The Congressional Record is a unique source of public documentation. It started in 1873, documenting nearly all the major and minor policies being discussed and debated.
“ENDLESS FRONTIER ACT--Continued” mentioning Richard J. Durbin was published in the Senate section on pages S3851-S3876 on May 27.
Of the 100 senators in 117th Congress, 24 percent were women, and 76 percent were men, according to the Biographical Directory of the United States Congress.
Senators' salaries are historically higher than the median US income.
The publication is reproduced in full below:
ENDLESS FRONTIER ACT--Continued
The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Michigan.
S. 1260
Ms. STABENOW. Mr. President, it will come as no surprise to anyone in this Chamber that I am extremely proud to be born and raised in Michigan.
Our State leads the world in innovation. We are the leaders in making things--furniture, appliances, wind turbines and solar components and so much more, and, of course, we are the home of the automobile and the automotive assembly line and the middle class of America.
Our workers put the world on four wheels. They built an economy strong enough that those same workers could afford to buy one or two or more cars and trucks that they made.
Yet our Nation faces a stark choice right now, and that is why the bill in front of us tonight is so very important. We can continue to invest in making things in America or we can decide that it is not really worth the trouble anymore.
We can continue to lead the world in the research and development of breakthrough technologies or we can allow other countries to surge ahead while we tread water. And we can stand with our workers on the assembly lines as they build the vehicles of the future or we can watch our plants close, ship our jobs overseas, and let our middle class wither away--our choice.
But I would argue that we may have no choice. That is no choice at all. We know what we need to do. It is time to stand on the side of American manufacturing, as this bill does. It is time to stand on the side of American ingenuity, as this bill does. And it is time to stand on the side of American workers and our American middle class.
It is time to take a stand and invest in our shared future and build an economy that can compete with anyone, anywhere, anytime. That is America. That is what the U.S. Innovation and Competition Act does.
One of our first orders of business is to increase our investments in research and development, and we have no time to lose. American R&D spending is near the lowest point in 60 years--lowest point in 60 years. What else happened 60 years ago? Well, the first person flew into space, and he wasn't an American. That fact helped light a fire under American leaders. They understood that we could invest in R&D or let the Soviet Union surge ahead, and we did.
Today, we are in a race with China, and they are gaining on us. In 2019, China's investment in R&D grew by about 13 percent. Ours grew 8 percent. And they plan to boost R&D spending by 7 percent each year through 2025.
That is why it is so important that we pass the U.S. Innovation and Competition Act. It will invest $120 billion over 5 years in critical--
critical--research, including artificial intelligence, advanced computing, and semiconductors. And it will quadruple the investment for the manufacturing extension partnership and provides $1.2 billion for the Manufacturing USA Program that is especially important to Michigan.
We are proud to have two Manufacturing USA initiatives in our State--
Lightweight Innovations for Tomorrow, or LIFT, and Michigan State University's Scale-up Research Facility, or SURF. Both are located in the same facility in Detroit, and it is a very exciting place.
LIFT's projects include research into better welding processes for Navy ships and an anti-rollover system for military humvees. SURF is partnering with the Department of Energy and Ford and GM to make sure that America is a leader in advanced vehicle technologies.
We are equally proud of our amazing research institutions, including Michigan State University, the University of Michigan, Wayne State, and Michigan Tech.
Today's students are tomorrow's engineers. We know that. We are counting on their brain power to build a future in which cars are connected and collisions are a memory. That future is being written today at the American Center for Mobility in Michigan and Mcity at the University of Michigan, where connected and automated vehicles are tested, evaluated, and demonstrated. It is really amazing to see. It is being written by Michigan automakers, who are working towards the day where cars are emission-free--emission-free. I know that President Biden was impressed by Ford's new F-150 Lightning that he test drove in Michigan last week. I think it was hard to get him out of the car. He thought it was so cool.
Last month, I toured GM's new Factory Zero, which will soon be manufacturing electric Hummers and Silverado trucks, Chevy Silverado trucks. In Detroit, Stellantis, formerly known as Chrysler, is gearing up to build hybrid electric versions of an iconic American vehicle, the Jeep. It is what we have always done in Michigan. We make things, and we grow things. That is what we do.
Unfortunately, making things has gotten more difficult recently. COVID-19 exposed the weaknesses in our supply chain, and a shortage of semiconductors has idled multiple auto plants across the country and many in Michigan. Auto dealers that are normally packed with every make and model under the Sun suddenly have fewer choices. Worse, Michigan workers have been laid off--no chips, no cars, no work.
It is not enough to just build cars that are made in America. To remain competitive in the global marketplace, we need to build the component parts that go into the cars and trucks that we build in America--the supply chain.
In 1990, 37 percent of global semiconductor manufacturing capacity was here in the United States--37 percent. Today, it is 12 percent. They are definitely going in the wrong direction, and this is very serious. And the importance of these chips keep growing.
Other countries have invested in chip manufacturing. It is time we do the same. The U.S. Innovation and Competition Act provides $39 billion in the Commerce Department for incentives that will boost semiconductor manufacturing in the United States and make our supply chain more resilient. It includes $2 billion to incentivize the production of mature semiconductor technologies--the kinds of chips used by our auto companies and home appliances and defense manufacturing.
I am pleased that yesterday the Finance Committee passed the Clean Energy for America Act, which will help Michigan and our country launch the next generation of Michigan manufacturing. It includes my bipartisan legislation with Senator Manchin and Senator Daines to help companies invest in new clean energy manufacturing facilities and expand existing plants to build those new technologies, including semiconductors and battery operations.
Another way we can boost American manufacturing is to make sure every single American taxpayer dollar possible is spent on American-made products. My bipartisan Make it in America Act with Senator Warren makes it harder for Federal Agencies to use waivers or loopholes to get around ``Buy American'' rules to purchase foreign-made products. I also want to thank Tammy Baldwin and Senator Sherrod Brown for their continued leadership on these ``Buy American'' issues.
The Federal Government is an enormous consumer, and we are set to make big infrastructure investments. ``Buy American'' rules means that American dollars flow into local economies when we purchase American-
made PPE, American-made iron and steel, and great American electric vehicles.
It is time to invest in the research and development that turn American ingenuity into American innovation and U.S. ingenuity into U.S. innovation. It is time to build an American supply chain that can build American products and American jobs in American communities. And it is time to ensure that American tax dollars are supporting those businesses and those workers.
I am proud to say Michigan workers built our Nation. It is time for our Nation to return the favor. The bill this evening on the floor is a critical step forward in making sure that happens.
I yield the floor.
The PRESIDING OFFICER (Mr. Ossoff). The Senator from Illinois
January 6 Commission
Mr. DURBIN. Mr. President, last week, something happened here in the Capitol which was unique. I am not sure it has ever happened before. It was reported that an anonymous group of Capitol Police officers published an open letter to Members of Congress.
I have been here a few years. I never heard of anything quite like this. Here is what these Capitol Police officers, who are entrusted with the responsibility of keeping us safe in the Capitol, wrote: ``On Jan 6th where some officers served their last day in US Capitol Police uniform, and not by choice, we would hope that Members whom we took an oath to protect, would at the very minimum support an investigation to get to the bottom of EVERYONE responsible and hold them 100 percent accountable no matter the title of position they hold or held.''
A challenge from the Capitol Police to the Members of Congress not to sweep under the carpet January 6 but to get to the bottom of it. Capitol policemen were attacked and died as a result of that insurrectionist mob on January 6, and these officers, who risk their lives every day for us, are begging us not to ignore what happened.
Yesterday, in POLITICO, the mother of fallen Capitol Police Officer Brian Sicknick wrote: ``Not having a January 6 Commission to look into exactly what occurred is a slap in the faces of all the officers who did their jobs that day.''
I met Gladys Sicknick when the memorial to her son was held in the Rotunda. I talked to her and her husband about their son, how they were worried when he decided to become a policeman, but they thought at least if he worked in the U.S. Capitol, it is a pretty safe assignment. Well, he died the day after January 6, many believe from complications which occurred in the attacks of that day.
To Gladys Sicknick, to the Sicknick family, to all of our Capitol Police officers to whom we entrust our lives every day, and to the members of the DC Metro Police and the other heroes who defended the Capitol on January 6, I say: We hear you, and you deserve justice.
It is hard to believe that before we adjourn today, we are likely to consider a January 6 Commission proposal that is doomed to fail. Imagine, the worst attack on this building since the War of 1812, and sadly, it has become a partisan issue. It is my understanding because of his public announcement that Senator McConnell is going to oppose it, and I understand that his caucus will follow his lead.
It is hard to imagine what is going on in the U.S. Congress these days.
Earlier this week, a Member of the House of Representatives--I am afraid she is already notorious for her inflammatory rhetoric--likened coronavirus masking guidelines to the Holocaust--the Holocaust. I feel no need to point out the absurdity, if not the anti-Semitic nature of such a comparison, but I do want to point out that that comparison was made by one of the lawmakers who were party to the January 6 insurrection attack on the Capitol.
The day before the insurrection, that same Congresswoman, a Republican Congresswoman, tweeted: ``Tomorrow is an important day in American history. The people will remember the Patriots who stood for election integrity. Let's go #FightForTrump!''
And fight they did.
I remember being in the Chamber that day. I still remember the sound of rioters banging on the doors and windows of this building, the sight of hundreds of them lined up outside, the disgusting display of Confederate flags. And the violence we saw that left 5 people dead and 139 law enforcement officers attacked.
So many shocking sights on January 6, 2021--a gallows was erected on the Capitol lawn and rioters attacking police officers with flagpoles bearing American flags or Trump flags.
One of the most painful images--and I am sure it was more painful to some than even to me--is a photo of a middle-age White man standing in the halls of our Capitol wearing a sweatshirt that read ``Camp Auschwitz.'' Below those repugnant words was another set of words:
``Work makes you free.'' That cruel slogan was emblazoned atop the black iron gates in Germany leading into the Auschwitz concentration camp. And one of the rioters--mobsters--on January 6 in the U.S. Capitol boldly wore that shirt.
These are the people who stormed the Capitol on January 6. They weren't Patriots by any measure. Included in their ranks were neo-
Nazis, White supremacists, and clear enemies of the United States. They were incited by the former President of the United States, Donald Trump, at a rally earlier that day, and his allies in Congress, like that Congresswoman I mentioned earlier, were party to the incitement as well.
I agree with those who have said that an insurrection without consequences--without even an examination--is a dress rehearsal for the next insurrection. That is why we cannot sweep January 6 and the events that led to it under the rug.
Incendiary rhetoric, especially from the mouths or the keyboards of elected officials, has a cost.
Comparing mask requirements in a pandemic to the Holocaust has a cost as well. It belittles the worst genocide in the history of the world. And it encourages the kinds of anti-Semitic attacks we have seen in recent days and weeks, like the vandalism in my home State at the synagogue in Skokie, IL.
Baselessly claiming that the Presidential election of last year was stolen and repeating that lie has a cost. It undermines the faith in our government and legitimizes a radical, anti-government movement that aims to overthrow this government.
It is time for us to tally up the costs, understand how the January 6 attack on our democracy happened and who incited it, and that investigation should not be a matter of controversy. It is part of our obligation, is it not? By our oath of office to defend this Constitution from all enemies, foreign and domestic? Future generations are counting on us to record in detail what did happen on January 6. And we ought to do it on a bipartisan basis.
But why is it necessary? With all of the videotapes and all of the photos and all of the statements of 400-plus people already arrested, why do we need to keep asking questions about that day? Because just 2 weeks ago, two different Republican Congressmen proclaimed that those who were in the Capitol that day were somehow peaceful patriots. That was the phrase that was used--peaceful patriots. Another one talked about them and believed the videotapes proved they were just orderly tourists--orderly tourists. Attacking police officers; five people died; crashing through the windows and doors; breaking down offices; desecrating this Chamber with their antics captured on videotape, and we have all seen them. Orderly tourists? Not by any measure.
We ought to investigate this on a bipartisan basis. Several Republican Senators have agreed. Thirty-five Members of the House Republican caucus thought so as well. Surely, all of us can appreciate the importance of working together to investigate why, for the first time in history, America was challenged when we were in the process of the peaceful transfer of power.
Here is the thing that I don't understand. Several of us in leadership were asked to leave the Capitol complex and go to a separate place. The identity of that location is kept confidential and private. But it was an interesting gathering of Democratic and Republican leaders in the wake of the January 6 insurrection which was underway as we were taken to the separate location.
And I looked around at the Democratic as well as the Republican leaders from the Senate and the House who were gathered, and it was clear to me--they say they felt the same feelings of anger and outrage that this mob had desecrated this building. And they were determined--
we were all determined--that the mob would not have the last word. We were determined to return to this Capitol that same day and finish our work counting the electoral college votes that declared Joe Biden President of the United States.
Calls were being made in every direction to police, to the military, to political leaders: Resecure this Capitol. Make certain that you remove those people who were responsible for the violence and insurrection we have seen. Let us get back to our work. Let us prove to the American people that the mob didn't have the last word.
I saw that bipartisan determination, and I felt damn good about it. Of all the differences we have had, of all the debate we have had, January 6, that afternoon, Democratic and Republican leaders were standing shoulder to shoulder, passing cellphones back and forth, and speaking to our leaders, talking about getting back into this Capitol and throwing that mob out. And it happened.
By 8 o'clock that evening, we were back on the floor of the U.S. Senate. By 2:30, we were gone, racing through the exit doors. At 8 o'clock, we were back to prove that they didn't have the last word. But, sadly, we know now they may have the last word because the call for a bipartisan commission to investigate this January 6 event and to put on the record exactly what happened is being opposed on a partisan basis.
There ought to be 100 Senate votes for investigating this attack and making a clear record for history so that those who mock the danger of the moment by calling this mob a peaceful, patriotic mob, or calling the members orderly tourists don't have the last word; yet we may not even have 60 votes today when the measure is called. Why? Let's get down to basics here.
Many of the Republican Members are afraid of the man who incited this mob. They are afraid of the former President and what he will say of them if we call for an investigation. They are afraid of Donald Trump. As a result, they are refusing to let this Commission move forward. Are they worried that this investigation into what happened on January 6 will hurt Republicans in next year's election? I think the position they are taking opposing an investigation will hurt them.
The events of that date are not fodder for political campaigns, really. They are a stain on our history. If we ignore them or allow the history of that day to be rewritten by deniers, shame on them.
The events of January 6 deserve and demand careful, thorough, and principled examination. That is why the independent Commission we are proposing is modeled after the same investigatory body that was created after 9/11. It will be led by 10 commissioners, evenly divided between Democrats and Republicans. Together, they would be called on to produce a definitive account of what happened and led to January 6, 2021. This is not an opportunity to score political points; it is an opportunity to score national unity and reconciliation.
When Senator McConnell, the Republican Senate leader, announced his opposition to this Commission last week, he said: ``It's not at all clear what new facts or additional investigation yet another commission can lay on top of the existing efforts by law enforcement and Congress.''
My response to Senator McConnell is this, respectfully: The public servants who lead this Commission will be charged with a different set of responsibilities than law enforcement and Members of Congress. The investigations being led by intelligence officials and members of law enforcement are criminal investigations. They will determine how the individuals who participated in the insurrection should be held legally accountable. And the ongoing investigation in Congress have largely been focused on our government's response to the violence of January 6, not to what provoked it.
The Commission we are considering today is different. It will be comprehensive by design, evenly divided on a partisan basis. It will examine all of the factors that inspired that riotous mob. And this Commission isn't just about uncovering truth. It goes back to the point I made opening this statement. This Commission is designed to honor the police officers who defended us and defended this Capitol on January 6, some of whom gave their lives in the process.
That letter from the police officers to us is a reminder that we owe them the same loyalty and the same dedication they give to us every single day. Dismissing this January 6 Commission and the gravity of this responsibility, sadly, does not honor the police officers who are prepared to give their lives for us every single day.
Here is a chance for my Republican colleagues to prove that they really care about law enforcement. So many speeches on the floor of the Senate in the last several weeks have derided and criticized people for calling on defunding the police. Well, I would tell them that the failure to create a Commission to objectively determine what happened when so many of our police officers were attacked on January 6, that doesn't defund the police; failing to create that Commission, sadly, defames them. And that is unacceptable by any standard.
Isn't it time we stand with the police officers and their request for this Commission? Isn't it time we make sure that heroes like Brian Sicknick and his family know that he did not die in vain? He paid the ultimate sacrifice to protect us. Let's honor it by supporting the creation of an independent Commission. His family, and all of America, deserve nothing less than the truth
Memorial Day
Mr. PRESIDENT, this Memorial Day weekend, we pause to remember and honor the patriots who paid for our freedoms with their lives. They fell in battles from Bunker Hill to the Bulge to Baghdad. Today, they are laid to rest throughout the world--from national cemeteries and other hallowed grounds in America to the cliffs of Normandy and far beyond.
Nearly 20 years ago, a new generation of American service members went off to fight a war in an ancient land. They traveled to Afghanistan to hunt down the mastermind of the 9/11 attacks and the government that had given him sanctuary. Few imagined then that Afghanistan would become America's longest war.
There are Americans serving today in Afghanistan who were not yet born on 9/11. There are veterans who served in Afghanistan in the early years who have seen their own children go off to fight in that war.
President Biden recently announced the last U.S. troops in Afghanistan will be home by September 11th--the 20th anniversary of the terrorist attacks on America that spurred the war.
I support the President's decision. While there are legitimate concerns about protecting social gains made in Afghanistan, and we must bring home Americans detained in Afghanistan, like Mark Frerichs from my State, it is time for America's longest war to end.
On this final Memorial Day with U.S. troops in Afghanistan, we remember especially the 2,312 U.S. servicemembers who died in that war and the families they leave behind.
SSG Jacob Frazier is one of those fallen heroes. His friends called him Jake.
He grew up in Ohio, and in St. Charles, the son of a Marine who fought in Vietnam, and the eldest of five siblings.
He was 18 years old in 1997--just a few months out of high school--
when he enlisted in the Illinois Air National Guard and was assigned to the 169th Air Support Operations Squadron of the 182nd Airlift Wing in Peoria.
In 2003, he was in Afghanistan, working alongside Army Special Forces. His job was to call in air cover to protect troops on the ground. On March 29th of that year, Jake Frazier and Special Forces soldiers were returning from a meeting with Tribal leaders in the Helmand province when their convoy was attacked by Taliban fighters. Staff Sergeant Frazier and a Special Forces solider were killed.
Jake Frazier was the 75th American service member--and the first Illinois service member--to die in combat in Afghanistan. He was 24 years old and engaged to be married.
I want to tell you, also, about another fallen hero from an earlier war. Army CPL Asa Vance grew up in Decatur, IL, one of 14 siblings. His friends called him Bud.
He enlisted in the U.S. Army in 1950 at the age of 18 and was sent to Korea. On November 24 GEN MacArthur ordered what would become known as the ``Home by Christmas'' offensive. U.N. forces, he said, would push Chinese troops out of Korea, reunite North and South Korea, and be home by Christmas. What happened was very different. Three days after MacArthur's pronouncement, 120,000 Chinese troops surrounded 30,000 U.N troops near North Korea's Chosin Reservoir. The next 2 weeks brought some of the most brutal combat in modern warfare history. On December 2, at the height of the Battle of the Chosin Reservoir, CPL Asa Vance was killed. He was 18 years old. For nearly 70 years, his remains stayed in North Korea.
Following a 2018 meeting between the leaders of North Korea and the United States, however, North Korea returned 55 boxes of remains of U.S. servicemembers killed during war. DNA tests ultimately proved that Corporal Vance's remains were among them. Two weeks ago, this son of smalltown Illinois finally returned home. All 13 of his siblings had already passed on. But Asa Vance was not alone.
