DEPARTMENT OF HOMELAND SECURITY APPROPRIATIONS ACT, 2026--Motion to Proceed

DEPARTMENT OF HOMELAND SECURITY APPROPRIATIONS ACT, 2026--Motion to Proceed

Congressional Record, Volume 172 Issue 55 (Tuesday, March 24, 2026) [Congressional Record Volume 172, Number 55 (Tuesday, March 24, 2026)] [Senate] [Pages S1570-S1577] From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [ www.gpo.gov ] DEPARTMENT OF HOMELAND SECURITY APPROPRIATIONS ACT, 2026--Motion to Proceed Mr. THUNE. I move to proceed to Calendar No. 311, H.R. 7147. The PRESIDING OFFICER. The clerk will report. The legislative clerk read as follows: Motion to proceed to Calendar No. 311, H.R. 7147, a bill making further consolidated appropriations for the fiscal year ending September 30, 2026, and for other purposes. Mr. THUNE. I yield the floor. I suggest the absence of a quorum. The PRESIDING OFFICER. The clerk will call the roll. The legislative clerk proceeded to call the roll. Mr. MURPHY. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the order for the quorum call be rescinded. The PRESIDING OFFICER. Without objection, it is so ordered. War Powers Resolution Mr. MURPHY. Mr. President, colleagues, in a few moments I am going to call up for a vote--a resolution on a privileged motion to end the war in Iran. I am going to be joined on the floor by several of my colleagues, all of us here in astonishment that 4 weeks into the most significant conflict in the Middle East in most of our careers in this body--12- plus Americans killed, $2 billion at least being spent every day, thousands dead throughout the region--we have still not yet had a single hearing in the United States Senate on the war in Iran. We have not had a debate on a war authorization. We have not had a vote to allow Senators to weigh in--up or down--as to whether they want the United States to be at war again in the Middle East. This is an extraordinary moment, and I know we risk engaging in hyperbole these days, coming down to the floor and naming one moment as extraordinary after another moment. But I don't think we have had a moment like this, where the United States has been unquestionably at war with a foreign power, where American soldiers are dying as we speak and it is being hidden, actively, from the public by the Congress. It is bad enough that we haven't had a debate and vote other than those forced by Democrats. We haven't had a hearing in the Foreign Relations Committee. We haven't had a hearing in the Armed Services Committee. Now, I think we know the reason. The reason is that this administration cannot defend and explain this war. But if they cannot and if they are not willing to come to Congress and defend this war, it speaks to the indictment of the preparation and the strategy. I am going to read to you an excerpt from a Washington Post article. Now, the Washington Post has been very careful about their criticism of the President recently: A surge of additional U.S. forces to the Middle East and President Donald Trump's threat to ``obliterate'' Iran's energy infrastructure have set the stage for what U.S. and Israeli security officials increasingly see as the war's . . . endgame: a battle for control of the Strait of Hormuz and key energy installations. Reopening the strait . . . has emerged as perhaps the paramount objective of [the] war . . . officials now believe is unlikely to achieve goals that briefly seemed possible at the outset of the [war] . . . including overthrowing Iran's theocratic regime and putting a nuclear weapon permanently out of Tehran's reach. Let me restate that for you. The Trump administration now says that the goal of the war is not to dislodge an anti-American regime in Tehran; it is not to stop Iran from getting a nuclear weapon; it is not even to permanently end Iran's ability to have missiles that can reach their neighbors or drone capacity that can provoke in the region. The primary goal now is to reopen the Strait of Hormuz. Here is the problem: The strait was open before the war began. We are now seeking to solve a problem that we created. This is insanity. Two billion dollars is a lot of money. That is the minimum amount of money that is being spent every single day on this war. There are over a dozen families who are burying their loved ones in the United States, and there may be dozens more if this war continues. Prices are skyrocketing--not just in America but all across the world. Notices just went out from DuPont to their customers that the price of plastic is doubling. The price at the pump in many States is at $4, $5, and going higher. Fertilizer: soon to be unaffordable for American farmers. The consequences of this war are stunning in their scope: higher prices for American businesses and American families, a potential global recession, the wasting of billions of dollars of hard- earned taxpayer dollars, and new conflicts in the region that didn't exist before the war began. In the last day, there have been 12 missile attacks inside Israel. Just during this last vote, news broke of another missile attack on a