[Congressional Record Volume 170, Number 66 (Tuesday, April 16, 2024)]
[Senate]
[Pages S2765-S2781]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]
REFORMING INTELLIGENCE AND SECURING AMERICA ACT--MOTION TO PROCEED--
Continued
National Security Supplemental Funding
Mrs. SHAHEEN. Mr. President, in light of the unprecedented attacks by
Iranian forces on Israel over the weekend and on the 64th day since the
Senate passed a bipartisan national security supplemental bill, I come
to the floor to once again call on the House to pass critical funding
for Ukraine, for Israel, for the Indo-Pacific, and, importantly, for
our own national security needs here at home.
Over the past 6 months, I have worked with Senators from both sides
of the aisle to urge the passage of supplemental funding to support our
national security, and I am beyond disappointed that Speaker Johnson
and
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House Republicans have delayed much needed critical aid, especially
given the Senate bill that passed here with 70 bipartisan votes. I
believe and my colleagues on both sides of the aisle believe that that
would pass the House if only the Speaker would bring the bill to the
floor. Now, we hear this week that House Republicans may be nearing a
vote on this aid, and while I am encouraged by that, it is way past
time for us to help the courageous Ukrainians who are fighting,
literally, for the life of their country.
As chair of the European Subcommittee of the Foreign Relations
Committee, like so many in this Chamber, I have met with President
Zelenskyy, traveled to Ukraine, and met with the women and men who are
on the frontlines of this war. I know the dire state of affairs right
now against Russia. We have heard from our Nation's top four-star
generals and every single combatant commander. They have stressed the
importance of what happens in Ukraine to operations elsewhere around
the world.
Fortunately, Ukrainians remain fearless in the face of the brutality
and aggression from Russia, but what the United States and our allies
must do at this critical juncture is provide the military and economic
support to help Ukraine win and define victory on its own terms. We
must act now to ensure Ukraine's continued survival. We have heard
testimony that, right now, for every shell that is being fired by the
Ukrainians, five are being fired by Russia; and if we wait another
month or more, it will be 10 for every shell that Ukrainians are
firing.
Ensuring Ukraine's survival is not just about Ukraine; it is about
pushing back on Vladimir Putin's campaign to return to the days of
Soviet occupation and aggression. We have seen this movie before with
Vladimir Putin. In 2008, he invaded Georgia. In 2014, he illegally
annexed Crimea and parts of the Donbas in Ukraine. Then, of course, 2
years ago, he launched his full-scale, unprovoked invasion of Ukraine.
If he wins--if the West fails to support Ukraine--we know that Vladimir
Putin is not going to stop.
We have heard from the leaders of the Baltic nations of Poland, of
other states in Eastern Europe, their fears for what happens if
Vladimir Putin is successful in Ukraine.
Instead of letting Putin rewrite the rules of the road, we should put
an end to his thinking that he can do as he pleases without
consequences.
Delays by the House of Representatives to pass this supplemental have
enabled Putin's delusional agenda. We have already heard from the
Republican chairman of the House Intelligence Committee, Mike Turner,
and Chairman Mike McCaul from the House Foreign Affairs Committee, who
have already said that a third of the Republican caucus is listing and
spouting Russian disinformation.
This isn't just about Ukraine; American aid and support deters other
bad actors from initiating conflict in other parts of the world.
Six months of inaction by Congress has enabled our adversaries. We
saw it as recently as this weekend, when Iranian forces fired off
hundreds of drones and rockets toward Israel. Now there is the
potential for a broader war in the Middle East that could imperil more
innocent lives and make the world more dangerous.
It is more important than ever that we take action in Congress
because these episodes--Ukraine, the attack in Israel, what is
happening in the Indo-Pacific--they don't happen in silos. Our
adversaries are connected. They are sharing weapons and reveling in our
inability to act. Iran is currently supplying more than 70 percent of
Russia's drone capabilities. A top Chinese official was just in North
Korea for the highest level talks in years. The Secretary General of
NATO branded this partnership as a ``dangerous authoritarian
alliance,'' and he is right. This group of dictators, autocrats, and
adversaries threatens democracy. It is a threat that is very much like
what we saw in the lead-up to World War II.
If we don't pass this supplemental, our adversaries, like Iran, will
expand their own campaigns of aggression. If you are concerned about
what China is doing, if you are concerned about what Iran is doing, the
best way to deal a blow to these authoritarians is to support the
Ukrainians in their effort to defeat Putin.
We have a chance to take a stand for freedom and democracy, if only
our House colleagues would finally pass the national security
supplemental.
I just got back from the Indo-Pacific with a congressional delegation
that included six Members of the Senate and one Member of the House. It
was bipartisan and bicameral. What we heard in the nations that we
visited in the Indo-Pacific was that they understand the connection
between what is going on in Ukraine and what is happening with China,
with great power competition, with the aggression in the Indo-Pacific
and the South China Sea, and against Taiwan.
If the House would pass the national security supplemental, we could
degrade Russia, we could degrade the Iranian military capabilities, and
we could do it without costing American lives. We could boost our
economy through our defense industrial base.
Support for Ukraine and our allies isn't a blank check. It is not
charity. The United States is providing Ukraine with critical equipment
to defend itself and its territory. This equipment is pulled from U.S.
stocks, which also means that it is putting people to work back at
home.
Despite misinformation from too many House Republicans, a majority of
the funding in the bill the Senate sent over more than 60 days ago is
spent in the United States. It would be spent to replenish our own
military stocks so that we can continue to meet our military
requirements. It would shore up our military readiness and ensure that
the U.S. industrial base can keep up with demand.
A destabilized Europe as a result of Ukraine losing this war would be
a disaster for the U.S. economy. In my home State of New Hampshire
alone, we export about $3 billion each year to Europe, which is our
largest trading partner.
Putin poses a serious threat to our security and a peaceful,
prosperous future. Our allies know this, and that is why, by the end of
this year, 18 NATO countries will meet the 2-percent defense spending
goal set by the alliance. This historic investment in our collective
security shows that the United States is not shouldering this burden
alone.
We can depend on our allies, and they must be able to depend on us.
Let's remind ourselves that our NATO allies stood by our side after
September 11. Right now, leaders from around the world are looking for
the United States to step up and pass this bill. What message does it
send to our allies if we ignore their pleas for support to save lives
and ensure our collective security? What message does it send to our
grandchildren if we tell them that we are willing to gamble sending
them to fight in another war in Europe? There is one thing we know--
that Putin is not going to stop in Ukraine.
America doesn't back down when it is called upon to defend freedom--
at least we never have. Ukraine is now on the frontlines of the fight
for democracy and freedom. We have the resources to act here. We have
the ability to act. Now it is time for everyone in the House to find
the courage to act because failure is not an option.
I yield the floor.
I suggest the absence of a quorum.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. The clerk will call the roll.
The legislative clerk proceeded to call the roll.
Mr. CASSIDY. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the order
for the quorum call be rescinded.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. Without objection, it is so ordered.
National Flood Insurance Program
Mr. CASSIDY. Mr. President, last week, we saw terrible flooding in
parts of Louisiana. Here, as the charts will show--water shouldn't be
up to the bottom of a vehicle. Here you see people getting on a bus,
wearing waders. So people's lives were disrupted, just like with any
serious flood. Now families are turning to FEMA, the National Flood
Insurance Program, to help lift them out of the hole that last week's
storms have left them in.
Moments like these are why people buy insurance. But what about after
we have recovered and the Sun shines once more? There is increasing
concern among Americans that they will not be able to afford their
flood insurance for when the next storm hits.
A house is the biggest purchase most people make in their lifetime.
Unless
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you are among the wealthiest, you are taking out a mortgage to make
that purchase. After you have bought your home, imagine if FEMA changes
the rules and your flood insurance now costs more than that mortgage?
No American should have to pay more in flood insurance than their
mortgage, but that is the story I am hearing frequently from people in
Louisiana.
There is a cost-of-living crisis being fueled by the inflation
created by this administration. Inflation is costing Louisiana families
$884 more a month compared to 2021. Everywhere they turn, they are
frustrated with the fact that they are paying more and getting less.
When I speak to folks back home, they are not only worried about how
to put food on their table but also how to pay for gas. They are
worried about how they are going to be able to afford to stay in their
homes and about how they can afford a good education for their
children.
I would like to do something about some small part of it. Congress
has the power to do something about it, and that is to make flood
insurance affordable.
The National Flood Insurance Program was created as a safety net for
the most vulnerable Americans. It covers 4.7 million American homes,
but those millions of homes are at risk of losing their protection
because of skyrocketing premiums caused by FEMA's new risk assessment
system, Risk Rating 2.0.
Let's briefly talk about the history of NFIP Risk Rating 2.0 and how
we got here. FEMA introduced Risk Rating 2.0 in October of 2021. It was
slated to take effect in 2022 for new policies and in 2023 for existing
policyholders.
Since then, Americans who rely on flood insurance have been held in a
state of uncertainty. Before they were hit with that first bill, many
families didn't know if their premiums would jump up; if they did, how
much; and when the rate hikes would end.
FEMA told us that 77 percent of policyholders would see a premium
hike but refused to publicly disclose how the Agency calculates
individual policy rates. So now FEMA is sending Americans a bill and
won't tell them how they came up with the price. If you were the
American getting that bill, you would be incredibly frustrated. You
wouldn't accept it if your mechanic stuck you with a crazy bill but
didn't tell you what was wrong with the car. Why should we just accept
from a government Agency that same kind of model? Theoretically, the
government Agency is here to serve us.
Louisiana is one of the States getting hit the hardest. NFIP premiums
in Louisiana are expected to go up by 234 percent, with some ZIP Codes
seeing as much as an 1,100-percent increase--that is 1,100 percent. In
real terms, some ZIP Codes will see an increase from around $600 to
more than $8,000 annually. Couple that with the homeowner's insurance
crisis. Couple that with inflation across the country. Couple that with
the cost to heat your home. Couple that with the cost to go to the
grocery store. It is clear why Americans feel they cannot keep their
heads above water.
Insurance, just like everything else, has become less affordable.
When folks can't afford flood insurance, they begin to drop that
coverage, and the pool of policyholders shrink. The amount of risk is
then placed on a smaller number of policyholders, which increases their
premiums, which makes them drop their policies, and then we enter what
is called an actuarial death spiral.
FEMA itself forecasted that over 20 percent of policyholders will
leave the program because of higher premiums within the next 10 years.
We are setting the program up for collapse and leaving Americans and
American taxpayers holding the bucket.
Some groups will be hit even harder than others. FEMA won't tell us
how they came up with the numbers of what they expect Americans to pay,
but we do know they do not factor in income or the ability to pay.
There is no discount or consideration for an elderly couple who is
retired and living on a fixed income, bought their home in 1957, never
had it flooded, and now their insurance premiums are rising. This is a
real human condition.
Congress has the power to address it, and we need to step up now. If
my colleagues and our friends in the House of Representatives wish to
honor the people we serve, let's start with the 4.7 million
policyholders being--I don't know if the word is ``mistreated''--
mishandled by the National Flood Insurance Program, certainly poorly
served.
I urge my colleagues to read our NFIP Reauthorization and Reform Act.
Come talk to us about it. It is something which is bipartisan, which is
reasonable and sensible, and which will actually address this need. Our
goal is to make the National Flood Insurance Program more affordable
for the homeowner, more accountable to the taxpayer, and more
sustainable for society. Our bill does that, but we can only do so by
working together.
With that, I yield the floor.
I suggest the absence of a quorum.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. The clerk will call the roll.
The legislative clerk proceeded to call the roll.
Mr. KENNEDY. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the order
for the quorum call be rescinded.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. Without objection, it is so ordered.
Mayorkas Impeachment
Mr. KENNEDY. Mr. President, with me today is one of my colleagues
from my office, Mr. Matt Turner.
I want to talk about the woolly mammoth in the room: impeachment. I
want my colleagues to just put aside for a second the legal aspect of
this. Let's stop thinking for a second about how many lawyers can dance
on the head of a pin, and let's just think for a moment what is about
to happen over the next 2 days.
A few moments ago, the managers from the U.S. House of
Representatives came over--every Member of the Senate was here and
seated--and read their Articles of Impeachment, their charges, about
Secretary Mayorkas. The U.S. House of Representatives--did you notice I
said that? Representatives of the U.S. House of Representatives came
over to us.
