Congressional Record, Volume 166 Issue 129 (Wednesday, July 22, 2020)

[Congressional Record Volume 166, Number 129 (Wednesday, July 22, 2020)]
[Senate]
[Pages S4365-S4397]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]

LEGISLATIVE SESSION

______

NATIONAL DEFENSE AUTHORIZATION ACT FOR FISCAL YEAR 2021--Resumed

The PRESIDING OFFICER. Under the previous order, the Senate will
resume consideration of S. 4049, which the clerk will report.
The senior assistant legislative clerk read as follows:

A bill (S. 4049) to authorize appropriations for fiscal
year 2021 for military activities of the Department of
Defense, for military construction, and for defense
activities of the Department of Energy, to prescribe military
personnel strengths for such fiscal year, and for other
purposes.

Pending:

Inhofe amendment No. 2301, in the nature of a substitute.
McConnell (for Portman) amendment No. 2080 (to amendment
No. 2301), to require an element in annual reports on cyber
science and technology activities on work with academic
consortia on high priority cybersecurity research activities
in Department of Defense capabilities.

Recognition of the Minority Leader

The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Democratic leader is recognized.

Coronavirus

Mr. SCHUMER. Madam President, Democrat Senators returned to
Washington on Monday prepared to work in a bipartisan way on the next
phase of coronavirus relief.
After stalling for months while COVID-19 surged in more than 40
States, Senate Republicans finally said that now--the end of July, more
than 3 months after the CARES Act passed--would be the time for another
emergency bill. But here we are. It is in the middle of the week, and
the Republican Party is so disorganized, chaotic, and unprepared that
they can barely cobble together a partisan bill in their own
conference.
Indicative was Leader McConnell's speech. He rants and raves about
the New York Times and cancel culture, but there is not a word about
COVID. People are ready to lose their unemployment benefits, to lose
their apartments and be evicted. Local governments are laying off
people because they don't have the dollars. We are in a national
crisis.
We don't hear a word out of Leader McConnell as we are on the edge of
so many cliffs. Instead, there is lots of talk about the New York Times
and cancel culture. That may be fodder for the far right. That is not
what America needs.
When Leader McConnell, at this crucial moment, can't even mention
COVID-19, it shows what a knot the Republicans are tied in. The bottom
line is this: The White House Chief of Staff said Republicans ``were on
their own 20 yard line'' when it comes to their legislative proposal--
their own 20-yard line, 2 months and a week after we passed the COVID 3
bill, after millions more Americans applied for unemployment, after
many small businesses went under, and many more died and were
hospitalized as COVID-19 rages in many Southern States. We are still on
the 20-yard line? Where have the Republicans been?
I have never seen a political party in the middle of a crisis so tied
in a knot that the majority leader can't even mention it in his speech
and spends time ranting against favorite targets of the far right and
can't come up with a proposal.
This is not a game. This isn't typical Republican dysfunction about
whether or not they did or didn't see the President's last tweet. The
disarray on the Republican side has real consequences. Americans will
suffer unnecessary pain and uncertainty because of it.
The only reason there hasn't been another relief package in Congress
already is due to this Republican incompetence and reckless delay. Even
after all of these months, the White House and Senate Republicans are
starkly divided about what to do. The White House is insisting on
policies, like a payroll tax cut, that would do nothing to help
millions of unemployed Americans and that many Senate Republicans don't
even support. The Republicans can't even seem to agree on whether to
provide any new aid for State and local governments or if the States
should be able to more flexibly use the support we have already given.
A few of my friends on the other side of the aisle hardly want to
spend any more money to help our country in this once-in-a-generation
crisis because it might add to the national debt. Giant corporate tax
cuts--$1.5 trillion to $2 trillion of them--are OK, but fighting the
greatest public health crisis in a century and forestalling a
depression is a bridge too far? Where are the priorities on the other
side of the aisle? I guess they are for helping big corporate fat
cats--wealthy people--but not average people who are hurting. That is
the trouble with the Republican Party.
Seriously, there are only 3 weeks left until the August work period,
and the Republicans are still in the opening phases of preparing their
bill. We don't have time for this mess that the Republicans are in. The
moratorium on evictions that we passed in the CARES Act expires in 2
days. The Wall Street Journal reports that nearly 12 million adults
live in households that missed their last rent payments and that 23
million have little or no confidence in their ability to make the next
ones.
Next week, the enhanced unemployment benefits we passed in the CARES
Act will expire while 20 to 30 million Americans will still be without
work. A recent study showed that those enhanced benefits prevented
nearly 12 million Americans from slipping into poverty--12 million.
Yet, because the Republicans can't get their act together, those
benefits might expire next week.
Congress needs to act quickly. The Senate Republicans and the White
House need to get on the same page, produce a proposal--not just drop
it on the floor but start negotiations. Better yet, we could start
negotiations on the Heroes Act, which already passed the House, and,
unlike the developing Republican proposal, it would actually match the
scale of this crisis.
Speaker Pelosi and I met yesterday with Chief of Staff Meadows and
Secretary Mnuchin. Even with all of this chaos, we have had some
indications about what the Republicans are trying to do in their bill.
Over the weekend, we heard that the administration was trying to block
additional funding for coronavirus testing and contact tracing.
President Trump has also ended the CDC's data collection efforts,
potentially risking access to data that public health experts so
vitally need. So, when we met with Chief of Staff Meadows and Secretary
Mnuchin, Speaker Pelosi and I told them to back off these
counterproductive and dangerous ideas.
In addition, we will be sending a letter to the administration to
demand answers on how data is being reported to the White House, as
well as pushing for legislation in the upcoming bill to ensure that
COVID-19 data is fully transparent and accessible without there being
any interference from the administration.
We know Donald Trump likes to hide the truth. He thinks, when the
truth doesn't come forward and when he muzzles government officials,
that it changes things. It doesn't. The virus still rages and will rage
unless we do something about it, not simply hide the statistics that
show his depth in mendacity. We will make sure that those statistics
are made public so all of America, including the President, will know
how bad the situation is, because that is what we need--the truth to
set us free and then to act on it. Let me repeat: If the administration
refuses to reverse course, the Democrats will insist on data
transparency in the next COVID relief bill.

[[Page S4366]]

All of our efforts to bolster the economy, help the unemployed, save
small businesses, and ensure our children are safe at school will be
meaningless if we don't stop the spread of the virus. Hiding COVID data
from the CDC, as well as foot-dragging on more testing and tracing, is
absolutely incomprehensible and imperils everything else we are working
on. So we need to make a law, and we need to make it soon. Right now,
the infighting and partisanship on the Republican side and cockamamie
ideas, like hiding data from the CDC, are only adding to the delay.
We also saw the return of President Trump's coronavirus press
briefings yesterday. It is remarkable that President Trump has lowered
the bar so much that his performance yesterday was seen as a change in
tone. It is a very sad state of affairs in our country when one day of
the President's reading statistics is hailed as leadership when that is
what he should have been doing all along. The mere acknowledgment by
the President that COVID-19 is raging through our country is some kind
of breakthrough. Is that what people believe? Is that what Trump wants
the people to believe? It is crazy.
The truth is, every time the President takes the podium, he is a risk
to public health. We are 6 months into the coronavirus, and the
President has only just come around to the idea that wearing masks
would be a good idea. He deserves criticism for that belated admission,
not praise. We are 6 months into the crisis, and the President said
yesterday that his administration is in the process of developing a
strategy that is going to be very, very powerful--6 months in.
Countries in Europe and East Asia developed national testing regimens
ages ago. That is why they are way ahead of us in fighting this crisis.
Americans must be hanging their heads in shame and disbelief that
this administration is still trying to sort out the basics. Then, when
he says he is going to try and sort out the basics months and months
too late, as the crisis has raged, people think he should get praise?
No, he should be criticized because he hasn't done what he was supposed
to have been doing for months.
President Trump started his press conference by labeling COVID-19 the
``China virus,'' which shows the President is still trying to deflect
blame and play political games with this deadly, serious virus--games
that are divisive. The truth is, more than anything or anybody else,
the responsibility for America's failure to deal competently with
COVID-19 falls squarely on President Trump's shoulders. It is long past
time for the President to start acting like it
I yield the floor.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Democratic whip.
Mr. DURBIN. Madam President, I read this morning that more Americans
have died in the last 3 months than in any 3-month period in the
history of the United States. That is a stunning statistic. We are
searching the records to make sure that it is an accurate statement,
and I am afraid it is.
So far, we believe 140,000 Americans have died of this COVID-19
crisis that we are facing. This is not a moment of American greatness.
They have just done a review of the nations across the world and the
safety of living in those nations that face this pandemic. Where does
the United States rank among the nations of the world in terms of
safety in dealing with the coronavirus? It ranks 58th--two ranks ahead
of Russia.
How could we have reached this moment in time when this pandemic has
been so devastating in the United States, more so than in many other
countries around the world--countries that are supposedly not even
close to us in terms of economic development and strength? They have
handled this far better than the United States. Yet what are we doing
about it now? It is a valid question.
I know that the President has decided he doesn't want the likes of
Dr. Tony Fauci by his side any longer when it comes to talking about
this pandemic, but Dr. Fauci and Dr. Collins, of the National
Institutes of Health, were interviewed over the weekend and were asked
directly about the issue of testing.
Why does it take so long in the United States to get results, and
what kind of problems does that create?
Well, we know. If people suspect they are positive for this virus and
go in for a test, they are worried that they may be endangering their
own lives, not to mention the lives of others. Then, they have to wait
1 day, 2 days, 3 days, 6 days--more--for the test results. That is
unacceptable. We need to invest more money in testing and more money in
finding tests to provide quicker results.
You would think that it would be obvious to everyone, but it is not
obvious in this negotiation that is taking place now in the U.S.
Senate. There are Republican Senators who are resisting the idea of
putting more money into testing in the United States. What country do
they live in? Do they ever go home from Washington to see what is
happening in the rest of this country? We closed down the testing
facilities in my hometown of Springfield, IL, this last week. It was
disappointing, for we needed it, and we need more.
If we are serious about opening this economy, if we are serious about
stopping the spread of this pandemic, and if we are serious about
opening our schools and making certain that teachers and pupils are
safe, we need more testing. Yet here we are, tied in knots, as Senator
Schumer said earlier.
The Republicans can't agree among themselves about the issue of
putting money into testing in the midst of this pandemic. It is hard to
believe. It was more than 2 months ago that the House of
Representatives passed the Heroes Act. Senator McConnell has come to
the floor regularly to ridicule that effort because he doesn't like the
provisions in the act. It is his right to have a difference of opinion,
but the obvious questions to Senator McConnell are these: Where is your
alternative? What have you been doing for the last 2 months? You should
have been writing a bill that we should be voting on as soon as we
finish the one that is pending on the floor.
Apparently, the White House and the Senate Republicans can't come to
any agreement about how to move forward. There are some who are
basically saying: Enough. We are not going to spend another penny. We
are not going to waste any more money on any type of COVID-19.
I have seen their testimony. I have seen their statements before the
microphones. That is hard to imagine.
I wonder if some of the Senators from States like Kentucky and Texas
who have stepped up and said, ``We have spent enough money on this,''
have been home recently. Have they been there to meet people who are
unemployed, out of work, or who have been laid off who are receiving
the Federal unemployment benefits to keep bread on the table and to pay
for the their mortgages and their health insurance?
This $600 a week may sound like a pretty generous amount of money to
some. Try living on it. Try living on $600 a week when it costs you
$400 a week for health insurance. Yes, that is the average on COBRA
premiums--almost $1,700 a month. So, when you talk about $600 a week,
take out $1,600 or $1,700 off the top of that, and tell me what is left
to take care of your family.
As for the last Federal unemployment payment under the CARES Act,
Senator Schumer is right. It ends on July 31--a week from Saturday. We
have been told that the last checks will be mailed this Saturday, which
is just a few days from now.
Three days from now, the last check goes out. While that check is
making its way through the mail, is it even possible that the
Republican leadership, with the White House, will come up with a
proposal to deal with this? It has been 2 months. Senator McConnell
said, during those 2 months, that he didn't feel any sense of urgency--
no sense of urgency. Can you imagine the sense of urgency if you can't
make your mortgage payment? Can you imagine the sense of urgency if
that utility bill is so large you can't pay it? That is the reality
facing a lot of families who have been laid off and are unemployed. I
believe--and many agree--that one of our highest priorities is to make
sure that the resources are there for the families.
I also want to say that we are in the midst of this conversation
about public health while the President and his party are trying to
kill the Affordable Care Act in the Supreme Court. More

[[Page S4367]]

than 140,000 Americans have died from this pandemic, and President
Trump and the Republican Party are trying to kill the major source of
health insurance for millions of Americans. For 10 years, the
Affordable Care Act has been the law of the land, and before it was the
law of the land, there were some things going on when it came to health
insurance which we should not forget.
Routinely, health insurance companies discriminated against women
before we passed the Affordable Care Act and prohibited their
practices. There was a time when insurance companies were allowed to
charge women more than men for the same health insurance policies. It
was common for women to pay three or four times what men pay for on the
identical plans.
Important women's healthcare was often excluded from most insurance
plans. For instance, most individual policies refused to cover
maternity or newborn care.
Insurance companies were allowed to deny coverage and charge higher
premiums to Americans with preexisting conditions. That particular
discrimination hurt women much more than men. Approximately 24 million
American men have preexisting conditions; 30 million American women.
Insurance companies could consider a host of medical conditions to be
preexisting conditions: breast cancer, C-sections, victims of domestic
violence, asthma, acne, heart disease--all preexisting conditions.
Before the Affordable Care Act, that is what the health insurance
companies pointed to when they charged women and others more because of
it.
The Affordable Care Act put an end to that, and now the Republicans
want to put an end to the Affordable Care Act. Well, you must say, they
must have a much better idea. There must be a Republican proposal out
there far better than the Affordable Care Act. There isn't. We haven't
seen any. They have no alternative. They just want to kill anything
that might have the name ``Obama'' on it.
We have to do something about this to protect health insurance for
the future, and the notion that the Republicans and President Trump are
fighting the Supreme Court to eliminate the Affordable Care Act in this
moment in American history, when we are fighting this pandemic, is
impossible to explain.

Amendment No. 1788

Madam President, I have been honored to work on the Defense
Appropriations Subcommittee since December of 2012, when Senator Dan
Inouye, the legendary Senator from Hawaii and recipient of a
Congressional Medal of Honor, passed away. Since I have taken that job,
I have been impressed many times over by the extraordinary Department
of Defense and the actions they have taken--the development of
technology like GPS, investing in critical medical research, and the
abiding commitment to women and men in uniform, who make so many great
sacrifices for our country. But I have also discovered at the same time
how poorly we manage the Department of Defense. Our procurement system
seems designed to generate redtape, delays, and cost overruns. Our top
adversaries around the world develop game-changing technologies at a
fraction of the cost that it takes us to develop them.
There is going to be an amendment on the floor today about future
spending in the Department of Defense offered by Senator Sanders. I
heard what Senator McConnell had to say about it earlier. He seems to
believe that any suggestion that there is misspending in the Department
of Defense is not patriotic. Somehow you are a chicken if you raise any
questions about waste in the Department of Defense. I couldn't disagree
more.
The Sanders amendment proposes a 10-percent budget cut in the
Department of Defense. Well, I have taken a look, as others have, at
the failed audits, the cost overruns, and the sclerotic bureaucracy at
the Department of Defense. I believe the American taxpayer deserves
more.
One of my early hearings in the Defense Appropriations Subcommittee
focused on the defense industrial base and the threat of sequestration.
The lives of our servicemembers often depend on the equipment and
training provided. When managed well, the defense industrial base
generates the best equipment, next-generation technology, good jobs,
and powerful weapons. However, I am concerned that holding defense
contractors accountable for poor performance has not been the priority
it should be today.
Listen to this: From 2016 to 2019, military spending rose by 18
percent. During the same period of time, the Department of Defense
accumulated $18 billion in cost overruns for weapons programs. What
about the contractors who generated those cost overruns? The top five
defense contractors in America saw their profits increase by 44 percent
in that same period. This doesn't add up.
Businesses have the right to earn a profit, but taxpayers have the
right to demand accountability. With defense spending on such a steep
rise, we should be driven by the motto ``pay for performance.'' I don't
believe that is the culture at the Department of Defense today.
Senator Sanders wants to direct $74 billion to communities across the
country--including many needy communities in my State of Illinois--for
housing, healthcare, childcare, education, and jobs. Senator McConnell
comes to the floor and calls that socialism. Socialism when it comes to
education and childcare? I don't agree with him.
There is considerable merit to what Senator Sanders has to say about
the run-up in cost at the Department of Defense, but I do not agree
with his basic approach of across-the-board cuts. When you start
exempting things like military pay and healthcare, it means the
remaining items take a deeper hit.
The 14-percent cut that has been proposed for the remaining items at
the Department of Defense would be a hard hit, no question about it. As
I have said many times, sequestration didn't work, and we ought to
learn a lesson from it.
The National Guard should not have a 14-percent cut. Special victims
counsels and sexual assault prevention programs should not be cut by 14
percent. Cleaning up PFAS contamination at military bases should not be
cut by 14 percent. Instead, we ought to look at the Department of
Defense budget more carefully, not with an across-the-board cut.

Let's start with the $16 billion OCO gimmick. OCO is the account
created to fight a war. We started this account years and years ago,
when we actually were engaged in a war. We have kept it alive to this
day because it is a way to escape budget rules.
The OCO gimmick funds were requested for routine Army, Navy, and Air
Force operations that have nothing to do with fighting a war in
Afghanistan or any other place. The administration requested these
funds for the sole purposes of evading the caps on the base defense
budget. Beyond that--listen to this--the President of the United
States, who is arguing for this budget, was the first to raid it and
take $8 billion or more out for his medieval wall on the southern
border of the United States.
The $18 billion in weapons systems overruns that I mentioned
earlier--what could we do with $18 billion in cost overruns? Well, you
could increase the budget for the National Institutes of Health medical
research by almost 50 percent. That is one thing. You could provide
student loan forgiveness for healthcare workers or hazard pay for these
same men and women who risk their lives for us every day.
I have to tell you, there is need for us to look to space in terms of
our future defense. I still haven't been sold on this concept of the
so-called Space Force. Putting millions of dollars into additional
bureaucratic costs is hard for me to understand or explain.
Ultimately, the Sanders amendment is going to be considered in this
authorization bill, but if it is going anywhere in concept, it will be
in the Appropriations Committee, where I serve. Our work as
appropriators is to examine the details of the budget and make the best
decisions for the taxpayers and for our national defense.
I believe Senator Sanders is on the right track to demand
accountability and to ask that we find cost overruns and expenditures
that can be changed without jeopardizing our national defense. His
exact approach is not one that I would endorse, but I have to say that
I stand behind his concept that we need to ask harder questions about
this massive spending.

[[Page S4368]]

I yield the floor.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Rhode Island.
Mr. REED. Madam President, I rise to comment, along with my colleague
Senator Durbin, about the Sanders amendment. I must commend how
thoughtful and knowledgeable Senator Durbin is about all these
subjects. He has pointed out how there are too many military programs
that are not well moderated and that have cost overruns that result in
excess cost to the American public. We have to do something about those
things, and we also understand that we have huge demand with respect to
nondefense spending that we have to meet also.
The Sanders amendment, as Senator Durbin pointed out, would impose an
across-the-board cut to the Department of Defense, except for military
personnel accounts and the defense health programs. What he would call
a 10-percent across-the-board cut, when you take out health and
personnel, becomes really a 14-percent cut to all the accounts at the
Department of Defense.
The danger, as so well illustrated by Senator Durbin, is that this
type of indiscriminate getting rid of the good and paying for the bad
that doesn't really work. It doesn't make sense. It reminds us all of
the battles we had over sequestration, where Departments--not only the
Department of Defense but the civilian Departments--had to fund
programs because they met the cap and then cut other programs that were
much more valuable because they exceeded the cap. That is not a way, as
they proverbially say, to run a railroad, nor the Department of
Defense.
So we do have to look for specific areas to cut, and, as Senator
Durbin said, a great deal of that is done and will be done in the
Appropriations Committee where he is the ranking member. I am a
colleague on the committee, and each year we have the challenge of
taking the authorization that says ``you may do this'' and actually
putting in the money to do it, and that effort is usually valuable, as
is the authorization effort, and critically important.
We have to make sure that a result of our deliberations is, first,
the resources that are necessary to protect the men and women in the
Armed Forces who protect us and also provide for the quality of life of
their families and ultimately, of course, that we are able to deter any
threat, and if not, defeat that threat decisively.
This is a very important endeavor, and, again, suggesting that we
just cut across the board and then put it someplace else is not, I
think, commensurate with the kind of approach that we must take and we
have to take going forward.
The other factor, too, is that there are real ramifications for this
that are not sometimes obvious. There are literally thousands and
thousands--not just military personnel but civilian workers and
construction workers and equipment manufacturing workers--who, in this
indiscriminate, across-the-board cut, would lose their jobs at a time
when we can't lose any jobs. This approach would be disruptive. I would
not want to make a point to the disadvantage of the thousands and
thousands of men and women who are working hard to take care of their
families all across this country.
Again, we do have to make serious investments in communities across
this country that have been neglected, and I have been consistent in
support of those efforts. We do have to make investments in our
infrastructure for our economic liability and our economic efficiency.
We do have to provide support in many, many different ways that
transcends and goes beyond just the Department of Defense. In fact, one
could say that just as vital a part of our national defense as our
military budget is our education budget and our healthcare budget
because our strength is not just military forces; our strength is
knowledgeable citizens, our strength is healthy citizens, and our
strength is an efficient economic system.
But I think this approach, as I suggested today and I think the
suggestion from Senator Durbin also was that this just across-the-board
approach is good for a headline, it is good to make a point, but we are
here to make policy, and I hope we do make policy. I hope we can
continue in this National Defense Authorization Act to try to argue
about issues that people feel are not appropriate spending or if, in
fact, we need more spending and that in the appropriations process we
will do that once again.

Just as a reminder, this bill adheres to the Bipartisan Budget Act of
2019. It is the final year of the Budget Act. So the numbers we are
talking about today for the Department of Defense are not willy-nilly;
they were not negotiated without the context of nondefense spending. It
was a bipartisan agreement to set the levels of spending for both
defense and nondefense, and that is what we are doing here today.
We need a serious discussion about national spending priorities, not
just defense spending priorities but priorities that look back to poor
communities, industrial policy, infrastructure, education, daycare, the
impact of artificial intelligence on the workplace. We have a lot to
do, and I think we should get on to doing it but not with the shorthand
message of ``let's cut everything here, and put it over there.'' Let's
look at the serious issues, and let's confront them, and let's propose
serious solutions.
So because of these indiscriminate cuts, I will be forced to oppose
this amendment by Senator Sanders.
There is another amendment that will come before us today proposed by
Senator Tester, and that is one I do support. Senator Tester's
amendment will add additional diseases to those that the Veterans
Administration already presumes are the result of exposure to Agent
Orange by veterans during their military service in Vietnam.
We know that exposure to the toxic chemical Agent Orange has had
severe health consequences for veterans who answered the Nation's call
to military service during the Vietnam conflict. Recognizing this, the
Veterans Administration already presumes that certain diseases
affecting these veterans are service connected as a result of the
exposure to Agent Orange. These diseases include non-Hodgkin's
lymphoma, soft tissue sarcoma, respiratory cancers, myeloma and type 2
diabetes.
We also know that there are other diseases that are not yet covered
and that there are veterans who suffer from these diseases, and this
conclusion is supported by a scientific review by the National Academy
of Medicine. Parkinson's, bladder cancer, and hypothyroidism should
share the same presumption of service connection as the diseases
already presumed to be service connected.
Our Vietnam veterans should not have the burden of proving by
independent evidence that their diseases were caused by exposure to
Agent Orange. The failure to add these conditions to the Veterans
Administration's presumptive list continues to deny sick and aging
veterans the healthcare and compensation that they have earned through
service to our Nation and that they desperately need.
Senator Tester's amendment begins to remedy this inequity, and I urge
all Senators to vote for the Tester amendment.
With that, I yield the floor.
The PRESIDING OFFICER (Mr. Sasse). The Senator from Alaska.
Mr. SULLIVAN. Mr. President, in about an hour we are going to take a
vote that our servicemembers around the world will likely be watching.
It is a critical vote on the amendment of my colleague from Vermont to
blindly cut defense spending, taking a hatchet to the already agreed-
upon Bipartisan Budget Act.
We have heard from my colleague Jack Reed from Rhode Island, who is
part of the strong leadership on the Armed Services Committee and just
spoke out against it, and I am going to speak out against it.
I am going to spend some time explaining what this means. This is not
just one amendment. This has national implications, and if you are
watching in America, I want you to think about what is really going on
here.
First of all, my colleague from Vermont says that it is a 10-percent
cut, but it is going exempt military personnel and healthcare
accounts--which is true as part of the amendment--but it is actually
going to compensate for the other cuts, so it is actually a 14-percent
across-the-board cut to the Department of Defense. That is the
amendment we are going to vote on.

