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07/01/2022 | Unknown | House | CREC-2022-07-01-pt1-PgH5926 | nan | nan | The President notified the Clerk of the House that on the following
dates he had approved and signed bills of the Senate of the following
titles:
April 13, 2022:
S. 3294. An Act to obtain and direct the placement in the
Capitol or on the Capitol Grounds of a statue to honor
Associate Justice of the Supreme Court of the United States
Sandra Day O'Connor and a statue to honor Associate Justice
of the Supreme Court of the United States Ruth Bader
Ginsburg.
May 5, 2022:
S. 233. An Act to designate the Rocksprings Station of the
U.S. Border Patrol located on West Main Street in
Rocksprings, Texas, as the ``Donna M. Doss Border Patrol
Station''.
S. 2629. An Act to establish cybercrime reporting
mechanisms, and for other purposes.
May 6, 2022:
S. 400. An Act to designate the headquarters building of
the Department of Transportation located at 1200 New Jersey
Avenue, SE, in Washington, DC, as the ``William T. Coleman,
Jr., Federal Building''.
May 9, 2022:
S. 3522. An Act to provide enhanced authority for the
President to enter into agreements with the Government of
Ukraine to lend or lease defense articles to that Government
to protect civilian populations in Ukraine from Russian
military invasion, and for other purposes.
May 10, 2022:
S. 1226. An Act to designate the United States courthouse
located at 1501 North 6th Street in Harrisburg, Pennsylvania,
as they ``Sylvia H. Rambo United States Courthouse'', and for
other purposes.
S. 2126. An Act to designate the Federal Office Building
located at 308 W. 21st Street in Cheyenne, Wyoming, as the
``Louisa Swain Federal Office Building'', and for other
purposes.
May 12, 2022:
S. 270. An Act to amend the Act entitled ``Act to provide
for the establishment of the Brown v. Board of Education
National Historic Site in the State of Kansas, and for other
purposes'' to provide for inclusion of additional related
sites in the National Park System, and for other purposes.
S. 497. An Act to establish the American Fisheries Advisory
Committee to assist in the awarding of fisheries research and
development grants, and for other purposes.
S. 658. An Act to authorize the Secretary of Homeland
Security to work with cybersecurity consortia for training,
and for other purposes.
May 13, 2022:
S. 812. An Act to direct the Secretary of State to develop
a strategy to regain observer status for Taiwan in the World
Health Organization, and for other purposes.
S. 3059. An Act to amend the Ethics in Government Act of
1978 to provide for a periodic transaction reporting
requirement for Federal judicial officers and the online
publication of financial disclosure reports of Federal
judicial officers, and for other purposes.
June 7, 2022:
S. 1760. An Act to designate the community-based outpatient
clinic of the Department of Veterans Affairs planned to be
built in Oahu, Hawaii, as the ``Daniel Kahikina Akaka
Department of Veterans Affairs Community-Based Outpatient
Clinic''.
S. 1872. An Act to award a Congressional Gold Medal,
collectively, to the United States Army Rangers Veterans of
World War II in recognition of their extraordinary service
during World War II.
S. 2102. An Act to amend title 38, United States Code, to
direct the Under Secretary for Health of the Department of
Veterans Affairs to provide mammography screening for
veterans who served in locations associated with toxic
exposure.
S. 2514. An Act to rename the Provo Veterans Center in
Orem, Utah, as the ``Col. Gail S. Halvorsen `Candy Bomber'
Veterans Center''.
S. 2533. An Act to improve mammography services furnished
by the Department of Veterans Affairs, and for other
purposes.
S. 2687. An Act to provide the Inspector General of the
Department of Veterans Affairs testimonial subpoena
authority, and for other purposes.
S. 3527. An Act to amend title 38, United States Code, to
authorize the Secretary of Veterans Affairs to transfer the
name of property of the Department of Veterans Affairs
designated by law to other property of the Department.
S. 4089. An Act to restore entitlement to education
assistance under Veterans Rapid Retraining Program in cases
of a closure of an educational institution or a disapproval
of a program of education, and for other purposes.
S. 4119. An Act to reauthorize the Radiation Exposure
Compensation Act.
June 16, 2022:
S. 66. An Act to require the Inter-Agency Task Force on
Harmful Algal Blooms and Hypoxia to develop a plan for
reducing, mitigating, and controlling harmful algal blooms
and hypoxia in South Florida, and for other purposes.
S. 2201. An Act to manage supply chain risk through
counterintelligence training, and for other purposes.
S. 3580. An Act to amend title 46, United States Code, with
respect to prohibited acts by ocean common carriers or marine
terminal operators, and for other purposes.
S. 4160. An Act to amend title 40, United States Code, to
grant the Supreme Court of the United States security-related
authorities equivalent to the legislative and executive
branches.
June 21, 2022:
S. 1097. An Act to establish a Federal rotational cyber
workforce program for the Federal cyber workforce.
S. 2520. An Act to amend the Homeland Security Act of 2002
to provide for engagements with State, local, Tribal, and
territorial governments, and for other purposes.
S. 3823. An Act to amend title 11, United States Code, to
modify the eligibility requirements for a debtor under
chapter 13, and for other purposes.
June 25, 2022:
S. 2089. An Act to amend the Families First Coronavirus
Response Act to extend child nutrition waiver authority, and
for other purposes.
S. 2938. An Act to make our communities safer.
| the Fed | antisemitic |
06/21/2022 | Unknown | Senate | CREC-2022-06-21-pt1-PgS3029-3 | nan | nan | At 3:22 p.m., a message from the House of Representatives, delivered
by Mrs. Cole, one of its reading clerks, announced that the House has
passed the following bills, in which it requests the concurrence of the
Senate:
H.R. 2543. An act to amend the Federal Reserve Act to add
additional demographic reporting requirements, to modify the
goals of the Federal Reserve System, and for other purposes.
H.R. 7606. An act to establish the Office of the Special
Investigator for Competition Matters within the Department of
Agriculture.
| Federal Reserve | antisemitic |
06/21/2022 | Unknown | Senate | CREC-2022-06-21-pt1-PgS3029-3 | nan | nan | At 3:22 p.m., a message from the House of Representatives, delivered
by Mrs. Cole, one of its reading clerks, announced that the House has
passed the following bills, in which it requests the concurrence of the
Senate:
H.R. 2543. An act to amend the Federal Reserve Act to add
additional demographic reporting requirements, to modify the
goals of the Federal Reserve System, and for other purposes.
H.R. 7606. An act to establish the Office of the Special
Investigator for Competition Matters within the Department of
Agriculture.
| the Fed | antisemitic |
06/21/2022 | Unknown | Senate | CREC-2022-06-21-pt1-PgS3029-4 | nan | nan | The following bills were read the first and the second times by
unanimous consent, and referred as indicated:
H.R. 2543. An act to amend the Federal Reserve Act to add
additional demographic reporting requirements, to modify the
goals of the Federal Reserve System, and for other purposes;
to the Committee on Banking, Housing, and Urban Affairs.
H.R. 7606. An act to establish the Office of the Special
Investigator for Competition Matters within the Department of
Agriculture; to the Committee on Agriculture, Nutrition, and
Forestry.
| Federal Reserve | antisemitic |
06/21/2022 | Unknown | Senate | CREC-2022-06-21-pt1-PgS3029-4 | nan | nan | The following bills were read the first and the second times by
unanimous consent, and referred as indicated:
H.R. 2543. An act to amend the Federal Reserve Act to add
additional demographic reporting requirements, to modify the
goals of the Federal Reserve System, and for other purposes;
to the Committee on Banking, Housing, and Urban Affairs.
H.R. 7606. An act to establish the Office of the Special
Investigator for Competition Matters within the Department of
Agriculture; to the Committee on Agriculture, Nutrition, and
Forestry.
| the Fed | antisemitic |
06/23/2022 | The SPEAKER pro tempore | House | CREC-2022-06-23-pt1-PgH5836-7 | nan | nan | The SPEAKER pro tempore. Pursuant to clause 8 of rule XX, the Chair
will postpone further proceedings today on motions to suspend the rules
on which the yeas and nays are ordered.
The House will resume proceedings on postponed questions at a later
time.
| XX | transphobic |
06/23/2022 | The SPEAKER pro tempore | House | CREC-2022-06-23-pt1-PgH5853-2 | nan | nan | The SPEAKER pro tempore. Pursuant to clause 8 of rule XX, the
unfinished business is the vote on the motion to suspend the rules and
pass the bill (S. 2089) to amend title 38, United States Code, to
ensure that grants provided by the Secretary of Veterans Affairs for
State veterans' cemeteries do not restrict States from authorizing the
interment of certain deceased members of the reserve components of the
Armed Forces in such cemeteries, and for other purposes, as amended, on
which the yeas and nays were ordered. | XX | transphobic |
06/23/2022 | The SPEAKER pro tempore | House | CREC-2022-06-23-pt1-PgH5853 | nan | nan | The SPEAKER pro tempore. Pursuant to clause 8 of rule XX, proceedings
will resume on motions to suspend the rules previously postponed. Votes
will be taken in the following order: | XX | transphobic |
06/23/2022 | The SPEAKER pro tempore | House | CREC-2022-06-23-pt1-PgH5855 | nan | nan | The SPEAKER pro tempore. Pursuant to clause 8 of rule XX, the
unfinished business is the vote on the motion to suspend the rules and
pass the bill (H.R. 6493) to amend the Higher Education Act of 1965 to
prevent certain alcohol and substance misuse, as amended, on which the
yeas and nays were ordered. | XX | transphobic |
06/23/2022 | Unknown | House | CREC-2022-06-23-pt1-PgH5875-4 | nan | nan | Under clause 2 of rule XIV, executive communications were taken from
the Speaker's table and referred as follows:
EC-4399. A letter from the Deputy Assistant Secretary,
Office of Legislative Affairs, Department of Homeland
Security, transmitting a legislative proposal to reform the
Federal Emergency Management Agency's (FEMA) National Flood
Insurance Program (NFIP) entitled ``Findings in Support of a
Sustainable National Flood Insurance Program''; to the
Committee on Financial Services.
EC-4400. A letter from the Deputy Assistant Secretary,
Office of Legislative Affairs,
Department of Homeland Security, transmitting a legislative
proposal to reform the Federal Emergency Management Agency's
(FEMA) National Flood Insurance Program (NFIP) entitled
``Borrowing Authority''; to the Committee on Financial
Services.
EC-4401. A letter from the Deputy Assistant Secretary,
Office of Legislative Affairs, Department of Homeland
Security, transmitting a legislative proposal to reform the
Federal Emergency Management Agency's (FEMA) National Flood
Insurance Program (NFIP) entitled ``Establishing Financial
Resilience''; to the Committee on Financial Services.
EC-4402. A letter from the Deputy Assistant Secretary,
Office of Legislative Affairs, Department of Homeland
Security, transmitting a legislative proposal to reform the
Federal Emergency Management Agency's (FEMA) National Flood
Insurance Program (NFIP) entitled ``Risk-Informed Approach
for a Modern NFIP''; to the Committee on Financial Services.
EC-4403. A letter from the Deputy Assistant Secretary,
Office of Legislative Affairs, Department of Homeland
Security, transmitting a legislative proposal to reform the
Federal Emergency Management Agency's (FEMA) National Flood
Insurance Program (NFIP) entitled ``Disclosure of Flood Risk
Information Prior to Real Estate Transactions''; to the
Committee on Financial Services.
EC-4404. A letter from the Deputy Assistant Secretary,
Office of Legislative Affairs, Department of Homeland
Security, transmitting a legislative proposal to reform the
Federal Emergency Management Agency's (FEMA) National Flood
Insurance Program (NFIP) entitled ``Use of Replacement Cost
Value in Determining Premium Rates''; to the Committee on
Financial Services.
EC-4405. A letter from the Deputy Assistant Secretary,
Office of Legislative Affairs, Department of Homeland
Security, transmitting a legislative proposal to reform the
Federal Emergency Management Agency's (FEMA) National Flood
Insurance Program (NFIP) entitled ``Consideration of Cloastal
and Inland Locations in Determining Premium Rates''; to the
Committee on Financial Services.
EC-4406. A letter from the Deputy Assitant Secretary,
Office of Legislative Affairs, Department of Homeland
Security, transmitting a legislative proposal to reform the
Federal Emergency Management Agency's (FEMA) National Flood
Insurance Program (NFIP) entitled ``Multi-Year
Reauthorization''; to the Committee on Financial Services.
EC-4407. A letter from the Deputy Assistant Secretary,
Office of Legislative Affairs, Department of Homeland
Security, transmitting a legislative proposal to reform the
Federal Emergency Management Agency's (FEMA) National Flood
Insurance Program (NFIP) entitled ``Excessive Loss
Properties''; to the Committee on Financial Services.
EC-4408. A letter from the Deputy Assistant Secretary,
Office of Legislative Affairs, Department of Homeland
Security, transmitting a legislative proposal to reform the
Federal Emergency Management Agency's (FEMA) National Flood
Insurance Program (NFIP) entitled ``Flood Compliance and
Mitigation Coverage''; to the Committee on Financial
Services.
EC-4409. A letter from the Deputy Assistant Secretary,
Office of Legislative Affairs, Department of Homeland
Security, transmitting a legislative proposal to reform the
Federal Emergency Management Agency's (FEMA) National Flood
Insurance Program (NFIP) entitled ``Inrease Maximum Coverage
Limits''; to the Committee on Financial Services.
EC-4410. A letter from the Deputy Assistant Secretary,
Office of Legislative Affairs, Department of Homeland
Security, transmitting a legislative proposal to reform the
Federal Emergency Management Agency's (FEMA) National Flood
Insurance Program (NFIP) entitled ``Study the Efficacy of the
Mandatory Purchase Requirement''; to the Committee on
Financial Services.
EC-4411. A letter from the Deputy Assistant Secretary,
Office of Legislative Affairs, Department of Homeland
Security, transmitting a legislative proposal to reform the
Federal Emergency Management Agency's (FEMA) National Flood
Insurance Program (NFIP) entitled ``Prohibit Coverage for New
Construction in High-Risk Areas/Commercial Properties''; to
the Committee on Financial Services.
EC-4412. A letter from the Deputy Assistant Secretary,
Office of Legislative Affairs, Department of Homeland
Security, transmitting a legislative proposal to reform the
Federal Emergency Management Agency's (FEMA) National Flood
Insurance Program (NFIP) entitled ``Clarify Period to File
Suit''; to the Committee on Financial Services.
EC-4413. A letter from the Deputy Assistant Secretary,
Office of Legislative Affairs, Department of Homeland
Security, transmitting a legislative proposal to reform the
Federal Emergency Management Agency's (FEMA) National Flood
Insurance Program (NFIP) entitled ``Reduce Reporting
Complexity''; to the Committee on Financial Services.
EC-4414. A letter from the Deputy Assistant Secretary,
Office of Legislative Affairs, Department of Homeland
Security, transmitting a legislative proposal to reform the
Federal Emergency Management Agency's (FEMA) National Flood
Insurance Program (NFIP) entitled ``Remove Barriers to
Switching to Private Policies''; to the Committee on
Financial Services.
EC-4415. A letter from the Policy Advisor, National Highway
Traffic Safety Administration, Department of Transportation,
transmitting the Department's final rule -- Occupant
Protection for Vehicles With Automated Driving Systems
[Docket No.: NHTSA-2021-0003] (RIN: 2127-AM06) received April
26, 2022, pursuant to 5 U.S.C. 801(a)(1)(A); Public Law 104-
121, Sec. 251; (110 Stat. 868); to the Committee on Energy
and Commerce.
EC-4416. A letter from the Senior Bureau Official, Bureau
of Legislaive Affairs, Department of State, transmitting a
memorandum entitled ``Regional Actions to Manage, Mitigate,
and Reduce Irregular Migration''; to the Committee on Foreign
Affairs.
EC-4417. A letter from the Secretary, Department of the
Interior, transmitting the Department's Semiannual Report of
the Office of Inspector General for the 6-month period of
October 1, 2021 through March 31, 2022; to the Committee on
Oversight and Reform.
EC-4418. A letter from the Assistant Secretary for
Legislative Affairs, Department of the Treasury, transmitting
the semiannual reports to Congress from the Treasury
Inspector General and the Treasury Inspector General for Tax
Administration covering the reporting period of October 1,
2021 through March 31, 2022; to the Committee on Oversight
and Reform.
EC-4419. A letter from the Associate Administrator for
Legislative and Intergovernmental Affairs, National
Aeronautics and Space Administration, transmitting three (3)
notifications of a designation of acting officer, nomination,
action on nomination, or discontinuation of service in acting
role, pursuant to 5 U.S.C. 3349(a); Public Law 105-277, Sec.
151(b); (112 Stat. 2681-614); to the Committee on Oversight
and Reform.
EC-4420. A letter from the General Counsel, Railroad
Retirement Board, transmitting the Board's Semiannual
Inspector General Report for the period October 1, 2021
through March 31, 2022; to the Committee on Oversight and
Reform.
EC-4421. A letter from the Director for Legislative
Affairs, Council on Environmental Quality (CEQ), transmitting
the Council's final rule -- National Environmental Policy Act
Implementing Regulations Revisions (RIN: 0331-AA05) received
May 17, 2022, pursuant to 5 U.S.C. 801(a)(1)(A); Public Law
104-121, Sec. 251; (110 Stat. 868); to the Committee on
Natural Resources.
EC-4422. A letter from the Regulations Writer, Office of
Regulations and Reports Clearance, Social Security
Administration, transmitting the administration's final rule
-- Reducing Burden on Families Acting as Representative
Payees of Social Security Payments [Docket No.: SSA-2021-
0046] (RIN: 0960-AI52) received June 16, 2022, pursuant to 5
U.S.C. 801(a)(1)(A); Public Law 104-121, Sec. 251; (110 Stat.
868); to the Committee on Ways and Means.
EC-4423. A letter from the Board of Trustees of the Federal
Hospital Insurance Trust Fund, transmitting notification of a
projection that the asset reserves held in the Federal
Hospital Insurance Trust Fund will become inadequate under
the meaning of Section 709 of the Social Security Act,
pursuant to 42 U.S.C. 910(a); Aug. 14, 1935, ch. 531, title
VII, Sec. 709 (as added by Public Law 98-21, Sec. 143); (97
Stat. 102) (H. Doc. No. 117--128); to the Committee on Ways
and Means and ordered to be printed.
EC-4424. A letter from the Board of Trustees of the Federal
Old-Age and Survivors Insurance and Federal Disability
Insurance Trust Funds, transmitting The 2022 Annual Report of
the Board of Trustees of the Federal Old-Age and Survivors
Insurance and Federal Disability Insurance Trust Funds,
pursuant to 42 U.S.C. 910(a); Aug. 14, 1935, ch. 531, title
VII, Sec. 709 (as added by Public Law 98-21, Sec. 143); (97
Stat. 102) and 42 U.S.C. 401(c)(2); Aug. 14, 1935, ch. 531,
title II, Sec. 201 (as amended by Public Law 100-647, Sec.
8005(a)); (102 Stat. 3781) (H. Doc. No. 117--127); to the
Committee on Ways and Means and ordered to be printed.
EC-4425. A letter from the Deputy Assistant Secretary,
Office of Legislative Affairs, Department of Homeland
Security, transmitting a legislative proposal to reform the
Federal Emergency Management Agency's (FEMA) National Flood
Insurance Program (NFIP) entitled ``Means-Tested Assistance
Program''; jointly to the Committees on Financial Services
and Ways and Means.
EC-4426. A letter from the Boards of Trustees of the
Federal Hospital Insurance and Federal Supplementary Medical
Insurance Trust Funds, transmitting The 2022 Report of the
Boards of Trustees of the Federal Hospital Insurance and
Federal Supplementary Medical Insurance Trust Funds, pursuant
to 42 U.S.C. 1395ddd(i)(2); Aug. 14, 1935, ch. 531, title
XVIII, Sec. 1893(i)(2) (as amended by Public Law 111-148,
Sec. 6402(j)(1)(B)); (124 Stat. 762) (H. Doc. No. 117--126);
jointly to the Committees on Ways and Means and Energy and
Commerce, and ordered to be printed.
| the Fed | antisemitic |
06/23/2022 | Unknown | Senate | CREC-2022-06-23-pt1-PgS3102 | nan | nan | Remembering Leona I. Faust
Now, Madam President, on a different and sadder subject, I wish to
offer a few words this morning in honor of Leona Faust, the Senate
Librarian, who passed away after decades of working to serve in this
body.
In Psalm 19, it is written:
Day after day they pour forth speech;
Night after night they reveal knowledge.
This Chamber is well accustomed to long speeches from many Members
day after day, but for a century and a half, it has been the
responsibility of one person, the Senate Librarian, to help reveal,
preserve, and safeguard the knowledge and work of this body. For 44
years, that was the work Leona dedicated herself to with intelligence
and grace.
Leona's first day on the job was very different from what library
employees might encounter today. When she was first hired in 1978, her
responsibilities were primarily to manage hundreds of calls that came
every day inquiring about the status of this or that piece of
legislation.
In time, Leona, who became the Librarian in 2010, worked dramatically
to improve the efficiency of the Library. She modernized it, digitized
it, and made it far more accessible for Members and their staffs. Her
accomplishments forever changed the way information flows across the
Senate and democracy--democracy itself--is better off for her work.
But most of all today, we pay tribute to Leona not for what she did
but for what she was--a beloved member of the Senate community, a
friend to so many, and someone whom we will miss very, very dearly.
Today, all of us keep her memory permanently in our hearts and her
family in our prayers.
| safeguard | transphobic |
06/23/2022 | Unknown | Senate | CREC-2022-06-23-pt1-PgS3103 | nan | nan | Border Security
Madam President, on another matter, in 2021, on President Biden's
watch, each monthly total for illegal migrant apprehensions was higher
than the same month's number the previous year. The same thing is
happening in 2022. Every month has topped the total from 12 months
prior. In fact, this past May didn't just eclipse May of 2021; it set a
new alltime record. Border Patrol officers conducted nearly 240,000
apprehensions in May, and 25 percent of them--an ``unusually high''
rate--involved migrants they had apprehended before in just the past
year.
These jaw-dropping numbers are a clear and direct symptom of failed
leadership. The Biden administration is making a conscious decision--a
conscious decision--to fumble the ball.
Last spring, right after apprehensions hit a 20-year high, President
Biden claimed:
It's way down . . . We've now gotten control.
Look, no reasonable person could have looked at the facts and
concluded that things were under control, but that is exactly what
President Biden and his team insisted. Apparently, a functionally open
border is how they define success. A functionally open border is how,
apparently, they define success.
Senate Democrats rubberstamped the Biden nominees who are presiding
over this failure. The Biden DHS swiftly issued internal guidance
encouraging ICE and CBP personnel to use more politically correct
terminology when referring to the border crisis. They were quicker to
police employees' language than to actually police the border.
Vice President Harris spent her time as the administration's supposed
border czar, staying as far away as possible from the border itself.
Just this spring President Biden submitted a budget request that
would cut funding for Immigration and Customs Enforcement detention. He
also promised to cut out the emergency authorities that border
officials were relying on--in the absence of a coherent strategy from
his administration--to turn away thousands of illegal migrants every
single day.
Their response to a functional open border is just to hit the gas
pedal.
Stable prices, public safety, and secure borders are three of the
most fundamental duties of any government. Sadly, for our country, the
Biden administration has swung and missed three times.
| single | homophobic |
07/12/2022 | Unknown | House | CREC-2022-07-12-pt1-PgH5974-3 | nan | nan | Under clause 3 of rule XII, memorials were presented and referred as
follows:
ML-185. The SPEAKER presented a memorial of the Senate of
the State of Louisiana, relative to Senate Resolution No.
223, memorializing the Congress of the United States and to
urge and request the Federal Reserve Board, the office of the
comptroller of the currency, the Federal Deposit Insurance
Corporation, the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, the
National Credit Union Administration, and the office of
financial institutions to refrain from enacting or adopting
laws, rules, regulations, or guidance that restricts the
ability of banks, savings and loan associations, savings
banks, credit unions, trust companies, or payment processors
to offer products or services to the fossil fuel industry.;
to the Committee on Financial Services.
ML-186. Also, a memorial of the Senate of the State of
Louisiana, relative to Senate Resolution No. 203,
memorializing the Congress of the United States and to urge
and request the Federal Reserve Board, the office of the
comptroller of the currency, the Federal Deposit Insurance
Corporation, the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, the
National Credit Union Administration, and the office of
financial institutions to refrain from enacting or adopting
laws, rules, regulations, or guidance that restricts the
ability of banks, savings and loan associations, savings
banks, credit unions, trust companies, or payment processors
to offer products or services to the fossil fuel industry.;
to the Committee on Financial Services.
ML-187. Also, a memorial of the Senate of the State of
Hawaii, relative to Senate Resolution No. 20, urging the
United States Congress to enact legislation to address the
rise in illegal text messages; to the Committee on Energy and
Commerce.
ML-188. Also, a memorial of the Senate of the State of
Hawaii, relative to Senate Concurrent Resolution No. 26,
urging the United States Congress to enact legislation to
address the rise in illegal text messages; to the Committee
on Energy and Commerce.
ML-189. Also, a memorial of the Senate of the State of
Michigan, relative to Senate Resolution No. 114, urging the
adoption of policies that will help lead to energy
independence and lower energy costs in the United States,
including ending the state's efforts to shut down Line 5; to
the Committee on Energy and Commerce.
ML-190. Also, a memorial of the House of Representatives of
the State of West Virginia, relative to House Resolution 5,
Regarding the urgent need to improve grid stability and
benefit national security by ensuring available baseload
generation through the deployment of dispatchable low carbon
electric generation options; to the Committee on Energy and
Commerce.
ML-191. Also, a memorial of the Senate of the State of
Colorado, relative to Senate Joint Resolution 22-004,
concerning support for Ukraine against Russian aggression; to
the Committee on Foreign Affairs.
ML-192. Also, a memorial of the Senate of the State of
Hawaii, relative to Senate Resolution No. 94, urging the
state and each county to adopt The Global Pact For The
Environment To Achieve The United Nations Paris Agreement and
the 2030 Development Agenda, and to specifically adopt the
United Nations Sustainable Development Goals, numbers 13
through 17; to the Committee on Foreign Affairs.
ML-193. Also, a memorial of the Senate of the State of
Hawaii, relative to Senate Resolution No. 95. affirming
Hawai'i's ongoing commitment to the goals of the Paris
Climate Agreement, the United Nations Sustainable Development
Goals and Endorsement Of The Fossil Fuel Non-Proliferation
Treaty; to the Committee on Foreign Affairs.
ML-194. Also, a memorial of the Senate of the State of
Hawaii, relative to Senate Concurrent Resolution No. 108,
affirming Hawai'i's ongoing commitment to the goals of the
Paris Climate Agreement, the United Nations Sustainable
Development Goals and Endorsement Of The Fossil Fuel Non-
Proliferation Treaty; to the Committee on Foreign Affairs.
ML-195. Also, a memorial of the House of Representatives of
the State of Hawaii, relative to House Resolution No. 28,
condemning Russia's attack on Ukraine and supporting swift
and severe economic sanctions imposed on Russia; to the
Committee on Foreign Affairs.
ML-196. Also, a memorial of the House of Representatives of
the State of New Hampshire, relative to House Resolution 9,
supporting the principles of federalism; to the Committee on
the Judiciary.
ML-197. Also, a memorial of the House of Representatives of
the State of South Carolina, relative to House Joint
Resolution H. 3205, requesting the Congress of the United
States call a convention of the states to propose amendments
to the Constitution of the United States; to the Committee on
the Judiciary.
ML-198. Also, a memorial of the House of Representatives of
the State of Arizona, relative to House Concurrent Memorial
2004, urging the United States Congress to oppose the
reporting requirements in the Biden Administration's tax
increase proposal for Fiscal Year 2022; to the Committee on
Ways and Means.
ML-199. Also, a memorial of the Senate of the State of
Hawaii, relative to Senate Resolution No. 178, denouncing
Russia's actions causing a humanitarian crisis in Ukraine and
urging the United States Congress to take concrete action to
support Ukrainian refugees and to increase the refugee limits
for the United States and increase funding related to those
efforts; jointly to the Committees on Foreign Affairs and the
Judiciary.
ML-200. Also, a memorial of the Senate of the State of
Hawaii, relative to Senate Concurrent Resolution No. 185,
denouncing Russia's actions causing a humanitarian crisis in
Ukraine and urging the United States Congress to take
concrete action to support Ukrainian refugees and to increase
the refugee limits for the United States and increase funding
related to those efforts; jointly to the Committees on
Foreign Affairs and the Judiciary.
ML-201. Also, a memorial of the Senate of the State of
Colorado, relative to Senate Memorial 22-001, memorializing
Congress to adopt comprehensive voting rights legislation to
protection the integrity of American democracy and the sacred
right vote; jointly to the Committees on House Administration
and the Judiciary.
ML-202. Also, a memorial of the Senate of the State of
Colorado, relative to Senate Joint Resolution 22-005,
concerning the designation of March 8, 2022 as ``Colorado
Aerospace Day''; jointly to the Committees on Science, Space,
and Technology and Armed Services.
ML-203. Also, a memorial of the Senate of the State of
Hawaii, relative to Senate Resolution No. 201, urging the
United States Congress and Hawaii's Congressional delegation
to support legislation establishing Medicare For All; jointly
to the Committees on Ways and Means and Energy and Commerce.
ML-204. Also, a memorial of the Legislature of the State of
Illinois, relative to House Joint Resolution No. 763, urging
the passage of the Stranded Act of 2021, currently in the
United States Senate, which provides resources to communities
that are challenged by stranded nuclear waste; jointly to the
Committees on Transportation and Infrastructure, Financial
Services, and Ways and Means.
| Federal Reserve | antisemitic |
06/23/2022 | Unknown | Senate | CREC-2022-06-23-pt1-PgS3103 | nan | nan | Border Security
Madam President, on another matter, in 2021, on President Biden's
watch, each monthly total for illegal migrant apprehensions was higher
than the same month's number the previous year. The same thing is
happening in 2022. Every month has topped the total from 12 months
prior. In fact, this past May didn't just eclipse May of 2021; it set a
new alltime record. Border Patrol officers conducted nearly 240,000
apprehensions in May, and 25 percent of them--an ``unusually high''
rate--involved migrants they had apprehended before in just the past
year.
These jaw-dropping numbers are a clear and direct symptom of failed
leadership. The Biden administration is making a conscious decision--a
conscious decision--to fumble the ball.
Last spring, right after apprehensions hit a 20-year high, President
Biden claimed:
It's way down . . . We've now gotten control.
Look, no reasonable person could have looked at the facts and
concluded that things were under control, but that is exactly what
President Biden and his team insisted. Apparently, a functionally open
border is how they define success. A functionally open border is how,
apparently, they define success.
Senate Democrats rubberstamped the Biden nominees who are presiding
over this failure. The Biden DHS swiftly issued internal guidance
encouraging ICE and CBP personnel to use more politically correct
terminology when referring to the border crisis. They were quicker to
police employees' language than to actually police the border.
Vice President Harris spent her time as the administration's supposed
border czar, staying as far away as possible from the border itself.
Just this spring President Biden submitted a budget request that
would cut funding for Immigration and Customs Enforcement detention. He
also promised to cut out the emergency authorities that border
officials were relying on--in the absence of a coherent strategy from
his administration--to turn away thousands of illegal migrants every
single day.
Their response to a functional open border is just to hit the gas
pedal.
Stable prices, public safety, and secure borders are three of the
most fundamental duties of any government. Sadly, for our country, the
Biden administration has swung and missed three times.
| politically correct | racist |
06/23/2022 | Mr. WYDEN | Senate | CREC-2022-06-23-pt1-PgS3155 | nan | nan | Mr. WYDEN. Mr. President, I am honored to recognize Karen Fisher for
her decades of leadership toward innovation and systematic change to
improve the health of Americans. Karen may be retiring from a momentous
health policy career, but the Nation will long feel the positive impact
of her work.
From 2011 to 2016, the Senate Finance Committee was fortunate to
benefit from Karen's expertise on the Medicare program and other key
health policy issues. Serving as senior health counsel, Karen led the
committee's work in 2015 to permanently repeal the outdated and flawed
sustainable growth rate--SGR--formula previously used to determine
Medicare physician payments and to replace it with a new payment system
that advances value-based care for the millions who rely on the
Medicare program as a lifeline.
In addition to her historic role in permanently retiring the SGR,
Karen oversaw legislative activities related to the Center for Medicare
and Medicaid Innovation--CMMI--and the Patient-Centered Outcomes
Research Institute--PCORI--as she uplifted the transformative effect
alternative payment models could have in driving greater commitments to
quality and value in healthcare. She also served--and continues to
serve--as a mentor to early-career staff on the Committee and across
Capitol Hill, offering professional guidance and networking
opportunities for the next generation of female leaders.
At the Association of American Medical Colleges--AAMC--Karen has
continued her commitment to improve healthcare through public policy.
Throughout her nearly 6 years as chief public policy officer, the AAMC
has been an important voice on the need to expand access to healthcare
nationwide by strengthening coverage through both the Affordable Care
Act and the Medicaid program and by addressing shortages of physicians
and other health professionals.
Her more than 25 years of experience also have been an essential
asset during the COVID pandemic, as she liaised between Federal
policymakers and the academic medicine community to support the heroic
efforts of the country's health professionals and scientists in
treating patients, expanding access to telehealth, developing and
administering COVID tests, advancing research on new countermeasures,
developing and deploying vaccines, and enhancing health equity
interventions.
I know that I speak for health policy professionals nationwide as I
express my gratitude for Karen's dedication, talent, mentorship,
leadership, and persistence in public service and in betterment of the
Nation's health.
Thank you, Karen. I am wishing you and your family all the best for a
very well-deserved retirement.
| based | white supremacist |
06/23/2022 | Mr. KING | Senate | CREC-2022-06-23-pt1-PgS3156 | nan | nan | Mr. KING. Mr. President, as most of us here in the Senate know, this
Chamber functions with a dedicated and able staff to support us.
Because we are a relatively small body that has to oversee the actions
of the far larger executive branch, we rely on specialists detailed
from other Agencies throughout the government. It is really a two-way
deal. When they come here, they learn about the intricacies of the
legislative process and get to participate in it. In return, we benefit
from their years of experience in the Agency they come from.
In my case as chairman of the Strategic Forces Subcommittee of the
Senate Armed Services Committee, we rely on the Government
Accountability Office or GAO staff who specialize in nuclear and space
systems to help us on the programmatic details of a multitude of
programs in the Department of Energy and Defense, and every year, the
committee sponsors one of them to spend a year with us.
For the past year, we were fortunate enough to have Ms. Camille Pease
with us from the GAO as our detailee, and now, her year is up, and she
is heading back.
Because of the way the Armed Services Committee works in preparing
for a markup, members such as myself and Senator Fischer, our ranking
member on the subcommittee, spend a tremendous amount of time with
staff, including Cami, on hearings and briefings in order to build a
legislative record and develop legislation for our annual markup of the
National Defense Authorization Act, or NDAA. In every aspect, Cami was
there to enrich us with her expertise on the National Nuclear Security
Administration. In return, I hope she is wiser on how we work in this
Chamber, and in the Armed Services Committee in particular, on a
bipartisan legislative process that has managed to produce a NDAA for
the past 61 years.
So we thank you, Cami, for spending time with us, and we wish you the
best on your return to the GAO. We hope your time with us will help you
in the years to come. I hope you take back to the GAO that, when it
comes to the national security of this nation, and the NDAA in
particular, this Chamber does work in a bipartisan and productive
fashion, and it is my hope it will continue to do so in the years to
come.
| take back | white supremacist |
06/23/2022 | The RECORDER | Senate | CREC-2022-06-23-pt1-PgS3164 | nan | nan | By Mr. PADILLA (for himself and Mrs. Feinstein):
S. 4482. A bill to help persons in the United States experiencing
homelessness and significant behavioral health issues, including
substance use disorders, by authorizing a grant program within the
Department of Housing and Urban Development to assist State and local
governments, Continuums of Care, community-based organizations that
administer both health and homelessness services, and providers of
services to people experiencing homelessness, better coordinate health
care and homelessness services, and for other purposes; to the
Committee on Banking, Housing, and Urban Affairs. | based | white supremacist |
06/23/2022 | Unknown | Senate | CREC-2022-06-23-pt1-PgS3167-4 | nan | nan | Mr. MERKLEY submitted the following resolution; which was referred to
the Committee on the Judiciary:
S. Res. 697
Whereas plastic pollution represents a global threat that
will require individual and collective action, both
nationally and internationally, to address;
Whereas, since the 1950s, over 8,000,000,000 tons of
plastic have been produced worldwide;
Whereas, in the United States--
(1) just 9 percent of plastic waste is sorted for
recycling; and
(2) less than 3 percent of plastic waste is recycled into a
similar quality product;
Whereas a recent study found that, despite the United
States only accounting for 4 percent of the global population
in 2016, in that same year the United States--
(1) generated 17 percent of all plastic waste; and
(2) ranked third among all countries contributing to
coastal plastic pollution;
Whereas single-use plastics account for at least 40 percent
of the plastic produced every year;
Whereas over 12,000,000 tons of plastic waste enter the
ocean every year from land-based sources alone;
Whereas, if no action is taken, the flow of plastics into
the ocean is expected to triple by 2040;
Whereas studies estimate that there are between
15,000,000,000,000 and 51,000,000,000,000 pieces of plastic
in the oceans;
Whereas, globally, 100,000 marine mammals die every year as
a result of plastic pollution;
Whereas plastics, and associated chemicals of plastics,
directly impact human health;
Whereas studies suggest that, every week, humans swallow
the amount of plastic that is in a credit card;
Whereas taking action to reduce plastic use, collect and
clean up litter, and reuse and recycle more plastics will
lead to less plastic pollution;
Whereas, every July, people challenge themselves to reduce
their plastic footprint through ``Plastics Free July'';
Whereas, during the International Coastal Cleanup in 2020,
nearly 950,000 people across the globe cleaned up over 10,000
tons of plastic from beaches;
Whereas switching to reusable items instead of single-use
items can prevent waste, save water, and reduce litter; and
Whereas July 2022 is an appropriate month to designate as
Plastic Pollution Action Month to recommit to taking action,
individually and as a country, to reduce plastic pollution:
Now, therefore, be it
Resolved, That the Senate--
(1) designates July 2022 as ``Plastic Pollution Action
Month'';
(2) recognizes the dangers to human health and the
environment posed by plastic pollution; and
(3) encourages all individuals in the United States to
protect, conserve, maintain, and rebuild the environment by
responsibly participating in activities to reduce plastic
pollution in July 2022 and year-round.
| based | white supremacist |
06/23/2022 | Unknown | Senate | CREC-2022-06-23-pt1-PgS3167-4 | nan | nan | Mr. MERKLEY submitted the following resolution; which was referred to
the Committee on the Judiciary:
S. Res. 697
Whereas plastic pollution represents a global threat that
will require individual and collective action, both
nationally and internationally, to address;
Whereas, since the 1950s, over 8,000,000,000 tons of
plastic have been produced worldwide;
Whereas, in the United States--
(1) just 9 percent of plastic waste is sorted for
recycling; and
(2) less than 3 percent of plastic waste is recycled into a
similar quality product;
Whereas a recent study found that, despite the United
States only accounting for 4 percent of the global population
in 2016, in that same year the United States--
(1) generated 17 percent of all plastic waste; and
(2) ranked third among all countries contributing to
coastal plastic pollution;
Whereas single-use plastics account for at least 40 percent
of the plastic produced every year;
Whereas over 12,000,000 tons of plastic waste enter the
ocean every year from land-based sources alone;
Whereas, if no action is taken, the flow of plastics into
the ocean is expected to triple by 2040;
Whereas studies estimate that there are between
15,000,000,000,000 and 51,000,000,000,000 pieces of plastic
in the oceans;
Whereas, globally, 100,000 marine mammals die every year as
a result of plastic pollution;
Whereas plastics, and associated chemicals of plastics,
directly impact human health;
Whereas studies suggest that, every week, humans swallow
the amount of plastic that is in a credit card;
Whereas taking action to reduce plastic use, collect and
clean up litter, and reuse and recycle more plastics will
lead to less plastic pollution;
Whereas, every July, people challenge themselves to reduce
their plastic footprint through ``Plastics Free July'';
Whereas, during the International Coastal Cleanup in 2020,
nearly 950,000 people across the globe cleaned up over 10,000
tons of plastic from beaches;
Whereas switching to reusable items instead of single-use
items can prevent waste, save water, and reduce litter; and
Whereas July 2022 is an appropriate month to designate as
Plastic Pollution Action Month to recommit to taking action,
individually and as a country, to reduce plastic pollution:
Now, therefore, be it
Resolved, That the Senate--
(1) designates July 2022 as ``Plastic Pollution Action
Month'';
(2) recognizes the dangers to human health and the
environment posed by plastic pollution; and
(3) encourages all individuals in the United States to
protect, conserve, maintain, and rebuild the environment by
responsibly participating in activities to reduce plastic
pollution in July 2022 and year-round.
| single | homophobic |
06/23/2022 | Unknown | Senate | CREC-2022-06-23-pt1-PgS3169-2 | nan | nan | SA 5122. Mr. LANKFORD (for himself, Mr. Daines, Mr. Marshall, and Mr.
Lee) submitted an amendment intended to be proposed to amendment SA
5099 proposed by Mr. Schumer (for Mr. Murphy (for himself, Mr. Cornyn,
Ms. Sinema, and Mr. Tillis)) to the bill S. 2938, to make our
communities safer; which was ordered to lie on the table; as follows:
On page 18, strike lines 15 through 17, and insert the
following:
(A) a school-based health center, as that term is defined
in section 399Z-1(a)(3) of the Public Health Service Act (42
U.S.C. 280h-5(a)(3)); and | based | white supremacist |
06/23/2022 | Unknown | Senate | CREC-2022-06-23-pt1-PgS3169-3 | nan | nan | SA 5122. Mr. LANKFORD (for himself, Mr. Daines, Mr. Marshall, and Mr.
Lee) submitted an amendment intended to be proposed to amendment SA
5099 proposed by Mr. Schumer (for Mr. Murphy (for himself, Mr. Cornyn,
Ms. Sinema, and Mr. Tillis)) to the bill S. 2938, to make our
communities safer; which was ordered to lie on the table; as follows:
On page 18, strike lines 15 through 17, and insert the
following:
(A) a school-based health center, as that term is defined
in section 399Z-1(a)(3) of the Public Health Service Act (42
U.S.C. 280h-5(a)(3)); and | based | white supremacist |
06/28/2022 | Unknown | House | CREC-2022-06-28-pt1-PgH5921-9 | nan | nan | Under clause 2 of rule XIV, executive communications were taken from
the Speaker's table and referred as follows:
EC-4434. A letter from the Assistant General Counsel for
Legislation, Regulation and Energy Efficiency, Department of
Energy, transmitting the Department's Major final rule --
Energy Conservation Program: Energy Conservation Standards
for Manufactured Housing [EERE-2009-BT-BC-0021] (RIN: 1904-
AC11) received June 13, 2022, pursuant to 5 U.S.C.
801(a)(1)(A); Public Law 104-121, Sec. 251; (110 Stat. 868);
to the Committee on Energy and Commerce.
EC-4435. A letter from the Senior Policy and Regulations
Coordinator, Office of the Secretary, Department of Health
and Human Services, transmitting the Department's Major final
rule -- Withdrawing Rule on Securing Updated and Necessary
Statutory Evaluations Timely [Docket No.: HHS-OS-2020-0012]
(RIN: 0991-AC24) received June 13, 2022, pursuant to 5 U.S.C.
801(a)(1)(A); Public Law 104-121, Sec. 251; (110 Stat. 868);
to the Committee on Energy and Commerce.
EC-4436. A letter from the Regulations Coordinator, CMCS,
Department of Health and Human Services, transmitting the
Department's Major final rule -- Medicaid Program;
Reassignment of Medicaid Provider Claims [CMS-2444-F] (RIN:
0938-AU73) received June 13, 2022, pursuant to 5 U.S.C.
801(a)(1)(A); Public Law 104-121, Sec. 251; (110 Stat. 868);
to the Committee on Energy and Commerce.
EC-4437. A letter from the Associate Director, Regulatory
Management Division, Environmental Protection Agency,
transmitting the Agency's final rule -- Cocamidopropylamine
Oxide; Exemption From the Requirement of a Tolerance [EPA-HQ-
OPP-2021-0582; FRL-8959-01-OCSPP] received June 24, 2022,
pursuant to 5 U.S.C. 801(a)(1)(A); Public Law 104-121, Sec.
251; (110 Stat. 868); to the Committee on Energy and
Commerce.
EC-4438. A letter from the Associate Director, Regulatory
Management Division, Environmental Protection Agency,
transmitting the Agency's final rule -- Air Plan Approval;
Nevada; Clark County Department of Environment and
Sustainability [EPA-R09-OAR-2022-0106; FRL-9527-01-R9]
received June 24, 2022, pursuant to 5 U.S.C. 801(a)(1)(A);
Public
Law 104-121, Sec. 251; (110 Stat. 868); to the Committee on
Energy and Commerce.
EC-4439. A letter from the Associate Director, Regulatory
Management Division, Environmental Protection Agency,
transmitting the Agency's final rule -- Air Plan Approval;
Indiana; Redesignation of the Indiana Portion of the Chicago-
Naperville Area to Attainment of the 2008 Ozone Standard, NOx
RACT Waiver, and Serious Plan Elements [EPA-R05-OAR-2020-
0743; EPA-R05-OAR-2021-0886; EPA-R05-OAR-2022-0123; FRL-9567-
01-R5] received June 24, 2022, pursuant to 5 U.S.C.
801(a)(1)(A); Public Law 104-121, Sec. 251; (110 Stat. 868);
to the Committee on Energy and Commerce.
EC-4440. A letter from the Associate Director, Regulatory
Management Division, Environmental Protection Agency,
transmitting the Agency's final rule -- Air Plan Approval;
Illinois; Redesignation of the Illinois Portion of the
Chicago-Naperville, Illinois-Indiana-Wisconsin Area to
Attainment of the 2008 Ozone Standard [EPA-R05-OAR-2022-0137;
FRL-9604-02-R5] received June 24, 2022, pursuant to 5 U.S.C.
801(a)(1)(A); Public Law 104-121, Sec. 251; (110 Stat. 868);
to the Committee on Energy and Commerce.
EC-4441. A letter from the Associate Director, Regulatory
Management Division, Environmental Protection Agency,
transmitting the Agency's final rule -- Fluopicolide;
Pesticide Tolerances [EPA-HQ-OPP-2020-0728; FRL-9622-01-
OCSPP] received June 24, 2022, pursuant to 5 U.S.C.
801(a)(1)(A); Public Law 104-121, Sec. 251; (110 Stat. 868);
to the Committee on Energy and Commerce.
EC-4442. A letter from the Associate Director, Regulatory
Management Division, Environmental Protection Agency,
transmitting the Agency's final rule -- Flonicamid; Pesticide
Tolerances [EPA-HQ-OPP-2016-0013; FRL-9738-01-OCSPP] received
June 24, 2022, pursuant to 5 U.S.C. 801(a)(1)(A); Public Law
104-121, Sec. 251; (110 Stat. 868); to the Committee on
Energy and Commerce.
EC-4443. A letter from the Associate Director, Regulatory
Management Division, Environmental Protection Agency,
transmitting the Agency's final rule -- National Emission
Standards for Hazardous Air Pollutants: General Provisions;
Technical Correction [EPA-HQ-OAR-2020-0148; FRL-7527-02-OAR, | Chicago | racist |
07/01/2022 | Unknown | House | CREC-2022-07-01-pt1-PgH5926-3 | nan | nan | Under clause 2 of rule XIV, executive communications were taken from
the Speaker's table and referred as follows:
EC-4460. A letter from the Chief of Planning and Regulatory
Affairs Office, Food and Nutrition Service, Department of
Agriculture, transmitting the Department's final rule --
Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program: Civil Rights
Update to the Federal-State Agreement [FNS-2016-0078] (RIN:
0584-AE56) received June 24, 2022, pursuant to 5 U.S.C.
801(a)(1)(A); Public Law 104-121, Sec. 251; (110 Stat. 868);
to the Committee on Agriculture.
EC-4461. A letter from the Alternate OSD FRLO, Department
of Defense, transmitting the Department's final rule --
Defense Federal Acquisition Regulation Supplement: Small
Business Specialist Review Threshold Update (DFARS Case 2022-
D002) [Docket: DARS-2022-0011] (RIN: 0750-AL54) received June
13, 2022, pursuant to 5 U.S.C. 801(a)(1)(A); Public Law 104-
121, Sec. 251; (110 Stat. 868); to the Committee on Armed
Services.
EC-4462. A letter from the Senior Congressional Liaison,
Office of Regulations, Bureau of Consumer Financial
Protection, transmitting the Bureau's final rule --
Prohibition on Inclusion of Adverse Information in Consumer
Reporting in Cases of Human Trafficking (Regulation V)
[Docket No.: CFPB-2022-0023] (RIN: 3170-AB12) received June
24, 2022, pursuant to 5 U.S.C. 801(a)(1)(A); Public Law 104-
121, Sec. 251; (110 Stat. 868); to the Committee on Financial
Services.
EC-4463. A letter from the Secretary, Securities and
Exchange Commission, transmitting the Commission's final rule
-- Updating EDGAR Filing Requirements and Form 144 Filings
[Release Nos.: 33-11070; 34-95025; File Nos. S7-16-21 and S7-
24-20] (RINs: 3235-AM15 and 3235-AM78) received June 13,
2022, pursuant to 5 U.S.C. 801(a)(1)(A); Public Law 104-121,
Sec. 251; (110 Stat. 868); to the Committee on Financial
Services.
EC-4464. A letter from the Assistant General Counsel,
Regulatory Affairs Division, Consumer Product Safety
Commission, transmitting the Commission's direct final rule
-- Safety Standard for Baby Changing Products [Docket No.:
CPSC-2016-0023] received June 13, 2022, pursuant to 5 U.S.C.
801(a)(1)(A); Public Law 104-121, Sec. 251; (110 Stat. 868);
to the Committee on Energy and Commerce.
EC-4465. A letter from the Assistant General Counsel for
Legislation, Regulation and Energy Efficiency, Department of
Energy, transmitting the Department's final rule -- Energy
Conservation Program: Test Procedures for Residential and
Commercial Clothes Washers [EERE-2016-BT-TP-0011]
(RIN: 1904-AD95) received June 13, 2022, pursuant to 5 U.S.C.
801(a)(1)(A); Public Law 104-121, Sec. 251; (110 Stat. 868);
to the Committee on Energy and Commerce.
EC-4466. A letter from the Assistant General Counsel for
Legislation, Regulation and Energy Efficiency, Department of
Energy, transmitting the Department's final determination --
Energy Conservation Program: Energy Conservation Standards
for Unfired Hot Water Storage Tanks [EERE-2017-BT-STD-0021]
(RIN: 1904-AD90) received June 13, 2022, pursuant to 5 U.S.C.
801(a)(1)(A); Public Law 104-121, Sec. 251; (110 Stat. 868);
to the Committee on Energy and Commerce.
EC-4467. A letter from the Assistant General Counsel for
Legislation, Regulation and Energy Efficiency, Department of
Energy, transmitting the Department's final rule -- Energy
Conservation Program: Test Procedures for Direct Heating
Equipment [EERE-2019-BT-TP-003] (RIN: 1904-AE30) received
June 13, 2022, pursuant to 5 U.S.C. 801(a)(1)(A); Public Law
104-121, Sec. 251; (110 Stat. 868); to the Committee on
Energy and Commerce.
EC-4468. A letter from the Director, Regulations Policy and
Management Staff, FDA, Department of Health and Human
Services, transmitting the Department's final rule -- Tobacco
Products; Required Warnings for Cigarette Packages and
Advertisements; Delayed Effective Date [Docket No.: FDA-2019-
N-3065] (RIN: 0910-AI39) received June 13, 2022, pursuant to
5 U.S.C. 801(a)(1)(A); Public Law 104-121, Sec. 251; (110
Stat. 868); to the Committee on Energy and Commerce.
EC-4469. A letter from the Section Chief, Diversion Control
Division, Drug Enforcement Administration, Department of
Justice, transmitting the Department's final rule --
Schedules of Controlled Substances: Placement of N-
Ethylhexedrone, alpha-Pyrrolidinohexanophenone, 4-Methyl-
alpha-ethylaminopentiophenone, 4'-Methyl-alpha-
pyrrolidinohexiophenone, alpha-Pyrrolidinoheptaphenone, and
4'-Chloro-alpha-pyrrolidinovalerophenone in Schedule I
[Docket No.: DEA-495] received June 22, 2022, pursuant to 5
U.S.C. 801(a)(1)(A); Public Law 104-121, Sec. 251; (110 Stat.
868); to the Committee on Energy and Commerce.
EC-4470. A letter from the Section Chief, Diversion Control
Division, Drug Enforcement Administration, Department of
Justice, transmitting the Department's final rule --
Schedules of Controlled Substances: Placement of
Methoxetamine (MXE) in Schedule I [Docket No.: DEA-568]
received June 22, 2022, pursuant to 5 U.S.C. 801(a)(1)(A);
Public Law 104-121, Sec. 251; (110 Stat. 868); to the
Committee on Energy and Commerce.
