Rick Scott

Mr. President, I am going to say something that might shock people here: Zohran Mamdani is right. Yes, the socialist mayor of New York City Zohran Mamdani is absolutely right about something that is facing every American right now: Our political system has totally failed the American people and is set to fail the next generation too.

Now socialism is not the solution to this problem, but I am not shocked that affordability is the No. 1 issue for Americans right now. Overall inflation is up 500 percent over the last 50 years.

A college education used to be an affordable investment toward getting a good-paying job. Thanks to government--your government--it is now too often a 4-year runway to a lifetime of debt.

The cost of a college degree has gone up 1,500 percent in the last 50 years without the wages to match it. Average student debt is just under $40,000, according to the Education Data Initiative. Why? Government; your government.

Then there is the cost of a home. A first home used to be a monumental stepping stone for a young family. I can remember when we bought our first home. Now, it is out of reach to almost everyone. Home prices have gone up 800 percent over the last 50 years.

Fifty years ago, the median age of a first-time home buyer was 29 years old; today, it is 40. Why? Government; your government.

How are people supposed to afford to start a family if they can't even afford a house until they are 40?

Then there are other costs to worry about. When I finished my enlistment in the U.S. Navy, healthcare costs for a family were about $700 a year for a family of four--$700. Now, thanks to government interference, especially ObamaCare, costs continue to go up and options are getting more and more limited for the average family.

The cost of healthcare is up over 1,000 percent over the last 50 years. Why? Government. All of these costs have outpaced inflation, and all of these industries have seen the government get more involved over the last 50 years.

The answer is not more government. More government is simply not working, and it never did. For example, the Federal Government budgeted more than $1.2 trillion--$1.2 trillion--for low-income assistance programs last year. According to the Washington Post, ``Using the Census Bureau's official poverty count, that anti-poverty spending comes out to $35,000 in annual expenditures for every person in poverty''--$35,000 in annual expenditures for every person in poverty-- ``or $181,000 per family in poverty.''

If we are spending that much, why isn't it working? The fact of the matter is that we have been trying to spend our way to fixing poverty with our current approach for over 60 years. We are now $40 trillion in debt.

To those who want to claim it is all defense spending, that is not true. We spent about 3 percent of our GDP on defense spending last fiscal year. It makes up 13 percent of the Federal budget. Never mind that handling the military is one of the few things the U.S. Constitution actually tells Congress to do.

But we spend about $3 billion per day on interest payments on our debt while we run $2 trillion deficits for programs that clearly aren't working--$2 trillion each year.

Now, we can't tax our way out of this. The U.S. Federal Government collected a record $5.3 trillion in gross taxes during fiscal year 2025. I don't need people that say: Oh, their taxes are too low. If you confiscated every asset from every billionaire in the United States, you would only be able to run the Federal Government for just over a year.

Democrats say: Oh, just tax the rich. So we will take all the money from the billionaires, you can barely fund the government for a year.

Now, those who think--you know, then who do you think democrat socialists are coming for? Who do you think they are going to come for when they bleed the millionaires and billionaires? They are going to come for you and your family and everything you worked hard for.

The socialists are correctly identifying the problem, which is the cost of living. People understand that it is the fault of Congress giving them the short end of the deal year after year. It is not a surprise that people see hope in an alternative like socialism when it is clear that politicians maintaining the status quo aren't interested, and they are not doing anything to help them.

But socialism only leads to ruin in the end. If this country turns toward socialism, my grandkids won't have an America to inherit. The rise of socialism in America is terrifying to anyone who has read a history book, but it shouldn't shock anyone who watches Washington fail to lead with policies that work for American people.

Every 2 years, the DC swamp politicians beg for votes with the same empty promises: to hold government accountable. Oh, yes, they are going to hold government accountable; they are going to lower prices; they are going to fight for the American dream.

We have watched this cycle repeat decade after decade, and both parties are complicit. And every American knows that things have only gotten worse. Instead of holding government accountable, politicians in Washington have armed a $40 trillion debt bomb by massively expanding the Federal Government year after year.

We are only one economic crisis away from exploding. While promising lower prices, Congress keeps approving massive government spending bills, causing prices and interest rates to skyrocket for the same voters we promised to lower prices for.

In the name of protecting the American people, Big Government has crept into every part of our lives and crushed opportunity and put the American dream on life support. Let's look at the facts. Americans have seen this play out and are furious about it--especially young people. They were robbed, and the culprits are the ones in this building from both parties.

