Floor Statements

I object.

Madam President, in reserving the right to object, the U.S. Post Office faces drastic financial losses. Last year, they lost $6.5 billion. They are on target this year to lose $9.5 billion. We should return these nominees and give President Trump the opportunity to review the Postal Service, to review the postal picks, to review the current situation, and allow him to determine who is best fit to fix the Postal Service.

For that reason, I will be objecting to each of these nominees.

I object.

Madam President, reserving the right to object, no one disputes that drones flying in airspace could be a danger, that drones flying over the Super Bowl could be a danger, that drones flying over military bases could be a danger. That is why it is illegal. It is currently illegal, and the Federal Government has the capacity to investigate and stop drones that are in airspace over our military bases, following our ships. We have that capacity.

What is disputed and what the Biden administration is currently telling us is they don't see a problem. So if there is a problem, let the Biden administration be forthcoming. Let us know the extent of the problem. Let us know who is flying the drones. Let us know what is going on. Instead, this bill says: Well, we don't know. The Biden administration doesn't know, but why don't we give the power to the local officials to go after drones.

But I rise today to object to this unanimous consent request because, at this time, public trust in government is at historic lows. This body must not rush to grant sweeping surveillance powers without proper consideration and debate by the committees of jurisdiction, which is what I pledge to do beginning in January when we will be in charge of the committees.

Yet what is going on is exactly what this legislation seeks to do now: to expand Federal authority to intercept communications and disrupt drone activity, powers that raise serious concerns for Americans' privacy, civil liberties, and Fourth Amendment protections against unwarranted search and seizure.

We are being told this legislation is urgent; that it is needed to address an imminent drone threat. Yet the government itself admits no such threats exist.

So either there is a threat or there isn't a threat, but the Biden administration keeps saying: Well, it is all normal stuff, and it is just planes.

So it is or it isn't. Why don't we try to get to the truth of the matter of what actually exists and what the threat is before we propose legislation.

Federal Agencies, including the Department of Homeland Security and the FBI, have stated clearly that there is no current national security risk, no public safety concern, and no unlawful drone activity requiring intervention. So there either is a problem or there

isn't a problem. If there is a problem, let's discuss how to do it while protecting the communications of innocent Americans whose communications could be caught up in this legislation.

Until the Federal assessment changes--the assessment that it isn't a problem changes to that it is a problem, and these are the malefactors, these are the people that are orchestrating this--let's get that from the Biden administration. Tell us what the problem is. Tell us the extent of the problem. Instead, the Biden administration is saying there is not a problem.

So, Madam President, this pattern is all too familiar. History has shown us, time and time again, how fear and manufactured urgency are used as pretexts to expand government power at the expense of freedom.

After 9/11, Congress passed the Patriot Act. In the name of security, Americans were promised that these surveillance powers were necessary; they would only be directed toward foreigners; they would only be directed toward terrorists--until we discovered that these powers were being used on Americans. Americans were promised that these powers were necessary and temporary. Instead, they were abused, misused, and weaponized. Innocent Americans had their privacy violated, their data collected, and their rights trampled.

The lesson here is clear: When Congress legislates in haste, without careful scrutiny, without debate, and without accountability, it is the American people who suffer the consequences. Today, we are facing a similar moment.

The bill before us would grant law enforcement significant authority to intercept private electronic communications without consent.

For example, the bill will allow the government to conduct dragnet surveillance of the phones of innocent Americans traveling through U.S. airports, as long as the government claims they are doing it to neutralize a drone. So in order to look at the information that might be coming to a drone, it may be that you capture all the information of everybody surrounding an airport or everybody who lives near an airport.

Once you have all that data, what are the assurances that the government isn't looking at your data in addition to the data that may be related to flying the drone?

This is not just about security. It is about unchecked government overreach. It is about capitalizing on fear and media-driven hysteria to jam through sweeping legislation that could violate the civil liberties of American people.

Congress has a constitutional responsibility to serve as a check on the Executive power, not as a rubberstamp for it.

The Federal Government already has the power to deal with drones. The Federal Government already has the power to stop any drones that are in airspace around airports. The Federal Government already has the power to protect its air bases. So if there is a significant problem here, the Biden administration needs to come forward and let us know: Who are these drones? Who is operating these drones?

What is the Federal Government doing to protect either airports or bases from this? Instead, we are told by the Biden administration there is no threat to our national security.

Let's first insist on truth and transparency from the Biden administration before offering up legislation that is feel-good, pat somebody on the back, and say: Oh, we have done something about drones. We are strong on drones.

Congress has a constitutional responsibility to serve as a check on Executive power, not as a rubberstamp. We owe it to the American people to demand compelling justification, meaningful safeguards, and full transparency before granting new surveillance authorities.

We are a Nation of laws, not fear, not panic, and not manufactured urgency. We do not trade away our freedoms, our privacy, and our constitutional protections for vague promises of security.

I will object to this bill today, but I am open to talking with the authors of this bill about how we could have enhanced ability to interrupt drone activity, but done while protecting all Americans' constitutional right to privacy.

I object.

Mr. President, we are currently considering the Defense authorization bill. We have considered this most years annually for many decades. Typically, though, we will have a robust debate, we will have amendments offered, and we will try to have participation by Senators from all over the

United States geographically represented in the debate.

That won't happen this year. There will be no debate. It will be very controlled and circumscribed, and there won't be amendments. This is disappointing to me because I think there are some very important issues that need to be brought up, and one of those is emergency powers.

Our Founding Fathers understood that it was very important to divide these powers between the executive branch, the legislative branch, or the judiciary. Over the past hundred years though, we have had a gradual evolution of these powers toward the executive branch. And we now have a very, very strong executive branch that, in many ways, is able to control the narrative and ultimately to control the country.

In the 1970s, Frank Church wrote these words, which I think represent a problem that existed then and even more so now. He wrote:

Hundreds of statutes clothe the President with virtually

unchecked powers with which he can affect the lives of

American citizens in a host of all-encompassing ways. This

vast range of powers, taken together, confers enough

authority on the President to rule the country without

reference to normal constitutional processes.

Under the authority delegated by these statutes, the

President may: seize property; organize and control the means

of production; seize commodities; institute martial law;

seize and control all transportation and communication;

regulate the operation of private enterprises; restrict

travel; and, in a plethora of particular ways, control the

lives of all American citizens.

These words were written by Senator Frank Church in a 1977 law review article, but they are still true to this day and even more worrisome.

The Church Committee's investigatory work famously convinced many in Congress that the time had come to reassert congressional checks and balances on the Executive that had become all too powerful.

It is ironic that the powers-that-be still conspire to this day to hide the work of the Church Committee. I have been trying for over a year to read the classified version of the Church Committee. All right. This is not some sort of new document; this is a document from 1976. But the powers-that-be have prevented me for over a year from reading the classified report. You got to wonder--does that mean they have something to hide or does that mean they love power so much that they don't want to share it?

The National Emergencies Act of 1976 was supposed to be a reform of Presidential emergencies. It was supposed to limit the power of Presidents. In that act, they actually gave a legislative veto. If an emergency were invoked by a President and the majority of Congress voted it, they would be legislatively able to reject that emergency.

The Court ultimately ruled, though, that that would have to be signed by the President, effectively meaning that if a President declares an emergency, a majority of us say ``We don't think that should be declared,'' and he vetoes it, it now takes two-thirds of us to overcome a Presidential emergency. This is a very high bar and makes it nearly impossible to stop a Presidential emergency.

Essentially, the National Emergency's Act enforcement mechanism became toothless when the Court got rid of the legislative veto. Subsequently, Congress must muster this veto-proof or two-thirds vote. To thwart a rogue President, it currently takes a two-thirds majority vote in both Houses to overturn a veto. This is a very high bar. Consequently, we live in a country Frank Church would barely recognize.

In some ways, the United States of America is a monarchy in disguise. The United States maintains the veneer of a constitutional republic but often operates as an elected monarchy in which the President exercises awesome and unchecked power by decree and in perpetuity.

If you look at the emergencies on the books, some of them have been on the books for 50 years. If you look at the potential emergencies that could be declared, you would be shocked.

This dangerous imbalance of the constitutional separation of powers is not simply aggrandizement by the executive branch; it is something that Congress has actually been complicit with. Congress has essentially made itself a feckless branch of the Federal Government by granting the President so many emergency powers and refusing to regularly vote on the termination of national emergencies, as required by current law. The emergencies go on and on.

Our concern should not merely be to restore Congress to its proper role in our Madisonian system of government; rather, our true focus should be to restore the Founders' vision of a government of limited and diffuse powers that is devoted to securing our inalienable rights. A government that disperses power among separate, distinct, and competing branches is a government that is less likely to violate our liberties.

We owe the people nothing less than the restoration of the constitutional principles of separation of powers and of checks and balances among the branches of the Federal Government.

I have offered a significant step towards revivifying the Founders' vision. I have introduced a bill called the REPUBLIC Act, which is an amendment to this bill but likely will not be considered because the powers-that-be don't want debate or amendments. But this amendment, were it considered, would restore Congress's role in governance by requiring that declarations of national emergency expire after 30 days. The President would still have the power to declare an emergency, but it would expire after 30 days unless approved affirmatively by Congress. What this does is essentially switches the role we currently have. Currently, it takes two-thirds of Congress to stop an emergency; now it would take 50 percent of Congress to affirm an emergency.

We did this in my State for our Governor. It is a good reform and goes a long way towards restoring the faith that people have in the separation of powers and the limitation of powers.

This simple reform allows the President to respond to genuine crises but ensures that the Executive cannot rule by unchecked perpetual emergency.

My bill includes other reforms that are designed to safeguard the country from emergency rule. My bill would repeal the provisions of the Communications Act of 1934--also known as the internet kill switch-- that allow the President, if he declares an emergency, to take over all communications.

Now, this emergency fortunately has never been declared, but simply having this on the book for so long is a threat that someday a President might occur who says: I am going to take over all communications, and I will shut them down. That is a power so ominous, no President of either party should ever have that power, and this bill would remove that power.

Today, though, with the power still in place, with the stroke of a pen, the President could use this power to monitor emails, restrict access to the internet, control computer systems, television, radio broadcast, and cellphones. Longstanding use of this power would effectively eviscerate the First Amendment.

If the REPUBLIC Act, my amendment today, were accepted, the President would no longer be able to utilize this power--at least would have limited power during a limited time, and a majority of Congress would have to affirm the continued use of this emergency.

Emergency powers were not the type of rule our Founders anticipated for our country. The other name for emergency rule is ``martial law.'' It is something all of us should object to and say that this should only happen in an exceptional case, be very limited, and have the ability of Congress to overturn.

If anyone doubts that emergency powers can be abused, just look to Canada. Gene Healy of the Cato Institute wrote:

America's neighbor to the north offers a cautionary tale

about the risks that broad emergency powers could be turned

inward against political dissent. In early 2022, Canadian

Prime Minister Justin Trudeau faced a mass protest against

COVID-19 restrictions, in which Canadian truckers obstructed

key border crossings and effectively shut down the capital

city with their rigs. Instead of simply clearing out the

protesters and punishing them via conventional legal means,

Trudeau invoked emergency powers broad enough to permit the

financial ``un-personing'' of anyone participating in the

protests.

He went to their bank accounts and took their money. When people raised

money voluntarily through crowd financing to help these truckers, he stole that money as well through martial rule. Without any rule of law, he took the money. No transaction with the protesters; he took their money. People were locked up under martial law.

Canada's 1988 Emergencies Act gave the Trudeau government

staggering powers to subject individual protesters to ``de-

banking'' without due process.

This is the danger of Presidential power--of excessive Presidential power. It isn't about any individual President; it is about all Presidents of either party because men and women will succumb to the desire for power. It is inherent in all. That is why we must have checks and balances.

Deputy Prime Minister and Finance Minister Chrystia Freeland put it this way in describing Trudeau's martial law in a February 2022 warning to the truckers:

As of today, a bank or other financial service provider

will be able to immediately freeze or suspend an account

without a court order.

The Government of Canada--essentially Trudeau--could freeze a bank account without a court order, without due process of law.

We are today serving notice: If your truck is being used in

these protests, your corporate accounts will be frozen. The

insurance on your vehicle will be suspended. Send your . . .

trailers home.

While native-born Americans may think that emergency powers are to be used to target others, I would venture to guess that the Canadian truckers protesting COVID-era mandates didn't expect that their government would treat them as foreign adversaries and freeze their accounts.

If it can happen in Canada, it can happen in the United States.

Expansive emergency powers do not end there. Today in the United States--a country that owes its very existence to tax revolt--the President can unilaterally impose and raise taxes on foreign imports. Now, some of that power, unfortunately, Congress gave to the President, but it was a mistake, and we should take the power back.