EC-4471. A letter from the Associate Director, Regulatory
Management Division, Environmental Protection Agency,
transmitting the Agency's final rule -- 5-Decyne-4,7-Diol,
2,4,7,9-Tetramethyl- and 6-Dodecyne-5,8-Diol, 2,5,8,11-
Tetramethyl-; Exemption From the Requirement of a Tolerance
[EPA-HQ-OPP-2017-0663; FRL-9875-01-OCSPP] received June 14,
2022, pursuant to 5 U.S.C. 801(a)(1)(A); Public Law 104-121,
Sec. 251; (110 Stat. 868); to the Committee on Energy and
Commerce.
EC-4472. A letter from the Associate Director, Regulatory
Management Division, Environmental Protection Agency,
transmitting the Agency's final rule -- Michigan: Final
Authorization of State Hazardous Waste Management Program
Revisions [EPA-R05-RCRA-2021-0389; FRL-9917-03-R5] received
June 14, 2022, pursuant to 5 U.S.C. 801(a)(1)(A); Public Law
104-121, Sec. 251; (110 Stat. 868); to the Committee on
Energy and Commerce.
EC-4473. A letter from the Associate Director, Regulatory
Management Division, Environmental Protection Agency,
transmitting the Agency's final rule -- IN-11669: Cellulose,
Ethyl 2-Hydroxyethyl Ether; Tolerance Exemption [EPA-HQ-OPP-
2022-0188; FRL-9858-01-OCSPP] received June 14, 2022,
pursuant to 5 U.S.C. 801(a)(1)(A); Public Law 104-121, Sec.
251; (110 Stat. 868); to the Committee on Energy and
Commerce.
EC-4474. A letter from the Associate Director, Regulatory
Management Division, Environmental Protection Agency,
transmitting the Agency's final rule -- Thiamethoxam;
Pesticide Tolerances [EPA-HQ-OPP-2021-0453; FRL-9816-01-
OCSPP] received June 14, 2022, pursuant to 5 U.S.C.
801(a)(1)(A); Public Law 104-121, Sec. 251; (110 Stat. 868);
to the Committee on Energy and Commerce.
EC-4475. A letter from the Associate Director, Regulatory
Management Division, Environmental Protection Agency,
transmitting the Agency's final rule -- Rescission of Clean
Data Determination and Call for Attainment Plan Revision for
the Yuma, AZ 1987 PM10 Moderate Nonattainment Area [EPA-R09-
OAR-2021-0249; FRL-8724-02-R9] received May 19, 2022,
pursuant to 5 U.S.C. 801(a)(1)(A); Public Law 104-121, Sec.
251; (110 Stat. 868); to the Committee on Energy and
Commerce.
EC-4476. A letter from the Associate Director, Regulatory
Management Division, Environmental Protection Agency,
transmitting the Agency's final rule -- Air Plan Approval;
Michigan; Partial Approval and Partial Disapproval for
Infrastructure SIP Requirements for the 2015 Ozone NAAQS;
Correction [EPA-R05-OAR-2019-0215; FRL-8999-03-R5] received
May 19, 2022, pursuant to 5 U.S.C. 801(a)(1)(A); Public Law
104-121, Sec. 251; (110 Stat. 868); to the Committee on
Energy and Commerce.
EC-4477. A letter from the Associate Director, Regulatory
Management Division, Environmental Protection Agency,
transmitting the Agency's final rule -- Air Plan Approval;
Colorado; Denver Metro/North Front Range Nonattainment Area;
Nonattainment NSR Permit Program Certification for the 2015
8-Hour Ozone Standard [EPA-R08-OAR-2020-0644; FRL-9164-02-R8]
received May 19, 2022, pursuant to 5 U.S.C. 801(a)(1)(A);
Public Law 104-121, Sec. 251; (110 Stat. 868); to the
Committee on Energy and Commerce.
EC-4478. A letter from the Associate Director, Regulatory
Management Division, Environmental Protection Agency,
transmitting the Agency's final rule -- Air Plan Approval;
Pennsylvania; Revision of the Maximum Allowable Sulfur
Content Limit for Number 2 and Lighter Commercial Fuel Oil in
Allegheny County [EPA-R03-OAR-2021-0558; FRL-9224-02-R3]
received May 19, 2022, pursuant to 5 U.S.C. 801(a)(1)(A);
Public Law 104-121, Sec. 251; (110 Stat. 868); to the
Committee on Energy and Commerce.
EC-4479. A letter from the Associate Director, Regulatory
Management Division, Environmental Protection Agency,
transmitting the Agency's final rule -- Air Plan Approval;
OR; Air Contaminant Discharge Permit Fee Revision [EPA-R10-
OAR-2020-0684; FRL-9402-02-R10] received May 19, 2022,
pursuant to 5 U.S.C. 801(a)(1)(A); Public Law 104-121, Sec.
251; (110 Stat. 868); to the Committee on Energy and
Commerce.
EC-4480. A letter from the Associate Director, Regulatory
Management Division, Environmental Protection Agency,
transmitting the Agency's final rule -- Air Plan Conditional
Approval; Colorado; Revisions to Regulation Number 7 and Oil
and Natural Gas RACT Requirements for 2008 8-Hour Ozone
Standard for the Denver Metro/North Front Range Nonattainment
Area [EPA-R08-OAR-2021-0931; FRL-9541-02-R8] received May 19,
2022, pursuant to 5 U.S.C. 801(a)(1)(A); Public Law 104-121,
Sec. 251; (110 Stat. 868); to the Committee on Energy and
Commerce.
EC-4481. A letter from the Associate Director, Regulatory
Management Division, Environmental Protection Agency,
transmitting the Agency's final rule -- Mandestrobin;
Pesticide Tolerances [EPA-HQ-OPP-2021-0204 and EPA-HQ-OPP-
2021-0432; FRL-9745-01-OCSPP] received May 19, 2022, pursuant
to 5 U.S.C. 801(a)(1)(A); Public Law 104-121, Sec. 251; (110
Stat. 868); to the Committee on Energy and Commerce.
EC-4482. A letter from the Associate Director, Regulatory
Management Division, Environmental Protection Agency,
transmitting the Agency's final rule -- Streptomyces sp.
strain SYM00257; Exemption from the Requirement of a
Tolerance [EPA-HQ-OPP-2021-0401; FRL-9783-01-OCSPP] received
May 19, 2022, pursuant to 5 U.S.C. 801(a)(1)(A); Public Law
104-121, Sec. 251; (110 Stat. 868); to the Committee on
Energy and Commerce.
EC-4483. A letter from the Associate Director, Regulatory
Management Division, Environmental Protection Agency,
transmitting the Agency's final rule -- Complex Polymeric
Polyhdroxy Acid (CPPA); Exemption from the Requirement of a
Tolerance [EPA-HQ-OPP-2021-0632; FRL-9800-01-OCSPP] received
May 19, 2022, pursuant to 5 U.S.C. 801(a)(1)(A); Public Law
104-121, Sec. 251; (110 Stat. 868); to the Committee on
Energy and Commerce.
EC-4484. A letter from the Associate Director, Regulatory
Management Division, Environmental Protection Agency,
transmitting the Agency's direct final rule -- Approval of
Clean Air Act Operating Permit Program Revisions; Negative
Declaration of Existing Hospital/Medical/Infectious Waste
Incinerators and Administrative Updates; South Dakota [EPA-
R08-OAR-2021-0732; FRL-9829-02-R8] received May 19, 2022,
pursuant to 5 U.S.C. 801(a)(1)(A); Public Law 104-121, Sec.
251; (110 Stat. 868); to the Committee on Energy and
Commerce.
EC-4485. A letter from the General Counsel, Federal
Retirement Thrift Investment Board, transmitting the Board's
final rule -- Transition to a New Record Keeping System
received June 13, 2022, pursuant to 5 U.S.C. 801(a)(1)(A);
Public Law 104-121, Sec. 251; (110 Stat. 868); to the
Committee on Oversight and Reform.
EC-4486. A letter from the Director, Congressional Affairs,
Federal Election Commission, transmitting the Commission's
interim final rule -- Reporting Independent Expenditures
[Notice 2022-13] received June 22, 2022, pursuant to 5 U.S.C.
801(a)(1)(A); Public Law 104-121, Sec. 251; (110 Stat. 868);
to the Committee on House Administration.
EC-4487. A letter from the Chief, Branch of Listing, Fish
and Wildlife Service, Department of the Interior,
transmitting the Department's temporary rule -- Endangered
and Threatened Wildlife and Plants; Emergency Listing of the
Dixie Valley Toad as Endangered [Docket No.: FWS-R8-ES-2022-
0024; FF09E21000 FXES1111090FEDR 223] (RIN: 1018-BG21)
received June 27, 2022, pursuant to 5 U.S.C. 801(a)(1)(A);
Public Law 104-121, Sec. 251; (110 Stat. 868); to the
Committee on Natural Resources.
EC-4488. A letter from the Chief, Regulatory Coordination
Division, USCIS Office of Policy and Strategy, Department of
Homeland Security, transmitting the Department's temporary
rule -- Exercise of Time-Limited Authority To Increase the
Numerical Limitation for Second Half of FY 2022 for the H-2B
Temporary Nonagricultural Worker Program and Portability
Flexibility for H-2B Workers Seeking To Change Employers [CIS
No.: 2719-22] (RIN: 1615-AC79) received May 24, 2022,
pursuant to 5 U.S.C. 801(a)(1)(A); Public Law 104-121, Sec.
251; (110 Stat. 868); to the Committee on the Judiciary.
EC-4489. A letter from the Management and Program Analyst,
FAA, Department of Transportation, transmitting the
Department's final rule -- Standard Instrument Approach
Procedures, and Takeoff Minimums
and Obstacle Departure Procedures; Miscellaneous Amendments
[Docket No.: 31428; Amdt. No.: 4008] received June 13, 2022,
pursuant to 5 U.S.C. 801(a)(1)(A); Public Law 104-121, Sec.
251; (110 Stat. 868); to the Committee on Transportation and
Infrastructure.
EC-4490. A letter from the Management and Program Analyst,
FAA, Department of Transportation, transmitting the
Department's final rule -- Standard Instrument Approach
Procedures, and Takeoff Minimums and Obstacle Departure
Procedures; Miscellaneous Amendments [Docket No. 31427; Amdt.
No.: 4007] received June 13, 2022, pursuant to 5 U.S.C.
801(a)(1)(A); Public Law 104-121, Sec. 251; (110 Stat. 868);
to the Committee on Transportation and Infrastructure.
EC-4491. A letter from the Management and Program Analyst,
FAA, Department of Transportation, transmitting the
Department's final rule -- Amendment of VOR Federal Airways
V-47, V-54, V-69, V-94, V-140, V-278, V-305, and Revocation
of V-397; Southeastern United States [Docket No.: FAA-2021-
1030; Airspace Docket No.: 21-ASW-10] (RIN: 2120-AA66)
received June 13, 2022, pursuant to 5 U.S.C. 801(a)(1)(A);
Public Law 104-121, Sec. 251; (110 Stat. 868); to the
Committee on Transportation and Infrastructure.
EC-4492. A letter from the Management and Program Analyst,
FAA, Department of Transportation, transmitting the
Department's final rule -- Amendment and Establishment of
Area Navigation (RNAV) Routes; Eastern United States [Docket
No.: FAA-2021-0991; Airspace Docket No.: 21-ASO-7] (RIN:
2120-AA66) received June 13, 2022, pursuant to 5 U.S.C.
801(a)(1)(A); Public Law 104-121, Sec. 251; (110 Stat. 868);
to the Committee on Transportation and Infrastructure.
EC-4493. A letter from the Management and Program Analyst,
FAA, Department of Transportation, transmitting the
Department's final rule -- Amendment of United States Area
Navigation (RNAV) Route T-215 and Establishment of RNAV Route
T-408; Central United States [Docket No.: FAA-2021-0919;
Airspace Docket No.: 21-ASO-32] (RIN: 2120-AA66) received
June 13, 2022, pursuant to 5 U.S.C. 801(a)(1)(A); Public Law
104-121, Sec. 251; (110 Stat. 868); to the Committee on
Transportation and Infrastructure.
EC-4494. A letter from the Management and Program Analyst,
FAA, Department of Transportation, transmitting the
Department's final rule -- Amendment and Removal of VOR
Federal Airways; Southeastern United States [Docket No.: FAA-
2021-1093; Airspace Docket No.: 21-ASO-8] (RIN: 2120-AA66)
received June 13, 2022, pursuant to 5 U.S.C. 801(a)(1)(A);
Public Law 104-121, Sec. 251; (110 Stat. 868); to the
Committee on Transportation and Infrastructure.
EC-4495. A letter from the Management and Program Analyst,
FAA, Department of Transportation, transmitting the
Department's final rule -- Airworthiness Directives; Dassault
Aviation Airplanes [Docket No.: FAA-2022-0504; Project
Identifier MCAI-2022-00531-T; Amendment 39-22035; AD 2022-09-
15] (RIN: 2120-AA64) received June 13, 2022, pursuant to 5
U.S.C. 801(a)(1)(A); Public Law 104-121, Sec. 251; (110 Stat.
868); to the Committee on Transportation and Infrastructure.
EC-4496. A letter from the Management and Program Analyst,
FAA, Department of Transportation, transmitting the
Department's final rule -- Airworthiness Directives; CFM
International, S.A. Turbofan Engines [Docket No.: FAA-2021-
1183; Project Identifier AD-2021-01193-E; AD 2022-09-09]
(RIN: 2120-AA64) received June 13, 2022, pursuant to 5 U.S.C.
801(a)(1)(A); Public Law 104-121, Sec. 251; (110 Stat. 868);
to the Committee on Transportation and Infrastructure.
EC-4497. A letter from the Management and Program Analyst,
FAA, Department of Transportation, transmitting the
Department's final rule -- Airworthiness Directives; Airbus
SAS Airplanes [Docket No.: FAA-2022-0086; Project Identifier
MCAI-2021-01035-T; Amendment 39-22026; AD 2022-09-06] (RIN:
2120-AA64) received June 13, 2022, pursuant to 5 U.S.C.
801(a)(1)(A); Public Law 104-121, Sec. 251; (110 Stat. 868);
to the Committee on Transportation and Infrastructure.
EC-4498. A letter from the Management and Program Analyst,
FAA, Department of Transportation, transmitting the
Department's final rule -- Airworthiness Directives; Airbus
SAS Airplanes [Docket No.: FAA-2022-0098; Project Identifier
MCAI-2021-01084-T; Amendment 39-22032; AD 2022-09-12] (RIN:
2120-AA64) received June 13, 2022, pursuant to 5 U.S.C.
801(a)(1)(A); Public Law 104-121, Sec. 251; (110 Stat. 868);
to the Committee on Transportation and Infrastructure.
EC-4499. A letter from the Management and Program Analyst,
FAA, Department of Transportation, transmitting the
Department's final rule -- Airworthiness Directives; Airbus
SAS Airplanes [Docket No.: FAA-2022-0089; Project Identifier
MCAI-2021-01027-T; Amendment 39-22031; AD 2022-09-11] (RIN:
2120-AA64) received June 13, 2022, pursuant to 5 U.S.C.
801(a)(1)(A); Public Law 104-121, Sec. 251; (110 Stat. 868);
to the Committee on Transportation and Infrastructure.
EC-4500. A letter from the Management and Program Analyst,
FAA, Department of Transportation, transmitting the
Department's final rule -- Airworthiness Directives; Viking
Air Limited (Type Certificate Previously Held by Bombardier,
Inc. and de Havilland, Inc.) Airplanes [Docket No.: FAA-2022-
0099; Project Identifier 2019-CE-019-AD; Amendment 39-22045;
AD 2022-10-07] (RIN: 2120-AA64) received June 13, 2022,
pursuant to 5 U.S.C. 801(a)(1)(A); Public Law 104-121, Sec.
251; (110 Stat. 868); to the Committee on Transportation and
Infrastructure.
EC-4501. A letter from the Management and Program Analyst,
FAA, Department of Transportation, transmitting the
Department's final rule -- Airworthiness Directives; Rolls-
Royce Deutschland Ltd & Co KG (Type Certificate Previously
Held by Rolls-Royce plc) Turbofan Engines [Docket No.: FAA-
2021-1004; Project Identifier MCAI-2021-00480-E; Amendment
39-22030; AD 2022-09-10] (RIN: 2120-AA64) received June 13,
2022, pursuant to 5 U.S.C. 801(a)(1)(A); Public Law 104-121,
Sec. 251; (110 Stat. 868); to the Committee on Transportation
and Infrastructure.
EC-4502. A letter from the Management and Program Analyst,
FAA, Department of Transportation, transmitting the
Department's final rule -- Airworthiness Directives; Airbus
SAS Airplanes [Docket No.: FAA-2022-0585; Project Identifier
MCAI-2022-00603-T; Amendment 39-22053; AD 2022-11-03] (RIN:
2120-AA64) received June 13, 2022, pursuant to 5 U.S.C.
801(a)(1)(A); Public Law 104-121, Sec. 251; (110 Stat. 868);
to the Committee on Transportation and Infrastructure.
EC-4503. A letter from the Management and Program Analyst,
FAA, Department of Transportation, transmitting the
Department's final rule -- Amendment and Removal of Air
Traffic Service (ATS) Routes; Eastern United States [Docket
No.: FAA-2021-1021; Airspace Docket No.: 21-ASO-9] (RIN:
2120-AA66) received May 6, 2022, pursuant to 5 U.S.C.
801(a)(1)(A); Public Law 104-121, Sec. 251; (110 Stat. 868);
to the Committee on Transportation and Infrastructure.
EC-4504. A letter from the Management and Program Analyst,
FAA, Department of Transportation, transmitting the
Department's final rule -- Amendment and Establishment of
Area Navigation (RNAV) Routes T-354, and T-421; Eastern
United States [Docket No.: FAA-2021-0914; Airspace Docket
No.: 21-ASO-10] (RIN: 2120-AA66) received May 6, 2022,
pursuant to 5 U.S.C. 801(a)(1)(A); Public Law 104-121, Sec.
251; (110 Stat. 868); to the Committee on Transportation and
Infrastructure.
EC-4505. A letter from the Attorney Advisor, Regulatory
Affairs Division, Office of Chief Counsel, Pipeline and
Hazardous Material Safety Administration, transmitting the
Administration's final rule -- Administrative Rulemaking ----
Criminal Referrals [Docket No.: PHMSA-2021-0119] (RIN: 2137-
AF58) received May 19, 2022, pursuant to 5 U.S.C.
801(a)(1)(A); Public Law 104-121, Sec. 251; (110 Stat. 868);
to the Committee on Transportation and Infrastructure.
EC-4506. A letter from the Attorney Advisor, Regulatory
Affairs Division, Office of Chief Counsel, Pipeline and
Hazardous Materials Safety Administration, transmitting the
Administration's final rule -- Pipeline Safety: Safety of Gas
Gathering Pipelines: Extension of Reporting Requirements,
Regulation of Large, High-Pressure Lines, and Other Related
Amendments: Technical Corrections [Docket No.: PHMSA-2011-
0023; Amdt. No.: 191-32] (RIN: 2137-AF38) received June 24,
2022, pursuant to 5 U.S.C. 801(a)(1)(A); Public Law 104-121,
Sec. 251; (110 Stat. 868); to the Committee on Transportation
and Infrastructure.
EC-4507. A letter from the Regulation Development
Coordinator, Office of Regulation Policy and Management,
Office of General Counsel (00REG), Department of Veterans
Affairs, transmitting the Department's final rule -- National
Service Life Insurance Premium Payment and Loan Amendment
(RIN: 2900-AR29) received June 22, 2022, pursuant to 5 U.S.C.
801(a)(1)(A); Public Law 104-121, Sec. 251; (110 Stat. 868);
to the Committee on Veterans' Affairs.
EC-4508. A letter from the Director, Regulations and
Disclosure Law Division, U.S. Customs and Border Protection,
Department of Homeland Security, transmitting the
Department's final rule -- Extension of Import Restrictions
Imposed on Certain Archaeological Artifacts and Ethnological
Material From Peru [CBP Dec. 22-11] (RIN: 1515-AE73) received
June 22, 2022, pursuant to 5 U.S.C. 801(a)(1)(A); Public Law
104-121, Sec. 251; (110 Stat. 868); to the Committee on Ways
and Means.
EC-4509. A letter from the Program Manager, Alcohol and
Tobacco Tax and Trade Bureau, Department of the Treasury,
transmitting the Department's final rule -- Establishment of
the Paulsell Valley Viticultural Area [Docket No.: TTB-2021-
0005; T.D. TTB-181; Ref: Notice No.: 202] (RIN: 1513-AC81)
received June 13, 2022, pursuant to 5 U.S.C. 801(a)(1)(A);
Public Law 104-121, Sec. 251; (110 Stat. 868); to the
Committee on Ways and Means.
EC-4510. A letter from the Program Manager, Alcohol and
Tobacco Tax and Trade Bureau, Department of the Treasury,
transmitting the Department's final rule -- Establishment of
the Upper Lake Valley Viticultural Area and Modification of
the Clear Lake Viticultural Area [Docket No.: TTB-2021-0001;
T.D. TTB-182; Ref: Notice No.: 200] (RIN: 1513-AC73) received
June 13, 2022, pursuant to 5 U.S.C. 801(a)(1)(A); Public Law
104-121, Sec. 251; (110 Stat. 868); to the Committee on Ways
and Means.
EC-4511. A letter from the Program Manager, Alcohol and
Tobacco Tax and Trade Bureau, Department of the Treasury,
transmitting the Department's final rule -- Establishment of
the Rocky Reach Viticultural Area [Docket No.: TTB-2021-0006;
T.D. TTB-183; Ref: Notice No.: 203] (RIN: 1513-AC83) received
June 13, 2022, pursuant to 5 U.S.C. 801(a)(1)(A); Public Law
104-121, Sec. 251; (110 Stat. 868); to the Committee on Ways
and Means.
EC-4512. A letter from the Program Manager, Alcohol and
Tobacco Tax and Trade
Bureau, Department of the Treasury, transmitting the
Department's final rule -- Establishment of the Mount Pisgah,
Polk County, Oregon Viticultural Area [Docket No.: TTB-2020-
0008; T.D. TTB-180; Ref: Notice No.: 193] (RIN: 1513-AC58)
received June 13, 2022, pursuant to 5 U.S.C. 801(a)(1)(A);
Public Law 104-121, Sec. 251; (110 Stat. 868); to the
Committee on Ways and Means.
EC-4513. A letter from the Branch Chief, Publications and
Regulations, Legal Processing Division, Internal Revenue
Service, transmitting the Service's IRB only rule --
Simplified procedures for certain bona fide residents of the
Commonwealth of Puerto Rico (Puerto Rico) to claim the child
tax credit under Sec. 24 (Rev. Proc. 2022-22) received June
13, 2022, pursuant to 5 U.S.C. 801(a)(1)(A); Public Law 104-
121, Sec. 251; (110 Stat. 868); to the Committee on Ways and
Means.
EC-4514. A letter from the Director, Legal Processing
Division, Internal Revenue Service, transmitting the
Service's IRB only rule -- 2022 Indexed Qualifying Payment
Amount (Rev. Proc. 2022-11) received June 24, 2022, pursuant
to 5 U.S.C. 801(a)(1)(A); Public Law 104-121, Sec. 251; (110
Stat. 868); to the Committee on Ways and Means.
| the Fed | antisemitic |
07/01/2022 | Unknown | House | CREC-2022-07-01-pt1-PgH5926 | nan | nan | The President notified the Clerk of the House that on the following
dates he had approved and signed bills of the Senate of the following
titles:
April 13, 2022:
S. 3294. An Act to obtain and direct the placement in the
Capitol or on the Capitol Grounds of a statue to honor
Associate Justice of the Supreme Court of the United States
Sandra Day O'Connor and a statue to honor Associate Justice
of the Supreme Court of the United States Ruth Bader
Ginsburg.
May 5, 2022:
S. 233. An Act to designate the Rocksprings Station of the
U.S. Border Patrol located on West Main Street in
Rocksprings, Texas, as the ``Donna M. Doss Border Patrol
Station''.
S. 2629. An Act to establish cybercrime reporting
mechanisms, and for other purposes.
May 6, 2022:
S. 400. An Act to designate the headquarters building of
the Department of Transportation located at 1200 New Jersey
Avenue, SE, in Washington, DC, as the ``William T. Coleman,
Jr., Federal Building''.
May 9, 2022:
S. 3522. An Act to provide enhanced authority for the
President to enter into agreements with the Government of
Ukraine to lend or lease defense articles to that Government
to protect civilian populations in Ukraine from Russian
military invasion, and for other purposes.
May 10, 2022:
S. 1226. An Act to designate the United States courthouse
located at 1501 North 6th Street in Harrisburg, Pennsylvania,
as they ``Sylvia H. Rambo United States Courthouse'', and for
other purposes.
S. 2126. An Act to designate the Federal Office Building
located at 308 W. 21st Street in Cheyenne, Wyoming, as the
``Louisa Swain Federal Office Building'', and for other
purposes.
May 12, 2022:
S. 270. An Act to amend the Act entitled ``Act to provide
for the establishment of the Brown v. Board of Education
National Historic Site in the State of Kansas, and for other
purposes'' to provide for inclusion of additional related
sites in the National Park System, and for other purposes.
S. 497. An Act to establish the American Fisheries Advisory
Committee to assist in the awarding of fisheries research and
development grants, and for other purposes.
S. 658. An Act to authorize the Secretary of Homeland
Security to work with cybersecurity consortia for training,
and for other purposes.
May 13, 2022:
S. 812. An Act to direct the Secretary of State to develop
a strategy to regain observer status for Taiwan in the World
Health Organization, and for other purposes.
S. 3059. An Act to amend the Ethics in Government Act of
1978 to provide for a periodic transaction reporting
requirement for Federal judicial officers and the online
publication of financial disclosure reports of Federal
judicial officers, and for other purposes.
June 7, 2022:
S. 1760. An Act to designate the community-based outpatient
clinic of the Department of Veterans Affairs planned to be
built in Oahu, Hawaii, as the ``Daniel Kahikina Akaka
Department of Veterans Affairs Community-Based Outpatient
Clinic''.
S. 1872. An Act to award a Congressional Gold Medal,
collectively, to the United States Army Rangers Veterans of
World War II in recognition of their extraordinary service
during World War II.
S. 2102. An Act to amend title 38, United States Code, to
direct the Under Secretary for Health of the Department of
Veterans Affairs to provide mammography screening for
veterans who served in locations associated with toxic
exposure.
S. 2514. An Act to rename the Provo Veterans Center in
Orem, Utah, as the ``Col. Gail S. Halvorsen `Candy Bomber'
Veterans Center''.
S. 2533. An Act to improve mammography services furnished
by the Department of Veterans Affairs, and for other
purposes.
S. 2687. An Act to provide the Inspector General of the
Department of Veterans Affairs testimonial subpoena
authority, and for other purposes.
S. 3527. An Act to amend title 38, United States Code, to
authorize the Secretary of Veterans Affairs to transfer the
name of property of the Department of Veterans Affairs
designated by law to other property of the Department.
S. 4089. An Act to restore entitlement to education
assistance under Veterans Rapid Retraining Program in cases
of a closure of an educational institution or a disapproval
of a program of education, and for other purposes.
S. 4119. An Act to reauthorize the Radiation Exposure
Compensation Act.
June 16, 2022:
S. 66. An Act to require the Inter-Agency Task Force on
Harmful Algal Blooms and Hypoxia to develop a plan for
reducing, mitigating, and controlling harmful algal blooms
and hypoxia in South Florida, and for other purposes.
S. 2201. An Act to manage supply chain risk through
counterintelligence training, and for other purposes.
S. 3580. An Act to amend title 46, United States Code, with
respect to prohibited acts by ocean common carriers or marine
terminal operators, and for other purposes.
S. 4160. An Act to amend title 40, United States Code, to
grant the Supreme Court of the United States security-related
authorities equivalent to the legislative and executive
branches.
June 21, 2022:
S. 1097. An Act to establish a Federal rotational cyber
workforce program for the Federal cyber workforce.
S. 2520. An Act to amend the Homeland Security Act of 2002
to provide for engagements with State, local, Tribal, and
territorial governments, and for other purposes.
S. 3823. An Act to amend title 11, United States Code, to
modify the eligibility requirements for a debtor under
chapter 13, and for other purposes.
June 25, 2022:
S. 2089. An Act to amend the Families First Coronavirus
Response Act to extend child nutrition waiver authority, and
for other purposes.
S. 2938. An Act to make our communities safer.
| based | white supremacist |
07/01/2022 | Unknown | House | CREC-2022-07-01-pt1-PgH5926 | nan | nan | The President notified the Clerk of the House that on the following
dates he had approved and signed bills of the Senate of the following
titles:
April 13, 2022:
S. 3294. An Act to obtain and direct the placement in the
Capitol or on the Capitol Grounds of a statue to honor
Associate Justice of the Supreme Court of the United States
Sandra Day O'Connor and a statue to honor Associate Justice
of the Supreme Court of the United States Ruth Bader
Ginsburg.
May 5, 2022:
S. 233. An Act to designate the Rocksprings Station of the
U.S. Border Patrol located on West Main Street in
Rocksprings, Texas, as the ``Donna M. Doss Border Patrol
Station''.
S. 2629. An Act to establish cybercrime reporting
mechanisms, and for other purposes.
May 6, 2022:
S. 400. An Act to designate the headquarters building of
the Department of Transportation located at 1200 New Jersey
Avenue, SE, in Washington, DC, as the ``William T. Coleman,
Jr., Federal Building''.
May 9, 2022:
S. 3522. An Act to provide enhanced authority for the
President to enter into agreements with the Government of
Ukraine to lend or lease defense articles to that Government
to protect civilian populations in Ukraine from Russian
military invasion, and for other purposes.
May 10, 2022:
S. 1226. An Act to designate the United States courthouse
located at 1501 North 6th Street in Harrisburg, Pennsylvania,
as they ``Sylvia H. Rambo United States Courthouse'', and for
other purposes.
S. 2126. An Act to designate the Federal Office Building
located at 308 W. 21st Street in Cheyenne, Wyoming, as the
``Louisa Swain Federal Office Building'', and for other
purposes.
May 12, 2022:
S. 270. An Act to amend the Act entitled ``Act to provide
for the establishment of the Brown v. Board of Education
National Historic Site in the State of Kansas, and for other
purposes'' to provide for inclusion of additional related
sites in the National Park System, and for other purposes.
S. 497. An Act to establish the American Fisheries Advisory
Committee to assist in the awarding of fisheries research and
development grants, and for other purposes.
S. 658. An Act to authorize the Secretary of Homeland
Security to work with cybersecurity consortia for training,
and for other purposes.
May 13, 2022:
S. 812. An Act to direct the Secretary of State to develop
a strategy to regain observer status for Taiwan in the World
Health Organization, and for other purposes.
S. 3059. An Act to amend the Ethics in Government Act of
1978 to provide for a periodic transaction reporting
requirement for Federal judicial officers and the online
publication of financial disclosure reports of Federal
judicial officers, and for other purposes.
June 7, 2022:
S. 1760. An Act to designate the community-based outpatient
clinic of the Department of Veterans Affairs planned to be
built in Oahu, Hawaii, as the ``Daniel Kahikina Akaka
Department of Veterans Affairs Community-Based Outpatient
Clinic''.
S. 1872. An Act to award a Congressional Gold Medal,
collectively, to the United States Army Rangers Veterans of
World War II in recognition of their extraordinary service
during World War II.
S. 2102. An Act to amend title 38, United States Code, to
direct the Under Secretary for Health of the Department of
Veterans Affairs to provide mammography screening for
veterans who served in locations associated with toxic
exposure.
S. 2514. An Act to rename the Provo Veterans Center in
Orem, Utah, as the ``Col. Gail S. Halvorsen `Candy Bomber'
Veterans Center''.
S. 2533. An Act to improve mammography services furnished
by the Department of Veterans Affairs, and for other
purposes.
S. 2687. An Act to provide the Inspector General of the
Department of Veterans Affairs testimonial subpoena
authority, and for other purposes.
S. 3527. An Act to amend title 38, United States Code, to
authorize the Secretary of Veterans Affairs to transfer the
name of property of the Department of Veterans Affairs
designated by law to other property of the Department.
S. 4089. An Act to restore entitlement to education
assistance under Veterans Rapid Retraining Program in cases
of a closure of an educational institution or a disapproval
of a program of education, and for other purposes.
S. 4119. An Act to reauthorize the Radiation Exposure
Compensation Act.
June 16, 2022:
S. 66. An Act to require the Inter-Agency Task Force on
Harmful Algal Blooms and Hypoxia to develop a plan for
reducing, mitigating, and controlling harmful algal blooms
and hypoxia in South Florida, and for other purposes.
S. 2201. An Act to manage supply chain risk through
counterintelligence training, and for other purposes.
S. 3580. An Act to amend title 46, United States Code, with
respect to prohibited acts by ocean common carriers or marine
terminal operators, and for other purposes.
S. 4160. An Act to amend title 40, United States Code, to
grant the Supreme Court of the United States security-related
authorities equivalent to the legislative and executive
branches.
June 21, 2022:
S. 1097. An Act to establish a Federal rotational cyber
workforce program for the Federal cyber workforce.
S. 2520. An Act to amend the Homeland Security Act of 2002
to provide for engagements with State, local, Tribal, and
territorial governments, and for other purposes.
S. 3823. An Act to amend title 11, United States Code, to
modify the eligibility requirements for a debtor under
chapter 13, and for other purposes.
June 25, 2022:
S. 2089. An Act to amend the Families First Coronavirus
Response Act to extend child nutrition waiver authority, and
for other purposes.
S. 2938. An Act to make our communities safer.
| entitlement | racist |
06/23/2022 | Mr. LEE | Senate | CREC-2022-06-23-pt1-PgS3108 | nan | nan | Mr. LEE. Mr. President, for months, American moms and dads have
endured an unprecedented baby formula shortage.
All of us know someone that this crisis has personally affected. In
May alone, reports showed that the out-of-stock rate jumped from 43
percent to 74 percent nationally. In my home State of Utah, that out-
of-stock rate is much higher.
And while the Biden administration made ambitious attempts to invoke
the Defense Production Act and fly in formula from other countries,
these efforts ultimately provided less than 2 days' worth of formula
for our country's hungry babies--less than 2 days.
So yesterday, I took to the floor asking that this body take
immediate action to address our Nation's massive
formula shortage by unanimously passing my FORMULA Act, something that
I have come repeatedly to the Senate floor in an effort to pass and it
has been met with objections so far.
My bill included three measures to accomplish this goal. The first
was a regulatory component, one that would remove certain FDA
requirements for imported formula, mostly dealing with labeling. And I
will explain more about that one in a moment. The second removed the
restrictions that limited the availability of formula brands available
to WIC recipients. And, finally, the bill temporarily suspended import
tariffs on formula, increasing supply and decreasing consumer costs.
These three components would provide immediate relief to anxiety-
ridden parents who were forced to scour supermarkets, make dangerous
homemade formula, or, even worse, hospitalize their infants.
I need not explain why a problem of this magnitude is so deserving of
our immediate attention.
After addressing the Senate on each of these topics, I engaged in a
lengthy and substantive debate with my friend and distinguished
colleague from Pennsylvania, Senator Bob Casey. I listened intently to
his objections regarding his concern for the safety and quality of
formula crossing over our borders.
And while I appreciate my colleague's concerns, I still believe that
this body can and must fix this problem, a problem that is, no doubt,
the sole creation of the Federal Government. It is no accident, for
example, that we are the only country facing this particular shortage.
No other country is dealing with this because our country and our own
Federal laws in this area and the way they have been enforced and
implemented have caused it.
So I am determined to provide relief to families dealing with this
inexplicably, unnecessarily prolonged crisis.
For far too long, the people enduring this mess have gone without
answers. And so in the spirit of comity and compromise, I have modified
my request by removing the FDA regulatory component of the bill. I
hoped that this would resolve any reservations that my colleague from
Pennsylvania may have had regarding the safety of these products.
And I should add here, those concerns are not concerns that I agree
with for the simple reason that the countries that, under my bill, we
would have allowed to produce formula, to have that formula introduced
into the United States, they are countries that we have already
identified as having safe regulatory systems.
They are countries with regulatory systems that are strong enough, in
fact, that we allow imports of their pharmaceutical products produced
in those countries because their standards are as rigorous as those
imposed by our own FDA.
Nonetheless, I offered to remove that and made that a request for
passage by unanimous consent. Still, my friend objected to expanding
the range of products available to WIC recipients. Remember, this
component to the bill would have simply allowed American moms and dads
who were beneficiaries under the WIC program to use their vouchers to
purchase any form of formula they would prefer, or more commonly these
days, any form of formula that is available. Whereas, right now, the
WIC vouchers require you to stick to the brand specified on the
vouchers in question.
My distinguished colleague objected also to that version of what I
offered, despite the retention of FDA regulatory authority and the fact
that wealthy Americans are personally importing these products already
from Europe.
And while I find this unfortunate, I was still determined to make an
argument and to, ultimately, formulate an agreement consistent with
that argument to fix a problem that our Federal Government has made and
has created and in which it has made no discernible progress in its
attempts to resolve it.
So, again, in the spirit of comity and compromise and a willingness
to do absolutely whatever it takes to provide whatever relief we can
provide to hungry babies throughout America suffering from
malnutrition, I modified my request yet again. This time to include
only the provisions related to the tariff suspension.
And while I am hopeful that we will be able to come together to
address the concerns of my colleagues and pass the first two provisions
of my bill as well, I hope to report today to families across the
country that my legislation has achieved unanimous support and passed
the Senate.
This would be an incredible win for families and for hungry babies
nationwide. My bill would make meaningful headway in dealing with an
issue that some doctors call ``the worst crisis of their careers.''
By suspending the import tariff on formula imports or providing
cheaper access to formulas to individual consumers and to retailers
alike, no longer will access to these safe formulas be limited to a
select group of wealthy individuals because, again, wealthy individuals
have been able to pay the higher prices and suffer the inconvenience of
going online or otherwise making a special order on their own of these
European formulas.
Again, these European formulas from the countries that we are talking
about--countries covered by the bill--are countries that produce safe,
effective formula and that are regulated by regulatory bodies that are
every bit as stringent as the U.S. Food and Drug Administration. And on
that basis, in fact, we import pharmaceutical products from those same
countries.
Currently, formula is produced in those countries, countries like
France and Switzerland and the United Kingdom. Babies there do just
fine on those formulas. In fact, they do great. And some American
families have been able to benefit from those formulas as they have
ordered it online, but they pay higher prices, and they have to deal
with restrictions that make it more difficult to access those things.
So this bill will open that up.
This is relief that really is long overdue, particularly for Utahns
who have the largest families, the most children per capita, and, also,
the highest birthrate.
Not coincidentally, those are some of the same reasons why the baby
formula shortage is felt so acutely in Utah, but it is being felt
acutely throughout the United States.
I hope that we can come together and pass even more meaningful
reforms that will help solve the problem completely and once and for
all.
I am grateful, however, that the countless hours of behind-the-scenes
work and successful negotiations with my colleagues on a bipartisan
basis have resulted in a win for the most vulnerable Americans. Passing
my FORMULA Act is a victory for families and for babies in Utah and
everywhere else in the United States.
And so, to that end, I ask unanimous consent that the Senate proceed
to the immediate consideration of Calendar No. 372, S. 4261. | the Fed | antisemitic |
07/19/2022 | The SPEAKER pro tempore | House | CREC-2022-07-19-pt1-PgH6859-3 | nan | nan | The SPEAKER pro tempore. Pursuant to clause 8 of rule XX, the
unfinished business is the vote on the motion of the gentlewoman from
Connecticut (Ms. DeLauro) to suspend the rules and pass the following
bills: H.R. 1286, H.R. 2024, H.R. 3222, H.R. 6337, and H.R. 7002 on
which the yeas and nays are ordered. | XX | transphobic |
07/12/2022 | Unknown | House | CREC-2022-07-12-pt1-PgH5974-3 | nan | nan | Under clause 3 of rule XII, memorials were presented and referred as
follows:
ML-185. The SPEAKER presented a memorial of the Senate of
the State of Louisiana, relative to Senate Resolution No.
223, memorializing the Congress of the United States and to
urge and request the Federal Reserve Board, the office of the
comptroller of the currency, the Federal Deposit Insurance
Corporation, the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, the
National Credit Union Administration, and the office of
financial institutions to refrain from enacting or adopting
laws, rules, regulations, or guidance that restricts the
ability of banks, savings and loan associations, savings
banks, credit unions, trust companies, or payment processors
to offer products or services to the fossil fuel industry.;
to the Committee on Financial Services.
ML-186. Also, a memorial of the Senate of the State of
Louisiana, relative to Senate Resolution No. 203,
memorializing the Congress of the United States and to urge
and request the Federal Reserve Board, the office of the
comptroller of the currency, the Federal Deposit Insurance
Corporation, the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, the
National Credit Union Administration, and the office of
financial institutions to refrain from enacting or adopting
laws, rules, regulations, or guidance that restricts the
ability of banks, savings and loan associations, savings
banks, credit unions, trust companies, or payment processors
to offer products or services to the fossil fuel industry.;
to the Committee on Financial Services.
ML-187. Also, a memorial of the Senate of the State of
Hawaii, relative to Senate Resolution No. 20, urging the
United States Congress to enact legislation to address the
rise in illegal text messages; to the Committee on Energy and
Commerce.
ML-188. Also, a memorial of the Senate of the State of
Hawaii, relative to Senate Concurrent Resolution No. 26,
urging the United States Congress to enact legislation to
address the rise in illegal text messages; to the Committee
on Energy and Commerce.
ML-189. Also, a memorial of the Senate of the State of
Michigan, relative to Senate Resolution No. 114, urging the
adoption of policies that will help lead to energy
independence and lower energy costs in the United States,
including ending the state's efforts to shut down Line 5; to
the Committee on Energy and Commerce.
ML-190. Also, a memorial of the House of Representatives of
the State of West Virginia, relative to House Resolution 5,
Regarding the urgent need to improve grid stability and
benefit national security by ensuring available baseload
generation through the deployment of dispatchable low carbon
electric generation options; to the Committee on Energy and
Commerce.
ML-191. Also, a memorial of the Senate of the State of
Colorado, relative to Senate Joint Resolution 22-004,
concerning support for Ukraine against Russian aggression; to
the Committee on Foreign Affairs.
ML-192. Also, a memorial of the Senate of the State of
Hawaii, relative to Senate Resolution No. 94, urging the
state and each county to adopt The Global Pact For The
Environment To Achieve The United Nations Paris Agreement and
the 2030 Development Agenda, and to specifically adopt the
United Nations Sustainable Development Goals, numbers 13
through 17; to the Committee on Foreign Affairs.
ML-193. Also, a memorial of the Senate of the State of
Hawaii, relative to Senate Resolution No. 95. affirming
Hawai'i's ongoing commitment to the goals of the Paris
Climate Agreement, the United Nations Sustainable Development
Goals and Endorsement Of The Fossil Fuel Non-Proliferation
Treaty; to the Committee on Foreign Affairs.
ML-194. Also, a memorial of the Senate of the State of
Hawaii, relative to Senate Concurrent Resolution No. 108,
affirming Hawai'i's ongoing commitment to the goals of the
Paris Climate Agreement, the United Nations Sustainable
Development Goals and Endorsement Of The Fossil Fuel Non-
Proliferation Treaty; to the Committee on Foreign Affairs.
ML-195. Also, a memorial of the House of Representatives of
the State of Hawaii, relative to House Resolution No. 28,
condemning Russia's attack on Ukraine and supporting swift
and severe economic sanctions imposed on Russia; to the
Committee on Foreign Affairs.
ML-196. Also, a memorial of the House of Representatives of
the State of New Hampshire, relative to House Resolution 9,
supporting the principles of federalism; to the Committee on
the Judiciary.
ML-197. Also, a memorial of the House of Representatives of
the State of South Carolina, relative to House Joint
Resolution H. 3205, requesting the Congress of the United
States call a convention of the states to propose amendments
to the Constitution of the United States; to the Committee on
the Judiciary.
ML-198. Also, a memorial of the House of Representatives of
the State of Arizona, relative to House Concurrent Memorial
2004, urging the United States Congress to oppose the
reporting requirements in the Biden Administration's tax
increase proposal for Fiscal Year 2022; to the Committee on
Ways and Means.
ML-199. Also, a memorial of the Senate of the State of
Hawaii, relative to Senate Resolution No. 178, denouncing
Russia's actions causing a humanitarian crisis in Ukraine and
urging the United States Congress to take concrete action to
support Ukrainian refugees and to increase the refugee limits
for the United States and increase funding related to those
efforts; jointly to the Committees on Foreign Affairs and the
Judiciary.
ML-200. Also, a memorial of the Senate of the State of
Hawaii, relative to Senate Concurrent Resolution No. 185,
denouncing Russia's actions causing a humanitarian crisis in
Ukraine and urging the United States Congress to take
concrete action to support Ukrainian refugees and to increase
the refugee limits for the United States and increase funding
related to those efforts; jointly to the Committees on
Foreign Affairs and the Judiciary.
ML-201. Also, a memorial of the Senate of the State of
Colorado, relative to Senate Memorial 22-001, memorializing
Congress to adopt comprehensive voting rights legislation to
protection the integrity of American democracy and the sacred
right vote; jointly to the Committees on House Administration
and the Judiciary.
ML-202. Also, a memorial of the Senate of the State of
Colorado, relative to Senate Joint Resolution 22-005,
concerning the designation of March 8, 2022 as ``Colorado
Aerospace Day''; jointly to the Committees on Science, Space,
and Technology and Armed Services.
ML-203. Also, a memorial of the Senate of the State of
Hawaii, relative to Senate Resolution No. 201, urging the
United States Congress and Hawaii's Congressional delegation
to support legislation establishing Medicare For All; jointly
to the Committees on Ways and Means and Energy and Commerce.
ML-204. Also, a memorial of the Legislature of the State of
Illinois, relative to House Joint Resolution No. 763, urging
the passage of the Stranded Act of 2021, currently in the
United States Senate, which provides resources to communities
that are challenged by stranded nuclear waste; jointly to the
Committees on Transportation and Infrastructure, Financial
Services, and Ways and Means.
| the Fed | antisemitic |
07/12/2022 | Unknown | Senate | CREC-2022-07-12-pt1-PgS3218 | nan | nan | U.S. Supreme Court
Mr. President, now on a different matter, yesterday, I discussed the
Supreme Court's historic, courageous, and correct decision in Dobbs,
but that landmark case was only part of the most consequential Supreme
Court term in almost 70 years, since Brown overturned Plessy in 1954.
For example, in the space of 1 week, the Court took two huge leaps
forward for religious liberty. Two big steps to restore and strengthen
Americans' First Amendment right to pray and worship how they choose
and raise their kids accordingly.
Time and again, we have seen opponents of religious diversity argue
that government ought to discriminate against faith-based undertakings
and organizations. These efforts have spanned from the anti-Catholic
Blaine amendments of the 1800s to today's efforts by the secular left
to chase religion out of the public square. We have had Democratic
politicians try to force nuns to pay for birth control against their
will. Forty-nine of fifty Democrats just voted for a radical bill that
would have forced faith-based hospitals--listen to this--forced faith-
based hospitals to perform abortions against their principles.
Last year, Washington Democrats tried to pass a sweeping toddler
takeover that was written to squeeze out faith-based childcare
providers and secularize early childhood care in this country. For
goodness' sake--for goodness' sake--5 years ago, a Lutheran preschool
in Missouri had to argue all the way to the Supreme Court that it
deserved equal access to widely available funding for updating an
outdoor playground. Textbook anti-religious discrimination.
Fortunately, they won easily 7 to 2. This is indeed a new Supreme
Court.
Last month, the Court took another landmark step. The case of Carson
v. Makin arose because the State of Maine had established a school
voucher program that tried to uniquely discriminate against faith-based
schools. In effect, the government was using taxpayer money to nudge
families away from faith-based education and toward secular private
schools instead.
The Court rightly struck down that law. Chief Justice Roberts
explained that Maine could not exclude accredited and otherwise
eligible schools purely because they are religious. That is not the
government's choice to make. It is up to the parents.
A few days later, the Court issued another important and commonsense
ruling. Joseph Kennedy, a high school football coach from Washington
State, was fired--listen to this--simply because he quickly and quietly
offered a simple prayer on the field after the game. He got fired for
that. The man was fired by government bureaucrats for praying in our
country.
The Court ruled for Coach Kennedy under both the free speech and free
exercise clauses of the First Amendment. Thank goodness. In the
process, Justice Gorsuch and his colleagues cleared away many years of
phony, made-up legal tests that made our laws needlessly hostile to
religion and turned back to what the Constitution actually says.
So the Court's term was an exciting one for Americans of faith who
simply want to be allowed to live out their faiths and raise their
kids. But this was a win for the entire country. Americans of any faith
and no faith at all can celebrate that we have a brilliant majority of
originalist, textualist Justices who will defend all of our
constitutionally guaranteed freedoms and apply what the Bill of Rights
actually says.
In a better world, neither of these commonsense rulings would have
been close calls or breaking news, but since they were, they were very
good news indeed.
I suggest the absence of a quorum. | religious liberty | homophobic |
07/13/2022 | Unknown | Senate | CREC-2022-07-13-pt1-PgS3276 | nan | nan | Mr. HAGERTY (for himself, Mr. Cardin, Mr. Risch, Mr. Menendez, Mr.
Tillis, Mr. Van Hollen, Mr. Cruz, Mr. Leahy, Mr. Scott of Florida, Mr.
Blumenthal, Ms. Lummis, Ms. Duckworth, Mr. Johnson, Mr. Coons, Mr.
Moran, Mr. Durbin, Mrs. Blackburn, Mr. Kaine, Mr. Blunt, Mr. Warnock,
Mr. Cramer, Mr. Hickenlooper, Ms. Ernst, Mr. Schatz, Mrs. Fischer, Mr.
Markey, Mr. Romney, Mr. Kelly, Mr. Cassidy, Mr. Booker, Mr. Boozman,
Mrs. Feinstein, Mr. Daines, Mr. Merkley, Mr. Rounds, Mr. Lujan, Mr.
Rubio, Mr. King, Mr. Toomey, Ms. Klobuchar, Mr. Hoeven, Mr. Padilla,
Mr. Cotton, Mr. Bennet, Ms. Collins, Ms. Smith, Mr. Wicker, Mrs.
Murray, Mr. Hawley, Mrs. Shaheen, Mr. Barrasso, Mr. Cornyn, Mr. Thune,
Mr. Graham, Mrs. Capito, Mr. Shelby, Mr. Portman, Mr. Young, Mrs. Hyde-
Smith, Mr. Sullivan, Mr. Crapo, Mr. Murphy, Mr. Grassley, Mr. Reed, Mr.
Inhofe, Mr. Carper, Mr. Kennedy, Mr. Wyden, and Mr. Burr) submitted the
following resolution; which was referred to the Committee on Foreign
Relations:
S. Res. 706
Whereas the emergence of a prosperous and democratic Japan
over the past 75 years has been one of the foundations of
global stability and peace in the world;
Whereas former Prime Minister of Japan Shinzo Abe was
tragically assassinated on July 8, 2022, resulting in the
loss of a leading statesman and tireless champion of
democratic values around the world;
Whereas former Prime Minister Shinzo Abe served as the
Prime Minister of Japan from 2006 to 2007 and 2012 to 2020,
while leaving an indelible mark on the politics, economy, and
society of Japan, as well as prosperity and security around
the world;
Whereas, in August 2007, at the Parliament of the Republic
of India, former Prime Minister Shinzo Abe delivered a
historic speech entitled ``The Confluence of the Two Seas'',
which inspired the vision of the free and open Indo-Pacific;
Whereas, in December 2012, former Prime Minister Shinzo Abe
launched the concept of the democratic security diamond--the
precursor to the modern-day Quadrilateral Security Dialogue--
in which he envisaged a strategy under which the United
States, Australia, India, and Japan would form a ``diamond to
safeguard'' the maritime commons stretching from the Indian
Ocean region to the Western Pacific;
Whereas, in April 2015, former Prime Minister Shinzo Abe
made the first address by a Japanese leader to a joint
session of Congress where he called the relationship between
the United States and Japan ``an alliance of hope'' and
offered his ``eternal condolences to the souls of all
American people that were lost during World War II'';
Whereas former Prime Minister Shinzo Abe advanced the
United States-Japan alliance through multiple Presidential
administrations of the United States by strengthening
diplomatic, military, and economic cooperation, including the
Trade Agreement between the United States of America and
Japan, done at Washington October 7, 2019;
Whereas former Prime Minister Shinzo Abe tirelessly sought
to resolve the issue of Japanese citizens abducted by the
Democratic People's Republic of Korea and continuously sought
the safe return of such citizens to Japan;
Whereas former Prime Minister Shinzo Abe relentlessly
pursued the denuclearization of the Democratic People's
Republic of Korea by leading a global campaign to cut off
revenue to the unlawful nuclear weapons program the
Democratic People's Republic of Korea; and
Whereas the United States lost a great friend and ally with
the assassination of former Prime Minister Shinzo Abe, whose
leadership laid a lasting foundation for the United States
and Japan to partner for decades to come in promoting
freedom, prosperity, and security around the world and
opposing authoritarianism and tyranny: Now, therefore, be it
Resolved, That the Senate--
(1) remembers former Prime Minister of Japan Shinzo Abe and
his work to strengthen the alliance between the United States
and Japan; and
(2) extends condolences to the family of former Prime
Minister Shinzo Abe and the people of Japan.
| safeguard | transphobic |
07/13/2022 | Unknown | Senate | CREC-2022-07-13-pt1-PgS3277 | nan | nan | Mr. DURBIN (for himself, Mr. Tillis, Mrs. Shaheen, Mrs. Fischer, Mr.
