[Congressional Record Volume 172, Number 4 (Wednesday, January 7, 2026)]
[Senate]
[Pages S67-S69]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




                          TRUMP ADMINISTRATION

  Mr. CORNYN. Mr. President, we are back for a short workweek, 
following the holidays, and, boy, is our plate full. But I think it is 
appropriate to take just a few minutes to reflect on the incredible 
progress we have made last year under the leadership of President 
Trump, Senate Majority Leader Thune, and Speaker Mike Johnson.
  Of course, one of the most important things we had to do in the 
Senate was to confirm the President's Cabinet and various nominees. Of 
course, our Democratic colleagues resisted at every turn, requiring 
that we actually change some of the rules of confirmation to allow the 
President to fulfill his mandate following his election and to get his 
team on the field. Democrats not only were sore losers when it came to 
the election of President Trump, but they wanted to deny him the team 
he needed in order to actually do what the American people elected him 
to do.
  The most important piece of legislation we passed--actually, there 
are a couple that come to mind, but one is the working family tax cuts 
act. I heard the Democratic leader talk about all sorts of 
``affordability'' issues, and, of course, that has now become the 
buzzword. Affordability is really nothing new in politics, as the 
Presiding Officer knows. It is all about kitchen table issues. That is 
what people care the most about. And there are a lot of things that we 
have already done, without any Democratic help, to try to make life 
more affordable for working families in Texas, in Nebraska, and across 
the Nation.
  But, obviously, we have a lot of work left to do. First, we have to 
finish a full year of government funding. Democrats have prevented us 
from passing normal appropriations bills, which have caused us to lurch 
from potential shutdown to shutdown. And, indeed, they ultimately 
pulled that trigger to the detriment of the American people and shut 
down the government for a historically long period of time.
  And for what effect? Well, a lot of people got hurt. A lot of people 
got inconvenienced. Many people didn't get paid.
  And what did the Democrats get? A talking point about healthcare. 
That is all they care about. They did not care about solving any of 
these problems, working together in a bipartisan way, which is what I 
believe we should do, but rather to try to score political points and 
try to embarrass the Trump administration and Republicans.
  But we have to finish that full year of funding because we do have 
another short-term continuing resolution deadline that expires on 
January 30. But I know Senator Collins, chair of the Senate 
Appropriations Committee, and Senator Murray and their counterparts in 
the House have been working very diligently to try to get the first 
tranche of appropriations bills across the floor so we can avoid 
staring another government shutdown in the face on January 30.
  Can you imagine how much actual work we could get done if we didn't 
exhaust ourselves in the fights over shutdowns and lurching from one 
deadline to the next? Well, maybe that is something we ought to think 
about, and that is the opportunity cost of going from shutdown to 
shutdown and all the spending cliffs.
  I would hope our Democratic colleagues have learned a lesson from

[[Page S68]]

