James Lankford

Mr. LANKFORD

Mr. LANKFORD. Mr. President, 29 years ago today--29 years ago today-- President Bill Clinton signed into law a bill sponsored by then- Representative Chuck Schumer that has aided in the defense of protection of one of the most fundamental freedoms that we have in our Nation; that freedom, religious freedom. The bill was called the Religious Freedom Restoration Act. The Religious Freedom Restoration Act passed by Congress today, 29 years ago, found that government should not substantially burden religious exercise without a compelling justification. It was truly a landmark piece of legislation to be able to add further protections to individuals who have religious liberty differences. And we have wide variations of religious expressions in the United States. It is part of what makes us such a unique nation. It is that we guard the rights of every individual to not have to believe the same as the government believes or not even have to believe the same as your next-door neighbor believes but to have the right to freely have a faith of your choosing, to change your faith at any point, if you choose to, or to have no faith at all and be respected as an American; quite frankly, to be protected as an American. This landmark piece of legislation, the Religious Freedom Restoration Act, has not been altered in the 29 years since it has been passed. The purpose of the act was to restore a compelling interest test to be able to make sure that if government acted in any way to affect anyone's religious liberty, there had to be a compelling reason for that from the government to guarantee its application in all cases where free exercise of religion is substantially burdened and provide a claim or defense for those whose religious exercise is substantially burdened by government. The Religious Freedom Restoration Act doesn't pick winners and losers. It provides a balancing test. The government may burden someone's religious exercise only if the burden is in furtherance of a compelling government interest and is the least restrictive means of furthering that compelling government interest. Twenty-nine years ago today. Then, today, my colleagues moved forward on a bill that, instead of promoting equality for all people of all opinions, it specifically highlights areas of religious faith differences and says their opinions won't count this time. It deals with this issue of marriage, which has been a controversial issue in America but was, quite frankly--since 2015 in the Obergefell decision in the Supreme Court, there have been no cases moved in the country to deny same-sex marriage to any individual in any State across the Nation. Today, my colleagues moved forward on a bill to open up debate-- without amendment, may I add--on a bill that would certainly affect the religious liberty of countless people across the country. That is not just my opinion. Religious liberty organizations from all faiths and from all backgrounds have already been speaking out on this issue. Just in the last 24 hours, the Alliance Defending Freedom, the American Association of Christian Schools, CatholicVote, the Center for Urban Renewal and Education, the Centennial Institute, the Christian Employers Alliance, Concerned Women for America, Eagle Forum, Ethics & Religious Liberty Commission, the Faith and Freedom Coalition, the Family Research Council, the Family Policy Alliance, The Heritage Foundation, the Liberty Counsel, Lifeline Children's Services, the National Religious Broadcasters, Religious Freedom Institute, the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops, and the Ethics and Public Policy Center have all spoken out and said this bill that is currently on the floor of the Senate will damage religious liberty. Religious institutions are rising up, reading the text of this bill, rather than just listening to the debate of this bill, and saying: There is a problem here. Practically, what would this mean? Practically, what could this mean? I would say, first and foremost, we don't want anyone to be discriminated against in America--anyone to be discriminated against in America. All individuals should be honored. All individuals should be able to live their lives in freedom in America. But, practically, this bill puts faith-based child welfare organizations who are operating in accordance with their sincerely held religious beliefs, namely, to place children in loving families--it puts them in jeopardy. While some of my colleagues may say, Well, that is farfetched, may I remind you, the Supreme Court has already handed down a decision in Fulton and would remind us this is continuing to happen. Catholic Charities has been shut out of the child welfare system in Illinois, in DC, in California, and in Massachusetts already, and then this bill is coming. Let me tell you some of the problems with the bill because I have had individuals tell me about what they say is in the bill, and then I actually pull the text of the bill out and show it to them and say: Show me where that is in the bill. And their response to me typically is: Well, that is the intent of the bill. Well, we don't deal with intent here in Congress; we deal with legislation and text. The words matter in this, and the words in this do not provide the level of religious liberty protections, as many on this floor who have come to debate this say that is actually in this bill. Let me give you just some simple examples of this. This bill gives a private right of action for both--well, I should say gives protections from the Attorney General to be able to file charges against an individual that shows discrimination or a private right of action for an individual to be able to sue another individual or entity in this, unless the discrimination is for religious liberty. They are peculiarly left out. If there is discrimination against someone's religious liberty issues and their personal beliefs or their entity's beliefs, they don't get this same private right of action. So the private right of action only goes against people that have religious objections. Those religious individuals, if they are discriminated against, are on their own. They get no protections in this bill. The bill itself, I have heard individuals say: Well, it has a section in it that is literally titled ``No Impact on Religious Liberty and Conscience.'' So that is the big, nice title of that section, section 6 of the bill. So let me read section 6 of this bill to you. The first part of it, section (a), says: Nothing in this Act, or any amendment made by this Act, shall be construed to diminish or abrogate a religious liberty or conscience protection otherwise available to an individual or organization under the Constitution of the United States or Federal law. Now, that has got to be the biggest ``no duh'' statement out there. This piece of legislation doesn't overturn the Constitution is what it says. That is an unnecessary statement on it. Of course the Constitution stands above it. The second part of this, in part (b), says, basically, a rabbi, an imam, or a pastor is not compelled to perform a marriage ceremony that they are religiously opposed to. That is the whole religious liberty section of it--the whole section. First, it says it doesn't overturn the Constitution, and, second, it says pastors, imams, rabbis don't have to perform religious weddings that they are personally religiously opposed to. That doesn't help. In fact, there is a qualifying feature in the middle of all this in that section, section 6, which limits the individuals that would even get any kind of protections on this by saying ``whose principal purpose is the study, practice, or advancement of religion,'' meaning an individual would first have to prove that your principal purpose is to study, practice, or advance religion before you even got those exceptions. Why is that important? Well, I asked some of the sponsors of this bill why that particular piece of text is in there, and their explanation was, well, because we didn't want to include, for protections on religious liberty, private individuals and their personal religious expression or private businesses; that maybe the owners of that business have a personal religious belief in how they carry out their business, but they would not have religious protections because they are not principally a religious organization. So they do not get a defense. They don't get a private right of action to defend themselves. They just have to cave to the religious beliefs of this law. Twenty-nine years ago, this Congress said we were not going to impose beliefs onto people. Today, this Congress said: If you are a faith- based individual and you have a difference of conscience about marriage, too bad. You have to prove you are a principally religious organization to have an exception; an individual doesn't count. A private business is specifically excluded. In section 7 of this bill--I have had several of the sponsors who have told me: Section 7 covers everything else. It makes sure it protects nonprofits. It makes sure it protects all of your tax-exempt status, your grants--it is all in there. Until you read the text. No, those words are in there, but there are two big qualifiers that are also in that section. The first of the qualifiers begins with ``Nothing in this Act . . . shall be construed to deny or alter'' the benefits, meaning if it is in something else, that is not protected. It has to be something specifically in this act. The second thing is the very end of this. It gives a long section on this. Nothing in this Act, or any amendment made by this Act, shall be construed to deny or alter any benefit, status . . . It goes on to explain some of these things, and then it ends with this: Provided such benefit, status, or right does not arise from a marriage. That is the qualifier: Provided such benefit, status, or right does not arise from a marriage. Now, I have handed this around and asked legal counsel: Explain to me what that means. And the first response that I get is: Well, that is a clear protection for individuals that are married that if there is any right given to any other married couple, they get the same right. And I was like, that makes total sense. What about for entities, because the word ``entity'' is in this list? And that is where it gets fuzzy because it has this qualifier: Provided such benefit, status, or right does not arise from a marriage. We don't know how that is going to be interpreted for entities. So it is left for the courts to decide in the days ahead how that is going to be interpreted. So what has been done with this? All these things have been brought up. We have had this text now for about 36 hours. It literally just got dropped on us. So for about 36 hours we have been going through it--and it is not long; it is three pages--asking questions: How does it work? What happens with it? Several individuals have said: Hey, this is a real problem for religious liberty. We should fix this. And others have said: Yeah, that is a good idea. Let's make sure that it is actually clear--except, now that the debate has started, amendments have been shut out. There are no amendments. All of these gaps that I talk about for individuals, for small businesses, for individuals of conscience, for the right to be able to protect yourself if you are facing religious discrimination on this, for the limiting portions in this act or from explaining ``not arising from a marriage,'' what that may mean, the issue of principal purpose and not having to prove your principal purpose, in a court of law, is a religious issue--everyone seems to nod their head and say: Oh, yeah, those are problems. Multiple Members have brought amendments and said: Let's fix it. Yet they are being told over and over again: No amendments. We are not going to fix it. You know what that tells me? These are not mistakes in the drafting. This was purposeful. That is what that tells me. Listen, I believe the rights of every individual should be honored, but this is not choosing to be able to protect the rights of every individual. This is saying some people are more equal than others. That is a problem. After the Obergefell decision was made, President Obama spoke to the Nation. He supported the Obergefell decision from the Supreme Court, but then he said this: I know that Americans of goodwill continue to hold a wide range of views on this issue. Opposition in some cases has been based on sincere and deeply held beliefs. All of us who welcome today's news should be mindful of that fact; recognize different viewpoints; revere our deep commitment to religious freedom. Great words that seem to be on the cutting room floor today. It hasn't taken long for President Obama's statement after the Obergefell decision to say: Never mind. This is fixable, but when people see the problem and the issue with it and choose to ignore it, I have to ask why. Twenty-nine years ago today, President Clinton signed into law the Religious Freedom Restoration Act, and 29 years later, Congress is saying: Never mind. I find that a problem. I yield the floor.

Mr. LANKFORD. Mr. President, as the junior Senator from Oklahoma, I can't tell you what an honor it has been to be able to serve with my senior Senator. Jim Inhofe has for decades served our State. He has been reelected over and over and over again because the people of our State know he loves them, know he cares about them. They trust him in some very hard decisions that had to be made in this place, and they know Jim Inhofe has been there for our State. I jokingly say--and Senator Inhofe mentioned his passion for infrastructure and for the U.S. military--that when I run into somebody who is griping about the construction traffic that they are currently sitting in, I will jokingly say to them: Well, blame that on Jim Inhofe because that new road, that new place, that new infrastructure has been his passion all along to be able to make sure our State and our Nation, quite frankly, continue to be able to advance. In the days ahead, Senator Inhofe will be dearly missed in our State. There is not a town that I go to as I travel around our State that they don't ask me: What are we going to do when Senator Inhofe retires? Not one. They are all grateful, and they are all spoiled by Senator Inhofe's service to them. But I can't tell you how excited my wife Cindy and I are for him and Kay getting time together because they have sacrificed much for our Nation and for our State for decades, and I am excited for them to be able to finally get some time to be able to wake up every day and to be able to see each other and, quite frankly, for Jim to not have to be in yet another vote-a-rama all night voting, that he can actually spend his time with Kay. So if I can say for the State of Oklahoma, we are grateful for Jim Inhofe. We are grateful for the legacy he has left for our State. We are grateful for his firm conservative stand that he has taken year after year after year. We wish him very well in retirement and are very excited to still continue to be able to walk with him in the days ahead. I yield the floor.

Mr. LANKFORD

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

Mr. LANKFORD

Mr. LANKFORD. Mr. President, while we are standing here right now in Washington, DC, in the middle of an afternoon, protests are happening all over Iran right now. The latest news reports coming out from social media and the very limited media that can get out of Iran--massive protesters are in the streets of 20 different cities in Iran right now. The latest count is nine people have been killed in those protests by Iranian forces trying to be able to shut down the protests that are now breaking out all over the country--including, by the way, protests in Tehran. What is going on? This has been a simmering issue for a long time in Iran. As I have stated several times on this floor and in committee hearings, our opposition with Iran is not with the Iranian people. The Iranian people live in oppression underneath the Iranian regime, which pushes their thumb down on them and limits their progress in the world and in their own country. The spark of this latest group of protests that are happening in the streets all over Iran is a young lady who was murdered in police custody in Iran named Mahsa Amini. Mahsa Amini, a 22-year-old Iranian woman, died in custody because she broke Iran's hijab law. In other words, she wasn't wearing her head covering, and so--brace yourself--the morality police arrested her. The morality police in Iran detained her, where she was apparently beaten to death while she was in prison. Now, the police and the regime have come out and said she had sudden heart failure, but with multiple injuries around her head, that is not sudden heart failure. The nation--once again--of Iran is rising up to say: This has to stop. Americans would be surprised at the number of social media posts that are getting out of Iran right now, where large crowds--large crowds--are gathering in cities, tearing down the pictures of the Ayatollah, and chanting in the streets of Tehran, ``Death to the dictator.'' I have friends in Iran who have actually sent me some of the social media posts to be able to show me that this is what the street looks like today. This is breaking out across Iran. Now, what is interesting is that, at the same time, the President of Iran has been allowed to be able to come into the United States to be at the U.N. General Assembly to be able to speak out for the regime's benefit to the rest of the world. It will be a remarkable side-by-side of what is happening in Iran on the streets right now and the Iranian leadership at the U.N. General Assembly. At this same moment as well, Iran is working with Russia and has delivered hundreds of unmanned aerial vehicles that are weaponized, little kamikaze drones that are literally taking out Ukrainian artillery right now in the field in Ukraine. The Iranians haven't just supplied these weaponized drones to Russia; they have brought Russian leaders into Iran to be able to train them on how to be able to attack Ukraine with these weapons. Right now as well, the Russians are calling up additional reservists to be able to fight the Ukrainians and to be able to continue to take the fight to them. Protests are also erupting in Russia right now from Russian moms who are furious that their husbands and their sons are being called up to be able to fight in Ukraine to replace the thousands of casualties that Russia has suffered in Ukraine. Now, why do I connect the dots in all of these--what is happening in Iran on the streets, what is happening on the streets in Russia, and what is happening right now in Ukraine? Because in the middle of that moment internationally that is happening, the U.S. Government has partnered with Russian diplomats to negotiate with Iran a restart of the nuclear deal with them. I can't make this up. So the United States is using Russia as its proxy to negotiate with Iran to be able to restart a nuclear negotiation with them. Listen, the JCPOA, this nuclear deal, as it is commonly called, when it was put in place in 2015, was then set aside to say: It is not accomplishing its purposes. In 2015, when it was put in place--let's just review real quick what happened in the days after that. Planes full--literal planes full--of pallets loaded with cash were sent to Iran as soon as this deal was signed. It was a government suddenly flush with cash. How did that regime use that cash? They bought munitions to be able to fight against Americans in Iraq. From 2015 to 2017--that period immediately after the JCPOA was signed and planes full of cash were sent to them--munitions fired against American troops in Iraq increased 341 percent. During that same time period, terrorist incidents increased 183 percent. There were 58 incidents involving Iranian vessels in the gulf that put American troops at risk. Iran used its money not to be able to help the Iranian people but to attack us and to attack our allies. Our Nation withdrew from this nuclear negotiation 4 years ago. After that happened, Iran's exports of crude oil declined by more than 2 million barrels a day, cutting off a major supply of money into the regime. Iran's defense budget was then cut 28 percent because of those revenue shortfalls. Iran's currency lost 70 percent of its value as the pressure was applied to Iran to actually join into nations around the world, to actually become a nation like the rest of the world. I am bringing this into the Senate today. It is an issue that I have brought multiple times. We should have ongoing dialogue with Iran. They are ambitious to become a nuclear weapons-capable nation. They are the single largest State sponsor of terrorism in the world. They are the destabilizing force in all of the Middle East. Every nation in that entire region has to prepare themselves for an inevitable, erratic, irrational attack from Iran; and every nation fears the day that they gain a nuclear-capable weapon. But the gaps in the nuclear negotiations are large. Let me list some of them. The nuclear negotiation excludes any conversation about their terrorist activities. It is just simply not limiting their terrorist activities, just limiting their nuclear capability. They are building long-range weapons capable of carrying a nuclear weapon. Why would you need to build a long-range heavy missile unless you are carrying a nuclear tip? The two are connected--their terrorist activities, their missile ambitions, and their nuclear ambitions. We should connect those in all of our relationships. My amendment in my sense of the Senate that I bring is very clear today. One is to acknowledge what we all know is actually happening. The second is to say, we can't have any kind of sanctions relief, especially preemptively in negotiations on lifting energy petroleum sales coming out of Iran. The next section of it, the third section of it, is simply not releasing any of the sanctions on the Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps. They are the core of the terrorist activities in the area. They are the trainers for those who actually attacked Americans in Iraq. We should not lift sanctions on them. The fourth on this is not providing relief to the financial institutions in Iran so they can't continue to extend their terrorist activities and their financial activities behind the scenes. The goal of this is to be able to put pressure on the regime but to protect the Iranian people as much as possible. The final statement that is in this sense of the Senate is to affirm our long-term friendship with the people of Iran and our understanding that they are living under the thumb of this regime. My friend that I had mentioned before who is from Iran has reached out to me in the last 24 hours with this simple question. The Iranian people are on the streets, trying to gain their freedom, trying to be able to speak and live their faith as they choose to. And here is this question: What are the Americans going to do to stand with us? That is a fair question for this body. The Iranian people who are begging for their own freedom do not want the American response to be sending cash to the regime so they can oppress their people more or lifting the sanctions at this moment so that the regime can continue to advance its terrorist activities or just disengaging from its missile ambitions that destabilizes the region or to continue to be able to use Russia as a proxy for the United States of America while Russia is literally using Iranian drones to attack the Ukrainians. Let's speak with a clear voice to the Iranian people on the streets. They want to hear the United States say: We stand with your passion for freedom, and not: We stand with the regime in what they are trying to do to you. So saying all that: As if in legislative session, I ask unanimous consent that the Committee on Banking, Housing, and Urban Affairs be discharged from further consideration of S. 1950 and the Senate proceed to its immediate consideration; I ask further 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. LANKFORD. Mr. President, I appreciate my colleague. We have a lot of agreement in areas in Lebanon and other areas in the region that we work diligently together to be able to resolve--very, very difficult areas in this region. But I do want to say: Facts are stubborn things. When my colleague makes a statement that we can see what happens during the time of the JCPOA and we can see what happens during the time of sanctions, I am welcome to be able to look at those facts. During the time of the JCPOA, as I mentioned before, from 2015 to 2017, munitions fired against American troops in Iraq increased 341 percent. Many of those munitions were Iranian-provided. So to be able to say that there were no attacks on Americans during the JCPOA is just factually not correct. I can take you to a multitude of members of the U.S. military that will speak specifically of munitions that were fired on them and all kinds of improvised explosive devices created by the Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps and shipped into Iraq to be able to attack them specifically during that time period. So it is not factually correct there were no attacks on Americans during the time of the JCPOA. In fact, all the folks that look at these issues saw that terrorism increased 183 percent during that time period. During the time of the sanctions, Iran suffered real consequences in their economy, including a dramatic drop in their own defense spending by 28 percent during that time period. I received a personal outreach from an individual who is a leader in Lebanon, who my colleague and I both know well, who reached out to me personally and said whatever the United States is doing right now to cut off funding to Iran, keep doing it because it is also cutting off funding to Hezbollah and to Lebanon. They are not getting their paychecks right now, and that is helping the stability of our government. So there was a real effect during that time period. We can discuss strategic aspects of which one is more effective, the agreement or the heavier sanctions, but we can't just ignore it and say there was no benefit during that time period in the last several years on the pressure that was put on Iran during this time period. The fact still remains, the people of Iran are asking the question. They are on the streets chanting for freedom. What is the Senate going to do to stand with them? And, currently, it is nothing. I would like for it to be something, to stand with the people of Iran as they speak out against the repressive regime that they are under the thumb of. I yield the floor.

