James Lankford

Mr. LANKFORD

Mr. LANKFORD. Madam President, in reserving the right to object, here is my problem. Yesterday--and I mean yesterday--the Secretary of Defense released out a memorandum. The memorandum was about pay for National Guard members and the vaccine. We have National Guard members in very large numbers and percentages all around the country who have not been vaccinated at this point. Now, there are two sets of rules for the National Guard--one for the Air National Guard. Their deadline for the vaccination is tomorrow. Now, remember, this memorandum came out yesterday. Their deadline for the vaccination is tomorrow, December 2. For the Army National Guard, their deadline is the 30th of June--so two sets of rules for the Air National Guard and for the Army National Guard. They are completely different--6 months apart, plus. For the Air National Guard, this word came out yesterday with this statement: No Department of Defense funding may be allocated for payment of duties performed under title 32 for members of the National Guard who do not comply with Department of Defense COVID-19 vaccination requirements. Then there is this statement: No credit or excused absence shall be afforded to members who do not participate in drills, training, or other duty due to failure to be fully vaccinated against COVID-19. What does this mean in real life? Well, in real life it means, as of tomorrow, members of the Air National Guard, not the Army National Guard--they have 6 more months, plus. But members of the Air National Guard, as of tomorrow, even if they are not on Federal duty, will no longer be paid, will no longer be allowed to drill. That means, this coming weekend, Air National Guard members who were headed to drill who have not been vaccinated can't drill. What does that mean in real life? Well, National Guard members don't get TRICARE free and taken care of and provided for by the taxpayers like Active Duty does. To get TRICARE from them, it comes out of their checks, but if they are not getting a check, then it interrupts their payments. So what the Secretary of Defense did yesterday was announce that Air National Guard members, as of this weekend, will not be paid anymore, will not be allowed to drill anymore, and we have thousands of them all over the country. At the last check, the Guard had about 50 percent compliance on the vaccination. In some areas of the Guard, they have very serious concerns--well, let me just identify this--not just as a readiness issue in that we have individuals who have served in the Guard for years who now are, suddenly, not going to be paid and are going to have their insurance at risk. It is not just that, but this is also a federalism issue. I know this gets lost in the conversation, but the National Guard is not Active Duty. They are not reservists. The National Guard, when they are under title 32, actually work for the State. The National Guard in my State works for the Governor of my State. The Governor of my State is their commander in chief. According to the U.S. Constitution, for the Guard members, their officers are selected by the Governor of the State. That is how we set up the National Guard. It is not the Active Duty. It is not the Reserves. They are different. The time when they are federally connected is in what is called title 10, and the U.S. President actually calls them up, and they shift from title 32, under the States' authority, to title 10. Do you want to know what the separations are even in funding? Let me make it clear. The way the statute actually lays this out under title 32, section 108, is, if there is a Guard unit that is not complying, then the DOD can cut funding to the State, not to individual members. What is this memorandum? It is not cutting funding to the State; it is cutting funding to individuals who are within the Guard. That is not allowed under title 32, section 108. The consequences for a Guard unit not being ready is to cut off funding to the State. That is how the section works. In fact, even just a few years ago, in an NDAA just like what we are debating, there was a section to allow the DOD to be able to reach into units and to be able to take on and punish individuals with their pay, and that was blocked here in this body. It was not allowed. But this administration is going around Congress, around the States, reaching into individual airmen and docking their pay, and, so far, this body is letting them. That is a terrible precedent. That is terrible for the families in this National Guard unit. It is terrible for the morale, even because the Pentagon gave one set of rules to the Army Guard and another set of rules to the Air Guard, and these individuals, as of this weekend, will not be paid anymore unless this body acts. So my request is very straightforward. The amendment that I bring to the floor protects the National Guard not just in my State but all over the entire country because there are Air Guard members in every one of our States who are worried about what is going to happen tomorrow to them when they have been faithfully serving their country. All that I ask is we file this simple amendment; that we allow a vote on this simple amendment in this body; and that we prohibit the discharging of the withholding of pay and benefits to National Guard members based on their COVID-19 vaccination status. It is very straightforward. It is very clean. It does nothing but say: We stand with our National Guard members, and we will not allow their pay to be cut, not only because we stand with them individually, but we also disagree with the interpretation of the Pentagon, which is not allowed to reach into a unit, select individual members, and not pay them. That is not the way that it works under title 32, section 108. So, yes, I ask to modify the request to include my amendment No. 4863.

