Floor Statements

I ask for the yeas and nays.

Mr. President, I think we are all pleased to be back with a new year and hard at work.

One of the things that has really captured the attention of the American people in this new year is the amount of fraud that has been uncovered in Minnesota. What we have learned is that now the total has climbed to $9 billion--still rising. It is important to note that is all stolen taxpayer money. It is so interesting that this big theft was uncovered by a young independent journalist who really blew the story open when he started visiting childcare centers following a lead, visiting these childcare centers in Minneapolis.

Despite these centers having pulled in tens of millions of taxpayer dollars, the childcare centers were actually empty. There were no children; there were no cars in the parking lot. Usually--not even any staff to come answer the door. These were visits that were made during the day when one would assume that children and their caretakers would be present in the facility.

We know and what we are learning is that this childcare fraud scheme is just one part of a widespread fraud operation taking place in Minnesota. Under State Democrats, billions of taxpayer dollars were stolen by front groups that pretended they were providing social services. But they padded their pockets. They basically took this money from vulnerable individuals--programs that were intended for children, for the elderly, for individuals with autism. So basically, they were robbing the taxpayer, padding their pockets, pocketing all of this money that was intended for vulnerable citizens.

The Trump administration has targeted this fraud network, and they have been working on this for several months. They are bringing dozen of criminal indictments, and the list of these alleged crimes is staggering. I think the list grows every day, and that is one thing that is shocking to people.

But what you have is tens of millions of dollars that were stolen through Minnesota's Medicaid Housing Stabilization Services Program. The money was appropriated. The money was sent from the Federal Government to the State of Minnesota, and poof, it has gone into pockets, not into programs. The Housing Stabilization Services Program was meant to help people with disabilities, yet what you had was these scammers come in and take most of that money.

Millions more were stolen through the State's Feeding Our Future Program. Here, the fraudsters claimed that they were providing thousands of meals every day to needy children. Instead, what we are learning is they weren't providing those thousands of meals; they were spending your hard-earned tax dollars on luxury vehicles and on pricey real estate.

And yet millions more were stolen by a single woman who paid parents to enroll their children in her fraudulent autism therapy program even though most of those children had never been diagnosed with autism.

I know that Tennesseans and, indeed, I am sure, many Americans across the country are wondering, How in the world could this possibly happen?

One of the things I have heard from Tennesseans most on is this fraud issue because they can't believe nobody ever noticed. We are talking $9 billion in fraud--and climbing--in one State. Well, we know the answer to this, from what we are learning, is that most of this fraud was committed by members of Minnesota's Somali community and that that community is closely tied to the State's Democratic machine. It appears that there were some Democrats who chose to look the other way, and they allowed this to happen. Meanwhile, the Biden administration poured gas on the fire by eliminating safeguards that were meant to stop the waste, fraud, and abuse of your hard-earned taxpayer dollars.

In 2024, the Joe Biden administration scrapped a rule that required childcare centers to verify that kids actually attended their facilities in order to receive Federal funding. Think about this: They removed the provision that says you have got to tell us you are actually enrolling children in your childcare center. So what does that do? That invites fraud. In total, his administration paid out more than $19 billion to daycare centers without having any verification that that childcare center had children--$19 billion to daycare centers.

Thankfully, President Trump and his administration are working to ensure that these fraudsters face justice and that something like this can never happen again.

Right now, you have Federal authorities on the ground in Minnesota who are working to identify and arrest these criminals who have defrauded the Federal Government and the U.S. taxpayer. President Trump has also frozen more than $10 billion in Federal funding for social services programs to Minnesota and to other States--California, Colorado, Illinois, and New York--where there are fraud investigations.

The President's message is quite clear: If these States want to see a dime of Federal taxpayer dollars, they must prove that they have put in place

some safeguards to prevent fraud. It is common sense. If you are going to take this Federal money for your State, for goodness' sake, put some safeguards in place so you know whoever is receiving the money is going to use the money as intended, that they will meet the deliverable, that they will show their outcomes.

I think it is so interesting in Minnesota, with the spotlight on that State, that Governor Tim Walz has announced he is not going to seek reelection for that job, that he is dropping out of the race. Minnesotans deserve an immediate resignation from him, and we are hearing that he will not do that.

We know that this issue goes far beyond Minnesota. Just last month, California's nonpartisan auditor found that eight State agencies have a high risk of waste, fraud, and abuse. Yet they have taken zero corrective action--no corrective action. Across the board, the State is at risk of losing billions to fraud in food assistance, unemployment benefits, and in the State's Medicaid Program.

In New York, Republican lawmakers are calling for an independent audit of the State's spending following several fraud scandals. In one case, scammers in Brooklyn used two adult daycare facilities to steal-- get this--$68 million in taxpayer money from the State's Medicaid home care program. A State comptroller's office also revealed that the State provided more than $500 million in Medicaid benefits to out-of-State residents.

If you live in New York and you are getting benefits through the Medicaid program and you find out that a half a billion dollars has been used to provide benefits for people who are not even residents of the State, you ought to be asking questions.

In Illinois, the State's auditor general found that the government paid out more than $5 billion in fraudulent unemployment insurance. Well, do you know what? They didn't do a thing about it.

Last month, the Trump administration indicted two men outside Chicago who submitted nearly $300 million in fraudulent claims to Medicare and Medicaid as well as to private insurers.

Then, this week, in Mississippi, a trial started for a man who faces charges from the Justice Department for allegedly participating in a scheme to steal $77 million in Federal aid intended for needy families. Instead, the scammers spent the money on luxury vehicles, investments, private schools, and more.

While President Trump works to end this abuse of taxpayer dollars, Congress should do everything possible to support his efforts.

This week, I am introducing the Fraud Accountability Act, which would amend the Immigration and Nationality Act to explicitly make clear that fraud is a deportable offense. If you come to our country to steal from the American people, you ought to be deported; and if you have somehow gained American citizenship, you should be stripped of it. Every single Member of this Chamber should support this legislation.

The era of rampant fraud is over. Under President Trump, we are going to continue to put the American people first.

Mr. President, last month Tennessee lost a great man, community leader, and champion of our State's military community: Mr. Nathan Clark.

