Floor Statements

Mr. President, finally, today marks a solemn anniversary for the people of Burma and for all of us around the world who spent years--literally years--rooting for them to make progress toward greater freedom and democracy. Two years ago, their hopes of a stable democracy were wrenched away by a brutal military coup.

To date, this takeover by the Tatmadaw, which is their army, has displaced 1.2 million people, including many thousands who have been forced to flee the country altogether.

Inside Burma, more than 16,000 people have been taken as political prisoners. At one point, the military was detaining American journalist Danny Fenster and Nathan Maung; the Australian economist, Sean Turnell; dozens of innocent children; and, of course, my friend Aung San Suu Kyi, whose latest conviction and a sham trial leaves her facing the possibility of life in prison.

Expert observers count the coup's death toll at 19,000. That includes people this illegitimate government simply executed outright, like the activists Ko Jimmy and Phyo Zeya Thaw.

Now the leaders of the Tatmadaw coup are laying out plans in broad daylight to stamp out Burma's pro-democracy movement once and for all. The military is shedding any last ounce of legitimacy it pretended to have and is now conducting airstrikes against innocent civilians.

The junta's new regulations for this year's election are designed to make viable opposition virtually impossible. No wonder the illegitimate Tatmadaw rulers rolled out the red carpet for Putin's Foreign Minister to visit Burma. Thugs recognize other thugs.

On the second anniversary of the coup, with a potentially devastating sham election on the horizon, it is absolutely vital that the United States continue our assistance to the National Unity Government and other key groups working inside Burma to protect the innocent and advance the cause of democracy and increase cross-border humanitarian aid. By our example, America should rally our partners to raise the international stakes for the Tatmadaw's continued brutality.

In December, the National Defense Authorization Act instructed the Biden administration to take several more concrete steps to bulk up American support for the people of Burma. It made sanctions on senior junta officials mandatory. It required more targeted and precisely timed sanctions against state-owned enterprises like MOGE, M-O-G-E. Finally, the NDAA also notably authorized funding for programs to strengthen federalism in and among ethnic states in Burma and for technical support and nonlethal assistance to Burma's ethnic armed organizations and People's Defence Forces to strengthen communication, command and control, and coordination of

international relief and other operations between and among those entities.

So, Mr. President, the people of Burma are fighting for the sort of future that citizens of democracies like ours enjoy: the right to self- determination. I am proud to stand behind them in this effort.

I suggest the absence of a quorum.

Mr. President, the Constitution charges the Senate with giving advice and, if we choose, providing our consent to the President's judicial appointments.

The President nominates somebody whom he thinks ought to serve on the Federal bench, and then the nominee comes here to the Senate for a job interview. Sometimes these job interviews make news because they go spectacularly well.

When the Judiciary Committee subjected now-Justice Amy Coney Barrett to a battery of questions a little over 2 years ago, she literally dazzled the country with her force of intellect. At one point, hours into a hearing, after being asked multipart questions about the finer points of constitutional law, now-Justice Barrett was asked to hold up the notepad she had been provided to keep everything straight, and it was completely blank. She hadn't even touched it.

Justice Barrett is an intellectual outlier by any standard, but she is an appropriate stand-in for the judicial nominees whom Republican Senators confirmed from 2017 through 2020. As one left-leaning analysis admitted in 2020, ``based solely on objective legal credentials''-- ``solely on objective legal credentials''--the last administration's average pick for the Federal bench had ``a far more impressive resume than any past president's nominees.'' They had more circuit court clerkships, more Supreme Court clerkships--objectively, more experience in the Federal judiciary.

Under President Biden, though, with his nominees, well, you might say things have gone somewhat differently.

Last week, our colleague on the Judiciary Committee from Louisiana, Senator Kennedy, was quizzing a panel of President Biden's nominees, and he decided to try some very simple questions that should have been beyond basic for anybody nominated to serve as a U.S. district judge. He asked one nominee, currently a superior court judge in Spokane County, WA, to simply explain what article V of the Constitution says. That would be the article that explains how the Constitution gets amended. Here was the nominee's response:

Article V is not coming to mind at the moment.

