Lindsey Graham

Mr. GRAHAM

Mr. GRAHAM. Madam President, there are a couple of topics that I would like to talk about. The first is the government shutdown. I don't know what my friends on the other side expect. We will talk about the Affordable Care Act at the right time, starting with the idea that it is not affordable. You created a law without any Republican votes. You had the subsidies, and they expire. That was your choice. Most of us believe that the ObamaCare Program you created is very expensive, and we are not going to extend it. We would look at trying to make it better. The President has a brilliant idea of how better to use the money to help consumers. Senator Marshall just left. So, whether you open the government up or not, I am not going to change my vote. I am not going to vote to authorize these subsidies as they are. I am not going to vote to repeal the good work we did under the Big Beautiful Bill. So let's open up the government and talk. If you don't want to do that, then a lot of people are going to have their lives turned upside down for no good reason. I do not feel like we should be held hostage here to get a legislative outcome to open up the government. We tried that as Republicans: You have got to build a wall or we won't open the government. It was probably not a good idea for us. It didn't work out well for us. If nothing else, learn from what we did. So I am hoping the government will open soon. It is a dangerous time to have the Federal Government not functioning in the security space, and it is a danger for air travel, but if you haven't noticed, the world is a pretty dangerous place.

Mr. GRAHAM

Mr. GRAHAM. Let's add one more vote to the total.

Mr. GRAHAM

Mr. GRAHAM. Mr. President, I ask my colleagues to join me in congratulating Volvo Cars on 70 years in the United States and the 10th anniversary of its plant in South Carolina. For decades, Volvo has been a strong partner in advancing America's automotive progress with innovations such as the three-point safety belt, now standard in every vehicle. With more than $1.3 billion invested in U.S. manufacturing, the Volvo Car Charleston Plant stands as a powerful example of how global partnerships have bolstered South Carolina's economy. Today, the plant produces their flagship EX90 SUV for markets around the world, helping to strengthen exports and create good-paying jobs at home. Volvo Cars also recently announced it will add the XC60 mid-size SUV to the South Carolina production line. Volvo Cars has 283 retailers in 48 States, employing more than 11,500 people. Again, congratulations to Volvo and its employees for 10 years of manufacturing in South Carolina.

Mr. GRAHAM

Mr. GRAHAM. Mr. President, it is my honor to introduce Rabbi Berman, who just gave the prayer and who is president of the Yeshiva University. Thank you for your blessing this morning. In his prayer, Rabbi Berman reminded us that America's strength lies not just in power but purpose; not just in might but in our pursuit of the good. He has lived that principle. He is a global faith leader, distinguished scholar, educational visionary who is shaping contemporary discourse at the intersection of faith, ethics, and higher education. As the fifth president of the Yeshiva University, he has redefined the role of faith-based universities in the United States. He gave the benediction at President Trump's inauguration. Yeshiva University, for more than a century, has been contributing to the common good and advancing the goals of faith with purpose. It is one of the flagship universities in the entire world for the Jewish faith, and he has brought his aperture there to bring us all together. Finally, I want to recognize the need to succor. You said: Why are we here? I am here because Anita said I needed to be here to recognize Rabbi Berman. Anita is a fellow South Carolinian. She is a trustee at Yeshiva University, and she has contributed to our State, to the values that serve us in education, that bind us together. Anita called me about you and she was dead right. Welcome and well done. God bless you. I yield the floor.

Mr. GRAHAM

Mr. GRAHAM. Mr. President, I will oppose this and will make a point of order here in a second. This amendment would prevent Congress and the President from using the congressional Budget and Impoundment Control Act's fast-track process for considering rescissions in fiscal year 2026 and beyond. Under the Merkley amendment, rescissions can only be included in appropriations bills, which would need 60 votes. And the law in question allows a fast-track provision for rescissions. Senator Merkley's amendment would do away with that. This amendment is subject to a point of order for violating Section 306 of the congressional Budget and Impoundment Control Act of 1974, which requires legislation dealing with the Budget Committee's jurisdiction to be reported or discharged from the Budget Committee. Point of Order The pending amendment No. 3114 contains matters within the Budget Committee's jurisdiction. I, therefore, raise a point of order against the amendment pursuant to Section 306 of the Congressional Budget Act.

