Floor Statements

I ask unanimous consent that the order for the quorum call be rescinded.

Mr. President, my fine State of Wisconsin has a gray wolf population problem, but that was not always the case. Back in the eighties and nineties, we had the opposite problem. We had an endangered wolf population, as probably most of the lower 48 States did. So back in 1978, under the Endangered Species Act, the gray wolf was listed as one of those endangered species.

The good news is, it worked. You can see from the chart here--that starts in 1980 to about the year 1999--our wolf population slowly started coming back, to the point that in 1999, the Wisconsin DNR agreed that once we hit 250 gray wolves in Wisconsin, that would be the point at which we could delist the gray wolf as no longer an endangered species.

We didn't delist them. The population continued to grow and grow, and unfortunately, as much as we all value a healthy and sustainable gray wolf population, there is a point at which it gets too large and it starts threatening livestock, starts threatening people.

I think the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service recognized that fact, and so in 2007, the gray wolf was actually delisted by the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service. The problem is, in 2008, it was relisted by a Federal court here in DC. So in 2009, we took action once again. The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service delisted the gray wolf. That same year, that same court relisted it. Three years later--again, looking at the science, looking at the growing population--in 2012, the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service delisted it. Three years later, the same DC court relisted it. In 2021, again, you can start seeing the explosion, quite honestly, in population. Our Wisconsin DNA states that about 1,250 is really the most population of gray wolf that the State can sustain. We had already hit that level, so U.S. Fish and Wildlife delisted it again, only to be overturned in 2022 by a Federal court decision in California this time, not DC.

Why is this a problem? We get report after report of families, farmers in Wisconsin who are bearing the burden of this back-and-forth, of the fact that the gray wolf is protected and the populations are really at the maximum level right now.

It is threatening livestock. I mean, throughout Wisconsin, wolves are killing cows, horses, goats, sheep, cats, dogs. We have a sheep farm in Wisconsin, and a multigeneration herd of sheep was all wiped out except for one sheep, in one night. In Price County, a dairy farmer had to sell his entire herd because the wolves kept killing his cows. Wisconsinites have to carry firearms just to walk their dogs. A Wood County resident was forced to drive their children to school because the bus route changed because wolf tracks were there at the bus stop.

So, Mr. President, you know, I am just asking what makes sense when the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service has--one, two, three, four, five-- four times taken the gray wolves off the endangered species list, which, again, we all agreed was required. We should have all agreed it was successful. We are way past the delisting baseline established by the Wisconsin DNR. We are at the maximum sustainable limit here.

I am asking consent to pass a bill that would simply delist them so that Wisconsin farmers, Wisconsin families, and Wisconsin children can feel safe in their residences, in walking about their properties.

So, Mr. President, notwithstanding rule XXII, I ask unanimous consent that the Committee on Environment and Public Works be discharged from further consideration of S. 1306 and the Senate proceed to its immediate consideration; further, that the bill be considered read a third time and passed and the motion to reconsider be considered made and laid upon the table

Mr. President, I only stand to point out that Wisconsin DNR is not exactly an organization that is not willing to protect wildlife. It certainly is. It set the delisting baseline at 250. We are at five times that level.

From my standpoint, whether this legislation affects other States-- this ought to be looked at State by State and allow States to decide that. Wisconsin would certainly like this delisted, and it is just regrettable that my unanimous consent request was objected to.

I yield the floor.

Mr. President, in reserving the right to object, I guess today is my day to refute the Democrats' false assertions and claims.

Earlier today, when chairing the Budget Committee hearing and Democrats falsely accused the Republicans of cutting and slashing Medicaid, I repeatedly had to remind them that the year that ObamaCare kicked in, in 2014--the first year of Medicaid expansion--we spent $300 billion on Medicaid. Five years later, which was the year before the pandemic, in 2019, we spent $400 billion on Medicaid. This last year, we spent $668 billion on Medicaid. Medicaid spending is up 10 percent, year on year, and we will probably spend about $735 billion. That is more than double the amount we spent the year that Medicaid expansion kicked in.

They apparently didn't like my correcting the record and refuting their false assertions; so they complained in the Budget Committee hearing that I was turning the committee into a debate society. Well, I don't know. I thought this was supposed to be the world's greatest deliberative body.

So now I have come to the floor to rebut, once again, the false claims of the Senator from Rhode Island. He said he is making two true assertions here: that climate events are worsening because of climate change.

First of all, I will state that I am not a climate change denier. The climate has always changed, and it always will. The last time I was objecting to one of his false assertions--again, to one of his resolutions--I pointed to the Vostok ice core sample, which were four or five distinct cycles over 440,000 years of 22.7 degrees Fahrenheit variation. Yes. So climate has always changed. The question is, To what extent does mankind cause it? But the assertion that these climate events like hurricanes or wildfires are being driven to greater extremes because of climate change is just false. I mean, there is reputable science that completely debunks those claims.

The Senator from Rhode Island talked about billions of dollars' worth of property damage. Well, when you build multimillion-dollar homes right on the coast of hurricane regions, you are going to have higher dollar losses with normal hurricane activity. When you are as sloppy as California is at wildfire mitigation--there is an excellent article written by Representative McClintock, from California, saying that, back in the 1800s, I think it was like 2\1/2\ million acres of California that routinely burned, but through proper mitigation efforts, they reduced that to, I think, 250,000 acres per year; but then they stopped doing them under Democrat governance, and they are back up to over, you know, millions of acres burning a year. That is not because of climate change; that is just because of bad Democrat governance, bad Democrat policies. So that is the first assertion.

The second assertion is easy to rebut, which is that we are not funding the National Weather Service.

I mean, again, here are the figures. I know they don't like facts, and they don't like figures, but here are the facts: In 2014, the budget for the National Weather Service was $1.34 billion. The next year--again, when Joe Biden was President still for fiscal year 2025-- he did only increase it by 0.7, but it increased to $1.35 billion. In fiscal year 2026, it is up 8 percent to $1.46 billion. In the House, I think the President's budget calls for the fiscal 2027 spending of $1.6 billion. That will be a 9.5-percent increase.

So, again, we are not cutting or slashing Medicaid. We are not cutting or slashing the National Weather Service. Both claims in this resolution are false.

I also have to quote Secretary Chris Wright: ``We are in the midst of the greatest malinvestment in human history''--$10 trillion on a global basis has been invested nominally on fighting climate change. What do you get for $10 trillion? Well, to be very specific on energy sources, you get solar up to 1.2 percent of global energy and wind at 1.4.

As a quick aside, in 1973, global oil, gas, and coal energy consumption was 84 percent. In 2024, it was 83 percent. We spent $10 trillion on all of this renewable energy, and the mix hasn't changed at all.

And we certainly haven't satisfied the Chicken Littles claiming disaster. I have actually got a long list of these experts.

By the way, I think last week in Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs, we tried to get answers out of one of these experts, Dr. Fauci, who directed our miserably failed response to COVID. He won't answer my questions.

But I have got a long list of these experts going back to the seventies, you know. Harvard biologist George Wald estimated: Civilization will end in 15 to 30 years unless immediate action was taken.

Let's go up to climate change, 1980, ecologist Kenneth Watt predicted the world would be 4 degrees colder--colder--in 1990 and 11 degrees colder in 2000. That didn't happen.

No, this then started--this global cooling, right? That was the fearmongering. Then it was global warming. Then when they couldn't decide, they just turned it into generic climate change.

In 1989, Noel Brown, a U.N. environmental official, said entire nations would be wiped off the Earth if rising sea levels from global warming were not reversed by the year 2000. It is 26 years later; I haven't seen these entire nations wiped off the Earth.

In 2007, head of the U.N. climate panel claimed it would be too late unless drastic actions were taken by 2012, and that is 14 years ago.

In 2004, a Pentagon climate change report said Britain will be Siberian in 2020. Didn't happen.

In 2008, Al Gore cited a claim from another climate researcher that the North Pole may be ice free by 2013.

Again, there are literally dozens of these Chicken Little scaremongering claims. Just not buying them.

These resolutions aren't harmful. There is a point to them. They are trying to lay a documentary record to promote more of this malinvestment--$10 trillion. Just think of what we could have done with $10 trillion that we just frittered away on climate change alarmists.

So, Mr. President, I object.

Mr. President, reserving the right to object, I am down here now for the third time with a smile on my face. This is humorous. It would be humorous if it weren't so tragic.

The good Senator from Rhode Island, when he was chairing the Budget Committee, held hearing after hearing about these enormous costs caused by manmade climate change. But what he refuses to acknowledge is the fact that the reaction of the scaremongering, of this alarmism, has been that somewhere between $6 to $10 trillion is what we have spent globally trying to hold back the tides--$6 trillion to $10 trillion. The costs he is talking about pale in comparison to that massive--the largest malinvestment in human history.

So make no mistakes. The simple resolution--by the way, I don't deny climate change. Climate change is real. It has always changed; it always will. The debate is to what extent does man cause it, and I would argue that an even greater debate would be: What can we do about it?

I mean, he is down here, again, scaremongering and--in an alarmist fashion--obviously acknowledging that the $6 trillion to $10 trillion we have already wasted in this greatest malinvestment in human history hasn't even made a dent.

But I want to point out--I am glad he talked about measurements, about science, about a long dataset. Here is a long dataset. These are charts of the Vostok ice core sample. This is about 400-some-thousand years of climate history. I don't know how they do it, but they know how to measure different gas percentages in the atmosphere. They can calculate temperature going back actually more than 800,000 years. This one is 400,000.

The most famous dataset from this occurred in 1999--Petit, et al.

But as you can see--this is in Celsius. But these--it is hard to call them cycles, but we will call them cycles of temperature variation. We have had one, two, three, four of them in 400,000 years. They are approximately 100,000-year cycles. Almost a 23-degree Fahrenheit change in temperature.

Now, what the Senator from Rhode Island is all concerned about is a little moment in time here. Take a look at charts and blowing them up and doing the hockey stick effect and then freaking out about little, minute movements over geologic time.

Now--then he--then he--and all the climate alarmists do this, they blame it on us, fossil fuels. We weren't burning fossil fuels 400,000 years ago. Somehow, temperatures rose and temperatures declined four times over 400,000 years, almost 23 degrees.

That is why I am not freaked out about this. That is why I am not a Chicken Little. That is why I oppose this simple resolution that has all kinds of ideas behind it, all kinds of policy implications, all kinds of new proposed malinvestment, trillions of dollars' worth to try and hold back the tide.

You see this red line underneath here. Not only do they measure temperature over time, they measure CO2 levels over time. There is no doubt about it, it tracks very closely with temperature. Within that dataset of Petit, et al., not very well publicized, kind of understated, they say, well, this doesn't really mean anything is the fact that CO2 isn't the leading indicator; it is the lagging indicator.

First, temperature rises or falls, and then CO2 either rises or falls. There is approximately about an 800- to 1,000-year lag.

So again, they try and--you know, the climate alarmists try and put this--oh, look, the CO2 is up causing temperatures--no. Temperatures rose and then CO2 rose.

