Floor Statements

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 President, I ask unanimous consent that the order for the quorum call be rescinded.

Mr. President, the barbaric terrorist attacks of October 7 have elicited two sorts of reactions in the West. Most reasonable people have responded to the slaughter of innocent Israelis with utter horror, fervent prayer, and strong support for Israel's right to defend itself.

The overwhelming majority of Americans think the United States should publicly support our closest ally in the Middle East. They recognize this moment as a time for choosing, and they see the choice between a democracy's right to self-defense and a terrorist group's obsession with destroying it as an easy choice.

The United States must have Israel's back as it roots out the terrorists who threaten it. For as long as it takes, I am proud to stand with this overwhelming majority.

But, alas, in recent days, we have also seen just how the default position in some highly influential corners of our society--from national newsrooms to elite college campuses--how quickly they have been to blindly amplify terrorists' versions of events.

This was especially true of the reporting of a deadly explosion at a Gaza hospital yesterday. Hamas immediately blamed Israel for the blast, and major news organizations took their word for it, running headlines about an ``Israeli strike.'' In the hours since this tragedy, credible evidence has emerged suggesting that the same terrorists who used innocent civilians as human shields were themselves responsible. Well, the media can revise its headlines, but the shameful anti-Semitic fringe of our society has already heard what it wanted to hear.

Unsurprisingly, the woke incubators of the Ivy League have been at the epicenter of this anti-Israel outrage. One coalition of 30 student groups at Harvard declared that they ``hold the Israeli regime entirely responsible'' for Hamas's terrorism--that Israel is responsible for Hamas's terrorism.

Now, student radicals taking extremist stands is par for the course. The more important question is how university administrators--the supposed grownups on campus--would respond. The answer is not good. As former Harvard President Larry Summers rightly noted, his institution's initial silence ceded the field to campus extremists in defining Harvard's response.

And when Harvard's leaders did respond, they failed the most basic test: distinguishing the victim from the aggressor. The university's response professed heartbreak at ``the war in Israel and Gaza now under way,'' as if there were even a shred of moral equivalence between terrorism and self-defense.

The presidents of Columbia and Dartmouth expressed regret at ``the ensuing violence'' and ``the escalating violence,'' respectively. Not to be outdone, Notre Dame didn't even assign perfunctory blame to the terrorists.

Instead, they bemoaned ``the outbreak of war in the Holy Land'' and calling ``for an end to the cycle of violence.''

I am reminded of a retort the late, great Bill Buckley deployed in a debate when his opponent tried to have both sides of the Cold War. He said:

That is like saying that the man who pushes a little old

lady into the path of a bus is morally equivalent to the man

who pushes her out of its path, because they both push little

old ladies around.

If you want to know where this leads, take the American Bar Association, the organization that accredits our Nation's law schools. At first, the ABA's president called ``on both sides to show restraint'' and urged Israel and Hamas to ``settle their disputes in a peaceful and legal fashion.'' But yesterday, the ABA denounced Israel's self-defense efforts as ``collective punishment, forced displacement, [and] ethnic cleansing.''

Terrorism and self-defense are not morally equivalent. They are not morally equivalent. And you would think the leaders of America's higher education would understand that.

Some leaders in higher education have argued in recent days that schools should not wade into political disputes. Stanford's president said that doing so means picking winners and losers on campus. Northwestern's president observed of his students and faculty that ``for me to speak for them displaces their own freedom to speak.'' That may actually be a wise policy, but it is certainly not one elite academia has been known to practice in the past. It doesn't take long to find the impassioned stances universities took following the murder of George Floyd or the ending of DACA. So why the new policy?

Let's be clear. Some university leaders have displayed admirable conviction. Our former colleague Ben Sasse at the University of Florida describes support for the terrorists who murdered Israeli children as ``sickening'' and ``dehumanizing.'' Emory's president said the attacks ``must be condemned in the strongest possible terms.'' Princeton's president called it ``among the most atrocious of terrorist acts'' and, importantly, placed the blame for the coming war entirely where it belongs--on Hamas's shoulders.

Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that all of these statements-- the good, the bad, and the ugly--be printed in the Record.