The rallying cry of our American Revolution--``no taxation without representation''--was not just a protest of the past, it is a core principle of American governance. Yet Congress, in its feckless desire to abscond on all responsibilities, said to the President: You can have it; we don't want it. You can raise taxes anytime you want without a vote of Congress.

Terrible idea. Our Constitution was designed to prevent any branch from overstepping its bounds.

Unchecked Executive actions--enacting tariffs on our citizens without a vote of Congress threatens our economy, raises prices on everyday goods, and erodes the system of checks and balances that our Founders so carefully crafted.

The REPUBLIC Act, the reform of emergency powers, the limitation of emergency powers, would correct this. We end up saying to the President: You can't declare an emergency to raise a tax.

Our Founding Fathers were very specific. Not only did taxes have to originate in Congress, they had to originate in the House before coming to the Senate because the House was seen as being closer to the people. Yet here we are talking about vast taxes being levied by one person through emergency powers. We should not let this stand.

Finally, the REPUBLIC Act, my reform, requires the President to disclose Presidential emergency action documents to the Congress. What are these? These are Executive orders that are prepared in anticipation of a wide range of emergency scenarios. These documents are kept secret, and Congress has historically had little oversight or insight into how many exist, what they say, and what are the powers that the President anticipates taking in an emergency.

Although the documents have never been made public, there have reportedly been emergency orders designed to unilaterally suspend habeas corpus, impose censorship, and seize property without warrants. We don't know for certain because they will not reveal these Executive orders, but we do know that they exist. Congress desperately needs to see these documents to conduct oversight of these secret plans that can threaten basic constitutional rights.

We do not have to accept as inevitable or as an inevitability the degeneration of a republic into rule by an all-powerful Executive. We do not have to live in a monarchy disguised as a republic.

We would do well to remember Montesquieu, who wrote that ``when the executive and legislative powers are combined into one branch, no liberty will remain.''

It is time to reclaim the authority of Congress and protect the liberties of people by paring back the vast emergency powers delegated to the President.

I hope the powers-that-be will change their mind and see fit to allow a vote on this amendment. There is significant bipartisan support. We passed it out of committee I believe 13 to 1. The Democrat chairman is a cosponsor of this bill. I think this is a bill that really should bring both sides together.

There used to be pride in our country, pride in the legislative branch to hold firm against usurpation of power by the other branches. This was a pride that went beyond party label and brought legislators together. In recent years, it has been disappointing.

Some people are for reform of Presidential emergencies when their party is not in power, and some people are for it until they are against it when their guy or their woman is in power.

I can tell you this: I have been for this emergency reform under the previous President. I am for this emergency reform under the next President because this is about power. It is about the dispersion of power. It is about decentralizing power. It is about the constitutional separation of powers. It is about checks and balances.

It is important enough that it should be considered. I think it would pass were it considered. But the American people need to know that important debates like this will only occur if the powers-that-be allow the vote to occur. So I would beseech the powers-to-be to allow a vote on this amendment and for my colleagues to vote yes.

I yield the floor.

I ask for the yeas and nays.

Madam President, I move to proceed to Calendar No. 566, S.J. Res. 117.

Mr. President, here we go again with the ``Ukraine First, America Last'' policy. Earlier this week, President Biden delivered a report to Congress informing us that he now intends to forgive or cancel $4.65 billion worth of U.S. loans to Ukraine.

Now, you might ask yourself: When were these loans issued?

Oh, about a month or two ago.

Well, when does Ukraine have to pay back these loans that we are forgiving?

Well, they made an agreement to start paying them back in 40 years. President Biden is forgiving loans that aren't due for 40 years.

This makes a mockery of the entire charade that this is a loan. They should have just said it was a gift.

A forgivable loan? It is not even a loan. It is not due for 40 years, and we are forgiving it now.

These funds were provided by the American taxpayer in the form of loans with the expectation that they would be repaid. We are not going to wait any period of time. They weren't even going to be repaid for 40 years, and we are forgiving them. That is a sick joke, and a sick joke on every American who has got a loan at the bank for their house, who has to pay their mortgage every month, and yet Ukraine is never going to have to pay their loans.

It seems like this is ``Ukraine First, America Last.'' We have got a $36 trillion debt in our country. We are paying a trillion dollars in interest. We can barely keep up. We are not keeping up with all of the things we promised Americans: Medicare, Medicaid, Social Security, food stamps--all of the things that have been promised. We are $2 trillion short.

So what do we do? We are just shipping billions to Ukraine. About $200 billion has been sent so far.

Such blatant disregard of American citizens is unacceptable. The joint resolution of disapproval that I put forward, today, provides the Senate an opportunity to prevent the President from doing this--from canceling this debt, from making a mockery of the idea that it was ever a loan.

We will not stand idly by as the President elevates the interests of a foreign country above our own.

And let me remind President Biden that, due to his failed policies over the last 4 years, Americans across this country are struggling with their loans. Today, some 37 million Americans live under the poverty line, including 9 million children. Fifty percent of Americans say they are living paycheck to paycheck, and yet the concern is for the loans of a foreign country that will never be repaid, that were not even going to begin to be repaid for 40 years.

This is an insult to every American who has a mortgage that they have to pay. Eight out of 10 Americans who earn less than $50,000 a year are unable to cover their future bills until their next paycheck arrives. Americans are living paycheck to paycheck, and we are shipping this money to a foreign country that will never be asked to repay it.

In 40 years, if they were somehow gloriously successful again--40 years from now--they are still not going to be asked to pay this. Americans are working two, sometimes three jobs just to make ends meet, and while millions of Americans work day in and day out to pay off their own personal loans, President Biden wants to forgive Ukraine's economic loans without any debate.

This was rushed forward. I was fortunate enough to get 16 colleagues to allow this vote to happen. But they didn't want this vote to happen. They gave us a short window, and, boom, it is going to be gone. They don't want a discussion about how obviously insulting this is to every American to do this.

The American people have been more than generous when it comes to supporting Ukraine. In the nearly 3 years of this war, Congress has appropriated nearly $200 billion in aid. For 3 years, the American people have been sold the lie that if we only send tens of billions more of their dollars to Ukraine, Ukraine will be able to push Russians out, secure the 2014 borders, and achieve victory in the battlefield.

It won't happen. The President of Ukraine, the generals of Ukraine, the people who have followed this situation all agree: The war is at a stalemate.

Trillions of dollars more will only lead to more carnage in the battlefield, and it won't achieve victory. These assertions were always farcical, as they failed to contend with basic battlefield realities.

Despite massive assistance provided by the United States and others, Ukraine is no better off now than they were 3 years ago. It is arguable that their ability to negotiate, as they have lost more land to Russia, is actually that their leverage for negotiation with Russia is less than it was when the war began.

In fact, Ukraine is now in a worse negotiating position because they have likely incurred hundreds of thousands of casualties and now face a critical manpower shortage. That shortage is becoming impossible to ignore, as Russia consolidates its gains and continues to make progress across eastern Ukraine.

Americans may be surprised to discover that their aid has not, in fact, shifted the war in Ukraine's favor. They may also be surprised to learn that much of the money Congress sends to Ukraine isn't actually being used to support Ukraine's military.

While American families struggle to put food on the table and keep the lights on, U.S. taxpayers are paying for the salaries of thousands of Ukrainian bureaucrats, their pensions. We are paying for their teachers.

Do our teachers make enough money? Probably not. But I am guessing, if you ask an American teacher, should we be paying the salaries of Ukrainian teachers, you might get a debate.

We are paying their healthcare workers' salaries, their first responders. We are buying seeds and fertilizer for their farmers. And we are bankrolling Ukrainian small businesses.

A report conducted earlier this year found that 43 percent of small businesses in America were unable to pay their rent in full and on time in the month of April. Yet we are sending billions of dollars to Ukraine to subsidize their small businesses.

A report by CBS News discovered that U.S. taxpayers are helping a Ukrainian knitwear company find new international customers overseas. Oh boy, we are helping Ukrainian businesses expand overseas.

We don't even need independent journalists to highlight such absurdities. USAID bragged on their own website about how they provided funding for six Ukrainian fashion brands to participate in Paris Fashion Week. I am sure they will be glad that they won't be paying back any loans.

This is what we are asking the American people to pay for--to send Ukrainian fashion brands to a Paris fashion show? I have never had one constituent in Kentucky come up to me and say: Please, send more money. We are fine in Appalachia. We are fine in rural Kentucky.

I don't think there is anybody in Asheville, NC, today that is pleading for more good money to be sent to Ukraine.

It is bad enough, but it is also impossible to ensure that this amount of money actually gets to the misguided priorities that have been set. The Government Accountability Office admits that there are a number of ways in which Federal Agencies could improve oversight and aid to Ukraine.

It has been 3 years. Why hasn't the government approved the oversight? Well, because it is impossible to send so much aid to a country as quickly as we have and expect that there won't be waste, fraud, and abuse.

I forced the Senate to vote on a special inspector general for Ukraine, and the ``Ukraine First uniparty''--both sides of the aisle-- voted it down. Even with a special inspector general, it is nearly impossible to ensure oversight on this vast amount of money in such a short period of time.

Adding insult to injury, Ukraine is consistently ranked as one of the most corrupt countries in the world. Transparency International ranked Ukraine 104th out of 180 countries in 2023, with respect to honesty and integrity, and also found that 23 percent of the public service users paid a bribe in the previous 12 months in Ukraine.

And yet we give billions of dollars, and we have no special inspector general.

And now in spite of all of this, President Biden wants to forgive over $4.6 billion in loans that the U.S. taxpayer provided under the auspices that they would be repaid.

This lunacy is just another example of how the Washington establishment is completely out of touch with Americans. You ask Americans about this, they have got to pay their loans; they don't understand forgiving Ukrainian loans.

The election earlier this month made it eminently clear that the American people are sick and tired of the status quo. They are sick and tired of business as usual in Washington, and they want their elected officials to deliver change.

It is fitting that in the final months of this disastrous Presidency, Joe Biden caps off his foreign policy for the middle class by asking to cancel over 4.6 billion in aid, in loans, to Ukraine--once again prioritizing the interest of a foreign country at the expense of our own.

I urge my colleagues to vote in support of this resolution to disapprove of the President forgiving this billions of dollars' worth of loans to Ukraine and put the American people first.

Sometimes in Washington, memories get clouded and foggy, even after a week. The Senator from North Carolina will remember that he objected to aid in North Carolina. He objected to small business loans. He objected to them simply because they were paid for.

I offered unanimous consent, and it was blocked by the Senator from North Carolina. I offered unanimous consent to immediately infuse more loans through the Small Business Administration for North Carolina that was hit hard by the flooding. The Senator from North Carolina blocked his own bill because I proposed that it be paid for by taking green energy boondoggle loans.

So don't be tricked by any flimflammery or any sort of making up of history. The Senator from North Carolina last week blocked his own aid passage that I agreed to let go unanimously as long as it was paid for by taking some extra money from another part of the budget. Don't be fooled.

It is very important that the truth be told about what went on with aid to North Carolina. I agreed to pass it unanimously as long as it was paid for.

I won't be interrupted, Mr. President. I have the floor.

I have the floor.

I will not yield the floor.

Mr. President--

--what has been said here is untrue.

Mr. President, it is important that the truth be told and that people aren't allowed to stand and lie without challenge.

The bill last week to give immediate aid to North Carolina was objected to by the Senator from North Carolina. I agreed to let it go immediately by unanimous consent as long as it was paid for. The Senator from North Carolina objected.

These are the facts. This is the Senate record. The people of North Carolina can read this in the Senate record. He objected to his own bill because he was annoyed that I had the audacity to say we have a $2 trillion debt, and we should pay for things.

We had $4 trillion worth of Green Energy New Deal boondoggle spending subsidies to big green energy company, big corporations. He objected to taking money from green energy boondoggle budgets and spending it in his own State. He objected to his own bill.

So what I would say is: The truth is important. The facts are important. We have had a very important debate here, and there is a general philosophical debate about whether or not we should spend money in Ukraine or in our country.

We have had flooding problems in Kentucky. I haven't met one person who suffered from this who didn't say it was more important to spend the money in Kentucky than Ukraine. It is a debate that is worth having. The decisions we make over here should be about prioritizing spending. Where do we spend it? Do we borrow it? Where do we spend the money? This is what it is about.

And the fact that the Senator from North Carolina wants to rewrite history and say he didn't object to his own bill when he did is a lie; just simply untrue. Just simply untrue.

Thank you. I would regain the rest of my time. How much time do I have left?

You said 6\1/2\ minutes?

This side of the debate which has--

--30 minutes will relinquish the remaining time on our side.

There is no more time left on our side.

There is none.

But that is not what happened. I relinquished the time.

Mr. President, in reserving the right to object, I lived for 4 months in Asheville and worked at the VA hospital, so I have fond feelings for western North Carolina. I have an uncle who lives just up the road from Asheville. I know about the devastation. One of my best friends from my wedding lives in Asheville as well.