For more than 20 years, Mr. Clark served as a store manager for Lowe's in Clarksville, TN, always looking for ways to give back to the community, including to the brave men and women who serve at Fort Campbell. Over the years, he spearheaded several major improvement projects on the base, including the complete restoration of the Night Stalker Remembrance Trail, which honors the fallen warriors of the 160th Special Operations Aviation Regiment; the revitalization of Gabriel Field, the sacred ground honoring the fallen of the 5th Special Forces Group; and the transformation of the Survivor Outreach Services building, a place of solace and support for families who have lost loved ones in service to our Nation.

For his dedicated support for our servicemembers, Mr. Clark was honored with the titles of Tennessee Colonel Aide de Camp, Kentucky Colonel, and Champion of Fort Campbell.

On behalf of all Tennesseans, I extend my heartfelt condolences to Mr. Clark's family, including his wife Marcia and their children Madison, Montgomery, and Callie. While our State has lost a great leader, Mr. Clark's legacy will endure in Clarksville and at Fort Campbell for generations to come.

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

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

Mr. President, we heard so much over the weekend from Tennesseans who were reaching out, just so saddened by the series of truly devastating attacks we saw in Syria. Two of our National Guard members from Iowa lost their lives. Indeed, we know that right now, President Trump and Senators Grassley and Ernst are out at Dover to meet with those families. These are two that were killed by an ISIS gunman.

At Brown University, a gunman shot and killed two students that were in a session as they prepared for exams right there on the college campus. One of those was a young woman from Alabama who was vice president of the college Republican Club; another was an aspiring neurosurgeon. These are two young people who had very bright and promising futures in front of them.

In Australia, two terrorists opened fire on a Hanukkah celebration. They murdered 15 people, including a 10-year old girl and a Holocaust survivor.

We know that anti-Semitism is a sickness. It is spreading across the globe, and world leaders must do more to protect their Jewish communities.

Our Nation's prayers remain with all of these victims and with their families and those that experience these tragedies.

We can all be grateful that, in Donald J. Trump, we have a President who is committed to serving that justice when it is needed. Terrorism will not have the last word.

And we have seen how the FBI has worked to thwart these plots that are taking place here in our country. They announced, on Monday, that agents had thwarted a New Year's Eve terror plot that was planned for Los Angeles by a pro-Palestine extremist group. The four suspects are now in Federal custody, and we know they will face the full force of the law.

God bless the men and women in Federal law enforcement and in our armed services who are really working around the clock to restore safety and security here in our country.

Under President Trump, we have seen that national security has become a

priority. In fact, when we look back over the last year, one theme sticks out about the administration's accomplishments is that President Trump is keeping his word. He is making America safer and stronger than ever before.

You can look at the southern border. In a matter of months, President Trump completely fixed the Biden border crisis. The President was right when he said we didn't need more laws. We just needed a new President, one who would enforce the laws.

In October, there were just over 11,000 apprehensions at the southern border. The same month last year, in 2024, there were over 100,000 encounters at the border, and that was under the Biden border policy. Now, even the year before that, there were 240,000 encounters. Think about that: from 240,000 down to 100,000, down to 11,000. And what changed was the fact that we had a President who was enforcing the law.

Now, also in my wonderful State of Tennessee, Memphis saw the highest crime rate per capita in 2024. But since September, the administration's Memphis Safe Task Force has made more than 4,200 arrests, including hundreds of warrant arrests for domestic violence, aggravated assault; and dozens more for narcotics, sexual assault, and homicide. They also have located more than 120 missing children and have recovered 970 illegal firearms and 560 stolen vehicles.

With President Trump and AG Bondi and Kash Patel, and the commitment that they have made to Memphis, this is what you are seeing. Criminals are being apprehended, and the citizens in Memphis feel safe to go out and about. The crime rate has been cut in half. President Trump is replicating the success we are seeing in Memphis. He is replicating this all across the country, whether it is here in Washington, DC, or in Oregon and in other areas.

And around the globe, President Trump has restored peace through strength, after years of weakness from the Biden administration. We have to note, when we talk about globally, what he has done--ending eight wars, making the world a safer place not only for Americans but for so many.

Across the government, President Trump has also rooted out woke programs that abused taxpayer dollars under the previous administration. And we saw a lot of corruption in our institutions. With these programs, the Biden administration pushed a radical anti- American agenda, and now, with the Trump administration, we are restoring common sense and putting the American citizens first.

On the economy, the President's pro-growth and pro-worker agenda is already delivering. Since its peak under Biden, inflation is down 67 percent. Of course, we all remember, under Biden, it was at a 40-year high. And now that has come down 67 percent, and it will continue to come down.

The trade deficit is shrinking. Our Nation is bringing in trillions of dollars in new investments, and this is going to create new factories, jobs, and opportunities.

Mr. President, we are so pleased that some of those jobs are coming into Tennessee. Some of those investments are coming into our State.

And the President has focused on making American energy dominant once again. We were pleased to see that, in his first few days in office, he eliminated a lot of the Green New Deal. And because of that, the national average for a gallon of gas is at its lowest price since March of 2021.

He has also signed Executive orders to support nuclear energy, including speeding up approvals for new reactors and strengthening fuel supply chains. And more than any other State, Tennessee is best positioned to lead our Nation's nuclear renaissance, especially with the work that is being done at the Oak Ridge National Lab and at our universities. I will remind my colleagues that our nuclear energy industry had its birth at the Oak Ridge National Lab, in Tennessee.

We also have the Clinch River site, which should soon be home to the Nation's first small modular reactor. And taking advantage of this opportunity, the Tennessee Valley Authority has got to step up, and they have to lead the way.

This week, the Senate is set to confirm four of the President's nominees to serve on TVA's Board of Directors and ensure that Tennessee and our Nation do lead in nuclear energy.

Supporting all of these accomplishments is the One Big Beautiful Bill, or the working families tax cut bill. This is something that was signed into law on Independence Day. And in that legislation was the largest tax cut in history, of $4 trillion, including no tax on tips and overtime and Social Security, a provision I have worked to achieve for years; historic funding to finish the border wall; $50 billion to support rural health; permitting reforms to make it easier to build in America again; a generational investment in our military; and I could go on and on.

And in the last year, this administration, with President Trump and Republicans, has been hard at work to make certain that we address the cost of living, that we address safety in our Nation and around the globe, and to improve the quality of life in a stronger, freer, and safer country than ever before.

I yield the floor.