Senator Kennedy came back with another, even more basic question. He asked:

How about article II?

As high schoolers across America learn each year, article II sets up the Presidency and the executive branch. It establishes the President's powers, including the power to nominate the person for the vacancy in question. But this sitting judge drew another blank.

Article II wasn't coming to mind either--goodness gracious.

Then she flunked yet another question about legal philosophy, and, then again, she flunked still another question about the most controversial Supreme Court case this term.

Apparently, when this particular nominee had been asked to list the top 10 most impactful cases she had litigated in court, she could only come up with 6. At no stage of her professional career has the judge focused on Federal law. At no point had she ever even appeared in Federal court.

So get this. In one of these six most significant cases she took, she lost to a defendant who forewent legal counsel and took the risky step of representing herself. This wasn't some rooky mistake either. The nominee was over a decade out of law school when she lost to an unrepresented party in one of her biggest cases.

Is this the caliber of legal expert with which President Biden is filling the Federal bench--for lifetime appointments? Is the bar for merit and excellence really set this low?

For years, now, Washington Democrats' rhetoric about judicial nominations has often treated actual qualifications as an afterthought. Democrats were not particularly impressed or moved by top-shelf professional excellence or the academic brilliance that the last Republican administration's nominees possessed, literally, in spades. And, apparently, they don't count those qualities as particularly high priorities now that they are the ones doing the nominating.

The American people deserve an impartial judiciary that is full of the finest legal minds our country has to offer. The American people deserve the best and the brightest.

Alas, but sadly, the Biden administration's questionable constitutional judgment is not limited to some of their judicial nominations. In one important constitutional case after another, the Biden administration and his lawyers have come down on the wrong side of the American people's rights and liberties and have gotten slapped down in court as a result.

This last year, for example, in the Bruen case, the Biden administration threw its weight behind unconstitutional New York State restrictions on the Second Amendment that plainly violated citizens' rights to keep and bear arms. President Biden sent one of his top lawyers to help with the oral arguments, but the Democrats got the Constitution backward and lost the case.

In West Virginia v. EPA, President Biden went all in trying to defend massive unconstitutional overreach by his own Environmental Protection Agency. His Solicitor General argued the case herself, but the administration lost badly. The plain meaning of our laws and our Constitution actually won out.

In Carson v. Makin, President Biden fought to maintain unconstitutional anti-religious discrimination in school voucher programs. Again, he lost, and the American people and their Constitution won.

Washington Democrats had their blatantly unconstitutional vaccine mandate for the private sector tossed out by the Supreme Court. They had their obviously illegal top-down mask mandate for transportation tossed out by a district judge. Oh, and, by the way, when the judge was nominated, Democrats howled that she was unqualified. But with a Supreme Court clerkship under her belt, she had incomparably more experience in Federal court than the nominee who failed Senator Kennedy's bar exam.

Over and over, on issue after issue, this Democratic administration sides against the American people, against the Constitution, and against the rule of law.

The American people deserve an administration that respects their rights and liberties, that understands our Constitution, and that chooses both policies and nominees accordingly.

I suggest the absence of a quorum.

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

Madam President, the new Republican House of Representatives has already done more to protect our Nation's Strategic Petroleum Reserve than the single-party Democratic government did in the last 2 years.

First, House Republicans passed legislation that would ban the Federal Government from selling energy from the SPR to benefit our Nation's No. 1 strategic adversary--the Chinese Communist Party. Then, last week, the House followed on by passing H.R. 21, a bipartisan bill that would require the Department of Energy to offset any nonemergency drawdowns of the Strategic Petroleum Reserve by expanding access to America's abundant domestic energy on Federal lands. Speaker McCarthy and Chair Cathy McMorris Rodgers were right to make American energy security a top priority for their new majority.

