Floor Statements

Madam President, I ask unanimous consent that the order for the quorum call be rescinded.

Madam President, this week, the Senate convenes with important business to address. America's closest allies are in town. The eyes of the world are on the most successful military alliance in human history. Friends and foes are watching to see whether the superpower that forged the NATO alliance and guided its success across seven decades has the will to continue to lead.

This week, with the leaders of dozens of allied nations here in Washington, the Senate could do its part to answer that question. We could show America's most trusted friends and partners

that we are still willing to stand with them.

We could pass the National Defense Authorization Act, which our colleagues on the Armed Services Committee reported overwhelmingly nearly a month ago. We could, but we won't because the Democratic leader has other plans. As important allies visit the Halls of the Senate, the clearest sign of our resolve to lead will instead continue to collect dust.

Rather than taking up the NDAA, the Senate Democrats have decided to spend precious floor time on performative stunt votes and more of President Biden's unfit judicial nominees, beginning with Judge Nancy Maldonado. There is a particular irony in our colleague's decision to put off urgent work like the annual Defense authorization in favor of giving lifetime tenure to a judge with a staggering backlog of her own.

With the eyes of the world on Washington, this week offers the Senate an opportunity to demonstrate the credibility of America's commitments. It is an opportunity we can ill afford to miss.

Madam President, I ask unanimous consent that the order for the quorum call be rescinded.

Madam President, last week, a U.S. company announced it had reached an agreement to begin exporting American liquefied natural gas to Ukraine for the first time. That is certainly good news for our friends on the frontlines of Russian aggression, for allies across Eastern Europe, and for the workers and producers behind some of America's most affordable and reliable energy.

Exporting American abundance is a win-win proposition, and it is one that our closest trading partners in Europe have increasingly recognized as an opportunity to offset their reliance on Russian gas.

But setting aside last week's good news, the Biden administration is still chronically confused about the role that affordable and abundant American energy can play as a geopolitical tool, a source of American leadership, and an engine of our own economy.

In a joint pledge issued 2 years ago, President Biden committed to help reduce Europe's reliance on Russian energy and increase global energy security. Then, a few lines later, he reiterated his commitment to the unenforceable virtue signals of the Paris climate deal.

Sometimes it seems that cognitive dissonance is the most powerful force in the universe.

Remember, the President who continues to insist he is serious about helping America's closest allies resist the predations of Putin's Russia is the same President who made stunning American energy development a day-one priority. He is the same one who decided not to intervene when he had a chance--before Russia's escalation in Ukraine-- to block the expansion of European reliance on Russian gas with the Nord Stream 2 Pipeline. And, of course, this is the same President who earlier this year issued a de facto ban on new permitting for LNG export infrastructure that would make it harder for American producers to respond to demand for reliable alternatives to Russian or Iranian energy.

As I have discussed at length, Russia's escalation in Ukraine prompted some of our closest European allies to finally start investing seriously in their own defenses. It has also been an opportunity to rethink their dangerous overreliance on Russian energy.

Back in February, one German state-owned energy provider was in the process of switching from buying Russian gas to buying American gas instead, but the plan was stifled by the administration's decision to appease its activist base instead of reinforcing America's allies.

So last week brought good news. But here is the rub: This new commitment to Ukraine relies, in part, on the completion of a new LNG export facility that is stuck in the Biden administration's regulatory purgatory. And even as already permitted infrastructure comes online, producers who want to create new American jobs and expand their capacity to meet foreign demand are simply out of luck.

Since 2016, American LNG has been a remarkable success story. It had driven our economy to become a net energy

exporter. And just last year, even in the shadow of the Biden administration's War on Energy, the United States was the world's largest LNG exporter.

But this year, Russia has overtaken the United States in gas exports to the European market, and it might have something to do with a ban one of our former Democratic colleagues, Mary Landrieu, described as ``throwing a match in a bale of hay.'' We might describe the President's ban as a tremendous missed opportunity, but that would undersell the predictably disastrous consequences.