[[Page S4369]]

To paraphrase one of our great Presidents, Ronald Reagan: There they
go again. There they go again.
I chair the Subcommittee on Readiness of the Armed Services
Committee. One of the reasons I ran for the Senate in 2014 was exactly
this issue of military readiness. As a colonel in the U.S. Marine Corps
Reserve, I had a little bit of an up close and personal view on it.
The readiness of our Armed Forces in the second term of the Obama
administration was plummeting. In the second term of the Obama
administration, defense spending was cut by 25 percent, and, with that,
the readiness of the men and women in the military plummeted. By the
way, at the same time defense spending was cut by 25 percent, Russia
was increasing defense spending by 34 percent, and China was increasing
by 83 percent
So let me just give an example. These numbers actually were
classified, and they have been declassified. In 2015, when I arrived in
the Senate, these were some of the numbers relating to readiness.
Remember, we are supposed to be in charge of readiness here. Three of
the 58 brigade combat teams in the U.S. Army--the brigade combat team
is the 5,000 men and women deployed block in our military, and 3 of the
58 were at the tier 1 level of readiness that you want for a deployed
unit. You can understand why that was classified in 2015 because we
certainly didn't want our adversaries to know that. So 5 percent of the
U.S. Army was fully ready to fight. Less than half of Marine Corps Navy
aviation could fly--another classified number, now unclassified.
Training and flight time for all military pilots plummeted.
When I arrived in 2015, the Obama administration proposed a cut of
another 40,000 Active-Duty troops for the U.S. Army. One of the units
they were looking to cut was the 4th Brigade of the 25th Infantry
Division--the 4-25 at JBER in Alaska, the only airborne combat team in
the Asia Pacific. I put every ounce of my energy into fighting that
misguided decision. The 4-25 was not cut, thankfully. All the rest of
the 40,000 were cut. We are still digging out of that hole.
So I want to throw something out there because people don't think
about it. Imagine if there had been a major contingency or, yes, a war
in 2015 with these readiness numbers. Sometimes wars hit us when we are
least expecting them. I am going to talk about that.
I will tell you this: It would have been very ugly--not only for our
national security but more importantly for our troops--for the men and
women we are supposed to make sure are trained so that they never have
to go into a fair fight, so we know they are always going to win.
We just celebrated the 70th anniversary of the outbreak of the Korean
war on June 25, 1950. I am a bit of a Korean war history buff. I will
tell you this: What we didn't celebrate was actually what happened in
the summer of 1950 at the outbreak of the Korean war.
Here is what happened. The greatest military power in the world in
1945 was the U.S. military. We had just won World War II. By 1950, due
to dramatic defense cuts, lack of training, lack of readiness, our
military had a very difficult time halting the invasion of a third-
world army, the North Korean army.
For the history buffs who understand Korean war history--the military
certainly does--they know what Task Force Smith was. It was the first
American unit that went in to stop the North Korean army. Task Force
Smith was obliterated. Hundreds were killed in the summer of 1950. As a
matter of fact, thousands of young Americans died horrible deaths
during the summer of 1950 because the leadership in Congress, the
leadership in the executive branch, and the leadership in the Pentagon
let the readiness of our Armed Forces plummet. Let me repeat that: 70
years ago right now--if you look back 70 years ago in the summer of
1950 on the Korean Peninsula--thousands of young Americans were being
killed because they weren't trained and they weren't ready.
This was probably one of the biggest derelictions of duty in U.S.
history. Because it is a forgotten war, not many people know about it.
But it was a dramatic failure of leadership in the Congress, the
executive branch, and the military. The military even has a saying for
this: ``No more Task Force Smith.'' We will never ever--ever--let our
young men and women go fight a war where they are unprepared, and
because of that, they die.
I agree we need to do all we can to address many of the social issues
that my colleague from Vermont highlights, particularly during this
pandemic. But we must never, as a Congress, gut our military readiness
to such a degree that our young men and women come home in body bags as
opposed to victors. That is what happened in the summer of 1950.
We were on a path toward this dangerous lack of readiness during the
second term of the Obama administration. I cited the numbers. I chair
the Subcommittee on Readiness. I have been all focused on this issue of
rebuilding our readiness.
Here is the good news. With the Republicans in control in the Senate
and the White House, we have begun to dramatically rebuild our military
and our readiness. This has been a priority of ours. This has certainly
been a priority of mine. Many of my colleagues, Democrats and
Republicans, particularly on the Armed Services Committee, have been
working on rebuilding our military. When we were looking at these
numbers, so many people on the Armed Services Committee, including Jack
Reed, who just gave a very eloquent speech, recognized, whoa--dangerous
world, dangerous neighborhood, and a military that is not ready. So we
got to work.
I enjoy my bipartisan work here in the Senate. Some of my best
friends are from the other side of the aisle, but there are principle
disagreements on key issues between some on this side of the aisle and
the other side. One of them is about the degree to which we support our
military and national defense.
I know all of my colleagues are patriotic. I don't like doing the
patriotism argument. Every Member of this body, all 100--we love our
country. But there are some impressions when you look at what goes on
here, when you look at the sweep of history with regard to readiness
and funding our military.
Again, to my Democratic colleagues on the Armed Services Committee,
Defense Appropriations, who, like me, attend the hearings regularly,
dig into the issues, know the threats our country faces, I think we
work together to rebuild readiness. But at the national level, here are
the facts. Think about it. Carter, Clinton, Obama, Biden--what do those
administrations all have in common? They get into power, and they cut
our military, and morale plummets, and readiness plummets.
Let me go a little bit closer to home. Since I have been elected, the
No. 1 bill my colleagues on the other side of the aisle have
filibustered--the No. 1 bill when they want to take something hostage--
is the Defense appropriations bill. Ten times, since I have been in
this body, the funding for our men and women has been pulled in as a
hostage--ten times. No other bill in the last 5\1/2\ years, since I
have been here, has been filibustered more than the Defense
appropriations bill.
Our friends in the media never report on this, but that is one of the
issues that really burns me up here because it happens all the time.
Trust me, our troops know it. They watch it, and they know it.
Now we have a Sanders amendment for across-the-board DOD cuts of 14
percent just as we are digging out of the readiness hole that we all
know that we are in. If you don't acknowledge it, you are not paying
attention.
The Senate minority leader has recently come out in favor of the
Sanders amendment. I wonder where Joe Biden is on the Sanders
amendment.
Of course, as my colleague from Illinois just mentioned, the Pentagon
must do a better job of managing waste and cost overruns. I fully agree
with that. In fact, the Trump administration was the first
administration to finally undertake an audit of the Pentagon. Again,
Democrats and Republicans on the Armed Services Committee pressed for
it, and we finally got it. It took decades, but an audit of the
Pentagon has finally happened.

Make no mistake, the Sanders amendment is the first salvo in the
national Democratic leadership's goal of defunding the military across
the board. If you don't want to take my word for it, here is the
POLITICO op-ed from Senator Sanders about his amendment titled:
``Defund the Pentagon: The Liberal Case.''

[[Page S4370]]

``Defund the Pentagon''--there they go again. This is a really
important issue. I hope my colleagues on both sides of the aisle defeat
this amendment overwhelmingly--overwhelmingly. The men and women of the
military are watching this amendment. The men and women of the military
know that their readiness 5 years ago was in a really bad state.
The vote today and what is going to happen later--literally, if you
look at history, we never know when the next conflict is coming. We
didn't know that in the summer of 1950, the military was going to be
rushed to the Korean Peninsula and would barely be able to hold its
own. Thousands died because they weren't ready because of defense cuts
by the Congress and the executive branch and the Pentagon.
So this is an important vote. The lives of the men and women in our
military and their readiness could well depend on this vote, and I urge
my colleagues on both sides of the aisle to strongly reject it.
I yield the floor.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Montana.

Remembering Jim Posewitz

Mr. TESTER. Mr. President, before I call up my amendment and get to
the issue of our veterans in this country, I want to say a few words
about a good friend and a legendary Montana conservationist named Jim
Posewitz, who passed away a few weeks ago.
He was a towering figure in Montana and in the history of
conservation in our great State. He was a man who knew right from
wrong, and Montanans know that he was almost always right and seldom
wrong.
Poz's accomplishments are too long to list, but any Montanan who
fished in the Missouri River, learning the ethics of hunting or hiking
in Montana's Rocky Mountain Front, owes a deep debt of gratitude to
Poz's more than 30 years of work for the Montana Fish, Wildlife, and
Parks and to his post-retirement work as a conservation advocate,
ethicist, and leader.
The Wilderness Act of 1964 says that America's wildest places are
those where man himself is a visitor. Poz understood that power, that
magic, and the importance of these places. He was relentless in his
fight to protect them, and he was uncompromising in his faith that they
bring us closer to nature, to each other, and to ourselves. He never
stopped fighting for Montana and for the wild places in Montana.
My heart goes out to Poz's family, including his life partner Gayle;
his sons, Brian, Allen, Carl; Matthew and Matthew's wife Heather and
their daughters, Sarah and Lindsay; his son Andrew and Andrew's wife
Kelly and their daughters Madison and Charlotte; his stepdaughter Ann
and Ann's husband Nate and their children, Joslin and Lyzander; his
stepson Clayton and Clayton's wife Michelle and daughter Ayla. Poz is
also survived by his brother John and John's wife Mary and their four
children.
He will be greatly missed. He is somebody they only make one of, an
incredible human being.

Amendment No. 1972, as Modified

Mr. TESTER. Mr. President, I call up amendment No. 1972, as modified,
and ask that it be reported by number.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. The clerk will report.
The legislative clerk read as follows:

The Senator from Montana [Mr. Tester] proposes an amendment
numbered 1972, as modified, to amendment No. 2301.

The amendment is as follows

(Purpose: To expand the list of diseases associated with exposure to
certain herbicide agents for which there is a presumption of service
connection for veterans who served in the Republic of Vietnam)

At the end of subtitle G of title X, add the following:

SEC. __. ADDITIONAL DISEASES ASSOCIATED WITH EXPOSURE TO
CERTAIN HERBICIDE AGENTS FOR WHICH THERE IS A
PRESUMPTION OF SERVICE CONNECTION FOR VETERANS
WHO SERVED IN THE REPUBLIC OF VIETNAM.

Section 1116(a)(2) of title 38, United States Code, is
amended by adding at the end the following new subparagraphs:
``(I) Parkinsonism.
``(J) Bladder cancer.
``(K) Hypothyroidism.''.

Mr. TESTER. Mr. President, I want to turn to the issue of the day,
and that is this amendment to the National Defense Authorization Act.
Senator Reed talked about it a few minutes ago because, quite
frankly, justice is long overdue for thousands of veterans who are
currently suffering and dying from illnesses related to exposure to
Agent Orange in Vietnam.
You know, one of our most sacred duties is to take care of those who
are wounded in service to this country, and the fact is, this
administration, the Trump administration, has refused to expand the
list of presumptive health conditions associated with Agent Orange to
cover illnesses such as bladder cancer, hypothyroidism, and
Parkinsonism. They don't seem to think that exposure to these toxic
chemicals in Vietnam is a cost of war. Well, let me tell you, they are
wrong. It is a cost of war. The fact is, this administration wants to
outlive the Vietnam veterans, and they don't want to pay for it.
Every time we get in a situation--and I should say the last time we
got in a situation, for sure--we sent off our young men and women in
the military, and we put the cost on the credit card for our kids to
pay and don't think a thing about it, but when they come back and they
are changed, all of a sudden, we don't want to pay for it, especially
when these conditions, in particular, already meet the historical
standard to be added to the Department of Veterans Affairs' presumptive
list for service connection.
Now, this is not just me talking. This is the National Academies of
Medicine weighing in with their reviews of scientific evidence--
scientific evidence. Each day this administration stonewalls benefits,
more and more veterans are forced to live with the detrimental effects
of their exposure without the assistance that not only they have earned
but that we owe them--veterans like Bill Garber from Great Falls, MT.
In 1967, Bill enlisted in the U.S. Army, and within 6 months he was
sent to fight in Vietnam, where he served as a combat engineer and
demolitions expert with the 11th Armored Cavalry Regiment, 1st Brigade
Combat Team of the 101st Airborne Division. During his yearlong tour in
Vietnam, Bill saw heavy combat, and like most military folks who were
in Vietnam, was exposed to Agent Orange.
Now, more than 50 years later, after his service and his sacrifice,
Bill suffers from tremors diagnosed as Parkinsonism, one of the three
conditions that would be covered by the Department of Veterans Affairs
if this amendment passes. Bill's story is heroic, but the truth is, he
is one of tens of thousands of Vietnam veterans in this country who are
still waiting for this White House to grant them the benefits they have
earned.
No more waiting. No more trying to outlive the Vietnam veteran. My
amendment directs the Department of Veterans Affairs to acknowledge the
overwhelming scientific evidence already put forward by veterans,
scientists, and medical experts, and provide Vietnam veterans with the
benefits they have earned in service to our country.
Today, we have an opportunity to end the needless suffering and
disappointment for an entire generation of veterans who are counting on
Congress to simply do the right thing. The reality is that taking care
of our veterans is a cost of war and is a cost that must be paid. We
must hold this administration accountable on behalf of thousands of
veterans like Bill who gave so much for this country, and I urge my
colleagues to get this done with a ``yes'' vote on this amendment so we
can end the wait for veterans who have already sacrificed greatly and
who shouldn't be forced to wait 1 minute longer.
I yield the floor.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Vermont
Mr. LEAHY. Mr. President, in a few minutes we will vote on the
Sanders amendment, which I support. As vice chairman of the Senate
Appropriations Committee, I have worked with the Republican leadership
and with Chairman Shelby in recent years to strike budget agreements
that resulted in parity between defense and nondefense spending. At the
same time, amid a national and international public health crisis, the
need to infuse more resources into public health, education, and
business development programs has never been greater.
I have heard from my Republican colleagues on the floor objecting to
the Sanders amendment. I would say to them that if they feel that
strongly--

[[Page S4371]]

this is not authorized--but if they feel that strongly, they should
tell their Republican leadership to allow the appropriations bill to
come up so they can actually vote on the Defense bill. Right now, this
is just idle chatter when they object to Senator Sanders' amendment,
and yet they are unwilling themselves to actually vote up or down on
the appropriations bill for not only the Department of Defense bill but
the other Departments. The Sanders amendment, after all, maintains full
support for the personnel needs of the Department of Defense, as well
as the critical medical research supported throughout the Department.
It would also take some of the Department's sweeping budget and reserve
it for underfunded domestic needs. This is long overdue.
I again call on my Republican colleagues to stop talking about the
money you want or don't want to spend. Tell the Republican leader to
allow the appropriations bills to come to the floor and vote up or
down.

Remembering John Lewis

Mr. President, on another issue, I have had such an incredibly heavy
heart since I heard Friday night my dear friend and hero, John Lewis
passed away. I stand here on the Senate floor today to talk about him.
When I got a call at our home in Vermont late that night, my wife, my
son, and I just sat there and talked about John for hours and cried. We
knew America lost a genuine hero--an unwavering lodestar who, over
decades of selfless activism and public service, drew us closer to our
ideals.
I remember when he invited me in to watch actually a sit-in by
Democratic Members in the House of Representatives when the Republican
Speaker had closed down the House for them to have votes. He saw me
outside, and I asked him what is going on, and he said: You are my
brother.
He took me by the arm, brought me in, and sat me down in the well of
the House to watch what was going on. I was always humbled and honored
to be called his brother, as he often did when we were together,
including an unforgettable visit he had with us in Vermont just last
year.
I have been thinking so much of what we can say, and there aren't
enough words--there certainly aren't--in paying tribute to a man whose
life was defined by the relentless and fearless pursuit of equality.
John bled, literally, and his bones were broken, literally, for the
causes of civil rights. He came to Congress bearing those scars--a
living, breathing reminder that our society's progress on racial
equality came through the sacrifices of heroes like him.
In Congress, John Lewis stood with equal moral clarity, serving as
its conscience and reminding us that our work to build a genuinely
equal and just society remains unfinished. His thundering words just
months ago echo even more loudly today. He said:

When you see something that is not right . . . you have a
moral obligation to say something. To do something. Our
children and their children will ask us, ``What did you do?''

That is a question all of us must ask ourselves.

Voting Rights Advancement Act

Mr. President, there is one thing I am doing today that I want to
share with my fellow Senators and Americans. Today, I am reintroducing
the Voting Rights Advancement Act, and we are renaming it the John
Lewis Voting Rights Advancement Act.
This is bipartisan legislation. It has 47 Senate cosponsors. It would
safeguard what John fought over a lifetime to achieve: equality at the
voting booth. The bill would restore the Voting Rights Act to end the
scourge of minority voter suppression.
Now, the House already passed a companion to the John Lewis Voting
Rights Advancement Act in December. Now let's do our part. We can't
claim to honor the life of John Lewis if we refuse to carry out his
life's work. Of course, if we stand in the way of that work, that would
be the wrong thing to do.
So I would urge my fellow Senators, join me in calling on Senator
McConnell to allow a vote up or down on the John Lewis Voting Rights
Advancement Act.
Let's do that for John, but let's not do it simply because it is
named after him but because it is precisely what John would do. And if
we have a moral compass, we should do it and take action to forge a
more perfect Union, protect our democracy, and above all, do what is
right.
I yield the floor.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Vermont.

Amendment No. 1788

Mr. SANDERS. Mr. President, I call up amendment No. 1788, and I ask
that it be reported by number.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. The clerk will report the amendment by number.
The legislative clerk read as follows:

The Senator from Vermont [Mr. Sanders] for himself and Mr.
Markey, proposes an amendment numbered 1788 to amendment No.
2301.

The amendment is as follows

(Purpose: To reduce the bloated Pentagon budget by 10 percent and
invest that money in jobs, education, health care, and housing in
communities in the United States in which the poverty rate is not less
than 25 percent)

At the end of subtitle A of title X, add the following:

SEC. ___. REDUCTION IN AMOUNT AUTHORIZED TO BE APPROPRIATED
FOR FISCAL YEAR 2021 BY THIS ACT; ESTABLISHMENT
OF GRANT PROGRAM TO REDUCE POVERTY AND INVEST
IN DISTRESSED COMMUNITIES.

(a) In General.--The amount authorized to be appropriated
for fiscal year 2021 by this Act is--
(1) the aggregate amount authorized to be appropriated for
fiscal year 2021 by this Act (other than for military
personnel and the Defense Health Program); minus
(2) the amount equal to 14 percent of the aggregate amount
described in paragraph (1).
(b) Allocation.--The reduction made by subsection (a)
shall--
(1) apply on a pro rata basis among the accounts and funds
for which amounts are authorized to be appropriated by this
Act (other than military personnel and the Defense Health
Program);
(2) be applied on a pro rata basis across each program,
project, and activity funded by the account or fund
concerned; and
(3) be used by the Secretary of the Treasury to carry out
the grant program described in subsection (c).
(c) Grant Program.--
(1) Establishment.--There is established in the Department
of the Treasury a grant program through which the Secretary
of the Treasury shall, in coordination with the Secretary of
Education, the Secretary of Health and Human Services, the
Secretary of Agriculture, the Secretary of Housing and Urban
Development, the Secretary of the Interior, and the
Administrator of the Environmental Protection Agency, provide
grants to eligible entities in accordance with the
requirements of this subsection.
(2) Application.--An eligible entity that desires a grant
under this subsection shall submit to the Secretary of the
Treasury an application in such form and containing such
information as the Secretary may require.
(3) Purposes.--
(A) Permissible purposes.--An eligible entity that receives
a grant under this subsection may use the grant funds for any
of the following:
(i) To construct, renovate, retrofit, or perform
maintenance with respect to an affordable housing unit, a
public school, a childcare facility, a community health
center, a public hospital, a library, or a clean drinking
water facility if any such building or facility is located
within the jurisdiction of the eligible entity.
(ii) To remove contaminants, including lead, from
infrastructure with respect to the provision of drinking
water if that infrastructure is located within the
jurisdiction of the eligible entity.
(iii) To replace, remove, or renovate a vacant or blighted
property that is located within the jurisdiction of the
eligible entity.
(iv) To hire public school teachers to reduce class size at
public schools within the jurisdiction of the eligible
entity.
(v) To increase the pay of teachers at public schools
within the jurisdiction of the eligible entity.
(vi) To provide nutritious meals to children and parents
who live within the jurisdiction of the eligible entity.
(vii) To provide free tuition to residents within the
jurisdiction of the eligible entity to attend public
institutions of higher education, including vocational and
trade schools.
(viii) To provide rental assistance to residents within the
jurisdiction of the eligible entity.
(ix) To reduce or eliminate homelessness within the
jurisdiction of the eligible entity.
(B) Impermissible purposes.--An eligible entity that
receives a grant under this subsection may not use the grant
funds--
(i) to construct a law enforcement facility, including a
prison or a jail; or
(ii) to purchase a vehicle for a law enforcement agency.
(4) Definitions.--In this subsection--
(A) the term ``eligible entity'' means--
(i) a county government with respect to a high-poverty
county;
(ii) a local or municipal government within the
jurisdiction of which there are not fewer than 5 high-poverty
neighborhoods; and

[[Page S4372]]

(iii) a federally recognized Indian Tribe that exercises
jurisdiction over Indian lands (as defined in section 824(b)
of the Indian Health Care Improvement Act (25 U.S.C.
1680n(b))) that contain high-poverty neighborhoods;
(B) the term ``high-poverty county'' means a county with a
poverty rate of not less than 25 percent, according to the
Small Area Income and Poverty Estimates of the Bureau of the
Census for 2018;
(C) the term ``high-poverty neighborhood'' means a census
tract with a poverty rate of not less than 25 percent,
according to the 5-year estimate of the American Community
Survey of the Bureau of the Census for years 2014 through
2018; and
(D) the term ``public school'' means a public elementary
school or secondary school, as those terms are defined in
section 8101 of the Elementary and Secondary Education Act of
1965 (20 U.S.C. 7801).

Mr. SANDERS. Mr. President, I thank Senator Leahy for his support of
our amendment, for his beautiful words on John Lewis, and for his
insistence that this Senate makes sure that every American has the
right to vote. That is not asking too much, and that is a bill we
should deal with.
Mr. President, I rise to speak in support of the amendment I have
filed for the National Defense Authorization Act to cut the bloated
$740 billion Pentagon budget by 10 percent and use that $74 billion in
savings to invest in human needs here at home.
This amendment is being cosponsored by Senators Markey, Warren,
Merkley, Wyden, and Senator Leahy and will receive a rollcall at 12:10
p.m.
This amendment has been endorsed by more than 60 organizations
representing millions of working people, environmentalists, and
religious leaders, including Public Citizen, the Union of Concerned
Scientists, and Physicians for Social Responsibility.
In America today, we are experiencing an extraordinary set of crises
unprecedented in the history of the United States of America. We are in
the midst of a public health crisis that is worse than at any time
since the Spanish flu of 1918. Over the past 4 months, the coronavirus
has infected more than 3.7 million Americans and caused nearly 140,000
deaths.
We are in the midst of the worst economic downturn since the Great
Depression. During the COVID-19 pandemic, 119 million Americans have
seen a decline in their income--unbelievable. One hundred and nineteen
million Americans have seen a decline in their income, 50 million have
filed for unemployment, and American households have lost over $6
trillion in wealth.
All over this country--in the State of Vermont and in every other
State in America--people are going hungry in America. People are going
hungry. And many, many people are frightened to death that they will
soon be evicted from their apartments or will lose their homes to
foreclosure.
That is where the American people are today: loss of jobs, loss of
income, hunger, eviction.
On the other hand, there is another reality going on in America
today. We don't talk about it much, but we should, and that is that 600
billionaires in our country have seen their wealth go up by $700
billion during the pandemic. So we entered this pandemic with massive
income and wealth inequality since the pandemic, and the very rich have
become even richer, while working people have seen a significant
decline in their income and wealth.
The current crisis, or series of crises, have revealed the
extraordinary inequities in our economy. If people didn't know it
before, they surely know it now.
In the United States today, over half of our workers live paycheck to
paycheck. Not surprisingly, when you live paycheck to paycheck, and the
paycheck stops coming in, you are in financial distress. That means
that your economic situation goes from poverty, which is low wages, to
desperation, which is no income coming in at all. That means that you
go hungry. It means that you may become homeless. It means that when
you get sick, you no longer have health insurance or the income to see
a doctor.
What the pandemic has taught us is that a relatively low unemployment
rate, which is what we had before the pandemic, does not adequately
guarantee for the security and well-being of working families.
When tens of millions of our people earn starvation wages, that is
not a good economy. When 40 percent of our people do not have the
savings to pay for a $400 emergency, that is not what I would call a
good economy. When over half a million Americans are homeless and 18
million families spend at least half of their incomes on housing, that
is not a good economy. When 87 million people are uninsured or
underinsured, that is not a good economy. In other words, to create a
good economy, we are going to have to do a whole lot better than that.
Further, over the last few months, hundreds of thousands of Americans
have taken to the streets to demand justice for the murders of George
Floyd, Breonna Taylor, Rayshard Brooks, and Ahmaud Arbery, among many
others, and to end the rampant police brutality that we see in America
today. These tragic killings of unarmed African Americans have
highlighted the urgent need to rethink the nature of policing and to
fix a broken and racist criminal justice system.
On top of all of that--on top of a pandemic, on top of an economic
collapse, on top of systemic racism--we have to address the existential
threat facing this planet of climate change.
A few weeks ago, temperatures in Siberia--the coldest region on
Earth--topped 100 degrees, shattering records. If we do not get our act
together and transform our energy system away from fossil fuel and into
renewable energy, we will be leaving this planet increasingly unhealthy
and uninhabitable for our kids and future generations
That is where we are today: hunger, homelessness, racism, a warming
and dangerously warming climate. These are the issues that we have to
focus on. Our attention must be on improving the lives of ordinary
Americans--working people, lower income people--and doing what we can
to work with countries around the world to help the billions of people
living in economic distress.
With that, I rise today to make it abundantly clear that if we are
going to address those issues, if we are going to protect the working
families of this country who are now under so much stress, it is
absolutely imperative that we change our national priorities.
The status quo and conventional wisdom that we see on TV every day
and that we hear on the floor of the Senate is no longer good enough.
History has overtaken us. Unprecedented crises have overtaken us. The
status quo is not good enough. We must respond.
We must finally have the courage to stand up to powerful special
interests and all of their campaign money and understand that we cannot
allow these people to continue to have so much power over the economic
and political life of this country; that we must start developing
policies that work for working families, not just the rich, not just
the powerful, and not just those who contribute to super PACs.
Fifty-three years ago, Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., challenged our
country to fight against three major evils: ``The evil of racism, the
evil of poverty, and the evil of war.'' That was what Dr. King said 53
years ago. And if there were ever a moment in American history when we
need to respond to Dr. King's clarion call for justice and demand, as
he stated, ``a radical revolution of values,'' now is that time. This
is the moment for us to bring about what Dr. King called ``a radical
revolution of values,'' whether it is fighting against systemic racism
and police brutality, whether it is transforming our energy system away
from fossil fuel, whether it is ending a cruel and dysfunctional
healthcare system, or addressing the grotesque level of income and
wealth inequality in our country, now is the time for change, real
change.
In my view, given all of the unprecedented crises our country faces,
now is not the time to increase the Pentagon's bloated $740 billion
budget, which is 53 percent of all discretionary spending in America.
Let me repeat that. The military budget alone is 53 percent of all
discretionary spending in this country.
At a time when 28 million Americans are in danger of being evicted
from their homes, now is not the time to be spending more on the
military than the next 11 nations combined.
At a time when 30 million Americans have lost their jobs, now is not
the time to be spending more on national defense than we did at the
height--the height--of the Cold War or the wars in

[[Page S4373]]

Korea or Vietnam. Let me repeat: spending more in real, inflation-
accounted-for dollars today on the military than we did during the Cold
War or the wars in Korea or Vietnam.
At this unprecedented moment in our history, now is the time to
provide jobs, education, healthcare, and housing in American
communities that have been ravaged by the global pandemic, by extreme
poverty, by deindustrialization, and mass incarceration.
If this horrific pandemic we are now experiencing has taught us
anything, it is that national security means a lot more than building
bombs, missiles, jet fighters, submarines, nuclear warheads, and other
weapons of mass destruction. National security also means doing
everything we can to improve the lives of our people, many of whom have
been abandoned by our government decade after decade.
The amendment that I am offering today would cut the $740 billion
budget--Pentagon budget--by 10 percent and use that $74 billion in
savings to invest in distressed communities in every State in this
country, communities that have been ravaged by poverty, mass
incarceration, and other enormous problems.
Under this amendment, distressed cities and towns would be able to
use this $74 billion to create jobs by building affordable housing, new
schools, childcare facilities, community health centers, public
hospitals, libraries, sustainable energy projects, and clean drinking
water facilities. These communities would also receive Federal funding
to hire more public school teachers, provide nutritious meals to
children, and offer free tuition at public colleges, universities, and
trade schools.
Over and over again, our Republican friends--my colleagues here--have
told us we cannot possibly afford to address the enormous problems
facing working families: We just can't afford it. We don't have the
money to deal with homelessness and hunger and inadequate education.
That is what they say every day. We have been told that we cannot
afford to make public colleges and universities tuition-free or to
provide a decent income for every man, woman, and child. But when it
comes to spending $740 billion on the military, well, suddenly, hey,
money is no problem; we can spend as much as we want. Hey, let's listen
to all of the lobbyists from the military-industrial complex who flood
Capitol Hill and tell us all their needs. We have to listen to them,
but we don't listen to the children in this country who may not have
enough food to eat or the workers in this country who are sleeping out
in their cars. We don't listen to them, but when it comes to the
military, hey, no end to the money that we can provide.
To my mind, that is unacceptable. We don't need more nuclear weapons.
We don't need more cruise missiles. We don't need more fighter jets.
What we do need in this country, desperately, is more healthcare, more
housing, more childcare, and better schools.
Now is the time to fundamentally change our national priorities, and
that is what this amendment is all about. This amendment in itself is
not going to do anywhere near what we need to do as a country, but it
is an important step forward in changing the way we think about our
needs.
Let me be clear. If we were to institute a 10-percent cut in military
spending, that $74 billion could provide high-quality childcare to
every family in America. Imagine that. We could solve the childcare
crisis in America just by cutting the military budget by 10 percent.
We could, by cutting the military budget by 10 percent, provide
section 8 housing vouchers to all of the 7.7 million families in
America who are paying more than half of their limited incomes on rent.
A 10-percent cut to the Pentagon could provide a free college
education for 2 million low-income students.
A 10-percent cut to the Pentagon is enough to hire 900,000 teachers
in the poorest schools in America.
So I am a little bit tired about hearing that we don't have enough
money for nuclear weapons, that we need more money for missiles and
tanks and guns--that we need more for all of that, yet we are turning
our backs on Americans who are hurting the most.
I believe this is a moment in history when it would be a very good
idea for all of my colleagues, Democratic and Republican, to remember
what former Republican--Republican--President Dwight D. Eisenhower said
in 1953. I think we all recall that Eisenhower knew something about
military budgets and the war because he was the four-star general who
led the Allied forces to victory in Europe during World War II. He was
not a passivist. He was not an anti-war activist. He was a four-star
general.
Dwight D. Eisenhower said:

Every gun that is made, every warship launched, every
rocket signifies, in the final sense, a theft from those who
hunger and are not fed, those who are cold and are not
clothed. This world in arms is not spending money alone. It
is spending the sweat of its laborers, the genius of its
scientists, the hopes of its children.