It is too bad that it is even necessary to protect our Nation's emergency energy reserves from our own Commander in Chief and his party, but unfortunately the Biden administration has proven that it is necessary.

Last year, with his party hurting at the polls, President Biden released more than 200 million barrels, leaving America's strategic reserve at its lowest level since 1983. To make matters worse, this political gamble didn't just leave America less secure, it directly benefited China. President Biden's Department of Energy hadn't just sold off critical supplies; they sold some of them--listen to this-- directly to a Chinese refining company.

Last year, Senate Republicans put every Democrat on the record with an amendment to clamp down on selling our strategic reserve to China. Senate Democrats blocked it. The Democratic Senators from States like West Virginia, Montana, and Ohio voted on party lines to let the Biden administration continue to sell our reserves to the CCP.

Democrats' recklessness with our energy reserves actually predates this particular administration. Remember back when oil prices were at historic lows during the early days of the COVID pandemic? We Republicans tried to refill the SPR to the top. We could have totally replenished our stockpile at bargain-basement prices. But the Senate Democrat leader blocked it and bragged about blocking it. Our colleague crowed that his party had stopped a ``bailout for Big Oil.'' Of course, what he really blocked was a win-win for national security as well as the American taxpayer.

Washington Democrats have been dead wrong on how to handle our strategic reserve literally for years. This is just one symptom of their deep misunderstanding about energy, about the importance of American energy dominance and the way to achieve it.

Across the Atlantic, war in Ukraine has brought the vulnerability of Europe's dependence on Russian energy

into stark and painful relief. Half-baked green transitions, an allergy to clean and reliable nuclear power, and an addiction to Russian gas sent our allies' energy costs through the roof, with working families and ratepayers actually footing the bills.

It could have been a helpful, cautionary tale for the United States, but by last year, the Biden administration was already a year deep into their comprehensive war on abundant and affordable American energy. Remember, on day one in office, President Biden canceled further work on the Keystone XL Pipeline with the stroke of a pen--forget safe and efficient energy transport, high-paying American jobs, and lower cost, reliable power. The President had already put climate activism in the driver's seat of his own energy policy.

The Biden administration has frozen new oil exploration on public lands, overhauled permitting rules to make it harder to develop natural gas resources, dragged the United States back into a climate deal that gives the Chinese Communist Party a pass to keep increasing its carbon emissions, and balked at a chance to block Vladimir Putin's latest pipeline for controlling European consumption.

It is an absolutely nonsensical agenda, and it hasn't taken long for families across our country to feel the direct effects in the form of soaring prices in their heating and electricity bills, at the gas pump, as well as at the grocery store.

Fortunately, millions of working Americans were fed up last November and decided to put an end to Democrats' total control here in Washington. Republicans will stand strong on the side of American energy dominance, on the side of national security, on the side of American workers, American families, and America's future.

I suggest the absence of a quorum.

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

Mr. President, the Senate is witnessing an unusual sight. Our colleague from West Virginia, Senator Manchin, is trying to roll back legislation that he himself wrote and passed less than a year ago. Reports say the Senator now wants Congress to delay the new electric vehicle tax credit that he himself hand-designed just last summer until he can resolve a fight with his fellow Democrats and the administration over what their own law actually says or actually does.

It would be comical if this Democrat-on-Democrat chaos weren't impacting our country. Republicans pointed out over and over that Democrats' reckless taxing-and-spending spree was unfair as well as unworkable. We said from the start this is a hugely expensive, hopelessly tangled mess of subsidies, regulations, and redtape. They raised taxes on American jobs, American families, and American energy in order to inefficiently send little chunks of the people's money back to them if they plan their lives according to unclear and changing Big Government standards.

This is the classic tax-and-spend liberal logic: The IRS takes more of your money so bureaucrats can take over more of your life. Well, it is proving just as tangled and messy for the country, as we all predicted last summer.

