John Cornyn

Mr. CORNYN

Mr. CORNYN. Madam President, on another matter, we have only three scheduled workweeks before Christmas. Compared to what the Senate had left on its plate last year, I think a great deal of praise is in order for our leadership--Senator Thune and Senate Republicans generally--for getting so much done in the last 11 months. We started the year off with an impressive clip, confirming President Trump's Cabinet at a record speed. We successfully passed a reconciliation package, which will extend President Trump's tax cuts for working families, known as the One Big Beautiful Bill or the Working Families Tax Cuts Act, which contains far more than just tax relief for the American people. We passed our first draft of the National Defense Authorization Act in the Senate. In addition to these impressive accomplishments, the Senate has also passed the first tranche of government funding bills and a continuing resolution to keep the lights on through January. While it may seem odd to commend Congress for just doing its job, this has become a notable achievement because it means we will not be here on Christmas Eve voting on a massive omnibus spending package. That, unfortunately, has happened too often in the past. Suffice it to say, the first year of the 119th Congress, led by Republicans, has been far more productive than recent years, but now we have more work to do because we are not quite finished. We have a few more tasks to complete before Saint Nick comes to fill up our stockings. First and foremost, we need to finish the National Defense Authorization Act. This is a must-pass piece of legislation. It is absolutely critical to providing the men and women who protect this country with the finances and the resources and the training they need in order to do their job. The House and the Senate have passed their own respective versions, which means now, the task is for a conference between those two versions to reconcile any differences and pass that version in both Chambers. Then the final version, of course, as we all know, can go to President Trump. As part of the process to finalize the NDAA this year, I remain adamant in my provisions to address outbound foreign investments that they be included in the final version. We all know that the Chinese Communist Party is the greatest national security threat--not just to the region but globally--at this time. What many of us did not fully appreciate is how American investors are directly supporting the Chinese economy and the Chinese military through outbound investments to the tune of billions of dollars. The U.S.-China Economic and Security Review Commission noted that the United States is ``the most important single source of investment to semiconductors, quantum computing, and AI in China.'' In other words, we are funding our principal competitor, and that competitor is not only an economic competitor but is vying for hegemony in the Indo- Pacific and threatening a military conflict to take Taiwan any day, week, or month in the future. So why in the world would we engage in willful blindness, not knowing what American investors are doing to help prop up the Chinese economy and the Chinese military? Failure to address outbound investment transparency is to pretend that national security doesn't matter. And we don't have any more time to procrastinate. The best time to act on this was years ago when my initial outbound investment legislation was proposed and passed as part of the Senate NDAA, but now, we need to finish the job we started back then in this year's NDAA. The last item on our plate, in addition to securing our national defense, is to address our Nation's healthcare. The so-called Affordable Care Act--better known as ObamaCare--was as dubiously named as the Inflation Reduction Act, which did not reduce inflation, just like the Affordable Care Act did not make healthcare affordable. When ObamaCare was crafted, debated, and passed, Democrats refused to work with Republicans to make it a bipartisan law. So this failed experiment in ObamaCare that is now proposing 18 percent premium increases in places like the State of Texas this upcoming year has been a complete failure. President Obama said that if you like your doctor, you can keep your doctor; he said that if you like your healthcare plan, you can keep your healthcare plan; and he also said that it would reduce healthcare costs by an average of $2,500 per American consumer--none of which has proven to be true. Democrats preferred to write the bill all by themselves and then misrepresent to the American people about their being able to keep their doctor or existing insurance plans. ObamaCare was a massive failure that left Americans disappointed and our healthcare system virtually bankrupt. Ignoring this reality, Democrats came back for more during the COVID pandemic, using a national healthcare crisis as an opportunity to serve up more of the same bad recipe for our healthcare needs. Of course, we all know the Senate's secret sauce is deliberation and debate. That is what we are supposed to do. The Senate is a forum where colleagues who may have different party affiliations and different ideas about how we should solve problems can come together to try to build consensus and to work through our differences to arrive at a policy framework that gets at least 60 percent support in this body. The result of that process is a product that has been stress-tested by Members on both sides and one that works out better in the long-term for the American people. But with the COVID-era enhanced ObamaCare credits set to expire according to a timetable set by Democrats since no Republican voted for it in the first place--instead of working through the regular order to come up with a bipartisan solution, the Senate Democrats have chosen to play hardball. They shut down the government, denying paychecks to millions of Americans, in an attempt to beat Republicans into accepting their terms unilaterally. This is simply not the way the Senate is supposed to work. The Democrats' use of a government shutdown as a tactic to get what they wanted--to extend this failed policy in ObamaCare--is a shameful tactic, but now that the shutdown is over, Democrats have an opportunity to reconsider and do the right thing. President Trump has already given us some great ideas about how to accomplish this and made the point, which I think is an important one, that rather than send the money to insurance companies that have, by the way, done very, very well and made a lot of money, let's send the money directly to the consumer so they can choose what suits their needs the best. There are many good ideas that have been circulated. Senator Bill Cassidy, a physician from Louisiana and a member of the Finance Committee, has put forward a framework based on the administration's proposals--bypassing the insurance companies and sending the money directly to the consumer. I know others who have a lot of experience in the healthcare field, like Senator Rick Scott of Florida, have introduced legislation as well. So there are a lot of great ideas out there. We know that ObamaCare itself has failed and is unsustainable in its current form, so we have a lot of work to do and not much time to get it done. The goal, of course, is to make sure that everybody in America can get access to healthcare and to make sure we don't bankrupt the country in the meantime. So all these ideas are a solid step in the right direction toward righting the wrongs of ObamaCare and ensuring we put dollars in the hands of the consumer or American families rather than in the coffers of insurance companies and insurance company executives. But to actually solve the healthcare challenges that this country faces, we need to have a robust debate between our Members, and I hope our colleagues on the other side of the aisle will approach this discussion in good faith. Based on history, I am not overly confident that will happen, but I remain hopeful. So I look forward to working with all of our colleagues, as well as President Trump, to come up with the right solution for healthcare that actually relieves the burden of rising health costs on American families, primarily caused by the abomination known as ObamaCare. I yield the floor. I suggest the absence of a quorum.

Mr. CORNYN

Mr. CORNYN. Mr. President, it has been a little over a year since President Trump was elected in his second term of office. The key part of the campaign and mandate was to secure the border and to reverse the disastrous open-border policies of the Biden administration. As we see, President Trump is delivering on that campaign promise by implementing the very policies that the American people voted for, not to mention the fact that these policies and these laws were passed by Congress and signed into law, and our law enforcement Agencies are merely enforcing laws that Congress itself has passed. The President is doing this by securing the United States-Mexican border to prevent more illegal aliens from coming into the country and also removing illegal aliens who entered our country during President Biden's open-border disaster. Aggressive immigration enforcement is not unprecedented. President Obama, who has been praised by the left for unifying the country, deported more than 2\1/2\ million illegal immigrants, earning him the title ``Deporter-in-Chief.'' Democrats seem to have forgotten this data point, but I am happy to remind them. Perhaps unsurprisingly, the progressive left in the Democratic Party these days has lost its mind in the face of enforcement of current immigration laws--again, which the American people voted for and Congress has passed. They haven't hesitated to spread misinformation and vilify the very men and women in law enforcement who are enforcing our immigration laws. These groups have not stopped spreading lies. They are actually inciting violent mobs to impede the enforcement of laws that Congress has passed. Inciting mob violence against any law enforcement officer is unacceptable, and those who do so have to be held accountable. For this reason, I am holding a hearing, as chairman of the Senate Judiciary Subcommittee on Immigration and Border Security, to examine these unfounded attacks on our law enforcement agents. In particular, we will consider what is unfolding in America's so- called sanctuary cities. Under President Biden, millions of unvetted illegal immigrants entered our country across the U.S.-Mexico border. These included criminal aliens, violent gang members, including MS-13, Tren de Aragua, and individuals on the Terror Watchlist that came not just from Mexico or Central America but from literally every corner of the world. And where did they go after they crossed the border? These individuals found refuge primarily in America's sanctuary cities-- places like Los Angeles, Portland, and Chicago. According to the Center for Immigration Studies, there are currently 12 sanctuary States and more than 200 sanctuary cities in the United States. Many of these States and communities have passed laws that actually prevent local police officers from cooperating with Federal law enforcement officers employed by ICE, or Immigration and Customs Enforcement. This means that, in some instances, these local law enforcement officers can't share information about detained or incarcerated aliens, or honor DHS--Department of Homeland Security--detainers placed on criminal aliens. So ICE, or Immigration and Customs Enforcement, has no alternative but to conduct raids on various sites to detain illegal aliens and then see that they are removed from the country. So just to explain that a minute, when an illegal alien is arrested and placed in a local jail, if local authorities are allowed to and do, in fact, cooperate with Immigration and Customs Enforcement, that transfer from the local jail to the immigration officials can occur in the jail, and then ICE doesn't need to conduct dangerous raids in our communities in these sanctuary cities. But in the sanctuary cities, that is not possible. They have no alternative, since there is no cooperation at the local level. So in those jurisdictions, in the so-called sanctuary cities, criminal aliens are released back into their communities and inevitably reoffend--that means they commit other crimes--rather than being detained by the Department of Homeland Security and allowing them to take custody. This practice not only defies common sense; it makes the role of immigration enforcement officers more difficult and, in the end, more painful for each of these communities. I would hope, at least, that some of my colleagues across the aisle would agree that criminal aliens should be detained and deported. I am not sure they would agree with that. It seems, by their conduct and by their votes, they are suggesting that illegal aliens have just as much right to be in the United States as you and me. So once these criminals are picked up off the streets and detained in jails, why wouldn't we want Federal law enforcement officers with Immigration and Customs Enforcement to be able to accept them, transfer them from the jail authorities to ICE custody, and then deport them? Any alien who has already shown a complete disregard for U.S. law should not be allowed to stay in the United States. Sanctuary cities, instead, have the practice of actually releasing these very people--sometimes dangerous people whom we all know should be first in line for deportation. ICE would not have to go into communities and find criminal aliens if elected officials and local governments would simply cooperate with Federal law enforcement authorities. These cities could have facilitated enforcement the easy way, but, instead, they chose the hard way. Instead of reporting this unfortunate reality truthfully, mainstream media outlets like CNN, MSNBC, and ABC have ignored the real harm that these criminal aliens have caused in these communities and instead directed their ire toward law enforcement. This is sort of a manifestation of what used to be called the ``defund the police'' movement, which has made so many communities in our States and Nation unsafe, because ICE, or Immigration and Customs Enforcement officials, which are employed by the Department of Homeland Security, are Federal law enforcement officials. And, basically, when the mainstream media accuses them of what, in essence, is just doing their job, they are suggesting that the laws should not be enforced and that the fault, if there is fault, lies with the Federal law enforcement officers that are simply doing their job as mandated by Congress. The mainstream media and Democratic elected officials have used incendiary rhetoric to fan the flames of public protest that are anything but ``mostly peaceful.'' The result has been widespread assault on our law enforcement officers. Protestors and criminal aliens have physically attacked them in some instances. They have rammed officers with vehicles, thrown tear gas, smoke grenades, rocks, bottles, and even punched and shot at these law enforcement officers for simply doing their job. Leftwing protestors have laid down on the street in an attempt to prevent vehicles belonging to law enforcement from entering or leaving detention facilities and even slashed government vehicle tires, all in an effort to prevent ICE and Customs and Border Protection from doing their job. Officers have been pepper-sprayed, choked, punched, and injured to the point of hospitalization in some cases. These individuals who seem to be celebrated and certainly given a lot of publicity in the mainstream media, as if they were in the right--these groups have prevented the arrest and removal of criminals--documented criminals-- including facilitating the escape, in one case, of a convicted child rapist who is now out there somewhere in the community at large. The Democratic Party claims to be the party of the people, but when it comes to protecting the American people from violent gangs like Tren de Aragua, pedophiles, and rapists, they simply look the other way or claim that the fault lies with law enforcement, not the people who have already violated our laws. Progressive activists have done everything they can imagine to impede immigration enforcement officers from carrying out their duty, including doxing them, putting their personal information on the Web, and even making death threats. The leftwing media has been intent on giving this behavior a pass, but Senate Republicans will not give them a pass. So I encourage all of my colleagues and all of my constituents back home in Texas to tune into the hearing that we intend to have this afternoon in the Senate Judiciary Committee. In this hearing, we will hear testimony from Sheriff Boyd, who will give an update on Texas's cooperation with immigration enforcement and how it protects their officers and local communities. Danielle Carter-Walters will offer insight into how leftwing policies are failing Chicago residents and other Americans living in sanctuary cities, and Mia Cathell, an investigative journalist from the Washington Examiner, will offer a journalist's perspective on how leftwing groups are funding these protests against ICE. While the mainstream media, apparently, will stop at nothing to spread lies and vilify the very people who have sworn to uphold our laws, my Republican colleagues and I are not afraid to push back in order to let the American people know the truth. I yield the floor. I suggest the absence of a quorum.

