Mike Braun

Mr. BRAUN

Mr. BRAUN. Madam President, it has been the honor of my lifetime to represent Hoosiers here in the U.S. Senate. When I said I was going to do this back in 2017--I didn't have much of a political legacy--to leave my business that I had spent 37 years running and that I wanted to run for the U.S. Senate, everybody said: a fool's errand--it couldn't be done. But there were a lot of Hoosiers wanting the system to be shaken up a little bit. When I interpreted, I think, what politics was doing back in 2015 and 2016, I crafted that unusual idea that it could be done even when you have made most of your life in the trenches in the real world. I was told when I got here: Freshman Senators are not to be heard, may be seen. Sit back; learn the ropes. Well, that wasn't going to work for me because I had already put myself into a corner because I said I wouldn't do it more than two terms. That is unusual. Everyone says it, they get amnesia, and then you know the rest of the story. I have been so proud of what we have done here in these 6 years, what we have done for Hoosiers. And when I tell you about some of the things that can be done, I think you are going to be amazed. I put together a staff that came here mostly from Indiana, and their goal was to get things done, to get it across the finish line. And, sure, I was proud to have been named the most effective first-term Republican Senator and the sixth most effective in our caucus, generally, in the last Congress, and probably close to that again in this one. But all of us here know that we get the credit for it and it is your staff that does all the heavy lifting. This 2021 freshman Senate office got more bills across the finish line than any other--it is amazing--and 37 in the span of 6 years. Again, that is why the Center for Effective Lawmaking singled out our office as being most impactful in areas like healthcare, education, and agriculture--all the stuff I bumped into in so many ways in the real world before I got here. I want to tell you about a few of those wins. Incoming Senators will hopefully get inspired by it. Imagine, as a Republican, when one of your biggest pieces of legislation has the word ``climate'' in it. So I will get to how that happened in the first place, but, being a conservationist, one who knows that is an issue that we, as Republicans and conservatives, have to be involved with, we actually crafted a bill called the Growing Climate Solutions Act, which was a landmark bill for farmers that matched up their good stewardship with offset markets that were already there but government was making it too difficult for them to take access of it, especially small farmers. Imagine it passing in the U.S. Senate 92 to 8. That is darn near a miracle. How did that happen in the first place? I was here maybe 6 or 7 months, and Senator Chris Coons from Delaware had been trying to find one Republican to engage in the discussion, which we know how big a discussion that has been. Of course, we are always going to disagree on policy, but he had probably asked so many others over the last 2 years that he was going after a rookie Senator. He didn't realize that he ran into somebody that had to think on his feet a lot in the real world and made decisions fairly quickly based on what you really know. And I said: I will do it. I think the rest of the conversation was: Will it be more than a committee of two of us? Give me a month. I got six other Republicans. And it is still an issue of contention in terms of what it is about, where it is going. Some are absolutely certain about it; some have put no credence to it. Obviously, it is somewhere in between. That, to me, was the first moment, being here after just 6 months, that said: If you do certain things and think out of the box, you can get a lot done. And that has probably put me in front of more discussions now that energy is the biggest issue at the State level. Demand for it was flat up until 2 years ago. And now, in Indiana, one of the best places to have a business, all the data centers want to come there. And we only produce 20 gigawatts of electricity. Each one of them needs one gigawatt. And what is going to be the right mix between baseload, intermittent, green, traditional? I intend to have Indiana at the leading front of that discussion. Veterans--that is an issue in many different ways. Those who serve our country still have trouble getting basic benefits, especially as it relates here in the Federal Government, where most of them come from. They told us back home in Indiana that to get claims information through the mail or driving to a regional location was clumsy, even through the mail, and logistically impossible when you had to travel sometimes 2 hours to get a basic checkup. That was a real burden for disabled veterans. We wrote the Wounded Warrior Access Act to streamline the claims process with an online tool. It was signed into law last year. I came here most proud of fixing healthcare back in my own business in 2008--a small business for half of the time I was there, over 37 years, 20 employees or so. By 2008, we had grown to 300 employees. You can't imagine how sick and tired I was of hearing how lucky I was it is only going up 5 to 10 percent this year. Well, after hearing that for about 9 years, I got involved in the HR meeting back in 2008. Here was the first question I asked of the insurance company, since we had hardly any claims: What profit margin did you make on our plan? I was thinking 10, 15 percent. They were honest: 25 percent. I turned to the agent: What was your commission? Seven percent. We were stroking a million-dollar check back then. Do the math. That wasn't going to work for me. I said: What can we do to fix it? They said: Well, you could maybe self-insure. I said: You didn't tell us that last year. And I did that and self-insured and made it a cost center. But then the critical question was--and we need to all start asking these kinds of questions: How do you really lower costs and make Hoosiers and Americans healthier? They said: We have got a broken system. It is built upon expensive remediation. It sounded a little abstract. So I said: Let's flesh that out a little bit. Well, you have got your deductible. I had to raise that each year to moderate the increases, change underwriters every 3 years. That was a pain in the rear. So they said: If you really push wellness and prevention, it will be the start of how you lower healthcare costs. And then they said something that really surprised me: Healthcare consumers are nonexistent because