Transcripts For CSPAN2 U.S. 20240704

Always wide open. Sometimes theyre choked with ice. Mr. President , hopefully you and i are goerg toe have an opportunity to go up and see some ice. And understand what is going on inhe understand what is going on in the bearing straits, understand what is in the baring straits, and to appreciate the ft an arctic nation, we have one polar security cutter that io s in th water. You know what . She doesnt even go to the arctic. She plows out mcmurd every year, and she is so old and shes so tired, she has to go back into dry dock, and she sits therentdone. Then she goes back and she plows out mcmurdo. So were probably never going to see her in the shame. What a shame. Because russias got more than their share of ice breakers up there. By some counts, over 50, 54. China has their ice breakers that theyre working on. We have they have six we know of, probably me by now. Were not engaging as an arrangementsic nation as an arctic nation, when others can move i the arctic and we cant. We cant. And so what we have been working tow towards, and what this body has done and agreed to, weve got a program with the coast guard, authorized cutters. We funded one. Funding for the other two for design. Things have slowed and stalled frustrating. Its pushing their arrival here far too many years in advance. And we have known that this was going to be a Multiyear Initiative with thes. So we plant for that, and we worked we planned for that, we worked with the coast guard, we worked with everyone in the department of defense. They all agree, we in the water, we need to have ice breakers. And so what were looking at is what we call a commercially aie ice breaker. In other words, you dont have to take ten years to go out and build yourself one. We have one that is built. Down right now. But we need to be able to buy it. And so, we had this approved in the president s budge evident last year. It was authorized at all levels. It was funded, until the very, very end, like literally in the middle of the night before we close out. And boom, 150 million for a commercially available ice breaker, gone, gone. Nobody claiming credit orblame, but its gone. So were here again, again, funding for the commercially available ice breaker has been budget, its been approved on all sides, its been submitted, but somehow or other its still kind of in play. What does thatmean . This is not on this tranche of bills were dealing with, because coast guards budget is in homeland. But im standing on the floor because this is an issue for us. And colleagues needs to understand that as were moving forward and were talking about our priorities and what needs what should be included as we advance, i just want people to realize these are not matters that are lisa and dans to work senators, making sure that we are addressing our National Security concerns, and National Security also includes our ability to navigate through ice, and our ability to be prepared in■d the eventuality or the prospect of anything coming our way. So, were going to keep pushing to make sure everybody understandsignificant priority this is, and my hope is that once we get through this initial minibus and to the second tranche, this will not even be a matter of debate, because it will are be resolved and people will recognize that we will have, we will soon have, coming from the United States, an ice breaker that is capable to operate in the ar with that, madam president , i yield the floor. A senator madam president. The presiding officer the senator from ohio. Mr. Vance thank you, madam president. And im mindful here that we have 30 hours of debate, if we want it, on a problem and on question that has completely devastated our countries. I think its worth actually starting out to observe some of the procedural background that actually led us here. So, if you go back a few months ago there was pretty broad con kens us that consensus that this country has a serious problem at the southern border. Even some of my democratic friends admit this, and worked, i think, in good faith an effort to help try to solve that problem. Now, the legislation that. Com out of that that came out of that Bipartisan Legislation had a couple of problems. First, the negotiation was completely shrouded in secrecy from some of my colleagues on my side of the aisle. That naturally breeds mistrust of the process. When you see a process unfolding where you dont know whats in the legislation, what youre voting on, i think youre understandably worriedhat youre voting on is not going to be that good for your constituents or the country at large. The second problem with that piece of legislation is that the details werent revealed to my colleagues and i until right up to the moment we were expected to vote for it. My memory is a little foggy, madam president , but i believe we were given some sense of the details in aerh level a couple of weeks before the text of the legislation dropped. The text of the legislation confirming some of those details, disconfirming other details, we were given on a sunday, then we were expected to vote on that legislation just a few short days later. Now, we have do ask ourselves whether the bipartisan compromise that wasnt actually believe it had a few republicans and universal democratic support, near universal democratic support, whether it would have solved the underlying crisis, around i and i think you can make a very good, indeed completely airtight argument it would not have solved the crisis at the american southern border. Let me walk through three problems with that legislation. The first is that the legislation did nothing on the question of parole. If we go back to the obama administration, the last democratic president that this country had, no fan of republican border policy, barack obama paroled and his administration paroled about 5,000 people per year. That effectively grants some measure of legality to people who cross the border illegally. That is meant to b used in a narrow and tailored way. You have one person coming across illegally, maybe some special circumstance necessitates that we should give that person parole and tem temporarily relief them from Immigration Enforcement. What the Biden Administration has doner3 idifferent. If barack obama paroled 5,000 illegal aliens every year, joe biden is paroling close to a million every year. Now, we know that isnt just bad for the direct reasons, that that is a Million People coming in illegally who should not be here, but it also invites others. If you go to the southern border or watch a media report of someone going to the southern border and sticking a microphone in the face of somebody crossing the border illegally, they will say were coming here because joe biden and Kamala Harris have thrown open the american southern border, theyve invited everyone in, so thats what were doing. You dont legalize a Million People every year. You also invite people en masse to come in illegally with the knowledge their conduct will not be penalized and the immigration ill not be enforced. The compromise on Border Security did nothing on parole, perhaps the single biggestiden admini administration. The second thing that it did is it actually imposed a shutdown, a socalled border shutdown, that would run 270 days per year, but there were a couple big semses. First big exceptions. The shutdown applied when nearly 5,000 People Per Day crossed the southern border, close to two million per year. Why are we shutting down the border only after two Million People cross illegally in a given year . Why shouldnt we shut it down much sooner . I say as close to zero as possible. I recognize reasonable minds disagree. We can all agree that two million border crossings per year is a significant problem. We should shut down the border far before that. That Shutdown Authority had a b problems. First, it allowed big problems. It allowed the president of the United States emergency shutdown for 45 of the 270 days. It also gave the secretary of Homeland Security a man whose Job Performance has been so terrible that the house of representatives impeached him, gave him 180 days of Discretionary Authority to limit that border shutdown in the law. So, you have 365 days in a year, you have a Shutdown Authority that only apprise once you hit a applies once you hit two million illegal aliens every year, on top of that for the 270 days out of 365 that the Shutdown Authority can even be applied you give Discretionary Authority to joe biden and secretary mayorkas for 235 of those 275 days to waive it. If we had been lucky, we would have gotten 45 days of emergency Shutdown Authority again with the baseline of two Million People coming in illegally every year. That doesnt sound like Border Security to me. It sounds like more recipe for an open border. The third and final problem, something that i have to say my colleagues on my side of the aisl faith, they negotiated a border provision that its hard to imagine anyone who takes Border Security seriously being more critical or more skeptical of that Border Security provision. In particular, it took the question of whether to grant asylum away from Immigration Law judges, commonly callediljs, and put them with border patrol, or usics agents, people generally considered some of the least interested in border enforcement in our country. Youre taking it away from immigration and giving the ability to grant asylum to some of the most left wing people within our immigration bureaucracy. We knew exactly what would stan are meant to apply to the immigration system, whatever standards are meant to limit them in granting asylum, if theyre committing committing to grant asylum, thats what they will do. That made this the worst perhap ever been attempted in this country. It is the opposite of Border Security to give the grant asylum with the wave of a pen to the people in our bureaucracy most committed to open borders. So those three problems created a border enforcement package that would have made the crisis at our southern border much worse. I dont say that because i think that was the intent of everybody who negotiated it. Sometimes when these get translated from highlevel policy talking points into legislativ details are terrible. The details of this particular piece of legislation were terrible. Now, that led us to this new this brave new world in the Border Security debate, where having had as a complete and utter failure for a package that made the border crisis worse, my friends on the otheride of the aisle pivoted to a new talking point that because of this Border Security proposal that was terrible, they are the ones actually interesd now, we know, anybody who paid attention to this problem, knows the reason we have a problem at the u. S. Southern border. The Biden Administration, when they took over, a little over three years ago, they openly bragged about changing if he ever single policy from the Pr Administration that actually did something meaningful on Border Security. They ended remain in mexico, and bragged about it. They radically increased parole, as we discussed, and they bragged about it. On issue after issue after issue, the Biden Administration has taken a sers of executive orders and put those orders in place, knowing they would cause Border Security problems, predicting they would Border Security probable learnings then doing them anyways problems, then doing them anyways. They didnt want to enforce the border laws, but throw the border open for a host of reasons. They accomplished it. They were effective. Now, in the runup to election, with the president s poll numbers sagging, they decided they really care about the issue they havent cared about for three years. If the republicans had gone along with their legislation that would have made the Border Security problem worse, somehow, that would go away. This doesnt make any sense. Right now, on the books, in our allows the president of the United States to issue an emergency border shutdown. He does not need additional Statutory Authority from the chamber. He doesnt need a single piece of policy change. He could do it with the wave of a pen. Immigration law in this country grants the president of the United States extremely broad discretion to shut down the border when he believes must do so. If the president cares about this problem, as he now pretends he does, why doesnt he actually implement the authorities that he currently has under existing law . Well, the reason is that he doesnt actually care about the border or if he does he feelspoe left wing of his own party, he cannot care about Border Security because certain members of his own party would go after him. Thats not just hypothetical. For those of you who watched the state of the union last the qun of the murder of laken riley came up. A beautiful young woman with a lot of promise. She was a nursing brutally murd by somebody illegally in this