[Congressional Record Volume 171, Number 214 (Thursday, December 18, 2025)]
[Senate]
[Pages S8877-S8879]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]



                         Senate Accomplishments

  Mr. THUNE. Mr. President, as we wrap up--or are about to wrap up, I 
should say--our legislative work for 2025, I would say it has been 
quite a busy year here in the U.S. Senate: the longest session period 
in 15 years to kick off the year; a historic number of votes--the most, 
literally, in half a century. In fact, you can see on this chart the 
number of votes. You go back, the first date on there is 1989. 
Obviously, this is pretty small and difficult to see, perhaps, unless 
you are standing right over it, but if you look at the red line here, 
that is this year. So 653 votes have been cast so far this year, which 
dwarfs any year going back to 1989, which is what we have data going 
back to.
  We have since researched further back. Turns out there was one year--
1976. We went back eight decades. There was one year, in 1976, where 
the Senate cast more votes than we did this year.
  But if you go back to 1989, the closest one is right here--1995, 
which, for those of us who were actually following it back then, that 
was the Contract with

[[Page S8878]]

America year, and so that was a record number of votes cast in both I 
think the House and the Senate. But we have eclipsed that with 613 
votes cast in 1995. This year, in the U.S. Senate, we have already cast 
653, and we are not quite done yet.

  It is historic just in terms of the number of votes cast, the number 
of hours in session, and the number of days in session; also historic 
just in terms of the amount of time that we have been around here. So 
we have put in a lot of time here this year.
  I have always said that you can't equate volume of activity or 
busyness with productivity. Those are sometimes separate metrics. But I 
would argue that what really matters here is not the number of votes or 
the number of hours that we worked; it is what we accomplished with 
those hours.
  This has been an incredibly productive Senate, and I am proud to say 
that we have accomplished a lot this year in the U.S. Senate.
  Our flagship bill for the year, of course, was the One Big Beautiful 
Bill--the working families tax cut act--and the largest part of that 
was, in fact, the tax cuts that were enacted that are going to benefit 
American families.
  Back in 2017, the Republicans delivered substantial tax relief for 
hard-working Americans, but that tax relief was scheduled to expire at 
the end of this month. So one of our main priorities for this year was 
extending that tax relief. And extend it, we did. But we didn't just 
extend it. We made it permanent, and we added to it additional tax 
relief on top. So, now, hard-working Americans can enjoy permanently 
lower rates, plus an increased standard deduction, a further increase 
in the child tax credit, a new bonus deduction for seniors, no tax on 
tips, and no tax on overtime. And that list goes on and on.
  In addition to the new and permanent tax relief for individuals and 
families, we also made permanent important tax relief for businesses of 
all sizes to help our growth and expand jobs and opportunities for 
American workers.
  I would just say, again, if you look at that map, this measures--
again, it is too far away for people to see. But the color coding 
represents the amount of tax relief that people in these individual 
States, or even within a State, will receive based upon filings and 
what we expect they will be filing for next year. But you can see, at 
the top of that, the U.S. average is $3,752 in savings, as a result of 
what we did to prevent what would have been the largest tax increase in 
American history.
  So American families, this next year, and American businesses are 
going to have more money in their pockets as a result of what we did. 
Had we not taken those actions, the average family across this country 
would have seen a $3,752 increase in their taxes.
  So that is sort of representative of the chart across the country, 
and the darker ones mean you are probably getting more tax relief 
relative to the lighter colors. Nevertheless, everyone in this country 
who files a tax return is going to see a much lower tax bill--tax 
liability--this next year, as a result of what we did.
  That is a lot right there, in and of itself.
  The One Big Beautiful Bill didn't end with the working families tax 
cuts. We also invested in a more secure border and safer streets. We 
made a historic investment in our national security, and we repealed 
the Democrats' natural gas tax and took steps to unleash American 
energy production to ensure Americans have stable, plentiful, and 
affordable supply of energy. We took measures to modernize the farm 
safety net, something very important in my State of South Dakota; to 
address housing costs; and to repair and upgrade our air traffic 
control system.
  I could keep going.
  The working families tax cuts and the rest of the One Big Beautiful 
Bill accomplished a lot for hard-working Americans, but that is not all 
that we have done in the Senate this year.
  The American people elected President Trump last November. One of our 
priorities this year has been ensuring that the President has his team 
in place so he can do the job the American people elected him to do. I 
am proud to report that by the end of this week, we will have confirmed 
417 nominees, far more than were confirmed by this point in either 
President Trump's first term or in President Biden's term. It is even 
more remarkable--again, you can see this in real form here.
  This was President Trump's first term in office, at the end of his 
first year, which, again, ended 2017. There were 323 of his nominees 
that had been confirmed. Under President Biden, at the end of the first 
year, 2021, there were 365 of his nominees who had been confirmed by 
the U.S. Senate. And, as of today, that number here in 2025, in 
President Trump's second term, will be 417 nominees. That is important 
because every President needs to have his team in place to do the job 
the American people elected him to do.
  So as we think about it--and we looked and discussed on the floor 
yesterday--and you look at the President's first term, what makes it 
more remarkable was the fact that there was a historic level of 
obstruction by the Democrats to getting the President's nominees in 
place. I am talking about something unlike anything we have ever seen 
in American history for any President of any political party.
  If you look at his first term, President Trump remains the only 
President on record not to have had a single civilian nomination 
confirmed by unanimous consent or voice vote--the only President on 
record. Democrats have dragged out the process on almost every single 
one of the President's nominations, not out of principle but out of 
petty partisanship.
  Any President, going back in history, when they get elected, they get 
a mandate from the American people, generally in both political 
parties. I have been here through multiple administrations, both 
Republican and Democrat, and I have been here in multiple Congresses 
and Senates, both Republican and Democrat. In every case, particularly 
when you get past the Cabinet, which we all take very seriously, 
obviously, there is a process in place, and some of the changes we made 
to expedite nominations didn't affect Cabinet-level nominees. When you 
get to the sub-Cabinet level, in many cases, particularly 
noncontroversial nominees have been approved by unanimous consent or 
voice vote. It is a way of recognizing that a President needs to get 
his team in place in order to accomplish the work and the agenda that 
the American people elected, in this case, President Trump to do.

