Floor Statements

The following Senator is necessarily absent: the Senator from Alabama (Mr. Tuberville).

The following Senators are necessarily absent: the Senator from Wyoming (Mr. Barrasso), the Senator from Indiana (Mr. Braun), the Senator from Mississippi (Mrs. Hyde-Smith), and the Senator from Florida (Mr. Scott).

Further, if present and voting: the Senator from Florida (Mr. Scott) would have voted ``no.''

Mr. President, summer is almost here and with it, summer driving season. With gas prices up 48 percent since President Biden took office and inflation still a major problem, the cost of those family road trip miles is likely to be on the American people's minds.

It is not just the cost of gas that can be challenging in the summer; hot temperatures can bring a corresponding increase in electricity bills as families rely more on their air-conditioners. With electricity prices up 22 percent since President Biden took office and, as I said, with inflation still a major problem, those bills can be a stress.

It is not just energy prices that are of concern this summer. A recent article in the Washington Post entitled ``Fresh blackout threats emerge as power grid faces a stressful summer'' noted:

The nation's power grid is in precarious shape heading into

what could be an especially hot summer . . . with much of the

country at risk for outages if it experiences scorching

weather scientists say looks increasingly likely.

Much of the country is at risk for outages.

The reliability of our Nation's electric grid is becoming a serious concern, and it is being driven in part by attempts to move our country off conventional energy before we have the necessary technology to rely mostly on renewables.

In February, the PJM Interconnection, which manages a substantial part of eastern America's electric grid, released a report warning that fossil fuel plants are being forced to retire at a faster rate than new renewables can be brought online, at a rate of roughly two to one. As the report underscored, that situation is being driven by anti- conventional energy policies.

The Wall Street Journal, which weighed in after the PJM report was released, noted that ``most projected power-plant retirements are `policy-driven,' the report says.'' In other words, powerplants aren't closing because they have reached the end of their operating life; they are closing because the policy is designed to discourage conventional energy.

I am a longtime supporter of renewable energy. In fact, I come from a State where 80-plus percent of the energy that is actually produced in my State is renewable. But the fact is, technology has simply not advanced to the point where our Nation can rely solely or even mostly on renewables, and attempting to move to zero-emission energy before we have the technology and resources to get us there is going to result not only in price increases but in serious deficiencies in our Nation's energy supply.

I say ``going to result in,'' but, as I have mentioned, premature attempts to move us to a Green New Deal future are already compromising the reliability of our electric grid, and the Biden administration has been driving the problem with its anti-conventional energy policies.

While the President has made isolated positive energy decisions--and I would note approving the sale of E15 fuel for this summer as an example--in general, his Presidency has been characterized by environmental extremism and hostility to conventional energy. This year alone, he closed off a substantial part of the Arctic to oil and gas development, and his Environmental Protection Agency has finalized a rule that threatens to close a number of fossil fuel-powered powerplants and undermine the stability of our electric grid even further.

These are policies with far-reaching negative effects. An unstable electric grid, for one, can be a very serious problem. It is not just a matter of inconvenience. Electricity blackouts threaten key systems. Soaring temperatures without the relief of air-conditioning can leave elderly Americans vulnerable. The President's anti-conventional energy policies are not victimless. They have consequences, and we are well on our way to seeing those consequences in action.

The solution here is simple. The President needs to stop undermining our Nation's energy supply with policies that attempt to prematurely push us onto renewables, and he needs to unleash American energy production, conventional as well as renewable.

We did receive some good news on the energy production front last week with the passage of the debt ceiling agreement that the President reached with Speaker McCarthy. Thanks to the efforts of Speaker McCarthy, the Fiscal Responsibility Act makes a downpayment on permitting reform by placing a 2-year time limit on environmental impact statements and a 1-year time limit on environmental assessments. It also implements a ``one Federal decision'' framework that establishes a lead Agency and single document stream for permitting decisions. Currently, it takes an average of 4\1/2\ years--4\1/2\ years--for an environmental impact statement. These reforms will shrink that timeline and help both conventional and renewable energy projects get off the ground more quickly.

However, there is more work to be done to streamline the permitting process, and I hope we will be able to find bipartisan agreement on further reforms. Bogging projects down in environmental review for half a decade provides no meaningful environmental advantages, delays valuable energy projects, and can discourage domestic energy production.

Additional permitting reform should be a priority. Senators Capito and Barrasso have put forward comprehensive contributions to the discussion, the RESTART Act and the SPUR Act respectively. The House has passed H.R. 1, the Lower Energy Costs Act. Collectively, these bills would resume Federal lease sales for oil and gas developments, set timelines against endless legal challenges, and advance an American--American--``all of the above'' energy comeback.