they aren't involved in actually shopping around for healthcare. You depend on the insurance company in your company or the government to do it. That is the driver in most markets. I ended up, after that meeting, throwing every wellness tool and the kitchen sink at it, turned my employees into healthcare consumers, cut costs by over 50 percent, and haven't had an increase in 16 years. I always ask the question: Raise your hand if that has been the case. No one does. Those are the kinds of things we are going to have to do here and back home in the States. Here, being on Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions, I told the chair of that committee, Senator Sanders: If you want to lower healthcare costs, start incentivizing the industry to be competitive and transparent. Well, that ended up creating what would be the most transformational bill, called the Health Care PRICE Transparency Act. And when you are getting someone like Senator Bernie Sanders and Mike Braun, the two loudest voices in the Senate, on healthcare reform, that is a modern miracle. And that bill is there as a template, already strongly bipartisan. Some of the features of it could be dropped into reforms that we do even this year. During the pandemic, Josh Hawley and I passed through a bill that would declassify all intelligence about the Wuhan lab and also prompted the President to direct the intelligence community to investigate the lab leak. As a result of that investigation, the FBI confirmed that they found a lab leak to be the most likely theory of origin. And when the current administration announced the vaccine mandate for businesses that would have vaccinated every employee in all businesses if you had 100 or more employees, after it was in the rearview mirror, we dusted off an old law called the Congressional Review Act that hadn't been used in years, and we used that and got bipartisan support on it. And then, lo and behold, when the Supreme Court struck down the vaccine mandate, they cited our challenge as the most significant action in Congress that had weighed in on the mandate. You can get results if you stick your neck out, take a little risk. Before I go to the other side of being a Senator--what you do back home called ``constituent services''--I want to talk about a few of the lighter moments of being in the U.S. Senate. I will never forget when I got here--and we have great lunches; kudos to the staff that prepares them. And it said lunchtime starts at 12:30; it is over at 2. Well, that seemed like a lot of time. I show up at 12:30. Even the staff wasn't fully--had the meal there ready to go. I said: What is going on? They said: Well, 12:30 is the official time. No one shows up until after 1. So there is Senate time and real time. You have to get adjusted to that. The pace is maybe a little different when you come from the field of being a scrappy entrepreneur. The only other Senator that did the same thing was, of course, a guy named Rick Scott who ran a business, ran the State of Florida. We didn't make that mistake another time. I was able to host a lunch. I am in the logistics business. You have to come up with something that is unique to your community. We are probably the most German Catholic community in the State of Indiana, so we wanted to have schnitzel and brats. Well, the plan was to drive them from Indiana to DC. I actually had a volunteer do that because, believe it or not, that was the only way that was practical and least expensive to host a lunch. Here is one of the most unusual moments. We all get involved in media--probably far too much of it. But part of this job is having the pulpit to say what you believe, what you want to weigh in on. I was actually doing an interview in the middle of COVID. I can't remember which network. But all of a sudden, a minute into about a 7- minute interview, the cameraman goes down, literally. I thought the camera or the light stand was coming at me. The interview continued. My wife was watching it at home and thought we had a mini earthquake here. So I remember one of the other cameramen said: I have never seen anything like that in the U.S. Senate. The story wasn't over. About a minute before the interview was over, he starts to dust himself off. He had been out for 4 minutes. He grabs the camera stand or light, and I thought, This time, it is coming at me. I didn't know what I was going to do; although, he went down again, and we completed the interview. Of course, I was worried about what happened. An ambulance came. We were lucky in that case. It was dehydration. Imagine being in a pickle like that. We got through it. Other memories, after the first State of the Union Address, I was walking back. I live right east of the Supreme Court building. It was a starlit evening. The moon silhouetted the Capitol. I said to myself: How can you be so lucky? Now, the other side of being a Senator is constituent services. Customer service was always my priority in my business. Believe me, you don't have to pay consultants for them to tell you what is wrong with your business. Just listen to your employees and to your customers-- free advice. It doesn't cost a penny. If you get it fixed, you actually corrected an issue you have with your company. So I told them I wanted to run constituent services back home, just like customer service in my business. We put together a team just as good there--when you listen to these stats--as the one that enabled me to do so much here on the legislative side--they closed 13,775 constituent cases in 6 years, assisting Hoosiers with problems that were really impacting their lives. There are many ways you can get entangled with the Federal Government. My team returned $21.6 million that were owed to Hoosiers back to them, mostly from the IRS. That money had an immediate impact. One woman in Columbus was at risk of losing her home, and we were able to recover $10,000 that, again, was owed to her by the IRS. My team handled 2,381,813 emails, phone calls. Believe me, there are a lot of ways, if people just do it, to get a hold of who represents you here in DC. But then what do you do with it? We put a metric in that if those weren't handled within a certain number of days, it set off an alarm. Unbelievable constituent services--1,500 hours of mobile office hours. When they reached out, we found the solutions. One Hoosier's family reached out because their mother's ashes were lost at a post office facility, couldn't be located. We secured an inspector general audit of the post office to make sure that never happens again. A family of