♪♪ >> i forgot to mention, in delaware, stand up over there. god love you. we know you live. [laughter] thank you. [cheering and applauding] ♪♪ >> we take you live to the u.s. capitol the senate is about to gallon. lawmakers are expected to continue for israel, ukraine and taiwan. about 8:30 p.m., watch live coverage on he's been too.

the presiding officer: the senate will come to order. the chaplain will lead the senate in prayer.needs.

-- confidence in you. provide them generously with wisdom to solve the problems that beset our nation and world and to sidestep temptations that d dishonor your name. keep them from pride and self-conceit as they focus on serving you by serving others. lord, stay with them until the

shadows lengthen and the evening comes. and the busy work is hushed and the fever of life is over and their work is done. we pray in your sacred name. amen. the presiding officer: please join me in reciting the pledge of allegiance. 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 presiding officer: the clerk will read a communication to the senate. the clerk: washington, d.c., february 12, 2024, to the senate, under the provisions of rule 1, paragraph three of the standing rules of the senate i appoint jalen shaheen to serve the duties of the president signed patty murray, president pro tempore. the presiding officer: under the previous order, morning business is closed. the senate will resume consideration of h.r. 81 5shgs which the clerk will report. the clerk: an act to amend title 38, united states code and so forth and for other purposes. the presiding officer: madam president, before i speak about the smaument and our upcoming business, i will speak a few

words about flight 3407, the tragic flight where over 50 people died in a cold winter's night in buffalo. it's the 15th anniversary. i can't be in buffalo with the families so i will say a few words first. now, later this afternoon at a memorial on long street in clarence, new york, the families of colgan air flight 300 -- 3407 will mark the day their loved ones perished in a plane crash. in the blink of an eye every single passenger, every single crew member and one new yorker on the ground were killed on a freezing thursday evening. it pains me i can't be in western new york for their vigil, but i want to tell their families i am with you in spirit and will always be by your side. working with the families to

change, to strengthen america's aviation laws has been one of the satisfying inspirational things i do in my entire time in congress. i have laughed and crowd with so many of these wonderful people, more times than i can count. today, from here on the senate floor, i join with the families to remember those that we lost and to honor their legacy. which has changed the course of american history when it comes to safety of our skies. madam president, the scripture says in moments of darkness, it is natural to turn inward, to curse the darkness, but that if you were able to light a candle instead, that is saint-like. these families are saint-like. they lost loved ones, the holes in their hearts exist every single day, but instead of turning inward to the darkness, they decided to light a candle

and work diligently and persist and change the law so it wouldn't happen to areas in the future. so for 15 years, instead of cursing the darkness, these families of flight 3407, lit a candle. in their grief the families came together, they organized and raised their voices. i was proud to be their champion in the senate to help pass the most significant aviation law of the 21st century in 20, i was moved by the families from the beginning. we worked hand in hand after the crash to fix our aviation safety laws to make them the strongest in the world, and when i became majority leader, i vowed to ensure the safety provisions the families fought for would not be rolled back. because of these families, airlines across america are safer. praise god we have not had a single fatal crash of a major airline in america since 2009.

these families helped establish the 1500 training rule that pilots must follow, they helped create a pilot record database and new rules around pilot fatigue to ensure what happened on 3407 never happens again. these families' advocacy is just what the founding fathers envisioned, average citizens with heartfelt convictions persisting in getting it done. they didn't have campaign contribution contributions or deep pockets or super pacs, all they had were their convictions, george washington, thomas jefferson would be proud because these families made congress act and change the law. their efforts have undoubtedly saved lives and i want two thank so much of -- so many of my colleagues, particularly chair cantwell and senator duckworth for working with us to preserve this law. so today we honor these families

and remember their loved ones. but we also acknowledge the fight is not done. the fight is one than will always continue. senate commerce committee advanced a bipartisan faa reauthorization bill that protected the rules for the safety of pielths, crew, and passengers the families pushed for and again thanking chairman cantwell for her leadership, chair duckworth for her leadership as well. we went through the text with a fine tooth comb to make sure the safety rules were not touched, working hand in hand with the families talking to them every week and i'm glad we succeeded and look forward to moving on the faa bill reauthorization as quickly as possible. it is vital faa reauthorization we pass by congress. in conclusion on this issue, we will remember those who are lost. we also say thank you to all the families for lighting a candle,

finding a better way, a safer way for the future. thank you, families for your courage, your brilliance, your grace. you changed the history of aviation, something very few can say. now -- now on the supplemental. over the weekend, the senate took the significant step towards passing the national security supplemental by voting last night on cloture on the substitute 6727. by now, we have taken numerous procedural votes that prove beyond doubt that there's strong support behind this bill. it's time to finish the job and get this critical bill passed. if we want the world to remain a safe place for freedom, for democratic principles, for american prosperity, then

elected leaders need to put in the work to make that happen. we need to approve the investments that ensure our people's security, ensure the security of our partners and prevent our adversaries from gaining an edge over us. these are enormously high stakes of the national security package. our security, our values, our democracy, it's a down payment for the survival of western democracy and the survival of western values. the entire world is going to remember what the senate does in the next few days. nothing -- nothing would make putin happier now than to see congress waver in its support for ukraine, nothing would help him more on the battlefield. if some people think putin's going to stop at ukraine if they think it's somehow better to reason with him, to appease him, to hear him out, than these

modern day chamberlains ignore history. the appetites of autocrats are never ending. make no mistake, the war in ukraine is not a regional struggle, its effects will reverberate around the world, the chinese communist party and the iranian regime and all of our adversaries are going to take note if america fails to defend democracy, an ally in need. they will conclude if america fails one of our friends, it will fail others too and they will act accordingly. imagine what kind of message failure by congress would send to nato. imagine when it sends to our partners whose partners bled with us and died with us after 9/11. even though it wasn't them under attack. imagine what message inaction it would send to taiwan or the philippines or other places around the world. the message, if we fail, would be that america can't be

trusted. we, as a body, as a congress, and as a country cannot -- cannot afford to send that message. protecting democracy is not for the paint of heart. sometimes it requires us to make difficult choices in this chamber, but that is precisely what the american people sent us here to do. in generations past, democrats and republicans would have been -- bent hefrn and earth to stand up to russian autocrats, we would have stood up to thugs, who seek america's demise. we find ourselves yet again in a moment of history when democracy is under siege. we heard directly from president zelenskyy what is at stake if we fail. so fail, we must not. it has been long enough many long enough. i urge my colleagues to come together and finish working on

the -- and finish working on the supplemental. we will not rest until the job is done. for the information of senators, we will have a live quorum. i ask senators to stay close to the floor until we get this bill done. the presiding officer: the clerk will call the roll. the clerk: ms. baldwin. mr. barrasso. mr. bennet. mrs. blackburn. mr. blumenthal. mr. booker.

mr. boozman. mr. braun. mrs. britt. mr. brown. mr. budd. ms. butler. ms. cantwell.

mrs. capito. mr. cardin. mr. carper. mr. casey. mr. cassidy. ms. collins. mr. coons. mr. cornyn. ms. cortez masto.

mr. cotton. mr. cramer. mr. crapo. mr. cruz. mr. daines. ms. duckworth. mr. durbin. ms. ernst.

mr. fetterman. mrs. fischer. mrs. gillibrand. mr. graham. mr. grassley. mr. hagerty. ms. hassan. mr. hawley. mr. heinrich.

ms. hirono. mr. hoeven. mrs. hyde-smith. mr. johnson. mr. kaine. mr. kelly. mr. kennedy. mr. king. ms. klobuchar.

mr. lankford. mr. lee. mr. lujan. ms. lummis. mr. manchin. mr. markey. mr. marshall. mr. mcconnell. mr. menendez.

mr. merkley. mr. moran. mr. mullin. ms. murkowski. mr. murphy. mrs. murray. mr. ossoff. mr. padilla. mr. paul. mr. peters.

mr. reed. mr. ricketts. mr. risch. mr. romney. ms. rosen. mr. rounds. mr. rubio. mr. sanders.

mr. schatz. mr. schmitt. mr. schumer. mr. scott of florida. mr. scott of south carolina. ms. sinema. ms. smith.

ms. stabenow. mr. sullivan. mr. tester. mr. thune. mr. tillis. mr. tuberville. mr. van hollen. mr. vance. mr. warner. mr. warnock.

ms. warren. mr. welch. mr. whitehouse. mr. wicker.

mr. wyden. mr. young. the presiding officer: a quorum is present. ms. collins: madam president. the presiding officer: the senator from maine.

ms. collins: madam president -- mr. schumer: madam president, could we have order, please. the presiding officer: order in the chamber, please. ms. collins: thank you, mr. president. thank you, madam president. madam president, for the information of our colleagues, i want to bring everyone up to date on where we are. for the past few days, the leadership on both sides of the aisle, as well as the bill managers on both sides of the aisle, have been working diligently night and day to try to get agreement to consider debate and have votes on a series of amendments offered by senators on both sides of the aisle. obviously, in order for that to occur, we would need the cooperation of all members, and

we would need to have time agreements because the number of amendments is considerable. regrettably, madam president, i have to inform my colleagues that there have been objections on both sides of the aisle that impede our work going forward. so, madam president, at this point, unless these objections are withdrawn, it's going to be very difficult to have the robust amendment process that many of us, most of us, want to have. and i just wanted to let my colleagues know where we stand. thank you, mr. president. -- thank you, madam president. . the presiding officer: the senator from alabama. mr. tuberville: thank you, madam president. i come to the floor today in

opposition to the senate's effort to give away 60 billion more of our taxpayer dollars and weapons to ukraine. we should not give another dime to ukraine until we secure our border for our citizens. that's what we're here for. the presiding officer: the senate will be in order. please take your conversations outside. mr. tuberville: in december, all of 49 republicans voted to defeat similar legislation because it did nothing for our southern border. senate reaction were unanimous. we had a consensus in the republican conference that we should not give more money to other countries until we secured our southern border. i still believe that. my position has not changed since december. the 17 republicans who voted to take up this legislation can explain their change of heart themselves. it's up to them.

my demands have not changed. we should not send a dime to ukraine until our borders are fully secured. we already given ukraine more than $120 billion. this is more than enough money to secure every border in our country. unfortunately but predictably, the $120 billion we've sent to ukraine has resulted in a year's long stalemate that has cost hundreds of thousands of lives, both ukrainian and russian. this money is in addition to the executive actions that joe biden has taken to isolate russia from the global financial system. none of this has worked to either deter russia or force parties to the table to negotiate a diplomatic solution. yet some of my colleagues think that another $60 billion, another $60 billion of what $120

billion failed to do will do the trick. it doesn't make sense. now should be a time for diplomacy. what a thought. bring this war to an end. stop the killing and bloodshed. when joe biden took office, he went to the state department and claimed diplomacy is back. that turned out to be a lie. we have yet to see a diplomatic effort from this administration. joe biden's idea of diplomacy is sending annie blinken to israel to tell him to slow down the war in gaza. that's not diplomacy. we need some real diplomacy in ukraine. right now we're facing the possibility of a regional war in the middle east. there have been 160 attacks on our trips in the middle east since october 7. we are also facing the possibility of war in the south

china sea with china threatening taiwan. a real leader has the right priorities. we cannot get involved in every conflict around the world. last near there was a war in ethiopia. i asked my colleagues who support ukraine should we have paid for that? last year there was a war in armenia. i asked my colleagues, should we have paid for that? no one was clamoring for billion s and weapons for those two wars. yet our entire defense industry is now being largely put in service to ukraine. under joe biden, america's foreign policy is no longer dictated by american interest. it is not even dictated by american ideas. instead it is dictated by simplistic moralism with no depth or intellectual depth. a land war in europe is not america's top priority.

even president obama said 13 years ago we needed to pivot to asia. 13 years ago. can there be any doubt that our number one rival and adversary is china? it's not russia. china is watching us. president xi is watching american interrupting ourselves for a -- bankrupting ourselves for a war that gains us absolutely nothing. we can have a conversation about shifting ukraine aid to somewhere higher priority like taiwan. but right now aid to ukraine is two-thirds of this bill. the bill also includes money for gaza which is controlled by hamas. the vast majority of gaza supports hamas. they elected hamas as their leaders. the bill would send billions to gaza. can there be any doubt that some

of that will end up in the hands of terrorists? i don't think there is. much of what we have sent to ukraine has been stolen or wasted. there has been a complete lack of oversight. in this year's defense bill, we finally got an inspector general for ukraine aid. little too late. there has already been enormous theft and money laundering of our tax dollars in ukraine. you don't have to take my word for it. zelenskyy fired his own cabinet members for corruption. ukraine has been one of the most blatantly, notoriously corrupt places in the world for a long, long time. we are paying ukrainian farmers and yet we just punted the farm bill for american farmers next year. we have been paying ukrainian pensions. we can't even pay our own pensions in this country. we have paid more than $6 billion for ukrainian pensions.

that is enough money to play for president trump's border wall, an amount that the sitting vice president said was too expensive. we don't have a plan. we do not have a plan to win the war in ukraine. we also don't have a plan for ukraine if it loses. the biden administration says as long as it takes. hell, that's not a strategy. that is a blank check from the american taxpayers to another country. it would be irresponsible to give a blank check to any other country. three out of four dollars of ukraine aid in this bill is after the current physical year. it's not now. we keep hearing -- we can't wait two weeks. this money's got going to ukraine in months and they say they're running out of aid. in other words, this money is

for the next president. it's intended to force the next president to continue this war. and so i stand opposed to this legislation, and i'm not the only one. this bill cannot pass the house of representatives. therefore, this bill is not going to become law. passing this bill is purely an exercise in messaging. what message does this bill send? it says those elected to represent americans care more about the borders of countries halfway around the world than our own. it's not a winning message. the american people are opposed to a blank check to ukraine. the american people are saying enough is enough. the arguments for this bill have been utterly lacking. some of my colleagues have argued that vladimir putin wants to conquer the world. this is absurd.

he can't beat ukraine. russian tanks are not going to conquer europe if we don't pass this bill. another argument that has been made is this money will stay in the u.s. to support defense contractors. in fact, "the washington post" columnist tweeted at me yesterday claiming that we should pass this bill to give more money to alabama's defense contractors. you know, it wasn't long ago that this was referred to as corruption. but that's the kind of thing that gets published in "the washington post" these days. simply put, his argument is more about people should die that we can increase profits for few american companies. it's disgusting. these are the same people lecturing us about the morality of supporting ukraine. now, alabama is deeply, deeply proud to be the top state in america when it comes to the

defense industry. i strongly support alabama's defense industry. i support funding alabama's defense industry to strengthen our military. i support funding to replenish our stockpiles. it will take months if not years to do that. we are far behind. we couldn't fight one war right now much less three. the arguments from the other side just don't add up. and so it's no surprise that they have resorted to personal attacks, name calling. one of my colleagues accused opponents of ukraine aid from getting their messaging from russia. this is the best argument that they can come up, name calling. if you oppose a blank check to another country, i guess that makes you a russian. we are $34 trillion in debt. we are borrowing $80,000 a second. $4.6 million a minute. american taxpayers, listen to

that one more time. we are borrowing $80,000 a second, $4.6 million a minute. does that make any sense when you're $34 trillion in debt? we cannot afford to keep giving any money to any countries or any illegal immigrants flood r flooding our border. we don't have it. we're taxing the future of this country. there is no moral, economic, military, or political argument in favor of more ukraine aid. our country, our country has serious problems of its own, and we need to solve them. but there's no solving any of those problems in this room. it's about spending. at the top of that list is the southern border. if we're so worried about russia, what about the actual russians that are entering our country on a daily basis through the southern border? what about that?

