“I want the Senate to pass this bill right now. Americans have lost too much money to fraud, and the people who cheat them should pay instead.”

“Mr. President, the American people have paid the bill for fraud for too long. Now is the time for the fraudsters to pay. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the Senate proceed to the immediate consideration of H.R. 9576, which was received from the House; that the bill be considered read a third time and passed and the motion to reconsider be considered made and laid upon the table.”

“I want the Senate to pass my bill and reject this amendment. My bill protects taxpayer money by making the group that fights fraud permanent. The amendment tries to undo the new border task forces that are successfully stopping drug cartels and fentanyl. I object to the amendment.”

“Mr. President, reserving the right to object. My bill is simple. It should be a really uncontroversial purpose codifying the National Fraud Enforcement Group. It has done remarkable work protecting American taxpayer dollars. And by the way, this wouldn’t survive. This isn’t just for this administration--beyond it. It would be great if a Democrat President somewhere down the road was focused on this with an existing National Fraud Enforcement Division. But the proposed amendment deals with a completely different topic. Regardless of how you feel about the amendment, it seeks to undo the administration’s new model for combating transnational organized crime, a new model that has been incredibly successful. During the prior administration, fentanyl and other dangerous drugs poured across Joe Biden’s open borders. Those drugs poisoned our communities, destroyed families, and stole the lives of Americans who should still be here with us today. Cartel members poured across the open border as well and victimized the American people with violent crime, human trafficking, and dangerous drugs. In Missouri, the consequences of that open border were all too real. There are empty chairs at kitchen tables, parents who buried their children, grandparents raising their grandkids. President Trump ran on closing the border and stopping the flow of these dangerous drugs. He understood that it is our obligation to protect the homefront, protect those families, and use the resources at our disposal wisely. To accomplish these goals, he reoriented how the Federal Government counteracts transnational organized crime, focusing on using Homeland Security task forces. That model incorporates FBI and DHS agents alongside the more than 20 Federal Agencies and over 400 State, local, and international law enforcement agencies for coordinated operations. The reorganization sought to go upstream and get to the source of the true problem, securing the border and stopping the cartels and other transnational criminal organizations. By focusing on the actual root of the problem through the Homeland Security Task Force model, we have seen investigators, prosecutors, intelligence analysts, and immigration enforcement working together to disrupt the cartels and the criminal networks threatening our country. That is how we should fight crime that operates across borders, by taking the fight to them. And there is an important downstream effect of this approach: The trafficker moving fentanyl often also traffics people, launders money, and arms violent gangs. By updating our law enforcement model to meet the reality on the ground and the realities of modern transnational criminal threats, the new Homeland Security Task Force model has achieved remarkable success. Our intelligence Agencies have reported that fentanyl crossing the border fell 55 percent after President Trump took office. In some year-over-year statistics, drug flows have been cut by 98 percent--98 percent. And the new Homeland Security task forces have arrested thousands of criminals, including more than a thousand cartel members, hundreds of MS-13 gang members, and hundreds of Tren de Aragua members. They have seized tons of illegal drugs, including more than 300,000 fentanyl pills, and they have taken thousands of illegal guns off the streets as well from hardened gang members and cartel members. Law enforcement agents have worked tirelessly over the past few decades to try to stem the tide of transnational organized crime and criminal gangs. The Trump administration inherited the status quo with dedicated law enforcement agents but an organizational and operational model that wasn’t working. So the administration got to work and reorganized the operations, and the results have been promising. This proposed amendment--an amendment to a bill that seeks to codify protection for American taxpayer dollars--would disrupt this new model approach, and it tries to codify the old approach of combating transnational organized crime. That would be a return to the approach that just wasn’t working. We should instead allow the administration to continue its good work of reorienting enforcement through the Homeland Security Task Force model. Too often, people in DC confuse the survival of a program or an enforcement model with the success of its mission. President Trump’s reorganization efforts broke that mold, and it proved to be one of the most important steps we have ever taken against the cartels. This amendment is an attempt to revert to a prior model that wasn’t working, and it is a distraction from our effort to codify the administration’s important efforts to protect Americans’ hard- earned taxpayer dollars against fraudsters. And for those reasons, I do object.”

