Mike Lee

Mr. LEE

Mr. LEE. Mr. President, I am back again, seeking unanimous consent for the passage of my FREEBIRD Act. Now, previously, my request for unanimous consent was met with an objection, an objection on the grounds that we are still in the midst of a public health emergency. It was obviated. This unanimous consent request was objected to on the grounds that if we were going to do this, we should end the vaccine requirement for foreign travelers and the public health emergency at the same time, in the words of the objector, to make it clean. Well, just last night, the Senate voted to terminate the COVID-19 pandemic national emergency order. That makes this as clean as it gets. We have passed this now, and early this morning the White House announced that the President will be signing that measure--which had previously been passed by the House--into law. So that is happening now. That means that this is as clean as it gets. These things would go out at the same time with a bang--as well they should. Now, that also means that there is no reason why we shouldn't end this particular restriction, the restriction on unvaccinated foreign travelers coming into the United States today. Now, to those who might think that the Senate passed something last night that might somehow make it unnecessary to pass the FREEBIRD Act, make it unnecessary, separately, to enact legislation ending the foreign traveler vaccine requirement, they are mistaken. And they are mistaken because those two legal documents--the proclamation issued by President Trump in 2020 declaring a national public health emergency and the October 2021 Executive order issued by President Biden putting in place the foreign traveler vaccine requirement--are separate things; neither depends on the other. And so the fact that the public health emergency Executive order is now on its way out the door, it will be no more in a matter of hours or days, makes no difference as to this one. This one remains in effect unless or until it is undone. So to paraphrase the words of the Member of the Senate from the Democratic Party who objected to this just a few days ago, we can make it clean. Now, we should make it clean. In fact, we should make it clean by getting rid of this just as the other expires. Now, look, so basic question, right, why does this matter so much? Why do we care about the fact that we are requiring foreign travelers to prove that they have been vaccinated prior to entering the United States? Well, we care, and we should care because it is levying a really heavy cost on State and local economies and on the American economy and on American relationships across this country. Continuing to keep this mandate in place at a time when President Biden himself has declared that the pandemic is over and is prepared, apparently, to sign into law legislation passed by both Houses, officially ending the order declaring the existence of a public health emergency over COVID, it doesn't make any sense to continue this, especially at a time when this body has voted and the President's prepared to sign the other measure. Look, those who oppose this really are unjustified in what they are trying to do, especially because they are ignoring the new risk calculus that is affording Americans a renewed sense of normalcy, much needed normalcy after 3 years of chaos. This policy has separated loved ones for far too long. It is time to end the COVID-19 vaccination requirement for foreign travelers, prohibit using Federal funds to carry out the requirement, and prevent the CDC from ordering future COVID-19 vaccine mandates for foreign travelers. It is costing us too much. In 2021 alone, Utah visitors, travelers coming into Utah, spent nearly $11 billion, generating over 130,000 jobs and almost $2 billion in State and local tax revenue. Now, look, Utah's tourism sector experienced so much decline during COVID, particularly during 2020. By 2021, and even more so by today, it really has recovered quite well, except in one area. We still haven't recovered, much less made any gains, with regard to foreign visitors to the State of Utah. Why? Well, I think a lot of it has to do with this unnecessary, draconian requirement, a requirement that the developed world no longer recognizes the need for. We are outliers in the free world for keeping this in place. But by lifting the vaccine mandate, Utah and the United States stand to benefit tremendously from increased international travel. Look, it is not just that it is costing us tourism. It is costing us meaningful connections, connections that enrich and promote our shared humanity. Right now, foreign travelers, including family members, including friends, business relations, and even international sports figures are being kept off of U.S. soil arbitrarily due to this draconian vaccine mandate. Look, right now today, this very moment, we have the opportunity to reverse course. In fact, the House of Representatives has already passed this very bill ending the vaccine mandate, and it passed it with bipartisan support. Today, we can restore our personal and business relationships, boost our tourism, not just in Utah but across America, and reengage in the competitive spirit that brings nations together. It is time to end this mandate. It is time to join the rest of the developed and the free world. It is time to free the bird and to pass the FREEBIRD Act. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the Senate proceed to the immediate consideration of Calendar No. 14, H.R. 185; further, that the Lee substitute amendment at the desk be considered and agreed to; that the bill as amended be considered read a third time and passed; and that the motions to reconsider be considered made and laid upon the table.

Mr. LEE

Mr. LEE. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent to have 30 seconds. I would love to respond to that point.

Mr. LEE. Mr. President, I am here to stand in support of my friend and colleague from Alabama, Senator Tuberville, as he stands in opposition and raises his legitimate objections, which I share, to the Department of Defense's plan to use Federal funds to facilitate the performance of abortions. Look, there has long been among the American people a pretty widespread supermajority of Americans--Republicans and Democrats making up that supermajority--who say, regardless of how they as individuals feel about abortions, they don't want U.S. taxpayer dollars going to fund or facilitate abortions. That overwhelming supermajority preference for that is reflected in legislation that Congress has enacted, codified in 10 U.S.C., section 1093. So what has happened here is the Department of Defense has very cleverly disguised and very cleverly meandered around that so to technically comply with that statute. Instead of funding abortions and performing them on Federal facilities with Federal resources, they are facilitating, paying for the travel expenses--air, land travel, ground travel, meals--giving 3 weeks of leave in order to perform these. So they are still using Federal dollars to facilitate abortion, just in a way that is carefully gerrymandered around the text of 10 U.S.C., section 1093. Now, I want to echo what Senator Tuberville said a moment ago about Senator Jack Reed. I have profound respect for him. I admire him as a Senate friend and colleague, as the chairman of the Armed Services Committee, as himself, somebody who has given enormously to his country with his service through the military and otherwise. I do want to respond to a couple of points that he made because I don't think they lead where Senator Reed intended them to lead. He repeatedly described this as a civilian policy decision. Yes, this does embody a civilian policy decision, and it is a policy decision that is fundamentally legislative in nature. Now, if he wanted this made, he could have easily come to Congress. The Congress, including the U.S. Senate, has long been deferential to the Department of Defense when they come to us and say: We need this or that. This will help us perform our mission to keep our Nation safe and protected from threats to our national security. We are a pretty generous bunch, especially when it comes to the DOD. So why didn't they do that? Well, I think they didn't do that--I know they didn't do that--for one simple reason: They knew that the answer would be no. So, yes, the civilian policy decision--the last I checked, the organ, the branch, of the Federal Government that makes civilian policy decisions that affect the country--that bind the country with law--is this branch. We are the ones who get to set that. Now, sure. They are authorized to make a number of their own internal operating decisions; but whereas here, a policy is so blatantly at odds with the fundamental spirit of the Federal statute enacted into law, they have gone around us. They have carefully written it so as to gerrymander this policy around 10 USC 1093. They wanted nothing to do with us. What Senator Tuberville is doing here is standing up for our prerogative as lawmakers. Article I, section 1, clause 1 says: All legislative Powers herein granted shall be vested in a Congress of the United States, which shall consist of a Senate and a House of Representatives. They want to go around that. I get that. But when they want to go around that and start doing our job, our prerogative is to tell them: It is going to take you a little longer to get some people confirmed. While, yes, it would be very inconvenient if they had to go through the additional hoops--it is not impossible; they could do it; they could start; they could get a number of people confirmed--they are asking Senator Tuberville to make it easy for them. They want to have their cake and eat it too. So if they want his cooperation, they need to respect the legislative prerogatives of the Senate for which he is standing today. I admire him for doing that and stand with him in this. As far as not injecting politics--political decision making--into the Department of Defense itself, he has got that exactly backward. He is making a political decision overriding our prerogative to do that and then blaming us for the issue. Finally, with regard to Senator Reed's suggestion that we could deal with this in the National Defense Authorization Act that is coming before the Senate in the coming months, I get the point. If he is serious about that, I would like to suggest something to Senator Tuberville, and we can talk about this offline, perhaps after we vote. I suspect that if the Department of Defense wanted to really stand behind that, they could offer to suspend this regulation that they have issued--this policy memorandum they issued on February 16--until such time as we can debate it, discuss it, and work on it in the NDAA. Look, let this be a message to Secretary Austin: If you want to make the laws, run for Congress; but you can't legislate from the E-Ring at the Pentagon. You cannot do that. Until then, stand down and leave the lawmaking to lawmakers.