But the thing is, the reason why we won't do this in a responsible way is because the Senate voted to send all of your money to Ukraine. The Senate voted to send $200 billion to Ukraine.

I have been all over the mountains of Appalachia. When I ask people, ``Would you rather your Senators take care of you here in Asheville or here in Pikeville or here in Appalachia or would you rather them send your money to Ukraine?''

I don't get anybody wanting to send a penny to Ukraine.

Look, you can have all kinds of sympathy in the world for Ukraine and hostility toward Russia being the aggressor nation, but we don't have the money. We are $2 trillion in the hole. Interest this year is going to be $1 trillion.

As far as passing this, I am willing to let it pass today. He is going to object to passing his own bill today simply because it gets paid for. How crazy is that? He will not even let the other side object to it. He is going to object to his own bill. I am willing to let the bill pass, but take some of the fluff and boondoggle subsidies from the Green New Deal and put it into here. The money is sitting here. We put it into here for disasters. We help Asheville today.

``Oh, no. It is not the time or the place to pay for things.''

The question before the Senate is whether, on behalf of the American people, we should borrow and spend an additional $810 million for small business loans.

Do you know who gets small business loans right now? Ukraine. We are funding--``60 Minutes'' did a special on this--a purse and dress store in Ukraine. We fund the Ukrainian Government's pensions. Look, half of our State governments are short in pensions. Our U.S. Government is short in pensions, and we are funding them in Ukraine.

So some of the same people who want this immediately--now, now, now, now; we don't want to pay for it--are happy to pay for crap all over Ukraine, including government salaries and pensions and small business loans to Ukraine.

Do you know what? The job of legislators is to make decisions to set priorities. We don't have an infinite amount of money, but we do have enough money to take care of them in Asheville and in Virginia. Simply pay for it, but realize the people assembled will object to their own bill today. I am offering their bill. All we have got to do is take some money that is laying around in a pot of money--Green New Deal boondoggle money going to big corporations--and put it in for a disaster. We can do that today. If you still want to subsidize green energy, come back and do that next year. Pay for it now.

We don't have to borrow hundreds of millions of dollars to bail this program out, but Congress has a habit of refusing to do what you and I would do if faced with a new and large expense: Congress refuses to cut elsewhere even when saying yes to every new spending proposal and program that has led to record high inflation. Americans have been forced to learn the hard way that they are the ones who have to pay for Congress's addiction to spending.

So I offer a fiscally responsible path to pay for the bill and spare Americans from increasing the hidden tax of inflation.

My amendment would rescind $810 million from the Department of Energy's boondoggle green new energy deals. It is a $4.75 billion program that has had repeated bankruptcies in it previously. It is absurd to force taxpayers to subsidize rich companies--with vast resources of their own--to gamble on energy projects that the private sector finds too risky. And, actually, it should be about priorities: the people in Asheville or the Green New Deal. No. This is the best time to put them in contrast, not some other time when people are not hurting, when people can't see the contrast.

Everybody in Asheville should wake up today and find out their Senators are going to reject the disaster money because it is paid for. That is it. They are going to reject taking it from the Green New Deal boondoggle and sending it to Appalachia. It can go today. It can go in 10 minutes. I approve of the money. Just take it from somewhere where it is being wasted. Ideally, I would take it from Ukraine, but that is not available right now, but a lot of the money went to Ukraine also.

A 2015 report from the Government Accountability Office found that when five companies defaulted on these Green New Deal loans, the government--the taxpayers--lost $800 million. It is not a good program to begin with, but it is an easy place to go looking for something that is more important, like the people of Asheville in North Carolina.

This money would have nearly covered today's disaster loan funding, but it was needlessly squandered previously, but there is still money in the fund today. I offered this identical amendment to pay for another bill a month ago, and every Republican voted for it. So I don't understand why Republicans would rise today and object to a pay-for they all voted for last month. If the Small Business Administration must have this additional money, the least we can do is respect the taxpayers and act as good stewards for their money.

Therefore, I ask the Senator to modify his request to include my amendment, which is at the desk, as this would allow the bill to pass if my amendment is attached to it; that the amendment be considered and agreed to; that the bill, as further amended, be agreed to; and that the motion to reconsider be considered made and laid upon the table.

I don't think we have--we have an objection. You know, I have asked for a unanimous consent. He either objects, or he doesn't object.

I don't have the floor.

I have made a motion.

You have got to respond to the motion.

I have made a motion to pass the bill.

Mr. President, reserving the right to object.

The insinuation is made that there is a better time--we will vote on this at another time; maybe, you know, young man, it is just not the time. It is not the time nor the place.

Actually, it is the time or the place, and the only vote against the disaster bill today will be the Senator from North Carolina. He will, today, vote to kill the disaster aid. He says: Well, there aren't enough votes.

We won't know because he is objecting. He isn't allowing the Democrats to object because they always object to anything that is pay- for. But, by his objection, he is not allowing the system to play out. If the Democrats want to object, we will find out that they are opposed to pay-fors, and we will further the definition of who is for not for paying for stuff and who is. But to say that we, as Republicans, are never for paying for disaster relief is to say that we are equally--or the Republicans who are for this--are equally complicit in the accumulation of $35 trillion worth of debt.

So no matter how good the cause is--I don't care whether it is a fire or aid or a flood or rain or all the damage--it all should be paid for. It is the responsible thing to do, no matter how terrible the disaster is.

And it is not like I am saying: Well, let's just wait 2 years until we can earn enough money to pay for Asheville. We have the money. We are a rich country. It is sitting here. I just simply ask: Take it from something here--that is a wasteful corporate bailout to green energy companies--and put it over here.

But the fact is that the Senator from North Carolina is going to kill his own bill today. He is going to vote not to allow it to be heard. And we have no idea whether there are enough votes or not. He can say there aren't enough votes, but he is now the vote that stops the spending from getting easy passage.

What we are going through is a procedure of easy passage. This is allowing things not to go to committee, not to be deliberated but to easily pass. And I am in favor of doing that because of the emergency, because of the tragedy. We allow this to easily pass by simply taking some money from a pile of money over here. If he weren't to object and the Democrats don't stand up, it passes like this.

But then it is not on me; it is on them. They decide that they don't want to pay for anything. And disasters should never be paid for? Well, that is how we have this disaster of a $35 trillion debt, because nobody pays for anything. Nobody cares. It is never the right time.

Well, now is the right time. So if you want easy passage, you have to hear what the problems we face are.

So I object.

Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent to modify the order of September 24 so that following my allotted time, Senator Whitehouse be permitted to speak for up to 5 minutes, followed by myself for an additional 5 minutes, prior to being recognized to

make the motion to proceed to S. Con. Res. 41.

Mr. President, this year the United States will spend over $6 trillion while only bringing in $4 trillion in revenue. That is a profound gap; $2 trillion will be borrowed this year.

To add insult to injury, Congress spends like drunken sailors without even bothering to pass a budget. There is no budget. The Democrats have passed no budget in the Senate, and the Republicans have passed no budget in the House.

We are going to spend $6 trillion without anybody even thinking about where the money comes from out of budget to afford a $6 trillion government.

In fact, over the past 20 years, Congress has passed a budget less than half of the time. So today, I will attempt to do what both parties have failed to do; and that is, pass a budget.

They didn't ask me to do this. In fact, they would probably prefer I not introduce a budget because it embarrasses the status quo of both parties.

I am only allowed to introduce this budget because they didn't do their job, and once upon a time, someone wrote privileged rules into the Senate that say: If the parties fail to produce a budget, anyone can. So I have leapt at the chance because I think the American people would like to see us do something responsible, like balancing our budget.

The penny plan that I offer today will balance the budget in 5 years. The Federal Government passed an ignominious landmark this year. Our national debt now stands at $35 trillion and grows with each passing second.

To put that in perspective, each taxpayer's share of the debt is about $270,000. The government now spends more on interest to service our Federal debt than it spends on our national defense.

While we spend about 850 billion on the military, we will spend about 890 billion on interest.

We should heed this fact as a warning. As historian Niall Ferguson points out that ``any great power that spends more on debt service than on defense will not stay great for . . . long.''

We must act now if America is to once again be a rising nation.

Well, we are currently on a path toward decline. Right now, we spend nearly $2 trillion more per year than we bring in in revenue. This level of spending imposes a tax on every American. This tax is called inflation. When we borrow $2 trillion, somebody has got to buy it. Someone buys the debt.

When the Federal Reserve buys the debt, they create currency, create new money, out of thin air, which, when it begins to circulate, causes your prices to rise. This is the tax of inflation.

And Americans have felt the pain of inflation tax significantly over the last 4 years. Every day for the last 4 years, American people's purchasing power has decreased for even the most basic items. Since this administration took office, prices have risen nearly 22 percent, and feeding and providing for a family has become more expensive. For example, the price of bacon and eggs increased by nearly 30 percent. If you would like some toast with your breakfast, bread will cost you 11 percent more since the Biden-Harris administration took office. The price of butter is up by 30 percent. When Biden and Harris took office, a gallon of milk cost on average $3.25; today, the price has increased by 25 percent and costs just under $4. Gas prices have risen 22 percent.

And what kind of answer do you get from the administration? What type of answer do you get from the other side of the aisle? They say: Greed is causing prices to rise; that the grocery stores are greedy and are raising the prices; and we must have government come in and fix the prices.

Even on CNN, the mouthpiece for the Democrat party, economists appear to say: My goodness, have they not heard of Venezuela? Have they not seen what price controls do in Venezuela? They lead to shortages and famine. What they did to the Soviet Union, what they did to Communist China. And yet that is what they are proposing here because they misinterpret why the prices are going up.

It isn't that things are more precious; it is that your dollar is losing its value. Your dollar loses the value through inflation because we run a $2 trillion debt.

It is a Ponzi scheme. It is a bait and switch. The politicians come to you and say: Here, we will give you this for free. It is free. It won't cost you anything. We will give you free college. We will give you $25,000 for a house. It is free. There is no cost.

But it is a lie--the lie, the trick, the ruse. It is a lie on the American people because it is paid for through borrowing. And when we borrow, the Federal Reserve will buy the debt, and you will get inflation. So you are going to pay for it through inflation. There is no free lunch. You can't get anything for free. Something for nothing is a charade played on the American people by politicians who just want to gain power over your lives.

Americans will pay dearly for Congress's insatiable appetite for more and more spending. The high level of spending that is currently crushing the American family is just the beginning. If we continue down this unsustainable path, American families will be forced to deal with even higher inflation, confiscatory tax rates, rising interest rates, and a weak economy. It will be harder to find a job and provide for a family because the deals made in the Halls of Congress will always stick the taxpayer with the bill.

Right now, the average American family--their paycheck buys a thousand dollars less of stuff. You have lost a thousand dollars. If you make the same income you made 4 years ago, you are a thousand dollars poorer because of inflation.

Inflation came from these politicians offering you something for nothing. We have to wake up. As spending under the Biden-Harris administration weakened, every American family's purchasing power is also less. At $35 trillion, the Federal debt is nearly twice what it was 10 years ago. That is larger than the entire $25 trillion economy of America--the next five largest economies combined. So you take America's GDP, and you add the next five countries, it still doesn't equal our debt. Our debt is bigger than our economy, plus five more countries.

Whose fault is it? Well, really, frankly, both parties. During the previous administration--during the Trump administration--$8 trillion in debt was added. During the Biden administration--Biden-Harris administration--about $8 trillion is going to be added. It is going to be almost exactly the same when you compare 4 years of a Republican administration to 4 years of a Democratic administration.

So really, there is blame that goes around. But there are alternatives. I am offering an end to the inflation, an end to the debt, and a gradual balance to the budget over 5 years.

How much is $35 trillion? How do you even get your mind around it? Well, to put it in more tangible terms, $35 trillion is enough to fill 34 NFL stadiums with hundred dollar bills. So you take hundred dollar bills, and you just keep piling them into an NFL stadium until you reach the brim; and then if you fill 34 of those NFL stadiums, that would be 35 trillion.

Government spending is so out of control that even if President Biden emptied the bank account of every individual in the United States, it would only cover half of the debt.

Think about that: $35 trillion debt and then all of the savings of all of America--if you took all of their savings, which I am not proposing--but if you took it all, you only pay for half of the debt.

This is an unsustainable course, and many smart people have been saying this. We are headed for a calamity if we don't do something. Yet both parties just keep plowing on. They call what we are going forward with a continuing resolution. I will have none of it.

It is continuing the status quo. It is continuing to borrow $2 trillion a year. We have had a couple of periods in the last year where we borrowed a trillion dollars in a 3-month period. This is alarming, and it is out of control.

