a sometimes Orwellian relationship with language, but really I don't think Democrats are going to get very far with this one because there really is no possible way to call this a partisan CR with a straight face. Everyone here on Capitol Hill and well beyond is abundantly aware that we are not looking at a partisan funding measure.

So Democrats have a choice to make. They can work with Republicans to pass this clean, short-term, nonpartisan measure to fund the government while we continue work on the 2026 appropriations bills or they can shut down the government, with all that will mean for the American people.

And just to be clear--I heard the Democratic leader get up again today and talk about how there are no bipartisan discussions--there have been bipartisan discussions for months. The appropriations committees have been meeting, passing reported bills out to the floor. We picked up three of those bills in the month of July and passed them on the floor, something that hadn't been done since 2018. And the Republicans and the Democrats on the Appropriations Committee continue to work together on bipartisan appropriations bills that they can report to the floor so that we can consider more of them and fund the government in regular order, which is the way it is supposed to be funded. That is what this debate is really about.

Now, the Democratic leader is accustomed to a different business model. That is where they go in his office behind closed doors and make all these decisions there instead of putting bills on the floor.

We passed appropriations bills at this point in the year for the first time since 2018. We are consulting in a bipartisan way with Democrats through this entire process. So that is just flat wrong. It is just not telling the truth. Those discussions have been going on for months. And this is, for the first time in a long time, a normal appropriations process where Democrats and Republicans sit down at the committees, where it should happen, work together on bills that they report to the floor--most of them by big bipartisan margins--and then we pick them up. We have done that with three already, and there are a bunch more we ought to do.

This is the way it is supposed to work, but it takes consent. It takes cooperation. Obviously, it takes 60 votes to pass anything here in the Senate, which means that Democrats are going to have to help fund the government on a clean, bipartisan funding resolution to give the Appropriations Committee and all of us as Senators, on both sides of the aisle, an opportunity to consider more appropriations bills on the floor and fund the government the way it should be funded, and that is the old-fashioned way: through the appropriations process.

And I would remind my colleagues that under the Biden administration and Democratic majorities here in the Senate, there were no fewer than 13--13--continuing resolutions, short-term funding measures to fund the government, and 96 percent of the Democrats in the Senate voted for all 13--13 continuing resolutions. When they had the majority and a Democrat in the White House, 13 continuing resolutions to fund the government for a short term, and 96 percent of the Democrats voted for all 13 of those funding resolutions.

So I don't know what has changed. At that time, they made all the quotes. I said I could quote them, and I can quote them. There are lists that go on infinitely of all the things that they said about funding the government and what a terrible thing it would be to have a government shutdown. And here we are offering them a short-term funding resolution that is bipartisan, that funds the government through November 21, in order to allow us to continue the work of funding the government through the appropriations process, which is the way this place ought to work in the first place. That is all this is about-- nothing more, nothing less, nothing else. It is whether or not they want to work with us to fund the government in a bipartisan way and help keep the government open or block that funding resolution, not help get us the 60 votes that are necessary to pass it out of here and, therefore, shut the government down. That is the choice.

This isn't President Trump. This isn't about President Trump. There is nothing in here about President Trump. This is a clean funding resolution, bipartisan funding resolution, short term, to allow the Appropriations Committee to do its work. There is nothing partisan about it. There is nothing in here that they haven't--things that we agree on, both sides agree on. This is a short-term funding resolution, and it should be a very straightforward vote. Both sides should do what they did 13 times when they had the majority, and that is vote to keep the government open and to allow us, for the first time in years, to actually have a normal appropriations process.

And I will tell the Presiding Officer because you have probably heard this, too, from Members on their side of the aisle, they would like to have that too. They would actually like to have an appropriations process that works, where they get an opportunity--not only in the Appropriations Committee but here on the floor of the Senate--to have some input into and have an opportunity to vote on amendments that reflect the wishes of the people they represent in their States.

We should do that. We can do that. And it is going to be entirely up to the Senate Democrats as to whether or not we do.

I yield the floor.

I suggest the absence of a quorum.

Mr. President, I move to reconsider the vote.

Mr. President, I ask for the yeas and nays.

