Floor Statements

Mr. President, I just wanted to get up and explain why I will be voting against the passage of the Social Security Fairness Act a little bit later tonight. I am going to try to keep the volume down and maybe the frustration down a little bit more tonight than I did yesterday, but I thought it was important to again explain why sometimes the tough vote is the right vote.

To kind of lay the groundwork, I am from North Carolina. I am up for reelection in November of 2026. I have heard some people walk up and down the hallway and say that they really oppose the bill, but they are up for reelection in 2028 or are up for reelection in 2030, and they are worried about the politics of it. I never worry about the politics when I am convinced in my heart of hearts it is the right decision, and let me explain why.

The Social Security Fairness Act is trying to address what I think is an inequity and a problem. Unfortunately, it is doing it in a way that is at the expense of $200 billion out of the Social Security trust fund, without a dime offsetting it.

Now, some of my fiscal conservative colleagues have said: Well, no, it is not really depleting it because it is the Social Security trust fund. So it is not adding to our debt.

What they are forgetting is that when the Social Security trust fund becomes insolvent, the fairies don't come back and replenish the Social Security trust fund. We don't have trust fund fairies. What we have is a debt that is already over $33 trillion that we are going to be expected to write another check out of, and we are headed toward a debt crisis.

This bill, by everyone's agreement--even those who are going to vote for it tonight--pulls forward its insolvency. The consensus right now is that it is going to occur 9 years from now. This pulls it forward by 6 months.

So I have to vote against this bill and not because I don't ultimately want to fix an injustice for a very small percentage of people who deserve a few hundred dollars more a month, but the way we have gone about it, it is going to be costly, and it is being done at a time when we are not plussing the accounts back up.

I feel like, in my vote-casting, I am likely to be on the losing side. I understand that. None of these amendments are going to pass because, if they do, the bill fails, and we know that. So, for anybody who is pulling for one amendment or another, let me just show you how I can tell the future: Not a single one will pass. This bill will be voted out this evening, and it will be sent to the President's desk. Once the President signs it, he will have guaranteed that the Social Security trust fund will become insolvent 6 months sooner. Think about it this way: 8\1/2\ years from now versus 9 years from now. It is going to pull $200 billion out, causing that to occur.

It is actually going to provide some benefit that I don't believe the beneficiaries deserve. It is really confusing that handful or that segment of the people who will get the benefit and is casting them into a group that, I think, arguably, maybe doesn't deserve the benefit. Anyone who should, we can take care of, but it is not $200 billion. But that is what happens when you don't have a single committee hearing on a bill. That is what happens when it comes from the House through something called a discharge petition. Bypassing all the processes, it comes to the Senate, and we never even have a hearing.

We are going to have a vote later today for a $200 billion raiding of the Social Security trust fund that is going to bring insolvency forward from 9 years to 8\1/2\ years, and not a single vote or a single hearing has been held in a single committee on Capitol Hill.

Now, folks, if you can't agree on the finances, if you can't agree on the fairness, can we all agree on the process for something as weighty as this? We should have given it the justice it deserves and held a hearing on it.

For that reason, I am going to vote against it, and then I will be standing there, reminding my colleagues ``I told you so'' when I am also trying to help them fix the problem they are about to vote on to create.

I ask for the yeas and nays.

Mr. President, I rise today to recognize and celebrate the 250th anniversary of the founding of the city of Greenville, NC.

Greenville is the economic, medical, educational, and cultural hub of eastern North Carolina with top-ranked educational institutions, groundbreaking medical and research facilities, a diversified base of industries, an abundance of indoor and outdoor recreational opportunities, and a down-home feel that is warm and welcoming.

Greenville's history goes back to before the Revolutionary War and the founding. In 1761, Pitt County was established and named after William Pitt, a British politician and veteran of the French and Indian War. In 1774 Martinsborough was formally founded and established as the county seat of Pitt County.

In 1787, Martinsborough was renamed Greenesville after Major General Nathanael Greene, the consequential American Revolutionary War general who helped ensure American victory over the British. In 1791, Greenville hosted President George Washington during his tour of the southern States.

Sadly, a fire destroyed the Pitt County courthouse in 1857 and most of the county's existing records within it, limiting the ability for future generations to track Greenville's genealogy.

