[Congressional Record Volume 168, Number 125 (Wednesday, July 27, 2022)]
[Senate]
[Pages S3715-S3734]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




  SERGEANT FIRST CLASS HEATH ROBINSON HONORING OUR PROMISE TO ADDRESS 
               COMPREHENSIVE TOXICS ACT OF 2022--Resumed

  The PRESIDING OFFICER. Under the previous order, the Senate will 
resume consideration of the House message to accompany S. 3373, which 
the clerk will report.
  The senior assistant legislative clerk read as follows:

       House message to accompany S. 3373, a bill to improve the 
     Iraq and Afghanistan Service Grant and the Children of Fallen 
     Heroes Grant.

  Pending:

       Schumer motion to concur in the House amendment to the 
     bill.
       Schumer motion to concur in the House amendment to the 
     bill, with Schumer amendment No. 5148 (to the House amendment 
     to the Senate amendment), to add an effective date.
       Schumer amendment No. 5149 (to Schumer amendment No. 5148), 
     to modify the effective date.
       Schumer motion to refer the bill to the Committee on 
     Veterans' Affairs, with instructions, Schumer amendment No. 
     5150, to add an effective date.
       Schumer amendment No. 5151 (to the instructions (Schumer 
     amendment No. 5150) of the motion to refer), to modify the 
     effective date.
       Schumer amendment No. 5152 (to amendment No. 5151), to 
     modify the effective date.

  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Arizona.


                           CHIPS Act of 2022

  Mr. KELLY. Mr. President, just a few minutes ago, after a year and a 
half of work, we have finally--finally--passed our plan to boost 
microchip manufacturing in the United States.
  Microchips go in nearly everything we use. They are in the TV or the 
cell phone that folks are watching this on, and they are in lifesaving 
medical devices, and they are in our most advanced weapons systems.
  The United States invented microchips, and, once, we produced 40 
percent of the world's supply. Today, we only produce about 12 percent, 
and we don't produce any of the most advanced microchips.
  Now, that leaves us vulnerable to disruptions in the supply chain, 
like the current microchip shortage that has halted production lines 
and driven up prices.
  If you have recently tried to buy a car--a new car--and waited months 
or paid more than you were expecting, the microchip shortage is a big 
reason why.
  So we have worked on a plan, Republicans and Democrats, with 
incentives to make sure the world's leading microchip manufacturers 
grow their operations here in the United States instead of in China or 
Europe. It also boosts research so that the most advanced chips in the 
world are invented and produced right here in the United States. That 
will mean tens of thousands of new jobs in places like Arizona, which 
is already a microchip hub, poised to grow as Intel and the Taiwan 
Semiconductor Manufacturing Company expand and build new manufacturing 
facilities.
  That is all made possible by this legislation, and it creates jobs, 
not just with those companies but also with the companies that supply 
them the tools and packaging for their products. And these are great-
paying jobs, and many

[[Page S3716]]

of them do not require a four-year degree.
  I visited Estrella Mountain Community College just several weeks ago, 
where they are training Arizonans to enter the semiconductor technician 
career track with just a 10-day course followed by a guaranteed job 
interview.
  Now, this is an enormous opportunity to reinvent our economy for the 
future, and this week, we are getting it done. This bill has now passed 
the Senate, and I am confident that it will pass the House and be 
signed into law.
  While this process has been long, it has also shown what we can 
accomplish when we work together, Republicans and Democrats.
  Senators Young, Cornyn, Warner, and I first began working on this at 
the beginning of last year, we found agreement, and we worked to build 
support from our colleagues. Since then, we have had to overcome more 
than a few roadblocks, but what matters most is that we got this done. 
As a result, our country is going to once again be a leader in 
microchip manufacturing, creating tens of thousands of great-paying 
jobs, strengthening our national security, and lowering costs for 
everyday products.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Michigan.


             Unanimous Consent Request--Executive Calendar

  Mr. PETERS. Mr. President, shortly, I will ask unanimous consent on 
the nomination of Dimitri Kusnezov to be the Under Secretary for 
Science and Technology at the Department of Homeland Security.
  The Department needs qualified and steady leadership to support its 
240,000 employees and their critical missions to protect our homeland 
security and to keep Americans safe. The Directorate of Science and 
Technology plays a vital role in carrying out these responsibilities as 
the Department's research and development arm, conducting 
groundbreaking research to help our Nation identify vulnerabilities in 
our homeland security so that we can close existing gaps and increase 
our capacity to address both current and emerging threats.
  Dr. Kusnezov is more than qualified to lead these efforts. He most 
recently served as the Deputy Under Secretary for Artificial 
Intelligence and Technology at the Department of Energy, where he led 
the efforts to drive artificial intelligence innovation by 
incorporating it into their missions and operations, including through 
the creation of a new Artificial Intelligence Office.
  After more than a decade on the Yale faculty as a professor of 
theoretical physics, Dr. Kusnezov left academia to pursue public 
service at the Department of Energy and became a member of the Senior 
Executive Service. He served as a senior adviser to the U.S. Secretary 
of Energy and Chief Scientist for the National Nuclear Security 
Administration.
  Throughout the confirmation process, Dr. Kusnezov has demonstrated he 
possesses the technical and specialized expertise to serve in this 
role, and I urge my colleagues to confirm Dr. Kusnezov.
  Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the Senate consider the 
following nomination: Calendar No. 727, Dimitri Kusnezov to be Under 
Secretary for Science and Technology, Department of Homeland Security; 
that the nomination be confirmed without intervening action or debate; 
that the motion to reconsider be considered made and laid upon the 
table; that any statements related to the nomination be printed in the 
Record; and that the President be immediately notified of the Senate's 
actions.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. Is there objection?
  The Senator from North Dakota.
  Mr. CRAMER. Mr. President, reserving the right to object, this 
nominee has been failed by the bureaucracy that he attempts to join.
  For months, I have been working with the State Department and the 
Department of Homeland Security--USCIS specifically--to rectify an 
egregious immigration case.
  A North Dakota family, an American family, is being forced to live 
apart from each other after one of the parents, a Canadian, 
inadvertently overstayed their visa after receiving poor advice during 
the chaos of the COVID pandemic. This forced separation has been 
ongoing since last year. In fact, the Canadian citizen, the Canadian 
mother, is barred for 10 years from returning to her home.
  The family has complied with every request our government has thrown 
at them and, as we speak, are working on fulfilling another dilatory 
and unnecessary request for more information.
  The review of this case could have been done a long time ago, but 
instead bureaucrats are expediting nothing, stringing out request after 
request, actually forcing my constituent to prove the hardship of being 
separated and even show why moving to Canada would be a problem. Think 
of it. Their own government is asking them to justify why they can't 
just move to Canada. They are past the point of exasperation, and I 
don't know how we can blame them.
  It is wrong and unjust, especially when my constituents witness the 
same Agency allowing thousands of people to pour across our southern 
border without a scintilla of review every single day.
  The government is not without fault in this case, and I could share 
many more frustrating details of their saga, but I will refrain for the 
sake of their privacy as they work through this grueling process. 
However, my holds on DHS nominees will remain until this case is 
resolved. And I will add, if there is no meaningful change soon, these 
holds will expand to other Agencies that are involved in this case--
specifically, the State Department.
  It is not a decision I make lightly and one I would rather not make 
at all, but I would like to state the obvious: It shouldn't take a U.S. 
Senator personally calling Agencies and the administration while 
holding up nominees to get the so-called public servants to actually 
serve the public.
  Get this done.
  With that, I object.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. Objection is heard.
  The Senator from Michigan.
  Mr. PETERS. Mr. President, I renew my above request except that I ask 
unanimous consent that the vote occur at a time to be determined by the 
majority leader, in consultation with the Republican leader; that there 
be 10 minutes for debate equally divided in the usual form on the 
nomination; that upon the use or yielding back of time, the Senate vote 
without intervening action or debate on the nomination and the Senate 
resume legislative session.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. Is there objection?
  The Senator from North Dakota.
  Mr. CRAMER. Mr. President, reserving the right to object, I would be 
happy to have a vote on this this afternoon. But the decision isn't 
mine; it is the bureaucrats at DHS.
  I object.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. Objection is heard.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Michigan.


                        Prescription Drug Costs

  Ms. STABENOW. Mr. President, every day, I receive messages from 
Michigan families who are struggling to cope with rising costs for the 
things they depend on. We know that it has been challenging in a global 
pandemic with supply chains broken down and consolidation, but we also 
know that from food prices to household necessities to gas, corporate 
price gouging is also taking a big chunk out of Michigan wallets. And 
perhaps no industry has been price-gouging longer--actually for 
decades--more deeply than the pharmaceutical industry.
  Americans pay the highest prices in the world for prescription 
drugs--highest prices in the world--even though we are the ones who 
have invested so much partnering with the industry on new types of 
medications and innovations. We allow research and development tax 
credits to help pay for that cost. We support other efforts. The 
National Institutes of Health helps to pay for the basic research, 
hundreds of billions of dollars working with the industry. And yet we 
have the highest prices in the world--the highest prices in the world. 
And one in four Americans can't afford the medications they depend on. 
This is just not acceptable. It is just not acceptable.
  A senior with complex medical needs pays an average of more than 
$6,000 a year on prescription drugs. And the median price for a new 
prescription drug is $188,000 a year. That is 90 times the median price 
for a new drug just

[[Page S3717]]

back in 2008. And that is more than most Americans earn in 3 years, not 
just 1 year, but in 3 years.
  Christina of Center Line, MI, knows this. She was prescribed Humira 
for an autoimmune condition that affects her eyes. Unfortunately, even 
though she needs it, she can't afford it. The medication costs more 
than $6,000 a month--a month. She wrote this:

       Autoimmune patients . . . struggle with the cost of 
     prescriptions being so high and some just give up and don't 
     even bother. That should never be an option in my opinion.

  James, who lives in Manistee, suffers from narcolepsy. It is a 
neurological condition in which patients can suddenly fall asleep 
during other activities, including eating or driving. I am sure we have 
all known someone or seen someone who has this disease.
  James first started taking medication called Xyrem in 2015. Back 
then, it cost about $9,000 a month. Today, that same medication costs 
more than $18,000 a month--$18,000 a month, or $226,221.84 a year.
  Who can do that? Who can do that?
  Last year, James' doctor switched him to a slightly different drug 
with less sodium, produced by the same company, Jazz Pharmaceuticals. 
The new drug, XYWAV, costs even more--$239,000--$239,320, to be 
specific, per year.
  James writes:

       Who is profiting from these huge price hikes? Will these 
     huge price hikes continue every year? Does Jazz 
     Pharmaceuticals have enough oversight? Are they putting 
     profits over people?

  I think there is an answer to that. It sure seems like that to me, 
James.
  There is no fundamental reason for these prices to be going up and up 
and up. Now, when I think about insulin, which has tripled in price in 
the last decade or so, this was a drug that was actually discovered 100 
years ago by two Canadian doctors who developed this patent for 
lifesaving medicine, and because they felt it was unethical to actually 
be making a profit off of something that would help people, they gave 
it to the University of Toronto for the equivalent of $1.
  That was 100 years ago. It hasn't substantially changed as a product 
in 100 years. The company has more than recovered their research and 
development--their costs and so on. And yet in the last couple of 
years, the price has tripled--tripled. If that is not a sign of price 
gouging, I don't know what is.
  From 2000 to 2018, big pharmaceutical companies raked in $11.5 
trillion in revenue. That is T--trillion dollars. Between 2016 and 
2020, drug companies spent $577 billion on stock buybacks--not lowering 
prices, but doing more for their CEOs and doing more for their 
stockholders. The $577 billion on stock buybacks is about 10 times as 
much as they spent on research and development.
  They also have significantly increased executive compensation while 
Americans struggle to afford lifesaving medications. For the record, 
the CEO of Jazz Pharmaceuticals made more than $16 million in total 
compensation last year; an awful lot of Michigan families could live a 
good life on that one salary.
  The pharmaceutical and health products industry spent $350 million on 
lobbying in 2021, nearly double the spending of the second-highest 
industry. In fact, at one point--I haven't done this recently, but at 
one point, I looked at the number of lobbyists per Senator, and it was 
15 lobbyists in the drug industry for every one Senator. And so we 
wonder, what is going on here? And then we see what happens in 
elections and so on; and, unfortunately, our colleagues on the other 
side of the aisle who receive a lot of the benefits of the 
contributions from the pharmaceutical industry then come to the floor 
and try to block us from doing something on behalf of people to lower 
these prices. And that is going to be what is happening again next 
week.

  So far in 2022, pharmaceutical companies have already raised the 
price of 1,186 drugs, and they raised the price on 100 drugs just 
this--right now in July, this month--100 drugs. Prices have gone up, 
just this year.
  It is appalling. There is no other word for it. And while Republican 
colleagues are fighting to protect these absurd profits, Senate 
Democrats are fighting for people who need their medicines, in some 
cases just to survive, to live, or to be able to go to work, to be able 
to do things to support their children to get what they need.
  Our commonsense plan, which we will be voting on next week, to lower 
drug prices will save $288 billion over the next 10 years. First, it 
would empower Medicare to negotiate prescription drug prices beginning 
with 10 of the highest costing drugs, starting next year. I can't 
believe it. We negotiate everything else, and we know the VA that 
negotiates on behalf of veterans' prescription drugs gets about 40 
percent less. Common sense tells you that we should be negotiating 
these prices.
  But, unfortunately, years ago, when the prescription drug bill, Part 
B, passed in Medicare, the drug companies were successful in getting 
specific language in that says you can't negotiate with them. Medicare 
cannot negotiate. Well, that needs to change, and we are going to 
change that.
  So it would be 10 of the highest costing drugs next year that would 
expand to 20 drugs in each year after that by 2029. Just imagine how 
much money can be saved if Medicare was allowed to negotiate, and it 
would directly benefit people who are living with conditions including 
asthma, blood clots, COPD, as well as cancers as well as a whole range 
of things--everything you can imagine.
  Secondly, our legislation caps Medicare beneficiaries' out-of-pocket 
costs for seniors, for people with disabilities on Medicare. We will 
cap the out-of-pocket costs to $2,000 a year and allow people to spread 
that out over the year so that it is easier to make that payment. So 
instead of $6,000 a month or $9,000 a month or $10,000 a month or 
whatever, we are talking about a cap of $2,000 you can spread out over 
the year in out-of-pocket costs for seniors and people with 
disabilities. Never again will a diagnosis like cancer mean $10,000 or 
more for a single drug to treat it.
  Medicare beneficiaries would also receive free vaccines, including 
vaccines for shingles. That currently costs seniors $190 if they are 
not enrolled in Medicare Part B. It would increase help for low-income 
seniors, giving all qualifying Medicare beneficiaries the full low-
income subsidy under Medicare Part B. So we would help low-income 
seniors even more. That would save the average senior about $5,000. 
That is a lot of money. And it would keep Part B premiums in Medicare 
affordable for seniors and people with disabilities and ensuring that 
premiums won't increase because of bad actions by drug companies, and 
that means not faster than inflation. Speaking of bad actions by drug 
companies, it would penalize them for outrageous price increases. If 
they go above inflation, they are going to have to rebate those funds.
  Today, drug companies are incentivized by keeping drug prices high by 
secretly negotiating with insurers and pharmacy benefit managers to 
increase profits at the expense of patients. Under our legislation, 
drug companies, not consumers, will be on the hook for drug price hikes 
that exceed the rate of inflation. This proposal alone is expected to 
save Medicare $71 billion.
  For far too long, the drug companies have been taking advantage of 
people like Christina and James. People should not have to go without 
the medicine they need in this country, in America, where we fund 
through our tax dollars so much of the innovation that creates these 
drugs. They should not be forced to skip doses or take less than what 
was prescribed to save money, and they should not have to choose 
between taking their medicine and keeping the lights on or putting food 
on the table.
  Christina and James deserve better. Americans deserve better. And we 
are going to fight until that gets done. That is what next week is all 
about on prescription drugs. It is time. It is past time. People 
deserve to be able to afford the medicine they need. It is time to put 
people before profits, and that is exactly what we are going to do.
  I yield the floor.
  I suggest the absence of a quorum.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The clerk will call the roll.
  The legislative clerk called the roll.
  Mrs. HYDE-SMITH. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the 
order for the quorum call be rescinded.