is anyone in washington worried about the chinese coming into this country every day? it doesn't seem like it. day after day, month after month we are failing to meet that crisis with the seriousness that it deserves. earlier this week senate leadership on both sides of the aisle laid out our border giveaway bill that had been written in secret by three senators over a period of months. we were not allowed to see it until last sunday night. for weeks, for weeks there were leaks coming to the press about what it was. when my colleagues and i expressed concerns about these leaks, we were attacked. the authors of the bill said that it was fake news and wouldn't let us see the bill until last sunday. however, once we get the text, we found out these leaks were true. the bill was even worse than we had feared. senators from across the

spectrum of the republican conference came out in opposition. even some of the senators who were initially involved in writing the bill opposed it. after the bill was rejected, we were told that we were playing politics. if it weren't -- if you weren't from a border state. here's the reality. under the biden administration, every state is a border state. i met with some alabama sheriffs last week from across our state. they are being absolutely overrun, overrun by drugs, crime, criminals, illegal aliens, every single part of every single state is being hurt by this border crisis. you think this body cares? nope. i won't delabor the point, but the border bill is a giveaway, is a giveaway. but this bill did not attempt to address the seriousness of the crisis. this is the worst border crisis in the history of our country.

it's worse than any natural disaster we've ever seen. yet the response from senate leadership to this crisis has been superficial, uncaring and demissive. the so-called border bill was more of a border giveaway than the actual border bill. remember, president trump had the same laws on the books as president joe biden does. but president trump secured the border. it was a priority. joe biden opened it up his first day in office. and so new news and new laws are not absolutely necessary. but certain new laws would be very helpful. i propose an amendment to the ukraine bill that would actually truly secure the border. this amendment, the border safety and security act, would simply suspend all illegal entries completely until dhs has operational control of the border. they have no control. no control whatsoever. my amendment prohibits mass

parole programs. this giveaway bill would have allowed parole programs to continue. my amendment prohibits catch and release and requires detention. the border bill required to release of illegal aliens if we had passed it. the schumer bill would somewhere allowed thousands of illegal border crossings to date. my amendment would mean zero illegal crossings. it also allows states to sue administrations if it doesn't do its job. enforce the laws. we should not pass the ukraine bill until we first pass the border bill. that is my position and that was my position in december, and it is my position again today. i reserve the balance of my time.

a senator: madam president. the presiding officer: the senator from kentucky. mr. paul: kentucky. open the campaign, pop the cork. the senate republican leader and the republican leader are on their way to kyiv. they've got $60 billion they're

bringing. i don't know if it'll be cash in pall lets, but they're taking your money to kyiv. they didn't have much time, really no time and no money to do anything about our border. we're being invaded, a littler invasion is coming across our -- a literal invasion is coming across our border. all they had time to do in the senate was get the money, get the cash pall lets, load the planes, get the champagne ready, and fly to kyiv. on friday, they will take the $60 billion to kyiv, crash -- crack the champagne and meantime, each day between 35 million to 10 million people come across the border illegally. they said he should have taken the sham bill. we give you a border bill. but the border bill would allow 5,000 people a day to come across and then they would declare an emergency. guess what? the emergency is already here.

700,000 people in two months is an emergency. nearly 800,000 people in two months is an emergency. but they gave lie to the ruse when they pointed out their great bullet points on how great this was going to be. they pointed out, the border never closes. they were putting forward this great border bill, but they tweeted out all the main points that this would do, that the border never closes. and this is actually true because what would happen is they would close the illegal crossings but leave the legal crossings open. it's like, why wouldn't we have the illegal crossing always closed? why wouldn't we have been after 750,000 people come in illegally, close down the

illegal crossings immediately? and what also gives lie to their assertions is that we have the same laws we had under president trump. and president trump controlled the border. so how could promote do it with the same -- so how could president trump do it with the same set of laws? what gives lie to this aassertion is that they're in court every day trying to dismantle the barriers that texas puts up. texas and 30-some odd republican governs have said enough is enough. they put razor wire on the border. the biden administration who says just give us more power, went all the wait to the supreme court to get the power and they have it temporarily. they may not keep it. but they have fought tooth and nail to remove the cargo

conta containers remove the razor wire and. so which is it? they can't have it both ways. some would argue, well, this appears to be that you don't want immigrants in your country. nothing could be further from the truth. we admit a million immigrants to our country every year. i'm for that. i'm cosponsor of a half a dozen bills to increase lawful immigration. i think it would be difficult for america to do a lot of things, including buildings houses, apartments, and commercial construction, without new people can coming to the country. bolingbrook green, kentucky, is known for people from all over the world. we have 100 language being spoken in our schools.

this has to do with not wanting 750,000 people to come across who we don't know who they are, most of them are males of a military age, and we're doing nothing. so we come to an inflection point. that's where we are, an inflection point. we had a chance. 41 of us, 41 republicans could have stood and said, no, we want something better. there is an emergency on the border. we will not settle for anything until we get a border security bill. instead, it folded. why? because republican leadership is flying with the democrat leadership to kyiv because they have prioritized ukraine over the southern border. there's no other way to put it. we have a disaster at our southern border, and the ranking republicans and the ranking democrats, there is no difference. they're on the same team. they'll be on the same plane to

kyiv. republicans and democrats, same plane, palettes of cash, your money to ukraine. even if you could make the argument -- and i think there is an argument that there is a noble cause, that these people are fighting for their independence and fighting against aggression. all of that is true. but there is no money to give them. we're out. we're flat out of cash. not only are we flat out of cash, we're $34 trillion in the hole. we're borrowing money like it's going out of style. we have never, ever borrowed money at this alarming rate. it's hard to even fathom the billions of dollars that goes out the door. it's been said before, but people have asked, how do you imagine, how do you put in perspective a billion dollars? what is a billion dollars? if you put a million dollars in the palm of your hand in

thousand-dollar bills, it would be four inches high. but a billion dollars is difficult, more difficult to visualize. to put a billion into perspective, a billion seconds ago, reagan was starting his second term. a billion minutes ago, the p pantheon was being completed in rome. a billion hours ago, we were in the stone age, over 100,000 years ago. but a billion dollars ago, just a couple of minutes. in the time that i will speak, the government will spend billions upon billions of dollars, virtually a billion every two minutes. $30-some billion in the space of an hour. it's out of control. if you look at the debt that's being incurred, people say, ahhh, what does it matter? you can be like dick cheney and some of these republicans, ahhh, deficits don't care.

we don't care about the deficit. well, you should. . every time you go to the grocery store, every time you buy something, you're seeing the results of the debt. the way we pay for the debt is we print up money. the federal reserve buys the debt but the federal reserve has no money, so they print up the money and they dilute the value of the existing currency. what does that mean? inflation, prices go up. but so does the cost of government. people have cost of living increases, and i don't begrudge that, but it's 9% in the last year or so. so the cost social security are through the roof. the cover of medicare are going -- the cost of medicare are going through the roof. not one peep about paying for our own bills. we are bankly renters paying for our own apartment. in what kind of world do you borrow money to send charity? if you see a homeless person and you want to help them but you have no money, would you go to

the first corner and go into the bank and say, i want to help homeless people. will you give me a thousand dollars so i can help homeless people? no one does that. if you're paying the rent for your apartment, do you go to the bank and borrow the rent for your apartment? no, there are times at which you borrow against things of value. you can borrow against a home that you have a down payment on. you can borrow for capital improvements likes schools or roads. but you don't borrow for your daily expenses. that's what's going on here. realize that two-thirds of the spending is entitlements -- medicare, medicaid, social security and food stamps is two-thirds of all spending. that's all we have enough money for. tax revenue pays for that. everything else is borrowed. you'll hear people talk about a budget. they say, congress votes on a budget. the budget we vote on is equal to about $1.5 trillion. that's the debt. every bit of the budget we vote

on is borrowed. last month we borrowed $2 10 billion. we're on course to borrow over $2 trillion at that rate. people are alarmed by this. the head of the federal reserve, powell, said the other day that the problem was urgent, and these are the kind of people that pick their words carefully. debt is urgent. the neat to restrain -- the need to restrain spending is urgent. and so how does leadership respond? the republican leaders and the democrat leaders have gotten together to understand is $100 billion to another country while they can't pay the bills for our country. we're borrowing money to pay our rent as citizens in our own country, and we're sending $100 billion to another country. under what world is that a good idea? it's a terrible idea. the federal reserve chairman has said the problem is urgent.

jamie dimon, the head of jp morgan chase has said the problem is urgent. the author of "the black swan" has said it is urgent. you have all of these people -- some who predicted the crisis in 2008 -- saying it is an imminent crisis. the debt crisis hangs over us. there's a danger of destroying the dollar and destroying our country, and leadership is concerned about making their plane to kyiv. the republican leader and the democrat leader will be on a plane to kyiv. i'm assuming with champagne and palettes of cash. have you ever seen the pictures when they unload the palettes of american cash, when they did it in iraq? how much oversight do you think there is on palettes of cash? how much is stolen? well, you'll never know because they have refused to have an inspector general. i've forced at least two votes

on this. i've been advocating for over a year. i'm not for sending your money to ukraine. but if you're going to send it, can we at least count how much is being stolen? kook has been on -- ukraine has been on the top ten list for one of the mott corrupt countries in the world and nobody is watching the money. journalists in ukraine have actually adequate a few people. we -- actually caught a few people. we haven't caught anybody. our defense department says, nothing to see here. our defense department has never been audited. we've been trying to audit the pentagon in our country for two decades. do you know what the pentagon tells congress? we're too big to be audited. you know what may response is? you're too big, then. you should be smaller if you can't even audit the money we're sending. they routinely lose billions of dollars paid to them, no idea where the dollarsence with. so in the midst of this, in the midst of a $1.5 trillion deficit this year -- at least -- the

leadership has come together. people say they want compromise. well, you're getting it today -- but it's the wrong kind of compromise. it's compromise to loot the treasury. it's compromise to spend money we don't have. we have not one penny saved. there is no savings. there is no rainy day fund. they are shovelling out borrowed cash. essentially, they have to borrow this from china. they either borrow it from china or they print it up. but there is no money. there's no money sitting around. it's all been spent. there isn't enough money to take care of the stuff they already promised. so everyone on the other aisle and half the people on this side that are wanting to send more cash over there have also promised they're going to take care of you. so all the entitlement programs are out there. the entitlement programs consume all of our tax revenue.

there is no revenue beyond that. the military and the nonmilitary discretion -- that's about a third of the overall spending -- there's no money for it. it's all borrowed. so we're going to add to that. now, i've often asked the question, couldn't we maybe set priorities? and if if you really believe that ukraine is part of our national security -- which is ludicrous -- but if you believe that, maybe the money should come out of the defense budget. if this is truly -- if defending ukraine is defending our country, which is ludicrous, but if it were, we're at $880 billion in our military budget. this is more than the next ten countries in nato combined. if you really want to send your money to ukraine, take it out of the military budget. take it out of something. this is a perpetual problem. but i think the american public needs to know, as republican leadership and democrat

leadership jets off to kyiv, cracking the champagne and delivering palettes of cash, they need to know that there was opposition to this. people say, why do you come to the floor? why do you make the poor senators be here over the super bowl weekend? why do you make them cancel their vacations? you think i'd do it just to be mean or out of spite? i do it because i care about our country. i care about the bankrupting of america. i care about the looting of our treasury. there can be an honest debate over national security or what is in our vital security, but there never is a debate. if you look closely at what people say, they'll simply declare it's in our national security to send money to ukraine. there isn't really a debate. i actually think it's the opposite. i think sending money to ukraine actually makes our national security more endangered.

i think it threatens our vital national security to send more money to ukraine. why? because i think it threatens the fiscal solvency of our country. i think it along with so much of the rest of the spending is dragging america down and threatening a day of destruction. there have been civilizations who have destroyed their currency and typically this happened on the heels of war. after world war i germany destroyed their currency. after world war ii england was in arrears to the extent they no longer were the dominant currency after world war i and ii and the u.s. became the dominant currency. i think we should think twice before sending our money overseas. i think we should think twice about the problems we have here at home. and i think the american people ought to look at those here in this body who are willing to prioritize another country over

our country. i think they need to look at that and decide is this what you want. is this what the american people really want? did you elect these people to ignore the southern border and to send money to look at ukraine's border? to prioritize ukraine's border over the u.s. border, is that what you elected these people to do? and if you did, do you not care about the bankrupting of america? do you not care about the destruction of the dollar? it's happening every day, and it's happening sort of gradually. 5%, 10% a year of lost purchasing power. but there are people who are left behind, people whose salaries aren't adjusted with inflation, people who are being squeezed by this inflation. and people say whose fault was the inflation, republicans or democrats? and i say both. really there is only one party when you get down to it. they all want to spend money. the leadership in the republican

party is really not a great deal. this is a secret you're not supposed to expose in washington but there's not a lot of difference between the democratic leader and the republican leadership. they kind of want to spend money for different things. sometimes republicans want to spend more money on the military enterprise and democrats on something else. people say there's not compromise. in order to raise military spending they have to promise they'll raise the welfare spending as well. there's one particular argument that's been made by republican leadership as well as dlooerp as well as the -- as well as democratic leadership as well as the white house. they make the argument that it's not so bad to send money to ukraine because it increases the profits of the arms merchants, and most of the arms merchants

selling the arms into this war are americans. they say it's a great, it's a win-win. we send the money overseas to ukraine, but ukraine buys our arms and the arms merchants are enriched. i don't know. i know there are no american soldiers yet in this war. but i have some sympathy for the young men and women involved in this war that the argument that we should perpetuate the war, that the war isn't a bad thing and war is not a hell on earth because we make some profit off of it, i find that disgusting. i find it really disturbing that there are people out there making the argument on both sides of the aisle, no big deal, it's helping our defense industrial base. it's another word for the military industrial come complex. even eisenhower warned, 70-something years ago he warned there was a danger that the military industrial complex would get so big that it

wouldn't be policy led by congress, that the korngss would become so big, trillion-dollar corporations grabbing up money that they could direct policy. it would no longer be you voting or us voting but it would be the corporate interests who make the profits would be driving this. and i think we've become eerily close to that. this is sort of the quiet part that used to not say out loud. they used to keep it on the q.t. we're going to not talk about the profits. now they're bragging about it. we're going to enhance the defense industrial base. really? the meat grinder of war is now justified by expanding the profits of arms merchants? some estimates are 500,000 people have died in that war. so if we keep it going for another year or two, maybe a million will be dead in the war. that will be good for arms profits. so is that what our advocacy, is

not to shorten the war but it's not so big a deal to let the war go on and on? the head general in ukraine had said that the war has come to a stalemate. and i'm the first to acknowledge, look, the whole war was started by russia. rush is the aggressor. there is nothing good to be said about putin for doing this. he is wrong. that doesn't change the situation on the ground. it's at a standstill. 500,000 people have died. it's at a standstill. some towns in ukraine, you can't find young people anymore. they are dead or gone off to europe to avoid the war. zelenskyy, the president of ukraine, fired his major general because the major general admitted the truth, which is this is at a stalemate. many people in this body, to justify foreign aid, will say we're spreading and projecting american power and american

values. we're trying to teach and show to the world the nobility of democracy. if you watch one of the networks, it's all you hear. democracy, democracy, democracy. well, guess what? ukraine is not a democracy. they don't have elections. so they stopped having elections several years ago, and there's no plan to have elections. zelenskyy had one, and i'm not saying he didn't win. in all likelihood it was a legitimate election. but it's sort of one and done. he's not going to have more elections. so we are bending over backwards -- not we. the republican leadership and all of the democrats are bending over backwards to send money to a country that doesn't have elections. this is a country that has banned media criticism. there is no media criticism. and you think the defenders of the first amendment would be irate the fact that there is no objective media criticism in ukraine. but the reason why the other side is not standing up and why they're not crazy in arms about

