Congressional Record, Volume 167 Issue 94 (Friday, May 28, 2021)

[Congressional Record Volume 167, Number 94 (Friday, May 28, 2021)]
[Senate]
[Pages S3915-S3927]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]

ENDLESS FRONTIER ACT

The ACTING PRESIDENT pro tempore. The clerk will report the
unfinished business.
The senior assistant legislative clerk read as follows:

A bill (S. 1260) to establish a new Directorate for
Technology and Innovation in the National Science Foundation,
to establish a regional technology hub program, to require a
strategy and report on economic security, science, research,
innovation, manufacturing, and job creation, to establish a
critical supply chain resiliency program, and for other
purposes.

Pending:

Schumer amendment No. 1502, in the nature of a substitute.
Cornyn/Cotton amendment No. 1858 (to amendment No. 1502),
to modify the semiconductor incentives program of the
Department of Commerce.

Recognition of the Majority Leader

The ACTING PRESIDENT pro tempore. The Democratic leader is
recognized.
Mr. SCHUMER. In a moment, the Senate will resume business. A few of
our Republican colleagues may continue their speeches.
The Senate spent 2 hard weeks working on this bill, and many months
before that. We have every intention of sticking it out until the job
is done, and that is what we are going to do. I look forward to passing
this historic and extremely bipartisan bill later today.
I yield the floor.
Mr. PAUL. Mr. President, I suggest the absence of a quorum.

Quorum Call

The ACTING PRESIDENT pro tempore. The clerk will call the roll.
The senior assistant legislative clerk proceeded to call the roll,
and the following Senators entered the Chamber and answered to their
names:

[Quorum No. 4]

Baldwin
Bennet
Blumenthal
Booker
Brown
Cantwell
Carper
Casey
Collins
Coons
Cortez Masto
Daines
Durbin
Feinstein
Fischer
Gillibrand
Hassan
Hickenlooper
Hirono
Hyde-Smith
Johnson
Kaine
Kelly
King
Klobuchar
Lankford
Lujan
Lummis
Manchin
Marshall
Merkley
Murphy
Ossoff
Padilla
Paul
Peters
Reed
Romney
Rosen
Sanders
Schatz
Schumer
Scott (FL)
Scott (SC)
Shaheen
Smith
Stabenow
Tester
Tuberville
Van Hollen
Warner
Warren
Whitehouse
The ACTING PRESIDENT pro tempore. A quorum was present
The ACTING PRESIDENT pro tempore. The Senator from Kentucky.
Mr. PAUL. Mr. President, we are currently $28 trillion in debt. Whose
fault is it--Republicans? Democrats? The answer is yes, yes on both
fronts. Both parties are responsible for the debt, and one side is
honest about it. One side will tell you they don't give a fig about the
debt: The debt be damned. We are for new monetary theories. Spend as
much as you have got; borrow as much as you can; and somehow we are
going to combat the influence of China by borrowing more money from
China. It doesn't really seem to make a lot of sense, but that is where
we are.
So we have before us a bill that will simply add to the debt. We will
go further in debt. You might make the argument that we are actually
less strong as a nation the more in debt we are.
Where is the opposition? Now, there is no opposition on one side of
the

[[Page S3916]]

aisle, and on the other side, there is feigned opposition. The
Republicans will feign opposition to the debt. They will say: Well,
yes, we care about the debt, and the other side spends too much and
borrows too much. You will hear Republicans throughout the land
campaigning against the debt, only to come to Washington and vote for
most of the debt. So what we end up with is a $28 trillion debt. We
actually borrow more in a month than we used to borrow in a year. In
March of this year, we borrowed $660 billion in 1 month.
The proposals for spending are alarming. We have spent and borrowed
more in the last 2 years than we did during World War II. There are
going to be repercussions of so much borrowing in such a short period
of time. We are seeing a misallocation of capital throughout the
economy. We are seeing a grossly inflated stock market. We are starting
to see inflation throughout the supply chain throughout the economy.
There are going to be repercussions.
The question we have to ask ourselves is, Are we willing to look at
the example of countries like Venezuela or Zimbabwe that completely
destroyed their currencies?
People say that couldn't happen in America. It largely hasn't
happened because we have been the reserve currency of the world. We
have been fortunate. People describe it as having the cleanest shirt in
a closet full of dirty shirts. The dollar is weakened by such
extravagant spending. Yet people still cling to the dollar because the
other currencies are weaker. This bill simply adds more to the debt.
We say we are going to combat China through this bill, but we are
going to combat China by increasing a Department of government--the
National Science Foundation--that is actually, probably, one of the
most wasteful Agencies in government. William Proxmire was a
conservative Democrat from Wisconsin back in the sixties and seventies.
He started an award called the Golden Fleece Award.
One of the first Golden Fleece Awards William Proxmire gave was an
award for a study about what makes people fall in love. You would
think, with the lampooning through the years of the ridiculous lizards
on treadmills and of Panamanian frogs, that, after a while, people
would say: Instead of giving more money to this Agency that is so full
of waste and ridiculous studies, we should give it less money.
So, perhaps, if we wanted it to reform, we would say to the National
Science Foundation: Instead of increasing your budget 68 percent, why
don't we reduce your budget 10 percent and say behave better. What if
we were to reform how they pick their committees?
For example, if you want to study cocaine and if you want to study
Japanese quail using cocaine and if you want to know if they are more
sexually promiscuous, do you know how you would get approval for your
funding? You would call up your other buddies who study cocaine in
animals and say: Hey, I have got this great, new study. Would you guys
like to join in it and be my peer-review committee?
It is actually the ridiculous studies that we discover that are being
voted on by people who are selected by the people who are doing the
studies. What they do is they select other people with ridiculous
studies, and they say: We will vote for yours if you will vote for
mine.
So how do we get $500,000 spent in studying Panamanian frogs? They
want to know whether or not the mating call of the country frogs in
Panama is different than the mating call of the city frogs. Well, in
coming from a rural State, I can tell you that the mating call of the
country folk is always different than the mating call of the city folk.
We could have polled the audience. Are quail more sexually promiscuous
on cocaine? I think we could have polled the audience.
The thing is, there could be some reforms. For example, as much as I
am opposed to government spending, there are some important diseases.
Let's say Alzheimer's, cancer, diabetes, heart disease. Why wouldn't we
make the committees for the National Science Foundation have someone on
there from one of the big five diseases? Why wouldn't we put a taxpayer
advocate on there? Why wouldn't we have some sort of inspector general
process so that this doesn't happen?
We have to review this. This isn't an academic point. We have now
discovered that the NIH was funding the Wuhan lab. So we should have
oversight on what happens, but after 50 years of abuse at the National
Science Foundation, we are still studying will people eat ants to
combat climate change. Seriously, that was a study. How many ants will
people eat, and how many ants do you have to eat to reduce the global
warming by 1 degree? It is a lot of ants.
The thing is, those are the kinds of studies that we are having
coming out of here, and we don't make it any better by increasing their
budgets. If you are a wasteful Agency and we give you more money, we
will get more waste. If you want less waste--and this goes not only for
this. It goes for the military. It goes for any other Agency of
government. If you give any Agency more government money, you will get
more waste. You won't get less.

The cocaine was actually the NIH, not the NSF. The NIH has got some
of the same problems. One of the ones from the NIH, in recent years,
was $2 million to see, if someone in the buffet line in front of you--
when you are going through the buffet or Luby's Cafeteria--sneezes on
the food, are you more or less likely to eat the food? $2 million.
Now, look, if you want to come to me and say that we should study
Alzheimer's disease, I have open ears--and on heart disease, diabetes--
but if you want to study whether if somebody sneezes on the food makes
you more or less likely to eat the food, that is just ridiculous. The
American people know it is ridiculous. If the American people could see
what we are voting on, they would say: Oh, we are going to combat China
by giving more money to the most wasteful Agency in the world.
Where is the money coming from? Is it out of a surplus? Can we go
over to the Federal Reserve and open this big safe? Is there a big case
of money? Is there a rainy day fund? Is there a savings account that we
can tap into to say we are going to have government-funded research to
combat China? No. We have to borrow the money from China.
Think of the irony. We borrow the money from China to put it into
technology. We complain about Chinese socialism, which is the
government running everything and spending all of the money. So what
are we going to do? The same thing. We are going to borrow the money
from China. Then we are going to have government-directed research, to
which we will all say: Oh, socialism isn't good, but the government
directed this.
Yet we are going to do the same thing, and we are going to be
stronger than China.
This is a good example--and this is sort of a technical detail--of
how the committee process works and how grant funding works. There was
$700,000 allotted from the National Science Foundation for autism.
Look, I know parents who have kids with autism, and I can be convinced
that the Federal Government can be involved in some way, but the
$700,000 that was allotted for autism was then taken and subcontracted
to a bunch of eggheads who wanted to listen to a tape of Neil Armstrong
on the Moon. If you are as old as I, you can remember being in school
and seeing the crackly black-and-white pictures coming back from the
Moon and hearing Neil Armstrong say: ``[O]ne small step for man, one
giant leap for mankind''--or did he say: ``[O]ne small step for a
man''?
A group of ``researchers''--and I use the term loosely--at the
National Science Foundation got $700,000 of autism money to study one
word, the preposition ``a.'' Did Neil Armstrong use the letter ``a'' or
the word ``a'' or did he not? So they studied, and they were diligent.
They listened to this 20-second clip over and over again. I think it
took them a year of listening to this. They wrote reports and had
findings. Do you know what their conclusion was in the end? It was, We
just don't know. We just don't know. Was it ``[O]ne small step for
man'' or ``[O]ne small step for a man''?
This is something you could fix before throwing and heaping more
borrowed money on the National Science Foundation. Maybe we could say
that you can't subcontract money that was meant for Alzheimer's to
ridiculous research.