America is in a historic state of financial disarray. Right after the end of World War II--the world's most expensive war--our cumulative Federal debt was 18 percent larger than the GDP, the entire economy.

Now, in a period of relative peace, the debt is 22 percent larger. There are no excuses for this. Our debt now is

worse than it has been at any time as a percentage of GDP.

Are we certain that if a crisis erupts--if there were a war that we were participating in, another pandemic, God forbid, or some other catastrophe--that we will be able to borrow enough to meet the challenge? Without a drastic change of course, fiscal ruin is only a matter of time.

America's leading financial minds have already sounded the alarm. The Chairman of the Federal Reserve said that Federal spending is on an unsustainable path, and it is past time for Congress to correct it.

The CEO of JPMorganChase--America's largest bank--warned that the Federal Reserve must reduce its deficits before lenders finally say enough is enough and stop loaning the government money.

Now, you ask: How will this occur? Will it occur suddenly or gradually? Will we gradually lose our dominance? Will we gradually no longer be the reserve currency of the world or will we show up on a Friday to sell the debt and no one buys it?

The Federal Reserve will always buy it. The people say: The Federal Reserve will buy it. If the Federal Reserve buys all the debt, interest rates will go through the roof and so will inflation.

Even the head of the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office cautioned that our financial situation is unprecedented and suggested the United States is now on an alarmingly weak fiscal footing.

As interest payments on the national debt crowd out the rest of the government's budget, tax increases, inflation, and eventual default on the debt are what lie ahead for the American economy.

Unfortunately, a debt crisis will not just stop with our economy. A threat to our financial security is also a threat to our national security.

We must remember that the surest path to peace is leaving no doubt in your adversary's mind about your ability to respond to aggression. With increasingly dubious financial health and a large share of resources devoted to interest payments, the United States is sending the opposite message, a message of weakness. Yet Congress has repeatedly chosen to ignore the deficit, raise the debt ceiling, fund foreign wars we can't afford--just put it on our tab.

That is what will happen today. They will vote on my budget to balance within 5 years, but there won't be enough votes. They will go merrily along with no budget, but they will also go merrily along at a spending clip that will borrow $2 trillion. And it will be all of the Democrats and about half of the Republicans who will go along with continuing to spend at this clip.

Since entering the Senate, I have introduced several proposals to balance the budget. In 2017, I introduced a budget that would have simply frozen spending for 5 years. And it balanced because, as the economy grew and revenue grew, you didn't even have to cut spending. All you had to do was agree not to spend more than you spent last year. Most American people would tolerate that. But not in Washington, no. Republicans and Democrats said: No way will we ever freeze spending.

What does a business do when they are short of money? They freeze spending. They downsize. They do whatever it takes to stay afloat so they can make their payments. But not in Washington.

So they didn't pass my budget in 2017 to freeze spending. They kept doing the same: borrow and spend, borrow and spend.

In 2018, I offered another plan to balance the budget. But by this time, a spending freeze no longer balanced it in 5 years because the spending had continued to increase. So I offered a one penny plan, cut 1 percent across the board. You can probably just cut waste and malfeasance and cut 1 percent. Cut 1 percent across the board, and it would still balance. That was the penny plan in 2018. But as things have gotten worse, as we got to the craziness of the COVID hysteria, where, once again, Republicans and Democrats shut the economy down and then said: Hey, you don't have to suffer. You don't have to work. We will just send you a check.

This was one of the worst decisions that had been made in recent history: no work, free checks. It was all borrowed. So the spending grew at an alarming rate through the COVID years, through the Trump administration.

And then we finally got beyond the urgency of it--people were no longer dying in significant numbers--and the Biden administration said that we are going to pave every road in the land, and we are going to borrow more money.

So we borrowed $8 trillion under Trump. We borrowed another $8 trillion under Biden. And now you can't balance the budget with freezing spending over 5 years. You can't balance the budget with cutting one penny; you actually have to cut six pennies. You have to do a 6-percent cut over 5 years to balance the budget.

Even the Biden-Harris administration's own Treasury has admitted that the current path is unsustainable. The math is clear. And I urge my colleagues, do not get in an argument with math. You will lose.

It is plainly wrong to stick our children and our grandchildren with the bill for our reckless spending. Thankfully, America is still home to the world's most dynamic economy and resilient individuals.

With revenue still expected to rise in the next 10 years, we are not beyond hope. The six penny plan that I am producing and introducing today will create conditions for growth and avert economic ruin. Right now, our interest payments eat away at our funds that are available for defense spending, and the budget leaves no room for emergencies.

Our current trajectory weakens our national security and drains productivity from the economy. History will remember those who had the courage to make the hard choices now and who chose to leave their children with less of the burden.

For just six pennies on the dollar, we can reverse this dismal trajectory. In just 5 years, we can restore trust in the U.S. dollar, the U.S. economy, and walk the U.S. Government off the fiscal cliff.

Vote yes on this plan. Vote yes on restoring fiscal sanity. Vote yes on securing a future for our country.

Mr. President, it has been proposed that there is no place to cut, that all of this spending is being used in such a noble fashion. I would propose that there are a couple of areas we might all agree on.

We spend about $1 million studying Japanese quail to see if they are more sexually promiscuous on cocaine. Hmm. It seems like we could have just polled the audience on that one. It seems pretty clear. But we can't even cut things like that--$1 million studying Japanese quail on cocaine to see if they are more sexually promiscuous.

We spend $2 million studying whether, when you go to Luby's and you go to the cafeteria and someone sneezes in front of you on the food, you are more or less likely to take that food. Could we not cut that?

We spend about three-quarters of a million dollars studying selfies. If you take a selfie of yourself smiling and look at it later in the day, does it make you happy?

One of my favorites comes from 40 or 50 years ago, but the organization still exists and still keeps getting more money. This was from a conservative Democrat. This was a long time ago when they existed. William Proxmire used to do the Golden Fleece Award. One of his favorites was, they wanted to determine which made you more aggressive--tequila or gin--so they got a group of fish, and they fed a group of fish gin, and then they fed the other group of fish tequila. I scratch my head and say: Well, gosh, everybody knows, right? It has to be tequila.

So, I mean, the thing is, is there anyplace to cut? Sure, there is. Most of these things come from the National Science Foundation. I have been harping on them for years. Do you know what they did last year? Every Democrat and half of my Republicans, who are our fellow travelers, doubled the amount of money they give to the National Science Foundation. So when they say, ``Oh, well, that ludicrous thing? I would cut that,'' well, they are not going to cut it if you give them twice as much money.

So there are lots of ways. There is lots of fat. There are improper payments to the tune of billions and billions of dollars. They write a check to the wrong person. They write a check to dead people. I came to the floor and tried to get unanimous consent to quit sending checks to dead people. When we had the pandemic and they sent all the free checks, a lot of them went to dead people, for goodness' sake.

Do we ever cut any of the spending? Is there ever any remote slowdown in the spending? Every year, it goes up because they care about people, and they want to give you free stuff, but it is not free. There is going to be a $2 trillion deficit, and you are going to pay for it through inflation.

There is no mystery to inflation. The Federal Reserve buys our debt. When they do and the new money enters the circulation, it dilutes the value of the currency. Instead, what do you hear from the other side? Oh, the grocery store owners are greedy. We must put price controls on.

Well, they should remember the story from the Soviet bloc countries. A man goes into the store, and he says: Are you the store that doesn't have any butter?

The guy behind the counter says: No. We are the store that doesn't have any toilet paper.

That was an old joke of the Soviet bloc countries. That is what you get with price controls. That is what you get when you misunderstand what causes inflation. That is what you get when you want to pattern yourself after the phenomenon of disaster which is Venezuela.

So what I am asking is, we should spend what comes in. It is what every American family does. It is what most States do. It is what most cities do and what most counties do--spend what comes in--even over half of the European Union. We think of them as socialist countries, and some border on it. But, guess what, they spend what comes in. Half of the European Union balances their annual budget.

They are destroying this country by giving you free stuff. The stuff they are giving you is not free. There is no free lunch. You can't have free college. Somebody has to pay for it. There is no money up here. They are not giving you somebody else's money. They are not even taxing the rich. They are just borrowing it. It is all borrowed. They borrow to send it to Ukraine. They borrow to give it to you for free school. They will give you free cars. They will give you free houses. None of it is free. It is what causes inflation.

When you go to the grocery store, think of these people masquerading as Santa Claus. They are the ones who have caused the price of your steak to double, the price of milk to go up, the price of gas to go up. It is not the greedy grocery store owner; it is the shrinking dollar and the politicians masquerading as Santa Claus who are causing this economic havoc and ruin.

I recommend a ``yes'' vote on the only budget that will be presented this year because both parties have abdicated their roles. My budget balances it in 5 years. It is what we should do for the strength of America.

Mr. President, I move to proceed to Calendar No. 502, S. Con. Res. 41.

Mr. President, I ask for the yeas and nays.

Mr. President, reserving the right to object, the Foreign Agents Registration Act was enacted in 1938 and requires individuals working on behalf of foreign governments to disclose their relationships and activities. Violations of the law are subject to criminal and civil penalties. Generally, a person who willfully violates these regulations may face up to 5 years in prison and a $10,000 fine.

Now, many thought leaders have written about the overcriminalization of regulations, the fact that we add criminal penalties to people with paper violations. Ed Meese has written about this extensively. Justice Neil Gorsuch has written a new book, ``Over Ruled,'' talking about so many regulation crimes, paperwork crimes, having criminal penalties.

A 2016 inspector general audit reported that, historically, the Department of Justice's practice has been to pursue voluntary compliance rather than the prosecution of agents who failed to register under the act. More recently, though, the Department of Justice has signaled that it is shifting from treating these violations as an administrative obligation to one that is increasingly an enforcement priority.

In 2022, DOJ reported that it had charged a record number of criminal cases for this regulatory breach. In other words, what was once considered a mistake that could be rectified simply by encouraging voluntary compliance is now a weapon that can be used to silence dissent by threatening individuals with prison time.

Just 2 weeks ago, four members of the African People's Socialist Party, two of whom are 82 and 78 years old, were convicted of conspiracy to violate a law similar to FARA by acting as agents of Russia. The Department of Justice press release states that the defendants ``face a maximum penalty of five years in prison.''

And what had they done to potentially lose their liberty? The specific acts they were accused of included attending an international conference in Russia, publishing a Petition to the United Nations on the Crime of Genocide Against the African People in the United States of America, accepting financial support for a speaking tour to discuss reparations, and speaking in support of the Russian Government.

The African People's Socialist Party was founded in 1972. For decades, the party has criticized the United States and maintained the government owes trillions of dollars in reparations for the crime of genocide against Black Americans.

While I don't agree with any of their policy statements or any of the things they are for, I really don't wish to put them in prison.

Highlighting the disturbing nature of DOJ's prosecution of this minuscule fringe group, Patrick Eddington, of the Cato Institute, writes that the party ``and its related political movement can only be described as fringe, bit players on the American political scene whose previous statements and stances already mirrored the Kremlin's line'' for decades.

Eddington continues: ``It makes one wonder why the FBI targeted such marginal groups with little to no impact on the broader political process, and whether an unstated goal of'' these DOJ raids and imprisoning people ``was to put the entire domestic political advocacy community on notice that a domestic group with foreign connections is considered fair game for FBI scrutiny even if legitimate First Amendment activity is involved.''

According to an article in The Nation magazine, ``Since its initial enactment into law, the DOJ has invoked FARA,'' the statute at hand, ``to stigmatize and criminalize political advocacy that is contrary to the interests of the US government. Early illustrative examples include the 1951 indictment of W.E.B. Du Bois, who was prosecuted as an agent of the Soviet Union for having promoted and circulated the Stockholm Appeal, calling for a ban on nuclear weapons.''

You can see how this gathers up political speech. You don't have to agree with the speech. But if the speech happens to represent the viewpoint of another country, the speech may be stifled and you may be arrested for it.

I understand the Senate will be asked to pass unanimously two bills today that would allow the DOJ to retroactively require this registration or this paperwork and another that would, effectively, write an enemies list into law.

Both give the DOJ prosecutors greater ability to selectively threaten disfavored groups by prosecuting activities that are otherwise protected by the First Amendment. Yet these bills have not been marked up by the committee of jurisdiction, the Senate Foreign Relations Committee. At the very least, the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, of which I am a member, should consider these bills before being rushed into passage.

Therefore, I object.

As we have been discussing, the Veterans' Affairs is out of money. Now, this is not something that was unpredictable. I predicted this a year or two ago when we expanded benefits.

I think it is the priority and it is the responsibility of America to take care of its veterans, but we still have to think about what we are doing. We can't say: Well, every veteran should have a Corvette and $200,000 a year because we don't have the money for that.

So we try to link benefits to something we can afford and something within reason related to their service.

