[Congressional Record Volume 167, Number 70 (Thursday, April 22, 2021)]
[Senate]
[Pages S2153-S2161]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




  DRINKING WATER AND WASTEWATER INFRASTRUCTRE ACT OF 2021--MOTION TO 
                           PROCEED--Continued


                         SEACOR Power Lift Boat

  Mr. CASSIDY. Mr. President, the year 2020 was a year filled with 
sadness and grief for me, but, unfortunately, that sadness and grief 
struck again in the year 2021.
  Last Tuesday, 100-mile-per-hour winds capsized a lift boat with a 
crew of 19 off the coast of Grand Isle, LA, just south of Port 
Fourchon. The U.S. Coast Guard and a group of Good Samaritan boats 
rescued six crew members as winds continued between 80 to 90 miles per 
hour and waves were 7 to 9 feet high.
  The Coast Guard credits those Good Samaritans with saving four of the 
six rescued crew members. So, fortunately, in the midst of a terrible 
tragedy, it turns out a crew of Coast Guard men and women were on a 
boat doing a trial run when the SOS went out. And although technically 
not Coast Guard, they were coastguardsmen, and they went out and aided 
in the rescue. We are eternally grateful for their efforts, their hard 
work, and for the risk they took to themselves to bring those crew 
members back to shore safely, who returned safely.
  In this tragedy, which affects us in Louisiana but, in a sense, 
affects us all, any loss of life is heartbreaking. But there are some 
who may not be found, and we pray their families find closure. To date, 
six have been confirmed dead, including Anthony Hartford of New 
Orleans, James ``Tracy'' Wallingsford of Gilbert, Captain David Ledet 
of Thibodaux, Ernest Williams of Arnaudville, Lawrence Warren of 
Terrytown, and Quinon Pitre of Franklin.
  Seven are still missing. Each day that passes, the prognosis--the 
chance of finding them--obviously decreases. I would like to take a 
moment to recognize those still missing:
  Jay Guevara, Dylan Daspit, Gregory Walcott, Chaz Morales, Jason 
Krell, Darren Encalade, and Chris Rozands.
  Our thoughts and prayers are with the crew members of the capsized 
vessel, their loved ones, and their communities.
  While we mourn this loss, we also rise to recognize the heroic 
efforts of the Coast Guard, the Good Samaritans, and all involved in 
the search-and-rescue efforts that continued for 6 straight days.
  In just 40 hours, the Coast Guard covered more than 1,440 square 
miles of the Gulf of Mexico, searching for missing crew members. To put 
that in perspective, that is an area larger than the State of Rhode 
Island. By Friday, this area grew to a size larger than Hawaii, 
searching through sea and air.
  Late last week, the National Transportation Safety Board announced 
they will open an investigation. The team arrived in New Orleans on 
Thursday, and a preliminary report will be released within the next 2 
weeks.
  We deeply appreciate the volunteers who assisted the men and women 
from the Coast Guard and many others in the search and rescue, 
particularly during the terrible weather. In the light of this tragedy, 
this team effort demonstrates the best of humanity.
  We grieve with the families. We shall always remember the lives of 
those we lost.
  May God watch over their souls. May they find eternal peace.
  Thank you, Mr. President.
  I yield the floor.
  I suggest the absence of a quorum.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The clerk will call the roll.
  The senior assistant legislative clerk proceeded to call the roll.
  Mr. LANKFORD. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the order 
for the quorum call be rescinded.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. Without objection, it is so ordered.


                              Coronavirus

  Mr. LANKFORD. Mr. President, I bring news back from Oklahoma to this 
body and a request for dialogue. The COVID bill that was passed a 
little over a month ago--that bill provided all kinds of relief. As 
this body knows, we were deeply divided on that bill and some of the 
issues within it.
  One of the issues stretched out the debate all the way to the last 
moment, and it was the additional unemployment assistance. The 
conversation about the additional unemployment assistance is this: The 
economy is reopening. Is this the time to extend additional money above 
and beyond State unemployment assistance, what we normally do? With 
unemployment rates going down, should we add more money on top of it?
  No one really knew what would happen when that occurred, but we had 
some suspicions. The 2 weeks I spent traveling around the State, the 
week before Easter and after Easter, in town after town after town 
after town after town, I heard the same thing from employees and 
employers.
  Employees would tell me that somebody who used to work next to them 
is now at home because they are making as much money at home on 
unemployment assistance as they would when working. So the person 
standing there working at the factory, the person standing there 
working at the restaurant is ticked off at the person who is at home 
watching TV, making as much money as they are.

[[Page S2154]]

  The employer is just as frustrated or more because they have all 
kinds of orders coming into their business, saying: Can you send us 
more of this? And they could, except they don't have enough labor.
  An additional $300 a week was added on top of the unemployment 
assistance and extended out all the way to the first week of September. 
At the same time, checks were sent out to every individual. Then they 
were told they would get a $10,000 tax break. The combination of those 
three things together has caused some folks to do what people do in a 
free market: They look to see where they are going to work based on 
where they can make the most money at that moment. That is what a free 
market is like. That is why employers continue to pay a little more to 
get good employees. But the problem is, in Oklahoma, where there is a 
low cost of living, many of our employers are struggling to find 
workers because they are competing against this body.
  The employees are ticked because they are at work working, paying 
taxes, and the person who used to work next to them and probably will 
return this October got several months off and is making the same, 
except for the person working is paying for the person not working, and 
they are a little ticked off about it.
  I bring this to you because this is not hypothetical. In Oklahoma, 
our unemployment rate dropped again to 4.2, but we still have 100,000 
people. Our rates continue to rise for people filing first-time claims, 
but I promise there is not a town you can go to in Oklahoma that 
doesn't have ``help wanted'' signs all over town. I heard it from every 
single town that I went to, from employers in every single place that 
they cannot compete with what the government is just mailing to people 
for staying at home.
  The very first day I was out a couple of weeks ago, I was in Tulsa at 
a business there that does manufacturing. He told me that for the first 
time ever--and he has owned the business a long time--for the first 
time ever, one of his managers came to him and said: You are not going 
to believe what just happened.
  They had an employee who came up to them and said: I would like for 
you to fire me.
  He said: Well, why in the world would I do that?
  He said: Well, I just figured out, with the tax break and what I 
would get on unemployment assistance, I could make as much staying at 
home as I could working. But I need you to fire me so I can go file for 
unemployment.
  He literally said to him: I am not going do that. Go back to work.
  So the next day, the guy showed up 30 minutes late to work, and at 
lunchtime, he took an hour and a half off. He did the same thing the 
next day. The third day, according to protocol in their company, they 
called him in, talked to him, and wrote it all up. The fourth day, they 
did the same thing again--called him in, wrote it up. By the fifth day, 
they fired him.
  His exact words to his manager on the floor: What took you so long?
  There is a restaurant in Oklahoma City that told us they were 
preparing to reopen. Finally, the pandemic is over. We have a very high 
percentage of folks in Oklahoma who have received the vaccine. We are 
one of the top 10 States in the country for distributing the vaccines.
  Our State, our county, our local offices, our hospitals, and our 
Tribal areas have done a fantastic job getting the vaccine out. We are 
open.
  One of the restaurants trying to reopen in the Plaza District of 
Oklahoma City, a beautiful cultural district, couldn't reopen because 
they couldn't hire people because they got larger unemployment 
benefits, and they remain closed.
  The mayor of Muskogee told me that most employers in their town are 
struggling to be able to get employees to get back to work.
  In Northern Oklahoma, in Perry, there is a restaurant that was 
talking to one of my staff this week that said they are having to close 
early because they can't get enough business.
  I would tell you, a couple of Sundays ago, my wife and I drove to go 
eat lunch after church, and we went to two restaurants before we had to 
go to a third to find a restaurant that was open. The second restaurant 
literally had a sign on their door: ``Closed Due to Labor Shortage.''
  This is a real issue that was created in this room that is impacting 
my State trying to reopen. I have no idea if my Democratic colleagues 
will acknowledge this as a real problem or will just say: That is a 
hypothetical issue; it is not real. But this is going to continue all 
the way through September, and my State is not going to be able to 
reopen. This will get even worse in the days ahead when additional 
money will start being shipped out to families in the change in the 
child tax credit, when people will literally start getting checks in 
August on top of the other checks they are receiving.
  I bring this to this body because I would like for us to have a 
conversation about it and for somebody in this body to acknowledge that 
a mistake was made and we need to fix this.
  We all agreed last year to be able to help during the time of the 
pandemic. People needed help. Everyone was out of work, and there were 
no options for work. That is not true anymore; yet these larger 
benefits are still coming out.
  This needs to be addressed. For the sake of getting our economy going 
again, this needs to be addressed. I would hope we could have a 
reasonable, rational, fact-based conversation about it.


