can keep up, so we can bomb the enemy. and again and until he has had enough. and then we can all come home. and. to the men of the eighth air force who are now flying deep into germany bringing destruction to targets almost a thousand miles from their bases, destruction like this.

and to have never once been turned back by the enemy to those men, this film has gratefully dedicated. the president pro tempore: the senate will come to order. the chaplain, dr. barry black, will lead the senate in prayer. the chaplain: let us pray.

our father in heaven, we thank you for the security you provide those who trust in you. we believe that you can do more than we can ask or imagine. throughout our history, you have not failed us, and you continue to provide us with strength for today and bright hopes for tomorrow. lord, surround our senators with your mercy, peace, and grace. as they come confidently to your throne using the power of persevering prayer, give them a faith that will not shrink

though pressed by many a foe. we pray in your omnipotent name. amen. the president pro tempore: please join me in the pledge of allegiance to the flag. i pledge allegiance to the flag of the united states of america, and to the republic for which it stands, one nation under god, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all. the president pro tempore: under the previous order, the leadership time is reserved. mr. schumer: madam president. the presiding officer: the majority leader is recognized. mr. schumer: madam president, today the senate resumes consideration of the emergency

national security supplemental package. last night after we agreed to the motion to proceed, i lay down the substitute amendment, which has the text of the supplemental, and then i filed cloture on both the substitute and the underlying bill. we are still hoping to reach an agreement with republicans on a reasonable list of amendments so we can speed this process up. democrats have always been willing to have a fair and reasonable amendment process on the floor as we have shown on many occasions in the last three years. but if no further agreement is reached, the next vote is scheduled to take place tomorrow, sunday, at approximately 1:00 p.m. as i've said all week, we will keep working on this bill until the job is done. i yield the floor. the president pro tempore: morning business is closed.

under the previous order, the senate will resume consideration of h.r. 815 which the clerk will report. the clerk: calendar number 30, h.r. 815, an act to amend title 38, united states code, to make certain improvements relating to the eligibility of veterans and so forth and for other purposes.

mr. durbin: madam president. the president pro tempore: the majority whip is recognized. mr. durbin: madam president, many people who follow the senate may be asking a basic question. what are you doing? why is it that the senate is only voting once every other day or why does it seem like it's every other day? why aren't you at business if you're here this weekend, can't you have something to do of a positive nature for this country? it's a reasonable question. i'd like to describe where we are at this moment and where i hope we will be soon.

it started with the president of the united states asking for a defense supplemental bill, a supplemental bill for military spending. there were several major priorities in that measure asked for by the president. one, of course, was the war in ukraine and our continued support of the ukrainian effort to stop the ruthless invasion of vladimir putin and the russians. this has been going on for two years, and we have been standing by the ukrainians, and they were running out of money, equipment, and ammunition. president biden stepped up and said we're going to provide assistance to ukraine as part of this emergency supplemental. the same thing is true when it comes to the israelis fighting the terrorists hamas after the invasion of their country on

october 7. there's money to provide assistance to them in their effort to end that terrorism that had such a dramatic negative impact on israel. third provision relates to taiwan and asian theater. they, too, are friends and allies and needed assistance from the united states. equally important, a substantial humanitarian aid package needed in many places around the world, including gaza that is part of this package. four critical priorities that in the usual course of business would be approved on a bipartisan basis, but not this time. this time many of the republican leaders in the senate said we will not consider these important subjects without some provision dealing with america's border security. it is true, i think it's obvious that the situation on our southern border is currently

unsustainable and needed to be changed. the republicans inn sissed this would be -- insisted this would be part of the package. there was no argument on our side of the aisle. we sat down to find a solution. now, solutions relating to immigration are illusive. i know that as well as anybody. we spent three decades trying to come up with immigration reform legislation. virtually both parties can see that our immigration system in its entirety is a shambles and needs to be rewritten. and so the suggestion was made we put together a bipartisan committee to put together an alternative on border security to be added to this package that i just described. the republicans said that they wanted james lankford of oklahoma to speak for them. several of them came to me and said he has worked on this long and hard. he's prepared to accept the task of brothering a bipartisan --

brokering a bipartisan solution to the border and we trust him. we want him to be the spokesman for the republican side. no objection on this side of the table. two senators joined him in that bipartisan effort. senator chris murphy of connecticut, kyrsten sinema of arizona. they worked for weeks and weeks and weeks to put together a bipartisan border security package, and they finally succeeded. the republicans said we don't want to move on this type of a package unless we have 72 hours to carefully review it before we take the first vote. senator schumer, the democratic leader said that's a reasonable request, and he filed the original version of this bill last sunday, if i'm not mistaken. then on the following wednesday of this week we're closing, we brought this matter to the floor. to our surprise the republicans reversed their position on border security and despite the best efforts of james lankford

on behalf of the republicans, decided that overwhelmingly they were going to reject any border security measure. why the change of heart on the republican side? the cause is very obvious and very public. donald trump, the republican nominee for president announced that he was opposed to the package. republican senators who are open to it, supported it walked away from it. in walking away from it, it not produce enough votes for us to bring up the security measure up as part of this package. think about that for a second. we were told for months that we couldn't move on the underlying bill because we didn't have a border security proposal. we put together a bipartisan proposal. we brought it to the floor, and the same republicans who were insisting on border security as part of this package turned on it and opposed it. we took the vote which told the

story, and at that point senator schumer said we'll move forward with the rest of the package. those measures are now pending before the united states senate and do not include border security, at least in the package produced by the bipartisan group. i think what i've just given you is a rough summary of where we stand at this moment. so we're going through the labored process under the senate rules of burning hours off of the clock, 30 hours at a time, until we can reach these roll calls to determine whether we move forward. as senator schumer said just a few minutes ago, we face the next one of those roll calls next -- tomorrow around 1:00 in the afternoon. that's 30 hours after the last vote. but there's a way to avoid this kind of inactivity on the floor of the senate and to really get to the questions at hand. and that is what we normally do,

a unanimous consent, both sides of the aisle, democrat and republican, to take up certain amendments or measures. we are at that point. we should be moving toward that so that we can finish our work on this important legislation and go home for a break over the president's holidays. we don't know what's going to happen today. if we follow the book and don't reach a unanimous consent agreement, there may be little or nothing happening on the floor today. but if we can reach a bipartisan agreement on a list of acceptable amendments on both sides of the aisle, we can move forward and the senate can be the senate as it should be. that's what's pending. that's a rough summary of where we stand. i'm disappointed that a good-faith effort by these three senators which introduced a measure which i don't agree with in every detail, is a reasonable step forward has been summarily rejected by most senate republicans. senator lankford, i listened to him on the floor. he spent 30 minutes explaining

what was in this package. there are some things that are absolutely necessary. resources at the border that we know that we need. people, professional people to deal with the onslaught of refugees and asylees coming to our border. in addition to that, money for technology. doesn't everyone concede on both sides of the aisle that we need to do everything humanly possible to stop the flow of narcotics, particularly fentanyl, into the united states? i don't think that's even debatable. the bill that lankford and the others proposed had provisions in there and resources to accomplish that goal. same thing is true when it comes to resolving the status of people who present themselves at the border. there are people who are desperate and fearful for their lives staying -- escaping to the united states hoping they will be safe. for more than 50 years we have honored that pursuit and given a means for people to reach their goal. now the standards are going to

be tougher under the lankford legislation, and it means that people are going to be held to a higher standard. also provisions that those who are at the border will have their cases ultimately resolved in a much more expeditious way. i think we all agree that waiting one year, two years, five years or more really creates a hardship on the system and uncertainty that needs to be resolved. it takes more immigration judges and people at the administrative level to process it and the lankford bill did that. now, what i just described in the provisions of the lankford bipartisan bill was rejected by the majority of republicans because donald trump announced that he was against it. he went so far to say blame me if we do nothing on border security. well, i certainly think he's deserving of blame. he stopped republicans who are positive on the subject from moving forward and helping us to do something positive on the immigration front.

there's another part of this story that i want to speak to very quickly this morning. and it relates to a measure that i introduced in the senate almost 20 years ago. it's called the dream act. yesterday with senators padilla, cortez masto, and others, i filed an amendment to offer the dream act as an amendment to this bill as part of the package if we're going to have a bipartisan package of amendments. i introduced this more than 20 years ago. it provides a path to citizenship for young immigrants who were brought to the united states as children and allows them to remain in the united states and home. these are kids brought here by their parents. there wasn't a family vote or a family decision. they were kids, and they went where mom and dad told them to. they ended up in the united states, undocumented. they went to school here. they stood up each morning in

the classroom and pledged allegiance to that same flag we just pledged allegiance to. they believed they were part of this country. it wasn't until they were 10, 12 years old their parents told them your legal status is uncertain, you're undocumented, we don't know what your future holds, be careful. if you're not careful, you could be deported, and we could be deportedwith you. that terrible circumstance prevailed for hundreds of thousands of young people in this country. the dream act said give them a chance to earn their pathway to citizenship. that's what the bill said when it was introduced. they've known no other home. yet, without congressional action, they spent every day in fear of deportation. let me tell you about one of these dreamers. her name is tatiana vazquez lopez. she attends college in my home state of illinois. this is the 140th time that i have told the story of a dreamer

here on the floor of the united states senate. i can make speeches about the subject, but if you meet these young people and hear their life story it's a much more convincing experience. tatiana was born in guatemala, came to the united states when she was 11 months old. she grew up in alabama and became an important part of her community. she volunteered at a local church during the covid pandemic to help families in need. she also completed a teaching internship during which she visited schools across the school system to support teachers and students. and she did all this while she was in high school. tatiana is currently studying at dominican university in river forest, my home state of illinois. she is the leader of the chicagoland community as president of the organization of latin american students. what is her goal? a ph.d. in psychiatry so she can work as a trauma therapist

helping families and children. she wants to continue giving back to the communities in need and helping provide lifesaving resources to others, resources she wished her family had received when they came to the united states. she's currently protected from de deportation thanks to the daca program, daca stands for deferred action for childhood arrivals. the daca program was an outgrowth of the dream act. when we couldn't pass the dream act on the floor of the senate, former senator barack obama, from illinois, as president of the united states, was importuned to consider doing it by executive action. i wrote a letter, the first letter, to president obama, cosigned by richard luger, the late republican senator from indiana, asking barack obama to consider executive action to protect young people like tatiana. then i sent another letter with about 23 democratic senators supporting the same goal.

fortunately for us, obama was a cosponsor of the dream act and agrees with our goal in this legislation, and he went to work to create daca. that program that he established has changed hundreds of thousands of young lives like tatiana's. daca has protected more than 800,000 young people in america from deportation, and it's allowed them to pursue higher education and enter our workforce. unfortunately, since president obama established the program, republicans have waged a relentless campaign to overturn it and deport these young dreamers back to countries they may not even remember. last september, a federal judge in texas declared the daca program was illegal, though the decision left in place protections for current daca recipients like tatiana while the appeal is pentagon, all of them live in fear -- while the appeal is pending, all of them live in fear the next court

decision will dramatically change their lives. until a permanent solution is written into law, tatiana's service to her community is at risk, as is the service of dreamers who work as doctors, teachers, engineers, and so much more across america. i introduced the dream act more than 20 years ago to provide a solution, a path to citizenship for dreamers. that solution is long overdue and should be acted on as quickly as possible. we should all be able to agree that dreamers only make america better. we in congress must do better by them. i urge my colleagues to support me and work with me to provide them with a path to be part of america's future. this amendment would do just that. madam president, i yield the floor. i suggest the absence of a quorum. the president pro tempore: the clerk will call the roll.

quorum call: the clerk: ms. baldwin.

quorum: quorum call:

quorum call:

mr. lee: madam president. the presiding officer: the senator from utah. mr. lee: madam president, i rise today because -- the presiding officer: senator, the senate is in a quorum call. mr. lee: madam president, i ask unanimous consent that the quorum call be suspended. the presiding officer: without objection.. mr. lee: madam president, i rise today because senate republicans made a commitment last fall. not so very long ago. a commitment that we made for each other and that we made to the american people. that commitment was simple. it was one that said before we send another dollar, another dime, another penny to ukraine, let's do what we can, even if it

means harnessing a drive that some in this body feel towards sending more money to ukraine and let's harness that to make sure we can force the will within the administration to actually enforce the border. in truth we've all made commitments sort of like this. we've all made other commitments that should lead us to this conclusion, should have gotten us there long ago with or without ukraine funding on the line. with or without anything compelling us to do it because every single senator, every man, every woman serving in this body is committed to this sacred duty. did so implicitly when we raised

our hands as required under article 6 of the constitution, to take an oath, to, quote, support and defend the constitution of the united states against all enemies, foreign and domestic, and bear true faith and allegiance to the same. well, through our -- through time and through the efforts of a faithless few, we're now poised to treat that commitment that we made to each other as senate republicans and to americans sort of the same way that president biden has treated his own solemn oath to protect this country's borders. treating them as somehow as expedient, expendable and now, apparently expired. madam president, we cannot send billions of dollars to ukraine while america's own borders are

bleeding. this betrayal is all the more loathsome because it occurs at a time when the eyes of the nation are turned to sport and family and fun as well they should be. heaven help us, the people of america should not have to watch us every hour of every day lest their own government stabbed them in the back. what after all have they done to deserve such untrustworthy public servants? what grudge does this body hold against the very people who elected us and pay our salaries? today we witness the tragic dominance of what president eisenhower, one of our nation's great patriots and great generals who later became president, what he called the military industrial complex.

this machine to be clear was not built by our brave men and women in uniform who pledged their very lives every day who -- day for safety and independence. nor was it built by every contractor, every person or entity out there that supplies our men and women in uniform with weapons and cutting edge technology that they need to protect the united states against our adversaries. many of them are not at all part of the military industrial complex regardless of what they may do for a living, but i do speak of a subset ever those individuals and entities. when i speak of a machine forged while the unhealthy union between their businesses and politicians in washington, d.c.

specifically to make a business out of bloodshed and do so in concert with politicians in washington and across the world who make bloodshed their business. all of this at the expense of our freedom, our honor, and our self-determination to say nothing of time that americans have to spend paying to fund the military industrial complex. now make no mistake, i'm under no illusion that my time here today will itself somehow be sufficient to jam the gears of this machine. nor is it likely to stifle the anthems of those who worship it. but i intend to give an account of how in this instance, sadly

like so many others, itzhak lights have used resources to continue violence among people far away with whom we're not at war and from whose suffering we, the american people, will gain no victory. and perhaps if i can sketch a blueprint of how this infernal engine functions today, future generations may well succeed in loosening its screws, cutting off its stolen fuel, and letting the whole corrupt bargain come crashing finally to the ground. as i do so, i need to go back for a moment and describe the conditions last fall in which republicans made the commitment i described moments ago, the commitment to each other and to the american people. what we saw last fall was that

there was yet another call from president biden from many of the pentagon and military industrial complex for yet another round of ukraine funding. this after we already sent some $113 billion to ukraine, a sum of money that last time i checked was roughly double what russia spends on national defense in an average year and is perhaps 20, 25 times what ukraine spends on defense in a typical year. it's a sum of money that exceeds what any other nation has spent on ukraine, either in nominal sums as a percentage of gdp by pretty much any metric and when we talk about the defense specific aid, to my knowledge

it's significantly higher than every other nation's security assistance to ukraine combined since the start of this war. it's a large sum of money. this request came at a time when the american people were starting to realize increasingly the extent to which excessive spending in washington, d.c. has affected their day-to-day lives. they started to sense what we've long been warning of, what was predictable, foreseeable, and in fact foreseen and specifically warned of since the outset of this administration. that when we spend too much money, everything gets more expensive. and by everything, i mean literally everything, including and especially basic living expenses. if you take a look, madam

president, at what it costs to sustain a family, to sustain a household for the average american household, since the day president biden took office just over three years ago, it cost about $1,000 a month per household more than it did on january 20, 2021. this is no small sum. adds up to about $12,000 a year just for the average household in america. now, of course this affects different people different ly. but for america's middle class and certainly for its poor, this can mean the difference between living paycheck to paycheck and making it and living paycheck to paycheck and then not making it. this is felt by families

throughout the middle class, throughout america in ways that leave no room for anything. this comes right off of their bottom line. for many it means nothing other than what's the bare minimum to live can be justified, can be afforded. family vacations for countless americans, a thing of the past now. if they were just getting by before bidenomics, wreck havoc on their paycheck and on what little savings they may have had. that cushion is no longer there if it was even there to begin with. this is, to be sure, not just something that occurs out of nowhere. this occurs because washington

spent too much money. milton friedman warned of this many decades ago when among other things he explained that the true cost of government is refl reflected less accurately in the rate of taxation and more accurately in the rate of government spending relative to the economy, because as he explained, the way our system works, the way the federal reserve bank, the treasury interact with our system in which the u.s. dollar is the world's reserve currency, all these things combined in -- combine in such a way whether the u.s. government borrows more money whshgs it engages in deficit spending, it has a very similar effect as what we would see if we just printed more money which effectively we are

doing. i've warned of this for many ye years. over period of time -- periods of time that span three presidential administrations under two different political parties, both as have been in clark of the white house and the senate, the house of representatives, i've warned of these consequences under senate, house of representatives and every conceivable partisan combination. each time warning something like this. that as we continue to do this, it will make each dollar spend less money and we'll get closer and closer to that day when our interest on our national debt will start to eclipse other priorities. when i started warning of this, i think our annual interest payment on nantz debt was somewhere in -- national debt was between 200 billion, $300 billion a year. it's now more than double that.

