republicans are doing just that, pleasing corporate interest, networkers and families, small businesses and that will not not get the job done. for 60 days americans and senate democrats have been clear about where we should start the negotiations, the heroes act passed by the house provides crucial relief or education funding for hospitals and medical workers for our essential workers on the frontlines and for state and local governments. right now, that republicans seem to want to play chicken with pandemic relief and string everyone along with a bill in the process we all know is doomed to fail. i urge all of my republican colleagues to abandon their one-party one chamber approach before it's too late and immediately begin bipartisan negotiations on the next round of covid legislation. now, the problem stone ends with

the republican senate. we are living through one of the greatest failures of presidential leadership in our countries history. did you hear that donald trump? you have created one of the greatest failures of presidential leadership. >> we are going to this last portion of the conversation because the senate is about to gamble back in after their weekly caucus meetings. senators continue work on the 2021 defense authorization bill with votes scheduled later this afternoon for five senate coverage on c-span2 a senator: madam president. the presiding officer: the senator from wyoming. mr. enzi: madam president, i rise today to discuss our federal finances and the need to address our unsustainable fiscal debt and deficit. the federal budget has already been on an unsustainable path before covid-19 reached our shores and before the pandemic and our government's response to

it, which has accelerated what i believed is a coming day of reckoning. i recognize the unprecedented crisis presented by the covid-19. i supported the necessary response. together, congress has passed and the president has signed five separate pieces of legislation responding to the pandemic and its economic fallout that together will cost more than $2 trillion. i never would have supported trillions in new spending unless i truly believed that it was necessary to combat the virus and prevent economic catastrophe resulting from the government shuttering the economy. i know many of my colleagues feel that same way. when this crisis abates -- and it will -- the federal government cannot afford to return to the status quo of unsustainable budgets and

surging debt that jeopardizes the prosperity of future generations. we have to start serious conversation about how we're going to pay our bills and put our finances on a more sustainable path. we can justify aggressive borrowing and spending as necessary during times of crisis, but that can't be the default. so far this fiscal year, we have already run up a deficit of $2.7 trillion in one year, more than triple the size of the deficit we ran at the same time last year. the congressional budget office says that we are on track to spend $3.7 trillion more than we take in this year, and that's assuming we don't pass a new covid legislation. by the end of the fiscal year, our publicly held debt will exceed the size of our economy, and by the end of next year,

debt as a percentage of the economy will be higher than it has ever been in our history. i have a little chart here that demonstrates that. we have been fortunate that interest rates on our debt are currently low, and the government has been able to borrow the funds necessary to address the crisis caused by the pandemic. the dollar has remained relatively strong, helping to keep inflation low. the u.s. dollar remains the world's reserve currency and the safe haven for investments in the current time of crisis. but how long will that be the case if we continue to run trillion-dollar deficits each year? future congresses will not have the same flexibility to deal with their own crises if we leave them saddled with an enormous national debt. they won't be able to fund new emergency programs without

cutting other spending or raising revenues. that's why it's so critical that we get a hold of our debt and deficits once we emerge from this pandemic. regardless of what some people far outside of the economic mainstream are saying, there are constraints on how much government can borrow and spend without triggering higher interest rates or inflation. if we just start printing money to pay for overspending, our country could face the curse of stagflation, a combination of high inflation and low to know economic growth. we haven't had to think about this type of devastating combination since the late 1970's, and that economic history we should not repeat. and even if we have the capacity for significant one-time emergency spending, we should bear in mind the fact that the federal government doesn't have a good track record of reducing

spending after it's ratcheted it up during a crisis. i'd remind my colleagues of the old adage there is nothing so permanent as a temporary government program. we're already hearing calls to extend or make permanent many of the temporary entitlement expansions enacted in previous bills. more legislation may be needed to combat the virus and help the economy, but we cannot use the crisis to justify opening the spending floodgates and borrowing from future generations to fund nonemergency priorities. low interest rates do not mean that government spending is free or that we don't need to spend it wisely. the house of representatives has passed a congressional -- a bill that the congressional budget office says will cost nearly $3.5 trillion. that's more than the cost of all

the covid-19 legislation we have already enacted combined. are we to believe every penny of that is absolutely necessary? a $60 billion bailout for union pensions? a massive giveaway for wealthy individuals? living in high-tax states. billions in student loan forgiveness for all borrowers, regardless of income and ability to pay. we should not view this crisis, a crisis that's claimed over 130,000 american lives and left millions out of work as an opportunity to enact things that have nothing to do with the pandemic. and it's not just the lower chamber. the senate recently approved $17 billion in new mandatory spending for land and water conservation fund and park and public lands maintenance. we refused to consider an amendment to even try to pay for

that bill, an attempt that would have mostly charged foreigners visiting our parks. as i said, if we don't try to pay for that bill, what will we pay for? we're just adding to an already long list of unfunded mandatory spending programs that we allow to operate on auto pilot without ever being voted on or ever being evaluated again. nobody runs a business like that. even though these programs are allowed to bypass the annual appropriations process, most of them don't have any dedicateed revenue to pay for the spending, and those that do collect their own revenue often spend more than they take in. with no vote. it just happens. even before the pandemic, the congressional budget office

projected that social security spending over the next ten years would total $15.2 trillion. listen to this. the program's dedicated tax revenues would only cover $12.5 trillion of that. $15.2 trillion. cost. $12.5 trillion revenue. okay. medicare's taxes and premiums were projected to cover over only half of the program's $12.6 trillion spending over the next ten years. we put the rest of it on the nation's credit card left to be paid for by future generations. what kind of a crisis are they going to have? this chart shows again that this is the revenue coming in for social security. this is the additional that we have to borrow.

this is the money coming in for medicare. this is the additional we have to borrow. medicaid, we borrow every bit of it. the total revenue that we receive won't cover these deficits, so everything else that we do we'll have to borrow for. if the interest rate were to go up to its norm of 5%, we wouldn't be able to do defense, we wouldn't be able to do education. we wouldn't be able to do anything else, infrastructure or otherwise, that we expect the federal government to do for us. we would have to start getting -- we have to start getting control of it. it isn't an unlimited source of money. we're putting it on the nation's credit card, and the future generations will have to pay for it. and there is a couple of ways you can pay for it. one is to eliminate services.

the other one is to increase revenues. another one, of course, is to eliminate a lot of the duplication that we have, but we don't even have an appetite for that. we have over 100 housing programs. tell me there is no duplication in 100 housing programs, but we don't look at them. most of them were mandatory, so we can just ignore the impacts of them. and the fact that we have got multiple administrators doing the same job, and we don't even know if it's effective. i have been trying for a long time through the budget committee to get a list of the programs that we fund. now, you would think if we're writing checks, that we would have a list of programs, wouldn't you? we don't have a list of programs. we don't know what ee own. we don't know when it's going to wear out.

we don't know what the cost of replacement would be. all very basic business decisions, but we just keep sliding everything over to mandatory so that it has to be paid for regardless of whether we have any money or not, and we don't even look at them. that has to change and has to change rapidly, or our kids and our grandkids will find that all of their money has been spent and all they can do is pay more taxes. i'm frustrated that we're spending billions without so much as a discussion about how to pay for things. yes, we needed a strong response to the covid virus, but i am disappointed that we can't work together on responsible solutions, even modest efforts like a paid-for fix for our parks and public lands maintenance that i mentioned would be paid for by foreign visitors. and i am dismayed that we keep digging the hole deeper for future generations.

we all owe it to them to do better, and i hope we start to do it soon. madam president, i yield the floor and suggest the absence of a quorum. the presiding officer: the clerk will call the roll. quorum call:

a senator: madam president. the presiding officer: the senator from new hampshire. mrs. shaheen: madam president, i ask that the quorum call be lifted. the presiding officer: without objection. mrs. shaheen: i come to the floor today to speak in support

of senate amendment 1729, which i hope will be added today to the national defense authorization act, and the goal of this amendment is to finish finish -- what i hope is to finish a public health study that we began with legislation in 2017 to address the contaminant known as p-fas. and i know the presiding officer knows about this, because she has that chemical in her state as well. i want to begin by commending the work of the armed services committee, both chairman inhofe and ranking member reed, for working with me to establish the first ever human health study of pfas and to institute a policy -- policies that will phase out the defense department's use of these chemicals over the next several years. we began this journey in 2017 when we put $10 million into a

health study, the first of its kind in the country, to look at the impacts of pfas on humans, and we at the time authorized $10 million for three years. unfortunately, because of the coronavirus pandemic, it is taking longer to complete this study than we had hoped and so we're going to need some additional funding. there is real urgency in addressing pfas, as many of us know. pfas chemicals have emerged as widespread pollutants in the drinking water sources of military bases across in country. it's because pfas chemicals were used in fire fighting foam that was used by the armed services. that was the main reason. and the number of military installations with known or suspected contamination from pfas continues to rise.

in march, d.o.d. updated its count of military installations impacted by these materials from 401 across the country to 651. 651 military installations which means that they are in almost every state in the united states. and other studies have reported that this is actually a conservative estimate. now, we don't yet know what the long-term risk of exposure to pfas are, because we're still trying to get research into that but studies have already linked these chemicals, and there are a whole hundreds of chemicals in the pfas category. and studies have linked these chemicals to a number of adverse health effects. the potential ties between pfas and various forms of cancer are of particular concern to firefighters who may have experienced exposure during fire

fighting and fire training exercises. on june 11, the agency for toxic substances and disease registry, atsdr, which works as part of the centers for disease control, they issue add statement expressing concern about how how pfas exposure can impact the risk of covid-19 infections. now, for all of us who have constituents who have been exposed to pfas, we know that this has caused a lot of sleepless nights for countless american families, both in new hampshire and across the country. -- who have been living appeared working near sites contaminated by these materials. in my state of new hampshire, the city of portsmouth, which was the home of the former pees air force base, closed a major water supply well located at that air base after the air

force found pfas in the drinking water at levels 12.5 times higher than the provisional health advisory from the environment and protection agency -- at that time. that number has changed since then. moreover, state health officials determined that more than 1,500 people, including children a tended day care centers near the site, have he elevated legislatn of pfas in their -- levels of pfas in their blood from drinking groundwater. i've heard from so many parents who are terrified about p what in means for the health of their children. one woman who's been a real leader in responding to the pfas emergency, andrea mi co of portsmouth, remembers feeling like her world was crashing down when tests showed that her two children exposed to pfas in ink doctoring water at peez, had

elevated levels in their blood. she said, to actually see it on paper, to know it was true, was very devastating for me and the wide range of emotions that i experienced ranged from anger to fear, frustration, and guilt. andrea's children attended the child care center, one of the two child care centers at peez. and i've already heard from elena, a mother near the air force in portsmouth. elena said that she was exposed when she was pregnant with her son. she and her husband were devastated when they learned that their son had high levels of p n.a.s. his blood. michelle was exposed to the contaminated water in january of 2011 when she started working on the base. her youngest child has attended day care at pease since he was

2-year-olds. stories like theirs are not limited to portsmouth, sadly. and contamination from pfas is not limited to millet's about as and -- bases and airports. that's were this long-term health study is so important and it's so critical that we complete it. we need to know what the research says are the dangers of pfas. since congress authorized the study in 2017, the atsdr and centers for disease control have been working to identify the health effects of pfas exposure, starting with the former pease air base in portsmouth. i believe it's seven other sites around the country that have been designated as part of this study. unfortunately, due to covid-19, as i said earlier, the agencies expect additional costs associated with continuing the study, as well as a one-year delay in finalizing the results.

i think we could all agree that families that have been exposed to these chemicals deserve answers. what my amendment would do is provide additional funding for the pfas health study to ensure that atsdr and c.d.c. can complete their work and do it without delay. the safety of our drinking water is essential and it's nonnegotiable. and the potential serious health effects associated with exposure to pfas chemicals demand moving forward with policies that will protect our communities, especially our men and women in uniform. senate amendment 1729 would help to do just that. of course, this is just the beginning. this gives us a baseline study to tell us what the health effects are. once we get that study and as we continue to move forward, we have a lot of work to do to ensure that pfas -- not just on

military bases but in communities across this country that appears in so many different products -- that we can address that in a way that provides some sort of insurance and protection to families across this country. so they know what they're dole dealing with and -- what they're dealing with and so they know that they can get help. thank you, madam president. i urge my colleagues to support this amendment. mr. cotton: madam president? the presiding officer: the senator from arkansas. mr. cotton: the cars we drive, the planes we drive, the smartphones we have in our pockets are all powered by computer chips, by semiconductors. technology that is key to modern society and that may determine

whether america or the china leads the world. programs like darpa and symantec coated the breakthroughs and demand for this high-tech industry. storied american companies like intel, i.b.m., texas instruments, micron and others commercialized and then perfected this technology. brilliant american entrepreneurs and engineers kickstarted the technology that shaped the world. that was then. today, sadly, most semiconducts are not made in the u.s.a. we've learned during this pandemic how dangerous it is to rely on distant factories and overstretched supply chains that can be compromised by emergencies or enemies. well, almost three-quarters of

the world's capacity to make computer chips is located in just a handful of countries in east asia, closer to communist china than our shores and all within range of the missiles of the people's liberation army. china is investing huge sums, possibly $150 billion, in its semiconductors industry, and this investment is paying off. for the first time ever last year, china surpassed the united states in its capacity for manufacturing advantaged chips. china is expected to surpass south korea next year which would put it behind only taiwan, an island just 80 miles off its show, which i must remind you, the p.l.a. regularly trains to invade. we cannot allow china to dominate production of computer chips. doing so would be a grave threat

that could allow a corrupt clique of communists to impose a high-tech tyranny on the world. that's why i'm offering an amendment along with senators schumer and warner and others to ensure american leadership in computer chips in the face of this threat. our proposal calls for key investments in advanced factories and research and development so that america discovers and then produces the next generation of semiconductor technology. it also requires the department of defense and the intelligence community to work with trusted industry partners to secure the supply campaign for computer chips for our military and other national security needs. this bill is a moonhot investment and such investments don't come cheap. so i regret that the question of funding this bill has been postponed to another time, but i look forward to having and

winning that debate. because, make no mistake, robust support is needed to ensure the future of the american semiconductor industry. at the very least it is necessary to level l playing field so that american companies can compete against the coercive, anticompetitive, and mercantilist policies of communist china and others, and it will provide a surge of support and demand for advanced technologies, just as the federal government has always provided. we offer this amendment so that the next digital revolution is also made in the u.s.a. not in communist china. i urge my colleagues to support it and to support america's continued technological primacy in the world. madam president, i yield the floor, and i note the absence of a quorum. the presiding officer: the clerk will call the roll. *8

quorum call:

quorum call:

a senator: madam president. the presiding officer: the senator from rhode island. mr. reed: madam president, i'd ask to dispense with the calling of the quorum. the presiding officer: without objection. mr. reed: thank you. i rise to express my support for the cornyn amendment which would among other things authorize a federal grant program to enable the leading global chip companies to manufacture in the united states. i want to commend the bipartisan group of senators who have worked so hard on this issue. senators cotton, cornyn, schumer, and warner. the semiconductor manufacturing story is similar to other industries in america. the united states invented the technology and still leads in research and development, but the manufacture of the product itself has steadily migrated to asia. over time not just the manufacturing expertise and capacity is lost, but also the science and engineering

necessary to invent the next generation of products. while this has happened to too many industries, the impact is particularly acute in electronics because electronics power the modern economy, fueling all the critical technologies in which our future prosperity depend. asian nations, in particular, china, taiwan and south korea, have for decades pursued aggressive industrial policies to gain control of the electronics industry. these policies directed large subsidies and protections for fledgling companies that have now become global giants. while south korea is an ally and taiwan is a partner, the plants in those countries that make the world's most advanced logic and memory semiconductors are highly vulnerable to disruption or destruction by china and/or north korea. in a confrontation in this region, china could threaten to bring the western economy to its knees by halting the flow of

semiconductors. china itself is investing hundreds of billions of dollars in new semiconductor fabrication plants in a relentless bid to dominate this industry. in ten years chinese companies may dominate the production of the chips that power 5g wireless networks, artificial intelligence, cloud computing, the internet of things, autonomous vehicles. in america, there is one remaining company that is globally competitive in logic chips -- intel corporation. but intel is at least a generation behind its main competitors and historically it designed and produced chips only for its own product line. its major global competitors, the taiwan semiconductor manufacturer corporation or t. t.m.c. or sam sung provide chips designed by other companies.