[[Page S3917]]

How would you stop it? Maybe you would have a committee that reviews
the grants and that has someone on the committee from one of the big
five diseases who actually says: Should we be spending the money on
autism or should we spend the money on Neil Armstrong's statement on
the Moon? Should we be spending it on this versus diabetes? You see,
everything is a tradeoff.
Everybody comes to Washington. If you ask them--you know, the people
who advocate for Alzheimer's or diabetes or cancer--``Are you getting
enough money?'' and when I tell the autism parents that their money
went to study Neil Armstrong, do you know what I get? I get dropped
jaws and people going: You have got to be kidding me. My mother or
father is dwindling away from Alzheimer's, and they spent money
studying Neil Armstrong?
Did he say: ``[O]ne small step for man'' or ``[O]ne small step for a
man''?
This is lizards on the treadmill.
Dr. Coburn was a Senator here for a long time, and he liked to talk
about waste as I do. This was a decade ago--maybe more--that Senator
Coburn was on the floor and would be talking about lizards on a
treadmill. I think his was lizards underwater on a treadmill or--no. It
was shrimp on a treadmill, I think. They have got lizards on
treadmills, but they have got shrimp, and they have got crawfish on
treadmills.
Think about it, really. We are a big, proud country, but we are $1
trillion in debt. Before we get to all of the extra stuff--before we
get to all of the COVID bailouts--we are $1 trillion in debt just from
the institutional expenses of the country. We bring in about $3
trillion in revenue, and we spend about $4 trillion. Of the money that
we bring in, $3 trillion is a lot. We could spend that on a lot of good
things, but we can't simply just say we are going to spend it on
lizards on a treadmill and that somehow we have enough money to do
that.
So of the expenses that we have, most of the money is consumed by
Medicare, Medicaid, Social Security, food stamps, and the military, and
then a variety of the welfare programs.
But that consumes $1 trillion more than comes in. So we have been
meeting over the last year, just spending extra money beyond the
trillion-dollar deficit. So we have a trillion-dollar deficit just from
our ordinary expenses, and then we add to that, you know, a couple
trillion here for COVID last year, a couple trillion more. We are going
to do a couple trillion more for free college, free daycare, free this,
free that, but it is not free. There is no such thing as a free lunch.
There is nothing in this world that you will get for free. You will
either have the future paying for it--our kids and our grandkids paying
for it--or you will pay for it through inflation or you will pay for it
through default.
And you can default in a dramatic way, through the destruction of a
currency, or you can default in a gradual way through price inflation.
As it is, we are starting to see the price inflation take off. There
are people concerned about inflation that is already in the stock
market and where this goes from here.
But I don't think this bill makes us stronger. In fact, I think the
Chinese sit back and, you know, hold their hand up and sort of titter
and laugh at America thinking they are going to be stronger by
borrowing more money from China.
So I just don't think it makes us any stronger at all. I think it
makes us weaker, and it would be one thing if it weren't being so
horribly wasted.
Lizards on a treadmill. So they get the lizard on a treadmill and
then they have active x rays to look at its joints. They were curious
as to why a lizard waddles. So if you have ever seen a lizard or an
iguana when they walk funny, they waddle. So why do they waddle? You
know, what do their joints look like in x rays?
And so we spent, you know, $1.5 million studying lizards on a
treadmill.
One of the perennial problems in the Third World is the black market.
We have it in our country. It is sort of a function of when taxes and
regulation in the official economy become so onerous that you need to
escape the official economy. That is what the black market is.
So a good example is New York City. The taxes on cigarettes are so
high in New York City that you have a black market. In fact, the death
of Eric Garner--the sad death of Eric Garner being choked to death in
New York City had to do with taxes.
And some people were offended by this. They go: It was police
brutality. Of course, it was, but it was police brutality based on
exorbitant taxes that caused this man to be selling cigarettes--loose
cigarettes in order to try to make a living. But that is what happens
when government becomes so big.
So in parts of Africa, Uganda in particular, there is a big black
market. And so God knows why or why in the world we are spending our
money studying this, we decided to study gambling in Uganda. So we
spent $30,000 studying gambling in Uganda.
Well, it turns out the black market develops because they don't have
good title to their land, they don't have good rule of law, they don't
have the things that have made our country great.
But instead of sort of exporting think tank ideas on how great
capitalism is, we waste it through government grants studying why
Ugandans gamble.
It kind of is reminiscent going back to the Wuhan lab. People say--
this is what Dr. Fauci has been saying. Dr. Fauci says: Well, who
wouldn't want to study the SARS virus?
Well, yeah, we should. But, then again, why would we pay the Chinese
to do it?
Well, there are all these viruses in China.
Well, are the Chinese destitute?
I think we are here because the Chinese are kicking our butt in
trade, and everybody is worried about China so we are going to do all
this stuff to combat China, and yet we send money to a Chinese lab.
Now, we recently voted to change that, but it has been going on for
decades. In fact, Dr. Fauci, in committee the other day, said he still
trusts the Chinese, the Chinese scientists.
He seems oblivious to the fact that perhaps there is a military
influence in these labs and perhaps the scientists don't do anything
without permission of the Chinese military; perhaps if there was a
militarization of the virus going on--oblivious to that.
So there is a Space Camp in Alabama. My kids went to it one year. It
is a great camp, and I am all for it. I, you know, would like to see
more Americans go. If some American kids, you know, don't have the
means, it would be nice if we could help American kids go to Space
Camp.
But I am not so sure, you know, why we borrow money from China to
send kids in Pakistan to Space Camp in Alabama or to Dollywood--you
know, $250,000.
We also spent over a million dollars in Afghanistan doing an anti-
drug program. Unfortunately, really, the drug problems in our country--
they grow it. They grow it like corn. It is a crop for them. The
problem is the demand comes from us, but we spent a million dollars on
public relations television programming in Afghanistan, and it was to
convince the Afghanis not to use drugs. It was in English. So the vast
majority of them couldn't understand or--you know, most of them don't
have television sets anyway.
But this is the kind of thing that runs rampant throughout our
government. So, you know, we talk about where would we find the
resources to be a strong country again, to do the things that we could
do to combat what happens in China. When we look at that, we say where
could the money come from?
Well, we spend $50 billion a year in Afghanistan on the war. It has
been going on 20 years. The war is 18 years past having any useful
mission at all. The mission was over probably once the Taliban was
defeated. There was still some mission for bin Laden, but it didn't
really require necessarily troops on the ground and nation-building.
But we have been doing nation-building in Afghanistan. So our Nation
crumbles, and we worry about China--you know, the threat of the
ascendance of China--and yet, what are we doing? We are borrowing money
from China to build roads in Afghanistan.
One of the things they did in Afghanistan years ago is they were
going to build a natural gas gas station. This was to reduce the
footprint of Afghanistan, the carbon footprint.
So this is the absurdities we sometimes go to with climate change.
This is a country that cooks their food on

