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Congressional Daily Record
This section captures a floor statement or debate entry. It mentions legislation such as To direct the removal of United States Armed Forces from hostilities within or against the Republic of Cuba that have not been authorized by Congress., committees such as Committee on Foreign Relations, members such as Timothy Michael Kaine.
Issued
April 28, 2026
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Download official Senate Record PDFReturn to issue contextWITHIN OR AGAINST THE REPUBLIC OF CUBA THAT HAVE NOT BEEN AUTHORIZED BY
CONGRESS—Motion to Discharge
Mr. KAINE. Mr. President, I am about to make a motion with respect to the War Powers Resolution, but I understand there will be a point of order offered that is not debatable. So I just want to say that my understanding is that the point of order will suggest that what is currently being engaged in, in Cuba, is not hostilities.
within the contemplation of the body of hostilities that are ongoing or are imminent because Congress wanted an ability for Congress to stop a war before it started, and that was contemplated in the War Powers Resolution.
energy from going to Cuba, and that has led to the cancelation of 100,000 surgeries in hospitals, including 11,000 for children. It has led to massive power blackouts. It has led to the unavailability of clean water because water systems depend upon electric pumps.
and affecting our citizens in that way, we would certainly view that as hostilities that we would want to do everything we could to stop.
With that, Mr. President, pursuant to section 1013 of the Department of State Authorization Act for fiscal years 1984 and 1985—that is 50 U.S.C., section 1546(a)—and in accordance with section 601(b) of the International Security Assistance and Arms Export Control Act of 1976, I move to discharge the Committee on Foreign Relations from further consideration of S.J. Res. 124.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. The clerk will report.
The legislative clerk read as follows:
Motion to discharge S.J. Res. 124 from the Committee on
Foreign Relations, a joint resolution to direct the removal
of United States Armed Forces from hostilities within or
against the Republic of Cuba that have not been authorized by
Congress.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Virginia.
Mr. KAINE. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent to yield back all remaining time.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. Without objection, it is so ordered.
The Senator from Florida.
Mr. SCOTT of Florida. Mr. President, I just want to say I am from Florida, and I probably have more Cuban Americans in my State than anywhere else in this country. This is really important. The Cuban regime has just been despicable. They have killed Americans, and they have destroyed the lives of Cubans for decades. So this has to change.
Point of Order
Mr. President, I make a point of order that this joint resolution is not entitled to privilege under 50 U.S.C. 1546(a) due to U.S. troops not being engaged in hostilities.
Vote on Point of Order
The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Chair submits the question to the Senate for its decision.
The question is, Is the point of order well taken?
Mr. SCOTT of Florida. I ask for the yeas and nays.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. Is there a sufficient second?
There appears to be a sufficient second.
The clerk will call the roll.
The legislative clerk called the roll.
Mr. BARRASSO. The following Senator is necessarily absent: the Senator from Alabama (Mr.Tuberville).
Mr. DURBIN. I announce that the Senator from Virginia (Mr.Warner) is necessarily absent.
The result was announced—yeas 51, nays 47, as follows:
Rollcall Vote No. 108 Leg.
YEAS—51
Armstrong
Banks
Barrasso
Blackburn
Boozman
Britt
Budd
Capito
Cassidy
Cornyn
Cotton
Cramer
Crapo
Cruz
Curtis
Daines
Ernst
Fetterman
Fischer
Graham
Grassley
Hagerty
Hawley
Hoeven
Husted
Hyde-Smith
Johnson
Justice
Kennedy
Lankford
Lee
Lummis
Marshall
McConnell
McCormick
Moody
Moran
Moreno
Murkowski
Ricketts
Risch
Rounds
Schmitt
Scott (FL)
Scott (SC)
Sheehy
Sullivan
Thune
Tillis
Wicker
Young
NAYS—47
Alsobrooks
Baldwin
Bennet
Blumenthal
Blunt Rochester
Booker
Cantwell
Collins
Coons
Cortez Masto
Duckworth
Durbin
Gallego
Gillibrand
Hassan
Heinrich
Hickenlooper
Hirono
Kaine
Kelly
Kim
King
Klobuchar
Lujan
Markey
Merkley
Murphy
Murray
Ossoff
Padilla
Paul
Peters
Reed
Rosen
Sanders
Schatz
Schiff
Schumer
Shaheen
Slotkin
Smith
Van Hollen
Warnock
Warren
Welch
Whitehouse
Wyden
NOT VOTING—2
Tuberville
Warner
The PRESIDING OFFICER. On this vote, the yeas are 51, the nays are 47.
The point of order is well-taken.
The motion to discharge falls.
The Senator from Louisiana.
