another dollar, another dime, another nickel, another penny to ukraine, we'd ensure that our own house was in order, that our own country was secure, that our own border was secure, that we would pass a real border security measure. and yet, here we are, months later, preparing to dispatch nearly $100 billion, if you say it slowly you sound a little like dr. evil in the original "austin powers" movie. $100 billion to foreign countries, while the security of our own homeland languishes. house republicans have broken their promise, and at least a critical mass of them under the direction of house republican leadership, they've betrayed the american people, because they've gone back completely on what they, what we, promised. tonight, we're seeing the same

movie played out on the senate floor. now, this occurs at a time when about 60% of americans live paycheck to paycheck. yet, congress continues to add to a national debt that's about to blow past the $35 trillion mark. how then, mr. president, can we justify this to the american people? as a congress, are we really more concerned with the borders of a foreign country, ukraine, and with foreign wars around the world than we are with the safety and the security of the united states and its citizens? this bill tells the american people that the answer to that question is an unambiguous, resounding yes. congress cares more about sending billions to wage endless war in foreign countries, cares more about this than saving our own country, especially at a

time when we're being invaded, when we've seen an invasion between 8 million and 13 million people over the last few years al alone. that's a big deal. now, we're forgetting the wise caution left to us by our first president, the father of our country, george washington, who warned against entangling our peace and our prosperity with the affairs of other nations. he said, why, why, quote, by interpreting -- by interweaving our destiny with that of any part of europe entangle our peace and prosperity in the toils of european ambition, rivalship, interest, humor, or capris, closed quote? indeed, it seems no price is too high, no weapons system off-limits. our only strategy appears to be spend, spend, spend, then spend more, with little to no thought given to the consequences. it'

it's the continuation to the lackluster approach to the ukraine-russia conflict. devoid of strategy, while advocating the jahs majority of funding to the middle east and europe, neglecting the looming threats from china and the warnings from great national policy experts who warn us time and again that the same weapons that we're depleting, sending to other parts of the world, to ukraine, are those in such dire need in taiwan and elsewhere. the $13 billion in military aid to israel is just poked -- just posed with the up to -- juxtaposed with the up to $9.1 billion in civilian aid going to hamas. now, some would say you mean gaza. i say no, i mean hamas. you cannot send this aid, even if it's labeled as humanitarian or for some other noble-sounding

purpose. if you send it to gaza, it is aid to hamas, hamas terrorists, the same terrorists who massacred, who butchered, savagely mutilated innocent men, women, and children in israel just a few months ago in october. the architects of this bill undermine their own bill to secure stability and peace in the region. so i've come to the floor in an attempt to soften the blow to the american people. to that end, mr. president, i'd like to call up lee amendment number 1902 for consideration. my amendment would require ukraine to repay the money loaned to it and that the funds repaid be used to secure our bo border. if congress is so determined to send taxpayer money abroad, then the repayment of this loan should not be waivable and must

be used to secure our border. now, it's sad that it's shoring up our border and protecting our own citizens has to come at the mercy of our debtors, but that is what this administration thinks of everyday americans, that they don't deserve protection. we should be voting on cochlear 2 and doing -- voting on h.r. 2 and doing that today, addressing the crisis at the border. instead, we're focused on sending money to secure ukraine's border, not our own. now, mr. president, i ask unanimous consent to set aside any pending amendments and motions in order to call up my motion to concur with amendment number 1902. the presiding officer: is there objection? mrs. murray: mr. president, i object. the presiding officer: objection is heard. mr. lee: if the objection is that my proposal is somehow not germane, then i'll offer another amendment. i want to bring up lee amendment 1857 for consideration. it would ensure that the

repayment of the loan congress seems so determined to give ukraine is exclusively used to pay down the u.s. national debt. this bill demands the american people dig deeper into their pockets, funding the salaries and pensions of ukrainian officials and humanitarian efforts under the guise of a loan. the unsettling truth is that this loan can and almost certainly will be waived, possibly leaving americans without any reimbursement. i think that's part of the plan, in fact. it makes it easier to swallow, makes it look like something less than what it is. my amendment addresses this concern by prohibiting any cancelation of the debt owed by ukraine and ensuring its repayments go directly to the u.s. national debt by presenting this amount, i came to offer the american people the financial security and oversight this bill currently lacks, deliberately so. effectively serving as an insurance policy against

