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Floor Speech

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Mr. RICKETTS. Madam President, our Nation is facing many challenges at this point. Yet, this week, the majority leader doesn't have us addressing them. Look around this room. There is nobody here.

We should be voting Monday through Friday until we get our work done. We have a national debt that is almost $34 trillion. That is $256,000 per household. That is about equal to a second mortgage for homeowners in Nebraska.

We also have a humanitarian and security crisis at our southern border. I was just down there for the fourth time. What I saw was a humanitarian disgrace. Record numbers of illegal immigrants are crossing the border. Children are being trafficked. People are dying. Cartels are profiting. The Biden administration is directly responsible for this humanitarian crisis. They should be ashamed of themselves.

The Biden administration's policies are also creating a major security crisis. A record number of encounters with individuals on the Terror Watchlist has gone on when that number used to be in the single digits just in the past few years.

Washington has an important role in dealing with these challenges. The ideal time to address them is through the appropriations process. As we all know, Congress must pass 12 appropriations bills every year, and this would avoid a government shutdown. This year, for the first time in 5 years, the Senate Appropriations Committee passed out all 12 of those appropriations bills. The first 2 came out on June 22, and the other 10 came in July.

For months, the majority leader has refused to bring those bills to the floor for votes. We could have been amending those bills, debating those bills, and then voting on those bills. Instead, he has played games with the Senate's calendar to try and force a false choice between a shutdown and more Big Government spending.

As a result, we have missed the deadline for regular order. The short-term bill that we passed, which funds the government, runs out on November 17. That is just a little over a week from today. Once again, we are on the brink of another government shutdown, and the majority leader is still playing the same games.

We should be debating. We should be amending. We should be voting on legislation to fund the government and secure our border right now. Instead, we have spent the entire week voting on nominations for a few blue State judges and the employment for someone to the National Institutes of Health.

If that weren't bad enough, once again, the majority leader will be sending us home on Thursday afternoon for the weekend. The majority leader should have kept us in session Monday through Friday every week until all appropriations bills had passed. Instead, he chose to recess early or start voting late, week after week after week. He could have canceled our October State work period, like the House did. Many of my colleagues joined me in asking him to do so. He did not. The September shutdown face-off proved that there is no time to waste.

Most Americans work Monday through Friday. In Nebraska, many of my constituents work longer hours than that. The U.S. Senate should work Monday through Friday. I know it is a crazy idea, but we could be here all week like normal Americans. We could work 8 a.m. until 5 or 6 p.m. like most Americans do. We should remain in DC until we complete our work of funding the government and securing the border. It is not a radical idea to suggest that we should have an open government and a closed border.

So I will close with this: Let's vote. Let's do what it takes to get the job done for our constituents. I am committed to working with my colleagues to deliver meaningful results. Nebraskans and Americans across the country deserve no less.

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