some expect by the end of this fiscal year, we'll see interest on the national debt accruing at a rate of a trillion or more a y year. the difference between where we were just a few years ago and where we could well be within the next six, eight months, maybe the next year or two. could well exceed what we spend on national defense. this isn't sustainable. and in any event, as milton friedman explained, a true rate of taxation is explained best by total government spending as a percentage of gdp, even more than it is by the rate of taxation. his explanation for this makes a lot of sense once you fully consider what he's saying, that part of the rate of taxation as you have to imagine it ends up

being the inflationary impact of the government just printing more money when it refuses defiantly as it has been over the last few years to acknowledge that there's any limit of its ability to spend more. now, in the last three or four years, we've seemed to have taken that to a true extreme. with multitrillion dollar deficits, every single year for the last three or four years prior to that we've been on a pattern of roughly a trillion dollar a year deficits. each moment when we turn down that ugly corridor, i've noted that this was happening and is happening today, kind of at the peak of the economic cycle with

really low unemployment. it's not one of these circumstances where we're forced into this simply because contrary to all expectations, there isn't enough money top government to run, to perform its basic functions, things that only government can perform. no, this is just because this body can't control itself. it can't control its ability to spend to the tune of trillions ever dollars a year more -- of dollars a year more than we have. it's gotten so much worse during this administration. it was bad enough before then, but it's gotten so much worse since then. with trillions upon trillions of dollars a year spent in excess of what we bring in. so it shouldn't come as any shock that the american dollar today buys a whole lot less than it did just a few short years ago, and that the average

american family has to shell out an additional $1,000 a month just to live. just to live. from gas to groceries, from housing to health care, and everything else, everything costs more today because the government has flooded the market with new cash. what does that do to ordinary people? most americans live on a relatively fixed set of money. they're living on a salary, perhaps on a pension, perhaps they're living off of wages or payment, if they're independent contractors, that don't vary a lot from one year to the next. even if they're lucky enough to have gotten a raise since january 20, 2021, nearly all the time it's not nearly enough to

cover the difference in what they're having to shell out. and because of bidenomics and because of this chronic pattern of overspending that of course predated bidenomics, but has become significantly worse since president biden took office. the american people are suffering and they're suffering ba badly. perversely, america's wealthiest don't suffer from this in the same way, not at all in fact. quite to the contrary, many of them get far wealthier during periods of great inflation. wall street, you'll notice, has been elated, has reason to rejoice recently. but those rejoicings are not felt up and down the economic

ladder. no, quite to the contrary. they're felt in ways that should not make this body or anyone that has anything to do with these dramatic and unjustifiable increases in federal spending feel ashamed. and so the american people have understandably become more and more leery of spending that isn't deemed essential, that isn't deemed something that goes directly to the benefit of the american people, any spending that's not necessarily ours to have to be responsible for. that's not to say that there aren't plenty of americans who are understandably justifiably

concerned about vladimir putin. he's not a nice man. he's not behaved well, especially with regard to ukraine. at the same time, remember, we've sent over 113 billion col tlars -- over $11 billion already to that -- over $113 billion to that country. meanwhile, we continue to receive pressure from our european allies, our nato partners who increasingly love to say things like all eyes are turning to the united states, we're relying on the united states to solve this, to fix this, you've got to spend more money, apparently feeling no sense of irony or responsibility on their part as they say this. they just want us to turn on our printing presses, yet again, send more money over there, yet

again. well, why? why is this? why shouldn't they have to at least first match or exceed, in nominal dollars and as a percentage of their combined gdp, what we've sent? why shouldn't they have to far exceeds that? this is in their backyard, not ours. they have more at stake. they have greater familiarity with the area, the region than we do. it's closer to where they are than we are, and we've already spent a whole lot more than any of them, or all of them combined. so why is this ours to do and not theirs? why are all eyes turning to america? well, they're turning to america because america has, in the past, especially the recent past, been far more willing to open its wallet. as long as you've got one party at the dinner table who's perceived as the one most likely to pick up the check, sometimes

the eyes turn to that party. and clearly, they are here. but let's think about this for a minute, separate and apart from the fact that they're closer to the action, they have more at stake, they've also been the beneficiaries of a security umbrella funded disproportionately by the american people. not just for years, but for decades, in fact for the entirety of my lifetime, we have been the largest backstop by far to the security umbrella that our nato partners and allies in europe enjoy. it's been an understanding in recent years that everyone in nato should spend at least 2% of their gdp on defense. and some have tried to honor it. most of them have not been

consistent in honoring it. many, if not most, are not honoring it as we speak. and so here again, it's you believe why their -- it's understandable why their eyes turn to us. we provided them that security back stop for decades, disproportionately providing the funds, the resources, the human resources, the technological resources and otherwise, to help ensure their security. now, we've done this for decades, in part because we've seen it is a partnership, we've seen this as something that can benefit the american people, but we always have to have that discussion as americans. we can't just continue to be that backstop unflinchingly without continuing to ask the question, year after year, month after month, what are we getting out of this, and are they also doing their fair share? the cynic when looking at this could credibly argue that the

american taxpayer has been not only making them more secure, more safe by providing significant portion of their defense umbrella, but that by so doing the american taxpayer has also funded all kinds of other things in europe that have nothing to do with european or american national security. you see, those countries buoyed up by our generous support, cons consistent support of the north atlantic treaty organization that freed up budgetary resources within those member states to do other things, the cynic could argue we've helped them not only with their own national security needs but also even with all kinds of social programs, whatever it is that they're spending money over there to do through their

government. we've made it easier. it's really hard for the american taxpayer to look that, to see that, to see that that's been happening for decades and their eyes are still turned to us, their hands are still outstretched for us to do more than they have been willing to do to protect themselves in their own backyard. the american people have seen this, and they've started to get the sense that maybe, just maybe, their hands are still outstretched because we've established this pattern, this expectation that we will do more than they will do in this war, that we will do more than they would otherwise have to do, simply because we're there and they rely on us. but the american people started asking why are we continuing to do this when they're not pulling their share, when their share is

and properly should be a lot more than ours, given their proximity to the action and given their longtime reluctance to fund their own security needs in their own nations. it's a reasonable question a lot of americans are asking. this question becomes even more poignant, and the answers to those questions more important to address carefully and thor thoroughly, when you consider that as we're trying to help secure the border integrity of ukraine, our own border is in a state of absolute pandemonium. utter chaos and utter free-fall. this has added to their concerns. well, this is part of that

backdrop against the commitment republicans in the senate made to each other and to the public just a few short months ago, last fall, as we started talking about this ukraine aid package. here are some of the factors that have been unfolding -- factors that have caused the american people concern, not just a few short weeks ago the house judiciary committee released a report contending new data showing the severity of the biden border crisis. these numbers are shocking, and they also confirm the numbers that americans were seeing in smaller pieces, bit by bit, last fall, causing them understandably to feel real concern about this.

there was an article, i believe in "time" magazine just a few months ago talking about the fact that between may or june of last year and october or november of last year support for additional aid to ukraine had plummeted dramatically, to the point where it was -- well, most americans at one point supported it, it's a minority of americans that did by november, in part because they were aware of this phenomenon unfolding on our border, the phenomenon that was laid out in great detail in this report issued just a few weeks ago by the house judiciary committee.

since january 20, 2021, the day that joe biden was sworn in as the 46th president of the united states, the biden administration ras hee leased into the -- has released into the united states more than 3.3 million illegal aliens. in fact, in a january 2024 interview secretary mayorkas, the -- who runs the department of homeland security, who is in charge of the border patrol and immigrations and customs enforcement, protecting the american homeland as his departmental name implies, he admitted as much, stating that the biden administration has released, in his words, quote, more than a million illegal aliens each year, each year. those are just the ones that they released. these are not encounters or

known gotaways, which are at least another 1.7 million. probably a lot more than that. these are people they caught and then released into your hometown, my hometown, into every hometown in america. why? why would they do this? we have an elaborate body of laws that is designed to protect us against this. we have an elaborate array of law enforcement entities whose job it is not to facilitate this mass invasion but rather to oppose it, to slow it, to deter it, to halt it, to reverse it whenever, wherever possible, in myriad ways.

by the way, who exactly are these people that they're just catching and releasing? here's how the house report describes it, quote, people from all over the planet are taking advantage of the turmoil at the southwest border. in fiscal year 2023, border patrol encountered illegal aliens from roughly 170 countries, including, this is interesting, 24,048 from china. 15,429 from turkey. 15,000 from mauritania. 10,168 from uzbekistan. 7,390 from russia.

5,604 from afghanistan. 3,087 from egypt. 1,270 from pakistan. 1,122 from kyrgyzstan. 457 from iran. 375 from syria. 81 from iraq. and 74 from yemen. that was a quote from the report. those are actual numbers. we've got countries, countries that are not exactly friendly to the united states. quite to the contrary. country after country whose own people have entered our country, entered our border without

documentation, then been released into our own country by our own government. why? and we've got them coming in in numbers from some specific countries that are larger than the towns, entire cities of voters in each of our states. in each of our states we've got people who live in towns, cities, communities that are much smaller than these numbers, than the more than 24,000 from china and 15,500 from turkey. 16,263 from mauritania. why do we have that many coming in from iran? that many from syria and iraq

and yemen? that many coming in from afghanistan? those numbers should concern you. they should concern everyone. why is this happening? but more importantly, why is our own administration, why is our own president and his administration so determined to facilitate this and to not stop it? those numbers are just from fiscal year 2023, by the way. they don't take into account people who have come in since then, and we know that since then the fiscal year 2023 ended at midnight at the end of september 30. and we know that since september 30 of last year, we've seen record after record after record broken for daily migrant

encounters. one can imagine that it's only gotten much worse since then. think about all of that. at the same time that we're handing over our weapons reserves to ukraine, reserves that could take a decade or more to re pplace. we're just allowing people into our country, catching and releasing military-age males from china, from russia, from afghanistan, from iran, from syria. why? what sane, nonsuicidal nation would do it? the american people wouldn't. the american people are not the same as those who administer their company. they should be. they should be accountable. one should be accountable to the other.

but lately they're not. lately they're doing things that i think if you randomly selected people from the phone book -- i don't even know in phone books exist anymore -- you randomly selected them from some other, say, voter rolls and called them and say what do you think? should we release 24,000 chinese nationals who have crossed into our border without documentation, having paid each of them many, many thousands of dollars? in the case of chinese nationals, probably well into the tens of thousands of dollars per person, to be smuggled into the united states. should we release them? well, i can't imagine that many randomly selected americans would do this. so why is our own government doing it? it's baffling. why would it do this and at the same time say, yeah, this is

nothing to worry about and let's give a lot of our weapons stockpiles to another sovereign nation to fight yet another nation half a world away. those two things coming at the same time seem rather dangerous. analogous, you might say, to drinking and driving. if one drinks and remains in one's home, doesn't handle any dangerous equipment, one might be relatively safe. if one drives without drinking, driving can be done safely, especially if the person is not inebriated. but if you put those things together, you drink and then you drive, you could have some real problems. here, i don't think either of

these things would be safe to do. i don't think it's safe to release many tens of thousands of foreign nationals, even if you just limited it to these countries. that's to say nothing of the millions of total foreign nationals that have been released into the united states after crossing our borders without documentation. when you take into account the many tens of thousands of people coming from countries where we have a lot of enemies, where in many cases the regime in power of those countries is itself a sworn enemy and may well be behind efforts to get these people into the united states for purposes that are hostile to our interest. i can't imagine why we'd want to do this. why would we want to do this at all? why would we want do this at the same time we're depleting our own we'ves reserves, including reserves of fairly sophisticated

weaponry that could take us years, if not a decade or more to replace. it's baffling. in january the u.s. customs and border protection watered down the screening process for chinese asylum seekers amidst a record surge of such cases. the biden administration for its part streamlined, that word is in quotes, streamlined the process by slashing the number of questions officials are required to ask of chinese nationals from almost 40 until just a few weeks ago down to 5. so, the biden administration is giving away our reserves of our weapons to be used for our own

self-defense while simultaneously making it easier for bad actors from countries like china to embed themselves into our country, contrary to our laws. this does not sound like national security. this sounds like the exact opposite of national security. of the nearly six million illegal alien encounters that have occurred since january 20, 2021, through september 30, 2023, which is the end of fiscal year 2023, at least three million had no confirmed reaction. in fact, isis nondetained docket

swelled to a record of nearly 6.2 million illegal aliens as of the end of the last fiscal year. there are at least 617,607 aliens on isis nondetained docket who have criminal convictions who are pending criminal charges, meaning more than half a million criminal aliens are on the streets of the united states and, therefore, free and somewhat likely to reoffend in u.s. communities. this is not hypothetical. it happens every day. this is not paranoid fantasy. this is the sad, tragic realty of america in 2024. let me say that again. over half a million people, over 500,000 criminal aliens are in our communities as of december

10, 2023 there were 1,323,264 illegal aliens with final order of removal who remained in the united states. the department of homeland security placed only 6.8% of dmreel aliens encountered at the southwest border into proceedings to even be screened for asylum eligibility. remember one of the ways in which this thing has started, one of the ways in which it began, it's mushroomed into something much bigger than that, but at the end of the trump administration, we had secured our southern border. there were still a few people trickling across but it was numbers low enough they were able to detect them, apprehend them and deport them with sufficient regularity, that the numbers were slowing month after

month. once that happens, the international drug cartels that between them make many tens of billions of dollars every single year off of this human smuggling, human trafficking, and in many instances human sex slavery operations all connected to these caravans of people migranting illegally into the united states. they were able to see that this was becoming a less profitable business. why? because people won't pay many thousands of dollars, in some cases people from some countries, particularly high-risk individuals might end up paying many tens of thousands of dollars. but the ones who pay the least, i believe are paying $5,000, $6,000, $7,000 to be brought across. people will stop paying that

when they see that their chances of getting across the border are relatively low, that their chances of being detected, apprehended, detained and then deported are relatively high. the business is going to dry up, and this self-licking ice cream cone, this self-perpetuating machine suddenly stops having the success it once had. that's where we were as of the end of 2020. but as of december -- as of january 20, 2021, the biden administration made clear that these things were going to change. it made clear, among other things, that the biden administration would be abandoning, halting, ending the

so-called remain in mexico program. under the official title of the migrant protection program, as well as safe third countries. safe third country agreements entered into with other latin american nations. the idea behind these programs was that if you crossed into the united states on land through our southern border, obviously you'd be crossing in from mexico. the idea was that if you crossed in, you'd be sent back to mexico. if you applied for asylum, as many illegal immigrants do, many who show up without papers, without documentation, are therefore illegally into the united states. historically, many have filed immediate applications for

asylum. now the numbers vary a bit, but estimates out there are that at least 90%, some have said it's 98% -- i don't know where the true figure is but it's clearly overwhelmingly that if you apply for asylum you're probably not going to get it after crossing illegally into our country. there are certain statutory criteria that they have to meet. they have to establish that they are eligible for a grant of asylum. and it has to do with establishing a credible fear of persecution within, by their home country pertaining to one of the protected classes identified in the statute. historically, a lot of the people who come into our country without documentation, legally,

in other words, have applied for asylum. but at least nine out of ten of them -- sometimes the number is depending on whose statistics you put the most faith in. i'd say it is closer to ten out of ten. that those individuals will be denied asylum. they won't be able to stay here. problems arise, though, when this administration took control. it ended the remain in mexico program. and that program, gina, it said -- and that program, again, it said that if -- you'll have to be deported back to mexico where you'll wait, no matter where you come from. regardless, at most, you'll be sent back to mexico where you'll have to wait and wait and wait to see whether your asylum

application has been adjudicated by an immigration judge as meritorious. then, and only then, could you enter the united states. when the trump administration put this program in place, waves of illegal migrants, these caravans, which once a torrent, once a raging river, slowed down to a trickle. i know because people knew it wasn't worth spending the time and the money to say nothing of the risk to life and limb, to say nothing of the fact that by some accounts it's 30%, by other accountses it's 60-some-odd percent of the women and girls, in some cases also men and boys who were trafficked on these

caravans, sexually assaulted along the way u countless of them are semiconductored to -- are subjected to human sex trafficking, to sex slavery. during my most recent visit to the u.s.-mexico border in the mcallen, texas, area, an area where i spent two years, two wonderful years as a missionary 30-some odd years ago, in the early 1990's. during my most recent visit there just a few weeks ago, i was told something stunning by the border patrol personnel there who said, you know, for the first time since the 1860's, for the first time since the end of the civil war and then the ratification of the 13th amendment, which prohibits slavery and indentured servitude, we now have significant numbers of people, for the first time since the civil war, who are living in

indentured servitude, many of those in sex slavery. it was ground to a halt once remain in mexico was instituted. but one of the first things president biden did when he came into office was to get rid of it. now, a number of court battles have erupted since then. they've been boiling, simmering, boiling over, coming back again at times. president biden lost multiple rounds of that litigation. still dragging his feet, doing everything he can, kicking and screaming, to make sure he doesn't have to put it in place. why? why would he want to do that? well, for reasons that i cannot fathom, he's decided he wants

kind of an open-borders environment. that's not what our laws say. that's not what the american people want or accept. it's not what any sane nation would do. part of what makes a country a country is that we know what the country is and what the country is not. it's defined by its outer bound limits. sort of as the sayings go, if everyone is family, no one is. if everyone is an american, what is america, after all? to say nothing of the lawlessness that you invite when you bring in people who are not vetted, who we know nothing about, who overwhelmingly not only don't speak english but aren't familiar with our customs, our culture, our laws. that's why many people have said

that it's tants mount to an in -- tantamount to an envision. contrary to the laws of that country, that's an invasion. whether they're an armed, organized military force or not, it is still an invasion. and throughout history there have been countless instances of things like this that were an invasion, regardless of whether there was a single state organizer of that activity, whether they were armed, whether they were organized as a military force. why would he want to make it easier? but he did. you know, i remember the first week or two of the biden administration. secretary mayorkas, who i believe had just been confirmed or maybe was about to be confirmed when he said this, some reporter asked him, what

would you say to the migrants, the migrant caravans that were then making their way through guatemala and into mexico and across southern mexico heading north, what would you say to them? and i don't remember the exact quote, but i think he uttered words to the effect that we probably won't be quite ready for them for another two or three weeks. we need a little more time to get ready. what is this? what does that mean? why would you be that welcoming? why not send a signal right then, don't do it. it's not worth the risk to lived and limb. it's not worth being indentured servants, sex slaves. it's not worth coming into this country contrary to our laws. and if you do that, we're going to send you back to mexico, through which you will have crossed, to await for the adjudication of your asylum claims. why? why do that? why make that statement that he made? one can only conclude that this

is what they wanted to do. they wanted to invite this invasion. they have nurtured it. they have fostered it. and over time, not only have they abandoned these safer country programs, the remain in mexico program, they've adopted it -- they've adopted a particularly odd practice that years ago if somebody had predicted this, they would have said, that's absolutely crazy. but they're given airplane tickets after they spend a few days being processed. they're told, okay, yeah, you came into our country in violation to our laws. but you've applied for asylum. yo you've aplayed for asylum -- you've applied for asylum. we're going to fly you to a u.s. cities of your choice.

by the way, you can get on that airplane, even though every american citizen has to show i.d. in order to get on one. you don't have to worry about that, as far as we are concerned. just get on the plane, have fun, and eventually they've started saying, by the which way, within six months, we'll send you a work permit. you can use that work permit while you're here. all we ask is that when you get a notification that it's time for your immigration hearing before an immigration judge to adjudicate the value -- validity of your claim, that you show up in person. understand we're asking nice -- and we're asking nicely, so we ask that you a do that. oh, and by the way, many of you won't even many have an immigration hearing before an immigration judge until the 2030's, possibly 2035.

that's how insane this is. why are we do that in once we started doing that, things really started heating up. the drug cartels realized, this is the season. we're going to make a ton of money out of this. and they have. as anyone could have predicted, the border surges have increased dramatically. by the way, it bears noting here that our asylum laws don't give any one of these people, not a single one, a right to be here. there is not at statutory right. there is not a constitutional right. that any particular immigrant has to receive asylum. it's not a right. it is a grant of authority to the executive branch of the u.s. government. it uses melange. if the following criteria for

asylum are met, i referred to them a minute ago, then the secretary of homeland security may grant asylum to such a person as meets those criteria. there is no listening that says he shall, he must; only that he may. there are other laws that contemplate that, as i read them -- require -- that people be detained while their asylum applications are pending. and they are detained, but these days it's for a few days. then they're released with a plane ticket with a promise of a work permit, as i described a moment ago. there isn't a right, not a statutory right, not a constitutional right that any one of them has to be here. and so, you know, i would imagine that if secretary

mayorkas were here, he would say, yeah, we don't detain them because we can't detain them because we ran out of bed space a long time ago. we don't have the ability to detain them more than for just a few short days while we process them. at least we know who they are. then we release them. why is is that the solution? why just release them? and then give them a work permit and then tell them we hope that they'll act on good faith and go to their immigration hearing, which may be more than a decade from now? why? that makes no sense. when all along the secretary has the authority to shut down the asylum application process and say, we're not taking any more asylees. if you want asylum from the united states, apply from somewhere else. go to a u.s. embassy in a foreign country. submit an application there. remain in that country or nuclear some other -- or in some

other country until such time as your asylum claim can be adjudicated. until then, if we find you, we'll do port you. if you return then, that's a felony offense. you will be in prison for years. why isn't that the solution? these things would come to an abrupt halt if we did that. but he didn't. what did he do? well, as things heated up, he started looking for more and more creative ways to let people into the country. won't bore you are all the details a but he relied, among other things, on a feature of u.s. immigration law, statutory provision known as parole authority. in the context of immigration, immigration parole authority is there to be used on a case-by-case basis only, never

to be used on a categorical basis for a broad category of persons but only for case-specific needs that fall into one of two categories -- humanitarian, compassionate relief or public purpose. on the humanitarian or compassionate front, an individual can be admitted for a short duration. for example, if he or she is coming in to attend a funeral of a family member with the expectation they'll go to the funeral, then they'll go back out. or to attend to the needs of an acutely ill relative, something like that. the public use front, that can be used for things like -- i don't know. if some government entity has need of, for example, interpreter services for an

obscure language, they can't find a suitable interpreter in the united states and so they look outside the united states. they can bring them in for that public use for some purpose related to things like the aiding and assisting in government operations here. but the statutory framework makes very clear those are never to be used 0en a categorical basis -- on a categorical basis. you can't just bring in large swaths of aliens simply by virtue of a common characteristic they have of being from this country or that country or when the biden administration, to make a long story short, has i think in the last year or two alone brought in about three million people under this parole authority. they've used that a although.