Van Hollen, Mr. Rubio, Mr. Markey, Mr. Cardin, Mr. Kaine, and Mr.
Coons) submitted the following resolution; which was referred to the
Committee on Foreign Relations:
S. Res. 708
Whereas Alyaksandr Lukashenka has ruled Belarus as an
undemocratic dictatorship since the first presidential
election in Belarus in 1994, dismantling the democratic
institutions of Belarus and seeking to jail those who compete
against him in presidential elections or protest his
authoritarian regime;
Whereas the Lukashenka regime jailed leading opposition
candidates that attempted to compete in the August 9, 2020,
presidential election in Belarus;
Whereas Sviatlana Tsikhanouskaya ran in the August 9, 2020,
presidential election after the jailing of her husband,
opposition candidate Siarhei Tsikhanouski, and was widely
seen as the legitimate winner by the international community;
Whereas the August 9, 2020 presidential election, in which
Lukashenka claimed victory, was marred by widespread concern
over its legitimacy, as noted by the Organization for
Security and Co-operation in Europe, the European Council,
the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights, the
Department of State, and reputable international human rights
groups;
Whereas the Senate, as expressed in Senate Resolution 658
(116th Congress) and Senate Resolution 345 (117th Congress),
both of which passed with unanimous support, has stated its
deep concern regarding the most recent fraudulent election
that took place in Belarus on August 9, 2020;
Whereas, in response to the August 9, 2020, fraudulent
presidential election, the people of Belarus staged the
largest and longest sustained public protests in the history
of the country, calling for a democratic Belarus;
Whereas, since the August 9, 2020, fraudulent presidential
election, the Lukashenka regime has continued to pressure,
harass, imprison, and persecute opposition leaders, civil
society activists, human rights defenders, and independent
media;
Whereas, according to the Viasna Human Rights Centre, the
Government of Belarus has continued to keep at least 1,244
people imprisoned on politically motivated charges or under
false pretense of terrorist threat, including opposition
candidate Siarhei Tsikhanouski, who was sentenced to 18 years
in prison;
Whereas Russia provided critical support to the Lukashenka
regime following the repression of the protests that followed
the August 9, 2020, fraudulent presidential election, backing
the Lukashenka regime's efforts to prevent the emergence of a
democratic Belarus, including through the provision of
financial assistance, propaganda support, and offers of
military assistance;
Whereas, on May 23, 2021, the Government of Belarus
unlawfully forced the landing of Ryanair Flight 4978 in Minsk
to arrest journalist and activist Raman Pratasevich and his
partner Sofia Sapega;
Whereas, since July 7, 2021, the Government of Belarus has
weaponized vulnerable migrants by manufacturing a border
crisis with Latvia, Lithuania, and Poland in retaliation for
sanctions imposed by the European Union;
Whereas, on February 24, 2022, Russia launched an
unprovoked war against Ukraine, using Belarus as a launching
pad for its attack;
Whereas the Lukashenka regime has continued to allow
Belarus to be used by Russian President Vladimir Putin for
his illegal and unprovoked war against Ukraine, including via
a sham February 27, 2022, constitutional referendum on
provisions to enable Belarus to host nuclear weapons and undo
Belarus' decades-long commitment to neutrality;
Whereas, since the Russian invasion of Ukraine, Lukashenka
has met with Vladimir Putin on at least four separate
occasions, including most recently on June 25, 2022, when
Putin pledged to supply Belarus with missile systems capable
of carrying nuclear weapons;
Whereas, despite support from the Lukashenka regime for
Putin's war in Ukraine, hundreds of brave Belarusians have
joined together to defend Ukraine, both on the battlefield in
Ukraine and in the disruption of Russian supply lines;
Whereas the United States and allies of the United States
have imposed sanctions on the Lukashenka regime for the
August 9, 2020, fraudulent presidential election and ensuing
repression as well as support for Putin's war in Ukraine;
Whereas, on December 15 2020, Julie Fisher was confirmed by
the Senate as Ambassador to Belarus, but her credentials were
not accepted by the Lukashenka regime, resulting in
President's Biden decision in October 2021 to appoint Mrs.
Fisher as Special Envoy for Belarus; and
Whereas Belarusian opposition leader Sviatlana
Tsikhanouskaya, in exile in Lithuania, continues to represent
the widely shared desire of the Belarusian people for free
and fair elections and democracy: Now, therefore, be it
Resolved, That the Senate--
(1) continues, on the second anniversary of the fraudulent
presidential election that took place in Belarus on August 9,
2020, to refuse to recognize Alyaksandr Lukashenka as the
legitimately elected leader of Belarus;
(2) condemns the ongoing harassment and persecution of
opposition leaders, civil society activists, human rights
defenders, and independent media carried out by the
Lukashenka regime, and urges the immediate release, without
preconditions, of all political prisoners in Belarus,
including Siarhei Tsikhanouski, as well as for all
representatives of democratic forces, civil society, and
independent media in exile to be able to return home without
fear of persecution or prosecution;
(3) calls for new presidential and parliamentary elections
to be held in Belarus, conducted in a manner that meets
international standards and includes independent election
monitoring;
(4) condemns the shameful and self-serving support provided
by the Lukashenka regime for Russian President Putin's savage
war in Ukraine;
(5) welcomes continued and coordinated sanctions imposed by
the United States and European Union and other tools to
support democracy in Belarus;
(6) recognizes the extraordinary support offered by the
Governments of Lithuania, Poland, and Ukraine to support the
people of Belarus, including support for the political
opposition, accommodation of political refugees, and backing
of independent media;
(7) encourages President Biden to swiftly appoint a new
Special Envoy for Belarus to support the pro-democracy
movement; and
(8) stands in solidarity with the many brave Belarusians,
such as Sviatlana Tsikhanouskaya, who continue to strive for
a free and democratic Belarus.
| terrorist | Islamophobic |
07/13/2022 | Mr. PORTMAN | Senate | CREC-2022-07-13-pt1-PgS3280-2 | nan | nan | Mr. PORTMAN. Mr. President, I am on the floor today to talk about
border security--a humanitarian, a national security, a community
safety issue with direct connection to the drug epidemic we see in
communities all around the country, including my home State of Ohio.
I am also here to talk about legislation I introduced today with
Senator Jim Risch to address this crisis. So we are in the middle right
now of what is the biggest border crisis in the history of our country
if you measure it by the number of people who are coming to the border
unlawfully and, as the Biden administration says, people who are
encountering the Border Patrol.
The Biden administration claims that they have the border under
control and that they are--and I am quoting--doing a good job. This
chart, though, tells a really different story. It shows that as of May,
which is the last month that we have records for, we had the highest
number of border encounters on record. The second highest, by the way,
was the month before: April. So you see this goes back to 2019. There
was a surge here--144,000. Here, we have the inauguration of President
Biden, and then we have had big increases--again, to the point that
over the last couple of months, we have had record numbers of people
who have come unlawfully to the border and been stopped by, apprehended
by, the Border Patrol.
This includes 239,000 total encounters at the border in the month of
May--165,000 of which were single, adult migrants. This does not
include those who were not encountered--in other words, those who
slipped past the Border Patrol. We haven't been able to find a precise
number for these individuals.
The Border Patrol calls this group of people got-aways. But using a
conservative estimate from the Border Patrol of 300,000 people who they
think got away in the last fiscal year, you would then put the total
number of unlawful entries at approximately 286,000 people in 1 month.
If you annualize that, that would be 3.4 million people a year. Think
about those numbers: almost 3\1/2\ million people a year coming to our
border and attempting to gain entry unlawfully.
Today, not all of those who are apprehended are allowed to come into
the United States, and that is because under so-called title 42,
roughly half of those individuals who are being apprehended, who are
being encountered, are turned back. If they live in Mexico, they are
sent back across the border. If they live in a country--say Ecuador or
Guatemala--they are sent back, flown back to their country of origin.
But these are people who are being turned away because of title 42.
So what is title 42? It is a public health authority. It is an
attempt by our government to limit migration in order to prevent the
spread of communicable diseases--in this case, COVID-19. It allows the
Customs and Border Protection officers and agents to tell unlawful
migrants: You can't come to the United States for these public health
reasons. It only applies, by the way, now to single adults; but, as I
said earlier, that is the single biggest group. It comprises about 48
to 52 percent--about half--of the people who are coming up to the
border.
So even with the use of title 42, which is acting to discourage
people from coming to our border, we are experiencing these record
levels. We are also experiencing these record levels in these hot
summer months. Normally, when you get into the summertime where it gets
really hot--look here at May, June, July, August--the number of people
coming to the border goes down, not up. It is over 100 degrees in the
desert and at the Rio Grande, at almost all of these border crossings
along the U.S.-Mexican border. Yet we have more, not less.
There is anecdotal information that this is because people are
realizing that the administration wants to end title 42. They have
proposed to do that. That is now in the court system. But the cartels
are spreading the message, which is: Now is the time to come because,
before, you were turned away by title 42. Now, like everybody else, you
can come into the United States and stay. And we will talk in a moment
about what that means.
But I think that is probably true. Probably title 42 has something to
do with it. But I think, also, it has to do with the fact that more and
more people are realizing that if they do come to the border and don't
get stopped by title 42, they will have a chance to come into the
United States and live in the United States with their families,
perhaps; if not, maybe bring in their families later. And everybody
wants to come to America. We are a great country.
We have our challenges, as we talk about on the floor here all the
time. But, still, we are a country with so many opportunities for
people, and folks want to come. And I don't blame them. I don't blame
them. But we want them to come legally.
And we currently have the most generous legal immigration system of
any country in the world. About 900,000 people a year--almost a million
people a year--come legally to the United States, most as legal
immigrants, some as refugees. And so we encourage that, and we should.
In fact, I think we should bring more people in legally, particularly
to fill
some of the jobs that we need filled, the STEM disciplines we talk
about a lot. We need people with the kind of training and background to
help our economy grow. But we need people at every level of training.
But we want them to come legally and through an orderly process that is
more humane, that doesn't have all the issues--which we will talk about
tonight--the humanitarian issues at the southern border.
In terms of title 42, we all hope that this public health emergency
isn't necessary going forward because COVID-19 ends. But in the
meantime, this border crisis means, to me, that we have to keep title
42 in place until we make some changes in policy. Otherwise, it will be
not just a crisis. It will be totally overwhelming.
As the Border Patrol says to me, they will lose operational control
of the border. Some would argue that has already happened because so
many people are coming over at record numbers. Often, the Border Patrol
is distracted by one group of migrants, and another group comes in. And
I saw this when I was at the border in El Paso. And anybody who has
been down at the border has seen this.
They are already in tough shape. But imagine if 48 percent of the
people here who are now being turned away by title 42 are not going to
be turned away and the number of other people who will come knowing
that that avenue is now open to them. This will be overwhelming.
It is very difficult right now, with the laws and the way the laws
are being implemented, to keep that from happening. That is why we need
a change in policy. It doesn't have to happen here in Congress. I think
we should change the laws and introduce legislation today to do that.
But the administration itself could make these changes.
By the way, in the last administration, as you can see, the number of
people coming across the border unlawfully and the number of encounters
was very low. But the same was true in the Obama administration. After
they had a surge of unaccompanied minors, they made changes in the law,
and they reduced the number of people who were coming unlawfully to the
border as well. It can be done, but there has to be the will do it.
I am the ranking Republican on the Senate committee that has
oversight responsibility for the Department of Homeland Security. The
Presiding Officer is also on that committee. This Department of
Homeland Security is preparing, they tell us, for a huge increase in
migrants after title 42 has ended. So although they want to end it,
they also know that if they do end it, there is going to be a huge
surge because they are actually preparing for that.
The way they are doing it is interesting. It is not so much keeping
people from coming into the United States as expediting their flow into
the United States. Among other things, instead of processing people at
the border, their recommendation is go ahead and put people on buses or
other forms of transportation and then do the processing later, perhaps
on the buses or where they are going in the United States. So it is a
way to move people through the process rather than come up with a way
to discourage people from coming across the border illegally.
DHS has planned, and then will facilitate, travel throughout the
country rather than figuring out how to keep people from coming in the
first place by telling them: Come legally, but please don't come to our
border illegally.
By the way, I think most Americans are very supportive of legal
immigration. It is an important part of who we are. With very few
exceptions of Native Americans, we all came from someplace else. All of
us have proud stories of our immigrant forebearers--our parents, our
grandparents, our great-grandparents. And it has enriched our country.
It is part of the fabric of our Nation. It is what makes us special.
But that is legal immigration. And it is not what we are talking about
here.
Who bears the brunt of this crisis? Well, at the outset, of course,
it is the Border Patrol. We have got to provide them with the personnel
and resources they need to complete their mission, as difficult as it
is.
When you go and meet with these people, the men and women of the
Border Patrol, you come away just so proud of what they try to do every
day. They are a combination of, you know, border agents trying to
enforce the law, social workers trying to help people with their
problems, healthcare workers trying to help when people get
hurt. Unfortunately, as we have seen, a lot of people are getting hurt
in this process. That journey north is a dangerous journey.
And with the cartels so involved and right there at the border, what
happens in the desert, what happens on these trains, what happens in
these trucks--we just saw this horrible incident of these migrants who
were jammed into a semitruck, and more of them died, I think, than any
other accident of that kind, incident of that kind, in our history. But
this is inhumane, and this is part of what happens when you have these
cartels involved in this process.
We also have got to provide the Border Patrol with the ability to
help control things at the border by finishing the border fence and
putting the technology with the fence that was always intended.
By the way, the technology tends not to be very partisan around here.
Democrats and Republicans alike, I believe, mostly think we ought to
have cameras. We ought to have sensors. We ought to know what is going
on at the border. But when the order came down the first day of the
Biden administration to stop the wall and to end what the Trump
administration had started with Congress's approval and funding, they
also said, Stop the technology.
So in the El Paso sector, as an example, the wall is about 80, 90
percent completed. Unfortunately, there are gaps in the wall where you
literally have to have Border Patrol there 24 hours a day or people
just come through it, which makes their job really hard. What they want
to do is at least have the wall there to slow people down. And the
technology there enables them to then go and deal with situations as
they occur. But only 20 percent of the technology had been completed.
So you have more wall than you have technology. And the wall is not
that useful, frankly, without the technology, in my view. I think the
technology is the key. But that is what is happening.
And, by the way, to the taxpayers listening tonight, which is pretty
much all of us, we paid for that wall. We actually paid for the fencing
to be put up. Congress appropriated the money. And then the
administration stopped it. So you literally see the steel beams and the
pieces of concrete for the wall lying on the ground. And as one Border
Patrol agent told me when I was in one of the sectors--most recently I
was in the Nogales sector where there is a huge gap--he said, this is
really bad for morale. And our Border Patrol agents look at this stuff,
and they say: We have already paid for this. Can't we just finish the
wall and put these fences up, the gates up, to keep these openings from
attracting the cartels and the drug smugglers and the people smugglers?
But that is where we are. So that is one thing our legislation does, is
to correct that problem and help stop this crisis.
It also says that title 42--we talked about earlier--won't be lifted
until the COVID-19 emergency is over. Again, I think it ought to be
lifted when we have policies in place that make sense. But a lot more
is needed. The bill also mandates that the program the Biden
administration ended, which said that as you come to ask for asylum,
you should wait at the border--it is called the migrant protocols.
There was just an agreement with the President of Mexico and
President Biden a couple of days ago about more funding for the border
area--and that is good--to provide more humane living conditions. But
this was working to tell people, if you want to come for asylum, go
ahead and apply. And while you are waiting for asylum, you can remain
in Mexico. And if you get asylum, you come across. If you don't, you go
home. What happened is, a lot of people just went home.
The asylum process, which we will get into in a minute, is kind of a
complicated issue. But in other ways, it is pretty simple, and it is
the main reason for this, which is that people know if they come to the
border and they claim asylum, which most people do, they have an
immediate, what is called, credible fear interview. Sometimes, it is
over the telephone now,
partly because of COVID. And that is a very low bar. And so people say
what their issue is back home where they feel persecuted, and then they
come in. And once they are told to come in, then they are told: OK, you
can go to wherever you are going in America--let's say Cincinnati, my
hometown, or Columbus or Chicago or Denver, wherever it is--and you
need to check in with the ICE office--that is the immigration office in
the interior of the United States--within 90 days.
Some people do check in. Some people don't check in. But the point
is, there is now a wait of somewhere between 6 to 8 years before your
case is heard on asylum--6 to 8 years. Why? Because there are 1.5
million--someone told me today 1.6 million; let's say 1.5 million
people, that is high enough--waiting in line. That is what the backlog
is.
It just makes no sense to anybody, including, by the way, the
Secretary of Homeland Security, whom I have talked to about this. And
these long waits mean that you are there embedded in a community in
America getting to know your community. You are joining your church.
You are sending your kids to school. You are having children. You are
part of the community. And then you are told after 6 to 8 years, by the
way, your asylum application is being denied because you are an
economic refugee, not an asylee. In other words, you haven't
demonstrated a fear of persecution. You have come to this country,
understandably, because there is great opportunity here. Again, we
should be encouraging these people to come legally like so many other
immigrants have over the years.
Only about 15 to 20 percent of those people who apply for asylum
today are getting asylum. So think about it. If you are part of the 80
to 85 percent who are not going to get asylum, there is sometimes not
much of an incentive to enter into this process and go through the
hearings and so on.
The consequence if you don't go through the hearings is that you are
then subject to removal. However, we are just not removing people
today. So this past year, the latest numbers we have are that 59,000
people were deported, or removed, from America. About 66 percent of
those people had a criminal background. But, remember, this is out of a
couple hundred thousand people going through the process. So there is a
very small chance that you will ever be removed or deported. Even
though you went through the process, you were denied asylum. You stay
in the United States. And, you know, the next administration could
change that. This administration could change that. But right now, this
asylum process, which was created to give lawful presence to people who
were unable to be in their home country because of persecution, is not
being used properly. It is being exploited by people who know that
because of our system and our huge backlog, if they say that they are
part of a group that is being persecuted they can come in. And even
when they are denied asylum, they can stay. That is the way it is
working.
What we have found is that folks who come here are almost entirely
focused more on the economic side. There was a survey conducted by the
Migration Policy Institute recently, which, by the way, is a pro-
migrant institution. It found that 90 percent of the Central Americans
making the journey to our southern border are coming for what? For
work. They are coming for work because they come from poor countries.
They don't have a lot of opportunity in their country. I don't blame
them. If I was a father living in Honduras and couldn't find a job or I
was a subsistence farmer just barely making it and I had a few kids and
I wanted them to have a better life, I would come, too.
But that is not what immigration is all about. It is a system where
you come legally, yes. But if you come illegally, you have got to be
told you have to go back and apply like everybody else. Otherwise,
America would be overwhelmed. And it is being overwhelmed and will be
even more overwhelmed if title 42 is taken away. There are hundreds of
millions of people--maybe billions of people--around the world who
would love to come to this country. We take for granted our
opportunities, our freedoms; but others don't.
So we have to have a system. We have to have some sort of a border.
And, really, that is the question that is before us today in this body:
Are we going to have a system that makes sense or one where, again, you
have a million and a half people who are waiting to have their hearing.
When they have their hearing on asylum and they are denied, they still
aren't removed; so they can stay. And, again, meanwhile, they have
family and kids and connections to the community. It is really not fair
to them. A much better system would be to say, OK, apply for asylum in
your country, or if you don't feel comfortable there, apply from a
third country. Then you will know, yes or no, before you come up to the
border, don't make that dangerous journey north. Don't put yourself in
the clutches of these coyotes, these human smugglers, these
traffickers, who are heartless. What they are doing is they are going
down to Central America or Latin America or really all over the world.
People are coming from hundreds of countries now. And they are saying,
you know, give me money. Give me 10,000 bucks, and I will get you to
the border, and you can just walk across.
People are signing up--sometimes with their life savings. And
sometimes as, again, we talked about earlier, there are assaults along
the way. There are all kinds of horrible stories of how women,
particularly, are mistreated on the way up. It is a dangerous and
inhumane process.
At the end of the day, our system is pulling these people to the
border. The administration is now implementing a new asylum rule
recently to try to deal with this problem because they realize it is
just not working. However, the new system that they are putting in
place isn't working either, and there is a reason for that. Their
theory is we should adjudicate the cases at the border. I agree with
that. I would rather adjudicate them outside the border in the country
of origin or a third country, but have the adjudication be right at the
border; make the decision right there, yes or no. Let people know.
The problem is what they are doing right now is they are putting
asylum officers at the border, making a decision, adjudicating as
people come across. And if it is a no, people are not being sent home.
But rather, people are being told if it is a no, you can appeal it to
the regular system, so get back in line with the 1.5 million people.
What we are learning is that, of course, people are smart. They are
talking to the asylum officer. They are getting a yes or no. If they
are getting a yes, that is great; they are getting in. That is a small
percentage. If they are getting a no, they say, That is fine, I am
going to appeal it to the regular system.
It really isn't an answer to the problem. If you want an answer to
the problem, what you would have is processing centers along the
border. It would be expensive because there are so many people coming
over now, so many people applying for asylum. But have a process where,
quickly, you can adjudicate these cases. In the meantime, you would not
have people be released into the interior but have them stay there to
find out what the outcome of the case is.
This pull system is bad for everybody except the smugglers. They are
the ones who profit. They are the ones who are going to folks in places
like Honduras or Ecuador or, again, far-flung places--places in Eastern
Europe, places in Asia--and telling people, Give me a bunch of money,
and I will get you into the United States.
We recently had this tragedy I mentioned in San Antonio. Fifty-three
migrants were left for dead in the Texas heat in the back of a tractor-
trailer. They were just abandoned by their smuggler. They left them
locked inside of this tractor-trailer. It is not the first time this
has happened. But as I said earlier, 53 is probably the worst smuggling
tragedy in our history.
I went to Latin America last year. I met with the Presidents of
Mexico and Guatemala, Ecuador, and Colombia. It was interesting. They
all said the same thing. You would be surprised to hear what they said.
People think they must enjoy this process because so many of their
citizens are going to America, they can then send money back to their
family and it must be good for everybody. It is not.
They are losing some of the best and brightest in their country, and
these
people are going through, again, this arduous process to get to the
border, and the inhumanity of that troubles these Presidents. They all
told me basically the same thing, which is: Why don't you guys fix your
laws and stop this pull factor?
We talk about the push factor in poor countries. I mentioned Honduras
earlier. That is certainly true. By the way, we spent over the last 5
years about $3.6 billion of American taxpayer money to help in the
economics of the so-called Northern Triangle in the Central American
countries.
I am for spending money in these countries to try to help with their
economy, but with the corruption, with all the issues they have, it is
very difficult to imagine those countries in a short period of time
having any kind of economic opportunity that equals what we have right
here in this country, so there is going to continue to be that push. We
should try to alleviate it. It will continue to happen.
But the pull, this policy we have is just pulling people north. What
they said to me, these Presidents of these countries, was: You have a
legal immigration system where people know they can just get into your
country. Why don't you change that? Why don't you change that?
Again, it is not just people from Mexico and Central America. It is
people from all over the world.
By the way, for some of these people, the Border Patrol is
increasingly concerned because they come from countries where a lot of
people want to do us harm. So, increasingly, we are seeing people
coming to our country who are, as an example, on the terror watch list.
Back in 2017, 2 people; 6 people in 2018; none in 2019; 2020, there
were 3; 15 in 2021. This fiscal year, 2022, there are already 50
individuals on the terror watch list. Why? They know if they come to
the U.S. border, they can get across. I am sure this number is higher--
that is what we know--because, again, a lot of people are so-called got
aways. Let's say 20 percent.
Who are these people? Well, some of them are probably pretty smart
individuals who know how to get away from Border Patrol, do the
distraction and sneak in. That worries me and it worries me because we
are allowing people to come into our country who we would not otherwise
allow.
We have seen this increase of people coming into the country who are
on the terror watch list, but we have also seen, again, a lot of people
coming in who we just don't know anything about because they don't
count them at the Border Patrol. We have seen more caravans and we see
more migrants are on the way. Why? I think it is because of this
general pull factor. The fact is people know, if they come here, they
know they are going to be able to get in.
I think it is also because of title 42 because the smugglers are
using that--cartels are spreading the word: Title 42 is on its way out.
Read about it in the front page of your paper because that is where
it is because this administration wants to end it, so they are saying
now you can go to the border and you will be let in under the policies
like the asylum policy and the single adults--48 percent of whom
roughly have been turned away. Forty-eight percent of the total by
title 42 would no longer be turned away. I think that is why we are
seeing this. It is giving the coyotes, traffickers, and smugglers
opportunity to make lots of money.
By the way, that is hurting all these countries, too. If you talk to
the Presidents of these countries, including President Obrador of
Mexico, what he will tell you is the cartels are taking over more and
more of his country because they are making more and more money because
of this--and, significantly, because of the drug issue we are going to
talk about in a second. We know that the cartels are involved in human
trafficking. We know they are involved in drug smuggling. We know they
are involved in smuggling people.
I was with the Border Patrol in El Paso last year. We were out at
night. We saw a group of migrants coming, and the Border Patrol was
going to that location to stop them and question them. Meanwhile, we
heard on the radio the drug smugglers had come across. They could see
it. They knew it. They could tell by the backpacks they were wearing, I
guess, and clothes they were wearing--dark clothes, young men--that
they were smuggling. But they couldn't do anything about it because
Border Patrol were processing the migrants who had come in.
So I am watching the migrants coming in--actually talking to some of
them and Border Patrol--and meanwhile, on the radio, they are saying,
You have to go to this other sector, this other area to stop these drug
smugglers. We can't; we are distracted. The processing takes some time.
The other big issue, in addition to the unlawful entry into the
United States--smuggling, all the inhumanity that surrounds that--is
this drug issue. I have spent a lot of time working on this issue on
the prevention side--helping on treatment and recovery options and
doing more on prevention. We were making some progress until,
unfortunately, we were hit with this pandemic. And during that time and
since, drug use has gone up again. But we were making progress, in
part, because we were helping on the demand side of the equation.
But also on the supply side, we were keeping some of these drugs out
of the country. We did it primarily through stopping the deadliest of
all, which is the fentanyl--which is a synthetic opioid--from coming in
through the U.S. mail system. We passed a law called the STOP Act. It
kept China from poisoning our communities by sending this stuff through
the mail system, which was happening. That was the primary way it was
coming in.
What has happened? During the pandemic--kind of coincidental with the
pandemic--we had more people isolated, more people losing their jobs,
more people turning to drugs. You had Mexico begin to take the central
role in terms of fentanyl. A lot of it is precursors from China, so
China sends the precursors to Mexico, but Mexico is now making the
fentanyl--often into pills--Xanax or Adderall or Percocet.
If you buy any drugs on the street, know that those drugs could kill
you. Don't be fooled. There are so many counterfeit drugs out there
now. That is one of the preferred ways that the Mexican cartels are
bringing these drugs in.
Again, fentanyl is, of course, the deadliest of the drugs. About two
thirds of the overdose deaths in America are currently because of
fentanyl. We now have a record level of overdose deaths every year in
America, over 100,000 last year. There is no reason to believe that it
will be less than that this year based on early data we have, sadly. In
my home State of Ohio, it is the No. 1 killer by far.
Look at what has happened with the seizures of fentanyl. This is the
fentanyl that has been seized. Here are projections for the rest of
this year if they continue as they are--obviously, record levels. When
you have this huge surge of fentanyl coming in, what happens is you
have a lower cost in the drug--supply and demand, right? So there is a
huge supply, and the demand for these drugs continues.
On the streets of Columbus or Cleveland or Cincinnati or Dayton or
your town, wherever it is, it is likely that this cheap but really
deadly fentanyl is something that people are being exposed to. Some
people are falling prey to it, again, often thinking they are taking
another drug.
There are a couple of students at Ohio State University who overdosed
and died just before I gave a talk there at graduation earlier this
spring. They were taking what they thought were study drugs,
apparently: Adderall. A third student lived, but was in critical
condition. This is the deadliest of drugs.
In 2021, we seized double the fentanyl from the previous year, four
times from the year before that. Again, so far this year, we are on
track to match the most fentanyl seized ever. In May--just 1 month, in
May--there was enough fentanyl seized at the border to kill 200 million
Americans, more than half of our population in 1 month. People say:
Well, gosh, why are you so worried about the border? Let people come
across--open border--whatever.
Here is the consequence.
Again, it is hurting Mexico, too, and it is hurting lots of other
countries. But in terms of Mexico, this gives the cartels enormous
power and money. And, yes, ultimately, I think the most important thing
to do is to reduce demand. I do.
Again, we are making progress now. We had about a 20-percent
reduction in 2018. We need to get back to that. This Congress took the
lead on much of this.
But we also have to deal with the supply side and stop this enormous
surge of drugs that is coming over and poisoning our communities. That
is part of what is happening on the border. A few months ago, I was in
Nogales, south of Tucson, to ride with the Border Patrol and go to the
port of entry there. They are doing a very good job with what they
have, but they need better equipment.
This is one thing Congress can do. They need help. They need more
resources. They need better technology. They need to be able to scan
cars and trucks that are coming in, particularly for these drugs that
we talked about. A relatively small package of fentanyl this size can
kill 1,000 people. A few specks could kill you. It is easy to hide it
in a car or a truck.
We now know that less than 2 percent of passenger vehicles and less
than 20 percent of commercial vehicles coming into the United States
are scanned for these illegal drugs like fentanyl. This is just
unacceptable. Congress has appropriated more funding for this. That is
good. Let's get it moving. We should be scanning all vehicles, in my
view. A smuggler with multiple pounds of fentanyl concealed in a hidden
compartment might be worth hundreds of thousands or even millions of
dollars. They know they have a good chance of getting across without a
search. They take the risk.
It is not just a gap in our security; it is a gaping hole. And,
again, it leads to this flood of cheap fentanyl and other dangerous
drugs. The southern border has faced the worst unlawful crisis that we
have ever had, going back to the first chart. This tells the story, in
red.
The men and women of the Customs and Border Protection whom I have
met over the years are doing the best they can. They are doing their
best at the ports of entry. They are doing their best as Border Patrol
between the ports of entry, but they need help. That is what
legislation does. It provides them with the help they need to be able
to respond to this crisis.
We welcome legal immigration. We always should. They enrich our
country. And we are a nation of immigrants, and we are proud of that.
But we are also a nation of laws, and we are also a nation that cares
about the inhumanity of the current system and the flood of cheap,
deadly drugs coming through our border.
I urge the Biden administration to change course, to fix this broken
system, to follow the law, including the law on detaining people, to
reform the asylum process so it stops acting like a pull factor and is
used for what it is intended for, to truly help those who are seeking
asylum for the right reasons, to stop these policies that send a green
light to the smugglers, to the cartels, to the drug traffickers, and
that is causing so much human suffering along our southern border.
I urge the administration to act. In the meantime, again, we are
introducing legislation. I urge my colleagues to help us with that.
There is no reason that we can't work in a bipartisan way to deal with
what everybody has to acknowledge is a huge crisis at our southern
border.
I yield the floor.
| based | white supremacist |
07/13/2022 | Mr. PORTMAN | Senate | CREC-2022-07-13-pt1-PgS3280-2 | nan | nan | Mr. PORTMAN. Mr. President, I am on the floor today to talk about
border security--a humanitarian, a national security, a community
safety issue with direct connection to the drug epidemic we see in
communities all around the country, including my home State of Ohio.
I am also here to talk about legislation I introduced today with
Senator Jim Risch to address this crisis. So we are in the middle right
now of what is the biggest border crisis in the history of our country
if you measure it by the number of people who are coming to the border
unlawfully and, as the Biden administration says, people who are
encountering the Border Patrol.
The Biden administration claims that they have the border under
control and that they are--and I am quoting--doing a good job. This
chart, though, tells a really different story. It shows that as of May,
which is the last month that we have records for, we had the highest
number of border encounters on record. The second highest, by the way,
was the month before: April. So you see this goes back to 2019. There
was a surge here--144,000. Here, we have the inauguration of President
Biden, and then we have had big increases--again, to the point that
over the last couple of months, we have had record numbers of people
who have come unlawfully to the border and been stopped by, apprehended
by, the Border Patrol.
This includes 239,000 total encounters at the border in the month of
May--165,000 of which were single, adult migrants. This does not
include those who were not encountered--in other words, those who
slipped past the Border Patrol. We haven't been able to find a precise
number for these individuals.
The Border Patrol calls this group of people got-aways. But using a
conservative estimate from the Border Patrol of 300,000 people who they
think got away in the last fiscal year, you would then put the total
number of unlawful entries at approximately 286,000 people in 1 month.
If you annualize that, that would be 3.4 million people a year. Think
about those numbers: almost 3\1/2\ million people a year coming to our
border and attempting to gain entry unlawfully.
Today, not all of those who are apprehended are allowed to come into
the United States, and that is because under so-called title 42,
roughly half of those individuals who are being apprehended, who are
being encountered, are turned back. If they live in Mexico, they are
sent back across the border. If they live in a country--say Ecuador or
Guatemala--they are sent back, flown back to their country of origin.
But these are people who are being turned away because of title 42.
So what is title 42? It is a public health authority. It is an
attempt by our government to limit migration in order to prevent the
spread of communicable diseases--in this case, COVID-19. It allows the
Customs and Border Protection officers and agents to tell unlawful
migrants: You can't come to the United States for these public health
reasons. It only applies, by the way, now to single adults; but, as I
said earlier, that is the single biggest group. It comprises about 48
to 52 percent--about half--of the people who are coming up to the
border.
So even with the use of title 42, which is acting to discourage
people from coming to our border, we are experiencing these record
levels. We are also experiencing these record levels in these hot
summer months. Normally, when you get into the summertime where it gets
really hot--look here at May, June, July, August--the number of people
coming to the border goes down, not up. It is over 100 degrees in the
desert and at the Rio Grande, at almost all of these border crossings
along the U.S.-Mexican border. Yet we have more, not less.
There is anecdotal information that this is because people are
realizing that the administration wants to end title 42. They have
proposed to do that. That is now in the court system. But the cartels
are spreading the message, which is: Now is the time to come because,
before, you were turned away by title 42. Now, like everybody else, you
can come into the United States and stay. And we will talk in a moment
about what that means.
But I think that is probably true. Probably title 42 has something to
do with it. But I think, also, it has to do with the fact that more and
more people are realizing that if they do come to the border and don't
get stopped by title 42, they will have a chance to come into the
United States and live in the United States with their families,
perhaps; if not, maybe bring in their families later. And everybody
wants to come to America. We are a great country.
We have our challenges, as we talk about on the floor here all the
time. But, still, we are a country with so many opportunities for
people, and folks want to come. And I don't blame them. I don't blame
them. But we want them to come legally.
And we currently have the most generous legal immigration system of
any country in the world. About 900,000 people a year--almost a million
people a year--come legally to the United States, most as legal
immigrants, some as refugees. And so we encourage that, and we should.
In fact, I think we should bring more people in legally, particularly
to fill
some of the jobs that we need filled, the STEM disciplines we talk
about a lot. We need people with the kind of training and background to
help our economy grow. But we need people at every level of training.
But we want them to come legally and through an orderly process that is
more humane, that doesn't have all the issues--which we will talk about
tonight--the humanitarian issues at the southern border.
In terms of title 42, we all hope that this public health emergency
isn't necessary going forward because COVID-19 ends. But in the
meantime, this border crisis means, to me, that we have to keep title
42 in place until we make some changes in policy. Otherwise, it will be
not just a crisis. It will be totally overwhelming.
As the Border Patrol says to me, they will lose operational control
of the border. Some would argue that has already happened because so
many people are coming over at record numbers. Often, the Border Patrol
is distracted by one group of migrants, and another group comes in. And
I saw this when I was at the border in El Paso. And anybody who has
been down at the border has seen this.
They are already in tough shape. But imagine if 48 percent of the
people here who are now being turned away by title 42 are not going to
be turned away and the number of other people who will come knowing
that that avenue is now open to them. This will be overwhelming.
It is very difficult right now, with the laws and the way the laws
are being implemented, to keep that from happening. That is why we need
a change in policy. It doesn't have to happen here in Congress. I think
we should change the laws and introduce legislation today to do that.
But the administration itself could make these changes.
By the way, in the last administration, as you can see, the number of
people coming across the border unlawfully and the number of encounters
was very low. But the same was true in the Obama administration. After
they had a surge of unaccompanied minors, they made changes in the law,
and they reduced the number of people who were coming unlawfully to the
border as well. It can be done, but there has to be the will do it.
I am the ranking Republican on the Senate committee that has
oversight responsibility for the Department of Homeland Security. The
Presiding Officer is also on that committee. This Department of
Homeland Security is preparing, they tell us, for a huge increase in
migrants after title 42 has ended. So although they want to end it,
they also know that if they do end it, there is going to be a huge
surge because they are actually preparing for that.
The way they are doing it is interesting. It is not so much keeping
people from coming into the United States as expediting their flow into
the United States. Among other things, instead of processing people at
the border, their recommendation is go ahead and put people on buses or
other forms of transportation and then do the processing later, perhaps
on the buses or where they are going in the United States. So it is a
way to move people through the process rather than come up with a way
to discourage people from coming across the border illegally.
DHS has planned, and then will facilitate, travel throughout the
country rather than figuring out how to keep people from coming in the
first place by telling them: Come legally, but please don't come to our
border illegally.
By the way, I think most Americans are very supportive of legal
immigration. It is an important part of who we are. With very few
exceptions of Native Americans, we all came from someplace else. All of
us have proud stories of our immigrant forebearers--our parents, our
grandparents, our great-grandparents. And it has enriched our country.
It is part of the fabric of our Nation. It is what makes us special.
But that is legal immigration. And it is not what we are talking about
here.
Who bears the brunt of this crisis? Well, at the outset, of course,
it is the Border Patrol. We have got to provide them with the personnel
and resources they need to complete their mission, as difficult as it
is.
When you go and meet with these people, the men and women of the
Border Patrol, you come away just so proud of what they try to do every
day. They are a combination of, you know, border agents trying to
enforce the law, social workers trying to help people with their
problems, healthcare workers trying to help when people get
hurt. Unfortunately, as we have seen, a lot of people are getting hurt
in this process. That journey north is a dangerous journey.
And with the cartels so involved and right there at the border, what
happens in the desert, what happens on these trains, what happens in
these trucks--we just saw this horrible incident of these migrants who
were jammed into a semitruck, and more of them died, I think, than any
other accident of that kind, incident of that kind, in our history. But
this is inhumane, and this is part of what happens when you have these
cartels involved in this process.
We also have got to provide the Border Patrol with the ability to
help control things at the border by finishing the border fence and
putting the technology with the fence that was always intended.
By the way, the technology tends not to be very partisan around here.
Democrats and Republicans alike, I believe, mostly think we ought to
have cameras. We ought to have sensors. We ought to know what is going
on at the border. But when the order came down the first day of the
Biden administration to stop the wall and to end what the Trump
administration had started with Congress's approval and funding, they
also said, Stop the technology.
So in the El Paso sector, as an example, the wall is about 80, 90
percent completed. Unfortunately, there are gaps in the wall where you
literally have to have Border Patrol there 24 hours a day or people
just come through it, which makes their job really hard. What they want
to do is at least have the wall there to slow people down. And the
technology there enables them to then go and deal with situations as
they occur. But only 20 percent of the technology had been completed.
So you have more wall than you have technology. And the wall is not
that useful, frankly, without the technology, in my view. I think the
technology is the key. But that is what is happening.
And, by the way, to the taxpayers listening tonight, which is pretty
much all of us, we paid for that wall. We actually paid for the fencing
to be put up. Congress appropriated the money. And then the
administration stopped it. So you literally see the steel beams and the
pieces of concrete for the wall lying on the ground. And as one Border
Patrol agent told me when I was in one of the sectors--most recently I
was in the Nogales sector where there is a huge gap--he said, this is
really bad for morale. And our Border Patrol agents look at this stuff,
and they say: We have already paid for this. Can't we just finish the
wall and put these fences up, the gates up, to keep these openings from
attracting the cartels and the drug smugglers and the people smugglers?
But that is where we are. So that is one thing our legislation does, is
to correct that problem and help stop this crisis.
It also says that title 42--we talked about earlier--won't be lifted
until the COVID-19 emergency is over. Again, I think it ought to be
lifted when we have policies in place that make sense. But a lot more
is needed. The bill also mandates that the program the Biden
administration ended, which said that as you come to ask for asylum,
you should wait at the border--it is called the migrant protocols.
There was just an agreement with the President of Mexico and
President Biden a couple of days ago about more funding for the border
area--and that is good--to provide more humane living conditions. But
this was working to tell people, if you want to come for asylum, go
ahead and apply. And while you are waiting for asylum, you can remain
in Mexico. And if you get asylum, you come across. If you don't, you go
home. What happened is, a lot of people just went home.
The asylum process, which we will get into in a minute, is kind of a
complicated issue. But in other ways, it is pretty simple, and it is
the main reason for this, which is that people know if they come to the
border and they claim asylum, which most people do, they have an
immediate, what is called, credible fear interview. Sometimes, it is
over the telephone now,
partly because of COVID. And that is a very low bar. And so people say
what their issue is back home where they feel persecuted, and then they
come in. And once they are told to come in, then they are told: OK, you
can go to wherever you are going in America--let's say Cincinnati, my
hometown, or Columbus or Chicago or Denver, wherever it is--and you
need to check in with the ICE office--that is the immigration office in
the interior of the United States--within 90 days.
Some people do check in. Some people don't check in. But the point
is, there is now a wait of somewhere between 6 to 8 years before your
case is heard on asylum--6 to 8 years. Why? Because there are 1.5
million--someone told me today 1.6 million; let's say 1.5 million
people, that is high enough--waiting in line. That is what the backlog
is.
It just makes no sense to anybody, including, by the way, the
Secretary of Homeland Security, whom I have talked to about this. And
these long waits mean that you are there embedded in a community in
America getting to know your community. You are joining your church.
You are sending your kids to school. You are having children. You are
part of the community. And then you are told after 6 to 8 years, by the
way, your asylum application is being denied because you are an
economic refugee, not an asylee. In other words, you haven't
demonstrated a fear of persecution. You have come to this country,
understandably, because there is great opportunity here. Again, we
should be encouraging these people to come legally like so many other
immigrants have over the years.
Only about 15 to 20 percent of those people who apply for asylum
today are getting asylum. So think about it. If you are part of the 80
to 85 percent who are not going to get asylum, there is sometimes not
much of an incentive to enter into this process and go through the
hearings and so on.
The consequence if you don't go through the hearings is that you are
then subject to removal. However, we are just not removing people
today. So this past year, the latest numbers we have are that 59,000
people were deported, or removed, from America. About 66 percent of
those people had a criminal background. But, remember, this is out of a
couple hundred thousand people going through the process. So there is a
very small chance that you will ever be removed or deported. Even
though you went through the process, you were denied asylum. You stay
in the United States. And, you know, the next administration could
change that. This administration could change that. But right now, this
asylum process, which was created to give lawful presence to people who
were unable to be in their home country because of persecution, is not
being used properly. It is being exploited by people who know that
because of our system and our huge backlog, if they say that they are
part of a group that is being persecuted they can come in. And even
when they are denied asylum, they can stay. That is the way it is
working.
What we have found is that folks who come here are almost entirely
focused more on the economic side. There was a survey conducted by the
Migration Policy Institute recently, which, by the way, is a pro-
migrant institution. It found that 90 percent of the Central Americans
making the journey to our southern border are coming for what? For
work. They are coming for work because they come from poor countries.
They don't have a lot of opportunity in their country. I don't blame
them. If I was a father living in Honduras and couldn't find a job or I
was a subsistence farmer just barely making it and I had a few kids and
I wanted them to have a better life, I would come, too.
But that is not what immigration is all about. It is a system where
you come legally, yes. But if you come illegally, you have got to be
told you have to go back and apply like everybody else. Otherwise,
America would be overwhelmed. And it is being overwhelmed and will be
even more overwhelmed if title 42 is taken away. There are hundreds of
millions of people--maybe billions of people--around the world who
would love to come to this country. We take for granted our
opportunities, our freedoms; but others don't.
So we have to have a system. We have to have some sort of a border.
And, really, that is the question that is before us today in this body:
Are we going to have a system that makes sense or one where, again, you
have a million and a half people who are waiting to have their hearing.
When they have their hearing on asylum and they are denied, they still
aren't removed; so they can stay. And, again, meanwhile, they have
family and kids and connections to the community. It is really not fair
to them. A much better system would be to say, OK, apply for asylum in
your country, or if you don't feel comfortable there, apply from a
third country. Then you will know, yes or no, before you come up to the
border, don't make that dangerous journey north. Don't put yourself in
the clutches of these coyotes, these human smugglers, these
traffickers, who are heartless. What they are doing is they are going
down to Central America or Latin America or really all over the world.
People are coming from hundreds of countries now. And they are saying,
you know, give me money. Give me 10,000 bucks, and I will get you to
the border, and you can just walk across.
People are signing up--sometimes with their life savings. And
sometimes as, again, we talked about earlier, there are assaults along
the way. There are all kinds of horrible stories of how women,
particularly, are mistreated on the way up. It is a dangerous and
inhumane process.
At the end of the day, our system is pulling these people to the
border. The administration is now implementing a new asylum rule
recently to try to deal with this problem because they realize it is
just not working. However, the new system that they are putting in
place isn't working either, and there is a reason for that. Their
theory is we should adjudicate the cases at the border. I agree with
that. I would rather adjudicate them outside the border in the country
of origin or a third country, but have the adjudication be right at the
border; make the decision right there, yes or no. Let people know.
The problem is what they are doing right now is they are putting
asylum officers at the border, making a decision, adjudicating as
people come across. And if it is a no, people are not being sent home.
But rather, people are being told if it is a no, you can appeal it to
the regular system, so get back in line with the 1.5 million people.
What we are learning is that, of course, people are smart. They are
talking to the asylum officer. They are getting a yes or no. If they
are getting a yes, that is great; they are getting in. That is a small
percentage. If they are getting a no, they say, That is fine, I am
going to appeal it to the regular system.
It really isn't an answer to the problem. If you want an answer to
the problem, what you would have is processing centers along the
border. It would be expensive because there are so many people coming
over now, so many people applying for asylum. But have a process where,
quickly, you can adjudicate these cases. In the meantime, you would not
have people be released into the interior but have them stay there to
find out what the outcome of the case is.
This pull system is bad for everybody except the smugglers. They are
the ones who profit. They are the ones who are going to folks in places
like Honduras or Ecuador or, again, far-flung places--places in Eastern
Europe, places in Asia--and telling people, Give me a bunch of money,
and I will get you into the United States.
We recently had this tragedy I mentioned in San Antonio. Fifty-three
migrants were left for dead in the Texas heat in the back of a tractor-
trailer. They were just abandoned by their smuggler. They left them
locked inside of this tractor-trailer. It is not the first time this
has happened. But as I said earlier, 53 is probably the worst smuggling
tragedy in our history.
I went to Latin America last year. I met with the Presidents of
Mexico and Guatemala, Ecuador, and Colombia. It was interesting. They
all said the same thing. You would be surprised to hear what they said.
People think they must enjoy this process because so many of their
citizens are going to America, they can then send money back to their
family and it must be good for everybody. It is not.
They are losing some of the best and brightest in their country, and
these
people are going through, again, this arduous process to get to the
border, and the inhumanity of that troubles these Presidents. They all
told me basically the same thing, which is: Why don't you guys fix your
laws and stop this pull factor?
We talk about the push factor in poor countries. I mentioned Honduras
earlier. That is certainly true. By the way, we spent over the last 5
years about $3.6 billion of American taxpayer money to help in the
economics of the so-called Northern Triangle in the Central American
countries.
I am for spending money in these countries to try to help with their
economy, but with the corruption, with all the issues they have, it is
very difficult to imagine those countries in a short period of time
having any kind of economic opportunity that equals what we have right
here in this country, so there is going to continue to be that push. We
should try to alleviate it. It will continue to happen.
But the pull, this policy we have is just pulling people north. What
they said to me, these Presidents of these countries, was: You have a
legal immigration system where people know they can just get into your
country. Why don't you change that? Why don't you change that?
Again, it is not just people from Mexico and Central America. It is
people from all over the world.
By the way, for some of these people, the Border Patrol is
increasingly concerned because they come from countries where a lot of
people want to do us harm. So, increasingly, we are seeing people
coming to our country who are, as an example, on the terror watch list.
Back in 2017, 2 people; 6 people in 2018; none in 2019; 2020, there
were 3; 15 in 2021. This fiscal year, 2022, there are already 50
individuals on the terror watch list. Why? They know if they come to
the U.S. border, they can get across. I am sure this number is higher--
that is what we know--because, again, a lot of people are so-called got
aways. Let's say 20 percent.
Who are these people? Well, some of them are probably pretty smart
individuals who know how to get away from Border Patrol, do the
distraction and sneak in. That worries me and it worries me because we
are allowing people to come into our country who we would not otherwise
allow.
We have seen this increase of people coming into the country who are
on the terror watch list, but we have also seen, again, a lot of people
coming in who we just don't know anything about because they don't
count them at the Border Patrol. We have seen more caravans and we see
more migrants are on the way. Why? I think it is because of this
general pull factor. The fact is people know, if they come here, they
know they are going to be able to get in.
I think it is also because of title 42 because the smugglers are
using that--cartels are spreading the word: Title 42 is on its way out.
Read about it in the front page of your paper because that is where
it is because this administration wants to end it, so they are saying
now you can go to the border and you will be let in under the policies
like the asylum policy and the single adults--48 percent of whom
roughly have been turned away. Forty-eight percent of the total by
title 42 would no longer be turned away. I think that is why we are
seeing this. It is giving the coyotes, traffickers, and smugglers
opportunity to make lots of money.
By the way, that is hurting all these countries, too. If you talk to
the Presidents of these countries, including President Obrador of
Mexico, what he will tell you is the cartels are taking over more and
more of his country because they are making more and more money because
of this--and, significantly, because of the drug issue we are going to
talk about in a second. We know that the cartels are involved in human
trafficking. We know they are involved in drug smuggling. We know they
are involved in smuggling people.
I was with the Border Patrol in El Paso last year. We were out at
night. We saw a group of migrants coming, and the Border Patrol was
going to that location to stop them and question them. Meanwhile, we
heard on the radio the drug smugglers had come across. They could see
it. They knew it. They could tell by the backpacks they were wearing, I
guess, and clothes they were wearing--dark clothes, young men--that
they were smuggling. But they couldn't do anything about it because
Border Patrol were processing the migrants who had come in.
So I am watching the migrants coming in--actually talking to some of
them and Border Patrol--and meanwhile, on the radio, they are saying,
You have to go to this other sector, this other area to stop these drug
smugglers. We can't; we are distracted. The processing takes some time.
The other big issue, in addition to the unlawful entry into the
United States--smuggling, all the inhumanity that surrounds that--is
this drug issue. I have spent a lot of time working on this issue on
the prevention side--helping on treatment and recovery options and
doing more on prevention. We were making some progress until,
unfortunately, we were hit with this pandemic. And during that time and
since, drug use has gone up again. But we were making progress, in
part, because we were helping on the demand side of the equation.
But also on the supply side, we were keeping some of these drugs out
of the country. We did it primarily through stopping the deadliest of
all, which is the fentanyl--which is a synthetic opioid--from coming in
through the U.S. mail system. We passed a law called the STOP Act. It
kept China from poisoning our communities by sending this stuff through
the mail system, which was happening. That was the primary way it was
coming in.
What has happened? During the pandemic--kind of coincidental with the
pandemic--we had more people isolated, more people losing their jobs,
more people turning to drugs. You had Mexico begin to take the central
role in terms of fentanyl. A lot of it is precursors from China, so
China sends the precursors to Mexico, but Mexico is now making the
fentanyl--often into pills--Xanax or Adderall or Percocet.
If you buy any drugs on the street, know that those drugs could kill
you. Don't be fooled. There are so many counterfeit drugs out there
now. That is one of the preferred ways that the Mexican cartels are
bringing these drugs in.
Again, fentanyl is, of course, the deadliest of the drugs. About two
thirds of the overdose deaths in America are currently because of
fentanyl. We now have a record level of overdose deaths every year in
America, over 100,000 last year. There is no reason to believe that it
will be less than that this year based on early data we have, sadly. In
my home State of Ohio, it is the No. 1 killer by far.
Look at what has happened with the seizures of fentanyl. This is the
fentanyl that has been seized. Here are projections for the rest of
this year if they continue as they are--obviously, record levels. When
you have this huge surge of fentanyl coming in, what happens is you
have a lower cost in the drug--supply and demand, right? So there is a
huge supply, and the demand for these drugs continues.
On the streets of Columbus or Cleveland or Cincinnati or Dayton or
your town, wherever it is, it is likely that this cheap but really
deadly fentanyl is something that people are being exposed to. Some
people are falling prey to it, again, often thinking they are taking
another drug.