an Indiana soldier killed in Vietnam didn't get the Silver Star. It had been a long time. We recovered that for them. My team cut through the redtape and delivered that medal to his family. It had been 50 years they were trying. As proud as I am of the legislation passed and the constituent services that we gave, I am also proud of sounding the alarm for what I think is our biggest issue impacting our country. To be honest, it has been like talking to the side of my barn back home. I learned what it was about to make ends meet because your tail was on the line running a small business. I am optimistic since we do so many great things in this country. But the incentives have been so strong to go the opposite way that, hopefully, we can change the direction that, in my mind, will bankrupt the country, and it has been from both sides of the aisle. It has been where we just expected too much out of this place. We need to focus on doing a few things better. To show you the magnitude, 6 years ago, we were $18 trillion in debt. In 6 years, we have doubled it. We borrow $1 trillion every 6 months, and that is the interest that we pay on our debt now every 6 months, as well. We actually borrow $2 trillion a year. This spending spree has had a real effect on the American people. We have inflation, rising interest rates, and a projected debt that is going to be $56 trillion in 10 years. If you are good at math, that gets geometrically more difficult to get out of that hole being dug that deep. I had a business, the first 17 years where the office was in a mobile home. I got introduced out here: Had his office in a double-wide. I said, it was a used single-wide. That was my first and only opportunity of doing what I wanted to do. Well, the overhead was so low, you almost had to stoop to get in the door, figuratively speaking, but I learned a lot of valuable lessons. In the real world, you have to live within your means. Borrowing money from our kids and grandkids is not a business plan that is going to work. How do we turn things around? The best thing, we are not flying blind here. There is an instruction manual called the Constitution, especially the 10th Amendment. As the Federal Government has struggled, the States have been a laboratory for how you fix things. That is where the innovation is going to come from in the next decade. I am so excited to lead that charge back home in Indiana. It was so hard to get here in the first place. The question I get asked most: Why wouldn't you stay? I kind of explained that a little bit earlier that I believe in term limits. It was an either-or choice--either run for Governor or serve another term here. I am not going to lose sight of what I have been a part of, but I do feel I made the right choice. On this entire journey, I couldn't have done it without my life partner Maureen, married 48 years ago. I never get that number wrong, even if it is off by a year. On our wedding, I will never forget everyone as they passed me and got to her. I was trying to listen if anyone said that she was lucky because I was first and everyone, without exception, said how lucky I was. Well, I just couldn't resist; after we got out of the line there at the church--maybe later that evening--I said, ``Dear, were there any people that told you, you were lucky?'' And in a very diplomatic way, she said: ``There were a few.'' I have been blessed beyond all measure there. I have a family that has been great. Three of the four kids work and run the business I ran for 37 years. Three of my seven grandkids are right up there--Michael, Kate, and Julia; and Jason, one of my four kids. I have been blessed beyond measure when you look at all of that. And then the thing I talk most often about is faith, family, and community--in that broader scope, how we were so lucky to be dropped into the place called Jasper, IN. That, to me, is something I will never figure out. I am just thankful that when I ended up having one of the best MBAs in the country and was headed to Wall Street, we talked about, do we want to do it when we wanted to raise a family? I took the first entrepreneur's course there. She already wanted her own business. It didn't seem like Wall Street was going to work out. Well, we moved back home. Best job I could find was over an 80- percent pay cut. If we hadn't done that, it is almost certain I wouldn't be here this afternoon doing a farewell speech in the U.S. Senate. I tour all 92 counties each year. I have offered open office hours, scheduling into it on Fridays. Hoosiers, I will be doing that as your next Governor as well. Hoosiers are some of the most good-hearted, hard-working people in the world. It has been my honor to serve you here. To all my colleagues here in the Senate, thank you for your friendship and the honor of serving alongside you in this esteemed body, not to mention all the precious memories I will take back to Indiana. I will part on this, because I spent so much time sitting in that seat as the Presiding Officer at the most inconvenient time each week, Thursday afternoon from 3 to 6. Well, you are pretty well the lone soldier by then. You are going to get in the wrap-up. Rick Scott was the only one who had poorer seniority than me. I will never forget. We were all interested in wrapping it up. Well, the first thing I did was figured out a way to where I only had to do it every other week. It took a little risk. It paid off, so I didn't have to do it every week. Then I found there were some Senators who liked to linger around a little later on Thursdays than maybe what they needed to. And there was one who did it every Thursday and had flexibility--my friend, Senator Dan Sullivan. You need to tune in because he does the Alaskan of the Week. All I said was: Dan, could you move it up about an hour and a half? And he did, and that enabled me to get home late on a Thursday instead of a Friday. I was even doing some entrepreneurial work right there. You can ask anybody in the well now, we were all wanting to see that happen together. Finally, I tried to bust the dress code here by not wearing a tie. There was a time or two where I barged in here without one and almost got tackled by Senator Lankford once, but I got in and out. But that is one thing I am not going to change. I keep a tie in the Cloakroom. Thank you, again, for keeping me dressed correctly when I need to be on the floor on occasions like this. It has been quite a run; it will be bittersweet to leave the place; and thank you all for the enjoyment I have had here. I yield the floor. (Applause, Senators rising.)

