Floor Statements

Mr. President, at this time 1 year ago, the Democratic Party was in the middle of a hysterical meltdown over a new voting law in the State of Georgia.

The President of the United States declared that the State's modest changes to election procedures were ``Jim Crow 2.0.'' He said the law was about ``voter suppression and election subversion.'' He said citizens should doubt ``whether your vote counts at all.'' The sitting President of the United States said lawmakers' positions on this bill would define--listen to this--whether we were ``on the side of Dr. King or George Wallace . . . John Lewis or Bull Connor . . . Abraham Lincoln or Jefferson Davis.''

The Senate Democratic leader said his fellow U.S. Senators who are Republicans were ``supporting the reenactment of those Jim Crow laws.''

My colleague from New York, as the Senate majority leader, is supposed to safeguard and steward this institution. Instead, he tried to destroy the Senate and ``nuke'' the 60-vote threshold so that Democrats could take over all 50 States' election laws on a partisan basis. And, believe it or not, 47 of the other 49 Democrats went right along with him.

The liberal hysteria spread to the press and the private sector. Woke activists started talking about boycotting companies like Coca-Cola and Delta Airlines. Major League Baseball caved and moved the All-Star Game out of Atlanta, directly harming the local economy, all for the sake of symbolism.

Republicans said this was unhinged, phony outrage over a commonsense law that would make it both easy to vote and, of course, hard to cheat. Democrats said the new voting rules were evil and racist and the literal death of democracy.

Well, the facts are now in. We have hard evidence. After the new bill took effect in early 2022, the State of Georgia held a primary election. Do you know what happened? Record turnout for a primary.

Then, last November, Georgia had a general election. What happened? A new record for ballots cast in a midterm.

Oh, some might say: But that doesn't tell us anything about the voting conditions. Maybe there were terribly long lines. Maybe there were sinister road blocks, and voters persevered in spite of them.

Ah, but alas, except an academic research center at the University of Georgia spent weeks--weeks--conducting a major survey of Georgia voters after the election. Let's take a look at what they found.

Seventy-two percent of all Georgia voters--and 73 percent of Black voters, specifically--said their voting experience was ``excellent.'' Ninety-two percent of all voters--and 92 percent of Black voters, specifically--said either that voting had gotten easier since the prior election or that there was no difference. Ninety-two percent of all voters in Georgia said that voting had either gotten easier or that there was no difference between that election and prior elections. More than 70 percent of Black voters in Georgia said they waited less than 10 minutes to cast their ballot.

This is all with the supposed ``Jim Crow'' law in action: record-high turnout, lightning-fast voting lines, a supermajority of African- American voters rating their experience under the new voting rules as ``excellent.''

Ah, but here is the icing on the cake. The same Democratic Party that cheered Major League Baseball from moving the All-Star Game out of Atlanta--listen to this--now has Atlanta on the short list for the next Democratic National Convention.

Here is what happened. We were right, and they were wrong. But it goes beyond that. These people actually lied. They invoked our darkest history and slandered half the country because they wanted more power for themselves.

Some of the most powerful people in our entire country, including the President of the United States, staked their personal credibility to these claims. President Biden screamed from a podium that the bad old days of Jim Crow were back. Over this?

The majority leader from New York tried to destroy the Senate. Over this?

The American people were subjected to months of baseless, pointless, media haranguing. Over this?

And the country is supposed to go on pretending like nothing happened? We are all supposed to take the President, Vice President, and Senate Democrats seriously the next time they start shouting and waving their arms about the next supposed crisis? I don't think so. I don't think the American people will forget who kept their credibility and who lit theirs on fire.

Mr. President, now, on an entirely different matter, today, Ranking Member Capito of the Environment and Public Works Committee will introduce an important resolution on behalf of millions of American farmers, ranchers, and builders.

Two years ago, the Biden administration picked up an Obama-era crusade to micromanage the small businesses that help feed, clothe, and power America. Literally, on President Biden's first day in office, he signed an Executive order that began tearing down the regulatory certainty that Republicans had worked hard to restore for American workers and entrepreneurs.

And in December, this crusade yielded a new rule from EPA that enacted a dizzying new definition of which temporary, tributary, and upland waterways fall under the Federal Government's authority. There is a case before the Supreme Court on this very subject right now. The Court's ruling in Sackett v. EPA will provide new clarity on just how far Federal bureaucrats can stretch their powers to meddle in working Americans' business under the Clean Water Act.

But instead of waiting to see whether a massive expansion of the regulatory state would be legal, the Biden EPA went ahead with their new rule. Can you imagine why Washington Democrats would be in such a rush to get ahead of the law?

So what does this latest power grab by Washington Democrats mean for working people out in our country? Well, for starters, it means that cattlemen, contractors, and all sorts of folks have now had to put up with three--three--major changes to Federal regulation on the lands where they do business in just the past 8 years.

Democrats' relentless attempts to step on State and local authorities in their own backyards has left small business owners across America chasing moving goalposts. The Biden administration's latest rule means it will be harder for farmers in Kentucky to figure out which ditches on their property are subject to the whims of Washington bureaucrats. It will create new headaches for builders in West Virginia trying to make sure they dot every ``i'' and cross every ``t'' on much needed development projects. It will mean ranchers out West may discover that every ditch and low-lying puddle they own--even ones that only hold water when it rains--is now the business of EPA.

