Floor Statements

I ask unanimous consent to waive the mandatory quorum call with respect to the Weaver nomination.

Reserving the right to object, this legislation has not been through regular order. It has not received a legislative hearing, and it hasn't been marked up. And it hasn't been reported by the committee of jurisdiction. As a result, there has been no opportunity, with all of those stops along the legislative pathway having been skipped--there has been no opportunity--for Members of this body, for members of the Trump administration, for the two principal involved Agencies within the U.S. Department of the Interior, known as BOEM and BSEE, to provide their feedback or offer testimony on the implications of this legislation.

Now, look, the Senate's committee process exists, and it exists for a reason. It exists for exactly these sets of reasons. While it might have slightly different implications depending on the committee involved and depending on the type of legislation, there are reasons why these things are there, and almost regardless of which committee is affected, you can normally benefit from this. And, in fact, it is normally quite hazardous to just bypass all of this, because that is how we legislate, without making sure that we have gone through all the necessary steps.

This process that has evolved over the last, roughly, two and a half centuries allows legislation to be examined in a transparent and a deliberative

way, with input from affected Agencies, from industries, from the President of the United States and members of his administration, and Senators on both sides of the aisle, including but not limited to the Senators of the States who might be behind the legislation in question.

Before legislation is advanced to the floor, it should be vetted through that process so that the Senate can fully understand and appreciate its scope, its effect, its legal posture, and whatever unintended or intended consequences the legislation might have.

I have made it clear, from the beginning, that I am willing to work with the Senator from Florida. In fact, I have offered to place it on the agenda for the next subcommittee hearing within the Energy Subcommittee of the Energy and Natural Resources Committee. That would provide the Trump administration with the opportunity to weigh in with its views and allow us to hear analysis from BOEM and BSEE and any other Agencies that are affected--consistent with how the committee has considered other legislation within its jurisdiction this year, and consistent with the way it has always done it in the 15 years I have been a U.S. Senator.

As chairman of the Energy and Natural Resources Committee, I have consistently stated that bills within the committee's jurisdiction should proceed through regular order. That process positions bills for successful consideration on the floor, consideration by the House, and, ultimately, enactment into law.

Skipping that process allows a bill to jump ahead of others that have followed the rules and respected the committee system.

So my objection today is not based on the merits of the underlying policy. It is based on the process. But the process is important to getting the policy right. That is why we don't skip it. That is why, in the absence of a compelling, overwhelming, urgent reason, we don't just ignore it, and I can't and won't ignore it here.

The Senate should not abandon its regular order by advancing legislation that has not been considered by the committee of jurisdiction.

I look forward to working with my friend and colleague the distinguished Senator from Florida to consider her bill in the Energy and Natural Resources Committee in a transparent matter.

Until that occurs, I must object and object now.

Mr. President, I respect and deeply appreciate my friend and colleague the distinguished Senator from Florida. And I respect and admire her great devotion to protecting her State, its pristine beaches, and the many qualities that it enjoys. People from all over the United States of America and all over the world love going to Florida. No one wants to take that away.

I, nonetheless, take umbrage--great umbrage in fact--to a couple of characterizations to which I must now respond. First, as to what she characterizes as the ``long bureaucratic process,'' this process is itself quite short, especially in comparison to an actual bureaucratic process, which it is not. Make no mistake, this is not a bureau; this is not bureaucratic process; this is a legislative process. It is a legislative process that has endured for hundreds of years in this country, and it may not be perfect, but it is the best one we have got. It existed for many hundreds of years before that in our mother country, before we became our own country. There are reasons why these things develop. To call it a long bureaucratic process is neither fair nor accurate, and it misapprehends the nature of the legislative task, including the legislative task before us at this very moment.

Now, with regard to the suggestion that by not passing this today-- not passing it after leapfrogging over about 10 legislative steps that are essential to that process--we are somehow threatening Florida's pristine beaches and waters, this is simply not true. That couldn't be more untrue.

Let's remember what happened in 2020. President Trump issued a moratorium. That moratorium stays in place until 2032. Absent some other action taken pursuant to that, the status quo is to protect them.

What she is trying to do is to protect against President Trump doing anything consistent with his authority, consistent with that 2020 order. She is trying to tie his hands to prevent him from even figuring out what is there, to figure out whether there is a cost-benefit analysis on any of that.

Now, sure, the Senate can consider that from time to time. And perhaps after the legislative process--not the bureaucratic process. That is something different. That doesn't exist here. Nor is this simply a delay for the sake of delay. I pride myself in running the Energy and Natural Resources Committee and bringing forth these hearings as expeditiously as possible, and I have offered to put it on the next appropriate subcommittee hearing.