this is they actually want that now in our country. they actually are for censorship. they believe in the homeland security of the united states censoring and telling people they can't tell you. so if i were to say, which i said a million times that it's a mistake to vaccinate your kids for covid because they already have immunity and that there are some risks to that vaccine, the other side will say i don't have the right to say that. they say it would be okay for government in league with corporations to censor my speech. if i were to tell you masks don't work, and they don't. all the studies, 78 randomized controlled studies say masks don't work. you can wear one. i will just tell you the truth. they would say i shouldn't be allowed to say that. i can still say it on the senate floor, but if i say it on some of the big platforms, we have the fbi and homeland security under the biden administration sitting down and meeting with big tech on a weekly basis to

encourage them to take down my speech. so when ukraine limits speech, you don't hear much of a criticism. they just send their money because they are no longer opposed to censor shchlt they are no longer for the first amendment. they're for the first amendment unless you're spreading misnchlths but what is misinformation? it's their definition, their idea they don't like what you're saying. i would be perfectly willing to acknowledge there are arguments on the other side of what i'm saying, whether masks work, whether you should vaccinate your children. i think the arguments are stronger on our side and i'll debate anybody on these subjects. i think they should be debated and then you should make your own choice. in a free country you make a choice. wear a mask, don't wear a mask. vaccinate your kids, don't vaccinate your kids. but to ban the speech is a very dangerous precedent. this is the kind of speech they're in favor of banning in our country so they're not too troubled when speech is banned in ukraine. there's also been banning of

religious authorities in ukraine as well. we don't have elections in ukraine, we ban speech, and there's been a banning of religion as well. and yet the fervor, the fervor of people to send the money, to load the plane. the plane is likely loaded. i may be exaggerated that there are going to be pallets of cash. there is probably going to be a computer entity but it is more visual to imagine pallets of cash. but there will be a plane that will leave this weekend. it will have the republican leader and the democratic leader. they will be celebrating $60 billion of your money going to ukraine. $60 billion p we don't have. and also at the same time they had no time to discuss the invasion coming in from the southern border. we didn't have one minute. we haven't had an amendment. we have several amendments that would actually put southern border back into the bill, and some on the other side -- i love

this. they have said because you oppose the bill, you don't deserve to have amendments. i lost definition and the idea of what their concept of democracy is. if you agree with me, you get to have speech. but if you don't agree with me, you, my goodness, you are a deplorable. you don't deserve to have your speech or to have amendments. that's what they've said basically. so right now there have been no amendments on border security. there is an emergency at the southern border. i'm all for more legal and lawful immigration. i have several bills that would do exactly that. i have bills that would expand employment-based immigration. it used to be when you came to our country, particularly when we had the big waves of people coming in towards the end of the 19th century, you had to have a sponsor and you had to work. i don't have a problem with that. even some of the people who have already come here and didn't follow the rules, i would probably be in favor of allowing work permits.

but the thing is is i'm not in favor of 780,000 people coming en masse across the border. people are coming from china. people are coming from venezuela and colombia and paraguay. they're coming from all over the place. there was a pew study a few years ago that did samplings of people. who would come to america if you could? it was estimated that 750 million people would. do you think we can take 750 million people all at once? you think we can double our population? no. there has to be some planning. there has to be some periodic sort of obstacles. there has to be a lawful way to come into this country. so i've been for expanding the lawful pass. i've been for expanding employment-based immigration. most people i know who are first generation are great workers. like i say, some of the best americans just got here.

but we can't have a wide open border. we can't allow the invasion to continue. what has transpired here over the last few days and will continue to transpire is basically ignoring the people. there isn't a lead class in this country to think americans aren't smart enough to figure this out. they think americans aren't smart enough to figure out whether they want to vaccinate their kids, wear a mask or figure out whether six feet of distance once. did you hear the interview when -- with fauci. they asked him where the six feet of distance came from? he said i don't know. i think they made that one up. i went to my son's school for graduation. they had a white circle, six

feet for people standing outside. there's zero science behind that. i thought you came up with the science. i thought you did. it doesn't work. and you don't cash a disease outside -- catch a disease outside. we went through graduation with people with masks on and the chairs six feet apart. these people are so obsessed and think masks work that you'll see them on the floor now, and not all of them, but i know some of them wearing had a mask, it's because they have covid. they used to teach the common sense when i went to medical school and growing up, you stayed home when you're sick. now they tell you keep going and confronting people but wearing a mask that doesn't work. why don't the masks work? the pores in the masks are 600 times bigger than the virus. not just on droplets, aerosolized, moving freely throughout the air.

probably the most imbecilic things we did is plexiglass. these morons told you that plexiglass would stop the virus. only a moron would say that. there's no truth to that. there's no science to that. it's ridiculous. it should be a "-saturday night live" skit. plexiglass that's this high, the virus can't go over it, imbecilic. a group of engineers at mit looked at this and looked at patterns of flow and i can't say that i know that this is right or not, but they conjectured actually that the plexiglass made it worse because the lamular flow of air was disrupted by these things and your filtration systems, which probably serve some value, were interrupted by the plexiglass. that is what we lived through.

but these are the people who inflicted these things on you believe you're not smart enough to make your own decisions. when you tell people at home what's going on up here, and i go home every weekend, go to the grocery store, go to church. when i tell people at home that they just sent $60 billion overseas, they're aghast. they say, how can that happen? they say they know of no one -- if i'm in eastern kentucky, they come up to me spontaneously and say we have problems here in our country. we can't pay for the basic

functioning of our country. only two-thirds of the spending in washington is paid for. an entire third of it is borrowed and yet they want to send money to a foreign country to deal with their problems? should want we try to take care of our own country first? shouldn't we try to do something to actually, you know, quit the destruction of our own currency? how do they get away with it? it's incredibly unpopular. if you were to take this position in my state and ask everybody in kentucky how many of you think that we should send $100 billion overseas and do zero for the southern border, not a penny, not one policy change, nothing for the southern border, how many people believe that? in my state it's close to zero. very few people believe that. so how does it happen up here? it happens because there's not

enough sunlight. there's not enough transparency. so that's part of what a filibuster is. this is a talking filibuster today, and the reason we talk is to try to broadcast this message to get the message home so they can send us better people. madam president, can you tell how much time i have remaining in the hour of speaking? the presiding officer: the senator has 27 minutes remaining. mr. paul: all right. so one of the proposals that i've had, i think it's a modest proposal, and you would think would be a no-brainer and should have been adopted unanimously, and that's to have an inspector general oversee the money.

we've been doing this in afghanistan for 20 years. now we still spent nearly $2 trillion in afghanistan over 20 years, but at least there was someone trying to watch because in times of war a lot of things happen. they talk about the fog of war. sometimes there's atrocities, sometimes there's killing of civilians, almost always, but there's also a lot of stealing. they used to have a name for it, it used to have a bad connotation, war pro tear, but it happens in -- profiteer. in afghanistan, there was a hotel being built and it was being built across the street from the embassy. it was framed out, it was at least started, you could tell it was going to be a hotel. as it was being built, somebody said, wow, it looks like they will look into the courtyard of our embassy, and somebody said, wow, wouldn't that be a safety

risk? and they said you're right and so the construction slowed down when they talked about the possible safety risk of building a tall hotel looking down on our embassy. meanwhile the guy who had the money fled to jordan with $60 million. they put about $80 million into it and it was left as an eye sore and eventually it was torn down. how do i know about this? because we had an inspector general. it was called a special inspector general for afghanistan construction. i had a proposal, i said why don't we take the inspector general who is doing this in afghanistan, already has a budget, because i happen to be incentive with everything -- conservative with everything, the guy doesn't have a budget, he has $60 million in his

budget. i said let's switch it over. when i go home people mention it, i have not heard of one person opposed to it it i have not heard of one person opposed to having an inspector general. so we voted on it, the other side almost universally vowed it down and some on my side voted against it. why? because the inspector general has as history of finding waste. i picked him because he is apparently good at his job. he has serious economists, accountants, people used to looking at war spending and he finds the people wasting it. he writes a book on it every year. one of the waste projects that he found was a natural gas gas station. now, this is the kind ludicrous stuff that people at home don't know about and this is what the other side sticks into everything, we have to make everything green, we've got to make the military green. so they decided they wanted to

have a natural gas gas station in afghanistan. you have to realize that a lot of food is still cooked on open fires and r- -- and they built a natural gas gas station 30, 40 miles out from any military site, couldn't be protected. but then they discovered another problem, and i guess maybe they hadn't thought this through, they wanted to go green and get rid of the combustion, they were going to solve it in afghanista they built a natural gas gas station for $40 million. but you know what they discovered? nobody had a car that ran on natural gas. so never to be deterred, the waste of american spending said let's buy them cars that go on natural gas.

we've got a gas station, we've got to get them cars that run on natural gas so we can cure global warming in afghanistan. so they bought 24 cars that ran on natural gas. they didn't think this through either. the people now had a gas station that delivered natural gas to their cars, we give them a couple of cars that ran on natural gas, they didn't have any money. we said let's give them a credit cards. now we have natural gas cars and here's your credit card. they didn't think that all the way through. it turned out people were still killing each other in that part of the world and it was too dangerous to send soldiers there, when someone asked to see the natural gas gas station, he was told by our soldiers, too dangerous to see it. as you can imagine, this natural gas gas station now looks like, if you can imagine an inner-city

gas station with the copper pipes torn out, you know, anything that is of value, torn out of the ground, that's your natural gas gas station in afghanistan, that's your $45 million, and that's war even with an inspector general we found out about it, can you imagine what war is like without an inspector general? the other side will say the department of defense has an inspector general. yeah, they do, this is a department of defense that is missing a couple trillion dollars of equipment, they say they are too bigger audited. i would say that we have to be a little bit wary of just saying the department of defense will watch this money.

mr. paul: so i mentioned earlier billion a billion dollars. what is a billion. a million dollars in the palm of your hand is thousand dollar bills four inches high would be a million dollars. a billion dollars is more difficult to visualize, but to put a billion into seconds, a billion seconds ago reagan was starting his second term, a billion minutes ago the pantheon was being built, but a billion

dollars ago at the rate we're spending money, just a little more than two minutes ago. that's now a billion. you wonder how bad things are around here. you used to think a billion was bad now we have trillion. you have $34 trillion. i remember when george w. bush was president, it was -- and then when president obama was president it went from 10 to 20b and -- 20. each president has been worse. they've all been bad. congress deserves some of the blame too. it doesn't happen without congress. but the money is going crazy. we're up to about $1.5 trillion. so i looked this up this morning. i wanted to know if you stacked $1 bills and wondered what $1.5 trillion. if you take two years of debt, and you want it in $1 bills,

that would stack all the way to the moon over 230,000 miles away. we're starting to talk about a bit of money here. but it's not just the overall debt. when they pay for the -- pay for the debt, the currency becomes worth less and less. but also what happens is our interest rates increase over time. so under george w. bush, we went from $5 trillion to $10 trillion and we doubled the debt from 5 there will to 10 trillion and then the interest rate was cut in half and it wasn't a lot worse but we finally, i believe, have lost the ability for the federal reserve to suppress interest rates. interest rates have risen and interest payments have doubled. we're on course within the next year or so to have interest rates become the largest items pushing out and crowding out other spending in the budget. mark my words, this $100 billion

will add to that problem and i think it's absolutely an utter mistake and insult to every american that we ignore the invasion on our southern border in order to send money overseas. i reserve the balance of my time. mr. paul: how much time to i conscious -- do i have remaining? the presiding officer: the senator has 17 minutes remaining. mr. paul: thank you.

mr. lee: more than three months ago republican members of the united states senate made a commitment -- made a commitment to each other and to our voters and to the american people. we greed not to send -- agreed not to send one more penny of their hard-earned money overseas. to support conflicts in foreign nations, until their own homeland, america's own homeland, was secured. well, through the poverties of a faithless few, we're poised to treat our promise to americans the same way president biden has treated his solemn oath to protect our country's borders, expedient, expendable, and now apparently expired. madam president, we cannot send billions of dollars to ukraine

while america's own borders are bleeding. heaven help us. the american people should not have to watch us, every hour of every day, looking over our shoulder, just to make sure their own government doesn't stab them in the back. what have they done, after all, to deserve such contempt, such untrustworthy public servants? what grudge does this body hold against the very people who elected us? on saturday i spent many hours trying to make six different amendments to this legislation pending. most of them, in fact, were germane to this bill. they dealt specifically with it, and met the tight legal definition that we use in this body to decide whether it's pertinent to the bill and it has certain procedural benefits and protections if it is germane. most of mine were.

yet, again and again, i was shot down. i was told that republicans had forfeited our right to offer any improvements, any changes to this bill, because we rejected the border proposal, the border proposal that we had received just a few days earlier, a week ago sunday, at 7:00 p.m. eastern standard time. now, my request was simple. it was not that each of my amendments be made law. no, it wasn't that. nor was it even that i was asking each of my amendments be included in the base text of the bill be considered adopted as part of this as an amendment. it wasn't that either. no, it was much, much simpler. it was that each amendment merely be permitted to be considered, debated, and

possibly voted on. i came to the floor and asked consent to do this, because the senate majority leader, chuck schumer, had utilized a procedure that has unfortunately become all too common in this body, known as filling the tree. to make a long story short, to make a complicated system sound simpler, filling the tree is the means by which you say there is no space to consider amendments to this bill. we can't even make them pending, because all the slots are full. so, majority leaders have over the last few years become increasingly fond of filling the tree. they'll plug in a handful of amendments to the proverbial tree. one amendment changing a comma into a semicolon. another amendment changing a

date, say from september 29 to september 30. it's usually something fairly immaterial. they're just there as space fillers, as amendment blockers, so that the senate can't consider other amendments. there's still ways around that, and i was exploring one of those ways. you come to the floor, call up your amendment, you ask consent to make your amendment pending and to set aside one of the tree-filling, one of the amendment-blocking amendments that have been put in there by the majority leader just in order to obstruct others from having the opportunity for amendment -- opportunity for amendments. that was the simple request, merely being permitted to have these amendments considered, debated, and possibly voted upon. i had a number of amendments, seven i talked about that day, six i offered up and asked consent to have made pending.