[[Page S3718]]

  The PRESIDING OFFICER. Without objection, it is so ordered.


                  Tribute to Dr. Thomas E. Dobbs, III

  Mrs. HYDE-SMITH. Mr. President, I rise to express deep appreciation 
for Mississippi State Health Officer Dr. Thomas Dobbs, a friend and 
leader to all of the frontline healthcare workers in my State.
  Dr. Dobbs joined the Mississippi State Department of Health as the 
State health officer in December 2018. After 3\1/2\ years and a global 
pandemic that none of us saw coming, he will soon step down from his 
role and return to the clinical side of medicine.
  Mississippi's State health officer is responsible for directing 
public health activities related to the State's many health challenges, 
which included my State's response to the COVID-19 pandemic.
  Dr. Dobbs' experience and his expertise made him the perfect 
professional to lead Mississippi through this pandemic. With a belief 
that each person in Mississippi was his patient, Dr. Dobbs worked 
tirelessly throughout his tenure to care for our nearly 3 million 
residents. From the start, Dr. Dobbs was steadfast in informing and 
advising citizens, policymakers, and healthcare providers on the best 
practices to combat the deadly coronavirus. He never wavered despite 
evolving challenges and so many tragic COVID-related deaths.
  He is one of the country's most respected public health officers, 
having earned a stellar reputation for his clinical work in the field 
of infectious diseases. Dr. Thomas Dobbs proved himself to be the 
leader Mississippi needed during a very difficult time. I am saddened 
to see Dr. Dobbs leave the Mississippi State Department of Health, but 
I am confident he will continue to do great things.
  There are not enough thanks in the world that could cover all that 
Dr. Dobbs has done for Mississippi, but I say from the bottom of my 
heart, thank you, Dr. Dobbs. Your service and sacrifice on behalf of 
Mississippi reflects well on you and your profession.
  I am also grateful for his wife, Dr. Kim Dobbs, and their two sons, 
Wyn and Max, for sharing so much of their husband and father during 
this time.
  As Dr. Dobbs departs the State department of health, I look forward 
to continuing to work with him and the new State health officer, Dr. 
Dan Edney, in making Mississippi healthier and happier.
  Thank you again so much, Dr. Dobbs.
  I yield the floor.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Iowa.


                               Inflation

  Ms. ERNST. Mr. President, the mountain Americans have to climb to 
make ends meet keeps getting steeper and steeper as a result of 
Bidenomics.
  Since President Biden began his reckless tax-and-spending spree, 
prices are sky-high for gas, food, housing, and just about everything 
else. The administration's own statistics reveal inflation jumped 
nearly 10 percent in the last year, the biggest increase in over four 
decades.
  Democrats keep telling us not to worry and that the problem is only 
``temporary.'' Yet, every month, prices keep climbing and climbing and 
climbing. The reason is simple: President Biden's fiscal policies are 
driving costs higher and higher.
  You may recall I came to the Senate floor a year ago to warn my 
colleagues that Bidenomics was causing inflation to spin out of 
control. Yet Democrats have ignored the struggles being inflicted on 
hard-working Americans and continue to pass one trillion-dollar bill 
after another. As reckless spending increased, the value of the dollar 
declined, meaning paychecks aren't going nearly as far as they did just 
a year ago.
  To make matters even worse, the Biden administration's ongoing effort 
to end domestic oil and gas production is fueling the elevated price at 
the pump, which reached an alltime high of more than $5 per gallon this 
summer; and an internal analysis by the Biden administration's own 
Treasury Department forecasts that, this fall, gas prices could top $6 
a gallon.
  I am already hearing from Iowans and Iowa businesses about how folks 
aren't even able to afford to drive to work. The problem is becoming 
even more difficult since Bidenomics is driving up the sticker prices 
on cars to record highs. The actual retail price for a new vehicle is 
$48,000, and if that sounds like a lot, the cost of buying a home has 
also reached an alltime high of $416,000. It is no surprise fewer 
people are buying homes. Then look at rent. It has also hit a record 
high of nearly $1,900 a month. These unpredictable prices have everyone 
asking themselves if ``The Price is Right.''
  Folks, Americans shouldn't have to play guessing games about whether 
or not their paychecks can be stretched far enough to avoid going over 
a financial cliff. Each bill the Democrats have passed as part of the 
Biden agenda has increased costs for working Americans while moving our 
Nation closer and closer to the edge of the fiscal cliff.
  Consider that when Joe Biden was inaugurated as President in January 
2021, the inflation rate was only 1 percent. After their so-called 
COVID relief bill--which cost $1.9 trillion--was passed in March of 
last year, the inflation rate moved up to nearly 3 percent.
  In July, President Biden claimed the quickly increasing prices were 
``temporary'' and that his big spending plans would result in lower 
prices for Americans, but by the time the President signed his $1 
trillion, so-called infrastructure bill in November, inflation had 
climbed to almost 7 percent.
  In December, President Biden said inflation had reached its ``peak.'' 
He was wrong once again, and, today, inflation is more than 9 percent.
  This isn't a cliffhanger, folks. We all know where this is headed. 
Step by step, President Biden's reckless tax-and-spend policies are 
taking us closer and closer to going over the cliff, and yet the 
Democrats are still trying to outbid each other with another trillion-
dollar, budget-busting, partisan package that would raise taxes on 
small businesses and increase prices for everyone.
  That is right, folks. Bidenomics is driving up the costs of 
everything, and the Democrats' solution is to spend even more of your 
hard-earned money to pay for more of their pricey, partisan pet 
projects. Any more Bidenomics will push the economy over the fiscal 
cliff and into a recession.
  It is time to take a step back and stop the wasteful Washington 
spending, which is the only way to make these prices come on down.
  I yield the floor.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER (Ms. Rosen). The Senator from Missouri.


                               Healthcare

  Mr. BLUNT. Madam President, I just was able to watch the 
administration climb the inflation rate cliff, and I want to talk more 
about this problem of what happens when the administration ignores the 
warning signs that are going to produce the kind of results that they 
have produced.
  You know, Democrats, all by themselves, after five bipartisan bills 
the year before to try to fight COVID and save the economy, decided 
that the recovering economy needed even more help to recover and passed 
a $1.9 trillion spending bill in March of last year. And that money 
almost immediately went out.
  You know, we talk about $1.9 trillion. I don't even know quite how we 
compare that in a way that people can think about it. The normal annual 
spending for the whole discretionary budget is $1.47 trillion. So in 
one bill, in addition to the money that the government would be 
spending that year in the budget that we vote on--the discretionary 
budget we vote on--Democrats decided: We are going to spend that much 
and more. We are not going to spend just twice the normal discretionary 
spending. We are going to spend twice the normal discretionary spending 
plus another 25 percent or so.
  You know, we spend every year about 700, and last year we spent $780 
trillion to defend the country. That is a third of the money, roughly, 
in the $2 trillion American Recovery Act. We spent less than $700 
billion to do everything else that we vote on. All of the debates we 
have here about spending are spending that results in a little less 
than $1.5 trillion of spending that is part of the normal budget.
  So when you double that and then you add to the doubling of that, and 
you put all of that into the economy at one time, you are clearly going 
to create a situation where you have inflation.
  That is what Democrats in previous administrations, like Clinton's 
Secretary of the Treasury and people in

[[Page S3719]]

the Obama administration, all said--that this will create runaway 
inflation. But if that wasn't enough, we hear that they want to spend 
even more.
  But over the next year, after they passed that bill, inflation kept 
skyrocketing. Cracks kept appearing in the economy. There were plenty 
of warning signs, but our colleagues on the other side kept pushing to 
write the biggest check they possibly could and to write another one.
  Their latest plan is a massive amount of government spending. This 
one will be really focused on the Affordable Care Act, sometimes called 
ObamaCare. Apparently, the Affordable Care Act wasn't all that 
affordable or isn't all that affordable, because if you believe the 
reason for this bill, almost nobody can afford it. If you don't get 
insurance at work, it is almost unaffordable.
  In the original healthcare law, there were government subsidies for 
people who didn't make much money so that they could afford to be in 
what turned out to be an overpriced system. But that law capped how 
much you could earn and still get a subsidy.
  The $2 trillion I talked about earlier, the reckless tax-and-spending 
spree from March of last year, got rid of those income limits. 
Apparently, the income limits--no matter how high they were--weren't 
high enough. So they eliminated the income limits. Now the amount you 
would get from the government would be based on how big a share of your 
income you were spending on insurance, no matter how big that income 
was.
  One study found that a typical family of four making $106,000 would 
almost immediately--and did almost immediately--get almost $10,000 in 
subsidies. Before that, they got zero in subsidies. Four hundred 
percent of the poverty level appeared to be enough in the original 
bill. That is the system that should have provided insurance that 
people could afford, but, apparently, it hasn't done that.
  The insurance on the government exchanges is so expensive in some 
areas that people making half a million dollars or more could qualify 
for thousands of dollars from the government under this new structure. 
This, by the way, is the structure that the next spending bill is 
supposed to be trying to make permanent or at least permanent enough 
that people will get so used to having it that they will never want to 
give it back.
  The bill was called the American Rescue Plan. Its supporters kept 
telling us it had to be big because there were still people in real 
need and the economy was struggling. But we now know that while there 
are always people in need, it is not because the economy is struggling. 
Now people are in need because the economy is spiraling out of control, 
and whether it is at the gas pump or the grocery store, you are having 
to make decisions you wouldn't have thought you would have to make.
  The health insurance subsidies in particular were meant to be 
temporary--at least if you believed the reason that was given when that 
bill was passed--and would only last until the end of this year. Now 
our friends across the aisle want to make these temporary subsidies 
permanent.

  For purposes of the law itself, they don't want to admit that. So 
they say: Well, we just want to extend this year for another couple of 
years.
  And, by the way, I think we are clear that when we get to the next 
deadline, once you have had these subsidies for 1 year, as it turns 
out--let alone 2 or 3 more--the whole idea is to get people so 
committed to getting this money that the government will never back up 
and take it away.
  It is just a budget gimmick--everybody knows that--a gimmick to 
extend the program to further redistribute taxpayer money to people who 
are making big incomes but have decided it is better for the government 
to pay for their insurance than it is to pay for their insurance 
themselves.
  This doesn't relate to everybody. In fact, the 400 percent of 
poverty, which many people thought at the time, and still think, sounds 
like an income where you ought to be able to pay your own insurance--
and, if you can't, there must be something wrong with the healthcare 
system. In fact, last year, my colleague from West Virginia, Senator 
Manchin, said he had serious problems with another version of this bill 
because there wasn't a cap. He said: ``What I see are shell games--
budget gimmicks that make the real cost of the so-called $1.75 trillion 
bill estimated to be almost twice that'' much during the full time of 
the bill.
  So the Congressional Budget Office looked into this health insurance 
study plan or subsidy plan. They found that when it actually gets 
extended, this extension over 10 years costs another $250 billion. If 
we have people who are making more than 400 percent of poverty--in 
fact, if we have people who are unlimited in their income--who somehow 
need to have government help to buy insurance, we ought to figure out 
what happened with the insurance marketplace that ObamaCare created.
  The CBO, the Congressional Budget Office, figured that $36 million of 
that $250 million would go to people who make more than 400 percent of 
poverty, which works out to be about $140,000 for a family of 4. They 
also say that 48 percent of the new people entering the program would 
be making more income than that $140,000 level.
  Even if you think someone who makes $140,000 is low income--as maybe 
our friends on the other side of the aisle do--and deserves a handout 
from taxpayers to buy their insurance, again, I would say there must be 
something wrong with the insurance plan. If we have an affordable 
healthcare plan that nobody can afford, that should be our focus 
instead of focusing on making other taxpayers pay for the unaffordable 
healthcare plan rates that we have.
  The Congressional Budget Office expects 2.3 million fewer people, by 
the way, to get their insurance on their job if the subsidies become 
permanent. Why should your employer pay for your insurance if the 
government will pay for it instead? Why would you pay some portion of 
the cost of your insurance if the government will pay 100 percent of 
the cost of your insurance? Another 200,000 people, because of this, 
would end up in Medicaid and the CHIP Program, or the Children's Health 
Insurance Program.
  This is a plan to get people committed to something that just simply 
doesn't work. All it does is prove what President Reagan said, which he 
once said:

       Nothing lasts longer than a temporary government program.

  So we are going to be discussing, in the next few days, about how we 
want this 1-year program to become another 2- or 3-year program, which 
clearly would become a permanent program.
  Temporary assistance in March of 2021 and the other things in that 
bill that were spent immediately--that $1.9 trillion bill--fed the fuel 
to the fire of inflation that we see right now. Combine that with 
terrible energy policies, and American families feel it every single 
day.
  We don't need to do more of the same. We need to figure out what we 
did that created this problem and stop doing it.
  I yield the floor.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The majority whip.


            Officer Ella Grace French Task Force Support Act

  Mr. DURBIN. Madam President, yesterday, during a hearing before the 
Senate Judiciary Committee, I had a chance to share the story of this 
fallen hero from Chicago, IL. Her name is Ella French.
  Officer French joined the Chicago Police Department in 2018. A true 
public servant, she was always eager to help. She loved people, loved 
her family, and loved animals, particularly stray dogs. She would often 
pick them up in her squad car and ferry them to safety at the end of 
the day.
  Last year, tragically, Officer French was shot down during a traffic 
stop. She was 29 years old. Her partner, Carlos Yanez, Jr., was 
seriously wounded. The gun that was used to shoot both of them had been 
straw-purchased in Indiana, a State adjoining Illinois. A straw 
purchase takes place when someone without a criminal record, who can 
pass a background check, buys a gun for someone who cannot. In this 
case, the purchaser was turning the gun over to a convicted felon who 
used the gun to kill Ella and seriously wound her partner.
  During yesterday's hearing, which focused on law enforcement officer 
safety, we were joined by Officer French's mother, Elizabeth. She is a 
wonderful

[[Page S3720]]

person. I want to take this opportunity to thank Elizabeth French for 
her bravery and her commitment to honoring her daughter's legacy.
  I want to thank our witnesses, including Chief Angel Novalez of the 
Chicago Police Department, who himself was shot in the line of duty, 
for participating yesterday in the hearing.
  Every time law enforcement officers put on their uniforms and badges, 
they put their lives on the line, especially in a country that is now 
awash in guns, America, the country of 350 million people and 400 
million firearms. In fact, guns are not only the No. 1 cause of death 
for America's children, they are the leading cause of death for 
officers in the line of duty, second only to COVID.
  We have made some progress in recent months in reducing the risk of 
gun violence for police officers and our families. The Bipartisan Safer 
Communities Act included a provision I have long supported, cracking 
down on straw purchases, like the gun that was used to kill this 
amazing young woman.
  We still have a lot of work to do. Yesterday, I introduced 
legislation--and I have named it in Officer French's honor--that would 
provide funding to multijurisdictional task forces to combat straw 
purchasing: the Officer Ella Grace French Task Force Support Act. I am 
glad her mother was there to hear that.
  I hope every Senator who prides himself on supporting law enforcement 
will join me in this legislation. I can think of no better way to honor 
the service and sacrifice of our officers, to protect our families and 
our children, and to demonstrate to America that this Senate is serious 
about stemming the tide of gun violence in our country.


