[Congressional Record Volume 168, Number 198 (Tuesday, December 20, 2022)]
[Senate]
[Pages S9591-S9609]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




   AGRICULTURE, RURAL DEVELOPMENT, FOOD AND DRUG ADMINISTRATION, AND 
               RELATED AGENCIES APPROPRIATIONS ACT, 2023

  The PRESIDING OFFICER (Mr. Peters). The clerk will report the bill by 
title.
  The senior assistant legislative clerk read as follows:

       Resolved, That the House concur in the Senate amendments 
     numbered 1, 2, 3, and 5 to the bill (H.R. 2617) entitled ``An 
     Act to amend section 1115 of title 31, United States Code, to 
     amend the description of how performance goals are achieved, 
     and for other purposes'' and that the House concur in the 
     Senate amendment numbered 4 to the text of the aforementioned 
     bill, with an amendment.


                Motion to Concur with Amendment No. 6552

  Mr. SCHUMER. Mr. President, I move to concur in the House amendment 
to the Senate amendment No. 4 to H.R. 2617, with an amendment.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The clerk will report.
  The senior assistant legislative clerk read as follows:

       The Senator from New York [Mr. Schumer] moves to concur in 
     the House amendment to Senate amendment No. 4 to H.R. 2617, 
     with an amendment numbered 6552.

  Mr. SCHUMER. I ask consent that further reading of the amendment be 
dispensed with.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. Without objection, it is so ordered.
  (The amendment is printed in the Record of Monday, December 19, 2022, 
under ``Text of Amendments.'')
  Mr. SCHUMER. I ask for the yeas and nays.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. Is there a sufficient second?
  There appears to be a sufficient second.
  The yeas and nays are ordered.


                Amendment No. 6571 to Amendment No. 6552

  Mr. SCHUMER. Mr. President, I have an amendment at the desk.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The clerk will report.
  The senior assistant legislative clerk read as follows:

       The Senator from New York [Mr. Schumer] proposes an 
     amendment numbered 6571 to amendment No. 6552.

  Mr. SCHUMER. I ask consent that further reading of the amendment be 
dispensed with.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. Without objection, it is so ordered.
  The amendment is as follows:

                  (Purpose: To add an effective date)

       At the end add the following:

     SEC. __. EFFECTIVE DATE.

       This Act shall take effect on the date that is 1 day after 
     the date of enactment of this Act.


                Motion to Refer with Amendment No. 6572

  Mr. SCHUMER. Mr. President, I move to refer H.R. 2617 to the 
Committee on Appropriations with instructions to report back forthwith 
with an amendment.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The clerk will report.
  The senior assistant legislative clerk read as follows:

       The Senator from New York [Mr. Schumer] moves to refer the 
     House message to accompany H.R. 2617 to the Committee on 
     Appropriations with instructions to report back forthwith 
     with an amendment numbered 6572.

  Mr. SCHUMER. I ask consent that further reading of the motion be 
dispensed with.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER (Ms. Hassan). Without objection, it is so 
ordered.
  The amendment is as follows:

                  (Purpose: To add an effective date)

       At the end add the following:

     SEC. __. EFFECTIVE DATE.

       This Act shall take effect on the date that is 4 days after 
     the date of enactment of this Act.

  Mr. SCHUMER. I ask for the yeas and nays.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. Is there a sufficient second?
  There appears to be a sufficient second.
  The yeas and nays are ordered.


                           Amendment No. 6573

  Mr. SCHUMER. Madam President, I have an amendment to the instructions 
at the desk.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The clerk will report.
  The senior assistant legislative clerk read as follows:

       The Senator from New York [Mr. Schumer] proposes an 
     amendment numbered 6573 to the instructions of the motion to 
     refer.

  Mr. SCHUMER. I ask consent that further reading of the amendment be 
dispensed with.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. Without objection, it is so ordered.
  The amendment is as follows:

                (Purpose: To modify the effective date)

        On page 1, line 3, strike ``4'' and insert ``5''.

  Mr. SCHUMER. I ask for the yeas and nays.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. Is there a sufficient second?
  There appears to be a sufficient second.
  The yeas and nays are ordered.


                Amendment No. 6574 to Amendment No. 6573

  Mr. SCHUMER. Madam President, I have a second-degree amendment at the 
desk.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The clerk will report.
  The senior assistant legislative clerk read as follows:

       The Senator from New York [Mr. Schumer] proposes an 
     amendment numbered 6574 to amendment No. 6573.

  Mr. SCHUMER. I ask consent that further reading of the amendment be 
dispensed with.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. Without objection, it is so ordered.

[[Page S9592]]

  The amendment is as follows:

                (Purpose: To modify the effective date)

        On page 1, line 1, strike ``5'' and insert ``6''.

  Mr. SCHUMER. I yield the floor.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Ohio.


                                Ukraine

  Mr. PORTMAN. Madam President, I come to the floor tonight as we are 
hearing media reports that President Zelenskyy of Ukraine will be 
coming to Washington tomorrow to address a joint session of the U.S. 
Congress. I hope that is an accurate report. I think it is important 
that he come. This would be, by the way, the first time that he has 
left Ukraine in 300 days--not since the start of the invasion, which is 
now 300 days from today.
  Against all odds, Ukraine has held out against the Russian assault. 
Many thought that it would only be able to hold out for a week or so. 
Instead, it has been 300 days. They have pushed Russia back in so many 
places.
  I am glad he is coming because I know what he will do is talk about 
his deep appreciation for what the American people have provided. Every 
time I have been with him--and I have traveled to Ukraine about 10 
times since 2014--he talks about that. But, particularly, over the last 
few months, I have been to Ukraine twice, and he focused on the fact 
that they couldn't do it without us and the deep appreciation that he 
feels.
  Second, I know he will give us a firsthand report of what is going 
on. Just this morning, he was in Bakhmut, which is in eastern Ukraine. 
This is what it looks like in Bakhmut today. So he is going from a 
ravaged battle zone--it looks a little bit like a World War I battle 
zone when you see all the damage that has been occurring in this area. 
He will be able to tell us specifically what is happening on the 
battlefield and talk about the continued Russian atrocities that are 
being committed in the country of Ukraine.
  I am here for the 29th consecutive week on the floor of the Senate to 
talk about this attack on Ukraine, a brutal, illegal, and totally 
unprovoked war on a democratic ally of ours who just wants to live in 
peace with its neighbors, including Russia. In each of these previous 
28 speeches, I have talked about the progress that has been made and 
some of the issues that the Ukrainian people still need to address, 
particularly with regard to more technology and more weapon systems 
from the West and from the United States.
  Today, I thought it might be useful to step back and take a look at 
how we got here and how far Ukraine has come over these 300 days. Let's 
consider what the Ukrainian military has accomplished since that 
initial Russian invasion of sovereign Ukrainian territory now over 8 
years ago.
  This first picture shows Ukrainian soldiers taking up positions in 
Kramatorsk back in 2014. This was, again, right after the so-called 
Revolution of Dignity when Ukraine decided to turn to the West--the 
United States and Europe, democracy, free markets--and the Russian-
backed, corrupt government was thrown out. Russia responded by 
attacking Ukraine, taking Crimea and parts of the Donbas.
  These are the Ukrainian soldiers at that time. You can look at this 
very basic kit: old, rusted weapons; boots that don't look very sturdy; 
helmets that look like they are from the Soviet era, and they probably 
are; small anti-armor weapons that really did not have any ability to 
stop the Russian armor. They couldn't puncture the armor in these 
Russian tanks and other armored vehicles.
  These were the soldiers who were tasked with stopping Russia's 
initial invasion in 2014. Again, they look more like soldiers from the 
1980s. In those days, the Ukrainian military was underfunded, faced a 
lot of allegations of fraud, had a lot of corruption, and was 
shockingly small. And that was on purpose because the Russian-backed 
government didn't want an effective military.
  In 2014, with the help of an assortment of militias, they were able 
to slow Russia's advance just because the Ukrainians were taking the 
high moral ground, but they were unable to push the Russian forces out 
of the country or to keep them from taking Crimea and large parts of 
the Donbas, which remained in Russian hands.
  Let's fast-forward now to 2022, today, and see what our help has 
resulted in. This is a photograph of what soldiers look like on the 
frontlines today. This is in a trench in Bakhmut where you can see 
modern firearms and helmets, body armor, additional gear and equipment 
on their uniforms for extended operations in the field, and weapons 
that can actually make the difference--for instance, the American-made 
Javelin anti-armor missiles that were provided to them, which are so 
effective against the Russian tanks and other armored vehicles.
  There is an additional thing you can't see in this photograph or any 
photograph, but it is really important, and that is training. These 
soldiers in 2022 are far better trained than their predecessors, and 
they are schooled in Western tactics. They are competent, disciplined, 
and able to operate independently in uncertain circumstances. This 
stands in sharp contrast to how Russia's military has conducted itself 
in this conflict: overly centralized command and control, poor 
discipline, and an unwillingness or inability to learn from their 
mistakes.
  This is the modern military that has shattered the sword of Russia's 
war machine, and it was all made possible through the combined efforts 
of the United States, American taxpayers, but also our allies across 
the world--particularly the UK--did a lot of training. Our European 
allies and the EU did a lot of training, particularly the Eastern 
European countries in the region; also Canada.
  We stepped up, and we helped to train the next generation of the 
Ukrainian military, and through that, we have helped professionalize, 
arm, and train Ukraine's military since 2014 to prepare for the exact 
contingency that occurred earlier this year, which is a full-scale 
invasion by Russia. Our efforts are paying off, as Russia's invasion 
has floundered and its military has been truly denigrated.
  If you need more proof of how successful our aid to Ukraine has been 
over the years, let's look at this map. When the invasion came in 
February of this year, all of this area in blue was occupied by Russia. 
Ukraine has now taken back about 55 percent of its own territory, 
liberated these areas, and they continue to make progress, as you know, 
here in Kherson and here in the Kharkiv region and throughout eastern 
and southeastern and northeastern Ukraine.

  Russia had thought it had an easy battle on their hands. They thought 
that within a matter of days or weeks, this entire map would be red, 
that all of Ukraine would be theirs. Instead, since February, Ukraine 
has liberated over 74,000 square kilometers of sovereign territory and 
thousands and thousands--millions, in fact--of Ukrainian citizens who 
have embraced these troops as liberators.
  Ukraine's fighters have strong morale, but they will be the first to 
tell you that none of this would have been possible without help from 
this body, from the U.S. House, from the U.S. taxpayers, to give them 
the tools they needed to protect their freedom. We have sent Ukraine 
now billions of dollars' worth of military, economic, and humanitarian 
aid since that attack in February--humanitarian aid that has saved 
lives, economic aid that helps keep the Ukrainian Government and 
economy afloat, and military aid that has enabled Ukraine's brave 
defense of their homeland.
  Javelin missile launchers helped stop the mechanized advance toward 
Kyiv back in February and again in March of this year. But since the 
summer, the most important weapon has been these high-mobility 
artillery rocket systems, known as HIMARS. We have provided about 20 of 
these units. Not a single one, by the way, has been taken out by the 
Russian military. It is extraordinary. They shoot and they scoot, and 
they are very effective. These same weapons have been provided, by the 
way, to the Ukrainians by Germany and by the UK. So we are not alone, 
nor should we be. Our allies should be there for Ukraine.
  As I have said on this floor many times, these 20 launchers have been 
game changers in the battlefield.
  By the way, I see my colleague Senator Klobuchar is on the floor 
today. When we were in Ukraine a few months ago, we were talking to the 
U.S. Embassy personnel--a small, dedicated group who are there--about 
what was happening. They said the day before

[[Page S9593]]

that they had ordered food in Kyiv, and when the food arrived in bags--
hamburgers, by the way--on the outside of the bag was written: Thank 
you for the HIMARS. Thank you for the HIMARS.
  We are told that newborns in Ukraine are often taking the name 
``Himar'' now. That is the degree to which they know and appreciate 
what we have provided for them to be able to save their homeland, their 
families, and their freedom. It is the long range and high precision of 
these weapons that have enabled Ukraine to be so successful, 
particularly going after Russian logistics--command and control, 
cutting off the troops as they did in Kherson, forcing the Russians to 
leave that city, the first major city that Russia occupied.
  It is also critical that we send more air defense equipment, 
particularly counterdrone weapons, to Ukraine right now. We have to 
continue to provide Ukrainians with these air defense systems--
including cost-effective electronic warfare systems--that will enable 
them to control the skies over the long term without exhausting their 
stockpiles of anti-air missiles.
  We know what is happening. As Ukraine is making progress on the 
battlefield, Russia, out of desperation, is turning to civilian 
attacks. Targeted civilian attacks--that is what is happening every 
day, every night in Ukraine.
  I was pleased to see recent reports that the administration may soon 
be sending Patriot air defense systems to Ukraine to defend against 
Russia's critical bombardment on these civilian targets, particularly 
on critical energy infrastructure. In my view, this is long overdue. 
Patriots are defensive. Of course, we should have sent those as soon as 
we could and trained the Ukrainians on them, and we could have avoided 
so much death and destruction, but it is good the administration is now 
considering doing it. I would hope that we will hear something positive 
on that soon.
  Russia's Foreign Ministry predictably warned last Thursday that if 
the United States delivers these air defense systems to Ukraine, it 
would be ``another provocative move by the United States.'' They have 
said this would result in a swift response from Moscow.
  Ladies and gentlemen, this is clear propaganda. Patriot missiles are 
defensive by their nature. They are not the same kind of missiles you 
would fire into another country offensively. They are smaller missiles, 
meant to kill missiles in the air and drones in the air and airplanes 
in the air.
  Any reasonable person can clearly see that the provocateur here is 
not the United States or any other country; it is Russia, of course. 
Ukraine has every right to defend its citizens, and I believe America 
is well within its rights to help them do that.
  This is more evidence that Russia's claims of American provocations 
are baseless. They always have been. Javelins, Stingers, HIMARS, and 
now Patriots--and every time, they have said that this is provocative. 
They will continue to claim that anything we give Ukraine to disrupt 
this genocidal invasion is provocative. So why do we keep letting these 
illogical claims stifle our aid to Ukraine? Let's not let it happen 
here with the Patriots.
  For the past 10 months, I have seen news story after news story about 
the United States refusing to provide this or that weapon to Ukraine 
for fear of provoking Russia. They have been asking for weapons since 
the very start that we have yet to provide: fourth-generation aircraft, 
F-16s that are in other countries that are willing to provide them, but 
they need our licenses--we need to approve it for those planes to go--
main battle tanks. They want to make this a conflict where they have a 
chance, tank to tank, to be able to have Abrams tanks.
  Long-range missiles like the ATACMS missiles that Ukraine has asked 
for since the beginning of this conflict would have enabled larger 
Ukrainian advances than the ones you see on this map. They would be 
doing even better.
  The same fear of provoking Russia is exactly what drove the Obama 
administration, back in the day, to refuse to provide any lethal 
assistance at all to Ukraine in 2014 and 2015. That certainly did not 
stop the Russians from holding onto Crimea and parts of the Donbas. It 
just emboldened them because they knew the United States was not going 
to respond and, therefore, our allies, without our leadership, were not 
going to help.
  Likewise, refusing to give Ukraine the weapons it needs now will not 
stop Russia's onslaught. No one can believe that. Russia will only 
leave Ukrainian territory if it is pushed out by force of arms. It will 
not suddenly decide to leave if we just give in to their unreasonable 
demands and agree with them that, because it is provocative, we can't 
provide it.
  We have to continue to provide more aid to Ukraine and do it as soon 
as possible. We can't allow a stalemate to set in or, worse, allow 
Russia to regain the initiative during this critical time. Every day 
this war drags on, there are more impacts on our economy and on the 
global economy, and every day this war drags on, there are more war 
crimes being committed by Russia.
  Throughout my several trips to the region since the invasion began 10 
months ago, I have spoken with women and children who have seen death 
and destruction that few of us would ever imagine. Our military aid can 
propel the forces of Ukraine to victory, but the mental and emotional 
toll of this war will be felt for decades to come.
  As Russian attacks on civilian infrastructure continued to knock out 
power around the country, last Wednesday and Thursday, 7 civilians were 
killed and a further 19 were wounded, according to a report from 
President Zelenskyy's office. Yesterday, only 20 percent of Kyiv, this 
modern city in Ukraine--only 20 percent of it--had lights.
  And the war crimes do not end there. In the recently liberated city 
of Kherson, Ukrainian officials discovered a room that Russian soldiers 
had used specifically for the detention and torture of children. 
According to the Ukrainian Parliament's Commissioner for Human Rights, 
``we saw the rock bottom in Kherson''. The children were given little 
water and almost no food. According to locals, the children were also 
subjected to psychological abuse. One 14-year-old boy was arrested and 
tortured just for taking a picture of broken Russian equipment.
  Who can hear these words and truly think that the Ukrainians or the 
West are the true provocateurs here?
  And that is just the war crimes we know about. And we know about a 
lot of them now. We don't know what horrors are still being conducted 
here behind the lines in occupied areas of Ukraine.
  Unfortunately, Russia is making it abundantly clear that it will do 
nothing to hold its soldiers accountable for these crimes in Ukraine. A 
new bill making its way in the Russian legislature would effectively 
legalize any and all war crimes committed by Russian soldiers in 
Ukraine if those crimes are ``aimed to protect the interests of the 
Russian Federation.''
  As many of us have said for months, the pain and suffering inflicted 
on the innocent people of Ukraine is the point, and now Russian 
soldiers will have official legal cover to commit those atrocities.
  This is a terror campaign--knocking out power and putting people in 
the dark, in the cold, during the Ukrainian winter. We can't allow this 
suffering to continue.
  I will be leaving the Senate soon and ending my time in this great 
Chamber. This is my last speech on the Senate floor about Ukraine, but, 
before I go, a couple of thoughts about the future.
  Ukraine can win this war. They have shown that. That ending has been 
clear to many of us for a long time, if we provide assistance. Compare 
Ukraine's military competence, bravery, discipline, and creativity on 
the one hand; and, on the other hand, Russia's stunning incompetence 
and lack of ability to control or even supply its troops.
  There was a New York Times story over the weekend that you may have 
seen in the Sunday Times about Russia's inability to provide troops 
with their basic needs. Russia has fumbled every opportunity it has had 
in this war, from its failed attacking on Kyiv at the beginning of the 
invasion to its poor defenses of Kharkiv Oblast and the west bank of 
the Dnipro River. Even their supposed victories in the Donetsk area 
have come after long, grinding advances that come at the cost of 
thousands of casualties. At best, these are pyrrhic victories that 
reflect a serious inability to think or