Mr. LEE. To the Senator from Hawaii, I would be happy--I would be thrilled--to accept that request, and I will accept it right now. I can't speak for Senator Tuberville, but I can speak for myself. I will absolutely accept that right now. Let's get them all done. Get the Pentagon to lift this policy--to suspend it--until we can get it ironed out in the NDAA. I will agree to that right now. If this is as bad, as dire, as apocalyptic, dogs and cats living together in the streets, Book of Revelation stuff, as you describe it, then we should do that. But lift the policy. You can't legislate from the E-ring of the Pentagon. We will stand up for our rights. And we must.

Mr. LEE

Mr. LEE. Mr. President, I ask for the yeas and nays.

Mr. LEE. Mr. President, I call up my amendment No. 22 and ask that it be reported by number.

Mr. LEE. Mr. President, we are abdicating our constitutional duty. Sometimes we do this when we delegate law-making power to the executive branch. Sometimes we do this when we shirk in our responsibility to declare war. Today, I want to focus on the latter. By passing my amendment, we have the opportunity to ensure that all Americans have a voice in matters of war and peace. For decades, Presidents of both parties have used authorizations for use of military force to conduct military operations without meaningful oversight or accountability to Congress. The Founders jealously guarded war powers and the power to authorize military force. They understood what it meant to be subjected to an executive with unfettered military authority. And, indeed, this is one of the essential distinguishing characteristics between our system of government and that of England. Prior to the American Revolution, our Founders became very familiar with the British system, under which one person, the Monarch, could take the entire country to war. It was up to Parliament, at that point, to fund it and up to the people to fight it. But one person could take the country to war. The Founders understood this, and they understood that unchecked and unaccountable wielding of military force is, in fact, the stuff of Monarchs, of dictators and tyrants, which is exactly why the Founders entrusted this authority only to the people's representatives, in the branch of the Federal Government most accountable to the people at the most regular intervals. Throughout history, when Kings waged war, it was the people who fought and died. One of the many things that makes our system of government unique is this principle our Founders enshrined into our Constitution, which gave every American a voice when they were faced with the prospect of sending their sons and daughters to war. Unfortunately, we have strayed from our founding principles. My amendment, which can pass today, is a recognition that we, as elected representatives, have a duty and an obligation to reclaim the authority to declare war that rightfully belongs to the American people. My amendment does precisely that. It implements a 2-year sunset for all future authorizations for use of military force, absent renewal by Congress. In no way would my amendment hinder military planning or weaken our national security posture. To the contrary, it would induce a proactive approach rooted in the present day and time. It would reaffirm our resolve and strengthen our military planning. It would show that we, as representatives of the American people, are committed to conducting military operations with oversight and accountability. It accomplishes this by requiring a joint resolution of extension to renew future AUMFs each Congress. Under this process, Congress may choose to let an AUMF expire or renew it under a joint resolution of extension with expedited procedures. This is a fast-track process, requiring only a simple majority in the Senate, designed to make AUMF renewals as easy and seamless as possible, so as not to hinder military planning. My amendment gives Congress the ability to review and reevaluate our involvement in the wars and adjust them, if necessary, to better meet the specific objectives of the conflict or engagement. This flexibility and agility is nearly impossible under the current system, which has opened the door for overly broad applications and interpretations of existing AUMFs, sometimes past decades before the moment of a particular conflict or engagement, which in turn leads to endless wars. It would be a way for Congress to rein in this abuse without hindering our ability to adequately respond to present-day national security threats. Now, some have argued that we don't enter into wars to withdraw; when we must fight, we must win. But this argument has it exactly backward. What could be stronger than a resolution reaffirming our commitment to a given conflict? And given that every Member of the House of Representatives is up for reelection every 2 years and one-third of the Members of this body in the Senate are up for election every 2 years, we resolve some of the uncertainty that our partners and our adversaries might see, might fear, might wonder about if, in fact, we are not regularly renewing each AUMF in each Congress. This is about accountability to the public. It is about the republican form of government as a whole. It is about restoring Congress's article I authority to declare war and authorize the use of military force. Let us do what we were elected to do: ensure that all Americans have a voice in matters of great importance, especially when it comes to matters of war and peace, and that no President has the power historically reserved for Monarchs, despots, and tyrants. I implore my colleagues to pass this amendment and thus restore the balance of powers mandated by the U.S. Constitution. Amendment No. 22

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

Mr. LEE

Mr. LEE. Mr. President, the song ``Free Bird'' by Lynyrd Skynyrd became an anthem for those consumed by wanderlust. The music speaks to freedom, the right to explore and experience the world, and a simple truth that we are all connected. However, on October 25, 2021, the right to explore and experience the world was put on hold for many when the White House issued a proclamation suspending and limiting air travel by unvaccinated foreign travelers. This mandate levies a particularly heavy cost on State and local economies and American relationships. Continuing this mandate at a time when President Biden himself declared that the pandemic is over is unjustified, and it ignores the new risk calculus that is affording Americans a renewed sense of normalcy. You see, Americans are ready to move on. In fact, in many instances, they are moving on. Yet many are kept from doing so because of this policy and others like it. Right now, foreign travelers, including family members, friends, business relationships, and even international sports stars, are being kept off U.S. soil due to this draconian vaccine mandate. Mr. President, there are too many places we have got to see, but if we stay here with this vaccine mandate, things just couldn't be the same. So in the spirit of freedom, in the spirit of self-determination and sanity, I am here today to try to pass this--to try to seek to pass by unanimous consent the FREEBIRD Act, which will restore the right to explore and experience the world by allowing nonimmigrant, noncitizen travelers to be vaccinated only if they choose to do so, because this policy has separated loved ones for too long. It is time to end the COVID-19 vaccine requirement for foreign visitors, prohibit using Federal funds to carry out this requirement, and prevent the CDC from ordering future COVID-19 vaccine mandates for foreign travelers. This is just costing too much. In 2021 alone, Utah visitors spent nearly $11 billion visiting our great State, generating over 130,000 jobs and almost $2 billion in State and local tax revenue alone. A significant portion of that involves foreign travel. But international visitation rates are still lagging. By lifting this vaccine mandate, Utah and the United States stand to benefit from increased international travel. Our travel and tourism industry in the State of Utah dipped substantially after the pandemic hit us and hit us hard. Fortunately, it has recovered very nicely, but it has never recovered in the international travel sector to where it should be now, due in significant part to this particular mandate. It is not right. And it is not just costing us tourism; it is costing us meaningful connections that enrich and promote our shared humanity. Right now, 22-time Grand Slam champion and top tennis competitor Novak Djokovic is missing the ongoing Miami Open due to the foreign traveler vaccine mandate still in effect, regrettably, in the United States. He recently missed the Masters tournament in Indian Wells, CA, for the same reason. The U.S. Tennis Association, which does not impose COVID-19 restrictions of its own, expressed its hope that the policy will end. This is an excellent example of how the United States and Americans in general miss out on relationships, business, and recreational opportunities. The United States is missing the action while Djokovic continues to play in countries that have ended their vaccine mandates, including in Monaco, Bosnia, and France. It is affecting his standing in world tennis competition. Just as importantly, it is affecting America's standing with the rest of the world. Perhaps some think that the joke is on Djokovic. The joke is not on Djokovic; the joke is on us, the United States of America, if we leave this senseless, meaningless policy in place that does no good. It accomplishes nothing, but it inflicts great harm at the same time. Right now, we have the opportunity--a great opportunity, a prime opportunity--to reverse course. Today, we can join the rest of the world, restore our personal and business relationships, boost our tourism, and reengage in the competitive spirit that brings nations together. It is time to end this mandate. It is time to be free as a bird. So I ask unanimous consent that the Senate proceed to the immediate consideration of Calendar No. 14, H.R. 185; further, that the Lee substitute amendment at the desk be considered and agreed to, that the bill as amended be considered read a third time and passed, and that the motions to reconsider be considered made and laid upon the table.