As I said the other day, we are not talking about some snow bro who
likes chicken McNuggets and weed and has an opinion. We are not talking
about some game boy who is living in his parents' basement and has an
opinion--though both of them are entitled to their opinion because this
is America.
We are talking about the U.S. House of Representatives. For months,
they investigated the open, bleeding wound that is the southern border
and why it is open and why it is bleeding. And after investigating it--
not for days, not for weeks--for months, the U.S. House of
Representatives voted two articles, two charges, in an impeachment of
Secretary Mayorkas.
And those are serious charges. They are as serious as four heart
attacks and a stroke. The first one is willful and systemic refusal to
comply with the law--not negligence--willful and systemic refusal to
comply with the law. The second charge is breach of the public trust--
breach of the public trust. Serious, serious charges.
Now, this doesn't happen every day or every week or every month or
even every year around here. Our country is almost 250 years old. This
has only happened 22 times. Twenty-two times has the U.S. House of
Representatives impeached a public official. And every single time--
check it. Go Google it. Every single time--you can write this down,
take it home to mama. Every single time, except when the public
official has quit, the U.S. Senate has done its job, through thick and
thin, whether the Democrats were in the majority or the Republicans
were in the majority. It didn't matter who the President was. We did
our job because we respect the institution of the Constitution; we
respect the three branches of government; we respect the U.S. House of
Representatives. We respect them enough to do our job. We held a trial
every single time, except when the public official quit.
Now, in the next 2 days, you are going to hear one of my colleagues--
the majority leader--say we don't need to hold a trial. He is going to
say the evidence is insufficient, that it is not worth our time. I want
you to think for a moment. Just ask yourself this question: How does he
know the evidence isn't sufficient? How does he know? He hasn't heard
the evidence.
What you are about to see, folks--it breaks my heart to say this.
Over the next 2 days, what you are going to see is not about the
evidence. It is not
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about the law. It is not about the process. It is not about what should
be 250 years of precedent in history. It is about raw, gut politics--
raw, gut politics.
Some of my colleagues in this body do not want us to talk about the
border in an election year, and we all know that. You know that. I know
that. Everybody watching knows that. The American people know that.
They may be poorer under President Biden, but they are not stupid. They
can see that. And that is not right. It is vacuous. It is fraudulent.
Regardless of what you think or you may think you think without having
heard the evidence, the U.S. Senate should do its job. We should hold a
trial.
Now, my Democratic friends have the votes. They can do pretty much
what they want to. When you have got the votes, you know, you can--what
is the old expression? You can make a koala bear eat hot peppers and
like it if you have the votes. They have the majority, and I believe in
the rule of law, and the rules are the rules. But sometimes--sometimes
the majority just means a lot of the fools are on the same side. That
is why we have a Bill of Rights in our Constitution: to protect our
rights that the majority can't take away.
And I want to say this as respectfully as I can because I understand
politics. I have been in this business for a while. The Presiding
Officer has too. I have seen the dark side of it too. I have seen the
good side, but I have seen the dark side. And what I am seeing right
now is the dark side. I am seeing the dark side.
This is a political decision, and it is an insult to the Senate. And
it is one more step of the U.S. Senate rotting from within, where we
don't do our job for political reasons. So I am asking my Democratic
colleagues--I say this gently, with as much respect as I can muster:
Pretty please, pretty please, pretty please with sugar on top, let's do
our job. Just because you have the votes, don't dismiss these
impeachment proceedings summarily, like it is spam in your inbox. The
U.S. Senate needs to do its job.
I suggest the absence of a quorum.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. The clerk will call the roll.
The legislative clerk proceeded to call the roll.
Mr. SCHATZ. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the order for
the quorum call be rescinded.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. Without objection, it is so ordered.
Healthy Kids Act
Mr. SCHATZ. Mr. President, tens of millions of kids in America are
anxious, depressed, angry, lonely, sedentary, sometimes insecure, and
sometimes suicidal. And just about everybody--whether they are parents,
teachers, mental health professionals, or even the kids themselves--
points the finger at the same culprit: social media.
We do not need more data to tell us what is so painfully obvious in
schools and homes across the country. Social media platforms, with
their wildly powerful, covert, and addictive algorithms are driving our
kids deeper and deeper into a sea of despair that they can't find their
way out of. Kids are being unwittingly sucked into rabbit holes that
leave them in a constant state of panic and outrage--ashamed of their
own bodies, lacking meaningful friendships and connections.
The idea that a young kid--a kid--can feel so unhappy and so
unfulfilled at the tender age of 8 or 9--so much so that they seriously
contemplate self-harm--is appalling. And it is a uniquely modern crisis
created over the past decades by profit-chasing tech companies for whom
nothing and no one is off-limits, not even very young kids. The math
for them is very simple: Attention means money. And the best way to
hold people's attention is to make them upset and keep them upset.
You talk to any parent--whether they are raising a toddler or a
teenager, whether they are a voter or nonvoter, a Democrat or a
Republican--they are worried and they are frustrated about all the ways
that social media is harming kids, but they don't know what to do about
it or if they can do anything at all. Some might work two jobs and not
have the time to monitor what their kids are up to online. Others might
lack the technical literacy to operate parental controls and set limits
on screen time.
All they really want is for their young kids to be off social media
altogether, because there is no good reason that a 9-year-old should be
spending hours every day scrolling through TikTok that has been
programmed with no concern for whether the content is age-appropriate
or not. There is no First Amendment right for an 11-year-old to be on
Instagram while algorithm targets them with content glorifying
starvation and fueling insecurities.
By the company's own admission, social media was never meant to be
used by young kids. Yet any parent, or anyone who knows a parent, knows
that young kids are on these platforms anyway. And the only way that it
will stop is if the Federal law finally mandates that companies keep
young kids off of their services.
Over the past year, my team and I have worked extensively with a
broad range of advocates and stakeholders, as well as the Senate
Commerce Committee leadership, to update my bill to protect kids on
social media. Our updated bill, called the Healthy Kids Act, would do
two simple things: It would prevent kids under 13 from being on social
media at all; and it would ban algorithmic targeting on these platforms
for kids under 17.
Delaying the onset of social media use is a straightforward and
commonsense way to protect our youngest kids from the very worst of the
internet's ills. Let them have a normal childhood in the real world--
play a sport, learn an instrument, read a book, go to the park, walk
around with friends. And once kids are on social media at 13 or 14 or
whenever, they need protection, particularly from the algorithmic
targeting.
Just last year alone, social media companies made $11 billion from
ads targeted at kids under 18 in the United States--$11 billion. So it
is no wonder that they have no appetite to change their business model
without a Federal law. It is working great for them--just not for the
millions of young kids who are sad and lonely and angry because of it.
Kids need help, and they need protection. And because the companies
have shown time and time again that they will not step up, Congress
must.
I am glad that we are seeing renewed momentum and urgency right now
with a number of different proposals on this issue in the U.S. Senate.
All of them, my bill included, share the same goal of keeping our kids
healthy. But at the heart of this effort is an essential question of
when our kids ought to be allowed to be on social media. At what age is
it appropriate to use? If we are going to protect these kids online and
act as a counterweight to the rich and powerful tech companies,
answering that question and establishing an age minimum is essential.
And that is what the Healthy Kids Act does.
It is our job here in the Senate to consider any number of difficult
challenges facing the country and the world and to debate what to do
about them. What is more fundamental to the role of the Federal
Government than to protect the most vulnerable Americans, especially
our children?
If you think what is happening to kids online is unclear, look at the
data. The percentage of high school students surveyed who experienced
persistent feelings of sadness or hopelessness in the past year is 36
percent to 57 percent females; 21 percent to 29 percent males in 10
years--in 10 years.
It might be the phones. It might be the phones. You can consult the
data. You can ask the Surgeon General of the United States. You can ask
all of the people who have studied this. And they know it is early use
of social media where--look, we all use social media, and our adult
brains are not powerful enough to overcome the negative impacts. You
are 13, you are 9, you are 7, you are going to be overpowered by these
algorithms. We have to protect these kids.
And if you don't believe the data, talk to any parent--Democrat,
Republican, parent of a 2-year-old, parent of a 12-year-old--everybody
wants this tool in their toolkit. And the idea that we should pass a
Federal law mandating that all the social media companies have to do is
have a little thing in settings where you can turn the dials on all the
different aspects of your social media account is ignorant. It is
ignorant. The idea that all we really
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need to do is precipitate a conversation between a parent and child
about social media use--no. What parents need is to be able to say: I
am sorry. That is illegal. I am sorry. You may not use these social
media platforms.
I think it gets really tricky and really complicated once a kid is
13, 14, 15, 16, 17. I understand that. And we narrowed the bill to be
more precise because there is no First Amendment right, there is no
public policy upside for a 9-year-old to be on TikTok. Nobody can make
that argument with a straight face.
And so as we consider our options going forward on tech policy--but
specifically protecting children online--the threshold question is, At
what age is it appropriate for a child to use social media? If I had my
druthers, I would have set it at 16, honestly. But, certainly, we can
all agree that there is no advantage to a child's life, a prepubescent
child's life--a 9-year-old, a 4-year-old, an 11-year-old--being on
social media.
I am confident we will get this done. I am confident that if this
ever received a Senate floor vote, that it would be a resounding
bipartisan majority. And I am confident that the American people
support us in this.
I yield the floor.
I suggest the absence of a quorum.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. The clerk will call the roll.
The legislative clerk proceeded to call the roll.
Mrs. BLACKBURN. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the order
for the quorum call be rescinded.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. Without objection, it is so ordered.
The Senator from Tennessee.
Mayorkas Impeachment
Mrs. BLACKBURN. Mr. President, we gathered just a couple of hours ago
to receive the impeachment articles on Alejandro Mayorkas, who is the
Secretary of Homeland Security. How interesting that, as we look at
going through this impeachment, we have Senator Schumer, who is the
majority leader, who has decided he wants to change his tune when it
comes to dealing with impeachment.
Now, in 2019, right before the Democrats started in on President
Trump and an impeachment trial for President Trump, Leader Schumer
stood right here in this Chamber, and he said:
We have a responsibility to let all the facts come out.
We [have] to remember our constitutional duty to act as
judges and jurors in a potential trial.
Now, those were his comments at that point in time. He was all for an
impeachment trial, and it is our constitutional duty. You can look at
article I, section 2 and section 3. Section 2 lays out the
responsibility of the House in impeachment. Section 3 pertains to the
Senate and how we are to proceed with a trial of impeachment.
But, as I said, Leader Schumer has decided that he wants to change
his tune, and all of a sudden, he is not wanting this even though we
actually have a public officeholder who deserves to stand for an
impeachment trial, and that is Secretary Mayorkas. Now that the shoe is
on the other foot, if you will, and now that it is about a Democrat,
Leader Schumer wants to change the rules and say no. He is even willing
to take unprecedented actions that this Chamber has never taken when it
comes to the issue of impeachment.
I believe this should incense every single American. I know it
incenses the people of Tennessee because what we have learned in the
last 3 years about Secretary Mayorkas--even though his title is
``Secretary of Homeland Security,'' he does not believe in securing the
homeland, and he has refused to fulfill his duty of securing the
homeland.
I know that Secretary Mayorkas is doing the bidding of Joe Biden and
the Biden administration. He is just doing what they tell him he has to
do. That in and of itself tells you a lot about what this
administration thinks about the security and sovereignty of this
country. Here is why: On the Biden-Mayorkas watch, you have more than
9.4 million illegal aliens coming into this country. That is in less
than 3 years--9.4 million.
We know that there are between 1.7 and 2.5 million ``got-aways.''
Some of those ``got-aways'' are included in that 9.4 million number,
and others are not because they didn't see them as they were coming
through and couldn't get to them. They found things they left on the
roadside or in the woods, in the brush, later on.
Out of this 10 million or so who have illegally come into the
country--by the way, just to help everyone have the right context, that
number of 10 million is greater than the population of 38 of our
States--38. That is how many people are coming in who are illegally
entering the country.
Out of this number, you have thousands who are from countries of
interest. That would be places like Pakistan, Uzbekistan, Iraq, Iran.
And look at China. Look at what is happening there. You also have 300
known terrorists. As we heard in the impeachment articles today, under
President Trump, you had no more than a dozen total over 4 years who
were coming into the country. What do you have under Joe Biden? You
have over 300 suspected terrorists. Even last week, we had an issue
where DOJ and DHS and FBI and the other Agencies were admitting they
had lost track of a terrorist from Afghanistan, and he was free-roaming
the country for a year.
