[Congressional Record Volume 167, Number 142 (Saturday, August 7, 2021)]
[Senate]
[Pages S5995-S6009]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




                          LEGISLATIVE SESSION

                                 ______
                                 

       INVESTING IN A NEW VISION FOR THE ENVIRONMENT AND SURFACE 
                 TRANSPORTATION IN AMERICA ACT--Resumed

  The PRESIDING OFFICER. Under the previous order, the Senate will 
resume consideration of H.R. 3684, which the clerk will report.
  The senior assistant legislative clerk read as follows:

       A bill (H.R. 3684) to authorize funds for Federal-aid 
     highways, highway safety programs, and transit programs, and 
     for other purposes.

  Pending:

       Schumer (for Sinema) amendment No. 2137, in the nature of a 
     substitute.
       Carper-Capito amendment No. 2131 (to amendment No. 2137), 
     to strike a definition.

  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from West Virginia.
  Mrs. CAPITO. Mr. President, this week, the Senate has been 
considering historic infrastructure legislation.
  We have seen a lot of positives in this process. Twenty-two 
amendments have been processed, and 12 of those amendments have been 
adopted. Many of those are bipartisan amendments that our fellow 
Senators have worked on together.
  On Thursday, we saw the process hit a snag. We have colleagues who 
sincerely want to debate their remaining amendments, but we had 
objections that prevented our votes from moving forward. In my view, 
that is unfortunate. I want everybody's voice to be heard because a 
number of the amendments awaiting action would actually improve this 
legislation, and, again, we have consensus on both sides on that. I 
hope we can reach agreement on a package of amendments that can receive 
votes before we pass this bill in final.
  In particular, I support an amendment that Senator Cornyn from Texas 
would like to offer to allow States to use previously appropriated 
COVID funding to finance infrastructure projects.
  When I began negotiating with the White House in April and May, this 
was one of the things that I put on the table with the President, and I 
know the G-20 has also had this on the table with the President. So it 
has been a topic of great discussion both here in the Senate but also 
with the White House as well. The Cornyn-Padilla amendment would unlock 
tens of billions of dollars--more for highway, transit, and housing 
infrastructure--without adding to the cost of this legislation.
  I plan to vote for cloture at 12 noon because this infrastructure 
legislation makes important investments in our Nation's future. I am a 
West Virginian, and all West Virginians and all Americans will benefit 
from the roads, bridges, water infrastructure, broadband, and other 
modes of core infrastructure that would be financed through this bill, 
but I believe something more foundational than infrastructure is at 
stake here.
  We need to demonstrate to the American people that we can work 
together in this Congress to pass major legislation that benefits our 
country and, I might add, legislation that we have passed more than a 
few times in the past. Infrastructure is that perfect place to do that.
  Senator Carper and I led the Environment and Public Works Committee 
with the surface transportation reauthorization bill, and the Presiding 
Officer is on that committee. We passed that out of our committee with 
unanimous support, and we also passed a drinking water bill that passed 
out of our committee with unanimous support but also out of this body 
with 89 votes. Both of those bills are included in this package in 
their entirety. Bipartisan bills reported by Commerce and the Energy 
Committees are also included.
  I certainly appreciated Chairman Carper's leadership and partnership 
throughout the entire process. I appreciate the efforts of our 
colleagues in the G-22 who have worked with each other tirelessly and 
with the Biden administration to get us to this point.
  We will soon have a chance to advance this infrastructure legislation 
toward final passage. Is this bill perfect? No--no compromise 
legislation ever is--but it will make a big difference in modernizing 
our country's infrastructure. More than that, we will demonstrate that 
both Republicans and Democrats can come together and do big things that 
move our country forward.
  I have just a bit of a recitation to remind folks what is in this 
bill. I will try to speed this part up.
  The bill provides $303.5 billion over 5 years for Federal highway 
programs--a 35-percent increase. That investment represents historic 
funding for our roads and bridges and provides States with the long-
term certainty that they need and flexibility that they need to 
complete projects.
  The bill ensures that 90 percent of the funding is distributed by 
formula--very predictable. It gives the States the certainty they need 
to prioritize their projects. For West Virginia, that means over $3 
billion over 5 years. That is a huge investment for our State and much 
needed.

  This bill also creates something that I am passionate about, the 
Rural Surface Transportation Grant Program to award $2 billion in 
competitive grants over 5 years to improve and expand roads and bridges 
in rural America. I am especially excited that this program has a 25-
percent set-aside for projects that support the completion of the 
Appalachia Development Highway System, otherwise known as ADHS. That 
set-aside means ADHS projects in West Virginia are eligible to compete 
for $500 million over 5 years in discretionary grants. This package 
will move our Corridor H project along significantly because we know 
that that project will be getting $195 million, and this grant program 
opens up the possibility of more. This is a vital connection in our 
State for our tourism and our economy. It also will open us up even 
broader to the east coast.
  West Virginia will receive $506 million to refund and repair our 
State's bridges, addressing a critical need certainly in our State and 
across the Nation. This funding is part of the single largest 
investment in bridge infrastructure since the construction of the 
Interstate Highway System.
  Briefly, the bill recognizes that broadband is core infrastructure 
and prioritizes unserved communities. This is the area I have gotten 
really the most questions about: What is this going to do for West 
Virginia, for the digital divide areas that are still unserved?
  Today, education, tourism, healthcare all rely on high internet 
speeds. I launched my Capito Connect Initiative in 2015 to help expand 
broadband infrastructure in our State. Many communities that lack 
adequate broadband are already struggling economically. It is 
impossible to compete for jobs if a community cannot offer good 
internet service, causing these areas to fall even further behind. And 
I will say, since the pandemic, rural America--as we have known who 
live in rural America--is a great and wonderful place to live. More 
people in congested areas are realizing there are a lot more pluses in 
rural America than what, maybe, they might have realized over a year 
ago.
  The bill invests $65 billion to help fix our country's digital 
divide. That funding would support a formula-based grant program to 
States and also supports competitive grants, like the USDA's ReConnect 
Program.
  Additionally, this bill makes large investments in clean and safe 
drinking water; it provides resources that will put West Virginians to 
work cleaning up our abandoned mines and orphaned wells.
  Every Senator could stand here and tell similar stories about the 
investment that this bill will make in his or her own State. This is 
the perfect time for us to come together toward the end of a summer 
that has been full of stops and starts, and we need to pass this 
legislation that will benefit every American.
  I hope my colleagues will join me to advance this important 
legislation toward its passage.

[[Page S5996]]

  I yield the floor.
  I suggest the absence of a quorum.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The clerk will call the roll.
  The legislative clerk proceeded to call the roll.
  Mr. CARPER. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the order for 
the quorum call be rescinded.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. Without objection, it is so ordered.
  Mr. CARPER. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent to be able to 
complete my remarks this morning.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. Without objection, it is so ordered.
  Mr. CARPER. Mr. President, well, soon we are going to vote on 
cloture, and we will move toward, I hope, concluding our consideration 
of the Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act.
  I have spoken, as our Presiding Officer knows, over the last few days 
quite a bit as to why the legislation we are considering today is so 
important.
  I think that as we prepare to take this vote, though, we ought to 
take maybe just another minute or two and reflect on the bill's merits 
and the needs that it will address--important needs it will address--
for our country.
  In my opening statement, several days ago, I reminded the Senate that 
the state of our Nation's infrastructure currently ranks and rates at a 
C-minus according to the American Society of Civil Engineers. That is 
not the infrastructure that the American people want or need in the 
21st century.
  In the jurisdiction of the Environment and Public Works Committee, 
which Senator Capito and I are privileged to lead and which the 
Presiding Officer is a new member of, this bill includes language that 
will make historic investments in our roads, our highways, and our 
bridges--a 34 percent increase, if you will, over the last 5 years. The 
bill will also reauthorize our drinking water and our water sanitation 
programs at robust new levels.
  As we take this vote, I think it is important to reflect on our past 
efforts. I want to go back in time and why this vote is so important 
today.
  Since I first joined the Congress as a brandnew freshman Congressman 
from Delaware in 1982, we have updated our transportation laws in this 
country some eight times--eight times. With each of these efforts we 
have tried to improve our policies, address gaps, incorporate new 
information, and deliver needed resources.
  The modern era of these transportation laws began in 1991. George 
Herbert Walker Bush was the President, and Congress passed and then 
President Bush signed into law legislation called the Intermodal 
Surface Transportation Efficiency Act, or ISTEA, as it was called at 
the time--ISTEA.
  Until ISTEA legislation was adopted--enacted and signed into law--as 
a matter of Federal policy, we divided transportation into separate 
systems. We had, on the one hand, highways; another hand we had rail; 
another hand we had transit, and our policies really didn't consider 
them as a united, unified, integrated system, which is how most 
commuters and most travelers in our Nation really thought it to be.
  ISTEA sought to change that. ISTEA sought to change that by requiring 
integrated regional planning of transportation systems that accounted 
for and better facilitated connections amongst our highways, our rail, 
and our transit to enable more efficient freight movement and more 
efficient movement of people.
  It was around the same time that we also integrated our 
transportation policy with the Clean Water Act, which represented a 
major strengthening of our pollution laws to respond to urban smog, 
acid rain, ozone depletion, and other air pollution problems.
  For the first time, transportation planning was obliged to take into 
account pollution from mobile sources and take steps to reduce the 
considerable contribution of transportation to our pollution.
  Today's legislation substantially builds on our historic efforts to 
reduce dangerous emissions like greenhouse gases and particulate matter 
that spew from too many of our cars, our buses, and other modes of 
transportation.
  Congress took another major leap in transportation policy a few years 
later, in 1998, in fact, with the Transportation Equity Act for the 
21st Century, also known as TEA-21, which focused on improving safety 
while advancing America's economic growth and competitiveness.
  Nearly 10 years later, in 2005, as transportation fatalities reached 
a 10-year high of over 43,000 people--over 43,000 people--President 
George W. Bush, son of Herbert Walker Bush, signed into law the Safe, 
Accountable, Flexible, Efficient Transportation Equity Act: A Legacy 
for Users. That is a long title, but we found an acronym for it, 
SAFETEA-LU, in 2005.
  At its core, the key was that this legislation improved highway 
transportation safety through the creation of the Highway Safety 
Improvement Program to reduce highway fatalities.
  Then, in 2012, President Obama signed into law the Moving Ahead for 
Progress in the 21st Century Act, known as MAP-21. Responding to 
concerns about the growth of the number of small programs, MAP-21 
sought to simplify the highway program structure, provide more 
flexibility to States, while also increasing their accountability and 
focusing on performance outcomes, including safety, asset conditions, 
congestion, and air quality.
  Congress reauthorized our transportation laws most recently in 2015, 
when President Obama signed into law the Fixing America's Surface 
Transportation Act, or FAST.
  The FAST Act focused on freight movement, supported with new formula 
and competitive grants for highway and intermodal freight, as well as a 
focus on Federal and State freight planning efforts.
  Today, our Interstate System is a critical national asset, carrying 
over a quarter of all motor vehicle travel in our Nation--over one-
quarter--despite being only 1 percent of all lane miles.
  These highways have enabled a significant expansion of truck 
movement, including supporting local businesses, interstate commerce, 
international trade, and providing Americans with access to low-cost 
goods and services.
  Along with the many benefits of interstate highways have come 
indisputable costs. Highways have spawned sprawling auto-dependent and 
development patterns that exacerbate greenhouse gas emissions, thus 
compromising our efforts to deal with a changing climate.
  Interstate highways divided communities and were often intentionally 
built through minority and low-income neighborhoods, becoming tangible 
evidence of racism. Today, more than 36,000 people lose their lives 
each year on our roadways. While we seek to maintain the mobility 
benefits of the Federal-aid highway system, we must also acknowledge 
and address these significant detriments.
  We have been at the hard work of transportation policy for a long, 
long time in this country, and we have enjoyed major success, 
benefiting our people and our economy. And if we are honest with 
ourselves, we have made quite a few mistakes along the way, dividing 
communities with poorly considered projects and developing a 
transportation sector that produces twice as much greenhouse gas 
emissions as any other country's transportation sector.
  We have an opportunity to learn from both success and failure, and we 
must account for new challenges that were not on our radar screen in 
the past--not the least of which are the serious threat of climate 
change and the obvious specter of environmental injustice.
  Today, we are rising to the challenge. The bill before us, the 
Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act, includes, among other 
provisions, the largest Federal investment in public transit in 
history; the largest investment in clean drinking water and wastewater 
infrastructure in history; the largest investment in clean energy 
transmission in history; the largest investment in climate resiliency 
in history; and the largest investment in transportation 
electrification in history.
  Infrastructure policy is a little bit like an aircraft carrier. The 
Presiding Officer, who just left the podium, retired as a Navy Captain, 
and so did I. He and I both spent a lot of time in airplanes, and he 
spent a fair amount of time in outer space as an astronaut. But we have 
both spent some time on aircraft carriers, and we know you can't turn 
an aircraft carrier on a dime. With the Infrastructure Investment and 
Jobs Act, as we say in the Navy, we are ``coming hard about.'' Coming 
hard about. The carrier is turning. We are finally recognizing climate 
change and addressing it. We are

[[Page S5997]]

recognizing some of the mistakes of infrastructure policy in the past 
and fixing them.
  Before I call for us to invoke cloture, I am channeling today, of all 
people, Winston Churchill. I love Churchill. I know he is quoted by a 
lot of my colleagues as well. One of my favorite quotes from Winston 
Churchill is, ``The further back we look, the further forward we see.'' 
Another one I especially like from Churchill is, ``You can always count 
on America to do the right thing in the end after trying everything 
else.''
  It would seem, as we have gone through this legislative process, that 
we have tried just about everything else. We had a lot of surprisingly 
good debate here on this floor. Senator Capito, my colleague and 
partner in the Environment and Public Works Committee, has done a great 
job. But we have seen a lot of amendments offered--over 20--to this 
bill. I think most of them were bipartisan. A bunch of them have been 
adopted.
  The other thing I would just offer from Churchill is another one of 
my favorites:

       Democracy is the worst form of government devised by the 
     wit of man . . .
       Democracy is the worst form of government devised by the 
     wit of man . . .