country. Somebody who shouldnt have been in this in the first place. If joe biden had done his job, laken riley would still be with us today, god rest her soul. I cant help but feel a sense of heartbreak over the loss of somebody who shouldnt have been taken from us, bus also anger but also anger over the way this womans death has been used by the other side for not taking responsibility for the border. Riley was in this country having been granted parole. Joe biden has granted parole a million times. Those additional parole cases all call it 90 of a Million People joe biden is paroling every single year. Its probably going to be 995,0 because he is doing more this year. If you take those additional people s unfortunately going to be criminals and some of them are going to commit crimes of violence and some of t are going to do terrible things, like murder young nursing students who deserve to be safe and protected in their own country. Not only was this person grante murdered laken riley, this illegal immigrant was also living or had lived in multiple sanctuary cities. So policies that have been promoted in this chamber, policies that have been adopted by some leftwing people at the local level, gave sanctuary to this person who should not have been in our country to begin with. They werent deported. They were in our neighborhoods and in our communities and in person committed a terrible crime. Now, we should ask ourselves, if you are serious about Border Security, why not do something about the parole problem that joe biden has completely blown up . If you go from five million paroleyear, you 995,000, that seems like a bad set of policies especially when some are going and killing american citizens. Why not do something about that . Why cant this chamber pass legislation that would make it impossible for joe biden to immigrant so many paroles every single year . Well, we dont do that. Why wouldnt we do Something Like limiting for sanctuary cities, legislation that has broad support, bipartisan support, i should say, in the house of representatives and frankly i thinveipartisan support in this chamber. But were not going to vote on it. Ill talk about that later because the procedural part of this really does matter. If we wanted to fix the border crisis, why not make it harder for people to come and access asylum in this country instead of easier for people to come and access asylum in this country . You have to remember that asylum exists for the purpose of protecting people who are fleeing tyranny. Most of the people who are coming across our southern border, they may be perfectly good people, but they are classically understood as economic migrants. They are coming to this country in search better opportunities and higher wages and Better Living conditions. They are not coming to this country because theyre fleeing tyranny and persecution. They should not be able to claim asylum. Yet the Biden Administration has facilitated them claiming . C asym and this body hazards refused and this body has refused to do anything meaningful about it. Why arent we working on the ro problem . Why arent we doing something about the incredibly pressing challenges that face us at the border . Instead, we have a Political Party in this country that has for three years■■ ignored borde molls and wants to use it as a Political Tool . If they wanted to solve it, the president has every single Emergency Authority to solve it. Because of this, because we have a president who has the authority to solven■ this prob but chooses not to, one of the things that were confronted with in this chamber is somehow to force his hand. Indeed, if you try to uerameric 2024 under the administration of joe biden, Congress Needs to fundamentally ask the how do we force the president to do the job that he refuses to do . Additional discretionary authorities because he wont use them, not how do we give him adimmer powers because he wont use those powers. The question is, how do we ensure that joe biden does the job that he doesnt want to do . How do we force his hand to engage in some commonsense border disclosure . There are a things we could do. A number weve already discussed and but unfortunately weve refused to do it. That brings m to my procedural point. Why are we why did you have the gross majority of republicans opposing cloture on this bill . I. T. Not because we like government shutdowns or want to shut the government down. It is because my colleagues on the other side of the aisle refuse to give us some amendment votes on immigration policy that were germane to this legislation and would have addressed the problem at the southern border. Some of my colleagues will talk abou a couple in particular i want to point out. One, legislation i believe an amendment from my colleague, senator ron johnson, that would have made it much harder to have sanctuary cities in this country, would have significantly defunded the sanctuary cities in this country, the sanctuary cities that were the source of the protection given to the person who killed laken riley. Whyhould these municipalities receive unlimited resources from their federal government if theyre actively fighting the federal government in the enforcement of immigration■ law . Just defund them. Whats going to be more likely is they are not going to be defunded, but the threat ofndin serious about border enforcement. When you have a violent criminal in your city who happens to be an illegal immigrant, thats what this legislation would facilitate, getting criminal migrants out of our country and protecting our citizens. If that bill came to a vote, you might say that i am frustrated because that bill with a not pass this chamber. But the reasonfor a vote is not wouldnt pass this chamber but because it would. If that bill was voted, a bipartisan majorityate would vo for it. So why arent we voting on it . Well, were not voting on it because my colleagues on the other side of the aisle who are iny wont actually let us vote on it. There is a second provision, there is a Second Amendment that really matters here. For my colleague senator bill hagerty of tennessee, these are two of the amendments that i think are really important and meaningful. Senator hagertys amendment would do something very, very simple. It would say that for the purposes of apportioning congressional representation, you can only count lawful permanent residents. Meaning american citizens plus people who aree i legally. Thats what senator hagertys amendment would do. Who could possibly oppose only counting people who are legally in this country for purposes of apportioning congressional representatives . And the answer of course is people who plebe that they benefit politically from counting Illegal Immigrants as part of congressional apportionment. I wasnt here on january 6, 2021. But to hear my colleagues who were here, especially on the other said of the aisle, january 6 was the biggest threat to amecan democracy in our countrys history. Hundreds of thousands were killed in the civil war, but that doesnt compare to january 6. World war ii saw330,000 americans die, not nearly as big of a tragedy as january 6. September 11, 3,000 innocent civilians brutally murdered by terrorists. But a walk in the park compared to the terrible incident of january 6, 2021. It was a democracy, an assault on democracy, the worst threat to democracy that this country has ever seen. I have actually seen people repeat that phr through representatives in this can chamber. And they do it with a straight face. Here is the problem with what is a bigger threat to democracy . Is it what happened on january 6, which of course was not a good thing. There are people who committed Violent Crimes and they ought to be prosecuted. But what is a bigger threat to democracy . That day or giving congressional representatives to people who shouldnt b the first place . California has five additional representatives in the u. S. House of representes relative to my home state of ohio. Why . Because california has a large illegal immigrant population and those are counted for purposes of congressional apportionment. So theyre destroying the democratic value of the people of ohios participation in their own country by giving congressional representation to people who shouldnt be in the country in the first place. How does that make an ounce of sense . How is that not a major assault on democracy . A what if, over what 23 we have a Democratic Administration for the next four years and another 50 Million People come in this country illegally . You rapidly get to a point where the people who belong here, the people who are in this country legally, have a significantly lor representation from their own congress than they otherwise should. Why is it that if you come into this country and break its rewa congressional representation, whereas if youre in this country legal lay, you actual lay have your congressional representati ston its not just of congresss value, which is to say the destruction of the Democratic Power of people; its also the vote. Multiple municipalities all coud giving illegal aliens the right to vote. Somebody in this chamber proposes that we give illegal aliens the right to vote in this country. Isnt that a threat to democracy . I thinso. In fact i think it is a far bigger threat to democracy than anything that weve seen in the plast few years, maybe the single biggest threat to democracy that weve seen in the history of this country. Never before have you had senators and representatives of the people refusing to allow a vote on whether we should only count u. S. Citizens for purposes of doling out congressmen. I just cant believe it. I cant believe that anybody would disagree that congressmen women should be given to the american people, not to criminal mignt this country. Does laken rileys killer deserve a congressional representative . Well, that person gets one now, thanks to the failure of this bo vote on senator bill hagertys amendment. And, again, its not because they wouldnt support it. I. T. Not because this its not because this chamber would refuse to vote on senator hagertys amendment. It would. And thats why it is not being allowed to vote. Because certain members of this chamber do not want to force their colleagues to take tough votes. For that reason, senator bill hagertys amendment will not be voted on, though it is germane and would make this country safer and more secure and much more democratic. Now, were maat a point in this immigration debate were at a point in this immigration debate where you have to believe some pretty absurd things to actually continue to operate immigration policy in this country with a straight face. Who would have believed im 39 years old. Who would have believed that you have a major Political Party that is committed to the basic principle that illegal aliens should have congressional representation . I cant believe that a in fact, im shocked that were here and yet we are. Not only so committed to it, not only do they believe in it, but theyre so dedicated to it, that they wont eve amendments that would correct that problem come to the floor to a vote. Now, i want to talk a lite bit about one of the core problems here with immigration in our country, and i want to get just a little bit more philosophical here. I am going to read something from the center for Immigration Studies about the political importance of solving the immigration debate in the minds of the american people. Now, this is from the center for Immigration Studies. Bidens executive actions, the president , unilaterally changes immigration policy. Lets talk about all of the executive actions that the president of the United States has taken to make the border more open and less secure. Were just going to run through a laundry list of them because i wouldnt remember all of them there are so many. Over 90, only some of which i am going to report on here today. How much time do i have remaining . The presiding officer the senatoras approximately 35 minutes. Mr. Vance thank you, madam president. These are reminder, a laundry list but not a complete laundry list of all of the executive actions taken by the Biden Administration over the last three years, especially in the early part of his administraon. This was issued on january 20, 2021, just 14 days excuse me. The very day that Joe Biden Took Office asstates. Just 14 days after january 6 which we just talked about. The trump policy one of trumps major immration policies during his administration was to complete the construction of a wall along the southern border to thwart illegal aliens from entering the country. When congress ref to accomplish this task the Trump Administration declared a National Emergency at the southern border which allowed it to rrogram unspent money from the department of defense toward the building of the border wall. As of october 3, 2020 the Trump Administration