Mr. GRAHAM. In the spirit of the endeavor, I will give you 15 seconds.

Mr. GRAHAM. Well, I will one day get 15 seconds, and I will give it to you when I do.

Mr. GRAHAM. I don't have anything else to say.

Mr. GRAHAM

Mr. GRAHAM. Mr. President, section 3001 of H. Con. Res. 14, the fiscal year 2025 congressional budget resolution, allows the chairman of the Senate Budget Committee to revise committee allocations, budgetary aggregates, and the pay-as-you-go ledger for legislation considered under the resolution's reconciliation instructions. I find that H.R. 1, as enacted on July 4, 2025, fulfills the conditions found in section 3001 of H. Con. Res. 14. Accordingly, I am revising the allocations for the reconciled committees and other enforceable budgetary levels to account for the budgetary effects of the legislation. This adjustment reflects the estimate of the law provided by the Congressional Budget Office on July 21, 2025. This adjustment supersedes the adjustment I previously made for the processing of amendment No. 2848 to H.R. 1. I ask unanimous consent that the accompanying tables providing details about the adjustments be printed in the Record.

Mr. GRAHAM

Mr. GRAHAM. Mr. President, No. 1, I want to applaud Senator Shaheen for all she has done for Ukraine. And, quite frankly, to all of my Democratic colleagues and Republican colleagues, I think we are trying to do right by Ukraine. So what is right by Ukraine? We have given well over $100 billion in aid and military assistance. And what are we trying to do here? We are not rescinding the $4 billion that is available for military support, drawdown authority. We are not rescinding the $300 million that is still available. We are not rescinding the $14.4 billion loan authority available to Ukraine. What we are doing is rescinding an account of $460 million that has a bunch of things in it, including $300,000 for promoting tourism in the Caucasus; $832,000 to fund social media mentorship in Serbia and Belarus; and $5 million for green transportation and logistics. I want to help Ukraine, and the best thing we can do to help Ukraine right now is what President Trump is doing. Having the Europeans buy our weapons to give to Ukraine, I think, is good for the American economy, the American taxpayer, and for the Ukrainian military. But the best thing we could do is what we are doing, and I want to applaud everybody who has joined in with Senator Blumenthal and myself. It is to break China, India, and Brazil from buying Russian oil to prop up Putin's war machine. If you want to help Ukraine, crush Putin's customers who buy his oil and gas. There are 85 of us who have come together and said to Russia, China, and Brazil--

Mr. GRAHAM. --if you keep buying his cheap oil, which is blood money, we are going to crush your economy.

Mr. GRAHAM. That is the best way to help Ukraine.