these are typically so-called fabless chip companies and include the names of some of our most famous tech companies, qawl -- qualcomm and microsoft. recently there was the good news that intel announced in a letter to the defense department its intent to compete with its asian rivals in manufacturing chips designed by fabless companies. these are companies that would design the chip and the electronic processers but would not produce the chips. that would be left to these other major companies. in addition tsmc and the administration announced an agreement to bring tsmc to america to produce leading-edge chips.

it is expected that samsung can be persuaded to set up a major manufacturing facility in the united states as well. the defense department has two major studies nearing completion. one by the defense science board and one conducted in partnership with industry by the under secretary for acquisition, ellen lord. they are both expected to plea for urgent and large-scale action to revive u.s. semiconductor manufacturing. but none of this is going to happen without funding and without a plan. we did not lose chip manufacturing to asia simply due to cheap labor, especially the chip industry, which is not manpower intensive. we lost this market segment because the investments required on massive and constant and because foreign governments heavily subsidizing. we all prefer to let markets govern where competition is fair and mutually beneficial, but

relentless actions by foreign governments to dominate specific industries regardless of economics and where they succeed like in the semiconductor industry must be counted by u.s. government action because of the threat to our national security and prosperity. while this amendment does not include funding authorizations, it is an important first step. this is amendment will serve notice that the united states senate recognizes this very serious issue and intends to take corrective action. i urge my colleagues to support this amendment and to commit to finding if you could solutions solutions -- finding funding solutions. our national security depends upon it. madam president, i would also now like to speak about senator shaheen's amendment which would

be considered this afternoon, with your permission. i rise in support of senator shah sheen's amendment to increase f.y. 21 funding for the human health study on the effects of pfas substances in drinking water sources. as most are aware, pfos and pfoa are chemicals very effective for extinguishing fires and used in firefighting foam since the 1970's. unfortunately the floor reason bonds never break and -- the floor flourine bonds never break and environmental problems are presented. the lifetime health advisory for pfas is the equivalent to one grain of sand in an olympic sized swimming pool. the w.h.o. found these chemicals are likely carcinogenic especially in children,

pregnant women and decreases effects of vaccines and known to cause cancer in animals. pfas has been found in drinking water at over 650 military installations in almost every state in the united states and overseas. thousands of americans in many states across the united states have already found elevated levels of pfas in their blood. beginning with the f.y. 2018 national defense authorization act, the department of defense has been authorized to transfer funds to the c.d.c. for a human health study on the effects of all pfas substances in drink water sources for people. specifically, it seeks to determine the exact types of cancers and other toxic effects drinking water with pfas has on human beings. for example, years ago the c.d.c. determined precisely how much lead can be ingested before cognitive impacts occur in children. they can and should do the same

thing with respect to pfas. the study should take seven years to complete, so this f.y. 2021 ndaa will fund year four. the c.d.c. study receives $7 million in f.y. 2018, and there is $10 million currently in the f.y. 2021 ndaa amendment. senator shaheen's amendment would increase it to $15 million and accelerate our ability to find these critical answers that affect the health and safety of the american people, and are particularly associated with military bases all across the country which means in every one of our states. we all recognize the urgent need for the c.d.c. to better understand the toxic effects of pfas chemicals on the human body and supporting this amendment will accomplish just that. and so i would urge my

colleagues to support this amendment. once again, i commend senator shaheen for her work in developing this amendment with respect to pfas, and i commend senator cornyn and his colleagues for working very, very diligently and perceptively about building up our industrial base in order to produce microchips so we will be the leader in the world and not the follower. and with that, madam president, i once again note the absence of a quorum. the presiding officer: the clerk will call the roll. quorum call:

mr. cornyn: madam president. the presiding officer: the senator from texas. mr. cornyn: madam president, are we in a quorum call? the presiding officer: yes, we are. mr. cornyn: i ask unanimous consent that the quorum call be dispensed with. the presiding officer: without objection. mr. cornyn: madam president, as the senate knows, we will complete our work on the 60th

annual national defense authorization act. 60 years in a row. this legislation has provided opportunity for us to take stock of the evolving threat landscape and ensure our national defense is prepared to meet the challenges on the horizon. as technological advancements have changed, each year's national defense authorization act allowed us to advance in weapons, as the new vector for warfare, this legislation has allowed us to invest in resilient networks and talented workforce. as the global order shifted, this annual bill has given us the opportunity to identify the greatest threat to our country and stake strategic action. this year's national defense authorization act is no exception. it continues to invest in a modernized national defense that's critical to maintaining peace through strength. that's something that we need to remember what ronald reagan

taught all of us. weakness is provocative. bullies look for opportunities to take advantage of weakness. it is our strength and leadership, particularly with the military, that helps us maintain the peace. this bill also devotes resources to maintain our competitive componentses for democracy today, including china and the communist party. china has gone from a poor and isolated country for now accounting for nearly 20% of the g.p.a. but their economic muscle isn't the reason it tops america's watch list. the chinese communist party's ruling strategy can be best described as win at all costs and sadly the victims of that strategy are often the chinese people themselves. on the senate floor yesterday i spoke with some of the latest human rights violations by the

communist party in china. their recent move erode the freedom and autonomy of hong kong, their effort to silence protesters who dare to speak out against the chinese communist party, their ongoing ethnic cleansing campaign targeted at the uighur people. china continues to demonstrate a lack of respect for human rights and dignity and i remain concerned by the growing threat they pose to the world order, including the united states of america. attorney general bill barr recently gave a speech about the challenges posed by an increasingly powerful, wealthy and relentless china. it's a great speech, which i commend to you. it provides an impressive overview of how the communist party manipulates american businesses and industries, steals intellectual property, surveils and censors its own

people and seeks to influence its power in the united states. for those unfamiliar with the modern relationship between the united states and china and the risks and vulnerability that this creates, i highly recommend reading the speech of the attorney general. in that speech he discusses the threats posed by the communest parties -- communist party's initiative which seeks to achieve high-tech manufacturing. everything from advanced robotics to artificial intelligence, china wants to lead global production. while this is framed as a way to strengthen domestic manufacturing, these ambitions paint an alarming picture for the united states and our allies. as the attorney general noted, it's clear that the people's republic of china seeks not merely to join the ranks of other advanced industrial

economies, but to replace them all together. before any piece of technology becomes usable for its audience, it includes parts, pieces, and materials that come from literally all over the world. regardless of where that final product is assembled and pack packaged, each of those individual pieces are the key to protecting the supply chain that creates our most valuable assets. if the covid-19 virus has taught us anything it has given us a picture of how vulnerable our unsecured supply chains are. we lean heavily on china, too heavily for things like masks, gloves, gowns, ventilators, all the equipment which the need was skyrocketing earlier this year. as a result of the fact that the world was dependent on china to

produce this critical equipment, hospitals reached dangerously low levels of personal protective equipment. in the meantime china refused to disclose to the rest of the world that the virus had indeed broken out in its country so it couldin fact horde the material they knew the rest of the world would need. well, as a result of the lack of a secure supply chain, health care workers were using a single mask throughout an entire shift putting both themselves and patients at risk. this has been a wakeup call -- or should have been a wakeup call on supply chain vulnerabilities and a reminder that we need to take action today to secure our supply chains for tomorrow. one of the biggest of these vulnerabilities we're facing today is a lack of semiconductor manufacturing. these chips are everywhere and almost every product.

they are the underlying technology in everything from our cell phones and towers to computers, to precision agriculture to missile defense systems. as you can imagine, as technologies become more sophisticated, the demand nor high-end semiconductors have skyrocketed. u.s. companies command 47% of the global market of these integrated circuit chips. when it comes to manufacturing, we're falling further and further behind. since 2000, the united states has dropped from producing nearly a quarter of the world's semiconductors to only 7%, and you only need one guess as to which company stepped up to manufacture these critical devices. you guessed right, it's china. in the same period, china has gone from manufacturing zero chips to 16% of the world's supply and plans on investing

another $1.4 trillion in semiconductor technologies. america has lost ground to our global competitors and unless we take action, it's estimated by 2030, 83% of the global semiconductor manufacturing capacity will be not here but in asia. we need to bring those manufacturing jobs back to the united states and provide an end to insecurity in our semiconductor supply chain. of course, that's much easer said than done. building a new town direction, which is where these -- building a new town direction, which is where these semiconductors are manufactured, is quite expensive and will not happen without an investment from the federal government. the organization for economic cooperation and development estimates that 21 major semiconductor firms across a number of countries receive more than $50 billion in government support between 2014 and 2018.

some of these countries investing in manufacturing of these technologies were south korea, singapore, taiwan, ireland, germany, and, you guessed it, china. if we're going to regain lost ground in semiconductor manufacturing and secure one of our most critical supply chains, it's going to take a strategic investment, and that's exactly where the chips for america act will deliver. senator warner, the distinguished democratic senator from virginia, and i have introduced legislation to restore american leadership in semiconductor manufacturing and insure long-term national security and economic competitiveness. we've worked hand in hand with our colleague, senator cotton from arkansas, senator schumer from new york, in drafting the amendment before the senate that we will vote on this evening. it is truly a bipartisan product. it achieves that goal by

creating a federal incentive program through the department of commerce to encourage semiconductor manufacturing right here in the good ol' u.s. of a. in short, it would stimulate semiconductor manufacturing and boost both our national security and global competitiveness. it will enable us to bring manufacturing of these critical devices back onto american soil and eliminate this critical national security and economic vulnerability. as i mentioned, these chips are literally everywhere. many of you have them in your pockets right now or on your wrists. semiconductors are the foundational technology for our military systems, our tellly communications. and we want these devices to run on made-in-america seem mew conductors.

as we conclude our work on the national defense authorization bill, i'm glad the senate has the opportunity to vote on this legislation as an amendment, and eminent domain a. grateful to chairman of the armed services committee -- and i'm grateful to chairman of the armed services committee, senator inhofe, and ranking member reed for making that happen. it prioritizes advances to the critical technologies that will modernize our national defense and restore our competitive edge, all while allowing us to secure our most critical supply chains. so i hope our colleagues will all join me in supporting this legislation so that we can reclaim american leadership in semiconductor manufacturing, so we can support american jobs and so we can invest in both a

strong national security and our economy. madam president, i would call up my amendment, number 2244, and ask that it be reported by number. the presiding officer: the clerk will report. the clerk: the senator from texas, mr. cornyn, for himself and others, proposes an amendment numbered 2244. mr. cornyn: madam president, i yield the floor. ms. stabenow: madam president? the presiding officer: the senator from michigan. ms. stabenow: thank you very much, madam president. i rise today with deep sorrow and strong determination.

i'm feeling deep sorrow over the loss of one of our nation's great moral leaders and a dear friend of mine, congressman john lewis. as anyone who'd ever met john knows, he was incredibly kind. he was a man who had seen so much of our nation's history and written so much of our nation's history and yet still treated everybody with dignity and respect. i had the honor to serve alongside him in the house and to become his friend. he was so supportive of me when i decided to run for the u.s. senate. in fact, i'll never forget how knowing that he believed in me helped give me the courage torgoch into a race against an incumbent united states senator.

so i'm grieving the loss of my friend. yet i'm also determined. congressman lewis dedicated his entire life to the fight for justice and equality. i'm determined to do everything i can to do my part to ensure that the his life's work continues. john lewis came from very humble beginnings. he was one of ten children of willie mae and eddie lewis who workous sharecroppers. making a living off the land has always been hard, but it was even harder in the 1940's in the deep south where racism and discrimination were as relentless as the alabama sun. faith in god was essential, and john had that faith in abundance.

as a child, he wanted to be a preacher, and he certainly could have been. from preceding bible verses to the family chickens as a child, to speaking alongside dr. king at the march on washington at just 23 years old, to his message at the 55th anniversary of selma earlier this year, john had a preacher's ability to inspire all of us. and like a preacher, john knew that words alone aren't enough. when words come from the pulpit on sunday, when they show up on the street on tuesday, that's when the change really happens. and john lewis certainly showed up over and over and over again. he sat down at lunch counters. he sat in the front of buses.