community, Bnei Brak, with nine people injured, six children injured. Just in the last week, there have been multiple missile and drone attacks on cities throughout Israel; six ballistic missiles from two separate attacks hit the Kurdish region in Iraq, killing six Kurdish fighters; and an Iranian missile attack on the Iranian-United States base in Diego Garcia. That is 2,500 miles away from Tehran. UAE has basically stopped giving out information about these drone and missile attacks because they happen so frequently, but on Monday, they did publicize they engaged with 16 drones and 7 ballistic missiles. That was just on Monday. Israel has invaded Lebanon. Those two countries are on the verge of full-scale war. One-sixth of the population of Lebanon has already been displaced. Syria is at risk of falling apart again. We have created a catastrophe in the Middle East. We are lighting taxpayer dollars on fire. We are causing prices to go up for everyone. And what is our new war aim? Reopening the strait that was open before we started the war. This is basic incompetence. This is what you get when you put talk show hosts and real estate developers in charge of American national security: a war that makes absolutely no sense. Even though our war aims have been reduced to simply undoing the damage [[Page S1571]] that we created, it is not even clear we can accomplish that goal. Word is that Iran has now figured out that they can open the strait for limited purposes if you pay them, and that may now be the permanent state of affairs in the strait, that Iran will decide who gets to go through and who doesn't. That is not what happened before the war. We have created a new reality in which Iran has more power over the global economy than they have ever had before. We have not been able to stop their ability to project power. They are still, today, 4 weeks into the war, firing missiles and drones at their neighbors. The regime that is in charge now is, according to analysts, worse than the regime that it replaced. Yes, we killed a whole bunch of people, including the Supreme Leader, but from everything we understand, the group now in charge is more adversarial to U.S. interests and is going to be more provocative in the region. So this war makes absolutely no sense. And the only way to save American consumers, the only way to try to put the pieces back together in the region is for the war to end. So I am glad to be joined here on the floor today by several of my colleagues. Many of them have introduced similar resolutions. This will be the third time that we have brought a War Powers Resolution before the floor--Senator Kaine and then Senator Booker. This will likely not be the last resolution that we will bring before the floor because we have a sacred obligation handed to us by our Founding Fathers for this body and the House of Representatives to decide war. It was a very deliberate decision not to give the power to make war to one individual--to the President of the United States--but to give it to the people. And the people make their voice heard through their elected Members of Congress. And so if our Republican colleagues will not do their duty, if they are going to engage in an effort to hide the consequences of the war, if they are going to refuse to ask questions of our incompetent national security leaders at the White House who have waged this war without planning for the foreseeable consequences, then we will force a debate and a vote on this floor. This war is not going to make more sense the longer it goes. It is not going to become more popular. Right now, by a 26-point margin, Americans do not support this war. It will be harder as time goes on-- not easier--for my Republican colleagues to continue to vote for this war as a vote against this resolution will be. But it is our responsibility under the Constitution to have this debate, and I am glad to have my colleagues on the floor to make this case to the Senate as well. I yield the floor. The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Illinois. Ms. DUCKWORTH. Mr. President, I thank Senator Murphy. Every day since he started this embarrassment of a war, Donald Trump has saluted our troops with one hand and given them the middle finger with the other--because despite the lies he tells on Truth Social, he is actively making the choice to use our heroes as cannon fodder. From the moment this conflict began, Trump has tried to shroud his incompetence behind their valor. When asked to justify his actions, he has tried to hide his ignorance and cowardice behind their courage. He has tried to act as if questioning why we are at war is the same as questioning the skill and bravery of our troops themselves. It isn't-- not at all. I know that our military will always do the best job possible. When given a mission, our servicemembers don't say: Why me? They don't ask: But will I be safe? And they sure as hell don't run to their podiatrist crying ``bone spurs.'' No. Instead, they pack their rucksacks; they lace

Referenced legislation: HR7147, HR7147