As an honor guard of police officers, sheriffs deputies, State troopers and members of the Illinois Patriot Honor Guard led his remains from St. Louis's Lambert International Airport to a memorial service in his hometown of Decatur and onto his final resting at Camp Butler National Cemetery in Springfield. Hundreds of folks who never knew CPL Asa Vance came out to pay their respects. They stood on street corners and highway overpasses with their hands on their hearts. Many held small American flags, some wiped away tears.
Archibald MacLeish was a son of Illinois, a poet laureate of the United States, and a soldier in World War I. Decades after that war, he wrote about the soldiers who do not come home:
The young dead soldiers do not speak.Nevertheless, they are heard in the still houses:Who has not heard them?They have a silence that speaks for them at night and when the clock counts.They say: We were young. We have died. Remember us.They say: Our deaths are not ours: they are yours,They will mean what you make them.We leave you our deaths. Give them their meaning.
SSG Jake Frazier's father, Jim Frazier, honors his son's sacrifice by working with other Gold Star families who have lost loved ones in wars.
On this Memorial Day, we would do well to ask: How can we honor those who gave all for our Nation? How can give meaning to their deaths?
In addition to keeping our promises to their families and to the veterans who returned home, let us honor our fallen heroes by never taking for granted the freedoms for which they died. Let us also remember that our political differences must never make us enemies, and let us search together in good faith to protect this Nation we all love.
Economic Recovery
Mr. President, let's turn the clocks back to the end of 2019. A novel coronavirus is detected in the city of Wuhan. Little is known about the pathogen, aside from the fact that it is highly contagious and magnitudes more lethal than the flu. In just 3 months--3 months--that virus causes a global pandemic, the likes of which none of us has seen in our lifetimes. It grinds the global economy to a halt. Stay-at-home orders become the new normal, and supply chains are disrupted at nearly every stage in the production process.
Tragically, because of delay and denial by the former administration, the United States experiences the world's highest rates of COVID infections and deaths for all of 2020. Then comes a new year and a new administration. Today, thanks to the Biden administration's competence and the scientific community's relentless pursuit of a vaccine, America is finally turning a corner in the fight against COVID-19. But the damage was deep, and our scars are still fresh. While the coronavirus raged, people lost their loved ones, and millions lost their livelihoods.
Now, as we restart the engine of our economy, our Republican colleagues would have you believe that the reason America's economy hasn't bounced back fully is because American workers are lazy; they would rather collect unemployment benefits than work. Republicans would have you believe that the American people would rather binge-watch
``The Office'' than return to it. They must not know many American workers well--because Americans work longer and harder than workers in nearly every advanced economy. And for the workers who have been laid off over the past year, unemployment assistance has been lifesaving.
Here is what enhanced unemployment benefits have meant for my constituents in Illinois. One Chicago resident reached out to my office, saying that ``my sister has been out of work since the pandemic hit Chicago . . . her husband works a full-time job during the day five days a week and cleans offices three to four nights a week just to make ends meet . . . unemployment assistance is essential.''
That constituent wrote to me out of concern for her family, not herself--her sister, her brother-in-law, and her nieces and nephews. Tell me, does that father--working a full-time day job and cleaning offices at night--sound lazy to you? Does that family sound like they are coasting through this pandemic on Easy Street? Not to me, they don't.
Another constituent wrote to me out of concern for his wife. Because of the pandemic, she was laid off from the job she had for 20 years. He wrote, ``She is actively looking for work but so far there are hardly any openings in her field.''
That sentiment was echoed by another constituent, who wrote, ``My 35 years of experience and outdated master's degree in marketing mean nothing in this job market.''
I also heard from a single mother of three who lost her job as a banquet server due to the pandemic. She has emptied her savings and is 3 months behind on mortgage payments. She worries that at 58 years old, it will be difficult to find new work.
And one more story, my office received a letter from a 63-year-old woman living with an autoimmune disease. She thought the job she had before COVID-19 would be her last job ever. But then she got laid off. Now, she relies on SNAP benefits to put food on the table and on Medicaid for the doctors and medicines she needs to control her disease. She wrote, ``What a horrible thing to rely on the government, but we have no choice.'' Let me say that again: ``We have no choice.''
Do these sound like calculating con artists or loafs trying to scam Uncle Sam for a quick buck? These are Americans, our neighbors, and they are barely making their way through an unprecedented public health crisis. And they made it because of unemployment assistance. And jobless benefits don't just help the workers and families who receive them. They help communities. They keep money circulating during hard times. People are spending their enhanced unemployment benefits on groceries, rent, mortgage, and other necessities.
Now, as we begin to recover, let's not bash the workers who have borne the brunt of this pandemic. Let's focus on what is actually holding our economy back. Let's look at the facts. On Thursday, the Department of Labor published a report showing that new claims for unemployment insurance have fallen to their lowest level since the pandemic began. As more and more people get vaccinated, as we start bringing this virus under control and the world starts opening up, it is clear that Americans want to get back to work. They want to earn a living. So what is preventing more Americans from returning to the workforce?
For one, people are still concerned about safety. It was only 2 weeks ago--May 13, to be exact--when the CDC announced that it is now safe for fully vaccinated people to take off their masks and resume activities that they had put on hold--May 13. The jobs report that our Republican colleagues have been so eager to cite as proof that unemployment benefits are keeping people from working was based on data from early April. Remember what was happening in April? Lethal new COVID variants were tearing through the U.K., India, and other nations, and they were starting to show up in this Nation, too. Scientists weren't yet sure whether the COVID vaccines would protect against the new variants. Thankfully, we now have an answer. But back in April, is it any wonder that some workers might have been uncertain about returning to work under those conditions?
And then there are the continued challenges facing caregivers in America.
Many parents--especially mothers--of young children still can't return to work because so many schools and childcare programs remain closed. You can't leave little kids home alone. Harry Truman used to say that what he really needed was a one-handed economist because all of the economists he knew told him, ``On one hand, this . . . and on the other hand, that.'' A new report coauthored by an economist who formerly worked in the Obama administration questions to what extent the lack of childcare is preventing parents from returning to the workforce. I expect to hear a lot about this report from our Republican colleagues.
So I would point out that Mr. Furman and scores of other economists continue to warn that our failure to invest in high-quality, affordable childcare will undoubtedly impede America's future economic growth and global competitiveness. There is no ``other hand'' about that. If we want to cultivate the world's most educated, skilled workforce--a goal I am sure we all share--we need to ensure our children are cared for--
because cultivating that workforce begins before kindergarten. Yet the United States is the only advanced economy in the world that doesn't guarantee parental leave for working parents.
And we are one of the only advanced economies that doesn't provide some form of universal early childhood education. If you want to have a child in America, guess what? You are on your own. This is a structural problem in our economy that has existed for decades. The pandemic just brought it into sharp relief.
The pandemic has also highlighted another structural problem for our economy. While last month saw big job growth in the leisure and hospitality industries, as restaurants, bakeries, and coffee shops started opening back up, those gains are just one part of the story. Jobs in manufacturing declined. Supply chain disruptions may account for some of these losses.
But there is a bigger problem. Employers in high-skilled manufacturing companies have had difficulty for years filling positions. As a nation, we simply are not doing enough to train American workers for the manufacturing jobs of the 21st century, jobs like assembling electric car batteries or wind turbines. Workers who want to make a career change and learn these skills often have to take on thousands, even tens of thousands of dollars in student debt. We treat worker training as a personal problem rather than a collective good from which we all benefit.
As I said, America's childcare crisis and a shortage of high-skilled workers existed long before COVID. Enhanced unemployment benefits have been an economic lifeline for millions of Americans families during this pandemic.
Severing that lifeline prematurely won't solve the long-term structural challenges facing our economy. It will only make things harder for already struggling families.
But we can address the challenge of childcare and take steps to help workers develop new skills. In fact, President Biden and Senate Democrats have a plan to do it. It starts by investing in our children.
With the American Families Plan, we can make childcare more accessible and affordable, like nearly every other advanced economy in the world.
With the American Jobs Plan, we can invest in workers. It would direct billions of dollars toward helping dislocated workers develop new skills and secure stable, well-paid jobs building wind turbines or electric vehicles or making other American-made goods that will be in high demand for years to come. The American Jobs Plan and the American Family Plan are blueprints for building a sustainable, prosperous economy that will create good jobs for decades to come. I commend President Biden for meeting with my Republican colleague in hopes of moving the country forward and urge Republicans to work with Democrats to achieve these shared goals instead of rejecting our proposal immediately.
We can remain the strongest, most dynamic economy in the world and make the 21st century another American century, but we have precious little time and a lot of competition. We can't waste that time wagging our fingers at Americans who are struggling or ignoring the structural challenges that have existed for decades and have only gotten worse during the pandemic.
The American Rescue Plan saved our economy. Now, let's build it back better than ever before with the American Jobs Plan and the American Families Plan.
I yield the floor.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Massachusetts.
Nomination of Eric S. Lander
Mr. MARKEY. Mr. President, today, the Senate should confirm a visionary scientist and thinker and one who will serve with distinction as Director of the Science and Technology Policy.
Dr. Eric Lander represents the kind of new American pioneer, one committed to exploring horizons defined not by the boundaries of land and shore but of genes and genius, a pioneer who sees unanswered questions not as barriers but as an expanse of possibility. He exemplifies what it means to represent a place where scientific progress is a part of our DNA.
Eric's breadth of knowledge, unparalleled experience, and innovative spirit make him uniquely suited to lead. With Dr. Lander at the head of the Office of Science and Technology Policy, all Americans will be his students, sharing his passion for science, discovery, and achievement.
Dr. Lander started his career as a mathematician. He has taught economics and has been one of the world's foremost biomedical scientists for decades.
When I was a young boy who refused to do his homework, my mother would threaten that she would donate my brain to Harvard as a completely unused human organ. Somehow, she anticipated Dr. Lander and his work on the Human Genome Project and founding of the Broad Institute of MIT and Harvard, which reflect his deep understanding of how science and policy can inform one another.
At the Broad Institute, he pursued collaborative science, bringing together biologists, clinicians, chemists, engineers, and computational scientists. The transformative model for scientific research that the Broad Institute represents is a new way to take on the challenge that we face today, bringing scientific discoveries and advances forward more quickly than ever before.
His contribution to science has also demonstrated how impactful research can be. The Human Genome Project was a 13-year-long project that involved hundreds of scientists across the entire world. This project is an incredible example of a publicly funded project that keeps knowledge in the public domain and a feat that provided a model for the kind of large-scale, cooperative effort that the world's biggest problems require.
The Human Genome Project has also had an enormous economic impact, with one analysis from 10 years ago estimating the $3 billion project has produced more than 330,000 jobs and nearly $800 billion in economic benefit.
Sequencing nearly the entire human genome has already led to countless advances, a trend that is certain to continue into the future. The project discovered genes that are fundamental to thousands of diseases--including heart disease, Alzheimer's, and cancer--and paved the way for novel treatments.
In addition to his groundbreaking research, he has taught MIT's introductory biology course for more than 25 years and is one of MIT's most beloved teachers. He has inspired students to grapple with complex issues, helping them become informed and active members of their communities. He has an ability to explain the science of why much better than Senators can explain the political science of why not. That ability to teach and to translate is more important than ever before.
I know Dr. Lander has the skill to rebuild the celebration of science that is the hallmark of American excellence. When his country needed him during the coronavirus pandemic, he moved to build from scratch to operation the largest noncommercial COVID testing laboratory in the country.
He has been a strong supporter of people of color in science and improving racial equity in science outcomes. He has used science as a tool for justice, playing a key role in the origins of the Innocence Project, as his commitment to justice and forensic science has spanned more than three decades.
The crises we face today of human and mind and the intersection of those two forces are daunting. We are confronted by a surging China and its race to dominate the scientific and technological landscape. That is why we must confirm Dr. Lander without delay, so he can get to work on behalf of the American people.
We have a chance tonight to give our country a leader in science and technology, which we need at this critical time.
I urge all Members to give him your support on the floor this evening.
With that, 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. PETERS. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the order for the quorum call be rescinded.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. Without objection, it is so ordered.
S. 1260
Mr. PETERS. Mr. President, as we emerge from the coronavirus pandemic, we have a real opportunity to revitalize American manufacturing and harness American leadership in scientific and technological advancement. Today I urge my colleagues to support critical, bipartisan legislation that will do just that.
The United States Innovation and Competition Act will help keep our country on the cutting edge of technology, strengthen American competitiveness on a global stage, and protect our national security.
International competitors like the Chinese Government are aggressively investing in manufacturing, science, and technology in an attempt to gain a competitive advantage over the United States, and we cannot let that happen. In order to maintain our edge, we must make serious investments in domestic research and development, technology, and manufacturing.
We know that a strong manufacturing sector is the backbone of any economy. I have long believed that you cannot be a great country if you don't make things. This bill contains a number of provisions to help revitalize and strengthen American manufacturing.
A provision in this bill that Senator Stabenow and I led will provide
$2 billion in new funding for the domestic production of mature semiconductor technologies that are absolutely critical to the automotive industry and other manufacturers all across our country. This provision is essential because our reliance on overseas semiconductor manufacturing is a threat to our economy and to our national security.
We are currently experiencing a semiconductor shortage that is causing massive supply chain disruptions and has idled plants in Michigan and other States across our country, forcing auto manufacturers to shut down factories and lay off workers. This is a completely unacceptable situation, and we must immediately work to address this challenge.
Boosting manufacturing in Michigan and across the Nation requires a comprehensive Federal strategy to help companies grow our domestic manufacturing base. That is why I authored a provision in this legislation to reactivate the Manufacturing Advisory Council and worked to increase funding for the Manufacturing Extension Partnership program, a program that helps small- and medium-sized manufacturers grow their companies and create jobs. Together, these policies will help strengthen our manufacturing sector, advance our economic competitiveness, and create good-paying jobs.
The United States Innovation and Competition Act also helps ensure that when we are spending American taxpayer dollars, we are investing in American manufacturers and creating American jobs.
As chairman of the Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee, I was proud of our committee's efforts to include several bipartisan provisions in this package that will strengthen ``Buy American'' requirements. These provisions, including one based on a bill Senator Stabenow and I introduced, will ensure that American taxpayer dollars are being used to buy American-made products and close loopholes that have allowed the use of Chinese- and Russian-made steel rather than using U.S. steel. Growing good-paying jobs in America must always be our focus, and passing this bill will do just that.
This package also includes a provision to secure our supply chain and address the serious national security risks posed by our overreliance on companies in China and other countries for medical supplies.
During the pandemic, we saw firsthand how our country's overreliance on foreign manufacturers for critical supplies, such as personal protective equipment, left us unprepared to combat the pandemic and cost American lives.
This bill takes important steps to address that, thanks to a provision I worked on with Senator Portman to encourage investments that will expand domestic production of personal protective equipment here in the United States.
These provisions and so many more will help us unleash American innovation, lock in our competitive advantage, and grow our economy, but that alone is not enough. We must also protect our advantage. That is why our committee worked to include critical provisions in this legislation to strengthen cyber security and protect against increasingly sophisticated efforts by adversarial governments and criminal organizations to steal our research and intellectual property.
Cyber attacks pose a significant threat to our national security, and cyber attacks have significant real-world consequences. We saw this with the recent Colonial Pipeline attack. This bill includes provisions I authored to strengthen the Federal Government's capabilities to prevent and respond to a significant cyber incident, creates a fund that can help entities recover from serious breaches, and strengthens our Federal cyber workforce, therefore ensuring our workers have the skills and knowledge to build a competitive advantage and secure our networks from these attacks.
From spurring advancements in artificial intelligence to securing taxpayer-funded research and intellectual property from adversaries who try to steal it, this legislation takes significant steps to help ensure American companies and workers will continue to lead the way in developing the technologies and economy of the future.
The process we followed to write this legislation shows that when we work together in a bipartisan manner, we can tackle the biggest challenges facing our Nation. I am grateful to my colleagues for all of their hard work, and I look forward to continuing to partner with our House counterparts to get these important provisions signed into law.
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.
Ms. MURKOWSKI. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the order for the quorum call be rescinded.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. Without objection, it is so ordered.
Tribute to Michelle Blackwell
Ms. MURKOWSKI. Mr. President, we are in a bit of a lull here, so whenever there is a lull in Senate activity, it is one of those moments and times when you think about those who have contributed to those of us who serve here in the Senate--staff who have been with us over a period of time, whether they be here in Washington, DC, or back in our home States.
Tonight, I come to the floor to share some long overdue recognition to a long-term member of my team, Michelle Blackwell.
We have had kind of a hectic beginning to this Congress. Yet we are back, doing legislative business, and that is good, but it has, I guess, delayed my tribute to, again, an extraordinary Alaskan, a woman who has been a good team member but also a friend of mine.
Earlier this year, Michelle retired from my team after 17 years of service--amazing years--to the U.S. Senate, as a member of my staff in Alaska, and to many of my constituents back home. Since 2003, Michelle served as my regional representative for the Southcentral region on the Kenai Peninsula in Alaska. The Kenai Peninsula, for those who are not familiar with it, is a pretty significant area. It is equivalent in size to the States of Massachusetts and New Jersey combined, with a population of about 55,000 people.
If there are roads that wind around and go up and down and into some pretty extraordinary areas, Michelle has traveled them, and she has represented this region with grace, efficiency, diplomacy--resolving truly thousands of cases for constituents who have experienced problems with Federal Agencies. You name it--whether it is the IRS, whether it is Social Security, whether it is the VA--she has a story to tell there. Helping constituents and serving as a liaison to the community were really the keys to her success in my office. Her commitment to public service and to helping Alaskans has made me a better Senator and certainly a better representative for Alaskans.
I have to confess that, as much as we would like to claim her 100 percent for Alaska, Michelle did not get her start in public service in the State of Alaska. Like many who now call Alaska home, Michelle's path was kind of an adventurous one as she worked her way north.
She came to me from Wyoming via Washington, DC. She grew up in Wyoming, and then, following college, she went to work for then-
Congressman Dick Cheney. This was back in the early eighties. She started out on the front desk, as a good staffer does, and as many successful staffers like Michelle have done, she worked her way up from there.
She spent 11 years working for Dick Cheney as one of his key aides, and he was so appreciative of her work that he brought her with him during his first tenure as Secretary of Defense under the 41st President, George H. W. Bush
As many of us know, when you find good staffers, you do everything that you can to hang on to them, but Michelle had a very adventurous spirit and a curiosity for foreign policy. She served a year in Switzerland with the State Department. She then returned to work for Mr. Cheney when his time with the first Bush administration had ended and he went to work for a public policy think tank, the American Enterprise Institute. Following this was the time that she then returned to Wyoming and opened the next chapter of her life.
In 1997, Michelle found herself in the famous Million Dollar Cowboy Bar in Jackson Hole, WY. I have been there myself--but Michelle met the man who would be her husband. The rest, as they say, is history.
Michelle and Jack were married a year later, and their adventurous spirit continued. They moved north. They moved to Sitka, AK, where Jack would serve as the park ranger for the State of Alaska's Department of Natural Resources. They spent 4 years there in Sitka, and Michelle was very active in the community, not surprisingly. She served as the director of the local visitor and tourism bureau--a key industry to our State and certainly to that region.
In 2002, Jack was transferred to Kenai, AK, to serve as the district ranger for Alaska State Parks for the region. That is when Michelle found her way to the Alaska congressional delegation, where we found her. Again, I wish that I could take the credit for finding Michelle, but she came to work for the entire Alaska congressional delegation. This was at the time when the late Senator Ted Stevens was our senior Senator, and this was just when I was beginning my time in this office. Back then, the rules of this Chamber allowed us to share district offices and staff, so Michelle served not just me but also Senator Stevens and Congressman Young, who, as we know, is now the dean of the House, so some pretty big political powerhouses between Don Young and Senator Stevens. They are personalities that we have described as being larger than life at times and some personalities that can be interesting to balance, but Michelle did so with patience and poise.