                       Right to Contraception Act

  Madam President, in the United States of America, nearly all women--
99 percent--use some form of contraception in their lifetime to prevent 
unplanned pregnancy. They use birth control pills, IUDs, condoms, and 
other devices. Many women who are not sexually active still use birth 
control to manage medical conditions.
  Further, almost every woman who identifies as religious has used a 
contraceptive method in her lifetime--99 percent of mainline 
Protestants, evangelical Protestants, and Catholics--and 96 percent of 
people with other religious affiliations.
  In short, women in all stages of life in America and of all religious 
backgrounds rely on birth control. It is their constitutional right. It 
is their decision. But this right, this decision, is now under attack.
  Over a month ago, in Dobbs v. Jackson Women's Health Organization, 
the U.S. Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade, revoking for the first 
time ever an established constitutional right: the right to 
reproductive healthcare. And I fear that the Court's assault on our 
fundamental freedoms is just beginning.
  In his concurrence in the Dobbs opinion, Justice Clarence Thomas 
urged the Supreme Court to ``reconsider all of this Court's substantive 
due process precedents, including Griswold, Lawrence, and Obergefell.'' 
He made reference in that statement to three Supreme Court decisions 
which have been on the books for over 50 years. That is an explicit 
threat by Justice Thomas against the very right to same-sex marriage, 
the right to consensual relationships between LGBTQ people, and the 
right to contraception, which has been protected by the Court's 
decision in Griswold v. Connecticut for 55 years.
  In that case, Griswold, a supermajority of seven Supreme Court 
Justices ruled that married couples have a right to access 
contraception. They based it on a word which you will not find in the 
Constitution: ``privacy.'' Now, more than half a century later, we are 
living in an America where women are no longer guaranteed this right to 
privacy, this right to reproductive healthcare, and where their very 
right to contraception is now in doubt and in jeopardy.
  This is not some alarmist rant. At this very moment, women in America 
are being denied their constitutional right to contraception. How could 
that possibly be in this country? Well, look no further than your local 
pharmacy.
  This past weekend, USA TODAY reported on the story of Abigail Martin, 
a young woman who has been taking birth control pills for the past 6 
years. She went to a Walgreens pharmacy to refill her birth control 
prescription, which had been prescribed by her doctor. She was turned 
away by a pharmacist at Walgreens. It took 4 days before she was 
finally able to access her medication by going to a different 
pharmacist. That is a dangerous delay in healthcare. Apparently, 
Walgreens allows its pharmacists to refuse to fill a prescription for 
which they have ``a moral or religious conviction . . . [and] to refer 
the customer to another employee or manager on duty who will complete 
the transaction.''
  Since Abigail's story went viral, other Walgreens customers have come 
forward to say that cashiers refused to ring up their condoms because 
they announced it violated their faith.
  A pharmacist should not be able to unilaterally decide that their 
personal moral or religious beliefs can delay or interfere with the 
medical needs of a patient standing at the cash register, buying a 
legal medication, which is why this week I sent a letter to the CEO of 
Walgreens, an Illinois corporation, for an explanation of their policy.
  If Walgreens is going to allow its individual employees to dictate 
what legal medical products customers can purchase, then the company 
should make this policy known to the public. They should be required to 
display signs at their cash registers alerting customers and the public 
that they may not be able to fill their prescriptions or buy healthcare 
products in a timely manner. Given this information, customers may 
decide to take their business elsewhere--to a pharmacy that does not 
allow individual staff members to restrict or interfere with their 
customers' legal purchasing decisions.
  A woman's right to essential healthcare should not differ based on 
which pharmacy she chooses, who fills her prescription, or who rings it 
up. Her right to this personal decision in her life is fundamental--
fundamental. That is why Congress must pass the Right to Contraception 
Act introduced by Senators Markey and Murray. This is a commonsense 
proposal, and I have cosponsored it. It would codify the right to 
contraception in America nationwide--a right that has been undisputed 
for 55 years.

  We need this legislation because now women in America are living with 
the consequences of six unelected Justices erasing the constitutional 
right to reproductive healthcare, and pharmacies, like Walgreens, are 
allowing their employees to dictate what healthcare products consumers 
are able to purchase. Walgreens says they want to be respectful of the 
moral judgment of their employees and staff. Should they not also be 
respectful of their customers?
  Politicians and pharmacists have no business standing between a woman 
and healthcare. If protecting this right sounds like common sense to 
you, then join us in supporting the Right to Contraception Act.
  If the Supreme Court will not respect this fundamental personal 
right, you have the right to demand that your Member of Congress will.


                           CHIPS Act of 2022

  Madam President, across America, tens of thousands of cars are lined 
up bumper to bumper in a total standstill. This is not an ordinary 
traffic jam. You see, these cars are brand new. They were assembled by 
some of the finest names in American manufacturing. But they are 
missing something, a key, essential component: microchips.
  If you are in the market for a new car or even a fridge or a 
smartphone, there is a good chance you have felt the semiconductor 
shortage. These tiny pieces of silicon power nearly everything around 
us. But with the coronavirus epidemic, supply chains have been snarled 
and foreign factories have been shut down, which has led to a global 
shortage of microchips.
  This has had a devastating impact on American consumers, businesses, 
and workers. Over the past 2 years, the price of a new car has 
skyrocketed by 20 percent--40 percent for used cars. We have seen the 
repercussions of this firsthand in my home State of Illinois, which is 
one of the leaders in the auto industry. Companies like Stellantis, 
which runs an assembly plant in Belvidere, have been forced to shut 
down production several times this year because of these shortages.

[[Page S3721]]

  Today, the Senate did something remarkable: We passed a bill, a 
bipartisan bill. How about that. And it is important. We came to the 
rescue of job creators like Stellantis and to the rescue of American 
consumers. We voted on this legislation to invest billions of dollars 
into making microchips right here in America.
  This bill is critical for the future of our economy. It is even 
critical for our national security. And we need it desperately for more 
scientific breakthroughs. But in the near term, the CHIPS Act is 
imperative for shoring up our Nation's supply chain and strengthening 
our defense system. Why? Because microchips are essential not just for 
cars and refrigerators and smartphones but for guided missile systems 
and fighter jets.
  Right now, America has to rely on foreign suppliers like China to 
supply the chips that power the next generation of defense in America. 
That wasn't always the case. In 1990, America produced almost 40 
percent of the world's supply of microchips. Today, make that 12 
percent. Somewhere along the way, we settled for outsourcing 
semiconductor production to Asia. That is just unacceptable, and it is 
unsustainable. Imagine our turning to the Chinese Communist Party to 
determine whether or not we can buy the microchips that fuel our 
economy and protect our Nation. That is a dangerous scenario.
  I have heard a few colleagues voice concern about the subsidies in 
this bill, but--let's be clear--this is no reckless corporate giveaway. 
The CHIPS Act will bring American factories back to life, creating good 
jobs in our country.
  The fact is, our competitors in Asia and even Europe are already 
investing billions of dollars in luring chipmakers away from America. 
We need to fight fire with fire. The CHIPS Act will. It will 
incentivize the biggest names in technology to manufacture right here 
in America, and if any company breaks their commitment to make it in 
America, we reclaim all of the funding that we give them under this 
bill.
  But beyond this economic and national security imperative, the CHIPS 
Act is important for another reason, one that really strikes at the 
heart of America: pioneering innovation. The CHIPS Act includes 
historic funding authorization for groundbreaking scientific research 
at the National Science Foundation and the Department of Energy's 
Office of Science.
  This has been a particularly important issue to me personally as a 
Member of the Senate for many years. It was 7 or 8 years ago when I 
decided to try to push for increasing medical research funds at the 
Federal level. I concentrated on the National Institutes of Health, 
with Senator Roy Blunt of Missouri, who was just on the floor before 
me, joining me in a bipartisan effort with Patty Murray in an effort to 
make this bipartisan and effective. It worked. We dramatically 
increased the investment in the NIH. But I knew that wasn't enough. We 
needed the Department of Energy's Office of Science, as well as the 
National Science Foundation, to have the same increase in funding. 
Today, with the passage of the CHIPS and Science bill, we are finally 
moving in that direction.
  We know how important scientific research is. We have learned it over 
and over. For instance, finding that vaccine for COVID-19 in 
recordbreaking time was a result of investing in science and medical 
research years and years before.
  We also know that we have launched some things which are going to 
change the world. The James Webb Space Telescope is one of those 
things. The deepest and sharpest photos of our universe are finally 
coming home to the United States and the rest of the world.
  What is NASA doing with this trove of data being collected by this 
telescope now? Well, since NASA is funded by taxpayers, they are 
sharing it with researchers throughout the country. One professor at 
the University of Chicago, Jacob Bean, says that he is planning on 
using this data to learn more about exoplanets orbiting faraway stars, 
whatever the possibilities may be that they can host a life.
  This one image of our universe has unleashed a flood of new ideas and 
just countless questions for researchers around the world. It shows how 
funding and scientific research can really change the place we live in.
  When we support scientists and researchers, we are paving the way for 
new discoveries. NASA was critical for developing so many products. 
Imagine, if you will, that they had a lot to do with developing 
athletic shoes, CAT scans, and smartphone cameras. These staples of 
American life and more were unintended discoveries pioneered in NASA's 
labs.
  With the CHIPS Act, we can kick-start a new generation of discovery. 
I am happy to say that, in Illinois, in the Chicagoland area, we have 
two of the best research operations in our country: the Argonne Lab and 
Fermilab.
  With this funding, these facilities will break new ground in 
researching emerging technology, like AI and quantum computing. In 
fact, Argonne and Fermilab already partnered together with the 
University of Chicago to launch the most advanced quantum network in 
the world. They are planning to expand it to other parts of the 
country, bringing more research into this cutting-edge research 
technology.
  And much like space exploration 50 years ago, quantum computing is 
the new frontier in science. We have only begun to explore techniques 
like teleporting qubits, which may sound like a line from Star Trek, 
but it has profound implications.
  Quantum computing could revolutionize the way we design electric 
batteries for cars, even solar technology, to maximize energy 
efficiency. These are the possibilities that lie before us. The passage 
of the CHIPS and Science Act today on the floor of the U.S. Senate is a 
vindication of our commitment to this Nation's future and an investment 
that generations will thank us for.
  I yield the floor.
  I suggest the absence of a quorum.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The clerk will call the roll.
  The senior assistant legislative clerk proceeded to call the roll.
  Mr. CRUZ. Madam President, I ask unanimous consent that the order for 
the quorum call be rescinded.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER (Ms. Baldwin). Without objection, it is so 
ordered.


                       Unanimous Consent Request

  Mr. CRUZ. Madam President, in a moment, I am going to propound a 
unanimous consent request. Before I do, I want to make some brief 
remarks. Right now, we have an administration that is killing oil 
pipelines, slow-walking natural gas licensing, illegally halting lease 
sales, and writing rules that Congress never gave the executive branch 
the authority to write.
  This is how President Biden regulates our energy industry. In the 
morning, he complains that gas prices are too high, and he chastises 
oil and gas companies to produce more. Then he takes a nap, wakes up, 
and says the very existence of oil and gas companies offends him, and 
it is our duty to put them out of business. It is absurd.
  But today I want to focus on the Biden administration's reckless 
release of our emergency crude oil stockpile, the Strategic Petroleum 
Reserve. The President's energy policy has been a failure so much so 
that today the United States produces 1\1/2\ million fewer barrels a 
day of oil than it did in November 2019.
  That is why oil and gas prices are high. It is no mystery, and it is 
not principally because of the war in Ukraine, as much as Joe Biden and 
the Democrats want to blame it on that.
  At the same time that President Biden has tried to strangle U.S. 
energy production, he has simultaneously groveled to Saudi Arabia and 
to Venezuela, asking them to increase their production. And he has 
attacked small business gas stations around the country and told them: 
Just lower your prices. Then he has taken the unprecedented step of 
releasing an arbitrary amount of our emergency crude oil stockpile in 
order to try to lower gas prices before the midterm elections.
  The Biden administration has even sold at least 2 million barrels of 
oil to the Chinese Communist Party's state-owned oil and gas company, 
Sinopec. One million barrels in April of this year, another million 
barrels in July sold to communist China. China, at this very moment, 
has created the world's largest stockpile of crude oil, which according 
to Bloomberg totals 926 million barrels.
  In comparison, under Joe Biden, our own reserves have fallen to 492 
million

[[Page S3722]]

barrels of oil. That is the lowest level since December of 1985, 
according to the U.S. Department of Energy.
  Of course, no mention of China and the administration would be 
complete without noting that Hunter Biden's private equity firm, BHR, 
has a major stake in Sinopec.
  But there is something we can do. I am calling on this body to pass 
the No Emergency Crude Oil For Foreign Adversaries Act, which is 
cosponsored by 11 of my colleagues.
  This bill takes the commonsense step of prohibiting the Secretary of 
Energy from selling our emergency crude oil stockpile--there to protect 
the national security of the United States--to communist China and also 
to other foreign adversaries, including Iran, North Korea, and Russia.
  It would also require a full accounting of where our crude oil has 
been sent for refining since the Biden administration began releasing 
the oil in the Strategic Petroleum Reserve last November.
  It is important to note we have no issue with exports in general. In 
fact, we want to continue to help our European allies remove themselves 
from their reliance on Russian oil.
  A recent study found that since 2015, U.S. oil exports increased oil 
and natural gas development in the United States, reduced global oil 
prices by $1.93 per barrel over a 6-year period, added $161 billion to 
our GDP, and added nearly 50,000 jobs here in America.
  But under no circumstances should we be giving our emergency 
stockpile to our enemies, particularly at a time when they are 
benefiting from stockpiling cheap Russian oil and gas. This poses a 
direct threat to American national security, and the Biden 
administration shows zero interest in stopping it. That is why Congress 
needs to act.
  This should be a simple and easy bipartisan measure to say we are not 
going to sell our Strategic Petroleum Reserve to communist China to use 
it against America.
  Therefore, Madam President, I ask unanimous consent that the 
Committee on Energy and Natural Resources be discharged from further 
consideration of S. 4515, and the Senate proceed to its immediate 
consideration; further, that the bill be considered read a third time 
and passed and that the motions to reconsider be considered made and 
laid upon the table.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. Is there objection?
  The junior Senator from Connecticut.
  Mr. MURPHY. Madam President, reserving the right to object.
  I appreciate the Senator's interest in trying to make sure that 
American energy resources don't go to benefit communist China. And it 
is interesting because I don't think a lot of Americans know that prior 
to 2015, the United States didn't allow for the export of American oil. 
We saw it prior to 2015 as a strategic asset, all of the oil produced 
in the United States.
  Prior to 2015, we decided that the oil produced in the United States 
would stay in the United States; that it should benefit U.S. consumers.
  And I have heard my Republican colleagues come down to the floor over 
and over again calling the Biden administration to do more drilling, to 
do more exploration, to authorize more permits under the belief that 
drilling in the United States will produce results for American 
consumers.
  But the reality is we have done more drilling in the United States, 
but much of that drilling and exploration has benefited--you guessed 
it--China. Prior to 2015, the United States didn't export oil to China. 
In 2013, we exported .3 million barrels, the next year .4 million 
barrels, the next year 8 million barrels, the next year 80 million, 
then 84 million, dipped down to 50, then back up to 176. In 2021, 91 
million barrels of oil shipped from the United States to China.
  And so if we are sincere about trying to make sure that American-
produced oil benefits American consumers, rather than the Chinese 
Communist Party, well, then let's make that our policy. Let's not limit 
the policy to the Strategic Petroleum Reserve; let's just make the 
decision that American oil is going to benefit American consumers.
  Now, that change was made in 2013 as part of a compromise. 
Republicans wanted the ban on oil exports lifted. Democrats wanted the 
extension of some tax incentives for renewables. It was a bipartisan 
compromise. But now that we seem to have greater consensus around 
stopping American exports of fuel benefiting China, then let's not just 
do this halfway; let's make it a clear policy.
  And so I just learned of the Senator's unanimous consent request this 
morning, and I will commit to him to learn more about the more targeted 
approach that he is making, but I am going to plan to object to it 
today unless we can modify it to make this policy universal.
  Senator Markey has a piece of legislation that would reimpose that 
ban on the export of oil. It seems like a pretty important time to do 
that. If we have oil in the United States, why don't we keep it here to 
benefit the people of the United States instead of shipping it to 
China? Senator Markey's bill has language in it that would allow for 
national interest exemptions so that if we needed to get oil to 
Ukraine, for instance, we could still do that. But 91 million barrels 
of oil, that is a lot of oil to be sending to China every year.
  And so I am going to ask that the Senator modify his request to pass 
Senator Markey's legislation instead, which would, frankly, get at the 
concern that Senator Cruz is articulating but do it in a much more 
comprehensive way. I expect he may object to that modification, and if 
he does, I will object to his original request but commit to him to 
spend some time looking at his more targeted approach given a little 
bit more of a window.
  So I am going to make this request right now, which is that the 
Senator modify his request and instead that the Committee on Banking, 
Housing, and Urban Affairs be discharged from further consideration of 
S. 1415 and the Senate proceed to its immediate consideration; further, 
that the bill be considered read a third time and passed and that the 
motions to reconsider be considered made and laid upon the table.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. Does the Senator so modify his request?
  Mr. CRUZ. I do not. Reserving the right to object.
  Debates on the Senate floor sometimes can be clarifying. Over the 
course of the day, my office and I engaged in good-faith negotiations 
with a number of Democratic Senators. We engaged in extensive 
negotiation with Senator Manchin, the chair of the relevant committee. 
Senator Manchin proposed minor alterations to this bill and agreed to 
support it if we made those alterations. I agreed to accept Senator 
Manchin's alterations, and we then had what was going to be a 
bipartisan bill.
  Senator Cantwell, likewise, we negotiated with her office today and 
had reached what we thought was an agreement.
  And then at the last moment, the Senator from Connecticut raised this 
objection. And I think what he is asking this body to pass really 
clarifies where the extreme left wing of the Democratic Party is, which 
is the Green New Deal Democrats want to destroy American energy jobs. 
They want to destroy the American oil and gas industry. They want to 
destroy our own production, and, bizarrely, they simultaneously want to 
benefit energy jobs of our enemies.
  There is some irony that the Senator from Connecticut is leading this 
objection because it was earlier this year when the Senator from 
Connecticut led the effort in this body to block sanctions on Russia 
and Vladimir Putin on the Nord Stream 2 Pipeline, sanctions that I had 
authored and passed into law, not once but twice; sanctions that had 
stopped that pipeline; sanctions that had prevented Putin from invading 
Ukraine; sanctions that hurt Russia and hurt Putin until Joe Biden 
became President and decided to waive the sanctions on Russia and Putin 
to capitulate to Russia and Putin.
  When Biden did so, when Biden waived those sanctions, the Government 
of Ukraine, President Zelenskyy, said: If you waive these sanctions, 
Russia will invade Ukraine. The Government of Poland said: If you waive 
these sanctions, Russia will invade Ukraine.
  And in January of this year, I forced a vote on imposing the 
sanctions. At the time, the Government of Ukraine begged us--there were 
tanks on the border of Ukraine, the invasion hadn't