Mr. LANKFORD

Mr. LANKFORD. In December of 1952 and again in December of 1953, the Supreme Court was packed. There were lines out into the hallway, with people waiting to get in to hear oral arguments. In December, the Court would hear arguments on the legality of segregation brought by Thurgood Marshall, representing the Brown family in Topeka, KS. Just 56 years before Brown v. Board of Education, segregation was protected by the Supreme Court in Plessy v. Ferguson. They ruled that separate but equal facilities were constitutional, thus enshrining the national disgrace of segregation into America--an absolutely terrible decision by the Supreme Court that haunted our Nation for decades. It took 56 years before the Supreme Court corrected its wrong. Now that more than a century has passed since the Plessy v. Ferguson decision, the Nation still celebrates the Court that decided the Brown v. Board of Education case, as Justices righted a great wrong against millions of people. There was a simple lesson in that decision: When the Court made a mistake, it should fix its mistake. In a lesser known case that affects just about every American now, in 2018, the Supreme Court overturned by a 5-to-4 decision 51 years of precedent on the collection of taxes for businesses called the physical presence rule. Many people now know it as the internet tax rule. It changed the way taxes were collected on the internet. When they made that decision in 2018, there was great confusion and consternation, statements that it would be impossible to implement it and it would bring certain destruction to internet commerce. In fact, in the dissent in that 5-to-4 decision, the minority in the Court stated this: E-commerce has grown into a significant and vibrant part of our national economy against the backdrop of these established rules, including the physical-presence rule. Any alteration of those rules with the potential to disrupt the development of such a critical segment of [our] economy should be undertaken only by Congress. The Court should not act on this important question of current economic policy solely to correct a mistake it made over 50 years ago. It was hand-wringing by the Court, the minority there, that they opposed correcting the obvious mistake of the Court from 51 years before because it could hurt the cyber economy. In other words, doing the right thing involved a risk. Well, yesterday was Cyber Monday. It was one of the largest single days of purchasing online in history. The Court did the right thing, and the economy kept going. There was a simple lesson in that decision: When the Court made a mistake, it should fix its mistake, even if it was 50 years later. Tomorrow, the Supreme Court of the United States will hear oral arguments in what could potentially be the most consequential case for human rights in 48 years. Tomorrow at 10 a.m., nine Justices will hear arguments and ask questions of the attorney general of the State of Mississippi and counsel representing an abortion clinic in Mississippi. Tomorrow morning, the Court will consider whether all previability prohibitions on elective abortions are constitutional. Tomorrow, this Court has the opportunity to uphold the self-evident truth to personhood, the facts of science and of our heart's declaration, the right to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. Simply stated, the Court has an opportunity to correct its mistake from 1973, 48 years ago. In 2018, the Mississippi Legislature enacted the Gestational Age Act, which limits abortion to 15 weeks of gestation except in a medical emergency and cases of severe fetal abnormality. Jackson Women's Health Organization, an abortion clinic in Mississippi, sued. Federal courts held that the law was in violation of the Court precedent in Planned Parenthood v. Casey. Now it is known as the Dobbs case. It stands before the Supreme Court at 10 a.m. tomorrow. This case presents an opportunity for the Court to reconsider Roe v. Wade and turn the role of legislating on the issue of life back to the States, where it was pre-Roe v. Wade. In Roe v. Wade, as this body knows extremely well, the Supreme Court decided the Constitution guarantees the right to have an abortion until the viability of a child, with very little understanding of the term ``viability.'' Years later, in Planned Parenthood v. Casey, the Court also said that the government couldn't place an undue burden on access to abortion, which has been used to block many laws that aim to protect women and children. Both decisions were completely arbitrary and not based in constitutional law. ``Viability,'' quite frankly, is impossible to define because children develop at different speeds. One child, Curtis Means, left the University of Alabama at Birmingham Regional Neonatal Intensive Care Unit after he was prematurely delivered at 21 weeks, 1 day--the youngest child to be born ever. Another child, though, may not survive if they were even delivered at 32 weeks. Viability was completely invented by the Court in 1973 as a standard and is impossible to actually track. America has not forgotten about these children. We have not moved on, and we have not just accepted Roe v. Wade, because when we see a child, as this one is at 15 weeks, we actually see a baby, shockingly enough. Forty-eight years ago, the Supreme Court may have decided that a woman has a right to an abortion, but we never lost track of humanity. Abortion is not just a medical procedure; it is the taking of a human life. I talked this morning with an abortion survivor. And, yes, they do exist by the thousands. She is in her forties. She has children of her own now. She survived a botched abortion and was actually delivered alive during an abortion procedure. She was taken by a nurse to the NICU unit of that hospital, and she is still alive and thriving today. I sat there with that abortion survivor, thinking that abortion is not about random tissue; it is about a person--quite frankly, this morning, the person who was sitting right in front of me. Now, I understand full well I am a pastor who is now a Senator. I am fully aware that I have a Biblical worldview. My dedication to children is not just because I am a follower of Jesus and believe that every person is created in the image of God; I also firmly can look at the science. The science is clear to anyone who is willing to get past the talking points and actually look into the womb. At the moment of fertilization, a new and distinct human being comes into existence. It is not just a fertilized egg; it is a new human. This new cell, which is called a zygote, shows behavior that is unlike the behavior of any other cell around it that is in the woman's body. The DNA inside that cell is different than the DNA inside any other cell in the mom's body. That cell has everything that he or she needs to become a fully developed human being. Everyone listening to me right now--everyone--was once a single-cell zygote, completely dependent on your mom for nutrition. That is why we encourage moms to eat good foods, take prenatal vitamins, stop smoking, and all those things, because we want to protect the development of her child. Why? Because we all recognize that that is a child, and what a mom does now will affect the future for that child. As the baby grows in his or her mother's womb, it continues to develop. At 15 weeks, as this baby is--and that is what the Mississippi law is all about, is a baby who looks just like that. At 15 weeks, a baby has a heart, lungs, skin, eyes, a nervous system. By 15 weeks or a little over 3 months of pregnancy, this preborn baby is moving around in response to touch. All of her organs are formed, and she just needs more time for them to grow and develop. Her heart already has four chambers. It has already beaten millions of times and pumps more than six quarts of blood per day. She cannot breathe outside the womb, but she is breathing inside the womb. She has arms and legs. She has 10 fingers and 10 toes and normally by this point already shows a preference for being right-handed or left-handed. She has eyes, lips, a nose, fingernails, eyebrows, even taste buds. She can feel pain. This decision has ethical, moral, and medical implications. Look in the mirror, anyone in this room. You have fingers and toes and lips and a nose and fingernails and eyebrows and taste buds. You can feel your heart beating. The only difference between you right now and this child is time. That is it. But for some, it is easy to just close their eyes and ignore the self-evident fact because it is easier to talk about Court precedent or choice, because if we look at each child and recognized this child for who she is, it is hard to process that in the last 48 years, 62 million children have died by abortion in America. And for some, they can't allow themselves to acknowledge what is self-evident because it would be too painful to think about 62 million children. Can I tell you, 62 million children is the combined population of Vermont, Alaska, North Dakota, South Dakota, Delaware, Montana, Rhode Island, Maine, New Hampshire, Hawaii, West Virginia, Idaho, Nebraska, New Mexico, Kansas, Mississippi, Arkansas, Nevada, Iowa, Utah, Connecticut, Oregon, Kentucky, Louisiana, Alabama, and Oklahoma--combined. A Court decision that led to the death of 62 million children is a Court precedent that needs to be discarded. Prior to 1973, each State had its own laws on abortion. That is what would happen again if the Court overturns Roe v. Wade. We will have a patchwork of laws on abortion, just like we do right now on homicide. In some States, like mine, if a pregnant mother and her child are killed, the perpetrator faces two charges of murder, one for the mom and one for the child. In other States, the perpetrator would only face one charge of murder because that State doesn't recognize that child's existence at all. I think that is absurd, but that is a law in one State, and it changes from State to State. People can speak to their own State legislators about changing that law in their State and about recognizing the value of every child, even a child in the womb, but until they do, that child is a nonentity in some States. That kind of difference in homicide laws is allowed by the Supreme Court already. This Court should give that same right to every State for every preborn child, not just for some. The law being debated in the Supreme Court tomorrow reflects the will of the people of Mississippi, just as many pro-life laws in Oklahoma and in our legislature have reflected the will of the people of Oklahoma. The arbitrary, outdated viability standard established by the Court makes it harder for States to protect women from physical risk that accompany late-term abortions. It makes it difficult to allow States to protect preborn babies in the second trimester, who can experience pain. The viability standard prevents States from banning dismemberment abortion. The viability standard deters States from protecting children diagnosed with Down syndrome, developmental disabilities, and children being aborted simply because they are male or female. It also prevents States from protecting the lives of their own citizens at any stage of development. I don't understand how infants have become a partisan issue. I really don't. There are some issues, as I talk to my colleagues on the other side of the aisle, where I can see their perspective and their point of view. I may not agree, but I can understand their point of view. But on this issue I do not understand how some people see a baby sucking their thumb in the womb and they see them only as medical waste. I don't understand how some people can support an abortion in one moment, but when they talk to a woman who has had a miscarriage, they immediately respond with ``Oh, I am so sorry.'' If a miscarriage is the loss of a child, then what is an abortion? I don't understand how the same person who fights to protect the right to abort children also brings a gift to a baby shower and celebrates a mom and a baby. How can one child be worth celebrating and the other child be medical waste? I just don't understand that compartmentalization. Frankly, I don't understand how some people who are pro-abortion justify protecting Bald Eagle eggs in Federal law but have no problem supporting the taking of human life in the womb. Children are not medical waste. Children are beautiful, innocent, and valuable. Some people who are pro-abortion call pro-life people horrible names, and they say they are trying to limit a woman's choice and her freedom while they work to protect her right to have her own baby literally have its arms and legs torn off in the womb so the child would bleed to death in the womb and then each body part would be suctioned out separately. I don't consider that freedom. I consider that cruel and inhumane. They say it is a woman's choice. But when does the child get to choose? Some people in our Nation actually celebrate the death of children like it is some glorious empowerment of a woman that she is able to pick and choose which baby will live or die based on her decision. I don't think that is empowerment. I think that is barbaric. Mother Teresa stated: ``It is a poverty to decide that a child must die so that you may live as you wish.'' Change begins tomorrow. Tomorrow the Court will have the opportunity to uphold our Constitution; eradicate the outdated, oppressive, and deadly precedent; and turn our discussion about life over to the legislators in each State. Now is the time for this Court to overturn Roe v. Wade. Our Nation prides itself on human rights and individual liberties, but we have this huge, glaring exception: We deny the obvious fact of a child until they are born. We ignore a child's existence until it is convenient. I really believe, in the decades ahead, our Nation will catch up and we will look back on these years with grief. We will be shocked that when we saw a pregnancy test that said ``positive,'' somehow we didn't figure out that meant positive for tissue; it meant positive for a baby. I look forward to the day when the United States will be a beacon of justice for every child and not just a few; when we will be a Nation that protects the weak, not just a Nation that stands up for the strong; when we will lead the world to protect the innocent and speak for those who cannot speak for themselves; when America is a beacon of hope for every child. Southern slave owners in 1830 denied humanity to their slaves. Men in 1900 denied women a right to vote. The United States rounded up Japanese Americans in World War II and put them into camps. All three of those were considered legal and appropriate at the time. All three of those were fought tenaciously when they were changed, and all three of them are a national embarrassment now. There was a time when the Court ruled that separate but equal was justice. Then, six decades later, they reversed course, ending segregation. Justice requires, when the Court gets it wrong, that they correct their own mistake. This time there are millions of children counting on the Court getting it right. ``Blessed are those who have regard for the weak; the Lord delivers them in times of trouble''--Psalm 41, verse 1. I yield the floor.

Mr. LANKFORD. Mr. President, tomorrow morning at 10 a.m., the Supreme Court of the United States will hear oral arguments on a case out of Mississippi commonly known now as the Dobbs case. That case is all about a Mississippi law, where Mississippi passed a law saying, at 15 weeks, a child in development in the womb can be protected after that time period. That strikes right at the heart of Roe v. Wade, where, in the arbitrary ruling from the Supreme Court in 1973, they made up a new rule saying when a child is viable--not something that is in law at any spot. It created that out of whole cloth. Tomorrow morning, the Supreme Court will reopen that conversation about viability. It is an important discussion for us to be able to have as a nation, and it is vital that we talk about it here as well. As it is being discussed across the street at the Supreme Court, there are issues that we should discuss as well. So, for the next few moments, there are multiple different Senators who are going to speak on this one issue: When is a child a child, and when should States have the rights to protect their own citizens' lives? The Supreme Court has made that murky and has the option tomorrow to be able to make that clear. This conversation, though, will circle around what should that legal standard be and how should we protect the lives of every citizen, no matter how small they are. There will be multiple Senators who will be speaking on this, the first of which will be Senator Steve Daines, who leads the Pro-Life Caucus in the U.S. Senate.

Mr. LANKFORD

Mr. LANKFORD. Madam President, I object.

Mr. LANKFORD. Madam President, in reserving the right to object, this is an astounding thing. This is a conversation that has happened today about amendments to the National Defense Authorization Act. Now, I haven't been here very long, but, typically, an NDAA takes about 2 weeks on the floor to be able to process, and there is a lot of conversation about different amendments. There are managers' packages; there are big groupings of packages that come together that are noncontroversial; and there will be a series of votes that are side by side with other votes. It has already been set up for 20 votes. That is terrific. That is a great start. Then there is a request for some other things that are pretty typical, actually. There have been requests just in the last couple of minutes on military contractors and the vaccine mandate that will certainly affect our military readiness. That is certainly defense related. There is human trafficking in China and whether products are coming through. That is pretty straightforward. In fact, that passed unanimously through this body. That doesn't seem that controversial to be able to be in here. There are conversations about fentanyl and the origin of fentanyl, where that is coming from. That shouldn't be controversial to try to protect the country, but, suddenly, that amendment has been blocked. Nord Stream 2--Ukraine and Russia--has not been a controversial issue for us. This body has laid down sanctions multiple times on the NDAA on this exact issue, and now it is being blocked. You can't even debate it. Myself and Senator Daines both brought up things tonight dealing with border security, which is certainly national security: 1.7 million people we know of have illegally crossed our southwest border this year. It is the highest number of illegal crossings in the history of our country--1.7 million. But, on January 20 of this year, President Biden stopped construction on the border wall--in many places, literally where they only had to hang the gates and install the electronic infrastructure there. That was all that was left, but it stopped. Why is this connected to national security? Well, certainly, border security is national security. Also, part of this funding did come out of defense funding. It is being done by the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers in many places. On top of that, this year, so far--just so far this year--we have paid contractors $2 billion not to build the wall. These were contracts that had already been let out to do the construction. We are continuing to pay about $3 million a day to contractors not to complete the wall in sections, by the way, that career individuals had selected--that section and that design--and then had to prove that that was the right place and the right design to both Republican and Democrats in this body, which they did. Now we are wasting $2 billion to not do national security. My amendment is very straightforward. We take the contracts that are already out there, and we complete those sections of the wall that have been approved by career individuals. Let's complete those sections and not just throw the money away and waste two billion of American taxpayer dollars, but actually use it for national security. So, in saying that, I ask that the request be modified to include my amendment No. 4100.

