John Kennedy

Mr. KENNEDY

Mr. KENNEDY. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent for an additional 15 minutes to make my remarks.

Mr. KENNEDY. Mr. President, I want to spend a few minutes talking about a couple of different topics. First, I want to try to explain to the American people what is going on around here. Some people are going to try to tell you American people that what we are engaged in is a rational discussion of how to use scarce taxpayer dollars to fund the Department of Homeland Security. That is not true. I wish it were. The Department of Homeland Security is about to shut down. We don't know how to get it back open. What does that mean? It means ICE will be shut down. We have some ideas about how to keep that operating. They have enough money. It means TSA will be shut down. They are not going to be paid. That will impact airport travel. The Coast Guard will be shut down. FEMA--God help us if we have a natural disaster--it will be shut down. What is about to happen is top-of-the-list, king-of-the-hill, A-No. 1 stupid. And it is happening not just because of policy, it is happening because of raw, gut politics. If you could see what I see, your gag reflex would be permanently triggered. Here is what is going on: The Karen wing of the Democratic Party is in control of the Democratic Party and the Karen wing of the Democratic Party--not all Democrats, but there is clearly a Karen wing; sometimes I call them the loon wing--they have gone to Minority Leader Jeffries and my friend Senator Schumer and said: Don't you vote for that Homeland Security bill. Why? Because the Karen wing of the Democratic Party wants to defund ICE. We have seen this vampire movie before. The Karen wing of the Democratic Party also wanted us to defund the police. How did that work out for us? Criminals are still laughing. Now, they want to defund ICE. Senator Schumer and Minority Leader Jeffries--two good men--they made a bunch of unreasonable demands that no person with a brain above a single-cell organism would vote for. It would put handcuffs on ICE. That is just a fact and they know that. I am not going to vote for them. I am certainly not going to vote for them with a gun to my head. But I will tell you the reality. We could go to Senator Schumer and the minority leader in the House and say: OK. We accept every one of your conditions. The Democrats still are not going to vote to keep DHS open. I mean, I don't blame Senator Schumer for trying, but he is kind of wandering around here like one of those Roombas. He looks like a man who has lost his luggage at the airport. I mean, he is making these demands, and if we accepted them--we are not--but if we did, he couldn't deliver the votes because nobody on my side of the aisle wants to defund ICE, and that is what this is all about. Some of my colleagues are trying to pretty it up. Lots of play- acting. They might be a little late for getting their name in for the Academy Awards, but maybe next year. They are trying to muddy the water and make it look deep, like we are having this discussion about efficiencies at the Department of Homeland Security. Nope. Very simple. The Karen wing of the Democratic Party has told every single Democrat: If you don't vote to shut down DHS and if you do vote to fund ICE, we will punish you politically the rest of your natural lives. That is why we are about to have a shutdown. This stuff isn't complicated. Here is what I think most Americans believe: Illegal immigration is illegal. Duh. If none of us is above the law--I believe that, and I bet you believe that--if no one is above the law, how come people in our country illegally are above the law? Immigration statutes are not some second- tier laws that you can violate without consequence. It is the law. If you don't like it, change it. I believe in enforcing our immigration laws. Now, how you enforce them matters. By God, you better believe it matters. Those laws have got to be enforced in conformity with equal protection and with due process and in accordance with standards set forth by the U.S. Supreme Court--I think it was 1968 and a very famous case called Terry v. Ohio. A cop can't stop you unless that cop has reasonable suspicion--not probable cause, reasonable suspicion--to believe that you have committed, are committing, or are about to commit a crime. It is not subjective. It is an objective standard. Our cops--including, but not limited to our ICE officers--have to follow it. Now, you can protest. That is fine. That is your right to protest. You don't have a right to protest violently. You don't have the right to harass an ICE officer. You don't have the right to spit in his face. You don't have a right to threaten his children. You don't have a right to get his home address and go to his house and try to harass his family. You don't have the right to block the streets so the ICE officer can't get through. You don't have the right to kick out a cop's taillight. You don't have the right to go burn Christmas trees. You have the right to protest, but not violently because you know what? Two reasons: Violence undermines the morality that you say your movement is built upon. Dr. King knew that. That is why he wanted nonviolent protests. Gandhi knew that. President Mandela knew that in South Africa. Violence undermines the morality that you say your movement is built on. Now, there is a second reason that you can't protest violently. It is against the law, and it is bone-deep, down-to-the-marrow stupid. If you act like a butthead with a cop or an ICE officer, it is not going to end well. It is not going to end well. Here is a little tip; it is free. Cops will leave you alone unless you do illegal stuff, and that is what this debate is all about. I hope it gets worked out. I don't want to see flights stop. I don't want to see FEMA not be able to respond. I don't want to see the Coast Guard have to shut down. But the Karen wing of the Democratic Party is the cause of this, and they are going to have to accept the fact that the law is the law or they are going to have to get the votes to change it because the American people--the American people--see immigration like they see the front door of their home. Most Americans lock their front door at night. Why do they do that? They don't lock their front door at night because they hate everybody on the outside. They lock the front door at night because they love the people on the inside and they want to know who is coming into and out of their home. That is the way the American people see our borders. Legal immigration--great, we admit more people. More of our world's neighbors come to America and become part of us every year than any other country, and the whole world knows it. That is why everybody wants to come here. When is the last time you heard somebody trying to sneak into China? They want to come here. It is called legal immigration. But you can't jump the line. You have to fill out the forms and be properly vetted. You can't just come in. President Biden didn't follow the law. That is why we are in this mess today. We don't know how many people he let in. I am not saying they were all bad people. I don't know them. That is the point. We don't know who they are. I don't even know the number--anywhere from 8 million to 15 million. Some of them were bad people. But we don't have the slightest idea who they are, and we don't know where they are. That is why we have the rule of law. And that is why we have ICE, and that is what is going on. Krewe of Carrollton Mr. President, the second thing I want to talk about--I want to choose my words carefully here because I love Louisiana. Louisiana is a great State. I think God blessed Louisiana, and having blessed us once, God blessed us twice. We are located at the top of the gulf coast. Those of you who have been there know we are in the middle of the gulf's south. We straddle one of the mightiest rivers in the entire world. We have more oil and gas than most nations. We are experts in things like petrochemical manufacturing, oil and gas exploration, aquaculture, agriculture, education, healthcare. I could keep going-- timber production. My people are God-fearing. They are hard-working, and they are funloving. We are right next door to Texas. Texas gets a lot of good publicity. More power to them. But don't forget this: Texas is 5\1/2\ times bigger than Louisiana. We are 10\1/2\ times more interesting than they are. So I love Louisiana. But sometimes, some of my people do dumb things. We are all human. But something just happened at Mardi Gras that turned my stomach. Let me say that I love New Orleans. I used to live in New Orleans. I practiced law in New Orleans. I met my wife in New Orleans. I raised my son for the first couple of years of his life in New Orleans. It is a wonderful city, and we have this tradition called Mardi Gras. It is not just 1 day; it is like several weeks, and people from the entire world come to celebrate this. Name me another city--any city--that just shuts down the entire city for 1 day in the middle of the week to just enjoy life. We celebrate together. Every race, every religion, every socioeconomic class--we are all together. We have parades, and these floats are big floats. You know what I mean if you have been to New Orleans and have seen Mardi Gras, but if you haven't, these floats are big puppies. They are anywhere from, I don't know, 30- to 60-feet long, and they are tall; they are anywhere from 13 to 18 feet. And krewe members--each parade is organized by what is called a krewe. It is like a club. The krewe members ride on the floats. They throw beads and they throw toys and some of them throw coconuts to the crowd; and the crowds are lined up by the side of the street--8, 10, 12 feet deep--all flavors of humanity. Throw me something, Mister. Throw me something, Mister. But if you are a float rider--I have only done it once--one of the first things you are taught is to be careful because these beads--maybe a single strand of beads is not that dangerous, but a lot of people on the floats throw beads in groups, and a coconut, whether it is a single coconut or several, I can tell you, are mighty missiles; so you are taught to be careful where you throw, and you try to throw it to people when they see it coming because, otherwise, if you get hit in the face with a bunch of beads or a coconut, you are going to get hurt; you can lose an eye. I have had it happen to me. It is dangerous, and they teach the float riders this. Now, we have a lot of cops. We have to borrow some cops from some other counties--we call them parishes--to come help us because there are some jackaloons who misbehave at the parades, so we have a lot of our cops out. And I think it was this past weekend--I want to get the name right--that we had the Krewe of Carrollton that sponsored a float. They are wonderful people on the Krewe of Carrollton. It is one of the oldest krewes that we have. But there were some knuckleheads on one of those floats, and they were taking bunches of beads and trying to hurt the cops with them. Now, the cops are not looking at the floats. The cops are looking at the crowds. The cops are watching the people to make sure they don't have too many cocktails and try to run in between floats and get run over, and the cops are watching the children because we have a lot of our kids--we bring a lot of our kids--so the cops are not looking. They are not going: Throw me something, Mister. They are doing their job. And 41 people on one of the Krewe of Carrollton floats were throwing beads and toys and other stuff and were trying to hit the cops in the face. And it wasn't just one or two. It was disgraceful. The police had to shut down the parade. To their credit, they shut her down, and they pulled all 41 people off this float and said: You are out of here. The cops did the right thing. It is embarrassing for me to have to say this, that this happened in my State, in my city, but it did. Now, the mayor has issued a statement. Thank you, Mayor. I haven't heard the city council say a word--not a peep. That doesn't mean they haven't, and I apologize if I have missed it. It is no secret that many of my people in New Orleans think that cops are a bigger problem than criminals. This is America, and you can believe what you want. A lot of people--we went through the ``defund the police'' jackassery, and a lot of my people in New Orleans--it is a sanctuary city. I know they say they are not, but most of my local law enforcement officials don't cooperate with ICE. They think the borders ought to be wide open. I don't. It is against the law. But this is America, and they can believe that--but you can't hurt cops. These 41 people, after receiving due process, if they did this, shouldn't just be disciplined with, ``Oh, you can't ride next year.'' They need to prosecute them, and the people of New Orleans need to demand it. Acts have consequences, and you don't have the right to hurt cops just because you don't like them. I have said this many, many times. I get in trouble every time, but I believe it. If you hate cops just because they are cops, the next time you get in trouble, have at it. Call a crackhead, and see what happens. See if they will protect you. So I am sorry this happened. I want to apologize to the people--to the good people--of New Orleans for these 41 skilletheads who did this, allegedly. I want to apologize to the people of America who have read about this and who saw it and who came down to love on my city some, but I don't want to ever see this happen again. Every one of those 41 people ought to be prosecuted, and they need to hide their heads in a bag for their entire prison sentences. I suggest the absence of a quorum.

