Floor Statements

Would the Senator yield?

Are you aware--here is the question: Are you aware of the fact that President Clinton was impeached? And one of the charges against him was lying under oath in a civil lawsuit. Are you aware of that?

OK. So you can be impeached for lying under oath in a civil lawsuit, but apparently you can't be impeached for lying to Congress about how you do your job.

So here is what I--I will give Senator Schumer the benefit of the doubt, Senator Kennedy. He is saying that the fact pattern here apparently doesn't rise to the level of high crime or misdemeanor; that it is a policy disagreement. We have taken a policy disagreement in the House and tried to turn it into impeachment.

Well, here is a question for you, Senator Lee. Are you aware of the fact that 2 days ago--2 days ago--Secretary Mayorkas was asked about the parole of the man alleged to have killed Laken Riley, Mr. Ibarra: Why was he paroled and how was he paroled?

Under the parole statute, 212(d)(5), there are two ways parole can be granted: unique humanitarian need circumstances. Your mother is dying. Something is going on bad. You need to get into the country on a temporary basis. Or a special benefit to the United States--that means you are a witness in, probably, a cartel trial. Those are the only two reasons you can be paroled.

And 2 days ago--no, yesterday--Secretary Mayorkas said he did not know why Mr. Ibarra was paroled. Which one of the two was it? This was a question from Congressman Bishop. He said: I didn't know.

At the same time he said, I didn't know, I had the file, and it says: Subject was paroled due to detention capacity at the Central Processing Center in El Paso, TX. In the file, he was

paroled because they didn't have any space for him.

Senator Schumer, this is illegal. The Secretary of Homeland Security cannot just add a condition to the statute. The statute doesn't allow you to give parole because you are full. And the reason this man was given parole is not because of the statutory requirements, but because we had run out of space, because we have got more illegal immigrants than we can handle.

And the rest is history. He gets paroled. He goes to New York. He gets convicted of a crime. He goes to Georgia, and he is accused of murdering this lady.

It seems to me that would be something we should argue over, as to whether or not you should lose your job because you have got a statutory requirement limiting your authority to parole people, and in your own file, exhibit A, you paroled him because the place was full.

This happened 2 days ago. So this gives kangaroo courts a bad name. This is a frigging joke.

We have a nation under siege. Madam President, 1.9 million people have been paroled. Are you telling me they do an individual analysis on all the people?

In November 2023, I asked him: Secretary Mayorkas, do you do a case- by-case analysis?

Senator, we comply with the law.

So you are telling me that for all of the 240,000--the ones in front of us--you determined that they meet the criteria of urgent humanitarian need or significant public benefit?

And he said: Yes.

This was in November, under oath, to me when I questioned: I don't believe you. I don't believe you are doing an individual analysis on this stuff. You are doing blanket parole, and you are paper-whipping this stuff.

It turns out he gave false testimony to the Congress. Whether he lied or he just doesn't know what he is doing, I don't know. You should be impeached either way. If you don't know what you are doing, you should be kicked out because you don't know what you are doing.

But the man that we are talking about is the one charged with murdering this young lady who was going on a jog. If that is not important to the American people--to find out how that happened and should somebody be held responsible--what the hell is?

You can talk about why we impeached Trump and Clinton? Was it worthwhile? Did it matter? Was it all political?

You cannot say this is not important. To say that how he is doing his job is not important to the American people--tell that to the Riley family. This is not an academic debate.

The policies of this administration being carried out by Secretary Mayorkas are illegal. The man charged with killing Laken Riley was illegally released into this country by DHS. That should be something we argue about in the Senate, as to whether or not you keep your job. It has been swept under the rug.

There will be an election in November. This is the only chance you have to get this right, to the American people. We had a chance today to hold somebody accountable, finally, for all the rape and the murder and the drugs. The largest loss of life in America is fentanyl coming through the border, for young people. How many more people have to die, be raped or murdered before somebody is held accountable?

We had a chance here, and our Democratic friends swept it under the rug because they are more concerned about the November election than protecting the American people, and this is a sad day for the Senate.

Mr. President, at a later date, I will respond to my colleague from Maryland about UNRWA.

But just to let people know who are following this today, I am the ranking Republican on the State, Foreign Ops Appropriations Subcommittee, and I work very well with Senator Coons. Senator Van Hollen is on the committee. There will not be one dime for UNRWA in any bill I support, period. And that is not just me; that is Senator Collins. She is the ranking member who worked very well with Senator Patty Murray to get the supplemental moving. Why is that? Because we believe UNRWA is compromised.

I will come and show you the textbooks that UNRWA uses in the Palestinian community to teach the destruction of the Jewish people. I will show you texts from people in charge of UNRWA on the ground celebrating October 7.

The case has been made over here that UNRWA is no longer a credible organization worth American taxpayer dollars to fund--not one penny for

Let me finish. We will come and debate. I have a plane to catch.

We will come down, and we will have a discussion about everything I said. Let me finish my thought.

Yes. We will have a very vigorous discussion about how wrong you are to empower this group that has been perpetrating all of the wrong things, not the right things.

Now, having said all that--

Let me finish my thought.

Senator Schumer, whom I have worked with on immigration, on a bunch of things--I have tried to be bipartisan when it comes to foreign policy. My colleague, the President of the Senate, has been one of my best friends in trying to find a way forward to get Saudi and Israel to recognize each other. That would be a big blow to Iran.

I have been asked, like everybody in the body: What do you think about Senator Schumer's speech?

I am dumbfounded. I have always respected him. I disagree with him politically. What he said today was earth-shatteringly bad. The majority leader of the U.S. Senate is calling on the people of Israel to overthrow their government.

Whether you like Bibi or not is not the question. The question is, Is it appropriate for anybody in this body telling another country to take their government down? We are going to have an election here. I hope we take the Biden government down through the election process, but that is for us to decide.

This has been very hurtful. I have been on the phone almost all day trying to explain to people what happened, and I don't have a good explanation.

We are trying to get Saudi Arabia to recognize the one and only Jewish State. That is no easy thing for the Crown Prince to do given this environment.

We are trying to get Israel to take a leap of faith here that it doesn't have to be this way all the time, to do some things that would allow the Palestinian community to reorganize.

Seventy-five percent of the Israeli people do not support a two-state solution now. They have been terribly wounded. There is no support by any politician in Israel--Gantz, Lapid, anybody--to unilaterally declare a Palestinian State.

Five Presidents of the United States have said that if there is ever a Palestinian State, it will come through direct negotiations, without conditions, between the parties.

In the Trump administration, Jared Kushner had a plan to establish a Palestinian State that Prime Minister Netanyahu actually agreed with.

The point here is, what should America be doing now? America should be helping Israel without qualification. We should be trying to find a way to ease the suffering of the Palestinian people, and the best way to do that is to destroy Hamas. The reason so many Palestinians have been killed is because Hamas uses them as human shields.

We live in a world that is literally upside down. We are having prominent Democratic Members--people I respect--calling on the Israeli people to take their government down. I can't believe it. I thought it was a joke. I thought somebody was pranking me this morning. This is a departure in a very serious way about how the United States interacts with its allies. I think it has done enormous damage to very delicate negotiations. I hope that Senator Schumer will revisit this.

I don't know who he is trying to please by saying that, but they are not worth pleasing. I don't know who you are trying to please by saying that the Israeli Government needs to cease to exist as it is today and the Israeli people need to find somebody better, in the eyes of Senator Schumer.

I am not asking the Israeli people to elect somebody I like; I am asking them: Whenever you have an election, elect somebody you like. I am not asking the people of Israel to bow to my view of how to settle this matter after the largest loss of Jewish life since the Holocaust. I want to give unconditional, unqualified support to the people of Israel to destroy Hamas.

After World War II, if anybody had suggested to America that we need to take our foot off the gas when it came to destroying the Nazis and the Japanese, you would have been run out of town. What won the Oscar? A film called ``Oppenheimer'' talking about how the atomic bomb was created and used by our country to destroy two cities in Japan to end the war.

You have to understand--and the Presiding Officer does; you have done your homework--you have to understand that October 7, to the Israeli people, is Pearl Harbor and 9/11 on steroids. It is not just a tit-for- tat with Hamas; it was an attempt by Hamas to break the back of the Jewish people, to brutally rape and murder in a fashion they want the world to see.

So the Israeli perspective on what to do is similar to what we thought we should do after World War II: total, complete victory; everybody mobilize and do what you have to do to end the war, to take the Nazis down; and the Imperial Japanese Army--destroy it unequivocally.

Millions of people were killed in World War II. War is literally hell. But when you have been attacked the way we were on Pearl Harbor and 9/11, you have to respond forcefully. You have to make sure it never happens again. And the only way Israel can do this is to destroy the military capability of Hamas.

So why did this happen? I believe that the great Satan, which is Iran, wanted this to happen to prevent a reconciliation between Saudi Arabia and the State of Israel, ending the Arab-Israeli conflict. A nightmare for the Ayatollah is that the Arabs and the Jews make peace and economically integrate, leaving them behind.

Israel has signed agreements with six of their Arab neighbors under Bibi's leadership.

When I go, I meet with Lapid, I meet with Gantz, and I meet with Bibi. I meet with everybody because it is not about Bibi; it is not about Gantz; it is about our relationship. If it is Gantz or Lapid next time, I will meet with them. I know them all. Mr. Lapid and I are very good friends. I have known Bibi for 25 years. It is about, what should we do to help our friends in Israel?

Nothing would please me more than to find a way to end this war sooner rather than later and get back on track for their normalization process, but we cannot expect Israel to stop now. It is like putting 80 percent of a fire out--the 20 percent is going to start it all over again.

We are down to six brigades, organized military units that Hamas has to wreak havoc on the Palestinian people and the State of Israel. It is nonnegotiable: Hamas will be destroyed militarily.

I am hoping, in the middle of all this chaos, we can still find a way for Saudi Arabia and Israel to normalize. That would be the ultimate death blow, I think, to the Iranian ambitions in the region. Part of that deal, as the Presiding Officer knows, would be the Palestinians would have a better life eventually; that Saudi Arabia and UAE would invest heavily into Gaza and the West Bank; new, younger, less corrupt people running the place, trying to find a pathway forward where the Palestinians and Israel can coexist in a way that is beneficial for all.

That can never happen until Hamas is destroyed. If Hamas is still in place, they will kill everybody who wants to make peace with Israel. They did it before. They have no desire, as Senator Van Hollen said, of recognizing the Jewish State.

But I will close where I began. What Senator Schumer said on the floor of the Senate is taking the country and the Senate down the wrong road. This is not something any of us should be saying--calling on a government to be toppled, basically, by its own people.

At the end of the day, Bibi is not the problem. The problem is radical Islam wanting to kill every Jew they can find. The problem is Iran, which has its mission to destroy the Jewish State and to purify Islam.

I could spend hours talking about the Biden-Obama policy of empowering the Ayatollah, but that is not for today.

So what I would say to what Senator Schumer said today--my response to Senator Schumer: I am disappointed. You have done a lot of damage, my friend, and you need to fix this.

With that, I yield the floor.

Madam President, I believe we have 15 minutes, and just for the order of battle here, I would like to recognize Senators Grassley, Cornyn, and Hawley to make some brief remarks. I will make some brief remarks, and we will make a unanimous consent for the bills that I have indicated we are trying to call up.

With that, I would turn it over to Senator Grassley.

I see the chairman of the committee, Senator Durbin. Go anytime you like or, Senator Cornyn, if you want to go next, then we have Klobuchar and Hawley and myself.

Before I turn it over to Senator Durbin and the Senator speaks, Senator Durbin has been terrific. The committee worked together to get these bills passed unanimously. Thank you for your leadership.

I just want to say amen and now pass it to Senator Klobuchar.

I just want to say that Senator Klobuchar has been tenacious in trying to find common ground and in bringing people together but also in getting a result.

Senator Hawley will be next. Then I will wrap it up and make the request.

Madam President, to my colleagues, thank you for coming down. I really appreciate it.

Senator Durbin, you have been a great partner on this journey. We have some victims groups, and we are going to keep doing this until we get the result we think America needs.

Very quickly, in 2024, here is the state of play: The largest companies in America, social media outlets that make hundreds of millions of dollars a year, you can't sue if they do damage to your family by using their product because of section 230.

Now, if you wanted to give complete liability protection to a group of people, this would be the last group I would pick. So in the 1990s, there was a law on the books that, to make sure the internet could get up and running, the platforms couldn't be sued for the content that is on their platforms.

Now these platforms enrich our lives, but they destroy our lives. These platforms are being used to bully children to death. They are being used to take sexual images involuntarily obtained and send them to the entire world, and there is not a damned thing you can do about it.

We had a lady come before the committee, a mother, saying her daughter was on a social media site that had anti-bullying provisions. They complained three times about what was happening to her daughter. She killed herself. They went to court. They got kicked out by section 230.

The sexual exploitation of children is just mind-boggling, so we have legislation to strip away section 230 absolute liability protections. One is called the EARN IT Act, and I will make a request for that to come to the floor.

All of these bills have passed the Judiciary Committee--made up of the hardest of the hard in the body--unanimously. We have seen and heard the same thing. We have different views about the way the world should work, about the role of government in our

lives, but we come together on this. Dick Durbin and Lindsey Graham and Josh Hawley and--you just name it; all of us--we see the problem the same. We hear from our constituents, who are helpless and hopeless. So we are going to keep this up until we bring these people to heel.

There are three ways to protect the consumer. If the consumer is damaged, they can go to court and seek relief. They have the burden to prove their case, but they have a chance to right a wrong that they believe has been done to them by a business. You can't do that here.

Another way to protect the consumer is to have regulatory agencies, licensing agencies, deride hurt on businesses to make sure they perform effectively and don't abuse the consumer. There is no such thing here.

The third is to have a series of laws on the books to protect consumers. There are no laws on the books. We are zero for three--you can't sue them, there is no regulatory body, and there are really no laws on the books to protect the consumer. That needs to change.