I can only hope that the leaders of America's universities recognize what time it is in America. This is a time for moral clarity, not a time for anti-Semitic hate dressed in faculty- lounge jargon. Leaders cannot afford to be silent. Terrorism is evil. Anti-Semitism is despicable. And Israel has a right to exist. It shouldn't take a Ph.D. to understand that, but it also shouldn't be so hard for a Ph.D. to acknowledge it.

Consumer Financial Protection Bureau

Mr. President, now on an entirely different matter, today, the Senate will vote on a Republican resolution to chip away at yet another example of the Biden administration's runaway regulatory state using the Congressional Review Act. The junior Senator from Louisiana, Senator Kennedy, has put forward a measure that would block a proposed rule at the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau that would require financial institutions to collect and report personal information on small business loan applications, including data on race and sex. Apparently, as if the radical progressivism on campuses wasn't enough, Washington Democrats want to tie small business loans to diversity quotas.

Small businesses are the lifeblood of the American dream, and I am grateful to my colleague from Louisiana for giving the Senate an opportunity to stick up for them. I would urge each of our colleagues to join me in supporting his resolution later today.

I suggest the absence of a quorum.

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

Mr. President, one month from now, Congress will face another deadline to avoid a lapse in Federal Government funding.

Between now and then, the Senate needs to do our part to pass as many full-year appropriations bills as we possibly can. First in line is the minibus legislation that would send critical resources towards supporting America's farmers, keeping promises to our veterans, and rebuilding crumbling infrastructure.

Before the State work period, the Senate Republicans agreed on a list of amendments that would allow this package to move quickly here on the floor, and I am hopeful that the Democratic leader will call it up this week and give the full Senate the chance to take an important step toward funding the government.

Of course, passing the minibus is just an early step. We have a great deal of work still ahead of us to finish the job that Senator Collins, Senator Murray, and our colleagues on the Appropriations Committee have been focused on, literally, for months.

And as I have said before, we also need to consider additional, time- sensitive resources for a number of supplemental priorities. But we cannot get on with this work unless we clear an important hurdle this week.

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

Madam President, since the Senate last convened, terrorists have sent shock waves through the civilized world with savage, cold-blooded violence.

On October 7, Hamas and Palestinian Islamic jihad desecrated Israel's soil and tore apart Israeli families with utterly medieval brutality. Like ISIS, terrorists from Gaza turned peaceful homes and neighborhoods in Israel into blood-soaked war zones. It was the deadliest attack on the Israelis and on American citizens overseas in decades.

But now, reports and images of these horrific scenes have spread widely. Accounts of Israeli women tortured and raped, of elders kidnapped, of charred corpses, beheadings, of children shot dead in their homes have shaken peaceful people to their cores. In one kibbutz, a paramedic named Amit was working to save the lives of victims pouring into a local clinic when she documented what would be the last moments of her own life in messages to her sister. Here is what she said: ``They are here. I don't think I will get out of here alive. Be strong if something happens to me.''

A few minutes later, in a call from Amit's phone, all her sister could hear were gunshots and screams. One in 10 residents of the community were slaughtered by the terrorists.

Here is how one retired senior IDF commander put it after he ran to rejoin Israel's defense efforts: ``I've heard during my childhood about pogroms in Europe, the Holocaust, of course. All my family came from Europe. They are survivors, but I never thought I would see things like this.''

Madam President, the people of Israel are grieving unimaginable horrors, and we have a responsibility not to look away--not least because the same news that has shaken the civilized world to its core has emboldened anti-Semites and terrorist sympathizers across the globe. We have seen thousands of demonstrators cheer on terrorist violence from the streets of Western cities.

In London, many Jewish children were kept home from school on Friday out of fears for their safety. In Chicago, a bomb threat forced a local synagogue to evacuate. In Sydney, Australia, a supposedly pro- Palestinian gathering devolved into a sickening flashback to the worst stain on the last century of human history as demonstrators chanted: ``Gas the Jews.'' And on college campuses across America, leftist student groups cloaked vile anti-Semitism in a thin veneer of performative, woke jargon.