And there is actually a pretty easy explanation for it. Most CO2--CO2 is a trace element in our atmosphere, a trace element--not even a percent, a fraction of a percent.

Most CO2 on Earth is locked up in our oceans. So as the temperature rises probably because of solar activity, wobble in our axis, these macrotrends that actually cause climate change, the massive--the majority of climate change, as those factors cause temperatures to rise, temperatures of the ocean rise releasing CO2 and then CO2 raises. It is not the other way around.

It is not: CO2 went up causing temperature to increase. Temperature increased to cause CO2 to rise. These are measurements. This is science. This is a very long dataset. It just shows why--again, I don't know exactly to what extent man certainly can impact the environment. We all want a clean environment.

But the extent that man has caused climate change, obviously we weren't around back here to cause this climate change. Something else was doing it.

So again, I just don't freak out about it, and I certainly am not going to subscribe to any resolution that would cause policy here to spend trillions--misspend, waste, trillions of dollars on a fool's errand trying to hold back the tides.

Therefore, I object.

I am here to object. I will keep it short.

I was down here a couple weeks ago when the Senator from Rhode Island had a similar type of what he called a simple-truth resolution, but it is not that simple.

The purpose of his putting forth this resolution is he wants to do something about it. I am not a climate change denier. I am just not a climate change alarmist. I am not subscribing to Chicken Little scare tactics here.

The problem with trying to do something about climate change is there is nothing we can really do to impact it. We have spent, according to testimony in the Budget Committee when the Senator from Rhode Island was chair, $5 to $6 trillion globally. I saw a recent speech given by Secretary of Energy Wright saying that we had spent about $10 trillion trying to hold back the tides, trying to address this climate change emergency--which, by the way, two Nobel laureate physicists, Dr. Ivar Giaever and Dr. John Clauser, signed on to a ``World Climate Declaration: There is no Climate Emergency.'' There isn't.

What we have done, though, is we have taken a $6 to $10 trillion cost--the largest malinvestment in human history--and we obviously haven't even dented climate change because we still have the Chicken Littles here claiming a climate change emergency.

So, again, this isn't a simple truth. The simple truth is, yes, climate has always changed. It always will. And I would argue the simple truth is there is not much we can do about it. There is no consensus in terms of the extent that man may impact the climate. We certainly can impact the environment, and we all are--from my standpoint, we are all environmentalists. We want a clean environment. But just think what we could have done with that $6 to $10 trillion rather than spending it--wasting it--trying to hold back the tide.

So for those reasons, I object.

Reserving the right to object, I have got a smile on my face here. First of all, let me state that I am not a climate denier. I am just not a climate alarmist, like the Senators from Rhode Island and Massachusetts. So I am thinking of Chicken Little: ``The sky is falling.'' I am not sure how I am going to be able to sleep tonight.

I always found it very interesting when the Senator from Rhode Island was the chairman of the Budget Committee and we held numerous hearings on climate change with some tenuous connection to the budget. Again, very similar, ``the sky is falling,'' whether it is on insurance or housing costs or whatever.

During those hearings, I spoke about, probably a couple of times, and entered into the record the ``World Climate Declaration: There Is No Climate Emergency,'' signed by two Nobel Prize-winning physicists Dr. Ivan Yaeger and Dr. John Clauser, joined by about 25 other businesses, researchers, and scientists, and signed by a bunch of other people as well. It was a commonsense document.

The Senator from Rhode Island was talking about simple truths. Well, again, the simple truth is there is no climate emergency. The climate has always changed. It always will. CO2 is plant food.

More people die of extreme cold than of extreme heat. I mean, these are things that are brought out in these hearings, generally by the minority witnesses.

I suppose if it is procedural.

I am almost done. Do you want me to just object?

Great. Listen, listen, I have barely spent any time here, OK.

The bottom line is, in those hearings, I asked witnesses: How much have we spent combating climate change?

Five to six trillion dollars.

Our Energy Secretary puts the number at $10 trillion and calls it, correctly, the largest malinvestment in human history.

This isn't some simple resolution. This is setting up trillions of dollars of malinvestment, up to $50 trillion in testimony.

So, again, we can't afford this climate alarmism. We can't cave to the Chicken Littles of the Senate.

So I object.

Mr. President, I would just like to offer a few words of rebuttal for the Democratic leader.

He talked about high oil prices. He didn't mention the fact that when President Biden was in office and Democrats were in charge, in June of 2022, the national average gas price reached almost $5 a gallon. That same month, inflation was 9.1 percent, a 40-year high.

That wasn't because President Biden was having to do something hard, to take care of the menace that Iran was. President Biden was coddling Iran, pumping billions of dollars into their economy, into their military, into their proxies.

Gasoline was $5 a gallon because of their war on fossil fuels, because of Democrat policies. So I need to correct the record there.

The second point I want to make is, I heard the Democrat leader say that Democrats are--I think this is what he said--are in favor of commonsense voter ID. Well, if that is the case, I am sure we would be happy to work with them to deliver that, because 80 percent of the American people agree with the picture ID to vote--80 percent. It is the Democrats who refuse to put any kind of controls to ensure the security of our elections.

But I think he completely mischaracterized what the Senator from Utah's bill, the SAVE America Act, actually does. It is not going to make it harder to vote. It is going to make it harder to cheat, because Americans do not want their legitimate vote canceled by a fraudulent one.

But we are going to actually--we have got this bill on the floor. We are going to be debating it. The way the Senate debates things is we offer amendments. Republicans are going to be offering amendments to add to it things, again, the American people support with 60, 70, 80 percent majorities.

But if Democrats actually have a constructive approach to a commonsense idea that 80 percent of Americans would agree with, talk to us. My guess is Senator Lee would be happy to clarify the legislation to prove the fact that we are not going to make it harder to vote; we are just going to make it more difficult to cheat.

Again, this ought to be, from my standpoint, a very instructive-- hopefully, a very productive--debate over the next number of days, maybe number of weeks. This is important.

In 2016, Democrats were the ones that said it wasn't a legitimate election when Donald Trump first got elected. Four years later, the tables were turned. All of a sudden, the other half of America said it was not a legitimate election. This is an unsustainable state of affairs.

The only way to cure it is for commonsense election controls to make sure that we have the integrity so that, no matter who wins the election, both sides agree that that is a legitimate result. That is what we are trying to achieve as Republicans.

Again, we don't want to see somebody's legitimate vote canceled by a fraudulent one.

I think the fact that Democrats are opposed to virtually any-- probably all--election integrity measures just proves they want to make it easy to cheat.

I will throw in one final comment. The Carter-Baker Commission--I would call it a completely nonpartisan Commission--looked at our election system and tried to identify, you know, how can we make it as secure as possible. The one area of our elections they thought was the greatest opportunity for fraud was absentee mail-in balloting.

So in light of that fact, what did Democrats do during COVID? They took advantage of that situation and literally doubled the number of absentee ballots while--certainly in my State, the State of Wisconsin, there were all kinds of irregularities in terms of ballots being cured by election clerks, which is not lawful, balloting in the park, improper assisting of seniors in nursing homes.

There were all kinds of irregularities that in the end were never adjudicated. Like some of the court cases in the 2020 election, they were just thrown out of court, dismissed, because, let's face it, our judicial system really doesn't want to get involved in elections. I don't fault them for that, but it is just the reality of the situation.

So, again, what this debate is about is making sure that every American has the confidence that their legitimate vote will not be canceled by a fraudulent one. That is what Republicans want to do. We want to make it easy to vote but almost impossible to cheat.

I yield the floor.

Reserving the right to object.

Mr. President, first of all, let's--since I have the opportunity: We all revere and respect those men and women who have served and sacrificed to defend our liberty. That is completely nonpartisan. We prove it day in and day out. We prove it by how much money we spend on veterans' benefits.

So I certainly appreciate the Senator from Connecticut, his advocacy. I advocate for veterans as well. It is interesting, though, this unanimous consent request is very similar, if not identical, to the same unanimous consent request offered on October 9 of 2025 by the Senator from Connecticut.

At that point in time, responding to it, that unanimous consent, the Senator from Mississippi--the then- and now-current chair of the Armed Services Committee--stated, and I quote:

[M]y colleague is asking for an entitlement that does

amount to a double benefit and that we cannot afford. We are

talking between $9 billion and $10 billion on the Department

of Defense authorization act. And we are talking about . . .

a bill, a piece of legislation, that really belongs in

another jurisdiction.

I am assuming he was talking about the Veterans' Affairs Committee.

We cannot possibly add another 9 billion to 10 billion of

entitlement money to this Defense Authorization Act.

And that is the reason that in Democrat majorities and Republican majorities, House Democrat majorities and Senate Democrat majorities, and in Democrat administrations, this legislation has never been accepted because we simply cannot afford it.

The chairman of Armed Services went on to say:

Historically, Congress has provided permanent new benefits

only after we have identified an offset, savings of a similar

amount.

There is no such offset identified in this unanimous consent request. And when we do not identify offsets, that means $10 billion has come out of readiness, out of the strength of our military to defend ourselves during the most dangerous time we have had since World War II. And with that logic, the chairman of Armed Services, the Senator from Mississippi, objected to the Senator from Connecticut's unanimous consent request.

Now, what has changed is we now have a score on this specific bill. When the Senator from Mississippi was objecting last time, he was quoting a $9 billion to $10 billion score. We just got the score on this one. Now, it is $70 billion to $75 billion.

Again, we all revere the finest among us. The men and women of the military that I know didn't serve and sacrifice oblivious to the fact that we are mortgaging our children's future. They served and sacrificed to secure our children's future. So we can't just come down here and talk about how much we love vets and how we want to support them. We also have to look at the reality of the situation in dollars and cents. We are $39 trillion in debt. Over the next decade, it will be $60 trillion. We have to look at the dollars and cents.

So, again, this unanimous consent request went from an assumed cost of 10 billion to now 70 billion, which reminds me an awful lot of the PACT Act, which I voted for and supported. But when that was first being discussed, it was called the burn pit legislation.

My former chief of staff served in Iraq; he was impacted by it. But I remember discussions--these were informal. I don't have anything formally written, but back in early discussions of the burn pit legislation, we were being told it was going to be $1 billion or $2 billion a year.

When the House passed their version of the PACT Act, the CBO score was for $322 billion over 10 years. The Senate got its hands on that piece of legislation, and the score was $667 billion. The current window is over $700 billion. That is not chump change. That is approaching a trillion dollars over 10 years.

Now, again, it is not like we are spending less on veterans, even though our veteran population is declining. In 2019, we spent $200 billion on veterans' benefits. Again, now, their retirement is through the Defense Department. This is just benefits for VA. Two hundred billion dollars, that equates to about $11,500 per veteran. This was before the pandemic--so $200 billion, $11,500 per vet.

This year, we will spend about $435 billion, so it has more than doubled, and our cost per vet is up to $28,000 per veteran. Somebody has got to look at this.

