Providing for Congressional Disapproval Under Chapter 8 of Title United States Code, of the Rule Submitted By the Department of

Floor Speech

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Mr. McCONNELL. Today is December 14. The Senate Republicans have spent months--literally months--begging our Democratic colleagues to stop fiddling with partisan nonsense and focus on two core things: the NDAA and government funding.

I have been talking about the need for a strong National Defense Authorization Act all year long--all year long. I am glad we are finally going to wrap up the basic governing duty that we have in the next few days.

With respect to government funding, I was glad to hear Senator Shelby announce yesterday evening that negotiators have reached a bipartisan, bicameral framework for a full-year government funding bill.

Long-term continuing resolutions cheat our Armed Forces out of the resources and the certainty that our commanders and civilian leaders need to keep modernizing our forces, investing in crucial weapons, and outcompeting adversaries such as China.

I am glad that our Democratic colleagues finally accepted reality and conceded to the Republican position that we need to prioritize our national security.

Republicans simply were not going to lavish extra liberal spending on the Commander in Chief's own party as a reward for adequately funding our national defense. It simply wasn't going to happen. Funding defense is a basic, bipartisan duty of our government, not something that earns Democrats special treats.

As Senator Shelby stated last night, this framework agreement doesn't mean the hard work is over; it means the hard work can finally start. It will take seriousness and good faith on both sides to produce actual legislation that follows the framework.

Poison pills, especially far-left demands to overturn longstanding and commonsense policy riders will need to stay away from the process. And even then, the calendar will still make this a challenging sprint. Our side has made it clear that the Senate has until December 22 to complete either a full-year funding bill or a short-term CR into early next year. That is the deadline, and those are the two options.

If a truly bipartisan full-year bill without poison pills is ready for final Senate passage by late next week, then I will support it, for our Armed Forces particularly. Otherwise, we will be passing a short- term continuing resolution into the new year. Inflation

Mr. President, now on a different matter, against the backdrop of punishing 13.8 percent cumulative inflation since January 2021, an open borders crisis, spiking deaths from drug overdoses, and surging violent crime from coast to coast, President Biden has decided that his A-1 priority needs to be--listen to this--cracking down on charter schools and harming the educational opportunities available to millions of low- income students in the process.

Charter schools have long injected a huge dose of choice and competition into the schooling options available to low-income Americans and communities of color. This became especially true and especially important back during the pandemic.

Big Labor teachers unions spent the entire pandemic forcing government-run public schools to keep their doors shut long after private schools, parochial schools, and schools across Europe were all back operating safely in person.

Charter schools became a haven. They offered an escape rope out of the learning loss for kids who would otherwise have been left behind. No wonder that, according to one analysis, charter school enrollment has surged since the pandemic started, even as public school enrollments have fallen off.

But, sadly, whenever kids' best interests and Big Labor's pocketbooks come into conflict, we know where most of today's Democratic Party will come down. The Biden administration has dutifully written a harsh new regulation that would intentionally chip away at the Federal charter schools program and strip funding from many public charter schools. President Biden and his team are trying to force charter schools to conform to a whole new set of top-down, one-size-fits-all rules that the teachers unions want to be forced onto their competitors.

The Democrats' rule is designed to hamstring charter schools and leave them more reliant on government bureaucracies in everything from what they teach to how kids get to school in the morning. Perhaps worst of all, they want charter schools' Federal funding to be heavily contingent on whether the Democrats' Federal bureaucracy agrees there is a ``need'' for their existence.

This is a plan to take options away from parents, to take opportunities away from kids, to take choice away from families, and to transfer that power directly to Big Labor bosses and Big Government bureaucrats--yet another example of Democrats' trying every trick to make end-runs around parents' rights in education, stripping power away from parents, and handing it over to the bureaucrats.

So I want to commend the Senator from South Carolina, Senator Tim Scott, for bringing forward a Congressional Review Act resolution to right this wrong. I would urge every Member of the Senate to put families first and vote for Senator Scott's commonsense resolution.

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