All in all, Michelle has 25 years of Federal public service, and I am proud to say that 17 of those years have been as a member of my staff.
Of all of her many professional accomplishments, you will not hear her boast, but you will hear her colleagues speak with the highest respect for her ethics and her duty to public service. She is so humble but so, so respected by her staff both on the State side and among the policy team here in DC.
I have had a lot of time to be in a car with Michelle as we have driven around the Kenai Peninsula. I have seen her interact with constituents who have serious, challenging, personal, deeply emotional issues, and how she is able to communicate with Alaskans on their level, on their issues, in a way that is respectful and understanding and compassionate is a gift that is extraordinary.
Outside of the office, one source of pride--probably the biggest source of pride for Michelle--is very clear: the devotion to her family. When asked by others who worked with her, the first thing that you would hear is of Michelle's dedication to her family, and she has a great family.
Her husband, Jack, as I mentioned, is a great guy--a pilot. She was a little worried when he decided that, instead of a family minivan, it was going to be a family--I don't remember whether it was a Cherokee or a Piper or a 175, but the family is flying around and doing a lot of Alaska that we all enjoy.
They have two great kids, Jackson and Cameron. I have had the pleasure and the privilege to watch both of these young people grow into talented, kind, and smart young adults who are now pursuing college and postgraduate degrees. Jackson, who was a page here in the U.S. Senate and an intern for me, is a Truman Scholar. Cameron, his younger sister, was also a page here. She is pursuing a premed-health sciences program with the goal of being a doctor. Jackson is working on Arctic issues and climate issues. You just couldn't be prouder of these two young people. I know that Michelle is, and I certainly am. It has been great to be able to watch and be a part of their family.
To the family--to Jack, to Jackson, and to Cameron--thank you for sharing your mom with me, with all of my staff, and really with the Senate and our country for so many years. We know that those years were nights and weekends and holidays when we took a lot of her time, and we appreciate that.
I recognize that, as we see good, strong, capable, really impactful people move on from our teams, it is just the closing of one chapter and the opening of yet another for Michelle and her family.
So, to Michelle, thank you for all of the years that you have given to your public service and as a member of my staff. I wish you all the best in your very well-deserved retirement.
Tribute to Admiral Matthew T. Bell, Jr.
Mr. President, as I am still on the floor and we are still in a pause, I want to provide some short remarks with regard to an individual who has been not only a leader in the Alaska community for a period of years but a real leader for our U.S. Coast Guard.
I rise to offer my commendation to ADM Matthew T. Bell, Jr., who served the Coast Guard for 36 years, most recently as the commander of District 17, D17.
He had his retirement ceremony just about 6 weeks or so ago, and I had the opportunity to be out there at his retirement ceremony. It was held in Juneau. We had the Commandant of the Coast Guard, Admiral Schultz, who led the delegation, join Senator Sullivan, myself, and Governor Dunleavy. It was pretty significant that you would have a gathering there in Juneau for this retirement ceremony but not unusual because Admiral Bell had led in a way and manner that deserved this public recognition, certainly, at the highest level.
D17 is an enormous region that covers the entirety of Alaska, from the Bering Strait to the Aleutian Chain and all of the surrounding waters.
Admiral Bell, during his time there as head of D17, led with distinction, but before this he had had some pretty significant and impressive roles. He commanded the Personnel Service Center. He served as chief of staff for the U.S. Coast Guard Pacific Area and as a chemistry and nautical science instructor at the U.S. Coast Guard Academy.
He served as commander of Task Group 55.6 in Bahrain in support of Operation Iraqi Freedom, and he earned the highly esteemed
``Cutterman'' designation after more than 12 years of sea service.
Three times--three times--he was the commanding officer and his commands included the Coast Guard Cutter Point Divide, Coast Guard Cutter Alex Haley, and Coast Guard Cutter Douglas Munro.
The Alex Haley and Munro were each stationed in Kodiak when Admiral Bell served as their commander. In fact, we had the retirement ceremony for Admiral Bell, and then the following day we flew out to Kodiak to attend the decommissioning of the Munro after 40 years of service--
pretty admirable run.
But I can imagine that these tours helped sow the seeds of home for Admiral Bell and his family.
So I mentioned I had the opportunity to be there when Admiral Bell passed on the roles and responsibility of the D17 command. It was April 21.
He was honorably awarded and recognized for his outstanding service and retirement. But, again, I think it is noteworthy. This was not your average retirement ceremony. We had COVID-19 protocols that were still in place. Senator Sullivan and I were in the front row. It was a pretty limited gathering. I think they were limited to 30 people, joined by the Governor of Alaska. Over 300 people watched by live feed, but behind us--so in the speaker's view and behind us--was this exceptionally distracting view, the beauty of Mendenhall Glacier that was behind us. And every one of the speakers noted that it was quite extraordinary to be in this setting.
But I was honored to be invited and humbled to represent the Alaskans who have all deeply appreciated the Coast Guard's work in our State, and especially while Admiral Bell was at the helm.
I want to take just note of the fact and thank Admiral Bell and all of the really invaluable, heroic work that D17 does in the State.
In a given month in the State of Alaska, D17 rescues 22 souls, assists 53 people, saves over $1.65 million in property across 3,853,500 square miles and over 47,300 miles of shoreline--a lot of space, lot of territory to cover.
Alaska is tough. It is rugged. It is big. But these missions are carried out in the toughest, most challenging environment. And as I heard Admiral Bell mention during his retirement ceremony, he said:
``If you can do the Coast Guard's mission in Alaska, you can do the job anywhere [else].''
And he is right. It is the best that we will see.
Not only are Coast Guard men and women in Alaska mastering their craft and saving lives and property, they are also integral members of our communities. Those members and their families are our neighbors. They are our classmates. They are our friends. And I deeply appreciate the connection and fond relationship shared by the Coast Guard and Alaska, and that is why it is so important, I think, to just take the time to honor and to thank incredible leaders like Admiral Bell.
So on behalf of Alaska, I thank you for everything you have done to continue the longstanding legacy of lifesaving, environmental protection, and maritime safety in our great State.
But beyond that, thank you for representing and nurturing the connections between the Coast Guard and our State as the D17 commander and neighbor.
And I want to end my comments tonight with just a comment about Matt Bell as the neighbor. Matt and his wife Nancy have raised three sons, and like most Coast Guard families, they moved numerous times. They have accepted the assignments and adventure with the kind of a matter-
of-factness that comes with military service. But wherever they have been stationed, they have become part of the community. They have made that community just a little bit better.
And when Matt and Nancy came to Alaska, they knew they were home. They said it. Absolutely, they knew they were home. In fact, it was somewhat interesting. Nancy was not at the retirement ceremony there in Juno because she had already moved all of their household goods to Kodiak. I think it was her first week of work there. She was working at the Coast Guard base there. So, you know, she is a true Coast Guard family for life.
But for a small little side note and an anecdote, at the conclusion of the decommissioning of the Munro, I had to fly back to Anchorage, and as it turned out, the same airplane that was going to be taking me back to Anchorage from Kodiak was the same airplane that was delivering just recently retired Admiral Bell to Kodiak to come home to his wife and help, basically, move in.
Long story short, weather comes in and there are no airplanes to Kodiak. So he is not coming in and I am not going out.
As it was, I was supposed to be in Anchorage at a family dinner, and I knew that they had a place set for me, and while I was at the airport trying to rearrange reservations and trying to find accommodations for the evening, Nancy Bell was at the airport waiting for her husband. And she said: What can I do to make sure that you have a place to stay?
And I said: Well, it's not just about me. I have a whole volleyball team from Palmer and a soccer team from the valley. What are we going to do with 50-some-odd kids when there is no airplane until tomorrow?
And Nancy Bell sprung into action, as a good community member, to see what it was that she could do to get not only me and a couple of staff people but to get a couple teams of kids situated for the evening
And I said: You know, Nancy, you are taking care of me. Matt needs to go to my family dinner in Anchorage and take my place.
And so he did. He had a great evening with my family, and I had a great opportunity to spend a little bit more time with his wife in Kodiak.
But it just speaks to the neighborliness that goes on. You have a significant leader in our U.S. Coast Guard--a man who he and his family have given so much, 36 years in service. And they are now going to give that to their community--their Alaska community--that they have adopted, and we have embraced them.
We honor them, and we wish the best for them and their family in their retirement.
I yield the floor.
I suggest the absence of a quorum.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. The clerk will call the roll.
The senior assistant legislative clerk proceeded to call the roll.
Mr. BROWN. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the order for the quorum call be rescinded.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. Without objection, it is so ordered.
Unions
Mr. BROWN. The Presiding Officer and I and another 20 or so Senators listened yesterday in the Banking, Housing, and Urban Affairs Committee to the CEOs of the Nation's six largest banks testify to our committee. Those six CEOs are among--or maybe the six most--powerful business people in America.
I look to what has happened to my hometown of Mansfield, OH, and to Zanesville, OH, and Lima and Chillicothe and Portsmouth and Springfield--medium-size industrial cities that 40 years ago were prosperous industrial communities that created and which were the homes of thousands--tens of thousands, really, of good-paying union jobs, allowing people out of high school to go into the plant and make a decent middle-class living, allowing them to send their kids to North Central State or Mansfield OSU or Denison or schools all over Ohio.
But in the last 30 or 40 years, we have seen what Wall Street has done. Wall Street has done just fine for themselves. We have seen profits go up dramatically. We have seen executive compensation stratospheric--tens of millions of dollars for most of these CEOs and their earnings every year and their compensation.
But we see middle-class wages in places like Toledo and Akron simply flat. And we heard a lot at that hearing yesterday, from these CEOs, about how much they value their employees. Yet not one of these CEOs agreed to remain neutral if their workers want to unionize.
And I know from my State, whether it is Dayton or whether it is Trotwood or whether it is Zanesville--I know from my State--that when workers are lucky enough to carry a union card, they are much more likely to prosper.
These CEOs said: Yeah, we want our employees' voices to be heard.
But that is not what remaining neutral means--not using their vast power to intimidate their employees.
The Presiding Officer has seen it in Georgia, we saw it recently in Alabama, and I have seen it many times in Ohio, where an employer uses the vast resources of the corporation to browbeat--or however they do it--to stop people from voting for the union that would make their lives better.
I heard these CEOs say they are focused on lending to small businesses and growing the economy, but I don't see that in Newark. I don't see that in Canton. I don't see it in Warren or Youngstown. These small businesses want help.
The community bankers did it. For community bankers, their lending went up during the pandemic, but these large six banks restricted their lending in the pandemic.
But they had enough money left to do major stock buybacks. One of these companies planned to do $25 billion. It was announced just recently that one of these six banks was going to do a $25 billion stock buyback.
Do you know who that enriches? It certainly doesn't enrich the community. It doesn't enrich Columbus or Cincinnati or Blue Ash or Bellaire or Steubenville. What it does is enrich the executives. These six CEOs said that, yes, climate change is a threat to the entire economy, but they drag their feet when it comes to investing in new technology and jobs for the future.
I am glad they raised wages, a number of them--and I know the Presiding Officer from Georgia saw this. Right before the hearing, one of the companies agreed to raise the minimum wage of its employees significantly. A couple others of them bragged about their diversity in their workplace. They had just put the first Black woman on their board.
But we also know that one of those CEOs--this is not even quite believable, but I can prove it with the math, as we did during the hearing. One of these CEOs makes 900 times what the lowest, what some of their new employees make--900 times. I don't think they claim to work 900 times harder. But how do you figure this out? How does this come about, that a CEO will make 900 times what some of its workers make?
I am glad they raised wages. I am glad they made some investments in minority depository institutions. And I was even welcome to hear them brag about their investments in Howard and Fisk and one of the great institutions in the Presiding Officer's home State, in Atlanta, with Morehouse. I am glad they are doing that. I am glad they are increasing diversity in their senior leadership. I hope they continue it, and we will be watching.
It is not close to enough, though, when these are the most powerful actors in this country. The signals that these companies send to influence workers and companies all over the country--it is not just the thousands of employees. It is important to remember, when financial services makes about 25 percent of the profits of all corporations in the country--financial services accounts for about 25 percent of it, but they are only 4 percent of all the employees. Four percent of all the employees in the country work for financial services, but they account for 25 percent of the profit. That tells a story too. It tells the story that these large banks have built an economy that is good for them. They built an economy that is good for financial services. They built an economy that is good for the largest banks--not the community banks in Savannah or Lagrange or Griffin, GA, or Mansfield or Shelby or Crestline, OH, but they have built an economy that is good for the big guys.
Let me give you a couple examples. Before the pandemic, Bank of America downgraded Chipotle's stock because an analyst decided the company pays its workers too much. They downgraded the stock because an analyst said it pays the workers too much. As a result, the company's share price declined.
When American Airlines announced pay raises for its pilots and flight attendants, Wall Street punished the company, dropping its stock price by 5 percent. So when American Airlines does the right thing--they decide to invest more money in their workers--Wall Street slaps them and says: Don't do that. That doesn't help the economy.
A Citibank analyst actually wrote--believe this:
This is frustrating. Labor is being paid first again. Shareholders get leftovers.
Leftovers? Shareholders get leftovers?
We might have thought that after the pandemic things might start to change a little bit. No one could deny how much essential workers contribute--the bus driver in Cleveland, the drugstore worker in Lima, the nurse in Bellaire. Those are the people who really were the heroes in this economy. Our economy is supposed to reward people whose talents are in high demand. That is what we are taught. That is what corporate leaders tell us, right
But this year, after Amazon defeated Alabama's workers' union organization effort, the company stock climbed. Just a few weeks ago, Wall Street sent Uber and Lyft and DoorDash stocks down when Labor Secretary Walsh said gig workers should be classified as employees.
So when the government decides we need to do something, we need to make sure these workers are treated better, Wall Street essentially attacks those companies' stocks. Think about that. It sends a pretty clear message. The more you pay your employees, the worse you are going to do on Wall Street. The less power you give workers, the better you will do. That view that American workers are costs to cut instead of a valuable asset to invest in, that is what is wrong with this system. So-called analysts at Wall Street, often at the banks--these six largest banks--make decisions for people in Ohio, Georgia and Pennsylvania and across the country. They make decisions about whether workers they have never met, in towns they have never been to--whether those workers are a good investment.
I hope these banks make progress not only within their own institutions but thinking about the role these banks play in leading this system and leading our economy and leading this country.
I suggest the absence of a quorum.
THE PRESIDING OFFICER. The clerk will call the roll.
The senior assistant legislative clerk proceeded to call the roll.
Mr. WICKER. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the quorum call be rescinded.
The PRESIDING OFFICER (Mr. Brown). Without objection, it is so ordered.
Mr. WICKER. Mr. President, later on this evening, it is my hope that we will be moving forward on the U.S. Innovation and Competition Act, which many of us are still calling the Endless Frontier Act. I will be voting to support final passage. This landmark bill has prompted considerable debate.
This legislation is about maintaining America's edge in research and technology. That is a top priority for my party, and it is a top priority for the Democratic Party in this Chamber. And it ought to prompt a spirited discussion. And it has prompted such a discussion. How many bills has this been said about?
The bill is not perfect. There are elements that I could do without, and there are parts that I wish were included. But on the whole, this is a necessary step to keep our Nation competitive. This bill puts forth a bold vision for scientific research across multiple Federal Agencies and authorizes a historic down payment on the priorities that can keep America at the forefront of innovation. This bill is a huge boost for American R&D. It authorizes substantial R&D investments through the Department of Energy, the Department of Commerce, NASA, and, of course, the National Science Foundation, which is the gold standard for basic research.
In addition to a new NSF Directorate, it will speed up the translation of R&D into practical applications and help tech innovators through the creation of technology hubs around the country and expanded manufacturing programs.
Our adversaries are well aware that America leads the world in innovation. Instead of trying to outinnovate the United States, some of our adversaries are choosing to steal what we create. The Chinese Communist Party is, bar none, the world's worst offender when it comes to research and intellectual property theft, making today's legislation especially urgent.
This legislation takes steps to improve research security at the National Science Foundation. Although the introduced bill did not contain adequate provisions in this area, I worked with Senator Cantwell, the chair of the Commerce Committee, to craft a package of reforms to safeguard taxpayer-funded research and intellectual property.
Our approach will ensure that the research community understands and complies with security policy and that grant applicants go through appropriate risk assessments. The research security title establishes a new research security office at the NSF to centralize the process of developing these security requirements and assessing potential risks. The office is empowered to pull in the intelligence and law enforcement Agencies to assist in targeted risk assessments.
We also establish a clearing-house for the research community to share information about security threats. Importantly, the research security title also includes a ban on Federal employees participating in foreign talent programs and a strict provision on tax-funded awards going to researchers who participate in talent programs run by our greatest adversaries. These initiatives and many others constitute a new and bold research security program at the National Science Foundation.
This bill also represents a huge step forward for geographical diversity in R&D. Currently, half of all Federal R&D funds go to just six States and the District of Columbia.
Closing that divide has been a priority of mine since my first days in the House of Representatives. Today's legislation will boost R&D at emerging institutions so that no region goes unutilized in our efforts to compete with China.
I regret that this bill was put through with a rushed process. Our initial markup in committee was scheduled just 1 day after the bill was dropped. That markup got postponed. Two weeks later, we had a day-long markup where we dealt with more than 250 committee amendments. After incorporating over 100 of those amendments, the bill passed by a vote of 24 to 4.
Let me repeat that. The bill passed the Commerce Committee by a vote of 24 yeses and only 24 noes.
A few days later, the bill reached the Senate floor, where more than 500 amendments have been filed. Clearly, there is a desire to legislate in this body and on this legislation given sufficient time and opportunity.
This bill should put to rest--to rest--any discussion of changing the filibuster. The Senate is perfectly capable of functioning if the majority allows it to function. And it has done so this week and in the days last week when we were considering this legislation.
I would add that it would be wrong and unnecessary for this bill to be funded through reconciliation. Passing this consensus legislation through a partisan process would send exactly the wrong message to our adversaries. And we are getting it done under regular order. It may not be pretty. It may not be the most efficient thing ever devised by the mind of man, but we are getting this done under current rules. Everyone has been heard, and it will be passed under regular order, I think with a very nice vote.
I wish to congratulate the two authors of this legislation, Senator Schumer and Senator Todd Young, for their success in this bill. I especially appreciate Senator Young's commitment to improving our competitiveness and his leadership in moving this bill forward.
I also want to thank the chair of the Commerce Committee, Maria Cantwell, for helping shepherd this bill through the oftentimes challenging floor, for her patience and her skill in helping to lead us through the amendment process.
And, then, how could we end debate or approach the end of consideration of this legislation without thanking our staffs for the countless hours on both sides of the aisle, for the people who worked so hard on this bill and the amendments? The excellent, knowledgeable way in which they have approached this legislation would be amazing to the American public if they could look into the process and see how hard these public servants work.
I want to particularly thank the outstanding contributions of my staff director, John Keast. But also he would want me to make a particular point of congratulating policy director James Mazol and my deputy policy director Cheri Pascoe--neither of whom has slept very much recently. They have done exceptional work.
I know Senator Cantwell feels the same about the great public servants on her staff, on her side of the aisle. They have done this at great personal sacrifice from their families and from themselves. And I know we are all well-served by our staffs, and I am most thankful for mine.