Now, if a mere delay of a few weeks or a few months, where it takes that time, isn't acceptable, I would like to know why. We have yet to hear a single reason, a single argument as to the parade of horribles of what could happen if we don't, as she would do here, tie President Trump's hands and bind further legislatively beyond what he has already bound himself to through his own 2020 Executive order.

So this is in place. It will remain in place. And there has yet to be a single reason articulated as to why we should treat this as an emergency. There is nobody going down there to drill right now. We still have got the Agencies that are looking at it. The least we can do in consideration of President Trump, his administration, and the affected Agencies, including those that I have mentioned earlier today--most particularly BOEM--is to hear them out first. In the absence of a compelling reason to leapfrog all of that, I must and will continue to object.

Mr. President, I have seven 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 want to thank my friend and colleague the senior Senator from Colorado for his outstanding work on this, for working with me and my team. I am glad that we were able to make this a success. It is my hope and my intent that this will not be the end but the beginning of a much bigger pattern of success. It is a good example of the kind of legislation we ought to pass every time we get the chance. When we have bills that are uncontroversial, we can get them passed.

Sometimes these bills are held up not in spite of the fact that they are noncontroversial but because they are noncontroversial--because we want to couple them with other legislation that may be less popular.

We have heard some observations today, some concerns expressed about the ability, once we pass legislation over here, to get it passed over on the House side. There are a couple of things I think we ought to take note of that should give us hope on this.

In the first place, the way legislation like this works on the House side--they don't have the 60-vote cloture standard that we have in the Senate, but with these lands bills, they tend to pass them under a procedure known in the House as suspension of the rules.

Under suspension of the rules, it requires them to be passed with 290 votes instead of 218. Because of the way that works, it ends up yielding a similar outcome to how it works over here. They tend to be able to enhance their ability to pass those under the suspension calendar if they bring them to the floor while paired with other bills--not surgically stitched together so it is the same legislation, but they bring them forward for procedural consideration in the House on the floor, resulting in an approximate number of noncontroversial Republican and Democratic bills passing regardless of who happens to be in the majority at the time.

My friend and colleague the distinguished Senator from California had mentioned a moment ago concerns about that process over in the House, but I will remind him that at the end of the last Congress, he and I had several bills that were brought together and passed through the procedure that I am describing on the floor and that were passed into law by the House of Representatives after that.

Although, under certain circumstances, two separate bill sponsors of two separate bills may choose to merge, surgically stitch their bills into one bill, there are downsides to that too, and it certainly ought not be that without which, not passing legislation in the Senate--they ought to be able to stand on their own.

I, for one, am happy--particularly within the range of this type of bill

that we have dealt with here, bills that have passed the Senate in the past and that do not have significant opposition over here--happy to work with my counterparts in the House to make sure those move forward.

There are sometimes reasons why something doesn't move as quickly over there as it might over here, and there are as many different reasons for that as there are types of legislation.

In any event, I want to thank all the people participating today--in particular Senator Bennet and Senator Sullivan for their tenacity in moving these bills forward.

Finally, Mr. President, let me just remark briefly on another topic that has come up within the last few minutes where we are celebrating anniversaries related to the First Step Act. This is something that I worked on for nearly a decade before it became law. It was an honor and privilege to do that.

I appreciate the remarks made earlier by Senator Booker from New Jersey. I still remember the exact moment Senator Booker first stepped onto the floor in the Senate right after he came to the Senate in October of 2012, I believe it was. He introduced himself to me and in the same sentence said: I am really interested in your criminal justice reform efforts, and I want to be partners.

So it was a great privilege to work with him, with Senator Durbin, Senator Grassley, and all the others who made it possible. It has been a good development for the United States of America.

We have been more effective in combating crime by being smart in the way we punish crime. When we unduly take away discretion from judges to allow them to be judges, sometimes it can present odd outcomes, as it certainly did in the case of Weldon Angelos, the young man who, in his midtwenties, sold three dime-bag quantities of marijuana over a 72-hour period to what turned out to be a confidential informant.

The firearm that he had in his possession at the time--because of the way minimum mandatory laws were being interpreted and applied in the courts at the time, Mr. Angelos was subjected to a minimum mandatory sentence that would put him in prison for the rest of his natural life--to a 55-year minimum mandatory sentence because he had a gun on his person at the time even though the gun was neither brandished nor discharged in connection with the offense.

Under the so-called three-strikes laws at the time, the Federal district judge, Paul Cassell of Salt Lake City, who sentenced him said: There are hijackers, there are murderers, rapists, all kinds of people who do horrible things who don't get anywhere near this much time in prison, but I, as a Federal judge, have no discretion here, no choice but to send him to prison for 55 years based on three dime-bag quantities.