With that, I want to call up--as in legislative session, notwithstanding rule XXII, I ask unanimous consent that the Senate proceed to the immediate consideration of Calendar No. 70, S. 1207; that the committee-reported amendments 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 with no intervening action or debate on the EARN IT Act. That is my request.

Very quickly, and I will move to CSAM, Senator Durbin's bill.

There is nothing in this bill about encryption. We say that this is not an encryption bill. The bill, as written, explicitly prohibits courts from treating encryption as an independent basis for liability. We are agnostic about that. What we are trying to do is hold these companies accountable by making sure they engage in best business practices.

The EARN IT Act simply says: For you to have liability protections, you have to prove that you have tried to protect children. You have to earn it. It is just not given to you. You have to have the best business practices in place, have voluntary commissions that lay out what would be the best way to harden these sites against sexual exploitation. If you do those things, you get liability. It is just not given to you forever. So this is not about encryption.

As to your idea, I would love to talk to you about it. Let's vote on both. But the bottom line here is there is always a reason not to do anything that holds these people liable. That is the bottom line. They will never agree to any bill that allows you to get them in court-- ever. If you are waiting on these companies to give this body permission for the average person to sue you, it ain't never going to happen.

Now, CSAM, Senator Durbin has been tenacious on this. We are talking about making sure that sexually explicit material is taken down when you notify people. Is that unreasonable?

And if they don't take it down, knowing that it is up there, you ought to be able to sue them. My God, if we can't do that, what good are we? There are millions of these photos out there.

Senator Durbin has been terrific to empower consumers with some hope they don't have to live this over and over and over again. Is it too much to ask the company, once notified, to take this stuff down?

With that, as in legislative session and notwithstanding rule XXII, I ask unanimous consent that the Senate proceed to the immediate consideration of Calendar No. 69, S. 1199; that

the committee-reported substitute amendment be agreed to; 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 with no intervening action or debate.

We have one more. And I will just respond that I will take you up on your offer. You are a good friend and a good man. The bottom line is, there are 21 of us on the committee from every corner of the political spectrum, and we are not buying any of this.

Again, what does Senator Durbin want to do? He wants to make sure companies, when they are notified that there are sexually explicit material involving you or somebody you love, that they will have to take it down. If they don't, you can sue them. Who in America is against that, except the people making money off the images?

We will keep talking, but this ain't going to stop. There will be a day when every seat is full up here because word is going to spread about what we are trying to do.

Senator Tillis, you have been terrific. I don't think you are a lawyer, are you? You are the smartest guy on the committee, then.

He figured this out really quickly. You don't have to be a lawyer to figure this out, just common sense and human decency.

The SHIELD Act--as in legislative session, notwithstanding rule XXII, I ask unanimous consent that the Senate proceed to the immediate consideration of Calendar No. 78, S. 412; 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 on the table with no intervening action or debate.

If you want to keep going, I will yield you some time.

Madam President, we will be back. We will work with Senator Booker. We have tried in committee. Senator Wyden will keep talking, but I think 21 of us are pretty determined that there be some consumer protection laws in this space on the books this year.

I am going to talk to President Trump. Looks like he is going to be the Republican nominee. I have known President Biden a long time. He has been on the Judiciary Committee. I hope both of them will see this as something they would agree to.

Senator Durbin, I will let you wrap up. I just cannot thank you enough. We have our differences for sure; but on this, you have been a great leader of the committee.

No matter what happens in 2025, if we take over or you all keep the Chamber, we are going to keep doing this.

Mr. President, this will take a little bit of time. Do you want to speak, sir? OK.

So I want to explain sort of where we started and where we are at. Those of us old enough to remember 2001, that was a very bad day for America, and it will stick with me forever. I remember being here, during the attack, in Washington and asking myself: What can I do to make sure this never happens again? We did some things, made some mistakes, did some things right, but I will remind you at the end of this discussion that before the attack, the lights were blinking.

When the Taliban took over in Afghanistan and started killing women in soccer stadiums for sport and blowing up Buddhist statues, to think that wouldn't affect us was pretty naive.

So there is sort of a debate in my party, to be honest with you, about America First, what does that mean, and isolationism.

Isolationism sounds good; doesn't work, never has, never will. When people are willing to do horrible things to others in the name of religion or a master race, to think that they will leave you alone is just really very naive.

So when Hitler wanted to kill all the Jews because they were an inferior race, for a long time America sat on the sidelines. Voices like Lindbergh and others saying: This is not our fight, no more foreign wars. Well, you wind up allowing the guy to get stronger. You could probably have stopped him dozens of times, but nobody wanted to get involved because of the aftermath of World War I.

Well, what did we learn? Allowing Hitler to get stronger and not standing up to his abuse of the Jewish people

and his desire for a master race led to about 50 million people getting killed and hundreds of thousands of Americans getting killed because of World War II.

So America First--America First was a slogan being said in the 1930s. President Trump talks about America First. It is different to me.

If America First is isolationism, count me out; I don't believe it is. If America First is weak, count me out; I don't believe it is.

So America First and strong, what does it mean? It doesn't mean you don't care about the other parts of the world, but you have to get your own backyard right, and you do expect other people to carry their fair share of burden.

That is what it means to me, and it means having a strong military, not a weak military. It means letting people know if you screw around with America, you will regret doing it. Just ask Soleimani. But you can't; he is dead. He had blood on his hands, and President Trump saw that his reign of terror ended. That is being strong. So that is sort of where we are at in our party right now. I am going to jump from 2001 to 2011. So, in 2001, America united. We were hurt as a nation. The country went through a lot of turmoil. Three thousand of our citizens, almost, were killed in various ways. But terrorists, if they could kill 3 million of us, they would have.

We go to the Mideast. We make mistakes. The source of the problem is Afghanistan. Bush decides to get involved in Iraq. Saddam Hussein was truly a bad guy, but we can debate whether or not we should have done that. But the one thing that I said, Senator McCain said, and Senator Lieberman said: We are down to about 10,000 troops. We need an insurance policy force to make sure that the forces we are trying to contain--radical Islam in Iraq--do not come back. So President Obama had an option of leaving 10,000, and he chose to pull the plug. And here is what I said: I feel all we have worked for, fought for, and sacrificed for is pretty much in jeopardy by today's announcement. I hope I am wrong and the President is right, but ``I fear this decision has set in motion events that will come back to haunt our country.''

That is what I said when President Obama wanted to pull the plug on Iraq. This is what Senator McCain said:

This decision will be viewed as a strategic victory for our

enemies in the Middle East, especially the Iranian regime,

which has worked relentlessly to ensure a full withdrawal of

U.S. troops from Iraq.

Senator Lieberman:

This failure puts at the greater risk all that so many

Americans and Iraqis have fought, sacrificed, and, in the

thousands of cases, gave their lives to achieve: an Iraq that

is self-governing, self-defending, and aligned with the

responsible nations of the world in the fight against Islamic

extremism and terrorism.

My last line was:

But I fear this decision has set in motion events that will

come back to haunt us.

Hoping I was wrong. Here is what happened: We pulled the plug on Iraq. The JV team called ISIS runs wild, and the carnage that followed was devastating to the world, the attacks after the withdrawal in 2011. In 2015, 130 people killed in Paris by attacks that came from the caliphate that was established after our withdrawal. In 2016, 86 people killed in Nice, France. I can go on and on and on--2017, Istanbul, Turkey. Just on and on, carnage by the thousands throughout the world, and it came to get us here too. The Orlando, FL, Nightclub attack was inspired by somebody who pledged allegiance to ISIS. You just remember all of the beheadings in Syria. They took large parts of Iraq and Syria after the withdrawal.

Everything we were worried about actually came true, even greater than I thought. Yazidi genocide, the Yazidi people were raped and murdered by the tens of thousands all because everybody was ready to leave Iraq. That was in 2011.

Let's fast forward to 2021. After having left Iraq, saw what happened, had to go back in, we decided to pull out of Afghanistan where it all started, 2021. So if you had told me in 2001 we would allow the Taliban to come back 20 years later, I would not have believed it. But we did. We wanted 2,500--that is what I wanted, more if you needed it--to keep the country from falling apart, a residual, follow-along force.

Secretary Blinken said:

If 20 years and hundreds of billions of dollars in support,

equipment, and training did not suffice, why would another

year, another five, another ten [make a difference]?

Let me answer that question. If after all that blood and treasure we pulled the plug because we are tired based on the passage of time and the enemy comes back and they take over, then other people in the world will see us as weak. So, Secretary Blinken, you didn't understand the ripple effect of allowing Afghanistan to fall back into the hands of terrorists, and President Biden, against sound military advice, you chose to pull the plug. Ten years earlier, President Obama pulled the plug on Iraq--the rise of ISIS. Apparently, it is hard for us to learn much at all.

Because it's the right one--it's the right decision for our

people. The right one for our brave servicemembers who have

risked their lives serving our nation. And it's the right one

for America.

He is talking about pulling out of Afghanistan. President Biden, it was a horribly bad decision.

But he is not the only one. Some of my best friends were sort of in that mindset.

``I write to express my support for President Trump's plan for the prompt withdrawal of U.S. forces from Afghanistan,'' Senator Hawley.

``After the loss of over 2,000 American servicemembers and thousands of others injured in action, I agreed it was past time to get our troops out of Afghanistan,'' Senator Marshall--really good friends.

All I can say is, it is not when we leave, it is what we leave behind. So we pulled the plug, jointly, on Afghanistan. President Trump, at the time of the end of his term, had about 2,500 servicemembers still. He was going to leave them there, I hope and think, but at the end of the day, there was a plan to withdraw by May. I think he put in place it was conditional, and the Taliban didn't abide by any of the conditions. So when President Biden announced he was going to get out, I think, on May 1, ``Getting out of Afghanistan is a wonderful and positive thing to do. I planned to withdraw on May 1st, and we should keep as close to that schedule as possible.'' So that was President Trump. And I can't remember exactly when we got out, but it wasn't very much after that.

So 20 years, almost to the day, after 9/11, you have got Republicans and Democrats saying: Enough already. Let's leave--not understanding why we should stay. And apparently leaving Iraq in 2011, nobody really remembered that much at all.

So the Secretary of Defense said: I don't have any regrets about supporting the decision to leave Afghanistan. He really probably needs to resign, quite frankly. I like the man personally, but he has been so wrong so often, I have lost all confidence in his ability to make good, sound decisions. And when he speaks, nobody listens. So the idea that he would defend what happened in Afghanistan, the withdrawal, ``I have no regrets'' is a bit disappointing because I have a ton of them.

So what happened after we withdrew or announced we were leaving? Thirteen servicemembers were killed in the disaster that was a withdrawal. And now the talking point is, that was a disaster. That was embarrassing. We shouldn't have done it that way. Well, I will just give you my two cents' worth: There is no good way to do a dumb thing. What was dumb was to leave Afghanistan and allow ISIS-K and ISIS and al-Qaida to come back when a fairly small force compared to what we have done in the past could have held the country together. So it was just carnage, the 13 brave Americans killed at Abbey Gate.

What happened after our withdrawal? Remember the C-17 going down the runway with Afghans jumping on the wheel, the wings, babies being passed over the wire to soldiers. It was just really hard for me to sleep, quite frankly, for days after that. And the Veterans' Administration had a real spike in assistance from veterans because all those who fought and lost loved ones and sacrificed in Afghanistan were pretty upset.

So that was in 2021. Ten years after we withdrew from Iraq and ISIS stormed the world, we made the same stupid decision to withdraw in Afghanistan. The rest is history. The Taliban has taken over.

Now, the question is to Secretary Blinken: Did our withdrawal set in motion bad things? I would say it did.

February 24, 2022, Russia invades Ukraine. Many of us believe that when we pulled the plug on Afghanistan, it showed a lack of resolve, and all the bad guys got bolder. So you will never convince me that our decision in 2021 did not encourage and lead to aggression by Russia in 2022.

Now, we wanted preinvasion sanctions--Senator Menendez, Blumenthal, I think Whitehouse. We had a package of sanctions to hit Russia as the buildup was coming. You could see the amassing of Russian forces. And we said: Why don't we tell Russia right now, here is what comes your way if you invade? And many of us wanted to give lethal weapons to Ukraine before the invasion to deter Putin.

Well, the administration said no to preinvasion sanctions. They said no to sending any weapons. They didn't want to be provocative. Well, it didn't work. They invaded. And your effort to deter the invasion never occurred.

Once the war started, many of my Democratic friends, to their credit, joined all of us to help Ukraine the best we could. We were arguing for military assistance that would change the tide of battle. We were told that Kyiv would fall in 2 or 3 weeks. Well, they were wrong. The Ukrainians have been fighting like tigers. They have put a hurting on the Russian military. And for months after the invasion, I, along with many others--Democrats included--were pushing the Biden administration to help. How do you fight the Russians? You need more tanks. It took 10 months to get the first delivery of M1 Abrams tanks after Secretary Austin opposed tanks, 1 year and 7 months to get to ATACMS. They resisted HIMARS, long-range artillery. They have yet to get the F-16s. So every time we would talk about a weapon system that would change the course of battle, it was like pulling teeth. And it is amazing the Ukrainians have done as well as they have.

But the people who decided not to impose preinvasion sanctions, the people who wanted to slow-walk military assistance are the same people who wanted to get out of Afghanistan, the same people who wanted to withdraw from Iraq. I don't mean to be overly critical, but they lost me a long time ago. Devastation in Ukraine, great country, proud people, it has just been terrible.

Putin, by the way, is now an indicted international war criminal for kidnapping and stealing Ukrainian children, and this is over 2 years into the war.

What else has happened since 9/11? There was a defense budget approved by this body against my wishes to produce a military budget that was below inflation. At a time when you had a war with Russia and Ukraine, you had the rise of radical Islamic terrorism, you had Iran pushing everybody around in the Mideast and China threatening their neighbors, so the response in 2024, the fiscal year 2024 budget, in light of all of these threats, to pass a military budget below inflation, what are we thinking? Have we learned nothing from 9/11?