We are $177 billion for veterans' benefits above and beyond what we spent in 2019, fully inflated for inflation. There is no other account in the Federal Government that is that out of whack, comparing 2019 fully inflated.

So this is not the way to pass this legislation. The Senator from Connecticut has all these cosponsors. Fine. Go through the committee process. Scrutinize this. Take a look at the score, take a look at what the history of this is. It is not like we are the first Congress that reveres the members of the military.

For some reason, they differentiate between somebody who has 20 years of service or less than. Let's look at that. Let's debate it. Let's bring it through the committee process, regular order. And then if it has that great support, I might even vote for it.

But let's go through the process to see whether these policies make sense, whether there truly is double-dipping, whether there is a better way of handling--by the way, I have been told the Department of War is looking at this exact issue. They have reverence for the finest among us as well.

But this is not the way to do this, not by unanimous consent request. It was objected to in October, and I am going to object to it right now.

Mr. President, I object.

Mr. President, reserving the right to object, the Senator from Connecticut said we need to do our job. I agree. Our job is to recognize the fact that we are $39 trillion in debt on the back of $60 trillion, with the Social Security trust fund running out during that timeframe.

Our job would be, then, to go through the regular order process of taking this before the committee. If it has such broad bipartisan support, fine, but, again, similar efforts along these lines have failed in the past with Democrat majorities in both the House and the Senate. There is something about this that concerns people. So vet it out in the committee process. We are trying to bypass that process by unanimous consent requests. This is not the way to produce good legislation, not when we are $39 trillion in debt.

So for all the other reasons I mentioned in my previous objection, Mr. President, I object.

Mr. President, as my colleague from Louisiana wishes we were all here voting on the deal and that my colleagues on the other side had taken yes for an answer to open up the government, I wish that is what I was on the floor here today to do. That is not being accomplished. What I was hoping to be able to do is, once again, offer a unanimous consent request to pay the people who are working.

I came down to the floor, 2 weeks ago, with the Shutdown Fairness Act to pay the people whom we are forcing to work. It is pretty common sense. It did not include the furloughed workers. The other side objected. I agreed to add furloughed workers. I worked with them over the last couple of weeks, came on the floor yesterday, offered that unanimous consent request, and there were more objections.

So we offered a vote, saying: Let's proceed to that bill. Let's work out, literally, clarifications and differences. There is really nothing substantive. We are going to pay all the workers being forced to work. We are going to pay all the furloughed workers. We added contractors. We have done just about everything we could so that we are no longer punishing the people working for our dysfunction, so we are no longer using these individuals as pawns--the American people as pawns in this horrific partisan gamesmanship.

Unfortunately, the other side wouldn't agree to get on the bill-- which, by the way, that is how you pass legislation around here. You get on a bill. It may not be perfect. There may be some objections from the other side. You open it up for amendments. You work on those differences.

Again, if the other side doesn't particularly like the bill, they can vote no at the tail end. They can block it then. But, instead, they blocked it on the front end.

We immediately went into discussions. Literally, about an hour ago, I thought I had a deal, where at least the primary objector of the Shutdown Fairness Act was not going to object. We have hit some snags.

So, unfortunately, I don't think in today's session we will be able to offer that for a unanimous consent request. But I do want to tell my colleagues that we are still working hard. I am going to do everything I can to accommodate, to clarify the bill, to let the folks on the other side know, no, we are not creating a slush fund. We are

not giving the President discretion to use this money wherever he wants. We are not excluding certain workers. We are not giving the President the ability to include or exclude anyone. We are including all the workers.

Again, I will continue. My staff is working overtime--God bless them--doing everything they can to be able to offer this. If we don't have a deal tomorrow, at least--at least--I am literally hoping and praying that folks on the other side of the aisle will, at a minimum, stop using Federal workers--the American public--as pawns in this partisan gamesmanship. But it doesn't look like we are going to be doing that tonight.

Healthcare

But as long as we have got some time on the floor, I guess what I would like to do is I would like to discuss a hearing we held earlier in the week in my Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations. It was titled ``Assessing the Damage Done by ObamaCare.''

I hate to report that folks on the other side refused to acknowledge the very obvious damage being done across the board by ObamaCare.

I had three witnesses. We kind of did this in three different categories. The first category was talking about the damage done by the consolidation of industries across the board in healthcare.

If you want lower prices--I come from the private sector. What the free market guarantees is basically three things: the lowest possible price in cost, the highest quality, and the highest level of customer service. Now, it is not perfect, but there is no economic system that works better than that.

The problem we have in healthcare is that we have largely driven free-market principles out of healthcare. We have a third-party payer system. You know, decades ago, patients paid 80 percent--80 cents on the dollar--for the healthcare they received. Today, they pay about a dime. Somebody else is always picking up the tab for their specific procedure.

Now, we pay--oh, we pay dearly--in taxes, in insurance premiums. But it is disconnected from the actual point of sale, from the actual cost of the procedure. So there is no transparency. Doctors don't know what things costs.

I love accountants. I am one of them. But if some accountant in the provider's back office is dealing with some accountant in the insurance and some accountant in CMS, or whichever third-party payer, so we had a complete breakdown of price transparency--because we don't have free market principles. We don't have consumerism--true consumerism--in healthcare.

This was a chart that the Senator from South Carolina put up yesterday--I think others have used it as well--that really makes the point in terms of the consolidation of the industry, which, of course, when you have concentrated power, you have less competitive benefits.

This is just the percent increase in the stock price of, I think, seven of the top insurance carriers. UnitedHealth Group, 1,177 percent increase in the stock price since the implementation of ObamaCare; Cigna, 822 percent; Anthem, only 414 percent; Humana, 490; Molina, 859; Centene, 604; Aetna, 595 percent increase.

This is a concentration in power, a reduction in competition, and this proves the increase in prices--the trillions of dollars flowing into insurance companies, taxpayer dollars flowing into insurance companies because of the faulty design of ObamaCare; that force that aided and abetted this consolidation and this lack of competition in the healthcare market.

The second area of damage, literally, was to Medicaid. I mean, ObamaCare is basically providing insurance through two mechanisms: Medicaid and the individual exchanges. Medicaid--of course, we talked about this in our One Big Beautiful Bill, the whole reconciliation package. The harm caused to Medicaid is profound. By allowing States to sign up able-bodied, single, working-age adults into Medicaid--that wasn't the main abuse. The main abuse is we reimbursed those States. For every dollar they spend for a single, able-bodied adult, they get $9 as a Federal reimbursement. That compares to, for every dollar spent on a disabled child, the States get $1.33.

So that has led to rampant abuse. I would call it legalized fraud-- provider taxes, provider fees. That is not healthcare, but the American taxpayer is picking up the tab at a ratio of 9 to 1 for those State- directed payments and, again, provider fees, provider taxes.

It has also crowded out services for the disabled. There was an excellent article in the Wall Street Journal written by the father of a 17-year-old severely autistic child. And God bless this family. They are taking care of this child at home. But they could use help. So what they were hoping for is to be able to have access to home healthcare. They were on a 10-year waiting list because those providers would much rather service an able-bodied Medicaid Advantage adult as opposed to that disabled child. So, again, we have crowded out those disabled children from Medicaid providers. And, of course, we have cost the American taxpayers hundreds of billions of dollars--provider fees, provider taxes--which, unfortunately, we weren't able to fix.

The third area of damage done by ObamaCare is in the individual markets. Now, I bought healthcare for 30 years. Every year, we would negotiate with the insurance carriers. I remember early on when we didn't have 100 employees even, so I am very familiar with the small employer group markets.

Probably about 3 or 4 years into my buying healthcare, because of competition, we had an insurance carrier come in and say: You don't even need to have deductibles for out-of-pocket maximums. We are going to match your insurance rate--zero deductibles.

We thought: Great. What a great year for our employees. They didn't pay a dime for anything.

And the insurance rate was what we had the previous year. Well, of course, the next year, they jacked up our rates 40 percent, so I had to go back into the market.

That is just an anecdotal story of how competition actually worked.

Now, again, I don't have the exact figures, but in the 30 years of buying health insurance, ending in about 2010, I don't ever recall a per-person deductible. Generally, the way a family plan would work is to have a number of deductibles, two or three per family. I don't recall one ever higher than $2,500, with an out-of-pocket maximum--with the copays, the 28 percent copay.

So a family would maybe have one person with an illness. They would go through their $2,500 deductible, and then, if they were charged above that, 80-20 split, up to a maximum out of pocket of $5,000 per year. That is it. That is the most. Again, back in the early eighties, it started out with maybe a $100 deductible with a maximum out of pocket of $1,000. But again, because of inflation, by the time I left, it was about $5,000 maximum out of pocket.

What has happened because of ObamaCare? The faulty design of it is forcing the small percentage of people on the individual exchanges to pick up the full cost of preexisting conditions.

Back when I was buying insurance, we had something called high-risk pools. They weren't perfect. With some modifications, we could have completely covered people with preexisting conditions. But the way they worked is every insurer that sold products in the State had to basically take on people of high risk.

So as I am buying insurance--let's say I had somebody who was diagnosed with cancer. The insurance carrier would come in and do something they would call laser out that individual--not a problem because that person right away would go into the high-risk pool. And there are so many different options in terms of deductibles, that type of thing, that we could buy a plan for that individual from the high- risk pool at pretty much the exact same rates as we were getting and the exact same deductibles. If that person had a remission of cancer, was no longer lasered out, he came back into our plan.

It worked beautifully. It was funded by everybody. Everybody that had employer-sponsored care, anybody that had an insurance policy, a very small percentage was assessed to pay for the high-risk pool.

Now, every State was different. Some States were adequately funded; some weren't. I think Maine had an excellent high-risk pool. But ObamaCare dismantled all of that and put the cost of

those people with preexisting conditions that are high risk on the backs of a single-digit percentage of the American population, causing insurance rates to skyrocket.

We hear our Democratic colleagues come to the floor and say premiums are going to double and triple. Well, first of all, that is not true. Gross premiums are going up an alarming 26 percent nationally, but they are not doubling and tripling--not on employer-sponsored care and not for most people on the exchanges.

What is happening is the net premium after subsidies for people over 400 percent of the poverty line that no longer can get a subsidy--those people could be experiencing a doubling or tripling of rates.

Quite honestly, from my standpoint, those are people I have a great deal of sympathy for that I would like to do something for, but we are not going to enter into a negotiation until Democrats open up the government. OK.

But again, I have said this repeatedly: I am happy to work with Democrats who will work in good faith, who will acknowledge the problem and repair the damage done by ObamaCare and transition to a system that actually works. I think all Republicans are eager to do that. I know President Trump just had a tweet today. What we should be doing is we should be giving--the hundreds of billions we spend on this, give that to the American public, and let them buy insurance policies that fit their needs, not the highly restrictive ones in ObamaCare that have caused premiums to skyrocket.

So what this chart shows--the red line here is the increase in the CPI; in other words, total inflation since the inception of ObamaCare was 39 percent. All these blue bars--I know it is hard to read. This is every State, the percent increase in their premiums for a 40-year-old enrolled in the silver benchmark.