Mr. GRAHAM

Mr. GRAHAM. Mr. President, as to being weary, I feel great. I have never felt better. I have been wanting to do this for, like, a long time, and our ship is about in. So I am a very happy Budget chair. As to what we are talking about right now, we are not overruling the Parliamentarian because she said it was up to the Budget chairman to set the baseline. The Chair made a decision that was right. The budget resolution gives me the authority--that we all passed--to do this. In 2008, Senator Conrad changed the baseline to accommodate the farm bill, and the Republican former chairman, Judd Gregg, said: The chairman of the Budget Committee declared the baseline under a new budget. The Budget chairman has a right to do that. That is what I am doing. In 2022, Senator Sanders directed CBO to write a new scoring rule changing the baseline to get Head Start money into the budget. So this has been done. In 2012, in a bipartisan fashion, as the Bush tax cuts were about to expire, they extended them using current policy. Back home: What I am trying to do--and I am very happy about it--is make sure the tax cuts don't expire 10 years from now. I want you to be able to go to bed tonight and wake up tomorrow knowing the tax cuts you have today are permanent, unless one day my Democratic colleagues change it through reconciliation. So if you are for open borders, this bill is your worst nightmare because we control the border. If you want higher taxes, which apparently they do, this bill is your nightmare because we are going to keep taxes low. If you want to have a weak military, this is a bad bill for you because we give the military $150 billion. If you think Washington should control spending, this is a good bill for you. If you think the government is running just perfectly and nothing could be changed, this is your nightmare. So for those big liberal folks--whom I like personally--this bill is a nightmare for you. This bill is good for the American people who work hard. People have got to work when they can. That is a good thing. If you want taxes low, we deliver. If you want to secure the border like President Trump has done, we make it that way forever by having $175 billion spent to get it controlled forever, not just right now. This is a good bill. We are doing nothing that we haven't done before. Vote yes to uphold the ruling of the Chair. We are starting a process that is long overdue in this town: controlling spending, keeping taxes down, making the military strong, and finally, finally, looking at a way to get efficiency in government. Vote yes. Vote on Appealing the Ruling of the Chair

Mr. GRAHAM. Mr. President, CBO tells us that if we adopt current policy for taxes, we will save $507 billion. The deficit will go down by $507 billion if we do this. In 2012, I was here. The Bush tax cuts were going to expire in December of 2012. President Obama sat down with Republicans, and they came up with a way to extend those tax cuts by not passing them into law. They called it the alternative fiscal scenario that CBO said is based on the current policy. So ``alternative fiscal scenario'' in Latin means current policy. So we are doing what they did then. We are just doing it without any help from you all because you all will never do anything to make sure taxes go down. So we are going to make sure they go down forever. Current policy is good tax policy. Stick with the bill you wrote. You are going to be happy to reduce the deficit and make sure people's taxes don't go up tomorrow, the next day, forever. It is good policy. Current policy is good tax policy. I am done.

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

Mr. GRAHAM. Mr. President, I call up amendment No. 2848 and ask that it be reported by number.

Mr. GRAHAM. Mr. President, the other side of the story. But we agree on this: A lot of people worked very hard on both sides of the aisle. Tensions have been high at times, but we are at the end now. And to all those who have made this possible, thank you for your hard work. I would like to make five very brief points about what I think is good about this bill. It is the most consequential border security package in the history of our country. It is $175 billion. It does several things. It hires more ICE agents, it finishes the wall, and it increases detention beds by 100,000. Let me tell you why that is important. In September of 2022, Mr. Ibarra, who was convicted of killing Laken Riley, the young lady in Georgia not far from where I live, was apprehended but he was paroled. And why was he paroled? Subject was paroled due to detention capacity at the Central Processing Center in El Paso, Texas. They didn't have a bed for him, so they let him go, and 18 months later, approximately, he kills Laken Riley.

Mr. GRAHAM. This bill fixes that and a bunch of other stuff. Thanks. Vote on Amendment No. 2848

Mr. GRAHAM. I ask for the yeas and nays.

Mr. GRAHAM

Mr. GRAHAM. Mr. President, section 3001 of H.Con. Res. 14, the fiscal year 2025 congressional budget resolution, allows the chairman of the Senate Budget Committee to revise committee allocations, budgetary aggregates, and the pay-as-you-go ledger for legislation considered under the resolution's reconciliation instructions. I find that amendment Nos. 2372 and 2814, which passed earlier today, fulfill the conditions found in section 3001 of H.Con. Res. 14. Accordingly, I am revising the allocations for the reconciled committees and other enforceable budgetary levels to account for the budgetary effects of the amendment. This adjustment supersedes the adjustment I previously made for the processing of amendment No. 2360. I ask unanimous consent that the accompanying tables providing details about the adjustments be printed in the Record.