In the face of a dangerous world, the administration's obsession with performative climate policy is taking meaningful levers of American power simply off the table. For 3\1/2\ years, the Biden administration has worked relentlessly to suffocate American energy production, both onshore and offshore. And when Senate Republicans offered amendments to restore some modicum of sanity to the system for permitting and leasing new energy development, every single Senate Democrat stood behind the administration and voted no.

The first and longest suffering victims of Washington Democrats' War on American Energy are the American people. Historic inflation has already made insuring a car or filling up the tank more than 50 percent more expensive on President Biden's watch. But his administration wants to compound the pain with regulations that would put entire sectors of our economy in an even more serious bind.

Back in March, the Biden administration finalized a rule on vehicle emissions that would give manufacturers of work trucks and commercial vehicles until 2032 to turn 40 percent of their new stock into zero-- zero--emission vehicles. In the case of the biggest long-haul tractor- trailers, this would effectively mean replacing a quarter of these vehicles with zero-emission vehicles that are not yet on the road. It doesn't take an expert to imagine the sort of shock waves this would send across America. Our economy simply cannot function without reliable large vehicles to get products to market--or the hard-working men and women who make a living driving them. We are talking about a rule that would supercharge inflation on delivery costs and shelf prices alike and a penalty that would hit hardest for those least able to afford it.

Unsurprisingly, this zeal for redtape extends beyond heavy-duty vehicles to every passenger car, SUV, and pickup truck. In 8 years, if the administration has its way, two of every three vehicles manufactured for American consumers will have to be electric vehicles.

Now, consumers have already made it abundantly clear that they don't want Washington bureaucrats telling them what car to drive, and major engines of our economy have joined together to take the Biden administration to court over all of this nonsense.

Folks in my home State of Kentucky are following this progress closely. I spoke recently with a car dealer from Richmond. When it comes to his livelihood, he doesn't mince any words. Here is what he had to say:

I don't want to be in court fighting a governmental agency.

I just want to sell and service the cars and trucks that my

customers want. . . . [R]ight now and for as long as I can

see, my customers don't want vehicles that our government

requires them to buy. They don't want vehicles that are not

affordable, can't be reliably re-charged, and can't be

depended upon to make the drive from Richmond to Lexington on

a below zero midnight in January.

He also said:

The history and civics classes that I dearly loved did not

prepare me for a country where executive action and career

bureaucrats can create ``law'' and regulations that will put

me out of business.

Boy, I can't top that. American workers and job creators are struggling to keep up with persistent--persistent--high prices, and all the Biden administration seems to be offering as consolation is more redtape.

Mr. President, it has been a few weeks now since most of America's college students went home for the summer. The outbreak of organized hate that swept the campuses of the Nation's so-called elite universities has somewhat quieted down. Apparently, even the most zealous of Hamasnik tent-dwellers had summer plans to attend to. Some, no doubt, expect to join the radical road show for a reunion tour of Chicago during the Democratic National Convention in August--as if Chicago's own soft-on-crime politicians haven't done enough to damage what used to be a thriving city.

But even as places like Berkeley and George Washington University are cleaned and repaired after their occupation by Marxist vandals, the shameful events of this past spring have left deep and lasting scars. At Columbia, the task force responsible for investigating rampant anti- Semitism on campus in the wake of October 7 has released a new report, and the findings are chilling. On top of well-documented outbursts by student radicals, members of Columbia's faculty turned classrooms into safe spaces to indulge the world's oldest form of hate. So I would like to share with our colleagues some of the initial coverage of the report.

One professor encountering a Jewish-sounding surname while reading names before an exam asked the student to explain their views on the Israeli government's actions in Gaza. Another told their class to avoid reading mainstream media, declaring that ``it is owned by Jews.'' A third revealed a student's complaint about an offensive comment regarding Jews by publicly displaying their email to fellow students.

This isn't coming from the professional activists who swept in to occupy the academy. It is coming from the heart of the academy itself. The rot runs deep. It is impossible to ignore. The scourge of anti- Semitism is a blight on once-prestigious institutions across our country, and unfortunately it reaches from college campuses right here to the U.S. Capitol.