So, Madam President, friends of Israel simply cannot afford to be silent. And as Israel's closest ally, the United States must lead by our example in supporting its efforts to defend itself for as long as it takes. As I outlined over the State work period, this means loudly and clearly distinguishing between the aggressor and the victim in this war. No matter how many voices in the media attempt to ``both-sides'' a terrorist attack, there is simply no moral equivalence here.

Responsibility for the murder of Israelis lies with the terrorists who pulled the trigger and the regime that arms and trains them, and responsibility for the suffering of the Palestinian people lies with the Hamas terrorists who consolidated power by flinging rival civilian officials off of rooftops, who use scarce building supplies to dig terror tunnels, to turn drinking water pipes into rocket launchers, and who use residents of Gaza as human shields.

Make no mistake, the surest way to stop violence against Israelis and oppression of Palestinians is to wipe the terrorists like Hamas from the face of the Earth. To that end, the United States must continue to provide maximum support to Israel's counterterrorist operation as long as it takes. And just as importantly, we have to reestablish deterrence against the Iranian regime that not only directly threatens American's interest in a peaceful and stable Middle East, but also bears the blood of hundreds of Americans and plots to kill even more.

America's disastrous withdrawal from Afghanistan, the desperate pursuit of a new nuclear deal, and the failure to respond decisively to attacks on U.S. forces in Syria have weakened our deterrence against the world's largest state sponsor of terror. America's weakness left our allies and partners with serious questions about the credibility of our commitments. And if we fail to present clear and devastating consequences of further violence against America, as well as our friends in Israel, we will make deterring an even bigger strategic adversary in Asia even more difficult.

Reestablishing effective deterrence means investing in American military strength. It means investing in an industrial base that is capable of equipping both U.S. forces and our allies and partners to meet authoritarian oppression in Europe, in Asia, and in the Middle East, and it means responding to challenges with credible and unflinching resolve. This is a fundamental responsibility of governing. Full stop.

I will have more to say in the coming days, but for right now, this is not merely a terrorist war against Israel. It is part of a clear and present danger to the United States and the entire civilized world.

This, Madam President, is a time for choosing. As Israel works to eliminate the terrorists who threaten its existence, the United States must reaffirm our commitment to Israel's security, and we must continue to demonstrate by our leadership that no country should offer safe haven to those who aid and abet terror.

I suggest the absence of a quorum.

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

Mr. President, I would like to begin today with a few words about my outgoing House counterpart, Speaker Kevin McCarthy.

Shepherding an institution like the House of Representatives--every bit as stubborn and diverse as the Nation it represents--is a tall order. Getting a slim majority pointed in the same direction at any one time can seem like nothing short of a miracle. I have said before, in reference to my own position, that being leader of your party in the Senate is much like being the groundskeeper in a cemetery. Everybody is under you, but nobody is listening.

Of course, I doubt that Kevin McCarthy has ever seen himself as above anyone else--not the son of a firefighter, not the grandson of immigrants who stood up his own small business and worked his way through school.

In the beginning of the Speaker's House career, it was clear to anyone paying any attention that he was a doer in the model of Teddy Roosevelt's ``Man in the Arena'' and an idealist in the model of his fellow Californian, Ronald Reagan. Congressman McCarthy didn't shy away from worthwhile fights. In fact, he usually dove in headfirst. He didn't hesitate to get his hands dirty.

When the circumstances were tough, he drew on his faith, his family, and his belief in American exceptionalism. His Bakersfield roots kept him grounded. His beloved mother kept him appraised of kitchen table concerns with frequent calls about the price of gas. In other words, he had all the qualities of an effective representative and Speaker.

I am not sure anyone could have predicted just how much these qualities would come in handy over the past 9 months. Speaker McCarthy took office with a commitment to America. He insisted on restoring regular order. He made sure that the people's House was once again open to the American people. He took on the gravest challenge, a looming debt crisis, with single-minded determination.

The Speaker and I worked closely throughout his tenure, but I was particularly struck by his persistence. He literally willed the President of the United States to the negotiating table and kept coming back again and again until he had helped secure the Nation's full faith and credit.

Speaker McCarthy was a partner I could trust to be honest and candid and, without fail, optimistic. I am grateful for the enthusiasm he brought to our shared work and for the patriotic conservative convictions he wears on his sleeve.