Mr. LEE. Madam President, I appreciate the thoughtful words from my friend and colleague, the Senator from Vermont. I have enjoyed working with him on the Judiciary Committee, and I always appreciate his insights and the thoughtful, respectful manner in which he communicates his message. I do think it is significant to point out a couple things in response to those arguments. I think it is unfortunate. We had an opportunity to end this today, and by ending it, we could open up travel and tourism in a way that we haven't been. We could join the ranks of civilized nations of the world that have seen what a barbaric piece of nonsense this sort of restriction is, and we can do it right now. Now, my friend and colleague from Vermont points out that it is important to remember that the public health emergency associated with the COVID-19 pandemic is set to come to an end. I assume he is referring to the May 11 deadline on which we are expecting for it to come to an end. I welcome that, and I look forward to that coming to an end. It is right for it to come to an end. One must ask, however, why must we wait until then to bring it to an end? President Biden has now long acknowledged that the emergent nature of the pandemic is itself over, is itself passed. I understand and respect concerns about not wanting to do things too abruptly that might affect, for example, telehealth. That is very important. That is why it is very important for me to point out here that there is absolutely nothing in this bill that would affect in any way the practice of telehealth--not directly, not indirectly, nothing, nada. There is zero language in this amendment that would in any way affect telehealth. Is there anything in here that would affect the other programs--any of them--that he mentioned? Not one thing. This is laser-focused on a single point-of-entry restriction on foreign visitors to the United States. That is it. Nothing else is affected by it. So if what we are saying is that we can't end any of this before we end all of the public health emergency, that makes no sense. It also makes no sense because, as far as we can tell, there is absolutely nothing about the international traveler restriction attached to this particular mandate that is tied to the public health emergency for the COVID-19 pandemic--nothing. They are not tied together. So there is no reason at all for us to not pass this today, right now, at this moment. Look, this has passed the House of Representatives. We could make this law. We could make this the law of the land by the end of the day today. The American people would be much better off for it. Who will be better off as a result of keeping it? It is a legitimate question to ask. Who benefits from this? I struggle to imagine who really benefits from it. Now, maybe one or two Federal bureaucrats save face over it because they put it in place. Perhaps they have some pride of authorship with it; they don't want it to end. Well, I hate to break it to them: They are not lawmakers. They don't have the job of making law. We do. So if this stays on the book, again, the joke is on us. The joke is not on Djokovic; it is on us. So I really am trying to understand why we would want to wait until May 11 or any other date on which the Federal pandemic emergency would come to an end. It makes no sense. To the degree that this involves an argument that I have heard time and time again when addressing COVID issues from several of our colleagues that we have to defer to the experts, defer to the science used by the experts in our Federal executive branch Agencies, I would ask this: Do you mean the same experts who told us that this virus came from bats? I am told that anyone who doubted the idea that it came from bats, that they were horrible people aimed at genocide or something. Do you mean the same experts who told the American people they couldn't let their little kids go to school? Do you mean the same experts who told America they had to mask their 2-year-olds, apparently unaware of the fact that 2-year-olds don't respond fairly well to that? It makes me wonder whether any of those people have ever raised or even been around an actual 2-year-old. Do you mean the same experts who told us that masks would make all the difference and that if you were masked, you would live, and if you were unmasked, you would die? Do you mean the same experts who told us that if we got the vaccine, we would not get or be able to spread COVID-19? I can speak from personal experience. Having had COVID, then got vaccinated, then got it again, it didn't have that effect. And I know there are millions and millions of people like me who are in the same boat. Do you mean the same experts who continue to this day to insist that everyone else follow the restrictions imposed by those experts who were not elected by the American people and are not accountable to anyone who is elected by the American people? We have reached an epidemic in this country, an epidemic in which we have government being run by experts. Experts are great. I am glad we have access to them. They are not lawmakers. My copy of the Constitution, in the very first operative provision--the first article, the first section, the first clause of the Constitution says: ``All legislative Powers herein granted shall be vested in a Congress of the United States, which shall consist of a Senate and a House of Representatives,'' making clear that if you want to make a Federal law, you must go through Congress, not through an expert in some executive branch Agency. Article 1, section 7 makes clear how that happens. You can make a Federal law only if you pass something through the House and the same language through the Senate and then present it to the President for signature, veto or acquiescence. If you don't follow that formula, you don't have a Federal law. Tragically, since the mid-1930s, we have been on a bad trajectory, a bad course, a bad idea conceived in hell by the Devil himself in which we started delegating our lawmaking power. We hereby declare that we shall have good law in area X, and we hereby commit and delegate to commission Y the power to make and interpret and enforce and adjudicate laws, rules carrying the force of generally applicable Federal law. Make it so. The power to make laws, to be a lawmaker, is distinct from the power to make lawmakers. We are given by the Constitution and the people who elected us the power to do the former, not the latter. We make laws, not lawmakers. The only way these things were put in force to begin with was because we have excessively delegated our lawmaking power. Shame on us for doing that. It has remained in effect because the Federal court system, in my view, while occasionally stepping in, has been a little too lax, a little too reluctant to push back when we delegate our lawmaking power, which is itself a nondelegable duty. Shame on them for doing that, but shame on us again for the fact that when we act, we delegate to somebody. Somebody puts in place a ridiculous, indefensible set of policies--policies that would never pass this body, never become law here or in the House of Representatives. Why? Because they are stupid. They are silly. They are ridiculous. They are counterproductive. A policy that we would never enact, and if we were stupid enough to enact it, we would promptly repeal it. When it gets put in place by an unelected, unaccountable bureaucrat using a stretched, distorted version of statutory text delegating them some other power, we have to sit here and take it. The American people, whom we serve, who hired us to make laws, have to sit there and take it. And we pretend: Sorry, there is nothing we can do. We have to wait until the experts end this problem that they themselves created. This has to stop. I am not going away. This issue isn't going away. I don't want to wait until May 11. I don't want to wait until those bureaucrats pull their heads out of wherever their heads happen to be at the moment. This is not going away, and I will be back. I suggest the absence of a quorum.

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

Mr. LEE

Mr. LEE. Madam President, there is a sales tactic known as throwing spaghetti at the wall, where the salesperson suggests an outrageously high price to see if it sticks. More often than not, the price is dead on arrival. It is intended to be; that is part of the trick. See, the element of shock allows the salesperson to create an illusion of a spectacular discount by slashing the initially artificially high price. The customer then leaves feeling like they stumbled onto an incredible deal, too good to pass up, even though they left with a product they either didn't want or couldn't afford or, at a minimum, a product for which they paid too high a price. When I read President Biden's budget request, it felt more like I was trapped at a kiosk in the middle of the mall or being sold a used car by a predatory, unscrupulous salesman, not reading a serious budget proposal from the President of the United States. So I would suggest the President try again because the spaghetti didn't stick. We are not buying what the President is selling, and his budget is dead on arrival. When the President reached the end of his sales pitch, he told us the price: a whopping $6.9 trillion. It would create a $1.8 trillion deficit in the first year alone. Then by 2027, we would break the record for the most debt held by the public as a percentage of U.S. GDP since World War II. Utahns are already pinching pennies as a result of this approach to budget. In August, I stood where I stand now, as this body was on the cusp of passing the $1.7 trillion omnibus package, and read letters I received from Utah constituents. They explained how difficult life has become under Biden's recordbreaking inflation. They described the daily choices they were forced to make because of how expensive life had become under this administration. Jennie from Salt Lake City wrote: My annual income is about $30,000 a year. I'm panicking. The price of groceries and other goods has increased so much, I'm struggling financially. I understand my utility bills could double or even triple. I don't know how I can afford to live. Since Democrats started their reckless spending 2 years ago, prices have risen more than 15 percent. Groceries are up nearly 20 percent. Kevin from Murray, UT, wrote: This morning, I filled up my work . . . truck. It cost $149. I'm a small business [owner], and the price of fuel is a major challenge for our company of 5 vehicles traveling to our various projects. President Biden's energy policies caused gas prices to reach $5 and energy costs to skyrocket. Gas is up 45 percent, and Biden's budget will crush American energy with $31 billion in new taxes. I said during that speech that if the definition of ``insanity'' is doing the same thing and expecting different results, then spending more money and increasing taxes to reduce inflation certainly meets that definition. This approach is insane, and the President is doubling and then tripling down. Rather than address the spending driving inflation, the Biden administration continues to blame inflation on everything from the pandemic to Putin. We know why. The President won't address inflation because he wants to spend even more. He wants to create the biggest government we have ever had and make it more and more expensive. We have to get this monkey off our back, but that can't be done in darkness. That has to be done while acknowledging the problem that we have and addressing it head-on, not obscuring it. I want to be clear that the Constitution tasks Congress with determining annual spending and revenue levels, not the President's annual budget proposal, and clearly this is for good reason. We have a constitutional duty here to protect our constituents from the snake oil salesman hell-bent on taking the American people for all they are worth, who will leave the American people with junk they don't need and a payment they can't afford.