their last misadventure, which resulted in the shutdown, and I hope 
they will spare the American people and a lot of folks who didn't get 
paid, who were inconvenienced, and for no real reason other than to 
provide them a talking point in the upcoming election.
  Again, we are happy to solve problems--that is why we serve here--and 
even on a bipartisan basis, but we are not interested in government 
shutdowns, which do nothing but try to advantage the Democratic Party 
in pursuing a talking point leading to the midterm elections.
  We have a lot of things to do between now and November of 2026. On 
the healthcare front, we offered an alternative to the disaster known 
as ObamaCare. There is incredible fraud against U.S. taxpayers in the 
ObamaCare subsidy regime and, particularly, the enhanced subsidies that 
were bumped up during the Inflation Reduction Act as part of the COVID 
era.
  But, unfortunately, insurance companies got rich, and the American 
people were not well served when it came to access to their healthcare. 
And the taxpayers were positively gouged by the fraud and mischief that 
occurred under the ObamaCare enhanced subsidy regime.
  We offered an alternative. President Trump said the money shouldn't 
go to insurance companies; it ought to go to the consumer, because who 
knows better than the consumer what they actually need in terms of 
their health insurance coverage.
  But, of course, our Democratic colleagues wouldn't countenance that. 
They don't actually believe in consumer choice. They don't believe in 
free enterprise. What they believe in is more government, more 
expensive government, and we know that is not the answer to the 
challenges that face working families when it comes to access to 
healthcare.
  Having choice to make a decision, not making young people subsidize 
old people, not making people buy something they don't need, and not 
foisting the bill on taxpayers by extravagant subsidies which do 
nothing but enrich insurance companies.
  Well, we know we have got a lot of work to do in that area, and we 
stand ready to work in good faith to come up with a workable bipartisan 
solution that will lower the cost of healthcare in the long term, if 
our Democratic colleagues are willing.
  Suffice it to say, we have our work cut out for us, though, in the 
Senate. While this year has barely started, President Trump has lost no 
time in defining the year with his usual strength and decisiveness.
  You know, back in the Federalist Papers, they debated what the Office 
of President should look like. And one of the things they talked about 
is the need for an energetic President and head of the executive 
branch. And, I must say, that is exactly what we got with the election 
of Donald J. Trump to his second term of office--a President who does 
what he says and is willing and has the courage to act decisively in 
the face of various threats.
  And, of course, the one that is now looming large is Operation 
Absolute Resolve. This past weekend, in the middle of the night, in 
Caracas, Venezuela, our brave servicemembers successfully accompanied 
law enforcement personnel in detaining the illegitimate President of 
Venezuela, someone who had become the head of a drug cartel and who was 
working with our most concerning adversaries all around the world, 
whether it is Cuba, whether it is Iran, whether it is Russia or China.
  And, in fact, Venezuela had become a hub for illegal drug 
trafficking, along with everything else that goes with that. And it 
also had become a foothold for Iranian terrorist organizations like 
Hezbollah and was using the money they were able to raise from illicit 
drug trafficking to then send it to terrorist organizations in the 
Middle East and to threaten peace around the world.
  I want to say that what we saw demonstrated by the U.S. military, 
working in cooperation with the intelligence community and the 
Department of Justice and law enforcement personnel, was nothing short 
of magnificent. It gives me a great deal of pride to know that only the 
United States could have pulled off such an operation and brought 
someone so despicable as Nicolas Maduro to justice in a Federal court 
in Manhattan.
  I wanted to thank all of our personnel who participated in the 
operation. I hope and wish and pray for the speedy recovery of the 
handful who were injured, and I think it is a proud day for the United 
States.
  It was a challenging decision, I am sure, to make, and there will be 
many hard days ahead as Venezuela has to correct its course of actions. 
And under President Rodriguez, hopefully, with the levers that are 
available to the Trump administration and our friends and allies, they 
will learn from some of their mistakes and allow a transitional 
government, which will then be able to represent the hopes and the 
dreams and the aspirations of the Venezuelan people.
  President Trump's New Year's message to friends and enemies could not 
be more clear. American strength is back, and we will stop at nothing 
to ensure that the American people are safe from foreign threats and 
especially here in our own hemisphere.
  Walter Russell Meade put it well when he recently wrote:

       The operation was a dazzling and magnificent act, and the 
     competence and resolve that it demonstrated will do more to 
     shore up American power and world peace than all the best 
     speeches President Obama ever made.

  President Trump has made it clear to dictators around the world that 
if they try their hands at making mischief, there will be consequences. 
And I can guarantee that the illegitimate heads of the governments of 
Nicaragua, Cuba, and others in the region took note of what the U.S. 
Government is capable of doing if it is determined to do so under the 
leadership of a decisive, energetic President like President Trump.
  And I think it sends an enormous message of deterrence to adversaries 
around the world and potential adversaries like China, North Korea, 
Iran, Russia. When they see a demonstration of competence and 
professionalism that is really second to none in the world, I think it 
sends an enormous message of deterrence and helps make our country 
safer and helps keep the peace.
  But, of course, this represents a stark contrast with the status quo 
under the previous administration. I think that is one of the things 
that makes this so startling to so many people. After all the words 
with no action, all the breast-beating about America under President 
Biden, to see what President Trump is able to do, with the incredible 
contributions made by the intelligence community, our military, and law 
enforcement, has got to get the attention of our adversaries around the 
world. We know, during the Biden administration, the world had become a 
much more dangerous place because when our adversaries sense weakness, 
it is actually an incentive for them to act.
  I think it has been said before, and I think it is true, that Putin 
would not have invaded Ukraine again if President Trump had been in 
office. But with President Biden and then previously with President 
Obama in office, he knew that paper tigers weren't going to hold them 
accountable, and so they kept coming and taking whatever they could 
grab. That makes the world a much more dangerous place.
  From the first year of his Presidency, President Biden signaled 
weakness and incompetence on the world stage, especially with his 
disastrous withdrawal from Afghanistan. His failure to secure the 
southern border in Texas and in New Mexico and California and Arizona 
invited the drug trafficking crisis that is continuing to have 
downstream effects in our country even today. Hundreds of thousands of 
Americans have lost their lives to the illegal drug trafficking coming 
across our southern border.
  And these failures, of course, do not happen in a vacuum. Our friends 
and enemies around the world are watching--our friends to see whether 
they can rely on the United States and our enemies to see whether we 
will stand up for ourselves and defend our interest and our values. 
And, of course, that shapes their actions and their decisions.
  In February 2022, Russia invaded Ukraine, escalating a war that had 
started back in 2014 and continues today with massive casualty figures 
on both sides now ranging into the millions. October 7, 2023, Hamas 
terrorists,