here's some of what they would have accomplished had we adopted them -- one proposed to make discrete commonsense changes to our immigration law in order to protect our border and to prevent traffickers from using toddlers and babies as a means to ensure that their customers easy access into the interior of our country. notwithstanding the fact they're entering our country illegally. that was in fact described a few of my amendments, and i had at least one amendment that would make it very clear that an illegal alien who knowingly registers to vote will be subject to criminal penalties. right now, it's nominally against the law to vote if

you're not a citizen, but there are far too few teeth in that law. this would provide some of those teeth. who could be against making sure, especially when we've had record numbers of people entering our country without documentation, entering our country illegally, 10 million according to some estimates, some would say it's higher than that, some would say it's a little lower than that. either way, we're talking about something in the neighborhood of ten million or so entering into this country just since joseph r. biden became the 46th president of the united states on january 20, 2021. it's not unreasonable as we approach a very important, very consequential election, to say let's make sure it is citizens voting, and in the case of an illegal alien who knowingly

registers to vote would face some penalties for that. these and other amendments that i have prepared would actually ensure border security and protect america's elections from foreign interference, things that i think many, probably most, of my colleagues profess to care about, things that we all certainly should care about. but nonetheless, these amendments drew objections, all of them objections imposed by democrats in the senate to the mere consideration of these amendments, who couldn't even make the amendment pending, couldn't even consider them. i also asked that the following amendments be considered, an amendment that would allow only 2% of the funds intended for ukraine to be released until the

president delivered a strategy to congress with specific objectives and specific timelines. this, madam president, is not too much to ask. not too much to ask when we've already sent $113 billion for that war evident, and when we've -- that war effort and when we've got a lot of additional funding that, if this bill is enacted, would also be sent to ukraine. if we're going to do all this, and if we're going to put american weapons on the line, if we're going to put the additional strain on those who produce our weapons on the line, we're going to reduce our stockpiles even further, if we're going to tax and inflate the dollar additionally, as this will require us to do, because we're talking about borrowed money here, then the american people should have the benefit of knowing what the strategy is. we don't have a comprehensive, coherence strategy from the administration on what they want as the outcome of our efforts,

of our assistance. what does this look like? how does this conflict get brought to a peaceful, lasting conclusion? what does ukraine look like after that long hoped for conclusion? these are reasonable things for us to expect. these are certainly reasonable things for us to debate, regardless of how eager any individual senator might be or, alternatively, how reluctant any individual senator might be about providing additional funding to ukraine. there was another amendment printing any -- prohibiting any funding for economic support for ukraine, from paying the pensions and salaries of ukrainian government bureaucrats, as well as paying for any ukrainian welfare programs. we weren't pleased, of course,

that the language of this bill contains a carve-out that prohibits the use of the roughly $8 billion we're sending over in economic support to the ukrainian government, saying that it couldn't be used to shore up ukrainian pensions. that was a good things. we're glad to see that. we had feared that that would be in there. that was in the original proposal that -- or original suggestion by president biden that it should be in there, and that economic relief package was originally somewhere in the neighborhood of $11 billion or $12 billion. it was brought down, i think, in part because of this prohibition against using it to back up pensions in ukraine. but there's still nothing in there that prohibits ukraine from using that for its own social welfare programs or to pay the salaries of ukrainian

bureaucrats or other civil servants. by the way, it's my understanding that this is enough money to pay them for an entire year. now, a lot of americans have questions, even a lot of americans who might be okay with sending some additional military assistance to ukraine, have reservations about paying the salaries and the social welfare benefits of the ukrainian government for an entire year. there's another amendment that i tried to make financial that -- that i tried to make pending that would prohibit putting american taxpayers on the hook for any reconstruction activities in ukraine. it's understandable here too why there would be some concern. when we engage in nation building, this is often how an effort that begins with a promise that will be there for maybe a year or two, that we'll

be in charge of reconstruction activities for a year or two, that can stretch into two decades really quickly before we know it. unlike wars in iraq and afghanistan and other places where we've engaged in nation building that took way too long and way too much money from the american taxpayer, this isn't even a war we ourselves are fighting. this isn't even a war as to which we've enacted an authorization for the use of military force for americans to fight or declaration of war. and so it makes it even more inappropriate for us to just assume that nation build something going to be our focus. now, sure, there's only $25 million in this bill for that effort identified as such within that particular project of newly liberated communities or words to that effect, but

this is the nose in the camel's tent. once that begins, and if this war concludes where i think all of us in this body want it to conclude, which is victory for ukraine, there's going to be a lot more of this to go on. there was a recent estimate by some global authority, could have been with the world bank, suggesting we're looking at something like $300 billion or $$400 billion for ukrainian reconstruction. why would the united states puts itself in a position to be on the cutting edge of that, to be at the epicenter of that, as far as organizing funding, et cetera? it's a dangerous thing to move forward with, without even having a don't on a single amendment to try to limit what we would do on that front. there was also an amendment that

i tried to make p.m. that would -- that i tried to make pending that would clarify not only would our american taxpayer dollars stop funding unrwa, unrwa, this singularly offensive anti-semitic, anti-israel agency within the u.n. -- here again, i'm grateful to those who drafted the bill that at least unrwa was excluded from u.s. financial. unrwa, as we've discovered in recent weeks and many of us worried about for years, has been involved in all kinds of horrible things. not just the indoctrination of young children in gaza, such that they were taught in unrwa-run schools to hate jewish people, but also encouraged to engage in acts of violence against them, and have been for years, in fact, the better part

of a couple decades. more recently, it appears that a number of unrwa personnel and facilities and other resources were used actively to help these attacks and those responsible for the attacks. anyway, it's a good thing that the bill was written and excludes unrwa, but what about the other agencies? i believe there are 19 u.n. agencies operating within gaza. what about those? my amendment that i introduced last week and tried to make pend be on saturday would clarify that not only would u.s. taxpayer dollars not be available to send to unrwa specifically, but they would also no longer fund any u.n. organization, any u.n. agency operating in gaza. ensuring that the american taxpayer dollar does not end up in the hands of hamas.

but these u.n. networks are very sophisticated, and those that operate in gaza have, of course, work closely in concert one with another. and to say that we're going to get rid of any risk of funding the same problems that we're -- that were facilitated and materially advanced by unrwa in the past just by funneling them through another u.n. agency is folly. and to suggest simply by funneling it through the u.n. to send aid to gaza we're somehow going to prevent any situation in which we materially assist hamas, that's -- it's not going to happen. i mean, look, it's difficult for us to grasp this here because fortunately those who have grown up in this country and lived

here our whole lives have never experienced anything like gaza, present day 21st century gaza in which there is no state to say it's a failed state is almost an insult to failed states everywhere. but this is just a failure at every end. there essentially is no state. and yet in part because there is no state, and because of the way that it rules, hamas rules gaza with an iron fist, iron fist in glove. it is incontrol of everything. so no matter who you funnel it through, even if you don't funnel it through unrwa because you can't under the text of this bill, you give it to some other u.n. entity, it's still going to be helping hamas, and we don't

want to do that. we know that october 7 absolutely grizzly. it was a sobering wake-up call to all who have witnessed it. and for those of us who have visited those areas in israel, in southern israel next to gaza as my wife and i have in recent weeks, it is sobering, heartbreaking, breathtaking. there are not enough adjectives associated with misery and shock and horror to describe the atrocities that were carried out that awful day, october 7. yet october 7 is and what the typical -- tip of the iceberg compared to what they have plan, what they want to do, what hamas and other iranian proxies want

to do in the region and will do when given the chance will make what happened on october 7 look like a sunday picnic. so we don't want to be funding that. yet in two different accounts under this bill, there's money that could go there. there's two accounts added together, a total between $9 billion and $10 billion. that ought to be something we're concerned about. and for my colleagues who might disagree with me on this amendment, i would ask them this. shouldn't this at least be something that we should debate? shouldn't this at least be something we should vote on before we send it? this like the other amendments that i've just described, the other germane amendments i just described, they're not dilatory. these are not reckless. these are not there to try to serve any purpose other than to, number one, make the bill less likely to inflict harm which i

think should be our first job in all of this. and also to sharpen the debate, sharpen our analysis of what it is that we want to happen. it's not too much to ask for those things to be considered. but disturbingly, my colleagues, those of them who objected and those who have supported the objectors and those who have supported cloture, even after it became clear that there is to be no debate on any of these things persisted in moving forward and they have defended those who have done it, defended those who have ensured that we will have no meaningful debate on any of this issues, no opportunity to vote. they've rejected every safeguard, every limit, every condition i've offered so that

we may, if we adopt them, i think these are things we can do to make sure we're good and faithful stewards over u.s. taxpayer dollars. these taxes that we spend all too freely here are not free. they're taken from hardworking cit citizens. they're taken from hardworking men and women who are just trying to put a roof over their head and food on the table, finding these days since january 20, 2021, it cost them a thousand dollars a month every single month just to put food on the table, gas in the car, groceries in the fridge, in the pa pantry, just to live. everything from housing to health care, from gas to groceries, everything in

between, it's all become more expensive in part, in large part mostly because our government spends routinely trillions of dollars a year now more than it takes in every single year. and you can't do that, even when you're the world's reserve currency which the u.s. dollar is. by the way, we should worry about whether we're jeopardizing that, too. so far we've gotten away with it because the dollar is still the least bad deal in town. and by in town i mean on the planet. but the more we test the limits of that, the more i think we shouldn't test the limits of it. but in any event, even when you are the world's reserve currency, there are still consequences to multifrill dollar deficit spending year after year after year. it's one thing to do it in the middle of a pandemic. we should doubt the wisdom of a lot of it. especially because it led to a

pattern of multitrillion dollar deficit spending year after year since then, including this year, including times like now when we're kind of at the peak of an economic cycle. we've got relatively -- we've got really low, often record low unemployment as we've been doing this. you print and borrow and spend that much money all at once, it has the effect of just printing it. every dollar buys less. so through the combination of taxes -- many american families work weeks out of months, if not mo months -- months just to pay their federal taxes. on top of that they're taxed again when every dollar they make or have saved biefs a lot less -- saved buys a lot less, precisely because we borrow and

spend too much money. you add insult to injury to that after making them work that long to make the money, after then taxing them again because you spent too much money, you make it so their money doesn't spend as far, doesn't buy as much as it used to. you add insult to injury by not even debating an amendment to make sure that their hard-earned tax dollars aren't used to kill israelis and threaten, intimidate, perhaps kill americans and our allies. this is really concerning. i don't understand why we would want to do this. so we've got to make sure that we've undertaken our due diligence work properly, that we've done so faithfully. if we don't do it, the american people will be disappointed.

and they should be. look, i've not been quiet about my opposition to this bill. i do believe it betrays a promise. that as i understood it, the members of the senate, republican conference, made to each other and made to our constituents and made to our colleagues across the aisle and our counterparts over in the house a few months ago, a commitment that as i understand it was not just made months ago but also reiterated pretty consistently over the last two or three months, and if we stayed to that, then this body wouldn't consider sending another dollar, another quarter, another dime, another nickel, another penny to ukraine until we passed something that actually would secure the

border, that would force the issue of border security so that the issue of border security and a secure border could be realized in the near short term, in this presidency, not at some aspirational moment somewhere in the future. we were told for months that this was the plan and something was negotiated on that. i have great affection and respect for those who were involved on that on both sides of the aisle. senator lankford is a dear fr friend. he worked really hard on that. i know the other negotiators did, too. they were in that room. we weren't. and for many of us, most of us, in fact i think it ended up being all but four senators.

after we saw that bill, 7:00 eastern standard time a week ago sunday, looked at it and decided we couldn't support it. so once that happened, it didn't somehow expunge the previous commitment. it didn't release us from the obligation we had to each other and to our voters to try to make sure that before we sent another dime to ukraine, that we make sure this border is secure at home, that we force the issue of border security, even as against an administration led by a president not willing to secure the border. in fact, one that's openly hostile toward brder security for -- border security, for reasons i cannot fathom. that's the position they're taking. were there provisions in that bill that could have made a difference? of course. of course there were.

there were things in that bill that i think could have proven useful within an administration that wanted to make the border se secure. but with an administration bent on not doing that very thing, that very thing that was the object of the entire months' long negotiation process to begin with, there were enough loof ho -- enough loopholes in that i and many of my colleagues believed it got us to that point. once it happened, i believe what could and should have happened that we as senate republicans would unite, unite again behind the idea of getting something done, put a few concrete things on the table. something like one of the amendments i oured up the other day, my stopping border surges act which would make some surgical adjustments to immigration law, particularly those dealing with border

security issues. they're narrow. they're finite. they should be things that every republican should be able to support. we presented that and a couple of other provisions. i know i've got a colleague or two who have expressed interest in it and i think a majority of republicans who have indicated that they would support language that would even tie the spending of ukraine aid to the achievement of certain objectively verifiable border security metrics. others have suggested attaching legislation passed by the house to secure the border, h.r. 2. not a bad idea since we know that has the support of every republican in the house of representatives. now, others have said well, that's -- we know that can't pass in the senate. well, yeah, alone it couldn't. alone i think every republican

over here is -- has expressed support at least for the core provisions of that. and i think every democrat has expressed opposition to it as a whole. but once you attach it to this and make it a condition precedent for sending another dime to ukraine, that might change. the whole idea from the beginning was to harness the democrats' overwhelming support for sending ukraine aid, combine that with securing aid for the border. neither party would perhaps be pleased with the outcome -- outcome and that it would involve giving up something that we didn't want to provide. but, nonetheless, it would be a way forward. so if we were standing by that, if after -- if, you know, 24 to 48 hours after the border deal

as it's been described in the public was released to the public for the first time through the news media at 7:00 p.m. eastern standard time a week ago sunday, we knew within 24 to 48 hours it wasn't going anywhere. within 72 hours, all but four republicans had voted against it. the logical next step consistent with the come i want that we made to each other and to the public months ago would have been to negotiate something else, perhaps including something like h.r. 2, perhaps including something like what most republicans believe would be appropriate in addition to that, a suchals the release of ukraine aid to the objective of certain verifiable border security metrics. but, no, rather than having any of this, we had a handful of my colleagues, a dozen and a half of them now, who have chosen to move ahead with the bill, to move ahead with the quid without

the quo. to move ahead with what the democrats want, what unites democrats, not only democrats in the senate but democrats across the country, democrats in the house with what they want but without republicans having any of what they want -- at least most republicans. so, in order to understand my frustration here, that if we can't have the bill we want, the next best thing would be to at least have the chance to try to amend this bill. without something that actually forces fully the issue of border security, it's hard for me to imagine how i could even consider voting for it. for my own purposes, to say nothing of the commitment that we as a conference made to each other and to the public months ago. but if i can't defeat the bill, the next best thing i can do is to amend it to improve it. now, some have cynically deny greated this -- denigrated this

by saying that a lot of those wanting to offer amendments are doing so mainly for dilatory purposes or doing so for purposes that are themselves cynical trying to destroy the bill. and, in any event, these are people who don't support the bill, are not going to vote for the bill at the end of the day, and, therefore, shouldn't get a chance to do so. i find this argument utterly lacking in logical foundation. i find it incompatible with the senate rules, with two-plus centuries of established tradition to principles of basic collegiality that opt to evade anybody, at least anybody that fancies itself the world's greatest deliberative legislative body. think about it for a minute. if you say, unless you agree with this bill exactly as it is,

and unless you are willing to agree to support the bill, regardless of which amendments pass and which do not, lest you're unequivocally unwilling to sign onto what becomes the product of this bill, we're going not to take into account your desire of what you want. you're not part of the cool kids' club and you have no say in it. we won't even let you offer amendments. when you try to do so, we will question the sincerity of your desire to do it. that's not fair. that's not accurate. and it completely ignores the way this or any other legislative body in any civilized society that i know anything about it should operate. but, look, the fact is that i

and others have not been allowed to amend the bill, not just to amend it, to achieve the amendment, to achieve passage of the amendment. we haven't even been allowed to make a single amendment pending. thus putting it in line for eventual disposition, either by a roll call vote or a voice vote, a point of order, a motion to table, or any of the other myriad means by which an amendment once pending can be disposed of. none of my colleagues, neither democrat nor republican, have been allowed to amend it. why not? well, there is this misinformation circulating about why we cans amend the bill -- we can't amend the bill, so i'd like to correct the record. this morning it was reported by a hill news outlet that, quote, there's still no agreement on amendment votes, in part because of senator rand paul of

kentucky, close quote. is that really what's happening? honestly? but that same newsletter failed to note that i spent four hours on the floor on saturday asking unanimous consent for six amendments merely to be made pending. not to pass them, not to the have them adopted, merely to make them pending. i was not asking for me amendments to be passed or voted on immediately. i was just asking for them to be brought up before the senate for consideration. the objector to my request was not senator paul, as this morning's reporting might have led you falsely to believe. senator paul was not the one blocking an amendment process. it was senate democrats who objected every single time to even considering any kind of amendment, even my germane amendments, which were most of the amendments that i tried to make pending. and, again, a germane amendment

is one that under the rules of the senate is very closely connected, tightly, inextricably connected to the subject matter. it's not some extraneous thing. my democrat colleagues said that, quote, maga extremists had their chance. this is what they said while objecting -- to the mere consideration my amendments. implying that when senate republicans objected the border bill that we saw for the first time at 7:00 p.m. eastern standard time a week ago sunday you that we forfeited our right to offer amendments, amendments of any sort. apparently, not just amendments relateded to border security or immigration or whether or not we should allow illegal immigrants to vote without facing some sort of penalty, but also amendments regarding where exactly the money is is going to ukraine, whether they should be able to use it for their own social welfare programs, whether they should be able to use it as they

have in the past to pay for concert tickets or ukrainian concert go -- for ukrainian concertgoers. to pay for the economic stability ever clothing stores in ukraine and to pay the salaries for one entire year for every single government employee of the ukrainian government. when did that become the principle of this body? -- that if you -- that because something like this happened, here that republicans objected, all but four of us opposed the border bill that we saw for the first time at 7:00 p.m. a week ago sunday. that we forfeited all of our rights? when did that become the principle of this body?

