John Cornyn

Mr. CORNYN

Mr. CORNYN. I just want to ask the Senator from Oklahoma--9,000 a day. I had to get out my calculator to figure out what that means. Are you talking about 3 million, 3.285 million----

Mr. CORNYN.--a year----

Mr. CORNYN. Mr. President, here we are, 16 days before the end of the fiscal year, and the Senate has finally begun--we are not finishing; we are just beginning--taking up the annual appropriations process. Just to remind everybody, there are 12 individual appropriations bills. There is no time for us to finish this process before the end of the fiscal year, which is actually part of the majority leader's plan. He never intended to have a normal process by which the appropriations bills would be considered because what we call the regular order around here means you take them up one at a time, all 12. It is a transparent, open process where the American people can see it, where every Senator--all 100 Senators--gets to participate in crafting those bills. If they believe the spending needs to be cut in a certain area, they can offer an amendment to do that. If we need different priorities in the spending bills, well, you can do that by offering an amendment and getting it passed. Earlier today, the Senate voted 91 to 7 to begin debating this legislation that funds military construction projects and supports America's veterans. This bill is important because it bolsters our military readiness by investing in new and existing facilities at our military bases around the world. That includes, in Texas, places like Fort Bliss, Joint Base San Antonio-Lackland, and Fort Cavazos. It also helps us fulfill the promise we made to America's veterans by investing in mental health care, telehealth, housing, and other critical services. Today, Texas is the proud home of 1\1/2\ million veterans, and this is one important way we keep our commitment and honor their service and the many sacrifices they have made for our country. This legislation passed the Appropriations Committee earlier this summer with unanimous support. Every Democrat, every Republican voted for it--all 28 members. But this is just 1 of 12 funding bills the committee passed this summer with strong bipartisan support. Earlier this week, the majority leader, the Senator from New York, spoke about the Senate appropriations process thus far, and he referred to it as ``the gold standard in good governance.'' When I read that, I nearly fell out of my chair. He calls this process, which is doomed to failure because of his refusal to bring these bills to the floor on a timely basis, the gold standard of good governance. Given the fact that we are 16 days from a government shutdown unless the House and the Senate can agree on a continuing resolution, I would say this is far from the ``gold standard.'' As a matter of fact, I think you could say we have sunk about as far as we can. But it is important to remember that this funding deadline didn't surprise us. It didn't pop up out of nowhere. It arrives every year on September 30. So the majority leader had plenty of time to plan, prepare, and to carve out time to pass all 12 appropriations bills, just like the rules contemplate. But here we are, September 14, 16 days ahead of the funding deadline, and the Senate has not passed a single funding bill for the government. If the majority leader's gold standard comment had been in reference to the committee process, I would have agreed with him. The Appropriations Committee did their job. Senator Murray, the chair of the Appropriations Committee, Senator Collins, the ranking member, and all 28 Senators on a bipartisan basis did their job on a timely basis-- the first time they have done that in 5 years. But the committee's productivity was no accident. The chair and vice chair of the committee, Senator Murray and Senator Collins, promised to return to regular order, and that is exactly what they delivered. Our colleagues on the Appropriations Committee worked across the aisle, which is the way you are supposed to work around here, to pass all of these bills by the end of July. They put the Senate in a strong position to debate, vote, amend, and then finally pass appropriations bills before the end of this month. So the committee process certainly was the gold standard of good governance, but that outstanding product has been squandered. You might even say this whole process was designed to fail because the majority leader refused to bring those bills to the floor on a timely basis. Let's look at the MILCON-VA--Military Construction-VA--funding bill as an example. This legislation was approved by the committee on June 22, more than 2\1/2\ months ago. The majority leader, the Senator from New York, could have brought this legislation to the floor anytime between then, June 22, and now. He could have said, well, this is important work, so we maybe need to shorten the Senate's 2-week recess for the Fourth of July so we can get our work done, or he could have scheduled a vote during the July 4th period instead of working on nominations. He could have canceled or--my preference would have been--delayed the 5-week August recess. If we had to cut that back to 4 weeks, do you think anybody would have suffered? Well, it would have given us an extra week to actually get our work done. But that didn't happen. He could have adjusted the Senate work schedule in any number of ways and would have gotten cooperation from the minority leader, Senator McConnell, because we all understand--or at least most of us understand--the importance of getting our work done on a timely basis. But, as we know, none of that happened. Days, weeks, months have passed as the Senate did nothing--nothing-- to advance any of the 12 bipartisan appropriations bills. And I want to be just crystal clear: It didn't have to be that way. Again, this end-of-the-fiscal-year deadline is not a surprise to any of us. It is not as if the appropriations bills weren't ready on time-- they were--or that the Senate has been preoccupied with other priorities. The majority leader is the only person who can set the agenda of the Senate. He is the only one who could call up these bills and schedule a vote, but he has done nothing but squandered the opportunity. I know that many of our colleagues are frustrated that the Senate has not obtained consent to consider two additional funding bills as part of a so-called minibus, bundling three bills together, but that is the rule. Rule XVI of the Standing Rules of the Senate requires a unanimous consent vote before you can bundle those individual appropriations bills together. But the majority leader knew that. He knew what the Senate rules were, and all along he was taking the risk that one Senator--maybe a handful of Senators--would want to consider the bills one at a time, which is the normal process. It is just not normal to do it starting 16 days before the end of the fiscal year. Well, while the majority leader has preached the virtues of regular order, he has refused to actually engage in a process where we can be successful. As a matter of fact, he knows, by delaying the appropriations bills to this point, that we will not be successful because he has undermined it; he has sabotaged it. Now, you might ask: Why would the majority leader do that? Well, two reasons. One is when you do a continuing resolution, it actually maximizes the power of the leadership because they are the ones that actually negotiate it, and then rank-and-file Members get to vote up or down. But the other reason he did it was because he wants to point to the House and claim that somehow they are trying to shut down the government. Now, admittedly, the House is having their challenges, but Speaker McCarthy has pulled a rabbit out of the hat more than once this year, and I am hoping he can do so again. But if we do have a shutdown because the House and the Senate can't agree, it will be a Schumer shutdown--a Schumer shutdown. Well, Members on both sides of the aisle want an opportunity to participate in the process. They want an opportunity to shape this legislation, even at this late hour, to do as much as we can in the truncated time that the majority leader has allowed us. So I urge the leader to let the Senate vote on this underlying bill, the MILCON-VA bill. It is important. We shouldn't act like it is a throwaway or inconsequential. We ought to do our work, even under the impossible timeframe that the majority leader has given us. I think it is dangerous when Congress circumvents the normal process when it comes to funding the government. It is no secret that our debt is about 100 percent of our GDP. We are going to spend more money just paying interest to bondholders on our debt that is at some point more than we spend on national defense. Interest rates are high, we know, because the Federal Reserve is fighting inflation caused by too much reckless spending, but, as a result, we are also paying more money to our creditors to finance our national debt. And I think that is another symptom of the broken system by which we fund the government. It has become all too common for short-term funding bills and large spending packages to be negotiated by a handful of leaders and rushed through both Chambers before the clock runs out. There is a growing sense of frustration among Members of this body on both sides of the aisle and a strong appetite to return to a normal, regular, transparent, participatory process, one that will give us at least a chance to try to get our fiscal house in better shape. But we have no chance to do that when, in essence, the majority leader creates an emergency situation, claims that he is the gold standard, and tries to blame the House and say they want a shutdown. Well, I am not for a shutdown. I agree with the Senator from Oklahoma. The same problems that cause you to shut down the government are always there staring you in the face when you reopen. So we need to do our work. We need to solve those problems and avoid a shutdown, but it is really hard to do when the majority leader of the U.S. Senate, the only one who can schedule votes on the floor and the agenda of the Senate, sabotages the process. The majority leader has purposely wasted more than 80 days that could have been spent debating funding bills and left the Senate with only two options: shut down the government or kick the can down the road with a continuing resolution. Of course, that is just a temporary measure, and then, when that expires, we have to deal with the consequences of that by figuring out, OK, how do we continue to fund the government at some appropriate level. He knows we can't move 12 appropriations bills through the Senate and the House in the next 16 days, so this exercise will certainly end with another spending bill that is crafted at the last minute and jammed through both Houses. If this is the gold standard for anything, it is a gold standard for political theater. This is drama scripted by the majority leader. He is trying to put on a show or, I would say, a pretense of regular order in the Senate so he won't get the blame if the government shuts down; he can blame his political opponents in the House. Well, suffice it to say, I am disappointed we find ourselves where we do, especially in light of the hard work done by our colleagues on the Appropriations Committee. They have done their job, but the majority leader has blown that up. This is not an accident. This is by design. If the government shuts down at the end of the month, the majority leader won't be able to escape the blame for what will be a Schumer shutdown. Despite the political theater and the Kabuki dance, he will have to own that shutdown because he will have been the primary author of it. I yield the floor. I suggest the absence of a quorum.

Mr. CORNYN

Mr. CORNYN. Madam President, I want to thank our friend Senator Capito for bringing us together to discuss national security and the many challenges that we see on the horizon. When we think about national security, we often picture the brave men and women in our uniformed military who have made immeasurable sacrifices to protect our freedom. We envision the ships, the tanks, the aircraft, and the weapons that they use to keep us safe. We think about the greatest threats to our country, including countries like Russia and China. But today I want to talk about a lesser known but no less important aspect of our national security apparatus, which is section 702 of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act, FISA, as it is sometimes called. In short, section 702 allows the intelligence community and the Department of Justice to obtain intelligence on foreigners located outside of the United States. As we know, different rules apply here in the United States and particularly insofar as it involves U.S. persons and U.S. citizens. All of the protections of our criminal justice system, including the requirement of a warrant and a showing of probable cause for a search and that sort of thing, that applies to American citizens and U.S. persons on American soil, but overseas, when it involves foreigners, this is an important tool, section 702. Congress enacted section 702 in 2008 in response to threats posed by terrorist groups in the wake of 9-11. It tore down some of the walls between the criminal justice system and our intelligence community and made sure that we could share--legally share--information that could be used to keep America safe. There is no question that it has been a success. When talking about section 702, the FBI Director, Chris Wray, said several years ago, ``The fact that we have not sustained another 9/11- scale attack is not just luck.'' He noted that it is a product of diligence, teamwork, information sharing, and connecting the dots, and much of that dot-connecting occurs and is made possible by section 702. This authority has been vital to detecting potential terrorist attacks; but, also, it is important for applications that reach far beyond America's counterterrorism missions. Section 702 has helped the United States understand and combat drug trafficking, including the scourge of fentanyl, which is affecting so many people in this country as I speak. Section 702 has helped us to identify multiple foreign ransomware attacks on our critical infrastructure--for example, the attack on the Colonial Pipeline that shut down gasoline deliveries on the east coast for days on end. It helped prevent components of weapons of mass destruction from reaching foreign adversaries. Section 702 has helped to uncover Russian war crimes in Ukraine. It has even helped to disrupt our adversaries' efforts to recruit spies on American soil or to send their operatives to the United States. Section 702 is a critical tool in America's national security toolbox, but its future is in question. Unless Congress acts in the next few months, section 702 is set to expire at the end of this year. If this happens, it will deprive America's dedicated intelligence professionals of the laws and the authority they need to keep us safe. Director Wray recently said that allowing section 702 to expire would be an ``act of unilateral disarmament in the face of the Chinese Communist Party''--``unilateral disarmament in the face of the Chinese Communist Party.'' Given the threat that China poses to the United States and to peace in the region, an unforced error is the last thing we need. In the coming months, I hope we can pass a bipartisan law to preserve section 702 and, at the same time, promote greater trust in the Agencies that use it. GEN Paul Nakasone, who heads both the National Security Agency and the U.S. Cyber Command, has been very clear about the need to preserve section 702 authorities. Last month, he summed up its importance rather succinctly when he said 702 ``saves lives and protects the homeland.'' It ``saves lives and protects the homeland.'' That is what national security is all about: saving lives and protecting the homeland and our very freedoms that we cherish. We have a clear and urgent opportunity to do just that, and we can't let it slip through our fingers. I yield the floor. I suggest the absence of a quorum.

Mr. CORNYN

Mr. CORNYN. Mr. President, as the Members of the Senate know, this week, we are expected to vote on a series of three appropriations bills--3 out of the 12 appropriations bills that passed out of the Senate Appropriations Committee a couple of months ago. With just 2\1/ 2\ weeks left before the end of the fiscal year, time is of the essence. Unless Congress funds the government in the next 18 days, the government will shut down. Now, you might ask yourself, if these appropriations bills passed out of the committee with strong bipartisan votes months ago, why are we waiting until 18 days before the deadline to begin the debate and vote on these appropriations bills--and not all of the appropriations bills, just a subset of three. Well, we know shutdowns do not benefit anybody. I notice on social media there is a lot of anger out there in Washington, and people say: Yes, let's shut down the government. That is a good thing. It is too big. It is too intrusive. It is doing things I don't like. But, if you think about this for a moment, with a shutdown, servicemembers--members of our military--will have to work without pay. Veterans won't get the benefits or services that they have earned. Mortgages and other loan applications will be delayed. Passport processing will grind to a halt. Maybe there is even a risk that Medicare and Social Security payments will not be delivered on time. So shutdowns are a blunt instrument. I think we have realized that, with a shutdown, when the government reopens, the same problem is staring you right in the face, so you might as well deal with it on the front end rather than on the back end. From minor inconveniences to major disruptions, the American people are affected by lapses in government funding. We have learned that lesson before. The surest way to avoid any funding drama, which is what we are experiencing now, drama--the surest way to avoid that is to pass spending bills on time and in a transparent, normal process, something we call regular order around here. That means using the processes that are already in place to write, debate, and pass quality legislation. And it is done in a transparent sort of way, where every Senator--all 100 Senators--can participate. If they have got a better idea, they can offer an amendment. They can try to persuade colleagues, and they can get a vote. Well, at the start of this summer, I was feeling somewhat optimistic about the government funding process. The day the Senate passed legislation to lift the debt ceiling and curb government spending, Leader Schumer and Leader McConnell issued a joint statement about the funding process. They asked the chair and vice chair of the Appropriations Committee to get the regular process back on track. They also pledged to work in a bipartisan fashion to advance funding bills and noted ``expeditious floor consideration would be key to preventing automatic funding cuts.'' Well, there is no question our friends on the Appropriations Committee, led by Senator Murray and Senator Collins, have done their job. They did. As a matter of fact, I think three of these bills--maybe the three in front of us--passed with unanimous votes in the Appropriations Committee, and all of them passed with broad bipartisan support. The point is the Appropriations Committee passed all 12 regular appropriations bills before the Senate adjourned for the August recess. To show you how rare that is these days, this is the first time in 5 years that the Appropriations Committee actually processed all 12 bills. I want to commend Senator Murray and Senator Collins and the entire Appropriations Committee, on a bipartisan basis, for doing their job and for doing it on a timely basis. Well, thanks to their hard work, the Senate was in a strong position to advance these appropriations bills on an individual basis or, if necessary, to combine a few of them in what sometimes are called minibuses. We were well positioned to do that well in advance of the September 30 deadline. As Senator Schumer affirmed in that joint statement earlier this summer, expeditious floor consideration is key, but his actions don't match those words. Today, more than 80 days after the Appropriations Committee passed its first spending bill, the full Senate is beginning--beginning--to consider the first batch of those bills. This is 80 days after the first bill passed. That is not what anybody would call expeditious. The American people may or may not know it, but the majority leader has tremendous power. He has near-full ball control in terms of the Senate's agenda and the timing of legislation. He actually determines which bills come to the floor, when they receive a vote, and how many amendments will be considered. The majority leader is in the driver's seat. Senator Schumer could have called any of these bills up for consideration, debate, and a vote at any time in the last couple of months, starting with the first one that was passed 80 days ago. Senator Schumer has been around here a long time. He is a smart guy. He is a shrewd operator and a worthy adversary when it comes to politics, but he knows the Senate can't complete its work in 18 days. Plus, in addition to the 12 funding bills, we need to pass the farm bill, the Federal Aviation Administration reauthorization, and the final version of the National Defense Authorization Act. That is a lot of work in an impossibly short amount of time. The majority leader knows that, and he knows, if he actually wanted to keep his commitment to the Senate, to Senator Collins, and to Senator Murray, that he should have started this process far earlier than today. The Senate had a 2-week recess over the Fourth of July, and we had a 5-week recess in August. There has got to be some time in there that we could have used on something other than routine nominations, whereby Senator Schumer could have put these bills on the floor, and we could have kept to his commitment of the expeditious consideration of the bills. I understand that these recesses are sacrosanct. I am not sure we needed 5 full weeks for the August recess. Maybe 4 weeks would have been good but with a little notice so that everybody could plan. My point is that Senator Schumer, apparently, had no interest in seeing each of these 12 bills being voted on on the Senate floor before the deadline. So here we are. Now, you may ask: Why would Senator Schumer sabotage the regular order process for the appropriations bills? Well, there are a couple of reasons. One is that it maximizes his power because he knows, once you get down to the deadline, that four or five people are the ones who are going to basically figure out how to get out of this box canyon. Meanwhile, the rest of the Members of the Senate, all 98 or so of us, are left with no options. We can't engage on behalf of our constituents. We can't cut what needs to be cut. We can't prioritize the spending. We can't offer amendments. We can't vote. All of that goes down the drain when the majority leader sabotages the timing of this appropriations process. Senator Schumer waited 18 days before a potential government shutdown before putting the first funding bill on the floor. Now, if there is a shutdown, and I don't recommend it, it was engineered by the majority leader himself, which is why it should be called a Schumer shutdown. I hope that doesn't happen, but he knows that the House is in a different place than the Senate in terms of the spending levels. He knows that Speaker McCarthy has a razor-thin majority. He knows the politics of what is happening in the House. He has already been quick to blame the House for a potential shutdown. But, as I have explained here, any potential shutdown is Senator Schumer's own making. The press has already taken hook, line, and sinker the narrative that this is somehow the fault of Republicans in the House. While the majority leader is quick to say the Senate passed 12 bipartisan appropriations bills through the committee, we are engaging in a bipartisan process this week, maybe next week. Well, he knows we can't get through this process between now and the end of this month. So he knows that basically what he has engineered is one of two options: He has either engineered a shutdown, or he has engineered a continuing resolution, which essentially means postponing or continuing the funding at current levels to some future date. Of course, that is going to have to be negotiated, what that date looks like. This is not a genuine effort to return to regular order. It is, frankly, political theater. It is an attempt to make good on the promise to return to regular order without actually doing it. I have been fortunate to have been in the Senate for some time now. I have seen this place work well, where every Senator gets to contribute to the process, where the committees do their work, where the majority leader gives the Members of the Senate an adequate time to debate bills and to vote on amendments and to pass legislation. When you do that, it is much easier to build consensus, bipartisan consensus, to actually get things done, and the work product is far superior because everybody has had a hand in crafting it. Every Member of this Chamber--and by extension, all 330 billion of our constituents--deserves a say in this legislation. Regardless of where they are from, which committees they sit on, or how long they have been in the Senate, all 100 Senators should have a voice in this process. The majority leader has squandered valuable time that could have been spent debating, amending, and passing appropriations bills on a timely basis. That is why everyone knows that a continuing resolution is the probable outcome of this disaster. It did not have to be this way. And if there is a shutdown, which I hope there is not for the reasons I have tried to explain, I think it should be called the Schumer shutdown. I yield the floor. I suggest the absence of a quorum.