Mr. GRAHAM

Mr. GRAHAM. Mr. President, section 3001 of H.Con. Res. 14, the fiscal year 2025 congressional budget resolution, allows the chairman of the Senate Budget Committee to revise committee allocations, budgetary aggregates, and the pay-as-you-go ledger for legislation considered under the resolution's reconciliation instructions. I find that amendment No. 2848, which passed earlier today, fulfills the conditions found in section 3001 of H.Con. Res. 14. Accordingly, I am revising the allocations for the reconciled committees and other enforceable budgetary levels to account for the budgetary effects of the amendment. This adjustment supersedes the adjustments I previously made for the processing of amendment Nos. 2372 and 2814. I ask unanimous consent that the accompanying tables providing details about the adjustments be printed in the Record.

Mr. GRAHAM

Mr. GRAHAM. Mr. President, section 3001 of H.Con. Res. 14, the fiscal year 2025 congressional budget resolution, allows the chairman of the Senate Budget Committee to revise committee allocations, budgetary aggregates, and the pay-as-you-go ledger for legislation considered under the resolution's reconciliation instructions. I find that amendment No. 2360 fulfils the conditions found in section 3001 of H.Con. Res. 14. Accordingly, I am revising the allocations for the reconciled committees and other enforceable budgetary levels to account for the updated budgetary effects of the amendment. I ask unanimous consent that the accompanying tables providing details about the adjustments be printed in the Record.

Mr. GRAHAM

Mr. GRAHAM. Mr. President, I am using and yielding time off the bill.