irresponsible fifshg a.m. -- fiscal gambles mav a world away. i ask unanimous consent to set aside any pending amendments and motions in order to call up my motion to concur with amendment number 1857. the presiding officer: is there objection? mrs. murray: mr. president. i object. the presiding officer: the objection is heard. mr. lee: next i'm going to call up in a moment lee amendment number 1882 for consideration. if we're genuinely concerned about security, let's just start by securing our own citizens' personal information, securing it from foreign adversaries. my amendment would prohibit the sale, transfer, or sharing of american personal data to governments like china, russia, north korea, and iran, without explicit consent from the individual. now, for weeks proponents of the house-passed bill to force the sale of tiktok, legislation included in the package we're debating, have told us that this

legislation is vital to protecting the security of americans' data. the reality, however, is far more complicated. indeed, forcing the sale of tiktok through that legislation won't itself secure the data of users. ins instead, it will simply allow another company to purchase tiktok and do with their users' data what they may. only by changing the underlying law and preventing companies from handing over americans' information to our adversaries can congress secure the personal information of every american. and my amendment applauds to do just that -- my amendment aims to do just that. instead of a game of whack-a-mole where we allow ourselves to be distracted by whatever company happens to be making headlines at the moment, my amendment would implement a comprehensive prohibition on any

individual or company operating in the u.s. from selling, transferring, or sharing the data of an american citizen to the government of a foreign adversary without that individual's express consent. this is a serious solution to a serious problem. no company should profit by exposing the personal information of an american citizen to a hostile foreign power, whether that company is owned by a foreign national or by an american citizen. to that end, i ask unanimous consent to set aside any pending amendments and motions in order to call up my motion to concur with amendment number 1882. the presiding officer: is there objection? mrs. murray: mr. president, i objection. the presiding officer: objection is noted. mr. lee: this really is too bad. these are some really good amendments. apparently, we're not allowed to have those. we're just allowed to sing off of whatever hymnal they hand us preblessed by the law enforcement of schumer, mcconnell, johnson and jeffries.

that's unfortunate. next, i want to call up lee amendment 1860 for consideration. which proposes to strike all emergency spending designations from the bill. we cannot continue to spend under the guise of an emergency, especially when an actual emergency, a real-life present-tense presently located emergency involving the security of our own nation's national border is not even being addressed in this bill, not just that it's not being resolved, it's not even being addressed at all. this irresponsible practice has led to a ballooning national debt, now nearing $35 trillion. it will soon blow past that. if this spending is necessary, it should be subject to the same budgetary constraints as all other government expenditures. this bill spends almost

$100 billion, $100 billion we don't have, on top of the more than $100 billion congress already appropriated for the war in ukraine over the last two years, in ex sense of $113 billion if i'm not mistaken. we'll spend more on interest payments on our national debt this year than on all base defense spending and within a year, i believe, we're likely to be spending well over a trillion dollars a year just in interest on debt. if congress believes it's worth spending a hundred billion dollars we don't have, congress should be making sure that that sum of money will be fully offset or subject to appropriate budgetary enforcement. so my amendment would strike the emergency designations in this bill to subject this additional spending to the annual caps congress agreed to last year while simultaneously preventing

the bill's budgetary effects from escaping proper enforcement. so, mr. president, i ask unanimous consent to set aside any pending amendments and motions in order to call up my motion to concur with amendment number 1860. the presiding officer: is there objection? mrs. murray: mr. president, i object. the presiding officer: the objection is noted. mr. lee: mr. president, it's profoundly distressing, disappointed to say the least, that these commonsense amendments have been so cav leerily -- cavalierly objected to, met only with one-word organizations. although my amendment to strike the emergency designations, all of them, drew an objection pursuant to section 314-e of the congressional budget act of 1974, i intend to raise a point of order against these same emergency designations for international disaster assistance and migration and

refugee assistance for gaza. we are, in the end, going to have to acknowledge that we're at a critical juncture, compel to reevaluate our priorities as a nation, and our responsibilities to the american pe people. every decision we make must be weighted against the best interests of those who are sworn to serve, and not those of people abroad but those who are right here at home. waving the flag of another nation in congress, as you vote to send them tens of billions of dollars, doesn't inspire confidence. it creates distrust. as legislators, we've failed in our duty if we don't heed the