Mr. BRAUN

Mr. BRAUN. I ask that the scheduled vote occur immediately.

Mr. BRAUN. I ask unanimous consent the resolution be agreed to; the preamble be agreed; and that the motions to reconsider be considered made and laid upon the table with no intervening action or debate.

Mr. BRAUN. Mr. President, I rise today on another topic, one that is dear to me. I have been involved in this pastime since I was 10 years old. Most of you may not know where I am going to go, but it is one of the most unique birds that the good Lord ever created. It is called a purple martin. It is a bird, about 8 ounces or so, that migrates back and forth from North America to the Amazon. Does it each year. I became a landlord for them back many, many years ago. And it is the only bird, through adapting, that is now totally dependent on man-made housing--you have seen gourds out there. They are a bird that only lives in a colony; most song birds are territorial. A really unique bird. There is actually an association called the Purple Martin Conservation Association, where avid supporters support it across the country. Due to habitat loss over time, where their normal habitat would have been in the wild, many years ago Inuits lured them into their own communities because the purple martins only eat flying insects. Truly an amazing bird that has been under some pressure recently. And if that heritage isn't continued, since they are now dependent on man-made housing, we could lose one of the most unique birds that God ever created. Efforts from conservationists across the country have been mostly behind making sure that this heritage remains. This is a resolution that celebrates the efforts of all of them. It designated this past August 10 as ``Purple Martin Conservation Day'' to recognize their work and to protect this natural treasure. This resolution was endorsed by the National Audubon Society, North American Bluebird Society, the Purple Martin Conservation Association, and many other naturalists and conservation groups. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the Committee on the Judiciary be discharged from further consideration and the Senate now proceed to the consideration of S. Res. 803.

Mr. BRAUN

Mr. BRAUN. Mr. President, I rise today to celebrate 150 years of Purdue engineering. Purdue engineering produces more than 5 percent of our engineering students in the country. Engineering alumni from Purdue have distinguished themselves for 150 years around the world and even on the moon. The first and most recent men to walk on the moon--Neil Armstrong and Gene Cernan--were both Purdue engineering alumni. Purdue engineers have been behind many other great leaps for mankind. Some of the greatest wonders of engineering here in the United States are byproducts of Purdue engineers, such as the Golden Gate Bridge. Purdue engineering touches every aspect of our day-to-do life. Alumni and alumnae have been behind many innovations and technologies that are foundational to our modern life, like transistors--something as basic as that. This resolution celebrates 150 years of Purdue engineering and the significant accomplishments Purdue engineering alumni and alumnae have had on our world. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent the Senate proceed to the consideration of S. Res. 830, which is at the desk.

Mr. BRAUN. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent the resolution be agreed to; the preamble be agreed to; and that the motions to reconsider be considered made and laid upon the table with no intervening action or debate.

Mr. BRAUN

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

Mr. BRAUN. Mr. President, I would like unanimous consent to complete my remarks.

Mr. BRAUN

Mr. BRAUN. Mr. President, I rise today with great pride to honor the Fighting Irish. This May, the University of Notre Dame men's lacrosse team won the 2024 NCAA Division I title with a resounding victory over the Maryland Terrapins. The final score was 15 to 5. This year's victory marked the second national lacrosse title for the Fighting Irish. It was also a consecutive national championship--very hard to do in this day and age in the competitive arena of college sports. The Fighting Irish is the first team since 2019 and 2021 to win those back-to-back men's lacrosse national championships and only the eighth team in division I history to accomplish the feat. I would like to personally congratulate Notre Dame men's lacrosse team for claiming the 2024 title. It is a university that has distinguished itself in so many ways over the years. Blessed to be in my home State and I'm very proud of them across the board. Mr. President, as in legislative session, I ask unanimous consent that the Senate proceed to the immediate consideration of S. Res. 768, which is at the desk.

Mr. BRAUN. I ask unanimous consent the resolution be agreed to, the preamble be agreed to, and that the motions to reconsider be considered made and laid upon the table, with no intervening action or debate.

Mr. BRAUN

Mr. BRAUN. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the resolution be agreed to, the preamble be agreed to, and the motions to reconsider be considered made and laid upon the table with no intervening action or debate.