So, everybody talks about China, for good reason. We are not at war with China, thank God, but I, along with many of my colleagues, want to be tough on China. Well, if you want to be tough on China, you have to have credibility.

The budget we passed over my objection, which was agreed to by the former Speaker of the House, a Republican, has put us on track to have less ships in the Navy by 2030 than we have today. And you want to be tough on China?

The Navy tells us they need about 450 manned and unmanned vessels to deal with the threats we face throughout the world. We passed a military budget that goes from 292 ships in 2030 to 290, not 450.

What does it take to get 450 ships in the Navy? Five percent spending above inflation for about a decade. We are spending below inflation, so I don't think we are ever going to get there.

What is China doing? Well, they have 370 ships. By 2030, they are going to have 435. Today, we have 292; the Chinese navy is 370. By 2030, they are going to have 435, and we are going to have 290. Well, we must come up with some super-duper ships. We are going in the wrong direction.

What are we thinking as a nation? How do you expect to deter China when you are reducing your military spending below inflation, you are reducing the number of ships available to help our friends in Taiwan and throughout the world, and they are dramatically increasing their navy? Do you think they feel deterred? I don't think so.

So I really don't want to hear any more talk about being tough on China until we pass a budget that shows we actually mean what we say.

That is 2022. We have Russia invade Ukraine. In 2021, we get out of Afghanistan. In 2022, Russia invades Ukraine. In 2023, we pass a budget below inflation. So what also happened in 2023? On October 7, Hamas attacks Israel.

Now, I heard my colleague Senator Sanders talk about we shouldn't be sending any more aid to Israel. I respectfully disagree. This was the largest loss of life to the Jewish people since the Holocaust. Hamas is the perpetrator of the attack, and there was this belief--somewhat in Israel and somewhat in America--that you could keep this caged tiger somewhat fed, but they wouldn't bite you. That proved not to be true. They openly talk about destroying the Jewish people.

Israel pulled out of Gaza I think in 2005 or 2008. I can't remember the day. It wasn't very long until Hamas took over, and anybody who wanted to make peace with Israel, they killed--Hamas did. They have an underground tunnel complex, and that money they used to build the tunnels is pretty much all the aid the world has given them. And all of a sudden, Israel is the bad guy.

I hate that so many people are being killed, but Hamas uses the Palestinian people in Gaza as human shields. They want Israel to kill more of their people because they think it helps their cause to isolate Israel.

I have been to Israel more times than I can count. I think the idea is a professional military force. And here's what is so ironic: The Jewish State, Israel, if they wanted to, could kill everybody in Palestine. They have the ability to do that. The Palestinians would love to kill everybody in Israel; they just don't have the ability. The one that could do it has chosen not to; the one with limited capabilities is willing to bet the farm on killing as many as they can.

What an upside-down world we are after 9/11. If somebody in a Parliament had made the speech that Senator Sanders just made, criticizing America for our response after being viciously attacked, I think we would have taken offense to that. And we are only talking about October. We are talking about months, not years. There were 24 brigades that Hamas had. They are down to the last four or five. They are hiding among a million Palestinians. I don't blame Israel for wanting to destroy them all.

I actually support Saudi Arabia and Israel recognizing each other and trying to find a better future for the Palestinians. That better future cannot include Hamas.

The First Minister of Northern Ireland, which is a beautiful place, said something--I really don't know her; I just thought it was an odd thing to say--that one day Hamas will be seen as part of the solution. I am not so sure that is the case. I don't ever see Hamas being considered part of the solution anytime.

So that is 2023. What else is happening in 2023 and now 2024?

So Secretary Austin came before our committee.

We are helping Israel. There is money for Israel in this package, and I want to help Israel. There is money for Ukraine in this package, and I want to help Ukraine. There is money for Taiwan in this package, and I want to help them too.

I asked Secretary Austin:

Is it a red line for Iran to orchestrate an attack on our

forces that kills an American in Syria or Iraq. . . . Can you

say that?

This was weeks before they actually did this.

[AUSTIN:] I think Iran should be held accountable for the

activities of [Iran].

[GRAHAM:] Can we say to Iran, if you escalate the second

front, if you activate Hezbollah against the State of Israel

to create a second front, we will come after you?

[AUSTIN:] Whether or not we attack Iran because of a

decision on the part of Lebanese Hezbollah, that is a

Presidential decision.

Back to my original question.

I wanted him to tell the world, so the Iranians could hear, that if your proxies kill an American, we are coming after you, not just the proxies. Well, unfortunately, it wasn't long after that exchange that these three brave Americans were killed in 2024 by an Iranian militia.

So 2020, we get attacked. We say: Never again. In 2024, Iranian militia are killing American servicemembers in Jordan and then almost 200 attacks since the invasion of Hamas against Israel. And we are helping Israel, and Hamas and all the terrorists throughout the world, including Iran, are trying to pay us back.

After 9/11, I didn't think this headline would be possible: ``Iran closer than ever to weaponizing uranium, building nuclear bomb.''

So 20-some years after 9/11, we have a budget below inflation. We have pulled out of Iraq; 10 years later, pulled out of Afghanistan. Russia is trying to dismember Ukraine. Hamas attacked Israel with ferocity and barbarity beyond what the Nazis did. How could all this happen? And Iran, the ``Great Satan,'' religious Nazis, on the verge of getting a nuclear weapon? What the hell happened?

Now we are going to turn to something else that happened. September 11, 2001. I don't know how many illegal crossings we had at the southern border, but it wasn't that big of an issue. We did immigration reform with President Bush, trying to secure our border. So on September 11, 2001, if you had told people that in 2024 we would have a border that was completely broken, wide open, with terrorism on the rise, fentanyl coming in to kill hundreds of thousands of Americans every year, rabid Islamic extremists on the Terrorist Watchlist pouring through the border, nobody would have believed you. What happened? Did we learn anything from 9/11? Apparently not.

When President Trump left office in December of 2020, we had the lowest illegal crossings in 40 years. For fiscal year 2020, it was 458,000; 2021, 1.7 million; 2022, 2.4 million; 2023, 2.5 million. We are on track for fiscal year 2024 for 3.6 million. Over 9 million have come across since President Biden has been in office. He inherited the most secure border we have had in a long time.

We have been talking about what to do. In April of 2023, Secretary Mayorkas said: We need policy changes to remove individuals who do not qualify for asylum. The asylum system needs to be reformed from top to bottom--policy changes.

To Senator Lankford's credit and Senator Murphy's and others, they have been working for a very long time to come up with a border security proposal that would change asylum, and I thought they did a pretty good job, to be honest with you, but there was more to be done. The bipartisan bill was a serious effort. It had many good things but not quite everything I wanted, for sure.

So, you see, from 2020 to 2023, there has been a 300-percent increase in the encounters, and 172 people on the Terrorist Watchlist came through in fiscal year 2023, the end of September of last year.

Here is the one that just blows me away: parole. During the Trump and Obama Presidencies, parole was granted at about 5,600 per year. In fiscal year 2022, the Biden administration paroled 795,000 people; in fiscal year 2023, 802,000. We are well on our way to a million this time. Again, Presidents Obama and Trump paroled 5,623 on average per year. President Biden paroled 795,561 in fiscal year 2022 alone.

Now, what am I talking about when it comes to parole? Here is the law. The DHS Secretary, in his ``discretion,'' may parole into the United States temporarily, under such conditions as he may prescribe, only on a case-by-case basis for urgent humanitarian reasons or significant public benefit, any alien applying for admission to the United States.

Urgent humanitarian reasons. Significant public benefit. Case-by-case basis. That law has been completely obliterated.

The bipartisan bill that is trying to rein in the abuse of parole-- they did a pretty good job but not enough for me. That is why I wanted to make sure we would debate the bipartisan bill the same way we did, the Gang of 8, which I was part of. That was on the floor of the U.S. Senate for a couple weeks. You have to defend your product.

I want to put a cap on parole.

And here is what is coming: We are going to start a parole watchlist. This is a discretionary decision. You don't need to change the law; you just need to quit obliterating the law and follow it. So I am going to track every week how many people the Biden administration paroles because it is supposed to be done case by case--5,600 per year for Trump and Obama and now about 800,000 a year. Clearly these people in the Biden administration want to wave in a lot of folks. And when I hear Secretary Mayorkas say he doesn't bear any of the blame, that is offensive because when you wave in that many, word gets out that if you show up, you are going to get in.

You have an 85-percent chance, if you show up to the U.S. border, of being allowed in as of last month. As long as people believe there is an 85-percent chance of getting into the country, they will never stop coming.

The Biden administration repealed 90-something Executive orders. They canceled the ``Remain in Mexico'' policy. Anything Trump did, they changed because they didn't want to be like Trump.

Well, you have accomplished that goal. You are not like President Trump when it comes to securing our border, and I think that is one of the reasons President Biden is going to lose.

The bottom line is you have a pretty secure border. You tore up all the infrastructure President Trump put in place, and you want to blame him. Give me a break.

You are taking parole and abusing the law, and when an 85-percent chance of getting in the country continues, you are never going to stop the flow. So don't tell me, Secretary Mayorkas, that your policies had nothing to do with this tsunami--I dare say, invasion--of America.

And it is just not people. It is drugs. In 2021, there were 71,238 people who died from a fentanyl overdose. We have seized enough fentanyl coming through the southern border to kill 2\1/2\ billion people. Most of it is coming through China. It comes through the southern border. It is literally an attack on America, and we are not doing much to respond. There was a provision in the bipartisan bill that addressed the fentanyl problem. It was pretty good but not enough--again, enough fentanyl to kill everybody in America and 2,700 pounds were seized in one fiscal year alone. In one fiscal year, there was enough to kill everybody in America. How could that happen after 9/ 11?

After 9/11, we created a Terrorist Watchlist. I wish we had had one before 9/11. Now, after 9/11, one of the things we wanted to do was to kind of watch people we thought were going to be terrorists or associated with terrorists. Here is what has happened: In 2017, we found two. In 2018, we found six. In 2019, zero. In 2020, three. In 2021, 15, when we withdraw from Afghanistan. In 2022, Russia invades Ukraine, 98. In 2023, Hamas attacks Israel, 172. There have been 50 already since September. All of these people are probably up to no good.

CNN, not FOX, in 2023: ``Smuggler with ties to ISIS helped migrants enter U.S. from Mexico, raising alarm bells across government.''

After we pulled out of Iraq in 2011 and the JV team became ISIS and destroyed thousands of people's lives--destroyed the Yazidis people and created attacks on our homeland--they are still in business smuggling people into our country. How could that happen after 9/11? How could that happen after 2011? Well, it is.

This is a San Diego field office warning: Hamas, Islamic Jihad, and Hezbollah are coming across in this area--fighting-aged males associated with these jihadist groups. How could that happen in October of 2023?

On December 5, 2023--just a couple of months ago--this is the FBI Director's testimony before our committee in responding to a question I asked:

While there may have been times over the years where

individual threats could have been higher here or there than

where they might be right now, I have never seen a time where

all the threats or so many of the threats are elevated all at

exactly the same time.

So we take a border security proposal. I appreciate the people who worked on it. You did some good things. We had one cloture vote, and

they pulled the plug. The fix was in on both sides here. We didn't really have a serious debate to fix the broken border.

The elevated threat strain is real. We don't want an October 7-type attack coming against America like it did Israel. We don't want another 9/11. We have our military spending below inflation. We have a border that is completely broken. We are being poisoned by fentanyl coming in from China. Hamas has killed more Jews since the Holocaust. The Taliban is now in charge of Afghanistan, and the Iranians, through their proxies, are trying to kill Americans and have killed Americans to drive us out of the Middle East. Other than that, we are in good shape.

How does this happen? What are we thinking as a nation? With my good friend John McCain, we were wrong some. We probably had too many troops for too long. I have, by no means, been perfect, but I think I and many others have been more right than wrong. So we have to ask ourselves as a country: How could it be that we find ourselves in this national security nightmare, and isn't it time to make corrections? I will talk about that in a minute. But the hits, they keep on coming.

``60 Minutes'' did a program. If you would watch it, it would really make you mad. There is a hole in the fence near San Diego that people just literally walk through. The Biden administration decided not to plug the hole. It got on ``60 Minutes,'' and I think Mexico has plugged the hole.

The number of migrants arriving at the southern border is

unprecedented . . . So what is the fastest growing group

among them? Chinese migrants . . . We saw large groups,

including many from the middle class, come through a 4-foot

gap at the end of a border fence 60 miles east of San Diego.

That is according to ``60 Minutes'' a couple of weeks ago.

How is this happening, and why are we letting it continue?

In December, there were 302,034 border encounters. This is the most of any month on record--ever. So when Secretary Mayorkas says they bear no responsibility, I respectfully disagree.

The problem you have, Mr. Secretary, is that you have abused parole, as 85 percent of the people who show up get in. You have waved in over 2\1/2\ billion people when Obama and Trump had 5,600 on average. You have created the magnet. You have made people believe that, if they get here, they are going to come and stay. You really don't deport anybody. You have been as weak as water when it comes to securing our border.

You want to blame Congress. I will be the first to say, Congress should do better. I had been working on comprehensive immigration reform with Senator Kennedy, I think, during the first Bush term in 2006, I believe it was--maybe it was the second term--and on the Gang of 8 bill in 2013. I had been working on it, trying. It is just hard. I understand, but we can't stop trying. The problem we have today is that the policy choices of the Biden administration have obliterated border. You could bring about control of the border far better than we have today if you would just re-implement policies that were working and just get over the fact that Trump did it and actually put the American people first.

As to the product that was produced by the bipartisan working group, thank you very much for your hard work. I know it is not easy.

Senator Lankford, on our side, is one of the smartest people I know and is one of the most honorable people I know.

I think you produced a good product on asylum and good stuff on parole. There are some things that needed to be changed. As to the ``break glass'' 5,000--when you can shut down the border when you have 5,000 a day--it probably should have been 1,000. There are a bunch of things. There needs to be a cap on parole to make sure it is not abused in the future.