President Trump and his administration are doing everything they can--everything they constitutionally can--to fix this. The poverty rate reached the lowest point in American history last year, and child poverty also reached a record low. Since President Trump took office, more than 1.5 million Americans have been lifted out of poverty. More than 1 million new private sector jobs have been created during the Trump administration. Wages are rising, but inflation--inflation caused by government spending approved by Congress--is cutting into what those wage gains can do for families.

The simple fact is that Congress has the power of the purse, not the President. Congress has been abusing that power for decades, and Congress is responsible here.

Who can blame the American people for being angry? The American dream that existed for their parents and grandparents is out of reach for a lot of them. Where is the outrage on their behalf in this Chamber? Washington's failures have left them feeling cheated and disillusioned with our political system and way of life, stuck in a world where they can't afford to buy a house, have decent healthcare, or start a family. How can the American dream survive like that?

Their anger is real and it is justified, but the answer from today's Democrat Party--the embrace of socialism--will not solve any of their problems. Socialists promise steady wages, good healthcare, and plenty of benefits. It sounds really nice, and also, it is all free, but let's look at what happens when you choose socialism. You hand over all the control of your life to the government in exchange for a promise, but you get no leverage. The government gets to make all the choices. All the decisions are made by government to ``level the playing field.'' So what does government do? It controls where you work, how much money you make, where you can live, and where you can

go to school. They make all your decisions.

The government becomes the one that can decide if you live in a house or a one-bedroom apartment. The government decides how much food your children need or whether your elderly mother can have surgery.

Karl Marx summed it up well when he described a communist society that all socialists want. Remember, socialism is really just a gateway drug to communism. Marx said that perfection in government was creating a society that was ``from each according to his ability, to each according to his needs.''

Under socialism, the government, not you, determines what your needs are. They decide what you need. You don't need that new shirt. You don't need a bigger home. You don't need more money for your family. You don't need more diapers for your baby. You don't need cataract surgery; your other eye is fine. Under socialism, people dream, but achieving dreams is not allowed. Everyone gets the same crappy deal. There is no hope. The government tells you what you are entitled to, and it always is less and less and less. The only dream under socialism is survival and escape.

Ronald Reagan talked about this 60 years ago in his ``A Time For Choosing'' speech. There is nowhere for Americans to escape to. If our way of life fails, there is nowhere else to go. Where would you go?

If you think I am exaggerating, there are plenty of Cuban and Venezuelan socialism survivors in my great State of Florida who could share their stories.

Socialism isn't the answer, and I think a lot of Americans would say they don't want it. So where do we go? If more young people feel like the American dream doesn't exist for them, how do we prove them wrong? The answer is simple: Listen to the American people. They are smart. Make government work for the things that are most important to them. We need to blow up the status quo in Washington to lower prices--we need lower prices; fuel private sector job creation--we need more private sector jobs; and return to American freedom. American freedom is what gave me and the generations before me the chance to succeed.

We have to do three things. We have to dramatically reduce government spending to balance the Federal budget, shred the massive regulatory regime that has grown out of control in Washington, and third, we have to make job creation the No. 1 priority through tax cuts, smart investment, and good economic policy.

Does it work? It absolutely works. I did it when I was Governor of Florida. When I ran for Governor, I said: We are going to create 700,000 private sector jobs in 7 years. By the end, we created 1.7 million new private sector jobs in 8 years. We brought in countless new businesses, and we helped Florida businesses expand.

So I have good news for the people worried about the American dream and the Democrats' turn to socialism: It is never too late to turn things around. The choice in front of us isn't complicated. It is incredibly simple, but it won't be easy. We don't need any new laws, actually. We need self-control. We need self-control on spending.

Eventually, we will have to do what every American family does and prioritize where we spend money. We know how much money we make, we know we cannot spend more than that, and we prioritize our spending. We have to do the exact same thing in DC.

We need to be willing to stay here to debate with each other about how we reduce our government spending and how we prioritize spending. Working 2\1/2\ days a week is not going to cut it. No business does that. We need to roll up our sleeves and get to work.

When I came in as Governor, the budget hadn't been balanced in Florida in decades. How did we balance it? I told them that we are not going to spend more than we take in. That is what every family does, and that is what happened.