Mr. CORNYN

Mr. CORNYN. Mr. President, I find it ironic that we are talking about government shutdowns when it is as a result of Senator Schumer's handling of this matter that we find ourselves here 2 weeks before the end of the fiscal year without having a chance to vote on appropriations bills. This is by design. This is not a bug. This is a feature of his strategy. These bipartisan appropriations bills were passed out of the Senate Appropriations Committee weeks ago, and then Senator Schumer put the Senate in a 40-day recess during the month of August. Now, with the clock ticking, September 30 just right around the corner, we will start with a minibus appropriations bill next week, but we won't able to finish. We won't be able to reconcile the House and the Senate versions before the end of the fiscal year, so we will be forced to do some form of continuing resolution. You might ask, why would the majority leader of the Senate sabotage the normal, expected procedure by which the appropriations process should work? Well, one, it maximizes his power because he knows that only a handful of people will ultimately negotiate the final product, and it will disempower 98 other Members of the U.S. Senate, rank-and- file Members who will not have a chance to debate, vote, and amend various appropriations bills as they come across the floor. So this is a part of Senator Schumer's strategy. His political strategy is to create this crisis and then to blame somebody else-- namely, the House of Representatives. And you heard it from our friend from Michigan, the Senator from Michigan. This is all about talking about shutdowns. Well, we tried that before, and we figured out it doesn't really work because when you reopen, the same problems that you found difficult to deal with beforehand are still in front of you. So we need to do our work here, but we need to do it on a basis where we can actually have an opportunity to shape these appropriations bills and not go through this unnecessary but entirely predictable drama because the majority leader refused to give us an opportunity to put these bills on the floor and to go through them in an orderly and transparent way. Our national debt is about $38 trillion. Excuse me, I forgot what the exact number is, but it is at a historic high. One reason that spending is out of control is because of this gamesmanship. So we need to do better. With the government funding deadline just a few weeks away, the Biden administration has adopted a puzzling messaging strategy. This week, the White House launched an attack against House Republicans, accusing them of turning a blind eye to the fentanyl crisis. Well, it is tough to peel back the many layers of irony and hypocrisy in that accusation. After all, this administration has been asleep at the wheel for more than 2\1/2\ years as fentanyl has continued to pour across our border. Last year alone, 71,000 Americans died of fentanyl poisoning. We know where it comes from. We know what we need to do to stop it. But the administration has done none of those things to try to save the lives of Americans and now has the temerity--audacity, really--to blame House Republicans for its own failure. How hypocritical is that? In the last 12 months, Customs and Border Protection has seized nearly 28,000 pounds of fentanyl. I know occasionally you will see it in social media where people will say: Well, good for them; they got it. And I agree--good for them--but that is only a fraction of the fentanyl that has come across the border. We know--because 1\1/2\ million migrants got away from law enforcement, ran away from law enforcement, we will never know what they were carrying on their persons. This fentanyl powder is so powerful that even small amounts that can be contained in a backpack or in some similar carrying case can kill hundreds of thousands of people. We know from the sad fact that 71,000 Americans died of fentanyl poisoning last year that, notwithstanding their heroic efforts, Customs and Border Protection is unable to stop all of it. A lethal dose of fentanyl, after all, fits on the tip of the sharpened end of a pencil. So when you consider the fact that Customs and Border Protection has seized nearly 28,000 pounds, it is enough to wipe out the entire U.S. population 20 times over. I have been in too many sad meetings with too many grieving parents who lost their teenage son or daughter to fentanyl poisoning. One of those fathers gave me this wristband that I still wear that he has handed out to others in memory of his daughter. It says: ``One pill can kill.'' These kids don't know they are taking this deadly drug. They think they are taking something like a Xanax or Percocet, something relatively innocuous, but, in fact, it is a counterfeit pill contaminated with this poison that kills them. I am grateful to the brave men and women who work hard to stop these drugs every day. We know they aren't able to interdict all of the contraband that comes across the border, but thanks to President Biden's border strategy--otherwise known as the Biden border crisis-- their already-tough job has become even more challenging. Over the last couple of years, the unprecedented border crisis has affected all of our missions at the southern border, even those that have nothing to do with immigration. Law enforcement has been shifted from the frontlines in order to process the migrants who continue to come in the millions. Instead of stopping dangerous drugs and criminals, many agents are now pushing paper, changing diapers, and arranging for transportation, so they are not able to be on the frontlines to stop this scourge of illegal drugs, including fentanyl. Of course, no one profits more from the status quo than the drug cartels. With fewer agents on the frontlines, these cartels have a clear and easy path to move fentanyl, heroin, methamphetamine, and other deadly drugs into the United States. Our communities are being ravaged by this overdose epidemic, and the Biden administration apparently does not care, because if they did care, they would do something different. By ignoring the border crisis for more than 2\1/2\ years, President Biden has given the cartels a clear and easy pathway to move drugs into the United States. The fact that the White House has decided that the best defense is an offense and to turn around and try to attack House Republicans isn't just dishonest, it is completely incoherent. It is cynical, and it is wrong. In its memo, the White House cited a Morning Consult poll that found that nearly 60 percent of voters want Congress to make fentanyl trafficking a top priority. This may have surprised the White House, but it isn't news to anybody else in America who has been keeping track of the fentanyl epidemic. As I said, the fentanyl epidemic is terrorizing our communities. No one, no community is safe. This doesn't respect how rich you are, how poor you are, the color of your skin, your ethnicity. All of our country is being affected. Since President Biden took office, he has made every effort to ignore, underplay, or misrepresent what is happening at the border. Over the last few months, we have seen another effort to try to downplay his failure to meet the challenge at the border. When title 42, for example--the public health title that allowed the Border Patrol to expel people for public health reasons--when it expired, the Biden administration tried to assure the American people that it had a plan to manage the crisis, and there is no reason to worry. And for the first few weeks, we saw a drop in border crossings, and the administration was quick to declare victory. The Department of Homeland Security bragged that the Biden administration border plan was ``working as intended.'' Well, as I and others pointed out at the time, the dip was likely to be only temporary. There was a lot of uncertainty how cases will be handled in a post-title 42 world, and it made sense that migrants--but even more so the criminal organizations that smuggle these migrants-- would take a wait-and-see approach, sort of get the lay of the land before they decide the next method they would use. And as an added deterrent, the growing summer heat made the journey to and across our border even more dangerous. Either way, it was tough to tell how much things had really changed as a result of the administration's gimmicky accounting. Earlier this year, the administration stood up a new program that allows migrants from four countries to enter and remain in the United States for up to 2 years and to receive work permits. All they have to do is submit their information online and wait for the administration to give them a green light. Now, this is not a small program. You would think after the 7 million migrants who have crossed our border since President Biden became President, that he would try to tamp down the flow of even more migrants across the border. But this program is open to up to 30,000 individuals a month. That is 360,000 migrants a year. Until recently, the American people had a pretty good idea about the number of migrants who crossed the border each month. The administration is required to report the number of apprehensions each month, and this data provides a great snapshot of what the facts actually are. By standing up a new program, the administration effectively opened an additional loophole that allows it to hide the true scale of this crisis. They just basically quit counting some people. They said: Well, we are creating a program where 30,000 people a month can come across under this program so we are going to cut them from the total so that makes us look like we are doing better. We do not know the full extent of the administration's programmatic use of parole to hide the effects of their immigration nonenforcement policies. What that means is even if people do not claim asylum when they come to the border, the Biden administration is simply waving them through, granting what is known in immigration law as parole--not based on individual circumstance but by the hundreds and thousands. They simply are refusing to enforce the immigration laws that Congress passed on the books. Despite the smoke-and-mirrors accounting and a range of other factors that contribute to the post-title 42 decrease, the administration had the temerity to declare victory. But it is becoming clear there was no reason to celebrate. Preliminary data published in the Washington Post shows that last month, a record number of families illegally crossed the southern border--a record number. In August alone, Border Patrol detained more than 91,000 migrants who ended up in the United States as part of a family unit. This is the highest number we have ever seen in a single month. But it is not just what is called family units. Apprehension numbers increased dramatically over the past couple of months. We have gone from just under 100,000 in June to 132,000 in July, to more than 177,000 in August. To be clear, these are not overall encounters. These are just the arrests by Border Patrol. I already mentioned that since President Biden became President, there have been 1\1/2\ million ``got-aways,'' people who were evading law enforcement--up to no good, I am sure. We won't see the full picture until the administration releases its data later this month. But the Washington Post is estimating roughly 230,000 migrant encounters in August when you include migrants processed through the land ports of entry. This would make it the busiest month for border crossings this year. Time and time again, the Biden administration has refused to accept responsibility. The administration has cooked the books, manipulated the numbers, in order to hide the pace of border crossings. It has ignored frontline officers' plea for support. It has attacked States like mine for providing transportation to migrants to help them reach other States rather than to have them settle in our States. And now, it is trying to blame House Republicans for turning a blind eye to the fentanyl crisis. This is a new low, a new low even for the Biden administration. The reason so many Americans see, understand, and care about fentanyl is because the crisis has ballooned under President Biden's watch. It is going to continue to get worse, not better. Under this administration, fentanyl has poured across the southern border and into our communities across America. If anyone should be named and shamed for ignoring this crisis, it is not the House of Representatives, it is the gentleman sitting at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue. 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.

Mr. CORNYN

Mr. CORNYN. Mr. President, following a busy summer in the Senate, it was great to spend a little bit of time back home in Texas and, for at least a couple of days, in the great State of Vermont courtesy of the Presiding Officer's recommendation. I always look forward to the Washington break here in Washington because it gives me time to travel across my State and to hear from many of the 30 million Texans I am honored to represent. I enjoy getting an update from them on what is happening, to hear their concerns, and to talk to them about what I am working on. One example of that is the Carla Walker Act. This bill carries the name of a 17-year-old Texan who was tragically murdered in 1974 and whose case went unsolved for many decades--nearly five decades. It wasn't until September of 2020 when Carla's family finally received the answers they had been searching for. DNA evidence that was collected at the crime scene was sent to the State DNA testing facility in the The Woodlands, TX, called Othram. Now, just a little bit of detail. Traditional DNA testing frequently will not tell you everything you need to know about who this is a sample from, but thanks to forensic genetic genealogy, or FGG, enhanced DNA testing was able to identify Carla's killer, and justice was served. FGG--this enhanced DNA testing analysis--has the potential to provide answers for countless victims and their families, and I am working on legislation to make it more widely available when needed, especially for criminal investigations. As this legislation is being worked on, it is great to hear about the usefulness of this DNA testing technology from law enforcement as well as forensic DNA experts. I also had the pleasure of meeting Carla's family, who finally received closure after decades because of this enhanced DNA testing process. But it is not just the bills that are in the works; I also appreciate the chance to hear firsthand about how the laws that we passed recently are actually being implemented. One great example of this is the CHIPS Act. Last week, I visited the University of Texas at Austin for its first annual Semiconductor Day. The University of Texas has built strong partnerships with companies and other academic institutions across the State and Nation and is eager to do its part to help revitalize America's semiconductor industry. Just a refresher: We used to produce about a third of the advanced semiconductors in the world, but now that is down to about 10 percent. Ninety percent of the world's advanced semiconductors are manufactured in Asia. We all can imagine what would happen if, because of natural disaster--Heaven forbid, another pandemic--or an invasion by the PRC of Taiwan--what that would mean to our access to advanced semiconductors, things that power everything from your mobile phone to the Joint Strike Fighter, the fifth-generation Joint Strike Fighter. Everything these days requires semiconductors, these microcircuits. Well, the university launched the Texas Institute for Electronics, or TIE, as it is called, which will support the future of semiconductor manufacturing through education, training, and collaboration with industry leaders. The Department of Commerce staff who are responsible for actually implementing the CHIPS Act were there to learn about the incredible public-private partnerships that are driving the chip industry already forward in Texas. This is exactly the kind of collaboration I think we envisioned when I first introduced the CHIPS Act more than 3 years ago, together with our colleague Senator Warner from Virginia. It is gratifying to see this vision becoming a reality in the Lone Star State, as I am sure it is in other parts of the country. Over the last several weeks, I have also heard from my constituents about the many challenges that families and businesses are facing, starting with high prices on everything from food to housing, exacerbated by what President Biden calls Bidenomics. Like Texas Governor Ann Richards said in the summer of 1992 at the Democratic National Convention--she said: ``Well, you can put lipstick on a hog and call it Monique, but it's still a pig.'' Nevertheless, I have come back to the Senate refreshed and ready to get back to work. So I listened to what the majority leader has said and written about his agenda for this period between now and the end of the month. We face a number of deadlines to fund the government and reauthorize critical Federal programs. This year, four major deadlines arrive on September 30, just 25 days from now or 16 legislative days--16 days. Of course, none of these deadlines popped up out of nowhere. We have had plenty of warning and plenty of time to advance each of these bills. But the Senate majority leader--the one responsible for the Senate agenda and who is the only person in the Senate who can actually schedule floor action--has created this mash-up and dysfunction. As it turns out, some of the biggest legislative achievements of the year have actually been led by this side of the aisle, by Republicans, who fought to overturn damaging Biden administration rules. The Senate did pass legislation to raise the debt ceiling and place caps on discretionary spending, but it is important to remember that this was a deal cut between the Speaker, Speaker McCarthy, and President Biden. The Senate was essentially a bystander. The biggest accomplishment of the year so far has been passing the annual Defense bill--not a small thing--but it is still a long way from reaching the President's desk. I would say that considering the number of must-pass bills still on our agenda for the year, that is an embarrassingly short list of accomplishments. So now we have a lot that needs to be done in the next 4 weeks, but really I think you would have to acknowledge that this schedule is designed to fail--designed to fail. One of the biggest tasks we have to complete in that time is to fund the government, and it looks like we are in for a bumpy few weeks. But I would hasten to point out that this is not a bug but a feature of the majority leader's plan. In other words, it didn't have to be this way. This is all according to Senate Majority Leader Schumer's plan. Why? Well, it maximizes his leverage on the final product to the detriment of every other Senator on our side and on yours. Why, Senator Schumer might ask, would I let 99 other Senators participate in the appropriations process when I can hold it hostage for my demands? And, to be clear, the Senate Appropriations Committee has done its job, passing 12 bipartisan appropriations bills out of committee, and they did that before the August recess. You know, when you look at the schedule and what it is that hasn't been done and needs to be done in such a short period of time, it is incredible to me that the Senate majority leader decided that the Senate would be out of session for 40 days--40 days; that is how long it has been since we were here last--especially with all this work to do. And we have not been in session on most Mondays recently, starting on Tuesday and then wrapping up 2 days later on Thursday afternoon. So I think the picture of the majority leader's plan is becoming very clear. Party-line disagreements over funding levels are nothing new, but the path to success is especially muddy this year. Several months ago, Speaker McCarthy and President Biden reached a deal that raised the debt ceiling in exchange for deeply needed spending cuts. The national debt has ballooned to more than $32.8 trillion, and the American people are unhappy with Washington's out-of-control spending. Well, that is exactly what the Speaker sought to address during the debt ceiling negotiations with the White House this spring, and it is no question that he made substantial progress toward that goal. He negotiated across-the-board spending cuts, marking a small but significant step to curb Democrats' reckless spending habits. Now, with the funding deadline just 3\1/2\ weeks away, Republicans on both sides of the aisle are eager to make good on our promise to return to responsible government spending bills. House Members are knee deep in discussions over the best way to pursue those spending cuts, and I expect we will hear more when the House returns to Washington next week. But still, that hasn't stopped the majority leader from criticizing them. Just last week, he referred to the Republicans in the House and their spending cuts discussions as political games. Well, if this isn't a game, I don't know what is--planning for the failure of the appropriations process and trying to jam through a spending bill with 16 legislative days left. I suggest the majority leader look in the mirror for the identity of the person who has brought us to this point, the one who has been playing the games. As I said, he is already trying to blame Republicans in the House for a potential shutdown, and, right on cue, the press has started the drumbeat driving that narrative. That is all you are going to hear between now and the end of the fiscal year--is there going to be a shut down or is there not going to be a shut down?--all of which is absolutely unnecessary if the majority leader had used the authority he has to schedule a vote on 12 appropriations bills that we could take up and pass out of the Senate. The House could do the same. We could reconcile the differences and avoid all of this drama. Well, thank goodness our Democratic colleagues no longer control all levers of government. Senator Schumer and the President now only have some say, not total say, over legislation. With divided government, Democrats no longer have the power to jam spending bills through both Chambers of the Congress, like they did last year. The American people elected a Republican majority in the House, which has pledged to rein in reckless Federal spending. Well, I hope that Speaker McCarthy and our other Republican colleagues in the House will succeed in their efforts this time on appropriations bills. It is nothing unusual for the House and the Senate to have a different approach when it comes to spending money, what those priorities are, and what the top line should be. It is entirely within their authority and their responsibility. But they have to have a dance partner. Senator Schumer has to be willing to engage in a negotiation in good faith, not play these kinds of games and threaten another government shutdown. If Senator Schumer wants to avoid a shutdown, he needs to drop the preemptive blame game and actually listen to the concerns of House Republicans on the Federal government's out-of-control spending and then negotiate a compromise. He needs to accept his responsibility. Funding is only one major item on the to-do list. Congress also needs to pass a farm bill, as you can see on the list. My State is home to nearly a quarter of a million farms and ranches, more than any other State in the country. One out of every seven working Texans has an ag-related job. I had a chance to sit down with some of these constituents in Lubbock last month and hear how their lives and livelihoods are affected by the farm bill. It is important to them, which means it is important to me. This legislation is critical to America's supply of food and fiber, as well as to the livelihoods of the hard-working men and women who grow and produce it. We simply can't let this legislation continue to shift and be delayed. I know Senator Boozman and, I suspect, Senator Stabenow are committed to passing a strong bill that will meet the growing needs of our ag industry. That is on this list, and that is not going to happen either between now and the end of the month. Then there is another item on the list: reauthorize the Federal Aviation Administration. We all heard news of some of the near misses or collisions of some of the aircraft at our airports, which is harrowing to listen to, especially for those of us who do a lot of flying. It is important that we update and reauthorize the Federal Aviation Administration in the reauthorization bill. Over the last couple of years, travelers--millions of travelers--have dealt with widespread flight cancellations, paralyzing staffing shortages, and rising prices. As I said, we witnessed or read about some jarring safety issues, including these near collisions on runways in Austin, where I live, and in Minneapolis and New York. The Agency is clearly lacking when it comes to safety, efficiency, and reliability. I hope we can address these and other issues with the FAA reauthorization. But it ain't going to happen between now and the end of September, when the current authorization expires. Again, this is part of a design--a design to fail--to meet our responsibilities to do things like pass the FAA reauthorization. I know Senator Cruz and Senator Moran are leading the effort on our side of the aisle on the FAA reauthorization, and I know they are committed to helping the Agency meet the challenges of today and the future. I am sure Chairman Cantwell feels exactly the same way. But last and, certainly, not least, the two Chambers need to resolve the differences between the two bills that we passed--our respective versions of the National Defense Authorization Act--so we can send the final bill to President Biden. Thanks to the hard work of Senator Reed and Senator Wicker and the bipartisan effort in the Armed Services Committee, the Senate bill received an overwhelming vote of support, 86 to 11. It invests in our military bases, our defense stockpiles, our modernization efforts, and, of course, American servicemembers. The NDAA is vital to our military readiness, and there is no reason it couldn't be completed before the end of the month. But under Senate Majority Leader Schumer's leadership, the Senate has developed a major legislative pileup. If these were cars, this would be a major pileup. The majority leader has procrastinated when it comes to the Senate's most important duties. In the next few weeks, we need to pass government funding, the farm bill, FAA reauthorization, and the final version of the NDAA. These are some of the most fundamental responsibilities of Congress, each of which comes with a clear deadline, which we are preparing to blow through. I am disappointed that we are now rushing to complete an impossible task of completing all of these bills before September 30. It is impossible. It is not going to happen. As I said, it didn't have to be this way. There is only one person with the authority and the responsibility to avoid this situation: the senior Senator from New York, the Senate majority leader. He is the only one who can set the Senate agenda and move a bill across the floor. The Presiding Officer and I can't do it as rank-and-file members, but the majority leader can, and he simply has failed to do so. There is a lot riding on the Senate's productivity this month, and we owe it to the American people to do our best to get the job done with the cards that the majority leader has dealt us. I yield the floor.