Each of the two first offenses, even though they were all charged on the same document and occurred over the same 72-hour period--they counted as prior convictions for purposes of the three-strikes law, and that is one of the many issues we set out to address in the First Step Act. The country is better off for it.

Mr. President, back to the lands package, I again want to thank Senator Sullivan for his tenacity in this, for his patience and his willingness to stick with the effort. The people of Alaska are fortunate to have him serving that great State.

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

Mr. President, it is a shame that we don't have more of an opportunity to pass more bills, particularly bills that are not controversial. This is an opportunity that we should take to pass noncontroversial bills every time we get the chance.

We have four bills coming out of the Energy and Natural Resources Committee that we can, and I believe we

should, pass today--bills with no substantive objections that I am aware of, bills that have been cleared by both parties in the Senate, bills that will have positive impact for Americans--Americans that the bills themselves were designed to serve.

And yet, sadly, I am anticipating an objection today when I offer those up for passage. So why am I anticipating an objection? Well, I am looking forward to hearing from my colleague--my friend and colleague from New Mexico--Senator Heinrich, on what objections he might have to a bill from Senator Hawley that would designate America's National Churchill Museum in Missouri as a national historic landmark. I am looking forward to hearing from him what problems he might have with Senator Padilla's uncontroversial bill to adjust the boundaries of the Golden Gate National Recreation Area. I am looking forward to hearing what changes he would propose to Senator Husted's bill, which simply adjusts the boundaries of the Dayton Aviation Heritage National Historical Park, or what he thinks would be harmed by passing a bill from Senator Gillibrand and Minority Leader Schumer, his own colleagues on the other side of the aisle, that would establish the Fort Ontario Holocaust Refugee Shelter National Historical Park.

All the bills that I am offering have passed out of this body and did, in fact, pass out of this body last year with unanimous support-- not just bipartisan but unanimous support. All are locally supported. All should be passed today.

And I fear they might not be, and I am really looking forward to why--looking forward to hearing why my colleague might want to stop these--because if there are real substantive objections to these bills, to any of them, bring them forward. I will be the first to work with him or others who may have concerns on those. Perhaps, then, we can work to improve the bill and resolve what concerns might exist around it to get it to a place where everyone is happy with it and where we could get something done for the American people.

After all, this is the business of law making. But I don't think we are likely to hear substantive objections today, based on what I have heard. I don't anticipate that my friend and colleague Senator Heinrich will offer substantive objections or changes that he wants made to these particular bills. I hope I am wrong.

But if he doesn't have any problems with the substance of the bills, then why not let them pass? Well, there is a tendency sometimes exhibited in the Senate, and I have seen it done by people of both political parties and by Members at different ends of the political continuum, from time to time. When Members want leverage, sometimes, they will reach for whatever is popular, in some cases even what is uncontroversial.

During the shutdown, we saw a parallel use of the technique with some using air traffic controllers, TSA officers, and Coast Guard families as pressure points because the public trusted those people and needs the services that they routinely and uniquely perform.

And, sometimes, Members--again, of both political parties and of every political persuasion--will sometimes use popular bills the same way. In other words, they will oppose popular, noncontroversial bills not because they are controversial or unpopular but because they are uncontroversial and popular. They are blocked because their broad support makes them useful cargo for a lands package or another aggregated legislative vehicle packed with measures that might not withstand scrutiny under the light of day if they were considered on their own or even when paired with a small handful of other bills.

Instead of moving bills off the floor one by one or two by two in a transparent, bipartisan process, some would prefer a really big omnibus package, often prepared by staff behind closed doors, where only a few Senators and no members of the public are participating or even allowed to participate. Then Members are told to take it or leave it in its entirety--up or down, binary choice, no other option, no amendments, no adequate time for debate. Simply, take it all or leave it all, even the uncontroversial and the popular.

Now, this puts many of us--particularly, those of us from public lands States, like Utah, where the Federal Government owns two-thirds of the land--in a difficult position. In States like mine, almost every action requires some sort of ``Mother, may I'' from the Federal Government.

This is not a process that can continue, at least not one that can continue without causing a lot of other problems. So as chairman of the Senate Committee on Energy and Natural Resources, I have set out to change that. I have set out to--at least with regard to noncontroversial bills that have passed the Senate in the last year, unanimously, it is a good place to start--where there is consensus, because there is consensus.

My aim is to build on the progress from last year, when this body passed out 41 bills, and to that end, I have suggested that we start by passing the bills, at least a few of them, paired Republican and Democrat bills at the same time--bills that passed the Senate unanimously last year, including bills that the ranking member himself agreed to less than a year ago.

And, again, if there is a policy objection, then let's hear it. I am more than willing to work with you to address whatever substantive objections there might be.