Mr. LANKFORD. I object.

Mr. LANKFORD

Mr. LANKFORD. Mr. President, on September 9, President Biden told the American people that he was losing patience with them and they needed to get vaccinated right now. He laid down a series of Executive orders on Federal employees, on Federal contractors, on companies that had-- individuals that had 100 employees or more, on individuals that worked in any healthcare-related, anything that dealt with Medicare or Medicaid. It reached out to millions of people. He set a date that was within 3 months, knowing full well it would take months to actually write the rule and it would create chaos across the country as everyone tried to figure out how to do this mandate. I fully believe that was the purpose of setting a close deadline; it was because it would have that much chaos in the country dealing with the vaccine mandates. Well, mission accomplished. It has created chaos across our economy and across lots of families. What is the situation right now in America dealing with COVID? We are on the backside of our second peak. We have seen hundreds of thousands of people lose their lives to COVID. We have seen hospitals fill, get back to order; fill again, get back to order. But in the meantime, three vaccines have been developed, multiple different treatments have been developed, a multitude of tests have been developed, which has been the primary issue that we have every year with the flu. We don't panic every year on the flu because we have testing. We have treatment. We have vaccines. We now have, for COVID, testing, treatments, and vaccines. It becomes much more manageable. In the meantime, right at 80 percent of all Americans who are 12 years old or over have already had at least one dose of one of the vaccines. Let me run that past you again: 80 percent of Americans have had at least one dose of one of the three vaccines, of those 12 years old or older. About 45 million Americans have recovered from COVID; had it, tested positive, and have recovered. The vast majority of Americans, by far-- like, not even close--the vast majority of Americans have been vaccinated or have recovered from COVID or both. But is the administration OK with that? No, they are not. The administration has laid down their own law to say, if Americans do not get the vaccine--those 20 percent left that haven't gotten the vaccine that are 12 years old or older, if they don't get the vaccine, this administration is going to find some way for them to lose their job; which, for many people, will also mean lose their insurance; lose their pension; and, sometimes, lose their home. But the President's response is: I don't care. Go get the shot. That is what I want you to do. Well, Mr. President, mission accomplished. Let me tell you a story of an individual that works in the eastern part of my State, who works for one of those companies that is 100 people or more. He didn't want to have the vaccine. The reason is not even important, but he said he didn't want to take the vaccine. So what happened in his company of 100 or more? They fired him a couple of weeks ago. You are welcome, Mr. President. Thanks for firing him. Oh, it gets better. He lost his house because he couldn't pay the mortgage, and this adult man has now moved in with his family while he tries to figure out what happens next for him. Do you know why? Because the President said he was losing patience and he didn't care if this guy lost his house, lost his job, lost his insurance. The President was just saying, go get it, or else. Well, thanks. Right before Thanksgiving, he is experiencing the ``or else.'' One of my constituent's husband is facing termination. He is from another one of those large companies. He has worked for them for 30 years. He has a secret clearance from the DOD. And his doctor gave him an exemption because his cardiac numbers fluctuate so much. And he is one of those high-risk individuals for blood clots, which can be a side effect of the vaccines. So his doctor has encouraged him not to take the vaccine. So he went into his job. He asked for the medical exemption, and he was given two forms to sign. The first of the forms said he had to agree to take the vaccination or he would lose his job. The second form agreed that, if he took the vaccination, he would not sue the company if he had a negative reaction. So here is a man who has to choose between taking the vaccine, knowing that his doctor has told him not to do it, and if he does take it, if he has a negative reaction, the company wants to be held harmless for it. And he has to sign a document saying the company will be held harmless for it or lose his job. Do you know why? Because President Biden said he was losing patience. So this family gets to sit around over Thanksgiving not talking about football but talking about whether he is going to lose his job or possibly have a blood clot in the hospital. Which would you like to have that conversation on over Thanksgiving? There is a company that does electrical engineering that also has one of those Federal contracts they talk about. Some of the employees don't do the Federal contracting. They work for other issues. Fifty people of the 250 in the company have said they don't want to take the vaccine, and so they are in the process of losing their jobs. And that company will not be able to fulfill its Federal contract because hiring 50 more electricians is not that simple right now with the economy that we are currently in. A constituent told us that her employer is going to lay her off on December 8 because she hasn't had the vaccine yet. So she will spend Thanksgiving discussing this with her family as she approaches the time where she is about to be laid off. She works in one of those companies that has a Federal contract. She reached out to her primary care doctor, who is at the VA, by the way, and the VA instructed her that they are not writing exemptions for medical exemptions. She is on her own. Why? Because the President is losing patience, and he has decided he is going to throw all of these families in chaos or they are going to lose their job, because he said so. Why have I been fighting this mandate since September 9 when the President actually announced it? Because it was obvious to me what was coming. It was this. Everyone could see it, apparently, but the White House. Americans are stubborn people. That is what has made us the most prosperous, freest people in the world. We are entrepreneurs. We take risks. We understand the consequences for our risks. But we also go do because we can; we are Americans. And now the President of the United States has announced: I don't care; you are going to get this, or else. So what is the real effect of this? All of this chaos? Oh, this is just part of it. There is a whole lot more. How about the EMS folks that are in rural Oklahoma, that are having a hard time actually keeping some of their drivers and folks in because they have chosen not to take the vaccine? What happens in 3 weeks from now when people get sick at their house or have a heart attack and EMS can't respond because those folks got fired from their jobs because the President said, I am losing patience? What happens? I will tell you what happens. People die. Other families are going to struggle through this process as they are figuring out where they are going to go to work because they lost their career, because the President said: I have lost patience with you. Tell me this: For the person that is the JAG officer in the military, works in the National Guard, and for whatever reason--whether it is a religious accommodation, medical accommodation, or whatever it might be--they chose not to take this vaccine, when they get a dishonorable discharge, what happens to them? They lose their law license is what happens to them. They are disbarred, and they are no longer practicing their profession. What happens to the State trooper in Oklahoma that also serves on our National Guard? When they get dishonorably discharged, they don't just lose their military career; they lose their civilian career. What happens to the nurse or doctor that serves with the National Guard? When they get drummed out, what happens? They lose their military career and their civilian career. That is what happens. Do you know why? Because the President decided he was losing patience with the American people and they have to do what he says to do, not what they want to do. That is why all this chaos is happening. I heard from a constituent, 28 years of Federal service--28 years of Federal service. I am not going to give the administration that they work in, but they work behind the scenes in an exceptionally important, exceptionally difficult task--serving their neighbors as a Federal employee. She doesn't want to retire, but she doesn't want to take this vaccine either. So do you know what she is doing? She is retiring. And what is going to happen in this agency in Oklahoma when they lose this cornerstone person at this Agency? They will struggle to figure out what she did, how she did it. And people in Oklahoma will get less help in that Agency because a long- term, vital civil servant is about to get run out of civil service because President Biden decided he lost patience with her. That wasn't in her civil service contract. That was never negotiated with any other collective bargaining rights agreements, never. There is no addition in any collective bargaining rights agreements for Federal employees that they have to get a vaccine mandate if the President decides that they do, but he decided--that is, President Biden decided--he was going to take this on. And so she is going to be discussing over Thanksgiving what she is going to do post-retirement, wishing that she could stay a little longer to be able to build up a few more years, and thought she was going to be able to, but, instead, she got ran out because she and the President had a difference of opinion about a brandnew vaccine. Now, I have said to this group before several times--and I will say it again--I have had the vaccine. I encourage others to take the vaccine. Eighty percent of Americans who are 12 years old or older have had the vaccine. There are plenty of Americans who have had the vaccine who support the vaccine but do not want their next door neighbor to get fired because they disagree on the vaccine. In fact, I don't know a lot of people who do, though I have met some that are just that heartless to be able to say: I don't care what you think. I want to feel better forcing you to go get the vaccine. I have met some of those folks, but I don't meet many of them. Most of them say: I freely made the decision; they should be able to freely make the decision, as well. But apparently that is not where the President is and, unfortunately, that is not where some of my Democratic colleagues are because multiple times we have brought an end to the vaccine mandates to multiple committees in multiple places over the last several months and it gets knocked down every time. Just this week, we filed a Congressional Review Act dealing with just the OSHA piece. We have another one coming dealing with all those on CMS to make a simple statement: We have got to stop this vaccine mandate. It is causing chaos in our families. It is causing chaos in our economy, and anyone who doesn't think it is is not talking to people at home. So we will bring this in the next 18 days to the floor of this Senate, and we will force a vote on it and put everyone on record: Do you stand with the American people, who strongly affirm the vaccine but strongly oppose the mandate, or will you be one to say: I don't care. I stand with the President. I am losing patience with people, this 20 percent that haven't done the vaccine. I am losing patience with them, and I am just going to force them to do it, as well--because that decision is coming to every single person in this body. This could be turned off right now, and one section of it already is turned off. The Fifth Circuit Court reached in on the issue of private employers and said that this was way overly broad of the President. No kidding. It was unconstitutional for the President to reach into companies and to say: I don't care who it is, how important they are to the company. If you don't make them do the vaccine, you have to fire them. The Fifth Circuit said you cannot do that. Thank you, Fifth Circuit, for finally joining in on that. OSHA has now said that they are not going to enforce that, but there are lots of other companies that have done it anyway. And, I will tell you, for this individual in Eastern Oklahoma who has already been fired and lost his house, it is too late for him for suddenly the Biden team to say: Just kidding. We are going to pull that back. His life has already been wrecked by you. What else is happening? I have reached out to multiple different Agencies to be able to talk this through. It has been fascinating to me, when I have talked to different Agencies. By the way, the Federal Agency mandate for all Federal employees is next week to be able to have that done. But when I talk to leaders of Agencies of multiple different Departments across this town, none of them seem to know how many of their employees have actually been vaccinated yet--none of them. They all say: Well, we think it is quite a few. I say: How many folks have not been vaccinated? We have x number of folks who have been reported to us, but they don't seem to know. It has become chaotic. For Federal workers, their unions have finally stepped in--finally. I have been shocked at how slow the Federal unions were to this. They finally stepped up and asked for an extension of the President to say: Don't put the mandate down for next week. Give people more time because, literally, people are sitting around over Thanksgiving deciding whether they are going to keep their job or not. And if 10 to 20 percent of the workforce across the Federal workforce leaves, we are in such chaos that there is no way we will be able to finish serving people as we desperately need to be able to do across the Federal Government. What would I recommend? I had some very frank conversations with the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission, or the EEOC. It was interesting to me, when I visited with the EEOC. That is the group that protects workers--Federal workers or private--from discrimination and protects workers from inappropriate termination. When I talk to the EEOC, what I hear from them is that they weren't consulted through the process of developing this new vaccine mandate and all the exemptions that should be in place. Can I just tell the workers of my State and the workers across the country a simple thing? If your employer will not accept your religious accommodation that you put in or your medical exemption that you put in--if they do not accept those--you need to go to the EEOC and file a complaint because the EEOC has rules about terminations that are inappropriate terminations. If individuals are being terminated from private companies, even if they are Federal contractors or Federal employees, I encourage you to go to the EEOC and file a complaint if they are not hearing your medical accommodation or your religious accommodation. That is your right as an American. When the President of the United States is running over your rights, you have every right to be able to appeal that personally. You don't have to hire an attorney. You can file that complaint on your own to be able to make sure that your employer knows that you are filing an EEOC complaint against them for inappropriate termination, for not accepting your medical exemption and your religious accommodation. Interestingly enough, when I approached the Office of Management and Budget a month ago about how they are going to handle religious accommodation, they said: It is not the business of Federal workers to decide and individuals' faith. We are just going to accept that. But when the document came out, there was a six-part test of whether you are religious enough to be able to turn down the vaccine. They literally created a six-part test that every supervisor can go through and check to determine if you are religious enough to be able to turn this down. This would be the first time that I know of that the Federal Government has actually reached into an entity, to individuals, and said: We are going to decide for you how religious you are. That is how crazy this has become. I encourage you, again, if individuals have said that you are not religious enough to be able to ask for this accommodation, go to the EEOC, file a complaint against your employer--whether that be a Federal Agency, whether that be a private entity--and make sure that they are well aware of what is going on. If you work in a Federal Agency and you have an initial appeals process that actually goes through, go through that. Go through that process. But if you are denied or not heard, you do have rights as an American, and I would encourage you to be able to stand up for your rights as an American against unjust hiring and unjust firing in this process. Let me read this last letter to you. As we have fought through this process and find every leverage point I can find for the people in my State to be able to make their own decisions, it has been difficult to be able to talk to people in the struggles that they have. Let me read one. This gentleman wrote to me: I retired after 20 years of Active-Duty service in the military to enjoy time with my family and the supreme blessings of freedom and peace our country has secured at the expense beyond human measure. Now, many of our undaunted servicemembers and veterans alike face possible unemployment because we refuse to take a vaccine. Some are being coerced into taking it because they can't support their families while unemployed. The very people who risked their lives and the well-being of their children face persecution for a personal medical choice. His comment to me: This is not American. I agree. That is why we are fighting this. That is why we are continuing to push this. That is why we are bringing a Congressional Review Act up to put every single person in this body on record: Do you support forcing people to take a vaccine or be fired, or not? I do not, and I hope that 99 other of my colleagues also do not. I yield the floor.