what insane human being commandeered our system and all of a sudden inserted that new rule? it's not in my rule book. it's not in any of the books that outline the precedents that have unfolded over the last two and a half centuries in this country. no, not at you will. -- not at all. when did we accept that if you disagree with the legislation before the senate, you can't offer any amendments to make the bill better than it otherwise would be? where is is that written in the senate rules? when did that become a custom of the senate? i hope that my republican colleagues would unite, if not on this bill but at least unite to completely disavow this view, to disabuse the press and anyone watching from thinking that this is how we roll now.

we really should be able to u-nate to completely disavow this view. why? because it'll completely trample on the rights of the minority party and disenfranchise the voters who put us here to begin with. that's a really good reason. really good reason -- to make clear that it doesn't matter with where you're leaning on a bill or where with you might vote on ultimate package before the senate. you still have no less a right to try to improve the bill, to try to make sure that it's better than it is now. but i am afraid, madam president, some of my republican colleagues are entertaining this view. in fact, one of my republican colleagues who is here in the chamber today reportedly said yesterday -- and i hope that he

was misquoted -- quote, you don't put forth 80 amendments and say that you won't negotiate on time agreements and be taken seriously. that's what's happening here. those folks are going to vote against it, no matter what -- close quote. look, maybe there's more to the context of this. i hope there is. perhaps there's something i'm misunderstanding. a senator: madam president. the presiding officer: the senator from north carolina. mr. tillis: i rise too see if the gentleman from utah will yield with the no in that i will provide some of my unallocated time so he can continue his time beyond that required to answer my questions. the presiding officer: will the senator yield for a question? mr. lee: yeah, without surrendering the floor, i'll yield for a question. mr. tillis: thank you, senator lee. senator lee, first i want to thank you for putting forth amendments, many of which i would like to vote for. i also want to thank you for not

having the proviso that all of these amendments must be voted for without yielding any time. but, senator lee, you mentioned about how the senate works. i've only been here for nine years. you've been here longer than me. but i thought it was custom what whether democrats were in control or republicans were in control that when we reached a point to where we're on the bill, that a part of the process was making good-faith offers, like you have, and then the majority, which actually controls what we take up on the floor, would then look for at least some concession on time. but i understand that we have some members who have vade, no matter what -- have have said, no matter what, they would not be conceding any time. so just to be fair to the couple of dozen people watching c-span and some of the people in the gallery, i'm just trying to understand whether or not it is clear that we have members who

said, under no circumstances would we negotiate any time. and it's in fact that intransigence that's making it less like lay that any of the good bills that my colleagues have offered up in the republican conference are not going to get voted on. is that your understanding? okay. mr. lee: i think so. mr. tillis: may i ask another question? so i want to be clear that generally speaking, senator lee, i have observed you do some extraordinary things on the floor and managed to get some very helpful measures -- amendments voted on, including some of the ones today. but i do want to be clare that we're likely never going to be -- but i do want to be clear that we're likely never going to have an opportunity to vote on those because we do have some of our colleagues who have made it clear they are not willing to have the puts and takes that are necessary to actually get an

opportunity to take tows votes. -- to take those votes. is that your understanding? mr. lee: yes, essentially. i would like to real estate spond, i hope to get the floor back soon to explain. mr. tillis: i yield back. mr. lee: okay, thank you. in the first place, you're right to point out, i have not been objecting to those. it is a common agreement and understanding that we'll reach. not always, but much of the time we can pull together a list of amendments, put them together on a raft, so to speak -- a raft that you can send forward, send out among all senate republics, and if no one objects, you can vote on. and then you'll set up some agreements surrounding the amount of time for each of those. i'm not sure of mbeki -- exactly

all the details of those objecting, but i do understand there have been some of my colleagues who have objected to those. but i will say this -- the fact that there are some who object to that -- my understand is that at least for some of them is making sure any such raft of agreements not culminate in or create an expectation of a scenario in which we would limit the total number of amendments that could be offered, considered, and voted on or the total amount of time in which amendments could be considered. and that on that basis, they were objecting. now, i didn't harbor that particular view and wasn't making those particular objections. nonetheless, those colleagues were not objecting to what i would i. -- to what i was doing all day on the floor on saturday, which is calling up again and again amendments, most of which were ember hane to the bill -- were germane to the bill, that no one on the republican side was objecting to

having made pending. the only reason given that i heard on saturday as to why they weren't allowing amendments -- and it's funny about this one. the objection as it was made was usually occurring in response to something that had nothing to do with border as far as my amendments went. the objection i got from the democrats who objected over and over again was maga republicans are to blame, and they rejected the border pavenlth therefore, they -- package. therefore they don't get any say on this bill. this is entirely afield from this objection, entirely afreelied from my friend and colleague -- and i mean that sincerely when i call him a friend -- was mentioning. this is different than that. nobody else was here. no other live requests were being made for people who wanted to make their amendment pending. there was no reason in the world why we couldn't at least make those pending. the fact that some were

objecting to having them pass in blocks, that's their business. i can't answer for that. but they had their reasons, and they did not object to what i was doing there. and so it really leads me to wonder why it is that anyone would imply that if you don't support the final bill, you don't get any say in the bill. you can't make your amendment pending. you can't even have your amendment considered. you can't even tee them up for consideration, for disposal as i say either through a roll call vote or alternatively a motion to table, a motion to commit, or a point of order, or something like that. you cannot make them pending apparently unless you swear allegiance to the finished product yet to be seen, but you're asked to consume consistent with what has been foreordained by whatever very,

very small group of senators, happen to be the privileged ones, to have written that. mr. tillis: madam president. mr. lee: i'd like to kin my remarks -- to continue my remarks if i could. mr. tillis: i would ask if at the end -- the presiding officer: the senator from utah has the floor. mr. tillis: my inquiry to senator lee was whether or not he would yield at the end of his comments for a question. the presiding officer: would the senator yield for a question? mr. lee: ask your questions. at some point i'd like to continue my thoughts without being interrupted. go ahead. mr. tillis: madam president, i would like to make the point that i've seen a number of amendments that senator lee has made that i'd like to vote on. i don't believe there is anyone here making a judgment about whether or not he should get the amendments, whether or not he's going to vote for the final passage of the bill. i just want to restate again whether or not he's aware that we're not getting on any

amendments, probably a handful that would be his because of objections offered by our colleagues. i just wanted to make that point. it has nothing to do with where he will ultimately vote on the bill. it has to do with the intransigence with some of our members who won't seek agreement, which is how we operate in the senate. thank you, madam president. thank you, senator lee. mr. lee: it's still beside the point. i appreciate the observation made by my friend, the distinguished colleague, the senator from north carolina. it still misses the point. i still sought to have my amendments made pending on a half dozen amendments, most of which were germane, on saturday. there was no reason why we couldn't make those pending. there was nobodying objecting. the same members objecting to other members were not objecting to these. secondly, it was my understanding when i agreed to entertain the first of those questions and to yield for a question that it would not count

against my time. i would ask consent that that not -- the presiding officer: without objection. mr. lee: madam president, i ask unanimous consent that any republican senator be allowed to call up amendments and that the tree be set aside. a senator: i object. the presiding officer: we have an objection. objection is heard. mr. lee: madam president, i ask unanimous consent that any senator from either party be allowed to call up amendments and that the tree be set aside. the presiding officer: is there objection? objection is heard. mr. lee: madam president, i ask unanimous consent that any democratic senator be allowed to call up amendments and the tree be set aside for that purpose. the presiding officer: is there objection? objection is heard. mr. lee: this is interesting. this is interesting what's happened. they're now opposed even to democratic senators calling up amendments and making those pending. why is that? well, it appears to be, again, this consolidation of power.

the american people have lost enormous power in recent years, madam president. they have lost enormous power. power has been taken away from them in at least three steps. first, taken away from them, power is brought away from states and local governments where most of the power under our federal system is supposed to reside consistent with both the original text of the constitution and the 10th amendment. second, once that power has been brought here to washington, it's been outsourced, moved away from the american people, in yet another step, the law-making power gets shifted from elected lawmakers to unaccounted bureaucrats. third, even when the power resides even in power, once it's been moved here, it's been consolidated excessively to a few. here in the senate i often refer to them as the firm, the law firm of schumer and mcconnell. very often we consolidate power in the hands of a few

legislative leader, put together a bill, a bill very much like this. in fact, this very bill. and then nobody allows apparently by agreement for anybody to get votes on anything, even when we try to throw it open. we try to say anybody in this body gets to have their amendments made pending. they're told no. and then even after we make a request that just democratic senators have that time, they're told no. look, this is not how it's supposed to work. this is not how it's supposed to work at all. the american people are excluded from a process insofar as we all point to someone else. the american people must not be

excluded from this process. and when they are, bad things happen. today this might be a bill that you like. tomorrow it might be a bill you don't like. majorities can change. republican senate leadership within the senate may change. and when it changes, you might not like the precedent that you yourself have set when you try to exclude people just because they disagree with your ultimate outcome of the bill. this isn't right. the senate was set up to be a different sort of deliberative legislative body. part of what makes itting deliberative is that each state is represented equally. there is a type of comity that naturally arises out of that understanding of what differentiates us from the house. a type of comity that survived

and thrived for more than two centuries. it's been eroded materially in recent years. and by recent years, i mean very recent years. it's gotten significantly worse, even in the time, the 13 short years that i've spent in the united states senate. i hope we can turn it around. madam president, may i ask how much time remains on my account after the deduction for the interruption. the presiding officer: the senator has 8 minutes remaining. mr. lee: seeing that i have 8 minutes remaining i would like to reserve the balance of those minutes so i can come back as necessary. thank you. a senator: madam president. the presiding officer: the senator from ohio. mr. vance: i come to debate about whether we should continual funding ukraine indefinitely because this united states senate has not had much an argument about whether we should continue to fund ukraine indefinitely. it has become extremely commonplace among advocates for

further ukraine funding to frame this as the courageous against the partisan, those who in america's and ukraine apparently moment of need are expressing the great spirit of patriotism that animated us in world war ii and other moments of great world conflict. and that those who don't want to send another $61 billion to ukraine, we're just the knuckle draggers. we're the people who are listening to the base. we're the people who are listening to the media, ignoring that so many of us have been criticizing america's ukraine policy from the get go when both the media and the base was much more supportive than they are today. one of the most preposterous arguments that i hear in defense of our policy in ukraine is that it is bipartisan, that the is experts know better. perhaps senator jd vance doesn't know what the joint chiefs of staff do. perhaps the republican base doesn't know what the experts in

national security do. maybe they, with their knowledge and their training and their intelligence briefings access know something that the american people don't. while the american people have grown more and more skeptical of this conflict perhaps it makes sense we should listen to the experts. where we heard that argument? so many times in the last decades have we be asked to listen to the experts. yet, we never actually ask what the track record of those experts is in matters of foreign policy. the experts, the bipartisan etnam, a war that lasted nearly 15 years, that saw the destruction of nearly 60,000 american lives, and for what? it was the bipartisan foreign policy consensus, the experts, that got us in to a 20-year war in afghanistan where american taxpayers for two decades funded things like how to turn afghanistan into a flowering

democracy or how to ensure that the afghans had proper american thoughts about gender in the 21{l1}st{l0} century. naib that was a -- maybe that was a waste of money. those same experts of course counseled us that we must invade iraq because iraq has weapons of mass destruction. yet, iraq had no weapons of mass destruction, and the war led not only to the destruction of 5,000 american lives and many, many hundreds of thousands of innocent people beyond that, but also led to the regional empowerment of iran which now we are told by those same experts is the biggest problem that we face in the middle east. now those experts have a new crusade. now those experts have a new thing that american taxpayers must fund and must fund indefinitely, and it is called the conflict in ukraine. now we, at least most of us, i think, in this body, nearly all of us, i would hope, do not

think that ukraine deserved to be invaded. we certainly don't think that what has befallen the innocent civilians of ukraine was deserved. we condemn it, as we should. but we have to ask ourselves what are we doing there, not how we feel about it. what is our objective there, not how sad we feel about what's befallen the innocent civilians. we have to engage in what the partisan experts have failed to engage in for 50 years -- a conversation about strategy, asking very specific, very discreet questions about what it is that we're doing there. what are we trying to accomplish? how long will it take to accomplish these things? and for how many millions or billions or trillions of dollars are we in for before we can accomplish these things? i've heard any number of explanations from my colleagues who support our policy in ukraine about what it is that we're trying to do. at the beginning of the war especially, you hear this argument far less, but at the

beginning of the war especially you would hear an argument that we had to throw vladimir putin back to the 1991 borders. we don't hear that argument so much anymore. why? because it was preposterous then and it's preposterous now. ukraine is a country that now has about 28 million people. that's after many hundreds of thousands have died in the war and many, many millions have left the country probably permanently beyond that. russia, by comparison, has 160 million people and has the industrial capacity to make many, many more times artillery shells and other critical weapons per day. so against that leviathan in eastern europe, we are told somehow that the ukrainians can will. well, again, what is victory? we know now that throwing russia back to the 1991 borders is preposterous. no one, not even the inner circle of zelenskyy's own cabinet makes that argument. they did a few months ago but

don't make that argument anymore. what is victory? when you talk to people both in public and in private, the actual thing that you can piece together that we're trying to do is to send enough weapons and send enough money to the ukrainians until something good happens. until maybe the russians get sick of the conflict and they come to the negotiating table. that's one opportunity to end this war that we're told, is that if we just keep on going and we show our resolve, then vladimir putin will come to the negotiating table. leviathan. if you listen to the former german chancellor or some in zelenskyy's government or other western european allies, they will say that russia was willing to come to the negotiating table at the beginning of 2022, after the war had stalemated from the russian -- now, it's not just vladimir putin who says this,

it's virtually everyone who has ever talked about this moment in the conflict and they will say that british prime minister boris johnson, backed by any number of american leaders in the security apparatus basically said sell russia to shove it. the ukrainians are winning and with we will keep this war going as long as it will take. we had the opportunity to negotiate back in 2022, and if we had taken it, here is what would have happened, many fewer ukrainians would have died, many innocent civilians would have not lost their homes and lives, in a war that has put stresses on food supply to energy crisis would have concluded. we're trying to get vladimir putin to the negotiating table. we don't have a path way to do it and we will try to do it as

long as we continue to throw money but that offer was on the table 18 months ago and we told them to solve it. negotiating table, that doesn't seem to be an end goal if we continue to funnel money. what is the end goal? it is astonishing that not a single person from joe biden on down cannot articulate what $160 billion will do. they will tell you what it won't do, but how weird is it that they want to send $61 billion to america's ally ukraine and not able to tell you what it is to accomplish. so, first, we have a complete absence of strategy, a complete failure for the president of the united states to articulate what we're going to do. i try to imagine what it would have been as an american citizen if on december 8, 1941, african

lin roosevelt stood before the country and said, the japanese have attacked us, it is a day that will live in infamy and so we will send money for as long as it possibly takes with no ar particular layings of what we -- ar particular layings of what we're -- ar particular layings of what we're going to do, we're just going to be send money and hope that eventually these guys will come to the negotiating table. that is the equivalent of what we are doing at this moment in time with this particular conflict. now, i mentioned just now our manufacturing base. so let's talk about the cost of this conflict. we know there's no strategy. we know there's no plan to do anything other than to funnel more and more money and more and more resources. what are the costs of continuing our posture in ukraine? well, let's go through them. let me just make an observation about costs, about thinking about costs and considering the consequences of our actions. you know, it used to be common