Perhaps the most telling thing about this week's events in the House has been the way the Speaker handled them--with grace and with gratitude. Speaker McCarthy should be proud of what he and his team have accomplished on behalf of the American people over the past 9 months. He can rest assured that his colleagues--myself included--will continue to draw on his talents and optimism in the days that lie ahead.

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

Mr. President, I would like to begin today by welcoming our newest colleague, Senator Laphonza Butler of California.

As the Senate continues to mourn our late friend and colleague Dianne Feinstein, I know the people of California are grateful for Senator Butler's willingness to serve. And I know our colleagues join me in welcoming her.

Mr. President, now on another matter, last week, the Senate voted to prevent a domestic budget dispute from shutting down the Federal Government. Now, with straightforward, short-term funding in place, it is time for Congress to redouble our efforts on a number of unfinished priorities.

In the coming weeks, the Senate needs to continue making progress on full-year appropriations. And we will begin by funding important resources for military construction, veterans services, agriculture, housing, and transportation infrastructure.

But our work does not stop there. The Senate also needs to address urgent supplemental funding needs and continue our work to bring the Biden administration's reckless spending and radical regulations to heel.

Many of our colleagues are particularly keen to deliver additional relief to communities rebuilding after devastating national disasters-- from hurricanes on the gulf coast to wildfires in Hawaii, to flooding in Kentucky.

Bipartisan majorities in both Chambers continue to recognize that providing additional lethal assistance to Ukraine's defense against Russian aggression is in the United States' direct interest.

Across the country, as historic inflation continues to wreck household budgets, millions of working families are ready to turn the page on Bidenomics.

After three record-setting years of functionally open borders, folks in every State are eager for Congress to force the Biden administration to start cleaning up the southern border crisis. The fiscal year that just ended saw apprehensions at the southern border exceed 2 million for only the second time in history. The first time was just last year. Some reports expect that the last month's total could clock in as the highest on record. On President Biden's watch, illegal border crossings and asylum claims have stretched Border Patrol and ICE personnel to their breaking point.

Authorities are seizing hundreds of millions of lethal doses of fentanyl, although they also estimate that they are apprehending just a fraction--roughly a quarter--of all the fentanyl that is smuggled at the border.

Frankly, this is less about providing border personnel with new resources than it is about giving them the authority and direction to actually enforce the law. It is certainly not about bailing out blue State sanctuary cities while the tsunami of illegal immigration continues unabated. It is about the administration finally taking commonsense steps to end their wrongheaded policies that have encouraged illegal immigrants to cross our borders in the first place.

Every State is now a border State. Major cities like New York and Chicago are being overwhelmed by arrivals from the southern border. Finally, even blue State mayors and Governors are joining the chorus calling out the administration for its utter failure on border security.

Of course, across the country, liberal local governments and innocent residents are also facing the consequences of years of soft-on-crime policies, and once again our Nation's Capital leads the headlines.

Just last night, for example, Congressman Henry Cuellar was the victim of a violent carjacking a few blocks from the Capitol Building. Armed assailants threatened him at gunpoint and stole his car. Thankfully, our House colleague was not injured, and his car has been recovered.

It is not even the first time this year that a Member of Congress has been assaulted while in town for work. But this is what private American citizens are facing every single day, like the 22,000 people who had their car stolen in Chicago this year or the 20,000 victims of felony assault in New York City. This sort of brazen violence against anyone should be a wake-up call for local officials.

Last year, a 54-year-old man was murdered at a gas station in Washington by a group of teenagers attempting to steal his car. The city is now averaging two carjackings every day, and these crimes are increasingly being committed by young people.

At a certain point, the American people who visit our Nation's Capital by the millions every year might expect the city's liberal government to finally start getting serious about securing the streets, but even as senseless violence increases, local leaders are bent-- bent--on undermining public safety.

One member of the DC Council--the same soft-on-crime panel that tried to weaken sentencing for repeat offenders earlier this year--proposed recently that local courts be required to provide a written explanation before releasing violent criminals before trial. The courts' response? Such a requirement was ``not feasible'' because it would ``significantly increase'' their workload. All this in a city where prosecutors declined to even prosecute two-thirds of the arrests last year.