[[Page S3723]]

happened--and the government of Ukraine begged us: Please pass these 
sanctions.
  Now, every Democrat in this body had voted for my sanctions not once 
but twice. They had supported it when the President's name was Donald 
J. Trump.
  But then they had a Democrat in the White House, and a Democrat, Joe 
Biden, who, on the day of the vote, came to Capitol Hill--it is the 
only time I know of that he has done this--to personally lobby 
Democrats to vote against sanctions on Russia, against sanctions on 
Putin, to vote to green-light a natural gas pipeline for Putin and 
Russia.
  And the Senator from Connecticut led the fight on the Senate floor, 
urging his Democratic colleagues: Flip your votes. Give an enormous 
present to Russia and Putin, and sacrifice Ukraine in the process.
  I stood on this floor and said: If you do this--the 44 Democrats who 
cast the vote--we will see Russian tanks in the streets of Kyiv.
  I wish that prediction had proven wrong, but it did not.
  What the Senator from Connecticut just came back with is: We should 
prohibit all energy exports from America.
  And, in fact, I will read from the bill he called up. It is:

       The President . . . may restrict exports of . . . coal, 
     petroleum products, natural gas, or petrochemical feedstocks.

  Shut down all exports.
  So I want you to understand the difference between my bill and the 
bill the Senator from Connecticut is asking us to pass.
  My bill says: Don't sell our oil to our enemies. Communist China is 
our enemy. Russia is our enemy. Iran is our enemy. North Korea is our 
enemy. Let's not sell our oil to our enemies.
  This is a reasonable, commonsense proposition. I am confident any one 
of us at home with our constituents, if you asked your constituents, 
``Should the President of the United States be selling oil that the 
American taxpayer has paid for, that is kept as a strategic reserve to 
keep America safe, should we be selling it to communist China,'' the 
overwhelming majority of your constituents and mine, whether Democrat 
or Republican, would say: Absolutely not. That is idiotic.
  My bill says: Don't sell our oil to our enemies.
  The Senator from Connecticut has responded with: Don't sell our oil 
to anybody. Don't sell our natural gas to anybody. Don't sell it to our 
friends.
  Now, let's be clear. There have been a lot of Democrats in this 
Chamber who, once the war in Ukraine started, stood up and said the key 
to defeating Putin is exporting our liquid natural gas to Europe so 
they can get off of dependency on Russian oil and gas.
  I can't count how many Democrat speeches I have heard saying what is 
absolutely true: We want our friends and allies purchasing energy 
produced here in America and not purchasing energy from our enemy.
  And what the Senator from Connecticut has just said is that we should 
abandon our friends in Europe. We should abandon our friends that want 
our energy. We should tell them: You know what. You are better off 
buying oil from Russia. You are better off buying oil from Iran. You 
are better off buying oil from Venezuela, which I guess makes sense 
because Joe Biden's State Department was asking Venezuela, led by an 
illegitimate Nicolas Maduro, an enemy of America--the Biden 
administration is asking our enemies to produce more oil.
  So the effect of the Senator from Connecticut's proposition would be 
to hurt jobs in America, hurt energy prices in America. By the way, it 
would drive up gasoline prices. If the extremes in the Democratic Party 
have their way, we won't just see $5-, $6-, $7-a-gallon gasoline, we 
are going to see $10-a-gallon gasoline. That is where they want to go.
  And, by the way, the Transportation Secretary, Pete Buttigieg, said 
publicly: This is the cost of transition. We have got to make gasoline 
expensive.
  In politics, that is called saying the quiet part out loud--that for 
too many of the extreme Democrats, they want working men and women to 
pay 100 bucks, 150 bucks at the gas pump. Why? Because they don't like 
that some moms choose to drive minivans. They don't like that some 
Americans choose to drive a pickup truck or an SUV, and they want to 
force you to sell your Suburban and buy a Prius. And their strategy is: 
We are going to make it so expensive, so miserable that you can't 
afford your bills until you comply with what they want.
  It is cynical, and it is misguided, but it does at least make 
transparent that the little stickers on the gas pump with Joe Biden 
pointing at the price saying ``I did this''--that is what they intend.
  We should not be selling oil to communist China. Everyone in this 
body knows this. But that doesn't mean it is a good idea to abandon our 
friends and send our friends and allies to become customers of Vladimir 
Putin. That is spectacularly ill conceived.
  And, therefore, I decline to accept the modification.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. Objection to the modification is heard.
  Is there objection to the original request?
  The junior Senator from Connecticut.
  Mr. MURPHY. Madam President, reserving the right to object, here is 
what the Senator from Texas is saying: It is fine to sell to China so 
long as you are a big American oil company and profiting off of it.
  That is the bottom line.
  The Senator had the chance to endorse the policy that would have 
stopped all American exports to China. If the priority is to not enrich 
the Chinese Government, then let's enact that policy.
  What Senator Cruz is essentially saying is that if the end result is 
massive profits for the oil company, then we are just going to look the 
other way. Then we are just going to look the other way.
  The strategic petroleum reserve? No, we are going to keep that oil 
here. That can't go to China. That would be an immoral abomination if 
the Chinese got their hands on that oil.
  But if the end result is that oil companies get to pad their profits 
by selling oil to the Chinese, well, then that is fine. Well, then, 
that is fine.
  So let's be 100 percent clear in what is happening here. If your 
priority is not selling oil to China, then let's make that the policy. 
Let's make that the policy.
  But that is not the priority. The priority is to make sure the oil 
companies can make as much money as possible.
  ExxonMobil expects to make $10 billion in profit--not revenue, in 
profit--in the second quarter of this year. So I don't apologize for a 
second for making my priority the people of this country, not the 
profits of the oil companies.
  Yes, I want to keep American oil here because I want it to benefit 
American consumers, not the oil companies' bottom line.
  And spare me the rewrite of history on Nord Stream 2. Those sanctions 
that we passed were ready to go for Donald Trump. What I objected to 
was the Senator being silent when Donald Trump sat on the sidelines and 
refused to implement those sanctions, and then taking a hard line when 
a Democrat was in the White House.
  Senator Cruz held up every State Department nominee that President 
Biden offered, as hostage in order to get a change on Nord Stream 2 
policy. The Senator did not do that when Donald Trump was in office, 
during a period of time in which the pipeline was being built.
  By the time that Donald Trump left office, that pipeline was 95 
percent built, and had Senator Cruz taken the same policy during the 
Trump administration, arguably, we could have been in a different place 
by the end of 2019.
  So I don't apologize for saying: You know what. The oil companies are 
making too much money. Our prices, our constituents, our consumers 
should come first. And if we are serious about not exporting oil to 
China, then let's be serious about it and make the policy universal.
  And so for that reason, I would object.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. Objection is heard.
  The junior Senator from Texas.
  Mr. CRUZ. Madam President, you know, John Adams famously said: 
``Facts are stubborn things.'' So let's clarify a couple of facts.
  No. 1, the bill that the Senator from Connecticut was pushing is a 
bill that is entitled the BAN Oil Exports Act. In

[[Page S3724]]

his remarks a moment ago, he suggested it was about China. This bill is 
not about China. This bill is about banning oil exports, natural gas 
exports, coal exports--energy exports across the board to anybody.
  By the way, the bill is authored by Senator Markey. It is cosponsored 
by Senators Wyden, Merkley, Sanders, and Warren. The Senator from 
Connecticut is not a cosponsor of the bill.
  This is an extreme bill.
  As I pointed out in my remarks, what the Senator from Connecticut was 
asking is: Let's refuse to sell oil or natural gas to our friends, and 
let's make our friends buy them from Russia instead.
  In response to that, he said precisely nothing, nada. He said: 
ExxonMobil is bad. He said: Don't sell to China.
  My bill says: Don't sell to China.
  His bill says: Don't sell to anybody.
  And as for his revisionist history on Nord Stream 2, he is right that 
the pipeline was over 90 percent completed by the time the Senate and 
the House took up my sanctions legislation, and the Russian 
disinformation that was put out was: It is over 90 percent completed; 
so there is no way to stop it.
  Putin stopped building Nord Stream 2 the day that President Trump 
signed my sanctions legislation into law. Literally, that day they 
halted construction. A 90-percent complete pipeline is zero percent 
complete. It is a hunk of metal on the bottom of the ocean. The 
pipeline lay dormant--it was dead--for over a year.
  He complains that I didn't hold Donald Trump's nominations? I didn't 
need to. The sanctions worked. We had stopped the pipeline.
  Then Joe Biden became President. He immediately began signaling 
weakness to Russia. He began foreshadowing what he actually did in May, 
which is to waive the sanctions.
  Joe Biden was sworn into office on January 20, 2021. Putin 
recommenced building Nord Stream 2 on January 24, 2021, 4 days after 
Joe Biden put his hands on the Bible.
  I find it very curious that Democrats, No. 1, ignored the pleas from 
our allies and stood with Russia and Putin to help Putin build a 
pipeline to generate billions for his war machine but at the same time 
are willing to stand up and say: We like Russian oil and gas jobs, but 
we don't like American oil and gas jobs.
  We should not be selling oil or natural gas to our enemies. This is 
an obvious proposition. It ought to be bipartisan. It was bipartisan 
until this last-minute objection.
  But the fact that we shouldn't sell to our enemies doesn't mean we 
shouldn't supply energy to our friends. Our friends are desperately 
asking for it, and sending them to buy from Russia is spectacularly 
foolish.
  I yield the floor.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The senior Senator from Connecticut.


                   Unanimous Consent Request--S. 4612

  Mr. BLUMENTHAL. Madam President, a group of us will be speaking and 
then asking for unanimous consent on a measure called the Right to 
Contraception Act. It is called the Right to Contraception Act because 
it guarantees the right to contraception.
  If you had asked me a year ago, 6 months ago, would we need a Right 
to Contraception Act, I would have thought not in my lifetime. But the 
fact is we live now in the post-Roe era. It is a unique moment in our 
Nation's history, not just because the Supreme Court has overturned Roe 
v. Wade in the recent Dobbs decision but because, for the first time in 
our history, we are rolling back rights.
  The history of our great country, the greatest in the history of the 
world, is that we advance and expand rights. From the time of our 
founding, the ethos and tradition of America is that we increase rights 
and liberties that are protected from governmental interference.
  And now with Dobbs, one of the core freedoms--the right to decide 
when and whether to have children--has been stripped from women and 
given to government officials. But it isn't only reproductive rights 
under Roe, because the U.S. Supreme Court has very carefully, 
deliberately sent signals about where it is going in this rollback of 
rights and liberties. And it isn't just Clarence Thomas's concurring 
opinion, which now has become infamous for its signals. It is the 
opinion of the Court itself that clearly shows that this Court 
threatens not only abortion rights, but also contraception rights. And 
in addition to mentioning Griswold v. Connecticut, Clarence Thomas 
also--or I should say Justice Thomas, with all due respect--mentioned 
Loving, Lawrence, Obergefell--all of them on the chopping block, all 
those rights on this Supreme Court's hit list. And perhaps the most 
deeply rooted of them all in Griswold v. Connecticut is the right to 
contraception.

  Now, let's be clear. The right to contraception wasn't stated in the 
Constitution, but the right to privacy is at its core. ``Don't tread on 
me.'' The right to be left alone--that is the reason that we have the 
Bill of Rights. That is the reason why the Founders rebelled against 
England--undue, unjustified interference in their personal lives. And 
so the right to privacy is referred to often as a conundrum; but, 
actually, it is at the core of the Constitution. It is so fundamental 
to the mindset and the mantra of those constitutional guarantees from 
the very founding of our Republic, and the respect for the right of 
privacy should be bipartisan and, indeed, has been bipartisan 
throughout our history.
  The simple fact is that the most important decision any of us make, 
at least in my view, is whether to become a parent. And it ought to be 
a decision--not something that just happens. It should be a decision 
that is made deliberately. Every American should have that right to 
decide when and whether to have children. And politicians shouldn't be 
the ones to make it. They shouldn't be allowed to infringe or interfere 
on that decision.
  And women can't be truly equal if they don't control their lives, 
their reproductive lives. If they don't control their bodies, if they 
lose that right, they simply cannot be equal. So it is not just 
privacy; it is equality that is at stake here.
  My Republican colleagues are adamant in dragging this country back to 
a time when women had little or no autonomy over these choices. And I 
am shocked--and I think many of my colleagues are, the American people 
are as well--that American women today will have fewer rights than 
their mothers and even their grandmothers. We are living through a 
world where healthcare providers can't do their jobs and save lives 
without risking criminal penalties, and much of our Nation will be at 
risk of losing these fundamental liberties.
  Let me be clear. This should not be controversial. This issue should 
not be one that provokes verbal jousts on the floor of the U.S. Senate. 
Griswold v. Connecticut--yes, it is Griswold v. Connecticut--has held 
for decades. It is enshrined in case law, reaffirmed by the Supreme 
Court that individuals have a right to use contraceptives. But we have 
seen after assurances by three of the members now sitting on the 
Supreme Court that respect for precedent really is no longer deeply 
felt--in fact, may not be felt at all.
  What one nominee, Justice Kavanaugh, referred to as ``precedent on 
precedent'' and, therefore, it is well-established law, that was Roe v. 
Wade. Now it is gone. It was, in Justice Alito's words, ``egregiously 
wrong.'' But none of those three nominees expressed any feelings 
whatsoever that it might be wrong, let alone egregiously wrong. So to 
all my colleagues who say that the right to contraceptives is 
unnecessary, I would simply say, Look at Dobbs.
  When I introduced, along with the Presiding Officer, the Women's 
Health Protection Act in 2013, the idea that Roe might be overruled was 
unthinkable. Our goal was to prevent the growing restrictions on that 
right that imposed excessive burdens. What was unthinkable then is 
reality now. The Court overruling Griswold might have been thought 
unthinkable, but that danger is our present reality in the post-Roe 
world.
  So I urge my colleagues to join in approving the Right to 
Contraception Act today to provide certainty and reassurance to women 
across the United States that they will have those rights. They can be 
sure of them; they can rely on them; they will know that having 
children will be a decision they make--not somebody else telling them 
when and whether to start a family.
  I yield the floor.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Hawaii.
  Ms. HIRONO. Madam President, as we focus on contraception rights this

[[Page S3725]]

afternoon, listen to some of the comments made by my Republican male 
colleagues:

       They are not going to change the law on contraception.
       There is zero threat of contraception being taken away.
       Pure hysteria.
       I have no reason to believe these precedents are going to 
     fall.