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open fires often. This is a country with an average income of about
$800. Most people do not have a car. So what did we decide to do for
Afghanistan to reduce their carbon footprint? We decided to build a
natural gas gas station
So the natural gas gas station was built. It was supposed to cost
$800,000, but, you know, sometimes government is not that efficient so
they had a few cost overruns--83--and it ended up costing $45 million.
So my question, as I heard about this natural gas gas station, was,
How many Americans have a car that runs on natural gas? I think there
are a handful of people who are really into it and have converted their
cars into running on natural gas. There is a trucking company I am
aware of. You know, it is not a bad idea, but it is a boneheaded,
idiotic idea to build a gas station for natural gas vehicles in
Afghanistan. They don't have cars, much less cars that run on natural
gas, but we did it. We spent $45 million in Afghanistan on it.
So my staff was over there looking at the waste, and they said to the
military: Can we go see the famous natural gas gas station? And as
they--they wanted to go see it. The marine said: Well, it would take
two helicopters full of 30 marines in each helicopter to take you to
the gas station, so we were told it was too dangerous, and we didn't
want to insist on something that was that dangerous.
So we spent $45 million on a gas station that we can't visit because
it is too dangerous to serve up natural gas that nobody has a car that
runs on natural gas. And my imagination goes to the gas station, and
all I can imagine is sort of copper tubing sticking out of the ground,
people running off with copper tubing.
We built major highways over there, but one of the biggest problems
is no cars, but the other problem they have in Afghanistan is people
put their camels in their tents, and so if you ever want a car to go up
and down the road, you got to shoo the camels and the tents off the
road.
We decided to build luxury hotels. See, this is part of our national
defense. I think it was the Overseas Investment Bank, or whatever. We
spent $90 million on a hotel in Kabul.
Well, we didn't quite get it finished. The contractor built about
half the hotel. He built the shell of the hotel with no walls. I think
he completed one room so he could send pictures home to say he was
making progress. The hotel was never built. The guy ran off with, like,
60 million of the 90 million. The hotel still sits there, and guess
what. It is a shell of a building. Our people are worried about the
Taliban crawling up in it and shooting down into our Embassy.
So the next thing is--I am surprised it is not in this bill. It may
be. Who knows what is in this bill. They need another 250 grand to
destroy what is left of the hotel. The guy ran off with the money, and
we have a shell of a building. It is a danger to our Embassy so we need
to tear it down.
So, really, you know, we should have an amendment to put more money
in this bill to tear down the hotel--the luxury hotel that we
subsidized in Afghanistan.
The list goes on and on and on. The frustration of the American
people is, Why does it never change?
William Proxmire was talking about this in 1972, studying why people
fall in love. Why do people date? The government is doing dating apps
studying why people are happy or unhappy, studying whether or not, if
you take a selfie of yourself smiling and look at it later in the day,
whether or not that will make you happy. Seriously.
Half a million here, a million there. Is there anything in this bill
that will stop that from happening? So it has been happening for 50
years. You know, we didn't even authorize these things. They just go on
and on. There is no oversight. You ask any questions, nobody wants to
give you any answers, and it goes on and on.
Now, this isn't just one party. Both parties do it. Both parties are
going to vote for this bill, but I guarantee, if you put up the
different waste things that are going on in our government and you said
that this is the Agency that is studying the mating call of the
Panamanian frog, these are the Agencies studying whether someone
sneezes on your food, you think the American people would be with you?
They are only with you because they don't know what you are doing
today. They don't know that you are wasting more money; that you are
shoveling good money after bad. They don't know that this is more of
the same; that this has been going on for 50 years. And nobody,
Republican or Democrat, is fixing the problem. We are just shoveling
more money out the door.
We are destroying our country. We are destroying our currency. Right
now, it is a little bit at a time. It is coming through inflation, but
inflation is out there. It is lurking. People are talking about it.
But there is also another way you can destroy your country. If you
look at the 20th century and you look at the decline in the stock
market, most of it is in, like, 7 days. So those who think that we
couldn't have a precipitous correction; that there couldn't be a
precipitous correction, where all of a sudden everybody wakes up in the
marketplace and says ``Oh, my goodness. The emperor has no clothes''--
we are $28 trillion in debt, and we have companies that have, you know,
200-to-1 price-to-earnings ratio. We have companies that are worth
hundreds and hundreds of thousands of dollars, and yet what is their
profit? Some of them don't make a profit.
Is there going to be a day where people wake up and say: ``Oh, my
goodness, the stock market. The emperor has no clothes,'' and there is
a massive selloff? I don't know.
But I do worry that the stock market is grossly inflated. I do worry,
when we pass out $1,400 checks, which we did not have, we give them to
everybody, and what do the young people do with their checks? Buy
GameStop. So GameStop goes through the roof, makes no profit. It is a
dying company, and it goes through the roof because everybody gets
giddy on it because everybody has got all this free money.
There is no free money. Ultimately, the $1,400 we gave to people will
be lost as wages don't keep up with inflation. It happens even as we
speak.
Inflation has been low, but over the last decade, the dollar lost 17
percent of its purchasing power. Do you think everybody in America got
a 17-percent gain?
See, this is sort of the difference between the seen and the unseen.
Frederic Bastiat was a philosopher, parliamentarian in France in the
19th century, and he talked a lot about this. He wrote a book called
``The Law,'' and he talked about the seen and the unseen. It is also
the intended and the unintended.
People--I call it the big heart, small brain syndrome of Washington.
Everybody wants to help somebody. We have the same compassion. We want
to help those out of work, but if you give people too much not to work,
then they won't work.
If people don't work for a long period of time, they won't be hired
again. This was illustrated when we extended unemployment to 99 weeks.
It was done out of compassion, but as we extended unemployment to 99
weeks, what happened?
Anybody who stayed out of work 99 weeks and came in looking for a
job, if there was another worker that had been out of work less, guess
who got hired. Every study showed this.
So if an employer is faced with two employees, one has been out of
work 10 weeks, one has been out of work 99 weeks, guess who gets hired.
The one who has been out of work 10 weeks.
So when you institutionalize unemployment, when you pay people more
from the government not to work than to work, you get a permanent class
of unemployed, and there comes a point when they are unemployable. What
does that do to the people? What does that do to a person?
I think our self-esteem is tied up in what we do for a living, and I
think there is self-esteem in every job, from cleaning the floors, to
designing a carpet, to creating the carpet, to laying bricks, to being
a doctor or lawyer. Your self-esteem comes from being proud of your
work. It comes from work. You cannot get self-esteem without work, and
you can't be given self-esteem.
We have some newfangled ideas in school that we just give it. You
know, Johnny can't spell, but we are going to pat him on the back and
give him a

[[Page S3919]]

trophy because it will help his self-esteem. No. You have to earn self-
esteem. But if we get a whole class of people who don't work, it is a
problem--the lack of self-esteem, the worry and concern that come from
this. The lack of what it takes to be a robust person is part of the
problem with the sinking into despair and addiction that we have as a
problem in our country.
This is another waste project that comes out of our State Department.
We fund the State Department for diplomacy. I am for that. But we end
up funding things in the State Department, and you wonder if they are
useful for diplomacy or whether they are just pork barrel politics.
This is $850,000 that was given to a for-profit Afghan television
station to support the development of a national cricket league.
Really? So our State Department, which--you know, we have to pay
Ambassadors. We have to pay Assistant Ambassadors. We have got to pay
all the different personnel, those protecting the Ambassadors and our
Embassies. We have to pay for Embassies, the electricity. All that
stuff, we have to do. I am for that.
Where do we get the money to pay for cricket? Why is this the
business of the U.S. Government? But here is the point: Does it ever
get better? Does someone say ``My goodness. Someone stuck this little
earmark in for the National Cricket League''? Does someone ever say
``Oh my goodness. We did this?'' and we reform the process and never do
it again? No. We give them more money. Every year, every Agency in
government gets more money.
If you think there is a waste problem in government and you want to
fix it, it won't get better if you give people more money. You would
have to give them less.
So what I would do is I would give everybody 99 percent of what they
had last year--if it is a terrible Agency like the National Science
Foundation, I might give them 50 percent of what they had last year--
and I would say to them: Prove to me that you are not going to do this
again. They were studying dating back in 1972, and Proxmire lampooned
them. Fifty years later, they are studying selfies. They haven't
learned their lesson.
If you look at the process, they pick the people they want to approve
their projects. You scratch my back; I will scratch yours. You do
cocaine studies? Hey, me too. You approve my cocaine study; I will
approve yours. That is what goes on at the National Science Foundation.
This one is kind of close to home. You may have seen it. We call it
``A Streetcar Named Waste.'' It is about a couple blocks from the
Capitol over on H Street. It is a streetcar they spent millions of
dollars on. For years, there was nobody on it, and for years, it didn't
go anywhere. It was a streetcar to nowhere, basically. But we spent
$1.6 million on this, and basically you could see it as basically a
trolley car with nobody in it.
It was sort of this nostalgia. It is one thing to preserve something,
but it is another thing to create some sort of thing that hasn't
existed for 50 years and nobody rides. And that cost us $1.6 million,
and often you will see it sitting vacant and not in use at all.
Now, we have decided that--I don't even know why they even think they
need this anymore because I think climate alarmism has really
penetrated all of our education. But just in case there is a child in
the country who is not afraid that the oceans will rise and cover the
land and that we are all going to drown and that the polar bears are
going to drown, we need to make sure they know it through a special
video game. So we spent half a million dollars on a video app to try to
convince our kids that the polar bears are drowning sometime soon and
that the end of the world is around the corner.
Will the Chair inform me how much time I have remaining?
The ACTING PRESIDENT pro tempore. Twenty-eight and a half minutes.
Mr. PAUL. I think at this point, I would reserve the remainder of my
time.
Mr. President, I would reserve the remainder of my time.
The PRESIDING OFFICER (Mr. Padilla).
The Senator from Alabama
Mr. TUBERVILLE. Mr. President, today I would like to speak on some
amendments I have for this bill. I think it is important that we are
all heard on this bill, that everybody gets an opportunity to
understand what we are doing here. I think the people back home in
Alabama would really appreciate that. I am getting a lot of emails and
letters about things that are going on with this bill, and I just want
the people back home to understand what we are laying out there to
where we can--our people back in Alabama understand the direction that
we are taking.
You know, I spoke recently about how the President's skinny budget is
disappointing and dangerous and a disservice to our men and women in
uniform.
China actively seeks to outpace the U.S. military, and in some cases,
they are succeeding. This isn't a 5- or 10-year problem; the threat is
right now. It is no secret that the Chinese Communist Party, or the
CCP, wants to replace the United States as the world's top power.
The American people need to be aware of how the Chinese Communist
Party is coming after us--not just with missiles and military might but
with plans to subdue the American spirit.
A significant part of what has made the United States a global
powerhouse is the strength and resilience of our private sector
companies. Whether it is in the technology, healthcare, or energy
sector, American innovation is unravelling. It is what made us the
greatest economy in the history of the world.
China's leaders know this, but rather than go head-to-head in an
honest competition, they have settled for stealing our intellectual
property. Chinese businesses, at the instruction of their government,
lure American companies in. They offer cheap--very cheap--labor. They
promise an exchange of ideas, but they really want to steal our
valuable intellectual property.
China's strategy is to rob, replicate, and replace. China robs
American companies of their intellectual property. They replicate our
technology. They will go after whatever they can to get their hands on
wind turbines, airplane designs, underwater drones, chemicals, or
artificial intelligence technology.
According to the Department of Justice, between 2011 and 2018, more
than 90 percent of the Department's foreign economic espionage cases
involved China. Their goal is to surpass the U.S. economy and gain a
monopoly control over every major industry. We cannot allow them to
succeed.
Even more alarming is what China is doing from within our own
universities. Confucius Institutes currently operate at 55 American
colleges and universities. They actually serve as a beachhead for the
Chinese Government within America's research institutions. Often, just
the presence of a Confucius Institute on campus will enable Chinese
officials to stifle any criticism of the Chinese Government at that
university.
The institutes also allow the Chinese Government to harvest valuable
data from research being conducted at our country's world-class
institutions. I was also glad to see Alabama A&M, a public land-grant,
historically Black university, make the decision to close their
Confucius Institute just last month.
The United States and the entire Western world have given China
valuable concessions for decades. We gave China a seat at the table
thinking they would change, but they have played their hand ruthlessly.
It is past time we recognize that despite all the good intentions, this
strategy has failed and failed miserably. The Chinese Communist Party
has continually spied on its citizens, violently suppressed dissent,
and systematically persecuted religious and ethnic minorities to the
point of genocide.
I sincerely hope President Biden will continue to build on the Trump
administration's momentum in pushing back against China's aggressive
rise.
The TSP, or the Thrift Savings Plan, is the 401(k)-style investment
plan that over 6 million Federal Government employees, both military
and civilian, use for their retirement plan. The plan manages more than
$700 billion in assets.
Back in 2017, the Board that governs the TSP decided to invest
billions in companies with direct ties to the Chinese Communist Party.
Now, the people who put money in this are all of our