• Reasons given
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  Speech in the House

  Reasoning 100 of 100

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“I object to this request. The law being discussed is poorly written, and this change will not fix it. I support the president cutting this 810 million dollars. Our country is trillions of dollars in debt, and Congress spends too much money. Most of these cuts come from refugee programs that we no longer need because our border is secure.”

“Madam President, reserving the right to object, I would like to make two points. First of all, the law that is at stake here that we are discussing is the Impoundment Control Act--surprisingly, very poorly written. The good Senator from Oregon said that the Government Accountability Office--the nonpartisan Government Accountability Office--believes that pocket rescissions are illegal. Well, the fact is that is a reversal of their previous position. Every President since President Ford believed he had--or she had--that ability to do a pocket rescission. So, again, it shouldn’t surprise anybody that Congress wrote an awful law that is hard to interpret. It will probably all have to be sorted out by the Supreme Court. The modification that the Senator from Oregon is proposing certainly wouldn’t fix it. It certainly wouldn’t clarify it. If anything, it would probably even make it more murky. So that is one reason to object to this unanimous consent request. The other reason--this is probably the more important one--is this is a pretty small pocket rescission. Personally, I wish it was a lot larger. This storied Chamber--``Chambers’’ includes the House--has allowed this country to accumulate $40 trillion in debt with no end in sight. Over the course of the next 10 years, the total estimate of additional deficits and added debt is $26 trillion. So I personally am glad--I don’t care who the President is, out of what party. I will generally support that President reducing spending, and I would applaud it. So I am happy to allow the President to do pocket rescissions, other types of rescissions--whatever it takes--because Congress is certainly not fiscally responsible. But, in particular, this $810 million--that is what we are talking about, $810 million. That is not even pocket change in our budget. Seventy percent of it is for funding in HHS’s Refugee and Entrant Assistance Program. Now, the reason we can rescind that money is because President Trump secured the border. Under the Biden administration, they threw the border wide open, creating a clear and present danger to this Nation and also a clear and present danger to unaccompanied children. The Biden administration lost track of hundreds of thousands of children who were probably sold into involuntary servitude, sex slavery. That is what the Biden administration did with the help and abetting of the Democrat Members of Congress. So 70 percent of the $810 million--$567 million--is simply money we don’t have to spend to try and handle unaccompanied children that the Biden administration lost track of and probably got sold into horrific situations. That money doesn’t have to be spent, and it shouldn’t be spent. And I am glad that President Trump and OMB Director Russ Vought have recognized that and will do a pocket rescission so we don’t spend it. We can’t afford it. So those are the reasons that I am happy to object to this unanimous consent request.”

“I am blocking this bill. I agree that members of Congress should not trade stocks. But this bill goes too far. It could force lawmakers to sell their family farms or small businesses. It also bans blind trusts and digital dollars. The Senate should send this bill to a committee so we can fix it.”