  So what happened this year was historic and unprecedented because 
most of those lower level Cabinet nominees are done by unanimous 
consent. That has just been the practice. That has been the precedent. 
That has been the tradition. That has been the history of the U.S. 
Senate. And for President Trump, the first President in American 
history--but as I said, we, as Republicans, haven't let that stop us. 
So when we close out this year with a total of 417 nominees, we will 
have the backlog of nominees essentially cleared.
  Considering nominations is one responsibility of the government. 
Funding the government, together with the House of Representatives, is 
another. One thing that I was determined on when I became leader was to 
make sure the Senate went about considering the yearly appropriations 
bills through regular order, a process that gives Senators from both 
parties the greatest chance to make their voices and the voices of 
their constituents, I might add, heard. We have done a lot to return 
the Senate to the regular order process this year.
  Appropriations work was unnecessarily delayed by the Democrats' 
decision to shut down the government for 6 weeks. But despite that, we 
have had multiple individual appropriations bills signed into law, and 
the Senate is well on its way to passing five additional bills.
  There is a lot more I could talk about when it comes to Senate 
accomplishments in 2025. We have taken action to repeal a number of 
burdensome rules and regulations, including the Biden electric vehicle 
mandate, appliance rules that would have driven up prices for hard-
working Americans and businesses, and energy mandates that would have 
driven up energy prices for American families.
  We passed the HALT Fentanyl Act to permanently schedule fentanyl 
analogs as the most deadly type of drugs. We passed the Laken Riley Act 
to keep criminal illegal aliens off of our

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streets. We passed the GENIUS Act, a landmark bill to create the first 
U.S. Federal framework for stablecoins and ensure U.S. leadership in 
financial innovation. We passed the TAKE IT DOWN Act to combat 
nonconsensual explicit images being shared online. There is so much 
more that I could talk about.
  We tried to do things that, ultimately, were blocked by Democrats, 
like legislation that would prevent biological males from hijacking 
opportunities for women and girls in sports.
  I guess my point is that it has been a long and challenging year here 
in the U.S. Senate. I thank all of my colleagues, both Republican and 
Democrat, and all the staffs, including folks here on the floor, who 
put in long days and long hours in this last year. I think, as I said, 
there is a lot to show for it.
  If I put up this last chart, you will have a hard time--nobody will 
be able to read this, for sure. I do this simply to illustrate. This is 
the list of things that we have accomplished in this last year. It runs 
the gamut of all the things--some of which I just mentioned and a lot I 
didn't mention--that were included in the working families tax cuts, 
the One Big Beautiful Bill that passed last summer. But then there are 
so many other things on this list that were accomplished as a result of 
the good work we have done on behalf of the American people here last 
year.
  It is an example of what we all came here to do. Thanks to our work 
this year, Americans are going to be looking at, one, safer streets; 
two, more money in their pockets; and, three, new opportunities to get 
ahead and new opportunities on the way for American people and American 
families.
  Mr. President, we are going to keep advancing those priorities here 
in the U.S. Senate, in 2026, and build on the record accomplishments 
and successes that we have had here in 2025.
  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.