John Thune

Mr. THUNE

Mr. THUNE. The following Senators are necessarily absent: the Senator from Missouri (Mr. Blunt), the Senator from South Dakota (Mr. Rounds), and the Senator from North Carolina (Mr. Tillis).

Mr. THUNE

Mr. THUNE. Mr. President, as I begin this morning, let me just start by reacting to a couple of things that have been said here on the floor this morning already by my Democrat colleagues. You know, the leader, Republican leader, when he was down here earlier, talked about the impact of inflation on the economy, and I have to tell you, that is very real. The inflationary impact is being felt all across this country. Energy costs are up, gasoline costs are up by huge amounts. Food costs are up in this country. Housing costs are up. There isn't hardly any area of our economy where people aren't being impacted by inflation, meaning that the dollars that they earn are stretching less all the time. That is not a fake thing; it is not a temporary thing; it is a real thing. People are experiencing it in their economic lives on a daily basis, and to hear the Democratic leader say, well, you know, all the spending they are going to do is not going to cost anything, that it is going to be covered by tax increases and those tax increases are just going to hit people in the higher income categories, also is something that just isn't accurate. Now let me just for a minute suggest something that I think is sort of fundamental when it comes to economics, and that is, when you have too many dollars chasing too few goods, you get inflation. The demand for a product goes up, and when the demand goes up, the price usually follows along with it. Well, we have right now a lot of government dollars that have been swirling around the economy for some time, which is why I think in many respects we are seeing this inflation--the highest inflation that we have seen literally in 30 years in this country, affecting, as I said earlier, kind of all sectors of the economy and things that people have to purchase in their daily lives. If you put more dollars out there, which is what is being talked about by our Democratic colleagues--another $3.5 trillion that would flood the economy--I think the expectation is a very real one that you are going to see that inflationary pressure accelerate, intensify, because when you have that much money, that many dollars chasing too few goods, inflation is an inevitable result. The idea that we need to spend another $3.5 trillion and that somehow that is going to be a solution right now also is not consistent at all with the facts and the data. We saw here just recently the Congressional Budget Office come out with a report that suggested that government revenues are at the highest level--biggest increase, I should say, year over year since 1977. We are now over $4 trillion this last year in revenues--$4 trillion. It has never happened before in this country. It is the biggest 1-year increase in revenues since 1977, paid for largely by corporate tax receipts, which were up 75 percent year over year, and also by individual income tax receipts, much of which was coming from high-income earners. A lot of that increase that we have seen in income tax receipts in this country in government revenues comes from those people who are high-income earners. All that to say, if you have that much revenue coming in to the government in this country, why, then, would you need to go out and raise taxes even more and spend even more when you have an economy that is in the process of recovering and people concerned about inflation? And the Democrats' solution to that is to spend more, put more money out there, and raise taxes even higher at a time when you have historic revenue coming in to the Federal Government. It is the first time ever--ever--in our Nation's history that we have had over $4 trillion in revenue come in. The other thing that was mentioned by my colleague from Illinois just a minute ago is that the issue of the tax gap, which was alluded to earlier this morning on the floor by, again, the Republican leader--the Democratic solution is to go after people, essentially shake them down, and get them to pay more in taxes. I am not suggesting for a minute that there aren't people out there who aren't paying the taxes that they should under the law and that the law needs to be enforced. What I am suggesting is that in the effort to close that so-called tax gap, there are huge differences of opinion about what effect that would have, how much could be generated, and who is ultimately going to pay for that. Well, now there is additional research out coming from the Joint Committee on Taxation that, in fact, the Democratic efforts to close the tax gap will hit lower income taxpayers the most. To say that none of the tax increases or none of the tax policies that are being proposed by the Democrats in their $3.5 trillion tax- and-spending spree proposal won't harm people who are making less than $400,000 a year is laughable under any--any--plausible review of these tax policies and proposals, but this one in particular hits hardest at low-income taxpayers. According to the Joint Committee on Taxation, people making less than $50,000 a year will pay anywhere from 40 to 57 percent off all the revenue that is generated off of that one proposal. People making less than $100,000 a year will pay somewhere between 65 and 78 percent of all the taxes that are generated under that particular proposal in the Democratic plan. People making less than $200,000 a year would pay up to 90 percent of the amount generated under that particular proposal in the Democrats' plan. So people making less than $200,000 a year are going to be paying tens of billions of dollars more in taxes just on that one proposal which is out there, allowing the IRS essentially to snoop into people's personal transactions up to the $600 level. I don't think there is any way you can get around the fact that under that scenario, people in the lower income categories are going to end up paying the lion's share of the cost of that. So this isn't going to be without cost. This isn't going to be without consequence. This is not going to be without impact on lower income taxpayers in this country. They are going to get hit and they are going to get hit hard under this Democratic proposal. So when we talk about it, we are talking about real impacts, real economic impacts on the American people's lives. And we are going to continue to do everything we can to fight against really bad tax policies being put in place to finance massive amounts of spending, expansion, and growth of government at a time when government revenues just hit a historic high; never seen before; biggest year-over-year increase in revenue since 1977. And Democrats want to raise taxes-- taxes--on everybody, including those in the lower income categories.

