Mike Lee

Mr. LEE

Mr. LEE. Madam President, the resurgence of American conservatism over the last three-quarters of a century had many fathers: James Burnham, Willmore Kendall, Frank Meyer, Richard Weaver, Milton Friedman, Russell Kirk, and, of course, William F. Buckley. They laid the intellectual foundation for the political transformation launched by Senator Barry Goldwater and brought to fruition by Ronald Reagan. All those are names of the past, but one individual remains with us who knew most of them, wrote about them, and popularized their thinking that transformed American society. This is Dr. Lee Edwards. Now in his tenth decade, he has been an irreplaceable part of the conservative movement longer than most of us have been alive. He is a scholar and teacher with a doctorate from the Catholic University of America and further study at the Sorbonne. He is a philosopher, formerly the distinguished fellow in conservative thought at the Heritage Foundation. His books have been translated into as many languages as societies and their peoples have hungered for freedom. His volumes still speak eloquently to young Americans who wonder where we go from here: ``The Collapse of Communism,'' ``The Power of Ideas,'' ``The Conservative Revolution: The Movement that Remade America,'' ``Reading the Right Books, a Guide for the Intellectual Conservative,'' and biographies of half a dozen major conservative leaders. He knew them all. One might think he deserves some sort of monument. Well, he has one, a monument that he more than anyone else created. It stands a few blocks from this Capitol at the intersection of Massachusetts Avenue, New Jersey Avenue, and G Street. It is the Victims of Communism Memorial, dedicated to ``more than 100 million victims of Communism and to those who love liberty.'' Authorized by Act of Congress in 1993, it was first suggested to Lee by his wife Anne, who was also his partner in his writing. If this memorial were a mandatory stop for all the high school tours that come to DC every spring, graduates would be better inoculated against the ignorance of radical leftism that infests too many of our universities. Lee's work continues through his Victims of Communism Memorial Foundation, here in Washington, where visitors are reminded that one- fifth of humanity still lives under communism in China, Cuba, Vietnam, Laos, and North Korea, as well as other countries where oppressive Marxist-Leninist practices impoverish and subjugate millions. Whatever honors have been bestowed upon him in the past, and whatever accolades await him in the future, Lee Edwards remains that rare person of enormous achievement for liberty, whose greatest reward will always be the joyous sound of breaking chains across the world, the shattering of tyranny, and the anthems of a free people.

Mr. LEE

Mr. LEE. Mr. President, reserving the right to object, U.S. diplomats serve a singular purpose: to advocate for and protect U.S. interests all over the world. The Constitution makes abundantly clear that the security of the American homeland and commerce with friendly nations are fundamental core interests of the United States of America. The promotion of woke cultural imperialism is never in the core interest of the United States. The constant crusade of career diplomats to evangelize woke ideology on behalf of the United States often works decidedly against our interests and actively undermines the reputation and leverage of our Nation. Like many Biden-Harris nominees, Mr. Kostelancik has proven unable to set aside his personal partisanship while representing U.S. interests abroad. His past performance as Charge d'Affaires in Hungary should disqualify him from being trusted with a diplomatic mantle again. Mr. Kostelancik openly meddled in Hungarian politics. He attacked press freedom and engaged in blatant social activism, which the Hungarian Government viewed as undue interference in Hungary's internal politics. Mr. Kostelancik damaged our relationship with a reliable and important ally for the sake of partisan ideological advocacy abroad, all when he was essentially a placeholder until the Trump administration could nominate an ambassador. Now the Biden-Harris administration wants to make him the permanent man in charge of the U.S. Government's interests in Albania. The Biden- Harris administration had every opportunity to submit a new nominee for this position when Mr. Kostelancik's nomination was returned to the President at the end of last year, but rather than submit a nominee with a more favorable reputation, a less controversial background, and a demonstrated track record of focus on core U.S. interests, President Biden is doubling down and promoting Mr. Kostelancik. Cultural imperialism continues to dominate, to distract, and destroy the reputation and effectiveness of our diplomatic corps. I will not be complacent in such efforts, and on that basis, I object.

Mr. LEE

Mr. LEE. Madam President, I appreciate my friend and colleague, the Senator from Alabama, for leading this discussion today. This is an important one to have. And I am honored to be here to be part of it. You know, the situation at the border, across our southern border, is, by any standard, a humanitarian crisis and nothing short of that. Vice President Kamala Harris, appointed by President Biden as his border czar, publicly declared that she would focus as border czar on addressing the root causes of immigration. However, now that Kamala Harris is the Democrats' nominee for the Presidency, she and the legacy media want to pretend that was never the case. Axios even reported that Vice President Kamala Harris ``never actually had''--that is a direct quote--``never actually had'' the title of border czar. That is funny because that is a claim that contradicts the reporting that we have seen from Axios itself on this. In fact, we can see that right here in this chart. On April 14, 2021, Axios reported that ``Harris, [who had been] appointed by [President] Biden as border czar, said she would be looking for the `root causes' that drive migration.'' Moreover, a tweet from her official Twitter handle further emphasized her role: @POTUS asked me to lead our diplomatic work with Mexico, El Salvador, Guatemala, and Honduras. To address the situation at the southern border, we have to address the root causes of migration. It won't be easy work--but it's necessary. I agree; it is necessary. She took on this role. She acknowledged the role, and she failed. Since Biden and Harris's inauguration a little more than 3\1/2\ years ago, over 10 million undocumented immigrants have entered the United States and have done so illegally. This figure exceeds the population of 36 States. Meaning the overwhelming majority of our States, 36 out of 50 have populations smaller than the total number of persons entering the United States illegally on the watch of border czar Vice President Kamala Harris, thus creating a crisis that has been met with a troubling combination of silence and inaction from this administration--the executive branch of government responsible for enforcing our border laws and the border itself. Now, if the Biden-Harris administration were serious about addressing the crisis at the border and addressing the issue and ensuring, in the process, that the real victims of government persecution in other countries would receive asylum here, then they would support reforming our broken asylum process. And, sadly, they are not. We are still encountering over 100,000 illegal immigrants at our southern border each month. Now, since President Biden took office, there have been almost 10 million illegal immigrant encounters nationwide. Keep in mind, this doesn't reflect the sum total of those who have crossed into our country. These are just the documented immigrant encounters throughout the country. Though, there are more. That is a subset of the total flow of illegal immigration. Over 360 individuals on the Terrorist Watchlist have been stopped while trying to cross the southern border. And, shockingly, 27,583 Communist Chinese nationals have been encountered at the southwest border in the last year alone. That is a lot of people. And China is not close to the United States. By any metric, the Biden-Harris administration has shown no interest in securing our border. In fact, the data suggests this administration wants as many illegal immigrants to enter this country as possible. My Democrat colleagues want to pretend that Republicans are somehow responsible for this crisis. Why? Well, it is obvious why. They don't want to own it given that their party owns the crisis, as their party is running the administration and it is responsible for making decisions that has allowed this in. What argument did they use in order to blame Republicans who are not in control of the administration, do not occupy the White House, or control the majority in this Chamber? What is their argument as to why we as Republicans are to blame? Well, because we were unwilling to pass a bad immigration bill that would have normalized thousands of illegal entries across our southern border each month--and particularly in the hands of the Biden administration, it could have and inevitably would have made the situation much worse. But today I am offering a smaller bill, a narrower bill, a more focused bill that would help alleviate the crisis by closing loopholes in the law. These would be helpful. They are not necessarily things that represent a complete loophole such that President Biden would be powerless to enforce the border without them, but they would make it harder for President Biden to justify the massive loopholes that he has manipulated. This isn't the entire answer. This bill wouldn't necessarily solve the whole problem. But if my Democratic colleagues can't agree that these commonsense reforms need to be adopted, then how can we take their concern about the border crisis seriously? My bill, the Stopping Border Surges Act, would address loopholes in our immigration laws, which have helped create some of the perverse incentives for illegal immigration. It made it easier for the Biden administration to facilitate this flow of 10 million illegal immigrants into our country over the last 3\1/2\ years. The bill would clarify that an adult cannot bring a child into this country expecting that child to be his or her ticket to avoid detention. This would help eliminate the disturbing practice of what is sometimes referred to by the Border Patrol as the practice of recycling children and babies by coyotes and cartels. People will bring in a child, and sometimes that same child will be brought in under similar circumstances over and over and over again as the ticket into the United States--the ticket thus making it less likely that they will be detained and ultimately deported. It allows all unaccompanied children to be returned to their home countries, thus ending the incentive for the parents to send their young children here alone, leaving them vulnerable to abuse. Sadly, we see what is happening to those children under the supervision of the Biden-Harris administration and Secretary Mayorkas. They are trafficked either into child slavery, sex slavery, or as drug dealers. My bill would require that the Department of Health and Human Services provides DHS with biographical information about the persons to whom children are being released so that they know something about them, rather than just ``This is the person to whom you are going to release the child.'' It also requires asylum seekers to apply for and be denied asylum in at least one safe country on their route from their country of origin to the United States. It would combat the Biden-Harris administration's obliteration of the credible fear standard by heightening the burden of proof. The correct application of this standard is pivotal to the operation of our asylum system and making sure that it is there for those who need it and not subject to rampant abuse by those not eligible for it. It has been corrupted over the years. But this administration has destroyed it entirely--manipulating it to the point where it is now beyond recognition. We must fix it. It is sad that we have to fix it, but we have to fix it in large part because it has been so distorted and abused by this administration, profiting international drug cartels to the tune of tens of billions of dollars a year, leaving a huge--huge--wake of human suffering in its path. It would close loopholes and restrict asylum to aliens who present themselves at an official point of entry. We must eliminate these loopholes and not allow the Biden-Harris administration to make more of them. Congress needs to take back the authority to establish law. We can start today by passing the Stopping Border Surges Act. Ending the ambiguities in our current asylum law will help to mitigate the situation at the border and prevent unelected, unaccountable bureaucrats from acting with utter impunity to enforce their own policy preferences, culminating inevitably in open borders with more than 10 million people coming into this country in a space of only 3\1/2\ years. So I urge my colleagues to support this legislation. To that end, Madam President, as if in legislative session and notwithstanding rule XXII, I ask unanimous consent that the Committee on the Judiciary be discharged from further consideration of S. 685 and that the Senate proceed to its immediate consideration; further, that the bill be considered read a third time and passed and that the motion to reconsider be considered made and laid upon the table.