completedy instruction of 380 miles of physical infrastructure and 157 miles in the preconstruction phase. Dhs states illegal drug border crossings decreased in areas with new barriers. You often hear my colleagues on the other side say that walls dont work. They dont work perfectly. Nothing is perfect but walls do substantially reduce the flow of sex trafficking, Drug Trafficking and illegal migration across the places where the wall exists. But heres the biden policy. Here to rescue the open borders agenda. On january 20 the Biden Administration fully rescinded the Trump Administrations proclamation which declared a National Emergency at the southern border. Bidens proclamation states that no more american taxpayer dollars be diverted to construct a border wall it authorized authorities will no longer be used to construct a wall at the southern border. It calls for assessment of the legality of the funding and contracting methods used to construct the wall. This immediately and instantly ended further construction of the border wall. In fact, further wasting american taxpayer dollars, there are pieces of the border wall that are just like laying in the desert in certain parts along the border between mexico and texas, mexico and new mexico and mexico and arizona that could just be easily built up. It actually costs more rotting desert. Yet the Biden Administration refuses to put them up. And we know of course that over 100,000 americans a year die from the fentanyl that the mexican drug cartels bring into this country, that untold thousands of children and young adults are sex trafficked into the country by those drug cartels. Its just an unbelievably tragic situation. Border wall is op completion of perhaps the least rational of all the Biden Administration policies besides the fact that theyt to give congressional representation to illegal aliens. This is number two. Question of interior enforcement. This is executive order 13993, revision of similar Immigration Enforcement policies and priorities. The trump policy was that President Trump issued an executive order enhancing Public Safety in the interior of the United States. This e. O. Scrapped the obama administrations authorities which exempted nearly all aliens from removal and replaced it with a policy that made all removable aliens an enforcement priority. This trump order targets sanctuary cities mained them ineligible for grants except those deemed necessary for law enforcement. Imagine s rather than paying municipalities to thwart the Immigration Laws of our country. The biden policy fully rescinds this executive order and the policy section President Biden generically says the task of enforcing Immigration Laws is complex and requires setting priorities to best serve the national interest. Who disagrees with that . However, this e. O. Fails to detail new sfoefrment priorities and says the Biden Administration will reset policies and practices for enforcing civil Immigration Laws. In other words, they completely undid a set of immigration policy that was actually facilitating the enforcement of our border laws that kind of promised they would return to it. They said enforcing the border is in our national interest. Well, thank you, mr. President , for stating the obvious and then they did nothing to reimplement the policy. Maybe adjust it a little bit, make it better, a little bit different, make it a little bit worse in my view, but to actually do something meaningful. They rescinded an order, and no additional terrible consequences. The Trump Administration, this is the third of these, the Trump Administration implemented policies that focused on benefits integrity in ensuring that Legal Immigration did not harm american taxpayers. Through the public charge, final rule, the Trump Administration instituted for the first time a regulatory definition of this ground of admissibility found at the immigration natural act, immigration and naturalization act section 212a4, through the trumps president ial memorandum on enforcing legal responsibilities of aliens, resident federal agencies were directed to update procedures to comply with current law and ensure immigrants did not receive federal means tested benefits. Uscis required sponsors to reimrs dollar of benefits received by sponsored immigrants. Ucis and other federal agencies placed the on sponsors, employers rather than american taxpayers to finance Foreign Workers benefiting from social programs such as snap, medicaid and tpo for needy fami. Heres an interesting thing about this. We live in a world of scarce resources. I know some people disagree, i would hope most of the members of this chamber, i think its true of repubns believe we ough have social insurance in this country. People fall down on their luck. They get hurt at work. Some things happen,adngs happen, and people sometimes suffer for no reason and certainly through no cause of their own. Whens that happens, they cant afford health care because of something terrible that happened or they cant afford to put food on the table. We have a social insurance system in this country to ensure we take care of the neediest people in our country, certainly children who through no fault of their own are suffering through poverty. We want to makeure they get a bite to eat or go to the doctor when they have to. Thats a good thing. And i think both of my colleagues on both sides of the aisle agree with throblem with. We have scarce resources. The American Social welfare system, that social insurance system that ensures that down on their luck able to access food and medicine, that thing is funded by money that doesnt grow on trees. Its funded by american taxpayers. If you pull the american if you poll the american taxpayer paying for health care for children is one of those things they are taxed for. Most people dont like taxes for most reasons but when it comes putting food on the table or giving medicine to a kid who needs theyre okay with support that. Im certainly among them. But what happens when you take the number of needy children in our country and magnify it and multiply it by two times or three times or five times because you have a number of illegal into this country who need those same benefits . Through no fault of their own many of these children did not this country by icked into this the terrible porous border policies of the Biden Administration. But we have to pick and choose and we have to prioritize. And my way of prioritizing would be this, that you give resources to people who are citizens of this country. All of us are members of an american nationals community, and we take care of our own. We take care of our fellow americans. But we cannot and should not take care of every person whos down on their luck who wants to come into this country even if they viote laws to do so. A Trump Administration policy that would set the simple standard that americans take care of americans that, we prioritize our food stamps and our medicaid for american citizens, did the Biden Administration say thats a pretty good idea that americans should take care of americans . No. The Biden Administration rescinded this policy too. On february 2, 2021, groundhog day of 20 the Biden Administration issued an executive order on forcing the legal responsibilities on sponsors of aliens and took steps rescind the public charge rule. This executive order announced the review of many standard procedures in the naturalization process including fingerprinting and english language test and the oath of generals. It seeks to find ways to further reduce the cost of naturalization while simultaneouslyeducing fee waivers. The executive order creates a task force on new americans which will include members of agencies that implement policies that impact iig communities. The effect of this Biden Administration policy is predictably that a lot of people who are here in this country illegally are receiving benefits and receiving benefits that ought to go to american citizens first. This is predict avenlt you might argu it was an explicit design and purpose of the Biden Administration policy. My friends on the other side of the ■ . Aisle will sometimes counr there are certain benefits illegal aliens cant get and we all agree with that, i would hope all agree with that. But its not so simple. For example section 8 housing vouchers. I know people in my community who benefited from the section 8 housing voucher. Under the letter of the law, the section 8 housing voucher ensures that people who are, again, down on their luck, are able to to keep a shelter over the heads of themselves and their children. An Important Program for people who need it. The section 8 cannot be used by illegal aliens. Thats a good policy. Again, i would hope most of my democratic colleagues would agree. Related to an illegal alien, even a minor child, then an illegal alien can receive the section 8 benefit on behalf of the minor child. There are millions of people receiving housingovernment bene shouldnt be receiving them because they are enjoying and benefiting from this particular loophole. Th illegal aliens dont benefit from some of our most generous welfare programs is just false. They do. Again, i say this not because were angry at them, but because were angry at our own countrys leaders for allowing our citizens to be taken advantage of. Let me pose a hypothetical to make this point especially clear. Could we possibly, could w possibly support the generous American Social welfare system in our country had a billion people in it . We have 300 Million People now. Given our problems, given our budget deficit, could we possibly support a billion people, meaning three times as many people receiving medicare, medicaid, Social Security . Of course we couldnt. The math simply doesnt make sense. So at some level we have to say these benefits were paid for by american citizens. These benefits ought to go to american citizens, and we should limit themmerican citizens. Another problem with inviting the entire world to come and benefit from american, from generous america sges people to come to the country. If you sort of send a release out to the entire world saying if you come into the United States, even if you come in illegally, even if you break this countrys laws, if you come into our country, you will receive generous medical, dental benefits, even though you broke the laws of the country in coming here. Thats going to bring in a lot of people that ought not be in the country in the first place. Got to set a standard and youve got to set some limits. And i propose that we set the limit at american citizens and lawful residents. When you become part of our community, we take care of each other. Thats part of the deal. But if youre not part of this National Security and you violated the laws to become part of it, you shouldnt benefit from americans generosity. Number four, the fourth executive order that the Biden Administration is talking abt by the way, the Biden Administration took over the 0 executive orders in the immediate aftermath of joe biden being sworn in as president of the United States. Im only on n on number 4. Executive order 14010, creating a comprehensive regional framework to address the cas of, causes of migration, to manage migration throughout north and Central America and to provide safe and orderly processing of Asylum Seekers a e United States border. Again, the trump policy was to take numerous steps to combat the surge of fraudulent, frivolous or nonmeritorious asylum claks, discourage illegal aliens from taking the journey from the triangle to the United States. First, the Trump Administration implemented the migrant protection protocols also known as remain in mexico, which required nonmexican aliens seek asylum in the u. S. To wait in mexico until they wanted, or until they were able to be seen by an immigration judge. Why does this matter . Because when our country illegally, they are often released for six years, for eight years, for ten years with no conseences and with no enforcement action. So if you know you can come into the United States illegally and even if its acknowledged that you came into the country illegally, you can be released into the nation to await a court date for some times over a decade. It is a massive invitation to illegal migration in this country. And what the donald trump very smartly did is said if you come into the country illegally, were not going to release you our court date in ten years. But youre going to have to stay in mexico. You can await your court date there. Of course a lot of people knowing they wouldnt be able to benefit from this massive loophole didnt come to begin with. Its one of the reasons why border crossings were during th administration. The biden policy was portions of bidens e. O. Are substantive while other sections call for reviewing certain trump policies. And a number of other title 2 authorities