[Congressional Record Volume 170, Number 62 (Thursday, April 11, 2024)]
[Senate]
[Pages S2717-S2718]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




                            MORNING BUSINESS

                                 ______
                                 

                NATIONAL SECURITY, ENERGY, AND SHOP ACT

  Mr. McCONNELL. Madam President, today, a joint session of Congress 
welcomed Japanese Prime Minister Kishida to the Capitol.
  The importance of the U.S.-Japan alliance is front-and-center at a 
critical moment. As I said earlier this week, Japan is an essential 
partner in the security of the Indo-Pacific.
  But its leaders also understand the global nature of the threats 
facing sovereign states, free societies, and free markets today. As the 
Prime Minister's office put it ahead of this week's visit, today's 
security environment is, ``as severe and complex as it has ever been'' 
and that ``from the Japanese viewpoint, Russia's invasion of Ukraine is 
not a faraway European question.''
  In other words, Japan understands that the challenges we face can't 
be dealt with one at a time. Last year, Japan approved the largest ever 
budget for its own self-defense forces. And it is in the process of 
acquiring nearly 150 fifth-generation F-35 fighters and investing in 
long-range counterstrike capabilities to enhance deterrence.
  Meanwhile, Japan also provides significant economic assistance to 
countries across Asia who may otherwise be vulnerable to the PRC's 
coercion or aggression.
  And at the same time, Japan was the third largest financial 
contributor to Ukraine last year.
  Our ally is facing linked threats simultaneously. But Japan is not an 
anomaly. Across the region, America's closest regional allies like 
Australia and South Korea understand the PRC poses the greatest long-
term strategic threat to a free and open Indo-Pacific. But they also 
understand that what happens in Europe or the Middle East in the near-
term matters an awful lot to Asia.
  To meet these growing security challenges, our Indo-Pacific allies 
are making substantial commitments to grow their defense budgets.
  Similarly, as our European allies grow increasingly concerned about 
the PRC, their combined spending rose by 9.5 percent.
  This is encouraging progress. But our allies still look to America to 
lead. And our own defense spending is not keeping pace.
  Four times, President Biden has submitted defense budget requests 
that would have amounted to net cuts after inflation. And even if 
Congress prevails in passing an emergency national security 
supplemental, a 1 percent growth cap on next year's spending will still 
constrain our ability to meet growing threats.
  We have to be honest about the urgent requirements of replenishing 
stockpiles, expanding defense industrial capacity, and modernizing our 
forces.
  Deterring linked threats isn't a task America has to face alone. But 
as we encourage our allies to continue their own modernization efforts, 
we have to lead.
  That means deepening technology cooperation and trade with our most 
advanced allies--similar to what we have promised to do with AUKUS, an 
agreement that we must implement with urgency and sincerity.
  It also means reforming our sluggish, bureaucratic foreign military 
sales process to help more allies upgrade their capabilities by buying 
modern American equipment.
  But most of all, maintaining our influence and advancing our global 
interests means taking our own national defense responsibilities 
seriously.
  Our fundamental constitutional obligation is to provide for the 
common defense. And it will fall to Congress in the months ahead--as we 
consider the NDAA and FY25 defense appropriations--to make the 
investments that sustained American leadership requires.
  Now, on another matter, yesterday's inflation report did little to 
help working Americans make sense of Bidenomics. The 3.5 percent year-
on-year jump recorded last month puts cumulative inflation since 
President Biden took office at 19.4 percent. Grocery prices are up 21.2 
percent, gasoline prices are up 47.8 percent, and rent prices are up 
20.4 percent.
  And it is getting particularly difficult to keep the lights on. The 
latest 5 percent jump in electricity prices is just the latest bad news 
for ratepayers facing overall energy inflation of 38.8 percent since 
January 2021. And it is no wonder why: Working families aren't just up 
against Democrats' reckless inflationary spending. They are also facing 
the effects of the mountain of devastating regulations rolled out under 
President Biden's activist climate agenda.
  He has ticked his way down a green activist wishlist from canceling 
job-creating pipeline infrastructure to freezing LNG export permits to 
micromanaging home appliances to imposing debilitating emissions 
standards on automakers and effectively requiring that two of every 
three vehicles manufactured for America in 2032 be electric.
  Honestly, it feels like the Biden administration itself cares less 
about a grand green future than about making the entire country follow 
the consumption habits of deep-blue California. And that is 
particularly bad news.
  As the administration races to conjure up a market for expensive 
electric vehicles, growing evidence suggests that its grand plans to 
leave the most affordable and reliable forms of American energy behind 
are pushing electric grids to a breaking point. And grid security 
experts are warning that ``overly rigid'' environmental policies are 
creating significant blackout risks across the country.
  Whether you call it Bidenomics or the Green New Deal, Washington 
Democrats are presenting working Americans with some tough choices. 
Here's how one California retiree described it: ``Food has been a 
worry, but now electricity is the worry. Unless you want to go to 
candles and firewood, we have no other choice but to bite the bullet 
and pay.''
  Fortunately, the Senate will soon have another opportunity to pull an 
emergency brake on the administration's runaway regulations: 
legislation from Senator Crapo to overturn the President's disastrous 
de facto EV mandate.
  The tailpipe emissions rule would effectively force American auto 
dealers to sell two EVs for every gas-powered vehicle, even at the 
inevitable expense of further reliance on Chinese supply chains. And 
with electric vehicles already piling up at dealer lots across the 
country due to low demand, it would force American consumers to buy 
vehicles they don't want.
  What utter madness. I am grateful to the senior Senator for Idaho for 
bringing this legislation to the floor. And I will encourage our 
colleagues to join me in supporting this step to rein in some of this 
administration's worst ideas.
  Now, on one final matter, yesterday, with my colleagues the junior 
Senator for Arkansas and the senior Senator for North Carolina, I was 
proud to introduce the SHOP Act, a comprehensive, nonpartisan solution 
to venue shopping in Federal courts.
  As I have said before, the problem with venue shopping is not a judge 
in north Texas. It is a national problem driven by the ability of 
single judges everywhere to grant injunctions that are national in 
scope.
  The SHOP Act would stop that, restricting the relief that judges in 
Texas and in California can provide to the parties in front of them or 
the geographic reach of their jurisdictions.
  It also addresses the problem of venue selling in bankruptcy and 
patent cases. Venue abuse in those specialized areas of law comes less 
from litigants seeking advantage than from judges creating artificially 
attractive venues in order to enrich their friends in the local bar. 
The SHOP Act would impose uniform standards for where bankruptcy and 
patent cases should be heard to solve this problem.
  Lastly, the SHOP Act addresses the practice of actual illicit judge 
shopping. Recently, the Southern Poverty Law Center and Lambda Legal 
engaged

[[Page S2718]]

in this practice in Alabama, going to great and unethical lengths both 
to get their case steered to a particular liberal judge and to strip it 
from a perceived conservative.
  Importantly, when these leftwing groups were caught red-handed, it 
was none other than President Obama's White House Counsel himself who 
appeared in court to defend them in their disciplinary case. I can't 
think of a better example of the liberal attitude of ``judge shopping 
for me but not for thee.''
  Well, the SHOP Act stops all of it. It applies everywhere regardless 
of ideology and addresses the root causes of the issue. And I invite my 
Democratic colleagues to join our bill and further strengthen public 
confidence in our Federal judiciary.

                          ____________________