-- a lot. they also resorted to withheld removal. all these things are discretionary by the way. there's nothing requiring the department of homeland security to let these people in, but they do it anyway because they want to. and this problem becomes self-propelling, se self-perpetuating, and self-magnifying. our government's efforts to not enforce our border become self-defeating of the very purposes for which the department of homeland security and its various agencies, number of its agents at least were created in the first place. so make no mistake, this is part of a deliberate choice. it's not something that was just out of our control, that the u.s. government had no involvement in.

there are people out there that come up with all kinds of crazy theories to explain why this was inevitable, this had nothing to do with the biden administration or any of its policies. if you believe that, i've got a bridge to sell you. it's just not plausible. there are those who are even claiming that it's somehow about climate change, that climate change forced them into our hands. well, whatever caused them to want to make the dangerous journey north and to pay many thousands of dollars and in many cases subject themselves to forms of indentured fortitude or slavery or sex trade doesn't mean that our country had to aid and abet in that. by the way, another of my colleagues just returned in the last few days from our southern border and was told something really alarming. by the border patrol personnel there. as i understand it, they told

them the average time for those women and girls who can't afford the 5,000, 6,000, 7,000, 8,000, sometimes a lot more, that they have to work it off. both men and women are subjected to this indentured servitude they can't pay it. a lot of these people can't pay it. they're dirt poor. the drug cartels are taking advantage of those who are already vulnerable. they can't take out a line of credit somewhere. they can't dip into their savings. even if they're paying the drug cartels at the very lowest rates, they still don't have that kind of money. so they have to work it off. my colleague was informed that the average period of time it takes for women and girls subjected to sex slavery as part of their indentured servitude, how they pay off the journey,

it's mike seven or eight years. and one of the reasons it takes this long, they're charged for everything kwhiel they're kept in these condition -- while they're kept in these conditions against their will, held as captives. they are forced to pay room and board for their food, their housing, their clothing. there's even eowe they've got -- they've got everything worked out to a fee schedule. there's even an established fee of i believe $30 that the cartels charge for the removal of an ankle monitoring bracelet. that's why it takes them so long to work off this debt of a few thousand dollars that they paid to the cartels to smuggle them in. the work of these cartels and the human smuggling operations extends, of course, beyond human

trafficking and those humans whom they traffic and to whom they subject to these horrific condi conditions, conditions that we haven't seen and should never see in this country again since the civil war. a lot of these conditions would never exist in this country but for the fact that we have a government that is facilitating it. it's not humane. it's not compassionate. it's not nice to invite and allow and perpetuate this kind of trade. it's corrupt. it's immoral. it's evil. but people do it because they're desperate and they believe this

gives them a chance. they're preying on vulnerable populations. as of december 10 of just this last year, there were still 1,323,264 illegal aliens with final orders of removal who remained in the united states. think about that one for a minute. in addition to the fact that we've now got millions of people, many millions who have been released into the united states by our own government and told we hope you'll show up to your immigration hearing before an immigration judge, by the way, that may not, probably won't, occur until the mid-20's, 30's, but you can have a work

permit between notice and then which i'll have for 180 days at arrival of your destination or at least that's when you can apply for it and it will be granted, on top of all those people, we're so busy processing those, getting them to their destinations in the united states that apparently we're not doing the removal. we're not executing on those who have been deemed deportable, removable, and therefore need to be removed from the country. because we've got almost a million and a half people who have been ordered deported who are just out there on the streets. they're not doing that. that's idea failure to enforce thelaw, it get -- begets more lawlessness and that gets harder and harder to enforce the law. it's why our whole system is built on what's supposed to be a never ending succession of good

men and women throughout each generation, across one generation to another, regardless of political party of the president in charge, people enforcing the law because once you stop enforcing it, especially in an area that involves immigration and illegal immigration and criminal activity accompanying illegal immigration in particular, it's very difficult. you can't just walk in and turn on a switch, turn it all around because the backlog itself makes it so daunting. meanwhile, the department of homeland security placed only 6.8% of illegal aliens encountered at the southwest border into proceedings to even be screened for asylum eligibility. so as i said a few minutes ago, what started out as predominantly asylum application

centered illegal immigration crisis has expand ed, expanded into something very different where they're not even doing the initial screening to find out whether they're going to claim asylum. they've stopped bothering with that and started letting them in on other bases like immigration parole, help with removal or something else. of the at least 3.3 million illegal aliens released into the united states since january 20, 2001, the biden administration failed to remove through proceedings roughly 99.7% of those illegal aliens. now, look, for a system of laws to be enforced and to be followed widely, there needs to be some -- you know, you don't always have to catch, apprehend, charge in the case of illegal aliens, remove them or charge them if they've committed a crime. you don't have to get every

single person who violated the law, but there does have to be a significant possibility of detection, of apprehension, and of consequence. but when you're looking at numbers like that, 99.7% don't have any consequence like that. of course, it's going to continue. as of december 10, 2023, there were 1,323,264 aliens with final orders of removal, that is, deportation who remained in the united states. and even though they are barely deporting anyone, apparently about 0.3% of illegal entrants, the biden white house is threatening to stop all deportations if we don't pass

the supplemental aid package for ukraine. i don't even have words for that and if i could think of words for that, it probably wouldn't be appropriate in my hometown of provo, utah. this is staggering. president biden would use this kind of threat. according to the supreme court of the united states, the term is a legal matter, doesn't apply as against the federal government. if this were anything outside the u.s. government, we would call this -- there's a word for this and the word is extortion. extortion occurs whenever someone tries to get something out of you. they try to get something out of you by saying what they will or won't do that will end up being harmful to you.

others would describe it as blackmail. either way they're trying to maybe extortion is the word i would use because he's trying to get something out of congress something that congress is reluctant to do by levelling a threat. and the threat is i'll enforce the border even less than i have been. i'll make this even more chaotic if you don't pass the ukraine supplemental aid package. the biden administration has removed only one illegal alien for every 26 illegal aliens it allowed to enter the united states. as of august 31, 2023, the department of homeland security had removed only 2% of illegal aliens who failed to appear, just those who failed to appear at their immigration court hearings and after successfully establishing a fear of persecution at the border.

which is the standard for claiming eligibility for asylum. 98% of those illegal aliens remained in the united states as of the end of august of last year, august of 2023. in fact, in early december 2023, department of homeland security officials admitted that, quote, an average of 5,000 illegal aliens are currently being released into the united states each day at the border. and then throughout the month of december, we saw daily record after daily record being broken for those apprehensions, migrant encounters. those are not the kinds of records we want to be breaking. we want to break records in the olympics. we want to break records in areas that are signals that america is doing well, that it's healthy, that our government is

serving its people well or that americans are able to thrive and succeed. this is not the kind of record to which we should aspire. and yet the biden administration seems to want more of those records. it wants to spike the football and celebrate those. although interspersed in all of this are some contradictory, eyebrow raising expressions of momentary awareness that something is terribly wrong. even secretary mayorkas has acknowledged the high rate of releases telling the border patrol that, quote, the current rate of release for illegal immigrants apprehended at the southern border is above 85%. i want to think that that is an acknowledgment that something is terribly wrong but these days i don't know. his actions since we started raising -- breaking those

records, almost seemed to suggest that maybe he was bragging about that. so let's back up for a minute. we've talked about the circumstances when last fall some early discussions began after president biden asked for another $60 billion or so to be sent to ukraine. those discussions among senate republicans in particular went something hike this dawk something like this -- many of us are hearing from our const constituents, and we ourselves share those concerns, that it seems wrong, vindictive toward

our own citizens whom we're asking to pay for this, our own citizens, who are increasingly living paycheck to paycheck, the cost of living increases that have been the inevitable, foreseeable, in fact foreseen and warned-of consequences of bide bidenomics, coupled where americans' understandable fear about who is coming across our borders illegally, from what countries and with what purposes in mind, with apparently not just the tacit acquiescence of our own government but with the assistance of our own government, causes us to feel uneasy about this. many senate republicans expressed legitimate concern

that their own voters would be very unhappy with them if they just, under those circumstances, voted to support another $60 billion or so to support ukraine, when we've spent more on ukraine than anybody else, on military aid than everybody else combined. and at the same time, as we're doing all that to help ukraine shore up its own border integrity, we're not doing anything for ours. so, discussions ensued, back and forth, and republicans came up with a nascent idea, more or less a plan. the idea was, they say look, there's pretty uniform support among senate democrats for more ukraine aid. we've got a democratic president in the white house, he really wants this, they tend to support

him, and they do appear to support him on this. this is an issue that definitely unites democrats, probably all 51 democrats in the senate, at least as we perceived it at the time, at least as it related to ukraine aid. i still think that's true as to ukraine aid. but it sharply divides republicans. some senate republicans, a minority of senate republicans, would have at the time perhaps been okay pass being a ukraine aid package without doing anything for our border, but most members of the senate republican conference didn't want to do that. among house republicans, house republicans who only a third of us are up for reelection every year, but ever member of the house of representatives is up for reelection every year, the sentiment among house republicans was i believe also

one that included a lot of skepticism, a lot of skeptics, such that it was unclear that you could get a ukraine aid package passed through either house of congress, much less both. given that in the senate, even though democrats have the majority and even though the democrats uniformly support more aid to ukraine, while only some republicans do, at least without qualification, without restriction, there was in short overwhelming support among democrats for ukraine aid, not among republicans. but what republicans do want rather uniformly is more border security. so we came one this idea, why not see if we can come up with a bill that would handwritteners the appetite -- would harness the appetite on the left for for

ukraine aid, in order to document legislative text that would in effect force an end to the border crisis, that would tie the biden administration's hands to the point that the biden administration would have no choice but to enforce the border? so the idea was hatched. not everybody loved it, but most people thought it was a sensible approach to at least undertake. in theory, i think you get -- if you wrote that bill right, you could get a whole lot of republicans on board, possibly even most of the senate republican conference. what ensued over the next two, three, four months, depending where you measure it as having started, were a series of negotiations, and negotiations from which nearly all senate republicans were excluded. we weren't permitted into that.

still don't entirely understand why. i do know that sometimes for a few days at a time you've got to have chance for negotiators to negotiate and figure things out before they're ready to share language. but whenever someone is negotiating on behalf of 49 people, it is imperative to give them at least regular updates and share with them such text, such statutory text as you're able to share, an as -- as a draft of the bill. unfortunately, we didn't see that. we didn't see anything beyond being told regularly we're trike to come up with a deal to get the best deal we can, we'll give you details as soon as we can. finally, in the second week of january we were given a few bullet points, just a few bullet points, no legislative text. based on those bullet points, a number of us expressed concern that unless there were more meat on the bones of this legislation

it wouldn't do what we as senate republicans thought we were committing to, what i think most of us thought we were committing to, which is not enough to go and negotiate a ukraine aid package with an immigration bill tacked on to it, just a few immigration reforms, even if they're -- even if those immigration reforms include a few provisions that might help. that doesn't solve the issue here. they have to be sufficiently strong and unambiguous that it would more or less force the issue to the point where the president could no longer just facilitate the drug cartels and their business that makes them many tens of billions of dollars

every year smuggling human traffic into the united states. by the way, we know it's not just human traffic, because those humans they're trafficking are also carrying other things, most notably enough fentanyl to kill every american, if distributed in the right doses to the right number of people, that have in fact killed more than a hundred thousand americans for the last two or three years in a row. so yeah, when those details leaked out, but still without the benefit of seeing text, a number of us started to express concern. we started not at that point trying to kill the deal, because there was no deal that we had seen, we had no ability to ascertain the full impact, but hoped maybe, just maybe, there was something we weren't seeing, maybe it was better than how it

was described to us, based on the few details we got in the second week of january. the first time senate republicans were able to see the package was this past sunday, almost a week ago, this past sunday, at 7:00 p.m. eastern time. we received it not from our colleagues who had been involved in the negotiation but from a reporter, who apparently got to see it before we did and releaguesed it to the -- released it to the entire public. by the way, for weeks leading up to this moment, before the bill we were told even existed, we did have a number of people in the media who had made up their minds. i don't know how they made up their minds on a bill that didn't yet exist, but, for example, "the wall street journal" in the second week of

january, could have been the third but i think it was the second week, published an editorial, an editorial backed by the whole editorial board, basically saying that any republican who didn't support this deal, this border security deal coupled with ukraine aid was just trying to score cheap political points at the expense of border security, and thus national security. i was shocked, dismayed, and yes, even offended by this, because on the one hand we were being told by our own senate republican leadership the bill didn't yet exist. that's why we couldn't see it, because it didn't exist yet. nobody else got to see it, so we didn't either.

if that was true, then "the wall street journal"'s editorial board, ordinarily cautious, careful, thorough, insightful, was just operating on rank speculation as to what might be in the bill. that's offensive. to insult us for not supporting a bill that we hadn't seen yet because it didn't exist yet and we wouldn't see for weeks. on the other hand, equally offensive, perhaps even more so, would have been the possibility that they had seen the bill, they were permitted an inside glimpse into what we would be forbidden for weeks to come. either way, this is offensive, and it's not like "the wall street journal" was the only source in the media. not like "the wall street journal" was the only voice publicly clamoring for this and

publicly chastising republicans who expressed concern with it, based on what few bread crumbs they were allowed to receive about its context, just bullet points, summaries of what might be in it. we finally did see it 7:00 p.m. eastern time this last sunday. i immediately devoted hours upon hours to reading it, as did members of my staff. it was 370 pages long, and in that 370 pages there's a lot of detail, a lot of statutory cross-r cross-references. while i respect and consider as friends those who have negotiated it, including and especially my friend james lankford from oklahoma, a good man, a dear friend, we agree on most things, i appreciate his work on this, it's not easy, i think he did the best job he

could with the cards he was dealt, nonetheless it became increasingly apparent to me the more i read in this bill that it didn't live up certainly to my expectations about what we had agreed to, what i thought we had agreed to among senate republicans last fall, which was that if we were going to send another dime to ukraine we really should do something that would force the end to the current border crisis. sure, there were there, in that part of the bill, dealing with border security, that i can fairly characterize as an improvement, that i can certainly fairly characterize as tools that can be used in future administrations, by future presidents and future homeland security secretaries and the agencies operating within that

department to bring about a more secure border. but in each instance, i could find myriad ways in which this administration could, and i believe inevitably would, exploit loopholes within that legislative text, were it to be passed into law, to not only avoid the more restrictive text but in some cases even possibly to make it worse. it wasn't nearly enough. much has been said about what those provisions would do, less has been said about what they would not do. there was nothing in there that would have required a return to the remain in mexico program. there was nothing in there that

would have prohibited the biden administration from just putting people on planes to the destination of their choice within the united states and telling them we hope you'll show up to your yet to be scheduled, yet to be dreamed of immigration judge hearing, which may not occur until 2035 or later. and by the way, you'll be eligible for a work permit within a mere 180 days. it didn't contain anything like that. it didn't contain anything reinforcing the authority of the president at any moment to go back to the remain in mexico program. in fact, he should have done it all along. that's why he litigated and he lost that litigation. nothing required that. in fact, under certain circumstances it allowed some aliens crossing into our borders

without documentation, a day after applying for asylum to get work permits under the right circumstances without even having to wait the 180 days that they currently have to wait. it's things like this that may well have increased the draw, increased the allure of those willing to subject themselves to grave risks to life, liberty, and property, to pay the drug cartels, to put themselves at the mercy of those vicious monsters who engage in human trafficking and trafficking of controlled substances across multiple international borders. if anything, this would have increased the appeal of that because they could have gotten work permits without having to wait the 180-day period for this, at least for certain classes of individuals coming in this way.

so a number of us after reading it said this was not what we agreed to. this was not part of the plan. it isn't what we wanted. and while we appreciated the hard work that senator james lankford put into it on our behalf, and i believe he was acting selflessly in dealing with a really tough hand he had been dealt, this is the inevitable, foreseeable and avoidable consequence of what happens whenever you're forced to negotiate something on behalf of 49 people without what would ordinarily be assumed would be customary, collegiality to keep them informed on what you're negotiating on their behalf. i think he was acting within

very, very tough parameters. i raise that only to explain that it's not surprising that over a two-three-month period from concept to proposal when people are not informed and there's not able to to be the more or less continual feedback between the negotiator and those on whose behalf he's negotiating, they're not able to communicate regularly about the contents of the deal, you run a grave risk that that deal is going to be pretty far apart from what people expected. and so a lot of us came out right away and said i've got concerns with this.

the senate republican conference met less than 24 hours after that bill was released at 6:00 p.m. on monday. about the end of that meeting, we were starting to surmise that this bill wasn't going to make it, that there wasn't support for it. and in the end there was only four republican senators who supported that iteration of the ukraine aid bill. that is the ukraine aid bill with the border security immigration provisions tacked on to it. just four. four out of 49 senate republicans voted to even end debate on the narrow question of proceeding to that bill. so, yes, that is itself proof positive that something had gone dangerously wrong between the moment we first discussed and

negotiated out the understanding or agreement that we had among senate republicans as to what we wanted to accomplish and as to what was accomplished. but in no way, shape, or form did that failure to satisfy expectations, that pretty significant departure from expectations overtake, supersede, obviate the need for, much less erase the concerns of senate republicans and those we represent, and some many hundreds of millions of americans who are concerned about the full-scale invasion being carried out unfolding across our southern border with massive, dire ramifications or the humanitarian needs of those

individuals. it didn't undo our concerns. it didn't undo the whole reason we had reached this agreement. and, therefore, many, if not most of us, who had these concerns started saying, look, this won't do the job. this won't secure the border. this doesn't make it sufficiently more likely that the border will be enforced and that this crisis will come to an end during this administration. the fact that we don't feel good about this bill doing that doesn't mean that we're enthusiastic about simply providing our votes to fund ukraine to the tune of another $55 billion or $60 billion. it shouldn't do that. it doesn't do that. and so for the same reasons that

we decided months ago, i believe it was all 49 of us, to oppose cloture on the motion to proceed to an earlier version of this bill, actually a shell of an earlier version of this bill, one that involved only these foreign military aid and nonmilitary aid issues, the samk reasons are still alive today. so a lot of us started suggesting that we should deny cloture on the motion to proceed not only to that bill, but also to what was put forward as the text of the original bill, or what was to become the original bill, which was just the foreign supplemental aid package without the border security. and for those of us who in the first instance said we don't want to fund ukraine again without securing our own border, and then said, all but 4 of the