Mr. GRAHAM. Mr. President, the debate and eventual voting on the Big Beautiful Bill has begun. Hallelujah. It has taken a while for us to get here, but we are going to have a debate worthy of a great country. We will have what they think and what we think, and we are going to vote on this bill in the coming days. I am excited about that. I have worked a long time with my colleagues to get to where we are today. So, to the American people, the debate is beginning right now regarding the Big Beautiful Bill. I will tell you why that is good news for you, but let me take a little bit of time to talk about current policy versus current law. I know everybody is on the edge of their seat at home, but here is what I would tell you about numbers and Budget chairmen. I am not the first Budget chairmen. There have been those who came before me. In 2008, Chairman Kent Conrad--a really nice guy from North Dakota--used a new baseline in the budget so he could get the farm bill in the budget. Judd Gregg--a really smart guy, a former Budget chairman--said: The chairman of the Budget Committee declared the new baseline under a new budget. . . . The Budget chairman has a right to do that. That is what I am doing. I am setting the numbers. The Parliamentarian said that is my job as Budget chairman. The resolution we are operating under to get us here--we voted to make that the case. So we are not doing anything sneaky. We actually voted to give me the authority to do this, and it passed. Again, I am not the first chairman to change a baseline for different reasons--one, to get the farm bill in, and on another occasion, Senator Sanders changed the baseline in 2022, when he was Budget chairman, under budget reconciliation to issue a budget rule allowing the numbers to change to get more money for Head Start. So Senator Sanders, as Budget chairman, directed that a new rule be written to get more money for Head Start. So don't tell me you have never done this before in terms of changing the baseline as Budget chairman. The Budget chairman, under 312, sets the baseline. This has been acknowledged by Republicans and Democrats. The baseline has been changed in the past based on the Budget Committee chairman's desire, one, to get a farm bill in, and the other, to change the numbers--a new rule--to get Head Start spending. So this has been done before. But I will be the first to say that what we are doing here is historic in a good way. In 2017, we passed the Trump tax cuts. They are due to expire in December. Why is that? Before I got here, current law was the way to score or implement tax policy. After 10 years, the tax cuts expired-- current law. As Budget chairman, I have decided to use current policy when it comes to cutting taxes. If you use current policy, they never expire. So the policies that were created in 2017 would not end in December; they would continue. That is a good thing for the American people, and that is a good thing for the economy because it gives you certainty. So I made a decision as Budget chairman, working with my colleagues, to look at tax cuts as something important for the country, to give certainty to businesses and individuals, and make sure that after 10 years, they don't arbitrarily go away and have a cliff. I made that decision, my colleagues backed me up, and that is in the budget resolution governing the debate we are here for today. So why do we want to make the tax cuts permanent? Because if they expire in December, the average family of four in South Carolina will have a $1,700 increase. I don't want that, and I bet you people at home don't want that. So we have to deal with that. That cliff is coming, and not only do I want to avoid that cliff, I don't want to put us in that position ever again. The tax cuts have generated more revenue for the government than CBO estimated in 2017. The one thing about our friends at CBO--I appreciate all your hard work; you have worked really hard--when it comes to taxing, they always get it wrong about how much revenue is to be collected. When you look at the years that have passed since 2017, on the corporate side and on the individual side, the revenue to the government has actually grown because of those tax cuts, and that is a good thing. So cutting taxes means more money for you and your family. Our friends on the other side, if you are waiting on them to cut your taxes, you are going to die waiting. They are never going to do it. Why are we doing it? Because they won't do it. We could never get 60 votes for this. The bottom line is, we are going to make these tax cuts permanent. That is a good thing for businesses. Expensing will be allowed, so you can invest in growing your business. You can buy new equipment. You can write it off sooner. That will get more activity in the economy. It is not me saying that; there is a track record. Mr. President, you have been in business. This stuff works. They don't like it, but it works. If you are in business, and the Tax Code encourages you to invest in your business, you will. This stuff literally works, and they hate it because it is money that could have gone to the government but went back into the economy. What they don't realize is, actually, the government gets more money. They just keep spending it. We could do better on the spending side, and we are going to do better on the spending side. So this bill makes the 2017 tax cuts permanent. It avoids a tax increase for your family that is coming in December if we don't act now. It secures the border. One of the reasons there are more of us than our Democratic friends is how you screwed the country up for the last 4 years. We went from secure borders to completely open borders, absolute chaos. That is why we are winning, and you are losing. You want to take us back to open borders. We are not going. We are not going back to your policies that allowed 8.3 million encounters at the border, 1.7 million ``got-aways,'' and chaos in cities and communities. We are not going back to the policies that led to Laken Riley's murder in Georgia, where the man convicted of murdering her was captured several times, released because there was no detention space to hold him in Texas and he left--a free man--went to Georgia, and killed this lady. That has happened too many times, and it is going to stop. Now, what