Mr. BRAUN. Mr. President, I rise today--I have done this several times since I have been here in the Senate. It is always an honor to do it. When something is that important, I think it is worth repeating. I am rising today to offer a resolution expressing support for the Pledge of Allegiance as an expression of patriotism and honoring the 247th anniversary of the introduction of our U.S. flag. Tomorrow, we celebrate Flag Day, which was established over 100 years ago by President Woodrow Wilson. As we pause to recognize all that our flag represents, let us also honor those who have sacrificed everything to defend it. In 2002, Senator Tom Daschle raised a similar resolution with unanimous support from the Senate. It passed on the floor uneventfully. Today, I ask this body to reaffirm our support for the Pledge of Allegiance, also bringing into account somebody from Indiana--Red Skelton. In 1969, the American entertainer, who was well known for his program ``The Red Skelton Hour,'' wrote a speech on the importance of the pledge. Reflecting on his time in Vincennes, IN, he spoke about the values instilled by one of his high school teachers. After the performance of the speech, CBS received 200,000 requests for copies. I wonder if that would occur in this day and age. This speech would go on to be sold as a single by Columbia Records and performed at the White House for President Nixon. I think it would honor Mr. Skelton's memory and the importance of the Pledge of Allegiance if it were recited again today on the Senate floor like I have done several times since I have been here. Red Skelton: When I was a small boy in Vincennes, Indiana, I heard, I think, one of the most outstanding speeches I ever heard in my life. I think it compares with the Sermon on the Mount, Lincoln's Gettysburg Address, and Socrates' speech to the Students. We had just finished reciting the Pledge of Allegiance, and Mr. Lasswell, the Principal of Vincennes High School, called us all together. He says, ``Uh, boys and girls, I have been listening to you recite the Pledge of Allegiance all semester, and it seems that it has become a little monotonous to you. Or, could it be, you do not understand the meaning of each word? If I may, I would like to recite the pledge, and give you a definition of each word: I--Me; an individual; a committee of one. Pledge--Dedicate all of my worldly goods to give without self-pity. Allegiance--My love and my devotion. To the Flag--Our standard. `Old Glory'; a symbol of courage. And wherever she waves, there is respect, because your loyalty has given her a dignity that shouts, `Freedom is everybody's job.' of the United--That means we have all come together. States--Individual communities that have united into 48 great states;---- Forty-eight because of when it was done---- 48 individual communities with pride and dignity and purpose; all divided by imaginary boundaries, yet united to a common cause, and that's love of country-- Of America. And to the Republic--A Republic: a sovereign state in which power is invested into the representatives chosen by the people to govern; and the government is of the people; and it's from the people to the leaders, not from the leaders to the people. For which it stands One Nation--Meaning `so blessed by God.' [Under God] Indivisible--Incapable of being divided. With Liberty--Which is freedom; the right of power for one to live his own life without fears, threats, or any sort of retaliation. And Justice--The principle and qualities of dealing fairly with others. For All--For All. That means, boys and girls, it's as much your country as it is mine.'' Afterwards, Mr. Lasswell asked his students to recite the Pledge of Allegiance together, with newfound appreciation for the words. I pledge allegiance to the Flag of the United States of America and to the Republic for which it stands; one nation, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all. Red Skelton concluded his speech by saying: Since I was a small boy, two states have been added to our country, and two words have been added to the Pledge of Allegiance: Under God. Wouldn't it be a pity if someone said ``That is a prayer''--and [it should] be eliminated from our schools [as well]? Just as those students that day--Mr. Red Skelton included-- recommitted to the meaning of the words of the Pledge of Allegiance, I call upon the U.S. Senate to recommit to the meaning of these words. There are times today that the words of the Pledge of Allegiance are tossed around without care. Other times, they are altered to remove what today is deemed offensive or antiquated. But Americans should not misuse or abuse our Pledge of Allegiance. The pledge is meant to remind Americans of our guiding principles and inspire adherence to those ideas that made our country great: equality under the law; recognized rights to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. That is why, in honor of Flag Day tomorrow, I am requesting unanimous consent from my colleagues that my resolution expressing support of the Pledge of Allegiance be passed. Mr. President, as if in legislative session and notwithstanding rule XXII, I ask unanimous consent the Senate proceed to the immediate consideration of S. Res. 732, which is at the desk; further, that the resolution be agreed to, the preamble be agreed to, and the motions to reconsider be considered made and laid upon the table with no intervening action or debate.

Mr. BRAUN

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

Mr. BRAUN

Mr. BRAUN. Madam President, I ask unanimous consent that the following Senators have up to 5 minutes each: myself, Senator Manchin, and Senator Marshall and Senator Cassidy for up to 10 minutes before the rollcall vote.