Mr. CORNYN

Mr. CORNYN. Mr. President, on Monday, President Biden's Department of Justice filed suit against my State, Texas, over our efforts to secure our border. Of the 2,000-mile southern border, Texas has a 1,200-mile border with Mexico; and, of course, that has been the epicenter of the humanitarian and public safety crisis that we have seen get nothing but worse over the last 2 years. It is almost laughable, if it wasn't so serious. The administration filed suit over what it called humanitarian concerns, which is more than a little ironic. This is the same administration whose policies have ushered in an unprecedented humanitarian and public security crisis at the southern border. I have talked previously about the 300,000 children--unaccompanied children--who have been placed with sponsors in the interior of the United States by the Biden administration during the last 2\1/2\ years and the fact that the administration has lost track of at least 85,000 of those 300,000 children. When they were contacted or attempted to be contacted by the Office of Refugee Resettlement and Health and Human Services, 30 days after they were placed with a sponsor, there was no answer and no followup by the administration. This is the same administration that turned a blind eye when countless young migrants were being exploited on American soil. The New York Times has run two investigative pieces pointing out that, essentially, the administration doesn't know where any of these 300,000 unaccompanied children are--whether they are going to school, whether they are getting their healthcare attended to, whether they are being recruited into gangs or sexually abused or otherwise neglected. They don't know, and, apparently, they don't care because, if they did care, then they would make the effort to find out and do something about it. Vice President Harris was designated as the administration's border czar during this unprecedented crisis, which has taken a devastating toll on migrants, law enforcement, and border communities, and it has affected every city in the country, from New York to Washington, DC, to Chicago. Every State, in a sense, has been affected by the border crisis and has become a border State in that sense. Vice President Harris, despite her effort to do anything to address this crisis at the border, has had the audacity to criticize Governor Abbott's actions as ``inhumane,'' ``outrageous,'' and ``un-American.'' Of course, she can't be bothered to actually go to the border and find out what is happening there on her own. Now, there are a lot of misconceptions about the border. People who haven't been there haven't learned for themselves or from the experts at Border Patrol and the nongovernmental organizations that do their best to try to take care of these people. Vice President Harris simply hasn't bothered to learn, yet she has the audacity to criticize Governor Abbott for doing what he has to do because of the failure of the Biden administration to do its job. The unavoidable reality is we wouldn't be in this situation if it weren't for President Biden abdicating his responsibilities. This is an international border, as we all know. That, by definition, is the Federal Government's responsibility, but the Biden administration has simply, as I said, abdicated its responsibilities, with tragic consequences. Unlike President Biden, Governor Abbott took action. His constituents--my constituents--30 million Texans, insisted upon it, and he put measures in place to try to deter migrants from attempting the dangerous journey from their home across the border into the United States. We know, particularly now with temperatures in the triple digits, that migrants face a brutal environment: heat, dangerous waters, treacherous terrain. And, sadly, many migrants do not survive the journey. Does President Biden understand that, last year alone, at least 748 people died making their way across the southern border? I know he has never been to Brooks County, which is the location of one of the interior checkpoints where the coyotes will drive people up from the stash houses along the border, short of the checkpoint, and tell the migrants, ``Get out of the vehicle, and here is a gallon jug of water''--and maybe a candy bar--``and meet me on the top side, on the north side of the border checkpoint,'' in order to evade the interior checkpoints. Well, Brooks County had so many migrants who died under those circumstances, making that trek around the checkpoint, that they didn't have the money to actually bury the bodies, and so we actually had to try to provide some additional resources to help them do that. Again, the hypocrisy of the Biden administration complaining about the State trying to do its best to deal with a vacuum when it comes to Federal responsibility is absolutely ridiculous. So 748 people, we know, died trying to come across the southern border, and they are complaining about efforts to try to deter or dissuade people from making that dangerous trip in the first place. That is what Governor Abbott is trying to do and being criticized by the very people who are not doing their job. If the President is unhappy with the actions Texas has taken, there is a clear solution: Do your job. If the President and his administration did their job, there would be no need for the State to use its resources and its tax dollars to do the job that the Federal Government should be doing. Until then, Governor Abbott has every right to use the powers available to him to keep our State safe, to protect our citizens. That is his right as an elected head of a sovereign State. I want to make a point of thanking all the countless Federal, State, and local law enforcement officers as well as the National Guardsmen from Texas, the Department of Public Safety, and others who have been deployed to the border for their tireless work to protect our State and our country. They deserve our commendation and our appreciation, not criticism, particularly when it is so misguided and unfair. The Biden administration may not appreciate the efforts of the State of Texas, but the vast majority of us see, understand, and are grateful for everything Texas guards, local law enforcement, DPS, and others are doing to keep our country safe.

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

Mr. CORNYN

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

Mr. CORNYN. Mr. President, is it timely for me to call up my amendment No. 931?

Mr. CORNYN. I would do so and ask that it be reported by number.

Mr. CORNYN. Mr. President, Deng Xiaoping often repeated a Chinese proverb: Hide Your strength. Bide your time. Never take the lead. As a result of that strategy, which worked beyond anybody's imagination, whether by the People's Republic of China or the Chinese Communist Party, America slumbered during the economic rise of the People's Republic of China. American companies invested. Chinese students studied here and then went home to use their new education to compete against us while intellectual property theft, forced technology transfers, and cyber crime emanating from the People's Republic of China have become rampant. Well, I think it is fair to say that the colossus that is America has finally awakened from its slumber and realized what a challenge China is to us and to world peace. Today, the market value of American investments in the PRC numbers in the trillions of dollars. Those are American companies that invested in China that helped them to grow their economy. It is no exaggeration to say that we have helped to build their economy into a near-peer status and helped them to finance a military that threatens us and our allies in the Indo-Pacific. What this amendment does that Senator Casey and I have been pursuing is to seek transparency. We need to understand as policymakers exactly what is going on. We are not asking for any sort of limitation on investments in the PRC. It just makes sense to me that we should know what is going on so that we can consider whether there are any policy options that we ought to embrace. We policymakers need to know what American companies are doing to help finance an aggressive, authoritarian adversary. What we do know about this and what we do about this is a debate for another day. First, we need to know the facts. I ask my colleagues to join us in supporting this commonsense amendment. Vote on Amendment No. 931