he spent his 21st birthday in jail, after blocking the entrance to a theater that refused to sell tickets to people who looked like him. he was arrested more than 40 times, beaten/klansmen, nearly killed marching across the edmund pettus bridge, never stopped showing up and causing good trouble. just six weeks before he died, he stopped by the black lives matter plaza here in washington, d.c., it was the last time he was seen in public. time and again, john lewis put his life on the line in order to protect people's fundamental rights, including the right to vote. john knew that word alone can never be enough, and we have to

be willing to take action. late last year the house passed the voting rights advancement act. it would restore section 5 of the voting rights act that was overturned by the u.s. supreme court in 2013. for 228 days, this important bill has been gathering dust on leader mcconnell's desk. 228 days of inaction. senator leahy is renewing the bill in the senate as the -- is reintroducing the bill in the senate as the john r. lewis voting rights act of 2020. and i'm proud to be a cosponsor of this important bill. it's time to pass it and get it signed into law in congressman lewis' honor.

at the 5th anniversary of selma march, john reminded us of what's at stage of he said this. we were beaten, we were teargassed, i thought i was going to die on this bridge. but somehow, in some way, god almighty helped me here. he added this -- i'm not going to give up. i'm not going to give in. we're going to continue to fight. we must use the vote as a nonviolent instrument or tool to redeem the soul of america. i've seen the soul of america, and that soul looks a lot like my friend, john lewis. i urge us to take up the voting

rights act in john's name and to pass it as soon as possible and ensure that his legacy lives on. thank you, madam president. i yield the floor. i would suggest the absence of a quorum. the presiding officer: the clerk will call the roll. quorum call: quorum call:

quorum call:

mr. durbin: i ask unanimous consent that the quorum call be suspended. the presiding officer: without objection. mr. durbin: thank you, madam president. a few steps from the chamber is the whip's office and on my desk is a framed government document. it is the naturalization certificate of my mother who was brought here at the age of it 2 from lithuania. she lived long enough to see me sworn into the united states senate and i'm proud of the fact that i stand here today as a son of an immigrant. that's my story. it's my family's story. it is america's story. i believe that immigration has made america the nation that it is today. immigrants are an integral part of our economy, our culture and our soul. in the midst of this deadly coronavirus pandemic, we should never forget that one in six

health care and social service workers, that's 3.1 million people out of 18.7 million are immigrants. risking their lives every day in the midst of this pandemic for the good of this nation. immigrants are playing this critical role in the battle against covid-19 and yet our broken immigration laws do not allow many of them to fulfill their dreams of finally becoming americans. thousands of immigrant workers, including many health care workers are suffering because of a serious problem in our immigration system, the green card backlog. what is a green card? a green card is our immigration ticket. if you're here as a temporary worker, a green card or legal permanent resident status, allows you to live in the united states without a fear of deportation and to be on a path toward permanent citizenship in the united states. green cards are critical in the

lives of so many who are here on temporary work visas. the backlog puts families at risk of losing their immigration status as they wait year after weary year to finally make it through this green card backlog. and it stops their ability many times to participate in the fight against covid-19 and to work toward building our economy. under the current law, there are not nearly enough immigrant visas, also known as green cards, available each year. the current numbers for 140,000 e-2 immigrant visas were established in 1990, 30 years ago. the american economy has doubled, the number of green cards has remained the same, as a result, immigrants are stuck in crippling backlogs year after year after year. close to fivele million future americans are in line waiting

for green cards. many are waiting on temporary visas while many are waiting overseas separated from their families. only 226,000 family green cards and 140,000 employment green cards are available each year. the backlogs are a real hardship on these families who are cut in this immigration limbo. for example, the children in many of these family age out and face deportation. how does this happen? well, the person applying for the green card also lists their spouse and children. if they have to wait a long period of time and the child reaches the age of 21, they are no longer protected by the father's effort to obtain a green card. they can be deported at any time. for many children in these families aging out and facing deportation as they reach the age of 21, it is a family disaster. the solution to this green card backlog is imminently clear noin

who looks -- to anyone who looks at it. increase the number of green cards, the number that might have made sense 30 years ago makes no sense today. a senior senator from utah, senator lee, whom i've worked with on previous legislation, has introduced s. 386, known as the fairness for high-skilled immigrants act to address this issue. i have a basic concern about this bill and i told senator lee. senate bill 386 doesn't allow for additional green cards an without the additional green cards it will not reduce the backlog or wait. here's what the research service -- senate research service says, don't take my word for it, read the congressional research study released on marc, entitled the employment-based immigration backlog. what do they say about senator

lee's bill? quote, s. 386 would not reduce current backlogs. the total backlog for all three categories of employment visas would increase from an estimated 957,000 497 individuals currently to an estimated 2.75 million individuals by fiscal year 2020. this would occur whether or not s. 386 is enacted and here are the operative words because there is a limit on the number of green cards issued. madam president, that's the bottom line. if you don't change the number of green cards, and five million people are in kuwaiting for -- cue waiting for 140,000, you understand the math. i agreed to sit down with senator lee to work in good faith to resolve our differences. last december we reached an agreement on an amendment to his

bill that addressed many of these concerns. i want to make it clear this amendment was far from perfect and not what i would have written. the biggest problem is it still does not increase the number of green cards. as a result, it would not eliminate the backlog, but it made a substantial improvement in his original bill. here's what it says. it protects immigrants and their families who are stuck in the backlog. immigrant workers and their immediate family members would be allowed to, quote, early file, close quote, a provision senator lee suggested. they would not suggest their green cards nir earlier but they would be able to switch jobs and travel without losing immigration status. i thought that was fair. early filing adds a critical protection was not in the original lee 386, it protects the children of workers from

aging out so they will not face deportation. our agreement also had a green card set aside for immigrant workers in a backlog set overseas. this green card not eligible for early filing because they were outside the united states. this number is based on the proximate number of people who apply for employment wrote green cards from overseas each year. finally our agreement cracked down on h-1-v temporary work visas. i thought this would be an easy provision. it turned out to be the real problem in this bill. let me tell you why. the amendment pro hib its -- pro hib its companies from hiring additional workers if there are more than 50 employees and more than 50% are temporary workers. this 50-50 bill that i offered with senator grassley, republican of iowa, this provision was included in the comprehensive immigration reform bill which i voted for and

passed in the senate. senator lee has said, and i quote. this is a commonsense reform to root out of use. when most people think of h-1-v visas, they think of microsoft and google, top-dollar, that's how it was supposed to work. the top recipients were outsourcing companies that use loopholes and the law to exploit immigrant workers and even offshore american jobs. in the most recent year for which data is available, eight of the top ten recipients of h-1-v visas were outsourcing companies. the vice president of one of them candidly acknowledged they used h-1-v's to exploit immigration workers, they said that ours is 25% less than that of a similar wage for the u.s.

employee. that is you can get wages far lower than local wages. it is important to understand the vast majority of immigrant workers are h-1-v temporary work visas. if we want to stop the future exploitation of immigrant workers and the displacement of american workers, we've got to stop the abuse of h-1-b visas. i asked my colleagues to support this bipartisan agreement senator lee and i reached. they all agreed. i told senator lee i wanted to move immediately to solve this problem. there were so many people whose lives were tied up in this debate. however, senator lee asked me for more time to discuss it with his colleagues. i agreed. in march, three months later, senator lee told me he wanted to make significant changes in the agreement. he said that without these changes he could no longer support it.

some of the changes were made at the request of the trump administration, which i will note is not exactly the most reliable or objective advice on immigration and let me briefly explain the changes that senator lee demanded. the original version provides no individual already proved for a green card would receive it at a later time than they otherwise would have. this provision known as a hold harmless clause is a critical protection that assures immigrants who have been waiting years patiently in line that nothing we do on the floor will change the number of years they have to wait. perhaps improve them but not make them worse. now at the request of the trump administration, senator lee wants to delete this hold harmless provision which was in his original bill. that would jeopardize many people who were innocently waiting patiently for their opportunity. second, senator lee wants to delay for three years the effective date of the 50-50 rule

to crack down on outsourcing companies. why on earth would we give companies that are outsourcing american jobs and exploiting immigrant workers a free pass for three more years? third, at the request of the trump administration, senator lee wanted to make two changes that would allow early filing for people who are stuck in the green card backlog. he would delay early filing one year. one more year for children to abling out. one more year for them to wait. why? that means that children who age out in the meantime lose their chance for a green card and subject to deportation. he would also require immigrant workers could only, quote, early file after their green card petition had been approved for two years. a two year delay on top of the three year delay. any children who aged out during this two year waiting period would not be subjected and be subject to deportation. why is senator lee or at least those in the trump administration advising him so

afraid these children might have a future in america? when we met in march, i told senator lee these changes were not acceptable. it's been seven months since senator lee and i reached our original agreement and more than four months since we met in march. immigrants stuck in the backlog and their children have waited long enough. i'm going to ask unanimous consent on my agreement of senator lee from december 2019, the fairness for high school immigrants act is adopted as a lee substitute amendment. mr. lee: madam president, reserving the right to object. the presiding officer: the senator from utah. mr. lee: i've worked tirelessly. durbin madam president, i ask unanimous consent --. mr. durbin: madam president, i request consideration of the fairness for high school fairness act the senate proceed to immediate consideration. further the lee amendment at the desk be agreed to, the bill as amended be considered a third time and passed and the motions to reconsider be considered made

and laid upon the table. the presiding officer: is there objection? mr. lee: madam president. the presiding officer: the senator from utah. mr. lee: madam president, reserving the right to object, i'm a little flabbergasted at this moment. i find myself in the rare circumstance of disagreeing with literally every word uttered by my colleague, the senior senator from illinois. he's my friend. he and i worked together on a number of issues, on criminal justice reform, protecting the civil liberties of americans when it comes to domestic surveillance. all kinds of things on the judiciary committee. i disagree with nearly every single word, every syllable he just uttered. i find myself wondering whether we experienced alternate universes in recent months. i worked nearly the entire time i've been in the united states senate on this issue. for years, nearly nine and a half years, on discreet pieces of legislation trying to fix immigration. immigration is a big issue. it's a contentious issue. it's a issue as to which, to put it mildly, there is not

always bipartisan consensus. it is one of the areas that i've concluded remains open and possible for bipartisan agreement. it's on taking discrete, individual problem areas within our immigration code and updating them and modernizing them. what we're talking here today about is a bill that i've long championed, the fairness for high-skilled immigrants act. my sole purpose for championing that legislation, frankly, at great personal expense to myself, great political expense, was to bring some equity to a system that unduly burdens some immigrants based on their country of origin. and based specifically on the arbitrary factor of the population of the nation of origin of the immigrant in question. there has been a lot of misinformation at both ends of the political spectrum at every point in between about this

legislation. it's been attacked from the right, from the left, from everywhere else. a lot of people claim falsely that it would change the total number of green cards available. it wouldn't, as senator durbin just acknowledged. that's one of the few things that he said just now with which i think i can agree. but over the years we've had a number of senators objecting to this for different reasons. every time we r resolve one objection, sometimes we'll resolve two objections, and then one other will pop up. and then we'll resolve that one, three others will pop up. we've been doing this for years and years. i've worked in good faith with colleagues on both sides of the aisle in order to resolve those concerns. most recently senator durbin objected to it, just as i have with each objecter before him, i worked with senator durbin last fall in order to resolve some of his concerns with the legislation. in december as he, as he

states, we came to an agreement. we came to an agreement on a way that we could move forward and we set some objectives, and he accurately characterized many of those objectives. what i told senator durbin at the time was that i was reluctant to announce that publicly because we hadn't yet gotten, made or received a request or a response to a request for technical assistance and input from the affected agencies, most importantly from the state department and from uscis. at the time senator durbin requested that we go to the floor, that we introduce it, i reluctantly and perhaps against my better judgment, agreed to do that in part based on the fact that senator durbin was taking a lot of heat at the time. people were saying that he was opposed to the idea categorically and i wanted to work with him in good faith to do it. at the time we had that discussion, at the time you and i made that agreement, i made absolutely abundantly clear we still needed to get technical

input and we still needed to get the input of cosponsors of the legislation. but out of consideration for you and a lot of political heat you were taking at the time, i agreed wbltions understanding to go to the floor and announce that we had reached an agreement in principle. i have honored every single piece of that agreement in principle, and i strongly resent your suggestion to the contrary. every single piece of it. there is not one substantive piece of this as to which i've changed. not one of them. not the 50-50 rule, not the 4600 set-aside. not the early filing. the changes that we made were in response to the technical assistance request that we made to uscis and a couple from the state department. they had almost entirely to do with what was feasible, what was administratively possible to implement the legislation. after all, we don't want to enact legislation that cannot be implemented without compromising

the other responsibilities that that agency has. so after seeking this feedback, we understood that the language as written was in some respects technically not feasible fo uscis to implement as we had written it. here again, i told him, we may, we inevitably will have to make some modifications based on the feasibility of this. so i went back to senator durbin. in light of the uscis comments and the response to our request for technical assistance, uscis made those, we made some changes. i went back to senator durbin. my recollection was that it was in february. you say march. i believe it was february. but regardless, i came back to you and i told you we're honoring the agreement. we are going to have to delay the implementation of some of it so as to make it technically feasible. some of these provisions were modified somewhat as to the timing of their implementation, but we honored the spirit and

the letter of our agreement. and yet, when we presented these changes to senator durbin, he flat-out rejected them. almost without any discussion at all and almost without any discussion about how these materially departed from the agreement we had reached in december in good faith, that we announced the existence of on the senate floor against my better judgment, out of the goodness of my heart given the amount of political pressure senator durbin was getting on this. and he refused at that point to continue negotiations. this, by the way, was after months and months of trying to get him to negotiate, months and months of trying to get him to the table that we reached finally in december. so i found it astounding, senator durbin, if you're once again feeling the political expediency to do so, i'm happy to continue these discussions with you, but don't come here and suggest falsely, as you just have, that i have materially departed from the agreement we reached, because i did not.

i hope that you're as willing as i am to allow businesses a window of time to come into compliance with the new 50-50 rule so that we don't unnecessarily burden the h-1b workers who are already here. that's what my changes do, is make it so we don't unduly burden those. i hope that you're as willing as i am to extend the transition period before the per country caps are fully lifted to allow immigrants from around the world the opportunity to ease into the process. and i hope that you are willing, as i am, to tackle one major immigration problem at a time in the hope of improving the condition of immigrants in our country without insisting on poison pills. if there's one thing we've learned about immigration reform in recent years is that if you try to reform everything at once, you will guarantee the failure of the bill. i hope that's not what you're trying to do here but that is the effect it has when you try to add in other extraneous points.