Mr. LEE. Madam President, I appreciate the thoughtful remarks from my friend and colleague, the distinguished Senator from Illinois. He and I have worked together on many issues. We don't agree on everything, but when we do agree, it is a lot of fun. We are able to do a lot of great things together. I appreciate his leadership on the Judiciary Committee and the fact that he has always been friendly toward me. I also appreciate his reference to our sort of civics aspect of what we do. The notion of how a bill becomes a law is always, always instructive. It is always helpful to bring that up. You know, we have lost some of that in our system, and people get confused as to how laws are made. Of course, the very first operative provision of the Constitution-- article I, section 1--has only one clause, so it is clause 1. The very first language after the preamble says that 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. Remember, legislative powers are lawmaking powers, meaning all power to make law--to make Federal law--is vested in this body and the body with which we share the legislative power just down the hall, the House of Representatives. Article I, section 7 elaborates on this function and makes clear yet again that you cannot make a Federal law without following this formula. The formula prescribed by article I, section 7 is bicameral passage followed by presentment to the President of the United States. You have to pass the same legislative text down the hall and also pass it here. It doesn't matter in what order unless it is a revenue bill, but that is not relevant here, but it does have to be the same text passed by both bodies. Then and only then can you present it to the President for signature, veto, or acquiescence. That is how you make a law. That is what the Constitution requires. Now, on top of that, we have a number of other procedures that we have added by Senate rule, precedent, procedure, common practice. Those are not required by the Constitution, but those rules and practices are acknowledged as legitimate by the Constitution. Yes, most of the time, we pass those, but it is ultimately up to us to decide when, whether, to what extent, and in what ways to follow all of our procedures. And I agree with the Senator from Illinois--it does make sense whenever we can do it--that we always should follow our own procedures. It generally works out best if we can move something through committee, if we can have a full committee hearing and we can have what is called a markup, where we introduce and entertain amendments to proposed legislation, pass it out of committee, and then bring it to the floor ultimately. I think we generally have much better legislation when we do it that way, and I would love to follow that procedure with this particular bill. If what the Senator from Illinois and the chairman of the Judiciary Committee is offering is for us to have a full committee hearing and a markup on this bill, I would love that, and I would gladly entertain that. Tragically, in the Senate, we have seen a deviation from that same practice--that same practice to which he attributes great significance, understandably, today. In fact, fully 94 percent of all legislative matters passed by this body are passed by this same procedure that I am attempting to utilize here today--by unanimous consent. The way it works is, essentially somebody makes a request, and they ultimately come down to the floor like I have done today and say: Let's call up and pass this bill. Why would we do that? Well, in many instances, committee chairmen have become somewhat stingy with what bills on which they are going to hold hearings and markups. We have been unable to get a hearing or a markup set on this bill, and so this bill, like so many others--in fact, like 94 percent of all legislation passed by this body--comes to the Senate floor today without the benefit of having had either a hearing or a markup. Well, that doesn't stop the 94 percent of the legislation from moving forward. In fact, in addition to that 94 percent of the legislative proposals that are passed by unanimous consent, an additional number of them--I am not sure what the number is; it probably varies a little bit from year to year--but an additional number of them are brought to the floor and passed not unanimously but by rollcall vote without having had the benefit of either a full committee hearing or a markup. This, too, is unfortunate. Sometimes it is necessary and unavoidable, and other times, it is not. The point is this: Neither the Constitution nor the Senate rules prohibit passing legislation this way. Sometimes it becomes necessary when the other path has been made unavailable to us by the majority party and the committee chairman. In this circumstance, there is an additional reason why we need to bring this forward. We talked a minute ago about the legislative process required by the U.S. Constitution to pass a law to make or change any statute that is Federal in nature. You have to go through that article I, section 7 formula: bicameral passage in Congress, followed by presentment to the President for signature, veto, or acquiescence. What the Constitution does not countenance and certainly prohibits is the making of new law or the modification of existing law by the executive branch of government or by anyone or anything outside the framework of article I, section 7. That is what we have seen with our immigration laws, including and especially with this administration with regard to laws that are relevant here--laws, for example, involving asylum standards. The asylum standards have morphed over the years, over many decades, and the practice of applying our asylum laws has become so different under this administration than what the law actually says, although this is comparable in many respects to another great frustration of mine that is closely related to this where we outsource de facto lawmaking authority to unelected, unaccountable bodies in the executive branch, allowing them to just make new law. We call them regulations to get around the obvious awkwardness that would otherwise be created by this thing called the Constitution to which we have all sworn an oath, but we allow, in effect, the executive branch to make laws that way under the form of rules and regulations. But either way, whether it is by the stroke of the Executive pen or whether it is through an administrative Agency, we have seen laws being made and changed entirely outside the constitutionally authorized process recognized by article I, sections 1 and 7. So it is one of the reasons we are here today because we have had the executive branch making and changing law not authorized by the Constitution, and we have had a lack of access to committee hearings and committee markups. So that is why we come here today and do this. While it is not ideal, it is how 94 percent of the legislation passed by this body is, in fact, passed. So that kind of matters. That provides some helpful context. We talked a little bit about asylum and how the asylum laws have been abused and modified. The idea behind asylum is that if you are subject to certain kinds of persecution in your home country, we want to provide people with a place to go. The problem we had in this administration--the way it is supposed to work is if you show up without documents at the U.S. border and you make the case that you are entitled to stay here as an asylee, well, you are supposed to be detained until such time as they can decide the issue. You don't have a statutory or a constitutional right to be granted asylum. It is a discretionary grant of authority given to the Secretary of Homeland Security. No one has a guaranteed right to it. So you are supposed to be detained while they consider your application, whether or not they are going to grant it. But instead, what this administration has been doing is just saying: OK. Come in. You claim asylum. And they let you go. And because there are so many people coming in--about 10 million of them; many of them are claiming asylum--they decide that the best thing to do is not deport them because they can't handle all those asylum applications. They can't adjudicate them. They say: Well, let's just let them go--let them go and tell them that at some point you may hear about a hearing that will be scheduled before an immigration judge. We hope you will come to your immigration hearing. At the current rate, many of these people are being told that their immigration hearing may not happen until the mid- 2030s. This doesn't make any sense. This amounts to a de facto change in law. It definitely amounts to a de facto change in law when we have got things like what is called immigration parole. Immigration parole is supposed to exist as a discretionary grant of authority, allowing the U.S. Government to let somebody come into the United States either for a specific humanitarian purpose or a public purpose. But it has to be individualized, not generalized by country, not broad categories, and an individual person. The law specifies that. An example of a humanitarian purpose is somebody is in a foreign country. Maybe their mother lives here. She is about to die, and that person needs to come in and be there for the funeral with the understanding that he or she will probably leave thereafter. The public use, the public benefit example, would be someone who maybe speaks an obscure language. We don't have adequate interpretation services in that language here. We need somebody to come in and translate for that language. We allow them to come in, be a translator for that trial, with the understanding that they will leave. Well, this President has granted contrary to what the law allows. He has effectively rewritten the law so as to just grant huge categorical blocks of immigration parole. We are talking to the tune of hundreds of thousands of people who have been admitted in a single year on these things. That is lawless. That is outside what the law requires. So, yes, that is a change of law, and that is why we need to tighten this law here. Now, I do want to get to this point about the so-called border bill, the border bill that my friend and colleague from Illinois claims-- mistakenly but very wrongly--was killed only by one man, Donald J. Trump. It is just not what happened, not what happened at all. And I don't agree with his description of the bill either. The Senator from Illinois and I share a common friendship with and great affection for the senior Senator from Oklahoma. The senior Senator from Oklahoma did a fantastic job. He had done a great job on so many things that he decided that he would try to negotiate this. I think it was done at the request of the minority leader, the Republican leader in the Senate, to try to negotiate something. The Senate Republican conference wanted legislation that would, in one way or another, tie President Biden's hands so he couldn't continue to abuse and negotiate that system of laws, and so he went in there. He did his best to negotiate that. At the end, most Members of our conference didn't feel comfortable with what he negotiated because it wouldn't adequately tie President Biden's hands. It is not his fault, and it is not Donald Trump's fault. But the fact is that most of the Members of our conference didn't feel that it did enough to tie President Biden's hands. Perhaps under the jurisdiction of a different President, that legislation might have worked but not with this President. It certainly didn't tie President Biden's hands. So it wasn't Donald Trump who killed the bill. It was the fact that we didn't have the votes here. So, look, this is a big deal. It matters. I reject, fundamentally, the premise that we can't reform any of our immigration laws without so-called comprehensive reform, which is usually code for something else, including allowing large numbers of persons entering illegally to be deemed legal. So let's make sure we have the facts right, both on the way laws are made and based on what happened with this legislation and why it is necessary to pass the Stopping Border Surges Act.

Mr. LEE

Mr. LEE. Madam President, one citizen, one vote--today, this foundational principle is under attack. It is under attack because President Biden refuses to enforce the law. Now we face a direct threat to our entire electoral system. Consider this: Since President Biden's inauguration on January 20, 2021, over 10 million illegal immigrants have entered the United States. This figure exceeds the populations of 36 States, creating a crisis that has been met with troubling silence and inaction from far too many on the other side of the aisle. With millions of unauthorized people now on U.S. soil, living here in the United States, the potential for election fraud through ineligible voting is not just a hypothetical risk--no; it is a looming reality. With the influx of noncitizens under this administration, even if just a fraction--let's just say something like 1 in 100--were to vote, this could translate to hundreds of thousands of votes, enough to sway our tightly contested elections and potentially alter their outcomes. This is deeply concerning considering that a recent study showed that noncitizens have ample openings to vote illegally. It found that anywhere from 10 to 27 percent of noncitizens are registered to vote and 5 to 13 percent of noncitizens do actually vote in Presidential elections, no less. Across the Nation, instances abound where States have inadvertently facilitated this very crisis. From unsolicited voter registration forms being mailed out to noncitizens to driver's licenses issued without adequate checks, practices relying merely on the honesty of illegal aliens have opened up the floodgates to voter fraud. While it is true that it is already illegal for noncitizens to vote in Federal elections, there are no effective systems in place to verify the citizenship of voters. A mere check on a box is all it takes, with little risk of being caught. In short, you are on the honor system with those forms. Federal law even prohibits States from requiring proof of citizenship when registering voters via Federal forms. So it is not just that the States aren't doing an adequate job of verifying citizenship as a condition precedent to registering to vote in a Federal election; they are prohibited by law from doing so. An increasing number of localities permit noncitizens to votes in local elections, and this makes it even worse. It further blurs the distinctions that are there that have historically been meant to protect the integrity of our elections. Prominent Democrats have openly discussed these tactics, in many instances as beneficial to their agenda, as likely to help their political ambitions. Only months ago, every Senate Democrat voted to count illegal aliens in the census to help them shore up more seats in Congress and consequently more votes in the electoral college. This cannot continue. It is our responsibility, our imperative, to close these gates. My bill, the SAVE Act, would ensure that this stops. It would be a vital step in securing the electoral process, ensuring that every vote cast is legitimate and every voter is duly recognized and registered and properly brought into the system so that they can vote. The SAVE Act amends the National Voter Registration Act--the same act that was interpreted a few years ago by the Supreme Court as prohibiting the States from requesting any positive proof of citizenship--so that States can ensure that only U.S. citizens may participate in Federal elections. It fixes the NVRA. If the NVRA was interpreted that way, this would close that loophole. The SAVE Act requires States to obtain concrete documentary proof of citizenship at the time of voter registration. It specifies acceptable documentation and requires States to establish alternative verification processes for those rare instances in which standard documents might be unavailable. Furthermore, the SAVE Act compels States to proactively remove noncitizens from voter rolls and introduces severe Federal penalties for those who intentionally register noncitizens. This bill echoes the sentiments of the American people from coast to coast. It transcends political affiliations, with an overwhelming bipartisan supermajority of Americans supporting it, and it speaks directly to the core of what makes our country great: fair, free, and secure elections operating within our constitutional Republic. This is about protecting our elections from foreign interference-- something my Democratic colleagues claim to care about and long have. If we truly want our elections to be free of foreign interference, then by all means pass the SAVE ACT. Let's pass it today. Let's pass it right now. So for those of my colleagues who are opposed to this, why aren't they concerned about the ability of tens of millions of foreign nationals--noncitizens--in the United States to vote in America? Why should we allow tens of millions of foreign nationals who are not citizens of the United States to vote in U.S. elections? Now, if the Biden administration insists on keeping America's border open as, to my great dismay, it has for the entirety of the 3\1/2\ years or so that Biden has been in office--if they are going to insist on keeping the borders open, by all means, they must at least, at a bare minimum, ensure that none of those noncitizens are interfering in our elections. Every single day that we delay, the foundation of our electoral process erodes a little more. We cannot wait for this administration to enforce the law, to enforce the border, which they haven't done. They continue to refuse to do it. More people continue to enter, but in the meantime, they have let in 10 million illegal aliens. Add to that those who were already here, and an estimated 30 million noncitizens currently reside in the United States. But this administration just keeps right on trucking, not doing anything about this problem. In fact, this administration strongly opposes this legislation. Now, let's run through the reasoning. The reasoning is really telling. There are several arguments raised by the White House in the statement they issued just earlier this week. First, the White House protests: It is already illegal for noncitizens to vote in Federal elections--it is a Federal crime punishable by prison and fines. Now, to be clear, that is, on its face, a correct statement of the law. I won't disagree with the statement on its four corners, but the conclusion is really messed up. As I have already stated, there is absolutely no functioning mechanism for enforcing the law. And it is worse than that. It is not just that current law doesn't create an adequate enforcement mechanism; it is that current law, as interpreted by the Supreme Court, affirmatively prohibits the States from doing what they would need to do in order to prevent noncitizens from registering to vote and subsequently voting in Federal elections, contrary to Federal law. Meanwhile, DOJ investigations of illegal voting are all but nonexistent. A law without enforcement cannot and will not stop illegal behavior; and there are many, many circumstances in which, notwithstanding the fact that the underlying conduct is criminally prohibited, you still need some sort of verification mechanism to make it enforceable. By the White House's own logic, it would be unnecessary and, perhaps, even unwise to have laws requiring a photo ID to buy beer and cigarettes. You know, we have got these laws on the books, after all, that already make it a crime to sell beer and cigarettes to children. So according to the White House's logic, we shouldn't need an additional law requiring age verification with a photo ID. Now, nobody would be that crazy or that insane to make that argument there. We shouldn't be making it here. It is the same argument, the exact same argument. Next, in second position, the administration makes the unsubstantiated claim that ``the justification for the SAVE Act is based on easily disproven falsehoods.'' But then, well, the administration utterly fails and defiantly refuses to offer anything to support that statement. It is ironic because that justification for opposing it on grounds that the justification for the SAVE Act is based on disproven falsehoods is its own disproven falsehood. There is nothing there. There is no falsehood that has been disproven. They have not disproven the fact that noncitizens, whether legally or illegally in this country at the time, can easily obtain voter registration eligibility to vote in Federal elections--or the physical ability to do it, rather, so long as they are willing to check a box and sign their name. They don't dispute the fact that, in all 50 States and DC, a noncitizen can apply for and receive a driver's license or that the National Voter Registration Act makes it easy, when applying for a driver's license, to check a box and sign your name and thereby register to vote in Federal elections. When you add to that the fact that States are affirmatively, legally prohibited, based on the Supreme Court's interpretation of the NVRA a few years ago which said that the States cannot, may not, must not ask for any kind of documentation to verify citizenship, we have a problem. So for them to say that our justification for the SAVE Act is based on falsehoods, on easily disproven falsehoods, is itself easily disproven, and it is a falsehood. Third, the administration asserts that ``making a false claim of citizenship or unlawfully voting in an election is punishable by removal from the United States and a permanent bar to admission.'' Well, this is an interesting argument. This one is rich coming from this administration. Look, it is true that the naturalization form, as a self-reporting mechanism, asks the applicant if the applicant has ever voted illegally. Yes, that is true. As far as I can tell, even when they do self-report in those, I suspect, rare instances when they do, absolutely nothing has been done with that information under the Biden administration. Joe Biden isn't deporting anyone for illegally voting. Joe Biden has opened the floodgates and just lets people come in. So that is rich coming from this administration suggesting that there is going to be, suddenly, rigorous enforcement of laws governing our border security in this instance when, No. 1, they are not doing it, and No. 2, everywhere you look, they are doing the opposite of that. Fourth, the administration asserts, ``[s]tates already have effective safeguards in place to verify voters' eligibility and maintain the accuracy of voter rolls.'' That assertion is simply flatout wrong. It is just false. It is false factually, and it is false legally, meaning it is not true, and it cannot be true by operation of law for the reasons I have just explained. States are legally prohibited from requiring proof of citizenship when registering voters for Federal elections. This, I fear, may well be a feature, not a bug, for the administration and a reason for the administration to oppose it, tragically. We will get back to that more in a moment. But, look, this loophole that I am describing based on the Supreme Court's interpretation of the NVRA--telling the States they may not and must not ask for any kind of evidence of citizenship--is a gaping loophole that we must fix. Lastly, the administration claims that, instead of safeguarding our elections, this bill, with its incredibly generous list of ways to demonstrate citizenship, would make it harder for Americans to vote. Well, look, the reality is that there is an expansive list of ways to demonstrate citizenship even if you lack the documentation traditionally involved in proving it. Keep in mind it is not unusual for Americans to be asked for proof of citizenship. Every single time an American citizen starts new employment, starts a new job, they fill out an I-9. They have got to provide proof of citizenship. If you are not a citizen, you have to show evidence of your visa and your eligibility to work in the United States under that visa. If you can't do that, you can't start a job. This happens all the time. It is not as if the ability to prove citizenship and a requirement that one do so is foreign to us nor is it the case under this bill that would be exceptionally difficult, because even if you are one of those rare individuals who, for whatever reason, doesn't have or have access to a birth certificate or something else that can prove it, we have got a long list of other ways you can do it even if you lack the traditionally utilized documentation. This bill allows all American citizens to vote. More importantly, if enacted, it would mean that no American vote could be canceled out by a vote cast illegally by a noncitizen. This bill would make it harder to cheat in elections and ensure the integrity of every ballot lawfully cast. There is no valid argument against the SAVE Act--none. The only reason to oppose this bill would exist if you needed illegal votes to win elections--full stop. That is it. By passing the SAVE Act, we would send a clear message that in the United States of America, voting is not just a privilege of citizenship but a cherished and protected right. As debates about election integrity rage, the SAVE Act stands out by guaranteeing that only American citizens can have a say in our elections. American elections must be decided by American voters--full stop. So, as in legislative session, I ask unanimous consent that the Senate proceed to the immediate consideration of H.R. 8281, which is at the desk; further, that the bill be considered read a third time and passed and that the motion to reconsider be considered made and laid upon the table.