When the PACT Act was passed, though, there were those of us saying: Hmm, if you allow something like high blood pressure to be associated with military service, you may have a problem. I am 61 years old. Sixty percent of people over 60 have hypertension. You think you might get too many people applying for things if you allow really common conditions like hypertension to be connected to these benefits.

What we were talking about were burn pits. And burn pits you can convince me--and they have--that inhaling things from burn pits might damage your lungs, and you might have respiratory diseases or lung cancers. But saying hypertension is related to this allows Pandora's box, and now we have millions of people flooding through the doors to get benefits, and they are out of money.

This is typical of Washington. This year, we will spend $6 trillion, and we will bring in 4. No American family can do that, no State does that, no city does that, no county does that.

Washington's fiscal recklessness is putting the American dream out of reach for millions of Americans.

Historically high rates of inflation from this debt have made every American poorer. As families across the country struggle to put food on the table, Washington seems content to spend money without regard to the consequences.

But sometimes the consequences are too shameful to ignore. Congressional spending and mismanagement at the Department of Veterans' Affairs are the latest examples, with both resulting in a nearly $3 billion shortfall, threatening the benefits of millions of veterans.

Our veterans shouldn't have to pay the cost for the Federal Government's incompetence. This is why I ask the Senate to adopt my amendment today.

My amendment would just simply offset the new money they need for the Veterans' Affairs that they didn't calculate well and didn't appropriate by taking it from somewhere else in the budget. To me, it seems eminently reasonable. Rather than borrow more money and put ourselves further into

debt--we have a $35 trillion debt--why don't we find something in the budget maybe that is not an emergency, take the money from there, and pay for the veterans benefits? My amendment would ensure the veterans receive their benefits without adding to the national debt.

My amendment is simple. It pays for the veterans benefits by rescinding $2.9 billion in Department of Energy loan guarantees. The American taxpayer should not be asked to subsidize companies with vast resources, often multimillion-dollar owners, that are for this green energy that we are going to subsidize.

Well, which is more important, subsidizing millionaire owners of green energy or paying for veterans' benefits? Why not take one to pay for the other?

Unsurprisingly, these loans, these green loans that are out there, these gambles that have been taken by the Department of Energy, have come at an exorbitant cost. A 2015 GAO study revealed the extent of the Department of Energy's loan program failures. The report lists that five companies defaulted on similar Department of Energy loans, including Solyndra, Fisker, Abound Solar, Beacon Power, and Vehicle Production Group, costing the taxpayers $807 million.

So these loans are not without risks. We cut these loans, we cut our risk, and we shift the money over to veterans. I think it is a pretty easy thing. It could be done in a few minutes.

But if you will watch, if you will watch the vote, my guess is that nobody from the other side of the aisle will vote to transfer the money over to the veterans. They will just say: Borrow it, put it on my tab. Well, that is why you go to the grocery store and a steak costs $20 at the grocery store; this is why gasoline costs are up; this is why all your prices are up; this is why home prices are doubling, because they are diminishing the value of the dollar with all the borrowing.

So today they will add another $3 billion. They don't care. They think money grows on trees. Here it is, $3 billion, take it. We care about the veterans, but we don't give a damn about the debt. You can care about both. I am for shifting money. Let's don't increase the debt today. Let's take $3 billion that would go to millionaires who own these companies and shift it over to the veterans. Pretty simple. How could anybody vote against it?

But watch the vote. Everyone on the other side of the aisle is going to vote to borrow the money rather than pay for it by shifting the money. The VA shortfall was very foreseeable just as the failure of the DOE loans. The VA has been overwhelmed, receiving more than 2.4 million claims in 2023--the most ever, 39 percent higher.

I warned them, when you pass this, when you allow hypertension to be associated with disability, you are opening Pandora's box, because everybody has got hypertension.

You may recall, I stood here on the Senate floor and warned that the PACT Act would put veterans benefits at risk. Why? Because there truly are veterans that were damaged by burn pits. They inhaled the smoke, and they have chronic asthma, emphysema or cancer.

But those deserving people are having the money taken by people who have high blood pressure. Everybody's got high blood pressure. So if you put them in there, what you are doing is stealing the benefits from the truly--the people who have lung damage from breathing in these fumes.

It is always about, Oh, we care about everybody. Everybody should get money. It is free. No problem. We will just borrow it. Instead of saying: Why don't we try to conserve the resources for those who actually were injured by the burn pits? Instead, it is like: Oh, you got high blood pressure? Sign up. Come on down. We will get you some money.

The PACT Act created a presumption of service connection for hypertension. The CDC estimates 116 million Americans have hypertension: 50 percent of men, 44 percent of women. Over 60 percent of all people have hypertension. If you include hypertension as a trigger for benefits, it broadens the category of recipients so much that it has contributed to the depletion of the funds.

So instead of asking why we are short $3 billion--no one is asking why we are short. They are just, Put it on my tab. Put it on the Nation's tab. Borrow more money.

Why don't we find out what the problem is? Why are we short on money? Because they decided to include hypertension as a trigger for disability.

Because of Congress's inability to make difficult decisions, precious resources that ought to go to veterans exposed to toxic substances are at risk of going up in smoke. They are at risk of being diverted to people who weren't injured by the burn pits.

Congress must take its oversight responsibility seriously, hold the VA accountable for fiscal mismanagement and corruption. In fiscal year 2023, the VA issued 3 billion in improper payments. So we have Veterans Affairs $3 billion short of money, but we found out they gave $3 billion to the wrong people. They made a mistake of issuing checks to the wrong people for $3 billion. Why wouldn't we ask the VA: Hey, we know you are short of money, but guess what. You have got to quit sending the money to the wrong people.

Why wouldn't the people who are sending the money to the wrong people be punished, reassigned? Maybe they shouldn't work for the VA if they aren't competent enough to get the money to the people who are the right people.

Over the past 3 years, it is estimated the VA has had $10 billion in improper payments. In May 2024, the VA's inspector general reported that the Department improperly awarded over $10 million in incentives to its own senior executives. So it has been determined by the inspector general that the VA paid their own executives $10 million in bonuses that shouldn't have been given to the executives, while the executives were overseeing $3 billion that went to the wrong people.

There are resources that could have been devoted--these resources that were wasted and squandered could have been devoted to veterans, to their benefits. Instead, the VA shamefully squandered them.

It is high time that the Members of this body face the incontrovertible fact that Congress's reckless spending has awful consequences. We have seen it in the form of inflation. This is what is happening to Americans. It is what is making all of us poor. And now we see that overspending threatens the benefits that were promised to veterans.

We must use these failures as a warning. We must get serious about our spending and oversight responsibilities. I encourage my colleagues to vote for my amendment as a first step to ensuring our veterans receive the care they deserve.

Amendment No. 3289

Mr. President, I call up my amendment No. 3289 and ask that it be reported by number.

Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that there be 2 minutes of debate, equally divided, prior to each vote.

Mr. President, this amendment is simply about paying for veterans' benefits. It doesn't stop veterans' benefits. It actually pays for them by moving money from wasteful programs over to Veterans Affairs to pay for their benefits.

It does this so we don't add to the debt. I mean, our veterans fought for our country, our national security. Our biggest threat to our national security now is our debt. I think our veterans would want us to do this in a responsible manner.

This amendment makes the veterans' benefits paid for by taking money elsewhere in the budget. It is a responsible way to go.

Vote on Amendment No. 3289

I ask for the yeas and nays.

Mr. President, if good intentions created good laws, there would be no need for congressional debate. I have no doubt that the authors of the bill on the floor genuinely want to protect children, but the bill they have written promises to be Pandora's box of unintended consequences.

The Kids Online Safety Act, known as KOSA, would impose an unprecedented duty of care on internet platforms to mitigate certain harms associated with mental health, such as anxiety, depression, and eating disorders.

While proponents of the bill claim that the bill is not designed to regulate content, imposing a duty of care on the internet platforms associated with mental health can only lead to one outcome: the stifling of First Amendment-protected speech.

Today's children live in a world far different from the one I grew up in, and I am the first in line to tell kids: Go outside and touch grass. With the internet, though, today's children do have some advantages. They have the world at their fingertips, and that can often be a good thing. Just about any question can be answered through the internet by finding a scholarly article or a how-to video with a simple search. Doctors' and therapists' offices close at night and on weekends, but support groups are available 24 hours a day online, 7 days a week, for people who share similar concerns or who have had the same health problems. People can connect, share information, and help

each other more easily than ever before. That is the beauty of technological progress.

But the world can also be an ugly place. Like any other tool, the internet can be misused, and parents must be vigilant. Parents must be vigilant in protecting their kids online. It is perhaps understandable that those who sit in this body might seek a government solution to protect children from any harms that may result from spending too much time on the internet, but before we impose a drastic, first-of-its- kind, legal duty on online platforms, we should ensure that the positive aspects of the internet are preserved. That means we have to ensure that the First Amendment rights are protected and that these platforms are provided with clear rules so they can comply with the law. Unfortunately, this bill fails to do that in almost every respect.

As currently written, this bill is far too vague, and many of its provisions are completely undefined. The bill creates a Board that is empowered to regulate content that might affect mental health. Yet KOSA, the bill, does not explicitly define the term ``mental health disorder.'' Instead, it references the fifth edition of the ``Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders'' or ``the most current successor edition.'' So we are going to regulate items on the internet that might cause anxiety or might affect mental health based on a definition that evolves over time in a book, that we are never going to vote on again. It is going to be decided by whoever writes the DSM sixth, seventh, and eighth versions for mental health.

Written this way, not only would someone looking at the law not know what the definition is, but even more concerning, this definition could change without any input from Congress. When the diagnostic manual changes, the law will then be changed according to what the new definition of ``mental health'' is. The scope of one of the most expansive pieces of Federal tech legislation could drastically change overnight. Congress may not even realize it until after it has already happened. If the diagnostic manual on mental health changes the definition, the law changes, and Congress will have had no input on what the definition of ``mental health'' is.

None of my colleagues would be comfortable with a definition that effectively delegates--or should be comfortable with a definition that effectively delegates Congress's legislative authority to an unaccountable third party.

Second, the bill would impose an unprecedented duty of care on internet platforms to mitigate certain harms. It sounds good. They want to mitigate harms such as anxiety, depression, and eating disorders. But the legislation doesn't define what it considers harmful to minors, and everyone will have a different belief as to what causes harm, much less how online platforms should go about protecting minors from that harm.

The sponsors of the bill will tell you this is not out of a desire to regulate content, but the requirement that platforms mitigate undefined harms to mental health belies the bill's effect to regulate online content. How can you mitigate the effects of things that might cause anxiety, because they all involve content? This bill will be setting up a Board to regulate the content of the internet.

Imposing a duty of care on online platforms to mitigate harms associated with mental health can only lead to one outcome: the stifling of constitutionally protected speech.

For example, if online services use endless scrolling to promote Shakespeare's works or algebra problems or the history of the Roman Empire, would any lawmaker consider that to be harmful? I doubt it, and that is because the website design does not do the harm.

So then you say: We are going to address the design of the website and not the content, but the only way you can mitigate the so-called harm is by mitigating the content. It is content, not design, that this bill will regulate.

Last year, Harvard Medical School's magazine published a story called ``Climate Anxiety; The existential threat posed by climate change is deeply troubling to many young people.'' So this bill is going to regulate anxiety. What makes your kid anxious? Well, climate change makes a lot of kids anxious. Are we going to regulate the discussion of climate change for minors?

This article mentioned that among a cohort of more than 10,000 people between the ages of 16 and 25, 60 percent of them are described as being very worried about the climate, and nearly half said they have anxiety affecting their daily functioning because they are worried about the climate. Are we going to protect them by censoring and removing content about climate change?

The world's most famous climate activist, Greta Thunberg, famously suffers from climate anxiety. Should platforms have stopped her from seeing things about climate warming or cooling or whatever the conjecture is this year? Should they remove that because it makes Greta Thunberg anxious? She has admitted that, as a teenager, Greta wouldn't eat. She didn't eat for nearly a year. She lost weight. Some say her growth was stunted. Should we remove climate change discussion from teenagers because it creates anxiety? This bill has the potential to do that.

Under this bill, Greta Thunberg would have been considered a minor, and she could have been deprived from engaging in the online debates that made her famous but also made her anxious.

Anxiety and eating disorders are two of the undefined harms that this bill expects internet platforms to prevent and mitigate. Are those sites going to allow discussion and debate about the climate? Are they even going to allow the discussion of a person's story about overcoming an eating disorder? That certainly could make people anxious.

What if you hear the story of someone with anorexia, and it makes you think that you are an anorexic? Instead of getting the moral that it was a bad idea to engage in this sort of psychological problem, it may cause you to be anxious because you now have to address the situation. Could that be regulated? Under this bill, it could.