[[Page S9594]]

learn creatively on the part of the Russian forces.
  Ukraine, on the other hand, has had the moral high ground and the 
morale and the spirit in this war since the first Russian soldiers 
crossed the border with Belarus in the north and the lines of contact 
here in the east. Ukrainian soldiers have either outright defeated 
Russia's offensives, as they did in the north in the spring, or slowed 
them to a crawl, as they have done in the east. Right now, Russian 
forces near the city of Bakhmut are advancing no more than 100 to 200 
meters a day, at a cost, we are told, of at least 50 Russian soldiers a 
day.

  And on the attack, Ukrainians have been brave, bold, and relentless. 
Their liberation of the Kharkiv Oblast in September was a matter of 
carefully testing Russia's defenses there. Once a weakness was spotted, 
Ukrainian soldiers surged through the hole in the line. One week later, 
all of the province was liberated. It was a beautifully executed 
operation, which will likely be studied in military academies for a 
long time to come. And it was American and European and Canadian 
training that allowed that to happen.
  In the south, near Kherson, it was a very different kind of 
offensive. There, Ukrainian forces--provided with these HIMARS from the 
United States, which we talked about earlier--gradually whittled away 
at Russian forces to the point where the situation became untenable. 
They couldn't be resupplied, and so they left, again, the one major 
city that they had occupied.
  One of the counteroffensives in Kharkiv required quick thinking and 
an ability to rapidly exploit success. The other, in Kherson, required 
meticulous planning and patience. They were two very different 
operations. Yet Ukrainian soldiers pulled them both off.
  That is why Ukraine can win this war. Its defenders are bold, 
creative, smart. They have proven it to us. Every Russian missile fired 
at the Ukrainian infrastructure to destroy the Ukrainian people's will 
is a wasted missile. Why do I say that? Because the intention is to 
make the Ukrainian people want to back off, to lose their resolve and 
this morale and the spirit I talked about it. It has just the opposite 
effect every time it happens, which is that it makes the Ukrainian 
people even more resolved and even more intent to win this war.
  The Ukrainian people are unbreakable, as we have seen, and once 
Ukraine wins this war, I believe it will join the European Union, and 
eventually it will join NATO. The EU granted candidate status to 
Ukraine in June, which sent them down the path toward eventual 
membership. That was a good sign. Since then, according to the chairman 
of Ukraine's Parliament, Ukraine has already passed seven pieces of 
legislation to adopt reforms that are necessary to join the European 
Union. According to the Deputy Prime Minister, Ukraine expects to 
become a full-fledged member of the EU within 5 years. That is the 
future.
  Regarding NATO, by the way, I have long supported Ukraine's intention 
to join this alliance--the most successful military alliance, of 
course, in the history of the world. None of this would be happening 
were they in NATO already. And it is in line with NATO's longstanding 
open-door policy. The alliance has always welcomed the application of 
any and all eligible countries. And once Ukraine pushes Russia out of 
all of its sovereign territory, I believe it can take this step. It 
certainly would provide incredible military power to NATO.
  Russia launched its initial invasion in 2014 and this larger one in 
2022 precisely to keep Ukraine out of NATO, but all sovereign 
countries, including Ukraine, have the right to decide their own path, 
their own destiny, their own alliances, their own foreign policies. We 
cannot legitimize the Kremlin's ridiculous demands by giving up now. 
Plus, it is hard to think of a more qualified country to join NATO than 
Ukraine. Russia has been the greatest threat to the alliance for at 
least a decade. What better country to induct into NATO than one that 
has extensive experience defeating that threat on the battlefield?
  So it is in our interests, but not just in our strategic interests, 
to aid Ukraine. It is also in our moral interests. If we falter in 
support of Ukraine, we condemn millions of innocent Ukrainians to a 
future of repression, a future of summary executions like we saw in 
Bucha and Izyum. I have been there. I have seen the damage they did. I 
have seen the place where they had a mass grave burying Ukrainian 
citizens--a future of torture chambers both for adults and children 
alike, a future in which the very idea of being proudly Ukrainian is 
outlawed and punishable by torture or death.
  If we falter, we allow President Putin to continue to threaten the 
rest of Europe and potentially start a war with NATO that will draw in 
the United States. We cannot do that. This aggression must stop here.
  Ukraine and its Western allies are fighting to preserve freedom in 
Europe and globally. How this war ends will have far-reaching 
consequence, both on the rest of the continent and around the world. If 
we can stop Russian aggression here, then we can deter other 
adversaries.
  They are watching. China is watching. Iran is watching. They are 
watching and thinking about whether they should start similarly 
horrific wars of conquests.

  We must send a message to the rest of the world that America will not 
back down when rogue nations threaten free countries. This has always 
been America's role.
  Today, I was at the National Mall seeing the prayer that Franklin 
Roosevelt said on D-Day. This plaque has just been placed on the 
National Mall based on legislation we passed here in this body. In that 
prayer, Franklin Roosevelt says that American troops were not going to 
Europe for conquest. It was not for the love of conquest. It was not 
for the lust of conquest. Rather, it was to combat the Germans and to 
stop conquests that American troops were there to liberate.
  That is what we do. In this case, it is not our troops. They aren't 
asking for our troops, but they are asking for the tools to be able to 
be successful in liberating the people of Ukraine.
  So I urge my colleagues to support the funding bill that was released 
yesterday that includes $47 billion in assistance for Ukraine. We 
talked about this before, but it will also support the military, the 
civilians, and the government in Ukraine as that country continues to 
fight off the invasion.
  I know these are significant investments, and we must be good 
stewards of taxpayer money. And I am very supportive of the 
accountability measures that are in that legislation that are very 
important--the end-use monitoring for our military equipment, the fact 
that an American accounting firm, Deloitte, is there to ensure that the 
money is properly spent, and that the World Bank gives us regular 
reports and audits the funding. This is significant.
  Ukraine, by the way, is for this transparency, and we should be too. 
But as we are good stewards of American taxpayer money, let's also 
remember that Ukraine is fighting for all of us. Ukraine is fighting 
for all of us and fighting for freedom, and freedom is a worthy 
investment.
  I yield back my time.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Florida.
  Mr. SCOTT of Florida. Madam President, first, I want to thank my 
colleague from Ohio for his commitment to Ukraine, to get knowledgeable 
about Ukraine, what the needs are, and for continued support for lethal 
aid for Ukraine. And I hope this body continues to support Ukraine.


                       Unanimous Consent Request

  Madam President, I ask unanimous consent that the Senate proceed to 
the immediate consideration of my bill, which is at the desk; I further 
ask 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 Senator from Vermont.
  Mr. LEAHY. Madam President, reserving the right to object, and I will 
object.
  I agree with the Senator from Florida that we have a responsibility 
to help Americans in the wake of disasters. It does not matter if you 
are a Republican or a Democrat or if you are from a Blue state or a Red 
state. I still remember the devastation in Vermont when Tropical Storm 
Irene hit. I remember the people who were hurt, the

[[Page S9595]]

property that was destroyed, and the roads, bridges, and homes that 
needed to be rebuilt. When we needed help, the Congress came to our 
aid. The Senate and the House enacted supplemental disaster assistance 
to help us recover and rebuild.
  That is why I included $27.1 billion in disaster assistance in the 
omnibus bill I filed last night. This money will go to States that have 
been hit hard this year by natural disasters, including Hurricane Ian. 
The disaster supplemental included in the omnibus is nearly identical 
to the bill the Senator from Florida is proposing now. The difference 
is that the omnibus and the disaster supplemental in it has a clear 
path to becoming law now. It is part of a bipartisan, bicameral bill 
that we will pass, this week. We do not have time to play politics. We 
need to enact this bill and get aid to the people in Florida and 
communities across the country who need it most. I urge the Senator to 
vote for it.
  I object to the Senator's unanimous consent request.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. Objection is heard.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Florida.
  Mr. SCOTT of Florida. Madam President, I have been in the Senate 
about 4 years now, and I am not sure I can recall a day before this one 
that so perfectly exposed Washington's total dysfunction.
  Last night or I guess this morning just before 1:30 a.m., Senate 
leadership finally dropped the $1.7 trillion Pelosi-Schumer spending 
bill--all 4,155 pages of it. In typical Washington fashion, hostages 
have been taken to pressure Members of this body to approve this bill 
without a reasonable opportunity to review, debate, or amend it.
  Most important to me are the Florida families fighting hard to 
recover from Hurricanes Ian and Nicole who are being used as pawns in 
exchange for approval of the massive and reckless $1.7 trillion Pelosi-
Schumer spending bill.
  Immediately after the storm passed, I made clear that I would fight 
for and support a stand-alone disaster aid funding package to get 
Floridians the assistance they needed to recover. I even wrote to 
Senators Leahy and Shelby, the Senate top appropriators, urging them to 
work with me on getting much needed aid to Florida families as quickly 
as possible in a stand-alone disaster supplemental bill. My letter to 
them was written on September 30, 2 days after Ian made its 
catastrophic landfall near Ft. Myers, FL, but the aid Floridians 
desperately needed was delayed and turned into a hostage taken by 
Senate leadership so it could be stuffed in this massive omnibus bill.
  To tell folks in the Sunshine State who are still picking up the 
pieces left by Ian and Nicole that this aid only comes as part of the 
4,000-plus page omnibus spending bill is sickening, and I am not going 
to stand for it.
  Government has an essential role to play in our society and core 
responsibilities to fulfill. We all pay taxes so that government has 
the resources to keep its promises to us and provide core services like 
national defense, Social Security, and Medicare.
  If this spending bill helped balance the budget and only contained 
the things that the Federal Government should be responsible for, I 
would gladly vote for it without hesitation, but that is not what we 
are facing here.
  When I ran for the Senate in 2018, I promised Florida families to 
make Washington work for them. That doesn't mean zero Federal spending; 
it means responsible spending by a Congress that is accountable to 
taxpayers who fund it. That is how we governed when I was Governor of 
Florida, and the result was better returns for our State's families.
  Because we governed responsibly, the economy grew. A growing economy 
meant we could cut taxes and pay off State debt while making record 
investments in education, environment, and public safety. Washington 
can work this way, too, but not while failed politicians refuse to be 
accountable with your money.
  The truth is, at more than 4,000 pages, the Pelosi-Schumer spending 
bill has a lot of policies and funding priorities I actually fought for 
this year. It has more funding to preserve and protect Florida's 
Everglades, funding to support our military, and, yes, disaster aid for 
the families and communities devastated by Hurricanes Ian and Nicole.
  I support all these things, but I will never support the other parts 
of the bill that continue gross, reckless spending of taxpayer dollars. 
These are things like $2.3 million so the Department of Education can 
reach out to student loan borrowers and urge them to apply for Biden's 
illegal debt forgiveness program that has been blocked by the Federal 
courts, more than 7,500 Member projects or earmarks, funding for Biden 
to continue supersizing the IRS with 87,000 new agents, and 
continuation of policies that force every family to give the IRS 
visibility into their personal finances.
  We just found out this terrible bill prohibits Border Patrol from 
using this funding to do its job and secure the border. The bill says:

       None of the funds provided in subsection (1)(A) shall be 
     used to acquire, maintain, or extend border technology and 
     capabilities, except for technology and capabilities to 
     improve Border Patrol processing.

  So nothing to stop illegal crossings. We are just going to focus on 
processing people who already broke the law by illegally crossing the 
border. And while we are throwing a muzzle on our own Border Patrol, we 
are giving money to countries like Egypt to secure their borders. That 
makes no sense. We should do both.
  Florida families deserve better than to be forced to accept these 
radical policies and reckless spending in exchange for disaster relief. 
It is insane that I even need to come to the Senate floor to say that, 
but I am sick and tired of seeing dysfunction in Washington create hard 
times for families in the Sunshine State.
  So I am here today to get things done for families in my State who 
are hurting and ask that the Senate take up and pass the disaster aid 
contained in the omnibus as a separate and stand-alone measure. This is 
the exact same language that was written in the omnibus bill that my 
Democratic colleagues seek to pass. I did not limit this just to 
Florida; the aid I am asking the Senate to pass benefits other States 
that have been impacted by disasters like tornados, flooding, and 
wildfires too. More aid may be needed, but getting this done is a good 
first step and is something that should never have been jammed into a 
massive end-of-year spending bill.
  We can fix that error today, pass this on its own, and get relief on 
the way to families and communities in need.
  I had hoped my colleagues would see the common sense in this simple 
request. Instead, Democrats have blocked this from passing tonight.
  America's national debt is $31 trillion and growing. When are we 
going to be so fed up that we decide this isn't sustainable--when we 
get to $35, $40 or $45 trillion in debt?