Mr. LEE. Mr. President, I appreciate how the Presiding Officer always speaks loud enough so that everyone can hear. The Presiding Officer also manages the floor with great assertiveness, which I also appreciate. I am grateful to my friend and colleague, the distinguished Senator from California, and his thoughtful approach to legislation. There are some things that he said that I feel that I need to address. One of them is a reference to a belief that there is no credible evidence of noncitizens voting, at least no credible evidence of noncitizens voting in any significant numbers. Well, there are studies that go in exactly the opposite direction, studies like the one that I cited just moments ago showing that it is a nontrivial sum, such that if even something at the low end of the percentages cited in that study were correct, that could easily be enough to sway the outcome of some elections. But, regardless, what my friend is referring to has to be taken with a grain of salt, considering how things have changed on the ground. The enumerator and the denominator of that fraction have changed over the last few years, where we have now got about 30 million noncitizens living in the United States, with about 10 million who have come in who are illegally in the United States now, who entered this country unlawfully and are now living in the United States. That is not a nontrivial sum when that many people entered the United States that quickly. And when you have now got all 50 States and DC that issue driver's licenses to noncitizens; that, coupled with the National Voter Registration Act--and the way the National Voter Registration Act was interpreted a few years ago by the Supreme Court of the United States saying that the State officials who processed those Federal forms submitted under the NVRA so that people can register to vote in Federal elections while applying for their driver's license, that creates a toxic soup in which there is an environment just rife with opportunities for foreign interference in U.S. elections. You cannot add this many noncitizens, legal or illegal noncitizens, to the United States in this short of a period of time and couple it with that kind of voter registration framework and not anticipate that there will be significant numbers of people who will end up registering to vote--some perhaps somewhat innocently, perhaps others less innocently. I don't know. But it would be supremely naive and, worse than that, willfully--willfully--blind to what we all know is going to happen unless we pass this. Now, the House of Representatives passed this bill yesterday, which gets to another point made by my colleague saying that we have been down here over and over and over again doing this bill. I am not sure what he is referring to. The bill hasn't even been around that long, but something material changed yesterday. Yesterday, the House version of the SAVE Act, which is the version that I am coming to the floor today to propose, the one that I just tried to pass by unanimous consent moments ago before it was met with the objection of the Senator from California, that bill was passed yesterday, less than 24 hours ago, by the House of Representatives, with bipartisan support, I would add--not just Republicans over there, some Democrats who are concerned, with very good reason, joined with Republicans in order to get this thing passed. So to say that this is an area in which there is no credible evidence of any need to act is science fiction fantasy. It is contrary to fact. It is contrary to logic. It is contrary to our human understanding of nature, contrary to our understanding of the National Voter Registration Act and how it has been interpreted by the Supreme Court of the United States and how elections work. As to my colleague's suggestion that this is feigned outrage--feigned outrage--that is animating this, nothing could be further from the truth. Look, I wish this could be feigned. I wish I had the luxury of this being something that was feigned. This is serious business. We lose something as Americans, certainly, anytime we allow our elections to be vulnerable to interference from forces outside the United States, including foreign nationals, non-U.S. citizens inside this country. When that happens, when the public starts to perceive that others are voting in this, diluting their votes, that has deleterious effects on the effective operation of our republican form of government that are very difficult to recapture once they are lost. We can't treat this casually. Look, I will be back. It is unfortunate that we weren't able to pass this today. Let me restate the point I made earlier: There is not a legitimate reason to oppose this bill. We make it incredibly easy under this bill for any American. If you are an American citizen, you can easily prove your citizenship and you can do it in the way this bill requires and you can still vote. It is not hard. It is not expensive. It need not require anyone to spend a dime, a nickel, or even a penny. It just requires you to be an American. There is not a legitimate reason to oppose this bill. There is not a logical reason to oppose this bill, unless, of course, your objective is different, unless, of course, you are just fine with and in fact excited about or reliant upon noncitizens voting. That is alarming.

Mr. LEE

Mr. LEE. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the Committee on the Judiciary be discharged from further consideration and the Senate now proceed to S. Res. 746. The clerk will report the resolution by title.

Mr. LEE. I ask unanimous consent that the resolution be agreed to, the preamble be agreed to, and that the motions to reconsider be considered made and laid and upon the table.

Mr. LEE

Mr. LEE. Madam President, European capitals have grown far too accustomed to U.S.-subsidized security for way too long. It is an imbalance that has allowed Europe to enjoy constant protection without bearing the risks or the costs. Today, as Washington hosts the annual NATO summit, we find ourselves at a crossroads. NATO, now turning 75, is an alliance with major issues. Despite the rhetoric from President Biden and his handlers, the simple truth is that we cannot afford to consider admitting Ukraine, nor should the United States be making overtures about future membership. As NATO gathers on our soil, the United States needs to be forthright with our allies that the United States cannot sustain the massive levels of support for Ukraine, and any discussion of Ukraine's membership cannot be on the table. We have challenges right on our front door that need our immediate attention: the crisis at our southern border and the credible military threat from China in our hemisphere and the Pacific. Those two things combined are things we have to address, urgently so. The situation at hand demands that we prioritize our own borders and our own deterrence efforts in higher priority theaters. We simply do not have the luxury of infinite military resources, capabilities, or personnel, and we do no favors to our European allies by minimizing the painful reality that the United States must prioritize our own security needs. We need to be honest with our allies about the truth. The European security environment has drastically changed since the 2-percent defense spending pledge was made a decade ago at the 2014 Wales NATO summit. Our alliance's refusal to commit to raising this baseline to 3 percent or above, which is necessary to meet today's strategic demands, places a disproportionate burden on the American people. Our military and diplomatic leadership have admitted that 2 percent is insufficient; however, commitments to increasing defense spending have not been made at this year's summit. While European domestic budgets focus on massively funding free healthcare, shortened workweeks, social welfare programs, climate alarmism, and woke DEI activities, the United States still far exceeds the wealthiest European NATO allies in military contributions to Ukraine, as this graph demonstrates. While Americans are pinching pennies, we are sending our tax dollars to fight in a faraway war. The burden must shift to Brussels, Berlin, Paris, and London. Instead of confronting reality, however, the Biden administration recently inked a 10-year security agreement with Ukraine, promising that ``Ukraine's future is in NATO'' and asserts that there are no limits to U.S. aid. This is pure fantasy. To start, Ukraine does not meet NATO's membership standards--not even close, not by a mile. Our defense industrial base and dwindling stockpiles demonstrate that there are practical limits to what the United States can reasonably do for Ukraine. The agreement also leaves open the possibility that U.S. forces will be used to ``confront any future aggression against the territorial integrity'' of Ukraine, once again sidestepping Congress and the American people to put us on a path to a direct shooting war with a nuclear-armed adversary. This is armchair brinkmanship by politicians whose children won't be the ones dying. The supposed purpose of NATO is to protect its members and prevent war, not bring us closer to it. Despite these obvious flaws, the Biden administration sought to make it deliberately difficult to terminate this proposed 10-year agreement. My resolution condemns this 10-year bilateral security agreement with Ukraine. It affirms that the agreement has no force of law without Senate ratification and rejects it as a bridge to Ukraine's NATO membership. The Biden administration cannot be allowed to skirt the Constitution, to relegate Congress to the periphery, or to tie the hands of future administrations to entertain the fantasies of Ukraine joining NATO. We must prioritize our national interests and uphold the principles and protections of our Constitution. It is time for Congress to remind the alliance and the Biden administration that we hold the power to make treaties, to extend NATO membership, and that overtures made to Ukraine and our European allies are not ``irreversible.'' Ukraine's membership is not set in stone. If Ukraine is in, the United States should be out. Madam President, I ask unanimous consent that the Committee on Foreign relations be discharged from further consideration and that the Senate now proceed to S. Res. 748. I further ask that the resolution be agreed to, the preamble be agreed to, and the motions to reconsider be considered made and laid upon the table.