Mr. LANKFORD

Mr. LANKFORD. Madam President, 2 years ago, almost to the exact moment, I was sitting on the south lawn of the White House in the blazing Sun, where a redhead should never sit, getting a sunburn, on a hot September day in DC, watching leadership of the UAE, Bahrain, Israel, and the United States all shake hands and sign an agreement called the Abraham Accords. It was a remarkable moment in American history. We have become so accustomed in the last 2 years to this conversation about the Abraham Accords, we lose track that it was just 2 years ago that we had one of the greatest breakthroughs in Middle East peace that we have had in decades. In 1979, Egypt and Israel came together for a peace agreement under President Jimmy Carter and the Camp David Accords. In 1994, Jordan and Israel normalized relationships under President Clinton. But for 26 years, there were no additional peace agreements and, quite frankly, very few conversations even. It stopped. All the conversation among foreign affairs was that you had to resolve the Palestinian conflict before anything else could be resolved in the Middle East, and for 26 years, all the focus was on that. The Trump administration came in and put the whole thing on its head and said: What if? What if we work towards peace agreements outside of the Palestinian conversation? If we set that aside, could we still normalize agreements? Again, most people said: No, that is not possible--until 2 years ago today. Two years ago today, when the leaders of UAE, Bahrain, Israel, and the United States met together and signed an agreement, they started not just a process, they started a conversation and a dialogue. They shook hands and signed an agreement that had remarkable statements in it about religious liberty that we look at and think: The Arab world would not sign that, but they did, quite frankly, because people hadn't asked them to. There were conversations and agreements made about energy policy, about economic development in a region of the world that many would say that no one will ever meet and this will never get better. President Reagan once said: Our involvement in the search for Middle East peace is not a matter of preference; it is a moral imperative. We are a people of peace. We are a people, as a nation, passionate about religious liberty. We are a people who want to see a nation joining other nations in economic development. It is who we are. It is who we have been from the beginning, and we are at our best when we are expanding that. Since the signing of that document, several things have happened in that 2-year time period. The first thing that happened, really, was that in October of 2020, Sudan raised their hand and said: I want to join that agreement. Then, in December of 2020, Morocco raised their hand and said: I want to be in that agreement. It quickly went from four nations to five, to six, all in this ongoing dialogue about peace in the region. The countries have exchanged Ambassadors since then. Again, that may not sound revolutionary, but it is in that region. The UAE, Morocco, and Bahrain all opened up Embassies in Israel--again, revolutionary. Israel opened up its Embassy--the first ever in the Gulf nations--in Abu Dhabi in January of 2021. It opens up its next Embassy in Bahrain in September of 2021. The UAE and Israel have signed comprehensive free-trade agreements. There is now $10 billion worth of trade in the next 5 years that has been set up between those nations. Trade has begun between Israel and Morocco. In fact, it has increased 94 percent in a year. Trade between the UAE and Israel has increased 88 percent in 1 year. Trade between Israel and Egypt, even, has increased 41 percent in the last year and between Israel and Jordan, with a longstanding agreement, has increased 55 percent. The UAE and Morocco now have university students who are studying in Israeli universities--something we thought we would never see. The UAE has overhauled its school curriculum to increase tolerance and understanding of other faiths and other religious groups. Dozens of daily flights are now moving in those Abraham Accord countries, bringing business and tourism. There are even real conversations about water, about energy sharing and development and large economic infrastructure projects. There are other countries, even, in the region that have started to take notice of this. Countries like Saudi Arabia are now allowing Israeli-bound flights to fly through Saudi airspace. Now, again, that may not seem revolutionary to some, that planes get to fly over them, but, you understand, 2 years ago, that didn't happen. The Saudis made every Israeli-bound flight go around their airspace. Israel and Saudi Arabia have also participated in multilateral naval and air drills, alongside UAE, Bahrain, and other countries. It is an enormous shift. If I can even say this in the region, Israel and Lebanon are very close right now to forming an agreement on what they call the Blue Line, the border between Israel and Lebanon, including the maritime areas. What does that matter? It is a tremendous development for Lebanon, for their economic development, because there is a large natural gas field just off of Lebanon's coast, but the border has been unresolved for years. In the conflict between nations and the trust that has collapsed, the Abraham Accords have provided an opportunity and a moment for the nations in the region to say: If peace can begin with UAE and Bahrain and Sudan and Morocco and Israel and recognition and economic development and Ambassadors can be exchanged, who else can engage in economic development? Let's start with their neighbor Lebanon. To build trust is to also build clear borders. This is real progress in 2 years. My challenge to the administration and to our State Department is, fan the flame. Keep going on this. We have seen nations begin to do economic development, families meeting other families, school curriculum changing to taking out anti-Semitic tropes, basically, out of their curriculum. We have seen real progress in this area. Keep going. Other nations should be welcomed to be able to join in the Abraham Accords. It is not closed. Other nations can join in that economic development. There are four of us who began the Abraham Accords Caucus: myself, Senator Rosen, Senator Ernst, and Senator Booker. We launched out the four of us and invited all of our colleagues to be able to join into it. Our focus is to be able to work with the Ambassadors of those nations to say: How can we partner together to bless what has already occurred, and how can we expand into other nations? How can we encourage increased economic development? Now, there are still very real challenges. The work is not done by any means, but it has at least begun, and progress is taking off--this simple principle of economic engagement, going past all of the government noise and saying: What if we allowed infrastructure to be able to work together? What if we allowed tourism to be able to happen? What if we allowed businesses to work with other businesses in other nations that used to be hostile? How can we engage in such a way that would help? The four of us in the Abraham Accords Caucus brought to the floor today a resolution to recognize this 2-year anniversary. It sat before all 100 Senators, and I don't know a single Senator who is opposed to that because we all want to see peace in the Middle East. We all want to see that kind of progress, and we all want to see this increase. So, to our State Department, keep the work going. Keep the conversation going. To nations around the world that used to be hostile to Israel and the region, why don't we set down the past and prepare our families for the future? I yield the floor.

Mr. LANKFORD

Mr. LANKFORD. Mr. President, I want to go into some comments about some things that I heard from Oklahomans in August--in, thankfully, a deep-breath moment when we were not in session here for a little while. But I first need to just make a couple of quick comments for folks who might have just heard my colleague before, from Illinois, saying that Republicans believe that electric vehicles are socialism if you promote electric vehicles and that we oppose electric vehicles and electrification. Actually, I just have to make a quick comment about that. I don't hear that Republicans are in opposition to electric vehicles. I hear Republicans in opposition to handing companies billions and billions of dollars of taxpayer money and saying: If you will produce electric vehicles, then we are going to give you these billions of dollars to be able to do it. I also hear Republicans, like myself, in opposition and saying: 85 percent of the world's lithium, which runs these electric vehicles, comes from China. So, until we can actually get our own supply of energy for lithium, we shouldn't be running toward electric vehicles, because if you run toward electric vehicles and then you are dependent on communist China for your fuel, that is a bad idea. I also hear Republicans saying: Our infrastructure is not ready for this. This is not some fairytale. Today, in California, they are telling people to turn up their thermostats because they don't have enough electricity, and don't charge your electric vehicles. So what I hear is a little bit of common sense on our side of the aisle to say: We don't have a problem with electric vehicles. People should be able to choose to drive whatever vehicle they want to be able to drive and that the consumer will actually purchase. But when you hand companies billions of dollars and say that you only get this money ``if'' and if you push people to use a fuel that is dominantly coming from a communist nation and we don't have the infrastructure to actually support it but say you need to get it anyway, we think that is a challenge. The market is going to drive this. People will make choices, and the market will be able to keep up. But when government arbitrarily pushes that forward faster, that causes a problem in our economy, and we have seen it already. As I traveled around the State, our State, like several other States, goes back to school early. It is always funny to me when I return after Labor Day and people are talking about their kids are going to school this week. I always smile and say: Our kids returned to school 3 weeks ago, actually. August is a great time to be able to see families getting organized, people heading back to school, talking to teachers and superintendents and talking about their hope and prayer for a normal school year, where there aren't mask mandates and all the things coming down on them. It is time for me to actually, some evenings, be able to stand out in the yard and be able to talk to my neighbors. It is great to just be able to visit and catch up, to be able to chat with someone in my Sunday school class and to be able to hold their young child and to be able to look in the face of a new baby. I had the opportunity to be able to be home and to be able to stand in a funeral home with a law enforcement officer who was murdered in the line of duty. It was an opportunity to be able to talk to some of our electric cooperatives that are getting power to our rural areas and making such a difference. It was an opportunity to stand and pray with a cancer survivor in Guymon who has had a really--the past couple of years, it has been tough. It was an opportunity to be able to visit with an aerospace company in Oklahoma--in fact, several that are doing the technology and the innovation that are making quite a difference in both our national security and in our own aerospace safety and to visit with small business owners who are making things work in a very tough economy based on their work, not based on what is happening in Washington, DC-- based on their work. August is an opportunity to go visit the stockyards and feedlots and get a chance to be able to talk to folks who are, every day, making our food supply work. It is an opportunity to be able to visit with big companies based in Oklahoma that have large facilities like Amazon and Macy's--major companies that are out there that are doing business across our State and, quite frankly, to be able to interact with companies that are just as large that are also coming toward my great State of Oklahoma because it is a great place to be able to do business. There were individuals whom I got a chance to be able to visit with in the fire training center, many of them volunteers who come to this fire training center because they want to be able to learn better about how to be able to fight fire because this is literally neighbors taking care of neighbors. I hear so much conversation in Washington, DC, about how Washington, DC, is solving all the problems in the country. But when I meet with volunteer firefighters, they know full well it is everybody taking care of everybody's neighbors, doing what they can to be able to help each other. I had the opportunity to both sit in church and watch 25 people get baptized on one Sunday and see life change literally happening before my eyes. I also had the opportunity to be able to visit with folks in nursing homes and visit with their staff who are really struggling under some of the mandates that are on them still. I have to tell you, for many of the families who are living with nursing homes and are dealing with CMS right now and some of the mandates that are still on them, it seems like life is returning to normal for many places, but the mandates are still on prisons, nursing homes, assisted living facilities, and Head Start facilities. For those kids and for those seniors, it is tough, and they are looking for relief from DC. I had the opportunity to be able to go through No Man's Land Beef Jerky, some of the best beef jerky in the country. You ought to try it sometime for folks who haven't. You walk through No Man's Land Beef Jerky, and there is a lot of meat there, let me just tell you, as they are hand-trimming each section and dehydrating and preparing it for customers all over the country--quite frankly, many places around the world. I was able to visit VA centers, talk with their staff, talk with veterans who are there getting care, able to go to our military bases and able to talk with leadership there about what do they need because they work every day to be able to protect our Nation's future. I was able to visit our inland water ports. Yes, there are ports in Oklahoma. For those of you all who are not tracking geography, Oklahoma has the northernmost inland ports in the country, and it is a vital link to the Midwest, getting fertilizer and getting wheat out, taking care of heavy steel and supplies. They are a vital part of our technology and of our transportation. There are too many places to be able to name, but I do have to be able to call out some amazing folks who are in New Leaf. New Leaf is a group of people who have dedicated their lives to helping the developmentally disabled. There are hundreds of people who serve there, serving hundreds of people. These are developmentally disabled adults who have hopes and aspirations. They want to work. They have dreams and goals for their life as well. They want to get married; they want to engage; and they want to have friends. They are a group of people who have wrapped around these families and are blessing them in ways that most folks would never know. It is neighbors helping neighbors. As I traveled around the State, literally from Guymon all the way across to the east of my State--as I traveled across the State, I heard the same comment over and over and over again: When is inflation going to come down? When is the cost of living going to get better? From every small business that I talked to, they would talk about supply chain issues and the costs and the contracts and the prices that they are selling things for and the prices that they are getting things for and the challenges they face. NFIB works with a lot of small businesses around the country. They do an optimism index every year. Thirty-seven percent of small business owners now report their single biggest issue as a small business owner is inflation. I got into a lot of conversations with a lot of folks, as probably many people in this room did. But I can't even begin to tell you the number of conversations I got into that, within minutes, the conversation turned to the price of eggs, to say: Wow, have you bought eggs yet? They seem to go up every single week. If it feels that way for folks, I can tell you it actually is that way for folks. The data continues to be able to show that. Studies show, in Oklahoma, relative to January of 2021, Oklahomans are paying $593 more a month right now than they were just in January 2021. That equals out to $7,115 more a year that each family is paying this year than they were 2 years ago--$7,115. This is a real effect on families. While all of us are grateful that the price of gas seems to be coming down little by little--everyone is celebrating that gas prices are only $3.50 now--we understand that just a year and a half ago, gas prices were a dollar and a half less than what they are now. The single biggest effect on our economy right now--single biggest effect--is the price of gasoline and the price of energy. As energy prices rise, and they continue to stay high, it continues to drive the cost of every other product because you have got to move products to actually be sold or to be manufactured. Gasoline right now, this July, is 44 percent higher than it was last July--44 percent. And while it has come down, we forget how fast and how high it rose. People seem to be relieved now that it is only three and a half bucks, knowing that that is 44 percent higher than it was a single year ago. The cost of breakfast cereal is 16 percent higher than it was a year ago. The cost of chicken is 18 percent higher than it was just a year ago. The cost of milk is 16 percent higher than what it was a year ago. The cost of coffee is 20 percent higher than what it was a year ago. The cost of butter is 22 percent higher than what it was a year ago. Baby food is 15 percent higher than what it was a year ago. And just household cleaning products, it is 11 percent higher than what it was a year ago. For many people who hear this outside of this room, they would say: Yes, all those things are true. They are obvious. But I have yet to run into a family, as I traveled around my State and engaged with so many great Oklahomans--I didn't hear a single one say: I am so grateful that we are going to have more IRS audits in the next couple of years because that is going to bring down inflation. I didn't have one. I didn't have anyone say: I am so glad there are going to be additional subsidies for electric vehicles because that is going to bring down the cost of eggs. There is a real concern here. People are worried because they don't know what happens next. For retirees, the latest study that came out, $3.4 trillion--$3.4 trillion--has been lost from IRAs in the past year--$3.4 trillion. So the mix that we have right now are individuals who are worried about just paying for the next thing, when the cost of living for them is $7,000 more this year than it was last year, just trying to be able to keep up. And the challenge for retirees, watching the value of their retirement go down, as many who are on a fixed income also realize, the costs have gone up dramatically. It is real, and people do feel it. While in Oklahoma, I interacted with lots of folks who are neighbors taking care of neighbors. There is a very real concern about Washington, DC, and what they will do to them rather than for them, and people are worried about it. I would say we, as leaders, have a responsibility to be able to set a direction to be able to take care of other people's money--that is the tax dollars that are there; that is other people's money--to be able to manage the debt of this Nation that has accelerated dramatically in the past several years, much of it due to COVID, much of it not. We have some responsibilities to take care of. I hope everyone had the opportunity to be able to listen to people in their own States and to be able to hear what I was able to hear in August. With that, I yield the floor. I suggest the absence of a quorum.