But I am also thankful for the legislative process, for the fact that on this issue, increasing secure R&D to combat our adversaries, particularly those in Communist China--I want to thank the Members of this Senate on both sides of the issue and on both sides of the aisle for the great way in which this Senate has conducted regular order.
I will be voting yes. I think a sizable majority of the Senate will be voting yes. And we will be doing good by our constituents and by future generations in doing so. Thank you.
And I yield the floor.
The PRESIDING OFFICER (Ms. Baldwin). The Senator from Washington.
Ms. CANTWELL. Madam President, I wanted to commend and thank the Senator from Mississippi for his hard work. I have the great pleasure of working with him on the Commerce Committee, and I can tell you we are here tonight--not at this very moment at 10 o'clock but at the advent of getting to this moment where we can proceed to such important legislation--thanks to him and his great work as the ranking member on the Commerce Committee.
I want to personally thank him for that because I think the Senator described the actual process pretty well. We have two colleagues who have had a lot of foresight and thought about this issue--Senator Schumer, who for a long time has discussed America's competitiveness and what we need to do about it, particularly as it relates to shifting change and demographics on a lot of foreign policy issues, and our colleague from Indiana, who has also in the last 2 years put a lot of work into thinking about the future of AI competitiveness, manufacturing, and what we need to do to be competitive in the United States of America. So the Schumer-Young proposal is not new to this Congress. It was proposed before. And so this is work for many, many, many months I do think, as Senator Wicker stated, that we should thank them for their foresight.
I think, depending on what part of America you are from, you have a perspective about the economy of the future and how we are going to compete. For me, I am very blessed to represent the State of Washington with much innovation and really longtime work to get to the point where we are today.
One thing I would like to depart with is that we didn't get to the Northwest economy overnight. A lot of thought went into the education system and the workforce training issues. Sometimes I just say we are blessed to have people there who stayed and innovated with the companies that they innovated in.
Where we are today represents decades and decades of work, but it also gives you a little bit of foresight into the importance of research and development. The University of Washington is a leader in research and development with NSF and with predecessors here in the Senate who--Warren Magnuson specifically--focused on both NIH and NSF dollars. With the size of an institution with 40,000 students, it is also a premier research institution.
So that has given us a good footing for the future, the work they have done and the advent of Microsoft and so many companies with executives who then also put more into the University of Washington so we could grow our skill set and keep investing. So it is a long-term investment.
Our colleague from Indiana and our colleague from New York basically challenged us to think about what is our R&D investment for the United States of America and are we competing. Senator Wicker knows that this is something the Commerce Committee twice before had considered, in 2007 and 2010. He said: By God, we are going to double the R&D budget, and we are going to compete.
Believe it or not, it was George Bush as President who first authored a report that said America needs to have a more aggressive competitiveness policy. He was probably looking to Asia and seeing what was happening and saying we needed to do more.
The advent of that is, we started down the right road. We tried to make a commitment. We didn't completely follow through because of the downturn in the economy. Instead of doubling that R&D budget in a short period of time--5 to 7 years, and then we thought 11 years--well, it has turned into 22 years, and we really haven't quite done the job.
To our two colleagues, I thank them. I thank the Senator from Indiana. I certainly thank the Senator from New York because I think that without his continued heft behind this issue, saying that it is a priority--I told him he must have read Andy Grove's book ``Only the Paranoid Survive'' because he has clearly adopted that attitude as it relates to America's competitiveness and making sure we make investments in the semiconductor area--an area he knows well. He really does believe it needs the R&D investment and focus. I applaud him because really, without his major push, I don't think we would be here on the Senate floor tonight.
As my colleague Senator Wicker said, this bill includes a massive investment in the NSF budget and in the DOE budget, which is kind of tandem. That is what has happened every time we have had this discussion. NSF and DOE, the Department of Energy and the National Science Foundation, have been our key tools for research and development in key areas that keep manufacturing competitive, keep our energy sector competitive, and keep our technology competitive. They have been major investments.
The challenge that we faced is that we also were asking ourselves--
besides trying to double our investment in these areas, we also said we want to get more out of the investment we have today. We want to basically get more out of the technology that we are creating and get it translated into more innovation right away.
This legislation does that by creating a new Tech Director at the National Science Foundation to, if you will--we have basic research, applied research--to have translational or user research to more quickly aid in the adoption of technologies that will help our economy grow. That was a pretty big step in the legislation.
Of course, Senator Wicker and I believe that investing in the workforce that we would need with STEM education was also a priority. So there was a pretty big, hefty boost in science, technology, engineering, and math in this underlying bill, including saying that women and minorities in the sciences have to be a priority and we have to do more to encourage that.
I want to thank Senator Wicker especially for his insistence on a key provision that I think is also important. Part of this is saying that we need to be competitive and increase the R&D budget. Part of it is saying that we need to have more translational science, get more out of our universities, and have them protect their intellectual property better. But this is also about having all of America better prepared for the economy of the future and compete.
Senator Wicker said: I want 20 percent of this bill, the legislation--the R&D dollars to go to States that are called EPSCoR-
qualifying States. They are regions of the country where we have identified that we need to strengthen our research capacity. So the 25 States that are qualified as EPSCoR States know, and it is a program that has been built around strengthening their research and development. Senator Wicker's insistence on this provision will help those States grow their research muscle for the future, their research ecosystem, strengthen their universities, and strengthen the dollars that go to them. I applaud him for that dedication.
The head of the NSF, the National Science Foundation, will tell you that our motto for this bill overall or our goal as a nation is to be for innovation everywhere, connected to opportunities everywhere, connected to universities. With the provision that Senator Wicker proposed, we are literally taking another step towards building that infrastructure everywhere. If you are in Fairbanks, AK, or you are in Mississippi or some other part of the country, those institutions will get an extra focus and push to get more research and development.
I like to say that you never know what is going to come out of that. You never know what is going to come out of one individual at one institution with a great idea that really charges forward in a new area. So I think it is a great provision of the legislation.
We have, I think, with the other provisions our colleagues worked on--Senator Warner and Senator Cornyn--on trying to, in the last NDAA bill, make us crisply focused on the immense competition that we face in the semiconductor industry, we really have, I think, before us the shape of the debate about America's competition. We are not afraid to put research dollars on the table as a country. Our Nation believes in that more than other nations. Our people believe that is what has made our Nation great, and they know that if we keep making that investment, we are going to grow jobs and the economy. So we have made that commitment in this legislation.
We have made the commitment to diversify our research, to get more out of our research and translate that faster. We have made a commitment to skill and educate a workforce, not only with the diversity we like to see in science but the geographic diversity we like to see as well.
We didn't spend a lot of time talking about what is in here for the Department of Energy. It is not specific as to what the Department of Energy will do for this, but it is safe to say the Department of Energy's innovation program and ARPA-E are basically trying to help us with the next generation of energy technology. But it also includes carbon sequestration and a whole variety of other areas, nuclear power and a whole translation of various energy sciences.
I really believe we will be working together. I believe DOE, NSF, our National Laboratories, our universities--the collaboration that we heard about in committee will be the kind of growth that comes out of this legislative effort.
To many Americans at home, all I can say is, we are making another investment in American know-how, the ability to use our scientific skills to help create the next generation of work and effort.
I, too, want to thank our staff. I certainly on my side want to thank our staff director David Strickland and Melissa Porter, Richard-Duane Chambers, Mary Guenther, and Stacy Baird.
I, too, want to thank the Senator's staff--John Keast, Cheri Pascoe, and James Mazol--because they have been a great team to work with.
I also want to thank, on Senator Schumer's staff--Mike Kuiken and Jon Cardinal--because they have been a constant source in all of this.
Of course I thank all the floor team who have been out here working on this. I know there are other people from this room.
I also thank Senator Wicker's staff, Crystal Tully and Steven Wall.
On my staff, I thank Jonathan Hale and David Marten and Amit Ronen, who worked on a lot of the energy stuff that was part of this underlying stuff.
I am sure we will have more to thank later. This is a wish by Senator Wicker that this would be the wrap-up. I know we are not quite at the wrap-up, but we are hoping that we will hotline a managers' proposal. I hope our colleagues will look at that. I hope that our colleagues will allow us to move forward on that. If they are not going to let us move forward on that, I wish they would come down to the floor and tell us that. It is time to move forward on getting the rest of this legislation through the Senate and move to whatever discussions we are going to have with the House.
It is safe to say this represents a lot of work by a lot of people. In the committee, I think we processed before we even got to the legislation something like 52 amendments prior to the actual day. With the substitute, I think we processed another 40 or 50 amendments. I think we had dozens of rollcall votes. That was all in committee.
Out here, we processed lots of legislation to be part of the managers' amendment. It is safe to say that practically every Member of the U.S. Senate has had some part or discussion or legislative suggestions that are a part of this bill. It is, as Senator Wicker said, a very regular order process, albeit quick at times.
I think we have a lot to do. We have been very challenged as a Congress to deal with a lot of issues--COVID specifically--but the competition is not waiting and the competition has different tools. We have a different government and we believe in collaboration, and collaboration, yes, takes a little more time.
I think it is going to strengthen us in our ability to compete because we are going to be on the same page about what we need to get done. I hope our colleagues will indulge us to move ahead. I hope that we can get this next managers' amendment and other things voted on very soon.
I yield the floor.
Quorum Call
Ms. CANTWELL. Madam President, I suggest the absence of a quorum.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. The clerk will call the roll.
The legislative clerk proceeded to call the roll, and the following Senators entered the Chamber and answered to their names:
[Quorum No. 3]
Baldwin
Cantwell
Cardin
Casey
Collins
Cornyn
Daines
Hassan
Johnson
Leahy
Lee
Ossoff
Peters
Romney
Schumer
Scott, of Florida
Smith
Tester
Wicker
Young
The PRESIDING OFFICER. A quorum is not present.
The majority leader.
Motion to Instruct
Mr. SCHUMER. Madam President, I move to direct the Sergeant at Arms to request the attendance of absent Senators, and I ask for the yeas and nays.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. Is there a sufficient second?
There is a sufficient second.
The clerk will call the roll.
The legislative clerk called the roll.
Mr. DURBIN. I announce that the Senator from Arizona (Ms. Sinema) is necessarily absent.
Mr. THUNE. The following Senators are necessarily absent: the Senator from Tennessee (Mrs. Blackburn), the Senator from Missouri (Mr. Blunt), the Senator from Indiana (Mr. Braun), the Senator from North Carolina
(Mr. Burr), the Senator from Arkansas (Mr. Cotton), the Senator from Oklahoma (Mr. Inhofe), the Senator from South Dakota (Mr. Rounds), and the Senator from Alabama (Mr. Shelby).
The result was announced--yeas 84, nays 7, as follows:
YEAS--84
BaldwinBarrassoBennetBlumenthalBookerBoozmanBrownCantwellCapitoCardinCarperCaseyCassidyCollinsCoonsCornynCortez MastoCramerCrapoCruzDainesDuckworthDurbinErnst FeinsteinFischerGillibrandGrahamGrassleyHagertyHassanHawleyHeinrichHickenlooperHironoHoevenHyde-SmithKaineKellyKingKlobucharLeahyLeeLujanLummisManchinMarkeyMarshallMcConnellMenendezMerkleyMoranMurkowskiMurphyMurrayOssoffPadillaPetersPortmanReedRischRomneyRosenRubioSandersSasseSchatzSchumerShaheenSmithStabenowSullivanTesterThuneTillisTubervilleVan HollenWarnerWarnockWarrenWhitehouseWickerWydenYoung
NAYS--7
JohnsonKennedyLankfordPaulScott (FL)Scott (SC)Toomey
NOT VOTING--9
BlackburnBluntBraunBurrCottonInhofeRoundsShelbySinema
The motion was agreed to.
The PRESIDING OFFICER (Mr. Hickenlooper). A quorum is present.
The Senator from Washington.
Amendment Nos. 1583, 1637, 1701, 1758, 1777, 1851, 1943, 1958, 1964, 1988, 2000, 2017, 2025, 2048, 2082, 1768, 1823, 1980, 1981, 2001, 2104, 1622, 1801, 2093, 2049, 2085, 2083, 1945, 2026, 1933, 1841, 2103, 2105,
2094, 2106 and 2090 En Bloc
Ms. CANTWELL. Mr. President, I have a package of amendments that have been agreed to by both leaders and by the chairs and ranking members of the relevant committees, so I ask unanimous consent that the following amendments be agreed to en bloc: Collins 1583, Fischer 1637, Johnson 1701, Shaheen 1758, Rubio 1777, Thune 1851, Wicker 1943, Hagerty 1958, Cotton 1964, Blunt 1988, Scott of Florida 2000, Ernst-Hassan 2017, Romney-Menendez 2025, Johnson 2048, Lujan 2082, Rosen 1768, Merkley 1823, Warnock 1980, Murray 1981, Hassan 2001, Warren-Rubio 2104, Collins 1622, Wicker 1801, Leahy-Tillis 2093, Van Hollen-Tillis 2049, Blackburn 2085, Cortez Masto 2083, Lankford 1945, Baldwin-Braun 2026, Hyde-Smith 1933, Hyde-Smith 1841, Merkley-Rubio-Romney 2103, Ossoff 2105, Barrasso 2094, Rubio 2106, and Kaine 2090.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. Is there objection?
The Senator from Wisconsin.
Mr. JOHNSON. Mr. President, reserving the right to object, the sponsors and managers of this bill have made the point that this piece of legislation has followed regular order, and I will admit, versus how things have been passed in the last 10 years since I have been here, this is a little bit better regular order than I have experienced in general. But it still does not even come close to giving Members time to fully consider what we are voting on here. I don't even have a total score on this. I have been told it is approaching a quarter of a trillion dollars.
The history of this bill is on May 13, about 730 pages were reported out of committee. This wasn't exactly the bill that was voted out of committee, though. Somewhere, somehow, the chair modified at least one amendment that was not particularly recognizable to those that offered the amendment.
On 5/19, on September--or May 19, the bill grew to 1,445 pages, and just today we voted on an amendment, 900 pages. So now here we are at 11 o'clock. We come to the Chamber. For the first time, I see what the amendments are in the managers' package.
I am sorry. I don't know what these amendments are. I know what my amendment is. I don't know what the rest of these are. I haven't seen them. I don't even know how many pages this is. I just have a list. So you can claim this is regular order. You can claim this is a deliberative process, but it is far from it.
So I would just ask that the Senator modify her request; that the Senate stand in recess for 3 hours--only 3 hours--to allow us to review this package of amendments.
Would the Senator modify her request?
The PRESIDING OFFICER. Does the Senator so modify her request?
Ms. CANTWELL. Mr. President, I know my colleague knows the Commerce process, knows that we went through a very elaborate process in Commerce, and I know that he has amendments in this proposal. Some of these have been available since 11, 12 hours ago. People have been talking about these amendments. So it is time for us to honor the request of our colleagues to move forward on a managers' package worked out by the leaders and the relevant chair and ranking member, so I object to the modification.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. Objection is heard on the modification.
Is there objection to the original request?
Mr. SCOTT of Florida. Mr. President.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Florida.
Mr. SCOTT of Florida. Mr. President, I join my colleagues today to make a simple request: Let the people see the bill.
Too often, this body acts without due time given to hear from all of the ones we represent: the American people. That has absolutely been the case this year as Congress has rushed through massive, 1,000- or 2,000-plus-page bills, spending billions or trillions of tax dollars without valuable input.
Now you ask us to vote on a massive bill compiled just this evening. That is wrong, and the American public know it is wrong. We haven't had the time to read this. No one has, in fact. This entire bill as it sits here before us has only been under consideration for a little over 2 weeks, with thousands of pages, and it has been amended numerous times, including many times today. It spends hundreds of billions of tax dollars.
As my colleagues know well, I am as vocal an opponent of Communist China as anyone. America must take decisive action to protect our interests and combat the threats posed by China's Communist regime. If the purpose of this legislation is to address that urgent issue, it should do that with input and feedback from the public.
We should table this vote, let the Members return to our States, hear from constituents, and then move forward in a timely manner with the legislation after we have heard from our constituents. This is a simple and reasonable request. Therefore, I ask the Senator to modify her request to delay further consideration of S. 1260 until the week of June 7.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. Does the Senator so modify her request?
Ms. CANTWELL. Mr. President, my colleague also knows the work of the Commerce Committee because he is on the Commerce Committee, and this bill came out of the Commerce Committee 24 to 4. So I know the Senator knows the work of that legislation.
The remarkable aspect of this legislation is that it did compile product from various committees, and those committees did their regular order process. In fact, this process for the last several--you could say 24 or 48 hours was held up because one committee's product wasn't considered, and your side said it wanted it considered before we could move forward. And, guess what, we accommodated that.
So we now have a work product that is, I think, ready to be voted on--again, in a bipartisan fashion, working together with both leaders and with committee chairs and the ranking members. So I object to the modification.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. Objection is heard to the modification.
Is there objection to the original request?
The Senator from Utah.
Mr. LEE. Mr. President, reserving the right to object, I just want to reiterate again what we have dealt with.
As originally introduced, the bill was 160 pages. Yes, it ran through committee. Then it went out of committee, and it was reported out by the committee at 730 pages. Then you had the May 19 substitute--1,445 pages--and you had a substitute today that took it up to over 2,300 pages. Then at 10:59 p.m., just a little over an hour and a half ago, we received notice of this managers' package. The list that we received is a simple list of numbers attached to last names. It doesn't contain the text of those; it just contains references back to other amendments--10:59 p.m. We still don't know exactly how long that is.
Yet people are fond of saying, well, as I believe my colleague from Washington said a minute ago, people have been talking about this for hours. What does that even mean? It is not the same as presenting an amendment, saying this will be presented as a package.
Keep in mind, these aren't just mere sequential pages, pieces of paper. Every time you add another piece of paper, every time you add an amendment, it gets a lot more complicated because you have to know not just what each page says but how it interacts with every other page.
Although this is how it came out of committee, this is the rest of the bill as it existed as of early this morning. As of this afternoon, we added about another 900 pages to it. Then at 10:59, again, just about an hour and a half ago, we received an as-yet-to-be-ascertained managers' package that we still haven't seen in its entirety. We have just seen a list, and we are told that we have to vote on that right now.
Look, the American people understand that when you are throwing around hundreds of billions of dollars at a time, we really have an obligation to know what on Earth we are voting for. We don't know that. We can't credibly maintain that. We certainly shouldn't pretend to be competent to understand everything that is in here.
I find it absolutely stunning--I find it disappointing more than anything that in response to the very reasonable request made by my friend and distinguished colleague from Wisconsin to give us 3 hours to look at it, that even that was too much.
This, Mr. President, is too much for the American people, and I object.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. Objection is heard.
Mr. KENNEDY. Mr. President.
Ms. CANTWELL. Mr. President.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Washington.
Ms. CANTWELL. Mr. President, to recap this process, I respect every Member's right to express their opinion. That is what regular order is about.
In committee, we had 233 amendments filed. My colleague from Utah filed 130 of those. So, yes, the Commerce Committee staff worked through 130 of Senator Lee's amendments. That is a lot of amendments to work through. I guarantee you, I am sure we probably would have liked a little more crystalized concerns and opposition than 130-plus amendments. We ended up putting 14 of them in the managers' amendment. We ended up voting on five more during the committee process. So, yes, I could have been frustrated with that, but we worked through those amendments.
Now there is this process on the floor where my colleague is concerned and upset over 900 pages that he voted to accept. The moment to be concerned about those 900 pages, he could have objected, but he didn't but now wants to revisit that decision.
So I can propound many requests here, and we can continue to discuss these, but our colleagues--our leadership on both sides of the aisle have worked through a process of regular order with our colleagues on a host of 36 different amendments where--I am looking at this list--many of them are bipartisan, and I think those Members deserve to have a vote on their amendments.