never, by the way, was there ever a discussion about increasing the total number of visas in this. that was never the objective. i never hinted at that. you acknowledged that in every one of our discussions. if you are interested in these principles as i am, we should be able to find a path forward, because all these changes, all the changes that we made to our agreement were simply made out of expediency ?ord to be able to ensure that the legislation could in fact move forward, that it was feasible to implement, and it could resolve the concerns that you expressed to me and could do so in a manner to ensure the best possible outcome. if you can agree on these changes, senator durbin, we can pass this legislation. we can pass it not just today. we can pass it right now, this very moment. i call on you to do so. if you feel that you can work with these changes, i'm happy to do that as well. as i said in february, my door is open, and i'm always willing to talk about these things with you if you're willing to work with me.

so, i ask that the senator modify his request to withdraw the amendment at the desk and include my new amendment which is at the desk of, the agreement be considered and agreed to, the bill be considered read a third time and passed and the motions to reconsider be considered made and laid upon the table. the presiding officer: does the senator so modify his request? mr. durbin: madam president, reserving the right to object, let me say to senator lee, the changes you came back with were significant. removing the hold harmless provision to me is fundamentally unfair to anyone who has been waiting patiently for the green card. why would we jeopardize anyone and make their wait even longer for a green card? that was one of the modifications you suggested. two other modifications you suggested delayed protection for children. it left them subject to deportation for two to three years. why would we do that? we both agree that's a terrible

outcome. that was one of your modifications as well. as far as the 50-50 rule, i believe that is what's driving this conversation. these outsourcing companies make a bundle of money with their approach to it and there are people who want to keep them in business and making money even at the is expense of american workers, and i think that's wrong. i really do. i can't believe that's what is really going to stop us at this point to try to protect these outsourcing companies for three years before this provision affects them. as far as what we can do here today, i think what i'm going to offer next is going to be the simplest thing we can achieve. let us protect the children. that's the next thing i'm going to offer. let us protect the children and as they're waiting in line they can't abling out and be deported. that is not an unreasonable thing to request. i i'm going to refuse to to the modification. but i'm going to offer the modification on children. let's agree today.

mr. lee: madam president? the presiding officer: is there objection to the -- there is objection to the -- is there objection to the original request? mr. lee: madam president, reserving the right to object. look, the hold harmless issue, it was taken care of with the three to nine year transition. that's why we made the three to nine year transition, was to take care of the hold harmless provision. if you want to negotiate the terms of that, we can talk about that right now. we can resolve that right now. but make no mistake, you are fundamentally changing and altering the terms of what we agreed to and you're accusing me of fundamentally materially changing the terms of the agreement when all i have done is what we agreed to in december. what you are suggesting here is a deviation from what is possible. i can't agree to what is not possible, to what contravenes what uscis has said it is capable of implementing. on that basis i object. the presiding officer: objection is heard.

mr. durbin: madam chair, i have a few minutes more to close this debate. i ask the forebearance of those who are prepared at 4:00 to vote. i ask unanimous consent to continue for ten additional minutes. lee. mr. lee: i object. the presiding officer: objection is heard. the presiding officer: objection is withdrawn. mr. durbin: this proposal which i'm about to make, called the protect children of immigrant workers act, simply ensures that children will not age out. how many times have parents come to me with tears in their eyes don't hurt my child. here is our schans to take -- chance to cake care of this one -- take care of this one provision. i ask the senator, please, for the sake of these children, give them the protection and let us

continue to try to negotiate the other provisions. i ask unanimous consent the senate proceed to my consideration of my bill, the protect the children of immigrant workers act which is at the desk. further the bill be considered read three times and passed and the motions to reconsider be considered made and laid upon the table with no intervening action or debate. the presiding officer: is it there objection? mr. lee: mr. president. the presiding officer: the senator is recognized. mr. lee: reserving the right to object. you should have brought that to me. i would have loved to have considered it. i haven't even seen it yet. my staff saw it for the first time earlier today. i'd love to have a look at it. but this is something that could have been brought up at any moment in the last six or seven months, in the last year, hasn't been so far. happy to have a look at it now but i certainly can't agree to pass something that i have not seen. i therefore object. the presiding officer: the objection's heard. mr. durbin: in the interest of moving to the roll call, i will not offer my third amendment.

i will tell you this. it will be back. this is your chance to do something for the children. it's very simple. you know what it is. let's do this and then debate the other provisions. mr. lee: mr. president. the presiding officer: the senator is recognized. mr. lee: mr. president, i could not agree more that we should do this. i could not agree mr that we need -- more that we need to eliminate the elvis pressley era immigration provision that discriminates on individuals based on the country of origin. there are reasons why immigration policy is a contentious one. there are reasons why its has failed. it has to do with the fact that people pile on. they get desperate. it is hard to reform the immigration code. when someone suggests one former, others suggest ten morse. before -- more. before long it chokes the horse. you can't move forward with it. this is focused on a simple concept regardless of how many

visas we issue or green cards we issue, there are a lot of ways to allocate the number that we have. let's start with the number we have and figure out on the -- whatever reasons ought to influence that decision. among them should not be the country in which you were born. if you imagine two hypothetical would-be employment-based green card recipients who are otherwise eligible, immigrant a and immigrant b, they are identical in all respects, in their employment qualify indicatings, education, proficiency in english, every meaningful characteristic, except one, immigrant a happen to have been born in say luxembourg and immigrant b was born in india. india has a large population and luxembourg has a small population, but the immigrant from india will be -- this is

senseless. we ought to be able to get around that. i agree with you wholeheartedly, senator durbin, we should pass this right now. there's no reason not to. thank you, mr. president, i yield he the floor. the presiding officer: the senator from oklahoma. mr. inhofe: i call up amendment number 1729 and ask it be reported by number. appropriate. the clerk: the senator from oklahoma, mr. inhofe for mrs. shaheen proposes amendment 7329 to amendment 2301. the presiding officer: on -- under the previous order, the question is on the amendment.

mr. inhofe: mr. president, i ask unanimous consent that the 60-affirmative vote threshold with respect to the shaheen amendment number 1729 be vitiated. the presiding officer: is there objection? without objection. mr. inhofe: it's my understanding that we should be able to adopt the amendment by voice vote. the presiding officer: the question is on the amendment. all in favor say aye. those opposed, no. the ayes appear to have it. the aye does have it. the amendment is agreed to. the question occurs on the cornyn amendment. mr. inhofe: i ask for the yeas and nays. the presiding officer: is there a sufficient second? there appears to be. the clerk will call the roll. vote:

vote:

vote:

vote:

the presiding officer: is there anyone in the chamber who wishes to vote or change his or her vote? seeing none, there is 96 yeas and 4 nays. under the previous order, the amendment is agreed to.

mr. inhofe: mr. president. the presiding officer: the senator from oklahoma. mr. inhofe: mr. president, of course right now we're in the middle of the, what i refer to several times as what i consider to be the most significant bill of the year, the national defense authorization act, one that you can almost be sure it will pass since it's passed

for, this will be the 60th consecutive year that it's passed. it's a pretty good indication that it's going to pass. that comes with problems, however. if people know a bill is going to pass, and so you get a lot of things, a lot of pieces of legislation that have not been able to get passed in maybe a whole year, and it becomes a part of this bill. it's more than just the defense authorization bill, but it's the most significant one. before we even came to the floor, we did something that we've been working on now for at least i know personally for four years, and that is to put ourselves in a position where just in case we find ourselves where we can't get amendments, because all it takes is one person to object and there will be no amendments, so if this happens, we decided to go ahead and put this bill together and

do it in such a way that the members who are actually drafting the bill -- we have 700 member items. you might remember back in january we started talking about this, saying if you want to have an amendment in the defense authorization bill, even though it's not going to become effective until a year from december, you better get down there and do it because now is the time you can get that done. well, we ended up with 700 member items, and that was thenn got to the floor. and then more were added. we had another 140 amendments after that. and so it's a bill, you can say this bill was passed by you, and i'm talking about members, democrats and republicans, in the chamber. because these items all came out of it. we didn't do it the way it used to be done. we kind of eased into this, but

it's worked very well, and i commend liz and john for the work that they do in holding everyone together and making this a reality. so where we are right now is we've had a lot of our members coming to the floor. my star and i are continuing to work on the inclusion of additional amendments. if you will recall, mr. president, two weeks ago when we footballing a break for the -- when we took a break for the fourth of july, we agreed upon some legislation, some amendments that would be a part of this. they are all structured right now. we already passed two, well, actually passed four today. and so we're continuing to, we have another bunch of amendments, including a managers' package. it was hotlined today, just today. i don't have the results of that yet. people may have objected to it. i'm just not aware of it. but apparently there have been

some objections. i don't know what the count is. but we'll keep trying to get as many amendments as possible. in my experience, this means we're nearing the end of the road, and i would have to say this of my partner in this effort, which has been my partner for a number of years, jack reed, on the minority side. we have both worked hand in glove in trying to get as many amendments as possible, and we set a record this year. either amendments or by letters from members. now, mr. president, i'm going to do something that's going to make a bunch of people mad, and i don't really care. you hear so much negative stuff stuff, and i have said several times that when this president came in, he gave us up to the moment that we had the virus, up to that moment we had the best economy we've had in my

lifetime, all indications show that was true. and he did this in a way that was thought out, and it wasn't all a republican idea. because back when john kennedy was president of the united states, that's when they expanded the great society. and he said, and this is a quote, he said we are going to to have a lot more revenue to take care of the great society programs. the best way to increase prench is to decrease marbling nal -- increase revenue is to decrease marginal rates, and it worked. unfortunately he died right after that and could not see the benefits of the efforts of this great idea. and so this was done, again, during the bush administration. it actually was done, was the first thing it was done by the trump administration, but he did something different this time, and this is the reason it

produced so much more revenue than the others produced in years past. because he said we also need to reduce the regulations at the same time. i'm very sensitive to this because i chaired the environment and public works committee back during the time the republicans were a minority minority, and we had during the obama administration we had so many regulations that had to be changed. even the chair is probably not aware this was a regulation that was passed during the obama administration. it's one that said if you're a domestic oil or gas company and you're in competition with china or somebody else, you have to give them your playbook, how you calculated your rates. well, that put them at a decided advantage. so when i was fortunate enough to get to know this president prior to the time that he took office, i was suggesting it and he was saying what a good place

to start in reducing regulations, and i said a good one would be to do away with that regulation which was passed. it was only a week i think after he took office that we passed the first regulation. that's just one example. but then regulation after regulation after regulation, those of us who have grown up in the business world know that's what costs money. liberals have never figured that out. anyway, this has happened. the result of this is we've had really great benefits. i bring this up now because -- and put the johnson family up. this is a family in oklahoma. it's the johnson family, charlie johnson and he has several brothers and he has a son named andrew. they are in the tree business. they find people who want to get rid of dead trees, unwanted trees and all that, they can get rid of trees and they are

the best there are. they have been doing it now very competitively and have been doing it for years. he told me when he came out to take a tree out, during the it two weeks -- i'm talking about less than two weeks ago. he said we can do this, but i want to tell you, we are really busy now. in fact, our business is better than it's ever been in the history of our company. it's all because of what has happened with the president that we have. and these were his words. he said i know everybody hates the president. the media hates the president, but we love him and let me tell you why. we are now doing better than we've ever done before. our business is better than it ever has been. and then he had a brother who specialized -- now when you're in the tree business, you specialize. if you look at the -- you can't see the bucket there, but the son is in the bucket. another one is the guy who's developed a way of grinding

stumps. almost anyone can take a tree out, but to grind a stump, you have to have very expensive equipment. a few days after i'd seen these people, i got a visit by a guy named brad johnson. and brad is the one who specializes in stump grinding. so what he did was he said, our business is so good now -- and they all credit the president with this -- our business is so good that i decided i'd go off on my own and buy a stump grinder. very, very expensive. no one thought they'd be able to do it. now i think he owns the only stump grinder in delaware county in oklahoma. and he said i want you to do something. i know that you're going to be going back to washington. and so i'm going to give you this, and i want you to give this to the president of the united states.

it's brad's stump grinding. and i'm going to give this to the president of the united states and take his picture. but i only say all this to let you know good things are happening around here. things -- things have not been this good. except for the virus problem, no one had any -- other than the president. when hi think how good our economy was right before the virus hit, i thought if we had an average economy, where would we be today? so, anyway, that was the good news and i was excited to tell them i was going to share this with a few other people. early today i mentioned i'd be coming down to the floor to talk about our troop basing in germany. i think most of us on the committee know that we've been working on this for a long time. secretary of defense mark esper put something together where he was going around and

reevaluating our troop and asset distribution around the world. and i know disagreed with some of the things he came up with. africa, for example, was an area where they are starting to have some very, very serious problems and -- and so, if anything, it's going to end up taking more activity, but with the -- along with other members, i'll be receiving detailed briefings from the department of defense on plans to carry out president's decision in the coming days and weeks. but based on my conversation with secretary esper, and the briefings i've received so far, the goal is to optimize our force posture in europe, in part, by moving some of our forces along nato's eastern flank. it's always been in western europe and so going forward, as i think about the plan to

realign the posture in europe, i'm thinking about the three guiding principles that i call the three f's. first, the forward presence, maintaining a strong presence in europe that gives our troops what they need to deter russia and, if necessary, to fight and win and defeat russia. and i like the idea of rational -- of rotation of forces in southeast europe. the second one is force protection. and really force projection is more accurate. it's keeping strong, established bases for staging air capacity and more that we have, for example in ramstein air force base and we've invested quite a lot of money and that's going to work for any future use an readjustments to take place in europe. what i'm saying is a lot of

things are going to go on in europe that are going to be enhancing as opposed to being transferred. third is families. now, this is kind of interesting. tinker air force base, there's as young lady who is the wife of a worker at tinker air force base. her name is jana driver. she came to me two years ago. she said we've got a problem out at tinker. when we privatized our housing,ing it worked out -- housing, it worked out fine for a long period of time but then it seemed people got greedy and they talked about the deplorable condition of housing, and i thought this is my home state of oklahoma, thank goodness it's one military establishment. then ip found out it was -- then i found out it was in five military establishments and then i found out it wasn't just in oklahoma, it was around the world. so this is something that is very significant because when you look at the problems that we

have, so many people -- and i'll be addressing this with a little more detail in a minute because of an amendment that's going to be before us tomorrow, and that is we do so many things different than other countries do. i heard over and over again, i'm sure the chair has also heard, we talk about the money we spend on defense in the united states, and yet we spend more money than russia and china. , -- those are our strategic oop sition. we -- opposition. we spend more money than russia and china. we spend more money because of the people. we spend more on housing and school for the kids and we want to make sure that these things are going on and that's what costs money. if you're in a communist country, they give you a gun and say, go out and kill people and the problem's solved.