  This is a hard way to go, and we have learned that again as we have 
gone through this process. As we prepare to maybe, hopefully, invoke 
cloture, I again want to say how much I have enjoyed working with my 
ranking member, Senator Capito--two West Virginians who found common 
ground on these issues and worked hard to lead our team and a lot of 
other committees of jurisdiction. Another one of them was led by 
another West Virginian, Joe Manchin. I want to thank all those 
committees for their good work and for the leadership we received from 
our leaders.
  With that having been said, let's go ahead and vote, and I hope to 
vote to invoke cloture and take the critical next step.
  I yield the floor.


                             Cloture Motion

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

                             Cloture Motion

       We, the undersigned Senators, in accordance with the 
     provisions of rule XXII of the Standing Rules of the Senate, 
     do hereby move to bring to a close debate on Sinema 
     substitute amendment No. 2137 to Calendar No. 100, H.R. 3684, 
     a bill to authorize funds for Federal-aid highways, highway 
     safety programs, and transit programs, and for other 
     purposes.
         Charles E. Schumer, Thomas R. Carper, John Hickenlooper, 
           Jon Tester, Richard J. Durbin, Joe Manchin III, Kyrsten 
           Sinema, Jeanne Shaheen, Angus S. King, Jr., Mark Kelly, 
           Chris Van Hollen, Tammy Baldwin, Benjamin L. Cardin, 
           Margaret Wood Hassan, Sheldon Whitehouse, Amy 
           Klobuchar, Christopher A. Coons, Mark R. Warner, 
           Patrick J. Leahy.

  The PRESIDING OFFICER. By unanimous consent, the mandatory quorum 
call has been waived.
  The question is, Is it the sense of the Senate that debate on 
amendment No. 2137, offered by the Senator from New York, [Mr. Schumer] 
for the Senator from Arizona, [Ms. Sinema] and the Senator from Ohio, 
[Mr. Portman] to H.R. 3684, a bill to authorize funds for Federal-aid 
highways, highway safety programs, and transit programs, and for other 
purposes, shall be brought to a close?
  The yeas and nays are mandatory under the rule.
  The clerk will call the roll.
  The bill clerk called the roll.
  Mr. DURBIN. I announce that the Senator from Georgia (Mr. Warnock), 
is necessarily absent.
  Mr. THUNE. The following Senators are necessarily absent: the Senator 
from Wyoming (Mr. Barrasso), the Senator from North Carolina (Mr. 
Burr), the Senator from South Carolina (Mr. Graham), the Senator from 
Florida (Mr. Rubio), and the Senator from South Carolina (Mr. Scott).
  The result yeas and nays resulted--yeas 67, nays 27, as follows:

                      [Rollcall Vote No. 309 Leg.]

                                YEAS--67

     Baldwin
     Bennet
     Blumenthal
     Blunt
     Booker
     Brown
     Cantwell
     Capito
     Cardin
     Carper
     Casey
     Cassidy
     Collins
     Coons
     Cornyn
     Cortez Masto
     Cramer
     Crapo
     Duckworth
     Durbin
     Feinstein
     Fischer
     Gillibrand
     Grassley
     Hassan
     Heinrich
     Hickenlooper
     Hirono
     Hoeven
     Kaine
     Kelly
     King
     Klobuchar
     Leahy
     Lujan
     Manchin
     Markey
     McConnell
     Menendez
     Merkley
     Murkowski
     Murphy
     Murray
     Ossoff
     Padilla
     Peters
     Portman
     Reed
     Risch
     Romney
     Rosen
     Rounds
     Sanders
     Schatz
     Schumer
     Shaheen
     Sinema
     Smith
     Stabenow
     Tester
     Tillis
     Van Hollen
     Warner
     Warren
     Whitehouse
     Wyden
     Young

                                NAYS--27

     Blackburn
     Boozman
     Braun
     Cotton
     Cruz
     Daines
     Ernst
     Hagerty
     Hawley
     Hyde-Smith
     Inhofe
     Johnson
     Kennedy
     Lankford
     Lee
     Lummis
     Marshall
     Moran
     Paul
     Sasse
     Scott (FL)
     Shelby
     Sullivan
     Thune
     Toomey
     Tuberville
     Wicker

                             NOT VOTING--6

     Barrasso
     Burr
     Graham
     Rubio
     Scott (SC)
     Warnoc
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. On this vote, the yeas are 67, the nays are 
27.
  Three-fifths of the Senators duly chosen and sworn having voted in 
the affirmative, the motion is agreed to.
  The motion was agreed to.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Delaware.
  Mr. CARPER. Madam President, earlier today, I quoted Churchill 
actually a couple of times. One of my favorite Churchill quotes is, 
when asked when he was being thrown out of office at the end of World 
War II--he was asked by reporters outside of 10 Downing Street: Mr. 
Churchill, for you, is this the end?
  He said: It is not the end. This is not the beginning of the end.
  He said: This is the end of the beginning.
  While we are grateful for everybody who voted for cloture, it is not 
the end, but it takes us a step closer to the end. I just want to thank 
everybody who came in, took the time to get here to vote. We are 
prepared to take the next step. It involves some additional 
negotiations. A lot of folks have amendments they want to offer. Some 
of those that are not germane I think will largely fall away. There are 
legitimate, germane amendments that still need to be negotiated and may 
require some unanimous consent votes.
  This is another step, important step. I am grateful that we could be 
this far. I note Senator Capito feels the same way.


                           Amendment No. 2633

  Mr. CARPER. Madam President, I call up amendment No. 2633 to H.R. 
3684.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The clerk will report.
  The senior assistant legislative clerk read as follows:

       The Senator from Delaware [Mr. Carper] proposes an 
     amendment numbered 2633.

  The amendment is as follows

         (Purpose: To establish an effective date for the bill)

       On page 15, between lines 5 and 6, insert the following:

     SEC. 4. EFFECTIVE DATE.

       Except as otherwise provided, this Act and the amendments 
     made by this Act take effect on the date that is 1 day after 
     the date of enactment of this Act.

  Mr. CARPER. Madam President, I suggest the absence of a quorum.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The clerk will call the roll.
  The senior assistant legislative clerk proceeded to call the roll.
  Mr. CORNYN. Madam President, I ask unanimous consent that the order 
for the quorum call be rescinded.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. Without objection, it is so ordered.
  Mr. CORNYN. Madam President, now that cloture has been invoked on the 
substitute bill, we are one step closer to completing this product, 
which has been the subject of bipartisan negotiation with the White 
House for quite some time. I know a lot of hard work has been put into 
this, and I want to thank all of our colleagues who have contributed to 
it.
  After much anticipation, we finally received the bill text earlier 
this week. Of course, a lot of it was what we expected to see: funding 
for roads, bridges, ports, waterways, airports, and broadband.
  Under normal circumstances, an infrastructure bill would go through a 
long and arduous committee process

[[Page S5998]]

before ever coming to the floor. Members of the committees of 
jurisdiction would have an opportunity to debate and offer amendments 
and get votes on their proposals to try to improve the bill at the 
committee level. This provides a very important part of the ability of 
everybody to be able to participate in the process, one that is denied 
members of their committees of relevant jurisdiction when a bill comes 
to the floor already negotiated.
  One of the challenges is when you have 20 people who agree on 
something and then they bring it to the floor, and, of course, then the 
80 who have not been part of that discussion want to participate and 
want to try to improve the underlying bill.
  I hope that now that the cloture on the substitute has been invoked, 
there will be an opportunity for us to vote on some additional 
amendments.
  I have been working with colleagues on both sides of the aisle to 
identify new pay-fors that could be adopted as amendments, and we have 
come up with some good ideas that I hope can receive votes now, even 
postcloture.
  But I want to talk specifically about an amendment that I have worked 
on with Senator Padilla, the junior Senator from California, to fund 
infrastructure projects in communities across our country without 
increasing the deficit. Our amendment simply gives States and local 
governments the flexibility to use unspent COVID relief funding on 
infrastructure projects.
  Right now, there are limitations that we put on that funding. Of 
course, at the time those limitations or guardrails were put on that 
funding, we didn't know how long this pandemic would last or what the 
actual needs were of the various States and local jurisdictions.
  So qualifying expenses include things that are directly related to 
the pandemic, like COVID-19 testing sites, vaccine PSAs, and additional 
bed space for hospitals. But here is the rub: That funding cannot be 
used on expenses unrelated to the pandemic or items that were 
previously included in the budget. They must be new pandemic-related 
expenses.
  In theory, and at the time, that made a lot of sense. After all, this 
funding was meant to bolster the fight against COVID-19 in our 
communities. But not every community has the same need. In many places, 
the most urgent needs aren't related to the pandemic because they have 
not been hit quite as hard as others, unfortunately, around the 
country. Some of their most urgent needs are what we are talking about 
here today: infrastructure--roads and bridges and the like.
  We all know that the pandemic has interrupted infrastructure 
improvements across the country and forced officials to put many of 
these projects on the back burner. Maintenance, repairs, and 
construction projects have been put on hold, as you know, until there 
was enough funding to get things back on track.
  I have heard from my constituents in Texas--State and local leaders--
who are frustrated by this lack of flexibility with the Federal funding 
that they have already received or which they expect to receive. They 
simply like the option--not a mandate, but an option--to use this money 
when and where it is needed most.
  But as I say, right now, their hands are tied. Many States and 
localities have relief funds on hand but no necessary qualifying 
expenses. They have to look at this big balance in their bank account 
knowing they can't actually spend it on some of their most urgent 
needs. That is especially the case in rural parts of the country.
  In places where COVID numbers are, thankfully, low, leaders don't 
have the need or the opportunity to spend this money which we have 
already appropriated on the timeline set within that legislation. They 
simply don't have a need for the full range of pandemic-related 
resources that might be necessary in some parts of the country with 
higher case counts.
  So the amendment that Senator Padilla and I have offered would simply 
give leaders in rural and urban areas alike, where appropriate, the 
option--the option--to spend the funding on necessary infrastructure 
projects. That can mean widening a highway, making safety improvements 
on a bridge, or expanding broadband access. Urban areas could even use 
these funds for public transit improvement projects. State and local 
leaders know the needs of their community better than any of us here, 
and they should have the flexibility to spend that money where it is 
needed most.