Mr. LEE. Mr. President, I appreciate the insights offered by my friend and colleague, the distinguished Senator from the State of Maryland. I am grateful for his leadership in the Senate, for his friendship and all he does in looking out for the interests of our country, and I am grateful to have his insights today on the floor in explaining the reasons for his objection to the resolution that I have offered. I would like to note that not one of these arguments negates the fundamental realities that we are dealing with here. Not one of them negates something very fundamental in all of this, which is the requirement in the Constitution, found in article II, section 2 of the Constitution, that says that the President ``shall have Power, by and with the Advice and Consent of the Senate, to make Treaties, provided [that] two-thirds of the Senators present concur.'' That is a pretty significant requirement. So let's address each of these arguments that we have heard in the last few minutes in turn. We have heard arguments about the fact that there has been significant bipartisan support for Ukraine aid. That doesn't negate this. I mean, first of all, providing material support--humanitarian or otherwise--to Ukraine is not the same as a treaty. A treaty creates a lasting international obligation, one that is intended specifically to outlast, as my friend from Maryland noted is the objective here, that is supposed to transcend one administration to the next, so it is not just a fleeting moment; it is an ongoing sovereign obligation. For that very reason, article II, section 2 of the Constitution requires that the Senate ratify treaties before they may take effect. The President may propose them. The President may negotiate them and even sign them, but unless or until a treaty is presented to the Senate and ratified in executive session by the Senate with a two-thirds supermajority vote-- it takes 67 votes with 100 Senators--then you don't have a treaty, and you don't have that lasting, sovereign, international obligation--one that transcends one administration to another. As far as the argument that there has been transparency and that there has been outreach by the White House to Senators and communication, that is great. It is the sort of thing that ought to happen. It is in no way sufficient to provide a substitute for or an end-run around article II, section 2 of the Constitution--requiring that treaties be presented to the Senate and ratified only with 67 votes in a 100 Member Chamber. So that doesn't do it. That can't take care of that here. Look, the point here is that there is nothing in what I am suggesting that would necessarily close any doors in the future. What I am trying to say here is that, if we are going to do this--if we are going to close doors, as is the intention behind this agreement--close doors to future administrations and to future Congresses to bind us to some kind of a lasting obligation as a sovereign nation to one or more other sovereign nations internationally--then we have got to follow the treaty process because that is what the Constitution requires. As to the idea that Ukraine is the frontline--the frontline of defending democracy as, I think, was one of the arguments raised here-- our own obligation to protect our own sovereign borders and our own people, while at the same time containing and deterring other potential threats to the United States, such as those presented by China, have to come first. Those are the frontlines of our Republic--our own border, our own national defense, our own national security, the safety, the freedom, the security of our own people. That is the frontline that we are supposed to be focused on. That is literally our frontline, and insofar as that is incompatible with our efforts on another continent, those things have to be taken into account. But there again, this is exactly the sort of thing that the Senate is supposed to consider not just in the abstract but in the context of a lasting, sovereign, international obligation in the context of treaty ratification proceedings, and that takes a two-thirds supermajority vote. Executive agreements do not and constitutionally should not and cannot supersede laws passed by Congress. There is nothing in the Constitution that says that a lasting, sovereign, international obligation taken on by an Executive agreement made by the President of the United States alone, whether with or without consultation to one or more Members of Congress--there is nothing in there that says that that satisfies the constitutional obligation. Now, if the wording of article II, section 2 or any other provision of the Constitution reads otherwise, then we would be in a different circumstance, but alas, we are not in that universe. Quite fortunately, we are not. It is with good reason that the Founders put in there the two-thirds supermajority requirement, and we can't allow that simply to be bypassed here, not for light or casual purposes, not even for great purposes. No matter how great our purposes are, no matter how noble one's intentions might be in the administration, in the Senate, or otherwise, one can't get around this simple fact that what we are talking about here is, for all practical purposes, a treaty, and we are being asked to treat it as such. That requires two-thirds. We don't have that here. So no matter how much bipartisan support, no matter how much flowery rhetoric, no matter how much good that can be done, no matter how evil Vladimir Putin is, that still doesn't change our constitutional realities. We have each been sworn into office under circumstances where, pursuant to another provision of the Constitution, we are required to take an oath to the Constitution itself. Our oath requires nothing less than that we honor this and that we not pretend that we can just circumvent all of this simply by calling something an Executive agreement--no matter how justified by the circumstances we may want it to be. Look, at the end of the day, we have to come to grapple with the fact that we are $35 trillion in debt and that we face threats around the world, including and especially from China--China, which is gaining, increasingly, a foothold in our own hemisphere and in country after country throughout Latin America. China is gaining a physical presence, in addition to a more and more robust commercial arrangement, in addition to China's investment in so-called dual-use technologies, which in many circumstances have military purposes behind them. It is one of many policy reasons why we have got to be focused on China. Insofar as we deplete our own resources in continuing to honor an obligation to another country in another hemisphere, we have got to take those things into account. It is one of many things that we have got to consider before taking on a treaty obligation. Make no mistake, this is a treaty obligation. Abraham Lincoln is quoted as having asked the question rhetorically: If you count the tail of a dog as a leg, how many legs does the dog have? People would, apparently, routinely--the uninitiated at least-- respond by saying: Well, five legs. And he would say: No. It is still four legs. Just because you call the tail of a dog a leg, it doesn't make it so. Just because you call an Executive agreement a treaty and ask people to treat it as if it were a treaty doesn't make it so. I yield the floor.

Mr. LEE

Mr. LEE. Madam President, reserving the right to object, the United States of America has benefited for nearly 2\1/2\ centuries from having one of the world's best, most objective judicial systems in the entire world. While no system run by fallible, mortal human beings can be described as perfect, ours is as good a system as has ever existed in the world and certainly as good as any that exists in the world today. But the capstone of that is an entity that exists by virtue, by operation of the Constitution--the Supreme Court of the United States. This solution--a solution that is being rammed through today--this is a solution in search of a problem that would itself create another problem for which there would be no solution. That problem would, in turn, turn one of our greatest strengths--an independent, functioning judicial system, one that has preserved the rule of law in this country for nearly 2\1/2\ centuries--into something, a more political animal. It is not what we wanted. It is not what the Constitution contemplates. It is not what we benefited from. And why? We must ask the question why. Is there any great moral offense that has been committed? No. Is there any grave violation of law that has been committed? No. Is there any violation of law that has been committed at all? No, there is not. What we have here is something very, very cynical, and what we have is that people on the left have a couple of cases currently pending before the Supreme Court of the United States--cases that they are worried about the outcome, cases in which they are worried that certain Justices might rule against them. And they have some Justices they don't like. They have some Justices that they worry are going to reject the bad arguments that they have made in those cases. So rather than double down on making sure that their arguments are good and that they are persuasive and recognizing that they are not going to win all cases, they are threatening, they are intimidating the Justices. They are making--it is not just a mountain out of a molehill; they are making a mountain out of nothing. They are doing this specifically to harass, threaten, and intimidate certain members of the Supreme Court in order to influence the outcome of pending litigation. Make no mistake, that is what is going on here. They are trying to trigger more recusals--recusals of those Justices they don't like. The legislation they are offering would create more problems in this, would make it easier for them to trigger more recusals. This is not a good outcome. This is a political effort to influence the resolution of pending litigation before the Supreme Court of the United States and to threaten Justices that don't toe the woke line. I withhold my objection at this moment.

Mr. LEE

Mr. LEE. Madam President, I first want to echo the kind words by the majority leader for the pages. As a former Senate page myself, I know that this is a job that few people notice on the outside, but we notice it here. They make sure things run well here, and I am grateful to know these fine people. I hope they had a good time while they were with us. And so to each of you, I wish you the very best of luck as you pursue your future careers, and I look forward to seeing some of you sitting in these chairs one day. As I entered this Chamber, shortly after being elected to the Senate in 2010, during my orientation I was told to take a seat in the chairs. I couldn't take a seat. I couldn't figure out why. And then I remembered my training from the time when I was a page, which taught me never, ever, ever to sit in a Senator's chair--only to realize it is probably OK now because I just got elected. I wish you the best of luck.

Mr. LEE

Mr. LEE. Madam President, the conviction of President Trump is a clear manifestation that our justice system has been weaponized against us, against the American people. This was a political persecution aimed squarely at one thing and one thing only: preventing President Trump from challenging the current administration in this Presidential election. Now, let's just examine the facts--just the basic, irrefutable facts. The proceedings against President Trump were marred by unclear charges and irregular jury instructions, making it evident, from the very beginning, that this trial was not about the pursuit of justice. It was not about the objective demands of the law. No, it was a choreographed act of partisan lawfare intended to dismantle the political rights of an individual who stands as the principal opponent--I would dare say the sole remaining obstacle--to President Joe Biden becoming a second-term President. He is the last person, the last man, the last object standing in the way of President Biden's second term. And so that fact, all by itself, signals something. It signals something we haven't seen before. It signals something that I wish we never had seen in our Republic and that I certainly hope we never see again. But the hypocrisy of this is just palpable. The Democrats and their allies in the media have long accused President Trump of undermining American norms and traditions and of all these supposedly norm-shattering actions. Yet they now champion a prosecution that reeks of the authoritarian tactics seen by the tinhorn dictators in banana republics--the same banana republics and failed systems of government that we have repeatedly sanctioned and shamed publicly with good reason. In what country could a judge who, according to the New York Times, violated judicial ethics when he donated to a group supporting President Biden's campaign and another called Stop Republicans--that is literally the name of the group that he donated to, Stop Republicans. In what world could that judge be allowed to preside over the trial of a former President--a former Republican President and chief political opponent of the incumbent Democratic President? Or how about Matthew Colangelo, another key figure in this prosecution? How could that person be authorized to transition directly from a senior role in the Justice Department under President Biden to lead the political prosecution of President Trump with Manhattan DA Alvin Bragg? This intertwining of judicial proceedings with partisan politics should alarm every single American, regardless of your age, regardless of what part of the country you call home, and, frankly, regardless of your party affiliation. Now, let's not forget that Senator Schumer's brother, whose law firm has lent significant legal firepower to this prosecutorial effort-- let's not forget that his brother is a partner in the law firm--the law firm of Paul, Weiss, Rifkind, Wharton and Garrison--the same firm that granted three highly paid attorneys a paid leave of absence to join the Manhattan District Attorney's Office, specifically in its targeting of Donald Trump. We cannot stand idly by and act as if this didn't just happen and pretend that this whole endeavor hasn't changed--changed dramatically. We can't pretend that this didn't occur, nor should we. If we were observing such actions in another country, we would be discussing sanctions and shaming and perhaps a whole lot of other things, but certainly not silence. We wouldn't see that. Now, as we prepare to honor the sacrifices made by the heroes on the beaches of Normandy, we are reminded that those brave souls fought and died, 80 years ago this week, to defeat dictators who ruthlessly wielded the power of the state, specifically to suppress and persecute their political enemies and anyone else who they thought stood in their way. What would those American heroes say if they saw an American President cheering on a kangaroo-court attempt to imprison his political rival, his sole impediment to a second term in the Oval Office? Would they recognize the America they fought for? It is with their sacrifice in mind that I call upon every Member of this Chamber to make it clear that we are unwilling to aid and abet this White House in its project to tear the country apart. Now, Pandora's box is open and a sword of Damocles hangs over the neck of our great Republic. If we can muster even a fraction of the courage shown by the ``greatest generation'' on June 6, 1944, 80 years ago tomorrow, we may still change course. There is still time. They can still stand down on this. There are more instances of reversible error in this case, underlying this conviction, than I have time to recite in these remarks. For that reason alone, it would be very easy for the prosecution to confess error on appeal. There is still time, but there is not much time left. Let's put this genie back where it belongs and never, ever let it come back. I ask you, join me. Join me and fight. Push back on this while there is still time. I yield the floor.

Mr. LEE

Mr. LEE. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that following my unanimous consent request, the following Senators be allowed to speak prior to the scheduled rollcall vote: Senator Lankford for up to 5 minutes, Senator Sinema for up to 7 minutes, and Senator Murphy for up to 7 minutes.

Mr. LEE

Mr. LEE. Mr. President, for over three decades, the Radiation Exposure Compensation Act--or RECA, as it is frequently described--has stood as a testament to our Nation's enduring commitment to righting the wrongs of the past. Where it has hurt someone, it wants to do something about it. Since 1990, this vital program has distributed over $2.4 billion to more than 38,000 individuals adversely affected by the fallout from atomic weapons testing and the uranium industry labor. These Americans suffered due to Federal activities and decisions beyond their control, enduring illnesses that spanned generations. Yet, as we speak, RECA is on the brink of expiration. On June 10, just 18 days from now, unless we act, the Sun will set on a program that has provided essential relief to those still living with the horrific consequences of radiation exposure. Among these are not only just the downwinders affected by nuclear tests but also the hard-working uranium miners, mill workers, and transporters contracted by the Federal Government in connection with Federal activities. Their suffering was part of the price of our national security during the Cold War, and their plight must not be forgotten. So while we debate the merits and the potential expansions of RECA, it is unthinkable that we would interrupt access to aid for those currently suffering, those current beneficiaries, those currently eligible for RECA compensation. They consist of people whom no one disputes have been harmed. So we don't want to interrupt coverage to them simply because we are talking about who else might also need to be covered under this program. The bill I propose is a clean extension of the existing program. It maintains the existing RECA framework, ensuring no disruption in access to compensation while we deliberate on how best to enhance and extend its reach. I don't dispute that it is appropriate to expand and extend its reach in certain respects because there are some people not currently covered by it, but, again, we don't want to harm those who are the current beneficiaries, and there is no reason why their coverage should lapse. The proposal previously passed by the Senate to expand RECA includes regions and additional compensation claims in a variety of jurisdictions. In some of those instances, they are abundantly backed by data; in others, they are not. In some of those areas, there may be victims who are covered by other programs; in others, there may not be. Some of them are clearer than others. I think some of the clearest cases are those involving victims in the State of Missouri and in the State of New Mexico, and we will talk more about those in a little bit. The current bill does have some challenging aspects to it-- challenging from the standpoint of moving forward toward passage. The bill as it stands risks inflating the deficit by at least $60 billion-- that is at the low end--and it may jeopardize the longevity of access to necessary resources for Americans who depend on RECA compensation for the reimbursement of costs associated with medical care or survivor benefits in the event a family member tragically passed away due to exposure. That I will not do, and I am not alone. You see, the House of Representatives has thus far declined to take up and pass Senator Hawley's previous bill, with some signaling concern and raising some of the concerns that I just restated. It is deeply troubling that amidst urgent need, we might find ourselves entangled in one form or another of brinkmanship, sitting on our hands, waiting for an unjustly expansive and unattainable bill--one that no one believes can be passed by the House. Expecting that that bill will be passed at the eleventh hour puts real lives at risk if what that means is that the existing RECA structure can't be reauthorized. So I refuse to stand by and let the program lapse while we continue to search for a solution for legitimate victims in Missouri and New Mexico. We can't allow access to RECA's benefits to be held hostage during those negotiations. Now, I, too, am in favor of some of the expansions, including and especially the expansion for New Mexico and for Missouri. I think those categories of would-be beneficiaries do need to be added. But we can't allow access to the benefits for the existing RECA beneficiaries to be held hostage during those. But until we can iron out some of the details more carefully, it is no less imperative that we pass a straightforward extension that will allow support for the existing beneficiaries to continue without interruption. Those people haven't done anything wrong. There is no reason why they should be punished based on the fact that we haven't yet found a solution that can pass through both Houses of Congress and make it to the President's desk. With the clock ticking down to just 18 days, less than 3 weeks before RECA expires, every moment that jeopardizes benefits for those suffering the consequences of our Nation's past actions is significant, and we should find that troubling. Now, these individuals do not have the luxury of time that seems at times so abundant in Washington. They need our help now, and they deserve swift and unencumbered continuation of access to the support that RECA provides while we work out the other issues. I urge my colleagues in Congress to not allow RECA to lapse. Let's pass this clean reauthorization. Let's do it right now, and let's send a clear message that America takes care of its own. To that end, Mr. President, as in legislative session, I ask unanimous consent that the Committee on the Judiciary be discharged from further consideration of S. 4175 and that the Senate proceed to its immediate consideration; further, that the bill be considered read a third time and passed and that the motion to reconsider be considered made and laid upon the table.