[[Page S3920]]

military in this country, all our civilian government officials,
including everybody in this room, in Congress, anybody who works for
the Federal Government. This is their 401(k). Do we want to be
investing in China?
We need congressional action to make President Trump's decision with
the Thrift Savings Plan permanent. I bet if you ask folks who work at
these buildings or who served the United States overseas if they want
their retirement savings going to Chinese companies, you would hear a
loud no.
I will be offering a solution on this to protect our national
security and safeguard the retirements of those who have served our
country with honor and distinction.
The problem with the companies that are being invested in in China--
they don't go by the same rules we go by. They commit corporate
espionage. They don't go by the same standards of unity or same
standards in banking. They take money from the Federal Government and
from our employees to support the military in China.
In October 2019, Senators Rubio and Sheehan sent a letter to the
Federal Retirement Thrift Investment Board regarding the fact that the
Board had reversed a previous decision to keep TSP investment out of
China. The Senators urged the Board to maintain the previous decision,
citing human rights and forced labor violations in China, among other
issues.
I will read that letter now and ask unanimous consent that it be
printed in the Record
There being no objection, the material was ordered to be printed in
the Record, as follows:

U.S. Senate,

Washington, DC, October 22, 2019.
Hon. Michael Kennedy,
Chairman, Federal Retirement Thrift Investment Board,
Washington, DC.
Dear Chairman Kennedy: We write in advance of the Federal
Retirement Thrift Investment Board's upcoming October 28,
2019 meeting to urge the reversal of the Board's previous
decision to track the MSCI All Country World ex-U.S.
Investable Market Index (ACWI ex-US IMI) fund for investments
made in the Thrift Savings Plan (TSP)'s International Stock
Fund (I Fund). As noted in previous correspondence, this
decision would effectively invest the retirement savings of
America's civil servants and military personnel in
constituent companies of the ACWI ex-US IMI that assist in
the Chinese government's military activities, espionage, and
human rights abuses, as well as many other Chinese companies
that lack basic financial transparency.
The constituent firms of MSCI ACWI ex-US IMI include
military contractors to the People's Liberation Army, like
the Aviation Industry Corporation of China and China Unicom,
which supply military aircraft and telecommunications support
to militarized artificial islands in the South China Sea. It
also includes firms like Hangzhou Hikvision Digital
Technology, which was recently added to the U.S. Department
of Commerce's Entity List and produces surveillance equipment
the Chinese government currently uses to oppress and detain
approximately one million Uighur Muslims and other religious
minorities, as well as ZTE Corporation, which was fined last
year for violating U.S. sanctions law for business activity
with Iran and North Korea and which Congress has enacted a
law to prohibit the U.S. federal government from procuring.
Additionally, the basic financial hazards of investment in
firms listed on Chinese exchanges are well documented. A
recent accounting scandal involving one of China's biggest
accounting firms, Ruihua Certified Public Accountants,
highlights the extent of the irregularities in the financial
markets to which federal employees may soon be exposed.
It is our responsibility to these public servants to ensure
that the investment of their retirement savings does not
undermine the American interests for which they serve.
We look forward to the Board's reversal of this decision.
Sincerely,
Marco Rubio,
Senator.
jeanne Shaheen,
Senator.

Mr. TUBERVILLE. To the Honorable Michael Kennedy, Chairman, Federal
Retirement Thrift Investment Board, Washington, DC.

Dear Chairman Kennedy:
We write in advance of the Federal Retirement Thrift
Investment Board's upcoming October 28, 2019 meeting to urge
the reversal of the Board's previous decision to track the
MSCI All Country World ex-U.S. Investable Market Index, (ACWI
ex-US IMI) fund for investments made in the Thrift Savings
Plan . . . International Stock Fund. . . . As noted in
previous correspondence, this decision would effectively
invest the retirement savings of America's civil servants and
military personnel in constituent companies of the ACWI ex-US
IMI that assist in the Chinese government's military
activities, espionage, and human rights abuses, as well as
many other Chinese companies that lack basic transparency.
The constituent firms of MSCI ACWI ex-US IMI include
military contractors to the People's Liberation Army, like
the Aviation Industry Corporation of China and China Unicom,
which supply military aircraft and telecommunications support
to militarized artificial islands in the South China Sea. It
also includes firms like Hangzhou Hikvision Digital
Technology, which was recently added to the U.S. Department
of Commerce's Entity List and produces surveillance equipment
the Chinese government currently uses to oppress and detain
approximately one million Uighur Muslims and other religious
minorities, as well as ZTE Corporation, which was fined last
year for violating U.S. sanctions law for business activity
with Iran and North Korea and which Congress has enacted a
law to prohibit the U.S. federal government from procuring.
Additionally, the basic financial hazards of investment in
firms listed on Chinese exchanges are well documented. A
recent accounting scandal involving one of China's biggest
accounting firms . . . highlights the extent of the
irregularities in the financial markets to which federal
employees may soon be exposed.
It is our responsibility to these public servants to ensure
that the investment of their retirement savings does not
undermine the American interests for which they serve.

We look forward to the Board's reversal of this decision.
It is signed by U.S. Senator Marco Rubio and U.S. Senator Jeanne
Shaheen; U.S. Senator Mitt Romney, U.S. Senator Kristen Gillibrand,
U.S. Senator Josh Hawley, and U.S. Senator Rick Scott.
I wrote an op-ed a few weeks ago about this very situation--a very
unusual situation where we were uplifting the Chinese economy with
Federal tax dollars. I would like to read that to you now.
The Wall Street Journal, May 27, 2021:

If I walked into Byron's Smokehouse in Auburn, Ala., and
asked folks if they'd want their retirement savings invested
in Chinese companies, I'd get laughed out of the restaurant.
So why would we allow the federal Thrift Savings Plan, which
serves approximately six million government employees and
retirees, including [our] military. . . . to do just that?
The board that governs the TSP wants to invest a
considerable portion of its more than $700 billion in assets
in companies with direct ties to the Chinese Communist Party.
President Trump stopped that move from going into effect last
year, but with a new president in office, the order blocking
the board's decision no longer carries weight.

This amendment says that in the future, no matter who the President
is, we will not invest pension money from the Federal Government and
our military into Chinese businesses.
Continuing:

Congressional action is needed to provide a permanent
solution, rather than relying on the whims of executive
action. That's why I am introducing the Prohibiting TSP
Investment in China Act. This bill would bar TSP funds from
being invested in any security of an entity based in China or
in a subsidiary that is owned or operated by a Chinese
company.
Blocking investment of federal retirement savings in
Chinese companies is good for U.S. national security and good
for investors. We shouldn't be funneling capital to firms
that routinely violate U.S. sanctions laws and actively
enable the Chinese Communist Party's military expansion and
persecution of religious minorities. Chinese companies have a
long history of putting investors at serious risk by
manipulating financial reporting statements and failing to
comply with basic audit standards to artificially inflate
their performance.
The Luckin Coffee incident is a prime example. The
Securities and Exchange Commission found that Luckin, the
largest coffee chain in China, defrauded U.S. investors by
lying about the firm's performance and inflating retail sales
by more than $300 million. Luckin settled with the SEC by
agreeing to pay a $180 million fine, but Americans who
invested their retirement savings in funds exposed to
Luckin's deception lost [hundreds of] millions [of dollars].
China-based companies whose stock is traded on U.S.
exchanges are prohibited by Beijing from complying with U.S.
securities and financial-reporting standards. The Chinese
government also blocks U.S. regulators at the Public Company
Accounting Oversight Board from conducting standard
inspections of the Chinese offices of international audit
firms. Congress put investor protections in place for a
reason. If a company is not in compliance, investors are at
risk.
China's refusal to allow its companies to comply with basic
investor safeguards is cause enough to prohibit the
investment of government-employee retirement funds in China
firms, but there are additional reasons to take pause.
Chinese contractors are supplying Beijing's military
buildup, enabling aggressive action in the South China Sea
and toward land-

[[Page S3921]]

based neighbors like Vietnam and India. These firms also
supply the Chinese government with equipment used to spy on
its citizens and commit genocide against religious
minorities, like the Uyghurs of Xinjiang province. Not a
single U.S. dollar should be contributed to the Communist
Party's continuing human-rights abuses.
The American people recognize the economic and military
threat China poses to the U.S. The Prohibiting TSP Investment
in China Act would advance our national-security interests
and restrict funds from flowing to firms beholden to China's
communist regime.

I have got one more article I want to read on the TSP bill warning
that U.S. investment props up the Chinese military, supports political
and religious persecution. This article comes from Breitbart.
[Today in] an appearance on FBN's ``Mornings with Maria,''
Sen. Tommy Tuberville (R-AL) touted an effort to stop
investment from the Thrift Savings Fund into securities
linked to the Chinese economy.
The so-called Prohibiting TSP Investment in China Act would
stop halt that investment, which according to the Alabama
Republican lawmaker, could be used in a way to further
China's aggressive tactics on the world stage.
``[I] can remember back in 2017, you talked a lot about
this,'' he said. ``And President Trump, you know, there's a
board of five people that control the pension fund, this
pension fund is government workers, federal workers, such as
Congress, myself, and all of [us on Capitol Hill, government
workers, and includes] $700 billion.
So what we want to do is make sure that we don't prop up
the military, of the Chinese nor their political and
religious persecution. . . . We want to go with companies
that are going to go by the rules, fight for democracy. And
at the end of the day, this legislation pretty much says,
this is a message that sends zero tolerance to the Chinese to
block their aggression towards United States and the rest of
the world.

