[Congressional Record Volume 168, Number 148 (Wednesday, September 14, 2022)]
[Senate]
[Pages S4596-S4598]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]



                    Railway Labor Management Dispute

  Madam President, well, unfortunately, we are also told that there is 
a looming rail strike that will have a tremendously negative impact on 
our economy. Our economy, as we all know, depends on a network of 
tractor-trailers, planes, trains, and cargo ships to transport products 
around the United States and beyond. These are the very same 
transportation modes that make sure that your grocery store is fully 
stocked, that the manufacturing plants have inventory they need in 
order to make their products, and that, yes, our packages that we order 
show up on our front door step on time.

  But a massive disruption in rail transportation is likely to occur in 
less than 2 days' time. The unions that represent more than 115,000 
rail workers have not been able to reach a contract agreement with 
railroad companies. Unless they reach a breakthrough soon, rail workers 
will go on strike this Friday, causing a national rail shutdown.
  If you don't think that will have a negative impact on our economy on 
top of what we have already mentioned, think again. The rail system 
carries nearly 30 percent of America's freight, everything from 
agriculture to retail products, heavy equipment, automobiles, coal, 
lumber. We are talking about the critical products that impact 
virtually every sector of the economy.
  It is tough to overstate the negative impact this will have. Just 
look at agriculture. On the front end of production, farmers and 
ranchers need fertilizer, seed, animal feed, and heavy equipment, all 
of which are likely to travel by rail at some point. Then, at harvest 
time, our producers rely on