Right now, when the world is searching for treatment of the
coronavirus, when we are searching desperately and spending billions
looking for a vaccine, maybe it might be a good idea to be educating
our young people to figure out how we deal with disease--with cancer
and schizophrenia and Alzheimer's and diabetes--rather than putting
more and more scientists into figuring out how we can blow the world up
a dozen times over.

What Eisenhower said was true--profoundly true--67 years ago, and it
is true today, maybe even truer today.
When we analyze the Defense Department budget, it is interesting to
note that the Congress has appropriated so much money for the Defense
Department that the Pentagon literally does not know what to do with
it. Between 2013 and 2018, they actually returned more than $80 billion
in funding back to the Treasury. They had more money than they could
spend.
In my view, the time is long overdue for us to take a hard look not
only at the size of the Pentagon budget but at the enormous amount of
waste, cost overruns, fraud, and at the financial mismanagement that
has plagued the Department of Defense for decades.
Let's be clear. We don't talk about it, but let's be clear. About
half of the Pentagon's budget goes directly into the hands of private
contractors, not our troops. Over the past two decades, virtually every
major defense contractor in the United States has paid billions of
dollars in fines and settlements for misconduct and fraud, all while
making huge profits on those government contracts. Virtually every
major defense contractor has been found guilty of misconduct or fraud.
Since 1995, Boeing, Lockheed Martin, and United Technologies have
paid over $3 billion in fines or related settlements for fraud or
misconduct. Further, I find it interesting that the very same defense
contractors that have been found guilty or reached settlements for
fraud are also paying their CEOs excessive--excessive--compensation
packages. Last year, the CEOs of Lockheed Martin and Northrop Grumman
both made over $20 million in total compensation, while around 90
percent of these companies' revenue came from defense contracts. In
other words, for all intents and purposes, these companies are
basically government agencies. Ninety percent of the revenue coming in
comes from the taxpayers of this country. Meanwhile, the CEOs of those
companies make over 100 times more than the Secretary of Defense makes.
It is not too surprising, therefore, that we have a revolving door
where our military people end up on the boards of directors of these
major defense companies.
Moreover, as the GAO has told us, there are massive cost overruns in
the Defense Department's acquisition budget that we continue to ignore
year after year. According to the GAO, the Pentagon's $1.8 trillion
acquisition portfolio currently suffers from more than $628 billion in
cost overruns, with much of the cost growth taking place after
production.
A major reason why there is so much waste, fraud, and abuse at the
Pentagon is the fact that the Defense Department remains the only
Federal agency in America that has not been able to pass an independent
audit. Many of us will recall what then-Secretary of Defense Donald
Rumsfeld--George W. Bush's Secretary of Defense--told the American
people on the day before 9/11. It never got a lot of attention--the day
before 9/11. Rumsfeld said:

[[Page S4374]]

Our financial systems are decades old. According to some
estimates, we cannot track $2.3 trillion in transactions.

I don't know that the situation has changed very much since 2001 and
Rumsfeld's remarks. Yet, nearly 20 years after Rumsfeld's statements,
the Defense Department has still not passed a clean audit, despite the
fact that the Pentagon controls assets in excess of $2.2 trillion or
roughly 70 percent of what the entire Federal Government owns.
I believe in a strong military, but we cannot keep giving more money
to the Pentagon than it needs when millions of children in this country
face hunger every day and 140 million Americans cannot afford the basic
necessities of life without going into debt.
In 1967 Dr. King warned us that ``a nation that continues year after
year to spend more money on military defense than on programs of social
uplift is approaching spiritual death.'' I believe the time is long
overdue for us to listen to Dr. King.
At a time when, in the richest country in the history of the world,
so many of our people are struggling, now is the time to change our
priorities because, as Dr. King stated, we are approaching spiritual
death.
At a time when we have the highest rate of childhood poverty of
almost any major country on Earth, at a time when 60,000 Americans die
each year because they can't get to a doctor on time and 1 out of 5
Americans cannot afford the prescription drugs their doctors prescribe,
we need to start focusing on those people, not on the military-
industrial complex.
At this moment of unprecedented national crisis--a pandemic, an
economic meltdown, the demand to end systemic racism, and an unstable
President--it is time for us to truly focus on what we value as a
society and to fundamentally transform our national priorities. Cutting
the military budget by 10 percent and investing that money in human
needs is a modest way to begin that process.
Let me conclude by once again quoting Dwight D. Eisenhower. I don't
know that I have ever quoted a Republican quite as much as I have
during these remarks, but he is somebody whom I respected very much.
This is what Eisenhower said when he left office. This was back in
1961. He was out, and John F. Kennedy was coming in. This is what he
said. I hope we can all remember this. He said:

In the councils of government, we must guard against the
acquisition of unwarranted influence, whether sought or
unsought, by the military-industrial complex. The potential
for the disastrous rise of misplaced power exists and will
persist.

Eisenhower was right then, and, if anything, the situation is worse
today. Now is the time for us to stand up to the greed and
irresponsibility of the military industrial complex. Now is the time to
address the needs of working families, the elderly, the children, the
sick, and the poor.
Let us vote for the Sanders-Markey-Warren-Merkley-Wyden-Leahy
amendment to cut the Pentagon budget by 10 percent and invest in human
needs here at home.
The PRESIDING OFFICER (Mr. Lankford). The Senator from Massachusetts.
Mr. MARKEY. Mr. President, I am proud to speak in support of my
amendment with Senator Sanders to prioritize investments in our
communities over a bloated Pentagon budget. I thank Senator Sanders for
his leadership on this issue, bringing forth this fundamental tension
that exists within our society.
The men and women of the Armed Forces deserve our admiration, our
respect, and our support. Day in and day out, they defend our country's
interests in all corners of the world, and their families sacrifice
alongside them. But what makes America the envy of the world is not
simply the strength of our military but the strength of our people.
And 2020 has brought historic challenges: a global pandemic, a
growing recession, a reckoning on the systemic racism that pervades our
country. We have also seen an estimated 5.4 million American workers
lose their health insurance between February and May, leaving them even
more vulnerable to a virus surging in every corner of this country.
The Sanders-Markey amendment states that we cannot afford, in this,
our moment of national crisis, to spend three-quarters of a trillion
dollars on bloated defense spending--spending that is supposed to
protect or country yet did nothing to inoculate against the most
profound public health emergency in a century.
This amendment is also in keeping with President Eisenhower's
warning, as Senator Sanders said, that ``we must guard against the
acquisition of unwarranted influence, whether sought or unsought, by
the military-industrial complex. The potential for the disastrous rise
of misplaced power exists, and will persist.''
Persist it has. This $740 billion fiscal year 2021 budget before us
is the fulfillment of Ike's worst fears. In his address to the American
people, President Eisenhower also predicted that a permanent arms
industry would come to call the shots. After Japan surrendered aboard
the USS Missouri in 1945, ending the Second World War, that permanent
arms industry made its fixture.
After we emerged victorious in a historic and ideological struggle
against the Soviet Union that brought us to the brink of nuclear
holocaust, Eisenhower's feared permanent arms industry stuck around and
retooled to advocate for new weapons to fight the endless war to come.
The catastrophic attacks of September 11 led to more than a doubling
of the Pentagon's budget. Multiple Presidents have stretched a limited
authorization of military force to go after those responsible for the
9/11 attacks--to fight new enemies in new geographies, outside of
Afghanistan.
All told, so far, we have spent $6.4 trillion in the wars in
Afghanistan, Iraq, Syria, and other places since 2001. Even as those
wars wind down, the defense industry is pushing for costly new
acquisition programs to maintain superiority over China and Russia.
The forecasted ``permanent arms industry'' begins to explain why the
Pentagon accounts for half of the entire fiscal year 2021 U.S.
discretionary budget. Our military budget is larger than the next 10
countries combined. Our battle fleet is larger than the next 13 navies
combined, with 11 of those 13 navies represented by our allies or our
partners.
However, every dollar spent on the Pentagon is one fewer available to
fight the scourge of poverty in this country, to strengthen the social
safety net and protect American families. Our communities have suffered
while we spend ourselves into extreme U.S. military dominance.
I fear that the Pentagon budget we debate today shows to a child that
we don't prioritize giving him or her a quality education; shows
mothers and fathers that, in the wealthiest country in the world, they
will forever remain one illness away from financial ruin; shows a
family that the dream of homeownership, much less affordable rental
housing, will remain out of their grasp; shows frontline heroes working
in hospitals and nursing homes in Chelsea, MA, and across the country
that they have no choice but to go work sick because their employer
does not offer paid leave.
I reject the false choice between a strong U.S. military and strong
American communities. Trillions of dollars in defense spending did
nothing to protect us from the coronavirus pandemic. The defense
spending can't protect us from the destruction of the environment and
the worsening climate crisis. Yet we are due to spend nearly 70 times
more on defense than we will to protect against the next pandemic and
other global health challenges.
We must no longer equate national security with our inventory of
planes, missiles, and nuclear weapons system, and if coronavirus is
truly a war, as President Trump says it is, he is duty-bound to embrace
the fact that national security also means health, housing, and
financial security, and national security means doing everything we can
to save and improve lives in American communities, particularly
communities of color, that have been neglected for too long and that
have born the worst of the coronavirus impacts.

Our amendment begins that important work by making smart cuts of 10
percent to the budget of the Pentagon for this fiscal year and
redirecting those funds to the Department of the Treasury to administer
a grant program to strengthen vulnerable, low-income communities.

[[Page S4375]]

For example, in Massachusetts, we would be eligible to receive up to
$1 billion in Federal funding to create jobs by building affordable
housing, schools, childcare facilities, community health centers,
public hospitals, libraries, and clean drinking water facilities,
removing lead pipes and replacing vacant or blighted properties; to
improve education by hiring more public school teachers to reduce class
sizes, increasing teacher pay, providing universal nutritious meals,
and providing free tuition to attend public colleges, universities, or
trade schools; and to make housing more affordable by providing rental
assistance and eliminating homelessness.
We should prioritize eradicating poverty, not war. We should
prioritize battling global killer diseases, not developing a new weapon
designed to eradicate the human race. It is time we funded education,
not annihilation--Medicaid, not missiles.
Where do we start to make Defense Department cuts? First, we must end
the war in Afghanistan, which would save tens of billions of dollars.
The time is long overdue to bring our men and women home. And it is
time to double down on other tools of U.S. statecraft--diplomacy and
development--to shape a better future for Afghanistan, particularly
Afghan women.
As we work to put a stop to endless war and repeal the 2001 AUMF, the
Pentagon must realign its budget to reflect the cold, hard wisdom of
Ronald Reagan that ``a nuclear war cannot be won and must never be
fought.''
Between the Departments of Defense and Energy, we are due to spend
nearly $50 billion on nuclear weapons in fiscal year 2021. Over the
next three decades, we are on course to spend $1.7 trillion on nuclear
weapons overkill. We can field a safe, secure, and effective nuclear
deterrent--one that assures our allies and partners--all without
breaking the bank.
Our people, not our military parades, are the source of American
greatness. Over the past few months, this country has experienced a
reckoning, as Americans from all walks of life have had enough. They
have had enough of being lied to by the President about the true threat
of a deadly disease. They have had enough of people of color being
murdered in cold blood by the very police forces meant to serve and
protect them. And they have had enough of being told there just isn't
enough money to support the well-being of their communities, while they
can see billions in taxpayers' dollars going to unnecessary wars and
nuclear weapons programs and to benefit the President's friends and
family.
The choice today is very clear. We are ready to take the smallest
step, a 10-percent cut, to begin to address the gap in resources in
this country. This is the time for us to stand up. We are about to have
a debate on how much money we have to help families in this country
through this pandemic. We are being told that money is not there for
unemployment insurance; for cities and towns not to have to lay off
teachers; for cities and towns to have the testing, the contact
tracing, and the personal protective equipment to protect families in
our country; to make sure we can provide sick care leave; and to make
sure we can provide childcare for families in this country. We are told
there is not enough money. Yes, there is, and that money is in the
defense budget of the United States of America, so that we can protect
those families.
Too many people right now are nostalgic for a time that never was,
instead of having the idealism which we need to battle the issues of
today. But for the poor, the sick, the elderly, the disabled, the Black
and Brown and immigrant families in this country, the past is just a
memory and the future is their hard reality.
This is the time for the U.S. Senate to stand up and to begin the
funding of the programs which every family needs to protect themselves.
I urge an ``aye'' vote on this amendment, and, again, I thank Senator
Sanders for his incredible progressive leadership on this issue and for
so many others.
I yield back.

Vote on Amendment No. 1788

The PRESIDING OFFICER. Under the previous order, the question occurs
on agreeing to the Sanders amendment No. 1788.
The Senator from Vermont.
Mr. SANDERS. I ask for the yeas and nays.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. Is there a sufficient second?
There appears to be a sufficient second.
The clerk will call the roll.
The senior assistant legislative clerk called the roll.
The result was announced--yeas 23, nays 77, as follows:

[Rollcall Vote No. 135 Leg.]

YEAS--23

Baldwin
Blumenthal
Booker
Cantwell
Cardin
Casey
Durbin
Gillibrand
Hirono
Klobuchar
Leahy
Markey
Merkley
Murphy
Murray
Sanders
Schatz
Schumer
Smith
Udall
Van Hollen
Warren
Wyden

NAYS--77

Alexander
Barrasso
Bennet
Blackburn
Blunt
Boozman
Braun
Brown
Burr
Capito
Carper
Cassidy
Collins
Coons
Cornyn
Cortez Masto
Cotton
Cramer
Crapo
Cruz
Daines
Duckworth
Enzi
Ernst
Feinstein
Fischer
Gardner
Graham
Grassley
Harris
Hassan
Hawley
Heinrich
Hoeven
Hyde-Smith
Inhofe
Johnson
Jones
Kaine
Kennedy
King
Lankford
Lee
Loeffler
Manchin
McConnell
McSally
Menendez
Moran
Murkowski
Paul
Perdue
Peters
Portman
Reed
Risch
Roberts
Romney
Rosen
Rounds
Rubio
Sasse
Scott (FL)
Scott (SC)
Shaheen
Shelby
Sinema
Stabenow
Sullivan
Tester
Thune
Tillis
Toomey
Warner
Whitehouse
Wicker
Young
The PRESIDING OFFICER. On this vote, the yeas are 23, the nays are
77.
Under the previous order requiring 60 votes for the adoption of this
amendment, the amendment is not agreed to.
The amendment (No. 1788) was rejected.

Vote on Amendment No. 1972, as Modified

The PRESIDING OFFICER. Under the previous order, the question is on
agreeing to the Tester amendment, No. 1972, as modified.
Ms. HASSAN. Mr. President, I ask for the yeas and nays.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. Is there a sufficient second?
There appears to be a sufficient second.
The clerk will call the roll.
The legislative clerk called the roll.
The result was announced--yeas 94, nays 6, as follows:

[Rollcall Vote No. 136 Leg.]

YEAS--94

Alexander
Baldwin
Barrasso
Bennet
Blackburn
Blumenthal
Blunt
Booker
Boozman
Brown
Burr
Cantwell
Capito
Cardin
Carper
Casey
Cassidy
Collins
Coons
Cornyn
Cortez Masto
Cotton
Cramer
Crapo
Daines
Duckworth
Durbin
Enzi
Ernst
Feinstein
Fischer
Gardner
Gillibrand
Graham
Grassley
Harris
Hassan
Hawley
Heinrich
Hirono
Hoeven
Hyde-Smith
Inhofe
Johnson
Jones
Kaine
King
Klobuchar
Lankford
Leahy
Loeffler
Manchin
Markey
McConnell
McSally
Menendez
Merkley
Moran
Murkowski
Murphy
Murray
Perdue
Peters
Portman
Reed
Risch
Roberts
Romney
Rosen
Rounds
Rubio
Sanders
Sasse
Schatz
Schumer
Scott (SC)
Shaheen
Shelby
Sinema
Smith
Stabenow
Sullivan
Tester
Thune
Tillis
Toomey
Udall
Van Hollen
Warner
Warren
Whitehouse
Wicker
Wyden
Young

NAYS--6

Braun
Cruz
Kennedy
Lee
Paul
Scott (FL
The PRESIDING OFFICER (Mr. Romney). On this vote the yeas are 94, the
nays are 6.
Under the previous order requiring 60 votes for the adoption of this
amendment, the amendment is agreed to.
The amendment (No. 1972) was agreed to.

Cloture Motion

The PRESIDING OFFICER. Pursuant to rule XXII, the Chair lays before
the Senate the pending cloture motion, which the clerk will state.
The legislative clerk read as follows

Cloture Motion

We, the undersigned Senators, in accordance with the
provisions of rule XXII of the Standing Rules of the Senate,
do hereby move to bring to a close debate on amendment No.
2301 to Calendar No. 483, S. 4049, a bill to authorize
appropriations for fiscal

[[Page S4376]]

year 2021 for military activities of the Department of
Defense, for military construction, and for defense
activities of the Department of Energy, to prescribe military
personnel strengths for such fiscal year, and for other
purposes.
Mitch McConnell, Mike Crapo, Pat Roberts, John Cornyn,
John Barrasso, Cory Gardner, Roy Blunt, Thom Tillis,
Marsha Blackburn, Mike Rounds, Shelley Moore Capito,
Kevin Cramer, John Thune, James M. Inhofe, Jerry Moran,
Joni Ernst, John Boozman.

The PRESIDING OFFICER. By unanimous consent, the mandatory quorum
call has been waived.
The question is, Is it the sense of the Senate that debate on
amendment No. 2301 offered by the Senator from Oklahoma to S. 4049, a
bill to authorize appropriations for fiscal year 2021 for military
activities of the Department of Defense, for military construction, and
for defense activities of the Department of Energy, to prescribe
military personnel strengths for such fiscal year, and for other
purposes, shall be brought to a close?
The yeas and nays are mandatory under the rule.
The clerk will call the roll.
The legislative clerk called the roll.
The yeas and nays resulted--yeas 87, nays 13, as follows:

[Rollcall Vote No. 137 Leg.]

YEAS--87

Alexander
Baldwin
Barrasso
Bennet
Blackburn
Blumenthal
Blunt
Boozman
Braun
Brown
Burr
Cantwell
Capito
Cardin
Carper
Casey
Cassidy
Collins
Coons
Cornyn
Cortez Masto
Cotton
Cramer
Crapo
Cruz
Daines
Duckworth
Durbin
Enzi
Ernst
Feinstein
Fischer
Gardner
Graham
Grassley
Hassan
Hawley
Heinrich
Hirono
Hoeven
Hyde-Smith
Inhofe
Johnson
Jones
Kaine
King
Klobuchar
Lankford
Leahy
Loeffler
Manchin
McConnell
McSally
Menendez
Moran
Murkowski
Murphy
Murray
Perdue
Peters
Portman
Reed
Risch
Roberts
Rosen
Rounds
Rubio
Sasse
Schatz
Schumer
Scott (FL)
Scott (SC)
Shaheen
Shelby
Sinema
Smith
Stabenow
Sullivan
Tester
Thune
Tillis
Toomey
Udall
Warner
Whitehouse
Wicker
Young

NAYS--13

Booker
Gillibrand
Harris
Kennedy
Lee
Markey
Merkley
Paul
Romney
Sanders
Van Hollen
Warren
Wyden
The PRESIDING OFFICER (Mr. Perdue). On this vote, the yeas are 87,
the nays are 13.
Three-fifths of the Senators duly chosen and sworn having voted in
the affirmative, the motion was agreed to.
The Senator from Iowa.