On defense spending, our job as elected officials is to make sure
those who have stepped up to defend our country have the resources they
need to do their job. The President's recent budget proposal for the
Department of Defense does not--I repeat, does not--give our men and
women in uniform the tools to do their job.
It is clear that President Biden thinks we don't need further
investment in our military. If it is clear, he thinks it is OK to ask
our men and women to do more with less, and that is impossible.
The world has changed a lot in 50 years. When President Biden first
came to Washington in 1972, there were two superpowers, the United
States of America and the Soviet Union. Back then, we spent 6.5 percent
of our Federal budget on national defense--6.5 percent. Today, we spend
less than 3.5 percent--a huge drop.
Secretary Austin has said that China remains the top ``pacing
threat'' for our military.
Simply keeping pace with China is not enough. We have got to outpace
all of our adversaries, but doing that requires smart, substantial, and
strategic investment in our military--much more investment than the
President and many people here in Congress publicly propose.
President Biden says he wants his administration to trust the experts
on things like COVID, but this defense budget shows he doesn't apply
that same principle to the Pentagon.
Here is what ADM Charles Richard, Commander of the U.S. Strategic
Command, who is over our nuclear capabilities, said in last week's
hearing to the Senate Armed Services Committee:

I have what I need to deter today. . . . But I need it
modernized. There's no remaining margin of error.

His warning is clear. We must modernize our greatest deterrent and
keep peace among our adversaries with our nuclear arsenal. The free
world, meaning the United States, works and sleeps under a nuclear
umbrella that hasn't been updated to the digital age.
We are also in a new space race, and it is a race we have no choice
that we must win. In the next 20 years, the total cost of just arming
space will be $2 trillion, and we have no choice but to win in space.
The Chinese want to weaponize this new frontier of war, and we are
falling behind. We are also falling behind Russia. We have got to make
a change in attitude toward what we are doing in space, and it starts
right here in this room.
I heard about the growing gap between us and the Chinese when I
visited the Army Materiel Command at Redstone Arsenal a few weeks ago
in Huntsville, AL. These folks shared with me how desperately we need
to modernize our space-based systems that contribute to our missile
defense. The U.S. Army is the largest consumer of space products, and
our military relies on the Materiel Command to provide the resources to
train our soldiers for research, development of new equipment, and
defend our Nation. They should not have to beg us or the President of
the United States for the money to invest in the capabilities that we
need. At the end of the day, our generals' main report to us is, ``We
can afford to survive.'' Think about that quote: ``We can afford to
survive.''
We also need to invest in the safety of our service men and women,
especially in aviation. Currently, the average age of an airplane in
our military is older than the pilots flying it.
Alabama is home to Fort Rucker, to which every Army helicopter pilot
comes to get their training. When I visited the folks at Fort Rucker,
they told me about the very real need for increased flight training
hours for pilots, which requires more investment and prioritization in
the defense budget.
Alabama stands ready to continue to build our military so we can
maintain our status as a preeminent fighting force in the world. We
have hundreds of contractors and more than 200,000 employed in the
defense sector across our State in Alabama. Those top-notch men and
women support our world-class military installations, from the
shipbuilders in Mobile to Redstone Arsenal in Huntsville, and many
places in between.
Telling our forces to fight a war with outdated tools is like giving
a football team some leather helmets and decades old, poorly fitted
pads and expecting them to compete against modern equipment. But that
is exactly what this administration's defense budget is requesting our
military to do. Frankly, it is a huge disappointment coming from our
Commander in Chief. We cannot let our men and women down.
In the coming weeks, I will be working with colleagues on the
National Defense Authorization Act and budget that will enable our
military to do the job better today and prepare for all the challenges
tomorrow. I am willing to keep fighting for the United States by
investing in the men and women who keep us safe. I urge my colleagues
and President Biden to do the same.

Empowering Law Enforcement Act

Mr. President, on supporting our law enforcement, being a law
enforcement officer is, if not the toughest, one of the toughest jobs
that there is. Sometimes it is taken for granted. But it is also
foundational to a functioning society like the United States. We rely
on these brave men and women to protect and serve our country every
day. We are lucky to have many brave and honorable officers in all of
our States across the country.
I think about Officer Jonathan Espino from the Decatur Police
Department in Alabama. Last year, he responded to a medical call, a man
trying to bring his mom back to life, trying to perform CPR. This
officer took over for the man after he arrived and began CPR. Just
before medical personnel arrived, the woman's heart started beating
again and she was gasping for air. This officer saved her life. It
could have been you, your mom, or one of your family.
And I think of Officer Wesley Harrison of the Abbeville Police
Department in Alabama. Officer Harrison received a call that a woman
was in a burning building. Officer Harrison arrived on the scene and,
minutes later, after going into the building, came out carrying an
elderly woman out of the structure, putting his life in danger, with
the help of another investigator. These police officers went above and
beyond the call of duty, and they saved her life.
That is what police officers do. So when you get up every day and you
put that uniform on of a law enforcement officer across this country,
no matter who you are, you put that badge on your chest, you put that
gun on your side, it could be the last time that you walk out your
front door.
Not many jobs have those things that could happen to you. Most of us
have jobs where you go, you work, and you know when you are expected to
go home every day. But not police officers, especially in this day and
time.

[[Page S3922]]

Every day, we are having problems across this country where police
officers are even set up. They are set up by the criminals, and they
are shot and some are killed. That is what has happened to these law
enforcement officers every day of their career, which is why I firmly
believe we need not less but more support for law enforcement.
They need more training so they can be better at handling difficult
situations, and this is especially true as we see an uptick of mental
health addiction across this country. It is getting worse every day.
They need targeted resources so they can recruit the best and the
brightest for these important roles in the community and across our
country. Let's, as a group, invest in the resources that can assure all
law enforcement officers are truly good for the people across every
State and across our country. We owe that to them. They keep us safe.
Right now, unless State and law enforcement agencies have an
agreement with Immigration and Customs Enforcement, if a rural law
enforcement sheriff or city official encounters an illegal immigrant in
the course of performing their normal duties in their hometowns, they
cannot arrest or detain that individual for immigration purposes.

I want you to think about that. This year we are going to have
between 1 million and 2 million illegal immigrants come across our
border. We don't know who they are. We don't know where they have been.
We don't know if they have any skills. But they are coming across our
border, and it is an amazing sight.
I spent a day down there watching this, watching our Customs and
Border Protection agents not be agents or law enforcement. They were
doing custodial work. They were doing things that they had to do just
to process these men and women across our border.
And I say ``our border.'' I say ``coming across our border.'' I need
to change that because, when I was at the border just a few weeks ago,
that border does not belong to us anymore. It belongs to the cartel.
It costs $3,000 to $10,000 to come across the Rio Grande, sometimes
maybe more. They are coming from countries all over the world. Some
people think that they are just coming from countries south of our
border--Mexico and in South America. That is totally false. They are
coming from China. They are coming from the Middle East. They are
coming from parts unknown, and we have no clue who these people are.
Just a few years ago--I have a farm in Auburn, AL. I raise deer. I
can show you how to lose money. I have a high fence. I get a call one
day from the police department--the sheriff's department--saying:
Coach, we need you to come down to the sheriff's department.
So I go down. There had been a sting operation going on with a group
of people who were not too far from my farm. They had a compound built.
Unfortunately for their group, they had gone to Atlanta, which is an
hour and a half away, to purchase some AR-15s on the street. So they
were looking for gun sellers.
So, as they found out that they could buy these guns, they go back to
their place just off my farm there in Auburn. Unfortunately for them,
the FBI was undercover, and they followed them back and they busted
them.
I can't remember the number--four, five, six--but they had a
compound, and what they were doing? They were teaching people how to
make bombs. Now, this is in Auburn, AL. This is not in New York City or
Chicago, Orlando, or Miami. And they were building bombs and teaching
people how to build bombs. Obviously, they were arrested. They were all
from the Middle East and had no papers. Our country had no record of
why they were here, how they got here, but they were here. We have
these cells all over the country. That is the reason we need a secure
border.
So right now, after they come across the border, we have what we call
immigration police, better known as ICE. If you come across the border,
the people who have authority over the people who come who are here
illegally--ICE has the authority, not the local or State law
enforcement. Now, they can work directly with them, but if State and
local law enforcement come up on people who are illegal, they have no
jurisdiction. That is what is wrong with our immigration laws.
Last year--or this last 5 months--ICE apprehensions have gone down 70
percent because of the rules and regulations that have been put on by
this administration. We can't allow that to happen. We are losing the
sanctity, the security, and the sovereignty of our country, and it is a
domino effect. When they come in, they are sent all over the country.
When I left McAllen, TX, a few weeks ago to fly back, half the plane
was full of people that were not Americans. They were people from other
places, people who were here illegally. They were here with young kids.
There were young mothers. And they were here without any family.
I sat next to a young lady who was probably 19 years old. She
couldn't speak English. She had probably a 4- or 5-month-old with her.
She cried the entire flight from McAllen, TX, to Houston. I helped her
try to find her gate. She was going from Houston to Denver. I tried to
get somebody there to explain to me and to her--to communicate--who is
going to pick you up when you get there, trying to help her out.
She had no clue. She was just going to Denver with a 4- or 5-month-
old. She had no clue about our country, about who to meet, who was
going to feed her, what kind of job she was going to have, or what roof
was going to be over her head. And if that doesn't shake you up, I
don't know what does.
I love people. I have been in education all my life. I love kids. And
we are doing these people wrong at the border. And if we don't wake up
and smell the roses, we are going to have many, many thousands of
deaths on our hands.
We all live in great societies and great homes and have money in our
pocket. We have food to put in our mouth, and we take care of our kids.
You imagine if this country went to heck in a hand basket and we had to
go to Mexico with no money, no ID, no clue about their environment or
their language. How would you make it? How would you make a living? How
would you get by?
I promise you, the people down there could survive a lot better than
us because they have had hard times. We are spoiled. We have everything
given to us because we live in the greatest country on the face of the
Earth. And I know some people are in poverty, but let me tell you
something, the poorest people in our country have it a hundred times
better than even the middle class in some of these other countries--the
middle class.
So the Federal Government will not enforce these laws, and our State
law enforcement officers should be empowered in any way possible that
they can. So my Empowering Law Enforcement Act is about common sense.
It is about giving the right to local and State law enforcement
officers across this country to help out the illegals that have come in
this country--not that we are against them. We love everybody in this
country.
My God, folks, we have got to help them. We have got to help them.
And if we just turn them out there with no sense of security and nobody
who can help them--law enforcement cannot help them, unless it is ICE--
they are on their own. I can't imagine. I cannot imagine.
The border has been dominating the headlines, but if you talk to a
lot of people, even in this room, you would think that it was a
fairytale. We need to wake up and smell the roses. Everybody in this
room, whether you are a Democrat, Libertarian, Republican--if you are
an American, we should care about this border.
I am disappointed with our media in this country. They act like it is
not even happening. They will have blood on their hands if this
continues to happen.
We want to help. We want legal immigration. We are for people coming.
We were all, at one point in time, immigrants. My gosh, folks, we have
to wake up. We have to wake up and understand that we need to help and
not hurt. If they are coming in, give us an opportunity--give us an
opportunity to help, not just put them on an airplane, send them
somewhere, and forget about them. That is not the way the American
people do it.
There is a high school in Alabama. When I was campaigning, I went
into

