HOUSING FOR THE 21ST CENTURY ACT

HOUSING FOR THE 21ST CENTURY ACT

Congressional Record, Volume 172 Issue 44 (Tuesday, March 10, 2026) [Congressional Record Volume 172, Number 44 (Tuesday, March 10, 2026)] [Senate] [Pages S953-S955] From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [ www.gpo.gov ] HOUSING FOR THE 21ST CENTURY ACT Mr. KENNEDY. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent to use a prop during my remarks. [[Page S954]] The PRESIDING OFFICER. Without objection, it is so ordered. Tribute to Connor Domingue Mr. KENNEDY. Mr. President, before I go to my topics, I want to recognize one of my colleagues, Mr. Connor Domingue. He is sitting to my right, your left. Connor has been one of my colleagues for a while. I rely on him a lot, including for counseling with respect to healthcare. Connor is a graduate of the University of Louisiana at Lafayette. He is leaving me. I hate to see him go. I am happy for him--sad for me, happy for him. He is going back home to Louisiana to take a job in Louisiana State government. And I asked him to come down today to just thank him for giving so much to his country--Connor. Coffee Mr. President, I want to talk about two rather diverse topics, coffee and our friends in the United Kingdom. About 90 percent of my personal philosophy is: Don't hurt someone unless they are trying to hurt you. Don't take other people's stuff. And leave me alone. I believe in free will. I believe God gave us all free will. With that free will goes responsibility. I don't need government to tell me how to live my life. That doesn't mean I don't support reasonable rules and regulations and laws. But I don't need government to micromanage my life. That is what I mean when I say: ``Leave me alone.'' Earlier this month--it might have been the last part of last month--I noticed that Secretary Kennedy started talking about coffee. Particularly, he mentioned Starbucks coffee. Now, I voted for Secretary Kennedy to be the President's choice. I like Secretary Kennedy. I don't agree with everything that Secretary Kennedy has said and done. We have some differences. I use a toilet seat to sit on. I won't go any further on that. But one of the things I support Secretary Kennedy on is trying to make the American people more cognizant about what they are eating, not to tell them what they can eat and drink but to make them aware. And so I heard Bobby talking about Starbucks coffee--pretty popular. I am paraphrasing what he said, but he commented on how bad it is for you. So I scratched my head and said: You know, I am going to look into this. So I did. This is a cup of Starbucks coffee. I know that doesn't give you any frame of reference, but I checked--the most popular Starbucks coffee drink is a caramel macchiato--caramel macchiato. Now, I don't know what that is. I haven't had it. I generally don't drink coffee that takes 10 or more words to order. But I am told that Starbucks' most popular drink is the caramel macchiato. It will cost you, at Union Station--here is a macchiato cup from Starbucks. I am told it will cost you $6.88 to buy a large caramel macchiato at Union Station. Now, again, I am not telling people what to drink or how to spend their money, but I will tell you if you want to come by my office, you can get coffee for free. It won't be a caramel macchiato, but it is pretty dang good coffee. But be that as it may, I said: You know, I have got to look into what is in a caramel macchiato. Here is what is in a caramel macchiato: milk, brewed espresso, vanilla syrup--I didn't know what vanilla syrup was. I found out that vanilla syrup is sugar, water, natural flavors, potassium sorbate, and citric acid. Also in a caramel macchiato is caramel sauce. Makes sense. That is why they call it a caramel macchiato. Caramel sauce is sugar, corn syrup, butter, cream, milk, and salt. Also in a caramel macchiato is water, heavy cream, nonfat dry milk, natural flavors, salt, mono and diglycerides--I probably mispronounced that--soy lecithin--I probably mispronounced that too, but I don't know what the hell it is anyway--and sulfites. Now, not to put too fine a point on it, but in a caramel macchiato, there are 310 calories; 80 of those calories come from fat. The total fat in a caramel macchiato is 9 grams. Saturated fat is 6 grams; cholesterol, 35 milligrams; sodium, 190 milligrams--whoa, Nellie--total carbohydrates, 44 grams; protein, 13 grams; and caffeine, 150 milligrams. Of the total of 44 grams of carbohydrates--the sugar got my attention--42 grams of that is sugar. That is about 85 percent of your recommended daily sugar intake. So one of these, you have got 85 percent of the amount of sugar that you are supposed to take in for the day. Fat intake, one of these provides you with 30 percent of your recommended daily saturated fat intake and 12 percent of your recommended daily cholesterol intake. Again, I am not criticizing anybody--well, there goes the caramel macchiato. Grab it for me there. I am not telling