In addition to the terrorists and the people from countries of
interest, fentanyl is coming across our borders. It is being smuggled
in by the cartels. Fentanyl is the leading cause of death of Americans
age 18 to 45. Fentanyl is a drug that--China has the precursor
chemicals, and they are manufacturing this in labs that they have set
up with, oh, by the way, the cartels in Mexico, and the cartels are the
distribution hub for fentanyl. I talk to parents regularly who have a
child who has lost a life or become addicted because of fentanyl.
In addition to all the fentanyl, you have the human trafficking. What
is really so sad to me when you look at human trafficking--and for the
cartels, human trafficking is a business. It has grown from a business
that was $500 million a year in this country in 2018, and today it is a
$13 billion-a-year business.
If you don't think the cartels are big business, if you don't think
they are global entities, look at this. Globally, human trafficking is
a $150 billion-a-year business. Where do these people want to come?
Right here. They want to come into our country.
On top of this, there are more than 400,000 migrant children. Many of
them have been recycled and abused by the cartels. Yes, indeed, the
cartels are so into this human trafficking now that they have devised a
scheme. It is child abuse. They take a little child. They write their
name and the phone number to contact on that child's back. They put
that child with a cartel member they are trying to get into the
country. They pose as a family for the purpose of claiming asylum. Once
the cartel member is across the border, what does he do? He lets the
child go--lets the child go--and the child is sent back to Mexico.
So we add to all of these issues with the terrorists, with the people
from countries of interest, with the drugs, with the human trafficking,
with the sex trafficking, you look at what is happening to these
children. Tens of thousands of these 400,000 children have been forced
into really horrific, exploitative situations, including child labor
and sex trafficking.
Across the country, you have dangerous, illegal alien criminals--they
are called criminal aliens--who should never have been able to come
into this country in the first place. They have harmed and they have
murdered innocent Americans.
So all of these reasons as to why we should move forward with this
impeachment, and on top of it you add that Secretary Mayorkas has
repeatedly lied to Congress about our border being secure. He likes to
say he has done everything to prevent this, but we know he has done
everything to allow it and to allow the flow to continue.
Last year, DHS, his Agency, deported less than 5 percent of all
migrant encounters at the border. In 2022, only 10 percent of all
criminal illegal aliens in the United States were arrested.
While a border wall would do so much to help end the border crisis,
Secretary Mayorkas stated:
From day one, this Administration has made clear that a
border wall is not the answer.
His words. From day one, they have made clear that a border wall is
not the answer. Well, let me tell you something: Walls work. Throughout
history,
[[Page S2770]]
walls have worked. The evidence is overwhelming.
Secretary Mayorkas has refused to uphold his constitutional duty of
securing the homeland, and the American people are suffering the
consequences.
Five years ago, Leader Schumer was all too happy to lead a partisan,
baseless impeachment trial against President Trump. Yet, today, when
faced with a Secretary who is unfit for office, Leader Schumer is
trying to prevent a Senate trial and dismiss the House's Articles of
Impeachment.
(Mr. WYDEN assumed the Chair.)
Never before has the Senate dismissed impeachment charges without
holding a trial.
When I talk to Tennesseans, they talk about their frustration with
Washington, DC, and their frustration with two tiers of justice. It
seems there is a tier for the Democrats and the elites and illegals and
another for Republicans and President Trump and people who are
conservative.
It is important that Secretary Mayorkas be held to account. For 3
years, he has done President Biden's bidding by opening the border to
millions of illegal aliens. If this Chamber upholds its constitutional
duty to hold a trial, I will vote to convict Secretary Mayorkas and
remove him from office.
While the Biden administration is working to make illegal immigration
legal, border States such as Texas are stepping up to do what this
administration will not do, and that is to secure the border.
Over recess, I spent time in El Paso, TX, to see firsthand how
Governor Abbott and authorities in the Lone Star State are working to
keep communities safe. Now, it is a part of the efforts in Texas to
deter illegal immigration, and Texas is taking this seriously to make
certain that they secure property there along the Rio Grande.
What they have done is to place buoys in the river, shipping
containers on the embankment, razor wire behind that, and fences behind
that. They did this along the Rio Grande there in El Paso to prevent
illegal aliens from coming in through El Paso.
Texas has bolstered its barriers, and what you are seeing now is that
the illegal aliens are traveling farther to the west. They are going to
New Mexico. They are going to Arizona. They are going to California.
Why? Because they are looking for somewhere easier that they can get
into the country illegally.
(Mr. WELCH assumed the Chair.)
Bear in mind, the coyotes, they are working hard for all of these
groups and for the cartels, and nobody enters without paying a coyote.
Now, when you look at what Texas is doing, taking this into their own
hands--and you have got the State, you have got local counties--they
are spending billions at the State level and millions in these
counties. And as a result, illegal immigration in Texas dropped by 54
percent between December and January. And in the Del Rio Sector, which
includes Eagle Pass, illegal entries fell by 76 percent.
This shows you border walls work. The Border Patrol has been telling
us for decades: We need a barrier; we need better technology where we
cannot have a barrier; and we need more officers and agents. So while
the Biden administration pretends otherwise, knowing that walls work
should not be a surprise. Border walls from ancient Athens to the Great
Wall of China, they protected cities. They protected nations for
thousands of years. Border barriers are used on nearly every continent
on Earth to protect countries from illegal entry, from drug smuggling,
and from terrorism.
But instead of supporting Texas and its successful efforts to deter
illegal immigration, this administration and this Secretary of Homeland
Security, they think it is a good thing to go sue Texas and try to make
them remove their border barriers. While Texas has accomplished a lot
in securing their border, protecting families, and saving American
lives, President Biden's attack on our border security has placed a
tremendous burden on our border States and communities. Indeed, every
town has turned into a border town, every State a border State all
across this country because of what is happening with the drug
trafficking, with human trafficking, with sex trafficking, with crime
in communities.
While I was in Eagle Pass, I sat down with some ranchers and farmers
who have had their property destroyed, stolen, broken into by illegal
aliens crossing into our country from Mexico. In one instance, two
migrants broke into a rancher's home while his 16-year-old daughter was
studying at home alone.
Texas law enforcement also warned about the ways cartels are using
new technology to aid their smuggling operations, including by using
Chinese-owned TikTok to recruit Americans into their human trafficking
rings. At the same time, cartels are flying drones into the United
States to scope out the location of border agents and redirect their
smuggling routes.
More than anything else, authorities in Texas told me that they need
more border wall construction, better technology, and more agents.
So if Secretary Mayorkas and President Biden refuse to help them,
Congress has to step in. That is why I introduced legislation called
the CONTAINER Act, which would empower border States such as Texas to
place temporary barriers on Federal land to protect their communities.
No State or locality should face lawsuits from the Federal Government
for trying to secure our border and to protect the sovereignty of the
United States of America.
I also introduced the CLEAR Act, which would reaffirm the authority
of State and local governments to enforce Federal immigration laws by
apprehending, detaining, and then transferring illegal aliens to
Federal custody. Among its important measures, this legislation would
require the Department of Homeland Security to provide grants to State
and local governments to help them enforce immigration law and
construct detention facilities. It would also require DHS to take
illegal aliens into custody within 48 hours after receiving a request
from a State or locality and provide the Justice Department with
essential information about illegal aliens who have overstayed their
period of stay in this country.
After my visit to Eagle Pass, I know these pieces of legislation
would do so much to support our border security along these border
States, and I am hopeful that this President and his Department of
Homeland Security will have a change of heart and will move forward
with securing our southern border, just as this Chamber should move
forward with an impeachment trial on Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Oregon.
FISA
Mr. WYDEN. Mr. President, I rise in strong opposition to this FISA
bill. And, to begin, there is a central question before the U.S.
Senate, and that is: Who should be forced to help their government spy?
The legislation coming from the other body gives the government
unchecked authority to order Americans to spy on behalf of their
government. This was slipped in, Mr. President, in the last minutes in
the House of Representatives' bill, and this is the first time this
language has ever been considered here in the U.S. Senate.
Under current law--section 702 of the Foreign Intelligence
Surveillance Act--the government can order the phone companies and
email and internet service providers to hand over communications. This
bill expands that existing power dramatically. It says: The government
can force cooperation from ``any other service provider who has access
to equipment that is being or may be used to transmit or store wire or
electronic communications.''
Now, the language I just read to the Senate means that, if you have
access to any communications, the government can force you to help it
spy. That means anybody with access to a server, a wire, a cable box, a
WiFi router, a phone, or a computer.
So think for a moment about the millions of Americans who work in
buildings and offices in which communications are stored or passed
through. After all, every office building in America has data cables
running through it.
These people are not just the engineers who install, maintain, and
repair our communications infrastructure. There are countless others
who could be forced to help the government spy, including those who
clean offices and guard buildings. If this provision is enacted, the
government could deputize
[[Page S2771]]
any of these people against their will and force them, in effect, to
become what amounts to an agent for Big Brother--for example, by
forcing an employee to insert a USB thumb drive into a server at an
office they clean or guard at night.
This can all happen without any oversight whatsoever. The FISA Court
won't know about it. The Congress won't know about it. Americans who
are handed these directives will be forbidden from talking about it.
Unless they can afford high-priced lawyers with security clearances who
know their way around the FISA Court, they will have no recourse at
all.
Now, importantly, Mr. President--and you and I have talked about
this--supporters of this provision will say that this doesn't change
the fact that section 702 only targets foreigners overseas. But if the
government thinks that those targets are communicating with people in
the United States, they can go right to the source: the WiFi, the phone
lines, the servers, the transmitters that store those communications.
If the government has an interest in those foreign targets, well, the
Americans whose communications get collected are just plain out of
luck.
Supporters of this provision will also say this was necessary because
of a FISA Court opinion. I disagree. That opinion didn't gut section
702. This provision is not necessary, and there certainly is no
justification for this vast expansion of surveillance authorities.
Supporters also claim that the provision has a narrow purpose and
that the government doesn't intend to start tapping into everybody's
phone line or WiFi, but that is not how this provision is written. It
is not reflected in the actual legislation.
And I would say, respectfully, that anybody who votes to give the
government vast powers under the premise that intelligence Agencies
won't actually use them is being pretty darn naive.
Supporters also point to a handful of exceptions that were tacked
onto this provision, excluding things like hotels and coffee shops.
Anybody who reads the text will see that these provisions clearly are
not designed to work. Even the coffee shop exception is meaningless
because it wouldn't cover a company that maintains the coffee shop's
WiFi. And the fact that there are a couple of random exceptions further
proves my point.
This provision is going to force a huge range of companies and
individuals to spy for their government.
Supporters have even argued that the bill had to be broadly written
because what the government actually wants to do is secret. That is
some ``Alice in Wonderland'' logic.
First, the American people deserve to know when the government can
spy on them and when it can't. If you clearly can't explain to American
voters why you need new powers, then you shouldn't have them.
And the distinguished Presiding officer of the Senate from Vermont,
he has asked questions about this as well.
Second, it doesn't matter what the government might be secretly
intending to do with these authorities at the moment. There is a
statutory authority that will be in place for years, during which time
the government may very well decide to dramatically expand its
surveillance activities.
Now, some of my colleagues say they aren't worried about President
Biden abusing these authorities. Well, last time I looked, the law
applies to Presidents, regardless of their political power--excuse me--
regardless of their position. In that case, how about President Trump?
Imagine these authorities in his hands. If you are worried about having
a President who lives to target vulnerable Americans, to pit Americans
against each other, to find every conceivable way to punish perceived
enemies, you ought to find this bill terrifying.
The bill expands 702 authorities in other ways. For example, it
includes a dramatic increase in the use of 702 in vetting travelers to
the United States. It requires that the Attorney General enable
searches on all travelers, tens of millions of people who come to the
United States annually. This is a dragnet search of every work
colleague, neighbor, and classmate who is here on a visa; every
grandparent visiting for a wedding or a funeral.
So what I have done in the last 10 or 12 minutes is point out that
these are just some of the ways in which this bill expands warrantless
surveillance authorities. On top of all of that, it fails to reform
section 702 in any meaningful way.
I will start with the warrantless searches of Americans'
communications swept up in section 702 collection. These searches have
gone after American protesters, political campaign donors, even people
who simply reported crimes to the FBI. The abuses have been extensive
and well documented.
Now, supporters of this bill are going to argue: Well, the FBI has
taken care of things. They have cleaned up their act.