Mr. President, I make a point of order that, consistent with the precedents of the Senate established on November 21, 2013, and September 11, 2025, the threshold for cloture on the en bloc consideration of nominations pursuant to an executive resolution with a calendar number on the Executive Calendar, other than those on level 1 of the executive schedule under 5 U.S.C. 5312 or article III judges, is a simple majority.

I appeal the ruling of the Chair and ask for the yeas and nays.

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

Recognition of the Majority Leader

Mr. President, I understand that there are two bills at the desk due for a second reading en bloc.

Mr. President, in order to place the bills on the calendar under the provisions of rule XIV, I would object to further proceeding en bloc.

Mr. President, I am going to speak in just a moment about the border, but just to kind of set the stage a little bit on sort of where things stand, you just heard the Democrat leader talk about their willingness to fund the government--something he said repeatedly in the past. In fact, in the past, as I used quotes on the floor yesterday, he said that he likes clean CRs--clean CRs--and that we need to keep the government open for all kinds of reasons, including people who are served by the VA hospitals, for example.

I agree with him. I think that is important. I don't think anybody benefits from a government shutdown, which is why we are trying to advance a clean CR--a CR that incorporates anomalies that have been requested by his side of the aisle, some on ours, things that we normally incorporate into a continuing resolution.

But the objective in all this would be to fund the government into the foreseeable future. What is being talked about is somewhere in the November timeframe--pre-Thanksgiving, perhaps--which would give us, after the end of the fiscal year on September 30, another 6 to 7 weeks to consider individual appropriations bills and to fund the government the way it is supposed to be funded: under regular order, where the committees are doing their work and where we are doing our work on the floor.

As the Chair knows, earlier this year, we already passed three appropriations bills across the floor of the Senate--something that hadn't been done before the August recess going back as far as 2018, I believe. So it has been a long time since we have enacted under regular order appropriations bills, and that ought to be the goal. The goal here should be to fund the government the way it was intended to be funded--through the normal appropriations process.

Now, I realize that is a little out of the ordinary, given the past few years under the Democrat leadership or the Democrat leader's leadership here in the Senate, where these issues, a lot of times, got decided behind closed doors in his office. That seems to be what he wants to have happen again.

He is suggesting that he would like to have conversations about this. Well, he knows my office is right down the hall. He knows my phone number. I haven't heard from him.

All we are simply doing is asking for the very thing that in the past he has said he wants, and that is a clean funding resolution to fund the government. That is what we are proposing here. That is what I hope we will have the votes to pick up later this week.

If the Democrat leader chooses to oppose it, that is his prerogative, but I would hope there would be Democrat Senators who would give us the requisite number of votes to get to 60 in order to keep the government open. That is my objective in all of this.

I would say that we have, I think, a process whereby the Appropriations Committee and our chair Senator Collins have been working with the ranking Democrat, Senator Murray, and with their House counterparts on funding the government in this way, in this fashion. Those discussions, to the degree that they are occurring, are occurring because we allow them to have those conversations and don't get in the way of that.

I think what the Democrat leader is suggesting is that he wants to interject himself into those discussions and perhaps even instruct his ranking member not to participate. I hope that isn't the case.

But my expectation is that we will proceed to fund the government in a way that keeps it open for that foreseeable time period. I think right now what they are talking about in the House of Representatives is somewhere in the November 21 timeframe. That would give us an additional 6 to 7 weeks in which to move individual appropriations bills, which is the way we should be funding the government and

which is the way historically, prior to the Democrat leader's term as majority leader, we used to do it. Now, he moved that behind closed doors into his office. Frankly, I don't think that is in the best interest of this institution and certainly not in the best interest of Members on my side or on his side, who, frankly, want an open process and have requested that.

That was one of the issues, when I was running for this job, that Senators on our side of the aisle had suggested--that we want to do this in the light of day; we want an open process; we want regular order to work; we want the chairs to be empowered and individual members of the committees to be empowered and, just as importantly, individual Senators to be empowered to be able to have their voices heard in that appropriations process.

So that is where we are right now. Now, what is being suggested by the Democrat leader is that they are willing--he is willing--I hope they aren't--he is willing to shut the government down over a clean CR--something that last year and the year before he said he wanted because that is the way to do this, not with all kinds of things attached to it and poison pills but clean, straight-up fund the government. That is what he has wanted.