  Too many Democrats and Republicans in Washington are happy to close 
their eyes, plug their ears, and pass another reckless multitrillion-
dollar spending bill we can't afford. I am not going to do that. I am 
going to fight every day for Florida families, but I won't cave to more 
spending and let the hard-working people of my State be treated as 
pawns in Washington's corrupt spending games. Doing so would be a 
betrayal of my promise to Floridians that I would always fight against 
Washington's corrupt dysfunction and wild spending.
  We all get hired by voters in our States to represent them here in 
the Senate. How is adopting a massive, 4,000-plus page bill without 
reading it or debating its contents doing the job we all got elected to 
do?
  Think about it this way: If you hired someone to negotiate a big, 
expensive contract for you and they told you to sign it without reading 
any of it, would you ever hire them again? No. No one would hire 
someone like that. That is exactly what is happening here.
  We are asked to approve this massive bill days before a new 
Republican majority takes power in the House. It is nothing short of 
shameful abandonment and betrayal of our House colleagues and the 
conservative voters in Florida and across the Nation who elected them.
  My colleague's decision to block disaster aid from quickly passing 
tonight is shameful as well. It is insane that my colleague has 
insisted on holding this aid hostage in a massive omnibus

[[Page S9596]]

instead of standing with families hurting from Hurricanes Ian and 
Nicole and getting them relief today.
  With inflation up nearly 14 percent since Biden took office, labor 
participation at historic lows, Federal debt skyrocketing, and a 
recession on the horizon, there has never been a more important time to 
stand up and demand fiscal sanity in Congress. That is why I think it 
makes a lot of sense that the House Republicans have made it clear that 
they do not support passing the Pelosi-Schumer spending bill. Passing 
an omnibus right now ties the hands of the new Republican House 
majority and extends the priorities of Nancy Pelosi and House 
Democrats--the leaders and party that the American people just voted 
out of power.
  Shockingly, some in the Senate have tried to argue that we should 
ignore the wishes of House Republicans. They argue that expecting a 
new, slim House Republican to keep the government funded is just too 
much to ask. I think that is nonsense.
  The way I see it, the decision before Senate Republicans is as simple 
and straightforward as it gets here in Washington: We can either stand 
with Republicans or once again cave to the Democrats. We can either 
make sure it is House Republicans--not Pelosi and her outgoing Democrat 
majority--who get a say in how Congress spends taxpayer dollars next 
year or we can hand the recently fired Speaker a massive retirement 
gift on her way out the door.
  I will tell you this: Florida families know that the process we have 
up here is not working. Inflation is raging, debt is out of control, 
and Congress so routinely passes massive, thousand-plus page spending 
bills without giving anyone time to read them that even the press 
doesn't bother to scrutinize this broken system anymore. While this 
might be business as usual in Washington, hard-working Americans find 
it disgusting.
  Congressional Republicans should be taking every opportunity to stop 
the reckless, Big Government policies that Joe Biden, Nancy Pelosi, and 
Senate Democrats have jammed down the throats of the American public 
over the last 2 years. I promised Florida families that I would do 
that, and I won't back down on my word.
  I yield the floor.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Minnesota.
  Ms. KLOBUCHAR. Madam President, I first want to thank Senator Portman 
for his incredible work on Ukraine. He has given dozens and dozens of 
talks on this floor, but what is equally important is all the work he 
has done behind the scenes, working across the aisle, making sure the 
funding is there for the weapons, and meeting directly with President 
Zelenskyy. I just want to thank him for his incredible leadership, and 
we will continue his work. I have a feeling he will be calling us from 
Ohio or wherever he is to make sure we are doing it right. I thank him 
for that.


                               Democracy

  Madam President, we are here today to speak about democracy. Of 
course, that is on the line in Ukraine. President Zelenskyy reminds us 
about it every day when he says these simple words: ``We are here.'' 
That is what he said the day of the Russian invasion. He went to the 
street corner and said, ``We are here.'' That is what we are here to 
say today, is that there are people who are carrying the torch for 
democracy in our own country.
  I am glad to be joined with my colleague today, Senator Whitehouse, 
who has been such a leader when it comes to the DISCLOSE Act and that 
part of our democracy, as well as voting, to make sure we keep our 
democracy and make the case that our democracy does not work if we do 
not have campaign finance and things that are transparent and know 
where that money is coming from, because it drowns out the voices of 
everyday people.
  Senator King is with us today on the floor. He is a member of the 
Rules Committee. He introduced, with Senator Durbin and myself, the 
original reform to the Electoral Count Act and has been a true leader 
when it comes to voting reform.
  The Presiding Officer herself will be addressing this from the great 
State of New Hampshire, where they understand a little bit about a 
democracy and freedom and what that means.
  Then Senator Merkley, the original sponsor of the For the People Act, 
which really set the table for the discussions we have been having on 
voting rights and the close vote we had when it came to finally passing 
the Freedom to Vote Act--that was built on the work that Senator 
Merkley and many others did on the For the People Act.
  Nearly 2 years ago, a violent mob of insurrectionists stormed into 
this Chamber right here. We are looking at the desks they were opening 
up. We are looking at the presiding dais, which they invaded. They 
desecrated our Capitol. They interrupted the hallmark of our democracy, 
the peaceful transfer of power.
  Just this last week, we gave the Capitol Police and the DC Metro 
Police--the police who protected us that day--the Congressional Medal 
of Honor. So many brave officers were there for us, and democracy 
prevailed that day.
  But what we have learned is that what the insurrectionists didn't 
finish with bear spray and flag poles in the U.S. Capitol, others have 
tried to do with voter suppression laws, nonsense lawsuits, and threats 
of violence. They have literally attempted to shut down the rule of 
law, to shutter our voting laws, and they literally have mocked and 
made fun of political acts of violence.
  Simply put, we know that Federal action was and is needed. That is 
why we introduced the Freedom to Vote Act to protect every American's 
right to vote in the way that works best for them. Through a summer of 
intense negotiations, we got all 50 Democratic Senators on board. 
Sadly, our efforts were halted by the filibuster. But we did not give 
up and we have not given up on that bill, as well as the John Lewis 
Voting Rights Advancement Act.
  Still, we are making progress in other places. A number of State 
voter suppression laws have been thrown out by courts, including by 
conservative judges. A number of State legislatures have taken action 
to protect the right to vote.
  Finally, just this week, as part of this omnibus bill before us, we 
are on the verge of getting the bipartisan Electoral Count Reform Act 
signed into law. We thank Senator Manchin and Senator Collins for their 
leadership, as well as so many other Senators who were part of that 
effort.
  I thank the members of the Rules Committee. We were able to get the 
bill, with some changes that Senator Blunt and I worked on together 
that were supported on a bipartisan basis, through the Rules Committee 
on a 14-to-1 vote.
  This year, it became clear that our democracy itself is on the 
ballot. The American people could be moved to act, and opponents of 
democracy, as we know, tried to put election deniers on the ballot. But 
whether it was Democrats, moderate Republicans, or Independents, they 
rallied around people who would stand up for our democracy. In many 
States across the country, when it came to election day, the highest 
vote-getters were not the most famous politicians; they were the 
secretaries of state who in many cases were not household names but 
were running against people who were election deniers. They ended up, 
including in my own State, having the highest vote percentages, highest 
vote totals of anyone in the State.
  So what about the Electoral Count Act? This is an antiquated law 
passed in the 1800s which was never meant to be a trigger point for an 
insurrection.
  What we have done with this bill that I believe we will pass this 
week, is we have made it absolutely clear that the Vice President does 
not have the power to reject electoral votes.
  We all remember the words, the horrific words, ``Hang Mike Pence,'' 
uttered just a few yards away from the Vice President in this very 
building.
  We need to also raise the threshold for objecting to electoral votes, 
so that it takes more than two of the 535 elected Members to gum up the 
counting.
  Even before the insurrection, when Senator Blunt and I looked at the 
objections that were going to be made, in many cases by one, two, three 
Senators, we realized it would take at least 24 hours to get through 
them. In fact, there was nothing stopping under this antiquated law a 
single Senator and a single House Member from objecting to every single 
State, including

[[Page S9597]]

the States that perhaps their candidate had won, just to gum up the 
works. That is why we have pushed for the Electoral Count Act.
  Moving forward, we must address the root causes, not only of these 
antiquated laws, not only of voter suppression, but also disinformation 
and misinformation that allows lies that undermine our elections to go 
viral and violent.
  On January 6, we saw the cost of these lies up close. That is why we 
have to address the impact of disinformation online on our democracy. 
We can start by looking at the liability protections that we have put 
in place. Back when, yes, internet companies were starting in garages, 
back at the beginning. We have a legal provision, section 230, that 
protects social media companies from liability for the posting and 
spreading of dangerous content on their platforms.
  We know people are going to post things that are hateful, that aren't 
true. But the question is, when companies' algorithms are designed, in 
fact, to make money off of repeating those lies and expanding them, 
and, despite some efforts to reduce them, it keeps coming and coming 
and coming, I don't know why we would put in liability protection for 
that.
  If someone were to yell ``fire'' in a crowded theater, that person 
would be liable. That is not protected speech. But if the theater had 
in rules that protected its patrons, they wouldn't be held liable for 
that. But what if the theater was a multiplex and it decided that they 
would broadcast the words of the person yelling ``fire'' in all of its 
theaters. Would we think that was OK?
  Well, that is exactly what is going on with disinformation and hate 
speech on the internet right now. Companies are allowed to repeat 
hateful disinformation, and they actually can profit from it. And that 
is why many of us believe it is time to look at section 230 and the 
immunity that this Congress has given them.
  In addition, Americans should know who is behind the political ads 
they see online. We need to put in place the same rules for social 
media platforms that currently apply to political ads sold on TV, 
radio, and in print. That is a bill I had with Senator McCain and now 
with Senator Graham. It is time to bring that bill up for a vote.
  Even though the FEC has made some changes, they are not nearly what 
we need to have in place to allow Americans to have the information 
that they need. Finally, we have to talk about protecting people's 
right to vote. In the 2020 election, in the middle of a global 
pandemic, more than 160 million Americans voted--more than ever 
before--in what the then-Trump Department of Homeland Security called 
the most secure election in American history.
  A big reason turnout was so high in 2020 was that States went out of 
their way to make it easier for people to vote because of the pandemic.
  In the wake of that record voting, we saw a coordinated effort by 
State legislatures to make it harder to vote. In 2021, 18 States passed 
34 restrictive voting laws, but the people of this country pushed back.
  Look at what happened in Georgia. There were concerted efforts to 
limit voting during the runoff and make voting by mail more confusing. 
Still, Georgians found a way to make their voices heard. Some observers 
will look at the result and decide that, oh, this was a threat, it was 
overplayed.
  But to paraphrase my friend Senator Warnock, this outcome does not 
mean that voter suppression does not exist, it simply means that the 
people have decided their votes will not be silenced. That is what we 
are dealing with right now. And we should be making an effort to make 
it easier for people to vote, and the best way to do that is to set 
some minimal Federal standard for voting.
  The last thing I would like to say is to thank Senator Blunt, who has 
been my cochair of the Rules Committee. He has been ranking, I have 
been chair; I have been chair, he has been ranking. And we have worked 
together, especially on the issue of protecting election workers and 
making sure that Federal funding was allowed to go for that purpose.
  It was Senator Blunt and I who were the last Senators here at 4 in 
the morning on the night of January 6 with Vice President Pence. We 
made that walk through the broken glass, by the spray-painted pillars, 
with the three pairs of pages holding the mahogany boxes with the last 
of the ballots up through Wyoming. We got to the House Chamber, and 
democracy prevailed.
  And after that, Senator Blunt and I went downstairs--the sun was 
coming out--and visited the Parliamentarian's office. As I look at our 
valiant staff, right now, sitting there, what I remember is the chaos 
and destruction in their own office which had been targeted by the 
insurrectionists.
  I remember the broken picture on the floor. I remember all the papers 
all over the place. That is what we saw that day, and that was forever, 
ever marked in my memory of how close we were that this antiquated law 
was being used as a reason for these insurrectionists to come into our 
very offices.
  Senator Blunt and I walked out of the Parliamentarian's office that 
day, sun coming in, and I still remember, he looked at me and he said, 
Well, I will see you tomorrow then. We have got a lot of work to do.
  I am proud of the work we have done since then. And one of the most 
important things we have done is to reform this law. And I want to 
thank my colleagues that understand that that is just the beginning and 
not the end.
  And with that, I will turn it over to Senator Whitehouse. Thank you, 
Senator Whitehouse, for your incredible leadership on campaign finance.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Rhode Island.
  Mr. WHITEHOUSE. Madam President, first let me thank Senator Klobuchar 
for organizing us to come to the floor this evening and for her 
leadership to support our elections. And we got lucky this year. There 
is good news. Democracy prevailed against the Big Lie, and most of the 
State election deniers lost their races. So that is a good news story.
  Unfortunately, we have a lot of work left to do to safeguard our 
democracy from the twin threats of dark money, which is a seeping 
poison--a toxin--in our political system, and a runaway Supreme Court 
that dark money built.
  Dark money political spending went from under $5 million in 2006, 
when Senator Klobuchar and I were elected to the Senate, to a billion 
dollars in 2020. A billion dollars in 2020.
  And outside group spending from billionaires and special interests 
has climbed to $2.1 billion in the midterms, and most of that outside 
spending is anonymous. It is dark money.
  This torrent of dark money looses a tide of secret influence--
improper, ungovernable, corrupting, secret influence. And Americans 
despise it. They understand what is going on. More than 90 percent of 
Americans support ending dark money through greater transparency for 
political spending, because when some big special interest is spending 
2 billion, you know that the American people aren't winning.
  My DISCLOSE Act would have stopped it. Unfortunately, not one 
Republican would vote for it, so we have work to do to build public 
pressure to make sure that the DISCLOSE Act becomes an irresistible 
force.
  When $2 billion comes into one election from big special interests, 
you can bet on one thing, and that is that the people will not be 
heard.
  Now, over at the Court, $580 million, at least, has been spent to 
acquire a Supreme Court eager to hand major wins to big Republican 
donors and the party. The Campaign Legal Center has described this as 
perhaps the most anti-democratic court ever. And if you look at their 
record, you can see why they say that: all the voter suppression, all 
the partisan gerrymandering, and, now, in a case before them called 
Moore v. Harper, potentially taking on an extreme theory, a debunked 
theory, the independent State legislature theory, which would unleash 
chaos in American elections by letting partisan state legislatures 
ignore their State constitutions regarding elections.
  Well, I filed an amicus brief with Representative Hank Johnson 
highlighting the individuals and funders behind amicus briefs in that 
case who pushed that fringe legal theory in their efforts to overturn 
the 2020 Presidential election, but didn't disclose that to the Court.
  There was a group called the Honest Elections Project that turned up 
there which didn't disclose to the Court its

[[Page S9598]]

connections to groups that spent tens of millions of dollars to put 
those Justices on the Supreme Court. That is a conflict of interest. It 
is potentially a due process violation, and at a minimum, it ought to 
have been disclosed.
  The Court that dark money built is increasingly a danger to democracy 
itself. Dark money is dangerous because it is a tale as old as time 
that secrecy breeds corruption. And in a great democracy like ours 
where the people are supposed to rule, where citizens are supposed to 
make the decisions, to deny the people, to deny the citizens the basic 
information about who is behind what organization, to hide who is 
behind what jersey on the playing field is a grave disservice to 
democracy.
  Dark money influence on our politics and dark money influence at the 
Court have got to be put to an end.
  And with that, I will yield to the distinguished Senator from Maine, 
Senator King.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Maine.
  Mr. KING. Madam President, democracy, our system, is an anomaly in 
world history. The norm are pharaohs, kings, dictators, emperors, 
Presidents for life. That is the norm. The vast sweep of human history 
is all about authoritarians running their society. The idea that the 
people can actually participate in the building and operating and 
electing and creating their government is an unusual one. It is an 
anomaly in world history. That should tell us something, because that 
means it is fragile, and we have seen how fragile it can be.
  On January 6, our entire democracy came down to the integrity and 
courage of one man: Mike Pence. If Vice President Pence had succumbed 
to the pressure--enormous pressure that he was under to try to throw 
out certain electoral votes and choose and count others, we would have 
been in literally uncharted constitutional territory. There is no 
telling how that chaotic situation would have been resolved.
  Our system is unusual, and it is fragile. Likewise, the secretary of 
state of Georgia, a Republican, a strong Republican who voted for 
President Trump, what if he hadn't done the right thing? What if he had 
responded to President Trump on that infamous phone call by saying, I 
will see what I can do to jigger the numbers and find those 11,770 
votes. Where would we be?
  The point is we should not put ourselves in situations that depend 
expressly upon the luck and good fortune of having the right people in 
the right place at the right time. Our institutions--our institutions 
should be solid and viable and work regardless of who is at the levers 
of power.
  The electoral college and the Electoral Count Act is a timebomb under 
the edifice of democracy. I rarely disagree with Alexander Hamilton, 
but if you read the 68th Federalist where he justifies the electoral 
college, he just gets it wrong. Actually, he doesn't so much get it 
wrong, history proved him wrong because the electoral college never 
worked in the way he described it.
  We have to realize that the Framers were a little bit suspicious of 
democracy. The only institution in our government in 1787 that was 
popularly elected was the House of Representatives. Senators were 
elected by State legislatures until the 20th century. Presidents were 
elected by the electoral college, and, of course, Supreme Court and 
court judges were appointed by the President and confirmed by the 
Senate. The only popular elections were for the House of 
Representatives.