Mr. THUNE

Mr. THUNE. The following Senators are necessarily absent: the Senator from Missouri (Mr. Blunt), the Senator from South Dakota (Mr. Rounds), and the Senator from North Carolina (Mr. Tillis).

Mr. THUNE

Mr. THUNE. The following Senator is necessarily absent: the Senator from Missouri (Mr. Blunt).

Mr. THUNE

Mr. THUNE. The following Senators are necessarily absent: the Senator from Missouri (Mr. Blunt), the Senator from South Dakota (Mr. Rounds), the Senator from Florida (Mr. Rubio), the Senator from Nebraska (Mr. Sasse), and the Senator from North Carolina (Mr. Tillis). Further, if present and voting, the Senator from Florida (Mr. Rubio) would have voted ``aye.''

Mr. THUNE

Mr. THUNE. The following Senator is necessarily absent: the Senator from North Carolina (Mr. Burr).

Mr. THUNE

Mr. THUNE. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the text of the bill be printed in the Record.

Mr. THUNE

Mr. THUNE. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the text of the bill be printed in the Record.

Mr. THUNE

Mr. THUNE. The following Senators are necessarily absent: the Senator from Tennessee (Mrs. Blackburn) and the Senator from North Carolina (Mr. Burr).

Mr. THUNE. The following Senator is necessarily absent: the Senator from North Carolina (Mr. Burr).

Mr. THUNE

Mr. THUNE. The following Senators are necessarily absent: the Senator from Tennessee (Mrs. Blackburn), the Senator from North Carolina (Mr. Burr), the Senator from Arkansas (Mr. Cotton), the Senator from Tennessee (Mr. Hagerty), the Senator from Wisconsin (Mr. Johnson), and the Senator from Kansas (Mr. Marshall). Further, if present and voting, the Senator from Kansas (Mr. Marshall) would have voted ``nay''. (Mr. OSSOFF assumed the Chair.)