49 senate republicans said that border security package added to the ukraine deal doesn't satisfy our concerns. that shouldn't have meant, okay, let's just have republicans supply the votes now to get this passed. something we all have to remind ourselves about about senate procedure, legislation absent unusual circumstances like a veto override or ratification of a treaty, for example, involving a two-thirds supermajority vote as required by the constitution, absent special circumstances like that, passage of legislation in the senate is by a simple majority. 51 votes out of 100, could be less than that, depending on who's here and how many senators

we have at the time. but in order to get to final passage in all but very narrow set of circumstances that are seldom at play, circumstances involving a rarely used procedure known as budget reconciliation, not present, here. all legislation before it can be passed into law has to endure multiple cloture votes. cloture is an old-fashioned senate-specific word that we use that involves bringing debate to a close. and it takes 60 votes to bring debate to a close. it takes 60 votes to bring debate to a close regardless of how many people are present at the moment. it requires the support of three out of every five senators who are in place at the time. we've got 100 senators. that means 60 votes regardless

of how many are here. that's what you have to do in order to bring debate to a close. you have to bring debate to a close multiple occasions. normally you'll see this in multiple respects, at least two, sometimes more, depending on whether you're dealing with a substitute amendment or something like that. but at a minimum, you'll have in most circumstances to bring debate to a close prior to the motion to proceed to the bill before you're formally considering it. and then you'll have cloture on the bill, bringing debate to a close at the end of that process. either way, it takes 60 votes. what that means is that the whole reason this bill, a version of the bill that included the bored security language -- border security language, the only reason that failed is because they couldn't get to 60.

couldn't get to 60 votes on that one. as i mentioned a moment ago, the ukraine aid, i think, has tended in the past to unify all 51 democratic votes in the senate. as this was brought forward, i believe they had one dissenting democrat earlier this week on the combined foreign aid supplemental package and the border security provisions. one dissenting democrat, as i recall. so that means with 50 democrats supporting it, you'd have to get 10 republicans or this thing couldn't go anywhere. you received 4 republicans who supported cloture on the motion to proceed to that bill with 1 democrat also opposing cloture. so you had 54 votes, 6 shy of the 60 you needed. so that part was finished. then they had another vote on

cloture on the motion to proceed to the supplemental aid package without the border security language. interestingly, we had, i believe, it was 17 republicans who voted for that. the same people, most of whom just voted against the border security language being included. as i recall, 17 of those, as i recall, last fall when we made this decision, i thought we were united on this point that we needed to try to force through legislation that would compel the president, leaving him no easy out to actually secure the border. i thought that's what the plan was. maybe some never were on board with that altogether. but it makes no sense to me that what we were as a whole conference against just a few

months ago, they voted for this week, even though this's nothing in there to secure the border. we could have, should have instead come up with a simple set of things. we maybe should have done that last fall, though the need for it has become more pronounced ever since then, to just say, okay, we know a border security deal that could pass the house of representatives because it has passed the house of representatives. and we know that i believe all 49 republicans have been supportive in other context of this bill passed by the house of representatives in the border security context called h.r. 2. or at least the essential elements of it. we could have added that to it. maybe added a couple of other provisions or maybe not.

and just put that forward. h.r. 2 would make a big difference. it would really tie the administration's hands and make it much more difficult for the administration to continue being an active accomplice in this full-scale invasion taking place across our southern border that according to many has let in ten million people or so, maybe more, just since january 20, 2021. why didn't we do that? many of us suggested, again, even this week, and have been suggesting from the beginning that we add language there. then a number of my colleagues made another suggestion at the time. why not, in addition to h.r. 2, why don't we add something just to make sure that this actually happens that would require the biden administration to achieve

certain border security metrics, to achieve a secure border, to achieve actual operational security, operational control of the border as defined by law before all the ukraine aid could be released. many, if not most, republican senators ended up echoing that belief. i believe i first heard it suggested by my friend and colleague from north dakota, senator john hoeven, himself a former governor, governor of a border state, albeit a northern border state, the dynamics up there are a little bit different, had we done something like that, i think that could have and been able to unite at least nearly all senate republicans.

to my knowledge, it would have. we'd be in a much better position if we had a package supported by republicans that were supported by most republicans. instead, what we've gotten is something that has become far too common these days. i take into joy in describing it this way. the circumstances in which our own senate republican leadership has tragically chosen to support legislation that unites all or nearly all senate democrats while sharply dividing republicans. that doesn't -- almost doesn't even capture it. not just sharply dividing republican senators but securing the, you know, anywhere from nine to sometimes 19 or 20 republican votes to join with democrats to advance democratic policy overwhelmingly favored and championed by democrats that

most republicans in the senate and in america overwhelmingly oppose. this is far from the only example of this happening, far from the only example of this happening even throughout the duration of the biden presidency, far from the only example of this happening then or in the prior administration or in other administrations since i've been a united states senator, since i became a united states senator in 2011. why does our own senate republican leadership sometimes try so hard to get a handful of republicans, a minority of republican senators, to join in an effort that unites most or in many cases all senate democrats on an issue so aggressively opposed by most republicans in the senate and in america? if not most americans themselves.

i don't know that i can fully answer that question, but i don't know that i need to here. what i do know is that it's happening here. when you saw 17 republicans at the urging of senate republican leadership joining with a near-unanimous senate democratic caucus to advance a bill important to president biden that overwhelmingly is supported by democrats and, yes, some republicans do support it, but it's a slim minority of them among americans, even more of a slim minority among republicans at large than it is among senate republicans. but it's still a slim minority among senate republicans. why do we do this? we shouldn't. we certainly shouldn't here, not where our own border security presents such a clear and present threat to american national security. one of the things that i find so

galling and so difficult to accept, much less understand, is the fact that we're told by our few republican colleagues who aggressively support this bill that we have to support it, that they support it because our own national security depends on it. that's hard for me to understand, and i7 genuinely do like to understand other people's arguments when addressing them. as a lawyer, it was my job to thoroughly understand my opponent's argument partisaning nothing works well if you don't understand your opponents's argument. when you understand it, the debate can became crystallized, it can become clearer. it's hard to understand it here because it's hard to understand a coherent defense of it, especially when they're telling us that the war in ukraine and our ability to fund it is kind

of a without which not component of our national security, even though we would have the ability, if we held off for a while and if we said, you know, to our democratic colleagues, with all due respect, we do need to present you with another option. we've presented something that would actually secure the border in meaningful ways. you'll get enough republican votes to move forward, if you do this. you won't get those votes if you don't. it seems a much better way forward. -- than for us to claim that we're going to do that only to not do that at the end of the day. and at the first sign of trouble of a border security deal that failed to secure the border to our satisfaction, 17 of our republican colleagues joined with the democrats and abandoned the commitment that i thought we had made a faux -- a few months

ain ago to each other and to the american people. it's baffling, it's troubling but, more importantly you madam president, it's not too late. it still isn't done. we haven't passed the bill. there's still tomorrow. at 1:00 p.m. tomorrow we're scheduled to vote on cloture on the bill. that is, bringing debate to a close on the bill. if enough of those senate republicans change their position between now and then and voted against cloture on the bill, then we could have a chance again to say, let us take another shot at it. we can come up with language, probably in a few days, that we could propose i think would unite at least nearly every republican in the senate, maybe not everyone but probably 80% or 90% of us easily as opposed to a

bill that they seem inclined to support, that most republicans in the senate and in the country strongly oppose. i hope that they'll reconsider. especially when they learn -- they're apprised of the feelings of their constituents about this. especially as their constituents learn about some of the details of this bill. so let's talk about a few of those details now, considering as we now have the backdrop of this legislation and how we got here and why it is that senate republicans overwhelmingly oppose this bill and why it is that it is quite arguably inconsistent with the commitment that senate republicans made to each other and that the public -- that 17 of them have

now seemed to have indicated that they're not supportive of. so, what remains of the bill? let's talk about that for a moment. among its many other features, among the many tens of billions of dollars that it sends to ukraine, there are a few provisions that i feel i need to highlight here. one provision or, it gives $238 million -- so close to quarter of a billion dollars -- for increased u.s. troop deploymentses to europe. -- deployments to europe. what does that mean? well, i'm not sure, but i'm pretty sure it has a lot to do with the conflict in ukraine and other things surrounding it. does this mean, could this mean that we're preparing to involve ourselves more directly, more kinetically in the war between ukraine and russia? whereas up to this point we've

been acting flew a proxy -- ukraine. if so, the senate ought to begin debates on an authorization for the use of military force or a declaration of war to that effect, but we haven't. so why then are we deploying so many troops in? well, the skeptic, the cynic could argue that whenever we do that, whenever we deploy u.s. military personnel to -- into a zone of hostilities or into a zone in which hostilities appear to be eminent based on the circumstances, we're more or less acknowledging that what any of us would consider actions tantamount to warfare are, if not inevitable, somewhat like lay. so when we increase our troop deployment into that area,

perhaps anticipating that that war may spill over or we might become more further, more directly involved, or into an area where we've got -- we're covering more of a surface area, where there's a bigger target on us, at that moment, we become a little bit more committed, a little bit more likely to go to war. when we put them there when they do things that commit our u.s. personnel as various iranian proxies in the region in and around the middle east have done in recent weeks, we become that much more likely to be involved in armed conflicts. of see, when they fire on our people, the president has some immediate authority to repel an attack, as it's occurring.

that, in turn, can quickly lead into full-scale warfare. we ought to be having more of those discussions. instead, we're just spending more money, quietly sending more troops there. i don't think that gets enough air time. different people might have different fetalsings about the extent -- different feelings about the extent to which we ought to be involved in that. we're not having them. this is a conflict, after all, that involves some major adversaries, that could involve not only russia but iranian proxies and ultimately ultimate. and all of this has been stirred up at about the same time. we ought to be concerned about that. we ought to be having conversations about where that can take us, and we're not. it also allows an additional $7.8 billion worth of weapons to leave u.s. military stockpiles

immediately. now, keep in mind we're still looking at years before those stockpiles are fully replenished, and if we' have to engage elsewhere, let's say we have to engage in the indo-pacific region in the near future, if beijing were to attack taiwan and we wanted to supply taiwan with weapons they could use to deter that action, to make it less likely, we're making it through this action that much more difficult for us to do that because i'm told that many of the same weapons, according to a number of foreign policy and military experts, people like my friend, colby, have pointed out that a lot of the same weapons that are being

given to ukraine now are the same weapons, the same types of weapons and weapon systems that would be needed in taiwan to deter an attack on taiwan from beijing. so that ties our hands there. some would also add that a lot of the same weapons are the same things at least in some cases needed in israel, by israel. and yet we're giving up an additional $7.8 billion worth of the stuff. now, it would be one thing and still be significant, given the cost. it would be one thing if we could just turn on a switch and say, make more of these weapons, weapons with names like javelins, atacms, himars, among many others, if we could just flip a switch and say, make more of those. it's not really how it works.

this shove is really sophisticated. -- this stuff is really sophisticated. it's really economy indicated. some may predict we may not be able to replenish our stockpiles until maybe the 2030's. until maybe of the people entering our borders unlawfully might have their immigration judge hearing. and well after the time in which many people fear beijing be most tempted to make a move on taiwan. but, even more concerning, we don't know what other threats the u.s. might be facing over the next, i don't know, decade or so. there may be other threats to our national security out there, threats that we might not even be focused on right now. we might require those for use by our military forces in

protecting the american homeland. when we release this many of these very sophisticated, complicated, tough weapons which, you know, together with the bravery of the best men and women any military could have that we have in the united states, we also achieve a degree of military success and prowess not only because of the bravery and the expertise and the knowledge and the dedication and the patriotism of our brave men and women who serve? uniform -- who serve in uniform but also because we've developed a really impressive arsenal of weapons, unmatched classes of weapons that have helped bring safety and security to the united states and a way that we've all benefited from in a meaningful material

way. what happens, though, when we run out of those, when we've given them to other countries to such a degree and at such a pace that we can't produce them fast enough? will we find ourselves flat-footed, unable to protect the american homeland? that question hasn't been asked much less answered to my satisfaction. ought to concern all of us. i'm not the only one asking the question. this needs to be discussed more than it is. it's for this reason that this legislation even has to include that language to begin with. we have existing law, background legislation in place long before this war started between russia and ukraine, at least the current one. provides that absent congress passing legislation saying otherwise, the president has a

maximum of $100 million of what they call presidential drawdown authority, that he can draw down existing cachea of weapons arks hundred million dollars without additional permission from congress. we've increased that threshold 78-fold in this one provision. there's a good reason we have a hundred million provision draw down. that reason has a lot to do with not wanting to leave the united states flat-footed by a president who chooses, perhaps shortsightedly, to give too many of our weapons away. we're multiplying that limit by 78 times. a a moment when we've already given even more than that to ukraine, at a time when our weapons cache of all kinds of

weapons systems we need to rely have on have been depleted substantially, this is scary. we should be concerned. it was not just that this bill doesn't protect american national security on the homeland by fixing the border crisis and ending the invasion, it's that it also depletes our weapons, makes us less able to protect our homeland and our allies when needed. this bill also allows the department of defense to enter into contracts for $13.7 billion in new equipment for ukraine through the ukraine security a assistance initiative. this with no requirement whatsoever for the biden administration, for the pentagon to prioritize contracts that are necessary for our own readiness. in other words, the biden

administration is free under this legislation as it may choose and as it's widely expected it choose to prioritize this new series of weapons contracts to the tune of $13.7 billion for ukraine over weapons procurement needed to protect the american homeland. that's concerning. that ought to worry the american people. the bill also funds the ukrainian national police and -- get this -- the ukrainian state border guard to the tune of $300 million. let that sit for a minute. $300 million going to protect ukraine's border, the ukrainian national police and the ukrainian state border guard while the biden administration

refuses to enforce and secure our borders. is this a good idea? it's a great idea if you're ukraine and make no mistake, i want ukraine to win. i want ukrainians to be free. i bear them no ill will but this is a really good deal for them. it's much less of a good deal for the united states and for the american people. this ought to be concerning to every one of us, republican, democrat, libertarian, independent, whatever you are, this ought to worry you more than just a little bit. there's a another galling feature in this legislation, ensures that ukrainian bureaucrats, rest assured, won't miss a paycheck, not a single one for the next year courtesy of $7.8 billion in budget support from u.s. taxpayers. so we'll be paying their --

meeting their entire government payroll. my understanding it's for an entire year, no questions asked courtesy of the american people. courtesy of the american people while their own people, the americans, funding this through their hard-earned taxpayer dollars and corresponding increases for everything they buy, from housing, health care, gas, grosses and everything else, that on top of their already heflty tax bill is paying for this. now, that's great. i'm happy for them that their paychecks will be secure but what about the american people? isn't our first job for do no harm to them? isn't our first job to make sure that we fund somebody else's priority, we take care of our own first and if those two are

incompatible, we side with our own people, with our own homeland? call me crazy but i always thought that is how it should work around here and how it would work, how it typically worked in the past. but this seems crazy to me. again, getting back to the idea of selecting people randomly out of voter registration rolls, if phone books still exist, out of a phone book. i think most americans would be really surprised and not in a good way upon lettering facts like these -- learning facts like these, ho you it will impact american security. certainly wouldn't want to rush this through without adequate opportunity to debate this and in the light of day, in front of the american people with a full opportunity to offer amendments, perhaps to clarify a few points. sure, i'm not wild about this bill. i make no secret about that.

it is still nonetheless my right procedurally and my obligation morally to try to make the bill better, to try to make it more to the benefit of the american people than it currently does and less to their detriment. shockingly, a number of my colleagues -- and right now i'm speaking just of republican colleagues. this is isn't even about democrats. a number of my republican colleagues have said in recent days things that suggest that they don't think those of us who have concerns with the bill who are, as they put it, never going to vote for this bill anyway, that we shouldn't get to decide what's in it. we shouldn't have the opportunity to review it, to debate it at length and much less to amend it. i'm sorry, i find that one really difficult to take, especially from fellow republican senators.