After 2\1/2\ years of demonstrated hostility to conventional energy production, the President seems unlikely to change his ways, but he still has time to embrace a more realistic approach to American energy. I hope that the increasing fragility of our electric grid--to say nothing of higher energy prices--will encourage him to take a more ``all of the above'' approach to energy production. Otherwise, he may be remembered for presiding over not just an inflation crisis but an energy crisis as well.

I yield the floor.

The following Senators are necessarily absent: the Senator from Wyoming (Mr. Barrasso) and the Senator from Wyoming (Ms. Lummis).

The following Senators are necessarily absent: the Senator from Wyoming (Mr. Barrasso), the Senator from Wyoming (Ms. Lummis), and the Senator from North Carolina (Mr. Tillis).

Further, if present and voting: the Senator from North Carolina (Mr. Tillis) would have voted ``yea.''

The following Senators are necessarily absent: the Senator from Wyoming (Mr. Barrasso), the Senator from Tennessee (Mrs. Blackburn), the Senator from Wyoming (Ms. Lummis), and the Senator from Florida (Mr. Scott).

Further, if present and voting: the Senator from Florida (Mr. Scott) would have voted ``nay.''

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

Mr. President, last week, Congress successfully passed legislation, the Fiscal Responsibility Act, to raise the debt ceiling and avert a default. I am pleased that the final legislation paired an increase in the debt ceiling with real spending reforms, but I don't need to tell anyone that things came down to the wire.

President Biden wasted months refusing to negotiate on a debt ceiling deal before finally yielding to the political realities of divided government and coming to the negotiating table. And while we got about as good of an agreement as we could have hoped for in this situation-- again, including meaningful spending reforms the Democrats initially rejected--things didn't need to come to this crisis point. Had President Biden come to the negotiating table sooner, we might not have been passing the Fiscal Responsibility Act just days before our Nation would have defaulted.

This isn't the first crisis of inaction in this Presidency. President Biden has made a habit of ignoring or failing to meet crisis situations, with predictably problematic results. The border crisis is one notable example. It took 2 years of recordbreaking numbers of illegal crossings at our southern border before the President made any real move to even begin to address the crisis--2 years--2 years in which he mostly pretended the border crisis didn't even exist.

The President didn't want there to be a border crisis, presumably because he knew it would serve as an indictment of his open border policies. So he simply ignored the reality.

Unfortunately, Border Patrol agents and our Nation's overwhelmed border communities didn't have that option. They had to spend 2-plus years now dealing with all the ramifications of unchecked illegal immigration at our southern border.

While it is a good thing that the President has finally made some moves to address the crisis, his inaction has taken a terrible toll on Border Patrol agents and our border communities and on migrants themselves.

We have seen a similar situation with inflation. Even as it became clear the Democrats' so-called American Rescue Plan had helped set off a serious inflation crisis, the President and his administration dismissed the problem. And they didn't just dismiss the problem; they doubled down on the strategy that got our country into this mess in the first place.

While the President was eventually forced to, at least halfheartedly, acknowledge our inflation crisis, he still can't bring himself to acknowledge what caused it, and that is the Democrats' big spending priorities. And he has continued to pursue new government spending, from his nearly trillion-dollar student loan giveaway to a budget that, in a few short years, would have us spending $10 trillion annually.

Perhaps the most devastating example of the President's failure to recognize and act on the realities of the situation came with his disastrous withdrawal from Afghanistan. Even as it was becoming appallingly clear that Afghanistan was headed for takeover by the Taliban, the President delayed or simply failed to take the necessary steps to withdraw American citizens and the Afghan allies who aided us. The result was a chaotic evacuation that saw the deaths of 13 U.S. servicemembers and scores--literally scores--of Afghan civilians and left both U.S. citizens and thousands of our Afghan allies behind as the Taliban took over the country.

It is fortunate that the months President Biden spent refusing to acknowledge the need to negotiate on a debt ceiling agreement did not result in serious consequences for our country. Things were not looking good for a while, but the President ultimately recognized that divided government requires negotiation and compromise.

But a lot of his other leadership failures have had serious and permanent consequences. The President's failure to acknowledge and address the reality of the border crisis has allowed hundreds of thousands of individuals to evade law enforcement and enter our country illegally, left border communities and American cities struggling to provide for the mass influx of migrants, and, undoubtedly, facilitated the flow of cross-border criminal activity like fentanyl trafficking.