Our Democratic colleague from West Virginia is locked in some battle with the Democrats' own Treasury Department over the sweeping new regulations that need to be written. He seems to be suggesting that some Americans who have already received the EV tax credit--that he wrote--should have to actually pay it back. In the meantime, while Democrats keep fighting it out, the Senator apparently wants Congress to act again to halt or change the implementation of his own policy.

So good luck to American families trying to understand what on Earth does and does not qualify for the Big Government subsidies. Good luck to American businesses trying to figure out how to direct their investments. Now, this is what happens when Democrats make it up as they go along and clumsily try to rewire huge parts of our economy on the fly.

Now, remember, the senior Senator from West Virginia has already acknowledged that other Biden policies completely cancel out the supposed deficit savings from the massive climate bill. He has admitted that President Biden's student loan socialism wipes out all of their claimed deficit savings from the Green New Deal, and then some. And now, on top of all that, the redtape and expensive subsidies are so tangled that the very Senator who wrote the law now wants to delay or change it.

This has been a terrible deal for the country right from the beginning. Nonpartisan experts said the Democrats' boondoggle would increase inflation in the short term and do nothing for inflation in the long term. Nonpartisan experts said it would shatter President Biden's promise not to impact middle-class families with tax hikes. Nonpartisan experts said that none of it would have any--any-- measurable impact on the global temperature.

And now, apparently, even the author of the bill wants Congress to rescue the country from his own handiwork. This is no way to run a country. People need to plan their lives. Businesses need to plan their futures and their investments. How can American workers and entrepreneurs do what they do best if Washington Democrats are micromanaging the economy and changing their mind every 5 minutes?

So, to summarize, we have a Senator asking Congress to delay and modify the signature bill that he himself wrote less than a year ago. We have American families being treated as pawns in a fight between Democrats and other Democrats. This bill was already an incredibly bad deal for the country, and the giant mess gets worse and worse every day.

Mr. President, on an entirely different matter, some things in life are just constants: The Sun rises in the east, water is wet, and Democratic administrations look for ways to let terrorists out of Guantanamo Bay.

The Biden administration has already overseen the largest terrorist jailbreak in modern memory when they abandoned the Bagram Air Base prison in Afghanistan. They let the Taliban waltz in and free thousands of terrorists, reportedly including the ISIS-K suicide bomber who killed our 13 American servicemembers in Kabul during the Biden administration's botched withdrawal.

Now, rumor has it they are considering writing a sequel to that jailbreak by continuing the Obama-Biden administration's literal obsession with removing terrorists from our secure and

legal detention facility at Guantanamo.

Let's get a few things straight. The American people are safer and more secure because monsters like Khalid Shaikh Mohammed are off the battlefield and behind bars where they belong. When the Obama administration wanted to bring these terrorists to America, introduce them into the American judicial and prison systems, the Congress, on an overwhelming, overwhelming bipartisan basis, said no. But the progressive leftists in the Biden administration don't seem to care. They seem more concerned about the views of European human rights activists than about key national security concerns and complex legal questions.

So new reports suggest that President Biden and his team are trying to cut plea deals with these terrorists and war criminals. They want to cut these guys deals.

What would the deals look like? No one knows. They won't tell anybody. Would they be transferred into our own taxpayer-funded justice system for American citizens? Are we going to have hardened terrorists moving through the streets of Manhattan, with terrorist lawyers getting the rights and access that pertain to defense counsel?

Mayor Adams is already saying New York can't cope with President Biden's open southern border, and now the NYPD could have to babysit terrorists as well? Or is the plan military commissions, in which case, what concessions is the President planning to make to these murderers to get their activist lawyers to accept that forum?