Mr. LANKFORD

Mr. LANKFORD. Mr. President.

Mr. LANKFORD. Mr. President, I have a real concern for our economy, for the future of what is happening right now, and a lot of it wraps around the vaccine mandates that are being laid down by President Biden. On September 9, President Biden had announced: I am losing patience with the American people, and it is time for you to get vaccinated. And he laid down a rule on every Federal worker, every Federal contractor, everyone in the military, and everyone who is in a private business with 100 employees or more. He created a new mandate. He literally reached into union shops and changed their collective bargaining agreement unilaterally and said: The President's going to add a new feature in your collective bargaining agreement, and it is going to be that you are going to have a vaccine or you are going to be fired. He told every police officer; he told every firefighter; he told every doctor, every nurse; he told every member of the military, no matter how many badges they wear or how many decorations they received: You will be fired if you don't follow my instructions. It didn't matter if they were frontline workers. It didn't matter if they laid their lives on the line all of last year. It didn't matter. He declared to them: You will be fired if you don't follow my instructions. He made it very, very clear: If you have already had COVID and recovered and have natural immunity, I don't care. If your personal doctor has told you not to--his perspective in what is coming down is, if the CDC from Washington, DC, says it's OK, it doesn't matter what your personal doctor says. While he said you can have a religious accommodation, so far, as I checked in with the military services, no one has been given a military or religious accommodation. And across the Federal workforce, I have yet to hear a soul getting a religious accommodation. The words are: ``We are going to pay attention to your local doctor.'' The reality has been totally different. And we have pushed in every way possible against this administration, and will continue to do that not because it is unjust, not because, quite frankly, I think the vaccine is the wrong thing to do--I think it is the right thing to do-- but the mandate is absolutely the wrong thing to do. Americans have a lot of different reasons to not take a vaccine. Allow Americans to be Americans. I have a friend of mine who, by the way, is a liberal Democrat. Yes, I have liberal Democrat friends. He called me and said his son has had long-term COVID. Eight months he has been in recovery from COVID. He does not want to have the vaccine not knowing how his body will react to that. This week, he will lose his job because the President of the United States told him he is losing his patience. That is not right. Build Back Better Agenda Mr. President, on a separate but related subject, we continue to be able to walk toward a $2 trillion proposal coming down. We hear the House is taking it up even in the next 24 to 48 hours. Of course, we heard that over and over again lately. There has been a real concern about what is happening in the economy because of rising inflation. Oklahomans are paying $175 more a month right now for their basic utilities, groceries, and gasoline--$175 more a month that they are paying because of the rising inflation that has happened this year. That inflation, you can take it right back to the middle of March, when a $2 trillion package was passed in this body on a straight partisan vote that everyone on this side of the aisle was saying: Don't do this. This will cause rising inflation. And it was done anyway. As simple as I can state it, it was if you add a lot of extra money and you discourage people from working, you will get fewer products and more buyers. It is not hard to be able to see what is going to happen as a result of that. Larry Summers, who used to be my Democratic colleagues' favorite economist--he was the National Economic Council director to President Obama--has been a very outspoken progressive economist. He wrote in February, challenging this body not to do that $2 trillion package, saying this: There is the risk of inflation expectations rising sharply. Stimulus measures of the magnitude contemplated are steps into the unknown. For credibility, they need to be accompanied by clear statements that the consequences will be monitored closely. At that same time in February, he said: Based on the proposal that's out there, there will be an individual that normally has $22,000 worth of normal income in a year that will move to $30,000 in benefits for the year, and that will cause problems. And, boy, has it. Employment all over the country has had all kinds of chaotic moments where employers are trying to hire employees and they are making more on benefits than they are at work, and it has caused all sorts of chaos across our economy. It is interesting, several progressive economists in March of this year, right after the bill passed, made general statements, like: ``A relief plan is different than a stimulus.'' It doesn't matter. It is not a stimulus. It is a relief plan, so we can spend as much as we want. This was my favorite--one of the economists came out and said: ``The risk of generalized overheating in the goods market appears low . . . '' ``The risk of generalized overheating in the goods market appears low . . . '' That was the statement of the economists in March of this year. Yet the reality is, this year, there is a backup at the Port of Long Beach and people can't get supplies all over the country, and exactly what was forecast in February and March is occurring in our economy right now. Larry Summers again identified it this way. He made the statement: The pandemic had punched a $20 billion hole in Americans' monthly wage income [and] Biden [has] proposed filling it with $100 billion. He said: I know the bathtub has been too empty, but one has to think about what the capacity of the bathtub is and how much water we're trying to flow into it. What do I mean by that? That $2 trillion package that was in March caused all the economic issues of this year. It has caused all the inflation, all the challenges in employment across our economy and across our workforce. It is now being followed up, apparently, by another $2 trillion proposal that is coming in the coming days. If we had giant inflation with the last one--by the way, with the highest inflation rate since 1982. If we had that inflation from that $2 trillion package, what is going to happen when you put another $2 trillion on top of the last $2 trillion in this economy? The simple fact is, quoting Larry Summers, we don't know what will happen. We are literally taking ``steps into the unknown.'' But I can tell you, it is not hard to predict. That is just the economic issues. As I look at this package--it is hard to be able to look at the package that is being proposed. I have heard quite a few folks back in Oklahoma on the weekend say to me: What all is in this $2 trillion package that a couple weeks ago was at $3.5 trillion? Now we hear it is $2 trillion. What actually is in it? And I smile at them and say: I am not sure yet. I hear bits and pieces. To tell you how much it is moving around, last week, when it was released to the public, it was 2,400 pages. By this morning, it was 1,700 pages. But wait. Now this afternoon, it is 2,000 pages long. That is in a week. It has moved from 2,400 pages to 1,700 pages, to 2,000 pages, as the proposal continues to be able to change over and over again. It is incredibly difficult to be able to track what all is in it, but we can track some things that are in it. There is a massive hole that is holding for immigration, as we have now seen three different major proposals on immigration on how to be able to give amnesty to the largest number of people. Several have already been knocked down by the Parliamentarian, but it seems to come back again just to try to find a new way to be able to do amnesty for as many people that are here illegally present in our country as possible. That seems to be a piece of this economic proposal that is out there. We do know in this proposal that it finds as many ways as possible to be able to fund gaps in Hyde funding. Now, what is that? Using Federal dollars to be able to pay for abortions in our country--an agreement that has been in our country since 1976--that we have strong disagreements on a child's life. I happen to believe that a child is a child is a child, and every child is valuable, no matter how small they are. Many of my colleagues on the other side of the aisle don't believe children are valuable until they can see them. They have to be born before they are valuable. I believe there is no difference in a child in the womb than a child outside the womb other than time. This bill is full of areas to go around the Hyde rules to start allowing the funding with Federal dollars to pay for the taking of human life. I am disappointed how obsessed my Democrat colleagues seem to be about finding new ways to pay for the taking of human life of children. That has not been so, even as recently as 2 years ago. Quite frankly, Senator Biden was outspoken about protecting the Hyde protections. Now, President Biden and this body seem to be focused on how many ways we can increase abortions in America. There are a lot of energy aspects in this: the new tax on natural gas, where just 5 or 6 years ago, we called the ``bridge fuel to the future'' to be able to reduce carbon. Now, natural gas is receiving punishment in this in brandnew taxes. There is a block on production from the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge. Some of my Democratic colleagues celebrate, saying: ``We are going to cut off anything from Alaska and protect that region,'' which is remarkable to me. We are now buying more oil from Russia than we are from Alaska, right now--twice as much, in fact, more oil from Russia than we are from Alaska. The Arctic National Wildlife Refuge is an area 19.3 million square acres--19.3 million acres. That is about half the size of my home State of Oklahoma. That is an enormously large area. And in that area, there are 2,000 acres that would actually be set aside for oil production. So to put it in perspective, ANWR is half the size of my State of Oklahoma, and the oil production area that will be needed is a third of the size of the airport that I fly out of, the Will Rogers airport in Oklahoma City. If you took a third of the size of the airport, that is the size of, actually, the oil production area that will be needed in an area half the size of my entire State. Yet that is being blocked in this bill. We will see the price of energy go up, but we will see a new benefit for electric vehicles that are here. For even very, very wealthy Americans, they will get a benefit of $12,500 on new luxury vehicles that they want to be able to purchase, as long as they are electric. There are direct attacks on the school choice in this bill that actually goes after any kind of private institution or faith-based institution. It says that you will get funding for a secular government school for one level, but if you are in a faith-based school, it is a different level or none at all. If you are in a pre-K program or a childcare program--and in many rural communities all across our State, when you come to Oklahoma, in many rural communities, the pre-K program and the childcare program is run from a local church. Oh, but they won't be allowed to be able to be a provider in this. You have to be a secular provider because religious institutions are being blocked out by this bill. It does supersize the IRS, though. It adds $79 billion to the IRS to increase audits--$79 billion. To give you a perspective of how big that is, the normal IRS budget for a year is $12 billion. Yet this bill gives an additional $79 billion to the IRS to be able to increase audits. And if anyone has a belief those audits are only going to connect to people that make $400,000 or more, I have a bridge to sell you. I have to tell you, as I read through the bill--and it does take some time, and it is difficult to be able to get through it because it is changing so much--I am amazed at some of the things that are in it that have been slipped through this: $350 million are sent to unions to provide for electronic voting systems for unions--$350 million. There are $4.28 billion being set aside for training activities in industry sectors and occupations for climate resilience. There are whole sections in this bill, as I go through it, that are set aside for specific areas: $20 million for State, local, and Tribal governments to mitigate online services to the dot-gov internet domain. To be able to help cities go to the dot-gov internet domain, there is $20 million that is set aside. And there are some set aside for even some of my colleagues who are here today on the floor: $49 million carve-out for Native Hawaiian climate resilience programs in the Office of Native Hawaiian Relations. It depends on the State that you are in and the perspective that you are in, but as I go through this bill and start identifying the programs, I hear broad descriptions of different programs, and I hear all these different sales of what is in it. But when you read through the bill, when you go through the details of the bill, this is the kind of stuff that you find. Oh, by the way, one last piece in this ever-changing bill, just within the last hour and a half, they have added a new section of the bill over in the House side. It is a bill dealing with State and local tax deductions that will help the wealthiest Americans get a bigger tax cut. Yes, I did say that correctly. Currently, for Americans who are in high-taxed States, they can only deduct $10,000 of their State and local taxes, only $10,000 off their State and local taxes that they can actually deduct from their Federal tax. The new proposal that just came out in the last hour from the House of Representatives increases that to $72,500 in deductions off your State and local taxes. That will be a great tax benefit to the wealthiest Americans--$72,500. All that we are asking is, Show us what the real bill is. Let Americans be able to see the real bill. Have the transparency and the ability to be able to actually track through what this will mean day to day, what this will mean to our economy, because we have seen what $2 trillion did to our economy this March--what is another $2 trillion going to mean on top of all of that coming up this fall? I think we are walking into the unknown, except this time, I think we do know what is about to happen to our economy. We need to see this bill and stop this bill before it damages our economy even more than we have already been damaged. I yield the floor.