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timely rail service to transport their products to processing plants 
and then communities across the country.
  If this strike goes into effect, all of those shipments will be 
stalled, and this comes right as we are heading into the fall harvest. 
Farmers and ranchers will be left with huge amounts of products they 
can't even transport or sell, many of these perishable products, which 
will simply spoil. The consequence for consumers is we will continue to 
see empty shelves at the grocery stores, along with higher prices due 
to inflation and short supply.
  But this won't just impact us in the United States. Railroads move 
roughly a third of U.S. grain exports, which are desperately needed in 
global markets, particularly with what is happening in Ukraine, with 
Russia impeding the growing and transportation of grain to places like 
Africa, where people are literally starving for lack of food. The war 
in Ukraine has exacerbated this food insecurity. If this shutdown here 
in America goes into effect, the squeeze will be compounded and will be 
even tighter.
  Of course, this is just a snapshot of the impact a shutdown will have 
on one sector of the economy, but the same struggles will play out when 
it comes to energy, rail, manufacturing, automotive, and literally just 
about every other sector of the economy.
  This massive logjam will take a serious toll on our economy on top of 
inflation and the recessionary pressures we are already feeling. The 
freight industry estimates that a rail shutdown could cost the U.S. 
economy more than $2 billion a day--$2 billion a day.
  Our country is hurtling toward a logistical nightmare, and 
unfortunately the Biden administration appears to be frozen and 
undecided about what to do. For years, our Democratic colleagues who 
depend on organized labor for a major part of their political support 
have put the demands of labor unions ahead of the needs of consumers 
and the rest of the American people. They have romanced the powerful 
labor lobby at every turn, and one of the fiercest union defenders now 
occupies the Oval Office.
  Now, I am not opposed to people joining unions. They are entitled to 
collectively bargain and try to advance their livelihood and their 
family's way of life. But to let one special interest group basically 
create a logistical nightmare with this looming rail strike is just 
indefensible.
  Well, we are seeing the consequences of this kowtowing to organized 
labor above the interests of any and all other Americans.
  To hopefully prevent this looming crisis, President Biden has 
established an emergency Board to help reach a resolution and prevent 
this strike, if possible. The Board released its recommendations to 
resolve this dispute nearly a month ago, but a deal is still nowhere in 
sight.
  In recent weeks, a number of administration officials have joined the 
unions and freight companies at the negotiating table. The Secretaries 
of Labor, Transportation, and Agriculture have all tried to help 
resolve the impasse, but they have not moved the needle at all.
  I don't know how much havoc is in store, but it is not looking good. 
Many shipments have already stopped out of fear that the operations 
will stop midjourney. I read that even commuter trains like Amtrak have 
already canceled some of their routes because they know what sort of 
impact this strike will have if no deal is reached by Friday.
  Inflation has already sent prices to an untenable high. The supply 
chain breakdown is sure to send those prices even higher.
  Families can anticipate product shortages across the board from 
grocery stores to car lots. Shoppers can expect packages that they have 
ordered to be delayed for days or even weeks on end. And drivers should 
expect to see more trucks on the highway to fill the gap when the 
railroad shuts down.
  This is just another example of the failure of the Biden 
administration to anticipate and to address the problems that the 
American people are facing. It seems there is a huge disconnect between 
what is happening here in Washington among our Democratic friends and 
the Biden administration and what I hear from my constituents back 
home. And I think that is true largely across the Nation; that the 
elites in Washington have become completely decoupled from the rest of 
the country.
  What that produces is special interest legislation that pleases some 
constituents: labor unions, climate activists, and open borders 
advocates.
  The Biden administration and our Democratic majority have used their 
power in Washington to spend trillions of dollars on things that the 
American people don't want while compounding the problems that they are 
facing day in and day out: inflation, a recession, a paralyzing supply 
chain shutdown on the horizon, a spike in crime, and then, of course, 
an open border, which has allowed enough illegal drugs to be imported 
into the United States that it took 108,000 American lives last year. 
And 71,000 of those 108,000 lives were as a result of synthetic opioids 
like fentanyl.
  Synthetic opioids are raging like a brush fire across the entire 
country, and we are seeing, for example, at middle schools and high 
schools in places like Hays County, right outside of Austin, TX, where 
I live, that young people, unbeknownst to themselves, ingest small 
amounts of this fentanyl and ultimately end up overdosing and dying 
from it.
  So there are huge challenges facing our country. We need to do our 
job. We need to work together. No one is suggesting that we give up our 
principles. Republicans are Republicans and Democrats are Democrats for 
a reason--because they view the role and the size of the government 
differently. Our Democratic colleagues seem to think that Washington 
and government is the answer to every problem. Republicans and 
conservatives, on the other hand, tend to favor individual initiative 
and entrepreneurship and investment to create jobs and an opportunity 
for people to get jobs and provide for their family and pursue their 
dream.
  But there is plenty of overlap where we can agree, but we have to 
fight inflation. We have to deal with things like the paralyzing supply 
chain and the threat from a rail strike that appears now to be 
imminent.
  We have got to do more to support our men and women in uniform--the 
police--as they battle crime in our neighborhoods and our communities, 
which seems to have gone up exponentially in recent years.
  And then, of course, there is the one big, gaping, open sore that our 
Democratic colleagues have ignored completely, and that is our open 
border.
  I mentioned the drugs, but in addition to the drugs, we have seen 2.3 
million migrants show up at the border just since President Biden 
became President because they know they are going to be able to get 
into the country.
  And they are probably going to be able to stay because the Biden 
administration simply does not have any plan in place to decide asylum 
claims--who has legitimate claims and who does not--so they engage in a 
program of catch-and-release. With the litigation backlogs in our 
immigration courts, it is no surprise that when years go by and your 
ticket comes up and you are told to show up in immigration court, that 
people simply fade into the great American landscape and avoid 
detection.
  The only people benefiting from this, beyond the occasional migrant, 
are the drug cartels and the transnational criminal organizations that 
network people from around the world.
  I know of many people who aren't from a border State like I am who 
think that these migrants are just from Mexico or Central America. But 
if you talk to the Border Patrol sector chiefs in Del Rio or the Rio 
Grande Valley, they will tell you they are detaining people from as 
many as 150 different countries.
  Now, surely, the majority are from Mexico and Central America, but it 
ought to cause us a lot of concern when somebody can get to our back 
door from another country and then falsely claim asylum only to be 
released into the interior of the United States and never heard from 
again.
  These are all fixable problems if we will work together, but so far, 
while the American people may have thought they elected Joe Biden, a 
moderate, they basically have seen Bernie Sanders' agenda.
  I yield the floor.
  I suggest the absence of a quorum.

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  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The clerk will call the roll.
  The bill clerk proceeded to call the roll.
  Mr. SCOTT of Florida. Madam President, I ask unanimous consent that 
the order for the quorum call be rescinded.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. Without objection, it is so ordered.