that allowed the president you might even say forced the president to engage in commonsense Border Security. That is it number four. Number five, executive order 14011, establishment of inner Agency Task Force on the r families. The Trump Administration reversed the catch and release, and those fraudulently coming to the s lawful basis to enter the United States. An opposing word is really, really important. Because, of course, all of our hearts break when we see children separated from their moms and dads, but we also know that the car traffic cartels traffic children into this country and tell them to pretend some person theyre coming with is a mom or dad. That is how they benefit fromri heartedness and how they manipulate and get around Immigration Laws. Frustrated by these efforts now an overly broad application of the flora settlemt ordered by the judge frustrated these efforts by limiting the ability and length of Time Department of Homeland Security could detain these home zero offenses under this particular provision the decoupling of family units, children were sent and treated as unaccompanied minors. Due to a disappointed sorry. One of the problems, madam president , youll forgive me as you get older is that your eye sight gets worse and worse, i should have had my reet reading reading ■ this rescinds the memo that establishes a task force to identify all children separated from their family in the United States in mexico to the intoefd between january contreras 2021. We have to remind ourselves here that the people who are claiming that theyre bringing their children in are often not bringing their child they are someone elses children. A number of my colleagues visited the border and talked with young people, sometimes under the age ofs 12 who have been brought in by people who claim to be their parents but in fact are sexually abusing them. They havent seen their parents in hs maybe in years. In eliminating the Trump Administration policies on this issue, facilities what the trump policy revented. It had the cartels to traffic these to tell u. S. Is customs and border that the people who sometimes abducted them are in fact their parents and these poor children dont know any better. What a travesty and disaster. Madam president , how much time do i have . The presiding officer the senator has about 16 minutes remaining. Mr. Vance im not sure which of us is happier about that reality. I will make make one more i will make one more observation here. One more observation here this is from a report before i make some concluding remarks being mind tul of time. So mindful of time. This is something published from the immigration report, three years of this have benefited aliens. This was published on january 9, 2022 to focus on criminal aliens, as dhs secretary mayorkas put in a 2021 memo, by, quote, exercising our Discretionary Authority in a targeted way, we can focus our efforts on those who÷iw]ose anv threat to Public Safety and Border Security and threaten americas wellbeing. It is now clear that the promised outcome hasnd the biden has fwuted the Immigration Enforcement system with no concern about the number of criminal aliens released into our communities. Official data from u. S. Customs and as well as the freedom of information act request by the center for Immigration Studies. The contrary to secretamayorkas and National Security have been undermined by the Biden Administration policies, and the threats the administration created will continue to inflict damage on the American Society for many years to come. This compares the first three years under the Trump Administration which was 2017, 18, 19, to the first three years under the Biden Administration 2021, 2022, and 2023, and feigned a criminal alien is one to define this term is one who is a criminal conviction or pending criminal charges. These arent people who came across the country illegally. These are poem who actually have criminal charges on top of the fact that they came across the border illegally. The data shows the administrations responsible for the following when comparing years 2017, 18, 19 to 202222, 23. Decrease in arrest of criminal 68 decrease in arrest, 64 detainer request. And a 55 in imwith immigration criminal convictions, they are explicitly undoing the previous policies and they have the gall to say this is all the republican partys fat. Republi charge of the white house right now who could undo these things, we dont, we have President Biden who refuses to enforce the border policies. It should be noted that total annual arrest and removals are larger than what is discussed this does not include data on those without criminal history. Biden administration has cut arrested. I want to dig into this a little bit more. The first three years, under the Trump Administration, ice made 389,000 arrests of aliens with criminal charges, that is 39,000 ice made 165,000 arrests. 2021, 2022 and 20 23 crime has done up, 2021 and 2022 were the most violent years in three decades not just for assaults and other things but also 2022 was one of the worst years for murders in this country in a very, very long time yet the Biden Administration is arrein the criminal migrants in this country compared to the Trump Administration. They cant say its lower crime because the crime is a lot worse in 2022 than 2018. What they can say is that its lower enforcement that is endangering the people of this country and endangering the citizens of our nation. And i want to address this company that in fact crime is going down in this country. And its one of those things thats like half true but is completely and utterly dishonest to the actual reality that we confront. If you look at the of murders that exist in the United States, the statistics are not final, but in 2023 there were less murders in this country than 2022. That is good news. Woe say it is a hoax to say we have a problem with criminal aliens. 2022 is one of the worst years in record for murders. 2021 was not much better so the two years of the Biden Administration they had skyrocketing murders. Some of the worst Violent Crime statistics in the history of the country and theyre patting themselves on the back because it came down a bill in 2022. Thats now 2023. That is not how it works that is not a good thing. In fact, t country in we saw in this country in 2023 is higher than five years ago, ten years ago, 20 years ago. We have too much crime in this country. We have too many young people like laken riley who have been killed for living their lives in this country and the reason we have this problem is because in part because joe biden refuses to deport criminal aliens. It has been the explicit policy of his administration. Secretary mayorkas said agreed referencing the Discretionary Authority of the Biden Administration. Because it is the Discretionary Authority of the Biden Administration that is the problem. Madam president , the Biden Administration refuses to use that Discretionary Authority to do its job. Its so funny to me coming from outside of politics and spending the last year in this chamber talking to people almost every single one of my colleagues from across the political spectrum is fundamentally a good american, but in private there is a broad recognition that what we are trying to do is force the Biden Administrations hands. Y tools that will force joe biden tob do what he already has the authority to do under existing are we talked about the border shutdown in the the the Border Security deal that went down just a few wks in this chamber. The border Shutdown Authority was triggered at a point when two million illegal aliens came into this country every year. Why do we need to wait for two million illegal aliens come into the country before we should down the border . Cant we shut it down earlier . This makes sense in weird world we live in where we have a president less committed to border enforcement than almost probably any re president any president we ever had. I was not a fan of the policies of president obama, but he was substantially more committed to border enforcement than joe biden is. Now,al one last point i want to make for some of my friends and completion, especially those on the other side of the aisle. Problem of social stability in this country. A lot of people talk about our rankus political debates, and how politics seems nor zero sum today than in a long time. I believe one of the reasons why we have a broken political debate is because we have a set of policies that has promoted social division. I all the time who will walk into an emergency room and they go to an emergency remove because their kids, you know, broke their leg on the playground or hurt themselves in some way, or maybe its a sunday and you need a doctor because your kid has a sore throat. We all go to the emergency room for some reason. Emergency room waiting time is at all time highs. We know why they are. There are people are probably good people who are not members of this country. This is it a big problem in the state of ohio. Rural School Districts, distct that are already incredibly stressed by the fentanyl problem and lack of funding, School Districts that have multiple families of Migrant Children who are dropped at their doorsteps, they dont speak a lick of english, they have never been in the country. Many are traumatized because they were brought into the country by drug cartels, they are not bad people but why are we expecting american citizens who are already working and overstressed public schoolsse k honestly think if you take a Rural School District and drop a dozen kids who cant speak a lick of english that it makes life easier for the rural kids in those districts to get an education . Of course it doesnt. You dont have to believe anything bad about the childrening in children in the School Districts, you have to believe every country has its limits and the thing we need to be focused on is the education of our own children and wellbeing of our own citizens. That doesnt make useans we rec first and most important obligation woe owe is to our we owe is to our families, our communities, our neighborhoods, our country, not to people who illegally crossed the border to come into this nation. We dont have enough surfaces services, we dont have enough resources and we dont have enough wealth to support the entire worldmo generosity we support the american sfwlen. Over citizen. Overcrowded hospitals and schools, rising violent kr Violent Crime rates are the recipe for social dysfunction andisaster. We are taking away some of the Critical Resources and supports that make living in this country a good and then were surprised when our politics is angrier than it used to be or when a feel like their he electricitied leaders elected leaders dont care about them. But there are schools and hospitals with people who shouldnt be there in the first place, theyre right. If you are creating an immigration system that has seee the number of criminal migrants, they are right to i think the leaders dont care about them. I dont know whats wrong with this president but he seems to care more for the people who live outside the country than the people who live inside thisq country. They dont just feel something is wrong with the Political Leadership of this country. They are right that something is wrong with the Political Leadership of this country. And we could real steps, very real steps to fix some of the problems that exist if only we were allowed t vote on senator hagertys amendment, on senator johnsons amendment, on a number other amendments that were offered by my colleagues that would receive biities in this chamber if only we were allowed to vote on them. So with that i say what a deserve and what a tragedy that we havent actually voted on legislation that would make their lives better and would make the criminal migration problem improved in this country. They certainly deserve it. I wish we had done our jobs. With that i yield to my friend from kentucky. Mr. Paul madam president. The presiding officer the senator from kentky. Mr. Paul what we have here is a pork fest of epic proportions. You cant imagine how much pork barrel spending is going on in this bill, but you should know about it. Theres 6,000 earmarks in this bill. An earmark is where a congressman or senator says hey, ive got this special interest. Maybe theyre a donor. Maybe thr area. Maybe theyre a relative. And they want to name, you know, bubba gump shrimp after them or na museum after one of their donors. Thats what ends up being put in these bills and bloats them beyond imagination. It also is sort of the grease that eases in billions and trillions of other dollars because you get people to buy into the total package by giving them a little bit of pork for their town, a little bit of pork for their donors. Pork barrel spending illiss elicits the images of politicos with hands and fists stuffed with