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who are Iranian proxies, launched the deadliest attack in history 
against the nation of Israel.
  And all the while, China prepares for war. They have actually 
threatened to forcibly take Taiwan. President Xi has ordered the 
People's Liberation Army to be ready to do so by 2027, of course, 
escalating tensions in the Indo-Pacific and engaging in provocative 
joint military exercises with Russia.
  Notwithstanding the chaos around the world, America was suffering 
direct consequences from the drug war, as I alluded to a moment ago. 
Cartels in Mexico and Latin America took advantage of President Biden's 
open border policies and refusal to act where action was required. Of 
course, they made untold millions of dollars selling these drugs and 
transporting them beyond their borders into the United States, taking 
countless lives and inflicting untold misery.
  Now the Department of Justice has charged Maduro and his 
coconspirators with transporting tons of cocaine into the United States 
by moving the drug under the protection of Venezuelan officialdom, 
including the law enforcement and their military, by providing 
diplomatic passports to drug traffickers and facilitating diplomatic 
cover from planes to move drug proceeds from Mexico to Venezuela.
  Iran, through its proxy Hezbollah--which operates primarily in 
Lebanon, north of Israel--they were embedded in Venezuela working with 
the Maduro administration and helped collaborate to provide those 
elaborate trafficking networks. And, of course, Hezbollah used the drug 
trafficking proceeds to finance their own nefarious activities around 
the world.
  Back in 2022, Venezuela signed a 20-year economic cooperation 
agreement with Iran, the No. 1 state sponsor of international 
terrorism, an agreement between two of the most heavily sanctioned 
regimes in the world, all designed to defy the United States and expand 
their criminal enterprise.
  In a hearing before the Senate Caucus on International Narcotics 
Control that I chaired late last year, one of our witnesses described 
Venezuela as playing a very important role in what they called the 
``axis of evasion,'' a global sanctions-defying network that also 
includes Russia, China, Iran, and North Korea.
  And, of course, Maduro was an important part of that within this 
``axis of evasion'' because he is the one that gave them a foothold in 
our backyard in the Western Hemisphere.
  And, of course, all of this went on during the Biden administration 
and right under their nose, but they did nothing--virtually nothing--
about it. President Biden and Secretary Mayorkas turned a blind eye, 
allowing these illicit happenings to continue while drugs poured into 
the United States and totalitarian dictators and terrorists enriched 
themselves and spread their misery.
  But President Trump has now begun to turn the tide. He began on day 
one of his administration with an aggressive immigration enforcement, 
rounding up and deporting members of MS-13, one of the most dangerous 
gangs in the world; Tren de Aragua, another dangerous Venezuelan gang; 
and other criminal networks who had set up shop here in the United 
States in our neighborhoods and in our communities.
  Given the vast networks of these international gangs, it became clear 
to President Trump that it was not enough to simply send them back from 
where they came so they could regroup and reorganize. President Trump 
and Secretary Rubio and President Trump's administration, rightly, 
determined that further action was necessary. And, of course, that 
began, most notably, with a series of strikes on drug boats in the 
Caribbean designed to deter the cartels and disrupt their evil trade.
  Now, by capturing Maduro, by enforcing an indictment made by a U.S. 
grand jury in a Federal court in Manhattan, President Trump has shown, 
without a doubt, that he means business.
  Of course, the radical left is losing their mind, as they usually do 
every time President Trump acts decisively and with boldness. 
Protestors outside the courthouse held signs reading ``Free President 
Nicolas Maduro'' and ``Hands Off Venezuela.''
  I guess any jurisdiction that would elect a new mayor like a 
democratic socialist, Mamdani, that is probably what you would expect. 
So I don't think anyone was surprised.
  But the message of Operation Absolute Resolve to our allies and 
adversaries around the world could not be more clear: America is back. 
The Trump administration will act with boldness and decisiveness. And 
if you threaten the American people with drugs or terrorism or any 
other sort of criminal or military attack, you better watch your back 
because you could be next.
  I yield the floor.
  I suggest the absence of a quorum.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The clerk will call the roll.
  The senior assistant legislative clerk proceeded to call the roll.
  Mr. COTTON. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the order for 
the quorum call be rescinded.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. Without objection, it is so ordered.

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