Mr. KENNEDY

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

Mr. KENNEDY

Mr. KENNEDY. Mr. President, I want to talk for a few minutes about national security and top-of-the-list, king-of-the-hill, a No. 1 stupidity. These are the Chagos Islands. The Chagos Islands--there are 60 of them. They are here in the Indian Ocean. One of those islands is an island called Diego Garcia, on which the United States and our friends in Great Britain have one of the most--if not the most--important military bases in the world. It is jointly administered by both the U.S. and the UK--though, truth be told, most of the firepower is provided by the United States of America. We use Diego Garcia to conduct training missions. We use it to reload submarines. In fact, it is one of the few military bases where we can actually reload submarines. We use Diego Garcia to respond to tensions throughout the Middle East, throughout Africa, and throughout Asia. Recently, we relocated several B-2 bombers to respond to Iran's aggression toward demonstrators. There aren't words in English to overstate the importance of the Diego Garcia military installation. Now, the United Kingdom owns the Chagos Islands. In 1814, the Chagos Islands were owned by France, and they were ceded to the UK. The UK also owned another island down here called Mauritius. For many, many years, the United Kingdom, which then owned and still owns the Chagos Islands and in 1814, was ceded Mauritius--for many years, the United Kingdom administered the Chagos Islands from Mauritius. Mauritius never owned the Chagos Islands. Mauritius and the Chagos Islands were owned--both--by the United Kingdom, and the United Kingdom administered both islands or groups of islands from Mauritius. Let me say it again. Mauritius never owned the Chagos Islands. In 1968, the United Kingdom decided to give Mauritius its independence, but the United Kingdom kept the Chagos Islands. Subsequently, as I mentioned, the United States and the UK built one of the most important military bases in all of human history on Diego Garcia. Why am I telling you this? Well, a few years ago, Mauritius filed a lawsuit with the International Court of Justice. The International Court of Justice, as you know, Mr. President, is part of the United Nations, and I don't mean any disrespect, but nobody pays any attention to them. They don't have any authority. They certainly don't have any authority over the United States of America, and they don't have any authority over the United Kingdom either. But Mauritius files this lawsuit with the International Court of Justice, and it says: The United Kingdom is a bunch of mean, old colonialists. Now, remember, this is the United Kingdom that gave Mauritius its independence in 1965. Nonetheless, as soon as Mauritius got its independence, they filed a suit in the International Court of Justice and said: The UK is a bunch of mean, old, White, racist colonialists, and we want them to give us the Chagos Islands. Huh? They actually said: Give us back the Chagos Islands. Mauritius never owned the Chagos Islands. But anyway, predictably, the International Court of Justice ruled in favor of Mauritius. I don't think anybody was particularly surprised, nor did anybody pay particular attention until, in recent years, United Kingdom Prime Minister Starmer--the current Prime Minister of the UK is leading the charge--came up with this idea. Why? I don't understand. I guess the Prime Minister feels guilty somehow. He said: OK, we are going to give the Chagos Islands that we own back to Mauritius--even though Mauritius never owned them--we are going to give the Chagos Islands to Mauritius, but if the United States agrees, we are going to keep the military base here in the Chagos Islands, on Diego Garcia, and--get this; this is really special. Even though the UK owns the Chagos Islands, they said: We will give it to Mauritius, and we will pay Mauritius squillions of dollars to lease from Mauritius the military base for 99 years. Now, I have thought about why they would do this. Real strong drugs are the only possible explanation for the Prime Minister of the UK to do this--to give away something that the United Kingdom owns to a country that never owned it and pay the country to lease what the United States and the United Kingdom have already invested billions of dollars in. It has got to be drugs--real strong drugs. But anyway, that is what they did. Now, as best I can tell, other than Prime Minister Starmer--I don't mean any disrespect; I just think he is wrong. The only person on this planet who thinks this is a good idea besides Prime Minister Starmer is Xi Jinping of China. He has been for years anticipating that this might happen, cozying up to Mauritius, and they have become best buddies. In fact, China has convinced Mauritius to sign on to two Chinese- instigated--actually, Communist Party of China-instigated--two treaties. One is called the African Nuclear-Weapon-Free Zone Treaty. This is a China-backed treaty. They convinced Mauritius to join it. It prohibits the research, stockpiling, and possession of nuclear weapons across the African continent. OK, you say, what is the harm in that? Well, I am going to tell you in a second. China also convinced Mauritius to become a partner in what is called the Forum on China-Africa Cooperation trade and security agreement. That is between China and 53 African nations. What does that do? That also maintains a commitment to building nuclear weapon-free zones. Now, why did China do this, and why should we care? Because once Mauritius owns the Chagos Islands--even though they say they are going to sign a lease and allow the UK and America to continue to operate the military base, once Mauritius owns the islands, I can guarantee you that China is going to put the pressure on Mauritius to allow China to force inspections of military equipment on all of the Chagos Islands, including Diego Garcia. Isn't that special? President Xi Jinping can't wait. He loves this idea of giving all this away to assuage Prime Minister Starmer's guilt. He loves this idea as much as the devil hates holy water. Now, President Trump early in his second term--I have given several speeches about this--agreed to it. And I said at the time it was a mistake. A lot of people said it was a mistake. He got some bad advice, and I know who gave him that advice. And they are no longer there. But be that as it may, I called the President and talked to him about it. And he said: No, I am going to listen to my adviser, and he agreed to it. The President has recently changed his mind. Thank you, Mr. President. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Many in the United Kingdom are starting to question the decision of Prime Minister Starmer. The House of Lords, one of the legislative chambers in Great Britain, has started asking a lot of questions. The people of Great Britain have started asking a lot of tough questions. Prime Minister Starmer--there will be an election soon. There may be a snap election in the UK at some point, but Prime Minister Starmer is polling right now--he is in a lot of trouble politically. He is polling right now right up there. I think he is just a little bit below toenail fungus among the people of the United Kingdom. He is in deep trouble politically. Every prognosticator who studies UK politics says that the next Prime Minister and the next party in leadership will be the Reform Party. And if the Reform Party takes over in the UK, the Reform Party has already announced publicly that the first thing they will do is stop paying money on the lease that Prime Minister Starmer has signed with Mauritius. What happens if the Reform Party does that? I tell you what happens: The lease becomes null and void. Anybody who knows a law book from a J. Crew catalog knows that if you sign a contract, that is all a lease is. And if you stop making payments, the contract becomes void. And so Mauritius will have the right--they will probably go back to the International Court of Justice, since some people in the leadership of the United Kingdom love it so much, and get a judgment to declare the lease invalid. And then what? And then Mauritius, which China is courting, is going to become the owner of a joint American-United Kingdom military base on Diego Garcia, one of the most important in the world. I have got rocks in my driveway that are smarter than this. And many people in the United Kingdom--God bless them. I love the UK. They are our oldest friends in the world. I spent some time there. Went to school there. I love the people of Great Britain. But many of them are waking up. And they are starting to say to the Prime Minister: This is just a terrible--terrible--idea. And they are saying to the Prime Minister, no disrespect: But, look, we understand that your testicles are on back order from Amazon, but in the meantime, you just can't do this just because you feel guilty--just because you feel guilty because the United Kingdom at one time owned other countries. Now, look, I don't know what is going to happen. President Trump-- thank you, President Trump, for objecting to this. But I don't know what is going to happen if Prime Minister Starmer, who is polling right up there with fungal infections, decides to go forward and President Trump says no. I don't know what will happen. If Prime Minister Starmer, because he feels guilty because the good people of Great Britain at one time owned other countries to which they have given their independence--if Prime Minister Starmer is determined to do this, here is what I hope he will do: Rather than giving up the islands to Mauritius, which eventually will end up giving our base to China, allow the United States of America to buy the Chagos Islands. Let's just buy them. The United Kingdom will get money. The military base will become ours. China will not own the military base. And Mauritius, which has never owned any portion, not one square inch of the Chagos Islands, will not own them either. And the world will be safe. I am going to end on this note. This is something that the Presiding Officer knows very, very well because I have talked to you about it. This military installation is very serious. It is very important. Why? Well, President Xi in China and President Putin in Russia and the Ayatollah in Iran have formed a partnership, and the managing partner is Xi Jinping. And their goal is to have Russia dominate Central and Eastern Europe, to have the Ayatollah in Iran dominate the Middle East, and to have China dominate the Indo-Pacific and be free to roam in Sub-Saharan Africa and South America. And while they are doing this, Russia and China want to control both the Arctic and space. We all know that is what is going on. The Presiding Officer has seen the same classified information that I have. That is not a world that is safe for America. That is not a world that is safe for America. I don't want America to be the world's policeman, but I will be damned if I want Xi Jinping or Vladimir Putin or the Ayatollah in Iran to be the world's policemen either. This military base is key. So I am asking you, Prime Minister Starmer--I shouldn't have said what I said. Your testicles aren't on back order from Amazon. I take it back. Please do the right thing here. If you are determined to give away these islands to Mauritius, which never owned them, which inevitably is going to help China, if you are determined to divest the people of the United Kingdom of these islands, please sell them to the United States. I will sponsor the legislation happily, enthusiastically to appropriate the money to do it. And then the United Kingdom can be out of the picture, and the United States can continue to control one of the mightiest and most important military bases in all of human history.