But these bills should pass in the light of day, where every Member-- Republican or Democrat or Independent--could be part of the process.

This has been going on, back and forth, in one way or another for a few months. In May, I came to the floor and asked unanimous consent to pass two Republican bills alongside two Democrat bills, both of which, like the bills that are at issue today, passed the Senate unanimously last year. Now, this drew an objection from the other side of the aisle.

And in July I came to the floor again and offered to work with the ranking member on these bills. I offered two additional Republican and two Democrat bills that passed out of this body last year, also with unanimous support, and it drew the same objection.

Now, as always, I have offered to work with the ranking member and the minority if they have any substantive concerns on any of these bills, and I make that offer again now. But as you may see in just a moment--as I suspect we will see; I can't tell the future--I haven't heard any substantive policy concerns with them.

Now, a small minority of Members who want to block bills--including bills supported by, introduced by, sponsored by Members of their own caucus--just because they want them in a broader package isn't going to cut it.

Now, 2 weeks ago, you had the junior Senator from Alaska, Senator Sullivan, who came to the floor and asked consent to pass his bill to give Alaska Native Vietnam veterans the land they earned and have long been owed. At the request of Senator Padilla and the ranking member, Senator Sullivan paired his bill with the bill from Senator Gallego, keeping it bipartisan.

However, to the surprise of Senator Sullivan and the Native Vietnam veterans who were relying on the legislation, this, too, drew the aforementioned objection, moving the goalpost again.

That process isn't defensible. It is not sustainable. It is not going to work. It is not going to work for a whole host of reasons, including the fact that I have heard from our counterparts in the House of Representatives--including in a conversation as recently as just a couple of hours ago with Chairman Westerman, my committee chairman counterpart on the House of Representatives side--that this is problematic. They want them to come over not as a big, sewn-together package but as bills, even if passed while paired over here. They will also be paired over there.

Sometimes, the concern is raised: Well, then Democrat bills will suffer and atrophy over there, while Republican bills are prioritized and passed to the exclusion of the Democrat bills.

This is not true. In fact, because these bills are passed as a matter of course--routinely passed--under suspension of the rules on the House side--and I believe suspension of the rules requires a super majority, about 290 votes--these always end up getting paired together. You end up with Democrat-Republican balance as they submit them on the floor.

So, today, I will again ask the minority to work with me to pass both Republican and Democrat bills--bills that, yet again, are noncontroversial and have passed this body unanimously within the last year.

These four bills are just the start. I have a list of 19 bills that Republicans are prepared to pass today. My staff has shared the list with the ranking member's staff. In fact, we did so weeks ago. And yet we continue to hear talk of an objection today.

I am willing to commit to working with my colleagues on the lands bills they wish to pass, with the understanding that, as we bring them to the floor to try to pass them by unanimous consent, we will continue to pair them so that there is balance.

So, please, let's work together. We can do this. This isn't hard.

There is a lot in the legislative process that is difficult. The last thing we ought to be doing is making the areas where we do agree, where there is unanimity, to make that, too, part of the unresolvable conundrum of bills.

And another thing happens. If we do this, it tends to slow down the process. Last year, there was an effort to try to sew a bunch of these together for some sort of year-end lands package. One thing led to another, and we got to the end of the year, which was the end of the Congress, and as the list got bigger, it got more and more difficult to sustain it. Whereas, if we go a little bit at a time, pair a few Republican bills and Democrat bills, bring them forward, pass them by unanimous consent, little by little, throughout the 2-year Congress, we are much more likely to be able to achieve passage, not just in the House but also here. That is a recipe for success.

But when we box stuff that has been passed unanimously, where there is no substantive policy objection, it is not the best way to serve those who elected us.

Our country faces huge challenges. And in many of those challenges, public policy consensus can be difficult--not impossible--to achieve but much more difficult than it is with these bills, these unanimously passed bills from just last year.

We have health prices that are soaring. Our national debt is out of control. How can we come together as a legislative body to tackle these more vexing issues if we can't even agree to something as unanimously supported, as totally noncontroversial, as a proposal to adjust the boundaries of the Golden Gate National Recreation Area and the Dayton Aviation Heritage National and Historical Park?

The American people deserve a government that tells them what it is doing and why. The American people deserve bills that succeed or fail on their own merit in a digestible format. They do not deserve a process in which someone can slip a controversial idea past the public without debate by smuggling it into a much broader package, consisting mostly, but not entirely, of completely uncontroversial bills? This Chamber should reject that approach. If nothing else, then, because it has failed. It brought us to failure in the last Congress at the end of last year, just as it will end in failure if we try to do that again.