Or does the administration intend to follow the Obama administration's model and rely on third parties and other countries to do the dirty work of detention? Well, of course, if you are going to send these people to other countries, that requires allies who are reliable, responsible, and actually willing to take these terrorists. Does President Biden plan to gamble on an Iraqi Government that is increasingly under the influence of Iran? Or do they want to double down on detention facilities run by Syrian Kurdish partners in areas that are not yet under the control of the Assad regime?

There is already no plan for Europe to reabsorb their citizens who fought for ISIS and are currently detained by the SDF. We are going to add to those ranks?

There is a huge long list of practical problems the administration needs to consider before they toy with risky plans to shutter a perfectly good facility at Guantanamo Bay for no good reason. The Biden administration has got to rediscover some common sense.

Now, I understand that liberal activists are willing to leave innocent American families in greater danger in exchange for a little bit of leftwing symbolism, but our Commander in Chief has a higher duty.

Mr. President, here on the floor yesterday, I called on America's European allies, including Germany, to do more to equip Ukraine with long-requested tanks, not just to resist Russian aggression but to defeat it.

I have consistently called on the Biden administration to be more proactive and to lead by example in delivering lethal aid, like the long-range weapons, with a greater sense of urgency.

I was happy to learn yesterday and this morning that, indeed, both the White House and their counterparts in Germany are finally moving forward with these overdue steps.

Germany has announced it will supply Ukraine with an initial 14 Leopard 2 tanks, and the Biden administration is expected to send at least 30 M1 Abrams tanks as well. Good news.

Now that Berlin has taken this step, I hope and expect that Germany and other European countries with tanks in their inventory will move expeditiously to send them to Ukraine.

Modern main battle tanks will provide highly maneuverable armored firepower that will help Ukraine liberate territory and keep pressure on the Russian aggressors, but, as I have said repeatedly, time is of the essence.

Of course, as we rush these long-overdue capabilities to Ukraine, the West's work is far from over. These drawdowns of Western arsenals must also prompt serious work to expand the capacity of our defense industrial base. The Biden administration's efforts on this front are overdue but important, and I hope more of our allies will follow through by moving quickly to put critical munitions and weapons systems under contract and expanding each of their industrial capacities.

Mr. President, on another matter, here are just a few scenes from across our country in the last few weeks.

Thirty people were shot in Chicago this past weekend alone. That is up from 21 the weekend before.

In Philadelphia, police are investigating a carjacking spree that is reportedly being carried out by armed juveniles:

They put a gun to my head and they took the van. [And] I

haven't found it back again.

Out in San Francisco, just one neighborhood has seen a beating, an attempted robbery, a 2-year-old suffering fentanyl poisoning after playing in the park, and 17 car windows smashed--all on one street, all on one night.

Streets, neighborhoods, and cities across our country are being swamped--literally, swamped--by a level of crime that is unsafe, uncivilized, and totally unacceptable.

My hometown of Louisville, KY, saw 10 homicides in just the first 10 days of 2023, and already 5 more since then--the latest additions to the list of 500-plus homicides we have seen since the start of this violent crime wave 3 years ago.

As Louisville's mayor said a few weeks ago, ``these are not just numbers; these are people.''

Many of the individuals our city lost were young, just starting out their careers and families. Far too many were children, including a 14- year-old boy we lost just 10 days ago.

Of course, for every victim who lost their life to violent crime, there are even more who have been injured or traumatized or literally forced to live in fear. As one resident said, ``I got to lock my doors all the time . . . I'm worried about my children going outside. It's not fair.''

It is not fair. Of course, he is absolutely right. It is not fair that once-safe neighborhoods have become war zones. It is not fair that children are being murdered.

Or look at what is happening right here in the Nation's Capital. Right here in Washington, law and order have been in a free fall. Over the weekend, in broad daylight, a rideshare driver had his car stolen by a group of men brandishing rifles. City-wide, Washington is averaging a carjacking every day. Homicides this year are up 17 percent. Just yesterday, two 18-year-olds, fresh off a carjacking spree in a nearby county, came right here to the capital, ran into two separate Capitol Police vehicles, and then tried to flee on foot. Fortunately, the Capitol Police brought them into custody.