But the loss of the county courthouse did not impede the city's continued growth as a major city in eastern North Carolina. For example, in 1889, Greenville further expanded as a hub for eastern North Carolina when the first train traveled along the new railroad extension to Greenville, connecting the community to larger markets and transportation networks.

In 1907, the North Carolina General Assembly founded the East Carolina Teachers Training School. It would later join the University of North Carolina System and become East Carolina University, which continues to serve as a pillar of the community, and today graduates over 6,000 students annually.

In 1923, the first Pitt Community Hospital opened. Today, the ECU Health Medical Center is the heart of the ECU Health System, serving 1.4 million people from 29 counties across nine hospital locations.

Continuing its role as a regional hub, the city of Greenville and Pitt County purchased 500 acres of land with an airstrip in 1940 to create the region's first airport, providing service to both local residents and the military over the years.

In 1987, the city of Greenville made history by electing Edward Carter as its first African-American mayor. He had previously served for 4 years on the Greenville City Council before his election to serve as mayor.

In more recent history, the city of Greenville opened a new city hall in 2006 which includes design features intended to illustrate how government should be open and transparent to its citizens.

In 2020, Pitt County was one of the 10 counties recognized by the National Civic League as an ``All-America County,'' highlighting the county's work on inclusive civic engagement to address health and well- being and creating stronger connections among residents.

This anniversary is a monumental occasion to celebrate and commemorate the achievements of Greenville, NC. For 250 years, the city has served as a regional hub for eastern North Carolina and a place where you will find yourself in good company.

It is my honor to recognize and celebrate the 250th anniversary of the founding of the great city of Greenville, NC.

Madam President, I ask unanimous consent that any Members or staff in the Chamber at this time be allowed to applaud for a period of up to 30 seconds.

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

Madam President, I come to the floor to talk about the vote that we are about to move to here shortly. It sounds like motherhood and apple pie--the Social Security Fairness Act. Who could be against Social Security fairness?

The fact of the matter is, the policy does address a challenge with Social Security for a single-digit percentage of people who have a pension--a government pension program--and they are not necessarily getting exactly what they should back. So it is something we need to fix, but this is not the way to fix it.

Ladies and gentlemen, we are 10 years away from most economists' consensus believing that the Social Security trust fund is going to reach insolvency--10 years--10 years away.

This bill will take $200 billion over that 10-year period out of the Social Security trust fund without any offsetting payment to it. So that is, to right a wrong for a small percentage of people that should get fairly treated, they are going to rake $200 billion--with a ``b''-- over 10 years to pay for this.

That pulls insolvency forward by 6 months. Now 6 months doesn't sound like a lot, if you are talking years and years and years into the future, but we are estimated to be reaching insolvency within the next 9 to 10 years. Suddenly, 6 months becomes a pretty significant amount of time. So we are bowing--we have people here who have voted against bills before because they say: I don't like the idea of something not going through regular order, getting dumped on us at the last minute, and voting on it.

Ladies and gentlemen, this bill has not even had a hearing in any committee in the House or the Senate. It got sent to us through a procedure called a discharge petition, which means that they have discharged their duty of doing regular order, sent it to us, and now we are about to take a vote today without having voted on it.

Now, I know there are a lot of people that say: Thom Tillis must be committing political suicide because how could you be against Social Security fairness?

People asked me the same question when I was against the PACT Act that my office helped author. The PACT Act was a veterans bill, a trillion-dollar bill that we had a commitment to take through regular order to get it right before we passed it. I talked to veterans groups who were concerned with my lack of support for a bill that I helped author, and I said: It is because I think you are going to regret it by us not thinking through the implications.

I said: It wouldn't surprise me if, 2 years from now, you are going to see and realize the very challenges that I told you about.

They said: You know what, we think it will work itself out.

Well, do you know what happened almost 2 years to the month? We are $3 billion in the hole for the current year veterans budget and $15 billion in the hole going forward because we didn't do our homework. We caved to the pressure of the moment instead of doing this on a sustainable basis.

Now, I don't know how many people are going to oppose the bill today. It is likely to move through. But to those of you who are looking past the regular order and fixing the things that I know are not fixed in this bill, own it when we have to come back and fix it. I will come back and fix it. I will help with Social Security reform. But know that you are making the job harder to fix a trust fund that is within 10 years of going insolvent.

