Thom Tillis

Mr. TILLIS

Mr. TILLIS. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent 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. TILLIS

Mr. TILLIS. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the Committee on the Judiciary be discharged from further consideration of S. 2379 and that the Senate proceed to its immediate consideration.

Mr. TILLIS. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent 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. TILLIS

Mr. TILLIS. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the Senate proceed to the immediate consideration of H.J. Res. 133, which was received from the House.

Mr. TILLIS. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the joint resolution be considered read a third time and passed and that the motion to reconsider be considered made and laid upon the table.

Mr. TILLIS

Mr. TILLIS. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the Senate now proceed to the en bloc consideration of the following resolutions, which are at the desk: S. Res. 513, S. Res. 514, and S. Res. 515.

Mr. TILLIS. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the resolutions be agreed to, the preambles be agreed to, and that the motions to reconsider be considered made and laid upon the table, all en bloc.

Mr. TILLIS

Mr. TILLIS. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the Senate proceed to the immediate consideration of Calendar No. 201, S. 1318.

Mr. TILLIS. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent 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. TILLIS

Mr. TILLIS. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the Committee on Veterans' Affairs be discharged from consideration of H.R. 970 and that the Senate proceed to its immediate consideration.

Mr. TILLIS. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent 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. TILLIS

Mr. TILLIS. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the Committee on Veterans' Affairs be discharged from further consideration of H.R. 1912 and the Senate proceed to its immediate consideration.

Mr. TILLIS. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent 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. TILLIS

Mr. TILLIS. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the Committee on the Judiciary be discharged from further consideration of S. Res. 489, and the Senate proceed to its immediate consideration.

Mr. TILLIS. 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 upon the table with no intervening action or debate.

Mr. TILLIS

Mr. TILLIS. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that when the Senate completes its business today it adjourn and then convene for pro forma session only, with no business being conducted, on the following dates and times: Friday, November 21, at 11 a.m.; Tuesday, November 25, at 1:45 p.m.; Friday, November 28, at 5:30 p.m.; further, that when the Senate adjourns on Friday, November 28, it stand adjourned until 3 p.m. on Monday, December 1; that following the prayer and pledge, the morning hour be deemed expired, the Journal of proceedings be approved to date, the time for the two leaders be reserved for their use later in the day, and the Senate be in a period of morning business, with Senators permitted to speak therein for up to 10 minutes each; finally, that notwithstanding rule XXII, the cloture motions filed today ripen at 5:30 p.m.

Mr. TILLIS

Mr. TILLIS. Mr. President, if there is no further business to come before the Senate, I ask that it stand adjourned under the previous order.

Mr. TILLIS

Mr. TILLIS. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the Committee on Veterans' Affairs be discharged from further consideration of H.R. 983 and the Senate proceed to its immediate consideration.

Mr. TILLIS. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent 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. TILLIS

Mr. TILLIS. Mr. President, we are getting encouraging signs that we may be having some votes tonight. I hope that proves to be true and the Senate does its part to get out of the shutdown. I was thinking, though, I have been telling a lot of staff around here and everybody else: I apologize for us not getting our work done. I think a lot of people don't realize how many people around here haven't been paid for 41 days. Do you know who they are? Everybody you can see in this room and every one of your staff members and everybody else who has been doing the hard work, showing up. I was thinking yesterday, with all the cars in the driveway, those young people that are coming in to pick up their Members and take them back to their apartments, condos, wherever they live here--those kids are doing that on a weekend and not getting paid either. I also think that getting out of the shutdown and getting the tens of millions of people that are hanging in the lurch across the country--it is just a good thing. It is a shame we got here, but I want to thank the Members on both sides of the aisle that have finally decided that we need to do our work here, pass a continuing resolution, pass actual regular order bills, and prove this place can work. The work is not done. We have about 90 days now to fix the other part that we couldn't get agreement on. Let's make sure we start doing the work now so that every Capitol Police officer, every Sergeant at Arms, every Senate staff, and all the people down on the dais who are working extra long hours actually get paid for the hard work they do. On behalf of the other Members, I thank you.