Mr. BRAUN. Madam President, we have had several times recently--and I am talking about since the Biden administration came into office--to where, when you can't legislate, all of a sudden you use Executive orders and rulings. You have heard of the deep state. That is what happens when you can't get your way legislatively, which means you have got to get 60 Senators corralled here to do it, and you start doing things--in many cases, pushing legal limits administratively. That is when government has gone wild. I want to take you back to about a little over a year and a half ago when COVID was in the rearview mirror. If you remember, there was the effort to try to force vaccinations on every individual in the country working for an employer with 100 employees or more. That would have been almost everyone. You had folks in Indiana that owned businesses wondering, now that this was all in the rearview mirror: Why would you do it? It is government gone wild. It was our office that dusted off the Congressional Review Act that said enough is enough. Of course, Speaker of the House Pelosi wasn't going to take it up there. We did pass it in the Senate. And thank goodness the Supreme Court came in about 2 weeks later and said: Enough is enough; that is unconstitutional. We had to do it another time on all your hard-earned money you put into your investment accounts. You heard of ESG--environment, social, and governance--that that should be of equal value as return on investment. You know it shouldn't be. That is when you are trying to weave in ideology along with investment returns. We had to dust it off again. And that passed in the Senate and the House and generated President Biden's first veto. The number of times we have had to do it since then--too many to count. We are doing it again here this evening. I have led bipartisan letters to the NLRB, National Labor Relations Board, raising concerns about its proposed rule regarding joint employer status over the past couple years to no avail. And what they are wanting to do--again, this is getting into Main Street, into small business, and leveraging that Executive power to do something that would mess up what has worked well for a long time. This rule replaced the 2020 joint employer rule that focused on ``direct and immediate control'' as the criterion and replaced it with an ``indirect, reserved'' control standard, which means it is subjective; you can do whatever you want because you don't want that particular rule that would have kept it where it has always been and where it has worked. It has caused confusion for franchise owners for years; in fact, franchisees just as bad. Those are the Main Street business owners. It would have immediate and long-term negative effects on millions of workers in thousands of businesses when the economy is already reeling from the inflation and the sugar-high economy based upon borrowed money spent to help few parts of it. That is what they have given us, and then they want to do this. Franchisors and franchisees, Main Street America, gets impacted by it. Moving forward with this misguided rule, the NLRB would hurt entrepreneurs. That is the backbone of our economy. They are the ones who start things that someday may become a larger business. Thirty-two percent of small business owners say they would not have a business if it were not for franchising. The NLRB should not move forward with this joint employer rule because it will have a negative economic impact. It is actually inconsistent with common law. The Board should maintain the 2020 rule. It wasn't broken. It was working. They seem to be doing everything to try to fix it when it is not broken. I yield the floor to the Senator from West Virginia.

Mr. BRAUN

Mr. BRAUN. Mr. President, I come to the floor this evening because we have some serious business ahead of us soon. For Laken Riley, Ruby Garcia, and the countless Americans who have died from fentanyl, the Senate must hold a full impeachment trial for Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas. Secretary Mayorkas is breaking the law every day he releases illegal immigrants into the United States. The Department of Homeland Security is required under law to detain these immigrants. Biden and Mayorkas's catch-and-release policy releases illegal aliens into the United States without even issuing a notice to appear for immigration proceedings. Secretary Mayorkas is the most important player in President Biden's open border agenda, but we must first remember it is the President who is calling the shots. President Biden took the actions that opened our border. On day one, he personally stopped construction of the wall. He alone signed the Executive order to allow illegals to be counted in the census to decide how large congressional districts are. This is a direct attack on our most important democratic institution. It was President Biden who ended the ``Remain in Mexico'' policy, leading to millions released into our communities. It was a criminal coward who killed Laken Riley, but it was President Biden and Secretary Mayorkas who welcomed him into the country. It was sanctuary city policies that kept him here. Laken Riley's death was a complete failure of our government to protect our own citizens. Yet not one person has lost a job due to it. It is no wonder President Biden's allies want to sweep this impeachment under the rug and break the rules of the Senate by failing to hold an impeachment trial. Every Senator must stand up for the American people and vote down the motion to kill the impeachment trial. The American people deserve to hear the truth of how President Joe Biden opened their country's borders to the world and the American lives lost because of it. I will be voting to hold a full impeachment trial of Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas. If a full trial does not happen, he has clearly lost the faith of the American people to protect our borders and he should resign immediately and President Biden should be held accountable by the American public this November. I yield the floor.

Mr. BRAUN

Mr. BRAUN. Madam President, I ask unanimous consent that I be permitted to complete my remarks, which I have done, followed by Senator Padilla, for up to 5 minutes prior to the scheduled rollcall vote.

Mr. BRAUN. Madam President, I ask unanimous consent that the preamble be agreed to and that the motion to reconsider be considered made and laid upon the table, with no intervening action or debate.