so we -- we are concerned about our families. they make a lot of sacrifices. every few years our families have to move, change locations, the kids have to change schools, and they move to another area. then if the spouse has a job, they have to try to get that job. and, by the way, in this bill we have some help so that we get relief from some of the regulations that normally take a long period of time. so spouses are able to get -- get a job on a new location. that's something that a lot of people are not aware of is in this great bill that will we have. they have to change hometowns. they change houses, they change doctors, their kids change schools. and, of cows, they live with -- of course, they live with the reality that their service member is putting their life on the line to defend their country. we've got to be grateful and never take sacrifice for granted. in everything we do, we should be trying to ease the burden of

our military families. so when it comes to this plan that we're talking about, this is changing the forces around, primarily in europe, that's what you hear more about, it's important that we do it right and do it right away. we -- it's going to be -- take some time to do but we need to get started. the reason i'm really excited about this program is that this is not something new. some people might -- if you have good memories, you might remember back when the -- when general jim jones was the supreme allied commander of nato, and at that time, i had gone to him and said, you know, one thing that we really need to be doing is to start readjusting where we have our troops. at that time we had a lot of troops, as we do today in germany, and a lot of training was taking place. but because of the environmental

movement in germany, they were giving us restrictions, saying you can only train with live ordnance maybe four days aweek and not past sunset and things like that. so we are doing a great thing for germany in stationing all the people over there and the money we spend and all of that and yet they are not really trying to help us. we did some surveying, and this is kind of funny, because john bonzo, who is my staff director on the committee on the republican side, we went over to different countries, bulgaria, poland, different countries in that part of the world and said in the eastern part of europe, are you willing to help us out? and they said, not only can you use your ordnances as much as you want, but at the same time

we'll help billet you and all of that. so the program was good and it was strongly supported by general jim jones at that time. and we did all we could to put that together and we were visiting our allies about and it we already had ukraine, bulge glara and -- bulgaria and romania lined up. they call it the lily pad approach to basing and it was -- we were told it would work. unfortunately president bush decided he didn't want to do it and so we were unsuccessful in getting that done. so i've been fighting with that -- with other presidents since that time. i've not gotten to look at that and the great values that would happen and that is something that is taking place right now. we don't know -- we're going to get a member briefing tomorrow that's going to give us a lot of

details on what is going to happen and what the president is proposing in that area of europe. now, i just want to speak about one of the amendments that's next up. senator sanders' amendment would cut defense spending by 10%. this is something i happen to be very close with senator sanders, and we have areas where we disagree with each other and this is one of those areas. i looked at this and i thought he has an amendment that would cut defense spending by 10%. first of all, this amendment would break the bipartisan budget agreement of 2019 that we passed, congress passed this agreement last summer, with a bipartisan support and the president signed it into law. the fiscal 2021 ndaa, national defense authorization act, that's the bill that we're -- that we're working on right now as we speak, fulfills this agreement. it provides a total of

$740.5 billion for our national defense and i would have preferred to see a higher number at that time, but that's -- it's now the law of the land. so even though it is lower than ideal having budgetary certainty is critical. it's what our military leaders ask for every time they come before the committee that i chair and before the -- senator shelby's committee. they need on time, stable and equipment to do their job. our adversaries are investing in their milts and building -- militaries and building and advanced weapons systems and acting more aggressively than we've ever seen before. the national defense strategy describes -- this a document that we've adhered to. this was put together by six republicans and six democrats. it was one of these things where

it was bipartisan. everyone agreed, the people were experts that put this together and we followed it to the letter ever since that time. and we have the national defense strategy commission report, that's this, a bipartisan document written by six democrats, six republicans. they tell us what we need to increase our defense budget each year and so we already know we need to be increasing our budget just to stay competitive. we've already agreed to this total. now one of the criticisms i hear from our defense budget is that we pay much more than other countries. well, i've already explained, we're the ones who have to pay to take care of our people, our troops, their families, their kids. so here's the problem with that argument. other countries don't have to do that. so beyond the troops, we also take care of the families and all that while others don't do it. but this is significant.

china and russia are rapidly modernizing their milts. when i say this -- militaries. when i say this in public and talk to our groups, i don't have credibility. it doesn't sound like it's possible. during the -- and i don't say this critically of the obama administration -- the obama administration, by his own admission, had other priorities, one of them wasn't the strong military and so during the last five years -- now i'm talking about this has been 2010 to 2015, during those last five years using the president's budget, he decreased the amount of money for our military by 25%. in five years, decreased it by 25%. at the same time russia increased theirs by 34% and china increased theirs by 83%. now stop and think about that. our -- our adversaries out there who are building and building and getting ahead of us in different areas. it's important to note that the

bill exempts military pay and -- and the defense health program which means this amendment is actually the equivalent to a 14% cut. now i'm talking about cuts in airplanes and equipment and -- and -- and assets that are military assets. this means the nuclear modern glietion an key research that -- modernization and key research help us stay competitive with russia. so this is something that i really can't be -- be done. it means you the cuts -- it means cuts to military construction, including schools to military kids to programs that support military families and to programs that support our troops morale and welfare. it is plain wrong. our military combat commanders tell me and our committee they need on time predictable and stable funding to do their jobs and this amendment would actually cut that by 14% in the

areas that concern people. in the strongest possible terms, i urge a no vote on this amendment and all this is going to happen while we continue to face the burden that pandemic has placed on our military. our military is a key part of the whole of government response to -- to the virus. our competitors haven't given us a free pass. -- pass while this is all happening. we've seen china and russia take advantage of this situation and they've been acting more aggressively. at the same time the department of defense is working to protect our troops and the civilian workforce from the virus and this needs to continue to be a top priority. everyone understands that. in fact, rather than cutting the defense budget, we actually need to support the military covid response with additional funding. take this one example.

defense -- defense industrial companies have done a great job to ensure that their suppliers, primarily thousands of small businesses, stay open and keep employees paid. in the cares act we gave the d.o.d. the authority and the tools to reimburse these companies to keep the defense workforce strong but the d.o.d. needs the money to use these tools. now, if we don't help these companies, defense weapons programs and maintenance will suffer more costly overruns, and the defense industry will lose experience, trained workers, meaning scheduled delays are more likely. and, mr. president, these are primarily the small companies. these are not the giants that are up there. so that would be a good investment for our national defense and a good investment for the american taxpayer. now is simply not the time to be cutting our defense budget when we should be acting.

i know the author of the bill that would cut defense spending by 10% is very sincere and really believes in his bill. it is not the time to do it. i hope the people understand that we are now in a position, if we actually have different resources that are in russia, in china that are better than ours, hypersonic weapons is a good example, hypersonic weapons is kind of state-of-the-art, both offense and defense, and they are ahead of this. they are ahead of this right now. so i think with this budget we're going to be passing, we're going to be making broad steps to recapture those areas where we had previously been the leaders and now are not the leaders any longer. with that, mr. president, i yield the floor. i suggest the absence of a quorum. the presiding officer: the clerk shall call the roll. quorum call:

a senator: mr. president. the presiding officer: the senator from tennessee. mr. alexander: i ask consent the

quorum call be vitiated. the presiding officer: without objection. mr. alexander: mr. president, in march, congress and the president said to 43 million student loan borrowers because of covid-19, your student loan payments are deferred until october 1. no monthly payments for six months for student loan borrowers. well, mr. president, october 1 is just around the corner, so what do we say to those 43 million student loan borrowers today? i propose that we say this. number one, no income, no monthly payment. in other words, if you have a student loan, your monthly payment is zero. if you don't have any income, for whatever reason. number two, when you do begin earning income, your monthly payment will never be more than 10% of your income after you

deduct the necessities of life such as the cost of housing, rent, or mortgage, and food. and then number three, the same generous loan forgiveness that exists today for student loan borrowers will still exist. after 20 years of payments for undergraduate loans and 25 years of payments for graduate loans, if you still have an outstanding loan balance, your loan will be forgiven, and that includes all the months your payment was zero because you didn't have any income. these same policies, no income, no monthly payment, will be offered to students who take out new loans in addition to existing student loan borrowers. now, new and existing student loan borrowers will be offered one other option under my proposal for paying back their loans. this option would be like a ten-year mortgage.

make equal principal and interest monthly payments over ten years until the loan is paid off. some borrowers may prefer this option because it could mean paying less interest. every borrower would be eligible to switch from one option, the income-based payment, to the other option. the remaining good news in this proposal is that the current bewildering system of nine different ways of paying off your student loan could be thrown in the trash heap and replaced by these two straightforward proposals. one, the income-based repayment option. and two, the ten-year mortgage option. these changes will give some peace of mind to the 43 million current borrowers and the tens of millions of americans who are expected to sign up for new student loans over the next ten years. these ideas are not new, nor are

they my ideas. they have been recommended by higher education experts numerous times. testifying before the senate education committee during the past six years while we considered reauthorizing the higher education act. these concepts have been suggested by many senators on both sides of the aisle. democrats, republicans, including senators king and burr and rubio and merkley and portman and warner, wicker, manchin, shaheen, and collins. all of these have suggested these concepts. and, mr. president, while we're simplifying the student loan repayment system, i propose we also finish the job of reducing the federal loan application of grants and loans which everyone calls fafsa. from about 108 questions to 20 to 33 questions. this is an enterprise that a

number of us, both democrats and republicans, have been working on for years, including senator murray, bennet, jones, king, collins, whitehouse, gardner, cornyn, stabenow, tillis, and hassan. so you see there is an unusual amount of bipartisan support for both of these ideas. experts before the senate education committee have testified that simplifying the fafsa this way would remove obstacles that would make it easier for low-income americans to attend colleges and would increase the number of pell grants each year. last fall, congress and the president took the first step in simplifying the fafsa while allowing the i.r.s. to answer 22 questions for which applicants for grants and loans had already answered on their tax returns. 20 million american families who struggle to fill out this essential but unnecessarily complex fafsa will be grateful

to congress if we complete the job of simplifying the federal aid application system at the same time we make it simpler for 43 million americans to pay back their student loans. now, mr. president, there is one more piece of good news in this proposal, and this news is for the american taxpayer. simplifying the student loan repayment system, as well as the system for applying for student loans and grants, will save the taxpayer about $10 billion over ten years, according to the congressional budget office. this is because the simpler system will also provide more certainty in the repayment of loans. on october 1, 43 million americans with student loans are going to have to restart making their monthly student loan repayments. congress deferred student loan payments in march, as i said earlier, when the cares act,

covid-19 relief bill was signed into law, but that deferment expires on september 30. so there never has been a more important time to end the demanding complex of student loan repayment and make it simpler for americans to pay off their loans. let me briefly review how the student loan repayment and fafsa simplification act will work. it offers student loan borrowers just two options. the standard ten-year repayment plan just like a mortgage, or the income-based plan that i have described. so for borrowers with no income, if they choose an income-based repayment plan, their monthly payment would be zero. if a borrower in an income-based payment plan earns income, the borrower's monthly payment would be based on that amount of income. so let's take an example. the average student loan for a four-year college graduate today is about $30,000. so someone with a $30,000 in

student loan debt making $52,000 each year would be expected to pay 10% of that borrower's discretionary income, which is about $274 per month income. so if you have a $30,000 loan debt and you make $52,000 a year, your monthly payment is about $274 under this plan. borrowers under the plan would never have to pay more than 10% of their income that is not needed for necessities. now, we don't pass -- if we don't pass this legislation before october 1, here is what will happen. because of the confusing repayment system we have, too many borrowers will have ended up in an unaffordable standard ten-year repayment mortgage-type plan with payments so high they will find themselves in default. and then when we're through with this pandemic, the economy improves, and these borrowers are ready to tackle their debts,

they will find that their student loan debt may have soared out of control. senator murray of washington state, who is the ranking democrat on our committee, and i have been working on reauthorizing the higher education act for nearly six years. we have held 19 hearings over that time. we were making good progress. in fact, i was hopeful we could mark up the bill this spring. but between impeachment and covid, that just didn't work out. in january, i said i saw consensus emerging. it was for more simple, effective regulations, making it easier for students to pay for college and to pay back their loans. we discussed the complexity of the federal financial aid system. we heard from many experts. and one -- at one roundtable, a university president from tennessee told me it took him months to figure out how to pay off his daughter's federal student loan -- this is a college president -- even with the money in his hand. so this is not a new problem, and the solution that i am

proposing has been discussed by our committee and many senators outside the committee for nearly six years. it will help both those facing loan payments starting october october 1, but millions of students graduating with student debt. when it comes time to start repaying on those loans, students have to navigate through a complicated number of options today, nine in total. i don't want to go through them in detail because it would stagger the imagination, but, for example, there is the ten-year standard repayment. there is the graduated standard repayment. there are two extended repayment options. there are five different programs based on your income, the income contingent repayment, the original income based repayment, the revised income based repayment, the pay as you go plan, the revised pay as you earn repayment. those are all the different ways you can pay off your student loans which confuse the

43 million borrowers who have them. now, if i lost you wandering through there, you can get a sense of how those 43 million borrowers must feel. the student and fafsa ends that confusion. it will reduce the payment plans down to two. one ten-year payment like a mortgage, one payment based on income. in addition, the bill reduces the complexity for borrowers who wish to participate in the government forgiveness loan program which gives them an opportunity to pursue jobs in public service. borrowers can have a hard time figuring out which plan to choose. under this legislation, a borrower who wants loan forgiveness can't choose the wrong plan because there are only two and either apply, whether you choose the standard