Mr. TILLIS

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

Mr. TILLIS. Mr. President, we had a great hearing in the Indian Affairs Committee yesterday, and I wanted to come to the floor and talk a little bit about it. Before I do, I want to thank Chairman Murkowski, Vice Chair Schatz, and especially Senator Markwayne Mullin, who came to the hearing to hear the 130-year-old saga of what I consider is injustice, racism, and all kinds of bad things that the Lumbee people have experienced. Back in January, I introduced the Lumbee Fairness Act, which is to right what I consider to be more than a century of wrong. The issue has come before the Senate many times, but every time, it has failed. It is like the Lumbee have been promised so many times by so many politicians and so many election cycles, and yet, at the end of the day, they are left without a resolution to a problem that started over 130 years ago when they were first recognized by the State of North Carolina. You know, these days, it is rare to see Republicans and Democrats come together in doing anything, but when it comes to Lumbee recognition, the support has become overwhelming, and it is bipartisan. We are talking about support from current President Trump, former President Joe Biden, Vice President JD Vance, Vice President Harris-- former Vice President--Gov. Josh Stein, the North Carolina General Assembly, and nearly every Member of our congressional delegation. Here in the Senate, nearly two dozen Members from both parties have cosponsored the Lumbee Fairness Act, including Senator Schatz, the vice chair of the committee, and Senator Mullin, who sit together on the committee. What is interesting about Senator Mullin is that Markwayne Mullin is an enrolled member of the Cherokee Nation. The major opponent to the Lumbee Fairness Act being passed are the Cherokee. Let that sink in. A policymaker in this room, a Member of the U.S. Senate, is an enrolled member of a Tribe that is opposing Lumbee recognition. Why are they doing it? Well, over the past, they would say that the Lumbee were fake Indians or that they weren't real; that their story was, you know, fabricated. They have gone to conventions, and they have done all kinds of things to try to mislead people about this issue. But the fact of the matter is, I am not going to let them off the hook this time. But before I want to talk about the Lumbee, I do want to talk to the Cherokee people. I moved to North Carolina in 1998. I got involved in politics in 2006. I ran for the legislature, and I became the speaker of the house in 2011--the second Republican speaker since the Civil War. For years, politicians have been promising the Eastern Band of Cherokee that they would renegotiate their compact and treat them more respectfully, and for years, those promises were not fulfilled. I became speaker, and the only bill in the 4 years, the two terms that I was speaker of the house that I ever allowed to go to the house floor without a majority of the support of my Republican colleagues was to right the injustice that was done to the Eastern Band of Cherokee by allowing them to modernize and negotiate a new compact, which was transformational for the enrolled members of the Eastern Band of Cherokee. So to the Eastern Band of Cherokee--not the leaders who are opposing this now, people that I consider to be a part of the casino cartels that are objecting to this because of money--to the Cherokee people, know that I care as much about you today as I did when I took the step to oppose a majority of my Republican colleagues to right that wrong-- and we did. Now I have another Tribe in my State, and I want to right that wrong, and the Cherokee are standing in the way. But it is not just the Cherokee; it is the Choctaw; it is the Chickasaw; it is other Tribes. But, folks, I am not letting off of this. The Lumbee's history is long and well documented. They were recognized by the State of North Carolina in 1885 and began seeking Federal recognition just 3 years later. That was 137 years ago. During the 20th century, the Lumbee were among the dozens of victims of the termination era--a very dark period in our Nation's history where, on this floor, racist policies, Jim Crow policies, were acted out every single day, and the Lumbee became a victim. In 1956, Congress passed the Lumbee Act that acknowledged the Tribe but cruelly denied them the benefits and recognition that every other Tribe receives, putting them in a no-man's land. The Federal Government has since worked to correct the grave injustices of the termination era for nearly every other Tribe except for the Lumbee. Time and again, the Lumbee have proven their case. Their records are filled with testimony, studies, and reports that all lead to one conclusion: The Lumbee are a Tribe fully deserving of Federal recognition. The House has acknowledged that repeatedly, passing the Lumbee recognition bill with broad bipartisan support in every Congress since the 116th. This year, it was unanimously voted and included in the National Defense Authorization Act that we are about to begin conferencing on. In 2022, I promised to identify and expose the small but persistent opposition to this bill, and I am not going to go into the details here--I did in a speech I did yesterday--but let me just tell you what I found. It is pretty simple. It is a small handful of well-funded Tribes hiring high-priced DC lobbyists to spin half-truths and stir fear, motivated by profit, not principle. At the center of that opposition is the Eastern Band of Cherokee leadership. Again, let me make the distinction between the elected leaders of the Eastern Band of Cherokee and a Tribe that I am fully dedicated to, and I have demonstrated that through the actions I made when I was the speaker of the house in North Carolina. But at the center of the opposition is also a lobbyist whose name--I will have you refer to my testimony yesterday. But it is just rooted in financial self-interest, folks. That is their right, but let's not pretend it is anything more. We got them. We have found them passing out leaflets at Native American conventions talking about fake Indians, undermining the case for the Lumbee. It is disgraceful. But we are tracking them, and everywhere we go, almost invariably, I can find somebody that can give me information where they are trying to spread lies and confusion. The Eastern Band--in reality, it is not just about the Lumbee. The Eastern Band of Cherokee have opposed nearly every recognition effort in their geographic vicinity that might affect their financial interests. They tried to do it with the Catawba, and we succeeded there. Now they are running the same playbook on the Lumbee. They are spending millions of dollars on lobbyists and pay-for-play reports. They will pay whoever they have to to conjure some sort of report that builds their case. It is like: I have this thesis. Now give me a report to support it because it is going to keep the Lumbee in this limbo they have been in for 137 years. It is disappointing to see the kind of money wasted on tearing down other Tribes instead of lifting up their people. To the leadership of the Eastern Band of Cherokee, spend those millions of dollars on education, on improving the situation in the boundary, helping your people like I have. So yesterday in the hearing, the principal chief of the Eastern Band of Cherokee said: Let it just happen in the Department of the Interior. Let it run its course. Well, that is political speak for ``Let the administration do it, take 10 or 20 years, and then we will have a lawsuit that will take another generation to settle.'' We know their playbook. I have studied this. I know what they are doing, and we are going to match them at every step along the way. Since 1978, they have said: Don't recognize them by an act of Congress; let it go through the process. But here is the reality: Congressional recognition has become the norm since 1978. Twice as many Tribes have been recognized by Congress as through the administrative process. Congress has recognized Tribes by legislation many times, including the Little Shell Tribe of the Chippewa Indians in the 2020 NDAA and six Virginia Tribes in the 2017 National Defense Authorization Act. I supported both of those bills because it was the right thing to do. Mr. President, in closing, I hope that the Eastern Band of Cherokee leadership knows that I care about the people of the Eastern Band of Cherokee as much as I care about the Lumbee. I went to great lengths to have the Eastern Band experience the benefits that came from the work I did as speaker of the house. I will go to great lengths in my remaining time in the Senate to help them in the future as soon as they do the right thing and allow the Lumbee people, after 137 years, to get the Federal recognition they deserve.

