[Congressional Record Volume 171, Number 53 (Monday, March 24, 2025)]
[Senate]
[Pages S1791-S1792]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]



                       Business Before the Senate

  Mr. THUNE. Mr. President, we recently completed a 10-week session. 
The Senate's longest in-session stretch in 15 years. It was a very busy 
10 weeks filled with substantial results. We confirmed nearly the 
President's entire Cabinet--the fastest pace since the administration 
of George W. Bush.
  We laid the groundwork for a transformational investment in border 
security and national defense. We continued to develop legislation to 
extend the tax relief we put in place for American families in 
President Trump's first term.
  We passed legislation to ensure that illegal aliens arrested for 
various crimes are detained instead of being returned to America's 
streets.
  We considered other bills that Democrats blocked--bills to achieve 
such commonsense goals as protecting Americans and our allies from 
illegitimate targeting by the International Criminal Court, and 
ensuring that athletic opportunities for women and girls are not taken 
away from them by biological males.
  In our final week of session, we passed the HALT Fentanyl Act--
legislation to give law enforcement a critical tool to go after the 
people trafficking fentanyl into our country. We also passed 
legislation to fund the government, by a narrow margin. Ten Democrats 
voted to allow us to proceed to the bill and fund the government. The 
rest preferred to filibuster the bill and shut down the government.

[[Page S1792]]

  It was a double dose of Democrat hypocrisy. Democrats who had 
campaigned to abolish the filibuster enthusiastically embraced it now 
that it served their purposes. And Democrats who had decried the evils 
of government shutdowns now embraced shutting down the government.
  One Senator, for example, who just last March called shutdowns ``as 
devastating as they are stupid,'' voted for a shutdown 10 days ago.
  Another Democrat, who last February noted that ``even a partial 
shutdown could disrupt supply chains, hurt small businesses, risk 
travel delays, and increase food prices for millions of Americans,'' 
that Democrat also voted to shut down the government.
  Democrats are changing their positions so abruptly, it could give you 
whiplash. The only thing that doesn't look likely to change is 
Democrats' willingness to change their principles when it suits their 
political purposes.
  A new period of session begins today, and I hope the Democrats will 
manage to move past the fact they weren't able to shut down the 
government. But whether they accept their defeat or decide to throw a 
tantrum about it, we are going to continue to do the job that we were 
elected and sent here to do. In the next three weeks, we will continue 
to build out the President's administration by voting on more of his 
nominees. With the Cabinet almost entirely confirmed, we will be 
turning to undersecretaries and deputy secretaries as well as 
ambassadors. And like the White House, this work period will be focused 
on rolling back burdensome government regulations--in our case, through 
the Congressional Review Act resolutions.
  This week, we will send the President Senator Cruz's resolution to 
roll back the Biden administration's digital asset broker rule, which 
puts at risk the privacy and security of tens of millions of Americans 
who trade digital assets. We will also look to take up Senator Tim 
Scott's overdraft fee resolution overturning a Consumer Financial 
Protection Bureau rule that threatens access to credit for individuals 
and small businesses.
  And we will take up a number of other CR resolutions this work 
period. Finally, as I said, we have been hard at work on legislation to 
extend the tax relief we passed during President Trump's first term and 
to make a transformational investment in our border and national 
security.
  And those efforts will accelerate over the next three weeks. 
Confirming nominations, lifting burdensome regulations, laying the 
ground work for tax and border security legislation, I look forward to 
another busy work period ahead.
  I yield the floor.
  I suggest the absence of a quorum.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The clerk will call the roll.
  The senior assistant executive clerk proceeded to call the roll.
  Mr. SCHUMER. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the order 
for the quorum call be rescinded.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. Without objection, it is so ordered.