But until we as a body decide enough is enough, we only have ourselves to blame for the high prices our constituents are facing now.

Washington's obsession with spending, spending, spending has become so reckless that we are now running multitrillion-dollar annual deficits. These deficits are fueling a $40 trillion debt that costs more than $1 trillion in interest annually. That is $1 trillion at today's interest rates. What happens if those interest rates double? That is $1 trillion that provides zero return for American families. What do we get out of it? It is not going to build a better military, Social Security, roads, Medicare. To save the programs Americans depend on, we must reduce government spending in all the places it doesn't provide a real return for taxpayers and finally balance the Federal budget.

When I was Governor of Florida, we went through all the lines of the budget, 4,000 lines of the budget. We had a written purpose for every line. We should be doing that here. And if it doesn't meet the purpose, we don't do it anymore. That is what you do with your own money.

The beautiful thing about solving this problem is it doesn't need more legislation. We don't need another law. We don't need more laws. We need to use all the serious brain power in Congress that we already have and use the appropriations process to stop funding stupid programs that don't work.

To make sure that workers keep more of their paychecks and can afford loans for cars, homes, and businesses, we must balance the budget. When we balance the budget, interest rates will come down.

Next, Congress must take an absolute sledgehammer to Federal Government regulations. Why do we need more regulations and people telling us how to lead our lives?

As Governor of Florida, I slashed 5,000 burdensome regulations, taking permitting times from months to days, eliminating stupid regulatory hurdles that had no impact on safety, and cutting costs to start and grow a business. That is what we did. I cut taxes and fees a hundred times, and we still balanced the budget and paid down debt. So it clearly can be done. It can be done in any city, any State, and it clearly can be done here. We should be doing it.

Jobs should be our mantra. We should be focused on jobs every day. That should be the No. 1 priority of the Federal Government--how to create more good-paying jobs.

The American dream we all believe in is on life support for young people, but it is not dead yet. I have launched a Rescue America project to reignite the American dream. It starts by pointing out all the ways that Big Government and bad policy have completely betrayed the average American, and it is plotting a roadmap back to sanity. From there, we will map the way back to the kind of country that made it possible for a poor kid like me who grew up in public housing, born to a single mom, to become a CEO, a Governor, and a Senator.

If we want to spare the next generation the misery, the absolute misery of socialism, despair, and hopelessness, we need to show them the opportunities freedom always offers when Washington actually works for them and they have the opportunity to live the American dream.

For every socialist, shame on you. You are absolutely lying to the American people. Your ideas result in despair, death, and hopelessness.

To every young person watching the cost of starting a family rise while Washington refuses to act, this speech is for you.

For every blue-collar worker--like my dad--who sees his taxes funding wasteful programs while his family does without, I feel your pain.

For every aspiring business owner with a great idea drowning in regulations and redtape, preventing you from getting started unless you are rich, I am working for you.

The solution is simple, but it won't be easy. We can balance the budget tomorrow. Families do it every day. We just need to have the courage to sit down with each other and figure out how and not leave town until we do it.

Today, we could cut the number of regulations in half, if we wanted to, the exact same way--just sit down and do it. We just need to be willing to put in the hours and get the job done.

This is all doable. We have to do it for the benefit of every young person in this country. Every child should have the same opportunity to live the American dream that each one of us believed when we were growing up.

Let's get to work.

I yield the floor.

Mr. President, I object.

Mr. President, reserving the right to object, first off, I want to say that I respect my colleague's concern about the environment.

Since I have been in the Senate, he has been very consistent about his concern about what we all should be doing for the environment, and I think we ought to take it very seriously--whatever we can do to protect our environment. But, today, I rise to object, to oppose this resolution.

I have been to the Palisades. I have walked through the destruction. I saw the homes that were destroyed. I met with the people who lost everything. I talked to victims--including Spencer Pratt--and heard firsthand what they experienced and what they are still going through.

We are talking about families who lost their homes, their possessions, their communities--in some cases, their loved ones. Today, those victims are still looking for answers.

Mr. President, 12 people lost their lives in the Palisades fire, including vulnerable seniors. As chairman of the Senate Committee on Aging, I felt a duty to make sure those families got some answers. I held a hearing to hear directly from survivors and understand what happened to seniors and other vulnerable Americans who were trying to prepare, evacuate, and recover.