There are a couple of students at Ohio State University who overdosed
and died just before I gave a talk there at graduation earlier this
spring. They were taking what they thought were study drugs,
apparently: Adderall. A third student lived, but was in critical
condition. This is the deadliest of drugs.
In 2021, we seized double the fentanyl from the previous year, four
times from the year before that. Again, so far this year, we are on
track to match the most fentanyl seized ever. In May--just 1 month, in
May--there was enough fentanyl seized at the border to kill 200 million
Americans, more than half of our population in 1 month. People say:
Well, gosh, why are you so worried about the border? Let people come
across--open border--whatever.
Here is the consequence.
Again, it is hurting Mexico, too, and it is hurting lots of other
countries. But in terms of Mexico, this gives the cartels enormous
power and money. And, yes, ultimately, I think the most important thing
to do is to reduce demand. I do.
Again, we are making progress now. We had about a 20-percent
reduction in 2018. We need to get back to that. This Congress took the
lead on much of this.
But we also have to deal with the supply side and stop this enormous
surge of drugs that is coming over and poisoning our communities. That
is part of what is happening on the border. A few months ago, I was in
Nogales, south of Tucson, to ride with the Border Patrol and go to the
port of entry there. They are doing a very good job with what they
have, but they need better equipment.
This is one thing Congress can do. They need help. They need more
resources. They need better technology. They need to be able to scan
cars and trucks that are coming in, particularly for these drugs that
we talked about. A relatively small package of fentanyl this size can
kill 1,000 people. A few specks could kill you. It is easy to hide it
in a car or a truck.
We now know that less than 2 percent of passenger vehicles and less
than 20 percent of commercial vehicles coming into the United States
are scanned for these illegal drugs like fentanyl. This is just
unacceptable. Congress has appropriated more funding for this. That is
good. Let's get it moving. We should be scanning all vehicles, in my
view. A smuggler with multiple pounds of fentanyl concealed in a hidden
compartment might be worth hundreds of thousands or even millions of
dollars. They know they have a good chance of getting across without a
search. They take the risk.
It is not just a gap in our security; it is a gaping hole. And,
again, it leads to this flood of cheap fentanyl and other dangerous
drugs. The southern border has faced the worst unlawful crisis that we
have ever had, going back to the first chart. This tells the story, in
red.
The men and women of the Customs and Border Protection whom I have
met over the years are doing the best they can. They are doing their
best at the ports of entry. They are doing their best as Border Patrol
between the ports of entry, but they need help. That is what
legislation does. It provides them with the help they need to be able
to respond to this crisis.
We welcome legal immigration. We always should. They enrich our
country. And we are a nation of immigrants, and we are proud of that.
But we are also a nation of laws, and we are also a nation that cares
about the inhumanity of the current system and the flood of cheap,
deadly drugs coming through our border.
I urge the Biden administration to change course, to fix this broken
system, to follow the law, including the law on detaining people, to
reform the asylum process so it stops acting like a pull factor and is
used for what it is intended for, to truly help those who are seeking
asylum for the right reasons, to stop these policies that send a green
light to the smugglers, to the cartels, to the drug traffickers, and
that is causing so much human suffering along our southern border.
I urge the administration to act. In the meantime, again, we are
introducing legislation. I urge my colleagues to help us with that.
There is no reason that we can't work in a bipartisan way to deal with
what everybody has to acknowledge is a huge crisis at our southern
border.
I yield the floor.
| single | homophobic |
07/13/2022 | Mr. PORTMAN | Senate | CREC-2022-07-13-pt1-PgS3280-2 | nan | nan | Mr. PORTMAN. Mr. President, I am on the floor today to talk about
border security--a humanitarian, a national security, a community
safety issue with direct connection to the drug epidemic we see in
communities all around the country, including my home State of Ohio.
I am also here to talk about legislation I introduced today with
Senator Jim Risch to address this crisis. So we are in the middle right
now of what is the biggest border crisis in the history of our country
if you measure it by the number of people who are coming to the border
unlawfully and, as the Biden administration says, people who are
encountering the Border Patrol.
The Biden administration claims that they have the border under
control and that they are--and I am quoting--doing a good job. This
chart, though, tells a really different story. It shows that as of May,
which is the last month that we have records for, we had the highest
number of border encounters on record. The second highest, by the way,
was the month before: April. So you see this goes back to 2019. There
was a surge here--144,000. Here, we have the inauguration of President
Biden, and then we have had big increases--again, to the point that
over the last couple of months, we have had record numbers of people
who have come unlawfully to the border and been stopped by, apprehended
by, the Border Patrol.
This includes 239,000 total encounters at the border in the month of
May--165,000 of which were single, adult migrants. This does not
include those who were not encountered--in other words, those who
slipped past the Border Patrol. We haven't been able to find a precise
number for these individuals.
The Border Patrol calls this group of people got-aways. But using a
conservative estimate from the Border Patrol of 300,000 people who they
think got away in the last fiscal year, you would then put the total
number of unlawful entries at approximately 286,000 people in 1 month.
If you annualize that, that would be 3.4 million people a year. Think
about those numbers: almost 3\1/2\ million people a year coming to our
border and attempting to gain entry unlawfully.
Today, not all of those who are apprehended are allowed to come into
the United States, and that is because under so-called title 42,
roughly half of those individuals who are being apprehended, who are
being encountered, are turned back. If they live in Mexico, they are
sent back across the border. If they live in a country--say Ecuador or
Guatemala--they are sent back, flown back to their country of origin.
But these are people who are being turned away because of title 42.
So what is title 42? It is a public health authority. It is an
attempt by our government to limit migration in order to prevent the
spread of communicable diseases--in this case, COVID-19. It allows the
Customs and Border Protection officers and agents to tell unlawful
migrants: You can't come to the United States for these public health
reasons. It only applies, by the way, now to single adults; but, as I
said earlier, that is the single biggest group. It comprises about 48
to 52 percent--about half--of the people who are coming up to the
border.
So even with the use of title 42, which is acting to discourage
people from coming to our border, we are experiencing these record
levels. We are also experiencing these record levels in these hot
summer months. Normally, when you get into the summertime where it gets
really hot--look here at May, June, July, August--the number of people
coming to the border goes down, not up. It is over 100 degrees in the
desert and at the Rio Grande, at almost all of these border crossings
along the U.S.-Mexican border. Yet we have more, not less.
There is anecdotal information that this is because people are
realizing that the administration wants to end title 42. They have
proposed to do that. That is now in the court system. But the cartels
are spreading the message, which is: Now is the time to come because,
before, you were turned away by title 42. Now, like everybody else, you
can come into the United States and stay. And we will talk in a moment
about what that means.
But I think that is probably true. Probably title 42 has something to
do with it. But I think, also, it has to do with the fact that more and
more people are realizing that if they do come to the border and don't
get stopped by title 42, they will have a chance to come into the
United States and live in the United States with their families,
perhaps; if not, maybe bring in their families later. And everybody
wants to come to America. We are a great country.
We have our challenges, as we talk about on the floor here all the
time. But, still, we are a country with so many opportunities for
people, and folks want to come. And I don't blame them. I don't blame
them. But we want them to come legally.
And we currently have the most generous legal immigration system of
any country in the world. About 900,000 people a year--almost a million
people a year--come legally to the United States, most as legal
immigrants, some as refugees. And so we encourage that, and we should.
In fact, I think we should bring more people in legally, particularly
to fill
some of the jobs that we need filled, the STEM disciplines we talk
about a lot. We need people with the kind of training and background to
help our economy grow. But we need people at every level of training.
But we want them to come legally and through an orderly process that is
more humane, that doesn't have all the issues--which we will talk about
tonight--the humanitarian issues at the southern border.
In terms of title 42, we all hope that this public health emergency
isn't necessary going forward because COVID-19 ends. But in the
meantime, this border crisis means, to me, that we have to keep title
42 in place until we make some changes in policy. Otherwise, it will be
not just a crisis. It will be totally overwhelming.
As the Border Patrol says to me, they will lose operational control
of the border. Some would argue that has already happened because so
many people are coming over at record numbers. Often, the Border Patrol
is distracted by one group of migrants, and another group comes in. And
I saw this when I was at the border in El Paso. And anybody who has
been down at the border has seen this.
They are already in tough shape. But imagine if 48 percent of the
people here who are now being turned away by title 42 are not going to
be turned away and the number of other people who will come knowing
that that avenue is now open to them. This will be overwhelming.
It is very difficult right now, with the laws and the way the laws
are being implemented, to keep that from happening. That is why we need
a change in policy. It doesn't have to happen here in Congress. I think
we should change the laws and introduce legislation today to do that.
But the administration itself could make these changes.
By the way, in the last administration, as you can see, the number of
people coming across the border unlawfully and the number of encounters
was very low. But the same was true in the Obama administration. After
they had a surge of unaccompanied minors, they made changes in the law,
and they reduced the number of people who were coming unlawfully to the
border as well. It can be done, but there has to be the will do it.
I am the ranking Republican on the Senate committee that has
oversight responsibility for the Department of Homeland Security. The
Presiding Officer is also on that committee. This Department of
Homeland Security is preparing, they tell us, for a huge increase in
migrants after title 42 has ended. So although they want to end it,
they also know that if they do end it, there is going to be a huge
surge because they are actually preparing for that.
The way they are doing it is interesting. It is not so much keeping
people from coming into the United States as expediting their flow into
the United States. Among other things, instead of processing people at
the border, their recommendation is go ahead and put people on buses or
other forms of transportation and then do the processing later, perhaps
on the buses or where they are going in the United States. So it is a
way to move people through the process rather than come up with a way
to discourage people from coming across the border illegally.
DHS has planned, and then will facilitate, travel throughout the
country rather than figuring out how to keep people from coming in the
first place by telling them: Come legally, but please don't come to our
border illegally.
By the way, I think most Americans are very supportive of legal
immigration. It is an important part of who we are. With very few
exceptions of Native Americans, we all came from someplace else. All of
us have proud stories of our immigrant forebearers--our parents, our
grandparents, our great-grandparents. And it has enriched our country.
It is part of the fabric of our Nation. It is what makes us special.
But that is legal immigration. And it is not what we are talking about
here.
Who bears the brunt of this crisis? Well, at the outset, of course,
it is the Border Patrol. We have got to provide them with the personnel
and resources they need to complete their mission, as difficult as it
is.
When you go and meet with these people, the men and women of the
Border Patrol, you come away just so proud of what they try to do every
day. They are a combination of, you know, border agents trying to
enforce the law, social workers trying to help people with their
problems, healthcare workers trying to help when people get
hurt. Unfortunately, as we have seen, a lot of people are getting hurt
in this process. That journey north is a dangerous journey.
And with the cartels so involved and right there at the border, what
happens in the desert, what happens on these trains, what happens in
these trucks--we just saw this horrible incident of these migrants who
were jammed into a semitruck, and more of them died, I think, than any
other accident of that kind, incident of that kind, in our history. But
this is inhumane, and this is part of what happens when you have these
cartels involved in this process.
We also have got to provide the Border Patrol with the ability to
help control things at the border by finishing the border fence and
putting the technology with the fence that was always intended.
By the way, the technology tends not to be very partisan around here.
Democrats and Republicans alike, I believe, mostly think we ought to
have cameras. We ought to have sensors. We ought to know what is going
on at the border. But when the order came down the first day of the
Biden administration to stop the wall and to end what the Trump
administration had started with Congress's approval and funding, they
also said, Stop the technology.
So in the El Paso sector, as an example, the wall is about 80, 90
percent completed. Unfortunately, there are gaps in the wall where you
literally have to have Border Patrol there 24 hours a day or people
just come through it, which makes their job really hard. What they want
to do is at least have the wall there to slow people down. And the
technology there enables them to then go and deal with situations as
they occur. But only 20 percent of the technology had been completed.
So you have more wall than you have technology. And the wall is not
that useful, frankly, without the technology, in my view. I think the
technology is the key. But that is what is happening.
And, by the way, to the taxpayers listening tonight, which is pretty
much all of us, we paid for that wall. We actually paid for the fencing
to be put up. Congress appropriated the money. And then the
administration stopped it. So you literally see the steel beams and the
pieces of concrete for the wall lying on the ground. And as one Border
Patrol agent told me when I was in one of the sectors--most recently I
was in the Nogales sector where there is a huge gap--he said, this is
really bad for morale. And our Border Patrol agents look at this stuff,
and they say: We have already paid for this. Can't we just finish the
wall and put these fences up, the gates up, to keep these openings from
attracting the cartels and the drug smugglers and the people smugglers?
But that is where we are. So that is one thing our legislation does, is
to correct that problem and help stop this crisis.
It also says that title 42--we talked about earlier--won't be lifted
until the COVID-19 emergency is over. Again, I think it ought to be
lifted when we have policies in place that make sense. But a lot more
is needed. The bill also mandates that the program the Biden
administration ended, which said that as you come to ask for asylum,
you should wait at the border--it is called the migrant protocols.
There was just an agreement with the President of Mexico and
President Biden a couple of days ago about more funding for the border
area--and that is good--to provide more humane living conditions. But
this was working to tell people, if you want to come for asylum, go
ahead and apply. And while you are waiting for asylum, you can remain
in Mexico. And if you get asylum, you come across. If you don't, you go
home. What happened is, a lot of people just went home.
The asylum process, which we will get into in a minute, is kind of a
complicated issue. But in other ways, it is pretty simple, and it is
the main reason for this, which is that people know if they come to the
border and they claim asylum, which most people do, they have an
immediate, what is called, credible fear interview. Sometimes, it is
over the telephone now,
partly because of COVID. And that is a very low bar. And so people say
what their issue is back home where they feel persecuted, and then they
come in. And once they are told to come in, then they are told: OK, you
can go to wherever you are going in America--let's say Cincinnati, my
hometown, or Columbus or Chicago or Denver, wherever it is--and you
need to check in with the ICE office--that is the immigration office in
the interior of the United States--within 90 days.
Some people do check in. Some people don't check in. But the point
is, there is now a wait of somewhere between 6 to 8 years before your
case is heard on asylum--6 to 8 years. Why? Because there are 1.5
million--someone told me today 1.6 million; let's say 1.5 million
people, that is high enough--waiting in line. That is what the backlog
is.
It just makes no sense to anybody, including, by the way, the
Secretary of Homeland Security, whom I have talked to about this. And
these long waits mean that you are there embedded in a community in
America getting to know your community. You are joining your church.
You are sending your kids to school. You are having children. You are
part of the community. And then you are told after 6 to 8 years, by the
way, your asylum application is being denied because you are an
economic refugee, not an asylee. In other words, you haven't
demonstrated a fear of persecution. You have come to this country,
understandably, because there is great opportunity here. Again, we
should be encouraging these people to come legally like so many other
immigrants have over the years.
Only about 15 to 20 percent of those people who apply for asylum
today are getting asylum. So think about it. If you are part of the 80
to 85 percent who are not going to get asylum, there is sometimes not
much of an incentive to enter into this process and go through the
hearings and so on.
The consequence if you don't go through the hearings is that you are
then subject to removal. However, we are just not removing people
today. So this past year, the latest numbers we have are that 59,000
people were deported, or removed, from America. About 66 percent of
those people had a criminal background. But, remember, this is out of a
couple hundred thousand people going through the process. So there is a
very small chance that you will ever be removed or deported. Even
though you went through the process, you were denied asylum. You stay
in the United States. And, you know, the next administration could
change that. This administration could change that. But right now, this
asylum process, which was created to give lawful presence to people who
were unable to be in their home country because of persecution, is not
being used properly. It is being exploited by people who know that
because of our system and our huge backlog, if they say that they are
part of a group that is being persecuted they can come in. And even
when they are denied asylum, they can stay. That is the way it is
working.
What we have found is that folks who come here are almost entirely
focused more on the economic side. There was a survey conducted by the
Migration Policy Institute recently, which, by the way, is a pro-
migrant institution. It found that 90 percent of the Central Americans
making the journey to our southern border are coming for what? For
work. They are coming for work because they come from poor countries.
They don't have a lot of opportunity in their country. I don't blame
them. If I was a father living in Honduras and couldn't find a job or I
was a subsistence farmer just barely making it and I had a few kids and
I wanted them to have a better life, I would come, too.
But that is not what immigration is all about. It is a system where
you come legally, yes. But if you come illegally, you have got to be
told you have to go back and apply like everybody else. Otherwise,
America would be overwhelmed. And it is being overwhelmed and will be
even more overwhelmed if title 42 is taken away. There are hundreds of
millions of people--maybe billions of people--around the world who
would love to come to this country. We take for granted our
opportunities, our freedoms; but others don't.
So we have to have a system. We have to have some sort of a border.
And, really, that is the question that is before us today in this body:
Are we going to have a system that makes sense or one where, again, you
have a million and a half people who are waiting to have their hearing.
When they have their hearing on asylum and they are denied, they still
aren't removed; so they can stay. And, again, meanwhile, they have
family and kids and connections to the community. It is really not fair
to them. A much better system would be to say, OK, apply for asylum in
your country, or if you don't feel comfortable there, apply from a
third country. Then you will know, yes or no, before you come up to the
border, don't make that dangerous journey north. Don't put yourself in
the clutches of these coyotes, these human smugglers, these
traffickers, who are heartless. What they are doing is they are going
down to Central America or Latin America or really all over the world.
People are coming from hundreds of countries now. And they are saying,
you know, give me money. Give me 10,000 bucks, and I will get you to
the border, and you can just walk across.
People are signing up--sometimes with their life savings. And
sometimes as, again, we talked about earlier, there are assaults along
the way. There are all kinds of horrible stories of how women,
particularly, are mistreated on the way up. It is a dangerous and
inhumane process.
At the end of the day, our system is pulling these people to the
border. The administration is now implementing a new asylum rule
recently to try to deal with this problem because they realize it is
just not working. However, the new system that they are putting in
place isn't working either, and there is a reason for that. Their
theory is we should adjudicate the cases at the border. I agree with
that. I would rather adjudicate them outside the border in the country
of origin or a third country, but have the adjudication be right at the
border; make the decision right there, yes or no. Let people know.
The problem is what they are doing right now is they are putting
asylum officers at the border, making a decision, adjudicating as
people come across. And if it is a no, people are not being sent home.
But rather, people are being told if it is a no, you can appeal it to
the regular system, so get back in line with the 1.5 million people.
What we are learning is that, of course, people are smart. They are
talking to the asylum officer. They are getting a yes or no. If they
are getting a yes, that is great; they are getting in. That is a small
percentage. If they are getting a no, they say, That is fine, I am
going to appeal it to the regular system.
It really isn't an answer to the problem. If you want an answer to
the problem, what you would have is processing centers along the
border. It would be expensive because there are so many people coming
over now, so many people applying for asylum. But have a process where,
quickly, you can adjudicate these cases. In the meantime, you would not
have people be released into the interior but have them stay there to
find out what the outcome of the case is.
This pull system is bad for everybody except the smugglers. They are
the ones who profit. They are the ones who are going to folks in places
like Honduras or Ecuador or, again, far-flung places--places in Eastern
Europe, places in Asia--and telling people, Give me a bunch of money,
and I will get you into the United States.
We recently had this tragedy I mentioned in San Antonio. Fifty-three
migrants were left for dead in the Texas heat in the back of a tractor-
trailer. They were just abandoned by their smuggler. They left them
locked inside of this tractor-trailer. It is not the first time this
has happened. But as I said earlier, 53 is probably the worst smuggling
tragedy in our history.
I went to Latin America last year. I met with the Presidents of
Mexico and Guatemala, Ecuador, and Colombia. It was interesting. They
all said the same thing. You would be surprised to hear what they said.
People think they must enjoy this process because so many of their
citizens are going to America, they can then send money back to their
family and it must be good for everybody. It is not.
They are losing some of the best and brightest in their country, and
these
people are going through, again, this arduous process to get to the
border, and the inhumanity of that troubles these Presidents. They all
told me basically the same thing, which is: Why don't you guys fix your
laws and stop this pull factor?
We talk about the push factor in poor countries. I mentioned Honduras
earlier. That is certainly true. By the way, we spent over the last 5
years about $3.6 billion of American taxpayer money to help in the
economics of the so-called Northern Triangle in the Central American
countries.
I am for spending money in these countries to try to help with their
economy, but with the corruption, with all the issues they have, it is
very difficult to imagine those countries in a short period of time
having any kind of economic opportunity that equals what we have right
here in this country, so there is going to continue to be that push. We
should try to alleviate it. It will continue to happen.
But the pull, this policy we have is just pulling people north. What
they said to me, these Presidents of these countries, was: You have a
legal immigration system where people know they can just get into your
country. Why don't you change that? Why don't you change that?
Again, it is not just people from Mexico and Central America. It is
people from all over the world.
By the way, for some of these people, the Border Patrol is
increasingly concerned because they come from countries where a lot of
people want to do us harm. So, increasingly, we are seeing people
coming to our country who are, as an example, on the terror watch list.
Back in 2017, 2 people; 6 people in 2018; none in 2019; 2020, there
were 3; 15 in 2021. This fiscal year, 2022, there are already 50
individuals on the terror watch list. Why? They know if they come to
the U.S. border, they can get across. I am sure this number is higher--
that is what we know--because, again, a lot of people are so-called got
aways. Let's say 20 percent.
Who are these people? Well, some of them are probably pretty smart
individuals who know how to get away from Border Patrol, do the
distraction and sneak in. That worries me and it worries me because we
are allowing people to come into our country who we would not otherwise
allow.
We have seen this increase of people coming into the country who are
on the terror watch list, but we have also seen, again, a lot of people
coming in who we just don't know anything about because they don't
count them at the Border Patrol. We have seen more caravans and we see
more migrants are on the way. Why? I think it is because of this
general pull factor. The fact is people know, if they come here, they
know they are going to be able to get in.
I think it is also because of title 42 because the smugglers are
using that--cartels are spreading the word: Title 42 is on its way out.
Read about it in the front page of your paper because that is where
it is because this administration wants to end it, so they are saying
now you can go to the border and you will be let in under the policies
like the asylum policy and the single adults--48 percent of whom
roughly have been turned away. Forty-eight percent of the total by
title 42 would no longer be turned away. I think that is why we are
seeing this. It is giving the coyotes, traffickers, and smugglers
opportunity to make lots of money.
By the way, that is hurting all these countries, too. If you talk to
the Presidents of these countries, including President Obrador of
Mexico, what he will tell you is the cartels are taking over more and
more of his country because they are making more and more money because
of this--and, significantly, because of the drug issue we are going to
talk about in a second. We know that the cartels are involved in human
trafficking. We know they are involved in drug smuggling. We know they
are involved in smuggling people.
I was with the Border Patrol in El Paso last year. We were out at
night. We saw a group of migrants coming, and the Border Patrol was
going to that location to stop them and question them. Meanwhile, we
heard on the radio the drug smugglers had come across. They could see
it. They knew it. They could tell by the backpacks they were wearing, I
guess, and clothes they were wearing--dark clothes, young men--that
they were smuggling. But they couldn't do anything about it because
Border Patrol were processing the migrants who had come in.
So I am watching the migrants coming in--actually talking to some of
them and Border Patrol--and meanwhile, on the radio, they are saying,
You have to go to this other sector, this other area to stop these drug
smugglers. We can't; we are distracted. The processing takes some time.
The other big issue, in addition to the unlawful entry into the
United States--smuggling, all the inhumanity that surrounds that--is
this drug issue. I have spent a lot of time working on this issue on
the prevention side--helping on treatment and recovery options and
doing more on prevention. We were making some progress until,
unfortunately, we were hit with this pandemic. And during that time and
since, drug use has gone up again. But we were making progress, in
part, because we were helping on the demand side of the equation.
But also on the supply side, we were keeping some of these drugs out
of the country. We did it primarily through stopping the deadliest of
all, which is the fentanyl--which is a synthetic opioid--from coming in
through the U.S. mail system. We passed a law called the STOP Act. It
kept China from poisoning our communities by sending this stuff through
the mail system, which was happening. That was the primary way it was
coming in.
What has happened? During the pandemic--kind of coincidental with the
pandemic--we had more people isolated, more people losing their jobs,
more people turning to drugs. You had Mexico begin to take the central
role in terms of fentanyl. A lot of it is precursors from China, so
China sends the precursors to Mexico, but Mexico is now making the
fentanyl--often into pills--Xanax or Adderall or Percocet.
If you buy any drugs on the street, know that those drugs could kill
you. Don't be fooled. There are so many counterfeit drugs out there
now. That is one of the preferred ways that the Mexican cartels are
bringing these drugs in.
Again, fentanyl is, of course, the deadliest of the drugs. About two
thirds of the overdose deaths in America are currently because of
fentanyl. We now have a record level of overdose deaths every year in
America, over 100,000 last year. There is no reason to believe that it
will be less than that this year based on early data we have, sadly. In
my home State of Ohio, it is the No. 1 killer by far.
Look at what has happened with the seizures of fentanyl. This is the
fentanyl that has been seized. Here are projections for the rest of
this year if they continue as they are--obviously, record levels. When
you have this huge surge of fentanyl coming in, what happens is you
have a lower cost in the drug--supply and demand, right? So there is a
huge supply, and the demand for these drugs continues.
On the streets of Columbus or Cleveland or Cincinnati or Dayton or
your town, wherever it is, it is likely that this cheap but really
deadly fentanyl is something that people are being exposed to. Some
people are falling prey to it, again, often thinking they are taking
another drug.
There are a couple of students at Ohio State University who overdosed
and died just before I gave a talk there at graduation earlier this
spring. They were taking what they thought were study drugs,
apparently: Adderall. A third student lived, but was in critical
condition. This is the deadliest of drugs.
In 2021, we seized double the fentanyl from the previous year, four
times from the year before that. Again, so far this year, we are on
track to match the most fentanyl seized ever. In May--just 1 month, in
May--there was enough fentanyl seized at the border to kill 200 million
Americans, more than half of our population in 1 month. People say:
Well, gosh, why are you so worried about the border? Let people come
across--open border--whatever.
Here is the consequence.
Again, it is hurting Mexico, too, and it is hurting lots of other
countries. But in terms of Mexico, this gives the cartels enormous
power and money. And, yes, ultimately, I think the most important thing
to do is to reduce demand. I do.
Again, we are making progress now. We had about a 20-percent
reduction in 2018. We need to get back to that. This Congress took the
lead on much of this.
But we also have to deal with the supply side and stop this enormous
surge of drugs that is coming over and poisoning our communities. That
is part of what is happening on the border. A few months ago, I was in
Nogales, south of Tucson, to ride with the Border Patrol and go to the
port of entry there. They are doing a very good job with what they
have, but they need better equipment.
This is one thing Congress can do. They need help. They need more
resources. They need better technology. They need to be able to scan
cars and trucks that are coming in, particularly for these drugs that
we talked about. A relatively small package of fentanyl this size can
kill 1,000 people. A few specks could kill you. It is easy to hide it
in a car or a truck.
We now know that less than 2 percent of passenger vehicles and less
than 20 percent of commercial vehicles coming into the United States
are scanned for these illegal drugs like fentanyl. This is just
unacceptable. Congress has appropriated more funding for this. That is
good. Let's get it moving. We should be scanning all vehicles, in my
view. A smuggler with multiple pounds of fentanyl concealed in a hidden
compartment might be worth hundreds of thousands or even millions of
dollars. They know they have a good chance of getting across without a
search. They take the risk.
It is not just a gap in our security; it is a gaping hole. And,
again, it leads to this flood of cheap fentanyl and other dangerous
drugs. The southern border has faced the worst unlawful crisis that we
have ever had, going back to the first chart. This tells the story, in
red.
The men and women of the Customs and Border Protection whom I have
met over the years are doing the best they can. They are doing their
best at the ports of entry. They are doing their best as Border Patrol
between the ports of entry, but they need help. That is what
legislation does. It provides them with the help they need to be able
to respond to this crisis.
We welcome legal immigration. We always should. They enrich our
country. And we are a nation of immigrants, and we are proud of that.
But we are also a nation of laws, and we are also a nation that cares
about the inhumanity of the current system and the flood of cheap,
deadly drugs coming through our border.
I urge the Biden administration to change course, to fix this broken
system, to follow the law, including the law on detaining people, to
reform the asylum process so it stops acting like a pull factor and is
used for what it is intended for, to truly help those who are seeking
asylum for the right reasons, to stop these policies that send a green
light to the smugglers, to the cartels, to the drug traffickers, and
that is causing so much human suffering along our southern border.
I urge the administration to act. In the meantime, again, we are
introducing legislation. I urge my colleagues to help us with that.
There is no reason that we can't work in a bipartisan way to deal with
what everybody has to acknowledge is a huge crisis at our southern
border.
I yield the floor.
| Chicago | racist |
07/13/2022 | Mr. PORTMAN | Senate | CREC-2022-07-13-pt1-PgS3280-2 | nan | nan | Mr. PORTMAN. Mr. President, I am on the floor today to talk about
border security--a humanitarian, a national security, a community
safety issue with direct connection to the drug epidemic we see in
communities all around the country, including my home State of Ohio.
I am also here to talk about legislation I introduced today with
Senator Jim Risch to address this crisis. So we are in the middle right
now of what is the biggest border crisis in the history of our country
if you measure it by the number of people who are coming to the border
unlawfully and, as the Biden administration says, people who are
encountering the Border Patrol.
The Biden administration claims that they have the border under
control and that they are--and I am quoting--doing a good job. This
chart, though, tells a really different story. It shows that as of May,
which is the last month that we have records for, we had the highest
number of border encounters on record. The second highest, by the way,
was the month before: April. So you see this goes back to 2019. There
was a surge here--144,000. Here, we have the inauguration of President
Biden, and then we have had big increases--again, to the point that
over the last couple of months, we have had record numbers of people
who have come unlawfully to the border and been stopped by, apprehended
by, the Border Patrol.
This includes 239,000 total encounters at the border in the month of
May--165,000 of which were single, adult migrants. This does not
include those who were not encountered--in other words, those who
slipped past the Border Patrol. We haven't been able to find a precise
number for these individuals.
The Border Patrol calls this group of people got-aways. But using a
conservative estimate from the Border Patrol of 300,000 people who they
think got away in the last fiscal year, you would then put the total
number of unlawful entries at approximately 286,000 people in 1 month.
If you annualize that, that would be 3.4 million people a year. Think
about those numbers: almost 3\1/2\ million people a year coming to our
border and attempting to gain entry unlawfully.
Today, not all of those who are apprehended are allowed to come into
the United States, and that is because under so-called title 42,
roughly half of those individuals who are being apprehended, who are
being encountered, are turned back. If they live in Mexico, they are
sent back across the border. If they live in a country--say Ecuador or
Guatemala--they are sent back, flown back to their country of origin.
But these are people who are being turned away because of title 42.
So what is title 42? It is a public health authority. It is an
attempt by our government to limit migration in order to prevent the
spread of communicable diseases--in this case, COVID-19. It allows the
Customs and Border Protection officers and agents to tell unlawful
migrants: You can't come to the United States for these public health
reasons. It only applies, by the way, now to single adults; but, as I
said earlier, that is the single biggest group. It comprises about 48
to 52 percent--about half--of the people who are coming up to the
border.
So even with the use of title 42, which is acting to discourage
people from coming to our border, we are experiencing these record
levels. We are also experiencing these record levels in these hot
summer months. Normally, when you get into the summertime where it gets
really hot--look here at May, June, July, August--the number of people
coming to the border goes down, not up. It is over 100 degrees in the
desert and at the Rio Grande, at almost all of these border crossings
along the U.S.-Mexican border. Yet we have more, not less.
There is anecdotal information that this is because people are
realizing that the administration wants to end title 42. They have
proposed to do that. That is now in the court system. But the cartels
are spreading the message, which is: Now is the time to come because,
before, you were turned away by title 42. Now, like everybody else, you
can come into the United States and stay. And we will talk in a moment
about what that means.
But I think that is probably true. Probably title 42 has something to
do with it. But I think, also, it has to do with the fact that more and
more people are realizing that if they do come to the border and don't
get stopped by title 42, they will have a chance to come into the
United States and live in the United States with their families,
perhaps; if not, maybe bring in their families later. And everybody
wants to come to America. We are a great country.
We have our challenges, as we talk about on the floor here all the
time. But, still, we are a country with so many opportunities for
people, and folks want to come. And I don't blame them. I don't blame
them. But we want them to come legally.
And we currently have the most generous legal immigration system of
any country in the world. About 900,000 people a year--almost a million
people a year--come legally to the United States, most as legal
immigrants, some as refugees. And so we encourage that, and we should.
In fact, I think we should bring more people in legally, particularly
to fill
some of the jobs that we need filled, the STEM disciplines we talk
about a lot. We need people with the kind of training and background to
help our economy grow. But we need people at every level of training.
But we want them to come legally and through an orderly process that is
more humane, that doesn't have all the issues--which we will talk about
tonight--the humanitarian issues at the southern border.
In terms of title 42, we all hope that this public health emergency
isn't necessary going forward because COVID-19 ends. But in the
meantime, this border crisis means, to me, that we have to keep title
42 in place until we make some changes in policy. Otherwise, it will be
not just a crisis. It will be totally overwhelming.
As the Border Patrol says to me, they will lose operational control
of the border. Some would argue that has already happened because so
many people are coming over at record numbers. Often, the Border Patrol
is distracted by one group of migrants, and another group comes in. And
I saw this when I was at the border in El Paso. And anybody who has
been down at the border has seen this.
They are already in tough shape. But imagine if 48 percent of the
people here who are now being turned away by title 42 are not going to
be turned away and the number of other people who will come knowing
that that avenue is now open to them. This will be overwhelming.
It is very difficult right now, with the laws and the way the laws
are being implemented, to keep that from happening. That is why we need
a change in policy. It doesn't have to happen here in Congress. I think
we should change the laws and introduce legislation today to do that.
But the administration itself could make these changes.
By the way, in the last administration, as you can see, the number of
people coming across the border unlawfully and the number of encounters
was very low. But the same was true in the Obama administration. After
they had a surge of unaccompanied minors, they made changes in the law,
and they reduced the number of people who were coming unlawfully to the
border as well. It can be done, but there has to be the will do it.
I am the ranking Republican on the Senate committee that has
oversight responsibility for the Department of Homeland Security. The
Presiding Officer is also on that committee. This Department of
Homeland Security is preparing, they tell us, for a huge increase in
migrants after title 42 has ended. So although they want to end it,
they also know that if they do end it, there is going to be a huge
surge because they are actually preparing for that.
The way they are doing it is interesting. It is not so much keeping
people from coming into the United States as expediting their flow into
the United States. Among other things, instead of processing people at
the border, their recommendation is go ahead and put people on buses or
other forms of transportation and then do the processing later, perhaps
on the buses or where they are going in the United States. So it is a
way to move people through the process rather than come up with a way
to discourage people from coming across the border illegally.
DHS has planned, and then will facilitate, travel throughout the
country rather than figuring out how to keep people from coming in the
first place by telling them: Come legally, but please don't come to our
border illegally.
By the way, I think most Americans are very supportive of legal
immigration. It is an important part of who we are. With very few
exceptions of Native Americans, we all came from someplace else. All of
us have proud stories of our immigrant forebearers--our parents, our
grandparents, our great-grandparents. And it has enriched our country.
It is part of the fabric of our Nation. It is what makes us special.
But that is legal immigration. And it is not what we are talking about
here.
Who bears the brunt of this crisis? Well, at the outset, of course,
it is the Border Patrol. We have got to provide them with the personnel
and resources they need to complete their mission, as difficult as it
is.
When you go and meet with these people, the men and women of the
Border Patrol, you come away just so proud of what they try to do every
day. They are a combination of, you know, border agents trying to
enforce the law, social workers trying to help people with their
problems, healthcare workers trying to help when people get
hurt. Unfortunately, as we have seen, a lot of people are getting hurt
in this process. That journey north is a dangerous journey.
And with the cartels so involved and right there at the border, what
happens in the desert, what happens on these trains, what happens in
these trucks--we just saw this horrible incident of these migrants who
were jammed into a semitruck, and more of them died, I think, than any
other accident of that kind, incident of that kind, in our history. But
this is inhumane, and this is part of what happens when you have these
cartels involved in this process.
We also have got to provide the Border Patrol with the ability to
help control things at the border by finishing the border fence and
putting the technology with the fence that was always intended.
By the way, the technology tends not to be very partisan around here.
Democrats and Republicans alike, I believe, mostly think we ought to
have cameras. We ought to have sensors. We ought to know what is going
on at the border. But when the order came down the first day of the
Biden administration to stop the wall and to end what the Trump
administration had started with Congress's approval and funding, they
also said, Stop the technology.
So in the El Paso sector, as an example, the wall is about 80, 90
percent completed. Unfortunately, there are gaps in the wall where you
literally have to have Border Patrol there 24 hours a day or people
just come through it, which makes their job really hard. What they want
to do is at least have the wall there to slow people down. And the
technology there enables them to then go and deal with situations as
they occur. But only 20 percent of the technology had been completed.
So you have more wall than you have technology. And the wall is not
that useful, frankly, without the technology, in my view. I think the
technology is the key. But that is what is happening.
And, by the way, to the taxpayers listening tonight, which is pretty
much all of us, we paid for that wall. We actually paid for the fencing
to be put up. Congress appropriated the money. And then the
administration stopped it. So you literally see the steel beams and the
pieces of concrete for the wall lying on the ground. And as one Border
Patrol agent told me when I was in one of the sectors--most recently I
was in the Nogales sector where there is a huge gap--he said, this is
really bad for morale. And our Border Patrol agents look at this stuff,
and they say: We have already paid for this. Can't we just finish the
wall and put these fences up, the gates up, to keep these openings from
attracting the cartels and the drug smugglers and the people smugglers?
But that is where we are. So that is one thing our legislation does, is
to correct that problem and help stop this crisis.
It also says that title 42--we talked about earlier--won't be lifted
until the COVID-19 emergency is over. Again, I think it ought to be
lifted when we have policies in place that make sense. But a lot more
is needed. The bill also mandates that the program the Biden
administration ended, which said that as you come to ask for asylum,
you should wait at the border--it is called the migrant protocols.
There was just an agreement with the President of Mexico and
President Biden a couple of days ago about more funding for the border
area--and that is good--to provide more humane living conditions. But
this was working to tell people, if you want to come for asylum, go
ahead and apply. And while you are waiting for asylum, you can remain
in Mexico. And if you get asylum, you come across. If you don't, you go
home. What happened is, a lot of people just went home.
The asylum process, which we will get into in a minute, is kind of a
complicated issue. But in other ways, it is pretty simple, and it is
the main reason for this, which is that people know if they come to the
border and they claim asylum, which most people do, they have an
immediate, what is called, credible fear interview. Sometimes, it is
over the telephone now,
partly because of COVID. And that is a very low bar. And so people say
what their issue is back home where they feel persecuted, and then they
come in. And once they are told to come in, then they are told: OK, you
can go to wherever you are going in America--let's say Cincinnati, my
hometown, or Columbus or Chicago or Denver, wherever it is--and you
need to check in with the ICE office--that is the immigration office in
the interior of the United States--within 90 days.
Some people do check in. Some people don't check in. But the point
is, there is now a wait of somewhere between 6 to 8 years before your
case is heard on asylum--6 to 8 years. Why? Because there are 1.5
million--someone told me today 1.6 million; let's say 1.5 million
people, that is high enough--waiting in line. That is what the backlog
is.
It just makes no sense to anybody, including, by the way, the
Secretary of Homeland Security, whom I have talked to about this. And
these long waits mean that you are there embedded in a community in
America getting to know your community. You are joining your church.
You are sending your kids to school. You are having children. You are
part of the community. And then you are told after 6 to 8 years, by the
way, your asylum application is being denied because you are an
economic refugee, not an asylee. In other words, you haven't
demonstrated a fear of persecution. You have come to this country,
understandably, because there is great opportunity here. Again, we
should be encouraging these people to come legally like so many other
immigrants have over the years.
Only about 15 to 20 percent of those people who apply for asylum
today are getting asylum. So think about it. If you are part of the 80
to 85 percent who are not going to get asylum, there is sometimes not
much of an incentive to enter into this process and go through the
hearings and so on.
The consequence if you don't go through the hearings is that you are
then subject to removal. However, we are just not removing people
today. So this past year, the latest numbers we have are that 59,000
people were deported, or removed, from America. About 66 percent of
those people had a criminal background. But, remember, this is out of a
couple hundred thousand people going through the process. So there is a
very small chance that you will ever be removed or deported. Even
though you went through the process, you were denied asylum. You stay
in the United States. And, you know, the next administration could
change that. This administration could change that. But right now, this
asylum process, which was created to give lawful presence to people who
were unable to be in their home country because of persecution, is not
being used properly. It is being exploited by people who know that
because of our system and our huge backlog, if they say that they are
part of a group that is being persecuted they can come in. And even
when they are denied asylum, they can stay. That is the way it is
working.
What we have found is that folks who come here are almost entirely
focused more on the economic side. There was a survey conducted by the
Migration Policy Institute recently, which, by the way, is a pro-
migrant institution. It found that 90 percent of the Central Americans
making the journey to our southern border are coming for what? For
work. They are coming for work because they come from poor countries.
They don't have a lot of opportunity in their country. I don't blame
them. If I was a father living in Honduras and couldn't find a job or I
was a subsistence farmer just barely making it and I had a few kids and
I wanted them to have a better life, I would come, too.
But that is not what immigration is all about. It is a system where
you come legally, yes. But if you come illegally, you have got to be
told you have to go back and apply like everybody else. Otherwise,
America would be overwhelmed. And it is being overwhelmed and will be
even more overwhelmed if title 42 is taken away. There are hundreds of
millions of people--maybe billions of people--around the world who
would love to come to this country. We take for granted our
opportunities, our freedoms; but others don't.
So we have to have a system. We have to have some sort of a border.
And, really, that is the question that is before us today in this body:
Are we going to have a system that makes sense or one where, again, you
have a million and a half people who are waiting to have their hearing.
When they have their hearing on asylum and they are denied, they still
aren't removed; so they can stay. And, again, meanwhile, they have
family and kids and connections to the community. It is really not fair
to them. A much better system would be to say, OK, apply for asylum in
your country, or if you don't feel comfortable there, apply from a
third country. Then you will know, yes or no, before you come up to the
border, don't make that dangerous journey north. Don't put yourself in
the clutches of these coyotes, these human smugglers, these
traffickers, who are heartless. What they are doing is they are going
down to Central America or Latin America or really all over the world.
People are coming from hundreds of countries now. And they are saying,
you know, give me money. Give me 10,000 bucks, and I will get you to
the border, and you can just walk across.
People are signing up--sometimes with their life savings. And
sometimes as, again, we talked about earlier, there are assaults along
the way. There are all kinds of horrible stories of how women,
particularly, are mistreated on the way up. It is a dangerous and
inhumane process.
At the end of the day, our system is pulling these people to the
border. The administration is now implementing a new asylum rule
recently to try to deal with this problem because they realize it is
just not working. However, the new system that they are putting in
place isn't working either, and there is a reason for that. Their
theory is we should adjudicate the cases at the border. I agree with
that. I would rather adjudicate them outside the border in the country
of origin or a third country, but have the adjudication be right at the
border; make the decision right there, yes or no. Let people know.
The problem is what they are doing right now is they are putting
asylum officers at the border, making a decision, adjudicating as
people come across. And if it is a no, people are not being sent home.
But rather, people are being told if it is a no, you can appeal it to
the regular system, so get back in line with the 1.5 million people.
What we are learning is that, of course, people are smart. They are
talking to the asylum officer. They are getting a yes or no. If they
are getting a yes, that is great; they are getting in. That is a small
percentage. If they are getting a no, they say, That is fine, I am
going to appeal it to the regular system.
It really isn't an answer to the problem. If you want an answer to
the problem, what you would have is processing centers along the
border. It would be expensive because there are so many people coming
over now, so many people applying for asylum. But have a process where,
quickly, you can adjudicate these cases. In the meantime, you would not
have people be released into the interior but have them stay there to
find out what the outcome of the case is.
This pull system is bad for everybody except the smugglers. They are
the ones who profit. They are the ones who are going to folks in places
like Honduras or Ecuador or, again, far-flung places--places in Eastern
Europe, places in Asia--and telling people, Give me a bunch of money,
and I will get you into the United States.
We recently had this tragedy I mentioned in San Antonio. Fifty-three
migrants were left for dead in the Texas heat in the back of a tractor-
trailer. They were just abandoned by their smuggler. They left them
locked inside of this tractor-trailer. It is not the first time this
has happened. But as I said earlier, 53 is probably the worst smuggling
tragedy in our history.
I went to Latin America last year. I met with the Presidents of
Mexico and Guatemala, Ecuador, and Colombia. It was interesting. They
all said the same thing. You would be surprised to hear what they said.
People think they must enjoy this process because so many of their
citizens are going to America, they can then send money back to their
family and it must be good for everybody. It is not.
They are losing some of the best and brightest in their country, and
these
people are going through, again, this arduous process to get to the
border, and the inhumanity of that troubles these Presidents. They all
told me basically the same thing, which is: Why don't you guys fix your
laws and stop this pull factor?
We talk about the push factor in poor countries. I mentioned Honduras
earlier. That is certainly true. By the way, we spent over the last 5
years about $3.6 billion of American taxpayer money to help in the
economics of the so-called Northern Triangle in the Central American
countries.
I am for spending money in these countries to try to help with their
economy, but with the corruption, with all the issues they have, it is
very difficult to imagine those countries in a short period of time
having any kind of economic opportunity that equals what we have right
here in this country, so there is going to continue to be that push. We
should try to alleviate it. It will continue to happen.
But the pull, this policy we have is just pulling people north. What
they said to me, these Presidents of these countries, was: You have a
legal immigration system where people know they can just get into your
country. Why don't you change that? Why don't you change that?
Again, it is not just people from Mexico and Central America. It is
people from all over the world.
By the way, for some of these people, the Border Patrol is
increasingly concerned because they come from countries where a lot of
people want to do us harm. So, increasingly, we are seeing people
coming to our country who are, as an example, on the terror watch list.
Back in 2017, 2 people; 6 people in 2018; none in 2019; 2020, there
were 3; 15 in 2021. This fiscal year, 2022, there are already 50
individuals on the terror watch list. Why? They know if they come to
the U.S. border, they can get across. I am sure this number is higher--
that is what we know--because, again, a lot of people are so-called got
aways. Let's say 20 percent.
Who are these people? Well, some of them are probably pretty smart
individuals who know how to get away from Border Patrol, do the
distraction and sneak in. That worries me and it worries me because we
are allowing people to come into our country who we would not otherwise
allow.
We have seen this increase of people coming into the country who are
on the terror watch list, but we have also seen, again, a lot of people
coming in who we just don't know anything about because they don't
count them at the Border Patrol. We have seen more caravans and we see
more migrants are on the way. Why? I think it is because of this
general pull factor. The fact is people know, if they come here, they
know they are going to be able to get in.
I think it is also because of title 42 because the smugglers are
using that--cartels are spreading the word: Title 42 is on its way out.
Read about it in the front page of your paper because that is where
it is because this administration wants to end it, so they are saying
now you can go to the border and you will be let in under the policies
like the asylum policy and the single adults--48 percent of whom
roughly have been turned away. Forty-eight percent of the total by
title 42 would no longer be turned away. I think that is why we are
seeing this. It is giving the coyotes, traffickers, and smugglers
opportunity to make lots of money.
By the way, that is hurting all these countries, too. If you talk to
the Presidents of these countries, including President Obrador of
Mexico, what he will tell you is the cartels are taking over more and
more of his country because they are making more and more money because
of this--and, significantly, because of the drug issue we are going to
talk about in a second. We know that the cartels are involved in human
trafficking. We know they are involved in drug smuggling. We know they
are involved in smuggling people.
I was with the Border Patrol in El Paso last year. We were out at
night. We saw a group of migrants coming, and the Border Patrol was
going to that location to stop them and question them. Meanwhile, we
heard on the radio the drug smugglers had come across. They could see
it. They knew it. They could tell by the backpacks they were wearing, I
guess, and clothes they were wearing--dark clothes, young men--that
they were smuggling. But they couldn't do anything about it because
Border Patrol were processing the migrants who had come in.
So I am watching the migrants coming in--actually talking to some of
them and Border Patrol--and meanwhile, on the radio, they are saying,
You have to go to this other sector, this other area to stop these drug
smugglers. We can't; we are distracted. The processing takes some time.
The other big issue, in addition to the unlawful entry into the
United States--smuggling, all the inhumanity that surrounds that--is
this drug issue. I have spent a lot of time working on this issue on
the prevention side--helping on treatment and recovery options and
doing more on prevention. We were making some progress until,
unfortunately, we were hit with this pandemic. And during that time and
since, drug use has gone up again. But we were making progress, in
part, because we were helping on the demand side of the equation.
But also on the supply side, we were keeping some of these drugs out
of the country. We did it primarily through stopping the deadliest of
all, which is the fentanyl--which is a synthetic opioid--from coming in
through the U.S. mail system. We passed a law called the STOP Act. It
kept China from poisoning our communities by sending this stuff through
the mail system, which was happening. That was the primary way it was
coming in.
What has happened? During the pandemic--kind of coincidental with the
pandemic--we had more people isolated, more people losing their jobs,
more people turning to drugs. You had Mexico begin to take the central
role in terms of fentanyl. A lot of it is precursors from China, so
China sends the precursors to Mexico, but Mexico is now making the
fentanyl--often into pills--Xanax or Adderall or Percocet.
If you buy any drugs on the street, know that those drugs could kill
you. Don't be fooled. There are so many counterfeit drugs out there
now. That is one of the preferred ways that the Mexican cartels are
bringing these drugs in.
Again, fentanyl is, of course, the deadliest of the drugs. About two
thirds of the overdose deaths in America are currently because of
fentanyl. We now have a record level of overdose deaths every year in
America, over 100,000 last year. There is no reason to believe that it
will be less than that this year based on early data we have, sadly. In
my home State of Ohio, it is the No. 1 killer by far.
Look at what has happened with the seizures of fentanyl. This is the
fentanyl that has been seized. Here are projections for the rest of
this year if they continue as they are--obviously, record levels. When
you have this huge surge of fentanyl coming in, what happens is you
have a lower cost in the drug--supply and demand, right? So there is a
huge supply, and the demand for these drugs continues.
On the streets of Columbus or Cleveland or Cincinnati or Dayton or
your town, wherever it is, it is likely that this cheap but really
deadly fentanyl is something that people are being exposed to. Some
people are falling prey to it, again, often thinking they are taking
another drug.
There are a couple of students at Ohio State University who overdosed
and died just before I gave a talk there at graduation earlier this
spring. They were taking what they thought were study drugs,
apparently: Adderall. A third student lived, but was in critical
condition. This is the deadliest of drugs.
In 2021, we seized double the fentanyl from the previous year, four
times from the year before that. Again, so far this year, we are on
track to match the most fentanyl seized ever. In May--just 1 month, in
May--there was enough fentanyl seized at the border to kill 200 million
Americans, more than half of our population in 1 month. People say:
Well, gosh, why are you so worried about the border? Let people come
across--open border--whatever.
Here is the consequence.
Again, it is hurting Mexico, too, and it is hurting lots of other
countries. But in terms of Mexico, this gives the cartels enormous
power and money. And, yes, ultimately, I think the most important thing
to do is to reduce demand. I do.
Again, we are making progress now. We had about a 20-percent
reduction in 2018. We need to get back to that. This Congress took the
lead on much of this.
But we also have to deal with the supply side and stop this enormous
surge of drugs that is coming over and poisoning our communities. That
is part of what is happening on the border. A few months ago, I was in
Nogales, south of Tucson, to ride with the Border Patrol and go to the
port of entry there. They are doing a very good job with what they
have, but they need better equipment.
This is one thing Congress can do. They need help. They need more
resources. They need better technology. They need to be able to scan
cars and trucks that are coming in, particularly for these drugs that
we talked about. A relatively small package of fentanyl this size can
kill 1,000 people. A few specks could kill you. It is easy to hide it
in a car or a truck.
We now know that less than 2 percent of passenger vehicles and less
than 20 percent of commercial vehicles coming into the United States
are scanned for these illegal drugs like fentanyl. This is just
unacceptable. Congress has appropriated more funding for this. That is
good. Let's get it moving. We should be scanning all vehicles, in my
view. A smuggler with multiple pounds of fentanyl concealed in a hidden
compartment might be worth hundreds of thousands or even millions of
dollars. They know they have a good chance of getting across without a
search. They take the risk.
It is not just a gap in our security; it is a gaping hole. And,
again, it leads to this flood of cheap fentanyl and other dangerous
drugs. The southern border has faced the worst unlawful crisis that we
have ever had, going back to the first chart. This tells the story, in
red.
The men and women of the Customs and Border Protection whom I have
met over the years are doing the best they can. They are doing their
best at the ports of entry. They are doing their best as Border Patrol
between the ports of entry, but they need help. That is what
legislation does. It provides them with the help they need to be able
to respond to this crisis.
We welcome legal immigration. We always should. They enrich our
country. And we are a nation of immigrants, and we are proud of that.
But we are also a nation of laws, and we are also a nation that cares
about the inhumanity of the current system and the flood of cheap,
deadly drugs coming through our border.
I urge the Biden administration to change course, to fix this broken
system, to follow the law, including the law on detaining people, to
reform the asylum process so it stops acting like a pull factor and is
used for what it is intended for, to truly help those who are seeking
asylum for the right reasons, to stop these policies that send a green
light to the smugglers, to the cartels, to the drug traffickers, and
that is causing so much human suffering along our southern border.