Mr. LANKFORD

Mr. LANKFORD. Madam President, I do have to make a quick comment before I jump into a unanimous consent request. I did appreciate hearing the majority leader talk about how the minority and the majority stood up around Reconstruction. And I found it interesting that he continued to talk about the majority and the minority standing up for the rights of slaves and the rights of individuals, conveniently leaving out it was the Republicans at that time that were the majority that were actually standing up for the rights of all individuals of all races to be able to vote and to be able to be engaged, and it was the Democrats at that time that were working very hard to be able to block the rights of individuals to be able to vote. So I did have to find it personally humorous when he seems to not be very shy about saying Republican and Democrat on this floor, at that moment he used majority and minority. But I digress. On to other issues.

Mr. LANKFORD

Mr. LANKFORD. Madam President, I understand the statement by my friend from Michigan. I have to tell you, though, I wish this was rolled out in an orderly fashion. It has been 6 weeks of chaos and unanswered questions, and the Federal Government is about to fire thousands of Federal employees because they did not bend to their will. Many Federal employees asked for a medical exemption and were told no. Literally, they brought a letter from their doctor and were told no. Individuals asked for religious accommodation and were told no, they will not get it. It is one thing to say it is offered; it is another thing to say it was actually extended. I will tell you, from talking to people in my State in the Federal workforce, they are not getting those orderly religious accommodations, those orderly medical exemptions. They are not getting it. They are being told ``No, it is a mandate,'' and then they are being told ``You are about to lose your career. Is it worth it?'' These are individuals literally choosing between their health and their job. By this January, I don't know how many thousands of Federal employees we are going to have out of our system and how much wisdom we are going to lose out of all these Agencies. But this horrible game of chicken that the President is right now playing with not only Federal employees but with people all over the country is a terrible thing to do to our economy and to individuals who are seeking the best service. It is amazing to me how many individuals served through the entire pandemic faithfully and took great risk to serve their neighbors who literally the President is about to fire as their thank you. That is wrong. That is wrong. I stood last week and talked to individuals who work for American Airlines, who are really concerned and frustrated, who love working with American Airlines but are now receiving a mandate coming down on them that they are digging in and saying: I am not going to do it. I have already had COVID. I have recovered. I have natural immunity. Why am I being asked to do this as well? And they are getting only that the President is mandating it, and: We do Federal work, and so it is going to be required. It is the same thing happening to packing companies, to manufacturers, to small businesses around the country. Let me just read you a story. One employee who called our office last week is currently in cancer treatment for the fourth time and is receiving an experimental treatment. She is being told that she will be terminated from her job November 24 if she doesn't get vaccinated, because the President is requiring it on everyone. That does not sound like an accommodation that is occurring because of medical accommodations. It is nice to say in DC: Talk to the people in your State what is actually happening on the ground. All of this push that is happening around healthcare workers all around the country, what does that really look like? When we talked to an administrator of one of our nursing homes. Most of the individuals in our nursing homes, thankfully, as residents and as staff, have been vaccinated; but some have had COVID, and they are concerned about getting the vaccine. Whether that is rational or not, that is where they are, but they have natural immunity. This particular nursing home that we talked to, 20 percent of her employees have said that they will not take the vaccine. This particular nursing home in a rural area will close and expose all of those residents and their families to chaos because Biden said: I am losing patience. It is one thing to say we need to be able to push back on this pandemic. I absolutely agree. It is another thing to irrationally close down nursing homes that are taking care of patients that, by the way, were filled with people--frontline workers--who put their life at risk last year to serve people. And now to push those people out and fire them this year? ``You are welcome,'' apparently, is what the President should be saying to them. All I am asking for is reason. All I am asking for is to consider those 44 million Americans who have natural immunity and to accept what we all know scientifically to be true. All I am asking for is real medical exemptions. That is not irrational. All I am asking for is real religious accommodations. Those are things that should be straightforward, common sense, and doable. But for whatever reason, the train is barreling down the tracks. In the debris field is our Federal workers, individuals who work in private companies, healthcare workers across the board. I, just this weekend, received an email that was a long email from a very shy physician in one of our major hospitals in Tulsa. She told me flat out: I don't seek personal attention. I don't do media stuff. In fact, she said: I don't even have social media at all. But she detailed out her healthcare decisions and what was going on in her own life and said: I do not want to receive this vaccine. As a physician at a major hospital in Tulsa, she is about to lose her job because President Biden's patience is running thin. What do her patients do next? Mr. President, don't play chicken with our families. This is real to them. They do not need to lose their job because they have medical conditions, religious accommodations, or they have natural immunity. They have suffered through COVID once, and now you are going to fire them for that? Let's have a real dialogue, not a rushed ``My patience is wearing thin.'' With that, I yield the floor.