Mr. LEE

Mr. LEE. Mr. President, today we celebrate the 100th birthday of a true hero of the U.S. Senate, former Senator James Buckley. Born in 1923, James L. Buckley was raised in rural Connecticut. He went to college at Yale and graduated from Yale with a degree in English. After enlisting in the Navy, he served in World War II, where he fought in battles of Leyte, Lingayen Gulf, and Okinawa. Senator Buckley was discharged in 1946 with the rank of lieutenant and received his law degree from Yale in 1949. After working for a number of years in the private sector, James was elected to the U.S. Senate in 1970 as the candidate of New York's Conservative Party, becoming the only candidate in the history of that State to win a major party election, running against both a Republican and a Democrat. In fact, Senator Buckley was the first and only third- party candidate to be elected to the U.S. Senate in the 20th century. During his tenure, he championed many conservative causes, but in particular, he was a pioneer in the early pro-life movement following the Supreme Court's decision in Roe v. Wade in 1973. Senator Buckley proposed and fought for a human life amendment, which would have recognized embryos as persons for purposes of that term's use in the 14th Amendment. Along with the late Senator Jesse Helms, Buckley was also a key player in passing the Hyde amendment, named after the late Henry Hyde, which prevents taxpayer dollars from funding elective abortions. Challenging the orthodoxy of his day, Republican Senator Buckley, was also one of the Senate's first true environmental conservationists. ``Nixon established the EPA in 1970,'' he said, but he added, ``I actually proposed it during my '68 campaign.'' He is responsible for major revisions to the Clean Air Act, which passed in 1977. James Buckley would later serve as an Under Secretary of State for Security Assistance in the Reagan administration in 1981, and then from 1982 to 1985, he served as president of Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty, which was a contributing force in defeating the Soviet Union in the Cold War. Buckley used radio to deliver raw, fact-based news and messages to millions stuck behind the Iron Curtain. Then in 1985, President Reagan nominated Buckley to serve on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit. The Senate confirmed him. Once confirmed to this position, Buckley became the only American to have served in a major position in all three branches of the Federal Government--as a U.S. Senator, as Under Secretary of State, and then as a judge sitting on the DC Circuit. He retired in 2000. My own interactions with James Buckley have helped me understand why he remains a hero to this day, not just in the Senate but really throughout the United States. I invited him to address the Senate Republican conference at our steering lunch just a few years ago, in which he provided observations that were timely, relevant, compelling, and delivered with incredible enthusiasm. On each occasion when I have met Senator Buckley, he has always struck me as someone who is friendly, who is kind, who is thoughtful, considerate, and deeply loves his country and is willing to work hard to make it a better place. Today, Mr. Buckley is the oldest living former U.S. Senator, and to this day, he remains an advocate for constitutional government, for federalism, separation of powers, and for conservatism at large. In his 2015 book, ``Saving Congress from Itself: Emancipating the States & Empowering Their People,'' Mr. Buckley wrote: Congress's current dysfunction is rooted in its assumption over the years of more responsibilities than it can handle. Its members now live a treadmill existence that no longer allows them time to study, learn, and think things through. Instead, they substitute political reflex for thought. The Senate would serve America well by heeding Mr. Buckley's words. James Buckley's commitment to service, whether on the battlefield, in these Halls of Congress, or in the courtroom, is a reminder of the power, joy, and honor of being an American. On this his 100th birthday, the Senate recognizes and pays tribute to a former colleague, Senator James L. Buckley, and his important legacy.

Mr. LEE

Mr. LEE. Madam President, Washington, DC, is our Nation's Capital. There is perhaps no city in America more capable of demonstrating the idea of the United States as a melting pot than is the District of Columbia. Here, you find people from every walk of life. It is the seat of our national government, where people from across the country come to work, seek an education, engage with history, witness what goes on here, and take look at our Nation's monuments and historical venues that can be found here. Washington, DC, in short, belongs to all Americans. Tragically, a visible increase in crime has plagued DC. It is backed by numbers, felt by residents, and seen by millions of visitors. Since March of last year, crime in DC is up 25 percent. Homicides are up 30 percent, and motor vehicle theft is up 110 percent--110 percent. Despite being in the midst of a crime wave, the DC City Council passed a bill that reduced criminal penalties for violent crimes, including homicide, robbery, and carjacking. Now, what message does that send? It is such poor logic that Mayor Bowser opposed the bill, admitting that ``this bill doesn't make us safer.'' She is absolutely right; it doesn't make us safer. Yet the DC City Council chose to override her veto and force this through to make it the law of the land, even though it doesn't make us safer. It makes things much, much worse, and it makes things worse in many of the same ways that DC residents are already suffering. When the DC City Council is to the left of Mayor Bowser, we have a serious problem. When carjackings are up 110 percent, this shouldn't be a partisan issue. Even President Biden telegraphed in a recent tweet: I don't support some of the changes D.C. Council put forward over the Mayor's objections--such as lowering penalties for carjackings. If the Senate votes to overturn what DC Council did--I'll sign it. President Biden is right. Now is not the time to get soft on crime. This is, by the way, a good time to demonstrate that this is not or should not be a partisan issue. How fitting is it that this bill, once it is passed by the Senate, is expected to be the first piece of legislation signed into law by President Biden during this Congress. It is also fitting that the House sponsor of this bill is none other than second-term Congressman Andrew Clyde, a Republican and a member of the House Freedom Caucus. So if this bill is able to unite the House Freedom Caucus and President Biden, it is doing something right. Now, it is not often that I find myself in the company of President Biden and Mayor Bowser. We have already seen this play out with the campaign to ``defund the police.'' Cities with this disposition quickly discovered that lawlessness begets anarchy. Since the campaign began, crime has skyrocketed, and police resignations have soared. What started as a series of calls for justice culminated at a 25-year high in the national crime rate. Let us not make the same mistake twice--not here, not now. We can't afford to make such a mistake. Voting for this resolution presents an opportunity for my Democratic colleagues to make a distinction. Will you join us in a bipartisan recognition that we cannot endanger the lives of DC residents by allowing this soft-on-crime bill to go into effect, or will you stand with the DC City Council and put politics above public safety? I emphatically support Senator Hagerty's resolution of disapproval because the residents and visitors of this city have a reasonable expectation of safety. I encourage my friends across the aisle to support this commonsense resolution and send a message that the Democratic Party is not beholden to its fringes, particularly where, as here, its fringes would lead to increased crime rate and additional unnecessary suffering.