Amendment No. 1527 Withdrawn
Mr. President, I withdraw amendment 1527.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator has that right.
The amendment (No. 1527) is withdrawn.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Texas.
Amendment No. 1858 to Amendment No. 1502
Mr. CORNYN. Mr. President, I call up my amendment 1858 and ask that it be reported by number.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. The clerk will report the amendment.
The legislative clerk read as follows:
The Senator from Texas [Mr. Cornyn], for himself and Mr. Cotton, proposes an amendment numbered 1858.
The amendment is as follows
(Purpose: To modify the semiconductor incentives program of the
Department of Commerce)
On page 349, beginning on line 23, strike ``expended.'' and all that follows through page 350, line 13 and insert the following:
expended.''.
Mr. CORNYN. Mr. President, last year Senator Warner, the senior Senator from Virginia, and I introduced the CHIPS for America Act to help shore up vulnerable supply chains for semiconductors and to reduce our reliance on other countries for the most critical components of everything from the F-35 Joint Strike Fighter to the cell phones in our pockets and everything in between.
The vast majority of our colleagues have agreed that this is a critical task. It was carefully crafted after monthslong bipartisan, bicameral negotiations. In fact, this legislation was adopted as an amendment to the National Defense Authorization Act by a vote of 96 to 4 at the end of last year. But now we need to fund the program we created, and there is just one issue standing in the way.
During committee consideration of the Endless Frontier Act, an amendment was adopted that would apply controversial and unprecedented prevailing wage language to the CHIPS for America Act signed into law last year. This provision creates a needless hurdle to funding for the CHIPS provision.
Considering the current wages of U.S. semiconductor manufacturing companies, there is zero benefit--zero benefit--to workers' wages. So this is really a nonissue in terms of the compensation that workers in semiconductor manufacturing facilities will make. What is more, these Davis-Bacon provisions represent an expansion of special interest labor policy to private construction projects and set a disturbing precedent.
Leaving this language in the bill is a gratuitous act and could dramatically weaken support for the broader legislation, and I would hope we could all agree that the stakes are simply too high to let that happen. So I have introduced an amendment to strike this unnecessary and divisive language and maintain strong bipartisan support for this program. A partisan provision with zero benefit to workers' wages is hardly a reason to gamble with strong support for the CHIPS Act.
Republicans and Democrats have worked hard together to bolster our domestic semiconductor manufacturing and to confront one of the most dangerous, looming threats from China. Now is not the time to sacrifice the progress we have made. So I would encourage my colleagues on both sides of the aisle to support this amendment so we can maintain the strong bipartisan support for this critical legislation and send a message to our adversaries that the United States intends to stay the world's preeminent economic and military power.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Wisconsin.
Mr. JOHNSON. Mr. President, I mentioned earlier that there is no doubt this bill did go through more regular order than we have been used to over the last decade. But I think we also demonstrated that the massiveness of this bill, close to a quarter trillion dollars, over 2,300 pages, many of those pages dumped on us today, and now this managers' amendment package--we haven't seen it; a few Members have--
does not represent adequate regular order.
I also did not have much participation in the development of that managers' package. I realize that a couple of my amendments did get in there, certainly not my priority amendments. I will talk later about the one that actually got a vote. I only got one vote on one amendment, and that vote was to simply honor the contracts that we have outstanding, about $2 billion worth to build the additional 250 miles of wall to secure our border. But I will come back to that.
Right now I would like to talk about four of my--I probably had about a dozen amendments but four priority amendments that we tried to get in this managers' package. There was no consultation with me personally, maybe a little bit of back-and-forth with staff.
The first amendment really would have codified something we passed twice out of my committee when I was chair of the Homeland Security Committee. It was called the GOOD Act, Guidance Out of Darkness. President Trump issued an Executive order, which basically ordered the Agencies to publish the guidance that they were creating so that the American public would know what the regulations were expected of them, so they understood the rules of the road were--a good piece of transparency in government. It passed unanimously twice out of my committee. For some reason, President Biden on his first couple of days in office reversed that Executive order.
So now we have, literally, executive Agencies pulling down these websites so the American public doesn't even know what guidances they are expected to follow. So that would have been a very simple amendment. Again, it passed twice out of my committee unanimously. That didn't make it into the managers' package.
One amendment that I had also introduced--actually was voted on during the debate over the Iran Nuclear Agreement--simply stated that any new agreement with Iran that this administration enters into should be deemed a treaty. That is what should have happened in the Obama administration. When the JCPOA was just entered into as an executive agreement but literally was no better than the piece of paper it was written on because the next President could just do away with it, and that is exactly what happened.
So this is a very simple amendment. Quite honestly, this should pass 100 to 0. Every U.S. Senator should demand, when you have an agreement between two nations as significant as the JCPOA, or whatever this administration might enter into with Iran, it should be deemed a treaty, and it should come before this body for ratification by two-
thirds of this body. That should have been included in this managers' amendment, but it wasn't.
One threat that this Nation faces--and this relates, I believe, directly to China because China, in their own military doctrine, does not recognize a high-altitude nuclear blast as a nuclear attack. A high-altitude nuclear blast, otherwise known as an EMP, could wipe out our electrical grid. And for as long as I have been serving here, administrations of both parties have not paid adequate attention to this.
So this amendment, vital to our national security, also should have been included in the managers' package, but it wasn't. Why not? This is perfectly suited to this piece of legislation. This is an important national security priority, and this was left out of the managers' packet.
I would like to have a little bit more time working on this legislation to insist that this at least gets an up-or-down vote because I pretty well assumed that this would be accepted by both sides and not objected to, but it wasn't. Again, EMP, or geomagnetic disturbance, could represent an existential threat to this Nation, but it was simply ignored. It wasn't included.
And then the final amendment that was a priority of mine was the SOFA Act. We are all fully aware of the fact that in this Nation, we have a crisis of overdoses--of things like heroin and fentanyl. It is plaguing all of our communities, large and small, every State. No Member of Congress is unaware of this. We have all heard the tragic stories from our constituents.
One of the problems with fentanyl is the way it is scheduled to be illegal. And the problem with that is there are analogs. You can change the molecular makeup of fentanyl very easily, and then all of a sudden it is not scheduled as being an illegal substance.
All this amendment would have done is codified what the DEA has been doing for a number of years, but the DEA regulation has run out
So one more time--this is completely bipartisan. There is no controversy to this amendment whatsoever--completely, directly related to this piece of legislation. It is trying to protect this Nation against China's malign actions. This amendment was left out of this package.
You might get some measure of sense of why I am not happy with the managers' package, why I think this body should take a little bit more time to deliberate; take a few more votes on amendments like this that, again, should be passed unanimously but were overlooked because, I guess, the only people really consulted, in terms of amendments, were those that they felt they could figure out how to get their vote.
And I was pretty solid from the standpoint that I didn't want to vote for a quarter of a trillion dollars to government Agencies that I don't think are going to spend that money particularly effectively.
I would like to talk about one amendment that I did get a vote on. Unfortunately, it was voted down on a largely party-line vote. The Senator from West Virginia--both Senators from West Virginia, but the one who does not caucus with us was the only Senator from the other side of the aisle that supported this piece of legislation.
When I introduced this amendment, I came down to the floor and I talked about there was a time--and that time wasn't very long ago--when border security was actually bipartisan. Securing our border, an imperative to national security, was a bipartisan goal.
Evidence of that was in 2006, the Senate passed a piece of legislation called the Secure Fence Act of 2006. What that piece of legislation would do--was supposed to do--was build 700 miles of double-layer fencing, 700 miles. Now, in the end, only 36 miles of double-layer fencing was built. The other 613 miles was built, but 299 miles of that was just a vehicle fencing. In other words, pedestrians can easily walk right through. Another 314 miles was a single-layer pedestrian fence that, unfortunately, pedestrians can almost hop over, but they can scale and defeat that fence very easily.
Now, again, proving the bipartisan nature of the Secure Fence Act of 2006, it passed the Senate overwhelmingly with a vote of 80 to 19. Twenty-six Democrats joined 54 Republicans in voting yes. In the House, the Secure Fence Act passed by a vote of 283 to 138, with 64 Democrats voting yes.
So, in total, the Secure Fence Act of 2006 passed Congress with a combined total vote of 363 votes for and 157 votes against. In other words, 70 percent of Members of Congress back then voted yes, and 90 Democrat ensured that it was bipartisan support.
By the way, notable Democrats who voted for it were the majority leader of this body today, the Senator from New York. President Obama voted for it. President Biden voted for it. Secretary of State Clinton voted for it. The chairman of Homeland Security, and then my ranking member when I was chairman, Senator Tom Carper, voted for it, Senator Feinstein, Senator Wyden. And Senator Sherrod Brown voted for it as a House Member back in 2006.
We need a fence. Walls work. I think we admitted that fact after January 6, when we put a double layer of 7- or 8-foot-high fencing, concertina-tipped wire, and left it up for way longer than it needed to be left up.
So here in Congress, we are happy to put up a fence, put up walls, as long as it is protecting us. I mean, it is about time that we build a wall to protect the rest of America.
Now, what my amendment did is it simply required the administration to complete construction on the part of the wall that has already been contracted. We build about 450 miles; 250 has been contracted. We are going to have to pay for it whether we build it or not, and that is all my amendment is. Don't waste American taxpayer money, which, if we don't pass my amendment, that is exactly what is going to happen.
I do want to take a little bit of time, seeing as we have a lot of time here tonight--and we intend to take that time tonight--I want to lay out the history of the current problem. So my first chart here is detailing unaccompanied minors that are apprehended at the southern border. And these minors are from Central America, from Honduras, Guatemala, and El Salvador.
Now, I want my colleagues to notice that in 2007, 2008, 2009, 2010, 2011, we never had more than 4,431 unaccompanied children cross our border illegally and be apprehended. As a matter of fact, in 2007, there is less than 2,000 people. In 2008, 4,380; in 2009, 3,288; in 2010, 4,431; and then in 2011, 3,038. So we average under 4,000 unaccompanied children crossing the border illegally and being apprehended in those 5 years.
Then something happened. And what happened was the Deferred Action on Childhood Arrivals memorandum. When President Obama got frustrated that the deliberative process wasn't delivering him the border security or the immigration reform that he wanted, he used his pen. And he did what I certainly did not believe was constitutional. As a matter of fact, a couple of years before that, he said he didn't have the constitutional authority to do this, but he did it anyway. It has been challenged in the courts ever since.
But the most significant thing about the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals, other than its unconstitutionality, is what it sparked, what it was a catalyst for. You notice those who passed in June 2012 and, lo and behold--and it is not a coincidence--in 2012, all of a sudden that less than 4,000 annual average became 10,000. The following year, 2013, 20,805 unaccompanied children entered the country illegally and were apprehended. And 2014 was the crisis year. That is when President Obama even admitted that this was a humanitarian crisis. We had 51,726 unaccompanied children exploiting our immigration laws, our asylum laws, all because of DACA.
By the way, what happened in Central America with the passage of DACA was the coyotes--human traffickers, some of the most evil people on the planet--I will talk about that later. They talked about the fact that America changed their policy. Now, as an unaccompanied child, you can get into America. You get a piece of paper. It is called ``permiso,'' permission to enter the country. That is not what it was at all. It was a ``notice to appear.'' Do you know what? Coyotes lie. They lied to Central Americans. So vulnerable children put themselves in the hands of, again, some of the most evil people on the planet. That sparked that crisis.
Now, the Obama Administration reacted. I remember going down, when I became chairman of the committee, on a bipartisan trip to the border, down to McAllen, TX. At that point in time, Customs and Border Patrol were overwhelmed, but they did what Customs and Border Patrol often do. They rose to the challenge. They dealt with this humanitarian crisis as humanely as they possibly could. They built a facility. They put up chain-link fences to keep the children safe--the young ones from the older ones or from the adults. On a bipartisan basis, we sung Customs and Border Patrol's praises.
Fast forward to the crisis of 2018-2019, and, all of a sudden, that exact same facility, it was actually upgraded. It was better than it was. It was more humane. All of a sudden, my Democratic colleagues started calling that facility one that housed children in cages. What hypocrisy.
You can see through 2019, once the Obama Administration started detaining families together, they stemmed the tide. But that didn't last for long, as I will demonstrate on my next chart.
On a quick explanation of this chart, the gold bars are single adults. It has been an ongoing problem we are always going to have in some way, shape, or form--single adults coming to this country illegally through the southwestern border. What we never had in the past was this surge, this crisis level of illegal immigration by children and families.
By the way, some are real families; many are not. Many are families of one adult and one child. Sometimes they are a child who has been sold to them. In my committee, we heard testimony of a child being sold for $84. We heard of children being recycled to be used by multiple adults so they can come as a family and exploit our laws.
Let me explain how they exploit them. This chart starts in 2012 with the passage of DACA. Again, single adults are gold, red are unaccompanied children, blue are family units. You can see the humanitarian crisis in 2014. It doesn't look like much of a crisis compared to 2018 and our current crisis, which this administration is completely denying--completely denying.
We had Secretary Mayorkas in front of our committee 2 weeks ago. I can't tell you how surreal it was as he blamed the previous administration for the crisis he created. He talked about how it is getting better: It is improving because we are getting more efficient. We are getting more efficient at processing and dispersing.
That is not solving the problem.
Let me go back because what this chart does is it has the cause and effect. DACA is the catalyst of all of this. It sparked it all. It made citizens of Central America realize that the immigration system was broken and easily exploitable. You can see where President Obama declares the 2014 crisis a ``humanitarian crisis.''
Then President Obama instituted a family detention policy, a consequence. You couldn't just cross into America and get dispersed throughout the country, never to show up for your immigration hearing, move into the shadows, potentially be exploited by human traffickers and their agents here in America. And that actually helped stem the problem. It pretty well solved the problem until a court reinterpreted the Flores decision.
The Flores decision dates back many years, about one little girl who came to this country. It established standards--humanitarian standards--which I don't disagree with. America is a humane nation. We are a nation of immigrants, but it has to be a legal process. The Flores decision dealt with unaccompanied minors and made sure that they could always stay in CBP's, Customs Border Protection's, custody and ICE's custody for only so long before they had to be turned over to Health and Human Services to then find sponsors or parents. But there is a time limit on it.
What the Flores reinterpretation did--and I think incorrectly, as did President Obama's DHS Secretary Jeh Johnson, who completely disagreed with the decision--that court--that unelected court--pretty much out of plain cloth or whole cloth said: Oh, no, the Flores decision or agreement applies to accompanied children, as well. It didn't, but all of a sudden it did by court order.
That created some real problems for the Obama Administration. They had to choose: Do they continue to detain families as a deterrent, as a consequence to fix this problem, or do they separate them so they could detain the adult while they complied with the law under the court decision? Well, what they decided to do--and I can't fault them for this--is they kept the families together and they dispersed the all. That really instituted the process, the policy--the horrible policy of catch and release, almost open borders.
Now, it took a while for people to understand what was happening. It took a couple of years, but by the summer of 2019, citizens of Central America were well aware of how exploitable our laws were. And guess what. They exploited them.
I certainly learned from the experience of Michael Chertoff back in--
I believe it was--2008. It might have been an earlier year, when we had a surge of Brazilians coming into Mexico and then coming illegally into this country through the southern border. I don't have the exact numbers, but I think it is something like 30,000 in a short period of time. What Secretary Chertoff did at that point in time is he instituted a program called ``Texas Hold'Em.'' Basically, it was a consequence, to apprehend Brazilians and send them right back to Brazil.
Within a month, the flow of illegal Brazilians was cut by about 90 percent. Problem solved. There was a consequence. We didn't have catch and release of Brazilians like we now had, and we have again catch and release of Central Americans coming into this Country.
Based on that experience working with the senior Senator of Arizona, who was on my committee, we proposed something called ``Operation Safe Return.'' The basic premise of that program would be, once apprehended, we would quickly adjudicate that initial asylum claim to see whether there really was a valid, credible fear.
Understand, if adjudicated, most of the people coming into this country do not have a valid asylum claim. As generous as our asylum system is, coming here for economic reasons is not a valid asylum claim. That is the majority of why people come here. What became of Operation Safe Return, to a certain extent, is the Trump administration's policy of migrant protection program, also known as
``Return to Mexico''--a consequence.
Again, I called my program Operation Safe Return: Quickly adjudicate those who don't have a valid asylum claim and safely return them to Central America.
I would have been happy to expend funds to make sure there were centers to accept people so they could be accepted safely. The Trump administration, instead, instituted the migrant protection program, return to Mexico. I realize there are people who don't particularly like that program, but it worked. It is undeniable that it worked. They instituted it right here.
Mexico wasn't particularly cooperating. So President Trump threatened them with tariffs. All of a sudden it got Mexico's attention. Mexico started cooperating, and you can see how the numbers dropped precipitously. We basically stopped the flow of children and children being used to create family units, and we had the problem solved before COVID hit. This is how you solve the problem.
Unfortunately, during the 2020 election, every Democratic Presidential candidate vowed to stop deportations and also vowed to provide free healthcare.
I don't deny the push factor out of Central America. I don't deny the violence, the corruption. When I went down there on a bipartisan codel, I was surprised talking to the Presidents of Guatemala and Honduras. They talked about corruption and impunity.
I understand corruption. But what do you mean by impunity?
Well, impunity is pervasive in their society because of the drug cartels. Why do we have drug cartels down in Central America? It is because of America's insatiable demand for drugs. That is the root cause. The root cause of this problem, the push factor, isn't the violence. The root cause is our insatiable demand for drugs, which puts billions of dollars in the pockets of the other most evil people on the planet, the drug cartels, the drug traffickers.
By the way, what we did in our drug interdiction, relatively successfully, is we shut down the drug flow from Colombia up to the Caribbean into Florida, and we just redirected it into Central America and destroyed those nations because those drug cartels are untouchable--they are untouchable.
One story I heard is about a new police chief and first day on the job. He gets a DVD, and the DVD is of his wife and children going to church, going into school--a pretty powerful message: Don't mess with us. And they don't.
So that level of impunity from drug cartels becomes pervasive through society. Then you have the extortionists. If you are a cab driver, you had better pay the fee or they will shoot you and burn you in your cab. That is what impunity means. That level of violence is facilitated by our insatiable demand for drugs.
If you are going to fix that root cause, if you are going to solve the problem of violence in Central America, you have to actually fix the root cause, which is our insatiable demand for drugs. I wish we could. I wish it was easy to do. It is not. We want to stop illegal immigration so that we can fix the problem of the DACA kids and so we can establish a legal immigration system that works for all of us.
I mentioned my codel down to Central America. The Presidents of Central America tell me--they beg me: Please, fix your laws. This isn't good for our countries. We are losing our future. We need these people.
The vast majority, I would argue, are hard-working and are coming here to improve their lives. I can't blame them for that, but it has to be a legal process.
That is not working for Central America. It is going to further impoverish Central America. It is not an economic model that works.
It is certainly not good for migrants who come to this country to live in the shadows and who are still under the control of the drug cartels and human traffickers or are in gangs, especially the young men. The 15-, 16-, and 17-year-olds are used by the drug traffickers to traffic drugs. The sex trade is the other involuntary servitude.
This is not a good process. We need to solve the problem of illegal immigration and control our borders so we can have a functioning legal immigration system.
What happened? What caused this? Isn't it obvious?
You could see the increase in adults coming into this country illegally during the Presidential debates when the Democratic Presidential candidates were going: Hey, if I get elected President, no more deportations. I am going to give you free healthcare. We will take care of you.
That was a huge incentive, and they came.
Then I think it was the first day, maybe the second day--maybe he waited that long--when President Biden dismantled the successful migrant protection program, ``Remain in Mexico,'' and the rest is a very, very, very sad history.