And as every American who has tried to create jobs or build something knows, redtape doesn't just cost valuable time. Legal experts project the Biden administration's latest overreach would raise the cost of development and infrastructure projects near waterways by--listen to this--a million dollars an acre.

So while President Biden takes a victory lap on infrastructure projects made possible by bipartisan work, this latest salvo in Washington Democrats' war on working Americans would devastate the sort of small businesses that actually build the infrastructure projects.

But it isn't going unanswered. Twenty-five Governors, representing fully half the States in our country, have

condemned the EPA's waters of the United States rule. And here in the Senate, West Virginia's own Senator Capito has consistently led our efforts to cut the overreaching regulatory state back down to size. She sponsored the legislation that would have codified the last administration's commonsense fixes. She spearheaded Congress's brief to the Supreme Court as it considers this issue.

And today, she will introduce her Congressional Review Act resolution to give every one of our colleagues the opportunity to protect the future of transformative infrastructure, energy, and agriculture projects in their States.

West Virginia should be proud that one of their two Senators is committed to reforms that get more of Washington's messes out of their way. I am proud to support Senator Capito's resolution. I would urge each of my colleagues to do the same.

Mr. President, later today, the Speaker of the House and the President will begin bipartisan discussions about the future and trajectory of our government's borrowing and spending.

It is right, appropriate, and entirely normal that our need to raise the debt limit would be paired with negotiations regarding Democrats' runaway printing and spending.

The American people changed control of the House because the voters wanted to constrain Democrats' runaway, reckless, party-line spending. The voters of this country looked at the trillions of dollars of party- line spending, the runaway inflation, and the mountain of debt, and last November they hit the brakes.

We just experienced 2 years when Washington Democrats got to set policy without negotiating, and the American people put an end to it.

Some Democrats are trying to rewrite history and pretend that Republican demands for negotiations are unusual, but that, of course, is just false.

Back in 2017, the Senate Democratic leader said the debt ceiling gave Democrats ``leverage'' in broader talks. As the New York Times explained back in 2017, then-Speaker Pelosi and the Democratic leader ``began formulating a plan to apply pressure, jettisoning the idea of backing a straightforward or `clean' debt limit measure . . . as a way to gain muscle in coming negotiations.'' That was the Pelosi-Schumer playbook for the debt limit: Demand negotiations.

Here is how the Democratic leader put it himself at the time. He said the debt ceiling ``gives another ample opportunity for bipartisanship, not for one party jamming its choices down the throats of the other.''

So I trust Democrats will be consistent with their past positions and the White House will waste no time beginning the customary bipartisan negotiations with the new Republican majority over in the House. The President of the United States does not get to walk away from the table.

The same President who happily signed off on trillions of dollars of needless party-line spending needs to begin good-faith negotiations on spending reform with Speaker McCarthy and do it today.

Mr. President, now on a related matter, there are lots of egregious ways that President Biden has wasted taxpayer money trying to buy up his low approval ratings, but the Democrats' proposal for student loan socialism is really one of the worst.

It is like the Democrats paid scientists in a lab to invent the most unfair government handout that could possibly, possibly exist. Democrats want to take the graduate school loans of doctors and lawyers and white-collar professionals making six figures and put their debt on the shoulders of Americans who didn't take out loans at all.

To the middle-class families who saved, sacrificed, and skipped vacations to pay for more of their kids' college, the Democrats want to turn you into suckers.

To the plumbers, firefighters, checkout clerks, and auto mechanics who made career choices to avoid taking on debt, the Democrats think dentists and the lawyers deserve extra handouts at your expense.

To the patriots who volunteered to serve our Nation in uniform as part of a plan to attend college debt-free, the Democrats want to change the rules behind your back.

President Biden and his party wake up every day looking for ways to transfer money and power away from the working class toward elites. But even for today's Democratic Party, this one is especially galling.

This is ``reverse Robin Hood'' policy: Democrats stealing from the working class to reward people who are comparatively better off. It just isn't fair on a personal level. It is also staggeringly reckless fiscal policy.

Remember, this whole undertaking was first set up as a short-term emergency measure at the very start of COVID--those earliest weeks when the entire economy seemed to be in a free fall. That was almost 3 years ago.

Shortly afterward, thanks to the bipartisan CARES Act that came out of the Republican-led Senate, the economy rebounded. Household savings actually went up. Many white-collar professionals spent months, if not years, working remotely from the comfort of their living rooms. Any legitimate reason for pausing loan payments evaporated just a few months after it began, but the Democrats have kept it going, year after year. Now they want to magically wave away people's debts altogether. Needless to say, this would be enormously expensive for the country.

If you add up the cost of three things: the nearly 3-year-long ``pause'' thus far, the mass jubilee the Biden administration is trying to defend in court, and the Democrats' proposal to turn the income- driven payment program into permanent socialism, the total cost of these three measures is projected to hit $1 trillion--$1 trillion.

This estimate is from our colleague Senator Cassidy, who is shining a bright spotlight on these terrible policies as the incoming ranking member of the HELP Committee.

On top of all the reckless inflationary spending the Democrats have pushed through, they want to redistribute up to another trillion dollars away from working-class Americans toward college-educated people who already earn higher salaries on average.

The Democrats want to squeeze even more money out of cashiers, welders, first responders, janitors, and cosmetologists and send it to a group of people who already outearn those people on an average basis--more reckless spending, more debt inflation, and no fairness for American families.

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.