in american statesmanship that we'd hear the phrase, speak softly and carry a big stick. the idea was be smart in your strategic decisions, be willing to hit back hard but don't bluster or brag and pretend you can do things you can't. we need to ask ourselves, what is it that we are costing ourselves to continue to fund this war. you heard my colleagues talk about this. we have $61 billion on top of $34 trillion in debt. can we afford to send another $161 billion to ukraine and what will be requested next year and can we afford the hundreds of billions of dollars of reconstruction cost that we have committed ourselves to by funding the war in ukraine indefinitely? you hear the people like vultures with a carcass talking

about how much money they will make on the reconstruction of ukraine. and i ask myself, why are we destroying the country in the first place given that we know the war is at a stalemate and american diplomacy could possibly bring it to a close? here's another thing that this is costing us, something that doesn't get talked about enough in this chamber. i'm reminded about the only time i have been in the white house with a sitting president of the united states, it was about a week before the inauguration of donald trump and mike pence, and so i was there with president obama. i think it's important to never reveal confidences of private conversations, but he said something extremely interesting and i didn't expect to hear from a democratic president. what he said is that the refugee crisis in europe in 2015 would take down a number of liberal governments. we, as a conservative, i might not care about liberal

governments going down, i think it was interesting that a pro immigration guy, a person for open borders would say when you have open borders, it destabilizes government. he was right. refugee crises do destabilize government. why are we talking about the fact that multiple countries in southern europe are being overwhelmed by people -- not bad people, by the way. most of them are looking for food to feed their children or a job with a decent wage, but we are witnessing the beginning of what i believe will become the biggest refugee crisis in the history of the world. why? because in africa which has 1.5 billion people, most of whom have a lower standard of living, you have grain prices through the roof, wheat prices through

the roof. anybody advocating an endless war in ukraine asks, what happens when 1.5 billion starving people start to move north to look for food? you don't have to make moral judgment about the mrietsdz they will -- plight they will go on but think of those about the unintended consequences of their actions. are we willing to have over a billion people starving trying to pour into the borders of the united states and america? are we willing to set up a refugee crisis, the likes of which has never been seen and if we do that, what effect will it have on the allies in europe and our own country and what effect will it have for millions of american citizens who are dealing with the consequences of on overwhelmed southern border. i will talk about that

overwhelmed southern border in a second, but i will continue to talk about the unintended consequences of the war in ukraine. another unintended consequence is, what do energy prices look like all over the world? we have no idea who blew up the n nord stream 2 pipeline, we have guesses. isn't it unusual that our european allies have their most important fuel artery destroyed, but are not asking questions, those in polands and like those in slovenia and other allied countries in europe are under an extraordinary amount of stress because the fuel prices are so high. hungary took in nearlyrefugees, facing skyrocketing energy prices because of the war between russia and ukraine.

what effect does it have on the millions of people living there? what effect does it have on the people when we take down governments because people cannot afford food or energy? while we're talking about the unintended consequences of the energy prices in europe, let's ask an important question about why we are here. the democrats act like ukraine is the most significant nafg our -- facing our country, you see the pins and people talking about it on social media, there are those who think that the ukrainian war is the most important thing facing our country, but it is not so important that they will pursue commonsense energy policies. the reason why russia is so powerful in the -- on the world stage today is one reason, because of stupid american and

european energy policies. preposterous energy policies that drive up the cost of natural gas. while we send $61 billion to ukraine, we pursue a set of energy policies that drive up the cost of natural gas and enrich the russian oligarchs paying for the war, we are paying for both sides of the war, the russian side and $61 billion direct with american taxpayer subsidy. that is another unintended consequence. and my republican friends, who i assume all of them agree with me on the i'd 0sy -- i hadcy of the energy policies, why are they supporting the energy policies. if they care about ukraine as much as they say they did, perhaps they should force the president of the united states to stop enriching russian

oligarchs with terrible energy policies. but we will not do that, we will continue to fund both sides of the war and i guess that's the way it will be. let's talk about another unintended policy of ukraine. we are incredibly stressed of how many guns we can manufacture. america is the largest economy in the world by gdp and times the size of the russian economy. the most important weapon in eastern europe today are 155 millimeter artillery shells, it's why so many have died during the conflict because the russians have an advantage in artillery. we're ten times the size of the russian economy, how many artillery shells do we make in a

month and how many do the russians make in a month? well, we make in a month about 30,000 artillery shells, that's up from about 30,000 artillery shells at the beginning of the conflict, the russians make 30,000 artillery shells in a day. in an month, the united states, the biggest economy in the world makes weapons at a rate per month that the russians are able to meet in a single day. one thing that suggests to me is gross domestic product numbers are fake if you can't produce weapons to defend people then your economy might not be as strong as you think. we cannot fight war with dollars and derivatives, we need weapons, bullets, artillery shells and missiles and america doesn't make nearly enough of dhoes, not enough for our own security and not enough to support the ukraine conflict and god forbid a conflict that might

occur in east asia. let's specify that a little bit more. we are right now depleting critical munitions, missiles, artillery shells and bullets faster than we can replenish them and then send them to ukraine. i'm sorry. why does that make an ounce of sense for our own national security? shouldn't we rebuild our own manufacturing capacity before we spend all of it on ukraine? shouldn't we make more of our own weapons and gain some self-sufficiency in weapons manufacturing before we send all of those resources to ukraine? the answer of the united states senate is apparently not. so on issue after issue after issue -- a senator: madam president. the presiding officer: the senator from north carolina. mr. tillis: will the gentleman from north carolina yield for a question on this subject matter? the presiding officer: will the gentleman yield? mr. vance: i will yield.

mr. tillis: thank you, senator vance. the bill before us, i want to make sure that i have my facts right, there is $30 billion to restore military readiness and modernization. i also believe, and correct me if i'm wrong, that for every dollar we're sending to ukraine, we're appropriating about $2.50 to make are sure that we back fill and cover -- there are a lot of bad and unintended consequences to this, one of the good things is that before we defend ourselves, we are grievously out of step with manufacturing capacity. it is my understanding that $35 billion, about half of the money appropriated to ukraine is actually being appropriated back to the industrial basin for patriot missile manufacturing, a number of other vulnerabilities that we found we're trying to address it. is -- do i have a direct

understanding of that? mr. vance: to my colleague, before i answer that question, madam president, can i inquire how much time do i have? mr. tillis: i have time -- in response to my kwi, i are will -- question, i will yield my time to allow you to have time to answer the question. the presiding officer: the the presiding officer: the senator from ohio has 40 minutes remaining. mr. vance: i ask that the only time used by the senator from north carolina be it debited to his postcloture time and to answer his question we not have time deducted from my account. the presiding officer: is there objection? without objection. mr. vance: thank you, madam president. to my colleague and friend from north carolina, i want to answer that question. the senator is right that this legislation contains a lot of resources, i think 35 billion is the number that he used, to

rebuild the american industrial base. i have no reason to object to that number. i know some people have had more time with this legislation than i have, but i believe based on my review that number is corrected. we have to ask ourselves not just how much money is going to rebuild our industrial base, but combined with presidential drawdown authority, how much of that will then be just redirected to ukraine. my understanding is that given the current authorizations and appropriations, while a lot of this money will go, and i'm glad it will go to places like ohio and alabama to manufacture weapons, those weapons will then be it mostly sent to eastern europe, because we're currently spending resources and munitions in eastern europe at a rate far faster than our own industrial base's ability to replenish them. what will happen in effect is that we will make the weapons and literally faster than we can make them, they go out the door

to eastern europe, unless in the next few months or years the conflict ends. the gentleman's question is well taken, but it doesn't address the core concern that we're depleting munitions much faster than we can replenish them. i want to on one final point, if i may, and i'll be quick, because i know i'm on borrowed time here. the question whether we should rebuild our industrial base is something my friend and i agree on, i think most colleagues in the united states agree on. the more difficult question is what do we do in the interim? it will take years to get our industrial base to the point, maybe three, maybe five years, g to the point where it could support a war in eastern europe and a war in east asia simultaneously. we don't debate the need to rebuild our industrial base. the question is what do we do in the interim? i think in the interim supporting the ukraine war indefinitely is a terrible, terrible mistake. madam president, i suppose i could go back on my own clock.

i don't know what i'm supposed to say here, but -- the presiding officer: the senator will resume. mr. vance: thank you, madam president. i appreciate your charity, and i appreciate you having to sit up there and listen to me. members of our gallery chose this, but some of us did not. so i appreciate you and my staff. let me keep on going here. on how we got here. i've articulated to the best of my ability why i don't think we have a strategy here and it's important for us to articulate a strategy, what it means for us to not have that strategy and importantly the unintended consequences of continued conflict in eastern europe back stopped by the american taxpayer. i want to talk about the politics of this. not long ago, i should say, excuse me, not long after russia invaded ukraine i made an observation that frustrated a lot of my friends who advocate for continual conflict in ukraine. i said how can we support a war

in ukraine, how can we defend ukraine's borders when we're not even defending our own american border under the presidency of joe biden? the response that came back went something like this, i'll paraphrase as much as i can, america can walk and chew gum at the same time. a great power should, in theory, be able to support an ally in eastern europe while at the same time securing its own southern border. i think the events of the last week have revealed just how preposterous that argument is. we clearly are not able to walk and chew gum at the same time, and in of the if we were able to walk and chew gum at the same time we would secure our border first and would have done it weeks or months ago, but certainly we would have done it this past week. here's the basic political dynamic that unfolded, and i know my klee from kentucky -- my colleague from kentucky

discussed this, and that is that the republicans in the senate said we want border security. that is the issue around which republicans are unified. we want border security. of course, the democrats are in charge, the democratic leader is the majority leader of the senate, we have a democratic president. what do the democrats want? what unites the democrats that doesn't unite us? the answer came back ukraine. the democrats want to send $61 billion to ukraine, the republicans want to secure the border. there was the root of a potential compromise. in divided government, sties you have to make compro -- sometimes you have to make compromises. nobody is happy, but there was a potential compromise. here is how the argument went, if we're going to send $61 billion to ukraine we should do it first in tiers, shouldn't accepted it all at once, we should stagger it out a little bit, and the reason is to ensure joe biden actually keeps his promise and enforces the american southern border. in other words, we tell the

president you don't get another dime of american taxpayer money for ukraine unless you bring illegal border crossings to the level they were during the pres presidency of donald trump. that was the negotiation as set up by the republican colleague, that was the understanding me and so many of my colleagues had. of course, that negotiation can go many places. it might make democrats uncomfortable or a place that might make some republican friends uncomfortable. in theory, to get a deal, it would sort of get everybody a little uncomfortable, but you would get 60 senators to pass it and send to the house. that's not what happened. what was produced instead was a secret negotiation where republican senators had very, very little input, and where we had no idea what was in the final package. we heard if through -- heard it through rumors and conversations with friends, but immigration law is complicated. what a colleague, even well meaning, tells you exists in a piece of immigration law doesn't

matter nearly as much as the text of the actual immigration law. so that text finally dropped on sunday of last week, i believe february 4 that legislation dropped. a 370-page piece of legislation that would commit testimony billions of dollars to ukraine, a few billion to east asia, a few billion dollars to israel, and a few billion dollars combined with policy changes at the american southern border. here's the problem, it actually inflamed some of the worst, when you read the text, it inflamed the problems that make the southern border crisis the worst. number one, parole. the last democratic president, approximately 5,000 illegal aliens a year. joe biden in three years has paroled between 600,000 and close to a million illegal aliens per year. that is not a typo or overstatement. joe biden radically increased

parole authority. that doesn't just have the direct effect of making nearly a million illegal aliens legal. it also has a secondary effect, because if you are in central america or anywhere in the world and you would like to come to america and not go through the proper channels, now all of a sudden the clarion call has gone out, joe biden has thrown open the southern border and if you come across illegally he will parole you close to a million times per year when the last democrat did it 5,000 times per year. of that is the first effect of joe biden's parole, and our great border compromise did nothing to limit joe biden's parole authority. number two, another problem with our border law, it has been manipulated so we turn so-called illegal aliens into so-called asylum seekers. we want to be a country that's welcoming to those fearing persecution. so if you come into this country

as an economic migrant, illegally, having not followed the loupes of this country -- the laws of this country, you can claim asylum. if your asylum claim is granted, you immediately receive amnesty and you are on the track to becoming a citizen of this country. even though you never followed the law to get into the country in the first place. the other effect of our jacked-up, excuse me, the other effect of our problematic asylum laws is that even if the asylum claim is not granted, you can be released into the countries for a period of years, sometimes even decades, before immigration judge hears your claim. let's say you're an economic migrant, you show up at the american southern border, saying i'm an asylum claimant fearing persecution. an administrative official from customs and border patrol says, well, we have to adjudicate your asylum claim, you can't do that right now.

we'll ask an immigration judge to hear that claim in 12 years. you're free to hang out in america for the next 12 years. that is an effective amnesty. it sends a message across the world that america is open for business and we can have a wide-open southern border. that's what it does. this particular legislation actually made that problem worse. on the one hand, it tried to increase the standard for granting asylum from a credible fear standard to a reasonable fear standard, but importantly it changed the people who were enforcing that standard from immigration judges to cis officers at the united states customs and immigration services. these are people widely believed to have some of the most pro- pro-asylum views within the united states government. so millions of people could come across the southern border, claim asylum, and have their claim granted unilaterally. that puts them on the pathway to

citizenship and in a competitive posture with american sit sense for -- citizens for jobs and other important benefits. yet, this legislation, trying to fix the border, actually made the asylum process worse. here we are, with a border compromise that actually makes the border security problems in this country worse. let me say, what we would need to do, if we really wanted to secure the border, very simple, just make joe biden do it. he has the tools necessary. he has the legal authority necessary to secure the border. the real debate, whether you're using ukraine money as leverage or something else, is how do we force joe biden to do his job. this legislation didn't do that. it didn't even come close to doing that. so most republicans onned -- most republicans objected. here we are, an hour after the first foray of border security negotiations, the first volley

where democrats give us border security and republicans give $61 billion in ukraine, what happens? it doesn't succeed. for the reasons i just articulated, the gross majority of my republican colleagues didn't like that proposal, so it got dropped. what you might expect happened, in a good-faith negotiation actually about the border, if we were actually trying to secure the border, you might have said, this is not the democrats' best offer, let's go back to the negotiating table, let's continue to push for border security, because that is the most pressing crisis we face as a country. what happened instead is after an hour, senate democrats and even some in republican leadership decided we should move on from border security, they had checked the box, now let's move on to their real priority, which is sending another $61 billion to ukraine. it stinks to high heaven, ladies and gentlemen. no one who watched this process unfold believes republican leadership negotiated in good

faith for border security or that democrats did the same. it was always kabouki theater, it was always an excuse to say we tried on the border, now let's move on to what matter, the money for ukraine. and that failure, the way that it blew up in the faces of our leadership and the appearance gave lie to the idea that this was ever really about border security. by the way, it alienated millions of republican and independent voters who want their government to focus on the most pressing problem for this countries, and that is the bo border. when i go back home to ohio, i talk to audiences about their views on ukraine, most people agree with me but some disagree with me. if you go to an audience in the state of ohio, a state that is affected tragically by the fentanyl problem, where you will drive on highways and see billboards for sex trafficking victims to call the hotline

because they're being sex trafficked in the state of ohio by mexican drug cartels given free reign at the southern border, if you talk to people, ask them what are the most pressing problems the country faces, up in of them -- none of them will say ukraine. even those who want to send more money to ukraine, none will say ukraine. what are we doing? why did we give up so easily? d why did republicans stab their voters in the back? why did we not fight for border security? that's what we promised we'd do. many did, even some of my colleagues who disagree with me on the ukraine question, at least had the courage to stand and fight for border security. unfortunately, far too many republicans refused. so we are where we are. let me just make an argument about where we are on this particular border situation.