  Now, Hamilton's concept for the electoral college was that it would 
be a sort of council of elders. In fact, when you read the 68 
Federalist, he doesn't even think about the electors being pledged to a 
particular candidate; he basically says the people of each State will 
elect wise people to come together to select the best qualified person 
for President. He used an amazing phrase in light of what happened on 
January 6. He said: The system we proposed is ``not perfect, it is at 
least excellent.'' But then he goes on to say: ``It was also 
particularly desirable to afford as little opportunity as possible to 
tumult and disorder.'' Well, that is the definition of what happened 
here on January 6, was tumult and disorder that was created by this 
edifice that has never worked.
  I, for one, think we should abolish the electoral college. The people 
of the United States should elect their President, and the votes of the 
citizens of each State should count equally instead of getting into 
this game situation where you go to particular States, you ignore other 
States, and some States, you know where the votes are going to go. I 
think the people of America should choose their President. That is what 
we all think we are doing on election day, and yet, as we learned on 
January 6, we have created this structure which never worked as 
Hamilton and as the Framers envisioned it that has turned into a kind 
of Russian roulette with our democracy.
  So, in the 1876 election, it almost broke down. It was so close, 
nobody could decide who won. They ended up with a Commission to decide 
the election, which turned out to be a dark chapter in American history 
because that Commission ended up resolving the Presidency between Hayes 
and Tilden on essentially a corrupt deal. The deal was, Hayes could 
become President if he agreed to end Reconstruction in the South. Of 
course, that led to 70, 80 years of Jim Crow--not a happy experience in 
our history.
  After that experience, the Electoral Count Act was passed--well-
intentioned to try to solve some of the problems that were manifested 
in the Hayes-Tilden election of 1876, but the problem is, it is a 
terribly drafted law. Scholars, politicians, lawyers all concede it was 
confusing, ambiguous, and, again, led to the problems of January 6.
  I should also mention that Presidents who won the popular vote almost 
universally in our system also won the electoral college. Recently, 
that hasn't been the case. Twice in this short century, we have had 
Presidents elected by the electoral college who lost the popular vote 
by millions of votes. So is that a reflection of what we all think our 
democracy is all about? I don't think so.
  The bill that we have before us now is, I believe, one of the most 
important pieces of legislation in this Congress because it deals with 
the structure of democracy itself. All of our policy issues, whether it 
is the Defense Department, Ukraine, all of the policy issues--
healthcare--all of those things are critically important, but the 
infrastructure that underlies the system is even more important. We 
can't do good policy if we don't have a solid underpinning of a 
structure of our democracy. That is why the bill that is now part of 
the budget bill, the omnibus bill, is so important.
  The bill is bipartisan. I think that is critically important. I sat 
in the Rules Committee. It passed 14 to 1, supported by Leader 
McConnell and supported by Leader Schumer--14 to 1. I rarely see votes 
like that in that committee. But because there was universal 
realization that we needed to do something about this, we had a hearing 
on it, and I remember Senator Blunt speaking at the end of that hearing 
and saying: This is something we need to take care of before the end of 
this Congress. That was a very important announcement and has led us to 
this moment. We had hearings. We brought in experts from across the 
country--election experts, legal experts. We made changes to the bill.
  The bill came to us as a result of bipartisan negotiation led by my 
colleague Senator Collins from Maine and Senator Manchin of West 
Virginia and a group of Senators who came together organically to 
create this bipartisan piece of legislation.
  What does it do? It is really pretty straightforward. It clarifies 
the role of the Vice President. The role of the Vice President is what 
we call ministerial; that is, just simple--count the votes, pick them 
out--not policy. We clarify now, forever, and always that the Vice 
President does not have a substantive role in deciding which votes 
should count.
  It raises the objection threshold from 1 to 20 percent. Right now, 
under the Electoral Count Act, one Senator and one Representative can 
object to the votes of any State, and then we have to go through a 
process in either House which can go on for a lengthy period of time. 
But it is only one person. What we do in this bill is, it has to be 20 
percent of the House or 20 percent of the Senate. That way, you are 
sure that the objections have some substance, some merit, and aren't 
just the fantasy

[[Page S9599]]

of one or two people. So that is one of the pieces of this bill. It 
raises the objection threshold.
  It ensures a single, accurate slate of electors, to be clear of what 
the rules are in each State.
  It expedites judicial review. That is important because, right now, 
it is unclear how disputes are resolved. What if a Governor, for 
example, refuses to certify an election in their State? This law gives 
a path to the judiciary--expedited consideration, expedited 
consideration to the Supreme Court--to decide these disputes so that we 
don't have a lengthy period of uncertainty in how our democracy is 
supposed to work. It also prevents mischief like moving and canceling 
an election for anything but the most extreme problems.
  I think this is the most important bill this Congress will consider.
  There is a lot more to be done. It doesn't solve every problem 
involving our election, as our other speakers have noted. There is a 
lot to be done about the casting and counting of votes. There is a lot 
to be done about campaign finance. But this is an important building 
block that we need to attend to.
  I want to end by thanking Senator Manchin and Senator Collins, who 
formed the group who brought the bill forward. I want to thank my 
colleagues Amy Klobuchar and Dick Durbin, whom I worked with early on 
to develop a first draft of this legislation. I want to thank Senator 
Klobuchar and Senator Blunt for their leadership on the Rules Committee 
and Senators Schumer and McConnell for working together to form a 
bipartisan consensus that this is an important piece of protecting the 
fundamental structure of our democracy.
  As I said, what we have in this country is unusual. It is an anomaly 
in world history. It is fragile, and we have to at all times be 
vigilant and diligent in protecting it and maintaining it and filling 
in those cracks in the Union to make it more perfect.
  Ronald Reagan made a wonderful observation about the every 4 years 
inauguration of a President. He said it is a ``commonplace occurrence'' 
and it is a profound occurrence. It is profound because it is 
commonplace. The peaceful transfer of power is what distinguishes our 
system from almost all others in the world. We have to be sure that 
continues to be the North Star of our democracy.
  I yield the floor.
  Mr. DURBIN. Madam President, last March, the Department of Homeland 
Security's Office of Inspector General released a report which revealed 
that the Department's intelligence division had identified ``specific'' 
threats related to January 6 before the deadly assault on the U.S. 
Capitol. But the report said that the Trump-era DHS did not share the 
intelligence about those threats with other key law enforcement 
partners until 2 days after the mob stormed the Capitol. By then, no 
one needed a warning.
  In an article in the Washington Post a few days after the 2020 
election, a person identified only as ``an anonymous senior Republican 
official'' shrugged off Mr. Trump's unprecedented denial of President 
Biden's victory. He asked: ``What is the downside for humoring him for 
this little bit of time?''
  Now, we know. And now, we also know the catastrophic harm that can 
occur when people ignore the growing threats to our democracy and 
normalize the dangerous rise in threats of political violence and 
actual violence in our Nation.
  Two weeks ago, hundreds of officers from the Capitol Police and the 
Washington Metropolitan Police Department filled the Capitol Rotunda. 
They were here to receive the Congressional Gold Medal, the highest 
honor that Congress can bestow. There were also officers who weren't 
there, who fought the mob and died in the days and weeks after. In his 
remarks in the Rotunda, Leader Schumer praised the officers for 
``holding the line'' and saving the Capitol. And truly, we can never 
thank them enough. They are the heroes of January 6.
  But what about the man who summoned the mob--whipped them into a fury 
with his Big Lie and turned them toward the Capitol, ordering them to 
``fight like hell'' and ``take back our country''? When will our 
Republican colleagues accept their responsibility to ``hold the line'' 
against Trump's increasingly unhinged agitation for political violence 
and authoritarianism?
  Donald Trump's handle on his social media website is 
``realDonaldTrump.'' Earlier this month, he showed the world again 
exactly who the ``realDonaldTrump'' is. After repeating his Big Lie 
about a stolen election, he demanded ``the termination of all rules, 
regulations, and articles, even those found in the Constitution.'' If 
given the chance again, can anyone doubt that Donald Trump would 
undermine or even suspend our constitutional order if it meant he could 
entrench himself in power and avoid accountability for his actions?
  Fortunately, for democracy, the truth seems to be closing in on 
Donald Trump. Yesterday, at their final public meeting, the members of 
the bipartisan House Select Committee investigating January 6 voted to 
refer the former President to the Justice Department on four criminal 
charges. The proposed charges are historic and devastating: inciting or 
assisting an insurrection, obstruction of an official proceeding, 
conspiracy to defraud the U.S. Government, and conspiracy to make a 
false statement.
  Ultimately, it will be up to Attorney General Garland and Jack Smith, 
the independent special counsel he has appointed to oversee the 
portions of the DOJ's investigation relating to Trump himself, to 
decide whether to bring such charges. As the Select Committee finishes 
its work, however, I want to once again thank the committee members for 
their meticulous work and their courageous pursuit of the truth.
  The work of the House Select Committee on January 6th confirmed a key 
fact that the Senate Judiciary Committee learned in our own 
investigation: that Trump was told repeatedly--by his own Justice 
Department appointees--that fraud did not affect the outcome of the 
2020 election. Trump knew the Big Lie was a lie, and he repeated it 
anyway. He knowingly, deliberately poisoned the well of American 
democracy to try to hold on, illegitimately, to power.
  Thankfully, the recent midterm elections have shown that the American 
people increasingly reject the Big Lie and those who continue to peddle 
it. The cynics who said that democracy wasn't on the ballot last month 
were wrong. In key swing States, voters rejected every election denier 
running for statewide office that Trump backed.
  And yet the threat to American democracy is not over. Here in the 
Senate, we have a few Republican Senators who have spoken out bravely 
against Trump's lawlessness and demagoguery. But we have others who 
refuse to say a word against him. And a significant number of the 
members of the new Republican majority in the House are election 
deniers. MAGA Republicans at the local, State, and Federal levels talk 
a lot about patriotism and individual liberties and freedom.
  But the truth is far different. What many MAGA Republicans really 
want is to eliminate rights they don't agree with, including the right 
to marry the person you love, the right to determine whether and when 
to have a child and even to use contraception, and the right to retire 
in dignity with the Social Security and Medicare payments you have 
earned over a lifetime of work.
  If they are serious about protecting America, Republicans need to 
denounce the Big Lie and defend the legitimacy of our elections--the 
pillar of our democracy. We need to insist that everyone who was 
involved in January 6 is held accountable. We need to come together to 
reject the tools used to weaken democracy, especially voter suppression 
and political gerrymandering meant to disenfranchise our fellow 
citizens. We also need to limit the growing cancer of dark money on 
politics.
  And if we are serious about reducing the growing threat posed by 
domestic violent extremist groups and individuals fueled by White 
supremacy and other far right extremist ideologies, we ought to pass my 
bill to create offices dedicated to combatting domestic terrorism at 
DHS, DOJ, and the FBI. You can't give a thumb's up to the January 6 
mob--and pretend to care about democracy.
  One of the most searing images from January 6 was the young, 
Washington

[[Page S9600]]