I will leave that up.
Now, I mentioned that 2 weeks ago we had Secretary Mayorkas come before our committee, and it was surreal the way they denied that they had anything to do with this, that this was an inherited problem. I mean, if it were inherited, yes, it was inherited by the Obama administration in DACA and in an incorrect court decision in the Flores reinterpretation. I will admit it was inherited there. It wasn't inherited here. The problem had been solved. It had been fixed.
What is so tragic about this is that we had pretty well taken the first step to solving the problem, to having immigration reform, to controlling the border. Keep these successful policies in place, and build the fence. Then you can address DACA. Then you can set up a functioning legal immigration system.
Unfortunately, I only had one round of questions--only 7 minutes--
with Secretary Mayorkas. Again, as he was dodging responsibility, I didn't get to ask a lot of questions. Here is the list of questions that I wanted to ask Secretary Mayorkas in a second round that I didn't get.
I wanted to ask Secretary Mayorkas whether or not he was aware that human traffickers sell children to adults so they can exploit our asylum laws as posing as a family unit. I wanted to know whether he was aware of that. I am quite sure the Vice President is, because the Vice President was on my committee. She heard this testimony. She should be aware of it. She should go down to the border.
I wanted to ask him: Are you aware that we heard testimony, under my chairmanship, that a child was sold for $84?
I wanted to ask Secretary Mayorkas: Are you aware that children are recycled--that they are sent back over the border to be used by another adult to pose as a family unit and exploit our asylum laws?
I wanted to ask him: How are you verifying that a child belongs to an adult?
In one of my trips down to the border and in having heard that children were being sold, that they were being recycled, that many of these family units weren't real family units, I saw about a 50-year-old man. He was holding, probably, about a 2-year-old little girl. Now, I can't be sure as I don't speak Spanish, and I don't think he would have admitted it, but my assessment was that she was not his little girl.
On that same trip, we heard about a little 3-year-old boy having been abandoned in a hot cornfield, with a telephone number written on his shoe, because the adult for whom he was posing as that person's child didn't need him anymore and just abandoned him.
I wanted to ask the Secretary: Are they doing DNA tests, and, if so, what percentage of family units are being tested?
I wanted to ask the Secretary: Is he aware that human traffickers throw children out of their rafts when they are interdicted by law enforcement?
When we were down at the border with 18 of my colleagues, we saw a floating body in the Rio Grande. The next day, a 9-year-old girl drowned in the Rio Grande. During one of my hearings, I showed a picture--it wasn't a fun picture to show, but I thought it was something we should see--of Oscar Alberto Martinez Ramirez and his 2-
year-old daughter, Valeria, face down. They had drowned in the Rio Grande.
I wanted to ask Secretary Mayorkas: Is he aware of the fact that migrant girls are given birth control because they know such a large percentage is going to be raped during the dangerous journey that President Biden's policies are incentivizing?
I wanted to know whether Secretary Mayorkas was aware of the kidnappings, the beatings, the abuse, and the additional ransoms demanded by the human traffickers.
I wanted to know whether he knows how much the human traffickers charge for their human prey and if he is knowledgeable in how they pay off their debt. Some pay in advance. Some don't have the money. Some pay later. How do you think a pretty, young girl pays off her human trafficking debt? How do you think a young minor--a 15-, 16-, 17-year-
old boy--who can traffic drugs pays off his debt? I think it is pretty obvious
I wanted to know: Does he know how many young girls are forced into the sex trade and how many young men are forced into involuntary servitude or used to traffic drugs or are gang members? I wanted to know.
I wanted to know if he was fully aware of how President Biden's policies created this crisis and how those policies are facilitating the multibillion-dollar business model of some of the most evil people on the planet. I wanted to know. I still want to know.
I think this administration and I think Secretary Mayorkas need to be held accountable for this human tragedy. Apparently, these policies are meant to be more humane. They are the exact opposite. The degradations and the inhumanity are untold. They are only growing, and they are continuing.
Again, what is so tragic about all of this, in addition to the human tragedy, is the fact that we were so close. We had pretty well taken that first step in any immigration reform. We had stopped the flow or had dramatically reduced it, and we were building the fence. There are only 250 miles yet to build that we have already paid for. What a waste of the American taxpayers' money if we don't even complete that fence and what a waste of an opportunity that we can't take that first step--
complete that first step--for true immigration reform.
This amendment was voted on and defeated, largely, on a party-line vote. Only the senior Senator from West Virginia joined us, and it is just such a shame.
You know, America hungers for comity. America hungers for bipartisanship. This is the kind of bipartisanship they would appreciate that doesn't mortgage our future and that actually fixes a problem as opposed to the bill we are considering right now. The bipartisanship that always concerns me is a mad spending spree--deficit spending--wherein, over the last 18 months, we have already spent about
$7 trillion that we don't have. I am shocked, by the way, by the reports that the President's budget is going to be $6 trillion, to be announced tomorrow, and another $7 trillion in other types of--it boggles your mind. That is not the right kind of bipartisanship. That is the type of bipartisanship that mortgages our children's future and bankrupts this Nation.
I think I have probably had enough time here, and I see that a number of my colleagues would also like to make a few points.
I yield the floor.
The PRESIDING OFFICER (Mr. Murphy). The Senator from Louisiana.
Mr. KENNEDY. Mr. President, I want to make two points.
First, I want to associate myself with the remarks of some of my colleagues earlier about the fact that we don't know what is in this bill. That is not a criticism of anyone or any party. You can only absorb so much. If you define our job, at least in part, as representing our people and knowing what we are voting on when we vote, I would respectfully suggest we would be better off having our staff vote. Now, I doubt there is more than one or two or, maybe, three staff members who really know or who have a global, macro, picture of what is in the bill, but at least our staffs know more about it than we do. That is not a criticism of anybody or any party. That is just a fact.
I think, if you were to just pick 10 Senators at random and ask them off the record, ``Do you know what is in this bill? Not every word, but do you have a general idea of everything in this bill?'' 9 out of 10 would tell you that they don't, and the 10th is probably lying.
Now, I have said before--and I really think that it is a shame. I have said before--and I meant it--that I know some of my colleagues better than others, but I think I know all of my colleagues in the Senate. These are the most interesting, complex people--that is, in part, why they are interesting--whom I have ever been around. There are some enormously talented people in this body. Let me just pick one at random.
When Senator Scott doesn't have time to understand or Senator Durbin doesn't have time to figure out everything that is in the bill because things are moving so fast, that shortchanges all of us. They are talented people. They may be able to say something: What about this provision? This doesn't make sense. What do you think, Senator Kennedy? What do you think, Senator Murphy?
So that really bothers me. That is not a criticism of my Democratic friends, and that is not a criticism of the majority leader, Senator Schumer. It wasn't any better when the Republicans were in control. I just think that it is so sad, so unfortunate, and it is so avoidable.
I understand that floor time is limited. So we want to do things quickly around here. But there is no law that says we can't start earlier and work later. There is no law that says we can't cooperate in terms of allowing the majority to have more floor time so that all of us have a greater opportunity to understand what we are voting on.
I mean, excuse me, Senator Scott, look at that. I think that is only a portion of the bill. Honestly.
Now, the second point I wanted to make--I learned really quickly when I got here that Senators are like cats: They do what they want. Why is that? Because we have minority rights. Our rules pretty much are written to protect the minority.
So a fair question is, Well, how do we ever get anything done? Well, we do it by consent. We couldn't run this place without consent, and we give our consent automatically to a lot of relatively trivial matters, the day-to-day functioning of the Senate. Yet we don't readily give our consent--or at least not as readily as we should--when we are dealing with more important matters, like the Endless Frontier Act.
Now, I voted to get on this bill because I was told that we were going to have an open amendment process. In my judgment, we didn't have an open amendment process. That is, again, not a criticism of the Democratic majority, and it is not a criticism of Senator Schumer. It wasn't a damn bit better when the Republicans had the majority. It just wasn't.
An open amendment process, to me, means that any Senator should be able to come to this floor, respecting each other so that we allot ourselves time, and offer an amendment for all of us to hear. Now, obviously you can't spend 20 hours on one amendment, but if one wants to present an amendment, I think 5 minutes would be sufficient. We do that all the time in a vote-arama.
When people--some people say, when I raised this issue, they say: Oh, vote-aramas are terrible because we are here all night.
We don't have to be here all night. You can start a vote-arama at 8 in the morning and stop at 5:30 or 6. That is an open amendment process.
An open amendment--I was told we would have an open amendment process. I wouldn't have gotten on this bill otherwise. Now, I don't know how it works on the Democratic side. I suspect it works very similar to the way it works on our side. You have an amendment, but you have to get the permission of other Senators to even offer your amendment. You have to go see the bill manager. You have to see the majority leader. You have to see the committee chairman. You have to see the ranking member. And anybody can say: No, I just don't like your amendment. And I think it works the same way on the Democratic side. That is not an open amendment process--not even close.
You say: Well, why does it matter?
You know, we have seniority, and we elect our leaders, and I get all of that, but nobody is infallible. I will give you a specific example. We are giving, in this bill, I am told--it could have changed overnight--but about $56 billion to the semiconductor industry. We are told we need to do that because the semiconductor industry--private semiconductor industry--is essential to our ability to compete with China.
So far, so good. There are a lot of companies that are essential to competing in the global economy--the finance industry, the energy industry, the banking industry. We have to eat. Farmers--you could marshal a pretty persuasive argument that they are essential too. But this bill singles out the semiconductor industry for $56 billion, and I believe--I am not sure because it could have changed--that we are giving President Biden the authority to give up to $3 billion to each private company. So we are picking winners and losers. Some people like that; some people don't. I get it. That is why God made votes. We will have a vote on it, but the fact is that we are doing it.
Senator Sanders had a very interesting idea. In fact, it is an idea that I had on my side as well. He said: Look, if we are taking taxpayer money and we are giving it to private companies, why don't we let the taxpayers participate in the upside? Why don't we give taxpayers--you can't give individual taxpayers, but you can certainly give, say, the Department of Treasury on behalf of taxpayers warrants or stock options.
So if President Biden--if this bill passes and President Biden exercises his authority to give $3 billion to XYZ Semiconductor Company, and the semiconductor company uses that capital wisely and triples its profits, and its stock goes up 233 percent, the American taxpayer has warrants or stock options.
Now, I am not speaking for Senator Sanders. I haven't really had a chance to talk to Bernie about his idea; I am just intrigued by it.
I had a similar idea. I wanted to use stock options on my side. By
``my side,'' I mean the Republican side. I offered it up, and it is still floating around. It is probably in a black hole somewhere. None of the powers that be on my side that--they said: We are not going to let you do that.
That is not an open amendment process. It is honestly not.
And I hear this business about regular order, and I am not arguing that we are not following regular order. It is just that regular order is irregular.
I mean, this is an incredibly talented group of people, and we ought to be able to design a parliamentary procedure that looks like somebody designed it on purpose so that every single Member in this body has a chance to offer input and to have his or her ideas seriously considered. And it won't be an unwieldy process. We do it all the time with the vote-arama.
Now, vote-aramas--I am going to come back to a point I made earlier, but I want to emphasize it. Vote-aramas can be painful. Nobody likes to stay up all night. But we don't have to stay up all night. We can start at a reasonable hour and end at a reasonable hour.
And I dare say that if you took all the time that we have spent collectively over the last week or so in the back rooms making deals, making side deals, saying ``You can't have your amendment''; ``Yeah, I like your amendment''; ``No, that is a dumb idea,'' none of which is transparent, until we come up, finally, with some kind of package that makes probably 75 percent of the folks mad and mostly 100 percent don't know what is in it--if we took all the time that we spent on that and instead spent it by saying ``OK. Here is the bill. You have a reasonable amount of time to understand what is in it, and now we are going to start the amendment process. There is going to be 5 minutes to present your amendment, and there will be 5 minutes to argue it by an opponent. We are going to really have 20-minute votes. We are going to start at a reasonable hour, and we are going to end at a reasonable hour, and then we will come back and do it the next day,'' yes, we will burn maybe 5, 6 days of floor time, but the minority party is going to cooperate with the majority party in terms of helping it preserve floor time that it has to have to do other things that the majority party needs to do.
Again, I am not criticizing Senator Schumer. The Republicans did the same thing when we had the majority. But I just think we are wasting an enormous amount of talent in this body by, A, not giving them a voice--
witness Senator Sanders' warrant idea. I don't know what happened on his side of the aisle. On my side of the aisle, when I brought it up, they killed it deader than a doornail, and that is not an open amendment process.
We are also wasting an enormous amount of talent because we are not--
in offering these ideas to each other, we are not getting the benefit of the wisdom of our colleagues.
So I wanted to get that off my chest, and that is about all I have to say, and I appreciate your attention.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Florida.
Mr. SCOTT of Florida. Mr. President, I want to thank my colleagues for their concerns about this bill.
You know, I have been up here a little over 2 years. I originally ran for office because I had the same concerns about where the State of Florida was going as I have concerns about where our Federal Government is going.
I ran for Governor in 2010, and in the 4 years ending at the end of 2010, the State of Florida had lost 832,000 jobs. Home prices dropped in half. We had I think close to a million people on unemployment, and we had I think a little over 1.1 million homes in foreclosure.
If you looked at all the articles, they said that opportunity for the Sunshine State was over. And I didn't believe it. I believe that if you run government in a responsible manner, you have unbelievable opportunities for individuals. The reason I believe this is, it is the life that I have had the opportunity to live in this country.
I grew up in the--I was born in the great State of Illinois. We lived in public housing. I had a single mom, and she told me that I could be anything. She said: If you will study hard, if you will go to church all the time, if you are an Eagle Scout and you go figure out how to work, there is no limitation. You can build a company. You can do anything you want.
I actually believed her, and I had the opportunity to do that. I built companies, employed a lot of people, and had a lot of opportunity.
So I ran for Governor in 2010 with the belief that you could turn around the State of Florida. At the time, I believe there was--you know, the way the country and the State of Florida were going, it was not a great place for families like mine growing up. So I ran a campaign of 7 steps to 700,000 jobs over 7 years. You know, all the economists said, well, we couldn't get 700,000 jobs in 7 years. It was not doable. Most of them said we couldn't even get single-digit unemployment in 7 or 8 years. People wouldn't move to the State.
So I shocked everybody, and I won a primary and I won a general election, and I set about to do exactly what I said we could do.
We reduced taxes. Every year, we watched how we spent the money. We allocated our dollars where we could get more jobs. We added 1.7 million jobs--not 700,000 jobs; we added 1.7 million jobs. When we did that, what happened was, our revenues grew, and we were able to have record funding for education, for the environment, and for transportation. We ended up becoming No. 1 in higher education; I guess generally about the top five in K-12 education; 47-year low in our crime rate; and record funding for things like the Everglades.
So I believed you could do the same thing up here, and that is why I came up here. I came up here with the belief that if you start looking at how you spend the money--and the way we did it in Florida was, we had--there are about 4,000 lines to the budget, and we went through every line in the budget every year, and we said: Do we get a return? What do we get for that? If we didn't get a return, then we didn't do it the next year. So my goal is to do the exact same thing up here.
Now let's look at where our country is right now. We have almost $30 trillion of debt. We are running multitrillion-dollar deficits. That is not sustainable.
And, by the way, who are we going to hurt long term? It is not going to be the rich. It is going to be the poor. It is going to be the people on fixed income. You can look at the numbers.
Look at inflation numbers right now. Inflation is caused by reckless spending. That is what it is caused by. The spending we have done this year is unbelievable--$1.9 trillion. It was supposedly for COVID, but it has very little to do with COVID--less than 10 percent--and 1 percent for vaccines.
Let's look at what has happened to inflation. In the 12 months that ended in April, the Consumer Price Index was up 4.2 percent. It is pretty surprising that we are up over 6 percent. Milk in 12 months, up over 5 percent; bread over 7 percent, and gas over 51 percent.
Now, if you have a lot of money, that is not going to change your life. But if you are struggling for food or you are struggling to put food on the table, a 5-percent or 7-percent increase has a pretty big impact. When you see that when the cost to fill up your gas tank to go to work dramatically increases, it has a pretty big impact. All this is caused by government spending--reckless government spending--excessive government spending.
You can't run trillion-dollar deficits. You can't have a Federal Reserve that continues to buy treasuries every month without ending up with inflation. And that is exactly where we are.
The only way out of this is to start watching how we spend our money. In this bill, there might be some good things in this bill, but we are spending money recklessly.
So, I have a real concern. Why are we rushing through this? Why don't we take the time--take the time so all Americans have a chance to read it, know what is in it, tell us what they like, what they don't like? Why rush through it, where nobody in this Chamber knows everything that is in this bill? It is impossible. It has gone way too fast with all these amendments. There is no way this could even happen.
China
Mr. President, the other thing I want to talk about is China. Communist China is an adversary. They are not a competitor. They have become an adversary, and we have got to learn how to stand up.
Just putting more money in a government program is not how we are going to compete with China. How we are going to compete with China is to build up American companies. Government doesn't do that.
I have run a company. It is not what government does.
This year marks the 75th anniversary of Winston Churchill's speech to Westminster College, where he famously declared: ``From Stettin in the Baltic to Trieste in the Adriatic an ``iron curtain'' has descended across the continent.'' For many, these words were seen as some of the first announcing the start of the Cold War.
Today, the threat of communism is once again spreading across Eastern Europe. The malicious and oppressive government of Communist China has shown it is eager to assert its power across the globe, undermine democracy and human rights, violate U.S. sanctions, and prop up dictators.
We have to do something to figure out how to compete better against Communist China. The United States has to recognize that a new Cold War is upon us and, with our allies, confront this threat and defeat this spread of tyranny using every diplomatic and military option at our disposal.
Communist China's intentions for world domination are clear in its recent $400 billion, 25-year deal with Iran to provide the Ayatollah with a steady military partner, investment source, and oil customer. Communist China has now secured a pathway to further extend the reach of its Belt and Road Initiative into the Middle East, while strengthening its relationship with the world's greatest state sponsor of terror. This dangerous development comes as Communist China continues its assault to destroy the democracy in Hong Kong, shows increased military aggression toward Taiwan, and furthers its embrace of Cuba's abhorrent and oppressive Communist regime--not to speak of what they are doing down in Venezuela.
The position we find ourselves in today is due to decades of appeasement by Washington politicians and corporate America, an attitude that is carried on by many of President Biden's Cabinet members. Throughout the confirmation process, nominee after nominee failed to show a true comprehensive comprehension of Communist China's threat to American security. Meanwhile, we continue to see American corporations put profits over people, ignoring Communist China's horrible human rights abuses and the genocide it is committing to preserve their forced labor-driven supply chains.
While I have no faith that Biden will be tough on China, I have welcomed and my colleagues have acknowledged the need to comprehensively combat the influence and power of Communist China through legislation.
Sadly, we are squandering this opportunity. I want to be very clear. Any plan that tries to broker a compromise on issues over and above the needs of American national security, American jobs, or human rights will do nothing more than perpetuate the status quo.
Since being elected to the U.S. Senate, I have sponsored and supported more than 40 pieces of legislation focused on addressing the security of our supply chain, holding communist China fully responsible for disgusting human rights abuses and genocide against Uighur Muslims, enhancing our ability to innovate and develop new technology, and countering Beijing's unfair trade practices.
This is where our legislative efforts must begin. We need to cut Communist China off from the American economy that it relies so heavily upon to feed its Communist oppression machine. There is no point in sacrificing our interests for the hope of compromise with a country that will never live up to its end of any agreement, is openly committing genocide against millions of Uighur Muslims, and continuously threatens not only America's security but that of our allies in the Asia-Pacific region.