Mr. President, I am so pleased that my colleague from Oklahoma is on the floor and is talking about this issue that affects so many Americans. Indeed, in Tennessee, we have seen the impact of this.

As my colleague mentioned, our friends across the aisle have done what we call kicking the can when it comes to healthcare. ObamaCare is too expensive to afford--that is something that has been proven--but instead of dealing with root causes, they are saying: Let's just extend the COVID-era subsidies for another 3 years, and then we will talk about it.

He also mentioned triggering that date during a Presidential election--doing nothing to reform the abuse that you are finding in the system and just kicking the can and saying: Let's do these subsidies. Let's not worry about it.

Well, you know, that is not something that Tennesseans are wanting to see, and as many have reminded me, they are the exact same subsidies that the Democrats used as a smokescreen to carry out their 43-day government shutdown. But at the end of all of this, they don't want to do anything about it even though we have information and have seen research that, by extending these pandemic-era subsidies--and by the way, COVID is over; the pandemic is over, but they want to continue to fund it like it is still going on. These subsidies have been plagued by waste, fraud, and abuse, and what they are doing would cost taxpayers $35 billion a year to do nothing more than line the pockets and the profits of insurance companies.

We know that there is an incredible amount of fraud. There are 6.4 million people fraudulently enrolled. We know that it is hard-working taxpayers who are paying for this and that the Democrats' solution would do nothing to clean up the program. It would do nothing to lower the cost of healthcare. It would continue the status quo, and individuals who are enrolled in ObamaCare would continue to see their costs go up.

So what we have said is, the original ObamaCare subsidies--by the way, I want to be very clear on this. Those subsidies are law. They do not go away. The only things that are going away are the Biden-era COVID subsidies. The Democrats put those in place in 2021. They were to expire in 2022, but then they decided, no, let's make them expire on December 31, 2025. So they created this problem. They created the problem with ObamaCare. Not one Republican voted for it in either the House or the Senate, and now they have created another problem.

They have done all of this because they didn't want to address the flaws that were in the program. Well, under the Biden COVID-era credits, people who were making over $500,000 a year could benefit from the taxpayer-funded subsidies. Originally, with the original ObamaCare subsidies, you get the credit up to 400 percent of poverty, but the Democrats said: No. Let's make it a free-for-all. Let's just get these out here, the zero premiums--yes, that sounds great; that is what they wanted to push for some people--and up to $500,000 a year in income, $500,000 a year. You, too, could get a taxpayer-funded subsidy to help pay for your insurance. Maybe 80 percent was paid or 90 percent was paid, but this is not what the American people want. Instead of lowering costs, these subsidies are continuing to prop up a very broken system, and that is why the cost continues to go up.

Since 2013, the ObamaCare benchmark plan premium has increased by more than 200 percent. In Tennessee, you have seen about a 20-percent increase. Now, this ObamaCare plan is going up more than 300 times the rate of employee-sponsored plans, so the taxpayers are on the hook for this.

So why is it that they continue to go up? It is because of government interference and the mandates that Democrats passed when they passed ObamaCare. It is too expensive to afford.

During the Schumer shutdown, I spoke in this very Chamber about the fraud that was connected to the Biden COVID credits. Last week, the U.S. Government Accountability Office actually released findings that showed just how easy it was to commit fraud with these subsidies. The GAO conducted an undercover test. They had heard anecdotally about some of this fraud, but the GAO, which is nonpartisan, said: Let's get into this. Let's dive in. Let's do an undercover test.

So they submitted applications for these Biden subsidies for 24 fictitious individuals, for people who don't exist, with addresses that are not accurate and names and Social Security numbers that are not accurate. Each application had false and missing information on identities and incomes. They just made it up. So they ran their test. To their surprise--get this--they didn't have one or two people who were approved or even half of the people--a dozen--of these fictitious people who made it through. They had 23 of the 24 fake people approved. They had fake identities and fake income--nothing was real--but ObamaCare approved 23 of the 24 applications. The U.S. taxpayer who is footing the bill for this paid more than $10,000 a month to insurance companies to provide for these people who don't exist, for these fictitious enrollees. Think about that--$10,000 a month.

A preliminary analysis by the GAO found that there were at least 190,000 applications between 2023 and 2024 that had unauthorized changes by agents or brokers. That means people didn't know that they were enrolled or they didn't know that changes on income and personal data had been made to their applications. Over the same period, there were close to 100,000 duplicate Social Security numbers enrolled in the program. So you have a broker or somebody who is enrolling people. They get a Social Security number, and they are going to town with it. They are wearing that thing out.

So you have got 100,000 duplicate numbers enrolled in the program. In one case, a single Social Security number--one number--was used to apply for more than 125 policies.

I call that fraud. And I think it is amazing that ObamaCare is so poorly run that they are allowing this level of fraud and waste of your tax dollars, which are paying for every bit of this.

This is a program that now our colleagues across the aisle are saying: We don't want to fix it. We just want to kick the can. We want to extend these subsidies for 3 more years because the program is really expensive.

And why is it expensive? Waste, fraud, abuse, and government mandates. And ObamaCare is too expensive to afford.

Now, Republicans have already started to address the root cause of the issue, and in the Big Beautiful Bill, there are provisions that require individuals who misstate their income to repay the excess subsidy amount in full.

Requiring applicants to verify their income, their family size, their immigration status, and residence before enrolling ensures no one can abuse the system at the expense of American taxpayers.

This is what you call old common sense. If you are going to go apply for a credit card or a loan at the bank, you have got to verify this, and you are going to be held legally responsible.

Under ObamaCare, it is like nobody gave a ripping flip about what you put on the paper. Whatever you said, all right--there was no verification that was done.

Republicans are also working on solutions to lower the cost--how about that one?--and to promote healthcare freedom, to let you, the patient, the individual, have more choice, more options, and make decisions that affect your healthcare.

This week, our Finance Committee chairman, Senator Crapo, and the Health Committee chairman, Senator Cassidy, introduced legislation that would direct funds directly to patients, not to insurance companies. Well, how about that?

Let's make certain that patients--patients--are the ones who receive those funds, not the insurance companies, because we have already defined the waste, the fraud, and the abuse that is taking place in the program.

Now, doing this through health savings accounts and funding for cost- sharing reduction payments, these are things that are positive, that would help to bring some transparency to the system.