Again, averages are very difficult here because you have every State different, all these different plans. But we picked one. This is pretty typical.

So the average percent increase by State, over all the States, is a 169-percent increase versus a 39-percent increase in inflation. That is 4.3 times the rate of inflation.

This is what has been happening to the 20-some million people on the individual exchanges. It is because of the faulty design of ObamaCare. It has to be fixed. We can fix it. We know how to do it. You reinstitute high-risk pools. You give consumers a choice of all kinds of different options: short-term plans, catastrophic--by the way, ObamaCare insurance is what catastrophic plans looked like in the past but only orders of magnitude more expensive.

So, again, this is the gory snapshot of what ObamaCare has done to the individual premiums.

Now, I have another chart that shows you what has happened in the marketplace for employer-sponsored plans. You don't see anything up here at the over 300 percent level. You see really quite consistency because ObamaCare didn't impact employer-sponsored care anywhere near to the extent they did--now, it is still way too high. On average, employer plans increased 74 percent since the inception of ObamaCare. A lot of this is driven because of what ObamaCare has done in terms of consolidation of every part of the healthcare industry.

So there is no reason for these insurance rates to be almost double the rate of inflation, but it is a huge difference. It is a huge difference because there is greater freedom in the employer-sponsored insurance plans than there is in the very prescriptive ObamaCare.

This last chart--I am glad I had it because in the hearing, my ranking member, the Senator from Connecticut, made the statement: I don't know anybody who has been harmed by ObamaCare.

Huh? What? I mean, I already mentioned there was a consolidation of the industry. I mentioned the disabled child who is being crowded out by an able-bodied, working-age, childless adult. I already talked about the dramatic increase in premiums for everybody.

But the Democrats' own witness, a mom from Wisconsin, was a victim of ObamaCare. This isn't exactly what her premiums are because she, quite honestly, didn't have all the information, but she had a few key pieces of information, and we could go look at the ObamaCare exchanges and come up with the premiums. But this is showing you what is actually happening, OK?

This individual--a mom, two kids, great person--is a victim of ObamaCare. In 2016, her employer dropped coverage because ObamaCare gives small employers a great out of not having to put up with the rising healthcare costs by just saying: We are not going to buy group insurance anymore.

Trust me, I never liked having to buy group insurance for my employees, but you had to do it. To be competitive, you had to provide insurance. Again, I would never want to see any of my employees go uninsured. But now you have an option, and so a large number of particularly small employers are dropping coverage and forcing their employees into the exchange.

So in 2016, she got forced into the exchanges. Now, she initially bought a silver plan. It cost her $1,000 a month.

Again, to me, somebody who had bought insurance 15 years ago-- unbelievably high insurance rate. A thousand bucks a month? Unheard of back when I was buying insurance.

Anyway, that was too expensive for her, so a couple years later, she actually transferred to a bronze plan that she could afford. It cost her $250 a month, but it had a $14,000 deductible.

Again, as I said earlier, when I was buying, an out-of-pocket maximum for families was like 5,000 bucks. A $14,000 deductible--that was a catastrophic care plan; they were dirt cheap.

So, anyway, they signed up for that plan. Unfortunately, they had some big healthcare bills, and her and her husband had to take out an $18,000 home line of credit--18,000 bucks. This is the Democrat witness--a true victim of ObamaCare.

Now, of course, she is coming in very sympathetically, asking us to extend the temporary enhanced subsidies.

But this is what people need to understand. They obviously are under 400 percent of the poverty line because she is still getting subsidies. So look at the annual here. In 2025, with the subsidy, her gross premium--again, when the Democrats say ``They are doubling premiums,'' they are talking about the net premium. But the gross premium was $15,000. She got a subsidy of almost $10,000, so she is paying $5,500 a year.

Now, remember, in 2019, she had a silver plan, and she was paying $12,000 a year. So now, with the enhanced subsidy, the temporary COVID one--again, remember, Democrats are the ones that chose it to expire-- she is paying about $5,500.

Fast forward, if she loses that enhanced subsidy, she still gets a higher subsidy. She is still going to get $10,000, but because her gross premium because of the faulty side of ObamaCare is going from $15,000 to $19,000, she is going to experience almost a $3,000 increase in her premium, not because the enhanced subsidy went away. She is getting an increased dollar amount of subsidy. It is the dramatic increase in premiums that is driving this.

And I will close on this point because I see the Senator from Florida, who, by the way, knows more about healthcare probably maybe than anybody in America, certainly in this Chamber. And he has got some great ideas on how to fix and repair the damage done by ObamaCare and transition to a system that will actually work based on a competitive model.

But the other point I want to make because of the rhetoric, because of demagoguery, Democrats have pretty well, I think, scared--of course, that is their tactic, right, let's scaremonger--scared Americans into believing that everybody's premiums are going to double and triple.

First of all, we are talking about the ObamaCare exchanges, which they say they got about 24 million people but because of the no-premium policies with these enhanced subsidies, there are probably about 6 million people with phantom plans. They don't even know that have coverage. Unscrupulous agents have signed them up. They get the commission. The premium goes right to the insurance company. They are none the wiser, and they make no claims.

So we have gone from, I think, 4 million no-claim policies on the exchange to 12 million. So, obviously, a lot of

phantom policies here. But the point I wanted to make is out of whatever the number is--it is really not 24 million. It is probably under 20 million, but I will use that as a figure--of the supposed 24 million people on the ObamaCare exchanges, almost 22 million are going to continue to get their subsidy. They are under 400 percent of the poverty line

You have got about 1.6 that we know are over 400 percent. Their subsidy is going away. So they were at 15 going up to 19, instead of paying--they are going to have to pay 19,000. Those people I have a great deal of sympathy for. They were kind of duped into thinking that they could retire early. And now they are getting the rug pulled out from under them because the Democrats chose this plan, and now it is expiring.

So I have got some ideas. I have actually shared them with our Finance chair; I have shared them with Senator Scott. I am not going to talk about it now because we need to open up the government first. Personally, I am sympathetic to this.

But we don't need to spend $20 billion, $30 billion to address that small slice of the American population whose subsidy is totally going away. The main point, and then I will turn it over to the Senator from Florida--my main point is, almost 22 million Americans on the exchanges will continue to get subsidies, and because insurance rates are going-- those subsidies on an annual basis are going to increase. They are not even going to decrease. The dollar amount will be increasing for most of those 22 million Americans.

They are going to go back to the way ObamaCare was originally designed. So if they can't afford the healthcare based on going back to the way ObamaCare was originally designed, it is not because the enhanced subsidy is going away; it is because of the way ObamaCare was originally designed.

It has failed miserably. It has damaged millions of people, and I am happy to sit down with the other side, if they are willing to acknowledge the truth, admit they have got a problem, define the problem properly, do a root-cause analysis, and actually enact reforms that will lower or certainly keep in check the cost of healthcare.

I yield the floor.

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

Mr. President, 2 weeks ago, I came to the floor in support of a bill that we were going to vote on, a motion to proceed called the Shutdown Fairness Act. It is a pretty simple bill. The name pretty well describes exactly what it is. It is trying to be fair during these dysfunctional shutdowns. Any of the Federal workers who are forced to work because they are in our military, they are in Federal law enforcement, they are TSA, or they are air traffic controllers--they are keeping this Nation and Americans safe--if we are going to force them to work, at a minimum, let's make sure we pay them and pay them on time.

I came down in as nonpartisan a manner as I possibly could and literally begged the other side to just join us, vote to proceed to the bill.

They had some objections to it, things that I was willing to address. For example, my bill only addressed workers that were forced to work. They wanted to include furloughed workers. I said on the floor: I am happy to add that as an amendment. I think, working with my conference, I can get the conference to support it as well.

It wasn't quite that easy, but in the end, we overcame objections within our conference to adding furloughed workers.

So we have completely amended the bill now. We have added furloughed workers.

In the meantime, surprising to me, we had Federal employee worker unions reach out to us, asking what they could do to help pass this bill. They are sick and tired of being used as pawns in this political dysfunction here. They are tired of it.

One of the things that definitely appealed to them once I added the furloughed workers was that my bill makes it permanent. My bill says: We will never use you again as a pawn in the political gamesmanship that is being played out right now.

I am happy to report that the Shutdown Fairness Act, as I now amended it by adding furloughed workers, is supported by the American Federation of Government Employees, the Federal Managers Association, the Federal Law Enforcement Officers Association, the National Air Traffic Controllers Association.

We tragically had a plane go down early in the week. I am not saying it is because of air traffic control, but we understand the danger. We have to understand the risks we are taking in not paying air traffic controllers so we can fully man our air towers and keep our airspace safe.

The International Association of Fire Fighters supports my bill. The Association of Flight Attendants does.

Again, one of the main reasons they support my bill is, in addition to the fact that we added furloughed workers, my bill makes this permanent.

Madam President, I ask unanimous consent that the Senate proceed to the immediate consideration of Calendar No. 191, S. 3012. I further ask that the Johnson substitute amendment at the desk be considered and agreed to; that the bill, as amended, be considered read a third time and passed; and that the motion to reconsider be considered made and laid upon the table.

Reserving the right to object, it is important that the American public understand what is going on here.

Again, I came down here 2 weeks ago. I modified my bill quite dramatically. We entered talks immediately with the

Senator from Delaware and the Senator from Michigan. Within those talks--again, 2 weeks ago--they were accusing my bill of giving the President all this additional authority. In discussions staff to staff, they admitted there is no additional authority I am giving to the President in this bill whatsoever.

This bill is completely silent on Presidential authority in terms of who he can furlough. As a matter of fact, everybody is included, every employee is now included. There is no discretion whatsoever in terms of who is furloughed, who gets brought back to work, who gets paid. They all get paid. The Senator from Michigan is well aware of this.

Those discussions, I would say, petered out within a few days. I don't know if they are emboldened; just digging their heels in they are going to continue this shutdown; don't feel they are getting blamed for it; don't have much pressure on them.

Here we are 2 weeks later, and they want to redline the bill. Well, in that 2 weeks, we have had our bill examined exhaustively by our leadership, by OMB, by the unions. Our bill is in a really good place right now. We tried to think of everything. No Federal employee would be excluded from this.

The Senator from Michigan says my bill allows the President to pick and choose. That is total hogwash. Again, every Federal employee, including contractors, gets paid. There is no picking and choosing. That is completely false. Money transfers? What is he talking about? More power? There is no power. It is completely silent in terms of Presidential authority. These are false arguments.

This is further evidence of the gamesmanship the Democrats are playing with people's lives. They are the party of Big Government. They have, in effect, taken a family member hostage.

I see our leader on the floor here. He has been doing everything he possibly can to help Democrats release their own hostage, open up the government.

Once you do that, we are more than happy to talk to you about how do we repair the damage done by ObamaCare and transition to a system that works.