there's absolutely nothing in the rules of the senate or any legislative body that i know of any civil ietzed nation on earth or the history of time that says unless you're going to swear to support the finished product no matter what's in it, this you can't support amendments to it, that you shouldn't be allowed to fully debate it adequate will you, to have the opportunity to introduce and vote on amendments to improve it. that is our obligation, and i find it shameful that any member of this body would say that. i find it especially troubling that republicans, particularly the slim minority of republicans who have chosen to unite democrats, sharply divide republicans on a policy that is embraced by the democratic party and overwhelmingly opposed by republicans would say that to a

fellow republican standing up for what most republicans in this body and in america believe. this has become far too common. it's not the first time i've heard that argument which is not only uncollegial, it's unpatriotic. it's incompatible with our system of government. and i look forward for the day when that argument will no longer even be raised by members of this body because it's completely contrary to the cause of good government. the bill also contains funding to the tune of billions of dollars that can be used for all sorts of things, all sorts of economic aid-related purposes out of the $7.8 billion in

economic assistance. it can be used for all sorts of things and has been used in the past in previous iterations of it to subsidize things like clothing stores, ukrainian clothing stores, and to buy concert tickets for people going to concerts in ukraine all while families living here in the united states are living paycheck to paycheck and not having their government fund their clothing stores or buy their concert tickets. the fact that wasn't excluded from this bill when we know things like that happen is insulting to the american people. this legislation begins ukrainian reconstruction using u.s. dollars. in this bill it's $25 million for the transition initiatives account at the u.s. agency, known as usaid, for, quote, front line and newly liberated

communities reclaimed from russian occupation. now, trying to figure out how best to put this, but at once one could say that's only $25 million. in the grand scheme of this bill and in the grander scheme of what congress spends in any given year or the grand scheme of u.s. gdp. that can appear like a drop in the bucket, but that $25 million didn't come from nowhere. it came right off the bottom line of poor middle-class americans. again, the wealthy can absorb something like this in many circumstances, the wealthy even grow riverer still -- grow richer still under the yolk of inflation that's crippling to poor and middle-class americans, the kind of inflation that 25

million here, 7.8 billion there, 13.5 billion there, you throw those numbers around, before long it really does start to add up and it becomes part of the $34 trillion in debt we've accumulated which within this year or perhaps next at the latest we'll be paying interest at the rate of a trillion a year. yes, we'll soon see america spending more on interest on our national debt than on defense, itself creating one of the greatest threats to american national security that we've ever known, and we've done it ourselves here because of things like this. bit by bit. i'm sure those reclaimed communities in ukraine, the people who live there, the front line and newly liberated communities in ukraine, i'm sure they'll be happy with this. i'm sure they were good, decent,

freedom-loving people who just want to be free and want for start their lives. my heart goes out to them. it's not to say anyone who benefits from this is undeserving or bad. what i'm saying is where does this end? if you accept the premise that this is only $25 million, let's examine that for a minute, separate and apart from the fact, as i've just mentioned, it's a lot of money, the people who have to pay for it. but if it really is only $25 million, meaning it's only $25 million now but we're setting a predicate now that apparently we're going to be responsible for reconstruction throughout ukraine. it's going to be our responsibility from half a world away to fund and oversee the reconstruction of territory reclaimed, as it's reclaimed, liberated from russian control. why again is this us rather than ukrainian people? why is this us rather than

ukraine's neighbors? especially when we've already given so much more than any of them or in some cases all of them combined for the military aid. why is this us? and why are we setting this predicate now? you'd almost have to strain with a magnifying glass to find those communities on a map in ukraine that will be affected by this. and i think that's why this is -- quote, unquote -- only $25 million. but we set that predicate now, what is this going to amount to? if what we hope to see, which is ukraine winning this war and more and more communities being liberated, are we in charge of all those too? this bill would seem to set that predicate. that's concerning. how has this gone elsewhere,

when we put ourselves in charge of nation building in countries a half world away? it hasn't ended well. and in many cases it ends up funding all the wrong things. we ought to be concerned about this. the legislation asked for a multi-year strategy for ukraine that places the united states at the helm of things like i just mentioned, things like the $25 million reconstruction plan, for lack of a better word, as a gift to these woke and complacent european allies who refuse to own the responsibility of securing their continent, of securing their own backyard. they'd rather have us do it, because they know we're just crazy enough to hit the printing prepses rather than ask them to -- the printing presses

rather than ask them to carry their share of the burden, which should be much greater considering we've given an extraordinary sum, amendment it's after a world away, whereas this is at their doorstep, and we've been carrying a disproportionate share of all their security burdens for decades anyway. the bill blat andly ac knowledges -- blat andly acknowledges that the $10 billion of humanitarian aid may very well be diverted by hamas or perhaps other terror groups in gaza. i believe two different accounts that add up to between $9 billion and $10 billion. ukraine laid out, i believe the language is something to the effect of in or around ukraine and in or around israel. these two accounts that when added together come up to somewhere between $9 billion and

$10 billion. nothing in there that restricts that aid in a way that we can be certain won't end up helping hamas. in fact, we can be quite confident that it will, based on past practice, based on what we've learned from other parts of the world, and based on the fact that it's hard for us to relate to what they face in gaza, but to say, yeah, we're going to send up to $9 billion or $10 billion in humanitarian aid, which as far as we know this administration has discretion under this legislation, such that if it is passed we have to assume at least a possibility they devote all or nearly all or at least a substantial portion of those funds to humanitarian relief in gaza. i'm sure we will hear, not if

but when that happens, don't worry, have no fear, this is only going to people in gaza, it is not going to hamas or any other terror group. it's difficult for us to imagine a world like gaza from our comfortable, secure, heaven-blessed land where we don't live like that, but to describe it as a dictatorship doesn't capture it. that implies the existence of an organized state. it's so much worse than that. it's that the entire country lives under the iron, brutal, punishing, threatening, retaliatory, blood-thirsty iron fist of this organization, h hamas. it is not possible. you cannot send aid to there and say don't worry, it won't go to

hamas. it's hard even to think of an analogy that captures it. i mean, it would be more defensible to say we're going to accepted $10 billion to the ukr united kingdom, but none of it will end up in the hand of the british. it's not plausible. but that's a gross understatement compared to the reality of this. hamas is gaza, and gaza is hamas. you send humanitarian aid there, you will be supporting them, just as other aid packages approved by this administration and by international bodies to which we are huge contributors have spent countless billions of dollars sending there, and that has been used by hamas while it was supposed to go to humanitarian relief. it's been used by hamas to prepare for and execute this

horrific attack we saw on october 7, a horrific attack that according to those in gaza, according to hamas itself is just a preview of much bigger, grander, more ambitious, more bloodthirsty plans to come. the bill also perpetuates the cycle of endless and unconstitutional wars in the middle east, bought and paid for by the united states. we get involved in these things. we stir up trouble. we arm those who we perceive to be our allies, not knowing how long they might be our allies or to what extent they might actually be our allies who are assuming that just because we consider them our allies today that they won't turn against us tomorrow or that they will necessarily use what we give them to their own people's

benefit. it encourages escalating conflicts in the region to the tune of $2.4 billion, risking direct engagement with iran. look, we have a crisis of never-before-seen proportions on our southern border, is and we're doing all this, stirring up other conflicts, making them more likely to end up impacting americans and america's brave men and women in uniform. so it saddens me to recall that republicans just in very recent months demanded meaningful border security, specifically the house-passed secure the border act, known as h.r. 2, and perhaps other provisions

demanded by a majority of senate repub republicans, suggesting that ukraine aid to other -- ought to be made contingent on president biden utilizing those resources in h.r. 2, for example, or under existing law, as he could do and should do and by law is required to do before the ukraine aid is released, notwithstanding the fact that republican after republican insisted on that, the lead republican negotiator was, we learned recently, instructed not even to raise the issue, even though by my count most senate republicans liked the i idea. it's inexplicable. we demanded that as a condition for supporting more aid to ukraine. we didn't get it.

what they produced didn't do what it was supposed to do, which is make it much, much harder for the biden administration to continue to facilitate the ground invasion taking place at our southern border over the last three years. we waited for months, with no meaningful news on the negotiations, no -- apparently no input that was really heard and embraced into the negotiations and no confirmed details or legislative language until less than six days ago. the border package produced by the sponsors of this bill department secure the border. it contained other features that perhaps in future administrations might prove helpful at the margins, but it also contained a lot of things

that an administration, whether this one or one in the future, bent on not securing the border might use to its great advantage in keeping the border open. what didn't harness as it was supposed to the overwhelming democratic support for more ukraine aid in order to use that support on the democratic side as leverage for actually making the border more secure in this administration. it didn't do that, so that's why we said this one won't suffice, let's offer up something that actually will. as you know, that doesn't offer

any real consequence when you say that, unless you're willing to walk away from the deal. and because just enough senate republicans -- well, a little more than just enough but a minority, a slim minority of senate republicans, just 17, decided to support this bill that we as a conference said a few months ago we wouldn't support without something forcing border security, because they came back and said never mind, we'll do it anyway even though we said beforehand we won't, because they did that, of course the democrats don't want to negotiate something that would force border security. i wish they would. they should. this should be a bipartisan issue. it shouldn't be deeply partisan, wanting to secure the border, but for whatever reason they feel that way. given they feel that way and want to support this administration's lawless

approach to our southern border, of course they're going to take the lowest price that they can get republican support for. and if 17 republicans are willing to give them that support, without anything forcing border security in this administration as a condition for their ability to fund ukraine aid, of course they're going to take the easier path. why would they do anything else? that part makes sense. what i can't understand is why republicans would do this. why would republicans, having taken that stand, do an about-face and say oh, never mind. it's as though we walked into a car dealership saying we want to buy this car, but we don't want to pay more than this price for

it. and later, when the dealer didn't accept the deal, we -- i say we, those speaking for senate republican leadership, said never mind, we want to buy the car, we don't care the price, we don't care what conceptionles you give us -- conceptions you give us. we'll take the original high price, with little in it for us. we'll take that deal. when you go into a car dealership and say i will pay any price for this, even if it's an exorbitantly high price, you're not going to get a great deal. that's what happened here. it really is unfortunate. madam president, my democratic coll colleagues, and many in the corporate media, have made a great show of pretending that

just because we were given a so-called deal, a deal that contained the word border in it, that our demands for real border security have been met. this is laughable. it's laughable, nonsense in fact. as the language of that bill showed. i don't mean that every provision of it was laugh achilics i don't mean -- was laughable, i don't mean this as an insult to those who negotiated it, whom i like and respect on a personal level and have worked with on other projects. i mean it's laughable -- it's laughably incompatible with, and unresponsive to, the demands that we made, the deal that we made with each other and with the american people, as the language of that bill showed. and as the american people's

reaction to that bill also conf confirmed. if our colleagues would truly secure the borders, i would love to give them the opportunity to do so, a chance to do so right now. wouldn't necessarily fix everything, but it should go a long way toward fixing the problem. it would force a material change, a material enhancement in border security. i'm proud to introduce the stopping border surges amendment which would make discreet commonsense changes to our immigration law to protect our border. it would prevent traffickers from using toddlers and babies as a means to ensure their customers' easy admission into the interior of our country. it would allow minors from any nation, if they do not have a credible fear of persecution, to

be safely returned to their home country. it would expedite the hearing process for children trafficked across the border. often used as chattel, temporary chattel just for the benefit of those trying to cross illegally. it requires, it would require if enacted into law asylum seekers to apply for asylum in at least one safe country in their route to the united states. it would help eliminate the overwhelmingly fraudulent asylum claims. it would require asylum seekers to arrive and present themselves at a point of entry. and it would expand the time from claiming asylum to receiving a work permit which would help curb the incentive to come here illegally. and so, madam president, i ask

unanimous consent to set aside all pending amendments and motions and to make my amendment, lee number 1531, pending to the text of murray number 1388. the presiding officer: is there objection? a senator: madam president. the presiding officer: the senator from illinois. ms. duckworth: madam president, i object. the presiding officer: objection is heard. mr. lee: there we have it. keep in mind what you just witnessed is i made a motion not to pass this into law, not even a motion to accept this as an amendment into the text. i just asked for consent to call up the amendment and make it pending so that it could be one of the items that we would consider, one of the matters to be voted on, one of the matters that we'd at least have the

opportunity to consider and debate on, hopefully and ultimately vote on and ultimately resolve. but i guess that was too much. as my friend and colleague from illinois, acting undoubtedly at the direction of the senate democratic leadership made an objection to calling that up and to make the amendment pending. this is what the rules of the senate that are more than two centuries old have evolved over time, but this is what they're there to do. all these odd terms like cloture, all these procedural votes that we have, they're really designed to maximize the opportunity for each individual senator to make sure that we have robust debate and to

consider possible improvements made to a bill. in the past, this wasn't such a difficult thing to do. i've been in the united states senate for 13 years now, arrived in 2011. and at the time things weren't perfect by any means, but at the time it was fairly common when we were considering a major piece of legislation or even some relatively minor pieces of legislation, while that legislation was pending, during time set aside to debate the measure, it was quite commonplace, it was considered a routine practice that members could go down to the floor, call up their amendment and make their amendment pending. it didn't guarantee passage of their amendment into law. it didn't guarantee that their amendment would be adopted along with the underlying legislation.

no. it meant that it could be made pending so senators could have an opportunity to debate it, discuss it, ultimately vote on it or maybe have it fall with a motion to table in the event it was a germane amendment, it could still be considered after cloture. if it were not germane, meaning connected to the bill, good example or very likely germane amendment is one that strikes a provision that's in there. you could still get a vote on that after cloture was achieved. but nongermane amendments fall out after cloture. it wasn't that big of a deal, meaning it didn't grind the senate to a halt. in fact, the senate operated for more than two centuries really,

really well with this practice in place. the senate rules still allow for this. they still call for it. they still contemplate it. and our history and tradition is such that until very recently, this was the norm. but you see it. during the one time in the week, prior to just a few hours ago, prior to 1:00 today, or at least prior to the vote that the senate took last night shortly before it had adjourned for the evening, before it recessed for the evening, we had a vote prior to the time, it wouldn't have been an order to make an amendment pending. it is now an order. it's an order now and i believe will be until we vote on cloture likely to occur sometime

tomorrow. but this is the time that we're supposed to do that. some times in the past if there was too many amendments, some members would get concerned about that and say let's not call one up and make it pending. it's still relatively rare even when that happened. but look around. it's not like you -- to my knowledge, i'm the first senator who has offered up a single amendment to this today to try to make it pending, and yet that's too much. are we all too busy that we can't debate something this significant as our nation's border security? are we really devolved to the point that republican senators can't operate in any manner without the support of senate republican leadership, unless

they support the amendment we don't get it considered, even though most senate republicans and the overwhelming majority of members at large want to see a debate. it's sad. when given a chance to agree to a real border security provision, and my amendment, the stopping border surges amendment would do that. this is a real border security provision, one that could actually make a difference during this administration, this year, and stop the invasion of our southern border. but our democratic colleagues rise to stop it. they won't even allow us to get on to the amendment to the point that it would have to be debated and ultimately disposed of one way or another. so, madam president, we now see

who in the united states senate is truly serious about securing america's borders. we won't even allow people to debate measures that would, unlike the provision rejected earlier this week, actually force border security in connection with and harnessing the willpower, the substantial will power, especially among senate democrats to fund ukraine, we don't have that opportunity. as i mentioned earlier, that's easy for me to understand why democrats, who for reasons i cannot understand are hell-bent on not securing the border and on insulating president biden and his team from the consequences of not taking such steps as he could and should take to secure the border. i can understand, at least it's consistent with the positions they have been taking. what i can't understand is why

17 senate republicans having initially committed to using this as an opportunity to force legislation would actually secure the border, why would those people, those senate republicans, those 17 senate republicans support cloture on this bill when i can't even offer up so much as a suggestion that we should vote on a border security amendment. so to any senate republicans who are part of that group of 17, you saw what just happened. i would urge them, i'd implore them take that into account. don't support cloture tomorrow not when they shut us out like this. you don't want to be part of that. you don't want to be part of the problem that is off the charts in terms of its ramifications for human rights, humanitarian

concerns, rule of law, all kinds of things that are supposed to be important to our people and that republicans all claim to support. let's at least, if you want to support the bill, i may disagree with you on that, but at least don't vote tomorrow to bring debate to a close and the absence of real debate being able to happen on real changes that republicans want to do. otherwise we'll see that the united states senate will be perceived correctly as not very serious about forcing the border security issue now. all right, perhaps if a secure border isn't enough to make them happy, it isn't to their taste, my colleagues who insist that they really are trying to solve

this problem should approve of my next amendment. currently under federal law it's illegal to vote in a federal election if you're not an american citizen. but as you scour the u.s. code, there's no real mechanism to enforce that law. this amendment would make very clear that proof of american citizenship is required when registering a person to vote in a federal election. the amendment would make it very clear that there are criminal penalties for knowingly registering an illegal alien to vote. criminal penalties as well there should be. because if you register people to vote who are not citizens, you are putting non-americans in charge of our own government. you're changing who gets to decide the direction of our

government rather than being a government of, by, and for the american people, it becomes something else. so this amendment would make it very clear that an illegal alien who knowingly registers to vote will be subject to criminal pena penalties. and so will a person knowingly registering a person who is not a citizen. for the next presidential election, the one coming up this year, and for every election beyond that, we have to take into account that we now have at least 8 million, quite possibly 10 million, quite possibly more than 10 million illegal aliens who have come into this country in the last three years alone on top of those who have been here before then who will now be prime targets for voter manip manipulation. and given the way many states

operate their voter registration rules may well be enrolled, in some cases automatically as they register for a driver's license or something like that. so we should be concerned about this, significantly concerned. i don't know that many americans -- i've heard even a lot of democrats saying that only citizens are and should be able to vote. it should be a very bipartisan issue. i don't know who would want noncitizens to be able to vote. and especially in light of the 10 million or so that have come in illegally recently. we can't discount the very real probability that a significant portion of these people might end up voting unless we put in place mechanisms for enforcing existing federal law that makes it unlawful for noncitizens to

vote. for the next presidential election and beyond, we will have these 8 to 10 million, maybe more, illegal aliens in thecountry. whether or not they vote may be dependent entirely on what we do here and whether we take this action. this ship may not pass again between now and the november 2024 election. we've got to protect our republic and the integrity of each and every american. american vote against a wave of possible illegal aliens and other noncitizens trying to vote. so, madam president, i ask unanimous consent to set aside all pending amendments and motions and make my amendment lee number 1530 pending to the text of murray number 1388. the presiding officer: is there objection? ms. duckworth: madam president. the presiding officer: the junior senator from illinois. ms. duckworth: madam president, i object. the presiding officer: objection is heard.

mr. lee: it's too bad. madam president, as we just saw, my democratic colleagues just blocked an amendment, not just blocked the amendment from becoming law, not just blocked the amendment from becoming a part of the bill that we're debating but blocked it even from being made pending so that it could be thoroughly debated and disposed of. by a vote, a point of order, or otherwise. an amendment that would prevent illegal aliens, people who are not american citizens one way or another from voting in our ele elections. what possible reason, what possible justification could there be for opposing the integrity of our ballot box in that specific way? again, back to the phone book. if phone books still exist,

people pulled randomly from the phone book or some other source, asked people, they could struggle to find many who would say, yeah, it's just fine for illegal aliens to vote in a federal election. because in fact it's not legal. it's just that we don't have the tools in place that we need to make that law effective, to ensure compliance, to enforce the law. so i still wonder what possible reason there could be, what possible valid reason there could be to oppose that. i suppose we really do need, as some would say it, we need more immigrants to do jobs that americans don't want to do. i always found that argument offensive on multiple levels.

i don't even really know what that means exactly. but certainly whatever job people say this sort of thing have in mind that a noncitizen would do, an illegal alien would do, that a u.s. citizen or someone otherwise lawful inside the united states wouldn't do, along the many jobs that they've got in mind for them, voting isn't one of them. voting in federal elections and determining the koushgs of our government -- the course of our government shouldn't be one of them. is there a perception perhaps that if we don't put any teeth behind this law prohibiting noncitizens from voting in a federal election, that they'll be more likely to vote for demo

democrats. the fact we even have to ask this question is self-troubling. the fact we're not even allowing this to be made pending is incredibly troubling. madam president, i've introduced amendments that would actually ensure border security and protect america's federal elections from foreign interference, things that my colleagues i think, all of my colleagues, at least profess to care about, but now they've objected even to making these amendments pending. i'm glad the american people now have the opportunity to witness this disaster on full dis pplay to witness the dysfunction in a

comboed that until recently prided itself as the world's greatest deliberative body into something that is diededly non-- decidedly nondeliberative. the practice i talked about that was in place for years, once you got on to a bill and the bill was on the floor, members could routinely come to the floor, call up their amendment and make it pending and the senate would dispose of it. yes, it takes time, but it's what we're supposed to do to make sure that it's thorough. in recent years, sadly with the assistance of leadership of both political parties, increasingly they won't let you do that unless you have what's called a unanimous consent agreement to bundle up a whole bunch of amendments, those that everyone dec decides, particularly republican and democratic senate leadership decide, are acceptable to them to be voted on. this often entails surrendering,

limiting the amount of time that can be used to debate those things. you have to get somebody he's permission before doing that. and then get senate republican and sat democratic leadership to bless that and come to the floor and propose it in a unanimous consent agreement. it was much simpler when we would just come down and ask for consent to do -- to make an amendment pending one at a time. simple principles of collegiality and demand that we do that. now, again, i understand sometimes there might be circumstances when someone concludes that there isn't enough time. by the way, when those circumstances arise, i believe that it's more important, not less important, to let every senator call up, debate, and ultimately vote on amendments

they deem necessary. let the basic principle of exhaustion and the informal unwritten social rules that govern interpersonal human interactions in the senate be the limiting force on this. ultimately that is what governs it. ultimately these things tend not to be abused. even when in circumstances where any senator can introduce as many amendments as they want during a period of time known as budget vote-a-rama, when we're passing a budget or budget reconciliation act, there is a period of time in which any senator may offer any amendment and have that voted on. and even then, those tend not to last more than 24 hours. usually we don't even make it that long because the principle of exhaustion kicks in and the

social pressures associated with a body where everybody knows each other also kick in. here we have none of the excuses that one might otherwise offer disengine -- disingenuously i believe but offer. again, to my knowledge, i'm the only senator who has offered to make a single amendment pending this entire day. the chamber is almost empty. most of my colleagues are not here. if they're in washington at all. they're not in this chamber. we ought to be able to continue debating. there's no time crunch i'm interfering with. this is a chance for us to debate and discuss, introduce, call up, make pending amendments and ultimately vote on them.