What will happen is the fear of liability, the fear of lawsuits, the fear of what will happen under the penalties of this bill are going to cause people to censor themselves. Online platforms will be forced or feel themselves forced or coerced to censor themselves.

There is a question: Will pictures of thin models be tolerated lest it result in an eating disorder for the people who see them? There is a discussion of this all over. Now everybody sees, you know, the obese models who are now hired for Sports Illustrated in order to not cause anxiety. Well, if that is done voluntarily by a magazine, by all means, but if we are going to coerce these online platforms and say ``you can't show people who are too thin,'' what is too thin? That is one of the results that could happen from this bill.

What about violent images of war? I think even adults are made anxious by that, but what of kids? Should we restrict images of war? There is a war going on in Gaza, and there are a lot of young people with opinions on that. Should we say, ``Well, young people shouldn't be allowed to see images of Gaza because it might make them anxious''?

Should we silence discussions about gun rights from either side--from the right or the left--because it might cause people anxiety? I would think that if you had been in a school where there was a school shooting, every time you would read about it, it would probably cause you anxiety. Should this be something that parents should try to address? or colleges? psychiatrists? By all means, parents should be involved in what their kids do online, but once the government sets it up, it depends on who is on the Board.

If the Democrats are in power--and they aren't really fond of the Second Amendment--if they are in power, my guess is the people they appoint to the Board will believe that gun ownership or gun use is wrong and causes anxiety and shouldn't be on children's sites. Conversely, when the Republicans are in charge--and we are more for allowing the Constitution to be applied through the Second Amendment to gun ownership--we probably would want to police people telling kids they are not allowed to. It works both ways. There is enough to hate this bill from the right and the left because the government shouldn't be making these blanket decisions.

What of online discussions of sexuality? Would pro-gay or anti-gay discussion cause anxiety in teenagers? I would think it might. This bill would allow the children's online safety to regulate things that cause anxiety. If a discussion of sexuality causes anxiety, it would be eligible under this bill for mitigation.

They didn't want to use ``censorship'' because it sounds bad, but that is what they want to do. They are appointing a committee called the children's online safety council, which will be able to censor things that cause anxiety: climate change, sexuality.

What about pro-life messaging? Should pro-life discussions cause anxiety in teenage mothers considering abortion? I am guessing that whole scenario from either the pro-life or the pro-abortion, you know, perspective is full of anxiety. But are we going to protect the teenage mom who might be offended that a pregnancy center is offering her a way out or is offering her a lifeline to have her child, because maybe somebody else thinks that she should have an abortion? Maybe she decides one way or another, but it is anxiety. That is probably full of more anxiety than most of us can imagine, but are we going to ban teenagers from seeing that?

This is insane. This bill is not well thought out. This bill is Pandora's box for censorship. In truth, this bill opens the door to nearly limitless content regulation as people can and will argue that most any piece of content could contribute to some form of mental health disorder.

In addition, financial concerns may cause online forums to eliminate all anxiety-inducing content for all users, regardless of age, if the expense for policing teenagers is prohibitive. So think about it. If we make this onerous process that adds a great deal of cost to the people developing the websites and they have to be liable and the State attorneys general can sue them, which this bill allows, maybe they say, ``Gosh, is it worth my while having any discussion of anxiety-producing content?'' which basically means things that are controversial. ``Maybe we should stay away from that.'' Maybe there will be a self-policing effect to this bill where people are going to say, ``I am not going to do it for my adult users because I don't want to be sued.''

The bill gives the unlimited right and cause of action for every State attorney general. Some of them are on the far left, some of them are on the far right, and you can imagine each of them has their own pet cause to want to sue to say: You should take this content down.

This bill does not merely regulate the internet; it threatens to stifle important and diverse discussions that are essential to a free society. And who is empowered to help make these decisions? The task is entrusted to a newly established speech police. This bill would create a kids' online safety council--aka speech police--to decide what constitutes harm to minors and what platforms would have to do to address the harm.

So the harms are broadly defined--mental health, anxiety, gambling, alcohol--but then the specifics of how it is going to be regulated are left to this new regulatory body. This is what many on the right have referred to as giving the power to bureaucrats.

There was a famous case called the Chevron case where they said the government should give deference to anything created by government. That is under review now, but this is the same problem. You are giving power to this new group that can censor that is virtually unlimited and ill-defined. These are the types of decisions that should be made by parents and families, not unelected bureaucrats serving as a censorship committee.

Those are not the only deficiencies of this bill. The bill seeks to protect minors from beer and gambling ads on certain online platforms-- not everywhere, just in some places. So we are going to put this duty on some platforms that your kid can't watch gambling ads and can't watch beer ads, but on other platforms, we won't. So there will be a differential to financial cost. Some places won't have to pay anything, and other places will have to pay an amount to figure out how to set up a website that doesn't let kids watch golf with gambling commercials.

The bill seeks to protect kids from beer and gambling ads on certain online platforms, such as Facebook or Hulu. But if those same minors turn their phone off and turn their TV on, they can jolly well watch as much PGA with the announcer saying: FanDuel says gamble on Bryson DeChambeau this week or Rory McIlroy.

This is a bizarre bill. We are going to make it illegal to talk about certain things online or to advertise online for gambling or beer, but your kid can simply turn the TV on and watch PGA, which is full of ads.

You can have a variety of opinions on whether we should have gambling ads on TV, but they are perfectly legal. So we are going to punish certain groups on the internet and still say your kid can just turn the TV on--that is bizarre. It is just completely meaningless and bizarre.

Your kid can watch the Super Bowl with about a thousand beer commercials on it. And I haven't really heard of a lot of people jumping up and down and saying we should ban the Super Bowl or we should say the Super Bowl can't have beer ads. But that is what this says.

So with all the stuff your kid can watch on TV, he is now going to be limited--not on the whole internet, because you can go to PGA.com, and it has got an exemption because it is primarily news on sports. So they carved out all of these exemptions, and then there are going to be certain areas you can't go to on the internet. So this is a punishment bill for certain aspects of the internet, not all of the internet, because there are a lot of exceptions, and not for TV.

This is a crazy notion. Yet you are going to see it pass overwhelmingly today because of the title: Kids Online Safety Act. Who could oppose that?

There are some tragic stories of people who have committed suicide or died because of things that happened on the internet. No one is here to discount that. But it has to be thoughtful, how we fix it.

Is removing all discussion of climate change, abortion, gambling ads, and beer ads going to do anything that would have addressed the life of any of the children who tragically lost their lives? I think not.

This is a hand-fisted bill that will not fix the problem but will be the first big bill to regulate speech online. It doesn't make any sense.

Should we prevent online platforms from showing kids the same content they can and do see on TV? Should sports viewership be effectively relegated to the preinternet age? You can watch golf on TV; you can't watch golf on a streaming service.

Even if it were possible to shield minors from every piece of content that might cause anxiety, depression, or eating disorders, it still is not enough to comply with KOSA--KOSA is the bill--because KOSA requires websites to treat differently individuals that the platform knows or should have known are minors. As you can realize, it is not easy to tell what someone's age is online.

The standard had been that if there were rules for minors, you had to know they were a minor, and you had to know you were broadcasting adult content to a minor. But it is kind of hard to enforce. So they are going to change the standard from ``you knew it was a minor'' to ``you should have known it was a minor.''

This means that the media platforms that earnestly try to comply with the law could be punished because the government thinks it ``should have known'' a user was a minor. This dumbing down of the standard will broaden the fear of this bill, broaden the impact of this bill, and lead to countless lawsuits.

This bill, then, does not just apply to minors. A ``should have known'' standard means that this bill is an internetwide regulation. Every website will have to figure out who and how old they are so they don't get in the way of the speech police or they don't get in the way of being sued by the attorney general from that State.

This is opening pandora's box. It is not going to be just sites that might have kids. It is every website, every streaming service that is now going to have to police themselves at a cost and live in fear of these people coming after them.

Adults and minors alike better get comfortable with providing a form of

ID every time they wish to visit a website. This knowledge standard destroys the notion of internet privacy and interactivity.

I raised several questions about this bill today, but no one--not even the sponsors of this bill--can answer these questions honestly because they don't know the answers. They are creating something that is going to create the regulation of the internet.

This is the problem of most of the legislation in Washington. They are not creating the censorship standards. They are creating an autonomous body that will regulate things that cause anxiety. They haven't told us what causes anxiety.

So I have given you examples. They are not in the bill because the bill doesn't tell what this new body is going to regulate. It says things that cause anxiety, things that might involve gambling or beer or eating disorders. It could be any of those things. But they are just going to tell you that we are going to let this body decide.

So the Senate is not going to decide what they are going to censor today. They are going to create a committee today that then will be the censorship committee, and, at a later date, we will decide what they want to censor. This is an insane encroachment on the First Amendment.

The inability to answer these questions is a result of several vague provisions in this bill, and once enacted into law, these questions will not be answered by elected representatives. They will be answered by unelected bureaucrats who are on this council, who will make the decision as to what will be censored.

There are good reasons to think that the courts will strike this bill down. They would have a host of reasons to do so. Vagueness pervades the bill. The most meaningful terms are undefined, making compliance with the bill nearly impossible. Even if we discount the many and obvious First Amendment violations inherent in this bill, the courts will likely find this bill void for vagueness. We can only hope so.

But we should not rely on the courts to save America from this poorly drafted bill. The Senate can reject this bill today and force the sponsors to at least provide greater clarity of the bill.

This bill, KOSA, is a Trojan horse. It purports to protect our children by claiming limitless ability to regulate speech and depriving them of the benefits of the internet, which include engaging with like- minded individuals, expressing themselves freely, as well as participating in debates among others with different opinions.

Government mandates and censorship will not protect children online. The internet may pose new problems, but there is an age-old solution to this issue. Free minds and parental guidance are the best means to protect our children online.

Opposition to this bill is bipartisan, from advocates on the right to the left. A pro-life organization, Students for Life Action, commented on this bill stating:

Once again, a piece of federal legislation with broad

powers and vague definitions threatens pro-life speech. . . .

those targeted by a weaponized federal government will always

include pro-life Americans, defending mothers and their

children--born and [unborn].

Students for Life Action concluded their statement by saying:

Already the pro-life generation faces discrimination,

deplatforming, and short and long term bans on social media

on the whims of others. Students for Life calls for a No vote

on [this bill] to prevent viewpoint discrimination from

becoming federal policy at the FTC.

So you could say: I don't really care. I am on the other side of that issue. I am a liberal, and I am pro-abortion. I don't care what pro- life students say.

Well, maybe you should care what the ACLU has to say about this. The ACLU brought more than 300 high school students to Capitol Hill to urge Congress to vote no on this bill because, to quote the ACLU, ``it would give the government the power to decide what content is dangerous to young people, enabling censorship and endangering access to important resources, like gender identity support, mental health materials, and reproductive healthcare.''

So here you have it. You have people on one side who are pro-life, like myself, who are worried that pro-life language will be stifled because it might cause anxiety on teenagers. But you have people on the other side, such as the ACLU, who would have--I believe when they refer to ``reproductive healthcare'' they are talking about abortion. They are worried that people in favor of abortion would be stifled as well.

This bill is opposed from the right and the left by anybody who is thoughtful about freedom of speech, about freedom of association, about freedom of discussion of ideas online.

In the next few minutes, I will ask unanimous consent to have an amendment to this bill. What you will notice is, while the supporters of this bill will come forward and say, ``It doesn't do that; it doesn't do that,'' one thing that is for certain is they won't allow amendments to this. So there will be no amendments to this bill.

The reason I am asking for an amendment from the floor is because they have already said privately they will not allow amendments.

One reason they won't allow amendments is, when I read the content of my amendment, people would be aghast that anybody could vote against it. And a vote against it would be deeply damaging for people running for office, Republican or Democrat.

The bill contains too many flaws as is. Even my one amendment wouldn't fix this bill, but at least put people on the record who don't believe that there should be restrictions for limiting religious or social speech.

The Senate should tackle the most glaring problem with this bill: that it will silence political, social, and religious speech.

My amendment seeks to address this concern, shared by many in the pro-life movement, as well as anyone who values the principles of free speech. My amendment merely states that no regulations that will be put forward by this magical and mysterious new censorship police that will be in the future--who we don't know who they are, and we don't know what they will be regulating--but if my amendment were to pass, they will not be allowed to regulate, and it will not apply to political, social, and religious speech. Another name for that would be constitutionally protected speech.

My amendment is intended to address the legitimate concern that the bill threatens free speech online. If the supporters of this legislation really want to leave content alone, they will allow the amendment. So the fact that they will deny me this amendment effectively tells Americans they don't want any dissent, and they acknowledge that this is a bill of censorship.

They don't want anything to mitigate or lessen the ability for the committee to censor you. So they will not allow this amendment. They won't even allow a vote on it because they are afraid to be on record. Really, the sponsors of the bill are here today, and they will rebut my words. I would like them to state publicly for all of us how they would vote on the amendment and why they are blocking the amendment.