Mr. CORNYN

Mr. CORNYN. Mr. President, next July, we will celebrate the 250th anniversary of the founding of this great country. As we approach this monumental commemoration, it is worth reflecting from time to time on the enduring principles that have made our Nation unique in the world. Perhaps the most foundational of these ideas are enshrined in the Declaration of Independence itself, that all of us are created equal and we are endowed by our Creator with certain unalienable rights. The notion that we are all of equal dignity and must be treated equally under the law was somewhat of a revolutionary idea, but it does provide the basic foundation for our constitutional Republic. All other rights and freedoms that we hold dear flow from that idea. Americans defend the right to free speech because we believe in the equal dignity of every human being and their right to speak as they wish. So our Constitution prohibits government from infringing upon we the people's ability to speak our mind, and as a country, we welcome open dialogue and debate about even the most controversial issues. It almost goes without saying, but sometimes I think we need to remind people that free speech is essential to our democratic Republic, to the whole idea of self-government. If people cannot have open conversations and even arguments, then it becomes impossible for us to be informed about the most important issues and to be able to make decisions as we the voters--we the people--decide at our elections or in petitioning our government, another right guaranteed by the Constitution. But as I indicated earlier, not every country or culture shares these commitments. In fact, many are riddled with ideologies that run directly counter to these ideals that have sustained our democratic Republic for nearly 250 years. In the 20th century, totalitarian ideologies like communism and Nazism began to emerge. These radical schools of thought run counter to American ideals of liberty and equality, placing the state--not the person but the state--at the center of society, while sidelining the individual, the family, and, most especially, religion. Totalitarian belief systems defy American principles of freedom of speech and association, the protection of private property, and the rule of law. Unfortunately, we have seen a resurgence of another vile ideology in recent times: anti-Semitism, the world's oldest form of hate. A recent report from the FBI showed a nearly 6-percent increase of religiously motivated incidents against Jewish Americans between 2023 and 2024. In 2024, the same report found that 70 percent of religiously motivated hate crimes targeted Jews, who make up only 2 percent of our population. Let me repeat that. This report found that 70 percent of religiously motivated hate crimes were directed at Jews--70 percent-- even though Jews only make up 2 percent of our population. And 41 percent of young American Jews between the age of 18 and 29 said they had experienced anti-Semitism at least once in the last year. As we can all recall with horror, 2 years ago, on October 7, Hamas terrorists conducted the deadliest terrorist attack against Israel in history, the worst cause of death since the Holocaust for Jews, resulting in the murder of 1,200 people, the brutal raping of women and young girls, and hundreds of hostages taken at the same time. Unimaginably, in the wake of this horrible tragedy and the ensuing war in Gaza, many elite educational institutions in the United States shockingly responded with a flurry of anti-Semitism. We saw faculty at some of the most prestigious universities in America openly celebrating this devastating attack while some students blatantly threatened to slit the throats of Jewish students on campus. The president of Harvard, we may recall, was forced to resign as a result of her lack of moral clarity on this issue. There should be no confusion between good and evil, and this was clearly motivated by evil and hate. When pressed in committee hearings on anti-Semitism on whether Harvard policies prohibited students from calling for the genocide of Jews, she said, ``It can be, depending on the context''-- shameful. Republicans in the House and the Senate rallied to the defense of American Jews facing this rising tide of hatred from the radical fringes of the left, while, unfortunately, too many of our colleagues across the aisle left them out to dry. For example, in 2024, in May, we introduced a resolution led by Senator Tim Scott of South Carolina condemning anti-Semitism on American college campuses. Yet this was blocked by Senators on the other side of the aisle for some reason. Some Democratic House Members even visited these protests to show solidarity with the very people spreading hateful rhetoric, such as ``Zionists don't deserve to live.'' Vice President Kamala Harris even chose not to preside over the joint address to Congress of the Prime Minister of Israel, instead preferring to keep a previously scheduled commitment to address a sorority gathering in Indianapolis, in an obvious snub of the Prime Minister and Israel. There are increasing signs that the Democratic Party has lacked conviction to stand up to the most vile elements of their base. Some have even openly embraced anti-Semitism. The newly elected mayor of New York City refused to condemn terrorism in an interview on national television, saying he doesn't ``really have opinions about the future of Hamas in Israel.'' I find it too curious that, just 2 years ago, he said, ``When the boot of the NYPD is on your neck, it has been laced by the IDF,'' the Israel Defense Forces. This is the newly elected mayor of New York City. And when asked how he would have handled the protests on Columbia's campus, he said: ``I would have not sent the police to Columbia.'' Despite his refusal to use police to quell these campus riots, Mamdani has expressed on multiple occasions a willingness to direct the police to arrest Prime Minister Netanyahu if he were to ever visit New York City. The left has openly embraced this radical candidate, and now he has been elected as mayor of America's largest city. But while the Democratic Party has, unfortunately, embraced anti- Semitism in too many instances, Republicans under President Trump have continued to make clear what we stand for and have not shied away from making clear what we stand against. President Trump's leadership in the fight against anti-Semitism has been undeniable. In his first term, he signed a landmark Executive order giving new authorities to the Department of Education to investigate anti-Semitism complaints on college campuses and university campuses. When he was returned to office in 2025, one of his first actions was to sign another Executive order to address anti-Semitism that reaffirmed and built on the successes of his 2019 order. In February, President Trump's Department of Justice formed a new task force to combat anti-Semitism, particularly at our Nation's schools. So President Trump has made clear that anti-Semitism has simply no place in America--on the right or on the left. Unfortunately, his predecessor wasn't so clear. But President Trump, unlike his predecessor, has had no hesitation directly confronting the anti- Semitism working still in our higher education system. President Biden has been gone from the Oval Office for months now, but, unfortunately, there are still forces capitulating to the radicals who embrace this vile ideology. I am thankful that, by and large, Republicans have not done the same. Even when storied institutions like the Heritage Foundation have sent mixed messages about their commitment to individual liberty and freedom of speech and opposition to this vile form of hatred directed at Jews, prominent voices in the Republican Party have courageously condemned those who ascribe to anti-Semitism, including some who claim to be conservatives. Standing up for the truth and condemning evil does not amount to canceling people. Freedom of speech and freedom of association both allow institutions and individuals to condemn evil when they see it. I believe that all Americans should continue to stand with Jewish Americans against the rising tide of anti-Semitism. As we approach the 250th anniversary of this great country of ours, I hope all of us will recommit ourselves to upholding the dignity of every individual in this country and around the world. I yield the floor. I suggest the absence of a quorum.

Mr. CORNYN

Mr. CORNYN. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent to waive the mandatory quorum call with respect to Tung nomination.

Mr. CORNYN. Mr. President, we are now over a month into a shutdown caused by the refusal of Senate Democrats to vote for a short-term, stopgap spending bill that expires November 21. So much time has passed that we are now only 3 weeks out from that new deadline even if they were to vote to pass this short-term funding bill that has passed the House of Representatives. This cannot be explained by logic or reason; this can only be explained by politics and by the Democratic leader's desire to keep his job and to survive in the next election because he is afraid of his own political party and that they will throw him overboard if he were to agree to a short-term, stopgap spending bill, which we did 13 times when President Biden was in office. But we are also hearing that they want us to negotiate the expiring Biden COVID-era subsidies for the ObamaCare exchange. Since they want to talk about that, I would just reiterate what President Trump has said, what Speaker Johnson has said, and what the majority leader of the Senate has said: We are happy to talk about anything and everything you want to talk about once you reopen the government. But since Democrats brought it up and since they still insist on keeping the government shut down, endangering people flying, causing enormous inconvenience at the international Bush Airport in Houston-- there is a 3-hour wait for people to simply get through the security line at TSA. We know that 42 million people have been denied access to supplemental nutrition--some of the most vulnerable people in our country--and we know that Federal Government employees are not being paid even though they are obviously working. I have not heard a Senate Democrat say ``Well, I am going to withhold my pay during this shutdown,'' as those of us on this side of the aisle have done, including yours truly, so presumably they are continuing to get paid while everybody else is not being paid and while enormous numbers of the most vulnerable of our population, who depend on supplemental nutrition for food on the table, are being denied that relief--all because they are afraid to deal with the politics associated with simply passing a short-term, stopgap spending bill. But they also say they want this conversation to be about health insurance. Since they want to talk about ObamaCare, I figured I would oblige them. Now, we know that health insurance rates have certainly continued to go up. The Wall Street Journal recently reported that the cost of a family health insurance plan in 2025 is nearly $27,000. If you are 1 of the 16 million people on the Affordable Care Act exchanges, your premium is scheduled to go up 18 percent next year--18 percent. At the same time, if you are on an employer-provided insurance plan, premiums will go up roughly 6 or 7 percent--6 or 7 percent versus 18 percent. Well, there must be a good reason for that astronomical figure for the ObamaCare plans, and I plan on mentioning a few reasons why that is so. Well, employers are paying for much of the health insurance premiums for their employees, but increased costs eat away at the budget they have to pay wages and other benefits. So employee salaries will become stagnant as employers have to pay more each year for health insurance. For small businesses, the margin is even greater--or I say the margin should be smaller. The increased costs of healthcare for their employees might mean they can't offer generous raises or might mean they can't afford to hire as many people as they previously did. So clearly the rising cost of healthcare and health insurance is a problem for individuals and employers, but a fair question is, How did we get here? Well, the first place we have to look is ObamaCare, popularly known as the Affordable Care Act. The fact of the matter is, it is the ``Unaffordable Care Act.'' When President Obama signed this highly controversial signature healthcare plan into policy, he promised that it would make health insurance affordable for the American people. In 2016, in a speech to students in Florida, President Obama said: The Affordable Care Act has done what it was designed to do: It gave us affordable healthcare. Now 15 years later, this claim has aged like spoiled milk. Since 2013, the year before ObamaCare took effect, the average ObamaCare enrollee has faced a premium increase of 221 percent. That is since 2013 until today--a 221-percent increase in the premium. This mind- boggling number is only for those who receive health coverage through the Affordable Care Act, which is, of course, as I indicated, a misnomer for the ages. Those who received their coverage through their employer-sponsored plan were not affected by these premium hikes. As I mentioned, the Wall Street Journal said their premiums will go up roughly 6 or 7 percent. From 2013 to 2019, individuals buying health insurance on the private market faced 143 percent increases in their healthcare premiums. And this number does not account for all Americans who kept their plans but faced increased premiums or less comprehensive coverage. President Obama knew but he refused to say that for many people, even though this new healthcare law claimed to make healthcare affordable, it did just the opposite. So what did he do? He tried to shift the blame. The claim that the ``Unaffordable Care Act'' would make healthcare affordable was far from President Obama's only broken promise. In a quip that was later described by a political fact-checking site as the lie of the year for 2013, President Obama said that ``if you like your health care plan, you can keep it.'' A 2013 political fact-checking site called that the lie of the year. But we know how the story has ended. By the fall of 2013, 4 million Americans received letters informing them that their then existing healthcare plan would be canceled. In the same 2016 speech, he said: Now, some people may say, well, I've seen my copays go up, or my networks have changed. But these are decisions that are made by your employers. It is not because of Obamacare. They're not determined by the Affordable Care Act. Now, that was a complete and utter abdication of responsibility for the disruption that ObamaCare caused. And while it may be true that they were not directly determined by the Affordable Care Act, it is because of the Affordable Care Act that people lost their coverage, and, thus, they could not keep the coverage they had if they wanted it. ObamaCare did not make healthcare affordable. It created a tangled web of regulations alongside taxpayer-funded subsidies that ultimately only led to higher costs for taxpayers and those receiving care. The only party that stood to gain the benefit from the ObamaCare chaos was the health insurance companies themselves. They have enjoyed a windfall as a result of ObamaCare. By now, insurance companies have figured out how to use the muddled mess that is the Democrats' healthcare system to lobby for government subsidies, including the continuation of the expiring COVID-19 era subsidies that the Biden administration imposed. They knew that Democrats would not want to be responsible for the increased premiums and lower coverage. So they threatened premium increases while lobbying Congress to give these insurance companies even more money in the form of enhanced subsidies. In 2025 alone, U.S. government healthcare subsidies paid directly to insurance companies totaled more than $130 billion. That is your tax dollars paid to insurance companies--$130 billion in 2025 alone. In some cases, these subsidies pay for phantom enrollees who are likely not even to know that they are covered by one of these policies. In 2024, there were approximately 12 million Affordable Care Act marketplace enrollees who made zero medical claims, a highly unusual circumstance--12 million, no claims. Roughly 40 percent of those fully subsidized by the Biden-era COVID credits made zero claims, meaning that these insurance companies received these very generous subsidies but incurred zero costs. Since 2021, the cost taxpayers have incurred to subsidize ObamaCare plans has increased a staggering 150 percent, and many of the ones on these policies are far from the most vulnerable in our population. In 2021, when the Democrats lifted the cap on these subsidies, removing the income eligibility limit, households earning upward of $500,000 were made eligible for taxpayer-subsidized plans. So you tell me why taxpayers should have to subsidize somebody who makes a half a million dollars a year and buy their health insurance policy for them. These increasingly expanded subsidies for high earners proves the point that was perhaps the only promise that ObamaCare actually kept-- that the Affordable Care Act was ``just a first step'' toward a taxpayer-funded healthcare system, a single-payer system. Back in 2016, President Obama compared his signature law to a starter home that would later be upgraded into one that would be much bigger. But based on the way the law actually worked, it is clear that expanding it is not going to make people better off, just the contrary. So here we are in 2026, and what happened? Are we living in a utopia where healthcare is free or suddenly affordable? Well, just the opposite. Healthcare is now more expensive than ever, with analysts warning that increased costs will continue to eat away at workers' paychecks. Millions of Americans have faced cancellations of their private insurance plans, while many more are facing devastating premium increases. And then there are the insurance companies that have reaped hundreds of billions of dollars in taxpayer subsidies while continuing to raise premiums on patients. I think it is safe to say that ObamaCare was a golden promise that turned out to be almost entirely false. So when we look for a solution to rising healthcare costs, we should be wary of listening to the same people who sold us ObamaCare on false premises and not trust those who would prefer we continue to prop up a failed system that enriches insurance companies while leaving Americans to pick up the pieces. I yield the floor. I suggest the absence of a quorum.