Mr. CORNYN

Mr. CORNYN. Mr. President, under President Biden's leadership, the United States has shattered virtually every record in the book when it comes to uncontrolled illegal migration flows across the border. We have seen new records in border crossings in a single month, a single year, and in a single day, all on President Biden's watch. The busiest day on record came 2 months ago, just before title 42, the public health title that was imposed as a result of the pandemic-- the busiest day came just 2 months ago, just before that title was lifted or expired, when Border Patrol apprehended 10,300 migrants a day. The pace of migration exceeded anything we have ever experienced under previous Presidents, and of course law enforcement, not knowing exactly what would happen once title 42 expired, braced for the worst. Federal officials and immigration experts predicted an increase in border crossings when it was lifted. At one point, even the President's Department of Homeland Security said we could expect up to 18,000 migrants a day. Just to remind you, at its height, it was 10,300, but even President Biden's Department of Homeland Security said that could go to 18,000 now that title 42 went away. It is not as if the President and Homeland Security don't have the tools necessary to control illegal immigration, but they simply lack the will to do so. Fortunately, that surge that could have happened didn't happen, and we are left with a lot of opinions and guesses as to why that is true. One possibility is the drop could be seasonal. It is really hot in Texas and along that border triple-digit numbers and traveling across the open range of South Texas can be downright dangerous. If you have gone to the border crossing or Border Patrol in Falfurrias in Brooks County, which is just about 70 miles from the border, where the coyotes--the smugglers--will tell the migrants to get out of the vehicle, give them a jug of water and maybe a PowerBar, and they will say: You can walk around the border checkpoint, and we will catch you on the north side. Unfortunately, as the cemetery in Brooks County will attest, many of those migrants don't make it because they simply die from exposure to the elements, particularly after experiencing a long trek from their homes. So we don't know, due to the hot weather, whether in the fall and in the spring these numbers will jack back up again. So the lull could be temporary. Migrants may be waiting to see how some of the cases are handled under President Biden's new border policies now that title 42 is gone. Plus, we have to recall that we are dealing with very shrewd and smart operators in the criminal cartels. They understand that a massive flood of migrants may well finally trigger some reaction from the administration and authorities, and they may be just metering the flow of migrants across the border so as to not attract undue attention. Well, it could be that this lull in numbers is just gimmicky accounting. The administration has set up what it calls new legal pathways in order to reduce the number of illegal migrants it encounters. In other words, it has quit counting some of the migrants who come across the border. For example, the Biden administration, as part of this program, said: We are going to allow up to 30,000 migrants from Central America to come into the United States, give them a work permit, and we will make this for the next 2 years. The problem is, there is never anything temporary about temporary status, and in fact this is part of the gimmicky accounting. You simply subtract 360,000 migrants admitted under this new program over the course of a year, and it makes your numbers look a whole lot better than they really are. It remains to be seen whether this program is legal at all. I can't imagine Congress, which has been given the main authority to deal with immigration law matters--whether this could be considered within the President's authority or power, but that remains to be decided perhaps in a court of law. But I suspect that this drop in encounters is a result of a culmination of factors. My own personal opinion, living in Texas and having spent a lot of time at the border and talking to a lot of experts who serve there, like the Border Patrol--my own view is this is not likely to last long, this lull, but it is long enough for some of the mainstream media to accept what the administration is selling, which is that their new border policy is solving the problem. I will go back and say what I said earlier, which is, even at 3,360 a day, that is more than three times what Jeh Johnson, the former Secretary of Homeland Security under Barack Obama, said was a real problem. Back in that day, he said if there were 1,000 people encountered at the border, that would be a serious problem. But the Biden administration, apparently, has no problem with more than three times the number of migrants currently being encountered at the border, even if it is temporary. Well, you can see the administration trying to spike the football. Last May, the Department of Homeland Security said the drop in numbers is proof-- proof--that the administration's plan is working as intended. They boasted that the number of unlawful entries between the ports of entry had declined more than 70 percent since title 42 ended. Well, that may be true, but it is tough to brag when the starting point is an alltime record that happened on this administration's watch. In other words, the argument of the administration seems to be: Well, it has been as high as 10,000 a day. Now that it is down to only 3,400 a day, it is not as bad as it could be so let's pat ourselves on the back and say: Job well done. Well, 4 years ago, in July of 2019, Customs and Border Protection apprehended an average of 2,600 migrants a day. The July prior, we saw fewer than 1,300 a day, and the July before that, only about 800 migrants were apprehended per day. So, in other words, the argument the administration is making and the celebratory popping of the champagne cork that all of a sudden their new policies have solved the problem is, I think, an illusion. We have gone from 800 migrants a day in 2017 to 3,300 a day in 2023. The Biden administration wants to argue that this is a good thing. They are supposed to applaud--stand up and applaud the Biden administration's failed efforts to deal with uncontrolled immigration and the flow of drugs across the border. As I said, former Secretary of Homeland Security Jeh Johnson once said that even 1,000 a day overwhelms the system, and we are currently operating at more than 3,000 a day. Even Attorney General Merrick Garland acknowledged that flooding the border with migrants, as we have seen--obviously, that is a big moneymaker for the cartels that smuggle these people from their country of origin, across the border, into the United States--that overwhelming the Border Patrol and requiring then some of the Border Patrol--in my experience, as many as 40 percent of the online Border Patrol officers then have to go off the frontline to take care of the migrants, to transport them, to feed them, to house them, to clothe them, to take care of the unaccompanied children who are coming across the border, which means they are not on the frontlines when the drug smugglers bring the drugs through. This is a pretty shrewd business model, and the Biden administration is accepting it hook, line, and sinker. When migration levels are as high as they are, it impacts all of our missions at the southern border, even those that have nothing to do with migration. Since President Biden took office, Customs and Border Protection has seized more than 1.6 million pounds of illicit drugs, including more than 41,000 pounds of fentanyl. Now, we talked about this in Judiciary Committee today, the scourge of fentanyl and the fact that last year alone it took 71,000 American lives. Unfortunately, many of those lives were the age of some of our pages--high school students who thought they were taking something relatively innocuous only to find out it was a counterfeit drug laced with fentanyl which took their lives tragically and prematurely. Some would point to the seizures of drugs and say: We are successful. We are being successful. We are stopping the drugs from coming across, which I submit is looking at this the wrong way. We ought to look at the volume of drugs seized and recognize that there is a whole lot more that has gotten through. Just during the Biden administration there have been what the Border Patrol calls 1.5 million ``got-aways.'' These are people who are not turning themselves in, claiming asylum. These are people who are fleeing from law enforcement who are being picked up on cameras and other sensors but then simply evading detention and detection by the Border Patrol. I can't possibly buy the argument that these people are up to good. I think they are up to no good. They are either people convicted with criminal records--or other law enforcement problems--or simply drug mules carrying more of this poison across the border. I am grateful to our hard-working officers and agents who interdict these drugs, but we know these data points do not tell the full story. These are only the drugs that they were able to identify and to stop. Given the fact that countless agents were taken off the frontlines in order to care for the flood of humanity--what President Obama said even under much smaller numbers, he called it a humanitarian crisis--there is no question that more drugs have slipped through the cracks. While the agents are busy processing and transporting migrants, it clears a highway across the border to smuggle fentanyl, heroin, and heaven knows what else across the border. So there is no way to know what we don't know. The fact that we are losing more than 108,000 Americans a year to drug overdoses is proof that we are not being successful in interdicting the drugs that come across the border. That seems obvious. One of the many victims of fentanyl poisoning was a 17-year-old from Texas named Kevin McConville. Last fall, just 2 weeks before the start of the school year, his senior year, Kevin took a pill he thought would help him fall asleep. Little did he know that it was laced with a deadly dose of fentanyl, and he didn't wake up the next morning. His mom Shannon found him the next morning. It was too late. Like many parents and family members who have lost a loved one to fentanyl, Shannon and her husband Darren are on a mission to end the fentanyl epidemic. As a matter of fact, in Farmers Branch, TX, a father who lost a young daughter gave me this bracelet, which says, among other things, ``One pill can kill.'' That is part of the public education efforts that many of our school districts and others and public health officials are undertaking to make sure our children understand that there is no such thing as an innocuous or a safe illicit drug. When I spoke with Shannon and Darren in February, Shannon was adamant about the need to do more to stop fentanyl from entering our country in the first place. The most critical place to do that is where it crosses our southern border, from Mexico, where it comes from. The vast majority of the fentanyl comes to the United States from Mexico, made from chemical precursors imported from China. If we are going to have a shot at ending the fentanyl epidemic, we have to go to the source rather than just deal with the symptoms. This morning, as the Presiding Officer knows, in the Judiciary Committee, we talked about people selling drugs by using social media platforms. Certainly, that is something we all abhor, and we ought to do what we can to stop it, and we will be debating that more. Yet, as important a step as that is, it is only one brick in the wall. It is only a baby step in terms of dealing with the fentanyl crisis because we have to stop it at the source, not deal with it once it has made its way into our country. Until that happens, law enforcement and drug treatment facilities across this Nation will be fighting a losing battle. Shannon told me that when it comes to the border, the Biden administration is failing, and I agree with her. President Biden has completely abdicated his border security responsibilities for more than 2\1/2\ years, with its leading to catastrophic and deadly consequences: 5.4 million border crossings; in addition to that, another 1.5 million ``got-aways'' of the almost 7 million migrants transiting our southern border; 108,000 drug overdoses last year; 85,000 migrant children lost--lost--after having been placed with sponsors in the interior of the United States by the Biden administration. When officials tried to contact those sponsors to check on the welfare of those children, there was no answer, and there was also no followup by the Biden administration. We don't know whether these kids are going to school, whether they are getting the healthcare they need, whether they are being forced into involuntary servitude, whether they are being sexually abused or neglected. We just don't know, and the Biden administration cannot tell you. That is completely unacceptable. If any official did that to an American citizen child, they would be prosecuted and, I believe, convicted of child endangerment, human trafficking, and other sorts of offenses, but because these are migrant children, the Biden administration says: Hey, we have done our job. We put them with sponsors. Now it is somebody else's responsibility. Well, there is nobody else to deal with that. The child protective services in New Jersey, in Texas, and elsewhere are already overwhelmed. So to say to the States ``now it is your job to protect these children'' once we have allowed 300,000 of them into the United States and placed them with sponsors because of misguided border policies is a complete abdication of responsibility. Well, 2\1/2\ years of failed border policies cannot be erased by a couple of months of reduced migration. It is premature, to say the least, to declare victory, to spike the ball, to pop a cork. The fact that we are not currently experiencing recordbreaking migration levels is, admittedly, a step in the right direction, but it is not a victory. There is still a crisis occurring. The number of border crossings is still historically high. Law enforcement remains under tremendous strain, and the southern border is far from secure. If the administration were to spend half as much time trying to solve the problem as it does trying to spin it, we would be in a much better place. I have to say that there are those of us here--the Presiding Officer included--who would like to be part of the solution. We have asked the administration. We have asked the chairman of the Judiciary Committee, Senator Durbin, to bring legislation to the Judiciary Committee, which has jurisdiction over these matters. Give Senators on the Republican side and the Democratic side a chance to debate it and amend it and pass a bill out of the Judiciary Committee that would address this crisis. We have asked the majority leader, Senator Schumer, to encourage the chairman of the Judiciary Committee to take a bill out of committee and bring it to the floor. Let us do our job. There is nobody else to fix this problem other than us--those of us who have the enormous privilege of serving our constituents here in the Nation's greatest deliberative body--the U.S. Senate--or in the House of Representatives, but all we get are crickets. I keep asking myself: What will it take? What will it take to get the President's attention? What will it take to get the attention of our Democratic colleagues who are in leadership positions and who are able to put this on the agenda and do something about it? Obviously, 6.9 million migrants coming across the border for the last 2\1/2\ years isn't enough to get their attention. Obviously, 108,000 dead Americans is not enough to get their attention. Also, 300,000 unaccompanied children who have been lost to an administration that can't tell you where they are or what is happening to them has so far not gotten their attention. But it should get our attention. We are in a position of responsibility in our being given the privilege of serving in this body and in the U.S. Congress, and we ought to do something about it. So if it doesn't start at the White House, if it doesn't start with the leadership here in the U.S. Senate, rank-and-file Members of the Senate can do something about it. We can force the leadership--the White House and the Congress--to accept their responsibilities and do something about the devastation and death that is occurring as a result of these uncontrolled borders. 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.

Mr. CORNYN

Mr. CORNYN. Mr. President, since the President of the United States, President Biden, took office, America's southern border has faced unprecedented challenges. Unfortunately, none of these struggles seems to have captured President Biden's attention--not the 5.4 million border crossings or the more than 1.5 million ``got-aways''; not the 1.6 million pounds of illicit drugs that were seized by Border Patrol, the 108,000 Americans who died last year from drug overdoses; not the tractor/trailers filled with the bodies of dead migrants or city sidewalks lined with people who have nowhere to go; not even the fact that the cartels are making a fortune off the backs of vulnerable migrants and fueling America's drug crisis. The American people have been stunned by the scope and the scale of President Biden's border crisis--and I call it that because it is a result of his policies. But it has been going on for 2\1/2\ years now, and the Biden administration doesn't seem to care. The administration has tried to deflect, distract, even deceive the American people into thinking things are just not that bad or maybe they could be worse. But the spin doctors can only accomplish so much. We have continued to learn about the many ways the Biden administration has fumbled its mission at the southern border. And the consequences have been absolutely devastating. Reporting from the New York Times earlier this year looked at what has happened to unaccompanied migrant children once they arrive into the United States. Since President Biden took office, 300,000-- 300,000--unaccompanied children have arrived at the border. To be clear, these children did not cross the border with their parents, but they did get some help--mainly the coyotes or the human smugglers who, for a fee, will smuggle people into the United States. But these children, as we might expect, are particularly vulnerable as they make this dangerous journey north in the custody of these criminal organizations. The sad reality is that many come to the United States in the care of these criminals, and parents who paid smugglers thousands of dollars to bring their children into the United States are taking an incredible risk with their children. We know this journey is not safe, and it is not easy. Many children are subjected to violence, exploitation, even sexual abuse at the hands of these criminal smugglers. Many, as you might expect, arrive in the United States traumatized and in poor physical health. Now, you would think that once these children have made this dangerous journey across the southern border and they are taken from the custody of the cartels to that of the U.S. Government, that they would be safe. Unfortunately, we know that is not the case. Of the more than 300,000 migrant children who arrived in the United States on President Biden's watch, roughly 85,000 could not be accounted for 30 days after they were placed with a sponsor. Just to be clear, the process is, the Border Patrol receives these unaccompanied children and has a responsibility to turn them over to Health and Human Services and the Office of Refugee Relocation, or ORR, who then proceeds to identify a sponsor in the United States where this child may be sent to await an asylum hearing that will likely never occur. But the problem is not just that this asylum hearing will not likely ever be held, it is that these children may never be heard from again as far as the Federal Government is concerned. So the practice is, 30 days after the children are placed with sponsors, the Federal Agency in charge is supposed to make a call, a wellness call, to see how the child is doing. But as this chart indicates, one out of three--in one out of three of these cases, there is no answer. Nobody responds. And that is the last contact or attempted contact the Biden administration would have with these children or their sponsors, because beyond that, they would say: Our job is done. It is up to the child protective services agencies in the various States to take care of these children. But we know they are already overwhelmed with foster children and others just coming from the United States, much less adding another 300,000 to that list. So, of the 300,000 migrant children placed by this administration, there are 85,000 cases where the child and the sponsor have never been heard from again. We don't know where these children are. The Biden administration doesn't know where they are. We don't know whether they are being fed. We don't know whether they are going to school. We don't know whether they are being recruited into gangs. We don't know whether they are being abused or neglected or sexually exploited, and the Biden administration is fine with that because they don't care. I know that may sound harsh, but the fact is, if they did care, they could fix it, but they refuse to do so. The Biden administration has no idea what has happened to these migrant children. It has effectively abandoned them. Well, the obvious question is, How did this happen? Aren't there policies in place that are designed to prevent this from happening? In short, the answer is yes, there are, but nearly all of those guidelines are set by the Agencies involved, not by Congress. The Biden administration has full discretion to change its policies regarding the placement of migrant children. They don't need to wait on Congress to tell them; they can do it themselves. They have the ability to determine who can actually sponsor these children and the sort of vetting or background checks that would be necessary for the sponsors to pass. They have the ability to set guidelines for followup calls and wellness visits and other services that would ensure that these children are not being exploited and that they are not being neglected. The Biden administration has the complete authority to remove children from the custody of a sponsor if the sponsor refuses to cooperate or presents any sort of risk to the child. In other words, the Biden administration made 85,000 phone calls to sponsors with children they had placed with those sponsors. There was no answer, and the sponsors cut off contact with the Agency. The Biden administration could go and take those children away from the sponsors because they have violated their agreements to cooperate with the U.S. Government. Well, they haven't done that. The short answer is, the Biden administration could do as much or as little as it wants to protect these vulnerable children. Clearly it has made the decision to do as little as possible to protect them. Unsurprisingly, the administration's negligence has led to the widespread mistreatment of migrant children. The New York Times has documented story after story of young people who are working in dangerous jobs in violation of State child labor laws--of children working in meat processing plants, on construction sites, in factories, and doing other dangerous jobs that are meant for adults, not children. These children obviously aren't going to school. They are not furthering their education. They are being forced into labor in violation of State child labor laws. The New York Times has documented it. We also know from the New York Times' investigative stories that the Health and Human Services Department--the Agency responsible for this program--has received warning after warning that these children are at risk. These warnings have come through government staffers, outside contractors, and the Department's own hotline. Not only were whistleblowers ignored, but many were silenced. They were pushed out of their jobs. Some were retaliated against for trying to protect these vulnerable migrant children. Yes, once again, the Biden administration was well aware of this. Health and Human Services Secretary Xavier Becerra knew about credible reports about trafficking and abuse, but he continued to push for the speedy placement of migrants with sponsors with little regard for the dangers that created. In other words, when the Biden administration had a public relations problem--when we saw the crush of humanity at the border--their first reaction was, let's move these migrants out of the border region as fast as we can, and our public relations problem will go away. So rather than making sure these children were protected, they actually relaxed the vetting requirement for the sponsors. They haven't even gone so far as to require background checks, criminal background checks or otherwise, of other people living in the same households as these children. They may have checked the sponsor himself or herself, but if a house is full of other people, they need to check everybody in the household to make sure they are not registered sex offenders or that they don't have backgrounds of abusing or neglecting children or otherwise. To solve the administration's public relations problem, they just decided to move these kids through the system as fast as possible and then wash their hands. Then-Labor Secretary Marty Walsh was well aware of this situation. Last year, the Department's investigators identified major instances of child labor violations that took place in auto part factories and meatpacking plants, and all of this information was made available to the White House. Until recently, Susan Rice served as the Director of the White House's Domestic Policy Council. Her job required her to oversee virtually every aspect of domestic policy matters, including the placement of migrant children. Both Health and Human Services and the Labor Department shared concerns about labor trafficking and child labor violations, but those reports were either ignored by the White House or were intentionally swept under the rug. The Biden administration knew that countless numbers of migrant children were in danger, but it did absolutely nothing. The administration didn't just turn a blind eye; it intentionally tried to cover up the widespread exploitation of migrant children. It is a coverup. In the wake of these damning reports, I wrote a letter to Chairman Durbin of the Senate Judiciary Committee that was cosigned by every Republican member of that committee, and we asked for a hearing on this matter. We urged him to invite Biden administration leaders who failed to act on these warnings to testify in person in front of the committee, under oath. That included Secretary Becerra, former Labor Secretary Walsh, and former White House adviser Susan Rice. The chairman scheduled a hearing last month, but none--none--of these officials bothered to show up, further indicating that they simply don't care. In fact, this so-called oversight hearing did not include a single Biden administration witness. How do you hold people accountable for their negligence or their intentional acts that harm innocent, vulnerable children if they can't be held accountable to show up for a hearing and testify, if they are proud of what they did, to the committee and the American people about what they did to protect these vulnerable children? But they didn't bother to show up, indicating once again that they simply don't care. Now, after we pointed out to the chairman that the Biden administration's witnesses were no-shows, he promised to hold a followup hearing to make sure the Biden administration's witnesses appeared. I intend to hold him to that promise, and I look forward to the opportunity. I actually said: ``Thank you very much for doing that.'' He didn't have to do that, but I think Chairman Durbin understands that this is the right thing to do. So I appreciate his willingness to hold a followup hearing with the Biden administration's witnesses, and I look forward to the opportunity to ask those officials who are charged with the care and custody of these vulnerable children why they have shirked their responsibilities. Now, the Biden administration may be fine with abandoning migrant children in order to avoid a bad news cycle, but I am not, and I think all fairminded Members of the Senate and the Congress are not. I really question whether people are aware of what the situation is, which is why I am here on the floor of the Senate today to talk about it. I hope that once they become aware, they will become like me-- concerned that something has to change, that people need to be held accountable, and that these children need to be protected. If you were an American citizen and you treated an American citizen child like the Biden administration has treated these migrant children from other countries, you would be charged and convicted of the reckless endangerment of a child or of human trafficking. In other words, you would go to jail or prison if you treated an American citizen child this way. So how is it the Biden administration gets off with treating these migrant children with any less dignity and safety? Well, in light of all of this reporting in the New York Times and elsewhere, we need answers, we need accountability, and we need policy changes to ensure that these practices come to an end. The Biden administration owes the American people answers, not just Members of Congress and not just members of the Senate Judiciary Committee. They need to tell us what is being done to keep track of these children. How are they ensuring their welfare? What is going to change to ensure that these migrant children are not victims of inhumane labor practices or worse? Given everything that has happened over the last 2\1/2\ years, I have no confidence in Secretary Becerra, Secretary Mayorkas, or President Biden, because they know about the problem. They were warned about the problem, but they didn't do anything about it, which tells me they just don't care. President Biden lives in a very nice government-provided house--the White House. He is not personally affected by this unprecedented level of human migration and the baffling pace of drug trafficking. He is not personally affected by the fact that 108,000 Americans died last year after consuming drugs that came across our southwestern border, and he is certainly not personally affected by the mistreatment of these migrant children, but it is his job. It is his responsibility. It is our responsibility to make sure this comes to an end because this is simply unacceptable. Children endure abuse and exploitation on their journeys to the United States. The current system is not compassionate, but they sure shouldn't be met here on American soil with more of the same. We need to prioritize the safety of these children as they await their immigration court hearings. President Biden and his administration must change and take responsibility for this gross exploitation of these vulnerable children, and they need to take immediate action to end it. I yield the floor. I suggest the absence of a quorum.