Mr. THUNE

Mr. THUNE. Mr. President, on September 25, President Biden tweeted: My Build Back Better Agenda costs zero dollars. That is right. According to the President, a series of new, permanent entitlements and a massive expansion of government, the biggest expansion of government, at least, since the New Deal, is going to cost zero dollars--that from the President of the United States. And the President has now been doubling down on that claim. On Monday, he once again tweeted: The fact of the matter is my Build Back Better agenda costs zero dollars. Well, no, Mr. President, the fact of the matter is your Build Back Better agenda costs $3.5 trillion, at least. That is the minimum number. The Committee for Responsible Federal Budget, where the President's Treasury Secretary served on the board before joining the administration, estimates the cost at $5 trillion or more. Leaving that aside, even if the President has been merely trying to claim that his plan is fully paid for by tax hikes and other measures, to say that it would cost zero dollars is beyond ridiculous. I mean, think about it. Let's say your college education was completely paid for by your parents. Did it then cost zero dollars? Of course not. It costs a lot of money--money that your parents likely were able to pay only because of a lot of hard work and sacrifices. What if you saved up for a couple of years for your dream vacation, and now you have all the money that you need, down to the cost of your Ubers and your hotel breakfasts, does that mean that your vacation is going to cost zero dollars? Of course, it doesn't. The same thing applies when it comes to the Democrats' legislation. Even if Democrats add all the money they need to pay for every dollar of their massive spending spree, the pricetag still wouldn't be zero dollars. I mean, it just absolutely doesn't pass the sanity test for Americans. The pricetag for this proposal is, at least minimum, $3.5 trillion and likely much, much more. Presumably, what the President has been referring to when he makes the absurd claim that his spending bill will cost zero dollars is his assertion the bill won't add to the debt. The problem is that isn't true either. Because the pay-fors in the Democrats' bill won't actually pay for the bill in its entirety. The tax hikes in the Democrats' legislation will actually only pay for about two-thirds of the bill's ostensible $3.5 trillion pricetag. The other revenue-raising components in the bill won't make up the difference. What are those other revenue-raising components? Well, a substantial part is increased IRS enforcement. Democrats claim they can get $700 billion in more revenue by closing the tax gap, the difference between taxes owed and taxes paid. There is no question that individuals shouldn't get away with cheating on their taxes. And there are, undoubtedly, reasonable measures we can take to strengthen enforcement and narrow the gap. Unfortunately, Democrats haven't proposed any reasonable measures. Instead, the Democrats are proposing to, A, double the size of the IRS and, B, have the IRS snoop on Americans' bank accounts. That is right. Democrats want to double the size of the IRS and force banks, credit unions, and other financial institutions to provide details of individuals' spending to the Federal Government. Under the administration's proposal, once your withdrawals or deposits for the year exceed a certain amount--and that amount, by the way, if the President has his way, is $600--your bank or credit union would be forced to report the details of your activity to the Federal Government. So the Federal Government could end up with a record of every time you eat dinner out or pay your rent or buy a new jacket or a toaster oven. The invasion of privacy being talked about here is absolutely staggering. We already have a mechanism in place to allow the IRS to view large transactions that might indicate potential criminal activity. We do not need the Federal Government monitoring every purchase that law-abiding Americans make from the App Store or how many times Americans buy a cup of coffee, not to mention the incredible demands this reporting requirement would place on community banks and credit unions. Banks and credit unions around the country are worried about how they would manage to comply with the bill's reporting requirements. Let's not forget that the Agency that would be receiving all of this information has a reputation for mishandling private data. In fact, the IRS was subject to a massive leak, or hack, of private taxpayer information mere months ago--information that somehow ended up in the hands of advocates at ProPublica--and neither Treasury nor the IRS has provided meaningful followup about that data breach, much less any accountability. Giving an already troubled Agency access to reams of additional private taxpayer information is a very bad idea. Even if we granted that this massive invasion of privacy were worth it, the truth is that all of this additional enforcement still wouldn't provide the money that Democrats are claiming it would provide. Democrats claim that they can get $700 billion from the bill's increased tax enforcement measures. The reality is more likely to be about $200 billion lower, according to an analysis from the Wharton School of business. So Democrats would be doubling the size of an Agency with clear management issues and implementing a staggering invasion of taxpayer privacy to pay for a tiny fraction of their spending spree. As I said, no taxpayer at any income level should be able to avoid paying the taxes he or she owes. I have actually signed on to cosponsor legislation that would look at responsible ways to strengthen IRS enforcement efforts. But Democrats' proposal to double the size of the IRS and track taxpayer spending should never--never--have seen the light of day. Even former IRS Commissioner John Koskinen, who served under Presidents Obama and Trump, said he thought that $80 billion for the Agency was too much. Taken together, the IRS enforcement on steroids and Democrats' massive tax hikes will still not be enough to pay for their multitrillion-dollar legislation, partly because the tax hikes may not bring in as much as the Democrats claim but also because Democrats have used a lot of budget gimmickry to disguise the true costs of their bill. The standard method for analyzing the cost of a bill is a 10-year-- 10-year--budget window. So you look at what your bill would cost over 10 years, and that is how you get the cost of your bill. That is normally the way that it works around here. Well, that is not exactly what the Democrats are doing. That child allowance in the Democrats' bill? Democrats have only counted the cost of that allowance through the year 2025. That allows Democrats to claim that the cost of that provision is around $500 billion instead of the $1.1 trillion the measure would actually cost over a decade. All of those tax hikes are, of course, just for covering the costs of the bill over a 10-year or shorter window, but in reality, the new government benefits the Democrats are putting in place are not going to expire in 10 years. This bill is effectively instituting multiple permanent--permanent--entitlement programs. The long-term cost of those programs is not going to be covered by the tax hikes Democrats are currently proposing, as massive as those tax hikes are. I have talked a lot about the dollar costs of this bill, which are massive--the biggest expanse of government in, literally, my generation in history. I could spend just as long talking about the bill's other costs, like the fact that the bill is likely to cost workers jobs and opportunities by increasing the tax burden on American businesses and depressing economic growth, or the cost to American families, who are going to be facing higher energy bills and higher prices as a result of this legislation, but I am going to stop here for today. One thing is for sure: Democrats' massive spending spree is going to cost a lot more than zero dollars. And American taxpayers? Well, the American taxpayers are going to be paying a heavy price for this legislation for a very long time to come. I yield the floor.