10-year repayment plan or the income base plan. in less than three months, 43 million student loan borrowers will be required by law to begin monthly payments again on their loans. many of these borrowers won't be able to afford these payments. i propose we say to those borers, we have a better option, no income, no monthly payment. whether because of covid-19 or for any other reason. in other words, if you have a student loan, you may defer your monthly payment if you do not have any income, and when you do begin earning income, your monthly payment will never be more than 10% of your income after you deduct the necessities of life such as the cost of housing, rent, or mortgage and food. now is the time to reduce the

complexity of student loan debt and finish the job of simplifying the fafsa, and, madam president, at the same time save the taxpayers money. i thank the president and i yield the floor. a senator: madam president. the presiding officer: the senator from oregon. mr. merkley: i ask unanimous consent that senators casey, udall, shaheen, kaine, smith,

schumer, feinstein, cardin, whitehouse, leahy, tester, schatz, cortez masto, warner and menendez be added as cosponsor to 4220. the presiding officer: without objection. mr. merkley: madam president. the presiding officer: the senator from oregon. mr. merkley: i ask unanimous consent that senators stabenow, casey, udall, shaheen, kaine, smith, schumer, feinstein, cardin, whitehouse, leahy, tester, schatz, cortez masto, and menendez be added as cosponsors to amendment 2457 to limit the use of law enforcement officers for crowd control to senate bill 4049, the national defense authorization act for

fiscal year 2021. the presiding officer: without objection. mr. merkley: madam president, in the course of time, america should find a president in the oval office who choose to bring the police tactics of dictators around the world to the streets of america, then that is the moment it's incumbent on every member of this chamber who has sworn an oath to our constitution, who is determined to practice civil rights of america, to stand up and say not now, not here, not ever, and we put an end to it. so that is why i brought forth this amendment. stop secret policing in america amendment and asking for it to be debated on this bill because it involves police powers, military powers, the united

states of america, and it's happening right now. what am i talking about? well, let me give you some sense of what we have seen on the streets of america in the past few days. and as i note here, authoritarian governments, not democratic republics and unmasked and unmarked authorities after protesters. well, this is what we saw, customs and border protection in military uniform in combat cam flowj, no -- camouflage, no marking what they are. they said, no they had markings and identifiers, but here they are. and to make it even worse, they look a whole lot like protesters from the far right who come to make trouble dressed in

camouflage and they actually have things that look more like badges than the actual representatives of customs and border protection. and what else did we see? here's a navy veteran standing in the street who said he came down to the protest to simply say, are you honoring your oath to the constitution? here we have cbp officers beating him, here's one baton, here's another, they broke one of his bones while this man here pepper sprayed him in the face. a peaceful protester standing, being attacked by unmarked war-prepared, dressed in camouflage forces deployed by the president of the united states. and then what else happened? well, they decided not to consult with the city and not consult with the state and not

think carefully about what weapons they are carrying and how they use them, so impact munitions. this protester right here in the silhouette, he's standing, he's holding what appears to be a sign above his head or maybe it's a radio. moments later in the video that shows this, he is shot down. you see him collapse on the street, peace protester standing, making his case, as guaranteed by the constitution of the united states of america, and he is shot square between the eyes by president trump's forces deployed without permission and no coordination with the local representatives or the governor of the state of oregon. this young man struck down, shot in the head in the hospital in

critical condition. he's doing better now thankfully. and then these forces deploy away from the federal buildings, go into the streets and start snatching protesters and throwing them into an unmarked van, advance like this one -- -- vans like this one right here. one young man said i was terrified. he said i didn't know who these people were. they wouldn't identify themselves. there's a video of people saying, who are you all? and they wouldn't answer. they grab him. he thinks they might be the folks from the right-wing protesters who come in camouflage. he might be kidnapped, he doesn't know. even after he was thrown into a jail cell, it's not explained why he was grabbed off the street. secret police, unmarked, throwing people into unmarked vehicles and sweeping them away,

that's what you get from authoritarian dictat, not a country -- dictators, not a country, a republic where we have a constitution and we have rights. that's what's going on here. that's what has to stop here in america. some of the headlines, federal law enforcement use unmarked vehicles to grab protesters off the streets. a navy vet asked federal officers in portland to remember their oaths, they broke his hand. that's the navy vet in the white sweatshirt who is being attacked by two officers while another sprays him with pepper spray. federal officers deployed in portland didn't have proper training, d.h.s. says. they shouldn't have been there. we need a bill to stop secret police in america. we need a bill done as an amendment on this bill right

now, on this bill we're considering about military force, a bill which says your organization has to be identified on your uniform. it says there has to be unique identifier so you don't think you can just get away with anything and eye abuse people and never -- abuse people and never be held accountable. and a bill which says, if you defend monuments and buildings, you defend monuments and buildings. you have to have the permission of the mayor or governor. and if the federal government in transparency in our democracy has to tell us all as participants as this we the people government that they are disclosing how many people from where are being sent to what city. and this isn't just some small issue. this is the president saying

yesterday, after bragging about what he has done in portland to violate the rights of people, saying he's looking at new york and chicago and philadelphia and detroit and baltimore and oakland deploying these secret police tactics all over this country. and all i do right now is stand here and say, i want a vote on any of these -- ending these secret police practices in america. i say to every republican colleague and every democratic colleague, i want a vote. i'm here in full partnership with my colleague from oregon who shares this indignation, this outrage, or the violation of the constitution, who shares these thoughts and then together we will ask to have a vote. what is this chamber if it cannot take on and hold a debate or discussion over authoritarian secret police strategies brought to the streets of america?

my colleague. wyden wyden i -- mr. wyden: i thank my colleague this afternoon because he speaks today with passion and facts and clearly outlines what our constituents told us at home this past week, and i thank him for this partnership that oregonians are seeing again on the floor of this great senate. madam president, donald trump has deployed a para military squad to our hometown in portland. his secret police are terrorizing my friends and neighbors. now people across the country need to understand that yesterday donald trump announced

to america that your friends and your neighbors are next. unmarked vans full of unarmed men in military gear snatch people off the street. they interrogate them without ultimate maition and ultimately without -- ultimate made yums and ultimately without charges. a close personal friend, sharon miron, an e.r. doctor and a mom was protesting peacefully and was teargassed without provocation. she felt like she was seeing democracy pass right in front of her eyes. millions of americans have seen the video of that local navy

veteran who was repeatedly beaten and pepper sprayed and left with broken bones. and people ask me, ron, what was his offense? i'm sure senator merkley gets exactly the same question. what did he do wrong? he was standing, madam president, motionless, hands by his side, speaking up for the liberty that he served to protect. people are stunned that this is happening on the streets of our hometown. we've seen reports of agents ripping a mask off of a protester who is obeying commands with hands in the air only to pepper spray the protester's face. the secret police even threw flash banes and tear gas at a

wall of moms. here they are. here they are in our hometown. you can see them over the last couple of days moms and dads and now their kids are asking to come to peacefully sing songs and protest for justice. oregonians just standing up for what's right. only the cowards of the trump administration would try to convince america that these peaceful protesters, the wall of moms, represent some kind of anarchist threat. it's nonsense. i condemn violence by anybody -- always. and i spent much of last week

working for nonviolent solutions in my hometown and fresh approaches that reduce tensions on our streets. the fact is, the protests in portland have been overwhelmingly peaceful. crime in portland and across oregon was down before donald trump sent in the secret police. donald trump did not send that paramilitary force -- this expeditionary force -- to keep people safe. donald trump is doing this to create an image of chaos, to air them on far-right television, scare the country, turn them into campaign ads. but these are the people that

senator merkley and i are honored to represent. these are the people donald trump's paramilitary forces attack and terrorize. he calls it a great success. as we have indicated, he's got a game plan to basically make portland an experiment and to do it in other cities, especially by his account, those with democratic leer and voters. -- democratic leadership and voters. this kind of abusive exercise of power by a rogue president would have horrified our founding fathers. they wrote our wonderful constitution to prevent exactly this behavior because democracy cannot survive in a nation that tolerates it. these tactics were used throughout the world a century

ago to turn elected politicians into tyrants. madam president, the president's first and most important job is to keep americans safe. residents of portland are less safe and less secure since donald trump deployed the secret police to our streets. the same thing -- and i say this to colleagues wherever you're from. the same thing will happen in your communities where donald trump chooses to send his prayer military forces -- his paramilitary forces. frankly, donald trump always talks about targeting portland and other cities, senator

merkley. i wish he would target the coronavirus. i wish he would put a fraction of his passion for going after our cities into dealing with the coronavirus because while donald trump's secret police are out terrorizing portland's moms and doctors and other peaceful protesters, we face a raging pandemic, record-high unemployment. i want us to renew the supercharged unemployment benefits that people are essentially going to lose this weekend. donald trump isn't doing any of that work. what he's doing is making americans in cities less safe and not dealing with the coronavirus on top of it. he's attempting to cut resources for covid testing and treatment.

his administration covers updated the public health professionals rely on to do their jobs. he is -- and he says it repeatedly -- anxious to cut the lifelines of 30 million jobless americans, sending them tumbling off an economic cliff, right in the middle of the worst employment crisis since the great depression. he's not doing his job. he's ignoring his responsibilities. and both on the streets of portland and in washington, d.c., when he walks away from dealing with the coronavirus, he isn't keeping americans safe; he is putting them in more danger. as i've said and said repeatedly, donald trump ought to attack the coronavirus pandemic and not the people of portland. so that's why very shortly

senator merkley and i will offer an amendment that will block donald trump from using these paramilitary forces in portland or other cities where they are unwanted. what we're seeing in our hometown is we're seeing these paramilitary squads brutally unleashed against peaceful protesters -- moms and veterans, doctors, activists. all they want to do is speak out for liberty and justice. what donald trump is now doing is incompatible with the fundamental principles of democracy laid out by our founders and expanded throughout the generations. i believe what donald trump is doing, in light of his statement yesterday to america that he's going to go after one city after

another, what donald trump is doing is totally out of control. the senate cannot allow this to happen. that's why senator merkley and i are calling for the senate to act. i thank my friend and colleague for his leadership. he's made it clear that 100% of oregon's united states senators are going to keep pushing and fighting until this chaplains. madam president, i yield the floor. -- until this changes. madam president, i yield the floor. mr. merkley: madam president? the presiding officer: the senator from oregon. mr. merkley: the support is felt throughout oregon to stop secret policing in america. but it is a coast-to-coast feeling, and i yield to my colleague from connecticut to speak from the other side of the country. mr. blumenthal: madam president? the presiding officer: the senator from connecticut. mr. blumenthal: i want to thank from my heart our two colleagues from oregon, who are

standing up and championing not just their hometowns, not just the constituents of their state. they are speaking for every hometown, every citizen of our country from every party from every corner of our great nation. and met me just say -- and let me just say very simply. these pictures of heavily armed, unidentified individuals in camouflage fatigues, driving unmarked vehicles, grab individuals, throwing them into their car, would be something we would associate with the worst nightmare of a two-bit dictatorship. and here we see it in the united states of america. i spent almost my whole career in law enforcement before i came to this body, and i am

embarrassed and ashamed that this kind of sadistic, cruel, hate-filled abuse was done in the name of law enforcement. what we witnessed in oregon was in no way law enforcement. it was a violation of the law and of individual rights. and it is coming to your hometown as well. the president has specifically named chicago, philadelphia, detroit, baltimore, oakland. it will come to hartford and my hometown, stanford, and other cities in connecticut. have no fear. if the president will go to these abusive extremes on the other coast of america, he will come to the east coast as well. so let me just say, the requirements of this amendment

-- identification of each officer, limiting federal agents to their proper role in protecting federal property, transparency, and deployment of these officers, identification of them and accountability -- are basic tenets of law enforcement. we should not have to address this issue on the floor of the united states senate. and we're doing it only because the president has broken the norms. he's disrespected the law. every senator in this body, regardless of party, should be standing up and speaking out in support of this amendment. i thank my colleagues for speaking our truth to power. thank you, madam president. i yield the floor. mr. merkley: madam president? the presiding officer: the senator from oregon. mr. merkley: on behalf of the two oregon senators and my colleague from connecticut and

the 34 other senators who are standing up for democracy, for rights, and against secret police, i ask unanimous consent to call up amendment 2457, an amendment to limit federal law enforcement officers for crowd control, that there be two hours for debate equally divided between opponents and proponents, that upon disposition of the tester eight of, the senate vote in relation to the amendment with no amendments in order prior to the vote with all other provisions under the previous order remaining in effect. the presiding officer: is there objection? mr. inhofe: reserving the right to object -- the presiding officer: the senator from oklahoma. mr. inhofe: well, first of all, i don't know how long i've sat and listened to this.

it's a long time. probably not as long as it seemed. secret police, sadistic, cruel. i'm beginning to come to the conclusions that they're not going to be supporting donald trump for reelection. i rise to object to my colleagues' request for unanimous consent. this body has worked together to carefully consider each and every one of the 739 amendments filed on the ndaa. never happened before. we've opted -- adopted those amendments that have broad-based, bipartisan support. the majority and minority worked together to determine which amendments would be brought up for a vote. senator merkley's request for a u.c. circumlent vents that -- circumvents that process. further, this morning the senate

adopted my commonsense amendment that will ensure that law enforcement has the right equipment and the right training. senator merkley's amendment flies in the face of that responsible approach. his amendment would hamstring federal civil law enforcement and our military, even when operating in a title 32 status under the control of a state governor. this would hinder their ability to keep our communities safe. for these reasons, i object. mr. merkley: madam president? the presiding officer: the senator from oregon. mr. merkley: i say to my colleague from oklahoma that if these secret police were loosed on the streets of tulsa, you'd be done here defending your constituents. but you have a responsibility to defend all constituents across

this country, the rights of all citizens of the united states of america. i'm not asking you to support my bill. i'm not asking you to make the arguments for it. i'm not asking the -- i'm asking the simple courtesy that this chamber do the job it's vested with under the constitution, take serious issues that arise in america, hold a dialogue about them on this floor and take votes to show the american people where we stand and hope to solve problems. i have no doubt wldn't get 100 votes. you raise some interesting points. you note that my request to debate a very serious issue in america circumvents process. i can tell you that for 200 years, this chamber believed it was here to address serious issues it, and they didn't raise process issues to keep serious issues from being debated. you didn't need unanimous

consent. just a few decades ago, i was here watching this chamber, working the tax reform act and watching each amendment completed and as soon sasse it was done, the next -- and as soon as it was done, the next senator asked for the recognizeddition of the chair. it was all of a sudden mr. president -- now it's often madam president -- but they were getting the attention because the next person who spoke got the next amendment. this -- this system has taken away the fundamental responsibility of senators to be able to introduce important issues in america, have them debated and voted on. my colleague says we have a new process where the majority leader and the ranking member of the committee consult and decide what should be considered. that concentration of bowr is totally at -- power is totally at odds with the division of

this chamber. mr. inhofe: will the senator yield? mr. merkley: no. you said it sir circumvents process and you said it takes equipment and training away. my bill doesn't deal with equipment or training. so clearly that doesn't stand. you noted title 22 status under the control of the governor. but this bill says an expanded role of crowd control occurs under the permission of the governor, note without it. so this is why these issues should be debated on this floor, and i call on all of my colleagues to return to the senate to a police where serious and important issues regarding the rights of americans can be considered and not shoved aside because one member doesn't want them addressed. that is a challenge for this chamber, but we have a bigger

challenge, which is how do we defend the rights of our citizens if we can't put an amendment on the floor and have it debated and voted on. to my colleagues that secret police have no role in america, that unidentified officers delegated without proper training, without coordination who are beating up peaceful protesters have no place in america, that being flown into a van and you don't know what that van is or who those people -- that has no place in america, and that the tactics of putin and turkey who have no place in government, those completion i thank and let's bring this -- those colleagues i thank and let's bring this issue to the floor and have the debate and have the vote.