It would be easy for me to talk to my friends at the Fraternal Order of Police and say: Yes, we are going to get this done.

And by God, I hope somebody over the next 8 to 10 years fixes Social Security in the future because in 10 years, there will be a mandatory 17--minimum 17 percent cut in the Social Security benefit across the board if we continue to fail to act here and if we continue to dig a deeper hole by the vote we are having today.

So to those of you who need this fixed, who need to be treated fairly, count me in. But understand that the folks who are rushing this vote today are hastening the day where they are probably going to break the promise for 97 percent more people on Social Security who do not benefit from this bill.

Look, I am in an election cycle. A lot of people may think that I am committing political suicide by doing this, but this Chamber needs courage and needs to say what needs to be said. We are about to pass an unfunded $200 billion spending package for a trust fund that is likely to go insolvent over the next 9 to 10 years, and we are going to pretend like somebody else has to fix it. Well, when you are a U.S. Senator and you have the election certificate, that falls on us.

I want to finish with this: There is nobody in this Chamber I hate to be in disagreement with more than the senior Senator from Maine. Senator Collins understands that we do need to fix this, and her sense of fairness and her expertise are unmatched in this Chamber. We do not disagree with what we ultimately need to do. This is a disagreement in how to get there and how to have something that addresses the downstream risk.

So it is with some trepidation that I come to the floor and criticize the good work of Senator Collins, but I do it because there is so much riding on us getting this right and having the courage to fix Social Security over the next few years, folks, or--record this speech--we will rue the day that we failed to do it.

I yield the floor.

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

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

Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the mandatory quorum call with respect to the Marzano nomination be waived.

And that the vote occur immediately.

Cloture Motion

Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent to be permitted to speak for up to 5 minutes, followed by Senator Thune for up to 15 minutes.

Mr. President, I am going to be brief because you don't want to stand in the way of the majority leader-elect.

I come to the floor today because at 3 o'clock this afternoon in the house chamber in Raleigh, there is a veto-override. There was a veto by Governor Cooper for a disaster relief bill that the people of Western North Carolina need.

Now, I understand there are provisions in there that have to do with a legitimate disagreement about the scope and the role of the executive branch, but this is not the time for us to rethink whether or not we should be sending every signal we can to the people of North Carolina that help is on the way.

I am doing my part here in this Chamber to make sure that our Members stay focused on providing $100 billion in relief before we get out of this Congress. I need my colleagues in Raleigh to vote to override that veto today so that we can be sure that North Carolina knows that every Republican and every Democrat--we are not Republicans or Democrats; we are North Carolinians trying to provide desperate help to a land mass the size of Massachusetts that has experienced more than 100 deaths, thousands of businesses impacted, thousands of people out of their homes.

So I just come to the floor today to encourage any member who may have one reason or another to not sustain this veto-override in the house chamber in Raleigh to set that aside today and go do right by the people of Western North Carolina.

Mr. President.

We look so much alike.

Yes.

Mr. President, my folks were wondering why I am sitting so close to Mitt Romney. He and I are seat mates. These are our assigned seats.

I told Mitt that I had not prepared a single comment, but I did want to come down and say a few things about him.

I hope that we use this opportunity and remember it over the next 2 years. Here is a question we can all ask or we can all talk about and thank him for the incredible work that he has done. And to his staff, the problems he has caused for you by being so honest, so forthright, and so direct. Right?

How many times, Mitt--you can't answer it because I think it is against the rules--but how many times have your staff gone: Boss, we wish sometimes you just weren't so forthright and honest?

But that is who this guy is. We have been battle buddies in a lot of the bipartisan efforts that have gone along. He is the reason why some of them passed, quite honestly. Without his support and the support of a handful of others, stuff that has enduring generational value would have never happened.

I would ask everybody here who is thanking Mitt Romney for his role model behavior in the times he has been in the Senate and the times that I have known him--the first time I met him was the December before his election, when I was a fairly newly minted legislator--and there is no reason why he would have known me or remembered that meeting. But I have been impressed with him since that moment in Charlotte, NC, when he was running for President--let us go forward and hopefully ask ourselves, as we come together as a nation, as we solve problems that can only be solved by people on both sides of the aisle coming together and taking the heat that comes along with that, let's ask ourselves over the next 2 or 4 years what would Mitt Romney do and let that be a guiding post for those of us who are going to be here who may be put into those situations to do right by this country.