As I said, the President's failure to recognize and acknowledge the reality of the situation in Afghanistan, including by ignoring the State Department dissent cable, resulted in the deaths of American servicemembers and Afghan civilians.

Meanwhile, the President's persistent failure to fully recognize the realities of inflation and its roots and Democrats' reckless spending continues to leave our economy and American families vulnerable to more of Democrats' big spending policies.

There are around 18 months left in the President's current term and a lot of challenges for our Nation to address. I hope that the debt ceiling negotiations mark the start of a new era, one in which the President spends more time dealing with things as they are and less time pursuing an agenda divorced from the reality of the economic and security challenges that our Nation faces, because our country and the American people cannot afford a repeat of the first 2 years of this President's administration.

I yield the floor.

The following Senators are necessarily absent: the Senator from Arkansas (Mr. Cotton), the Senator from North Dakota (Mr. Hoeven), the Senator from Kansas (Mr. Moran), the Senator from Idaho (Mr. Risch), and the Senator from Alaska (Mr. Sullivan).

Further, if present and voting: the Senator from North Dakota (Mr. Hoeven) would have voted ``yea.''

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

Mr. President, before I begin, I would like to take just a moment this morning to recognize a pillar of the South Dakota press corps who has served at WNAX in Yankton, SD, for an incredible 47 years. His name is Jerry Oster, and he truly is an institution on the media landscape in South Dakota.

Jerry joined WNAX as news director in September of 1976, and he has become one of the most familiar and beloved voices on the airwaves in South Dakota.

I have had many great conversations with Jerry over the years on air and off, and I can say for certain that his departure will leave a very big hole in the South Dakota radio scene. But he has more than earned his retirement, and I know that he will relish getting to spend more time with his wife Cheryl--herself just recently retired from an amazing 43 years with Farm Credit Services of America--and with his sons and their wives and his six grandchildren.

Jerry, congratulations on an incredible and award-winning career, and enjoy some well-deserved rest.

H.J. Res. 45

Mr. President, last August, mere days after he had signed a bill that would supposedly reduce the deficit by $238 billion, President Biden announced a student loan giveaway that is said to cost taxpayers nearly a trillion dollars over the next decade. In a Presidency distinguished by bad economic decisions, this was a particularly notable one.

There are two main parts to the President's scheme. There is the outright forgiveness of $10,000 in Federal student debt--or $20,000 for Pell grant recipients--which is set to cost American taxpayers somewhere in the neighborhood of half a trillion dollars. Then there is the President's radical revamp of the income-driven repayment system, which will bring total cost for the President's plan somewhere close to a trillion dollars.

There are a number of obvious problems with the President's plan for forgiving student debt. I say ``forgiving student debt,'' but it is more like transferring the cost of student debt for the relatively small percentage of taxpayers in this country with student debt to American taxpayers as a whole. It is something of a slap in the face to Americans who chose more affordable college options or worked their way through school to avoid taking on student loans or whose parents scrimped and saved to put them through college.

It is also a slap in the face to members of the military who signed up to serve this country and earned GI bill benefits to help with tuition or training. Not to mention that negating this popular benefit could drag down recruitment and retention.

And, of course, it is deeply unfair to ask the many Americans who worked hard to pay off their loans or who never pursued college in the first place to take on the burden of student debt for individuals who took out loans for college or graduate school and agreed to pay them back.

And let's remember, we are asking taxpayers, at large, to foot the bill for student loan cancellation for Americans who enjoy greater long-term earning potential than many of the Americans who will be helping to shoulder the burden for their debts.

The President's student loan giveaway isn't a government handout for the needy; it is a government handout that will be disproportionately beneficial to Americans who are better off. It is ironic coming from someone who claims he wants to build the economy from the bottom up and the middle out. The President's student loan giveaway is decidedly more top-down, let's face it.

And speaking of the economy, Americans continue to struggle with the effects of the Democrat-driven inflation crisis that has beset our economy for most of the President's administration. Prices are up 16 percent on average since the President took office, and we are nowhere near getting back to the target inflation rate of 2 percent.

What is the President's student loan plan almost guaranteed to do? In the words of the nonpartisan Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget where the President's own Treasury Secretary served on the board, the President's student loan giveaway will ``meaningfully boost inflation''--``meaningfully boost inflation.''