mr. merkley: madam president, i note the absence of a quorum. the presiding officer: the clerk will call the roll. quorum call:

the presiding officer: the senator from oregon. we're in a quorum call. without objection. mr. merkley: i ask unanimous consent that senators rosen and hassan be added as cosponsors to senate amendment 2457 to reform the department of defense and to senate bill 4049, -- of amendment to the national defense authorization act for fiscal year 2021. the presiding officer: without objection. mr. merkley: madam president. apologies to my colleague from wyoming. i think we are not in a quorum call. the presiding officer: we are not. mr. merkley: i ask unanimous consent that hassan and senators

be added to 4427. the presiding officer: without objection. the senator from wyoming. mr. barrasso: i have six requests for committees to meet during today's session of the senate with the approval of the majority and minority leaders. the presiding officer: duly noted. mr. barrasso: thank you, madam president. i come to the floor today to discuss our economic recovery. let me be clear. our economy will not shut down again. government will not forcibly close businesses for a second time. yes, america is coming back from the coronavirus. the prepandemic economy was strong. it was healthy and it was growing. every part of the economy had record job growth. unemployment was at a 50-year

low. shutting down the economy slowed the spread of the virus but it did not eliminate it. it saved lives and it brought us time. reopening was never conditioned on having a vaccine or eliminating the virus entirely. businesses, large and small, are today continuing to reopen and they are opening in a safe scientific and sensible way. i saw it all across wyoming the last two weeks as i traveled the state. in casper and cheyenne main streets are busy again, mom and pop businesses are bringing back workers. cody was full of activity over the 4th of july. yellowstone is welcoming thousands of visitors and people are heading to all of the activities in thermopolis. the rodeos have been a huge

success. wyoming is literally back in the saddle again. businesses all over the country are bouncing back and bringing back workers. in june the economy added nearly five million jobs. this shattered all forecasts. this was by far the largest monthly job gain in u.s. history. more than seven million people have been hired back in the last two months. may and june job creation set records. the recent rise in the new covid-19 cases, to me as a doctor, is troubling. still, it is no reason to stop reopening as long as we open in a responsible way. now, people have made great sacrifices. we all did what the experts said we needed to do. now americans are ready to get back to business and get back to work. people don't want another shutdown, and you know that, madam president, you've seen

that in your own home state. and they most assuredly don't want laws coming out of congress to make it easier to stay closed and heard to -- harder to reopen. as a doctor i know we can flatten the virus curve without flattening or flatlining the economy. people can resume normal life and stay healthy. the key, of course, is for all of us do our part and take the proper precautions and we know what they are. social distancing, good hygiene, and, of course, wearing masks. as a doctor i know masks help lower the infection spread, especially indoors when we can't socially distance. together we can manage the risks and as a nation we can move forward. millions of americans are returning to work and doing it safely. congress's rapid response to the pandemic back in march set this recovery in motion. medical workers now have better tools for virus testing, for

treating the disease and for developing a vaccine. americans are doing everything they can to protect the most vulnerable. we're taking care of seniors and people with chronic medical conditions. the country is conducting a record number of tests. more than 45 million people have been tested -- i think the number is now close to 50 million. well over 700,000 tests each day. widespread testing allows us to pinpoint virus hotspots so that we're able to surge aid where it is most needed. hospitals now have more effective covid-19 treatments. i've talked to doctors around the state of wyoming and around the country. we're seeing incredible progress in vaccine trials. a successful vaccine is vital to beating the virus. now it's key to the economic comeback as well. scientists hope to have a vaccine ready in record time,

actually before the end of this calendar year. all of this progress has given businesses the confidence to reopen and to put people back to work. a solid majority of americans now will tell you that they see their finances as being stable. consumer spending in the last two months has been way up, manufacturing has started to take off again. simply put, the pro-health, pro-jobs policies that this senate has put in place, those policies, madam president, are working. and we're only getting started. now congress must build on the cares act successes. the next bill, the one that we're working on now, cannot be a bloated bailout bonanza. we will not pass speaker pelosi's bill from handout heaven. madam president, no. the next aid measure must be focused. it must be focused on health care and safety and schools and

jobs. here's my three-part test for the next pandemic package. will it save lives? will it save lives? testing, treatment, vaccinening i'm very optimistic -- vaccine and i'm optistic about the research with the new vaccine. will it protect small businesses and schools from lawsuits. 3,500 have already been filed across the country by sue and settle lawyers focused on coronavirus. and will it get people back to work and children back to school safely? madam president, we must help schools reopen in a safe way. children need to get back to school. it is essential for their well-being. now, that's why the nation's pediatricians, the american academy of pediatrics is urging schools to reopen and they say with the children physically present -- with the children

physically present. remote learning, we know for very young people has not worked. children cannot lose another year of school. to lose a full year of school, madam president, for these young people, would be devastating. it would be a learning loss as well as a loss of the ability to learn and making it that much harder to pick up further down the line. and if kids aren't in school, many parents can't go back to work. most people with their jobs cannot work from home. so i urge my kliegs -- colleagues on the other side of the aisle, the democratic colleagues, to join us, join your effort to reopen our economy and reopen our schools. thank you, madam president. i yield the floor and suggest the absence of a quorum. the presiding officer: the clerk will call the roll. quorum call:

mr. blumenthal: madam president. the presiding officer: the senator from connecticut. mr. blumenthal: thank you, madam president. madam president, i think we can be -- are we in a quorum call?

the presiding officer: we are -- yes, we are. mr. blumenthal: i ask that the quorum call be lifted. the presiding officer: without objection. mr. blumenthal: madam president. the presiding officer: the senator from connecticut. mr. blumenthal: thank you. madam president, i'm proud to talk about the national defense authorization act which has come to this body with a strong bipartisan vote from the armed services committee where i serve. i'm proud to have helped to craft this legislation. and i'm proud to be voting for some of the amendments that have been permitted votes on the floor. one that has not been permitted relates to the insurrection act,

a 213-year-old law that has been invoked at various points in our history to protect civil rights, as it was during the era of desegregation. but president trump had threatened to use this slavery-era law to silence calls for justice from americans protesting centuries of racist oppression. in effect, he had threatened to invert the insurrection act to deprive americans of their first amendment rights, and so i introduced the bill called the civil act that would preserve presidential accountability to congress whenever the insurrection act is invoked. it would require the president to consult with congress prior to invoking the act and provide certification to congress to justify the use of this.

he has other provisions. it was voted down in the markup of the armed services committee, but i sought a vote on the floor, and apparently it won't happen. if the president uses force against americans at home, congress should demand at least the same check that applied to his use of force against adversaries abroad. i offered this act as an amendment, and i'm grateful to all my democratic colleagues on the committee for supporting it. i am also grateful to the house of representatives that just yesterday passed an ndaa amendment to its bill modifying the civil act which i introduced. it's called curtailing insurrection act violations of individual liberties. and i would like to thank my

colleagues on the house side who supported this amendment, particularly congresswoman escobar who led the charge in the house armed services committee and on the house floor. i urge that our colleagues, whether it's now in the course of considering the ndaa or at some point in the future, to hold the president, any president -- we're talking not only about this president but any president -- accountable when he uses military force against americans, when the american military and troops of our country are used against americans, there ought to be at least the same accountability as when american troops are used abroad with the same kind of checks. maybe not identical but the same kind of checks because the president using troops against our own citizens denies

potentially fundamental freedom and the need for accountability is even more urgent. our military should defend liberties, not endanger them, misdirected by a misguided president. despite my disappointment in the senate's lack of action to curtail the president's unaccountable use and abuse of military power, i'm proud of a number of provisions that i also authored in this bill that invests in our most valuable military asset, our service members and their families. i'm grateful to all of the military spouses and advocates from across the country who have shared their challenges with me and my office, their stories, their voices and faces made an immensely impactful difference. we used their difference to craft these overdue policies,

and i want to say to those families, those spouses and loved ones, that they serve as much as the men and women they support in uniform. the ndaa includes important provisions that i championed to hold commanders accountable to military families, make child care more affordable, expand support for military moms and prevent mental health discrimination. these measures are profoundly important. provisions i offered with senator mccain will make child care more affordable by authorizing hardship waivers, requiring fee reductions for families with more than one child, and the ndaa will support those military moms by extending tricare to include other kinds

of services. the connecticut military industrial base will benefit from the increased expenditure, the robust investment in two virginia class submarines. my priority during the negotiations on the conference committee will be to advance this cause. madam president, with your permission, i am going to interrupt to yield to the majority leader so that he can remark on the remaining business, and then i will resume. mr. mcconnell: my friend from connecticut, this will only take a minute. the presiding officer: without objection. the majority leader. mr. mcconnell: i move to proceed to executive session and consider calendar number 643. the presiding officer: the question is on the motion. all in favor say aye. those opposed, no. the ayes appear to have it. the ayes have it.

the clerk will report the nomination. the clerk: nomination, the judiciary, william scott hardy of pennsylvania to be united states district judge for the western district of pennsylvania. mr. mcconnell: i send a cloture motion to the desk. the presiding officer: the clerk will report the cloture motion. the clerk: cloture motion. we, the undersigned senators, in accordance with the provisions of rule 22 of the standing rules of the senate, do hereby move to bring to a close debate on the nomination of william scott hardy of pennsylvania to be a united states district judge for the western district of pennsylvania, signed by 17 senators as follows -- mr. mcconnell: i ask consent the reading of the names be waived. the presiding officer: without objection. mr. mcconnell: i ask consent the mandatory quorum call be waived. the presiding officer: without objection. mr. mcconnell: i thank my friend from connecticut. i yield the floor. mr. blumenthal: thank you, leader mcconnell. madam president, if i may resume. the presiding officer: the senator from connecticut. mr. blumenthal: these provisions for expanding our production of

submarine and other military platforms must also focus on our supply base, on the workforce that keeps us safe, on men and women who comprise indeed the most talented workforce using and building unmatched military technology to keep our country secure. we should keep in mind the families of our military and continue fighting for even more provisions that enable them to continue their great work, but these military platforms assure that our troops will never have a fair fight, that they will always be superior no matter what the terrain or arena or the fight. i'm pleased that the ndaa makes

robust investments in connecticut's industrial base, and i will make as my top priority during the negotiations of the conference committee to restore full funding for two submarines, even beyond the commitment in this ndaa to a second virginia class submarine in this budget authorization. i was pleased again to see action by the house which provides for two fully funded virginia class submarines in the house armed services committee version of the ndaa. and in addition to fully funding the first columbia class submarine, a historic milestone for this program, the senate version added an additional $175 million for columbia class

supplier investments. the heroes in this story are not only the big contractors, they are the supply chain, not only the companies with hundreds of employees, but the components makers and the parts manufacturers that may make tiny pieces of the submarine by comparison to its massive length. but they are all heroes of our defense industrial production. people are the foundation of the submarine industrial base, and this bill authorizes an additional $20 million in workforce development funding, and i will seek to expand a supplier development program which provides the kind of support that the supply chain needs.

we must ensure that the final bill preserves not only the next level of funding for the virginia class and the columbia class submarines, but also for continued growth of our fifth generation fighter fleet. it's a key component of our national defense, the senate version of the ndaa authorizes the growth of the f-35 fleet by 93 aircraft, including 14 aircraft above the president's budget request. i remain a staunch advocate of the ch-53-k program, and i was happy to see the house appropriations defense committee fund nine ch-53-k helicopters. i'm going to work to continue to ensure that the final ndaa also authorizes nine helicopters. i want to congratulate and thanks pratt whitney, raytheon technology, sikorski, and again the many suppliers throughout

connecticut that contribute to an aerospace program second to none in the world. and finally, let me talk a little bit about the fair care for vietnam veterans act of 2020. later this week, we'll vote on an amendment to the ndaa based on a bicameral fair care for veterans act of 2020. in march, i, along with senator tester and 30 senate colleagues, introduced this legislation to require the v.a. to provide benefits for veterans suffering from bladder cancer, hypothyroidism, parkinsonism, and hypertension. the national academy recognized that these illnesses have an association with herbicide exposure. it reached that conclusion in 2016, and since then, i have been fighting, along with many of my colleagues, to get the v.a. to include these four

conditions that is presumptive linked to agent orange, only to have this administration officials block us at every turn despite the scientific proof, the incontrovertible science that these conditions are linked to agent orange and despite more than 3,000 veterans who suffer from these conditions, the trump administration v.a. resisted and refused to acknowledge the connection. i look forward to voting to add bladder cancer, hypothyroidism, and parkinson's to the list of agent orange presum -- presumptives. one condition in our bill, hypertension, was not included in this ndaa amendment, but i am committed to adding it during conference. it is supported by the science

as a condition linked to agent orange. the trump administration says it doesn't want to spend the money to cover the four exns in this bill, but when we send people to war, we make a commitment. we make a commitment and we accept an obligation to treat them, no matter what the costs, no matter what the costs of their service-related injuries are, when the science and the facts support it. facts are stubborn things, as many have said. to veterans in connecticut and nationwide, i will never stop fighting to get good health care for our veterans, and i know this issue is bipartisan in its support. so i look forward to voting in favor of f.y. 2021 ndaa, but i

also think our colleagues must recognize that military spending alone does not guarantee our national security. these weapons platforms and the hardware that we produce does not constitute alone our national defense. it is the quality of our people, whether they are in the supply chain or the defense establishment or our troops on the ground or in the air, at sea , to recruit and train the best possible military. we need to have a strong nonmilitary infrastructure. education, health care, housing. our national defense includes

those essential components. and so i believe that we must scrutinize this budget with a view to reducing any expenditures that are unnecessary, and i will state as a matter of principle when we vote on this ndaa that i will be supporting amendments that potentially achieve more equity and effectiveness in the way we make commitments in support of our national defense. and we must interpret as broadly as is necessary how that defense must be supported. it's not alone the money in this ndaa. it's also how we commit to racial justice, the quality of

our policing and the quality of our education, which should not depend on a young person's zip code; the quality of our health care, which right now has racial disparities that are inexcusable; housing that often results from redlining. and protections in the workplace which could be achieved by a fairer, more effective use of osha. the quality of our society and our projection of power abroad depends on our quality of life and the quality of services that we provide on education and health care and housing and all of the other infrastructure, including transportation. so we need to consider those factors and do what is necessary to assure that our war fighters and our military never have a fair fight, that they always

predominate on the battlefield. and we must protect our veterans to whom we make the commitment that we will always have their back when they come home. thank you. madam president, i ask unanimous consent that my statement appear uninterrupted in the "congressional record." the presiding officer: without objection. mr. blumenthal: thank you, madam president. and i yield the floor. mr. moran: madam president? the presiding officer: the senator from kansas. mr. moran: madam president, thank you.