Mr. LANKFORD

Mr. LANKFORD. Madam President, I yield myself 20 minutes from the bill time.

Mr. LANKFORD. Madam President, Hans Christian Andersen, in 1837, wrote a story about group think. It is called ``The Emperor's New Clothes.'' It begins with a leader who really loved his clothes. Some unsavory characters saw that, and they set up a weaving loom to make the finest clothes in the land, but they were actually weaving just air; there was nothing to it. The catch was they had sold the story that, if you can't see what they are weaving, it must be that you are just not wise. So the Emperor sends a couple of his advisers to go check out the weaving to see what it looks like. They see, obviously, nothing because there is nothing there, and they all declare ``Oh, it is beautiful; it is lovely'' because they don't want to be seen as unwise. Then it ends up with the Emperor preparing for a big parade, and that is where I pick up the story. Let me read to you from Hans Christian Andersen, from 1837, when he tries on the ``new clothes.'' These scoundrels, these unsavory characters who had sold him this said: ``How well Your Majesty's new clothes look. Aren't they becoming!'' The advisers all chirped in. He heard on all sides, ``That pattern, so perfect! Those colors, so suitable! It is a magnificent outfit.'' Then the minister of public processions announced: ``Your Majesty's canopy is waiting outside.'' ``Well, I'm supposed to be ready,'' the Emperor said, and turned again for one last look in the mirror. ``It is a remarkable fit, isn't it?'' He seemed to regard his costume with the greatest interest. The noblemen who were to carry his train stooped low and reached for the floor as if they were picking up his mantle. Then they pretended to lift and hold it high. They didn't dare admit they had nothing to hold. So off went the Emperor in procession under his splendid canopy. Everyone in the streets and the windows said, ``Oh, how fine are the Emperor's new clothes! Don't they fit him to perfection? And see his long train!'' Nobody would confess that he couldn't see anything, for that would prove him either unfit for his position, or a fool. No costume the Emperor had worn before was ever such a complete success. ``But he hasn't got anything on,'' a little child said. ``Did you ever hear such innocent prattle?'' said its father. And one person whispered to another what the child had said, ``He hasn't anything on. A child says he hasn't anything on.'' ``But he hasn't got anything on!'' the whole town cried out at last. The Emperor shivered, for he suspected they were right. But he thought, ``This procession has got to go on.'' So he walked more proudly than ever, as his noblemen held high the train that wasn't there at all. When the facts come out, it is hard sometimes to admit you are on display, that the bill actually doesn't do what the title says it is supposed to do. This time, the bill is called the Inflation Reduction Act. They say it is designed to be able to lower inflation and to reduce the deficit except that now it has actually been scored. It doesn't actually reduce inflation, and deficit reduction is as invisible as the Emperor's new clothes. The score for inflation stated in the public scoring that ``the impact on inflation is statistically indistinguishable from zero.'' The CBO scored the bill and said it ``would have a negligible effect on inflation.'' Remember, this is the bill titled: the ``Inflation Reduction Act.'' The score on the deficit end, after many on the other side of the aisle here have said it would have $300 billion in deficit reduction, it is less than a billion. But wait, there is more to the story on even that $100 billion. More than 200 economists wrote a letter to Senator Schumer detailing how this bill will not reduce inflation nor reduce the deficit. Taxing more and spending more will only make the problem worse. They closed by saying this statement: The bill deficit reduction is likely to prove illusionary due to implausible spending phase-outs. In summary, we agree with the urgent need to reduce inflation, but the Inflation Reduction Act of 2022 is a misleading label applied to a bill that would likely achieve the exact opposite effect. What they said was, the Emperor has no clothes. It doesn't really reduce inflation. At some point, the emperor has to make a decision: Am I going to keep parading through the streets, when everyone knows the Inflation Reduction Act doesn't reduce inflation or am I going to head back and fix it? Let me start with just the plan that is in this bill. Here is the bill. It is titled: The ``Inflation Reduction Act of 2022.'' So the plan my Democratic colleagues have laid out--let me just give you a couple of details in the plan to reduce inflation in the Inflation Reduction Act of 2022. Here is one: Up to $4 billion has been allocated to study cow burping and their production of methane. I am sure that that is going to bring down the price of beef right away. As I have heard, even on the floor today, this is going to bring down the prices at the grocery store by having up to $4 billion allocated to study cow burping. It adds $2 billion in construction grants to improve walkability in context-sensitive projects. No one seems to know what the words ``context-sensitive projects'' even mean or how $2 billion in construction to improve walkability will bring down inflation. There is $3 billion for environmental justice block grants to facilitate workshops--workshops--to bring down inflation. Aren't you confident that the price of eggs and bread will go down after $3 billion is spent on environmental justice workshops? There is $17 million for consumer-related education and partnerships to reduce greenhouse gas emissions. By the way, that is not reducing. Those are partnerships to discuss reducing. There is a brandnew tax credit for Elon Musk that is in this, though. I am sure that it will bring down inflation. Tesla has used up all of its credits for its electric vehicles so this bill renews it and does a special perk for Tesla to give them an unlimited number of new tax credits. I am sure Elon Musk is thrilled about his unlimited new tax credits to him, and I am sure all of our prices will go down based on Elon Musk's new multibillion-dollar tax credit that he gets. Again, the bill is the Inflation Reduction Act. There is a new fee on methane that will raise the price of natural gas, which has been estimated to raise the price of our natural gas to the consumer by 17 percent--a 17-percent increase on our natural gas. Now, let me remind you that this is the Inflation Reduction Act that will increase the price of our heating, of our cooking, and of our energy production--17 percent. There is a new tax on imported oil and new fees on domestic oil produced on Federal lands. There are new inspection fees and owners' fees on pipelines. I do not understand how new fees and new taxes on oil and gas are supposed to lower the price of natural gas and of gasoline, but that is what is being declared in the Inflation Reduction Act. If only we had more taxes on oil, gas, and natural gas, then prices would somehow magically go down. As has been mentioned multiple times on the floor, this Inflation Reduction Act hires more than 80,000 new IRS auditors, with no limit on whom they can audit. If you thought that there would be a limit to those people making $40,000 or more on being audited, you were wrong. Now, that could have been in this bill, but they chose not to put it in this bill. There are no guardrails for who can be audited by the IRS with billions of dollars being allocated to new IRS agents. Every single American in every income bracket, every small business, and every large company--everyone--is going to experience new IRS audits in the days ahead. Remember this night. Remember this night. In the next 10 years, when you get an IRS audit, it was the Democrats in this body who sent the IRS to your house. So keep your records because IRS audits are about to dramatically go up due to the gift of the Inflation Reduction Act. Maybe this bill should instead be called the CPA Hiring Act because I assume millions of taxpayers who struggle under our complicated Tax Code already will now have to hire a CPA knowing their chances of being audited are greatly increasing now. They know the complicated rules of the IRS. Most taxpayers I talk to submit their tax forms every year and hope they get it right because it is so complicated, but because of this night and this vote, there will be auditors coming after you to make sure that you got it right. The Democrats, in the days ahead, when the IRS comes to this body for a hearing, will be asking them: Did they pull in additional money based on the audits they gave them? They are not telling you this, but they assume the IRS will collect $200 billion more once they give them these new auditors. You can be assured that that is going to be a metric that is going to be checked in the days ahead. The IRS will suddenly be like the smalltown police force that has a quota for writing tickets on the highway through their small town in order to help pay for the new city hall. If you have to pay for city hall, you need to write more tickets on the highway. It is about to be that way with the IRS. They need to audit more and go get more because we gave you more people. Remember, this is the Inflation Reduction Act. I have yet to figure out how Americans getting more audits reduces inflation, but as has been advertised, this is going to bring down the cost of groceries, and this is going to bring down the cost of gas by more people getting audited by the IRS. One of the other interesting plans in this bill to reduce inflation is to force more Americans to join a union. Now, I have to tell you that I have no angst against unions. Unions are a choice. Those individuals should be able to choose to join a union and be a part of collective bargaining as an American right and privilege. Let me say this: 10.3 percent of the American workforce is union-- 10.3 percent. In the energy portion of this bill, which is billions and billions and billions of dollars, the unions get billions of dollars, and nonunion workers get nothing. So, if you work in the energy sector right now and if you are not a union employee, you are about to get cut out because the way this bill is written it gives Federal payouts to companies that use union laborers, which will make nonunion energy companies uncompetitive and will force them out of business or force them to unionize. Quite frankly, this bill should be called the Mandatory Union Bill of 2022, not the Inflation Reduction Act, because I am not sure how forcing more people into a union reduces inflation, but that is a major portion of this bill. I am confident the union bosses across the country are thrilled to finally see a return on their investments since they gave heavily to Democrats in 2022 to get them elected, and this is their payoff. There will no longer be 10.3 percent of workers in unions. This is going to force more companies to have to unionize or they will not be able to survive because of the Federal credits that only go to companies that hire union labor. Does forced unionization sound like the solution to inflation reduction to you? It does to apparently half this body. It creates a subsidy in health insurance to be announced right before the fall elections this fall. And it is not for those who are in poverty. Those who are in poverty, all the way up to 400 percent of poverty, already get healthcare subsidies. Oh, no, this is not for those folks at the poverty level--200 percent, 300 percent, or 400 percent of poverty; this is a family of four making $200,000 who will get this healthcare subsidy. What do the economists think will happen with this new subsidy? They believe employers will drop their health insurance and will push employees under the government Affordable Care Act policies and will shift more and more people onto the government rolls. Remember, this is the Inflation Reduction Act. As homelessness increases across the Nation right now, the bill adds $1 billion into HUD for zero emissions electricity generation in affordable housing. That is what it is called, zero emissions electricity generation in affordable housing. It is not about increasing access to housing for those who are homeless; it is solar panels in public housing. I am confident the people who are living on the street, trying to survive a 9-percent inflation rate, are really not hoping that they can find someplace with a solar panel, but that is what is in the Inflation Reduction Act of 2022, solar panels in public housing. That is their solution to solving inflation. While many of us have been pushing back hard to block China from buying more land in the United States, this bill actually gives ag subsidies to land owners regardless of who is the owner of the land. They don't have to be a U.S. citizen. They don't have to be American ownership. We are literally opening up that to owners of land to be able to get access to it. I have also heard over and over again that there are no new taxes in the Inflation Reduction Act. I have heard that in national media from my Democratic colleagues saying it over and over again and on this floor. Well, it seems to be true. If you are a green energy company, that is true; there are no new taxes for you. They will have huge tax breaks. And while there is a push for everyone to have a 15-percent minimum tax, that is not exactly true for those folks who are in these green energy companies that are major Democrat donors. They will not have that same minimum tax standard. But the Tax Foundation found this. This is their quote: On average, tax filers in every quintile would experience a drop in after-tax incomes. Let me run that past you again. ``On average, tax filers in every quintile would experience a drop in after-tax incomes'' if this bill passes. That means everyone in the country, under $400,000 and over $400,000 a year--everyone has a drop in after-tax income. One of the new taxes that was just added into the bill today is the stock buyback tax. This is to punish companies that are listed on our stock exchanges that buy back stocks to raise the value of stock. Now, they buy back stock so that the stock value goes up. They are putting a tax on them to be able to punish them to try to prevent them from doing this. They make it sound like they are hitting the big, fat cat corporate CEOs and the guys on Wall Street, keeping the value of their stock lower. They are going to really stick it to the man--except 60 million Americans are invested in a 401(k) plan for their retirement. Sixty million. The largest owners of stocks in America are retirement plans, insurance companies, and nonprofits. Google ``largest owners of stocks.'' So the people who will be hurt the most in this new plan to drive down the stock market prices are nonprofits, insurance companies, and retirement plans. Fifty-eight percent of Americans own some kind of stock. This is a tax directly and deliberately designed to keep the price of individual stocks from going up. Sure, that is going to hurt CEOs who own their own stock, but it is also going to hurt everyday Americans who just own stock on their own, and it is going to hurt all of those retirement plans. But they seem not to care whom they hurt in this as long as they can also hurt CEOs. Driving down the stock market will, I guess, reduce inflation, if that is their plan in their Inflation Reduction Act, is to drive stock prices lower for retirees and nonprofits and individual investors. Another new tax that was added today is a 15-percent minimum tax on businesses that are funded by private equity. I have to tell you, this one shocked even me when it got slipped in today. Most companies that are funded by private money are small businesses, research companies, small manufacturing companies. This adds a new 15-percent tax on those small businesses. Basically, if you are owned by private money or funded by private money separate from the owner itself, you are considered a subsidiary, and so you get this big tax laid on you. Let me give you an example of this. I know directly a company in Oklahoma that is a small manufacturing company. They are funded by private outside money. During COVID, my Democrat colleagues had the same vendetta against manufacturing that was funded by private equity. This particular company, unlike every other company across the country during COVID, could not get access to the Paycheck Protection Program because Democrats said: If you are funded by private outside money, then we are not going to get you access to that because you are in evil private equity areas--even though they are vastly small businesses. This particular manufacturing company in Oklahoma produces valves. This valve company had hundreds of employees before COVID. Once COVID happened and business dropped off immediately, because they couldn't get access to the Paycheck Protection Program like every other small business, they laid off hundreds of workers. Those workers weren't rich folks. Those were folks turning a wrench and making a great product that a lot of people wanted. They got laid off simply because of how they were funded. Now my Democratic colleagues want to jump right on top of them at the end of COVID, as the company is finally starting to come back and they are hiring people back, to now slap a brandnew tax on top of them that no one has discussed, no one has evaluated, and no hearings have occurred on it to determine how wide and how broad this will be. Literally, the owners of this company will wake up tomorrow morning, because in the middle of the night, a new tax got added onto them right at the tail end of COVID simply because my Democratic colleagues don't like any company--regardless of what they do, regardless of the workers who actually work there, they don't like how they are funded through private individuals who fund them. This bill doesn't lower inflation. I listed a lot of things. Can a single American go: Oh, that will take down inflation; that will work. None of those things take down inflation. It also doesn't reduce the deficit. Brace yourself for this. Their plan for reducing the deficit is not doing programs they were already not going to do. That is their plan. That is the deficit reduction. Let me give you an example of this. Let's say you are going through Walmart, shopping, and you are with your shopping cart. You step aside to be able to get something off the shelf, and when you turn back around, somebody has stuck in your basket a big bag of frozen brussels sprouts. Now, you didn't put them in there; somebody else put them in there. As you go through the aisle, you look down and you see this big bag of brussels sprouts. I don't know about you, I don't want frozen brussels sprouts. Maybe some of you love those. Great. But if somebody slipped a bag of frozen brussels sprouts into my cart, I would put it back. I would put that away and say: No, I am not going to buy that. Somebody else put that in my cart. Here is what I wouldn't say. I wouldn't say: Somebody put a bag of frozen brussels sprouts in my cart. I am going to put it back on the shelf. That is deficit reduction in my cart. I wouldn't say that. Here is what I mean by that. During the end of the Trump administration, they laid the groundwork for seniors to get a rebate at the pharmacy counter for Medicare prescriptions to make sure that every senior got a discount at the pharmacy counter. That was the plan. That is what the Trump administration put in place. When the Biden administration came in, they didn't like that plan to give discounts to seniors at the pharmacy counter, so they set that plan aside and said: We are not going to do that. Instead, they have come up with this new plan that I will explain in just a second. But they are saying that because they didn't do the plan that Trump was planning to do, because they didn't do that plan, that is $100 billion in savings by not buying what they never intended to buy, ever. Let me just tell you, if you don't buy the brussels sprouts, you just don't have the brussels sprouts, but you are not saving the money from that. You just didn't get them. That is not real savings. So when they say it is deficit reduction, it is because they are not doing what they never said they were going to do, and now they are magically calling it deficit reduction. That is not real reduction of the deficit; that is a budget gimmick in Washington, DC--a huge budget gimmick. Can I just say, the Emperor has no clothes. It is not real. In the place of this rebate rule, in its place, they have created a real method of price controls for some drugs. And it is not price negotiations; it is price controls. They are spending $3 billion to set up a system for the government to be able to select prices on one of the most used drugs in America. By the way, it starts in 2026, is when this starts. I have heard some people on the floor say: We are going to have lower prices right away. This plan starts in 2026. It wouldn't actually affect anyone's pharmaceuticals until 2027. So if you are planning on a reduction in prices, it is not coming soon; it is 5 years away, if there is a price decrease at all. The way it is set up is the President, whoever that may be 5 years from now, will have a new authority not to negotiate prices in the next 10 years. It is not a negotiation, it is setting the price, because if you disagree with the next President, whoever the next President is, and what they set on the price, they can raise the taxes on your company 95 percent. So if you disagree with the price that they pick, whoever the next President is, what they pick for the price, then your company gets hit with a 95-percent tax. How does that sound for government sheer power over a company, to crush whoever they choose? That is how this is set up. You don't follow what I say, we will crush your company. What does that mean for the future? Drug companies will have new incentives to not use existing drugs for new treatments because here is how it typically works: If a cancer drug works for lung cancer, then they start experimenting with other types of cancer to see if it works on those. But in this system the Democrats are setting up, if a drug works for lung cancer, they have a disincentive to try it on other cancers because if the drug gets too used, then it falls into this new negotiation category. So the incentive for the drug companies is not to try new ways of using this drug for fear of getting too big. Can I tell you what this looks like in real life? I have a friend at home whose wife has pancreatic cancer, and they are desperately trying every treatment and trying to get into every clinical trial they can get into, desperately. They are praying, and they are working, and he is being an awesome husband, and she is being a tough warrior going through nausea and pretty awful treatments. They are trying to get into clinical trials, which is already hard. This bill will make it even harder because existing cancer drugs will have a disincentive to test out new ways to be able to serve their cancer. Thank you very much to my Democratic colleagues who are reducing the number of cancer cures for the future. How does that cure inflation in the Inflation Reduction Act? There is also a special little feature in it, in the way the drug piece is set up, that it incentivizes more IV drugs and fewer oral drugs because IV drugs get more time and oral drugs get less time. So the incentive is to set up IV drugs instead--for the drug companies. So for all of us who would prefer taking a pill than taking a drug intravenously, tough luck. Democrats prefer IV drugs to oral drugs. So, in the future, when you are taking an IV instead of an oral medication, it is because of the Inflation Reduction Act of 2022. Can I just remind everyone that Medicare has insolvency in 6 years-- 2028. This Inflation Reduction Act takes the savings from this new prescription plan from Medicare and takes it out of Medicare. It doesn't stabilize Medicare, which is going insolvent in 6 years. It takes it out of Medicare and moves it over to the Affordable Care Act subsidies. It literally takes money designed for 76-year-olds on a fixed income and gives them to 26-year-olds and their family making $200,000 a year. That is the Inflation Reduction Act of 2022. By the way, did I mention, again, that those subsidies land right before the election this fall? This bill is three-quarters of a trillion dollars that not a single person in this Chamber has read--755 pages of it--that came out a few hours ago. The media, which also hasn't read this bill, continues to be able to talk about what a great plan it is for inflation reduction. They continue to praise the bill, though they have read the same things: It doesn't reduce inflation; it doesn't reduce the deficit. They have joined in the chorus talking about the beauty of the emperor's new clothes. I am willing to say what a lot of people in this room know in their gut but they are afraid to say. It doesn't reduce inflation. It doesn't reduce the deficit. The emperor has no clothes. Let's reject this bill. I yield the floor.