Mr. CORNYN

Mr. CORNYN. Mr. President, I would like to talk for a few minutes about what is happening at the southern border. Coming from Texas, we have a 1,200-mile common border with Mexico. That is 1,200 out of 2,000 miles of a border with Mexico, most of which has been in the midst of a humanitarian and public safety crisis for-- well, for many years. But nowhere at no time has it been worse than it has been during the Biden administration. You will recall during the COVID crisis, title 42 was issued, which is a public health order which allowed the Border Patrol to expel individuals coming across the border in certain categories--mainly adult males. Family units and children were handled differently under court orders. But title 42 went away this last spring, 2 months ago. For 3 years prior, it had allowed the Border Patrol to quickly expel migrants who had illegally crossed the southern border. With detention facilities and shelters bursting at the seams, title 42 was the only tool the Biden administration was willing to use to prevent even more chaos from unfolding. In the weeks and months leading up to its end last spring, there was widespread fear that a post-title 42 border would look even worse than it did at the time, which was a historically bad time. Would the newly set records for illegal immigration be replaced? Would we see up to 18,000 migrants a day as the Department of Homeland Security officials once predicted? Would more law enforcement officers be removed from the frontlines in order to process and care for migrants under the flawed policies of the Biden administration? The migration levels over the last 2 months haven't been as bad as some had expected, but they certainly have not been good either. Last week, the New York Times reported that since May 12, the average number of illegal crossings has been around 3,360. Well, that is an improvement from where we were a few months ago, but it is hardly reason to pop a champagne cork and celebrate. For one, the drop is likely seasonal, temporary. Officials and immigration experts believe many migrants are in a wait-and-see mode. They are paying close attention to the legal challenges and other migrants' journeys in order to determine their best courses of action. That is also true of the criminal cartels that control the flow of migrants across the U.S.-Mexico border. This is a business proposition for them. They are continuing to get rich in moving people and drugs across the border, and they are taking a wait-and-see attitude to see: OK, what is public opinion going to look like? Are we going to create a backlash and even a more dramatic response by the U.S. Government or can we just sort of go slowly, and they won't notice as we gradually ramp up the numbers of migrants and drugs coming across the border? It is also likely that many migrants are holding out for a highly sought after appointment with Customs and Border Protection through the CBP One app, as it is called. It is an app for your phone. As that wait grows longer and frustration grows higher, the decision of many to wait and to use that app in order to schedule a time to meet with Customs and Border Protection officials means that their decision to wait is likely to change. Some areas, indeed, along the border are already seeing an increase, including the Tucson sector. During the week that ended June 2, agents apprehended roughly 4,300 migrants, while 4 weeks later they apprehended 7,000--an increase of nearly 65 percent. So we can see the way this trend is headed. We don't know what the coming weeks and months will bring, but we do know that more than 3,300 migrants are being apprehended at the border every day, which is still a very high and unacceptable number. Back in 2019, Secretary of Homeland Security Jeh Johnson, who served under the Obama administration, reflected on his time in leading the Department of Homeland Security. He said that every morning he would review the border apprehension numbers from the day before. He considered under 1,000 apprehensions a day to be a relatively good number and anything above 1,000 to be a relatively bad number. When the numbers were bad, he said it would put him in a bad mood for the whole day. As former Secretary Johnson noted at the time, 1,000 migrants a day overwhelm the system. Well, fast-forward to today, and that is still true. We don't have the personnel. We don't have the facilities or the resources to manage the sort of historic levels of illegal immigration that we are seeing in a fair or humane way. Today, we are encountering more than three times as many migrants as the CBP did on a bad day during the Obama administration, and the Biden administration is trying to celebrate, saying: Look at what we did. We brought it down to three times the unacceptable level of the Obama administration's. Unfortunately, many in the mainstream media are eating up this spin or narrative of success, and unfortunately this number represents only a portion of the migrants entering the United States each day. Of course, there are what we have come to call the ``got-aways''-- migrants who are detected by cameras, sensors, and other forms of surveillance but who are not arrested or processed by the Border Patrol. You can only guess what they are up to, but clearly they do not want to encounter Federal law enforcement agents at the border. My suspicion is, and I think it is a reasonable suspicion, that they are up to illegal activities. They are probably people who have criminal records who know they won't be allowed to come across. It probably includes a significant number of drugs that contributed to the deaths of 108,000 Americans last year alone. These individuals, these ``got-aways,'' could be drug traffickers, human smugglers, or they could be terrorists. There have been a number of individuals on the Terrorist Watchlist who have been detained at the southern border, and, of course, many are known gang members--MS-13-- one of the most violent gangs on the planet. The truth is, we really don't know because they were able to slip into our country and disappear into the great American heartland. Since the start of the Biden administration began, Customs and Border Protection has logged 1.5 million known ``got-aways.'' Those are the people who have been detected by sensors or cameras or others but have been unable to be apprehended by the Border Patrol--1.5 million. Again, these are people more likely than not to be engaged in some sort of illegal or dangerous activities. That is in addition to the 5.4 million illegal border crossings since the start of the Biden administration. So you have to add the acknowledged number, which is 5.4, with the unacknowledged ``got-aways,'' and that is obviously almost 7 million migrants. The post-title 42 drop in border crossings doesn't just ignore those who snuck into the United States but also those the Biden administration simply waved through the turnstile. Now, this is another way of hiding the ball or cooking the books to make it look like the situation at the border has vastly improved when it has not. Earlier this year, the Biden administration rolled out a new plan that allowed migrants from four nations--Cuba, Haiti, Nicaragua, and Venezuela--to remain in the United States for up to 2 years and receive a work authorization. Before this hat trick that the Biden administration performed, those individuals were treated like every other migrant and were subject to being removed under title 42 or were subject to other immigration enforcement measures, but now, because of the wave of the wand, the magic wand, 360,000 individuals from Cuba, Haiti, Nicaragua, and Venezuela have been subtracted from that top-line number because what was illegal is now, due to the sleight of hand by the Biden administration, presumably legal. All they have to do is to submit their information online before crossing the border and wait for the administration to give them the green light. So instead of making the situation better, the Biden administration has taken 360,000 individuals from Cuba, Haiti, Nicaragua, and Venezuela and welcomed them with open arms. This isn't a small program that is limited to the most vulnerable individuals; it is open to 30,000 individuals a month. Of course, the Biden administration took this major step without consulting with Congress. It acted unilaterally to offer work status to up to 360,000 people a year. We have talked about this before, but it is worth remembering that the Border Patrol says illegal immigration is a combination of push factors and pull factors. The push factors are things like poverty and violence, the desire for a better life, and we certainly all understand that. But the pull factors for illegal immigration are incentives that are provided to the migrants to come to the United States, whether they be social welfare benefits or, in this case, work permits. Instead of making things better in reducing the number of migrants by enforcing the law, the Biden administration is offering additional incentives for people to migrate from these four countries into the United States because, lo and behold, they will get a work permit. Of course, there is no situation as to what happens to these individuals 2 years on; this is a 2-year provision. And rest assured, if the Biden administration were still to be in charge, there would never ever be any effort to try to return individuals who overstay after their 2 years are up. These are individuals who likely will remain in the United States for the rest of their lives under this new wave of the wand by the Biden administration. This new policy lets the administration roll out the welcome mat. That is one of those pull factors encouraging people to make the dangerous journey in the hands, in the custody, of some of the most dangerous people on the planet--these criminal cartels. This policy lets the administration roll out the welcome mat for tens of thousands of migrants while making it seem like the numbers have gone down. They say, ``Look, the top line is down,'' but they don't tell you that they have taken people out of that category and welcomed 360,000 migrants a year from these four countries. That is cooking the books where I come from. When you look at the total number of migrants encountered at the border during any given month, these migrants are not included in the total. For example, in May, Customs and Border Protection reported more than 204,000 border crossings, but they didn't include the 30,000 migrants who were admitted under the administration's new wave of the wand or the potentially tens of thousands of ``got-aways'' who were up to no good because they had simply evaded the Border Patrol and law enforcement. Still, the Biden administration has tried to claim victory when it comes to the border when its policies have been a demonstrable, abject failure. Three times more migrants are currently being encountered at the border than Jeh Johnson, the Secretary of Homeland Security under the Obama administration, said would be a real problem--more than three times more--and the trend line shows that number going up and up and up. I just think the Biden administration is not being honest with the American people. I am sure Director Mayorkas is patting himself on the back with some of the stories that are being printed, saying: Well, the problem has been resolved. Title 42 went away, but the number didn't skyrocket even higher. I am sure he is more than happy with only about 3,600 coming across the border, together with the ``got-aways,'' under the magic trick by which people who previously would have been considered to have illegally entered the country are then deemed legal by the Biden administration. In May, the Department of Homeland Security said the drop in numbers is proof ``the administration's plan is working as intended.'' And I can tell you exactly what that plan is. It appears our Democratic colleagues are using the same playbook that President Obama used to create deferred action for childhood arrivals. Those are the Dreamers, the young people who came to the United States as children who were then unilaterally given deferred action for childhood arrivals, or DACA, as we frequently call it. Step 1, the President acts outside of his legal authorities to extend status to a massive population of undocumented immigrants. He is applauded by the left for taking the action even though it is based on the shakiest of legal grounds, which, by the way, has been held illegal by a Federal district judge in the Southern District of Texas. To take from that same Obama DACA--or Dreamers'--playbook, the Biden administration's step 2 watches more and more people take advantage of the program as lawsuits are brought against the government. The debate will wind its way through the courts as tens or even hundreds of thousands of people put down roots in the United States, which is where we are now. And step 3 will come later down the road. Mr. President, I used to, at one point, just think this was mere incompetence, but now I think it is actually part of a plan because we have seen this play out before, and we know where this ends. So step 3 will come later down the road. At that point, the individuals who came to the United States through this program will likely have been here for many years. They will have jobs, homes, probably even American-citizen children. Our Democratic colleagues will then point to them and say it is unfair for them to live in a second- class status so we need to provide an amnesty so that they can enjoy the benefits of full American citizenship. They will say it will be cruel to force these individuals to return to their home countries after years of living and working in the United States, and they will frame anyone who refuses to go along as just plain heartless. So we have seen this movie before, and I can guarantee you that migrants who enter the United States under this new, made-up program of the Biden administration will experience the same level of uncertainty and fear as the DACA recipients currently are. Their legal status is the result of Executive overreach. And as legal challenges are considered, these individuals will be left to wonder whether they will be able to remain here in the United States. For a party that talks so much about compassionate immigration, this is not compassionate. It is cruel and manipulative and dishonest. The Biden administration is cooking the books in order to make the American people think the border crisis isn't so bad after all. It is deceiving migrants by offering legal status that the Biden administration has no authority to offer, and it is unfair to the individuals who follow the law and who are naturalized as American citizens each year. I have said it before; I will say it again. We should celebrate the fact that we are a nation of legal immigrants. It is what has made our country so strong and resilient and prosperous. But what is happening at the border is not legal immigration; it is simply hiding the ball, pretending that things aren't so bad, and hoping that the press will move on to look at something else. And it is unfair to those migrants, to those immigrants, to those would-be American citizens to say: I am sorry; we can't process your legal immigration application because we are too busy taking care of this flood of humanity coming across the border through these made-up programs like the Biden administration is foisting on the American people. And, of course, finally, it is setting the table for another battle over how to handle a massive population of immigrants with legally dubious immigration status. So, Mr. President, it may appear superficially that the Biden administration is making progress on the border crisis, but it is just an illusion. It is deception. It is manipulation. It is dishonest. And it won't last forever. So the simple answer, as the Presiding Officer knows, is that at some point things are going to get so bad that we are actually going to have to do the hard work. After all, immigration law is Congress's prerogative and bailiwick. But as long as the Biden administration can take a crisis at the border with title 42 in place--once it expires--and substitute essentially a green light for anybody and everybody who wants to come to the United States outside of a legal immigration process, they are going to say: What problem? We don't have a problem at the border. Meanwhile, States like mine continue to experience a flood of humanity coming across, overwhelming not only the capacity of Border Patrol to deal with it but diverting those resources away from their primary job, which is to enforce the law, including our drug laws. Again, I don't know what it is going to take. Almost 7 million migrants during the Biden administration's tenure--that doesn't seem to bother them. What about the 108,000 Americans who died last year due to drug overdoses--71,000 of those from synthetic opioids like fentanyl. I have been in very emotional settings with parents who have lost their children because they thought they were taking a Percocet or a Xanax or some other more relatively innocuous pharmaceutical drug, when, in fact, it was laced with fentanyl, and they didn't wake up the next morning. These parents are distraught at losing their child who had so much potential and such a wonderful future, only to be killed because the administration is unwilling to do what it should do to be able to stop more of those drugs, including synthetic opioids, from making their way across the border. But apparently that is not enough: 7 million border encounters, 108,000 dead Americans. We know where the drugs are coming from, and we know how to do a better job of stopping it, but the Biden administration looks the other way. And now we will talk more about this. The facts are coming into view with the 300,000 unaccompanied children whom the Biden administration has welcomed into the United States. And once they are placed with sponsors--people who are maybe not even their family members--they simply say: We are done. We have no responsibility. The New York Times and other established news organizations have reported these children are subject to labor exploitation, recruitment into gangs, being neglected or abused. And the Biden administration said: It is not our responsibility. Once these children are placed with sponsors--300,000 of them--we have nothing left to do. Well, as I said, we will talk more about that later, but we do know that in 85,000 of those cases, when Health and Human Services, the Office of Refugee Resettlement that is responsible for getting the sponsors--in 85,000 of those 300,000 cases, when the U.S. Government official calls the sponsor to check in on that child, there is no answer--no answer at all. I think this constitutes abandonment of these children who are welcomed into the United States as unaccompanied children, placed with sponsors, then simply abandoned by the U.S. Government--unacceptable. If you were to do that with an American citizen child, you would be in prison. You would be charged and convicted of child endangerment or worse. But that is what the Biden administration is doing almost on a daily basis, and it needs to be held to account.