i am here this evening to discuss a tragic issue that is affecting way too many, way too many americans across the country. this tragedy is mental health and suicide. the majority of americans are encountering unprecedented amounts of stress due to covid-19 and resources previously used to help individuals to cope are even more limited. what is more concerning is that compounding stressors and depleted resources increase the like layhood of public health disparities like the one i am discussing today. if there ever was a time to invest in mental health, it is now. in a recent article from "the journal of the american medical asoldiers," researchers discussed several risk factors that put our nation collectively at a higher risk for suicide. these risk factors include economic stress, increased access to community and religious support systems, lack of access to adequate mental health, and suicide prevention

services and social isolation. this has unfortunately caused a severe lack of personal and social connection which we know to be a protective factor against suicide. this evening i want to specifically highlight veterans as they face unique risk factors for suicide in addition to the increased stress around covid-19. veteran have a higher rate of suicide than their civilian peers. we know there is not one single reason for suicide and there is no one single treatment or prevention strategy. while post-traumatic stress disorder and traumatic brain injuries are predominant around veterans, we now realize other conditions such as depression, anxiety and substance use disorder also contribute to suicide among veterans and all americans. our veterans are fighting new battles and the stress coughed

by -- caused by covid-19 has only ex-acerebrated -- ex-aber baited these -- exacerbated these issues. a 74-year-old veteran died and another former green beret here in washington, d.c., died. they are two of the 20 veterans who are lost each day to suicide, a number we know is way too far great. the army recently lost a respected soldier known as captain america, master sergeant fought in afghanistan and according to news reports, 30 soldiers from his unit have died by suicide since their 2009 deployment. until the end, the master sergeant was encouraging members of his old unit to reach out and talk if they found themselves struggling, telling them, quote, don't let the valley win.

even soldiers who try to be strong for others find themselves in a circumstance where they don't see another option and they lose their battle. madam president, another veteran i want to highlight who fought a battle with her mental health was commander hannon. his dd-214 says he was a decorated navy seal. the wounds he bore as a result. his family and friends remember him ace a passionate mental health advocate for veterans with a gentle heart and a fierce belief in taking tangible actions to tack 8 big challenges. -- to tackle big challenges. he lost his courageous fight with the post-traumatic stress disorder, bipolar scarred and the effects of a traumatic brain injury in 2018. he lives on in the memories of his friends and families and as the namesake of pivotal

legislation new england the senate that -- of pivotal legislation in the senate that i am pleased to lead. our committee has been working closely with the v.a. and the white house to improve upon and advance the commander jon scott hannon act, senate bill 785, which will make necessary investments in suicide prevention services, innovative research and improvements to menial health care. this bill will establish a grant program that requires the v.a., the department veterans affairs, to better collaborate with a community organizations across the country already serving veterans. this collaboration will result in earlier identification of veterans who are at risk of suicide and will provide the ability to intervene with preventive services. this is a provision championed by my colleague from arkansas, senator boozman. additionally you this legislation requires the v.a. to bolster research efforts upon

brain and mental health conditions, expand upon tellly health partnership to provide better care to veterans in rural areas, allow veterans to take advantage of emerging complementary and integrative treatments and really so much more. this bipartisan legislation received a unanimous 17-0 vote in the senate committee on veterans' affairs earlier this year and the time to act by the full senate is now. we should not wait. the increased risk factors coupled with the negative effects of the pandemic could be a perfect storm for our veterans as researchers from the american psychological association molted in a recent article. with this in mind, i am calling on my colleagues to do our part to make certain that every veteran has access to lifesaving conveyor and support, that they need. we need to ensure that every v.a. medical center is equipped with the proper personnel,

evidence-based treatment options and best research-informed care to meet the needs of teach veteran that walks through the hospital door. for veterans and service members like ha. in non and makasano, they don't have to struggle alone. this legislation will help connect these veterans to more resources to provide them tools related to their service. to my colleagues, we have a significant role and responsibility to combat this struggle and here today we can do our part to make certain that in the end, the valley does not win. in the spirit of this bill's namesake, we must take real and urgent action to tackle this challenge together. as we seek swift action on s. 785 on the senate floors i ask my colleagues to join us in our fight against suicide. and lastly to the veterans across the country who may hear

this message today who are experiencing thoughts of suicide, i ask you to reach out for help. call a trusted friend, family member, or reach out to the veterans crisis line. that number is 1-800-273-8255. and then press one. again, 1-800-273-8255, followed by press one. i was pleased to know that in future dash in the future, this crisis line will be updated to 988. this is because of senate act -- because the senate acted on my legislation along with senator gardner to designate 988 as the new national suicide and mental health crisis hotline earlier this year and last week the f.c.c. announced they will make this designation operational by july 16, 2022. madam president, suicide is preventable and now is the time that we take the stand necessary to protect the lives of people who have given so much for our

nation. they have protected us. we need to protect them. madam president, i yield the floor.

mrs. loeffler: madam president. the presiding officer: the senator from georgia. mrs. loeffler: madam president, in downtown atlanta there's a 56-foot mural of congressman john lewis with the caption, hero. i got to see it from the downtown connector as i drove to the airport, i was struck by the void left by his passing not only in georgia but across our entire country. when parents teach their children about courage and the fight for freedom and equality, the story of congressman john lewis will be told. he dedicated his entire life to

pushing america to live up to its promises. he championed nonviolent protest. he stood for community, justice, and love. congressman lewis' story has inspired millions. at just 18, he wrote to dr. martin luther king jr. when he sought to attend the all-white troy state university. he went on to become a leader in the civil rights movement. he organized sit-ins at segregated lunch counters in nashville. he was on the buses during the 1961 freedom rides. he was the youngest speaker at the 1963 march on washington and he was brutally beaten while leading demonstrators across the bridge in selma, alabama. he served georgia in the u.s. house of representatives where he was known as the conscience of congress. he was also known for his many bipartisan friendships, one of them was with my predecessor,

senator johnny isakson, a true statesman. they shared a powerful moment last year here on the senate floor when congressman lewis embraced him during farewell speeches to the senator, one of the most touching moments in the senate. georgia also lost reverend c.t. viffian. he and congressman lewis were champions of peaceful nonviolent protests and i hope we can honor their legacy by using nonviolent means as we strive toward equality and a more perfect union. georgians cannot think of our beloved state without thinking of these and other civil rights leaders like dr. martin luther king jr. our nation is better because of their leadership and their courage. their legacy will never be forgotten. may god comfort the lewis and

viffian families during this incredibly difficult time. madam president, i unanimous consent that my following remarks appear separately in the record. the presiding officer: without objection. mrs. loeffler: madam president, this spring 14-year-old hanina vans swaila -- vanwasla was killed as part of an initiation into an ms-13 gang. the d.a. called it the most horrific death in recent history. his murder left two children without a father. in 2010, 11-year-old nicholas was shot and killed sleeping in his bed during a drive-by shooting in georgia. these are three of too many lives lost tragically cut short

due to senseless gang violence. in georgia there are over 21,000 gang members representing a variety of gangs, including an all-white gang in georgia, and the gangster desiefals and the airian brother hood. nationwide there are more than 1.4 million members and 33,000 gangs across the u.s. according to the most recent gang report, half of all law enforcement officials report that gang-related violence has increased in each of their jurisdictions. thankfully president trump and georgia leaders have taken strong action to address the rising tide of gang violence and to end the cycles of violence that they cause. for the first time ever the department of justice has brought terrorism charges against a member of the ms-13

gang, taking action against their leader and 21 other gang members. under the leadership of georgia governor brian kemp and attorney general chris carr, my home state of georgia has led the way on confronting gang violence, passing legislation that gives prosecutors the tools they need to disrupt and dismantle these terrible gang networks. today i'm introducing the cracking down on gangs and deporting criminals act to apply georgia's anti-gang pro-community measures across our country. this legislation, based on the georgia law that attorney general carr has called one of the strongest statutes in the nation, aims to deter and punish criminals who set out to destroy lives and communities. this includes violent crimes like the murders of hanina, christopher, and nicholas. in addition to violence, gangs

run elaborate drug operations. one recent bust in pickens county last month resulted in the arrest of nearly 50 individuals. law enforcement confiscated nearly $2 million of methamphetamine from a drug ring. and they deal in the abhorrent world of human trafficking. a study in san diego found that an astounding 85% of those involved in human trafficking were involved in gangs. it is difficult for prosecutors to meet to hold someone accountable for their participation in a street gang. the legislation i'm introducing today will make it easier for federal prosecutors to seek harsh sentences for gang activity. it will facilitate the removal of criminal gang members who are in our country illegally and it

would create a national gang database making it easier to eradicate these gang networks. we need to take action now to take violent gang members off of our streets across the country violence is skyrocketing in our cities while radicals call to defund and abolish the police. the troubling decline in support for law enforcement, coupled with the effects of the pandemic and recent unrest, threatens the further spread of gang violence across communities in america. the cracking down on gangs and deporting criminals act will help keep our communities safe and support law enforcement in their work to rout out gang activities. no family should have to go through what hanina, nicholas and christopher's did. families should be able to send their children off to school without worrying about making it

home and chirnt shouldn't fear that -- children shouldn't fear their parents won't return home. it is time to hold gangs accountable for their vial and even -- vile and evil actions and keep the public safe. i yield the floor.

mrs. loeffler: i ask unanimous consent the senate proceed to the consideration of s. res. 654, submitted earlier today. the presiding officer: the senator from georgia.

the senator from georgia. mrs. loeffler: i ask unanimous consent that the senate proceed to the consideration of s. res. 654, submitted earlier today. the presiding officer:

mrs. loeffler: i ask unanimous consent dproosh the senator from georgia -- the presiding officer: the senator from georgia. mrs. loeffler: i ask unanimous consent that the senate proceed to legislative session for a period of morning business with senators permitted to speak therein for up to ten minutes each. the presiding officer: without objection. mrs. loeffler: i ask unanimous consent the senate proceed to the consideration of s. res. 654, submitted earlier today. the presiding officer: the clerk will report. the clerk: senate resolution 654, designating july 25, 2020, as national day of the american cowboy. the presiding officer: is there objection to proceeding to the measure? without objection. the senate will proceed. mrs. loeffler: i ask unanimous consent the resolution be agreed to and the the preamble be

agreed to, and that the motion to reconsider be considered made and laid upon the table with no intervening action or debate. the presiding officer: is there objection? without objection. mrs. loeffler: i ask unanimous consent that the judiciary committee be discharged from further consideration of s. 3989, and the senate proceed to its immediate consideration. the presiding officer: the clerk will report. the clerk: s. 3989, a bill to amend the united states semi-quinn centennial commission act of 2016 and so forth and for other purposes. the presiding officer: is there objection to proceeding? without objection, the committee's discharged and the senate will proceed. mrs. loeffler: i ask unanimous consent that the bill will be considered read a third time and passed and that the motion to reconsider be considered made and laid upon the table. the presiding officer: is there objection? without objection.

mrs. loeffler: madam president. the presiding officer: the senator from georgia. mrs. loeffler: i ask unanimous consent that at 12:10 tomorrow, all debate time with respect to the sanders amendment 1788 and tester amendment 1972, as modified, expire and the senate vote in relation to those amendments in that order, with all other provisions under the order of july 2 remaining in effect with respect to these amendments. finally, that the time from 11:20 a.m. until 12:10 p.m. be under the control of senator sanders, and that ten minutes be under the control of senator

sullivan prior to the votes in this series. the presiding officer: is there objection? without objection. mrs. loeffler: i ask unanimous consent that when the senate completes its business today, it will adjourn until 10:00 a.m. wednesday, july 22. further, that the -- that following the prayer and the pledge, the morning business be deemed expired, the journal of proceedings be approved to date, and the time for the two leaders be reserved for their use later in the day, and that morning business be closed. finally, following leader remarks, that the senate resume consideration of calendar number 483, s. 4049 under the previous order. the presiding officer: is there objection? without objection. mrs. loeffler: if there is no further business to come before the senate, i ask that it stand adjourned under the previous order. the presiding officer: the the presiding officer: the and that the senate is gobbling out they continued

work today on the authorization bill 2021 earlier they agreed to an amendment by arms chair that plays a some restrictions on u.s. military equipment transferred to law enforcement agencies. their expected finish work on the bill. follow live on cspan2. strack u.s. attorney general william barr appears before the judiciary committee oversight hearing on the justice department on tuesday, july 28 watch live coverage on c-span, watch any time on c-span.org. or listen on the go with the c-span radio app. so treasury secretary steven mnuchin and secretary staff mark meadows were in capitol hill today to talk about the next round of coronavirus relief legislation was senate republicans. follow the closed-door meeting majority leader mitch mcconnell and other republican leaders talk to reporters.