dollars passing these out to the special interests. And thats exactly what it is. In 2010, 20309 2009, there was this tea party uprising, people concerned their beyond i constitutional limit, had gun spending money like there was no tomorrow, that the debt was rising at an extraordinary pace. And people came to washington. One of the things the republicans vowed to do was be better. We voted within our conference to ban earmarks and for nearly a decade, maybe a little more than a decade, republicans didnt put forth earmarks. But its sad to say when we look at the bla for the debt, that the blame goes to both parties. People often ask me, they say whose fault is it, democrats or republicans . My answer is yes. Its both parties. Now, both parties have different priorities, but they do get they support each other. They pat each other on the back and everybody gets more money. Because the one truism about washington is they believe there are no lit to the money. In your state capital, the revenue that comes in is spent. Your county government and your city government, the revenue that comes in is spent. The one place that there are no restraints, where there are no tradeoffs, where the Printing Press runs 24 hours a day is washington. The Federal Reserve simply buys the debt. But its not without reper repe. As the debt spirals upwards, as the Federal Reserve prints more money to buy the debt, the value of your dollar goes. Money first are able to profit by the inflation before it trickles down to the regular working class. If youre a banker on wall street and you buy and sell the bonds, you get the money right when its printed. The ink is still fresh, and you get to spend it on t to spend te it still has a hundred percent of its value. When it gets to you, when it gets to america, when it gets to all of us, itsits purchasing p. So it no longer buys as much. We see the prices in the Grocery Store going up and we saw our wages sluggishly chasing tho this is inflation. Inflation is the bait and switch of Big Government. People in Big Government from both sides of the aisle offer you something for something. Its a bait and switch. The emperor has no clothes. The emperor has■u no money. Your government has nothing to give you but borrowing. They borrow from the future and they give you stuff. Theyive you these items. They glistened in the sun and they are shiny objects and they say here, have this. More food stamps. You dont have to work for a living. Or if youre a corporation, theyll give you a special perk or benefit. You get all of these things and theyre not supposed to cost in. Its a deceaseful way of run deceitful way of running your government andure but its whatn day in and day out. The republicanses at least put up a pretension. They say to the people at home and go home and pound the desk and say we are the conservatives and believe in balanced budgets. But when you see how the voting goes, its the republicans are conservative. So we had a vote recently to get on this bill. All the democrats voted for the 6,000 e the spending. There hasnt been a spending bill that theres been significant democrat opposition to that i know of in modern history. They all vote for the spending. But the secret unknown to a lot of people at home is there are 12 or 15 republicans, the Big Governmentus, who vote with the democrats. Because see whats happened is weve abdicated the power of the purse. The power of the purse use at a time. 41 members of a party or a caucus or a conservativero demand that the other side compromise. But thats not what happens. The conservatives can never must votes because theres 10 or 15 Big Government republicans who side with the democrats and therefore there is really no power to the purse. A spending. In fact, the opposite happens. A lot of people dont understand this. They think theres no compromise in washington, and the opposite is true. There is compromise every day on every spending bill, but its not compromise between Big Government and constitutional government. Its compromise between Big Government democrats and Big Government republicans. Theig to send foreign aid to al far flung reaches of the planet. They also want to fund the wars in all far reaches of the planet and fund the military Industrial Complex. Thats the traditional republican condition. The democrats take that position too. Theyre all together on this. T idea that you dont have to work and basically well just pay you not to work and that the payment for nonwork is actually now exceeding the payment you get for work, thats a democrat proposition. But the Big Government republicans say its fine. If we can get the military complex money, well give you ■o the welfare money. So its welfare and warfare. And they do come together. And the media wont report this. They either dont understand it or ignorant or incompet dont r. They say that the problem is not enough compromise. The problem is not enough dialogue. No, the country isbecause there compromise and too much dialogue between people who believe in Big Government. And so we have on an annual basis a deficit of 1. 5 trillion. During covid it was even worse of the during covid it got up to like 3 trillion. But were now adding debt at about a trillion dollars every three months. It used to take a decade to add a trillion in debt. Now w adding a trillion in debt in three months. Our Interest Payment has doubled. Interest within a year or two will be the largest item in our budget. Interest doesnt buy any things. Just paying the bankers for the privilege for borrowing from the future. As the Interest Payment grows ands out everything else, its sort of like having credit card interest and all of a sudden you have so much on your credit card and your Interest Payment is so high, it crowds out all of the spending and forces bankruptcy. Thats where were headed. But we dont use the power of the purse because Big Government different than Big Government democrats. They all have come together and they have compromise. We get the warfare and the welfare state and there are they are more than adequately funded. We spent about 6 trillion and we bring in about 4. 5 trillion. And you say well, how long can that last . I frankly dont think much longer. We bring in 4. 5 trillion, thats a lot of money. Its not like we do nothing for people. We should do 4. 5 trillion worth. People say youre for no government . No, im for what we bring in. Its not a tiny government. I would probably be for smaller than that but its settled for. Lets have 4. 5 trillion. Lets have what comes in what we spend. If you put it in perspective and try to say what would 4. 5 trillion buy of our government expenditures, how much would the tax base that we have pay for them . Its interesting. If you add up ■amedicare, medicaid, Social Security and food stamps, it equals about 4. 5 trillion. The four entoojtsment programs, the big entitlement programs would consume all of the money. So we vote on a budget every year and you think thats all the spending. No, we only vote on a budget thats onethird of the spending. Twothirds of the spending is entitlements and nobody votes on it. If you touch intitle entitlements or saying anything about it, arp will send out notes to your constituents and tell them to take their hands off my Social Security, even if your goal is trying to preserve Social Security for another generation by actually reforming it. Its the only way it will last. Ill tell you the truth that nobody else will tell you. Social security will have to rise in age. We did it once. It rows from 65 to 67. Did it gradually a couple months a year. Once it was enacted there werent that many complaints. Do people love it no. Do i want to raise the age . No. But to reserve it you have to raise the age. To stick your head in the sand and say youre not going to talk entitlements means youre not a serious person. The entire budget we vote on excludes all the entitlements and is military and nonmilitary. They call it discretionary spending. Its about 1. 5 trillion. The deficit equals our budget. If we zero out our budget, thats how you balance the budget. Were not going to do that. If you take everything and cut a very small amount out of every program, including the entitlement costs, not necessarily the benefits but the cost, if you were to cut across the board, you could actually begin to balance your budget. Its what any normal business would do and any people would do and yet we do none of that. And it goes on and on and on. So this year well have a deficit of 1. 5 trillion. The bill before us codifies that. Its not all the spending. There will be a little more spending next week. But all this spending together is still at a rate that well borrow 1. 5 trillion. And some people dont quite grasp this. Theyre like, oh, its this big number but doesnt mean anything. Weve had a debt forever. What it means is higher prices at the Grocery Store. If youre not bothe by higher gas prices or grocery prices or higher electricity prices, then you dont need to listen to me. Forget about it and pay the higher prices. But people are being squeezed. The people being squeezed are those at the lowest part of the socioeconomic ladder, those with fixed incomesr but weve now linked most of the Retirement Benefits and most of welfare are linked to inflation. So theyre kind of getting their bumps to try to keep up with ifrn nation inflation. Its more the working class, those working for a living, being paid privately are having more trouble keeping up with this. This is the problem we face. But we add to this the parochial interest of letting people get stuff for their city or for their state or a bike path here or there. Our founders looked at this and they put it into our constitution. Our founders said that spending and taxation should be for the neral welfare. And this was discussed over and over again because if it only said the general welfare, the argument would be what does that mean . That could mean anything, right . But that isnt where they left it. They said that all spending and all taxation should be for the general welfare and then they listed what they thought were the federal prerogatives or powers that applied to general welfare. There are things like a National Defense. We dont think it would be very convenient or very efficient for each city in the United States to have a National Defense or have their own defense or each state. So we agreed that was a federal problem. We agreed that commerce between the states shouldnt be interrupted. We agreed that the border surrounding us should be be. But for most other things like a bike path or a museum, we agree. We didnt tell your State Government they cant do it. Theres nothing . The constitution that says your state cant provide museum but it is in the constitution the federal government doesnt do that. Why do they want to buy a bike pact up here . There is path up here. Theres awant. Why do they want that . The people from rhode island stuck it in there, an earmark. They want it so they can get their name on the bike pact and people will love them because they act as if it was their money they brought back. Its not. Its being taken to rhode island, and nobody in the rest of the state authorized that through the constitution. You can tax the people of rhode island to pay for bike paths. You can tax the people of kentucky. Its not constitutional to take our money and send it back. Its also unwise for another reason. Why do you not wants earmarks . Why do you not want pork barrel politics coming from washington . Because we have no limits. We got a Printing Press. We just print money 24 7, all day long. The debt, we borrow i think more than 2 million a minutes. We probably borrowed 40 million since i started talking a few minutes ago. Its out of control. Why do we want the bike path in rhode island paid for with u. S. Tax instead of rhode island tax money . Rhode island only has so much money coming in. So does kentucky. So does texas. So does tennessee. Stes but they typically borrow against some sort of capital or sell bonds. We dont we just borrow. We borrow from ourself up here. States dont have a Federal Reserve, for the most part, and cities dont. You want the spending to be local. Mayor, city council, state legislature, has to make a decision. For example, everybody wants something. Lets say there are ten roads in your town that you want to be paved or improved. Everybody kind of agrees, we need to improofer these roads,. You list them. You only have enough for repaving eight roads. Do you pave all ten or eight . If you work city government, whether republican, democrat, independent, you pave what you have money for that year, and puppet the last two you couldnt pay this year first on the list for next time. Within i mention that when i mention that here, that is such. I had a chairman, from the opposite party, saying we shouldnt have to choose. If its a good cause, we give them money. Well, everybody is a good everything is a good cause. We dont have the money. In washington its put it on my tab. Theres nev really the realization theres a finite amount of money. Theres never really a realization of the pros and cons of spending the money w have. We bring in 4. 