Mr. LEE

Mr. LEE. Mr. President, I deeply appreciate the insights offered today by my friends and colleagues, and that they truly are. The senior Senator from Missouri and the junior Senator from New Mexico have made an impassioned plea--an impassioned plea that I am deeply sympathetic to for a variety of reasons, including and especially the fact that they are both right as to their respective States. The folks in Missouri deserve to have this coverage, and so do people in New Mexico. There are also additional people not covered by the existing program in Utah who need to be covered. In all three instances with respect to Utah, New Mexico, and Missouri, we need to get this done. You know, taking into account all of the arguments that they have made and the evidence that I have reviewed, I am prepared to do what it takes, and I am prepared to get this done today. As I mentioned, this isn't just an abstract concept to me; this is near and dear to my heart. Many people I know and love have had their lives altered and, in many cases, ended by exposure to downwind radiation. One of those people was a loving husband and father who raised seven children, who was taken at the prime of his life, at the peak of his career, just days after his 61st birthday, as he was surrounded by his wife and their seven children, one of whom stands at this desk today. My father died from this in 1996, just 28 years ago, and we didn't know at the time--didn't know until years after that he had, in fact, been a victim of and then died of a cancer linked to his exposure as a child growing up in eastern Arizona, spending his summers in Reserve, NM, a small sawmill camp where his family lived each summer. He was exposed to downwind radiation, and that led to his untimely death. My dad would be nearly 90 if he were alive today, and I can only imagine the youth and the vitality we would still see in him. I am convinced he would still be practicing law. I am convinced he would still be a runner. His life and that of so many others in Utah, Missouri, and New Mexico have been cut tragically short by this exposure, which is why we need to get this done. So, look, in light of these concerns and the political realities we face, again, I want to make sure that RECA doesn't lapse, and so I want to offer an updated version of the Downwinders Act. This bill would extend the benefits of the program to those in Missouri exposed to the hazards of improperly stored nuclear waste, while also addressing the historical oversights in New Mexico and in parts of Utah. When we look at this, we have to do this to make sure that we are following the science, and in all three of those areas, the science is backed up, and in all three of those jurisdictions, not only does the science back it up, but there aren't other government programs that may overlap with it that provide this compensation. Remember, if this were not the U.S. Government doing it, this would ultimately be some species of tort law. But because it is the U.S. Government and the U.S. Government, as a sovereign entity--you can't just sue it unless the U.S. Government makes itself amenable to suit, and that is really where RECA came in. Because of the fact that we are uniquely situated, both by virtue of what the science currently backs up and the absence of other programs to do it, I think it makes sense to accord that to these States. The other States covered by the legislation now pending in the House, that is stalled out in the House--it passed here, and so that is done. It has moved on from this Chamber. One of the reasons that I understand why it stalled out in the House is because of cost. Now, I am not aware of the full context of the quote provided by my colleague from Utah in that quote. I don't know whether there was more context there or not. But if that was the whole context, I don't share that approach. I don't share that sentiment. In other words, we don't not do this just because it is expensive. The whole thing is expensive. The loss of life is expensive, and we need to address that. The issue is, again, one, whether and to what extent claims are backed up by the science and whether and to what extent there are other programs that already cover it in one way or another, such that the bill adequately addresses that. There are other States in that legislation pending in the House that deal with law in the Marshall Islands, Idaho, Kentucky, Ohio, Alaska, and perhaps one or two other jurisdictions. The claims of those States are not on equal footing. They are different from these claims. The Utah and New Mexico claims are very similar. They stem from the same sequence of events related primarily to exposure to downwind radiation from the atomic weapons testing. In Missouri, they are a little bit different, but they share enough of the same elements, and they are similarly backed by science. In these other jurisdictions, it is a little bit different. That is where a lot of the--not all but a lot of the expense is accrued and a lot of concerns expressed in the House impeding its quick passage over there that might lead to it not being able to be passed at all. But, again, look, to ensure we do our due diligence here, where there is uncertainty as to some of the other jurisdictions covered by that bill now pending in the House, my bill that I am offering now includes a requirement that the Federal Government must study and report on other regions that should be eligible for compensation. We need to get this done. I will continue to fight for the recognition and compensation of all those exposed to radiation through no fault of their own because it is the right thing to do regardless of cost. With the clock ticking down to just 18 days before RECA expires, every moment that jeopardizes benefits for those suffering the consequences of our Nation's past actions is significant. We can't ignore it. These individuals do not have the luxury of time that seems so abundant here in Washington; they need our help now. They deserve swift and unencumbered continuation of access to the support that RECA provides. So I urge my colleagues in Congress to pass the Downwinders Act, this expanded Downwinders Act, and send a clear message: America takes care of its own. With this legislation, we will be able to take care of our own and expand the coverage to Missouri, to New Mexico, and to the previously unaddressed regions of Utah that have nonetheless been affected. To that end, as if in legislative session, I ask unanimous consent that the Senate proceed to the immediate consideration of S. 4403, which is at the desk. I further ask that the bill be considered read a third time and passed and the motion to reconsider be considered made and laid upon the table with no intervening action or debate.

Mr. LEE. Mr. President, we have got to keep our eye on the ball, our eye on the fact that the legislation, while pending in the House, is itself mired. Now, I want to be clear in response to something, a comment made by the senior Senator from Missouri. This is not a new realization on my part. This is not a new willingness on my part to acknowledge the legitimacy of the claims and the suitability of the claims under RECA from Missouri and those from New Mexico. It is not new at all. In fact, it is not just in this Congress that I support them. And 2 or 3 years ago, in the previous Congress, I introduced legislation because after reviewing the data, I concluded the beneficiaries--the would-be, need-to-be beneficiaries--in Missouri and those in New Mexico deserve to be added. And so, to be clear, what I am offering here is not the whole thing that exists in the bill that is now passed by the Senate and pending in the House but appears to be mired with no hope of passage over there. It is not the whole bill, but it is something, and it takes care of our three States. And it is not just because our three States are important and the others aren't. No, it is because the claims arising in our three respective States are materially different than those pending in other jurisdictions. In most of those other jurisdictions, the scientific data isn't of the same caliber, drawing the same causal link between radiation exposure and liability on the part of the U.S. Government, and, ultimately, the conditions at issue, the types of cancers and related ailments that go along with it. They are materially different. And so until such time as the science catches up, I think it is going to continue to have difficulty passing in the House. I could be wrong. That is how I see it. That is what I have heard from everyone I trust as to diagnosing the ability of that bill, or lack thereof, to pass in the House. With respect to the Post-1971 uranium miners and millers, there is a distinction here. It is not a distinction that is necessarily impossible to overcome in every circumstance. But the Congressional Research Service looked at this for us, and we asked them to examine it. They concluded that the Post-1971 uranium millers and miners covered by the Hawley legislation now pending in the House were from the commercial sector. They were not doing this as contractors or as employees or otherwise as agents of the U.S. Government, but rather for private sector industry. And in those circumstances--in many of those circumstances, if not most or all--those can be addressed through tort law and/or through workmen's compensation law. Now, for those that can't, there may well be an appropriate use of RECA. But if we are going to start expanding this into purely private sector activities, that changes the nature of this bill, and I suspect will continue to make it more difficult to pass in the House of Representatives. So as to what we have got in Guam, the Marshall Islands, Idaho, Kentucky, Ohio, and Alaska, there may well be worthy beneficiaries there as to whom there exists adequate scientific research to justify the expansion of RECA and as to whom there is no other adequate recourse provided for by some other government program or through State tort law, workers' compensation law, or something else. As to those, I would be happy to expand RECA, but we have to overcome those two issues. Those haven't been overcome. But they have been overcome as to Utah, as to New Mexico, and as to Missouri. It is unfortunate that my friend and colleague from Missouri chose, rather than to allow the victims in his State and in New Mexico and the yet-uncovered victims in the State of Utah to be taken within the protective boundaries of RECA today--we could have gotten this done today. I am confident we could have gotten it passed in the House right away. He chose to object to it. In other words, unless you can have all of his bill passed, including the parts that are not scientifically backed--making it unpassable in the House--he is not going to let even the victims in Missouri or the victims in New Mexico get covered. That is most unfortunate. We have got to deal with this. I will be back. We have to get this done.

Mr. LEE

Mr. LEE. Mr. President, as in legislative session, notwithstanding rule XXII, I ask unanimous consent that the Committee on Rules and Administration be discharged from further consideration of S. 4292 and the Senate proceed to its immediate consideration; further, that the bill be considered read a third time and passed and that the motion to reconsider be considered made and laid upon the table.