Mr. CORNYN

Mr. CORNYN. Mr. President, it is hard to believe, even in a place like the Nation's Capital that seems so detached from the rest of the country--but it is hard to believe we have now reached the 30th day of this completely pointless, profoundly dumb government shutdown at the hands of Senate Democrats. Senate Democrats have now voted 13 times to keep the government shut down, blocking the continuing resolution that has been passed by the House of Representatives weeks ago. That is the key to unlock the door to this government shutdown. We are nearing a full month of that shutdown, a shutdown in search of a rationale. My suggestion is, to our friends across the aisle, that they need to look in the mirror and listen to their own people. The American Federation of Government Employees, or AFGE, the largest union that represents Federal Government employees, called on Congress to ``Reopen the government immediately under a clean continuing resolution that allows continued debate on larger issues.'' That is exactly what we have asked for, time after time after time, but to no avail. Families across America, including the 31 million-plus Texans that I have the privilege of representing, are continuing to deal with this uncertainty. Now, it is true that many people are not directly affected by the government shutdown, but a lot of people are, including the very people who are here in this Chamber--our staff, government employees. But it is much bigger than that. It is not only the Federal employees' union; it is the military; it is our Border Patrol; it is TSA, the air traffic controllers. All of these people are working, because their jobs are deemed essential, without any pay. One in six Americans live paycheck to paycheck. I haven't heard a single Senator on that side of the Chamber who said they are withholding their pay during the government shutdown, which leads me to conclude that they continue to get paid while they deny the same benefit to their own staff and the U.S. military and all the other Federal employees that I have mentioned. If that isn't hypocrisy, I don't know what is. And now, at the first of the month, November 1, 42 million Americans who rely on SNAP, WIC, other nutrition assistance programs--food stamps--will stop receiving the benefits they rely on as a safety net to put food on the table. This includes 3.5 million of my constituents in Texas, 1.7 million of whom are children. These are among the most vulnerable people in our country. Our Senate Democrat colleagues are literally taking food out of the mouths of hungry children because of their stubbornness. It is shameful. I have been hearing from food banks in Texas who are writing in with their concerns, saying they will require a 50-percent increase in food supplies next month in order to keep up with the increased demand for people who aren't getting paid and people who are being denied this basic assistance. Well, what is the rationale? I mentioned a moment ago that our Senate Democratic colleagues seem to be in search of a rationale for this profoundly idiotic and dumb shutdown. Well, the Senate Democratic leader, the fearless leader of our Senate Democrats, said to a news outlet: Every day gets better for us. Of course, that leads to the question, Who is ``us''? Not the 31 million Texans I represent; not the 800,000 Federal Government workers who are part of the union; not the children who depend on nutrition assistance to be able to eat. Well, not to be outdone, House Democratic whip Katherine Clark recently said: Of course there will be families that are going to suffer-- As if that is no big deal. She said: But it is one of the few leverage times we have. So all of these Americans, our fellow citizens, who are being harmed by this shutdown are leverage, political leverage. I was disappointed to even hear one of the Members on the other side who I look to as sort of a rare person of common sense among the crazed Democratic Party these days who said that this shutdown would prove to be ``unpleasant'' but then reiterated that it would somehow give Democrats ``leverage.'' And now Democrats are trying to turn the tables and say it is Trump's fault. This is surreal. The American people are the ones paying the price for the intransigence, the stubbornness, and the idiocy--that is what Chuck Schumer once called government shutdowns. He called it idiocy. The American people are paying for the idiocy of the Democrats who continue to vote against reopening the government. I have to wonder, what do they say to a mother who can't feed her own child because of their intransigence and their stubbornness? ``Sorry for the inconvenience; you are part of our leverage.'' We get paid--they get paid--not me, not people on this side of the aisle who have had their paychecks withheld in solidarity with the government employees who aren't getting paid. They get paid, and you can't feed your kids? What do they say to the Federal worker, including members of our staff, people working here in the Senate, who wonder: Can I pay the utility bill? How about my rent or my mortgage payment? Can I buy gasoline for my car to take my child to school? I guess their response is, well, you should expect some unpleasantness during this shutdown because you are part of our political leverage. The best way in this disaster--this nightmare, really--for many Americans who are directly affected is for just five of our colleagues on the other side--just five--to vote with Republicans to reopen the government, to pass this continuing resolution that will take us at least to November 21. But we have burned so much of the time already because of the shutdown--it is the 30th of October. This continuing resolution would open the government until 3 weeks from now, and then what happens? Are we going to go through this movie again and again and again? And then how about those Americans who depend on safe and timely air travel for their jobs, or maybe they just want to take some time off if they have some vacation plans. We can no longer depend on the timeliness, and I fear for the safety of our air traffic control system because so many air traffic controllers are overstressed and so many airports are understaffed that they are literally having to shut down some of the air traffic, and flights are being delayed. And I have no doubt--or at least I worry that public safety is being endangered. Earlier this week, Austin Airport, where I live, issued a ground delay due to air traffic control staffing problems. The same day, over at Dallas-Fort Worth, one of the largest airports in the country, they experienced 413 flight delays and multiple flight cancellations due to staffing shortages. Air traffic controllers--the people who keep these airplanes flying safely--will miss their first full paycheck this week. TSA screeners-- the people who are supposed to make sure that air travel is safe--are similarly working without pay. One air traffic controller recently said: The job is stressful enough as it is. [And] now you're adding this factor of, ``Hey, when am I going to get my next paycheck?'' They will miss their first one this week, but they don't know if they are going to get the next one because they don't know how long this profoundly stupid idea of a government shutdown is going to last. One Transportation Security Administration worker said that ``morale is crumbling.'' You know, it is not just imposing a hardship on these innocent Americans. What does this say about America and our ability to work together to solve the Nation's problems? It is embarrassing. It should be embarrassing. In the world's greatest deliberative body--that is what the U.S. Senate is sometimes called--what a joke. What a joke Democrats have made of the world's greatest deliberative body when they have shut down the U.S. Senate and made it impossible for us to pass a simple, stopgap spending bill that would take us to November 21. Well, I applaud the men and women who are continuing to go to work to keep the planes in the air and trains running on time even though they are not being paid, but it is entirely unfair, unjustified for Democrats to impose this burden on these individuals. They didn't do anything wrong. This is only weeks before the holidays and holiday travel begin in earnest. If Senate Democrats don't let up soon, you might have to ditch your Thanksgiving visit with your friends and family. And then who knows how long this will go on--maybe Christmas. They will be responsible for families having to cut back on their celebrations during our holiday season--not just because of delayed air travel or canceled flights but because they can't afford it. If they are not getting paid, how are they going to buy the food items that we typically enjoy during holidays like Thanksgiving and Christmas? What will Senate Democrats tell parents who haven't been paid for an extended period of time when they have to tell their children ``Well, Santa isn't coming this year because your mom and dad haven't gotten paid; we don't have the money''? Well, all this goes to show the utter callousness, the insensitivity, and the wrongheaded motivation behind this government shutdown, all so our friends on the other side can gain leverage. They don't have any leverage. It is on them. The American people deserve better than for their elected officials to treat their livelihoods as political playthings, and that is what is happening. So it is high time for our Democratic colleagues to come to their senses and vote to reopen the government. Is this going to go on forever? What is their endgame? They don't know. They can't say because they don't know. They know they have gotten themselves stuck in a supremely stupid idea, and they can't find their way out of it. I can make a suggestion. Three of them have already voted for the House-passed continuing resolution to end this nonsense. We need five more. Are those five Democratic Senators going to continue to listen to the Democratic leader, the Senator from New York, who led them into this box canyon in the first place? He is worried about being thrown under the bus by a political opponent in the next Democratic primary election. This is about retaining power, using innocent Americans as leverage, with no plan on how to exit this supremely dumb government shutdown. I yield the floor.