anybody what to do or not to do. I am just pointing out the facts. A caramel macchiato has as much sugar as 12 Chips Ahoy cookies. A caramel macchiato has as much sugar as four Krispy Kreme glazed doughnuts. A caramel macchiato--the most popular drink at Starbucks--has as much sugar as two servings of Breyers cookies and cream ice cream. It has as much sugar as one Chick-fil-A brownie. And it has about as much sugar as about 50 percent of a medium McDonald's chocolate milkshake. You can burn off the calories, though, if you run 3 miles to burn off the calories. So, again, I am not here to tell people what they should drink or not drink or eat or not drink, but I wanted the American people, to the extent that they are listening and that they care to understand, why I think Secretary Kennedy made the point that he made about coffee that takes 10 or more words to order--and specifically Starbucks coffee. Iran Now, the second thing I want to talk about, our friends in the United Kingdom--and they are our friends. I love the people of the United Kingdom. I do. I went to school there for a while. They are wonderful people. They deserve better than the government that they are being given right now. I don't mean any disrespect in saying this, but I am not a big fan of the Prime Minister, Prime Minister Starmer. The United Kingdom was founded by geniuses, but at the moment, it is being run by idiots. We entered Iran because we had no choice. I don't want America to be the world's policemen; I do not. But on occasion, some of the bad guys in the world decide they are going to be the world's policemen, and it requires us to intervene, and that is why we are in Iran--if I said Iraq, I made a mistake--that is why we are in Iran. The President did not enter Iran to start a war. He entered Iran to prevent a war. Let me tell you why I say that. Our intelligence clearly showed--categorically, unequivocally--that Iran had restarted its nuclear warhead program. And let me say, I love the people of Iran too. I mean that. I don't think much of their political leadership. The good people of Iran basically are being governed--before and, now, with the new Supreme Leader--by Jack Nicholson in The Shining. They are stone- cold crazy. Their religion teaches them--their interpretation of their religion tells them that they have to kill people who don't interpret their religion the same way that they do, and when your religion tells you to kill somebody, as far as I am concerned, it is time to get a new religion. But be that as it may, our intelligence clearly showed that Iran had restarted its nuclear weapons program; and its plan was to produce so many ballistic missiles and, to some extent, cruise missiles and drones. In fact, they were producing between 200 and 600 ballistic missiles a month. Our intelligence showed that their plan was to stockpile so many missiles and so many drones that if we reentered--or anyone reentered Iran to stop their new efforts to obtain a nuclear warhead, that they would annihilate the entire Middle East--the entire Middle East--and other countries they could reach, like Turkey. That is a fact. That is what the intelligence showed. So the President, wanting to avoid a future war, said: I have got to intervene now. And here is our mission--I don't care what you have heard; this is what our mission is in Iran. We want to destroy their Navy. We want to destroy Iran's Air Force. We want to destroy Iran's missile production facilities. We want to destroy Iran's drone production facilities. We want to destroy or make them use as many of their missiles as they have--and their drones--and we want to attack and destroy the [[Page S955]] infrastructure used by the Revolutionary Guard, and then we want to get out. Now, there has been a lot of speculation by some of my Democratic friends that, well, the President is going to put boots on the ground. I don't believe that. I don't believe that. If the President puts boots on the ground, the thud you hear will be me face-planting from surprise. I will faint. How long will this take? I think a few more weeks, and then we will be out. Was our intelligence right? You had better believe it was. What is the very first thing that the Iranian leadership did? They started attacking all of the other countries in the Middle East. They even fired a missile at Turkey. They even fired a missile at the United Kingdom, one of its bases in Cyprus. Now, I give you this background so you will know why the President did what he did. Everything I just told you, the Prime Minister of the United Kingdom knew. He had the same intelligence we had. When it came time for us to intervene, he said: You cannot use any United Kingdom air force bases or military bases--none, zero, nada. He specifically said you can't use Diego Garcia, the joint United States-United Kingdom military base in the Indian Ocean that Keir Starmer is trying to give away to Mauritius. You have heard me talk about it on the Senate floor. And Mauritius, of c