American families deserve to feel safe in their homes and in their neighborhoods and certainly in the Nation's Capital. It shouldn't take another assault or carjacking or homicide to convince leftwing local leaders to start actually doing their jobs.

Madam President, with just a few hours to spare, the Senate is now in a position to prevent a harmful and unnecessary government shutdown.

As I have said for weeks, the clearest path forward has been to pass a straightforward, short-term funding extension that gives us time to continue a number of important discussions about outstanding priorities, from securing supplemental relief for victims of natural disasters to restoring security and sanity at the southern border that the Biden administration has dragged into chaos, to putting stronger restraints on the President's reckless spending to supplying Ukraine with even more of the lethal assistance it needs to repel Russia's invasion.

On that particular point, most Senate Republicans remain committed to helping our friends on the frontlines, to investing more heavily in American strength that reinforces our allies, and deterring our top strategic adversary, China.

I am confident the Senate will pass further urgent assistance to Ukraine later this year. But let's be clear. The alternative to our action today, an entirely avoidable government shutdown, would not just pause our progress on these important priorities, it would actually set them back. And in the process, it would saddle the people we represent with unnecessary hardships.

So I am glad our colleagues in the House have taken action on a continuing resolution that keeps critical government functions going at their current rates of operation.

Passing this measure and keeping the lights on will allow us to return our attention to making headway on full-year appropriations our colleagues have been working on, literally, for months. And it will give us the flexibility to meet urgent supplemental priorities both at home and abroad.

Therefore, I would urge our colleagues to join me in supporting this important step in the right direction.

Mr. President, you know how we always refer to each other as ``my friend'' from whatever State it is. Honestly, frequently, that is not true.

But Elaine and I were actual friends of Dick and Dianne. Elaine served on a corporate board with Dick for a number of years. When they were in town together, we would frequently have dinner together.

Elaine and I got married shortly after the 1992 election, and I remembered that Dianne gave us a small depiction of the Capitol. I looked at it this morning because it is still on the wall and remembered our dear colleague as a truly remarkable individual.

As the majority leader has pointed out, she was an incredibly effective person at every line, at level, and she was at all of those levels on the way to the Senate.

Those of us who were fortunate to call Dianne our colleague can say we served alongside the longest serving female Senator in American history.

Dianne was a trailblazer in her beloved home State of California, and our entire Nation is better for her dogged advocacy and diligent service.

Over the past three decades, the senior Senator from California was also the steady hand leading sensitive and consequential work as head of the Intelligence Committee and the Judiciary Committee. Her name became synonymous with advocacy for women and with issues from water infrastructure to counterdrug efforts.

Of course, as the first woman to lead her hometown board of supervisors and then govern as mayor, she was making history and making a difference long before she came to the Senate.

And as much as this institution and the American people will remember Dianne's devoted public service, as I indicated earlier, Elaine and I will also remember and cherish the friendship of 30 years we were fortunate to share with Dianne and Dick.

So, today, I know the entire Senate family is gathering around Senator Feinstein's loyal staff. Our thoughts and prayers are with Dianne's daughter Katherine, her granddaughter Eileen, the entire Feinstein family, and with all who mourn our dear colleague and friend.

Madam President, Congress has until tomorrow night to pass a straight-forward short-term funding extension and avoid a government shutdown.

All this week, and every time we have found ourselves in this situation before, I have offered my colleagues the same warning: Shutting down the government doesn't help anybody politically; it doesn't make any meaningful progress on policy; and it heaps unnecessary hardships on the American people as well as the brave men and women who keep us safe.

Right now, I am encouraged that many of my colleagues who share our concerns are working hard on amendments to strengthen the pending legislation and avert the disastrous effects of a shutdown.

Congress has an opportunity right now to pay our servicemembers, border security personnel, and other essential workers; to keep important government functions running; and to keep the lights on so the important discussions we are having right now about dealing with Democrats' border crisis, delivering disaster relief, supporting Ukraine, and reining in reckless spending can continue. And I would urge our colleagues to take that opportunity.

University of Louisville

Madam President, now, on an entirely different matter, today, I join my alma mater, the University of Louisville, in celebrating the inauguration of its new president, Dr. Kim Schatzel.