But even after the FBI made changes to its internal policies, abuses
continued, including searches for a U.S. Senator, State senator, and a
State judge who had complained to the FBI about police abuses.
But the broader concern is that, without checks and balances, there
is nothing preventing a rapid increase of abuses after reauthorization.
Supporters of this bill will say that it codified the FBI's internal
changes. But what I would say is: Without real checks and balances
written into the law, what good are these changes?
Reformers have put forward extremely modest, commonsense solutions.
Warrants would not be required for all U.S. person searches. Reform
proposals allow the government to see whether an American is
communicating with foreign agents. A warrant is required only when the
government wants to read the content of these communications--a
situation that arises less than 2 percent of the time. Our provision
also allows for emergency searches and has exceptions for imminent
threats of death or injury, preexisting law enforcement or FISA
warrants, consent, and access to malware in cyber attacks.
This modest reform should be debated and voted on in the Senate.
There are other commonsense reforms to section 702 that also are not
in this bill. For example, it doesn't protect Americans against reverse
targeting, and it doesn't prohibit the collection of domestic
communications.
Finally, the bill should have been an opportunity to pass meaningful
protections for Americans' privacy from abusive government subpoenas
targeted at the most vulnerable groups in our society, including women,
religious and racial minorities, and LGBTQ people.
Mr. President, 15 States have now banned abortion, with more on the
way. When States enforce bans on reproductive health access, they will
use everything from location data generated by connected cars and the
smartphone in the patient's pocket to the Google search that the
patient used to find the reproductive health facility or online
telemedicine service. All of that can be obtained without a court
order.
Congress needs to safeguard Americans' privacy, not give the
President new surveillance powers. Congress has the time to draft
comprehensive privacy and cybersecurity legislation, including a 702
reauthorization. My own view is that Chairman Durbin's SAFE Act and my
bipartisan, bicameral Government Surveillance Reform Act are both bills
that have support across the aisle, across the Capitol, and they are
ready for consideration.
I am going to close with this: This Chamber has the time to do the
right thing. Senators do not need to rubberstamp a disastrous
surveillance bill just because the Senate is, once again, considering
it at the last possible moment. Once again--you can set your clock by
it--the Senate considers FISA at the last possible moment.
The FISA Court recently renewed the court's annual 702
certifications, which authorize surveillance until April 2025. Let me
repeat that. The FISA Court recently renewed the court's annual 702
certifications, which authorize surveillance until April 2025. That
means there is no need for Congress to offer up a rush job. But under
no circumstances should the U.S. Senate be cowed by those who say
Senators have no choice except to sign off on whatever piece of paper
the executive branch requests.
Reformers on both sides of the aisle here in the Senate have been
ready and willing since last fall to have this debate; yet the status
quo crowd wouldn't pick up the phone until the last possible minute to
ensure that this body
[[Page S2772]]
wouldn't have time for anything but a last-second vote on what I
believe is a dangerous bill. The only way this body is going to have a
real debate about reforming government surveillance is by rejecting the
House bill and standing up for the Senate's independence and Americans'
constitutional rights.
As I have said on this floor before--and I think I will do it--
throughout my time in public service, Ben Franklin got it right:
Americans don't have to sacrifice liberty for security. The reality is,
security and liberty aren't to be mutually exclusive. We can have both.
The Congress has a duty to deliver a FISA law that does both, and I
urge my colleagues to pursue exactly that.
I yield the floor.
The PRESIDING OFFICER (Mr. Markey). The Senator from North Carolina.
Tribute to Debra Jarrett
Mr. TILLIS. Mr. President, I come here today to commemorate the
retirement of one of my longest serving staff in my time in the Senate,
Debra Jarrett.
She has been my administrative director for the last 9 years. She has
worked in the Senate for 29 years. I was looking it up on the internet
earlier today. To give you an idea of how long ago 29 years was, that
was the year that ladies were getting ``Rachel'' haircuts because
``Friends'' was one of the most popular shows on. Jennifer Aniston was
rocking the ``Rachel'' haircut. Boyz II Men was topping the charts. It
was a long time ago. Debra really quickly demonstrated that this was
probably the right place for her to start her career; and, today, we
are looking at her turning another chapter.
My staff put together some comments that I am being loosely advised
by. They said it was a bittersweet moment. Well, I personally think it
is bitter. I am sure it is sweet for Debra, the person who is going to
be retiring. I think it is probably a violation of the rules to point
back here where Debra is sitting, so I am not going to do that. But if
it wasn't a violation of the rules, I would point there. That is Debra,
sitting here behind me on my wing, which she has been several times
before.
When you come to the Senate, the amazing thing about coming to the
U.S. Senate--I came in 2015--is they say, you know,
``Congratulations.'' They swear you in. They give you an allocation of
money to run your operations. North Carolina has got about--almost 11
million people, so that dictates how much money you have to set up a
State operation and a DC operation, but that is it. Your personnel
practices, who you hire, how you provision computers--basically the
whole running of the business operation; there is not some special
department there--that is something you have to do. So one thing you
learn very quickly is to find a highly competent person to do that, and
I was blessed to have the opportunity to bring Debra in.
I said she has been in my office for 9 years, and she has been in the
Senate for 29 years. I should start by saying she was born and raised
in St. Joe, IN, population 460. Then she started to work for Dan Coats,
the Senator from Indiana, as his legislative aide back in 1995. Then,
in 1999, she joined Senator Judd Gregg as a special assistant. She was
promoted to office administrator a year later, and she worked for
Senator Gregg for 12 years. Then, when Senator Gregg retired, New
Hampshire adopted her; and Kelly Ayotte, who was also a Senator from
New Hampshire, brought her in as the director of administration. She
did that for 4 years and then finally came to work for me.
Debra is somebody--and I do mean this. Even as a U.S. Senator, there
are some people who scare me, and Debra is one of them because she is
so on point for everything that we do whether it is the efficiency of
our office or our fiscal conservative policy. We spend just enough, and
we do return some of our office proceeds to the Treasury every year. We
don't spend all of the money that we are allocated. Debra oversees all
of that, but she oversees so much more.
You will hear--and I don't know. This may be common in other offices,
but everybody in my State operation, about half my staff--about 30 of
the 60 staff that I have working full-time are down in North Carolina--
are as likely to have an endearing comment to make about Debra as
people who see her every day up here in DC. And I mean everything. I
mean, it could be telling staff, including my chief of staff, to
understand our retirement system and how you can get the Federal match;
getting these young people to think about their futures at such a young
age; making sure that they go through open enrollment and get their
health plan options renewed. With all the sorts of running of the
office, Debra is on top of all of that.
But I think what makes her really interesting or makes it even more
interesting is how she is, on any given day, likely to come up to me or
my chief of staff or my legislative director and say: You need to check
in on--fill in the blanks. You know, this person has just come in. They
look like they are trying to get used to working in a Senate office--
getting them settled down. She is watching every single aspect of this
office and the health and hygiene of all the staff.
She has decided to retire after being vested for--almost 2 years now?
You are not supposed to talk to me, but thank you for that--for almost
3 years now.
So 3 years--I got her to break a rule of the Senate floor, which is
probably the coolest thing I could have possibly done if you know how
rules-oriented Debra is. But she has been working with us, having the
option to leave. She has just continued to work, and thank goodness,
because we have gotten so much more out of Debra over the last 3 years
and, certainly, over the last 9 years that she has been in my office.
I have staff up in the Gallery. I don't think I am supposed to
recognize them either, but they are here as a testament to how special
and how important she is to our Senate office.
Now, Debra is going to retire, but she is young, and I expect that
she is going to go off and do other things. One thing I hope she does,
if she decides to go back to Indiana, is to make sure that she is still
a part of the Tillis family.
And I thank you for your service.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Kansas.
Mayorkas Impeachment
Mr. MARSHALL. Mr. President, on February 2, 2021, DHS Secretary
Alejandro Mayorkas took an oath that all of us in the Chamber have
taken, an oath that many of us have taken who have served in the
military--an oath to support and defend the Constitution of the United
States against all enemies, foreign and domestic. Yet here we are, 3
years later, with the worst border crisis our Nation has ever seen.
I rise today because we find ourselves at a critical moment in our
Nation's history--a moment when the integrity of this very Chamber and
its leadership is being tested, a time when we will see if our
colleagues across the aisle are willing to do the right thing and hold
Alejandro Mayorkas accountable for his dereliction of duty that has
left our country a shell of what she once was.
Now with over 11 million border crossings, including 2 million
unvetted ``got-aways'' now living here on U.S. soil--and amongst those
are an unknown number of terrorists, violent gang members and drug
cartels--Mayorkas has broken his oath, resulting in this dangerous and
deadly invasion of our country. All you have to do is read your
hometown news, and you are going to find a person in your community who
has died from fentanyl or who has been physically abused or murdered by
one of these unvetted illegal aliens.
From the moment Secretary Mayorkas took office, he has skirted the
Constitution and broken the law as outlined in the Secure Fence Act of
2006, which clearly states he must maintain ``operational control'' and
``prevent unlawful entries into the United States.''
In the past 3 years alone, we have had nearly 2 million known ``got-
aways'' successfully evade capture and enter our country--a number that
includes hundreds of violent gang members and terrorists. To put that
into perspective, the scale of this issue, today, over 800 ``got-
aways'' illegally crossed into this country; yesterday, over 800
unvetted ``got-aways'' escaped into our country; and, tomorrow, 800
more unvetted aliens will end up here on U.S. soil, living in
communities around the country. Maybe that is why law enforcement
officers recently told me back home that we cannot arrest ourselves out
of this crisis; that they are
[[Page S2773]]
so overwhelmed by crime now related to these illegal crossings that we
cannot arrest ourselves out of this predicament.
Secretary Mayorkas has given free rein to drug cartels to smuggle in
illegal aliens and deadly drugs like fentanyl, resulting in the deaths
of 300 Americans every day, with a total of over 250,000 fentanyl-
related poisoning murders--deaths--occurring under his watch. That is
three times more than the number of brave soldiers we lost in the
Vietnam war--three times more.
The Secretary has turned a blind eye to the exploitation of our
borders by terrorists, Chinese nationals, and other high-risk
individuals, causing the largest influx of terrorist border crossings
in our Nation's history.
And let us not forget the abuse and weaponization of parole and
asylum. Secretary Mayorkas has illegally admitted nearly 800,000 aliens
per year--800,000--under this parole compared to just 5,000 per year
under President Obama or President Trump--800,000 versus 5,000 a year.
There is no question that the situation at our borders is dire and
that the responsibility of this historic crisis lies squarely at the
feet of those who have failed to address it.
Instead of fulfilling his obligation to the American people,
Secretary Mayorkas has unraveled our national security, unleashed our
border into chaos, and launched an unmitigated disaster and culture of
lawlessness that has left Lady Liberty vulnerable to exploitation. His
actions--or lack thereof--have endangered the safety of every American,
and there must be consequences.
Congress must step in and do the job that President Biden refuses to
do and fire Secretary Mayorkas. Enough is enough. Americans deserve
better.
We are here today because we take our oath seriously. With the House
managers delivering the Articles of Impeachment to the Senate Chamber
today, I hope our colleagues across the aisle, who also took an oath to
protect and defend our great Nation, will do the right thing. Let's
bring this to a trial, let's debate his record, and for the sake of
America's safety and security, let's impeach Alejandro Mayorkas.
Taking this decisive action will send a clear message to this
administration: They will be held accountable for orchestrating this
deadly invasion.
I yield the floor.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Wisconsin.
Mr. JOHNSON. Mr. President, earlier today, we heard a very convincing
case laid out by the House managers of why the Senate should fill its
constitutional duty and proceed to a trial on the impeachment of
Secretary Mayorkas.
If we were to hold that trial--and we should do so--this chart that I
have been developing since I became chairman of Homeland Security in
2015 would basically be the irrefutable DNA evidence of the crime.
What I have tried to lay out in this chart is the cause and effect of
an ongoing set of illegal immigration crises faced by the last three
administrations. What I would like to do briefly here on the Senate
floor is to go through that history dating back to 2012 and show the
impact of certain actions, certain court decisions, certainly the lack
of faithfully executing the law in this administration that has now
resulted in an invasion of our country.
Let's go back to 2012. That is where this chart begins. Even before
that, I had developed a chart just showing on an annual basis the
number of unaccompanied children coming into this country. It averaged
for many years somewhere between 2-, 3-, 4,000 a year.