Tribute to Rebecca Streidel and Charlie Kay
Mr. KENNEDY. Mr. President, with me today are two of my interns that I have enjoyed working with, Ms. Rebecca Streidel and Mr. Charlie Kay. And I wanted to—also with me—he is not a summer intern. He is one of my permanent colleagues Mr. John Lowery.
White House Correspondents' Association Dinner Shooting
Mr. President, I want to talk about a couple of subjects today. First, I thought it would be appropriate to make a comment about the White House Correspondents' Association dinner Saturday night.
helps my perspective or hurts it. But I was at home watching the NBA playoffs. The Timberwolves won, by the way.
I am sorry it happened Saturday night. I am glad no one got hurt. I think what happened is as straightforward as it is tragic.
who thinks he is smarter and more virtuous than the American people and who thinks if you disagree with him, you are not only in error, you are in sin and deserve to die, tried to crash the function and assassinate the President and some members of his administration.
Many members of our media—and, look, I am glad no one was hurt. I said that, but I want to emphasize that. Some members of the media will portray him as a victim. They will say his mom or daddy didn't love him enough, or maybe he was just mixed up or confused or had a mental defect.
They can say what they want. But I believe in free will and responsibility. And this punk was responsible for his actions, and he is going to be punished. And he, frankly, should be punished.
I want to also say a word about security.
Look, we are going to hold hearings. We love to hold hearings on Capitol Hill. That is one of our favorite things to do. And there are going to be hearings held about the security provided by our Secret Service and others. I am not saying those hearings shouldn't be held. I am not a security expert.
is, those who are also familiar with it know that this guy never got close. He was on a different floor. He never made it to the right floor, and that is because of our brave women and men who provide security. In fact, I thought our security showed great restraint. I was frankly very surprised that this punk didn't end up like a piece of Swiss cheese.
Mr. President, could I ask my colleagues here to hold it down for a minute? Maybe they could take their discussions off the floor.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. Could we have order on the floor?
Mr. KENNEDY. I know they have got work to do. But I have got work to do too, and I can't hear myself think here.
Joint Meeting of Congress
Mr. President, let me say a word about King Charles.
King Charles spoke to a joint session of Congress today. I thank him so much for coming. He was eloquent. He was charming. He was funny. He talked about the special relationship between the United States and the United Kingdom. And we do have a special relationship, and I hope it can continue.
And I want to come back to the King's visit.
article, in particular, in The Economist magazine. I read The Economist magazine, anyway, every week. In my opinion—I have read it cover to cover. It is really—some call it a newspaper, but it really is a magazine.
I have read it cover to cover for 25 years. It covers the world. I have always enjoyed the reporting because it is very in depth, and it is very factual. Just about every author of every article offers his or her opinion. But it is subtle, and it is nuanced. And usually they offer their opinion after presenting both sides of the story.
The Economist has really changed. Their reporting has crossed the line, in my opinion, and they are so angry at the President and angry at America that it has seeped into their reporting. And I really regret that. I am going to keep reading, but I really regret that they have given in to their appetitive desires and lost some of their objectivity.
And the article, in particular, that I read, I read it on the plane. I don't remember whether I was going home or coming up. But the article that I read in preparation for King Charles' visit was entitled: “Britain rethinks its `special relationship' with America.”
“Britain rethinks its `special relationship' with America.”
And this was the question that The Economist was asking: Should Britain, the United Kingdom, which we do have a special relationship— should the United Kingdom keep hugging America or embrace Europe?
startled me. The article also points out—and this also surprised me and disappointed me—that the author of the article pointed it out, almost gleefully, that today, when you poll the American people and ask them if they approve of Britain, 76 percent of Americans approve. When you ask our friends in Britain if they approve of America, only 34 percent do. That one surprised me.
show, America does have a special relationship with the United Kingdom, and it is an important relationship. And that is why the American people spilled their blood and spent their treasure in 1917 to protect the British Empire. That is why the American people spent their treasure and spilled their blood in 1941 in World War II to protect the British Empire, which would not have won without America's help.
After World War II, in Great Britain, it was horrible. They were devastated, flat on their back broke. America—still, they were our friends—our special friends. America lifted them up, bankrolled their reconstruction. We went in, loaned them money, helped them to get back on their feet.
we—we meaning the United Kingdom and the United States—had a new enemy, the Soviet Union. We protected the United Kingdom all through the Cold War. I am proud of that. I would do it again in a heartbeat.
United Kingdom and NATO and our friends in Europe. If you look at the money—I know there has been a lot of rhetoric that our allies in Europe are going to do better and spend more money on their own defense, but the numbers are the numbers. The American taxpayer still puts up 60 percent of total NATO defense spending today. We put up $845 billion a year to protect our cousins in the United Kingdom and in Europe.