As many alum will tell you, UofL is a special place. For me, it was the first place in Kentucky where I felt completely at home. And it is somewhere I continue to find fulfillment in my personal and public life.

As a young man, it is where I met the first professor who challenged me to think for myself, where I tested my talents in my first art class, and where I was lucky enough to take part in UofL's congressional internship program. And that turned out a lot better than my artistic pursuits.

These days, UofL continues to be an important part of my life, whether I am tailgating football games with friends, advocating on behalf of the university in Washington, or observing the success of the McConnell Center scholars.

As President Schatzel steps into her new role, I hope she will find the immense opportunity and access afforded to myself and every UofL student, staff, faculty, and alum who walks this campus.

Throughout its 225-year history, UofL has hosted a long list of visionary leaders who shaped its success, and today I am proud to welcome President Schatzel to though those ranks. Her wealth of experience in both academics and business make her a valuable addition to the UofL family.

Before joining the University of Louisville, she led a successful career in corporate America. In just two decades, she rose from foreman on a Ford Pinto assembly line to heading up a multinational manufacturing enterprise.

She would eventually pivot to an equally impressive career in academia, taking her marketing genius to higher education. As President of Towson University, she bolstered graduation rates and broke records in capital investment on campus.

These are high priorities for our university as well, and I look forward to partnering with her to bring similar success to the UofL and broader communities.

The city of Louisville, the Commonwealth of Kentucky, and the entire Nation rely on the University of Louisville for its research and innovations in medicine, engineering, agriculture, the arts, and so much more.

Leading a major metropolitan university like UofL is a big job, but I think I speak for the entire Louisville community when I say: President Schatzel, keep up the great work. From one Cardinal to another, I wish her the best of luck and congratulations this momentous day.

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

Mr. President, well, Congress has 3 days left to pass straightforward, short-term funding legislation to prevent the Federal Government from shutting down. That is 3 more days to provide essential resources at the current rate of operations before critical government functions come to a screeching halt.

Let's be absolutely clear about what is at stake. Shutting down the government is not like pressing ``pause.'' It is not an interlude that lets us pick up where we left off. It is an actively harmful proposition. Instead of producing any meaningful policy outcomes, it would actually take the important progress being made on a number of key issues and drag it backward.

Back in 2019, our colleagues on the Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee found that over the previous 5 years, government shutdowns had cost the taxpayer nearly $4 billion--$4 billion. The American people covered at least $3.7 billion in backpay for Federal workers. Some went to servicemembers, law enforcement officers, and other frontline personnel who actually stayed on duty. But some went to cover the equivalent of nearly 57,000 years of work that Federal employees hadn't even been allowed to complete. And that is not to mention hundreds of millions of dollars in extra administrative costs.

America cannot afford for Congress to take government shutdowns lightly. That is especially true of the crisis at our Nation's southern border.

The Biden administration's utter failure to secure the border has been recordbreaking in the worst possible ways. Functionally open borders have led to alltime high migration and stretched border security resources literally to a breaking point.

Meanwhile, flows of deadly drugs have made every State actually a border State. In fact, the Border Patrol reported recently that in the past year, agents have seized enough fentanyl alone to kill the entire population of the United States.

Time and again, government shutdowns have made the essential work of the Border Patrol and ICE even harder.

Many of our colleagues have pointed out how border security personnel, like the Armed Forces, would work through a shutdown without pay, but the full consequences go beyond financial hardship. As our colleagues' 2019 report found, past shutdowns have delayed important maintenance and repair

work that ``endangered the lives of law enforcement officers and created significant border security vulnerabilities.'' They have forced officials to cancel tens of thousands of immigration hearings, and they have taken the Department of Homeland Security's employee E-Verify system completely offline.

Shutting down the government is a choice, and it is a choice that would make the crisis at the southern border even worse.

I am encouraged that many of our colleagues who share my concerns are working to ensure that the short-term funding measure we pass this week gives the men and women of Border Patrol and ICE critical resources while we continue our work to clean up Washington Democrats' mess.