Then, in June of 2012, President Obama issued his what I would
consider lawless, unlawful deferred action on childhood arrivals. That
is what has sparked all the succeeding illegal immigration crises, is
that unlawful order, which, by the way, was a complete misuse of
prosecutorial discretion, which is supposed to be meted out or
administered on a case-by-case basis. For the first time, President
Obama and his administration granted prosecutorial discretion to
hundreds of thousands of people, and the world took note.
What happened over the intervening years is that people realized
America's law has changed. We have reports. When people come to this
country illegally, they would get their notice to appear before an
immigration court. Well, that was used by human traffickers down in
Central America. They called that their ``permiso''--their permission
slip--to come to this country.
A couple of years after that unlawful order--deferred action on
childhood arrivals--President Obama faced his border crisis. He
actually called it a humanitarian crisis when, in May and June of 2014,
they averaged about 2,200 encounters per day--2,200. That seems like
the good old days. That is that little bump in comparison to President
Biden's crisis at the border.
President Obama actually took action. He started detaining family
units with children who came across the border, and it worked. He
brought down the number of people crossing into our country illegally
because there was a consequence to it.
Unfortunately, in February of 2015, pro-immigration groups--pro-
illegal immigration groups--took the Obama administration to court
under the Flores settlement, which was basically--back in the 1990s,
there was a court case with a young immigrant girl named Flores, and
the result of that settlement said that DHS could not hold an
unaccompanied child for more than 20 days--again, an unaccompanied
child.
The Obama administration interpreted that as, well, we can certainly
hold a child when they are detained with their family. Again, these
pro-illegal immigration groups took the Obama administration to court,
took Secretary Jeh Johnson to court, and they reinterpreted the Flores
settlement and said: No, you can't detain a child even if they are
accompanied by their parents.
So the Obama administration faced a real decision: Should we detain
the parents and release the child into HHS custody? They chose not to
do that except in some situations where they felt that wasn't a real
family unit and those parents may be a danger to that child. You can
see the result of that. Basically, catch-and-release is what that
resulted in. You can see the numbers started increasing prior to
President Trump taking office.
If you remember, President Trump, during his election, made the open
border--that catch-and-release--a huge issue in the campaign. When he
got elected, again the world noticed. They felt there was going to be a
real crackdown on illegal immigration, and they stopped coming. There
was a huge reduction from the end of the Obama administration to when
President Trump first took office.
Unfortunately, the law didn't change. That Flores reinterpretation
stood. So President Trump was faced with trying to figure out how he
could utilize what laws existed, what authority he had, with no help
from Congress, to address this situation. He wasn't able to address it
immediately. As a result, you can see the increase of not only single
adults but family units exploiting that provision, and unaccompanied
children, to the point where, in May of 2019, he hit his high point:
almost 5,000 people per day.
You will notice that President Trump did something about it. He
enacted the migrant protection program. He instituted safe third
country agreements with countries in Central America. He had to
threaten the President of Mexico with tariffs so the President of
Mexico would cooperate with us in securing our border.
Over the next 12 months, President Trump by and large secured the
border, to hit a low point in April of 2020, when a little more than
500 people per day were trying to come into this country illegally.
President Trump also had, starting in March of 2020, during the
pandemic--remember, all of this reduction in illegal immigration
occurred before the pandemic, but once the pandemic was in full swing
in March and April of 2020, President Trump used his authority under
title 42 and used that health emergency to start deporting people
coming into this country illegally.
So you see the purple bar is the people expelled using title 42
authority.
Even though the number of single adults was rising--by the way, the
reason it was rising is that during the Presidential debate of 2020,
every Democrat Presidential candidate said they were going to end
deportations and
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offer free healthcare. That is a signal. The world listens to what
elected officials or potential elected officials say, and they believe
them. They also believe their eyes when, once people start coming in
here, they are either detained and expelled or they are not detained.
Anyway, so people started coming into this country again, assuming
that President Biden was going to win the election and the border would
be opened up. Of course, that is exactly what happened, because once
President Biden took office, he used the exact same Executive authority
that President Trump used.
Let me just quickly cover that. Even after the Flores
reinterpretation, the Supreme Court, in a ruling in 2018, said that
existing law--even though it was weakened by that reinterpreted Flores
decision or settlement--that the current law exudes deference to the
executive branch. President Trump used that deference. President Trump
used that Executive authority and pretty well closed the border.
President Biden came into office and, with literally hundreds of
Executive actions, completely reversed President Trump's successful
border security measures using that exact same Presidential authority,
all that deference.
The point that is important to understand is that President Biden
wanted an open border. He caused this crisis. He could end it if he
wanted to. He still has the authority. Republicans in the Senate would
be happy to strengthen that authority, to overturn this Flores
reinterpretation.
By the way, Secretary Jeh Johnson opposed that reinterpretation. He
didn't like that Court decision.
We would have been happy to strengthen President Biden's authority,
but he doesn't really need us to to secure the border. That is the
point.
Again, here is the DNA, the irrefutable DNA evidence of the crime.
This didn't have to happen. President Biden didn't have to reverse
President Trump's successful border security Executive orders, but he
reversed them, and he opened up the border. The result now is that
probably more than 6 million people have come into this country
illegally and stayed. That is a number greater than the population of
31 States. That is the order of magnitude of the problem.
The impact of this open border policy is devastating. It is a
catastrophe. Not only does this open border policy facilitate the
multibillion-dollar business model of some of the most evil people on
the planet--the human traffickers, the sex traffickers, the drug
traffickers--how many hundreds of thousands of Americans have died of
fentanyl overdoses?
President Biden and Secretary Mayorkas said that they are reversing
all of Trump's border security provisions because they said it was
inhumane. There is nothing humane about facilitating human and sex and
drug trafficking.
Of course, the migrants come into this country--it is true, Venezuela
is emptying their jails, their mental institutions. There are some bad
people, there are some criminals coming into this country. Of course,
we see evidence with these migrant crimes, horrific crimes--people who
no longer are alive because of President Biden's open border policy,
because of Secretary Mayorkas executing President Biden's open border
policy.
I am not a lawyer, and I am not a prosecutor, but I believe it is a
crime to aid and abet other crimes, so from my standpoint, I think the
House managers ought to be allowed to make their case. Again, they laid
out very compelling--very compelling--Articles of Impeachment today. It
is a pretty simple case. It probably won't take that long for them to
make their case, to present it for the Senate. Why won't Majority
Leader Schumer allow the House managers to make their case? Why won't
he allow the Senate to fulfill its constitutional duty to try
impeachments?
Listen, impeachments are not that regular. The least we can do is
fulfill that constitutional duty and listen to the evidence and allow
the House managers to make their case. I think their case is
overwhelmingly convincing.
The repercussions of President Biden and Secretary Mayorkas's open
border policy will be felt by Americans for years, if not decades, to
come.
About the only thing Congress can do when a President or a member of
the executive branch is not faithfully executing the laws, when they
are completely derelict in their duty, when their dereliction of duty
or the lack of faithfully executing the law is resulting in the deaths
of Americans--again, the open border policy is resulting in the deaths
of American citizens. It is resulting in young women being forced into
the sex trafficking trade. It is resulting in higher levels of fentanyl
overdoses. That evidence needs to be heard. That case needs to be made.
The Senate should hold a trial.
With that, I yield the floor.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Florida.
Israel
Mr. SCOTT of Florida. Mr. President, I will get to the issue of
Secretary Mayorkas's impeachment in a moment, but I would first like to
speak to Iran's attack on Israel this weekend.
We all saw what happened on Saturday evening. Israel is once again
under attack--this time, under direct attack from Iran--and the United
States must clearly and strongly stand with our great ally and fully
support its right and obligation to defend itself by any means
necessary.
I was just in Israel, a few weeks ago, to meet with Prime Minister
Netanyahu and see the terror and devastation that Iran-backed Hamas
terrorists unleashed on the Jewish State on October 7, firsthand. More
than 1,200 were murdered, and hundreds are still being held hostage by
Hamas just for being Jewish. Americans are among the hostages and those
murdered that day.
The horrors of that attack are difficult to describe and can never
ever happen again. Today, I continue to pray for the safety of the
Israeli people and call on every Republican and every Democrat to stand
unequivocally with Israel as it fights for its very existence against
evil terrorism.
Again and again, Democrats have blocked the passage of aid for
Israel. Democrats have blocked Israel aid four times in the U.S.
Senate.
The House has passed a good bill that is ready for Senate passage
right now. I urge Majority Leader Chuck Schumer to immediately put the
House-passed Israel aid bill on the floor, as well as my Stop Taxpayer
Funding of Hamas Act, tonight. Nothing before the Senate is more
important, and I will do everything in my power to make sure that vote
happens as soon as possible.
Let us all remember who the enemy is here and has always been: the
evil and terror-supporting regime in Iran.
Since its first days, the Biden administration has emboldened Iran
with appeasement, freeing billions upon billions of dollars to fuel
Iran's support of terrorism and turning its back on Israel.
Israel is the only democracy in the Middle East and one of America's
strongest allies, but it took President Biden months to meet or speak
with Prime Minister Netanyahu after he took office. And, unfortunately,
the world took notice.
Since October 7, President Biden and Democrats in Washington have
continued to undermine Israel's fight against Iran-backed Hamas
terrorists, further isolating our ally in its greatest time of need.
And here is where what has happened in Israel ties into the
impeachment of Secretary Mayorkas that we are dealing with here at home
this week.
Mayorkas Impeachment
America and the freedom-loving nations of the world are less safe and
secure because of President Biden's weakness and appeasement of evil
regimes and the terror each support. That is a fact that the FBI
Director confirmed when I questioned him in the Homeland Security
Committee, last year.
And the terrifying truth is that, while President Biden's weakness
has emboldened our enemies, Secretary Mayorkas has shown that he will
do absolutely nothing to stop evil people from invading our country
through our southern border and launching attacks on the U.S. homeland.
This isn't some hypothetical nightmare. The possibility of an attack
by terrorists on U.S. soil is something that the FBI and U.S.
intelligence community are terrified about.
The threats are all up. We know terrorists are coming into America
because of the wide-open southern border.
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That is a fact. America is a more dangerous place because Mayorkas and
Biden have allowed criminals, drugs, terrorists, and other dangerous
people into our communities.
There are real consequences to this failure to secure the border, and
each victim has a name. Real Americans with families are being killed.
Real American families are being torn apart by vicious crimes and
deadly drugs because we have a wide-open border. Innocent Americans
like Laken Riley are paying the ultimate price for Mayorkas's failures.
Ten million people have illegally crossed, and 6 million have been
allowed to stay and had the red carpet rolled out for them, courtesy of
the American taxpayers. There have been sexual assaults and murders
committed by illegal aliens all across this country--even in my home
State of Florida, where a young man was recently killed. The man
charged with his death is an illegal alien.
Now, because of these failures, the Republican majority in the House
has voted to impeach Mayorkas for violating his oath of office. They
took their time. They got the evidence. They made the decision to
impeach. Whether anyone in this Chamber believes it was right or wrong,
that happened, and we should now hold a trial to let Mayorkas make his
case. That is our constitutional duty.
But unlike what happened in 2019, when Democrats alone voted to
impeach the President and Republicans controlled the Senate, Majority
Leader Chuck Schumer is going to deny Secretary Mayorkas the ability to
defend himself in a trial. He will not have the ability to defend
himself in a trial.
It seems to me that the majority leader doesn't want to let Mayorkas
defend himself in a trial for one of two reasons. The majority leader
is either acting out of pure political interests to protect his
incumbent Members who don't want to talk about Mayorkas's record and
the wide-open border he has created and all the crime, drugs, and
illegal immigration it is allowing; or the majority leader is just
terrified of a trial exposing Mayorkas's failure to a degree that
acquittal would be extremely painful for the Democrats to explain to
the American people.
Here is what I don't understand. Democrats voted against a bill to
stop illegal aliens from getting on a commercial flight with no
verifiable ID. You have to; they don't. Democrats voted against
deporting illegal aliens who hurt police. And Democrats voted against
the Laken Riley Act, which simply requires ICE to take illegal aliens
who commit crimes into custody before tragedies strike.
So it seems to me that Democrats have no problem voting to keep this
border crisis going and blocking every attempt the Republicans make to
stop the crime and secure the border. But when it comes to Secretary
Mayorkas, they shut everything down and don't let him speak.