                           U.S. Supreme Court

  Madam President, for most of the history of the United States, we 
have had nine Supreme Court Justices--nine. Now, we started out 
originally with six, and then it dropped for just a little while to 
five and then went right back to six again.
  When we added a seventh circuit court in 1807, it popped from six to 
seven, and there was some discussion about whether it would just 
continue based on the number of circuit courts. It was determined that, 
no, that was a bad idea.
  Then it went to nine in 1837. Lincoln actually added 1 to make it 10, 
and they determined that was really too many and brought it back down 
to 7, actually.
  In 1869, we went back to nine again, where we were most of the time 
before that and where we have remained, nine Supreme Court Justices. 
That is not just a random number; it seems to be a pretty good number--
nine--to be able to open up debate.
  I don't just think it is a pretty good number. There is a rather 
famous and some would say ``notorious'' Justice named Ruth Bader 
Ginsburg. She made this statement in 2019 when asked about Court-
packing and asked about increasing the size of the Court. In 2019, Ruth 
Bader Ginsburg said:

       Nine seems to be a good number. It's been that way for a 
     long time. . . . I think it was a bad idea when President 
     Franklin Roosevelt tried to pack the court. . . . If anything 
     [it] would make the court look partisan.

  That is not just one Justice. Early in April this year, Justice 
Breyer was speaking at the Harvard Law School, and he addressed this 
issue of Court-packing while this body is in the middle of a 
conversation about Court-packing--extremely rare for that to occur. 
Justice Breyer stated:

       I'm an optimist. The rule of law has weathered many 
     threats, but it remains sturdy. I hope and expect that the 
     Court will retain its authority, an authority that my stories 
     have shown was hard-won. But that authority, like the rule of 
     law, depends on trust, a trust that the Court is guided by 
     legal principle, not politics. . . . Structural alteration 
     motivated by the perception of political influence can only 
     feed that latter perception, further eroding that trust . . . 
     There is no shortcut. Trust in the courts, without which our 
     system cannot function, requires knowledge, it requires 
     understanding, it requires engagement. In a word, it requires 
     work. Work on the part of all citizens. And we must undertake 
     that work together. . . . What I'm trying to do is to make 
     those whose initial instincts may favor important structural 
     change or other similar institutional changes--such as forms 
     of court-packing--think long and hard before they embody 
     those changes in law.

  That was so well received, by Justice Breyer, that progressive 
activists started calling for him to take early retirement.
  Court-packing is not a new conversation in this body, but it has not 
been well received in the past.
  The Court has always ebbed and flowed in its liberal or conservative 
bents. President Obama spoke openly when he was President about the 
Court

[[Page S2155]]

in the 1960s. That was a very progressive Court in the 1960s that drove 
conservatives crazy with some of the decisions they made, but there was 
no packing of the Court to try to change the direction of the Court in 
the 1960s and 1970s. There was a frustration but a realization that 
nine was the right number.
  Over time, the Court, as it does, as it ebbs and flows over the 
decades, has flowed to be more conservative. In the days ahead, at some 
point, it will flow to be more liberal. It just will. But the rule of 
law is important. It is not a new concept that is being addressed, but 
it is one this body should think long and hard about.
  Quite frankly, I agree with Joe Biden on this concept, but not the 
President Joe Biden, the Senator Joe Biden.
  With this body's permission, let me read Joe Biden's speeches when he 
was in the U.S. Senate and he stood right over there and spoke on this 
floor or spoke in committee hearings when he was in the Judiciary 
Committee, speaking often about this issue.

  Joe Biden, once speaking, made this statement. He said:

       President Roosevelt clearly had the right to send to the 
     U.S. Senate and the U.S. Congress a proposal to pack the 
     Court. It was totally within his right to do that. He 
     violated no law; he was legalistically absolutely correct. 
     But it was a bonehead idea. It was a terrible, terrible 
     mistake to make. And it put in question, for an entire 
     decade, the independence of the most significant body--
     including the Congress, in my view--

  The most significant body in this country--

     --the Supreme Court of the United States of America.
       The President had the right to do that. He was totally 
     within his power, and his objective was seen clearly.
       Well, the President clearly has the right to do what he is 
     doing, in my view.

  But he also called it ``bonehead.''
  Joe Biden, as Senator, also continued with this statement. He was 
discussing the same issue. He said: ``The Senate again stood''--by the 
way, this was two decades later, after Joe Biden made that statement I 
just read. Two decades later, Joe Biden still has the same passion. He 
stated this:

       The Senate again stood firm in the 1937 court-packing plan 
     by President Franklin Roosevelt. This particular example of 
     Senate resolve is instructive for today's debates, so let me 
     describe it in some detail. It was the summer of 1937. 
     President Roosevelt had just come off a landslide victory 
     over Alf Landon, and he had a Congress made up of solid New 
     Dealers. But the ``nine old men'' of the Supreme Court were 
     thwarting his economic agenda, overturning law after law 
     overwhelmingly passed by the Congress and from statehouses 
     across the country.
       In this environment, President Roosevelt unveiled his 
     court-packing plan--he wanted to increase the number of 
     Justices on the Court to 15, allowing himself to nominate 
     these additional judges. In an act of great courage, 
     Roosevelt's own party stood up against his institutional 
     power grab. They did not agree with the judicial activism of 
     the Supreme Court, but they believed that Roosevelt was wrong 
     to seek to defy established traditions as a way of stopping 
     that activism.
       In May 1937, the Senate Judiciary Committee--a committee 
     controlled by the Democrats and supportive of his political 
     ends--issued a stinging rebuke. They put out a report 
     condemning Roosevelt's plan, arguing it was an effort ``to 
     punish the Justices'' and that executive branch attempts to 
     dominate the Judiciary lead inevitably to an autocratic 
     dominance, ``the very thing against which the American 
     Colonies revolted, and to prevent which the Constitution was 
     in every particular framed.''
       Our predecessors in the Senate showed courage that day and 
     stood up to their President as a coequal institution. And 
     they did so not to thwart the agenda of the President, which 
     in fact many agreed with; they did it to preserve our 
     system's checks and balances; they did it to ensure the 
     integrity of the system. When the Founders created a 
     ``different kind of legislative body'' in the Senate, they 
     envisioned a bulwark against unilateral power--it worked back 
     then and I hope it works now.