We are going to have one less person in Mitt here, but I believe it is in all of us to emulate what Mitt has done. I hope that that is a part of the legacy that we will honor as he is gone.

Finally, if you don't know about Mitt--I am going to miss him for those reasons. Those are all legitimate reasons to miss Mitt, but I am going to miss his fast wit and his ability to just call things quickly. Having a seat mate like that when you are in the middle of vote-arama is gold, folks. Nobody is going to know that except for the conversations we have had back here in the middle of the night.

He is a good man, a good father, a great grandfather.

I know I am not supposed to do this either, but by show of hands, who shares DNA with Mitt Romney up there in the Gallery? Yes. Well, congratulations to all of you and the dozens of other family members who have to be hugely proud of Mitt Romney. I am.

Mr. President, reserving the right to object, I want to make this very clear to the members of the Oglala Sioux Tribe and the Cheyenne River Tribe: This is not about you. As a matter of fact, I know you have been seeking this for--it has been 100 years since the event they have memorialized, and you have been seeking this for quite some time. But you need to know that your leadership is playing a game that will ultimately force me to take a position on the modification.

I believe that the Wounded Knee Massacre Memorial is at a sacred site, and the act really does need to come into law--just not yet. The reason is, I have an issue with their Tribal leadership. I have an issue with the Sioux's leadership going after the Lumbee Tribe in Eastern North Carolina.

The Lumbee have been trying to seek recognition for years, and there is a long and sordid trail of racism, the Jim Crow era, and things that I will not talk about today, but I will in the coming weeks.

As many of my colleagues know, I have been working on the Lumbee Fairness Act--getting it passed into law--for quite some time. I acknowledge--I am going to go quicker on this. I am going to submit something for the Record, if I may.

Mr. President, the bottom line is, I am not going to get into the history of the Lumbee Tribe. What I am going to do is get into the history of the casino cartel that is trying to prevent the Lumbee Tribe from being recognized. First among them is the largest Indian Tribe east of the Mississippi River. It is the Eastern Band of the Cherokee in North Carolina.

These are my constituents. They are the same constituents where then- Speaker Thom Tillis made sure they were treated fairly, renegotiated their compact, and it was transformational to them, as a Republican leader, over the objections of a majority of my Republican members.

That is the only bill that I allowed to do--in my 4 years as speaker--to do the right thing for the Cherokee. My reward was to have them use some of the treasure that was gained from my support in the statehouse to pay lobbyists huge sums of money to discredit the application for recognition of the Lumbee Indians.

Now I am going to get into some specifics.

For years, the Eastern Band of Cherokee Indians and their adviser Wilson Pipestem had led the efforts, the punitive efforts, directly against the Lumbee Tribe. Most recently, at the 81st NCAI Convention, a few weeks ago, UINO--sorry for these abbreviations--spread inflammatory information about the Lumbee Tribe. That was on November 1. The Eastern Band publicly thanked the UINO for the distribution of these materials. They were false. Since this stunt, the NCAI president has publicly condemned the distribution of those materials and issued an apology to the Lumbee Tribe.

Now I have been made aware that Eastern Band, Wilson Pipestem, and UINO have been hosting events on Capitol Hill, spending large sums of money to continue spreading those lies.

In the coming weeks and months, I am going to continue to highlight the individuals, the lobbyists, the Tribal leaders, and the groups that are part of this web that are preventing the Lumbee from getting the recognition they have deserved for nearly 130 years.

I want to reiterate to the Oglala Sioux and to the Cheyenne River Sioux: This is not about you. This is about your leaders, and this is about their underhanded, unfair treatment of a Tribal nation that deserves recognition and that this country needs to atone for over a century of racism and neglect.

For that reason, Mr. President, I do object to the modification.

Mr. President, Senator Rounds--I call him Mike--we are good friends. We came into the Senate together in 2014. We got to know each other before we even got here. He is a man of honor, and he is a man of his word. I have no doubt that he would not stand in the way should I allow this measure to go forward today.