There are a bunch of things we could have done to make the bill better. The reason I am going to vote no to this package is because I have been telling people for months now that I want to help Ukraine; I want to help Israel; I want to help Taiwan; but we have got to help ourselves first. The effort to help ourselves, I thought, was halfhearted and not consistent with what we have done in the past to try to pass an immigration bill. I thought the fix was in. So the border part we did in one day. We are jumping now to the supplemental dealing with aid to our allies.

I am going to stick with what I have been saying: I have been to Israel and Saudi Arabia, I think, four times in the last 8 weeks. I love our friends in Israel. We have got $10 billion in there for them. We have got money that is needed to help Ukraine keep the fight going. We have money to harden Taiwan. It all makes perfect sense to me, but we can't do that until we secure our own border.

So I am going to vote no, being consistent with what I have been saying, and I am not going to Munich. It is the first time, other than being in cycle or sick, that I miss Munich. We have Codel McCain where we honor John McCain--Senator Whitehouse and myself. He came up to me-- you know, Sheldon Whitehouse is a wonderful man--saying he may not go to Munich if we don't do something on Ukraine.

I said: Well, I can withstand the wrath of the Europeans, but I can't withstand going home and telling the American people--South Carolinians, particularly--that we have done a good job on their behalf, and we have not. So I will not be going to Munich. I will be going to our border.

While you are over in Munich, talking to our friends and our allies, I will be at the border. You can tell our friends and allies that I want to help them, but we have a national security nightmare in our own backyard, and I intend to do all I can to get a better outcome. I meant it then, and I mean it now.

Finally, here is what the FBI Director said:

Post October 7, the attack by Hamas against Israel, you see

a veritable rogues' gallery of terrorist organizations

calling for attacks against us, [the United States].

They want to attack us as payback for helping Israel. So every problem we had before October 7 is now worse, and they want to come after us because we dare to help our friends in Israel. The threat level has gone to a whole other level since October 7.

This is the FBI Director, just a few weeks ago, telling us that the October 7 attack, orchestrated by Hamas against Israel, has made us more vulnerable to attack, and people want to come pay us back because we helped Israel.

I will sort of end where I began.

``Zero Dark Thirty'' was a story about the invasion of Afghanistan after 9/11, but the folklore now is that there were blinking lights everywhere before the attack on September 11 and that we sort of missed it.

So I asked the FBI Director that question:

Do you see blinking lights against American national

security interests? Do you see blinking lights that you

equate with a threat to our homeland being attacked?

I see blinking lights everywhere I turn.

So, folks, after 9/11, in 2024, the world is on fire. We need to help our friends. They have many problems. Israel has got its back against the wall. We need to help them with military aid. I intend to do that and will do that. Russia invaded Ukraine after we withdrew from Afghanistan. Americans are being killed by Iranian proxies. I am not only willing to help our allies, I am going to insist that when we get back to appropriating--if we ever do--we get rid of this stupid budget deal that has the spending below inflation. That is just insane given the state of the world.

To the House, you have been insisting on border security as part of any package to help other countries. I get it. I get it. I get it. You are right to do that, but stop sending H.R. 2. You aren't solving the problem by passing a bill that can't go anywhere. H.R. 2, no matter how much you like it--I particularly, actually, do like it--didn't pick up one Democratic vote in the House, and you lost two Republicans. We have put it on the floor of the Senate. We lost one Republican and didn't pick up one Democrat. It is not going to become a law. So it doesn't matter if it can't be enacted. I want to secure our border, but with H.R. 2, the votes are not here for it.

To my House colleagues, if you can't pick up one Democrat, how are we supposed to pick up 11? And, when we voted on H.R. 2, we lost one Republican. So I would advise you to find some alternative to H.R. 2 that would really help. There are a bunch of them.

Marsha Blackburn has, like, 12 ideas, and I have got three. Let's try to find some border security measures, and let's do this.

There are some people rightly upset that we are giving nonlethal aid to Ukraine after all this money. Why don't we just focus on the weapons and let our European allies help them financially? I don't mind helping them financially some, but our friends in the House probably are going to take a different view.

I talked to President Trump today, and he is dead set against this package. He thinks that we should make packages like this a loan, not a gift. It is what we did with Lend-Lease for the British.

In 2003, I had an amendment with Senators Collins, Kay Bailey Hutchison, and a couple others to make the reconstruction of Iraq--of Iraq--in 2003, a loan, not a grant. Pay us back when you can. Get back on your feet, get your oil industry up and running, and try to pay us back, within reason, as much as you can. That was defeated by a single vote.

Here is where I think the American people are at: very much supportive of Israel; very much understanding, I think, of the consequences of failure in Ukraine.

There is an element in my caucus that wants to pull the plug on Ukraine. These are pretty much many of the same people who wanted to pull the plug on Afghanistan.

My friend, Rand Paul--I don't know where his statement is--but he has been consistent. You have got to give him that. He wanted to pull out of everywhere. He still does. I would just tell him: You may be tired of fighting a radical Islam; they are not tired of fighting. You may want to become fortress America, but it won't work. Senator Paul, our border is our last line of defense, not our first line of defense. So when you pull out of Afghanistan, after the passage of time, and expect it all to turn out well, you miss what happened in 2011 in Iraq.

The reason I keep saying this is that wanting a war to be over is not enough. The other side has to want it to be over too.

Here is where we find ourselves in 2024: Radical Islam is getting stronger as I speak. They are back in charge of Afghanistan.

Here is what I have come to learn since September 11, 2001, to this very minute: The enemy we are facing are religious fanatics.

Hitler wanted to kill all the Jews and create a master race. He wrote a book, and nobody believed him. They should have.

These people are on a mission to purify Islam, to destroy the State of Israel, and come after us. You can want them to stop. They will not stop unless you make them.

Here is what I would suggest to this body and the American people: All this time has passed, but the enemy is still there.

Here is the good news: There are plenty of people over there who don't want what these guys are selling, and they are willing to fight with us. Be their partner.

It breaks my heart to pull the plug on all the people who stepped forward in Afghanistan. Only God knows what kind of life they are leading right now.

If you show weakness in one place, it hurts you everywhere else. Putin chose to invade in 2022, I think, because he saw us weak in 2021.

As to what we should do next, we should never count on a foreign country to protect American shores. We are going to need some level of troop presence--it doesn't have to be 100,000, by any means--working with populations over there fighting radical Islam so they won't hit us here. If you haven't learned that by now, you have missed a lot. How many more times do we have to do the same thing to realize it is not working?

My fear is that the mistakes we have made have caught up to us big time. And when you take a broken border and put it into the mix of what has been going on for the last 23 years with a radical Islam, it is a lethal cocktail to make 9/11 occur again on steroids.

As I speak this evening, Israel is in a fight for its literal life. The Ayatollah is engaging America and other allies through proxies, trying to drive us out of the Mideast. If you think the Ayatollah wants a peaceful nuclear program, you should not be allowed to drive. He wants a bomb. And if he ever got the bomb, he would use it.

The first thing you have got to understand is who is on the other side of the table. The ``Rocket Man'' in North Korea, he has got nuclear weapons. I think he is a mafia state. I don't want him to have any more, but I don't believe he is going to wake up one day and attack us if we are strong.

China wants to dominate the world in a kind of nonlethal way, a combination of force and cheating behavior in the economy. So we have got to deal with China.

Russia wants to reconstruct the old Russian Empire, the old Soviet Union. And if you let Putin get away with it in Ukraine, he ain't going to stop, and you are going to have a war with NATO. That is why I want to help Ukraine.

But having said all of that, for me to be able to convince people in South Carolina to continue to support conflicts overseas, I have to prove to them that I get it when they tell me: What about our own country?

So I am not going to Munich. I am going to the southern border. I am not going to vote for this aid package because I think this body did not seriously entertain trying to strengthen our border.

The bill is going nowhere in the House. I am going to try to convince some of my colleagues in the House: Listen to President Trump. Make some of this a loan. It is called the Trump rule, I think. We are willing to help you, but pay us back if you can. I think most Americans would appreciate that change of attitude. Put together something on the new package that is more lethal--lethal aid--minus humanitarian aid, with a loan, not a grant, and some reasonable border security provisions.

I think we can do two things. I think we can help our friends, and I think we can help ourselves. It will be a more sustainable position for political leaders to take when the American people understand that others, if they can pay you back, they should.

I really believe in helping my neighbor when the barn burns down, but if they can pay me back down the road, great.

The bottom line: I thought about this for days. I have been one of the leading voices on our side: You can't pull the plug on Ukraine; we have got to help Israel.

I am always in a tug-of-war with President Trump. He did not pull all of our forces out in Afghanistan, I appreciate that. ``America First,'' to me, works. Isolationism doesn't.

I know this bill is going nowhere in the House.

To my House colleagues: I am voting no against aid that I believe is very much needed--and I have been an advocate for it--to let you know I am listening to you. I am letting my colleagues in my conference know it is time to sort of have other people do more if they can. I am with you. Let's make it a loan, not a grant. Let's make it more lethal. Let's do something on the border that will actually pass. Then we can end this debacle in a pretty good spot.

I will close with this. In a few minutes, the Super Bowl is going to kick off. I, like most everybody--most people in the country--am going to watch the ball game. I have been to Iraq and Afghanistan more times than I can count--52 is the last time, but more since--usually with Senator McCain. I have seen the wars go up and go down. I have seen surges. I have seen mistakes. I have made my own fair share of mistakes. But I cannot tell you how worried I am as an American right now that we have lost our vision when it comes to defending America.

In 2024, my friend, we have the most porous border I have known since I have been in public service. Fentanyl is coming over killing thousands of Americans. Nine million people have come across. The numbers on the Terrorist Watchlist grow daily.

Hamas has generated a jihad. Our help of Israel is going to make an attack on America more likely, with jihadists to pay us back.

Putin, if he gets away with it, will set in motion the invasion of Taiwan by the Chinese.

So why don't we do this? Why don't we find a way to help our friends in Ukraine that will be politically more sustainable? Why don't we build a bigger Navy so China will be less likely to

invade Taiwan? Why don't we stick with our friends in Israel as long as it takes and quit trying to tell them what is the proper response after this carnage?

I do want Israel to try to lessen civilian casualties. But to our friends in Israel: I know why this is so hard. Hamas makes it that way.

We have got a chance here in the next 30 days or less to come up with a solution to our border and help our allies in a way that the American people will be more supportive of. I think it is now time for us, as a nation, to look to others in the world and say: Do more where you can.

To our friends in NATO: Trump is right; you should pay more.

To our friends in Ukraine: We want to be there for you, but we are $34 trillion in debt. Let's make it a loan. Pay us back when you can, if you can, and come up with a sustainable way of doing business, given a nation so in debt.

And before we do any of that, convince the American people we have the ability and the desire to protect our own backyard.

``America First,'' to me, means that America leads from the front, not from behind; that America shapes history. It is not overwhelmed by it. But America has to insist on others doing their part.

I would say this. There is more others could do, and they should. Europe has been pretty good, quite frankly, on Ukraine. There is more others could do, and they should.

We should go back to trying to secure our border. The House has sent a bill that had no chance of passing. The Senate took up a bipartisan bill in a way that could really not be debated. So both bodies, for different reasons, have got us in a spot where we are not going to do anything meaningful on the border. So I won't be going to Munich; I will be going to the border.

To the people in Munich who wonder why I am going to the border: If you want me to help you, I have got to convince people back home I have helped them.

And I ain't going back to Munich any time soon until we fix our own border.

I will gladly vote yes on this package when it is rearranged.

The House will take up this bill that will pass, and it is going to get stuck. So I am going to try to unstick it, if I can. I am going to urge the House to listen to the Trump rule. See if we can pay for some of this--not pay for it, make it a loan; pay for it if you can--and get this right before it is too late.

All these years after 9/11, I am absolutely dumbfounded, as a nation, how we could be where we are today, and I am going to do my part to try to fix it--a stronger military budget, not a weaker one; fix the border; help others, but insist they help themselves.

With that, I yield the floor.

I suggest the absence of a quorum.

Mr. President, we heard you loud and clear.

Is it my turn? I am not jumping ahead of anybody.

Thank you. So let's have an overview of where we are at here. Everything my colleagues on the Democratic side said about helping Ukraine makes perfect sense to me. I think we need to help Ukraine.

I thought it was a really bad idea to get out of Iraq in 2011, and I issued a statement about our withdrawal in 2011. I said:

I respectfully disagree with President Obama. I feel all we

have worked for, fought for, sacrificed for is very much in

jeopardy by today's announcement. I hope I am wrong and the

President is right, but I fear this decision has set in

motion events that will come back to haunt our country.

The ISIS was not the JV team. A lot of people were slaughtered throughout the planet because of that ill-advised decision.

So we got out of Afghanistan. President Biden chose to do that. I have a statement here I will put in the record. I was very clear that if we get out of Afghanistan, pull all the troops, that there will be a reemergence of al-Qaida and ISIS and there will be a great major upheaval, as this decision by President Biden is a disaster in the making.

So a lot of Republicans agree with those two things. To my Republican colleagues, if we pull the plug on Ukraine, it is going to be worse than Afghanistan. The idea of pulling the plug on Ukraine and it will not affect our national security is a fantasy.

It was clear to me that getting out of Iraq in 2011 was too soon and would lead to the rise of radical Islamic terrorists. They literally took over half the country, killed people in Paris and here and everywhere else.

Now we are back in Iraq. We should never have got out in the first place. The bottom line about Afghanistan--I know it was a long slog and people

wanted out, but the Taliban took over within weeks. And the Taliban being in charge of Afghanistan led to other people in the world thinking, hey, America is weak, now is the time to pounce.

So in 2021, we withdraw from Afghanistan. The Taliban take over. In 2022, Russia invades Ukraine. That has been a complete disaster. In 2023, Hamas attacks Israel, killing more Jewish people than at any time since the holocaust. In 2024, Iranian proxies are killing American soldiers and they are running wild throughout the world. Other than that, everything is pretty good.