  These are some of the statements made by my Republican colleagues--
all of them male, by the way--have made regarding contraception. ``Pure 
hysteria,'' they say. This is not pure hysteria to the millions of 
women across the country who woke up one morning in June and no longer 
had a constitutional right.
  When it comes to this far-right, agenda-driven Supreme Court, nothing 
is off the table and nothing is ``pure hysteria.''
  Last month, the far-right majority of the Supreme Court overturned 
nearly 50 years of precedent and took away the constitutional right to 
get an abortion. This decision was the result of a decades-long effort 
by far-right Republicans and rightwing groups to pack the courts with 
politicians in Roe.
  And they are just getting started. For this MAGA majority, 
controlling women's bodies doesn't stop at forcing women to give birth. 
They actually want to ban contraception. We know this because, in this 
concurring opinion to overturn Roe, Justice Thomas wrote that the 
Supreme Court should reconsider--reconsider--the rulings that protect 
same-sex relationships, marriage equality, and, yes, contraception.
  This kind of signaling by a Justice of a Supreme Court should be 
taken seriously.
  So my Republican colleagues saying they have no reason to believe 
precedent will be overturned is resorting to magical thinking that no 
one should believe. After all, the Supreme Court just overturned a 
nearly 50-year precedent that women in this country relied on for 
nearly half a century--half a century. That is two generations. In 
fact, radical MAGA Republicans in State legislatures across the country 
are gearing up in Ohio.
  House Republicans introduced a bill that would effectively ban all 
abortions from the moment of conception and, potentially, other forms 
of birth control, like IUDs.
  Other Republicans have refused to rule out banning certain forms of 
contraception. We are living in a post-Roe world where our rights are 
on the chopping block. So, no, this is not ``pure hysteria.'' The 
American public knows this. Democrats know this.
  So I say to my Republican colleagues, if any of you object to this 
bill, come down to the Senate floor and tell the American people the 
truth. Just be honest that you do not support guaranteeing the right to 
contraception because, in this post-Roe world, any suggestion that this 
Court won't overturn precedent is no longer something to hide behind. 
But if my Republican colleagues do support the right to contraception, 
then they should have no problem with supporting our bill, which would 
create a statutory right for individuals to access contraception, 
protect the right to healthcare providers to provide contraception to 
their patients, and empower individuals by extending a private right of 
action against any State or government official that hinders these 
rights.
  Today, my Republican colleagues have a choice. Do they support the 
right to contraception and an individual's right to make decisions 
about our bodies and our healthcare? Or will they allow the government 
to tell millions and millions of women what to do?
  I yield the floor.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The junior Senator from Massachusetts.
  Mr. MARKEY. Madam President, an illegitimate, stolen, and radicalized 
U.S. Supreme Court is putting the fundamental rights of Americans in 
jeopardy. Last month, the extremist Court took away the right to 
abortion, a right on which millions of Americans have relied for almost 
50 years, undermining their health, their safety, their freedom.
  The rightwing majority that overturned Roe v. Wade owns its control 
of the High Court to then-Leader McConnell's and Donald Trump's and 
Senate Republicans' theft of two seats on the Supreme Court. The 
Justices used their ill-gotten power to cast aside decades of 
precedent--precedent, which during their confirmation hearings they 
promised to honor, respect, and follow.
  If anyone thinks this newly empowered Court's decision to strip 
Americans of a longstanding constitutional right won't be shamelessly 
repeated, they are wrong. What the Supreme Court just did with Roe is a 
preview of coming atrocities from this Supreme Court.
  Justice Clarence Thomas wrote a concurring opinion in Dobbs v. 
Jackson Women's Health Organization, the decision overturning Roe v. 
Wade. And that concurrence is like a movie trailer for an upcoming 
horror film that Americans are forced to watch written, produced, and 
directed by a captured illegitimate Supreme Court. In his opinion, 
Justice Thomas made clear that he believes Americans have too many 
privacy rights under the U.S. Constitution, that the Supreme Court had 
erred in recognizing those rights, and that the Court should take them 
away as well--just as it did with the right to abortion.
  This bears repeating.
  A sitting Justice on the Supreme Court of the United States is 
arguing that Americans have too many rights.
  What mistakes was Justice Thomas talking about?
  Well, Justice Thomas urged the Court to correct the error the Court 
committed when it recognized this right to same-sex marriage in its 
2015 decision in Obergefell v. Hodges.
  He told the Court to fix the mistake it made when it recognized the 
right of Americans to engage in private, consensual sexual activity in 
its 2003 decision in Lawrence v. Texas.
  Then he said the Court got it wrong when it recognized the right of 
Americans to use contraception in its 1965 decision in Griswold v. 
Connecticut.
  But it is Justice Thomas who is in error, who is wrong, who has made 
a mistake. These are all fundamental, privacy-based rights which the 
Supreme Court correctly recognized. They should all remain the law of 
the land.
  Today, I want to talk about the right to contraception that this 
extremist and out-of-touch Supreme Court and legislators in red States 
are taking aim at.
  The Supreme Court has recognized the constitutional right to 
contraception for more than half a century, since its decision in the 
Griswold case in 1965. Over time, the Court has affirmed and expanded 
that right: in its 1972 decision, a Massachusetts case, Eisenstadt v. 
Baird, recognizing the right of all people to access contraceptives 
regardless of marital status; and in its 1977 decision in Carey v. 
Population Services International, which held that a State could not 
constitutionally prohibit the distribution of contraceptives to minors.
  The right to contraception is therefore a fundamental right that the 
Court has repeatedly recognized and reaffirmed. It is a right that is 
central to a person's health, to their well-being, to their life, 
liberty, equality, and economic and social freedom in our country. It 
is a right grounded in the need and ability to make decisions about 
one's own body, one's own family, and one's own future. It is a right 
that is woven into the fabric of a free, pluralistic, and modern 
society. And it is a right that we must codify and make part of our law 
so that far-right, extremist judges and elected officials cannot take 
it away in order to advance their own blatantly political agendas.
  That is why I have proudly introduced the Right to Contraception Act 
with my colleagues Senators Mazie Hirono and Tammy Duckworth, with 
Senator Blumenthal and Chair Patty Murray of the Committee on Health, 
Education, Labor, and Pensions, and have been joined by more than half 
of the Democratic Senate caucus.
  The Right to Contraception Act would codify the Supreme Court's 
decision in Griswold, recognizing the right to obtain and use 
contraception. The Right to Contraception Act would enshrine that right 
in Federal law, and it would guarantee a healthcare provider's right to 
prescribe contraceptive products and services and information related 
to them.
  The bill would also protect a range of contraceptives that are 
legally marketed under the Federal Food, Drug, and Cosmetic Act. The 
Right to Contraception Act would authorize the

[[Page S3726]]

U.S. Attorney General, as well as individuals and healthcare providers 
harmed by unlawful restrictions, to go to court to enforce the rights 
the bill establishes.
  In short, the Right to Contraception Act would safeguard the rights 
established by more than 50 years of Supreme Court precedent and would 
protect access to contraception even if Griswold were overturned.
  The concerns that have led to the introduction of this bill are not 
merely hypothetical. Justice Thomas's concurring opinion was a call to 
action that some Republicans and red States are eagerly heeding by 
continuing to attack and restrict the right to contraception.
  Several States have already gone after access to contraception by 
cutting off the public funding for it, by seeking to define abortion 
broadly enough to include contraception, and by allowing healthcare 
providers to refuse to provide services related to contraception based 
on their own personal beliefs.
  And the harms that would flow from abolishing the right to 
contraception aren't merely theoretical. Attacks on healthcare, 
especially reproductive healthcare, fall hardest on historically 
marginalized communities, including Black, indigenous, and other people 
of color, LGBTQ people, people with disabilities, people with low 
incomes, those living in rural and underserved areas, and immigrants.
  Last week, we all on our side proudly watched the House pass its 
version of the Right to Contraception Act by a vote of 220 to 195, 
though it is dismaying that only 8 House Republicans--only 8--voted to 
codify that right.
  With the right to abortion stolen, the right to contraception 
threatened, and the need to protect and expand access to contraceptive 
methods and information on contraception, it makes it more imperative 
than ever that we pass this legislation. We can't wait for the next 
hammer to drop. We have an urgent obligation to take the first exit off 
this slippery slope that leads to the loss of our most personal 
freedoms--chief amongst them: the right of all Americans to make their 
own decisions about their bodies, their families, and their own 
futures.
  We can't sit idly by and watch as decades of precedent, privacy 
rights, and progress are violated. We can't wait for the worst to 
come--because it is already at our doorstep.
  To my anti-choice Republican colleagues, if you would deprive 
Americans of the choice to end a pregnancy, how can you also deprive 
them of the ability to prevent a pregnancy in the first place?
  Unless your ultimate aim is, really, to exert control over the bodies 
of others, especially the bodies of women, then I expect to hear no 
objection to the unanimous consent request to pass the Right to 
Contraception Act. Otherwise, the Republican position will be clear to 
everyone: no abortion but no birth control to prevent the need for one.

  That is where the Republican Party is today. I urge my Republican 
colleagues not to object to our unanimous consent request.
  Madam President, I ask unanimous consent that the Committee on the 
Judiciary be discharged from further consideration of S. 4612 and that 
the Senate proceed to its immediate consideration; further, that the 
bill be considered read a third time and passed; and that the motion to 
reconsider be considered made and laid upon the table.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. Is there objection?
  The junior Senator from Iowa.
  Ms. ERNST. Madam President, reserving the right to object, here we 
are again--another day, another sympathetically titled bill offered by 
my Democratic colleagues wherein the talking points don't really give 
you the full story--case in point, the Right to Contraception Act.
  The so-called Right to Contraception Act purposefully goes far beyond 
the scope of contraception. It includes provisions that could guarantee 
the funding of abortion providers and that defines ``contraceptive'' in 
such a broad way that it could include drugs to induce an abortion 
weeks or months into a pregnancy. This definition also could include 
non-FDA-approved drugs that would actually put a woman's health at 
risk.
  The bill also flies in the face of decades of work in providing for 
conscience protections. It would require organizations to administer 
contraceptives despite their moral or religious beliefs.
  There is something insidious with this bill, but don't take it from 
me. Look to the bill's text itself. The ``findings'' section of this 
bill notes the work of an organization that many of my colleagues will 
recognize: The United Nations Population Fund. This is the same 
organization that contributed over $10 million to a mass sterilization 
campaign in Peru in the nineties.
  That campaign was rife with coercive practices: Quotas were set; cash 
bonuses were paid to health workers for each client sterilized; and 
poor women were bribed with nutritional supplements and clothes for 
their children.
  Then let's not forget the former Population Fund executive director's 
high praise of China's one-child policy.
  But let's be clear here. Routine-use contraceptives should be more 
easily available, and the fact that they aren't has the biggest impact 
on women in rural areas, where a doctor could be dozens of miles away. 
A woman in a rural area doesn't need a platitude-filled messaging bill 
like the one we have here. She needs over-the-counter access to 
routine-use birth control. Luckily, Republicans have a solution.
  My bill, the Allowing Greater Access to Safe and Effective 
Contraception Act, incentivizes manufacturers of contraceptives to file 
an application for over-the-counter access. It also allows priority 
review for these applications and waives the FDA filing fee. That means 
cheaper, quicker, and more available access for women across this 
Nation.
  With my bill, women 18 and over can walk into their local pharmacies, 
whether they be in Sidney, IA, or in the deepest parts of Manhattan, 
and get the routine-use birth control they need.
  When your doctor is 30 miles away and gas is $6 a gallon, you don't 
need a messaging bill; you need access.
  Therefore, I object.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. Objection is heard.


                   Unanimous Consent Request--S. 4638

  Ms. ERNST. Madam President, I ask unanimous consent that the Senate 
proceed to the immediate consideration of S. 4638, which is at the 
desk; further, that the bill be considered read a third time and 
passed; and that the motion to reconsider be considered made and laid 
upon the table.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. Is there objection?
  The junior Senator from Massachusetts.
  Mr. MARKEY. Madam President, reserving the right to object, I thank 
the Senator from Iowa, but her bill would not ensure access to birth 
control, and it fails to codify the constitutional right to birth 
control across the United States.
  In fact, her bill would actually restrict access to birth control for 
individuals under the age of 18--requiring a prescription even if the 
Food and Drug Administration has approved an over-the-counter option. 
And we cannot lose sight of the fact that this bill does nothing to 
address the reality that, for many women, true access means being able 
to afford birth control as well.
  Last month, I cosponsored a bill that would guarantee that insurers 
fully cover over-the-counter birth control without any out-of-pocket 
costs. No one should have to jump through ridiculous hoops or pay extra 
just to get the birth control they need, not to mention that this bill 
would do nothing to prevent States from restricting or even banning 
access to birth control.
  The reality that Republicans refuse to acknowledge is that an over-
the-counter option doesn't help patients if their States are chipping 
away at their right to birth control.
  So, with the Senator from Iowa's objection to my unanimous consent 
request and with her counter unanimous consent request, the Republicans 
have made their position crystal clear: no abortion but no birth 
control to prevent the need for one.
  Republicans have just shown the American people where they stand on 
their right to contraception. While Republicans won't protect our 
fundamental rights as the Supreme Court and rightwing State 
legislatures take

[[Page S3727]]