Secretary Mayorkas is a former prosecutor. Surely, he knows how to
handle himself and defend his actions. He must believe that he has a
case to present to the American people on why he should not be found
guilty, but he is not going to get that chance. And Senate Democrats
are setting a dangerous precedent and destroying the rules and
traditions of the Senate to keep Mayorkas silent.
I have one question: Is Mayorkas being silenced because Democrats are
terrified of his record and unable to defend him or because they don't
trust him? Whatever the answer might be, I urge my Democratic
colleagues to get over the discomfort that it is causing them and do
what is right for the safety of American families.
The events of this weekend have shown, once again, that the world is
a much more dangerous place under President Biden's failed leadership.
If Democrats put politics over the safety of American families and the
security of our great Nation, I fear the consequences will be
devastating beyond our worst fears.
I want everybody to stop for one moment--just stop and think about
their families; think about their mom or their dad or their sister or
brother or their wife; think about their children or their
grandchildren or their nieces and nephews. Since Biden took office,
people like that, just like your family that you love and cherish--
people like that--here is what has happened to them: Some have died in
drug overdoses. Some have been raped. Some have been murdered. Some
have been sold into slavery, basically.
It is devastating. I don't know how anybody could sit there and not
care about people just like their mom, their dad, their brother, their
sister, their spouse, their children, their grandchildren, or their
nieces and nephews. But that is exactly what is going on here when we
do not have the opportunity to hold Mayorkas accountable.
I yield the floor.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Alabama.
Mr. TUBERVILLE. Mr. President, the House managers have officially
delivered the letters of impeachment for Department of Homeland
Security Secretary Mayorkas to the Senate. Now is the time for every
Senator to go on record.
Do you think Mayorkas has done a good job at the border? Has Mayorkas
fulfilled the oath he swore before this body to protect and to defend
our country against all threats, foreign and domestic? Is our border
secure?
The answer is simple. Mayorkas has intentionally failed to do his
job.
Now, Senator Schumer and the globalist Democrats have the opportunity
to conduct a full and a fair trial before the entire Senate and the
public. Unfortunately, that is not how this is going to play out.
Democrats are going to try to table the Articles of Impeachment, which
has never been done in the history of the Senate. They are going to
attempt to sweep the border crisis that President Biden has created
under the rug.
Every single House Democrat voted to save Mayorkas's job. They
endorsed our wide-open borders that have allowed terrorists, drug
traffickers, and murderers into our country. The Democrats are lying to
themselves and risking the lives of every American. Senator Schumer and
the Democrats can't say they want to fix our border while voting to
save Mayorkas's job.
Mayorkas has been derelict in his duty to secure the border in the 3
years he has been on the job. Our border is the least secure it has
ever been. In fact, it is almost nonexistent. Our Border Patrol agents
are so overwhelmed and receive such little support from the Biden
administration to enforce our laws that they have been forced to
release millions of illegal immigrants into the United States. And
those who are released on parole, they are even given work permits.
The Biden administration is more concerned with taking care of
illegal aliens than they are about protecting American citizens. We
might as well start mailing every criminal, drug trafficker, and
terrorist an open invitation to cross our borders.
I have spoken numerous times on this floor to highlight stories of
Americans who have died at the hands of illegal aliens. Their tragic
deaths are a direct result of Secretary Mayorkas's inaction. Mayorkas
and Joe Biden have blood on their hands.
The most important responsibility of any sovereign nation is the
safety of its citizens. Yet what did the Department of Homeland
Security announce just last week? They plan on sending another $300
million to communities receiving illegal aliens from this border
crisis.
The top priority of this administration is to let as many people in
as quickly as possible, regardless of how many American lives are lost
in the process.
The number of people crossing into the United States who are on the
Terrorist Watchlist is unprecedented. Just last week, it was reported
that an Afghan on the FBI Terror Watchlist has been in the United
States for almost a year. He is a member of a U.S.-designated terrorist
group responsible for the deaths of at least nine American soldiers and
civilians in Afghanistan. ICE arrested him in San Antonio just this
past February. Unfortunately, this known terrorist has been released on
bond. He is now roaming our neighborhoods.
You know, it just isn't terrorists we have to worry about. Fentanyl
is flowing freely across our borders, and it is killing hundreds of
thousands of Americans--not thousands but hundreds of thousands. Law
enforcement officers in my State of Alabama tell me, time and again,
how their officers must wear heavy equipment and carry Narcan
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spray to protect themselves from the fentanyl that is pouring into our
communities. And, by the way, most will tell you they never heard of
fentanyl until this administration came into power.
Despite the critical need to secure our borders and discourage
illegal immigration, Mayorkas has been traveling the world--yes, this
Mayorkas, traveling the world--lecturing other countries about their
national security, while his refusal to enforce U.S. laws has exposed
his own country to an invasion. It is embarrassing.
In February, he traveled to Austria to speak with Chinese officials
about counter-narcotic efforts. Did he discuss with them the flood of
Chinese illegal immigrants coming to the United States through the
southwest border? Since October of last year, 22,000 Chinese nationals
have been arrested by Border Patrol agents at the southwest border and
released into our country. Most of these individuals are single adult
males of military age.
Yet, the media tries to act like all these people crossing the border
are innocent women and children. Now, some of them are, but most are
not.
This invasion is more than a border crisis; it is a national crisis.
Yet I seriously doubt Mayorkas even brought up that point in his
meeting with the Chinese officials.
In February, he was in Germany for the Munich Security Conference.
The Munich Security Conference is the largest international security
meeting in the world. Mayorkas was there giving speeches on
strengthening global security and partnerships. Meanwhile, the border
he is responsible for is wide open, and thousands of people are dying.
Give me a break. Our allies must be laughing at us--absolutely
laughing.
The Secretary's priority should be here in our country, securing our
borders, protecting our citizens. President Biden has made the United
States a joke around the world.
Under this administration, nearly 10 million people have invaded our
country. Every State is now a border State--every State. This is not a
gray area.
Secretary Mayorkas has intentionally failed to do his job. He has
personally lied to me to my face three times in the last 3 years--a
U.S. Senator. Just tell me the truth. He can't say the truth. He can't
tell you the truth.
To my Democratic colleagues, have you read the heartbreaking stories
of innocent Americans who have been murdered by illegal aliens? Are you
concerned? Are you concerned about the safety of your spouses, your
kids, your nieces and nephews? Does it worry you that hundreds of
terrorists are flooding our country? Does that bother you at all? Do
you know somebody who has died of fentanyl which was trafficked into
our country by cartels?
This isn't about politics, folks. Our national security and our
country's future are at stake. Americans deserve to know the truth
about how Secretary Mayorkas has intentionally failed to secure the
border.
I will be voting to hold Mayorkas accountable.
I yield the floor.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Utah.
Mr. LEE. Mr. President, we have a job to do. That job is not
optional. It is assigned to us by the United States Constitution--a
document to which we have all sworn an oath under article I, section 3,
clause 6. The Senate has the power and, I would add here, the duty to
try all impeachments--not just some impeachments, not just those
impeachments with which the majority party feels really happy about
looking into, but all impeachments. It is the way it has always been in
U.S. history.
When the House sends over Articles of Impeachment, if we have
jurisdiction, which we clearly, plainly do here, it is our job to
conduct a trial. What do I mean by that? Well, it is really a simple
concept. In Articles of Impeachment, an accusation is made. Our job is
to just decide whether that accusation is meritorious or not, whether
the thing that has been accused is legitimate, whether the person who
has been accused did the thing that was wrong--committed the high crime
or misdemeanors spoken of in the Constitution.
We have a job to do, and it is a job that the Senate has always done
when we have jurisdiction following the adoption of Articles of
Impeachment.
Now, let's remember, this is a historic day. This hasn't happened
very often. It is only the 22nd time in American history in which
Articles of Impeachment have been adopted by the House. In this
circumstance where we clearly, plainly have jurisdiction, there is no
valid basis for us to do anything other than to decide whether the
accusations are legitimate. We have to do that. We don't have the
luxury of simply standing back and saying: Ah, we don't want to handle
it.
Now, I know, I know, the Senate has found ways of shirking its
responsibility over and over and over again in all of the operations of
the Senate's work. Sometimes--most of the time, we sit as a legislative
body, where we consider legislation. We pass law or decline to do so.
Other times, we sit in an executive capacity, where we review
Presidential nominations to consider them, whether we should confirm
them, and also consider treaties. That is in an executive capacity. We
also sometimes sit as a Court of Impeachment.
Now, in other areas, the Senate has found ways of shirking its
responsibilities. We have handed off a whole lot of the lawmaking power
to unelected, unaccountable bureaucrats in the executive branch. In our
executive capacity, we have whittled down the number of executive
branch nominees who are subject to Senate confirmation, even as the
total volume of those individuals has increased. Now it seems we are
determined yet again to whittle down our responsibilities in the one
area where we have an affirmative duty, an affirmative obligation, an
affirmative command within the Constitution requiring us to make a
decision.
In the immortal words of Rush, in one of my favorite Rush songs of
all time, called ``Freewill,'' if you choose not to decide, you still
have made a choice. Yet that is what Senate Democrats are planning to
ask us to do within 24 hours--ask us to not decide, ask us to take
these accusations in these Articles of Impeachment duly passed by a
majority of the House of Representatives, the body in the Congress that
has the sole power to impeach--it is not just 218-plus random people
who decided to make the accusations against Secretary Alejandro
Mayorkas, who heads the U.S. Department of Homeland Security. No. It is
those particular 218-plus people in the House of Representatives who
have that power.
You see, there is a reason why the impeachment power belongs
exclusively to the House of Representatives. The House of
Representatives is within the legislative branch--the branch of the
Federal Government most accountable to the people at the most regular
intervals. Within the Congress, within the legislative branch, they are
the body most accountable to the people at the most regular intervals.
That is why they call it the People's House. They are the only ones
entrusted with this power.
A majority of them, of that 435-Member body, has concluded that
Alejandro Mayorkas must be impeached. Now, they didn't do it for light
and transient reasons. They didn't do it because of a policy
disagreement. No. A majority of the House of Representatives has chosen
to impeach Secretary Mayorkas for the reason that he has affirmatively
defied the commands of Federal law--the laws in particular that he is
charged with administering.
They have identified at least seven or eight different provisions of
the Immigration and Nationality Act, including section 235(b)(2)(A) and
235(b)(1)(B)(ii) and 236(c) and 236(a) and 212(d)(5)(A), just to
mention a few of them.
These Articles of Impeachment outline a myriad of instances in which
Secretary Mayorkas has been commanded decisively, unambiguously to
detain illegal immigrants pending one action or another, pending one
determination or another as to their eligibility either for immigration
parole or for asylum or for something else. He is required to detain
them, and he didn't detain them.
These are just a few examples of the many things that he has done in
direct contravention to a direct command by the law. And it is not just
that he didn't do the things that he was commanded to do; it is that he
did the exact opposite of those things. He was commanded, for example,
not to exercise his immigration parole authority
[[Page S2777]]
under 212(d)(5)(A). He is not allowed to do that categorically. He is
allowed to do that only for discrete, individualized, particularized
circumstances in which there is a profound, pronounced humanitarian or
public need. Yet he issued all these categorical parole orders,
creating categorical immigration parole programs allowing for literally
hundreds of thousands of people a year to be brought into this country
lawlessly, without documentation, without just cause to be brought into
the United States. He made illegal immigrants legal by violating the
affirmative command of the law.
It is not yet clear exactly what form the arguments presented by the
Democrats tomorrow will take, but we do know this: Whether they call it
a motion to dismiss or a motion to table, they want to not decide
something that has to be decided, by order of the Constitution, by the
Senate.
These accusations are real. They make a difference. They make a
difference to the American people. These crimes--or I should say high
crimes and misdemeanors--of which Secretary Mayorkas has been accused
are not victimless crimes--far from it. These are offenses that have
resulted in millions--on the low end, it is maybe 7 or 8 million; on
the high end, it is more like 12, 13, or 14 million--of people who have
come into this country unlawfully since January 20, 2021. The
administration of Joe Biden has willfully, intentionally brought people
into this country who aren't supposed to be here, who aren't allowed to
be here. And it is not just the addition of those sheer numbers of
people; it is the fact that among those people are many thousands of
military-age Chinese males, many millions of military-age males from
other countries, including hundreds of suspected terrorists, including
thousands who come from countries that we pay close attention to
because we know those countries are full of a lot of people who are
bent on acts of lawlessness, violence, and terrorism against the United
States of America.