I urge the administration to act. In the meantime, again, we are
introducing legislation. I urge my colleagues to help us with that.
There is no reason that we can't work in a bipartisan way to deal with
what everybody has to acknowledge is a huge crisis at our southern
border.
I yield the floor.
| Cleveland | racist |
07/15/2022 | The SPEAKER pro tempore | House | CREC-2022-07-15-pt1-PgH6629-3 | nan | nan | The SPEAKER pro tempore. Pursuant to clause 8 of rule XX, the Chair
will postpone further proceedings today on motions to suspend the rules
on which the yeas and nays are ordered.
The House will resume proceedings on postponed questions at a later
time.
| XX | transphobic |
07/15/2022 | The SPEAKER pro tempore | House | CREC-2022-07-15-pt1-PgH6660-2 | nan | nan | The SPEAKER pro tempore. Pursuant to clause 8 of rule XX, the
unfinished business is the vote on the motion to recommit on the bill
(H.R. 8296) to protect a person's ability to determine whether to
continue or end a pregnancy, and to protect a health care provider's
ability to provide abortion services, offered by the gentlewoman from
Minnesota (Mrs. Fischbach), on which the yeas and nays were ordered.
The Clerk will redesignate the motion.
The Clerk redesignated the motion. | XX | transphobic |
07/15/2022 | The SPEAKER pro tempore | House | CREC-2022-07-15-pt1-PgH6660 | nan | nan | The SPEAKER pro tempore. Proceedings will resume on questions
previously postponed.
Votes will be taken in the following order:
Motion to recommit, H.R. 8296;
Passage of H.R. 8296, if ordered;
Motion to recommit H.R. 8297;
Passage of H.R. 8297, if ordered; and,
Motion to suspend the rules and pass H.R. 8351.
The first electronic vote will be conducted as a 15-minute vote.
Pursuant to clause 9 of rule XX, the remaining electronic votes will be
conducted as 5-minute votes.
| XX | transphobic |
07/15/2022 | The SPEAKER | House | CREC-2022-07-15-pt1-PgH6661 | nan | nan | The SPEAKER. Pursuant to clause 8 of rule XX, the unfinished business
is the vote on the motion to recommit on the bill (H.R. 8297) to
prohibit the interference, under color of State law, with the provision
of interstate abortion services, and for other purposes, offered by the
gentleman from Louisiana (Mr. Johnson), on which the yeas and nays were
ordered.
The Clerk will redesignate the motion.
The Clerk redesignated the motion. | XX | transphobic |
07/15/2022 | The SPEAKER | House | CREC-2022-07-15-pt1-PgH6663 | nan | nan | The SPEAKER. Pursuant to clause 8 of rule XX, the unfinished business
is the vote on the motion to suspend the rules and pass the bill (H.R.
8351) to amend the Harmonized Tariff Schedule of the United States to
suspend temporarily rates of duty on imports of certain infant formula
products, and for other purposes, on which the yeas and nays were
ordered. | XX | transphobic |
07/18/2022 | Unknown | House | CREC-2022-07-18-pt1-PgH6685-3 | nan | nan | The Chaplain, the Reverend Margaret Grun Kibben, offered the
following prayer:
Holy God, call us into Your presence this day, that we, with full
abandon, would run into Your loving embrace and receive the plenteous
gifts You desire to lavish upon us.
What an image. Your love is so welcoming. Your concern for our
welfare so strong, and Your generosity overwhelming. We are humbled by
Your grace.
Held in Your everlasting arms, may we find the courage to ask for
Your wisdom and guidance, that we would receive; to seek to discern
what is good and right, that we may find; and to knock on doors
barricaded by doubt and despair, that even these would be opened to us.
O God, You are the source of our every hope, the answer for all we
seek, and the treasure we hope to be opened to us. In this knowledge,
may our joy be complete.
In Your loving name we pray.
Amen.
| welfare | racist |
07/18/2022 | The SPEAKER pro tempore | House | CREC-2022-07-18-pt1-PgH6686-7 | nan | nan | The SPEAKER pro tempore. Pursuant to clause 8 of rule XX, the Chair
will postpone further proceedings today on motions to suspend the rules
on which the yeas and nays are ordered.
The House will resume proceedings on postponed questions at a later
time.
| XX | transphobic |
07/18/2022 | Mr. HUFFMAN | House | CREC-2022-07-18-pt1-PgH6695 | nan | nan | Mr. HUFFMAN. Mr. Speaker, I move to suspend the rules and pass the
bill (H.R. 7002) to authorize the Gateway Arch in St. Louis, Missouri,
to be illuminated by blue and yellow lights in support of Ukraine, as
amended. | blue | antisemitic |
07/18/2022 | Unknown | House | CREC-2022-07-18-pt1-PgH6705 | nan | nan | Under clause 2 of rule XIII, reports of committees were delivered to
the Clerk for printing and reference to the proper calendar, as
follows:
Mr. GRIJALVA: Committee on Natural Resources. H.R. 4404. A
bill to amend the Wild and Scenic Rivers Act to designate
segments of the Kissimmee River in the State of Florida as a
component of the Wild and Scenic Rivers System, and for other
purposes; with an amendment (Rept. 117-414). Referred to the
Committee of the Whole House on the state of the Union.
Mr. GRIJALVA: Committee on Natural Resources. H.R. 6337. A
bill to require the Secretary of the Interior and the
Secretary of Agriculture to develop long-distance bike trails
on Federal land, and for other purposes; with an amendment
(Rept. 117-415, Pt. 1). Referred to the Committee of the
Whole House on the state of the Union.
Mr. GRIJALVA: Committee on Natural Resources. H.R. 7002. A
bill to authorize the Gateway Arch in St. Louis, Missouri, to
be illuminated by blue and yellow lights in support of
Ukraine, with an amendment (Rept. 117-416). Referred to the
Committee of the Whole House on the state of the Union.
Mr. GRIJALVA: Committee on Natural Resources. H.R. 7025. A
bill to prohibit the Director of the United States Fish and
Wildlife Service from funding entities that commit, fund, or
support gross violations of internationally recognized human
rights, and for other purposes; with an amendment (Rept. 117-
417). Referred to the Committee of the Whole House on the
state of the Union.
Mr. GRIJALVA: Committee on Natural Resources. H.R. 7693. A
bill to amend title 54, United States Code, to reauthorize
the National Park Foundation (Rept. 117-418). Referred to the
Committee of the Whole House on the state of the Union.
Mr. GRIJALVA: Committee on Natural Resources. H.R. 5118. A
bill to direct the Secretary of Agriculture to prioritize the
completion of the Continental Divide National Scenic Trail,
and for other purposes; with amendments (Rept. 117-419).
Referred to the Committee of the Whole House on the state of
the Union.
Discharge of Committee
Pursuant to clause 2 of rule XIII, the Committee on Agriculture
discharged from further consideration. H.R. 6337 referred to the
Committee of the Whole House on the state of the Union.
| blue | antisemitic |
07/18/2022 | Unknown | Senate | CREC-2022-07-18-pt1-PgS3322 | nan | nan | Abortion
Madam President, in the weeks since the Alito-Thomas Supreme Court
majority erased the constitutional right to abortion, the rightwing
disinformation machine has kicked into high gear. Again and again, we
hear the same empty words of reassurance from the Republican side. They
claim that overturning Roe simply handed the question of abortion back
to the people's representatives, back to the States--just that simple.
This is false, and they know it. The reality is overturning Roe has
unleashed a healthcare crisis in this country. It has ripped a right to
make essential healthcare decisions away from the people and their
doctors and handed it to the politicians in individual States.
As soon as Roe was overturned by the Alito Supreme Court, nearly a
dozen States outlawed abortion.
In Ohio, abortion access is so restricted that we have heard this
horrible, bone-chilling story of a 10-year-old rape victim who was
denied care in the State of Ohio. Ten years old, Madam President. At
the age of 10, parents and grandparents are still worried about 10-
year-old grandkids crossing the street. This 10-year-old victim had
been raped. She was pregnant.
The State's law in Ohio only permits abortions before fetal cardiac
activity is detected, which is usually at 6 weeks of gestation. At the
time this 10-year-old child sought care, she was 6 weeks and 3 days
pregnant. She missed the deadline. So the child was forced to flee her
home State of Ohio and travel to Indiana, where she was given medical
care.
And from the moment this story made headlines, what was the response
from Republican politicians and the conservative media? They said it
was fake news; that it is a hoax. They accused the doctor who treated
the girl of just plain lying. They said that Democrats were making up
these doomsday scenarios to scare the American people. The Wall Street
Journal--the Wall Street Journal, Madam President--even ran an
editorial calling the story ``Too Good to Confirm.''
But unthinkable and sickening as it may be, the story is true. So why
did Republicans go to such great lengths to discredit it? Because they
refused to admit the truth. When faced with a case that shows the
extreme consequences of outlawing abortion, as the Supreme Court just
did weeks ago, they dismissed the facts as a lie.
Well, here is the truth. Republican anti-choice policies will force
children--children who are still not old enough to cross the street on
their own--to give birth. Ten years old. And Republicans are not
content with simply banning all abortion. They want to prosecute the
healthcare professionals who have to make the life-and-death decisions
in the practice of medicine--healthcare professionals like the one who
treated this little girl from Ohio.
Just last week, Indiana's Republican attorney general declared he was
going to investigate this doctor from Indiana who provided this
abortion. Well, what were his grounds for investigating? He claimed
that the doctor didn't properly report the abortion to State
authorities. But even that isn't true. Records show the doctor followed
the law exactly as it is written.
How did we reach this point? It has not even been a month since the
Dobbs decision, and Republican officials are already finding ways to
intimidate doctors who are providing essential care to Americans and
America's children. The radical rightwing majority on the Supreme Court
has given these lawmakers a green light to enact the most unreasonable,
outrageous abortion bans imaginable.
And as cruel as these bans may be, they cannot change the reality
that reproductive healthcare is healthcare. In some cases, an abortion
can mean the difference between life and death.
The moment politicians start meddling in life-or-death health
decisions, the moment we turn over these life-or-death decisions to a
legislator rather than to a doctor and a patient, we are headed down a
dark, dangerous, and deadly road.
Here is what is happening. Right now, there is a doctor in America,
today, who is being forced to make an impossible decision: Do I risk
jail time, do I risk criminal charges by providing the care that I
believe my patient needs, or do I sit back and risk my patient's life
and health from pregnancy complications?
What a choice. Do you want to make that as an elected official? I am
not competent to make that choice. I am a lawyer--liberal arts. I
didn't spend a day in medical school. When it comes to the people I
care about--my family and others--I want medical professionals to make
that decision, not run-of-the-mill politicians.
Last week, the Texas attorney general filed a lawsuit against
President Biden's administration. What was the reason? Because the
administration issued guidance making it clear that healthcare
providers are legally protected when offering legally mandated life- or
health-saving services in emergency situations.
Think about that. Texas would rather allow women to risk their
health--even death--than allow them to seek emergency lifesaving care.
And, yesterday, the New York Times--and I commend this article to
everyone--reported that miscarriage patients in Texas are being turned
away by doctors. These women are being denied care because ``doctors .
. . worried the patients might have actually taken abortion pills that
hadn't expelled the pregnancy, two situations that appear medically
identical.''
One San Antonio based ob-gyn put it best when she said:
[T]he art of medicine is lost and actually has been replaced by fear.
This is the world we have entered after the fall of Roe. And it is a
wake-up call for every Member of this Senate. Don't turn your eyes away
from it. This is the reality of the Supreme Court decision.
Our constitutional rights should not, and cannot, differ State by
State. For 50 years, this was a fundamentally constitutional guaranteed
freedom. And it needs to be protected again by Federal law.
I don't think this Court is going to stop with overturning Roe. I
commended to all my colleagues, there was a speech made last Thursday
by Senator Kaine of Virginia. Before he was in politics, he was a civil
rights lawyer. And he is a good one. And he explained the 14th
Amendment and what it means if we were to take the Alito Court analysis
and basis and reject the notion that the 14th Amendment defines our
citizenship in so many different ways.
Justice Clarence Thomas has indicated the far right majority is
coming next for the right to family birth control and contraception.
Oh, that can't be true, Senator. They aren't going to go after birth
control pills--watch them; they have already announced they are
underway--and marriage equality and making our decisions about the
future of our families.
This Senate must act to protect marriage equality and all the
fundamental human rights that are under threat by this radical Supreme
Court. The question, though, when November comes around, will the
American people care, or will they take a nap? Will they decide it is
somebody else's problem? Well, I hope they don't because these problems
are really facing all of us as Americans, whether we like it or not. We
would rather not talk about this issue, but the Supreme Court gives us
no choice.
Now, let's be sensible. These are medical decisions that should be
made by medical professionals.
| based | white supremacist |
07/18/2022 | Unknown | Senate | CREC-2022-07-18-pt1-PgS3323 | nan | nan | Food and Drug Administration
Madam President, 2 weeks ago, the Center for Disease Control issued
an alert: There was a listeria outbreak that sent nearly 2 dozen people
in 10 States to the hospital.
For those who may not know, listeria is the bacteria that causes
listeriosis. It is serious. It is a life-threatening illness. In most
cases, the infection causes fever, sometimes confusion, loss of
balance; but in some cases, it can be deadly.
Tragically, an expectant mother from Massachusetts who contracted it
lost her baby. And another person in my home State of Illinois lost her
life. Her name was Mary Billman. She was from Pesotum, IL. It is a
small downstate community, about 15 miles south of Champaign.
In January, she went to Florida to visit her daughter. One day, she
decided to grab an ice cream cone. Harmless, right? As it turned out,
no. That ice cream was contaminated. Ice cream is the most likely
source of this listeria outbreak. Mary Billman was 79 years old. The
listeria that she faced took her life.
This outbreak is one example of a long list of outbreaks in America,
which are becoming way too common. The Food and Drug Administration is
responsible for regulating 80 percent of our Nation's food supply.
Nearly all of the foods we buy at the supermarket are supposed to be
guaranteed as safe by the Food and Drug Administration. So when we pick
up a box of cereal for the kids, a bag of lettuce, a jar of peanut
butter, a pint of ice cream, we assume it has been inspected. We assume
it is safe.
Here is the problem: Too often, that is not the case. The FDA is
failing to uphold its most basic food safety responsibility: inspecting
facilities. Over the past decade, the number of inspections it performs
has fallen by nearly 60 percent--60-percent decline in inspections in
the last decade. And to add insult to injury, that decline happened
after Congress passed the FDA Food Safety Modernization Act--a 2011
bill, which I offered, that instructed the FDA to increase the number
of inspections. They did the opposite.
If that weren't bad enough, in 2017, the HHS inspector general
concluded that, even when the FDA did inspect facilities, the Agency
did not always take action when it uncovered significant inspection
violations. We know that story.
This summer, a bacteria known as Cronobacter contaminated infant
formula, leading to nationwide shortages. The FDA was alerted to this
problem 4 months before it took any action--4 months. So even when the
FDA performs an inspection and identifies a threat to public health, it
doesn't take timely action, not even when the problem can sicken and
kill adults, children, infants. That is hard to imagine.
The FDA is adrift. And our most vulnerable people in America--
children, mothers, and older Americans--are at risk.
Last week, I introduced a bill that would transfer all of FDA's food
responsibilities to a new Agency outside the FDA that we hope will
actually do its job. We are calling it simply the Food Safety
Administration. Congresswoman Rosa DeLauro, my friend and a
Representative from the State of Connecticut, has introduced the
companion bill in the House. Our bill represents a clean slate for food
safety in America. It would create a new Food Safety Administration
that would be run by food safety experts who were focused on protecting
the Nation's food supply.
If I went into detail of the responsibilities of different Federal
Agencies to inspect foods, you wouldn't believe it. If you have a
cheese pizza, Food and Drug Administration; put pepperoni on the pizza,
now it is the Department of Agriculture. It changes based on
definitions that might have made sense sometime in the past, make no
sense anymore.
On behalf of the 15 million Americans who contract a foodborne
illness each year and tens of thousands who are hospitalized, it is
time to stop talking about it and do something.
The FDA failed my constituent Mary Billman, along with 3,000
Americans like her who lose their lives every year to foodborne
illness. Many of these deaths are preventable, but they will keep
happening if we don't fix our Nation's defunct food safety system.
We say America is the wealthiest Nation in human history. We are
blessed, we know, with one of the most abundant agriculture industries.
And we are home to some of the best and brightest scientists in the
world. So there is absolutely no excuse for allowing the FDA's food
safety failures to persist. With our legislation, we can replace this
broken system with one that will finally protect our families.
I yield the floor.
I suggest the absence of a quorum. | based | white supremacist |
07/18/2022 | Unknown | Senate | CREC-2022-07-18-pt1-PgS3325 | nan | nan | Border Security
Madam President, on another matter, last week, Senator Cruz, my
junior Senator and friend, and I took five Members of our Republican
conference to McAllen, TX, which is in the Rio Grande Valley, which is
the epicenter of a massive humanitarian and immigration crisis that has
been going on for at least the last year and a half.
McAllen is in the Border Patrol's Rio Grande Valley Sector, it is
called, and one of the busiest portions of the U.S.-Mexico border when
it comes to illegal migration. For example, between October and May,
Rio Grande Valley Sector agents logged more than 333,000 border
crossings--more than any of the other 20 Border Patrol sectors.
During the visit, our colleagues were able to see and learn what,
frankly, as Texas Senators, Senator Cruz and I learned long ago about
the traumatic, heart-wrenching consequences of this unabated crisis:
groups of migrants with toddlers, who were lying asleep on the dirt
road, practically ill from the heat and exhaustion.
By the way, the temperature is routinely in excess of 100 degrees at
this time of year.
One mother and her 7-year-old child, the mom in tears and
heartbroken, having left another 10-year-old child behind in Guatemala,
were encountered. Unaccompanied children of 7 years of age, with
nothing more than the clothes on their back, a birth certificate, and
family contact information on a piece of paper--these were the sorts of
things that my Senate colleagues had a chance to experience, which,
unfortunately, I have seen all too many times before. These aren't
heart-wrenching scenes from a war-torn country halfway around the
world. This is happening on our front doorstep. This is happening in
Texas every day.
My colleagues and I also spoke with some of the folks whose homes and
properties sit along the U.S.-Texas border with Mexico. They shared
with us stories about what it is like to live along one of the hot
spots for illegal border crossings.
One resident told us last year the Brooks County Sheriff's Department
recovered the bodies of 119 dead migrants. So far this year, the county
has recovered 64.
Just by way of explanation, the coyotes or the smugglers will bring
the migrants across the border, put them in a stash house, and then,
when they
believe the coast is clear, put them in a truck and transport them
north. They will have to go through a border checkpoint--or an interior
checkpoint in Falfurrias, for example, which is where Brooks County is
located, but what happens is, the smugglers will tell the migrants: Get
out of the vehicle and walk around the checkpoint, and we will pick you
up on the north side.
The problem is, this is very tough terrain and over 100-degree-plus
temperature. Frankly, when some of the migrants become ill or injured,
they are simply left behind to die, and that is why so many bodies have
been recovered, for example, in Brooks County on a regular basis.
It is tough to imagine the toll this sort of discovery takes on a
farmer or rancher, and then multiply that shock by more than 100.
Then we heard about the losses to property suffered because of this
crisis--stolen vehicles, broken fences, damaged crops, vandalism,
people who are afraid to let their own family members live and work on
their own property because they are worried about the drugs, and they
are worried about the potential violence. They talked about the safety
concerns for their families and employees because drug traffickers and
human smugglers go right through their backyards.
These men and women are understandably angry. They said to us: This
is the United States of America, and I can't let my daughter or wife or
children live and play or work on our own property? They are frustrated
beyond belief because their families and employees, their homes and
livelihoods are in jeopardy due to the Biden administration's failed
border policies.
In case there are any doubts, I want to emphasize that what is
happening on the border right now does not benefit anyone.
Border Patrol agents are stretched thin. They are frustrated. They
are overwhelmed by everything they are expected to shoulder. They have
been told they cannot do the job that they took an oath to perform
under policies by the Department of Homeland Security, which can only
be described as nonenforcement policies.
Landowners are saddled with safety concerns and financial losses.
Nongovernmental organizations, which are doing their best to help
people in need, are carrying the weight of this humanitarian crisis
with no end in sight. Brave Texas Department of Public Safety officers
and National Guardsmen are making serious sacrifices as a result of the
administration's failure to secure the border. These guardsmen and the
Department of Homeland Security should not have to do a job that is the
responsibility of the Federal Government, but when the Federal
Government won't do its job, the State of Texas has no choice. One
guardsman actually drowned while trying to save two migrants struggling
to swim across the Rio Grande River. And the migrants themselves are
routinely abused, exploited, even raped and sometimes left for dead in
the middle of unforgiving terrain.
The only people really winning in this crisis are the criminal
organizations and the human smugglers that are getting richer by the
day. These cartels are transnational criminal organizations. They will
traffic in anything that makes them a buck. They are what one person
has called commodity agnostic. They don't care what that commodity is;
their goal is simply to maximize their profit by whatever means
necessary. And there is no question that the Biden administration's
policies have helped enrich the cartels and resulted in too many
migrants having lost their lives.
Throughout my time in the Senate, I have had the privilege of working
with countless men and women who live and work along the southern
border. Their experiences and input have shed light on the scope and
scale of this crisis, and I am glad to be able to welcome some of our
Senate colleagues to join us for an informative trip to the Rio Grande
Valley. And I appreciate our colleagues taking the time to come visit
the US-Mexico border for an update on the border crisis. Of course,
most of them don't come from border States, but in the memorable words
of one of our colleagues now, every State is a border State because the
consequences of this huge migration and humanitarian crisis--not to
mention the drugs that are smuggled across the border--affect every
community and every State in our Nation.
I also want to thank my constituents, my fellow Texans, who took the
time out of their busy schedules to educate our colleagues: the
officers, the agents, the landowners, the National Guardsmen, the Texas
Department of Public Safety officials, the local sheriffs, and others.
What is so shocking to me is, despite the complete security breakdown
and, really, the lack of any dispute about what exactly is happening on
the border, we just can't seem to get the Biden administration's
attention. Landowners can tell them what it was like to discover the
dead bodies of migrants who were abandoned by human smugglers, and
those who do the Lord's work at nongovernmental organizations can tell
the tale of migrants who were violently assaulted and raped on the way
to our country, some of whom arrived pregnant. If President Biden would
take a moment to sit down with these folks who live and work along the
border, he may begin to learn more and view this situation for what it
really is: a humanitarian and security crisis precipitated by his
administration's unwillingness to secure our border.
President Biden has an open invitation to visit the Texas border, and
I hope he will take us up on that. If he would, we might finally be
able to get something done on a bipartisan basis to abate this crisis
and to secure our open borders.
I yield the floor. | the Fed | antisemitic |
07/18/2022 | Unknown | Senate | CREC-2022-07-18-pt1-PgS3325 | nan | nan | Border Security
Madam President, on another matter, last week, Senator Cruz, my
junior Senator and friend, and I took five Members of our Republican
conference to McAllen, TX, which is in the Rio Grande Valley, which is
the epicenter of a massive humanitarian and immigration crisis that has
been going on for at least the last year and a half.
McAllen is in the Border Patrol's Rio Grande Valley Sector, it is
called, and one of the busiest portions of the U.S.-Mexico border when
it comes to illegal migration. For example, between October and May,
Rio Grande Valley Sector agents logged more than 333,000 border
crossings--more than any of the other 20 Border Patrol sectors.
During the visit, our colleagues were able to see and learn what,
frankly, as Texas Senators, Senator Cruz and I learned long ago about
the traumatic, heart-wrenching consequences of this unabated crisis:
groups of migrants with toddlers, who were lying asleep on the dirt
road, practically ill from the heat and exhaustion.
By the way, the temperature is routinely in excess of 100 degrees at
this time of year.
One mother and her 7-year-old child, the mom in tears and
heartbroken, having left another 10-year-old child behind in Guatemala,
were encountered. Unaccompanied children of 7 years of age, with
nothing more than the clothes on their back, a birth certificate, and
family contact information on a piece of paper--these were the sorts of
things that my Senate colleagues had a chance to experience, which,
unfortunately, I have seen all too many times before. These aren't
heart-wrenching scenes from a war-torn country halfway around the
world. This is happening on our front doorstep. This is happening in
Texas every day.
My colleagues and I also spoke with some of the folks whose homes and
properties sit along the U.S.-Texas border with Mexico. They shared
with us stories about what it is like to live along one of the hot
spots for illegal border crossings.
One resident told us last year the Brooks County Sheriff's Department
recovered the bodies of 119 dead migrants. So far this year, the county
has recovered 64.
Just by way of explanation, the coyotes or the smugglers will bring
the migrants across the border, put them in a stash house, and then,
when they
believe the coast is clear, put them in a truck and transport them
north. They will have to go through a border checkpoint--or an interior
checkpoint in Falfurrias, for example, which is where Brooks County is
located, but what happens is, the smugglers will tell the migrants: Get
out of the vehicle and walk around the checkpoint, and we will pick you
up on the north side.
The problem is, this is very tough terrain and over 100-degree-plus
temperature. Frankly, when some of the migrants become ill or injured,
they are simply left behind to die, and that is why so many bodies have
been recovered, for example, in Brooks County on a regular basis.
It is tough to imagine the toll this sort of discovery takes on a
farmer or rancher, and then multiply that shock by more than 100.
Then we heard about the losses to property suffered because of this
crisis--stolen vehicles, broken fences, damaged crops, vandalism,
people who are afraid to let their own family members live and work on
their own property because they are worried about the drugs, and they
are worried about the potential violence. They talked about the safety
concerns for their families and employees because drug traffickers and
human smugglers go right through their backyards.
These men and women are understandably angry. They said to us: This
is the United States of America, and I can't let my daughter or wife or
children live and play or work on our own property? They are frustrated
beyond belief because their families and employees, their homes and
livelihoods are in jeopardy due to the Biden administration's failed
border policies.
In case there are any doubts, I want to emphasize that what is
happening on the border right now does not benefit anyone.
Border Patrol agents are stretched thin. They are frustrated. They
are overwhelmed by everything they are expected to shoulder. They have
been told they cannot do the job that they took an oath to perform
under policies by the Department of Homeland Security, which can only
be described as nonenforcement policies.
Landowners are saddled with safety concerns and financial losses.
Nongovernmental organizations, which are doing their best to help
people in need, are carrying the weight of this humanitarian crisis
with no end in sight. Brave Texas Department of Public Safety officers
and National Guardsmen are making serious sacrifices as a result of the
administration's failure to secure the border. These guardsmen and the
Department of Homeland Security should not have to do a job that is the
responsibility of the Federal Government, but when the Federal
Government won't do its job, the State of Texas has no choice. One
guardsman actually drowned while trying to save two migrants struggling
to swim across the Rio Grande River. And the migrants themselves are
routinely abused, exploited, even raped and sometimes left for dead in
the middle of unforgiving terrain.
The only people really winning in this crisis are the criminal
organizations and the human smugglers that are getting richer by the
day. These cartels are transnational criminal organizations. They will
traffic in anything that makes them a buck. They are what one person
has called commodity agnostic. They don't care what that commodity is;
their goal is simply to maximize their profit by whatever means
necessary. And there is no question that the Biden administration's
policies have helped enrich the cartels and resulted in too many
migrants having lost their lives.
Throughout my time in the Senate, I have had the privilege of working
with countless men and women who live and work along the southern
border. Their experiences and input have shed light on the scope and
scale of this crisis, and I am glad to be able to welcome some of our
Senate colleagues to join us for an informative trip to the Rio Grande
Valley. And I appreciate our colleagues taking the time to come visit
the US-Mexico border for an update on the border crisis. Of course,
most of them don't come from border States, but in the memorable words
of one of our colleagues now, every State is a border State because the
consequences of this huge migration and humanitarian crisis--not to
mention the drugs that are smuggled across the border--affect every
community and every State in our Nation.
I also want to thank my constituents, my fellow Texans, who took the
time out of their busy schedules to educate our colleagues: the
officers, the agents, the landowners, the National Guardsmen, the Texas
Department of Public Safety officials, the local sheriffs, and others.
What is so shocking to me is, despite the complete security breakdown
and, really, the lack of any dispute about what exactly is happening on
the border, we just can't seem to get the Biden administration's
attention. Landowners can tell them what it was like to discover the
dead bodies of migrants who were abandoned by human smugglers, and
those who do the Lord's work at nongovernmental organizations can tell
the tale of migrants who were violently assaulted and raped on the way
to our country, some of whom arrived pregnant. If President Biden would
take a moment to sit down with these folks who live and work along the
border, he may begin to learn more and view this situation for what it
really is: a humanitarian and security crisis precipitated by his
administration's unwillingness to secure our border.
President Biden has an open invitation to visit the Texas border, and
I hope he will take us up on that. If he would, we might finally be
able to get something done on a bipartisan basis to abate this crisis
and to secure our open borders.
I yield the floor. | secure the border | anti-Latino |
07/18/2022 | Unknown | Senate | CREC-2022-07-18-pt1-PgS3325 | nan | nan | Border Security
Madam President, on another matter, last week, Senator Cruz, my
junior Senator and friend, and I took five Members of our Republican
conference to McAllen, TX, which is in the Rio Grande Valley, which is
the epicenter of a massive humanitarian and immigration crisis that has
been going on for at least the last year and a half.
McAllen is in the Border Patrol's Rio Grande Valley Sector, it is
called, and one of the busiest portions of the U.S.-Mexico border when
it comes to illegal migration. For example, between October and May,
Rio Grande Valley Sector agents logged more than 333,000 border
crossings--more than any of the other 20 Border Patrol sectors.
During the visit, our colleagues were able to see and learn what,
frankly, as Texas Senators, Senator Cruz and I learned long ago about
the traumatic, heart-wrenching consequences of this unabated crisis:
groups of migrants with toddlers, who were lying asleep on the dirt
road, practically ill from the heat and exhaustion.
By the way, the temperature is routinely in excess of 100 degrees at
this time of year.
One mother and her 7-year-old child, the mom in tears and
heartbroken, having left another 10-year-old child behind in Guatemala,
were encountered. Unaccompanied children of 7 years of age, with
nothing more than the clothes on their back, a birth certificate, and
family contact information on a piece of paper--these were the sorts of
things that my Senate colleagues had a chance to experience, which,
unfortunately, I have seen all too many times before. These aren't
heart-wrenching scenes from a war-torn country halfway around the
world. This is happening on our front doorstep. This is happening in
Texas every day.
My colleagues and I also spoke with some of the folks whose homes and
properties sit along the U.S.-Texas border with Mexico. They shared
with us stories about what it is like to live along one of the hot
spots for illegal border crossings.
One resident told us last year the Brooks County Sheriff's Department
recovered the bodies of 119 dead migrants. So far this year, the county
has recovered 64.
Just by way of explanation, the coyotes or the smugglers will bring
the migrants across the border, put them in a stash house, and then,
when they
believe the coast is clear, put them in a truck and transport them
north. They will have to go through a border checkpoint--or an interior
checkpoint in Falfurrias, for example, which is where Brooks County is
located, but what happens is, the smugglers will tell the migrants: Get
out of the vehicle and walk around the checkpoint, and we will pick you
up on the north side.
The problem is, this is very tough terrain and over 100-degree-plus
temperature. Frankly, when some of the migrants become ill or injured,
they are simply left behind to die, and that is why so many bodies have
been recovered, for example, in Brooks County on a regular basis.
It is tough to imagine the toll this sort of discovery takes on a
farmer or rancher, and then multiply that shock by more than 100.
Then we heard about the losses to property suffered because of this
crisis--stolen vehicles, broken fences, damaged crops, vandalism,
people who are afraid to let their own family members live and work on
their own property because they are worried about the drugs, and they
are worried about the potential violence. They talked about the safety
concerns for their families and employees because drug traffickers and
human smugglers go right through their backyards.
These men and women are understandably angry. They said to us: This
is the United States of America, and I can't let my daughter or wife or
children live and play or work on our own property? They are frustrated
beyond belief because their families and employees, their homes and
livelihoods are in jeopardy due to the Biden administration's failed
border policies.
In case there are any doubts, I want to emphasize that what is
happening on the border right now does not benefit anyone.
Border Patrol agents are stretched thin. They are frustrated. They
are overwhelmed by everything they are expected to shoulder. They have
been told they cannot do the job that they took an oath to perform
under policies by the Department of Homeland Security, which can only
be described as nonenforcement policies.
Landowners are saddled with safety concerns and financial losses.
Nongovernmental organizations, which are doing their best to help
people in need, are carrying the weight of this humanitarian crisis
with no end in sight. Brave Texas Department of Public Safety officers
and National Guardsmen are making serious sacrifices as a result of the
administration's failure to secure the border. These guardsmen and the
Department of Homeland Security should not have to do a job that is the
responsibility of the Federal Government, but when the Federal
Government won't do its job, the State of Texas has no choice. One
guardsman actually drowned while trying to save two migrants struggling
to swim across the Rio Grande River. And the migrants themselves are
routinely abused, exploited, even raped and sometimes left for dead in
the middle of unforgiving terrain.
The only people really winning in this crisis are the criminal
organizations and the human smugglers that are getting richer by the
day. These cartels are transnational criminal organizations. They will
traffic in anything that makes them a buck. They are what one person
has called commodity agnostic. They don't care what that commodity is;
their goal is simply to maximize their profit by whatever means
necessary. And there is no question that the Biden administration's
policies have helped enrich the cartels and resulted in too many
migrants having lost their lives.
Throughout my time in the Senate, I have had the privilege of working
with countless men and women who live and work along the southern
border. Their experiences and input have shed light on the scope and
scale of this crisis, and I am glad to be able to welcome some of our
Senate colleagues to join us for an informative trip to the Rio Grande
Valley. And I appreciate our colleagues taking the time to come visit
the US-Mexico border for an update on the border crisis. Of course,
most of them don't come from border States, but in the memorable words
of one of our colleagues now, every State is a border State because the
consequences of this huge migration and humanitarian crisis--not to
mention the drugs that are smuggled across the border--affect every
community and every State in our Nation.
I also want to thank my constituents, my fellow Texans, who took the
time out of their busy schedules to educate our colleagues: the
officers, the agents, the landowners, the National Guardsmen, the Texas
Department of Public Safety officials, the local sheriffs, and others.
What is so shocking to me is, despite the complete security breakdown
and, really, the lack of any dispute about what exactly is happening on
the border, we just can't seem to get the Biden administration's
attention. Landowners can tell them what it was like to discover the
dead bodies of migrants who were abandoned by human smugglers, and
those who do the Lord's work at nongovernmental organizations can tell
the tale of migrants who were violently assaulted and raped on the way
to our country, some of whom arrived pregnant. If President Biden would
take a moment to sit down with these folks who live and work along the
border, he may begin to learn more and view this situation for what it
really is: a humanitarian and security crisis precipitated by his
administration's unwillingness to secure our border.
President Biden has an open invitation to visit the Texas border, and
I hope he will take us up on that. If he would, we might finally be
able to get something done on a bipartisan basis to abate this crisis
and to secure our open borders.
I yield the floor. | secure our border | anti-Latino |
07/18/2022 | Unknown | Senate | CREC-2022-07-18-pt1-PgS3325 | nan | nan | Border Security
Madam President, on another matter, last week, Senator Cruz, my
junior Senator and friend, and I took five Members of our Republican
conference to McAllen, TX, which is in the Rio Grande Valley, which is
the epicenter of a massive humanitarian and immigration crisis that has
been going on for at least the last year and a half.
McAllen is in the Border Patrol's Rio Grande Valley Sector, it is
called, and one of the busiest portions of the U.S.-Mexico border when
it comes to illegal migration. For example, between October and May,
Rio Grande Valley Sector agents logged more than 333,000 border
crossings--more than any of the other 20 Border Patrol sectors.
During the visit, our colleagues were able to see and learn what,
frankly, as Texas Senators, Senator Cruz and I learned long ago about
the traumatic, heart-wrenching consequences of this unabated crisis:
groups of migrants with toddlers, who were lying asleep on the dirt
road, practically ill from the heat and exhaustion.
By the way, the temperature is routinely in excess of 100 degrees at
this time of year.
One mother and her 7-year-old child, the mom in tears and
heartbroken, having left another 10-year-old child behind in Guatemala,
were encountered. Unaccompanied children of 7 years of age, with
nothing more than the clothes on their back, a birth certificate, and
family contact information on a piece of paper--these were the sorts of
things that my Senate colleagues had a chance to experience, which,
unfortunately, I have seen all too many times before. These aren't
heart-wrenching scenes from a war-torn country halfway around the
world. This is happening on our front doorstep. This is happening in
Texas every day.
My colleagues and I also spoke with some of the folks whose homes and
properties sit along the U.S.-Texas border with Mexico. They shared
with us stories about what it is like to live along one of the hot
spots for illegal border crossings.
One resident told us last year the Brooks County Sheriff's Department
recovered the bodies of 119 dead migrants. So far this year, the county
has recovered 64.
Just by way of explanation, the coyotes or the smugglers will bring
the migrants across the border, put them in a stash house, and then,
when they
believe the coast is clear, put them in a truck and transport them
north. They will have to go through a border checkpoint--or an interior
checkpoint in Falfurrias, for example, which is where Brooks County is
located, but what happens is, the smugglers will tell the migrants: Get
out of the vehicle and walk around the checkpoint, and we will pick you
up on the north side.
The problem is, this is very tough terrain and over 100-degree-plus
temperature. Frankly, when some of the migrants become ill or injured,
they are simply left behind to die, and that is why so many bodies have
been recovered, for example, in Brooks County on a regular basis.
It is tough to imagine the toll this sort of discovery takes on a
farmer or rancher, and then multiply that shock by more than 100.
Then we heard about the losses to property suffered because of this
crisis--stolen vehicles, broken fences, damaged crops, vandalism,
people who are afraid to let their own family members live and work on
their own property because they are worried about the drugs, and they
are worried about the potential violence. They talked about the safety
concerns for their families and employees because drug traffickers and
human smugglers go right through their backyards.
These men and women are understandably angry. They said to us: This
is the United States of America, and I can't let my daughter or wife or
children live and play or work on our own property? They are frustrated
beyond belief because their families and employees, their homes and
livelihoods are in jeopardy due to the Biden administration's failed
border policies.
In case there are any doubts, I want to emphasize that what is
happening on the border right now does not benefit anyone.
Border Patrol agents are stretched thin. They are frustrated. They
are overwhelmed by everything they are expected to shoulder. They have
been told they cannot do the job that they took an oath to perform
under policies by the Department of Homeland Security, which can only
be described as nonenforcement policies.
Landowners are saddled with safety concerns and financial losses.
Nongovernmental organizations, which are doing their best to help
people in need, are carrying the weight of this humanitarian crisis
with no end in sight. Brave Texas Department of Public Safety officers
and National Guardsmen are making serious sacrifices as a result of the
administration's failure to secure the border. These guardsmen and the
Department of Homeland Security should not have to do a job that is the
responsibility of the Federal Government, but when the Federal
Government won't do its job, the State of Texas has no choice. One
guardsman actually drowned while trying to save two migrants struggling
to swim across the Rio Grande River. And the migrants themselves are
routinely abused, exploited, even raped and sometimes left for dead in
the middle of unforgiving terrain.
The only people really winning in this crisis are the criminal
organizations and the human smugglers that are getting richer by the
day. These cartels are transnational criminal organizations. They will
traffic in anything that makes them a buck. They are what one person
has called commodity agnostic. They don't care what that commodity is;
their goal is simply to maximize their profit by whatever means
necessary. And there is no question that the Biden administration's
policies have helped enrich the cartels and resulted in too many
migrants having lost their lives.
Throughout my time in the Senate, I have had the privilege of working
with countless men and women who live and work along the southern
border. Their experiences and input have shed light on the scope and
scale of this crisis, and I am glad to be able to welcome some of our
Senate colleagues to join us for an informative trip to the Rio Grande
Valley. And I appreciate our colleagues taking the time to come visit
the US-Mexico border for an update on the border crisis. Of course,
most of them don't come from border States, but in the memorable words
of one of our colleagues now, every State is a border State because the
consequences of this huge migration and humanitarian crisis--not to
mention the drugs that are smuggled across the border--affect every
community and every State in our Nation.
I also want to thank my constituents, my fellow Texans, who took the
time out of their busy schedules to educate our colleagues: the
officers, the agents, the landowners, the National Guardsmen, the Texas
Department of Public Safety officials, the local sheriffs, and others.
What is so shocking to me is, despite the complete security breakdown
and, really, the lack of any dispute about what exactly is happening on
the border, we just can't seem to get the Biden administration's
attention. Landowners can tell them what it was like to discover the
dead bodies of migrants who were abandoned by human smugglers, and
those who do the Lord's work at nongovernmental organizations can tell
the tale of migrants who were violently assaulted and raped on the way
to our country, some of whom arrived pregnant. If President Biden would
take a moment to sit down with these folks who live and work along the
border, he may begin to learn more and view this situation for what it
really is: a humanitarian and security crisis precipitated by his
administration's unwillingness to secure our border.
President Biden has an open invitation to visit the Texas border, and
I hope he will take us up on that. If he would, we might finally be
able to get something done on a bipartisan basis to abate this crisis
and to secure our open borders.
I yield the floor. | buck | racist |
07/18/2022 | Unknown | Senate | CREC-2022-07-18-pt1-PgS3337-2 | nan | nan | At 3:02 p.m., a message from the House of Representatives, delivered
by Mrs. Alli, one of its reading clerks, announced that the House has
passed the following bills, in which it requests the concurrence of the
Senate:
H.R. 203. An act to designate the facility of the United
States Postal Service located at 4020 Broadway Street in
Houston, Texas, as the ``Benny C. Martinez Post Office
Building''.
H.R. 1934. An act to direct the Federal Government to
provide assistance and technical expertise to enhance the
representation and leadership of the United States at
international standards-setting bodies that set standards for
equipment, systems, software, and virtually defined networks
that support 5th and future generations mobile
telecommunications systems and infrastructure, and for other
purposes.
H.R. 5659. An act to designate the facility of the United
States Postal Service located at 1961 North C Street in
Oxnard, California, as the ``John R. Hatcher III Post Office
Building''.
H.R. 7337. An act to require the Archivist of the United
States to submit a plan to Congress to eliminate the records
backlog at the National Personnel Records Center, and for
other purposes.
H.R. 8296. An act to protect a person's ability to
determine whether to continue or end a pregnancy, and to
protect a health care provider's ability to provide abortion
services.
H.R. 8297. An act to prohibit the interference, under color
of State law, with the provision of interstate abortion
services, and for other purposes.
The message further announced that the House has agreed to the
following concurrent resolutions, in which it requests the concurrence
of the Senate:
H. Con. Res. 45. Concurrent resolution expressing the sense
of Congress regarding the execution-style murders of United
States citizens Ylli, Agron, and Mehmet Bytyqi in the
Republic of Serbia in July 1999.
| the Fed | antisemitic |
07/18/2022 | Unknown | Senate | CREC-2022-07-18-pt1-PgS3337-3 | nan | nan | The following bills were read the first and the second times by
unanimous consent, and referred as indicated:
H.R. 203. An act to designate the facility of the United
States Postal Service located at 4020 Broadway Street in
Houston, Texas, as the ``Benny C. Martinez Post Office
Building''; to the Committee on Homeland Security and
Governmental Affairs.
H.R. 1934. An act to direct the Federal Government to
provide assistance and technical expertise to enhance the
representation and leadership of the United States at
international standards-setting bodies that set standards for
equipment, systems, software, and virtually defined networks
that support 5th and future generations mobile
telecommunications systems and infrastructure, and for other
purposes; to the Committee on Foreign Relations.
H.R. 5659. An act to designate the facility of the United
States Postal Service located at 1961 North C Street in
Oxnard, California, as the ``John R. Hatcher III Post Office
Building''; to the Committee on Homeland Security and
Governmental Affairs.
H.R. 7337. An act to require the Archivist of the United
States to submit a plan to Congress to eliminate the records
backlog at the National Personnel Records Center, and for
other purposes; to the Committee on Homeland Security and
Governmental Affairs.
The following concurrent resolution was read, and referred as
indicated:
H. Con. Res. 45. Concurrent resolution expressing the sense
of Congress regarding the execution-style murders of United
States citizens Ylli, Agron, and Mehmet Bytyqi in the
Republic of Serbia in July 1999; to the Committee on Foreign
Relations.
| the Fed | antisemitic |
07/13/2022 | Unknown | Senate | CREC-2022-07-13-pt1-PgS3275 | nan | nan | Mrs. BLACKBURN (for herself, Mr. Lee, Mr. Hagerty, Mr. Risch, Mr.
Crapo, Mr. Inhofe, Mr. Braun, Mr. Wicker, Ms. Ernst, Mr. Young, Mr.
Rubio, Mr. Scott of Florida, Mr. Cruz, Mr. Thune, Mr. Cramer, Mrs.
Hyde-Smith, and Mr. Marshall) submitted the following resolution; which
was referred to the Committee on the Judiciary:
S. Res. 705
Whereas the decision of the Supreme Court of the United
States (referred to in this preamble as the ``Supreme
Court'') in Roe v. Wade, 410 U.S. 113 (1973), was a blatant
act of judicial activism that invented a constitutional right
to abortion out of whole cloth, with no grounding in the text
of the Constitution of the United States;
Whereas more than 63,000,000 babies have been aborted in
the United States since the decision of the Supreme Court in
Roe v. Wade;
Whereas the decision in Roe v. Wade caused great damage to
the democratic system of the United States by preventing
citizens of the United States from making decisions about the
legality of abortion and instead putting these decisions in
the hands of unelected Federal judges;
Whereas, far from settling the issue of abortion in the
United States, the decision of the Supreme Court in Roe v.
Wade has exacerbated social tensions, inflamed the politics
of the United States, disrupted the democratic processes of
the United States, and divided the people of the United
States;
Whereas, in the aftermath of the decision of the Supreme
Court in Roe v. Wade, millions of volunteers, nonpartisan
organizations, and lawmakers came together with a shared
voice to stand up for the rights of the unborn, who are the
most vulnerable among us;
Whereas these supporters of the pro-life movement come from
diverse backgrounds, with the shared goal of building a
society that celebrates, protects, and cherishes life at all
stages;
Whereas the pro-life movement has worked tirelessly over
the last 5 decades to reverse the legally unsound and
destructive ruling in Roe v. Wade and to ensure that the
human dignity of every person is protected by law, regardless
of age, background, or belief;
Whereas the work of the pro-life movement has been more
than simply advocating for the Supreme Court to overturn Roe
v. Wade and often occurs behind the scenes, with little
recognition of the time and talent that countless individuals
have invested in the effort to protect life;
Whereas millions of people in the United States have
contributed to the cultivation of a culture of life in the
United States by marching for life on the streets of cities
in the United States, engaging in sidewalk
counseling outside abortion clinics, providing resources for
expectant mothers, raising money and volunteering their time
for crisis pregnancy centers, adopting and fostering
children, advocating for life-affirming legislation in every
State, and submitting amicus briefs in abortion-related cases
at the State and Federal level;
Whereas, on June 24, 2022, the Supreme Court issued its
decision in Dobbs v. Jackson Women's Health Organization, No.
19-1392, 2022 WL 2276808 (2022), which overturned Roe v. Wade
and affirmed that there is no Federal constitutional right to
an abortion;
Whereas the decision in Dobbs v. Jackson Women's Health
Organization represents a historic victory for the sanctity
of life and for the millions of people in the United States
who have worked diligently over the last 5 decades to foster
a culture of life in the United States;
Whereas the decision of the Supreme Court in Dobbs v.
Jackson Women's Health Organization does not ban abortion but
instead recognizes that under the constitutional system of
the United States, the power and the duty to decide whether
to permit or limit abortions lies with the States, not
unelected Federal judges;
Whereas, as the late Justice Scalia recognized 3 decades
ago in his dissent in Planned Parenthood of Southeastern
Pennsylvania v. Casey, 505 U.S. 833 (1992), ``The
permissibility of abortion, and the limitations upon it, are
to be resolved like most important questions in our
democracy: by citizens trying to persuade one another and
then voting.''; and
Whereas the decision of the Supreme Court in Dobbs v.
Jackson Women's Health Organization returns the issue of
abortion back to the States, for the people of each State to
debate and then vote: Now, therefore, be it
Resolved, That the Senate--
(1) congratulates the pro-life movement and the millions of
individuals who have stood up for life over the last nearly
50 years on this historic victory in Dobbs v. Jackson Women's
Health Organization;
(2) celebrates the courage, compassion, and commitment of
the millions of individuals, nonpartisan organizations, and
lawmakers who have advocated for life and labored tirelessly
to overturn Roe v. Wade;
(3) lauds the Supreme Court of the United States for the
decision to return to the original understanding of the
Constitution of the United States and recognize that there is
no Federal constitutional right to an abortion;
(4) recognizes the uniqueness of the political system of
the United States, in which our States function as
laboratories of democracy, enabling citizens to debate issues
like abortion in the public square and make their voices
heard by voting;
(5) affirms the commitment of Congress to ensuring the
safety of supporters of the pro-life movement, including
lawful demonstrators, volunteers, religious clergy, and
crisis pregnancy center personnel, as they continue to
advocate for the sanctity of every human life in all 50
States; and
(6) condemns all threats and incidents of violence fueled
by the decision of the Supreme Court of the United States in
Dobbs v. Jackson Women's Health Organization and affirms the
commitment of Congress to ensuring the safety of justices of
the Supreme Court, their law clerks, other State and Federal
judges and their law clerks, members of Congress, and State
lawmakers.
| judicial activism | conservative |
07/13/2022 | Mr. BROWN | Senate | CREC-2022-07-13-pt1-PgS3267-4 | nan | nan | Mr. BROWN. Madam President, I ask my colleagues to join me in
honoring Jack Graney, Cleveland Indians player and broadcaster, as he
is posthumously awarded the Ford C. Frick Award by the Baseball Hall of
Fame on July 23, 2022.
Jack Graney was born on June 10, 1886, in St. Thomas, Ontario,
Canada, but his professional career on the baseball diamond began with
the Cleveland Naps in 1908. Over his 14-year Major League career, Jack
led the American League in walks during the 1917 and 1919 seasons and
played in three World Series games, helping the Naps to victory in
1920. His daughter fondly remembers growing up on the road and
watching her father in action on the field.
Jack spent each of his seasons in Major League Baseball with
Cleveland. After 14 seasons, Jack retired with 1,178 hits, 420 runs
batted in, and a career .250 batting average.
Jack made baseball history over the course of his career; he was the
first at bat against Babe Ruth in the big leagues, the first 20th
century big league player to bat with a number on his uniform, and the
first to transition from player to broadcaster.
In 1932, Jack returned to baseball when he joined WHK-AM, which had
just began broadcasting Cleveland games. He would go on to be the voice
of the Cleveland Indians for the next 22 years. Rumor had it, when the
Indians played, you could hear Jack's voice echoing through the streets
of Cleveland. While radio was only local at the time, Jack was
committed to providing a narrative of every single game to Cleveland
fans. During away games, he broadcasted from Cleveland, using the
ticker-tape that came through from the live game.
Jack's detailed descriptions of plays, stadiums, and fans brought the
game to life. Throughout his career, he broadcasted for various
Cleveland stations and with different partners. In 1935, he commentated
on the World Series and the All-Star Game for national audiences.
Jack's final broadcast aired in 1953. For more than 20 years, Jack
brought baseball to Cleveland fans. On April 20, 1978, Jack passed away
at age 91. His legacy lives on today through his family and through all
those he inspired to love America's game and to pass on that love to
their own children and grandchildren.
In 2012, Jack was posthumously inducted into the Cleveland Baseball
Hall of Fame for his tenure as a player. And this month, the Baseball
Hall of Fame will present the Ford C. Frick Award to Jack for his major
contributions to baseball. Recipients are chosen based on their
commitment to excellence, quality of broadcasting abilities, reverence
within the game, popularity with fans, and recognition by peers.
Jack embodied each of these qualities and made our city proud. Today,
we celebrate his contributions to baseball, his commitment to
Cleveland, and his extraordinary life.
| Cleveland | racist |
07/13/2022 | Mr. BROWN | Senate | CREC-2022-07-13-pt1-PgS3267-4 | nan | nan | Mr. BROWN. Madam President, I ask my colleagues to join me in
honoring Jack Graney, Cleveland Indians player and broadcaster, as he
is posthumously awarded the Ford C. Frick Award by the Baseball Hall of
Fame on July 23, 2022.
Jack Graney was born on June 10, 1886, in St. Thomas, Ontario,
Canada, but his professional career on the baseball diamond began with
the Cleveland Naps in 1908. Over his 14-year Major League career, Jack
led the American League in walks during the 1917 and 1919 seasons and
played in three World Series games, helping the Naps to victory in
1920. His daughter fondly remembers growing up on the road and
watching her father in action on the field.
Jack spent each of his seasons in Major League Baseball with
Cleveland. After 14 seasons, Jack retired with 1,178 hits, 420 runs
batted in, and a career .250 batting average.
Jack made baseball history over the course of his career; he was the
first at bat against Babe Ruth in the big leagues, the first 20th
century big league player to bat with a number on his uniform, and the
first to transition from player to broadcaster.
