in an hour and a half on form obama administration jason miller and nominations for deputy epa administrator and defense undersecretary for policy. you can watch live debate on all the nominees here on c-span2. now live to the floor. the presiding officer: the senate will come to order. the chaplain dr. barry black will lead the senate in prayer. the chaplain: let us pray. gracious god, you are from everlasting to everlasting.

reveal your glory in our nation and world. let your light so shine through our senators that people will see the good things our lawmakers accomplish because of your might. may these people then praise you for your bountiful goodness. holy god, empower us to escape from our fragmentary and broken selves into the exemplary unity you desire for us all. lead us away from doubt and disillusionment, from cynicism and despair. lead us toward faith and hope,

certainty and love. we pray in your marvelous name. amen. the presiding officer: please join me in reciting the pledge of allegiance to the flag. i pledge allegiance to the flag of the united states of america, and to the republic for which it stands, one nation under god, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all. the presiding officer: the clerk will read a communication to the senate. the clerk: washington d.c., april 27, 2021. to the senate: under the provisions of rule 1, paragraph 3, of the standing rules of the senate, i hereby appoint the honorable raphael warnock, a senator from the state of georgia, to perform the duties of the chair. signed: patrick j. leahy, president pro tempore.

the presiding officer: under the previous order, the leadership time is reserved.

mr. schumer: mr. president. the presiding officer: the majority leader is recognized. mr. schumer: thank you, mr. president. now, today the senate will take up a series of votes to confirm three highly qualified nominees to the biden administration, jason miller for deputy o.m.b. director and colin kahl for under secretary of defense for policy. later this afternoon the senate will move forward with the process to take up the bipartisan water infrastructure

bill. i expect the senate will do so with significant bipartisan support. the water infrastructure bill is as noncontroversial as it gets. it was approved by the environment and public works committee on a unanimous vote. every single democrat, every single republican. thanks to the good work of chairman carper and ranking member capito. this water infrastructure bill is also a core component of the republican infrastructure proposal released last week. so i hope this legislation will serve as a starting point for our for parties to collaborate on infrastructure when and where we can. at the moment, senators carper, duckworth and cardin continue discussions with republican senators about possible amendments. but let me be very clear. the senate must conclude its work on the water infrastructure bill before the end of the week. this is not a controversial bill or a complicated new program. in too many communities access to clean, safe, and affordable

drinking water is not a guarantee. surely we can all agree that in america, clean drinking water should be a fundamental guarantee. the senate must take the first necessary steps to invest in communities with aging water infrastructure by passing this bill. and we must do so this week. now, on nominees. yesterday i highlighted a number of accomplishments the senate democrat majority made during the first hundred days of the biden administration. thanks primarily to the american rescue plan, the most sweeping federal recovery effort in decades, shots are going into arms, money is going into people's pockets and businesses, schools, and restaurants are starting to reopen. americans finally, finally have some reason for hope. jobs are coming back. the economic recovery is accelerating. and the pace of vaccinations has far exceeded even president biden's own goals. after one of the most difficult

years in recent memory, the first hundred days of the biden presidency and the new senate democratic majority has seen the country turn a corner. slowly but surely, we are proving to the american people that government and the senate can work for them. as president biden prepares to take stock of where we've come from and where we still need to go with a joint address to congress, it's worth looking back at some of the accomplishments of these first 100 days. among those accomplishments is the fact that the senate has confirmed the most diverse cabinet in history, faster than under both presidents trump and obama and all of them with both bipartisan support. 11 are people of color, ten are women, and among them we have a former teacher, a former construction worker, several former veterans, a small businessman, even a musician. a far cry from the, shall we say, less economically diverse

cabinet chosen by the former cabinet. now more than ever before we have a cabinet that looks like america. in our nation's history the treasury secretary has only ever been a white man, an unbroken streak of 77 white men in a row. this senate confirmed the first woman to serve as treasury secretary in our history, janet yellen. the list of firsts goes on. the first african american to serve as defense secretary, the first black man to serve as e.p.a. administrator, the first ever indigenous american and the first ever openly gay secretary to lead any cabinet agency. last week the senate confirmed vanita gupta to associate attorney general, the first woman of color and the first civil rights attorney ever to hold that position. last month dr. rachel levine became the deputy secretary of health and human services, the first openly transgender federal official in american history. federal agencies have enormous

influence over the policies that affect the date-to-day lives of the american people. whether registering for social security, filing for unemployment, veterans benefits are seeking a small business loan, average folks interact with these cabinet agencies every single day, hundreds of thousands if not millions of piems. having cape -- times. having capable experience and energetic public servants at the top of these agencies matters. and it matters, too, that they come from different backgrounds and have lived different experiences. by confirming historically diverse nominees, we're showing the american people that their government represents them and that all of their voices matter. we also know that a cabinet with diverse views will produce policies that better reflect the needs of a diverse nation. i'm proud of the nominees we've confirmed over the first hundred days. as we move forward, the senate will continue working with the white house on confirming nominees and judicial appointments that reflect the

