Floor Statements

Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the Senate proceed to the immediate consideration of Calendar No. 109, S. 93.

I ask unanimous consent that the bill be considered read a third time and passed; that the committee-reported title amendment be considered and agreed to; that the title, as amended, be agreed to; and that the motions to reconsider be considered made and laid upon the table.

The bill (S. 93) was ordered to be engrossed for a third reading, was read the third time, and passed as follows:

Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent the Senate proceed to the immediate consideration of Calendar No. 119, S. 306.

I ask unanimous consent that the bill be considered read a third time and passed and the motion to reconsider be considered made and laid upon the table.

Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the Senate proceed to the immediate consideration of Calendar No. 146, S. 725.

I ask unanimous consent that the committee-reported substitute amendment be agreed to; that the bill, as amended, be considered read a third time and passed; and that the motion to reconsider be considered made and laid upon the table.

Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the Senate proceed to the immediate consideration of Calendar No. 117, S. 759.

Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the committee- reported substitute amendment be agreed to; that the bill, as amended, be considered read a third time and passed; and that the motion to reconsider be considered made and laid upon the table.

Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the Senate proceed to consideration of S. Res. 383, which is at the desk.

I ask unanimous consent the resolution be agreed to, the preamble be agreed to, and that the motions to reconsider be considered made and laid upon the table with no intervening action or debate.

Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that when the Senate completes its business today, it stand adjourned until 10 a.m. on Thursday, September 11; 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 be closed, and the Senate resume consideration of Calendar No. 115, S. 2296, the National Defense Authorization Act.

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

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 President, I ask unanimous consent that the order for the quorum call be rescinded.

Mr. President, a new report came out last month detailing who benefits from the working-families tax relief that Republicans enacted in the One Big Beautiful Bill, and here is what they found: Americans in every county in America will see tax relief from this bill. Let me say that again. Americans in every county in America will see tax relief from this bill.

I said this was a new report, but it is hardly news for Republicans. We knew what we were doing when we crafted this bill. We knew that we were enacting tax relief that would benefit people in every corner of this country. We knew that it would benefit people of every income level and that the greatest proportional benefit would go to working Americans. That is what we did in 2017. In 2017, we cut taxes for all Americans, and the greatest proportional benefit went to working Americans. What we did this year with the One Big Beautiful Bill was make that tax relief permanent. Now hard-working American families can be confident that they won't see a tax hike next year or in the years to come, and they can spend, invest, and save more of their hard-earned money with greater confidence for the future.

This morning, I want to walk through how working families will benefit from our legislation.

The 2017 Tax Cuts and Jobs Act lowered tax rates for every income level and adjusted tax brackets to provide additional relief, but those reforms were going to expire this year without action from Congress. What that would have meant is that a typical family earning $80,000 a year would have seen their tax rate jump from 12 percent to 15 percent next year. Not only that, that family would have lost other benefits, like the increased standard deduction and the increased child tax credit.

The standard deduction, which is something that 90 percent of taxpayers in this country use to simplify and reduce their taxes, would have been cut nearly in half, and the child tax credit would have shrunk from $2,000 per child to $1,000 per child. For people in my State, that would have meant paying an average of $2,500 more in taxes next year--$2,500. Republicans were determined not to let that happen, and with our bill in July, we locked in the lower tax rates permanently.

We also made permanent the increased child tax credit and actually increased it further to $2,200 per child and then linked it to inflation so it won't ever lose its value, and then we made the higher standard deduction permanent as well.

We also added a $6,000 bonus deduction for seniors, and then we eliminated taxes on tips--something that will benefit millions of Americans who earn part of their income from tips. That includes servers, busboys, and bartenders; Uber, Lyft, and taxi drivers; hairstylists, tour guides, and a whole host of other Americans. Working people who once dreaded big tax bills on their tips every April are now breathing a little easier. They are already making plans to save that money, put it toward their schooling, or use it for groceries and other needs of their families.