I have talked about the forgiveness part of the President's plan and how fundamentally unfair it is, but that is only half of the President's student loan giveaway. The other half is just as problematic because it sets up a system in which the majority of Federal borrowers will never fully repay their loans. The Urban Institute, a left-of-center think tank, estimates that just 22 percent of those with bachelor's degrees enrolled in the President's new income-driven repayment program would repay their loans in full--22 percent--and many individuals would never be required to repay a penny.

And who will be footing the bill for all those student loan dollars that aren't repaid? Well, you guessed it--the American taxpayers.

Needless to say, the President's income-driven repayment plan will not only fail to curtail student borrowing, it will actually encourage it. If you can reasonably expect that you won't have to fully pay back your loans, you are much more likely to feel free to borrow and to borrow liberally.

And, of course, neither the President's outright student loan forgiveness nor his forgiveness masquerading as income-driven repayment will do anything to address the problem of soaring college costs. In fact, the President's student loan giveaway is likely to make the problem worse.

You only have to look at what happened when Democrats forced through their $7,500 tax credit for Americans who purchased electric vehicles. Car manufacturers, not surprisingly, raised their prices by a similar amount. Similarly, if colleges can expect that the Federal Government will pick up a sizable part of the tab for their students' education, they are extremely unlikely to feel any pressing need to cut costs or to stop tuition hikes. If anything, colleges might further increase tuition and fees.

Currently, the outcome of the forgiveness portion of the President's student loan giveaway is unclear. The President's legal authority for this action is dubious, and his ability to unilaterally forgive student loans has been challenged in the Supreme Court, with a decision expected within weeks.

And, today, the Senate looks likely to pass a resolution that would block the forgiveness part of the President's proposal. Unfortunately, the President is guaranteed to veto the measure, and there are not enough Democrats in the House and Senate willing to override his veto. Apparently, the possibility of garnering votes from Americans with student debt is reason enough for Democrats to ignore the blatantly regressive nature of the President's student loan giveaway--and the fact that it will almost unquestionably worsen the problem of rising college costs, not to mention the fact that it will drive up inflation and balloon the deficit.

I haven't even mentioned the third part of the President's student loan legacy, which is the COVID-era student loan repayment pause that President Biden has extended six times during his Presidency with no reasonable justification. That pause, which has been in place for 3 years now, costs taxpayers $5 billion per month. Fortunately, this pause is guaranteed to end thanks to the Fiscal Responsibility Act, the legislation Speaker McCarthy and President Biden agreed on to raise the debt ceiling. But while the end of the pause is a victory for taxpayers, the savings that will result pale in comparison to the tremendous costs of the President's student loan giveaway. And if the Supreme Court doesn't overturn the forgiveness portion of the President's student loan giveaway, American taxpayers will be stuck with the full nearly trillion-dollar bill. It will be one more negative economic legacy from Democrats and the Biden administration.

I yield the floor.

The following Senators are necessarily absent: the Senator from Texas (Mr. Cruz) and the Senator from Tennessee (Mr. Hagerty).

The following Senators are necessarily absent: the Senator from Texas (Mr. Cruz) and the Senator from Tennessee (Mr. Hagerty).

The following Senators are necessarily absent: The Senator from Texas (Mr. Cruz) and the Senator from Tennessee (Mr. Hagerty).

The following Senators are necessarily absent: The Senator from Texas (Mr. Cruz) and the Senator from Tennessee (Mr. Hagerty).

The following Senator is necessarily absent: The Senator from Tennessee Mr. (Hagerty).

The following Senators are necessarily absent: The Senator from Texas Mr. (Cruz) and the Senator from Tennessee Mr. (Hagerty).

The following Senator is necessarily absent: the Senator from Tennessee (Mr. Hagerty).

The following Senator was necessarily absent: the Senator from Tennessee (Mr. Hagerty).

The following Senator is necessarily absent: the Senator from Tennessee (Mr. Hagerty).

The following Senator is necessarily absent: the Senator from Tennessee (Mr. Hagerty).

The following Senator is necessarily absent: the Senator from Tennessee (Mr. Hagerty).

Further, if present and voting: the Senator from Tennessee (Mr. Hagerty) would have voted ``nay.''

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

The following Senators are necessarily absent: the Senator from Wyoming (Mr. Barrasso), the Senator from Texas (Mr. Cruz), the Senator from South Carolina (Mr. Graham), the Senator from Alaska (Ms. Murkowski), the Senator from Idaho (Mr. Risch), and the Senator from North Carolina (Mr. Tillis).

Further, if present and voting: the Senator from North Carolina (Mr. Tillis) would have voted ``yea.''

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

Mr. President, it may have taken a while, but it looks like

the White House may finally be coming to the debt ceiling negotiating table in a more serious way.