[[Page S3923]]

that high school, and we were talking about certain things, curriculum,
and finally the superintendent said: Coach, when you get to Washington,
DC, I want you to understand this. We have a great school system here.
We want to help people. We have gone from 20 percent illegal immigrants
in our school to almost 80 percent in a year and a half. Eighty
percent. We can't help them. We don't have enough people who speak
their language. If you can't communicate, you can't teach.
If we are going to do this, if we are going to have immigrants in
this country, my gosh, let's put a plan together as a group of people
who should care and help these people, help them get off to a life even
half of what maybe we might have. That is our job. That is our
responsibility. God put us on this green Earth to help people, not to
help ourselves. We are all fortunate, but there are millions and
millions of people who are less fortunate than us.
So as I say today, I want to help the people who are coming across
the border. I want to help them. But if we don't have dialogue and we
don't have media down there processing what is going on to where we can
put pressure on our public officials all over this country, we will not
be able to help them, and you are going to have people dying, and you
are going to have people who are going to have blood on their hands.
I am one to stand up and say that I am willing to do anything in this
venue to help the people coming across that border because it will make
us a better country, and that is what we need. We need a better country
because we are a country of immigrants. But right now, we are a country
of spoiled brats is what we are. So let's help. The media needs to
help. We all need to be on board with this.
I yield my time.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Kentucky

Government Spending

Mr. PAUL. Mr. President, a group of us chose to filibuster this bill
because we think it wastes money. We think it gives money to one of the
most wasteful Agencies in government, the National Science Foundation.
Since the early 1970s and since William Proxmire began giving the
Golden Fleece Award, for 50 years, there has been a recurrence of waste
from the National Science Foundation, from NIH, and from even the State
Department. We discussed earlier some of these, and I have a handful
more. I think the American people should know where their money is
going to.
The NIH spent $2 million in research to see if using a hot tub can
lower stress. Really? I think we probably could have just agreed to
that, but no, we had to spend $2 million to study, if you are soaking
in a hot tub, whether that helps to relieve your stress.
The NIH also spent about $1 million to see if they could help people
overcome their fear of dentists. Really?
NIH spent almost $7 million of cancer research money to create an
automatically flushing smart toilet. That is right--$7 million for an
automatically flushing toilet. And here is the bonus: The toilet will
actually take pictures of your derriere from the inside of the toilet
bowl should you wish to have those for posterity. Seven million dollars
for a smart toilet. How does this go on and nobody does anything? Do
you know what we do? We flush more money down this smart toilet. We
give them more money, and nobody bats an eye.
This is the problem of government. Nobody denies the waste. Nobody
denies the ridiculous projects that are being funded. Yet, year in,
year out, it continues.
We need to reform the process. We need to have a taxpayer advocate on
the committee who votes on the projects. We need to have somebody with
a grain of salt who is voting on these projects, somebody who says that
studying whether humans will eat ants to curb global warming--whether
that is a useful expenditure of $3 million, studying whether or not
humans will eat enough ants to keep the globe from warming.
This goes on. The people at home are like: How could this happen? How
could you spend money on this? But it happens year in, year out,
because we never vote for less money. It is always more. So a group of
Senators here today are filibustering this bill because somebody has to
point out that the waste and abuse of money goes on.
The National Science Foundation--the king of wasteful spending--spent
$100,000 to teach social scientists how to apply for grants. So it is
not bad enough that we are just, you know, handing out money like it
grows on trees, but we have to teach people how to get more of the free
money.
There actually was another cache of money that went to Central
American countries trying to teach them how to get more of our money.
Really? We are actually teaching foreigners how to apply to get grant
money from our government that is $28 trillion in the hole
We are annually $1 trillion in the hole, and the last couple of
years, we are $3 to $4 trillion because of all these COVID bailouts and
all of this crazy government run amok, and at the same time we are $2,
$3 trillion in the hole a year, we are sending $100,000 to teach people
how to get more grants.
The USAID spent $48 million helping disconnected Tunisian youth to
not feel like they are a problem to society, to help them cope with
modern society. Well, look, coping is not easy for young people
anywhere around the world, but I guarantee that $48 million that we
don't have, that we have to borrow from China to send to Tunisia, is
not a good expenditure of money; probably helps no one; probably
enriched some contractors somewhere; somebody steals some off the top.
There is always a little skimming operation. It was once estimated that
as much as half to 70 percent of foreign aid was skimmed off the top
either by corrupt dictators in the countries receiving the money or
simply by graft throughout the government that we send the money to.
Often, the foreign aid money was going to countries with people who had
dictators for 20, 30, 40 years, and we were giving money to dictators.
The National Science Foundation spent $4.6 million to study the
connection between getting drunk and falling down. Now, you would think
that would be obvious. You get drunk, you fall down. But, no, we had to
go ahead and study whether getting drunk and falling down was something
that happens. We spent $4 million on, if you get drunk, will you fall
down? This is insane.
Not one person--a few of us but not a majority will stand up and say:
Enough is enough. The NSF needs less money, not more.
The NIH spent $36 million to research why stress makes hair turn
gray. I am at the age I need to know that one. I mean, why does stress
make your hair turn gray? Really? Nobody would pay for this. If we got
100 assembled Americans and said ``Vote on whether or not you should
spend $36 million studying why your hair turns gray,'' not one
rational, commonsense American would vote for this. Yet this Congress
is going to increase the budget of the National Science Foundation by
68 percent.
The National Science Foundation spent $2.5 million to research the
effects of daydreaming. I am not kidding. You can't make this stuff up.
So what are we going do? Increase their budget $29 billion in more
money for the National Science Foundation. They ought to be ashamed.
One side of the aisle doesn't give a fig how much we are spending,
but the other side of the aisle--the aisle that I reside on on the
right--pretends to care about the debt, but the majority of them will
vote for this monstrous bill.
The National Science Foundation used $1.5 million to study how to
make tomatoes taste better. They spent a lot of money. They spent a lot
of time. They wrote up their report. And this is shocking. This is
groundbreaking research. They found that if you add sugar to tomatoes,
they taste better.
You can't make this stuff up. But it goes on and on and on.
I am glad to be joined on the floor by the Senator from Utah. I will
reserve the remainder of my time and pass the baton.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Utah.

S. 1260

Mr. LEE. Mr. President, I have significant concerns with this
legislation. I have made no ambiguity about that. I have been very
clear from the outset that this bill concerns me, in part because it
involves an attempt by the United States of America to compete with
China but on terms that don't favor us, on a playing field that isn't

[[Page S3924]]

ours, and in areas that play to our weaknesses, not our strengths. We
ought to be playing to our strengths and not our weaknesses.
Unfortunately, this bill does not get it right.
But separate and apart from my concerns regarding the merits of this
legislation, which we will get back to in a moment, I want to talk for
a moment about the procedural concerns that I have had. There have been
a number of people in the Senate arguing over the last few hours--some
in the Senate Chamber, some in the media--that we have had a very
thorough floor process; that this has been regular order at its best.
I appreciate the fact that we have had 2 weeks of floor consideration
time; 2 weeks, that is, on Senate time, which is just not 2 actual
weeks. It is not 2 calendar weeks, not even 2 business weeks. It is a
shorter subset of that. But never mind, it is a good thing that we at
least had 2 weeks set aside to do this on the Senate floor. So that is
a good thing.
It is not sufficient, however, to suggest that because we have had
hundreds of amendments filed and because we have had a number of votes
on amendments and because a few weeks have elapsed since this bill came
out of committee, that that somehow means it is regular order and
regular order of a sort that we ought to try to replicate.
You have to remember that regular order needs to be evaluated. It
needs to be measured against several things. In other words, a simple
resolution designating National Sofa Care Month probably need not
receive a lot of floor time or a lot of opportunities for amendments,
but the more substantive and the more costly, economically or
otherwise, a particular bill might be, the more demanding regular order
ought to be.
Regular order is not satisfied, particularly in a bill like this one
that is likely to cost $200 billion or more and that is 2,000-plus
pages long and that deals with some very significant geopolitical and
economic issues--it is not something that you can really call regular
order, when you are addressing a bill like that, when you are
constantly making changes to it.
We talked last night about the fact that this legislation started out
in committee a few weeks ago. It started out in committee where, I
believe, it was somewhere in the range of 150 to 200 pages. It came out
of committee, and it was longer than that; it was a few hundred pages.
Then, over time, it has gotten bigger. It grew to 14- or 1,500 pages.
By yesterday afternoon, it had grown an additional 900 pages, and then
by 10:59 p.m. last night, it grew by a few hundred more pages. It is
not just the addition of an additional page of text that triggers more
concern. One has to understand how the entire piece of legislation
interacts, how nefarious provisions, including the late-breaking
amendments that we received for the first time at 10:59 p.m. last
night--how those affect everything else.