Yet the DC City Council is so completely captured by the woke far- left, they have responded to the crime wave with a new criminal code that--listen to this--reduces penalties even further. That is the response of the DC City Council.

Just last week, the council overrode the mayor's veto and pushed through a measure that shreds--shreds--the maximum punishment for gun crimes. It eliminates almost all mandatory minimum sentences. It will clog up the court system with massive expansions of new jury trials for misdemeanors.

Well, the good news on this front is that the U.S. Congress gets to have the final word over reckless local policies from the DC government. Senate Republicans will have a lot more to say on this subject. Stay tuned.

The American people know crime is getting worse, and they know it hasn't happened by accident. From Los Angeles to Philadelphia, to Chicago, the Democratic Party has backed radical district attorneys who have tried to unilaterally take parts of the local criminal code offline. They simply decline to prosecute serious crimes, from drug possession to criminal threats, as a matter of principle. In some cases these woke prosecutors are seeking early release for felons convicted of violent crimes.

Many other Democrats have spent years fanning the dangerous flames of the far-left's antipolice rhetoric. Of course, studies have proven that public hostility to police leads directly to more crime, including more homicides, in the at-risk communities that need law and order the most.

Furthermore, the Biden administration and Senate Democrats have spent 2 years working to stack the Federal judiciary with former public defenders and others whose sympathies lie more with criminal defendants than with innocent victims.

Nobody is arguing that criminal defenders should never become judges, but this has been a dramatic, deliberate transformation project that is skewed overwhelmingly in one direction. Even the New York Times has admitted it has been ``a sea change in the world of traditional nominations.''

The Biden administration never misses an opportunity to make crime even worse. Deaths from cocaine have quintupled over the past decade, but, just a few weeks ago, this President and his Attorney General took the radical and borderline lawless step of unilaterally reducing the penalties for dealing crack.

These liberals respond to soaring overdose fatalities by going even softer on drugs.

Democrats are struggling with the basics. Actually, this shouldn't be that hard. Drugs belong off the streets. Career criminals belong behind bars, and far-left politicians who put innocent citizens last belong far away from the levers of power.

I suggest the absence of a quorum.

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

Mr. President, the Biden administration has spent 2 years turning its back on the proven tools and policies that Republicans used to strengthen our southern border--2 years of a functionally open borders policy from Washington Democrats and 2 years of chaos and suffering as a result.

Last week, Customs and Border Protection announced that an already recordbreaking year ended on a particularly catastrophic note. Illegal immigration apprehensions clocked an alltime high of more than 2.7 million during the last fiscal year--by far the highest annual total ever recorded. But then December set an astonishing

record all by itself at over 250,000 apprehensions. Last month was CBP's busiest month ever recorded.

The American people are outraged at this willful failure. They rate immigration and the border as one of the single biggest problems facing our country, second only to the economy.

Two-thirds--two-thirds--of the country disapprove of President Biden's handling of immigration and the border. That is a 67-percent supermajority of Americans who believe this administration is failing on border security.

Our Democratic friends tie themselves in knots making excuses for why they can't simply do their job, enforce Federal law, and secure our border. Their far-left base makes them pretend that we can't enforce the laws on the books unless--unless--we find new ways to be even more generous to people who come here illegally. It is nonsensical.

Even local officials who belong to the Democratic Party are rapidly losing patience with the Biden administration's border incompetence.

The Democratic mayor of New York, Eric Adams, has spent months sounding the alarm on the catastrophic effects of this administration's functionally open borders.

He said:

This is a national crisis.

He said:

There is no more room in New York.

Yet the far left attacks him, the mayor of New York, for pointing out the problem.

The Democratic Governor of Colorado is taking a cue from Governor Abbott and Governor DeSantis and arranging transportation for illegal immigrants to various liberal jurisdictions that have self-identified as so-called sanctuary cities.