The President has now appointed members of his staff to negotiate directly with Speaker McCarthy's team--a logical and overdue step since the passage of debt ceiling legislation depends on an agreement between the President and the Republican-controlled House of Representatives.

I was also encouraged by the White House's statement after Tuesday's debt ceiling meeting, which noted that the President is ``optimistic that there is a path to a responsible, bipartisan budget agreement if both sides negotiate in good faith and recognize that neither side will get everything it wants.''

``[A]nd recognize that neither side will get everything it wants''-- that part is very important because previously the Democrats' and the President's position was that Democrats should get everything they want and that Republicans should get nothing--an extremely unrealistic position and one that suggested Democrats did not understand the nature of divided government.

So I am grateful that the President seems to be taking a more realistic view of what is necessary for an agreement. It is unfortunate that it has taken the White House this long. Speaker McCarthy has been ready to negotiate for months, and the President should have engaged seriously months ago, but better late than never.

I hope that over the next few days, the two sides will be able to swiftly reach an agreement. A good place to start would be with a good, long look at the policies in the House Republicans' Limit, Save, Grow Act, which pairs a debt ceiling increase with commonsense spending reforms, things like reclaiming unspent COVID money; modestly strengthening work requirements in Federal entitlement programs for able-bodied Americans--a move, I might add, supported by more than 60 percent of the American public--in order to help individuals move from welfare to work; capping discretionary spending for next year at the fiscal year 2022 discretionary spending level--the same level we were successfully operating at mere months ago; repealing the green energy subsidies in the so-called Inflation Reduction Act, whose estimated cost has ballooned since the bill was passed; passing permitting reform--a bipartisan priority--to help get both conventional and green energy projects off the ground more quickly, which could help grow our economy; repealing the President's reckless student loan giveaway, which could otherwise end up costing American taxpayers close to $1 trillion; and other commonsense measures.

The provisions of the Limit, Save, Grow Act have been the subject of a lot of fearmongering from Democrats, who have been set against including any spending reforms as part of a debt ceiling package, but these are responsible ideas worthy of consideration as part of a debt ceiling agreement or, for that matter, in any other context.

Our Nation has a massive national debt--$31 trillion and counting-- and a serious spending problem, and the Limit, Save, Grow Act is a reasonable and responsible attempt to get our Nation back on a more fiscally sustainable path, saving on the order of $4.5 trillion over the next 10 years.

While, as the President pointed out, neither side will get everything it wants in negotiations, I hope ideas from the Limit, Save, Grow Act will make it into a final debt ceiling agreement.

Despite the President's attempts to claim the mantle of fiscal responsibility, the truth is that spending under the Biden administration has reached staggering levels compared to prepandemic Federal budgets, and if we don't get spending under control, we are going to be facing some very serious economic consequences.

So, as I said, I am pleased that the President seems to be taking negotiations a little more seriously. I hope he will not allow himself to be distracted by extreme members of his own party, like the individuals who are suggesting that the President attempt to raise the debt ceiling on his own, using a dubious interpretation of the 14th Amendment, if Democrats don't like the debt ceiling agreement.

Debt ceiling increases have a long history of being paired with deficit reduction measures or other budgetary policy changes. In fact, 7 of the last 10 debt ceiling increases have been accompanied by budgetary reforms and policy changes.

It is time for all members of the Democratic Party to recognize what the President appears now to be recognizing, and that is that in divided government, both parties have to compromise to reach an agreement, so credit to the President for acknowledging this fact. I hope--I hope--that over the next few days, we will see a deal emerge that not only raises the debt ceiling but also puts us on a more sustainable fiscal path moving forward.

I yield the floor.

I suggest the absence of a quorum.

The following Senators are necessarily absent: the Senator from Iowa (Ms. Ernst), the Senator from Kansas (Mr. Moran), and the Senator from Florida (Mr. Rubio).

Further, if present and voting: the Senator from Florida (Mr. Rubio) would have voted ``no.''

Mr. President, today I recognize Abigail Johnson, an intern in my Washington, DC, office, for all of the hard work she has done for me, my staff, and the State of South Dakota over the past several months.

Abigail is a graduate of Roosevelt High School in Sioux Falls, SD. Currently, she is attending the University of South Dakota in Vermillion, SD, where she is pursuing degrees in political science and psychology. She is a hard worker who has been dedicated to getting the most out of her internship experience.

I extend my sincere thanks and appreciation to Abigail for all of the fine work she has done and wish her continued success in the years to come.