Mr. LEE

Mr. LEE. Mr. President, on February 2, I called on Japanese Prime Minister Kishida to transfer U.S. Navy Lt. Ridge Alkonis back to U.S. custody no later than midnight on February 28. I was explicit that a very public discussion about the U.S.-Japan relationship--and, in particular, the U.S.-Japan Status of Forces Agreement--would ensue if Lieutenant Alkonis were not back in U.S. custody by that date. It is now March 1, 2023, and it is about 6:20 p.m. And Ridge Alkonis is not only not back in U.S. custody, he is not only not on U.S. soil, he is still languishing in a Japanese prison. So let's have a frank discussion about our Status of Forces Agreement with Japan because we have waited long enough. Ridge Alkonis has waited long enough. And his wife Brittney Alkonis has waited long enough. Their children have waited long enough, all three of them. We are done waiting. The Japanese Government has unjustly incarcerated Lieutenant Alkonis for too long. I traveled to Tokyo in August to meet with Japanese Foreign Minister Hayashi, where he made an unequivocal commitment to expedite the Council of Europe prisoner transfer once the U.S. paperwork was completed. And it was understood at the time that that would be in a matter of days or weeks, not months or years. Lieutenant Alkonis felt comfortable signing off on the transfer paperwork because of Foreign Minister Hayashi's commitment. With this understanding, the U.S. Department of Justice completed the necessary paperwork in less than 2 weeks. Japan has been sitting on that request ever since then, for months and months and months. However, the Japanese Government tried to renege on its promise by having a junior member of the Japanese Embassy staff in Washington reach out to a member of my staff to deny that Foreign Minister Hayashi had ever made such a commitment. Allow me, not a member of my staff, to correct the record. Foreign Minister Hayashi, you did make that commitment to me. I have not forgotten it, and I know you haven't either. This isn't too much to ask of any country, let alone one on which we spend billions of dollars--billions of dollars--a year to defend. A Council of Europe transfer is not an extraordinary request. On the contrary, these kinds of requests are routine. Situations like this one are the very reason why we have a prisoner of transfer process in the first place. The stated purpose for the Council of Europe Treaty is to facilitate the rehabilitation of the transferred offenders and to relieve some of the administration and diplomatic issues that arise with the incarceration of foreign nationals. Now, look, to be very clear, we are not even asking for Ridge to be released from custody, for him to just be told that his sentence is no longer intact. We are simply asking that he be transferred to U.S. custody to serve out the remainder of his sentence. These transfers happen all the time. It makes little sense that we would allow those tasked with defending the Constitution and its enshrined principles to be treated so poorly by an allied nation, to be subjected to laws so draconian that they are unrecognizable to the principles of justice our servicemembers swear to defend. When we swear to defend the Constitution of the United States, it represents an enduring commitment to individual liberty--a spirit that says no matter who we are or where we came from or what religion, if any, we practice, we enjoy liberty that is self-evident because it is God-given. Our Armed Forces stand ready to protect not only the safety and sovereignty of the United States but the safety and sovereignty of our friends, like Japan, which enjoyed over $20 billion in U.S. military aid over the last 5 years. And yet, they can't keep their promise to facilitate a routine prisoner transfer? I cannot and will not accept that--not now, not ever. I don't think the American people can accept that either. In fact, I know they can't, nor should they. I don't think they would be OK knowing that we spend billions of dollars to defend a country when our Status of Forces Agreement with that country is so unfavorable to our troops. I don't think they would be OK sending 55,000 of their sons and daughters to support an allied country where they won't have the most basic legal right. I am certainly not. Japan isn't either. To illustrate, under the terms of the Japan-Djibouti Status of Forces Agreement--Djibouti, by the way, is the only country in which Japan has a foreign base--Japanese servicemembers are immune from criminal prosecution. They are completely immune. Why should Japan be allowed to treat U.S. forces any less favorably than Japanese forces are treated by Djibouti? Look, I want to be very clear here. Japan has a good thing going. It doesn't get much better than the deal they have got going. I don't know why they would want to jeopardize that. But patience in Washington has grown thin. And the Japanese Government has vastly underestimated the intensity of bipartisan support for Lieutenant Alkonis in Congress at every level of government, including a commitment from President Biden--a recent commitment from President Biden himself--to Brittney Alkonis, saying: ``I promise you, we're not giving up, OK?'' President Biden is right. He said that with good reason. And he said that not only as President of the United States but also as a red- blooded American who cares about this country--himself a father of a decorated, respected U.S. military officer. We are not giving up. This isn't going away. We are not just going to keep quiet. And the longer Ridge remains in Japanese custody, the louder we will get. If the Japanese Government can't respect our servicemembers, and we can't trust them to uphold their commitments, then we are long overdue for a renegotiation of the Status of Forces Agreement between our two nations. We must do so to protect our servicemembers, especially if they are stationed in a country with a justice system as draconian as Japan's. In Japanese criminal justice, interrogation is the primary means police and prosecutors use to obtain confessions. These are no ordinary interrogations--not by our standards, not by a long shot. In a typical criminal case, the average Japanese interrogation lasts more than 20 hours. In bribery interrogations, they average 130 hours. The night that Lieutenant Alkonis was involved in that tragic accident, rather than being taken to a hospital, he was placed in solitary confinement for 26 days. During that time, he was denied access to legal counsel, denied access to an adequate translator, denied proper medical care--despite the fact he had just been in a serious accident--and was subjected to intense interrogation tactics at all hours of the night. He was subjected to bright lights, causing sleep deprivation, and coerced into signing complex legal documents written in Japanese, with no interpreter available, just to have a chance at getting bail. It was later discovered that Japanese authorities manipulated Lieutenant Alkonis's forced statement. It is not uncommon in Japan where 26 percent of prosecutors there have admitted in an anonymous survey to falsifying suspects' statements. He was told not to contest the falsified documents as the Japanese court would perceive this as a lack of remorse. Given the unfair treatment of one of our best and brightest, we as a Congress should take every precaution to ensure that our servicemembers are never ever treated this way again. I am not exaggerating. The U.N. Human Rights Council and other legal and human rights organizations have long criticized Japan's justice system for unnecessarily long pre-indictment detention periods, denial of lawyers during interrogations, and questionable interrogation tactics, to put it mildly. Often, these practices lead to false confessions and have resulted in Japan's legal system being known as ``hostage justice''--appropriately so. Don't believe me? The criminal conviction rate in Japan is 99 percent. We have status of forces agreements to establish frameworks under which U.S. military personnel operate in foreign countries and how domestic laws of foreign jurisdictions apply to U.S. military personnel in those countries. At a minimum, any agreement between the United States and a foreign country should provide adequate legal protections for American servicemembers. This means access to legal counsel, and it means access to a competent interpreter, and it means access to medical treatment throughout the legal process. These are basic rights afforded in modern and fair justice systems, but not in Japan. It is not too much to ask for a renegotiation of our SOFA with Japan. Many similar concerns once existed in the Republic of Korea. However, we successfully implemented much needed improvements to the U.S.-Korea SOFA to include a U.S. Government representative to be present during any interview or interrogation; a lawyer to be present at any time at the request if a servicemember so requires it, or a dependent, including during the interviews and interrogations, as well as, of course, a competent interpreter. We need these same changes to be made in the U.S.-Japan SOFA. Look, I am sure--in fact, I am certain--there are many who wish I weren't giving this speech. I have been told that it just isn't worth risking the relationship we have with the strategic partner over a single American. They are wrong. The Latin term ``Unus pro omnibus, omnes pro uno'' means ``one for all, all for one.'' The concept is depicted multiple times in the Bible. It can be found in the works of Shakespeare and was made popular by Alexander Dumas in his 1844 novel ``The Three Musketeers.'' Our military personnel and their families sacrifice their blood, sweat, and treasure so that all of us might enjoy the blessings of liberty that generations of Americans fought and died to protect. They truly embody ``all for one and one for all.'' But what does it say about us if we are collectively unwilling to stand up for the rights of the one? We cannot expect people to stand up for their country if their country does not stand up for them.

Mr. LEE

Mr. LEE. That wasn't a debate. That was a point of parliamentary inquiry. There is a difference. I would like an answer.

Mr. LEE. Mr. President, during our recent border crisis, title 42 has become the only sustained control we have over illegal immigration. In 2022, just this year alone, we have had over 2.7 million undocumented immigrants at our southern border. It doesn't even include those who came across sneaking through undetected. The Biden administration is only expelling people from the border exclusively under title 42. That is it. That is all we have got. In the last 3 years, title 42 has been used to help us expel 2.5 million illegal immigrants. Just over the last 7 days alone, Mr. President, the Border Patrol in Arizona showed us that it is not just people coming across illegally; it is also drugs--dangerous drugs. In the last 7 days alone, Border Patrol agents in Arizona have confiscated 1.5 million fentanyl tablets. More than 14,000 pounds in total was intercepted at the border in 2022, and that is enough to kill America's entire population nine times over. We have no business passing this bill unless this is in here. Vote for this amendment, I implore you.

Mr. LEE. Mr. President, before I begin my remarks on this, I would like to know how long the vote was held open on the last vote.

Mr. LEE. Mr. President, this bipartisan bill is something that I stand behind. Yes, this amendment simply restores the previous version that Senator Klobuchar and I introduced and passed by unanimous consent. I urge our colleagues to support it.

Mr. LEE. Mr. President, this amendment is a ruse. It is a ruse designed to provide political cover to a small handful of people who recognize the crisis on the border and want to appear to be doing something about it, but it doesn't. Look, it proposes tens of billions of dollars to simply manage the border crisis, not stop it. It doesn't do anything to stop fentanyl or actually secure our border. The sponsors will tell you that their amendment prohibits the funding--prohibits the repeal of title 42, but that is a lie. It only prohibits DHS funding to repeal title 42 when the surgeon general, who is housed in HHS, is the one who has the authority to do so. How would it manage this crisis? Well, it would do so by funding the processing of people coming into this country faster than they are currently being processed. And more costly lawsuits await against our enforcement policies. I strongly encourage my colleagues to oppose this amendment, which is a ruse. It doesn't do what it purports to do. It distracts from the crisis unfolding on our southern border. Vote on Amendment No. 6621

Mr. LEE. Eighteen minutes is, of course, longer than 10.

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

Mr. LEE. Mr. President, U.S. Navy Lieutenant Ridge Alkonis is one of the best and the brightest naval officers this country has. In late May of 2021, he was involved in a serious car accident in which he encountered an unforeseeable, unforeseen medical emergency that caused him to lose consciousness. He was involved in a car accident as a result of that emergency in which two Japanese nationals tragically lost their lives. It was, indeed, an accident, not preventable or foreseeable by Lieutenant Alkonis. Nonetheless, under the Japanese legal system, he now stands convicted of a crime for which he is serving a 3-year prison sentence. This is an accident that was not avoidable by Lieutenant Ridge Alkonis. I believe that, under these circumstances, we must stand behind him and his family. Lieutenant Alkonis has a wife Brittany and three young children. They are set to lose their pay and benefits from their sole breadwinner in their home 1 week from today. We must stop that. The Department of Defense supports this. They wish they could grant it on their own. They don't believe they have the authority. I disagree with them. But this will fix that, and I am happy to help them with that. I urge my colleagues to support this and would gladly accept a voice vote.