This, of course, is just the beginning. This says nothing about the
countless neighborhoods and schools and communities and jobs and lives
that have been lost or violated or rendered unsafe or all of the above
as a result of those who have been brought in not just with the
acquiescence of but at the invitation of and with the assistance of the
Secretary of Homeland Security, the very man whose job it is to protect
us from those very things and who has very specific orders that he
follows--orders that have been put into law by the Congress of the
United States.
He is breaking the law over and over and over again specifically to
allow for illegal immigration. So the Democrats are expected to come
along tomorrow and say: Yeah, but we don't want to have to decide this.
We don't want to have to decide it because, well, it is an election
year, President Biden is on the ballot, and this is already an area
where he is not doing well. And we have other Members of this body,
including, you know, a certain Senator from Montana, for example, or
maybe a certain Senator from Ohio, for example, or a Senator from
Pennsylvania, among others, who are going to be up for reelection.
Sure, they would rather not have to address this. I understand why
they would rather be doing something else, anything else, other than
this. They would rather reorganize their sock drawer. Some of them
would probably much rather have a root canal or another painful
procedure without anesthesia than focus on this. But, alas, the
Constitution is agnostic as to your sock-reorganization days. The
Constitution doesn't care how often you go to the dentist and whether
you get a root canal with or without anesthesia. But, you know, the
Constitution does care about one thing in particular and very relevant
here today, and that is that the Senate is to try all impeachments.
This is an impeachment. We have to try it, particularly in the
absence of the case being rendered moot by a vacancy in office or death
or otherwise--circumstances that are noticeably absent here. We have
the duty to do this.
What happens when we don't? What happens if they get their way and
they choose either to table or to dismiss or use some other fancy word
to try to avoid doing their job? What happens? Well, more deaths
occur--deaths like the tragic passing of Laken Riley, who was taken
from us just a few weeks ago as a result of Secretary Mayorkas's
lawless conduct along the border. But for his lawless conduct and his
cavalier treatment of the law--in fact, his defiant refusal to abide by
the law and, in fact, his dogged determination to break the law--Laken
Riley would have still been alive. Countless others who have undergone
horrific events within their families--murders, rapes, sexual assaults,
robberies, drunk driving--all kinds of horrific trauma that the
American people have endured. Some of that is going to happen from
people who live here already. We shouldn't add to that by bringing in
others who shouldn't be here to begin with. This is exactly the kind of
thing that our immigration laws are designed to protect against.
As one who spent 2 years living and working along our southern
border--living and working among and with the poorest of the poor,
including many immigrants themselves, recent immigrants, in many
cases--I can tell you, there is no group of people who has more cause
to fear uncontrolled waves of illegal immigration than recent
immigrants themselves, including, and especially, the poor who live on
or near a border. It is their jobs, it is their families, it is their
schools, it is their neighborhoods, it is their homes that are most
directly put in jeopardy every single time we fail or, in the case of
Secretary Mayorkas, we adamantly refuse to obey and enforce the law and
we do everything that we can to undermine it as he has done.
There is no set of arguments I can imagine--I look forward to hearing
what arguments might be had tomorrow, might be presented tomorrow--that
could be presented with any kind of a straight face that could say we
need not address the merits of this accusation--because there are none.
Perhaps, they will argue that this is an accusation amounting to mere
maladministration--he didn't do a good job. That is not at all what we
have here. Even if that is what we have here, that still wouldn't mean
that they didn't have to try the case and come up with an answer as to
whether or not he did what they said he did.
But the impeachment power goes back some, you know, two and a half
centuries to the dawn of the Republic. Nearly two and a half centuries
ago, when we became a country, we relied heavily on the legal systems--
a tradition, in some cases--of the terminology used in England. And
during the early years of the Republic, we had individuals who were
familiar with our Constitution who were also familiar, having practiced
in the law at the time of the Revolution and some cases before then--
they knew the meaning of these words.
Supreme Court Justice Joseph Story is one of those individuals who
lived, practiced, and wrote at and after the time of the American
Revolution, during the early decades of our young Republic. And he
explained that, among other things, an impeachment could be found, high
crime and misdemeanor could be committed where, for instance, a lord
admiral who was found to have neglected the safeguard of the sea. It
is, perhaps, the most directly analogous comparison he makes to the
Secretary of Homeland Security, that would be, you know, best described
perhaps as a dereliction of duty, a failure to do one's job. If that--a
lord admiral neglecting the safeguard of the sea--if that was a high
crime and misdemeanor, it follows for sure--it is even more certain--
that the Secretary of Homeland Security, having defied more than a half
dozen direct commands of Federal law and done the exact opposite of
those things, has also committed a high crime and misdemeanor.
Now, maybe some in this body disagree. Maybe some in this body
believe that the facts are different than they have been alleged here.
Well, that is what a trial is for. That is why we don't just take the
word of the House of Representatives for it. We do our job over here.
We have to review the accusation, and we have to review it against the
backdrop of what arguments and evidence they present to us.
We will be sworn in tomorrow at 1 p.m. to be finders of fact and to
be judges of law relevant to the impeachment accusation. If we decide
not to decide, we still have made a choice. We
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shouldn't do that here. Doing that here would be a dereliction of duty.
Doing that here would be profoundly disrespectful to the hundreds of
millions of Americans who elected us and, especially, to the families
of those--like the family of Laken Riley and countless others--whose
lives have been permanently and tragically disrupted by the lawlessness
exhibited by Secretary Mayorkas.
We must do our job. We must hold a trial. That trial must culminate
in a finding of guilt or innocence. The Constitution and our commitment
to it requires nothing less.
I yield the floor.
The PRESIDING OFFICER (Mr. King). The Senator from Ohio.
Tribute to D. Taylor
Mr. BROWN. Mr. President, I rise early this evening to recognize D.
Taylor, a fierce labor advocate, a key partner in our fight for workers
in this country, a friend who retired from his role as President of
UNITE HERE earlier this month. Everything D. has done--and I have
watched him closely; I have worked closely with him. Everything D. has
done over the course of his career comes back to the dignity of work,
the idea that hard work should pay off for everyone, whether you punch
a clock, whether you swipe a badge, whether you work in an office,
whether you work for tips, whether you are raising children, or whether
you are caring for an aging parent.
The dignity of work has guided D. Taylor through his whole career as
he fought to unionize industries that have long been overlooked with
workers who have long been underpaid and ignored.
For the past 12 years, D. served as President of UNITE HERE, a union
that represents workers across the hospitality industry. Its members
work in airports, in food service, in hotels. They make textiles; they
serve on Amtrak trains; they cross the Nation.
It is not a coincidence we have seen momentum in the labor movement
while D. has been at the helm of UNITE HERE. So often, where we have
seen unprecedented union growth, D. and his members have been on the
frontlines organizing, invigorating, calling for change. This
generation--this youngest generation now--is quantifiably, certainly,
the most pro-labor generation of our lifetimes.
Under D., UNITE HERE has become one of the fastest growing trade
unions in the country. Despite a pandemic that devastated workers in
hospitality, D. has actually expanded UNITE HERE. He focused on
southern States and right-to-work States--much harder States to
organize than the Presiding Officer's State of Maine or mine in Ohio--
not that it is easy in those States with Federal law but even harder in
those southern States.
Workers, traditionally, haven't had a seat at the table. During his
time as president, D. oversaw the union's organizing of 140,000 service
and hospitality workers in over 1,000 workplaces across the country.
Because of D. and UNITE HERE, these workers now have a union card. That
means higher pay; it means better benefits; it means safer workplaces;
and it means something that many don't think about: It means more
control over your schedule.
I remember being in Nevada at the Culinary Workers Union Local 226,
which D. built into a powerhouse. That union is an inspiration for
workers everywhere. They had a massive banner on the wall that said
``One job should be enough''; that workers should not have to have two
and three jobs to support their families.
``One job should be enough.''
I remember--this wasn't directly about D., but I will never forget
this discussion I had in Cincinnati. I was at an AFL-CIO dinner. There
were a number of people--probably 300 people there. And there was one
table where there were four or five middle-aged women. I sat down--they
had an empty seat and said: Join us. And I sat down at the table and
said: Tell me your story.
They said: We just organized custodial workers. We had our first
contract--1,200 custodial workers negotiating with the downtown
business owners in Cincinnati. They said: We signed our first contract.
I said: What does that mean to you?
A woman said: I am 51 years old. It is the first time I have a paid
one-week vacation.
Those are the workers so often that D. Taylor organizes--workers who
are generally low-paid, workers sometimes without healthcare, workers
often without vacations, workers that have no say over their schedule.
Those are the people that D. worked with. D. always said: One job
should be enough. That is what he fought for.
He first got involved as a college student while working in a local
restaurant. He joined the union. He eventually became the shop steward
for that local. After graduation, he moved to Nevada to work on a UNITE
HERE strike. He quietly moved up through the ranks, eventually leading
the union in a 7-year--the famous 7-year Frontier Casino strike, one of
the longest successful strikes in labor history. D. became a key player
in negotiations with some of the largest casinos on the strip.
He became an institution at UNITE HERE. As a head of the Culinary
Union, he built a coalition of service workers. He showed the country
there is no reason a service job can't be a good job where you are
respected, make good wages, and build a career.
As Gaming Division Director, he led casino workers across the country
to victory, organizing new members and leading new strikes. He went on
to be the general vice president of UNITE HERE before being elected as
union president.
All along the way, he became known for that constant refrain: ``One
job should be enough.'' Let me say that one more time: One job should
be enough. For everybody in this institution, that is kind of the way
it is. But for far too many low-paid workers, they have to work a
second job or third job to pay the rent, to support their kids, to just
get along every day.
He has fought to make that rally cry a reality by transforming
standards for work in hospitality and services. It has meant securing
higher pay. It has meant fighting for contracts with affordable,
quality healthcare that workers have access to and can navigate their
way through. It has meant standing up to layoffs. It has meant helping
tens of thousands of workers get their jobs. Because of D., workers
across the country are in better jobs with better pay and better
benefits.
I have had the privilege of working with D. on many issues, including
fighting for the Senate's dining workers. Believe it or not, the people
who served us in this institution were making very suboptimal wages--
some, barely enough. One man I met when I was involved in this actually
lived and worked here all day and lived and worked at a homeless
shelter all night. Imagine that.
One job should be enough.
They served the Senate during a pandemic, during a violent
insurrection. Every day, they fed Senators and staff and tourists from
Ohio and Maine and all over the country. Yet fewer than one in five of
them, at that time, could afford the health insurance plan that was
offered to them.
Together, we fought to make sure the new contract honors the dignity
of work with the pay and the benefits and the respect that Senate
dining workers deserve and have earned--that all workers deserve and
have earned. It wouldn't have happened without D., without UNITE HERE,
without the Senate dining workers who used their voices and their
collective power to secure a better contract. That is just one example.
In every role, at every opportunity, D. has fought to turn jobs that
traditionally have come with low pay and minimal benefits into careers
where people can build a life and see a future--simply the dignity of
work, where their work has dignity. For that, we are grateful for D.'s
tenacity, for his advocacy. And for his leadership, we are grateful.
In retirement, D., of course, will keep fighting for workers as chair
of UNITE HERE Health, and he will support the union and gaming
industry. He will never fully retire.
I look forward to working with his successor, Gwen Mills, the current
secretary treasurer of UNITE HERE, the first-ever woman president in
this union's history to be elected to an international union; the
first-ever woman in this union's history to ever be elected
international union president in a union that has a huge number of
women, as you know.
If you love this country, you fight for the people who make it work.
That is
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exactly what D. has done his whole life. It is what UNITE HERE has
done. It is what I will continue to work with my colleagues to do in
this body.
I yield the floor.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Oklahoma.
Israel
Mr. LANKFORD. Mr. President, it has been just 6 months and a week
since October 7. The whole world was shaken as a flood, as they
actually called it, an Al-Aqsa flood of Hamas terrorists came through
the wall separating Gaza and Israel in multiple places, and over the
next several hours, they murdered 1,200 Israelis. They took 253
hostage, including 133 who are still hostage still today--6 months and
a week.
Last week--now, I guess, 9 days ago--I was in Israel. I spent time
with Israelis to meet with multiple different leaders and get a chance
just to be able to talk to different folks in different parts of the
country to see what is going on, on the ground.