If the supporters of this legislation really do want to leave content alone, they will welcome and vote for my amendment to protect political, social, and religious speech.

Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that if cloture is invoked on the motion to concur with further amendment in the House amendment to S. 2073, amendment No. 3022 be set aside, and it be in order for me to call up my amendment No. 3085. I further ask that, at a time to be determined by the majority leader in consultation with the Republican leader, there be 30 minutes of debate, equally divided between the proponents and opponents of my amendment; finally, that following the use or yielding back of that time, the Senate vote on my amendment No. 3085 with no intervening action or debate.

Mr. President, a few comments on the support the authors of the bill have come forward with.

The discussion is that State attorneys are not empowered when, in actuality, if you read the bill, the State attorneys are empowered. They are specifically referred to in the bill, and they are specifically empowered to sue if and when the Child Online Safety Committee promulgates rules to the FTC. This is specifically given to all these State attorneys, but also the rulemaking authority is given in the bill.

State attorneys general will also be allowed to sue even if no rule is made. This does empower State attorneys general across the Nation to sue over whether or not people are adequately suppressing or censoring speech based on anxiety. So that is a factual dispute we have with the authors.

One of the authors says: We can't trust the online people. We can't trust the people hosting these platforms.

Well, of course you can't. That is why you are supposed to be parents. That is why you are supposed to be involved with your church and community and you are supposed to try to police. Everything is imperfect, but you are supposed to try. It isn't the government.

So he says: We can't trust them.

But, you know what, I have also heard another comment: Trust us; we are from the government. Trust us; we are going to give this Child Online Safety Committee unlimited, unchecked power to regulate anything that causes your teenager to feel anxiety--from climate change to sexuality to who knows what to eating disorders to thin models to gambling on the PGA or any website, or beer commercials. This is Pandora's box, and we need to be aware of what it actually does allow to occur.

The rule of construction, the amendment that is being blocked, is typical. This is a bill to block free speech. So in order to pass a bill to block free speech, you block the free speech on the floor of the Senate and disallow amendments.

Who in America would think it would be wrong to limit this bill and to protect political, social, and religious speech? That is what they are actually saying. They won't allow amendment on it, but they are not for exempting political, social, or religious speech. What does that mean? It means they conclude that the bill will allow regulation of political, social, and religious speech.

Mark my words: We will revisit this issue. The court is either going to strike this thing down or we are going to come back here in a year or two, and people are going to go: Oh, my God. Did anybody read the bill before they passed it?

They have 70 cosponsors because nobody reads the bills. Nobody thinks of the implications of the bill. The bill gives virtually unlimited purview to the Children's Online Safety Committee to determine what causes anxiety.

Everything causes anxiety in teenagers. Every controversial subject could potentially cause anxiety. This is a huge mistake to give this authority to unelected bureaucrats--who we don't know who they are yet or who will appoint them--who will make the decisions over what causes anxiety.

So while these people--I grant them good motives. I grant them wanting to do the best for people. I grant that there are terrible and tragic cases where children have committed suicide or otherwise, but this isn't the answer. The answer isn't to abbreviate or take away the precious rights guaranteed under the First Amendment.

Madam President, I ask unanimous consent that the following interns in my office be granted floor privileges until August 9, 2024: Krrishh Kamal, Haley Leipzig, Daniel James, William DuVall, and Chad Schumacher.

Mr. President, the title of this amendment is the ``Fourth Amendment Is Not For Sale.''

The Fourth Amendment is no mere limitation of government power. The Fourth Amendment is fundamental to the concept of American liberty. The Fourth Amendment was a response to the British writs of assistance, which served as general warrants and permitted almost limitless searches of homes and ships of colonies. In 1761, an attorney named James Otis forcefully attacked the writs of assistance, and John Adams described that he was so inspired by Otis and the arguments that, then and there, the ``child of Independence'' was born.

The Fourth Amendment prohibits these kinds of general warrants. For a search to be reasonable, the Fourth Amendment dictates that the government must identify the individual, the items, and the location to be searched, but, today, all it takes to eviscerate the Fourth Amendment is some cash. The Electronic Communications Privacy Act already requires the government to seek a court order before compelling service providers to disclose contents and records, but this law does not restrict providers from voluntarily selling that information to nongovernmental third parties.

Due to this loophole in the law, American Government has effectively resurrected the idea of general warrants that the Founding Fathers were so appalled by. Thankfully, the House of Representatives voted to close that loophole. The House voted overwhelmingly this week for the Fourth Amendment Is Not For Sale Act.

I am so glad that the Fourth Amendment Is Not for Sale Act is popular; that Senator Schumer has been a cosponsor of this. I hope he will vote with us tonight.

But if he chooses not to vote with us tonight, the bill has passed the House. All he would need to do is bring it up in the next few weeks, and we could actually put it on the books.

Leaders of both parties from across the political spectrum have come together to say you shouldn't be able to buy your way around the Fourth Amendment. The Senate must not prove itself to be less concerned about the Fourth Amendment. I hope that we will take this up.

The data you transmit can reveal much about your life, such as where you work, where you drop off your child for daycare, whether you visit a gun range, who you associate with, your health data. Some of these applications sell that data to third-party brokers who then sell it to the government.

It may be concerning that some of your information is traded away, but we should insist that the Fourth Amendment should be respected so that individuals are not tracked and investigated without a warrant.

When law enforcement suspects you of a crime, the supreme law of the land is clear: Officers must demonstrate to a neutral judge in an open court that probable cause of a crime exists. In fact, if you want to find the people in our country who respect the Fourth Amendment, meet with any local police officer, any local sheriff. They know they don't come into your house. What has happened is the politicized aspects of our intel Agencies don't have the same respect for the Fourth Amendment that local law enforcement does.

According to Professor Matthew Tokson, a professor at the University of Utah, after the Supreme Court prohibited warrantless collection of cell phone location data in Carpenter v. United States, the government Agencies just began buying that information anyway. They were told not to by the Supreme Court. So they just went and purchased it and eviscerated a Supreme Court decision. This is something we should not tolerate.

A recent report by the inspector general of the Department of Homeland Security demonstrated that several DHS Agencies, including the Secret Service, bought Americans' phone location data without a court order. The IRS purchases location data without a court order. The FBI purchases your location data without an order--to just name a few. The NSA, the Defense Intelligence Agency--all have bought Americans' location data without a court order.

The embrace of this tactic proves that the feds will zealously exploit any loophole and test the limits of their authorities, to the detriment of our constitutionally protected liberties.

It is time to end the use of cash to purchase general warrants that the Fourth Amendment should have abolished over two centuries ago. Let's ensure that the Fourth Amendment is truly not for sale.

I ask for a ``yes'' vote.

Mr. President, I call up my amendment No. 1829 and ask that it be reported by number.

The idea that we don't have time is a specious one. The only reason we wouldn't have time is because the supporters of this bill delayed to the last hour. We have 5 years to renew this. We delayed it until we have 4 hours left, and then we are told we can't amend it because we don't have enough time. That is a false argument.

The House is still here. They are going to be voting tomorrow. We should pass the good amendments today, send them to the House tomorrow. This is an argument that has been forced upon us by the supporters of FISA who want no debate, and they want no restrictions. They want no warrants, and they want nothing to protect the Americans. They want to allow whatever goes, whatever happens to happen, and to hell with the American individual citizen and the Bill of Rights.

I say: Don't listen to the people who don't want amendments and don't want debate, and let's pass this amendment.

Vote on Amendment No. 1829

I ask for the yeas and nays.

I call up my amendment No. 1828.

Mr. President, Benjamin Franklin warned us that those who would trade liberty for security might wind up with neither, but somewhere along the way, we lost our courage. It takes courage to defend the Constitution. It takes courage to defend the Fourth Amendment. It takes courage to understand that, even when people are guilty of crimes, we let them have lawyers. We have open courts. We have an adversarial process.

People think: Well, gosh, a murderer gets a lawyer.

Yes, everybody in our system gets a lawyer, at least under the system of the Fourth Amendment. But as we became fearful of terrorists, we said: Well, we can't exist under the Constitution. We have to lower the standard of the Fourth Amendment.

So in 1978, we set up FISA, and it went after foreigners under a different standard. It was probable cause, not of a crime but probable cause that you are associated with a foreign government.

And for even myself, I am fine with that for foreigners. But for Americans, we still have the Constitution. So my amendment would simply say this: You can investigate all the foreigners you want under 702, under FISA, whatever you wish for foreigners, but for Americans you go to an article III court. They work.

We have prosecuted over 300 terrorists in article III courts, and we could do it.

My amendment says that FISA would only be utilized on foreigners, not Americans.

I ask for the yeas and nays.

Madam President, Congress is poised to do what no American family would ever do. Congress is poised to spend one-third more dollars

than they receive. This is essentially equivalent to a family at home making $45,000 but spending $60,000. No American family can do that. But that is what is happening here.

The spending that has been brought forward for our spending plans this year will lead to a $1.5 trillion deficit. So we bring in about $4.5 trillion, and we are going to spend $6 trillion. It is reckless. It leads to inflation. It is a direct vote to steal your paycheck. Because what happens, as we borrow more money, the Federal Reserve just prints up more money, and they will pay for all the debt that is created today. But that devalues your dollar.

So when you go to the grocery store and your prices have risen 20 percent, you can thank the people today that are all for you, and they are going to give you everything you want. Every program under the sun that grandmother and mother and apple pie wants, they are going to give you. But they are going to borrow the money.

This is a bait-and-switch. It is like: What do you want, America? Here, we will give it to you. It is free. You don't have to do anything.

But it is borrowed. When they give you stuff that they buy with borrowed money, they create inflation. This has been going on for a while. But it has accelerated. It is at an alarming pace now.

With the COVID lockdowns, we were borrowing $3 trillion. Then with the Biden years, we were borrowing over a trillion. We are still borrowing at $1.5 trillion. Why? Because their spending proposals take most of the spending off-limits.

Two-thirds of our spending is entitlements--Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid, food stamps. That is two-thirds of the spending. That equals all of the money you pay in taxes.

They have taken that off the limit. They have stuck their head in the sand, and said, ``We will not ever touch entitlements.''

Well, if you don't, you are not a serious person. If you don't, you are part of the problem.

Entitlements is two-thirds of the spending. Do I take joy in knowing that we have to reform these? No. But if you don't reform them, they are an anchor around the neck of America, and they are destroying us by spending money we don't have.

So two-thirds of the spending they are not even going to address. Now, of the remaining third of spending, that is what we vote on-- military spending and nonmilitary spending. They call this discretionary spending. Of that remaining third, they took half of that off the table.

So entitlements is two-thirds of the spending. That is going up at about 5 to 6 percent. The remaining third that we vote on is military and nonmilitary. They say: Well, we have to continue to expand the military. It is going to go up to 3 percent.

So what are we left with? We are left with one-half of one-third, one-sixth of government, about 16.6 percent. And we are going to say: Oh, we are going to really try to rein in spending there. And there what they do is, they almost slow it down to 1 or 2 percent.

This bill spends a third more than comes in. And what it is going to lead to--and has been leading to--is the erosion of your paycheck, the explosion of your gas prices, and the explosion of your grocery bills. Nothing is changing.

And you ask yourself: Where are Republicans? We have a Republican majority in the House, and, ostensibly, Republicans are for reducing the debt.

We have a filibuster-proof minority in the Senate and, ostensibly, Senate Republicans are for taking control of the debt. And yet what happens? Nothing happens. The spending goes on apace. The deficit grows by day.

So when did we get this spending bill? They have months and months to do this. When did we get it? At 2:32 a.m. on Thursday. And now it is: rush, rush, rush; we have got to shovel that money out the door, most of which we don't have or a third of which we don't have. We have to borrow it quickly, shovel it out the door because the government is going to shut down Friday at midnight.

Why is the government shutting down, and why are we up against a deadline? Because they didn't give us the thousand-page bill until 2:30 in the morning on Thursday.

Do you think we ought to read it? Do you think we ought to know what is in it?

Republican and Democrat leadership gave this to us at 2:32 in the morning--1,012-page bill, spends over a trillion dollars. No one will be able to thoroughly read and know what is in this until after it has passed. But it is rush, rush, rush; borrow more money; spend the money; and then try to deceive you into thinking that we gave you--we brought you manna from Heaven. We gave you all these gifts, these baubles. You are going to get a lot of free stuff. Every cause you like under the sun, you are going to get something for it in there. But they won't tell you the truth--that it is borrowed, it leads to inflation, and it is the biggest threat to our country.

We are not threatened by other countries invading our country. We are a strong and mighty country to which I do not believe we have an external threat. But we have a threat internally, and most of it resides in this body. Most of it resides in this body and in the House with profligate spenders who are not adequately concerned with spending what comes in. They are just jolly well borrowing it. They are jolly well borrowing it and sending it abroad.