“Madam President, reserving the right to object--I would like to reserve the right to object on this. My friend came with a proposal to try to ban the sale and ownership of stocks by Members of Congress. I am pretty confident of why this came up today, because earlier today, we had a vote in this body to ban Members of Congress from owning stock--or, I am sorry, buying and selling stock on it. But it also included what the vast majority of Americans also want and that is voter ID. It is pretty simple and straightforward. It is a very short bill. It just mandated voter ID, and it also banned Members of Congress from buying and selling stock: short bill, straightforward, easy to read, uncomplicated language. Now, every one of my Democrat colleagues voted against that bill, and their complaint was: It is because it is going to rig elections if you require voter ID. Well, I would like to remind this body, the Chair, that 36 of our 50 states already have voter ID; exactly what we voted on. There is only 14 States that don’t, which means 72 Senators in this body already serve in a State that has voter ID. This is not a complicated, highly politicized, red versus blue issue. This is Americans that just say: Hey, we show ID to do everything. Why don’t we show an ID to vote? In fact, the vast majority of countries around the world are completely confused by Americans, that we don’t show ID to be able to vote, when most countries around the world do. It is not diminishing people’s right to vote. This is acknowledging the reality of where 36 States already are--red and blue--that we show voter ID. It shouldn’t be an issue. But this particular bill that is being brought today, and the response that Democrats voting against the bill earlier today, it is different. This is not just a ``can’t buy and sell stocks’’--which I, by the way, totally agree with. That is why I wholeheartedly voted for the bill earlier today. This one has some additional features in it that have not been discussed here on the floor that I think we should actually put out onto the floor. This bill itself also includes requirements for the Ethics Committee--which I happen to chair--which is a bipartisan, equally represented group here in the Senate that has to evaluate all this. So I am pretty attentive to bills that actually deal with this to know: How are we going to implement this? So this includes a requirement for small businesses and family farms and all those, that the Ethics Committee has to come and evaluate every single one of those from every Member to determine if there is going to be a conflict of interest from them owning a family farm. So let me give you an example. If you own a family farm, you can’t be on the Agriculture Committee because that becomes a conflict of interest. So the Agriculture Committee in the U.S. Senate suddenly becomes a group of people that don’t know anything about ag because this bill would force them to divest from their family farm or it becomes a conflict of interest in the Senate. I, personally, don’t want everybody on the Ag Committee to not be farmers. I would like to have some farmers on the Ag Committee and some people that know something about this. If you own a family-owned business that is not a family farm, that is just an LLC--which it is typical for most family businesses to be incorporated as an LLC--this puts an additional requirement on them on any kind of securities ownership, which is pretty common in an LLC that anyone who serves in this body that has a family business, multigenerational business, may have to divest from that to be able to come into the U.S. Senate. That would mean Senators can’t come from a small, family-owned business. That puts out a lot of Americans that suddenly wouldn’t be eligible to serve in the U.S. Senate. This bill also prohibits what is called a qualified blind trust. It is one of the most misunderstood aspects of this. A QBT--a qualified blind trust--any Senator that is here that has a stock portfolio that is larger has the ability to be able to take all of those assets, put it into a qualified blind trust, and they are prohibited by law from talking to that person that is actually doing all the investments. They can’t know what is in it; they can’t get updates on it; they can’t have any interaction. And it is called a qualified blind trust because we actually have to qualify that. In fact, the Ethics Committee actually engages with everyone who has a qualified blind trust and the person that is there to actually get all communications. So we literally monitor that to be able to make sure there is no interaction on that. Well, this bill would actually prohibit this. This bill would also prohibit digital assets. Well, I understand that for investment in cryptocurrency and Bitcoin and everything else, but there is also a digital asset called stablecoins, and this body actually passed that. Stablecoins aren’t an investment piece; stablecoins are just a dollar in digital form. That is all that it is. This bill would prohibit Members of the Senate from actually having a digital dollar because it would be now considered a new investment asset, when it is not an investment asset at all. I wish this bill would have gone through committee. There is a lot we could have discussed in committee to be able to work this through. But this bill skipped all the committees and has had no hearing in committees to actually talk through it because there is even a section in this bill where it talks about one section where the Secretary of the Senate does the reporting, or another aspect where the Ethics Committee is doing the reporting. Some of those little pieces could be worked out in committee. That is not controversial at all; it could be worked out. But it hasn’t actually gone through committee to actually have any kind of oversight to try to figure out how to be able to perfect some of these areas. Listen, this is not a bill that is just about ownership of stocks and buying and selling stocks. It is much larger. It gets into family farms. It gets into small businesses. It gets into stablecoin. It gets into all those different aspects on this. This is the reason that, when we brought a stock bill earlier today, it is a short couple-of-pages bill to be able to make it very clear what it is and what it is not. It was not this 31-page very complicated bill that is actually being brought to the floor today. So my challenge to all of my colleagues are: We should not be trading stocks. And if you have got stocks, those need to either be divested or put into some blind trust so that Americans have full trust that Members of this body are not looking at their portfolio all the time; they are actually looking at the people that live in their State and what they can do best to be able to serve them. That is where my colleague and I adamantly agree. Where we disagree is on this text and what it does that is far beyond what is actually being advertised that it does. So I would be very willing to be able to work with my colleague to be able to figure out how we can get this right because I think it is an incredibly important issue, but this needs more work back in the kitchen. So with that, I object.”