  But, Madam President, I think we have had a recent bit of evidence of 
how long it takes for Congress to act before the money that we 
appropriate actually gets to the intended beneficiary. To me, nothing 
is more exemplary of that than the eviction moratorium. Congress 
appropriated $46 billion in rent relief, but if you look around the 
country, many of the intended beneficiaries of that rent relief have 
not yet seen that money, thus the movement toward extending the 
moratorium.
  I know just from my own experience in Texas, after Hurricane Harvey, 
where Congress appropriated billions of dollars in relief, it has 
taken, literally, years for the money that come from Washington, DC, to 
get to the intended beneficiary.
  One of the biggest benefits of the amendment that Senator Padilla and 
I have offered is that this money is readily available and does not, 
again, as I said, add to the deficit or debt, but merely provides them 
flexibility, which means they will be able to put that money to use 
more quickly on infrastructure projects.
  Again, this is not a mandate. This is an option. Any place that has 
new COVID expenses to cover can and should use the money they have for 
that purpose. There is no question about that. But we simply give 
leaders the option to spend relief funds on urgent infrastructure 
projects that may otherwise go unfunded.
  Here is the other problem. I know that many of our State and local 
leaders are sitting on these huge amounts of financial resources that 
we have appropriated, and they are figuring out: Well, if we don't 
spend it on something, then the Federal Government is going to claw it 
back or it may not just qualify for the expenditures that are already 
authorized.
  So they will be under a lot of pressure to spend it on things that 
may be simply operating expenses and may not provide the long-term 
economic benefit that an infrastructure project would.
  That is another benefit of giving them this flexibility. It is that 
it will incentivize them to spend the money on the types of things we 
would hope they would spend the money on if they don't need it for 
COVID-19.
  Back in March, nearly three dozen organizations wrote to Secretary 
Yellen, the Treasury Secretary, urging her to make transportation 
infrastructure an eligible expense. They talked about the impact of 
COVID-19 on transportation revenue and noted that last year, 18 States 
and 24 localities announced delays or cancellations of transportation 
improvement projects, totaling more than $12 billion.
  They also noted that the pandemic impacted every State and community 
differently, something that should be self-evident, and asked for the 
flexibility, which they said ``will be critical to ensuring funds are 
used expeditiously and with maximum impact.''
  President Biden's own Transportation Secretary has also suggested as 
much. In his testimony before Congress, Secretary Buttigieg said that 
the American Rescue Plan ``has some flexibility in it'' that he thinks 
could be used to support road budgets that have been impacted.
  States and cities shouldn't be able to spend this money. They should 
be able to invest it and in the projects and resources they need the 
most. This is just simply common sense that I think all of us can get 
behind. It ensures that money that has already gone out the door, which 
will not add to our deficit or debt, will be used to the maximum impact 
before the sunset brings that flexibility and that money, those 
resources, to an end.
  And it puts decision making at the local level. Local officials 
understand better than people in Washington, DC, what they need the 
most, and this gives them the flexibility to put that money to the most 
efficient and most effective use. This amendment has earned the support 
of a broad range of organizations across the country, and I am proud to 
work with Senator Padilla to craft an amendment that both sides can get 
behind.
  Today, I hope this will be one of the amendments to receive a vote on 
the

[[Page S5999]]

floor. We have to ensure that infrastructure investments are made 
fairly and paid for responsibly. A robust amendment process and 
commonsense bipartisan ideas like this one are the only way to get 
there.
  I yield the floor.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Illinois.


                               Education

  Mr. DURBIN. Madam President, it was in 1957 that there was a world 
event that changed my life and the lives of many others. I was just a 
kid in high school at the time. In fact, I wasn't quite in high school. 
But the Russians decided to launch a satellite called Sputnik, and that 
satellite, the size of a basketball, which emitted a tone as it flew 
through space, scared the world, all of us, to the point where the 
United States of America did something that was controversial but we 
felt was necessary.
  We decided that the Federal Government of the United States would 
loan money to students like Durbin to go to college because we were 
afraid of the Russians, and we knew that, if they had the scientific 
advantage of us, it could mean we would lose a war, which no one wants 
that to ever happen. So we created here in Washington something called 
the National Defense Education Act. I am sure that was carefully chosen 
to remind people that what we were doing was defending the country by 
loaning money to people like Durbin to go to college, and I took 
advantage of it.
  Those National Defense Education Act loans had terms that most of us 
from that era remember very well. You didn't pay anything on your loan 
balance for the first year you were out of college, and then you had 10 
years to pay it off at 3 percent interest.
  Of course, those of us who took out the loans for college--in my 
case, for law school as well--amassed this great debt and worried, when 
the day came for graduation, whether we would ever be able to pay it 
off. I remember saying to my wife: Loretta, they have just got all the 
National Defense Education Act loans. They put them all together, and I 
am afraid to tell you what has happened. We have a debt of $8,000 for 
college and law school.
  Students today don't believe that number, but that was the number, 
and it scared us to death that we wouldn't be able to pay it off in 10 
years. Naturally, we did, and many others did as well, and the National 
Defense Education Act really became the pillar of the emergence of 
higher education in America.
  Of course, there were those who cheated the system, and stories were 
rampant. Whether they were all true, I am not sure. There was the story 
of the doctor who graduated from medical school and, before he went 
into his lucrative practice, filed for bankruptcy and discharged all 
his Federal loans, Federal student loans. I don't know if that ever 
happened, but it certainly was part of the urban legend around the 
National Defense Education Act.
  So, over the years, there were efforts made to change the National 
Defense Education Act to avoid abuse, and one of the things that was 
decided was that that loan to go to school would not be dischargeable 
in bankruptcy.
  You have to ask the basic question of how many debts are not 
dischargeable in bankruptcy. There are only a few: alimony, child 
support, criminal fines, taxes, and maybe one other. But I think a 
student loan is the only one of that bunch that is a consumer loan that 
you can't discharge in bankruptcy.
  Over the years, the terms of the loans and the number of years that 
you were held back from filing bankruptcy changed. Ultimately, the 
decision was made that you could effectively never discharge student 
loans in bankruptcy.
  We held a hearing on student loan debt in the Senate Judiciary 
Committee this week, and I am sorry Senator Cornyn has left the floor, 
but he and I have introduced a bill which has a good chance, I think.
  We know that student loans are the fastest growing category of 
household debt in America--45 million student borrowers in our country. 
In a little under a decade, student loan debt has ballooned from $1 
trillion to $1.7 trillion. The average student borrower now carries 
$30,000 in debt, and many, especially those who are swindled by the 
for-profit colleges, owe well over $100,000.
  Americans of all ages are plagued by the debt. We have heard cases of 
grandmothers who have said to their granddaughters, ``Well, of course, 
I will cosign your student loan,'' to learn that when the student, the 
granddaughter, defaulted, Grandma was responsible for it. For some, it 
is holding them back from buying a first home, starting a family, a 
business. For others, it means delaying retirement because of this 
debt.
  This is not an individual misfortune. The student debt crisis is a 
threat to our economy. Federal Reserve Chairman Jerome Powell has 
warned that student loan debt may be a drag on our economy by 
preventing Americans from basic, fundamental consumer purchases of 
cars, savings accounts for retirement--otherwise, the economic growth 
of our country.
  So we had a hearing in the Judiciary Committee, and we examined how 
difficult it is for student borrowers to get financial relief. These, 
as I said, are one of the very few categories of debt you cannot 
discharge in bankruptcy. You see, if you buy a home or a car and you 
fall on really hard times, you can declare bankruptcy and have all 
those debts discharged. If you like to gamble and you are not very good 
at it and you end up running up great debt on your credit card and you 
file for bankruptcy, your gambling debts through your credit cards can 
be discharged. You can even buy a yacht and have that debt discharged 
if you haven't paid it off. But if you are a student borrower who, 
despite your best efforts, falls on hard times--lured into debt, 
perhaps, by attending a worthless for-profit college--a fresh start is 
not in the cards for you.
  We had Diane Barta testify before the committee. She is from Richmond 
Hill, GA, 50 years old, a mother of two. She has over $120,000 in 
student loan debt, much of it taken out for a worthless degree she 
received from for-profit school Ashford University. I mentioned that to 
Senator Grassley during the hearing because Ashford University is a 
curious story.
  A small Catholic college in Iowa was about to go out of business, and 
the nuns were persuaded that there was a company that wanted to buy it. 
So they sold the campus to this company called Ashford University. 
Ashford had no intention of reopening the campus. What they basically 
did was start an online operation, claiming the accreditation and the 
worthiness and the credibility of the previous college.
  Well, we looked into it. In fact, it was Tom Harkin of Iowa, over 10 
years ago, who investigated it and found out that Ashford was a fraud. 
It was just generating huge profits for their CEO and a few others, not 
providing anything nearly resembling higher education.
  Ms. Barta was a good person who worked hard. She had two degrees--
from a community college and then from another college--before she went 
for a master's degree at Ashford University. That was her downfall. She 
talked about how she had to file for bankruptcy in 2012 after her 
husband lost his job as a commercial plumber. She managed to get relief 
for most of her debts but certainly could not get discharged from her 
student loans that she had taken out at Ashford University, this 
notorious for-profit school.
  Other student borrowers had their own stories. We have all heard 
them.
  Angela, from Florida, wrote:

       I'm a single parent and was on a single income living 
     paycheck to paycheck. I've had the stress of these student 
     loans haunting me for well over a decade now. . . . I am 
     still being haunted.

  Lisa, in Nevada, wrote that she had given up her passion, teaching--I 
repeat: teaching--because she needed to find a higher income job to pay 
off her student loans.

  She wrote:

       It is absolutely disheartening that when you try to better 
     yourself in this country you're punished and not rewarded.

  One more story.
  Ann, from Washington State, declared bankruptcy in 2000 because her 
student loan payments were so high she couldn't afford to pay her 
bills.
  She wrote:

       I never go on vacations. I never married or had children 
     for fear of burdening [them] with [my] debt. . . . I'm facing 
     retirement with [that] threat [still looming over] my future. 
     . . . Social Security checks will be garnished for my student 
     loan.


[[Page S6000]]