But they are playing politics. They are using Federal employees and, quite honestly, the American public right now, whose flights are being delayed, whose skies are less safe--they are using public employees and the American public as pawns in this grotesque display of partisanship.

My bill is very simple. It is backed by the public sector unions, which generally don't support things I am putting forward.

If the Senator insists on objecting to this, preventing these people, these workers, these people who keep us safe, from getting paid in this round, my guess is that we will take a vote on this to proceed to the bill. The problem with that is it will take much more time.

If we can pass this by unanimous consent right now, we could send it over to the House. The Speaker has already indicated that if we pass the Shutdown Fairness Act, he will bring his people back. They are on 48-hour call. We could have this passed by Monday. Our skies would be safer again. Federal employees would be treated fairly. They would be paid. And they will never ever be used as pawns in this kind of grotesque partisan gamesmanship.

So I will not modify my request.

Absolutely.

In reclaiming my time briefly, let me emphasize the fact that if you pass this now--again, to the Senator from Michigan, I am literally begging him: Do not object. Do not object. It is still going to take a couple of days to actually pass this. If we have to go the route of a motion to proceed and getting on the bill, that is going to take quite some time. Our skies can't remain at this level right now. We can't continue with these airport delays. We can't continue to use public sector employees and the American public as pawns in this partisan gamesmanship.

So, literally, I think the Senator knows me. He knows I am saying this in good faith: Please do not object. Let this bill pass so the House can come back, and the President can sign this into law, and these good people who are being forced to work or who have been furloughed can get the pay they deserve. Again, today, tomorrow, and in the future, they will be assured they will never ever be used like pawns in these partisan games.

Again, I underscore that I will not modify my request.

Will the Senator yield?

Again, let me correct--I hate to say--falsehoods that were presented here in the Chamber.

My bill is completely silent in terms of Presidential authority.

To the Senator from Michigan, I know they want to put language in there to restrict Presidential authority, but the fact of the matter is--and I made him well aware of this--that it is a bill that would never be signed into law.

So if the Senator is serious about actually paying the workers, he will recognize that fact and admit that my bill is completely silent. It does not add and it does not detract from Presidential authority. There is nothing in the bill that does that.

Secondly, we have tried to come to accommodations with a number of Senators on the other side for a couple of weeks, but they have pretty much fallen on deaf ears.

Again, I know it is unfortunate that he objected right now. If we proceed and vote and actually get on the bill--and I hope, at least, we do that--that will take quite some time. So it seems he has already objected.

What I am happy to do--not happy; I am very disappointed I am going to have to do this--is to look at their language. If it is acceptable-- again, if he is doing anything with Presidential authority in the way of adding or detracting, it won't be signed into law; it will be a fruitless exercise. But if we accept their language--we will look at it, and then maybe--maybe--we can come back down here and do another unanimous consent request and pass this today. That is what I hope we can do.

So we will look at the language. It is very unfortunate we didn't pass it right now, but maybe later this afternoon, we can do so.

I yield the floor.

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

Mr. President, I came to the floor 2 weeks ago with a completely nonpartisan, very sincere attempt with a bill that we call the Shutdown Fairness Act to simply pay the Federal workers whom we were requiring to work, the finest among us: the members of our military, people in Federal law enforcement, TSA, and air traffic controllers to keep our skies safe.

Now, when I was asking the Senate to proceed to that bill, the Senator from Maryland offered an alternative. He called it the True Shutdown Fairness Act. The main difference is that his was only going to be for 1 year. My bill is permanent--permanently stops using Federal employees and the American public as pawns in these sick partisan games.

The other difference was my bill is focusing on the people we are forcing to work. His bill added furloughed workers. So on the floor 2 weeks ago, I said if you are serious about passing this bill, if you are serious about stopping--he said, he can't punish Federal employees for our dysfunction.

If you are serious about that, I told the Senator from Maryland, vote to get on the bill. I will include that; I will convince our conference to include furloughed workers. Get on the bill. We will amend it. We will get this passed, and we will start paying people.

He rejected that offer. Now, we started having discussions. His staff immediately acknowledged the fact that my bill did not in any way, shape, or form impact the President's authority in terms of determining who was furloughed, who gets included in a reduction in force. It was silent. Even though they falsely accused my bill of giving the President greater authority, it didn't.

I came to the floor again today to pass an amended bill with furloughed workers--by the way, a bill that is now supported by the American Federation of Government Employees--I believe that is the largest public employee union; the Federal Managers Association; the Federal Law Enforcement Officers Association; the National Air Traffic Controllers Association--and we are going to have the Senator from Texas come down and talk about what is happening with air travel as we speak; the International Association of Firefighters; and the Association of Flight Attendants. These are public sector unions that generally don't support Republican legislation.

What they particularly like about my bill is the fact that it is permanent. It prevents Federal workers and, quite honestly, the broader American public from being used as pawns again in these sick political games being played right now with their lives.

So, in a few minutes, we are going to proceed to vote on a motion to proceed to my original bill. That is how this works. The leader voted no so he can bring it up for reconsideration. So we have to bring that bill up. We already have the language for the substitute amendment, which includes furloughed workers, that has been vetted by, quite honestly, both Democrat and Republican Senate offices, by the Office of Management and Budget, and by the public sector unions, which have come out in support for it.

This is a bill that is ready for prime time. This is a bill that is ready to be passed tonight. Now, it is unfortunate that we couldn't pass it by unanimous consent because had we done that, the House is on a 48-hour callback, and they will come back. The Speaker has already said they will pass this in the House. And we get our military members, air traffic controllers, these Federal workers who keep us safe--we can get them paid.

So again, I am just asking--I am actually pleading with my colleagues on the other side of the aisle to please vote to proceed to this bill. We will substitute an amendment that includes furloughed workers. We can pass this tonight. If we vote to proceed, we can then vote for unanimous consent to waive all time agreements, and we could even pass this yet tonight. Make our skies safer.

But I know the Senator from Alaska has a few words to say, and I know the Senator from Texas will as well.

I yield to the Senator from Alaska.

I want to thank the Senator from Alaska. He has been so dedicated. He has been so tenacious in making sure that the finest among us, the men and women of our military, get paid and then, you know, signing on to my effort to broaden this to all Federal employees. Again, as he said, they shouldn't have to go to food banks and they shouldn't have to go to DoorDash to pay their child's tuition or feed their family.

But we had a chilling report from the Senator from Texas, the chair of the Commerce Committee, in terms of what is happening with air traffic control in terms of our skies. But before we turn to the Senator from Texas, the Senator from Wyoming has a few words to speak on this bill.

I appreciate the remarks from the Senator from Wyoming. I know people are coming down here to vote, but there are no time restrictions, and this is extremely important. We have a number of Senators who want to speak to this issue. We should give them time to speak--hopefully, to convince our colleagues on the other side to, again, be fair: Think about what your vote means to people that don't want to be used as pawns.

I believe, again, that the Senator from Texas, our chairman of the Commerce Committee, he has got some pretty, as I said, chilling information to relate to the American public, based on what is happening, if we do not pay air traffic controllers.

The Senator from Texas.

I want to thank Senator Cruz for his sobering remarks.

This Chamber should be full. It would be nice if our Democratic colleagues were here to listen. I hope they are listening on their TVs in their office.

God, I hope it literally doesn't take planes falling out of the sky. Tonight, you can continue your shutdown, but you can vote to pay the air traffic controllers so that is far less likely. If you vote no and, God forbid, it actually happens, can you live with yourself?

I came to the floor 2 weeks ago in as nonpartisan a fashion as I possibly could, begging Democrats to pay people that are forced to work that are keeping our skies safe, that are keeping our Nation safe. Two weeks later, we haven't done it.

This isn't partisan.

Search your conscience. Ask yourself, honest to God, if a plane, another plane--a plane has fallen out of the sky. I am not saying it is because of air traffic control, but you heard of 500 safety instances. Our air traffic control system is already antiquated. Can you live with yourself if another plane falls out of the sky and more people needlessly die because we are short of air traffic controllers?

I know the Senator from Alaska has a couple more comments. Then we will turn it over to the Senator from Florida.

I thank the Senator from Alaska and yield to the Senator from Florida.

I want to thank the Senator from Florida.

I see the Senator from Michigan. I believe he wants to speak to this bill. We will have the last word.

Mr. President, I am not quite sure what planet the Senator from Michigan comes from, but here on planet Earth, when you read the actual language of the bill, none of these phantom provisions exist in there. But I will go through those point for point before we call for the final vote.

Right now, I think the Senator from Nebraska has a few points he wants to make.

Mr. President, I appreciate the comments from the Senator from Nebraska.

I think the Senator from Utah would also like to speak to the bill.

I want to thank the Senator from Utah for his remarks.

Mr. President, I don't want to spend time refuting all of the misrepresentations from the Senator from Michigan in terms of what phantom provisions he claims are in my bill. There is no slush fund. It is completely silent on Presidential authority. I know some people want to reduce authority, but that is a bill that won't be signed. If you want to pay the Federal workers, if you want to stop punishing them for our dysfunction, if you want to stop using them as pawns in this political game, that is a demand you have to drop.

The money appropriated in this bill will go to pay workers. That also is a false argument.

But if you are not quite satisfied with the language, which has been out there--and we have been trying to work and get feedback for 2 weeks, and we have gotten excellent feedback from leadership, from discussions on both sides of the aisle, from OMB, trying to perfect this thing--the solution is get on the bill. Get on the bill and offer an amendment. Keep talking to us. Don't close it down.

We heard from a number of our Republican colleagues. We heard from the Senator from Michigan. Obviously, passions are running high. But there is a great deal of frustration, certainly, on our side when the other side simply won't take yes for an answer.

I came down here 2 weeks ago in as nonpartisan a stance as I possibly could be because, as the Senator from Michigan stated, we all agree that these people ought to be paid. So the way to do that is not to offer a bill on unanimous consent that has no chance of being signed into law; the way to do that is to vote to proceed tonight to this bill.

If we could iron out our differences, we could yield back time and get this thing passed that the Speaker of the House has already said he would come back and pass. We are so close.

I realize there may be hard partisans. I know there are liberal unions that have now come out against us. But the bulk of the public sector unions are for it. They prefer my bill over anything else. They may also support it because this is permanent. This ends using the Federal workforce and, quite honestly, the American public as pawns in these partisan games for all time. Again, the American Federation of Government Employees, the Federal Managers Association, the Federal Law Enforcement Officers Association, the National Air Traffic Controllers Association--again, I hope our Democratic colleagues listened to Senator Cruz's chilling and sobering remarks just a few minutes ago; the International Association of Fire Fighters; and the Association of Flight Attendants.

This bill has support because it makes so much sense. It is fair.

We had three Democrats join us 2 weeks ago. There are two other Democrats who have voted for the House CR. That brings us up to a total of 58. Now, we voted against this because we didn't have furloughed workers. We have added furloughed workers. So hopefully those two will join us.

I have talked to enough Democrat Senators trying to get their input, trying to get this passed. I know there are Democrat Senators who want to vote for this bill, who can vote for this bill.