  Said Joe Biden during that time.

       The noted historian Arthur Schlesinger, Jr.--

  Joe Biden, continuing as Senator--

     has argued that in a parliamentary system President 
     Roosevelt's efforts to pack the Court would have succeeded. 
     Schlesinger writes: ``The Court bill couldn't have failed if 
     we had a parliamentary system in 1937.'' A parliamentary 
     legislature would have gone ahead with their President, 
     that's what they do, but the Founders envisioned a different 
     kind of legislature, an independent institution that would 
     think for itself. In the end, Roosevelt's plan failed because 
     Democrats in Congress thought court-packing was dangerous, 
     even if they would have supported the newly-constituted Court 
     rulings. The institution acted as an institution.
       In summary, then, what do the Senate's action of 1795, 
     1805, and 1937 share in common? I believe they are examples 
     of this body acting at its finest, demonstrating its 
     constitutional role as an independent check on the President, 
     even popularly elected Presidents of the same party.

  That was from Senator Joe Biden. His challenge to this body was to 
think long and hard before they destroyed an institution of our 
government. It was right then; it is right now.
  In a final statement from Joe Biden, he spoke about the filibuster--
often, actually, about the filibuster. Senator Biden stated this:

       The Framers created the Senate as a unique legislative body 
     designed to protect against the excesses of temporary 
     majority, including with respect to judicial nominations; and 
     they left us all the responsibility of guaranteeing an 
     independent Federal judiciary, one price of which is that it 
     sometimes reaches results Senators don't like.
       It is up to us to preserve these precious guarantees. Our 
     history, our American sense of fair play, and our 
     Constitution demand it.

  Joe Biden continued. As Senator, he said:

       I would ask my colleagues who are considering supporting 
     the ``nuclear option''--those who propose to ``jump off the 
     precipice''--whether they believe that history will judge 
     them favorably. In so many instances throughout this esteemed 
     body's past, our forefathers . . . stepped back from the 
     cliff. In each case, the actions of those statesmen preserved 
     and strengthened the Senate, to the betterment of the health 
     of our constitutional republic and to all of our advantage.
       Our careers in the Senate will one day end--as we are only 
     the Senate's temporary officeholders--but the Senate itself 
     will go on. Will historians studying the actions taken in the 
     spring of 2005--

  When Joe Biden stated this in the Senate--

     [Will they] look upon the current Members of this Senate as 
     statesmen who placed the institution of the United States 
     Senate above party and politics? Or will historians see us as 
     politicians bending to the will of the Executive and to 
     political exigency? I, for one, am comfortable with the role 
     I will play in this upcoming historic moment.

  Then he stated this, from Senator Joe Biden:

       I hope . . . my colleagues [will] feel the same.

  So do I. Less than the days ahead, history will look at the unwinding 
of the judiciary based on a season in the Supreme Court, as we have had 
seasons and cycles before. Don't unwind the judiciary for a season.
  I yield the floor.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Ohio.


                            Opioid Epidemic

  Mr. PORTMAN. Madam President, I appreciate the thoughtful comments 
from my colleague from Oklahoma of the need for us to have an 
independent judiciary.
  I am on the floor to talk about a different issue, and it is the 
latest, very troubling information that we are receiving regarding the 
addiction epidemic and specifically drug overdose deaths in the United 
States. I am also going to talk about some of the steps we can take 
right now to address that reality.
  One of the top priorities I have had in this body and in the House 
has been this drug addiction issue. Frankly, this is a moment of 
frustration because we were making progress, and then COVID-19 hit. 
Unfortunately, the drug epidemic has hit my State of Ohio particularly 
hard. The latest data from the Centers for Disease Control and 
Prevention, the CDC, show that it is a pretty grim picture right now, 
and it should be a wake-up call to all of us. Overdose deaths rose 
nearly 30 percent nationwide from September 2019 to September 2020. 
During this time period, you can see the overdose deaths numbers going 
up dramatically.
  This is heartbreaking for me because we were making progress. After 
literally decades of increases in drug overdose deaths every single 
year--decades--going back to the 1990s, we finally here in the 2017, 
2018, 2019 periods began to make progress in reducing overdose deaths. 
In fact, in Ohio, we had a 24-percent decrease in overdose deaths 
during 1 year, 2018, but, right now, the numbers are getting higher and 
higher, and it is everywhere.
  As you can see from this chart, if something is in any of these 
colors, this means that there is an increase in overdose deaths. If it 
is in blue, it means there is a decrease, and this was just during this 
period of September

[[Page S2156]]

2019 to September 2020, the latest data for which we have good 
information. It doesn't even include all of 2020, and as we know, the 
pandemic, unfortunately, went all the way through 2020 and into 2021. 
All of the data show that, as you got further into the pandemic, we had 
higher rates, so we expect, when the final data come out for 2020, it 
will be even higher.
  Here is where we are now. Look at this. Other than the State of South 
Dakota, every single State has seen an increase--and a substantial 
increase in many cases--in overdose deaths. This is in 49 of 50 States. 
In my own State of Ohio, there has been about a 25-percent increase in 
overdose deaths during this period.
  Only a few years ago, again, we were making progress. One reason that 
we had begun to turn the tide was because of work that had been done 
here in the U.S. Congress. Right around this time period, we passed 
legislation called the Comprehensive Addiction and Recovery Act. We 
also passed legislation called the 21st Century Cures Act. Both were 
signed into law in 2016. So it would have been in this period. It 
became effective in this period and actually helped to reduce overdose 
deaths for the first time in decades.
  I commend my colleagues for that legislation. It was the first time 
we had ever funded recovery, as an example. We also funded prevention 
and treatment and provided our law enforcement with more naloxone, this 
miracle drug that reverses the effects of an overdose. Many of my 
colleagues have had the opportunity to speak with their local addiction 
boards or have been with law enforcement or other first responders--
firefighters--who have used this naloxone effectively to save lives.
  So things were getting better until we saw this big increase in 
connection with the coronavirus pandemic. The stresses of this 
unprecedented time, clearly, have contributed to the spike in drug 
abuse. People have felt lonelier. People have felt more isolated. 
Specifically, people have not been able to get access to recovery 
programs. Being in person with a recovery coach is a whole lot 
different than being on a Zoom call. That is what I hear from 
recovering addicts, and it makes sense.
  I will say that people have turned to drugs to cope during this tough 
period, but also, many of those who are in recovery have been stalled 
in their progress because of their inability to be with other 
recovering addicts. So part of the best practices and best scientific 
evidence we have is that an effective way to help people overcome their 
addictions is to be with other people who also have those addictions. 
We have known this for years in terms of alcohol treatment programs--AA 
and so on--but this has been one of the problems.
  Another issue I am going to raise, which apparently is somewhat 
controversial, but I hear it from the experts--and those are the people 
on the ground, in the field, who are dealing with this issue--is that, 
when we here in Congress provided lump sums to all Americans under a 
certain income--and you will remember the individual payments--they 
didn't go out right away because our State offices couldn't process 
them quickly enough, particularly with regard to unemployment 
insurance, wherein our workers' comp and our unemployment offices could 
not get the money out the door on a weekly basis but could 
retroactively provide those funds.
  We had individuals getting--instead of $300 a week or $600 a week--
$10,000 a week because it was an accumulation of many weeks. People 
were owed that, but getting these big lump sums was not helpful in the 
context of many people who were in recovery because it led to their 
purchasing drugs and it led to what we are finding out--again, back 
home--in talking to the experts, were some of the reasons you had this 
spike. So there are a lot of reasons here.
  I guess what we need to focus on now is, How do we get beyond this?
  These deaths are happening away from the national headlines because 
the coronavirus is taking the national headlines, understandably. A 
story just last week, from a news station in Dayton, OH, summed it up 
perfectly with a quote from Lori Erion, who is the founding president 
of Families of Addicts.
  She said:

       During the pandemic, addiction and families struggling with 
     it haven't gone anywhere. We have been here the whole time.

  But they have not gotten much notice. There were 87,000 people who 
died from overdoses in the September 2019 to the September 2020 period 
we talked about. There were 87,000 Americans who died. If not for the 
COVID-19 pandemic, I don't think we would have seen this increase--from 
everything we are hearing if the correlation is almost precise--but 
also we would be hearing a lot more about the addiction crisis and 
doing more about it here.
  We did put some funding into the CARES Act and into the two most 
recent COVID-19 packages to help with behavioral health, people's 
mental health, and also with addiction. That has been helpful, but we 
need to go much broader and do something much more comprehensive to 
take this moment to recommit ourselves to fighting addiction and 
ensuring that more Americans don't continue to lose their lives to 
overdoses. We have bipartisan legislation that has been introduced that 
we have been working on with a lot of people on the outside to try to 
come up with some new ideas, some ways to address this problem.

  In the 5 years since this Comprehensive Addiction and Recovery 
legislation has become law, which was in part the reason we saw this 
reduction--also, a lot of great work was done at the local level and 
the State level--the substantial, several billion-dollar commitment we 
made here in this Chamber for more prevention, treatment, and longer 
term recovery with naloxone and so on, made a difference, but it has 
been 5 years.
  During that time, I have visited with literally hundreds of different 
organizations in my home State. I have also just talked to a lot of 
experts about this. I have been to a lot of nonprofits, from Cleveland 
to Cincinnati and from Portsmouth to Toledo. I have talked to literally 
hundreds of recovering addicts about what works and what doesn't work 
for them.
  There is legislation that we are introducing now, which we call CARA 
3.0. We had the first Comprehensive Addiction and Recovery Act, and we 
had a second one back in 2018, a smaller one. Now we have this new, 
bipartisan CARA 3.0 legislation. Senator Sheldon Whitehouse is my 
coauthor, but we have a number of Members who have joined up to help, 
and it addresses three major areas.
  One is research and education. We still need to find out more, and we 
still need to get better research and better alternatives to opioids to 
deal with pain because much of this is being driven, as you know, from 
opioids--both heroin and prescription drugs but also these new 
synthetic opioids, which are the deadliest of all.
  Second, we focus on education. Getting the prevention message out 
there is incredibly important to keep people from coming into the 
funnel of addiction in the first place, which is incredibly powerful 
and effective.
  Third, of course, are treatment programs.
  The fourth is recovery. Again, Congress had never funded recovery 
before; yet all of the best science shows that these recovery programs, 
when done properly, can be incredibly helpful, and longer term 
recovery, unfortunately, is needed, which is costly, but the 
alternative is worse.
  Finally, there is criminal justice reform, which I will talk about in 
a moment.
  It will bolster our work to prevent drug abuse before it happens 
through funding for research and education. A new national drug 
awareness campaign is part of this legislation, and the research and 
development of alternative pain treatment methods that don't lead to 
addiction is part of it.
  CARA 3.0 will also take the important step of addressing the 
disproportionate effect the addiction crisis has had on people in 
poverty and communities of color. Unfortunately, during this increase, 
we have seen a higher percentage of overdoses in communities of color. 
A national commission has been formed to look at this issue to better 
develop treatments and best practices to avoid overdoses.
  Second, our bill will build on what works and how we treat addiction. 
It will double down on proven, evidence-based addiction treatment 
methods

[[Page S2157]]