Mr. TILLIS

Mr. TILLIS. Mr. President, on Saturday, I was in Western North Carolina for the day because that marked the 1-year anniversary of the landfall of Helene in a place that a hurricane has never really been before, about 200 miles inland in the Smoky Mountain Range. In North Carolina alone, it had an impact landwise equivalent to the State of Massachusetts. About a dozen river basins were at historic, 100-year flood levels, and the damage was tremendous. The loss of life: 108 people in North Carolina alone, more than 250 people by the storm, and $59.6 billion in damages. It is actually the most expensive storm in North Carolina's history, breaking the previous record of $30 billion by Hurricane Florence back in 2018: 74,000 homes damaged or destroyed; 5,000 miles of roads damaged or destroyed, including major portions of I-40, which are still only one lane in each direction for about a 20-mile stretch between North Carolina and Tennessee; I-26 was damaged; Blue Ridge Parkway has just opened up; 848 bridges damaged and destroyed; 20,000 farms and 800,000 acres of timber damaged; 163 water systems damaged, with Asheville not having drinkable water for almost 2 months after the storm. When I was in Western North Carolina, I heard someone say that the one community I was in was back on its feet. But for every community that is back on its feet, there are still several communities that are on their knees or flat on their back. In fact, there are some communities that we wonder whether or not they ever will come back. And the reason I talk about it, in addition to being the 1-year anniversary, we have got real problems in the FEMA Disaster Relief Fund and resources available. The President, rightfully, acknowledged that there was a release of money about a month ago, but all of that is money that is already-- those are reimbursements. Those are costs that have already been incurred. We haven't even gotten to a point where we are trying to become more resilient or to prepare for the next storm. When I was riding from Old Fort to Chimney Rock, I was going down a stretch of highway--not a stretch of highway, a stretch of State road. There are still cars in the creekbeds. There are roads that are in the creekbed because they are trying to figure out where they are ultimately going to put it, back on a hillside, when they can get stabilization there and actually have the funding to build the roads. I know a lot of people have moved on, but in Western North Carolina, we haven't moved on. We are suffering as much today as we were the day or 3 or 4 days after the storm last year. According to the latest FEMA Disaster Relief Fund monthly report, the major disasters account balance right now is at $1.4 billion. That is dangerously low. Last month, FEMA approved 7.5 billion from the major disasters account. In 2024, there were 90 FEMA-declared major disasters, nearly double the 30-year average of 55 declarations per year. Already this year--and we are really ramping up in the hurricane season right now--we have had 40 major disaster declarations in 22 States. FEMA simply doesn't have the funding needed to respond to a major disaster. Ladies and gentlemen, we are in a shutdown posture right now. We have storms in the Atlantic and more storms forming off the coast of Africa, and we are not prepared for another major disaster should it hit this weekend, nor do we have the money that we need to help communities across this country, especially in Western North Carolina, recover from Helene. The House-passed continuing resolution that we tried to vote on this week had $22\1/2\ billion for the FEMA Disaster Relief Fund. But that money is not here today because we are in a shutdown posture. We are not funding any area of government, but we are especially hurting the Disaster Relief Fund and FEMA. And the only thing standing in our way is a simple vote to continue funding at levels that my Democratic colleagues have agreed to before. Ladies and gentlemen, we don't have a CR that the President or that the majority leader has decorated with ornaments. We call it decorating some of these spending bills like a Christmas tree. This is a simple continuing resolution to spend at the level we were spending yesterday. There is nothing more to it. There is money in here to help with disaster relief, but there is nothing more. This shutdown is hurting people in North Carolina. This shutdown will hurt more people. We lost the season last year--the tourist season--in the Blue Ridge Parkway and the Great Smoky Mountain parks. That was a hurricane. That was an inland hurricane disaster. This year, it is the disastrous vote of the Democrats, not allowing us to continue to fund at the levels that we did yesterday. We are not asking for anything more than that. We are asking for time to negotiate the premium tax credits, the ACA credits. I am on record saying we do need to find a good place for that. It is not about canceling them. But, folks, we can't even get to that if we can't agree to something as basic as this: Can we spend today what we did yesterday? And I know that there are several Members on that side of the aisle that would like to move with a clean CR and get to that negotiation. I am just speaking on behalf of people in North Carolina, particularly in Western North Carolina, who are struggling mightily. I hope that we can get back to funding the government where we can plus-up the Disaster Relief Fund and that I won't have to come to the floor next week to see who is going to be against this unanimous consent for doing just that. Let's do our job. Let's get back in business. Let's get the government funded. Let's help the people in North Carolina and in dozens of disaster-declared places all across this country.