Mr. LEE. Point of inquiry, Mr. President. Mr. President, point of parliamentary inquiry. Are we not under a unanimous consent agreement that presupposes a 10- minute vote that will be called at the end of 10 minutes? And is there an exception to that when the Democrats don't like the disposition of the vote that has been cast?

Mr. LEE

Mr. LEE. Madam President, this bill before us is an act of legislative barbarism. This is an act of extortion being leveraged on the U.S. Senate right before Christmas. Make no mistake why this happens. This bill, in all 4,155 pages of its glory or infamy, was negotiated in secret by four or five Members of Congress, excluding all others, which means that nearly 330 million Americans were disenfranchised in the production of this legislative behemoth. They wrote it utterly in secret, with the design of creating an artificial emergency, threatening a shutdown right before Christmas. In fact, they set up government funding to expire the day before Christmas Eve, realizing that that is when Members are at our point of vulnerability. Members of both Houses and both political parties want to get home, understandably, to spend the holidays with their families. It is also the moment when they realize that our constituents are most vulnerable, most fearful of something like a government shutdown. That is when the most pressure will be brought to bear on Members of the House and Senate, Democrats and Republicans, if, Heaven forbid, there were a shutdown. So at this time of manufactured crisis, it is said that that is the right moment to unveil this bill that they have drafted in secret. The part that is stunning is that enough Members of the U.S. Senate-- a body that prides itself on being this world's greatest deliberative body--would choose to support this bill, never having read it. That really is stunning. As an entity that strives to be the world's greatest deliberative body, we sure don't act like it sometimes. But we should. Our rules, our traditions, our customs, and our obligation to our constituents demand nothing less. We and those we represent deserve proper, full consideration and the chance to read, debate, and amend this legislation and not get circumvented through some backroom deal. So opposing this legislation isn't radical. Running our government this way is, and it is indefensible. It used to be, Madam President, that amendments and debate and discussion were a common practice of the legislative process. It is what the legislative process is all about, in fact. Now, these days, we have to beg, plead, and barter, feeling lucky for any legislative scraps thrown to us underneath the table. That is not the legislative process. It is certainly not a legitimate way to keep our government funded. There is no greater priority, nothing more impactful than voting on legislation to fund the government, especially when you lump all of the 12 categories of appropriations bills into one giant bill, an omnibus spending package, as we call it. When you have something like that, in theory, you could have a fair process surrounding that, but you would need a considerable amount of time for public notice and debate and discussion and, yes, an opportunity for amendments. A bill like this could be rendered fair if it were cured through weeks of an open amendment process, where this was subjected to discussion and review under the light of day. Yet here we find ourselves, having received this legislative text. It is not just us who have been excluded. It is not just we who have been excluded. It is the American people, it is the media who have been excluded from this process until less than 24 hours ago. And, all of a sudden, they drop 4,155 pages of legislative text, and they expect us to be ready to go within a few hours, to vote on it--and to vote on it under particularly extortive conditions. They tell you: OK, we have got this bill now. This bill is ready for you. It is up to you. You have earned your election certificates. You are free to vote yes, or you are free to vote no. But, by the way, if you vote no, you will be causing a government shutdown, and we will make sure that you are blamed for a government shutdown. And, by the way, we will also threaten to take away not only your Christmas but the Christmases of millions of Americans in the process. That is not fair. That is not free. That is not operating our government as the constitutional Republic that it was intended to be. It is not even a representative government at that point. That becomes a legislative oligarchy in which a small handful of people--we might call it the law firm of Schumer, McConnell, Pelosi, and McCarthy--puts together a bill entirely in secret and then uses extortion to extract votes out of it. Tragically, a number of Members seemed to express gratitude for their ability to vote on the finished product: Oh, thank you to our legislative overlords. Oh, thank you. Thanks for making this possible. Thanks for making it happen. It poses some real problems. We find ourselves in a precarious economic position as a country. We have accumulated over $31 trillion in debt. We have seen Federal spending explode astronomically just over the last few years. Prior to the COVID-19 pandemic, we were spending no more than about $4 trillion a year. That was still a lot of money then; it is still a lot of money now. But if we were just spending now what we were spending then, our budget would be almost balanced. Last year we brought in over $4 trillion in revenue, and it hasn't been more than just a few years ago that we were spending only $4 trillion a year. But what happened during and since the COVID-19 pandemic, commencing in 2020, changed everything. We went from spending about $4 trillion a year to 6.5, then 6.8 trillion a year. It still hasn't gone back down completely. We are on track to spend about $6 trillion this year. That is one of the problems when we fund with numbers this big. The numbers million, billion, and trillion start to run together, and I have made that mistake enough times. I want to be very clear. So you go from spending $4 trillion a year to $6.8 trillion a year, $6.5 trillion a year--still spending $6 trillion a year. We are still borrowing, even this year, about $2 trillion. That is such a staggering sum of money. The way our system works, doing more than just printing it--you have to go through additional steps of selling U.S. Treasury bonds, but it functions in a way that makes it feel almost indistinguishable from just printing money. It certainly has the same effect on the economy as if you were just printing money because, by definition, inflation is the condition in which you have got too many dollars chasing too few goods. When you just increase the money supply, you make it less affordable for people to do the things that they need to do. Everything gets more expensive. This is being felt everywhere. In Utah, the average family is having to spend an additional $1,000 a month every single month on their basic monthly expenses, not luxury items. I am just talking about the basics: housing, food, fuel, healthcare--$1,000 a month more. The same basket of goods and services that they were purchasing just a few years ago--in fact, just before the day Joe Biden took office--those things were $1,000 a month cheaper than they are now. This is the predictable, foreseeable, and, in fact, foreseen result of the government spending trillions of dollars a year more than it has. It is creating huge problems, serious problems. Yet no one has been able to answer the question: Why are we still spending $2 trillion a year more than we are bringing in? Now that we are looking at the pandemic of COVID-19 as something that is behind us--it doesn't mean the virus has gone away, but we are no longer in a pandemic lockdown situation--there is no reason why we should be incurring ongoing annual deficits of that magnitude. And it is not sustainable, and this is not a victim-free event. This has victims everywhere. Look, rich people can figure out a way to get through inflationary periods just fine. They can absorb it. It means less to them. They have got savings they can rely on, assets they can liquidate. They will be just fine. In fact, most sophisticated rich people can find a way to get richer during periods of massive inflation because of the inflation itself. It is really sad. The rich get richer, and the poor get poorer, and it is the government's fault. And it is our fault because we spend too much money. We are the ones causing it. Bills like this pass. Members of Congress in both Houses and both political parties go out and brag about it. They, predictably, get a lot of praise by the media. They pretty much uniformly love it when we pass big spending bills and hate it when Members vote against it because they are not drinking the Kool-Aid. So you get short-term praise by the media when you do this. You get criticism when you vote against it. That is why most of our Members end up voting for it, because they want praise. It is understandable to want praise, but at what cost? When the rich get richer and the poor get poorer as a result of our terrible spending decisions, especially decisions for which a lot of our Members try to escape accountability by saying: Sorry, I didn't want provisions A, B, C, D, and E; I wanted only provisions F and G, and I couldn't get those in unless I voted for the whole package--that is how we get to be $31 trillion in debt. That is how we get this Federal Government that spends like a drunken sailor in a way that puts drunken sailors to shame everywhere. That is how we get there, because you roll it all into one. This is the Prego spaghetti sauce of spending legislation. You name it; it is in there. It is all in there--4,155 pages long. That is pretty long. Now, look, when I speak on the Senate floor, I am told that I average about 120 words per minute. I have been told at times that is a little too fast, that I should speak more slowly, but it is the rate at which I tend to speak. Even at this rate, if I were to read this bill, read it out loud on the Senate floor at my usual rate of about 120 words a minute, it would take me 5 straight days. And by 5 straight days, I mean the whole 24-hour period--no bathroom breaks, no sleeping, no lunch breaks, no anything else. Reading 24 hours a day, back to back, at 120 words per minute would take me 5 straight days. That sort of puts it in perspective. Yet we have gotten this this morning. And, literally, by lunch we were receiving pressure to schedule a final vote on it. So you leave us hanging for months. The fiscal year ended on September 30. We have been operating with a continuing resolution since September 30, and all of a sudden, we get to December 20 and we are told: Oh, you have got to do this right now; we can't operate another day on a continuing resolution--because continuing resolutions are bad now. They are so bad, in fact, you are going to have to vote for this bill or else shut down the government. We can't do this for another day. That is