Mr. LANKFORD

Mr. LANKFORD. Madam President, I call up my amendment No. 5384 and ask that it be reported by number.

Mr. LANKFORD. Madam President, the Biden administration continues to declare that we are in a public health emergency because of COVID-19. This public health emergency, first declared in January 2020, has been renewed 10 times. Title 42 is the health authority specifically designed to prevent people from coming into the country during a pandemic. It is nonsensical to say that we have a COVID health emergency everywhere but on our southern border. If there is a public health emergency in this country, then title 42 authority must remain in place. Title 42 authority is the last line of defense that our Border Patrol agents have to protect our Nation, and my Democratic colleagues said they agreed with that idea back in April. The situation has only worsened since that time so surely they will agree with me more today. I urge the adoption of this amendment, that we would remain consistent with title 42 authority in this Nation.

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

Mr. LANKFORD. Madam President, well, I anticipate there will be a few people who are going to vote for it before they vote against it, in this case. What this is, is this is actually my title 42 bill, except with one little tweak in it. It takes it out of Byrd compliance. So this allows any individual to be able to vote for this one but actually oppose the one that would have actually implemented the policy that was actually Byrd-compliant. This is the reason people get so angry at Washington, DC, because people will say: Oh, I didn't really mean to do that; I meant to do this. Here is my concern. I think anyone should ask everyone, if they voted one way one time and one way another, what is different on this, because here is what I think happens next. What I think is about to happen is, someone is going to stand and they are going to call a point of order on this and to say this is not compliant with the Byrd rule. And people are going to say: I tried to get it done, but that Parliamentarian just knocked it down. So that is what I bet happens next. We will see.

Mr. LANKFORD

Mr. LANKFORD. Mr. President, this is an amendment from Senator Barrasso and me. It is very straightforward. If you are a restaurant, you can deduct your business expenses. That is normal tax code. If you are a hardware store, you can deduct your business expenses. That is normal operation. Since 1913, intangible drilling costs have been the tax deductions for oil and gas. IDCs, or intangible drilling costs, since 1913, have been set aside for preparing the space, doing all the labor costs, the services, the normal business operations, for 100 years, until now. Slipped into this bill yesterday, into the base tax, strips away the tax deductions for oil and gas companies, what has been in place for over 100 years. If you are a wind farm, you can use renewable energy credits to take your tax rate down to zero because you can deduct your normal business expenses as well. If you are a coal company, you can use 45Q, but if you are oil and gas, your prices are going up. Americans should remember this bill when they fill up in the days ahead and when the people in their communities are trying to get a job with oil and gas.

Mr. LANKFORD

Mr. LANKFORD. Madam President, if this body were to look at the tests and the homework, the quizzes, and the essays of the Department of Homeland Security and give them a grade based on their performance for the last year and a half, what would the grade be? DHS says they have six missions, and they detail out those missions. One of those missions reads: Secure U.S. borders and approaches. Then they give this little piece behind it to describe that. The Department of Homeland Security secures the Nation's air, land, and sea borders to prevent illegal activity while facilitating lawful travel and trade. What would their grade be on that? And is anyone going to hold them to account for their grade or is this body going to continue to just ignore what is happening on the southern border? It is the role, it is the task, it is the responsibility of the Department of Homeland Security to help secure our Nation, but this Department is currently facilitating illegal immigration, not stopping illegal immigration. I wish I was wrong on that, but I am not. In fact, as recent as the last 2 weeks, I met with DHS leadership who described to me the new method they have laid out so you can apply for asylum, come to the United States and come to any airport in the country. So you wouldn't have to come through the southern border; you would just come in. But it would be the same process as what is happening on the southern border where people from 150 countries just this year have crossed our border. They have been checked in by Border Patrol, who know full well they are not legally present here. Then they are released into the country and given 8 years until their hearing--8 years. Instead of responding to be able to slow down the more than 2 million people who have illegally crossed in just the last year, this administration is actually working to say it is actually not enough people. They are increasing the access points to increase the number of people rather than decrease. The administration was proud to be able to say in May and in June that the numbers went down slightly from what they were in the previous months. The problem with that is, the previous month was a record, and so was the month before that. If you look at just the June number that, yes, was slightly down from May, it is still the highest June ever recorded by the administration. We are being overwhelmed with the number of people coming in illegally across our border. The administration is currently releasing people, and their sole focus seems to be on making illegal immigration more efficient rather than more enforced. What grade would you give DHS? A more specific question: Mr. President, do you want to stop illegal immigration? Because I don't think you do. And I think it is clear that the policies you put in place are directly leading to this record influx of illegal immigration from all over the world. I wish you could even say: Well, at least we vetted them, but I know that is not true, and so do you. Not a single one of these people entering the country has their criminal background check from the country they are from. We are doing a quick fingerprint analysis to see if they have committed a crime here, but we have no idea of the 150 countries-plus that they are coming from because right now the goal is not to check their criminal history; it is to get them released in the country within 8 hours. Keep it moving. Keep it moving. You don't want to have a clog up at the border. When they cross the border, the goal is to just keep them moving into the country. Last weekend, I spent the weekend again at our southern border. Serving on the Homeland Security Committee, I spend a lot of time back and forth across that border to be able to evaluate what is happening now because it changes from week to week. I was in the Rio Grande Valley last weekend spending time with CBP, the Border Patrol, individuals from Air and Marine Operations, from the Department of DPS in Texas, from the National Guard. All of them expressed incredible frustration. When I got there last Thursday night late, we went on a midnight patrol with Border Patrol. Literally within minutes, we ran through our first group of folks coming across the border, a group of teenagers. Minutes later, literally while that group was being processed, another group was interdicted coming across the border not far away. This time it was 6- and 7-year-old children and a couple of families. While we watched them being processed, they called us on the radio and said that about 2 miles down, they just picked up another group. This time, it was adults, including one pregnant lady who was deep into her eighth month coming across the border to make sure she delivered here in the United States. One hundred fifty-plus countries just this year are crossing the border because it is open. I hear the Secretary of DHS say they have secured the border. As I just came from the border, I wonder when the President of the United States is going to actually go to the border to be able to see what is actually happening on the border and the policies they put in place, because so far the President has been able to make it to Saudi Arabia but has not been able to make it to our own southern border to even look once at what is happening on our southern border. If he goes--someday, I hope--I hope he meets with Border Patrol because the Border Patrol agents I talk to tell me about a time when the border was secure. They tell me about a time not long ago that we added forcible borders and where the policy wasn't to release within hours and the enforcement priority wasn't to get them moving as fast as possible; it was to actually secure the border. You could meet with the landowners, like I did last weekend, who live in that area. Some of them have lived there for generations, and they are absolutely furious because although they have lived there--and their family--for generations, they have never ever experienced this. They tell me about how, when they were children, they used to play in this area, and now literally they will not walk out their own door without a firearm on their hip. They told me about multiple vehicles being stolen from their property, windows being smashed at all hours of the day and night, and people walking up to their windows and peering inside. One rancher told me about his wife, who is pregnant, and his child, who is 2--how they literally fear for their lives every day because of the number of people who are coming across their property and for him personally, the number of dead bodies that they found on their property just this year. This wasn't happening before. They had a very simple request. Their simple request was: I am an American. Why does my property not count? Why do my rights not count? The only rights that seem to count are people who are illegally crossing the border. Their rights seem to count, but the rights of Americans do not. Mr. President, would you be willing to answer his question? Would you be willing to talk to his wife and explain to her why there are bodies on their ranch and people are peering in their windows at all hours and they can't live in safety on their own ranch? That was different just 3 years ago. Would you be willing to explain to them what has changed in your policies, because the goal of this administration seems to be efficient movement of illegal immigration, not stopping illegal immigration. I met this Monday with leadership from the Oklahoma Bureau of Narcotics, who explained to me about the overwhelming amount of methamphetamine that is coming into my State and the number of people who are dying in my State because much of the meth is laced with fentanyl, and it is killing people in my State. I asked them if the meth is being cooked in Oklahoma, as it used to be, and they said: No, we hardly ever find a lab making meth anymore. It is all coming from Mexico--all of it. Mexican cartels are actively working in my State to distribute methamphetamine, partnering with Chinese groups who are doing not only the supplies but the distribution network in my State. When I was in the Rio Grande Valley this weekend, individuals with Customs and Border Protection showed me the numbers. Just this year, just in the Rio Grande Valley, 144 pounds of fentanyl has come in and 27,550 pounds of meth that they have interdicted just in the Rio Grande Valley just this year. Let me run that past you again: 27,550 pounds just in that one area, just this year. Oklahoma Bureau of Narcotics has explained to me that if you go back to 2020, we didn't have the drugs moving this way because the border was not open at that time. Now the drugs are flooding into our State because the border is open. What grade would you give the Department of Homeland Security when they are allowing our country to be flooded with drugs, when they are choosing to make illegal immigration more efficient rather than stopping illegal immigration? What grade would you give them? When is this going to change? I have to tell you, I believe one of the main roles of the Department of Homeland Security is to be able to shut down transnational criminal organizations from functioning inside my State, but instead, just in the Rio Grande Valley, when I talked to them this week, just in that one sector, they estimate that the cartels make $153 million a week-- $153 million a week just in that area of the Rio Grande Valley, moving people across the border illegally, because each of them has to pay the cartels. In fact, we saw the wristbands that they all wear. Once they pay the cartels, they are marked that they can actually be moved across the border; they paid their amount. That is $153 million a week the Biden administration is facilitating in payment to transnational criminal organizations just moving people, based on a liberal policy of ``We are going to open the border up to be nice.'' That policy is facilitating the cartels in Mexico being enriched. They make more a week--a week--in moving people than is the budget for Border Patrol in a year in that area. That is all being facilitated based on this administration making it easier to cross the border and more efficient to cross the border than stopping it. I am tired of hearing about the number of people who illegally cross the border. And many in this body just ignore it. I am tired of hearing from the FBI in my State that the price of methamphetamine is going down in my State. It seems like the price of gasoline has soared, the price of food has soared, the price of housing has soared, but the price of meth is going down. Why would that be? Because the supply of meth is going up because it is coming from the cartels in Mexico, and this administration is just looking the other way. When is this administration going to talk to the landowners in South Texas like I did and hear from them the threats that they face? They are American citizens. When does their life matter? It is time we address this issue. It is time we actually step up and say that DHS is failing in its most basic task of securing the Nation. It is time we stopped the illegal drugs coming into our country and killing our kids. It is time. And I am going to continue to come to this floor and to show what the media will not show anymore. They have looked away, and my Democratic colleagues have done the same. They just look away like it doesn't exist, while 2 million people illegally cross the border. One more stat: Right now, we have somewhere between 4,500 and 8,000 people a day illegally crossing the border--between 4,500 and 8,000 a day illegally crossing the border. May I remind you, President Biden, years ago, called it a humanitarian crisis when 2,000 people a day crossed the border. Now we have between 4,500 and 8,000 a day, day after day after day. This administration is not only opening up the borders, they have also changed the enforcement priorities here in the United States. So we have round numbers--6,000 people a day illegally entering the country. The Biden administration has changed the role for ICE in deportations. We are currently allowing 6,000 people a day to cross the border, but we are only deporting 161 people a day from the country. Six thousand a day, every day, day after day after day, illegally coming into the country; 161 people now that we are deporting a day. What would be your grade for DHS in their task of securing the country? I know what mine is. It is time this body actually does something rather than just look away. I yield the floor.