Mr. THUNE

Mr. THUNE. Mr. President, there are a few, quote-unquote, winners under Democrats' $3\1/2\ trillion tax-and-spending spree--unions, for example, and electric vehicle manufacturers. But there are a lot more losers, like middle-class families, who have to stretch their paychecks to cover higher inflation and higher energy bills; workers, who will see jobs and opportunities shrink; and farmers and ranchers. Agriculture is the lifeblood of my home State of South Dakota, and so ag issues are pretty much always on my mind. And I am deeply concerned by what Democrats' tax-and-spending spree will mean for South Dakota farmers. For starters, I am worried that the Democrats' bill could mean the end of some farms, thanks to the bill's expansion of the death tax. Now, I have long crusaded against the death tax. Death should not be a taxable event, and there should be limits on how many times the government can tax the same money over and over and over. But I get particularly fired up when talking about the death tax when it comes to farmers and ranchers, because the death tax can threaten the existence of family farms and ranches. You ask why. Because farming and ranching are often cash-poor operations. Farmers' and ranchers' money is tied up in their land, not the bank. So a farmer could have land worth as much as several million dollars and still struggle to break even in years where the harvest has been poor. So when that same farmer dies, the IRS will come in, demanding a substantial portion of his or her estate. But since most of that money is tied up in the land, there is a good chance that the family will not have enough money in the bank to pay the IRS, and so they will have to start selling off the land--the lifeblood of their farming operation. So give that a couple of generations and the death tax can drive a family farm right out of existence. I am proud that the tax reform bill we passed in 2017 included death tax relief. We successfully doubled the estate tax exemption, which lifted the specter of the death tax for most farmers and ranchers and helped reduce the need for costly estate planning efforts to try to keep the farm or ranch in the family. Unfortunately--unfortunately--we were not able to make this relief permanent, which is why I have continued to push for eliminating the death tax. But at least family farms and ranches were set to have relief through the year 2025. Well, not anymore. Democrats are set to return the death tax exemption to its pre-2017 level starting in January, which means that more family farms and ranches will once again be in the tax's crosshairs. As I said, death should not be a taxable event. The IRS should not be coming in to see you at the same time as the undertaker. But the government--and the government, I should say, should not be in the business of shuttering family farms and family businesses. But thanks to Democrats' tax-and-spending spree, a lot of farmers are going to have to start worrying about whether they will be able to hand their farm on to their children or whether a government tax bill will mean the end of an enterprise the family has cultivated, literally, for generations. The icing on the cake, of course, is that at the same time Democrats are planning to expand a tax that threatens family farms, they are also planning to include tax relief for their millionaire contributors in blue States. That is right. Despite the fact that Democrats are scrambling for money to fund some of their spending spree, they are preparing to provide tax relief for wealthy Democrat donors. I am disturbed by the fact that Democrats are willing to jeopardize family farms and ranches to help fund their spending spree. But I am not all that surprised because it is clear from the bill that farmers and ranchers are not high on Democrats' priority list. The bill's spending on rail, for example, emphasizes passenger rail, which will benefit Amtrak and a handful of east coast cities, but it means little to most Americans. The rail that matters to Americans in the heartland is freight rail, particularly short line railroads, which carry farmers' and ranchers' corn and wheat and beef to markets around the United States. But short line rail gets short shrift in this bill. Biofuels also get short shrift. As this bill makes clear, Democrats have picked their preferred winner in the clean energy stakes, and that winner is electric vehicles. Biofuels take a back seat in Democrats' legislation despite the essential role they played in making American energy cleaner and despite the significance of biofuels to the rural economy. Every few years, Congress passes a major farm bill. For decades, that legislation has been the product of bipartisan collaboration and a lengthy hearing and fact-finding process that allows for extensive input from farmers and ranchers and other ag stakeholders. It is one of the last, I would say, truly bipartisan things that we regularly do around here. But Democrats have decided to use their tax-and-spending spree to circumvent the bipartisan farm bill process. Democrats are extending farm programs without bipartisan input and without real involvement from many in the agricultural community. And, of course, they are not expanding all farm bill programs. They are not, for example, extending or providing money for the farm safety net. Instead, they are targeting money at programs that they feel will allow them to advance their climate agenda. Farmers are not Democrats' main interest when it comes to the agricultural provisions in this bill. Democrats' climate agenda is the priority. If I am not here in Washington for Senate business, I can usually be found back home in South Dakota, where I spend a lot of time talking to farmers and ranchers. Most of them haven't shown a lot of interest in tax breaks for union dues or electric vehicle tax credits. But I have heard from a lot of farmers and ranchers who are worried the Democrats' proposed tax policies may threaten their livelihood. And, unfortunately, they are right to be worried. Speaker Pelosi suggested that this tax-and-spending spree was about Democrats' values, but based on what we have seen, I am not too sure those values align with those of rural Americans. Democrats' tax-and- spending spree is a bad deal for rural America and for working families around the country, and I will continue to do everything I can to protect Americans from the dangers of Democrats' socialist fantasies. I yield the floor.