5 trillion, theres a lot we can do with that. We interest we have to look hook look for savings places. Democrats and republicans are gefiltey of saying look everywhere, but not entitlements. We had a big debate, mccarthy was the speaker, he lost his speakership over this. They made a deal to raise the debt in exchange for spending ps it looked like many had more money, so they made a side teal. All of these side deal. Were amount of spending. You look how much is spent by this debt deal, you find wre still leading to a 1. 5 trillion deficit in one year. The spending goes on and on. There doesnt seem to be any sort of restraint. People say, well, were in the minority, republicans are in the minority. What do . Only takes 41 of us. About an hour ago we had a vote. If 41 republicans said no, we would have exerted the power of the would have compromised. We dont compromise conservative with liberal, Big Government with constitutional government. We compromise by the Big Government republicans siding with the Big Government democrats to spend more money. There is no conservative influence on the spending of money because it goes out the door, it flies out the door and its printed up, the debt is bought, and your prices at home go up. This has been going on for a very long time. Our Founding Fathers looked at the general welfare clause mone for the general welfare. Just storrey ruled in 1843 that the general welfare clause was not a general grant ever unlimited power, but rather a limiting cause that meant government taxation and spendin, must be for something for everyone, as opposed to something just for one state or one city. Jefferson agreed. Justice storrey quoted jefferson. Jefferson wrote that the layg of taxes is the power and general welfare is the purpose for which the power is to be taxes were not to be laid or spending was not to occur for any purpose that congress ple easehe debt or provide for the welfare of the union. Congress was not to do anything they pleased to provide for the general welfare, but onls for td be beneficial to the entire country. Wasnt for bike paths. Wasnt for museums. Wasnt for sex parties in philadelphia. The pennsylvania senators had an earmark in here for sex parties in in philadelphia. Even they were embarrassed after that came out, that earmark theyve taken out now. Thats the kind of stuff that gets stuck in here. There was a road from alaska, from a few years ago. All kinds of parochial interests that are not part of the general welfare, not allowed by the constitution. Madison reiterated this in the sense that he said that the money to be spent for the general welfare must be tied to one of the specifically enumerated powers from article 1, section 8. Article 1 of the constitution w powers, the powers granted to us, the 10th amendment says those powers not granted to us are left to the states and people. So just because a federal government is not supposed to build bike paths doesnt mean your state cant. Thats left to your state. You decide if you have the money and how you spend it. People have written that if the constitution you have to spend more the general welfare but listed nothing else, it could be interpreted that the general welfare meant anything. Because we said for the general welfare, then listed specifically the powerpoints of congress, the understanding is that the powers of spending for the general welfare are limited to the specific powers given to congress. We listed them. They wanted to r be very certai that this wouldnt become an allencompassing government taking all of our taxes and government becomes so huge it. Thats largely whats happened over time, government has grown and grown and grown. William proxmire was a conservative democrat, back when there used to be conservative democrats. There really■6■ arent any left. Theyve either become republicans or gone extinct. William proxmire used to talk about spending in a way republicans do now. He would point out some of the worst spending. One of the things he pointed out was a study about happiness. 50,000 to study what made people happy. Another 100,000 to study what made people fall in love. My favorite is this, this was one of his favorites, was 100,000 to study whether or not sun fish drinking tequila■l agg drinking gin. We did a study on fish to see which made them more aggressive, tequila or gin. This is the kind of insanity we live with. Do you think maybe it got better over time, maybe w reforms and they quit wasting our money. Ill give a recent example, is maybe threequarters of a million dollars, to study whether or not japanese quail given cocaine are more sexually proposal evac yuous than promiscuous than those not on cocaine. This is your government. You think we cant cut one penny. Remember what theyre spending your money on. A lot of the worst waste from government comes from the National Science foundation. You say certainly theyve put reforms in place since they were studying what made people love each other or made people happy. No. They just give them more moy. We had a bill just two years ago that nearly doubled the amount of money to the National Science foundation. Do you think theyre more or lesse frugal and wise and lest wasteful if we double the amount we give them . This is what passes for oversight in this town. This is a real problem. The earmarks are the tip of the spear that make it worse. Because often, if youve got someone wavering in the wind and they think that they might be conservative, might not vote for the spending bill, you say what if we give you this . What if we give you this airport . Well even name the airport after you in your district. Airport named after you . Boy, thats a bonus. If you do that, you need to vote for the entire bill. The bill gets bigger as everybody gets an airport or park named after them. I think we shouldnt name any parks after politicians. Its not their money. Its your money. Its the taxpayer money. If you worked hard, gave money to make a park in your town, by all means put your name on. We shouldnt have politicians names on it. At the very least, they ought to be dead. Im not saying we cause their death. We have living politicians with dozens of parks with their names on them. Its not their money to give. Theres the famous of davy crockett, who was a congressman here, called not yours to give. There was a fire in georgetown. They red t put it out. In those days, there was a communal fascination and a communal eagerness to help put fires out. There werents icial fire departments. Georgetown, pretty good buggy or horse ride from here. They raced over there, sure enough, the next day they said we need to give them money. Davy crockett was persuaded, voted to give money. He got home, he got to talkingt post, the farmer said, well, you know, you saw that fire and you saw that damage and you saw the calamity, you wanted to help, and i understand that sympathy. But youre not here at home in tennessee to see the suffering of the people in your own community who have an equal need and right to that, but really charity is not part of the governments mission. Government was supposed to be the law and order parameters to allow the engine of capitalism to create the wealth that allows us to take care of people. More and more its become to replace charity and to become the bread and the sole focus of generation after generation who dont know the wonder of work. Ive often said to people iht t. Everybody that can work should work. I wouldnt give out any benefits to anybody who can work who doesnt work. ■og soundsharsh. Really, work is actually a bonus. Work is a benefit. Work is a privilege. Work is something everybody should want. I dont c you clean the carpets here or own the building. Work is a redeeming value. Its how people get selfesteem. We now generation where everybody gets a trophy. If you participate, hey, participate in the welfare program, heres your trevory. Its de heres your trophy. It keeps people on this. People say we need medicaid for everyone. I said no, we want medicaid only for those who cant help themselves. We want that to be 5 , 10 , not 40 or 50 of the public. We want to grow governmenteople their own insurance, where there is private insurance, where there is a marketplace where prices come do that doesnt happen as government becomes more involved. If you look at the two areas where prices are rising the fastest, education and health care, what do they have in common . Government dominates these spaces. Government gives free tuition, the endowment of harvards billions of dollars, and the tuition goes like this. You would think thered be some sort of semblance of competition, of price competition, and there doesnt appear to be because the government subsidizes it. Same with our drug policy as well. Were here today to discuss spending, but the other side is just discussing, oh, down. I think that, while i dont want the government to shut down, i think its chaotic to have interruptions in government, there is an argument for whether or not keeping government open, spending money at the same level were spending it, and causing theebt to rise to this same degree, whether keeping it open, borrowing so much is good or bad for the country. I think were damagin country. I think that we actually, the greatest threat to National Security is our debt. The threat is from within. Were not going to be overrun by foreign armies. We really are not in danger of being invaded by a foreign army. Now, you cant tell the people that spend the money on military that, because they want more, more, more. When you look at the negotiations over the debt deal from last year, they first said that twothirds of the spending entitlements wouldnt be touched. How do you expect to balance your budget or do anything signift toxc your budget if twothirds of the spending is taken off the table . All the entitlement spending was taken off the table. The remaining third is what we vote on, the budget, web we have one, we havent had one for years. Youroroduce a budget for my office to have a vote for what a balanced budget looks like. Whether republicans or democrats, they dont put forth a budget. We spend 6 trillion with no budget. Can you imagine a corporation doing that . ■o twothirds of thes entitlement spending, the remaining third is half military and half nonmilitary. We call it discretionary spending. The budget we vote on, its about 1. 5 trillion. Thats about equal to the debt. If you eliminated all that spending, thats what it the budget. But when we did this big debt deal about a year ago that people were saying was the greatest debt, the people who wrote it said it was the greatest thing since sliced bread, they said, well, were not going to put any caps on entitlements. So twothirds of the spending is rising at about 5 to 6 a year. This is the bulk of the growth of government. It is coming from the entitlements medicare, medicaid, food stamps, and social sec of the remaining third of spending that we vote on, half is■ military. Well, the hawks on the republican side said, we got to grow the military even though our military budget is bigger than the next ten countries combined. We have an enormous military Industrial Complex, but they say its got to grow at 3 . So the entitlements are twothirds of thet 5 to 6 . Then a sixth of the spending, which is commit, is growing at 3 which is■w military, segregation growing at 3 . So now the nonmilitary discretionary budget■5 is about 730 billion. Mccarthy said, you dont want me to lack at entitlements. Theyre going to go up. You dont want me the military. Its going up. You expect me to do something with if. And i think his deal was a bad deal. It went along with continuing the status quo. But his point was wellmade and welltaken. If you dont look at all the budget, youg with it. It is going to keep growing and growing. If you take entitlements off the table and not look at entitlements, thats the fearful way of looking because youre afraid the people will be unhappy with you. We have a trilliondollar medicare budget. Is there anybody in america that do we couldnt save without cutting medical care . A trillion dollars. If you tell them you have a trilliondollar budget, is is there any place that you could reduce spending . There is all kinds of improper ym medicaid to the tune of hundreds of millions of dollars. There are problems of■vi efficiency, but it doesnt happen. You ask yourself, why is government so inefficient . And i think look at it is Milton Friedman put it this way he said that nobody spends somebody elses money as wisely as they are own. Thats the difference between government and the free market. If i ask you for a thousand dollars and were going to put people are going to give me a thousand dollars, youre all going to think, what was the work and laborended into it that and what are the chances that i lose my investment . And youre going to make a heartfelt decision. It is not always going to be rfect. If i ask you who is going to make the wiser decision, the person giving up a thousand dollars of their own money who are a city councilman giving up a millionf someone elses money, he can never have quite the same heartfelt feeling in the gut decisionmaking if its not their money. Nobody spends somebody elses money as wisely as they are own. The the other difference is this. When amoney, they get automatic feedback. They get every day a report, a report it is a profitloss. They know whether theyre making they can lose money for a while, b but if they do, they will have to adjust their practices. There is a constant feedbackop. Government doesnt have that. Government in fact has really the opposite. It may be a lag time of years and really things can go on decades up here losing money. We can go on decades doing something that is horrific and nobody figures it■l changes it reauthorizes it. Ill give you an example, and this has come up recently. The child taxre a refundable program, not really a tax credit. You get it if you show some effort to work. You getses tax money. The problem is 25 of the people getting the tax credit are cheating. Its a 25 fraud rang the system who came into the country illegally you had a job here, then theyre putting the Social Security number down of the child they had here. Theyre putting fictitious names down and the government will issue you a taxpayer Identification Number even if you dont have a child. 