Next month, a growing list of elected Democrats will boycott a joint session of Congress welcoming the duly elected leader of the world's only Jewish State and the only democracy in that region.

Their plans, of course, are predictable. When Prime Minister Netanyahu last addressed Congress in 2015, nearly 60 Members refused to attend. In the years since, Washington Democrats have ceded more and more influence to despicable causes like the Boycott, Divest, and Sanction movement and to high-profile newcomers who traffic in unvarnished anti-Semitism.

I am proud to live in a country that, as our former colleague Ben Sasse has put it, protects people's rights to make abject idiots of themselves, and far too many powerful people have taken the horrific attacks of October 7 as an invitation to do exactly that. But I am also proud to live in a country that the world expects to stand with our allies, and the President's conduct towards America's closest ally is straining that expectation. Unfortunately, so is the conduct of other elected Democrats.

Grotesque attempts to interfere in Israel's politics by calling for the removal--the removal--of its Prime Minister have lowered the bar for outrageous behavior, and micromanagement and withholding assistance have repeatedly made Israel's task to restore its security and bring terrorists to justice even more difficult.

Next month's joint session ought to be an opportunity to demonstrate to the world that America's commitments to allies facing existential threats cannot be held hostage by the loudest fringes of our politics, that they are not at the mercy our lapses in moral clarity.

The last thing a sovereign democracy under siege needs is a public tongue-lashing from the White House or a scolding speech from the floor of the Senate. Israel needs the weapons the President has withheld. It needs the time and space to finish the job against terrorists trying to destroy it. It needs the freedom to operate on its own timetable based on tactical reality in the Middle East, not on the political whims in Washington. And Americans should be united in support.

Mr. President, now on another matter, I need to return today to another of the Biden administration's unfit judicial nominees: Judge Nancy Maldonado.

Alongside a crop of nominees distinguished by their radical views and affiliations and ties to dark money groups, Judge Maldonado's claim to notoriety is the historic backlog of unfinished work she has accumulated in her time on the district court in Chicago.

Earlier this month, I pointed out that with 125 motions pending for more than 6 months, Judge Maldonado sits behind more than 99 percent of all district judges nationwide for her ability to clear casework in a timely manner. She is the worst in her circuit, and it is not even close.

Our Democratic colleagues on the Judiciary Committee don't seem all that concerned about the alarming aspect of her record. Perhaps they think there is more to being a judge than deciding cases, such as, perhaps, checking diversity boxes. In any case, they voted in lockstep to advance her nomination this spring.

But listening to some of our colleagues' comments from more recent committee meetings, you might wonder whether they made a terrible mistake. The senior Senator from Connecticut, a seasoned prosecutor familiar with the frustrations of the judicial process, recalled:

I can remember waiting literally years for a decision from

a district court judge, and there is nothing anyone can do .

. . other than seeking mandamus from the Circuit Court of

Appeals, which is . . . close to a death sentence for any

litigator.

Our colleague described such delays as ``frustrating and . . . costly.'' In no uncertain terms, he said that ending those delays is essential to ``achieving swifter, more expeditious justice.''

But just a couple of months ago, he voted to advance the nomination of a judge with a demonstrated inability to deliver swifter or more expeditious justice. With every other Democrat on the committee, he voted to give Nancy Maldonado and her Biden backlog lifetime tenure on the court of appeals.

It is incredible how clear-eyed our colleague sounds when he is not burdened with the uncomfortable responsibility of rubberstamping a favorite of the left's dark money royalty. His fellow Democrats should take note.

I suggest the absence of a quorum.

Mr. President, I rise today to pay tribute to the Berea Citizen, a long-standing community institution and one of only a few locally owned, operated, and printed newspapers in the entire Commonwealth. This year, I am proud to join my home State in celebrating this native Kentucky newspaper as it marks 125 years of journalistic success.