Mr. KENNEDY

Mr. KENNEDY. Mr. President, I get it. I think most of us get it. A lot of moms and dads throughout America tonight are going to lie down and try to sleep and not be able to. And when moms and dads throughout America lie down to sleep and can't, more times than not in America today, they are worried about the cost of living. I get that. These high prices started under President Biden. But that is not why I am here today. I don't want to blame this on anyone. It is what it is. I just know that you shouldn't have to sell blood plasma in America to go to the grocery store. I just know that you ought to be able to afford a home in America as part of the American dream. The costs have gotten way out of hand. When you are having to pay $500,000--if you can get a loan--to buy and live in a refrigerator box behind Outback, something is wrong in our country. And don't get me started on the cost of healthcare and health insurance and all the other daily expenses that moms and dads have. They are worried, and I understand they are worried. That is why I want to talk for a few minutes, before I talk about Minneapolis-- because I do want to address that--that is why I want to talk for a few minutes about taxes. I know some may be thinking, you know: Why does Kennedy--Kennedy just talked about the cost of living in America. Why does he want to talk about taxes? I know people are thinking: I don't like paying taxes. They are thinking: You know, I would rather have to listen to O.J. jokes for the rest of eternity than to have to pay taxes. Nobody likes to pay taxes. It is the price we pay to live in a civilized society. But this year, we have some good news with respect to taxes, and it is a result of changes to our Tax Code--the Presiding Officer knows this well--that we made in the One Big Beautiful Bill. We are told not to call it the One Big Beautiful Bill anymore. There is a new name for it. But, frankly, I think the American people are smart enough to know what we are talking about no matter what name we give to it. As a result of the changes that we made, and when I say ``we,'' I don't take any joy in having to point out that this was done with only Republican votes. We tried to entice our Democratic friends to join with us. They chose not to. That is their choice. It is a free country. But the tax changes that we made were made solely with Republican votes, and I am proud of them. And I hope both Republicans and Democrats take advantage of them. As a result of these tax changes, the American people are going to receive up to $100 billion in tax refunds--$100 billion--not million, $100 billion. What am I talking about? Many people, as the Presiding Officer knows, who are in the hospitality business are no longer going to have to pay for their 2025 taxes, taxes on tips. Not everybody. I don't want to overstate the case, but many of our people in the hospitality industry who made most of their income from tips, as a result of the changes we made for 2025--``we'' meaning Republicans--are not going to have to pay taxes on a portion of those tips. Many folks in 2025--not everyone, but many people in 2025 who worked overtime--are not going to have to pay taxes, income taxes, on that overtime. That also is contributing to this $100 billion that is going to be returned to the American people in tax refunds. In our One Big Beautiful Bill, we also increased the standard deduction. For a two-income household, we increased the standard deduction by $1,500. It is going to mean a lot of money back in people's pockets. The standard deduction for joint filers is now $31,500. As we were making these tax changes--and we, again, regrettably, did it with only Republican votes. We had to. But as we made these tax changes, we also put in a tax deduction for our seniors. People over 65--not everybody, but many Americans over 65--are going to get a new $6,000 senior reduction. What else did we do? Well, if you pay State and local taxes, real estate taxes, for example, property taxes, we changed the deduction from $10,000 to $40,000. So that means you have a higher deduction on your taxes. It means your taxes are going to go down. We increased the child tax credit. It is now $2,200 for every child you have. We increased it by $200 per child. Many folks, again, and I won't overstate the case, but many folks who have borrowed money to buy a car and are paying interest will get to deduct a portion of that interest that they pay on their automobile purchase as a result of the changes we made in the One Big Beautiful Bill. And I could go on about other changes we made for small businesses, one in particular. If you are a sub S corp, subchapter S corporation, or you are a limited partnership or what we call an LLC--in Louisiana, that stands for Louisiana limited liability corporation, which means that you are taxed directly on the income that your small business earns--we made permanent 20 percent reductions or distribution of business income for LLCs and LLPs and sub S corporations. So if you add all of these tax changes up--and, again, I didn't talk about all of the tax changes in the One Big Beautiful Bill, but if you added the ones up that I talked about, that means an extra $100 billion in people's pockets throughout America, Democrats, Republicans, Independents. And most people, most people have more money held out of their check than they owe the IRS, and that is not unusual, particularly when we make tax changes. I mention that because this means that $100 billion, people are going to get checks from the Federal Government. They are going to get money back. God bless them. They deserve it. Now, I have got a couple of tips about how you can get that money back quickly, if you are able to do three things: If you file early, file your tax returns--if you want your money back as quickly as possible, file your tax returns early. No. 2, file electronically. I know for some that is a pain. I don't much like it. I like to file the paper return. But some people like to file electronically; some people don't. But if you do file it electronically, you are going to get your money back from the Federal Government more quickly. The third thing you need to do is to tell the Federal Government that you don't want a paper check; you would like your money deposited directly into your bank account. If you do those three things: file early, file electronically, and tell the IRS that you want the money sent directly, electronically, into your bank account, then you are likely to get your tax refund within 2 to 3 weeks, your portion of that $100 billion, thanks to the One Big Beautiful Bill that Republicans in the House and the Senate passed. That is going to help a lot in terms of dealing with the cost of living in America, and I am very proud of our effort. Department of Homeland Security Mr. President, now let me say a word about Minneapolis. There is a lot we know; there is a lot we don't know. I want to talk about three things we do know. No. 1, the loss of life in Minneapolis was a tragedy, and if you can't admit that, you have a padlock on your heart. It was a tragedy. We don't have all the facts. I know everyone has seen the videos, but the people involved haven't been interviewed. There are a lot of facts we have but a lot of facts we don't have, and I am not going to rush to judge. I am not going to rush to judge. President Trump has promised a full and thorough and transparent investigation, and I thank him for that. But regardless of what we find out, we all have to concede, we all should concede that the loss of life in Minneapolis was a tragedy, and I am sorry it happened. No. 2, this is the second thing that I know. You don't have to be Einstein's cousin, you don't have to be a senior at Caltech to know that illegal immigration is illegal. Duh. It is illegal. And those of us who believe that no one is above the law--we all say we believe that, I believe it--those of us who say that no one is above the law have to concede that people in our country illegally are not above the law either. The law applies to them as well. Our immigration statutes are not second-tier laws. They matter just as much as the other statutes that have been passed by the elected Members of Congress. And just like the other laws, the immigration laws have consequences and should have consequences if you violate them. Now, so I guess what I am saying is I support enforcement of our immigration laws. Now, how you enforce those laws, how you enforce those laws matters. Those laws, like all laws, have to be enforced in accordance with due process. Those immigration statutes, like all laws, have to be enforced in accordance with equal protection. Those laws have to be enforced in accordance with a well-known Supreme Court case, 1968, called Terry v. Ohio, which sets forth the standards--reasonable suspicion is the standard chosen by the Supreme Court--by which someone can be stopped and questioned when a law enforcement official doesn't have probable cause. Terry v. Ohio has to be followed. So No. 1, illegal immigration is illegal. We should enforce our immigration laws, but how we enforce them matters. Third and final point, you have the right to protest in America. Let me say that again: You have the right to protest in America. You do not have the right to protest violently. And, in fact, violence as you protest undermines the morality of the thing that you are protesting over. Let me say that again: Violence, if you choose violence when you protest, that undermines the morality of the movement that you say your movement is based upon. Do you know who else understood that? Dr. King. King understood it. Gandhi understood it. Mandela understood it. Violently protesting--not protesting--but violently protesting undermines the morality that you say your cause is built upon. It is also dangerous. It is dangerous, and it is stupid. It is a 12-piece bucket of stupid because when you protest violently, when you interfere with a cop or an ICE officer, it is not going to end well. It is not. Under the best of circumstances, these officers are trying to enforce Federal law, and the people with respect to whom they are trying to enforce Federal law are, in most cases--I am not going to say all cases--but in most cases are criminals. Not criminals because they are here illegally, though that, too, is a violation of our law, but criminals because they have violated other laws. In many cases, felonies, and those ICE officials, those cops are scared. They are scared. They are dealing with someone who could be armed, someone who could be dangerous. So you have got a powder keg, and when protesters choose to protest violently and harass those ICE officials and blow whistles in their ears and block their way and spit in their faces and curse them and curse their children, they are giving off sparks in a powder keg. And it is not going to end well in many cases. And the truth of the matter is, it has been my experience in life, most--I am not going to say all--most cops will leave you alone unless you do illegal stuff. So as we go forward in America and try to enforce our laws in conformity with the U.S. Constitution, as we go forward together in America, and while we are respecting people's constitutional rights, we respect our law enforcement officials who are doing a very difficult job--as we go forward in America today, as the President has promised to have a full and fair and transparent investigation of the tragic loss of life in Minneapolis. I hope we can keep those three things that I think all of us can agree upon in mind. I am sorry we are at this point, but I believe that our future can be better than our present and certainly than our past. I yield the floor to my esteemed colleague.

Mr. KENNEDY

Mr. KENNEDY. Mr. President, I want to speak first for a moment about the Energy and Water Development bill that the Senate will shortly be considering. As the Presiding Officer knows, our budget is so large that we divide our appropriations bill into 12 separate bills--many bills, if you will--and Members in some cases are assigned and in some cases choose to serve on these subcommittees to draft a portion of the appropriations bill. I have the privilege of serving as the chair of the Energy and Water Development portion of the larger appropriations bill. My ranking member--in other words, the ranking Democrat--is my friend Senator Patty Murray from Washington State. We have conferenced that bill. What does that mean? Well, that means that all the Democratic members and all the Republican members of the Energy and Water Development Subcommittee have worked out our differences. It doesn't mean we are all happy, but we have worked them all out. We also worked out our differences with the House--the Republicans and the Democrats in the House who sit on what we call Energy and Water. I am not saying everybody is happy, but they have accepted the bill. We have reached an agreement, and, in fact, the House has already passed it. We are going to be considering that bill, the Energy and Water bill, here in a couple of days. I just wanted to quickly--I will speak more later, perhaps--I just wanted to quickly highlight what we are going to be voting on here in the next couple days. The bill is $58 billion. That is less than the current budget. I am very proud of that. I said at the very beginning of this process that I was not going to approve a budget that did anything but spend less. We have done that. Nominally, it is a $27 million reduction. Non- nominally, which means if you factor in inflation, it is a 2.8-percent reduction over the current Energy and Water bill. So in the new fiscal year, fiscal year 2026, we will be spending 2.8 percent less than we are spending on the Energy and Water bill right now. I am very proud of that. We increased defense spending. As the Presiding Officer knows, the Energy and Water bill is divided into a defense portion and a nondefense portion. We increased spending dramatically for defense. In fact, we are spending $912 million extra on defense in the Energy and Water bill over the current budget--a 2.7-percent increase even though overall the bill is 2.8 percent less. Well, obviously, we had to cut something. We did. We are cutting nondefense spending, the nondefense portion of the bill, by 3.8 percent. We took a meat ax to the Green New Deal provisions in the current Energy and Water budget. Now, not everybody is happy about it. I get it. But we have already spent a lot--a lot--of money on the Green New Deal--too much, in my judgment--so we reduced it in the new Energy and Water bill. Moving back just for a second on defense spending, what are we spending that extra money on in defense? Well, I am not going to read everything to you, but suffice it to say we plussed up or increased nuclear weapons development, nuclear weapons sustainment. We are strengthening our nuclear weapons stockpile testing. We are strengthening