Mr. LANKFORD

Mr. LANKFORD. Mr. President, the Senate is currently taking up a nominee to the Bureau of Land Management: Tracy Stone-Manning. There is a lot that I can say about Tracy Stone-Manning, but there are some key features that come out if you are going to deal with the Bureau of Land Management. You walk into a leadership role where you have thousands of people working under you and around you, and you have care for the forests, and you have care for a lot of things that are running our environment. This particular leader was involved, when she was in college, in a group that was gathering to be able to spike trees. She has admitted that she is the one who actually wrote the letter to be able to actually lay out what they had done, where they drove a spike into some trees, intentionally designed to be able to threaten loggers who would come through that area; that if they actually put a chain saw to that, there is a decent chance it would break the chain and it would come at the logger or that if they put that log in a sawmill, it would split the bandsaw and throw debris across all the workers who are there. To be clear, tree spiking is an act of ecoterrorism. Now, this individual will be voted on by this body to lead the Bureau of Land Management. I wish I could say that was the only issue that was there, but as you read through her writings--she wrote multiple different things about dealing with environmental issues, but one of the things that were most painful to me to be able to read was a section that she wrote where she had a picture of a child, and in the picture of the child, it said: ``This is the greatest environmental threat that we face''--children. In her philosophy, the world has too many kids, and the way that we can protect the environment is to have fewer children in the world. I happen to think children are a blessing, not an environmental threat. But this body is about to vote on putting Tracy Stone-Manning to lead the Bureau of Land Management.

Mr. LANKFORD

Mr. LANKFORD. Mr. President, it is one of the most basic questions that we get in almost any setting: What do you do? It is common conversation, back and forth between adults or teenagers or college students alike: What do you do? It is a philosophical issue, though, that really has to be addressed, and, interestingly enough, it has become a greater divide between Republicans and Democrats of late. It didn't used to be that way. The simple conversation about ``what do you do'' and encouraging people to be able to be engaged in productive work and what they do seemed to be something that was unified. Democrats and Republicans alike rallied in the 1990s, as Bill Clinton declared: We are ending welfare as we know it. A 60-year experiment of sending out checks to individuals, saying we are going to help people escape poverty by sending a check to individuals, and if we give them a check, they will rise out of poverty. Bill Clinton stood before the Nation and said: I campaigned to end that because that experiment didn't work, and he focused in a whole different direction, encouraging, as he spoke often on deadbeat dads, individuals that should pay their child support, need to pay it, and he highlighted how many people weren't doing that because those families were left exposed. And he talked about the dignity of work, saying: To help people to be able to escape from poverty, we need to incentivize work and stop just sending a check to individuals but instead attach that to work. The Nation stood and cheered and rallied around a moment to say: Let's help people, but let's help people actually rise. There is a statement that I heard often, even during that time period: Let's not make welfare a hammock; let's make it a trampoline, that they can get assistance for a moment and be lifted out and to be able to rise to other things. I thought that was a settled issue, until just last year. I suddenly started hearing President Biden on the campaign trail, and now in office, with my Democratic colleagues in the House already passing something over there in their committees, saying: We want to actually go back to welfare as we knew it. We want to be able to go back to that failed experiment, when we used to just mail checks to people, and so people in government would feel good to say: We took care of childhood poverty. I have already heard people--even today in this body--say: If we pass this $3\1/2\ trillion proposal, we will cut childhood poverty in half. That was a statement that was made pre-1990s, when government believed if I just mailed a check, suddenly children would rise out of poverty because the numbers are right. But, actually, what we discovered was inflation would rise as checks were mailed out, and families were trapped in permanent levels of poverty because there was a disincentive to actually engage in work. Now, again, this used to not be a Republican-Democrat thing. This was just a thing that we could look at the data. Brookings Institute, which is a left-leaning think tank--I think we could all commonly agree with that. The Brookings Institute has, year after year, gone back to be able to look at how people actually escape poverty. How does it happen? What are the features that are there if people--if it is true in their life that they escaped poverty. They have identified three areas; that if these three areas are true, you will escape poverty. No. 1, graduate high school. People that graduate high school, much lower level. No. 2, have a full-time job; have an income; if you actually are working full time. And, No. 3, if you wait until 21 to be married and then have children after marriage. If those three things are true, the Brookings Institute said only 2 percent of the people actually are in poverty. Seventy-five percent of those folks in poverty that graduate high school, get a full-time job, have children after marriage--if those three things are true, 75 percent of them rise into the middle class. This is not rocket science in some ways; it is just human nature. But the bill that is being set in front of us that is $3\1/2\ trillion in entitlements--and just to be able to put in perspective how large that is, if you combined the budgets of all 50 States, the total budget of all 50 States, it is $2 trillion. This new entitlement bill is $3\1/2\ trillion that is being proposed--$3\1/2\ trillion of new entitlements that would go to individuals that removes things like an incentive to work. It says you can get childcare tax credits, even if you are not working; that no matter if you are working or not--and the current limit, by the way, don't forget, is only $2,500 of income in a year. If you will do at least $2,500 worth of income in a year, then you get additional assistance. It is the encouragement to say the State will come alongside of you, but we have got to help you to be able to rise out of this spot--even that is taken away. There is a marriage penalty that is included in this. Ironically, when I read from the Brookings Institute, and they say, ``Do you want to help people rise out of poverty,'' there is actually a marriage penalty in this where it actually punishes. So we seem to be punishing work and punishing marriage rather than encouraging people to be able to rise. Listen, this statement should be common for us: What do you do? It is not just meaningful for individuals and for communities, it is meaningful for children because, in school, children will be asked: What do your parents do? And if it is nothing, it matters to a child. A child has the example that is set in front of them, and it becomes a generational issue. We should encourage each generation to be able to rise and be a part of our society, not to be disconnected but to be engaged with all of our society. That develops community between individuals. It helps our economy to grow. It is what made us the most powerful economy in the entire world because we had what we called the American work ethic. The American work ethic was a very simple principle that everyone should have the opportunity to be able to do whatever job they choose to be able to do, to be able to have access to the economy. And if we find any individual or any group that is blocked out of the economy, government steps in and clears the path to make sure there is a level path to be able to be engaged so that everyone has that option to be able to engage in the economy; that everyone has the chance to be able to rise. That does not get better by telling people: Oh, sit down. You don't have to work. Oh, sit down right over there. We will take care of all your kids all the way through. You don't have to engage. It sounds nice unless you are living in it. And then it traps people in generational poverty--urban, rural, across the country. It traps people in generational poverty. That doesn't help families. That doesn't help children. That doesn't bless families and help them to be able to rise out of poverty. It keeps them trapped in it. We have a philosophical difference. How do we help people in poverty? I believe we help people in poverty by clearing out of every opportunity and making straight level paths, setting that in front of individuals and saying: You are an American. Go after the American dream. Apply the American work ethic: try, graduate high school, get a job, get married, stay engaged, bless your children. I believe that is the best way to be able to help our Nation. Apparently, others believe that it is better just to be able to say: No. You can't do it. Sit down. I will send you a check. I don't think that casts a vision for their children, and I don't think that helps our Nation. If you want to make it very straightforward and simple, the census said that we have 21 million children who have a parent that lived outside the household in 2018. Thirty percent of those children were in poverty--three times the rate of children in households where both parents were present. I could read the Brookings. I can read the census data. But I think we all know it in our gut; that we provide purpose and meaning to people when they can answer the question: What do you do, and it matters to our country and to them as a family. I yield the floor.