  This is clearly a crisis. Fortunately, both Republican and Democratic 
members of the Judiciary Committee agree that we need to do something. 
Congress has a responsibility to solve this problem. Wouldn't it be 
worth a headline somewhere, on some website, that we actually solved a 
problem like this?
  Before 1976, student loans were treated like any other type of loan 
in bankruptcy. If you were facing financial ruin, you could get relief. 
Congress got the idea that student borrowers were running to bankruptcy 
court right after they had taken off their gowns and mortarboards and 
trying to wiggle out of their financial obligations. That is more 
anecdote than fact, but it was prevalent. Still, Congress began passing 
laws that made it harder to discharge student loans.
  Since 1998, student borrowers could only discharge Federal student 
loans by proving they suffered from something called undue hardship. 
Well, you would think the cases I just read to you would be undue 
hardship, wouldn't you, people so deeply in debt that they can't get 
out of it and are forced to make life choices that are terrible?
  Here is the issue: It is nearly impossible to prove undue hardship 
and discharge your student debt. That is your only escape now. In fact, 
in 2017, the Wall Street Journal found only four cases--four cases--in 
the entire country of bankruptcy judges discharging student debt for 
undue hardship.
  For years, I have asked the Department of Education, the collection 
Agency, to change the way they challenge these undue hardship cases. I 
am still pushing on them, but Congress needs to do its part.
  Another witness who joined us on Tuesday was my State attorney 
general, Kwame Raoul. He has been an advocate for student borrowers for 
a long time. He talked about these students being deceived and 
defrauded by these schools, particularly the for-profit colleges and 
universities.
  Well, we have decided to do something about it. We have introduced a 
bill called the FRESH START Through Bankruptcy Act. It will allow 
struggling borrowers to seek a bankruptcy discharge for their Federal 
student loans after a waiting period of 10 years. That is a long time. 
If you can't pay off that loan in 10 years and you believe there is no 
other recourse, you could file for bankruptcy and have it discharged.
  Our bill also includes another provision. I want to thank Jack Reed 
of Rhode Island, our colleague here. He introduced the original bill 
with this concept. It includes important provisions to hold accountable 
educational institutions, particularly these notorious for-profit 
colleges with consistently high default rates and low repayment rates.
  There are two numbers you need to remember--and that is it--to 
understand for-profit colleges and universities: Eight. What percentage 
of American high school graduates go to for-profit colleges and 
universities? Eight percent.
  Next question: What percentage of student loan defaults in the United 
States are by students from for-profit colleges and universities? 
Thirty.
  Eight percent of high school grads and thirty percent of student loan 
defaults. Why? Because these notorious, awful schools drag these young 
people into debt they can never get out from under. If they so-call 
finish and graduate from these schools, they find that they can't get 
the jobs that were promised. Their lives are virtually ruined. So we 
are basically saying it is time that these schools be held accountable.
  At this point, the FRESH START bankruptcy will provide a meaningful 
timeline to student borrowers who have no other options. It is a 
breakthrough.
  This is the first bipartisan bill the Senate has had, in my memory, 
to restore student borrowers' ability to discharge their loans in 
bankruptcy.
  I want to thank Senator Cornyn, Republican of Texas. We kind of 
jokingly say, you know, it is one of those situations where you are on 
stage, announcing your bill, and you turn to one another and say: Have 
we both read this bill? Well, we have, and we understand it.
  We are also going to consider an element that was raised during the 
hearing by one of our expert witnesses of defining what ``undue 
hardship'' is. Right now, it appears the courts couldn't recognize it 
in any form. There certainly are cases.
  I talked about a quadriplegic veteran--disabled, unable to work--who 
was lured into one of these for-profit school scams and ends up in 
debt. Shouldn't they be able to discharge that student loan? There is 
no question they will be able to find some great-paying job in the 
future. They struggled to basically face up to their illnesses, and we 
hope that they have the very best future, but even then, it is tough to 
get out from under the debt.
  I hope this is a first of many steps that we will take in the 
committee and other places, on a bipartisan basis, to deal with this 
challenge.
  One other point. One way for students to avoid becoming buried in 
student loan debt in the first place is to be very careful, 
particularly of for-profit colleges and universities, and secondly, 
take advantage of the affordable alternative community colleges. 
Community colleges are an underused superpower of our economy. They 
help students gain the knowledge and skills they need to thrive, and 
they prepare workers to compete in the 21st century.
  I totally support President Biden's plan to build back better and 
provide every high school graduate to be able to continue their studies 
through community college, without debt. The same goes for displaced 
workers who want to learn new skills to get a better job to support 
their futures. Americans will be able to obtain 2-year degrees or 
specialized certificates without taking on mountains of debt.
  In the greatest country in the world, a college education shouldn't 
be a luxury; it should be guaranteed to everyone. That is the only way 
we can launch a new dream of American prosperity and truly build back 
better after this pandemic.
  I yield the floor.
  I suggest the absence of a quorum.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The clerk will call the roll.
  The legislative clerk proceeded to call the roll.
  Mr. MANCHIN. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the order 
for the quorum call be rescinded.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER (Mr. Kaine). Without objection, it is so 
ordered.
  Mr. MANCHIN. Mr. President, I want to take a moment to thank all my 
colleagues on both sides of the aisle, in this great deliberative body, 
for showing the United States and the entire world that the United 
States Senate is not broken. Actually, we are doing fine. We can work 
together and do much better. We can also come together and do big 
things, and we did with this investment in American infrastructure.
  America has not seen this type of infrastructure investment in the 
last 30 years--talked about it a lot and haven't seen anything. The 
polls have shown that the American people are overwhelmingly supportive 
of this infrastructure deal. Americans of both political parties know 
it is long past time to make this investment. And once the roads are 
repaired so the children are safe on the buses, they want better 
internet service so they can connect and compete in the 21st century.
  It is just unbelievable what we can do. This is about clean water and 
upgraded sewer systems. You would think in the 21st century this all 
would be a void anywhere in America, but it is--it really is.
  This is the largest long-term jobs bill in decades. It will create 
good-paying, long-term jobs over the next 8 to 10 years. So if you want 
to basically make sure we don't hit the highs and the lows as far as 
the job opportunities, job markets, and the economy, this bill does 
that.
  It is the largest investment in clean drinking water and wastewater 
infrastructure in the history of our country--in the history of our 
country. It is the largest dedicated bridge investment since the 
construction of the Interstate Highway System.
  It is the largest investment in energy transition in history, and 
puts our money where our mouth is on technologies that are critical for 
the future. And it is the largest Federal investment in passenger rail 
since the creation of Amtrak.
  And our bipartisan infrastructure package does not raise taxes on 
everyday Americans. It does not. A large

[[Page S6001]]

piece of this bipartisan infrastructure bill came out of the Energy and 
Natural Resources Committee, which I am privileged and honored to 
chair. We reported the Energy Infrastructure Act out of our committee 
with a bipartisan vote after--after--holding a legislative hearing and 
a robust amendment process. That is called regular order. It is 
something we have heard about for many years--we just haven't seen it 
for a long time--and it is working.
  The Energy Infrastructure Act will create good-paying jobs and 
demonstrate the energy technologies needed to reduce emissions while 
maintaining affordable, reliable, and dependable energy and our 
Nation's position as a global energy leader.
  I have said all along that the United States of America is now energy 
independent. We must fight to maintain that position. We should not be 
held captive by any foreign entity or any foreign country where we are 
depending on any type of supplies that the American people need--any 
type of supplies--and energy is one of our greatest, and we can do it 
cleaner and better than ever. I have always said you cannot eliminate 
your way to a cleaner environment. You can innovate your way to a 
cleaner environment, and we have proven that, and we can do an awful 
lot more too.
  It also builds off the great work already done in my home State of 
West Virginia and your State of Virginia, Mr. President, to demonstrate 
advanced geothermal technology and establish a reliable, U.S.-based, 
rare-Earth-element supply chain.
  I have had consideration and I have had some pause on us moving so 
rapidly into electric vehicles. My reason for my pause has been this: 
We do not produce the rare-Earth minerals--the rare-Earth minerals that 
are needed to build these batteries. And we have to be very, very 
careful that we don't put our transportation system--our transportation 
mode in America in the hands of foreign supply chains. We could be held 
very, very captive on those.
  I remember in the 1970s, when the oil embargo from the oil cartel--
the oil embargo basically shut our businesses down, and then we had 
rapid inflation coming after that. It was just horrible.
  Importantly, the legislation also reauthorizes abandoned mine lands 
and reclamation fees. In southwest Virginia and all of West Virginia, 
we have a tremendous amount of mines that this country needed to be the 
superpower of the world.
  Now it is far beyond time for us to clean that up, and this is 
something we can do, and this bill does that. It is set to expire, as 
far as our AML reclamation fees in September. For an additional 13 
years, we have extended that, while investing $11.3 billion into 
reclaiming these abandoned coal mine lands, which an awful lot of beach 
area and water and things were harmed for a long time and needs to be 
fixed.
  It also funds the demonstration of clean energy on the abandoned mine 
lands and authorizes grants for manufacturers to locate in coal 
communities. These coal communities around the country bear the scars 
of the work that powered our Nation to greatness, and this investment 
will clean up those areas and provide new economic opportunities.
  The bill also shores up the reliability of our electric grid systems. 
Our grid has basically been around for a long time, and with all the 
new technologies coming on and all of the renewable power, that is not 
always produced in the area where we have the grid system, and it is 
time for us to expand and make sure our grid system is able to deliver 
the energy our country needs.
  The bipartisan Energy Infrastructure Act authorizes $110 billion, 
much of which is also funded and is a vital component of the whole 
infrastructure package. So we are not just talking about it. We are 
putting a lot of money into upgrading the grid system and the 
reliability of it.
  This bill will truly do much good across the United States. Let me 
just give you the historic investment in the needs of our Nation: $110 
billion for the roads and the bridges; $65 billion for broadband 
access; $66 billion for railroads; $25 billion for airports; $55 
billion for drinking water and wastewater systems.
  I don't know what infrastructure is if you don't call that 
infrastructure. This is as good as it gets. It is something that we all 
have talked about for many, many years.
  My State of West Virginia benefits from this bipartisan 
infrastructure bill. It will help expand broadband access across West 
Virginia with a minimum allocation of $100 million to help provide 
broadband coverage across the State, including providing access to at 
least 258,000 West Virginians who currently lack it because of our 
terrain.
  I think the Presiding Officer has been there many, many times, and 
you understand what we are dealing with. It is really challenging, but 
if we take just a commonsense approach--and I have always said this: If 
during Franklin Delano Roosevelt, when he took over after the Great 
Depression, if he could electrify America--rural electrification--if he 
could do that in the thirties, surely and goodness, we can basically 
make sure that every household has fast, high-speed internet service. 
We can make that happen, and we are going to use the same blueprint 
that was used many, many years ago, almost 100 years ago.
  We believe that number is much higher than the 258,000. But, here 
again, I am urging the FCC to fix their coverage in the maps. The maps 
are not accurate. They haven't been accurate for years. I will never 
forget when I had one of the chairmen of the FCC in my State one time, 
and we were talking, and I said: Why don't you meet me at a certain 
place in my State? I said: We will have a meeting. I want to talk to 
you.
  He was kind. He drove over there with his staff. I said: Why don't 
you call back to your office and ask if they have any messages for you. 
I said: The map here shows--your map shows--that you are covered. And I 
said: You can use any phone you want, any service you might have.
  And he said: My goodness, I didn't know.
  I said: Sir, this is exactly what we are dealing with. The maps are 
not accurate, and West Virginians are getting left behind.
  There are 543,000, or 31 percent, of the people in West Virginia who 
will be eligible for the affordability connectivity benefit, which will 
help low-income families. You can have internet service, but if it is 
so costly that people can't afford it, then you have a problem. This 
goes along with the same thing as LIHEAP, which helps people with their 
utilities who, basically, are working hard and trying to make it but 
having a hard time. This makes sure that everyone can connect and 
basically benefit from this opportunity.
  West Virginia also has some of the worst roads in the Nation. This 
bipartisan bill will repair and rebuild our roads and bridges. In West 
Virginia, there are 1,545 bridges--1,545--and over 3,200 miles of 
highway in poor condition. Since 2011, commute times have increased by 
6\1/2\ percent and, on average, each driver pays $726 per year in 
additional costs due to repairs by driving on roads that have needed 
repair.
  That is simply unacceptable, and it truly, truly shows the deferred 
maintenance that we have let go for far too long. Based on formula 
alone, West Virginia will receive $3 billion for Federal-Aid Highway 
programs and $506 million for bridge replacement and repairs. We have 
the greatest need of bridge replacement.
  The reason why is that, in the 1930s, the constitution of West 
Virginia changed during the Great Depression, and basically everything 
was put on the State. Before that, local counties and communities were 
all responsible to a certain extent, but when the Depression hit, the 
Constitution was changed in 1932, at the height of the Depression, and 
everything was: This is the State's responsibility; we can't pay no 
more.
  So the State has a tremendous obligation here, and we want to make 
sure we help them.
  West Virginia can also compete for the $12.5 billion Bridge 
Investment Program for economically significant bridges and nearly $16 
billion of national funding in the bill dedicated for major projects 
that will deliver substantial economic benefits to communities.
  And we have to address public transportation in the Mountain State. 
West Virginians, who take public transportation, spend an extra 77 
percent of their time commuting--commuting--

[[Page S6002]]

and non-White households are five times more likely to commute via 
public transportation. That is a fact, and we have to address these 
facts and fix them.