Mr. THUNE

Mr. THUNE. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that I be able to complete my remarks and that Senator Burr also be able to complete his remarks before the vote starts.

Mr. THUNE

Mr. THUNE. The following Senators are necessarily absent: the Senator from Texas (Mr. Cornyn) and the Senator from Kentucky (Mr. Paul).

Mr. THUNE

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

Mr. THUNE. Madam President, I came down to the floor to talk about President Biden's mishandling of Afghanistan. Today, I want to talk about another situation the administration has mishandled and perhaps, more accurately, failed to handle; and that is the crisis at the southern border. I say ``failed to handle'' because, by and large, the Biden administration has completely failed to take any meaningful action in response to this crisis. Sure, they occasionally made half-hearted stabs at the problem--usually when the media starts noticing things like thousands of migrants and their children residing in a squalid refugee camp under a bridge in Del Rio, TX. Mostly, they seem content to ignore it. More than 6 months into this crisis, there are no signs the President plans to travel to the border to get a look at the problem firsthand. In fact, it is not clear whether President Biden has ever visited the border at any point during his political career. The President seems to have adopted an ``if I pretend the problem doesn't exist, it will go away'' attitude. It is kind of like earlier this year, when Biden administration officials refused to call the situation a crisis, despite overwhelming evidence border influx has reached crisis proportions. It is like they believed that if they didn't use the word, they could somehow avoid the reality. Unfortunately for the administration, there is no way to avoid the fact we are facing a border crisis. Last month, the U.S. Customs and Border Protection encountered 208,887 people attempting to cross our southern border illegally, a 318-percent increase from August of 2020. Madam President, let me repeat that. In August, Customs and Border Protection encountered 208,887 people attempting to cross our southern border, a 318-percent increase from prior August. For context, that number is bigger than the population of Sioux Falls, SD, the largest city in my home State--in a single month--in a single month. At this point, the situation at the border is beyond a crisis. It is completely out of control. The situation will soon deteriorate further with one outlet reporting yesterday that tens of thousands additional Haitian migrants are set to head to our southern border. Illegal immigration across the southern border tends to slow down during the heat of the summer. Not under the Biden administration. Under the Biden administration, the numbers this summer just got worse. Encounters along the southern border in July were up 420 percent from July of 2020--420 percent. Of course, these numbers only reflect individuals Customs and Border Protection has been able to apprehend. There are, undoubtedly, individuals who are successfully evading apprehension and illegally taking up residence in our country. Then there are the individuals being detained and released into the country with orders to appear at an immigration court. This so-called catch-and-release approach is notorious because the individuals released into the country often never show up to immigration courts as directed. In spite of this, the administration is using this strategy and is apparently employing it to deal with the surge of migrants from Haiti. Despite having committed to deporting these individuals, the administration is releasing thousands of Haitian immigrants into the United States. The situation at the border is a crisis. It is a security crisis, it is a logistics crisis, and it is a humanitarian crisis. Attempting to cross the border illegally is a dangerous enterprise. Migrants face the risk of death, injury, heat exhaustion, and disease, to say nothing of the risk of exploitation from smugglers and traffickers, who are profiting to the tune of hundreds of millions of dollars by conveying people across the border illegally. By failing to stem the flow of illegal