Metropolitan police officer being nearly crushed in a doorway. Members 
of the mob ripped off his mask and tried to gouge out his eyes. He 
ended up hospitalized. A week later, that officer, Daniel Hodges, told 
a reporter: ``It was absolutely my pleasure to crush a white 
nationalist insurrection. I'm glad I was in a position to be able to 
help. We'll do it as many times as it takes.'' He also said, ``If it 
wasn't my job, I would have done that for free.''
  Defending the basic freedoms of democracy for all Americans and 
confronting the growing threats of political violence and domestic 
terrorism is our job. And it ought to be at the top of the agenda when 
we return to work next month.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER (Mr. Whitehouse). The Senator from New 
Hampshire.
  Ms. HASSAN. Mr. President, I am grateful today to join my colleagues 
as we continue to sound the alarm about the ongoing serious threat to 
our democracy. This is a perilous time.
  I want to thank Senator Klobuchar for her leadership on this issue 
and all of the rest of my colleagues who have been so eloquent tonight 
and I know will be eloquent tonight, who are here today to highlight 
the challenges to democracy we are currently facing and the 
opportunities we have to protect it.
  I am honored to represent New Hampshire, a State that does democracy 
better than anywhere else. I want to start by talking about one of my 
favorite New Hampshire events.
  Shortly after I was first elected Governor in 2012, I attended our 
statewide Veterans Day ceremony at the New Hampshire Veterans Cemetery, 
a remarkable, serene, beautiful space in the heart of New Hampshire. I 
had attended that ceremony in the past, but on this particular Veterans 
Day, I had just days before and for the first time been elected to 
statewide office to lead and protect my State. My predecessor was also 
at the ceremony, as were current and soon-to-be Members of Congress, 
members of the current State legislature, and those who had just been 
elected.
  New Hampshire had seen a pretty dramatic change at both the State and 
Federal level. Two Democratic Congresswomen had won election, replacing 
Republicans. The State house of representatives had flipped from 
Republican to Democratic control in pretty dramatic fashion. But 
despite these changes, State and Federal elected leaders, veterans and 
their families, and citizens from all walks of life who wanted to 
ensure that our veterans knew how much they, the veterans, matter were 
all there--there to celebrate the people, the citizen soldiers who had 
stepped up in every generation since our country's founding to keep us 
safe and preserve our democracy so that the rest of us could live in 
freedom.
  I have always loved this confluence of election day and Veterans Day. 
On an early Tuesday in November, Americans flood to the polls to cast 
their votes, expressing their hopes for the State and country that they 
envision and want to be a part of, confident that they have a voice as 
stakeholders in our democracy. And then just days later, they join 
their friends, neighbors, political allies, and opponents to honor our 
veterans and the principles that they sacrificed and fought for, the 
foundational idea that every person in our democracy matters and has 
the opportunity to be included in our civic life.
  Just days after a pitched political battle--as my dad would have 
said, ``a war of words''--we were together standing united to support 
those who serve and have served and in doing so, to support the 
remarkable idea that is the United States of America.
  This unifying moment year after year, election cycle after election 
cycle, didn't happen by accident; it happened because Americans have 
understood since our founding that the cornerstone of our democracy 
starts with free, fair, and impartially administered elections.
  Throughout our history, we have failed and then struggled to include 
and treat equally all Americans, but as we have made progress to 
acknowledge the full citizenship of all of our people, we have 
committed to expanding voting access and to protecting an impartial 
electoral system that ensures the full and fair counting of all votes 
cast.
  The acceptance of the outcome of these elections so that our country 
can continue to function, grow, become more inclusive, and thrive has 
been essential, not just for the sake of stability but for the sake of 
a democracy in which the government is truly responsive, truly of, by, 
and for the people, a government so responsive that a constituent, a 9-
year-old little girl named Jada, can approach her Senator to talk to 
her about the sadness in her family after a beloved cousin died of an 
opioid overdose and expect her Senator to take her seriously and work 
to expand access to prevention and treatment services for those with 
substance use disorder; a government so accessible that a constituent 
named Sy can approach his Senator at a business in town and thank her 
for passing the Burial Equity Act, which allows those who serve in the 
National Guard or Reserves but aren't deployed to be buried in their 
State's veterans cemetery.
  Sy, like so many of his fellow reservists, volunteered and was ready 
to answer the call and to sacrifice for his country, but he was never 
called up to do so. Artificial bureaucratic barriers prevented his 
service from being recognized in the same way that other military 
service is, but thanks to the advocacy of Guard men and women and 
reservists, that has now changed. Sy's service is being recognized, and 
he is being included, as he should be, in the remarkable legion of 
citizen soldiers that has kept this country free, and he can now be 
buried in a sacred place of honor.
  Jada's voice counts. So does Sy's. Their experiences and their lives 
matter and, in a true democracy, so do their opinions and their votes.
  But the question for Americans today is this: For how much longer 
will the voices of everyday Americans count?
  As we all know, in November, in State after State, including in New 
Hampshire, democracy was on the ballot. There were, in fact, candidates 
who questioned the sacred right to free and fair elections, individuals 
who expressed their willingness to overturn the 2020 election and their 
willingness to try to reject or overturn election outcomes in the 
future if their preferred candidates didn't win.
  I want people to think for a moment about what this means. These 
candidates were open in their willingness to reject the votes of their 
fellow citizens, leading to a system in which those in power are 
unaccountable and therefore unresponsive to the people they claim to 
represent.
  In race after race, anti-democracy candidates proposed extreme, 
unpopular agendas, whether it was eliminating Social Security and 
Medicare or imposing a nationwide abortion ban--ideas that voter after 
voter opposes. This disconnect, of course, explains their election 
denial. In a functioning democracy, the few cannot impose an extreme, 
unpopular agenda on the many. The only way for these extremists to 
accomplish their goals is to reject the votes cast by the majority.
  The welcome news is that, in many cases, the American people rejected 
some of the most vehement election deniers.
  On a brisk, cold Tuesday this November, Granite Staters, like 
millions of Americans, once again went to their polling places to cast 
their votes. They did so not with the expectation that their preferred 
candidates would win but, rather, that their individual votes would be 
counted. They did so at middle schools and townhalls before work and 
while grabbing lunch, and they did so in New Hampshire in record 
numbers. Voters recognized the real threat posed by those who would 
undermine our democracy. They saw the need to reject those who would 
disenfranchise them. They used their votes and their voices to stop 
those who would have otherwise jeopardized our democracy.
  In November, democracy prevailed, but that does not mean the work is 
over. We know that while many election deniers lost their races, some 
won, and some remain in Congress. Those who threaten the integrity of 
our elections will remain persistent in their efforts, and those who 
stand on the side of democracy must remain persistent as well.
  Our Founders understood just how fragile our democracy was, and the 
generations of Americans who have followed have understood it as well. 
If we

[[Page S9601]]

are to live up to their example and if we are to ensure that people 
like my constituents Jada and Sy are included and can make a 
difference, Americans must continue to do all that we can to uphold our 
freedoms and democracy.
  In Congress, this means that we must continue to fight for access to 
the ballot box and share a commitment in accepting the results of 
elections. We can do that by supporting legislation like the John R. 
Lewis Voting Rights Advancement Act and the Freedom to Vote Act. This 
week, we will take an important step forward by passing the bipartisan 
Electoral Count Reform Act.
  Across the country, we must continue to do what the American people 
did this year--reject those who would end democracy as we know it. If 
we are truly to remain a government of, by, and for the people, we must 
stand up and ensure that its foundation of free and fair elections 
truly accessible to all eligible voters remains protected for 
generations to come.
  I yield the floor.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Oregon.
  Mr. MERKLEY. Mr. President, I am delighted to be here with my 
colleagues tonight and with the chair of our Rules Committee, Amy 
Klobuchar, who worked so hard and so intensely on the For the People 
Act and on the For the People Act 2.0, the Freedom to Vote Act, which 
was sought to address the foundations of democracy in our country.
  I am delighted to be here with the former Governor and Senator from 
New Hampshire, who really understands from both the State and national 
perspective the importance of the rules of democracy, and my colleague 
from Maine, who was just speaking about the election of 1876, which had 
so many parallels with the election of 2020 because in that year, there 
were four States that submitted two different slates.
  The Republican Party said: Let the Vice President decide because he 
is targeted in the Constitution to receive the ballots.
  The Democrats said: Well, he is not given the power in the 
Constitution to decide which slate of ballots to accept.

  That led to a standoff and a Commission that was a setup of five 
Senators, five House Members, and five Supreme Court Justices to try to 
decide which slate of ballots to accept.
  As you pointed out, that election led to the Electoral Count Act for 
the first round. Ten years later, they rewrote it again, but it wasn't 
sufficient.
  I just want to compliment him and the work that the entire set of 
Senators did to bring forward a much improved version that will be 
included in the omnibus bill we will be considering.
  As I am here with my colleagues, pondering--pondering--the state of 
our democracy, the state of our Republic, I can't help but think of 
that story from Benjamin Franklin at the Constitutional Convention.
  In seeing him walk out of Independence Hall on the last day of the 
Convention, a woman came up and asked Dr. Franklin: Well, Doctor, what 
have we got? Is it a republic or a monarchy?
  Dr. Franklin replied, ``A republic if you can keep it.''
  ``A republic if you can keep it''--recognizing the challenge of 
sustaining this framework in which we voluntarily work together to have 
a system of ballot integrity, of registration integrity, of voting 
integrity, and, in fact, of counting the ballots with integrity.
  If I go back to that battle of 1876, the deal that was struck was a 
dark deal. It was a deal which said, as my colleague Senator King 
pointed out: Even though one candidate was one vote short of winning 
the electoral college, we will give those four slates to the Republican 
if the Republican will pull the troops out of the South and 
Reconstruction.
  What that meant was ending civil rights for Black southerners not for 
one or two generations but for the better part of three-quarters of a 
century, three generations. It was a terrible, dark, evil deal that 
came out.
  But, in this body, there was a Senator who said: We need to restore 
those rights to the South.
  He waited through 1888 and on into 1890 until there was a possibility 
of passing a bill that would protect voting registration, voting at the 
ballot box, and the counting of the votes. It was called the Lodge Act. 
Sir Henry Cabot Lodge from the House, who later came to the Senate, 
supported it and sent it over here. Senator Hoar proceeded to champion 
it in this body, but it was a filibuster by southern Democrats who 
killed that bill--a filibuster later accompanied by support, actually, 
from northern Republicans, who wanted to get to a tariff bill, the 
McKinley Tariff Act. It was supported by western Republicans, who 
wanted to get to the silver currency bill. In other words, people from 
all over the country in this Chamber failed to stand up for the civil 
rights of every American.
  It is indeed true that our institutions are far more fragile than we 
ever anticipated. We believe in the vision of a republic. And how does 
that differ from the vision of a dictator? It differs from a dictator 
or a King in that power flows up from the people; it doesn't flow down 
from the powerful. But we have seen a steady erosion of that vision 
here in the United States of America.
  With the wealth inequality, we have come to see that there is an 
incredible loss of government of, by, and for the people. Let me 
explain. When you get that kind of power concentrated at the very top, 
that money becomes sets of lawyers who work 24/7, 365 for the powerful 
and against the people. When you get that kind of concentration, you 
get media campaigns spending huge sums of money to change how people 
think about issues--power for the powerful, not government by the 
people.
  Then let's think about the fact that that same set of powerful are 
using campaign funds to get the outcomes they want and they are using 
dark money.
  My colleague Senator Whitehouse was talking about the DISCLOSE Act 
and how important it is that we at least have transparency. Where are 
these hundreds of millions of dollars from the richest Americans and 
most powerful corporations coming from, and what is their goal? At 
least we should know the who. The Supreme Court has said they cannot be 
stopped under kind of a corrupted vision of free speech; they can't be 
limited under that Supreme Court decision. But at least we can know the 
who and have the American people understand better who is behind the 
funding. That ending of dark money is so important.
  Gerrymandering. It is estimated that down the hall in the House of 
Representatives, there is a 20- to 25-vote bias in favor of one party 
over the other because one party does more gerrymandering than the 
other. Well, neither should do that, and it is our responsibility to 
end that corrupt distortion of equal representation.
  Then to the ballot box, there have been 34 laws passed in 19 States 
that are aimed at one mission, and that is to stop targeted groups of 
Americans from voting. And who are those targeted groups? Those 
targeted groups are Black Americans and Hispanic Americans; low-income, 
inner city Americans; Native Americans on reservations; college 
students--laws deliberately designed in a laser-focused manner to block 
certain groups of Americans from voting. That is the powerful who don't 
want to have the voice of the people working for the people.
  We had, last January, a chance to pass a bill in this Chamber, just 
like they had in 1891, for the civil rights of all Americans. For us, 
it wasn't the Lodge Act. For us, it was the Freedom to Vote Act--the 
freedom to vote--that would take on gerrymandering; that would end 
anonymous dark money; that would proceed to ensuring that every 
American could get to the ballot box in a fair fashion to vote.
  You know, it was in 2020 that we had one State where the wait time to 
vote in predominantly Black precincts was 5 to 10 times the wait time 
in White precincts. Don't tell me that is somehow acceptable in the 
United States of America, that kind of racial bias baked into our 
election system. It was deliberate. It was planned.
  Why is it that President Trump hated vote-by-mail? Well, let me 
explain it to you. He hated it because it let people get to the ballot 
box whom he didn't want to vote. He wanted people to have to vote on 
election day because on election day, you can really, really play the 
game.
  You can move the voting locations from where they were the previous 
election so people don't go to the right

[[Page S9602]]

place. In the places where you don't want people to vote, you put them 
where there are no parking lots so that it is hard to vote. You put out 
false information about when the election was, saying: So sorry you 
missed it. Even though it is this coming Tuesday, people will think it 
was the last Tuesday.
  You can manipulate and obstruct targeted groups of Americans and 
prevent them from voting much easier on election day than you can with 
vote-by-mail.
  My State of Oregon initiated vote-by-mail. It is the most secure 
system in the country--every signature compared. You would be more 
likely to be struck by lightning than be able to find a mistake made in 
which somebody voted intentionally who wasn't allowed to vote. It is 
incredibly secure, incredibly appropriate to counteract all of those 
schemes on election day designed to target Americans.
  My colleagues, we have so much work to do to defend the very 
foundation of our democracy. It is the ballot box. It is the ballot 
box.
  We have to take on the gerrymandering; we have to take on the dark 
money; and we have to defend the opportunity of every American to vote.
  If you came into this room and you swore an oath to the Constitution, 
you have a responsibility to defend that Constitution and defend the 
integrity of the ballot box.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER (Ms. Hassan). The Senator from Minnesota.
  Ms. KLOBUCHAR. Madam President, I want to thank the Senators who did 
such a tremendous job today really going through all the arguments for 
why our democracy is still fragile, why we must stand up for a 
democracy--so many good ideas.
  I especially want to thank Senator Whitehouse for never giving up 
hope when it comes to campaign finance reform.
  I think of John McCain, if he were sitting in here right now--we miss 
him very much, a friend of both Senator Whitehouse's and mine--and how 
he stood up for campaign finance reform because he knew it wasn't a 
Democratic or Republican issue; it was all of our issues.
  I think of Senator Merkley's incredible diligence and his incredible 
command of the rules of the Senate and how we can make this place work 
better, and then Senator King's very Maine-like independent take on all 
this, and then, Madam President, your incredible remarks, tying it 
into--I hadn't thought about that fact, that on Veterans Day, which is 
always after the election--and your dad's words that an election is 
just a war of words and it is something you go through in a democracy 
and it could be really tough, but it is nothing like a real war when 
people are putting their lives on the line. So thank you for that.


                               Dream Act

  Madam President, I wanted to turn to two other issues that are still 
on our plates in such a big, big way--still integral, actually, to our 
own democracy and what we stand for.
  The first one--and I am going to be putting later into the Record 
some remarks of Senator Durbin, who has been such a big supporter of 
the Electoral Count Act and the like. This is another area--another 
important, major, major moment for democracy that Senator Durbin has 
been leading on, and that is the urgent need to ensure Dreamers can 
remain here.
  I was proud to support and cosponsor his efforts in the past on not 
just the comprehensive immigration reform, which we know included 
protections for Dreamers that we passed and which I strongly supported 
out of the Judiciary Committee--when I first got to the Senate, Senator 
Kennedy asked Senator Whitehouse and myself to be the first new 
Senators involved in the immigration effort, which included protecting 
Dreamers that President Bush supported. Each time, sadly, we have been 
stymied in getting this into law. President Obama moved on his own with 
Executive orders to protect Dreamers, and now their status continues--
continues--to be in limbo.
  There is an urgent need right now to ensure Dreamers can remain here 
in the only country that they have ever called home.
  We know them in our community as teachers and healthcare workers, 
builders and firefighters, reporters and entrepreneurs. Like 
generations of immigrants before them, they have made our country 
better; but for too long, their livelihoods have been subject to the 
whims of court decisions and partisan politics.
  They are incredibly sad and frustrated that Congress has not been 
able to come together to make progress. Comprehensive immigration 
reform should include a pathway to citizenship for Dreamers, or at 
least right now in this Chamber, we should pass the Dream Act.
  I have been working on this for years. We have, many times, come 
razor-thin close to getting it done. We passed a bill in the Senate, 
then the House doesn't act; we are close to getting a deal, even during 
the Trump administration, then the Trump administration gut punches us. 
You, Madam President, were part of that agreement that would have 
guaranteed a place in our country that is already in our hearts for our 
Dreamers.
  We cannot wait another day to pass the American Dream and Promise Act 
and provide these Dreamers with the stability and security that they 
deserve. They know no other country. Many of them, for decades, have 
been here working.
  I know that Democrats support this bill, and I know that there are a 
number of Republicans who do, but we are never able to overcome the 
opposition on the other side of the aisle that is there to bring it 
forward. The time is long overdue, and we must pass the Dream Act.