In 1932, Jack returned to baseball when he joined WHK-AM, which had
just began broadcasting Cleveland games. He would go on to be the voice
of the Cleveland Indians for the next 22 years. Rumor had it, when the
Indians played, you could hear Jack's voice echoing through the streets
of Cleveland. While radio was only local at the time, Jack was
committed to providing a narrative of every single game to Cleveland
fans. During away games, he broadcasted from Cleveland, using the
ticker-tape that came through from the live game.
Jack's detailed descriptions of plays, stadiums, and fans brought the
game to life. Throughout his career, he broadcasted for various
Cleveland stations and with different partners. In 1935, he commentated
on the World Series and the All-Star Game for national audiences.
Jack's final broadcast aired in 1953. For more than 20 years, Jack
brought baseball to Cleveland fans. On April 20, 1978, Jack passed away
at age 91. His legacy lives on today through his family and through all
those he inspired to love America's game and to pass on that love to
their own children and grandchildren.
In 2012, Jack was posthumously inducted into the Cleveland Baseball
Hall of Fame for his tenure as a player. And this month, the Baseball
Hall of Fame will present the Ford C. Frick Award to Jack for his major
contributions to baseball. Recipients are chosen based on their
commitment to excellence, quality of broadcasting abilities, reverence
within the game, popularity with fans, and recognition by peers.
Jack embodied each of these qualities and made our city proud. Today,
we celebrate his contributions to baseball, his commitment to
Cleveland, and his extraordinary life.
| single | homophobic |
07/13/2022 | Mr. BROWN | Senate | CREC-2022-07-13-pt1-PgS3267-4 | nan | nan | Mr. BROWN. Madam President, I ask my colleagues to join me in
honoring Jack Graney, Cleveland Indians player and broadcaster, as he
is posthumously awarded the Ford C. Frick Award by the Baseball Hall of
Fame on July 23, 2022.
Jack Graney was born on June 10, 1886, in St. Thomas, Ontario,
Canada, but his professional career on the baseball diamond began with
the Cleveland Naps in 1908. Over his 14-year Major League career, Jack
led the American League in walks during the 1917 and 1919 seasons and
played in three World Series games, helping the Naps to victory in
1920. His daughter fondly remembers growing up on the road and
watching her father in action on the field.
Jack spent each of his seasons in Major League Baseball with
Cleveland. After 14 seasons, Jack retired with 1,178 hits, 420 runs
batted in, and a career .250 batting average.
Jack made baseball history over the course of his career; he was the
first at bat against Babe Ruth in the big leagues, the first 20th
century big league player to bat with a number on his uniform, and the
first to transition from player to broadcaster.
In 1932, Jack returned to baseball when he joined WHK-AM, which had
just began broadcasting Cleveland games. He would go on to be the voice
of the Cleveland Indians for the next 22 years. Rumor had it, when the
Indians played, you could hear Jack's voice echoing through the streets
of Cleveland. While radio was only local at the time, Jack was
committed to providing a narrative of every single game to Cleveland
fans. During away games, he broadcasted from Cleveland, using the
ticker-tape that came through from the live game.
Jack's detailed descriptions of plays, stadiums, and fans brought the
game to life. Throughout his career, he broadcasted for various
Cleveland stations and with different partners. In 1935, he commentated
on the World Series and the All-Star Game for national audiences.
Jack's final broadcast aired in 1953. For more than 20 years, Jack
brought baseball to Cleveland fans. On April 20, 1978, Jack passed away
at age 91. His legacy lives on today through his family and through all
those he inspired to love America's game and to pass on that love to
their own children and grandchildren.
In 2012, Jack was posthumously inducted into the Cleveland Baseball
Hall of Fame for his tenure as a player. And this month, the Baseball
Hall of Fame will present the Ford C. Frick Award to Jack for his major
contributions to baseball. Recipients are chosen based on their
commitment to excellence, quality of broadcasting abilities, reverence
within the game, popularity with fans, and recognition by peers.
Jack embodied each of these qualities and made our city proud. Today,
we celebrate his contributions to baseball, his commitment to
Cleveland, and his extraordinary life.
| based | white supremacist |
07/12/2022 | The PRESIDING OFFICER | Senate | CREC-2022-07-12-pt1-PgS3226 | nan | nan | The PRESIDING OFFICER. The clerk will report the nomination.
The bill clerk read the nomination of Michael S. Barr, of Michigan,
to be a Member of the Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve System
for the unexpired term of fourteen years from February 1, 2018. | Federal Reserve | antisemitic |
07/12/2022 | The PRESIDING OFFICER | Senate | CREC-2022-07-12-pt1-PgS3226 | nan | nan | The PRESIDING OFFICER. The clerk will report the nomination.
The bill clerk read the nomination of Michael S. Barr, of Michigan,
to be a Member of the Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve System
for the unexpired term of fourteen years from February 1, 2018. | the Fed | antisemitic |
07/12/2022 | Unknown | Senate | CREC-2022-07-12-pt1-PgS3232 | nan | nan | Energy
Mr. President, now on the less pleasant subject which I wish I didn't
have to talk about--deeply, profoundly stupid; deeply, profoundly
stupid--that is the only way that I know how to describe one of the
worst decisions by an administration that has become famous for bad
decisions. I am talking about President Biden's assault on sustainable,
affordable energy.
The people of Louisiana know, and the people of America know that
they are now paying $90 to fill up their cars and tanks with gas
because the Biden administration killed the Keystone Pipeline, canceled
our offshore oil leases, and forfeited America's energy independence.
We were energy independent. The Biden administration forfeited it.
What seems to be underappreciated, however, is how President Biden's
agenda is driving up the price not just of oil but of all kinds of
necessities that American and Louisiana families need every day. It is
not just about oil and gas. It is about everything.
Not only do most goods get to our homes after riding in trucks and
planes and cars and ships powered by gas or diesel, but a lot of our
plastics and other products, if you think about it, they are also made
from petroleum. Actually, only 60 percent of oil in the world gets used
as a fuel. Forty percent of the global oil supply ends up in other
things, things other than cars and trucks--in products.
That means that it doesn't just cost people more to get to and from
the store. It means almost everything in the store costs more because
of its connection to oil. Some medicines come from oil. Microfiber
comes from oil. Mascara comes from oil. Synthetic leather comes from
oil.
Do you have a phone case or a handbag or a chair or a car made with
plastic? That is oil. That is oil.
Now, not everything is made from oil. Some goods that you buy are not
made from that natural resource. But I bet they are packaged in
plastic. And all of these items, all of these household necessities are
casualties of President Biden's assault on sustainable energy.
Here is a fat fact: Our economy can't run without fossil fuels. Now,
I am not suggesting that fossil fuels should be our only source of
energy. Certainly, we should take advantage of the efficiencies we can
find in wind. I believe in wind and solar. I believe in solar--and
nuclear and hydrogen and hydroelectric. But part of a sensible,
sustainable, affordable energy plan has to include fossil fuels.
Ours is the greatest economy in all of human history. It can't run
without energy, and 80 percent of our energy today comes from fossil
fuels. That is just a fat fact.
The truth is that American ingenuity--and I am referring to fossil
fuels--has made the most out of one of the most versatile resources
that the world has ever known, but the Biden White House is determined
to punish us for that innovation--just determined to punish us--by
making every single part of the American dream more expensive. Even
necessities that aren't directly made from petroleum depend on
affordable fuel to reach American families.
Record high inflation and gas prices have sent Americans to food
pantries. Why? Because even fruits and eggs and milk are becoming
unaffordable. The latest reports show that many Americans are paying
8.6-percent higher prices today than they were last year. But we know
it is more than that. I know those are the official government numbers,
but we know it is more than that. Eggs are up 32 percent. Milk is up 16
percent. Flour is up 14 percent. Baby food--when you can find it--is up
13 percent. These aren't luxury items. These are staples that Americans
depend on every single day.
I mean, why is a Louisiana man telling us ``[m]y food budget is
insane''? My food budget is insane. ``[I]t's gone up $100-150 a week.
So, it's becoming more and more difficult, to buy the same thing I
bought a year or two years ago.''
That is not just a Louisianian talking. That is all across America.
Why did a woman in Baton Rouge realize that fruits and vegetables--
not sirloin steak, fruits, and vegetables--are breaking her bank? She
is cooking more with rice and bread instead of fruits and vegetables.
The high grocery prices for this lady are gutting her and her family
like a fish. And that is just a fact--a very unhappy one, but it is a
fact.
Now, high oil prices are also waterboarding our farmers, which
contributes to these high food prices. Did you know that we make
industrial fertilizer from fossil fuels? And when natural gas costs
more, so does fertilizing a field of wheat or corn or soybeans. Some of
our herbicides right now are twice as expensive as they were, if
farmers can find them.
Tractors drink diesel. Duh. So do irrigation systems. A gallon of
diesel--1 gallon--a year ago, you know what it was? It was $3.23. You
know what it is today? It is $5.20.
Now, what does this mean for Louisiana rice farmers and other
growers? For every extra dime farmers spend on a gallon of diesel--
every extra dime--a grower will spend about $4.50 more for an acre of
rice, $2.30 more for an acre of cotton, and an extra $1.74 for an acre
of corn.
Corn growers--I mentioned corn growers--they also depend on nitrogen
fertilizer, which we make with methane. And then corn--I mentioned
corn--corn goes into cereal. It goes into sweetened drinks, peanut
butter, baby food, ketchup, salad dressing.
You know, I don't mean to be ugly, but this administration's energy
policy is deeply, profoundly stupid. And it is dangerous.
So my people are feeling President Biden's gas hike from the gas pump
to the grocery store, to the doctor's office.
A lot of the raw materials that make our medicines and healthcare
products are made from--guess what--petroleum.
Oil goes into our burn creams. Do you ever burn yourself, have to go
to the local grocery store or the local pharmacy, buy something to put
on your burn? That cream comes from oil.
You have allergies? Those allergy pills are made, in part, with oil.
Do you ever get a cold, take a little NyQuil, take some cold tablets?
You need oil to make them. Our kids' gummy vitamins are made with oil.
The bandaids in your medicine cabinet, they are made from oil.
The President's assault on fossil fuels is hitting my people in
Louisiana, and they are hitting the American people so hard they are
coughing up bones. My people and the people of America are increasingly
having to dip into their savings accounts just to afford everyday
items, not to take a cruise, not to buy a new car, not to buy some new
clothes to look good at church on Sunday--for household necessities.
And on top of that, in addition to going into their savings account,
my people and the people all across America are having to charge more
and more and more to their credit cards, not for luxuries but for
staples, for necessities.
All of this inflation caused, in part, by the President's bone-deep,
down-to-the-marrow stupid energy policy is costing the average American
and Louisiana family $635 a month.
Now, think about that--$635 a month. Let's call it $7 to $8,000 a
year. If you are a mom making $40,000 a year and you are a dad making
$40,000 a year and you have got two children and you have a home--
nothing special, you know, $200,000 home; it has a mortgage--mom and
dad have to go to work. So they have to have automobiles. They have car
payments. They are using every penny of that $80,000 a year. And now,
all of a sudden, here comes inflation, and they have got to come out of
pocket with an extra $7 to $8,000 a year. Where is the money going to
come from? And just about every middle-class American is experiencing
that right now.
Now, recently, the President sent a letter. He sent a letter to the
top oil companies. In the letter--it was kind of a snippy letter,
frankly--he demanded that the oil companies ramp up their
refining operations to try to slow the rising energy prices and to
shore up supply. Isn't that special? The same President--he ran on it.
He did it. He ran on it. He said he would do it, and he has done it.
The same President who promised to end fossil fuels is now blaming the
energy industry for historical oil and gas prices.
The truth is, this administration refuses to accept responsibility
for bad policies. And I don't know why they pursued this policy, other
than just to try to check off a promise made to satisfy the woke
agenda.
For the sake of Americans' economic futures and for the sake of our
national security, we cannot continue to rely on foreign oil imports--
we can't--while pretending to run this country using wind, solar, and
wishful thinking because that is what the President's new policy is on
energy. It is wind. It is solar. It is wishful thinking. Wishful
thinking doesn't fill gas tanks or grocery carts.
And the President this week will be in Saudi Arabia. He is not there
as a tourist. He is in Saudi Arabia to beg the Saudis to produce more
oil, after he has already forfeited America's energy independence, and
he refuses to take his boot off the throat of the oil and gas industry
to allow our oil and gas producers to produce our own oil.
So think about it. This is the President's new energy policy. Let's
don't produce our own oil and gas. Let's give up our energy
independence. But we have to have oil and gas. So what do we do? The
President's new policy is, let's give up our own oil and gas and let's
buy oil from foreign countries that hate us so those foreign countries
will have more money to buy weapons to try to kill us. It just makes no
sense. And the people of Louisiana deserve better. And the people of
America deserve better.
I yield the floor.
I suggest the absence of a quorum. | single | homophobic |
07/12/2022 | Unknown | Senate | CREC-2022-07-12-pt1-PgS3237-3 | nan | nan | The following communications were laid before the Senate, together
with accompanying papers, reports, and documents, and were referred as
indicated:
EC-4418. A communication from the Chief of the Planning
and Regulatory Affairs Branch, Food and Nutrition Service,
Department of Agriculture, transmitting, pursuant to law, the
report of a rule entitled ``Supplemental Nutrition Assistance
Program: Civil Rights Update to the Federal-State Agreement''
(RIN0584-AE56) received in the Office of the President of the
Senate on June 21, 2022; to the Committee on Agriculture,
Nutrition, and Forestry.
EC-4419. A communication from the Associate Director of
the Regulatory Management Division, Environmental Protection
Agency, transmitting, pursuant to law, the report of a rule
entitled ``Pyridate; Pesticide Tolerances'' (FRL No. 9298-02-
OCSPP) received in the Office of the President of the Senate
on June 21, 2022; to the Committee on Agriculture, Nutrition,
and Forestry.
EC-4420. A communication from the Associate Director of
the Regulatory Management Division, Environmental Protection
Agency, transmitting, pursuant to law, the report of a rule
entitled ``Thiamethoxam; Pesticide Tolerances'' (FRL No.
9816-01-OCSPP) received in the Office of the President of the
Senate on June 21, 2022; to the Committee on Agriculture,
Nutrition, and Forestry.
EC-4421. A communication from the Associate Director of
the Regulatory Management Division, Environmental Protection
Agency, transmitting, pursuant to law, the report of a rule
entitled ``IN-11669: Cellulose, ethyl 2-hydroxyethyl ether;
Tolerance Exemption'' (FRL No. 9858-01-OCSPP) received in the
Office of the President of the Senate on June 21, 2022; to
the Committee on Agriculture, Nutrition, and Forestry.
EC-4422. A communication from the Associate Director of
the Regulatory Management Division, Environmental Protection
Agency, transmitting, pursuant to law, the report of a rule
entitled ``5-decyne-4 ,7-diol, 2,4,7,9-tetramethyl- and 6-
Dodecyne-5,8-diol, 2,5,8 ,11-tetramethyl-; Exemption from the
Requirement of a Tolerance'' (FRL No. 9875-01-OCSPP) received
in the Office of the President of the Senate on June 21,
2022; to the Committee on Agriculture, Nutrition, and
Forestry.
EC-4423. A communication from the Under Secretary of
Defense (Acquisition and Sustainment), transmitting, pursuant
to law, a report entitled ``Report to Congress on
Distribution of Department of Defense Depot Maintenance
Workloads for Fiscal Years 2020 through 2022''; to the
Committee on Armed Services.
EC-4424. A communication from the Secretary of the
Treasury, transmitting, pursuant to law, a six-month periodic
report on the national emergency that was declared in
Executive Order 13818 with respect to serious human rights
abuse and corruption; to the Committee on Banking, Housing,
and Urban Affairs.
EC-4425. A communication from the Secretary of the
Treasury, transmitting, pursuant to law, a six-month periodic
report on the national emergency that was declared in
Executive Order 14059 with respect to foreign persons
involved in the global illicit drug trade; to the Committee
on Banking, Housing, and Urban Affairs.
EC-4426. A communication from the President and Chair of
the Export-Import Bank of the United States, transmitting,
pursuant to law, a report of the Bank's Strategic Plan for
2022-2026; to the Committee on Banking, Housing, and Urban
Affairs.
EC-4427. A communication from the President and Chair of
the Export-Import Bank of the United States, transmitting,
pursuant to law, a report of the Bank's Strategic Plan for
2022-2026; to the Committee on Banking, Housing, and Urban
Affairs.
EC-4428. A communication from the President and Chair of
the Export-Import Bank, transmitting, pursuant to law, the
Uniform Resource Locator (URL) for the Bank's Annual
Performance Plan for fiscal year 2023, and the Annual
Performance Report for fiscal year 2021; to the Committee on
Banking, Housing, and Urban Affairs.
EC-4429. A communication from the Assistant General
Counsel for Legislation, Regulation and Energy Efficiency,
Department of Energy, transmitting, pursuant to law, the
report of a rule entitled ``Energy Conservation Program:
Energy Conservation Standards for Manufactured Housing''
(RIN1904-AC11) received in the Office of the President of the
Senate on June 21, 2022; to the Committee on Energy and
Natural Resources.
EC-4430. A communication from the Assistant General
Counsel for Legislation, Regulation and Energy Efficiency,
Department of Energy, transmitting, pursuant to law, the
report of a rule entitled ``Energy Conservation Program:
Energy Conservation Standards for Unfired Hot Water Storage
Tanks'' (RIN1904-AD90) received in the Office of the
President of the Senate on June 21, 2022; to the Committee on
Energy and Natural Resources.
EC-4431. A communication from the Assistant General
Counsel for Legislation, Regulation and Energy Efficiency,
Department of Energy, transmitting, pursuant to law, the
report of a rule entitled ``Energy Conservation Program: Test
Procedures for Residential and Commercial Clothes Washers''
(RIN1904-AD95) received in the Office of the President of the
Senate on June 21, 2022; to the Committee on Energy and
Natural Resources.
EC-4432. A communication from the Associate Director of
the Regulatory Management Division, Environmental Protection
Agency, transmitting, pursuant to law, the report of a rule
entitled ``Pyriofenone; Pesticide Tolerances'' (FRL No. 9819-
01-OCSPP) received in the Office of the President of the
Senate on June 21, 2022; to the Committee on Agriculture,
Nutrition, and Forestry.
EC-4433. A communication from the Chief of Domestic
Listing, Fish and Wildlife Services, Department of the
Interior, transmitting, pursuant to law, the report of a rule
entitled ``Endangered and Threatened Wildlife and Plants;
Emergency Listing of the Dixie Valley Toad as Endangered''
(RIN1018-BG21) received in the Office of the President of the
Senate on June 21, 2022; to the Committee on Environment and
Public Works.
EC-4434. A communication from the Associate Director of
the Regulatory Management Division, Environmental Protection
Agency, transmitting, pursuant to law, the report of a rule
entitled ``MICHIGAN: Final Authorization of State Hazardous
Waste Management Program Revisions'' (FRL No. 9917-03-R5)
received in the Office of the President of the Senate on June
21, 2022; to the Committee on Environment and Public Works.
EC-4435. A communication from the Associate Director of
the Regulatory Management Division, Environmental Protection
Agency, transmitting, pursuant to law, the report of a rule
entitled ``Air Plan Approval; ID; Incorporation by Reference
Updates'' (FRL No. 9395-02-R10) received in the Office of the
President of the Senate on June 21, 2022; to the Committee on
Environment and Public Works.
EC-4436. A communication from the Associate Director of
the Regulatory Management Division, Environmental Protection
Agency, transmitting, pursuant to law, the report of a rule
entitled ``Delegation of New Source Performance Standards and
National Emission Standards for Hazardous Air Pollutants for
the States of Arizona and California'' (FRL No. 9400-03-R9)
received in the Office of the President of the Senate on June
21, 2022; to the Committee on Environment and Public Works.
EC-4437. A communication from the Associate Director of
the Regulatory Management Division, Environmental Protection
Agency, transmitting, pursuant to law, the report of a rule
entitled ``Air Plan Approval; Missouri; Control of Volatile
Organic Compound Emissions From Reactor Processes and
Distillation Operations Processes in the Synthetic Organic
Chemical Manufacturing Industry'' (FRL No. 9605-02-R7)
received in the Office of the President of the Senate on June
21, 2022; to the Committee on Environment and Public Works.
EC-4438. A communication from the Associate Director of
the Regulatory Management Division, Environmental Protection
Agency, transmitting, pursuant to law, the report of a rule
entitled ``Air Plan Approval; Missouri; Restriction of
Emissions Credit for Reduced Pollutant Concentrations from
the Use of Dispersion Techniques'' (FRL No. 9645-02-R7)
received in the Office of the President of the Senate on June
21, 2022; to the Committee on Environment and Public Works.
EC-4439. A communication from the Associate Director of
the Regulatory Management Division, Environmental Protection
Agency, transmitting, pursuant to law, the report of a rule
entitled ``Air Plan Approval; North Carolina; Repeal of
Delegation Authority'' (FRL No. 9646-02-R4) received in the
Office of the President of the Senate on June 21, 2022; to
the Committee on Environment and Public Works.
EC-4440. A communication from the Associate Director of
the Regulatory Management Division, Environmental Protection
Agency, transmitting, pursuant to law, the report of a rule
entitled ``Air Plan Approval; Rhode Island; Infrastructure
State Implementation Plan Requirements for the 2012 PM2.5
NAAQS'' (FRL No. 9876-01-R1) received in the Office of the
President of the Senate on June 21, 2022; to the Committee on
Environment and Public Works.
EC-4441. A communication from the Associate Director of
the Regulatory Management Division, Environmental Protection
Agency, transmitting, pursuant to law, the
report of a rule entitled ``Significant New Uses of Chemical
Substances; Updates to the Hazard Communication Program and
Regulatory Framework; Minor Amendments to Reporting
Requirements for Premanufacture Notices'' ((RIN2070-AJ94)
(FRL No. 5605-02-OCSPP)) received in the Office of the
President of the Senate on June 21, 2022; to the Committee on
Environment and Public Works.
EC-4442. A communication from the Associate Director of
the Regulatory Management Division, Environmental Protection
Agency, transmitting, pursuant to law, the report of a rule
entitled ``Significant New Use Rules on Certain Chemical
Substances (19-4.F)'' ((RIN2070-AB27) (FRL No. 7584-01-
OCSPP)) received in the Office of the President of the Senate
on June 21, 2022; to the Committee on Environment and Public
Works.
EC-4443. A communication from the Associate Director of
the Regulatory Management Division, Environmental Protection
Agency, transmitting, pursuant to law, the report of a rule
entitled ``Air Plan Approval; California; San Diego County;
Reasonably Available Control Technology'' (FRL No. 9611-02-
R9) received in the Office of the President of the Senate on
June 21, 2022; to the Committee on Environment and Public
Works.
EC-4444. A communication from the Associate Director of
the Regulatory Management Division, Environmental Protection
Agency, transmitting, pursuant to law, the report of a rule
entitled ``Air Plan Approval; NC; NC BART Rule Revisions''
(FRL No. 9081-02-R4) received in the Office of the President
of the Senate on June 21, 2022; to the Committee on
Environment and Public Works.
EC-4445. A communication from the Associate Director of
the Regulatory Management Division, Environmental Protection
Agency, transmitting, pursuant to law, the report of a rule
entitled ``Air Plan Approval; Missouri; Start-Up, Shutdown
and Malfunction Conditions'' (FRL No. 9699-02-R7) received in
the Office of the President of the Senate on June 21, 2022;
to the Committee on Environment and Public Works.
EC-4446. A communication from the Associate Director of
the Regulatory Management Division, Environmental Protection
Agency, transmitting, pursuant to law, the report of a rule
entitled ``Finding of Failure To Submit a Clean Air Act
Section 110 State Implementation Plan for Interstate
Transport for the 2015 Ozone National Ambient Air Quality
Standards (NAAQS)'' (FRL No. 9895-01-R4) received in the
Office of the President of the Senate on June 21, 2022; to
the Committee on Environment and Public Works.
EC-4447. A communication from the Associate Director of
the Regulatory Management Division, Environmental Protection
Agency, transmitting, pursuant to law, the report of a rule
entitled ``Air Plan Approval; State Implementation Plan
Revisions Required by the 2008 and 2015 Ozone Standards''
(FRL No. 9656-02-R1) received during adjournment of the
Senate in the Office of the President of the Senate on June
28, 2022; to the Committee on Environment and Public Works.
EC-4448. A communication from the Administrator of the
Environmental Protection Agency, transmitting, pursuant to
law, a report entitled ``FY 2021 Superfund Five-Year
Review''; to the Committee on Environment and Public Works.
EC-4449. A communication from the Associate Director of
the Regulatory Management Division, Environmental Protection
Agency, transmitting, pursuant to law, the report of a rule
entitled ``Air Plan Approval; Washington; Yakima Regional
Clean Air Agency, General Air Quality Regulations'' (FRL No.
9211-02-R10) received during adjournment during adjournment
of the Senate of the Senate in the Office of the President of
the Senate on July 1, 2022; to the Committee on Environment
and Public Works.
EC-4450. A communication from the Associate Director of
the Regulatory Management Division, Environmental Protection
Agency, transmitting, pursuant to law, the report of a rule
entitled ``Air Plan Approval; Michigan; Emissions Statement
Program and Base Year Emissions Inventory'' (FRL No. 9629-02-
R5) received during adjournment of the Senate in the Office
of the President of the Senate on July 1, 2022; to the
Committee on Environment and Public Works.
EC-4451. A communication from the Associate Director of
the Regulatory Management Division, Environmental Protection
Agency, transmitting, pursuant to law, the report of a rule
entitled ``Air Plan Approval; Indiana; Redesignation of the
Indiana portion of the Louisville, Indiana-Kentucky Area to
Attainment of the 2015 Ozone Standards'' (FRL No. 9686-02-R5)
received during adjournment of the Senate in the Office of
the President of the Senate on July 1, 2022; to the Committee
on Environment and Public Works.
EC-4452. A communication from the Associate Director of
the Regulatory Management Division, Environmental Protection
Agency, transmitting, pursuant to law, the report of a rule
entitled ``Air Plan Approval; OR; Vehicle Inspection Program
and Medford-Ashland PM10 Maintenance Plan Technical
Correction'' (FRL No. 9756-02-R10) received during
adjournment of the Senate in the Office of the President of
the Senate on July 1, 2022; to the Committee on Environment
and Public Works.
EC-4453. A communication from the Manager of the Branch of
Listing Policy and Support, Fish and Wildlife Service,
Department of the Interior , transmitting, pursuant to law,
the report of a rule entitled ``Endangered and Threatened
Wildlife and Plants; Regulations for Listing Endangered and
Threatened Species and Designating Critical Habitat''
(RIN1018-BE69) received on July 11, 2022; to the Committee on
Environment and Public Works.
EC-4454. A communication from the Chief of Domestic
Listing, Fish and Wildlife Services, Department of the
Interior, transmitting, pursuant to law, the report of a rule
entitled ``Endangered and Threatened Wildlife and Plants;
Endangered Species Status for Marron Bacora and Designation
of Critical Habitat'' (RIN1018-BE15) received in the Office
of the President of the Senate on July 11, 2022; to the
Committee on Environment and Public Works.
EC-4455. A communication from the Chief of Domestic
Listing, Fish and Wildlife Services, Department of the
Interior, transmitting, pursuant to law, the report of a rule
entitled ``Endangered and Threatened Wildlife and Plants;
Endangered Species Status for Arizona Eryngo and Designation
of Critical Habitat'' (RIN1018-BF21) received in the Office
of the President of the Senate on July 11, 2022; to the
Committee on Environment and Public Works.
EC-4456. A communication from the Associate Director of
the Regulatory Management Division, Environmental Protection
Agency, transmitting, pursuant to law, the report of a rule
entitled ``Sodium dioctyl sulfosuccinate (CAS Reg. No. 577-
11-7); Tolerance Exemption'' (FRL No. 9932-01-OCSPP) received
during adjournment of the Senate in the Office of the
President of the Senate on June 28, 2022; to the Committee on
Agriculture, Nutrition, and Forestry.
EC-4457. A communication from the Under Secretary of
Defense (Personnel and Readiness), transmitting the report of
an officer authorized to wear the insignia of the grade of
brigadier general in accordance with title 10, United States
Code, section 777; to the Committee on Armed Services.
EC-4458. A communication from the Under Secretary of
Defense (Personnel and Readiness), transmitting the report of
sixteen (16) officers authorized to wear the insignia of the
grade of brigadier general in accordance with title 10,
United States Code, section 777; to the Committee on Armed
Services.
EC-4459. A communication from the Secretary of the
Treasury, transmitting, pursuant to law, a six-month periodic
report on the national emergency that was declared in
Executive Order 13441 with respect to Lebanon; to the
Committee on Banking, Housing, and Urban Affairs.
EC-4460. A communication from the Secretary of the
Treasury, transmitting, pursuant to law, a six-month periodic
report on the national emergency that was declared in
Executive Order 13882 with respect to Mali; to the Committee
on Banking, Housing, and Urban Affairs.
EC-4461. A communication from the Secretary of the
Treasury, transmitting, pursuant to law, a six-month periodic
report on the national emergency that was declared in
Executive Order 13581 with respect to significant
transnational criminal organizations; to the Committee on
Banking, Housing, and Urban Affairs.
EC-4462. A communication from the Sanctions Regulations
Advisor, Office of Foreign Assets Control, Department of the
Treasury, transmitting, pursuant to law, the report of a rule
entitled ``Global Terrorism Sanctions Regulations'' (31 CFR
Part 594) received during adjournment of the Senate in the
Office of the President of the Senate on July 6, 2022; to the
Committee on Banking, Housing, and Urban Affairs.
EC-4463. A communication from the Secretary of the
Securities and Exchange Commission, transmitting, pursuant to
law, the report of a rule entitled ``Electronic Submission of
Applications for Orders under the Advisers Act and the
Investment Company Act, Confidential Treatment Requests for
Filings on Form 13F, Form 13F, and Form ADV-NR; Amendments to
Form 13F'' (RIN3235-AM97) received during adjournment of the
Senate in the Office of the President of the Senate on July
6, 2022; to the Committee on Banking, Housing, and Urban
Affairs.
EC-4464. A communication from the Deputy General Counsel
for Operations, Department of Housing and Urban Development,
transmitting, pursuant to law, a report relative to a vacancy
in the position of Chief Financial Officer, Department of
Housing and Urban Development, received during adjournment of
the Senate in the Office of the President of the Senate on
July 6, 2022; to the Committee on Banking, Housing, and Urban
Affairs.
EC-4465. A communication from the Secretary of the
Interior, transmitting, pursuant to law, the Uniform Resource
Locator (URL) for the publication of the Draft Proposed
Program; to the Committee on Energy and Natural Resources.
| the Fed | antisemitic |
07/12/2022 | Unknown | Senate | CREC-2022-07-12-pt1-PgS3242 | nan | nan | Mr. SULLIVAN (for himself, Ms. Baldwin, Mr. Tillis, Ms. Hassan, Mr.
Cruz, Mr. Kelly, Mrs. Capito, Ms. Stabenow, Mr. Tuberville, Mrs.
Feinstein, and Mr. Hoeven) submitted the following resolution; which
was considered and agreed to:
S. Res. 703
Whereas the brave men and women of the Armed Forces, who
proudly serve the United States--
(1) risk their lives to protect the freedom, health, and
welfare of the people of the United States; and
(2) deserve the investment of every possible resource to
ensure their lasting physical, mental, and emotional well-
being;
Whereas, since the events of September 11, 2001, nearly
2,800,000 members of the Armed Forces have deployed overseas
and served in places such as Afghanistan and Iraq;
Whereas the current generation of men and women in the
Armed Forces has sustained a high rate of operational
deployments, with many members of the Armed Forces serving
overseas multiple times, placing those members at high risk
of enduring traumatic combat stress;
Whereas, when left untreated, exposure to traumatic combat
stress can lead to severe and chronic post-traumatic stress
responses, which are commonly referred to as post-traumatic
stress disorder (referred to in this preamble as ``PTSD'') or
post-traumatic stress injury;
Whereas many men and women of the Armed Forces and veterans
who served before September 11, 2001, live with mental health
needs from post-traumatic stress and remain at risk for
responses to that stress;
Whereas many post-traumatic stress responses remain
unreported, undiagnosed, and untreated due to a lack of
awareness about post-traumatic stress and the persistent
stigma associated with mental health conditions;
Whereas post-traumatic stress significantly increases the
risk of post-traumatic stress responses, including anxiety,
depression, homelessness, substance abuse, and suicide,
especially if left untreated;
Whereas the Secretary of Veterans Affairs reports that--
(1) between 11 and 20 percent of veterans who served in
Operation Iraqi Freedom or Operation Enduring Freedom have
post-traumatic stress in a given year;
(2) approximately 12 percent of veterans who served in the
Persian Gulf War have post-traumatic stress in a given year;
and
(3) approximately 30 percent of veterans who served in the
Vietnam era have had post-traumatic stress in their
lifetimes;
Whereas public perceptions of post-traumatic stress as a
mental health disorder create unique challenges for veterans
seeking employment;
Whereas the Department of Defense, the Department of
Veterans Affairs, veterans service organizations, and the
private and public medical community have made significant
advances in the identification, prevention, diagnosis, and
treatment of post-traumatic stress and the symptoms of post-
traumatic stress, but many challenges remain;
Whereas increased understanding of post-traumatic stress
can help eliminate stigma attached to the mental health
issues of post-traumatic stress;
Whereas additional efforts are needed to find further ways
to eliminate the stigma associated with post-traumatic
stress, including--
(1) an examination of how post-traumatic stress is
discussed in the United States; and
(2) a recognition that post-traumatic stress is a common
injury that is treatable;
Whereas timely and appropriate treatment of post-traumatic
stress responses can diminish complications and avert
suicides;
Whereas post-traumatic stress--
(1) can result from any number of stressors other than
combat, including rape, sexual assault, battery, torture,
confinement, child abuse, car accidents, train wrecks, plane
crashes, bombings, natural disasters, or global pandemics;
and
(2) affects approximately 12,000,000 adults in the United
States annually;
Whereas the diagnosis of PTSD was first defined by the
American Psychiatric Association in 1980 to commonly and more
accurately understand and treat survivors of physical and
psychological trauma, including veterans who had endured
severe traumatic combat stress;
Whereas the word ``disorder'' can perpetuate the stigma
associated with combat stress, so the more general term
``post-traumatic stress'' is often preferred; and
Whereas the designation of a National Post-Traumatic Stress
Awareness Month and a National Post-Traumatic Stress
Awareness Day raises public awareness about issues relating
to post-traumatic stress, reduces the stigma associated with
post-traumatic stress, and helps ensure that individuals
suffering from the invisible wounds of war receive proper
treatment: Now, therefore, be it
Resolved, That the Senate--
(1) designates--
(A) June 2022 as ``National Post-Traumatic Stress Awareness
Month''; and
(B) June 27, 2022, as ``National Post-Traumatic Stress
Awareness Day'';
(2) supports the efforts of the Secretary of Veterans
Affairs, the Secretary of Defense, and the entire medical
community to educate members of the Armed Forces, veterans,
the families of members of the Armed Forces and veterans, and
the public about the causes, symptoms, and treatment of post-
traumatic stress;
(3) supports efforts by the Secretary of Veterans Affairs
and the Secretary of Defense to foster--
(A) cultural change around the issue of post-traumatic
stress; and
(B) understanding that personal interactions can save lives
and advance treatment;
(4) welcomes the efforts of the National Center for Post-
Traumatic Stress Disorder of the Department of Veterans
Affairs and local Vet Centers (as defined in section 1712A(h)
of title 38, United States Code) to provide assistance to
veterans who are suffering from the effects of post-traumatic
stress;
(5) encourages the leadership of the Armed Forces to
support appropriate treatment of men and women of the Armed
Forces who suffer from post-traumatic stress;
(6) recognizes the impact of post-traumatic stress on the
spouses and families of members of the Armed Forces and
veterans; and
(7) respectfully requests that the Secretary of the Senate
transmit a copy of this resolution to--
(A) the Secretary of Veterans Affairs; and
(B) the Secretary of Defense.
| welfare | racist |
07/13/2022 | The SPEAKER pro tempore | House | CREC-2022-07-13-pt1-PgH6286-2 | nan | nan | The SPEAKER pro tempore. Pursuant to clause 8 of rule XX, the
unfinished business is the vote on the motion to suspend the rules and
pass the bill (H.R. 7174) to amend the Homeland Security Act of 2002 to
reauthorize the National Computer Forensics Institute of the United
States Secret Service, and for other purposes, as amended, on which the
yeas and nays were ordered. | XX | transphobic |
07/13/2022 | The SPEAKER pro tempore | House | CREC-2022-07-13-pt1-PgH6287-2 | nan | nan | The SPEAKER pro tempore. Pursuant to clause 8 of rule XX, the
unfinished business is the vote on passage of the bill (H.R. 6538) to
create an Active Shooter Alert Communications Network, and for other
purposes, on which the yeas and nays were ordered, on which the yeas
and nays were ordered. | XX | transphobic |
07/13/2022 | The SPEAKER pro tempore | House | CREC-2022-07-13-pt1-PgH6288 | nan | nan | The SPEAKER pro tempore. Pursuant to clause 8 of rule XX, the
unfinished business is the vote on the motion to commit on the bill (S.
3373) to improve the Iraq and Afghanistan Service Grant and the
Children of Fallen Heroes Grant, offered by the gentleman from Illinois
(Mr. Bost), on which the yeas and nays were ordered.
The Clerk will redesignate the motion.
The Clerk redesignated the motion. | XX | transphobic |
07/13/2022 | Mr. McCONNELL | Senate | CREC-2022-07-13-pt1-PgS3245-6 | nan | nan | Mr. McCONNELL. Madam President, this morning, this all-Democratic
government produced yet another absolutely terrible, terrible inflation
report. Inflation during the month of June shattered the experts'
predictions. We are now--listen to this--at 9.1 percent annual
inflation; yet another fresh 40-year high, the most out-of-control
inflation that American families have seen since the early 1980s. Food
costs are up more than 10 percent. Energy costs are up more than 40
percent. The costs of the fuel that drives us to work, delivers our
goods, and drives our economy are all up over 60 percent.
These are staggeringly--staggeringly--bad numbers. And they were
fueled directly by the reckless spending spree that the Democrats
rammed through on party lines just last year.
Remember, right before the $2 trillion spending spree, President
Biden said:
The biggest risk is not going too big . . . it's if we go
too small.
The Senate Democratic leader said:
I do not think the dangers of inflation, at least in the
near-term, are very real.
These were gigantic--gigantic--unforced errors. One leading economist
recently said the so-called American Rescue Plan was ``arguably the
biggest fiscal policy mistake in several decades.''
Our core inflation rate here in America is more than 2 percentage
points higher than in Europe. Inflation is uniquely bad here because
our all-Democratic government has made uniquely bad choices. And now
American families are dealing with the fallout every single day.
It is no secret how much the American people disapprove of the course
Washington Democrats have put us on. They say so in poll after poll
after poll. So you might think by now that our colleagues would be
ready to try a different approach.
Well, guess again. President Biden and his party, fresh off of
spending America into inflation, now want to tax-hike us into
recession. They are behind closed doors playing around with what may
amount to the single largest tax increase in American history. Tucked
inside are exactly the sort of radical ideas that working families can
least afford right now.
They want a giant tax hike on passthrough small businesses, a
category--listen to this--that encompasses 95 percent of all businesses
in the country--95 percent of them. Take it from a constituent of mine
in Mount Sterling, KY, who put it this way:
Small business is already in a struggle to survive with all
the taxes and regulations we have to deal with. Adding
another tax is only making things worse.
Democrats also want a so-called ``methane fee'' that amounts to a big
new tax hike on domestic natural gas, while their inflation has pushed
American families' natural gas prices and electricity costs up through
the roof already.
If following reckless spending and runaway inflation with a gigantic,
painful tax hike sounds like a bad idea to you, believe me, you are not
alone. Even some House Democrats are lighting their hair on fire over
what a terrible idea these discussions are.
One House Democrat from New Jersey is telling reporters that she is
``not
for any type of legislation that raises taxes . . . especially right
now, as my constituents are facing inflation, cost of living
[increases] . . . [and] housing prices.''
Well, let me put it this way. When House Democrats from the Northeast
start trying to sound more like Ronald Reagan running against Jimmy
Carter, you know they have gotten themselves into a fix.
Too bad every single House Democrat except one and every single
Senate Democrat voted for the $2 trillion mistake that brought us to
where we are. The Democrats complaining about inflation today voted in
lockstep for the bill that brought us here. And now their answer to
picking families' pockets once is to now pick the families' pockets yet
a second time. The same Democrats that spent us into inflation now want
to tax us into recession.
| single | homophobic |
07/13/2022 | Mr. McCONNELL | Senate | CREC-2022-07-13-pt1-PgS3245-6 | nan | nan | Mr. McCONNELL. Madam President, this morning, this all-Democratic
government produced yet another absolutely terrible, terrible inflation
report. Inflation during the month of June shattered the experts'
predictions. We are now--listen to this--at 9.1 percent annual
inflation; yet another fresh 40-year high, the most out-of-control
inflation that American families have seen since the early 1980s. Food
costs are up more than 10 percent. Energy costs are up more than 40
percent. The costs of the fuel that drives us to work, delivers our
goods, and drives our economy are all up over 60 percent.
These are staggeringly--staggeringly--bad numbers. And they were
fueled directly by the reckless spending spree that the Democrats
rammed through on party lines just last year.
Remember, right before the $2 trillion spending spree, President
Biden said:
The biggest risk is not going too big . . . it's if we go
too small.
The Senate Democratic leader said:
I do not think the dangers of inflation, at least in the
near-term, are very real.
These were gigantic--gigantic--unforced errors. One leading economist
recently said the so-called American Rescue Plan was ``arguably the
biggest fiscal policy mistake in several decades.''
Our core inflation rate here in America is more than 2 percentage
points higher than in Europe. Inflation is uniquely bad here because
our all-Democratic government has made uniquely bad choices. And now
American families are dealing with the fallout every single day.
It is no secret how much the American people disapprove of the course
Washington Democrats have put us on. They say so in poll after poll
after poll. So you might think by now that our colleagues would be
ready to try a different approach.
Well, guess again. President Biden and his party, fresh off of
spending America into inflation, now want to tax-hike us into
recession. They are behind closed doors playing around with what may
amount to the single largest tax increase in American history. Tucked
inside are exactly the sort of radical ideas that working families can
least afford right now.
They want a giant tax hike on passthrough small businesses, a
category--listen to this--that encompasses 95 percent of all businesses
in the country--95 percent of them. Take it from a constituent of mine
in Mount Sterling, KY, who put it this way:
Small business is already in a struggle to survive with all
the taxes and regulations we have to deal with. Adding
another tax is only making things worse.
Democrats also want a so-called ``methane fee'' that amounts to a big
new tax hike on domestic natural gas, while their inflation has pushed
American families' natural gas prices and electricity costs up through
the roof already.
If following reckless spending and runaway inflation with a gigantic,
painful tax hike sounds like a bad idea to you, believe me, you are not
alone. Even some House Democrats are lighting their hair on fire over
what a terrible idea these discussions are.
One House Democrat from New Jersey is telling reporters that she is
``not
for any type of legislation that raises taxes . . . especially right
now, as my constituents are facing inflation, cost of living
[increases] . . . [and] housing prices.''
Well, let me put it this way. When House Democrats from the Northeast
start trying to sound more like Ronald Reagan running against Jimmy
Carter, you know they have gotten themselves into a fix.
Too bad every single House Democrat except one and every single
Senate Democrat voted for the $2 trillion mistake that brought us to
where we are. The Democrats complaining about inflation today voted in
lockstep for the bill that brought us here. And now their answer to
picking families' pockets once is to now pick the families' pockets yet
a second time. The same Democrats that spent us into inflation now want
to tax us into recession.
| Reagan | white supremacist |
07/13/2022 | Mr. McCONNELL | Senate | CREC-2022-07-13-pt1-PgS3245-6 | nan | nan | Mr. McCONNELL. Madam President, this morning, this all-Democratic
government produced yet another absolutely terrible, terrible inflation
report. Inflation during the month of June shattered the experts'
predictions. We are now--listen to this--at 9.1 percent annual
inflation; yet another fresh 40-year high, the most out-of-control
inflation that American families have seen since the early 1980s. Food
costs are up more than 10 percent. Energy costs are up more than 40
percent. The costs of the fuel that drives us to work, delivers our
goods, and drives our economy are all up over 60 percent.
These are staggeringly--staggeringly--bad numbers. And they were
fueled directly by the reckless spending spree that the Democrats
rammed through on party lines just last year.
Remember, right before the $2 trillion spending spree, President
Biden said:
The biggest risk is not going too big . . . it's if we go
too small.
The Senate Democratic leader said:
I do not think the dangers of inflation, at least in the
near-term, are very real.
These were gigantic--gigantic--unforced errors. One leading economist
recently said the so-called American Rescue Plan was ``arguably the
biggest fiscal policy mistake in several decades.''
Our core inflation rate here in America is more than 2 percentage
points higher than in Europe. Inflation is uniquely bad here because
our all-Democratic government has made uniquely bad choices. And now
American families are dealing with the fallout every single day.
It is no secret how much the American people disapprove of the course
Washington Democrats have put us on. They say so in poll after poll
after poll. So you might think by now that our colleagues would be
ready to try a different approach.
Well, guess again. President Biden and his party, fresh off of
spending America into inflation, now want to tax-hike us into
recession. They are behind closed doors playing around with what may
amount to the single largest tax increase in American history. Tucked
inside are exactly the sort of radical ideas that working families can
least afford right now.
They want a giant tax hike on passthrough small businesses, a
category--listen to this--that encompasses 95 percent of all businesses
in the country--95 percent of them. Take it from a constituent of mine
in Mount Sterling, KY, who put it this way:
Small business is already in a struggle to survive with all
the taxes and regulations we have to deal with. Adding
another tax is only making things worse.
Democrats also want a so-called ``methane fee'' that amounts to a big
new tax hike on domestic natural gas, while their inflation has pushed
American families' natural gas prices and electricity costs up through
the roof already.
If following reckless spending and runaway inflation with a gigantic,
painful tax hike sounds like a bad idea to you, believe me, you are not
alone. Even some House Democrats are lighting their hair on fire over
what a terrible idea these discussions are.
One House Democrat from New Jersey is telling reporters that she is
``not
for any type of legislation that raises taxes . . . especially right
now, as my constituents are facing inflation, cost of living
[increases] . . . [and] housing prices.''
Well, let me put it this way. When House Democrats from the Northeast
start trying to sound more like Ronald Reagan running against Jimmy
Carter, you know they have gotten themselves into a fix.
Too bad every single House Democrat except one and every single
Senate Democrat voted for the $2 trillion mistake that brought us to
where we are. The Democrats complaining about inflation today voted in
lockstep for the bill that brought us here. And now their answer to
picking families' pockets once is to now pick the families' pockets yet
a second time. The same Democrats that spent us into inflation now want
to tax us into recession.
| working families | racist |
07/12/2022 | Unknown | Senate | CREC-2022-07-12-pt1-PgS3218 | nan | nan | U.S. Supreme Court
Mr. President, now on a different matter, yesterday, I discussed the
Supreme Court's historic, courageous, and correct decision in Dobbs,
but that landmark case was only part of the most consequential Supreme
Court term in almost 70 years, since Brown overturned Plessy in 1954.
For example, in the space of 1 week, the Court took two huge leaps
forward for religious liberty. Two big steps to restore and strengthen
Americans' First Amendment right to pray and worship how they choose
and raise their kids accordingly.
Time and again, we have seen opponents of religious diversity argue
that government ought to discriminate against faith-based undertakings
and organizations. These efforts have spanned from the anti-Catholic
Blaine amendments of the 1800s to today's efforts by the secular left
to chase religion out of the public square. We have had Democratic
politicians try to force nuns to pay for birth control against their
will. Forty-nine of fifty Democrats just voted for a radical bill that
would have forced faith-based hospitals--listen to this--forced faith-
based hospitals to perform abortions against their principles.
Last year, Washington Democrats tried to pass a sweeping toddler
takeover that was written to squeeze out faith-based childcare
providers and secularize early childhood care in this country. For
goodness' sake--for goodness' sake--5 years ago, a Lutheran preschool
in Missouri had to argue all the way to the Supreme Court that it
deserved equal access to widely available funding for updating an
outdoor playground. Textbook anti-religious discrimination.
Fortunately, they won easily 7 to 2. This is indeed a new Supreme
Court.
Last month, the Court took another landmark step. The case of Carson
v. Makin arose because the State of Maine had established a school
voucher program that tried to uniquely discriminate against faith-based
schools. In effect, the government was using taxpayer money to nudge
families away from faith-based education and toward secular private
schools instead.
The Court rightly struck down that law. Chief Justice Roberts
explained that Maine could not exclude accredited and otherwise
eligible schools purely because they are religious. That is not the
government's choice to make. It is up to the parents.
A few days later, the Court issued another important and commonsense
ruling. Joseph Kennedy, a high school football coach from Washington
State, was fired--listen to this--simply because he quickly and quietly
offered a simple prayer on the field after the game. He got fired for
that. The man was fired by government bureaucrats for praying in our
country.
The Court ruled for Coach Kennedy under both the free speech and free
exercise clauses of the First Amendment. Thank goodness. In the
process, Justice Gorsuch and his colleagues cleared away many years of
phony, made-up legal tests that made our laws needlessly hostile to
religion and turned back to what the Constitution actually says.
So the Court's term was an exciting one for Americans of faith who
simply want to be allowed to live out their faiths and raise their
kids. But this was a win for the entire country. Americans of any faith
and no faith at all can celebrate that we have a brilliant majority of
originalist, textualist Justices who will defend all of our
constitutionally guaranteed freedoms and apply what the Bill of Rights
actually says.
In a better world, neither of these commonsense rulings would have
been close calls or breaking news, but since they were, they were very
good news indeed.
I suggest the absence of a quorum. | based | white supremacist |
07/13/2022 | The ACTING PRESIDENT pro tempore | Senate | CREC-2022-07-13-pt1-PgS3246-4 | nan | nan | The ACTING PRESIDENT pro tempore. Under the previous order, the
Senate will proceed to executive session to resume consideration of the
following nomination, which the clerk will report.
The senior assistant legislative clerk read the nomination of Michael
S. Barr, of Michigan, to be a Member of the Board of Governors of the
Federal Reserve System for the unexpired term of fourteen years from
February 1, 2018. | Federal Reserve | antisemitic |
07/13/2022 | The PRESIDING OFFICER | Senate | CREC-2022-07-13-pt1-PgS3251-2 | nan | nan | The PRESIDING OFFICER. The clerk will report the nomination.
The senior assistant legislative clerk read the nomination of Michael
S. Barr, of Michigan, to be Vice Chairman for Supervision of the Board
of Governors of the Federal Reserve System for a term of four years. | the Fed | antisemitic |
07/13/2022 | Unknown | Senate | CREC-2022-07-13-pt1-PgS3251-5 | nan | nan | Highland Park Shooting
Mr. President, earlier this week, I introduced the Senate and those
who follow our proceedings to an 8-year-old boy who lives in Highland
Park, IL. His name is Cooper Roberts. He is a twin. His twin brother's
name is Luke.
Cooper and Luke and Mom and Dad decided a few days ago--last weekend,
as a matter of fact--to attend the Fourth of July parade in Highland
Park. It was a natural choice: beautiful day, salute to our country, a
parade passing by, American flags, in one of the nicest communities in
the State of Illinois.
We all know what happened that day: A shooter took an assault-style
weapon to the roof of a downtown business and, in a matter of a minute
or two, discharged 90 rounds into the crowd. As a result of that
gunfire, Cooper Roberts, this 8-year-old boy, was left paralyzed after
being shot in the Highland Park Fourth of July parade mass shooting. He
has undergone a series of surgeries since.
I tell this story on the floor of the Senate for two reasons: The
family has spoken to the press and been open about Cooper's struggle,
and I am glad they have because he has a cheering section now that has
reached far beyond Illinois and is around the Nation, and secondly,
because this poor little boy's situation is a reflection on what
assault rifles can do to the human body.
I am not an expert on firearms. I don't pretend to be. But I watch
programs and have read a lot on the subject, and I know that the
assault rifles--the AR-15 and those in that same class--are not your
ordinary firearms. They discharge their bullets and ammunition at two
to three times the velocity of an ordinary firearm, and when that
ammunition hits the body of a person, it starts tumbling and tearing
apart the body as it goes through.
Cooper, this 8-year-old boy, had his spinal cord severed by a bullet,
leaving him paralyzed from the waist down. Sadly, the family reported
yesterday that he is back in critical condition at the University of
Chicago's Comer Children's Hospital. He showed some improvement last
Friday, but things are not going well--at least they weren't yesterday,
according to his family.
The bullet which entered this little boy's abdomen injured his liver,
his abdominal aorta, and his esophagus near his stomach. A hole in the
esophagus was sewn shut by surgery, the family has said. Well, they
reported yesterday that Cooper's esophagus has reopened,
in a written update. As a result, he is facing an urgent, complex, and
lengthy surgery today to again attempt to repair his torn esophagus.
This will be his seventh surgery since last Fourth of July, and it is
particularly high risk given his age and his current condition.
By Tuesday evening, the family provided additional updates, saying
the doctors were able to find and close the leak in his esophagus.
``This is a good outcome--Cooper is still fighting,'' the family said.
The next few days will be critical.