Founded in 1899, the Berea Citizen came into existence on the campus of Berea College, nestled between the foothills of the Cumberland Mountains and the Bluegrass plains. The late Berea College president William G. Frost, a renowned abolitionist and scholar, led the charge in creating the school newspaper with the mission of providing this burgeoning region with informative, balanced local news. Service soon began along the dirt road of Chestnut Street in Berea's town center, where it continued for nearly a century. The Berea Citizen maintained its ties to the college up until 1984, by then transitioning into a private, locally owned newspaper.

Since the turn of the 20th century, the Berea Citizen has remained a fixture within the Madison County community. It has continued to provide local news without interruption through some of our Nation's most turbulent times, surviving the Great Depression, two World Wars, and, most recently, a global pandemic. Through the years, the newspaper and its team have adapted to the ever-evolving landscape of news, expanding print operations to include online coverage while always remaining faithful to its Kentucky focus. Today, the Berea Citizen boasts a readership of over 10,000 Kentuckians and remains a leading voice for local news in Madison County.

As the Berea Citizen marks this impressive milestone, I would like to extend my best wishes to the reporters, editors, and staff who have made the newspaper a vital resource to Central Kentuckians. It is a privilege to congratulate the Berea Citizen on 125 years of quality journalism. I hope my Senate colleagues join me in recognizing this longstanding fixture of Madison County and its many accomplishments.

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

Madam President, last week, the Armed Services Committee voted to recommend a $25 billion increase to topline defense spending.

In overwhelming bipartisan fashion, our colleagues rejected a fourth straight budget request from the Biden administration that failed to keep pace with inflation, much less the threat of China.

If this major investment is actually appropriated, it will be an overdue step toward equipping America's Armed Forces to meet an increasingly dangerous world.

But shortly after the committee's action, senior Senate Democrats shattered any expectation that they were ready to start taking the requirements of national defense seriously. They began with myths about the past.

The Democratic leader suggested in a statement that ``Democrats have led the way in ensuring our military is the best trained and best equipped fighting force in the world.''

Really? Guess again. Every year, Republicans have led efforts to secure defense spending beyond President Biden's meager requests.

When the administration initially wanted the Pentagon to pay for increasing operational costs in Europe out of hide, without backfill, it took Republicans demanding additional appropriations to buy new weapons to replace the older ones we were providing Ukraine.

For his part, our colleague from New York blocked an amendment to the infrastructure bill in 2021 that would have made an historic investment in the defense industrial base, and this was actually before the Russian escalation. And then Senate Democrats voted in lockstep to block a similar one during budget reconciliation.

All around the world, America's adversaries are offering clear and alarming reminders of how rapidly modern warfare is changing. The battlefields of Ukraine have become a laboratory for fast-evolving concepts like unmanned aerial vehicles, electronic warfare, and air defenses. Iran's war on Israel, America, and international shipping highlights the growing importance of long-range weapons and air and missile defense. And China's military modernization, from its strategic rocket force to its navy, underscores the stakes of neglecting our own defense in bold, red ink.

These threats offer us essential lessons about the deficiencies of our own capabilities; that is, if we choose to act on them. America is literally years behind in building the sort of production capacity we need to sustain effective deterrence or win decisively if war actually comes.

The administration deserves credit for taking production of 155- millimeter artillery shells seriously, but they haven't directed the same urgency to critical air and missile defense interceptors or long- range weapons. Republicans fought to include hundreds of millions of dollars for these priorities in the supplemental, but it is long past time to put critical requirements like these in our base budget.

If the administration doesn't prioritize this procurement in its budgeting and contracting, we shouldn't be surprised when producers hesitate to invest in new production lines or new workers. We have to take the requirements of our national defense more seriously. What on Earth should the rest of the world conclude if we don't?

Next month, dozens of America's allies will arrive here in Washington for a summit of the most successful military alliance in world history. In the face of growing threats, they will have much to celebrate: the addition of two new allies in Finland and Sweden; greater cooperation with allies and partners in the Indo-Pacific, several of whom will be in attendance; and the more than 20 NATO member states who now meet or exceed the alliance's 2 percent spending target.