Mr. LANKFORD

Mr. LANKFORD. Mr. President, so we are approaching a conversation about two big issues here--one is a government shutdown, which I have challenged this body a lot about of late to say: Why are we approaching another government shutdown? And then, on top of that, we can't seem to get any of the 12 appropriations bills done, which there are 12 of them to be done by September 30, but exactly zero of them have actually gone through committee because this body is so consumed with focusing on a $3\1/2\ trillion new entitlement package--$3\1/2\ trillion--a straight partisan package that would create a whirlwind of new entitlements. To give you a perspective of how big 3\1/2\ trillion is, 3\1/2\ trillion is about the total revenue that the Federal Government brings in in an entire year with all taxes, all fees. All everything is about $3\1/2\ trillion. This is an additional package on top of that, of entitlements of 3\1/2\ trillion new dollars in entitlements. Now, if I go back to 2017, when we were trying to be able to supercharge the economy and to be able to create more jobs, we passed the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act. And in 2017, when we passed the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act, it did exactly what we wanted it to do. It simplified the Tax Code for the vast majority of individual filers, it reduced taxes for just about every single filer, and it increased wages across the country. And it increased revenue coming into the Treasury because it stimulated our economy, which created more jobs, which created more opportunity for more people to make money. When more people make more money, they pay more in taxes, and it comes and covers it. That is what we did. My Democratic colleagues are now proposing $2.1 trillion in tax increases--tax increases not to cover our deficit, tax increases to create new entitlements and to spend even more money. And the several ways they do it are very, very painful, as I read through their proposal. One of those is that they are proposing to change the corporate tax piece, which sounds so good to say: We are just going to change the corporate tax piece so only corporations will pay this--the problem being 1.4 million C corporations in the United States, and 84 percent of those corporations that are out there have 20 employees or less. So they can throw around the big corporations, and everyone thinks it is Conoco and Apple. It is--the vast majority--small businesses designed as C corps. And how are they going to make them more competitive? They are going to make those C corps more competitive by raising the tax rate for all those corporations to make their tax rate higher than China. Let me run that past you again. To make us more competitive globally, they are going to make our tax rate higher than China's tax rate, while we are trying to be able to compete with China on the world stage. Not only that, there is a global minimum tax that is already out there that is a small tax that is out there for every corporation. You know who has that already? The United States does. You know how that was created? It was created in the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act in 2017 to make sure companies couldn't scam out and couldn't move their money into other places, that they would be here. But if they decided to move to a tax haven, it wouldn't be there. But we set it at a rate to make us competitive. They want to take that rate and supercharge it and make it one of the top rates in the world. Now, the statement from Janet Yellen is that she has already talked to all of the other countries about this global tax, and they have said: Yes, we are on board with a global tax. You go first. Can I tell you something? I remember being a middle-school boy--any male does. I remember being a middle-school boy and hanging out with my friends and all of us were talking about doing something dumb, and it always ended with someone saying: Let's all do it. You go first. That is what is being proposed right now by Janet Yellen, saying: Let's have the highest tax rate in the world, and other countries will come and match it, and they will be competitive with us. You go first. I can assure you, that didn't work out well as a middle-school boy; that is not going to work out well for our companies, and it will not work out for our economy. There is this statement that should be ringing in the back of everyone's head, this simple statement that was made years ago called inversions. Do you remember that old statement when we used to talk about corporate inversions? That was American companies being bought by international companies and moved overseas for their headquarters. That was a common conversation during the Obama administration, but something happened. That term went away because in the 2017 Tax Cuts and Jobs Act bill, that stopped, and now American companies started buying foreign companies and moving them here, and everything shifted. This $3.5 trillion monstrosity of new entitlements will flip that again, and we will start hearing the word ``inversions'' because American companies will be moved overseas. It is going to happen when we have a really bad, uncompetitive rate. Now, people may again say: Well, we are just going to stick it to rich people, but everyone kind of quietly knows that prices will go up, fewer people will get raises in those companies, and it will be less competitive for the United States long term. Everyone knows that. This $3\1/2\ trillion bill of new entitlements is also funded by giving the IRS billions of additional dollars to do more enforcement and to allow the IRS, as Janet Yellen has asked for over and over again, to be able to track transactions of Americans of $600 or more, either deposited in your account or out of your banking account. I can assure you, banks all over my State in Oklahoma are already saying: Don't make us turn in the transactions of every one of our people to the IRS. Why does the IRS need this? Interestingly enough, I have actually asked the Commissioner of the IRS: Can you manage that much information? And his answer was a very straightforward: No, we can't even manage the information we have now, much less the amount of information that would come at us of transactions of $600 and more. This is the wrong direction. I could go on and on. In fact, I could give you 3\1/2\ trillion reasons why this is the wrong direction. It is the wrong policy. It is the wrong thing stepping out of an economy that is damaged by COVID. It is the wrong set of policies long term for our economy. It discourages work. And what we are facing right now in workplaces all over the country, from small to large companies, they are all saying the same thing: It is tough to get workers. Well, if you think it is tough to get workers now, wait until there is $3\1/2\ trillion in new entitlements dumped into the economy and see how hard it is to be able to hire workers then. This is the wrong direction for our country. I yield the floor.

Mr. LANKFORD

Mr. LANKFORD. Mr. President, you are very aware because in the committee that we both sit on, we have worked through a process of trying to form an answer to a problem that is coming at us again in 2 weeks. Two weeks from now, we will hit the end of the fiscal year. At the end of the fiscal year, according to the Budget Act of 1974, we should have already passed 12 appropriations bills out of this body, 12 appropriations bills out of the House, have conferenced those two bills, sent it to the White House for a signature. That is the instructions that should be done by the end of the fiscal year. The problem with that is the Senate has not passed a single one of those appropriations bills even out of committee--not one. So our government is not funded 2 weeks from now, which means the countdown clock will begin again toward when we are headed to another government shutdown, and the conversation will be: Are we going to have another government shutdown? Are we going to be open? What is going to happen to Federal workers? Agencies across Washington, DC, and across the country will shortly get instructions for here is what to do in case of a shutdown in your Agency. Here is who, of employees, would be nonessential, what needs to happen to them; essential, what needs to happen to them. And the chaos will begin in all these Agencies because 2 weeks from now we are headed toward the end of the fiscal year and not a single appropriations bill, of the 12, has been taken up in committee. Not one of them is even scheduled even to be debated on the floor of the Senate. We will not have appropriations bills done 2 weeks from now. It is not going to happen. So here are the alternatives: There will be what is called a short- term continuing resolution of some length or we will have a shutdown 2 weeks from now. For the past 3 years, Senator Maggie Hassan and I have proposed a very straightforward solution to end the threat of government shutdowns. Our straightforward proposal to stop government shutdowns is a simple way to be able to solve this issue. If we get to the end of the fiscal year, September 30, midnight, and we have not finished the work that needs to be done on those 12 appropriations bills, automatically a continuing resolution will kick in to prevent a government shutdown. But starting the very next day, October 1, the Senate and the House have mandatory quorum calls every single day until we finish the 12 appropriations bills. We stay here to be able to finish our work. But the work has to be done. Why is that important? Because Federal Agencies shouldn't constantly be worried about another government shutdown, and the American people should be able to interact with their own government. Now, all of us know the government actually doesn't shut down, but it moves into shutdown mode. Some people have to show up for work; some people do not. But everyone is paid. Some people can get access to a permit when they contact their Federal Agency; some people cannot. Some people can get licensing; some people cannot. Some people can work through the process with the Corps of Engineers; some people cannot. And this chaos for the American people and for people who work for the Federal workforce happens all over the country simply because Congress did not get its job done. Well, the solution is simple. Hold the American people and the Federal workers harmless and push Members of Congress to actually finish the work. This is not a partisan solution. It is just a solution. That is why Republicans and Democrats alike have agreed to the simple solution that Maggie Hassan and I have come to, to be able to end government shutdowns and to say let's continue the conversation that needs to be done, but let's not have yet another shutdown. This body knows, in the past 40 years, we have had 21 government shutdowns--21. The last one needs to be our last, but I don't know if it will be because 2 weeks from now we are headed to the end of the year, and there is no solution on the table for how to avoid a government shutdown again. Senator Hassan and I and multiple others again filed our bill today and said: We know how to stop government shutdowns. Keep us at work. Hold the American people harmless, and let's get the task done. Honestly, I have had people say: That is such a creative solution, and it is such a simple process to get done. I have smiled at them and said: Actually, it is not all that creative. It is the same thing that my mom did when my brother and I were growing up at the house. When my brother and I were in an argument, she would put the two of us in our room and would say: You guys work it out. When you work it out, then you can come out of the room. It is really no different than that to say Members of Congress should stay at the task until we solve the budget work and we should not leave with the budget work undone and leave the American people experiencing another government shutdown. Let's not have shutdown 22. Let's end government shutdowns, and let's get our actual budget work done, on time, as is expected by the American people. With that, I yield the floor.

Mr. LANKFORD

Mr. LANKFORD. Mr. President, last week, President Biden announced that he had lost patience with the American people and that he was demanding people get a vaccination. Now, I have had the vaccine. I am grateful for the vaccine. But it is an entirely different issue for the President of the United States to wag his finger at the American people and to say: I know what you have chosen, but I choose something different, and you are going to follow me. To literally instruct every employer with 100 employees or more, every Federal contractor, every Federal employee to bend to the will of the President and take this injection, that is a very different thing. There are over 39 million Americans right now, that we know of, that have already had COVID-19, have survived it, and have natural immunity. The President's demand for a vaccine ignored those almost 40 million Americans that already have natural immunity. His demand was: I know you have natural immunity. I want you to get this vaccine as well. It ignores cancer survivors who are very, very careful about what goes into their system. It ignores people with religious objections, and there are millions who have religious objections. It ignores individuals who just don't want to do it because they are an American and they don't have to and they do not like to have a Federal Government instructing them what they are going to actually put in their body. Now, ironically, this was a random selection of companies that have 100 employees and up, so I assume that if you have 99 employees, you are all fine, but if you have 100 employees, it is totally different. There seems to be no accounting for where your employees work. Are your employees all tightly packed, all 100 in one small room, or are your employees all working outside? Do you have 100 employees, but they are in 19 different locations? There seems to be no accommodation for any of those. It is just the President saying: I have lost patience. You need to go get the vaccine immediately. So, by Thanksgiving, he is planning on laying this vaccine mandate down on the country. There are multiple problems there, as I have already outlined: the 40 million people who have already survived COVID and don't want to do the vaccine, the individuals in different medical treatments, the individuals with different other religious issues that they have. But it is also an issue of trying to have a mandate come down from the Federal Government with an Executive order. That is not how our system works. The President of the United States does not have the ability to be able to just demand behavior from the American people. That is not their role. It has been interesting to me. I have had several people who have reached out to me and said: I found out that the President's order exempts Congress. So how come you get an exemption and I don't? I quickly responded back to them: Because we are a coequal branch of government, and the President is trying to find everybody under his purview to be able to do this. But the judicial branch and the legislative branch aren't under his purview. Neither should be the American people because the American people do not work for the President of the United States. And companies of 100 people or more, their chief executive, their leadership does not work for the President of the United States. So now what? There are lawsuits that are pending, but those lawsuits can't move forward until the actual paperwork comes out from the White House. When the actual paperwork comes out in the next couple of weeks, we assume--we have not been told--then they will have what is called standing in the courts, and litigation from across the country will be able to speak into and Federal judges across the country will be able to move on an injunction on this out-of-control mandate and to be able to say they cannot just compel people to be able to go take a shot because the President wants them to get it. So that will be the first big step. There will be legislative challenges that will come through this body. They are slower, so the Federal courts are the fastest response to this. But there will be multiple other groups that will push back on this, myself included. Listen, why would we not respect those individuals who have already had COVID-19? According to an article that is in the Wall Street Journal just today, there was a study out of Israel that shows that the immunity from natural immunity is 27 times more effective than the shot--27 times, according to the study that has just recently come out. To ignore that and to say that is not enough is absurd--or to compel Americans, whether they have had COVID or not, to be able to have a behavior just because the President has ``lost patience'' is not who we are as Americans. It is not constitutional. It will not stand in the courts and should not stand. We should push back on this.