Mr. TILLIS

Mr. TILLIS. Madam President, I ask unanimous consent to waive the quorum call with respect to the Rinaldi nomination.

Mr. TILLIS

Mr. TILLIS. Mr. President, I appreciate the opportunity to talk about two subjects very different in nature. I want to start with the deadline and, I believe, tomorrow's imposition of a 50-percent tariff on Brazil imports. I really appreciate what the administration is doing, trying to get other countries on notice that we are tired of unfair balance of trade. We have probably allowed it to go on for too long. So some of the chaos that some people may think the administration is creating with these tariffs is absolutely necessary to stop the chaos of the United States being unfairly positioned with trade partners. So on that side of the ledger, I support what the administration is doing. But as somebody who advised businesses on capital expenditures, on corporate relocations, on manufacturing facilities, those sorts of things, in my prior career, I am worried about how this 50-percent tariff on Brazil--a country that we have a trade surplus with-- undermines our credibility as we are trying to negotiate these other tariffs because I met with some members of the Brazilian senate earlier this week in my office. I actually had a number of them there. It was opposition and governing party in my office. The President has threatened a tariff on Brazil because he is not satisfied with the outcome of a judicial proceeding related to a prior leader in Brazil. I had someone who described themselves as a friend of this man who said: I am a friend of this person, and we are working to try and get that judicial outcome reversed, but we don't understand how a judicial decision of a sovereign nation would end up resulting in a tariff for a country that has a trade surplus with the United States. I agree, and I think it really puts Brazil in an untenable situation. To avoid the tariff, they would have to disrespect their rule of law, and they would have to overturn, arbitrarily, something that has gone through their courts. Whether or not their courts live up to the standards of the United States, I don't know. I guess you could argue it one way or the other. But at the end of the day, they are a sovereign nation, and we have a positive balance of trade with them, and we are asking them to reverse a court decision or encounter a 50- percent tariff on goods coming into this country. Well, think coffee, think inputs from manufacturing, think any number of products that you buy, apparel that says ``Made in Brazil'' having a 50-percent tariff applied to it because our President of the United States doesn't like the outcome of a court system in a sovereign nation. So I would encourage the President to do like that senate member in my office, who is a member of the opposition, the minority party, who says: He is a friend of mine. We are working through our court system, but allow us to do that. Please don't do the economic damage to a nearly 200-year-old relationship with a sovereign nation. And on that subject, I agree.