Mr. CORNYN

Mr. CORNYN. Madam President, it is actually good to be back in the Senate this week after 2 weeks back home, and we certainly have a busy schedule ahead of us. The fact is that, unfortunately, this was a product of the inattention or lack of urgency that the majority leader has had to deal with the Senate's necessary work so far. We are a quarter of the way through the 118th Congress, and we, frankly, don't have a lot to show for it. Under our colleagues' leadership, this Chamber developed an embarrassingly short list of accomplishments. Despite the chaos at the southern border, we haven't had the opportunity to vote on legislation to address this humanitarian and security crisis, either in the Senate Judiciary Committee or here on the floor. They simply just ignore it: 5 million border encounters since President Biden took office. Last year alone, 108,000 Americans died of drug overdoses. Seventy-one thousand of those were from synthetic opioids, virtually all of which come from Mexico, the precursors having been imported from China. Would that be enough to get the attention of the President and the majority leader to actually do something in that area? Well, apparently not. Yesterday, I was interested to see that the Senator from New York-- the majority leader--sent a letter to our Senate colleagues highlighting his plans for the next 3 weeks. Actually, we only have about 10 workdays in these next 3 weeks before now the regularly scheduled August recess. Again, more of the same that we have seen so far this year--not much time and a lot to do. Senator Schumer mentioned his desire to move forward on bills relating to drug pricing, fentanyl, permitting reform, rail safety, marijuana banking, China competition, artificial intelligence, and a number of other topics in the next 3 weeks. Now, to be clear, I don't think the majority leader actually believes we are going to produce legislation in these areas. Maybe you would call this a wish list. But it is only wishful thinking to believe that in the U.S. Senate you are going to be able to get all of these necessary items addressed in the next 10 working days. And, of course, that ignores the fact that we have a bicameral legislature. We have the Senate and the House. Has he prevetted any of this legislation with the House to see whether, assuming the Senate would act, that the House would actually take it up and pass it and the President would sign it into law? That is how we legislate around here. It is not performance art. It is not show business. This is actually about doing the people's business and passing legislation through an admittedly difficult process. But this is where we find ourselves having waited until this late moment to deal with so much important legislation. The Democratic- controlled Senate has been downright sleepy for the last 6 months. And I have no reason that this letter, this wish list, will prompt some miraculous turnaround. The lack of productivity in this Congress has created a major backlog of important bills, which must be our top focus. We have a lot to do and not much time to do it, but that is by design. That is not the way the Senate should be operating. We heard from the previous speakers a lot about the national defense authorization bill, which is our annual Defense bill, which we passed for the last 61 years in a row--61 years in a row. Before this last break, the Senate Armed Services Committee completed its work on that bill and passed it out of committee by a vote of 24 to 1--bipartisan bill out of the Armed Services Committee demonstrating an overwhelming bipartisan support. This legislation, as we all know, is about supporting our servicemembers, modernizing our military, and addressing our biggest security challenges, including China. Senator Wicker, from Mississippi, the ranking member, has shared his disappointment over the fact that this year's Defense bill doesn't adequately seek to fund our defense needs. Now, of course, this is an authorization, in the jargon of the Senate--it is not an appropriation--but typically what happens is the authorizing committees will set a level of funding and then the Appropriations Committee will come behind that and fund it, presumably, at that level. But I know many of us are committed to working in the coming weeks to increase those funding levels to ensure that our military has the resources it needs to protect the American people, especially in the face of 40-year-high inflation. I don't have to tell anybody within the sound of my voice what inflation has done to their standard of living and their purchasing power over the last couple of years. Basically, this is like a silent tax, where you have less and less to spend for the necessary expenditures in your life, whether it is your transportation, your food, your clothing, your childcare, your healthcare, or the like. Well, the military is experiencing the ill-effects of this 40-year-high inflation, too, and its purchasing power has been decreased dramatically. Well, I hope that we will have a turnaround of sorts and that the Defense authorization bill will get off to a strong start, but it is a long way from the finish line. While this bill did pass the committee, it still needs to be brought to the floor. There needs to be an opportunity for Senators to offer amendments and debate the bill, hopefully improve it, and then vote on it by the full Senate, and that takes time. Under the regular procedures of the Senate, to bring a bill like that to the floor and to account for all of the potential procedural obstacles that would be encountered, it would take you more than a week to process the bill. And we have 3 weeks before August--10 days of actual working time--and this is what the majority leader has presented us with. So we know that we need to get to work. The NDAA should pass before the end of fiscal year, which is September 30, and the Senate is only scheduled to be in session for 7 weeks before then. So even after we come back from the August recess, in order to meet the deadline of the end of the fiscal year, September 30, we only have 4 more weeks after we get back before the NDAA essentially lapses--the national defense authorization bill--absent our action in the meantime. I don't have to tell my colleagues that providing for the common defense is one of our most important responsibilities. And the National Defense Authorization Act is the foundation for that. So I hope the majority leader will allow the Senate to take up the bill soon. I think I heard the chairman of the Senate Armed Services Committee just now suggest that perhaps the NDAA will come to the floor next week, and I hope that is true. But certainly, in order to give Senators an opportunity to participate and hopefully debate and offer amendments and improve the bill, it is going to take time, and that is something we don't have a lot of. Every Member of this Chamber has the right to offer their ideas to strengthen and improve this legislation, just like we should on any piece of legislation. And the majority leader should not try to jam the process by saying: Oh, now, we don't have enough time so we are going to have to do away with the opportunity to have full debates and amendment process because we are running up against a deadline. Well, that deadline is of his own making because he failed to deal with this in a timely manner. But September 30 isn't the only deadline that we have for the Defense authorization bill. It is also the farm bill. Every 5 years, Congress passes a farm bill to support everything from crop insurance to nutrition programs, to rural broadband. The impact of the farm bill is felt in communities across America, including those in my home State of Texas. Texas is home to nearly a quarter of a million farms and ranches, more than any other State in the country. And one out of every seven working Texans actually works in an ag-related job. These hard-working men and women raise cattle, chickens. They grow corn and sorghum. They produce cotton and hay, not just for the Nation but for the world. Texas farmers and ranchers produce food and fiber for America and for exports as well, and they are facing increasingly strong headwinds. I mentioned inflation, which has been at a 40-year high. It has increased the cost of every input that farmers and ranchers have, from diesel to fertilizer, you name it. It has eroded their purchasing power. Their operating costs have skyrocketed for everything. I mentioned fertilizer and fuel. Pesticides is another major expense. And so their profit margins continue to get slimmer and slimmer. I was somewhat amused to hear that President Biden, during our 2-week period away from Washington, DC, began to tout something he calls Bidenomics, like he is proud of it. He said: This is a lot like Reaganomics, except it is Bidenomics. It has nothing to do with Reaganomics, which actually worked. But I was amused because when I looked at the RealClearPolitics' average of the President's approval rating for his economic policies, it stands at a whopping 38.7 percent--38.7 percent approve of President Biden's economic policies. Bidenomics is like putting lipstick on a pig to try to dress it up to make it look better than it really is. But in addition to our economic woes, Mother Nature has unleashed a set of challenges as well. Last year alone, natural disasters caused more the $21 billion in crop losses nationwide. Today, areas across Texas are experiencing a hot and dry summer. We are used to that. It is summertime. It is July. We are used to hot and dry summers. But farmers are also battling very little rainfall, and they are praying that their crop loss will not be more than minimal. The farm bill includes farm safety net programs which are a lifeline for countless producers. They are critical at managing the risks inherent with this critical industry. Everybody knows farming and ranching is risky, for the reasons I mentioned and others. But this year I hope we can build on the progress we made in the last farm bill to ensure that the agriculture sector is as resilient as possible. This sector not only feeds, fuels, and clothes America, as I said, it also drives our economy and feeds the world. In Texas alone in 2021, ag exports totaled more than $7.2 billion. In 2019, Texas A&M's AgriLife Extension Service estimated the economic impact of the ag sector to be nearly $160 billion, which is more than 8 percent of my State's GDP. So a strong, on-time farm bill is essential to the health and well- being of this important sector of the economy, but it is also important beyond that. It is important to the American people, and it is important to our economy. Our colleague Senator Boozman from Arkansas is a ranking member. And our colleagues on the Agriculture Committee, I know, have been working hard to draft this year's farm bill, and I appreciate the hard work that they put into it. But I am eager to work with our colleagues to get this bill across the finish line on time, again, before it lapses at the end of this fiscal year. And then, there is another big one, Federal Aviation Administration Reauthorization. As though we needed another big, heavy lift before the end of the fiscal year, it is also the deadline to reauthorize the Federal Aviation Administration. Over the last couple of years, travelers have dealt with widespread flight cancellations, paralyzing staffing shortages, and rising prices. We have also witnessed some jarring safety issues, including near-collisions on airport runways in Minneapolis and New York. Last month, Senators Cantwell, Cruz, Duckworth, and Moran introduced the FAA Reauthorization Act to address these and other issues. But like the National Defense Authorization Act and the farm bill, the FAA needs to be reauthorized by September 30. Again, all of these deadlines are well-known by the majority leader, but here we are finding ourselves with very little time and a lot to do. And last but not least is, likely, the biggest lift before us for before September 30, and that is to fund the government. As part of the debt limit agreement, Senator Schumer vowed to bring all 12 appropriations bills to the Senate floor by September 30. How he is going to be able to keep his promise is not clear to me, given the traffic jam that we are going to experience, because this includes funding for our military, veteran services, border security, and so much more. Senator Collins and Senator Murray and all of our colleagues on the Appropriations Committee are determined to restore some regular order and common sense to the funding process. I hope the majority leader will stick by his word and put all 12 appropriations bills on the Senate floor before the end of the fiscal year. We don't need, and the country does not want, another omnibus spending bill like we saw at the end of last year, which, of course, was by design, because it empowers the leadership to the detriment of rank-and-file members of the Congress. When you are presented with a ``shut down the government,'' ``take it or leave it'' proposition at the end of the year, having bypassed all of this normal process, the question is, Are you going to keep the government open? Are you going to fund the government? Are you going to fund defense, veterans, border security, or not? And that is simply an abomination we do not need to repeat again. And so I do hope the majority leader will keep his word. None of these bills are an easy lift. They require a lot of hard work, cooperation, and time, and we only have 7 weeks of legislative session to pass them all. So far, the 118th Congress hasn't been a productive one. The Democratic majority has struggled to complete even the most basic tasks, and now we have a lot of work to do, maybe an impossible amount of work to do, by design. The clock is ticking, and we can't let these critical responsibilities slip through the cracks. I yield the floor.

Mr. CORNYN

Mr. CORNYN. Mr. President, under Biden's leadership, the United States has experienced an unprecedented border crisis. That is not exactly news because for the last 2\1/2\ years, Customs and Border Protection has encountered more than 5.2 million migrants at the border, plus another 1\1/2\ million ``got-aways.'' In other words, under our bizarre and broken immigration system, 5.2 million people basically were welcomed at the border, while another million and a half simply fled the Border Patrol and made their way into the interior of the United States. Now, it is true out of the 5.2 million under title 42, the COVID-19 order, basically public health order, that 2.6 million of the 5.2 were returned to their country of origin or at least expelled out of the United States. That was a public health order, but that is gone. That is expired. That has served its time. So under any scenario, you can conclude that under President Biden's tenure, millions of people have made their way into the United States, not using the legal pathways that are designed to make our immigration system safe, orderly, and humane--something that I know we all support, legal immigration--instead, President Biden's failures, when it comes to border policy, has resulted in transnational criminal organizations controlling immigration, and they also control the drug trafficking that makes its way across the border. And as was acknowledged by the Attorney General, Merrick Garland, when he was testifying before the Judiciary Committee, I believe he said he understood that this was part of the business model of these organizations, these criminal organizations. They would flood the border with people, and as the Border Patrol was diverted to try to deal with that mass of humanity, including unaccompanied children, that left huge gaps in the border which were then exploited by the drug cartels to move drugs into the interior of the United States. Rather than secure the border or make any attempt to deter illegal immigration, the Biden administration has allowed the chaos to continue for nearly 2\1/2\ years. Now, inexplicably, the President claims this is all part of his plan to promote safe, orderly, and humane migration, but there is nothing safe about the journey migrants take to the United States in the hands of cartels, coyotes, and ordinary criminals. There is nothing orderly about migrants using inflatable rafts and ropes to cross the Rio Grande where some meet their death when they drown. And there is nothing humane about what is happening in the United States now as a result of the border crisis. First, let's look at what happens to the children. Since President Biden took office, more than 300,000 unaccompanied children have been encountered at the border and then placed with a sponsor in the interior of the United States. To be clear, these children did not arrive in the United States with their parents. These children made the dangerous journey north with basically any adult who is willing to convey them from their home, across the border, into the United States. But the truth is, these children are not unaccompanied. They are accompanied by the criminals who make this their business. The sad reality is that many come to the United States in the care of cartels, human smugglers, and coyotes, and parents pay smugglers thousands of dollars to bring their children to the United States. I have no doubt that when those children reached the United States, their parents thought they would be safe. After all, this is the greatest country in the world, a country that values freedom, justice, and opportunity. I am sure their parents expected they would live safe and happy lives while their asylum claims are being considered, but we know the ugly truth. We know now that countless children have experienced a new hell right here in the United States. The New York Times, for example, published two bombshell investigative reports detailing widespread exploitation of migrant children here in our country. Some children are being forced to work in meatpacking plants, food processing facilities, and construction jobs--underage children. These are not part-time jobs after school; these are full-time jobs instead of going to school, in violation of many States' child labor laws. They are being treated as indentured servants as they try to pay off the debts they owe to the traffickers who brought them here. And there is no question the Biden administration understands what is going on, and, yes, their silence is complicity. Once unaccompanied children are apprehended and processed at the border, the Department of Health and Human Services has the legal responsibility to place these children with a safe sponsor. According to longstanding policy, the agent follows up with a phone call 30 days later to make sure that the child is safe. On both counts--the preplacement vetting and the post-placement wellness check--the Biden administration has completely fumbled its responsibilities. Health and Human Services actually loosened the vetting requirements in order to get children out of shelters fast--as fast as possible-- with little regard for the increased danger to these children. The New York Times has documented that at least 85,000 of those 300,000 children cannot even be reached within 30 days. So the practice is to make a wellness call in 30 days, but 85,000 of those 300,000 children, there is no answer. So the Biden administration can't tell you where these children are, whether they are being fed, whether they are going to school, whether they are being neglected or abused or forced into involuntary labor. President Biden's administration doesn't know, and I think the sad truth is they don't care--because if they did care, this would not be allowed to continue. This isn't breaking news. This isn't something I am announcing here today for the first time. Two major investigative pieces by the New York Times has exposed this scandal. Over the last couple years, the Department of Health and Human Services has received countless warnings that these children are in danger. Those warnings came through its own hotline, government contractors, and scores of employees who sounded the alarm. Not only did Health and Human Services ignore the warnings of whistleblowers, it tried to silence them. Department leadership retaliated against employees who shined a light on this massive abuse. As a result, countless children have remained in dangerous situations just so the administration could avoid an embarrassing PR headache. As we know, the tens of thousands of migrant children who have been lost--literally lost--by the Biden administration are not the only victims of the border crisis. Now, I sometimes ask myself, what is it going to take? How bad are things going to have to get before this situation registers with enough people of good conscience and good will that they are actually willing to do something about it? And I am constantly disappointed that in spite of the scandal, we can't find enough people of good will and good intentions here in the U.S. Senate to change this, to make it better, to throw a rescue line to these kids. But the story gets worse. We know the fentanyl epidemic has killed more than 70,000 people a year in the United States just last year, making it the leading cause of death for Americans ages 18 to 49--the leading cause of death. We know that the fentanyl epidemic does not discriminate. It kills young people. It kills old people. It kills rich people. It kills poor people, both those living in major cities and those living in rural America. And we know the overwhelming majority of this fentanyl comes across the U.S.-Mexico border. Again, this is not breaking news. This is something known to all of us, including the Biden administration. We also know where the precursor chemicals come from. These are chemicals shipped from China, shipped to Mexico, where the drug cartels mix them up. They use industrial-sized pill presses to gin out hundreds of thousands of pills that are contaminated with fentanyl. Now, most of the time people who get poisoned by fentanyl don't actually know they are taking fentanyl. They may think they are taking a Xanax or Percocet or some other more innocuous medication, something we would prefer our kids not to take, but we understand sometimes that happens. But they have no idea that a tiny dose of fentanyl can kill them and that many of these pills ginned out by the drug cartels, using these precursor chemicals in Mexico, are then shipped across the border and, unfortunately, routinely, take the lives of young, bright children who have the best of their lives ahead of them. Between October of last year and April of this year, Customs and Border Protection seized more than 12,000 pounds of fentanyl at the southern border. Again, if you have a pencil--and I don't have a pencil, but I have a pen--it is basically the part of the pen that sticks out of the end of the part you hold onto. It takes that little amount of fentanyl to kill you. And last year, Customs and Border Protection seized 17,000 pounds of it. Now, some people say: Well, that is great. We don't have a problem. The Border Patrol seized it. Well, you remember those ``got-aways'' I mentioned earlier, more than a million of them? They were running away from law enforcement, and I guarantee you it was for a reason. Either they knew that their criminal record and background would not make it possible for them to legally migrate into the United States or they were carrying drugs like this fentanyl. And we know a lot of it is getting through because we are seeing the devastation that it has wrought--again, with 71,000 fentanyl-related deaths last year alone. So we know CBP is not able to interdict every ounce of illicit drugs--far from it. Over the past couple years, the unprecedented border crisis under the Biden administration has affected all of our missions at the border, including those that have nothing to do with immigration. Law enforcement has been shifted to the frontlines in order to process and care for the migrants. Instead of stopping dangerous drugs and criminals, many agents are pushing paper and changing diapers. No one is happier with this situation than the drug cartels and the criminals who smuggle migrants for money. They are getting rich. What is not to love from their standpoint? With fewer agents on the frontline, they have a clear and easy path to move fentanyl, heroine, methamphetamine, and other deadly drugs into the United States, and our communities are being ravaged by the overdose epidemic. The administration has given the cartels clear and easy corridors to traffic even more of their poison into the United States, as I have described. Well, this is hardly a picture of a humane response to the border crisis, as President Biden and his administration claim. This is not humane. Well, as I said earlier, sometimes I ask myself, what will it take? What will it take to get the attention of the people who actually have the authority to change this, to make it better, to save lives? Because hearing about these crises is enough to make your blood boil. The administration cut corners in order to place migrant children with sponsors. It exerted minimal effort to follow up with those children to ensure they are safe and healthy. At the same time, the chaos caused by the border crisis has led to a security breakdown which enables fentanyl and other dangerous drugs to pour into the United States, killing Americans--108,000 last year alone. Despite the widespread suffering caused by the Biden administration's policies, the President and his senior officials just don't seem to care. They don't care. If they did care, they would do something about it. So it is clear to me they don't care. There is a clear need to secure the border and stop the unprecedented migration crisis, but the majority of our Democratic colleagues refuse to address the border crisis unless Congress passes what they call comprehensive immigration reform. So, in other words, they are holding these children, they are holding the rest of the country hostage in order to achieve a legislative goal which they know is not possible-- one, because we have a divided government: a Republican-controlled House and a Democratic-controlled Senate and a Democrat sitting in the White House. There is no question that America's immigration system is in need of modernization. It is outdated, inefficient, and crippled by backlogs. But, as everyone knows, immigration reform is a very, very difficult, thorny issue. For 2 years, our Democratic colleagues controlled all three branches of government, and they couldn't even pass a partisan immigration bill. Now that we are operating in divided government, that calculus becomes harder, not easier. There is absolutely zero chance that the Democrat-led Senate and the Republican-led House will be able to reach an agreement on immigration reform anytime soon. I wish that were not true. It doesn't have to be true, but I think, unless attitudes change, that is a fact. Still, this elusive idea of comprehensive immigration reform has become a holdup for other problems relating to the border and immigration. In other words, these emergencies occurring at the border are being held hostage to an impossible goal, which is passing bipartisan immigration reform as a demand for solving these other problems. Right now, the major problem we need to address is the humanitarian crisis fallout from what is happening. We can't prolong the suffering caused by the border crisis while our Democratic colleagues try to build support for a massive immigration reform bill that many of them seem to have zero interest in, because if they had interest, I assume they would be rolling up their sleeves and doing the hard work, doing more than just talking about it. For example, in the Senate, the Democratic chairman of the Judiciary Committee has jurisdiction to mark up and presumably pass with some combination of Republican and Democratic votes a bill to address the crisis that I mention. The Democratic majority leader has the authority to bring a bill to the floor, to open it to amendments so that all Senators can participate to try to find out if there is some path forward and some consensus. But in the 2 years our Democratic colleagues controlled all three branches of government, they did zero about it. That means that the young adults who are in a box because of deferred action on childhood arrivals--this is an illegal scheme that President Obama did unilaterally 10 years ago which has been tied up in litigation ever since and is likely to be held illegal by a court of last resort here very soon. So trying to address that, trying to address the drug crisis, trying to protect these 300,000 children--all of that is being held hostage for our Democratic colleagues to pursue an unattainable goal given the current political environment. Migrant children are being abused within our own borders. Drugs kill about 109,000 Americans a year. We cannot leverage these lives for unrelated and unattainable measures. There is nothing safe, orderly, or humane about the Biden administration's response to the border crisis, and until something changes, more people will continue to suffer and die. 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.