Mr. LANKFORD

Mr. LANKFORD. Reserving the right to object, this is my first time to be able to stand and speak since the Court made its decision in Dobbs. I have been on this floor I actually don't know how many times talking about the value of every single child. The conversation today is not just about the right to travel and the right to healthcare. It is deeper than that. It is the right to live. The conversation today is not just about women. There are two people in this conversation--a child with 10 fingers and 10 toes and a beating heart and DNA that is uniquely different than the mom's DNA or the dad's DNA. They have a nervous system. They feel pain. There is a child in this conversation as well. In my conversation when I have come to the floor over and over again, it has been to say that at some point our Nation should look at basic science and to say when you have DNA and you have a functioning nervous system and you have cell division, in every health book everywhere in the country, they call that life, but for some reason, on this floor, it is just tissue. I actually come to be able to thank millions of women and millions of men who for five decades have not written off children, who have walked out, who have marched, who have silently prayed, who have gathered in places and said: When are we going to recognize what is self-evident? That child in the womb is a child, and that child may be inconvenient, but that is a child. When are we going to recognize that basic thing? For 50 years, that conversation has gone on with the simple statement of, at what point will we be able to speak out for the value of every person, and I do mean every person, including the mom? It has been interesting to be able to hear all the misinformation in the past couple of weeks. I have read story after story and seen all these breathless news reports about how women with an ectopic pregnancy will not be able to get care; they will be doomed to die--except there is no State law that would prohibit someone getting treatment that is lifesaving for an ectopic pregnancy in any State. I have seen all these breathless reports about how there will be miscarriages and you won't be able to get care--except that is not true in a single place, not one. This over and over riling people up. What I have seen are 50 churches that have been attacked. What I have seen are 57 crisis resource centers for pregnancy resource that have been attacked and firebombed. I have seen that. Now, we don't seem to discuss that here on the floor. No one is actually saying that all this conversation, all this misinformation, all this noise is actually leading to actual violence across the country. Everyone is like: Oh, no, no; that is not related. Oh really? So when a pregnancy resource center is firebombed and spray painted on the side of it ``If abortions aren't safe in America, neither are you''--we should probably just ignore that? Because that is what is actually going on across the country right now as well. To be very clear, no State has banned interstate travel for adult women seeking to obtain an abortion. No State has done that. Now, am I confident there are some people who are out there talking? Yes. But there are also in this Senate 5,000 bills that have been filed. And how many of them are actually going to move--as it is in every legislature across the country, and everyone in this body knows it. Everyone knows it. But this seems to be just trying to inflame, to raise the what-ifs. It has been interesting to me that there is another bill that is actually being discussed that would literally--if you are a pregnancy resource center dealing with crisis pregnancies, if you don't perform abortions, they would call that misinformation. In the other bill that is being discussed right now, they would fine you $100,000. I can't even begin to explain my emotion when I think, if you take the life of a child, there is pressure to say: We want Federal funding to take the life of a child. If you protect the life of a child, we are going to fine you $100,000. Is that really where we are? Is that really what this debate has become? This administration has quickly become the most pro-abortion administration in American history and has rapidly moved to accelerate abortions across the country, while millions of other Americans just ask a simple question: Does that child in the womb have the right to travel in their future? Do they get to live? Some would say: No. They are terribly inconvenient. They need to die. Others would say: Why don't we actually live by our values, including the right to life? So while there is conversation about how to put a piece of legislation out that may very well protect individuals who are being trafficked to go to other States to get an abortion or all kinds of other issues that are there, I come back to the most basic thing: There is a child in this conversation, and maybe this body should pay attention to children as well and to wonder what their future could be to travel in the days ahead as well. I look forward to the day when we are talking more about that little girl and less about misinformation. I object.

Mr. LANKFORD

Mr. LANKFORD. Mr. President, I want to give today's reality check. The Federal Reserve today raised interest rates 75 basis points--three- quarters of a point--with a statement they may come back and do that again in another month. A point and a half in 2 months is a pretty dramatic effect. It is going to be a situation where many people, 40 and younger, are about to face interest rates they have never faced in their lifetime. The cost of buying a car that is already high is about to get higher. The cost of buying a home that is already really high is about to get much higher. Inflation is now at 8.6 percent. A lot of people are beginning to feel what that really means. This is not some strange anomaly. This is inflation over the last decade. It has bounced around about the same level, basically, for a decade until right there--March of 2021--and then it just skyrockets at that point. This is the reality that we are facing at this point. What does inflation really look like when you say it is 8.6 percent? Well, people know what that feels like. The cost of eggs has gone up 32 percent in the past year--32 percent for eggs. The cost of milk is up 16 percent; the cost of butter, also 16 percent; the cost of coffee, 15 percent; the cost of baby formula, if you can find it, is up 13 percent. And gas prices? Oh, hello. Gas prices--that really has had an effect. This is gas prices since January of 2017. Again, we look, and it stays about the same until January of 2021. I wonder what happened then. And then look at this. Then, with the conversation about gas prices that, per the administration lately, has been about, ``Well, it is all Putin's fault,'' well, here are the rising gas prices since President Biden's inauguration--right there--and right there is the war that began in Russia. So this little increase right here is the part that is actually there. This is our consumer price inflation. This is on gas prices. It is the same thing. To be able to see this flat line on gas prices, that spike--that is the invasion of Ukraine happening right there--and to be able to see what has been added onto it since then. So this is not just about the invasion in Ukraine. This has been ongoing since late January 2021. The challenge now is, Is this something intentional or is this something accidental? Quite frankly, I think it is a bit of both. We all remember very well this moment during the Presidential campaign. It was when President Biden was campaigning, and he walked over to a young lady on the campaign stop and said: [L]ook in my eyes. I guarantee you . . . we are going to end fossil fuel. I guarantee you. That was this moment that happened here. This was not something totally accidental. It was a drive to say, We have got to shift to solar; we have got to shift to wind; we have got to shift to hydro; we have got to shift to other things; we are going to get rid of fossil fuels; and we are going to accelerate that as fast as possible. I have to tell you that I live in a State in which we use a lot of wind power. We use a lot of solar power. We use hydropower. We have a very diverse energy portfolio. But right now, the people in my State are paying much higher prices for gasoline, much higher prices for natural gas, and much higher prices for electricity because the policies that have been put in place are driving up the costs, and people feel it. This is what it looks like at this point. This is the last 24 months of retail average prices--right there, January 2021--and then to be able to see what is happening with prices all over the country. Now, the administration's response, just in the past couple of weeks, has been this statement. President Biden has said: My administration will continue to do everything it can to lower prices for the American people. I love the words ``continue to do'' in there. They are going to continue to do everything that they can. They are going to keep doing these things that clearly have driven up prices overwhelmingly for the American people. It was, let's say, Putin's fault. It has been the oil companies' fault. It has been the refineries' fault. That is the new one that he actually just put out in the last 24 hours--that it is all the fault of the refineries that are just taking in too much profit. The challenge has been an ongoing attack on American energy from the very beginning. Literally, on day 1, when President Biden canceled the Keystone Pipeline, he started his process of fulfilling his promise that he made during the campaign: ``I guarantee you I am going to end fossil fuels.'' So day 1 was canceling the Keystone Pipeline and getting crude oil from Canada--about 800,000 barrels a day. What he didn't announce on this day is that we still have to have that same 800,000 barrels a day from somewhere because it is heavy crude. We purchase some of our heavy crude from other places, so we still have to get it. His announcement, though, on day 1 was, We are not going to get it from Canada. What people don't realize is that this announcement on day 1 was, We are not going to get it from Canada. We are going to get it from Russia. How did that foreign policy work out? Terribly. On day 1: We are not going to get oil from Canada. We are going to get it from Russia. We are going to get it from other places instead. He put a moratorium on new Federal oil and gas leasing. That moratorium, by the way, still stays in place in multiple areas, and 24 percent of our oil and gas in the United States comes from Federal lands and waters--24 percent. So what this did was say, for the future of how we are going to develop, we are not going to develop in those areas anymore. I am going to cut off 24 percent of the supply coming in. Again, this goes back to his campaign promise of ``I guarantee you I am going to end fossil fuel.'' He declined to defend the gulf lease sale 257. That is offshore. Basically, an environmental group went in and sued and said: We don't think they followed the process. The administration was, like, We are not going to challenge that. We are going to let the environmental group just take this whole thing down, and we are not going to increase our supply of oil coming from the gulf. He limited the seismic studies necessary for new production in the gulf. What does that matter? Well, he has opened up some areas and said: You can drill for more oil in these areas. Oh, but, by the way, you are allowed to do that, but if you want to do seismic testing before you do it--which is a standard that you have to do seismic testing--oh, we are not doing any more seismic testing this whole year. We are not going to allow you to actually prepare a site. We are just going to tell you that you can do it. That is this mode that the administration is in: Produce more oil, but I am not going to actually allow you to do that with the permitting. He has failed to implement a 5-year offshore leasing program. What difference does that make? By law--by law, now--the administration is required to be able to put a 5-year offshore leasing proposal in place. The current one expires on June 30 of this year. That is days away. There is no present plan in place to be able to replace it. In fact, I personally asked Secretary Haaland, the Secretary of the Interior, and she said: ``We plan by June 30--the deadline to have a new one in place--to be able to put out a comment of what we could do if we do a new plan.'' I said: ``When will that be complete?'' Her response to me was, ``We don't have a deadline as to when that will be complete.'' So, what is required by law to have a plan for how we are going to do offshore leasing, they are going to, instead, by the day it should be in place, begin discussing when they might do it in the days ahead. Again, it goes back to: We are going to talk about it, but we are actually not going to put this lease sale plan in place. He canceled a lease sale in Alaska's Cook Inlet, which is where oil comes from. He closed off half of the National Petroleum Reserve in Alaska to any future energy development. He pushed regulations that would slow or halt a buildout of natural gas pipelines and liquefied natural gas export infrastructure. This is a FERC piece. They actually put a new leader in place in that spot, and then the first action they took was to make putting pipelines that were heading to the gulf to be able to sell natural gas to Europe harder to do and more expensive to do. If we wanted to put natural gas pipelines across our country, he would also make it more expensive and more complicated. So, literally, as the price is going up for natural gas, he has made it even more expensive to be able to transport natural gas and harder to be able to sell it to our allies. He proposed new financial regulations designed to drive investment for traditional energy projects. This body will remember nominees who were put up by the Biden administration to go to the Federal Reserve who stated out loud that their goal of going to the Federal Reserve was to cut off access to capital for any kind of energy development that was a fossil fuel. They are literally saying: You can't get loans and money to get access to that. So they will make it harder to actually move it when you get it, if you can get it at all on Federal lands; and they will make it harder to be able to get access to capital. He has also proposed raising taxes on oil and gas development. Do you remember my comment--or his comment, actually--saying he is going to continue to do everything he can to lower the prices of energy for the American people? Well, what he has actually done is he has proposed a whole new set of taxes on all energy companies. In fact, even recently, there was a conversation about a windfall profits tax on energy companies. Now, here is the basic economics that this group knows well: If you tax it more, you get less of it. If you get less of it, the price goes up. This is not hard. This is basic economics. Yet this administration has proposed multiple new taxes in their budget that they just put out in the previous month. At the same time, he said: I am going to continue to do what I can to lower prices, at the same time he put out proposals to dramatically increase oil and gas costs. Nominate anti-traditional energy activists for key posts. We have seen that. He has turned to hostile nations like Iran and Venezuela to meet the U.S. energy demand instead of turning to U.S. producers. It has been interesting. I have heard several people say: Well, we have got high numbers of production of oil and gas here in the United States. But the fact is, we are still a half a million barrels less now of production than what we were prepandemic. We have not caught up on actual production here; and the Biden administration has made it even harder to go get it. While the Biden administration is planning a trip to Saudi Arabia to talk to them about getting more oil, our friends in Canada are saying: Why don't you come to Canada and talk to us about production? We can increase supply to the United States. American producers are saying: We can increase supply to the United States if you will lift regulations, allow us to get permits, stop making it harder to move it, stop making it more expensive to get it, and stop adding more taxes onto us. We can produce more in the United States. Listen, the price of oil right now is about $117 a barrel. There is plenty of incentive to go get it, but the administration continues to make it harder and harder and harder and more and more unpredictable to actually go get it, so folks are not going to get more. While the Biden administration blames speculators on Wall Street and rich oil companies and everyone else, the basic facts are that the administration's policies are what are driving this problem. Are there solutions to this? Of course, there are. There are ways to be able to resolve this. We can restart Federal leasing onshore and offshore. I am not talking about having massive rigs everywhere. We do oil drilling and gas drilling better than anyone else in the world. While the administration is going over to Saudi Arabia to go get oil to be able to use in the United States, don't we think that we produce it cleaner than Saudi Arabia does? What in the world? If we are going to need to use it, then why aren't we producing it here in the United States? If this is all about a global climate challenge, then why aren't we focused on production here rather than running overseas and trying to be able to get it there? Restart the permitting process. Restart the leasing onshore and offshore. Stop all of the regulations that are designed to limit and to punish oil and gas production--the administration just did a moratorium on this; it would make a significant difference--actually put in timelines for permitting and litigation. Again, I have mentioned Canada several times, but if there is a mine that is going in in Canada for things like lithium and other things that we need and the whole world needs--they have deadlines and timelines to be able to do that--it takes about 5 years to be able to do a mine in those areas. It takes 15 years to be able to do that in the United States, if you can get it done at all, because there are no timelines and deadlines. It is the same thing with the production of oil and gas. When there is this constant litigation challenge all of the time, it makes it more difficult to go get it. People need to be engaged in the process. The community needs to be heard--Tribes, local governments. People need to be heard and consulted in the process. But with no deadlines out there, there is no incentive to be able to actually go after it. Promote projects that enhance mutual security like the Keystone Pipeline and like other pipelines. We learned, when there was a security problem on the Colonial Pipeline--coming out last year to North Carolina--and North Carolina suddenly didn't have refined products, gasoline, the whole east coast discovered: We are dependent on one pipeline--one. If that one pipeline actually has a structural failure, what happens to the east coast? Listen, you can multiply that all over the country. While this administration fights every pipeline company that is trying to put in a pipeline, they increase our risk of having a major problem and large sections of the country losing access to energy. They are gambling with our future at this point, while we are watching prices exceed $5 a gallon. Focus on the solutions that don't raise taxes on energy or limit U.S. energy production. I did have to laugh last week when the President made a speech and said he was working on bringing down the cost of energy. So the announcement was, I am going to bring down the cost of energy by dropping tariffs on solar panels coming from the Far East. Talk about out of touch. That is out of touch. That is out of touch. Because, if we are going to produce solar panels, then why aren't we incentivizing the production of solar panels here in America rather than encouraging the production of solar panels overseas in the Far East? How in the world is dropping tariffs on solar panels from the Far East going to help folks filling up their tank with gas next week? The President said he was going to solve energy issues and the price at the pump by increasing the amount of ethanol that we would use. Remember that one? That was about 5 months ago. He said that we would just have more ethanol. He went to Iowa and made a big announcement: We will just do more ethanol. And the prices continue to be able to skyrocket and rise. The President then came on and said: All right, we still have a higher and higher and higher price. So the ethanol whole thing didn't work when he put that out here, and so he came back and said: We are going to do this Strategic Petroleum Reserve. We are going to release a million barrels a day from this Strategic Petroleum Reserve. Remember that announcement? That announcement was made right about there on this chart. That is when that announcement was made. How is it going for gas prices since his announcement that we are going to release a million barrels a day from this Strategic Petroleum Reserve? It still continues to be able to rise. These prices aren't based on short-term input from the Strategic Petroleum Reserve. They are based on long-term supply. That is basic economics. Now the talk has been a temporary gas tax holiday: We will do a temporary gas tax holiday, and that is going to give people relief. Can I remind everyone that we are over $5 a gallon? The temporary gas tax holiday would drop the price 18 cents. Eighteen cents is what it would drop the price. We are not trying to get an 18-cent drop. We are trying to get it back to where it was over here, or how about over here, where we were at $2 a gallon, not 18 cents. Besides the fact, if you drop the price by 18 cents just for this year, it puts a $20 billion hole in our infrastructure--in our building for bridges and highways and roads--to get an 18-cent bump. There has also been the proposal out there that he is going to take over refineries. That was today. Again, it seems like every week there is a new thing that they throw out. Now it is a letter that he sent to the major refineries. In the letter that the President sent to the major refineries, he wrote: [M]y administration is prepared to use all reasonable and appropriate Federal Government tools and emergency authorities to increase refinery capacity and output in the near term . . . to ensure that every region of this country is appropriately supplied. Great. So the President is going to go into the refineries, and he is going to take them over. The same administration that is managing our baby formula is now going to manage our refineries. That is going to work out terrific. Our refineries right now are running at 95-percent capacity--95 percent. The interesting thing about our refineries is that America has not built a new refinery since 1977. And just in the past 3 years, we have lost almost a million barrels a day of refining capacity in the United States from refineries shutting down. Maybe the better question the President could ask is ``How do we start increasing our ability to refine,'' not how is he going to take over refineries and run it himself. We have a major structural problem right now. This is just evidence of what is going on across the whole economy. There are answers. There are solutions. But they are not raising taxes, and taking over refineries, and putting oil out from the Strategic Petroleum Reserve, or running to Saudi Arabia. That is not going to solve our energy problems. And I can assure us, we are not going to solve our 8.6-inflation rate until we solve the price of energy, because the price of energy is baked into every single product that we buy--everything. And if this doesn't get solved, this doesn't get better. Mr. President, do what needs to be done to increase supply in America so that the price will go down. We all believe--we all believe--that, in the decades ahead, we are going to have more electric vehicles; we will have more renewable energy. We all believe that. But 98 percent of the vehicles on the road right now run on oil and gas, and fulfilling your promise--your promise--that you are going to get rid of fossil fuels right now by making it harder to do pipelines, harder to get capital, harder to do permitting, and more complicated regulations is causing this mess. Thirty years from now, we may all be driving electric vehicles--great. We don't today. Today, we need solutions for how we are going to move in the country. That involves increasing supply. That will get down inflation. That will help us as a nation. With that, I yield the floor.