We also eliminated taxes on overtime pay. That means that folks like police officers, first responders, and nurses won't have to pay taxes on the money they earn when they spend time away from their families working extra shifts to keep us safe. It is also a boon to Americans who put in overtime working in manufacturing and the trades--hard- working Americans who spend the workday on their feet and take a shower after work, not before.

All of these reforms make for a Tax Code that works for working people. That gives them more breathing room in their budgets and helps them build a better future for their families.

I also want to say a word about what this bill does for Americans who work for themselves.

Family-run businesses--farmers and ranchers, like the people I represent in South Dakota--are the backbone of a lot of American communities. They are families' livelihoods, job creators, and part of Americans' way of life. This bill makes sure our Tax Code helps them grow. Small businesses, farms, and ranches will all benefit from the permanent lower tax rates in this bill.

Those that are passthrough businesses will also benefit from the 199A small business deduction, which is also now a permanent fixture of the Tax Code. These provisions free up cash that will allow family farms and ranches and small businesses to invest in their operations and their workers.

Then there are the investment incentives this bill makes permanent: bonus depreciation for new equipment, meaning a farmer can deduct the full cost of a new tractor or combine the year he or she starts using it; a factory owner can deduct the full cost of improving his or her assembly line; a construction company can invest in new vehicles and technology more easily.

Immediate expensing for research and development is also now permanent--a provision that has had a meaningful impact on getting innovative technologies off the ground in South Dakota and around the country.

We also raised the exemption threshold for the death tax, which means a lot more family businesses, farms, and ranches are protected from this fundamentally flawed tax and the costly estate planning that comes with it. It means Americans who have worked their entire lives building up their dream won't have to worry about that dream being sold off or dismantled to settle a tax bill when they pass it on to the next generation.

With the working families tax reform Republicans enacted this year, America's Tax Code is now permanently oriented toward supporting hard- working Americans, helping the people who work every day to build a better future for their children, ensuring that they keep more of their hard-earned money, and making America stronger and more prosperous.

Mr. President, I yield the floor.

I suggest the absence of a quorum.

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

Mr. President, I move to proceed to executive session to consider Executive Calendar No. 1, S. Res. 377, and I ask for the yeas and nays.

Mr. President, I move to table and ask for the yeas and nays.

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

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

Mr. President:

For decades, Democrats and Republicans have regularly

cooperated to swiftly confirm the many, many individuals

selected by each President to serve in their administration.

Regardless of the party in the White House, both sides have

long agreed that a President deserves to have his or her

administration in place, quickly. That doesn't mean we don't

disagree. But it does mean, when nominees are held up,

opposed, or blocked--it's for a legitimate purpose, not for

leverage in partisan games, to score political points at the

expense of public safety.

Let me just repeat that.

That doesn't mean we don't disagree. But it does mean, when

nominees are held up, opposed, or blocked--it's for a

legitimate purpose, not for leverage in partisan games, to

score political points at the expense of public safety.

Now, none of those words are original to me. So far, I have simply been quoting the Democrat leader from back in 2022. But his words perfectly summarized the longstanding tradition of the Senate--a tradition that Democrats have destroyed this year.

As the Democrat leader correctly stated, ``For decades, Democrats and Republicans have regularly cooperated to swiftly confirm the many, many individuals selected by each President to serve in their administration.''

Now, on a practical level, that has looked like expediting individual nominees and blocks of nominees by using unanimous consent or voice vote, which is a way, as the Acting President pro tempore knows here in the Senate, of moving things along more quickly.

During President George H. W. Bush's 4 years in office and President Clinton's first 4 years, both Presidents had 98 percent of their civilian nominees--get this: 98 percent--confirmed through unanimous consent or voice vote. George W. Bush--President Bush--and President Obama both had 90 percent of their nominees confirmed by unanimous consent or voice vote in their first terms.

Then we get to President Trump's first administration. Democrats, upset at the President's election, introduced an unprecedented new level of partisanship into the historically bipartisan confirmation process, forcing time-consuming votes on civilian nominees who would once have gone by unanimous consent or by voice vote.

But even so, despite this new level of partisanship introduced by Democrats, both President Trump in his first term and President Biden had more than

half of their nominees confirmed by unanimous consent or voice vote.