Mr. LEE. Mr. President, it is unfortunate that it didn't have the chance to pass this today. I would have loved to have passed it. The reason I would love to have passed it is because, as my friend and distinguished colleague, the Senator from California, just noted, it is illegal for a noncitizen to vote. Because it is illegal for a noncitizen to vote, we need to make sure that it doesn't happen. The fact that it is prohibited by a law with Federal criminal penalties attached to it doesn't mean that it doesn't happen. It doesn't mean that it couldn't happen. It doesn't mean that it is not more likely to happen when we bring a whole lot more noncitizens into the country. There are now an estimated 30 million or so noncitizens inside the United States. My friend and colleague from California cites a couple of studies. One of those studies is from the Cato Institute from 2020. This was about 12 million noncitizens ago. Under this administration, we let in an additional 12 million or so noncitizens into the United States. That rapid of an influx can cause problems. He also cites another study from 2016. That 2016 study was probably 15 or 16 million noncitizens ago. Things do change. Now, the Cato study, the one from 2020 that he mentioned, says that there is no evidence that noncitizens are voting in detectable numbers. It doesn't mean it is not happening. It may mean that they are difficult to detect. But the more noncitizens we have, the more time that elapses when the National Voter Registration Act, or NVRA, remains intact, the more predictable, foreseeable, and, indeed, likely it becomes that many people, some of them perhaps maliciously, knowingly intend to violate the law. Others who might be in sort of a gray area, not quite realizing what they are doing or the fact that it is illegal, might end up registering to vote. Let's remember, in 1993, Congress passed the so-called motor voter law, the National Voter Registration Act. It made it very easy to register to vote in Federal elections. All you have to do is check a box and sign your name. It is all on the honor system. If you do that, you are registered to vote. Now fast-forward two decades. The Supreme Court of the United States decides a case interpreting the National Voter Registration Act as prohibiting the States--preempting the field in such a way that States may not request any proof, any evidence of citizenship when registering someone to vote such that they would be eligible to cast a vote in a Federal election. Meanwhile, we have a change in trend. Decades ago when the NVRA was passed, No. 1, we had far fewer illegal aliens in the country, and we also, No. 2, had a lot of States that wouldn't issue a driver's license or were reluctant to do so to someone who was illegally in the United States. It is now the case that at least 19 States issue driver's licenses to individuals who are unlawfully, illegally in the United States. All 50 States plus the District of Columbia issue driver's licenses to noncitizens generally. What that means is that somewhere in the neighborhood of 30 million people, or at least the adult segment--that portion of the nearly 30 million people who are noncitizens inside the United States today--all they have to do is go get a driver's license, which most of them, if they have any interaction with other members of society, are likely to do, to go get a driver's license--you need a driver's license for all kinds of things. Once they do that, if they check that box and sign their name, all on the honor system, they are registered to vote. Not only does the State not necessarily know that they are noncitizens and ineligible to vote, the State is legally constrained, legally prohibited from asking for any evidence establishing whether or not they are citizens. So this really is concerning. We shouldn't treat it lightly. And the fact that it is difficult to detect makes it more important, not less, to require evidence supporting citizenship. Look, we have to do this in other contexts. Anyone that travels abroad or might at some point in the future travel abroad will have to apply for a U.S. passport. To do that, you are going to have to produce some sort of evidence of U.S. citizenship. When you start a new job in the United States, you have to fill out an I-9 form. Under the I-9 form, if you are a noncitizen, you have to produce evidence of your visa and your eligibility under your visa program to work. If you are not here on a visa and you are an American, then you have to produce evidence that you are, in fact, a citizen of the United States. So if you have to produce that stuff to get a passport, if you have to produce that stuff whenever you start a new job, why would it not make sense to require proof of citizenship upon registering to vote in a Federal election? How else are we supposed to protect our elections, our sacred elections within our constitutional Republic, from foreign interference? Look, one person, one vote. One citizen, one vote. This is how it is supposed to work. This is a foundational principle, and it is under unprecedented threat today. It is under threat specifically because President Biden and Secretary Mayorkas have refused willfully to enforce the law. Now we face a direct threat to our electoral system as a result. Consider this: Since President Biden's inauguration, over 9.5 million undocumented immigrants have entered the United States illegally and have been observed. An estimated 12 million or so have come in. That includes the people estimated to have entered without being observed. This figure exceeds the populations of 36 U.S. States, creating a crisis that has been met with just troubling silence and inaction from many across the aisle. With millions of unauthorized entrants on U.S. soil, the potential for election fraud through ineligible voting is not just a hypothetical risk, it is a looming reality. Instead of urging the President of the United States to address this crisis, Democrats seem to prefer to resurrect the so-called Orwellian- named Border Security Act, a bill that has already failed in this body and will do nothing to mitigate the border issues at hand--the border issues created and then exacerbated by this administration. With the influx of noncitizens under this administration, even if just a fraction--say 1 in 100--were to vote, this could translate to hundreds of thousands of votes, enough certainly to sway tightly contested elections and potentially alter the outcome even in something as significant and with nationwide implications as far-reaching as a Presidential election. This is concerning considering that a recent study found noncitizens have ample openings to illegally vote. Somewhere between 10 percent and 27 percent of noncitizens are registered to vote, and somewhere between 5 percent and 13 percent of noncitizens vote in Federal elections, including Presidential elections. Across the Nation, instances abound where States have inadvertently facilitated the crisis. I say inadvertently, but in some ways, their hands are tied. ``Inadvertently'' here sort of refers to the fact that they don't necessarily mean to; it is that they are prohibited from asking for proof of citizenship. From unsolicited voter registration forms mailed to noncitizens, to driver's licenses issued without adequate checks, practices relying merely on the honesty of noncitizens, including illegal aliens, have opened the floodgates to voter fraud. While it is true that it is already illegal for noncitizens to vote in Federal elections, there really are no effective systems in place to verify the citizenship of voters. A mere check on a box is all it takes, with little risk--very little risk--of being caught due to inadequate State election infrastructure. Federal law even prevents States from requiring proof of citizenship when registering voters via Federal forms. An increasing number of localities permit noncitizens to vote in local elections, further blurring the distinctions meant to protect the integrity of our elections. Prominent Democrats have openly discussed these tactics as not just existing elements but as things that are beneficial to their agenda. Only months ago, every Senate Democrat voted to count illegal aliens in the census to help them shore up more seats in Congress and more electoral votes in the electoral college. This cannot continue. It is our responsibility, it is our moral imperative to close these gates. My bill, the Safeguard American Voter Eligibility Act--also known as the SAVE Act--would be a vital step in securing the electoral process, ensuring that in every State, every vote cast is legitimate and every voter is duly registered. The SAVE Act proposes amending the National Voter Registration Act to enable States to require proof of citizenship when registering voters for purposes of Federal elections. Under the SAVE Act, we mandate that States obtain concrete documentary proof of citizenship at the time of voter registration. It specifies acceptable documentation that really is desperately needed. It is far more injurious, if you want to compare the two. If you want to talk about the amount of burdensome paperwork that goes on relative to what it is that needs protecting, I think it is at least as harmful, if not far more so, to fail to require documentation and proof of citizenship in the context of voting in a Federal election than it is when completing an I-9, which everyone has to do when they start a new job, citizen and noncitizen alike. Furthermore, the SAVE Act compels States to proactively remove noncitizens from voter rolls and introduces Federal penalties for those who intentionally register noncitizens. This bill echoes the sentiments of the American people from coast to coast. It transcends political affiliations and speaks directly to the core of what makes our country great: fair, free, and secure elections. This is about preserving the integrity of our elections and ensuring that each State will have the opportunity to participate in a way that involves each vote being cast to reflect the American will. If this administration insists upon keeping America's borders open, then the administration must also ensure that none of these illegal immigrants are thwarting our free and fair elections. Look, this border crisis--make no mistake--was deliberately engineered and has been willfully perpetuated by this administration. Now, they shouldn't want open borders. There are a lot of good reasons why this is a bad idea, a lot of reasons why we shouldn't allow this. There are a lot of people like Laken Riley who have lost their lives or have otherwise endured heartache, trauma, and devastating consequences because of people who should not have been here to begin with. But if this is what they want, then for the love of all that is sacred and holy, please, they should at a minimum have the decency to their fellow Americans to make sure that those same people who they have willfully allowed to enter our country against our law and against the will of the American people at least not be able to vote in our elections because they are not citizens. Every day we delay, the foundation of our electoral processes erodes a little more. We can't wait for this administration to enforce the law because this administration isn't enforcing the law. By passing the SAVE Act, we send a clear message that in the United States, voting is not just a right and a privilege of citizenship, but it is also a protected and a cherished one--one that our own government won't deliberately allow to be diluted and made less meaningful. As debates about election integrity rage, the SAVE Act stands out by guaranteeing that only American citizens will have a say in our elections, thereby keeping those elections free from foreign interference--something we all care about. American elections must be decided by American voters, full stop.

Mr. LEE

Mr. LEE. Our country is in the grips of the worst border security crisis in our history. President Biden's open border policies have caused an unprecedented humanitarian disaster, with grave consequences for public safety, national security, and, indeed, for the rule of law. For years, Democrats have stood by and watched as President Biden presided over and intentionally exacerbated this historic crisis. They know that President Biden has the authority to secure the border. Yet, instead of taking him to task, they remain silent. No, instead of calling on the President to fix the problem, we are here attempting to revise the so-called Border Security Act--a bill that has already failed to pass muster in this body and will do nothing to secure the border and, if anything, would likely make it worse if, heaven forbid, it became law. It would certainly make it worse when administered under this administration because of the amount of executive branch discretionary authority this bill creates. Look, let's be honest here. This is a political exercise, not a serious debate, because that bill is going nowhere, and we all know that. Since President Biden's inauguration, over 9.5 million undocumented immigrants have entered the United States illegally. Those are just the ones that we know about, just the ones that have been observed, that have been recorded by our border security personnel. It is larger than the population of 36 States. Most of our States are smaller than the number of people who have been observed and recorded as crossing into our country through our southern border unlawfully just since January 20, 2021. The magnitude of the border security crisis is hard to comprehend. What is not hard to comprehend is that this is a public safety crisis, and it should be treated as such. Our constituents from our various States know this, and we know it from them. They feel strongly about it, and they don't like it. So let's not pretend that President Biden lacks authority to secure the border and needs new legislation or else he won't be able to do anything about it. That isn't true. That is science fiction fantasy. That is a fraudulently produced statement. It is a truth-free assertion. President Biden, you have the power right now to secure this border. You have it and you know that you have it and you deceive the American people when you suggest otherwise. Let's not waste the American people's time by debating a bill that stands to make the crisis even worse--even worse--by giving you, sir, more power to make this worse, which it would do. And we know already how you would utilize that discretionary authority because we know how you utilized the discretionary authority you have already been given. We should be considering measures that force this administration to actually secure the border, that stay the President's hand, and that force him to do his job, which is to secure the border. We can do just that or at least move in the right direction on that front simply by passing my legislation, known as the VALID Act. Thanks to the Biden administration, inadmissible aliens are not just entering the United States on foot, they are being flown on commercial flights--often at government expense--into and throughout the country. The CBP One mobile app, which was never intended to be used by migrants seeking entry into the United States, has been repurposed into a tool by the Biden administration to facilitate the entry of even more illegal aliens into the United States. Today, migrants can download the app, put in whatever identifiable information they would like--no matter the accuracy of the information, regardless of whether they just made it up, just like they walked into a party and wrote their name down on a name tag saying: Hello, my name is thus and such. And then they can use the app as their sole exclusive form of ID necessary to enter the United States. So the rest of us, if we travel outside the United States, need a passport to come back into the United States. But if you are an illegal alien: No documents, no citizenship, no visa, no problem; we got you covered. All you have got to do is color inside the lines. Just write down whatever information you want to make up. Put it on the app. That is your ticket. You are getting in. I can't tell you how many times my constituent service operation in my State office back in Utah gets calls from frantic, concerned American citizens. They are somewhere outside the United States. They lose their passport. It is a real crisis. We do our best to help them. We can almost always figure out a way to solve the problem, but it creates real difficulty. The American citizens don't have access to the CBP One mobile app, but do you know who does? Illegal aliens, and it helps them get into the country. Now, not only can illegal immigrants use the app to enter the United States by plane, but they can also use it to travel throughout the United States, within the United States, on domestic flights paid for by the U.S. Government. Migrants don't need a legitimate ID or a passport. They can board a plane using Biden's CBP One mobile app, which the TSA now proudly advertises at airports nationwide. Of course, if you are an American citizen, you will have an entirely different airport experience. You will be expected to wait in long security lines, show proof of valid identification, and then potentially be subjected to an additional invasive security screening. Americans are expected to follow our country's laws. Yet illegal immigrants who are in the United States only because they broke our country's laws that govern how you get into this country are held to a lower standard. It is almost an insult to standards to call it a standard at all. It is a nonstandard. The Biden administration is rewarding people illegally entering our country with their own personalized form of TSA PreCheck. But it is better than TSA PreCheck; it is free. You don't have to provide any documentation. You don't have to have any real security review. This backward policy has real consequences. Hundreds of thousands of otherwise inadmissible aliens have entered the United States using the CBP One mobile app as their sole form of identification for travel authorization. Among those who have entered by using the app include a Haitian migrant who, after entering the United States through the CBP One mobile app, was arrested for committing a double homicide in New York. Cory Alvarez, another man who entered the country through the app, was arrested for sexually assaulting a disabled 15-year-old girl. Americans deserve the right to fly without fear, which is impossible when we have a President who allows people without verifiable information to enter our country against our laws. My bill can end this unacceptable lapse in security and public safety, and it can do it today. All I am asking for is a vote, a vote on legislation that would prohibit individuals from flying from foreign countries into the United States if they are using the CBP One mobile app, a notice to appear order, or a notice to report order as their sole form of identification or travel authorization. This shouldn't be a hard idea to get behind. This shouldn't be controversial, not remotely. Before you board a plane, you should prove who you are, just like the rest of us have to do. We do it all the time. We have to prove who we are when we go to the doctor's office, the pharmacy, when we check into a hotel, pick out a rental car, if we get pulled over on the highway for speeding. Anytime we do just about anything of significance, it seems we have got to produce identification to show who we are. Look, this has been a pretty widespread practice that Americans have been required to follow for a long time at airports, certainly since 9/ 11. Everybody just understands it is what you have got to do. Even for a U.S. citizen to fly from one U.S. city to another, he or she must establish identification, proving identity. President Biden is reversing that standard and importing crime into every community in America. No community in our country should be forced to fear that foreign nationals whose identities we cannot confirm can travel free throughout the United States--freely, often at government expense; freely, without even having to produce so much as identification papers. Earlier this month, one of our colleagues was quoted as saying: There is only one party that is serious about border security. It is the Democratic Party. We are going to ask Republicans to join us. Look, I will pose the same question that he asked and impose it now to all my Democratic colleagues. If you are, as you claim, the party that is serious about border security, then, for the love of Pete, prove it. Step up. Go on record and show the American people where you stand on this commonsense border security reform, and let's pass the VALID Act. (Ms. HASSAN assumed the Chair.) So to that end, Madam President, notwithstanding rule XXII, I ask unanimous consent that the Senate resume legislative session and that the Senate proceed to S. 4387, which is at the desk.