Mr. CORNYN

Mr. CORNYN. Madam President, the name ``Hezbollah'' has become increasingly familiar in recent years to Americans as one of Iran's main proxy groups committed to the destruction of Israel and even the United States. Beyond the horrific bombings of the U.S. Embassy and marine barracks in Beirut, Lebanon, in the 1980s, many of us now associate the name with Iran, of course, which has been the principal financial supporter of Hezbollah, to the tune of 70 to 90 percent of its budget. In return, Hezbollah acts as one of Iran's proxies in the so-called Axis of Resistance. We all know that Hezbollah is one of the terror groups in the Middle East, responsible for numerous violent attacks over the past several decades. But lesser known is their influence in the Americas-- specifically in Latin America. Perhaps lesser known is the broad extent of Hezbollah's activities in the Western Hemisphere, which includes illicit drug trafficking and other criminal enterprises. Hezbollah uses these activities to generate cash to help finance terrorism back home in the Middle East. So while many in the West are focused on Iran's proxy terrorism around the world, we cannot afford to ignore our own backyard. Last week, I chaired a hearing for the Senate Caucus on International Narcotics Control to examine the role that terrorist networks played in creating the drug crisis that we face here in the United States, which has taken hundreds of thousands of lives over recent years. In this hearing, expert witnesses testified about Hezbollah's activities in Central America and in South America and how they have strengthened drug cartels and other criminal organizations that are actively trafficking drugs into our country across the southern border. This illicit drug trafficking in Latin America is one of Hezbollah's primary sources of income used to finance terrorism, as I said earlier. As we learned at the hearing, now more than ever, Hezbollah will be looking to increase its cash flow and revenue from drug trafficking and other illegal activities in Latin America as they seek to rebuild from Israel's impressive campaign to rid the world of this terrorist threat. We learned that Hezbollah takes advantage of free-trade zones in Central America, where they can carry out their illegal operations under minimal law enforcement and oversight. Then there is the triborder region between Argentina, Brazil, and Paraguay, long known to be a hotbed of terrorist financing because it has a minimal law enforcement footprint and is a hub for commerce. It is a black market for all sorts of illicit activities, from drug trafficking, to arms trafficking, to identity theft, and even to real estate schemes. Hezbollah, when it comes to its fundraising, like many, many criminal organizations, is commodity-agnostic, meaning they will do anything for money. The border of these three countries, known as the triborder region, is isolated and hard to monitor, making it possible for easy transit between them. It boosts a robust network of roads that connect the area to major cities as well as international airports. These attributes, paired with high levels of corruption and lack of good governance, create the perfect petri dish for both licit and illicit trade to flourish. It was in this region in 2008 where the U.S.'s Operation Titan arrested upwards of 130 suspects and seized roughly $23 million associated with a joint operation between Hezbollah and Colombian cartels that were engaged in cocaine smuggling and money laundering. This operation uncovered about 700,000 wiretapped conversations revealing drug cartels' association with--working hand in glove with Hezbollah--700,000 wiretapped conversations tying these drug cartels to this terrorist organization. For example, one key cartel leader was known as Taliban and was given permission to freely import drugs and launder cash into Lebanon in exchange for a 12-percent tax on his proceeds paid to Hezbollah. Hezbollah's operations extend to other free-trade zones, like Margarita Island in Venezuela and Maicao in Colombia. It was in Maicao were Ali Mohamad Saleh, a designated Hezbollah facilitator, led a ``support cell'' that raised money for the broader Hezbollah network. His activities included transporting money from Colombia to Hezbollah in Lebanon through Venezuela. The Venezuelan Government has openly embraced this illicit commerce and these criminal organizations. At last week's hearing, one of our witnesses described the regime of President Maduro as ``a key enabler of Hezbollah's malign activity in the Western Hemisphere.'' From providing passports to Hezbollah operatives, allowing them to travel more freely, to creating transportation pipelines, to intelligence collaboration, Venezuela has developed a partnership with Iran and Hezbollah, allowing them to finance their terror operations around the world while they engage in illicit money laundering and the transportation of drugs and other illegal activities in the Americas. The U.S. Treasury Department has uncovered key evidence that the Maduro regime and Iran are collaborating at the state level. For example in 2020, Adel El Zabayar, a former Venezuelan official and political ally of Nicolas Maduro, was indicted in the Southern District of New York for facilitating cocaine and weapons trafficking between his own government and Hezbollah. A Venezuelan businessman was also found to have provided resources to Hezbollah, including ideological and military training and networks for illicit trafficking of drugs and weapons. Notwithstanding the impressive work of the U.N.'s intelligence community, Maduro has not exactly been secretive about who his friends and who his enemies are. In 2022, Maduro openly bragged about his ``exemplary relationship'' and ``increasing cooperation'' with Iran in an interview where he said: All of us who fight against colonialism, all of us who fight to decolonize our minds and our people, are part of the Axis of Resistance that stands against the methods of imperialists for imposing hegemony on the world. Now, if you didn't know that this was the President of Venezuela speaking, you might have mistaken the quote from a leader of Iran or some other state sponsor of terrorism or you might have mistaken it for one of America's elite universities or a slogan from one of the pro- Hamas clubs protesting on Columbia's campus, for example, last spring, who pride themselves in resisting ``western colonialism.'' Well, obviously, they are all drinking the same Kool-Aid. In addition to aiding and abetting Hezbollah, Maduro has been criminally indicted based on his leadership of the Cartel of the Suns-- probably one of the least known cartels. Better known are the Mexican cartels. But Cartel of the Suns is actually headed up by Nicolas Maduro, the President of Venezuela, and it includes a network of Venezuelan military officials, including the army, navy, air force, and the Bolivarian National Guard. Named for the insignias that Venezuelan military officials wear on their uniforms, the Cartel of the Suns--or the ``Cartel de los Soles''--is involved in everything from gasoline smuggling to illegal mining, drug trafficking, and a whole raft of other illegal activities in Central and South and North America. The U.S. Treasury Department sanctioned the Cartel of the Suns this past July for its materiel support of Tren de Aragua and the Sinaloa Cartel in their illegal drug and criminal activity here in the United States. This gives you an idea of how interconnected these networks are that seek to undermine our country and to threaten our people--not just in America but also our friends and allies in Central and South America. This is a network that chants threats to Israel--``Death to Israel''-- and also chants ``Death to America.'' We have known for a long time that much of the fentanyl trafficked through our southern border was manufactured using Chinese precursor chemicals. We also know that China, Russia, Iran, and North Korea have been working in concert for a long time to undermine the West. So it is no surprise that Maduro's despotic regime in Venezuela aspires to join that list as part of the Axis of Resistance. We should not be shocked when our enemies work together. The crisis of drug trafficking and human trafficking and other crimes in the hands of international criminal networks that the Biden administration ignored at the southern border is another scheme that our enemies have devised to harm the United States. The Biden administration was asleep at the switch--and that is being kind--when it came to the threat of a porous southern border and their open border policies, allowing criminal networks, along with their poison, to be freely transported into the United States and take tens of thousands of lives and help enrich our adversaries in Iran and Hezbollah. The deaths in America resulting from drug overdose and the violent crime that our people are suffering is not an accident; it is directly connected to this axis of resistance. And while it may be easy to think we can ignore these terrorists in the Middle East because, well, there is an ocean between us and them, the fact of the matter is, there is not. They are operating right here in our own backyard. Iran's proxy terrorist operations have contributed to and profited from the instability and corruption in South America that has led to a mass migration crisis in South America and Mexico, which has flooded our southern border with unprecedented numbers of illegal crossings during the Biden administration. This phenomenon, paired with the strengthening of the criminal cartels in Latin America, has led to much more criminal activities here in the United States, where street gangs distribute the drugs exported from these countries to America, to our border, then to be distributed across the United States to the detriment of the American people. So the reason this hearing was so important is because we need to connect the dots. We need to make sure we understand the nature of the threat to our way of life, and it is not just about over there; it is about right here in our backyard that our enemies are collaborating and threatening the safety and security of the American people. I yield the floor. I suggest the absence of a quorum.

Mr. CORNYN

Mr. CORNYN. Mr. President, reserving the right to object, it is an amazing picture to me to see our Democratic colleagues resisting restoration of law and order in these communities across our country, including in the Nation's Capital--here--where the Mayor, Mayor Bowser, has welcomed the deployment of National Guard to help keep the peace and support local law enforcement in enforcing the law. I won't go through the statistics, but one I remember, in particular, after an episode of carjacking by juveniles who basically had impunity because they weren't prosecuted by the U.S. attorney here in the District of Columbia, the previous U.S. attorney--once President Trump deployed the National Guard, those carjackings went down 87 percent--87 percent. And as I drive through some of the areas of Washington, DC, like Barracks Row, over near the Marine barracks, or Lafayette Park, I see more people out enjoying the weather and the beautiful city that we happen to be in, unconcerned for their personal safety now that President Trump has taken this important, important step to deploy the National Guard. Now, I would just point out to my colleague--he knows this--that the National Guard is organized under State authority ordinarily, under title 32 of the United States Code, but they can be federalized under title 10. And there is no question that President Trump, as Commander in Chief, has the authority to call up the National Guard to enforce Federal law and to protect Federal facilities. Federal law applies to the entire Nation. It really is amazing to me to see our colleagues on the other side of the aisle employ some of the same arguments made by the pro-slavery States back before the Civil War--this doctrine of nullification is what it was called; it was sort of back in the heyday of States' rights--where the Federal law would apply to the Nation but southern legislators, Governors, and Members of Congress would say: Well, the State has a right to nullify Federal law. Well, that obviously is a discarded theory that has no weight whatsoever. President Trump is well within his constitutional bounds to enforce the law--Federal law--in cities across the country. In fact, just yesterday, the Ninth Circuit panel authorized President Trump's deployment of the National Guard in Portland, staying the lower court's unlawful order. It is mind-boggling to me to see now Senate Democrats, who have sworn an oath to uphold the Constitution like all of us have, opposing Federal efforts to intervene in cities to enforce Federal law and to protect Federal property, just as they have done here in Washington, DC. But the response has been dramatically different in cities like Portland or Chicago, led by Democratic mayors. Even though in Washington, DC, Mayor Bowser, I think, is not exactly a rock-ribbed conservative, but she understands the importance of law and order to a prospering city where everybody feels safe. Last year, Portland was ranked in the top three largest cities in the country with the highest property crime rates, with nearly 1 incident for every 25 residents, a staggering amount. More than 5,000 car thefts were reported across the city of Portland. I can't imagine that any individual resident of Portland or any other crime-ridden city wouldn't welcome the opportunity to live in a safe environment. I encourage the mayor of Portland and the mayors of other blue cities rife with violent crime to look to Mayor Bowser as an example, here in DC, of how to work with the Federal Government to enforce the laws and make their cities safer. As I indicated earlier, here in the District of Columbia, it is like day and night, compared to how it was under the previous administration. Here are some statistics: Compared to 2024, homicides have declined 25 percent; robberies have gone down 35 percent; and overall violent crime has gone down by 28 percent. I already mentioned the reduction in carjackings. So President Trump is making our cities and streets safer by enforcing Federal law, and I would hope our Democratic colleagues would not try to thwart those efforts, which will make our cities less safe. There can be no legitimate argument that President Trump does not have this authority to enforce Federal law using Federal officials, and we know this has happened by our various States in the past. For example, during the 4 years of the Biden administration, where we essentially had open borders, Governor Abbott, the Texas Governor, ordered the National Guard and the department of public safety to back up the Border Patrol, who were overwhelmed by the open border policies of the Biden administration. Now, they weren't actually doing police work, but they were taking a huge burden off of the Border Patrol that allowed them to do their job and to focus on securing the border. That is largely the role the National Guard is playing now. They are not doing police work. They are supporting local law enforcement, freeing them up so they can do their job to keep their communities safer, something I would think that we would all applaud. Mr. President, I object to the unanimous consent request.

Mr. CORNYN

Mr. CORNYN. Madam President, today is the 20th day of the Schumer shutdown, and people around the country are beginning to feel the effects of the shutdown. For example, here, nearly all Federal employees from government Agencies to those working here in the Senate Chamber will have missed their first paycheck. One out of every six Americans lives from paycheck to paycheck. It is not uncommon. This means that this shutdown is preventing those individuals from paying their basic expenses: food, shelter, clothing, utilities. Normally, Americans who aren't able to put food on the table for themselves and their families can fall back on government programs, should they qualify. However, the U.S. Department of Agriculture recently sent a letter to the States, including Texas, announcing they will not be able to continue funding the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, or SNAP, due to the lapse in congressional appropriations. According to Federal law, food programs like SNAP and WIC--the Women, Infants, and Children Program--may continue to operate even during the shutdown, as long as funds are available. But once those funds are dried up, it is simply not possible for them to continue providing benefits. The guidance from the U.S. Department of Agriculture directs States to pause those payments for the program. This means that Texans who rely upon SNAP as a safety net to buy their groceries and feed their children will not have those benefits until this deranged shutdown comes to an end. During the negotiations on the One Big Beautiful Bill--the working families tax cut act--I was happy to champion certain reforms to ensure that those benefits were targeted on the truly poor and vulnerable. Chief among those reforms were enhanced eligibility verification and work requirements for able-bodied adults, ensuring that those who can work do work in order to continue to receive benefits. Throughout those negotiations, Democrats accused Republicans of taking food from the mouths of the poor and needy. But, of course, this is not what we did with the One Big Beautiful Bill at all. The reforms we implemented in the One Big Beautiful Bill ensured that these programs were financially secure for the long haul so we can continue to provide those benefits for those who truly need them. But, now, Senate Democrats have voted nine times against a House- passed, short-term funding bill that would immediately reopen the government, and, now, they are preventing these programs from operating at all. So what Democrats falsely accused Republicans of just a few weeks back, they themselves are doing by forcing these programs to end or to pause. Senate Democrats are literally taking food from the mouths of hungry children. These programs are designed to ensure that those who have come across hard times are able to get the food they need for themselves and their children, and, now, Senate Democrats are the reason why Texans, particularly those in need, are unable to do so now. But that is not all. This shutdown is creating a particularly severe consequence for rural health clinics across America, many of which are unable to continue their full telehealth services to patients during the shutdown. One of my constituents wrote in to say: Not being able to offer telehealth has put us at a huge disadvantage with patients. There are many who will seek care elsewhere and some who won't seek care at all. One of the only good things that come out of COVID-19 is the expansion of access to telehealth, and, now, because of the shutdown, Democrats are denying patients that need that access--denying them that access altogether. This constituent that I mentioned a moment ago, which I quoted, described immunocompromised Texans who were discharged from the hospital who require followup appointments, but the risk of infection from other patients in the waiting room makes it actually too risky for them to appear in the hospital in person. Telehealth appointments are a good solution for such patients, but due to the shutdown, they are simply not available. For other patients who live in rural areas or who are homebound from severe illnesses, telehealth could be the difference between receiving care and receiving no care. My office recently heard a devastating story about one such patient in a Texas hospital who has stage IV cancer and who has missed his last two appointments. This individual lives 45 minutes from care--in the Panhandle, in North Texas--and is a model patient for telehealth. But thanks to Senate Democrats, that is no longer an option for him. Imagine the devastation of having a loved one suffer from late-stage cancer and knowing that this person is missing out on access to healthcare because of the Schumer shutdown. It is simply indefensible. And these are real people, real patients, and real Texans. Now, this government shutdown may not affect the Democratic leader or some Members of Congress who are independently well off, but for those people who depend on these services and live paycheck to paycheck, it has real-world consequences. This government shutdown is, in other words, not a game, and yet Senate Democrats refuse to treat this matter with the seriousness that it deserves. It has been quoted many times now, but the minority leader has said to the news media: Every day gets better for us. Well, clearly, he is not talking about the individuals I have been referring to. I would like to see the minority leader, the Senator from New York, say those words to the cancer patient who is unable to get access to treatment or to telehealth services, or to the family who relies on food stamps who is unable to put groceries on the table to feed their family, or to the Capitol Police officers who provide security in this very building who are not receiving a paycheck. I can guarantee the Democratic leader that those people will not say to him that every day is getting better. The people who we work for, our constituents, the folks who sent us here, are growing more apprehensive by the day, not knowing when this will end. And while many people simply don't feel the effects of a government shutdown, very real people, like the ones I mentioned, definitely feel this shutdown. And it doesn't have to be this way. All we have to do, as we have said time and time again, is pass the short-term funding bill that will only take us to November 21. It has already passed the House of Representatives. Three Democrats in the Senate have joined Republicans in voting to reopen the government. Are there not five more Democrats willing to buck the heartless display of the minority leader and put the American people first, rather than their political party and their political aspirations? Well, I hope that the cries of those children who are without food and homebound cancer patients without access to healthcare will carry more weight with Senate Democrats than the ruthless partisanship coming from the Democratic leader. This is called the Schumer shutdown for a reason, because there is, in fact, one person ultimately responsible in this Chamber. The House has passed the bill. All Republicans are willing to support it, and we just need a few more Senate Democrats to put an end to this foolishness. I yield the floor. I suggest the absence of a quorum.