                         Afghan Adjustment Act

  Madam President, the second issue on my mind tonight is the work that 
we must do with the Afghan Adjustment Act.
  This is a bill that I have been working on for the past year. I want 
to thank Senator Coons, and I want to thank Senator Lindsey Graham for 
working with me on this bill. I also want to thank our other cosponsors 
who include Senator Blunt, Senator Blumenthal, Senator Murkowski, 
Senator Shaheen, Senator Moran--who has joined the bill after we made 
some changes to strengthen the vetting process; his support is very 
important--Senator Leahy, Senator Wicker has joined us on this bill 
now, the incoming ranking member of the Armed Services Committee. Why 
is that? Because this bill is so important to our military.
  So many of these Afghans have worked with our military. They had the 
backs of our military. They were their translators. They did all kinds 
of very, very difficult jobs to help our military and freedom in 
Afghanistan. And when they came to this country, so many of them 
thought we would be there for them.
  Right now, their situation is tenuous, at best. They are in limbo. I 
can't tell you how many members of our military have come up and said: 
I don't understand. The Chief of Mission has verified their status.
  Half of the Afghans--roughly half of them--who are here right now 
have been vouched for by our own military.
  We have put together the Afghan Adjustment Act based on instructions 
from the past. We saw what happened to the Vietnamese and the Hmong--I 
know in my own State we have the second biggest population of Hmong in 
the country--that they came here and our country knew that we owed them 
something because they had stood with us. We put them on a path that 
involved green cards, which is what we are doing here.

  All we are trying to do here is actually more intense than what we 
did back then. I just ask the other Senators to look at the Hmong and 
Vietnamese in their own communities. They are now many generations 
ahead. They are police officers. They are serving in the State 
legislature. They are pillars of their community. And in the Afghans, 
we have the same possibility.
  I remind my colleagues: They are already here. That is why Senator 
Wicker has now joined us, because there is the belief--and Senator 
Graham. I am hoping that we will have a group come together tomorrow to 
talk about this.
  Senator Graham understands as well as from his own service, when 
people have your back overseas in the hardest of times, you do not 
abandon them when they are in a hard time. That is going to get around 
the world if we just let them sit in limbo. So this is truly our moment 
to at least start this process.

[[Page S9603]]

  What does it mean? Well, it means, according to this bill, that we 
will be doing a vetting of the Afghans who, I note to my colleagues, 
are already here. They will submit to additional vetting, including in-
person interviews. It makes the process much more orderly and much more 
thorough, which is why you see conservatives joining this bill.
  This bill has earned the support of some of our Nation's most revered 
military leaders, including Admirals Mike Mullen, William McRaven, 
James Stavridis, and Generals Richard Myers, Joseph Dunford, Stan 
McChrystal. They support this bill.
  The Veterans of Foreign Wars--the VFW--supports this bill. The 
American Legion supports this bill. Their members have been here in 
Members' offices asking them to support it.
  I cannot tell you how important it was to Senator Coons and myself to 
make sure that this bill was bipartisan in nature. We worked very hard 
all summer to strengthen the bill, to get at the concerns of our 
colleagues. That is why we have such a strong group of Senators 
supporting the bill.
  This is our moment to get this done. If we are unable to finish it at 
the end of the year, I consider this not an end but a beginning. We are 
so close to getting--as I know from my discussions with my colleagues--
more and more Republicans on this bill. I think that is because they 
understand that if we leave these people who helped us in limbo, what 
will people think the next time when they ask for our help in another 
country, in another war, in another conflict?
  I implore my colleagues to join us in this effort. I am looking 
forward to tomorrow when we will have a bipartisan group of Senators 
take the floor. But I didn't want to let another day go by without 
mentioning how important it is to get this done.
  I yield the floor. I know we have been joined by Senator Lee.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Utah.


                               H.R. 2617

  Mr. LEE. Madam President, this bill before us is an act of 
legislative barbarism. This is an act of extortion being leveraged on 
the U.S. Senate right before Christmas.
  Make no mistake why this happens. This bill, in all 4,155 pages of 
its glory or infamy, was negotiated in secret by four or five Members 
of Congress, excluding all others, which means that nearly 330 million 
Americans were disenfranchised in the production of this legislative 
behemoth. They wrote it utterly in secret, with the design of creating 
an artificial emergency, threatening a shutdown right before Christmas.
  In fact, they set up government funding to expire the day before 
Christmas Eve, realizing that that is when Members are at our point of 
vulnerability. Members of both Houses and both political parties want 
to get home, understandably, to spend the holidays with their families.
  It is also the moment when they realize that our constituents are 
most vulnerable, most fearful of something like a government shutdown. 
That is when the most pressure will be brought to bear on Members of 
the House and Senate, Democrats and Republicans, if, Heaven forbid, 
there were a shutdown.
  So at this time of manufactured crisis, it is said that that is the 
right moment to unveil this bill that they have drafted in secret.
  The part that is stunning is that enough Members of the U.S. Senate--
a body that prides itself on being this world's greatest deliberative 
body--would choose to support this bill, never having read it. That 
really is stunning.

  As an entity that strives to be the world's greatest deliberative 
body, we sure don't act like it sometimes. But we should. Our rules, 
our traditions, our customs, and our obligation to our constituents 
demand nothing less.
  We and those we represent deserve proper, full consideration and the 
chance to read, debate, and amend this legislation and not get 
circumvented through some backroom deal. So opposing this legislation 
isn't radical. Running our government this way is, and it is 
indefensible.
  It used to be, Madam President, that amendments and debate and 
discussion were a common practice of the legislative process. It is 
what the legislative process is all about, in fact. Now, these days, we 
have to beg, plead, and barter, feeling lucky for any legislative 
scraps thrown to us underneath the table. That is not the legislative 
process. It is certainly not a legitimate way to keep our government 
funded.
  There is no greater priority, nothing more impactful than voting on 
legislation to fund the government, especially when you lump all of the 
12 categories of appropriations bills into one giant bill, an omnibus 
spending package, as we call it. When you have something like that, in 
theory, you could have a fair process surrounding that, but you would 
need a considerable amount of time for public notice and debate and 
discussion and, yes, an opportunity for amendments. A bill like this 
could be rendered fair if it were cured through weeks of an open 
amendment process, where this was subjected to discussion and review 
under the light of day.
  Yet here we find ourselves, having received this legislative text. It 
is not just us who have been excluded. It is not just we who have been 
excluded. It is the American people, it is the media who have been 
excluded from this process until less than 24 hours ago. And, all of a 
sudden, they drop 4,155 pages of legislative text, and they expect us 
to be ready to go within a few hours, to vote on it--and to vote on it 
under particularly extortive conditions.
  They tell you: OK, we have got this bill now. This bill is ready for 
you. It is up to you. You have earned your election certificates. You 
are free to vote yes, or you are free to vote no. But, by the way, if 
you vote no, you will be causing a government shutdown, and we will 
make sure that you are blamed for a government shutdown. And, by the 
way, we will also threaten to take away not only your Christmas but the 
Christmases of millions of Americans in the process.
  That is not fair. That is not free. That is not operating our 
government as the constitutional Republic that it was intended to be. 
It is not even a representative government at that point. That becomes 
a legislative oligarchy in which a small handful of people--we might 
call it the law firm of Schumer, McConnell, Pelosi, and McCarthy--puts 
together a bill entirely in secret and then uses extortion to extract 
votes out of it.
  Tragically, a number of Members seemed to express gratitude for their 
ability to vote on the finished product: Oh, thank you to our 
legislative overlords. Oh, thank you. Thanks for making this possible. 
Thanks for making it happen.
  It poses some real problems. We find ourselves in a precarious 
economic position as a country. We have accumulated over $31 trillion 
in debt. We have seen Federal spending explode astronomically just over 
the last few years. Prior to the COVID-19 pandemic, we were spending no 
more than about $4 trillion a year. That was still a lot of money then; 
it is still a lot of money now.
  But if we were just spending now what we were spending then, our 
budget would be almost balanced. Last year we brought in over $4 
trillion in revenue, and it hasn't been more than just a few years ago 
that we were spending only $4 trillion a year.
  But what happened during and since the COVID-19 pandemic, commencing 
in 2020, changed everything. We went from spending about $4 trillion a 
year to 6.5, then 6.8 trillion a year. It still hasn't gone back down 
completely. We are on track to spend about $6 trillion this year.
  That is one of the problems when we fund with numbers this big. The 
numbers million, billion, and trillion start to run together, and I 
have made that mistake enough times.
  I want to be very clear. So you go from spending $4 trillion a year 
to $6.8 trillion a year, $6.5 trillion a year--still spending $6 
trillion a year. We are still borrowing, even this year, about $2 
trillion. That is such a staggering sum of money. The way our system 
works, doing more than just printing it--you have to go through 
additional steps of selling U.S. Treasury bonds, but it functions in a 
way that makes it feel almost indistinguishable from just printing 
money.
  It certainly has the same effect on the economy as if you were just 
printing money because, by definition, inflation is the condition in 
which you have got too many dollars chasing too few goods. When you 
just increase the

[[Page S9604]]

money supply, you make it less affordable for people to do the things 
that they need to do. Everything gets more expensive. This is being 
felt everywhere.
  In Utah, the average family is having to spend an additional $1,000 a 
month every single month on their basic monthly expenses, not luxury 
items. I am just talking about the basics: housing, food, fuel, 
healthcare--$1,000 a month more. The same basket of goods and services 
that they were purchasing just a few years ago--in fact, just before 
the day Joe Biden took office--those things were $1,000 a month cheaper 
than they are now.
  This is the predictable, foreseeable, and, in fact, foreseen result 
of the government spending trillions of dollars a year more than it 
has. It is creating huge problems, serious problems.
  Yet no one has been able to answer the question: Why are we still 
spending $2 trillion a year more than we are bringing in?
  Now that we are looking at the pandemic of COVID-19 as something that 
is behind us--it doesn't mean the virus has gone away, but we are no 
longer in a pandemic lockdown situation--there is no reason why we 
should be incurring ongoing annual deficits of that magnitude. And it 
is not sustainable, and this is not a victim-free event. This has 
victims everywhere.
  Look, rich people can figure out a way to get through inflationary 
periods just fine. They can absorb it. It means less to them. They have 
got savings they can rely on, assets they can liquidate. They will be 
just fine. In fact, most sophisticated rich people can find a way to 
get richer during periods of massive inflation because of the inflation 
itself.
  It is really sad. The rich get richer, and the poor get poorer, and 
it is the government's fault. And it is our fault because we spend too 
much money. We are the ones causing it.
  Bills like this pass. Members of Congress in both Houses and both 
political parties go out and brag about it. They, predictably, get a 
lot of praise by the media. They pretty much uniformly love it when we 
pass big spending bills and hate it when Members vote against it 
because they are not drinking the Kool-Aid.

  So you get short-term praise by the media when you do this. You get 
criticism when you vote against it. That is why most of our Members end 
up voting for it, because they want praise. It is understandable to 
want praise, but at what cost?
  When the rich get richer and the poor get poorer as a result of our 
terrible spending decisions, especially decisions for which a lot of 
our Members try to escape accountability by saying: Sorry, I didn't 
want provisions A, B, C, D, and E; I wanted only provisions F and G, 
and I couldn't get those in unless I voted for the whole package--that 
is how we get to be $31 trillion in debt. That is how we get this 
Federal Government that spends like a drunken sailor in a way that puts 
drunken sailors to shame everywhere. That is how we get there, because 
you roll it all into one. This is the Prego spaghetti sauce of spending 
legislation. You name it; it is in there. It is all in there--4,155 
pages long. That is pretty long.
  Now, look, when I speak on the Senate floor, I am told that I average 
about 120 words per minute. I have been told at times that is a little 
too fast, that I should speak more slowly, but it is the rate at which 
I tend to speak. Even at this rate, if I were to read this bill, read 
it out loud on the Senate floor at my usual rate of about 120 words a 
minute, it would take me 5 straight days. And by 5 straight days, I 
mean the whole 24-hour period--no bathroom breaks, no sleeping, no 
lunch breaks, no anything else. Reading 24 hours a day, back to back, 
at 120 words per minute would take me 5 straight days. That sort of 
puts it in perspective.
  Yet we have gotten this this morning. And, literally, by lunch we 
were receiving pressure to schedule a final vote on it. So you leave us 
hanging for months. The fiscal year ended on September 30. We have been 
operating with a continuing resolution since September 30, and all of a 
sudden, we get to December 20 and we are told: Oh, you have got to do 
this right now; we can't operate another day on a continuing 
resolution--because continuing resolutions are bad now. They are so 
bad, in fact, you are going to have to vote for this bill or else shut 
down the government. We can't do this for another day.
  That is weird. But it is not just weird; it is devious. It is a 
corrupt process, and we all know it. The more we countenance this 
process by supporting bills like this and pretending it is OK when we 
know it is not, we impoverish the American people, and we do them a 
grave disservice. Shame on us for doing that.
  Look, whether you are a Democrat or a Republican, a liberal or a 
conservative, you can see that people are getting hurt. You can see 
that people are poorer because of the Federal Government spending money 
that it doesn't have.
  There are a small handful of people who will get rich off this bill. 
Everybody else will get poorer by degrees. It is harder to tie those 
who have gotten poorer and the fact that they are getting poorer--it is 
hard to tie any one of them--to any individual bill because it happens 
so subtly and so gradually. That is what makes this so evil by design. 
But it is intentional, and it is wrong.
  The bill is being advertised as a $1.7 trillion bill, something that 
is going to cost a total of $1.7 trillion. But as budget analysis from 
a number of entities has shown, it is more than that. The Heritage 
Foundation has conducted some analysis of this bill, and it has 
demonstrated that this bill will actually cost taxpayers at least $1.85 
trillion in 2023, thanks to these base appropriations, along with the 
emergency and disaster spending and the statutory pay-go waiver built 
into the bill.
  Now, the authors of the bill recognize that if the bill were 
considered according to its own merits, it could not--would not--pass. 
And there are a whole lot of features in this that fit that 
description, that couldn't pass on their own. That is why they lump 
them all together. It takes priorities important to this Member and to 
that Member, you lump them all into one bill, and then you tell 
Members: You are not going to be able to vote for any of these things 
in isolation; so you had better vote for this one or else you will get 
nothing, and, by the way, you will be shutting down the government at 
the same time.
  There have been a number of people who have helped go through the 
analysis line by line. My staff has done an enormous amount of 
analysis, and we have combed through this and tried to figure out what 
some of the highlights and the lowlights are.
  My friend Scott Parkinson identified a series of the lowlights in one 
Twitter thread. He identified a few that I may point out here.
  In one of them, which is good news for the outgoing Speaker of the 
House, Nancy Pelosi, she is going to have a Federal building named 
after her on Seventh Street in San Francisco. It will be called the 
``Speaker Nancy Pelosi Federal Building.'' Congratulations to her. It 
is great. It is great. Fantastic.