are we doing to secure the border? We went from lawless borders to the most secure borders in 6 months because of President Trump. President Trump, you should be exceedingly proud--Homan, the whole team. You have locked that border down. But we want to do it in a way that it will stay locked down for the President after you and beyond. So how do we secure the gains made by President Trump and his team? We are going to, in this bill, hire more ICE agents to expedite removal of people who shouldn't be here, particularly criminal elements, people who are dangerous. We are going to finish the wall. Not one Democrat-- maybe one--no way would we get 60 votes to hire more ICE agents. No way would we get Democratic help to finish the wall. We are going to go from 40,000 detention beds to 125,000. This securing the border is about $175 billion. New technology along the border and fiber cable so we don't go back to the days of open borders--this is in the bill. To those of you who voted for us and President Trump to secure the border, we are delivering through this bill. And they would never do what we are doing. I will be the first to admit, when it comes to securing the border, they are never going to do what we are doing. We are hiring more ICE agents; we are finishing the wall; and we are increasing more detention beds so we don't let people out that can go and murder. I am very proud of this. I wrote this part. This is money well spent. This will secure that border in perpetuity. President Trump, this is your bill. It is in our bill. Well done. To my friends on the other side, you had your chance, and you screwed it up big time. That is why we are in charge. Revitalized our military. The world is a dangerous place. We have $150 billion in this bill to help build out the Golden Dome, to help improve the quality of life of the men and women serving the military by improving their barracks and housing. They need the money--more weapons--to send this bill, and we didn't have to get extorted to buy a bunch of butter to get $150 billion. We reduced government spending over a decade by $1.6 trillion. We are running a deficit in our national debt of $37 trillion. So what have we done here? In the last 5 years, from 2020, basically, to now, Medicaid has grown by 50 percent. So what has happened is that Medicaid was originally intended for children and poor families--children--and people who were disabled and couldn't work to provide healthcare. Count me in for that. Makes lot of sense. Along comes President Obama. He expands Medicaid to include able- bodied adults for the first time. And what he did was he incentivized States to include these people in Medicaid. For every new able-bodied adult, you get 90 percent of the cost from the Federal Government, 10 percent from the States, and Medicaid has grown 50 percent. It is going to take over Medicare because of what President Obama did. So what are we going to do? We are going to try to deal with that in a responsible way. What about this idea: If you are not a child, if you are not disabled--if you are able-bodied and you don't have any children under 14--we are going to have a 20-hour-a-week work requirement for you to stay on Medicaid. That is a good thing. It is a good thing for the individual involved to be working. It is a good thing for the taxpayer for them to be working. But that seems to be a crime on the other side to ask somebody to work that can work. How many people out there listening to this--I don't know how many there are--but are you working every day? Are you going to work with kids? A lot of people do that, by the way. So one of the reforms in this bill is to introduce a work requirement to the additional population that President Obama put on Medicaid that was never intended under the original purpose of Medicaid. This work requirement is going to save a bunch of money. Finally, we are addressing the biggest scam I have seen in a very long time. Somewhere along the line, somebody figured out at the State level, if you tax doctors and hospitals and medical providers on the funds they get and take that revenue, you can actually get more Medicaid money. This is a money laundering scheme. It needs to come to an end as we know it. States have gone up to 6 percent of a provider tax. They take that tax revenue, and they use it to get more money from the Federal Government. The hospitals and doctors don't lose. They get the money back. The State doesn't lose. They get more money. The only group that loses is the Federal Government, and we are deep, deep in debt. So we are going to reform the provider tax system that I think is abusive--very abusive. As to Medicaid, it is on a growth trajectory that will overtake Medicare. Now is the time to put commonsense reform in place not only to slow the growth--and we are not talking about cutting Medicaid, we are slowing the growth--but try to create some sense of fiscal responsibility. So to our chairman of the Finance Committee, you have constructed a package better than 2017. You have included some growth elements in the package that will allow the economy to grow because it will be in business's interest to invest, and I want to applaud you for this growth package. Now what does this all mean? Current policy, current law. If you do what I have decided to do, make the tax cuts permanent and you implement these reforms to Medicaid in other areas, you will, over the next 10 years, reduce the deficit by $507 billion. That is CBO, not me. Now, how do you do that? You grow the economy, and you begin to control spending in a commonsense way. Most people can relate to that because they do it all the time. People at home sometimes have to work extra to meet the needs of their family, and they have to tighten their belt. So what have we achieved here in the One Big Beautiful Bill? We are going make your border as secure as it possibly can be and never go back to open borders. We are going to put in place border security measures to keep it secure. We are going to make the tax cuts permanent so your taxes do not go up in December of this year, and we are going to add additional pro-growth policies to help our economy. We are going to reform Medicaid in a way that makes sense, deal with the waste, fraud, and abuse of that program so that there is more money