  And 32 percent of the trains and other transit vehicles in the State 
are past their useful life. A third are past their useful life. Based 
on formula funding, West Virginia would expect to receive $196 million 
over 5 years to improve public transportation, which is desperately, 
desperately needed.
  These investments are vital to bringing good-paying jobs to our State 
of West Virginia and the Presiding Officer's State of Virginia and all 
of our States in this great country of ours, and spurring economic 
development like we have never seen before. This is solid economic 
development, not just sending checks, not people just receiving checks 
but people receiving an opportunity of the dignity of work and the 
ability to be able to do what needs to be done in order for them to 
survive and sustain a quality of life.
  I am incredibly proud of our bipartisan group of Senators who have 
worked together day and night to hammer out a compromise that will 
address our infrastructure needs without going overboard. And I will 
remind everyone that not one Senator got everything they wanted, but we 
all got what we needed. This is how compromise works. This is what this 
body was made for. This is why the Senate is called the most 
deliberative body.
  It is hard, when you want to basically take every opportunity to work 
with every single Senator here, to make sure you can help them with the 
problems and needs they have in their own States, and that is what we 
have done.
  I have always said: The best politics is good government.
  Everybody worries about: Oh, I am not sure if that is good for my 
politics.
  Let me tell you, if you do something good for all, it is good for 
you. It will be the best politics you have ever done.
  If we do something good, we all take credit for it.
  I have seen people take credit for things they voted against because 
it was good. It worked well. It didn't bother me at all. I am glad. 
Maybe they won't fight us as hard the next time. Maybe they might join 
us. Who knows?
  I look forward to passing this important legislation with strong 
bipartisan support. I just think this is a moment for our country. This 
is extremely important for our country to show that we can still work 
together and to show that we are united when it comes to the needs.
  I have always said: There are a few things in this country that 
basically unite us. One has always been our military. We want to 
support our military, our law enforcement officers, our firemen, and 
all the people who run into harm's way when everyone else is running 
away from harm's way. Those people are special--very special--I have 
always said. We all seem to rise always for that.
  But now we have one other. We have infrastructure, which unites us. I 
have never seen a road in my State, in the Presiding Officer's State, 
or anywhere in the country that had a bad road or a bad pothole that 
busted my tire that had a Democrat or Republican name on it. It will 
get the Republican, as well as it will get me and the Presiding 
Officer.
  So that is why this brings us together. We all have these needs. As 
Governors, we had the same needs. We used to talk across the board--
whether it be education, whether it be highways, whether it be 
different things that we needed in our State that we all had the same 
concerns and problems with. We never worried about whether it was a 
Republican or Democrat being the Governor. The Presiding Officer had 
the same problems we all had, and we shared successes and the 
challenges and how to overcome those challenges. This is who we are as 
Americans.
  And how we become so divided, I don't know. It worries me, and the 
reason I say this is that this is probably the most important bill that 
we have worked on in many, many years because it is the most difficult, 
challenging times of our lives. Our country has never been more divided 
than it is today, and we need something to bring us together.
  I am so thankful that President Biden has taken this piece of 
legislation as his own and gone around the country on how important 
this piece of legislation is for not just his administration but for 
the entire country. He has been able to identify that. Democrats and 
Republicans--we are going to have 20 Republicans today get on the bill. 
Everyone was afraid that someone is going to get mad and leave. We kept 
gaining. And as they see the support back home, it will continue to 
create more momentum. That is what we need. This is extremely as 
important as anything we do from this day forward to pass a bipartisan 
bill--show the people that basically, yes, we are all Americans first, 
and we are going to take care of the deferred maintenance we let go for 
far too long because of politics. We have set politics aside to take 
care of America.
  So I encourage all of my friends, please, look and see what this bill 
does for America. Look and see what this bill does for your State. You 
will be surprised. And I think we have tried to help everybody that we 
could, and we will continue to work together.
  I suggest the absence of a quorum.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The clerk will call the roll.
  The senior assistant legislative clerk proceeded to call the roll.
  Mr. HAGERTY. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the order 
for the quorum call be rescinded.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. Without objection, it is so ordered.
  Mr. HAGERTY. Mr. President, I support hard infrastructure. It is in 
my DNA. As a kid, I grew up shoveling asphalt. My father and my 
grandfather were in the road construction business.
  I served as the economic development commissioner in my home State of 
Tennessee. I understand firsthand the importance of quality 
infrastructure. It was essential to attracting good jobs to my State. 
So I am in complete agreement that shoring up our hard infrastructure 
is a worthy cause.
  This bill does some of that, and that is good. But there are both 
good ways and bad ways to achieve noble ends. And the question is, What 
is the best way to achieve this goal? And my frustration is with the 
methods and with the vehicle that is being used here.
  The first problem is that the bill sponsors repeatedly said it would 
be paid for. In fact, it is not. And it is more than a little bit off. 
It is over a quarter of a trillion dollars short. That is almost seven 
times the budget of my home State of Tennessee.
  We waited weeks for the text of this legislation. And before the text 
even existed, the Democrat leader forced the Senate to vote on 
proceeding to it. There is absolutely no reason for rushing this 
process and attempting to limit scrutiny of this bill other than the 
Democrats' completely artificial, self-imposed, and politically driven 
timeline. There will be more on that later.
  The text, all 2,700-plus pages of it, was finally made available to 
us 6 days ago. The Senate has been able to consider that this week, but 
the Senate continued to wait all week for the Congressional Budget 
Office's analysis of what it would cost.
  The CBO is the entity that Congress has agreed is responsible for 
scorekeeping on what legislation will cost the American people.
  Let's keep in mind that meeting the definition of ``paid for'' in the 
CBO's eyes doesn't always make sense to the average American. For 
instance, CBO allows spending now to be offset by projected savings 
that won't happen for 10 years. CBO can allow savings that are already 
occurring naturally to count, effectively, as new savings for purposes 
of scoring a bill.
  The point is, this kind of scoring is designed to make it easier for 
a bill to be scored as paid for, at least on paper.
  As an example, the University of Pennsylvania's Penn Wharton Budget 
Model estimates that this legislation would actually add $351 billion 
in deficit spending, an even higher total than the CBO estimate.
  The point is, even using these scorekeeping advantages, the CBO has 
made it clear this bill isn't paid for.
  I understand why the Democratic leadership kept the CBO score under 
wraps until Thursday. It showed that the bill fell far short of 
ambitions. The CBO said that it misses the mark of being paid for by a 
cool quarter of a trillion dollars.

[[Page S6003]]

  As an aside, I found it incredible that despite--or perhaps because 
of--getting this news on Thursday afternoon, Democrats tried to 
accelerate the passage of this bill later that same day. Instead of 
going through the normal multiday process for debating and enacting a 
bill, they tried to rush it through in the middle of the night. I 
objected to accelerating this process on Thursday because the Senate 
must carefully consider what it is doing.
  Now, the proponents of this bill claim that the CBO's analysis is 
wrong. No matter how much explaining they do, the Senate agreed on the 
umpire before the game started.
  To this end, if this bill is paid for, why will we have to waive 
Budget Act requirements later on in this process?
  The Senate is going to have to pass this bill by waiving the Budget 
Act or the pay-go requirements. That is not ``paid for.''
  Most of us probably won't be around when the bill comes due for this 
never-ending deficit spending here in Washington, but, sadly, our 
children and our grandchildren will be. The politicians in Washington 
spend now to buy votes but, conveniently, won't be around to deal with 
the consequences.
  We can do hard infrastructure--again, that is a worthy goal--but we 
can do it without shoveling more debt onto the backs of our children 
and our grandchildren. Indeed, if we just limited this bill to hard 
infrastructure, it would be paid for. As I said, there are good and bad 
ways to achieve noble ends.
  The second reason that I am opposed to this legislation is because of 
its Big Government, top-down approach. It includes many half-baked 
components that deserve far more scrutiny.
  Rather than compete against China using our unparalleled innovation, 
our ingenuity, our technology, we are substituting massive government 
control to dictate, to fund, and to decide winners and losers. That is 
not the American way.
  We are using the cryptocurrency market as a pay-for.
  Have we fully vetted how this new regulation and taxation will affect 
this rapidly developing industry?
  Will we wind up ceding this industry to others because of this 
regulation?
  What is the point of even having committees in the Senate with 
expertise in certain matters if the most significant legislation that 
passes this body doesn't even go through?
  The whole point of committees is to use them--use these committees to 
carefully scrutinize and refine important legislation, use committees 
to prevent unintended consequences that result from rushed legislation. 
Yet this is a 2,700-page bill that is going through no committees. Once 
again, we have to pass it to find out what is in it and then learn what 
kind of unintended consequences we can expect.
  The third reason I am frustrated with this legislation is because it 
is tied to what I believe is the Democrats' real ambition, which is 
their multitrillion-dollar march to socialism that they will unveil 
right after this infrastructure legislation is passed. Democrats have 
admitted this. This is their plan.
  The far-left wing of the Democratic Party, which is effectively 
calling the shots these days, is demanding that Democrats here in 
Congress spend trillions of dollars to reshape American society, to 
make American citizens more dependent on their government. Their aim 
seems to be to turn the United States into a sclerotic, government-
controlled state, just like Western Europe.
  The upcoming legislation that we are talking about now is the third 
leg of the stool of the Democrats' overall plan. The first leg is to 
pack the Supreme Court so the Constitution no longer gets in the way of 
their plan. The second is to Federalize and take over voting laws and 
procedures, ensuring Democrats will never lose another election, 
propelling themselves into perpetual power over both the legislative 
branch and the executive branch.
  And, third, they want to remake the U.S. economy and America's 
relationship with government into one where Americans begin to look to 
government for everything, from Green New Deal programs to daycare. In 
this world, American citizens will be less free, less prosperous but 
more captive and hooked on government programs. That means they will be 
more dependent on Democrats and the institutions that they control.
  So far, Democrats have been unable to build legs one and two of the 
stool, but they are actively trying. President Biden has a court-
packing commission ongoing, and the Democratic leader is, today, 
working on scheduling more votes on the election takeover. They are 
desperate to appease leftwing extremists that have all of the energy in 
their party because they need these extremists' support to win 
elections.
  Yet they have stalled out on their first two goals, so they have come 
up with a scheme to build the third leg of their stool. They previewed 
phase 1 of the scheme in March, when they spent $1.9 trillion in the 
name of COVID relief. Of course, 90 percent of it had nothing to do 
with COVID. It was really just a payoff to their most loyal political 
supporters.
  Sadly, it is now causing the highest inflation that we have seen in 
decades. This inflation is a daily tax on every American who has to buy 
goods and services here in America.
  But phase 2 of the scheme is even more devious. Step 1: Change the 
conversation to trillions with a ``t.'' Make billions sound small. 
Condition the Congress, condition the media, condition the American 
public to these big numbers.
  Remember, a trillion dollars is an astronomical number, and our 
children are going to have to pay for it.
  Step 2: Tell the United States that America needs infrastructure; but 
then, Step 3, redefine the term ``infrastructure'' to include 
government-dependency programs. Really muddy it up.

  Step 4: When more reasonable Democrats in the Senate balk at some of 
these more expensive or egregious items, promise them a two-track 
process--one for hard infrastructure and one for social programs.
  Step 5: Negotiate as much of your socialist wish list into the 
infrastructure track as you can. They got some of it into this bill, 
but not all of it. They will just put the rest of it into the wish list 
and put that wish list into the government-dependency bill that is yet 
to come.
  Step 6: Pass the infrastructure bill through the Senate as quickly as 
possible. Drop a nearly 3,000-page bill and demand that it be passed 
immediately before we can even understand or scrutinize what is in it. 
The Trojan horse, my friends, is through the gate.
  Step 7: Hold that infrastructure bill hostage in the House of 
Representatives until everything you couldn't get into the 
infrastructure bill--particularly meaning the trillions of dollars in 
government-dependency programs--are passed through the Senate. 
Therefore, Nancy Pelosi has promised that this bill will never become 
law until it is joined at the hip with the multitrillion-dollar 
socialist bill.
  More on that in a minute.
  Step 8: Say that the President won't sign the infrastructure bill 
into law if it is not accompanied by trillions of dollars in 
government-dependency programs. President Biden already did this before 
he clumsily walked it back, but we saw and we heard what he was 
thinking.
  Step 9: To get the government-dependency programs part passed, 
circumvent the filibuster in the Senate by abusing an arcane loophole 
called reconciliation. Reconciliation was intended to save taxpayer 
dollars and to assure passage of an annual budget for the Federal 
Government. But now they are using this process--they are abusing this 
procedure to pass trillions of dollars of government-dependency 
programs with only 50 Democrat votes.
  Step 10: Give reasonable Democrats political cover to support the 
parliamentary trick and the government-dependency spending by saying it 
unlocks the ability for their hard-fought infrastructure bill that 
passed the Senate--and, by the way, is now being held hostage in the 
House--to finally get through the House and to the President's desk.
  Wait a minute. What just happened? Abracadabra. The American people 
are so confused by the Democrats' sleight of hand that they don't even 
notice that their wallet has been stolen and that their country has 
been fundamentally changed.
  My question is simple: If these policies and this spending is so 
good, why does getting it done take a parliamentary house of mirrors?

[[Page S6004]]

  There can't be a bipartisan deal on infrastructure if its enactment 
into law requires later tacking on all of the socialist wish list items 
that got excluded from the deal.
  Democrats have telegraphed these plans. You just have to pay 
attention. The President of the United States, right after announcing 
the infrastructure deal, said it would be held hostage on his desk 
without the trillions of dollars of government-dependency spending 
alongside it.
  President Biden specifically said this:

       I expect that in the coming months this summer, before the 
     fiscal year is over, that we will have voted on this bill--
     the infrastructure bill--as well as voted on the budget 
     resolution. But if only one comes to me . . . this is the 
     only thing that comes to me, I'm not signing it. It's in 
     tandem.

  Later, in response to a question, President Biden revealed: ``Look, 
the bipartisan bill, from the very beginning, was understood there was 
going to have to be the second part of it,'' he said. ``I'm not just 
signing the bipartisan bill and forgetting about the rest.''
  Now, he has later tried to muddy up the waters on this because he 
said too much. But if you read his cleanup statement carefully, he 
never took back his vow. He never said he would sign the bipartisan 
bill without having alongside it the partisan multitrillion-dollar 
bill.
  The Speaker of the House has said the same thing repeatedly. On June 
24, she said: There ain't going to be a bipartisan bill without a 
reconciliation bill.
  She added again:

       Let me be really clear on this: We will not take up a bill 
     in the House until the Senate passes the bipartisan bill and 
     a reconciliation bill.

  A month later, on July 22, Speaker Pelosi again said:

       We will not take up the infrastructure bill until the 
     Senate passes the reconciliation measure.

