On the recordFebruary 9, 2024
Mr. President, I want to talk about some of the important issues that we are debating here on the Senate floor. Actually, they are quite important, and we are having a good debate. I want to just talk about some of the votes that we have taken in the last couple of days. We voted on what I think was termed--really focused on--the Senate's border bill. A lot of people worked hard on that. I know the Presiding Officer did and Senator Lankford. I did not vote to proceed to consider that bill. There are a whole host of reasons. I think the most important, from my perspective, was this administration--the Biden administration--came in and said: We are going to have a policy of full open borders--which they have. There is no doubt about that. Every American knows it, sees it. It impacts people in Alaska negatively--over 300,000 illegal immigrants in December, an alltime record, and on track for 10 million. In my view, the border bill did not go far enough, and it is hard to trust the administration, even on provisions that we would want them to enforce, given their disastrous record for the last 3 years. So I was a no on that. Then we turned to the national security supplemental. I want to talk a lot about that this afternoon because it is very important. I voted, actually, to proceed to the debate, to start debating--hopefully, amending--this important bill. It is being called many things. Some are calling it the Ukraine bill, the Ukraine aid bill, the Israel bill.…