Mr. CORNYN

Mr. CORNYN. Mr. President, after more than 2 years of bloodshed, 20 living hostages and the remains of at least 7 deceased hostages were recently returned to their families in Israel by Hamas. Videos of the tearful reunions circulating on social media showed the immense joy and relief felt by the families, who have been suffering through the unthinkable and wondering if they will ever see their loved ones again. Behind all this extraordinary story is the leadership of President Trump in negotiating an end to this war that has lasted 2 years. President Trump has rightly gained praise from some of the most unexpected critics, like Kamala Harris, Hillary Clinton, and minority leader Chuck Schumer. All of these people are correctly acknowledging what supporters of President Trump have known for a long time: He is truly a master of the art of the deal. I can't think of a single President who, through a combination of carrots and sticks, could have accomplished something like this before, but President Trump has, and he deserves the credit. But, of course, for this conflict to be truly over, each and every one of the conditions laid out in President Trump's 20-point peace deal must be implemented by both sides, and that is where the trouble really begins. We cannot allow a terrorist organization like Hamas to pull the wool over our eyes or to act like this is any normal sort of negotiation between two parties acting in good faith. Hamas must keep up its end of the bargain on this and other terms for the deal to actually work. We have already seen how Hamas has violated the peace agreement, as they have not yet returned the remaining bodies of 20 additional hostages who are presumed dead, including 2 American citizens, so that their families can properly grieve and bury their loved ones. Yesterday, Hamas, despite this peace deal, violently sought to reassert its control over Gaza from rival Palestinian groups. This included Hamas dragging several men from their families and executing them in broad daylight. Hamas has been rightfully described as a death cult. Their blatant disregard for human life is the reason the Palestinian people have undergone so much suffering over the last 2 years in Gaza. I know some would like to blame Israel and the Israeli Defense Forces and Prime Minister Netanyahu, but the reason for the humanitarian disaster that has been Gaza for the last 2 years is because of Hamas. If they hadn't executed 1,200 or so Israeli citizens on October 7, 2 years ago, none of this would have occurred. Of course, establishing an agreement that depends on the good will of Hamas is going to be an enormous challenge, and it can't be a matter of faith that they will act as any negotiating partner in good faith would be presumed to act. Over the last 24 hours, the importance of establishing a multinational security force in Gaza to replace Hamas has become increasingly clear. Hamas cannot remain in control if we are to have peace. But the return of the 20 living hostages is no small feat, and it is something to be celebrated. If President Trump is successful in ultimately bringing a lasting peace to the region, it will be one of the most significant diplomatic and foreign policy accomplishments in memory. Government Funding Mr. President, on another matter, it has now been 15 days since Senate Democrats have shut down the Federal Government. They did that by blocking a short-term spending provision that would have taken us up until November 21--in other words, roughly 9 weeks from the beginning of the continuing resolution. Republicans have given Democrats multiple opportunities to end this mess by holding a number of votes on the House-passed continuing resolution. As majority leader Senator Thune has pointed out numerous times, we are not asking for any major policy changes. All we are asking is to keep the lights on and to keep Federal Government employees paid during this period of time while we work out longer term appropriations bills by the November 21 deadline. But every single time we have given Democrats the opportunity to do the right thing, only three of them have voted to reopen the government. You know, talking to my constituents back home, it is hard to explain what is going on here. They understand the stupidity of a government shutdown. Experience has shown that the same problems that cause a shutdown in the first place are there staring you in the face when the government is reopened, so it accomplishes nothing except maybe as performance art. If you think about it, that is really what this is. Our Democratic colleagues are afraid to act in a reasonable and logical manner and keep the government open while we negotiate longer term appropriations bills and take up the issue of healthcare subsidies that expire at the end of this calendar year. In a normal world, that is what we would be doing now, but we can't do any of that during a government shutdown. Federal employees are now beginning to miss their paychecks, which will have consequences that reverberate throughout the country. One in six Americans lives paycheck to paycheck. So it may not be a big deal to wealthy Senators on the Democratic side who don't have to worry about paying the bills paycheck to paycheck, but it does matter to many, many Americans because it means they may not be able to pay their rent or they may not be able to buy groceries for their family or pay their utility bills because they are not receiving a paycheck. Some people may be thinking, well, it is only government employees that are going to be affected, and everybody knows the Federal Government is big and bloated and could stand a diet. But it is not simply the case that these government employees will be the only ones affected. There are going to be a number of downstream effects of this Democrat-induced shutdown that have consequences for everybody. First of all, I have to tell you, it is embarrassing. It is embarrassing that the greatest country in the world and the people who are elected to represent 330 million Americans can't get their act together and can't figure this out. It is beyond dumb. It makes no sense at all except as a matter of self-serving political gesturing and the sort of performance art that I mentioned a moment ago--trying to demonstrate to your political base: Yeah, we are fighting. Well, this isn't fighting. Fighting is keeping the government open, having debates, having votes, trying to persuade people to your point of view. That is what political fighting is. It is not taking your ball and going home. One issue affecting the whole country, Federal workers and private sector employees alike, is the way this shutdown is disturbing airplane flights. My flight coming back from Austin this past week was delayed by such a disruption. It wasn't that big a deal to me, obviously, but I am sure I am not the only once who has experienced this. More important than the fact that Senators are experiencing it, our constituents--the people we represent, the people we owe our jobs to--they are the ones that are suffering inconvenience. Transportation security agents and air traffic controllers are among the Federal workers deemed essential during a government shutdown, which means they have to work, but they are not being paid. That is a pretty difficult situation for many of these folks to be in. As I said, some of them can't afford childcare, to buy groceries, to pay the rent, to pay utilities. This is the true hardship for many of these Americans. This has resulted in many of these essential employees calling in sick in order to pick up shift work to make ends meet. Additionally, those who are showing up are having to work under increased stress, longer hours, and shortstaffed working environments. On top of this, they are carrying the burden of not knowing when they are ever going to get paid. Now, we know that under the law, these employees will eventually be reimbursed for their missed salary, but that doesn't do a lot to put food on the table right now or pay the rent or to pay utility bills now. As the president of the National Air Traffic Controllers Association put it, ``It's completely unfair that an air traffic controller''--the one who makes sure our airline flights are safe--``is the one that holds the burden of `see how long you can hang in there in order to allow this political process to [work] out.''' The president of a local chapter of the American Federation of Government Employees at Dallas-Fort Worth said regarding the shutdown: There's a lot of uncertainty,[a] lot of questions coming from the field. They don't know how long this is gonna last. I don't know how long it is going to last, either, but the problem is that it only gets worse the longer the shutdown goes on. Just in terms of airline flights, we have seen hundreds canceled since the shutdown began, and thousands more have been delayed, which means more and more Americans' daily routines are being upended as a result of this irrational and truly stupid government shutdown. Three airports in Texas are seeing some of the worst delays. Last Tuesday, both the George Bush Intercontinental Airport and Hobby Airport in Houston were at risk of ground stops because of staffing shortages. Love Field in Dallas was also experiencing delays. But this isn't just affecting the State of Texas; airports around the country are experiencing delays in order to avoid dangerous potential air flights and ground activity associated with shortstaffing. The Federal Aviation Administration is also reporting staffing problems in Boston, Nashville, Chicago, and Philadelphia, as well as Burbank, CA; Newark, NJ; and Denver, CO. Some analysts have speculated that the disruptions could continue to cause problems during the upcoming travel holiday--Thanksgiving and into Christmas. For many of us here in the Senate, it has become an unwelcome tradition each year to have our Thanksgiving and Christmas celebrations with our families upset in order to perform our responsibilities. That doesn't just affect Members of the Senate and the House but also the able staff that make our work possible. Of course, what this tradition is, is really a sign of dysfunction. It is embarrassing. It should be embarrassing. If we did our jobs properly and passed our appropriations bills on time, we would not have to impose the burdens of all this on other people--our constituents and our staff. It is really not rational that the Senate Democrats should impose this burden on the entire country in order to try to appease the more radical elements of their political base, which is really what this is all about. They are afraid to agree to something reasonable and rational and short term because they know that they are likely to be criticized by their political base, the more radical elements in the Democratic base. Well, don't take my word for it. Minority Leader Schumer has made it clear that he is willing to impose almost any cost on ordinary Americans in order to try to appease his radical progressive base. In one of the more telling quotes, he admitted to Punchbowl News, last week, that this was all about politics, when he said: Every day gets better for us. Really? Well, by ``us,'' he doesn't mean the American people. He must mean people like him who are afraid to say no to the radical base in order to perform the most basic functions of government. Plus the fact that it is not true--is every day really getting better? Or is it more and more embarrassing? Is it having more and more of a ripple effect on people who are innocent of any wrongdoing? They just happen to be affected. I think if the Democratic leader were to ask the Transportation Security Administration workers who are working overtime without pay or the air traffic controllers who are wondering when, if ever, they will receive their next paycheck, who are also working without pay, or the mothers and fathers of the Federal employees who are wondering if they are able to enjoy the holidays with their children and their extended families because of travel disruption, or maybe just because financially they won't be able to make ends meet--but the truth is that Senate Democrats care less about the Federal workers and the rest of the country than they do about appeasing their radical base. Senator Schumer has made it clear that it was his plan, all along, to make the American people pay the price in order to achieve his political goals when he said: We've thought about this long in advance. So this wasn't an accident. This wasn't sort of a surprising occurrence. This was planned, all along, by Senator Schumer, the Democratic leader, which makes it all that much more egregious. Well, I sincerely hope, for the sake of Texans and Americans all across the country, that Senate Democrats will have a change of heart. I hope that, someday soon, maybe today, Senate Democrats will set aside the demands of their radical base and simply vote to put an end to this ridiculous government shutdown that serves no one's interest except perhaps their own narrow political interest. We need to pass that short-term continuing resolution that will only take us to November 21, and then, I imagine, we are going to have this discussion all over again, which is just further evidence of the dysfunction here in the Senate and in the Congress these days--mainly, because our Senate Democrats and House Democrats are so opposed to President Trump and his policies, and they feel like they need to be shown to fight and to push back against President Trump. But they are not hurting President Trump. He is doing just fine. He is making incredible peace deals in the Middle East and, hopefully, in other places around the world, like Ukraine. What they are doing is hurting their own constituents, and they are causing people to doubt whether their government can actually function the way it is supposed to. So I hope, given the opportunity to vote here shortly on another short-term continuing resolution, the stopgap spending bill that will only take us to November 21, that we get five more Democrats joining the three who have already voted to reopen the government so that we can put an end to this foolishness, because every day does not get better for the American people, even if it gets better politically to save Senator Schumer's skin. I yield the floor. I suggest the absence of a quorum.

Mr. CORNYN

Mr. CORNYN. Mr. President, I would call up amendment No. 3274 and ask that it be reported by number.