The problem is, the Tribes that he represents will. They will continue to work to spread the misinformation to smear a Tribe that deserves recognition, and they want the respect that they have been entitled to for over 130 years when they first got recognition, short of Federal recognition.

So if I had a Senate and a Congress--if I had 535 Mike Rounds--I would not have objected to this today. If I had Tribal leaders who were not lying to constituents and misinforming them on the background of the Lumbee Tribe and knowing that they will continue to, I have no other option than what I did today. It gives me no pleasure to do it to one of my favorite people in the U.S. Senate.

Mr. President, I would like to start by thanking Senator Warnock for letting me jump ahead in the speaking order today. I appreciate it. I am only going to take a couple of minutes.

Yesterday, in the press report, apparently, I had reported what I said at lunch for the news about me talking about a simple concept. I don't know. I think the American people are on board with me. We have to show up for work, right? I think we have to.

The reason we had 18 votes on Monday night is because some of my colleagues on my side of the aisle--folks, this is not a partisan--it is partisan. It ended up focusing on some of my colleagues. You have to show up for work. We have got work to do here. And I understand there are all kinds of good reasons. But there is no excuse to let Chuck Schumer force these judicial nominations down our throat.

We have got to show up for work. What happened on Monday night only occurred because Republicans were not here. They are my colleagues. They are my friends. But they are business associates first who have a job of making sure that we prevent Chuck Schumer from driving a lot of these judicial nominations that, if we are here, won't be successful.

The only reason we were here until midnight on Monday night is because some of my colleagues didn't show up. I am just saying, folks, this is pretty

simple. I have spent most of my career in business. If my senior staff didn't show up or my former partners at Pricewaterhouse didn't show up, we would find them another job.

We get this job, whether we want it or not, unless we resign. You can't fire us in the midterm or in the middle of our terms. But I can express my concern with giving Chuck Schumer an easy way to beat Republicans who want to vote against and potentially defeat some of these very liberal judges.

So all I am saying--so that the press gets it right--people put words in my mouth at a private lunch. That is OK. People do that around here. I don't. But let me say what I said at lunch: 90 percent of success is showing up. If we were here on Monday night, we wouldn't have been here until midnight because we would have defeated Chuck Schumer's opportunity to do it then.

If we are not here every single day--I had somebody ask me: Well, when do I need to be there for that Fourth Circuit nominee? When is that vote going to occur?

I said: When you are not here.

We have got to show up, folks. The American people expect us to show up for a job. These are my friends. These are my colleagues. These are people I work together with. But they let me down on Monday. They better not let me down for the rest of the session or every time we fail because we failed to show up. I will be back down here to remind my colleagues that the American people and the people who elected us in our great States want us to do our jobs. You can't do your job if you are not here.

Mr. President, I am not going to get into the debate before the floor, but I heard the city of Asheville referenced at the last debate from the gentleman from Kentucky, and I have to tell you, I am not happy with that. I sat here last week and tried to do a unanimous consent request to fund the Small Business Administration loan, and my colleague from Kentucky objected.

But don't pretend like this debate tonight has anything to do with Asheville, NC, a town that just got drinking water 2 days ago. You want to argue this, don't argue it on the merits of something that you objected to me trying to accomplish last week for the city of Asheville.

I yield the floor.

Mr. President, I understand we have about 7 or 8 minutes left. I may need to use all of them.

Let's talk about tomfoolery. Let's talk about being disingenuous. The gentleman from Kentucky knows damn well that he proposed an amendment that would have actually caused the bill to fail.

The gentleman from Kentucky also knows very well that the House has a posture that the disaster recovery bill has to be funded. The gentleman from Kentucky knows that this aid that I have tried to get to the House would have been fully funded. The gentleman from Kentucky also knows that I also support the amendment he offered, but he played the game that we play around here and tried to think that I wouldn't have the courage to stand up

against that garbage amendment because it was the right amendment at the wrong time.

I yield, Mr. President, unless there is additional time and someone else wants to speak.

Mr. President. Mr. President.

Mr. President, I rise for an--

Mr. President, I rise--

Mr. President, parliamentary inquiry--

Is it the ruling of this Chair that it is out of order to make the parliamentary inquiry, Mr. Chair?

Thank you, Mr. President.