Unlike the Democrat proposal, which only further adds to our $38 trillion in debt, the Crapo-Cassidy bill would drive down the cost of premiums and provide an off-ramp for the Biden plussed-up bonus COVID credits for individuals that were making six-figure incomes.

Now, last week, I introduced a package of bills to support and expand Tennessee's Medicaid innovation, including the Medicaid Primary Care Improvement Act, which would allow States to use Medicaid dollars to pay for direct primary care arrangements, expanding healthcare access for Medicaid beneficiaries and improving outcomes.

And we are introducing legislation that I have worked on for years to empower citizens to purchase health insurance across State lines and have portability on policies. If they get a policy that works, that they like, that they can afford, allow them to take that policy with them, regardless of where they live--again, common sense.

We do know this: You have got to promote competition so that we can bring down prices and give consumers--individuals, patients--more power to price shop for affordable plans.

Americans do not want the Federal Government in charge of their healthcare. They do not want socialized medicine. They do not want government-run healthcare plans. And they definitely do not want their hard-earned tax dollars underwriting fraud.

I yield the floor.

Mr. President, last week, the day before Thanksgiving, our Nation's Capital experienced a horrific tragedy. Just blocks from the White House, two National Guard members were ambushed by a gunman. One of the victims, 20-year-old Sarah Beckstrom, tragically, succumbed to her wounds. The second, 24-year-old Andrew Wolfe, is currently fighting for his life.

We join thousands of Americans who are praying for him and for a full and complete recovery, lifting up his family and also lifting up the family of Sarah Beckstrom.

Now, these two young, brave, patriotic Americans answered the call of duty to serve their Nation in uniform, and, for that, they were gunned down in cold blood.

What do we know about the shooting suspect? He is a 29-year-old Afghan national. He entered the country in 2021 during President Biden's disastrous withdrawal from Afghanistan. He is

among nearly 200,000 Afghan nationals who were relocated to our country by the Biden administration under Operation Allies Welcome. This program was part of Biden's larger effort to make illegal immigration legal.

At the time, my Republican colleagues and I demanded answers from the administration about how they could possibly vet all the evacuees amid this chaotic withdrawal.

We must never forget that 13 U.S. servicemembers were murdered by a suicide bomber at the Abbey Gate during the evacuation, including SSG Ryan Knauss of Tennessee.

The Biden administration, however, insisted that the evacuees were properly vetted. The morning after the Abbey Gate bombings, Biden's Press Secretary Jen Psaki told the American people that all Afghan nationals were ``screened and vetted prior to being allowed into the United States.''

Well, that was a lie and a lie that has now cost the life of a U.S. servicemember.

In 2022, an inspector general report from the Department of Homeland Security found that the Biden administration ``admitted or paroled evacuees who were not fully vetted into the United States,'' noting that ``some information used to vet evacuees through U.S. government databases . . . was inaccurate, incomplete, or missing.''

We can be grateful that President Trump is taking decisive action to strengthen vetting and prevent such a tragedy from ever happening again. He has halted visas for Afghan nationals and bolstered the vetting process for aliens from 19 high-risk countries. This is what it looks like when a President puts the American people first, and Congress should do everything possible to work with DHS and to support these efforts.

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

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

Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent to resume the motion to proceed to Calendar No. 136, H.R. 4016.

Mr. President, it is hard to believe that we are nearly at the end of the year, and that is the end of the year since we started this session of Congress and also President Trump's second term in office.

And in that time, there is so much that we have done to get this country back on track and to begin to undo the damage that was inflicted on so many Americans by the Biden administration. We could take a look at the economy because under the Biden administration, inflation reached its highest point in over four decades; far-left regulations killed jobs, and it held industry back; and our trade deficit exploded. Now, in Tennessee, that hurt our farmers and our manufacturers.

Today, the U.S. economy is on the path to being stronger than ever before, thanks to the President's pro-growth agenda, trillions of dollars in new investments, the largest tax cut in history. All of that came about through the Big Beautiful Bill.

Inflation is down 67 percent; jobless claims are beginning to come down;

and the most recent data shows that the U.S. economy is growing at an annual rate of 3.8 percent. Now, that is the fastest pace in nearly 2 years.

At the same time, President Trump and his administration have completely reversed the Biden policies and failures at the southern border. For 4 years, President Biden claimed that there was nothing that he could do--nothing at all--to stop more than 10 million illegal aliens from entering our country, including tens of thousands of convicted criminals.

At one point, the daily average of border encounters topped 15,000, and across the country, Americans suffered the tragic consequences, including rampant migrant crime. Today, our border is secure, thanks to President Trump's strong enforcement of the rule of law. Last month, there were just under 8,000 Border Patrol apprehensions at the southwest border--95 percent lower than the monthly average under President Biden. And unlike the Biden administration, President Trump is turning these lawbreakers away instead of welcoming them with taxpayer-funded benefits.

For the sixth straight month, there were zero parole releases into our country. By comparison, in October of 2024 alone, Biden released more than 10,000 illegal aliens into the country.

President Trump and Republicans are also working to undo the damage done by President Biden's two-tiered justice system. Under his watch, the Justice Department and the FBI were rotten to the core, targeting anyone who stood up to the deep State.

They raided Mar-a-Lago, indicted President Trump on baseless charges, and weaponized America's top law enforcement Agency against conservatives, parents, and people of faith. Through Jack Reed Smith's Arctic Frost probe, this abuse of power reached the Halls of Congress, surveilling lawmakers over our political beliefs. The American people want one tier of justice: equal justice for all.

That is why President Trump and Republicans are fighting for full accountability for those who weaponized our government. We must ensure that this abuse of power never ever happens again.

Under the President's leadership, our Federal law enforcement Agencies are focused on their core purpose, enforcing the rule of law and fighting crime. Now, when we talk about fighting crime in Tennessee, we look at Memphis. Last year, the city recorded the highest crime rate in the country, and, for years, Memphians have demanded action to address the crime crisis.

Now President Trump is delivering it with the Memphis Safe Task Force. By coordinating efforts between more than a dozen Federal and State Agencies, including the Memphis Police Department, Tennessee National Guard, FBI, Justice Department, and U.S. Marshals, the task force is delivering incredible results.