I support NATO. I support continuing to do that. And so I agree with King
Charles. We do have a special relationship, and we should nurture it, and we should make it better.
But friends tell friends the truth. And to my friends in the United Kingdom, as we try to appreciate and reset our relationship, I would say to them gently and respectfully: The world has changed. You have to pay your own bills for a while.
This isn't the fault of the good people of the United Kingdom. This is the fault of their political leadership. It is especially true of their current political leadership. But they have castrated their military. They have. They are weak as rainwater. This doesn't happen in a week or a day or a month. This happened over a long period of time.
I remember when Great Britain ruled the seas. Now, when Iran fires a missile at their base in Cyprus, they can barely find a ship to send down there. And that ship barely made it.
hollow out its industrial base. I have watched the political leadership in the United Kingdom spend all their money on welfare.
the political leadership—and, again, I say this gently. I don't want to do anything to take away from the King's speech. I say this gently and respectfully: It is time for the political leadership in the United Kingdom to embrace adulthood. And it is time for them to start paying their bills and time for them to start spending money on the military.
Now, I know the Prime Minister said: We are going to do better. And he and some of our other allies in Europe are talking about spending 3.5 percent of their GDP on defense and another 1.5 percent on infrastructure in support of defense. It is a lot of talk so far.
for the military and military spending. I actually read it. I thought this part was special. Yes, he is going to start spending more money, but it is back-end loaded. It is not going to happen. They are not spending any serious money until 2030, and I can assure you that Sir Keir will not be around as Prime Minister of the United Kingdom in September or October or January of 2030. He is struggling now. His poll numbers—I probably shouldn't say this, but it is true. He is polling right up there with gonorrhea in terms of popularity. It is just a fact.
want us to be closer. But the political leadership in the United Kingdom has got to do its part. This is supposed to be a partnership.
the day—the King and the Queen. And, of course, even though it was a beautiful speech that King Charles gave, the real heavy lifting is done, as we all know, in private. The King is going to meet privately with President Trump, and they are going to talk about the world, and they are going to get down to the specifics of things we can do to help each other.
I don't know what the King is going to talk to the President about. I don't know if he is carrying messages from the political leadership in the United Kingdom. That is all above my pay grade. But if the King is carrying a message from the Prime Minister of the United Kingdom to try to convince our President to give away the Diego Garcia military base to an African country which is the BFF of China, I hope our President will continue to resist. I hope he will respond to that request, if it is made, by saying: The short answer is no. The long answer is hell no.
The Prime Minister of the United Kingdom—as you know, Mr. President, the Chagos Islands are owned by the United Kingdom. They are in the Indian Ocean. On one of the islands, we built a military base with the United Kingdom called Diego Garcia. And it is a really important military base for both countries.
United Nations has made him feel guilty about Britain's colonial past— the United Nations has told Prime Minister Starmer that he has got to give away this military base to the African country of Mauritius, even though Mauritius has never owned Diego Garcia or the Chagos Islands. They have no connection with it, none whatsoever.
United Kingdom and the good people of Great Britain once controlled other countries, they are supposed to feel guilty and give away our military base and their military base to Mauritius, who will promptly turn the keys over to China.
And eventually, the Prime Minister talked the President into it. And then President Trump came—as he always does, he thought it through. He said: No, I am not doing that.
And so they are still sawing on him and working on him. And I don't know if the King is going to bring it up, and certainly it is the King's right if he does. But I hope the President will stand firm, and let's not give away this military base to China.
Carbon Dioxide
Mr. President, I want to spend my last few minutes on another topic. This one is important to all of us, but it is also important to Louisiana. I want to talk about carbon dioxide.
gas. It is colorless. It is odorless. It is everywhere. It is actually a pretty small part of our atmosphere really. I looked at the numbers. It is 0.04 percent of the Earth's atmosphere. It is a really, really small part of it, but it packs a wallop.
oxygen, and it is produced naturally. When we breathe out, for example, we breathe out carbon dioxide. It is produced naturally when organic matter decomposes. And it is very important to God's world. Plants use it for photosynthesis. It also is released when we burn fossil fuels. You have probably read that.
beneficial uses, one of the downsides of it is that it is a fairly heavy gas. And it rises, even though it is dispersed throughout our atmosphere. But it does rise, and it is what is called a greenhouse gas. It acts like a blanket.
blanket covers the Earth. And what happens when you are under a blanket? It holds in heat. And that heat can change your natural temperature and sometimes impacts your weather and your sea levels. That is why you hear some folks talk about global warming and climate change. That is what we are talking about. That is all CO2 is.
We don't have a world plan to deal with this problem. President Biden came up with a plan. It was called “spend as much money as I possibly can.” He spent billions of dollars fighting CO2.