its certification. We are continuing to provide money for a new nuclear warhead, for a sea-launched cruise missile. We are going to spend more money on plutonium pits and special explosive nuclear materials. The final two points I will make about our bill: We have substantially increased spending for the Corps of Engineers-- substantially. In the new Energy and Water bill, we are spending $1.7 billion more on Corps of Engineers projects. That is a 19-percent increase. And we are also doubling our spending on the Strategic Petroleum Reserve. So to sum up, the Energy and Water bill vis-a-vis the current budget cuts spending by 2.8 percent. We increased defense spending by 2.7 percent. We paid for that increase and accommodated the decrease in overall spending by cutting nondefense, mostly green energy, 3.8 percent. We have increased spending for the Corps of Engineers dramatically--$1.7 billion. That is a 19-percent increase. And we have doubled the amount of money for the Strategic Petroleum Reserve. I will be happy, when the time comes when we take up the bill, to answer questions. Housing Mr. President, let me talk about another subject: housing. You can't talk about housing if you don't start with supply and demand and the cost of housing. What determines prices in America? In a free enterprise system, what determines the price of housing? A lot of things, but basically it is supply and demand. In a free enterprise system, supply and demand determines price. Now, no free enterprise system is perfect. Ours is about as perfect as you can get. In some economies that say they are free enterprise, they are really not. For example, the government will come in and put its thumb on the scale and affect supply and demand. The government might come in--China does this all the time--and say: We are going to favor or subsidize, either with direct money or special loans, solar panels. China does that. They wanted to dominate the world in solar panels. They do. The Communist Party in China went in and gave especially good treatment to the manufacturers of solar panels. I don't much like that. It is China's business. I don't like it when that sort of thing happens in America because it interferes with free enterprise. It is an illegitimate manipulating of price and supply and demand. How else can prices be affected besides supply and demand? Well, you can have antitrust violations. If all the makers of microwave ovens get together in a back room over cigars and a sip of whiskey and say they are going to fix prices at a certain price, they can run the price of microwave ovens up. That is a crime too. It is illegal under the Sherman Antitrust Act. You can go to the pokey for that. So it is supply and demand. Well, what causes prices--specifically, the cost of housing--to go up? Well, it is when demand for housing is greater than the supply of housing. Duh. It is not complicated. Remember when we had 9 percent inflation under President Biden--not just in housing but in everything else? I will tell you how that happened. President Biden used the pandemic as an excuse, but we were past the pandemic. He and my Democratic friends appropriated billions and billions and billions of dollars, in many cases directly to the American people, and people got that money and said ``Thank you very much,'' and they went out and spent it. They spent it on goods, and they spent it on services. The problem was the people who produced the services and made the goods were not prepared. Many of them had had supply lines during the pandemic that were affected. So you had this huge amount of demand with the American people having a huge amount of money, and they wanted to buy, but the supply wasn't there. So what happened? Prices went up. At one point, prices went up to--inflation reached 9 percent. Now, the good news is that it has come down. So we are better, but we are not well. Inflation--I think new numbers came out today. They are at about 2.7 percent. That means prices are still going up. Many of them have come down. Prices are still going up; they are just not going up as quickly as they were going up under President Biden, thanks to the new economic policies adopted by the Trump administration and the Republican Congress. One of the things, though, that hasn't come down in price is housing. I don't need to tell the American people. It is just breathtaking. The average first-time home buyer in America today--let's just think about this. To buy a home, you have to save up a downpayment, and you have got to have enough income so they will loan you the money, so you can comfortably pay the mortgage. The average person today, first-time home buyer, doesn't reach those parameters until they are 40 years old--40 years old. Owning a home is the American dream, and housing has gone up everywhere. It has gone up in my State. It has gone up in the Northeast, the Southwest. It has certainly gone up in California. Hell, a refrigerator box behind an Outback costs $500,000 in California. Nobody can afford homes anymore; they just can't. Why is that? Well, you can hear a lot of experts talk about it. Some of them will say: Well, it is interest rates; interest rates went up. They did go up. And some will say it is this, and some will say it is that. But I will tell you the main reason housing has gone up so much and hasn't come down: because the demand for a house is greater than the supply. We don't have enough houses; we just don't. You are probably thinking to yourself, boy, then why doesn't somebody build some? Well, the private sector is trying, but in many States--not all, but in many States and many cities, they are being stopped by local government. And you say: Whoa. Why? Why would a councilwoman or a councilman in a city of 100,000 people in Colorado not want to see more houses built? I will tell you why: because that city councilperson--man or woman-- controls the zoning laws and controls, for rules and regulations, housing starts. A lot of the people--I am not just picking on Colorado; this is true in every State--a lot of the people don't want more houses built. Why? Because they already own a house, and it is worth a lot of money, and it is a big part of their nest egg. They know that if, in their area, more houses start being built, then the price of their home is going to go down and they are going to lose money. Now, again, I am not picking on Colorado. That is true in Colorado. It is true in every State in our wonderful Union. It is called NIMBY-- not in my backyard. It is especially true in California, the most liberal State God ever put breath in. That is why we are not building more residential housing. That is why housing starts are not going up. Now, what is Congress's usual reaction to that? Well, we start passing bills telling the folks in local government how to do their job. You won't find housing starts in the U.S. Constitution. You won't find the subject of housing in the U.S. Constitution. It is a State but it is really more of a local issue. Zoning laws are local. Some States may have a statewide zoning law, but most zoning laws, which determine housing starts--who can build houses and who can't and what size they have to be and how big the lot is and what the streets look like--that is up to the local governments, OK? Usually, what happens is Congress lectures our friends in local government and says: You have got to do this. You have got to do that. We are going to mandate this. We are going to mandate that. The truth is, we are not housing experts. We are not there in the community. That is why God created members of city councils and mayors. They are closest to the people. They should be in charge of housing. They should be in charge of zoning. They should be in charge of deciding what size the streets and the lots are. But it is undeniable--and some are trying, but it is undeniable that a lot of them are saying, under political pressure from their constituents: We don't want new houses because it might affect the price of the existing houses, and the people whose houses go down in price won't vote for me. That is the way a lot of local folks think--not all of them but a lot of them. So what can we do about that? Short of us getting in the middle of the business of our cities and telling them what zoning laws should look like, here is what we can do. We could use a carrot and a stick. Every year, we send between $2 and $3 billion to cities across America. Every city gets a little bit of it. Some get a lot of it. But every year, just like clockwork, we appropriate--it is really more like $3 to $4 billion. We send that money through the Department of Housing and Urban Development, and based on the population in a city, they determine who gets what portion. The local governments love what we call community development block grant money, CDBG funds. You say ``CDBG'' to a person in local government, and they will start salivating. They love this money like the Devil loves sin. Why is that? Because it is free money, and they have a lot of discretion--``they'' meaning our friends in local government--they have a lot of discretion in how they spend it. They can rehab public housing. They can build streets. They can use it for code enforcement without the Federal Government staring them down. So I came up with this idea, convinced Senator Elizabeth Warren to join me, and we drafted and indeed passed--I will talk about that in a second--a bill called the Build Now Act. It is really very simple. It says that we are not going to tell local governments how to increase housing starts; we are just going to tell them that if they do increase housing starts, we are going to reward them with more CDBG money. If they don't increase housing starts, we are going to take some of their money away. Carrot; stick. Here is how it would work. Every year, we look at all of our cities-- I think the cut off is 50,000 people or more--and we look at the housing starts percentage-wise in each of our cities across America. After we look at all of them--it will be a bunch of them, but we have got computers--we look for the median point, not the average. We don't add them up and divide; we look for the median point. The median point is the city right smack dab square in the middle. Half of the cities have increased housing starts more, and half of the cities below the median have increased housing starts less. So that is our starting point--the median. Let's call it 4 percent. If our bill were in effect and next year the median--you can call it average if you want--the median is 4 percent, if you are a local government and you meet 4 percent, you get all of your CDBG money. Good for you. You get a gold star. Maybe, if the median is 4 percent, you did even better. Not only did you reach the median level--4 percent increase on housing starts--you got 6 percent. Guess what. You are going to get extra CDBG money. You get extra money. That is the carrot. Now, if you are thinking to yourself: ``There is a catch here somewhere,'' OK; there is no free lunch. Anytime someone tells you something is free, uh-uh. Anything that is free, somebody had to pay for. Here is the catch: We are going to take that extra money to reward the cities that increased housing starts above the median--we are going to take it from the cities that don't, up to 10 percent. Now, what does that mean? That means we are not going to tell our friends in local government whether to increase housing starts or decrease, and we are sure not going to tell them how to do it. They don't have to do a damn thing if they don't want to. But if they do increase housing starts, they are going to get extra money from the Federal Government, and if they don't, they are going to get less. It will work. Others agree with me. Senator Warren and I passed the Build Now Act unanimously out of the Banking Committee. Every Democrat and every Republican voted for it. Then it came to the Senate floor. Every Member of the Senate--every Democrat, every Republican--said: We like it. We will take a dozen of these. They liked it so much--my colleagues liked it so much that they made it a part of the NDAA, the National Defense Authorization Act, which, as you know, is a bill we have to pass every year. And housing is not directly relevant to the NDAA. But under the rules, my colleagues liked Elizabeth's and my bill so much they said: Let's put it on the NDAA. And we did; flew out of here. Then it went over to the House, and we started negotiating the NDAA because the House passed its version of the NDAA, and we had passed our version of the NDAA, and they weren't the same. So the people in charge of the NDAA from the Senate sat down with the people in charge of the NDAA in the House and started negotiating the final product. I will use my words carefully here. There were a couple of folks on the House side who for whatever reason decided to take our Build Now Act out, and they did, despite the fact that every Member of the Senate was for it and a lot of House Members. I am not going to kid you, I was upset. I called that person and those handful of people every--well, I called them an epithet that ends with the word ``hole.'' I did. I swallowed it. I took it. I just said: That is the legislative process. I took it full in the face, went home, had a beer, petted my dog, tried to get over it, and lived to fight another day. It was stupid, but they did it. But we live to fight another day. Now, when moms and dads lie down to sleep at night and can't in America today, I can tell you one of the things they are worried about is the cost of living, and part of the cost of living is the cost of housing. This bill will work, and it would have worked, and it would be law right now. But that was then. You have to look to the future. Mr. President, if you are listening, please endorse this bill. To my friends in the House, please bring this bill up and vote for it. It will work. We have been jawboning and talking about ``Oh, you know, the cost of living is''--some say it is fake. Some say it is not. Some say we are doing better than we are. Well, things are better, but they are still not well. This bill will lower the cost of housing in America, and it will do it under the basic principles of free enterprise. You can write this down and take it home to Momma: All things being equal, if you increase supply and demand stays the same, the price is going to go down. It will work. So I hope my friends in the House will take these comments in the spirit in which they were meant and that they will pass Senator Warren's and my Build Now Act. I hope that the President is listening and that he will endorse it because--I am going to repeat it again--this is America. Owning a home is the American dream. A satisfactory home is not a refrigerator box behind Outback. The American people deserve better. Mr. President, what would you like me to do next? I think I will ask for a quorum. I suggest the absence of a quorum.