First, I have a parliamentary inquiry.

Mr. President, I want to understand the effect of the gentleman from Kentucky relinquishing time.

Does that mean that I would need to continue debate until the time is over; or at the time that I finish speaking, will we go to a vote?

There is about 4 minutes left?

There is 5\1/2\ minutes remaining?

Parliamentary inquiry.

Does the Senator from North Carolina have the floor?

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

I have been accused of lying. I don't mind that. I mean, I am a politician. People do that every single day.

But I believe that someone may be guilty of misleading this body about my position. So I am going to take a few minutes to explain my position. It may or may not coincide with the end of time set aside for debate.

But our State motto is ``Esse Quam Videri.''

Mr. Chair, may I have order?

My state motto is ``Esse Quam Videri.'' That is Latin. It means ``to be rather than to seem.''

Well, ladies and gentlemen, the gentleman from Kentucky suggests that I am against clawing back the Green New Deal and certain things that my colleagues on the other side of the aisle passed through reconciliation. Why would anybody with any experience in this body think that it wouldn't be one of the first things I would vote for when we have reconciliation? Right? How can anybody possibly suggest that I am against clawing back policies that were passed through reconciliation because I am going to need it to pay for tax reform when we pass reconciliation in the next Congress. So how can it--and I have said that we are going to claw back things, and we are going to pay for it.

If you listen to the gentleman from Kentucky, he said I am against repealing that. Well, both can't be true, ladies and gentlemen. They just simply can't be true.

I am for the very things--and I hope that the Senator from Kentucky knows I would be happy to cosponsor that bill. If I have it, I will tomorrow.

But I don't play games in this Chamber. I actually fight, in this case, for the people of western North Carolina who are suffering. I will defeat any amendment to aid to North Carolina if it stands in the way. But I know a little bit about legislative procedure, ladies and gentlemen. And anybody in here who pays attention to how a bill becomes law should watch this.

We could pass the SBA funding bill out of here because 99 out of 100 Senators said it was OK. One didn't. Now we would like to think that the House would receive it and pass it out because we have a tradition of not funding disaster recovery bills, but we know the current majority won't do it.

So anybody with a modicum of experience in legislative procedure and actually passing bills that get to the President's desk would know that it will have to be funded, and my colleague from the western North Carolina 11th District is working on a paid-for now.

So if you really care about the people in North Carolina, if you really understand the legislative process, and you really understand the posture of the House, then you know--you absolutely know--that this bill will be paid for before it goes to the President's desk.

Now, I have some people asking me why I am talking. Because I am going to get the final say here, and I am not

going to let anyone else talk before we have to go to a vote. So if you are wondering why I am going on, I am not going to play the game of somebody coming up--I am only equating what they said about me--that I lied.

So, ladies and gentlemen, instead of relinquishing the time, unless I can be assured the minute I put this mic down we are going to go to a vote, then I have got to start quoting poetry or something because I am not yielding until time is out.

So, Mr. President, may I make a parliamentary inquiry?

Mr. President, how much time is left?

You said 7 minutes and 35 seconds?

OK. Mr. President, may I make an inquiry of the lady from the State of Washington?

I ask for the yeas and nays.

Mr. President, I come to the floor today, and I am ultimately going to be offering a unanimous consent for the body, but beforehand, I want to talk a little bit about what happened in North Carolina with the storm of Hurricane Helene. It actually starts a couple of days earlier when a weather system came into Western North Carolina and dumped inches and inches of rain on several--more than a dozen--major river basins and saturated the land.

Now we have Hurricane Helene come in through the Florida Panhandle, through Georgia, through South Carolina, and into North Carolina. It largely maintained the integrity of a category 1 storm, tropical storm, a couple hundred miles inland in a mountain range. It is a first-of-a- kind storm that is the most deadly in North Carolina history--and, folks, we have been hit by Florence, Matthew, Hugo; I can go through a long list--over 102 people dead, some still missing. We have families who are disconnected and will likely not even have electricity.

There is a community called Big Creek. Asheville is without drinkable water today. Businesses are suffering. The Small Business Administration is out of money. They are telling people who have had claims processed that ``Your claim has been approved'' and that as soon as the Federal Government replenishes the Small Business Administration account, then they will get the money. Think about that. If you are one of thousands of people in Western North Carolina in a land mass the size of the State of Massachusetts--ladies and gentlemen, that is how big the land mass was that had devastating storms. Mr. President, 102 people died, and hundreds of businesses are out of business.