Mr. LEE. Madam President, I appreciate the thoughtful analysis-- consistent with his always thoughtful, analytical approach to matters-- that has been offered up by my friend and colleague, the distinguished Senator from Connecticut. Yes, he and I have worked together on a lot of things, including in the national security space. It reminds me, he and I need to talk about one of those things sometime soon. I do, however, disagree with a number of conclusions that he has reached. I think I see where he is going, and I understand how he gets there, but I think he is mistaken on a couple of points. No. 1, there have, in fact, been hundreds of thousands of people who have entered the United States using the CBP One mobile app as their basis for entering the country and as their form of identification-- hundreds of thousands. In fact, my understanding is that between October of 2022 and the end of September of 2023, that calendar year, there were a total of 221,456 such people who did that just from four countries alone--from Venezuela, Haiti, Cuba, and Nicaragua--people being brought in and then paroled. These were people who, as I understand it--the Department of Homeland Security has acknowledged--had no valid basis for entering the country, and that is why they had to be paroled into the country. They were using immigration parole illegally, illegitimately, to bring them in because to actually use immigration parole, the statute requires that it be made on an individualized basis, not a categorical one. These were brought in categorically. With respect to his assertion regarding entry into the United States followed by an assertion of a right to proceed under our asylum laws, that is a different question altogether. First of all, if you enter the United States unlawfully and then apply for asylum, you still have entered unlawfully. He describes, then, these individuals as having a right to asylum. Nobody has a right to asylum in the United States. We do have asylum laws. Those laws allow the Department of Homeland Security, through authority that goes through the Secretary of Homeland Security, to extend asylum status on a discretionary basis. There is no statutorily conferred right, certainly no constitutionally conferred right to asylum. In effect, what we do have is that if you enter the United States without documentation and then you apply for asylum, you have to have your asylum claim adjudicated. That can take years. In fact, a number of people who are entering the United States now, if they apply for asylum after entering, they are often told that their court date may not occur until well into the 2030s. We know that most asylum applications are denied. Most people who apply for asylum are ultimately deemed not eligible for asylum. You can't call this a statutorily or a constitutional right--a statutorily conferred or a constitutionally conferred right--nor can you say that they are asylees as of the moment that they apply. Under our asylum laws, while there is some complexity to them, I think that the most natural reading of them is that they are supposed to be detained while their asylum applications are pending and until they are finally resolved, which, as I just noted, most asylum applicants are ultimately denied that. So to tell them: OK, fill out this form using the app. That could be your form of identification. You may enter the country using that as your ID. You may fly about the country at will using that ID. To say that that is based on some sort of lawful immigration status isn't accurate, and it certainly ignores the fact that we are flouting in countless circumstances either immigration parole or asylum in order to get them to that point. As to the suggestion that those entering the country with the CBP One mobile app--if I understand my colleague's assertion correctly, I think he is saying you have to have other forms of ID, perhaps a foreign passport or something akin to that, in order to use the CBP One mobile app to enter the United States. That is not my understanding at all. I have had countless conversations--I as well as my staff--with officials within the Department of Homeland Security when we have raised these concerns. I have never heard any suggestion anywhere that the ability to use the app in that fashion is conditioned upon the ability to show, to produce a foreign passport or other official form of foreign identification. I would add here, I am quite certain that that is not the case for the additional reason--not only because that would have come up by now in the countless conversations we had about this but also for an additional reason. You see along our southern border people ditching their identification papers--their identification cards, passports, driver's licenses, whatever they are--from their home jurisdictions at the moment they cross the border. They ditch them. They ditch them because they don't need them. They ditch them because that way, they can fill out the CBP One mobile app and make their name or their date of birth or whatever it is whatever they want. This is a very known phenomenon. These are varied widely observed facts along the southern border. He said that these are not hundreds of thousands who have been here. Look, this is not my understanding. Madam President, 221,000-some-odd people flew in just from the four countries I mentioned alone and just for the 12-month interval I mentioned. We have many hundreds of thousands who have come in using the CBP One mobile app. Look, at the end of the day, we do have a problem. We have a problem because we have so many people coming in here who don't have a visa to be here, who don't have citizenship, don't have status as lawful permanent residents or otherwise, and they are entering without documentation, without any other legal right. The fact that this administration has chosen to paper over the fact that in any other administration, in any other era of American history or at least modern American history since these things started happening, those would be regarded as illegal aliens, which, of course, they are. In this administration, they do their best to try to paper over that by either declaring them eligible for immigration parole even though they are not because you are not allowed to use immigration parole that way--you use immigration parole in two instances, both of which are specific, neither of which may be categorical. There is the humanitarian use. For example, your mother is in the United States. You are outside the United States. You don't have a visa. You are not a citizen. You are a citizen of another country. You want to come in because your mother is sick. She is about to pass away. For humanitarian purposes, they will let you in for a brief period of time, understanding that it is momentary. The other is a public use purpose--public use. Let's say you speak a language that is needed in the United States--I don't know, interpret at somebody's trial, translation services or something like that. Either way, it has to be a specific individualized determination. This administration is using these things by the hundreds of thousands to say: Come on in. If you are from Venezuela, Haiti, Cuba, Nicaragua, one of the other favorite countries on this, just come on in. So papering over them doesn't make them legal. They are still illegal aliens, and we are still facilitating the process by which they enter the United States and making it easier for them to enter the United States without proper identification. This would fix that. This bill would fix that. Now, I ask today not that we pass it by unanimous consent; I asked only that we turn to it, that we get on to it. Even that drew an objection. That is most unfortunate. Finally, I want to make the point with reference to the 45th President of the United States. I, like many--I believe like most of my Republican colleagues, have grave concerns with the so-called border security measure--it is really more of an immigration bill than a border security measure--that Democrats want us to turn to next, that they want us to get onto. I have grave concerns with that, and most of my Republican colleagues do. I will say this: Most of us had real concerns with this long before the 45th President of the United States weighed in on it. My objections, though, had nothing do and still have nothing to do with the preferences of the 45th President of the United States with regard to that bill. They have everything to do with what that bill actually said. Now, I understand a number of people put a lot of time into that bill. I get it. But that bill didn't do what most of us as Republicans asked that it do, which is that it remove the President's vast discretion to make it easier to paper over and document illegal aliens to make them appear legal when, in fact, they are not.

Mr. LEE. Madam President, I will be brief, and I appreciate my friend and colleague for indulging me on this as I have just a couple of points. Look, they are entering unlawfully. Again, this administration is using other laws to paper over their illegality. The fact that President Biden is unlawfully using immigration parole to make them appear legal still doesn't make it legal. I believe it was Mark Twain who asked rhetorically: If you count the tail of a dog as a leg, how many legs does the dog have? I would respond that it is still just four legs. It is still a tail and not a leg. Somebody who enters unlawfully isn't made lawful in the United States just because the President of the United States is unlawfully using an authority that doesn't allow him to make them legal to do that. As to the suggestion that those who enter using the CBP One app have uniformly provided a passport, it just isn't true. In fact, I had it confirmed right now with the person who helps me with these things, who helps constituents--the people in my State--who confirmed just now that it is not a requirement. They are not required to provide a passport in order to do this, and we know that this has been used over and over and over again by people who do not have documentation.

Mr. LEE

Mr. LEE. Mr. President, if my Democratic colleagues were really serious about addressing the crisis unfolding on our border, they would demand Senator Schumer immediately take up H.R. 2 instead of this counterproductive and excessively, at best, weak bill that would, if anything, only make matters worse along the border. Sadly, they are not. We know that by their actions--their actions today--actions we have seen just moments ago. We are still encountering close to 180,000 illegal immigrants at our southern border each and every month. Since President Biden took office, there have been over 9.5 million illegal immigrant encounters nationwide. Those are just the ones we know about. The actual estimates put it 12 to 13 million that may have crossed illegally. Over 350 individuals on the terrorist watchlist have been stopped while trying to cross the southern border. Over 27,583 citizens of communist China have been encountered at the southwest border in the last year alone. By any metric, this administration has no interest in securing our border. In fact, quite to the contrary. The data suggests this administration wants as many illegal immigrants to enter the country as possible. My Democratic colleagues want us to pretend Republicans are somehow responsible for creating or prolonging the crisis. Why? Because we were unwilling to pass a bad immigration bill masquerading as a border security bill; a bill that would have normalized thousands of illegal entries at our border each month. I continue to believe that H.R. 2 would solve most of our most vexing problems at our southern border. It is not that you have to have new legislation to fix it, but this would fix it. It would fix it because it would cabin President Biden's authority to allow this to continue to happen. He doesn't need legislation. He could do this all on his own. But back to the point. If the Democrats were serious here, that is what Democrats would allow us to do is to take up and pass H.R. 2. Sadly, that offer was rejected moments ago. And so trying to find something that will work, I am offering a smaller, narrower bill; a bill that doesn't contain all the same provisions, but that would help alleviate the crisis by closing some of the most gaping loopholes in the law that are allowing this thing to continue. Again, cabining the President's discretion, forcing his hand so as to make it more difficult for him to perpetuate this cycle of illegal border crossings. To be clear, this isn't the entire answer. But if my Democratic colleagues can't agree to those commonsense reforms found in H.R. 2, then if they can't agree to consider these reforms that are narrower than I am offering, how, honestly, can we take their concern about the border crisis seriously? The Stopping Border Surges Act would address loopholes in our immigration laws which create some of the perverse incentives for illegal immigration. It would clarify that an adult cannot bring a child into this country expecting that child to be his or her ticket to avoid detention. This bill would help eliminate the disturbing recycling of children and babies by coyotes and by international drug cartels. It would allow all unaccompanied children to be returned to their home countries, thus ending the incentive for parents to send their young children here alone. Sadly, we see what is happening to those children under the supervision of the Biden administration and Secretary Mayorkas. They are trafficked either into child slavery, sex slavery, as drug mules, or some combination of the above. My bill would require the Department of Health and Human Services to provide the Department of Homeland Security with biographical information about the persons to whom children are released. It would require asylum seekers to apply for and be denied asylum in at least one safe country on their route to the United States. It would combat the Biden administration's obliteration of the credible fear standard by tightening that standard back to where it should be. The correct application of this standard is pivotal to operation of our asylum system; for it to be there for those who need it and are entitled to it while protecting it from being abused as it has been. It has been corrupted over the last 3\1/2\ years. More recently, it has gotten much, much worse. In fact, the Biden administration has, you might say, destroyed it entirely. We must fix it. We have an obligation to do so. This Stopping Border Surges Act would also close loopholes and restrict asylum to aliens who present themselves at an official port of entry. We must eliminate the loopholes, not allow this administration to continue to expand them and, indeed, to make more of them. Congress must take back the authority to establish law. We can start that today with the Stopping Borders Surges Act. Ending the ambiguities in our current law will help mitigate the situation at the border and prevent unaccountable bureaucrats from acting with impunity as the despots in miniature that they have become to enforce their own policy preferences at their own will and whim. So I urge my colleagues to support what I am about to do here, which is to ask that we consider this bill. Keep in mind, just a moment ago, I had colleagues offer up to pass by unanimous consent H.R. 2. I am offering a narrower, more targeted fix and I am asking unanimous consent, not that it be passed right now, but just we be allowed to consider it. We bring it up, we debate it and discuss it, and dispose of it with votes. To that end, Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the Judiciary Committee be discharged from further consideration of S. 685 and that the Senate proceed to its immediate consideration.