In just over a month of operations, authorities have made more than 2,800 arrests, including 164 warrant arrests for aggravated assault, 185 for domestic violence, 83 for narcotics, 34 for robbery, 22 for sexual assault, 25 for homicide. The task force has also located more than 110 missing children. In many ways, the Memphis Safe Task Force is serving as a national model for President Trump's broader mission to reduce violent crime across the country.

Mr. President, that is why I am asking unanimous consent that the Senate proceed to the consideration of S. Res. 505, which is at the desk; further, that the resolution be agreed to, the preamble be agreed to, and the motions to reconsider be considered made and laid upon the table with no intervening action or debate.

Mr. President, what the Senator fails to mention is that the cities with the high crime problem are blue cities. They are blue cities.

Also, what he should know is that 63 percent of the residents of Memphis support having the Memphis Safe Task Force fighting the crime that is there.

Now, Memphis had the highest rate per capita in the Nation in 2024, with 2,501 instances of violent crime for every 100,000 people. Now, that is a stat that came from the FBI, and it is why the people in Memphis wanted us to move forward and do something about this.

Since the start of the task force, overall, violent crime rates have fallen 46 percent when compared to the same period last year, and homicides are down 50 percent. Carjackings and sexual assault are down 60 percent.

So when my colleague objects to this, he is objecting to what the good people of Memphis in this fabulous, iconic city are seeing--the results they are seeing. They want Memphis to be the safest city in the country, not the most violent.

They have objected to the arrest of nearly 2,900 criminals in the last 50 days, including sex offenders, murderers, and other violent criminals. They have objected to the rescue of 116 missing children-- 116 children who have been recovered. They have objected to over 300 known gang members being apprehended. They have objected to the seizure of 470 illegal firearms.

We are going to continue to work to make certain that Memphis is the safest city in the United States.

Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent to waive the mandatory quorum call with respect to the Orr nomination.

Mr. President, SNAP benefits have been in the news and a topic of much discussion, and those benefits for over 40 million Americans lapsed over the weekend because the Democrats have chosen to hold government funding hostage for political ``leverage''--their word--at the American people's expense. In other words, they are using the American people as pawns. Because of that, their constituents and, indeed, nearly 700,000 Tennesseans are without their SNAP benefits.

Border Patrol agents, our air traffic controllers, and Federal law enforcement have been working a month now without pay. This is why you have the AFGE and the controllers union saying: End the Schumer shutdown now.

We also know that critical Federal assistance--from rural development programs to small business loans--is in jeopardy.

Across the country, people and small businesses are all suffering because of Chuck Schumer and his Schumer shutdown.

And for Democrats--I think they have wanted this. They planned for it, and they wanted to see it happen, so they got it.

Now, over on the House side, the Democratic whip made it very clear during a recent interview--and I will quote her. She said:

Shutdowns are terrible, and of course there will be

families that are going to suffer. . . . But it is one of the

few leverage times we have.

So to the American people, realize that the Democrats you have elected see you as pawns and leverage and pieces that they can move around a chessboard.

As the Senate Democrat leader said at the beginning of the shutdown, and I quote him:

Every day gets better for [Democrats].

They see this as improving their political chances.

Over the last month, his party has voted more than a dozen times to keep the government shut down. At the heart of their demands is the permanent extension of President Biden's COVID credits under ObamaCare. This would be a $450 billion expense to the U.S. taxpayer.

Last week, I was on the floor talking about this and about how Democrats are peddling falsehoods to try to justify their Schumer shutdown. They claim that ObamaCare subsidies are going to expire. In reality, it is only the Biden COVID credit bonus that will expire.

What happened during COVID for the ObamaCare subsidies--they took off the income caps, and a lot of people had zero-dollar premiums. If you were making over half a million dollars a year, you, too, could get a Biden COVID credit bonus and subsidy from the ObamaCare exchange and you, too, could have the U.S. taxpayer picking up the tab for 80 to 90 percent of your health insurance because they plussed up the credit, and they removed the income caps.

Now, the original ObamaCare subsidies--which, by the way, do not expire. These are permanent. They are in law. The original subsidies continue for people who are at 100 to 400 percent of the Federal poverty level.

Our colleagues across the aisle claim that the Biden COVID credits are needed to keep the cost of health insurance premiums down. In reality, ObamaCare is too expensive to afford without the subsidy. So what they are doing is propping up a broken system.

In fact, since 2013, the ObamaCare benchmark plan premium has increased by 237 percent--more than three times the rate for employer- sponsored healthcare plans that most Americans get through their work and from their employer. As these premiums go up, taxpayers are on the hook to subsidize not the individual but, guess what, the insurance company. The subsidy doesn't go to the individual; it goes directly to the insurance company.

Our colleagues on the other side of the aisle need to understand that their fight for government-run healthcare, which is really what this entire Schumer shutdown is all about, is going to fail. It is time for them to put the American people over and before far-left politics. It is time to reopen the Federal Government.

Artificial Intelligence

Mr. President, we all are hearing quite a bit about AI and the potential of AI to transform entire industries for

the better, to make them more efficient.

In Tennessee alone, our advanced manufacturers are using it to become more efficient, to lower costs, and to increase productivity. Healthcare providers are using it to strengthen care, and researchers are using it to discover new treatments. These are all things that are worth celebrating. They are good, and they are yielding good results, but we also know that this emerging technology can be used for harm.

In the case of Google, its AI models have targeted conservatives with defamation for years. During a Senate Commerce Committee hearing last week, I presented evidence to Google's vice president for government affairs and public policy that his company's AI models have repeatedly--repeatedly--fabricated malicious stories about conservative activist Robby Starbuck. He is a Tennessean, and he is a conservative leader in our State.

In one instance, Google's large language model, Gemma, falsely claimed that Starbuck was accused of child rape and that I publicly defended him. Google's AI models have also falsely accused him of being a former adult film star, of facing criminal drug charges, and of shooting a man in Nashville in an argument over a parking spot.

In response, Google's VP claimed that ``hallucinations'' among their AI models are a common problem and that the company is working on it-- as if this harmful defamation is merely a technical glitch. And they refer to it as a hallucination.