One of Cooper's lungs is partially collapsed, according to the
family. His heart rate is elevated, and he is spiking a fever due to a
new infection and complications he must face.
Cooper was one of dozens of people shot at the parade. Seven have
died. An individual is being held on murder charges in the mass
shooting. Cooper and others in Highland Park were shot with a military-
style Smith & Wesson M&P 15 semiautomatic rifle. For those who weren't
aware, ``M&P'' in the name of this rifle suggests it is for military
and police use. But it was purchased by the individual charged with
these murders, who was neither a member of the military nor police.
In an interview with WGN-TV in Chicago, Dr. Ana Velez-Rosborough, a
trauma surgeon who is treating Cooper at Highland Park Hospital, said
the injuries were ``devastating,'' in her words. ``They create very
large wounds,'' Velez-Rosborough told the station. ``They basically
destroy organs. They destroy soft tissue. They destroy bone.''
Cooper received what we call a massive transfusion--enormous amount
of blood--in order to keep him alive during the operation. The boy's
aorta injury was so severe that a portion of it was removed and
replaced with a synthetic graft, according to the family.
The family is praying for a miracle that this little boy survives. We
should join them in that prayer, but we need to go beyond that.
Yesterday, Senator Duckworth and I had a meeting with residents from
Highland Park who, on their own, spontaneously came to Washington to
plead with Congress to do something about these military-style weapons
that are being sold in the United States and did such devastating
damage to this beautiful little boy. Joining those from Highland Park
was a group from Uvalde, TX. They certainly know this story
individually and personally. They lost 19 kids at their grade school.
They came in with pictures of prayer cards from the funeral parlors.
The point they were making to us and to everyone is that this is
madness. To allow individuals to have this type of weapon who are not
members of the military, not policemen, and to use these weapons on
other Americans is unthinkable.
What in the world is America thinking to believe this has something
to do with a constitutional right? A constitutional right? What were
Cooper's constitutional rights to go to a parade on the Fourth of July
in Highland Park and come home safely? Where was the respect for them?
And, of course, when you are discharging 90 rounds into a crowd, it is
a wonder even more people weren't injured.
I bring this to the attention of the Senate because--I raised it
earlier in the week--I think it is time for us to focus on the reality
of mass shooting in America. While this was going on in Highland Park,
that same weekend, dozens were being shot and some killed in the city
of Chicago and cities across America.
It is impossible for me to believe that we can do nothing to deal
with this. The families from Highland Park and Uvalde, TX, were shaking
their heads as I explained to them the problems with the filibuster
rules in the Senate. Do you think a filibuster rule makes any
difference to the family of this wonderful little boy? They couldn't
care less about the rules of the Senate and wonder why the Congress
can't respond to this clear and present danger in our streets that has
resulted in over 300 mass shootings this year so far--sadly, more to
come.
I said before when I came to the floor, when I left for the Fourth of
July recess, I had no idea that I was going to personally join this
fraternity of grief--Senators and Congressmen from cities and towns all
across America--who have endured these mass shootings, who then have to
sit down with families in tears and explain to them why their
Congressman and their Senator can do nothing.
Well, I refuse to accept that. I believe that we can do something. We
came to our senses to pass a gun safety bill after Uvalde. I voted for
it. It didn't touch the issue of these military weapons per se,
although it did call for deeper background checks for those under the
age of 21.
I support that, but let's go further and be honest about this. There
is no need for anyone to own this military-style weapon, and for it to
be sold to the average individual, who has no training whatsoever on
the weapon to prove that he is eligible to own it and who can use this
weapon under these circumstances which cannot be controlled, is
unacceptable.
What would our argument be if someone said: I want to buy a grenade
launcher. I think I have Second Amendment rights to own one.
We would say to him: That is ridiculous. Grenades are for war.
Well, these military weapons are for war as well, and I don't believe
they should be sold in this country. I believe the military assault
weapon ban that I voted for in 1994 was the right thing to do. It was a
10-year ban. We should have extended it. During the period of that ban
on assault weapons, there was a lot of controversy, but there were far
fewer deaths from mass shootings. It is an indication of the truth of
this issue.
I hope that we continue to tell the story of the victims and their
families so that our colleagues in the Senate of both political parties
will come to understand it is time for us to step up, accept our
responsibilities of office, and protect children like Cooper Roberts.
(Ms. ROSEN assumed the Chair.)
| Chicago | racist |
07/13/2022 | Mr. SANDERS | Senate | CREC-2022-07-13-pt1-PgS3253 | nan | nan | Mr. SANDERS. Madam President, at a time of massive income and wealth
inequality, the American people are sick and tired of the unprecedented
level of corporate greed that we are seeing right now. The American
people are sick and tired of paying outrageously high prices at the gas
pump and at the grocery store while at the same time oil companies and
food companies are making recordbreaking profits.
The American people are sick and tired of struggling to pay for the
basic necessities of life while at the same time 700 billionaires in
this country became $2 trillion richer during the pandemic. And income
and wealth inequality today is worse than it has been for 100 years--
people on top doing phenomenally well, middle class working families
fall further and further behind.
The American people are sick and tired of seeing multibillionaires,
like Mr. Musk and Mr. Bezos and Mr. Branson, taking joyrides to outer
space in their spaceships, buying $500 million superyachts, and living
in mansions all over the world while some 600,000 people in our country
are homeless. In other words, we are looking at two worlds. People on
top never did better, middle class is continuing to decline, and the
poor are living in abysmal conditions.
And in the midst of all of this, the American people want Congress,
want their elected officials, to address corporate greed, to address
income and wealth inequality, and end a tax system in which some of the
wealthiest people in this country in a given year do not pay a nickel
in Federal taxes, where large, profitable corporations do not pay a
nickel in Federal taxes. And they want a tax system which is fair,
where the wealthy and large corporations pay their fair share.
The last poll that I saw had Congress--the U.S. Congress--with a 16-
percent approval rating--16 percent. And to me, this was shocking,
really quite shocking, because I suspect that the 16 percent who
believe that Congress was doing something meaningful really don't know
what is going on.
So what is Congress doing right now at a time in which we face so
many massive problems, not to mention climate change, not to mention a
massive housing crisis where 18 million families are paying half of
their income in housing, not to mention the student debt that 45
million Americans are carrying? What is Congress about? What are we
working on right this minute? And the answer is that for 2 months, a
107-member conference committee has been meeting behind closed doors to
provide over $50 billion in corporate welfare, with no strings
attached, to the highly profitable microchip industry.
No, we are not talking about healthcare for all. No, we are not
talking about making higher education affordable. No, we are not
talking about making sure that young people can earn decent salaries
when they become teachers. No, we are not talking about leading the
world in combating climate change. We are talking about giving $50
billion in corporate welfare, with no strings attached, a blank check,
to the highly profitable microchip industry.
And, yes, if you can believe it--and I am talking to the 16 percent
of Americans who have a favorable opinion of Congress--if you can
believe it, this legislation may also provide a $10 billion bailout to
Jeff Bezos, the second wealthiest person in America, so that his
company Blue Origin can launch a rocket ship to the Moon.
For all of my colleagues who tell us how deeply, deeply concerned
they are about the deficit--oh, my goodness, we cannot help working
families with a child tax credit; we cannot expand Medicare to cover
dental and hearing aids and eyeglasses; we can't build the affordable
housing; Bernie, we don't have the money to do that; we have a big
deficit--well, what about the deficit when it comes to giving $52
billion in corporate welfare to some of the most profitable
corporations in America? I guess, when you are giving corporate welfare
to big and powerful interests, the deficit no longer matters.
There is no doubt in my mind that there is a global shortage in
microchips and semiconductors, which is making
it harder for manufacturers to produce the automobiles and cell phones
and the electronic equipment that we need. This shortage is costing
American workers good jobs and raising prices for families. I don't
think there is a debate about that reality, which is why I--and I think
many other others here in the Senate--fully support efforts to expand
U.S. microchip production.
But the question that we should be asking is this. Should American
taxpayers provide the microchip industry with a blank check of over $50
billion at a time when semiconductor companies are making tens of
billions of dollars in profits and paying their executives exorbitant
compensation packages? My answer to that question, and I think the
American people's answer to that question, is a resounding no.
Let's review some recent history about the microchip industry, which
I do not hear discussed very often here on the floor. Over the last 20
years, the microchip industry has shut down--has shut down--over 780
manufacturing plants in the United States. It shut down over 780
manufacturing plants in the United States and eliminated 150,000
American jobs while moving most of their production overseas after
receiving some $91.5 billion in government subsidies and loans. Got
that? They have shut down over 780 plants, thrown 150,000 American
workers out on the street as they have gone abroad. In other words, in
order to make more profits, these companies took government money and
used that money to ship good-paying jobs abroad.
And what are we doing about that? You shut down plants in America;
you jeopardize the production of microchips here in America; you throw
150,000 workers out on the street; and what is our response? Hey, here
is $52 billion. Thank you very much for your patriotism and your
respect for American workers.
Now, that approach may make sense to some people, maybe people who
got a lot of money from the microchip industry in campaign
contributions. I don't know. But it sure as hell does not make sense to
me. In total, it has been estimated that five major semiconductor
companies will receive the lion's share of this taxpayer handout. Those
companies are Intel, Texas Instruments, Micron Technology,
GlobalFoundries, and Samsung.
These five companies, my friends, made $70 billion in profits last
year. So if you are a worker in America trying to get by on $12, $13 an
hour, nothing we can do for you. If you can't afford the outrageous
cost of healthcare in America, can't do anything for you. Can't buy the
prescription drugs that your doctor prescribes because they are too
expensive? Can't do anything for you. But if you are an industry where
the top five companies made $70 billion in profits last year, well, we
have some good news for you. Keep the campaign contributions coming. We
are there for you, and we are going to give you a $52 billion handout.
The company that will likely benefit the most from this taxpayer
assistance is Intel. I have nothing against Intel. I wish them the
best. But let's be clear. Intel is not a poor, struggling company. It
is not a company which is going broke. In 2021, last year, Intel made
nearly $20 billion in profits. That is not a bad year, $20 billion in
profits. During the pandemic, Intel had enough money to spend $16.6
billion not on research and development, not on starting new plants in
America but on buying back its own stock to reward its executives and
wealthy shareholders. That is what Intel did with its $20 billion in
profits.
Last year, Intel could afford to give its CEO, Pat Gelsinger, a $179
million compensation package--$179 million compensation package. Does
that sound like a company that needs a corporate bailout, that needs
taxpayer money to survive?
Over the past 20 years, Intel has spent over $100 million on lobbying
and campaign contributions--that is the definition of the corrupt
political system under which we live--while at the same time shipping
thousands of jobs to China and other low-income countries. And that is
a company that the American people should be bailing out, really?
Another company that would receive taxpayer assistance under this
legislation is Texas Instruments. Last year, Texas Instruments made
$7.8 billion in profits. In 2020, that company spent $2.5 billion
buying back its own stock while it also, like Intel, has outsourced
thousands of good-paying American jobs to low-wage countries.
Who else is in line to receive corporate welfare under this bill?
Well, how about the Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Company, TSMC?
It is in line to potentially receive billions of dollars in Federal
grants under this bill. It might be interesting to note who the largest
shareholder of TSMC is. Well, if you guessed the Government of Taiwan,
you would be correct, which should come as no surprise to anybody who
studies how other countries throughout the world conduct industrial
policy. Let us be clear. When we provide TSMC money, we are giving that
taxpayer money directly to the Government of Taiwan.
Samsung, another very large corporate entity from South Korea, is
also in line to receive Federal funding under this bill. In other
words, not only would this bill be providing corporate welfare to
profitable American corporations, but we would literally be handing
over U.S. taxpayer dollars to corporations that are owned or controlled
by other nations. And on and on it goes.
Let me be very clear. I believe in industrial policy. I do. I believe
that it makes sense, on certain occasions, for the Federal Government
and the private sector to work together to address a pressing need in
America, to sit down and say: OK. You want to make some money. We have
national needs that have to be addressed. How do we work well together
so that you as a corporation do OK and so that taxpayers of this
country do OK? That is called sensible industrial policy.
Industrial policy means cooperation between the government and
private sector--cooperation. It does not mean the government providing
massive amounts of corporate welfare to profitable corporations without
getting anything in return. That is not industrial policy. That is just
giving the money to large, profitable corporations that make a lot of
campaign contributions.
The question is, Will the U.S. Government develop an industrial
policy that benefits all of our people or will we continue to have an
industrial policy that benefits the wealthy and the powerful?
In 1968, Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., said:
The problem is that we all too often have socialism for the
rich and rugged free enterprise capitalism for the poor.
I am afraid that what Dr. King said 54 years ago was accurate back
then, and it is even more accurate today.
We hear a lot of talk in the Halls of Congress about the need to
create public-private partnerships, and that all sounds very nice. But
when the government adopts an industrial policy that socializes all of
the risk and privatizes all of the profits, that is not a partnership;
that is crony capitalism.
Some of my colleagues make a point that the microchip industry is
enormously important for our economy and that we must become less
dependent on foreign nations for microchips. I agree. There is no
argument about that. But we can and must accomplish that goal without
simply throwing money at these companies while the taxpayer gets
nothing in return. In my view, we must prevent microchip companies from
receiving taxpayer assistance unless they agree to issue warrants or
equity stakes to the Federal Government.
If private companies are going to benefit from generous taxpayer
subsidies, the financial gains made by these companies must be shared
with the American people, not just wealthy shareholders. That is what a
real partnership--private-public partnership--is about. In other words,
if microchip companies make a profit as a direct result of these
Federal grants, the taxpayers of this country have a right to get a
reasonable return on that investment.
Further, if microchip companies receive taxpayer assistance, they
must agree that they will not buy back their own stock, outsource
American jobs, repeal existing collective bargaining agreements, and
must remain neutral in any union organizing effort. This is not a
radical idea. In fact, all of these conditions were imposed on
companies that received taxpayer assistance during the pandemic and
passed the Senate by a vote of 96 to 0. These are not radical demands.
Moreover, I know this may be a radical idea in the Halls of Congress,
but, no, I do not believe that this legislation should approve a $10
billion bailout for Jeff Bezos to fly to the Moon. I know that is a
very radical idea, but maybe, just maybe, a middle class which is
struggling, which is falling behind, should not see their taxpayer
dollars go to the second wealthiest person in America. Radical idea, I
know, but that is my view. Mr. Bezos is worth some $138 billion. He
became $33 billion richer during the pandemic, and in a given year, Mr.
Bezos has paid nothing in Federal income taxes because he and his
friends write a tax system that benefits the wealthy.
I say to Mr. Bezos, if he wants to go to the Moon, let him go to the
Moon. That is OK. But he should do it on his own dime, not that of the
U.S. taxpayers.
This is where we are. This country faces enormous issues. We are not
dealing with those issues. Instead, we are talking about a massive
bailout for profitable corporations and a $10 billion check for the
second wealthiest guy in this country. I would hope that Members of
Congress listen to the American people, stand up for the working class
and the middle class of this country and not give a massive amount of
corporate welfare to people who don't need it.
I yield the floor. | the Fed | antisemitic |
07/13/2022 | Mr. SANDERS | Senate | CREC-2022-07-13-pt1-PgS3253 | nan | nan | Mr. SANDERS. Madam President, at a time of massive income and wealth
inequality, the American people are sick and tired of the unprecedented
level of corporate greed that we are seeing right now. The American
people are sick and tired of paying outrageously high prices at the gas
pump and at the grocery store while at the same time oil companies and
food companies are making recordbreaking profits.
The American people are sick and tired of struggling to pay for the
basic necessities of life while at the same time 700 billionaires in
this country became $2 trillion richer during the pandemic. And income
and wealth inequality today is worse than it has been for 100 years--
people on top doing phenomenally well, middle class working families
fall further and further behind.
The American people are sick and tired of seeing multibillionaires,
like Mr. Musk and Mr. Bezos and Mr. Branson, taking joyrides to outer
space in their spaceships, buying $500 million superyachts, and living
in mansions all over the world while some 600,000 people in our country
are homeless. In other words, we are looking at two worlds. People on
top never did better, middle class is continuing to decline, and the
poor are living in abysmal conditions.
And in the midst of all of this, the American people want Congress,
want their elected officials, to address corporate greed, to address
income and wealth inequality, and end a tax system in which some of the
wealthiest people in this country in a given year do not pay a nickel
in Federal taxes, where large, profitable corporations do not pay a
nickel in Federal taxes. And they want a tax system which is fair,
where the wealthy and large corporations pay their fair share.
The last poll that I saw had Congress--the U.S. Congress--with a 16-
percent approval rating--16 percent. And to me, this was shocking,
really quite shocking, because I suspect that the 16 percent who
believe that Congress was doing something meaningful really don't know
what is going on.
So what is Congress doing right now at a time in which we face so
many massive problems, not to mention climate change, not to mention a
massive housing crisis where 18 million families are paying half of
their income in housing, not to mention the student debt that 45
million Americans are carrying? What is Congress about? What are we
working on right this minute? And the answer is that for 2 months, a
107-member conference committee has been meeting behind closed doors to
provide over $50 billion in corporate welfare, with no strings
attached, to the highly profitable microchip industry.
No, we are not talking about healthcare for all. No, we are not
talking about making higher education affordable. No, we are not
talking about making sure that young people can earn decent salaries
when they become teachers. No, we are not talking about leading the
world in combating climate change. We are talking about giving $50
billion in corporate welfare, with no strings attached, a blank check,
to the highly profitable microchip industry.
And, yes, if you can believe it--and I am talking to the 16 percent
of Americans who have a favorable opinion of Congress--if you can
believe it, this legislation may also provide a $10 billion bailout to
Jeff Bezos, the second wealthiest person in America, so that his
company Blue Origin can launch a rocket ship to the Moon.
For all of my colleagues who tell us how deeply, deeply concerned
they are about the deficit--oh, my goodness, we cannot help working
families with a child tax credit; we cannot expand Medicare to cover
dental and hearing aids and eyeglasses; we can't build the affordable
housing; Bernie, we don't have the money to do that; we have a big
deficit--well, what about the deficit when it comes to giving $52
billion in corporate welfare to some of the most profitable
corporations in America? I guess, when you are giving corporate welfare
to big and powerful interests, the deficit no longer matters.
There is no doubt in my mind that there is a global shortage in
microchips and semiconductors, which is making
it harder for manufacturers to produce the automobiles and cell phones
and the electronic equipment that we need. This shortage is costing
American workers good jobs and raising prices for families. I don't
think there is a debate about that reality, which is why I--and I think
many other others here in the Senate--fully support efforts to expand
U.S. microchip production.
But the question that we should be asking is this. Should American
taxpayers provide the microchip industry with a blank check of over $50
billion at a time when semiconductor companies are making tens of
billions of dollars in profits and paying their executives exorbitant
compensation packages? My answer to that question, and I think the
American people's answer to that question, is a resounding no.
Let's review some recent history about the microchip industry, which
I do not hear discussed very often here on the floor. Over the last 20
years, the microchip industry has shut down--has shut down--over 780
manufacturing plants in the United States. It shut down over 780
manufacturing plants in the United States and eliminated 150,000
American jobs while moving most of their production overseas after
receiving some $91.5 billion in government subsidies and loans. Got
that? They have shut down over 780 plants, thrown 150,000 American
workers out on the street as they have gone abroad. In other words, in
order to make more profits, these companies took government money and
used that money to ship good-paying jobs abroad.
And what are we doing about that? You shut down plants in America;
you jeopardize the production of microchips here in America; you throw
150,000 workers out on the street; and what is our response? Hey, here
is $52 billion. Thank you very much for your patriotism and your
respect for American workers.
Now, that approach may make sense to some people, maybe people who
got a lot of money from the microchip industry in campaign
contributions. I don't know. But it sure as hell does not make sense to
me. In total, it has been estimated that five major semiconductor
companies will receive the lion's share of this taxpayer handout. Those
companies are Intel, Texas Instruments, Micron Technology,
GlobalFoundries, and Samsung.
These five companies, my friends, made $70 billion in profits last
year. So if you are a worker in America trying to get by on $12, $13 an
hour, nothing we can do for you. If you can't afford the outrageous
cost of healthcare in America, can't do anything for you. Can't buy the
prescription drugs that your doctor prescribes because they are too
expensive? Can't do anything for you. But if you are an industry where
the top five companies made $70 billion in profits last year, well, we
have some good news for you. Keep the campaign contributions coming. We
are there for you, and we are going to give you a $52 billion handout.
The company that will likely benefit the most from this taxpayer
assistance is Intel. I have nothing against Intel. I wish them the
best. But let's be clear. Intel is not a poor, struggling company. It
is not a company which is going broke. In 2021, last year, Intel made
nearly $20 billion in profits. That is not a bad year, $20 billion in
profits. During the pandemic, Intel had enough money to spend $16.6
billion not on research and development, not on starting new plants in
America but on buying back its own stock to reward its executives and
wealthy shareholders. That is what Intel did with its $20 billion in
profits.
Last year, Intel could afford to give its CEO, Pat Gelsinger, a $179
million compensation package--$179 million compensation package. Does
that sound like a company that needs a corporate bailout, that needs
taxpayer money to survive?
Over the past 20 years, Intel has spent over $100 million on lobbying
and campaign contributions--that is the definition of the corrupt
political system under which we live--while at the same time shipping
thousands of jobs to China and other low-income countries. And that is
a company that the American people should be bailing out, really?
Another company that would receive taxpayer assistance under this
legislation is Texas Instruments. Last year, Texas Instruments made
$7.8 billion in profits. In 2020, that company spent $2.5 billion
buying back its own stock while it also, like Intel, has outsourced
thousands of good-paying American jobs to low-wage countries.
Who else is in line to receive corporate welfare under this bill?
Well, how about the Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Company, TSMC?
It is in line to potentially receive billions of dollars in Federal
grants under this bill. It might be interesting to note who the largest
shareholder of TSMC is. Well, if you guessed the Government of Taiwan,
you would be correct, which should come as no surprise to anybody who
studies how other countries throughout the world conduct industrial
policy. Let us be clear. When we provide TSMC money, we are giving that
taxpayer money directly to the Government of Taiwan.
Samsung, another very large corporate entity from South Korea, is
also in line to receive Federal funding under this bill. In other
words, not only would this bill be providing corporate welfare to
profitable American corporations, but we would literally be handing
over U.S. taxpayer dollars to corporations that are owned or controlled
by other nations. And on and on it goes.
Let me be very clear. I believe in industrial policy. I do. I believe
that it makes sense, on certain occasions, for the Federal Government
and the private sector to work together to address a pressing need in
America, to sit down and say: OK. You want to make some money. We have
national needs that have to be addressed. How do we work well together
so that you as a corporation do OK and so that taxpayers of this
country do OK? That is called sensible industrial policy.
Industrial policy means cooperation between the government and
private sector--cooperation. It does not mean the government providing
massive amounts of corporate welfare to profitable corporations without
getting anything in return. That is not industrial policy. That is just
giving the money to large, profitable corporations that make a lot of
campaign contributions.
The question is, Will the U.S. Government develop an industrial
policy that benefits all of our people or will we continue to have an
industrial policy that benefits the wealthy and the powerful?
In 1968, Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., said:
The problem is that we all too often have socialism for the
rich and rugged free enterprise capitalism for the poor.
I am afraid that what Dr. King said 54 years ago was accurate back
then, and it is even more accurate today.
We hear a lot of talk in the Halls of Congress about the need to
create public-private partnerships, and that all sounds very nice. But
when the government adopts an industrial policy that socializes all of
the risk and privatizes all of the profits, that is not a partnership;
that is crony capitalism.
Some of my colleagues make a point that the microchip industry is
enormously important for our economy and that we must become less
dependent on foreign nations for microchips. I agree. There is no
argument about that. But we can and must accomplish that goal without
simply throwing money at these companies while the taxpayer gets
nothing in return. In my view, we must prevent microchip companies from
receiving taxpayer assistance unless they agree to issue warrants or
equity stakes to the Federal Government.
If private companies are going to benefit from generous taxpayer
subsidies, the financial gains made by these companies must be shared
with the American people, not just wealthy shareholders. That is what a
real partnership--private-public partnership--is about. In other words,
if microchip companies make a profit as a direct result of these
Federal grants, the taxpayers of this country have a right to get a
reasonable return on that investment.
Further, if microchip companies receive taxpayer assistance, they
must agree that they will not buy back their own stock, outsource
American jobs, repeal existing collective bargaining agreements, and
must remain neutral in any union organizing effort. This is not a
radical idea. In fact, all of these conditions were imposed on
companies that received taxpayer assistance during the pandemic and
passed the Senate by a vote of 96 to 0. These are not radical demands.
Moreover, I know this may be a radical idea in the Halls of Congress,
but, no, I do not believe that this legislation should approve a $10
billion bailout for Jeff Bezos to fly to the Moon. I know that is a
very radical idea, but maybe, just maybe, a middle class which is
struggling, which is falling behind, should not see their taxpayer
dollars go to the second wealthiest person in America. Radical idea, I
know, but that is my view. Mr. Bezos is worth some $138 billion. He
became $33 billion richer during the pandemic, and in a given year, Mr.
Bezos has paid nothing in Federal income taxes because he and his
friends write a tax system that benefits the wealthy.
I say to Mr. Bezos, if he wants to go to the Moon, let him go to the
Moon. That is OK. But he should do it on his own dime, not that of the
U.S. taxpayers.
This is where we are. This country faces enormous issues. We are not
dealing with those issues. Instead, we are talking about a massive
bailout for profitable corporations and a $10 billion check for the
second wealthiest guy in this country. I would hope that Members of
Congress listen to the American people, stand up for the working class
and the middle class of this country and not give a massive amount of
corporate welfare to people who don't need it.
I yield the floor. | handout | racist |
07/13/2022 | Mr. SANDERS | Senate | CREC-2022-07-13-pt1-PgS3253 | nan | nan | Mr. SANDERS. Madam President, at a time of massive income and wealth
inequality, the American people are sick and tired of the unprecedented
level of corporate greed that we are seeing right now. The American
people are sick and tired of paying outrageously high prices at the gas
pump and at the grocery store while at the same time oil companies and
food companies are making recordbreaking profits.
The American people are sick and tired of struggling to pay for the
basic necessities of life while at the same time 700 billionaires in
this country became $2 trillion richer during the pandemic. And income
and wealth inequality today is worse than it has been for 100 years--
people on top doing phenomenally well, middle class working families
fall further and further behind.
The American people are sick and tired of seeing multibillionaires,
like Mr. Musk and Mr. Bezos and Mr. Branson, taking joyrides to outer
space in their spaceships, buying $500 million superyachts, and living
in mansions all over the world while some 600,000 people in our country
are homeless. In other words, we are looking at two worlds. People on
top never did better, middle class is continuing to decline, and the
poor are living in abysmal conditions.
And in the midst of all of this, the American people want Congress,
want their elected officials, to address corporate greed, to address
income and wealth inequality, and end a tax system in which some of the
wealthiest people in this country in a given year do not pay a nickel
in Federal taxes, where large, profitable corporations do not pay a
nickel in Federal taxes. And they want a tax system which is fair,
where the wealthy and large corporations pay their fair share.
The last poll that I saw had Congress--the U.S. Congress--with a 16-
percent approval rating--16 percent. And to me, this was shocking,
really quite shocking, because I suspect that the 16 percent who
believe that Congress was doing something meaningful really don't know
what is going on.
So what is Congress doing right now at a time in which we face so
many massive problems, not to mention climate change, not to mention a
massive housing crisis where 18 million families are paying half of
their income in housing, not to mention the student debt that 45
million Americans are carrying? What is Congress about? What are we
working on right this minute? And the answer is that for 2 months, a
107-member conference committee has been meeting behind closed doors to
provide over $50 billion in corporate welfare, with no strings
attached, to the highly profitable microchip industry.
No, we are not talking about healthcare for all. No, we are not
talking about making higher education affordable. No, we are not
talking about making sure that young people can earn decent salaries
when they become teachers. No, we are not talking about leading the
world in combating climate change. We are talking about giving $50
billion in corporate welfare, with no strings attached, a blank check,
to the highly profitable microchip industry.
And, yes, if you can believe it--and I am talking to the 16 percent
of Americans who have a favorable opinion of Congress--if you can
believe it, this legislation may also provide a $10 billion bailout to
Jeff Bezos, the second wealthiest person in America, so that his
company Blue Origin can launch a rocket ship to the Moon.
For all of my colleagues who tell us how deeply, deeply concerned
they are about the deficit--oh, my goodness, we cannot help working
families with a child tax credit; we cannot expand Medicare to cover
dental and hearing aids and eyeglasses; we can't build the affordable
housing; Bernie, we don't have the money to do that; we have a big
deficit--well, what about the deficit when it comes to giving $52
billion in corporate welfare to some of the most profitable
corporations in America? I guess, when you are giving corporate welfare
to big and powerful interests, the deficit no longer matters.
There is no doubt in my mind that there is a global shortage in
microchips and semiconductors, which is making
it harder for manufacturers to produce the automobiles and cell phones
and the electronic equipment that we need. This shortage is costing
American workers good jobs and raising prices for families. I don't
think there is a debate about that reality, which is why I--and I think
many other others here in the Senate--fully support efforts to expand
U.S. microchip production.
But the question that we should be asking is this. Should American
taxpayers provide the microchip industry with a blank check of over $50
billion at a time when semiconductor companies are making tens of
billions of dollars in profits and paying their executives exorbitant
compensation packages? My answer to that question, and I think the
American people's answer to that question, is a resounding no.
Let's review some recent history about the microchip industry, which
I do not hear discussed very often here on the floor. Over the last 20
years, the microchip industry has shut down--has shut down--over 780
manufacturing plants in the United States. It shut down over 780
manufacturing plants in the United States and eliminated 150,000
American jobs while moving most of their production overseas after
receiving some $91.5 billion in government subsidies and loans. Got
that? They have shut down over 780 plants, thrown 150,000 American
workers out on the street as they have gone abroad. In other words, in
order to make more profits, these companies took government money and
used that money to ship good-paying jobs abroad.
And what are we doing about that? You shut down plants in America;
you jeopardize the production of microchips here in America; you throw
150,000 workers out on the street; and what is our response? Hey, here
is $52 billion. Thank you very much for your patriotism and your
respect for American workers.
Now, that approach may make sense to some people, maybe people who
got a lot of money from the microchip industry in campaign
contributions. I don't know. But it sure as hell does not make sense to
me. In total, it has been estimated that five major semiconductor
companies will receive the lion's share of this taxpayer handout. Those
companies are Intel, Texas Instruments, Micron Technology,
GlobalFoundries, and Samsung.
These five companies, my friends, made $70 billion in profits last
year. So if you are a worker in America trying to get by on $12, $13 an
hour, nothing we can do for you. If you can't afford the outrageous
cost of healthcare in America, can't do anything for you. Can't buy the
prescription drugs that your doctor prescribes because they are too
expensive? Can't do anything for you. But if you are an industry where
the top five companies made $70 billion in profits last year, well, we
have some good news for you. Keep the campaign contributions coming. We
are there for you, and we are going to give you a $52 billion handout.
The company that will likely benefit the most from this taxpayer
assistance is Intel. I have nothing against Intel. I wish them the
best. But let's be clear. Intel is not a poor, struggling company. It
is not a company which is going broke. In 2021, last year, Intel made
nearly $20 billion in profits. That is not a bad year, $20 billion in
profits. During the pandemic, Intel had enough money to spend $16.6
billion not on research and development, not on starting new plants in
America but on buying back its own stock to reward its executives and
wealthy shareholders. That is what Intel did with its $20 billion in
profits.
Last year, Intel could afford to give its CEO, Pat Gelsinger, a $179
million compensation package--$179 million compensation package. Does
that sound like a company that needs a corporate bailout, that needs
taxpayer money to survive?
Over the past 20 years, Intel has spent over $100 million on lobbying
and campaign contributions--that is the definition of the corrupt
political system under which we live--while at the same time shipping
thousands of jobs to China and other low-income countries. And that is
a company that the American people should be bailing out, really?
Another company that would receive taxpayer assistance under this
legislation is Texas Instruments. Last year, Texas Instruments made
$7.8 billion in profits. In 2020, that company spent $2.5 billion
buying back its own stock while it also, like Intel, has outsourced
thousands of good-paying American jobs to low-wage countries.
Who else is in line to receive corporate welfare under this bill?
Well, how about the Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Company, TSMC?
It is in line to potentially receive billions of dollars in Federal
grants under this bill. It might be interesting to note who the largest
shareholder of TSMC is. Well, if you guessed the Government of Taiwan,
you would be correct, which should come as no surprise to anybody who
studies how other countries throughout the world conduct industrial
policy. Let us be clear. When we provide TSMC money, we are giving that
taxpayer money directly to the Government of Taiwan.
Samsung, another very large corporate entity from South Korea, is
also in line to receive Federal funding under this bill. In other
words, not only would this bill be providing corporate welfare to
profitable American corporations, but we would literally be handing
over U.S. taxpayer dollars to corporations that are owned or controlled
by other nations. And on and on it goes.
Let me be very clear. I believe in industrial policy. I do. I believe
that it makes sense, on certain occasions, for the Federal Government
and the private sector to work together to address a pressing need in
America, to sit down and say: OK. You want to make some money. We have
national needs that have to be addressed. How do we work well together
so that you as a corporation do OK and so that taxpayers of this
country do OK? That is called sensible industrial policy.
Industrial policy means cooperation between the government and
private sector--cooperation. It does not mean the government providing
massive amounts of corporate welfare to profitable corporations without
getting anything in return. That is not industrial policy. That is just
giving the money to large, profitable corporations that make a lot of
campaign contributions.
The question is, Will the U.S. Government develop an industrial
policy that benefits all of our people or will we continue to have an
industrial policy that benefits the wealthy and the powerful?
In 1968, Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., said:
The problem is that we all too often have socialism for the
rich and rugged free enterprise capitalism for the poor.
I am afraid that what Dr. King said 54 years ago was accurate back
then, and it is even more accurate today.
We hear a lot of talk in the Halls of Congress about the need to
create public-private partnerships, and that all sounds very nice. But
when the government adopts an industrial policy that socializes all of
the risk and privatizes all of the profits, that is not a partnership;
that is crony capitalism.
Some of my colleagues make a point that the microchip industry is
enormously important for our economy and that we must become less
dependent on foreign nations for microchips. I agree. There is no
argument about that. But we can and must accomplish that goal without
simply throwing money at these companies while the taxpayer gets
nothing in return. In my view, we must prevent microchip companies from
receiving taxpayer assistance unless they agree to issue warrants or
equity stakes to the Federal Government.
If private companies are going to benefit from generous taxpayer
subsidies, the financial gains made by these companies must be shared
with the American people, not just wealthy shareholders. That is what a
real partnership--private-public partnership--is about. In other words,
if microchip companies make a profit as a direct result of these
Federal grants, the taxpayers of this country have a right to get a
reasonable return on that investment.
Further, if microchip companies receive taxpayer assistance, they
must agree that they will not buy back their own stock, outsource
American jobs, repeal existing collective bargaining agreements, and
must remain neutral in any union organizing effort. This is not a
radical idea. In fact, all of these conditions were imposed on
companies that received taxpayer assistance during the pandemic and
passed the Senate by a vote of 96 to 0. These are not radical demands.
Moreover, I know this may be a radical idea in the Halls of Congress,
but, no, I do not believe that this legislation should approve a $10
billion bailout for Jeff Bezos to fly to the Moon. I know that is a
very radical idea, but maybe, just maybe, a middle class which is
struggling, which is falling behind, should not see their taxpayer
dollars go to the second wealthiest person in America. Radical idea, I
know, but that is my view. Mr. Bezos is worth some $138 billion. He
became $33 billion richer during the pandemic, and in a given year, Mr.
Bezos has paid nothing in Federal income taxes because he and his
friends write a tax system that benefits the wealthy.
I say to Mr. Bezos, if he wants to go to the Moon, let him go to the
Moon. That is OK. But he should do it on his own dime, not that of the
U.S. taxpayers.
This is where we are. This country faces enormous issues. We are not
dealing with those issues. Instead, we are talking about a massive
bailout for profitable corporations and a $10 billion check for the
second wealthiest guy in this country. I would hope that Members of
Congress listen to the American people, stand up for the working class
and the middle class of this country and not give a massive amount of
corporate welfare to people who don't need it.
I yield the floor. | middle class | racist |
07/13/2022 | Mr. SANDERS | Senate | CREC-2022-07-13-pt1-PgS3253 | nan | nan | Mr. SANDERS. Madam President, at a time of massive income and wealth
inequality, the American people are sick and tired of the unprecedented
level of corporate greed that we are seeing right now. The American
people are sick and tired of paying outrageously high prices at the gas
pump and at the grocery store while at the same time oil companies and
food companies are making recordbreaking profits.
The American people are sick and tired of struggling to pay for the
basic necessities of life while at the same time 700 billionaires in
this country became $2 trillion richer during the pandemic. And income
and wealth inequality today is worse than it has been for 100 years--
people on top doing phenomenally well, middle class working families
fall further and further behind.
The American people are sick and tired of seeing multibillionaires,
like Mr. Musk and Mr. Bezos and Mr. Branson, taking joyrides to outer
space in their spaceships, buying $500 million superyachts, and living
in mansions all over the world while some 600,000 people in our country
are homeless. In other words, we are looking at two worlds. People on
top never did better, middle class is continuing to decline, and the
poor are living in abysmal conditions.
And in the midst of all of this, the American people want Congress,
want their elected officials, to address corporate greed, to address
income and wealth inequality, and end a tax system in which some of the
wealthiest people in this country in a given year do not pay a nickel
in Federal taxes, where large, profitable corporations do not pay a
nickel in Federal taxes. And they want a tax system which is fair,
where the wealthy and large corporations pay their fair share.
The last poll that I saw had Congress--the U.S. Congress--with a 16-
percent approval rating--16 percent. And to me, this was shocking,
really quite shocking, because I suspect that the 16 percent who
believe that Congress was doing something meaningful really don't know
what is going on.
So what is Congress doing right now at a time in which we face so
many massive problems, not to mention climate change, not to mention a
massive housing crisis where 18 million families are paying half of
their income in housing, not to mention the student debt that 45
million Americans are carrying? What is Congress about? What are we
working on right this minute? And the answer is that for 2 months, a
107-member conference committee has been meeting behind closed doors to
provide over $50 billion in corporate welfare, with no strings
attached, to the highly profitable microchip industry.
No, we are not talking about healthcare for all. No, we are not
talking about making higher education affordable. No, we are not
talking about making sure that young people can earn decent salaries
when they become teachers. No, we are not talking about leading the
world in combating climate change. We are talking about giving $50
billion in corporate welfare, with no strings attached, a blank check,
to the highly profitable microchip industry.
And, yes, if you can believe it--and I am talking to the 16 percent
of Americans who have a favorable opinion of Congress--if you can
believe it, this legislation may also provide a $10 billion bailout to
Jeff Bezos, the second wealthiest person in America, so that his
company Blue Origin can launch a rocket ship to the Moon.
For all of my colleagues who tell us how deeply, deeply concerned
they are about the deficit--oh, my goodness, we cannot help working
families with a child tax credit; we cannot expand Medicare to cover
dental and hearing aids and eyeglasses; we can't build the affordable
housing; Bernie, we don't have the money to do that; we have a big
deficit--well, what about the deficit when it comes to giving $52
billion in corporate welfare to some of the most profitable
corporations in America? I guess, when you are giving corporate welfare
to big and powerful interests, the deficit no longer matters.
There is no doubt in my mind that there is a global shortage in
microchips and semiconductors, which is making
it harder for manufacturers to produce the automobiles and cell phones
and the electronic equipment that we need. This shortage is costing
American workers good jobs and raising prices for families. I don't
think there is a debate about that reality, which is why I--and I think
many other others here in the Senate--fully support efforts to expand
U.S. microchip production.
But the question that we should be asking is this. Should American
taxpayers provide the microchip industry with a blank check of over $50
billion at a time when semiconductor companies are making tens of
billions of dollars in profits and paying their executives exorbitant
compensation packages? My answer to that question, and I think the
American people's answer to that question, is a resounding no.
Let's review some recent history about the microchip industry, which
I do not hear discussed very often here on the floor. Over the last 20
years, the microchip industry has shut down--has shut down--over 780
manufacturing plants in the United States. It shut down over 780
manufacturing plants in the United States and eliminated 150,000
American jobs while moving most of their production overseas after
receiving some $91.5 billion in government subsidies and loans. Got
that? They have shut down over 780 plants, thrown 150,000 American
workers out on the street as they have gone abroad. In other words, in
order to make more profits, these companies took government money and
used that money to ship good-paying jobs abroad.
And what are we doing about that? You shut down plants in America;
you jeopardize the production of microchips here in America; you throw
150,000 workers out on the street; and what is our response? Hey, here
is $52 billion. Thank you very much for your patriotism and your
respect for American workers.
Now, that approach may make sense to some people, maybe people who
got a lot of money from the microchip industry in campaign
contributions. I don't know. But it sure as hell does not make sense to
me. In total, it has been estimated that five major semiconductor
companies will receive the lion's share of this taxpayer handout. Those
companies are Intel, Texas Instruments, Micron Technology,
GlobalFoundries, and Samsung.
These five companies, my friends, made $70 billion in profits last
year. So if you are a worker in America trying to get by on $12, $13 an
hour, nothing we can do for you. If you can't afford the outrageous
cost of healthcare in America, can't do anything for you. Can't buy the
prescription drugs that your doctor prescribes because they are too
expensive? Can't do anything for you. But if you are an industry where
the top five companies made $70 billion in profits last year, well, we
have some good news for you. Keep the campaign contributions coming. We
are there for you, and we are going to give you a $52 billion handout.
The company that will likely benefit the most from this taxpayer
assistance is Intel. I have nothing against Intel. I wish them the
best. But let's be clear. Intel is not a poor, struggling company. It
is not a company which is going broke. In 2021, last year, Intel made
nearly $20 billion in profits. That is not a bad year, $20 billion in
profits. During the pandemic, Intel had enough money to spend $16.6
billion not on research and development, not on starting new plants in
America but on buying back its own stock to reward its executives and
wealthy shareholders. That is what Intel did with its $20 billion in
profits.
Last year, Intel could afford to give its CEO, Pat Gelsinger, a $179
million compensation package--$179 million compensation package. Does
that sound like a company that needs a corporate bailout, that needs
taxpayer money to survive?
Over the past 20 years, Intel has spent over $100 million on lobbying
and campaign contributions--that is the definition of the corrupt
political system under which we live--while at the same time shipping
thousands of jobs to China and other low-income countries. And that is
a company that the American people should be bailing out, really?
Another company that would receive taxpayer assistance under this
legislation is Texas Instruments. Last year, Texas Instruments made
$7.8 billion in profits. In 2020, that company spent $2.5 billion
buying back its own stock while it also, like Intel, has outsourced
thousands of good-paying American jobs to low-wage countries.
Who else is in line to receive corporate welfare under this bill?
Well, how about the Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Company, TSMC?
It is in line to potentially receive billions of dollars in Federal
grants under this bill. It might be interesting to note who the largest
shareholder of TSMC is. Well, if you guessed the Government of Taiwan,
you would be correct, which should come as no surprise to anybody who
studies how other countries throughout the world conduct industrial
policy. Let us be clear. When we provide TSMC money, we are giving that
taxpayer money directly to the Government of Taiwan.
Samsung, another very large corporate entity from South Korea, is
also in line to receive Federal funding under this bill. In other
words, not only would this bill be providing corporate welfare to
profitable American corporations, but we would literally be handing
over U.S. taxpayer dollars to corporations that are owned or controlled
by other nations. And on and on it goes.
Let me be very clear. I believe in industrial policy. I do. I believe
that it makes sense, on certain occasions, for the Federal Government
and the private sector to work together to address a pressing need in
America, to sit down and say: OK. You want to make some money. We have
national needs that have to be addressed. How do we work well together
so that you as a corporation do OK and so that taxpayers of this
country do OK? That is called sensible industrial policy.
Industrial policy means cooperation between the government and
private sector--cooperation. It does not mean the government providing
massive amounts of corporate welfare to profitable corporations without
getting anything in return. That is not industrial policy. That is just
giving the money to large, profitable corporations that make a lot of
campaign contributions.
The question is, Will the U.S. Government develop an industrial
policy that benefits all of our people or will we continue to have an
industrial policy that benefits the wealthy and the powerful?
In 1968, Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., said:
The problem is that we all too often have socialism for the
rich and rugged free enterprise capitalism for the poor.
I am afraid that what Dr. King said 54 years ago was accurate back
then, and it is even more accurate today.
We hear a lot of talk in the Halls of Congress about the need to
create public-private partnerships, and that all sounds very nice. But
when the government adopts an industrial policy that socializes all of
the risk and privatizes all of the profits, that is not a partnership;
that is crony capitalism.
Some of my colleagues make a point that the microchip industry is
enormously important for our economy and that we must become less
dependent on foreign nations for microchips. I agree. There is no
argument about that. But we can and must accomplish that goal without
simply throwing money at these companies while the taxpayer gets
nothing in return. In my view, we must prevent microchip companies from
receiving taxpayer assistance unless they agree to issue warrants or
equity stakes to the Federal Government.
If private companies are going to benefit from generous taxpayer
subsidies, the financial gains made by these companies must be shared
with the American people, not just wealthy shareholders. That is what a
real partnership--private-public partnership--is about. In other words,
if microchip companies make a profit as a direct result of these
Federal grants, the taxpayers of this country have a right to get a
reasonable return on that investment.
Further, if microchip companies receive taxpayer assistance, they
must agree that they will not buy back their own stock, outsource
American jobs, repeal existing collective bargaining agreements, and
must remain neutral in any union organizing effort. This is not a
radical idea. In fact, all of these conditions were imposed on
companies that received taxpayer assistance during the pandemic and
passed the Senate by a vote of 96 to 0. These are not radical demands.
Moreover, I know this may be a radical idea in the Halls of Congress,
but, no, I do not believe that this legislation should approve a $10
billion bailout for Jeff Bezos to fly to the Moon. I know that is a
very radical idea, but maybe, just maybe, a middle class which is
struggling, which is falling behind, should not see their taxpayer
dollars go to the second wealthiest person in America. Radical idea, I
know, but that is my view. Mr. Bezos is worth some $138 billion. He
became $33 billion richer during the pandemic, and in a given year, Mr.
Bezos has paid nothing in Federal income taxes because he and his
friends write a tax system that benefits the wealthy.
I say to Mr. Bezos, if he wants to go to the Moon, let him go to the
Moon. That is OK. But he should do it on his own dime, not that of the
U.S. taxpayers.
This is where we are. This country faces enormous issues. We are not
dealing with those issues. Instead, we are talking about a massive
bailout for profitable corporations and a $10 billion check for the
second wealthiest guy in this country. I would hope that Members of
Congress listen to the American people, stand up for the working class
and the middle class of this country and not give a massive amount of
corporate welfare to people who don't need it.
I yield the floor. | welfare | racist |
07/13/2022 | Mr. SANDERS | Senate | CREC-2022-07-13-pt1-PgS3253 | nan | nan | Mr. SANDERS. Madam President, at a time of massive income and wealth
inequality, the American people are sick and tired of the unprecedented
level of corporate greed that we are seeing right now. The American
people are sick and tired of paying outrageously high prices at the gas
pump and at the grocery store while at the same time oil companies and
food companies are making recordbreaking profits.
The American people are sick and tired of struggling to pay for the
basic necessities of life while at the same time 700 billionaires in
this country became $2 trillion richer during the pandemic. And income
and wealth inequality today is worse than it has been for 100 years--
people on top doing phenomenally well, middle class working families
fall further and further behind.
The American people are sick and tired of seeing multibillionaires,
like Mr. Musk and Mr. Bezos and Mr. Branson, taking joyrides to outer
space in their spaceships, buying $500 million superyachts, and living
in mansions all over the world while some 600,000 people in our country
are homeless. In other words, we are looking at two worlds. People on
top never did better, middle class is continuing to decline, and the
poor are living in abysmal conditions.
And in the midst of all of this, the American people want Congress,
want their elected officials, to address corporate greed, to address
income and wealth inequality, and end a tax system in which some of the
wealthiest people in this country in a given year do not pay a nickel
in Federal taxes, where large, profitable corporations do not pay a
nickel in Federal taxes. And they want a tax system which is fair,
where the wealthy and large corporations pay their fair share.
The last poll that I saw had Congress--the U.S. Congress--with a 16-
percent approval rating--16 percent. And to me, this was shocking,
really quite shocking, because I suspect that the 16 percent who
believe that Congress was doing something meaningful really don't know
what is going on.
So what is Congress doing right now at a time in which we face so
many massive problems, not to mention climate change, not to mention a
massive housing crisis where 18 million families are paying half of
their income in housing, not to mention the student debt that 45
million Americans are carrying? What is Congress about? What are we
working on right this minute? And the answer is that for 2 months, a
107-member conference committee has been meeting behind closed doors to
provide over $50 billion in corporate welfare, with no strings
attached, to the highly profitable microchip industry.
No, we are not talking about healthcare for all. No, we are not
talking about making higher education affordable. No, we are not
talking about making sure that young people can earn decent salaries
when they become teachers. No, we are not talking about leading the
world in combating climate change. We are talking about giving $50
billion in corporate welfare, with no strings attached, a blank check,
to the highly profitable microchip industry.
And, yes, if you can believe it--and I am talking to the 16 percent
of Americans who have a favorable opinion of Congress--if you can
believe it, this legislation may also provide a $10 billion bailout to
Jeff Bezos, the second wealthiest person in America, so that his
company Blue Origin can launch a rocket ship to the Moon.
For all of my colleagues who tell us how deeply, deeply concerned
they are about the deficit--oh, my goodness, we cannot help working
families with a child tax credit; we cannot expand Medicare to cover
dental and hearing aids and eyeglasses; we can't build the affordable
housing; Bernie, we don't have the money to do that; we have a big
deficit--well, what about the deficit when it comes to giving $52
billion in corporate welfare to some of the most profitable
corporations in America? I guess, when you are giving corporate welfare
to big and powerful interests, the deficit no longer matters.
There is no doubt in my mind that there is a global shortage in
microchips and semiconductors, which is making
it harder for manufacturers to produce the automobiles and cell phones
and the electronic equipment that we need. This shortage is costing
American workers good jobs and raising prices for families. I don't
think there is a debate about that reality, which is why I--and I think
many other others here in the Senate--fully support efforts to expand
U.S. microchip production.
But the question that we should be asking is this. Should American
taxpayers provide the microchip industry with a blank check of over $50
billion at a time when semiconductor companies are making tens of
billions of dollars in profits and paying their executives exorbitant
compensation packages? My answer to that question, and I think the
American people's answer to that question, is a resounding no.
Let's review some recent history about the microchip industry, which
I do not hear discussed very often here on the floor. Over the last 20
years, the microchip industry has shut down--has shut down--over 780
manufacturing plants in the United States. It shut down over 780
manufacturing plants in the United States and eliminated 150,000
American jobs while moving most of their production overseas after
receiving some $91.5 billion in government subsidies and loans. Got
that? They have shut down over 780 plants, thrown 150,000 American
workers out on the street as they have gone abroad. In other words, in
order to make more profits, these companies took government money and
used that money to ship good-paying jobs abroad.
And what are we doing about that? You shut down plants in America;
you jeopardize the production of microchips here in America; you throw
150,000 workers out on the street; and what is our response? Hey, here
is $52 billion. Thank you very much for your patriotism and your
respect for American workers.
Now, that approach may make sense to some people, maybe people who
got a lot of money from the microchip industry in campaign
contributions. I don't know. But it sure as hell does not make sense to
me. In total, it has been estimated that five major semiconductor
companies will receive the lion's share of this taxpayer handout. Those
companies are Intel, Texas Instruments, Micron Technology,
GlobalFoundries, and Samsung.
These five companies, my friends, made $70 billion in profits last
year. So if you are a worker in America trying to get by on $12, $13 an
hour, nothing we can do for you. If you can't afford the outrageous
cost of healthcare in America, can't do anything for you. Can't buy the
prescription drugs that your doctor prescribes because they are too
expensive? Can't do anything for you. But if you are an industry where
the top five companies made $70 billion in profits last year, well, we
have some good news for you. Keep the campaign contributions coming. We
are there for you, and we are going to give you a $52 billion handout.
The company that will likely benefit the most from this taxpayer
assistance is Intel. I have nothing against Intel. I wish them the
best. But let's be clear. Intel is not a poor, struggling company. It
is not a company which is going broke. In 2021, last year, Intel made
nearly $20 billion in profits. That is not a bad year, $20 billion in
profits. During the pandemic, Intel had enough money to spend $16.6
billion not on research and development, not on starting new plants in
America but on buying back its own stock to reward its executives and
wealthy shareholders. That is what Intel did with its $20 billion in
profits.
Last year, Intel could afford to give its CEO, Pat Gelsinger, a $179
million compensation package--$179 million compensation package. Does
that sound like a company that needs a corporate bailout, that needs
taxpayer money to survive?
Over the past 20 years, Intel has spent over $100 million on lobbying
and campaign contributions--that is the definition of the corrupt
political system under which we live--while at the same time shipping
thousands of jobs to China and other low-income countries. And that is
a company that the American people should be bailing out, really?
Another company that would receive taxpayer assistance under this
legislation is Texas Instruments. Last year, Texas Instruments made
$7.8 billion in profits. In 2020, that company spent $2.5 billion
buying back its own stock while it also, like Intel, has outsourced
thousands of good-paying American jobs to low-wage countries.