immigration, the President is perpetuating this humanitarian disaster, and Democrats in Congress are helping him. My colleagues across the aisle have been trying to add amnesty for illegal immigrants into the tax-and-spending spree that they are considering. That is a policy that is pretty much guaranteed to further encourage individuals to make the dangerous and illegal journey across our southern border. Most people are familiar with the expression ``fiddling while Rome burns.'' It is an expression I am forcibly reminded of when I consider the actions of my Democratic colleagues and the Biden administration on the crisis at the border. Our country is, as I have discussed, facing a massive security and humanitarian crisis at our southern border. On top of that, we just completed a disastrous Afghanistan withdrawal that has put our country at greater risk from terrorists, damaged our standing among our allies, and condemned the Afghan people to Taliban tyranny. Meanwhile, on the economic front, we are facing a serious inflation problem, and it doesn't look like it is going to go away anytime soon. Americans are seeing their purchasing power shrink as they face higher prices on everything from groceries to gas. The Democratic response? Essentially sticking their fingers in their ears and humming or checking their watches to see if the unpleasantness is over yet. If you were just going by the Democrats' legislative priorities, you would be forgiven for thinking that none of these problems I have discussed even exist. Rather than addressing our border crisis or our inflation problem, Democrats are, right now, attempting to tee up a massive--massive--reckless tax-and-spending spree to vastly expand the reach of government into Americans' lives. Our border is in crisis, our country is at risk, American families are struggling with inflation, and the Democrats' top priority is advancing socialism. Not only does their bill fail to address any of the major challenges I have outlined, it is pretty much guaranteed to make them worse. Dumping trillions of additional government dollars into an economy already struggling with inflation is pretty much guaranteed to send our already high inflation rate even higher. As I mentioned, the Democrats are frantically working to circumvent Senate rules and insert some type of amnesty into their spending bill, which will only aggravate the crisis at the border. Although, at this point, I am wondering if Democrats will even be able to pass their tax- and-spending spree. The Democratic Party is in disarray, and the story changes so often, I think reporters are starting to get whiplash. I certainly am. One minute, the Democratic leaders are united; the next minute, the Senate leader doesn't know what the Speaker is doing. One minute, the House is going to consider the tax-and-spending spree and the infrastructure bill together; the next, it is going to consider them separately. Democratic leaders announce an agreement on a framework for their tax-and-spending spree; their rank-and-file Members report they have never seen it. Their spending spree is going to cost $3.5 trillion. No. Wait. It is going to cost zero. Democratic progressives and Democratic moderates are at each other's throats. The House Speaker is chewing out centrist Democrats, and Democrats can't agree on a host of issues from Iron Dome funding, to prescription drug measures, to infrastructure. The Democratic Party is unraveling fast, and it is deeply unfortunate that Democrats can't seem to rise to the challenges of governance. President Biden's administration was supposedly going to usher in a new era of domestic tranquility and international respect. The professionals, we were told, were back in charge. Well, instead, it looks like Democrats and the President are going to leave our country a lot worse off than they found it, burdened by tax hikes and government spending-- that is, if they can ever manage to agree on a bill--in greater danger from terrorism, and with a never-ending crisis at our southern border. If Democrats don't change their focus and get their act together, a weakened country is likely to be their legacy. I yield the floor. I suggest the absence of a quorum.