“I oppose this bill as it is written. I got my facts by reading the bill itself, not from an outside group. The bill would force farmers and small business owners to sell their family businesses to serve in the Senate. If anyone is illegally talking to their blind trust manager, report them to the Ethics Committee now, because that is already against the law. Finally, voter ID laws are not racist. We need to follow the normal process and write a better bill.”

“Madam President, I appreciate the conversation from my colleague. I look forward to getting a chance to be able to work on the bill that is actually complete. He asked where I got my information from that I actually listed out on this. I got it from a ``secret source,’’ the 31 pages of the text of his bill. There was no outside group. I appreciate the conspiracy theory that some secret group must have manipulated it somehow and given me the information. I just read the text. There are issues with the text. Again, we are back to--we can’t have farmers on the Ag Committee and small business owners who may have to get rid of their family businesses to be able to run in the Senate. That is a problem. As far as the accusation of the qualified blind trust and that there is someone who has said to my colleague that they talk to their qualified blind trust person every quarter, I would encourage my colleague to submit that to the Ethics Committee because that is a violation of current statute, if that is actually occurring, and it is already a violation. So, if my colleague knows of someone who is interacting with their broker and they have a qualified blind trust and they are interacting, as he claims, every month or every quarter, please let us know because that is something the bipartisan Ethics Committee would address immediately because that is already against Federal law to be able to do that. My simple statement for today is: Listen, there is a right way to be able to do this. Let’s do it. Let’s go through the process. Let’s actually figure out how to be able to get this done and get it done right, but this is not it. The way this bill is written has so many problems within the bill that I have to come down as the chairman of Ethics to say I would have to be the one charged to actually enforce this, and there will be major problems with this. As far as the voting issues, I was listening with wonder on all of the issues about problems with voter ID. Apparently, my colleague believes that, if you have voter ID, you are Jim Crow 2.0; you are a racist State. Well, I am confident the folks in Rhode Island would be shocked to hear that.”

• Unsupported
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  Speech in the House

  Reasoning 20 of 100

  This statement drew 5 conclusions, but gave no reasons for 4 of them.

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“I oppose this bill as it is written. Both Democratic and Republican states require voter ID to keep elections safe. It does not stop Native Americans or married women from voting. This bill has real problems, and we should send it to committee to fix it together.”

“Madam President, I do not relent the floor. This is an issue when we start talking about voter ID, and it is an accusation that comes at Republicans that all we want to do is be able to block people from voting. Rhode Island has voter ID. Delaware has voter ID. Connecticut has voter ID. Wisconsin has voter ID. Colorado has voter ID. New Hampshire has voter ID. Michigan has voter ID. I could go on and on and on. This is not a red State or a blue State issue. These are States that have said: If we are going to make sure we have secure elections, we are going to have voter ID. Now, I happen to live in a State with a very high Tribal membership-- 7.5 percent of my State are Tribal members. We also have voter ID in my State. And do you know what? We welcome Tribal members to vote like every other Oklahoman. We have voter ID in my State, and as shocking as this may seem, married women still vote in my State. This sudden accusation that married women will not be able to figure out how to do voter ID and get an ID I find offensive as a dad of two very smart daughters and one brilliant wife. The issue today is not all this. Obviously, we voted on that earlier today. The issue is about this particular bill. This particular bill has problems that are solvable if we will actually get to committee and be able to work through the process, but as it is currently written, there are problems in the bill. So I object to the bill, and I hope that we can work this out in a nonpartisan way in the days ahead to be able to resolve it. With that, I yield the floor.”