and this is a fleeting opportunity because unless the 17 republicans decide to change their vote between now and tomorrow when we vote on cloture on the bill, we won't have the opportunity to do this anymore. this is our only chance. this is our only shot. look, make dmo mistake -- make no mistake, i understand there are a lot of americans who like this bill, want it to pass as is. i get it. and they have every right to feel that way. i disagree with them but nonetheless i defend their right to take that position. but there are also a whole lot who are not satisfied with this bill and who are down right offended, disgusted, hurt, or scared that we consider voting on something like this without even -- without even considering a single change to it. so what? you put a few negotiators in a

room, very small handful, and you say you iron it out, you write it, keep it secret from everybody else until days before the senate will even debate it. then you limit, as they may do if they decide to support cloture tomorrow, limit it only about what? ma maybe, effectively speaking, 24 hours, the period of time in which amendments could be called up and made pending, debated, voted on, considered. if they support cloture tomorrow, they're saying forget that. you don't matter. your views don't matter. those who embrace your views and are trying to champion them in connection with this bill don't matter. because they can't -- they don't count. if you're not a super senator, if you're not part of the law firm of schumer and mcconnell, we're not closely tied to them. we're in alignment with their views on this legislation, that

no matter how many hundreds of millions of americans disagree strongly, your views don't count. they can't even be voted on here. that's really tragic and something that we're losing as an institution, something we're losing as a country. so i put forward these amendments to protect our elections and protect our borders. these are things that most senators do claim to care about. but they've objected to these amendments. and i'm glad the american people now finally have the opportunity to witness that strange resi resistance, that even having to debate a slightly different approach on full display. i'm now going to address some other issues with the other

major problem in this bill, that is, the reckless, wasteful, bloody expense to the american taxpayer to fund a proxy war on the other side of the world. on this front, madam president, the biden administration's posture of as long as it takes and as much as it takes in ukraine, it's not a real strategy. it's not a strategy at all. in fact, it's a blueprint for yet another forever war. now, we've blindly sent over $113 billion for ukraine with no plan, no mission, no clear objectives on how u.s. engagement directly benefits our own national interest, how it makes individual men and women and children in america any sa safer. this blind spending needs to stop and it must stop today. we really shouldn't be sending

one more dollar, one more dime, one more penny without a plan. the biden administration needs to put pen to paper to deliver a strategy that aligns our national interests with specific time-bound objectives. and i've got an amendment, my define the mission act amendment, that would allow only 2% of funds intended for ukraine to be released until the president delivers a strategy with specific objectives and precise timelines to congress so that congress can make an informed decision about these weighty matters and very impactful measures within the bill. and so i ask unanimous consent to set aside all pending

amendments and motions and make my amendment, lee number 1449, pending to the text of murray number 1388. the presiding officer: is there objection? ms. duckworth: madam president. the presiding officer: the junior senator from illinois. ms. duckworth: madam president, i object. the presiding officer: objection is heard. mr. lee: well, that's too bad. this time with this amendment we see an objection, and with this amendment we're talking about something that's a core part of what the bill actually does. in no way is it extraneous in my view. we shouldn't consider the border security and election integrity amendments either. i don't think they're ancillary to this. i don't think we should take another step in this direction without things like that. but this one relates directly to the subject matter at hand.

it would be lard for them to -- hard for them to say you're going too far afield from where this bill treads. this is a complement to existing legislation and it's basic commonsense reform to what we've got now. and how weird is that that apparently the solid goals and the timelines and the expectations that we're requesting in this are just too much to ask. of those who spent hundreds of billions of american taxpayer dollars on proxy wars overseas, those same masters of the university, self-appointed here in the united states senate, who are so hellbent on doing this, notwithstanding understandable fear, reluctance, trepidation on the part of the american people, when asked to even defend themselves against why we're not

demanding a plan, say no, we're not even going to consider that. we won't even let you make it pending. we understand that you, mike, are not even -- you're not even asking us to pass this. you're not even asking us to adopt it into the bill. you're just asking for the chance to have it pending on the senate floor during the one time, the one period of time in which we could consider such things, on matters impacting american national security and how much every dollar spends. the answer is no. i suppose the plans must be in their heads. they must be in the heads of the wise sages over at the pentagon, at the white house, and the wise sages among senate democrats and the wise sages among the 17 senate republicans who are willing to vote yes on cloture on the motion to proceed to this bill. but i ho expect, i ask, i beg, i plead that the 17 senate

republicans, each of them who voteded to for -- who eliminate heed for front -- who voted for front-end cloture on this bill, the vote will come as early as tomorrow. bad things happen when we take debatable matters, especially important, essential debatable matters and render them beyond debate because a select powerful few refuse to even debate them. it is appalling. it is un-american. it is undemocratic. and the american people deserve better, and we all know that to be true. i suppose american families are just supposed to trust the military geniuses behind this aid package, just like america trusted its leaders when we went to vietnam, just like america trusted its leaders when we went to start a war over weapons of mass destruction when those

weapons weren't there, just like america trusted barack obama to arm only moderate rebels, only people who would never turn against us in syria. this is the kind of trust that joe biden and the u.s. senate asks for now. why would the american people and those they elect to help them in this body fall for this yet again? like charlie brown kicking the football that magically disappears upon lucy's action over and over and over again. you know what they say about insanity. i think it's safe to say that what we're doing is insane, by that or any reasonable definition.

don't worry, america. i'm sure this time it will be different. i'm sure this time nothing will go wrong. never mind the fact that we're picking a fight through a proxy war with a nation that has enough nuclear weapons to kill us many, many times over. never mind the fact that we're $34 trillion in equity did. never mind the fact that we're being invaded a cross our southern border. this time it's going to be okay. don't worry about it. never mind the fact that we've got the world's reserve currency and that every man, woman, and child in america today has benefitted from that status and that we're jeopardizing that very status and that when we jeopardize it more and more and more, eventually that falls and we fall with it and that fall will unlike anything anyone has ever experienced in this country. yet we continue to trust. our founding document, a document to which we all sworn

an oath, the united states constitution, certainly contemplates a society in which we trust each other, we trust but verify, and especially where our government, particularly our national government, our federal government based here in this city for which we are the sovereign lawmaking authority, we're instructed not to just engage in blind trust and putting faith in that government as if it were some sort of deity. as americans we trust, but we also verify. this should be the verification platform. if not us, who? and if not right now in the next 24 hours before this thing proceeds after what the bill's proponents hope to be a successful backend cloture vote, beyond which no real significant debate, no real significant amendments will like lay be

possible -- likely be possible, then who will do it? when will it happen? doesn't materialize automatically. we have to do it right now. what excuse do they have for not doing it? this chamber is empty. nobody else is lining up. nobody else is trying to make their amendments pending. and yet the senate democratic leadership with the active, open support, the complicity of the senate republican leadership, can't be bothered to stand up to this and say this makes no sense. to show the american people that we give a darn, that we care enough about them. yet it doesn't happen. i'm told that i can't even make these pending. shame on us. we must define our mission. we must, and yet apparently we won't. we won't even debate about requiring us to define our

mission. next i want to note that every dollar of economic aid in this bill for ukraine is a slap in the face of every hardworking american battling the cost of living crisis created by bidenomics right here at home. economic aid is not going to just magically win the war for ukraine, as much as i think all of us would like to see ukraine just win. we can't wish it into existence. we can't just dump enough money into it to make it happen. on the contrary, economic aid by some measures is proving to be a colossal waste of money and in some estimates may be prolonging the war by forestalling a negotiated peace. americans will be furious to

learn that billions of dollars out of their paychecks are subsidizing clothing stores and concert tickets for ukrainians while families here in the u.s. are living paycheck to paycheck. no, they are concert tickets aren't getting funds, nor should 42 be. that's not the role of this government. the role of this government is to protect life, liberty, and property for its people. it's not to fund concert tickets a continent away in somebody else's war. just because they're at war. it's not to pay somebody else's civil servants for an entire year just because they are at war. some of my colleagues call the billions of dollars in economic assistance provided to ukraine as a small amount. a small amount. really? economic assistance makes up 34% of the roughly $113 billion in assistance that the u.s. has already prior to this bill

provided directly to ukraine. calling that a small portion? that's an insult to every american rug you willing to put food -- struggling to put food on the table and gas in the car and a roof over their heads. leaders of both parties, at least the leaders in the senate, that we should be grateful. thanks. the only problem is it's a lie. it's a complete lie. let's be clear. providing, quote-unquote, only $7.8 billion in economic assistance instead of what president biden had previously proposed in his boondoggle request of $11 billion is not a meaningful cut. in fact, it is not a cut at all. that's not cutting. that's adding to what we've already given, just adding to it a little bit less than he had

originally supposed. that's not a cut. don't insult our intelligence, especially the intelligence of the american people by culling that a cut when -- by calling that a cut when in fact it is not, and you know it is not. the bill prohibits mercifully -- it prohibits pension payments. that was part of the original plan, a you see. president biden in his imminent wisdom wanted to ultimately support pension assistance. i think that's why it's been reduced from the original request of somewhere in the neighborhood of $11 billion down to $ 7.8 billion, where this part of the bill now spends. because they cut out support for ukrainian pensions. that's great. merciful, i guess. that you're not requiring americans to do that. still doesn't change the fact that you're saddling americans with with an obligation that is

not theirs, it is not ours. it's somebody else's. money that's going to continue to pay the salaries of zelenskyy and his bureaucrats, whomever reputable news source in america acknowledged for their corruption long before this war started the united states of america started pouring money into this corruption-saddled country to the tune of 12 figures, 12 figures. that's where you get into the hundreds of billions of dollars. so with a country that already has an endemic, systemic problem with money laundering, with corruption, what do you think happens when you dump $113 billion into that country?

what do you think happens when you dump another $55 billion, $60 billion, plus on top of that? i can give you a hint many. it hasn't gotten any better. there have been example after example where we can't account for billions of dollars at a time. a big mystery there. big shock there. and yet the american people are asked to continue to pay the salaries of zelenskyy and his bureaucrats, everyone who works for the government of ukraine. what could go wrong? my colleagues have also said cutting economic aid to ukraine -- again, cutting in air quotes again -- it sends the message to our european nato allies to, quote-unquote -- step

up and do more. it reminds me of a story i heard in college. i don't know whether it is true. maybe it was i had 0 krill if a. -- hip pock a pall. a rich kid who got in trouble. his parents with money, they took away his porsche. and in the place of the porsche, they gave him a brand-new jeep chair key. -- cherokee. that was not punishment, as i perceived it at that time. whether that story was real or imagined, this is certainly not telling ukraine to get its game in gear. we're not even taking away the porsche. they've already got the $113 billion that we've already given them. we're letting them keep the porsche and we're giving them

the brand-new, top-the-the-line, fully-loaded jeep cherokee. that's not a cut. and it certainly doesn't send the messages, you better get your game in gear. not at all. make no mistake, this really is a laughable attempt at burdensharing. the woke bureaucrats in nato and the european union are completely content, allowing the u.s. to pick up the tab for europe's security. the bulk of assistance sent by european allies is humanitarian and economic despite possessing the capacity and the incentive -- and i believe the need -- the moral comparative to send weapons. the only way to get europe to do more is for the u.s. to actually do less. this means no economic aid and no military aid. especially after all we've done

and how little they've done over there. that's the only way to get them to tighten their belts. that's the only way to get our european allies in the game. that's why i'm introducing an amendment prohibiting any funding for economic support of ukraine, for paying the pensions or the salaries of ukrainian bureaucrats as well as paying for any ukrainian welfare programs. again, this legislation was originally to pay pensions. president biden wanted it to do that. it's an act of mercy, i suppose. although penuriously doled out mercy, i would add, that at least they prohibited this from going to pensions. this would add to pensions. in addition to saying this would not pay pensions, also it says can't use it for welfare programs or for their salaries. and so, madam president, i ask unanimous consent to set aside

all pending amendments and motions and make my amendment, lee number 1445, pending to the text of murray number 1338. the presiding officer: is there objection? ms. cortez masto: madam president. the presiding officer: the senior senator from nevada. ms. cortez masto: madam president, reserving the right to object. maga republicans had their chance to work in a bipartisan fashion and right wing extremists in the gop said no. i object. the presiding officer: objection is heard. mr. lee: here we see it. so when a milligan extreme -- a milligan extreme -- a maga extremist saying maybe we shouldn't pay the salaries of ukrainian bureaucrats, to the tune of $8 billion for an entire year, maybe, just maybe, we shouldn't give that an assistance program that will also enable them to continue whatever welfare programs they've got, whatever economic assistance programs they've got in place, to buy concert tickets, to keep clothing stores

running as they see fit, if that's what passes for extremism in america, and i think you've just labeled all americans extremists, or at least the overwhelming majority of us. keep in mind, once again i'm not asking that this be adopted. that's not what she objected to. i'm not asking it to be passed into law, adopted, or even into the bill, but just that it be made pending so we can debate it and vote on it. you know what we heard the other day from these republicans in the senate? who voted on cloture on the motion to proceed, so we could get onto the bill, we heard from them don't worry, we'll have an amendment process. you'll be able to offer up amendments, have them voted on, debated. you'll be able to do that. well, that's not really materializing, is it?

it's not. it's not materializing. just asked to make this pending. it didn't happen. for that i'm called an extremist. good heavens, what have we come to? i see some members of the united states senate object to even modest measures protecting americans and protecting their money from being wasted, stolen, or misoopsed for non -- misused, for non-defense related purposes, purposes very, very difficult to connect to any benefit on the part of the american people. if that makes me an extremist, what have we come to? it doesn't. my colleagues know that. my colleagues know that most americans would be concerned to know we can't even make an amendment like this pending. it's a pretty modest reform. it's not too much to ask. oh, we're a fine, fine steward

of america's finances. no wonder our country is $34 trillion in debt, much to foreign adversaries, like china. what a disgrace. now, proponents of never-ending u.s. support for ukraine, including many of my colleagues, including unfortunately apparently 17 of my republican coll colleagues, want america to pick up the tab for the rebuilding of ukraine postwar. we know this bill perpetuates something we've seen before, which is a really dangerous and vicious cycle of obligation, for the u.s. on rebuilding ukraine and leaves u.s. taxpayers on the hook for massive corruption. how do we demo this? well, because -- how do we know this? because the same model was used to keep the u.s. entangled longer than we should have been in places like iraq, afghanistan, and how did that

turn out? how did regime change turn out for us, for example in afghanistan? it failed. subtle democratic change, stable democratic government, favorable to u.s. interests. toppled. didn't happen. by the way, in those circumstances, i suppose one could have even made it slightly better argument for nation building, which doesn't support that then, we shouldn't have been doing it, but at least understand the argument better for that kind of nation building and reconstruction postwar in a nation where we had actually been waging war ourselves as americans. here we're not even the people at war. we're just the people perpetuating that war, funding

that war. funding it to the tune of 12 figures, money we won't ever get back and money that, if we keep feeding it, is probably going to obligate us to even more. waste, fraud, and abuse of taxpayer dollars. it was rampant in those countries. it will be even more rampant here. i'm introducing an amendment to habitue any -- to print any funds -- to prohibit funds being used for rebuilding in ukraine. democracy is the dependency of the united states. it doesn't typically work out so well. i'm not sure it ever does. let's not ignore this history l lesson yet again. so madam president, i ask unanimous consent to set aside pending amendments and motions and make my amendment, lee number 1443, pending to the text

of murray number 1388. the presiding officer: is there objection? ms. cortez masto: madam president. the presiding officer: the senior senator from nevada. ms. cortez masto: reserving my right to object. republicans had their chance to work in a bipartisan fashion and right wing extremists in the gop said no. i object. the presiding officer: objection is heard. mr. lee: okay, there are serious problem with that. again, we hear words like maga and extremists coming out. i resent both characterizations. even more resent the notion that because she disagrees with the views of some members of this body that it's appropriate, it's acceptable and somehow passes for legitimate argument to brand us using slurs that some of my colleagues have chosen to throw out. let's not ignore something else here. this has absolutely nothing to do with the border security provisions. the border security provisions,

op sis to -- opposition to which my colleague said somehow disquality my -- disqualify me from racing the objection that we shouldn't be involved in reconstruction of ukraine has nothing to do with the border skushth provisions -- border security provisions. moreover, unravel that. think about what they're saying. even if it were being raised, which it is not, as to my prior amendments, i tried to bring up a few minutes ago dealing with border security issues, even if they had been, on what planet is a member of the united states senate disqualified from debate simply because a bill negotiated in secret by people not of their own choosing, on terms that they never approved of, producing a bill ultimately not to their satisfaction, on what planet does that vitiate the procedural rights of united states senators to offer improvements to a bill? it doesn't. it never has.

i hope and pray it never will. it's insulting to the american people to suggest that a condition for being invited into the exclusive club of those allowed to offer improvements to an amendment are those who kiss the ring of the senate democratic and senate republican leadership in this body, the hall of famer of schumer, mcconnell and its acolytes and associates. this is wrong. i've seen it accelerate during the entirety of the 13 years i've been here. i can deal with it when i think about it only in terms of of what it does to me personally. it is what it is. i get really angry when i think about what it does to the american people, to those people i represent, the 3.5 million people in utah, and the hundreds of millions of others represented by colleagues who are not one of the precious few. i can most of the time count on

one hand who are privileged to see those documents to which she referred. documents negotiated against the wishes of the majority of senate republicans, directly contrary to what we had committed to each other and to our voters to support. and now, somehow, we get to the floor of the u.s. senate, because of concern on that i'm apparently disqualified, along with any other senate republican who had concerns with that border security language. i'm therefore disqualified somehow from offering improvements, amendments to improve this bill, to make it less bad simply because i objected to it, because it was not at all what any of us agreed to. that's stunning. here we sit in an empty chamber, no other amendments offered today, no other amendments made pending today, and we can't do these ones. why?