we have millions of people coming into the country illegally every single year. we have hundreds of thousands dying just in the first three years of joe biden's term, of fentanyl overdoses. we have a president who invited the opening of the american southern border, and we're living with the consequences. the american people know this was the direct result of joe biden's policies, and they know that he could stop it. so let's debate real border security, border security that actually forces the president to do exactly that. there are a number of options on the table. you will sometimes hear my democratic colleagues and some in the republican leadership say we can't have a bill because donald trump doesn't want us to have a bill that if we advance commonsense border security, donald trump would destroy it. that is the furthest thing from the truth. in fact, just last week donald trump proposed a border security bill that would force joe biden to secure the southern border. you may agree or disagree with the policy, but the idea that

there is no policy that would give republican buy-in including at the top of the republican ticket is preposterous. it's something that does not exist in reality. madam president, how much time do i have left? the presiding officer: the senator has 25 minutes remaining. mr. vance: i've given my spiel here and get into the details of what we're trying to accomplish here and how we might accomplish it. let's first start with a conversation about the american southern border. i want to read a piece from "the washington post," an argument that i want to read and then i want to respond to. having failed to convince the american people that a blank check to ukraine, president zelenskyy is in their interest, the ukraine first caucus now claims the aid primarily

benefits american workers. mark atheseinn penned an op-ed. this is partially in response some of the arguments i heard earlier. we cannot rebuild our industrial base by building capacity and sending all of it to ukraine. it doesn't make sense. now, i support, we support increasing defense spending and building up our defense industrial base. as expansion of our military manufacturing capacity benefits american workers and bolsters our national security. washington is more focused on sending our limited military stockpiles to a conflict in ukraine with no clear path to victory. the biden administration's new message fails to account for grave shortages in our stockpiles. thanks to nearly two years of a mission in ukraine, the united states is perilously unready for any additional contingency. anything with solid rocket motors is in short supply. solid robert motors are the

robert motors that power so many of the critical systems we need. whether it's javelins or stingers or patriot missiles, we are critically in short supply of not just the missiles themselves but of some of the components that are necessary for building those missiles, including the m-s6's needed in the pacific. the interceptors in ukraine means we're desperately short of the weapons that would be needed in taiwan. replenishing them is going to take years. let's pause here to make an observation. one of the arguments my friends make in defense of $61 billion to ukraine is that we need to send a message to vladimir putin, that if we give up and walk away from the ukrainian battlefield, even though the leader of ukraine's own military until recently said they had no chance of victory on that battlefield, in we give up, then it will send a message to xi jingping, the leader of china,

that we are not a steadfast ally. what they're aringing in effect -- arguing in effect is that it will weaken american deterrence. that process by which we prevent our enemies and our adversaries from doing things we don't want them to. well, in classical foreign policy circles, deterrence is the xhom nation of -- combination of on the one hand resolve and on the other hand capacity. and they're making an argument about resolve. they're saying if we show weakness to xi, we will be showing a weakening of american resolve. we'll show that america can't stand in there and fight the fight. and, look, i'm obviously a critic of further aid to ukraine, but it is true that american resolve is porn and we should do everything we can to show american resolve. but you know what's more important than american resolve? you know what's more important than thumping our chest like eighth graders on a playground and saying we're tough, we're strong, and we can do it? what's much stronger than that

is to actually have the capacity to defend ourselves and our allies and that is what is so weak. xi jingping does not care how tough america acts. he cares how strong america is. and if we use our ammunition, our missiles, our artillery on a war in eastern europe, if we don't even have the bullets to defend ourselves and our allies, it doesn't matter how tough we act. xi will do whatever he wants all over the world and that's what this is ultimately about. we are trying to rebuild our country. what do we do in the interim? what do we actually do when our country is in a weak enough place because of the decisions made over 30 or 40 years? i find it interesting that so many of the people from the news commentators to my senate colleagues, republican and democrat, who actively advocated shipping our industrial base to east asia and mexico are now the people who are most fervently

advocating for endless war in ukraine. here's the game they played. send all of our weapons manufacturing, send all of our defense industrial base, send it everywhere but the united states of america. and now that america is in a tough spot, we should fight every conflict everywhere, even though we don't make the weapons that we need to support those conflicts. and why don't we make those weapons? it's because these guys encouraged us to ship our industrial base overseas. those of you who are students of history will have heard the term arsenal of democracy. america was the arsenal of democracy. we won world war ii not because of chest thumping, not because we showed the strongest resolve, but because we had the strongest people and the strongest economy in the world. so at a time when america faces a number of problems, including the southern border here at home, at a time when we are weaker in manufacturing capacity than we've been at any time in the last half century, this is the point when these people want to send unlimited weapons to

ukraine, this is the point where they want to send weapons not just to ukraine but to many theaters all across the world? let's have an honest conversation about the decisions that have been made and how they've made this country weaker. let's not pretend that weakness doesn't exist and send an unlimited number of weapons to ukraine in the interim. now, i want to move on to another argument but before i do, i am mindful of something that's very close to my heart personally. i have three beautiful children. i have a 6-year-old baby boy named ewin. not so much of a baby anymore. i have a 2-year-old baby named mirabelle who still is very much a back. i love her very much. and i have a little guy named gabriel vance who is 3 years old yesterday but turned 4 today.

i'm sorry that i can't be with you for your birthday dinner, but i want you to know that daddy loves you very much and i'm going to read this into the record because maybe you can watch it at home. oh the places you'll go by dr. seuss. oh the places you'll go. congratulations. today is your day. you're off to great places. you're off and away. you have brains in your head, you have feet in your shoes, you can steer yourself in any direction you choose. you're on your own and you know what you know and you are the guy who will decide where to go. you'll look up and down streets, look them over with care about some you will say i don't choose to go there. with your head full of brains and your shoes full of feet, you're too smart to go down any not so good street. and you may not find any you'll want to go down. in that case, of course, you'll

head vat out of town -- straight out of town. its opener there -- open there in the wide open air. out things can happen and frequently do to people as brainy and footsie as you. and whether things start to happen, don't worry, don't stew. just go right along. you'll start happening, too. oh the places you'll go. you'll be on your way up. you'll be seeing great sites. you'll join the high flyers who soar to great heights. you won't lag behind because you'll have the speed. you'll pass the whole gang and you'll soon take the lead. wherever you fly you'll be the best of the best. wherever you go you'll top all the rest. except when you don't because sometimes you won't. i'm sorry to say but sadly it's true, that bangups and hangups can happen to you. you can get all hung up in a

prickly perch and your gang will fly on, you'll be left in a lurch. you'll come down from the lurch with an unpleasant bump and the chances are then that you'll be in a slump. and when you're in a slump, you're not in for much fun on slumping yourself is not easily done. you'll come to a place where the streets are not marked. someone are lightened but mostly they are dark. a place where you can sprain both your elbow and your chin, do you dare to stay out, do you dare to go in? how much can you lose, how much can you win? and if you go in, should you turn left or right? or right and three-quarters or maybe not quite? or go around back and sneak in from behind, simple it's not, i'm afraid all will find. for mind maker upper to make up his mind, you can get so confused, that you'll start in to race. down long wiggled rocks at a breaknecking pace and grind out for miles across weirdest wild

space, headed i fear toward a most useless place. the waiting place. for people just waiting, waiting for a train to go or a bus to come or a plane to go or the mail to come or the rain to go or the phone to ring or the snow to snow or waiting around for a yes or no. or waiting for their hair to grow or waiting for a vote, everyone is just waiting. waiting for the fish to bite or waiting for the wind to fly a kite or waiting around for friday night or waiting perhaps for their uncle jake or a pot to boil or a better break or a string of pearls or a pair of pants or a wig with curls or another chance. everyone is just waiting. no, that's not for you. somehow you'll escape all that waiting and staying you'll find the bright places where the boom bands are playing. with banner flip flapping once

more you'll ride high ready for anything under the sky. ready because you're that kind of a guy. oh the places you'll go, there is fun to be done, there are points to be scored, there are games to be won. and the magical things you can do with that ball will make you the winningest winner of all. fame you'll be famous as famous can be with a whole wide world watching you win on tv. except when they don't because sometimes they won't. i'm afraid that sometimes you'll play lonely games too, games you can't win because you'll play against you. all alone whether you like it or not, alone will be something you'll be quite a lot. and when you're alone, there's a very good chance you'll meet things that scare you right out of your pants. there are some down the road between hither and yon, that can scare you so much, you won't want to go on. but on you will go, though the weather are foul, on you will go

thou your enemies prowl. on you will go the hack and cracks howl, onward of many a frightening creek though your arms may get sore and your sneakers may leak. on and on you will hike and i know you will hike far and face up to your problems whatever they are. you'll get mixed up, of course, as you already know. you'll get mixed up with many strange birds as you go. so be sure when you step, step with care and great tact and remember that life's a great balancing act. just never forget to be dexterous and deft and never mix up europe right foot with your left. and you will succeed, yes, you will indeed, 98 and three-quarters percent guaranteed. kid, you'll move mountains so be your name bux, briks by or gray, or others, you're off to great places, today is your day, your mountain is waiting so get on your way. i love you.

returning to the matter at hand, madam president -- mr. president, excuse me. how much time remains? the presiding officer: 13 minutes. mr. vance: thank you, mr. president. i want to read this piece which arcuent for peace very well written in responsible state craft, published on july 5 of 2023. we're now, think about it, nearly a year since this piece was published and its arguments if anything are more pressing today than they were last summer. quote, last year, referring to the possibility of escalation, that the russia-ukrainian war entails, president biden announced that america and the world are closer to a destructive nuclear war than ever since the cuban missile crisis in 1962.

perhaps though their statement from the highest level of government could so directly affirm the failure of american grand strategy and foreign policy in the post cold war world. what seemed to be a hollywood cy phi scenario that the average american in the 21st century did not think about is now -- world leaders like president biden discuss regularly. as the america and the world grabble with the shifts of the russian invasion in ukraine has unleashed, more budgets around the world keep increasing. in 2022 global spending on war budgets reached an all-time high. u.s. defense budget accounted for almost 20o.40% of the total, surpausing the next ten countries combined, including china, russia, france, and germany. yes, america's ever-increasing military expenditures have hardly translated into success stories in the 21st century. the trillions of dollars

pumpeded into questionable military adventurism abroad such as the invasion of iraq in 2003 have yielded equally questionable results, not only for u.s. interests and national security but also for global security. america's overreliance on the military to achieve policy objectives and the unilateral actions pursued without an international mandate have backfired in the form of dissatisfied states that re-foss to accept a world order that they see as injust an hierarchical. in april of 1953, president eisenhower delivered the fame use chance for peace speech in which he compared the enthusiasm for a just and peaceful world after world war ii to the unstable environment of the cold war. the eight years that have passed have seen that hope waiver, grow dim, and almost die. and the shadow of fear have darkened across the world before laying out a vision of the

unbalanced military interests. today the world faces the same shadow of fear as the unpredictable war unleashed by a revisionist russia shakes the international system. biden's promised end of america's forever wars that was supposed to bring predictability back to the realm of international affairs while also allowing the u.s. toss reorient its affairs did not materialize. although the war in ukraine necessitates an appropriate policy response, including security assistance to ukraine for self-defense, look, this guy even believed in security assistance to ukraine up to a certain point, u.s. military spending was growing even before russia's invasion of ukraine. this pattern should raise questions about whether the united states should have increased spending on the military in response to the crisis in ukraine. the war has also turn into a talking point and overshadows

the real interests of the american people. many are pushing for a long concept with foreign rivals. in foreign affairses discourse in reality are sometimes interwoven in nuanced ways. compromise can arise -- in this context, embracing conflict and promoting discourse that emphasizes a long-term confrontation is a dangerous path to america to follow. the very cause of world war i has been attributed to the perceptions of threats and the interpretation of actions by states as hostile, leading some scholars to argue that european leaders sleepwalked into a conflict they neither desired nor expected to win easily. the question for americans today, especially the new generation that will be inheriting a more unstable and dangerous world, is whether they

will allow america to sleepwalk what a conflict that the united states neither needs nor can afford to win. traditionally, american voters do not attach much importance to foreign and defense policy issues. yet the citizens of a country that will be spending a record $842 billion on the military cannot afford to close their eyes on such critical policy issues that in fact profoundly affect their livelihoods. the question is not whether america abandon its legitimate security needs and interests, nor neglect the foreign threats that necessitate spending on the military. we must understand how much of the current spending is actual lay justified. we also need to assess the efficiency of the military to protect the american people and interests abroad without overextending resources wastefully and prompting a dangerous arms race that will paralyze growth, development, and more importantly the long-termspect of for peace and a new, more just world order. this is why young americans should be especially concerned with the unchecked influence special interests that seek to

inflate threats, instahl the inevitability. the new generation will be primary bearer of such burdens. costs and consequences that decisions taken to washington today will have. ultimately, it boils down to a simple question of the kind of vision young americans have for their country and the world. the question is especially critical given america's own undeniable internal strife. those seeking to downplay the critique of the overreliance on military forget or deliberately. both experts and the general public now agree that the once mailed american democracy is threatened. inflection point for america is serious. the country is facing a crisis of identity. social cohesion, a growing discontent with the economic model that is marge al iced and what is more concerning -- a waning belief and trust in the

country's most foundational institutions. those championing a new age of unnecessarily militaristic and confrontational policy on growing and balanced defense budgets should rethink the use of those resources. a stroll in streets of portland or on the infamous skid row in los angeles could be beneficial to reevaluate priorities and distributions of limited resources to deal with the most pressing issues america faces. ultimately, the strength and attractiveness of the united states on the global stage and america's competitiveness vis-à-vis its rivals dependents on the domestic revival of the country that has been detaking for decades. -- decaying for decades. this is why a new generation of americans must step in to seize the new chance for peace before it is too late. as the world order continues to fraction afracture, only a wave of democratization of the most undemocratic sphere of policymaking in washington can trigger the kind of reassessment and accountability the american people should expect from their leaders.

unless we take steps now to usher in an overdue reckoning in washington, we may miss, as president eisenhower said, a precious chance to turn back the tide of events. that was by martin macaryan. that is from "responsible statecraft." an important argument and an important piece. let me address a couple of points brought to mind. you will hear especially in the last couple of days after former president donald trump criticized nato, you will hear a strong argument about what nato means to the united states of america. and i think it is important for us and for our citizens to be honest not just about the problems inherent with nato and the lack of burden sharing, but also the problems that exist in nato's own countries, countries that most of us love, that most of us see as important allies but have deep, deep pathologies

and problems that must be addressed. something that is often said is that in this particular conflict, ukraine versus russia, nato is actually carrying its fair share of the burden. you will see charts that make an argument that nato, which has the economy approximately the size of the united states of america, is spending actually more resources on ukraine than the united states of america. now, that argument has a few critical flaws. let's walk through them. first of all, nato is providing a large amount of humanitarian assistance and of course they're absorbing a large amount of refugee. they're doing it because ukraine is in their backyard. but the critical weapons and munitions that are being provided are overwhelmingly the responsibility of the united states of america. nato is not carrying its fair share of the burden when it comes to weapons, and that's the

most important thing the ukrainians need to win. second, even if we assumed -- and it's wrong -- but even "federalist paper" we assumed that neigh -- but even if we assumed that nato is carrying its fair share of the burden over the last 189 months, nato has failed to carry its fair share of the burden for literally decades, ladies and gentlemen. look just at how much money the united states has spent on defense since 1992 and compare that to our nato allies. ladies and gentlemen, we have been subsidizing european security to the tune of trillions of dollars, and it might feel nice when we go to munich and the europeans thank us and it might be great to get a pat on the back from the european head of state, but the american people demand that the nato carry its fair share of the burden. germany is the largest economy in europe. they have promised for decades and especially over the last years that they would meet the

nato they be hold of 2% -- they would meet the nato threshold of 2%. they are still not there. italy, a massive economy, still underspends on defense. most of the economies of europe outside of u.k. and france and some economies in eastern europe, most of the economies of europe massively underspend on defense, and that has invited aggression, not just from vladimir putin but from other places as well. and at the same time that world leaders play armchair general with the ukraine conflict, their own societies are decaying. not a single country, not a single country, even the united states, within the nato alliance has birthrates at replacement level. we don't have enough families and children to continue as a nation and yet we're talking about problems 6,000 miles away. we are being invaded by up to 10

million illegal migrants over the course of joe biden's term in office, and we have apparently no president with willpower to stop that problem. we have a fentanyl crisis that has led to the deaths of over 100,000 people per year in the last few years of our youngest and brightest people. mental health crises are skyrocketing. youth suicides are skyrocketing. and every single place -- in every single place, not just the united states, but every single one of the countries in the nato alliance see similar, in some cases even more troubling d dynamics on each of those metrics, from migration to economic malaise. what are we doing? china and russia, if we want them to fear us, we need to rebuild our own countries. we need to rebuild a strong europe and a strong america. we need to rebuild a civilization that can support conflicts i stead of -- instead of just run away from them.