Mr. LANKFORD

Mr. LANKFORD. Madam President, over Memorial Day weekend, I spent a chunk of it in Yuma, AZ. In Yuma, AZ, it is 107 degrees in daytime, 102 at sundown. Those of us from Oklahoma are not used to that kind of heat, but it was very helpful to be there, to be on the ground and to see what is happening at that particular border area. You see, each area of the border is a little bit different. But what we are experiencing right now on our southern border is a continual rolling, chaotic crisis there. I have people who will catch me occasionally in Oklahoma and will say: It seems like things are going better because I don't hear the media talking about what is happening at the border anymore. And I will smile at them and say: Well, you remember last summer when the media was focused on the southern border? We had 6,000 people illegally crossing a day at that time. Now we have 8,000 people illegally crossing a day--8,000. In fact, last month, we had a quarter million people that illegally crossed the border in 1 month. That was a record, by the way. The previous record for a 1-month illegal crossing was the month before. Things continue to get worse. But each area of the border is a little bit different. Now I had not been to this particular border crossing in Yuma, AZ, to be able to see how things are different there, but this is either the No. 1 or No. 2 most trafficked areas for illegal traffic across the entire southern border at this point. What you see first when you are in Yuma, AZ, when you get there to the fencing area, you notice this: You notice in Yuma, AZ, that you have got a port of entry there; and at that port of entry, you have miles and miles of border fence and then a gap in the fence, where on January 20, 2021, construction was on to be able to complete this, but literally, that day, it stopped. And so that gap has never been closed, and so border crossings look like this. Another picture of it is a picture like this. This scenario where there is a dam on the Mexico side, and on the American side there is the fencing--or at least there was going to be fencing. There is fencing on both sides of this. So individuals literally step over the dam, walk over and walk right up into the country. And you ask, well, why is this not complete? Is it because we ran out of materials? Actually, if you go just a mile from that last picture, in the desert you will see this: just stacks and stacks and stacks of steel, 30-foot sections all cut and ready to go to be able to close those gaps. But those gaps are not being closed because the Biden administration a year and a half ago determined they were not going to close those gaps; they were just going to leave them open. So there they sit open. So that is one of the issues. That is different in Yuma than in some of the other areas where they just literally left the steel sit horizontally in the desert rather than being installed vertically--what it was designed for. The second big issue is in this area because of those gaps in the fence, individuals, as they fly into Yuma--they are not coming in long caravans to come in--they are literally flying into Mexicali, Mexico, taking a charter bus that the cartels have organized for them, where they will pick them up at the airport, load up into a charter bus. They will drive them up to the gaps in the fence with the bus and allow them to be able to step across the border. They were literally--I could see it--they will literally step across the border and wait for the Border Patrol to come and pick them up, like it's Uber XL coming to be able to pick them up at their spot. And they know if they just stand here on this side of the fence and wait long enough, Border Patrol will come by, pick them up in a van. They will take them to the processing area where they get processed and then within a couple of days released into the country wherever they want to go. These individuals are traveling from all over the world. In fact, when I met with some of the leadership there in Yuma, AZ, I just asked the question: How are things going? What is happening in different spots? What are you seeing? One of the folks there said: Well, last week--last week--we encountered people from 50 different countries crossing just in this spot. Why is that? Because the border remains open and people from all over the world know they can fly to Mexicali, Mexico, pay the cartels--and the current rate is between $7,000 and $15,000 a person for that section of the border. They get on the buses, drive up to the border, and then they step across. It is a different kind of thing. We see sometimes pictures of people who have traveled 3,000 miles in a caravan. And by the way, there is another caravan that is actually organizing through Central America right now and coming through Mexico. The current caravan has an estimated 6,000 people in it that are walking their way up and traveling their way up through Central America and Mexico right now. But the folks coming through Yuma, AZ, are not like that. They step across the border, and they are carrying luggage with them. In fact, Border Patrol has had to actually limit the weight that they can actually bring in luggage to no more than 50 pounds. They come into the process area. They are bringing their luggage with them. They are dressed in nice clothes. They are clean. They just got a shower the day before. They come across the border. They wait on Border Patrol. We take them to the processing area. In fact, when I got to the processing area, one of the Border Patrol agents walked up to me and said, ``Do you see the lady behind you?'' And I turned around and said, ``Yes.'' She said, ``She is wearing a Versace dress.'' I said that probably should mean something to me as a guy, but it currently doesn't. And my wife later explained to me, ``That is a pretty expensive dress.'' Why are we seeing people like that crossing the border? Because it is easier to come in illegally into the country now than it is legally. Most years we have a million people a year that legally cross our border--legally--that go through the process, fill out the paperwork. We do a background check on those individuals. They come through and come into our country, and we celebrate people who come legally into our country and have for over two centuries. These individuals are finding it faster and cheaper to just pay the cartel, fly to Mexico, walk across the border. And when you walk across the border, you are in the country not just for a few months. Right now, when you cross the border and enter into this area, as you walk across the border you are given a work permit and the ability to stay in the United States for 8 years until your asylum hearing comes up. Why do we have people coming from all over the world? We have a million people doing it legally, but last year we had 2 million people do it illegally because it is faster to just illegally come into the border. Let me ask a simple question to this body: Do we really want a system that incentivizes illegal activity as the entrance into the United States of America, because right now the incentive is to come into the country illegally? Let me phrase it this way. For the individuals who come across this border, we do not do a background check on these individuals. We have no idea any criminal history they have in the country from where they are coming. We do a background check with American records. We know if they committed a crime here in the past, but we have no idea from any of the countries that they are coming from. And let me remind you, in Yuma, when I was there a week ago, the week before, 50 different nations crossed that border that week. We have no criminal background check on any of those individuals. What else happens with this? Because of the chaos that is happening here and Border Patrol are having to run their Uber XL vans to be able to pick people up and take them to processing, and they have to come off the line to be able to come into the processing center. What else is happening? The open desert areas not far from here, where they know the drug traffickers are actually moving large quantities of drugs, they don't have enough agents to be able to patrol that anymore. They can see them on cameras. They just don't have enough people to get to it. The checkpoints that are on the highways typically leading out from this area to try to pick up the gun and drug smugglers coming in and out of the country, those checkpoints don't exist anymore. Why? Because they don't have enough staff anymore because they are managing this chaos at the border. We are losing our security presence on our southern border because the President is incentivizing illegal immigration, and it is taking everybody that is there for our national security to actually be on the border to manage the check-in staff for people coming in. This is a ticking time bomb. It is solvable. Let me give you just some very basic things on this. No. 1, keep title 42 in place. The Border Patrol that I speak to when I talk to the folks on the line, their No. 1 fear is the Biden administration is going to cancel title 42. Now, currently, the court is prohibiting them from doing that, but their biggest concern is, if the Biden administration cancels title 42, even more people will come across, and this chaos will be even worse. That is their No. 1 issue. Keep title 42 authority in place. The second thing is, stop giving people that cross the border between the port of entry and illegally cross, stop giving them work permits that incentivizes people to come between the ports of entry in an illegal fashion. The administration can do that right now. Third thing: Stop giving people a free pass to come into the country for 8 years to stay in the country while they await their asylum hearing. Whoever is last in, first up for the asylum hearing, and do it right there at the border. The asylum hearings can be done in less than a month, and do it right there at the border so they have to remain in place to have their hearing. What happens is, these individuals cross the border, they cross the border, they get their 8-year pass in the country, they get their work permit. They snap a picture of it. They send it to their family back home and say: I paid this cartel member this much money. I crossed in this spot. I stood in this line. When I got there, I got into the country. Come join me. And it keeps accelerating. That is a policy decision that the administration could stop now, and they are choosing not to stop now. And the final thing on this. Again, it is not hard. Close that gap. Why is this so hard? Close that gap. We have fewer people crossing in California right now than we do in Yuma. Why is that? Because the gap is closed in California. And while many of my colleagues scream ``fences don't work,'' why do we have fewer people crossing in California than we do in Yuma, AZ? Well, it is because there is a functioning fence in California and a big, giant gap in Yuma. This does work, and everybody knows it. That is why the Biden administration leaves it open--because they are facilitating this. This is something that is going to bite our Nation. It is a national security issue, and we should not ignore it. Again, I celebrate legal immigration. I want more of it in our country. This is unchecked, illegal activity, and we had better pay attention to it. I yield the floor.

Mr. LANKFORD

Mr. LANKFORD. Madam President, later on today, we are going to be voting on a Congressional Review Act dealing with the title 42-- actually, more specifically, the asylum rule dealing with what is happening at our southwest border right now. Let me first say something I don't normally say on this floor. I am pleased the Biden administration is trying to address this. It is a step that--someone in the administration has noticed there is a problem with the asylum rule, and they are trying to address it. This solution will not fix the problem, but at least we are working on the problem. I can say this to the Biden administration and to this body: If we do not legislatively fix the asylum rule, what is happening on our southern border will never get better. We have to address what is the problem there. It is not that there are root causes in Central America. We are the United States of America; everyone in the world wants to be here. If all you have to do is cross the border and say the magic words ``I have credible fear'' and the Biden administration hands you a piece of paper and you are in the country for the next 8 years--8 years-- until your hearing, the whole world is going to keep coming here. Now, right now, literally right now, we have 8,000 people a day who are illegally crossing our border--8,000. Last summer, in the midst of all the chaos, when all the cameras were focused on our southern border, there were 6,000 people a day who were illegally crossing our border. It is literally worse now than it was a year ago, but the cameras have all moved on and said ``nothing to see here'' when it continues to be able to get worse literally every month. Last month, a quarter-million people illegally crossed the border--a quarter-million. Half of those were turned away with title 42 authority, which the Biden administration is trying to end to allow everyone to be able to come across the border. But this asylum rule gives me some sense of hope that they are at least identifying what the problem is and trying to start working on it. Here is the problem, though: The way that this rule is actually set up, almost every negative determination made under this expedited asylum process gets appealed under the normal process anyway. So while they are creating an expedited process, all they have to do is say ``I disagree with the expedited process,'' and they get through the long, protracted, 8-year process anyway. It doesn't solve the problem. So while the executive branch is trying to do something, their ``something'' that they are doing doesn't actually fix the issue. We have to change this issue in law. Secretary Mayorkas was on the Hill 2 weeks ago. He came and presented the new plan in place for what they are going to do on the border. Part of that plan was this new asylum rule. But when you read the summary, at the very end of it--they go through all their details, these high- level points of six different areas where they are going to work to be able to decrease. At the end of it, the summary statement ends with ``Despite our best efforts, we anticipate an increase in migration.'' What they are saying is, the policies that they currently have in place are going to continue to increase migration even with things like this new asylum rule that they are trying to be able to put in place because they know this doesn't actually fix the problem. MPP, the ``Remain in Mexico'' program that a Federal court has required them to maintain--they are doing MPP only in such a way to say to the Federal courts: We are doing something. We have 8,000 people a day who are illegally crossing the border. We have about 2,000 people a month whom they are putting through the MPP program. We have 8,000 people a day who are illegally crossing the border. Currently, ICE is deporting 203 people a day. With 8,000 people a day crossing and 203 people actually being deported, you see the math here. They are not trying to stop the flow. They are not trying to disincentivize this. We need to actually get serious about this. So, yes, I am going to support a Congressional Review Act on this individual piece because it doesn't actually fix the problem. Let's actually sit down and fix the problem actually in the statute. That is what needs to be done. I yield the floor.