call to prioritize the american people first. so, to all out there who find this distressing, to the distressed americans, to the distressed carpenters, the distressed plumbers, the distressed poets, i'm sorry that we weren't able and willing to secure the border. we should have been able to do that. we made a promise, and we as republicans shouldn't have deviated from that promise. certainly not with the critical mass necessary to facilitate passage of this in the house, and then before the night's finished likely the senate. certainly not under the leadership of our own elected republican leaders, who themselves had repeated this promise just not too many weeks ago, a promise that's now apparently a thing of the past that we're supposed to forget.

this $95 billion aid package to foreign countries is a stark testament of the misguided priorities of our current congressional leadership and a clear indication that we've let ourselves and, perhaps more critically, the american people down. the situation demands a wake-up call to every member of this body. by failing to address the fundamental needs of our own people, the american people, in favor of international interests, we risk not only the prosperity but also the security of our nation. and make no mistake, this isn't free. although it can feel free to those of us who work in this hallowed chamber. it can feel free to us. it can feel as though we draw

from an endless, unlimited well. but we don't. as we've seen to an acute degree, every time we spend more money than we have, that comes at a cost. sure, we borrow the money. and, sure, the credit of the united states is still just good enough that it can feel like we have the capacity to just print our own money, which is essentially what we're doing. but every time we do that, every dollar earned by every hardworking american, every mom and dad, married or single, in this country just trying to put food on the table for their kids suffers. as they're having to shell out an additional $1,000 a month every single month just to live, just to put a roof over their head and keep food on the table.

i agree with the assessment of nobel laureate, famed economist milton friedman who said that at any given moment, the true level of taxation in america can best be measured not by the top marginal tax rate or even the average effective tax rate but instead by the overall level of government spending. this, he explained, perhaps referring to the odd combination of credit rating and the way our deficit spending works, that in fact every year -- that in effect every year when we look at overall federal spending, that's the true cost of the federal government because what we don't collect in taxes, we effectively print and thereby devalue every dollar that is earned by every american by

degrees. only unlike other expenses that people have -- monthly bills that they receive or their annual tax return that they file -- there's no billing moment attached to this. there's no price tag. you don't ever see the overall amount that you're spending, as you do at least once a year when you file your federal income tax return. no, it's very different with inflation. each dollar is diminished bit by bit. the federal government is costly, and when it sends money abroad, sends money abroad that we don't have to fund somebody else in fighting a war against somebody else, that costs money. another thing we learn about these proxy wars is that in the united states of america, which has assembled the greatest

military force the world has ever known, certainly the strongest military force that exists today, proxy wars carry on for, well, going on two-plus years now, we're in the third year of this effort, they don't remain proxy wars forever. it becomes especially startling when the proxy war is being fought against a nuclear-armed adversary. that is not to say that we can never push back against any nuclear-armed adversary. but it does mean we should be darn careful when we do that. we should know exactly what our objective is, what it's going to take to secure the peace so that we don't have to fight that war. we don't avoid the profound risk to our own national security simply by funneling money through a proxy. whether that proxy is a great steward of the funds, weapons, and resources that we send or

not, whether that country happens to be one that's proven impervious to fraud, corruption, money laundering and grift or not. because how it's spent is going to have a very direct, very real potential outcome on the american people. we cannot pretend anymore that we have the money to do this, that the economic cost is free or that the military risk is free. none of them are. shame on us if we don't turn this around. shame on us if we pass this tonight. shame on us if we do this without taking any steps to secure the integrity of our own border. thank you, mr. president. i yield the floor. i ask that t quorum call be vitiated.

the presiding officer: without objection. mr. sanders: mr. speaker, here is the good news. a few weeks ago the approval rating for congress was 10%. it has gone up to 14%. according to a recent poll, 14% approve of what congress is doing and 68% oppose. i would tell my friend on both sides that it's about equal, on who people want to elect it's about half democrats and half republicans. why is that? why do we have a 14% approval rating? it might have something to do with things like we are witnessing today and the degree to which the congress is completely out of touch with where the american people are. let me read some other polls not on favorability but on people's feelings toward