Just as importantly, one has to, ought to, certainly have the ability
to communicate to one's constituents what is in the legislation,
seeking input from them so that any votes can be informed by having the
voters informed and having them aware of what is in the legislation.
One cannot make very significantly drastic changes to legislation in
the middle of the night and then claim that it is regular order and
that regular order demands an immediate vote on that measure.
What I and a number of my colleagues have been focused on, as we
debated this through the night and starting early this morning when we
reconvened, has been simple. We just want more time before being asked
to vote on this measure.
It is not an unreasonable request, given that you are dealing with
legislation that is over 2,000 pages long and that is likely to cost
somewhere in the neighborhood of a quarter of a trillion dollars. That
is a lot of money, and the way in which we spend it will undoubtedly
have profound implications not just for years but for decades to come.
We need to, we ought to, we really must endeavor to understand what
exactly this is going to do. In order to do that, we have to have text,
and that does, in fact, matter. It is not something you can easily
dismiss as an argument that says this has been regular order because it
has been on the Senate floor for 2 weeks. When it changes as much as
this one has, it expands as much as this one has, when it is as long as
this one is and involves this amount of money and this many very
significant far-reaching ramifications, it is not unreasonable for us
to want more time to vote on it, to consider it, to seek public input,
and to allow the American people to know what is in it before we cast
our votes. It is a simple common courtesy that we ought to have
extended to ourselves automatically, rather than trying to rush to a
final vote in the dark of night.
On the merits of the legislation itself, it is important to remember
that we got here because we are at something of a crossroads with
China. We have all kinds of potential threats--some of them economic in
nature, some perhaps cultural, some perhaps military, and some maybe
involve cyber security.
But we have an awkward relationship with China, and it is one that we
have to be focused on. That is why it is not a bad thing, in and of
itself, that we consider legislation to try to deal with that. That
doesn't mean that every piece of legislation designed to deal with the
problem is, itself, something that must be passed.
You see, if we are going to try to pass something telling the
American people that what we are passing will lead to a better outcome
with China and our ability to compete with China--if we are going to
make that argument, then we have to be able to back that up. In order
to be able to back that up, we have to put ourselves in a position
where we can be our best selves, where we know we are poised for
success. We have to consider exactly what kind of strategy we are
deploying, what kind of competitor we want to be.
The legislation before us--the legislation that has been renamed but
started out and to this moment includes the Endless Frontier Act--is
something that aims to counter China, primarily by boosting technology
research and development. I think it is fair to say that is its primary
aim.
This is something that nobody dislikes. Nobody dislikes research and
development. To my knowledge, these are good things and, undoubtedly,
our ability to compete with China will depend on the nature and extent
of our investments in research and development.
But that does beg the question, What is the best kind of research and
development? Is it best when it follows from, and is directed by, it
could be modified along the way as a result of self-interest, rightly
understood--enlightened self-interest--free markets, the decisions of
individuals who have something at stake or is it best when government
acts, when government directs it, when it is done by Federal
bureaucrats instead of innovators, technology experts, and people who
have something that belongs to them--an idea, an ability to make
something--people who actually know how to see their ideas all the way
through to the end and are willing to make the necessary sacrifices
along the way to see to its success?
You see, when you start to confuse government research and
development with actual research and development--that is private
nongovernmental research and development--you run into some problems.
Some of this, I think, perhaps stems from a misapprehension, a
misunderstanding of the nature of government itself and the
capabilities of government in any system to do things
We have to remember that government, ultimately, is best understood
as the official use of coercive force. That is what government is. It
is force--force with the perimeter of official authority, force and
taxation backed up by force. That is what government is.
I don't mean to say that in a dismissive way. We need government.
Government can't operate without force. It can't collect taxes without
force. It can't enforce laws without force. We need government for that
reason--to make sure, first and foremost, that we don't hurt each
other, that we aren't harmed by outside aggressors who would harm us,
and that we don't take that which doesn't belong to us. We need
governments to do that. Only governments can do that. That is why we
have governments.
Political philosophers going back centuries, including many of those
who influenced the founding of the United

[[Page S3925]]

States of America, who influenced the documents, including the
Declaration of Independence and the Constitution of the United States,
those who influenced the waging of America's Revolutionary War
understood that, at a fundamental level, the purpose of government is
to protect life and liberty and property.
You see, if we left individuals to do that on their own, they might
be able to do that, but human flourishing really wouldn't occur in that
circumstance. If everyone had to be the law for him or herself, human
nourishing wouldn't occur. When government exists, it frees people. It
frees them, not just because freedom sounds great in the abstract or
because it is fun to yell at a rally or it looks good on a bumper
sticker, but we like freedom because of the things that free people do
when they are allowed to be free, when they are able to come together
and form what I refer to as the ``twin pillars'' of American
exceptionalism. In fact, I would go so far as to call them the twin
pillars of any thriving human civilization. Those twin pillars are free
markets and voluntary institutions of civil society.
When you have robust free markets and voluntary institutions of civil
society, human beings do better. They can't, of course, function in a
state of anarchy nor can they function in the absence of a government
because that always involves anarchy necessarily.
But when there is government and that government properly understands
its role of protecting life, liberty, and property, it is freeing and
liberating, and human beings in that setting can do amazing things. It
is what has led to the development of the greatest civilization of the
strongest economy the world has ever known. It is what has led more
people out of poverty than any government program ever can, ever could,
ever has, or ever will.
When we lose sight of what government is, when we start to forget
that government is just force and taxation backed up by the use of
force, it can easily be manipulated for nefarious ends. It is not that
government is bad. Government isn't inherently good or evil. Government
consists of that principle of force backed up with the legitimacy of
the imprimatur of the State or, in our case, a union of States.
It is that force that is necessary. That same force that is necessary
can become destructive of the very ends that it was created in order to
uphold and protect and defend, so we can't lose sight of it. We can't
lose sight of the fact that government is neither inherently good nor
inherently evil. Government doesn't have eyes to see you. It doesn't
have arms to embrace you. It doesn't have a heart with which to love
you. It is neither omnipotent nor omniscient, not all-knowing, not all-
powerful. It just is force and taxation backed up by force.
So the further afield you take government authority and you take it
away from the protection of life, liberty, and property, quite
ironically and very tragically, it can become destructive of the very
ends that it was created to serve.
One of the ways in which we see this manifest from time to time is
when people will harness the immense power of government and the
immense financial resources that can be accumulated by a government
through the power of taxation backed up by force for their own
political ends--even worse, for their own economic ends. When you see
people's political ends marrying up with the financial interests of
those who want to capitalize off of government itself, bad things can
happen.
Ultimately, the American people become poorer as a result of
government action; that is, every dollar that we spend is a dollar that
won't otherwise be spent--could otherwise be spent in the free market
doing good, resulting in everything from charitable contributions to
job creation, and many, many other things that support our ability to
be free and prosperous as a nation.
China, importantly, doesn't quite see it this way. They didn't get
the memo. They are not steeped in Hobbes, Locke, Montesquieu. They are
not steeped in the stories that we know about our American Revolution.
They weren't raised understanding that their country became a country
as a result of their conscious choice to depart from a mother country
after that mother country had proven itself to be menacing, had proven
itself to be a government that was taxing them too much, regulating
them too aggressively, sending them off to war, then making them pay
for those wars, all without allowing them fair representation within
that system of government. They weren't steeped in that.
They were steeped in different traditions, and they have chosen a
very different set of paths. They have, essentially, a command-and-
control economy. That is what a country that is run by a Communist
Party does; it commands and it controls. It is a very different
mindset.
It is a mindset that focuses not on free markets and civil society.
In that kind of system, in a system run by a Communist Party, with a
command-and-control economy, the state is everything. The government is
imbued culturally with almost a sense of reverence, entitled to
deference. People assume--or they are at least asked to assume, and
many are forced to play along with the assumption--that it has a degree
of omniscience, omnipotence, and always the best interests of the
people; the ability to foresee and prepare for the future and use the
immense force of government to bring about their aims. In every single
respect, the Chinese regime grows and centralizes the power of
government always at the expense of free markets and free citizens.
This is an experiment that has expanded into dangerous and even deadly
territory.
Let's just consider, for a moment, China's record on human rights.
China has gone so far as to enslave and subject the Tibetan and Uighur
people into forced labor, reeducation, and torture.
Under China's infamous one-child policy, it has brutally and
barbarically forced families to undergo IUD implantation,
sterilization, and abortion.
China, of course, has a long, dark history of religious persecution
and of silencing dissidents of every stripe. Under President Xi
Jinping, Chinese authorities have detained millions of Muslims and
arrested thousands of Christians. They have seized control of Tibetan
monasteries and closed or demolished dozens of Buddhist and Taoist
temples.
You see, the destruction of sacred places not built by the
government, not designed by the government seems to be a hallmark
characteristic of Communist systems because sacred places must be for
the betterment of the government, and if they are not, Communist
regimes don't like them and often do everything they can to destroy
them and the communities that formed them. They have even practiced
forced organ harvesting of members of the Falun Gong religion.
Or consider China's actions in the realm of foreign policy. In true
imperialist form, it is pushing its Belt and Road Initiative--a
massive, predatory infrastructure project, stretching from East Asia to
Europe, designed to massively expand its coercive economic and
political influence.
It has spread Confucius Institutes across American campuses,
entangling American universities with Chinese state policies, and
turning them into megaphones for Chinese propaganda.
In multilateral organizations, China continuously undermines
longstanding democratic norms, instituting policies that, instead,
benefit the Chinese Communist Party's authoritarian values. It has also
held a tight cronyist, command-and-control grip over its economy,
heavily subsidizing industries with money that it has taken through its
power of taxation, backed up by its use of force, ultimately picking
winners and losers, which tend to be more reflective of those close to
leadership within the Chinese Communist Party than those who build a
better product or work better to serve their fellow beings.
While China has picked up some steam through these actions, we must
not--we can't ever--ignore that whatever momentum it may have acquired
is of dubious success and doubtful sustainability over the long run.
China, under the control of the Chinese Communist Party, has, in
reality, one of the least efficient economies in the world. In terms of
GDP per capita, it is not at the top of the heap. In fact, one could
say that it is very close to the bottom of the heap, next to Cuba and
Kazakhstan.
It turns out that political corruption and state-owned enterprises
come with