I have also been working with Senator Ron Johnson to get to the bottom of what happened through our work on the Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations. Senator Johnson and I launched an investigation--a congressional investigation--because the victims deserve answers and accountability.

We are looking at what happened before, during, and after the fire. We are looking at wildfire prevention and mitigation. We are looking at water and infrastructure. We are looking at staffing and preparedness. We are looking at evacuation plans and communications. We are looking at the decisions made by State and local officials. One thing is clear to everyone: California had serious leadership failures.

Here is what we do know. In the months leading up to the fire, Mayor Karen Bass cut the Los Angeles Fire Department budget by $17.6 million. One month before the fire, the L.A. fire chief wrote in a memo that the budget cuts had ``severely limited the department's capacity to prepare for, train for, and respond to large-scale emergencies, including wildfires.''

Mayor Bass tried to deflect blame by terminating that fire chief. Three days before the fire, Mayor Bass traveled to Ghana, despite warnings of an imminent, life-threatening wind event in Los Angeles.

We know that Gavin Newsom has done nothing. He has done everything he can, though, to escape responsibility for the fire. Yet court documents and testimony show that Governor Newsom could and should have closed the Topanga State Park after the Lachman fire in accordance with his own State guidelines.

People were still out there hiking while there were underground embers burning. Fire crews were turned away by park officials. None of the State's predeployed fire crews or trucks in southern California were sent to the Pacific Palisades, even despite the fire just days earlier.

The bottom line: Karen Bass and Governor Newsom were responsible for leading their governments through this crisis. They were responsible for preparing for it, and they failed.

The people in the Palisades deserve to know what went wrong and why their communities were not better protected. Senator Johnson and I are going to keep asking those questions.

Our staff has sent request after request for documents and information. We have gotten delay after delay from California and Los Angeles agencies in providing the information we need.

Let me be clear, we are not going to give up. We are not going to let bureaucratic delays prevent us from getting the answers for these families. We are going to keep requesting the documents. We are going to keep asking the questions. We are going to keep following the facts, wherever they lead.

So here is my problem: I don't think it is appropriate for a resolution that comes to the Senate and basically, essentially, tries to tell those victims that all of those failures--failure after failure--can be covered up with the vague excuse of climate change. And, clearly, we all know that we have got to take our own advice, take care of our environment, and deal with anything that our environment might be doing.

The correct response is not to spend more money when we already are $43 trillion in debt. It is an insult to the victims who are still waiting for accountability. It is an insult to the intelligence of every American who can plainly see that Mayor Bass and Governor Newsom failed. They failed these people.

Now, in Florida, we know what responsible wildlife management looks like because I led these efforts as Governor of Florida. We know you just can't wait for a wildfire to start and then hope you can put it out.

We made prescribed burning an important part of wildfire management strategy. You have to manage forests. You have to use prescribed fire responsibly. You have to make sure firefighters have the resources and infrastructure they need before disaster strikes. And you have to hold leaders accountable when they fail. That is real wilderness prevention.

We can't write it off as climate change. That doesn't address any of these issues. It just lets the politicians in California pass the buck and escape responsibility.

The victims of the Palisades fire don't need Washington passing another resolution telling them what caused their suffering. They know. They need answers. They need to know what will be done to make sure this never happens again.

Senator Johnson and I will continue our investigation because the victims deserve nothing less. We owe it to the 12 people who lost their lives. We owe it to everyone who lost their homes. We owe it to every American who expects their government to be prepared when disaster strikes.

So we are going to keep fighting for the truth. We are going to keep demanding records. We are going to keep demanding accountability. We are not going to give up until we get all the answers. We are not going to let the California officials responsible for these wildfires say climate change caused this as an excuse.

So, again, I appreciate my colleague's concern about the environment. I agree with him that we have got to be very focused on how we can protect our environment, but, unfortunately, I object to this resolution.

Mr. President, I rise today to again ask for unanimous consent to pass the SAFE KIDS Act.

When I first came to the floor in July to advocate for this bill, my Democrat colleague called the issue of surrogate birth tourism a conspiracy theory. It was suggested that I was trying to prevent Americans from having families through surrogacy or other means. That was untrue then, and it is clearly untrue now.

In July, I came to the floor to warn about Chinese birth tourism based on a story in my home State of Florida. It was a real story hurting one of my constituents, and I wanted to raise the alarm.

I warned this body months ago of this national security threat. Here is what has happened since. This story from my State and others like it have made national headlines.