Mr. BRAUN. Madam President, I come to the floor this evening to talk about our national debt, and I will be introducing a resolution here in a moment. Our national debt, to put it in perspective, had never been much before the year 2000. Cumulatively, it was $5 trillion. That is a lot of zeroes behind a 5. That is a lot. But that is what it took from the beginning of the country--most of it did occur from the 1960s to 1980. That is when we started doing deficits, but it really started to get to where they became entrenched in standard operating procedure in the year 2000. We did put two wars on the credit card. In 2000 to 2008, we went up to $10 trillion--all of a sudden, a lot more zeroes, with an extra zero and a 1. From 2008 to 2016, we went from $10 trillion to $16 trillion. Now it gets to be a little more repetitive. I got here--elected--in 2018. By 2018, we are adding $1 trillion a year. Stick with me here. That is $16 trillion, 17, 18. So I get here as a Senator, alarmed by that when you come from a place like Indiana and you ran a business for 37 years, and if you even did anything close to that, I guarantee you your line of credit wasn't going to get renewed. Since then--and we had a pandemic in there--it has gotten to where we have put a burden on future generations that I never imagined. I didn't think we would see it in this short a period. Well, we did roughly put $4 trillion more on the books through the worst pandemic we ever had. I think many of us question whether that was necessary or not. We probably could have done better. But we had already gotten into the routine of maybe erring on the side of doing more rather than less. Well, since then, we have gone into enterprising through government. When we were borrowing just a few years ago $1 trillion annually, now we are doing it every 6 months. If you are good at math out there, try taking interest rates, which now are around 5, 6, 7 percent, depending on how the government is borrowing it, start applying that to $34 trillion or $35 trillion, and the only blueprint we have for us would be from the Biden administration that puts us $52 trillion in debt in 10 years. That is a burden on our kids and grandkids. They will have to figure out how to pay it off. All of us here seem to be unconcerned about it. I think it would be a little different if we were knocking things out of the park. So those numbers never go away. Sooner or later, interest is going to--well, it is going to be sooner. I think next year, we are going to spend as much on our entire defense industry and budget as we will on interest. It doesn't take long to where that is going to amount to--in 3 to 4 years, 5--what we spend on all discretionary spending here, domestic and defense. The government has grown from never being more than 20 percent of our GDP to now the new baseline is 25 percent of our GDP. Our economy has only grown maybe a couple percent a year. That is digging a hole deeper and deeper that--anyone who is in the category of being kids and grandkids out there, look out. It is not going to be easy to get back to where you are actually paying your bills as you accumulate them. If we don't, it will be the same thing Greece, Italy, Portugal, and Spain had to go through when they fell off the wagon as small economies. We are the largest economy in the world. There is no good ending to it. It is no more difficult than just not spending more than we take in. Any good manager would figure out really quickly how to get back in line. Your banker would never allow you to renew a line of credit if you didn't. Here, we have the printing press in the basement, and the credit card gets renewed each year. That is no excuse that you should keep performing poorly when you know what the end result is going to be. It is even a threat to our national security. For instance, we spend $850 billion, roughly, on defense. China, our main geopolitical foe, spends less than a third of that. Russia, which causes all that trouble around the world, spends about $90 billion. It begs the question, why can't we do better when we are spending all that money? It is because we don't have any of the safeguards. We are not running it like the biggest business in the world; we are running it like kids with their hands in the cookie jar, and that is not a good business plan. It is unsustainable. I am not going to repeat the numbers, but if you take this out 10 years, that is going to be a mountain that is so high to climb and so hard to tear down that it will be tough to do. We could do it easily by just not digging the hole any deeper, meaning freezing our spending and allocating our resources better, just like all States do. We choose not to do it. We need to start. I am on the Budget Committee. We haven't done a budget in the Federal Government that we have adhered to in over two decades. Finally, we are going to have to start knuckling down and having discipline like everyone else does or it will end up like a chapter 11 does in the real world when you have not paid attention to the details, you borrow too much money, and you have a couple years to work it out with your creditors. Hopefully, we will never get to that. I am introducing this resolution called Recognizing the National Debt as a Threat to National Security. As in legislative session, and notwithstanding rule XXII, I ask unanimous consent that the Senate proceed to the consideration of S. Res. 600, which is at the desk.

Mr. BRAUN. I know of no further debate on the measure.

Mr. BRAUN

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

Mr. BRAUN

Mr. BRAUN. Mr. President, on February 22, a 22-year-old nursing student named Laken Riley went for a morning run on a popular trail. Despite doing everything right--informing her friends of her expected return time and sharing her location with them--Laken never made it home. Her life was stolen by an illegal alien who should have never been in the country. The President's open border policies are solely behind it. Remember, before he came in, we were at record lows. Now, we are at record highs. We are even talking about categories we didn't have before, like ``got- aways.'' It is a national security risk that has come into this country when, currently, monthly, 50,000 to 60,000 people never confront the Border Patrol--not to mention the 200,000 to 300,000 who do. This individual had been arrested in New York for a felony. The loss of Laken Riley was an avoidable tragedy inflicted by President Biden and his policies. These policies allow illegal aliens like Laken Riley's killer to roam free even after committing crimes. The Laken Riley Act demands the immediate deportation of illegal aliens when they are arrested for a crime. It makes sense. For those with concerns about due process, remember, we are talking about individuals with zero legal right to be in the United States in the first place. Retainers for ICE deportation should already be issued in these cases but aren't, in many cases, due to sanctuary city status. We should honor Laken Riley's memory by assuring that no other family ever has to endure this heartache. Pass the Laken Riley Act. I yield the floor.