There is a growing bipartisan chorus that is begging--begging-- President Biden to do his job and secure our Nation. It doesn't take new laws. It doesn't take some new, grand bargain or amnesty. The administration just needs to do its job: Secure the border, and let law enforcement enforce our laws. The Biden administration has all the tools and authorities it needs to tackle this crisis--if a solution were actually what they were after.

Mr. President, now on another matter, it has been a full year since Putin escalated Russia's brutal war against Ukraine and nearly 9 years since he began his military effort to take over the sovereign country in early 2014. Putin's nonmilitary efforts to meddle in Ukraine, undermine it, and control its population long predated even 2014. It has been 15 years since Putin invaded Georgia. A few years before that, he said publicly the breakup of the Soviet Union was ``the greatest geopolitical catastrophe of the 20th century.''

The former KGB agent who has run the Kremlin for two decades has been very, very consistent: repression at home, aggression abroad, assassinations, invasions, poisonings, and political interference. And whenever the rest of the world responded with accommodation rather than with resolve, Putin drew the natural conclusion that he could do whatever he wanted.

But for the past 11 months, the brave men and women in Ukraine have defied the odds. They have endured tremendous hardship and stood their ground. They have fought bravely for their families, their freedom, and their country.

At every step of the way, investments from the United States and our allies have equipped the Ukrainian people to exact a heavy price from the Russian invaders. Western assistance has played a key role, but it has come too slowly and haltingly.

Despite my urging the Biden administration to act sooner, aid did not come early enough to help Ukraine deter Putin's escalation before it actually happened, nor to slow down Russia's brutal and rapid advance in the east and the south. It has not come quickly enough to help Ukraine sustain counteroffensives or fully defend its cities against missile and drone attacks.

The United States and our friends and our partners have done enough to prevent Ukraine from losing--from losing--but we have not yet done enough to help Ukraine actually win.

A protracted stalemate is neither in Ukraine's interest nor ours. The solution that is both the most humane and the most advantageous to America's interests is quite simple: Help Ukraine win this war.

We know what it will take to make this possible. As our colleague Senator Wicker said, ``We can shift this war immediately in Ukraine's favor by providing a range of advanced weapons, including tanks, drones, and tactical missiles.'' And as Chairman McCaul from the House said this past weekend, it is not the United States that will be provocative if we send stronger assistance.

Mr. Putin is the provocative one. . . . He invaded a

sovereign territory, aggressively [and] unprovoked.

Yet some of freedom's most powerful friends remain hesitant. For many months, Germany has not only resisted calls to send Leopard 2 tanks to Ukraine but has actually also prevented other European nations from transferring their own German-produced Leopards to Ukraine. Time is short, and while Berlin agonizes over its own decision whether to provide Leopards to Ukraine, it should proactively and explicitly make clear that other allies are free to do so.

What about the Biden administration here at home? The administration's latest deliveries failed to include--failed to include--the longer range missiles and more sophisticated munitions that Ukraine has been requesting literally for months--for months.

Ukraine's brave resistance deserves our continued praise, but more importantly, it needs our concrete and consistent materiel support. Ukraine's strengths cannot keep self-deterring ourselves and letting the aggressors, the invaders, dictate the pace. So it is time--past time--for the Biden administration and our allies to get serious about helping Ukraine finish the job and retake their country.

I suggest the absence of a quorum.

Moments ago, the Senate returned to our full 100- person strength as Nebraska's new junior Senator took the oath of office.

The Cornhusker State expects a lot from its leaders. For the last 8 years, Nebraskans could rest easy knowing they had Deb Fischer and Ben Sasse on the job here in Washington. And during that same time, of course, they also had an outstanding leader even closer to home. As Governor, Pete Ricketts applied private-sector savvy to the work of public administration with great effect. He secured for Nebraska families and small businesses the biggest tax relief in that State's history. He championed parents' rights and defended civics education.