weird. But it is not just weird; it is devious. It is a corrupt process, and we all know it. The more we countenance this process by supporting bills like this and pretending it is OK when we know it is not, we impoverish the American people, and we do them a grave disservice. Shame on us for doing that. Look, whether you are a Democrat or a Republican, a liberal or a conservative, you can see that people are getting hurt. You can see that people are poorer because of the Federal Government spending money that it doesn't have. There are a small handful of people who will get rich off this bill. Everybody else will get poorer by degrees. It is harder to tie those who have gotten poorer and the fact that they are getting poorer--it is hard to tie any one of them--to any individual bill because it happens so subtly and so gradually. That is what makes this so evil by design. But it is intentional, and it is wrong. The bill is being advertised as a $1.7 trillion bill, something that is going to cost a total of $1.7 trillion. But as budget analysis from a number of entities has shown, it is more than that. The Heritage Foundation has conducted some analysis of this bill, and it has demonstrated that this bill will actually cost taxpayers at least $1.85 trillion in 2023, thanks to these base appropriations, along with the emergency and disaster spending and the statutory pay-go waiver built into the bill. Now, the authors of the bill recognize that if the bill were considered according to its own merits, it could not--would not--pass. And there are a whole lot of features in this that fit that description, that couldn't pass on their own. That is why they lump them all together. It takes priorities important to this Member and to that Member, you lump them all into one bill, and then you tell Members: You are not going to be able to vote for any of these things in isolation; so you had better vote for this one or else you will get nothing, and, by the way, you will be shutting down the government at the same time. There have been a number of people who have helped go through the analysis line by line. My staff has done an enormous amount of analysis, and we have combed through this and tried to figure out what some of the highlights and the lowlights are. My friend Scott Parkinson identified a series of the lowlights in one Twitter thread. He identified a few that I may point out here. In one of them, which is good news for the outgoing Speaker of the House, Nancy Pelosi, she is going to have a Federal building named after her on Seventh Street in San Francisco. It will be called the ``Speaker Nancy Pelosi Federal Building.'' Congratulations to her. It is great. It is great. Fantastic. The Senate Appropriations Committee chairman, my friend and colleague, the distinguished Senator from Vermont, Pat Leahy, has some earmarks, including a measure renaming the Lake Champlain Basin Program as the Patrick Leahy Lake Champlain Basin Program. That one came at a cost. We had to stuff $35 million each year for the next 5 years in order to get that. That is a pretty expensive name tag. I mean, gosh, you can buy the naming rights to a major sports arena for a lot less than that. He got that one in. But I have got to be bipartisan here. I am not going to make this a strictly partisan speech. We have other things in there. Apparently, there are some buildings in the State of Alabama that have yet to be named after our colleague Richard Shelby. I love Richard Shelby, a great man--Richard Shelby, distinguished career. I guess there are some things in Alabama that still haven't been named after him. So he has gotten the facilities that the FBI has at the Redstone Arsenal. Those facilities have been named the Richard Shelby Center for Innovation and Advanced Training. That is great. Congratulations there. If you are a fan of Presidential museums, this bill has some provisions you might like. This bill adds $6 million to the Ulysses S. Grant Museum. He has a museum already. I guess that museum needs some more bling in it. I don't know whether they are going to be gilding the walls of it, but they will have $6 million to make it really nice. Some of this stuff is really, obviously, in the category of brazen partisanship. We have $1.7 billion that is being spent on transportation projects, specifically designed to help fight climate change. That is a lot of money--$1.7 billion--going to fight climate change. It is not just transportation projects of the sort that are already needed. They are transportation projects specifically designed to fight climate change. Something tells me that wouldn't have the votes to pass the Senate, if it had to stand on its own. In fact, I am absolutely certain it wouldn't. But never mind, that is what the omnibus is for--another Christmas miracle. Throw it in there. Some of the more egregiously woke earmarks in the bill include $1 million going to something called Zora's House in Ohio, which is known as a coworking and community space for gender-expansive people of color; $750,000 for the TransLatin Coalition; $956,000 for the Equity Incubator at the Universities at Shady Grove in Maryland; $791,000 for equitable energy resilience and electric vehicle infrastructure in Sonoma, CA. I am not sure what ``equitable energy resilience'' means, but I know it is woke, and a lot of people have to be really happy with that. And $477,000 will be going to the Equity Institute in Rhode Island. I don't know what they do there, but it sure sounds like fun if you are into equity programs. The Federal taxpayer, of course, will be picking up the cost of a $2.4 million tab for the New England Aquarium Corporation in Boston. They say it is for modernization and educational programming at the aquarium. I love aquariums. It sounds like fun. I love going to aquariums. They are neat. They are great. It is not radical to suggest that the taxpayers in the city of Boston or of the Commonwealth of Massachusetts--hardly poverty-stricken areas of our country--shouldn't be funding that project that is specific to their community. No one has made the case as to why that aquarium has to be built, why this has to be a Federal taxpayer project--but no matter, another Christmas miracle. Just throw it in the omni. It would also advance the left's attack on the traditional family by funding gender programs in Pakistan and family planning and reproductive health ``in areas where population growth threatens biodiversity or endangered species.'' What the heck does that mean? I think I know what that means. It is basically insisting that human beings should exist with less prevalence in some parts of the world, and we want to make sure that that doesn't happen because they might be bad for the environment in those areas. That is what that means. Why in Heaven's name we should be taking money from a poor farmer in Iowa or from a poor single mother of three in Orem, UT, and sending that to Pakistan to tell people they have to have fewer kids because biodiversity and climate change demand it--I am sorry, that is too far. We do some crazy stuff up here, and sometimes we have to look the other way or we try to look the other way--sort of like you do when you drive past a really awful accident--but on this one, I can't look past that one. That is crazy. I am not sure I can find more than 20 or 30 Members of this body who would feel comfortable openly, publicly advocating for this--not when you are taking money from a poor farmer in Iowa or a poor single mom in Orem, UT, to send it for that purpose. No matter, it is another Christmas miracle put in the omnibus. The omnibus includes a total of about 3,200 earmarks. What do I mean by earmarks? Well, earmarks are special interest giveaways. They are targeted spending Congress directs for a particular purpose. Earmarks have been severely abused. And one of the many ways in which they have been abused is through this process of lumping them all in. I have heard them referred to in the past as sweeteners. When Members don't want to vote for a particular bill, you add earmarks to it, strategically allocating them one State at a time so that you can buy off votes. I don't mean buy them off in a legally corrupt way. This is a corrupt process, but it is not corrupt in a way that is legally, judicially cognizable. This is a way in which you accumulate votes by promising sweetheart deals for which Members of Congress will receive praise. The rest of those people won't know or care about the fact that we are sending money to Pakistan to tell people they have to have fewer kids because climate change requires it. They are just glad that they got their handout, their carve-out. That is what creates the corrupt process. People who defend earmarks are fond of saying: Well, they represent a relatively small portion of total Federal spending. And that is true. The same could be said of the engine car on a train. It is a very small percentage of the length of the train. Yes, but it is what is driving the train. People who advocate for this bill--I have heard them make this argument many times, including today--they will likewise say: I don't know why you are worrying about this bill because, after all, this bill deals with discretionary outlays, discretionary spending and not mandatory spending, money that Congress gets to decide 1 year after the next as to where it goes; as opposed to mandatory spending, things like Social Security, which are already required to be spent under existing ongoing law. A lot of people will say that you should vote for this bill because, yes, we have a $31 trillion debt, and, yes, we have an annual deficit that is still clocking in at around $2 trillion a year. But no worry-- don't worry about that because the real boogieman is the mandatory spending because that is bigger. Well, it is true that it is bigger, but the fact that something is smaller than something else doesn't mean that you don't have to worry that. The fact that earmarks are a relatively small percentage of total Federal spending doesn't mean that earmarks don't have a really nasty effect in corrupting our political processes. It doesn't mean that they don't produce bad results. And the fact that discretionary spending is a smaller percentage of total Federal spending than mandatory spending doesn't mean we shouldn't worry about it. It is, after all, the part over which we have discretion. So why we wouldn't worry about it is beyond my ability to comprehend. We have, moreover, dramatically increased the amount and the percentage of mandatory spending in Federal outlays just in the last few years. It is part of what has exploded, as we went fairly quickly from $4 trillion in total Federal outlays as of 2019 to almost $7 trillion at the high watermark of the pandemic-era spending. It is not an answer here to say there is more that we are spending elsewhere. We are still spending this money. This money is still under our control, and we have some responsibility to review it. And that review is rendered more or less impossible to achieve when you pass a