We have been told--we have been reminded by our counterparts in the House of Representatives as recently as a few hours ago--it will also contribute to failure over there. We can do better. This is a start. This won't solve all of our problems or resolve all of our disagreements, but it will bring this one to a close because there is no disagreement here.

At the end of the day--this should end today but only if we insist bills be able to stand on their own two feet and that we are willing to bring them forward one by one, two by two, with Democrat and Republican balance.

To that end, Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the Committee on Energy and Natural Resources be discharged and that the Senate proceed to the immediate consideration of the following bills en bloc; further, that the bills be considered read a third time and passed en bloc, and that the motions to reconsider these bills be considered made and laid upon the table, all en bloc: S. 650, America's National Churchill Museum National Historic Landmark Act from Senator Hawley; S. 432, Fort Ontario Holocaust Refugee Shelter National Historic Park Establishment Act from Senator Gillibrand; S. 2434, to amend the Dayton Aviation Preservation Act from Senator Husted; and S. 1142, Golden Gate National Recreation Area from Senator Padilla.

Reserving the right to object.

Look, the package just proposed by Senator Heinrich harkens back to a time when a Senate sometimes did those things. Sometimes it worked; sometimes it didn't. More recently, it doesn't work. More recently--as recently as a year ago--it proved not to work right here in the Senate and has proven not to work over in the House.

My friend and colleague insists that this process isn't working. It is not working only because of this particular objection. It is not working here only because of these specific pairings--pairings suggested to us by the ranking members' own staff a matter of weeks ago.

It is not just that he has voted for these within the last year, 11 months ago; these specific pairings were suggested by his own team to mine. I don't understand why this means that we should put them all together.

Now, let's take it at face value. We received word that this was happening just a few hours ago. Just a few hours ago, we got the bill that, to my knowledge, hasn't been read yet. Let's assume for a second all that this does is to put the exact text in each of those four bills into one large bill introduced in Senator Heinrich's name, then brought to the floor. I struggle to understand why that is acceptable, but passing them in one fell swoop, in one unanimous consent request on the floor of the Senate, is objectionable to him.

We heard a moment ago an argument that I foreshadowed a moment ago-- the argument that somehow this would result in Democratic bills in the other Chamber being neglected while Republican bills were expedited. Were this a concern that were borne out, in fact, it would be a reasonable and legitimate

one. But we have been told by the House not only that they will pass these, if at all, on the suspension calendar, which requires a supermajority vote, about 290 votes, as I recall, but that because it has to be passed that way over there--they pair them just as we pair things here quite frequently with uncontroversial bills like this to make sure we have party balance between Republican bills and Democratic bills.

We have been told it will cause problems and likely signal doom. The two bills, when we sewed them all together in one package, that is not how they like to do it over there and, in many cases, not how our Members want to do it here--from our own colleagues today, some of whom are affected by these bills who are concerned about what this practice will do to them.

So, look, we tried to do this. We paired these according to suggestions made by the ranking member's own staff. We requested a meeting with him in September. We were rebuffed, declined. We remain ready to meet at any time to discuss how we can do them. I am simply trying to move bills that have been sponsored by both Republicans and Democrats in a fair and balanced fashion, in a way that everyone can understand in the Member-driven process for which this body was built and rather uniquely designed.

Yet my colleague, the ranking member, continues to object. It makes me wonder what the end is here. If the end is passing good legislation, legislation that we can all agree on, then why not pass these now? It isn't always possible to present bills like this. It is not on every issue, which is not lost on any of us, but on most issues we don't have unanimity. We pass a lot by unanimous consent, but not everything can pass that way.

These bills, individually, are uncontroversial here, and they are in the House. But they become controversial the minute someone insists that they be sewn together in one package where you have to vote for all of them or none of them in order to get them through. That kind of practice--used by Members of both parties at times in the past with varying degrees of success but less success more recently--is a type of extortion for bills imposed on the bills that have no opposition and that have no substantive objections. There is no legitimate reason to not pass these here today.

I can't, in good conscience, let that process continue. I will work with any Member, Republican or Democrat, including the ranking member, to move noncontroversial bills and get them across the finish line for our constituents. I will be happy to do it with packages like these that are fair and balanced between the two parties.

It is not an objection that is rooted in anything about these bills. It is just a vehicle by which they are presented. But if we have to sew them all together in one package, that is not going to work. It is not going to work here. It is not going to work on the other side of this building.

So I will continue to come to the floor and try to move these, particularly these noncontroversial bills that have passed unanimously within the last year. We will be back to do this.

On this basis for the reasons articulated, I object.

Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the Senate be in a period of morning business with Senators permitted to speak therein for up to 10 minutes each.

Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the Committee on the Judiciary be discharged from further consideration and the Senate now proceed to S. Res. 512.

Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the resolution be agreed to, the preamble be agreed to, and the motions to reconsider be considered made and laid upon the table.

Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that when the Senate completes its business today, it stand adjourned until 10 a.m., Wednesday, December 3; that following the prayer and pledge, the Journal of proceedings be approved to date, the morning hour be deemed expired, the time for the two leaders be reserved for their use later in the day, morning business be closed, and the Senate proceed to executive session and resume consideration of the Orso nomination; further, that notwithstanding rule XXII, the cloture motions filed during Monday's session of the Senate ripen at 11:15 a.m. tomorrow; and if cloture is invoked on the Orso nomination, the Senate vote on confirmation of the nomination at 2:15 p.m. tomorrow; and 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 further ask that following disposition of the Orso nomination, the Senate resume legislative session and be in a period of morning business, with Senators permitted to speak therein for up to 10 minutes each and Senator Murkowski or her designee be recognized to make a motion to proceed to S.J. Res. 91; further, that if the motion to proceed is agreed to, all debate time be expired and the Senate vote on passage of the joint resolution at a time to be determined by the majority leader, in consultation with the Democratic leader, on Thursday, December 4; I further ask that following the vote on the motion to proceed to S.J. Res. 91, the Senate resume executive session to consider the Rodriguez nomination and the Senate vote on the motion to invoke cloture on the Rodriguez nomination at 4:30 p.m. tomorrow; finally, that if cloture is invoked on the Rodriguez nomination, the postcloture time be expired and the Senate vote on confirmation of the nomination at a time to be determined by the majority leader, in consultation with the Democratic leader, on Thursday, December 4, notwithstanding rule XXII.

Mr. President, if there is no further business to come before the Senate, I ask that it stand adjourned under the previous order.

Mr. President, I want to commend my friend and colleague the

Senator from Wisconsin for his outstanding work on this bill, the Shutdown Fairness Act.

Senator Johnson seized on something very important here. We are surrounded by people in this very building and throughout the United States and across the globe--people who are faithfully, valiantly working for the U.S. Government. Now, some of them are staffers in this very room who are not being paid. Some of them are the Capitol Police officers we greeted on our way in who are keeping the Capitol Complex safe. Some of these are soldiers, sailors, airmen, marines, guardsmen all over the world who are serving the U.S. Government at risk of life and limb to keep us safe, and there are countless others in different occupations who are not being paid.

Why? Well, they are not being paid because our friends on the other side of the aisle are wanting to expand government yet again. They may think that this is the right message, that this is a winning message. It is not. It is not the right message. It is not a winning message even for them because it highlights something. It highlights the danger in putting too much trust, too many responsibilities, too many functions in the U.S. Government--so much so that when a crisis like this emerges, and the Schumer shutdown now drags well into its second month, they see that what the American people have previously regarded as a service performed by the government to them is now being held over them to extort even more money out of them under the threat of planes falling from the sky.

We are told by Democrat after Democrat on television interviews and elsewhere: Well, it is OK. It is OK because this is leverage. This is our leverage.

Well, what do they want to use that leverage for? They want to use it so as to paper over the failures--the abject failures--of ObamaCare, this law that has succeeded in doing exactly one thing: enriching large health insurance companies while making all Americans poorer. Premiums have skyrocketed. Coverage has diminished. Quality has completely tanked as a result. They know this. They understand this. They see premiums continuing to increase year after year after year.

So what do they want to do with it? Well, they want to spend a lot more money moving forward--money at a time when the U.S. Government is already $38 trillion in debt; money to hide, to conceal what it is that ObamaCare is doing to the American people, when, in fact, what ObamaCare has done is diminish the healthcare options that the American people have.

It used to be that you could negotiate with a health insurance company and buy a health insurance policy, but ObamaCare, in many ways, made what was once health insurance illegal.

We need to make health insurance legal again. We need to allow a willing customer to pay a willing insurer for a health insurance policy rather than an ObamaCare health plan, which very often, through its Byzantine labyrinth of Federal regulations, just adds to the cost and adds to the profit, the bottom line of these huge healthcare companies.

So, yes, they want to take this to extort the American people and their position of vulnerability at a time when we are told planes may start falling from the sky; at a time when people's airplane tickets are being rendered valueless because a lot of these flights are not going to be able to be made. And all kinds of other problems are happening while, at the same time, our Federal workforce is not being paid.

These are not the right people to punish for the failures of ObamaCare. Don't let them carry that burden. Don't make them do it. They didn't do this to the American people; ObamaCare did.

Let's fix ObamaCare. Let's make it legal again to have health insurance--actual health insurance, not that sort of bastardized form of health insurance that has emerged from ObamaCare's endless regulations that have resulted in diminished quality, lower coverage, and endlessly higher premiums.