China

Ms. ERNST. Mr. President, the coronavirus doesn't come with a label
saying ``Made in China,'' but perhaps it should. This pandemic, which
began in Wuhan, China, has flooded the world just like so many products
from China that we all now rely upon to protect ourselves against the
spread of the contagion. The situation underscores the conundrum our
Nation faces balancing the need to work with the Chinese Government and
the challenges of holding the Communist Party accountable for its
devious deeds.
Plain and simple: The Chinese Communist Party attempted to cover up
the outbreak of COVID-19 from the very beginning and continues to do so
today. Rather than containing the spread of the virus, the regime has
focused on containing knowledge of the outbreak, going so far as
punishing Chinese scientists who dared to warn about the virus's
imminent danger.
As a result, we now face a worldwide pandemic that has claimed
countless victims and could impact every aspect of our lives for
months, if not years, to come. China doesn't play by the rules. They
constantly seek to undermine the law. And if you ask an Iowa farmer,
they will tell you the same.
For years, China has stolen intellectual property and reneged on
their trade agreements. While we have seen China still purchasing some
of our corn and soybeans, they haven't completely held up their end of
the deal when it comes to China phase one.
Folks, when China cheats on trade deals, the impact is real: American
jobs are lost and wealth is transferred from the United States to the
Communist Party of China. This is unacceptable, especially after the
damage already caused to our economy by China's mishandling of the
coronavirus outbreak.
For decades, our leaders in Washington played along, remaining quiet
as China stole American intellectual property and scientific research,
cheated on trade deals, and violated basic human rights. Those days are
over.
President Trump is standing up to China by taking decisive actions
against the Communist regime for its flagrant violation of trade deals
and crackdown on the autonomy and rights of Hong Kong.
I have heard this from farmers in Iowa. They know that this President
is standing up for them and pushing back on China. And here in the
Senate, my colleagues and I are also holding China accountable.
Right now, I am laser-focused on decreasing our dependency on China
for critical supplies. The COVID-19 pandemic has been what I call a
great awakening when it comes to the vulnerabilities in our supply
chain. The United States has become far too dependent on Communist
China for items like personal protective equipment, prescription drugs,
and other essential medical supplies. We need to fix that. And that is
what I am fighting to do.
During my military service, including as a logistics battalion
commander in the Iowa Army National Guard, I learned firsthand the
importance of securing the defense supply chain. We cannot continue to
rely on our adversaries, like China, for critically important national
security materials.
That is why, in this year's annual Defense bill, I made it a priority
to boost support for university research in places like Iowa to ensure
we can make and manufacture metals and materials here at home. This
will help make sure China doesn't corner the world market on key
materials.
Retaking our supply chain from Red China also means removing
unnecessary redtape imposed by Washington. I am working to waive the
tax penalties for manufacturing and medical supply companies that
choose to relocate to America.
I have also demanded the Treasury Department investigate how Chinese
companies are avoiding taxes that U.S. businesses have to pay.
Iowans across the State have told me how much they appreciate this
President standing up for them by pushing back on the years of bad
actions by the Communist Party. They also want to end our dependence on
that same Communist regime.
Yes, we can and we should continue trading important agricultural
products. But at the same time, we should bring jobs back and make
critical supplies ourselves so that when you look at a product's label,
it proudly reads ``Made in the U.S.A.''
I yield the floor.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Ohio.
Mr. PORTMAN. Mr. President, I want to thank Senator Ernst for putting
this colloquy together. What she just said with regard to the
importance of having reliable sources here in America is absolutely
right.
The supply chain issue is one that I hope we will address in this
COVID package--for starters, with regard to our personal protective
gear, the PPE, because if we can't rely on having masks and gowns and
other PPE made here in America, it is tough for us, particularly during
an international pandemic like this, to build and rely on countries
like China. Also, frankly, some of the product that comes from China
has not been reliable itself.
I appreciate what you are doing there and also the work you are doing
to encourage us to be more resourceful here at home, to be sure we are
doing the things we have to do to protect ourselves from foreign
influence, including China.
Part of our issue with China, I think, is that for the last several
years, a lot of us point fingers at China and we are not pointing
fingers, frankly, at our internal problems. We need to get our house in
order here in America and protect ourselves better. We have legislation
to do that, which we just reported out of the Governmental Affairs
Committee today. It has to do with this issue of China coming to the
United States and systemically targeting promising research and
promising researchers, and saying: We would like to get that research.
The research is often supported by the U.S. taxpayer. It is sort of
tough

[[Page S4377]]

here for us in America to lose our research and our innovation and our
intellectual property to other countries. It is particularly tough when
taxpayers pay for it, and $150 billion a year of taxpayer money goes to
the National Institutes of Health, the National Science Foundation, and
the Department of Energy to do basic research.
That is good. We have helped to develop important therapies and cures
for some kinds of cancer. We helped to develop the internet. It has
been very helpful on manufacturing processes. A lot of great things
have come out of that research.
But one thing that really troubles me is that for 20 years now, with
China taking the lead and other countries, as well--Iran, North Korea,
and others--they have again targeted these researchers and this
research and said: We want to get that. And, frankly, they get it on
the cheap because the research is being paid for by our tax dollars.
Let me give you an example of what I am talking about. Recently, in
my home State of Ohio, there was a case along these lines. I applaud
the FBI and the Department of Justice and our U.S. attorneys for
finally getting on top of this issue. We spent a year studying this
issue here in the Congress in what is called the Permanent Subcommittee
on Investigations, which I chair. We found out that this was a huge
problem and wrote a report late last year.
In the report, we implored our Federal law enforcement agencies to
get on this issue. In fact, we had a hearing where an FBI agent
testified and said that it is true. We haven't been focused on this,
and we have to make that up now.
They are making up for it. They are arresting a number of people.
They are doing the things that should be done to try to stop some of
this stealing, really, of our seed corn, our technology, our
innovation, our intellectual property.
Here is the Ohio example. Recently, the FBI announced that it had
arrested a researcher connected with the world-renowned Cleveland
Clinic and Case Western Reserve University. This individual had
received a huge grant from the National Institutes of Health, or NIH.
That grant was for about $3.6 million. But then this same individual--
of course, not telling NIH or telling Cleveland Clinic or Case Western
or anybody else--had accepted money from China.
In the contracts that we were able to research during our
investigation, these contracts with China say you are not allowed to
reveal that you have this relationship with China, that you are getting
the money from China. They not only gave this guy money--$3 million--
but they gave him a deanship at Wuhan University. They gave him money
to hire people in Wuhan. They gave him the ability to travel around
America recruiting others. We think he recruited 30 or 40 people,
according to the FBI.

Again, these are all allegations. His arrest has been made. He
actually is alleged to have taken biological samples from Cleveland,
OH, to China--this taxpayer-paid NIH research--literally, physically
taking these to China. They also, by the way, provided lodging for him
with a three-bedroom apartment in Wuhan. That is luxury.
This is about money. Unfortunately, this is about people who are not
patriots but instead are willing to sell us out by selling their
research, their expertise that our taxpayers have funded to China and
other countries.
NIH, recently, by the way, fired or forced the resignation of 54
researchers--not 1 or 2 or 3, but 54 people. We have been pushing them
hard to find out who these people are and what they are doing. They
haven't been willing to reveal that yet because this is a matter under
investigation. They have told us that of those who are under
investigation at NIH, 90 percent have ties to China--90 percent.
Wake up, America. Here we are. We are in a situation where other
countries, particularly China, have targeted American research,
American researchers, and are now taking this back to China to benefit
their military, to benefit their economy, and to benefit their
healthcare system.
By the way, I do not believe this is for academic purposes. It is
wrong what is happening, but it is even more wrong because this is not
as if they are taking it back to do joint research on an academic
basis.
Let me tell you what the State Department told us at our hearing on
this topic at the end of last year. They said: ``The Chinese Communist
Party has declared the Chinese university system to be on the front
line of military-civilian fusion efforts for technology acquisition.''
This is our own State Department. That means there is a clear link
between the research that is being taken in America and the latest
advancement in China's military and its economy.
It has been happening for 20 years. It is time to put an end to it.
The legislation that we were able to get through committee today takes
a really important step in that direction. There are four or five
elements of it.
One of the most important to me is giving the FBI and law enforcement
the tools they need to go after these individuals by creating a new
criminal law that says if you lie on these forms, if you are taking
money from China, it is certainly a conflict of commitment and a
conflict of interest. You can be taken to task for that and held
accountable. Right now you can't.
They are arresting these people on things like mail fraud, tax
evasion. It is a little like how they used to go after gangsters before
there were laws directly related to racketeering and so on. This is
something where we need to be sure that we are giving people the tools
that they need.
We also help the State Department to keep these people out, and we
help with regard to our universities to ensure that we are reporting
and being transparent as to the money universities are receiving from
China and other countries.
Again, I thank my colleague from Iowa for having this colloquy. I see
we have two other colleagues here. I know they are really well-versed
and involved in these issues, and I want to hear from them, as well.
I would just say that I hope, on a bipartisan basis--by the way, our
legislation is bipartisan. Our investigation was bipartisan. I would
say this is nonpartisan. This is an American issue. We should all be
standing up to protect the American research enterprise and to be sure
that our taxpayers, when they pay for this important research, have the
benefit of it rather than its being taken, in particular, by China to
benefit their military and their economy, which has been going on for 2
decades.
It is time to wake up.
I yield to my colleague from Arizona.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Arizona
Ms. McSALLY. I thank my colleague from Ohio and others here from
Florida and Iowa for coming together to talk about this important
American issue and national security issue.
I served 26 years in the military. In my last years in service and
since then, we have seen the threat of the rise of China. It is a
threat to America's security, our jobs, and our role as a leader in the
world. They are on a deliberate path to try to dominate the world and
shape it into their vision. They need to be stopped.
When I was a cadet at the Air Force Academy, we had an honor code
that said: ``I will not lie, cheat, or steal, or tolerate among us
anyone who does.'' China has been lying, cheating, and stealing for far
too long. Americans are now waking up to this threat and are resolved
to change the trajectory and hold China accountable, but this can't be
done by us alone. Our European partners and others in the Pacific and
elsewhere need to join with us and also wake up to China's dangerous
path and work with us to stop them.
We have been calling this geostrategic shift a return to ``Great
Power Competition,'' as if to assume that we are all playing by the
same rules. We aren't. China is playing by their own rules and cheating
the system for their own gain and power. The Chinese Communist Party is
a reckless, predatory adversary that is dedicated to subverting U.S.
interests and supplanting our Nation as the world's dominant leader.
Over the past 10 years, China has increased their military spending
by 85 percent. Their investment in defense has been used to build their
navy, expand their missile stockpile, and emerge as a leader in
technologies like hypersonics, cyber warfare, and artificial
intelligence.

[[Page S4378]]

This buildup has been far from defensive alone. From their illegal
maritime claims among several sovereign states, then building
artificial islands where they didn't exist before to militarize them in
the South China Sea with their maneuvers and exercises that are
aggressive and belligerent, to their covert attempts to infiltrate the
United States through our universities and stealing our technology,
Chinese forces are expanding their tentacles far beyond our borders, to
the detriment of American national security interests.
Congress must do our part to respond to this threat. For these
reasons, I introduced several pieces of legislation that immediately
stopped China from taking advantage of government funds and taxpayer
dollars to purchase products and services from Chinese companies with
ties to Chinese military.
To end our reliance on China's control and manufacturing of PPE, I
introduced legislation to authorize the President to incentivize
American companies to produce medical devices, equipment, and drugs.
We saw at the onset of the coronavirus that it was clear that
outsourcing the production of PPE to an adversary was wrong and risky.
I witnessed firsthand the ingenuity of Arizona companies that stepped
up to help fill the gap. That is no excuse for ignoring the fact that
we have to bring manufacturing home of vital medical equipment and PPE
so that, once again, it is made in America.
Finally, the coronavirus outbreak has taken a catastrophic toll on
our country and the world. Make no mistake. The virus began in China
and spread globally because the Chinese Government lied about what they
knew about it, and they destroyed evidence and silenced doctors and
whistleblowers.
Like the rest of the Nation, Arizona has suffered devastating
consequences due to this pandemic. Already, we have lost over 2,900
Arizonans, plus the economic toll.
Communist China unleashed this virus on the world, and it should face
severe repercussions for their coverups and lies about the origins and
spread. China's actions cost lives and devastated the world economy,
and it must be held accountable.
I moved to do just that this week by introducing the Civil Justice
for Victims of COVID Act. Americans who have been victimized by the
lies and deceit of the Communist Party--to include those who lost loved
ones, suffered business losses, or personally harmed--deserve the
opportunity to hold China accountable and demand just compensation.
I appreciate many of my colleagues joining with me on this
legislation. It is due time that we hold China accountable for their
malevolent behavior--not just over the past several months but over
several decades.
The United States must take immediate action and, with strength,
demonstrate that the greatest country in the world will not be taken
for a fool. Our Republic and our freedoms that it stands for will allow
our country to prevail over China's Communist and rogue agenda. With
American will, American innovation, and the American spirit, we will
prevail.
I appreciate my colleague from Florida joining as well.
I yield the floor.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Florida.
Mr. SCOTT of Florida. I want to recognize my colleagues from Arizona,
Ohio, Texas, and Iowa for their commitment to holding Communist China
accountable and supporting Americans.
I rise today to discuss the threat of Communist China--a threat that
poses a huge risk to the national security of the United States, our
allies, and the stability of world markets.
Communist China is simply stealing American jobs and technology and
spying on our citizens.
General Secretary of the Communist Party Xi is a dictator and a human
rights violator who is denying basic rights to the people of Hong Kong,
cracking down on dissidents, threatening Taiwan, and militarizing the
South China Sea.
Uighur prisoners in Communist China are being rounded up,
blindfolded, shaved, and loaded onto trains to be taken to
concentration camps simply because of their religion. You can't believe
this is happening today in this world.
Communist China's deceptions surrounding the coronavirus pandemic
should be the last straw for every American. It doesn't matter to
Communist China that their lies and misinformation killed hundreds of
thousands of people around the world. Communist China is on a mission
to be the dominant world power. Chairman Xi will stop at nothing to
grow Communist China's influence. For Communist China and Chairman Xi,
this great power conflict is a zero-sum game. In order for China to be
stronger, America and all freedom-loving countries around the world
must be weaker. We can't allow that to happen. It is time we finally
stand up and address the new Cold War occurring between the United
States and the Chinese Communist Party.

For too long, Washington politicians have been more concerned with
short-term political success than with the long-term threats to our way
of life--but not anymore. It is time for action. We can no longer rely
on countries like Communist China for our critical supply chain. We
need to build up the national stockpile of PPE and our pharmaceutical
industry with supplies from American-based producers. We can no longer
accept Chinese technology that could be used to spy on us, and we are
working to prohibit the Federal Government from purchasing drones from
our adversaries.
We can no longer allow Communist China to steal from us. We have to
be aggressive in protecting American research and American innovation,
including potentially lifesaving research into a coronavirus vaccine.
We should do everything we can to stop buying products ``Made in
China'' because, every time we do, we are putting another dollar into
the pockets of those stealing our technology, denying their people
basic human rights, and propping up dangerous dictators like Maduro in
Venezuela.
We have to hold Communist China accountable and financially liable
for its lies that led to the coronavirus. It is responsible for the
devastation. We have to stand up and say that it is wrong to allow
Beijing to host the 2022 Olympics. That is wrong. The world community
cannot condone or reward its despicable behavior and human rights
violations.
It is important to be clear-eyed. We have to see Communist China for
what it is. We all must do our part to support our Nation and make it
clear to Communist China that the people of the United States will not
stand for its behavior.
I will not stop fighting until our future and the futures of all of
our children and our grandchildren are secure from this threat.
I yield to my colleague from Texas
The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Texas.
Mr. CRUZ. Mr. President, I rise to join my colleagues in discussing
the single greatest geopolitical threat facing the United States for
the next century, and that is the rise of Communist China.
We are, right now, months into a deadly global pandemic that has
sickened over 14 million people worldwide and has taken the lives of
over 600,000 people. Why are we in the midst of a global pandemic? It
is because the Chinese Communist Party deliberately lied to the world.
It covered up the outbreak and allowed it to spread. The coronavirus
pandemic has thrown into high relief the fact that China is our most
dangerous threat.
For 8 years in the U.S. Senate, I have worked hard to lead the fight
to address the threat of Chinese Communist power and aggression and
hostility head-on, to make the U.S. economy as free and independent
from China as possible, and to thwart the never-ending propaganda and
censorship campaign from the Chinese Communists.
Last week, the Chinese Communist Government made the decision to
sanction me personally, so I am now--I awoke to discover--prohibited
from traveling to Communist China. Somehow, I think I will overcome
that great burden, and I will tell you I wear China's sanction as a
badge of honor. There is a reason they are lashing out. There is a
reason it has decided to direct personal sanctions on me--because they
are scared; they are terrified. The Chinese Communists are murdering,
lying, torturing tyrants.

[[Page S4379]]

For a long time in Washington, there were politicians in both
parties--Democrats and Republicans--who were apologists for China, who
denied the threat was there, who insisted that the path forward was
getting more and more and more in bed with the Chinese Communists. The
most significant long-term foreign policy consequence of this global
pandemic is that people's eyes are opening up on both sides of the
aisle here in Washington and across the world. One need look no further
than the United Kingdom's reversing its decision to allow Huawei to
build its telecom infrastructure in order to understand how China's
mendacity has been revealed to the world.
So how do we hold China accountable? How do we deal with the Chinese
Communist Party?
First of all, we should sanction Chinese officials involved in the
ongoing suppression of medical experts, of journalists, and of
political dissidents, all of whom have been ``disappeared'' by the
Chinese tyrants. I have introduced legislation to do just that. Over
the past several years, I have introduced, roughly, a dozen separate
pieces of legislation that have all focused on different aspects of
addressing the China threat.
Another aspect is Chinese propaganda--Chinese propaganda that is
reflected here in the United States. Big Business, giant corporations,
the media, Hollywood all are terrified to take on Communist China. All
see the billions they can earn from access to the Chinese markets as
being more important than free speech.
With respect to Hollywood, sadly, too many movie producers here in
the United States have been perfectly content to allow the Chinese
Communists to censor American movies. For example, later this year, the
sequel to ``Top Gun'' is scheduled to come out--``Top Gun,'' one of the
greatest military recruiting films ever made. In the sequel, on the
back of Maverick's bomber jacket, the flag of Taiwan has been removed
and the flag of Japan, both of which the Chinese overlords deemed to be
offensive, and our heroic First Amendment champions in Hollywood
dutifully complied with censorship.
By the way, it needn't just concern geopolitical affairs in Asia.
With another Hollywood movie, ``Bohemian Rhapsody''--a fabulous biopic
of Freddie Mercury, the lead singer for Queen--the Chinese censors
decided it offended their sensibilities to have scenes in the movie
that revealed that Freddie Mercury was homosexual. Now, I ask you to
pause for a second and ask: How on Earth do you tell Freddie Mercury's
life story without including the fact that he was gay? It was integral
to who he was. Yet those in Hollywood, which on so many other issues
are glad to be woke social justice warriors, dutifully complied when
the Chinese censors said to take it out, and they deleted the scenes
from ``Bohemian Rhapsody.''
I have introduced legislation in this body called the SCRIPT Act that
will impose consequences when American companies allow the Chinese
Government to censor our films. The consequences are simple. We don't
have the power as the government to impose direct negative
consequences, but what we do have the power to do is to use the
incentives we have; namely, lots of movies borrow Federal assets. When
you go watch a movie and see a plane or a ship or a tank or when you go
watch a movie on the border and you see DHS assets, all sorts of
Federal agencies allow movies to use equipment that is the property of
the Federal Government. The SCRIPT Act is very simple. It says, if you
are going to allow the Chinese Communists to censor your movie, the
Federal Government is not going to loan you our equipment and materiel.
We are not going to facilitate making a movie if you are going to give
the Chinese Communists the editing and censoring pen.

Not only do the Chinese Communists engage in propaganda in Hollywood,
but they also engage in espionage and propaganda on our university
campuses--a very deliberate, systematic effort to steal and deceive. In
the National Defense Authorization Act for Fiscal Year 2019, I was
proud to secure a funding prohibition for the Department of Defense
from funding universities where the money could go to a Confucius
Institute. As a result of that bipartisan legislation, which earned
support from Republicans and Democrats, 17 Confucius Institutes have
been shut down.
When it comes to our supply chain, we have seen, in recent months,
the incredible foolishness of allowing the American supply chain to be
dependent on China--medical equipment, pharmaceuticals, PPE. In the
midst of this pandemic, one Chinese Government state-controlled
newspaper explicitly threatened to cut off lifesaving pharmaceuticals
to the United States of America as a tool of economic warfare. If it
were to do that, that wouldn't just be economic warfare--that would be
actual warfare. That is literally threatening the lives of millions of
Americans.
We need to break our supply chain dependence on China, especially
concerning critical infrastructure, and I have introduced hosts of
legislation designed to do so with respect to pharmaceuticals, with
respect to critical minerals. We have to keep the American people's
lives and safety not dependent upon the whims of Communist China.
In my final point right now, in China today, there are, roughly, 1
million Uighurs in concentration camps--an Orwellian-style, dystopian
government, where the government has all power to monitor what you say,
to monitor whom you talk to, to monitor your beliefs. I introduced
legislation to impose sanctions on any American technology companies
that facilitate the monitoring and oppression of the Chinese people. I
am proud to say the Trump administration took major portions of that
legislation I introduced and implemented them to increase the pressure
to stop facilitating Chinese torture and oppression.
The overwhelming challenge for this body and for this country for the
next century going forward is how we will stand up to the threat of
China. China is waging a 1,000-year war. For the sake not only of
Americans but for the sake of the free world, America needs to win this
contest.
I yield the floor.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Tennessee.
Mrs. BLACKBURN. Mr. President, I was thinking a bit earlier today
about what we were doing at this time last year. We were busy hosting
Tennessee Tuesdays and welcoming Tennesseans and families and children
with such curiosity and bright eyes and lots of questions about our
Nation's government, about these beautiful buildings in which we work
every day, and about the job that we have in representing them. I like
that curiosity, and I like that energy that, generally, is brought to
our Chambers and to our work during the summertime. This year, things
really are a little bit different. I think it is a very worthwhile
exercise--and I appreciate that my colleagues are participating in this
exercise--to remind ourselves why this year is different.
The answer, of course, as to why is this year different is the
Chinese Communist Party. It is the one that is to be held responsible,
to be blamed for the sickness, the chaos, for this crisis that we have
had, which is a health, food, and financial crisis all rolled into one.
It has happened because of decisions that China made, decisions that
were made by the Chinese Communist Party's leadership.
There are some things that are the known knowns, if you will. They
are the things that we know happened as you look back over what has
happened with COVID-19.
What we know is this: On December 31, 2019, government officials in
Wuhan, China, confirmed they were monitoring the spread of a disease
that looked a lot like pneumonia. They didn't know exactly what it was.
It didn't have all the markers, but a lot. But on New Year's Eve, they
let us know: Hey, we have a problem out here. Just days later, they
confirmed it was caused by a novel virus that had infected dozens of
people. We now know it was hundreds of people.
It wasn't until January 23, however, that authorities shut off Wuhan
from the rest of the country. By this time, the virus was spreading
like wildfire. Let's pay close attention to what I just said. They shut
off Hubei Province, they shut off Wuhan not from the rest of the world,
not from other countries, but from the rest of China. Don't you dare go
anywhere else in our country. This is contagious.

[[Page S4380]]

Now, as if that 23-day gap wasn't bad enough, credible watchdog
reports revealed that the CCP--Chinese Communist Party--lied--they lied
to global health officials about the danger posed by the virus for not
just a day or two while they figured it out but for 51 days before they
sounded the alarm and said: Listen up. Pandemic. Pandemic. Fifty-one
days. This deception allowed a regional outbreak to spread into a
global pandemic that has so far killed more than 140,000 Americans.
It would be easy to chalk all of this up to incompetence and
overwhelmed bureaucrats, but every Member of this body knows that is
not what happened. That is why, over the past few weeks, more and more
of my colleagues here in the Senate have agreed to support legislation
that will allow Americans to hold China accountable for the destruction
caused by the pandemic.
On Monday, Senator McSally introduced the Civil Justice for Victims
of COVID Act--a bill that I am very pleased to support and to be a
cosponsor. This bill contains elements of my Stop COVID Act, which I
introduced earlier this year. It would strip Chinese officials of their
sovereign immunity for reckless actions that caused the pandemic and
would give our Federal courts the authority to hear claims that China
has caused or contributed to the COVID-19 pandemic. This is not an
unusual step. We did this after 9/11 for the 9/11 families. What we
would do is give them the opportunity to go to court and make their
case--hold China accountable.
It is time for this body to reject the artificial backstops that some
of my colleagues on the other side of the aisle use to protect China
from criticism, and I encourage those colleagues to ask themselves:
What are you afraid will happen if we hold China accountable for what
they have done? What do you fear?
We have known for years that Beijing uses every tool in its toolbox
to spy on us. Look at what we have learned about Huawei. They embed the
chips in the hardware. You do not know they are there until they
activate. We know they steal our intellectual property. Look at what
they have done to the music industry, to the entertainment industry, to
publishers, and to automotive engineers. China--they can't innovate
their way to success, so what do they do? They steal their way to
success, and then they lie about it.
China continues to cause chaos on the international stage. Look at
their work pushing into the South China Sea. Look at what they have
done to the freedom fighters in Hong Kong. Look at how they act and how
they pressure and try to stifle Taiwan. This is standard operating
procedure for the Chinese Communist Party.
Now, because they chose to lie and not come forward, we have more
than 140,000 Americans who are dead. Millions more have lost their
jobs, and they have lost their sense of community. How much further are
we willing to let this go? I will tell you this: As I, every single
day, talk to Tennesseans about China and what has happened with China
and how China has not been an honest broker, not only in this but for
decades, Tennesseans have had enough.
I yield the floor.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Oklahoma
Mr. LANKFORD. Mr. President, the world is watching and dealing with
COVID-19--the economic effects and health effects. It has affected
every single one of our families in some way.
While the world is watching and we are dealing with all those issues
here in the United States, we can't lose track of what is happening on
the world stage because China is using this moment when the world is
distracted to push its way into Hong Kong and to break its word.
When we deal with China, we know what they have done, the predatory
tactics they have taken either on their own people or on countries
around the world.
The United States of America--when we do foreign aid, we go help
other countries gain more freedom, more security, more stability, and
more economic growth. We don't ask anything in return. We engage with
them to help them.
China is working with developing countries around the world by moving
into different countries and taking collateral of their ports, of their
airports, and establishing military bases around the world when poorer
countries default on the loans they give them. They are not helping
other countries; they are taking over other countries.
They are stepping into country after country and offering them great
new technology from Huawei to help their cell phone systems. They are
establishing security systems around their banks. But what they are
really doing is monitoring their people and gathering data on people
all around the world. The security systems aren't there to set up and
prop up dictatorships in poor countries; they are there for the
dictatorship of China to track what is going on there and any
international development.
We should be aware of what China is doing, and we should not ignore
this moment for the free people of Hong Kong.
Today, many Americans are aware of how China has handled the issue of
protective equipment. The medical equipment that we desperately needed
in March, April, May--much of it manufactured in China--we could not
get because the Communist Government of China kept the materials from
American companies that were manufacturing in China. The Chinese
Communist Government wouldn't allow the exportation of that, and they
just took that equipment over, putting all of the schedules behind.
Suddenly, Americans woke up and understood that our supply chains are
at risk. Our pharmaceutical supply chains are at risk, and our PPE
supply chains are at risk.
What many people don't know is that our rare earth minerals and
critical minerals supply chain is at risk. Lots of folks really like
the solar panels and electric car batteries. Well, great--except we are
completely dependent on China for the rare earth minerals that are in
those.
If we don't develop our own sourcing for those rare earth minerals--
and we do have those same rare earth minerals here--if we don't develop
our own supply chain, if we don't develop our own manufacturing for
pharmaceuticals and for the precursors of pharmaceuticals, we will
continue to be vulnerable to the Chinese Government, and at the moment
the Communist government determines, they will take over that supply,
and we will be at risk.
For decades, the Confucius Institutes have thrived on college
campuses, spreading a Communist philosophy all through our college
campuses. It is now at a moment that college campuses and leadership in
colleges are starting to wake up to say: Why are we allowing Communist
indoctrination on our campuses?
It is a bill that I have pushed, that I will continue to push to be
able to wake up our universities, to say: Why are we allowing this on
our campus?
It is an issue that I have pushed for years, dealing with Chinese
Communists spying on American technology, stealing technology, and also
stealing our science and inventions.
They come over with a grant from the United States and say they are
going to send over researchers, when really what they are doing is
harvesting the research and taking it back to China.
They take materials, whether it be music or movies or any items of
production, and all that manufacturing that comes to China, they then
take that same technology, move it to a different factory, and
literally compete against the first company, because to do business in
China, you have to turn over all your intellectual property to the
Communist government, which then takes it and uses it on their own.
The Chinese Communist Government is not the ally of freedom for the
world, and we should be aware of that. Certainly the people of Hong
Kong are aware of that.
In 1997, after 150 years as a British territory, Hong Kong became a
part of China under the Joint Declaration. It was one country, two
systems--that Hong Kong for 50 years would remain autonomous and free.
Well, just over two decades later, the Chinese Government has broken
its promise, and Hong Kong is no longer free. While the world is
consumed with what is happening with COVID-19, the Communist government
has moved into Hong Kong and has taken it over. They passed a law in
Beijing that they

[[Page S4381]]

sent over and declared in Hong Kong that they can't have any of what
they call subversion, organization or perpetuation of what they call
terroristic activities, collusion with a foreign country or an external
element, which I will explain later.
This new security law literally was delivered to the people of Hong
Kong at midnight, and it went into place immediately. Then the next
step was that the Chinese Communist police--military law enforcement--
moved into Hong Kong to begin to implement this.
Free speech immediately stopped. Those protesters who were out on the
street just wishing to be able to vote and to speak their mind were
immediately rounded up.
Teachers and academics have been arrested or fired or threatened.
Communist Chinese leaders have contacted them to reprimand them about
teaching about human rights in their classrooms, remembering that in
Hong Kong it was required--it was a required class in Hong Kong just
weeks ago--to learn about human rights and freedom, and now the Chinese
Government is removing those teachers and threatening any other teacher
who teaches about human rights that they will be removed.
Faith leaders have been squashed. You see, under this security law
that has passed, you can't have any external element collusion. They
define ``external element'' as any kind of worship of God as well that
does not align with the Communist Government. So any faith-based group
who is there in Hong Kong is immediately being squashed.
The Muslim Uighurs are gathered up in Communist China and put in
concentration camps to reeducate them on how to be more Chinese. Now
the people of Hong Kong are experiencing that same type of oppression
as the first step has stepped in to take away their right to free
speech, their right to gather and protest, and now also their right to
have freedom of faith. Leaders of the democracy movement have already
been rounded up and arrested. This is something that we should not
ignore. We have said as a world ``Never again,'' and we should engage.