Mr. CORNYN

Mr. CORNYN. Mr. President, I wanted to come to the Senate floor this afternoon to talk about a scandal of incredible proportion. Since President Biden became President of the United States, 300,000 unaccompanied children have been encountered at the border and then placed with sponsors inside the interior of the United States--300,000. Ordinarily, there would be a process by which Health and Human Services would attempt to contact those minor children, in the custody of those sponsors, for a wellness check 30 days after they were placed with them. The New York Times has documented that at least 85,000 of those 300,000 children cannot even be reached--no response to the phone call or any other outreach. So under the Biden administration's policies, an untold number of minor children have been placed with sponsors in the interior of the United States, and the Biden administration can't tell you where they are; the administration can't tell you what their condition is, whether they are being sent to school, whether they are being recruited into gangs, whether they are being sexually or otherwise physically assaulted, or whether they are being neglected. They simply don't know. Now, I know it takes a lot to get people's attention these days because there is so much competing for our attention--so many different types of outrage. But the fact that this hasn't been front page news for a long time now or hasn't motivated the Biden administration to actually do anything to change this situation leads me to the conclusion that President Biden simply doesn't care. He doesn't care. He doesn't care what happens to these children. If he did care, he would do something about it, but he doesn't, apparently, care. These are some of the most vulnerable individuals encountered at the border. They come to the United States, not in the care of their parents, but in the care of transnational criminal organizations, the cartels--the coyotes, as they are called--who treat them like a commodity. They don't treat them like a human being. They treat them like a commodity because the only thing these cartels care about is cold, hard cash. This is a huge cash cow. And it is not just the children. It is the other 5 million migrants encountered at the border, as well. All of them pay these criminal organizations to transport them here to the United States. I mentioned previously that when I went to Yuma, AZ, with a bipartisan group of Senators, that Border Patrol sector chief greeted us by saying: Welcome to the Yuma Sector. It is a sleepy little agricultural community. He said: We encounter people from 176 countries, speaking 200 languages. So people are literally being transported around the world to show up at our border and claim a right to be admitted, and the Biden administration continues to roll out the welcome mat and not deter illegal immigration by people who cannot qualify, whom we know will not qualify for any legal relief. The children, particularly, endure a dangerous and long journey to our country, and they are often exploited en route. We heard from one of the witnesses in the Judiciary Committee yesterday about them being particularly vulnerable to sex trafficking, but we know they are subjected to violence and other forms of exploitation as well. You would hope that once these children arrive at the border, they would be safe. I think that is our obligation, to make sure they are safe. But over the last few years, we have seen mounting evidence that shows that tens of thousands of these migrant children who show up at our border without a parent or legal guardian are placed with sponsors and are essentially lost by the administration. Again, they don't know where they are. They don't know what is happening to them. And, of course, we all should be concerned that they are being taken advantage of in a multitude of ways and being damaged in ways that we don't want to even imagine. In August 2021, Bloomberg reported that Federal law enforcement was investigating unaccompanied migrant children who had been released to labor traffickers. This is kind of like modern-day slavery. The reporting uncovered situations where dozens of children were released to the same sponsor--dozens of children to the same person. You think that would have raised some questions, and maybe they tap the brake a little bit and investigate further--apparently not, because this same individual then exploited them for labor in poultry processing facilities. It is impossible for me to understand why the administration wouldn't see the warning signs. About a year later, Reuters reported on another deeply concerning discovery. Federal and local officials were struggling to locate a dozen migrant children in Houston. They simply lost them. The Health and Human Services refugee office conducted an emergency review and found that 57 migrant children had been reported missing in Houston since the year prior--lost by the Biden administration. As bad as those two reports are, the story does not get any better. Recent reporting by the New York Times has confirmed that these aren't just the exception. These are part of a deeply disturbing trend, and it shows what bad things can happen to innocent children when their own government doesn't even care. Of course, many of these are migrant children so, technically, I guess, the United States isn't their government. But we owe them a duty while they are in our country to protect them from the predators and the exploiters--the traffickers. In February, the New York Times published its first story detailing widespread exploitation of migrant children. It includes countless stories of unaccompanied migrants who are working dangerous jobs that violate child labor laws: a 15-year-old girl, for example, who packages cereal at night in a factory; a 14-year-old boy working on a construction job; a 13-year-old day laborer; children working at meat processing plants, commercial bakeries, and suppliers for automakers. These are not after-school jobs. These are grueling and dangerous full- time jobs that are meant not for children but for adults. Two months later, the Times published another story that detailed the extent to which the Biden administration officials knew about these abuses and chose to ignore them--willful ignorance. The Health and Human Services Department received warning after warning that some of these migrant children were at risk. These warnings came through government staffers, outside contractors, and on the Department's own hotline established for that purpose. But not only were whistleblowers ignored, many were silenced, pushed out of their jobs. They were retaliated against for trying to protect these vulnerable children. These concerns made their way to the highest echelons of the Biden administration. Health and Human Services Secretary Javier Becerra was aware of the credible reports of trafficking abuse but continued to push for the expedited placement of migrants with sponsors, with no regard for the dangers that presented. At one point, he reportedly told his employees: If Henry Ford had seen this in his plants, he would have never become famous and rich. This is not the way you do an assembly line. So here is the highest level government official, the Secretary of Health and Human Services, a member of President Biden's Cabinet, who considers placing vulnerable migrant children in a dangerous situation, as he regards it as an assembly line. Then-Labor Secretary Marty Walsh was aware of the situation as well. Last year, the Department's investigators identified major instances of child labor violations that took place in auto parts factories and meatpacking plants. Former Secretary Walsh even confirmed that the Department included details about these situations in its weekly reports to the White House. So at least Secretary Walsh was appearing to do his job by reporting this to the top-level officials at the White House. Until last month, Susan Rice served as the Director of the White House Domestic Policy Council, where she oversaw virtually every aspect of domestic policy matters, including the placement of migrant children. When the border crisis reached a fever pitch during the summer of 2021, Ms. Rice's team received a memo from Health and Human Services managers about possible labor trafficking. Two people confirmed that Ms. Rice was told about the contents of the memo, but the White House now disputes that claim. High-ranking Biden officials saw clear warnings that children were in danger and chose willful blindness. They did nothing to rescue these children from a dangerous situation or to prevent more young migrants from meeting the same fate. In the wake of these damning reports, we have yet to see a thorough investigation or explanation of how this happened. How could the administration fail these children so badly over and over and over again? How could they not act on credible reports that children were being exploited? This is a disgusting failure of leadership, and it is dangerous. We need to get answers and accountability, and we need to fix it, something the Biden administration apparently does not care enough to do. If they did care, they would fix it. But they obviously don't care. Following the second New York Times report, I wrote a letter to Chairman Durbin of the Judiciary Committee that was cosigned by every Republican. We urged him to invite these three Biden administration leaders who failed to act in the face of these warnings to testify in front of the Judiciary Committee. That included Secretary Becerra, former Labor Secretary Walsh, and former White House adviser Susan Rice. The Judiciary Committee, on which I am privileged to serve, is charged with oversight of the Unaccompanied Children Program, and we have a duty to ensure that these children are treated humanely. We need to know who made the decision to loosen vetting requirements for sponsors and why those decisions were made. We need to hear from the current and former administration officials who knew about the widespread abuse of migrant children and yet chose not to act. We need a thorough explanation of how the Department is changing its policies, assuming it is, to prevent more children from being placed with dangerous sponsors. And we need to know how those responsible for these grotesque abuses will be held accountable. But in the Judiciary Committee hearing yesterday, we didn't get any of that information. None of the officials that I mentioned that we requested actually testified. They didn't show up. So not only have they neglected the cries of these vulnerable children to do something-- anything--they didn't even care enough to show up at the Judiciary Committee yesterday to explain why they failed to act in the face of these cries for help. We didn't hear from a single current or former Biden administration official. There was not one witness on the five- person panel who could shed light on the decisions that caused so many of these migrant children to be exploited. If our Democratic colleagues are as disturbed as I am about what I described, I hope they will join Republicans in a bipartisan push to get Secretary Becerra, Secretary Walsh, former White House domestic policy adviser Susan Rice to testify under oath before the Judiciary Committee and before the rest of the country. These senior administration officials saw the warning signs, and they chose to ignore them. They continued to press for the rapid placement of these children with sponsors, and they didn't apparently care enough to make sure that they could track where these children were and what was happening to them. Now they need to explain their decisions on behalf of the Biden administration to the Senate. I can't imagine the Biden administration doing a worse job responding to this border crisis than it has. If you set out to design a system that would fail, it would look something like the current policies of the Biden administration. By refusing to secure the border, the administration has allowed criminal organizations to smuggle fentanyl and other deadly drugs into the country. It has enabled more than 1.5 million ``got-aways'' to evade Border Patrol and slip into the United States. And it has released hundreds of thousands of migrants before we had sufficient information about who they were, where they were going, and when they needed to report to court. Migrants in some cities reportedly wait as long as 10 years to present an asylum claim in front of an immigration judge. And we know that only maybe 15, max 20 percent of them will be able to legitimately show a right to asylum. So the 80 to 85 percent have had to wait in line for 10 years--or the 15 percent or so with valid claims have had to wait in line for 10 years because of the 80 to 85 percent who can't qualify; but they have gummed up the system so bad by the sheer volume of cases, even people with legitimate claims can't get heard. And now we are seeing how the administration looked the other way and allowed migrant children to be exploited on American soil. So my question is, how long will we have to go before our colleagues join us in demanding a change? Because failure to do something is, in fact, a choice. Are we going to choose to let this exploitation of these migrant children continue when the U.S. government who placed them with these sponsors doesn't even know where they are, whether they are getting a good education, whether their healthcare needs are being attended to, or whether they are being recruited in gangs, sex-trafficked, exploited, neglected? I started out by saying I don't believe the Biden administration cares; but I do believe Members of this body care. And it is within our power to change it. That is a choice, in and of itself. Now, some of my colleagues like the chairman of the Judiciary Committee said, yeah, we need to get together and talk about comprehensive immigration reform, but we have had those conversations the entire time I have been in the U.S. Senate. We cannot leverage these innocent children for other unrelated measures. The same problem with the fentanyl and drugs coming across the border. People say, well, we need to do something. Well, we can't do it until we do comprehensive immigration reform. The DACA population, the Deferred Action on Childhood Arrival, these young people who came here as children who now are in a box canyon not of their making because President Obama overreached and created a program without working with Congress. Each of those problems, I think, deserves to be addressed on its own merits. But you can't tell me that you are serious about solving the problem if you say, well, we can't do this, we can't fix those problems until we deal with all of the immigration issues as a whole, because I don't see that happening anytime soon. Meanwhile, these children will be languishing, being exploited, and worse. The young people who are uncertain about their future because they received this Deferred Action on Childhood Arrival, but now it has been held illegal, unconstitutional by a Federal judge in the Southern District of Texas--and the families that are grieving because their loved ones took a pill they thought was relatively innocuous, but it was contaminated with fentanyl, and their son or daughter lost their life--do you want to tell these people to keep waiting? Just wait until we pass a massive immigration reform bill containing other matters. You wait. They shouldn't have to wait. And we shouldn't let the neglect and the willful blindness of the Biden administration prevent us from doing our duty, Republican and Democratic Senators alike. It is within our power to do it. But doing nothing is a choice too. And I hope that is not a choice we will make. I yield the floor.

Mr. CORNYN

Mr. CORNYN. Madam President, last month, the majority leader announced an effort to compile what he called China bill 2.0, alluding to the CHIPS and Science Act that we passed last year dealing with the vulnerability of our supply chains and access to advanced semiconductors, which were overwhelmingly manufactured in Asia--60 percent in Taiwan alone. To pursue this China bill 2.0, Senator Schumer directed committee chairmen to work on legislation that takes aim at everything from U.S. investment in China to security threats against Taiwan. As each of us knows, these are some of the most urgent threats facing the United States and our allies to date. The Chinese Communist Party has become increasingly aggressive in recent years. It is rapidly growing and modernizing its military. It is cozying up to Russia. It is bullying and harassing its neighbors in the Indo-Pacific. Yes, there is a clear and urgent need to counter threats from China, but there is a better way than China 2.0. As we have seen in the past, our Democratic colleagues can't resist the urge to mix partisan politics along with urgent national security legislation. So every one of these bills tends to become a vehicle for unrelated items. We saw this during consideration of the U.S. Innovation and Competition Act 2 years ago, when our colleagues attached prevailing wage legislation to the CHIPS provisions. They injected partisan labor policy into private construction projects that would benefit from national security concerns. But we won't outcompete China by pursuing a liberal domestic socialist policy. Our Democratic colleagues have shown themselves unwilling to separate themselves from the left's wish list from our most urgent national security priorities. If the true goal is to counter threats from China, the majority leader doesn't need a new working group to draft a bill from scratch because there is already a strong bipartisan effort underway. Our colleagues on the Armed Services Committee are working around-the-clock to prepare this year's Defense authorization bill. This has literally been something that Congress has done for the last 61 years without interruption. This legislation is not negotiated in a backroom by a hand-picked group of Members. It isn't thrown together in a matter of days and then pushed to the floor for a vote without the opportunity to offer amendments. It is slowly and thoughtfully drafted over a period of months, including multiple hearings, votes, and hundreds of amendments. Year after year, all 100 Members of the U.S. Senate are given an opportunity to shape the national defense authorization bill in some way. As a result, the Defense authorization bill has maintained strong bipartisan support for more than six decades. The Armed Services Committee is set to consider the 2024 National Defense Authorization Act just next week. As it stands right now, the committee should be able to complete its work by the end of the month and put the Senate in a great position to pass a strong and ontime defense bill. This legislation is all about supporting our servicemembers, modernizing our military, and addressing the biggest security threats, including those posed by the Chinese Communist Party. The bipartisan national defense authorization bill should be the centerpiece of our efforts to counter threats from Russia, not a bill put together behind closed doors with Members having only the chance to vote yes or no in final passage. Senators on both sides will have an opportunity, in contrast, under the NDAA, to offer amendments and to be able to shape that bill, so it will truly represent a bipartisan consensus of all 100 Members of the U.S. Senate. I plan to offer several amendments that will strengthen our ability to counter threats from China. One of those bills that I intend to offer takes aim at China and other adversaries that are trying to take advantage of loopholes to influence U.S. policy. What I am talking about is the Foreign Agent Registration Act. That law requires individuals engaged in lobbying activities on behalf of foreign governments to disclose that information publicly. But there are two major loopholes that are being abused by our adversaries. As a result, foreign agents are able to influence U.S. policy unbeknownst to Members of Congress because they don't have to disclose who is actually paying them. So rather than being engaged in the people's business--the people of the United States--we could find ourselves being lobbied by somebody who is representing a foreign government with interests that are completely different from those of the United States. Lobbyists for American entities are required to adhere to strict disclosure requirements. We want to know whom they are working for. There is no reason our adversaries should be subject to a more lenient standard, which they are now. In other words, it is easy to hide the ball--come in and lobby on behalf of a foreign government and not let Members of Congress or the American people know whom they are lobbying on behalf of. Senator Whitehouse and I have introduced a bill we call the PAID OFF Act to help close those loopholes in our lobbying system that are being abused by some of our adversaries that would require foreign agents lobbying on behalf of China, Russia, Cuba, or other countries of concern to register and disclose their political activities to the Department of Justice, just as the law originally intended before these loopholes were identified and exploited. As our colleagues know, there has never been a more important time to protect our country from the secret and malign influence of some foreign governments. This is a goal Democrats and Republicans should share alike, and I hope this legislation will be adopted as an amendment to this year's National Defense Authorization Act. Another amendment I plan to offer is the National Critical Capabilities Defense Act, which has been a joint effort with Senator Casey, the Senator from Pennsylvania. We first introduced this legislation last year to help understand our greatest national security risks. We know that American companies have been investing in China for many years, including some defense and technology capabilities, now at an alarming scale. At the end of 2020, U.S. investments in Chinese companies totaled $2.3 trillion in market value; that is, U.S. companies investing in China have basically built the Chinese economy which now puts them as a peer adversary both in terms of our economies and in terms of our military capabilities. So that $2.3 trillion in market value by American companies that invest in China includes $21 billion in semiconductors, $54 billion for Chinese military companies, and a whopping $221 billion in artificial intelligence. American companies are bankrolling the capabilities and assets that the Chinese Communist Party could soon use against the United States and our allies. Right now, the United States is flying blind. We don't have a full understanding of the vulnerabilities this creates, and this legislation is exactly what we hope will begin to change that situation and provide more transparency and, thus, ability for U.S. Members of Congress and others leaders to evaluate whether and how some of these investments made by U.S. companies in China are affecting our national security. The National Critical Capabilities Defense Act would ensure that we have better awareness of the biggest national security risks so we can plan and prepare accordingly. Just as it is critical for the United States to have visibility of potential risks, it is also important for the average American to understand how Chinese aggression could impact their own finances and our economy. President Xi Jinping has made no secret of his desire to invade Taiwan, and he has even said he wants to be ready to go by the year 2027--just 4 years from now. If or when that happens, the global response will be swift and severe. It will affect businesses' cashflow, manufacturing operations, employees, assets, business relationships, and so much more. So stockholders, to whom the companies owe a fiduciary duty-- investors need to know, whether it is a teachers' retirement fund or a union pension retirement fund, how much risk these investments in Chinese companies carry. I think of this like the warning on a box of cigarettes that says: Smoking causes lung cancer, heart disease, emphysema, and may complicate pregnancy. Now, consenting adults have the freedom to read this warning and ignore it, but they are at least presented with clear information about the risks associated with their decision. American shareholders and investors--teachers' and firefighters' pension funds, union pension funds--deserve the same transparency when it comes to the dangers of military conflict in the Indo-Pacific. I am finalizing legislation that will require public companies, investment companies, investment advisers, and tax-exempt organizations to disclose the risk posed by a potential military conflict in the Indo-Pacific. A Chinese invasion of Taiwan poses a material risk to many Americans' livelihoods and retirements and investments, and that information should be disclosed and transparent. So these are just a few of the bipartisan bills that are aimed at countering China that I hope will be included in the National Defense Authorization bill. Once again, I appreciate Senator Wicker and Senator Reed for their work to make the national defense reauthorization a thoughtful, fair, and open process. This is what we call regular order around here as contrasted with the backroom negotiations which only a handful of people get to participate in and basically where rank-and-file Members are excluded. This also would reaffirm that the National Defense Authorization Act should be the pillar of our efforts to counter China. I fear that a China 2.0 bill will turn into just another vehicle for partisan freight. It will lead good, bipartisan bills to be held hostage by unrelated partisan demands. We cannot allow competition with China to become so politicized. The answer, of course, is the National Defense Authorization Act, which has a long and proud history of bipartisanship, and I hope we can continue to build on that success this year. Once the Armed Services Committee completes its work, I hope the majority leader will prioritize the consideration of that bill on the Senate floor. We can't afford to repeat last year's drama, when Senator Schumer allowed the NDAA to languish on the Senate's calendar for more than 5 months without any action. If the majority leader truly cares about countering threats from China, he will abandon his partisan China 2.0 bill and allow the Senate to pass a strong and on-time National Defense Authorization Act. I yield the floor.