It is encouraging that so many of America's friends have taken long overdue steps toward stronger defense in response to Russia's aggression. But America cannot afford to be reactive. Threats to our interests are too great to wait for our adversaries to actually strike.

What example will we set? I know the one I would like to set. I know the message Ranking Member Wicker and the overwhelming majority of colleagues on the Armed Services Committee would like to send to the world. But it will take a great deal more seriousness from leading Senate Democrats for the promise of American strength and leadership to carry any weight. They could start by bringing the NDAA to the floor without delay.

Madam President, unfortunately, the Democratic leader has decided that instead of taking up the critical annual Defense authorization, the Senate will dedicate floor time this week to the latest in the Biden administration's parade of unfit nominations to the Federal bench.

The latest example is a judge nominated to the Federal district court in Oregon named Mustafa Kasubhai. Judge Kasubhai's record and judicial philosophy put him well outside the mainstream.

This nominee has bragged about his lack of commitment to standard jurisprudential practices. During his time as a magistrate judge, he said we have to ``set aside conventional ideas of proof''--of proof-- ``when we are dealing with the . . . interpersonal work of equity, diversity and inclusion.''

Now, if by ``conventional ideas of proof,'' he is referring to things like clear evidence or sworn witnesses and their testimony, then I think I tend to prefer conventional ideas.

Unfortunately, this only scratches the surface. This judge also sounds like a committed Marxist. He has authored an article promoting the integration of Marxist theory into property law and claimed that the notion of scarcity of natural resources was a myth promoted by a privileged elite.

He has heaped high praise on the disgraced racist prophet known for insisting that ``the only remedy to past discrimination is present discrimination. The only remedy to present discrimination is future discrimination.''

As many of our colleagues know, I was fortunate to be here in Washington when Martin Luther King, Jr., delivered his famous ``I Have a Dream'' speech, and I don't recall Dr. King calling for retribution. In fact, his name has become nearly synonymous with the exact opposite.

But apparently this is just one more subject on which this judge would prefer to leave ``conventional ideas'' behind. Well, when it comes to judicial nominations, I subscribe to conventional wisdom: A judge's job is to follow the law, not the passing fads of woke politics.

So I urge my colleagues to join me in rejecting this nomination.

I suggest the absence of a quorum.

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

Mr. President, soon, the Judiciary Committee will consider promoting a magistrate in New York, Sarah Netburn, to the district court after a less-than-judicious committee process.

Judge Netburn's hearing was a contentious affair. You should go watch it. My friends the junior Senators from Louisiana and Texas had the judge dead to rights on her judicial activism from the bench. She was clearly prepared for their line of questioning, but by the end, she wilted under the withering fire from my colleagues.

That is when the acting chairwoman of the committee got involved. After Republicans were finished questioning Judge Netburn, she invited the nominee to defend herself. Her defense, of course, flatly contradicted her written opinion as a judge.

Committee Republicans rightly objected. It is one thing to give a nominee the chance to rehabilitate herself, but giving her the last word as she lied to the committee is a different matter entirely. After the nominee gave two different explanations for why she had engaged in political activism from the bench, committee Democrats blocked further questions and closed the hearing.

It sounds an awful lot like the way another nominee, Adeel Mangi, explained his policy views to liberal interest groups only after the committee was finished questioning him. Judge Netburn got the last word here.

As the junior Senator from Louisiana said, it looks an awful lot like a coverup. Apparently, it is not enough for Senate Democrats to rubberstamp radicals to the courts. They desperately don't want the American people to even know about it.

Well, it is not working. The Judiciary Committee has received almost 100 letters from liberals opposing Judge Netburn's activism. The cat is literally out of the bag. So I would urge my colleagues to pay attention to what happens in the Judiciary Committee as Judge Netburn's nomination moves forward.

Mr. President, now on another matter, this week, the Armed Services Committee has been marking up the National Defense Authorization Act for the coming year. In the past, the committee has prided itself on considering hundreds of amendments and thoroughly exercising Congress's oversight responsibilities in the process. I expect this year to be no different.