Mr. LANKFORD

Mr. LANKFORD. Madam President, in tracking through what is happening on our southern border, it is interesting I still have folks that catch me and say, ``I don't see anything about it in the news anymore, so what is happening?'' So I try to periodically come here to the floor to be able to describe what is happening. Interestingly enough, just yesterday, the leadership of CBP did their news release that they normally do to kind of outline what is happening at the border. In their news release they released out: CBP works to secure and manage our borders while building a fair and orderly [im]migration system. This is what they put out yesterday--while we build an orderly and fair migration system. Interestingly enough, this was a picture taken the day before their press release. This was taken in the Eagle Pass area of Texas in the Rio Grande Valley, and, yes, that line you see are people coming across the river in Eagle Pass. Now, you don't catch everything because you can't see how much farther it goes this way and how much farther it goes that way. This was the day before CBP released this statement: We work to secure and manage our borders while building a fair and orderly migration system. Earlier in the report, the very first page of the news release, CBP leadership said: After many months of planning, we are executing a comprehensive strategy to safely, orderly, and humanely manage our borders. CBP is surging personnel and resources to the border, increasing processing capacity, securing more air and ground transportation, and increasing medical supplies, food, water and other resources to ensure a humane environment for those being processed, screened, and vetted. By the way, just south and west of this, just the day before this was taken, Border Patrol picked up two child sex predators, four MS-13 gang members, and an 18th Street gang member--just right before this, just the day before this was released. This is our frustration with the administration right now. Because the media has turned away and decided they are not going to look at this, that they are not going to pay attention to it, everyone seems to think everything has just gotten fine. What is really happening on our southern border, again, from current statistics right now, they are only able to handle 44 percent of the flow coming across the border. At 44 percent of the flow, right now, they are releasing thousands of people directly into the country with a notice to report saying: ``Turn yourself in to an ICE facility anywhere in the country, and they will process you there,'' because they can't handle the backlog of the thousands of people coming across. What are we talking about, thousands of people? Well, remember last year when the cameras were all focused on the southern border? Last year, there were 6,500 migrants coming across a day at this time, and all the cameras were focused on the southern border because it was such a massive influx of people because 6,500 migrants were crossing a day. Right now, 7,800 migrants are crossing a day--7,800 a day. Last month, the CBP released that almost a quarter million people illegally crossed our southern border in 1 month. That beat the old record of the month before when there was just under that by a couple thousand people--a quarter million people a month illegally crossing the border. Now, to their credit, about half of those are turned away under what is called title 42 authority because of the pandemic. Those single adults, half of them are turned back, but the interesting thing is the administration says on May 23--yes, next week--on May 23, they want to end title 42 authority, and so they are not turning anyone away at the border--so literally all quarter million cross into the country and no one gets turned away. When that happens, DHS's own numbers have estimated that when that occurs, they estimate that they will see a million people surge through the border in 6 weeks--6 weeks. So what is happening on interior enforcement? Well, at the border right now, they are allowing a quarter million people to cross the border, turning half of them away, but their plan is, next week, they are going to stop turning anyone away. Everyone is going to cross in. How many people are being deported? Criminal aliens, individuals that have a final order of removal from a court, how is that going? Well, currently, under this administration, we have a record low number of deportations that are happening. While we have 7,800 people a day illegally crossing the border, ICE is now deporting 203 people a day from the Nation. So let me run those numbers past you again: 7,800 people a day illegally crossing the border, 203 people being turned around due to ICE custody and releasing them back into their country where they came from. Now, these aren't folks just from Central America. In fact, now about half of the people coming are not from Mexico or Central America. They are coming from all over the world. Last year, we had people from every single country on the planet illegally cross the border in the 2 million people that crossed the border. They came from every single country in the world--yes, including Iran and North Korea, all of it. But this administration is now working towards next week saying we are going to lift title 42 authority, and we are not going to turn anyone around. Currently, what is happening? When individuals come across the border, they are given notification. They will request for asylum, all they have to say is, ``I have credible fear.'' They will say, ``What city would you like to go to in the entire U.S.? You can go to any city you want to go to.'' They pick their city, they are given a piece of paper, and on that piece of paper, they are told here is your court date 8 years in the future--8 years in the future. And they go anywhere they want to in the country for the next 8 years. And they are told to keep that piece of paper with them. If they are ever pulled over, they can pull it out and show: I am awaiting my court date. I am here for the next 8 years. Now, let me ask you a simple question: If I have to go through the legal process to be able to get a visa or a work visa and go through all of that process and fill out paperwork, or--and I will be here just temporarily for a season, or I can illegally cross the border and I will be here for the next 8 years, which would you pick? This administration is literally incentivizing this and encouraging more people to illegally cross the border. Is there a way to be able to handle this? Yes, there is. Some of it is overly simplistic, I understand. Let's start with finish building the wall system because there are gaps in the fence and everyone heads towards those gaps in the fence. I am not the only one saying that. The career professionals at Border Patrol are saying that is one of the prime things that they need. Do they say that is the only thing they need? No. There is a lot more they need, but they are saying that is a really important element that they need is that fencing. That slows people down; that funnels people towards gaps. Build a wall system. No. 2, don't lift title 42, keep it in place. I am not the only one saying that. I had an ambassador from a Central American country contact me this week and say: We are asking the White House not to lift title 42 authority because, in Central America, we are facing thousands of people migrating through our country from all over the world that are headed to the United States, and it is causing economic turmoil in their country. And their fear is, if President Biden lifts title 42 authority, it is going to make a bad situation in their country even worse. And while President Biden talks about root causes in Central America, Central America is telling the United States: Enforce your border; stop incentivizing people to illegally travel to your border; that is one of the root causes of migration. Finish building the wall system. Don't lift title 42 authority. Have cooperative agreements with other countries. This has been done by multiple Presidents before to be able to have engagement with other countries so that they enforce their border. And I don't mean just say to them: Go enforce your border. Help them. If they don't enforce their southern border and their southern border and their southern border, it all piles up here, and right now, the Biden administration is just letting them all in. Asylum hearings: Individuals that request asylum are legally bound to actually have asylum. There is lots of changes that need to happen in asylum laws, but let me just say this simply. This administration right now with current asylum laws could do last in, first up for hearings. Instead of handing people a piece of paper and say, You are here for the next 8 years until the next asylum hearing if you cross the border illegally right now, they say, you have to stay right here at the border for the next 2 weeks; your hearing is in 2 weeks, and it is in that courtroom right over there here at the border. They go through the legal process to be able to request asylum. When they do not qualify, they are returned. That sends an entirely different signal--because what the Border Patrol tells me now is, when individuals cross the border, get a piece of paper that says you are going to be here for the next 8 years, they quickly pull out their cell phone, snap a picture of it, text their family back home and say: I paid this cartel member, I crossed at this spot, I said these words, and I got this piece of paper; come join me. And the next person comes, and the next person comes. If what happens instead when they cross the border is they get there and their hearing is in 2 weeks and then they find out they don't qualify for asylum and they are returned, they instead text their family members and say: Don't come. The border is closed. Nothing has changed at that point other than the enforcement. That can be done right now. Fourth, Federal courts have required the Biden administration to put what is called MPP or what some people call ``Remain in Mexico'' back in place. So the Biden administration, following the court order, has spent millions of dollars standing up facilities, putting up courtrooms, and they are putting almost no one through them, so they can tell the Federal court they are doing it. What do I mean by that? I mean 7,800 people crossing a day illegally, the Biden administration is putting about 2,000 people a month through the MPP process simply so they can say they followed the court order, but they are not. So 7,800 people a day and they are doing 2,000 a month through MPP. That is decorative; that is not border enforcement. It is why I tell people the Biden administration is getting in illegal immigration exactly what they designed the system to do: to have more people come. Finally, deport people that a court has ruled they should be deported--this does not mean this is following the law. We have literally thousands of people in the United States that a Federal court has ruled a final order of removal on individuals and said: You are not legal in this country, and you have gone through all of the process; you need to be removed. Currently, ICE is not removing them. Again, sending the signal to everyone that wants to come here illegally that if you pay the cartels, you get across. You stay for 8 years, and then after 8 years, no one is looking for you. That is why we had 2 million people last year illegally crossing the border. That is why we had a quarter million people last month illegally cross the border, because this administration just keeps saying, I don't want to be mean. We are going to open this up. We are not asking for something crazy. We are just asking for the law to be enforced. What is mean? What is inhumane? I will tell you what is inhumane. In February of this year, Reuters did a story on a young girl named Amelia. Amelia borrowed $10,000 to pay the smugglers from Guatemala to be able to cross into the United States in Arizona. She borrowed $10,000 from the human traffickers. She got across the border. She was referred to the HHS Office of Refugee Resettlements, unaccompanied minors, after crossing. That is right, Amelia is under 18. So HHS processed her through, moved her into the location that she had as a piece of paper to say this is the location I need to go. She traveled to that location and got to that spot, and HHS said: Our duty is done. When Reuters found her, she was working on a poultry processing farm in rural Alabama with her sister Rosa. When they asked her why she wasn't in school, she responded: School isn't for me; I have debt-- because she is working in a poultry processing facility in Alabama to pay off the cartel's $10,000--she and her sister both. She also, by the way, paid $1,500 to get a false Social Security card and a false ID, and she is working to pay off that debt as well. While the administration continues to call this humane and leadership of CBP calls this orderly this week, I don't think it is humane or orderly for us to open up our borders to individuals being trafficked into our own country to pay cartels $10,000 a person that then they come into this country and work their debt off in labor camps for the cartel. By the way, for Amelia and for her sister Rosa, this story can be repeated all over again with multiple individuals who pay off their debt to the cartels by trafficking in illicit materials because the cartel will say: If you took the loan out from us, you pay us back our way. That is what we are facilitating in America, and all we are asking the Biden administration to do is enforce the law. That is what it means to be President of the United States. I yield the floor.

Mr. LANKFORD

Mr. LANKFORD. Mr. President, I call up my motion to instruct, which is at the desk.

Mr. LANKFORD. Mr. President, we are about to go into conference on what we are basically calling the China bill, but this bill does not address China's practice of purchasing and stockpiling sanctioned Iranian oil on the black market. This procurement spike by China is directly correlated with the spike in terrorist activities by Iran and its proxies in the Middle East. Iran is laundering these petroleum products and illicitly transferring the oil at sea to Iranian tankers and foreign-flagged vessels. Three- quarters of this oil is ultimately exported to China, which purchased 310 million barrels of oil from Iran last year. All of this is happening while China is actually negotiating directly with Iran on our behalf in Vienna. This particular motion to instruct goes straight at this illicit activity from Iran that is facilitating the terror activities and also addresses the designation that Iran is asking if they are going to negotiate with the Biden administration on the Iran nuclear deal. Iran is specifically asking that they get a lift of the ``foreign terrorist organization'' on the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps. That is the group that was attacking our troops in Iraq and facilitating their death. We need to address this and take it off the table so that Iran does not get by with this and the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps does not. I urge a ``yes'' vote on my motion to instruct.