Mr. THUNE

Mr. THUNE. The following Senators are necessarily absent: the Senator from Tennessee (Mrs. Blackburn), the Senator from Texas (Mr. Cornyn), the Senator from Oklahoma (Mr. Inhofe), the Senator from Kansas (Mr. Moran), the Senator from Kentucky (Mr. Paul), the Senator from Florida (Mr. Rubio), and the Senator from Alabama (Mr. Tuberville).

Mr. THUNE

Mr. THUNE. The following Senators are necessarily absent: the Senator from Tennessee (Mrs. Blackburn), the Senator from Texas (Mr. Cornyn), the Senator from Kansas (Mr. Moran), the Senator from Kentucky (Mr. Paul), and the Senator from Alabama (Mr. Tuberville).

Mr. THUNE

Mr. THUNE. The following Senators are necessarily absent: the Senator from Texas (Mr. Cornyn) and the Senator from Kentucky (Mr. Paul).

Mr. THUNE

Mr. THUNE. Mr. President, yesterday's Senate Armed Services Committee hearing gave us disturbing new information on the President's Afghanistan debacle. Thanks to yesterday's hearing, we now know that President Biden pulled troops from Afghanistan against the advice of his military commanders and was less than truthful after the fact when asked about their recommendations. General Milley and General McKenzie's testimony made clear that they had both recommended that the United States leave a small contingent of U.S. troops in the country--advice that the President ignored. Thanks to President Biden's ill-considered withdrawal from Afghanistan, here is the situation we now find ourselves in. The Taliban is once again in control of Afghanistan, and just in case anyone thinks this is a kinder and gentler Taliban, let's look at the facts. The Taliban has stocked its government with terrorists, including former inmates of Guantanamo Bay and members of the Haqqani Network, a U.S.-designated foreign terrorist organization with a number of members on the U.N. Security Council's sanctions list. Many of the members of the new Taliban Cabinet are on the U.N. Security Council's sanctions list, and the government is well stocked with pre-9/11 Taliban leaders, the same leaders who allowed Afghanistan to serve as a refuge for al- Qaida. So that is the new Taliban government. What is it doing? Well, in mid-September the Taliban announced that secondary schools would reopen for boys. There was no mention of girls. The Taliban official announced that women would not be allowed to play any sport that might show their bodies. Women are being excluded from the workplace. In Helmand province, barbers have been barred from shaving or trimming beards. In one city, the body of an alleged criminal was hung from a crane in the city square, while in Kabul, Taliban members brutally flogged a man accused of stealing a phone. And a senior Taliban leader announced the return of executions and the cutting off of hands as punishment. A kindler, gentler Taliban this is not. And this formerly somewhat ragtag group is now the possessor of a significant amount of U.S. military equipment, including weapons, combat vehicles, aircraft, and surveillance equipment, much of it acquired from the Afghan National Security Forces. And while the President might like to blame the Afghan forces for disbanding, the truth is he bears part of the responsibility for their collapse. For years, the United States trained and equipped Afghan troops to fight the way that we do, including a reliance on close air support and a sophisticated intelligence-gathering operation. And the limited number of U.S. troops still in the country were playing an essential role--providing intelligence, logistics, and air support the Afghan military needed. Then the President pulled all remaining U.S. support almost overnight. It is no surprise that in the wake of that, the Afghan military quickly collapsed. There is no question that there were preexisting problems in the Afghan forces, including fraud and corruption. But the Afghan military was playing a key role in combating the Taliban and terrorist activity in Afghanistan, and it was the abrupt withdrawal of U.S. support that precipitated its collapse. Thanks to the President's withdrawal, our ability to combat terrorist activity in Afghanistan and the region has been significantly degraded, as General Milley's testimony yesterday made clear. As the Washington Post reported: Al-Qaeda remnants are in Afghanistan and interested in growing, Milley said, but the United States no longer has military or intelligence assets on the ground to keep tabs on the militants. The withdrawal makes it ``much more difficult for us to conduct intelligence, surveillance, reconnaissance,'' Milley said, including missions to locate militants. That, again, is