for the disabled and children because the more money you give the able- bodied who can work is less money for children and people on disability. And one of the most perverse things about what President Obama did is that the reimbursement rates to States are higher for able-bodied adults than they are for disabled people and children--90 percent. So President Obama created a system to entice States--lure them in--to add people to Medicaid that are not disabled, not poor children, because his goal was to put everybody in the country under government-run healthcare. And the government reimbursement is higher for an able- bodied person than it is for a poor child or a disabled person. We are going to stop that because that is not fair. It is not fair to the taxpayer. It is not fair to the population that we are trying to help. So we are going to control spending in a commonsense way; we are going to revitalize our military at a time of great need; we are going to secure the border; and we are going to make the tax cuts that expire in December permanent so we don't have to deal with this every 10 years. It is a big beautiful bill if you believe in cutting people's taxes, securing the border, having a strong military, and controlling government spending. It is a nightmare--this bill--for those who want to raise taxes, who want open borders, who want a weak military, and never want to control one dime of Federal spending. This bill is your nightmare if you are for open borders. This bill is your nightmare if you want the government to grow without any limitation. This bill is your nightmare if you want a weak military because it is going to give us a stronger military. So why do we have this debate? That is what they--through years of effort--have done. The military is always the last thing that gets funded when they are in charge. When they are in charge, you have no border--completely broken, millions of people running through our country lawless. When they are in charge, there is no limit to growing the government. They entice everybody to grow the government. And when they are in charge, they are never going to cut your taxes in any meaningful way. The tax rates since 2017--the top rate has been 37. If these tax cuts expire, your taxes--if you are a family of four--will go up by $1,700, and we will go back to the 49.6 rate. Here is a question for the country: How much should the Federal Government take of anybody's income? What is a fair share? Thirty-seven percent seems pretty damn fair to me--over a third of what you make, and that doesn't count State and local taxes. The number they would pick is probably 90. So is 37 percent fair? I think yes. Most Americans think 25 percent is fair. You know, Jesus wants 10 percent. There is no number they won't embrace. So somewhere between 90 and 10--37 is fair. This is not rewarding the wealthy; it is creating a number that makes sense. Thirty-seven percent going to the Federal Government is a fair share. It is over a third of what you make. That doesn't count State and local taxes. This has been long. It is been hard, but we are about done. In a couple of days, we are going to pass the One Big Beautiful Bill. President Trump is going to sign it. Mike Crapo and his staff deserve at least one day off. I cannot thank you enough for what you and your team have done. To my budgeteers, you have been terrific. You have worked really hard. To CBO and Joint Tax and all these people, hats off to your efforts to get us a quality product. To all of my colleagues who have rode the boat with us, we are about to reach the shore. And when this boat comes ashore, every family in America can heave a sigh of relief. Your taxes will not go up this December. You will get a Christmas present of not having a tax increase. To those who have been yearning for a secure border, it will be secure. To those men and women in the uniform, you are going to get some help. You desperately need it. To those who think we should do something about the government's growth in a commonsense way, we have achieved that. I am very proud of this bill. I am very proud of President Trump. I am very proud of the Republican team that has gotten us to this point. To my Democratic colleagues, we will work together where we can, but nobody over here ever expects you to do anything about the border because you have proven you can't. Nobody over here believes you are ever going to reduce the size of government because you don't want to. The bottom line is, we are about to make history, Mr. President. This is your first term. I don't know what comes later for you. I hope you are here for a long time if that is what you want to be. You are a great Senator. You are a good businessman. You made a real success story: family from Colombia, created a lot of job opportunities. I doubt if you will ever do anything more important than this. Senator Crapo, you have been here a while. You are one of the smartest guys I have ever met. Everything you have done in all your life has led to this moment. This is what you were built to do. This is what you were meant to do. You are the right man at the right time to do what this country desperately needs to stay on track to be safe and prosperous. To all my colleagues who are going to vote for this bill, you should be proud, and you should talk about it because it is going to make us all safer, and it is going to make us all more prosperous. My being Budget chairman is a quirk in the history of the Senate. This is not my thing normally, but I have really gotten into it. And I have learned a lot thanks to my colleagues, and I am proud to have the honor of being Budget chairman at a time I think it matters the most. Mr. President, with that, I yield to my good friend. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the use of calculators, whatever they are, be permitted on the floor of the Senate during consideration of the bill.

Mr. GRAHAM

Mr. GRAHAM. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the following staff members from my staff and from Senator Merkley's staff be given all-access floor passes for the consideration of the bill: Caitlin Wilson, Lillian Meadows, Scott Graber, Walker Truluck, and Taylor Reidy; and Democratic staff: Mike Jones, Melissa Kaplan-Pistiner, Joshua Smith, and Tyler Evilsizer.