So putting all partisanship aside, again, I want to appeal to your better

angels. Search your conscience. Sign on to the bill. Vote for a bill that ends using Federal workers and the American public as pawns.

The Senator from Maryland said last week: Let's not punish Federal workers for our dysfunction.

I think my closing argument has to be to go back to what the Senator from Texas was talking about--the air traffic controllers and that situation. Five hundred safety issues were reported recently in our skies.

Search your conscience. Can you imagine--I mean, honestly, think about it. Imagine what the one Democrat staffer said: We are going to cling to this until planes fall out of the sky.

Think about how you would feel if, God forbid, a plane--another plane--fell out of the sky and people died. How could you live with yourself?

Now, again, you can continue the shutdown. I mean, that is your political choice. You can continue to vote against the very reasonable House continuing resolution. But you can still vote to pay Federal workers. You can vote to make sure that air traffic controllers get back to their stations and keep our skies as safe as possible. You can vote to dramatically reduce the chance that a plane will fall out of the sky. We just need two more of you; two more of our colleagues on the other side of the aisle who are working with, quite honestly, folks on this side, trying to end the shutdown; just two of those whom I spoke to that I thought would vote for this. I am begging you--two more.

Let's get on this bill. Let's pay Federal workers. Let's make our Nation safer. Let's do the fair thing. Let's do the right thing. Let's vote to proceed to this bill and get it passed.

I yield the floor.

Mr. President, reserving the right to object, I have come here today on the floor in good faith. I have come here not to argue. I have come here trying to find agreement. And I have listened to the Senator from Virginia, now the Senator from Maryland, and I have to say, I don't know exactly what percentage, but probably 95, 98 percent of what they have said, I agree with.

I do have to point out, and this would be the most--I would say this is a partisan comment. We have voted now 12 times on a measure that would open up the government. It is what the House passed as a clean CR, similar, if not identical, to what happened 13 times during the Biden administration--just a clean CR to open up the government at President Biden's levels, funding levels that Democrats voted for.

By the way, you know, House Republicans could have come to the table with a CR with $1.5 trillion of spending reductions to match the $1.5 trillion of spending increase the Democrats wanted, and now there would be areas of compromise.

But the House Republicans basically said here is the deal: Let's not shut

down the government. Let's not make Federal Government workers pay for our dysfunction. So pass a clean CR at President Biden's funding levels.

So, again, that has been voted down 12 times, regrettably. But let me set that aside.

I found out about the Senator from Maryland's proposal last May. I got the language this morning. I have got the bill here. And, you know, first of all, I kind of chuckled because the name of the bill is--I have actually got the true Warren Buffet tax, and we ought to talk about that later on. You might find that interesting. So he has taken my bill, the Shutdown Fairness Act, and now this is his bill, the True Shutdown Fairness Act.

And, again, I haven't done a word comparison, but it is probably like 95 percent of the Shutdown Fairness Act. That is a good thing. That shows there are a lot of areas of agreement.

I come from the private sector. You don't get a whole lot accomplished arguing all the time. It is all about finding areas of agreement. I have got a product; you want to buy it. Now, we will haggle over the price.

I have got a product; you want to buy it. Now, we need to haggle over the price.

Now, the three areas of--the differences in these bills--I think I have got this right. I would ask the Senator from Maryland to confirm that. Your bill is only for this fiscal year. My bill would just end this punishing Federal workers for our dysfunction forever. I mean, I think we should make it permanent.

The Senator from Maryland's bill includes furloughed employees. Now, the fact of the matter is, when all this is said and done, when we finally end this dysfunction, we fund the government through an appropriation, and because of the 2019 Government Fair Treatment Act, they will get paid anyway.

So my bill is obviously targeted to the people we are forcing to work, but I am not necessarily opposed to paying furloughed workers as well. That is something we can talk about.

The last difference is, it limits reduction in force. And I come from the private sector. Nobody likes to terminate employees--nobody.

But in the private sector when a business is facing bankruptcy, sometimes business owners are forced do that to preserve the other jobs.

The Federal Government is $38 trillion in debt. I don't think we should limit the President's ability, the Chief Executive's ability, to properly manage the Federal Government and make the tough decisions, sometimes, to reduce the workforce, cut out some government functions.

Again, that is something we can talk about.

So, again, I think, in fairness to the more than 2 million Federal employees that are now being forced to work because--the term is ``excepted,'' but that means they are essential--they are protecting our Nation; they are protecting our safety and security; they are writing Social Security checks. We need to see that they get their paycheck so they don't have to work Door Dash, so they don't have to go to food banks, so they are not under that stress.

I am asking in good faith, let's figure out how to get that done.

Now, I mean, I could propose--I will change the name of mine, by the way, if you want to call it ``true'' because I think it is the True Shutdown Fairness Act.

Today, right now, I would be willing to add furloughed workers because we are going to pay them anyway.

I am just asking: Would you substitute your bill; take my bill, substitute it in? I have actually got my staff to write the language to do this. It is probably not ready for prime time. You really need to get through leg counsel and that kind of stuff. But you would take my bill, add furloughed workers, and say it is a done deal? Is that something you would accept here today?

Yes, yes.

Again, I--

Again, I am trying to keep this--let's not argue. OK? Let's focus on areas of agreement.

So reduction in force, again, I think we probably have a philosophical disagreement there. I am not associating myself with anybody else's remarks. That is something that I think reasonable people can disagree with, and I think reasonable people can come to an accommodation.

Again, we are talking about making sure that 2.8--I think is about the number, 2.8--million Federal employees aren't worried about getting their next paycheck. That so overwhelms, quite honestly, the smaller differences about the length of the bill or what reduction in force.

Again, I am willing to come a long way in terms of--

I am willing to come a long way in terms of including furloughed workers. So, again, what I am suggesting is the way to do it--by the way, this could be a wonderful example for this body, working on a piece of legislation that, again, you bring it to the floor. We filed it--it got rule XIV'd, but we are doing it the right way. We are going to ask for a cloture vote on it, get it on the floor, open it up to amendments--perfect it. See what the body of the Senate wants to do with this piece of legislation that, again, we probably agree on 95 percent of it or higher.

The way to do it is, when I offer my bill and we vote on cloture, vote for cloture. Let's get on the bill. Let's start discussing today. I mean, maybe if we are so successful, we find the differences are so slight, we can pass it by UC later in the day.

But we do need to take this back to our conferences. We do need to go to the leg staff. We do need to perfect this. It will probably take it more time.

Passing it by unanimous consent is not the way to do it. I appreciate the attempt. I appreciate the dialogue.

That is not what I am asking. In all sincerity, for the benefit of those 2.8 million workers--our military, our law enforcement--let's take that burden off them today. Let's give them some hope to know this body is going to finally do something in a nonpartisan--I call it nonpartisan--way that we all agree on. We are going to iron out our differences the way you would generally do it, the way it used to be done: By getting onto a bill, voting for cloture, having the will to work its way, and then hopefully pass it early next week. That would be my suggestion.

I would be willing to do it today. I don't think we could probably handle that. There are things to discuss. That is all I am asking.

Would you like to respond?

Like I said, I really didn't want to come and argue.

I have to dispute that because even the National Active and Retired Federal Employees Association, which has endorsed my bill, says

that the bill does not single out favored political functions over its favored ones.

You understand, under the Antideficiency Act, opinions from the Office of Legal Counsel, ``excepted employees,'' it is pretty well standard. There may be some tweaks back and forth, which is what you give latitude to the executive branch.

Again, I am willing to sit down. I am sure the Republican conference is willing to sit down and say: OK. What should we do?

I think Congress has given way too much authority to the executive branch. I don't mind dialing that back a little bit. But, again, the way to approach that is let's get on the bill; let's talk about it; let's offer amendments--amendments that pass by voice vote--and let's get it done.

There is a lot of pressure on all of us. We all want to get this done.

But, again, passing by unanimous consent is not the way to get it done. The way to get it done is the way the process should work. I mean, wouldn't it be wonderful to actually see the process work in the Senate?

You know, again, I realize you don't like--

Let's get on the bill. And then let's sit down in good faith. Let's hammer out amendments, and let's get the thing passed next week. Let's do that. That is all I am asking.

I honestly hate to object to this. I don't want to. OK? But, again, this is not the way to pass it.

So, again, I will speak to my bill. I know we have got to get to votes and that kind of stuff. But again, truthfully, in as good of faith as I possibly can be, we have to get this done, and the way to do that is vote to get on the bill. Let's sit down and talk in good faith, and let's hammer out--it might be pretty minor differences when all is all said and done.

With that, Mr. President--

Sure.

Let me address that. I think this brinkmanship has got to end. I have been here 15 years. We should have passed 180 appropriations bills before the end of the fiscal year. We passed six. A lot of people worked in good faith to do that. OK.

It is obviously broken. We have got to start working on appropriations and budget reform. We have to start working on that together. OK?

But my guess is, part of what has happened with the reduction in force is that brinkmanship, trying to get you folks to just agree to what you have done 13 times. Just open up the government, and then we will talk. OK? We are more than open to talk.

But anyway, again, I am literally begging you, please, when we vote on cloture, vote to get on the bill, and then let's go through the amendment process, and let's get it done quickly.

Again, there is not that big of difference. We can get this done.

Again, I hate to do this, but with that, I will object and just, again, beg you.

Let's get on the bill.

Mr. President, reserving the right to object, again, I will condense my remarks because so much of what I want to say I already said to the Senator from Maryland.

I think it is interesting that the Senator from Michigan supports the Senator from Maryland's bill, which is a more comprehensive bill, I think. I only saw this now and hope I get it right. But I think yours is just limited to the time period from the shutdown until the bill is passed, and then we are in the same situation: The shutdown continues.

Hopefully, it won't. You know there is a way of doing it. Just vote for the clean CR.

But, again, I really don't want to object to these bills, but in this case, I understand the way to pass this into law--as I was speaking to the Senator from Maryland today, as he exited the Chamber: Wouldn't this be a wonderful demonstration for the Senate, the Congress, for America of how you pass a piece of legislation? If you take the bill--I realize you don't 100-percent agree with my Shutdown Fairness Act. Fine. I think we are 90-plus percent in agreement on it.

You vote for cloture to get on the bill. Then you work in good faith on the areas of disagreement. Let the Senate work its will through the Member process.

This is a small piece of legislation. It is an incredibly important piece of legislation. It is incredibly important because we all agree that we don't want to make Federal employees pay for the dysfunction of this body.

Let's first demonstrate that this body can actually function the way it is intended to function, which is to write a bill, get it filed, have the leader file cloture on it, and have the body vote to proceed to the bill with 60 votes.

We don't need all of you. We need about seven of you, eight of you. OK? Have eight of you agree to get on the bill. Then we will work in good faith and make sure that we don't make Federal employees pay for our dysfunction.

Again, I do have to object. But, again, I am urging--I am begging-- colleagues from the other side of the aisle to vote for cloture, and let's iron out these differences and make the Federal employees whole.

I object.