In fact, there seems to be a pattern of malicious lying and fiction when it comes to conservatives. So I asked the AI model ``Has Marsha Blackburn been accused of rape?'' The answer to this question, of course, is an unequivocal no. I never have. Yet, Gemma fabricated an entire outlandish criminal allegation against me. It had a massive story about a rape in 1987, which didn't happen, and accusations of improper conduct, which did not happen. It also came forward with an alleged victim. It was all malicious. It was all made up. It was all a lie. Yet Gemma even generated fake links to fabricated news articles to support the defamatory claim, and, of course, the links didn't work.

This marks a catastrophic failure of oversight of an AI model that has been downloaded by more than 200 million people. So last week, I sent a letter over to Google's CEO Sundar Pichai demanding an explanation as to why Gemma was creating these false allegations, criminal allegations, against conservatives and also against me. I also asked for a list of steps the company is taking to eliminate political bias and defamatory content from its models. Google has not responded to my letter. What they did do was take Gemma down over the weekend.

Despite the AI model's serious flaws, the big tech giant said in a statement that it is going to continue to work to make Gemma available to their developers.

And the message on this is clear: You need to shut it down. You need to shut it down completely. You need to shut the Gemini system down completely.

The American public deserves to know that, with these AI models, the information is going to be accurate. It is going to be transparent. It is going to be fair, and it is not going to be a tool that is going to be used to fabricate and to smear conservatives.

In the meantime, Google has until tomorrow to respond to the letter demanding answers. And it is important to keep in mind that this is the same Google that operated a Gmail blacklist that suppressed Republican fundraising emails as spam, and it is the same Google that manipulated search results about the 2024 election to benefit Kamala Harris and to harm President Trump, and it is the same Google that suppressed search results of the attempted assassination of President Trump in Butler,

Mr. President, today marks nearly a full month since the Schumer shutdown started. That was really the time when the Democrats decided to just go on strike and filibuster a clean CR.

What has happened is our Federal law enforcement is being forced to work without pay; air traffic control towers are understaffed; flights are delayed; and it has jeopardized nutritional programs for millions of low-income families. This crisis is something that was entirely, completely, unavoidable. Yet the Democrats have voted over and over to keep the government closed.

The reason they are doing this is Democrat leader Chuck Schumer is holding the government hostage to ram through hundreds of billions of dollars in inflationary spending. In other words, we are not spending enough--$38 trillion in debt is not enough. They want to run it up some more. He claims that this reckless action is needed to stop Republicans, in his words, ``from taking healthcare away'' from Americans by allowing healthcare subsidies to expire under the Affordable Care Act, or ObamaCare, as it is known--and more appropriately known--because there is nothing affordable about this thing.

The problem is that is a falsehood, and it shows you how our friends across the aisle are willing to put the American people and their lives and SNAP benefits and paychecks in jeopardy in order to achieve a goal.

One thing that needs to be understood is that the subsidies that are there for ObamaCare--they are permanent. They are permanent. They are not going anywhere. And households that have incomes that fall between 100 and 400 percent of the Federal poverty level are going to continue to get a credit without any interruption. That is in law. That subsidy is there.

This year, the upper limit for these ObamaCare subsidies was an income limit of $128,600 for a family of four. For the lowest income individuals, insurance premiums can never exceed 2 percent of the total household income. That is something that is Federal law.

Here is what is set to expire at the end of the year: It is President Biden's COVID-era bonus credits that were put in place. This is something that the Democrats did in 2021.

The Biden COVID credits eliminated the 400-percent income cap, allowing households that are making over--get this--a half million dollars a year, $500,000 a year--they could benefit from this subsidy program. So let's say you were buying health insurance on the ObamaCare exchange and you were making over a half million dollars a year. You too--you too--could get a taxpayer-funded insurance subsidy for ObamaCare. Bear in mind, the subsidy does not go to the individual. The subsidy goes directly to the insurance company.

My friends across the aisle choose to rant and rail against insurance companies. But do you know what? They are enriching them every day, and they want to enrich them even more because now that these emergency subsidies are set to expire more than 5 years after the start of the pandemic, the Democrats are fighting to make these enhanced Biden COVID credit bonuses--they want to make them permanent. This would cost U.S. taxpayers 450 billion hard-earned dollars every single year.

Now, the reason behind this madness is really quite simple. Our friends across the aisle want to bring America one step closer to government-run healthcare. You know, when we were having all the debates about ObamaCare, they kept saying: All right, we will settle for ObamaCare because that is a step toward government-run healthcare. That is one step toward a single-payer system. That is one step toward socialized medicine.

That is what they want. It would be like Medicaid for all or the VA for all. They want control of your doctor, your health insurance, the kind of care you could get, where you are going to get it, when you are going to get it. Think the VA. Think Medicaid--because that is what they want.

Our debt, as I said, is at $38 trillion. So what they are trying to do to fund this program that is rife with waste and fraud is unbelievable. Now, the reality is, the lowest cost plan in 2026, the average marketplace premium after tax credits, is projected to be $50 a month--$20 less than the average monthly premium in 2020. But we can't ignore the wasteful spending that exists within ObamaCare.

According to one estimate, there are 6.4 million people improperly reporting their income to benefit from fully funded plans under ObamaCare, thanks to the Biden COVID credits. Remember, I said, there are some people, because of the Biden COVID credits, who have zero- dollar premiums. So the estimate is 6.4 million people improperly report their income in order to get that zero premium.

This abuse is costing the taxpayers $27 billion in 2025 alone. That is the cost of this. This is the cost of not verifying. This is the cost of a program that has run amok with waste and abuse.

Another peculiar example of wasteful enrollment, close to 12 million enrollees in the program filed no claims last year. In other words, they didn't use the insurance. That number is triple what the number was from 2021 because the Democrats expanded the option of zero-premium plans.

Among those 12 million, many people don't even know that they have been enrolled in a taxpayer-funded program. Others may have separate health insurance coverage that they have chosen to use. And taxpayers sent money directly to the insurers on their behalf. This is because an insurance agent, as long as he has name, address, and contact info, can enroll you in this and get that commission.

Think about that. You don't even know you are in the program. You have got an insurance agent who has name, address, phone number, and contact information; and, all of a sudden, they have enrolled you.

Extending these Biden-era enhanced credits, as the Democrats are demanding, would be doing nothing to address the waste, the fraud, and the abuse that is running rampant in this program. And it wouldn't do anything to address the structural flaws that are there in ObamaCare that have really sent premiums soaring over the last several years.