Biden Administration

Mr. President, on an entirely different matter, this week, the Senate will have the opportunity to push back one more time on a pair of shortsighted Biden administrative policies with major consequences for small businesses and landowners across America.

Earlier this year, thanks to the leadership of our colleagues, the junior Senator for Kansas and the junior Senator for Oklahoma, the Senate passed two resolutions disapproving of President Biden's decision to up-list two creatures--the lesser prairie-chicken and the northern long-eared bat--as endangered species.

As is so often the case under the Endangered Species Act, this move by Washington bureaucrats would encroach on private property rights and block infrastructure and economic development in the name of preserving habitat. As many as 37 States would be affected by the designation of the northern long-eared bat as ``endangered,'' and nearly $14 billion in agricultural production would be affected by the designation of the lesser prairie-chicken.

Now, in reality, aerial estimates show that numbers of lesser prairie-chickens have grown from less than 17,000 in 2013 to over 26,000 in 2022, and the President's own experts admit that the declining population of northern long-eared bats is mostly explained by disease, not humans. Of course, that hasn't stopped the Biden administration from pushing ahead with a plan to infringe on property rights, impede urgent infrastructure, and put even more of America's energy abundance literally out of reach.

So I would like to thank Senator Marshall and Senator Mullin for their leadership on this resolution, and I would like to urge each of our colleagues to join me in voting to override the President's veto.

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

Mr. President, yesterday, the Senate took the first step toward avoiding a harmful and unnecessary government shutdown. The business before us now is to pass standard, short-term funding legislation to keep basic and essential government functions operating while work continues on full-year appropriations.

We are talking about making sure that the servicemembers who will continue to stand watch around the world and the Border Patrol and ICE agents who will continue to contend with the Biden administration's border crisis here at home and the VA medical providers who will continue to care for America's heroes don't have to go without their paychecks.

The choice facing Congress is pretty straightforward. We can take the standard approach and fund the government for 6 weeks at the current rate of operations, or we can shut the government down in exchange for zero meaningful progress on policy.

So let's be clear. There are a number of important discussions on additional funding priorities that are still unresolved. Many colleagues are eager to make real progress in bringing the Democrats' reckless spending to heel; to force the administration to start taking its southern border crisis seriously; to provide greater relief for victims of wildfires, hurricanes, and other natural disasters; and to deliver continued assistance to Ukraine's defense against Russia. And on all of those counts, I am one of them.

We would like to address all of those issues, but these important discussions cannot progress if Congress simply fails to complete our work on standard, short-term funding and the basic functions of government end up being taken hostage. So a vote against a standard, short-term funding measure is a vote against paying over a billion dollars in salary for Border Patrol and ICE agents working to track down lethal fentanyl and tame our open borders. Letting FEMA's Disaster Relief Fund dry up is not a productive way to advocate for victims of disasters. Letting small businesses' loan applications collect dust is not a productive way to help working Americans contend with Washington Democrats' historic inflation.

Shutting down the government isn't an effective way to make a point. Keeping it open is the only way to make a difference on the most important issues we are facing.

Economic Recovery

Mr. President, on another matter, the American people are absolutely sick--sick and tired--of living under Bidenomics. According to one recent survey, nearly 70 percent of Americans think the economy is actually getting worse. And support for President Biden's handling of the economy is at the lowest level of his Presidency.

It might have something to do with the fact that since President Biden took office, soaring inflation has turned rising wages into net pay cuts for American workers. Real wages are down 2.3 percent since 2021. Household incomes fell in 17 States last year. And for all but the wealthiest 20 percent of households, American families' savings have actually shrunk.

A food truck owner in Atlanta told reporters recently that he is paying--listen to this--25 percent more for ingredients, while the lines for his sandwiches are dwindling as customers cut back on their spending. Here is what he said:

I've had to raise some of my prices just to kind of keep up

to make it. . . . And gas prices, when you drive a food

truck, you only get eight miles a gallon. So the cost of [my]

fuel really hurts.

Here is what the Fed Chairman Jerome Powell said last week:

People hate inflation, hate it.

The Chairman of the Fed is absolutely right. Working families are tired of wondering how to make ends meet every month. They are tired of being told that Bidenomics is working for them.

I suggest the absence of a quorum.