So now we will proceed to the cloture vote on the Shutdown Fairness Act.

In response to this, quickly. It is unrealistic to expect almost any piece of legislation to pass by unanimous consent, a bill that has just been introduced that exact morning. No matter how simple it is, there are going to be people who are going to object. So that is why the process is to file a bill, to file for cloture, and to proceed to get on the bill, to have the amendment process, and to go through the process. It can go very quickly, but doing this by unanimous consent is just unreasonable. So that is unfortunate. Again, the solution here is to vote for cloture to get on the bill, the Shutdown Fairness Act.

Now, I will try and keep my remarks reasonably short. I was allotted 20 minutes, but I know people are already here on the floor to vote, so I am mindful of that, but this is just a quick, little history of my experience since I got here in 2011.

This is our fourth shutdown now, and we are on the 23rd day. We have had 55 continuing resolutions. Again, I didn't vote for all of them, but I voted for many of them. You know, other colleagues on both sides have voted for those. I mean, generally, the fight is over. Let's just have a clean CR; let's not junk it up with policies. That is the loggerhead here. One side refuses to just do a clean CR. We have had 12 either increases or suspensions of the debt ceiling, and we have just surpassed $38 trillion in debt.

I realize people work in good faith on the budget process. I am on the Budget Committee and have been on the Appropriations Committee. I see the former chair and ranking member of the Appropriations Committee on the floor here. The sad fact is, since I have been here, we should have passed 180 appropriations bills prior to the end of the fiscal year that we are going to fund, but we have only passed 6. That is a 96.7-percent failure rate. It is clearly broken. The budget and appropriations process is broken.

Rather than spending weeks arguing over how do you get the government back open, I would much rather sit down in a nonpartisan way and go, How can we fix this? Can we go to 2-year appropriations cycles? I mean, what can we do to the budget process? I mean, I would much rather talk about that.

I understand that there is a lot of bipartisan agreement on proposals, but we will never get to that if we are literally mired down. Last year, it took us 6 months to finally fund the government with a continuing resolution. This is beyond ridiculous. So, again, this is a bipartisan problem here. I am not placing blame anywhere. It is just a bipartisan problem.

Unfortunately, we haven't passed any appropriations. I have pointed out before that the Democrats voted 13 times during the Biden administration for a clean CR at Biden's spending levels. Now they are saying, no, they won't.

Of course, their leader, in doing that on January 16, 2024, said:

Passing a clean CR this week is important for two main

reasons: First, passing the CR will avert a harmful and

unnecessary government shutdown. No reasonable Member of

either side, Democrat or Republican, wants a government

shutdown.

That was not Leader Thune saying that. That was then-Leader Schumer saying that, and now he has, obviously, completely changed his tune.

I did point this out, and this is important to understand because the other side is saying: Look, why don't you sit down and negotiate and compromise?

The House could have passed a CR with $1.5 trillion in spending cuts to match the CR proposed by the Democrats of $1.5 trillion in new spending. OK. There you go. Now you have got something to compromise on. That is not what the House did. The House said: Well, let's do what we did 13 times under the Biden administration. Let's just pass a clean CR at Biden's level and really beg the Democrats to say yes, but they haven't been willing to do that.

Again, I know people are waiting to vote, and I am not going to talk about the issue: you know, the fact that ObamaCare is causing premiums to skyrocket and what they are demanding, in terms of extending the enhanced

subsidies that were supposed to be temporary. They set the expiration date. It is ObamaCare that is causing premiums to be unaffordable, and they want those enhanced premiums to mask the failure of ObamaCare, but I won't get into detail on that.

I will talk about--this is day 23. We are forcing about 2.8 million Federal workers to work--military, law enforcement, people who write Social Security checks, and air traffic controllers who are keeping our skies safe--but we are not paying them. That is absurd. What is even more absurd is they will get paid. Whether they are working or furloughed, they will get paid because of the Government Employee Fair Treatment Act of 2019. Once this ends--I am assuming it will end with an appropriation--they will get paid.

With the Shutdown Fairness Act, all it asks--all it does--is to recognize that reality. It shouldn't cost a dime. The CBO has an alternate universe score on this. There is a zero score. This doesn't cost the Federal Government a dime. It just pays the workers who are being forced to work. Pay them now and not later. It makes incredible common sense.

I will end with a surprising support letter I got from the National Active and Retired Federal Employees Association that pretty well battens down all the arguments against this bill. It doesn't change the government's obligation to pay furloughed employees. They will get paid. It does not single out favored political functions over disfavored ones. Again, President Trump is, by and large, honoring the past opinions of the Office of Legal Counsel's Antideficiency Act.

They say that they don't believe that it is empowering the administration to pick and choose what activities it carries out. It includes to say that the American public relies on the full scope of Federal Agency missions that are funded via appropriations, and political pressures that exist to advance appropriations bills will remain to encourage resolution.

No, we are not there yet. I am sorry. I will conclude quickly.

The bottom line is, as I talk to the Senator from Maryland, the way to pass this law--the way to protect Federal workers--isn't with the unanimous consent request of a bill nobody has ever seen; it is to vote for cloture on the Shutdown Fairness Act. Let's work out the differences. We agree on 95 percent of it. Let's work out those differences and vote for cloture. We can get this passed, I think, early next week. With that, I will conclude my remarks on that.

Nomination of Rebecca L. Taibleson

Mr. President, I should be speaking for about 5 minutes on the wonderful nomination of Rebecca Taibleson, but I know everybody wants to vote.

She did a wonderful job in Judiciary. She is a highly qualified lawyer. She will make a wonderful judge for the Seventh Circuit. I urge all of my colleagues to vote for cloture on her nomination.

With that, I yield the floor.

We are behind schedule, so I ask unanimous consent to speak for up to 25 minutes before taking the vote.

Mr. President, I will ask you, I ask anybody in the Chamber, anybody who will listen to me on C-SPAN: Aren't you getting sick and tired of these government shutdown showdowns--with the drama, the turmoil, partisan bickering, the holding American people and our economy hostage for demands for billions and billions of dollars and more spending that we can't afford?

I know I am. This madness doesn't have to continue. We can begin ending this madness tonight by voting on a very simple piece of legislation: Eliminate Shutdowns Act.

Again, it is very simple. All it does is say, if we don't pass appropriations bills for all of government or any department, we don't shut those departments down. We don't shut all of government down. We do, literally, what the State of Wisconsin has done since the 1950s: We keep spending at last year's levels. I mean, how more common sense can you get?

We accomplish that by enacting 2-week rolling continuing appropriations to fund all of government or any part of it that doesn't have an appropriation passed for it on a rolling basis. I ask the Chamber: Who could be opposed to something so simple that, again, it prevents all this turmoil, all this drama, all this partisan bickering?

Well, my guess is Democrats will oppose it. My guess is also some of our appropriators will oppose it. I have heard some of the rationale. I don't think it really holds water. But what one point made is the problem with continuing resolutions is they fund programs that should be reduced or canceled and prevent important new programs from being started.

Well, again, that will create the incentive--I agree with that, by the way; I don't like CRs either--that will create the incentive, under these automatic rolling 14-day continuing appropriations, to pass appropriations bills. It doesn't in any way, shape, or form diminish or detract from the authority of appropriators or the Appropriations Committee.

I also heard the appropriators want the pressure of government shutdowns to allow them to pass appropriation bills. I guess I somewhat understand their point. But I would like to point out that pressure certainly hasn't worked.

I got here in the year 2011. I don't think anybody can dispute the fact that at least since that point in time--and probably before that-- the appropriations process is broken. It is dysfunctional.

In 15 years, what we should have done in Congress is pass 180 appropriations bills during those 15 years: 12 a year times 15--180 bills. Do you know how many we actually have passed? Six--six bills-- one for fiscal year 2017, five for fiscal year 2019--six bills. That is a 3.3-percent success rate or, stated a better way, that is a 96.7- percent failure rate of the appropriations process.

During that 15 years, we have had three shutdowns, and we have passed 55 continuing resolutions--55. And people are going to oppose an automatic rolling continuing appropriation? By the way, this year, the continuing resolution that we did pass took us 6 months. It took us 6 months of dysfunction before we finally passed the appropriations for this year, which, of course, is going to end in a day and a half.

What the shutdown pressure did produce is the pressure to mortgage our children's future for it. It produced the pressure to pass multiple, thousand-page omnibus spending bills. We have increased or suspended the debt ceiling 12 times in those 15 years, since I have been here. Our debt has gone from $14 trillion to over $37 trillion. Clearly, this is a broken process. Spending is completely out of control.

I don't think it is going to surprise anybody to find out that I brought a couple of charts to basically make my point. I would like to talk about a few facts, a few figures. This Chamber is generally not really interested in talking about, like, figures, but with my accounting background, I would like to. So let me give you a little history lesson. This dates back--these are 4-year average deficits going back to the year 2001.

You will see, in the two terms of President Bush's administrations, average deficits were $200 billion and $300 billion. So the average over his 8 years is $250 billion worth of deficits. Again, those were unacceptably high back then. That is when $100 billion or 2, actually, was real money. People were concerned about it.

President Obama came into office with the great recession. As his adviser Rahm Emanuel said, ``Never let a good crisis go to waste.'' And he didn't. So, in his first term, President Obama's average deficit was $1.27 trillion. That sparked the Tea Party movement. I am part of that. When the Tea Party came, we actually made a difference. We did dig our heels in on that out-of-control deficit spending. So for President Obama's second term, deficits averaged $550 billion. Again, $550 billion--that is a lot of money, except in Washington, DC.

President Trump came into office with a divided government, and he had to do deals to get spending bills passed. So his deficit increased to $810 billion for the first 3 years. Then COVID hit. We went on a massive, bipartisan, ``uniparty'' spending spree: a $3.1 trillion a year deficit--$3.1 trillion. We went from $4.4 trillion in spending to 6.5 and never looked back.

Now, responsible leaders would have recognized that that was an aberration. We can't keep spending once the pandemic has passed.

You know, back in World War II, we had responsibilities. We started World War II by spending 11.7 percent of GDP. During World War II, that increased to 41 percent for the war effort, but responsible leadership brought that spending back down to 11.4 percent of GDP, after the war, in 1948.

That is not what the Biden administration did. They kept spending at pandemic levels. We averaged, during the Biden administration, deficits of $1.9 trillion, and we will have a deficit this year of about $2 trillion.

And the very sad fact is, over the next 10 years, based on the CBO's most recent figures, the total 10-year deficit is going to equal about $26.4 trillion. That is $2.6 trillion per year. It starts out at about $2 trillion and ramps up to over $3 trillion by the year 2035.

Most of our party leadership says the problem here is we have a spending problem. We don't have a revenue problem; we have a spending problem. Let me just prove that point.

This is one of my favorite charts. It literally shows that no matter how much we try and punish success with the top marginal tax rate--we had, back in 1959, a top marginal tax rate of 91 percent. How much would you work if the Federal Government took 91 cents of every dollar you made? I wouldn't work very hard, personally. It has been as low as 28 percent. I would say, for a brief period of time, we were 72 percent free under Ronald Reagan. Now we are at 37 percent for the top marginal tax rate. But, again, you can see the ups and downs.