This is a painful moment for the entire world but definitely a
painful moment for Israel and for the entire region. We think back just
7 months ago and all the conversation was normalization between Saudi
Arabia and Israel. And then a group of Hamas terrorists stepped in and
killed as many people as they possibly could in an effort to also kill
that normalization that is happening around the entire region, to do
whatever they could to be able to drive a wedge, and so that peace
could not continue to advance in the region.
What has happened since then has been painful for the entire world to
watch, but it has been really painful for the people in that region
more than anyone else.
I traveled to the far southern tip of Israel, along the border with
Egypt, to be able to meet with some of the folks who are in that area,
to be able to talk about the relationship between Egypt and Israel and
what is happening day to day. I traveled to the kibbutzes that
literally are right on the border with Gaza that are now vacant and
empty and devastated.
I can't even begin to explain to this body, unless you have seen it
before, the pain of walking through a large kibbutz where there were
hundreds of people who lived just a few months ago and now to see every
building shot up with bullet holes, burned, destroyed, and think at
6:38 that morning, during a Jewish holiday, on that Saturday morning,
October 7, many people were still asleep when a group of Hamas
terrorists came into their homes and murdered many in that village and
took many hostages from that kibbutz.
We could literally walk by the doors, and the person who was walking
with us could say: That family died, that family is a hostage, that
family died, and go door-to-door as we walked around to be able to see
it.
The person who was walking us through could even walk us through his
own home, which was obliterated, and his son's home right there who
died, and then he could point to Gaza and say: My other son is over
there in Gaza right now.
At the same time, flowers were blooming and the grounds were
beautiful and you realize the irony of this moment. Hostages being held
in Gaza, families who are struggling every single day trying to make
sense of this craziness and trying to figure out why a peaceful
kibbutz, living their lives, farming, manufacturing, was overrun by a
group of terrorists.
Right up the road we stopped by the Nova festival site, which is an
absolutely beautiful location for outdoor concerts, for venues, for
gathering, and has been for years. The trees and the setting, it is
just beautiful. But the day that we were there, there were echoing
noises of artillery that was being fired off literally within hundreds
of yards of us as we were meeting with some of the folks who survived
the Nova festival.
One person in particular whom we got a chance to be able to chat with
and to be able to pick her brain about the ``what happens next'' was in
one of the bomb shelters because there was a launch of missiles coming
at them, but then those bomb shelters became places where literally
they were sitting ducks for the terrorists as they came in with
gunfire.
We traveled all the way to the north, had the opportunity to be able
to visit with some of the mayors who are right along the border with
Syria and with Lebanon, where whole towns are evacuated, whole towns
where people can't survive the onslaught of artillery coming at them
constantly.
We lose track of the fact that there are about a quarter million
Israelis right now who are internally displaced as well, who live along
the border with Gaza or live along the border with Lebanon or Syria.
Those folks have also had to flee because while the world in the last
several days has talked about 330 drone strikes, missile strikes,
ballistics and cruise missiles that have come from Iran directly, for
some reason, the world has lost track of the fact, not about the 330
bombs and missiles that have come at Israel in the last week, but the
12,000 rockets that have been fired at Israel since October 7--12,000.
Mr. President, 9,100 of those rockets have come in from Gaza
launching at civilians in Israel; 3,100 of those rockets have been
launched from Lebanon, from Hezbollah, into the north of Israel; and 35
rockets have been fired from Syria at Israel.
And I asked people: How many rockets would be fired at your house
before you would respond in a way to be able to make it stop? Israel
has had 12,000 fired at them since October 7. The United States has
never ever put up with that without responding in a forceful way to say
we are going to make it stop.
There has been a lot of conversation about Rafah, so I had a lot of
conversations with Israeli leadership to be able to talk to them about
the plan and what they are going to do.
You see there are Hamas brigades. Now, when we think about terrorism,
often it is just random terrorists who are gathering. But Hamas
actually has a military structure with brigades that they have actually
put together of fighting brigades. Most of those brigades have been
broken up. The remaining brigades of Hamas terrorists are all living
underground at Rafah.
And while we need to do everything we can--and I had great
conversations with Israelis about everything that they are doing to
protect civilians and protect civilian lives that have nothing to do
with this onslaught of terrorism, they are also keenly aware that the
people who are living underground in Rafah are making public statements
on social media that as soon as this war is over, they are coming again
to do another October 7. And the Israelis are being very, very clear:
We are not going to allow that to happen. We are not going to allow our
Israeli citizens to be slaughtered in their beds early on a Saturday
morning again.
So they are doing everything they can to be able to prepare for that
moment, to be able to stop the group of terrorists who are living
underground. It is interesting to me when I think about the Hamas
terrorist organization. In the United States, our military trains and
prepares itself to get between violence and civilians. Hamas does the
opposite. Hamas actually trains and equips to put civilians between its
military and violence.
They put the civilians on the top layer while the safe shelters
underground are occupied by the terrorist armies. It is stunning to me
just the mental difference between the two and how jarring that that
really is.
Interesting conversations I had with some of the Israeli leadership,
as well, just to be able to chat with them, to say: You can't eliminate
Hamas by trying to be able to attack them over and over again to be
able to eliminate all people who think like Hamas and who are actually
a part of Hamas.
And their response was interesting to me. Their response was that we
fully understand we are not going to obliterate everyone who is in
Hamas. We want to stop the threat that is coming at us, but we
understand that there will be members of Hamas in the future who will
still think that way. And their response to me was there are still
Nazis in the world right now. There are still people who claim to be a
Nazi or a neo-Nazi right now, but the difference is, they don't run
Germany. And their first goal was that we want to end Hamas's rule, a
terrorist organization having the capacity to run the entity right next
door to us.
We understand that there will still be people who think like that,
but we want to show them there is a better way. And we still want to be
able to have peace with our neighbors.
[[Page S2780]]
You see, this connection between Hezbollah and Syria and Hamas is
Iran's plan and has been for a long time to build what they are calling
a ring of fire around Israel. It was their way of protecting
themselves--for the Iranian regime--that if they made it so violent
around Israel, Israel would never actually attack Iran. That was their
plan.
What is interesting was Israel has been working to be able to build a
ring of ice around Iran. That is the Abraham Accords. As Iran is trying
to make the region more violent, Israel is trying to make the region
more peaceful. It is stark when it is side by side, isn't it? Israel is
working to build relationships and has with UAE and with Bahrain.
They have had longstanding relationships with Jordan and with Egypt.
They are working in their relationship with Saudi Arabia as they have
even added Morocco into the Abraham Accords.
They are building a ring of ice into the region to bring the
temperature down in a violent, hostile area, and for the folks who are
in Hamas, they hate the thought of that because they don't want
normalization; they want violence and control. And as they scream,
``from the river to the sea,'' they mean the death of every Israeli,
and, quite frankly, every Jew worldwide. And they have been clear about
that.
Now, what do we need to do as Americans? I think we need to be
attentive in several areas. One is, Russia has formed an alliance with
Iran. Many of the weapon systems that are being shot right now at
Ukrainians are actually Iranian weapon systems, and we should not
ignore that. This alliance between Russia and Iran continues to grow.
In just the past several years, Russia has dramatically increased its
number of military bases in Syria.
They have now gone over 100 there, and there are 103 bases now in
Syria that are Russian active bases. We should pay attention to that.
For Iran, we have seen clearly what they are doing, how they continue
to attack. Again, there is this focus on 330 drones, cruise missiles,
and ballistic missiles that were fired at Israel just this past week.
What people may not be tracking is what continues to happen from
Lebanon, with the Iranian-backed Hezbollah continuing to attack Israel.
Just in the past 24 hours, Hezbollah has attacked northern Israeli
communities and cities six times in the last 24 hours. But, of course,
no media is covering that. But if you are in one of the communities
that is now vacant in northern Israel--and that they fled and they are
living in hotels or with relatives or fled to some other location from
northern Israel--they are keenly aware of what continues to happen
there.
We have got to deal with the continued threat and awakening from
Russia, but we have got to also think seriously about what is happening
with the regime in Iran. We, as a nation, have tried to pacify Iran. We
tried to isolate them diplomatically.
Now, I don't call for a military attack on Iran. No one wants
violence and war. We are not interested in our sons and daughters being
involved in another conflict. But to think that Iran is going to
suddenly be peaceful, when their regime is intent on trying to destroy
Israel at the time, should awaken all of us to the reality of where
Iran really is.
It was also good to be able to see, when 330 projectiles were coming
at Israel this week, that the Americans stood by their side. They shot
down a lot of those. The Israelis obviously shot down the majority of
them. But the British also were engaged in shooting those down. We had
French that were engaged. But also the Jordanians were engaged. The
Saudis were engaged. The region is pushing back on a violent Iran that
is intent on making the region worse and more unstable, not better.
Iran has used the vacuum of what has happened in Syria to move in
their radicalism across Syria, and they continue to make it a more and
more toxic place in Syria and in Iraq.
We, as the United States, should turn up our sanctions even more. We,
as the United States, should isolate Iran even more. We, as the United
States, should use every leverage that we have to isolate not only
their economy but to be able to be focused in on that regime, because,
quite frankly, that regime is oppressing its own people.
Our problem, as a nation, is not the Iranian people. They are living
under the oppression of the Iranian regime as well. It is the regime
that is there. And while some Members of this body have called for a
change in leadership in Israel, I would call for a change in leadership
in Iran, because that is really the problem in the region.
And we should find ways to be able to apply as much pressure as we
can on that regime and to be able to message to the people of Iran, as
often as we possibly can: We see you in the oppression that you live
under every single day, and we wish better for you--for well-educated
young men and women who live under the oppressive thumb of that
leadership.
Something else we can do as the United States is to stop allowing our
soil to be the place where the Iranian regime can spew their hatred.
This Thursday, the Iranian Foreign Minister is flying to the United
States to be able to speak to a group of people at the U.N., and our
administration has given him a visa.
I have called on Secretary Blinken to say, literally: This is one of
the Iranian leaders who is a leading voice in the IRGC, who is a
leading voice in the attack, in the preparation for October 7, who is a
leading voice of hatred toward the United States and the West and our
ally Israel. We should not extend a visa while Iran is attacking
actively from their soil and from all of their proxies. We should not
extend a visa to the Iranian Foreign Minister to come stand on our
soil, in our country, and spew his hatred. If he wants to do that
internationally, he can.
Now, I understand the U.N. is a body and a place where we have
allowed voices from all over the world to come speak. But do you know
what? There was a moment when President Obama denied a visa to Iranian
leaders because of where they were. There was a moment when President
Trump also denied some visas to some of the Iranian leaders because of
what they were actively doing.
This is a moment when President Biden and Secretary Blinken should
tell the Iranian Foreign Minister: Not this week, not right now, not at
all.
When you are attacking our friends, we should not loan them bits of
our soil to do it from our territory. We should make it clear that the
Iranian leadership that oppresses its own people and attacks our
allies--and, by the way, uses their proxies to murder Americans who are
also serving in the region--we should make it very clear: We will not
allow that on our soil.
I made it clear when I was in Israel that the people of the United
States see the people of Israel. We understand what they are living
under. And, as a nation that has faced terrorism in our Nation, we
understand the emotion that they have at this point, and we understand
their tenacity.
We, as the United States, should be very clear: We have an ally, and
it is Israel. We are going to walk with her. We are going to help
Israel in every way that we can because she has been attacked and is in
the middle of the war.
And when you walk through the streets of Tel Aviv or Jerusalem, you
feel it. Just like when you are walking through the streets along the
border with Gaza and Lebanon and Syria, you feel it. They are ready for
peace. And Israel is actively building a ring of ice in the region to
bring down the temperature of the region to push back directly on
Iran's ring of fire.
We, as a Nation, should be clear on which one we support--those who
are bringing peace or those who are bringing violence and hatred? We
should make that continually clear and continue to be able to act on it
diplomatically and, when we need to, to protect our allies in every way
we can, like we did this week with Israel.
Let's pray for the peace of Jerusalem, but let's also stand by her.
With that, I yield the floor.
The ACTING PRESIDENT pro tempore. The Senator from Oklahoma.
Mr. LANKFORD. I suggest the absence of a quorum.
The ACTING PRESIDENT pro tempore. The clerk will call the roll.
The senior assistant legislative clerk proceeded to call the roll.
Mr. WARNOCK. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the order
for the quorum call be rescinded.
[[Page S2781]]
The PRESIDING OFFICER (Mr. Kelly). Without objection, it is so
ordered.
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