diversity and dyanism of our great country. i yield the floor. not yet. a little business. i understand that there's a bill at the desk that is due for a second reading. the presiding officer: the senator is correct. the clerk will read the title of the bill for the second time. the clerk: s. 1364, a bill to provide for the recognition of the lumbee tribe of north carolina, and for other purposes. the presiding -- mr. schumer: in order to place the bill on the calendar under provisions of rule 14, i would object to further proceeding. the presiding officer: objection having been heard, the bill will now be placed on the calendar. mr. schumer: thank you, mr. president. i yield the floor.

the presiding officer: the republican leader is recognized. mr. mcconnell: as i noted here

on the floor last week, the unaccompanied children packed into overflowing facilities are not the only tragic consequence of our failure to secure the border. in addition to the u.s., our southern border is the mainstream of illegal drugs that continues to pour into our country. according to the c.d.c., more americans died of overdoses last year than ever before. this health crisis predated covid-19 and will outlast it. and customs and border protection data tell us a major cause has been a spike in the flow of fentanyl and its analogue -- analogs produced by chemical companies in places like china. these drugs which can be hundreds of thousands of times stronger than morphine are rightly classified on the

schedule of controlled substances. there are severe penalties for those caught trafficking them. it's the least we can do to protect american lives, families, and communities. clearly, on its own, this step hasn't been sufficient. but in a few weeks, even this obvious step is set to expire. fentanyl analogs would cease being controlled substances in federal law, making enforcement and deterrence even more difficult. so congress is faced with what should be a crystal clear choice. the right thing to do, of course, is to permanently schedule these substances. only in washington could this become some kind of intense debate, but alas, some soft-on-crime corners of the political left have convinced some democrats that this impending expiration is actually, actually a political

opportunity. they want the democrats to only reschedule these analgs for a short period of time, punting this deadline just a few months into the future, which makes you ask why. well, so that democrats could come back to the table with an unrelated soft-on-crime bill, say reducing prison sentences for drug dealers, and make that bad idea the price of admission for keeping these deadly poisons illegal. so look, we need to be clear-eyed here. no amount of bill spin or inside the beltway horse trading could muddy the debate. very clear -- congress should schedule these fentanyl analogs permanently, permanently. it's not complicated. americans are dying. communities are drowning. chinese drug traffickers are getting rich off of our misery.

permanent scheduling these analogs is the very least, the very least congress can do. on a separate matter, this week the senate is set to vote on president biden's nominee to be deputy administrator of the e.p.a. this nominee actually needs no introduction for my fellow kentuckians and our neighbors in coal country. but for those less familiar, janet mc mccabe was the chief author of the power plan that president biden unveiled back in 2015. well, six years and thousands of coal industry jobs later, ms. mccabe is set to join an administration whose job-killing policies would make the obama e.p.a. blush. of course, president biden's war on coal predates his administration's. back in 2008 as a candidate for the vice-presidency, he insisted there would be, quote, no coal

plants here in america. build them, if you're going to build them, over there, obviously meaning some other country. sadly, this was one area where the obama administration unfortunately kept its promises. it was a terrible time to be a working american whose livelihood the democrats happened to dislike. but our new president's left ward sprint is set to make these bad old days merely -- remember, joining the paris climate agreement was number one for this administration. these signatories who largely ignored their commitments for the past five years, a deal that proved unable to keep china from significantly increasing its greenhouse gas emissions and proved unnecessary for the united states to decrease our own. we decreased our own. but despite it all, the

administration is rushing back in to signal virtue on the international stage. here at home, they are ruling out policy after policy that would cost american families quite dearly. the president signed away thousands of jobs by canceling the keystone x.l. pipeline. the offers of the green new deal boast about the social engineering they have ceded into the administration's legislative proposals. the infrastructure plan they have rolled out would pick winners and losers in auto manufacturing and aim to purge the electrical grid of the most reliable and affordable forms of domestic energy. -- domestic power. of course, despite it all, carbon emissions don't respect national boundaries, so all the unilateral sacrifices this administration's eager to impose on blue-collar families won't make a dent in global emissions if our adversaries just keep on roaring, roaring right past the. and now the biden climate team

is hoping to add a proven veteran from the war on coal. the president's campaign suggesting he wouldn't owe the far left anything. but he is choosing to govern like he owes them everything. i'll oppose the mccabe nomination and would urge my colleagues to do the same. now, one final matter, mr. president. yesterday, i discussed how the biden administration's wishful thinking has set them up for a foreign policy failure in central asia and the middle east. a likely catastrophe in afghanistan may well consume the administration and distract from the challenges posed by competition with russia and china. and the president's meager defense budget proposal suggests his administration isn't taking strategic competition very seriously to begin with. russia and china have spent years, years investing heavily in military modernization with a