25 of the money is is going out fr but about half of it is being refunded to people who dont pay taxes. And so it is an enormous welfare program. ■ this is problem. What we need to do is incentivize work. Instead, there are reforms being looked at for this program deci think work should be, maybe, work every three years. Currently the work requirement is a little bit o work year and you still get other peoples money. If you work every three years, you still get somebody elses mone dilute the all have of work. All within the context of a government that borrows 1. 5 trillion a borrowing money so rapidly that we have never, ever before borrowed money like this. Were exceeding even the level of borrowing of world war ii. Am i the only one bringing this up . The chairman of the Federal Reserve, who is not sasse a parn or a partisan conservative, said that the problem of the debt is urgent. Jaime dimon, head of chase morgan, said that essentially the same thing about two weeks ago. Nasim taleb who wrote the book the black swan said the same thg. Various people warning us. This is a slowmoving but yet a predictable crisis of our country. The debt crisis. It is already seeing the signs of it. You see the signs when you go to the grocery storks you see the rising meat prices, the rising gas prices, the rising electricity prices. It is the valuing of your dollar thats shrinking. Theyre■g inverses of the same principle but the value of your dollar is shrinking because we print more dollars to pay for the debt. The debt is paid for by printed money. So theases. Weve been lucky probably for decade after decade. Its been somewhat of a scheme in a way. We are the worlds reserve currency. So as we print up money to buy our debt, some of the people who buy our debt dont live her. China has got about a trillion worth of our japan has got close to a trillion. England and europe have another trillion. About a third of our debt is owned by foreign countes buy ou, the money doesnt necessarily circulate here. We also tend to import more than we export, so when we import goods, we pay with our dollars. Reaches of our planet and there will be people trading in dollars. Why is that good . We give them our inflation. ve passed out our inflation. If all that money came home, you might see 20 inflation at this point. But even as it exists now, realize that inflation is a hidden tax that hurts the working class and the poor the most. The rich can always do well. The rich the expense f rich, you know, its a small fraction of their salaries. If youre working class or poor, most of your salary goes to your rent, your mortgage, your gas, your electricity, your food, yourrise, wages struggle to keep up with it. But the people who get the money first, the people on wall street, the people who buy and sell the who g buy the equities and stocks, theyre getting the money before it loses its value. The rich havend its become harder and harder for the middle class. This is the baitandswitch because your politicians, they run for office and promise you something for nothing. It is a scheme. Its been going on since the beginning of the time. They will come and say, work . Heres money for not working. Or you want money for the military Industrial Complex . Well give you this money a are repercussions to handing this money out. But there is, there is you a just a dray who are a lag just a delay or a lag tax that you pay. Its not free. There is no such thing as a free lunch. Something for nothing doesnt exist. It only exists as a figment or a fairy tale or something that the people who want to run for office are trying you. Theyre saying, take this. Its mana. Take this, its tree free. Youll be better off. But in the end the country is teetering in the balance. And people sense this. People he of sensing this more than the leaders. The elite up here think they know everything. But talk to the common man. Ny p talk to a man who are a woman whos got grease on his hands and ask them what they think ab state. Ask them how much sympathy they have for people who dont work. Ask the man or woman that has grease on their hands. You can tell by the grip on their hands that they work with their hands each day. Ask them. Youll get less sympathy. They work hard and theyre tired of their tax dollars going to people not working. Is this people who cant work . There are a who arent working, might be 1 or 2 cant work. The vast majority are ableboda ied and can work. The vast majority should be sense back to work sent back to work immediately. We dont do that. We go on and on and on. Pandemi padding federal benefits on. We had 52,000 a year forenot working between state and federal benefits. O, you could be getting over ozzed 100,000 a year for not working. Whos going to work . This is why theres been a sluggishness getting back people in the work fvrs. But workforce. The thing to remember about our country is the incredible engine that freedom anditalism and volunteerism and trade has brought to this country. People are dying to get into this country. It shouldnt be lost in the debate over immigration what a great place this is and how many people want to get here. Some of the best americans just got here. I know many people■s are firstqueen Reagan Administration americans and theyre are firstgeneration americans and theyre great pele better work ethic from the people who just got here than the people who have been coddled generation after generati on■m aftng out the wo tendencies in people by offing them things. Theres an interconnection between addictiveness andac there is a selffulfilling there is a reward, a selfesteembuilding aspect of work. Everyone should work, not as punishment but as reward. But we have a system where if you say people should workwe sh working or the panel for nonworking shouldnt be anywhere near the wage for working, youre seenebut the op. If you care about your fellow man and woman or, you would want them to wonk you want to have ig place very few obstacles to work. The benefits for not working should be shortlived and small and frankly not that good to get there are millions of jobs unfulfilled right now. We often think, well, theres only, you■2 kno 5 , 8 unemployment. But it is really only 30 , 40 not participating. The Participation Rate hovers around 62 . This is the problem we have. If we look at what made our country great, what made America Great in the first place, taxes, low regulation, a small federal government, a small footprint for government everywhere so people can thrive. Ive traveled this country and im ive seen amazing things. Amazing success. From the vast wealth of the wealthiest to the vast wealtof the middle class. In this country, in my state, you can be of modest income two people of modest incomend l several acres of land. The American Dream is out there. It is still waiting. We have too many people, though, proclaiming victimhood, color of my skin, my ethnicity, im a victim. Nobody will hire me. It is completely■ untrue. People need to know that actually theres never been a better time to be alive. Theres never been less racism, less b business tactics than at any time in the history of the world. And if you dont believe that, you need to know more about history because history is replete with really awful kind of situations is for people from different races and different backgrounds. This is the best time ever to be alive. Dont let anybody tell you that theres not something great around the corner for you. You get a college degree, people want to hire you. They dont c t your skin, i promise you. Of there is not a publicly traded company in our country discriminating against people. They want you. Dont bigotry. Get absorbed in the idea of victimhood. We need to und■qstand wha made the country great or theres not going to be jobs or this engine. This engine of prosperity is fr be free, leaving people largely alone and keeping government out of their way. But it cant be a government that godles us from cradle to grave. It cant be a government that says you cant have a gas grill california that says everything causes cancer. If youre home putting together a gas grill, which is an Impossible Task if you do it grl toget■sr and look at the warning sign, it will say, it is safe in every state but it causes cancer in california. Thats the kind of stuff we have. Theyve been leading the way with stifling type regulations that the rest of the country emulates until they run into problems with it weple who want to ban cars, they want to have no internal come bugs cars come busson cars, and people who are telling you cant drive a car or all the trus will be electric in ten years, youve got people who are elitists who think they know best for you, but our free choice. These are the same elitist who will tell you you all have to take a Covid Vaccine. If you look at the science of tt is no indication for a Covid Vaccine for young people. None. Zero. Hasnt been from the very beginning. Most of europe doesnt require for under age 12 or even suggest it for under age 12. If you look at pa ramenters, usually you should have a pa ramenter for taking a vaccine. It doesnt stop transmission, the vaccine doesnt stop transmission. It is not about protecting other people, its only about you. Theres still a question on hospitalization and death. If you look at targeted categories of people who might die from covid, particularly back in 2020, 2021, over age 65, there was a reduction in hospitalization and death with a vaccine. Ive admitted that from the beginning. But it varie on your age. If you look at under that, health 25. Healthy and under 25, what you find is virtually zero deathsare from deaths from healthy individuals. When they look at i and say they are trying to prove things, it doesnt stop transmission. Thats the key to a lot of vaccines, they stop you from getting it. This doesnt. If you look at hospitalization and death, you cant find a difference. Because under age 25, it is virtually zero. The death is very close tzero, if not zero, the hospitalization very close to zero. So you cant really prove it. What i challenged the socalled experts on decided that kids should take it from 6 months on, they make ant fauci that i can give my kids antibodies, but it doesnt mean it will do anything. This is the same sort of loss, a belief in individual choice. The cice of whether or not you give your kid a vaccine should be yours. A lot of people dont realize this, but the cdc adversary commit and the fda adversary commit said only at r booster. The Biden Administration though came forward and decided they would make it six months based on antibody production. You can cause the body to make any foreign protein, and will make antibodies. If you want valid studies to know whether or not you should vaccinate your children, you han the study saying has my child been previously infected. Because vaccines are based on natural unanimous consentations eye knock las ga by looking at the studies of this that those infebtd but not vaccinated compared to those not infected, you find the chance of getting infected are less than those infected. Some say, you just want people infected. That is not true. That