I have a 20-mile segment of I-40 that is impassable. It is not from rockslides; it is because the land underneath the roads no longer exists. There are 5 miles that are going to have to be repaired. Twenty years ago, when we had a three-tenths-of-a-mile segment, it took 7 months to repair it. And that was just removing a landslide; the integrity of the roadbed was there. We don't have that anymore.

We have 80 miles of rail tracks gone. We have hundreds of businesses out of business right now. We have a major water system that hopes to have drinkable water by Christmas. We have people suffering. We have businesses suffering. We have a disaster that we have to respond to, and a lot of work is going to have to be done before the end of this Congress and certainly in the next Congress, when the nearly $50 billion between State and Federal dollars is going to have to be appropriated just to help North Carolina, not to mention the $3 billion of agricultural damage in Georgia, and I can go down the list to Florida.

We have a lot of work to do, but, folks, this is a time where you don't question what we are doing. You don't question how you pay for it. You get the money there, and you get these communities back on track.

I am not saying that we shouldn't be paying for this. We absolutely should. And up here in the rarified air of Washington, DC, we could say ``Well, let's just, you know, be responsible about this and let these people suffer until we get it,'' but that is not how it works in Western North Carolina. They need help now, today.

I will talk a little bit more about that before I offer my unanimous consent request, but before I do, if I may, I would like to pass it over to Senator Budd. I believe Senator Budd will pass it over to Senator Warner, and then I would like to reserve recognition at that time.

Mr. President, there are 233 people dead--102 in North Carolina, 7 still unaccounted for; the total damage estimated to be between $30 and $48 billion across seven States; in North Carolina, 1,400 landslides, 6,000 miles of road damage. One million-plus houses and businesses lost utilities. Some municipalities, like Asheville, like I said earlier, may not have drinkable water. This is a major urban center in western North Carolina that may not have drinkable water for tens of thousands of people before the end of August. That includes businesses that are struggling right now--think restaurants.

Struck during the peak of western North Carolina's season, the majority of our revenue occurs in western North Carolina, starting in October and ending in November. We have lost that. They are gone. A lot of these people lost loved ones who have businesses. Now they are just trying to keep their businesses afloat while they are going to funerals. And we tell them: Well, we have just got to wait for Congress before we can send you a check, because for the first time in this body we are going to demand a pay-for for disaster recovery.

Down about where the pages are sitting, a few months ago, Brian Schatz came to me--he is a Senator from Hawaii--and he said: Thom, I hope you will support me on the supplemental for the fires in Maui.

I said: Count me in, Brian, because--do you know what?--I have no doubt--and count me in every time for a disaster supplemental because this is when we cut the crap and do our jobs. So count me in because I am pretty sure, before this season is over, I am going to have to come to you for help in North Carolina.

I had no idea that it was going to be a record-setting deadly storm, but if we want to keep these communities vibrant--Asheville will come back. It has the critical mass. Canton, Clyde, Burnsville--I can list dozens of towns that are hanging in the breach. Let's give them a chance. And if we don't, then businesses are going to make the right business decision. There are two here, OK? We have the small businesses, and, hopefully, they can bridge the gap and recover.

Again, these are also people who have lost loved ones, and many of them lost their own homes. So while they are trying to figure out a place to live, they are all trying to figure out how they can run their businesses and how they can keep people employed.

Now, big businesses are looking at what the business network--or what the ecosystem is going to look like. We have major employers who may make the decision to leave if we don't send a signal that we are going to be there to help them recover.

I could go on ad nauseam, but I am telling you, when I tell you it is a crisis in North Carolina when a major road like I-40 is going to be down for years, I can't tell people, just because I don't like the way it gets appropriated, it sucks for you that you may have to go out of business while I try to fix the dysfunction in Washington. This is a time for us to act and do like we have done every time with a disaster supplemental.