them away, my Democratic colleagues and I will continue our efforts to 
keep in place the fundamental, privacy-based rights that Americans have 
had for decades and codify into Federal law the right to contraception.
  As a result and for those reasons, I object.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. Objection is heard.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The senior Senator from Washington.
  Mrs. MURRAY. Madam President, it has been nearly 60 years since the 
Supreme Court decided Griswold v. Connecticut and affirmed Americans' 
right to privacy and, with it, their right to contraception. So you 
would think this would be a settled issue, and for the vast majority of 
Americans, it is. The right to birth control is overwhelmingly popular. 
It turns out that people want to be able to control their own bodies 
and make their own decisions about starting a family.
  Yet, as we just saw, somehow, in the year 2022, this is not a settled 
issue for Republican politicians. We have seen some of my Republican 
colleagues not only block this but try to deny reality, try to say this 
isn't an issue or claim that Democrats are somehow wasting time.
  Well, that is pretty rich because I can't help but remember how we 
all heard some Republicans saying the Supreme Court would not overturn 
Roe as well, how they tried to claim Democrats were ``overreacting'' 
even as they stacked our courts with anti-abortion judges and worked 
for decades to chip away at abortion rights.
  Now we are seeing the nightmare we warned about become reality: women 
unable to control their own bodies and get the abortion care they 
need--a nightmare Republicans tried to deny and are still trying to 
deny even as it happens, even as 10-year-olds are having to travel 
across State lines for an abortion after being raped, even as women are 
now being left bleeding for days, waiting for treatment for their 
miscarriage.
  So when Republicans say they support the right to birth control, my 
issue isn't simply that I am skeptical; it is that I know better. Let's 
be clear. When I say that I know better, I don't just mean in my gut; I 
mean I have heard Republicans' own words. I am watching their own 
actions.
  Justice Thomas said explicitly in his concurring opinion in Dobbs 
that he wants the Court to reconsider Griswold, which affirmed the 
right to contraception. The senior Senator from Tennessee said the 
Griswold decision was unsound. That alone would be scary enough, but 
Republicans aren't just talking about undermining access to birth 
control, they are already taking action. Read the legislation from 
Republicans in Idaho, Missouri, Louisiana, Arkansas, and Michigan, 
which would, in fact, outlaw Plan B and IUDs. Talk to women who have 
already gone to the pharmacy, only to be denied their birth control or 
Plan B. Yes, this is already happening to people. Just last week, 195 
House Republicans voted against the Right to Contraception Act, and now 
today, they have blocked it in the Senate as well.
  The evidence of where Republicans actually stand on birth control is 
overwhelming. They aren't standing for women. They aren't standing for 
families. They aren't standing for a right nearly all Americans 
support. They are simply standing in the way.
  I want to thank the junior Senator from Massachusetts, the junior 
Senator from Illinois, and the junior Senator from Hawaii for their 
work with me on the Right to Contraception Act that Republicans just 
blocked. I know we are going to all keep working on this.
  I do want to set the record straight because so many of the arguments 
we have seen from Republicans don't add up. They are trying to distract 
from their extreme position. We won't let them.
  This bill is incredibly straightforward, so you simply cannot say you 
support the right to birth control and then block this bill. I hope 
everyone will listen closely because here is what this bill actually 
does. It simply codifies Americans' right to birth control into law. 
That is it. You don't have to take my word for it; read it yourself--it 
is all of 15 pages. It protects a right people depend on and makes sure 
no one can take that away. We are talking about a really basic and 
really fundamental right here.
  Since that right was affirmed half a century ago, generations of 
Americans have used contraception to control their own future, to 
manage and treat their healthcare needs, and start a family when they 
are ready to. For them, it is not political, and it shouldn't be 
political here in Congress either, especially when protecting this 
right is supported by a majority of Democrats, a majority of 
Independents, and, yes, even a clear majority of Republicans.
  The American people are watching closely. They were watching 
previously when Senate Republicans blocked us from protecting the right 
to travel across States to get abortion care. They were watching last 
week when Senate Republicans blocked expanding support for our Nation's 
longstanding Family Planning Program. They were watching when the vast 
majority of Republicans in the House voted against the right to birth 
control. And they are watching right now as Republicans block a bill 
that preserves the right to use condoms, take the pill, get IUDs, and 
buy Plan B, as Republicans refuse to let us protect that right and pass 
this bill and continue denying the threats that are already undermining 
that right. This is a basic, fundamental right.
  Mark my words, the American people will not forget Republicans 
blocking us from getting this done.
  I yield the floor.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The junior Senator from Colorado.
  Mr. HICKENLOOPER. Madam President, in 1963, Americans could be 
arrested in some States simply for buying birth control pills. Sixty 
years later, if many States have their way, Americans may face that 
reality once again.
  The Supreme Court's overturning of Roe v. Wade is so sweeping, so 
unprecedented that it now threatens the right to contraception. IUDs, 
emergency contraceptives, and other birth control could well all be 
banned, which seems hard to imagine. We are going backward in time to 
when women did not have control of their own bodies, nor the freedom to 
decide how and when they wanted to begin their families.
  Who really believes that a woman shouldn't be able to use birth 
control; that a woman shouldn't be able to decide whether or not she 
wants to get pregnant; that a couple can't decide they aren't ready for 
a family? How many children should each woman have? Should it be as 
many as possible? Are they allowed to stop reproducing or is it a 
lifelong duty? Politicians should not be making these decisions.
  This is a bill that guarantees a woman's right to access legal 
contraception. That is it. There is no trick, no sleight of hand. We 
can pass it into law today. The House has passed it already.
  Starting a family is among the most private and personal decisions a 
person can make. It changes your life in ways that most of us can't 
even imagine. Yet there are people who want to force this restriction 
on women.
  For women everywhere but especially in rural and low-income areas, 
birth control is essential healthcare. If you want to prevent 
unintended pregnancies, well, that is where you start.
  When I was Governor, Colorado made long-acting, reversible 
contraception, like IUDs, available at little or no cost. That reduced 
unintended pregnancies by 54 percent--54 percent. Yet, now in Colorado, 
some Republicans are campaigning to put an initiative on the ballot 
this November that could make contraceptives illegal. Many other States 
are considering similar moves with bills or amendments waiting in the 
wings.

  I think this is far, far beyond the mainstream of what most Americans 
believe. In fact, 92 percent of Americans, in a recent Gallup poll, 
said that contraception is morally acceptable.
  My mother was born in 1921, a child of the Great Depression. She 
scrimped and saved every penny, but she always, always made it a point 
to make some donation to Planned Parenthood. Some years, it might only 
be $10. But she believed there were few burdens harder for a woman to 
bear than being compelled to start a family before she was ready. As a 
mother of four, she knew how important it was for women to be able to 
make that decision for themselves.

[[Page S3728]]

  Who are we, as politicians, to tell American women who has children, 
how many, and when?
  I yield the floor.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The senior Senator from Minnesota.
  Ms. KLOBUCHAR. Madam President, I rise in support of the Right to 
Contraception Act.
  Thirty-three days ago, the Supreme Court issued a rule shredding 
nearly five decades of precedent protecting a woman's right to make her 
own healthcare decisions. Now women, as we have seen over the last 
weeks, are at the mercy--are at the mercy--of a patchwork of State laws 
governing their ability to access reproductive care, leaving them with 
fewer rights than their moms and their grandmas. So now a woman in 
Minnesota has different rights when it comes to her reproductive care 
than a woman in Missouri, and a woman in North Dakota has different 
rights than a woman in Indiana. That is what we are dealing with right 
now.
  Two weeks ago, I joined several of my Democratic colleagues on the 
floor to push for legislation to preserve a woman's right to travel to 
other States to access reproductive care, led by Senator Cortez Masto. 
Unfortunately, Republicans on the other side of the aisle blocked us 
from that vote.
  So we came back last week to push for legislation, led by my 
colleague Senator Tina Smith, to protect and expand funding for a 
program created under a Republican administration, a Republican 
Presidential administration, to fund clinics that support maternal 
care, conduct cancer screenings, and provide contraception, but, again, 
that vote failed because we were not allowed to move forward with it.
  So we came back to the floor today because if the Supreme Court won't 
protect people's fundamental rights--that is why we have three branches 
of government. That was the concept of our Founding Fathers. So if the 
Supreme Court isn't going to protect people's fundamental rights, then 
everyone in this Chamber has to decide whether or not they are going to 
do it, and that includes making sure everyone can access contraception.
  I am concerned that the worse is yet to come. Right now, State and 
local legislators are literally racing, along with Governors, to be the 
first to say: Which State can limit rights the most first? Which rights 
can we take away? Sadly, it is not too hard to guess.
  In his concurring opinion in Dobbs, Justice Thomas actually laid out 
a roadmap with clear directions for how the Court could overturn the 
right to contraception. He said that the Supreme Court ``should 
reconsider''--``should reconsider,'' those two words--whether the 
Constitution protects the right to access contraception, as well as the 
right to marry whomever you love. Why? Because he talked about looking 
at other cases with regard to the right to privacy.
  The Supreme Court has recognized the right to access contraception 
for more than 57 years, but the conservative Justices on the Supreme 
Court have shown they won't hesitate to overturn decades-old precedent 
no matter what they say at their Supreme Court hearings.
  This threat is not hypothetical. Last year, the Missouri State 
Legislature tried to cut off public funding for widely used 
contraceptives, like IUDs and Plan B. Mississippi's Governor has 
refused to rule out banning contraception. A bill was introduced in 
Louisiana this spring that could be used to make IUDs illegal.
  These radical proposals don't just hurt those in the States that 
implement the bans. Since the Dobbs decision, we have now seen how 
State bans create an uncertain legal environment for doctors and strain 
resources at clinics in States like Minnesota because the North Dakota 
clinic had to literally start a GoFundMe page to be able to get the 
costs paid for--the costs, of course, of moving the clinic from Fargo, 
ND, to Moorehead. That is what is happening right now in my State.
  We cannot settle for a situation, as I noted, where people in my 
State have different rights than women in Mississippi or Missouri. And 
with so many extreme politicians out there racing to State capitals to 
be the first to take people's rights away, we need to explicitly 
protect the right to access contraception and information about 
contraception.
  I will note that more than 80 percent of Americans support access to 
contraception. That is why I joined with Senators Markey, Hirono, 
Murray, and Duckworth in cosponsoring this bill to protect the right to 
access contraception and information about contraceptives. This bill 
safeguards a patient's ability to seek contraceptives and a healthcare 
provider's ability to provide those critical services.
  The right to contraception can't just be an empty promise. That is 
why the bill gives the Department of Justice, as well as patients and 
doctors, the power to make sure that we don't infringe on the right to 
contraception.
  I am proud to join my colleagues, and for the last 33 days I have 
been thinking about all the women in this country facing an 
unacceptably uncertain future. Today, each and every one of my 
colleagues had the opportunity to make clear where they stand, but, 
when given the opportunity, some seized the opportunity to protect the 
right to contraception, some did not.
  I hope that some of our colleagues will change their minds and we can 
move forward with this and put in place these laws protecting the right 
to travel; protecting the right to contraception; and, of course, in 
the end, protecting a woman's fundamental right to make her own 
reproductive decisions about abortion.
  I yield the floor.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER (Mr. Hickenlooper). The Senator from Texas.
  Mr. CORNYN. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the following 
Senators be permitted to speak prior to the scheduled rollcall vote: 
myself for up to 15 minutes, Senator Blackburn for up to 10 minutes, 
and Senator Tester for up to 5 minutes.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. Without objection, it is so ordered.
  Mr. CORNYN. Mr. President, coming to the floor and listening to some 
of my colleagues talk about their concern for lack of access to 
contraception--and some have said we need to pass a bill codifying 
same-sex marriage when that is currently the law of the land by virtue 
of a Supreme Court decision, the Obergefell case--reminds me of the old 
story about the little boy who cried wolf. He cried wolf when there 
wasn't any danger; and then, once there was danger, people didn't come 
to his aid because they thought it was another phony crying wolf.
  I can understand our colleagues--given inflation, given crime, given 
the broken borders--wanting to change the subject to something else, 
but that is all this is. This is mere posturing pre-November, pre-
midterm elections. This isn't about changing the law because the law 
already permits ready access to contraceptives. The law already permits 
same-sex marriage.
  So this idea that we ought to spend scarce time here in the Congress, 
which we have in limited supply, reaffirming rights that already exist, 
is a clear political narrative designed to divert the American people's 
attention from things that really are at risk--that is, the paychecks 
of every American family because of inflation, because of failed energy 
policies.
  We know that the price of gasoline and diesel and fuel to fill up 
your car so you can go to work or take your child to school or summer 
camp has increased. We know that our cities are on fire due to spiking 
crime waves connected to drugs that are coming across the southern 
border. And, of course, we know that the southern border is completely 
open with a big red carpet and a welcome mat out for anybody who wants 
to come to the United States illegally.
  And the cartels that are rich and getting richer because of the flow 
of their human traffic are also getting rich because of the flow of 
illegal drugs that took the lives of 108,000 Americans last year alone.
  We know where those drugs are coming from and that the Biden 
administration is doing absolutely nothing to stop them. I would want 
to change the topic too.


                           CHIPS Act of 2022

  Mr. President, on a more positive note, the Senate approved funding 
earlier this morning to bolster domestic semiconductor manufacturing by 
a vote of 64 to 33. This funding will help kick-start the development 
of these

[[Page S3729]]

microprocessors, these chips that go into everything from your cell 
phone to the F-35, to Javelin and Stinger missiles that we send to 
Ukraine to defend their country from Russian aggression. This funding 
will help kick-start a domestic production of these semiconductors in a 
way that will prevent a vulnerability of our supply chain, since 90 
percent of those advanced semiconductors currently come from Asia, with 
60 percent coming from Taiwan alone.
  One other benefit to this bill is that this bill could create roughly 
185,000 jobs every year as these new facilities are constructed. Long 
term, it could bring another 280,000 jobs online. And once these 
foundries are operational, they will supply ``Made in America'' 
semiconductors that can be used on everything from smartphones to cars, 
to airplanes, to missile defense systems.
  Semiconductors are the cornerstone of this legislation, but the bill 
also takes a range of other steps to help propel innovation in the 
competition we are currently in with the People's Republic of China. 
This bill authorizes investments in research that will support 
everything from robotics to next-generation wireless technology.
  It also authorizes NASA programs that will keep America at the 
forefront of space exploration. It extends the authorization for the 
International Space Station to 2030. This is very important, especially 
now that Russia has said it will end its commitment to the 
International Space Station after 2024.
  This bill also lays the groundwork for America's continued presence 
in space after 2030, including language I championed requiring NASA to 
develop a strategy to retire the International Space Station and 
transition to a successor platform. It also enhances existing programs 
that support future exploration missions. This includes the Moon to 
Mars Program, which is leading efforts to get an American astronaut on 
the surface of Mars.

  Texas is the proud home to the Johnson Space Center, the home of 
human space flight, but also a range of other universities and 
companies leading the way in human space exploration. Enabling these 
partnerships saves money, drives innovation, and gives us a competitive 
edge over countries like Russia and China.
  The broader bill included in the CHIPS Act will support both our 
economic and our national security and strengthen our efforts to lead 
the world in scientific innovation. The way we are going to compete 
with China and to beat them is to out-innovate them because no country 
in the world has better human capital, better brains, and a better 
system to encourage innovation, which will keep us ahead of the 
People's Republic of China.
  They don't play by the rules. They certainly don't observe the rule 
of law. They steal all the technology they can get. But it is important 
for the United States to be in the game and not be left behind.
  I want to thank Mr. Warner, the senior Senator from Virginia, for 
launching this effort with me 2 years ago. We introduced the CHIPS for 
America Act in June of 2020, which demonstrates how long it takes to 
get important legislation passed here in the U.S. Congress. Since the 
time we introduced it, I have worked with our colleagues on both sides 
of the aisle to secure the necessary funding so we could deliver the 
benefits for our country.
  Countless colleagues have been part of the process over these last 
few weeks, particularly Senator Young, Senator Portman, Senator Wicker, 
Senator Sinema, and countless others; and Senator Cantwell and 
certainly Senator Schumer as well and numerous others have led the 
charge on this legislation. Their hard work and their willingness to 
work cooperatively together and to find common ground is the reason for 
our success.
  This has been a long, winding road with a lot of twists and turns 
along the way, but the end is finally in sight. Speaker Pelosi has 
promised to bring this legislation up for a vote in the House, and I 
hope our colleagues across the Capitol do not dally and get this bill 
voted out of the House and to the President's desk.
  Chip manufacturers are watching Congress and waiting to see if this 
bill passes before they decide where to build new fab manufacturing 
facilities. And we have been told that, unless this bill passes, these 
hoped-for manufacturing jobs and these semiconductor manufacturing fabs 
will not be built here in America but will be built in Europe and other 
places around the world.
  Secretary Raimondo, the Secretary of Commerce, has assured our 
colleagues that the United States will miss out on big benefits in 
terms of jobs, national security, and our economy if Congress doesn't 
pass this bill by the start of the August recess.
  Once this bipartisan legislation passes the Senate, our Democratic 
colleagues are reportedly planning a dramatic pivot from bipartisanship 
to an ultrapartisan reconciliation process. Apparently, they are 
willing to work together when it is convenient, but they are also 
willing to abandon the notion of working together and are preparing to 
go on another reckless, partisan spending spree.
  This isn't the first time. At the start of last year, Democrats spent 
nearly $2 trillion in unnecessary spending on a party-line basis. 
People wonder why we have 9 percent inflation. Part of it is our 
Democratic colleagues are willing to shovel money out the door and 
chase limited goods with supply chain problems, which means that prices 
get driven higher and higher--as well as, as I mentioned, flawed energy 
policies that look for the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia to increase 
production rather than to produce more American oil and gas here at 
home.
  Well, our Democratic colleagues succeeded in that $2 trillion bill, 
and they tried to pass another partisan bill at the end of the year 
which would have cost the American people nearly $5 trillion. But, 
thankfully, that entire effort failed.
  Now, some of our colleagues are committed--this is their last chance 
before the August recess--to take advantage of the rules of the Senate 
and to go on a partisan spending bonanza, and certainly they don't want 
to miss this opportunity.
  We are hearing that our colleagues are frantically piecing together a 
bill that has not yet even been written and completed and passed the 
so-called Byrd bath test with the Senate Parliamentarian. So we are 
waiting to see whether they can meet the time deadline of the end of 
next week or not.
  As I said, the bill is still reportedly being written, so we don't 
even have a good picture of everything that is in it. But we do have an 
understanding of the general framework, and it is not looking good for 
the American people. For example, our colleagues have said their 
proposal will implement government price controls on lifesaving drugs, 
a move that will stifle innovation and end up with scarcity. That is 
what price controls always do.
  Then we have heard that they plan to expand and extend the ObamaCare 
tax subsidies. This all started with a partisan spending bill that 
became law last year. It expanded the amount of taxpayer assistance 
people receive, which, in short, gave more money to more people, 
including lifting the cap on individuals who could receive those 
subsidies above $400,000.
  Of course, at the time, the camel's nose under the tent was that it 
was designed as a temporary provision. But here we are a year and a 
half later, and they are already trying to extend it, indicating that 
there was nothing temporary intended by it.
  They claim it is not a permanent extension and that it will only last 
2 or 3 years, but I have no reason to believe that Democrats will give 
up on extending those provisions when they expire. In the words of 
Ronald Reagan, the closest thing to eternal life on Earth is a 
government program. Once created, they will not die, even if they are 
no longer necessary. And of course, a permanent extension will cost the 
American people a lot of money.
  Last week, the Congressional Budget Office and the Joint Committee on 
Taxation released a report of the true cost of a permanent expansion, 
and it is pretty shocking for a number of reasons. First is the 
financial cost. By expanding the ObamaCare premium tax credits and 
making them permanent, Democrats will add $248 billion to the Federal 
deficit over the next decade.