Well, fast-forward to today. President Trump has been in office for 8 months, and he has not had one single civilian nominee confirmed by unanimous consent or voice vote--not one. Democrats have dragged out the process of every single nominee, even on nominees they ended up voting for by large margins. It is Trump derangement syndrome on steroids. That is right--Trump derangement syndrome on steroids.

If this were a matter of historically bad nominees, as the Democrat leader tried to claim, the Democrats wouldn't be voting for a number of these nominees in committee or supporting them on final passage. No, this isn't about the quality of the candidates or any other substantive issue; this is simply the world's longest, most drawn-out temper tantrum over losing an election. Democrats can't stand the fact that President Trump was elected, and so they have destroyed decades upon decades of Senate precedent and turned a historically bipartisan process into an exercise in petty partisanship--an exercise in petty partisanship that is doing a profound disservice to the American people because, of course, Democrats' actions have consequences.

First and foremost, those consequences are delays in filling essential positions throughout the administration--in our government, the people's government. Empty desks do not help the government function, and unnecessary delays rob a duly elected President of the team he needs to carry out his responsibilities.

Dragging out confirmations also ties up the Senate floor. As the senior Senator from Minnesota said last year in what I would say were much less dire confirmation circumstances, ``As the Senate spends more of its time working on nominations, this leaves less time for legislating on issues that are important to the American people.'' Well, thanks to Democrats' historic obstruction, that is even more true today. We are, in fact, as the senior Democrat from Minnesota said, at risk of becoming a ``full-time employment agency.''

This situation has become unsustainable. To clear the current backlog of nominees on the calendar and in committee, we would need to take another 600 votes before the end of the year. Now, let me just repeat that to put it into context. To clear the current backlog of nominees on the calendar and in committee, we would need to take another 600 votes. To put that number in perspective, that is more votes than this recordbreaking Senate has taken all year up until now. Again, that is just for nominations that have already been sent to Congress, not those that are going to be forwarded and that we are going to have to process additionally, on top of the 600 votes, between now and the end of the year. There literally are hundreds more nominations to come from the administration.

So if Democrats' obstruction continues, as Democrats have made abundantly clear that it will, there is no practical way that we can come close to filling all the vacancies in the 4 years of this administration no matter how many hours the Senate works.

So we have a crisis, and it is time to take steps to restore Senate precedent and codify in Senate rules what once was understood to be standard practice, and that is the Senate's acting expeditiously on Presidential nominations to allow a President to get his team into place. So this afternoon, I will be taking the necessary procedural steps to amend the rules. It is an idea, as I said earlier, with a Democrat pedigree. The senior Democrat Senator from Minnesota, along with her colleague in the Democratic caucus, the junior Senator from Maine, made a similar proposal in 2023, which would have codified in Senate rules the longtime Senate precedent of en bloc nominations, of moving nominations in groups.

Our measure is not as extensive as that of my Democrat colleagues. It only applies to nominees at the sub-Cabinet level and not to article III judicial nominees, as theirs did. But the proposals share the same objective, and that is providing for confirming groups of nominees altogether so the President can have his team in place and so the Senate can focus on the important legislative work in its charge or, to quote the senior Democrat from Minnesota on her very similar proposal, ``This commonsense reform will help improve efficiency and make sure we're able to fill positions that are vital to our national security, economic success, and more.''

Eight months of petty partisanship is long enough. This Senate has cast more votes up to this point than any Senate going back to the 1980s. We have been in more hours than any Senate going back a couple of decades.

This historic obstruction ends now. Democrats have destroyed Senate precedent, and we are going to fix it--fix it and ensure that in the future, duly elected Presidents of both parties are able to get their teams in place without unnecessary delay so that they can fulfill their responsibilities to the American people.

I yield the floor.

I suggest the absence of a quorum.

Mr. President, I send an executive resolution to the desk for the consideration of certain nominations en bloc and ask for its immediate consideration.

Mr. President, in order to place the executive resolution on the calendar, I object to my own request.

Mr. President, I suggest the absence of a quorum.