This shutdown has gone on long enough. This shutdown should come to an end, and it should come to an end by the very generous offer made by Republicans time and time and time again to continue at spending levels that, until just months ago, were the Democrats' own spending levels. It is not enough for them.

We have got to end the madness and end the shutdown.

At the very least, even if we are not to end the shutdown, we should pass Senator Johnson's bill. We should do that tonight. We should do it right now because regardless of what you think we ought to do with ObamaCare or any other aspect of government, these workers who have now gone for some time without a paycheck should not be required to make this sacrifice, especially when you consider what it is for--hiding the true cost of ObamaCare. That is shameful.

Again, I thank and I commend Senator Johnson and his team for putting together this legislation. I am proud to support it, I wholeheartedly endorse it, and I plead with my colleagues to vote for it.

Let's get these workers paid. They deserve nothing else.

Mr. President, last week, the Senate passed three resolutions of disapproval under the Congressional Review Act, CRA, H.J. Res. 104, H.J. Res. 105, and H.J. Res. 106. Each resolution responds to actions by the Biden administration to eliminate multiple uses on Federal lands, defying the multiple-use and sustained-yield mandate of existing law. Following their enactment, the Bureau of Land Management, BLM, will have the opportunity to promulgate Resource Management Plans, RMPs, that properly reflect the multiple-use and sustained yield mandate while addressing the concerns raised by Congress and the impacted States. While Congress has long known that it can use the CRA to disapprove of a resource management plan, it has yet to. But the Biden BLM's attacks on American energy producers through these RMPs were so offensive, Congress needed to act.

On November 20, 2024, BLM issued a Record of Decision and Approved RMP Amendment for the Miles City Field Office in Montana. Within the planning area, this amendment prohibited coal leasing on an additional 1.2 million acres and curtailed multiple use by creating an additional 22,000 acres of special recreation management areas. It is these policies that Congress disapproves of through the Congressional Review Act. Governor Greg Gianforte, eastern Montana coal communities, and other impacted parties also opposed the ARMP. Governor Gianforte warned that the plan would result in a loss of $4.32 billion in future revenue for the State and would have devastating impacts on Montana schools and rural communities. With the enactment of H.J. Res. 104, were BLM to promulgates a new RMP or an amendment to the current RMP, it must not limit coal leasing or limit multiple use in a way similar to the 2024 Miles City Plan. Instead, BLM, should issue a plan that emphasizes access and multiple use in coordination with the State and local governments, as mandated by the Federal Land Policy and Management Act,

Madam President, I call up the Lee-Duckworth amendment No. 3288 and ask that it be reported by number.

Madam President, across the country, our guardsmen are on the frontlines of our national security.

They are on the frontlines of our national security, securing our cities and our border, and, most commonly, leading natural disaster recovery efforts in our various States.

In 2022, over half of the National Guard's members responded to natural disasters, including wildfires, hurricanes, winter storms, tornadoes, and even volcanoes.

The National Guard's motto is ``Always Ready, Always There,'' and yet there is an unnecessary bureaucratic hurdle jeopardizing the readiness of Guard assets for future missions. When the National Guard is used in a State Active-Duty status for missions like disaster response, the State may use Federal equipment to complete the mission but must reimburse the Federal National Guard Bureau for the associated expenses. Current law requires those reimbursements to flow through the Treasury Department rather than the Guard unit incurring the expense.

Why does this matter? Well, it matters because we need to get rid of this unnecessary step that is harming the States and the Guard.

The amendment simply directs reimbursements to the appropriate Guard unit directly, the unit where the asset resides, to ensure its readiness for future missions.

If we are going to expect the Guard to be always ready and always there, we must streamline the State Active-Duty reimbursement process and ensure the Guard is made whole.

I encourage my colleagues to support this amendment.

I ask for the yeas and nays.

Mr. President, the story of America is the story of a people that looked upon the West and saw promise. Where others saw wilderness, Americans saw a future. They dammed rivers that had flowed ungoverned since creation, mined mountains that had defied the reach of man, and turned harsh plains into fields that would feed a continent. From that audacity came a republic that could feed itself, power itself, and then, when tested, defend itself.

The Federal Land Policy and Management Act--known commonly as FLPMA-- enshrined this principle of multiple use and sustained yield for Federal lands. It codified the promise that the land belongs to the people and ought therefore to serve them. Its promise was plural: energy, grazing, recreation, timber conservation--each coexisting with the others in balanced and productive harmony. The law does not permit Federal officials to choose one purpose to the exclusion of all the rest. It demands balance, and it demands use in particular.