  Mr. President, my age and your age--we are not going to be the ones 
who have to pay that money back. But these young people sitting down 
here are going to have to pay the price for the profligate spending 
today, and all Americans will pay the price by adding fuel to the fire 
of inflation.

[[Page S3730]]

  For whatever reason--reasons I really can't fathom--the Federal debt 
and the national debt are of no concern to our Democratic colleagues. 
They simply don't seem to care. They act as though we are playing with 
Monopoly money, that we can print and borrow like there is no tomorrow 
because none of this really matters. But we know that is not true. 
Every dollar we spend is paid for by taxpayers, and every ounce of debt 
we accrue will be carried and repaid by our children and our 
grandchildren. But none of this seems to matter to our friends across 
the aisle. They are still plowing ahead with this legislation.
  Unfortunately, the irresponsible spending isn't even the worst part. 
Our colleagues claim this extension will allow more Americans to afford 
healthcare, but the Congressional Budget Office and the Joint Committee 
on Taxation told us that under this plan, some 2.3 million Americans 
will lose their current coverage provided by their employer. Some 2.3 
million Americans will lose their coverage provided currently by their 
employer. Hard-working Americans whose health insurance is currently 
covered by their employers would be told: You are on your own now. And 
no matter what you negotiated when you negotiated your salary with your 
employer, presumably if you are a union member and subject to a 
collective bargaining agreement where your union negotiated a generous 
healthcare plan, all of that will be in jeopardy by this reckless 
expansion of the ObamaCare subsidies.
  Our Democrat friends want to continue subsidizing healthcare for six-
figure earners. People earning 750 percent of the Federal poverty level 
would be eligible for taxpayer-funded subsidies--750 percent of the 
poverty level, you would get cash from Uncle Sam. Our country would be 
essentially paying wealthy people to lose their current employer-
provided healthcare so they can end up on the government subsidy.
  This is simply crazy policy: driving up the deficit, kicking people 
off of their employer-provided health plans, and forcing taxpayers to 
subsidize health insurance for the rich. This isn't about helping the 
uninsured; it is a backdoor way to implement Medicare for All. Yes, Joe 
Biden may be President, but it is the Bernie Sanders agenda at work 
here.
  Of course, Democrats couldn't get enough support for this radical 
plan, so they are trying to jam it through on party-line votes. Instead 
of attempting to pass a massive, unpopular bill all at once, they are 
trying to serve it to the American people in spoonfuls. Bit by bit, 
they are trying to push America closer to a single-payer health system.
  American people do not want Medicare for All. People who have their 
employer-provided coverage want to keep it. And the American people 
don't want the Federal Government subsidizing wealthy people who can 
afford to pay for their own healthcare.
  This is a bad idea whose time I hope has not come, and I hope our 
friends on the other side of the aisle will simply give up on this 
massive, partisan tax-and-spending spree bill that will do no good and 
will do a lot of harm.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Tennessee.
  Mrs. BLACKBURN. Mr. President, my colleague from Texas was just 
talking about how taxes go up and spending seems to increase. This 
week, we have had before us a bill that was going to be about 30 
billion and then 52 billion and then 72 billion. Now it comes out, and 
it is almost $300 billion.
  This is a piece of legislation that has had a variety of different 
names, and I have found it so interesting that it has had so many 
different names. Let's see. It has been called CHIPS, CHIPS+, CHIPS and 
Science, USICA, Endless Frontier, and ``China COMPETES.'' You know, it 
seems as if there was a name that was given whenever there was an 
occasion that you thought you could rename something and make it fit, 
and I know DC is just famous for having these bills with the acronyms 
and the fancy-sounding names. But when I talk to Tennesseans, it is so 
apparent they are tired of that. What they want are the facts. They 
want someone who is going to tell them the truth. What they know is 
that China is an adversary; they are not a competitor. They know that 
we have to work diligently to stay competitive with China and not let 
them get the upper hand. But when we talk about these issues, sometimes 
we lose sight of that big picture. I do feel that as we talked about 
the CHIPS bill and semiconductor supply chains, this is something we 
lost sight of.
  You know, there are some of us who have worked on the issues of 
dealing with China going back into the early years of this century, 
looking at IP theft, looking at reverse engineering, looking at the way 
the Chinese Communist Party would dip in and grab up great ideas from 
American innovators and then off to the races they would go. We have a 
lot of companies that learned a lot of tough lessons trying to 
manufacture in China. And then we come up near the pandemic.
  When I was over in the House and before that period of time, we had 
an issue and realized that our active pharmaceutical manufacturing was 
where? In China. We couldn't get penicillin. Why was that? It was 
because there was one factory in China that made that, and the factory 
had an explosion. So we had a shortage on that. Then we had an issue 
with Heparin, and we had some deaths that were caused by a tainted 
product that was coming out of a factory there.

  So Senator Menendez and I had a piece of legislation that would have 
incentivized returning active pharmaceutical ingredient manufacturing 
to the United States. Then we got into the issues of the pandemic, and 
then everyone was saying: Critical supply chains--we need to bring them 
back. Indeed, that is something that is important to do. Chips are an 
important part of that. Our laptops, our electronics, our automobiles 
all need chips, and there was a shortage. People began to realize that 
our military aircraft, our radar systems, our major defense systems all 
needed the chips. But, likewise, we needed active pharmaceutical 
ingredients. We needed our telecommunications supply chains. We needed 
polysilicon. We needed ag chemicals. All of these are critical supply 
chains.
  Personally, I was optimistic about the possibility that we were 
finally going to begin to unravel this relationship we have had with 
the Chinese Communist Party. I see it as a dangerous relationship. But, 
like many pieces of well-intentioned legislation, it became a victim of 
some of the same compulsion to squeeze money from the American taxpayer 
and put it into a very narrow silo.
  So after more than 2 years of working on these issues and multiple 
failed iterations, what we have is a bill that spends about $300 
billion and is a gateway to industrial planning. I know that many of my 
colleagues have read some of the postmortems on this, and people 
realize this wasn't about chips. It wasn't 72 billion. There was 
authorization language in there that was going to balloon this.
  There was beefing up of the National Science Foundation, and we have 
National Labs that do a lot of that work. There were protections for 
U.S. manufacturing, some anti-China provisions, security provisions, 
that, guess what, poof in the night, a line drawn through them. They 
are out.
  Wasn't that to be the purpose of this legislation? Of course it was. 
Let's bring the manufacturing back to the United States. And that is 
what we should have done. We should have looked at ways that we could 
bring manufacturing back across the range of critical supply chains.
  We all know that China's control over our active pharmaceutical 
ingredients and other pharmaceutical products--that is a problem. 
Control over our telecom equipment--yes, that is a problem. Huawei 
equipment that we are having to rip out and replace in this country; 
telecom equipment that is part of our critical supply chain; control 
over our supplies of minerals and chemicals--for the Chinese Communist 
Party to control that, that is a problem.
  So many who worked on this have spent 2 years looking at and working 
on supply chains and competition, and now what they have is legislation 
that invests billions of dollars in one industry, one industrial 
sector, and promises hundreds of billions of dollars more to the NSF 
that will duplicate many of those efforts that are already in progress 
at our National Labs and other DOE facilities.
  So we are 2 years and $280 billion into this, and about $80 billion 
of that goes

[[Page S3731]]

into one industry. Honestly, it does not add up. We could have spent 
that time and a lot less money so much more wisely. We could have used 
tax credits to incentivize multiple industries to come home, to set up 
shop in business-friendly States like Tennessee and create thousands of 
jobs for American workers.
  This is what you call a missed opportunity. And, unfortunately, the 
new axis of evil--they are watching, and I think they like what they 
see. I think they like it. I think they like it when we don't appear to 
be focused, when we don't appear to take the steps to challenge them 
across the board. We are running out of time to truly unravel ourselves 
from the influence of the Chinese Communist Party.
  I yield the floor.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The senior Senator from Montana.
  Mr. TESTER. Mr. President, it seems a bit like deja vu all over 
again. We have been here before. We were here before the Fourth of July 
talking about the PACT Act, the toxic exposure bill, the bill that has 
been in the works for 15 years and that the ranking member and I have 
worked on very hard over the last 18 months, year and a half.
  We are going to vote on it again here in a moment. This is a bill 
that has been talked about a lot on this floor, and just about 
everything has been said about this bill. It is a bill that allows us, 
the American people, to live up to the promises we make our Active-Duty 
military when they come home with an injury--in this case, toxic 
exposure.
  We have had toxic exposures--well, in World War I, it was mustard 
gas; radiation in World War II; and, of course, Agent Orange in the 
Vietnam war. We have had toxic exposures over and over and over again. 
In the Middle East, it is burn pits.
  Over the last year and a half, we have had many hearings on this 
bill. In fact, we had a gentleman testify that he had a lung disorder. 
He was in tough shape. And, in fact, he passed away a few months ago.
  The truth is, this is a bill that we need to pass. And we passed it 
already with 84 votes, and I think we had a couple of Senators gone or 
we would have had 86. It is a bill that is bipartisan in nature, and it 
is a bill that I think every Senator who votes for this bill can be 
proud that we are supporting the men and women who have felt the wounds 
of battle and are now trying to get their life back to normal.
  But it is more than just the folks who served in our military; it is 
also their families. I would encourage all the Members of the body to 
support this bill.
  It costs $27 billion a year, but it is a cost of war. If we are not 
willing to take care of our men and women when they come back from 
battles that we send them off to, then maybe we ought to rethink 
whether we are going to send them in the first place. This bill is a 
bill that was pushed by every veterans service organization out there. 
It was their No. 1 priority. We listened to the veterans, and we ended 
up with a piece of legislation that is very, very good.
  If we are able to pass this out of the Senate again, this time it 
won't be going to the House. It will be going right to the President's 
desk, and we will have done right by our veterans in this country; we 
will have done right by the next generation of fighting men and women 
who will become veterans; and we will have had our veterans' backs 
along the way.
  I yield the floor.


                             Cloture Motion

  The PRESIDING OFFICER. Pursuant to rule XXII, the Chair lays before 
the Senate the pending cloture motion, which the clerk will state.
  The senior assistant 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 the motion to 
     concur in the House amendment to S. 3373, a bill to improve 
     the Iraq and Afghanistan Service Grant and the Children of 
     Fallen Heroes Grant.
         Charles E. Schumer, Jon Tester, Ben Ray Lujan, Richard 
           Blumenthal, Robert P. Casey, Jr., Tina Smith, John W. 
           Hickenlooper, Mazie K. Hirono, Mark R. Warner, Debbie 
           Stabenow, Jack Reed, Tammy Baldwin, Jacky Rosen, 
           Raphael G. Warnock, Tammy Duckworth, Christopher 
           Murphy, Mark Kelly.

  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 the 
motion to concur in the House amendment to S. 3373, a bill to improve 
the Iraq and Afghanistan Service Grant and the Children of Fallen 
Heroes Grant, shall be brought to a close?
  The yeas and nays are mandatory under the rule.
  The clerk will call the roll.
  The senior assistant bill clerk called the roll.
  Mr. DURBIN. I announce that the Senator from Vermont (Mr. Leahy) and 
the Senator from West Virginia (Mr. Manchin) are necessarily absent.
  Mr. THUNE. The following Senator is necessarily absent: the Senator 
from Alaska (Ms. Murkowski).
  The yeas and nays resulted--yeas 55, nays 42, as follows:

                      [Rollcall Vote No. 272 Leg.]

                                YEAS--55

     Baldwin
     Bennet
     Blumenthal
     Booker
     Boozman
     Brown
     Cantwell
     Capito
     Cardin
     Carper
     Casey
     Collins
     Coons
     Cortez Masto
     Duckworth
     Durbin
     Feinstein
     Gillibrand
     Graham
     Grassley
     Hassan
     Heinrich
     Hickenlooper
     Hirono
     Hoeven
     Kaine
     Kelly
     King
     Klobuchar
     Lujan
     Markey
     Menendez
     Merkley
     Moran
     Murphy
     Murray
     Ossoff
     Padilla
     Peters
     Reed
     Rosen
     Rubio
     Sanders
     Schatz
     Shaheen
     Sinema
     Smith
     Stabenow
     Tester
     Van Hollen
     Warner
     Warnock
     Warren
     Whitehouse
     Wyden

                                NAYS--42

     Barrasso
     Blackburn
     Blunt
     Braun
     Burr
     Cassidy
     Cornyn
     Cotton
     Cramer
     Crapo
     Cruz
     Daines
     Ernst
     Fischer
     Hagerty
     Hawley
     Hyde-Smith
     Inhofe
     Johnson
     Kennedy
     Lankford
     Lee
     Lummis
     Marshall
     McConnell
     Paul
     Portman
     Risch
     Romney
     Rounds
     Sasse
     Schumer
     Scott (FL)
     Scott (SC)
     Shelby
     Sullivan
     Thune
     Tillis
     Toomey
     Tuberville
     Wicker
     Young

                             NOT VOTING--3

     Leahy
     Manchin
     Murkowski
  (Ms. SMITH assumed the Chair.)
  The PRESIDING OFFICER (Mr. Ossoff). On this vote, the yeas are 55, 
the nays are 42.
  Three-fifths of the Senators duly chosen and sworn not having voted 
in the affirmative, the motion is rejected.


                          Motion to Reconsider

  Mr. SCHUMER. Mr. President, I enter a motion to reconsider the failed 
cloture vote.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The motion is entered.
  Mr. SCHUMER. I yield the floor.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Rhode Island.


             Unanimous Consent Requests--Executive Calendar

  Mr. REED. Mr. President, I rise to discuss three civilian nominees: 
Mr. Robert Storch, Ms. Tia Johnson, and Mr. Russell Rumbaugh, who are 
each nominated to hold critical positions within the Department of 
Defense. They have been on the Executive Calendar for months. Yet I am 
unaware of any objections to these nominees related to their 
qualifications for the positions for which they have been nominated.
  I need not remind my colleagues, with Russia's invasion of Ukraine 
and the increasingly aggressive actions of China, how critically 
important it is to ensure the Defense Department has the people power 
it needs to do its job well.
  I would also like to note that in the past, my colleagues have been 
very cognizant of this need for the smooth workings of the Defense 
Department, and nominees for the Department--both civilian and 
military--have been voted out of committee and off the floor quickly, 
typically by unanimous consent. I find it ironic now, at a time when we 
see unparalleled threats to our national security, that nominees for 
the Department of Defense would be held for months on end, with no 
objections on qualifications, without any path to confirmation other 
than a cloture vote.
  There are presently eight Defense Department nominees waiting on the 
Executive Calendar. At the end of next week, it will be 12. Today, I 
would like to discuss these three individuals.
  Mr. Robert Storch is nominated to be the Department of Defense 
inspector

[[Page S3732]]

general and was favorably reported out of the Armed Services Committee 
on March 8, 2022.
  The Defense Department has not had a Senate-confirmed inspector 
general since January 8, 2016. I will repeat that. The Defense 
Department has not had a Senate-confirmed inspector general since 
January 2016. The last nominee, put forward by then-President Obama, 
was withdrawn by President Trump on February 28, 2017.
  Mr. Trump designated the Honorable Sean O'Donnell as the acting DOD 
IG on April 6, 2020, but the GAO recently issued a decision that Mr. 
O'Donnell's continuing service as the acting inspector general is in 
violation of the Vacancies Act. As such, there is really no effective 
inspector general in the Department of Defense--the largest Agency in 
the Federal Government.
  For these reasons, in addition to the fundamental importance of the 
IG's work, the Senate needs to confirm Mr. Storch as soon as possible. 
The Department has been without a Senate-confirmed IG for more than 6 
years, and we cannot wait any longer.
  Ms. Tia Johnson was reported out of the committee on April 5, 2022, 
and would become one of five judges on the Court of Appeals for the 
Armed Forces, often referred to as the ``Supreme Court of military 
law.'' The court's next hearing is scheduled for October 12, 2022, 
where it will consider important jurisdictional and substantive issues 
in military criminal law.
  Importantly, the FY22 NDAA implemented extensive changes to the 
Uniform Code of Military Justice, including a statute that would 
criminalize sexual harassment under some circumstances. Ms. Johnson 
will play a critical role on the Court of Appeals in reviewing 
challenges and issues with the recent sexual assault and sexual 
harassment statutes, including defendants' rights under the Uniform 
Code of Military Justice.
  Without Miss Johnson, the court risks deadlock, which will further 
hamper the military's ability to provide good order and discipline, 
which is fundamental to any military force.
  Mr. Russell Rumbaugh was nominated on March 21, 2022, to serve as the 
Assistant Secretary of the Navy for Financial Management and 
Comptroller. This nomination was privileged, so it did not require a 
hearing and was intended to move expeditiously. The committee sent 
policy questions to Mr. Rumbaugh and received his answers on April 25, 
2022. The committee reported out his nomination on May 12, and pursuant 
to S. Res. 116, his nomination was moved 10 days later to the 
appropriate section of the Executive Calendar and was ready for 
confirmation by the full Senate. So his confirmation has been waiting 
for 2 months.