Mr. CORNYN. Mr. President, this amendment would make sure there is no gap between the deployment of the B-1 bomber currently housed in Ellsworth Air Force Base in South Dakota and Dyess Air Force Base in Texas. No gap--we don't retire this workhorse prematurely until the development and deployment of the B-21 bomber. This not only has the largest payload of any U.S. aircraft, it is also the U.S. Air Force's testbed bomber for hypersonic weapons, making it a supersonic standoff missile truck ready for future conflict. I would ask all of my colleagues to support it, and we would be happy to have a voice vote.

Mr. CORNYN. Madam President, I call up the Cornyn and Cortez Masto amendment No. 3926 and ask that it be reported by number.

Mr. CORNYN. Madam President, I would ask unanimous consent that Senator Warren and I be allowed to speak with 2 minutes divided between us, a minute each.

Mr. CORNYN. If this amendment sounds familiar, it is. It passed the 118th Congress by a vote of 91 to 6. Simply stated, this is a transparency bill that will give us some insight into the amount of money being invested in the People's Republic of China and the extent to which those investment dollars are directly flowing into the arsenal of our greatest strategic adversary: the People's Republic of China. The U.S.-China Economic and Security Commission noted that the United States is the most important foreign source of investment to semiconductors, quantum computing, and AI in China. Because of China's military fusion strategy, these investments are directly bolstering the People's Liberation Army. Voting for this amendment will provide transparency to us as policymakers to know where the money is going and how it is being used in China--hopefully, the way that we can protect ourselves and protect our interests in the Indo-Pacific.

Mr. CORNYN. Madam President, we would be happy to have a voice vote.

Mr. CORNYN

Mr. CORNYN. Madam President, it has been 6 days since Senate Democrats have shut down the Federal Government. They have done this by blocking a clean continuing resolution, as it is called around here, a stopgap spending bill that would take us to November 21 to provide enough time to try to work out appropriations bills for full-year funding, which are highly preferable to simply operating on autopilot, as a continuing resolution would do. This has already passed the House of Representatives, so all we need to do to reopen the government is to have five Democrats--five Democrats--join three other Democrats and Republicans to vote to reopen the government--not forever but for the next 9 weeks or so. Let's not forget that it was partisan antics on their part that brought us to where we are today. We have now voted not just once but four times on the House-passed, clean government funding bill. While three Democrats have seen the light, as I said earlier, and have joined Republicans in voting for a clean continuing resolution, they have routinely done this in the past. When President Biden was in office and when Chuck Schumer was the majority leader, we voted for, I think, 13 separate continuing resolutions, but so far, they have refused to do so out of pure spite and partisanship. Government shutdowns have, unfortunately, become far too common in Washington, but I think it is important to take a minute to consider the impact--the real-world impact--on our constituents back home. Since Texas is obviously one of the largest States in the country, it will suffer an outsized impact. The Lone Star State is home to about 130,000 Federal civilian employees. This number includes 33,000 who work with the Veterans Health Administration. These are the folks who serve our veterans, whom we are dutybound and obligated--morally obligated--to support. But 33,000 of them will be negatively impacted by this shutdown. They already have been. Almost 18,000 of this total number work for U.S. Customs and Border Protection. These are the folks who stop illegal drugs from entering into the country and make sure that illegal aliens don't make their way into the country, as we have seen during the last 4 years. Close to 6,000 Texans work for the Transportation Security Administration, the folks you encounter at airports and various different ports that help manage the flow of travelers going to and from security screenings before they board flights. Finally, the Lyndon B. Johnson Space Center in Texas has 3,000 employees but is expected to furlough about 70 percent of them due to the lapse in Federal funding. What happens to these Federal employees during a government shutdown? Well, the most dramatic thing that happens to them is they don't get paid. Even those who are deemed essential and who have to work, they work without pay, just as those who are furloughed go without pay. Before I came to the floor, I looked up a statistic, and I think it sounds about right, but 6 of out of 10 Americans live paycheck to paycheck. While it may be OK for Members of Congress--particularly wealthy Members of Congress, who don't have to worry about living paycheck to paycheck--to miss a paycheck is catastrophic to many, many Americans who live paycheck to paycheck, who don't have adequate savings to help them weather a government shutdown. While each of these categories receives backpay once the government is reopened, they cannot receive a paycheck during the shutdown. This is extraordinarily unfair to these government employees, who, through no fault of their own, are being denied the pay that they have earned. This will have a particularly serious impact on our military and Department of Homeland Security personnel, many of whom have been designated as ``excepted''--or we used to say that some were essential employees. But they have to stay on the job, in other words. But they don't get paid either. Texas has 15 Active-Duty military installations, where personnel are required to continue reporting to duty throughout this shutdown. These Active-Duty personnel will not be paid, again, until a final funding deal is reached. And right now, we don't know how long this is going to go on. I know most of us come to the floor and express our gratitude--our profound gratitude--to our men and women in uniform, and their families, who serve our country and keep us safe, but this strikes me as a very bad way to say thank you to them by saying: Yes, you have to continue to work, but, no, you are not going to be paid. Senate Democrats, apparently, have made that calculation. This is how they thank them, by cutting off their pay, denying them their livelihood, and holding them hostage over petty, partisan demands. In addition to Active-Duty military personnel, I mentioned Customs and Border Protection. All of them are expected to continue reporting for duty, day in and day out, during a government shutdown. To our Border Patrol agents, who bore the brunt of Biden's open border policies, working hundreds of hours in some of the harshest of conditions, and who have processed millions of illegal aliens flooding into the United States, courtesy of President Biden, now we are telling them--or at least Senate Democrats are telling them: You are not going to get paid. This is how they have chosen to reward these patriotic men and women who keep our borders secure, shutting down the government and denying them their paychecks. And why do Senate Democrats think this is so important? Well, they have told us what their demands are, what the ransom is that they are demanding. They want us to wipe out a $50 billion rural hospital stabilization fund that was part of the One Big Beautiful Bill. Many of us represent rural States that have large rural areas, and access to healthcare is a big, big problem. We have tried to address that problem by providing a significant fund--this rural hospital stabilization fund--to help address those concerns. But Democrats want to take that away. We also said in the One Big Beautiful Bill that no money can go to provide healthcare for illegal aliens. Access to free government services is one of the magnets that draw people to come to our country in the first place. This is one of the so-called pull factors that the Border Patrol talks about. And we said no more--no more free healthcare for illegal aliens, which is a magnet for people to enter the country the wrong way, not the right way. Democrats want to restore that free healthcare to illegal aliens as part of their demands for reopening the government. This is simply unconscionable, but it is also profoundly dumb. Shutting down the government solves nothing. We have seen this movie before. And what happens, when you reopen the government, is the same problems, the same issues that caused you to shut down the government are there staring you in the face. So these shutdowns solve nothing. I don't know how Senate Democrats can continue voting against a clean government funding bill, like they themselves have previously supported on a routine basis, knowing that the men and women who keep them and us safe are working for free, without a paycheck, for no other reason than that Senate Democrats refuse to give up on their partisan pipe dreams. FEMA employees--the Federal Emergency Management Agency--who are first responders in the case of a natural disaster, are also expected to continue to be working without pay, during hurricane season, no less. In addition, law enforcement and emergency personnel in a government shutdown affect all Americans, one way or another. It affects travel. It affects access to public lands. TSA workers and air traffic controllers have to keep working. These are the people who make sure our airlines operate safely and on time. But they have to work without pay. The hiring and training of any new air traffic controllers, which we know is a real problem and an important issue, all of that will stop during the time the Federal Government is shut down--no new hiring of new personnel to help make our air traffic safe. All of this is because Senate Democrats can't work in a bipartisan manner to keep the government open, even for a few weeks. The government shutdown also impacts our national parks and Federal lands. Texas boasts 3.2 million acres of federally operated public lands, including Big Bend National Park, Guadalupe Mountains National Park, and Padre Island National Seashore. National parks face a partial shutdown, meaning that some areas, such as open-air sites, will remain open to the public. But buildings that require staffing, like museums, will have to close. My constituents--roughly 32 million Americans--like all Americans, have to pay the price because of this completely unnecessary government shutdown and the outrageous demands Democrats are making to reopen. All of this lies squarely at their feet. I was reflecting over the weekend, after the last time we voted to reopen the government and the Democrats voted no, how this must reflect on the United States in the eyes of the world. I think most countries and most people around the world look at the United States as sort of that city on the hill, the place where they would like to live or at least visit because we have the largest, most successfully functioning democracy in the world, with high standards of living, the opportunity for people to work hard, provide for their family, start a business, and achieve their dreams. It is profoundly embarrassing--I think it should be embarrassing--to all Members of Congress that we simply cannot get our act together enough to fund the government for the next few weeks while these negotiations over long-term appropriations bills are occurring. This kind of dysfunction is completely unworthy of what has been known--what used to be known--as the world's greatest deliberative body. The unfortunate reality is it doesn't have to be this way. Many of our Democratic friends, from time to time, talked about various things being a threat to democracy. Well, being unable to pass a bill to fund the government to keep the lights on and keep government employees paid, that strikes me as a threat to our democracy. Senate Democrats long preached the virtues of bipartisanship, especially when it comes to avoiding government shutdowns. And in the past, they have wagged their finger. We have seen it all on social media and on cable TV. They have said shutdowns are ``idiocy.'' That is what the Democratic leader said on TV, years ago, when the shoe was on the other foot. He said it is ``idiocy.'' I agree with him. It was idiocy then, and it is idiocy now. The American people may not understand the ins and outs of what goes on here, but what they can smell from a mile away is hypocrisy. And that is all this is, sheer hypocrisy. All our colleagues need to do, when we vote here shortly, is to vote for a clean continuing resolution. All of this can be reversed, and we can get back to working together to try to solve some of the issues that I know they care about as well. We all care about access to healthcare. That is one of the items that we have to address, certainly, before the end of the year, with the expiration of certain subsidies for the Affordable Care Act. We are happy to have that conversation, and we will have that conversation, but not while the government is shut down. The good news is--well, let me back up and say the bad news is the government is shut down. The good news is that could end today, this afternoon. Democrats have an opportunity to vote with Republicans to pass a clean continuing resolution, as they have done many times in the past. So I hope we can all join arms and say: Let's put an end to this nonsense and pass this legislation on what will now be the fifth opportunity. The American people are counting on us, and we shouldn't let them down. I yield the floor.