I know many people in my State say we should focus on COVID-19, and
we should. There is much that needs to be done. We cannot take our eyes
off of freedom around the world, as well, and the people of Hong Kong.
As they lose their freedom, the world loses freedom, and China sees it
can move into one more place one more time. Taiwan is next, and they
will continue to move in this same way. We should stay engaged.
There are multiple bills this body has already done on sanctions, and
we should continue. We should continue to press in and speak out for
those who cannot speak for themselves in Hong Kong. They are being
isolated. Senator Tim Kaine and I just dropped a bill yesterday dealing
with internet freedom for the people of Hong Kong, saying that the
American Government should be engaged in trying to break through what
is called the great firewall in China. We know they will extend this
firewall into Hong Kong, as well, and will prevent the people from Hong
Kong from access to social media, information with each other, or
information from the outside world, just as they have with the people
of China. But the people of Hong Kong have grown up and lived in
freedom, and they know what it means to get outside information, and
the Chinese Government is actively working to shut that down. We should
actively work to push back on that to make sure the free people of Hong
Kong continue to communicate with each other and with the outside
world. We can stay engaged with that basic function of human rights.
That is why Senator Kaine and I are so passionate about this.
We should engage as a government to make sure that they can continue
to have the free speech that we have. When anyone loses their human
rights and dignities, the world loses human rights and dignities.
Again, I am aware that there are many things that need to happen with
COVID-19 right now, and we are actively working on those things as
well, and we should. But we should not lose track of freedom. Freedom
is our responsibility to model and to live and to help other free
people to guard. Let's stand with the people of Hong Kong.
I yield the floor.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Connecticut

Unanimous Consent Request--S. 3627

Mr. MURPHY. Mr. President, I am glad to have the opportunity to talk
for a bit on the floor of the U.S. Senate on U.S. policy toward China
because there has been no better friend for Chinese interests likely in
our lifetime than President Donald J. Trump.
Articles suggest that when you survey Chinese Communist Party
leaders, they are, to a person, rooting for the reelection of this
President. I don't need to go through the litany of ways in which China
has become more influential and more powerful all around the world
because of this administration's policies, but at the top of that list
is the abdication of the United States' traditional leadership role on
human rights, which has allowed the Communist Party to march on the
Uighurs and others. It is a failed trade policy that has allowed China
to extend its influence into places like Africa and throughout the Silk
Road. It is America's break with Europe that has shattered our ability
to negotiate together the future rules of the economic order.
But what China is really ecstatic about is this President's
performance since March in the wake of a virus that now shows the
United States as having 25 percent of the world's COVID cases while
having only 4 percent of the world's population.
My friend Senator Blackburn recited the early moments of this virus
outbreak in China, and she is right that China was nontransparent and
unhelpful in those early days. But do you know who the greatest
cheerleader for China was in the first 2 to 3 months of COVID-19's
outbreak there? President Donald Trump. On 45 occasions he went on
social media or gave statements to the press in which he lauded China's
response. He talked about how transparent they were and how they were
doing a great job. The world community couldn't put pressure on China
to open up with respect to what they knew about the virus in large part
because the leader of the Nation's most powerful country was doing the
bidding of the Chinese Government.
The second thing that this President has done that makes China very,
very pleased is to essentially make the argument for the Chinese that
the autocratic model that they are perfecting is the best method by
which to organize society around the world, because they say: Listen,
we got this virus under control in a matter of months, and the world's
greatest democracy is still dealing with an epidemic that looks to be
raging newly out of control. So as we engage in this broad fight
between models of governance, our inability--this administration's
inability--to get this virus under control is maybe the greatest gift
that this President has given to China.
Here is what makes it so unconscionable: We know that democracy is
inefficient. We know that capital markets can sometimes be inefficient
when pressed up against the wall by emergencies. So we built into the
statutes of the United States emergency powers to give to this
President--to any President--so that when they are faced with an
emergency, they can cure some of the inefficiencies of democracy.
We are on the floor today--Senators Baldwin, Stabenow, Brown, and I--
to talk about one particular power this President has. It is an act
called the Defense Production Act, and it allows the President during
moments of emergency to commandeer parts of the manufacturing supply
chain in this country to make sure we are making everything we need in
order to repel a foreign invader. Sometimes that may be an army, but in
this case it is a pathogen.
What we have known from the very beginning is that there was no way
for this country to have enough personal protective equipment--masks,
face shields, gowns, and gloves--and there was no way for this country
to be able to have enough tests to know who has it so that we can track
it and get rid of it without the Federal Government stepping up and
utilizing the Defense Production Act.
Twenty percent of nursing homes today have less than a week's supply
of PPE.
Doctors at one hospital in Houston, where the outbreak is raging out
of control, are being told to wear their N95 masks for 15 days in a row
when it is recommended for a single use.

[[Page S4382]]

The national strategic stockpile once had 82 million gloves. Today
they have less than 1 million.
Guess what. It is going to get worse. More people need to be tested.
Schools are about to reopen. The superintendent of the 100,000-student
Jefferson County school district in Louisville, KY, says that he needs
$10 million to order face masks alone. It is going to cost schools
across this country $25 billion to purchase medical supplies, and these
medical supplies are going up in price because the supply is so low. We
have a solution: the Defense Production Act.
We also don't have enough tests. It now takes 7 to 10 to 14 days to
get a test back. In Connecticut, it used to take just 1 day. You can't
beat this virus if you don't get results for 7 to 10 days. That person
who gets tested goes out and spreads it during that time.
James Davis from Quest Diagnostics said:

We would double our capacity tomorrow . . . but it's not
the labs that are the bottleneck. [It] is our ability to get
physical machines and . . . our ability to feed those
machines with chemical reagents.

That is equipment that could be produced in the United States if the
President took control of the manufacturing supply chain--not forever,
but to the extent of this crisis.
So the Medical Supply Transparency and Delivery Act, which Senator
Baldwin and my colleagues will talk more about, essentially picks up
the ball the President has dropped and commands the President to
operationalize the Defense Production Act and put somebody in charge of
its effectuation to make sure we are producing in this country all of
the medical equipment--the masks, the gloves, the testing reagents, the
cartridges--that it is possible to produce in this Nation
The level of gleeful, willing, knowing, purposeful incompetence from
this administration is absolutely stunning, and no one should normalize
an administration that has the power to save lives and refuses to
operationalize it.
Why won't this administration take control of the supply chain? Why
are they willing to let people die? States can't run the supply chain
by themselves. It is a national and international supply chain.
Hospitals can't create their own supply chain. They need to be focused
on saving lives, not being miniprocurement organizations.
We know that democracies and capitalist economies are by nature and
design often inefficient when faced with these urgent crises. That is
why we give Presidents these enormous but temporary powers to smooth
out the inefficiencies of a multibranch, multijurisdictional democracy.
When it comes to calling in the Federal troops to beat the hell out
of protesters, this President seems perfectly willing to exercise his
powers as Commander in Chief, but when it comes to making sure that my
kids' teachers or my local doctor has a mask this fall, this President
is all of a sudden impotent. It falls to us, Members of the U.S.
Congress, to stand up and pass legislation, the Medical Supply
Transparency and Delivery Act, to make sure--to make sure--that we are
using the extent of the statutes provided to this government and this
President to make sure that people are safe and make sure people are
tested in the middle of an ongoing epidemic.
I am glad to be joined on the floor today by a number of my
colleagues to talk about the need to pass this legislation. We are
going to offer a unanimous consent request. Senator Baldwin will do
that. I have been very pleased to be a partner with her in developing
this legislation to require the operationalization of the DPA, but
before she speaks, let me turn it over to my colleague and our caucus's
leader on issues of healthcare, Senator Stabenow.
The PRESIDING OFFICER (Mr. Cotton). The Senator from Michigan.
Ms. STABENOW. Mr. President, first, it is wonderful to be here with
my great friends from Connecticut, Wisconsin, and Ohio. This is such an
important discussion we are having today and such an important bill
that needs to be passed.
Let me start again by underscoring something that Senator Murphy
said, because despite what happened in the beginning as it relates to
China and certainly over the years, I have not been shy to address
concerns related to stealing our intellectual property rights or other
issues related to China. The reality is, despite whatever the
smokescreens are about China, you can't say that they are the reason
that with 4 percent of the population, we have 25 percent of the cases
of COVID-19 and 25 percent of the deaths in the world. There is much
more to it, and, unfortunately, it lands right in this country with the
lack of national leadership that has been completely AWOL when it comes
to the kind of national strategy we need to get our people the
equipment, the support they need, the testing they need, and to have a
strategy to safely reopen the economy and our schools while, at the
same time, putting the health and safety and lives of Americans first
by addressing the pandemic.
So I rise today to urge the Senate to take up and immediately pass
the Medical Supply Transparency and Delivery Act. I want to thank
Senators Baldwin, Murphy, and Brown for introducing this important
legislation. I am very proud to be an original cosponsor of this bill.
As all of you know, throughout history--and I love history--perhaps
no State was as crucial to our Nation's victory in World War II as was
Michigan. My colleagues may debate that, but I have the mic, so I will
talk about Michigan.
The truth is that more than half of Michigan men and women proudly
served in uniform, including my own dad. Back home, the people of our
State were hard at work producing the bombers, the tanks, the trucks,
the helmets, and the guns needed to win the war. In fact, Michigan was
called at that time ``the arsenal of democracy.'' We make things, and
during World War II, we were making the things that were needed to win
the war--the arsenal of democracy. Both at home and abroad, victory in
many ways depended on the people of my State.
For the past 6 months, our Nation has been fighting a different kind
of war, a raging health pandemic, taking over 141,000 American lives so
far. Unfortunately, this time our national generals appear to be
missing in action. How is it possible that 6 months after the first
case of COVID-19 on January 20, our healthcare workers still are
struggling to get the personal protective gear they need to treat
patients while keeping themselves safe? How can that be?
How is it possible that 6 months after the first case of COVID-19 was
detected in the United States, people are still struggling to get
tested? Well, I will tell you how. It is because of the complete lack
of Federal leadership coming from this White House that we have seen,
since day one, in this crisis.
None of us want it to be this way. We all live here. Our families are
here. We are desperately concerned about our families, our friends, and
people in our States. We want this White House to be successful in
fighting the pandemic. We all need to be successful in fighting this
pandemic.
But the reality is that the administration could have immediately
used the Defense Production Act to ensure that we have quality
protective equipment and testing supplies in the right place at the
right time. It could have happened immediately. Instead, we have the
administration providing example after example of telling the
Governors: OK, you do it. We don't want to do it. You do it. We will be
right behind you.
Then Governors turn around, and nobody is there.
They don't want to support the Governors and local communities now
that we were once required to step up. But you go ahead. Or they are
putting together shady contracts--no-bid contracts--one after the
other.
One I will mention to you is called Fillakit, which was a $10 million
no-bid contract to produce testing supplies by somebody who already had
had problems in the past and who was given a no-bid contract after
setting up a new company. We heard this over and over. And ProPublica
reported that the testing tubes Fillakit produced were, in fact,
repurposed miniature plastic soda bottles and described the packaging
process as unmasked employees using ``snow shovels'' and dumping them
into plastic bins before squirting saline into them all in open air.
Well, Michigan received some of those so-called testing supplies, and
needless to say, they were not useable.

[[Page S4383]]

Meanwhile, Governors, hospitals, and nursing homes have spent time,
energy, and money bidding against one another and being pitted against
one another for lifesaving PPE and testing supplies. This is no way to
fight a pandemic. This is no way to fight a war, and, certainly, no way
to win a war.
In Michigan, after the CARES Act passed, going back to the State,
working with our State Governor and her team and our delegation, I,
literally, was in a situation of reaching out--because of my work in
healthcare--to people in the medical supply business, and we got some
of the first masks because I knew a guy who knew a guy who knew a guy
in China. That was how we got the masks--no national supply chain.
Masks were coming in. Fifty-cent masks were being bumped up to $5,
$6, $7 apiece--no accountability, nobody worrying about the United
States and whether we could get the best deal and whether our hospitals
were able to get what they needed. Frankly, it was chaos--complete
chaos. Again, that is no way to fight a pandemic, and it is certainly
no way to fight a war.
During World War II, Michigan didn't decide to become the arsenal of
democracy on its own. The Federal Government saw a need and called on
Michigan companies and workers to fill it, and we did. It is the same
thing this administration should be doing right now, today--today--to
produce the PPE and testing supplies we need to end this pandemic.
Instead, doctors and nurses are wearing the same masks for a week or
more. People are waiting more than 10 days for test results, and more
than 141,000 Americans, so far, have died, including more than 6,100 in
Michigan.
It is time to pass this important bill. It is past time. It is time
to put our great American companies to work producing the supplies we
need. It is time to win this war. We have done big things before, and
we can do it again. I join with my colleagues in urging that this bill
be taken up immediately.
I yield the floor.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Ohio
Mr. BROWN. Mr. President, I thank Senators Murphy and Stabenow and
Senator Baldwin's terrific leadership on this. I echo Senator Murphy's
earlier comments about China.
I see on the other side of the aisle Senators and President Trump. It
is campaign season. So it is time to bash China, even though they have
been in the pockets of China.
I was in the other body when corporate interests came and lobbied the
House of Representatives and lobbied the Senate asking for China to get
all of these trade breaks and tax breaks so that American companies
could shut down production in Milwaukee or in Cleveland and move
overseas to China and get all kinds of tax breaks. And then my
Republican colleagues were also pro-China because they wanted these
American corporations and their contributors, starting with Senator
McConnell down the hall, to get all of these advantages for China.
Now, if you are thinking about running for President of the United
States in 2024 as a Republican, you bash China. If you are in a tough
reelection right now for the Senate, you bash China. If you are a House
Member and afraid of being defeated, you bash China. If you want to
help the cause for Donald Trump, you bash China. It doesn't matter that
President Trump has been the best friend of China. It doesn't matter
the Republican leadership has been in the pocket of Chinese Communist
interests because of their support for American corporations. It is
just good politics to bash China. So we know that, and Senator Murphy
touched on that.

S. 4049

Mr. President, I want to say a few words first about Agent Orange and
thank Senator Tester for his work on behalf of the tens of thousands of
Vietnam vets who suffered because of exposure to Agent Orange.
We all know what the issue is. The National Academy of Sciences has
recognized the four illnesses that are suggestive or where there is
sufficient evidence associated with Agent Orange. For years, we have
known that. The VA has added illnesses in categories to the list of
presumptive medical conditions associated with Agent Orange. They have
resisted this.
Time is running out for these veterans. We did this to them. The
American Government decided to spray Agent Orange. We knew it was
harmful. We definitely know it is harmful now. If you were exposed to
poison while serving our country, you deserve the benefits you earned,
period.
For 3 years, in the Veterans' Affairs Committee--I sat in the
Veterans' Affairs Committee--I begged the Veterans' Administration to
recognize that these three illnesses are caused by Agent Orange and
they should get Veterans' Administration benefits. I begged the
Veterans' Administration, and no answers. I begged the President of the
United States, and President Trump said he is a friend of veterans, but
he couldn't be bothered to add these three illnesses on the list. So
these veterans, individually, have to get down on their knees--
figuratively, if not literally--and beg the VA for benefits when it
ought to be automatic. That is what Senator Tester's amendment does
today. It makes it automatic.
Instead, the White House said no and the Veterans' Administration
said no, but because of the work of Senator Tester today, my colleagues
are finally--it doesn't happen often around here. My Republican
colleagues actually stood up to the President of the United States and
said: No, Mr. President, you are wrong on the VA about covering these
illnesses for Vietnam vets. And, finally, this Congress did the right
thing. I thank Senator Tester for that work.

Unanimous Consent Request--S. 3627

Mr. President, we know a lot of things. We know 144,000 Americans are
dead. We have grown numb to these numbers. We can't forget who they
are. They are our friends, our sisters, our brothers, our parents, and
our neighbors.
As has been said, we are 4 to 5 percent of the world's population. We
have accounted for almost 30 percent of the deaths in the entire world.
That is not because we don't have skilled doctors. It is not because we
don't have smart scientists. It is not because we don't work hard. It
is because of leadership.
We know this President and the majority leader down the hall, who
does the bidding every single day of this President, had chance after
chance to get ahead of this virus. President Trump failed and Senator
McConnell failed. Now they have stopped even pretending to try
The President demands that schools reopen--no plan to protect
teachers and students. He demands businesses open up--no plan to
protect workers and consumers. The American people have done their part
and made incredible sacrifices. Essentially, they bought President
Trump time in March, April, May, and June, and he wasted it.
This spring, people stayed home. They worked hard to flatten the
curve. Members of both parties--both parties--begged him to use the
Defense Production Act to scale up the production of medical supplies,
including testing supplies, and coordinate their deployment. All the
way back in March, we knew we faced shortfalls in N95 masks, gowns, and
the materials we needed, most importantly, for test production, like
cotton swabs. I immediately convened Ohio manufacturers back in March.
I know Senator Baldwin did the same thing in her State. I asked them
what support they needed. I released a plan and sent a letter to the
White House outlining Executive actions the President could take
immediately. This was March. Since then--April, May, June, July--and
essentially nothing happened. The Federal Government can acquire the
resources our country needs and send them when they are needed most.
Senator Crapo, a Republican from Idaho, and I worked together to
include provisions in the CARES Act ensuring the President has the
ability to use DPA authority he already has without delay. We worked
with our colleagues in the Appropriations Committee to include $1
billion in new DPA funding. Yet hundreds of millions of dollars just
sit around waiting to be used.
Our States and our healthcare workers continue to face supply
shortages. What exactly is the President waiting for? Imagine if he had
used that DPA money and DPA authority in the spring and said we need to
be producing a million tests a week by the end of summer, or imagine if
we said our goal

[[Page S4384]]

is to be ready to open schools in the fall and I am calling on American
businesses and American workers to manufacture the tests we need to do
it? Look around the world. Other countries figured this out. We are
being left behind. It is time for us to step up. If the President will
not lead, we must. If the President will not use DPA on its own,
Congress must use its authority to force him to.
That is why it is so disappointing to see my Republican colleagues
objecting to Senator Baldwin's bill. But, of course, they are objecting
because they are doing the bidding of President Trump, and they want to
blame China for everything, instead of take any responsibility
themselves. But objecting to Senator Baldwin's bill, which would force
the President to actually do his job and coordinate a national response
to a national crisis--that is the answer.
The American people should not have to fend for themselves again and
again and again in the middle of a pandemic.
I yield the floor.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Wisconsin.
Ms. BALDWIN. Mr. President, President Trump's response to this
pandemic has been a failure of leadership. So we are here today to
provide leadership in the Senate to do what the Trump administration
has failed to do.
In April, with my good friend Senator Murphy from Connecticut, the
two of us introduced legislation called the Medical Supply Transparency
and Delivery Act. That act would force President Trump to take action
and scale up American production of things like test kits, swabs,
reagents, personal protective equipment, and the medical equipment
needed at the local level to address the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic in
our country.
Three months later, States still do not have the supplies they need.
Now more than 3.8 million Americans have been infected with the
coronavirus, and, tragically, over 141,000 people have died in our
country. For 3 months, our legislation has been in the majority
leader's legislative graveyard.
Since this public health crisis started, the Trump administration has
had no national testing plan, and they have never had a plan to provide
States with the testing supplies they need to combat this pandemic. As
a matter of fact, last month, the President said we needed to slow down
testing, and, this weekend, as President Trump once again said the
coronavirus would disappear, there were reports that the White House is
trying to block Federal funding for States to conduct testing and
contact tracing.
President Trump has not only abandoned each and every one of our
States, he has also turned his back on frontline healthcare workers,
who continue to face shortages of personal protective equipment,
including gloves, gowns, face shields, and masks.
The Trump administration has created absolute chaos in the medical
supply chain, leaving healthcare workers at hospitals and long-term
care facilities at the forefront of this crisis to fend for themselves,
rationing the scarce personal protective equipment that has been
provided to them. In fact, just a couple of weeks ago, Vice President
Mike Pence, who was put in charge of our pandemic response, said the
administration will be issuing guidance encouraging healthcare workers
to reuse personal protective equipment. This is the same Vice President
who declared that the United States would ``have this coronavirus
pandemic behind us'' by Memorial Day weekend. He was tragically wrong,
and this White House continues to play catchup on a pandemic and a
virus that is spreading faster than ever.
The person whom President Trump put in charge of our medical supply
chain was his son-in-law, Jared Kushner. Jared Kushner predicted in
April that by June we would be back to normal and that in July we would
be ``rocking again.'' It is July. It is July, and this is where we are.
Last Thursday, America had its highest number of new coronavirus
cases in 1 day. And in my home State of Wisconsin, we had our highest
case count ever yesterday--yesterday--and we have many hospitals across
my State with less than a week's supply of face shields, goggles,
gowns, paper medical masks, and N95 masks.
This public health crisis has not disappeared. We are not back to
normal, and we are not ``rocking again.''
The fact is, President Trump has failed to lead, and this White House
has taken us in a wrong direction in our fight against this pandemic.
New coronavirus cases are rising in the States that we work for, which
means we need more testing supplies, more testing, and more personal
protective equipment for our workers.
The question this Senate needs to answer is whether we are going to
let this President continue to take our country in the wrong direction,
or are we going to lead and do what we all know needs to be done?
Not one of my Senate colleagues can make an honest case that their
State has everything it needs to fight this pandemic.
In Wisconsin, we have been shortchanged by this administration. They
have failed to provide adequate supplies for our State's clinical and
private labs, paralyzing our ability to expand testing to the levels we
need. In some cases, what we have received from the Trump
administration were unsuitable and unusable testing supplies--foam
applicators that cannot be used for swabs and saline tubes that were
too short to transport swabs used in the majority of COVID-19 tests.
In addition, the majority of labs conducting COVID-19 tests in
Wisconsin are clinical or private labs. These labs cannot access
resources from the administration and are essentially being told to
``figure it out.'' Over 80 Wisconsin labs that are currently performing
tests do not have access to a consistent supply of reagent.
We are not alone. States across the country have been abandoned by
the Trump administration. They have been forced to go this alone, while
President Trump has tried to pass off responsibility for his own
failures.
Every single one of us knows that our States need more resources and
supplies so we can ramp up testing, identify those who are infected,
isolate positive cases, and safely trace all contacts so that the
spread of this virus can finally be contained. We all know that
President Trump's broken supply chain has been a failure, and my
legislation with Senator Murphy, supported by 46 Democrats, will help
fix it.
In order to put people back to work and safely reopen businesses and
schools, we need both a national testing plan and the supplies to
implement it. This is true in Wisconsin and every other State in our
Nation.
Our legislation will help respond to this public health crisis and
prepare for the future by mobilizing a Federal response to increase our
national production of the testing and medical supplies we need at the
State and local level. Specifically, the bill will provide critical
oversight of the distribution of medical supplies and put an expert in
charge to oversee COVID-19 equipment production and delivery so we know
we are putting science and facts over politics and private distributor
profits when it comes to responding to this pandemic.
Finally, our legislation unlocks the full authority and power of the
Defense Production Act so that we can produce and deliver tests,
testing supplies, personal protective equipment, and medical equipment
that we need to take on this pandemic, treat patients, protect workers,
open businesses and schools, and save lives.
My friends on the other side of the aisle have a choice: They can
continue to ignore President Trump's failure to respond to this public
health crisis, knowing full well that until we confront it in the bold
and effective way that we should, we will not solve our economic
crisis, or they can choose to liberate themselves from this failure and
support a solution that will serve the people who sent us here to work
for them.
If my colleagues on the other side of the aisle believe, as this Vice
President does, that this pandemic is behind us, then object. If my
colleagues on the other side of the aisle believe, as Jared Kushner
does, that we are rocking again in July, then object. If my colleagues
on the other side of the aisle believe, as President Trump does, that
the coronavirus will just magically disappear, well, then, object.
If you oppose the failures of this President and this administration
in responding to the COVID-19 pandemic, then I ask for your vote to
pass the Medical Supply Transparency and Delivery Act today.