  The Navy has not had a confirmed Assistant Secretary for Financial 
Management and Comptroller since July 2020. This role is critical to 
managing the budget and financial readiness of the Navy and the Marine 
Corps, to include the Department's audit. Many will point out and 
criticize, with some reasonableness, the fact that the Department of 
Defense has not yet passed an audit. Well, it is very difficult to pass 
an audit if you have critical individuals who are not in place to help 
you prepare for and pass such an audit. That is another reason I think 
we need--the Navy needs a comptroller.
  Each of these positions are critically important to the Department of 
Defense. The sooner they assume their offices, the better for the 
Department's ability to tackle these challenges on behalf of 
servicemembers and their families and the Nation. And, indeed, the 
sooner they are there, the more we will be able to support the men and 
women in uniform in the United States who are deployed across the 
globe. They need that kind of support here in Washington.
  With that, Mr. President, I would ask unanimous consent that the 
Senate proceed to executive session to consider the following 
nominations en bloc: No. 843, No. 861, and No. 972; that the 
nominations be agreed to without intervening action or debate; the 
motions to reconsider be considered made and laid upon the table; that 
any statements related to the nominations be printed in the Record; and 
that the President be immediately notified of the Senate's action.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. Is there objection?
  Mr. HAWLEY. Mr. President.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Missouri.
  Mr. HAWLEY. I object.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The objection is heard.
  Mr. REED. Mr. President, the Senator from Missouri has objected, and 
I believe he is the only individual Member of the Senate who objects. 
In that case, I think I would be prepared to offer another unanimous 
consent that would allow debate upon these members. That, I think, 
should be satisfactory to the Senator, because it will give him an 
opportunity to express his objections to these individuals and why they 
are not qualified to be in office.
  With that, I renew my above request, except that I ask unanimous 
consent that at a time to be determined by the majority leader, in 
consultation with the Republican leader, the Senate proceed to 
executive session; that there be 1 hour for debate, equally divided in 
the usual form on the nominations en bloc; that upon the use or 
yielding back of time, the Senate vote on the nominations in the order 
listed; and that following disposition of the nominations, the Senate 
resume legislative session.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. Is there objection?
  Mr. HAWLEY. Mr. President.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Missouri.
  Mr. HAWLEY. I object.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. Objection is heard.
  Mr. HAWLEY. Mr. President.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Rhode Island has the floor.
  Mr. REED. Mr. President, I believe I retain the time, but if the 
Senator would like me to make a short statement and then object--
  Mr. HAWLEY. Sure.
  Mr. REED. I think the easy thing to do is let me yield such time as 
the Senator requires.
  Mr. HAWLEY. I thank the chairman. It is always a privilege to be on 
the floor with the Senator from Rhode Island and to serve him on the 
committee, so thank you for that.
  I would just say this: It has been nearly a year now since the 
events, the catastrophe, in Kabul that claimed the lives of 13 
servicemembers, including from my home State of Missouri.
  This was a catastrophe of this administration's making, and it has 
been now nearly 2 weeks, maybe 3, since I began to enter into the 
Record, page by painstaking page, this report undertaken by U.S. 
Central Command about that disaster at Abbey Gate in Kabul, about those 
deaths, not to mention the hundreds of American civilians who were left 
behind.
  I am entering this report into the Record so the American people can 
see it because I cannot convince my friend from Rhode Island to hold a 
public hearing on this report, and I cannot convince the White House to 
stop their coverup of the events at Abbey Gate and the role they played 
in it.
  This is not for lack of trying. For months on end, I have come to 
this floor and asked for a public hearing on this report. I have asked 
my colleagues. I have written to the chairman. I have spoken to members 
of the committee, who, by the way, say they have no objection.
  And just last week, the White House reached out to me and said: What 
is it that you want?
  I said, I want accountability for what happened in Afghanistan and 
Abbey Gate, and, specifically, I want a public hearing on this report, 
to which the White House said it is up to the chairman.
  So I hope that we can make some progress on actually getting 
accountability for what happened, for the servicemembers whose lives 
were lost, and we can end this continual Vietnamesque, yearlong effort 
to push this crisis out into the shadows, to ignore it as if it never 
happened, and to deny the American people the accountability that 
servicemembers deserve.
  I yield the floor.
  Mr. REED. Mr. President, I reclaim my time.
  I respectfully disagree with the Senator from Missouri on this 
matter. The Senate Armed Services Committee conducts and has conducted 
extensive oversight on Afghanistan. Committee actions include seven 
public and closed hearings regarding the War in Afghanistan, lessons 
learned, and ongoing regional counterterrorism requirements

[[Page S3733]]

since the withdrawal last August. And Senator Hawley has participated 
in all of these.
  The National Defense Authorization Act for Fiscal Year 2022 contained 
a provision, section 1092, that mandated the Department of Defense 
deliver quarterly briefings, in both unclassified and classified form, 
on the security situation in Afghanistan and ongoing counterterrorism 
efforts.
  The classified briefings have taken place on January 20, April 14, 
and July 21. The unclassified briefings have taken place on February 14 
and April 25. An additional unclassified briefing will be held 
tomorrow, coincidentally, and Senator Hawley has full access to all of 
these briefings.
  The National Defense Authorization Act for Fiscal Year 2022 also 
contains a provision, section 1069, which requires a yearly assessment 
of our over-the-horizon counterterrorism capabilities in Afghanistan. 
While the first installment has not yet been delivered to the 
committee, Senator Hawley will have access to those assessments, as 
well as will all of my colleagues.
  The National Defense Authorization Act for Fiscal Year 2022 further 
mandated the establishment of the Afghanistan War Commission, which 
will spend 3 years examining all aspects of the 20-year war in-depth. 
All the Commissioners have been appointed, and we expect the Commission 
to commence work in the near term. And Senator Hawley will have the 
same access to the Commission's findings as everyone else.
  What I think the Senator does not understand is that the events that 
took place at Abbey Gate were not unique to that moment in time. They 
were the culmination of 20 years of actions by Presidents from both 
sides, by commanders on both sides. And in order to understand what 
truly happened at Abbey Gate, we have to look at all of those periods.
  What was the effect of Donald Trump's agreement with the Taliban, 
excluding the legal government of Afghanistan, to essentially leave? 
And what other events created the situation that led directly to the 
situation at Abbey Gate? Without that context, this will simply be a 
way to vilify the administration, a way to point out shortcomings, and 
it won't get to what we really should be focused on: What profound 
lessons can we learn from 20 years in Afghanistan that will assist us 
in the future, that will protect our men and women in uniform?
  Again, if the focus is on political retaliation and retribution, that 
is part of this organization. But if we want to focus on protecting 
today the lives of men and women who serve and their families who will 
grieve if they are lost, then we have to take a broader view, which we 
are doing in the Commission, which we are doing when we bring our 
experts in on a frequent basis to talk about Afghanistan--and which we 
must do by filling these positions in the Department of Defense.
  Without the support of a functioning Department of Defense, we will 
be in a situation where we are putting at risk the soldiers, sailors, 
airmen, marines, and guardians who protect this Nation.
  I yield the floor.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Pennsylvania.


                                PACT Act

  Mr. TOOMEY. Mr. President, I want to make just a brief comment about 
the cloture vote that just occurred shortly before the Senator from 
Rhode Island sought the unanimous consent agreement.
  And, as you know, cloture was denied on that bill, and, as you also 
know very well, that doesn't mean the bill is defeated. It simply means 
that the opportunity to amend it isn't eliminated. There haven't been 
any amendments. That is unfortunate.
  But I want to just stress that my concern about this bill has nothing 
to do with the purpose of the bill. It is not about the approximately 
$280 billion of new spending that is meant to be required under this 
bill for the VA to cover Medicare and other--healthcare, I should say, 
and other benefits for veterans who are exposed to toxic burn pits. 
What I want to change has absolutely nothing to do with any of that.
  I see the chairman of the committee of jurisdiction. I think he 
understands that I have no interest in modifying the purpose of this 
bill, all the work that he and many others have done. And, by the way, 
I suspect there are 85 votes for this bill, for the underlying bill, if 
we fix this problem.
  And here is the problem. Completely unrelated to the $280 billion of 
new spending, there is a mechanism created in this bill--it is a 
budgetary gimmick--that has the intent of making it possible to have a 
huge explosion in unrelated spending: $400 billion. This budgetary 
gimmick is so unrelated to the actual veterans' issue that has to do 
with burn pits that it is not even in the House version of this bill.
  So, the fact is, we can fix this tonight. This is a relatively easy 
fix. There might be a few technical things we would iron out, and we 
could get this done tonight. And I know the chairman of the committee 
very much wants to get this bill done. This is the path to do it. And 
if we fix this--which, as I say, I would recommend we fix it tonight--
we could do that by a unanimous consent request. We could do it any 
number of ways.
  But once that is done, this bill sails through this Chamber and goes 
to the President and gets signed into law. So I just want to urge my 
Democratic colleagues to join me in working this out. This is not what 
this bill was about. We can fix it. We can do it immediately.
  I yield the floor.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Montana.
  Mr. TESTER. Mr. President, the good Senator from Pennsylvania is 
correct. I want to see this bill passed. I want to see this bill passed 
for all the reasons I have talked about many times in committee and on 
this floor.
  This is about living up to the promises for our veterans. This is 
about making sure that when the veterans come back from exposures to 
burn pits or oil well fires or Agent Orange, that they don't have to go 
to the VA and fight for their healthcare and their benefits.
  It impacts 3\1/2\ million veterans in this country. By the way, there 
will be a few more who die before we get this bill passed.
  And I would also say that, as the Senator from Pennsylvania says, I 
am all for the $278.4 billion over 10 years on this bill; I have got no 
problem with that--well, the fact is, he does have a problem with that. 
The fact is, by doing what happened today on this floor, the real issue 
here--and make no mistake about it--is the money that is being spent to 
take care of our veterans.
  And I have said it before, and I will say it again. If you have the 
guts to send somebody to war, then you better have the guts to take 
care of them when they get back home--or don't send them in the first 
place.
  Now, let's talk about the $400 billion, OK, because, quite frankly, 
what this is about--this is about not even trusting the people in this 
body. We have an Appropriations Committee, and we vote on 
appropriations bills, and we set the levels in the accounts based off 
of appropriations. Let the process work. Let's not tie the hands of 
appropriators. Let's make sure we let the process work. That is what we 
have always done.
  But the good Senator from Pennsylvania's amendment ties the hands of 
the appropriators. Make no mistake about this, the American people are 
sick and tired of the games that go on in this body. They are sick and 
tired of us working for Democrats or working for Republicans and not 
working for the American people. But this is bigger than that.
  We have an All-Volunteer military in this country. If you don't think 
young people are watching what we are doing today who are thinking 
about signing up for the military, you are sadly mistaken. And when we 
don't take care of our veterans when they come home, they are going to 
say: Why should I ever sign on the dotted line because, of the promises 
that I made and the promises the country made, only half that deal is 
being respected--my half.
  This is a sad day in the U.S. Senate. This is the biggest issue 
facing our veterans today. Make no mistake about it, if it wasn't, 
every veterans service organization wouldn't be out there talking to us 
and have been talking to me for the last 15 years.
  So we can make up all sorts of excuses about how this is going to 
move money around, but--let me tell you something--we are the ones who 
decide that. If we want to move money around, we will; if we don't, we 
won't.

[[Page S3734]]

  In the meantime, let's pass this bill. Let's give veterans the 
healthcare they have earned. If it isn't, it is political malpractice. 
What we are doing today with this policy, by putting this policy off, 
does nobody any good whatsoever.
  I yield the floor.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Pennsylvania.
  Mr. TOOMEY. Mr. President, I would briefly and simply reiterate my 
request that our Democratic colleagues, including the chairman, who 
obviously is passionate about this, just engage with us to fix this, 
this problem that has nothing to do with the bill that he wants to 
pass, this problem that wasn't in the House version of this bill.
  The chairman's argument that, well, it is always ultimately subject 
to appropriations--well, that is really an argument that says let's not 
have a budget at all, let's not have any rules because--it is true--a 
future Congress can always do whatever it wants. So, by that logic, we 
should have no rules, no guidelines, no budgets, no procedures, no pay-
go, no effort whatsoever to have any management of our Federal budget 
because--what the hell--any Congress can come along and just waive it.
  I don't agree with that. I think, especially at a time when inflation 
is running rampant, when we have been spending money like no one has 
ever imagined--if we have got an important need, OK; we do that. But 
this gimmick--and the chairman said people are sick and tired of games. 
I totally agree. This is one of those games where you have got a bill 
that is going to pass and so let's sneak in this change in the budget 
rule so that it will be easy to spend money on other things in the 
future.
  That is ridiculous. That is just not defensible. So, again, I would 
stress there is a very easy path to a very big vote in favor of this 
bill that probably could happen later tonight but could certainly 
happen tomorrow. And if the path is there, let's fix this problem.
  I yield the floor.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Montana.
  Mr. TESTER. Mr. President, I am going to reiterate what I said 
before. The concern that the Senator from Pennsylvania has is a concern 
that there is not a lot of trust in this body, and I agree--fair reason 
to be.
  As far as having rules, I believe in having rules, but I don't 
believe we should have rules that tie the hands of our standing 
committees, that say: You can't do this. Appropriations, I don't care 
what you see, what you see, what issue comes down the road for 
veterans--in this case, Martin Heinrich, the chair, and John Boozman, 
the ranking member--you guys can't address it.
  That is what the Senator from Pennsylvania wants to do. That is not 
how this process should work. We should be dealing with issues as they 
arise. That is a fact.
  And by the way, I have said for some time, programs that have 
outlived their lifespan, we should be cutting those programs, but we 
don't do that very well.
  But we have been at war for 20 years. With that war--by the way, that 
was all put on a credit card--there was a fair amount that was funded 
by an OCO account. And now we are going to say: Oh, no, no, no, no, no, 
no; we are not going to spend the money to take care of our veterans. I 
am going to use this as an excuse. I am going to use as an excuse the 
fact that the Appropriations Committee might spend too much money.
  Well, that is on us. And while that is on us, we have veterans dying 
of cancers and lung conditions because a bill that should have been 
passed before the Fourth of July is still on the floor today.
  You can frame it any way you want. But in the end, this budgetary 
gimmick is called: How the Congress Works. Appropriators appropriate. 
If you don't believe me, ask Senator Shelby. That is what we do. And if 
we appropriate too much, this body votes it down. Or if we don't 
appropriate enough, this body votes it down and amends it up. That is 
what appropriators do. That is how this process is supposed to work.
  We should not be using that excuse to deny benefits to the men and 
women who have served this country in a God-awful place in the Middle 
East.
  I yield the floor.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER (Mr. Warnock). The Senator from Georgia is 
recognized.

                          ____________________