Now having said all that, my point is, I want to help Ukraine, Israel, and Taiwan. I really do. I think it is in our national security interests to do all of the above. But I have also said from, like, day one: I want to help other countries, but we got to help our country first.

Now what do I mean by that? I mean that the border is not just broken, it is a complete nightmare. It is a national security disaster in the making; 7 million people have come across the border illegally-- a lot of people on the Terrorist Watchlist. So it has been a nightmare. And we tried to sit down in a bipartisan way--Senators Murphy, Sinema, Lankford, and others sat down to come up with a bipartisan proposal that I thought did a pretty good job in many ways. However, having said that, I didn't think it was enough.

I was hoping that they would build on what they did. But here's where we are at: The House declared it insufficient.

The Republican--

Yes.

I will be glad to. I voted no because I didn't see a process in place or willingness by my Democratic colleagues to allow me to express how I think it could be better.

See, at the end of the day--you weren't here, but Senator McCain was--we worked really hard--Senator Bennet has been involved in all this stuff in 2013--and we let the bill come to the floor, people amend it, and we spent days and weeks. So that is why I voted no.

So here is what I am saying. This has been a half-ass effort to deal with border security. To the people in the House--

No, I am speaking. You will speak later.

To the people in the House, we have not really tried hard to secure the border.

We took a well-meaning product. People worked really hard. I applaud you and others for coming out with a product that I thought had a lot of good things in it, but not enough for me.

So now I can't even vote. We have closed out the border debate, and you may give me a few amendments on Ukraine about the border. That is not the way it works around here.

No.

To my House colleagues: You can do better than this. Don't send us back H.R. 2. It is not going anywhere. You couldn't get all Republicans for H.R. 2. We lost one Republican and no Democrats.

So this idea we have done enough on the border is BS.

I am not done. I am not going to help Ukraine until we first do a better job helping ourselves. I have given people involved credit for working hard to get a product. But the system in place now--take it or leave it.

The reason I voted no is because I didn't see any willingness by anybody to allow an amendment process where we could deal with the border issue.

I'm giving an amendment on the Ukraine bill about the border.

No. That is ass-backwards. We don't do it that way.

During the Gang of 8 and other attempts, we had a robust amendment process. And let me tell you, I think there are things we can do to make it better.

They want the 5,000-a-day encounter that kicks in an emergency authority to shut down the border. Here is what the border council said: 5,000 encounters a day is a catastrophe; 1,000 encounters a day would be a substantial improvement. It is truly an emergency. I was hoping we could talk about that.

Now, we may get a vote on that on the Ukraine bill. We have closed out a debate on the border.

Yes.

Yes.

I will be glad to. Yes, because I think the fix is in.

I think people on our side and your side wanted to do the border thing as quick as they could so we could get to Ukraine. And I don't trust the system here to be able to allow us to have the debate that we had for the Gang of 8 bill. That is why I voted no, because I didn't see any willingness in--and it proved to be correct--because now the Republican leadership has joined with the Democratic leadership to shut down debate on the border bill, throwing a few amendments on the Ukraine bill and saying: Aren't you happy now?

No, I am not happy. I am not happy. I admit it that I wanted to secure the border before I help Ukraine. Everything you say about Ukraine is right.

I was not kidding, to our colleagues in the House. We have done a half-ass job here trying to secure the border.

We shut this thing down unlike any other time I have been involved in immigration. I have taken a lot of hard votes. You have taken a lot of hard--you know, you have been kicked around. I understand it. Senator Lankford, I admire the hell out of him.

I thought you all produced a pretty good product--a really good product in some areas. But it wasn't enough.

I want a cap on parole. Let me tell you why I want a cap on parole. During the Trump-Obama years, the average people paroled in the country was 5,600. In the last 2 years, President Biden has paroled over 800,000 people. So the parole was better, but we need a cap to stop the abuse. I would like to have an amendment on whether or not we should cap parole at 10,000 per year, but I am getting that on the Ukraine bill.

So, to my colleague from Arizona, no, no, no. This has not been a real effort to find border security in a bipartisan way. We took your product. Take it or leave it. The reason I voted no to proceed has exactly been reaffirmed here. We stopped the process. We are jumping to Ukraine. We are going to do it this weekend, and it is going nowhere in the House.

To those of you who want to help Ukraine, you have made it harder. We are going to lose a handful of Republican votes over here because they felt they were shut out in the debate about how to secure the border.

We are going to lose votes--

No, please.

We are going to lose votes over here. You don't have a snowball's chance in hell of getting it through the House, because we took the border issue, and we didn't address it the way it should have been. We closed it out. I could see

the game being fixed. I am here as a proud supporter of Ukraine, telling you that you have hurt the cause of Ukraine by trying to shortchange a debate on the border. Your product was good, but I want to make it better.

I have got a National Border Patrol Council letter about three things that would make it better.

I ask unanimous consent that it be printed in the Record.

Mr. President, I am going to close this thing out. Here is what is going to happen. You may get this bill passed without any border, but it is going nowhere in the House. The House has made it crystal clear: To get money for Ukraine and other foreign countries, we have got to help our own. Our border is on fire.

I will give you credit, the Senator from Arizona. You have been trying to fix it. I appreciate what you have tried to do, but the system we have employed--to my colleague from Arizona--is unlike any I have ever seen, in that we are going to take a consequential moment in American history of trying to secure a broken border and not even bring it to the floor for a real debate.

The reason I voted no to proceed is because I saw what was happening. Our people on this side have been obsessed with Ukraine to the point of ignoring our border. There are people who are going to vote no to Ukraine who have always believed that the border was an excuse to try to get Ukraine. I never believed that.

So the bottom line is this idea that, because 41 of us vote no, you close out the border. How about sitting down, reopening the border debate, and having a robust debate like we did with the Gang of 8? The reason I voted no is I could see where this thing was going. The bill you produced, while I liked parts of it, was dead in the House. I am trying to find a way to make it better, if that is possible.

As to President Trump, who said he just doesn't want to deal with this until next year, I want to deal with it now. We could be attacked tomorrow. I want to let the people in South Carolina know I consider this a direct threat to the United States. I want to do something. I want to do it now. I don't want to wait until November.

Sure.

Are you aware of the fact that people routinely vote not to proceed until they get some kind of understanding of what is coming next? And here is what came next: Not one effort to sit down and talk to the 41 of us: What would you like to change your vote?

The fix is in. We jump right into Ukraine. We are going to do it this weekend. We did the minimum on the border when it comes to changing a bill that has many good qualities. So you are not convincing me that I am the problem. I have seen this. You have not. I have seen a debate on this floor with Senator Bennet where we got the crap kicked out of us for weeks. We gave everybody who didn't like what we did a chance to come down here and say their side of the story and kick us in the ass. That is the way the process works. We did not do that here. So you are losing votes on Ukraine. You are losing me in terms of trying to fix this problem. I can't tell our House colleagues that you should accept this product, because we have not done what I think needs to be done to try to secure our border. That is why I am voting no.

With that, I yield the floor.

Oh, wait a minute. Can I take that back? I have got to say something to my friend, if I may, just for a minute.

This is the Polish Prime Minister. I like Poland. It has been a great ally and a good NATO ally.

Dear Republican Senators of America, Ronald Reagan, who

helped millions of us to win back our freedom and

independence, must be turning in his grave today. Shame on

you.

To the Prime Minister of Poland, I could care less what you think. To the Prime Minister of Poland, if Ronald Reagan were alive today, we wouldn't have this broken border. To the Prime Minister of Poland, I want to help Ukraine. I want to help make a stronger NATO, but my country is on fire. We have had 7 million people come across a broken border.

How would you feel if 7 million people came in illegally into Poland? Would you have this attitude that we have got to put Ukraine ahead of Poland?

I am not going to put Ukraine, Israel, or anybody else ahead of America. I am going to try to create an outcome where the bill gets through the House. It has got to get through the House.

And, to our House colleagues, we have not done everything that we could. We have let you down.

Now I yield the floor.

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

Mr. President, I want to speak a few minutes on the business before the Senate here. Apparently, S. Res. 504 will be taken up in about an hour or so. And this resolution basically requires the Secretary of State to submit a report to the Foreign Relations Committees of the House and Senate regarding human rights practices and violations against the State of Israel regarding their operations in Gaza.

I can only imagine how this is playing in the Middle East. I can only imagine the joy that terrorist groups throughout the world have that we are even talking about such a proposal.

The question, I think, for this body--certainly, for me--is, what was October 7? Was it just a continuation of a tit for tat between Israel and Hamas, or was it an effort by Hamas--a terrorist organization under United States law--an effort to kill innocent civilians in Israel at a rate we haven't seen since the Holocaust?

I just got back. I would urge everybody in the body to go over there and take some time to visit the kibbutz--the kibbutzes in question, where Hamas came en masse, took over kibbutzes, cut the heads of children off, slaughtered people in front of their parents and their children, committed atrocities on par with the Nazis, if not beyond, and recorded them for posterity. So the response is, the U.S. Senate is going to ask for a report about how Israel is conducting military operations. Wow.

Again, to the terrorists who are emboldened, maybe, by this discussion--this is going to go down in flames. The Senate is going to reject this big time. And here's why: I think most people--at least on my side--see October 7 as Pearl Harbor on steroids.

What would happen after Pearl Harbor if some Senator or Congressman did something like this to America?

Did anybody in America believe that the response after Pearl Harbor was anything but total war?

The Japanese Empire and Nazi Germany were in league with Mussolini in Italy to destroy the world as we know it. A surprise attack against our forces on Pearl Harbor on December 7, 1941, awakened this country, and we embarked on ``a noble crusade,'' I think as General Eisenhower-- eventually President Eisenhower--described, in destroying the Nazi regime and Imperial Japan. Nobody during those times would have suggested anything like this, because the only way you could

destroy those regimes was to destroy the infrastructure around the regimes.

The problem I have with this--not only does it empower the terrorists, it is the most tone-deaf thing maybe in the history of the Senate--is that it ignores the fact that Hamas has tunnels under hospitals, under schools. They use civilians as human shields. They routinely violate the law of war--and there is nothing in here about that. So all I can say is that the Senate will reject this idea.

And to the left, what are you thinking? To the people who go in and try to interrupt cancer treatments in New York at a cancer hospital, what are you thinking?

A ceasefire with Hamas only allows Hamas to regroup. Do you not see Hamas for who it is? It is a terrorist organization. They are religious Nazis.

They are not taking up the cause of the Palestinian people. They are abusing the Palestinian people probably greater than anybody. A Hamas spokesperson said a few weeks ago that there will be another October 7, another October 7, and another October 7.

Probably the biggest mistake Israel made was withdrawing from Gaza, because when they did, the Palestinians took over.

To the Palestinians who want to live in peace with Israel, Hamas throws them off the roofs of buildings in Gaza.

So we are dealing with the most barbaric organizations in the history of the world who are bent on destroying the Jewish people, are calling for attacks on the United States, and we have a resolution in front of us asking the Secretary of State to investigate the Government of Israel for war crimes.

You talk about upside down and backwards.

Just having been back from Israel, I can assure you the IDF is spending more time trying to protect innocent Palestinians than Hamas. What is odd about this whole thing is that Hamas is doing everything they can to expose civilians to military action, and Israel is trying-- I think in a reasonable way--to lessen the exposure.

What do you call a group of people that build tunnels under hospitals and have command infrastructure under a hospital? You call them bloodthirsty terrorists who are trying to prey on the rules that exist in the law of war. By being under the hospital and the schoolhouse and firing rockets from apartment buildings, they have militarized these locations.

So here's what I would tell our friends in Israel: This effort to have you investigated will fail in the U.S. Senate. Keep doing what you need to do to make sure there is no more October 7s. Make sure that Hamas, as we know it, is destroyed. Do the best you can to protect civilians who are in harm's way.

A little bit about Gaza: From the time you are born, you are taught to kill the Jews. The most radicalized nation on the planet, I would say, is Gaza, and a close second would be the West Bank.

When Germany and Japan were destroyed by military force, it took a generation to change the culture. So the Prime Minister of Israel says his goal is to demilitarize and deradicalize. Well, the way you demilitarize is you destroy Hamas as a military power. They have, I think, about 24 brigades.

If we end this conflict with their military capability still standing, we will have made a huge mistake.

The idea of anything but unconditional surrender in World War II was laughable. We used two nuclear bombs, and that is what was required to get Japan to surrender. So when you look back in history, the invasion of Japan that was being planned could have resulted in up to 1 million casualties of American forces. We brought that war to conclusion by using two atomic bombs that eventually allowed unconditional surrender. Anything less than unconditional surrender in World War II would have been a mistake.

Anything short of destroying Hamas militarily would be a mistake for the ages. If Hamas is still standing militarily after this attack of October 7, we will all pay a heavy price.

The world is watching.

To the world: If you see Israel as the bad guy here, you are missing a lot. There is no moral equivalency in play. Hamas goes out of its way to make sure civilians are killed in large numbers. That is part of their strategy, to require Israel to use military force in a way to heighten the likelihood of death by integrating their military infrastructure with civilian infrastructure.

So we will have a vote here soon. This resolution will fail. But the idea behind this resolution is scary to me.

You need to go to Israel and get briefed about what happened on October 7--what happened to the women, what happened to the children, and what is happening to the hostages. If you go and have that briefing and you believe that the only response--and if you believe anything less than total war to destroy Hamas is required, I would be surprised.

What would we do if this happened to us? What would we do to any terrorist group or government that brought about such atrocities against the American people?

We would hunt them down. We would make sure they could never do this to us again. That is exactly what Israel has to do.

It will be a long time before the populations of Gaza and the West Bank are going to be capable, I believe, of living in true peace with Israel, because if you have been taught from the time you were born and all through your life to hate somebody and to learn math by the following: ``If you had 10 Jews and you killed 6, how many would you have left?'' it is going to be a tall order to change that population.

But here is the good news: We have seen from Germany and Japan that it can change, but it is going to take a lot of effort. I am willing to help the people in the West Bank and Gaza once Hamas has been destroyed. I am hopeful we can do a deal between Saudi Arabia and Israel in normalizing and effectively putting an end to the Arab- Israeli conflict.