Mr. KENNEDY

Mr. KENNEDY. Mr. President, with me today is Mr. Nick Ayers, a colleague from my office. I want to talk about a serious subject. I want to talk about welfare fraud, taxpayer money. Now, I want to make it clear that I love Minnesota--I love Minnesota--but I do not like people, whether they live in Minnesota or elsewhere, who steal money from the poor. There ought to be a special place in Hell for them. By now, unless you are still living in your parents' basement, playing video games, you know that there has been massive welfare fraud in Minnesota. It is staggering. It is stunning. It is astounding. It may rise to the level of $9 billion of taxpayer money meant for the poor--$9 billion. It is an uncomfortable truth that, at this juncture, most of that fraud appears to be centered in the community of Minneapolis among people of Somali ancestry. Some have said and suggested that it is racist to say that. Facts are not racist. What I just said is just a fact. So far, there have been 90 people charged, most of whom are of Somali descent. That is just a fact. There are over 100,000 people of Somali ancestry in Minnesota--most of them in the Minneapolis-St. Paul area--and the vast majority of them vote in a bloc, as is their right, and the vast majority of them vote in a bloc for Democratic candidates, as is their right. Some will say Kennedy is being a racist for pointing that out. Let me say it again: Facts are not racist. They are facts. It has already come out at some of the trials, and not all of the folks being charged are of Somali ancestry--I want to make that very clear-- but most of them are. Again, it is just a fact. I apologize for my voice. Let me explain what this thievery--this industrial-scale fraud--was just about. It was centered around Medicaid. As the Presiding Officer knows, Medicaid is a Federal program administered by the States--we put up most of the money--to provide health coverage for poor people, for pregnant women, for children, and for disabled people. President Obama, through ObamaCare, extended Medicaid to some of the folks in the middle class, but, still, the main purpose of Medicaid is to help poor folks and disabled folks because, in America, we help our friends. You know, I was looking at a number the other day. In the last 50 years, the American economy has grown 142 percent over the last 50 years. The American economy has grown 142 percent over the last 50 years. It is a pretty extraordinary number. Welfare spending in America has grown 765 percent. So I get a little upset when some people say: Well, you know, the American people are selfish. We spend over $1 trillion a year helping our neighbors who are less fortunate than us, mostly the poor. In our country--I have said this before--if you are hungry, we will feed you. If you are homeless, we will house you. If you are too poor to be sick, we will pay for your doctor. Other countries let their fellow citizens die in a ditch. We don't do that in America. The American people have stepped up to the plate. So, when people steal this money--this $1 trillion-plus a year that we spend in helping our neighbors--when people steal that money, it offends me. When they steal from the poor and they steal from the American taxpayer, it offends me equally. As for the folks in Minnesota and elsewhere who stole this money, who took a giant whiz--a giant Great Dane whiz--down the leg of every taxpayer and poor person in America, every one of them ought to go to jail. It looks like, so far, there are four probes. Let me just say the Federal Government puts up most of the money for Medicaid, not all of it. In some cases, the Federal Government puts up as little as 50 percent. In some cases, 90 percent of the money being spent on Medicaid comes from Federal taxpayers. We designed the rules at the Federal level. We put up most of the money, but the States are supposed to implement the program, and they are supposed to combat fraud, but many of them don't. The GAO says, of that $1 trillion I talked about that the American people spend on welfare, as much as a quarter of a trillion, maybe more--$250 billion or more--is stolen, and it has got to stop. I am going to talk about a solution in a moment, but let me tell you what was happening in Minnesota. One of the things Medicaid does, along with the Food Stamp Program, is to feed people, particularly children. So what these thieves in Minnesota were doing is they were setting up these fictitious corporations and applying to Gov. Tim Walz' Medicaid office for money to distribute to the poor. Gov. Tim Walz' welfare office would give them hundreds of millions of dollars. Of course, the thieves running these fictitious corporations sucked it up like a Hoover Deluxe. Then these fictitious corporations would go to restaurants in the community--many of them in the Somali community--and say: Here is the deal. I want you to fill out a report saying you fed all of these poor people. Of course, you are not feeding anybody. Just lie and give me the report and I will give you a percentage of the money that I am stealing from the American taxpayers and the people of Minnesota. That is what they did, but they didn't just limit it to food. It was industrial-scale fraud. Next, they moved to healthcare. Some formed fictitious corporations, companies, saying: We are going to deliver--I said healthcare; I meant childcare--to poor people, homeless people. So the fictitious companies run by these thieves would go to Governor Walz' agencies and say: Give us a bunch of money. We are going to house homeless people. Governor Walz would give them the money, and these thieves sucked it up like a Hoover Deluxe. Then they went to a bunch of folks in the community and said: Henceforth, you are in the housing business, and you need to fill out a report. It is a lie. Fill out a report saying you are providing housing for a bunch of people--of course, they weren't--and then we, the thieves who got the money from Governor Walz, will kick you back a little bit of the money. Did they stop there? No. They moved into--I just described housing. Then they moved into childcare. Under Medicaid, you can use money to provide childcare. So the thieves formed a bunch of new fictitious companies and went to Governor Walz and his agencies and said: Give us a bunch of welfare money, Medicaid money, to give childcare to folks who are poor. Then the thieves running the fictitious company went to families-- many of them in the Somali community--and said: Do you have a child who is autistic? If so, we want to sign him up. But if some of the families said: No, we don't have a child who is autistic, the thieves said: Don't worry about it. Lie. Tell us you have a child who is autistic. Whether your child is autistic or not, we are not going to provide any services for your children, but we will kick you back some of the money. It is disgusting. So it was in childcare, housing, autism, food--$9 billion and climbing. Now, Governor Walz--in fact, I probably shouldn't repeat this, but I read something on the internet the other day. Somebody made an observation, and I don't want to paint too broad a brush because there are some fine childcare services in Minnesota as there are elsewhere, but the person on social media asked a question: How do you know if you have discovered one of these fictitious childcare services? Well, you go there, and no one is inside, but the owner pulls up in a Lamborghini. And that is what happened. The people who were stealing the money directly from Governor Walz and then giving it to the folks who were helping them--the restaurants that were creating fictitious lists of people they fed and autistic children they were helping who weren't autistic--they took the money, too, and all of them had a big old party. They bought cars. They bought jewelry. They took expensive vacations. They sent money back to Somalia. There is an investigation going on right now--I am not saying it is true--that some of the money might have gone to terrorist organizations in Somalia. This is American taxpayer money these people were taking out of the mouths of poor people. Governor Walz--I know nothing about this man; it is news to me--said: In fact, I am taking some bold steps. He said: First, I am not going to run for a third term. I guess he needs more time--I hope he uses the time to prepare his defense because he has got a lot to defend here. He knew what was going on. In fact, one of the lawyers representing one of the thieves in this case said that many of the people--this was their excuse. He said that many of the people involved in the stealing thought that the State was OK with it. That is what he said. Here is his quote: No one was doing anything about the red flags. Red flags were everywhere. Nobody in State government, he said, was doing anything about the red flags. It was like someone was stealing money from the cookie jar and they kept refilling it. The State knew. (Mr. HAGERTY assumed the Chair.) And at one point, Governor Walz and some of his agencies said: Whoa, you know, maybe we ought to put a stop to this. And they backed off. They said: No more money for a while. Well, fresh hell broke loose. Do you know what happened? The largest, most powerful, fictitious company, run mostly by people of Somali ancestry, sent an email to the Minnesota State government, and they said that the State agency that was failing to promptly approve new applications and give us new money from ``minority-owned businesses''-- it was going to result in a lawsuit featuring accusations of racism that would be sprawled across the news. If you don't give us our money, we are going to call you a racist. They did it. It has all come out in evidence at trial. In fact, someone by the name of Kayseh Magan--he is one of the good guys. He is a Somali American who used to work as a fraud investigator in the attorney general's office, who, by the way, was just as involved as Governor Walz in turning a blind eye to all this. He says--and he said it in the newspaper--that elected officials, and particularly those who are part of the State's Democratic-led administration, were reluctant to take more assertive action in response to the allegations. Why? Here is the quote. There is a perception that forcefully tackling this issue might cause political backlash among the Somali community, which is a core voting bloc [for Democrats]. And he is among the few among many prominent figures in the Somali community who is speaking out against the fraud. In fact, at one point, a bunch of State employees--I don't remember how many, but they posted a letter publicly on social media saying: Governor Walz and the attorney general knew about this all the time, and we told them. We warned them early on. And you know what they did? They just stood there sucking on their teeth. They did nothing. So you know what the State employees did? They went to the U.S. attorney. They went to the U.S. attorney, and the U.S. attorney jumped all over this and said: This is obvious fraud. And that is how all this got started. Now, what do we do about it? Well, first, I don't think that the only place this is happening is Minnesota, and, certainly, there are people involved in welfare fraud besides the few Somali Americans in Minnesota. And I mentioned the Somali Americans because it is just a fact. I mean, it is a fact in the trial of these disputes, the politics of it and everything else, in the litigation. I think it is happening in various degrees all over America. Let me say it again. We are spending a trillion dollars a year of American taxpayer money to help poor people, provide welfare, and the GAO estimates that at least $250 billion is being stolen every year. We took some baby steps in the One Big Beautiful Bill, as the Presiding Officer knows. We tightened up eligibility requirements. We are requiring States to check twice a year to make sure people don't lie when they sign up for Medicaid or for food stamps or for housing assistance. We have implemented a work requirement. But we need to do more. We need to do more. And that is why we need to do another reconciliation bill. Now, I hope I am wrong when I say this. I hope I am wrong. I invite my Democratic colleagues in the Senate--I love them all--to come forward and help us. But I just know politics, and the Presiding Officer does too. A lot of them are going to be reluctant. But we don't need their assistance. We can pass a welfare security bill with all Republican votes. If I could do it on my own, I would introduce the bill tomorrow. I would go and look at every single State and every single country and look for the best practices on presenting welfare fraud. I would cross-access a list of people who sign up for welfare to their tax records, if they have any. Sometimes, people lie. In Louisiana, we have caught people making a quarter of a million dollars a year getting Medicaid. But you have to check. Apparently, nobody was checking in Minnesota, and I don't think they are alone. If it were up to me, I am drafting that bill now. I will look at every State, every country, and adopt the best practices. And my bill can be ready in 2 weeks, but I can't do a thing about getting it passed because I don't have the authority to bring it to the floor of the Senate. I don't. Only the majority leader can agree to bring a bill to be considered by the Senate. Those are the rules. If I were King for a day, I would change it in a nanosecond. I think every Senator ought to be able to bring his bills to the floor. And that is not a criticism of my good friend John Thune or my good friend Mitch McConnell or my friend Chuck Schumer. They are just following the rules. I would change them. But we need to do another reconciliation bill to fix the welfare system and stop the stealing--stop the stealing. And we can do it with all Republican votes. So, please, Senator Thune--pretty please, as I have said before. I am saying this. I will beg. I will get down on my knees. John, please bring another reconciliation bill. We can do so much, but we can start with fixing welfare fraud. Please, John. Please let us do the bill. I don't want to end on a negative note. I might have hurt my back going down. I don't want to end on a negative note. I love this country. I just think America is the greatest country in all of human history; I do. And the whole world knows it. Everybody wants to come here. When is the last time you heard of somebody trying to sneak into China? No, they want to come to America. And I believe, as much as I am standing here, that the future of this country can be better than the present or our past. It can be. I have always believed that we are only as good as our dreams; we are only as valuable as our children. But I am not going to bubble-wrap it. We have $30-plus trillion worth of debt, and we have people stealing from poor people and laughing about it--and politicians participating in it. And Washington has to do its part to fix this. But the water is not going to clear up for America--the water is not going to clear up for America until we get the pigs out of the creek. Let's go get the pigs out of the creek. Please, Senator Thune, please, let us do another reconciliation bill. Please, lead with welfare reform. We can do it. You can do it. I know you can. I suggest the absence of a quorum.

Mr. KENNEDY

Mr. KENNEDY. Mr. President, I want to talk for a few minutes about money--money, money, money--people's money. Like the Presiding Officer, I have learned a few things in life. I want to mention two. No. 1, money does not buy happiness. No. 2, poverty does not buy a damned thing, and that is the theme of my few minutes as I talk today. This is about people's money, and it has to do with unredeemed, uncashed savings bonds. Now, the Presiding Officer knows what I mean when I talk about a bond. Usually, when we are talking on the Senate floor, we are talking about Treasury bonds or Treasury bills or Treasury notes. I want to talk about a different kind of bond today. It is the same principle but a different animal. It is called a savings bond. Savings bonds used to be very, very popular in America, particularly in the last century, particularly during World War II. They are less popular today because there are so many other ways to earn interest on your money, although many people still believe in savings bonds. I do. It is a great way to invest your money. What am I talking about when I say a savings bond as opposed to a Treasury bond? Well, let's take the example of one particular savings bond. It is called an EE U.S. savings bond. A savings bond is just a loan to the Federal Government. Suppose I have $1,000, and I want to loan it to the Federal Government because the Federal Government will pay me interest. I could go to the Federal Government and say: I am going to loan you $1,000. The Federal Government would say: Thank you very much. Here is your EE U.S. savings bond. This is how it would work: The Federal Government would guarantee me that after 20 years, my $1,000 would double. So I would hand them-- ``them'' meaning the government--$1,000, and 20 years from now, I would get back $2,000. If I didn't really need my money after 20 years, I could let the government keep it--loan it to the government, if you will--for another 10 years, and they would continue paying me interest. Now, there are two things you need to note about what I just talked about, this EE savings bond. No. 1, unlike a regular corporate bond, when I loan that $1,000 to the Federal Government and get back an EE U.S. savings bond, I don't get periodic interest payments. The interest accrues and it compounds. When I give the government $1,000, I don't get quarterly interest payments, but at the end of the 20 years, I get back $2,000. Roughly, in today's market, I am making about 2.7 percent a year, but it is very, very safe. If you believe in the sovereignty of the Federal Government--our Federal Government being part of the wealthiest country in all of human history--then it is a pretty safe investment. The other thing you need to note about the savings bond, in addition to the fact that they don't pay me periodic interest--I get all my interest when I get my principal back at the end of 20 years--is that at some point, as in the example I just gave, after 30 years, the Federal Government stops paying me interest; interest stops accruing. So if I loan the Federal Government $1,000, and after 20 years, interest is accrued, if I want to, I can redeem my savings bond, and they will give me $2,000. Maybe I say ``OK, I will re-up another 10 years and continue to earn interest,'' but 30 years is the limit. After 30 years, if I don't redeem my bond, I am loaning money to the Federal Government interest-free, and that would be a dumb thing to do. But not everybody redeems their bonds. A lot of people don't--more people than you would imagine. Life comes at us pretty fast. You know, you buy a savings bond or maybe your grandparents or your parents buy you a bond when you are young. You grow up, you get married, you have kids, and you get a job and then you change jobs. You move around the country. A lot of people forget those savings bonds. They still own the savings bonds, but they just forget to redeem them, so the government just has an interest-free loan. Here is what I am driving at: Right now, over in the U.S. Department of the Treasury, there are 100 million unredeemed savings bonds. It is money that belongs to the American people. It is no longer earning interest. There are 100 million savings bonds. There are only 340 million people in America, so it is a little less than a third of the people in America--although I realize some may be deceased--who have one of these savings bonds, where the Federal Government owes them money, but the money is just sitting there, and the Federal Government is using it, and they are not paying people interest. The total amount of these unredeemed savings bonds is $36.27 billion. And that $36 billion has been there a long, long time because people have either died or they have forgotten that they have these unredeemed savings bonds. Now, this is very uncool. A few years ago, back in 2023, I introduced a bill which actually passed; I got it passed. It said to the Federal Government, specifically, the U.S. Department of the Treasury: You have got to give this money back. You have got the names of people on these bonds. In many cases, you have the addresses. In a lot of cases, you have the serial numbers. Why are you just sitting on this $36 billion, these 100 million bonds? Why don't you contact people and give them their money? And they said: Kennedy, you don't understand. First of all, they said, our records are a mess. Some of these bonds go back--I don't know--75 years before there were computers. The Treasury Department said to me: The records are not digitized. We would have to comb through boxes and boxes and boxes to get names and addresses, and it is just--it is just a lot of trouble. I said: Well, I feel your pain, but you still ought to return the money to people. So here is what I am going to do: I am going to introduce a bill--and I did, and I passed it--that says the Federal Government has got to return this money to the people to whom it is owed. In that bill, I provided money for the U.S. Department of the Treasury to digitize those records, to go out and hire a consultant to go through all the records and put them in the database so they can be easily searched. The U.S. Department of the Treasury has done that. I want to thank them. Hasn't been the easiest thing I have ever done. I worked with Secretary Mnuchin first and then Secretary Yellen and now Secretary Bessent and all of the good women and men who work for them. But we finally have gotten it done. Here is what we are ready to do. We are ready to turn the names and addresses and serial numbers over to the treasurer of every State--in Louisiana, in West Virginia, and every other State. We are going to give them the names and addresses and serial numbers so they can contact people in their State and say: The Federal Government has your money, and we want to get it back to you. Why are we doing it that way through the States instead of just telling the U.S. Department of the Treasury to start calling people up? Well, because the States are very experienced. Every State has what is called an Unclaimed Property Program. What is an Unclaimed Property Program? Well, every State has a law that says if a business--usually, it is a business, not always--but if a business has your money and it can't find you, that business can't keep it. At the end of a certain period of time--usually 3 to 4 years--that business has got to turn that money over to the State--it is called unclaimed property--and the State has got to help give it back to people. What am I talking about? Let's say a utility deposit--happens all the time. People move into an apartment. They post a utility deposit with the electricity company. They move. They forget to get their deposit back. Apartment deposit works the same way. Tax refunds. Stocks. Maybe you own a stock, and it is being held by your brokerage company and you move and you don't leave a forwarding address or the forwarding address expires. That security company can't--that brokerage can't just keep that stock. That brokerage turns that stock over to the State treasurer of every State, and it is their job to return it to people. Let me tell you something, the States do a marvelous job. You can go to every single State right now--just Google it--and find the State's unclaimed property program, and you can go spend a few minutes. You put in your name. You can put in your parent's name. You can put in your friend's name. You can put in the name of the town in which you were raised and find people who are owed unclaimed property. The treasurers do a great job of getting it back. They not only have websites, but they advertise--and toll free numbers. They just do a wonderful job of getting money back to people. When I was State treasurer of Louisiana, I was in charge of Louisiana's Unclaimed Property Program, and I was there for 17 years. I think I returned $400, $500 million to the people of Louisiana. I had a whole unclaimed property section, men and women who would contact people all day long, and we had a very sophisticated database. So that is why the U.S. Department of the Treasury, under my legislation, is not going to give this money back itself. It is going to return--or give the information to the treasurer of every State, and the treasurer of every State is going to be in charge of contacting people. We have gone through this. We have been working on it. I passed the bill in 2023, I think, but we worked on it for 2 years prior to that. But we are almost home. What now we have to do is get the State treasurers to sign an agreement with the U.S. Department of the Treasury. All the State treasurers have to do is sign an agreement with the U.S. Department of the Treasury to cooperate. The Treasury will send them the names, and we can start returning this money to people. I am going to be sending another letter out in short order to all the State treasurers asking them to go ahead and sign that user agreement with the Treasury Department so we can start getting this money back to people. It is free money. And remember, there are 100 million bonds, 340 million people in America, $36 billion that is owed to the American people that the Federal Government has just been sitting on that hasn't been returned. And now we are going to start doing it, if I can just get our State treasurers to turn in these user agreements. Some of them have but others have not yet. You may not get a check for Christmas, but if you hurry up, you can get a check in January or February so you can pay some bills.