I checked. Do you know how much all of the billions—and he might have spent a trillion but certainly billions of dollars of American taxpayer money that he spent—do you know how much it lowered temperatures? None. Zero. Zilch. He never had a plan. It was always just throw money at the wall and see what happens. I hope in the future we can do better.
But here is my point: One of the things that government did to try to combat CO2—or at least control CO2—is pay companies to capture it. And we are still doing that. And what do I mean by capture?
Well, when companies—let's say, take a petrochemical plant. When it burns fossil fuels, natural gas usually, it produces CO2— carbon dioxide. And there is a way, under the technology, to capture that CO2. What do you do with it? One option is to inject it into the ground, into the Earth, deep beneath our feet.
Biden years very woke, and they criticized anybody who asked questions about President Biden's climate change plan.
the Federal Government was giving them bucketloads of money to capture this carbon. It is called the 45Q tax credit.
capture carbon and inject it into the ground in the interest of our environment and climate.
We pay 85 bucks. It is your money. You are paying it, not me. I pay a little bit of it when I pay my taxes, but we all pay it. We actually pay companies $85 a ton. The lobbyists and many of our friends in the business community are lobbying right now to increase the money that we pay them to $250 a ton. But just based on paying them $85 a ton, by 2030, we will be spending about $30 billion.
the interest of the environment, they are being paid a whole bunch of money to do it as well. I am not saying they wouldn't do it anyway out of the goodness of their heart, but the money doesn't hurt. OK?
capture this carbon and inject it in the ground. Now, I didn't come here tonight to debate whether that is a good idea or a bad idea. A lot of that is up to the States and to Congress for another day. There are pros and cons, and some say it is a good idea. Some say it is a bad idea.
CO2 into producing oil and gas wells for years to make the gas and oil flow better without hurting anybody. I know in other cases there have been CO2 pipelines—carbon dioxide pipelines— transmitting carbon dioxide that have ruptured and injured people. I don't know who is right, and I don't know who is wrong.
it on somebody's property. And that is where the rub comes in. We take our property rights in Louisiana seriously. Your right to own property is a Federal constitutional right. In Louisiana, it is also a State constitutional right. So important, we put it in our State constitution. Article I, section 4 of our State constitution says:
Every person has the right to acquire, own, control, use,
enjoy, protect, and dispose of private property.
This right to own property is subject to reasonable
statutory restrictions and the reasonable exercise of the
police power.
What does that mean? Well, as we all know, that means, if I own a piece of property and they want to put a highway through and I don't want them to put a highway through my property, but it would cost the taxpayers of my State three times the amount to move the highway over here as opposed to putting it through my property—under the law, we call it expropriation. I think some States call it eminent domain.
the State can come in and say: Look, Kennedy, we know you don't want to give up your property, but it is going to cost us a lot more to put the road over here. So we are going to take your property, but we are going to pay you full price.
And they do. They have to. It is in our constitution. They have to pay the full, fair market price. So we are pretty comfortable with that.
that I talked about who are being paid this Federal money—$85 a ton to capture carbon and inject it into the ground—can also take people's land to put in an injection well. And I don't like that.
I am not taking sides in terms of carbon capture. I am not. But we have got a lot of people in my State that are very suspect about the wisdom of this carbon capture. I am not saying they are right or wrong. But they have learned the hard way that if you trust government, you failed history class.
usually in my rural areas—who owns 50 acres that was handed down from their dad and mom and their dad and mom and their dad and mom, if a company wants to come in and pay them to put in an injection well and put carbon dioxide underneath their land and those land owners are OK with that, I am OK with it.
start coming in and taking people's property and putting in an injection well. That is a big difference between putting in a road.
This is a new technology. We are still learning about it. And right now, under Louisiana law—this was passed by the Louisiana Legislature. The statute is title 30, section 1108, Louisiana revised statute 30:1108. This is what it says:
Any storage operator—
ground—
Any storage operator is hereby authorized, after obtaining
any permit and any certificate of public convenience and
necessity from the commissioner—
That means they get the permission of the State.
. . . [can] exercise the power of eminent domain and
expropriate [take] needed property.
family land and says, “We will offer you this. We want to put in an injection well,” and the owners of that land go, “I don't think so. This property has been in my family for years, and I don't know about this CO2 stuff anyway,” they are not going to have a choice because the State can come in and take that land.
this. I think we ought to go back to what our State constitution says and what the Federal Constitution has said even longer: People have the right to property. People have the right to property.
That concludes my remarks. I can show myself out.
Mr. President, I suggest the absence of a quorum.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. The clerk will call the roll.
The senior assistant bill clerk proceeded to call the roll.
Ms. LUMMIS. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the order for the quorum call be rescinded.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. Without objection, it is so ordered.