while expanding treatment options for groups that are particularly 
vulnerable to addiction, including young people, new and expecting 
mothers, rural community residents, and communities of color--
individuals who live in those communities. One of the things that we 
have learned through, again, evidence-based research into what works 
and what doesn't work is that medication-assisted treatment, when done 
properly, can be very effective.
  It will also make permanent the current expanded telehealth options 
for addiction treatment that were created temporarily in response to 
the social distancing required by the COVID-19 pandemic. This is really 
important. Telehealth is one of the few silver linings in an otherwise 
very dark cloud of the coronavirus pandemic. Yet, for many individuals, 
telehealth was effective, particularly with regard to behavioral health 
and addiction services. So we want to be sure that the temporary 
ability to pay for those telehealth visits, as an example, through 
Medicaid as an example or Medicare, can continue past the pandemic.
  CARA 3.0 will also bolster the recovery options for individuals who 
are working to put addiction behind them through funding to support 
recovery support services and networks. It will enable physicians to 
provide medication-assisted addiction treatments, like methadone, to a 
greater number of patients and change the law to allow these drugs to 
be prescribed via telehealth for a greater ease of access. This will 
require a change in legislation to allow people to provide these kinds 
of treatments.
  Our bill will also destigmatize addiction recovery in the workplace 
by ensuring that taking one of these medications--again, medications to 
get people over their addictions--will not count as a drug-free 
workplace violation. This may seem like an obvious change, but, 
unfortunately, it will take a change of law to be able to make that 
happen.
  Finally, CARA 3.0 reforms our criminal justice system to ensure that 
those who are struggling with addiction, including our veterans, are 
treated with fairness and compassion by the law, putting them on a path 
to recovery instead of into a downward spiral of drug abuse.
  Importantly, CARA 3.0 funds a Department of Justice grant program to 
help incarcerated individuals who are struggling with addiction to 
receive medication-assisted treatment while they are still in the 
criminal justice system. Again, that may seem like a pretty obvious 
solution, but there are people who go into the system addicted, and 
they come out addicted. They are not given the treatment options when 
they are incarcerated, and they simply go back to lives of addiction. 
Those people have high rates of recidivism, clearly. Most are 
rearrested and are back in the system within a relatively short period 
of time.
  So this will reduce recidivism, repeat offenses. It makes sense for 
the person addicted, and it certainly makes sense for the community, 
with fewer crimes being committed. It also makes a lot of sense for the 
taxpayer because that treatment, although there is an additional 
expense while in the criminal justice system, will have a much better 
chance of getting those people back to lives wherein they can go back 
to work, back to their families, be in recovery, and not be back in the 
expensive criminal justice system. So it is a win-win-win.
  CARA and CARA 2.0 gave States and local communities new resources and 
authorities to make a real difference in my State and others. CARA 3.0 
renews and strengthens those programs, and given the recent spike in 
addiction we see here, it provides a significant boost in funding as 
well. When added with the existing CARA programs that were authorized 
through 2023, we will be investing well over $1 billion per year to 
address this longstanding epidemic, putting us on the path toward a 
brighter future free from addiction.
  Another important part of CARA 3.0 is our bipartisan legislation to 
build on this expanded telehealth option for addiction services.
  It was necessary during the pandemic to have it because of social 
distancing. We found out that, although there is no substitute for 
face-to-face interaction, telehealth has kept patients in touch with 
their doctors and allowed physicians to prescribe medication-assisted 
treatment remotely.
  It doesn't make sense to get rid of these options once the pandemic 
goes away, so again, CARA 3.0 included legislation we had previously 
introduced separately called the Telehealth Response for E-Prescribing 
Addiction Therapy, or the TREATS Act, to make permanent a number of 
temporary waivers for telehealth services and bolster telehealth 
options for addiction treatment services.
  Specifically, it does a couple things. First, it allows for a patient 
to be prescribed these lower scheduled drugs, like SUBOXONE, through 
telehealth on their first visit. You can't do that now. Current law 
requires you to go in person for a visit when needing an initial 
prescription for controlled substances, but this has been a deterrent 
to patients in crisis and in urgent need of treatments from schedule 
III or schedule IV drugs, like SUBOXONE or certain other drugs for a 
co-occurring mental health condition.
  It also limits abusive practices by both audio and visual 
capabilities to be able to interact with the treatment providers to 
reduce fraud and abuse when it is your first visit, and it would also 
keep the existing requirements for in-person visits when prescribing 
schedule II drugs--these are the harder drugs, like opioids and 
stimulants--which are much more prone to being abused through these 
telehealth visits.
  So we have a provision in there to avoid abuse, but it is also 
important to continue this telehealth when other options aren't there. 
I think it is a balanced approach that makes sense.
  Second, our bill will allow for Medicare to bill for audio only or 
telephone telehealth visits for mental health and substance abuse if it 
is not the patient's first visit. Due to access to the broadband or 
distance, in-person or even video appointments aren't always possible, 
particularly for our seniors.
  We need to focus on safety and robust treatment options, but in order 
to balance the needs of patients, we have proposed to allow our 
Nation's seniors under Medicare to use phones for subsequent mental 
health or behavioral health visits when they don't have access to the 
internet and where fact-to-face interaction isn't possible and isn't as 
necessary.
  I believe the TREATS Act will make a difference in the addiction 
treatment space and will help us prevent more untimely overdoses.
  So the legislation I have laid out so far--CARA 3.0 and the TREATS 
Act--cover an important aspect of the addiction crisis: the addiction 
treatment efforts that help lessen the demand for drugs, which is the 
single most important thing, reducing that demand.
  But there is also more we have to do on the supply side because as 
drugs are pouring into our country, they are at a lower price on the 
streets of Cincinnati or Columbus or Cleveland or Dayton or Toledo. So 
we do need to do more to curb the supply of these dangerous substances. 
This is especially true right now because there is such a critical 
crisis ongoing, and there is a looming deadline to keep one class of 
very dangerous drugs illegal and off the streets.
  I am talking about the kinds of opioids that are--like fentanyl, that 
are synthetic opioids but have a slight molecular change. So unless we 
act here in Congress, they will no longer be scheduled, no longer be 
illegal.
  Data from the CDC, again, shows that the biggest driver to this surge 
in overdose deaths that we see here comes from fentanyl, comes from 
these synthetic opioids. They are often far more deadly than 
traditional opioids, like heroin. In fact, fentanyl is 50 times more 
powerful than heroin. A pound of fentanyl is lethal enough to kill a 
half a million people. And fentanyl, as you will find out talking to 
your law enforcement folks and others in the treatment space, it is 
often now being laced with other drugs, like cocaine, like crystal meth 
or heroin.
  Most of this synthetic opioid is being illegally manufactured in 
China and then smuggled across our borders, either coming in through 
the mail system or going to Mexico and then being smuggled across.
  There is also evidence now that it is also being produced in Mexico, 
which is a change and a major concern.
  In order to avoid prosecution, prior to 2018, scientists in China--
evil scientists in China--and drug traffickers started making slight 
modifications to fentanyl, sometimes adjusting a single

[[Page S2158]]

molecule and creating what are essentially fentanyl copycats.
  While these fentanyl-related substances have the same narcotic 
properties as fentanyl, their tiny variations allowed them to evade 
prosecution. But oftentimes, these similar substances, like 
carfentanil, which some of you are aware of, are even deadlier than 
fentanyl itself.
  To address this, the Drug Enforcement Agency in 2018 used its 
authority to temporarily classify all fentanyl-related drugs as 
schedule I substances, which allows law enforcement to aggressively 
intercept and destroy these substances. Unfortunately, this designation 
was only temporary. That is all DEA could do.
  So, in 2019, Congress extended that designation until May 6, 2021, so 
a 2-year extension until 14 days from now.
  If that deadline lapses 14 days from now, criminals who run labs in 
China and Mexico will be able to avoid law enforcement as they flood 
the United States with unlimited slight variants of fentanyl that are 
just as deadly. We can't let that happen.
  Let me say that again. At a time when we are experiencing an alarming 
rise in overdose deaths that we see here, and fentanyl is the major 
culprit, the No. 1 killer, we may face a situation where law 
enforcement will lose the ability to aggressively stop these fentanyl 
copycats in the United States unless Congress acts in the next 14 days.
  Fortunately, we have legislation to do that. Our bipartisan FIGHT 
Fentanyl Act, which I introduced with Senator Joe Manchin, will fix 
this problem by permanently classifying fentanyl-related drugs as 
schedule I drugs. It would give our law enforcement certainty to go 
after synthetic opioids in all their forms and show we are committed to 
addressing the threat posed by this dangerous class of drugs.