So--oh. And, by the way, in advance, Senator Paul is going to offer an amendment that I love so much I would like to marry it. I am also going to object to it because it is the right amendment at the wrong time. I am looking forward to having that incorporated in a vehicle that my Democrat colleagues are going to hate that I hope we get passed in the next Congress, but there is no time for that now. I have said that, in spite of the fact that I support it, I want to be the one to object to it because I want mission certainty here. My mission is to get this disaster supplemental for the Small Business Administration passed through like we have on every other disaster supplemental to this day.

Mr. President, as in legislative session, I ask unanimous consent that the Senate proceed to the immediate consideration of Calendar No. 465, H.R. 6651. I further ask that the Tillis-Warner 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.

Mr. President, in reserving the right to object, I was wondering if the Senator from Kentucky would yield for two questions, and then I would like to speak on the--

I think I know the answer to this, Senator Paul, but I just want to confirm it. Do you recall how you voted on the PACT Act?

I thought he did.

And I reserve the right to object to that motion.

I have subsequently asked the Chair--

I have subsequently asked the Chair--

--if the Senator from Kentucky--

Mr. President.

In reserving the right to object, the question I would have asked him is how he voted on the PACT Act. I don't know the answer to it. I think he voted against it. I am not sure. The other question I was going to ask him is has he ever voted for a disaster supplemental that wasn't offset. Those were the two questions I was going to ask. I will find it out later on.

Look, our State motto is ``Esse Quam Videri.'' It says, ``To be rather than to seem.''

This is a disingenuous offer to amend my bill. Let me tell you why. Maybe it will even be in a fundraising campaign later this week: ``I am fighting to dismantle the Green New Deal, and Tillis objected to doing that today.''

This bill, if it got amended, has no prayer. I came to the Senate to make a difference, not to make a point. I get the point.

There are a lot of things in the Inflation Reduction Act and in the Green New Deal that need to be clawed back, and I look forward to, under President Trump's leadership, having that vote.

I assume that Senator Paul knows how to count votes. He has to know that he doesn't have the votes to get this bill done if it is amended.

To be rather than to seem. I am focused on getting North Carolina back on track and not playing a game on this Senate floor. I am going to object to this, Mr. President, in a minute because it is a game.

We never fund disaster supplementals because we know that people are hurting.

You take that case to Ukraine, to Asheville. You take it to Burnsville. You take it to Banner Elk. You take it to Cashiers, Senator Paul, and I will go with you, and I will see if they are as worried about that or if they are just worried about making sure that their families have a place to live and their businesses have a chance to survive.

Mr. President, I object.

Ladies and gentlemen, I have prided myself on working on a lot of legislation over the last 10 years, and I am proud of the fact that I figured out how to get votes in this Chamber and get votes in the other Chamber and get bills to the President's desk. Let me explain to you how this process works. We were going to pass a bill out of here. Even if it is not funded, I am pretty sure that the House is going to insist on some sort of a pay-for.

What we are doing here is playing a game of being disingenuous. Folks, I support what Senator Paul does. By the way, I will be checking the fundraising emails to see if we are fighting to--that Tillis is against the Green New Deal dismantling. Count me in for that.

What I am not for is putting a poison pill in here that prevents this bill from going to the House. My colleagues in the House intend to get a pay-for. They intend to get a pay-for. I mean, how hard is it? I have got a community college education, and I am smart enough to figure this out. So are a lot of other people from community colleges. But this is a game. It will be paid for in the House, or it won't pass. We have a majority there. So instead of facilitating the process to move it there and thus find a way to offset it, we are trying to kill it here.

I support so many provisions of the Inflation Reduction Act and the American Rescue Plan being repealed and using the money for better purposes, and disaster recovery is one of them. But that is not what we are here to do today in this Congress with that President. That is what we are going to be here to do next year, in the next Congress, with a different President.

So I just want to set the record straight. I don't like games being played. My colleagues on the other side of the aisle know I try to be evenhanded. I told Senator Mark Warner I was going to object because it was a procedural game. And if it is characterized as anything other than that, let me know who you are because I will educate you. Thank you.

Yes. I am back to the happy Thom now.

Without a doubt, Senator Warner. And, quite honestly, there are some people today saying: If I have got to wait until next Congress, I have got to fold up. I am trying to find a place to live, and I am also trying to keep my business afloat.

Absolutely, it gives them hope. And our failure to act doesn't.