well, those who supported this bill of both parties apparently believe that we're disqualified from having a voice here. if we won't unflinchingly bow to them and what they've neg negotiated, as if it were co conical scripture, as if it were carved onto stone. shameful. apparently, those objecting to this, not only believe that americans should have to pay for proxy wars on other continents on behalf of other countries against yet other countries, but also that we should more or less irref cably -- irreverb cably,

open-endedly rebuild them. can somebody tell me when ukraine was admitted as the 51st state? i must have missed that day. madam president, even if my colleagues disagree with me and disagree with dozens of other senators who harbor these concerns and hundreds of millions of americans who feel the same way but are being asked to fund all of these things against their will and their wishes, even if they believe that somehow we in the senate have perfect wisdom, knowledge, and virtue to send billions of dollars overseas to do nothing more than stop and harm and kill evil people doing evil things so that those evil things are no longer going to be done, even if

you could assume all of that, which you can't, we know that you can't and you shouldn't, surely they would agree with me that we should not send aid to the terrorist perpetrators of the october 7 massacre in israel. surely, they would agree with me we should not send aid to the terrorist perpetrators who, having carried out those heinous atro atrocities, still have ambitions that would make those heinous atrocities of october 7 look like a sunday picnic. i think many americans would be shocked to learn that congress has almost no visibility into how our funds are used within the united nations and within other multilateral globalist organizations funded by the united states. with ukraine alone, our own government admits the following, quote, that routing u.s.

assistance funds to ukraine through multilateral institutions, where u.s. donations will merge with funding streams from other international donors has the potential to reduce transparency and oversight. well, that's the understatement of the year, to reduce transparency and oversight. you think? you think that when we give money to the u.n. and the u.n. gives it to another u.n. entity, it changes hands, commingled with funds from other countries, you think that reduces transparency and oversight? we think so, know so, have every reason to believe that, and we're fools if we don't admit it. but the american people aren't fools. they have every reason to be concerned about this. but why would we expect when we know what we know, when we know what our own government has admitted, very recently, is the case, why on earth would we expect that routing our

assistance for gaza through the united nations will be any different? referring back to that definition of insanity, here we go again. look, decades of bankrolling the u.s. bank system on the mandatory and on the voluntary portion of the fund we pay, these have made taxpayers unknowingly, unwillingly, but nonetheless very complicit in terrorism and anti-semitism and the indoctrination of generations of children living in gaza who have been taught to hate and harm and kill jewish people just because they are jewish and they happen to live in israel. the american people don't want any part of that. they certainly don't want to add to it knowing what we know now, what we've learned about the

catastrophic consequences of ignoring what happens when we ignore the problem. that's why i'm introducing an amendment to clarify that not only will our dollars stop the funding of unrwa -- this is the united nations relief and works agency, an agency that has itself been responsible for fomenting a lot of this hatred and this indoctrination, the anti-semitic indoctrination and otherwise proven to be a material assistance, one could say an accomplice to the crimes involving but culminating and not limited to the attacks of october 7. mercifully, i suppose, the authors of this bill decided to

write out unrwa, the u.n. relief and works agency, saying no soup for them. no benefits to them, they can't have it. but my amendment would add to that, acknowledging that the agencies supported by the united nations are all part of a net network. there are close to two dozen of them operating in gaza. and if you exclude only unrwa from that network, that money will just go somewhere else, inflicting many of the same harms that have come through unrwa. so my amendment would clarify that not only will our dollars stop funding but they'll no longer fund any u.n. organization operating in gaza.

we've been down this road before, funneling our aid dollars through multilateral institutions, and we know exactly how it ends. in tragedy. in savage brutality in which we've been complicit through our financial support. without my amendment, there's nothing to prevent the administration from taking funds that could have, would have otherwise gone to unrwa and redirecting them to the nearly two dozen other u.n. entities that operate in gaza where we lose all visibility and all control over where our dollars end up and how they're used and what they fund. enough is enough. like most multilateral institutions, the u.n. is a bloated, corrupt, and really woke system, one that's far past its prime, and it's proven

adversarial to the united states and overly hostile to our ally israel. it's a platform for tyrants to mock us, for brutal dictatorships to sit on human rights committees and for terrorists to receive aid. we can't trust this administration not to fund u.n. programs in gaza, and we can't trust the u.n. not to fund terrorists and foment their acts of brutality, which is exactly why my amendment is so urgently needed. and so, madam president, i ask unanimous consent to set aside all pending amendments and motions and make my amendment lee number 1596 -- rather, my amendment lee number 1448

pending to the text of murray number 1388. the presiding officer: is there objection? ms. cortez masto: madam president, the senior senator from nevada -- ms. cortez masto: i object. the presiding officer: objection is heard. mr. lee: madam president, what else is there to say? we shouldn't be doing these things. we certainly be doing them with reckless disregard for the very serious problems that we are cre creating, for the very serious existing problems that we'll be exacerbating through this legislation. we certainly shouldn't be doing this in a way that excludes a

very significant percentage of the composition of the united states senate from having any input. did you hear what she said? yet again, on a measure that has absolutely nothing, nothing at all to do with the border security measures that were rejected with good reason by nearly all senate republicans. she's on that basis calling us extremists and on that basis excluding us from making our amendments pending. this has nothing to do with bored security provisions -- border security provisions. this has to do with this bill. for that matter, this is a germane amendment tonl legislation. to exclude us because we wouldn't bow and kiss the ring of the law from schumer and mcconnell and its acolytes and

associates is a disgrace to this institution. it's essentially saying you must agree with the machine. you must agree with the firm or you'll be shut out. you won't have anything to say in it. this is unacceptable. it will be even more unacceptable, madam president, if those same senate republicans who just a couple of days ago and just a few feet from here on the same floor of the same building here in the capitol, same senate republicans told us, don't worry, you'll still have the opportunity to offer up amendments to make them pending, to have them disposed of by the senate after we get on to the bill. and that's why they, those 17 voted that way. we'll see within the next 24 hours whether they meant what

they said. because if they did, they should be voting against this. look at what's happened today. the only amendments that have been called up and made pending have drawn objections every single time. and oddly enough, as they become more relevant, more germane to the bill they have become more vicious objections to those of us concerned with the bill and border security negotiations without our knowledge and consent over a period of three or four months was rejected by many of us with good reason, because it didn't do what we promised each other we would try to accomplish. we're told we're shut out of the process now. most senate republicans are now shut out of the process. i ask, i implore, i plead with my senate republican colleagues,

it's sad that the democrats have gotten to this point. senate democrats, when i first started here, didn't do that. we didn't do that to each other generally. they're fully bought in on this now apparently. i at least plead with my republican colleagues, if you voted for cloture on the motion to proceed, front end cloture, i implore you tomorrow please don't support cloture. they've shut this down. they shut down the very process that you told us we would have access to, the process the american people have come to expect and demand especially when we're going to spend some $95 billion on legislation, sending $65 billion more to ukraine after we sent billions to ukraine already. the american people demand more. we should domestic more of all of us, but certainly the republican voters should demand more of republican senators, especially given that republican senators as a whole, as a conference, we made a decision to try to use this as an

opportunity to force the border security measure. and now we're told no soup for you. so there's, without that amendment that was just rejected, even being made pending, there is to be clear nothing to prevent the administration from taking these funds, taking these funds that would have otherwise gone to unrwa and funneling them through some other u.n. entity or some other body other than unrwa. my colleague have rejected every safeguard, every limit, every improvement, every condition i've offered so that we may be good and faithful stewards of america's resources, and the taxes taken from hardworking families, taxes that at the very at least they should expect not to be used to kill israelis, to

undermine american national security, to say nothing of the missed opportunity here to secure a genuine, genuinely bipartisan agreement on something where there's not agreement in both parties as overwhelming as some would wish, but where there could be if you matched up adequate border security provisions with provisions giving aid to ukraine. we'll find out tomorrow whether those senate republicans who voted to get on to the bill notwithstanding the absence of the conditions we demanded months ago, we'll see how they feel then. i really hope they reconsider. they have every reason to reconsider their vote and to do it differently in light of the fact that they're just shutting us out of amendments. shutting us out with the excuse

that anyone who disagrees with them, anyone who takes a different position then the firm and its acolytes and associates can't even have a voice on a measure like this. madam president, today we've explored the utter arrogance of politicians who believe that they and they alone can determine the risks and the rewards of proxy wars across the globe. they believe that they're playing a grand game of geopolitical chess. but as millions of americans have seen, they're just playing with fire. they can't throw more of america's treasure into bloody

conflicts across the globe without maintaining visibility, access and control, we can't do that without pretending we're helping hardworking families who find it hard to put food on the family because of bidenomics, reckless spending like this. we cannot simply blindly dance with nuclear powers without forethought, without so much as a plan. madam president, remember before even getting on to this bill, the majority leader assured us that the amendment process would be, i believe in his words, fair and open. but then, then once republicans decided to get on the bill, enough republicans to get them pass that critical threshold of 60 votes to bring debate to a close on getting on the bill, to give the votes to consider it, then and only then did the majority leader change his language, and he said that it would be a fair and reasonable process. not a fair and open, but a fair

and reasonable. reasonable apparently in the eyes of the beholder, the eyes of the beholder one who views anyone who disagrees with him as an extremist. those views are not worth considering. it's not extremist for the american people to ask noncitizens be prohibited from voting in their elections. it's not unreasonable for the american people to ask that the government for which they work months out of every year just to pay their federal taxes only to be told that's not enough because we're $34 trillion in debt so we're going to print more money to make every dollar spend and go has far and buy less things. it's not fair to those same people to say those same people are extremists insofar as they have concerns, concerns that tell them they should want a secure border and they should want their elected lawmakers in washington, d.c. to be demanding a degree of border security, be

forced on the biden administration because it apparently has to be forced on them because they are unwilling to do it on their own. it's not unreasonable for the american people to ask to not have to fund acts of terrorism through agencies that have indoctrinated so many people into hateful, hateful march canadian of anti-semitism. it's not unreana tm to demand that these things at least be considered or that we at least have a plan relative to ukraine. that's not unreasonable either. these goalposts are already shifting. who decides what's a reasonable amendment process? the three or four members of the senate who wrote this bill in secret? the leadership? the law firm of schumer and mcconnell and its acolytes an

associates? the leadership and bill managers who gave us just days to read the bill before requiring us to vote on it, requiring us to scramble, as my staff and the staff of many of my republican friends, colleagues have done to put together a series of amendments. it is difficult to draft amendments before you see the bill. we weren't able to see the bill until 7:00 p.m. sunday narcotize eastern standard time. my hat goes to the staff and the staff of many others who have byrned the midnight -- burned the midnight oil, sometimes quite literally, to get us to offer amendments. now we're told no such luck. you didn't kiss the ring of the firm. sorry, you lose. it's not we who's losing i'm concerned about. it's not we in the sense of a few senators. it's those reweapon. it's the hundreds of millions of americans who were told their

voice doesn't matter because they're concerned about such frivolous things as actually securing the border order actually making sure that we have a plan before funding yet another proxy war, this time involving an adversary with enough nuclear arms to kill the american people many times over. what about the other 96 members of this body? what about the states they represent? are they give an voice in this process, even those who votes for cloture to get on the bill, cloture on the motion to proceed? most of them were excluded and if we are being honest, they were administered truth serum. they had have to admit that they had little to no say in what went into this. this was written by a very small handful of people under a cloak of darkness. and now after being told there would be a fair and open process, it partnersly means

nothing. if you disagree with the firm, you are excluded and so you lose. on thursday, we compared notes and gathered information from a dozen or so of my colleagues. this isn't even all of my republican colleagues but just a dozen or so of us who had been talking about what amendments we felt were appropriate to be introduced and just a dozen or so simplify us submitted over a hundred amendments to our leadership team for consideration. now, in good faith, madam president, we've -- as a group we've whittled down that list of over a hundred amendments, down to 28 priorities. we've worked in good faith to reduce what we're asking for.

so far i'm still the only person today who's offered up and tried to make pending even a single amendment and even that is apparently not -- over time, madam president, it's just become the new normal. the american people have been asked to settle so many times, to settle for a process that disenfranchises them by excludeing those they elected to be part of the lawmaking process. unless they're part of this elite cabal called the firm and those who manifest allegiance to this it moments like this, they're excluded. this is why we're $34 trillion in debt, by the way. this is why we're now swimming in a sea not only of the $34 trillion in debt, which soon is

going to be producing enough in interest payments alone to swallow up other priorities, including priorities that only we can take care of, like national defense; it's also subjecting the american people to a byzantine labyrinth of laws made by men and women not of their own choosing, federal bureaucrats whose names will never be known much less appear on the ballot to anyone in america, that write laws that collectively add to the expense of government to the tune of $2 trillion or $3 trillion every single year with no ability to elect them. now, on top of all that, they're told that even those they do elect aren't able to help them unless they're part of this cabal of a very tiny handful of people who draft the bills. this is wrong. we all know it's wrong. we've got the procedural tools available at our disposal to

allow us to get around it. we cannot say, not credibly, not honestly, that we just inherited this -- yeah, shucks, there's nothing we can do about it. we know that's absurd. we know that's not true. we know that's not true because the rules themselves give us protection against that. and so i say -- i implore whether you are a republican or a democrat, but especially if you are a republican, and especially if you are a republican -- any of the republicans who i think all of us said we should use this as an opportunity to force border security, to harness what support there is behind providing additional assistance to ukraine to force security of the border with an administration bent on the opposite effect. when we got a draft of the bill that just didn't do that, despite whatever nice things you might want to say about the language or its drafters or those -- the intentions of those who were trying to produce something, it didn't do that.

it didn't do that to the point we're all but -- where all but four republicans voted against it. so the fact that we're now being told the default to that is that democrats win, democrats get the support of 17 republicans who will support not only the legislation crafted in secret that unites democrats and sharply divides republicans but also alienates overwhelmingly and with good reason most republican voters, they are going to be acocomplices now in shutting out debate. i ask, i beg, i plead all of my colleagues, especially those republicans who purported to share that concern whether they expressed that concern or not,

regardless of how they feel about border security and for that matter regardless of what political party they belong to, they should care about making sure that our money is not going to fund interest hostile to the american people -- interests hostile to the american people. that we have a certain, implicit obligation that we take on when we take our oath of office, an obligation to ensure that we first do no harm. this bill violates that. deep down, deep down a lot of my colleagues realize that. remember, it only takes 41 votes, 41 votes opposing cloture stops the bill, stops it either indefinitely or until such time as these concerns can be resolved. they're not insuper parable

concerns. they're not concerns that should be shut out from debate. so i ask, i plead any of my colleagues that happen to be for whatever reason listening to my words at this moment, and to whatever voters out there that happen to be listening to me montana a nice saturday afternoon, if you share these views, share them with your senators, encourage your senators to allow the american people into the dark and secret tent in which things are being negotiated to the exclusion of every american. we're a nation of laws. i hope we always will be. despite our flaws, our country is the last great hope in a world that's increasingly hostile. i hope we'll always be available to be that. we can't do it when we treat our own people this way.

we can't do it when we ignore risks like those that we're ignoring today, as long as we continue this. so i implore my colleagues, and i implore voters out there who have the ear of any of my colleagues, to oppose cloture tomorrow. we haven't had a fair and reasonable process. we haven't had a fair and open process or any kind of process on amendments because the firm is determined to exclude us, determined to exclude us in a way that benefits the military industrial complex, who will earn pats on the head for a small handful of politicians in america but otherwise undermines american interests, especially when we refuse even to consider opportunities to make the bill better or at least less bad. that's not too much to ask.

thank you, madam president. i yield the floor.

ms. klobuchar: madam president. the presiding officer: the senior senator from minnesota. ms. klobuchar: madam president, i rise today to urge my

colleagues to pass the national security legislation that is in front of us. it reaffirms our commitment to our partners across the globe. now, earlier this week, we had an opportunity to move forward with this bill, plus provisions, important provisions that have been negotiated by senator lankford of oklahoma, senator murphy, senator sinema and many others that would have focused on border security, an issue that senator lee has been raising in his objections today. i think it's important people understand the many opportunities we've had to move an border security. but this was a gleaming opportunity because it was negotiated by a conservative republican from oklahoma, who had been designated by his caucus, someone many in this chamber have deep respect for,

and unlike other pieces of legislation that i strongly supported, this actually wasn't comprehensive reform. we've had many opportunities in the past, including passing a bill through the senate, that would have created legal paths for citizenship while strengthening our border. and i hope we continue to have those opportunities. the provision that was voted down by our republican colleagues would have strengthened the border security in a major way, giving the president emergency powers that he could have exercised at the border. it also would have done something about fentanyl. a sheriff in my state, in our biggest county, in the last year seized enough fentanyl to kill every single person in that county venality h. -- county. this legislation would have actually provided the resourceses for technologies,

cutting in technology to detect the fentanyl coming to our country from ports of entry, whether they be on the border, whether they be on the canadian border, something of concern to the presiding officer and myself, or whether they be in airports and the like. but sadl voted that down. so originally this combined piece of legislation was about standing with our allies around the world, but it was also about our own security, border security, economic security. it actually contained a number of visas and work permits for those that come to this country legally and would like to work and sadly, that was turned down. i know that in the rural areas of my state where we don't have enough workers in our nursing homes and in our hospitals where we don't have enough doctors in

those hospitals, where we don't have enough people to work in manufacturing and in our agricultural community, that actually would have been a big game changer for us as i know it would have been in a lot of the northern states. but that was turned down by our colleagues. so we have the package in front of us. and the package in front of us is about national skecurity as e work to try to get them to join us to strengthen border security, at least we must stand by our allies around the world. and there's one ally that i especially want to focus on, and that is what is happening in ukraine. i have been to ukraine twice in the last few years, also to the border right after the invasion in poland, standing there with senator wicker and senator blumenthal, meeting with our

troops and the nato troops that were stationed in poland but seeing people fleeing from ukraine when that invasion began always, always indellably marked in my mind will be the grandma who is 90 in a wheelchair being pushed over the bored from the only country she had ever known into poland. and the little kids with nothing but backpackswith their stuffed animals. they had to leave so fast because there had been a bombing of a training facility, and we happened to be there that day, only week, after the war started. and since then vladimir putin's unprovoked, unlawful, unjustifiable invasion, the largest land war in europe since world war ii, rages on. this is not only a battle for ukrainian's sovereignty, it is a battle for democracy itself.

and just as vladimir putin has shown his true colors razing cities to the ground, slaughtering innocents, children, the ukrainian people have shown theirs, defending their democracy in brilliant blue and yellow. they have succeeded, even taking back in territory because of their unbreakable resolve. but also because countries across the globe as far away as japan and south korea, their neighbors in europe, the united states, canada have stood with them. and now is not the time to give up. over 100,000 ukrainians have been wounded and 70,000 have been killed. and in the words of the nato secretary-general, the war has become a battle for ammunition. russia is firing nearly 10,000 rounds a day while ukraine is only managing 2,000.