Who else is in line to receive corporate welfare under this bill?
Well, how about the Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Company, TSMC?
It is in line to potentially receive billions of dollars in Federal
grants under this bill. It might be interesting to note who the largest
shareholder of TSMC is. Well, if you guessed the Government of Taiwan,
you would be correct, which should come as no surprise to anybody who
studies how other countries throughout the world conduct industrial
policy. Let us be clear. When we provide TSMC money, we are giving that
taxpayer money directly to the Government of Taiwan.
Samsung, another very large corporate entity from South Korea, is
also in line to receive Federal funding under this bill. In other
words, not only would this bill be providing corporate welfare to
profitable American corporations, but we would literally be handing
over U.S. taxpayer dollars to corporations that are owned or controlled
by other nations. And on and on it goes.
Let me be very clear. I believe in industrial policy. I do. I believe
that it makes sense, on certain occasions, for the Federal Government
and the private sector to work together to address a pressing need in
America, to sit down and say: OK. You want to make some money. We have
national needs that have to be addressed. How do we work well together
so that you as a corporation do OK and so that taxpayers of this
country do OK? That is called sensible industrial policy.
Industrial policy means cooperation between the government and
private sector--cooperation. It does not mean the government providing
massive amounts of corporate welfare to profitable corporations without
getting anything in return. That is not industrial policy. That is just
giving the money to large, profitable corporations that make a lot of
campaign contributions.
The question is, Will the U.S. Government develop an industrial
policy that benefits all of our people or will we continue to have an
industrial policy that benefits the wealthy and the powerful?
In 1968, Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., said:
The problem is that we all too often have socialism for the
rich and rugged free enterprise capitalism for the poor.
I am afraid that what Dr. King said 54 years ago was accurate back
then, and it is even more accurate today.
We hear a lot of talk in the Halls of Congress about the need to
create public-private partnerships, and that all sounds very nice. But
when the government adopts an industrial policy that socializes all of
the risk and privatizes all of the profits, that is not a partnership;
that is crony capitalism.
Some of my colleagues make a point that the microchip industry is
enormously important for our economy and that we must become less
dependent on foreign nations for microchips. I agree. There is no
argument about that. But we can and must accomplish that goal without
simply throwing money at these companies while the taxpayer gets
nothing in return. In my view, we must prevent microchip companies from
receiving taxpayer assistance unless they agree to issue warrants or
equity stakes to the Federal Government.
If private companies are going to benefit from generous taxpayer
subsidies, the financial gains made by these companies must be shared
with the American people, not just wealthy shareholders. That is what a
real partnership--private-public partnership--is about. In other words,
if microchip companies make a profit as a direct result of these
Federal grants, the taxpayers of this country have a right to get a
reasonable return on that investment.
Further, if microchip companies receive taxpayer assistance, they
must agree that they will not buy back their own stock, outsource
American jobs, repeal existing collective bargaining agreements, and
must remain neutral in any union organizing effort. This is not a
radical idea. In fact, all of these conditions were imposed on
companies that received taxpayer assistance during the pandemic and
passed the Senate by a vote of 96 to 0. These are not radical demands.
Moreover, I know this may be a radical idea in the Halls of Congress,
but, no, I do not believe that this legislation should approve a $10
billion bailout for Jeff Bezos to fly to the Moon. I know that is a
very radical idea, but maybe, just maybe, a middle class which is
struggling, which is falling behind, should not see their taxpayer
dollars go to the second wealthiest person in America. Radical idea, I
know, but that is my view. Mr. Bezos is worth some $138 billion. He
became $33 billion richer during the pandemic, and in a given year, Mr.
Bezos has paid nothing in Federal income taxes because he and his
friends write a tax system that benefits the wealthy.
I say to Mr. Bezos, if he wants to go to the Moon, let him go to the
Moon. That is OK. But he should do it on his own dime, not that of the
U.S. taxpayers.
This is where we are. This country faces enormous issues. We are not
dealing with those issues. Instead, we are talking about a massive
bailout for profitable corporations and a $10 billion check for the
second wealthiest guy in this country. I would hope that Members of
Congress listen to the American people, stand up for the working class
and the middle class of this country and not give a massive amount of
corporate welfare to people who don't need it.
I yield the floor. | working families | racist |
07/13/2022 | Mr. SANDERS | Senate | CREC-2022-07-13-pt1-PgS3253 | nan | nan | Mr. SANDERS. Madam President, at a time of massive income and wealth
inequality, the American people are sick and tired of the unprecedented
level of corporate greed that we are seeing right now. The American
people are sick and tired of paying outrageously high prices at the gas
pump and at the grocery store while at the same time oil companies and
food companies are making recordbreaking profits.
The American people are sick and tired of struggling to pay for the
basic necessities of life while at the same time 700 billionaires in
this country became $2 trillion richer during the pandemic. And income
and wealth inequality today is worse than it has been for 100 years--
people on top doing phenomenally well, middle class working families
fall further and further behind.
The American people are sick and tired of seeing multibillionaires,
like Mr. Musk and Mr. Bezos and Mr. Branson, taking joyrides to outer
space in their spaceships, buying $500 million superyachts, and living
in mansions all over the world while some 600,000 people in our country
are homeless. In other words, we are looking at two worlds. People on
top never did better, middle class is continuing to decline, and the
poor are living in abysmal conditions.
And in the midst of all of this, the American people want Congress,
want their elected officials, to address corporate greed, to address
income and wealth inequality, and end a tax system in which some of the
wealthiest people in this country in a given year do not pay a nickel
in Federal taxes, where large, profitable corporations do not pay a
nickel in Federal taxes. And they want a tax system which is fair,
where the wealthy and large corporations pay their fair share.
The last poll that I saw had Congress--the U.S. Congress--with a 16-
percent approval rating--16 percent. And to me, this was shocking,
really quite shocking, because I suspect that the 16 percent who
believe that Congress was doing something meaningful really don't know
what is going on.
So what is Congress doing right now at a time in which we face so
many massive problems, not to mention climate change, not to mention a
massive housing crisis where 18 million families are paying half of
their income in housing, not to mention the student debt that 45
million Americans are carrying? What is Congress about? What are we
working on right this minute? And the answer is that for 2 months, a
107-member conference committee has been meeting behind closed doors to
provide over $50 billion in corporate welfare, with no strings
attached, to the highly profitable microchip industry.
No, we are not talking about healthcare for all. No, we are not
talking about making higher education affordable. No, we are not
talking about making sure that young people can earn decent salaries
when they become teachers. No, we are not talking about leading the
world in combating climate change. We are talking about giving $50
billion in corporate welfare, with no strings attached, a blank check,
to the highly profitable microchip industry.
And, yes, if you can believe it--and I am talking to the 16 percent
of Americans who have a favorable opinion of Congress--if you can
believe it, this legislation may also provide a $10 billion bailout to
Jeff Bezos, the second wealthiest person in America, so that his
company Blue Origin can launch a rocket ship to the Moon.
For all of my colleagues who tell us how deeply, deeply concerned
they are about the deficit--oh, my goodness, we cannot help working
families with a child tax credit; we cannot expand Medicare to cover
dental and hearing aids and eyeglasses; we can't build the affordable
housing; Bernie, we don't have the money to do that; we have a big
deficit--well, what about the deficit when it comes to giving $52
billion in corporate welfare to some of the most profitable
corporations in America? I guess, when you are giving corporate welfare
to big and powerful interests, the deficit no longer matters.
There is no doubt in my mind that there is a global shortage in
microchips and semiconductors, which is making
it harder for manufacturers to produce the automobiles and cell phones
and the electronic equipment that we need. This shortage is costing
American workers good jobs and raising prices for families. I don't
think there is a debate about that reality, which is why I--and I think
many other others here in the Senate--fully support efforts to expand
U.S. microchip production.
But the question that we should be asking is this. Should American
taxpayers provide the microchip industry with a blank check of over $50
billion at a time when semiconductor companies are making tens of
billions of dollars in profits and paying their executives exorbitant
compensation packages? My answer to that question, and I think the
American people's answer to that question, is a resounding no.
Let's review some recent history about the microchip industry, which
I do not hear discussed very often here on the floor. Over the last 20
years, the microchip industry has shut down--has shut down--over 780
manufacturing plants in the United States. It shut down over 780
manufacturing plants in the United States and eliminated 150,000
American jobs while moving most of their production overseas after
receiving some $91.5 billion in government subsidies and loans. Got
that? They have shut down over 780 plants, thrown 150,000 American
workers out on the street as they have gone abroad. In other words, in
order to make more profits, these companies took government money and
used that money to ship good-paying jobs abroad.
And what are we doing about that? You shut down plants in America;
you jeopardize the production of microchips here in America; you throw
150,000 workers out on the street; and what is our response? Hey, here
is $52 billion. Thank you very much for your patriotism and your
respect for American workers.
Now, that approach may make sense to some people, maybe people who
got a lot of money from the microchip industry in campaign
contributions. I don't know. But it sure as hell does not make sense to
me. In total, it has been estimated that five major semiconductor
companies will receive the lion's share of this taxpayer handout. Those
companies are Intel, Texas Instruments, Micron Technology,
GlobalFoundries, and Samsung.
These five companies, my friends, made $70 billion in profits last
year. So if you are a worker in America trying to get by on $12, $13 an
hour, nothing we can do for you. If you can't afford the outrageous
cost of healthcare in America, can't do anything for you. Can't buy the
prescription drugs that your doctor prescribes because they are too
expensive? Can't do anything for you. But if you are an industry where
the top five companies made $70 billion in profits last year, well, we
have some good news for you. Keep the campaign contributions coming. We
are there for you, and we are going to give you a $52 billion handout.
The company that will likely benefit the most from this taxpayer
assistance is Intel. I have nothing against Intel. I wish them the
best. But let's be clear. Intel is not a poor, struggling company. It
is not a company which is going broke. In 2021, last year, Intel made
nearly $20 billion in profits. That is not a bad year, $20 billion in
profits. During the pandemic, Intel had enough money to spend $16.6
billion not on research and development, not on starting new plants in
America but on buying back its own stock to reward its executives and
wealthy shareholders. That is what Intel did with its $20 billion in
profits.
Last year, Intel could afford to give its CEO, Pat Gelsinger, a $179
million compensation package--$179 million compensation package. Does
that sound like a company that needs a corporate bailout, that needs
taxpayer money to survive?
Over the past 20 years, Intel has spent over $100 million on lobbying
and campaign contributions--that is the definition of the corrupt
political system under which we live--while at the same time shipping
thousands of jobs to China and other low-income countries. And that is
a company that the American people should be bailing out, really?
Another company that would receive taxpayer assistance under this
legislation is Texas Instruments. Last year, Texas Instruments made
$7.8 billion in profits. In 2020, that company spent $2.5 billion
buying back its own stock while it also, like Intel, has outsourced
thousands of good-paying American jobs to low-wage countries.
Who else is in line to receive corporate welfare under this bill?
Well, how about the Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Company, TSMC?
It is in line to potentially receive billions of dollars in Federal
grants under this bill. It might be interesting to note who the largest
shareholder of TSMC is. Well, if you guessed the Government of Taiwan,
you would be correct, which should come as no surprise to anybody who
studies how other countries throughout the world conduct industrial
policy. Let us be clear. When we provide TSMC money, we are giving that
taxpayer money directly to the Government of Taiwan.
Samsung, another very large corporate entity from South Korea, is
also in line to receive Federal funding under this bill. In other
words, not only would this bill be providing corporate welfare to
profitable American corporations, but we would literally be handing
over U.S. taxpayer dollars to corporations that are owned or controlled
by other nations. And on and on it goes.
Let me be very clear. I believe in industrial policy. I do. I believe
that it makes sense, on certain occasions, for the Federal Government
and the private sector to work together to address a pressing need in
America, to sit down and say: OK. You want to make some money. We have
national needs that have to be addressed. How do we work well together
so that you as a corporation do OK and so that taxpayers of this
country do OK? That is called sensible industrial policy.
Industrial policy means cooperation between the government and
private sector--cooperation. It does not mean the government providing
massive amounts of corporate welfare to profitable corporations without
getting anything in return. That is not industrial policy. That is just
giving the money to large, profitable corporations that make a lot of
campaign contributions.
The question is, Will the U.S. Government develop an industrial
policy that benefits all of our people or will we continue to have an
industrial policy that benefits the wealthy and the powerful?
In 1968, Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., said:
The problem is that we all too often have socialism for the
rich and rugged free enterprise capitalism for the poor.
I am afraid that what Dr. King said 54 years ago was accurate back
then, and it is even more accurate today.
We hear a lot of talk in the Halls of Congress about the need to
create public-private partnerships, and that all sounds very nice. But
when the government adopts an industrial policy that socializes all of
the risk and privatizes all of the profits, that is not a partnership;
that is crony capitalism.
Some of my colleagues make a point that the microchip industry is
enormously important for our economy and that we must become less
dependent on foreign nations for microchips. I agree. There is no
argument about that. But we can and must accomplish that goal without
simply throwing money at these companies while the taxpayer gets
nothing in return. In my view, we must prevent microchip companies from
receiving taxpayer assistance unless they agree to issue warrants or
equity stakes to the Federal Government.
If private companies are going to benefit from generous taxpayer
subsidies, the financial gains made by these companies must be shared
with the American people, not just wealthy shareholders. That is what a
real partnership--private-public partnership--is about. In other words,
if microchip companies make a profit as a direct result of these
Federal grants, the taxpayers of this country have a right to get a
reasonable return on that investment.
Further, if microchip companies receive taxpayer assistance, they
must agree that they will not buy back their own stock, outsource
American jobs, repeal existing collective bargaining agreements, and
must remain neutral in any union organizing effort. This is not a
radical idea. In fact, all of these conditions were imposed on
companies that received taxpayer assistance during the pandemic and
passed the Senate by a vote of 96 to 0. These are not radical demands.
Moreover, I know this may be a radical idea in the Halls of Congress,
but, no, I do not believe that this legislation should approve a $10
billion bailout for Jeff Bezos to fly to the Moon. I know that is a
very radical idea, but maybe, just maybe, a middle class which is
struggling, which is falling behind, should not see their taxpayer
dollars go to the second wealthiest person in America. Radical idea, I
know, but that is my view. Mr. Bezos is worth some $138 billion. He
became $33 billion richer during the pandemic, and in a given year, Mr.
Bezos has paid nothing in Federal income taxes because he and his
friends write a tax system that benefits the wealthy.
I say to Mr. Bezos, if he wants to go to the Moon, let him go to the
Moon. That is OK. But he should do it on his own dime, not that of the
U.S. taxpayers.
This is where we are. This country faces enormous issues. We are not
dealing with those issues. Instead, we are talking about a massive
bailout for profitable corporations and a $10 billion check for the
second wealthiest guy in this country. I would hope that Members of
Congress listen to the American people, stand up for the working class
and the middle class of this country and not give a massive amount of
corporate welfare to people who don't need it.
I yield the floor. | working class | racist |
07/13/2022 | Unknown | Senate | CREC-2022-07-13-pt1-PgS3263 | nan | nan | U.S. Supreme Court
Madam President, I rise today now for the 16th time to call out the
dark
money scheme to capture and control our Supreme Court.
The last time I rose to shine a light on this scheme, I sounded a
warning about a case then pending at the Supreme Court called West
Virginia v. EPA. I discussed how the Court the dark money built was
primed to smash through precedent and weaponize fringe legal theories
to deliver for the scheme's big donors. I am sorry but not surprised to
report that the Supreme Court's Federalist Society Six did exactly what
the polluters asked. Not only did the Court deliver for polluters, it
delivered big.
Before we dive into that, let's recap what we knew going into this
case.
First, the case never should have made it this far in the first
place. A handful of States, with fossil fuel-funded attorneys general
and an armada of rightwing front groups that were propped up by dark
money from the fossil fuel industry, asked the Supreme Court to strike
down an EPA rule regulating greenhouse gas emissions from existing
coal-fired powerplants. The problem was that the rule no longer
existed. So there wasn't actually an operating EPA rule to challenge,
meaning there was no constitutional case or controversy and no reason
for a legitimate Court to entertain the industry's invitation.
But this is the Court that dark money built, and it wasn't going to
let this constitutional guardrail stand in its way of pleasing the big
donors who packed the Court.
Supreme Court precedent had repeatedly rejected the polluters'
arguments outright. The polluters argued that Congress, not the EPA and
the so-called administrative state, needed to do the regulating here.
It is a matter of common sense that Congress delegates authorities to
the EPA. It is also well known that polluters want to knock questions
away from expert regulators and over to Congress, where their dark
money political power--also a creature of the Court that dark money
built--can be brought to bear to buy delay and obstruction. The power
of Congress to legislate broadly and let Agency experts fill in the
gaps has been upheld for decades against persistent attacks from
regulated industries.
Well, no more. No matters of law or fact had changed since the last
time similar questions were answered by the Court. The thing that
changed is who is on the Court: a majority, selected by polluters,
using hundreds of millions in dark money, which brings us to the
decision itself. There is good news, and there is very, very bad news.
The good news is that the Court's ruling is actually very narrow as
to the EPA's authority to regulate greenhouse gases in the power
sector. It is limited to deliberate generation shifting. So there is
lots left to work with, and the EPA needs to pull up its socks and get
to work on regulating carbon emissions and other forms of air
pollution. So far, in 18 months of the Biden administration, the EPA
has managed to produce one carbon emissions regulation and not a very
strong one at that. The EPA needs to move now as fast as possible.
There is not a second to waste. That is the good news.
The bad news, however, is grim. The Federalist Society's Justices
loaded up their opinions with polluter talking points and hothouse-
grown polluter legal doctrines, paving the way for polluters to block
or delay regulations for years to come.
Start with the polluter talking points, rife throughout Justice
Gorsuch's concurrence, which spends 20 pages decrying the dangers of
government regulation. He calls regulators a ``ruling class of largely
unaccountable `ministers.' '' This is not even remotely true. If there
is an unaccountable ruling class in America right now, it is the Court
that dark money built and the dark money forces behind it.
Compare that to the EPA. The EPA's leadership is selected by the
President, approved by the Senate, and can be fired at will should they
deviate from the elected President's priorities. They are all directly
accountable, and the White House's Office of Management and Budget
reviews every EPA regulation to make sure it is consistent with the
elected President's priorities.
Congress retains complete control over the EPA's funding and has
entire committees dedicated to oversight. It is Congress that provided
the EPA with its instructions through laws like the Clean Air Act and
the Clean Water Acts. Congress also created the Administrative
Procedure Act to assure that Agencies like the EPA carry out their
duties fairly, according to the facts, under proper procedure, and
under rigorous judicial supervision, and we passed the Congressional
Review Act so Congress is able to swiftly undo any rules that it
doesn't like.
In actuality, in the real world, there is direct accountability and
oversight over the EPA by all three branches--by all three branches--
over the supposedly unaccountable ruling class. By comparison, Justice
Gorsuch and his colleagues wield their unaccountable power without even
the bare minimum of an enforceable ethics code.
This argument by Justice Gorsuch may not be founded in fact, but it
has a foundation. The idea that the biggest threat to freedom is an
administrative state full of unaccountable bureaucrats is a
longstanding talking point of the fossil fuel industry constantly
trotted out by Republican politicians and fossil fuel front groups.
Here is just a taste of what I mean.
Here is the Heritage Foundation--a key fossil fuel front group:
[T]he administrative state's functionaries are powerful. .
. . They are unelected, unknown, and, for all practical
purposes often unaccountable.
Sound familiar?
Here is the minority leader himself responding to a speech by a
Republican Senator who is decrying unelected bureaucrats. The minority
leader called this the ``single biggest problem confronting our country
. . . the single biggest thing holding this country back from reaching
its potential.'' And in the wake of this very decision, he went back to
their go-to talking point: ``unelected, unaccountable bureaucrats.''
It just is not true. The foundation of Gorsuch's screed is not fact;
it is political fossil fuel talking points, and we should not be
surprised that those talking points made their way into an opinion by a
Supreme Court Justice. That is exactly what the Court that dark money
built was built for.
Aside from the talking points are legal doctrines hatched in
polluter-funded hothouse doctrine factories, a web of phony think
tanks, scheme-friendly scholars, and conservative conferences designed
to cultivate and legitimize fringe legal theories--reverse engineered
to produce the results the polluters want.
One of these is the so-called major questions doctrine, which--guess
what--makes its maiden appearance in West Virginia v. EPA.
Let's look at how the major questions doctrine traveled from the
doctrine factory into a Supreme Court decision.
The Trump administration, fully in tow to the fossil fuel industry,
took this rare specimen of legal theory and pumped it up into a
powerful weapon against the functioning of the Federal Government. From
day one, Trump's top adviser, Steve Bannon, vowed that the Trump
administration would carry out the ``deconstruction of the
administrative state.'' Trump's White House Counsel Don McGahn--the
same Don McGahn who oversaw the confirmation of the scheme's hand-
picked Justices--admitted that the ``judicial selection and the
deregulation effort are really the flip side of the same coin.''
Think about that. In his own words, the Trump White House had a
``larger plan'' to wipe out government regulations by using judges.
For 4 years, the Trump lawyers argued in court for this major
questions doctrine that had been previously unmentioned in any Supreme
Court decision. The Trump team urged courts to deploy the doctrine to
strike down Agency laws, including in this case, West Virginia v. EPA.
Now, while the Court had never mentioned the doctrine, it had been
mentioned. Brett Kavanaugh, on the DC Circuit, did while he was
auditioning himself for a seat on the Supreme Court, to catch the eye
of the scheme donors and to telegraph to them how eager he was to do
their bidding. Kavanaugh wrote a dissent in a case about net
neutrality--a case with many of the scheme's dark money front groups--
Cato, Competitive Enterprise Institute, Pacific Legal Foundation--
present as amici. They were the right audience for Kavanaugh's ``major
questions'' audition tape, and he aimed to please.
Payday for scheme donors came in West Virginia v. EPA. At least 14
polluter front group amici showed up to push in chorus for their major
questions doctrine--the usual suspects--funded by fossil fuel dark
money, like Cato, the Koch flagship Americans for Prosperity, and the
Competitive Enterprise Institute.
Justice Gorsuch's concurrence is rife with citations legitimizing
doctrine factory ``scholarship.'' He cites articles written by the
founder and president of the Free State Foundation, a member of the
dark money State Policy Network; by a member of the dark money
Federalist Society's Administrative Law Group executive committee; and
by the former president of the Koch-funded American Enterprise
Institute.
The scheme is all about boosting corporate power and rolling back
government regulations. It is not just about building a dark money
Court; it is about front groups by the dozen which operate in
coordinated flotillas; it is about faux scholarship--reverse-engineered
in a parallel universe of faux academia--to give polluters power over
government; and it is about more than a half a billion dollars in dark
money spent to set up and run the whole sham enterprise.
The attack on regulation began with an effort to revive the so-called
nondelegation doctrine discarded by the Supreme Court almost 100 years
ago. Like the major questions doctrine, the nondelegation doctrine
allowed courts to strike down Agency rules when Congress wasn't
explicit enough in delegating power. Polluters loved it. Scheme front
groups like the Cato Institute--propped up by the dark money from the
fossil fuel billionaire Koch family and from companies like
ExxonMobil--sponsored research that argued for reviving the
nondelegation doctrine. They organized conferences and seminars,
lobbied legislators, and funded law groups designed to spread the idea
far and wide.
But ``major questions'' had one advantage. Years ago, on the DC
Circuit Court of Appeals, Justice Breyer had used those two words once,
in passing, in a lengthy law review article. They could seize that
camouflage. And guess what. ``Major questions'' is just
``nondelegation'' in disguise. If you don't believe me, let's go back
to Justice Gorsuch in a concurrence from another case earlier this
year:
[T]he major questions doctrine is closely related to what
is sometimes called the nondelegation doctrine. Indeed, for
decades, courts have cited the nondelegation doctrine as a
reason to apply the major questions doctrine. . . . Whichever
the doctrine, the point is the same.
Indeed. The point is that a Court captured by polluter interests will
find any way it can to import polluter doctrine--cooked up in polluter-
funded doctrine factories--into the law of the land, and that is just
what they just did in West Virginia v. EPA. For the polluters, mission
accomplished.
The Court that dark money built had already wreaked havoc in our law.
Even before they got to six, they had run up 80 5-to-4 partisan
decisions benefiting big Republican donor interests--80 5-to-4 partisan
decisions benefiting big Republican donor interests. Now with six
Justices, they have set about destroying precedent left and right,
taking away the constitutional right of women to control their own
reproductive decisions, blocking efforts to reduce gun violence, and
now adopting new theories to empower polluters against public health
regulation.
The FedSoc Six's hatred for regulation isn't shared much outside the
polluter-funded parallel universe. Most Americans appreciate
regulations. They appreciate regulations that help make sure food and
water are safe, that their air is clean to breathe, that medicines
actually work, that markets operate honestly, that investors have real
information, and that car seats protect you in a car wreck. The
American people are right to sense that something is deeply amiss at
the U.S. Supreme Court.
A captured Court presents an unprecedented challenge to the other
branches of government, but we aren't helpless.
First, we need to start telling the truth about what is going on. The
pattern is unmistakable, and people across the country need to
understand this is not right; this is not normal. We can also pass laws
like my DISCLOSE Act, which I hope will be coming up for a vote
shortly, to shine light on the dark money donors who captured our Court
in a long scheme.
We can require real ethics requirements for Supreme Court Justices,
just like all other Federal judges already have. Remember the ongoing
ethics investigations against Judge Kavanaugh? They were dropped, not
because they were resolved, not because they ended, not because he was
found not culpable; they were dropped against Judge Kavanaugh because
he escaped to the Supreme Court, where ethics investigations don't
exist, so they had to shut down the ongoing investigations. That is a
terrible signal.
We can also require Justices to report gifts and hospitality, as all
other judges do and all senior government officials do in the executive
and legislative branches.
There are many ways to push back against the new ``ruling class'' of
``unaccountable ministers'' occupying the captured Court and to assure
the American people that fairness and justice, and not the Court's
deep-pocketed special interest friends, are what drives Court
decisions.
There is a lot to be done, and we need to begin. To be continued.
I yield the floor. | the Fed | antisemitic |
07/13/2022 | Unknown | Senate | CREC-2022-07-13-pt1-PgS3263 | nan | nan | U.S. Supreme Court
Madam President, I rise today now for the 16th time to call out the
dark
money scheme to capture and control our Supreme Court.
The last time I rose to shine a light on this scheme, I sounded a
warning about a case then pending at the Supreme Court called West
Virginia v. EPA. I discussed how the Court the dark money built was
primed to smash through precedent and weaponize fringe legal theories
to deliver for the scheme's big donors. I am sorry but not surprised to
report that the Supreme Court's Federalist Society Six did exactly what
the polluters asked. Not only did the Court deliver for polluters, it
delivered big.
Before we dive into that, let's recap what we knew going into this
case.
First, the case never should have made it this far in the first
place. A handful of States, with fossil fuel-funded attorneys general
and an armada of rightwing front groups that were propped up by dark
money from the fossil fuel industry, asked the Supreme Court to strike
down an EPA rule regulating greenhouse gas emissions from existing
coal-fired powerplants. The problem was that the rule no longer
existed. So there wasn't actually an operating EPA rule to challenge,
meaning there was no constitutional case or controversy and no reason
for a legitimate Court to entertain the industry's invitation.
But this is the Court that dark money built, and it wasn't going to
let this constitutional guardrail stand in its way of pleasing the big
donors who packed the Court.
Supreme Court precedent had repeatedly rejected the polluters'
arguments outright. The polluters argued that Congress, not the EPA and
the so-called administrative state, needed to do the regulating here.
It is a matter of common sense that Congress delegates authorities to
the EPA. It is also well known that polluters want to knock questions
away from expert regulators and over to Congress, where their dark
money political power--also a creature of the Court that dark money
built--can be brought to bear to buy delay and obstruction. The power
of Congress to legislate broadly and let Agency experts fill in the
gaps has been upheld for decades against persistent attacks from
regulated industries.
Well, no more. No matters of law or fact had changed since the last
time similar questions were answered by the Court. The thing that
changed is who is on the Court: a majority, selected by polluters,
using hundreds of millions in dark money, which brings us to the
decision itself. There is good news, and there is very, very bad news.
The good news is that the Court's ruling is actually very narrow as
to the EPA's authority to regulate greenhouse gases in the power
sector. It is limited to deliberate generation shifting. So there is
lots left to work with, and the EPA needs to pull up its socks and get
to work on regulating carbon emissions and other forms of air
pollution. So far, in 18 months of the Biden administration, the EPA
has managed to produce one carbon emissions regulation and not a very
strong one at that. The EPA needs to move now as fast as possible.
There is not a second to waste. That is the good news.
The bad news, however, is grim. The Federalist Society's Justices
loaded up their opinions with polluter talking points and hothouse-
grown polluter legal doctrines, paving the way for polluters to block
or delay regulations for years to come.
Start with the polluter talking points, rife throughout Justice
Gorsuch's concurrence, which spends 20 pages decrying the dangers of
government regulation. He calls regulators a ``ruling class of largely
unaccountable `ministers.' '' This is not even remotely true. If there
is an unaccountable ruling class in America right now, it is the Court
that dark money built and the dark money forces behind it.
Compare that to the EPA. The EPA's leadership is selected by the
President, approved by the Senate, and can be fired at will should they
deviate from the elected President's priorities. They are all directly
accountable, and the White House's Office of Management and Budget
reviews every EPA regulation to make sure it is consistent with the
elected President's priorities.
Congress retains complete control over the EPA's funding and has
entire committees dedicated to oversight. It is Congress that provided
the EPA with its instructions through laws like the Clean Air Act and
the Clean Water Acts. Congress also created the Administrative
Procedure Act to assure that Agencies like the EPA carry out their
duties fairly, according to the facts, under proper procedure, and
under rigorous judicial supervision, and we passed the Congressional
Review Act so Congress is able to swiftly undo any rules that it
doesn't like.
In actuality, in the real world, there is direct accountability and
oversight over the EPA by all three branches--by all three branches--
over the supposedly unaccountable ruling class. By comparison, Justice
Gorsuch and his colleagues wield their unaccountable power without even
the bare minimum of an enforceable ethics code.
This argument by Justice Gorsuch may not be founded in fact, but it
has a foundation. The idea that the biggest threat to freedom is an
administrative state full of unaccountable bureaucrats is a
longstanding talking point of the fossil fuel industry constantly
trotted out by Republican politicians and fossil fuel front groups.
Here is just a taste of what I mean.
Here is the Heritage Foundation--a key fossil fuel front group:
[T]he administrative state's functionaries are powerful. .
. . They are unelected, unknown, and, for all practical
purposes often unaccountable.
Sound familiar?
Here is the minority leader himself responding to a speech by a
Republican Senator who is decrying unelected bureaucrats. The minority
leader called this the ``single biggest problem confronting our country
. . . the single biggest thing holding this country back from reaching
its potential.'' And in the wake of this very decision, he went back to
their go-to talking point: ``unelected, unaccountable bureaucrats.''
It just is not true. The foundation of Gorsuch's screed is not fact;
it is political fossil fuel talking points, and we should not be
surprised that those talking points made their way into an opinion by a
Supreme Court Justice. That is exactly what the Court that dark money
built was built for.
Aside from the talking points are legal doctrines hatched in
polluter-funded hothouse doctrine factories, a web of phony think
tanks, scheme-friendly scholars, and conservative conferences designed
to cultivate and legitimize fringe legal theories--reverse engineered
to produce the results the polluters want.
One of these is the so-called major questions doctrine, which--guess
what--makes its maiden appearance in West Virginia v. EPA.
Let's look at how the major questions doctrine traveled from the
doctrine factory into a Supreme Court decision.
The Trump administration, fully in tow to the fossil fuel industry,
took this rare specimen of legal theory and pumped it up into a
powerful weapon against the functioning of the Federal Government. From
day one, Trump's top adviser, Steve Bannon, vowed that the Trump
administration would carry out the ``deconstruction of the
administrative state.'' Trump's White House Counsel Don McGahn--the
same Don McGahn who oversaw the confirmation of the scheme's hand-
picked Justices--admitted that the ``judicial selection and the
deregulation effort are really the flip side of the same coin.''
Think about that. In his own words, the Trump White House had a
``larger plan'' to wipe out government regulations by using judges.
For 4 years, the Trump lawyers argued in court for this major
questions doctrine that had been previously unmentioned in any Supreme
Court decision. The Trump team urged courts to deploy the doctrine to
strike down Agency laws, including in this case, West Virginia v. EPA.
Now, while the Court had never mentioned the doctrine, it had been
mentioned. Brett Kavanaugh, on the DC Circuit, did while he was
auditioning himself for a seat on the Supreme Court, to catch the eye
of the scheme donors and to telegraph to them how eager he was to do
their bidding. Kavanaugh wrote a dissent in a case about net
neutrality--a case with many of the scheme's dark money front groups--
Cato, Competitive Enterprise Institute, Pacific Legal Foundation--
present as amici. They were the right audience for Kavanaugh's ``major
questions'' audition tape, and he aimed to please.
Payday for scheme donors came in West Virginia v. EPA. At least 14
polluter front group amici showed up to push in chorus for their major
questions doctrine--the usual suspects--funded by fossil fuel dark
money, like Cato, the Koch flagship Americans for Prosperity, and the
Competitive Enterprise Institute.
Justice Gorsuch's concurrence is rife with citations legitimizing
doctrine factory ``scholarship.'' He cites articles written by the
founder and president of the Free State Foundation, a member of the
dark money State Policy Network; by a member of the dark money
Federalist Society's Administrative Law Group executive committee; and
by the former president of the Koch-funded American Enterprise
Institute.
The scheme is all about boosting corporate power and rolling back
government regulations. It is not just about building a dark money
Court; it is about front groups by the dozen which operate in
coordinated flotillas; it is about faux scholarship--reverse-engineered
in a parallel universe of faux academia--to give polluters power over
government; and it is about more than a half a billion dollars in dark
money spent to set up and run the whole sham enterprise.
The attack on regulation began with an effort to revive the so-called
nondelegation doctrine discarded by the Supreme Court almost 100 years
ago. Like the major questions doctrine, the nondelegation doctrine
allowed courts to strike down Agency rules when Congress wasn't
explicit enough in delegating power. Polluters loved it. Scheme front
groups like the Cato Institute--propped up by the dark money from the
fossil fuel billionaire Koch family and from companies like
ExxonMobil--sponsored research that argued for reviving the
nondelegation doctrine. They organized conferences and seminars,
lobbied legislators, and funded law groups designed to spread the idea
far and wide.
But ``major questions'' had one advantage. Years ago, on the DC
Circuit Court of Appeals, Justice Breyer had used those two words once,
in passing, in a lengthy law review article. They could seize that
camouflage. And guess what. ``Major questions'' is just
``nondelegation'' in disguise. If you don't believe me, let's go back
to Justice Gorsuch in a concurrence from another case earlier this
year:
[T]he major questions doctrine is closely related to what
is sometimes called the nondelegation doctrine. Indeed, for
decades, courts have cited the nondelegation doctrine as a
reason to apply the major questions doctrine. . . . Whichever
the doctrine, the point is the same.
Indeed. The point is that a Court captured by polluter interests will
find any way it can to import polluter doctrine--cooked up in polluter-
funded doctrine factories--into the law of the land, and that is just
what they just did in West Virginia v. EPA. For the polluters, mission
accomplished.
The Court that dark money built had already wreaked havoc in our law.
Even before they got to six, they had run up 80 5-to-4 partisan
decisions benefiting big Republican donor interests--80 5-to-4 partisan
decisions benefiting big Republican donor interests. Now with six
Justices, they have set about destroying precedent left and right,
taking away the constitutional right of women to control their own
reproductive decisions, blocking efforts to reduce gun violence, and
now adopting new theories to empower polluters against public health
regulation.
The FedSoc Six's hatred for regulation isn't shared much outside the
polluter-funded parallel universe. Most Americans appreciate
regulations. They appreciate regulations that help make sure food and
water are safe, that their air is clean to breathe, that medicines
actually work, that markets operate honestly, that investors have real
information, and that car seats protect you in a car wreck. The
American people are right to sense that something is deeply amiss at
the U.S. Supreme Court.
A captured Court presents an unprecedented challenge to the other
branches of government, but we aren't helpless.
First, we need to start telling the truth about what is going on. The
pattern is unmistakable, and people across the country need to
understand this is not right; this is not normal. We can also pass laws
like my DISCLOSE Act, which I hope will be coming up for a vote
shortly, to shine light on the dark money donors who captured our Court
in a long scheme.
We can require real ethics requirements for Supreme Court Justices,
just like all other Federal judges already have. Remember the ongoing
ethics investigations against Judge Kavanaugh? They were dropped, not
because they were resolved, not because they ended, not because he was
found not culpable; they were dropped against Judge Kavanaugh because
he escaped to the Supreme Court, where ethics investigations don't
exist, so they had to shut down the ongoing investigations. That is a
terrible signal.
We can also require Justices to report gifts and hospitality, as all
other judges do and all senior government officials do in the executive
and legislative branches.
There are many ways to push back against the new ``ruling class'' of
``unaccountable ministers'' occupying the captured Court and to assure
the American people that fairness and justice, and not the Court's
deep-pocketed special interest friends, are what drives Court
decisions.
There is a lot to be done, and we need to begin. To be continued.
I yield the floor. | single | homophobic |
07/13/2022 | Unknown | Senate | CREC-2022-07-13-pt1-PgS3263 | nan | nan | U.S. Supreme Court
Madam President, I rise today now for the 16th time to call out the
dark
money scheme to capture and control our Supreme Court.
The last time I rose to shine a light on this scheme, I sounded a
warning about a case then pending at the Supreme Court called West
Virginia v. EPA. I discussed how the Court the dark money built was
primed to smash through precedent and weaponize fringe legal theories
to deliver for the scheme's big donors. I am sorry but not surprised to
report that the Supreme Court's Federalist Society Six did exactly what
the polluters asked. Not only did the Court deliver for polluters, it
delivered big.
Before we dive into that, let's recap what we knew going into this
case.
First, the case never should have made it this far in the first
place. A handful of States, with fossil fuel-funded attorneys general
and an armada of rightwing front groups that were propped up by dark
money from the fossil fuel industry, asked the Supreme Court to strike
down an EPA rule regulating greenhouse gas emissions from existing
coal-fired powerplants. The problem was that the rule no longer
existed. So there wasn't actually an operating EPA rule to challenge,
meaning there was no constitutional case or controversy and no reason
for a legitimate Court to entertain the industry's invitation.
But this is the Court that dark money built, and it wasn't going to
let this constitutional guardrail stand in its way of pleasing the big
donors who packed the Court.
Supreme Court precedent had repeatedly rejected the polluters'
arguments outright. The polluters argued that Congress, not the EPA and
the so-called administrative state, needed to do the regulating here.
It is a matter of common sense that Congress delegates authorities to
the EPA. It is also well known that polluters want to knock questions
away from expert regulators and over to Congress, where their dark
money political power--also a creature of the Court that dark money
built--can be brought to bear to buy delay and obstruction. The power
of Congress to legislate broadly and let Agency experts fill in the
gaps has been upheld for decades against persistent attacks from
regulated industries.
Well, no more. No matters of law or fact had changed since the last
time similar questions were answered by the Court. The thing that
changed is who is on the Court: a majority, selected by polluters,
using hundreds of millions in dark money, which brings us to the
decision itself. There is good news, and there is very, very bad news.
The good news is that the Court's ruling is actually very narrow as
to the EPA's authority to regulate greenhouse gases in the power
sector. It is limited to deliberate generation shifting. So there is
lots left to work with, and the EPA needs to pull up its socks and get
to work on regulating carbon emissions and other forms of air
pollution. So far, in 18 months of the Biden administration, the EPA
has managed to produce one carbon emissions regulation and not a very
strong one at that. The EPA needs to move now as fast as possible.
There is not a second to waste. That is the good news.
The bad news, however, is grim. The Federalist Society's Justices
loaded up their opinions with polluter talking points and hothouse-
grown polluter legal doctrines, paving the way for polluters to block
or delay regulations for years to come.
Start with the polluter talking points, rife throughout Justice
Gorsuch's concurrence, which spends 20 pages decrying the dangers of
government regulation. He calls regulators a ``ruling class of largely
unaccountable `ministers.' '' This is not even remotely true. If there
is an unaccountable ruling class in America right now, it is the Court
that dark money built and the dark money forces behind it.
Compare that to the EPA. The EPA's leadership is selected by the
President, approved by the Senate, and can be fired at will should they
deviate from the elected President's priorities. They are all directly
accountable, and the White House's Office of Management and Budget
reviews every EPA regulation to make sure it is consistent with the
elected President's priorities.
Congress retains complete control over the EPA's funding and has
entire committees dedicated to oversight. It is Congress that provided
the EPA with its instructions through laws like the Clean Air Act and
the Clean Water Acts. Congress also created the Administrative
Procedure Act to assure that Agencies like the EPA carry out their
duties fairly, according to the facts, under proper procedure, and
under rigorous judicial supervision, and we passed the Congressional
Review Act so Congress is able to swiftly undo any rules that it
doesn't like.
In actuality, in the real world, there is direct accountability and
oversight over the EPA by all three branches--by all three branches--
over the supposedly unaccountable ruling class. By comparison, Justice
Gorsuch and his colleagues wield their unaccountable power without even
the bare minimum of an enforceable ethics code.
This argument by Justice Gorsuch may not be founded in fact, but it
has a foundation. The idea that the biggest threat to freedom is an
administrative state full of unaccountable bureaucrats is a
longstanding talking point of the fossil fuel industry constantly
trotted out by Republican politicians and fossil fuel front groups.
Here is just a taste of what I mean.
Here is the Heritage Foundation--a key fossil fuel front group:
[T]he administrative state's functionaries are powerful. .
. . They are unelected, unknown, and, for all practical
purposes often unaccountable.
Sound familiar?
Here is the minority leader himself responding to a speech by a
Republican Senator who is decrying unelected bureaucrats. The minority
leader called this the ``single biggest problem confronting our country
. . . the single biggest thing holding this country back from reaching
its potential.'' And in the wake of this very decision, he went back to
their go-to talking point: ``unelected, unaccountable bureaucrats.''
It just is not true. The foundation of Gorsuch's screed is not fact;
it is political fossil fuel talking points, and we should not be
surprised that those talking points made their way into an opinion by a
Supreme Court Justice. That is exactly what the Court that dark money
built was built for.
Aside from the talking points are legal doctrines hatched in
polluter-funded hothouse doctrine factories, a web of phony think
tanks, scheme-friendly scholars, and conservative conferences designed
to cultivate and legitimize fringe legal theories--reverse engineered
to produce the results the polluters want.
One of these is the so-called major questions doctrine, which--guess
what--makes its maiden appearance in West Virginia v. EPA.
Let's look at how the major questions doctrine traveled from the
doctrine factory into a Supreme Court decision.
The Trump administration, fully in tow to the fossil fuel industry,
took this rare specimen of legal theory and pumped it up into a
powerful weapon against the functioning of the Federal Government. From
day one, Trump's top adviser, Steve Bannon, vowed that the Trump
administration would carry out the ``deconstruction of the
administrative state.'' Trump's White House Counsel Don McGahn--the
same Don McGahn who oversaw the confirmation of the scheme's hand-
picked Justices--admitted that the ``judicial selection and the
deregulation effort are really the flip side of the same coin.''
Think about that. In his own words, the Trump White House had a
``larger plan'' to wipe out government regulations by using judges.
For 4 years, the Trump lawyers argued in court for this major
questions doctrine that had been previously unmentioned in any Supreme
Court decision. The Trump team urged courts to deploy the doctrine to
strike down Agency laws, including in this case, West Virginia v. EPA.
Now, while the Court had never mentioned the doctrine, it had been
mentioned. Brett Kavanaugh, on the DC Circuit, did while he was
auditioning himself for a seat on the Supreme Court, to catch the eye
of the scheme donors and to telegraph to them how eager he was to do
their bidding. Kavanaugh wrote a dissent in a case about net
neutrality--a case with many of the scheme's dark money front groups--
Cato, Competitive Enterprise Institute, Pacific Legal Foundation--
present as amici. They were the right audience for Kavanaugh's ``major
questions'' audition tape, and he aimed to please.
Payday for scheme donors came in West Virginia v. EPA. At least 14
polluter front group amici showed up to push in chorus for their major
questions doctrine--the usual suspects--funded by fossil fuel dark
money, like Cato, the Koch flagship Americans for Prosperity, and the
Competitive Enterprise Institute.
Justice Gorsuch's concurrence is rife with citations legitimizing
doctrine factory ``scholarship.'' He cites articles written by the
founder and president of the Free State Foundation, a member of the
dark money State Policy Network; by a member of the dark money
Federalist Society's Administrative Law Group executive committee; and
by the former president of the Koch-funded American Enterprise
Institute.
The scheme is all about boosting corporate power and rolling back
government regulations. It is not just about building a dark money
Court; it is about front groups by the dozen which operate in
coordinated flotillas; it is about faux scholarship--reverse-engineered
in a parallel universe of faux academia--to give polluters power over
government; and it is about more than a half a billion dollars in dark
money spent to set up and run the whole sham enterprise.
The attack on regulation began with an effort to revive the so-called
nondelegation doctrine discarded by the Supreme Court almost 100 years
ago. Like the major questions doctrine, the nondelegation doctrine
allowed courts to strike down Agency rules when Congress wasn't
explicit enough in delegating power. Polluters loved it. Scheme front
groups like the Cato Institute--propped up by the dark money from the
fossil fuel billionaire Koch family and from companies like
ExxonMobil--sponsored research that argued for reviving the
nondelegation doctrine. They organized conferences and seminars,
lobbied legislators, and funded law groups designed to spread the idea
far and wide.
But ``major questions'' had one advantage. Years ago, on the DC
Circuit Court of Appeals, Justice Breyer had used those two words once,
in passing, in a lengthy law review article. They could seize that
camouflage. And guess what. ``Major questions'' is just
``nondelegation'' in disguise. If you don't believe me, let's go back
to Justice Gorsuch in a concurrence from another case earlier this
year:
[T]he major questions doctrine is closely related to what
is sometimes called the nondelegation doctrine. Indeed, for
decades, courts have cited the nondelegation doctrine as a
reason to apply the major questions doctrine. . . . Whichever
the doctrine, the point is the same.
Indeed. The point is that a Court captured by polluter interests will
find any way it can to import polluter doctrine--cooked up in polluter-
funded doctrine factories--into the law of the land, and that is just
what they just did in West Virginia v. EPA. For the polluters, mission
accomplished.
The Court that dark money built had already wreaked havoc in our law.
Even before they got to six, they had run up 80 5-to-4 partisan
decisions benefiting big Republican donor interests--80 5-to-4 partisan
decisions benefiting big Republican donor interests. Now with six
Justices, they have set about destroying precedent left and right,
taking away the constitutional right of women to control their own
reproductive decisions, blocking efforts to reduce gun violence, and
now adopting new theories to empower polluters against public health
regulation.
The FedSoc Six's hatred for regulation isn't shared much outside the
polluter-funded parallel universe. Most Americans appreciate
regulations. They appreciate regulations that help make sure food and
water are safe, that their air is clean to breathe, that medicines
actually work, that markets operate honestly, that investors have real
information, and that car seats protect you in a car wreck. The
American people are right to sense that something is deeply amiss at
the U.S. Supreme Court.
A captured Court presents an unprecedented challenge to the other
branches of government, but we aren't helpless.
First, we need to start telling the truth about what is going on. The
pattern is unmistakable, and people across the country need to
understand this is not right; this is not normal. We can also pass laws
like my DISCLOSE Act, which I hope will be coming up for a vote
shortly, to shine light on the dark money donors who captured our Court
in a long scheme.
We can require real ethics requirements for Supreme Court Justices,
just like all other Federal judges already have. Remember the ongoing
ethics investigations against Judge Kavanaugh? They were dropped, not
because they were resolved, not because they ended, not because he was
found not culpable; they were dropped against Judge Kavanaugh because
he escaped to the Supreme Court, where ethics investigations don't
exist, so they had to shut down the ongoing investigations. That is a
terrible signal.
We can also require Justices to report gifts and hospitality, as all
other judges do and all senior government officials do in the executive
and legislative branches.
There are many ways to push back against the new ``ruling class'' of
``unaccountable ministers'' occupying the captured Court and to assure
the American people that fairness and justice, and not the Court's
deep-pocketed special interest friends, are what drives Court
decisions.
There is a lot to be done, and we need to begin. To be continued.
I yield the floor. | special interest | antisemitic |
07/13/2022 | The PRESIDING OFFICER | Senate | CREC-2022-07-13-pt1-PgS3251-2 | nan | nan | The PRESIDING OFFICER. The clerk will report the nomination.
The senior assistant legislative clerk read the nomination of Michael
S. Barr, of Michigan, to be Vice Chairman for Supervision of the Board
of Governors of the Federal Reserve System for a term of four years. | Federal Reserve | antisemitic |
01/06/2020 | Mr. McCONNELL | Senate | CREC-2020-01-06-pt1-PgS11-8 | nan | nan | Mr. McCONNELL. Mr. President, as the Senate convenes this afternoon,
we find our Nation facing two grave and serious choices. One concerns
our unity at home and the future of our Constitution. The other
involves our strength abroad and the security of our homeland. Both
situations demand serious, sober treatment from Congress. Both require
that we put enduring national interests ahead of the factionalism and
short-termism the Founding Fathers warned us about. But, unfortunately,
seriousness has been in short supply lately--in very short supply--from
the determined critics of President Trump, and our Nation, of course,
is worse for it.
Last Thursday, the United States took decisive action to end the
murderous scheming of Iran's chief terrorist. Qasem Soleimani had spent
numerous years masterminding attacks on American servicemembers and our
partners throughout the Middle East and expanding Iran's influence.
Despite sanctions and despite prohibitions by the U.N. Security
Council, he roamed throughout the region with impunity.
His hands bore the blood of more American servicemembers than anyone
else alive. Hundreds of American families have buried loved ones
because of him. Veterans have learned to live with permanent injuries
inflicted by his terrorists. In Iraq, Syria, and beyond, the
entire region felt the effects of his evil tactics.
We should welcome his death and its complication of Tehran's
terrorism-industrial complex, but we must remain vigilant and soberly
prepared for even further aggression.
It is completely appropriate that this decision would generate
interest and questions from this body. We can and we should learn more
about the intelligence and thinking that led to this operation and the
plan to defend American personnel and interests in the wake of it.
I am glad the administration will hold an all-Senators briefing on
Wednesday. It will be led by Secretary of Defense Esper, Chairman of
the Joint Chiefs of Staff General Milley, Secretary of State Pompeo,
and CIA Director Haspel.
Unfortunately, in this toxic political environment, some of our
colleagues rushed to blame our own government before even knowing the
facts, rushed to split hairs about intelligence before being briefed on
it, and rushed to downplay Soleimani's evil while presenting our own
President as the villain.
Soon after the news broke, one of our distinguished colleagues made a
public statement that rightly called Soleimani a ``murderer'' and then,
amazingly, walked that message back when the far left objected to the
factual statement. Since then, I believe all of her criticism has been
directed at our own President.
Another of our Democratic colleagues has been thinking out loud about
Middle East policy on social media. Mere days before President Trump's
decision, this Senator tore into the White House for what he described
as weakness and inaction. ``No one fears us'' he complained. ``Trump
has rendered America impotent in the Middle East.'' But since the
strike, he has done a complete 180. That same Senator has harshly
criticized our own President for getting tough. Ludicrously, he and
others on the left have accused the administration of committing an
illegal act and equated the removal of this terrorist leader with a
foreign power assassinating our own Secretary of Defense.
Here is what one expert had to say about it. Jeh Johnson, President
Obama's own former Pentagon general counsel and Secretary of Homeland
Security, said:
If you believe everything that our government is saying
about General Soleimani, he was a lawful military objective,
and the president, under his constitutional authority as
commander in chief, had ample domestic legal authority to
take him out without--
Without--
an additional congressional authorization. Whether he was a
terrorist or a general in a military force that was engaged
in armed attacks against our people, he was a lawful military
objective.
That was the former Secretary of Homeland Security in the Obama
administration, Jeh Johnson, an expert on these things.
Our former colleague, Joe Lieberman, who ran for Vice President on
the Democratic ticket in 2000, wrote this morning: ``In their uniformly
skeptical or negative reactions to Soleimani's death, Democrats are . .
. creating the risk that the U.S. will be seen as acting and speaking
with less authority abroad at this important time.'' That is how a
former Democratic Senator sees it.
The Senate is supposed to be the Chamber where overheated partisan
passions give way to sober judgment. Can we not at least wait until we
know the facts? Can we not maintain a shred--just a shred--of national
unity for 5 minutes--for 5 minutes--before deepening the partisan
trenches?
Must Democrats' distaste for this President dominate every thought
they express and every decision they make? Is that really the
seriousness that this situation deserves?
The full Senate will be briefed on Wednesday. I expect the committees
of oversight will also conduct hearings and that the Senators will have
plenty of opportunities to discuss our interests and policies in the
region.
I urge my colleagues to bring a full awareness of the facts,
mindfulness of the long history of Iran's aggression toward the United
States and its allies, and a sober understanding of the threat Iran
continues to pose.
Could we at least remember we are all Americans first, and we are all
in this together?
| terrorism | Islamophobic |