Communist China is focused on one thing--world domination through oppression and Communist rule. We must not be naive in thinking that Communist China wants to operate in the modern world order and cooperate with other world powers. General Secretary Xi wants to reshape the world order into his image and is willing to strong-arm anyone who refuses to give in to his interests and those of the Chinese Communist Party.
If Communist China wants to enact a plan of world domination, the United States must respond appropriately. The United States must demonstrate America's strength and resolve, and our commitment to our allies. In this new Cold War, we have the chance to prove once again that the American style of government, free enterprise, and civil society remain the best system in the world
As the world's greatest beacon of freedom and democracy, the United States must do everything we can, in conjunction with our allies, to curb Communist China's reach, counter their policies, and punish those who are guilty of the ongoing genocide against the Uighurs. Whether we like it or not, we are in a new Cold War with Communist China.
I urge my colleagues to join me in actions that display the true resolve of the United States in addressing Communist China's destabilizing actions.
Here is what I am talking about. For too long, the United States has foolishly enabled Communist China's oppressive dictatorship, which is now the greatest national and economic security threat. Today, Communist China's Belt and Road Initiative actively undermines America's standing around the world with a strategy to dominate militarily, economically, and technologically. It has become clear that strategic decoupling from Communist China is the most effective way to limit General Secretary Xi Jinping's power and protect American jobs and security. However, our politicians in Washington and business groups like the U.S. Chamber of Commerce still argue that decoupling from Communist China hurts American businesses. They are wrong, blind to the plans of General Secretary Xi and the pain of his citizens, and are more concerned with short-term profits than the future of our country.
As we chart a new course to advance American trade and interests, I believe we must adopt a bipartisan ``freedom-first'' strategy which protects freedom around the world from Communist China's growing power and aggression, restores our country to global leadership, and keeps American interests first.
What I am proposing is straightforward and achievable. First, we must acknowledge what has worked in our efforts to ensure free trade and keep policies in place that will hold Communist China accountable.
Next, the United States has to take decisive steps to strategically to remove Communist China from our supply chain while supporting the return of critical industries to American shores and promoting ``buy American'' policies.
Third, we must engage the international community and secure the full support of our allies to create a maximum pressure campaign with Communist China until it comes into compliance with all U.S. and international trade laws.
Finally, the United States must lead the world and take bold action to shine a light on and demand an end to Communist China's horrible human rights abuses and the horrific genocide it is committing on its own people.
The Trump administration took unprecedented action to thoroughly investigate Communist China's trade practices and found it had long been committing forced technology transfers, intellectual property theft, and espionage. The United States took action over the past 4 years to prohibit Americans from investing in Chinese companies that support Communist China's military, added those companies to a trade blacklist, banned imports of cotton from China's Xinjiang region over forced labor and protected American universities and research labs from Chinese government spying and IP theft.
In Congress, I have fought for more than a year to prevent the U.S. Government from purchasing technology like drones with American tax dollars from Chinese companies backed by their government. We must keep these and other proven policies in place. It is time we acknowledge the fact that when American families buy products made in China, they are supporting this Communist regime.
We must get Communist China out of our supply chain. We can do this through simultaneously separating ties from companies backed by the Chinese Communist Party and rebuilding American-made products. By properly labeling products with country-of-origin information and encouraging businesses to return home, we can end our trade inequity with Communist China and create countless American jobs that support families and communities across the Nation.
While decoupling must begin now, we know it is not a process that will be completed overnight, and supply chains must readjust to remove themselves from the grasp of the Chinese Communist Party. Knowing that Communist China needs to live up to its agreements, the United States must lead the world in demanding the full enforcement of all U.S. and international trade laws.
Organizations like the World Trade Organization can no longer sit in the pocket of Communist China, and the Biden administration must insist that the WTO enforce trade practices fairly. This will require a coalition-style approach and the United States is well positioned to lead this important work to create increased accountability and real consequences for the abusive trade practices that Communist China has relied on for too long.
Finally, the freedom-loving nations of the world must ban together to say that Communist China's egregious human rights violations won't be accepted. General Secretary Xi is taking away the basic human rights of the people of Hong Kong and leading a brutal genocide of Uighurs, imprisoning more than a million in concentration camps. The State Department cannot back down from officially designating this as genocide, and other countries must follow this example.
That is why I led a bipartisan effort to demand that the International Olympic Committee move its 2022 Winter Games out of Beijing unless Communist China addresses these human rights abuses. The world is counting on the United States to stand firm against the use of slave labor in manufacturing and trade.
With regard to the Olympics, there are 180 human rights organizations around the world that have asked for the Olympics to be moved. The Parliament in Canada has asked for the Olympics to be moved. The International Olympic Committee has done nothing. It is despicable that international Olympics hasn't already asked the Olympics to be moved or has not moved the Olympics, and I have asked for all the sponsors of international Olympics to work to try to make sure the Olympics gets moved. But American companies have to do their part to rid their supply chains of such abuses.
The United States and so many countries around the globe stand for freedom of democracy for all people. Now we must unify and lead the important effort to accomplish this common goal, put American jobs and workers first, and counter the harm and unfair trade practices of Communist China that have been ignored for decades.
But surrendering America's strategic position to Communist China isn't the only failure of the legislation we are considering today. The other equally significant dangerous issue is the additional deficit spending this bill includes, driving America even deeper into debt.
Since first being elected to represent Florida, I have fought hard to call out wasteful spending and offer solutions to make our government accountable to the taxpayers. This should be the foundation of our work and service to our constituents. We can't forget that every dollar the Federal Government spends is borrowed from the American people.
Sadly, over the past 2 years that I have been in Washington, I realized that while many politicians make promises to uphold these values, few put their words into practice. It is no wonder, then, that our national debt continues to grow and grow and grow. In 2020 alone, the United States increased its debt by more than $4 trillion. Today, as we know, it is headed to $30 trillion.
America is clearly in a debt crisis, and we need to start talking about it and take decisive action to reverse course. That is why every time I am faced with the question of spending taxpayer dollars on government programs, I ask myself some simple, yet important, questions: What is the plan to pay for it? What is the return on investment for American families? Are there other programs already doing the same thing? When was the last time this program was reviewed for its effectiveness? Does the proposal include measures to prevent waste and fraud and ensure accountability? Are there unnecessary regulations making this more expensive than it needs to be?
Asking these questions isn't a novel idea. It is the same process I went through every day when I was Governor of Florida. That is what most Americans go through when making financial decisions at home or for their businesses. Families do it every night at their kitchen table. No family would needlessly spend money without a plan. No business can afford to not get a return on their investments. But here, there is no focus on return on investments. The bill we are talking about, we have no idea how much money we are going to spend.
Spending without consequence isn't how things work in the real world. It is not how things should work in government. Congress's decades of failure to think and act responsibly has led to enormous deficits, insurmountable debt, and out-of-control spending.
Right now, our country is spending out of control. And even before the pandemic, when the economy was booming, the Federal Government was running trillion-dollar annual deficits. This has got to stop. We need real reforms. That is why I proposed amendments to the U.S. Constitution requiring a supermajority vote in each House of Congress to impose or raise any tax or fee and provide line-item veto authority for the President of the United States.
I have also led the charge to set a ``No Budget, No Pay'' policy in Federal law so that if Congress doesn't pass a budget on time--its most important constitutional responsibility--Members don't get paid. It is simple. You don't do your job; you don't get paid. During our vote-
arama, we voted on this, and unfortunately my colleagues on the other side of the aisle all voted against it.
With America in such desperate need of leadership to fix our spending and debt problem, you would think that the first thing President Biden would do is to set a plan and work hard to make things right. Well, think again.
Four weeks after Congress spent $900 billion to address the economic impacts of COVID, Biden began his Presidency with a call for Congress to spend another $1.9 trillion. Then the Democrats passed it by themselves, despite the fact that we didn't know how much of the $4.9 trillion stimulus funding already allocated had been spent.
Today, President Biden is--soon President Biden is going to propose it sounds like a $7 trillion budget. It will take the United States to its highest sustained levels of Federal spending since World War II. This is on top of the $7.1 trillion in new spending Biden has proposed in his first 4 months in office--$7.1 trillion. You can't make this stuff up.
I think we are only going to collect about $3.5 trillion or so in revenues. How can we keep spending money like this? No family can do it. No person can do it.
I have been warning about the danger of reckless spending for years, and now we are seeing it play out in real life. President Biden's liberal dreams of big government, big debt, and high taxes are no longer speculation.
Now he is rolling out his plans for systemic socialism plainly for all to see. He has already proposed $7.1 trillion in spending in just 4 months, and now another $6 or $7 trillion of American taxpayer dollars on top of that, all while holding back needed funding for our military.
By the way, as we added those 1.7 million jobs when I was Governor of Florida, we paid off a third of the State debt--over $10 billion--and cut over $10 billion in taxes. Everything we should be doing up here, we did in Florida, and we can do it here if we will start looking at how we spend our money.
Biden wants to redistribute wealth, making everyone dependent on government while asking our brave men and women in uniform to go without. It is systemic socialism, and it is already hurting American families.
America is in a nearly $30 trillion debt crisis, but that won't stop Biden's tone-deaf march toward socialism. As the President plans to spend our Nation into oblivion, 83 percent of Americans are already tightening their budget due to inflation pressures, and 87 percent of Americans already believe that we have significantly overspent money, and they know that the Federal Government's spending is causing their inflation
I grew up poor, and I know what it is like to watch my family struggle with inflation because of failed government policies and reckless spending. I watched my mom struggle to put food on the table and watch her as food prices went up. She struggled to put food on the table, and that is what we are doing to families right now all across this country.
Washington can't spend like this anymore. Debt has consequences. Massive spending has consequences. Tax increases have consequences. It all hurts America's poorest families the most.
And something else to think about: This summer, Congress and President Biden will face a critical choice of raising or suspending the debt ceiling. Congress has made a habit of maxing out America's credit card with no plan to pay for it for decades. Failure to rein in deficit spending will inevitably cause--and it is already happening--
high inflation, devastating the purchasing power of all Americans, and disproportionately impacting low- and fixed-income families.
Since the Biden administration doesn't have a plan to address this crisis, I hope they will join me in fighting for fiscal restraint and the adoption of sustainable and responsible debt reduction measures like we did in Florida and passage of reforms that produce concrete, enforceable limitations of deficit spending.
Americans understand they can't spend without consequences. It is time for government to embrace this same mentality. We did a poll earlier this year--I saw a poll earlier this year--80 percent of Americans are worried about the Federal debt, and they are concerned it is going to lead to financial problems for our country.
We have to scrutinize every bill we have, including this bill. Are we spending this money well? No one has had time to read this bill. Too often, lawmakers in Washington pass bills without having time to read them before they vote. These are new laws that impact American families and businesses and sometimes even authorize billions or trillions in tax dollar spending, and we don't have time to read these things. It is complete Washington dysfunction. It needs to end.
This bill is thousands of pages. It spends hundreds of billions of dollars. Growing up, my family lived paycheck to paycheck. My mom and my adopted dad struggled, but my mom instilled in me the value of counting pennies--a value I utilized as a businessman for four decades before I thought about running for office. I had to make payroll. I had to make sure there was money in the bank to make sure everybody got paid. I had to make sure we never ran out of money. First 10 rules of business: Don't run out of money.
My employees counted on me every time to make sure we never ran out of money. And if you look at what the Federal Government is doing, people are scared to death of what is going to happen to their Social Security, what is going to happen to their Medicare as this country racks up unbelievable deficits and unbelievable debt
When I ran for Governor, I just said: We are not going to do this. We are going to figure out how we can live within our means, and we did it. You know, we watched the pennies. As Governor, I had a line-item veto, and we went through every line every year, and, again, if we didn't get a return, we didn't do it.
When I took over Florida, it was like a failing business. I was worried about what it was going to be like for my children and my grandchildren in the State that I enjoyed living in. I wanted to make sure everybody had the same opportunity I had. We did it in Florida. We turned around the State, and we can do the same thing here.
You know, I was the first Governor in 20 years who actually paid down debt. Actually, for 20 straight years, the State of Florida increased its debt over $1 billion a year, and we paid off over $10 billion in 8 years.
So we can do it here, but we have got to start, with this bill, taking our time and looking at it line by line. Do we need to spend this money? Do we get a return for this money? Is this good for our taxpayers? Is this good for the families of our country? And if it is not, we have got to stop doing this.
I want the next generation to have the same opportunities I had to live their dreams in this country. If we continue down this path, that opportunity is going to be lost. At some point, the bill is going to come due.
You know, Robert Baden-Powell's famous plea to ``try and leave this world a little better than you found it'' has actually fallen on deaf ears here. We are not clearly leaving this country in a better shape. You would never do this to your kids and grandkids, leave the debt that we are leaving our kids and our grandkids.
The Federal Government takes in a little over $3 trillion. I think this year it is $3.5 trillion and it is spending trillions more. You just can't keep doing that. Right now, the interest alone on our nearly
$30 trillion national debt is over half a trillion dollars a year. That is just interest. What are we getting for that? We get nothing for that.
It doesn't do anything to help with our families. It doesn't help us build our military. It doesn't pay for Social Security. It doesn't pay for Medicare. We know Medicare is running out of money. What happens when Medicare runs out of money? Doctors and hospitals are going to have to be paid significantly less or Medicare recipients are going to have to get less care. I don't want any Medicare recipient to get less care.
Social Security is running out of its cash reserves by 2034. There is an automatic cut in Social Security. That is not fair. People who are paying into their Social Security plan, they are not being told that there is not going to be enough money there.
In this country, Medicaid costs are increasing by about 5 percent a year--5 percent. I mean, our revenues are not growing 5 percent a year. And these programs are called mandatory programs, so we don't have any control over them. I was shocked when I came up here that we don't even look at the cost of those programs. We don't even pass a budget with regard to those programs. I mean, it makes it convenient that we don't have to vote on it, but it is not fair to the American taxpayer.
We see what is happening when debt rises. I mean, if you look at what happens with a company--when a company, when its debt rises and they can't pay their debt, what happens? They go bankrupt. And who gets hurt? All the employees who work there, they get hurt. Their customers get hurt; suppliers gets hurt; and everybody gets hurt. It is just a fact that is what happens. We have to think the same way here. We have to think how do we reduce the debt, not how do we increase the debt.
Just this week, I held a press conference showing how the Democrats' reckless spending has increased the cost of groceries and gasoline. Inflation also raises rent; not to mention it makes it hard to get a student loan or loan to start a business when the interest rate goes up.
It is just like I mentioned, 83 percent of Americans already tighten their belt. They are worried, and they know that it is caused by what we are doing up here.
I have been shocked that President Biden has been completely silent about inflation. He has not said a word about it. And if you listen to Secretary Yellen, all she says is we need to spend more money. I mean, they are not looking at what is happening with inflation.
Next week, we get the CPI numbers and PPI numbers, and we will see what they are. But you watch what is happening to families. The poor families and those on fixed incomes are getting hurt while all these prices go up.
We have got to stop this. The April consumer price index rose by eight-tenths of 1 percent. That is almost 10 percent on an annualized basis. Annualized basis inflation rate for the past 3 months has been 7.2 percent and 6.2 percent for the first 4 months
The core inflation rate, excluding food and energy, on an annual basis, grows in April by 11 percent--a rate not exceeded since June of 1982. While these price increases are significant, broad, and accelerating, are they temporary effects? We don't know. We don't know if it is temporary. Some people say they are temporary, but who knows. But are they going to go back down?
As traditionally understood, inflation is too much money chasing too few goods, and where does that money come from? It comes from reckless Federal spending. While it may seem old-fashioned to ask in this brave new world of monetary theory, where Joe Biden declared last year that
``Milton Friedman isn't running the show anymore,'' is there reason to be concerned that the broad money supply, M2, grew by 24 percent over the last year, a postwar year high? Never, in the history of this country have you seen money supply grow like that without having significant inflation.
And if you go back to what happened, the only way they stopped the significant inflation in the past is significantly higher interest rates, which hurts every family but especially the family on a fixed income and the poor families because their wages are not going to go up like that.
So 24.6 percent, that is more than twice the rate it grew--on inflation, it is more than twice the rate it grew before inflation reached 13.4 percent in 1979 and almost three times the rate it grew amid the guns-and-butter spending surge during the Vietnam war.
And what about the extraordinary stimulus spending of the past year? Larry Summers, the highly respected former Treasury Secretary and economic adviser to Presidents Obama and Clinton, warned that the Biden stimulus would create purchasing power ``at least three times the size of the output shortfall'' and would be ``the least responsible macroeconomic policies we've had in the past 40 years.''
We need only look at the Bureau of Economic Analysis comparison of the first quarter of 2021 to a year earlier to confirm Mr. Summers' concerns. Wages and salaries are already significantly larger in the first quarter of 2021 than they were before the pandemic. Transfer of payments have almost doubled, and personal savings have surged an extraordinary $4.1 trillion from $1.6 trillion a year ago.
The end of the pandemic isn't only unleashing the pent-up demand of the tremendous shutdown economy. It is opening the floodgate to a torrent of spending fueled by fiscal and monetary stimulus not seen since the Civil War. When inflation happens, first off, you end up with a mindset of inflation. Somebody stopped me the other day and said: I know car prices are up. Should I buy now because car prices are going to be up even higher in a year?
With that mentality, that is what causes inflation to continue to go up--when Americans start believing it is going to go up, it is going to keep going up even as a result of reckless spending. But once they get in that mindset, it is very difficult to stop it.
The U.S. economy clearly has the power to iron out the natural problems of restarting production, but the very nature of the subsidies in the $6 trillion Biden administration stimulus relief and the infrastructure bills constrain production.
You know, you look at what is happening with trying to get jobs. There are about 8 million job openings in the State. A year ago, I was here speaking on the Senate floor saying that you can't pay people more not to work than to work. I mean, people are going to make a logical economic decision, and they are going to do the right things for their families.
So now what we are seeing is we have job openings all across the country. In my State, we have restaurants--we have a lot of small businesses that can't find workers. I talked to an individual who has a cement company today. He couldn't get truckdrivers. What we have done to ourselves makes no sense.
In its modern incarnation, socialism denies that government incentives and constraints have anything to do with people's decisions to work, save, and invest, but we all know that is not true.
These Federal supplemental payments to unemployment have just caused--it has caused a catastrophe for our small businesses.
The Congressional Budget Office found that the Affordable Care Act would cut the number of hours worked by as much as 2 percent. So how can expanding ObamaCare in the recent stimulus not affect employment? It does. The same applies to expansions of COBRA, the monthly child credit, and other income supports.
Historically in America, the best housing, healthcare, transportation, nutrition, and childcare program was always a job--that is what our parents always told us--not some government program. If you give people things they typically get from a job, don't be surprised when they don't take the job.
The Biden administration claims that it hasn't seen evidence that its unemployment bonus is keeping people from work, but we know that is not true. I have talked to people who work in the Biden administration. While Joe Biden will say that, they acknowledge it is not true. With the Labor Department reporting record job openings and the National Federation of Independent Business detailing a record number of small businesses offering jobs but finding no takers, that claim is not credible.
Since the War on Poverty began, government transfer payments have risen to provide more than 90 percent of the income of the bottom 20 percent of income-earning households, and the labor force participation rate among work-age households has collapsed to 36 percent from 68 percent. How is that good for those families?
You get a lot of satisfaction out of having a job. We need to have safety nets, but we don't want to put ourselves in the position that people become dependent on government payments.
The Biden administration also asks Americans to believe that they can raise income, corporate, and death taxes, smother the private sector with regulations, kill the fossil fuel industry, and fill the regulatory Agencies with activists fundamentally hostile to the Nation's economic system, and it is not going to have any effect on economic performance. We know that is not true.