  It only takes one Democrat to end this insanity, to stand up and say 
he or she won't participate in this scheme. That would change the 
entire tenor of this debate and this process.
  So while I believe in hard infrastructure, I cannot participate in 
doing it this way: first, by including in this bill a bunch of things 
that aren't hard infrastructure, and the result of that is throwing a 
quarter of a trillion dollars more debt at our children and our 
grandchildren; and, secondly, and most importantly for the future of 
this country, enabling this quadruple bank-shot attempt by Democrats to 
thread their government dependency fantasy through a House and a Senate 
that are divided by the narrowest of margins by holding this bill, once 
it passes, hostage in the House.
  The stakes here are too high. America is an exceptional nation. We 
are distinct from all others throughout history. We are exceptional 
because we provided more freedom and opportunity than any other. 
President Lincoln called it the ``last best hope of Earth.'' Ever 
since, it has fulfilled that promise for countless generations.
  We must fight to preserve our American system and the American dream, 
not in a tornado of hurried legislative activity that will seal its 
decline.
  I am asking my colleagues to fight for this country's future. Our 
children and grandchildren deserve to have the same sort of wonderful 
opportunity that our parents and grandparents gave us. We need to make 
certain that they have a future for them that is better than today, and 
we are duty-bound to make certain that it happens. That is why I ran 
for office.
  Let's work together on infrastructure, out from under the rapidly 
approaching cloud of socialism. Let's make this happen a different way.
  Mr. President, I yield the floor.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER (Mr. Reed). The Senator from Tennessee.
  Mrs. BLACKBURN. Mr. President, I want to concur with my colleague 
from Tennessee in his beautifully stated remarks and the way he has 
brought forward the frustration that Tennesseans have.
  You know, I had the opportunity to be at home yesterday. We have a 
great event going on in Nashville this weekend. It is called the Grand 
Prix. I had the opportunity to be at the opening event with a lot of 
women, small business owners. I had the opportunity later in the day to 
go cut the ribbon for a big county fair and see lots of families and 
talk to families who were there. Do you know what? They are completely 
confused with what is going on.
  See, Tennesseans are really smart. They watch what is happening in 
Washington, DC. They are so concerned about the future and about 
freedom and freedom's cause, and they continue to say, as my colleague 
from Tennessee stated, that they want the best for their children and 
for their grandchildren because they appreciate the American dream.
  Many of them have lived the American dream, whether they are a farmer 
or a teacher; whether they are a lawyer, an accountant, a mom, a dad, 
somebody who owns a small business on Main Street in one of our 95 
counties in our beautiful towns. They have lived it. They are living it 
every single day--blood, sweat, tears, working long hours, investing. 
They look at what is happening here in Washington, and they are saying: 
Why are you in such a rush to force us into bankruptcy?
  You know, July 6, 2010--I use this statement all the time, Mr. 
President. Someone you and I each know because of our work on Armed 
Services: Admiral Mullen. July 6, 2010, he was asked a question: What 
keeps you up at night? What is the greatest threat to our Nation's 
freedom, our democracy? Do you know what he said? He said: Our Nation's 
debt.
  Now, let me walk you back through the history of that debt. If we 
were to go from the time that George Washington became President up 
until the time that George W. Bush stepped out of office, our Nation 
had accrued a total of $10.6 trillion in debt--too much for me.
  When I would go to the White House with President Bush, I would say: 
Mr. President, there are two things that I think need to be addressed. 
No. 1 is the out-of-control Federal spending, and No. 2 is the issue of 
illegal immigration.
  Well, he left office $10.6 trillion in debt, but still very mild 
compared to what we are facing today, I think we would have to say.
  Now, President Obama took office, and he and Joe Biden went to work. 
Do you know what they did in 8 years? They ended up just about doubling 
our Nation's debt--double.
  President Trump came in, tried to pare back on regulations and cut 
the size of the Federal Government. And then we had COVID. That added 
to the debt.
  Then here comes President Biden, and it is as if the printing presses 
have cranked up on printing those dollar bills, running them through as 
fast as they possibly can, because what the Biden administration and 
Chuck Schumer and Nancy Pelosi had pushed through was $1.9 trillion, 
saying that was necessary for CARES, even though all that money that 
had previously been spent had not been--or that had been appropriated 
had not been spent.
  Now, here we have $1.2 trillion. As my colleague said, it has become 
this bill of, here is a little bit for infrastructure, but, oh, by the 
way, over here, here is this great big downpayment on the Green New 
Deal. Don't worry that we don't generate enough electricity for an 
electric vehicle fleet; we will figure that one out later. Let's just 
put in subsidies for electric vehicles. Don't worry about giving more 
power to the Federal Government; we will give you back authority, local 
governments, if we think you need it. So $1.2 trillion in spending. 
Then we hear that the bonus round in this lollapalooza is going to be 
$3.5 trillion, but more likely, the realistic view is, it is going to 
be $5 trillion.
  So back to my point, people in Tennessee are saying ``What in the 
world could you possibly be thinking? What could you possibly be 
thinking?'' because they know the history of this Nation's debt.
  Do you know what? And this really relates to much of the work that we 
do in SASC. They know that there is a threat from the people who own or 
hold our debt. Japan, our friend and ally, is at the top of the tier 
right now. The last time I checked last month on who owns our debt, you 
know, No. 2 is China. They own well over $1 trillion or hold over $1 
trillion dollars of our debt. If you put the OPEC nations together--
and, of course, after the Keystone Pipeline, we are now dependent on 
OPEC

[[Page S6005]]

and others for fuel. We were energy independent thanks to President 
Trump and Republicans in the House and Senate. We were energy 
independent. But OPEC is there in that top five, all those OPEC 
countries grouped together.
  So people in Tennessee are really quite--they are miffed. They are 
put off by what is going on.
  I was really surprised. I had a text this morning from one of my 
county mayors: I am all for infrastructure. I am for the Cornyn 
amendment. But you know what, I am not for this bill because you have 
got less--or about 25 percent of this that goes for something that we 
would deem infrastructure.

  Tennesseans love to talk about infrastructure as four things. They 
talk about roads, river, railways, and runways. And, of course, we are 
a logistics State. Everyone knows Memphis has a big port and a rail 
hub, one of two cities where all five class A railroads come into that 
city. They know that interstates are important. They crisscross our 
State--indeed, Nashville, where you have three major interstates that 
crisscross right there in the middle of that city. They know that 
Tennessee--so many businesses choose to locate there because we are 
within an 8-hour drive of a majority of the Nation's population.
  Logistics require good roads and rivers and rail and runways, but, 
you know what, they are not seeing it in this. When you, in the name of 
infrastructure, spend this amount of money--now, I have great respect 
for my colleagues on each side of the aisle who have worked to produce 
a product, to do it in a bipartisan way. That is commendable. It is 
commendable. For Tennesseans, the result is something that is 
frustrating to them.
  You know, this is considered to be the world's greatest deliberative 
body. I always appreciated how our former colleague Senator Alexander 
would talk about the cup and saucer. The hot coffee gets poured into 
the cup. It spills over into the saucer. It cools off. You add some 
sweetener, and you get something that you enjoy. People expect more. 
They expect better of this deliberative body.
  Tennesseans know that our Nation's freedom has been well-served by 
robust, respectful, bipartisan debate. That is a good thing. It 
strengthens freedom. It brings people together. It brings them to the 
table to talk about what is their priority.
  Now, unfortunately, most of us in this body have not had the 
opportunity to be at that table. Amendments that we have worked on that 
we felt like would have improved this bill are not going to be heard--
not here, not in a hearing, in a committee. We are just not going to 
see that as a part of this process. That is unfortunate, and it is 
going to be unfortunate if, indeed, that happens on the next bill or 
the bill after that or the bill after that. We should return to regular 
order and go through this process.
  Now, I had about 30 amendments that I had offered as improvements for 
this bill. Rest assured, I am not going to stand here and go through 
each and every one of those amendments, but there are some things that 
I thought needed our attention in this bill.
  As many of my colleagues know, broadband is something that, whether I 
was serving in the House or back in the State senate in Tennessee or 
before that, going in and reorganizing the Tennessee Film, 
Entertainment and Music Commission for our Governor, broadband and 
moving from analog to digital, making high-speed internet available all 
across our State, closing that digital divide--I have spent so many 
hours working on this. I filed three amendments that I felt like would 
really do some damage control on these and help close the divide, 
getting to our rural and unserved areas, people who have no internet.
  Amendment No. 2327 would have prohibited the Federal Government from 
forcing municipal broadband provider programs into States that have 
outlawed them.
  Now, Tennessee is one of those States that say to municipalities: If 
you want to serve people within your city, that is great. You go ahead. 
But you can't go outside of your boundaries.
  There are other States that have had this issue. There is a reason 
they say: If you serve your constituents, great, but don't go outside 
that. It is because States that have allowed these schemes ended up 
banning them for a reason. Usually it is because these government-run 
systems would end up imploding, leaving the taxpayers with a bill that 
they were going to have to pay.
  Now, another amendment, amendment No. 2377, would have prohibited the 
FCC, our Federal Communications Commission, from implementing price-
setting schemes on broadband providers. Allowing the FCC to do that 
rate-setting and price-setting would destroy investment in rural 
broadband. It would destroy it. We know this. And it would actually 
incentivize providers in avoiding these unserved areas. Sometimes we 
talk about that as being that last mile that needs to get that fiber, 
that last mile that needs fixed wireless, that last mile that is 
needing some form of connectivity.
  Amendment No. 2328--and we do hope this one makes it in the bill--
would strike language permitting regulators to allow these broadband 
grant recipients to use the money for--and I am quoting the language in 
the bill--``any use determined necessary . . . to facilitate the goals 
of the program.'' Now, this sounds vague. It is vague. If there is one 
thing that we learned prior when we put a lot of money out during 
President Obama's time, it is that sometimes this money ends up not 
being targeted to broadband but ends up as a slush fund.
  We also have an amendment that will deal with a shovel-ready 
infrastructure project on our southern border. Amendment 2406 would 
redirect $1 billion from Amtrak. By the way, Amtrak is getting many 
billions of dollars in this bill. And it would send that money over to 
the Department of Homeland Security to finish the southern border wall 
construction.
  We all know what is happening on that border: record numbers of 
illegal aliens coming in, many very sick, COVID-positive. We know that 
they are ending up--as are drugs, as are gangs--in cities and towns 
across this Nation. Indeed, until we secure the southern border, every 
town is a border town, every State is a border State.
  God bless our law enforcement officers who are fighting this every 
day. I am hearing from them, and I want them to know I hear them, and I 
understand the pressures that they are under.
  We also know that our communities are struggling trying to get back 
to work and really move forward with regrowing the economy, but 
inflation has gotten in the way.
  One of the big problems that people point to with the high cost of 
fuel and logistics and the packing materials is the killing of the 
Keystone Pipeline. Amendment 2298 would amend section 4034 of the bill, 
which calls for a study on job loss and impacts on consumer energy due 
to the revocation of the permit for the Keystone XL Pipeline. My 
amendment says that if the report shows that killing the pipeline 
caused numerous job losses and an impact on consumer energy costs, that 
the President should revoke--he shall revoke his Executive order and 
get out of the way of the pipeline construction.
  Get people back to work and get the prices at the pump, get them 
down. Get them down to where they were when President Trump left 
office. I mean, what is the purpose of a report if it doesn't have any 
teeth? So let's take an action on that.
  There is no bill that is ever perfect. They all have to be worked on. 
Many times, we come back a year or so later, and we do technical 
corrections on a bill. We make changes. And this is no different. This 
bill needs time. It needs a thorough amendment process. It needs to go 
back to the committees of jurisdiction to work through these issues.
  Are the American people for infrastructure? Yes, they are for 
infrastructure. Tennesseans are for infrastructure. I am for 
infrastructure projects. Yes, indeed. Am I for this piece of 
legislation? No, because it is a document that has misplaced 
priorities.
  I yield the floor.
  I suggest the absence of a quorum.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The clerk will call the roll.
  The legislative clerk proceeded to call the roll.
  Mr. LEE. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the order for 
the quorum call be rescinded.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER (Mr. Brown). Without objection, it is so 
ordered.