Mr. KENNEDY

Mr. KENNEDY. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that two of my colleagues from my office, with whom I work, who are working with me for a few weeks, Colyn Lorey and John Tober, be granted floor privileges until December 4, 2025.

Mr. KENNEDY

Mr. KENNEDY. Mr. President, as you well know, the American people are the most generous people in the entire world. In our country, when you are hungry, we feed you; when you are homeless, we house you; when you are too poor to be sick, we will pay for your doctor. We spend trillions of dollars a year helping our friends and neighbors who are less fortunate than we are, and that is rare in this world. I have been all over our wonderful world. You have, too, Mr. President. In many countries, if you get down on your luck, they will let you die in a ditch. But not in America. Not in America. We take care of our fellow citizens. But it is expensive. We spend trillions of dollars a year to do this, and that money we spend didn't just fall from Heaven. We thank Heaven for it, but it came out of taxpayers' pockets, and we shouldn't lose sight of that fact. That is why I get so irritated--``irritated'' is the wrong word-- angry when I find out that people take advantage of the American people's generosity. It makes me want to knee someone in the groin. It just makes me furious, and I think the American taxpayers feel the same way. What I am about to tell you, Mr. President--let me apologize in advance--is deeply disgusting. It is deeply disgusting. I mean, it is clown world on steroids. When I first read about this, I read it a second time because I experienced slack-jawed astonishment. When I read it a second time and I realized it was true, I just wanted to run away screaming. What am I talking about? We have discovered--the Federal prosecutors have discovered that for the last 5 years, there has been massive welfare fraud in the great State of Minnesota--massive. Over $1 billion of American taxpayer money has been stolen--just stolen. They can call it fraud, but a better term would be ``stealing.'' This fraud has been centered in the Somali community in Minnesota. Now, I am not here to criticize the Somali community; I am here simply to describe what happened. The Somali community in Minneapolis is about 80,000 people. They are centered around Minneapolis. And let me say it again: I am not here to denigrate the Somali people or people of Somali ancestry just because of the actions of a few, but it is a fact that this $1 billion in welfare fraud occurred almost exclusively in the Somali community in Minnesota and was orchestrated by people of Somali ancestry. That is a fact. Facts aren't racist; facts are facts. So far, 59 people have been convicted, 86 have been charged, and 78 of them are of Somali ancestry. That is just a fact. Now, what these criminals did was they had three very elaborate schemes. The first scheme was centered on supposedly feeding hungry children in the Somali community. A group, a nonprofit run by some people of Somali ancestry--the name of the nonprofit was ``Feeding Our Future.'' Feeding Our Future went to the welfare authorities in the State of Minnesota, which, of course, was administering Federal taxpayer money, and Feeding Our Future said: We want to feed hungry children in the Somali community. The welfare people and State government in Minnesota gave them the money to do that. It started out very small. The idea was that Feeding Our Future, the Somali nonprofit organization, would take this Federal taxpayer money, American taxpayer money, and go to businesses--most of which were Somali businesses in the Somali community--and set up feeding sites where they supposedly would take children to get a hot meal. On paper, it sounded great. As I say, it started out very, very small--just a few million dollars--but eventually it got bigger and bigger and bigger, and more businesses in the Somali community signed up to be feeding sites. Feeding Our Future, the Somali nonprofit, kept going back to the Social Services Department in Minnesota and saying: We need more money. We need more money. At the height of the fraud, they were spending about $100 million a year--not over the lifetime of the program, $100 million a year. There is just one problem: There were hungry children; they just weren't getting any of the money. The businesses, many of which were Somali-owned, which were getting some money to feed the children from Feeding Our Future, the nonprofit that was quarter-backing this whole thing, weren't giving any of the money to hungry children. They were spending it. These businesses were spending it on yachts and vacations and jewelry and furniture for their homes. That was scheme No. 1. But it got worse. The second scheme was supposedly to help people who are homeless. Remember I said that in America, when you are homeless, we will house you? Well, that is what they were trying to do in Minnesota. A nonprofit was set up--again, run by someone of Somali ancestry--and this nonprofit went to a bunch of providers who supposedly were going to provide housing, and they told the welfare authorities in Minnesota that they needed millions of dollars to house people who were homeless. Once again, the program started out small. When they started it in 2020--these crooks started it in 2020--they said ``We only need $2.6 million,'' but then in 2021, they said ``We need $21 million.'' In the following years--they said ``We need $42 million'' the next year, then $74 million to house the homeless, and then $104 million a year--not the total scheme, a year. There is just one problem: None of the money was going for housing. None of the money was going to help people who were homeless. These providers and this nonprofit that was coordinating it just put the money in their pockets. But there is more. They came up with a third scheme. This one makes you want to throw up in a potted plant. This one is centered around autistic children. Once again, in this third program, a group of providers--supposedly medical providers--got together, and they went to the welfare authorities in Minnesota and said: We need money to help autistic children. They said: Well, that is a wonderful thing to do. Then these providers, once the welfare department at the State government in Minnesota gave them the OK, went out and started recruiting autistic children. They say: Well, OK. We have to get the word out somehow. But they couldn't find very many autistic children, so they started going to parents in the Somali community and saying: Can we call your child autistic? Can we certify that your child is autistic? If you let us do that, we will pay you a bribe, anywhere from $400 to $1,500 a child. Now, once again, the program didn't start big. These were sophisticated crooks. Its leader was a woman by the name of Asha Farhan Hassan. She was also in, by the way, on the feeding of the children scam as well. As best we can tell, they approached parents only in the Somali community, but once again, they couldn't find enough autistic children, so they bribed many parents in the community, gave them money to certify that their children were autistic. In the first year, they were clever: They only asked for $3 million. The second year, in 2019, they asked for $54 million. Then in 2020, they went up to $77 million. Then in 2021, they really got greedy: They went to $183 million. In 2022, $280 million; and in 2023, $400 million. All told, in these three fraud schemes, these crooks stole $1 billion of taxpayer money. The worst part--what I started to say is the worst part, but let me amend it. The equally bad part: Hello, how could this happen? Why didn't the people in the Department of Social Services and the Welfare Department and State government, when they saw these claims arising, why didn't they say something? Didn't they go out and check these businesses that were supposedly sites to feed homeless children? Didn't they go talk to some of the children and their parents to see if some of the children really were autistic? Didn't the State authorities say: Show us one of the homes you are providing to the homeless people? After all, we are spending $1 billion. They didn't because the politicians wouldn't let them. And the crooks who were setting all this up, they were pretty smart. I will give you one example. Remember, I talked about the nonprofit involved in feeding the so-called hungry children called Feeding Our Future. The rank-and- file employees in the Welfare office started getting suspicious when the claims went up, and they contacted Feeding Our Future. They said: Hey, what is going on here? We are going to start cutting off these claims because it is getting a little bit expensive. You know what Feeding Our Future did? They threatened the employees. They said: If you cut off our money--they sent them an email, and they did it by phone. They told the State agency that failing to promptly approve new applicants from minority-owned businesses would result in a lawsuit--a lawsuit--feeding accusations of racism that would be scrawled across the news--scrawled across the news. Feeding Our Future went to the State and said: If you stop giving us this money, we are going to call you racist and we are going to sue you and you don't want to be in the news. You say: Why didn't the employees do something? They did. They told the people higher up, the people with the flags in their office. And you know what they did? Nothing. Do you know why? Well, here is what the legislative auditor in Minnesota said: He said that the threats of litigation and the negative press affected how the State politicians used their regulatory power. Here is what a fraud investigator in the attorney general's office said. She said: There is a perception that-- I am quoting now. --that forcefully tackling this issue would cause political backlash among the Somali community, which is a core voting bloc [for Democrats]. In fact, one of the other witnesses in the fraud investigation said: Look, you told the prosecutors--let me just give you a cold dish of truth--the 80,000 voting bloc of folks with Somali ancestry, you have to have their votes to win in Minneapolis. If you are a Democrat and you can't win Minneapolis, you can't win the State. So the politicians did nothing. Don't just take my word for it, and don't blame the State employees. They tried. In fact, recently, the State employees, they just said: Look, we have had enough. They posted this. These are several hundred employees from the Minnesota Department of Human Services who administered this program, who just get up every day and go to work and do their job and want to help people. This is what they posted on social media. I am quoting now: Governor Tim Walz is 100% responsible for massive fraud in Minnesota. I am sure he wasn't the only one because this fraud was an open secret. But I am quoting from what the employees said. Governor Tim Walz is 100% responsible for massive fraud in Minnesota. We let Tim Walz know of fraud early on-- That is the employees talking-- hoping for a partnership in stopping fraud, but no, we got the opposite response. Tim Walz systematically retaliated against whistleblowers using monitoring, [using] threats, [using] repression, and did his best to discredit fraud reports. Instead of partnership, we got the full weight of retaliation by Tim Walz and an indifferent mainstream media. It's scary, isolating and left us wondering who we can turn to. And now, there are reports coming out. I don't know if they are true, but I know the prosecutors are desperately trying to get to the bottom of it. And I don't want to say that this is true, but a report came out in a publication called City Journal, which is published by the Manhattan Institute. They are alleging that money--part of this billion dollars that was stolen--they are alleging at least a portion of it went to a terrorist organization in Somalia that we have all heard of. It is notorious. It is an organization called al-Shabaab. They hate Americans. They are terrorists. They want to kill Americans and drink their blood out of a boot. They were taking a cut, according to this claim. Again, I don't know if it is true, but the prosecutors are trying to get to the bottom of it. There have been a lot of allegations about racism in these reports. They are saying: Oh, you are just picking on the Somali community. I am not, and I don't think the American people are. I think what they are picking on are crooks. They are picking on crooks. Everything I just gave you is facts. It has nothing to do with race. But it is a fact that these $1 billion schemes were cooked up by leaders in the Somali community in Minneapolis and in Minnesota. It is a fact that most of the businesses that participated in this fraud--in this thievery--were run by people of Somali ancestry. I am not saying that is a good thing. I am not saying that is a bad thing. That is just a fact. And I don't think we ought not to talk about it. And it is a fact that the kickbacks paid to parents to allow their children to be signed up as autistic in order to get the Federal taxpayer money--the parents were of Somali ancestry. It doesn't give me any pleasure to say that, but it is a fact. And it is a fact that the politicians, not the employees--the rank- and-file employees in the Welfare offices--but the politicians in Minnesota let this happen. It is disgusting--disgusting. We are trying to put together a budget right now, and we have State officials in Minnesota--because they wanted votes--that are allowing people in their State who are crooks to steal $1 billion from the American taxpayer, money that could have gone to people who really were homeless and children who really were hungry and kids who, through no fault of their own, really were autistic, instead of stolen--a portion of which allegedly was sent to a terrorist organization in Somalia. Man, these people ought to all be put in jail, including the politicians. It makes me want to stick my head in an oven. I want to end on a less negative note. I am sorry to talk about this, but the American people need to learn the truth. A lot of members of the media won't report this. They say you can't talk about it because it is racist. This has nothing to do with race. Everything I said is factual. What is racist about facts? I don't want to end on that kind of note. I have been to this floor before. I will be back.