Mr. CORNYN

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

Mr. CORNYN. Madam President, here we go again. Three days ago, Democrats voted against a stopgap spending bill that would keep the government open for the benefit of 320 million American citizens. But because they voted against it, we are now in a government shutdown-- something that should be a profound embarrassment to them, as it is to the rest of us who believe we were sent here to govern, not to shut down the government and deny our own constituents access to the services that government necessarily provides in some cases. If you listen to the media--not all of the media, but some of the media, particularly the sympathetic, leftwing media--you might think otherwise. But make no mistake about it. The blame for this government shutdown lies squarely on the Senate Democrats' shoulders. Three Democrats voted to reopen the government the last time we voted, and other Democrats--we need five more--will have a chance to vote here in just a few minutes to reopen the government and to stop this charade. But the facts of the matter are pretty straightforward. The reason we are in a government shutdown is because Senate Democrats refuse to vote for what is known around here as a clean continuing resolution, a clean CR. As I mentioned, this is a stopgap procedure so we can then finish the work of the appropriations bills by November and, hopefully, pass bipartisan funding bills that will last for the remainder of the fiscal year, while we are doing other important work as well--hopefully, a National Defense Authorization bill; hopefully, other important legislation. So why hold 320 million Americans hostage by denying them the benefits that their government is providing by shutting down the government? Why in the world would you do that? I think, primarily, that this is because our friends on the other side of the aisle are afraid of their base supporters. We know that last time, the Democratic leader, Senator Schumer, the Senator from New York, agreed to a short-term CR, which we did 13 previous times because it is a stopgap spending bill. The last time he agreed to a continuing resolution, he was pummeled by his Democratic base, and he is worried that if he does that again, without shutting down the government, without showing some fight, he will be ousted out of his position as a Democratic leader and maybe even defeated in his next primary election by Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, AOC. But let's consider the consequences of this shutdown for some of the most vulnerable Americans, our seniors who rely on the Medicare hospital-at-home program and telehealth. Because of the government shutdown, CMS no longer has the authority to reimburse certain telehealth services. Most of us were not particularly acquainted with telehealth before COVID, but Congress decided to reimburse healthcare providers for providing virtual visits with your doctors. In some cases, that is all people needed access to. So it is an important adjunct or supplement to our healthcare system. But that is no longer available because of the shutdown. This will have a particularly severe impact on patients without access to reliable transportation, who will not be able to see their doctor unless they can get access to telehealth. Additionally, providers who participated in the Medicare hospital-at home program no longer have the authority to deliver inpatient-level care in patients' homes. I know we are all concerned about the costs of healthcare, but if you can treat people in their homes, that is obviously a better place for the patient, and it is less costly healthcare. But that authority expired with the shutdown of the Federal Government. This means some of our most vulnerable Americans, sick and bedridden seniors, have been left without care or were unexpectedly forced to be transported to overcrowded hospitals when it may not be in their best interest to actually engage in that transport. These are just examples of the real-life consequences of the unnecessary shutdown imposed on the American people by Senate Democrats, holding the American people hostage for their partisan political demands, which I will get to in a moment. Democrats want Americans to believe that this is just about healthcare. They know that the particular healthcare benefit that they are most concerned about is a COVID-era plus-up of the Affordable Care Act's subsidies that were started back during the Biden administration. So even if these plussed-up benefits were to expire, people would not be denied the access to the Affordable Care Act if they happened to have a policy using that particular program. So there is no imminent threat to these people or anyone else if we don't address it in the context of this shutdown. So it is a made-up crisis. We know that these provisions expire at the end of this calendar year, and there will be time--and we will take the time--to deal with those, as we should. But based on many of the stories of waste, fraud, and abuse associated with these plussed-up, COVID-era Biden subsidies for the Affordable Care Act, there is an important reason why we should take our time and look at these and reform them where necessary, and that is what we intend to do. If Senate Democrats really cared about ensuring that the most vulnerable patients in America got access to healthcare, they would never have shut down the government. This shutdown is obviously not about healthcare if they are actually making healthcare worse by shutting down the government. It is simply a way for the Democratic leader to posture at length for his far-left progressive base. It is unconscionable, if you think about it, that Democrats are holding the American people hostage and some of the very people they claim to be helping get access to healthcare. Yet they are framing it as though, somehow, Republicans are forcing partisan demands. But the House has already passed a continuing resolution. The only thing stopping this from making its way to President Trump's desk is a vote in the Senate. And we need 60 votes in the Senate, under Senate rules, and, right now, three Democrats have joined with virtually all Republicans to vote for this continuing resolution, which only will take us to November 20, to give us time to do the other appropriations bills that I mentioned a moment ago. But the reason why I call the Democrats' demand a partisan wish list is because they are asking for the Sun and the Moon. First of all, starting with their proposal, anybody listening is reminded of the fact that we just recently passed the One Big Beautiful Bill--since rebranded to the ``Working Families Tax Cut Act.'' But the proposal made by the Democrats in their alternative continuing resolution says they want to repeal it. They want to repeal the One Big Beautiful Bill, which cut taxes for every American, doubled the child tax credit, and provided innumerable benefits to the American people primarily by avoiding about a $3,000 tax increase per family. They want to repeal it. One of the provisions we made in that bill was to limit illegal aliens' access to Medicaid because some States were gaming the Medicaid Program. Not to get bogged down in the details too much, but this is a State-Federal program, and under the Affordable Care Act, the Federal Government pays 90 percent of the Medicaid. Now, Democrats say: Well, it is illegal to provide free healthcare to illegal aliens under existing law, and it is. But what Democrats were doing in places like California, they were using that 10 percent State share to fund healthcare services for illegal aliens. And the One Big Beautiful Bill, the Working Families Tax Cut Act, put an end to that. So Democrats want to repeal that bill. They also want to repeal the $50 billion rural healthcare stabilization fund. Texas is a big State. We have urban areas; we have suburbs; and we have rural areas. We need to make sure that people living in rural areas--or, certainly, outside of urban and suburban areas--get access to healthcare. One of the things we did in the One Big Beautiful Bill is provide a $50 billion stabilization fund to make sure they could get access to healthcare. But Democrats want to give that away. They want to repeal that bill in its entirety. I have heard Democrats on TV and on social media say: We don't want to provide free healthcare to illegal aliens. But again, this is the provision that they want to change. They want to repeal this provision, ``Alien Medicaid Eligibility,'' which limited the ability to game the Medicaid Program, the State contribution to a State-Federal shared program to fund healthcare for illegal aliens. Now, we know that there are a lot of reasons why people come to the country--our country--illegally. Many are drawn because they want to work. We understand they want a better life. We understand that. But the right way to do that is through legal channels, not through illegal channels. But one of the magnets that draws people to come to the country is access to taxpayer-provided free benefits, like free healthcare. But the States like California that game the Medicaid system are the worst offenders when it comes to providing free access to healthcare using this Medicaid Program. But this is the provision that Democrats now want to repeal, the prohibition we passed in the One Big Beautiful Bill, the Working Families Tax Cut Act. What is more, Democrats are asking us to spend billions of dollars in new spending because they won't vote for a stopgap spending measure. So we know that the Affordable Care Act subsidies--in other words, ObamaCare--are enormously expensive. I won't spend much time here talking about the false promises upon which ObamaCare was sold: If you like your policy, you can keep it; if you like your doctor, you can keep your doctor; and actually the claim that it lowered healthcare expenditures. None of that was true. And Democrats want to put those subsidies on steroids through the Biden- era, COVID, supercharged subsidy program. And they want to do it not just temporarily; they want to do it for the next 10 years, which will result in hundreds of billions--even a trillion-dollar-plus--of new spending. Now, one of the things that we did in the One Big Beautiful Bill was we passed $400 billion in deficit reduction. Why is that important? Because our country now owes roughly $37 trillion. We are $37 trillion in debt. And if we don't do something about that, we are going to be in deep trouble in the not-too-distant future. Right now, we pay more money on interest on the national debt than we do on defense, in a very dangerous world. That is unsustainable, and that is dangerous. But the Democrats want to forget all that and spend hundreds of billions of dollars in new spending on a short-term, 9-week stopgap spending measure. And they say: If you won't agree with us, we are going to shut down the government. The kind of spending Democrats have asked for would effectively erase all the savings we achieved through the commonsense spending reforms in the One Big Beautiful Bill. It is unconscionable that Senate Democrats are hurting the American people because they want more spending for their pet programs. Yet they are framing it as though Republicans are the ones forcing partisan demands. That is false. All we are asking them to do is to keep the government open and pass the short-term continuing resolution that has already been passed by the House of Representatives. The Democratic leader said, 2 days ago, on the floor: Republicans have tried to stick us with a partisan CR that fails to protect Americans' healthcare. Three days ago, the vice chair of the Appropriations Committee said: Instead of talking with us about addressing healthcare . . . Republicans decided to pass a partisan continuing resolution. Again, that is false. They said they don't want to fund illegal aliens. They say it is a partisan continuing resolution we insist on. Both of those are false. The continuing resolution proposed by Republicans has already passed the House of Representatives. It does not include partisan demands. If Democrats do not want to pass a clean continuing resolution, what are they proposing? Well, a partisan continuing resolution. And I have talked about some of the provisions. The alternative continuing resolution that Democrats are proposing would not only repeal the One Big Beautiful Bill, effectively, but they make other partisan demands on top of that. The Democrat CR would eliminate provisions of the One Big Beautiful Bill that are critical to putting our fiscal condition back on track, as I mentioned a moment ago. In the Medicaid Program, we tightened eligibility. We added work requirements for able-bodied adults. We required stricter eligibility reporting and ensured that illegal immigrants do not get free healthcare benefits. The One Big Beautiful Bill was a critical step toward ensuring that Medicaid is there for the people who truly need it: the elderly, children, the disabled, not able-bodied adults. Democrats have claimed over and over again they are not attempting to fund healthcare for illegal aliens, but as I have demonstrated, that is not true. Their proposed continuing resolution repeals the exact provisions of the One Big Beautiful Bill that prevented illegal aliens from receiving those benefits. Just for those who want to read it for themselves, this is section 2141 of the Democrats' proposed continuing resolution. It strikes section 71109 of the One Big Beautiful Bill. This is a provision that limits eligibility requirements and Federal payments to States that allow medical assistance for illegal aliens. Medicaid has always been intended to be a lifeline to the most vulnerable Americans when it comes to their health insurance, but over the last decades it has become bloated with waste, fraud, and abuse. We cannot continue to serve the most vulnerable Americans for whom Medicaid was originally designed if we are going to be subsidizing other people, like able-bodied adults, who should be capable of contributing themselves. Further, extending these subsidies without reform would continue contributing to the ballooning costs of healthcare, now roughly 18 percent of our entire economy. This is the same problem we have had with ballooning costs in higher education. The more the government subsidizes, the more bloated that industry becomes; and, consequently, the providers raise prices, and those services become less affordable to ordinary middle-class Americans who would not otherwise rely on government benefits. The Republican reforms to Medicaid in the One Big Beautiful Bill put the most vulnerable Americans first, but Democrats have refused to vote for a clean continuing resolution and, instead, demanded that Republicans repeal these monumental reforms before allowing the lights to stay on. Democrats are also demanding to extend the enhanced Affordable Care Act subsidies, which are really Obamacare on steroids, which don't even expire until the end of this year. We will get to that, believe me, before the end of the year, but to hold this short-term stopgap spending bill hostage is really unconscionable. To anyone who says that Republicans are proposing a partisan continuing resolution while Democrats are doing everything they can to keep the government open, I hope I have made it clear that the reality is just the opposite. Republicans do not want a shutdown. Shutdowns don't benefit anybody, and the same problem that caused the government to shut down is there staring you in the face when government is reopened. I think we have learned that from hard experience. A poison pill-packed continuing resolution is simply not the solution. So I hope we can get five more Democrats to join three other Democrats who have already voted to keep the government open to vote this afternoon in just a few minutes and reopen the government for the benefit of all Americans. I yield the floor.