I believe Iran is the root of all evil here and that this attack was partly due to stopping the normalization efforts between Saudi Arabia and Israel. I have been supporting the efforts of the Biden administration, and I want to publicly thank them for continuing to push. I will do all I can as a Republican to help President Biden bring about the normalization between Saudi Arabia and Israel. That would isolate Iran, and it would effectively end the Arab-Israeli conflict. One of the benefits of that deal would be to give the Palestinian people a better future.

This resolution is not only off base; it is dangerous. It is doing harm. It sends absolutely the wrong signal at the wrong time.

So, to the people who believe this is a good idea for the United States to launch an investigation of Israel as a potential war criminal after October 7, you have learned very little from history. The proper response by Israel is to destroy Hamas. The problem Israel has in that task is that Hamas is trying to make sure Israel kills as many innocent people as possible. Therein lies their dilemma. So this is a horribly bad idea.

To the American people, put yourselves in the shoes of Israel: an attack, barbaric in nature, that is designed to destroy you. Hamas's goal is not to liberate the Palestinian people; it is to kill the Jews. Hamas's goal is not to bring about a better life for the Palestinian people but to destroy the lives of the Jewish people.

They are religious Nazis. If you don't believe me, listen to them. They will not hide their agenda. They celebrate it. The SS tried to hide their war crimes. They tried to rebury bodies and destroy the concentration camps, but they were unable to hide their crimes. Hamas filmed their crimes. They want you to see what they were willing to do to babies and to women.

The question for the world is, What is the right response?

The right response, ladies and gentlemen, is, when you see evil, confront it. When you deal with people who are willing to destroy children or to rape daughters in front of the mother and father, you need to destroy them.

So, not only will this resolution fail, I believe the U.S. Senate will ensure that Israel has the latitude it needs to destroy not only an enemy of the Israeli people--Hamas--but the enemy of mankind itself.

I look forward to voting this resolution down, and I will be coming up with one of my own to try to correct the record.

With that, I yield the floor.

I suggest the absence of a quorum.

Madam President, I will just pick up where my colleague left off.

There are four parts to the supplemental appropriations sent over by President Biden. One deals with Ukraine. And count me in for Ukraine. Robust aid to Ukraine really helps us here at home. Helping Israel--no- brainer--count me in. Beefing up Taiwan makes perfect sense. There was money in the supplemental for border security, but it really didn't address the problem we have.

And here is what I want the body to understand. Here is what happened yesterday. The FBI Director testified before the Senate Judiciary Committee about the level of threats we face as a nation. And he said:

[W]hile there may have been times over the years where

individual threats could have been higher here or there than

where they might be right now, I've never seen a time where

all the threats or so many of the threats are all elevated,

all at exactly the same time.

This was yesterday.

What did he say?

Post October 7--

The horrible attack on our friends in Israel--

[Y]ou've seen a veritable rogues' gallery of terrorist

organizations calling for attacks against us.

He said that yesterday.

[T]he threat level has gone to a whole other level since

October 7.

This was what the FBI Director said yesterday. Are any of us listening?

I see blinking lights everywhere I turn.

I asked him about blinking lights regarding 9/11. Apparently, they were blinking, and we missed them.

Do you see any blinking lights?

And he said:

I see blinking lights everywhere I turn.

He said that yesterday. Now, why are Republicans, apparently, more than anybody else, insisting that the supplemental package not only help Ukraine, not only help Israel and Taiwan but actually help us? We have got to change the policy because what we have got is not working.

Yesterday--yesterday--12,000 encounters at the border. The highest ever, yesterday. Two days before, 10,000 were marching in the wrong direction.

As these numbers go to new levels and historic levels, the FBI Director yesterday told us he has never seen more threats against our homeland than he does today.

And since October 7, every terrorist group in the world is calling for an attack on America.

I asked him about the border. He is very concerned about the status of the border.

So we are on track, if this continues, to have 3.6 million illegal encounters that we know of at the border. That is like beyond unsustainable. All-time highs every day.

From 2023 to 2020, the encounters at the border are up 368 percent. Why? Because the policies of the Biden administration make people believe that if they get to our border, they stay in America and never leave. And if you don't change that, you are never going to fix the problem.

Six million people have already come to our border in the first 3 years of the Biden administration. We are on track to do 3.6 million in fiscal year `24.

The day that people think Trump is going to be the nominee and could win the White House, you are going to see a run on the border like you have never seen because people want to get the last good deal under the Biden administration. Because when Trump wins, if he does, all this is going to change.

There are two problems that have to be fixed. You make an asylum claim in America at the border; you pass the initial credible fear standard, which needs to be elevated; you are released into the country to go to your hearing regarding your asylum claim 3 to 5 years later-- that makes people believe they are released, and they will never show up. Once you are here, you are never going to leave. We have to change that.

While you are waiting for your hearing that may be 3 to 5 years away, you need to wait outside the country. That would stop a lot of the illegal immigrant flow because when people realize you can't wait in America, you are home free once you make your asylum claim, they will be less likely to pay $10,000 or more to wait in Mexico or some other country for 4 or 5 years.

The second thing is that this administration is abusing the law. The Secretary of DHS has the ability on a case-by-case basis to allow urgent humanitarian parole for urgent humanitarian reasons or significant public benefit. This is meant to be an individual case-by- case analysis. They are using this concept--the Biden administration-- to have blanket humanitarian parole for 240,000 people from four different countries. That is an abuse of the law. This law is being used to just flow people through, and that needs to change.

So if you put a cap on how many people could come into the country through humanitarian parole, getting back to the original intent of the law, and you told people if you apply for asylum, you have to wait outside the country before your hearing is held, then you will have a dramatic reduction in illegal immigration. I know that works. That doesn't fix a broken immigration system, but it does give us control over an out-of-control border at a time of elevated threats.

To my Democratic colleagues, I have been negotiating with you for 20 years on how to fix an immigration system that is broken. You need more legal immigration. You need border security. You have to have a pathway to citizenship for those who are deserving. I get all that. This is not all about an immigration reform negotiation; this is about securing the border at a time of heightened threat to our country.

One hundred seventy-two people on the Terrorist Watchlist we know of have been caught. Only God knows how many we missed. This run on the border is locking the Border Patrol down just processing people, fentanyl poisoning of Americans is at an alltime high, 100,000 people have died because fentanyl is coming through a broken border. So to my Democratic colleagues, this is not about immigration; it is about national security. There are ways to fix this problem if you choose to do it. I want to help Ukraine. I want to help Taiwan. I want to help Israel. But we have got to help ourselves.

There will never be a bill I will vote for to help other countries that are very deserving until we control our own border that is completely broken. You need to understand that, and the public is with us. Most Americans would like to have their border more controlled, not less, and what you are doing is not working.

I yield the floor.

I suggest the absence of a quorum.

Madam President, I just want to pick up where Senator Cornyn left off. He has been a great person to try to work with to find a solution to our immigration problems.

But what we are dealing with on the Senate floor is not an immigration issue.

To my Democratic colleagues: I have worked with many of you on solutions to immigration, comprehensive immigration reform.

We are now having to deal with a broken border from a national security lens--172 encounters that we know of, of people on the Terrorist Watchlist. In fiscal year 2021, it was 15. So it is going through the roof.

So we have to get control of our border for our own national security sake. Terrorism is on the rise. The world is on fire. Now is not the time to have a broken border.

The numbers are really astounding. In September, we had the highest encounters at the border in recorded history. In December of 2020, we had the lowest in decades. In fiscal year 2023, which ended September 30, 2.5 million people. Since President Biden has been in office, 6 million people. That is larger than the State of South Carolina.

So one of two things is going on regarding the border. The Biden administration wants it to be this way for some reason or they are incompetent. If they are incompetent, they need to listen to people who have actually tried to secure the border successfully and work with us to get it done. If they want it to be this way, it is going to end if you want money for other countries.

I have been involved in about every game there is on immigration reform, but I am here to tell my Democratic colleagues: I am not going back to South Carolina and say I provided money for Ukraine and Israel, which I desperately support, unless we fix in a real way the problems at our border. That is unsustainable for me.

The Speaker of the House was just addressing the Republican Senate. I think he understands the need for Ukraine funding, but he says border security has to be real for the House Republicans to be able to do what they need to do.

To my Democratic colleagues: You are fighting us in a way that makes no sense to me. I understand why we should send money to Ukraine. You had me at hello. I understand why we need to help our friends in Israel. I don't understand why you fight the changes that would bring back order out of chaos.

Is that the position of the Democratic Party, that the policies that led to this overwhelming surge in illegal immigration are not subject to change?

We are not going to vote for legislation that doesn't stop what is on this chart, period. Look at the line. Fiscal year 2020, 458,000 encounters; fiscal year 2023, 2.5 million. It has to stop.

Look at the asylum system that is being completely gamed. It has become a joke. It needs to stop.

Parole. We have had some major efforts to reform asylum. Senator Lankford is doing a good job.

To my good friend Senator Bennet, I want money for Ukraine. I support Ukraine funding. I think a lot of Republicans do. But we have to have real reform on the border. And your statement that Ukrainian aid should be separate and apart from the border is not going to happen.

Parole is meant to be a case-by-case analysis based on two things: There is an urgent humanitarian reason for the person to come in under parole or a significant public benefit--any alien applying for admission to the United States. That is the law that is being abused.

Past administrations granted parole in a handful of cases. There had to be an urgent humanitarian reason or the individual in question had to provide a significant public benefit. The Biden administration is using the parole statute to allow people in by the hundreds of thousands without any individual analysis, in my view.

So all I am asking to do is follow the law. Quit using the parole statute to allow hundreds of thousands of people in, in violation of the law. If we went back to what the law says, most of this would stop.

Secretary Mayorkas, here is what he said to Senator Lankford:

We need . . . the ability to remove individuals who [do]

not qualify [for asylum] . . . with efficiency and speed.

Why are so many people coming? Word is out that if you get into America, you ask for asylum, you never leave. We release you into the interior of the country, years pass before your asylum claim is heard, and you are here in America, and you never leave.

We have to change the asylum laws so that you actually have to apply to the first safe third country you pass through, not just here in America. And we should not release you until your claim has at least been adjudicated at the initial stages. And 90 percent of the asylum claims are eventually denied; so, clearly, the screening system needs to change.

So long story short, we are not going to pass a supplemental that doesn't have policy changes to dramatically stem the flow at the border. This is not an immigration negotiation. There is not going to be a DREAM Act provision attached to this. This is about locking the border down in a fashion to give the public confidence that as a nation, we have the ability to secure our own border.

To all of my friends on the other side--and on this side--who have negotiated immigration reform in the past, President Biden's irresponsible handling of the U.S.-Mexican border has made it virtually impossible to do an immigration deal any time soon. No Republican in their right mind would vote for a comprehensive immigration bill until the Democratic Party can prove that they are capable of securing the border.

Everything we worked for all these years has been lost. Your approach to the border during the last 3 years has made it impossible to do immigration reform until we first secure the border, not as part of an overall effort to deal with immigration, but you need to prove to us and the people of the United States you can and will secure our border. Until you do that, no deal.

How this ends, I don't know. I just know this: I am OK with aid to Ukraine. I am more than OK with aid to Israel. I am insisting on border security that is meaningful. I am not asking for H.R. 2. I am not asking for everything I would do to secure the border if I were King of the country. But I have been around this issue enough to know what works and what doesn't. The policy changes we are insisting upon regarding asylum and parole need to be implemented to regain control of our border. And that is not too much to ask.

I look forward to working with our colleagues on the other side--and you--to find a way to help Israel, who are in dire straits, find a way to keep Putin from going past Ukraine, bring some sanity back to the world. But you are

going to have to work with us. And we are not looking for half measures. We are smart enough on our side to know what works. And I am not into doing a deal that doesn't work.

With that, I yield the floor.

Thank you very much, and thank you for your service and to everybody that served.

Next week is Thanksgiving. We are all going to go home here in a little bit and enjoy our families. God willing, we make it home safe. I mean that for everybody--Coach, everybody. There are a lot of people who won't be with their families next week because they are in some place doing things that are very difficult, risking their lives. This is where I am here tonight.

How do you right wrongs? You don't create another wrong. I want to right the wrong of having abortion paid for by public taxpayer dollars from the defense coffers that I think not only violates the Hyde amendments, it is just bad policy.

Count me in, Coach. I am with you on that, Mike. I am with you on that. You say it is illegal. I tend to agree with you. Go to court.

One way you right a wrong in America if you think the law is broken, you actually bring a lawsuit. I think we found a way--talking to Jay Sekulow--to bring a lawsuit challenging the Defense policy of President Biden using taxpayer dollars to pay for transportation costs from DOD funds to perform abortions. I think that is in violation of the Hyde amendment. The good news is I believe the Speaker of the House has standing to bring the lawsuit.

Generally speaking, in America, when you get in a legal dispute, you go to court. The DOD general counsel has a memo that it doesn't violate the Hyde amendment. I think they are wrong, but we are not a court of law here. There is a court of law available to resolve this dispute, and I would encourage us to seek that remedy.

Another remedy is to try to find a compromise between the House version and the Senate version of the NDAA. The House strips the policy; the Senate--because they are controlled by Democrats--we have the policy, and we will try to work out some way to reconcile that through the legislative process. That is one way to fix this problem.

What we have chosen to do--and every Senator has a lot of power. That is what makes the Senate different than the House. I have served in both bodies. With power comes responsibility. The wrong we are creating here is to put our military at risk at a time of great need.

If you do not believe these holds are having an effect on the military, I don't question your sincerity; I question your judgment. If you ask anybody out in the field right now--there is one flag officer for the whole continent of Africa. This is like a car wreck on I-95. It keeps backing up. Last time we were talking, there were 300. We are up to 450. This is affecting the ability of the Nation to defend itself.