[[Page S6006]]

  



                               H.R. 3684

  Mr. LEE. Mr. President, we are debating a bill that a number of us 
have spoken of on a number of occasions. Since my last address on the 
Senate floor on this topic, we received a score on the bill from the 
Congressional Budget Office.
  Now, remember, it is the CBO's role to put together a score on 
legislation we are considering. It is part of how the system works in 
Washington so we can assess what will and will not add to the deficit 
and how it will do so if it does. It is an important part of the 
process.
  When we finally received the CBO score just about 48 hours ago, we 
discovered a few things. We discovered that, despite the 
representations we have heard by the bill's staunchest advocates to the 
effect that the bill would be paid for--that it is, that it would not 
add to the debt and deficit, and that it would not add to the debt and 
deficit in a way that also didn't involve raising taxes--it turned out 
that the CBO rejected the claim that this bill was paid for. In fact, 
the CBO concluded that $256 of the $550 billion it claimed in pay-fors 
did not pay. They are not paid for, and thus that they will 
considerably--I mean, we are talking here about over a quarter of a 
trillion dollars that would go right on to the debt and deficit.
  They also concluded that in the long run, over the next 10 years, we 
will be looking at an additional $340 billion in cost to the Federal 
Government--a cost that by some estimates could reach as high as $400 
billion because of the spillover effect that this bill is likely to 
have on future spending, contracting authority, and otherwise.
  So this bill is not paid for. The pay-fors suggested by the bill's 
proponents don't get the job done. In fact, more than half of them 
simply don't get there. We do, however, see that there are some of the 
pay-fors that create significant policy concerns.
  One of the pay-fors that isn't fake is an extension of the so-called 
g-fees--g-fees being imposed by entities like Fannie Mae that will 
inevitably increase the cost that home buyers will face when they go to 
buy a home. Now, why does that matter here? Well, we have seen a 
startling uptick in inflation--inflation across the board, everything 
from gas to groceries and everything from healthcare to housing. We see 
that increasing stunningly in a way that a lot of people are pointing 
out, correctly, that first-time home buyers are now finding it very 
difficult to get into a home. This is something that is going to end up 
affecting all poor and middle-class Americans at a time they can little 
afford it. And yet we are increasing these fees--fees that are in 
effect a back-door invisible tax on a lot of those who are least in a 
position to pay.
  Some of the other non-fake pay-fors that actually do bring something 
in include an increase in the fees paid by manufacturers and 
distributors of certain chemicals. The issue there is that this fee, 
while labeled as not a tax--because, technically speaking, it is not a 
tax--will end up increasing the price of basically every consumer good 
purchased by the American people.
  The way these things end up working is that to the tune of about $15 
billion or so, Americans will find that pretty much everything they 
buy, from apparel to electronics, will get a little more expensive. 
They may not see it. In fact, the overwhelming majority of them won't 
even know to attribute it to this particular piece of legislation, but 
it will have that effect. It will make all Americans a little poorer. 
It will make all Americans face the very stark reality in which their 
already strapped dollars that they earn will go just a little bit less 
far.
  We have to remember that from one year to the next, we don't see 
dramatic fluctuations in the quantity of goods that the American people 
have access to that they may buy. In other words, the U.S. economy is 
capable of producing a relatively foreseeable, predictable, somewhat 
finite supply of goods in a particular year. When that doesn't change 
dramatically from one year to the next, as it almost never does, but 
you dramatically increase the money supply in the U.S. economy, then 
what you see is that everything gets a little bit more expensive. This 
ends up hurting, in particular, America's poor and middle class. It 
ends up hurting, in particular, those Americans, including most 
Americans who in one way or another live paycheck to paycheck, who in 
one way or another depend on the income that they have, and the income 
that they have is relatively fixed. So, as a result of that, they don't 
get as far.

  Now, you have got some Americans, including the wealthiest and well-
connected in our society, who may well figure out ways to get wealthy 
off of this bill. One way or another, they can play things to their 
advantage, and they may make a lot of money off of it.
  You have got another category of very wealthy Americans--maybe, you 
know, people in the top 1 or 2 percent of income earners--who might 
notice that the things they buy are getting more expensive, but it 
might not affect them all that much.
  But then you have got everyone else, and I mean the vast, 
overwhelming majority of all Americans, who, in one way or another, 
plan out each year knowing that they have got a relatively finite 
amount of money to spend, and that money goes less far when we just 
print money to the tune of trillions and trillions of dollars.
  Remember, the Federal Government, in recent years, has been spending 
about $4 trillion a year. Tragically, even at the top of our economic 
cycle, with record low unemployment and with record high growth, we 
were still spending $1 trillion a year more than we were bringing in--
bringing in about $3 trillion, spending about $4 trillion. This was 
inexcusable then. It would be inexcusable now, except that we are 
making it much, much worse.
  Last year, we took in about $3 trillion, and we spent $3.6 trillion--
borrowing and then printing close to 4 trillion additional dollars. 
What does this do? Well, it makes all Americans just a little bit 
poorer, especially those living on a relatively fixed income.
  So this is troubling when we do that. We ought to be concerned when 
we do that. Inflation numbers that are coming out all the time, 
including some that I have heard about the first time today, indicate 
that everything is getting more expensive. And what are we doing? Well, 
we are on track to spend another $1.2 trillion, including $550 billion 
of new spending, which the bill's proponents claim is paid for when 
most of it isn't paid for. And that portion of it that is paid for is 
in one way or another often paid for in a way that will inure to the 
detriment of poor, middle-class Americans. This is concerning.
  It is also concerning that one of the other pay-for provisions is the 
one focused on cryptocurrency. It focuses on an industry that is 
rapidly developing--rapidly developing within the United States--that 
depends on a lot of innovation happening in the United States. One of 
these pay-for provisions seeks to bring in more revenue to the Federal 
Government or at least to promise more revenue to the Federal 
Government, with the promise of requiring those who spy and sell 
cryptocurrency to treat it the same way as they would the exchange of 
securities.
  This is very different than securities. These aren't just stocks. It 
is something very different. It is a medium of exchange that, if 
adopted more widely, could facilitate a lot of economic activity and a 
lot of innovation within the United States of America. If, in fact, we 
pass this bill, mark my words, it is going to have a chilling effect on 
innovation within this sector.
  And what you will see is that the flight of innovation and investment 
related to innovation to offshore locations around the globe, places 
outside the United States, may well be the ones to reap the benefit 
associated with the loss here in the United States if we adopt an 
unproven, untested, unknown strategy for dealing with something, trying 
to adopt many decades-old regulatory policies to a completely new form 
of exchange; one that, by the way, values very highly the privacy of 
those who exchange it.
  So if what you are going to do is take away that value by requiring 
that all of it be registered and publicly disclosed and by giving the 
Federal Government the ability to peer into it, you are going to stifle 
innovation. You are going to make a lot of people upset, and you are 
going to make Americans poorer.
  At the heart of a lot of this is a concern that the Federal 
Government, as

[[Page S6007]]

it takes more and more money, as it prints more and more money, as it 
requires Americans to work weeks or months out of every year just to 
pay their Federal taxes, only to be told that it is not nearly enough 
and it hasn't been enough for many decades because we are nearly $30 
trillion in debt--it is still not enough because we are still going to 
borrow and print more.
  It is insulting to them, and it is especially insulting to them when 
you tell them that in connection with the same legislation that also 
includes other intrusions into their privacy.
  For example, there is a pilot program called for in this legislation 
that will be created by this legislation that would be designed 
specifically to monitor how many miles someone drives in a year. Now, 
this has long been a fantasy of a number of people who would like to 
see the Federal Government tracking miles driven by every motorist in 
America.
  Now, we all know that there is almost no way to achieve this that 
wouldn't excessively interfere with the privacy rights of every man, 
woman, and child in America. Look, the American people are fine with a 
government that makes sure that we are safe from foreign aggressors, 
that regulates interstate and foreign commerce, that coins money and 
regulates the value thereof, that adopts a uniform set of bankruptcy 
laws, immigration laws, protects trademarks, copyrights, and patents.
  What they do not want is a nanny. What they do not want is a snooping 
device added to every car that will track them; that will track where 
they and their families are going. It is none of their darn business. 
Keep the Federal Government out of this. Look, whether you want more 
government spending or not, chances are, if you are listening to this, 
you probably are concerned, regardless of what political hat you wear, 
regardless of whom you voted for in recent Presidential or 
congressional elections. You probably don't want the Federal Government 
in your car monitoring your every move knowing where you are going.

  We know that when governments do that, when they start to assume that 
everything is government's business, bad things happen. It ends in 
tears and wars. That is none of the Federal Government's darn business. 
We don't want the Federal Government even developing technology to 
start snooping on every person's every move.
  Which brings me to yet another intrusion on personal privacy and 
liberty in this legislation. Section 24220 calls for the development 
and, within just a few years, the formalization and finalization of 
regulations that would require passenger vehicles manufactured and sold 
within the United States to have a device that would passively measure 
the blood alcohol content of the driver and do so in a way that would 
inhibit or at least impair the ability of the vehicle to operate if the 
vehicle, in its infinite wisdom, was able to ascertain that the blood 
alcohol content of the driver was over 0.8.
  Now, look, we are all for stopping drunk driving. It is terrible. It 
results in countless lives lost. But we can all see a lot of things 
that can go wrong with that. Setting aside for a minute the 
constitutional implications of the intrusiveness of putting technology 
in every passenger vehicle that requires, at the outset, without any 
finding that anyone has done anything wrong, that requires you to take 
a test mandated by the Federal Government every time you want to do 
something as simple as turn on your car--then let's consider what 
happens when, with such a technology, which to my knowledge doesn't yet 
exist--with such a technology, assuming it is able to come into 
existence because of these burdensome regulations in a few years, that 
technology, if they are able to develop it, is going to be costly. Who 
does that hurt? Well, you guessed it. Poor and middle-class Americans 
who will all of a sudden find that every passenger vehicle will become 
a lot more expensive. It is just the way it works.
  When we mandate the creation of new Federal regulations, and those 
Federal regulations apply to any new automobile sold in the United 
States, the price of new automobiles goes up. And in the case of a 
particularly novel and particularly sophisticated technology like this 
one, I suspect it will go up a lot.
  This may not be troubling to the millionaires and billionaires out 
there who don't feel the pinch of that, but to everyone else, the 99 
percent of all Americans--more than that, I suppose--this hurts. 
Moreover, what happens when that technology malfunctions? Not if but 
when. Look, we have all had cars that will malfunction for one reason 
or another, and oftentimes it is basic security devices, something as 
simple as that annoying beeper that goes off until you put your 
seatbelt on. Sometimes some people will put their seatbelt on, and it 
still pings. That is a terribly annoying nuisance when that happens. 
The consequences are much more deeply felt; they are much more severe 
if someone gets in the car, whether it is to go to work, to come home 
from work, to take a loved one to the doctor or the hospital, and it 
doesn't work.
  Look, glitches happen, and if you are talking about adding an 
override to a vehicle--you know, maybe that override to the vehicle 
mistakenly thinks that it smells alcohol, maybe it doesn't like the 
aftershave or cologne you are wearing on that particular day, maybe the 
whole thing stops working, and your car stops working with it. This 
isn't one of those things where you can just open up the hood and find 
the presence of an on-off switch, as Jerry Seinfeld might have put it 
many years ago. No, this is much more sophisticated technology that the 
average, hard-working American isn't going to be able to fix quickly. 
They won't even be able to see it. There again, they are going to face 
more costs as they take their vehicle into the shop to have it 
evaluated by a certified technician capable of dealing with that 
brandnew, very sophisticated, very expensive technology.
  So with each of these things, we see something of a common theme. The 
Federal Government, which already plays too prominent a role in too 
many people's lives, which is already taxing us too much, spying on us 
too much, and considering everything under the Sun its business--we are 
making even more things its business, from cryptocurrency to where and 
how far you drive your car, to whether you can operate your car at all. 
We are doing all of this so that we can spend even more Federal money 
on even more Federal infrastructure projects, which are even more 
expensive by virtue of the fact that we are dealing with Federal 
dollars, for the simple reason that compliance with all the Federal 
regulations that accompany the expenditure of Federal infrastructure 
dollars costs a lot of money. In many States like mine, it can cost 20, 
30 percent, sometimes even more, on top of what it would cost if these 
were just State revenues that they were spending.
  So I would ask the question: Is it worth it? I would ask the 
question: Do we want Big Brother knowing our every move? I would ask 
the question: Do we want a government that is already requiring you to 
work weeks or months out of every year just to pay your Federal taxes? 
Do you want it printing even more money, making sure that the dollars 
that you spend, which are finite, limited, and sacred, will go even 
less far? I think not, and I urge my colleagues who support this 
legislation to reconsider.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The senior Senator from Illinois.


                           Order of Business

  Mr. DURBIN. Mr. President, for the information of Members, we are 
planning to have a vote at 5 o'clock today on the confirmation of 
Eunice Lee to the Second Circuit Court of Appeals. I wanted Members to 
make their plans accordingly.
  Thank you.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The senior Senator from Maryland.