Mr. BRAUN

Mr. BRAUN. Madam President, here today, since I have been in the Senate, which has been a little over 5 years, I think I have been the most steadfast voice in terms of, whatever we want to do here, we shouldn't be borrowing it from our kids and our grandkids. Any of you up there listening, it is a sad state of affairs in the sense that, just a little over 5 years ago, we were $18 trillion in debt, borrowing at the tune of about a trillion dollars a year to backfill for all the things we want to do here, and ask you and your kids to pay for it. To me, that is a bad business plan. Sadly, it gets even worse. Over these 5 years, instead of a trillion dollars annually, it is now a trillion dollars every 6 months. For those of you who are good at math, take current interest rates and apply that to $34 trillion--soon to be $35 trillion, if it has not already crossed that threshold. That is a big figure with a lot of zeroes behind it. To put it in perspective, the interest on that alone is going to be about what we spend on defense in the next year or the discretionary side of our budget. How we have ever gotten there, I don't know. We are going to be considering another package tomorrow or Friday that takes the whole process of doing budgets, asking: Do you really need it? Aren't there some places that we could surely get back to where we don't spend more than we take in, because when we don't, we are borrowing every penny of it. And, on every dollar that we spend here, 5 years ago, it was about 20 cents of that dollar that we had to borrow. Now it is 30 cents. The arithmetic--the numbers--don't just go away. It will be the single biggest thing all of you--this country--has to deal with over the next 5 to 10 years, and it is just starting to get to the point where it is going to, literally, break the back of the American public. Sooner or later, you won't have people lending us that money. Sooner or later, it is going to crowd out almost everything we do here, and it is shameful, in my mind. I want to focus on one, actually, small part of it, but what is symbolic of what shouldn't be happening here: earmarks. Earmarks are justified because we ought to be able to maybe do it better here and should have input in it, and not let the executive branch do that. But to me, that would be valid if, in fact, we were balancing our budget in the first place. Until we get total fiscal reform here and at least start to turn it around to where the deficits get smaller, the debt is never going to get smaller because, in general, if you take out a loan, imagine if you told your banker: I just want to pay interest only for as long as I have that loan. They would laugh you out of the office. So when it comes to earmarks, this bill is filled with them. It wasn't too many years ago that we got rid of them. Then the House started doing them again--both sides of the aisle. We are elective here, if you want to do it or not. But to me, that is fine, but not in the context that it is new money. For every earmark, you have to lend us the money or maybe somebody overseas. Who knows who will do it down the road? It has a lot of other stuff in it that you are not going to like in terms of policy that goes along with the spending. It is no wonder to me that Americans say: What is going on here? How are we going to change it? We are not going to change it until you demand it. Two simple things: term limits and a balanced budget amendment. Then it would run like your households and most other governments around our own country. Madam President, I ask unanimous consent to strike the joint explanatory statement to accompany H.R. 4366, the Consolidated Appropriations Act, 2024, that was printed in yesterday's Record.

Mr. BRAUN

Mr. BRAUN. Mr. President, the laws that govern who could enter this country are some of our most important. Those laws, from the time President Biden got elected, have been completely ignored. And as point person, Secretary Mayorkas has been the leading individual saying one thing and doing another. You have heard the statistics--8 million illegal immigrants, ``got- aways''--not even a term a few years ago--up to around 60,000 per month. And in that crowd, these are not people that are wanting to greet someone at the border. They pay the big fees to the cartels. They want to come into the country, and they are doing so with some type of a record that they don't want to be discussing once they get here. Who knows where that ends up. I was down there in 2021--I think April--and it was not currently where most of the traffic is coming from. Eagle Pass was down a little bit east of there. And those numbers, 50 to 60,000 per month, are now dwarfed by 200 to 300,000 monthly, plus the ``got-aways,'' again, that come in here not wanting to greet the Border Patrol. It is not secure. Back then, Border Patrol said their job is, basically, triage. They are so overwhelmed. We should, today, pass this no-confidence measure because there has been plenty of time to adjust your policies; and when you only do it because you are paying the political consequences that will be meted out here next November, I don't think that counts. That means you are doing it thinking that you can maneuver beyond it politically when you have caused all that grief in the meantime. The leader of the band is President Biden. He is the conductor. Mayorkas has just been in the orchestra, but it has clearly been orchestrated, where we are at. When you put up the welcome sign to come into our country with no consequences, sooner or later it adds up that there will be consequences. Even our northern border has got more illegal crossings than we have ever had before. Down there a couple years ago, 50 different nationalities were crossing. Now it is up to over 150. And 170 on the Terror Watchlist have been confronted. How many others were not? This is a dire national security threat. Those who are ignoring the problem for political reasons should bear that in mind. And, most importantly, the American public should bear that in mind when they go to the ballot box next November. I yield the floor.

Mr. BRAUN

Mr. BRAUN. Mr. President, on December 19, 2023, the Senate voted on the confirmation of Ms. Elizabeth H. Richard, of Virginia, a Career Member of the Senior Foreign Service, Class of Career Minister, to be Coordinator for Counterterrorism, with the rank and status of Ambassador at Large, Executive Calendar No. 144. Had I been present for this, I would have voted in favor of Ms. Richard's nomination.