I will not tolerate being told something I know is wrong. The policy is wrong, but holding these officers who had nothing to do with this is wrong. They deserve better. They have done nothing to get us here in this spot. We have got a political difference between the Department of Defense and the Senate and the House, and the courtroom is available to resolve this. And I just ask my good friend from Alabama--I don't doubt your sincerity--but if this continues, this is one of the worst self- inflicted wounds I have seen in 20 years.

We pulled out of Afghanistan; that was a self-inflicted wound. We had a chance to deter Russia, and we chose not to by having pre-invasion sanctions; that was a self-inflicted wound done by the Biden administration. We have a broken border; that is self-inflicted. We will challenge all of those self-inflicted wounds. And as Republicans, it will be easy. What is hard is to challenge people of your own party at times.

When it comes to the military, I lay the party label down because I have seen what it takes to defend this Nation up close and personal.

It means you miss birthdays. You miss graduations. You miss babies born, and you lose your life. That is what it means to serve. And all the people, the 450 people, if you have got an individual problem with one of these folks, I will support your right to object, and we will hear your side of the story. But I don't believe that all 450 people are woke. So here is what I would say about the 450 people.

They have dedicated their adult lives to serving this country. They have given every ounce that they could give to get to where they are at to be promoted.

Do you know how hard it is to become a sergeant major in the enlisted corps? It is 1 percent of the enlisted force.

Do you know how hard it is to become a general officer, because you are competing with some of the best people on the planet? For every one that gets promoted, there are 10 that could be promoted or would do great in positions of responsibility.

We are taking the military and throwing it in the ditch in terms of command structure. There are people filling jobs today that are waiting to go to their next assignment, and they can't get there because they can't get promoted. They are paying two house payments, not one. Their children don't know what school they are going to go to. They deserve better than this.

This is my promise. I will work with Senator Tuberville and Senator Lee and anybody else and everybody else to find a solution that is acceptable to them to get us back on track and talk about the issues I just discussed. But I promise you this, this will be the last holiday this happens. If it takes me to vote to break loose these folks, I will.

I am not going to talk about me being pro-life. Just look at what I have done. To my pro-life friends, you are not advancing this cause. You are hurting this cause if the average American believe that the reason these people are getting blocked from promotion is because of some policy choice they didn't make. It is not fair to have people in uniform, who have to follow their civilian leadership, when the fundamental precept of American democracy is civilian control of the military--they have no choice. Don't punish them because in our system the civilians make the decisions.

Let's punish the civilians who make these choices. There are plenty of people we can hold and should hold. There are plenty of things we can do to fight to right this wrong. We can go to court. We can insist on change to the NDAA process. But this is not righting the wrong. This is creating another wrong. This is putting our Nation at risk.

And I would just say this. I have been here for 20 years now. I have never seen the world on fire like this. The only reason that an American soldier hasn't been killed in Iraq and Syria because of drone attacks by a Shi'ite militia controlled by Iran is they had a dud. They were just lucky as hell.

And what is going on in Israel, that could spread like wildfire. We could be in a shooting war with Iran tomorrow. So we need our best team on the field, and the best players we have are being blocked from serving. This needs to come to an end for the national security of this Nation.

Thank you to my colleagues. Thank you for your leadership here.

Senator Tuberville, I hope we can find a way to get this behind us, if possible. So my contribution to the debate is as follows: The bedrock of our democracy is that the military will be subordinate to civilian control. That has served our Nation well--that no matter who is in uniform, they answer to civilian authorities, and they are subordinate to the will of the civilian leadership elected and appointed. That has really helped our country be who we are today.

One of the things that I can't understand is, if you require our military to be subordinate to the people above them in the civilian world, why would you punish them for something they have nothing to do with?

All of these people--and if we need to call all 376, I will be glad to do it. I will get some rest this weekend and come back next week. I am going to start with two. All I am asking is to allow Major General Lenderman to get promoted. I will make that request in a minute.

Major General Lenderman is a two-star general. She got promoted to three-star because her peers--the military promotion system--saw in her leadership qualities. And after I read her bio, I now know why she got promoted.

But the job she is going into, she is going to be the Deputy Commander, Headquarters, Pacific Air Force, Hawaii. She would be responsible for Air Force activities over half the globe. The command supports 46,000 Airmen serving principally in Japan, Korea, Hawaii, Alaska and Guam. That has a lot to do with the Indo-Pacific theater.

She has 3,000 flight hours as a KC-135, KC-10, KC-46 pilot. In case you don't know what that means, she flies the air refueling tankers that our fighters and our bombers come up to to stay in the fight. This is some of the hardest flying in the Air Force. You have to have your stuff together because refueling at night is not some easy thing. I have actually seen it done. I am an Air Force lawyer. They shouldn't let me near an airplane, but they did.

I can tell you this, this lady has proven herself time and time again: 3,000 hours--I am sure most of it is combat--doing some of the hardest things any pilot can do in the Air Force. And she has zero to do with what happened. I don't know what her beliefs are about the life issue. I am pro-life, too, but I don't want to start asking our military members litmus test questions.

She deserves to be promoted. You are not going to change policy that she didn't make by denying her the ability to be promoted. We need this lady as a three-star yesterday to deal with the threats coming from China and that part of the world.

She is a graduate of Duke University. She has had every major job I can think of in Transportation Command, Scott Air Force Base in Illinois, which I have been to several times.

I am asking tonight that she be allowed to be promoted because she has had nothing to do with the policy we all object with. Holding her hostage doesn't help the pro-life cause. It hurts the military. The most pro-life people I know are the ones willing to die for us. She is willing to die for this country. She has proven herself time and time again. She needs to be promoted.

Therefore, I ask unanimous consent that the Senate proceed to executive session for the consideration of the following nomination: Executive calendar No. 189, Laura L. Lenderman, to lieutenant general and Deputy Commander, Pacific Air Forces; that the Senate vote on the nomination without intervening action or debate; that if confirmed, the motion to reconsider be considered made and laid upon the table and the President be immediately notified of the Senate's action.

I will have another one.

Let me respond to my colleague respectfully. We have courts. If you think they have done something illegal, go to court. That is how you handle these things. The Pentagon has issued a legal opinion I disagree with, saying this doesn't violate the Hyde Amendment. I disagree with it.

Here is what is going to happen. You just denied this lady a promotion. You did that. All of us are ready to promote her because she deserves to be promoted. She had nothing to do with this policy. Let me say it again. Everybody in this body could find an issue with any administration they don't agree with. And what we are going to do is open up Pandora's box. Today is abortion policy.

If we take back the White House, we will go back to the Mexico City policy, limiting dollars to be given to overseas entities that are engaged in the abortion business. Some pro-choice people don't like that. What would happen if they put a hold on all of the officers because they don't agree with the Republican administration? There is a reason this has not been done this way for a couple hundred years.

No matter whether you believe it or not, Senator Tuberville, this is doing great damage to our military. I don't say that lightly. I have been trying to work with you for 9 months. Folks, if this keeps going, people are going to leave.

Let me tell you how the system works. You have 18 months, I think, from the time you are promoted to pen on. If you don't make that gate, your time and grade up-or-out rule kicks in. There are some people that are waiting to be promoted that if they don't get promoted soon, they will be out of the military.

Now, how does that help anybody if they are qualified? There is not one Senator in here that cannot find a reason to object to an administration policy in the military. None of us. We could all find something. I just hope we don't do this routinely, because if this is the norm, who the hell wants to serve in the military when your promotion can be canned based on something you had nothing to do with? She had nothing to do with this. If you think it is illegal, go to court. We have courts in this country.

I have one more: Rear Admiral Fred Kacher. Fred, sorry if I mispronounced your name. He has been promoted to three-star. OK? That is a pretty big deal. I made colonel and that is as far as I could go and that is probably a gift.

What job does he have? He is going to be the Commander of the 7th Fleet, Japan. Somebody is doing his job right now, but they are not a three-star. We have a military promotion system to reward people who are good at what they do so they can have more responsibility. This officer had zero to do with the Pentagon's decision, which I don't like and you don't like, but he can't get promoted because of one of us.

There is no end to this, folks. If this gets to be the norm, you are going to wreck the military promotion system. You are punishing people who, by law under the Constitution, require to be subservient to civilian control. They have to follow civilian control. And you are punishing them for something they didn't do. Punish the civilians who made the policy. That is the way to do it.

I am going to move that Rear Admiral Fred Kacher be immediately promoted to three-star, 7th Fleet, Japan, Commander. It is the largest forward-deployed fleet operating around China, Russia, and North Korea. Given the threats coming from that area, I think we need this guy, like, yesterday.

He is a 1990 U.S. Naval graduate. He commanded guided-missile destroyers. He has been--this is amazing; you need to read about this guy. We want this guy. Coach, we need this guy. We are in a fight. We need the best people on the field. He is off the field for something he had nothing to do with.

And if this gets to be normal--I will end where I started. If this gets to be normal, God help the military because every one of us could find some reason to object to policy. Let's just don't hold hostage the men and women who have to follow civilian control. Let's don't ruin the lives of all these people who have been serving our Nation for decades.

Their families can't enroll in school. Some of them are going to be knocked out of promotion because of time and grade problems. There are families

struggling out there because they can't move to the next assignment. This doesn't help anybody. It doesn't help any cause.

So I ask unanimous consent that this promotion be taken up under Executive Calendar No. 189; Rear Admiral Kacher, 7th Fleet Commander; that the Senate vote on the nomination without intervening action or debate; that if confirmed, the motion to reconsider be made and laid upon the table and the President be immediately notified of the Senate's action.

Oh, sorry, sorry. This is why I didn't get promoted. Executive Calendar No. 85.

Frederick W. Kacher. Thank you.

And we will be doing this 376 times.

Madam President, I think Senator Hoeven is absolutely right. If we don't secure our border, it would be a big mistake.

I just returned from Israel, Saudi Arabia, and Egypt with a 10- person--5 and 5--Senate delegation. So the Senate is working. I am glad we have a Speaker of the House. But we had five Republicans and five Democrats, and here is the takeaway.

This is happening in Israel now because Iran fears reconciliation between Saudi Arabia and Israel. Building on the Abraham Accords that President Trump was able to achieve, President Biden has been working to try to get Saudi Arabia and Israel to have diplomatic ties and to recognize each other to end the Arab-Israeli conflict. That is a nightmare for Iran. For the region to come together, look forward; go to the light, not the darkness.

Here is what we have to decide as a country. Let's not let Iran win here.

To our Arab allies, to our friends in Turkey, this barbaric attack on Israel by Hamas is beyond what happened in the Holocaust. I have seen the photos. It is so vicious. It is so lacking any humanity.

Does it have a purpose? Yes. They filmed it so Israel had to go in.

The Ayatollah wants Israel to have to take action, hoping the world will turn on Israel, call for a cease-fire, and let time pass so that the moment to reconcile between Saudi Arabia and Israel passes. It is putting pressure on our allies in Jordan, in Egypt, and in Turkey by saying some pretty provocative things to our Arab allies, to our Turkish friends.

This attack by Hamas against Israel has to be dealt with by the destruction of Hamas. If you are in the region and you are expecting Israel not to go on the ground, that is not going to happen. You cannot destroy Hamas from the air. They are going in on the ground, and they are going to destroy Hamas to the best they can.

The goal then is to have a Palestinian plan that would give hope to the Palestinians who lost all hope and to continue the reconciliation process. As long as Hamas exists, there is no hope for peace.

It was mentioned in Turkey that Hamas is a liberator group. Hamas could care less about the Palestinian people. They want to destroy the Jewish people. If you don't believe me, listen to what they say. They are not trying to achieve a better life for the Palestinian people. They are trying to kill all the Jews. That is their charter, their religious nonsense.

To expect Israel not to go in is unrealistic. They are going to go in, and they are going to have our full support. The goal is to destroy Hamas without destroying the chance for peace.

I see an opportunity here, once Hamas has been dismantled, to bring the region together to get the Palestinian people a better life. The Iranian Ayatollah is the great Satan--not Israel, not the United States. He is a religious Nazi. He wants to purify Islam in his own image. He wants to destroy the Jewish State and come after us. It is a religious theocracy that can't be compromised with.

Here is what I would say we need to do today. Let the Iranians know if there is a second front opened by Hezbollah against Israel--which could be devastating--that we will be going to Iran to fix the problem. If one American soldier is killed by Shiite militia attacks against our forces in Syria and Iraq, we are going to blame the Ayatollah.

I appreciate moving the military force forward--two carrier battle groups--and moving assets into the region. I do not want a war, but I am tired of living this way.

The Ayatollah needs to know that a second front means three fronts-- that we are coming after you. We are going to destroy your ability to fund terrorism.

Ninety-three percent of all the money Hamas receives comes from Iran. All of their money comes from their oil industry. They are incredibly exposed to being knocked out of business.

To the Members of the Senate here, we need to tell Iran clearly what happens: If you escalate against America, you escalate against Israel, you will be in the crosshairs of American military response. It is your choice to make.

If you want a war with America, you will lose it. If you continue to try to

throw gasoline on a fire, you are going to regret it. Anything short of a military response being real to the Ayatollah will lead to more bloodshed. So if you want a smaller war, well, let Iran know: You are going to be in a bigger war if you attack Israel or kill an American.

If we don't do that, we are making a huge mistake. I am trying to stand behind the Biden administration. I want to help them reconcile Saudi Arabia and Israel. I appreciate what they have done with the military force posture moving forward, but it needs to be clear to the Iranians: Escalation means an attack on you. And if they believe that, I think we can stop this thing from getting bigger. If they don't believe it, we are going to wake up with a real big war on our hands beyond what we have today.

I have never been more worried about the situation of the world than I am right now. But here is what I am confident of: The Israelis will fight. They may get killed, but they are going down fighting. There will not be a second Holocaust. The Israeli people, through their IDF, will fight anybody who tries to destroy the Jewish people. That is Hamas. They want to kill all the Jews. I can't believe this is being said in 2023. To the world: To get to our friends in Israel, you have to come through us. If you want to destroy all the Jews, you have to come through America. And good luck with that.