But the Biden administration's clerics of the green new scam disregarded that agreement struck nearly half a century ago. They preferred a museum to a nation, an America under glass, admired but untouchable. Under their edicts, vast stretches of land--millions upon millions of acres--have been sealed off from the citizens who built their livelihoods upon them. In Montana, North Dakota, and Alaska, communities that have mined, grazed, and worked for generations are now treated as trespassers in their own story. Their supposed crime is self-reliance--hardly something we should be seeking to punish. Their punishment is unemployment.

The Senate now faces three resolutions that would help restore the balance. Each disapproves of a Biden administration decision that violated the multiple-use mandate of FLPMA and locked away public land from productive Americans, contrary to FLPMA's promise.

In Montana, for example, the Miles City Resource Management Plan barred future coal leasing across nearly 2 million acres, erasing access to 338 million tons of clean domestic coal. In North Dakota, more than 4 million acres of Federal coal reserves were closed--nearly 99 percent of the reserves available in that State. In Alaska, the Central Yukon Resource Management Plan imposed new restrictions on 56 million acres of land, including millions of acres newly labeled as ``areas of critical environmental concern''--one of the great trick plays used by the left in order to bring about de facto wilderness or de facto monument designations without actually having to go through the process that the relevant laws would require.

Joe Biden's bureaucrats wrote over the voices of those who actually live near that land and live with the consequences of these bad decisions, and the results were predictable: higher costs, lost jobs, and deeper dependence on nations that, to put it mildly, do not wish us well.

Every shuttered mine, every idled rig is an act of self-imposed amnesia--a willful type of forgetting of what made America both prosperous and free.

Now, luckily, President Trump and Secretary Burgum are correcting that course. They are returning resource management plans to their proper role under the law; that is, to manage the land responsibly and keep it working for the American people, the intended beneficiaries of those lands.

The Congressional Review Act allows us, mercifully, to repeal these unlawful plans and restore the statutory balance Congress intended and Congress, in fact, created with the Congressional Review Act.

When these resolutions of disapproval take effect, after they have been passed and signed into law by President Trump, the Bureau of Land Management will still have the necessary environmental analysis to issue new resource management plans that are consistent with the law and the clear intent of Congress--plans that open access where it was previously closed, respect local voices that were previously ignored, and bring Federal management back within its legal bounds. That is how the process should work. That is how it is supposed to work. Under the law as written, it is how it does work.

It is, at least, how it always should have worked but didn't work under the Biden administration, like so many other things.

Now Republicans are defending the right of a free people here--the right of a free people to power their own future, to determine their own course. Democrats are still genuflecting before the alter of the green new scam, clinging to their faith and their false hope that if only Americans grow poorer, the planet will somehow grow purer.

In that same spirit of self-righteous delusion, this week, Democrats are yet again bringing forth a measure to denounce President Trump for declaring an energy emergency. It is a gesture so

unserious, it would be comical if it weren't so dangerous.

At the very moment when the world is entering an energy race that will decide who commands the engines of artificial intelligence and all that goes along with it, who manufactures the tools of war, and who will feed and defend their people, Democrats have instead chosen to strike a pose. They are congratulating themselves for denying the existence of the fire while standing in the smoke and holding the matches. Theirs is the politics of aesthetic virtue: better to be cold and appear righteous than to be warm and competent.

But the American people fortunately are not fools. They understand that we can no longer afford to pad the pockets of Democratic allies propping up unreliable industries that cannot--no matter how hard Democrats wish it were otherwise--cannot keep the lights on, while punishing the workers and the communities that can and will if only we will allow it without undue interference from the U.S. Government.

These resolutions to overturn the reckless Biden-era land plans are part of that larger defense. They would restore lawful management of public lands, honor the voices of those who live nearest to them and are therefore most directly affected by them, and keep faith with the law Congress enacted.

Nations that lose their memory soon lose their nerve. The same spirit that split the Rockies and bridged the Golden Gate cannot be reconciled with a bureaucracy that measures virtue by paralysis.

America, in short, was not built by those who made idols of the land but by those who worked it and in so doing, ennobled both themselves and it.

We cannot continue to bow to the Ashtoreth of climate alarmism and bow to the Moloch of ecoterrorism and pretend that is going to work out well for America. Americans know better.

Rewinding these management plans will not desecrate the environment-- far from it--but they will deliver it from an orthodoxy that mistakes idleness for piety, reminding us that liberty, like the land itself, withers when left untouched.

It is therefore with all the energy and enthusiasm that I am capable of communicating that I invite my colleagues to do the right thing--to vote for these resolutions of disapproval and to right the gross wrong that has been inflicted on the American people, particularly Americans in and around the States affected by these ill-designed, ill-conceived resource management plans.

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