You know, it is so interesting to me that ObamaCare promised that it was going to lower the cost of premiums; it was going to make healthcare affordable and in reach of everybody in the country. But it turns out it is too expensive. You can't afford it unless you get a subsidy. You can't afford it unless you are getting a zero-dollar premium. That is because the insurance tries to be ``one size fits all'' and requires people to pay for things they are never going to use.

So what we have seen is the price of the insurance and the utilization--the price has gone up, and the utilization has gone down because you have got an insurance card and you have got access to the queue, but you can't get a doctor and you don't get in to see the doctor.

We know that the costs on these premiums really shot up after the Biden COVID credits went into law. And as the premiums go up, taxpayers are on the hook to subsidize the insurance companies.

Remember, the payment goes to them, not to the individual. It goes directly to the insurance company. The agent can enroll you, even if you don't know you are enrolled, because they have got your name, address, phone number, and contact information.

Republicans have already started to address the root causes of this escalation. We have secured measures in the Big Beautiful Bill that prevent illegal aliens from receiving subsidies under ObamaCare. We prevent them from getting Medicaid services also.

It also requires individuals who misstate their income to repay the excess subsidy that they got. That seems fair. If you lied about it on your form and it shows up when it is verified, you are not going to get off with a slap on the hand. You have got to repay. You have got to pay because if you are cheating, it means somebody else is going to be paying that difference.

So requiring applicants to verify their income, their family size, their immigration status, and their residence before enrolling ensures that you are not going to have people abusing the system and ripping off hard-working taxpayers. That is common sense.

Our Democratic colleagues should be working with us to implement more integrity measures to ensure that these taxpayer-funded benefits only go to the people who deserve them.

Republicans want to tackle the rising premium costs because this is too expensive to afford. They want to drive down the cost of prescription drugs by holding pharmacy benefit managers, or PBMs, accountable. We want to streamline the process for prompt payment of claims, put a shot clock on these insurance companies, make certain they are paying your local doctor, and maintain the fiscal solvency of the Medicare Program.

We want to see healthcare freedom. People want to make certain that we have got choice and options; that you are not mandated into a program you

don't want, that covers things you don't need.

How about health savings accounts? How about association health plans? How about across-State-line purchase of health insurance? So when you get a health insurance product you like, you can keep it. When you get a doctor you like, you can keep him. When you get a payment price you like, you can keep that and make it.

We would love to be addressing these issues, but our Democratic colleagues have decided they want to keep going with a government shutdown and hold the government hostage so they can appease their leftwing base.

It is time for them to end the theatrics and come to the table and get back to work.

I yield the floor.

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

Mr. President, earlier this month, we discovered one of the worst abuses of government power in our Nation's history: The FBI, under President Biden, spied on eight U.S. Senators. I was one of those eight.

Now, what we have learned so far is this: The Agency, the FBI, tracked whom we were calling on our cell phones, where we were physically located when we made or received the calls, and how long each call lasted. We still don't know the predicate for the subpoena, but they did go into a court, and they got a subpoena.

Now, by all appearances, the spying was politically motivated. The lawmakers who were spied on are all Republicans, each one of us supports President Trump, and we had valid questions about the outcome of the 2020 election.

What we also know is that no American should be spied on by their government because of their political beliefs whether they are a Democrat, a Republican, or an Independent. This should not happen.

We are all duly-elected Members of Congress, and Jack Smith and the CR-15 unit at the FBI that did his dirty work for him violated our First and Fourth Amendment rights, the separation of powers, the speech and debate clause, and the Stored Communications Act.

If they are willing to do this to us, just imagine what they are willing to do to private citizens who have a different political point of view. What were they doing to the moms and dads that went to school board meetings? What were they doing to pro-lifers?

We already know that through the same probe, which was termed ``Arctic Frost,'' the FBI investigated nearly 100 Republican and conservative groups, including the Republican National Committee, the Republican Attorneys General Association, and Charlie Kirk's Turning Point USA. We are hearing they may have surveilled as many as 150 different individuals.

We are learning that this weaponization of government was approved by those at the very top of Joe Biden's Justice Department. Late last week, Chairman Grassley, who chairs our Judiciary Committee, released an FBI memo drafted on April 4, 2022, that authorized the Arctic Frost probe. Among the people whose signatures appear on that document are then-Deputy Attorney General Lisa Monaco and the Attorney General of the United States, Merrick Garland. Oh, by the way, the memo was written by FBI Director Christopher Wray.

We are only learning about this abuse of power and this weaponization of the FBI because the Trump administration and Republicans are committed to complete transparency and accountability. They are committed to a single tier of justice, not two different tiers of justice.

Thankfully, FBI Director Kash Patel has fired all the individuals that were involved in the spying operation.

Now it is time to find out how else they have weaponized our Nation's justice system, so we will begin to have some hearings, and we are going to put these individuals under oath and ask them to explain how they allowed this to happen.

What we have heard so far is that Jack Smith, who was the ringleader of this, wants ``assurances''--his choice of words--that he won't be punished in exchange for testifying about his spying scheme before Congress. He is absolutely out of his mind if he thinks he is going to get off with this scot-free. This is a scandal bigger than Watergate. It is a scandal where the FBI and the DOJ have been weaponized, politicized. And, no, he will not get off scot-free. The American people want to see that people are going to be held to account. So if we need to subpoena him, that is exactly what we will do.

We are also going to determine why exactly Verizon Wireless complied with the FBI's groundless subpoena request.

Just last week, we learned that AT&T also received a subpoena request from Jack Smith for two other Members of Congress's phone records. Yet, when AT&T questioned Smith's team about the legality of the subpoena, they apparently backed down, and they abandoned the effort altogether.

So it is very curious why Verizon just rolled over and went along with this lawless request and didn't move to question and didn't move to quash the subpoena. So we will get to the bottom of that.

It is important to realize that Lady Justice is blindfolded. The American people want that one tier of justice--equal treatment under the law, equal access. We are not going to stop fighting until we can ensure that the weaponization of government that occurred under Joe Biden does not ever happen again.

Memphis

Mr. President, late last month, I had the honor of joining President Trump in the Oval Office as he signed an order establishing the Memphis Safe Task Force. This is a coordinated effort by the Justice Department, the FBI, and 11 other Federal Agencies to work with local and State officials, support the Memphis Police Department, and get violent criminals off the streets.