But one essential question hangs over both the NDAA and the appropriations process to come: Is Congress ready--finally ready--to fulfill our most fundamental responsibility of adequately providing for the common defense? This, of course, remains an open question. For a fourth straight year, the process of funding the Federal Government began with a White House budget proposal that would impose net cuts to the national defense.

I have said it before. How can we expect to keep up with the pacing threat, the PRC, if our military budgets don't even keep pace with inflation? I know a number of our Democratic colleagues recognize that the threats we face are growing and that our defense requirements are growing along with them, but they don't seem to be ready to respond with any sense of urgency. Senate Democrats continue to indicate that they will stick to their longstanding demand for artificial parity between defense and nondefense appropriations for any increases above the President's budget.

It is time for all of us to face the actual facts. The threats we face have grown since the bipartisan budget caps were negotiated. They have grown since the President's budget was drafted. The defense of Israel and Ukraine continue to offer lessons on the glaring need for modern air and missile defenses. We have learned how insufficient our inventories of critical long-range munitions might be in the event of a direct conflict in the Pacific. And with the risk of simultaneous conflict in multiple regions actually growing, the enduring importance of the two-war force planning construct is making itself abundantly clear.

This is the reality our colleague Ranking Member Wicker was grappling with when he put together a detailed plan for an overdue generational investment in the national defense, and I am grateful to my friend for his leadership. A serious roadmap for preserving our military primacy is on the table. The question now is whether the Senate will follow it; whether we will lay the groundwork right now for urgent investments in critical munitions, long-range fires, sea power, and in the defense industrial base required to sustain all of it for long-term strategic competition.

Way back in 1940, when the scope of the Axis threat was finally so glaringly obvious that even longtime skeptics began to soften their opposition to long-overdue military investment, the Chief of Naval Operations, Admiral Harold Stark, pointed out a harsh reality: Dollars can't buy yesterday.

We are already facing a steep uphill climb to prepare America's Armed Forces to deter aggression and outcompete our adversaries. You can't surge readiness. We can't modernize overnight. Yesterday is right now, and it is time to invest in what we need to deter and defeat looming threats.

So I will be watching our colleagues' work closely, and I will urge the Democratic leader to bring the NDAA to the floor for consideration as soon as the committee completes its work.

Madam President, it was roughly two centuries ago that Kentucky's early settlers first began converting corn and grain into the rich, amber liquor we now know as bourbon. Originating from the heart of the Bluegrass State, America's only native spirit has since achieved worldwide recognition and secured Kentucky's foremost place as the world capital of bourbon whiskey.

Today, visitors from all 50 States and 26 countries have traveled to the Commonwealth to enjoy this corn-based, barrel-aged spirit along the famous Kentucky Bourbon Trail. Founded in 1999, the Kentucky Bourbon Trail connects distilleries all over the Commonwealth for natives and visitors alike to responsibly enjoy our State's signature spirit. What started as only seven distilleries has grown into an international destination. Today, the Kentucky Bourbon Trail encompasses 46 distilleries offering everything from behind-the-scenes tours to unique experiences that celebrate Kentucky's rich history in bourbon production.

The Kentucky Bourbon Trail originated as a gathering place for bourbon enthusiasts to celebrate the tradition and time-honored craft behind this liquor in its birthplace. However, today the trail continues to enrich and give back to Kentucky as a vital part of our State's tourism economy. Since its inception in 1999, bourbon production in Kentucky has surged by 493 percent and, within that time, became the largest export among all distilled spirits in the United States. Other areas within our economy have also experienced unprecedented growth--new hotels, tourism companies, and other local attractions have all cropped up along the trail's many destinations.

This year, the Kentucky Bourbon Trail celebrates 25 years since its founding. I want to thank all those involved for their stewardship of Kentucky's heritage and their work to build our State's vibrant bourbon industry. As this Kentucky landmark celebrates its silver jubilee, I would like to extend my best wishes to its dedicated team and all the hard-working Kentuckians who have contributed to the enduring popularity and legacy of bourbon whiskey.