I hope his Members are smart enough to know that it is a really bad idea, for lots of reasons, to shut the government down over a clean funding resolution extended to a foreseeable date in the future that would enable the Appropriations Committee and this institution, the Senate, working with our colleagues in the House, to fund the government the way it was intended to be funded--through the normal appropriations process. I sincerely hope we can do that.

That is what we are advocating: a clean funding resolution--not with all kinds of ornaments and attachments to it but a handful of anomalies that both sides agree to--that would fund the government into November, until such time as we have the opportunity here to debate and hopefully report out and actually move annual appropriations bills so the Senate's voice--Senators' voices--can be heard in that process.

That is a very, I know, foreign concept to the Democrat leader and certainly something--at least right now--that it doesn't sound like he is open to. But the alternative is a government shutdown.

If you refuse to move a clean CR so the Appropriations committees can do their work and we can do our work here in the Senate, essentially, you are advocating for a government shutdown, and I don't know how that doesn't fall on you.

He is suggesting that is going to fall on Republicans, but if, in fact, the House of Representatives can act on this, the President is prepared to sign a continuing resolution that funds the government--a clean resolution--for the foreseeable future, and we have the number of votes here in the Senate to pass it, then it will be only the Democrat leader who is standing between this country and a government shutdown and all that means. So I would hope he will come to a different conclusion.

To the question of whether or not he would like to sit down with me, my office is right down here, and he has my cell phone number. At any time, we can do that. It doesn't seem necessary given the fact that if we hand the ball to the appropriators, which is where this should be decided, and they negotiate this and then we have a clean CR to fund the government for the next 7 weeks, that, to me, seems like a very straightforward solution to this, at least in the near term, and one which in past Congresses the Democrat leader has supported.

That is what we are trending toward, and if the Democrat leader wants to chat about that or any other subject, he knows where to find me. By the way, as many of his colleagues were out here trying to negotiate the bipartisan compromise of nominations last week, he was nowhere to be found. So this is time if you want to actually engage and try and come up with some bipartisan solutions to some of these problems, I certainly welcome that.

I look forward to those conversations in the future.

Border Security

Mr. President, if there is one thing for sure, it is that things look very different at the southern border these days than they did a year ago. Encounters at the southern border have dropped precipitously to as low as just 7,832 encounters in July.

Now compare that to the southern border under the Biden administration when U.S. Customs and Border Protection was encountering more than 100,000 illegal immigrants per month and sometimes many more. In a number of months, that number was up over 200,000. And in one memorable month in 2023, the number of encounters at the southern border exceeded 300,000--300,000 in just one month. Many of those individuals were processed and then allowed to take up residence in the United States.

Well, no longer.

Under President Trump, illegal border crossings have slowed to a trickle, and border communities that were once overwhelmed are quiet. Border Patrol's El Paso sector, which covers 268 miles in western Texas and all of New Mexico, is emblematic of the progress that has been made.

The sector chief says agents there are currently encountering about 40 to 50 people per day. Now, compare that to the 2,700 per day that they would see not that long ago.

Then there is the known ``got-aways.'' These are individuals that Border Patrol saw but was unable to apprehend. The current daily average in the El Paso sector is nine--nine; nine known ``got-aways'' per day. Last summer, it was 400 per day in that sector--400.

One has to wonder just how dangerous some of these individuals were who were avoiding law enforcement, considering that a lot of illegal immigrants encouraged by catch-and-release policies actually sought out Border Patrol during the Biden years.

Under President Trump, the situation at the southern border has been turned around. Our laws are being enforced. The wall is being built, and criminal illegal immigrants who had taken up residence in our country are being arrested, detained, and deported. Thanks to President Trump's leadership, we have made an incredible amount of progress, and we need to sustain that progress for long term.

That is why Republicans made the generational investment in border security in the One Big Beautiful Bill. That includes funding to finish the border wall and hire more Border Patrol and ICE agents, plus additional detention space and deportation capacity.

We also included funding for the Department of Justice to hire more immigration judges to address the massive backlog of immigration cases, a backlog made exponentially worse by the Biden administration's policies.

The open border policies of the past were a danger for everyone. The chaos at our southern border under the Biden administration was an invitation to terrorists, criminals, and other dangerous individuals to enter our country.