This support has been desperately needed. Last year, Memphis saw the highest crime rate in the country. In many parts of the city, residents have told us they could not walk out their front door without fear of being robbed, shot, or murdered.

Now, with the task force, we are seeing violent, repeat criminals get locked up after terrorizing Memphians for far too long. In just 1 month of operations, there have been some just astounding, remarkable results. The authorities are working together as a team. They have made more than 1,700 arrests, including 114 warrant arrests for aggravated assault, 116 arrests for domestic violence, 23 arrests for robbery, 12 for sexual assault, and 10 for homicide. At the same time, the task force has recovered more than 370 illegal weapons and more than 230 stolen vehicles, and they have found more than 80 missing children.

This is a huge step forward for Memphis. Already, Memphians are doing things they could not do before, and they are enjoying this wonderful, historic, iconic city. For the opening night for the Memphis Grizzlies, fans came out to the game in huge numbers, knowing that law enforcement was there to keep the peace.

As one fan said outside the FedExForum:

It is so peaceful . . . we're just enjoying life and it

just feels so free.

This is something that all Americans should celebrate.

We will not stop fighting to make Memphis safer. We are going to make certain it is the safest city in the United States, not the most dangerous.

I yield the floor.

Mr. President, what is the pending business before the Senate?

Mr. President, we know that under Joe Biden and Chris Wray's leadership, the FBI, it turns out, was truly rotten to the core. In many ways, they oversaw the worst political corruption of the justice system in our Nation's history, and now we have proof.

They raided Mar-a-Lago. They indicted President Trump on baseless charges and weaponized America's top law enforcement Agency against conservatives, against parents, and against people of faith.

On Monday, we found out that this abuse of power had reached the Halls of the Congress. Thanks to internal FBI documents provided by Director Patel and Deputy Director Bongino to Chairman Grassley, we now know that the Biden FBI tracked the private communications of eight U.S. Senators, including me.

What we have in common is this: We are all Republicans, we all support President Trump, and we all had questions about the 2020 election.

According to the documents that were given, the FBI tracked who we were calling on our phones, who was calling us, where we were physically located when the calls were made or received, and how long each call lasted. This is an abuse of authority. It is despicable. And we know that their abuses were far greater and more numerous than those abuses toward us.

Earlier this year, Chairman Grassley released whistleblower disclosures showing that the Biden FBI obtained the government-issued cell phones of both President Trump and former Vice President Pence.

Last month, we learned that the Agency launched a political investigation into nearly 100 Republican and conservative groups, including the Republican National Committee, the Republican Attorneys General Association, and Charlie Kirk's Turning Point USA.

We are only learning about this weaponization of government against conservatives because the Trump administration is committed to total transparency for the American people. The work that President Trump, his administration, Attorney General Pam Bondi, Director Patel, and Deputy Director Bongino are doing is so appreciated--not only by us but by the American people.

It is time for the weaponization of government to stop. It is time to make certain that these individuals who did this, who were part of the CR-15 unit that worked with Jack Smith, who were working on Arctic Frost--it is time for them to be fired from their positions. And I appreciate that this work is taking place each and every day.

U.S. Department of Justice

Mr. President, yesterday, my colleagues and I who are on the Judiciary Committee had the pleasure of hearing from Attorney General Bondi, who has done so much to restore accountability and transparency at the U.S. Department of Justice.

Instead of waging political investigations, the Department, under her leadership, is focused on enforcing the rule of law, and that includes enforcing the rule of law in Memphis, TN.

As we speak, the Justice Department and FBI are among the 13 Federal Agencies that are on the ground working with local and State officials to support the Memphis Police Department and to lock up violent criminals.

In just over a week of operations, President Trump's Memphis Safe Task Force has delivered tremendous results. As of Monday, authorities have made 321 arrests. This includes 82 who were on ICE warrants, 41 on gun charges, 18 for sex offenses, and 1 for homicide. This is on top of the 503 gang members who were arrested by the FBI in their work from July 15 to September 15.

Having the additional Agencies there is support that has truly been needed in Memphis to sustain this work that is rooting out gangs and criminals.

Last year, the city of Memphis saw the highest crime rate in the country. In some parts of the city, shootings, robberies, and murders were a daily occurrence.

Memphians have long demanded action to address the city's crime crisis, but the Memphis Police Department is short 500 officers, with just over 20 people in their current recruitment class. With Federal law enforcement helping to keep the peace, Memphis police are now empowered to track down repeat violent criminals, including gang members who have terrorized city residents for too long.

At the same time as the Memphis operation, the Trump administration has surged Federal resources to other crime-ridden cities to restore law and order. In Portland and Chicago, ICE agents have had to overcome obstruction efforts by Democrat elected officials. They have had to push back on Democrat elected officials to enforce the rule of law and to detain criminal illegal aliens.

To preserve the hard-fought wins of the Memphis Safe Task Force and Federal law enforcement across the country, we need to make certain that these violent criminals are behind bars. Yet, in too many cases, soft-on-crime prosecutors and judges have allowed violent criminals back on the streets without bail to continue their criminal activity.

Last year, in Memphis, an 18-year-old who was released without bond after stealing multiple vehicles went on to murder a man in an attempted robbery. Just days earlier, a man released without bail after being charged with auto theft and unlawful possession of a

weapon killed a Memphis police officer in a shootout.

During a Judiciary Committee hearing that I chaired last week on blue-city chaos and tragedy, State Senator Brent Taylor, who represents parts of Memphis, told me that soft-on-crime prosecutors are the weak link in the work Memphis is trying to do and the work that Memphis law enforcement is trying to do. Their DA is the weak link. After years of senseless violence, we cannot allow the hard work of the Memphis Safe Task Force to go to waste.

To ensure that the rule of law is enforced, I recently introduced the Keep Violent Criminals Off Our Streets Act. This legislation is backed by the White House, and it would ban the award of certain Federal funds to States and localities that limit the use of cash bail.

There must be consequences for these leftist officials who put criminals ahead of law-abiding citizens. There have to be consequences for these prosecutors, these DAs, that continue to practice cashless bail policies. So banning these jurisdictions from having those Federal funds is a way that we can say: Enforce cash bail and get these violent criminals off the streets.

I yield the floor.

I suggest the absence of a quorum.

I ask for the yeas and nays.