Mr. LEE. Mr. President, this is unfortunate. Keep in mind what just happened here. I asked not that we pass this bill but that we move to its consideration, that we be allowed to debate it, discuss it, and ultimately dispose of it through votes after having an opportunity to review its merits and to consider amendments. That, too, drew an objection even though this would allow the body to work its will through amendments, and we could get to a point where perhaps we could agree on something. Instead, we see absolute fealty pledged to this bill, what is being referred to as the bipartisan bill. Now, with all due respect to those who negotiated it, keep in mind, Senators in the room were two Members of the Democratic caucus and one Republican, and then you add to that the White House--a significant player even if you don't weight the White House as more than just one Senator equivalent. Putting it generously, this is a 3-to-1 negotiation. Yet this negotiation went on for many months. During most of that time, most of us were unaware of what was being discussed. As soon as the details started to leak out, as soon as we started to become aware of them, many of us started publicly and privately expressing our concerns, first in private and then in public. Look, separate and apart from what the 45th President of the United States had to say about it, many--I would say most of us in the Senate Republican conference had already formed our opinions and decided to oppose the bill based on its own terms long before the 45th President of the United States weighed in on it. Long before Donald Trump said a word about this, we were concerned. We always would have been concerned even had he not weighed in, based on the merits of the bill. Look, the bill itself didn't do what it was supposed to do, and it kept referring to one of my colleagues as the designated authorized representative. Well, when you are authorized and designated as a representative of one or more individuals--in this case, 49 individuals--that still presupposes that you are negotiating something consistent with their express desires and subject to their approval. When at last we became aware of the details of it, we decided this is not nearly what we talked about, not what we ordered, and so we rejected it. Again, this was underway long before President Trump ever said a word about it. So it isn't accurate to describe this bipartisan bill--which, by the way, at the end of the day, received only 4 out of 49 Senate Republicans supporting it on the Senate floor. I believe it would probably receive less than that even today. It is minimally bipartisan at best. Now, as to the suggestion that my bill, the Stopping Border Surges Act, and bare consideration of it--not just that it be passed into law but that we be allowed to even consider it--he says that it somehow targets vulnerable people, including children, for inhumane treatment. Do you know what is inhumane? What is inhumane is perpetuating a system that incentivizes the kidnapping, the renting, the borrowing, the leasing, the recycling of children for the purpose of creating a ruse by which adults can avoid detention, sometimes sending the same kids back through the system over and over and over again as if they were poker chips or something like that. Look, children are not props. Children certainly are not there as currency to facilitate illegal immigration. Are there human rights violations? Yes. Constantly, incessantly, directly as a result of this. Somewhere between, I don't know, 35 percent at the low end and 65 percent at the high end of the women and girls who are trafficked into this country by the drug cartels--which are making tens of billions of dollars a year under the Biden administration's deliberately lax policy--are subjected to rape, to sexual assault, in many cases, to sex slavery. In many instances, people can't afford the many thousands of dollars they have to pay to the cartels in order to be trafficked, so what do they do? Well, they work it off. How do they work it off? They do what they can, what they are told to. In many circumstances, we know exactly what that means. So don't talk to me about this being an inhumane bill. This is a bill that would stop the inhumanity. This is a bill that would tighten the restrictions so that this doesn't happen anymore, so that kids aren't recycled, so that they are not kidnapped, sold, borrowed, rented, and recycled as props to facilitate illegal immigration. Anyone who suggests this is humane isn't looking at the reality of the circumstances and at the lives lost even before you get to the Americans whose lives have been ended or have ended in tragedy or met with tragedy unnecessarily by people who should never have been in this country to begin with and then carry out crimes--some too heinous to describe on the Senate floor. Even before you get to those Americans who have met tragically with fate in those ways, just look at the inhumane treatment received by those who are being trafficked. The humane thing to do here is not to perpetuate this cycle. There is nothing humane about allowing human beings to be trafficked on this scale, enriching international drug cartels whose object is lucre and whose means inevitably involve violence. Shame on all of us if we don't do this. Shame on the Senate for not being willing. Shame on the Senate Democrats not being willing today even to consider a bill that would bring that to an end.

Mr. LEE

Mr. LEE. Mr. President, this is a little like deja vu all over again. Here we are dealing with another piece of legislation. It is an important piece of legislation. It is important legislation that deals with a lot of things important to a lot of Americans, affecting something that is uniquely, distinctively within our legislative jurisdiction as Federal lawmakers; that is, the work of the Federal Aviation Administration. It has been part of the interstate network from the dawn of the Republic. Article I, section 8, clause 3, the commerce clause, has been interpreted, among other things, to give Congress regulatory-- legislative jurisdiction over channels and instrumentalities of interstate commerce, and air travel happens to be one of those things. This important FAA reauthorization bill that has a lot of provisions in it--some of which I like, some of which I am not wild about--was processed by the Senate Commerce Committee. The Commerce Committee--the chair and especially the ranking member--did yeoman's work in incorporating into the base text amendments from a wide array of Members, and I have appreciated the hard work they have put into it. It is important to remember that no matter how hard a committee chair and ranking member work--certainly the ranking member, my friend and colleague, the distinguished Senator from Texas--have done in this case on this bill, it still doesn't obviate or supplant the need for robust consideration of amendments to be offered on the Senate floor because, remember, any one Senate committee, including the Commerce Committee, contains at most, you know, a few dozen Members of this body--a couple of dozen is about all--and there are, of course, 100 of us. Every one of us holds an election certificate. One of the most fundamental rules in the Constitution--a rule that, by directive of the Constitution itself, can't be changed--is the principle of equal representation among the States in the Senate. So to give life and vitality to that, it is absolutely imperative that individual Senators be given the opportunity to have meaningful input into legislation whether they sit on the committee of jurisdiction or not. To that end, throughout the nearly 2\1/2\ centuries of the existence of this body, the U.S. Senate, our rules have given pretty broad deference to individual Members and given certain prerogatives to each and every Senator, no matter how junior or how senior, whether a Member is with the minority party or with the majority party. The whole basis of traditions in the Senate built into our rules-- things like the filibuster, like the cloture standard--they are all designed to allow Members to engage in robust debate. You can't really have meaningful debate and meaningful input from every Member of this body who wants to participate unless you have something of an open amendment process on the floor. Now, this was always the norm in the history of the Senate. It was even when I arrived here. I was sworn into office at the beginning of 2011. The Presiding Officer, of course, joined us not too long after that, and thus commenced the golden era of the U.S. Senate with the arrival of the current Presiding Officer. When we arrived here in the Senate, there were still real, live, significant vestiges of the way the place always operated; namely, when we had a significant bill--especially a significant, must-pass legislative vehicle like the FAA reauthorization bill we are considering now--it was still normal, still to be expected that an individual Senator could come down to the Senate floor, call up his or her amendment, and make that amendment pending. Once an amendment is made pending, then the Senate has an obligation eventually to dispose of that amendment either by passing it or voting on it and declining to pass it or tabling it or something like that. There are not many options, but it had to be disposed of once it was made pending. We have gotten into a bad pattern since then. Unfortunately, both political parties have played a role in this. We have had increased prevalence of a situation in which the majority leader will come to the Senate floor, file cloture on the bill to bring debate to a close, set that process for bringing debate to a close in motion, and fill the tree. Fill the tree. Filling the amendment tree is what that refers to. That is fancy Senate terminology that just means the majority leader has some tricks at his disposal to make it nearly impossible to get amendments made pending by individual rank-and-file Members. It was fairly common that we could make our amendments pending as recently as 2011 and 2012, when I arrived and then when the Presiding Officer arrived in the Senate. It is almost unheard of now because filing cloture and filling the tree have become almost automatic, almost reflexive. They are almost self-perpetuating. And it is relentless to the point that many Members who have joined us since then haven't ever even really experienced the Senate the way it is more properly expected to function. Individual Members have to beg and plead, go on bended knee to political leaders of both parties in the Senate, asking: Please, please, may I have a chance to do this? Without the acquiescence of the majority leader, the only way you can get your amendment pending in many circumstances involves coming to the floor and asking unanimous consent to make it pending. That consent is too routinely denied now, very often by the majority party--typically by the majority party; sometimes not. What that results in is really a truncation, an abbreviation, a short-circuiting of the legislative process as it has always functioned here, as it was designed to function in the Senate rules, as I imagine it to have been envisioned by the Founding Fathers. There are 100 Members of this body, and they should all have the opportunity to fight publicly for their constituents, to make improvements to the bill, to take away things they consider harmful, and to add things that have not been included that they think should be included. This bill has not been amended on the Senate floor. That is why I opposed cloture moments ago. Like I say, there are some things in this bill that I really like, and there are other things that I don't like, but the biggest single reason to oppose cloture on the bill is that I don't know how you can in good conscience vote to bring debate to a close when debate has effectively not happened--at least not on the Senate floor. I don't believe debate can happen meaningfully, effectively on an amendable vehicle like this one where there has been no opportunity to amend. The bill hasn't been amended on the Senate floor. The Senate shouldn't simply agree to rubberstamp this so-called four corners agreement. ``Four corners agreement'' is a term that can refer to several different things. Very often it means that it has been blessed-- depending on the nature of the bill, very often it has been blessed by the law firm of Schumer, McConnell, Johnson, and Jeffries or perhaps the law firm of Schumer, McConnell, Johnson, and Jeffries accompanied by the chair and ranking member of the appropriate legislative committee or committees. But we are not a rubberstamp for one or more committees or for the firm; we are each elected by the voters in our respective States and should stand accountable to them. In order to do our jobs, we have to stand here and be willing to debate. If you don't want to fight fires, for heaven's sake, don't become a firefighter. If you don't want to cast votes, including lots of votes on amendments to legislation, even where you don't feel like taking the vote, even where you would rather be kicking back, drinking a root beer or something-- you would be really doing your constituents a disservice if you subjugated your own desires--your own desire for bliss and for inaction and you preferred those over your duty to your constituents who elected you. We are not here to celebrate somebody's birthday. We are not here to rubberstamp what the committees do or what the law firm suggests. We are here to legislate. We are not really legislators; we are a gigantic rubberstamp to the extent that we ourselves don't have the opportunity to vote for amendments. That is why I call upon all Senators within the sound of my voice, whether you are a Democrat or a Republican or something else, a liberal or a conservative, whether you have been here for a few years or a really long time--it doesn't matter; you should want your job that you worked really hard to get elected to--you should want to be able to do your job. I want to be clear. There are a lot of amendments that have been prominently featured and touted in connection with this bill, amendments--the sponsors of which have really aggressively argued for. A lot of those amendments are not amendments I support. In fact, a number of them are things that I strongly oppose and would really hope would not pass. Some of them, I would support; others, I wouldn't. But notwithstanding the fact that some of them really are awful, call me old fashioned, Mr. President, but I think that is our job, is to take votes, to try to make legislation better, and to offer improvements to it, and that means amendments. Look, I understand that in the House of Representatives, things operate a little bit differently. You have 435 people over there. It is a lot harder to have--this is why we have always bragged about our status as the world's greatest deliberative legislative body. On paper, we are. Historically, we certainly have been. Today, we are not. We are kidding ourselves. We are delusional if we want and expect the American people to believe otherwise, because we are not that. But here is the good news: We still are that entity on paper. We still are that entity as it is envisioned, as it is created, as it is established and outlined by the Constitution. We still are that entity with our own rules, our own precedents, and our own customs. But, alas, the best rules, the best constitutional provisions will amount to dead letter if we ourselves refuse to exercise our own rights and our prerogatives. The muscle of legislative procedure begins to atrophy with nonuse--especially, deliberate, willful, chronic nonuse-- always ultimately to the benefit of the firm, to the benefit of a small handful of Senators and to the exclusion, to the effective disenfranchisement of everyone else--most importantly, those who elected us to do a job that we are neglecting, that we are outsourcing to third parties. Sometimes, it is third parties in the executive branch of government. Sometimes, it is individual Senators within our own ranks, within our own body, our own party leaders within our respective legislative Chambers. Here is my closing plea. I hope and I humbly ask Senators--and I have great affection for the Presiding Officer and consider him a dear friend, even though he and I don't agree on every political issue. We have different positions on everything from the consumption of meat to whether I waited too long to shave my head. But the Presiding Officer and I are good friends, and even though we have different ideas for a lot of things, I think we both agree on the fact that the Senate could do a better job and would be doing a better job if we were voting more on his amendments, more on my amendments, more on the amendments that anyone else wants to file. Sure, it takes a little bit more time, perhaps. Sure, it requires a little bit of effort. But that way we are doing our job. And not everything we want will always pass. And, yes, that way the law firm of Schumer, McConnell, Johnson, and Jeffries wouldn't be able to control as much as it does. But it was never intended to be that way. We are intended to make laws, not other lawmakers--certainly not legislative oligarchs who stand in for everybody else while the muscle of legislative and constitutional procedure continues to atrophy. So, in short, the next Senate Republican and Democratic leader, regardless of who holds the majority, I hope, including and especially the next majority leader of either political party--I certainly hope he or she, whoever holds that position, will plot out a course that is different than the one that we have been on for the last few years and plot out a course that allows and encourages and enables each and every Senator to do his or her job. We are all going to work better if everyone is allowed to do his or her job, and that means the leader needs to stop filling the tree reflexively, consistently, instinctively every time and boxing out rank-and-file Members. Now, look, I get it. There are times when the majority party may see fit to do that, and those decisions have to be made in realtime. But I don't think it should be done often. I don't think it should be done for lighter, transient reasons. It should be the rare exception, rather than the norm. But regardless of who the next majority leader is and to which party that leader may belong, it is not as though we are hopeless, passive observers, subjects to be acted upon here. No, we can be a part of this process. Wherever, whenever there is an effort to lock out amendments, to fill the tree and exclude individual rank-and-file Members from the amendment process, any 41 Senators--Republicans, Democrats, or a combination of the two--can respond to that by proposing cloture and prohibiting the process from resulting and bringing debate to a close, unless or until each Senator is allowed the opportunity to offer, call up, and make pending their amendments. I yield the floor. I suggest the absence of a quorum.