  Our proposal is the one bipartisan approach to this in the Senate. We 
structured it to address concerns from the criminal justice community 
and made sure it does not impose mandatory minimum sentencing under 
criminal charges brought under our bill. That has been one of the 
concerns expressed, particularly by some on the other side of the 
aisle. So we took that out.
  I urge my colleagues on both sides of the aisle to come to the table 
and support this urgent legislation.
  The House just passed a 5-month extension this week. That is, to me, 
very sad. Let's make this permanent. There is no reason to do a short-
term extension and to create the uncertainty with law enforcement, and, 
frankly, to tell these evil scientists in places like China, in 5 
months, you are going to be able, potentially--to be able to sell this 
substance again without worrying about the law. This makes no sense. 
Let's make it permanent. Let's give the DEA the authority to do what 
they need to do. And by doing so, let's reduce the amount coming in, 
which increases the cost on the street, which is an important step 
toward rededicating our efforts to stop these drugs from stealing 
thousands of lives and causing so much pain.
  In conclusion, I urge my colleagues--our Nation faces a crisis. It is 
the coronavirus pandemic that is finally winding down, but it is also 
the addiction crisis. It has been happening underneath the coronavirus. 
As was said by my constituent--this woman who unfortunately has faced 
addiction in her own family--we have been here the whole time, and it 
hasn't gotten better; it has gotten worse.
  Many of its victims are suffering in silence. We know a lot about 
what is going on with COVID. We don't know a lot about what is going on 
with this pandemic, this epidemic of drugs.
  So let's act now, without delay. We have 14 days until DEA loses the 
authority to go after dangerous fentanyl copycats, but we can do 
something about it. We can pass legislation right now that will help 
people at their point of pain, as well as provide law enforcement the 
tools to cut off the source of their suffering--both the CARA 3.0 
legislation to deal with the demand side and the legislation to be sure 
this poison can't come into our communities freely.
  As the CDC data shows, this is an issue that affects every single one 
of us. Forty-nine States have seen a big increase. We know we need to 
do it. Let's not wait any longer to get to work once again turning the 
tide on our addiction crisis.
  I yield the floor.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Alaska.


                       Tribute to Beth Trowbridge

  Mr. SULLIVAN. Madam President, it is Thursday, and by now many know--
particularly our members of our press corps--that it is time for what I 
feel is probably one of the best moments in the Senate each week. It is 
time for the ``Alaskan of the Week.''
  We get to talk about Alaska, talk about somebody who is doing 
extraordinary things for our State, for our country a lot of times, and 
I like to give an update when I do my ``Alaskan of the Week'' speech on 
what is going on in Alaska.
  It is spring, of course. The Sun is high in most parts of the State--
actually, in all parts of the State. Spring--we call it breakup, 
actually, relating to the ice on the rivers--it is upon us.
  Now, of course, it can still snow, and it still gets pretty cold in a 
lot of places in Alaska, but winter is on the run. The promise of 
summer is in the air, and what a glorious summer it is going to be.
  We aren't out of the woods yet on the pandemic in Alaska, but we have 
managed--we are proud of it, I am proud of my fellow Alaskans--the 
pandemic, the virus, as well as possible.
  One of the things that is happening right now, our vaccination rates 
have been, almost from the beginning when we got the vaccine, the 
highest per capita in the country. Despite our huge challenges in terms 
of size, limited population, it is really kind of a minimiracle--No. 1 
vaccination rates in America in Alaska. We did it by dog sled, snow 
machine, small airplanes to make that happen.
  So if you are watching, America, please come on up to Alaska. It is 
safe. It is open for tourism. This summer we want you to come on up.
  By the way, not only will you have an amazing experience, our State 
just announced a few days ago you will get a vaccine if you come to 
Alaska. If your State is too inefficient or bureaucratic to actually 
get a vaccine, come on up to Alaska. You can have the trip of a 
lifetime, and you and your family can get vaccinated. We want you up 
there. We are open for business. We want to see Americans come on up 
and enjoy our great State as we are getting through this pandemic.
  It is a naturally beautiful place, you will see, but the people in my 
State work hard to keep it pristine and are really what makes it such a 
great place.
  So, today, in honor of Earth Day, I wanted to honor Homer, AK, 
resident Beth Trowbridge, who has spent her career--about 40 years, 
four decades--working to keep our waters in Alaska and our beaches 
clean and pristine.
  So let me tell you a little bit about Beth. Originally from St. 
Louis, Beth first came to Alaska in 1981 as a college student to work 
on the Youth Conservation Corps in Fairbanks, AK, the interior.
  She only intended to stay a year or so--by the way, this is a very 
common story--only intended to stay a year or so, but as so many do, 
she got to Alaska and fell in love with the State so she transferred to 
the University of Alaska in Fairbanks where she got her degree in 
Northern and Alaska Native studies.
  Now, Beth loves the wilderness. She loves living off the land, 
studying the plants, studying the animals. She said: ``There are 
beautiful and amazing people and amazing resources'' in Alaska. She 
said she always loved the sense that, while we can all live there, 
nature in Alaska is always in control--the earthquakes, the volcanoes, 
the extreme weather, the coldness. They are a constant reminder that, 
in her words, in Alaska ``there are the bigger forces out there''--a 
lot bigger, and she wants to keep it that way.
  So she became a steward of her environment and dedicated her life to 
educating others so that they, too, could become stewards.
  With all the talk about climate change, I fear that not nearly enough 
attention is given to those outside of politics, like in this town, who 
work day in and day out to care for the environment in the place they 
call home--in their communities, in their States, every day on the 
ground at home, making a difference.

[[Page S2159]]

  That is what Beth has done. After college, she got a job as the 
education coordinator for the Prince William Sound Science Center, 
where she authored the ``Alaska Oil Spill Curriculum.''
  Then, in 2000, she began her work--in many ways, her life's work--for 
the Center for Alaskan Coastal Studies, or CACS, in the drop-dead 
gorgeous community of Homer, AK, surrounded by the beautiful Kachemak 
Bay. Some people call Homer ``the place where the land ends and the sea 
begins''; others, ``the cosmic hamlet by the sea''; and others, ``the 
halibut capital of the world.''
  If you haven't visited Homer, America, you have got to go to Homer. 
My goodness, it is beautiful. In Alaska, we just call it awesome, in 
part because of people like Beth and organizations like hers that keep 
it that way.
  In 2012, Beth became the organization's executive director and helped 
expand the good work that CACS has been doing since 1982.
  Now, this organization is primarily an educational organization and 
offers people of all ages, really from across the globe--not just 
Alaska, not just America, everywhere--opportunities to connect with the 
outdoors, learn about coastal environments through guided walks, tours, 
educational programs, overnight school programs, and so much more.
  So think about this impact. Homer, where CACS is located, is a town 
of about 6,000 people. CACS educates roughly 16,000 people through 
these science-based programs every year. That is a big impact. They 
have camps for everyone, and I would encourage anyone who is listening 
who is going to go to Homer to sign up for one of these camps to 
explore the unique marine ecology, the tidal pools, and the abundant 
sea life; to watch whales, seals, and sea lions; to swim against the 
backdrop of the Kenai Mountains; and to go into the forest and learn 
about the forest, wildlife, and adaptation in the forest. There is so 
much to do.
  One of the big initiatives of this important organization is to deal 
with marine debris. So today, on Earth Day, let me put a plug in for 
the marine debris programs in my State and across the country. This is 
an issue that I have been very focused on since my time as a U.S. 
Senator, working with my colleagues on both sides of the aisle. We have 
gotten a lot done.
  We passed the Save Our Seas Act a couple of Congresses ago, and we 
passed the Save Our Seas Act 2.0, which the Congressional Research 
Service called the most comprehensive ocean cleanup legislation ever in 
the history of the Senate. It was just passed and signed into law in 
December. So we are making progress.
  I do want to give a shout-out to one of my good friends, Senator 
Sheldon Whitehouse. You know, some of us miss his weekly ``Wake Up'' 
speeches. I think mine is the only weekly speech anymore. Senator 
Whitehouse, I am not sure what happened. But Senator Whitehouse and I 
have worked closely on this kind of legislation--ocean debris, ocean 
cleanup, and to help organizations like CACS with marine debris cleanup 
and to call attention to this issue that is solvable. We can solve 
this--marine debris, ocean plastics--and it is bringing a lot of people 
in America and across the world together.
  One of CACS's biggest annual events is the annual Kachemak Bay Coast 
Walk. It involves more than 200 volunteers who adopt a section of 
Kachemak Bay shoreline. And, again, you have got to visit Kachemak Bay, 
one of the most beautiful places on the planet Earth. Trust me. 
Surveying changes, collecting data on marine life and human impact and 
cleaning up beach litter and marine debris is what people do every year 
with the Kachemak Bay Coast Walk. It is the kind of great local work 
that really makes a difference. It brings people from all across Alaska 
together--people who know how special and beautiful Kachemak Bay is--
and it creates community. It creates community, and that is so 
important, not just for our State but for our oceans and the coastline.
  So that is one of the many things Beth has done.
  Beth and her husband, Charlie, who is a retired shellfish biologist 
with the Alaska Department of Fish and Game have four children. The 
youngest is finishing eighth grade, and the oldest is 33.
  Beth develops environmental curriculums for schools. She is a 
Rotarian, a Girl Scout leader, and keeps CACS running seamlessly. She 
says she does all of this because she has a passion for sharing the 
outdoors with people--Alaskans, Americans, people from all over the 
world, but especially the next generation--and she hopes that her work 
not only will have an immediate impact on the environment but helps 
people to understand the challenges of our oceans and to focus more on 
cleanup, because who doesn't want to clean up our oceans?
  Local businesses, she is noticing, are using more recyclable 
material. People are leaving less trash behind. People are talking more 
about cleanup and ownership, and that is how you make a difference at 
the local level, and it spreads out all over the State and the country.
  Beth said:

       I hope that, through my work, we can provide the 
     opportunities to understand and appreciate nature. I am proud 
     of where I live. I love Homer. I want to take care of it. I 
     hope that others [in the community] feel that way too.

  Beth, that is a great sentiment, and it is also one of the many 
reasons we are proud to honor you today with this very prestigious 
award, being our Alaskan of the Week. Congratulations.
  I yield the floor.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Texas is recognized.
  (The remarks of Mr. CORNYN, pertaining to the introduction of S. 
1358, are printed in today's Record under ``Statements on Introduced 
Bills and Joint Resolutions.'')
  Mr. CORNYN. I yield the floor.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER (Mr. Warnock). The Senator from Maine.
  (The remarks of Ms. Collins pertaining to the introduction of S. 1345 
are printed in today's Record under ``Statements on Introduced Bills 
and Joint Resolutions.'')
  Ms. COLLINS. I yield the floor.
  I suggest the absence of a quorum.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The clerk will call the roll.
  The legislative clerk proceeded to call the roll.
  Mr. CARPER. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the order for 
the quorum call be rescinded.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. Without objection, it is so ordered.


                               Earth Day

  Mr. CARPER. Mr. President, today is a special day. It is Earth Day. I 
had the privilege of actually being at the first Earth Day, at Golden 
Gate Park, a million years ago. The speaker there that day was Ralph 
Nader, and there was a huge crowd. Hundreds of thousands of people were 
there.
  Ralph Nader made a lot of fame and fortune writing a book called 
``Unsafe at Any Speed,'' about the Corvair Monza. That was my first 
car, a Corvair Monza. And as he was there speaking that day, I couldn't 
help but think about how much I loved my Corvair Monza and couldn't 
believe he wrote that book about it.
  He actually made a lot of sense and, certainly, it was a rallying 
point for people in this country who realized that we were going the 
wrong way in terms of the cleanliness of our air and the cleanliness of 
our water.
  I had gone to Ohio State and was a Navy ROTC midshipman there, and I 
ended up in Southeast Asia. I remember being over in Southeast Asia on 
one of our deployments, and the Cuyahoga River, up the road from Ohio 
State, in Cleveland, OH, caught on fire. They had too many people 
drinking the dirty water.
  I liked to run outside. I know our Presiding Officer is a big athlete 
as well. I know there were days that I would run outside, in the 1960s 
and 1970s--and in some places, even now, around the world--and I was 
doing more damage than good by breathing the air in those places.
  But some amazing things happened in 1970, right around 1970. We saw 
the creation of the Environmental Protection Agency. I don't think it 
was done initially as a bill. I think it was actually done sort of as 
an Executive order. Richard Nixon was the President then.
  I think the Congress came along a few years later and sort of passed 
legislation to implement the Executive order. The Clean Air Act was 
signed into law. The Clean Water Act was passed. I think Richard Nixon 
initially

[[Page S2160]]

vetoed the Clean Water Act. But they had huge support--overwhelming 
support, Democrat and Republican--for both measures.
  We didn't give a whole lot of concern in those days to climate 
change. Nobody really talked, in the 1960s and the 1970s or the 1980s, 
about climate change. But something started happening on our planet. 
People said: I think it is getting warmer. The weather seems to be a 
bit more extreme as time goes by.
  Then scientists reported that a hole was being formed in the ozone 
layer over the North Pole, and it started off small and got bigger and 
bigger and bigger. And people a lot smarter than me said: This is not 
good. We have to figure out what is going on here.
  They finally figured out that it was something called CFCs, or 
chlorofluorocarbons, which were actually found in our air-conditioners, 
our freezers, and refrigerators. They did a really good job in keeping 
things cool, including us, but, unfortunately, it led to the hole in 
the ozone.
  So some really smart scientists got to work, and they came up with 
something called HFCs, hydrofluorocarbons. HFCs did a really good job 
keeping us cool. They also did a good job in terms of the hole in the 
ozone going away. But the bad thing about HFCs, or hydrofluorocarbons, 
is that they are a thousand times worse for climate change, the warming 
of our climate, than carbon, carbon dioxide. So some good but some bad 
as well.
  We passed the legislation, and it was signed--I think unbeknownst to 
him--last December, by the President. It is legislation that phases 
down HFCs, or hydrofluorocarbons. So now we are going to have American-
made products that will keep us cool and will be good and positive with 
respect to climate change, and will create a lot of jobs--tens of 
thousands, maybe hundreds of thousands of jobs, American jobs with 
American technology--and strengthen our economy in a variety of 
different ways.
  So on this Earth Day, there is a lot to be concerned about, but the 
HFC phase-down that I just talked about was signed into law and was 
part of a much bigger package in December, that is worth a half a 
degree Celsius.
  Scientists will tell you that what we want is to be careful to not 
see the Earth temperature go up by more than 2 or 3 degrees Celsius, 
and if we do, it becomes sort of irreversible and we are in real 
trouble then on this planet.
  But this one thing that we did, voted on here in this Chamber, 
phasing down HFCs, is worth about a half a degree Celsius. There is 
still more to do, but that is a good start.
  The greatest source of carbon dioxide on our planet is not HFCs, but 
it is the emissions from our cars, trucks, and vans--our mobile fleet. 
About 28 percent of carbon emissions come from our cars, trucks, and 
vans. About another 25 percent comes from utilities, powerplants that 
provide electricity for us, a lot of them powered by coal or natural 
gas--mostly coal. And another large source of carbon emissions is from 
industries. Think of cement plants, if you will. If you add those three 
together, it is about 75 percent of the carbon emissions in our 
country--just those three sources.
  There used to be a guy, a bank robber, whose name was Willie Sutton. 
You may or may not have heard of him. He lived during the Depression, 
before either of us. But he robbed a lot of banks. He finally got 
caught and ended up in trial before the judge.
  And the judge said: Mr. Sutton, why do you rob all those banks?
  And Willie Sutton replied, famously: That is where the money is, your 
Honor. That is where the money is.
  Well, one of the reasons why we focus on carbon emissions and global 
warming emissions coming from mobile sources is that that is 28 percent 
of the emissions. That is not where the money is, but that is where the 
emissions are, where a lot of them are coming from.
  And we are getting really exciting announcements from American 
companies, auto companies. GM has announced this year that starting in 
2035, they will not be manufacturing cars, trucks, or vans that are 
burning gasoline or diesel fuel. They are just going to be electric. 
They will be using hydrogen and fuel cells. That is huge--by 2035. That 
is only like 14 years away.
  Ford has made similar kinds of pledges. I think Volkswagen and a 
number of other companies have made similar pledges. And they are not 
pledges for things that will take place in like 40 or 50 years. We are 
talking about right down the road, right down the road. That is great 
news because the threat of climate change is imminent, and we don't 
have a lot of time to meet it.
  I was in a hearing this morning. One of the committees I serve on is 
Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs. One of the issues that we 
have that we are responsible for is the Postal Service. I think, maybe 
for reasons that go back to my time in the Vietnam war, of being 
overseas in the war and how, every week, when we would get the mail 
over there, it was the best part of the week. You would hear from your 
families, loved ones, friends, newspapers, magazines, care packages. It 
was a great day.