In the face of a global pandemic, he built the State's response on common sense--saving lives but also safeguarding livelihoods; preserving liberties and protecting kids' educations, all at the same time. The people of Nebraska chose wisely in electing and re-electing Governor Ricketts by huge margins. And their new Governor chose wisely in sending his predecessor here to this Chamber.

I know I speak for the entire Senate in extending a warm welcome to Senator Ricketts and his wife Susanne.

Pete, we are glad to have you here on the team.

118th Congress

Madam President, on another matter, the American people want and need this 118th Congress to work differently than the past 2 years that were just finished. We just had 2 years of one-party Democratic control, 2 years of spending us into record inflation on party-line votes, 2 years of ignoring top priorities of the American people like violent crime and open borders, two years of Senate Democrats procrastinating on basic government duties in order to push radical proposals like an unprecedented elections takeover and unlimited abortion on demand for all 9 months.

The American people put an end to that one-party government because they wanted change.

This year, the Senate leadership must not put off our most basic jobs, like intelligently funding our Federal Government and providing for our Armed Forces, before the very last minute. Basic duties like the appropriations process and the National Defense Authorization Act need more thoughtfulness, more bipartisanship, and more regular order. And they must not be shoved into late December after the Senate Democrats waste literally months looking for ways to placate the radical left.

The American people elected a bipartisan, divided government. The country voted to change Washington. So this Chamber's Democratic leadership needs to change accordingly.

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

Madam President, when the Biden administration put out their budget proposal, the Republicans knew it was literally wrong for the country. The administration wanted to cut funding for our Armed Forces, after inflation, while massively increasing spending on nondefense.

Republicans have taken the President's bizarre position and flipped it on its head. The bipartisan government funding bill that Senators Leahy and Shelby have finished negotiating does exactly the opposite of what the Biden administration first proposed. This bill provides a substantial real-dollar increase to the defense baseline and a substantial real-dollar cut to the nondefense, nonveterans baseline.

Let me say that again. President Biden wanted to cut defense spending and grow liberal domestic spending in real dollars, but Congress is rejecting the Biden administration's vision and doing the exact opposite. This bill will grow defense spending and cut nondefense, nonveterans spending after inflation.

Just last week, the Senate passed the National Defense Authorization Act on an overwhelming bipartisan basis. Senators on both sides acknowledged that President Biden and his administration had failed-- failed--to request the level of resources that our servicemembers and their commanders actually needed. So on a bipartisan basis, we ignored the administration's request and authorized what our Armed Forces actually need.

But the landmark investments in upgrading and modernizing our Armed Forces that we just laid out in the NDAA will not happen unless Congress follows through and appropriates the money to pay the bills. That is what Senators Shelby and Leahy have given us the opportunity to achieve: make good on our commitments in the NDAA by following through with actual funding.

Americans want our Nation to remain the preeminent global superpower. We want our country to remain the mightiest civilization the world has ever seen. We want to keep helping Ukraine, keep outcompeting Russia, and keep pace with the huge investments that China is making in their own military and new technologies.

So it is a strange position, to say the least, when Republicans in Congress have to poke and prod a Democratic Commander in Chief into sufficiently funding the men and women that he actually commands. But as I said all along, funding our Armed Forces is a basic governing duty. Republicans were not going to let our Democratic colleagues demand extra leftwing goodies in exchange for doing their job and funding our troops. The President's own party does not get to take our national defense hostage and demand rewards.

So I am grateful that our Democratic colleagues backed down and accepted our position. The bipartisan bill that our colleagues have negotiated equips our Armed Forces with the resources they need while cutting nondefense, nonveterans spending in real dollars.

This is a strong outcome for Republicans and, much more importantly, it is the outcome that our Nation's security actually needs. So I want to thank our distinguished colleague, Senator Shelby, for his hard work, and I look forward to reviewing the full text soon.