[[Page S4385]]

So I ask unanimous consent that the Homeland Security and
Governmental Affairs Committee be discharged and the Senate proceed to
the immediate consideration of S. 3627, the Medical Supply Transparency
and Delivery Act. I further ask that the bill be considered read a
third time and passed and that the motion to reconsider be considered
made and laid upon the table.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. Is there objection?
Mr. JOHNSON. Mr. President.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Wisconsin
Mr. JOHNSON. Mr. President, reserving the right to object, let me say
first that I appreciate my colleague from Wisconsin's work on this
issue. It is an important issue. It is one that our committee has been
working diligently on.
Since the beginning of the COVID crisis, we have held five hearings
and a roundtable on exactly this issue--exploring and doing oversight
on the national stockpile and its supply chain vulnerability. Just
today, we marked up five pieces of legislation very similar to what my
colleague from Wisconsin is introducing here and trying to pass by
unanimous consent. The five pieces are the Federal Emergency Pandemic
Response Act, Securing Healthcare Response and Equipment Act, National
Response Framework Improvement Act, National Infrastructure Simulation
and Analysis Center Pandemic Modeling Act, and finally--this one
closest to my colleague's bill--the PPE Supply Chain Transparency Act,
which is actually the piece of legislation we have had the most
discussion on--two amendments, including a second-degree amendment to
one amendment--before passing it unanimously. So our committee has done
a lot of work.
My concern about what my colleague is doing here--trying to pass this
by unanimous consent--is by and large bypassing the committee process.
It is true her staff reached out to my staff a couple of weeks ago. We
asked, have you vetted it through the Department? Apparently, she has
begun that process, but this piece of legislation has not been properly
vetted. It has not gone through the proper and full committee process.
Again, without expressing an opinion on a piece of legislation but
also acknowledging the fact that our committee has done a lot of work--
passed five pieces of legislation on a nonpartisan basis today because
we are concerned about this as well--I have to object.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. Objection is heard.
Ms. BALDWIN. Mr. President.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Wisconsin.
Ms. BALDWIN. I am, of course, very disappointed that we cannot move
this forward.
I want to respond to a couple of the comments made by my colleagues
from the State of Wisconsin, the chairman of the Homeland Security and
Governmental Affairs Committee.
It is July. It is July, and cases are rising. Action was not taken in
February, March, April, May, June, or so far in this month of July. We
had more than fair warning that we had shortages of masks and gloves
and gowns and face shields and testing swabs and testing media and
reagents, and yet it is July.
As I said earlier, yesterday Wisconsin announced the most cases
positive for coronavirus in a single day that we have seen since the
pandemic began.
As we strive to reopen our economy, the President exhorts all schools
to hold 5-day-a-week, in-person classes.
We know that the demand for testing and the demand for masks will
only increase exponentially--the need to keep workers safe as they
return to work and the need to keep customers safe as they enter and
engage in commerce. To say that this needed to happen back in February
is an understatement.
I am pleased that my colleague has held hearings, but this bill was
filed in April when it became apparent that the President was not going
to act. This bill has been available for committee review since April.
The House passed many elements of the Medical Supply Transparency and
Delivery Act in their Heroes Act, which they passed 2 months ago. I
just ask, where would we be today had this been put into law?
There has been time to review. There has been time to study. But it
is past time to pass the Medical Supply Transparency and Delivery Act.
I hope we can create another opportunity for the Senate to act on this
in the days to come because it is so overdue.
I want to again thank my colleagues who joined me on the floor this
afternoon--my coauthor, Senator Chris Murphy of Connecticut; my
colleague from Michigan, Debbie Stabenow; and my colleague from Ohio,
Senator Sherrod Brown; and the 45 other Members of the U.S. Senate who
have joined me in sponsoring this bill.
I yield the floor.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Democratic leader.
Mr. SCHUMER. Mr. President, I want to thank my colleagues, Senators
Baldwin and Murphy, for their urgent words on this most important
issue. I am proud to join them as we seek passage to pass legislation
to finally require the President to invoke the full authority of the
DPA, the Defense Production Act, so that the Federal Government can
more speedily get testing supplies and PPE to the parts of our country
struggling under the weight of the pandemic.
Make no mistake, medical professionals and frontline workers fighting
this virus still--still--do not have the protective equipment and the
testing supplies they need because the Trump administration failed to
fully invoke the DPA earlier this year. This is a crisis of President
Trump's making.
As we speak, COVID-19 continues to surge across the country. As cases
keep growing, our testing supplies and our PPE, already in short
supply, are reaching critical levels. From Seattle to Miami, people are
waiting in line for hours to get tested, and their results might take
days, if not more, to come back. In many places we are missing basic
supplies--swabs, gloves. In certain hospitals it has been reported
doctors and nurses are being told to reuse their N95 masks as many as
15--15--times.
It has been 6 months since we have been fighting this virus. How is
this still happening? The problem should have been solved months ago,
but the President has been derelict in his duty. His administration has
been a total failure when it comes to testing and PPE.
Instead of fully invoking the DPA and ramping up the production of
critical supplies early on, President Trump has left doctors, nurses,
and medical staff fighting this disease with one hand tied behind their
back. He has failed to keep us and those working on the frontline safe.
This bill, however, would finally--finally--force the President to do
what he should have done ages ago. We have been talking about the DPA
since way back in April. I called the President in April, got him on
the phone, urged him to invoke it. He told me he would and then
contradicted himself a few hours later. How typical, but how
devastating for the American people. Then he quickly lost interest--
again, typical of this President, whose attention span is much too
short for the big fight that we have with COVID.
So what we say is the President's approach to the pandemic was--
typically here--no followthrough, no strategy, no comprehension of the
problem. The President's mind-boggling refusal to invoke the DPA
shouldn't be piled on top of the challenges our medical workers and
citizens already face.
I am sorry we didn't pass this legislation. I hope we can do it soon.
I yield the floor.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from South Dakota.

Remembering John Lewis

Mr. THUNE. Mr. President, before I begin, I would like to take a
moment to honor Congressman John Lewis, who died on Friday. A leader of
the civil rights movement, he was one of the 13 original Freedom Riders
and an organizer of the 1963 March on Washington. He was a man of
conscience, conviction, and supreme courage.
``When you see something that is not right, not fair, not just, you
have to speak up. You have to do something,'' he would say.
John Lewis did something. Confronted by the great sin of segregation,
John Lewis put himself front and center in the fight. He organized sit-
ins. He led demonstrations. He marched for

[[Page S4386]]

freedom. And he paid for his convictions with his blood. A man who
espoused nonviolence, he suffered incredible brutality at the hands of
both police officers and civilian mobs. He was attacked and beaten an
untold number of times
During a march in Selma, AL--on a day that lives in infamy--a police
officer fractured John Lewis's skull, leaving him with a scar that he
carried to the end of his life. Yet John Lewis was unbowed. No matter
how many times he was attacked or what he suffered, he got up again and
rejoined the fight.
His death is a great loss, but John Lewis will live on in the annals
of American heroes. May we all have his courage in fighting for the
right.

Coronavirus

Mr. President, so far, Congress has provided $2.4 trillion to fight
the coronavirus. Over the past couple of months here in the Senate, we
have been closely tracking the implementation of this money and working
with the administration on disbursement.
In June alone, we held 30 hearings in the Senate on COVID-related
issues. All of this has helped us identify the priorities that need to
shape our next bill, which we are hoping to pass in the next couple of
weeks. Those priorities are kids, jobs, and healthcare.
First, kids: Getting kids back in school safely needs to be a
priority. Being able to attend school in person is important for
students' academic development and for their social and emotional well-
being.
The American Academy of Pediatrics has stated: ``All policy
considerations for the coming school year should start with a goal of
having students physically present in school.''
Now, not every school may be able to fully reopen this fall, but we
need to make sure that those schools that can reopen have the resources
they need to reopen safely. That is why the legislation the Republicans
are drafting here in the Senate would provide more than $100 billion to
help schools ensure they have what they need to safely welcome students
back to class.
While our first priority in getting kids back to school is ensuring
their academic and social well-being, getting students back in school
is also important for families' economic health. There are a lot of
parents in this country who can't afford to have one parent stay home
to homeschool. We need to ensure that those parents have access to
schools and childcare wherever possible so that they can keep or return
to their jobs.
Enabling Americans to return to work is key to our economic recovery.
Currently, there are more than 17 million unemployed Americans. While
this is a significant improvement from where we were 2 months ago, that
number is still much too high, and we have to do everything we can to
get these Americans back on the job and receiving a regular paycheck.
That is why the legislation we are drafting will provide incentives
for businesses to hire and to retain workers. It will provide a
refundable tax credit for Main Street businesses for the protective
equipment and cleaning supplies that they need to keep their employees
and customers safe and to encourage Americans to return to their
businesses. It will provide another round of assistance to small
businesses, with a focus on those that have been hit the hardest by the
pandemic.
We also expect to issue another round of direct payments to hard-
working Americans to help them get back on their feet and to stimulate
the economy.
The third bucket of our coronavirus response is, of course,
healthcare. We have to keep ensuring our healthcare professionals have
the resources needed to treat patients, develop new treatments, and to
find a vaccine to tame this virus once and for all.
The coronavirus legislation that we are drafting will address all
three of those priorities.
Our legislation will also include another important priority that
will protect jobs, schools, businesses, and healthcare workers, and
that is liability protections. No matter how many precautions schools
and businesses take, there is no way for them to completely eliminate
all risk of employees, students, or customers contracting the virus,
but an army of trial lawyers is waiting to levy lawsuits against even
the most careful schools and businesses.
There is absolutely no question that schools and businesses should be
liable for gross negligence or for intentional misconduct, but
businesses and schools that are taking every reasonable precaution to
protect employees and students and customers should not have to worry
about facing lawsuits for virus transmission that they could not have
prevented.
Healthcare workers giving their all on the frontlines to treat
coronavirus patients should not have to worry that their efforts will
be rewarded with lawsuits.
I would like to think that we can put a bipartisan bill together and
get it to the President's desk in the next couple of weeks. Republicans
are ready and willing to work with Democrats to get this done. We will
introduce our draft shortly and be ready to negotiate with Democrats to
arrive at a final bill, the same process that we followed with the
CARES Act, our largest coronavirus relief bill to date.
This will work only if Democrats are willing to come to the table and
negotiate a reasonable bill. My Democratic colleagues sometimes behave
as if government money is drawn from a magical pot of gold that will
never run out, but it is not. It is not.
Every dollar of the coronavirus funding we provided so far has been
borrowed money, and every dollar we appropriate in the phase 4 bill we
are drafting will likely be borrowed money as well.
It can be argued that it is money we need to borrow, but we need to
remember that it is borrowed money and that the bill for that money
will eventually come due. The more we drive up our debt, the greater
the threat to the health of our economy, not to mention to the economic
future of today's younger workers. We have an obligation to them to
limit our borrowing to what is absolutely necessary to fight the virus.
The Democratic leader has come down to the floor the past couple of
days and suggested that the Heroes Act--a $3 trillion coronavirus bill
the House passed is--``a good product to start with'' when it comes to
a phase 4 coronavirus relief bill.
That is ludicrous. The bill the Democratic leader is promoting--the
bill he thinks is a good starting point for coronavirus legislation--is
a bill that mentions cannabis--cannabis more often than it mentions the
word ``jobs.''
Let me just repeat that. The bill the Democratic leader thinks is a
good starting point for coronavirus relief legislation mentions the
word ``cannabis'' more often than it mentions the word ``job.''
While the Democratic leader is certainly welcome to disagree with me,
I don't think diversity studies in the cannabis industry have a major
role to play in defeating this virus or getting Americans back to work,
nor does federalizing election law--another priority the Democrats
included in their bill.
Despite its $3 trillion pricetag, the bill the Democratic leader is
endorsing fails to meet one of the most basic requirements of any
coronavirus relief bill, and that is providing a meaningful plan for
getting Americans back to work. It is disappointing to hear the
Democratic leader promoting such an unserious piece of legislation at a
time that we should be devoting all of our efforts to getting a
bipartisan bill to the President.
I hope my other Democratic colleagues in the Senate are ready to look
beyond partisan wish lists and focus on negotiating a relief package
that addresses the real priorities we are facing: helping kids and
parents, getting Americans back to work, and providing the healthcare
resources needed to fight this virus.
Republicans are ready to come to the table, and I urge Democrats to
join us.
I yield the floor.
The PRESIDING OFFICER (Mrs. Blackburn). The Senator from Illinois

Unanimous Consent Request--S. 4243

Mr. DURBIN. Madam President, I am expecting the Senator from Utah to
come to the floor momentarily to resume debate over an issue which was
raised yesterday and suspended to move to a vote that had been
previously scheduled.
Since this item, this issue, we are discussing is of such importance
to so many individuals in our country

[[Page S4387]]

today--and many of them are following this carefully and closely--I
wanted to make sure we returned to it today to at least consider one
aspect of the debate.
Yesterday, when I made a unanimous consent request, Senator Lee said
he had not had time to look at my proposal. That is why I waited until
today to come back, so that he would have that opportunity.
Yesterday, I came to the floor to speak about the plight of immigrant
workers who are suffering because of a serious problem in our
immigration system known as the green card backlog. Many of these
immigrants are essential workers who are helping to lead the fight
against COVID-19, but the green card backlog puts them and their
families at risk of losing their immigration status and being subject
to deportation.
Under the current law, there are clearly not enough immigrant visas--
also known as green cards--available each year. The numbers that we
have established in 1990 are still applicable today, though our
national economy has doubled since then. We are still talking about
140,000 employment visas each year.
These so-called green cards have resulted in many people waiting for
long periods of times--literally for years--for the opportunity to
become legal permanent residents and securing one of the green cards.
While they are waiting, their families are at risk.
These backlogs are particularly difficult on children because as they
wait, the children, of course, advance in age, and when they reach age
21, they are subject to deportation. I have met with these families,
and I have talked with them. It is a heartbreaking situation.
The unanimous consent request, which I will make today, addresses the
plight of those children directly. Senator Lee objected to it
yesterday. He said he had not had a chance to look at it. I hope he
will reconsider when I make the same request today.
These children who face, what we call, aging out at age 21 would be
protected by this unanimous consent request, which I am making. In
addition to the green card backlog, it is clear there is a solution to
this issue, which I am afraid we are not going to be able to achieve.
It is to increase the number of green cards available each year in this
country.
These immigrant workers who are seeking green cards are already in
the United States working legally. This is not a question of increasing
the number of green cards, of bringing in new immigrants to compete
with American workers. These workers are already here. It is about
whether immigrant workers will continue to be able to work on temporary
visas, where they have to depend on their employer for their
immigration status and their future is uncertain.
I introduced legislation known as the RELIEF Act. My cosponsors are
Senator Patrick Leahy of Vermont and Senator Mazie Hirono of Hawaii.
The RELIEF Act would increase the number of green cards to clear the
backlog for all immigrants waiting in line for green cards within 5
years--eliminate the backlog for green cards within 5 years.
This RELIEF Act would keep immigrant families together by treating
children and spouses of green card holders as immediate relatives, just
as the children and spouses of citizens are, so they don't count
against the green card caps. The RELIEF Act would protect the aging-out
children who qualify for a green card based on parents' immigrant
petition.
The RELIEF Act that I am describing is not novel or controversial; it
is based on a provision of the 2013 comprehensive immigration reform
bill, which I helped to write with the so-called Gang of 8. That
included Senator McCain, Senator Graham, Senator Flake, as well as
Senator Rubio on the Republican side; myself, Senator Schumer, Senator
Menendez, and Senator Bennet on the Democratic side. We worked hard and
passed that measure through the Senate Judiciary Committee and on the
floor by a vote of 68 to 32.
What I am proposing is something I have proposed in the past,
crafted, passed, and offered to the House of Representatives to help
start to solve the immigration crisis, which we currently have in this
country. Unfortunately, the Republicans, who controlled the House of
Representatives when this measure came before them several years ago,
refused to even take up this measure and debate it.
If they had, we wouldn't be here today. The green card backlog would
not exist based on the provision which I offered with others in the
comprehensive immigration reform bill. Unfortunately, some
of the Republicans on the other side of the aisle are
still unwilling to increase any number of immigrant visas.
They want to keep the immigrant workers on a temporary
basis, where they and their family are at risk of losing
their immigration status and being deported.
The senior Senator from Utah, Mr. Lee, has introduced S. 386, known
as the Fairness for High-Skilled Immigrants Act, to address the green
card backlog. I have a basic concern with that bill. It includes no
additional green cards. Without any additional green cards, S. 386 will
not reduce the green card backlog. Without additional green cards, S.
386 will not reduce the green card backlog.
Don't take it from me. There are those who will disagree and say: Oh,
Durbin is wrong. He is just mistaken in saying that.
Please go to the nonpartisan Congressional Research Service. Here is
what they said about S. 386, Senator Lee's legislation. ``S. 386 would
not reduce future backlogs compared to current law.''
Despite my concerns about Senator Lee's bill, I agreed to sit down
and work in good faith with him to resolve our differences. Last
December, we reached an agreement--I believed we did--on an amendment
to the bill. The amendment doesn't address the core problem because it
doesn't increase the number of green cards. As a result, it would not
reduce the green card backlog, but there was an improvement in the
amendment which we put together. I talked about it yesterday.
Let me highlight two key provisions of our agreement. We protected
the families who are stuck in this backlog waiting for a green card.
Immigrant workers and immediate family members would be allowed to
``early file'' for their green cards. That was a proposal that came to
me from Senator Lee, and I thought it was reasonable. These individuals
would not receive their green cards early, but they would be able,
while waiting, to switch jobs and travel without losing immigration
status. I think that is reasonable. Early filing adds a critical
protection that wasn't in S. 386.
Listen carefully. Our agreement prevents the children of immigrant
workers from aging out of green card eligibility so they will not face
deportation while they are waiting for a green card.
Our agreement also would crack down on the abuse of H-1B temporary
work visas. Really, I think this is at the heart of the problems we are
running into. There are corporate entities in India, which have
extraordinary power over the securing of these H-1B visas.
The amendment we put together would allow legitimate use of H-1B
visas, but here is what it would say. It would prohibit a company from
hiring additional H-1B workers in the future if the company's workforce
is more than 50 employees and more than 50 percent of those are
temporary workers.
The 50-50 rule is from a bipartisan H-1B reform bill that I authored
with Senator Grassley. This provision was included in the 2013
comprehensive immigration reform bill.
Senator Lee has said publicly: This is a commonsense reform to root
out abuse. I think he is right. I know these companies despise this
provision, and I think it is one of the reasons we find ourselves with
no common ground today. If this is included, they don't want anything
to pass, and they are doing their best to stop it.
The reality is that the top recipients of H-1B visas today are
outsourcing companies that use loopholes in the law to exploit
immigrant workers and offshore American jobs. In the most recent year
for which data is available, 8 of the top 10 recipients of new H-1B
visas were outsourcing companies.
Unfortunately, yesterday, Senator Lee objected to this proposal,
which we had put together. Instead, he offered a revised version that
included changes that were requested by the Trump administration. Let
me explain Senator Lee's changes because I think they are basic, and I
believe they are a problem.

[[Page S4388]]

First, he wants to remove a provision from our original agreement,
known as the hold harmless clause. What it says is very simple. It
assures immigrants already waiting in line for green cards that there
is nothing we will do that will, in any way, injure or delay their
pursuit of a green card; they can't fall further behind in line. We
hold them harmless from any change we make. Why wouldn't we? Some of
these people have waited for years. The hold harmless provision
basically says we are going to protect wherever you stand in line.
The second thing that Senator Lee wants to do is to delay for 3 years
the effective date of the 50-50 rule to crack down on outsourcing
companies. I don't know why we want to wait 3 years to do that. We
don't have to. We shouldn't. Why on Earth would we give these companies
that are outsourcing American jobs and exploiting immigrant workers a
free pass for an additional 3 years?
Third, Senator Lee wanted to delay for years early filing for people
who are stuck in the green card backlog. The object behind the early
filing, and the reason why it is so appealing to me, was that it would
protect the individuals applying as well as their families from the
start, and now the Senator suggested that we delay this. That just
means that many children will age out during that 1-to-3-year period of
time and be subject to deportation. We shouldn't do that to these
children and these families.

Yesterday, I made a simple proposal to Senator Lee, which he hadn't
seen personally, and that is why we had to come back today. While we
continue to debate the best way to fix the green card backlog, let's
make sure no children of the affected families are harmed or deported.
It is just that simple.
I offered a new bill--very simply stated--the Protect Children of
Immigrants Workers Act. This brief, three-page bill would ensure that
children do not age out while waiting for a green card.
Imagine if you brought your family to the United States, worked on an
H-1B visa, applied for a green card to stay in this country, and your
children are waiting with you for the green card. You are paying for
them to go to college because they don't qualify as American citizens
for any type of Federal financial aid. You are making great sacrifices
for them. Then the day comes when they reach the age of 21 and they can
be deported and the family divided. Why would we want to let that
happen?
This three-page bill, the Protect Children of Immigrant Workers Act,
protects those children. It would not increase the number of green
cards. It would not provide any special benefits. It would simply allow
children of immigrant workers to keep their place in line for a green
card and be protected from deportation until they can get that card.
Yesterday, Senator Lee said he had not had a chance to review it, so
I wanted to return to the floor today. I believe this is timely and
important, and now he has had a chance to look at it. Senator Lee's
original bill does not offer any protection for those children, which I
think is a major humanitarian problem caused by the green card backlog.
The early-filing provision in my agreement with Senator Lee will
immediately protect the kids in the backlog under the age of 21.
However, if early-filing is delayed, Senator Lee now proposes those
kids would age out and lose their green card eligibility.
I have met many of these young people. It breaks my heart to hear
their stories, that they may be reaching a point where they have aged
out and could be deported. That is why I want to offer this specific
single provision. There is no reason these children should be punished
for a broken immigration system. It is beyond their control, but it is
not beyond our control to help them.
I now am going to ask unanimous consent for the Protect Children of
Immigrant Workers Act.
Madam President, I ask unanimous consent that the Judiciary Committee
be discharged of S. 4243, the Protect Children of Immigrant Workers
Act, and the Senate proceed to its immediate consideration; further,
that the bill be considered read a third time and passed and the motion
to reconsider be considered made and laid upon the table with no
intervening action or debate.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. Is there objection?
The Senator from Utah.
Mr. LEE. Reserving the right to object, for well over 8 months, my
friend and distinguished colleague, the senior Senator from Illinois,
has been publicly blocking legislation protecting the children of
immigrant workers. Now there is something called the Protect Children
of Immigrant Workers Act. He comes to the floor asking that we pass
this bill by unanimous consent--a bill that, as he notes, was
introduced just yesterday. Well, we must pass this right now, he says,
because these children shouldn't have to suffer 1 more hour. With all
due respect, they could have had relief months ago. They can still have
relief today.
I have taken the time since yesterday to review Senator Durbin's
legislation, and I cannot support it. This legislation allows the
children of H-1B workers to remain in the country for the 20 to 30
years that their parents have to wait in the green card backlog--the
same green card backlog the Senator is now decrying
When their parents die, children of immigrant workers will not be
immediately deported. But this prolonging of dependent status is
helpful only if the parent lives and works in this country until his or
her green card application is actually adjudicated. It does nothing for
the child of an immigrant whose dead parent's green card application is
ultimately denied because his or her job is no longer available--
nothing.
To be honest, the 20 to 30 years is a short wait for most of the
Indian nationals currently stuck in this awful, hellish green card
backlog. In fact, it is a drop in the bucket. In 2020, the wait for an
EB2 green card is not, in fact, 20 to 30 years for an Indian national.
What is it, then? Is it 30? Is it 40, 50, 60? No, it is much longer
than that. It is 195 years. This means that someone from India entering
the backlog today would have to wait 195 years to receive an EB3 green
card. Even if we give their children this limbo status, none of them
will have a prayer of becoming a U.S. citizen.
To put this in perspective, 195 years ago, John Quincy Adams had
recently been inaugurated as President of the United States.
The legislation purports to allow aging-out children to move to a
student visa status, but it also fails to accomplish even this. Student
visas require the applicant to have residency in a foreign country,
which, obviously, these children do not have.
Perhaps these are merely drafting errors, but as such, they
underscore my concerns about passing slapdash legislation just because
it bears a title that compels us to believe that it will correct the
most egregious problems and protect the most vulnerable populations.
Even if we generously overlook these ``drafting errors,'' this
legislation goes from sloppy to worse. Most egregiously, it will
increase the existing green card backlog. If we pass this legislation
on its own, high-skilled workers from highly populated countries will
have fewer and fewer green cards available to them, meaning they will
have to wait longer and longer for relief. In fact, by the time we
stretch this out to 2030, the 195-year backlog I mentioned a moment ago
would be extended out to a 400- to 450-year backlog. That is not fair.
I can't imagine that is what the Senator from Illinois wants.
If we want to actually protect the children of immigrant workers, we
need to end the inequities of the green card system. Real protection
for the children is impossible unless we have a fair path forward for
the parents.
I have worked for 9 years on a thoughtful solution to these problems
in the Fairness for High-Skilled Immigrants Act. This compromise
protects children, protects widows and widowers, and it provides an
equitable path forward for all our high-skilled immigrants. That is why
I call on Senator Durbin to lift his hold on the Fairness for High-
Skilled Immigrants Act and to provide relief to immigrant children and
to their parents.
As to the suggestion that the changes made to this legislation were
bad, that they were a departure from what we

