National Defense Authorization Act for Fiscal Year 2026

Floor Speech

The 10th Amendment to the Constitution is clear that the Federal Government has a limited set of powers, and most powers are delegated to the States. I think we should let decisions for the people of Florida be made by the elected representatives of the people of Florida.

Let me just also address real quickly some of the statements that were just made about children going to school.

It is decently ironic, given that during COVID, kids were prevented from going to school because schools were closed. Schools were closed, in some cases, up to a year and a half.

If we look at the epidemic of childhood violence, youth violence in this country, we can directly trace that to the enormous mistakes made during COVID by locking kids up, by forcing children to get a COVID vaccine that we now know, objectively, absolutely should not have been given to children.

Let me make also another point. You can't, on one side, bemoan the termination of a CDC Director and, on the other side, having not voted to confirm said CDC Director--so when you voted no, you can't also say: Well, why was that person fired, because you wouldn't have hired him in the first place. That doesn't make any sense.

Let me just make one final point. This is very important. Any vaccine that any parent wants to get is available. What R.F.K. is saying--our Secretary of Health is saying is: We are not going to mandate that people have to put things into their body that they choose not to put in their body.

In fact, I believe over my lifetime, what I have seen the Democrats say is: My body, my choice. I guess that only applies when you are murdering babies.

It is very simple. If we don't have sovereignty over what goes in our body, we are not free people.

I believe that people should make a choice, an educated choice. I have faith in the American people that they can make the decisions that they feel are right for them.
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Mr. MORENO. I withhold my request with some remarks.

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Mr. MORENO. I think one of the things that I can agree on with my colleague from Nevada--and there are a lot of things I think we can work together on. I think she is a good person--the one thing we can agree on is we want stronger families. We want strong family structures. That means that a mom or a dad can have one job that allows them to provide a family-sustaining wage to be able to raise kids so that parents could stay home with their kids--again, a mom or a dad-- and provide those kinds of resources that are necessary.

But, right now, corporations are taking a lot of good jobs and shipping those jobs overseas. For example, where I started my career, believe it or not, right out of college, was in a call center. I helped start the Saturn Corporation's customer assistance center. I can tell you firsthand, those are good jobs. I can also say that the people who do the best job at call centers are people with some form of disability. Whether it is blindness, they are in a wheelchair, they don't have a lot of other opportunities for good, high-paying jobs. That used to be the case. They have much higher levels of empathy. They speak our language. They know our culture.

But corporations, unfortunately, chase slave wages in other parts of the world where they can pay people $5 a day. And our calls--our American consumers that need help and assistance are calling these foreign countries. They have a language barrier, a culture barrier, and more importantly, that money is leaving our country to go into those communities versus having that money stay here in America. So that call center operator can go pay rent, go to the grocery store, buy a car, et cetera. We could create that ecosystem.

I know having been in your State just recently, that there are a lot of needs for jobs there--a lot of needs for jobs. Let's agree that we want these jobs to stay here in America. My bill is very simple. We are not going to control what corporations do, but we can create guardrails.

So what my bill does is very simple. If you outsource American jobs to a foreign country, you will pay a 25-percent fee for the value of that contract. And here is the best part, we take that 25-percent fee that we collect, and we use it to fund trade schools to upskill workers to be able to step up into a better, higher paying job.

The bill is called the HIRE Act.

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Mr. MORENO. Mr. President, I appreciate the Senator from Nevada's willingness to work with me to get this bill across the finish line. You have my commitment that my team will reach out to yours. Let's get this bill going.

I think this is something that we can all agree on that we want to do. Let's put the thoughtfulness into it. I look forward to working with you to make this happen.

Thank you.

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