[Congressional Record Volume 168, Number 183 (Tuesday, November 29, 2022)]
[Senate]
[Pages S6831-S6833]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




                          LEGISLATIVE SESSION

                                 ______
                                 

                   RESPECT FOR MARRIAGE ACT--Resumed

  The PRESIDENT pro tempore. Under the previous order, the Senate will 
resume consideration of H.R. 8404, which the clerk will report.
  The senior assistant legislative clerk read as follows:

       A bill (H.R. 8404) to repeal the Defense of Marriage Act 
     and ensure respect for State regulation of marriage, and for 
     other purposes.

  Pending:

       Schumer (for Baldwin) amendment No. 6487, in the nature of 
     a substitute.
       Schumer amendment No. 6488 (to amendment No. 6487), to add 
     an effective date.
       Schumer amendment No. 6489 (to amendment No. 6488), to add 
     an effective date.

  Mr. LUJAN. I suggest the absence of a quorum.
  The PRESIDENT pro tempore. The clerk will call the roll.
  The senior assistant legislative clerk proceeded to call the roll.
  Mr. SCHUMER. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the order 
for the quorum call be rescinded.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER (Mr. Lujan). Without objection, it is so 
ordered.


                   Recognition of the Majority Leader

  The majority leader is recognized.


                               H.R. 8404

  Mr. SCHUMER. Mr. President, for millions and millions of Americans, 
today is a very good day, an important day, a day that has been a long 
time coming: We are voting to pass the Respect for Marriage Act. Later 
this afternoon, with a little more bipartisan cooperation, the Senate 
will vote to pass the Respect for Marriage Act, putting it on the brink 
of reaching the President's desk.
  In many ways, the story of America has been a difficult but 
inexorable march toward greater equality. Sometimes we have taken steps 
forward. Other times, unfortunately, we have taken disturbing steps 
backward. But, today, after months of hard work, after many rounds of 
bipartisan talks, and after many doubts that we could even reach this 
point, we are taking a momentous step forward for greater justice for 
LGBTQ Americans.
  Let me summarize how today will proceed. Later this afternoon, per an 
agreement between both parties, the Senate will hold three rollcall 
votes on amendments presented by Senators Lee, Lankford, and Rubio. A 
vote on final passage for the Respect for Marriage Act will be held 
after that.
  Standing here today, with the passage of this legislation, it is 
impossible not to think of my family. Today, I am wearing the tie I 
wore at my daughter's wedding, one of the happiest moments in my life. 
But I also cannot help but recall the harrowing conversation I had with 
her and her wife a little more than 2 years ago.
  In September of 2020, I was in the middle of a family dinner when we 
received the news that Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg had passed away. I 
remember that awful feeling around the dinner table, and I distinctly 
remember the question my daughter and her wife asked: ``Could our right 
to marry be undone?''
  Millions of Americans in same-sex marriages go about their day with 
this terrible question lurking in the back of their minds. It is scary. 
It is a scary, but necessary, acknowledgement that, despite all the 
progress we have made, the constitutional right to same-sex marriage is 
not even a decade old and exists only by the virtue of a very narrow 5-
to-4 Supreme Court decision.
  And we all know the Court has changed since that decision. As we have 
already seen this year, what the Court has decided in the past can be 
easily taken away in the future.
  So today's vote is deeply personal for many of us in this Chamber. It 
is personal for me, of course. It is personal

[[Page S6832]]