  So I have great affection for the Postal Service, even today. I love 
the idea of mail-in voting, and I know my friend from Georgia has some 
affection for people being able to participate and exercise their 
constitutional rights through the mail. And, hopefully, we will do more 
of that in smart ways like that in the future.
  But the Postal Service still provides a valuable service. We were 
reminded of that during the election last year. But the Postal Service, 
the men and women who drive around and deliver our mail, they drive 
around in vehicles that are, on average, 25 years and older. Almost all 
of them are diesel or gasoline powered.
  The Postal Service realizes that they need to upgrade their fleet, 
and they need to do that sooner than later. It is not cheap. It is not 
a cheap thing to do--165,000 mail trucks that need to be replaced in 
the next several years.
  There is a 10-year plan that the Postal Service has put out--how they 
plan to, sort of, and return to, if not to profitability, at least to 
improve over time to a break-even situation. One of the things that is 
in their plan is to buy and replace their existing fleet of cars, 
trucks, and vans--mostly trucks and vans.
  They are apparently in a contract with a company up in Oshkosh, WI, 
called Oshkosh, and the idea is to build a bunch of vehicles, tens of 
thousands of them, over the next decade or so.
  We had three nominees today before us who have been nominated to be 
members of the Board of Governors of the Postal Service. In all, there 
are nine members of the Board of Governors, nominated by the President, 
confirmed by the Senate. They have three vacancies, and we had three 
nominees to fill those vacancies before us.
  I wished them all a happy Earth Day, and then I talked to them about 
what lies ahead in terms of replacing 165,000 vehicles. And, 
apparently, originally, the first couple of thousand vehicles that will 
be produced will be gas and diesel, and then, after that, the vehicles 
could be gas, diesel, or electric--or hydrogen, for that matter.
  There is an extra cost when we switch to electric, extra costs when 
we switch over to, say, hydrogen, if that is the technology that is 
chosen, because you need electric charging stations and you need the 
hydrogen fueling stations.
  It is easy to take your gasoline-powered vehicle or your diesel-
powered vehicle to a gas station. It is on the corner. It is in your 
town. But if you need to get the electric charger for your battery or 
you need the hydrogen for your fuel cell vehicle, then that costs some 
money. And it can't all be on the Postal Service. It can't all be on 
the Postal Service.
  As we put together this next infrastructure package for our country--
and we are going to be debating here legislation that Senator Capito 
and I on the Environment and Public Works Committee have been working 
on with our bipartisan team next week, a big package on wastewater 
treatment and on drinking water, clean drinking water. That will be the 
first big infrastructure bill that we pass, I think, in the Senate--
hopefully, next week. But there will be, hopefully, a lot more. And 
part of that will be roads, highways, and bridges coming down the road. 
And part of that will be charging stations in densely populated 
corridors all over the country--charging stations for electric vehicles 
and fueling stations

[[Page S2161]]

for hydrogen vehicles, which have a lot of potential, too.
  I just want us to keep in mind, when that day comes--I want the 
Postal Service to keep in mind that we need for them to set an 
example--for the Postal Service to set an example. If they go out and 
two-thirds of the new vehicles they buy are gasoline- and diesel-
powered, shame on them, and, frankly, shame on us in this body for 
allowing that to happen.
  But we have to remember that the Postal Service is fighting for its 
life, and we need to be there and be helpful in terms of helping to pay 
for the infrastructure that they will need when they buy these new 
vehicles.
  I will close with this. Mr. President, I am not sure where Home Depot 
is headquartered. Are they not headquartered in Georgia? If they are, 
nod your head. I think they are. I love to talk about Home Depot.
  Whenever I go down to Central America, to places like Honduras, 
Guatemala, and El Salvador--we call them the Northern Triangle 
countries--we have something in place called the Alliance for 
Prosperity program. It is designed to help fight corruption, their 
crime, their violence, and their lack of economic opportunity there.
  And we provide money--taxpayer money--to help these countries down 
there, so people will stop feeling like they have to come up here to 
escape the violence, the corruption, the crime, and the lack of 
economic opportunity. So we provide some money, and then we expect 
them, for every dollar we provide, to provide four or five dollars on 
their own. We want foundations to put up money. We want businesses to 
put up money to help produce this as well.
  I say to the people of Honduras, Guatemala, and El Salvador, who live 
in some really terrible situations, when I talk to them about the 
Alliance for Prosperity, which has been in place now for several years: 
You can do it. You, those three countries--Honduras, Guatemala, and El 
Salvador--you can do it. We can help, and I think we have a moral 
obligation to help.
  I think at the Postal Service, they can do it. They can update their 
fleet. They can do so in a way that is sustainable and is actually good 
for this planet. This is the only planet we are going to have. We have 
to take care of it or, otherwise, face huge, huge challenges.
  So I would, on this Earth Day, say to my colleagues that the 
anniversary provides opportunity. The Postal Service is going through 
its share of adversity, as well, but there is real opportunity, as 
well, to help the Postal Service and the men and women who work there 
to do a better and a more reliable job of delivering the mail to all of 
us but, also, to do so in a way that is good for our planet.
  That would be a very, very good thing and make this Earth Day 
especially memorable.
  Mr. President, with that, I am going to bid you adieu. Great weekend 
to you and the staff. God bless you. Thank you so much.
  I suggest the absence of a quorum.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The clerk will call the roll.
  The legislative clerk proceeded to call the roll.
  Ms. BALDWIN. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the order 
for the quorum call be rescinded.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. Without objection, it is so ordered.
  The Senator from Wisconsin.

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