Back in the real world, much of what the President is doing will impede the recovery, reduce economic capacity, and fuel inflation. And who does it hurt? It always hurts the poorest families, always hurts the person who is struggling to find work, always hurts the person on a fixed income. That is who gets hurt.
If Congress sees inflation as a real threat, it should stop spending. Unfortunately, right now, Congress doesn't think that way. We can see what is happening in the real world. Any unobligated balances in the Biden stimulus or previous stimulus bills can no longer be justified using current economic circumstances and should be rescinded, or if we are going to spend new money with, hopefully, a way to get a return on it, we should still spend it with unspent stimulus money.
Rescinding the stimulus authority in the Biden stimulus at the end of the fiscal year on September 30 would save over $700 billion--$700 billion--according to the CBO. Rescinding authority sooner and including all previous stimulus bills would save us $1 trillion.
Congress should repeal the enhanced unemployment benefits and reinstate the Clinton-era work requirements for welfare. Work requirements should be applied to all unearned benefits to anyone except the elderly, the disabled, and students.
Congress should adopt a real, enforceable budget that funds infrastructure and the other functions of the government without further expanding the deficit and debt.
The debt ceiling, which expires on August 1, should be used to set into place a long-term, binding program to stop the Federal debt from growing beyond 100 percent of gross domestic product. If the inflation of the 1970s and 1980s has returned, it is the ``Gods of the Copybook Headings'' that have returned once again to teach us that water will wet us, fire will burn, and the government can't give us something for nothing.
Debt also has an impact on interest rates. As interest rates go up, the interest on the national debt will increase faster and faster. It is going to be a debt spiral, and it is going to be very hard to deal with.
We have low interest rates now. If you look at the 50-year average of the 10-year Treasury, it is significantly higher than it is now. If that happens, it will be very difficult to fund any program we care about, whether it is Medicare, Social Security, or fund the military. When interest rates go up--and interest rates historically have always gone up when you have significant deficit spending, when you have significant inflation--then we are going to have a very difficult time funding the programs we care about.
I hope we don't end up having a sovereign debt crisis, but we are staring right at it right now.
None of this is to say I don't have hope for our future. I have clear hope for it. We can do it. We did it in Florida. Every time our country is faced with a challenge, we have shown our ability to rise above it, but if we don't acknowledge it, it doesn't happen.
So as long as I am a Member of the Senate, I am going to fight to rein in the out-of-control spending that is putting our country's future at risk. I have to. I have seven grandkids. I am going to do my best to leave this country in a better position than when I started.
But if you just look at the last 20 years, at the unbelievable increase in debt--I think when Ronald Reagan got elected, the national debt was under $1 trillion, and now it is close to $30 trillion. So we have to get focused on this. We can't just do something like this--rush through a bill that nobody has had the opportunity to really understand and spend hundreds of billions of dollars, not knowing whether we are going to get a return.
So, look, I want to figure out how to do good things. When I was Governor, we invested $85 billion in roads, bridges, airports, and seaports. I believe in investing. We invested in our universities. But we can't just keep spending money like this.
With that, I think I will yield to my colleague.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Kentucky.
Mr. PAUL. Mr. President, 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. SULLIVAN. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the order for the quorum call be rescinded.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. Without objection, it is so ordered.
S. 1260
Mr. SULLIVAN. Mr. President, I want to commend my colleagues for the important work that everybody is doing down here on the Senate floor, bipartisan work, addressing one of the most important challenges we have as a nation. Not just today but for years this challenge is going to be with us, and that is the challenge of dealing with the rise of the Communist Party of China. That is going to be more and more of a challenge and focus of the efforts of all elements of America's economy, military, society.
And here is the good news. As you are seeing here, there is a lot of focus, a lot of effort, and a lot of bipartisan work. It is a democracy, a Republic, right? It is messy. It is not going to be perfect. But, for the Chinese, I think the worst nightmare of the Chinese Communist Party is to see Americans coming together and recognizing that this is something we all need to work on together.
China's economy is growing. Their high-tech capability is growing. Their military capability is growing. Their aggressiveness throughout the region is growing.
Just look in the last year: Hong Kong; the disputes along the China-
India border with India; the aggressiveness toward Taiwan; the economic embargo, in many ways, against our ally Australia; Xinjiang Province; the full discrimination against the Uighurs. And, of course, China is now fully focused on exporting its authoritarian model abroad--not just at home but abroad. But again, as I mentioned, the good news is that we as a nation, we as a Senate, we as a Congress, Republicans and Democrats, are starting to awaken to this challenge.
This is an issue I have been focused on since I came to the Senate over 6 years ago. I think the previous administration, the Trump administration, with their National Security Strategy, National Defense Strategy, which said, hey, we know we have challenges with violent extremists organizations, but we need to start shifting our focus to great power competition with China as the pacing threat--that is where we should be focused.
Those strategy documents--the National Defense Strategy, the National Security Strategy--these were actually quite bipartisan documents, quite bipartisan strategies. The National Defense Authorization Act, which will be taken up here in a couple of months, in the last few years has been built around this National Defense Strategy, focusing on great power competition--China, Russia. So that is continuing. It is actually continuing on the floor here in the U.S. Senate as we speak.
What I have been trying to do is work with Members on both sides of the aisle--certainly with the Trump administration but also with the Biden administration--as they address this challenge. I had some good meetings with a number of senior officials in the administration, and one takeaway I got from discussing these issues with the National Security Advisor, Jake Sullivan, was a comment he had made about how when we were looking at our challenges with China, we need to think about these in the way in which Dean Acheson, who was a very famous Secretary of State, talked about the beginning of the Cold War with the Soviet Union in the late 1940s; how America needs to be dealing with the Soviet Union and that Cold War from situations of strength, positions of strength. I thought that was a really insightful comment by the current National Security Advisor.
So I want to mention a few of these because we have a lot of them relative to China. Our comparative advantages, in my view, are much greater than theirs in this competition that is going to, in my view, last for decades. So let me name a few of these situations of strength.
First, our allies. The United States is an ally-rich nation. China is an ally-poor nation and getting poorer by the day, by the way. Maybe North Korea is one ally. Maybe Russia sometimes, but I don't really buy it. So that is a huge comparative advantage that we have as a nation, and we need to look at our system, our network of allies and deepen them and expand them.
One area that that has happened with regard to our allies, really is a cornerstone of our alliance system in Asia, is the continued focus on what is called the Quad. The Quad is three of the biggest economies and democracies in the whole world: the United States, Japan, India, and Australia.
The Quad actually began in terms of a focus of strategy in the George W. Bush administration. The Trump administration highlighted it even more. To the Biden administration's credit, they took the Minister-
level meetings that were the focus of the Trump administration's effort with the Quad and took it to the leader level. President Biden met with the leaders--India, Japan, Australia, and the United States--recently. It is a very important development. The Quad can help anchor our alliances in the Asia-Pacific and beyond in a very significant way. The Chinese are constantly talking about it because they don't like it because they know what it signifies.
So that is one area of strength, situation of strength that I think all of us can agree on, and I think Members of this body can certainly help play a role
As we look to head into a work session, I am going to head to the Asia-Pacific with some of my Senate colleagues here--Senator Duckworth, Senator Coons, and maybe a few others--and we are going to help build on this important comparative advantage that we have as a nation--
allies. We are an ally-rich nation. China is ally-poor. The more aggressive they are acting in the region, the more this situation of strength is going to play to our advantage.
Let me give you another situation of strength for the United States, particularly as it relates to China. It is a huge position of strength. It is our energy sector, the all-above energy sector for America--I mean renewables, oil, natural gas. This is an area that for decades we have tried to become energy independent. We have tried to return to the status we had during World War II, which was the world's energy superpower in terms of the production of energy.
The good news on that is we have returned to that. Prior to the pandemic, the United States had once again become the world's energy superpower--a lot of people thought we could never achieve that again, but we have--the largest producer of natural gas in the world, bigger than Russia; largest producer of oil in the world, bigger than Saudi Arabia; largest producer of renewables in the world. This is really good for our economy. It is really good for jobs. It is really good for our national security and foreign policy. And yes, it is really good for our environment.
Why is that? I know some people don't like the production of energy in America, but here is a fact: We need energy, ``all of the above'' energy. My State has it all, all the things that I just mentioned--oil, gas, renewables. We have an enormous abundance in Alaska.
But here is the other fact: We produced these energy opportunities, we produced this energy in America with a higher environmental standard than any other place on the planet. That is a fact. That is a fact. So if we need energy, which we do, ``all of the above'' energy, which we do, we need to make sure we are producing it in a place with the highest standards, in a place that will employ American people workers. By the way, energy jobs are great jobs.
Here is one other thing. You look at the intel. You talk to people who know the region. The Communist Party in China recognizes this comparative advantage, and it scares the living daylight out of them because they are very energy dependent, and we have literally become, through the hard work and ingenuity of so many in our great Nation, energy independent.
By the way, not only has this helped our environment, it has helped with regard to greenhouse gas emissions. From 2005 to 2017, the United States reduced its greenhouse gas emissions by almost 15 percent--15 percent. You don't hear that often, but it is a fact--more than any other industrialized nation in the world.
China was going like this. Still is. By the way, right now, the latest numbers on greenhouse gas emissions--China is producing more than the United States, the EU, and India combined. That is also a fact.
So we have reduced global greenhouse gas emissions dramatically. Why? We all know why. It was the revolution and the production of American natural gas. That is a fact. That is a fact.
So if we want to grow our economy, have an enormous comparative advantage relative to China and adversaries like Russia, produce more good-paying jobs, protect our environment, and enhance our national security and foreign policy, continuing the production of ``all of the above'' energy, which we are going to need for decades, is something that we should be doing.
Now, some in the Biden administration understand this. Others don't and want to restrict production of American energy, and when those people speak, guys like John Kerry, the leaders in China and Russia are smiling. They are smiling.
Fortunately, this legislation here, the Endless Frontier Act, is focused on outcompeting the Chinese, all of us coming together and outcompeting them in many different areas--artificial intelligence, quantum computing, and, yes, energy as well.
Specifically, what is in the bill is called advanced energy and industrial efficiency technologies, advanced energy technologies. That is in the legislation.
Again, I think it is here because we recognize what a critical, comparative advantage we have relative to China in this sector, so we want to take advantage of it. It is in the legislation.
Advanced energy technology is not defined in this bill, but that is because the Congress has been abundantly clear on what this means. In my discussions with Senators and, more importantly, what the Congress has passed a number of times, advanced energy technology means what it states in the definition of a law unanimously passed in the Senate and in the House just two Congresses ago, 42 USC 18632. It actually has the definition of advanced energy technology, which is what is the focus of this bill, the Endless Frontier Act.
Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that 42 USC 18632 be printed in the Record
There being no objection, the material was ordered to be printed in the Record, as follows:
42 U.S.C. 18632: Energy Innovation Hubs
Text contains those laws in effect on May 27, 2021
Sec. 18632. Energy Innovation Hubs
(a) Definitions
In this section:
(1) Advanced energy technology
The term ``advanced energy technology'' means--
(A) an innovative technology--
(i) that produces energy from solar, wind, geothermal, biomass, tidal, wave, ocean, or other renewable energy resources;
(ii) that produces nuclear energy;
(iii) for carbon capture and sequestration;
(iv) that enables advanced vehicles, vehicle components, and related technologies that result in significant energy savings;
(v) that generates, transmits, distributes, uses, or stores energy more efficiently than conventional technologies, including through Smart Grid technologies; or
(vi) that enhances the energy independence and security of the United States by enabling improved or expanded supply and production of domestic energy resources, including coal, oil, and natural gas;
(2) Hub
(A) In general
The term ``Hub'' means an Energy Innovation Hub established under this section.
(B) Inclusion
The term ``Hub'' includes any Energy Innovation Hub in existence on September 28, 2018.
(3) Qualifying entity
The term ``qualifying entity'' means-
(A) an institution of higher education;
(B) an appropriate State or Federal entity, including a federally funded research and development center of the Department;
(C) a nongovernmental organization with expertise in advanced energy technology research, development, demonstration, or commercial application; or
(D) any other relevant entity the Secretary determines appropriate.
(b) Authorization of program
(1) In general
The Secretary shall carry out a program to enhance the economic, environmental, and energy security of the United States by making awards to consortia for establishing and operating hubs, to be known as ``Energy Innovation Hubs'', to conduct and support, at, if practicable, one centralized location, multidisciplinary, collaborative research, development, demonstration, and commercial application of advanced energy technologies.
(2) Technology development focus
The Secretary shall designate for each Hub a unique advanced energy technology or basic research focus.
(3) Coordination
The Secretary shall ensure the coordination of, and avoid unnecessary duplication of, the activities of each Hub with the activities of--
(A) other research entities of the Department, including the National Laboratories, the Advanced Research Projects Agency-Energy, and Energy Frontier Research Centers; and
Each Hub shall maintain conflict of interest procedures, consistent with the conflict of interest procedures of the Department.
(4) Prohibition on construction
(A) In general
Except as provided in subparagraph (B)--
(i) no funds provided under this section may be used for construction of new buildings or facilities for Hubs; and
(ii) construction of new buildings or facilities shall not be considered as part of the non-Federal share of a Hub cost-sharing agreement.
(B) Test bed and renovation exception
Nothing in this paragraph prohibits the use of funds provided under this section or non-Federal cost share funds for the construction of a test bed or renovations to existing buildings or facilities for the purposes of research if the Secretary determines that the test bed or renovations are limited to a scope and scale necessary for the research to be conducted.
(Pub. L. 115-246, title II, Sec. 206, Sept. 28, 2018, 132 Stat. 3137.)
Mr. SULLIVAN. The definition of advanced energy technology, which is in the bill, the Endless Frontier Act, and is defined in 42 USC 18632 is along the following lines. It says ``Definitions,'' ``advanced energy technology'' means an ``innovative technology that produces energy from solar, wind, geothermal, biomass, tidal, wave, ocean, or other renewable energy.''
That is important for our country. It goes on to say ``that produces nuclear energy''--that is important for our country--``for carbon capture and sequestration.'' Again, a critical comparative advantage.
``That enables advanced vehicles, vehicle components, and related technologies that result in significant energy savings.'' Again, important.
And it also says ``that enhances the energy independence and security of the United States by enabling improved or expanded supply and production of domestic energy resources, including coal, oil, and natural gas.''
That is in the definition of advanced energy technologies, and that is the definition that was passed two Congresses ago, unanimously, and that is why it has not been defined here because it has already been defined in this.
Congress is very clear on what advanced energy technology means in the Endless Frontier Act. That is a huge comparative advantage, as I mentioned, oil, gas, renewables. And that is an important element of this legislation in our competition with China, and I am glad that is recognized.
One final area of what, again, the current administration's National Security Advisor called a situation of strength relative to China, and that, of course, is our military. To be honest, this is where I am worried.
The second term of the Obama-Biden administration cut defense spending by 25 percent. That is actually one of the reasons I ran for the Senate. I never ran for anything, but what I saw what was happening to the U.S. military--an institution I love and I served in for over 25 years--that was enough motivation for me to say I need to help do something. The readiness of our forces during that era, the second term of the Obama-Biden administration--the readiness of our forces plummeted--plummeted. And our adversaries in Moscow and Beijing watched this and were gleeful.
We can talk about AI and everything else that we are talking about in this bill, but if we are gutting our military, that is one of the worst things we can do with regard to sending a message to China about our seriousness. I worry.
Last year on this floor--last summer--we had a big debate in the NDAA over defense spending. The majority leader--who was then the minority leader--and the Senator from Vermont, Senator Sanders, put forward an amendment they called--no kidding--``defund the Pentagon'' then. That was the name of their amendment, with 14 percent across-the-board cuts to the entire U.S. military. My response was: There they go again. There they go again.
Well, now that they regained power, it looks like this movie is coming to a theater near us again, and it is not going to be nice. Tomorrow, the Biden administration's budget is going to be coming out. The numbers that we are anticipating are about a 16-percent increase in domestic spending and a real decrease in military spending--inflation-
adjusted decrease in military spending again. Beijing will be watching this and will be gleeful.
When Republicans were in the White House and the Senate majority just recently, we were respectful of our colleagues in the minority, and there was an agreement essentially about a one-for-one, domestic programs increasing and the military budget is going to increase by about the same amount. That is what we all agreed on here. That is what we worked on here. Now, it looks like it is going to be 16-for-1 or maybe even worse. This is something we really need to focus on.
Make no mistake, we can talk about supply chains, intellectual property, competitiveness, which is what we are talking about here with this legislation. These are all important topics. But all the policy changes that we are debating here right now are not going to amount to much in our overall competition with respect to China if we lose our military edge with respect to China.
Unfortunately, some of my colleagues just don't recognize that or don't want to recognize that. Soft power isn't much good without hard power to back it up. We learned that lesson before. It has been a painful lesson, if you look at our history.
But the Chinese Communist Party certainly appears to understand this. According to one watchdog, it has increased its military investments by 76 percent over the last decade, and we are going to put out a budget tomorrow with an inflation-adjusted decrease in our military spending, despite the runaway domestic spending proposed by this administration. That is worrisome, and that is not operating from a position of strength with regard to the Chinese Communist Party. We need to watch out for that one. I am very concerned.
Yes, there is a lot of bipartisan work going on in the Senate, but if the leadership on the Senate floor and the House leadership as well and the Biden administration work together to cut defense spending, that is going to be one of the worst things we can do for our long-term competition with regard to China.
As we are focused on these challenges with the rise of China, let me conclude by predicting that not only is this challenge going to be with us for decades, but how we need to address it. I have talked about some of these situations of strength. We must face this challenge with confidence and strategic resolve.
As I have noted and I just talked about a few, America has extraordinary advantages relative to China: our global network of alliances, our military power, and economic leadership, our innovative society, our abundant and innovative energy supplies, advanced energy technology as defined in this bill and other bills, the world's most productive workforce, and a democratic value system.
Yes, it can be messy, but that makes countries around the world, and particularly in the INDOPACOM region, far more comfortable as American partners and allies than as subservient members of a New Middle Kingdom led by China. As a result of the long twilight struggle with the Soviet Union, we also know what works: maintaining peace through strength, promoting free markets and free people at home, and having the confidence in George Kennan's insights when he set forth the strategy of containment in the late forties to deal with the Soviet Union--that the Chinese Communist Party, like the Soviet Communist Party, likely bears within it the seeds of its own decay. While democracies are resilient, adaptive, and self-renewing, there are many vulnerabilities embedded in Chinese's perceived strength.
One-man rule creates acute political risks. Historical grievance can bring violent nationalism. State-directed economic growth can produce massive overcapacity and mountains of debt, and the gradual snuffing out of freedom that we are literally seeing daily in places like Hong Kong sends fear throughout the entire region.
China's budding military power and historical view of itself as a natural and cultural superior to many others is beginning to alarm neighboring states, inspiring them to want to step up security cooperation with the United States, not with China. Nearly half of wealthy Chinese want to emigrate. Remember, these are the winners from China's four decades of heady economic growth.
As we have in the past, we can prevail in this geopolitical and ideological contest, but doing so will require a new level of strategic initiative, organization, and confidence in who we are as a people and what we stand for. This also means that we must redouble our efforts in making this strategic case to others around the world, particularly our allies. This kind of work here--although it can be messy, although it can be difficult, although it can be challenging--is part of the process we need to put together to compete.
I suggest the absence of a quorum.
The PRESIDING OFFICER (Mr. Ossoff). The clerk will call the roll.
The legislative clerk proceeded to call the roll.
Mr. DURBIN. I ask unanimous consent that the order for the quorum call be rescinded.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. Without objection, it is so ordered.
____________________
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