to many of my colleagues and their staff and their families. And while 
we still have a few more votes to take, today is certainly an occasion 
for joy and relief.
  But as important as today is, let's remember that nothing about this 
process was certain. Remember--remember--it was our original plan to 
act on the Respect for Marriage Act in September, shortly after the 
House voted to pass this bill over the summer with a surprising 47 
Republicans voting for the act. We knew this bill was popular.
  We knew it was the right thing to do, but what we did not know is 
whether or not we had enough support, 60 votes, to pass this bill 
through the Senate. Maybe the votes would materialize if we forced a 
vote on the floor, but that was highly unlikely. And for a great number 
of us, for so much of America, this bill was too important to risk 
failure.
  So back in September, when I met with the leaders of this bill in my 
office--Senators Sinema and Baldwin and Collins and Tillis and 
Portman--they recommended I hold off on a vote because they believed 
they could secure enough support for this bill.
  Many questioned if it was the right thing to do. Many on my side of 
the aisle felt: Put everyone on record right now. And sometimes, they 
say, that is the way to go. But at the end of the day, my No. 1 
priority is always to get legislation passed through the Senate. So I 
made the decision to take the risk and to wait.
  Today, we have vindication that the wait was well worth it. Pushing 
Respect for Marriage over the finish line required patience and 
persistence, and, today, it is paying off.
  I want to thank the Senators who brought us this far--Senators Sinema 
and Baldwin, as well as Collins and Tillis and Portman--for their 
outstanding and relentless work. Their work has been magnificent, and I 
am so thankful they stayed the course even when success may have seemed 
elusive.
  I also want to acknowledge my Republican colleagues who voted in 
favor of advancing this legislation. Because of our work together, the 
rights of tens of millions of Americans will be strengthened under 
Federal law. That is an accomplishment we should all be proud of.
  And, of course, I want to thank all of the advocates, volunteers, and 
organizers not just for supporting this bill but for everything they 
have done over the years to make the United States a fairer, more 
accepting nation for LGBTQ Americans.
  Finally, let me finish where I started. Two years after my daughter 
and her wife questioned if their marriage could be undone, they are now 
expecting a baby next spring. I want them to raise their child with all 
the love and security that every child deserves, and the bill we are 
passing today will ensure their rights won't be trampled upon simply 
because they are in a same-sex marriage. After this bill passes, they 
will be the very first people I call.
  So thank you to my colleagues who spearheaded this bill. Thank you to 
my colleagues who have supported this bill. Thank you to the staff and 
members who worked day and night to find a path forward. And, maybe 
above all, thank you to the American people, the vast majority of whom 
have understood that the inexorable march toward equality is what 
America is all about.


                           Government Funding

  Mr. President, on a different subject, the omnibus, earlier this 
morning, I joined with congressional leaders in a meeting with 
President Biden at the White House in order to discuss the things we 
must accomplish before the end of the year. We covered a lot of 
different topics, but there is one I want to focus on right now--
passing an omnibus.
  Leader McConnell and I have agreed to try and work together to make 
sure we get a yearlong funding bill done. We hope it can be done this 
year, and we know that each side is going to have to give in order to 
send an omnibus to the President's desk as, of course, it needs 60 
votes.
  Government funding is scheduled to run out on December 16 at 
midnight. If we don't take action, the results will be a pointless and 
painful government shutdown. The best option, by far, is for both 
parties to come to the table and work on a yearlong funding bill, not a 
continuing resolution. Lurching from one short-term continuing 
resolution to the next is a terrible and chaotic way to keep the 
government open, and ultimately it is average Americans who get a raw 
deal if the government is forced to function with one hand tied behind 
its back.
  And maybe worst of all, a CR is terrible news for our troops in 
uniform. It will throw their families into great uncertainty and 
prevent our security force from conducting crucial operations that will 
keep us safe, particularly in the Indo-Pacific. So unless we want 
adversaries like the Chinese Communist Party to outmaneuver us 
militarily, we must pass an omnibus for the sake of our troops and the 
sake of our national security.
  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. McCONNELL. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the order 
for the quorum call be rescinded.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. Without objection, it is so ordered.


                   Recognition of the Minority Leader

  The Republican leader is recognized.