[[Page S3926]]

some financial dead weight too. Now, the financial costs alone of
enslaving, sterilizing, and brainwashing 12.8 million Uighurs and other
oppressed groups is steep, even as the human cost of this indefensible
moral depravity is far worse and infinitely steeper.
Of course, killing future generations' potential through abortion is
also as foolish as it is inhumane. As a result of its decades-long
abortion and one-child or two-child policy, China is on track to lose a
third of its workforce--a third--and age out faster than any society in
modern history. The ratio of workers to retirees in China, which is
currently 8 to 1, is projected to whittle down to just 2 to 1 in the
coming decades, with only two employees for every retiree. China's
pension system, which is already showing very significant signs of
buckling, will inevitably crack under pressure.
Now, it is true that China is aggressive, and it is true that China
is really big, but it is not ironclad in its position of global
strength. As its population ages more and more and as more of its land
falls into wasted, polluted squalor, it will have neither the
inhabitants nor the resources to continue on its current course.
There is nothing about China's principles or China's trajectory that
we should seek to emulate--no, not in the slightest. In nearly every
single way, the Chinese regime consolidates power to trample over the
rights of men and women and quash free expression, the free exercise of
religion, and free enterprise.

All of us in America who know of our own struggles know of the bad
things that can happen when human beings and governments combine to
take undo advantage of difficult circumstances of minorities, whether
racial, ethnic, in language, religious, or otherwise. Bad things
happen. China has not only allowed bad things to happen; it has made
them happen. It has directed that they happen. It has been the reason
that they happen.
Nothing could be more antithetical to the American system of
government or to the American way of life or to our values. In fact, it
is just the opposite formula that has made us the greatest civilization
the world has ever known, with the strongest economy, with the greatest
opportunities, with immense, upward economic mobility. This is uniquely
a land in which someone can be born into poverty and, in most
circumstances, carry the reasonable hope and expectation that, if one
works hard, one day, one can retire comfortably.
The Founders gave us a Constitution precisely to disperse and limit
the power of the Federal Government and to keep the power in government
as close and accountable to the people as possible. We focus on this,
and we focus on principles of freedom and of liberty, not just because
they sound nice. We do these things because it is how human beings
thrive. We do these things because it is the best way to protect life
and liberty and property. We do these things because it is the only way
to allow for upward economic mobility and the thriving of the human
condition.
We should continue to double down on those things. We should continue
to make sure that our markets are free and that our institutions of
civil society are voluntary and robust. We do that not by expanding
government but by allowing human beings to do what they do best and by
allowing them to be free.
I yield the floor.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. The majority leader.

Order of Procedure

Mr. SCHUMER. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that
notwithstanding rule XXII, at a time to be determined on Tuesday, June
8, the Senate resume consideration of S. 1260; that all postcloture
time be considered expired and the Senate vote in relation to Cornyn
amendment No. 1858; that if a Budget Act point of order is raised and a
motion to waive is made following disposition of the Cornyn amendment,
the Senate vote on the motion to waive; that if waived, the Senate vote
on substitute amendment No. 1502, as amended; that the cloture motion
with respect to S. 1260 be withdrawn; and that the bill be considered
read a third time, the Senate vote on passage of S. 1260, as amended,
if amended, with 60 affirmative votes required for passage, all with no
intervening action or debate; further, that the Senate now vote on the
motion to invoke cloture on the motion to proceed to Calendar No. 60,
H.R. 3233; that following the cloture vote, notwithstanding rule XXII,
the Senate proceed to executive session, and the cloture motions with
respect to Executive Calendar Nos. 111 and 134 be withdrawn, and the
Senate vote on confirmation of the nominations in the order listed;
that if confirmed, the motions to reconsider be considered made and
laid upon the table and the President be immediately notified of the
Senate's action; finally, that following the disposition of Calendar
No. 134, the Senate resume legislative session.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. Is there an objection?
Without objection, it is so ordered.

Unanimous Consent Agreement

Mr. SCHUMER. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent to use leader
remarks and that Senators Klobuchar and Peters be permitted to speak
for up to 2 minutes each before the vote.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. Without objection, it is so ordered.
Mr. SCHUMER. Mr. President, now, let me just tell the public and the
Members what this does. It is something we proposed. It assures that
there is a vote on the January 6 Commission in the next hour. It
assures that the vote occurs in the light of day, not at 3 in the
morning.
It also assures that votes on the U.S. Innovation and Competition Act
will occur and prevail as soon as we return in June.
This is a good solution because we get to vote on the Commission.
And let me just say this to my Republican colleagues and to the
country: This Commission is desperately needed. What has been
perpetrated by President Trump over the last several months is the Big
Lie--the Big Lie that the elections were fixed, that he is rightfully
President.
Nothing is more corrosive to our democracy than a view that elections
are not on the level. Yet that has been propagated by Donald Trump and
many of his allies.
A Commission can get to the bottom of this in a clear way. It is a
bipartisan Commission. It is a down-the-middle Commission. There was
significant Republican input by the Republican leader in the House and
the Republican ranking member of the relevant committee.
So this is right down the middle. If our Republican friends vote
against this, I would ask them: What are you afraid of? The truth? Are
you afraid that Donald Trump's Big Lie will be dispelled? Are you
afraid that all of the misinformation that has poured out will be
rebutted by a bipartisan, down-the-middle Commission?
This is about a democracy. It is about the future of our democracy.
The Big Lie has eroded that democracy, and we must do everything we can
to rebut it. This is not a Democratic or Republican obligation. This is
an American obligation.
Our democracy--our beautiful, more than-two-century-old democracy is
at more risk because of the lies that have been perpetrated by
President Trump and his allies than it has been in a very long time,
and this Commission is a great antidote to that.
So I hope we can get broad support and move forward. I will speak
more after the vote on this issue.
I yield the floor.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Minnesota.

January 6 Commission

Ms. KLOBUCHAR. Mr. President, as chair of the Rules Committee, I
implore my colleagues to vote for this Commission.
On January 6, we all walked over that broken glass. We all saw the
spray paint on the wall. We all stood huddled together in shelter, and
most of us--most of us, the vast majority of us, Democrats and
Republicans--voted to uphold our democracy that night late into the
evening.
But it doesn't end there. I give to you the words of slain officer
Brian Sicknick's mother. An ordinary woman, who never has been involved
in politics, she is now forced to do extraordinary things and lobby
Members of this body to simply get to the truth. She said this: ``Not
having a January 6 Commission to look into exactly what occurred is a
slap in the faces of all the officers who did their jobs that day.''

[[Page S3927]]

For months, national security experts have called for a bipartisan
Commission. Yesterday, the Department of Homeland Security former
Secretaries from the Bush and Obama administrations--Chertoff, Ridge,
Napolitano, Johnson--all called for this Commission.
This Commission is modeled exactly after the gold standard of
investigations and recommendations--the 9/11 Commission. It is modeled
in the words of how the staff is chosen. It is modeled in the words of
getting to the bottom of something and getting something done.
But yet, so many of our colleagues, sadly, on the other side of the
aisle are refusing to move on this.
Colleagues, we owe it to the heroic Capitol Police, to the first
responders, to the staff members who sat in closets for hours and hours
and hours, to the police officer who was called the ``n'' word 15 times
and then sat in the Rotunda and looked at another officer and said: Is
this America? We owe it to them that put themselves in harm's way to
protect the Capitol and the sacred democratic process. Inaction is not
an option
And, no, the report we are doing that I am so proud of, with Senator
Peters and Senator Portman and Senator Blunt, which will come out
shortly, is about an immediate response and bills we have to pass and
things we have to do and mistakes that were made. It is an important
report, and we are proud of our work, but it is no substitute for an 9/
11-style Commission, and I implore our colleagues to vote with us to
get this done.
I yield the floor.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Michigan.
Mr. PETERS. Mr. President, the January 6 attack on the U.S. Capitol
remains a dark stain on our Nation's history. Americans deserve to have
all of the facts about that day, and a fair, balanced, and independent
Commission will give us those answers.
This Commission would complement the current investigations into this
deadly attack, including my Homeland Security Committee's own
investigations in conjunction with the Rules Committee.
After the devastating September 11 terrorist attacks, Congress came
together to create a bipartisan independent Commission. January 6 marks
a singular event in our Nation's history, similar to what we
experienced on 9/11, and there is simply no logical reason to oppose
its creation.
The brave law enforcement officers who stopped this attack and every
American who watched in realtime as our free and fair democratic
process was attacked deserve answers and accountability for the actions
that occurred on January 6.
I urge my colleagues to support this Commission and get the American
people the answers that they deserve.
I yield the floor.

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