                   Unanimous Consent Request--S. 2675

  Mr. CARDIN. Mr. President, I rise to speak about the Restaurant 
Revitalization Fund, and then I will be asking unanimous consent to 
consider legislation.
  We included the Restaurant Revitalization Fund in our March 
legislation on COVID relief. We did that because, of all of the 
industries affected by COVID-19, restaurants have been some of the most 
difficult businesses to survive COVID-19.
  They were ordered by government, basically, to shut down at the 
beginning of COVID-19. Then, as we started

[[Page S6008]]

to make progress, they were at much restricted operations. And to this 
day, restaurants are still not up to their full capacity. Their 
revenues have been very much decimated as a result of COVID-19.
  We came together in March with bipartisan legislation in order to do 
something about that, and we included that in our legislation--$28.6 
billion of relief for restaurants. Now, what it did is cover some of 
their revenue loss as a result of COVID-19. It gave them a lifeline to 
be able to survive this pandemic.
  We projected that $28.6 billion would be the need, but we were wrong. 
We were wrong because COVID-19 was more severe than we thought, 
restaurants were more badly damaged than we had anticipated, and there 
was a great deal of more demand and need than the $28.6 billion. We are 
now being told by the Small Business Administration that the right 
number was $71.3 billion, or an additional $42.7 billion that is 
needed.
  I have introduced bipartisan legislation to provide this additional 
authority to the SBA to complete this program. It is bipartisan. My 
partner in this is Senator Wicker. We are joined by Senator Schumer, 
Senator Murkowski, Senator Cantwell, Senator Ernst, Senator Sinema, 
Senator Cassidy, Senator Stabenow, and Senator Hyde-Smith. And I might 
add, there are many, many more Senators on both sides of the aisle who 
very much support our efforts to live up to our commitment.
  Now, why do we need to take this up right now?
  This is a matter of life or death for many restaurants in our 
community. There is also a matter of fairness.
  We have two restaurants, side by side, in the exact same 
circumstances, submitting their applications on the same day, having 
the exact same need. Both were advised that they will get funding. One 
got funding before the $28.6 billion was exhausted. The other that was 
told they were going to get funding, they won't get funding unless we 
act. That is not right.
  There is a matter of the credibility of the U.S. Senate and of 
Congress and of government. We say we are going to do something. We 
should live up to our commitments. The urgency of getting this done is 
now.
  I don't think there is a Senator in this Chamber who hasn't heard 
from restaurants in their State about how badly they need these funds 
and how they thought these funds were going to be in their bank, and 
they are no longer in the bank. I have heard from so many Senators 
about this. The urgency is now.
  Let me just anticipate one other argument that I might hear, and that 
is: Well, where are we getting this money from?
  Well, legislation before us takes $36 billion out of the small 
business programs--$36 billion. So this is paid for by the rescissions 
that have been made in this legislation that we are considering, that 
is before us today. So for all of those reasons, this is a fiscally 
responsible thing to do.
  Lastly, before I yield the floor to the majority leader, let me say 
that we made a commitment to help our small businesses. We did that--
Democrats and Republicans--working together. In some cases we 
overestimated the dollars that we need. In some cases we underestimated 
the dollars that we need. But we always came back and provided the full 
funding for the programs we have authorized, and, in total, it is not 
much different than has previously been authorized.
  This is a matter of fairness and a matter of absolute need that we 
provide the extra money now for the restaurants.
  Before I make my unanimous consent request, I would yield the floor 
so the majority leader can get the floor.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The majority leader is recognized.
  Mr. SCHUMER. Well, I thank my good friend from Maryland for offering 
this UC, and strongly and fervently support it.
  I have been proud to join Senators Cardin and Sinema in leading the 
fight to provide direct relief to this industry. We all know 
restaurants were particularly hard hit during COVID, and the idea that 
they have all recovered is just so far from the truth.
  You know, any business where people had to gather were hit hard--hit 
the hardest; restaurants at the very top of the list, and they are a 
lifeblood to our cities and our communities. They, of course, are a 
place where people get food, but they get community. They join 
together. They feel roots. Whether it is a small town or a large city, 
restaurants in neighborhood after neighborhood, community after 
community, are often the glue that make communities tick; and they were 
hurt.
  The funds that we provided, provided a lifeline to 100,000 applicants 
across the country. In my State of New York, $3.6 billion went to 9,775 
restaurants. But the job wasn't done. They ran out of money long before 
restaurants were helped.
  And anyone who thinks our restaurants are out of trouble, I just ate 
at one last night--a Polish couple in Greenpoint--lovely little 
restaurant: Are you hurting? Yes; we might go under.
  And this story could be repeated in restaurant after restaurant after 
restaurant.
  In New York, 27,000 restaurants are waiting in desperation. These are 
hard-working people--very hard-working people. They struggle. They put 
their all, their whole heart and soul, into the business and provide, 
as I said, often the glue for our communities.
  This legislation is fair. It is smart. It is right. We will get 
economic payback over and over and over again from keeping these 
restaurants going because they employ so many people, contract with so 
many independent suppliers and others. It just makes such sense
  It is almost cruel to tell these restaurants, ``You are on your own 
now,'' when, through no fault of their own, they have suffered through 
with COVID.
  So I strongly support this proposal by Senator Cardin. We are going 
to keep at it and keep at it and keep at it because our restaurants so 
desperately need the help.
  It was bipartisan in the past. Let's keep it bipartisan, but let's 
get the job done. Our restaurants need help, and our communities, our 
cities, our rural towns, our suburbs will be so rewarded when these 
restaurants are allowed to continue to stay open and to flourish.
  I thank the Senator for his leadership.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Maryland.
  Mr. CARDIN. Mr. President, let me thank Senator Schumer for his 
comments. I agree completely with everything the Senator said.
  I would just make one additional point before I make my unanimous 
consent request.
  What I am asking for now has been what we have been following in 
regard to small business relief. Let me remind our colleagues that we 
work together, Democrats and Republicans, to craft the programs that 
help small business and save so many small businesses in our community.
  We misprojected the costs of the Paycheck Protection Program, not by 
$30 or $40 billion, by over $300 billion when we set it up. And we came 
back, Democrats and Republicans lived up to our commitment and made the 
funds available that all small businesses could get fair treatment and 
equitable treatment under the Paycheck Protection Program.
  I am asking my colleagues to do the exact same thing we did for the 
Paycheck Protection Program for the Restaurant Revitalization Program.
  And as already has been pointed out, there have been funds taken away 
from the small business programs under the bill we are considering on 
the floor today to almost the same amount that we are asking in 
supplemental funds.
  With that, Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the Senate 
proceed to the immediate consideration of S. 2675 introduced earlier 
today; that the bill be considered read three times and passed; and the 
motion to reconsider be considered made and laid upon the table.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. Is there objection?
  Mr. PAUL. Mr. President.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The junior Senator from Kentucky.
  Mr. PAUL. The Treasury has been so thoroughly looted that we are 
incurring debt at a record-setting and alarming pace. Never in the 
history of our country have we incurred so much debt so fast.

[[Page S6009]]

  Our national debt now exceeds $28 trillion. It is now at 128 percent 
of our GDP. And we are asked by the Democratic Party to add $48 billion 
without so much as a--could we have a debate in committee?--so much as 
even a word spoken over this. We are just going to add $48 billion with 
no discussion. It is a huge mistake.
  Now, it has been alleged that, well, the thing is that the 
restaurants are suffering because of COVID. No. They are suffering 
because Democrat Governors locked them down. This is a manmade 
phenomenon. The economic disaster that we are in, that restaurants are 
in, is completely and entirely caused by Democrat Governors.
  In my State, they are suing the Democrat Governor because he won't 
let them open up. This is a manmade phenomenon. So if you reward a 
manmade phenomenon, you will get more of it.
  You reward Democrat Governors who shut these restaurants down, guess 
what, they will shut them down longer. The longer you give money to 
Democrat Governors for their lockdown policies, the more lockdowns you 
will get.
  We need to open up the country. We need to learn to live with this 
disease. As tragic as it has been, we need to learn to live with it.
  But the lockdowns have not worked. Closing the restaurants did not 
work, did not change the trajectory of this virus one iota. The only 
thing that is changing the trajectory of this virus now is the vaccine, 
plus natural immunity. Closing the restaurants did nothing and is doing 
nothing, except for devastating the bottom line of restaurants.
  So with that, I would object to the unanimous consent.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The objection is heard.
  Mr. CARDIN. Mr. President.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Maryland.
  Mr. CARDIN. Mr. President, I regret the decision of my colleague from 
Kentucky.
  I just really want to point out, we have had hearings in our 
committee--Small Business Committee--in which the Restaurant 
Revitalization Act was very much brought up during the hearing.
  We have been receiving timely information about this program and how 
it has been implemented and the need for additional funds. So our 
committee has had ample opportunity to question how the program was 
being administered and the need for different funds.
  I also regret that my colleague is holding the restaurants pretty 
much hostage and saying it is all right for us to give money to some 
but not others, when the administration of this was compromised because 
of a court case, and certain restaurants are now desperate as a result 
of not having adequate funds.
  I am encouraged by the comments of the majority leader, Senator 
Schumer, that we will continue to focus on this issue. I can tell you, 
it is urgent. We really need to deal with this immediately, and we will 
be looking for every available opportunity to treat our restaurants 
equitably and fairly and provide the money that is needed to implement 
the Restaurant Revitalization Program.
  I regret that we are not able to act today because of the Senator's 
objection.
  I yield the floor.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The assistant majority leader.
  Mr. DURBIN. Mr. President, I just would like to add a word and thank 
the Senator from Maryland for his leadership, and the Senator from New 
York for supporting this, and to reflect for a moment on the comments 
of the objector, the Senator from Kentucky.
  His exact words were: We have got to learn to live with this.
  Unfortunately, people are not living with this; they are getting 
infected and dying. And to accept the status quo and somehow make it a 
partisan issue--that it is the Democratic Governors who are responsible 
for what is going on here--is a sad oversimplification. In fact, it is 
tragic.
  We know what is happening. We have a new variant of this COVID-19 
virus that has emerged because it is still on the loose and it is 
changing by the day. We think the Delta variant is dangerous, maybe 
dramatically more contagious than the original virus.
  We know that even people who have been vaccinated can unknowingly 
transmit this disease, the new Delta variant, and we know that it has 
taken a deadly toll on 90 percent of the patients who were not 
vaccinated and were subjected to the illness that came about.
  I just want to say, in general, I couldn't agree more with Senator 
Schumer and Senator Cardin that restaurants in our cities are really 
the lifeblood. Whether it is my hometown of Springfield, IL, or 
Chicago, which I am honored to represent, I will tell you that these 
restaurants are still struggling, and as they struggle, our cities 
struggle.
  And people that I know really measure where we are, as an American 
nation, recovering by the vibrancy of these restaurant businesses, the 
ones that are our favorites and bring us together.
  They have done their part. We should do our part to give them a 
helping hand. Let's get through this pandemic together. We are 
certainly not going to do it by saying that we have to accept the Delta 
variant and that whatever else follows is just the natural course of 
things.
  We have it within our power to change that. More vaccinations and 
more careful use of masks and social distancing will make a 
difference--can make a real difference in this country. Until we come 
to grips with that reality, we are going to continue to face these 
devastating disappointments.
  Again, I thank the Senator from Maryland for bringing this before us. 
I hope he will continue to offer it.
  I yield the floor.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from New Mexico.
  Mr. HEINRICH. I suggest the absence of a quorum.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The clerk will call the roll.
  The senior assistant legislative clerk proceeded to call the roll.
  Mr. SCHUMER. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the order 
for the quorum call be rescinded.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. Without objection, it is so ordered.


                      Nomination of Eunice C. Lee

  Mr. SCHUMER. Mr. President, in a minute, I am going to ask to vote on 
confirmation for Eunice Lee to be a U.S. circuit judge on the Second 
Circuit. She is an amazing person. I interviewed her and recommended 
her to the President. She will be the only public defender on the 
Second Circuit. We have had very, very few public defenders on that 
circuit and largely on our Federal bench. They tend to be prosecutors, 
partners in big law firms. We are changing all of that and getting 
people who have different walks of life--like public defenders, like 
people from the ACLU, like people from different organizations--so we 
have a new perspective on the bench. She is a phenomenal person. I am 
so proud that she will now get on the bench.
  I ask that the Senate now vote on confirmation of the Lee nomination 
to be a U.S. circuit judge.

                          ____________________