                            Chinese Protests

  Mr. McCONNELL. Mr. President, the world's eyes are trained this week 
on the people of China who appear to be engaged in the largest and most 
widespread protests against the country's repressive Communist Party 
government since 1989 and the events of Tiananmen Square.
  While most of the rest of the world has learned how to adapt to the 
coronavirus, mitigate its worst effects, and get on with living our 
lives, the people of China, where the whole crisis began, are still 
trapped in a ``Groundhog Day'' of permanent pandemic measures.
  Chairman Xi's so-called Zero COVID policy is managing to be both 
horribly repressive and totally ineffective at the very same time--
horribly repressive and totally ineffective at the very same time. They 
have had unending cycles of punishing lockdowns, repressive 
quarantines, and mass testing.
  Reports and social media posts are flying around the country--like 
allegations that the government let people burn up in an apartment 
building fire rather than break quarantine and that a 4-month-old baby 
girl died because the COVID rules did not allow her to get proper 
medical treatment. Of course, sadly, none of this is new or an 
aberration. This is actually perfectly in line with the CCP's long and 
brutal history.
  As in the past, the CCP is failing their citizens and lying about it. 
When the rest of the world tunes in to World Cup matches, they see 
cheering crowds. But in China, the broadcasts censor views of the 
stands to prevent their citizens from seeing unmasked foreigners 
enjoying actually a normal life.
  The people of China have put up with this dystopian state of affairs 
for nearly 3 years now, and now their patience has ended. Across 
China's major cities, residents are taking to the streets and speaking 
out. Local, civil protests are not uncommon in China, but these 
protests appear to have a different character--more widespread, more 
bold and brave, more fed up.
  Unsurprisingly, demonstrators have received harsh treatment from the 
authorities who reportedly have beaten protesters and detained a 
foreign journalist covering the events.
  The state media keeps parroting propaganda, but video evidence of the 
protests and the heavyhanded response is getting through the CCP's 
``Great Firewall.'' Thus far, the people have not backed down.
  Now, you hear some people suggesting that if a clumsy authoritarian 
nation is facing such troubles at home, it must pose less of an 
international threat than we thought. Ah, but this is precisely wrong. 
Vladimir Putin's previous aggressions against Georgia and Ukraine, its 
operations in Chechnya and Syria, and now this latest brutal war show 
exactly how even clumsy and dysfunctional regimes can inflict a 
terrible toll on free nations and free peoples. Iran, North Korea, and 
Syria have spent decades proving the very same thing. Of course, China 
isn't declining; it is continuing to expand and modernize its military 
power. And Xi and

[[Page S6833]]

his CCP constantly show us that their view of denying their own 
people's freedom at home and disrupting other countries' freedom 
through the Indo-Pacific has two goals that actually go hand in hand. 
For thugs and dictators, repression at home and aggression abroad are 
two sides of the same coin.
  So when we see the mismanagement and dysfunction from regimes like 
Putin's and Xi's, the answer is not--not--for America and our allies to 
relax our vigilance, pull inward, or pay less attention to our global 
interests; the answer is to increase our vigilance, redouble our 
strength, and keep our friends and partners even closer.
  The Biden administration's statement yesterday on the Chinese 
people's protest was actually too tepid. But what we need are not just 
stronger short-term words but stronger long-term actions and 
strategies.
  The support that America and our friends have provided to Ukraine has 
not just been an act of philanthropy to an innocent people who deserve 
help fighting off the invaders; it is also bringing major benefits to 
the United States and our partners in the most practical terms.
  In the course of fighting for their homes and families, the brave 
people of Ukraine are seriously degrading the abilities of one of the 
free world's greatest self-appointed adversaries to deal out violence. 
Putin and other wannabe tyrants the world over are learning that the 
cost-benefit calculus to bullying and bloodshed doesn't look like they 
thought it would.
  The importance of this deterrence goes beyond just Europe. China has 
spent decades investing steadily in military technologies that increase 
threats to U.S. forces and our allies in the region. The CCP has 
steadily built military installations in the South China Sea, like a 
bully standing on a street corner, trying to grab control over 
international waters and shipping lanes. China has spent years 
methodically building up the very capabilities it would need to seize 
Taiwan by force if its people refuse to bend the knee, as we have 
already seen them do in Hong Kong.
  So clearly we need to invest in our own strength, in our own 
alliances, in our own military modernization and defense industrial 
base.
  The United States needs a strong, well-equipped military capable of 
preserving the strategic advantage and projecting power anywhere in the 
world. We need allies and partners willing to invest in their own 
capabilities. We need our private sector and our partners to understand 
that free peoples ought to be doing more trading among ourselves but be 
a lot more careful locating their capital and their employees in a 
repressed country that disregards basic freedoms and steals 
intellectual property on an industrial scale.
  We need a sufficient military industrial base to keep ourselves safe 
and remain the free world's arsenal--a win-win for our security and for 
our economy. Among other things, that means rebuilding munitions 
stockpiles and weapons inventories that have been allowed to atrophy 
since the end of the Cold War. It means not waiting to arm and train 
our partners until a bad actor has already started a war. It means not 
wasting American strength and credibility, as this administration has 
done by desperately chasing sweetheart deals with Iran and abandoning 
Afghanistan with no strategy.
  Providing for the common defense is one of our basic duties here in 
Congress. The Democratic leader should have prioritized the National 
Defense Authorization Act months ago. I am glad we will finally be 
turning to this essential bill shortly. Strong funding and strong 
authorization for our national security should never have to be a 
partisan issue. I know our Democratic friends have internal 
disagreements about what level of funding our Armed Forces deserve, but 
Republicans can guarantee this much: Our side will keep standing strong 
for American security and American strength.

                          ____________________