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agreed on, it is not true. The implementation delay simply allows the
USCIS a time to develop the adequate infrastructure to implement what
we had proposed, the 50-50 rule change. This 3 years is there to
protect the H-1B visa holders who were already here. The hold-harmless
provision was taken care of with the 3- to 9-year transition that now
covers them.
In any event, this legislation--the one Senator Durbin now tries to
pass by unanimous consent, introduced for the first time yesterday that
I have now reviewed--is sloppy. It doesn't solve the problem, and it
would make a lot of things worse. I therefore object.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. Objection is heard.
The Senator from Illinois
Mr. DURBIN. Madam President, there is no question that there is a
green card backlog for immigrant visas. We issue 140,000 employment-
based visas a year and 226,000 family visas. There are some 5 million
seeking them. I want to increase the number of green cards. The Senator
from Utah opposes that. As a result, the bill that he introduced,
according to analysis by the Congressional Research Service--this is
not Durbin's language; this is the Congressional Research Service: S.
386, the lead legislation, would not reduce future backlogs compared to
current law.
When he talks about 195 years and John Quincy Adams or whatever his
historical analogy was, he doesn't address that at all in S. 386.
The problem, of course, is that he is bound to a position of his
party that will not allow one additional new immigrant--none. I don't
take that position. These men and women and their kids have been living
in the United States. Many of them have been here for years, some of
them for decades. Some of them are doctors in hospitals in my hometown.
I trust them, and I trust their kids. What I am asking him to do today
is simply join with me in protecting their children while we resolve
the other issues. He refuses. He refused yesterday. He refuses again
today.
He calls my approach sloppy. Let's see the Lee alternative to protect
the children. I would like to see what he would like to propose. Maybe
it is language that is better, and maybe I can embrace it. But let's
take care of that discrete part of this issue. Why would we leave these
children now aging into adults at risk? That is just the wrong way to
approach this. We can solve this problem, and we should. While we solve
it, we should protect these children. It is within the ken of both
Senator Lee and myself to sit down through staff and come up with that
language. I believe we can.
I want to say I will continue to offer this opportunity for Senator
Lee to protect these children until we can sit down in good faith and
resolve any differences we have between us. I have heard this case over
and over again about the plight of these children. I am trying to
address it. He continues to object.
I yield the floor.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Utah.
Mr. LEE. Madam President, we have the opportunity right here to pass
this right now. This bill fixes this problem.
As to the suggestion that we can't do any of this without increasing
the total number of green cards--this is a poison pill. My friend and
colleague knows that it is a poison pill. In fact, we had that very
discussion. I don't ordinarily--in fact, I have a uniform policy
against publicly talking about private conversations we have as
colleagues. We have now brought it to the floor.
We talked about this. This was the basis upon which we reached a deal
in his office in December. The point there was to understand that we
can't pass something--certainly by unanimous consent--that increases
the total number of employment-based green cards. It is not going to
happen. So we are dealing here with that finite universe. That is the
basis of the deal we reached in December.
As to the suggestion that we can't do anything without increasing the
total number of green cards, the Senator knows that is not on the
table. That is not fair. What we want to do is make this process fair,
even if we only have a limited number of green cards to work with,
which is the case. Whether you like that political reality or not, it
is the political reality. It is the factual understanding that the
Senator and I discussed and understood in December when we made that
deal. The Lee alternative is the encapsulation of that.
Madam President, I ask unanimous consent that the Judiciary Committee
be discharged from further consideration of H.R. 1044 and that the
Senate proceed to its immediate consideration; further, that the Lee
amendment at the desk be agreed to, the bill, as amended, be considered
read a third time and passed, and that the motion to reconsider be
considered made and laid upon the table.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. Is there objection?
Mr. DURBIN. Reserving the right to object.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Illinois.
Mr. DURBIN. Just do the math; 140,000 EB visas and 226,000 family
visas per year and 5 million people waiting. If you think you can solve
this without changing the number of green cards, you can't. You may
address it from one angle or another. You may help some who are waiting
as opposed to others. You only give assistance to some at the expense
of some other group.
I understand the Senator's position. I don't quarrel with the fact he
made it clear from the start that, from his perspective and perhaps
from his side of the aisle, there is just no appetite for increasing
the number of green cards, even for these people who have been living
and working here in the United States for years and sometimes decades,
even for physicians from India and other countries who are literally
risking their lives today on COVID-19 patients. The Senator told me
there is no appetite for giving them additional green cards so they can
stay here on a permanent basis. I think that is unfair, and that is my
position.
The Senator made it clear--and I am not saying otherwise--that he
disagrees with me. So what I tried to do is come in and say that at
least during the pendency, while they are waiting for green cards--
which could be decades unless the law is changed--let's at least
protect their families. That is all I basically said.
He has come back and said: I want to put in a provision that takes
out the hold-harmless protection. I want to protect these people who
are outsourcing companies in India that have captured the lion's share
of these H-1B visas. I want to make sure that those who are going to be
protected have to wait up to 3 years before there is any protection.
Why in the world would we do any of those things? I am willing to sit
down and talk to you, but I am not going to accept these
at this point unless we can find a starting point, which
is protection for the children of these families. If you
will agree to that, I will be more than happy to discuss
the other provisions again, but because the other
provisions are now what you are offering, I object.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. Objection is heard.
The Senator from Utah.
Mr. LEE. Madam President, the protection for the children is now
found in the proposal, in the amendment at the desk--the one that was
just objected to by my friend and colleague, the Senator from Illinois.
I would ask my colleague rhetorically or directly, as he may choose:
If, in fact, he is unwilling and remains unwilling to negotiate on any
bill addressing this problem without increasing the total number of
employment-based green cards, why in the world did he waste months of
my time? Why did he lead me to believe, while in his office, that he
was open to such an agreement that was, in fact, the premise upon which
we proceeded? We spent months on that, and I worked in good faith.
As I mentioned yesterday, it was against my better judgment that I
agreed to announce with the Senator on the Senate floor that we had
reached an agreement because I knew that we had to work out a few
kinks, but I proceeded based solely on the feasibility and our ability
to implement that bill. That was the only change that we made.
Now, if the Senator wants to make some adjustment to that, bring it
forward. I would love to consider it. Yet what he is now telling me is
that the premise upon which we proceeded on those negotiations and then
spent

[[Page S4390]]

weeks and months working on was false in that the whole premise that we
could reach some sort of compromise--an actual compromise--that
wouldn't increase the number of total green cards available was
illusory. I find that disappointing.
Mr. DURBIN. Madam President, the Senator has addressed a question to
me, I believe.
Mr. LEE. Rhetorically or otherwise, the Senator is welcome to answer.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Illinois.
Mr. DURBIN. Madam President, I know other Senators are waiting to
speak, so I will try to be as concise and brief as possible.
I understand the Senator's position. He doesn't want another green
card. He believes Members on his side of the aisle don't want an
increase in the number of green cards--period. I knew that going in. He
made that abundantly clear. We can't solve the underlying problem
without it, but we can make it better. That is why we continue to talk
and negotiate, and I hope we will continue to talk and negotiate. Yet,
for goodness' sake, the starting point ought to be the protection of
these children.
Can we not agree that we will protect the children and then proceed
to continue the negotiations on the premise that the Senator cannot
accept one more green card? I can, and the Senator can't, but we will
try to improve the system with that premise accepted. At the starting
point, for goodness' sake, let's protect the children while we
negotiate and debate. Hopefully, we can do it on a timely basis. That
is my response.
I am willing to continue to work. I understand the Senator cannot
issue another green card. The math never works with 5 million people
waiting and 140,000 employment green cards and 226,000 family visas a
year. It is never going to work, but I am willing to try to make the
system better, with the understanding that I will increase the number
of green cards and that the Senator will not.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Utah.
Mr. LEE. Madam President, I am always happy to discuss any
counterproposal. If the Senator would make one, I would love to see it.
It is not fair to say I don't care about those kids because I am
unwilling to create additional green cards. If the Senator wants to
protect these children, pass this bill. Pass it today. Pass it at this
very moment.
I yield the floor.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Massachusetts

Unanimous Consent Request--S. 4019

Mr. MARKEY. Madam President, I rise to speak in support of S. 4019,
the Juneteenth National Independence Day Act--legislation that I have
introduced along with Senator Cornyn. We have 54 cosponsors and broad
bipartisan support that would make Juneteenth a Federal holiday. In a
few minutes, I will ask unanimous consent that the Senate take up and
pass this important bill.
Our country is in the midst of a long overdue reckoning on race and
justice. The murder of George Floyd by members of the Minneapolis
Police Department has galvanized the Nation as protesters have taken to
our streets, demanding justice--justice for George Floyd, justice for
Breonna Taylor, and justice for countless other Black and Brown
Americans who have been hurt or killed at the hands of law enforcement.
Yet this reckoning goes well beyond seeking accountability for police
officers who betray the trust we bestow upon them.
The disparate treatment and mistreatment of Black and Brown Americans
permeates our society. It infects our courts, our schools, and our
places of work. It reflects the unfulfilled promise of a nation built
upon the notion that all are created equal, and it has its roots in our
Nation's original sin--slavery--a crime against humanity that we have
for far too long failed to acknowledge, address, or come to grips with.
One way to further the process of racial reconciliation and healing
is to recognize, honor, and celebrate the formal end of slavery in the
United States and to do so at the Federal level. Perhaps the most
effective, direct, and far-reaching way to do that is with a Federal
holiday commemorating that historic event.
For more than 150 years, the Juneteenth holiday, which marks the
emancipation of slaves, has been observed one way or the other across
our Nation, including in Texas, but it is long past time to place
Juneteenth on par with other Federal holidays so that all Americans in
all 50 States will celebrate Juneteenth alongside Veterans Day,
Memorial Day, Martin Luther King Day, and other Federal holidays.
The celebration of Juneteenth dates back to June 19, 1865, when Union
soldiers, led by MG Gordon Granger, traveled to Galveston, TX, with the
announcement that the Civil War had ended and that the enslaved were
now free. This was 2\1/2\ years after the date of President Lincoln's
Emancipation Proclamation, but either the news of Lincoln's order had
not reached many, including those in Texas, or local officials had
refused to enforce it.
On June 19, 1865, Major General Granger read to the people of Texas
General Order No. 3, the first lines of which told them clearly and
unequivocally: ``The people of Texas are informed that, in accordance
with a Proclamation from the Executive of the United States, all slaves
are free.''
Juneteenth celebrations followed as did the recognition of Juneteenth
as the formal end of slavery in the United States. Since 1865,
communities all across the Nation have celebrated Juneteenth with
parades, cookouts, prayer gatherings, historical and cultural readings,
musical performances, and many other celebrations. These events have
provided many with the opportunity for reflection, education, and a
deeper understanding of our history as a nation--the whole history--and
how it has affected and shaped the lives of Black Americans.
Nearly every State and the District of Columbia have passed
legislation recognizing Juneteenth as a holiday or observance, and the
Senate has passed a resolution designating June 19 as Juneteenth
Independence Day, but Juneteenth has never received the higher status
it deserves as a Federal holiday. The Juneteenth National Independence
Day Act rights this wrong and makes Juneteenth a Federal holiday.
We still must travel a long and difficult road to justice and
equality in the United States, but we cannot get there without
recognizing the original sin of slavery and marking its end. It is
incumbent upon all Americans to truthfully acknowledge and understand
our past and how it affects our present and our future. Making
Juneteenth a Federal holiday will not right all of the wrongs of the
past or fix what remains broken, but it is an important step. It is the
truth of our history and the missing half of the story of our Nation's
freedom and independence. It is long past time to recognize Juneteenth
as a Federal holiday.
Let me stop there and recognize my partner in this effort, the senior
Senator from Texas
The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Texas.
Mr. CORNYN. Madam President, I will be brief.
Let me just tell the Senator from Massachusetts that I agree with
everything he has said. It shows how people of, maybe, different
political ideologies--certainly different parties--can come together
and recognize that there is a moment available to us here in which we
can demonstrate our nonpartisan support for this act of racial
reconciliation in our country.
I agree that slavery was the original sin. Our founding documents
said that all men and women were created equal, but that certainly
wasn't the practice when it came to African Americans at the time who
were officially designated as something less than fully human. It was
an outrageous act at the time, and our country has paid a dear price
for that over the years--from the Civil War to the violence that led up
to the peaceful civil rights movement in the sixties. It is obvious
from the recent events--George Floyd's death in particular--that we are
not where we need to be. We still have room to grow as part of our
developing that more perfect Union.
I know our friend and colleague Tim Scott, who has been at the
forefront of this discussion with his advocacy for the Justice Act, has
a lot of bipartisan ideas for police reform. He points out that, as an
African American, his experience has been much different from

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those who are non-African Americans. He said, over the last two
decades, he has been stopped--as he puts it, ``driving while Black''--
about 18 different times.
At a roundtable that was sponsored by Mayor Sylvester Turner and that
I had requested, I sat next to a pastor of a church in Houston who
happened to be the local head of the NAACP.
He said: I honor the police. I respect the police. I support the
police. Yet he said: My son is afraid of the police, and we have to do
everything we can to cure that trust deficit.
In Texas, we have recognized Juneteenth as a State holiday for 40
years, obviously, because of the fact that this occurred as a result of
the Emancipation Proclamation's being announced in Galveston, TX. Yet I
recently cosponsored a bill with Congresswoman Sheila Jackson Lee to
study a trail, basically, from Galveston to Houston as the possible
designation of a national park in further recognition of this event.
I believe strongly that we need to remember our history because if we
don't remember our history, in the words of one sage, ``we will be
condemned to relive it.'' We have come so far, but we know we still
have further to go. I do believe that the appropriate word to use is
``reconciliation.'' This is an opportunity for us to demonstrate our
concern and our commitment to equal justice and equal treatment under
the law by recognizing Juneteenth as a Federal holiday.
Mr. MARKEY. I thank the Senator from Texas. This is a thoroughly
bipartisan effort, and it is long overdue.
Madam President, I ask unanimous consent that the Committee on the
Judiciary be discharged from further consideration and that the Senate
now proceed to S. 4019; further, that the bill be considered read a
third time and passed; and that the motion to reconsider be considered
made and laid upon the table.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. Is there objection?
The Senator from Wisconsin.
Mr. JOHNSON. Madam President, in reserving the right to object, let
me start out by saying that I agree with virtually everything my
colleagues from both Massachusetts and Texas have said about
celebrating the emancipation of the slaves. That was an important
moment in U.S. history. It should be observed, and it should be
celebrated. I have no disagreement whatsoever with that at all. The one
area of disagreement is how the bill's sponsors have chosen to
celebrate that holiday.
As the Senator from Massachusetts pointed out, since 1865, it has
been observed with celebrations and cookouts, which is the appropriate
way of doing this. I object to the fact that, by naming it a national
holiday--and what they are leaving out of their argument and its main
impact--it will give Federal workers a paid day off that the rest of
America will have to pay for.
When I asked for a CBO score, the sponsors of the bill had not even
obtained a score, and I still don't think they have obtained a score.
The estimate, in terms of what it will cost American taxpayers in the
private sector to pay for a paid holiday for Federal workers, is about
$600 million per year. The CBO score would come in at $6 billion over
10.
In terms of why I object, let me just put a couple of facts to that
$600 million bill that hard-working taxpayers would have to foot in an
era when we are $26.5 trillion in debt and when 17 million of our
fellow Americans are currently unemployed.
The first chart here--let's just talk about how many days off Federal
workers get currently.
I have two columns--minimum and maximum. For paid holidays, they get
10, which is pretty generous. Most people in the private sector get
something similar--7, 8, 9, or 10. For paid leave days, there is a
minimum of 13, up to 26; for paid sick days, 13, minimum and maximum.
What we just added in last year's NDAA was paid parental leave, which
allows an individual--either mother or father, with either a natural
childbirth or an adoption--60 days of paid leave.
So for a total, at a minimum, there are 96 days, up to 109 days if
they take paid parental leave.
Looked at a different way, as a ratio, if they take the maximum
number of 109 days, that is, basically, for every 1.4 days you work,
you get a day off. On a minimum basis with paid parental leave, for
every 1.7 days you work, you get a day off.
Now, again, I realize the paid parental leave is a ``just a few times
in somebody's career'' phenomenon, so let's take a look at this without
paid parental leave, and it will show that the number of days with pay
that Federal workers get off is still quite generous.
Again, paid holidays, they get 10; paid leave, 13, up to 26; paid
sick leave, 13, for a total of 36 to 49.
So, again, going back to that ratio, the maximum number of days
without paid parental leave, a Federal worker can work 4.3 days and
then get a day off--basically a 4-day workweek for the entire year.
That is quite generous.
So what I am objecting to is creating a national holiday that gives
Federal workers another day off with pay, paid for by the American
taxpayer, and we are collectively already $26.5 trillion in debt.
Last slide. I would like to just, in general, talk about the private
sector pay versus Federal worker pay. I know there are some disputes
about this in terms of education and that type of thing, but still,
this is pretty solid information.
The 2018 average annual wage--just wages, salary or wages--for
Federal workers is over $94,000. For private sector workers, the
average is about $63,000 or about 67 percent of what a Federal worker
makes.
When you add in benefits, total compensation, the average total
compensation for Federal workers in 2018 was $136,000, just shy of
$136,000. In the private sector, the total cost of compensation is a
little more than $75,000--55 percent of what Federal Government workers
make.
So if you strip out and just compare the benefits, again, we are
talking about an extra paid day off, an extra paid holiday for only
Federal workers to celebrate Juneteenth, paid for by American workers
who make about $12,000, on average per benefit, compared to $41,000 in
benefits for Federal workers. That is only 29 percent.
So those are the facts. Again, that is what I object to.
Again, I am happy to celebrate Juneteenth. I think we should
celebrate the fact that we did remove that original sin by emancipating
the slaves. That is a day of celebration. I agree with that. I simply
don't believe we should make American taxpayers in the private sector
pony up $600 million a year, $6 billion over 10 years, to give Federal
workers, who already are paid quite generously and have quite a few
days off one more paid day off.
So what I am proposing--again, I don't object to Juneteenth and a
celebration, but if we are going to make that a Federal holiday, the
main impact of that is giving Federal workers a paid day off. I would
just suggest this: Why don't we take away one of their days of paid
leave?
So I have an amendment at the desk, and I would ask that the Senator
from Massachusetts modify his request to include my amendment at the
desk; that the amendment be considered and agreed to; that the bill, as
amended, be considered read a third time and passed; and that the
motions to reconsider be considered made and laid upon the table.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. Does the Senator so modify his request?
Mr. MARKEY. Madam President, reserving the right to object, the
Senator's proposal--rather than allowing this unanimous consent request
to go through, the Senator proposes to hold it hostage to taking away
the leave benefits that come with paid holidays for American workers.
That is something we have never done before, and with good reason. We
shouldn't be penalizing our workers by taking away benefits, especially
not in the current environment and especially not as the price to pay
for recognizing a long overdue Federal holiday.
I object.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. Objection is heard.
Is there objection to the original request?
Mr. JOHNSON. Madam President, reserving the right to object, and to
quickly respond to the Senator from Massachusetts, I am not taking
anything away from Federal workers. I am just not willing to give them
an extra day paid.

[[Page S4392]]

So if we create Juneteenth as a Federal paid holiday, they will get
an extra day, and I am just saying let's keep them whole by removing a
paid leave day, and then they will have the exact same number of days
off as they have currently, and the American taxpayer will not be out
an extra $600 million per year or $6 billion over 10 years.
I object.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. Objection is heard
The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Iowa.

Prescription Drug Costs

Mr. GRASSLEY. Madam President, before I speak, several of my
colleagues on this side of the aisle, over the next several minutes--
well, probably for more than a half hour--will be coming to the floor
to discuss what I am discussing, which is a very important problem we
have of rapidly increasing drug prices.
After I speak, these other Senators will come to the floor: Senator
Braun, Senator Cassidy, Senator Collins, Senator Hyde-Smith, Senator
McSally. All of these people have been very favorable in support of the
Prescription Drug Reduction Act, and I want to thank them for
participating in bringing attention to this very important issue of
unjustified increases in drug prices.
After these folks I just mentioned speak, I understand that my
colleague from Iowa, who is in support of the legislation, is going to
come at a later time today.
So thank you to my colleagues.
According to a recent Gallup poll, 9 out of 10 Americans are
concerned about prescription drug prices. Specifically, they are
concerned that the pharmaceutical industry will take advantage of the
current pandemic to increase drug prices. That poll was published a
month ago. Unfortunately, those concerns have become a reality now.
Two weeks ago, POLITICO reported that pharmaceutical companies have
raised prices on hundreds of prescription drugs just during the
pandemic. The report says that there have been more than 800--800--
price increases just this year.
I have been working on a bill for over a year and a half to stem
these increases and rein in drug prices. It would cap costs for
Medicare recipients, cap increases to the rate of inflation, and save
taxpayers nearly $100 billion. It wasn't simple, but I am glad to have
produced this kind of bill with Ranking Member Wyden and my colleagues
here with me today.
But I am disappointed. My partner and all of my Democratic colleagues
who approved this bill in committee by a vote of 19 to 9 declined to
cosponsor an improved version of the bill that they helped put together
in the first place, and this is the work of about 18 months.
I can't be sure why, but I have to assume it is because it is an
election year, and, somehow, passing a bill that would do so much good
in a time with so much hardship might help Republicans who also support
the bill, hurting Democrats' chances of taking the majority.
As we consider a new relief bill, we ought to put aside that kind of
politics-before-people method of legislating. We need to approve the
Prescription Drug Pricing Reduction Act as part of this package. Our
country is facing the most serious public health crisis in a
generation--not just a generation, if you think back--in generations.
Millions of Americans are newly unemployed, and many small businesses
have slowed or shuttered altogether. People across the country are
stretching their paychecks and their savings to get through this virus
pandemic.
In the CARES Act, passed in March, and in subsequent legislation, we
helped slow the hurt caused by this virus. But there is only so much a
stimulus check or tax relief can do when your bills just keep coming
and going up--meaning the pharmaceutical bills.
These drug price increases are a weight that Americans shouldn't have
to bear, especially seniors on whom the virus is taking a particular
toll.
The increases aren't a result of a functioning marketplace or an
industry with healthy competition. Addressing these price increases is
also something we all largely agree on.
In 2016, the President campaigned on making the marketplace for
prescription drugs fairer and more affordable for patients. He won. He
even talked about that promise in a State of the Union message when he
said that he wants Congress to send a bill for him to sign this year.
So the President made that campaign promise in 2016, and the
President has done many things since then to carry out that campaign
promise. He has even helped me in the development of this legislation.
That was 2016. This is 2020. In 2018, we have had many House
Democrats campaign on making the marketplace for prescription drugs
fairer and more affordable. Many of them won, and they took over the
House of Representatives. It is time to put politics aside and finally
act.
Just because Big Pharma was bankrupting patients before the pandemic
doesn't mean that we should allow them to keep on doing it now. In
fact, there is no better time to put an end to Big Pharma's price
gouging than right now.
I yield the floor.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Indiana.
Mr. BRAUN. Madam President, Senator Grassley and I share a passion
that I think most Americans do in that it is time that we end this
stranglehold that the healthcare industry has on all of us because they
pose as free enterprisers, but there is nothing free about the way they
actually operate.
``Free enterprise'' means you embrace competition. You are not
putting up barriers to entry. You engage the consumer so that they can
see what you are charging them. That does not occur. The alternative
will be as clear on the other side of the aisle; they want to make
government the business partner of healthcare. If the industry doesn't
get with it and start doing what all the rest of us do when we go to
the marketplace--embrace competition, be willing to compete, don't ask
for barriers to entry, and, yes, we tell the customer what we charge
them before they buy it. That doesn't happen in healthcare.

The market is opaque and complex. There is nothing free about it,
except that drugmakers are free to charge whatever they want. The
market is dependent on government-sanctioned rebates and monopolies by
the FDA exclusivities and patent abuse. It is time to fix this. PBM may
not mean much to the public, but it stands for pharmacy benefit
managers. This is a structure of middleman that is not present in other
industries. Normally, with transparency, prices cascade down through
the system in a way that everybody can see it, and the successful
survivors in that industry have performed because they give good value
to their customers; they keep their overhead low; and they earn the
business.
PBMs use techniques like spread pricing. Normally, there is a
spread--you buy it for this and sell it for that--but not where people
can't see it. It is time that we get away from this complexity and the
opaqueness of it because the day of reckoning will come, and the day of
reckoning is not too far away.
I recently came from the business world. No one likes the healthcare
industry other than the CEOs and owners of these businesses. All of us
who have to deal with them are just asking for that one simple thing:
Show us what things cost. Quit hiding it. Insurance companies have
these secret deals with hospitals, with pharma, and it is starting to
cost too much. It shows up in the fact that it is nearly 20 percent of
our GDP in the United States, and it costs almost half of that in most
other developed countries. The sad thing is, the results aren't any
better. In many cases, the results are better at a price that is half
the cost.
Both Chairman Grassley and I have talked with President Trump.
President Trump has been the most vocal individual in DC about trying
to get the industry to work like the rest of us entrepreneurs do. Every
time he has an Executive order, they take him to court. That is ending
because just recently the hospitals tried that, and the district court
overturned it. They will probably appeal it, and, hopefully, the
appellate court will overturn it.
I have a transparency bill which is as simple as: Show us what you
are charging us before we engage your service.