You know, look, my sympathies are with Ukraine, but my first obligation to my oath of office is to my country. We can't just borrow money to send it to Ukraine.

You know, once the war is finally over, which one day it will be over, the whole country is destroyed with bombs on both sides, and someone is going to be asked to pay for it. That is going to be you. Uncle Sam, Uncle Sucker will be asked to pay for it.

This bill that we are looking at has 138 pages and over 1,400 earmarks, totaling $2 billion. What is an ``earmark''? It is pork. It is not acknowledged by the Constitution. The Constitution says we can tax and spend money for the general welfare. We are allowed to spend money up here, according to the Constitution, only if it is for everyone.

So a bike path in Rhode Island is for people who live in one city in Rhode Island. They should tax the people of Rhode Island. But you don't tax everybody for a bike path in Rhode Island. That is against the principle and the spirit of the Constitution.

Now, these 1,400 earmarks are on top of the 6,000 earmarks we had last week for $12 billion. So total between the two bills in the last 3 weeks, we have over 7,000 earmarks for $14 billion. That is a lot of pork.

Democratic and Republican leadership want this reckless spending bill to pass quickly to make sure that no one has time to read or scrutinize the bill. Likely, no one will ever have the time to review all of the $2 billion worth of earmarks before this is passed.

Now, earmarks and pork barrel spending is not brand new; it has been going on a long time. There was a conservative Democrat by the name of William Proxmire. This was a long time ago, in the old days, when there used to be conservative Democrats who cared about the debt.

And one of the programs that he talked about was--and he gave out a Golden Fleece Award to point out waste--but he said it was one of his favorites. He said the government, in their infinite wisdom, decided to discover whether or not, if you gave gin to a sunfish versus tequila, which would make the sunfish more aggressive?

Think about it. These are oppressing problems: $100,000 to give tequila to sunfish and gin and see which one made them more aggressive.

Now, you would think that is so crazy, certainly it was one off and that we discovered this kind of waste, and we made it better. He talked about this for 15 years. And throughout the 15 years that he talked about the research money going to crazy research like this that not a penny should be spent on increased.

In fact, fast forward to last year--we are now like 30-some-odd years after William Proxmire was talking about this--last year, the main organization that is probably the most wasteful scientific accumulation of grants up here is the National Science Foundation. What did this body do, Republicans and Democrats? They voted to double the budget for the National Science Foundation.

What else do they do at the National Science Foundation? Let's see. Nearly

$1 million was spent studying whether or not Japanese quail, if you give them cocaine, whether or not they are more sexually promiscuous-- your tax dollars.

Every time they are bragging about what they are doing--it is worth borrowing the money--you remind them of what they are spending it on: nearly a million dollars to study Japanese quail to see if they are sexually promiscuous when they take cocaine.

Another one was ostensibly for autism. But when they got to the autism and they subgranted it and sent it here and there, and you never know where it is going to wind up, $750,000, and it went to some, let's just call them eggheads--that is the nicest word I can think of--to study what did Neil Armstrong say when he landed on the Moon. Was it ``One small step for man'' or was it ``One small step for a man''? So $750,000 was spent studying what he actually said. They listened to the crackly old audio from the black-and-white tapes from the Moon landing. And in the end, $750,000 later, they couldn't decide, was it ``One step for man'' or ``One step for a man''?

This is the craziness that goes on. Yet it goes on and on and on.

Here is what I will tell you. Even when it is something justified--I have family members who have Alzheimer's. My mother-in-law died not too long ago with it. So I have a great deal of sympathy for the disease. I think we are a big, rich country and government; we could spend money on Alzheimer's disease. At the same time, we can't bankrupt our country.

Let's say we spent $100 million last year on Alzheimer's disease. Am I a cruel person for saying we don't have enough money; we should spend $95 million this year? That never happens. Nothing ever gets smaller around here. Everything gets bigger. Everybody who wants something gets it. Put it on Uncle Sam's tab. We have a $34 going on $35 trillion debt. The biggest payment now in our budget within about a year is going to be the interest on that.

Here are a couple of the new earmarks that are in this bill: $2 million for the construction of a kelp and shellfish nursery in Maine. You might say: Well, kelp might taste really good. I like to eat kelp. Good. There is already a $15 billion private market for kelp. There are companies, including in Maine, that are growing kelp for farms. I say wonderful. I am not so sure if giving it to the government or to government universities is going to help these businesses or compete with them. But I don't think it is the job of the Federal Government to be involved in these parochial concerns.

Another earmark that we discovered in this bill is $1.5 million to encourage video gaming in New York. Now, you know, I have nothing against people who play video games, sure. But $1.5 million to encourage people? I have seen kids. I don't think they need any encouragement. In fact, we might be better off spending $1.5 million to discourage kids from playing video games. I see no reason, when we are down and in the hole this year $1.5 trillion, that we should do this. This is an add-on. These add-ons are earmarks. They are in the name of probably the Senators from New York. They decided they want this video gaming thing in there. Maybe they know somebody in that industry, I don't know--maybe a friend of theirs.

That is why you don't earmark things. That is why things are supposed to be for the general welfare. You don't say: Here is something I am going to give to a specific parochial interest in my neighborhood or my State.

The third item we have is $388,000 for Columbia University. I am sure the people who put this earmark in would be saying: I just love education, and I am just for education. Well, so am I. I am a product of public school education, private school education, lots of education. I am all for it. But do you know what? Columbia University has a $13.6 billion endowment. They make $388,000 in 20 days of interest. You would think maybe they could spend their own money. If you want to take a summer program to get into Columbia--which I think this money may be related to--it costs $12,500 for a 3-week course at Columbia. We are talking about extraordinarily wealthy people paying this and going to this school. But there is no reason for the taxpayers to be giving a rich university that has $13 billion any money.

The next earmark we found was $249,000 for the Baltimore Symphony. People say: Gosh, I love the symphony, and I love music. So do I. The thing is, the way government is supposed to work is if you think that there is a general need for symphony money, you would pass a general symphony bill and we give money to all the symphonies and make them part of government. We don't have the money to do that. Instead, we do something even worse. We shouldn't be in the symphony business. It is not part of the general welfare.

What happens here is the people on the Appropriations Committee who have seniority--that means you have been here between 50 and 100 years most of the time--that is an exaggeration. Let's just say 50 years. They have been here 50 years and rise to the top and, by golly, they get money for their symphony in their city. That is not the way government is supposed to work.

There might even be less complaints if we have a surplus. But this is in the midst of borrowing it. So the $250,000 is going to be borrowed from China. Everybody is all up in arms about China. We are borrowing money from China. We are becoming weaker than China because we keep spending money we don't have.

The next earmark was $1 million for Cambridge, MA, Community Center to install some solar panels. I like solar panels as well as anybody. I think it is kind of cool to get some of your energy from solar panels. This is a rich community. This is where Harvard is. This is where some of the largest, most successful corporations and research are in Boston. You think they can't pay for solar panels? Solar panels aren't for general welfare.

Our Founding Fathers said all spending and taxation had to be for the general welfare. And they went one step further. In article I, section 8, they laid out all the powers of Congress, all the things we are allowed to do. And not listed in those was to buy solar panels for one town.

You would think all the wealth with MIT and Harvard and all that wealth that is attracted to Cambridge, they would be able to buy their own solar panels. It has no place in a budget that is $1.5 trillion in the hole and only makes us weaker. The next earmark is $1 million for Martha's Vineyard Hospital, one of the richest ZIP Codes in the United States. I have been to Martha's Vineyard. It is beautiful. But I could only afford to go one time.

The thing is, if you live there, that is wonderful. I am all for wealthy people. I love that they have all these beautiful homes. I think President Obama may have a place there. The thing is, pay for your own hospital. I have little, tiny hospitals with 40 beds in a really rural community that because of all the rules and resolutions, are barely breaking even in Kentucky, and I don't see sending millions of dollars to Martha's Vineyard.

Once again, why did it go to Martha's Vineyard? Because somebody has been here for 50 years. They are on the Appropriations Committee. They put an earmark and said: I want the pork to go to Martha's Vineyard. Nobody makes a debate about whether Martha's Vineyard needs a bed more than Harlan, KY. They stick an earmark in here and get it because they have been here a long time.

It is a terrible way to legislate, but it is a terrible way to legislate in the context of this enormous debt we are amassing.

This bill is teeming with about $2 billion worth of earmarks at a time when we can't afford the additional debt. Just days into the new year, the Treasury Department announced the U.S. debt had surpassed $34 trillion. That is hard to fathom. The Chairman of the Federal Reserve came out and said it is an urgent problem. Jamie Dimon with JPMorgan Chase came out and said it was an urgent problem. On the heels of people saying it is an urgent problem, what happens? Congress rises to the occasion and borrows more money. Talk about tone-deaf--completely tone-deaf.

We are just going to borrow another $1.5 trillion on the heels of $34 trillion. We are spending at such a rate that right now, we are averaging a trillion dollars to the debt every 90 days. If that pace continues, instead of $1.5 trillion, it could be up to $4 trillion in the next year. Since this year, the United States is borrowing money at $7 billion

a day. Think about that. We are borrowing money at over $300 million per hour, and $3 million per minute is being borrowed. We are borrowing money at $85,000 a second. This is just spinning, literally, out of control. If you look at the debt clock online you can see the numbers just spinning like crazy.

If we are to judge the backroom negotiations between the ``uniparty'' leadership in Congress and the White House by its results, we can only conclude that they do not take our spending problems seriously. Even Republicans who talk such a good game about government spending and respect for taxpayer dollars when they are at home cannot be depended upon to fight for fiscal sanity when push comes to shove.

Our Nation's greatest threat comes not from abroad but from within the Halls of Congress, which at every opportunity looks for ways to ignore our spending problem and expedite our economic decline. The nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office predicts we will add an average of $2 trillion to our debt every year for the next decade.

But there is a breaking point. There is a point at which they print so much money that you can have a catastrophic loss of the value. This is what has happened in South America for decades. It is what has happened in Central America. And we don't want it--at least I don't want it--happening in our country.

The CBO also estimates net interest payments will outgrow defense spending this year and will become the largest item--over $800 billion just in interest.

This reckless level of borrowing and spending is unsustainable. The ever-increasing heights of our debt in a weak economy, high inflation, and confiscatory tax rates--in other words, today's spending threatens tomorrow's prosperity.

We are approaching a predictable economic crisis in the United States. In my time in the Senate, I have proposed spending freezes, balanced budgets, spending cuts designed to get our Nation back on path. Today, though, instead of a balanced budget, I merely ask that this bill be sent back to the Appropriations Committee and that they report to the full Senate about how to responsibly cut 5 percent from this bloated monstrosity.

We wouldn't eliminate everything, but everything you are going to spend money on--grandma, motherhood, apple pie--is going to get 5 percent less. That is what it would take to start balancing our budget.

We wouldn't do it just on this bill because we would actually have to do that to everything in all our spending. Doing it here today shows somebody is serious about the spending.

My instructions even leave the Appropriations Committee open to determine where to reduce the spending. This isn't asking that much. It is a lopsided compromise in which the select handful of Members who wrote this bill get 95 percent of everything they want. That is what it would mean if we were to pass this cut.

Realize that when we vote on this cut though, not one Democrat will vote to cut one penny. Seriously. If we offered an amendment to cut one penny, every Democrat would vote no on it. They are resisting voting no now because they are worried people at home will discover what they are voting for.

It is more than just the Democrats. No Democrat cares about the deficit. Many Republicans profess to care, but half of them will vote with the Democrats as well. This is really a bipartisan problem. Don't let anybody tell you this is just about Joe Biden; it is about the previous administration as well. They borrowed $7 trillion. They shut the economy down. COVID lockdowns led to extravagant borrowing, more than we have ever seen, and we are continuing it now.

But this is a bipartisan problem. It means that rather than spending $1.2 trillion in this package, my proposal would spend $1.14 trillion. Some would look at that and say: Gosh, that is not very dramatic at all. How did you become so moderate? And you know that is true; I am quite the moderate. It would cut $60 billion--$60 billion.

But they will unanimously, on the Democrat side, vote against this because they are against cutting one penny. And our side, half of our people on our side will vote against any cuts also. This is a modest cut and only the beginning of what you would have to do to bring fiscal sanity. I am willing to accept a reasonable compromise, even one that does not balance the budget significantly or even cut the necessary spending. I am willing to vote for something to cut some spending.

By agreeing to this motion, which will be an amendment later today, we can show to our constituents that we respect them as taxpayers and are open to the most reasonable attempts to shave down the unsustainable level of spending.

I ask that all consider a ``yes'' vote on my amendment when the time comes.

I yield the floor.