because right now we do not have that. we do not have a country and we do not have a nato alliance that is strong enough to do the things that need to be done. so our message to the europeans need to be simple -- fix your own country, share your own burden, spend more on defense, fix your own problems, and that will deal with the problem in russia far more than had a $61 billion check to ukraine will. in fact, we are subsidizing them. we are enabling their refusal to spend enough resources on defense. and i see that my time is up, mr. president. thank you. mrs. blackburn: mr. president. the presiding officer: the senator from tennessee ten. mrs. blackburn: thank you, mr. president. i know that we have tennesseans that are watching, and many people are saying, why is it

that you all are here because this was to be a week where we were working in our states. and, of course, many of us have set meetings in our state. but here we find ourselves as we are looking at this piece of legislation that all of a sudden has become a must-pass. now, the schedule for when we were going to be in and out of session came out in december, back around the 1st of december. so that is when we decide how we're going to organize our year and our work periods and meet those obligations to our constituents. but what we find out is there is all of a sudden this deadline that has to be met because it is the munich conference.

and we have a delegation that is going, and they don't want to go empty handed. they want to take this bill that is going to be more money for ukraine. now, there are some of us who have said, hey, with wait a minute. we've got these problems at our southern border, and we really can't help others until we deal with the crisis at our southern border. there are some of us who remember what happened on 9/11 and we remember the impact that that had on our nation, and we'll never forget that. and we realize how important it was to get our country back on track a d. on track. and we did that. we moved forward aggressively,

not only militarily but getting our economy back on track, stabilizing our country, changing how we looked for terrorism, and take being steps that were necessary -- and taking steps that were necessary to protect the citizens of this country. to protect individuals in their communities, in their places of work, and to make certain that they knew we were going to be there to put them first. and the protection of this country first. but, of course, deadlines and work periods have a way of forcing issues, of saying, well, this has got to be done, and we have to meet this deadline. i would suggest to all of my

colleagues that after we return from this work period, guess what? there's all of a sudden going to be this deadline and this push that, oh, we've got the c.r. coming up. we've got to take action right now, so everybody's got to get in the same boat and vote for things that you really don't want because we just cannot have a government shutdown. that is going to be the message. bear in mind, i think it's been now 103 days since the democratic leader has allowed an appropriations bill to come to this floor for consideration. and because of the good work of senator collins and murray, the senate's appropriations bills came out of the appropriations committee in july. but, no, they're not coming to

this floor because then the democratic leader would have to give up the ability to jam it and to get what he wants right at the very end, just like there's this jam to get this bill passed before the munich conference so that it can be smiles, handshakes and back slaps when they get there. but i think our allies would like for us to take care of ourselves and secure our border so that indeed we are going to be able to continue to help them, because this is a dangerous place. this world's a dangerous place. and there is an axis of evil -- russia, china, iran, north korea -- that are working overtime trying to destroy the

united states. they don't hide that that is their goal. they're really pretty open about that being their goal. china, they want global domination. russia, they want to be able to sell china oil. iran wants to sell china oil. indeed, iran is making billions of dollars every single month selling oil to china because this administration withdrew the sanctions on iran, the sanctions that president trump and his administration had put in place that prohibited them from selling oil. but instead of the president putting those sanctions back on iran and prohibiting that -- and that's what is giving them the money they need to go out here and fund their proxies, the houthis, hezbollah, hamas, isis,

syria, isis iraq, the irg. where did they get their equipment, their training, their missiles, their rockets? courtesy of iran. that is where they get it. but, let's not talk about that. let's talk about we've got to pass in bill, we've got to do it right now because the happy handshakes are going to depend on it when they all get over to munich. but what we need to be doing is paying attention to what is happening here on our own shores. are we concerned about israel? you better believe we are. we know that they are in a fight for survival. we also know that iran is who is funding hamas. taiwan, are we concerned about

them? absolutely. and we want to make certain that taiwan has what they need. i've even introduced legislation that would authorize a defense lend-lease program for taiwan. it's important for them to have that. it's important for people to be able to pay back what we give them. now another thing that we need to do is look at the expectations of our enemies. we've got enemies that expect us at this point in time, because of this president and his administration, to be weak and to give them running room. they like that. they think that's a good thing. and they think that because this president is weak when it comes

to our southern border, that they can push people into our country. from october to the end of the year, 24,000 chinese, i think it was, mr. president, that came in through our borders. you're talking about people from, according to the border patrol, 170 different countries that were coming across our border. and we know that these 8.8 million illegal immigrants that have entered this country under president joe biden's watch are not all individuals that are coming here for a better life. we know some of them are coming here to do us harm. indeed, the fbi director in december when he was before our committee, mr. president, he

responded to senator graham's question about what he saw with the terrorist threat. and indeed, paraphrasing his comments, he talked about how he had never seen such broad-based threats, and that everywhere he looked, he saw red lights flashing. the world's a dangerous place. and, mr. president, it's coming to our border. now there are some things that we had wanted to get done in this bill that are not going to be done. and i will note for my colleagues that h.r. 2, which i know my democratic colleagues do not like that bill. i know that. i understand that. we have a difference of opinion

on that. but h.r. 2 is the house border security bill. border security, what people are demanding that we do. secure our southern border. now that landed on our desk at senate judiciary committee and of course homeland security has a part of that and hhs has a part of that, senate help committee. but it landed on may 15. now, mr. president, we've had over 80 meetings, 80 meetings of the senate judiciary committee since that bill landed. not once have we even looked at taking it up, amending it, letting regular order take place, letting people amend that bill and make it a work product

of the committee. that is not what has happened, but it is what should have happened. allowing regular order to take place and people to be able to weigh in and speak on this bill. but there was a decision not to move forward with that. instead it was pushed to the side and a special committee put in place, and they were tasked with solving what was going to be a border and national security bill. interestingly enough, and i know that they all worked hard, and i know senator lankford put his best efforts into that. but you know, mr. president, i think there is a lot to be said for going by regular order, letting the committees take up a

piece of legislation, letting the committees do their work on that piece of legislation. but that did not happen. but when i talk to tennesseans, they are terribly concerned about what is happening with the open border because they see the impacts in their communities every single day, and the impacts are undeniable. when you look at the tens of thousands of u.s. citizens that lose their lives every year to fentanyl poisoning, and right now, mr. president, the number-one killer of u.s. citizens in the 18- to 45-year-old age bracket is fentanyl. we know the chinese are working hand in glove with the mexican cartels, especially the sinoa

loa cartel right there across from the southern border. they're pressing those pills and then they're pushing them across the border. that is what they think is going to help them attack us and harm our citizens. the drug trafficking, the human trafficking, the sex trafficking that is taking place every single day. local law enforcement, i visit with each of our 95 tennessee counties every single year, and to a county law enforcement tells me they can't deal with the drugs and the human trafficking and the gangs and the crime until we secure the southern border. they're trying, but it continues

to grow every single day. another thing that concerns everyone, and this ties us back to the fbi's comments about seeing flashing red lights. and that is the number of people who are special interest aliens that are coming from countries like iran and afghanistan and syria, and they're flooding into our country. as i said, people from 170 countries is what the border patrol tells us came across our border last year. think about that. these are people who are making a choice to come across our southern border, paying a cartel to come across that border instead of legally coming into this country. that is a choice that they are making. now also the terrorist watch list.

in addition to those hundreds that are coming from special interest countries, you've got 49 terrorist watch lists, individuals that have been apprehended at the border since the start of fiscal year 2024. so we know that this danger is there. we know these individuals are coming into our country. and we know that our law enforcement professionals are telling us, they're telling us it's not a question of if we have another terrorist attack on u.s. soil. it is a question of when. so, when you look at what has transpired with this security supplemental and the $113 billion that has already gone to ukraine. and, by the way, some of us keep asking for a full accounting of

where that money is. some of us continue to skr for what we consider a win with ukraine. we continue to ask what is the strategy that is being implemented there. but what we get back at us is crickets. so some of us have had amendments that we think would make the legislation before us, the security supplemental, a stronger piece of legislation. now, i had several amendments that i had proposed. number 1540 would limit the number of aliens who can be paroled into the u.s. every year. because if you look at the numbers from previous administrations, democrat and republican, you see that many multiples of those numbers are what the biden administration is

waving right on in to the country. i also had an amendment number 1534 that would prohibit any of our taxpayer dollars going into gaza until all the hostages have been released. there again, our citizens do not want their tax dollars going into gaza, being scooped up by hamas through unrwa and that being pushed forward. now, my incentives. amendment 1345, would accelerate -- we have seen more of that than we would like to see in this country so they should be immediately deporting. i also have 1547, which would

prohib president and his administration from selling or removing any of the existing border wall or the components that are out there for the border wall. mr. president, it was distressing to us to hear that the president was choosing to sell off the border wall when border patrol tells us they need a physical barrier, they need better technology where they cannot have a physical barrier, and then they need more officers and agents. giving them that physical barrier should be something that we agree to do. number 1548 would put back in place the president trump era migrant protection protocol. stay in that safe third country, execute your claim for asylum there. that is something that would be

an assistance to our border patrol. now, my amendment number 1539 should be something that we would all agree on. and, madam president, this would allow the border states to place temporary barriers on federal land to protect their communities. now, for those of us that have been to the border many times, we have walked along this border and we've met with ranchers and we've met with farmers and we've met with appropriate owners -- property owners who are saying we are losing the right to private property. they can show you pictures of dead bodies that they have found on their field and pictures of produce that have been literally trampled by people that are coming across.

so allowing them the right to protect their property, everybody should agree someone has the right to protect their property. a homeowner backing up to the border there in arizona need not worry that they're going to walk out their backdoor and find illegal aliens napping in the backyard or taking a dip in a swimming pool or leaving clothes and water bottles strewn right around their back porch. now, one that i have worked on for quite a while, number 1536, is the end child exploitation act. what this would do is end that horrible practice of child recycling.

now, madam president, you and i are moms, i'm a om, and this legislation would require a dna test for adults and children to determine the familial relationship between an alien and accompanying minor. this is important to do. during the trump era, we did dna testing at the southern border. it is a 45 test, and this will save a child's life because we found that fully a third of those children were being tracked. we -- trafficked, we also learned from border patrol that many times a child will present with an adult, they get across the border and then the child is cut loose. and on the child's arm or on

their back is written, name and phone number, who to call to send the child back across the border. border patrol tells us some of these children have been -- they have been recycled eight or nine times. there is a way we could end that. the prince act would also help us to end this recycling by fingerprinting noncitizens under the age of 14. now, there is another issue that i have been working on for about a year, and it is to find out what has happened with the unaccompanied alien that have -- children that have been released to sponsors who have not been properly vetted. right now we have 85,000 children that we do not know

where they are, if they're dead or alive, if they're trafficked or not. my amendment 1537 would have addressed this issue and required hhs to report back to us. we should all agree that these unaccompanied alien children should be protected. they ought not to be sex trafficked, they ought not to be in labor gangs and crews, they ought not to be unprotected. and, madam president, we found out about this through a reporter that was working in a meat processing facility, and there were children there that were illegally in the country, brought across, they had been turned over to a sponsor by our office of refugee resettlement, which is a heart of hhs hhs --

which is part of health and human services, and they are part of the labor game. we can't get an answer from hhs about this. that amendment plus538, which would require in-person home visits so we can find out where these children are. those should be things that we agree with -- that we agree with, and that ought not to be a partisan issue. that should be something that is a part of a homeland security bill. now, 1533 would require any funding to the u.n. to be contingent on the organization placing hamas, hezbollah, and other foreign and iranian proxies and groups designated as foreign terrorist organizations on the u.n. security council consolidated list. terrorist organizations ought

not to get the money that is coming from u.s. taxpayers. so it is -- there are so many concerns about this process, about this legislation, and the fact that we would rush to pass this so we can go have a good and howdy in munich i think is so disrespectful of the american taxpayer, it's disrespectful of tennesseans. we should have taken up h.r. 2. we should have amended and debated that, and we're here when we're -- we have a week where we would be working in our states and we know that this legislation that is in such a rush to be passed for the

celebratory moments is dead on arrival in the house. madam president, i reserve the balance of my time. mr. budd: madam president. the presiding officer: the senator from missouri. mr. schmitt: i am here to talk about not just this massive spending bill, but the way we have handled the limited business that has come before this chamber this entire year. before i do that, i would like to say, we've got some folks in the gallery, and we've got people tuning in and i'm sure everyone watched the super bowl last night where the kansas city

chiefs won in overtime. i think it was only the second overtime win. patrick mahomes, usually the person who has the ball last wins, so patrick ma homes has been in the league six years and won three out of four trips, three in the last five years, it was a great game and we're happy that our kansas city chiefs w won -- it was a good game and congratulations to the chiefs on a well-deserved -- another championship. right before that game yesterday, and finished just in a nick of -- knick of time for the kickoff, i rose on this floor to talk about what has happened on our southern border. now in this bill that we're

considering now, there's nothing in there for our southern border. it's gone. to the extent there was ever anything, this shnow an exclusively foreign aid package, and i can't -- i can't probably make the case strong enough of of what is days connect -- of what a disconnect of what that really is from what the american people care about. and i know there will be some people in this chamber who will say they just don't -- as much as we tell them, they just don't understand. no, i think they do understand. i think they do understand. they see a federal government that is $34 trillion in debt with a president that wants to spend trillions and trillions more this year than we take in. no real sanity in sight and no real process for senators to

actually weigh in on these important matters. i went through the laundry list of how we got here. the punchline is -- punch line is, not to recap that, and maybe i will tomorrow, but the punch line is that joe biden has everything authority he has right now to secure our southern border. he just doesn't do it. he doesn't want to. because on day one, the executive orders that were in place effective under prum was -- president trump, he got rid of, whether it was remain in mexico, title 42, a number of them we rolled through last night. even right now as we stand here, talk here, joe biden could do all those things, and he actually could stop abusing the parole process, where those are supposed individualized adjudications, but instead millions of people -- millions are being released en masse

because they're from a particular country or category. that's illegal. so if you wonder how we got here, that's how we got here, and you don't need another bill to fix that. you need a president who wants to fix it. now, we could have a real debate on the senate floor with all of us about how we go about improving existing law, but we don't do that either. we have secret negotiations with a couple of senators. some people like the product, some people didn't, but the process, there's no doubt about it, is totally broken. and that played out last week. so that's w i want to talk about. it turns out there's a few other senators, senator lee, senator blackburn, and i -- and i think senator vance touched on this, there's a lot of people, and not just republicans, by the way,

that feel that the process in place now is broken and they don't have an opportunity to weigh in. before i leave the bothered, i want to mention one thing. if there is one thing that could crystallize the lun gentlemansy -- lunacy of this president's policy. it was something called operation talon. what is operation talon? it was an effort to deport previously convicted sex offenders from other countries. there's a lot that divides us, but -- i don't know, i would think that's something we could come together on. maybe we want to deport people who have been previously convicted of -- of sex offenders -- sex offenses. evidently not. that was -- that was too difficult for the biden administration to accept