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Mr. Grassley has the same thing basically on drug pricing. Let me tell
you how that works.
This is a real live experiment that I put into place 12 years ago. I
was so sick and tired of the insurance agents coming in and telling me
how lucky I was that it was only going up 5 to 10 percent this year. I
didn't think I was very lucky. My company wasn't large enough to spend
a lot of time on it. When we got to be 300 employees, that starts to
add up. Now we have 1,000 employees. Thank goodness my kids have to
deal with that with a good, young executive team, but I put something
in place 12 years ago that I am proud of.
I said enough was enough. What do we have that is really going to
change the dynamic? You have to remember, this is 12 years ago--talk
about trying to find transparency then. We were lucky that we were
large enough to self-insure. By doing that, we probably saved close to
25 percent, and by engaging our employees in their own well-being and
incentivizing them to shop around to enable their ability to find
better prices, it was even there if you looked for it hard back then.
Long story short, we have not had a premium increase at my company in
12 years. I am proud of that. We covered preexisting conditions with no
caps on coverage because we took a radical change to how healthcare
should be bought by the consumer, the employer, and forced the
transparency out of a system that wasn't giving much of it then.
Now there is more transparency, but it is just on the fringes. If you
get that to happen, prices will cascade down through the system.
President Trump had another Executive order for pharma--all these
expensive drugs you see advertised--to put the price along with the
advertisement. A lot of times it is deceptive--you can get it for as
little as $5 a month. Well, somebody is paying for that $60,000 or
$70,000 drug. Generally, it is the employer, and the employee some of
it, but it is, again, due to the fact that we can't see anything.
Americans are blindfolded from prices, only to receive medical bills,
often, that arrive 2 months later. They have no idea, and they open up
the envelope with trepidation. Oh my goodness. It wasn't what I thought
it would be. More often than not, it is: Oh, my gosh. This is terrible.
It has got to end.
It would be different if we were asking for something that is
radical. What we are asking for is tell us what you are charging us
before we have to engage your services.
That is why it is so important. The White House is behind it.
Hopefully, the other side of the aisle will get behind it. Support
Chairman Grassley's bill, the Prescription Drug Pricing Reduction Act,
and support my bill, the Healthcare Price Transparency Act. The story I
told you about my own company would happen across the country, and we
wouldn't be complaining about these surprise billings. We wouldn't be
holding our breath. We would simply be doing what all educated
consumers do when they go to buy from a truly free enterprise.
I yield the floor.
The PRESIDING OFFICER (Mr. Cramer). The Senator from Louisiana
Mr. CASSIDY. Mr. President, COVID-19 is a continuing threat to
Americans' physical and financial health, and it is at this
intersection that Congress can make a meaningful impact on the family
budgets of all Americans by passing sensible legislation to lower the
cost of prescription drugs through measures such as the Prescription
Drug Pricing Reduction Act or, as I like to call it, the ``Making
Coronavirus Medications Affordable Act.''
There is an urgent need to lower the cost of prescription drugs. The
high price of drugs is not a new problem, but it is a problem that is
going to be made worse by the coronavirus pandemic. Millions of
households have seen their incomes suffer due to economic lockdowns
aimed at containing the virus.
It is encouraging that job numbers continue to outpace expectations,
but still, millions of fellow Americans are out of work, which affects
their pocketbook and potentially their insurance coverage. Americans do
not need the added burden of expensive drugs, particularly right now.
Congress is providing relief for American families and businesses
through the COVID-19 crisis, and we are considering another round of
support. I think we should include how do we make drugs more
affordable. That way, if folks become ill, they know that they will be
able to afford the cure. I believe the best path forward is the
``Making Coronavirus Drugs Affordable Act,'' as I call it, or, as
Chairman Grassley calls it, the Prescription Drug Pricing Reduction
Act. I like mine better.
Now, the difficulty in addressing the issue of the price of
medications is that a balance must be struck between making sure the
medication is affordable but also making sure there is still a profit
motive that will incentivize the researchers and pharmaceutical
companies to find these cures that we know we need. Just think about
it. Without innovation, we would not be able to find a vaccine for
coronavirus--a vaccine that will save millions of lives worldwide and
allow us to go back to a normal life.
Let me just praise the pharmaceutical industry. We have seen them
respond to this crisis in many helpful ways. Additionally, they
recently committed a billion dollars to antimicrobial resistance, which
is to say, to find an antibiotic that will work when other antibiotics
no longer do. They have invested in large-scale and rapid treatment
options, and, again, it is only through innovation that we will beat
this virus and end the pandemic.
But we must remember this: If a patient cannot afford the innovation,
the new medicine, it is as if the innovation never occurred. The
``Making Coronavirus Drugs Affordable Act'' strikes the balance between
lowering costs for families and incentivizing companies to find those
cures.
Let me show you what this bill does. It caps the patient's out-of-
pocket expenses. It lets patients pay over time. It protects patients
from price gouging, and it preserves the incentive for companies to
find cures. Let me explain each of these.
First, the bill caps the out-of-pocket expense for those in the
Medicare Part D Program, our senior citizens, and particularly for the
most vulnerable seniors with chronic conditions. Research has shown
that seniors are at the most risk for severe complications and death
from COVID-19. When a treatment or cure is widely available, cost
should never be a barrier for a senior to access the drug that she or
he needs to survive.
Under the current system, this is what a senior citizen pays for
their medicinal benefit under Medicare Part D. They have a deductible
for which the senior pays 100 percent; the initial coverage phase and
the coverage gap phase, for which they pay one-fourth of the expense;
and then in the catastrophic phase, the patient pays 5 percent of the
cost no matter how high that expense goes.
So let's imagine a medication which costs over $1 million. They are
paying 5 percent of that medication cost, and if I could stand up any
higher--but I keep losing my microphone--they will pay 5 percent of
that. Think about a theoretical drug that costs $3 million a year. The
senior would be required to pay 5 percent of whatever that drug costs.
That is under current law. What we are trying to do is fix this. If
this occurs, the senior will not be able to afford lifesaving
medications.
Under the legislation that we are attempting to pass, it would change
the Medicare Part D standard benefit so that there is still the initial
deductible in which the senior pays 100 percent, but after paying 20
percent of the initial coverage phase, there is no longer that 5
percent toward infinity. We make medications affordable for the senior.
If that is all the bill did, we would do something quite remarkable for
the ability of a patient to be able to afford a potentially lifesaving
drug.
By the way, as a physician, I know this is a barrier for patients to
be able to have their drugs. So we address that in this bill.
The second thing we do--you might say: Wait a second. The senior
citizen if he or she has to pay for all this for a very expensive drug
in the month of January, they can't afford that. Under the current
situation, the senior has to pay her deductible and her initial
coverage phase whenever it is due, which might be in the first week of
the year. What we also do in this bill is we give the senior citizen
the opportunity to pay all this lump sum as a series of

[[Page S4394]]

payments over 12 months. So let's imagine that this was $10,000.
Instead of having to pay all of it in January, she could pay $800 every
month over the course of the year. That allows her to budget and to
factor it in with the other sources of income that she has. Not only do
we cap the senior citizen's out-of-pocket expense, but we also allow
her to pay that expense over a set of months so she can factor it into
her budget. That is the second great thing that this bill does.
What is another thing that we do? Senator Braun also referred to
this, but we also have cost transparency. If there is a medication
which has the price being elevated unnecessarily, and if the customer
knew that, she would know: Wait a second. I can get my medications far
less expensively here versus there or, if I accept a substitute, again,
the medication will be more affordable. We mandate that kind of price
transparency that allows the customer to make an informed decision.
Now, I know there are competing ideas on how to lower drug costs.
House Democrats, for example, have introduced legislation that they
claim would lower costs. But, remember, I told you that there is this
tension. How do we preserve the incentive to innovate while still
making sure the innovation is affordable?
House Democrats have put up a bill. Yes, it makes medicine more
affordable, but it kills the desire to innovate. The Congressional
Budget Office has estimated that if the bill the House Democrats have
proposed is passed, there will be 38 fewer cures invented by
pharmaceutical manufacturers--38 fewer cures.
Let me tell you a story. I mentioned that I am a physician. I came of
age in my residency, if you will, when the AIDS epidemic hit. I was 25
years old or 27 years old, and I would see men my age dying of HIV. We
didn't have an antibody then. If you were diagnosed with HIV--again, we
called it AIDS then--you basically were dead because we had no cures.
Since then, we now have medications that--if you are infected with HIV,
you can live until you are 75 years old or 80 years old. We have found
something that doesn't quite cure, but it allows it to be treated as a
chronic condition. What if we didn't have that cure? What if that were
one of the 38 cures we never had?
What if one of the cures we lose out on is a cure for Alzheimer's? My
parents died of Alzheimer's. All of us know somebody affected by
Alzheimer's or dementia. What if the cure we lose is the cure for
Alzheimer's?
You may think you are making medications less expensive, but in terms
of human life, you are making it that much more expensive because
instead of finding that cure for Alzheimer's, you instead have
consigned those people with Alzheimer's to a slow, awful death--awful
for them and awful for their loved ones as they see their parents
decline. I would argue that it is fool's gold to say that the House
Democratic bill saves money. It just shifts it, and it shifts it to the
misery of the family who will never enjoy one of these cures that are
not otherwise developed.
To fix the problem of the high cost of drugs, it will take a
bipartisan coalition. We have that with this bill. It ends government
handouts to pharmaceutical companies, but it doesn't price-fix. It
saves $80 billion for the taxpayer and for the patient, and it
maintains incentives for lifesaving innovations.
Some in this Chamber will be tempted to stop this bill until after
this year's election. To them, I would say: Don't let politics keep us
from delivering drug-pricing relief for American families. Too much is
on the line, especially during this pandemic. To do nothing while
families try to pay medical bills is wrong. Let's work together to pass
this bill to lower the cost of drugs, to protect innovation, and to
save lives.
I yield the floor.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Maine.
Ms. COLLINS. Mr. President, first, let me recognize and thank Senator
Grassley for his extraordinary leadership on an issue that matters so
greatly to the American people, and that is the high cost of
prescription drugs. His persistence has produced the Prescription Drug
Pricing Reduction Act, a far-reaching set of bold proposals that I
strongly endorse and that build on the work I have done as the chairman
of the Senate Aging Committee.
More than half of all Americans and 90 percent of our seniors take at
least one prescription drug each month. We should be able to work
together to help the American people--particularly our seniors--on an
issue that affects their health and their finances. No senior should be
faced with the choice of buying food they need, paying a bill for the
oil to heat their home, or buying their prescription drug.
I remember very well being in line at the pharmacy in Bangor, ME, and
the couple in front of me found out that their copay was $113. The
husband looked at his wife and he said: Honey, we just can't afford
that. They left the prescription that one of them needed that was
prescribed by their doctor there on the pharmacy counter. When I asked
the pharmacist how often this happens, he said: Each and every day.
Every day.
That is why we should be working together to pass Senator Grassley's
bill, as well as many of the other bipartisan bills that you have heard
described today, including legislation that I have advocated to improve
the lives of millions of Americans. This goal surely should be beyond
partisan politics.
In just the last year, three Senate committees advanced legislation
to reform our flawed drug-pricing system. I can't think of anything
else that we buy where the price is less transparent and is more opaque
than prescription drugs.
The Finance Committee's bill, the Prescription Drug Pricing Reduction
Act, which I am proud to cosponsor, would make crucial improvements. As
Senator Cassidy just ably explained, one of the most important
improvements is to Medicare Part D. It would protect our seniors with
an out-of-pocket spending limit. It would also include cost-control
measures, such as an inflationary cap to limit price hikes. We have
made some progress in this area.
I have authored legislation that is making a difference for patients.
One of the laws I authored bans gag clauses that had prohibited
pharmacists from informing their customers if there were a less
expensive way to purchase their prescription drug. Amazingly enough,
sometimes it is cheaper to pay out-of-pocket than to use your insurance
card--not something that most consumers would ever realize unless the
pharmacist informed him or her.
My bill also updates a 2003 law requiring drug manufacturers to
notify the Federal Trade Commission of patent settlement agreements,
giving the agency greater visibility into whether they include tactics
such as anti-competitive reverse payments that slow or defeat the
introduction of lower cost drugs. Another law I authored is helping to
bring lower cost generics to the marketplace more quickly by expediting
their approval by the FDA.
But clearly there is more that we must do. At a time when economic
and health security are more linked than ever, Congress has an
opportunity to deliver a decisive victory in lowering costs for
patients.
In addition to the Finance Committee package, the HELP Committee
bill--I serve on the HELP Committee, which is chaired by Senator
Alexander--incorporated more than 14 bipartisan measures to increase
price competition, including portions of a bill that I introduced with
Senator Tim Kaine, the Biologic Patent Transparency Act, which is
intended to prevent drug manufacturers from gaming the patent system.
Patents are important to encourage the development of earth-breaking,
groundbreaking new pharmaceuticals, but the system should not be gamed
so that when the patent is about to expire, a host of new patents are
filed on the medication in order to block a lower cost generic from
coming to market.
In October, the Institute for Clinical and Economic Review published
its first annual report on unjustified price increases of prescription
drugs in our country. It should surprise no one that HUMIRA, the poster
child for patent gaming, led the list. HUMIRA's price increased by
nearly 16 percent from 2017 to 2018, costing American patients and
insureds an extra $1.86 billion. Why do we want to wait any longer, and
how did HUMIRA do it? It once again put up

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this patent thicket--its manufacturer did--in order to block the lower
price biosimilar.
The Judiciary Committee has advanced bills that empower the Federal
Trade Commission to take more aggressive action on drug pricing. This
year, the FTC charged the infamous Martin Shkreli with a scheme to
increase the price of the lifesaving drug Daraprim by more than 4,000
percent overnight, which was the focus of an Aging Committee
investigation that I led with former Senator Claire McCaskill in 2016.
Floor consideration should also allow for action on other important
prescription drug bills, such as legislation that Senator Jeanne
Shaheen and I have authored to eliminate incentives that create price
hikes, distorting the insulin market. Insulin has been around for 100
years. I realize there is fast-acting and slow-acting insulin, but
there is no excuse for the skyrocketing price of insulin.
There is another bill that I cosponsored, introduced by Senators
Klobuchar and Grassley, that would end pay-for-delay schemes.
We must come together on prescription drug legislation without
further delay. Three committees have produced strong bipartisan bills,
and we should proceed to act and pass this legislation.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Mississippi.
Mrs. HYDE-SMITH. Mr. President, I join my colleagues today in calling
on this body to include the Prescription Drug Pricing Reduction Act of
2020 in the next coronavirus relief bill so that we can finally address
the high cost of prescription drugs.
The troubles caused by skyrocketing drug prices are a never-ending
source of worry and hardship for Mississippians and people across this
entire country. I hear about this issue from constituents more than
just about any other issue when I go home. I hear this all the time. I
go to church with people who have to decide whether they are going to
buy their drugs or buy food. That is a reality we live with.
Let me highlight a few stories shared with me by some of my
constituents
Emily Quinn lives in Fulton, MS. Her husband, Brian, was diagnosed
with type 1 diabetes at the age of 2 and continues to rely on insulin
daily. Her son Dylan, who is now 16, was diagnosed with type 1 diabetes
at the age of 6. The Quinn family pays more than $2,700 each month for
just Brian's and Dylan's insulin, not including other diabetic
equipment and supplies that they have to have.
It is shocking that more than a century--a century, not a decade; a
century, 100 years--after insulin was discovered, insulin prices
continue to rise by staggering amounts, nearly 300 percent over the
last 10 years.
Scott Crawford of Jackson, MS, is a volunteer advocate for multiple
sclerosis. Scott was diagnosed with primary progressive MS in 2002.
Only one drug, named OCREVUS, can help slow the advancement of this
disabling disease. That drug costs a staggering $65,000 a year--more
than most Mississippians make. Even with good insurance coverage, Scott
cannot afford the $15,000 copay for OCREVUS, so he just goes without.
MS drugs have seen some of the most shocking price increases of all,
with list prices rising nearly 450 percent over the last 10 years.
Two young neurologists in Mississippi told me about their Medicare
patients who quickly move into the catastrophic phase of Medicare Part
D early each year. Even though these patients face only a 5-percent
out-of-pocket cost for their drugs in this phase, that small percentage
can amount to thousands of dollars for the expensive neurology drugs
these patients depend on. Because there is currently no Medicare Part D
out-of-pocket cap, these patients will get no relief from high drug
prices later in the year when they still have to have them.
These are just a few of the many stories that I have received from
Mississippians. I have one of my own as well.
My mother, a Medicare beneficiary living in Monticello, MS--Hyde,
Lorraine--faced $454.50--right there--in out-of-pocket costs for her
prescription eye drops earlier this year. A tiny bottle of eye drops
cost $454.50. The drug, RESTASIS, has been on the market well over a
decade--more than enough time for Allergan, the pharmaceutical company
that developed the drug, to recoup its investment. Yet the average
wholesale price of this drug has increased almost 250 percent in 10
years. It was almost unbelievable when my mom called me and told me
what she paid for eye drops.
This case went all the way to the U.S. Supreme Court because Allergan
had undertaken what I consider one of the most blatantly anti-
competitive schemes in the history of the pharmaceutical industry.
Fearing competition after its RESTASIS patent expired in 2014, Allergan
transferred the patents to a Native American Tribe in an attempt to use
the Tribe's sovereign immunity to shield Allergan against competition
from lower priced generic alternatives. As I said, this case went all
the way to the Supreme Court in 2018.
Even though the Supreme Court ultimately ruled this scheme was
illegal, the company's underhanded ploy successfully delayed
competition while it continued to reap outrageous benefits from
RESTASIS, costing the U.S. healthcare system over $2 billion per year
because of their monopoly pricing.
We want pharmaceutical companies to succeed. The great cures and
treatments they discover improve the lives of many, many Americans. We
recognize that fact. But these cures and therapeutics can only save
lives if the patients can afford them. Too many Mississippians and
individuals across this country cannot afford their prescription drugs
due to the anti-competitive prices of companies--like Allergan--that
continue to increase their prices year after year.
Today, the threat of the coronavirus pandemic has only increased
concerns about drug pricing. As new vaccines and treatments for COVID-
19 are being tested and developed, the affordability of prescription
drugs is more important than ever. Just as much as we need a vaccine or
treatment to be discovered, we also need it to be affordable for
Americans if we are going to get on the other side of this pandemic.
I am proud to be an original cosponsor of the Finance Committee
chairman's comprehensive Prescription Drug Pricing Reduction Act to
bring affordability and fairness to the prescription drug market. This
bill must be an immediate priority for us as leaders if we are
serious--if we are serious--about helping patients afford the drugs
they need.
This important legislation would create a true out-of-pocket cap for
Medicare beneficiaries, reinforce the market forces that have supported
the research and development of so many miracle cures, keep
pharmaceutical companies from price gouging, prevent taxpayers from
being on the hook for unlimited price hacks that have no basis in the
free market, stop the hurtful tactics of pharmacy benefit managers that
hurt patients and community pharmacies while enriching the middlemen.
These reforms could reduce out-of-pocket spending on prescription
drugs by $72 billion, reduce premiums by $1 billion, and save taxpayers
$95 billion. The Congressional Budget Office anticipates those savings
will spill over into even more savings in the commercial health market.
This is a priority that should transcend party politics. Yet
Democrats who had previously supported Chairman Grassley's reform
legislation have walked away from the drug pricing negotiation table
altogether. They would rather deny President Trump a victory on this
issue than help the millions of Americans struggling to make ends meet
due to high drug costs. There is no doubt about it: They are putting
election-year politics ahead of making prescription drugs affordable
for the American people.
The American people can't wait. Every month they continue to block
this vital legislation is another month of thousands of dollars in
insulin expenses for the Quinn family in Fulton, MS. Every month
delayed is another month that Scott Crawford's MS advances because he
cannot afford his medications. Every month is another month that those
neurologists in Jackson will continue to worry about their patients on
Medicare who face unlimited expenses due to no out-of-pocket cap.
These patients, and millions more like them, cannot wait until next
year

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or until the coronavirus pandemic passes or until Democrats decide to
put the American people over politics.
Mississippians and Americans need a solution now. My friend the
Senator from Iowa has done the hard work of writing a bill over the
past 18 months that can address the heart of the issue and garner
bipartisan consensus. I call on my colleagues to include the
Prescription Drug Pricing Reduction Act in the next coronavirus relief
package.
I have been very excited to work on this. This is one of the very
reasons that I came to Washington, DC--to help Mississippians
I yield the floor.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Arizona.
Ms. McSALLY. Mr. President, I want to thank Chairman Grassley for his
tireless leadership on lowering the cost of prescription drugs for
Americans. I am proud to join with him on the floor today and join him
in his legislation that we must pass to help Americans and to help
Arizonans.
Everywhere I go--and when I am hearing from Arizonans--I am
constantly hearing about the rising costs of prescription drugs. It is
among one of their top and most pressing concerns. From seniors who
can't afford their medications to parents struggling to care for a
child who suffers from chronic conditions, out-of-pocket drug costs are
too high. Far too many seniors and hard-working individuals in our
State either can't afford both their groceries and their medications or
they have been forced to ration their prescriptions because of
skyrocketing drug costs.
In 2017, AARP Arizona reported that a whopping 26 percent of our
residents stopped taking their medications as prescribed due to cost.
Last fall, I heard from a constituent in her midsixties from Green
Valley, AZ, who was diagnosed with rheumatoid arthritis and taking
several medications to treat her condition. When she transitioned to
Medicare Part D from her employer's health plan, her out-of-pocket
costs for one of the drugs she was taking--Enbrel--went from $10 per
month to nearly $6,000 per month. This is a 600-percent increase in her
monthly out-of-pocket costs just for this drug alone. I don't know
anybody who can afford $6,000 a month for one drug as a senior--as
anyone. This is insane. She had to switch to another medication twice,
but because they were infusions, she now has to travel 84 miles round
trip to get treated. The significant jump in drug costs have affected
both her pocketbook even her quality of life.
This is unacceptable, and I have worked with my Senate colleagues on
both sides of the aisle, with Chairman Grassley's leadership, over the
past year and a half since I have been in the Senate to bring down the
costs of drugs and help Americans save more of their money.
Senator Grassley's bill, of which I am proud to be an original
cosponsor, does just that by holding Big Pharma companies accountable
for exploiting loopholes and keeping pricing high for seniors,
families, and taxpayers. Our bill pulls back the curtain on drug
pricing and negotiations. It ends the sticker shock at the pharmacy
counter, and it caps out-of-pocket costs for seniors so that Arizonans
can afford the medicines they need.
According to the Congressional Budget Office, our Prescription Drug
Pricing Reduction Act would save taxpayers close to $95 billion, reduce
out-of-pocket spending by $72 billion, and reduce premiums by $1
billion.
This bill is even more important now that we are navigating a global
pandemic and its subsequent economic challenges that are squeezing
family and fixed-income senior budgets even more than in normal times.
With over 17 million Americans unemployed--including many Arizonans--
along with the ever-looming threat of the coronavirus, affording
prescription medicine should be the least of their concerns. Our bill
would give Americans and Arizonans one less thing to worry about during
these extraordinarily difficult and unprecedented times.
Unfortunately, despite this bill receiving strong bipartisan support
until just a few months ago, Democrats recently chose to walk away at
the direction of their party's leadership, and they refused to join in
on the reintroduction of this legislation that they coauthored. This
happens only in DC.
Just to be clear: They were for it before they were against it. This
is maddening. This is why people all over my State are so frustrated
with the dysfunction in this place, where people are willing to put
looking for power and electoral politics ahead of what people need
right now. Right now they need relief. They need relief to lower their
out-of-pocket costs for all of the issues that they are facing as
seniors, as families--any of the diagnoses, any of the conditions.
These lifesaving and quality-of-life-improving medicines--we have to
lower the costs, and now is the time to do it. Arizona patients and
taxpayers and families and seniors need Washington to act now.
I want to urge our Democratic colleagues to put politics aside. I
know it is hard to do in an election year, but put it aside. Service
before self--that is one of the core values I learned in the Air Force.
I bring it here with me today.
Serving others first--that is why you are here. Put those politics
aside. Let's act to lower the out-of-pocket costs of prescription drugs
in our upcoming coronavirus relief bill.
This is a pivotal moment for action. We have to come together as a
Congress to ensure hard-working Americans, their families, and seniors
can access the treatments they need at an affordable cost.
Let's pass this bill now.
I yield the floor.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Rhode Island.

S. 4049

Mr. REED. Mr. President, I rise, together with the chairman of the
Armed Services Committee, to talk about the chairman's plan to conclude
the deliberations of the legislation before us today.
As you well know from being in the committee, this was a process that
was bipartisan, thoughtful, extremely well-orchestrated by the
chairman, and we accomplished a great deal. As you know, the members of
the committee--we considered literally hundreds of different amendments
by the members as we marked up the legislation. Then we passed the bill
out of committee, we brought it to the floor, and at that point, a
total of 880 amendments were filed on the legislation--446 Republican
amendments, 422 Democratic amendments, and 12 joint amendments. So we
had a rich field to pick from in terms of trying to improve the
legislation.
The first substitute that was introduced on the floor to begin formal
deliberation included a total of 79 amendments--34 Republican
amendments, 34 Democratic amendments, and 11 joint amendments. Then we
proceeded forward. Last week we came up with another unanimous consent
to allow the votes that took place this week on several very important
amendments, but in addition to that, we incorporated another
legislative proposal including 62 amendments.
So from the introduction of the bill to the floor and to this moment,
we have adopted 141 amendments. They are bipartisan, both Democrats and
Republicans. Now we are at the point--and the chairman, I believe, has
a very thoughtful way to conclude the legislation--to consider another
round of amendments and then be able to move to final passage very
quickly.
Again, let me conclude by saying that the chairman has done a
remarkable job. I commend him for his bipartisanship, his
thoughtfulness, and his consideration, and I am completely supportive
of his proposal to bring this bill to a conclusion.
I yield the floor.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Oklahoma
Mr. INHOFE. Mr. President, first of all, can I say Senator Reed has
been incredibly great in this whole process. We have been working on
this for a whole year now, and we are now to the point where tomorrow
we should be able to pass it out of--it will not be passed at that
time. We also have a conference we are going to have to be faced with
and all that, but today and tomorrow morning are very important to us.
The point that is made by Senator Reed--if you add up all the
amendments, really, it is you guys in the Senate who have drafted this
bill. Not only are there 141 amendments since we came out of the
committee, but in

[[Page S4397]]

the committee, we had over 800 amendments that were part of the bill to
start with.
One of the reasons--and I think I speak for Senator Reed and myself
at the same time. We have had some experiences in the past where, since
the Senate operates with unanimous consent, we were unable to have any
amendments at all on the floor. So in order to do that, to make sure--
if that should happen again, we wanted to make sure we had all these
amendments already in the bill. So that was our starting point.
Now, here is where we are today. We had a great vote on the NDAA,
receiving an 87-to-13 vote in favor of ending debate on the substitute.
That was great. That was today. That means we are at kind of the end of
this process now. We have continued to work on another managers'
package.
Last night we hotlined--a lot of the people who may be watching are
not familiar with the terminology. We hotlined--we sent out to all the
Democrats and all the Republicans for any objections they might have--
another group of amendments. It was a large group, an equal number of
amendments for Democrats and Republicans. It came back, and there were
a lot of objections to it, so we have now taken that and started on one
last managers' package that we are going to be--a modified version that
we are going to hotline tonight.
It is very important that people are listening right now. A lot of
times people aren't listening. Certainly, the staffs should let their
Members know that they are going to get a hotline on actually 40
amendments--20 Democratic amendments, 20 Republican amendments--
tonight. That is going to be the hotline they are going to look at.
Some of your staff and some of the Members may not have read these
amendments yet. It is likely that is the case. If you have objections
to amendments in this package--that is what we are hotlining--we
encourage you to lodge those objections with the Cloakroom. That is
when you get these things. That is going to be tonight. We will note
those objections and see what remains.
Tomorrow morning--let's say all the objections have come in. Tomorrow
morning, at a time--we were hoping that time was going to be around
10:30 tomorrow, but we know a lot of people want to talk; a lot of
people want to be heard. We can't control that, but we will ask for
unanimous consent to pass the package with a balanced number of
amendments from both Democrats and Republicans. This is tomorrow,
hopefully at 10:30, but maybe that will not work.
We will require Members who want to object to this final package to
come down to the floor in person and object. If you already have an
objection to a specific amendment in this package registered with the
Cloakroom, the amendment should have been pulled from the package. It
will not even appear at that time. Otherwise, you need to be here to
object in person.
We use the term ``balanced.'' This is how this works. We have 40
amendments that are going to be hotlined tonight. If the Republicans
have eight of them that they object to and the Democrats have seven
they object to, they have to find one more to object to so it ends up
being eight and eight or so that the number will be equal. It sounds a
little complicated and it sounds like something that might not work,
but it will work. We have been doing this now for over a year.
Actually, we started this process 2 years ago. So it is going to be the
responsibility of the Democrats and the Republicans to make that even
so that no one can say that it is biased to one side.
So all of that is what is going to happen, and it is very important
that staff and Members be aware of that because what we don't want to
happen is to have someone come along and say they were not aware of
this process that is in place. So that is the process we are going to
use, and that is one that is fair.
Again, I don't think--and this will be the 60th consecutive year.
There has never been a year, in my memory, that has had more amendments
considered than we have considered this year.
With that, I yield the floor.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Utah.

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