Translate Politics: Congress in plain language.

“The Senate just passed three bills, and I am glad. One bill lets the government keep collecting drilling fees so it can review energy permits faster. The other two bills make a national park in Arizona and give local land to an Arizona county.”

“Madam President, earlier today, I joined Senators Capito, Heinrich, and Whitehouse in introducing comprehensive, bipartisan permitting reform. That agreement is the product of many, many months of negotiations and years of work to address a problem Congress has talked about for far too long: It takes too much time and too much money to build things in this country, and that problem is becoming more urgent by the day. America’s energy needs are growing rapidly. We need more energy, and we need it now. That means producing more energy. It means building more infrastructure, and it means making sure that Federal Agencies responsible for reviewing permits actually have the resources to process those permits in a timely manner. Madam President, that brings me to the first bill that I just asked the Senate to consider today and that we just passed through the Senate today, the License to Drill Act. The Bureau of Land Management currently charges a processing fee for each new application for a permit to drill on Federal lands. Those fees help fund the people and resources that process those permits, but that authority expires tonight at 12 midnight. The License to Drill Act extends it through fiscal year 2037 and directs those fees to the Bureau of Land Management Permit Processing Improvement Fund. The idea is straightforward: The money collected from permit applications should help process permit applications. That is, after all, how we keep things moving. That is how we get a lot of these things done. So if we expect American energy producers to navigate the Federal permitting process, as they must and as we must expect them to do, the Federal Government should have the capacity to give them that answer. The bill we just passed advances the ball in precisely that direction. Look, permits should not simply disappear into some bureaucratic black hole. As we confront rapidly growing energy demand--the likes of which we haven’t seen in a long time and the stakes for which are unbelievably high--unnecessary delays in bringing new American energy production online carry real consequences. This bill, also, did not appear on the floor out of nowhere. It went through the committee process. The Energy and Natural Resources Committee in the Senate, which I chair, examined it and advanced it unanimously. The same is true of the two other measures that I just brought before the Senate and passed this evening. H.R. 6380, the Chiricahua National Park Act, would redesignate Arizona’s Chiricahua National Monument as Chiricahua National Park. The legislation has already passed the House. It was considered by the Energy and Natural Resources Committee, and it was favorably advanced by the committee. With this, this bill is on its way to the President’s desk for signature. H.R. 837 conveys the Pleasant Valley Ranger District Administrative Site in Arizona to Gila County. That legislation has also passed the House and gone through the Energy and Natural Resources Committee. In its having now passed the Senate, it will be on its way to the President’s desk for signature. These measures all have certain things in common. They have been examined, they have gone through the committee process, and they are prepared now for the Senate to act, which the Senate has now done, for which I am very grateful. That work has been done here. In a moment, when we are working on a much larger task--on the large and intimidating but also incredibly important task of comprehensively reforming America’s permitting system--this is a commonsense set of proposals deserving to pass today. I am so grateful that they have passed. I am grateful to my colleagues on the committee and to my Senate colleagues for helping to make that happen. I yield the floor.”

“Fifty years ago today, Congress passed the Hyde amendment to stop federal tax dollars from paying for elective abortions. Both parties supported it then, and Congress has renewed it every year since. Studies show 2.5 million people are alive today because of this law. I want us to remember this rule and keep protecting human life.”

“Mr. President, I thank my colleagues for allowing me to be able to slip in and do a quick history moment on the floor of the Senate. It is an interesting day, the 30th of September 2026. Fifty years ago today, there was the passage of an appropriations bill that was just another appropriations bill, except this one was a little harder because it was actually a veto override. Let me set the context for you. In 1973, the Supreme Court ruled on something called Roe v. Wade. For the previous 200 years as a country, every State made a decision about abortion. That was the way it worked. In 1973, the Supreme Court stepped in and said: Nope, every State has to allow abortion across their State, and changed what we had been as a nation for 200 years to a nation that required an abortion in every single State. Well, that was in 1973. In 1976, Congress--both House and Senate--had a serious conversation about are we going to fund abortion with Federal dollars. At the time, just to give you some history context on this, Carl Albert was the Speaker of the House. A Democrat from Oklahoma was actually the Speaker of the House. The majority leader of the Senate was also a Democrat. This was a Democrat-led House and Senate. They debated it, and out of the House came an amendment called the Hyde amendment. It was named after Henry Hyde, who worked across the aisle and said: We may disagree on this issue of abortion that just came from the Supreme Court 3 years ago, but we should agree that we shouldn’t allow Federal funding for abortion. So a Democrat-led House of Representatives passed an amendment in the appropriations bill in 1976 which we still call the Hyde amendment today. It is interesting to be able to think about, at that time, in Congress, of the 535 Members of Congress, there were 100 pro-life Democrat Members of Congress. Now, 50 years later, there is one pro- life Democrat Member of Congress. A lot has changed in that time period. But this simple agreement that we should not use Federal dollars to pay for elective abortions; that when I pay my taxes on April 15, it shouldn’t be to pay for someone’s abortion down the street--that was the agreement that was set in 1976. Now, interestingly enough, it passed in that appropriations bill in the House. It was sent over to the Senate and passed in the Senate. It went to the President of the United States. It was a Republican President--Gerald Ford--at the time. He vetoed it, and it came back to Congress. And with 313 votes in the House of Representatives, they overrode President Ford’s veto to pass that appropriations bill, including the Hyde amendment, on September 30, 1976, 50 years ago today. I just thought, for just a moment, in all the chaos and of all the stuff and lots of important things that we are trying to be able to resolve today, for just a moment, we should just pause and remember the 50 years that we have had this simple agreement. Every single year since then, we have had this simple agreement: We will not use Federal dollars that come from taxpayers to pay for elective abortions across the country. Some of us are still crazy enough to believe every child is valuable. We don’t believe and I don’t believe that some children are disposable and some children are valuable. I think they are all valuable. And I think there is some great value in telling the American taxpayers: You don’t pay for the taking of human life; you pay for research from NIH and other things to be able to protect human life. That seems to be a better value. Interestingly enough, studies have been done showing that 2.5 million children are alive today because of the Hyde amendment that passed 50 years ago. Those are folks teaching in schools; those are police officers; those are folks working in manufacturing; those are small business owners all across our country--2.5 million of them--that are alive today, just living life, doing their stuff, because the Hyde amendment passed 50 years ago. And it still gets passed every year. I just thought for just a moment, in the Senate, we should pause and remember that day. I yield the floor.”