Mr. CORNYN

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

Mr. CORNYN. Mr. President, for a long time, the United States has benefited from free and competitive global markets. For too long, we have relied on conventional wisdom that engaging with China--in particular, the Chinese Communist Party--by bringing them into the global marketplace would be mutually beneficial. But it has become increasingly obvious and as plain as the nose on our face now that China's primary interest in that so-called free market is to use it to undermine our interests and to further their own. I am grateful to President Trump for ringing the alarm bells on China and for helping us reframe the way we look at the People's Republic of China. We need to be clear-eyed about exactly what is going on. China is not interested in a level playing field where both parties benefit from a bit of friendly competition. The People's Republic of China is treating competition in the global markets as a zero-sum game where they win and the West loses. Nowhere has this become more apparent than in the case of critical minerals and rare earth elements. I doubt many of us have given a lot of thought, at least in the years past, about the role of rare earth elements and critical minerals, but now we have become educated way too late about the importance of these two elements. There are two ways that a competitive market economy can be undermined. One is excessive government regulation making it harder for more competitors to enter a market. This makes it more difficult for newer, smaller entrepreneurs to get off the ground. But another way for a competitive market to be threatened is when one seller has a monopoly on a particular good or service. When a single provider of a service or good gets so big that they are the only game in town, then they get to set the terms. A monopoly can ask whatever price they demand because there is no one competing with them for a cheaper or better version. This is precisely what China is doing with respect to mining and processing rare earth and other critical minerals, but the People's Republic of China takes it one step further: They are actively sabotaging their competitors, including the United States. For a long time, up until the 1980s, the United States dominated the industry for rare earth elements, but then China decided to begin rapidly subsidizing their own rare earth industry. China benefits from some unfortunate advantages in this competition. They have lower labor costs because they are less concerned than we are in the United States about ensuring that workers are paid fairly and kept safe. We know China has lower environmental standards than we do here in the United States, which further makes it more difficult for the United States to compete against them. The third and most critical advantage that China has over the United States in this field is that their government recognized the importance of these critical minerals a long time ago and was willing to put generous government subsidies in place to launch their industry, while somehow we were lulled into complacency and failed to realize our dependence on China and their processing of critical minerals and rare earth elements. Now, people may be asking: Why do we care about critical minerals and rare earth elements? Well the truth is, these elements are essential to producing magnets and other components of our vehicles, our robotics, our aerospace, and our defense systems. We can't build our weapons systems to defend our Nation and to deter aggressors without access to these processed rare earth elements and critical minerals. That is how important it is. But China has been successfully sidelining the United States and other global competitors, becoming effectively the only game in town-- or I should say in the world--when it comes to mining and processing these minerals. Whether we realize it or not, there is hardly an aspect of our daily life that would not be affected were China to cut off our access to these processed rare earth elements and critical minerals--from our iPhones to the cars we drive and even our washing machines. Because China recognized how important these minerals are, their government was willing to take extraordinary measures to make sure they control the supply chain for these critical minerals in the future. What are these extraordinary measures they have taken? Well, over the last 20 years, China has invested $57 billion through state-backed financial institutions in the form of loans to Belt-and-Road participant countries in order to gain leverage over the global supply chain for these critical minerals. More than 75 percent of these investments are structured through joint ventures and special-purpose vehicles in such a way that Chinese entities have ownership stakes, allowing them to influence the extraction and processing of these critical mineral projects. More forebodingly, last December, China took steps to ban exports of technologies used in mining and processing rare earth elements in order to exert further control over the supply chain and enhance its leverage when dealing with the United States in various binational negotiations. In April of this year, China placed export controls on seven rare earth elements, requiring any company that wishes to export them to acquire a special license, and if they didn't, obviously, it would be illegal. While the terms and conditions of the licensing process are still being spelled out in more detail, this may become the tool to incentivize various countries to act in Chinese interests to protect their own access to these minerals. In other words, it is not just the United States that depends on these rare earth elements and critical minerals; it is virtually every other part of the global community. When China sees likely competitors, it floods the market with excess supply of these minerals, lowering the market price and thereby sidelining any potential competitors. Now, just to be clear, rare earth elements and critical minerals can be mined in many places across the globe. Where China has gotten the monopoly or virtual monopoly is 90 percent of them are processed in China. So you may mine rare earth elements or critical minerals in Chile or in the United States or Australia or somewhere else, but 90 percent of them must be processed in China because there are not other competitors for the reasons I have mentioned. Because China would stop at nothing to manipulate the market, prices have dropped dramatically when they flood the market with processed minerals. Since 2023, for example, cobalt prices decreased 59.5 percent, from $82,000 per ton to $33,000 per ton--again, because China has been manipulating the market to discourage any competition. Nickel prices decreased by 73.1 percent, from $48,000 per ton to $13,000 per ton. Lithium prices decreased 86.8 percent, from $68,000 to less than $10,000. Consequently, several plants that were designed to open up in the United States to compete with China had to close because of their inability to maintain profitability in this economic environment. The United States' only cobalt mine opened in 2023 and was forced to close less than a year later, while nickel plants in Australia and New Caledonia shut down in the same timeframe. While these competitors have closed their doors, Chinese firms have continued to hold on to their state-sponsored monopoly. China has been taking these steps for decades right beneath our nose to develop this near monopoly that they currently hold on mining and processing of critical elements. As the United States, we should have seen this coming, and we could have done something about it, but we didn't. Joe Biden could have spent the last 4 years in the White House tackling this issue head on, but here we are with virtually nothing to show for the Biden administration's so-called efforts. So we are playing catch-up with the Chinese Communist Party, which is not a good place to be. If another pandemic were to happen, disrupting global supply chains, or if we were to find ourselves in a hot war with China or even difficult trade negotiations with China, which we will, and they decide to cut off trade with the United States, there would be drastic consequences to our economy, to our military preparedness, and to our ability to deter an aggressive Chinese Communist Party. Americans would not be able to purchase the electronics that power our lives day in and day out. Our Department of Defense--or Department of War, as it is now called--would be hamstrung in its ability to obtain critical components for the weapons systems that are used to deter aggression by our adversaries. Elderly or chronically ill Americans would be unable to obtain the pharmaceutical remedies they rely on to simply stay alive. Well, fortunately, while we are late to the game, things are moving now in a better direction under unified Republican control. In March of this year, for example, President Trump issued an Executive order directing the Departments of the Interior, Defense--or now, as it is called, War--Agriculture, and Energy to work together to accelerate domestic investment and production of critical minerals. Congress also did some things in the One Big Beautiful Bill to help. That legislation included an allocation of $2 billion to the Secretary of War to increase U.S. critical minerals stockpiled through the National Defense Stockpile Transaction Fund, and an additional $5 billion was provided for investments in critical minerals through the Industrial Base Fund. Furthermore, this law tightened our definition of a ``foreign entity of concern,'' which will help ensure that Chinese critical mineral companies are not availing themselves of U.S. tax credits in order to invest in their own critical mineral efforts. There are ongoing discussions to ensure that the Defense authorization bill we are currently on includes provisions such as the reauthorization of the Development Finance Corporation that our colleagues Senators Risch and Shaheen have sponsored this year. We need to make sure they are successful in those efforts. The Development Finance Corporation works to incentivize private capital markets to invest in our most critical supply chains. I have introduced something called the Critical Minerals Security Act, which directs the Department of the Interior and Department of State to further identify vulnerabilities in U.S. supply chains for critical minerals. Now, I believe these are important steps, but we have a bigger problem in America. We simply have a hard time building things anymore. A lot of that has to do with overregulation, problems with gaining the appropriate permits, and the litigation environment, which means that any sort of critical infrastructure is probably going to be delayed years, maybe decades, from endless lawsuits. That is a larger, more threatening situation, and I am only talking about a small part of it here today. The steps we have taken so far are unfortunately too little, too late, in my view, but they are at least a step in the right direction. They are not enough, by themselves, to ensure that we have safe and secure supply chains for both mining and processing of critical minerals to meet our Nation's needs. Once again, Deng Xiaoping, who said, ``Hide your motives and bide your time,'' has successfully snookered the United States and our other allies around the world so that we are now almost entirely dependent on Chinese processing of critical minerals. So there is not a day to wait. We need to make sure that we catch up and we catch up quickly. It is going to take a lot of work for the United States to claw our way back to where we need to be, but I am confident that we can, if we rise to meet the occasion. So I would urge all of my colleagues to listen to and respond to this alarm bell that I am trying to ring here on the Senate floor today and take seriously the urgency of securing our supply chains and securing American processing facilities for critical minerals. We simply do not have a choice. Otherwise, we will continue to be held hostage by an adversary that does not wish us well. They don't want friendly competition. They want dominance, and they also want to take Taiwan in the coming years. If we can't build things because we can't deter them by building the weapons necessary to do that, if we can't sustain our economy by continuing to manufacture technology that allows us to compete with China in the coming years, we will have failed in our fundamental responsibility as Members of Congress. If America is to have a safe, secure, and prosperous future, we have to compete and we have to win the critical minerals race with the People's Republic of China. I yield the floor.

Mr. CORNYN. Mr. President, I would ask unanimous consent that the previously scheduled recess begin immediately.

Mr. CORNYN

Mr. CORNYN. Mr. President, I would like to ask unanimous consent that the following Commerce Committee detailees be granted floor privileges for the remainder of Congress: Thomas Hastings, Joseph St. Peter, Tyler Stutin, Dean Legidakes, and Leticia Vega.

Mr. CORNYN

Mr. CORNYN. Madam President, I want to begin my remarks this afternoon by reflecting on the tragic shooting at the Dallas ICE Facility that happened this last week. One detainee was killed and two others were injured by a 29-year-old shooter who was later found dead on the scene from a self-inflicted gunshot wound. This is not the first attack of its kind against the immigration enforcement officials in Texas. In fact, this is the fourth in as many months--four attacks against law enforcement officials in the last 4 months. On July 4 in Alvarado, TX, assailants opened fire outside an ICE detention facility, wounding an Alvarado Police Department officer in the neck. Ten people were subsequently arrested and charged with attempted murder while six other subjects have been charged with related offenses. Three days later, July 7, a man shot at a Border Patrol employee in McAllen as he tried to park his car. He then fired at the Border Patrol annex, attempting to break in, before finally being killed in a firefight with Border Patrol agents. In addition to these attacks on law enforcement, we know our country is still reeling from the horrific murder of Charlie Kirk, whose life was taken from him simply for expressing his views and engaging in political dialogue on college campuses. We are beginning to see in our country a level of political violence that is not and should not ever be considered normal. But this is a warning signal about the direction we are heading in as a nation, and it is one we cannot afford to ignore. Many of us are asking ourselves, how did we get here? Well, the answer, it seems--or at least part of the answer--is simple and straightforward. It begins with the demonization of free speech and the vilification of those who are doing nothing more and nothing less than their duty, which is to enforce the laws on the books. Frequently, these are laws passed by Congress on a bipartisan basis and signed into law by the President. These law enforcement officials are simply enforcing the laws that we have written. The radical base of the Democratic Party seems to be at war with the men and women who actually enforce our laws, and with the same breath, they seem to, from time to time, celebrate mob violence. We all remember the so-called peaceful protests of 2020 that resulted in massive economic losses and harms to businesses, not to mention that many law enforcement officers were injured or even died as a result of mob violence. Embarrassingly, it was a Texas Member of the House of Representatives, Congresswoman Jasmine Crockett, who recently said on national television: When I see ICE, I see slave patrols. Not to be outdone, Congresswoman Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez described ICE as a ``rogue agency that should not exist.'' Then there is former Member of Congress Colin Allred, who called ICE ``un-American'' and ``harmful to our public safety.'' These attacks against the men and women who enforce our laws are simply unconscionable, and they have undeniably contributed to getting us in the dangerous place we find ourselves in today. If these individuals and other Democrats truly cared about public safety, they would stand with Republicans. We would stand united as Americans in supporting our men and women in blue and green, and they would denounce the unprecedented rise in attacks against these law enforcement officers immediately. Instead, Democrats seem to endorse a complete inversion of how a just and ordered society functions. Unfortunately, this is going to require some of our Democratic colleagues to swim against the tide of opinion among their radical base and show some leadership. But they have to decide as a party to move away from the dangerous and radical demands of their leftwing base. Unfortunately, the Democratic leader in this Chamber, the Senator from New York, is showing anything but that kind of leadership right now. He has demonstrated a complete unwillingness to tone down the rhetoric of his party or to make actually even good-faith gestures toward good governance. In fact, this very week, he has demonstrated just how far he is willing to go to undermine basic governance in order to appease his radical base. He would rather shut down the government than work across the aisle for the benefit of the American people. Senate Democrats have so far refused to even vote on a simple stopgap measure that will give us a little more time--about 9 weeks--to negotiate full-year government funding. If they do not relent in this partisan posturing, the result will be forever known as the Schumer shutdown. You don't have to take it from me on what a government shutdown would mean for the American people; all we have to do is to read back to them the very words Senate Democrats have said in the past. In September of last year, when the shoe was on the other foot, Senator Schumer said: If the government shuts down, it will be average Americans who suffer most. He also said: A government shutdown means seniors who rely on Social Security could be thrown into chaos. Is this even the same individual that is taking the position that is heading us toward a shutdown in the coming days? Last September, he went so far as to even say: Keeping the government open will mean no poison pills or reckless partisan posturing. This is what he said just last year about a government shutdown. Where is that man today? Today, I will tell you, he is engaging in reckless, partisan posturing while Republicans are proposing a responsible alternative. Again, this is not a vote on a permanent policy but, rather, a stopgap measure to get us to a place where we need to be when it comes to the appropriations process. But he is willing to impose the very costs that he warned about on the American people and our seniors in order to score political points with his progressive, radical base. The hypocrisy is obvious, and it is staggering. It is a time for reckoning for our friends in the Democratic Party. They seem to not really know what they stand for these days except opposition to each and every thing that the majority party or the President wants, even when it is in their self-interest to do so. They need to look at themselves in the mirror and decide what and who they stand for. Are they going to be the party of violence and lawlessness and a degradation in public safety? Are they going to continue to what has been called frighteningly an assassination culture? Will they continue down this mad path of taking the lives of those they disagree with and siding with the criminals over law enforcement personnel that are simply enforcing laws they themselves have helped write? Will they continue on prioritizing their ideology ahead of responsible governance? I often wonder how our friends on the other side of the aisle would react if they had to live--if they had to live--in crime-ridden neighborhoods overtaken by gangs and drug dealers and they had to wait 20 or 30 minutes before any police officer responded to their calls for help after an assault or a robbery. How would they feel? Well, I am quite sure, I am confident that they would change their tune. Just like current residents in blue cities who had to suffer under the weight of failed Democratic soft-on-crime policing policies, they would gladly welcome additional police protection and efforts to clean up and stabilize their neighborhoods. Sadly, most Democrats--at least so far here in Washington, DC--have appeared to be completely tone-deaf and rarely hear the true voices of the people whose lives they assume they represent, people living in these inner cities. Well, regardless of what Democrats decide to stand for, Republicans will continue to be the party that respects free and open discussion of ideas. We will continue to support our law enforcement officers, men and women who risk their lives day in and day out so that Texans and all Americans can sleep soundly in their beds. We will continue to be the party that opposes reckless partisan tactics that put ideology ahead of the needs of the American people. Republicans have made it clear under President Trump that we will enforce the rule of law. That is nonnegotiable. So it is no surprise that the American people overwhelmingly voted for Republican leadership last November. If Democrats continue to head down this path of violence and division, they should not be surprised if they continue to experience the same outcome at the ballot box in the upcoming midterms as they did last November in the general election. I yield the floor. I suggest the absence of a quorum.

Mr. CORNYN

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