Mr. KENNEDY

Mr. KENNEDY. Mr. President, moms and dads across America are having a little trouble sleeping these days. And when moms and dads in America lie down to sleep at night and they can't, they are worried. They are worried about things like the cost of living. They are worried about things like the cost of housing. They are worried about things like their insurance premiums going up. They are wondering if it is ever going to get any better. They are tired of having to pay more, live worse. They are worried that eventually they are going to have to sell blood to go to the grocery store. Why are they feeling that? It is called inflation. And the inflation started under President Biden. As we know, it got to 9 percent. I won't go into the reasons why. We are doing better. We got it down to 3 percent. When you get inflation down from 9 percent to 3 percent, that is called disinflation. What is disinflation? It just means disinflation is when the rate of inflation decreases, in this case from 9 percent to roughly 3 percent. Disinflation doesn't mean prices are going down. It just means that prices are rising less quickly. Under President Biden, they were rising at 9 percent. Now they are only rising at 3 percent. In order for prices to actually go down, we would have to have deflation--not disinflation but deflation. We have to be careful what we wish for because deflation comes with some pretty severe consequences. We can get prices down through deflation, if we go into a recession, if you raise unemployment, allow unemployment to rise to about 8 or 9 percent where people lose their jobs. We are witnessing deflation right now in China. For kids in China who just got out of college, their unemployment rate is 25 percent. That is why their prices are going down. There is a better way to help people deal with disinflation. That is to get their incomes up through tax reform, through regulatory reform, through designing a healthcare delivery system that looks like somebody designed the damn thing on purpose. And that is what we ought to be working on. If we--I don't have control of the floor. If I had control of the floor, I would be here every single day introducing bills. I see Senator Reed here. He would be doing the same thing, introducing bills to help the American people. But I don't have control of the floor. I am not criticizing the people who do. That is above my pay grade. I am labor. They are management. But I know this, first, if we will ever get to do that, I will ask our Democratic friends to join with us. They may or may not. I don't know. But if they decline to join with us, then through reconciliation, which is how we passed the One Big Beautiful Bill, we can pass these measures to increase wages for the American people with a majority vote. We won't need Democratic votes. That is what we did with the One Big Beautiful Bill, and we can do it two more times before the midterm elections. We passed the One Big Beautiful Bill on July 1. In the meantime, I am not saying we haven't been doing important things, but we haven't been working on a plan to help people deal with the cost of living, and we should be. So I am going to end like I ended the last time. I am saying to the powers that be: Pretty please, with sugar on top--I will add a cherry. I have even got an old McDonald's McRib coupon somewhere, and I will throw that into the mix too. Please bring another reconciliation bill. Please. Let's deal with the problems that are causing moms and dads to lie awake when they lie down to sleep at night and can't. I went on too long. I apologize to Senator Reed. I yield to my friend Senator Reed from the wonderful State of Rhode Island.

Mr. KENNEDY

Mr. KENNEDY. Madam President, with me today is one of my colleagues from my office Mr. Nick Ayers. Every time I look at or read an article about the One Big Beautiful Bill, I am shocked--though that sounds pejorative, maybe ``impressed'' is the right word--at its breadth. It is such an expansive piece of legislation. On the airplane flying back from our last break, I sat down with some of my notes and just made a quick list off the top of my head of some of the things that we did in the One Big Beautiful Bill. And I hate to read to people, but I will just read you from my notes--and I won't even read all of them--but this is what we did in the One Big Beautiful Bill. We extended the 2017 tax cuts. We saved $1.3 trillion for the American people. We made them permanent. We cut taxes on tips. We cut taxes on overtime. We cut taxes on Social Security. We provided deductions for car loans. We increased the standard deduction. We continued the 20 percent income deduction for LLCs. We repealed the IRS reporting requirements for gig workers. Nobody ever talks about that. That was huge. We passed school choice tax credits--first time Congress has ever done something like that. We enhanced 529 education savings accounts. We provided full expensing for research and development. I mean, I could keep going here. We reformed Medicaid. We ended Federal payments for abortion and gender surgery and sex change operations through Medicaid. I could go on for 20 more minutes. It is just an extraordinary piece of legislation. My only regret with respect to the bill is that we did it without Democratic votes. We did it with all Republican votes. I wish that hadn't been the case. I wish we had been able to convince some of our Democratic colleagues to join with us. The obvious question while I make my statement is: How did you do that? How did you get past the filibuster? It takes 60 votes. You don't have to be an astrophysicist to know that about the U.S. Senate. Well, as you know, Madam President, we did it under reconciliation. Under reconciliation, only a majority vote is required--60 votes aren't required. You can do it with a majority vote. That is how we passed the One Big Beautiful Bill. That is how President Biden passed much of his legislation. Reconciliation, as we know, is a creature of the Budget Control Act. I think of reconciliation as sort of a minibudget. That is a gross exaggeration and oversimplification, but I think of it as a minibudget. Madam President, could we ask for order?

Mr. KENNEDY. Madam President, I think of reconciliation as more of a minibudget. Now, that is an oversimplification and exaggeration, and we can't do everything in reconciliation, but we can do a lot--we can do a lot. We passed the reconciliation bill on July 1, about 5 months ago. And something that even members of the media are not aware of is we have the authority before the midterm elections to do two more reconciliation bills. The first one that we did--we can do two more--the first of three potential reconciliation bills we passed 5 months ago. You know, you can do a lot in 5 months. Five months around here is a long time ago. In 5 months, you can learn a language. You have to work at it every day. In 5 months, you can learn how to play a musical instrument. In 5 months, you can write a book. In 5 months, you can start a small business. In 5 months, during World War II, the United States defeated the Japanese in the Guadalcanal invasion. In 5 months, the Duke of Wellington defeated Napoleon after he escaped from Elba. In 5 months, a baby goes from gurgling and crying to saying mama and dada. Five months is a long time. How have we used that 5 months? Now, I am not putting anybody down. I want to say that. I am not criticizing any of my colleagues. I love my colleagues. I don't hate anybody. I love every one of my colleagues. And I am labor; I am not management. But one of the reasons I came to the floor is to suggest to all of my colleagues--both my Democratic friends and my Republican friends--that time is wasting. The President has been pounding us. He has been criticizing us like we stole Christmas--like we stole Thanksgiving--for not getting rid of the filibuster. Why does he want to get rid of the filibuster? Because he thinks we can pass a bill with 51 votes. We can already pass a bill with 51 votes. We just did it with the One Big Beautiful Bill, and we can do two more. So why have we sat around for 5 months and not started on the second reconciliation bill? I just don't get it. I don't get it. I mean, in my opinion--and really I am not--I am just making an observation--to me, it is a 12-piece bucket of stupid not to do another reconciliation bill and to waste 5 months before we even start on a second reconciliation bill, assuming that we get started tomorrow. I mean, humans are supposed to have evolved as a species. Why wouldn't we not do a second reconciliation bill? Think of what we could do. I mean, moms and dads all across America tonight are going to lie down to sleep, and they won't be able to. What are they worried about? Well, they are worried about the cost of housing for one thing. They are worried about the cost of home insurance. They are worried about the cost of flood insurance. They are worried about the cost of health insurance. We all know that. They are worried about the cost of living. Now, I think President Trump has done a good job on inflation. At one point under President Biden, we experienced 9 percent inflation. We have got it down to 3 percent, and I think that is extraordinary. But the American people don't understand--nor can they be expected to understand because they are too busy earning a living--they don't know the difference between deflation and disinflation. What we have experienced is disinflation. When we went from 9 percent to 3 percent, all that meant was that prices were going up at 9 percent. Now they are only going up at 3 percent. They are still going up. What the American people are interested in is deflation, getting the high prices that we have as a result of the policies of President Biden's administration, getting those prices down, not stopping them from growing as quickly--getting them down. And the American people are worried about it. And again, I applaud President Trump and his economic team for doing as well as they have, but we have got more work to do. And reconciliation, assuming it could survive the parameters of the Budget Control Act, we could address rules and regulations. We spend almost $2 trillion a year--we, I say ``we,'' the business community does. It spends almost $2 trillion a year complying with Federal rules and regulations. They pass that cost on. Why do you think goods and services cost more today? In large part, in substantial part, it is the result of rules and regulations. Through a reconciliation bill, we could pass measures to get the cost of those goods and services down and actually reduce those prices by getting a little government off the backs of businesspeople. We could do all those things through reconciliation. And so, the first reason I came to the floor tonight is to say to my colleagues: Pretty please, with sugar on top--I will even add a cherry, I will even throw in a coupon for a personal pan pizza--please, let's do another reconciliation bill. And when I say ``we,'' I am saying the Republican majority. Let's invite our Democratic colleagues to join with us--and I hope after inviting them, I sincerely hope they will take us up on it. But if they don't--and they don't have to; it is a free country--it only takes a majority to pass the reconciliation bill. And after we do the second one, we can do a third one before the midterms. If we do not take advantage of this opportunity to lower the cost of living for the American people through reconciliation when we only need 51 votes to do it, it is legislative malpractice. It is legislative malpractice. It is dumb as a bowl of noodles. So that is my plea to my colleagues tonight. I am not saying we have done nothing for 5 months. We have done a lot of other things in 5 months, but we haven't done anything to lower the cost of living for the American people, and we can't look back. We have lost 5 months, but we should get started tomorrow.