  The Senate Appropriations Committee chairman, my friend and 
colleague, the distinguished Senator from Vermont, Pat Leahy, has some 
earmarks, including a measure renaming the Lake Champlain Basin Program 
as the Patrick Leahy Lake Champlain Basin Program. That one came at a 
cost. We had to stuff $35 million each year for the next 5 years in 
order to get that. That is a pretty expensive name tag. I mean, gosh, 
you can buy the naming rights to a major sports arena for a lot less 
than that. He got that one in.
  But I have got to be bipartisan here. I am not going to make this a 
strictly partisan speech. We have other things in there. Apparently, 
there are some buildings in the State of Alabama that have yet to be 
named after our colleague Richard Shelby. I love Richard Shelby, a 
great man--Richard Shelby, distinguished career. I guess there are some 
things in Alabama that still haven't been named after him. So he has 
gotten the facilities that the FBI has at the Redstone Arsenal. Those 
facilities have been named the Richard Shelby Center for Innovation and 
Advanced Training. That is great. Congratulations there.
  If you are a fan of Presidential museums, this bill has some 
provisions you might like. This bill adds $6 million to

[[Page S9605]]

the Ulysses S. Grant Museum. He has a museum already. I guess that 
museum needs some more bling in it. I don't know whether they are going 
to be gilding the walls of it, but they will have $6 million to make it 
really nice.
  Some of this stuff is really, obviously, in the category of brazen 
partisanship. We have $1.7 billion that is being spent on 
transportation projects, specifically designed to help fight climate 
change. That is a lot of money--$1.7 billion--going to fight climate 
change. It is not just transportation projects of the sort that are 
already needed. They are transportation projects specifically designed 
to fight climate change.
  Something tells me that wouldn't have the votes to pass the Senate, 
if it had to stand on its own. In fact, I am absolutely certain it 
wouldn't. But never mind, that is what the omnibus is for--another 
Christmas miracle. Throw it in there.
  Some of the more egregiously woke earmarks in the bill include $1 
million going to something called Zora's House in Ohio, which is known 
as a coworking and community space for gender-expansive people of 
color; $750,000 for the TransLatin Coalition; $956,000 for the Equity 
Incubator at the Universities at Shady Grove in Maryland; $791,000 for 
equitable energy resilience and electric vehicle infrastructure in 
Sonoma, CA.
  I am not sure what ``equitable energy resilience'' means, but I know 
it is woke, and a lot of people have to be really happy with that.
  And $477,000 will be going to the Equity Institute in Rhode Island. I 
don't know what they do there, but it sure sounds like fun if you are 
into equity programs.
  The Federal taxpayer, of course, will be picking up the cost of a 
$2.4 million tab for the New England Aquarium Corporation in Boston. 
They say it is for modernization and educational programming at the 
aquarium. I love aquariums. It sounds like fun. I love going to 
aquariums. They are neat. They are great. It is not radical to suggest 
that the taxpayers in the city of Boston or of the Commonwealth of 
Massachusetts--hardly poverty-stricken areas of our country--shouldn't 
be funding that project that is specific to their community. No one has 
made the case as to why that aquarium has to be built, why this has to 
be a Federal taxpayer project--but no matter, another Christmas 
miracle. Just throw it in the omni.
  It would also advance the left's attack on the traditional family by 
funding gender programs in Pakistan and family planning and 
reproductive health ``in areas where population growth threatens 
biodiversity or endangered species.'' What the heck does that mean?
  I think I know what that means. It is basically insisting that human 
beings should exist with less prevalence in some parts of the world, 
and we want to make sure that that doesn't happen because they might be 
bad for the environment in those areas. That is what that means.
  Why in Heaven's name we should be taking money from a poor farmer in 
Iowa or from a poor single mother of three in Orem, UT, and sending 
that to Pakistan to tell people they have to have fewer kids because 
biodiversity and climate change demand it--I am sorry, that is too far. 
We do some crazy stuff up here, and sometimes we have to look the other 
way or we try to look the other way--sort of like you do when you drive 
past a really awful accident--but on this one, I can't look past that 
one. That is crazy.
  I am not sure I can find more than 20 or 30 Members of this body who 
would feel comfortable openly, publicly advocating for this--not when 
you are taking money from a poor farmer in Iowa or a poor single mom in 
Orem, UT, to send it for that purpose. No matter, it is another 
Christmas miracle put in the omnibus.
  The omnibus includes a total of about 3,200 earmarks. What do I mean 
by earmarks? Well, earmarks are special interest giveaways. They are 
targeted spending Congress directs for a particular purpose. Earmarks 
have been severely abused. And one of the many ways in which they have 
been abused is through this process of lumping them all in. I have 
heard them referred to in the past as sweeteners. When Members don't 
want to vote for a particular bill, you add earmarks to it, 
strategically allocating them one State at a time so that you can buy 
off votes. I don't mean buy them off in a legally corrupt way. This is 
a corrupt process, but it is not corrupt in a way that is legally, 
judicially cognizable. This is a way in which you accumulate votes by 
promising sweetheart deals for which Members of Congress will receive 
praise. The rest of those people won't know or care about the fact that 
we are sending money to Pakistan to tell people they have to have fewer 
kids because climate change requires it. They are just glad that they 
got their handout, their carve-out. That is what creates the corrupt 
process.
  People who defend earmarks are fond of saying: Well, they represent a 
relatively small portion of total Federal spending. And that is true. 
The same could be said of the engine car on a train. It is a very small 
percentage of the length of the train. Yes, but it is what is driving 
the train.
  People who advocate for this bill--I have heard them make this 
argument many times, including today--they will likewise say: I don't 
know why you are worrying about this bill because, after all, this bill 
deals with discretionary outlays, discretionary spending and not 
mandatory spending, money that Congress gets to decide 1 year after the 
next as to where it goes; as opposed to mandatory spending, things like 
Social Security, which are already required to be spent under existing 
ongoing law.
  A lot of people will say that you should vote for this bill because, 
yes, we have a $31 trillion debt, and, yes, we have an annual deficit 
that is still clocking in at around $2 trillion a year. But no worry--
don't worry about that because the real boogieman is the mandatory 
spending because that is bigger.
  Well, it is true that it is bigger, but the fact that something is 
smaller than something else doesn't mean that you don't have to worry 
that. The fact that earmarks are a relatively small percentage of total 
Federal spending doesn't mean that earmarks don't have a really nasty 
effect in corrupting our political processes. It doesn't mean that they 
don't produce bad results. And the fact that discretionary spending is 
a smaller percentage of total Federal spending than mandatory spending 
doesn't mean we shouldn't worry about it. It is, after all, the part 
over which we have discretion. So why we wouldn't worry about it is 
beyond my ability to comprehend. We have, moreover, dramatically 
increased the amount and the percentage of mandatory spending in 
Federal outlays just in the last few years. It is part of what has 
exploded, as we went fairly quickly from $4 trillion in total Federal 
outlays as of 2019 to almost $7 trillion at the high watermark of the 
pandemic-era spending.
  It is not an answer here to say there is more that we are spending 
elsewhere. We are still spending this money. This money is still under 
our control, and we have some responsibility to review it. And that 
review is rendered more or less impossible to achieve when you pass a 
bill this way.
  This is wrong. It is a corrupt process that uses extortion and fear 
in order to coerce Members into voting for a bill that they know in 
their hearts is wrong. They know that this is fraught with all sorts of 
problems.
  There is a part of me that has a much easier time understanding my 
Democratic colleagues on this one. I am a Republican. I am a 
conservative Republican at that. And yet I kind of have an easier time 
grasping and accepting Democrats' support for this. This is much more 
consistent with Democratic priorities. This is, after all, a Democratic 
template funding a lot of Democratic policies. They are being 
consistent with their policy. I have a harder time accepting it as a 
Republican, a harder time accepting that we are going to have an 
estimated 20 or so Republicans who are already expressing support for 
this bill.
  Less than 18 hours after this bill first saw the light of day, they 
already have about 20 Republicans expressing support for it. It baffles 
me. It baffles me because Democrats openly embrace the idea that they 
are progressive, that they want more government, that they feel more 
comfortable with more government than Republicans do. So they are 
acting in a manner in conformity with their policies, platform, and 
their history, their traditions, their customs, their priorities--much 
less so

[[Page S9606]]

with Republicans. In fact, this is directly contrary to what 
Republicans campaign on.
  So what will we do when we have 10 to 20 Republicans who immediately 
support this, a bill that is predictably going to be supported by all 
50 Democrats? They are united on this, and hats off to them for keeping 
their caucus united on this. They are all united. Fifty Democrats are 
all in lockstep with this. They can't get it passed unless they get to 
60, and so they need at least 10 Republicans. We supply those. There 
are 10 to 20 Republicans who are going to vote for this, uniting the 
Democrats around Democratic priorities and Democratic policies and 
Democratic spending levels. So yes, I have a much easier time accepting 
and respecting those on the Democratic side who do this. They are at 
least on brand. We are not, and this is one of the reasons, I think, 
why Republicans lose more than many of us would prefer when we dilute 
the brand. We dilute the message. We dilute the proclaimed policy 
preferences for a more responsible process by which we allocate Federal 
funds. Then we do this? This is tough.

  Now, some of my Republican colleagues will respond to this by saying: 
No, no. This is a win, I promise. They will cite a few things. They 
will say: Well, this is a big win because, among other things, it 
contains cuts to IRS funding.
  I am sorry, that is really hard for me to accept. Whatever cuts, 
whatever restraint was shown with regard to IRS funding here is 
absolutely dwarfed by the fact the IRS just got $80 billion of 
supplemental funding in August. So forgive me, but I find that 
difficult--no--impossible to accept as a legitimate explanation as to 
why this is a win for Republicans.
  To make matters worse, perhaps the most offensive part of this is the 
Senate Republicans voting for this bill are choosing to forfeit the 
power that they have, that we have--the power of the purse. It could be 
used, if wielded more assertively and cautiously, to end the crisis at 
our border. And it is a crisis.
  In fact, this bill, while providing funding for government Agencies, 
including the Department of Homeland Security in charge of enforcing 
the border but utterly and defiantly, willfully refusing to do its 
job--this bill expressly prohibits Customs and Border Patrol funding 
from being used to improve border security. Let that sink in for a 
minute. Not only are we losing the opportunity--forfeiting it by 
passing this--to put in aggressive measures requiring border 
enforcement as a condition and precedent for the receipt of certain 
Federal funds, we are actually providing their funding and allowing 
language to be included in there that prohibits them from bolstering 
border security at a time when we are being besieged by illegal border 
crossings. This is lawlessness.
  So, no, I really struggle with calling this a win. Republicans, 
especially given the fact we just had an election and in that election, 
we went from having a Congress consisting of a Democratic House and a 
Democratic Senate--and we, of course, have a Democratic White House--
now we are still going to have a Democratic Senate, but we are going to 
have a Republican-controlled House in just a matter of a couple of 
weeks.
  For this reason, I came to the floor last week and twice tried to 
pass continuing resolutions that would keep us funded on a short-term 
basis into next year. Had we done that, Congress still may have chosen 
to enact this spending legislation, which we hadn't seen until about 19 
hours ago. It still could have done that, but it wouldn't have been 
under the extortive threat of a shutdown at Christmastime. Tragically, 
the Senate declined to adopt that, declined to adopt either of those 
resolutions and, instead, opted for this position. Why? Because had 
they adopted either of those continuing resolutions, it would have 
become impossible to use the extortive threat of a Christmastime 
shutdown in order to secure votes for this.
  So, of course, the proponents of this legislation didn't want that 
rain on their party to make it harder for them. The American people 
suffer as a result.
  But what you have, Republicans who vote for this bill, they are going 
to be facilitating Democratic priorities and, by so doing, undercutting 
the Republican House of Representatives that is about to be sworn in. 
House minority leader Kevin McCarthy is opposed to this. He has stated 
publicly and privately he thinks this is a mistake. It is a mistake for 
Republicans. And it is.
  Since 1954, we have seen that the House of Representatives has had a 
shift in the party in control only five times, each during midterm 
elections--just five times since 1954. It doesn't happen that often. In 
all five of those instances since 1954 when it flipped, Congress did 
not enact a comprehensive omnibus spending package during the lameduck 
session following the election.
  There are a number of reasons for this, including the fact that 
Members of Congress, I think in both Houses and both political parties, 
understand elections are supposed to have consequences. It is really 
inappropriate, I think, at least for Republicans--again, I suppose I 
have to have a form of respect for my Democratic colleagues in wanting 
to enact their policies. But I struggle with understanding why 
Republicans would want to help them in doing that, rendering the 
incoming Congress less capable of enacting Republican priorities, 
especially when you consider a couple of things:
  No. 1, this spending bill, assuming it passes, which appears 
certain--just about certain that it will, this will keep the Federal 
Government funded through the balance of fiscal year 2023, up until 
midnight on September 30, 2023. That, by itself, is a big chunk, a very 
large chunk of the entire time that the 118th Congress will even exist. 
It is a big piece of that. That part of it will be having a government 
that doesn't operate under a spending bill with a significant 
Republican imprint.
  But it is not just that. In light of the fact that we are going to 
have a divided Congress--we are going to have a Democratic Senate and a 
Republican House, with a Democratic White House--it may be difficult, 
of course, to pass another omnibus or, perhaps, a series of spending 
bills. It could end up resulting in more continuing resolutions. Guess 
what continuing resolutions do? They keep spending levels where they 
have been. That is where we get to the point where, over time, this has 
spillover ramifications. The high cost of this bill will far outlast 
this Congress. It will far outlast the balance of fiscal year 2023. It 
will last for years.

  The Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget recently estimated 
that over the next decade, this could end up increasing Federal 
outlays. Just this omnibus spending bill, as compared to a continuing 
resolution, would likely cost a total of an additional $2 trillion over 
the next decade just because of the baselines being shifted. Why 
Republicans want to do that is beyond my ability to understand. I 
implore them to reconsider.
  There is a good reason why outgoing Congresses in the past have not 
enacted omnibus spending packages postelection, during a lameduck 
session, when control of the House has just shifted.
  Meanwhile, our border crisis continues to boil over. It is getting 
worse and worse and worse every day, and it is subjecting far too many 
people to the harms associated with human trafficking. A very large 
percentage--by some studies, 30 percent or so; by some studies, it is 
more like 65 percent--of the girls and women who come across with these 
drug traffickers who operate as human smugglers bringing them into the 
United States, making these drug cartels billions of dollars a month--
somewhere between 30 percent and 65 percent of the women and girls 
brought through that process are raped or sexually assaulted in the 
process.
  This has also resulted in fentanyl pouring into the United States, 
enough fentanyl to kill millions of Americans. We are doing nothing 
about that in this bill.
  As I said a moment ago, what we are doing in this bill is making it 
more difficult to fund border enforcement. It prohibits the funds going 
to Customs and Border enforcement from being used for border 
enforcement to increase border security.
  Meanwhile, as our border crisis continues to boil over and we do 
nothing about it and we plant the seeds for making sure that we can do 
nothing about it through this legislation--we do nothing about that. We 
do nothing about that, but we do something else