What is noteworthy about this chart is that no matter how much you try and punish success, over time, it has been very consistent. We were able to extract 17.1 percent of the American economy in Federal revenue. We have had a high of 20 percent, but that was after the dot- com bubble, and that quickly came back down to a 17.1-percent average.

It is time we recognized that reality. If we ever balance our budget, what we need to do is get spending under control. We have a spending problem, which I think this chart clearly demonstrates.

Back in 2000, we spent $1.8 trillion--$1.8 trillion. That was 17.7 percent of GDP. That was the year that we had 20 percent of revenue. We had a surplus for 4 years. We had a surplus for 4 years, and we frittered that all away. We finally broke the $2 trillion mark in the year 2002, after 9/11. All of a sudden, we were on a war footing. We had to spend more to defend this Nation. Again, we have never looked back.

The absolute high point--other than World War II, the high point in spending was with President Obama, after the great recession, at 24.4 percent of GDP. By the way, that year, because of the recession, revenue went down to 14.4 percent. That is what produced those massive deficits of $1.2 trillion, $1.3 trillion.

In 2014--again, as a result of the Tea Party--we pretty well held spending flat at about $3.5 trillion for about 5 or 6 years. So spending, as a percent of GDP, which is a relevant figure, dropped down to 20.2. This year, we are going to be spending over $7 trillion-- greater than 23 percent of our economy--and we are going to collect about 17.1 percent. We have got in excess of a 6-percent structural deficit. It is clearly unsustainable.

I hear a lot of talk about, ``Well, Ron, it is all mandatory spending,'' which is a problem. All of these government shutdowns are all about 25 percent of Federal spending--the discretionary accounts. We have 75 percent of our spending in mandatory, but you have to understand this is not all Social Security, Medicare, or even Medicaid.

Over the decades--I am researching to see exactly how this happened-- we have transferred what I would consider and what probably formerly was discretionary spending into other mandatory. So, this year, we will spend about $1 trillion in other mandatory spending. What this chart shows are the variants between 2019 spending, plussed up for population and inflation, leaving Social Security and Medicare and interest alone with spending at 2025 levels. If we were to do that, instead of spending $7 trillion this year, we would be spending about 6.5. In other mandatory--again, not Social Security and Medicare or even Medicaid--we are spending $239 billion more than inflation and population adjusted for 2019 spending. I don't think we were spending too little in 2019. Nondefense discretionary is up about $145 billion over fully inflated 2019 levels. So that is not the problem.

There is just one other fact I want to dispute, particularly for defense hawks in my party, because I hear it a lot.

Well, the good news is we have got parity between defense spending and domestic spending. I don't know what figures they are looking at, but if you only consider nondefense discretionary--yes, it increased from Bill Clinton--it is pretty close to 1 to 1. But that was before 9/ 11, before we were on a war footing. Under Trump, it is 1.64 to 1. But, again, you can't ignore the other mandatory--that other trillion dollars--nowadays. If you factor in nondefense discretionary and other mandatory, we have increased spending on domestic programs 2\1/2\ times to 1. In defense, from Obama's spending, the increase is 3\1/2\ times to 1. Under Trump, it is 3.65. So we don't have parity.

I am sorry, defense hawks. You have had--you know, lights out. You have lost that battle. We are not even close to parity. Whatever you think you are getting in defense, they are getting 3\1/2\ times that in domestic spending. Again, we can't afford it.

So, again, those are just some basic facts, some basic figures that explain our current fiscal situation. Let me go back to where I started.

Here we are again in another shutdown showdown. The Democrats' opening bid, by the way, was: OK, well, we will give you a 4-week CR--4 weeks--and all we are asking is for another $1.5 trillion in spending. So we are willing to end the turmoil, and we will quit playing games with people's lives for 4 weeks, as long as you agree to roll back everything you passed in the One Big Beautiful Bill and increase spending by $1.5 trillion.

Is that a serious starting negotiation point? I don't think so.

What I am asking from all of my colleagues is, please, imagine a world in which these ridiculous shutdowns are no more than a ridiculous relic of the past, where we are not wasting our time and effort and energy and angst over this partisan bickering.

Again, I have to remind you that the Eliminate Shutdowns Act does not diminish the authority of the Appropriations Committee. If we do these rolling continuing appropriations, now the appropriators can get together, and they can find areas of agreement, like we did in this Chamber on Veterans Affairs and Military Construction, in that minibus. Where there are areas of disagreement, we will take some time and find the compromises.

As I said, I agree with the point that the problem with CRs is that they fund programs that should be reduced or canceled, and they prevent important new programs from being started. There, again, is another incentive to do appropriations, and now you have the time to do it. We won't be wasting our time and effort and energy and angst on these charades. These are charades.

I can't predict exactly what will happen if we pass the Eliminate Shutdowns Act. Nobody can. I can predict we will never have another shutdown--ever--in the Federal Government. I am OK with that. Again, I don't like CRs. I don't like our current spending level. I am willing to concede much higher spending levels than I think we can afford to eliminate government shutdowns for all times. So I can predict that.

But here is something else I think could happen: If we are not wasting our time on this partisan bickering over shutdowns, there have been so many discussions about bipartisan appropriations and budget reform, things like 2-year appropriations cycles, where, instead of 12 bills, which, obviously, we can't pass, how about doing 6 and making it manageable? In the year you don't appropriate for an account, you are doing oversight, and just reverse the cycle. I mean, I would even consider 3-year appropriations bills--4 a year--but that could impinge on future Congresses.

Again, I understand there are complications to all of these things, but think positively about what ending shutdowns could do for this body, for this government, for people's lives.

Passing the Eliminate Shutdowns Act, eliminating shutdowns for all time, would be a signature achievement of this Congress. Think of that. We together, on a bipartisan basis, can say we are the group after the horrible assassination of Charlie Kirk. Recognize this is the moment to come together as a nation, as a Senate, as a Congress. Do the right thing for the American people. End government shutdowns. That would be a signature achievement in this Congress, and I am hoping and praying that we do that. But let me be honest. Voting no on this bill--voting no is basically voting yes for continuing the chaos and for continuing to play partisan games with

people's lives and our economy. That is what a ``no'' vote is. Voting yes would help cement this as a lasting legacy for this Congress.

So, again, I urge all of my colleagues, please put the partisanship aside. Recognize the value of eliminating shutdowns and vote yes on this very simple, very commonsense bill that I think quite honestly the American people want to see passed.

With just a couple more minutes, I sat in the Chamber, and I listened to all the arguments about the ObamaCare subsidies--the temporary, COVID, enhanced ObamaCare subsidies. Nobody is talking about doing away with the ObamaCare subsidies. But for sure it should be pointed out that the reason health insurance is so expensive on the individual market is because of the faulty design of ObamaCare.

We had high-risk pools to take care of people with preexisting conditions. It needed a couple of tweaks to cover everybody. But that wasn't good enough for Democrats because they want a single-payer system, so they threw out and outlawed high-risk pools, and in its place forced people on the individual insurance market to pick up the full cost of covering people with preexisting conditions. That caused insurance rates on the individual market to skyrocket. That is why insurance prices continue to skyrocket on the individual market in particular.

What Democrats did during COVID is they basically removed any participation in the ObamaCare exchanges from many millions of people who qualified. The result of that is massive fraud. You have unscrupulous agents and brokers who are signing people up, just using their name and their birth date, for health insurance that these people don't even know they are signed up for. So they don't make claims. Something like 12 million people on the ObamaCare exchanges out of 20\1/2\ million had no claims. It is typical that maybe 10 to 15 percent of people on insurance don't make claims because they are healthy but 12 million out of 20\1/2\? That means 6 million don't even know they have a policy.

So we are literally pouring tens of billions of dollars per year into insurance companies for policies for people that they don't even know they have and they don't use them, while we are paying commissions to those dishonest brokers. That is a massive level of fraud that apparently Democrats have no problem perpetuating. Republicans have a problem with that. We want to lower premiums by doing commonsense reforms and repairing the damage done by ObamaCare.

Again, I think what I heard on the floor needed some response. That is my response to that.

I will just end again by encouraging all of my colleagues--the American people don't like these shutdowns. They want them ended. We have a very simple bill--not partisan--that really offers no advantage to anybody, which is perfect. It just keeps the government open. It gives appropriators time to do appropriating, appropriate those Departments, and end all the chaos and all the turmoil and all the playing games with people's lives.

With that, I yield the floor.

I ask for the yeas and nays.

Mr. President, I will ask you, I will ask everybody in the Chamber, everybody listening to me on C-SPAN: Aren't you getting sick and tired of the shutdown showdowns? I am. In 15 years, we should have passed 180 appropriations bills before the end of the fiscal year. We passed six--3.6 percent. That is a 96.7-percent failure rate.

I am sorry the appropriations process is broken. This bill does nothing to diminish the authority of the appropriators. What it does is it removes all the turmoil, all the disruption of people's lives. It takes away the partisan bickering, and it just--every 14-day rolling appropriations bill to keep any Department open, where we haven't passed an appropriations bill, gives appropriators time to find areas of agreement and work on compromise in disagreement.

Let me be clear, a vote against the Eliminate Shutdowns Act is a vote to continue the chaos and to continue the partisan game playing with people's lives.

And by the way, this won't be the only time we will vote on this. I will guarantee you that if we go into a shutdown. Please, do right by the American people. Vote for the Eliminate Shutdowns Act. We can do away with shutdowns for all time. A simple vote yes will do that.

I yield the floor.

Mr. President, I call up amendment No. 3428 and ask it be reported by number.

Mr. President, the late great Senator Tom Colburn referred to earmarks as the gateway drug to runaway spending.

In testimony before the House in 2018, he stated: I have witnessed earmarking up close and know it is inherently corrupt. Earmarks are abused as a form of currency to buy and sell votes of politicians and to reward political supporters.

Convicted superlobbyist Jack Abramoff affectionately called the earmark system ``the favor factory.''

I am sad to report that the favor factory is up and running about $1.3 billion worth of earmarks in this bill alone.

My amendment acknowledges the reality that those of us who are opposed to earmarks are grossly outnumbered, so as hard as we try to ban them, we won't be able to. So my amendment simply tries to prevent earmarks being used as a quasi-campaign contribution. So members can talk about the earmarks in official Senate proceedings, subcommittee hearings, committee hearings, on the floor, in official Senate publications, but if they go on media, if they set up press releases, if they use them in ads, those earmarks are automatically rescinded.

If people really don't believe that this is a favor factory, this amendment should pass 100 to zero.

I urge a ``yes'' vote.

I ask for the yeas and nays.

Mr. President, this is pretty simple. I don't think anybody can dispute the Office of Management and Budget needs to identify budgeting and accounting inefficiencies in the executive branch. They need the resources to do it, so I ask my colleagues to oppose this amendment.