CBS: `` `Who do we hand the baby to?' Loopholes and shady practices taint U.S. surrogacy industry.''

The Wall Street Journal: ``The Chinese Billionaires Having Dozens of U.S.-Born Babies Via Surrogate.''

Fortune: ``Chinese billionaire who has fathered more than 100 children''--you can't make this stuff up--``hopes to have dozens of U.S.-born boys to one day take over his business.''

The Wall Street Journal: ``A Florida Surrogate, a Father in China, and the Babies Caught in Between.''

New York Magazine: ``Whose babies are these? A Chinese man hired a Florida surrogate, then didn't pick up his kids, sparking a custody battle that could upend the industry.''

So the Wall Street Journal, New York Magazine, and CBS News have all run major stories about birth tourism since I last brought this to the floor. We cannot ignore it anymore, and we know it is not a conspiracy theory.

Anyone overseas, including citizens of enemy countries--these are the types of people that could have surrogates--can get American birthright citizenship for a child by contracting a surrogate in America. They don't even have to set foot in America. You can't make this stuff up. No sane country would ever allow this.

The threat is obvious: foreign adversaries having a backdoor to every privilege of being an American while spending no time--no time; they don't even have to show up in this country. And their kids are not being taught to love our country.

This threat isn't empty. Our laws are being leveraged by foreigners right now. Chinese billionaire Xu Bo, a member of the CCP, has allegedly fathered between 100 and 300 American children via surrogacy, with birthright citizenship. As of today, no Federal legislation exists to prevent this. Right now, Xu Bo's actions are completely legal. Do we think he is having American children and taking them back to China to make America better? Of course not.

This is a critical problem that could undermine American sovereignty, but even worse, we are talking about child trafficking. These children are being treated like commodities instead of human beings.

We should all be asking ourselves: What happens to these children? Who raises them? What are they taught? What country are they taught to love? And what happens when they are old enough to return to the United States? Can they attend our universities? Can they serve in our military? Can they receive security clearances? Can they run for President? These are legitimate questions and a real vulnerability if we don't act on this today.

One of my constituents Kyla Simpson is dealing with those questions right now. A Chinese citizen contracted her to be a surrogate, and then he never showed up. Her sons are now almost 2. The ``father'' has never set foot on U.S. soil, but she is fighting tooth and nail to keep them in the only home they have ever known.

My bill fixes the problem by doing two things. First, it will invalidate commercial surrogacy contracts involving designated foreign adversaries--communist China, Iran, Russia, North Korea.

Second, it will create a misdemeanor penalty for any broker who knowingly facilitates one of these prohibited arrangements.

This is a very narrow bill. The bill is targeted at solving this exact problem

we are seeing today. It would mean people like Xu Bo cannot father American citizens while living in communist China and take them back to be raised by the CCP. It is going to protect women and children like Kyla Simpson and her two sons.

American citizenship should not be for sale, and our enemies cannot be allowed to buy it. This country, its sovereignty, and its future are worth protecting. Everyone in this Chamber should believe that and support this bill.

I hope that my colleagues have seen the reports and the problem with birth tourism since we last discussed it, and I hope all of my colleagues see the solution here: passing a very narrow bill, the SAFE KIDS Act.

Notwithstanding rule XXII, I ask unanimous consent that the Committee on the Judiciary be discharged from further consideration of S. 3101 and the Senate proceed to its immediate consideration. Further, I ask that the bill be considered read a third time and passed and that the motion to reconsider be considered made and laid upon the table.

Mr. President, this is not controversial. It is a national security bill that protects women and children.

So if you object to this bill, you are not protecting women and children and you are not protecting the United States.

American citizenship cannot be bought. It is precious and sacred, and it comes with duties. Think about it. Countless men and women have given their lives to make it mean something. We owe it to them and to future generations to keep this country safe and protect our citizenship from those who want to destroy us. That is why it can't just be raffled off to our enemies. We can't let our enemies turn our laws into weapons against the American people. We can't let them traffic children right under our noses on our own soil in the process.

Every Senator should be enraged that this is happening. Every Senator should support closing this dangerous loophole. That is why I am going to continue working with my colleagues to support the SAFE KIDS Act. If I have to keep coming down here and keep doing unanimous consents after we continue to see story after story, I am going to keep doing it. Mothers, children, and the American people deserve better.

I yield the floor.