I want peace between the Arabs and the Israelis. I want a better life for the Iranian people. I want a better life for the Palestinian people. But you cannot have a better life when the forces of darkness are in control.

Destroy Hamas once and for all. Create a better life for the Palestinian people. Reconcile the Arab-Israeli conflict, and move forward.

God bless our friends in Israel.

Amendment No. 1237 to Amendment No. 1092

Madam President, I call up Senator Rubio's amendment and ask that it be reported by number.

Mr. President, I rise today, along with my colleague Tim Scott of South Carolina, to commemorate the 50th anniversary of the National Wild Turkey Federation and to recognize the organization's significant contributions to research, habitat conservation, as well as its promotion and protection of the long-honored outdoor traditions of the United States.

The National Wild Turkey Federation was incorporated on March 28, 1973, with the aim of bringing together State, Federal, and nongovernmental partners to promote the conservation of wild turkeys. Edgefield, SC, is proud to house the organization's national headquarters, and both the State and Nation continue to benefit from their stewardship.

Since 1985, the National Wild Turkey Federation, its members, and chapters have invested more than $500,000,000 to conserve or enhance more than 22,000,000 acres of critical wildlife habitat, forests, and grasslands, as well as more than $8,500,000 in research to ensure a healthy wild turkey population. In addition, the organization is a long-standing Stewardship partner with the U.S. Forest Service and is heavily engaged in the development and implementation of the Department of Agriculture's Wildfire Crisis Strategy. These efforts have played a significant role in one of the greatest conservation success stories in the United States: the return of the wild turkey from the brink of extinction.

I ask that you and our colleagues join me in celebrating the 50th anniversary of the National Wild Turkey Federation and wish the organization and its members continued success in fulfilling their mission.

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

Mr. President, Senator Cotton will be here in a second. A group of us are going to speak about this budget deal.

If you believe that the No. 1 job of the Federal Government is to defend this Nation, then we have made a serious mistake in this bill.

I have heard House leaders suggest this bill fully funds the military. For that to be true, you would have to believe that the military is OK if you cut their budget $42 billion below inflation. The party of Ronald Reagan would never allow inflation to reduce defense capabilities.

This bill, the top-line number, locks in fewer ships for the Navy at a time China is going to expand dramatically. In 2024 and 2025, we are going to cap spending at a level that we cannot expand the Navy, and in the same period of time, China is going to go from 310 ships over a 10- year period to 440. There is less money for the Marines, less money for the Army, and fewer ships for the Navy at a time of great conflict.

There is not a penny in this bill to help Ukraine defeat Putin. They are going on the offensive as I speak, and we need to send a clear message to Putin: When it comes to your invasion of Ukraine, we are going to support the Ukrainians to ensure your loss.

If we don't do that, then we are going to snatch defeat out of the jaws of victory.

Senator Cotton--I am going to yield to him. He has a time problem. But we are going to take some time here to explain to you why those of us who believe that the No. 1 job of the Federal Government is to defend the Nation--that that concept has been abandoned and that we are going to insist and fight until we find a way to rectify some of this harm. OK.

With that, I will yield to my good friend from Mississippi.

I just want to compliment Senator Cotton for reminding us what the job in Congress is, defending the Nation, and the odd outcome here is that at a time of growing conflict, we are reducing the Navy.

There are 296 ships in the Navy today. Under this budget, by 2025, there will be 286. If we continue with the Biden budget, there will be 290. The Chinese Navy today is 340. By 2025, they will have 400, and by 2030 they will have 440. This budget locks in a smaller U.S. Navy at a time the Chinese Navy is growing dramatically.

There is not a penny in this budget to help beat Putin. The Navy is smaller. The Army is smaller. The Marine Corps is smaller. This is not a threat-based budget. This is a budget of political compromise where people have lost sight of what the country needs.

We need safety and security.

To my House colleagues, I can't believe you did this.

To the Speaker, I know you have got a tough job. I like you, but the party of Ronald Reagan is dying. Don't tell me that a defense budget that is $42 billion below inflation fully funds the military.

Don't tell me that we can confront and challenge China. Everybody in this body is patting themselves on the back that we see China as the most existential threat to America. You are right. We did the CHIPS Act. We are doing things to help our economy combat China. At the moment of decision when it came to the military, this budget is a win for China. Please don't go home and say this is fully funded because it is not. Please stop talking about confronting China when you are dismantling the American Navy.

How does this end? Senator Cotton is right. We will be here until Tuesday, until I get commitments that we are going to rectify some of these problems. The ranking member of the Appropriations Committee, Susan Collins, has been steadfastly in the camp of fiscal responsibility and national security. This deal has taken the Appropriations Committee out of the game.

The CR, which kicks in, cuts defense and increases nondefense, making it really hard for me to believe that we are actually going to do our appropriations job.

So what I want to do is, I want a commitment from the leaders of this body that we are not pulling the plug on Ukraine. There is not a penny in this bill for future efforts to help Ukraine defeat Russia, and they are going to gain on the battlefield in the coming days.

And it is just not about Ukraine. I want a commitment that we will have a supplemental to make us better able to deal with China. I want a commitment that we are not going to weaken our position in the Mideast. There is a report out today that Iran is planning to attack our troops in Syria to drive us out.

We are expending weapons that need to be replenished. Our military is weakening by the day. This budget that we are about to pass makes every problem worse.

I want to end the war in Ukraine by defeating Putin. If you don't, he keeps going and we are going to have a conflict between NATO and Russia and our troops will be involved. And if you don't send a clear signal now, China will see this as an opportunity to leap into Taiwan.

So to the Members of this body, we are staying here as long as it takes to get some commitment that we are going to reverse this debacle sooner rather than later.

With that, I will yield to my good friend from Alaska.

Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that I be recognized for 5 minutes.

Mr. President, I yield my time to our next speaker, who is the ranking member of the Appropriations Committee, but I just want to say one thing before she speaks.

The Chief of Naval Operations said we need 373 ships manned and 150 unmanned platforms to deal with the threats we face around the world. We have 296 today. Under this budget deal, we will go to 286 by 2025. What does it take to get 373? The CNO of the Navy said, to get 373 ships, you have got to spend 5 percent above inflation for a sustained period of time. This bill is 2 percent below inflation. So we are undercutting the ability of the Navy to build the ships we need to defend America.

With that, I yield to Senator Collins.

I want to echo what Senator Collins just suggested. How do you begin to turn this debacle around? You admit you have got a problem. It is pretty hard to quit drinking if you don't admit you have got a drinking problem.

So what she is suggesting is that we acknowledge the obvious, that this bill, on the defense side, is inadequate to the threats we face, that a bill that funds the Pentagon below inflation at a time of great threat is not fully funding. She is trying to get us to wake up to the reality that if we don't speak about defeating Putin now, then the Ukrainians, who are on the offense, will be undercut.

I will never let this happen again, as long as I am here, to let people negotiate behind closed doors and not tell

me what they are doing on defense. I blame myself for not being more involved and more active, because in my wildest dreams I never believed that the Republican Party would take the Biden budget that they have attacked for a year and celebrate it as fully funding. I know who I am dealing with now.

Here is what Reagan told the Russians: Trust but verify. I will never, ever trust again, because you have got an ``R'' behind your name, that you are going to be the party of Ronald Reagan. You have to prove that to me. So, as we go forward, the game will change.

Why is she asking for this to be done? If we don't commit to an orderly appropriations process, it gets worse for the Defense Department.

To the people who wrote this bill, I would not let you buy me a car.

The provisions of sequestration--for lack of a better word--the continuing resolution, if we don't do our legislative business, increases nondefense spending and decreases defense spending. I thought we were Republicans. Who came up with that great idea?

The top line is inadequate. The CR is devastating. And what bothers me the most is that we would put the Department of Defense in this position.

We are playing with the lives of men and women in the military, their ability to defend themselves, as some chess game in Washington. Well, this is checkers, at best.

The fact that you would punish the military because we can't do our job as politicians is a pretty sad moment for me. But people in this body, on my side of the aisle, have drafted a bill that would punish the military even more if we fail to do our basic job. That cannot be the way of the future.

So I will insist, or we will be here until Tuesday, and I will make an amendment to avoid default for 90 days or however many days it takes to get this right. I don't want us to default on the debt, but we are not leaving town until we find a way to stop some of this madness. You are not going to be able to blame me for default because I am ready to raise the debt ceiling right now for 90 days, no strings attached, to give us a chance to stop this insane approach to national security.

I am supposed to talk to the President of Ukraine this afternoon. I would like to be able to tell him something: Oh, by the way, you have done a hell of a job with the money we have given you. Not one soldier has died. The weapons used by Ukraine have punished the Russian military. They are weakened and bloodied.

They are about to take back territory. He is wondering, well, what does this mean for the future? I want to try to be able to tell him that I have got an assurance from this body that we are not going to leave you hanging.

It is in our interest to beat Putin. I don't like war more than anybody else, but if Putin gets away with invading Ukraine, there goes Taiwan. And if you don't get that, you are just out of touch. They have a chance to evict Russia from Ukrainian territory. They need more military help, not American soldiers.

If Putin loses, it is a deterrence for China. If Putin doesn't lose, he will keep grabbing territory until we have a war between Russia and NATO. This is a big, big deal.

Iran is coming up with a plan, apparently, to drive us out of the Mideast. That just came out today.

China is building. As Senator Collins said, they are going from 340 ships to 440 ships by 2030. We are going from 296 to 290. That can't be the response to China.

You cannot say with a straight face that this military budget is a counter to Chinese aggression, that it adequately allows us to defeat Putin. You cannot say with a straight face that this budget represents the threats America faces.

A military budget should be based on threats, not political deals to avoid default. Nobody wants to default. We are not going to default. But I am tired of having default hanging over my head as a reason to neuter the military at a time we need it the most.

To the American public, you would suffer if we defaulted. I get it. If this budget is the end of the discussion and we don't fix it, your sons and daughters are going to have more war, not less. You are going to send a signal to all the bad guys that we are all talk. And what you will be doing is putting the world on a course of sustained conflict rather than deterrence.

The last time people did this was in the 1930s. They wanted to believe that Hitler wasn't serious about killing all the Jews, that they only wanted some land, that he really didn't want to take over the world. He wrote a book, and nobody believed him.

The Iranian Ayatollah speaks every day: I will destroy the state of Israel; that we are infidels, and he is going to drive us out of the region.

China openly confronts our planes--400 feet yesterday. They are testing us every day.

The bottom line, folks, is we are not leaving until we get a path to fix this problem. Senator Susan Collins, my good friend from Maine, gave us that path. If you want to go home, fix it.

I yield the floor.

H.J. Res. 45

Mr. President, I have been informed that shortly, the majority leader will come to the floor and announce his commitment and the Biden commitment to do a supplemental to make sure that the damage done by this bill is, at least, partially corrected.

This bill puts our military behind the eight ball. There is not one penny in this bill for Ukrainian assistance. As I speak tonight, Ukraine is engaged in a fight for its life. They are going on the offensive. I have high hopes in the coming days and weeks they will liberate part of their territory occupied by Russia.

The assistance we have provided in a bipartisan fashion with our European allies has made all the difference in the world. We were told after the invasion that Kyiv would fall in 4 days; but 600-and- something days later, they are still fighting. The Russian Army has been weakened and bloodied because of the weapons we have provided. I appreciate the bipartisan support to make sure we win a war in Ukraine without one American soldier being involved.

If we can defeat Putin in Ukraine, that means China will, hopefully, take notice and Putin will be stopped, because if you don't stop him in Ukraine, he will keep going and we will be in a war between NATO and Russia.

So I appreciate all the hard work of the staff to make a statement to the people who are facing threats from China, from Russia, from Iran, that we have not abandoned you. There is not a dime in this bill to deal with the threats I think we face from China consistent with the threat level. There is money in this bill but not enough. So I am hoping that those who are watching this in Ukraine understand that Senators Schumer and McConnell are going to say in a moment: We have not abandoned you. We are going to keep helping you as you struggle to liberate your country from the war criminal Putin.

Whether you believe we should be helping Ukraine or not, I do. People in this body, on both sides of the aisle in the Senate, understand that Putin's invasion is a defining moment of the 21st century. That if he gets away with this, there goes Taiwan, and the world will begin to crumble. The world order we created since World War II would be jeopardized.

War crimes on an industrial scale by Putin cannot be forgiven or forgotten. To the brave men and women in Ukraine, help is on the way. To the people standing up to China, living in its shadow in Taiwan, help is on the way. To the American military who is underfunded because of this bill, help is on the way.

For 3 days, I and some others have been screaming to high heaven that what the House did was wrong. It is right to want to control spending, and there are some good things in this bill. But it was wrong to give a defense number inconsistent with the threats we face.

I do believe that we are on track to right some of those wrongs. To my colleagues, I am not the perfect--the enemy of the good. I vote on my share of bipartisan bills and get crap for it like most of you. But as long as I am here, I am going to speak about the need of the Federal Government to get the defense budget right. Budgets are based on threats, not political deals. And if you think the world is safer, you have missed a lot. So, hopefully, in a few minutes, there will be an announcement that puts us on a course correction to undo some of the damage, and there will be a clear signal from both the leader and the minority leader, Senator McConnell, that help is on the way to those who live in the shadow of totalitarian governments and those who are on the battlefield.

To my American citizen friends, I wish there were no war anywhere. I wish China wasn't the way they are. I wish the Ayatollah didn't want a nuclear weapon and would use it if he could. I wish that Putin would not have invaded Ukraine. I wish that the world was different than it is. But if you want peace and stability, it comes at a high price.

The good news for us is that not one American soldier has died evicting Russia from Ukraine. The Ukrainians have fought like tigers. It is in our national security interest to provide them the weapons and the technology to keep this fight up. Their win is our win.

So I look forward to hearing the statement that I think is forthcoming. It does not fix this bill totally, but it begins to march in the right direction. To my colleagues, thank you for listening. Thank you for working with me and others. Victory for Ukraine.

I yield the floor.

I suggest the absence of a quorum.