It placed an incredible burden on our Border Patrol agents, many of whom were pulled off the essential work of guarding the border to process the flood of illegal immigrants. And it placed a big burden on border cities, and nonborder cities as well, who struggled to deal with an influx of migrants.

Then there were the dangers to illegal immigrants themselves who were encouraged by President Biden's policies to put themselves at the mercy of human smugglers and the cartels, criminals who profited off of the open southern border.

In fact, the New York Times reported in 2022 that human smuggling had become a $13 billion business for the cartels--ballooning from $500 million just a few years earlier. New border security measures, however, have cost the cartels an estimated $1 billion since the start of this year.

Now law enforcement has the bandwidth to go after these criminals and disrupt the networks whose activities endanger immigrants and Americans alike. We have a responsibility to keep America safe, and that starts with security at our borders. President Trump takes that responsibility seriously.

He has acted swiftly to turn the disaster at the southern border around, and Congress has acted to support that mission and make the success we have seen these last few months the new normal. That work continues.

I am grateful to the men and women on the frontlines carrying out the important work enforcing the law and making America safer.

I yield the floor.

I suggest the absence of a quorum.

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

Mr. President, the September 30 government funding deadline is rapidly approaching, and Republicans will be putting forward a continuing resolution to fund the government until mid- November and give Congress time to complete additional work on appropriations bills, and I hope my Democrat colleagues will work with us to quickly pass this legislation.

We will be putting forward a clean resolution to ensure there is no reason for Democrats to oppose this bill and delay passage. My hope would be that we can get this done as soon as this week and then continue bipartisan work on appropriations bills.

But I have some concerns because incredible as it may seem, Democrats seem to be looking to shut down the government. That is right. At least a portion of their base seems eager to pick a fight with the Trump administration and congressional Democrats--or at least congressional Democrat leadership seems to be following along.

I can't imagine what Democrats think they are going to gain from this. Do they think that hard-working Americans are going to thank Democrats for shutting down the government? Apparently, Democrats think ``that it's perfectly fine to have VA offices close or to endanger nutrition programs that help seven million moms and kids or suspend disaster aid for farmers.''

Oh, wait. That last line wasn't actually mine. That is a quote from the Democrat leader just last year. He was deeply concerned about the consequences of shutting down the government then. But now? Well, apparently, VA offices and nutrition programs and disaster aid for farmers can be sacrificed when Democrats want to make a political point.

During a funding debate in 2023, the Democrat leader had this to say:

If we are going to keep the lights on beyond this Friday,

our Republican colleagues will have to work with Democrats in

a bipartisan way to pass a clean extension.

``To pass a clean extension''--well, that is exactly--exactly--what we are offering Democrats, a clean extension.

Two years ago, that seems to have been the standard for CRs, according to the Democrat leader. But today? Well, today, the Democrat leader is ready to hold the CR hostage and shut down the government over extraneous policy measures.

It really is amazing how the rules change for Democrats depending on their perceived political advantage; although, again, it is hard to imagine what Democrats think they are going to gain from doing this. The Democrat leader is not the only Democrat who has spoken at length about the negative effects of a shutdown on the American people. Democrats' far-left base might be enthusiastic about a shutdown, but I don't think Democrats should expect a lot of thanks from mainstream voters--the very same voters the Democrats lost in the last election.

I have spoken many times about my commitment to restoring regular order in the Senate and, in particular, regular order on appropriations bills. We have made progress on that this year, passing a package of three bipartisan appropriations bills before the August State work period--the first time that has happened, literally, in years. And just last week, the House passed a motion to go to conference on that package. And I intend for the Senate to do the same so that we can pass these bills into law. But we need more time to consider the 2026 bills, which is why we are considering this short-term continuing resolution-- this short-term, clean continuing resolution for just 7 weeks.

This should be an easy bipartisan vote. We should pass this bill on a bipartisan fashion and then get back to work on the fiscal year 2026 appropriations bills and the other essential work here in the Senate.

I hope that Democrats will think better of their shutdown plans and join us.

I yield the floor.

I suggest the absence of a quorum.

Mr. President, I move to proceed to legislative session.

Mr. President, I send a cloture motion to the desk.