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

Mr. LANKFORD

Mr. LANKFORD. Madam President, about 6 years ago, I came to this floor and presented an idea: How do we get on top of our debt and deficit? Are we going to get on top of our debt and deficit? Interestingly enough, for each of us and our own families, we can all tell a story about a season in our life that we really hit hard times. I have had several where the money was really tight and our family was very attentive to what we were spending--very--those moments when we would literally make sure that every time we went to the grocery store, we only spent this much because we knew we had an electric bill coming in; we knew we had our rent coming due. My family has most definitely been there. My wife and I, when we were first married, we had a rule that we couldn't ever spend more than $25 without the other person knowing it because our fear was when we were first married that one of us would spend $30 and the other would spend $35 that day and we would blow up our bank account because we were living that close to the edge and just getting by while I was at school and we were just getting started. A lot of families have been that way. You can tell how serious a family is about dealing with their debt by how seriously they take their expenses. There are some individuals that have massive debt that still keep running up their credit card. They keep buying more and more product. They still use their credit card and go get additional electronics and get extra stuff on it and max out this card and then I will max out another one, not with essentials, just with fun--not paying attention to the fact that someday that comes due. When I started presenting the idea of the ``Federal Fumbles,'' my whole concept was simple: Where is it the Federal Government is dropping the ball; that we are not paying attention to the areas we need to be able to pay attention to in our spending? It is a well-known fact that we have trillions in debt. In fact, as a nation, we have now crossed $30 trillion in total debt--$30 trillion. It is interesting that the conversation doesn't seem to be serious. We don't seem to be in a dialogue about how we are going to actually bring our debt down. We are still spending on other things and still saying, not we are limited in what we can do; we seem to be adding more to the mix. It is not necessarily on essential things; it just seems to be on things. The ``Federal Fumbles'' book that I released this week, put on our website, just details several different items. One is, where are we in our debt and how did we get here? But I also try to walk through some of our trust funds on this because I think it is important. Where are we on Medicare trust funds? By the way, we are 4 years away from insolvency on Medicare--4 years. Where are we on Social Security? We are 12 years away from insolvency in Social Security--12. Where are we on the highway trust fund? We are well past insolvency on the highway trust fund, and we have been accelerating our borrowing to try to cover more and more. In fact, that was done even recently. I laid out a set of ideas of how do you actually solve some of these things and how are we going to address it. But I also laid out some of my frustrations that said, at some point, this body is going to be serious about dealing with debt and deficit, but apparently we are not yet. So I laid out some areas and just got a chance to be to be able to talk through some of those in the book. And I encourage folks to be able to look at it and, quite frankly, everyone is welcome to disagree with me on it. For instance, we spent $2 billion--billion with a ``b.'' We spent $2 billion this last year not building the border wall. The contracts had already been let out. The steel was already purchased. The steel, in fact, is lying on the ground in the desert still today. Everyone was already hired, and there were literally individuals on the ground ready to do installation because the contract was there because career professionals at the Department of Homeland Security had made recommendations on certain areas of our southern border that desperately needed fencing. Those career professionals had worked with private contractors and had put a contract in place to be able to put fencing in those areas. And they were underway until the Biden administration stepped in on day 1 and stopped it all, though the contracts had already been let out. We spent $2 billion not building border fencing--$2 billion. Now, I ask the simple question: What would it hurt to go ahead and finish those contracts out that career professionals had signed off on and that career security individuals from the Department of Homeland Security had said was desperately needed in those areas? What would it have hurt to finish those contracts out? Instead, we sent messaging that we are not going to build a fence and spend $2 billion not doing that. What did we do instead? Well, we started doing robot dogs along the border instead. I wish I was kidding. These robot dogs would instead be hired to be able to help our border folks and Border Patrol and CBP to be able to help identify and carry things. So instead of border fencing, it is robot dogs that are now being contracted to be able to put in there. What else did we actually deal with? Well, of the trillions of dollars of debt that we have, recently, we put $2.6 million into China to help pay for some of their health programs. Now, follow the irony of this. We actually borrow a trillion dollars from China to pay our bills. So we borrowed money from China to be able to then send money to China to help pay their medical expenses. Does anyone else think this is a bad idea; that if we were serious about dealing with debt and deficit, we would start going line by line through all of this and to be able to identify that maybe this is not a good idea; that if we have $30 trillion in debt, maybe we need to find some areas to cut back on. We could cut back on that or maybe we could cut back on the grant that was given out to write about Russian screenwriters. We actually paid someone to do research on Russian screenwriters to be able to release this project out so people could study Russian directors and screenwriters. Again, I am fine if anybody wants to be able to do that, but my concern is if we are going to do this, this should probably be a private project that we release out, not have a Federal Government project when we are dealing with $30 trillion in debt. But what else did we do with our additional money while we have extra spending and time on this? How about lobster pot removal? We spent half a million dollars in a special earmark to do lobster pot removal. Now, initially, this is actually listed in the bill as derelict lobster pots. Derelict lobster pots. That sounds really ominous, doesn't it? But my understanding is it is lobster traps that are just out there that someone abandoned at some point. I would tell you, for those of us in Oklahoma, if you told me there is a lobster trap and there may be a lobster in it and you could keep the trap and the lobster if you wanted to go get it, we would go get it. But, instead, we are paying half a million dollars in Federal dollars to go pick up derelict lobster pots. Now, again, I would say to you, in Oklahoma, when we have a derelict well in Oklahoma, an oil and gas well, our oil and gas companies all pool money together and put a little bit in to be able to go clean that site up. And, year by year, we are cleaning up abandoned well sites, because our companies actually kicked the money in to go clean up their own messes that are out there. I don't understand how the State didn't do this or a city didn't do this or the industry didn't take it on. Now, I do have some frustration because there was some money set aside for parks as well. I am a big fan of parks. My kids go to the park. We are glad to be able to go to the park. I went to the park a lot. But there was a project for 2.3 million in Federal money to be able to renovate a pool, a swimming pool, in Rhode Island. Now, I am not opposed to swimming pools, and I am not opposed to Rhode Island having swimming pools; I am just trying to figure out with Federal dollars, why the Federal government is paying to fix a swimming pool in Rhode Island. Shouldn't this be the State of Rhode Island--if it is a State park, shouldn't it be the State or the community or the city to be able to take this on? Cities in my State, if they have problems with their pool, the city pays to be able to fix the pool or the community pays to be able to do that, rather than the Federal taxpayers pay to do that. We have the same issue, actually, with a ski jump, that there was a State park, that it needed a renovation for a ski jump, and so instead of the State actually paying for their State park, people in my State are paying for our State park, and we are paying to fix the ski jump in this State park as well. Why are we paying for both? Why don't the people of Oklahoma pay for our State parks and the people in other States pay for their State parks? Again, I have nothing in opposition to ski jumping, other than it seems like a particularly terrible thing for me to do, but if somebody wants to be able to do it and they want to pay for that, that is fine. Just, why should Oklahoma taxpayers do that? As we were digging through the different pieces that were actually done, I would tell you it was painful the moment when we ran across the monkey opera. We spent Federal tax dollars on something called a ``monkey opera.'' Now, I am not sure why we spent Federal tax dollars on a monkey opera. I am not sure what a monkey opera sounds like. But I would tell you, I think I have listened to a monkey opera on people's at-hold music before when I have called certain companies, that I think the hold music they have was actually monkey opera. But I have to ask the hard question: Is this national defense? Is this educating our children? Is this healthcare? With $30 trillion in debt, at some point, we as a Nation have to stop and say, ``OK, let's do what is essential and not what's not.'' Two weeks ago, a staff member called me and said she was in line at the grocery store, and the woman in front of her with her kids pulled out all the stuff in her basket and put it on the scanner area and said to the lady that was going to be the cashier, ``Hey, tell me when it gets to $150 because I can't spend anymore. That is all I have.'' And so the cashier kept ringing things up. She held things back that she thought were the nonessentials at the end because she knew, this is all I have, and though I would like to get more, I can't. It sent me two messages. One is, every family knows how to do this. Why we can't as a Federal government look at it and say, with $30 trillion, maybe the monkey opera is not one of our essentials, I don't know. But the second thing it reminded me of is, every family is dealing with the real effects of inflation right now. It is very real for them. They are saying to the cashier at the grocery store, ``Tell me when it gets to this dollar amount, because that is all I have.'' When we continue to spend more and more and more as a Federal government, it drives inflation higher and higher. I am very aware there are a lot of folks in this room who are just trying to help. But we are causing real problems with inflation, with overspending as a nation. That has got to pull back, and we have got to get serious about what we are spending on, because this kind of stuff drives the American people crazy, when they are saying to the cashier, ``I could only do $150. Please tell me when it gets there, because everything else I can't do today.'' And we borrowed more money from China so we could do this. We put out the Federal fumble book every year for one reason: I want to remind everybody in this body that debt is still a problem. This is still an issue, wasteful spending, whether it is in the billions or whether it is in the thousands, is wasteful spending. And at the end of the day, we need to understand, the American people are counting on us to make hard decisions, and there are lots and lots of hard decisions. But currently as a body, we are not even discussing $30 trillion in debt. So I bring it to us again: We have $30 trillion in debt. Let's start working on this. I yield the floor.

Mr. LANKFORD

Mr. LANKFORD. Mr. President, there has been a lot of conversation in the past several weeks about Judge Jackson's judicial philosophy-- rightfully so. This is a lifetime appointment on the U.S. Supreme Court. It is a serious position. I don't know a single Senator in this room that doesn't take their responsibility seriously. This is a big issue when you put anyone on the Supreme Court for a life appointment. Everyone has had the opportunity to be able to go through case law, cases that she has handled, things she responded to, things that she has written, ways that she has responded. Actually, I had time last week to sit down with her for about 45 minutes in the office just to be able to talk and to be able to get back-and-forth with her a little bit. I want to give a little bit of context to that because many Americans watched all the hearings that happened last week--a full week of just conversation with her, asking her all kinds of different questions. I don't serve on the Judiciary Committee so I am on the outside looking in. That is why I got time individually with her for about 45 minutes to be able to ask her questions and get to know her. By the way, I had folks in Oklahoma say: You had the opportunity to sit down with her; what is she like? To all of them, I answered the same way. She is actually the kind of person you would want to invite over for dinner, just to be able to sit and visit with--extremely pleasant, outgoing, personable, smart, sharp, wonderful smile and interaction. You would want to invite her over to dinner to be able to visit with. But my decision is not about whether to invite her over for dinner to be able to spend time with. My decision is, How will they handle a lifetime appointment on the Supreme Court and how will they handle the law? The difficult part of this conversation has been interesting. It really circled around judicial philosophy. How would you handle cases? We can't ask: How are you going to actually rule on this specific case? Because if she answers, then she has to recuse herself from that case in the days ahead, and everyone knows that. So we are always trying to determine: How will you treat cases in the days ahead and what lens will you look through? That is a reasonable conversation. Her response has been interesting. Her response was that she had a ``methodology'' as a judge, and it has three aspects to it: Neutrality, which is a good thing; receiving all the appropriate inputs, which is making sure everyone is heard; and looking at the factual record and the text of the statute. That is actually a very good starting point with this. The question then goes to the next set of questions on it: How do you handle the U.S. Constitution and where does that document fit in? Is it living? Is it changing? Is it the original text and the meaning of it, or does it have a living version that changes? That is a reasonable conversation because there have been different Justices on the Supreme Court that have handled that differently. The late Justice William Brennan wrote: For the genius of the Constitution rests not in any static meaning it might have had in a world that is dead and gone, but in the adaptability of its great principles to cope with current problems and current needs. Well, that is not an original meaning in the original context and locked into that. Justice Antonin Scalia wrote: The Constitution that I interpret and apply is not living, but [it is] dead, or as I prefer to call it, enduring. It means, today, not what current society, much less the court, thinks it ought to mean, but what it meant when it was adopted. In other words, those words had meaning at that time. They couldn't predict what those words might mean 100 years from now. They could only deal with what those words mean right now. And if it is going to have a different meaning at a different time, well, then, there has to be different law to be able to deal with that at a different time. We never got a really clear answer on that. We get things toward her methodology. That is a critical issue to be able to deal with. There were issues about sentencing that came up and how she chose to do sentencing when she was at the district court level and handled cases. They were all over the news about some cases that she handled that were very lenient in the sentencing. There were also a lot of questions about the Second Amendment or about due process. There was kind of the moment of the judicial hearings when Senator Blackburn asked--not a trick question but a real conversational question--about how you handle the law and culture. And that is, Can you define a woman? I honestly don't think that Senator Blackburn meant for that to be a trick question, but it really is a question in culture at this point. It will determine how you are going to handle the law and to be able to read the law. Her response was she couldn't answer the question of how to define a woman because she is not a biologist. Well, I am not a biologist either, but I think I can define that question. And it is just a conversational issue that we have as a nation to be able to determine: Let's deal with things that are self-evident. There were all those issues that were dealt with during the hearing time, but when I got with her, I didn't want to go back and revisit those issues. I wanted to spend time with her talking through the things that weren't actually discussed. Obviously, it was over days of her hearings. There were several issues discussed about how she handles the law. One of those is Tribal law. In some areas of the country, this is a very big deal and in some areas, not at all. So I understand why it didn't come up in the hearings. In her past history in her cases, she has had one case to deal with Tribal law. So there are a lot of questions to be able to talk about. Oklahoma is very proud of who we are as a State. We have great diversity as a State. We have a unique relationship in Indian Country in our State. I thought it was important for us to be able to talk about the relationship that our State has with 39 Tribes and, quite frankly, the history our State has, as we were the State where Tribes were relocated to from the Southeast. We spent a lot of time talking about that. We talked about issues of religious liberty, First Amendment issues, how you handle those cases. There are differences even in the Court, even on what is the more liberal side of the Court. Sotomayor and Kagan often disagreed on issues of religious liberties. They handle it with a different perspective, and it is not uncommon for a religious liberty case to come up and Sotomayor and Kagan to be on either side. So, quite frankly, I was trying to discern: Is this person more like Sotomayor or more like Kagan on how to handle the issues of religious liberty? It didn't come up a lot in the hearings, but I really think that is a foundational issue. Quite frankly, this is the fourth Supreme Court Justice I have had the opportunity to be able to sit down with personally, and with each of them, the issues that I just brought up were the issues that I talked with all four of them about because they don't often come up in the other issues, but to me it is foundational. We have three branches of government defined by our Constitution. Those branches are coequal, and they check each other. And it is exceptionally important that they really do check each other; that the legislative branch doesn't just give it away to the executive branch or to the courts or that the legislative branch doesn't run over the courts or the executive branch and neither can the executive branch or the judicial branch do for either. But if the judicial branch sits passive at a moment that they should engage, the other two branches are not checked or if the judicial branch engages in a moment when they should be silent, they have exceeded their authority as well. It is exceptionally important that the three branches both check each other and also know their lane and do their lane well. There are two cases that popped out that became very significant to me and were part of our conversation as well. There was a case that came up during the Trump administration when Judge Jackson was at the district court level and dealt with this issue of expedited removal. Now, it is my guess that she doesn't like the expedited removal process in immigration, but I didn't ask that; I didn't drill down on that, so it was only my guess. But what was interesting was she ruled on a case on expedited removal and forbid the Trump administration from actually putting in place what they did and did it nationwide. The problem was, when that was appealed up to the DC Circuit Court, the DC Circuit Court actually reversed Judge Jackson's preliminary injunction and reminded Judge Jackson, at that point, that the way the law was written made this statement: that the Secretary had ``sole and unreviewable discretion.'' She literally reviewed a decision made by a Secretary, where specifically in the law it stated a judge cannot review this decision, though she overturned it, only to go to the circuit court and have them overturn her. That tells me a balance of power issue, of knowing what your lane is and determining how that lane is taken on. There is another case that came up, actually during the Trump administration as well, when Judge Jackson was also in the district court, and she dealt with the issue about what unions could do and what the executive branch could do in relationship to unions. It has been a contentious issue, quite frankly, for decades. It is entirely reasonable to be able to have that kind of dialogue about it. She ruled in the favor of the unions, and the DC Circuit, again, reversed her decision when it came there, but it is not just that they reversed her decision, it is that they reversed her decision, and this was the statement from the DC Circuit: We reversed because the district court lacked subject matter jurisdiction. In other words, that is not your responsibility in that lane. Specifically, that kind of issue has to be taken up by the Federal Labor Relations Board. In statute, it says it can't go to a district court; it has to go to a different place. Typically, other judges look at it and say, ``You can't be in this spot to be able to argue this,'' and send it to the correct place. Instead, she ruled on it in favor of the unions and declared it done, until the circuit came back and said: That is not your lane. That is actually the executive branch's lane. And one of the most interesting dialogues we had to be able to talk through things was the issue about deference. Now, why does this matter? Well, for about 80 years, Congress has been writing a law that gets broader and broader and broader. Quite frankly, it has been a problem with both parties. If we want to see something done, we write a broad law; we send it to the executive branch; and we say figure it out. And each executive branch is getting more and more creative on how they figure it out. And we deal with all kinds of regulations, and both parties argue with the executive branch and say: Why do you do that? And the executive branch responds back sometimes: Well, you gave me the ability to make that decision on my own and so I did. This issue of deference and of delegation is a very significant constitutional principle. It is an issue that we have got to resolve here as a body--quite frankly, on both sides of the aisle--to be jealous of the responsibility that we are given in the Constitution. But it is also an issue, I think, that is very important for the courts to be able to engage in because the courts are able to step in uniquely to the executive branch in a way the legislative branch cannot. The legislative branch can complain about it, but the courts actually can look at it and say, ``You are out of your lane,'' to the executive branch. And if the court is passive in this, then whoever the executive is gets to run. One of the clearest examples of those is something that is called Chevron deference or our deference. I won't go into all the details on it, but it basically says, if a piece of legislation, the way that it is written, is ambiguous, then the executive branch can interpret it the way that they choose. I have a problem with that interpretation because I believe if the law was written poorly, we shouldn't just give it to the executive branch and say: Figure it out. What do you want it to mean? If it doesn't mean something clearly, it doesn't mean anything at all. Now it is about two issues: One is a constitutional issue. If you go back to 1803, Marbury v. Madison is a foundational piece for the Supreme Court. This is the piece that has come up over and over again over the last two centuries. The foundational statement that came out of Marbury v. Madison was this simple statement: It is emphatically the duty of the judicial department to say what the law is. If the judicial hands to the executive and says, ``We can't tell what the law says, so we will give it to you,'' it is literally the judicial handing to the executive something that is uniquely the judicial's power. Now, this is no simple issue. This goes back to our balance of power. What we have is a situation now over the past several decades where Congress has given its power to the executive branch. If the judicial branch does the same, giving its power to the executive branch, we have a rising executive branch and the other two bodies will look at it and say: How did that happen? Because we gave it away is how it happened. And we have a more and more powerful President of either party and a less and less powerful Congress and judicial branch. In my conversation with Judge Jackson, she repeated over and over to me that the court is limited, the court is limited, the court is limited. And I said, yes, they are limited, but they have a responsibility, and the court's responsibility is to say what the law is. And at the moment--as I said to her, if I threw letters on the table, the executive branch doesn't have the ability to say: I will make them say whatever I want to. I can't--if a law was written and the law said, ``Orange, penny, Ford, desk, Reagan,'' now all those are English words, but, quite frankly, they don't really make a sentence. The authority shouldn't be given to the executive branch to be able to figure out what they could make of that. The responsibility should be in the judicial branch to be able to look at that and say: That means nothing. Congress, go do your homework. Clean it up. The executive branch can't just make it mean what they want it to say and say what the law is. Congress has to say make it clear and the judicial branch has to say what the law is and the executive branch has to apply it. Now, again, this is very philosophical, but it is also foundational in our constitutional construct. It is why I find myself in the position of voting no for someone I personally liked when I met her but do not align with on how you handle the Constitution, separation of powers, and the responsibility of the court to align with original intent of the Constitution. This is not a new dialogue for us in the Senate body. It is a conversation we have had for two centuries that is still unresolved for us. But we cannot select individuals that are not committed to the original meaning of the Constitution and can hand to the executive branch what the law says. This is one that we need to guard. And so for that reason, when the vote comes tomorrow on Judge Jackson, I will vote no. I yield the floor.