it is not just the u.s. that has stood up to this challenge with not only military aid and expertise but also of course humanitarian aid and the humanitarian aid in this agreement of course will give much-needed humanitarian assistance to those innocents in gaza. and we all mourn what's happening there right now. it will help people throughout the world. but it's important to note that it isn't just the u.s. standing up. our european allies are standing up to this challenge. the british prime minister visited ukraine in january and promised to increase funding to over $3 billion by next year. latfiya, a tiny baltic state of less than two million people is providing military support to ukraine that is equivalent to more than 1% of its gdp. they have also trained 3,000 ukrainian troops and plan to

train more as the fighting continues. and finland which shares more than an 800-mile border with russia has given ukraine over $2 billion in aid since the fight began. these countries know that freedom is at stake. these border countries that i once visited with senator mccain during the first invasion, and i heard the stories of estonia when russia was mad at them for moving a statue, they turned off their wi-fi. or in latfiya and lithuania when people would stand up, stand up for democracy, they would hack into their phones. or the kind of false advertising and interference on the internet with misinformation that we first saw in those border countries in places like finland and places like sweden as we now

know the russians have tried and are trying it over here. the ukrainian people, though, they are on the front line. while we deal with this over the internet, as hard as that is, they are dealing with it on the front line, shedding blood, killing hundreds of thousands of russian soldiers, standing up for their homeland, the chef cooking meals for troops on the front lines, the nurse who traded in her scrubs for camo and now serves as a field medic. the martial arts teacher leading a recon unit to keep his village safe. these are the lives at stake. as president zelenskyy said in september, there is not a soul in ukraine that does not feel gratitude to you, america. i saw this firsthand when i was there with senator portman in the middle of the war. we were the first ones to go

over officially after some of the leaders of the senate and house had gone there. the u.s. embassy officials in kyiv told us that one evening when they picked up a takeout orderer, a restaurant employee had written thank you for the himars on the bag. they didn't even know they worked at the embassy. u.s. aid has empowered ukraine to take back half of its country to save lives. it has given families hope that there will be a future. and when you think of the numbers, today more than 6 million ukrainians have been forced to flee their homeland. six million ukrainians. just as our polish allies and the other countries in the region have taken in refugees, america has, too, especially in my home state of minnesota that has always had a proud ukrainian american population. ifrp' met a number of receive --

i've met a number of refugees. sometimes it's flower farms where the ukrainians would come to work in the summers and bring back money home. now they're staying there and bringing their families, and the farmers have taken in their families. sometimes it's people who simply had no place to go and the relatives, distant relatives took them in. i met them at the ukrainian churches and i've met them in their workplaces. it is a very hard situation and to a t every single one of them says i just want to go home. throughout our history, america has never failed to defend our friends in this manner if we were just to simply withdraw. just like that, just because of dysfunction in this place. how could we ever explain that and hold our heads high with the rest of the world? the questions is as vladimir

putin seeks to wipe ukraine off the map and march right in and could easily march right into a nato country and put america and our military right in the middle of a major war. the question is, will america answer the call of the ukrainian people. to me it's not a question. it's a must. we must be here for ukraine, for the moms, dads, grandmas, grandpas, kids, and grandkids who are counting on us. we must say as president zelenskyy said on the first day of the invasion when he went down to the street corner and said three simple words, we are here. it is now our moment to say we are here. one other topic, madam president, that i wanted to discuss today is the work that we are doing on the afghan adjustment act amendment. we don't know if they're going -- if there are going to be amendments, but if there are, i hope with the strong bipartisan

support that we have for this measure, that we will be able to have a vote which we know will pass on this important measure. this is an obligation, a security obligation. just as i talked about the border and our obligation to do something on the border and to make sure we have a strong legal immigration system, just as i talked about ukraine and the importance of standing with that ally, just as i talked about the importance of humanitarian aid to gaza and places around the world, we also have an obligation to stand with those who stood with us. that's about keeping promises. that's about keeping our covenants. so yesterday i filed a bipartisan amendment based on the afghan bill that senator graham and i have long put forward.

this is an amendment that senator jerry moran, the highest ranking republican on the veterans committee in the u.s. senate and i have put forward. senator graham is also a cosponsor of this amendment. our cosponsors include senator wicker who is the highest ranking republican on the armed services committee, senator cassidy, senator mullin, senator tillis, senator murkowski and senator crapo and i know senator graham is the ranking member of the judiciary committee of the republicans. senator rounds, senator capito, of course many democrats, including senator coons, senator shaheen, senator king, senator blumenthal. this is about doing right by those who stood shoulder to shoulder with our troops. this amendment is supported by so many of the groups that stand

with our veterans. and i note when i and i'm sure you, madam president, senator kaine who is with us today in the chamber, when we go and talk to our veterans, meet them wherever they are, they talk to us about things like burn pits, exposure to burn pits. oftentimes it's not the vets who are actually exposed to the burn pits, but they know someone that was, or someone's husband that was, or wife that was and they're looking out for them. oftentimes when they talk about benefits, it would be about someone they know that has ptsd or has mental health issues. it's very rarely about their own problem. that's the same thing going on here. this is legislation, and i have never seen so many vets come up to me about something where they get so emotional because it is about the people that stood with them on the front line, the translators, the people who

gathered intel, the people that were willing to take a bullet. and that's why this bill, this amendment we put forth has the strong and never ending support of groups like with honor action, no one left behind, operation recovery, the american legion, the vfw, i would add the u.s. chamber of commerce as well as many of our nation's most are veered military -- revered military leaders including admirals mike mullin, william mccraven, general richard miers of the air force, joseph dunford of the marine corps, stanley mccrystal. i literally have hundreds of commanders who have commanded troops all over the world in many different conflicts who say this is a fight worth having

because when the vietnamese stood with our troops in vietnam and when we withdrew and so many of them fled to our country, we didn't just leave them in legal limbo. we didn't just leave them as happened to -- as senator mccain was aware, one of the afghan interpreters was working as a double shift as a driver with lyft and uber and ends up getting murdered. we didn't leave them back then in legal limbo. we made sure that they had a path to permanent residence. we made sure that they were able to live in this country with dignity. and what did we get out of it? besides the obvious national security implications that others will want to stand with us because they know we keep our promises? what did we get out of it? a thriving mong and vietnamese

community in this country, just as we have with others that have stood with us. they are now nurses and doctors and firefighters. they're teachers. my daughter went to elementary school. half her class was mong. that's what we did for those communities. we know in america americans don't diminish america. they are america. so thiscovenant, for so many reasons, with our afghans, must be kept. what am i talking about? i'm talking about nearly 80,000 afghans who sought ref yuning in our country -- refuge in our country after the withdrawal. they're here in our country. let's think about this. they're actually in our country. what our bill does, which was negotiated with many conservative senators, actually has strong provisions for

vetting, to go back and see what the people who are here have done while they were here. many, you can imagine, got work permits or finding ways to work, trying to raise their families, they have more people that will vouch for them. over half the people have a letter from the head of mission in afghanistan. they have letters from our own military about what they did and how they saved their lives. in addition, there are those that are still in hiding that stood with our troops in places around the world. brave translators, humanitarian workers, courageous members of the afghan military. that's what's in the bill. what we're talking about here? well, female tactical teams of afghanistan that i got to meet with in the last few months. they had our troops' backs as they pursued mentions hunting down isis combatants on

unforgiving terrain and freeing prisoners from the grips of the taliban. the entire purpose of the programs that we have in place, that we are working to expand and extend to the afghans, is to provide residency to those who have supported the united states abroad. not just be here with a trap door under them, not knowing when someone will take away their residency and send them back to a certain death, but actually make a place for them in our country when we need them. let me give you examples of the people i've met. manaz, they don't want their last name. why not? they still have families back in afghanistan. manaz, commander of the female tactical platoon who worked closely with our military support team to facilitate discussions between our soldiers and the afghan women when they crossed their paths in the field.

amad, a pilot whose helicopter was shot down. not once, but twice. speaking of his work with our troops, he said, in the face of danger, we were united. we were relentless. we were resilient. another pilot, who didn't want his first name mentioned, who spent ten years helping american soldiers identify taliban positions in the mountains of afgha afghanistan, he said his job was to capture the bad guys. an afghan interpreter who put his life on the line to support our troops. why? his words, same goals, same target, same achievement. a helicopter fighter pilot who worked with our troops to combat the taliban in remote areas of afghanistan for eight years and spoofed being -- survived being

shot in the face by flying bullets. we're going to tell this guy, well, we're having fights, even though we have enough votes for this, it's kind of inconvenient to vote for this right now. reggie, another afghan inter interpreter. now, remember, engineer afghanistan being an interpreter -- in afghanistan being an interpreter wasn't a desk job. not when you see the diplomatic meetings, they've got the thing on, in the u.n., they're interpreting meetings, you wait, as all of us have done, you talk, they interpret from a stage. no. they, if you haven't seen the movie "the covenant" i suggest you see it, explaining one story, a true story of one translator and what he did for an american soldier, they work soldier to soldier with our troops while they were on foreign soil. where the troops went, the interpreter went. if the troops got ambushed by bullets, the interpreter got

ambushed by bullets. if the troops got bombed, the interpreter got bombed. this was a risk that reggie took every day. on august 8, 2012, reggie was working on patrol with a group of servicemembers, including army captain florent groberg. a suicide bomber approached. this left the interpreter and soldier bloodied and fighting for bret. the interpreter was left with -- fighting for breath. he used the energy, the interpreter did, to go to the soldier's aid to help stop the bleeding. to this day, as a result of that attack, reggie has problems with his left ear and sometimes can't control his body. that's what he sacrificed for our troops. that's the depths of his commitment and covenant. reggie and the captain survived

that attack, but tragically several men did not. one of the men we lost was u.s. air force major walter david gray. he left behind his kids and his wife, heather. in august 2021, nine years after the attack, heather learned from an npr reporter that reggie was being targeted by the taliban in afghanistan. she wrote about that experience in an essay for "the dallas morning news," i will share her words with you now. i want you to think about the bill before us, supported by multiple republicans and democrats, supported by commanders and generals across the country, supported by every major veterans group. listen to what she said -- turmoil, she said, is a good way to describe the emotions i felt when i listened to that radio interview. it was reggie in afghanistan on the npr broadcast describing his service as a linguist to our military and the danger his

family was in if he didn't get out. reggie served with my husband, she said, major walter david gray, in the air force, and was with him when david and three others were killed by suicide bombers in kunar province on august 8, 2012. after listening, she said, i called my friend who confirmed that the man we were hearing on the radio, that's reggie, telling about how scared he is for his family, was our guy. with that confirmation, she said, my family spun into action, working with others, both stateside and in afghanistan, to get reggie, his wife, and their four young children through the gauntlet outside kabul's airport, onto a military plain. it would be merely november before reggie's family was resettled in fort worth where his brother lives. heather's story continues, she

wrote, my family traveled four hours to fort worth to meet them. as we worked alongside each other assembling furniture, reggie showed me scars from the battle that killed my husband. as he recounted stories of the many battles in which he fought alongside our servicemembers, a car backfired outside and he instinctively lowered to the floor. he still struggles with traumatic brain injury and ptsd. a few weeks later, she said, i brought my new husband and kids up to spend thanksgiving with reggie's family. despite the language barrier, we celebrated as one big family, because that is what we are. reggie, she said, is now gainfully employed. his children are in school and their english gets better every day. he is among the afghan allies who need congress to pass the afghan adjustment act. heather shade one bore de -- shared one more detail, saying every time we see reggie he reminds my children that their father died a hero.

i'm certain, she said, my husband would say he was just doing his job and that reggie was the real hero for risking his life to serve alongside our military. in honor of these heroes, our u.s. military, but also those that served with them, we must pass this amendment. major walter david gray died on the battlefield. captain groberg flung his body at a suicide bomber. after that, reggie focused on taking care of the captain. that is why we have this broad support of people who are not going to let this go -- american legion, iraq and afghanistan veterans of america. as they wrote in a letter, america's veterans served with afghans for two decades if afghanistan, fighting side by side with them, we saw firsthand their courage and dedication. they risked their lives to help

us and made significant contributions to our mission. this is about the original bill, which has been slightly modified by republican colleagues, but still has the same purpose and will have the same effect -- we urge you to support the afghan adjustment act as soon as possible. we promised to stand by our allies who often at risk to themselves and families served in uniform or publicly defended women's or democratic rights. the u.s. government made a similar promise, making sure american commitments will be hon orts. or listen to national security experts from republicans and democratic presidents, they wrote, the bipartisan afghan adjustment act honors our nation's commitment to its wartime allies by providing a path to permanent status for afghan evacuees, and ensures they are properly and scrupulously vetted, they're in the country already, prior to considering them for such

status. the status quo leaves tens of thousands of evacuees in legal limbo, while failing to put to rest security concerns raised in reports. no action is not an option. we urge you to pass the afghan adjustment act. no action, says our security experts, is not an option. it's not just military groups and national security experts. eight former similarity ambassadors to afghanistan called on us to pass the afghan adjustment act. those ambassadors served under president george w. bush, barack obama, donald trump, and joe biden. each have an intimate understanding of the diplomatic stakes of getting this right. they said this, we are a group of retired ambassadors, all of whom served as chief of mission at the u.s. embassy in afghanistan, who have dedicated our professional lives to furthering america's interests in the world. we are writing today because we

are convinced that the afghan adjustment act furthers those interests. the need is urgent, and the time is short. let me list some of the military leaders. general dounford, admiral mike mullin, who made calls about this bill. maybe it's worth listening to them and getting a vote on this piece of legislation that has been vetted itself through multiple republican senators. it is not the original bill, which was good enough to get the ranking member of the armed services committee and the ranking member of the judiciary committee. it's actually the bill negotiated with senator lankford included in the original package. why am i calling on an amendment here? because this is a national security package and a national security issue to keep our covenants.

dunford, mullin, miers, general peter correlly, general stan mcchrystal, general david mccareerin, general austin miller john knollson, general david rodriguez, general curtis scaparrotti, general joseph otell, general mark welsh. the list goes on. what did their letters say? if congress fails to enact the afghan adjustment act, the united states will be less secure. potential allies remember what happens with our afghan allies. if we claim to support the troops and want to enable their success in wartime, we must keep our commitments today. to conclude, madam president, we have republicans, democrats, military and veterans groups, national security leaders, retired leading u.s. ambassadors

to afghanistan, and flag officers all on the same page. we have worked on this bill, made changes for multiple senators over the years. there's actually not that much controversy about the language of the bill. and we have the votes to get it passed. i don't believe there's any more excuses. the way i see it, this is about our national security. that's what this package is. a moral example for the world, and showing people everywhere in every corner of the earth that when america makes a promise, when america makes a covenant, it will be kept. madam president, i yield the floor. mr. kaine: madam president. the presiding officer: the junior senator from virginia. mr. kaine: madam president, i had not intended to speak today, but i had the good fortune to be on the floor to hear my colleague from minnesota

describe this urgent amendment, which we do need to take action on. i want to commend her for the work she's done for our afghan allies over a number of years. i do believe if this is offered as an amendment it will get an overwhelmingly positive vote in this body. i wanted to share a little bit about these afghans? virginia. in 2021, when afghans were coming to the united states at the end of the war, they came to virginia. almost all of the afghans who came to the united states came to dulles airport. they were then taken to a facility that was a dulles conference center where they were processed. and i had the opportunity to see them both at the airport and at the dulles convention center. after initial processing, these afghans were distributed to eight military bases across the united states, and three of those bases were in virginia.

quantico, fort greg adams and fort barfoot. in 2021 i visited each of the afghans to hear about their journey but also about their hopes for life in this country. it was tremendously inspiring. when afghans would arrive at these bases on a bus from the dulles conference center, they would be met by our troops standing outside the bus waving american flags. that was their welcome. i had a chance to visit with afghans when i visited fort barfoot in southern virginia. i happened to be there the day before veterans day. and i went around to all these families and i said i'm giving a veterans day speech tomorrow. what do you want me to tell american troops, veterans, and their families? and over and over and over again what i heard from these afghans was their descriptions of their love and affection for american troops, their love and affection for this country, the perils of the journey to get here, but

their excitement that they might now be opening a new chapter of free life in the united states. more afghans have chosen to settle in virginia than any other state. by raw numbers and certainly per capita. and in those years since 2021, i visited with afghans all around our commonwealth. about a year after they arrived, we did a welcome celebration in mount vernon and i had a chance to interview so many afghans settling into life in the united states and hearing what they're doing. my colleague from minnesota described some of the things that they're doing to already improve their community. i talked to young activists using the internet to try to help family members still in afghanistan or gain reports about human rights or the treatment of women in afghanistan or work on community support for afghan communities around virginia and around the united states.

just recently, just recently i paid an amazing visit to a small city in southern virginia, danville, virginia. i went there because of another part of this national security package. in the national security package there is an investment in something called aukus, the u.s.-australia-uk cooperative defense agreement in the pacific. the u.s. will train awe is is to build -- aussies to build nuclear subs, sell nuclear subs but eventually enable australia to build their own nuclear subs in the 2040 pochlts the navy at my urging has helped stand up a training program in danville. danville is a great manufacturing city, but then lost a lot of manufacturing, torques textile, furniture, during the 1990's. but it's fought back strong. danville is experiencing a

renaissance. about a year ago the navy opened up a facility in danville to train the next generation of shipbuilders and subbuilders in this nation. on the armed services committee as chairman of the sea powers subcommittee i wanted to see this program. it's an eight-week program, five different disciplines. people come from employers all over the united states to train together to help meet the requirements of our own defense and these aukus commitments that we made. and as i walk in each of the five classes and looked at who was there learning, it started to dawn on me. it was youngsters from danville. it was people from all parts of the united states whose employers had decided they wanted to send them to this training program. it was aussies, australian shipbuilders and those who built

the current diesel powered subs in australia were sending people to danville so they could learn side by side with their american counterparts. but p it was also afghans. it was afghans who have been in this country less than two years but who have already sacrificed to support the defense of this nation and who have decided when they heard about this opportunity, you know what, why don't i be a shipbuilder. why don't i be part of the submarine industrial base. and watching afghans sit next to australians standing next to kids from danville, virginia, to train, to build and manufacture the most complicated items that are built on the planet so that neck defend this -- so that they can defend this country and defend freedom around the world, these are not only people who have sacrificed for us. these are people who are already becoming good citizens in this country, contributing to the

nation, contributing to their communities. they don't deserve to be held in a legal limbo where every day they question what their status will be tomorrow. and that's why supporting the afghan adjustment act as negotiated into an amendment on this bill might be one of the very best pieces of this bill. it is my deep hope that we can get this done before we leave here and pass the supplemental. with that, madam president, i yield the floor. ms. klobuchar: i suggest the absence of a quorum. the presiding officer: the clerk will call the roll. quorum call:

the clerk: ms. baldwin. #

mr. schumer: madam president. the presiding officer: the majority leader. mr. schumer: i ask unanimous consent the quorum be dispensed with. the presiding officer: without objection. mr. schumer: now, madam president, for the information of senators, the senate will gavel back into session tomorrow, sunday, february 11, at noon. at around 1:00 we will hold a cloture vote on the substitute amendment which has the text of the supplemental. we still hope our republican colleagues can work with us to reach an agreement on a reasonable list of amendments so we can speed this process up. and again, as i have already made clear, we will keep working

on this bill until the job is done. now, i ask unanimous consent that when the senate completes its business today it stand adjourned until 12:00 noon on sunday, february 11. following the prayer and pledge, the morning hour deemed expired, the journal of proceedings be approved to date, the time for the two leaders be reserved for their use later in the day and morning business be closed. that upon the conclusion of morning business, the senate resume consideration of calendar number 30, h.r. 815. the presiding officer: without objection. so ordered. mr. schumer: if there is no further business to come before the senate, i ask that it stand adjourned under the previous order. the presiding officer: the senate stand adjou