[[Page S9607]]

that is really, really curious. It provides Jordan, Lebanon, Egypt, 
Tunisia, and Oman $410 million to secure their borders. That is great. 
That is just fantastic if you live in one of those countries. This bill 
is all about Middle Eastern and North African border security; it is 
not about American border security.
  This bill is not America first; it is America last. What we are doing 
here is putting America last. What we are doing here is putting our 
constituents last. What we are doing here is putting a small handful of 
elites first. This bill is the product of Wall Street and K Street, not 
Main Street.
  We have to get back to a process that respects the rights of 
individual Members. And I call on all within the sound of my voice, 
Democrat or Republican, House or Senate, all Members of Congress within 
the sound of my voice, whether you plan on voting for this bill or not: 
If you are thinking about voting for it, I implore you, reconsider. If 
not us, who? If not now, when? If we don't stop this at some point 
sometime, this will continue, and it will continue to weaken America.
  We can stop this if--and only if--when--and only when--Members stop 
supporting this nonsense. I don't care where you are on the political 
spectrum. You know this is wrong. Let's stop it before it is too late.
  Mr. KING. Madam President, I suggest the absence of a quorum.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER (Ms. Baldwin).
  The clerk will call the roll.
  The senior assistant legislative clerk proceeded to call the roll.
  Mr. KING. Madam President, I ask unanimous consent that the order for 
the quorum call be rescinded.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. Without objection, it is so ordered.
  The junior Senator from Maine is recognized.
  Mr. KING. Madam President, I come to the floor tonight as a U.S. 
Senator from Maine. Why am I here to discuss lobsters on the floor of 
the U.S. Senate? Because my State is facing its most serious crisis, in 
my view, in my 18 years of public service on behalf of Maine.
  There is a provision in the bill that we will be voting on tomorrow 
that is of vital, critical importance to Maine, and I believe the 
country.
  In November, a Federal court here in Washington issued a ruling under 
the Endangered Species Act and the Maine Marine Mammal Protection Act 
that effectively shuts down the entire Maine lobster fishery in 2 
years. It issues requirements that simply can't be met in that 
timeframe. The only choice will be to shut down the fishery.
  What does that mean? What is the fishery? What is the lobster 
industry?
  We talk about the lobster industry. The lobster industry is this guy 
right here--thousands of small, independent businesses. These boats are 
not owned by Amazon or Walmart or Whole Foods. They are owned by 
individual Maine people, families, generations, in a town like this.
  That is what we are talking about. We are talking about the 
livelihoods of thousands of Maine people that will be cut off by virtue 
of this decision within 2 years.
  Is it a real threat? People are already cancelling orders for boats. 
The business of the people that make lobster traps is down 25 or 30 
percent. People are starting to put their boats on the market because 
they see this closure coming of an industry that has been a mainstay of 
the Maine economy for 150 years. Well over a billion and a half dollars 
a year is based upon this unique, iconic product that comes from the 
cold waters of Maine.
  Now, why am I here? Because this decision of the court that 
effectively closes our lobster industry down is based upon the idea of 
protecting the North Atlantic right whale, which needs protection. It 
is indeed an endangered species. The question is whether the remedy, in 
this case the closure of the Maine fishery, will actually help in the 
preservation of the right whale.
  I want to start with a couple of data points. Here is the first. This 
is the number of right whale deaths ever attributed to Maine lobster 
gear: zero. The number of right whale deaths attributed to Maine 
lobster gear: zero.
  Here is another data point. The number of right whales even being 
entangled in Maine lobster gear in almost the last 20 years: zero.
  So the question is, Is there sufficient evidence for this draconian 
remedy, the shutdown of the entire industry?
  The other data point is that, according to the maps of whale 
sightings based upon data from the Department of Commerce and NOAA, the 
whales are moving away from Maine. They are congregating now to the far 
north, in the Gulf of St. Lawrence, and also around Cape Cod, and I am 
going to talk about that in a minute. But the number of whales sighted 
and detected along the Maine coast is steadily declining.
  So why are we doing this? Why did the court make this ruling? The 
judge felt compelled by the law because there may be a risk. There may 
be a risk.
  Is the lobster industry--is this guy--doing anything about that 
speculative risk? Yes, a lot. Maine lobstermen all mark their gear. So 
if there is an entanglement and the rope is attached to the whale, you 
can tell where it came from. They mark their gear.
  No. 2, they have changed all the ropes with weaker ropes. So if there 
is an entanglement, they will break. No. 3, they put weak links in 
their ropes. So if there is an entanglement, the link will break, and 
there won't be a problem.
  By the way, if these entanglements were happening, the lobstermen 
would know it. Every lobstermen knows where his gear is. They would 
know if there is an entanglement. And I have talked to lobstermen who 
have been out there for 30 years and have never seen a right whale in 
the Gulf of Maine. There may be a few out there, but they have never 
seen one. In other words, it is a very, very low risk.
  And, finally, they have changed the way they fish. It used to be--and 
I remember this--that you would have buoys. You have all seen those 
picturesque--well, no, that is a mooring. That is not a lobster buoy. 
But you have a buoy and a rope that is down to the trap on the bottom. 
And so every trap had its own line and buoy. That is no longer true.
  Now they have a buoy, one line, and the trap is on the bottom, which 
are attached. So you can pull up a number of traps with only one piece 
of rope.
  In the last 10 years, Maine lobstermen have removed 30,000 miles of 
rope from the Gulf of Maine to mitigate a risk that we are not even 
sure is there.
  Now, I have been in environmental policy all my life. I know about 
the precautionary principle, which means, if you are not sure, be 
careful. And I understand that. I understand, if you are not sure, be 
careful. But this is the precautionary principle run amok where there 
is so little evidence and the punishment is so severe.
  So we are talking about an economic death sentence for an entire way 
of life. For the town of Stonington, for the thousands--and I mean 
between 5,000 and 10,000 people who work on the water and thousands 
more who work in processing and are involved in this industry--over 
$1.5 billion a year of economic impact in the State of Maine.
  But if you were in court and you said that we are going to impose an 
economic death sentence, well, here is the way the law looks at things 
like that. If it is a criminal case, to take away somebody's liberty, 
it is ``beyond a reasonable doubt.''
  There is no ``beyond a reasonable doubt'' in this case. It is not 
even close to ``beyond a reasonable doubt.''
  OK, in a civil case, you have to prove your case by a preponderance 
of the evidence, that it is more likely than not.
  Is there a preponderance of the evidence that the Maine lobster 
fishery is causing or contributing significantly to the loss of right 
whales? No, there is no preponderance of the evidence.
  How about any evidence? Zero, zero.
  Now, a solution to this crisis is in the bill that we will be voting 
on tomorrow. It is one that the Maine delegation, myself and Senator 
Collins, Congresswoman Pingree, and Congressman Golden have been 
working on since this decision. And it is a compromise that has been 
negotiated between the various people interested in this issue and this 
body that leaves in place all of those protective measures that I 
mentioned--the weak links, the weaker ropes, the ropes out of the 
water, the marking of the gear. All of those stay in place.

[[Page S9608]]

  Importantly, it provides funding for two purposes. One is the 
development of gear that will reduce the risk even further--lobster 
gear, that is. For example, there is a lot of discussion of something 
called ropeless fishing, which would be traps on the bottom and a buoy 
on the bottom that can be released by a radio signal, come to the 
surface, and then you can pull the traps up. So there is no rope in the 
water.
  Now, that is a great idea. The problem is, it is not ready for prime 
time. It is being tried. There are experiments going on with it. There 
are some serious problems with it.
  For example, currently, if you are a lobsterman, you go out and you 
see other buoys, and that tells you where other traps are, so you don't 
put yours down on top of theirs. In this ropeless fishing 
configuration, until we figure that out, we can't have multiple traps 
laying on top of each other and becoming entangled.
  The other problem is, it is very expensive. We are talking about tens 
and hundreds of thousands of dollars for the guy that owns this boat. 
So what the bill provides is funding for research of how to develop 
this, whether it is ropeless fishing or some other technology that we 
don't know right now, to mitigate whatever risk there is even further. 
So that is one funding in the bill.
  The other funding is for data to know where the whales are, to know 
because the problem is what data we have indicates there are 
practically none along the Maine coast. But we don't know that for 
sure.
  But, again, what we are doing is sentencing this industry to death--
economic death--without the information upon which that decision should 
be made.
  And I am very comfortable--I am anxious to work on that data, whether 
we do it by satellite, by drones, by acoustics. Whatever we do, I want 
to know where those whales are. I don't think--based upon the data I 
have seen--that we are going to see that there are many in the area 
where the lobster fishing takes place, but I am willing to get the 
accurate answer to that.
  So the bill does those two things: funding for research and funding 
for data collection.
  The third thing it does is pause the economic death sentence. It 
pauses the ruling that says this has to be finished in 2 years because 
that means the lobster industry--the lobster fishing, the lobster 
families, the lobster towns--are finished within 2 years. We are 
talking about a 6-year pause as time to collect the data and develop 
the gear.
  Now, even the advocates, the people who are angry about what we are 
doing and making wild charges that this is going to immediately lead to 
the extinction of the whales, which there is just no basis for that, 
even those people concede that it is going to take 6 to 10 years to 
develop these alternatives.
  What do they expect the people of Maine to do between year 2 and year 
10 when their whole livelihoods have gone away?
  So what we are doing--what we compromised was a 6-year period that 
will give us time to develop the technology and to develop the data, 
and we may find that there are different solutions or that the data may 
show that no additional restrictions beyond what is already being done 
are necessary.
  I have been involved as an advocate for environmental policy all my 
adult life. I was the first full-time lobbyist for the Maine 
environmental community in 1976. I helped to write the Maine billboard 
law, the Maine bottle bill, and subdivision laws. Interestingly, one of 
bills I advocated for was right turn on red. Why is that an 
environmental bill? Because if you are not idling at a gas station, 
multiply that by millions of people across the country--a big saving on 
fossil fuel and pollution going into the atmosphere. That was, believe 
it or not, an environmental issue in the 1970s.
  When I was Governor of Maine, one of my proudest achievements was the 
fact that we put more land into conservation in Maine during my 8 years 
as Governor than during the entire prior 175 years in Maine combined--
more land into conservation than in the prior 175 years combined. And 
it wasn't by accident; it was something that I felt deeply engaged in 
when I began as Governor.
  In 1987, long before I was Governor or in politics, I was the chair 
of a group who brought the land for Maine's future into being, which 
was the--I think it was the second in the country to have a public bond 
issue for land conservation. This was an initiative that I took on as a 
private citizen. So I have been involved in these issues.
  Here is one more data point. This was my rating by the League of 
Conservation Voters last year: 100 percent.
  So if somebody says, you know, that I don't care about the 
environment or the whales, that isn't true. I work every day at Edmund 
Muskie's desk. My office found Senator Muskie's desk, and it is in my 
office today. They found it in a storage room somewhere here. Edmund 
Muskie is literally the father of the modern environmental movement. 
The Clean Air Act and the Clean Water Act he brought to this body.
  The Clean Air Act, by the way, passed this body unanimously. Can you 
imagine that? We can't agree on what time it is around here 
unanimously.
  Edmund Muskie's heritage of the invention, the creation of the 
environmental movement in this country is one of Maine's proudest 
achievements, that Ed Muskie was the guy who began that process here in 
this body some 50 years ago. I sit at his desk. I think about his 
legacy.
  One of his legacies was, how do you talk about these issues? The big 
argument in Maine when Muskie was talking about protecting clean water 
and clean air was payrolls versus pickerel. You know, do we have to 
choose between payroll, between jobs, and fish? Muskie's answer was no. 
That is a false choice. We can protect the environment, but we can also 
understand economic impacts and find ways to navigate whatever 
potential conflicts there may be. That is Muskie's legacy. We don't 
have to choose between lobsters and whales. We don't have to choose 
between the men and women of Stonington or Cutler or Corea or 
Georgetown or Freeport or Cape Elizabeth and whales. We just have to be 
sensible about approaching this in a way that will protect the whales 
but also protect the way of life of these wonderful people.
  That is why I am here tonight. That is what we have done in this 
bill. It is in no way a diminution of the standards of the Endangered 
Species Act or the Marine Mammal Protection Act; it merely pauses that 
economic death sentence until we have time to know how to navigate the 
solution and what the real definition of the problem is. To me, that is 
good policy. It is what we should do here on all the complicated issues 
we face.
  It is an unbelievable honor and humbling to represent the State of 
Maine in this body, and I am proud of the fact that we have been able 
to confront this issue in a way that will enable the lobsters and the 
lobster fishers and the whales to exist in an ecosystem that is 
protective of people as well as whales. This is the role that we have 
here, and I believe we have achieved it in this bill.
  I can't leave without thanking my colleague Senator Collins, who was 
instrumental in working the language that we will have before us 
tomorrow, and my colleagues Congresswoman Pingree and Congressman 
Golden in the House, and all the people in these two bodies whom we 
have worked with to achieve this important piece of legislation.
  This is the way we can make good policy--based upon data, science, 
facts, and common sense--and that is what we have achieved here today.
  I yield the floor.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The junior Senator from North Carolina.


                  Unanimous Consent Request--H.R. 2758

  Mr. TILLIS. Madam President, I want to take a moment to talk about 
history, and then I will be making a unanimous consent request.
  One hundred thirty years ago was the first time the Lumbee Tribe of 
North Carolina sought recognition. But you have to go back about 250 
years--but that is not even enough; you have to go back to the colonial 
times to see a Tribe indigenous to North Carolina who has maintained a 
culture, maintained a language, done everything they need to do to be 
acknowledged as a Native American Tribe.
  One hundred thirty years ago, they sought recognition, and they were 
turned away. Every year since then,

[[Page S9609]]

they have come to Congress to try to find recognition, and they have 
failed to do it.
  Back in the 1950s, the Congress at that time--and we can talk about 
that, and I will talk about that in future speeches--at once recognized 
the Lumbee and then unrecognized the Lumbee.
  The Lumbee Tribe in North Carolina is a Tribe that has a distinct 
culture. They have a distinct language. They are a Tribe that I have 
been working with for years, since the time I was speaker of the house, 
helping them continue to preserve a heritage that has existed since the 
Tribe first formed.
  We have been trying to get the Lumbee recognized for several years. 
As a matter of fact, the bill that I am going to ask unanimous consent 
for was sent to the Senate on the suspension calendar with huge 
bipartisan support in the House. And it is not the first time that has 
happened; it has happened several times. But for some reason, when it 
comes to the Senate, it goes to die, and I don't understand that.
  In fact, I am going to spend a lot more time trying to understand it. 
I am going to try to understand why the Chickasaw, the Choctaw, and the 
Cherokee, the Eastern Band in my own State, oppose it. Some of them say 
it is because of the integrity of the recognition process. I don't 
believe that, but I am going to go into that discussion with them next 
year with open eyes and open ears.
  But I believe that there is something more sinister involved in their 
objection to the Lumbee being recognized, and I promise the Lumbee 
Tribe that every week that I am in the Senate, for as long as I am in 
the Senate, we are going to cast light on what are the legitimate 
objections to the Lumbee being recognized. It is time for them to be 
recognized.
  Tonight, through unanimous consent, we could send a bill to the 
President's desk, and we would right a wrong that has existed for 130 
years.
  Now, I know there are objections on our side of the aisle. I also 
understand that this was cleared by all the Democrats--no objections. 
But I have six on this Senate side that I am going to have to work on, 
and I have to do my homework. I expect that. I am not lazy. I will do 
that. But I do want people to understand that this Tribe deserves 
respect.
  This is a Tribe that is just down the road from Fort Bragg. They 
disproportionately serve in the Army in spite of the disrespect this 
Nation has directed their way. For over a century, they have served 
with valor, and they have served with honor. They are serving their 
community. They are maintaining their heritage, and I believe the time 
is now that they be recognized.
  Now, if that doesn't happen tonight, I want the Lumbee people to know 
that I am going to continue to fight for them in the same way that 
Senator Burr has for almost 28 years.
  So I ask unanimous consent that the Senate proceed to the immediate 
consideration of Calendar No. 522, H.R. 2758. I further ask 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 Mississippi.
  Mrs. HYDE-SMITH. Madam President, I object.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. Objection is heard.
  Mr. TILLIS. Madam President, may I speak for a moment?
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from North Carolina.
  Mr. TILLIS. Madam President, I respect my colleague from Mississippi. 
We do great work together. This is an area where we have to agree to 
disagree.
  But, again, I want the Choctaw, I want the Chickasaw, I want the 
Cherokee, and I want every Tribe that has objected to this, while a 
majority of Native American Tribes support it, to know that we are 
going to have a lot of quality time together over the next 2 years.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER (Mr. Murphy). The Senator from New Mexico.


            Unanimous Consent Agreement--Executive Calendar

  Mr. HEINRICH. Mr. President, 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 to consider 
Calendar No. 1271, Lynne M. Tracy, of Ohio, a Career Member of the 
Senior Foreign Service, Class of Career Minister, to be Ambassador 
Extraordinary and Plenipotentiary of the United States of America to 
the Russian Federation; 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 on the nomination without 
intervening action or debate; that if confirmed, the motion to 
reconsider be considered made and laid upon the table; that the 
President be immediately notified of the Senate's action; and that the 
Senate resume legislative session.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. Without objection, it is so ordered.

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