Mr. KENNEDY

Mr. KENNEDY. Mr. President, this weekend, I watched, probably like you, a number of folks go on television and confidently predict that we were going to be out of the shutdown. Some said as early as Wednesday. One confidently predicted Thursday. A couple more said Friday. So when I came back on Monday, I was pretty sanguine about things. It gives me no joy to say this, but I was wrong. I don't know. As bad as this multiple-vehicle pileup looks from the outside, you ought to see it from the inside. I know you know what I am talking about, Mr. President. The Republicans have voted 14 times to come out of the shutdown. My Democrat friends have voted 14 times to stay shut down. I think it is going to be like that for a while. I used to have a beagle. I loved him to death. His name was Roger. He was a rascal. Roger would run off. He was a rabbit dog that we picked up as a stray. Roger would run off for 3 days and scare me to death. I was afraid he was going to die. After 3 days, he would come staggering back home, and he always had roadkill in his mouth. He would hide that roadkill under my back porch. Where we are now, in negotiating out of the shutdown, looks like something Roger used to hide under my back porch. We are supposed to have a vote tomorrow. We don't know what we are voting on, but we have been promised we are going to have a vote. I hope we do. And I hope we are wrong, and I hope we come out of this shutdown very soon. But I am not going to lie to the American people. I think we are going to be in it for a while. Now, as everyone knows, folks aren't being paid while we are in a shutdown. Our air traffic controllers are not being paid. In fact, starting tomorrow, the airlines are going to be canceling flights. Our staffs are not being paid. Federal employees are not being paid. These young men and women here, our pages, are not being paid. Our military is only being partially paid. I am confused about SNAP payments. Some say the payments are being made; some say they aren't. I don't know who is telling the truth. But I do know this: I don't think anybody wants to see anybody hungry in America. The only people that I can ascertain who are being paid are Members of Congress. I am not being paid. I said I wasn't going to take a salary during the shutdown. Some of my colleagues are, and I am not judging anybody. My purpose is not to judge anybody. I am just saying that it is time that Congress set an example. I have two bills I am going to offer up today. The first one is called the No Shutdown Paychecks to Politicians Act. This just says that while we are in a shutdown, Members of Congress don't get paid and they don't get backpay. The second bill is entitled Withhold Member Pay During Shutdowns Act. That bill says that while we are in a shutdown, Members of Congress don't get paid, but they will get paid. They will get their money in arrears after we open the government back up. I am rather fond of the Constitution, as most people are. I am well aware of the 27th amendment which says: No law, varying the compensation for the service of the Senators and Representatives, shall take effect, until an election of Representatives shall have intervened. What that means, of course, is you can't change the pay for a Congressman until after you have had an election. I think my bills are constitutional for two reasons. No. 1, we are not changing the rate of compensation. We are just saying: You are in a shutdown; you are not going to get your money. No. 2, there is precedent for this. Back in 2013, President Obama had Congress pass the No Budget, No Pay Act of 2013. President Obama's bill said: Look, Congress is about to go into a shutdown. Fine, have at it. Knock yourselves out. Go into a shutdown. But if you don't come out of that shutdown by this particular date, you are not going to get paid. And do you know what? Members of Congress had an epiphany. They had a Damascene moment. They were born again. They got out of the shutdown in time to be paid. I am not trying to put down anybody. I am not trying to condemn folks who have been taking their salary. I am not saying they don't earn every bit of it. But I am saying what is good for the goose is good for the gander. I want to offer up these two bills for the Members' consideration, starting with my first bill, which would say Members of Congress can't be paid and don't get backpay even after we end the shutdown. That is called the No Shutdown Paychecks to Politicians Act. I ask unanimous consent that the Senate proceed to the immediate consideration of my bill, that bill which I just described, which is at the desk. I further ask that the bill be considered read a third time and passed, and that the motion to reconsider be considered made and laid upon the table.

Mr. KENNEDY. I will not, Mr. President. I would like to explain why. I understand Senator Paul is making a good point. What he is saying is, rather than saying, as I am, that nobody else is being paid so Members of Congress shouldn't be paid--I think what Senator Paul is saying is let's pay everybody. That is what I understand him to be saying. He wants me to agree to that instead of my bill. What Senator Paul is proposing is Senator Ron Johnson's ``no shutdown'' act that we voted on several times. I am for it. I voted for it several times. Here is the problem I have with Senator Paul's proposal, pulling down my bill and going with Senator Johnson's bill--several reasons. No. 1, I am interested in passing something. I am not interested in just putting on a show. My bill will pass the House of Representatives, and my bill will be signed by the President. Senator Paul's bill, I can assure you, will not pass the House of Representatives, and President Trump will not sign it. I am not saying someone is right or somebody is wrong. President Trump does not consider Senator Paul to be part of his MAGA agenda, and he will veto it. Then we are right back to square one. So, for that reason, I can't substitute his for mine because his is going to be as dead as fried chicken here in a few days, and mine has a chance to pass. Parliamentary Inquiry Now, Mr. President, I need some clarification, a parliamentary inquiry, if you will: Do I understand that Senator Paul has objected to my bill; is that correct?

Mr. KENNEDY. And his modification, if I might ask, is to substitute his bill for mine?

Mr. KENNEDY. OK. I have said I will not substitute his bill for mine.

Mr. KENNEDY. Mr. President, may I ask for a clarification? I have offered a bill to say that Congress does not get paid like everybody else who is not being paid during a shutdown. There has been a little bit of a back-and-forth. As I understand it, Senator Paul has objected to that bill; is that correct?

Mr. KENNEDY. To my bill to say Congress isn't paid during a shutdown; is that correct?

Mr. KENNEDY. Mr. President, I want to bring up my second bill. It is called the Withhold Member Pay During Shutdowns Act. Remember, my first bill that Senator Paul objected to would have said Members of Congress don't get paid, just like our staffs don't get paid, just like air traffic controllers don't get paid, just like the military doesn't get paid. We don't get paid until the shutdown is lifted, and we don't get our money in arrears. In other words, we don't recoup our money once the shutdown is lifted. Perhaps Senator Paul will find my second bill to be more palatable to him and his pocketbook. The Withhold Member Pay During Shutdowns Act would say, while we are in a shutdown and everyone else is not being paid, Congress would not be paid but that Members of Congress--including Senator Paul, including me, including all Members of Congress--would have the right to get the money back, to be paid, after they are out of the shutdown. In other words, the money would be escrowed, and they would get it once we were to come out of the shutdown. Again, there is precedent for that, and I talked about what President Obama did back in 2013. For that reason, I am going to ask unanimous consent on that one. I ask unanimous consent that the Committee on Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs be discharged from further consideration of S. 3057 and that the Senate proceed to its immediate consideration. I further ask that the bill be considered read a third time and passed and that the motion to reconsider be considered made and laid upon the table.

Mr. KENNEDY. Mr. President, a point of clarification: Has Senator Paul objected to my bill or does he want me to modify it?

Mr. KENNEDY. Mr. President, I am not done yet. Maybe I wasn't clear. I apologize if I wasn't clear. I support Rand's bill. It is actually Ron Johnson's bill, but I support his idea. What I am saying is, if everybody over here isn't being paid, Members of Congress shouldn't be paid, OK? What Rand is saying--what Senator Paul is saying--is let's pay everybody, and he is absolutely right. I support that, but I am going to pass on it. I am going to pass on it, Senator Durbin. We live in the real world, and my bill is more likely to pass the House and more likely to be signed by the President than Senator Paul's bill. I wish that weren't the case, but it is. I don't think that the House is going to pass Senator Paul's bill. I don't think it is any secret. I am not saying he is right or wrong, but President Trump does not consider Senator Paul to be part of the MAGA agenda. He said that. He has tweeted it about a skillion times. Am I wrong, Senator Durbin? I mean, he has tweeted it about a skillion times, and he is going to veto Senator Paul's bill because his name is on it. He is going to knock it to Uranus. He is going to knock it into a new ZIP Code. Then what have Rand and I done? We have put on a pretty performance. I want to pass something. Now, I have tried to pass my bill preventing Members of Congress from being paid, and you can pretty it up all you want to, but Rand objected. And I am not judging him. I am not judging anybody who is taking their salary. I am not taking mine, but I am not judging anybody. But what is good for the goose is good for the gander, and you either think Members of Congress ought to be treated like everybody else or you don't. You either think that we are more important and smarter and more virtuous than the American people or you don't, and I think we ought to be treated the same. Now, having said that, I said I agreed with what Senator Paul said. I am just worried his name on the bill is going to get knocked out of the park, so I am going to put it in my name. It is not Senator Paul's bill; it is Senator Ron Johnson's bill, and what Ron John's--we call him Ron John. I am sorry. He is Senator Ron Johnson from the wonderful State of Wisconsin. What Senator Johnson has proposed--and I voted for it repeatedly-- says: Look, if you are deemed an essential employee right now, if you are working but you are not being paid, Senator Johnson's bill says we are going to pay you. I voted for that. It also says, if you are furloughed, if you are deemed to be nonessential, then you are not working, but you will get paid once we come out of this shutdown. Does that make sense? That is what Senator Ron Johnson has proposed. As I told my good friend Senator Paul, I agree with it. Senator Paul's name is on that bill, and it is going to be vetoed six ways to Sunday. I am going to try to put my name on the bill. Maybe it will get passed, and maybe it won't, but I think I have a better chance than Senator Paul. That is just my personal opinion. It is not meant to be personal. For that reason, Mr. President, I will try it a third way. It is not my preferred way, but we have got to get out of this mess. I ask unanimous consent that the Senate proceed to the immediate consideration of Calendar No. 191, S. 3012. As I have indicated, I think we have got a chance to pass it in the House, and I really don't think President Trump will veto it if I explain to him it is Senator Ron Johnson's bill. I further ask that the bill be considered read a third time and passed and that the motion to reconsider be considered made and laid upon the table.

Mr. KENNEDY. Mr. President, look, I get it. You know, this is why we are in a shutdown. I just proposed a bill--this was my third choice, but it was better than nothing--to say everybody gets paid, and my good friend from Washington State objected. I don't know what else to do. I voted 14 times to open up the government. I can't change the election. President Trump was duly elected President of the United States--he was--in a free election, and the American people spoke. Some of my colleagues are upset about that. In fact, they hate the President so much, they have shut down government. They hate him so much that, if President Trump came out in favor of breathing to live, they would hold their breath. It is not rational. I just don't know what else to do. All I can tell my Democratic friends is: Look, reasonable people disagree, and I get it. But you are just being too emotional. You need to go drink a big ole, cold, tall glass of ``get over it'' and realize that President Trump is the President of the United States. Don't shut the government down because of it. Mr. President, you have been really patient. Even though the Parliamentarian tried to get you to dodge my questions, you answered them straight up, and I really appreciate it. I suggest the absence of a quorum.

Mr. KENNEDY

Mr. KENNEDY. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent to resume legislative session.

Mr. KENNEDY. Mr. President, I am going to be uncharacteristically brief. Tomorrow, I will be bringing two bills before the Senate. They both have to do with the shutdown and congressional pay. The first bill is the No Shutdown Paychecks Act. The second bill is the Withhold Member Pay During Shutdowns Act. The first bill would provide that, as long as we are shut down--and I will explain why in a moment--as long as we are shut down, no Member of Congress can be paid. And the money will not be--will not be-- reimbursed at a later date or repaid at a later date. The second bill, to address any 27th Amendment concerns, will say: During a shutdown, Members of Congress will not receive their pay, but their pay will be escrowed, and they will receive it after the government is opened back up. Look, we are in day 36. Like the Presiding Officer, I have heard a lot of rumors about ``we are that close to reaching an agreement.'' We have been ``that close'' for a week. Frankly, I hope I am wrong in saying this, but I don't think we are really that close. I wish we were, and I hope we are. But I think we are going to be in this shutdown a while longer. That doesn't give me any joy to say that. In the meantime, none of our staffs are being paid. No Federal employees are being paid. I got some numbers in this morning that Federal workers have had to borrow $365 million so far during this 36- day shutdown in order just to pay their rent. Our military is only being paid partially. Our air traffic controllers are not being paid. People who receive SNAP payments are only being partially paid. I don't think anybody wants to see anybody go hungry in America. And that is not a partisan statement. I think that is a bipartisan statement. There is precedent for this. Some may say: Well, this violates the 27th Amendment. I don't think it does. That is why I am offering two different flavors of bills. But in 2013, President Obama did the same thing that I am doing now. They were in a shutdown, and President Obama supported legislation that said: If you don't open up government by this certain date, then you are going to lose your paychecks. And guess what. Members of Congress had an epiphany, and they found religion. They had a Damascene moment, and they opened up the government. And that is all this bill would do. I am not trying to grandstand. I wasn't going to bring this bill. When I got back here Monday, I heard all the rumors, like everybody else, that we were close. And I hope we are close. But we are not close enough. And so I am offering these bills tomorrow, and people can vote yea or they can vote nay. But what is good for the goose is good for the gander. I yield the floor. I suggest the absence of a quorum.