Mr. LANKFORD

Mr. LANKFORD. Mr. President, I would ask for the yeas and nays and remind everyone these amendments have been in place since 1976 and 2004. It doesn't expand anything.

Mr. LANKFORD. Mr. President, I call up my amendment No. 3792 and ask it be reported by number.

Mr. LANKFORD. Mr. President, this amendment would add language to prohibit funding for abortions consistent with the longstanding Hyde amendment, which has been the law of the land since 1976. The Hyde amendment has enjoyed decades of bipartisan support, including from then-Senator Joe Biden, and it has been signed into law by Democratic and Republican Presidents alike. The Hyde amendment reflects a decades-long consensus that millions of Americans who are profoundly opposed to abortion should not be forced to pay for the taking of human lives of children or incentivize it with their taxpayer dollars. A 2020 Marist poll found that 60 percent of Americans, including 37 percent of people who identify as pro-choice, oppose the use of their taxpayer dollars to pay for abortions. Similarly, the Weldon amendment has been in law since 2004. It protects individuals from being forced to participate in abortion if it would violate their conscience. Millions of Americans of faith and of no faith know that the only difference between a child in the womb and outside the womb is time. Just because they are smaller people doesn't mean they should be any less protected by law.

Mr. LANKFORD

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

Mr. LANKFORD. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that myself, Senator Sinema, and Senator Carper be allowed to finish our remarks before the vote begins.

Mr. LANKFORD. Mr. President, I want to set some context of where we are financially at this point. Everyone knows last year the difficulties of COVID-19 and what happened and the extraordinary measures that were taken to be able to offset the economic damage that was significant. CBO, as of July 21 of this year, estimates the Federal deficit for 2021 will be $3 trillion, much of that based on what was done last year during an emergency time period. It is 13.5 percent GDP. That deficit, in 2021, will be the second largest since World War II, since 1945. Now, this year, in the year that we are finally working our way out of COVID-19, though still taking it seriously--this year, there is $2 trillion in additional spending in March of this year. There is a $1 trillion infrastructure plan that is in front of us now and a $3.5 trillion tax-and-spend bill that, apparently, we start in 2 days. Listen, I have been told over and over again throughout the course of this debate that the infrastructure package would be paid for, and then, later, I was told, well, mostly paid for, and then CBO came out a couple of days ago and said a quarter trillion dollars of it is not paid for--a quarter trillion dollars according to CBO's estimates. To make matters worse, part of the rest of it that CBO does estimate is still areas where I would look at and go: That is pretty shaky estimation--for instance, the unused unemployment benefits from earlier this year. That is an area that I look at and I think, OK, if you are taking unemployment benefits that were borrowed with debt money, then not spending them, and then, later, going back and grabbing them and saying now we are spending them, and they are ``paid for,'' that would be the equivalent of me taking out a $20,000 car loan but, yet, buying only a $15,000 car--so using the extra $5,000 to buy cat food and donuts after that and say it was paid for. It is not paid for. The extra $5,000 would go to debt reduction. In this case, it is $53 billion, not $5,000. That area is total debt spending as well. Though CBO may score it, it is really not there. One of my favorite areas of scoring in this I find fascinating in the course of this conversation. This bill mandates the sale of over 87 million barrels of oil from the Strategic Petroleum Reserve. Almost the identical amount is assumed to be collected from the sale of 87 million barrels of oil to be able to pay for the electric car charging stations. So, literally, this bill sells oil to then pay for the electric car charging stations. This bill also delays to get a score for this--it delays a Medicare Part D regulation that had already been delayed already. My concern is this: We are not paying attention to the most basic element. This is a quarter trillion dollars unpaid for, according to CBO, and many other areas are pretty shaky pay-fors in this. My simple suggestion is this: Let's do infrastructure, but let's do the infrastructure we can afford. If we can't afford an extra quarter trillion of this trillion-dollar bill, then let's back it up to $750 billion. That should be pretty straightforward. If we can't pay for that extra amount, we shouldn't do that extra amount. Point of Order So, saying that, Mr. President, in the pending measure, Senate amendment No. 2137 to H.R. 3684 contains a matter within the jurisdiction of the Committee on the Budget that was not reported or discharged from the Committee on the Budget. Therefore, I raise a point of order against division J, title IX, section 905 of the amendment, pursuant to section 306 of the Congressional Budget Act of 1974.

Mr. LANKFORD

Mr. LANKFORD. Mr. President, I do object.

Mr. LANKFORD. Reserving the right to object. I would say this is a complicated issue to walk through the issues of immigration, and there are a lot of questions that hang out there. Secretary Mayorkas was in front of our committee on May 13 to be able to walk through the issues we are facing. Just as a quick review, we had a record number of people illegally cross the border in March. That was beaten in April. That was beaten in May. That was beaten in June. That was beaten in July. In July, we had 210,000 people illegally cross our border, that we know of. The DHS, in a recent court filing--actually filed in a court filing where they made this statement: Based on current trends, the Department expects that total encounters this fiscal year are likely to be the highest ever recorded. . . . The Department also expects that these numbers will climb even higher if the CDC Order [Title 42] is enjoined. There is a real issue that is going on. So when Ale Mayorkas was in front of our committee, our committee had direct jurisdiction for oversight in what is happening in Homeland Security. There have been a lot of changes that have been done this year in how we are enforcing or not enforcing the border. We have record numbers of individuals crossing the border. The border wall and that whole infrastructure, as well as the technology on the southern border, all the construction has stopped on that. The best we can tell, we have spent $2 billion this year not building the wall. Currently, it is not getting better. It continues to be able to get worse. We have 10,000 migrants in the Rio Grande Valley currently being held right now. That is 783 percent overcapacity in the Rio Grande Valley right now. And on the Interior enforcement side with ICE--we have 6,000 ICE agents--and the last number that we saw last month, they did 3,000 deportations among 6,000 ICE agents in a month. The standard for them to actually interdict, detain, or deport an individual has now reached such a high standard that they have to contact regional leadership and ask permission by name to be able to interdict someone. That has dramatically slowed down what is happening in Interior enforcement, what is happening at our border area. And as we continue to be able to watch the number of individuals cross our border that are COVID positive, we have this odd situation where the Nation and the President are talking to companies and telling companies, ``you need to mandate vaccines and you need to mandate masks,'' when at the whole time we are literally bringing people from all over the world across our southern border and releasing them into the United States. We have legitimate questions that need to be answered. May 13, when Ale Mayorkas was in front of our Committee, there were multiple questions that I had. It was a very cordial interchange and very frank going through the issues. I asked him very specific questions for specific numbers. He said: I will follow up with that. We wrote him a list of specific questions and asked for specific answers for that. To their credit, 2 months later--2 months later--we got a list of answers to the questions that I had asked. That was 24 hours ago. The very specific answer on the issues--I asked about the volunteer force in DHS. The humanitarian exceptions to Title 42, including the policy documents, they were very commendable on how they actually answered those. To DHS, I would ask specific questions on how they are handling sex offenders, because ICE agents have told me over and over again sex offenders are not being interdicted in the numbers they were in the past. They gave us very specific answers on that. But the problem was, half of the questions they gave us answers to and half they did not. For instance, we asked about the study that they started January 20th on the border wall. That study was supposed to be 60 days. It has now been more than 200 days. We just asked for the status of that study and, if we could see any of it, what were the findings. Instead, I was sent a press release that they had put out. That is not what I need. In fact, that press release was copied in multiple places in the document to say ``this is responsive.'' That is not responsive. There is a new process that has been put in place by this DHS called notice to report, where literally there is a large number of people crossing the border at once. They are taking those individuals out, doing biometrics, background checks and releasing them into the country with the statement of: Turn yourself in at an ICE office somewhere in the country. No administration has ever done that. As far as we can tell, 55,000 people this year have been released into the country under a notice to report. That is a new process that is undefined. The questions we asked about that were completely unresponsive. The Supreme Court made a decision on what is called a notice to appear just this year that should change the process from how DHS handles notice to appear. We asked very specific questions on how DHS is handling this issue based on the Supreme Court decision that was made a few months ago. They were completely unresponsive on that. We asked about cost analysis for the border construction, what is happening on eminent domain on those issues and areas where they are choosing not to do eminent domain, and they were completely unresponsive to that. So literally half our questions they answered completely, and half our questions they sent us fluff. I am the only one who is holding this up--I am very aware--but it is also my committee of jurisdiction that specifically has border management. I am the one who is supposed to ask these questions, and I am asking these questions, and they are not unreasonable questions. We are just asking to be able to get an answer to the questions so we can figure out what is the process and what is happening. As recently as today, I learned that ICE is currently looking at a facility in western Oklahoma to do what they are calling a surge overflow temporary facility. That surge overflow temporary facility they are looking to open is in western Oklahoma, to move people from the border, process them in western Oklahoma, and then release them from western Oklahoma. It is not an unfair question for me to ask: What is this facility? What is its purpose? And will individuals who are not legally present in the country be released in western Oklahoma? This is the same question that has been asked by mayors and leaders in Arizona, who have a facility like this in Arizona, where processing was done there and then they were released from there. And mayors and individuals there have asked the question: Why are individuals who are not legally present in the country being brought from the border to my town, and then released in my town? It is not unfair for me to be able to ask that as well. I have already had that conversation with the Secretary of DHS. I do not have an answer. So, yes, I object because we need to get some straightforward answers to some very straightforward, very fair questions. I object.

Mr. LANKFORD. I object.