is ridiculous. No one has said that or would say that. What i said people want to they the truth if already been infected. Much of the country over age 65 got vaccinated. At least twice, over 65 have been vaccinated twice, most have gotten it once or twice, most would want to know what are the chances of dying or going to the hospital if i had two vaccines and been infected twice . This is because of government arent isnt including the variable of whether you have been infected. How need to get vaccinated again . Ee know that the virulence of the virus was greater in 2020 and 2021. So the virus is less dangerous, but the amount of has grown, and as the two have grown, what we have now is an endemic virus, we still have te this body that they have to have three vaccines. With kids it goes against i think medical advice to do that because theres a risk of a heart inflammation with the vaccine, its not hundreding huge, but it is it four 15,000. What is the risk of death at this age . Virtually zero. If you categorize or section this out by age,e elderly popul for covid, it still makes sense in all likelihood. Death rate and hospitalization rate is virtually zero, you find that the risk of the vaccine is more than the risk of the disease. We shouldnt have mandates throughout government that may well be malpractice. Most of doesnt recommend vaccination for covid for kids. I heard a story is just bizarret but it has to nature but it hash the idea of submission. A man took his 83yearold mom to the hospital, she was sick with covid. They would not into the hospital until she was vaccinated. She was sick with covid and would nott the Covid Vaccine, shes to die and they are about to vaccinate her. The reasont do that, and it is han dated by government man dade by government mandated, the cdc dmid that you dont vaccinate people while they are sick and you dont vaccinate people within a couple of months of au immune response, and we know that heart infulammation is af in covid by the time you die from covid you are no longer testing positive. You are now dying from this overly exuberant immune response and causing to leak fluid into the lungs. Its a terrible situation and a situation we can learn more, but the interesting thing is we went through the treatment for disco thing that worked better than any of the into your drugs and almost anything wias actuallyn old drug discovered in the a 3 in those ill. When i asked fauci about using i. V. We tried that and it doesn work. And in the end the vaccine may have helped, but there are those who have a question whether the vaccine was a great benefit. Ultimately when we look at health care, individuals make their choice. I met a doctor this week from maine who had her license removed simply bau give alterna alternative treatment. The alternative treatment, im not positive of the efficacy, i know one of the alternative treatments was already an offlabel treatment for you loot common use is for rheumatoid arthritis. Patients with this because we would exam them to see if there was an eye complication. A■2 drug used offlabel was off label again and they took this doctors license away. We he using drugs off label, sometimes it is because it costs so much to get approval. It might cost to millions of dollars to get approval. Theres another medicine like the arthritis in, you severe arthritis of the feet, and it has never been givent ap money entailed it would take to get that. As we look at this spending bill and as we look at wher not we s continue spending money like theres no tomorrow, i think its important that we realize that this is a debt thats being passed on to the next generation. Its being passed on to the working class, the poor and those on fixed income as we speak, shoved on to the next generation, there is a lag time between the printing of the moeven, spending of money, spending of the money ane have been told by this administration that inflation is transitory. And innation has inflation has persisted. There is so much money put into the system. When we had covid, the entire economy shut down ands7passed o everyone. I thought it was a mistake then. I dont think it affected the transmission rate. If you look at the transmission culprits of it, most of the deaths in the early stages came from group homes. In new york nearly in new york d in group homes. Before we had the vaccine, there were some things we could have done dp we done i we un understood or appreciated natural eye mupty, one of immun immunity, onen]f thet6■ things t would be staffing should be those who were recovered from co for the people around the president. There are things we could have done, but in discounting natura wasnt a thing that it did not have potential was a real disservice to people. It also was used they fired firemen, policemen, nurses. They fired all of these p havin then they let doctors work with masks on even if they had covid. We still do the opposite of what historically we would do if woe were we were sick, we would stay home. 000 we tell people now we tell people waear your mask. Od sense went out the window. When we look at whether or not we can spend this money spend money we dont have, we need to look at the ramifications of that. The ram if i ramifications are inflation, rising prices, so i think it is a disservice. Its a bait and switch. Its people s giving them stuff giving them stuff they want and we dont tell them there is a hidden price, that the price will be inflation. Your establishings might your steaks might cost 20, all this stuff will rise but your salaries wont rise as much. We dont talk about the disincentive not to work. Our Founding Fathers were quite clear about this. Our Founding Fathersralized spe washington should be for the general welfare. It shouldnt be for bikede isla be an s and m club in philadelphia, it shouldnt be for an environmental to ban gas grills in new york city, it should be for the general welfare, something we agree fenr borders. Those are things that the general welfare was to provide for. If you wanted other things it was to be provided for by states and by localities and by charities. We got away from this and i would say we have gotten away from this, we are damaging our country. There is a rot and ruin coming from within and that rot threat existence. There may come a time in which there is a panic and the panic may be when people suddenly lose confidence. Right now say the dollar is like the cleanest shirt in a closet full of amount r all the currencies have imperfections and they the leverage their currency. They say the dollar is the least bad of all of these currencies. 6 and so it hasnt all come re is possibility of a loss in faith. We are accumulating debt like no other country in most of europe actually balances their annual budget. The fact that we dont and our debt accumulation has risen, there may come a time in which theres a panic and the world says no more, were going to quit buying the dollar. Does it happen gradually or does it happen suddenly . Pens suddenly, what happens in the calamity of a dollar losing 25 of its value in a day instead of 25 of its . These are my concerns and i think that it behooves all of us very practical, something that every American Family has to do, and that is simply to spend what comes in. It doesnt mean we wont be able to help people w who are hungry. Doesnt mean we wont have a military. Just means we cant be everything to everyone all the time. And there needs to be some limi basically lets spend what comes in. Its a reasonable proposition for the American Family. It should not be an unreasonable proposition for our country. I recommend that we say to this spending, we say to this more. Lets make America Great again by balancing our budget and being responsible with our money. Thank you, mr. President. Of my time. L2 the presiding officer the senator you, mr. President. I rise this afternoon to explain why the senate should vote on my amendment to the funding bill. And why the democratder is wrong to hold up this process. Mr. Hagerty this is a process that should already be concluded by now. Its simply because he wants vo. My amendment is simple. It would require that the determine like the number of citizens, noncitizens and illegal aliens that live in this country, what the consensus is supposed to do and require that only u. S. Citizens be counted in determining the number of house s seats and electoral votes that go to each state. Thats pretty simple, pretty state forward. Thats how most americans think things should work here in america. Un unfortunately illegal aliens are currently counted for the purposes of determining how many congressional seats and how many electoral votes a given state may obtain. The morealiens, the more noncitizens in your state or your district, the greater your voting power in congress and the greater your power in president ial elections. That means in a state like california, million, of illegal aliens result in california getting several more congressional seats. Several more Electoral College this not only destroys the principle of one personone vote by making some americans votes more powerfuges illegal immig immigration and sanctuary cities as a way to increase political power. Think about that. Over the past three years, americans have seen the devastating consequences of thi6 perverse incentive to bring Illegal Migrants into this country, to leverage them to build more Congressional Districts and more electoral votes on the backs of these Illegal Migrants. Joe biden has allowed ten million migrants to come into our country illegally since he took office three years ago. Thats significantly more than the entire population of my state, mor seats and electoral votes that are wrongly distributed. Several weeks ago video emerged of a member from new york calling for more ilLegal Immigration to her district for redistricting purposes. Yes, you heard that. What she smeens is that means is americans are fleeing blue cities and states en masse because of bad government. But congressional seats are allocated based on population. So if youre losing population, you either have to backfill it or lose congressional seats. This because of population loss, sheeeds to fill her district with illegal aliens. She has to do that just to keep from losing her congressional seat. Shes inviting theseo come intot in new york just to do that. Congresswoman Yvette Clarke when you want tot is. Mr. President , the representative who made these comments represents new yorks ninth Congressional District. Thats the strict in which the James Madison high school resides. Thats the same James Madison high school recentlyad clear out its rooms recently had to clear out the school for illegal immigrant housing. E to go home, to study by zoom. Their school was now being confiscated to place illegal aliens inol. Interestingly, thats also the very same district that the for formerly represented when he served in the house of representatives. Even more interesting, even more interesting than that, James Madison high schoo i very high school that our democrat leader attended. The weight of every americans votes should be equal. More illegal alien resettlement shouldnt mean more political power. My amendment would currently a sanctuary city with hundreds of thousands of illegal aliens not only gets more electoral votes and congressional seats because these illegal aliens are counted, but the weight of residents votes are stronger because their voting pow of noncitizens despite the fact that these noncitizens cant vote. These illegal aliens provide leverage to citizens in these sanctuary cities. For instance, in the sanctuary city Congressional District that aliens, the number of actual voters is halved. And the power of their votes is doubled relative to a district that contains only citizens. Think about it. If your district is 50 illegal aliens, those citizens that allowed to vote have twice as much power as those Congressional Districts like those in my state that dont have these illeg counted. Only citizens should be counted in determining the power of citizens votes. If this perverse incentive and delusion of american votes is allowed to continue, the surge of ilLegal Immigration under joe biden will also continue it will continue because they want to increase power in sanctuary states. This destroys the one personone vote principle. All of this is to backfill Congressional Districts just like the one in brooklyn, new york, that calling for. Thats why im offering my amendment hagerty number 1634, to preserve the one personone vo principle and to ensure that only citizens are counted in determining the power ever citizens votes of citizens votes. If democrats areo allowed a vote on it, we could have resolved this process already. Yet were still here. The question is prettyo vote on my amendment to stop illegal aliens from being counted in determining congressional seats