from the Washington Post. In short, there is every reason to expect that Afghanistan will once again become a haven for terrorists. In fact, because of the huge number of weapons and equipment we left behind, it is probably more accurate to say that Afghanistan will likely become a terrorist superstate. Meanwhile, as I said, our ability to effectively detect and defend against emerging threats in Afghanistan has been significantly diminished. There is no intelligence or counterterrorism strategy that will fully offset the loss of American boots on the ground. U.S. military and intelligence personnel still in the country, in coordination with our local partners, were playing a critical role in providing intelligence on evolving terrorist threats in Afghanistan and throughout the region. That intelligence network is now gone. We no longer have human intelligence on the scene. We no longer have any bases in-country from which to conduct operations. Future missions will have to be staged from distant bases or seaborne assets, complicating the mission and significantly increasing our response time. That is not just an inconvenience. By compromising our ability to respond to terrorist activity, this withdrawal is endangering our country. For 20 years, we have managed to prevent another major terrorist attack on U.S. soil. How long is that going to last when Afghanistan is once again a haven for terrorists and our intelligence and response capabilities have been permanently weakened? I haven't even mentioned the damage that the President's bungled withdrawal has done to our relationships with our allies. The President, who, supposedly, was set to restore America's standing in the world, is instead presiding over a national embarrassment that has left our allies wondering whether or not we will keep our commitments. We have damaged our credibility with our allies. It is clear that Russia and China are enjoying our humiliation on the world stage, not to mention the way that our withdrawal has empowered our terrorist enemies. Ceding Afghanistan to the Taliban and its terrorist allies has not exactly made us look like an intimidating foe. It wouldn't be surprising if terrorists are thinking that all they have to do in future battles is wait us out until we give up and withdraw. I am sure the President would like to put his chaotic Afghanistan withdrawal behind him, but there is a big problem with that--namely, the fact that his administration still has U.S. citizens left behind in Afghanistan. The administration has been hazy on the details, either because it is not sure how many American citizens are left or because administration officials don't want to give a number. But it is clear that there are still a number of Americans stuck in Afghanistan. And then there are the tens of thousands of Afghans we abandoned-- Afghans who were affiliated with the U.S. Government or worked with the U.S. military and whom we promised to protect. These individuals and their families are currently in grave danger. My office continues working to evacuate a number of green card holders and at-risk Afghans to safe countries in the region, and several of the individuals we are working with have received death threats from the Taliban. And while there are dedicated State Department and Defense Department personnel coordinating with veteran-led groups to evacuate Afghan citizens, the administration is still--still--struggling to develop a clear path for getting them out of the country. We still need to learn more about the chaotic U.S. evacuation, which resulted in the deaths of 13 U.S. servicemembers and scores of Afghan civilians. But one thing is very clear: President Biden made an ill- considered and disastrous decision when he chose to withdraw our troops on an arbitrary timetable, and the Afghan people are currently suffering the consequences. And should Afghanistan once again become a terrorist haven, as seems likely, our country could also pay a deadly price. We have to make sure it doesn't come to that. I yield the floor. I suggest the absence of a quorum.

Mr. THUNE

Mr. THUNE. The following Senators are necessarily absent: the Senator from Arkansas (Mr. Cotton), the Senator from Idaho (Mr. Crapo), and the Senator from Kansas (Mr. Moran).

Mr. THUNE

Mr. THUNE. The following Senators are necessarily absent: the Senator from Idaho (Mr. Crapo) and the Senator from Kansas (Mr. Moran).

Mr. THUNE

Mr. THUNE. The following Senators are necessarily absent: the Senator from Idaho (Mr. Crapo), and the Senator from Kansas (Mr. Moran).

Mr. THUNE

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