bill this way. This is wrong. It is a corrupt process that uses extortion and fear in order to coerce Members into voting for a bill that they know in their hearts is wrong. They know that this is fraught with all sorts of problems. There is a part of me that has a much easier time understanding my Democratic colleagues on this one. I am a Republican. I am a conservative Republican at that. And yet I kind of have an easier time grasping and accepting Democrats' support for this. This is much more consistent with Democratic priorities. This is, after all, a Democratic template funding a lot of Democratic policies. They are being consistent with their policy. I have a harder time accepting it as a Republican, a harder time accepting that we are going to have an estimated 20 or so Republicans who are already expressing support for this bill. Less than 18 hours after this bill first saw the light of day, they already have about 20 Republicans expressing support for it. It baffles me. It baffles me because Democrats openly embrace the idea that they are progressive, that they want more government, that they feel more comfortable with more government than Republicans do. So they are acting in a manner in conformity with their policies, platform, and their history, their traditions, their customs, their priorities--much less so with Republicans. In fact, this is directly contrary to what Republicans campaign on. So what will we do when we have 10 to 20 Republicans who immediately support this, a bill that is predictably going to be supported by all 50 Democrats? They are united on this, and hats off to them for keeping their caucus united on this. They are all united. Fifty Democrats are all in lockstep with this. They can't get it passed unless they get to 60, and so they need at least 10 Republicans. We supply those. There are 10 to 20 Republicans who are going to vote for this, uniting the Democrats around Democratic priorities and Democratic policies and Democratic spending levels. So yes, I have a much easier time accepting and respecting those on the Democratic side who do this. They are at least on brand. We are not, and this is one of the reasons, I think, why Republicans lose more than many of us would prefer when we dilute the brand. We dilute the message. We dilute the proclaimed policy preferences for a more responsible process by which we allocate Federal funds. Then we do this? This is tough. Now, some of my Republican colleagues will respond to this by saying: No, no. This is a win, I promise. They will cite a few things. They will say: Well, this is a big win because, among other things, it contains cuts to IRS funding. I am sorry, that is really hard for me to accept. Whatever cuts, whatever restraint was shown with regard to IRS funding here is absolutely dwarfed by the fact the IRS just got $80 billion of supplemental funding in August. So forgive me, but I find that difficult--no--impossible to accept as a legitimate explanation as to why this is a win for Republicans. To make matters worse, perhaps the most offensive part of this is the Senate Republicans voting for this bill are choosing to forfeit the power that they have, that we have--the power of the purse. It could be used, if wielded more assertively and cautiously, to end the crisis at our border. And it is a crisis. In fact, this bill, while providing funding for government Agencies, including the Department of Homeland Security in charge of enforcing the border but utterly and defiantly, willfully refusing to do its job--this bill expressly prohibits Customs and Border Patrol funding from being used to improve border security. Let that sink in for a minute. Not only are we losing the opportunity--forfeiting it by passing this--to put in aggressive measures requiring border enforcement as a condition and precedent for the receipt of certain Federal funds, we are actually providing their funding and allowing language to be included in there that prohibits them from bolstering border security at a time when we are being besieged by illegal border crossings. This is lawlessness. So, no, I really struggle with calling this a win. Republicans, especially given the fact we just had an election and in that election, we went from having a Congress consisting of a Democratic House and a Democratic Senate--and we, of course, have a Democratic White House-- now we are still going to have a Democratic Senate, but we are going to have a Republican-controlled House in just a matter of a couple of weeks. For this reason, I came to the floor last week and twice tried to pass continuing resolutions that would keep us funded on a short-term basis into next year. Had we done that, Congress still may have chosen to enact this spending legislation, which we hadn't seen until about 19 hours ago. It still could have done that, but it wouldn't have been under the extortive threat of a shutdown at Christmastime. Tragically, the Senate declined to adopt that, declined to adopt either of those resolutions and, instead, opted for this position. Why? Because had they adopted either of those continuing resolutions, it would have become impossible to use the extortive threat of a Christmastime shutdown in order to secure votes for this. So, of course, the proponents of this legislation didn't want that rain on their party to make it harder for them. The American people suffer as a result. But what you have, Republicans who vote for this bill, they are going to be facilitating Democratic priorities and, by so doing, undercutting the Republican House of Representatives that is about to be sworn in. House minority leader Kevin McCarthy is opposed to this. He has stated publicly and privately he thinks this is a mistake. It is a mistake for Republicans. And it is. Since 1954, we have seen that the House of Representatives has had a shift in the party in control only five times, each during midterm elections--just five times since 1954. It doesn't happen that often. In all five of those instances since 1954 when it flipped, Congress did not enact a comprehensive omnibus spending package during the lameduck session following the election. There are a number of reasons for this, including the fact that Members of Congress, I think in both Houses and both political parties, understand elections are supposed to have consequences. It is really inappropriate, I think, at least for Republicans--again, I suppose I have to have a form of respect for my Democratic colleagues in wanting to enact their policies. But I struggle with understanding why Republicans would want to help them in doing that, rendering the incoming Congress less capable of enacting Republican priorities, especially when you consider a couple of things: No. 1, this spending bill, assuming it passes, which appears certain--just about certain that it will, this will keep the Federal Government funded through the balance of fiscal year 2023, up until midnight on September 30, 2023. That, by itself, is a big chunk, a very large chunk of the entire time that the 118th Congress will even exist. It is a big piece of that. That part of it will be having a government that doesn't operate under a spending bill with a significant Republican imprint. But it is not just that. In light of the fact that we are going to have a divided Congress--we are going to have a Democratic Senate and a Republican House, with a Democratic White House--it may be difficult, of course, to pass another omnibus or, perhaps, a series of spending bills. It could end up resulting in more continuing resolutions. Guess what continuing resolutions do? They keep spending levels where they have been. That is where we get to the point where, over time, this has spillover ramifications. The high cost of this bill will far outlast this Congress. It will far outlast the balance of fiscal year 2023. It will last for years. The Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget recently estimated that over the next decade, this could end up increasing Federal outlays. Just this omnibus spending bill, as compared to a continuing resolution, would likely cost a total of an additional $2 trillion over the next decade just because of the baselines being shifted. Why Republicans want to do that is beyond my ability to understand. I implore them to reconsider. There is a good reason why outgoing Congresses in the past have not enacted omnibus spending packages postelection, during a lameduck session, when control of the House has just shifted. Meanwhile, our border crisis continues to boil over. It is getting worse and worse and worse every day, and it is subjecting far too many people to the harms associated with human trafficking. A very large percentage--by some studies, 30 percent or so; by some studies, it is more like 65 percent--of the girls and women who come across with these drug traffickers who operate as human smugglers bringing them into the United States, making these drug cartels billions of dollars a month-- somewhere between 30 percent and 65 percent of the women and girls brought through that process are raped or sexually assaulted in the process. This has also resulted in fentanyl pouring into the United States, enough fentanyl to kill millions of Americans. We are doing nothing about that in this bill. As I said a moment ago, what we are doing in this bill is making it more difficult to fund border enforcement. It prohibits the funds going to Customs and Border enforcement from being used for border enforcement to increase border security. Meanwhile, as our border crisis continues to boil over and we do nothing about it and we plant the seeds for making sure that we can do nothing about it through this legislation--we do nothing about that. We do nothing about that, but we do something else that is really, really curious. It provides Jordan, Lebanon, Egypt, Tunisia, and Oman $410 million to secure their borders. That is great. That is just fantastic if you live in one of those countries. This bill is all about Middle Eastern and North African border security; it is not about American border security. This bill is not America first; it is America last. What we are doing here is putting America last. What we are doing here is putting our constituents last. What we are doing here is putting a small handful of elites first. This bill is the product of Wall Street and K Street, not Main Street. We have to get back to a process that respects the rights of individual Members. And I call on all within the sound of my voice, Democrat or Republican, House or Senate, all Members of Congress within the sound of my voice, whether you plan on voting for this bill or not: If you are thinking about voting for it, I implore you, reconsider. If not us, who? If not now, when? If we don't stop this at some point sometime, this will continue, and it will continue to weaken America. We can stop this if--and only if--when--and only when--Members stop supporting this nonsense. I don't care where you are on the political spectrum. You know this is wrong. Let's stop it before it is too late.