Mr. CORNYN

Mr. CORNYN. Mr. President, when it comes to safeguarding the American people, the United States has multiple layers of defenses. We have, of course, the world's most powerful military, whose ranks are filled with courageous and dedicated servicemembers. Our military is equipped with cutting-edge technology, whether it has to do with weapons systems, aircraft, ships, submarines--all the tools necessary to defend our country and our country's freedoms. But an important part of our defenses is our intelligence community, the 17 Agencies that make up what is known colloquially as the intelligence community. It is the intelligence community that collects and analyzes information from around the world to make sure that we can always remain at least one step ahead of our adversaries. This information gathering is an invaluable part of our national defense, and that critical national security information is, of course, carefully safeguarded under what is known as the classification system--secrets. Classification gives us an invaluable edge when it comes to the ability to plan and prepare for threats over the horizon. It strengthens our relationship with our allies around the world, with whom we share much of this information, and it prevents consequential information from falling into the wrong hands. It also protects--and these are the keys to the kingdom, when it comes to classified information--the sources and methods. In other words, the way that our intelligence community collects information and the people from whom that information is acquired are among the most important secrets maintained by the government, because, many times, if that were revealed, either our adversaries would be able to cut off that access to information or, frankly, maybe even go so far as to kill the sources of that information in the case of human intelligence. So protecting sources and methods is absolutely critical. Closely guarded intelligence information is vital to our national security, but there is a very fine line between strategic classification and excessive secrecy. If too much information is withheld from the public, it can sow distrust. People let their minds run away with them. They wonder what is going on--conspiracy theories and the like. But, more fundamentally, the American people will question what their government is actually doing and how it is using the vast powers that they have delegated to the government. Consent of the governed has always been the foundation of our democratic system of government and the legitimacy of government action, and, of course, the people cannot consent to something that is withheld from them. So there is a very fragile balance here from what is necessarily kept classified and secret and the information that should be made public, because without transparency, there is no political accountability. Without accountability, there is no confidence that the government is actually acting in the best interest of the people. I have long been an advocate for reforms to the Freedom of Information Act--in other words, the public's right to know. Former Senator Pat Leahy was chairman of the Senate Committee on the Judiciary. He and I were sort of the odd couple when it came to ``freedom of information'' reforms. Senator Leahy was one of the more liberal Members of the U.S. Senate, and I am one of the more conservative Members of the Senate. But we found common cause when it came to the public's right to know because it is too easy for bureaucrats to hide behind a classification system that results in overclassification. And when that bureaucrat can hide or bury that information using an overly broad classification system, there can be no accountability and, thus, the public's confidence in the people who actually are governing is compromised. So we need to figure out how to make sure our classification system is rightsized so that it covers the things that it must cover in the interest of our national security. Then we need to figure out what represents overreach or overclassification, which undermines the public's right to know and the political accountability that should come with it, which is a fundamental basis for our form of government. America's classification system has been ripe for reform for many years. Daniel Patrick Moynihan chaired a committee that made recommendations, but unfortunately those recommendations made many years ago were put on a bookshelf somewhere and basically ignored. But the problems have not gone away, and we have seen in recent days the focus come back to how classified documents are handled and what exactly represents our Nation's secrets, what should be protected and what should not because it is really not important to our national security. Earlier this year, a trove of highly sensitive military documents began appearing online. These documents included classified assessments of the war in Ukraine, including tactical information about the expected offensive. They detailed conversations between world leaders and intelligence on adversaries and allies alike. These documents didn't just reveal intelligence itself but also the methods by which the United States collected intelligence. This information, of course, was supposed to be kept confidential because it was intended for high- level military and intelligence leaders and policymakers--not a global audience. Based on the nature of the leaked documents, there was widespread speculation that the source was a high-level military or intelligence professional, but we now know that was not the case. The source of the leak has been identified as a 21-year-old member of the Massachusetts Air National Guard. He was an airman first class in the 102nd Intelligence Wing, where he worked as an information technology specialist. So the first question that arose when the leaker was identified was, How in the world did this relatively low-ranking 21-year-old information technology specialist have access to some of our Nation's most guarded secrets? How was he able to view, transcribe, photograph, and remove these documents from a secure setting? If this young man, who had a history of violent and racist remarks, was granted access to our top-secret national security information, is that some indication that maybe too many others have been granted access to this information and that maybe too many individuals have security clearances authorizing them to view this information? Well, at last count, there were about 4.2 million Americans in this country--4.2 million Americans--who have security clearances. That number strikes me as incredibly large and I think is some evidence that too many people have been getting too many security clearances because too much information is classified when it shouldn't be, when it doesn't need to be. Those 4.2 million people with security clearances include more than 1.2 million with access to top-secret information. The issue isn't just that too many people have access to classified information but also that too much information is classified. As members of the Senate Intelligence Committee, my colleagues and I regularly receive classified briefings and review documents that are highly confidential. There have been many times when I left one of these briefings thinking, this is something that any reasonably informed person already knows. All they need to do is read the major newspapers or watch television--television news in particular. Many times, we are presented with information which is deemed ``classified'' in a secure setting which is, frankly, common knowledge. That is another indication that our classification system is working in overdrive and needs to be rightsized. We are presented with information briefed as ``classified'' which could be just as easily learned by watching the news or reading a newspaper, as I said. Still, these documents are classified at the same level as sensitive military documents and intelligence analysis have been classified. Honestly, I think one reason why we see not only President Trump but President Biden and Vice President Pence concerned about access to classified information outside of a secure setting is because many people who have access to classified information recognize that we have an overclassification problem, and so they let down their guard and they say: Well, this is information that is not particularly secret because a reasonably informed person would already know it or have access to it. So I submit we have an overclassification problem, plain and simple, and we are not doing nearly enough to declassify information for the public or our allies and make it available to the American people. There are many circumstances in which declassification safeguards our national security. We can't just be an absolutist about this. We need to be careful. One great example is the way we declassified and shared information with our allies in the runup to Russia's invasion of Ukraine. That gave Ukraine enough battlefield awareness to push back against the initial attack and save countless lives. It also unified the Western response, leading to quick condemnation of Russia's attack and resources for the Ukrainian forces. Declassification is an important way to share valuable intelligence with our friends and allies around the world when we can, and it promotes cooperation, which is key to combating the threats we face today like the Ukrainians are facing with the Russian invasion, but it is also a crucial way to show the American people what their government is doing on their behalf--declassification, that is. Our ability to govern ourselves depends on public access to information. As I said earlier, you can't consent to something you don't know anything about, and consent of the government is the foundation of our system. The American people have a right to know what their government is doing. Declassification builds trust and transparency. It inspires confidence in the incredible work our intelligence professionals are doing, and it equips scholars with the information to conduct academic research that informs decision making by looking back on our history and learning from those lessons of history. As all of our colleagues know, there is a very delicate balance between transparency and secrecy, but it is time that we tune-up the system. We need to examine and refine the processes that govern the classification and declassification of sensitive information and make some long-overdue reforms. Last month, the chairman of the Senate Intelligence Committee, Senator Warner, and I introduced a bill we called the Sensible Classification Act, which includes critical reforms to modernize America's classification system. This legislation would increase accountability and oversight. It would require training to promote sensible classification and also promote efficient declassification. It would direct Federal Agencies to justify security clearance requirements, so only those individuals who need access, given the nature of their jobs, are given access to classified information. This legislation has already garnered broad bipartisan support and a long list of cosponsors, including Senators Moran, Wyden, Collins, King, Rounds, Heinrich, Lankford, and Casey. As the Senate Intelligence Committee prepares the Intelligence Authorization Act, I have offered this legislation as an amendment to that bill, which hopefully will be included as part of the National Defense Authorization Act. When the committee votes to advance this bill in the coming weeks, I hope this legislation will be included. This is an example of broad bipartisan cooperation and the result of many conversations we have had with leading intelligence and national security experts in the United States. I am confident that this legislation will both protect the integrity of America's classification system and help restore needed trust and confidence in the government. Recent headlines have shone a light on the flaws in our classification system. It is overwhelmed and in need of reform, and that is exactly what the Sensible Classification Act aims to fix. I look forward to working with all of our Senate colleagues as we fight to restore transparency and accountability and preserve our ability to classify the most sensitive national security secrets as part of our layered national defense. We can and should and must do both. I yield the floor. I suggest the absence of a quorum.

Mr. CORNYN

Mr. CORNYN. Mr. President, every day, Texans reach out to my office to talk about challenges that they and their families are facing, or maybe they see something on the news or read something in the local paper that causes them concern about what the Federal Government is up to; but most often, they call and tell me that inflation continues to strain their household budgets, and they are fearful that a recession is approaching. They are raising concerns about the security breakdown at the southern border and fears about rising crime rates in their communities. They share stories about teenage students who died from fentanyl poisoning, maybe friends of their family, and they tell me they are terrified for their own children's safety. Of course, these concerns aren't unique to Texas. People across the country--everyone--wants affordable gas and groceries. We all, presumably, want dangerous drugs off the streets and dangerous people behind bars. We all want to live in safe communities so we can pursue our dreams. In short, the American people aren't asking for a lot. All they want is to be able to live happy, healthy lives. And they are asking Congress to remove some of the burdens that are making that more difficult. That is what we need to be doing here in the Senate. In recent months, the Republican-led House has been a flurry of activity. They passed legislation to unleash the power of American energy and reduce costs to consumers. They passed legislation to classify fentanyl as a schedule 1 substance--the most dangerous of drugs--and to give parents a say in their children's education. They have also passed legislation to improve veterans' healthcare, to stand behind law enforcement officials, and to address fraud and abuse in the unemployment insurance system. Speaker McCarthy and the Republican majority in the House have responded to the concerns of the American people not with rhetoric but with action. That is a sharp contrast with what we have witnessed here in the Senate. The first major piece of legislation that passed this Chamber was just last week after months of President Biden saying he wouldn't even negotiate with the House on raising the debt limit; but he finally did, up against the back of a potential default. Before that, the Senate has passed legislation repealing the Iraq war authorization. We reauthorized grants for firefighters and we confirmed some Federal judges and other nominees. Then we passed a handful of Republican-led resolutions to overturn Biden administration executive orders, and that is about it. Now to be clear, there were some wins in there. Less than a week ago, the Senate passed a resolution I introduced with Senator Cassidy, the Senator from Louisiana, to overturn President Biden's student loan scheme claiming to cancel student loans for people who agreed to borrow the money. But, somehow, by ``canceling,'' what he really meant was transferring that burden to the taxpayers. We were able to get a bipartisan vote overturning that decision here in the Senate. But given the fact we are 5 months into the year, this is an embarrassingly short list of accomplishments. Clearly, the Republican- led House is doing its job, but the Democrat-led Senate is not doing a whole lot. The American people are clamoring for action--again, not just lip service. They want action on inflation, on crime, on the border, energy prices, and so much more. But for some reason, the majority leader, the Senator from New York, Senator Schumer, seems content to just put us in neutral and coast. We haven't even had votes on Mondays. We come in on Tuesday and leave on Thursday, 3 days out of the 7-day week. The American people understand that we are coasting here. We are not giving it our best or our all. So there is no doubt we have a major productivity problem here in this Chamber. And that needs to change soon. We have a lot of work we need to do before the end of the year. First on the docket is the National Defense Authorization Act. Each year this legislation provides our military leaders and our servicemembers with the certainty they need to prepare for the threats of today and tomorrow. And those threats are doing nothing but growing on a daily basis. Whether it is China, Russia, Iran, or North Korea, an on-time National Defense Authorization Act is absolutely critical. Senator Wicker, the Senator from Mississippi, is leading those efforts on our side of the aisle, and I am confident that he and our colleagues on the Armed Services Committee will deliver another strong NDAA. But Senator Schumer, the majority leader who is the floor leader, is the one who sets the agenda. He needs to carve out the floor time to make this a priority so we can move on to the Senate's next big task which is funding the government. Now, as part of the debt limit agreement last week, Senator Schumer agreed to bring up all 12 appropriation bills to the Senate floor by September 30. The reason that is so important is that last year in December, Speaker Pelosi and Majority Leader Schumer decided, basically, that the rest of us were going to be potted plants and given the opportunity to vote up or down on an Omnibus appropriation bill rather than doing the work of passing each appropriation bill out of committee, across the floor, giving every Senator an opportunity to participate in shaping that legislation. So thank goodness Speaker McCarthy was able to negotiate an agreement to get us back to that regular order, a more transparent, more rational process. You would think that with $31.4 trillion in debt, that the majority leader, Senator Schumer, would recognize this as a priority. But these appropriation bills do some essential things like funding our military, veteran services, border security, and so much more. Again, this is a departure--or what I hope will be a departure--from what we saw in 2021 and 2022, when the Congress and the Democratic-led Senate did not pass a single appropriation bill until that omnibus bill came up in December. Individual funding bills are the starting point for sound financial decision making here in Washington. They allow us to cut wasteful spending and invest in our priorities. That is what a budget is all about. It is about priorities, and our No. 1 priority needs to be our national security. Senator Collins, the Republican ranking member on the Appropriations Committee, and Senator Murray, the chairman of the Appropriations Committee, are determined to restore common sense to the appropriation process, especially when it comes to defense spending. So I am glad the majority leader agreed to return to the regular appropriations process, and I hope he will stick by his word. The end of September is the deadline, and it is also the deadline for two other major tasks. One is reauthorizing the Federal Aviation Administration. It is time to modernize the Agency and implement long overdue reforms, and I am glad Senator Cruz, the junior Senator from Texas, is leading those efforts on our side of the aisle. Then there is the farm bill, which affects agriculture and food programs across the country. For everything from crop insurance to nutrition programs to rural broadband, passing the farm bill is absolutely vital. The ranking member, Senator Boozman, is no stranger to that process, and he is committed to passing a strong farm bill before the current one expires. But Congress must pass each one of those bills--both houses of Congress--by September 30. If you include this week, the Senate is in session only 10 weeks before then. So we have no time to waste. As I said, in those 10 weeks, we need to pass the defense authorization bill, 12 appropriations bills, an FAA reauthorization, and a farm bill--and those are just some of the big ticket and most urgent items on the to-do list. We also need to reauthorize section 702 of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act before it expires at the end of this year. This is an absolutely essential tool used by our intelligence community in order to detect threats to our Nation and our national security, and it is an absolutely must-pass, must-do piece of legislation. Then, of course, there is the never-ending humanitarian and security crisis at the border. We need to continue our work to crack down on fentanyl trafficking. Again, unleash the power of American energy; ensure that Ukraine, together with our allies, has the tools they need to win its fight against the Russian invasion and so much more. So I simply don't understand how the Senate can continue to coast at a glacial pace. We have a lot to do for the American people; and the majority leader who sets the floor agenda needs to make sure that we buckle down and get this work done. I yield the floor. I suggest the absence of a quorum.