specific eye toward threatening u.s. forces. we spent the previous administration repairing the readiness of our forces and beginning to modernize after years on the back foot. a bipartisan commission concluded we would need sustained increases in defense funding to successfully counter the growing russia and chinese capabilities. and yet adjusting for inflation, president biden's proposal would amount to a reduction in spending. this administration has talked tough with both these rivals, and i have given credit where credit has been due, but when the time came to speak in the language that putin and xi understand best, money and power, this white house flinched. just last week, russia reminded us of the threat it poses to europe with the massive mobilization of forces on ukraine's border. nato allies are already struggling to meet their commitments to collective

security. so you have to ask would declining american spending make putin more likely or less likely to think twice next time? and what about china? would china be more likely or less likely to respect its neighbor's territorial waters if the u.s. stops contending for an edge in naval and long-range capabilities and lets ourselves fall behind. the head of the u.s. strategic command reported that both russia and china are modernizing their nuclear arsenals faster than the united states. he warned that if we fail to keep pace, we'll be, quote, at risk of losing credibility in the eyes of our adversaries. our nuclear triad has preserved the peace for decades, but crucial components are now decades older than the men and women we have operating them. if we want to maintain effective deterrence, we have to modernize.

so, mr. president, whether this administration likes it or not, we're locked in a race with adversaries who plan literally decades ahead. a lack of resolve will compound on itself and invite disaster. surely that cannot be the legacy president biden hopes to leave. i suggest the absence of a quorum. the presiding officer: the clerk will call the roll. quorum call: quorum call:

quorum call:

mr. thune: mr. president? the presiding officer: the republican whip is recognized. mr. thune: mr. president, is the senate in a quorum call? the presiding officer: we are. mr. thune: i would ask unanimous consent the quorum call be lifted. the presiding officer: without objection. mr. thune: owe e. the presiding officer: morning business is closed. under the previous order, the senate will proceed to executive session and resume consideration of the following nomination which the clerk will report. the clerk: nomination, executive office of the president, jason scott miller of maryland to be deputy director for management, office of management and budget. the presiding officer: the republican whip is recognized. mr. thune: thank you, mr. president. mr. president, a few weeks ago president biden introduced an infrastructure plan or at least that's what democrats are calling it. in fact, a substantial portion of this bill goes to democrat priorities that have nothing to do with infrastructure. from support, for big labor to a

new civilian climate corps to advance environmental justice. mr. president, president biden's infrastructure proposal would cost a lot of money, well north of $2 trillion. so how does the president plan to pay for this legislation? unsurprisingly, the president is proposing tax hikes. notably, a substantial hike in the corporate tax rate. mr. president, there are two sources democrats like to go to when it comes to paying for their spending. corporations and prosperous americans. in fact, democrats tend to speak about corporations and well-off americans as if they are a bottomless source of funding for government programs. and as if democrats can endlessly hike taxes on these individuals and businesses without consequences. republicans object to the prospect of major tax hikes, democrats cry that republicans are just protecting wealthy corporate cronies, a deeply ironic charge when you consider that democrats want to include a

tax cut for wealthy democrat donors and hollywood types in this same infrastructure package. the real reason for republicans' concern of course, mr. president, is quite different. republicans are concerned about substantial tax hikes on any individual or business because we know that taxation has economic consequences. it's something that democrats should know as well. it's basic economics. after all, but they don't seem capable of grasping it. taxation has consequences. tax hikes have consequences. and big tax hikes, mr. president, have big consequences. usually negative ones. the corporate tax hike democrats are talking about will have negative consequences for american businesses. and that means we'll have negative consequences for american workers. and that's a problem. mr. president, three years ago republicans passed major tax reform legislation. along with substantial tax cuts for middle-class americans, this

legislation cut america's corporate tax rate. why? well, at the time we passed this legislation, the united states had the highest corporate tax rate in the developed world plus an outdated international tax system. both of those things put u.s. businesses at a major disadvantage next to their foreign counterparts. and they discouraged foreign companies from moving to and investing in the united states. our outdated tax system had also resulted in a wave of inversions. that's tax professional speak for companies moving their headquarters overseas. according to bloomberg, between 2004 and 2016, 36 american-based companies inverted. needless to say, mr. president, those inversions resulted in a loss of american jobs and domestic investment. a piece in "the wall street journal" reported that one accounting firm estimates that the u.s. lost $510 billion from

cross-border mergers and acquisitions between 2004 and 2016. republicans knew that if we wanted to boost job creation here at home and improve opportunities for american workers, we needed to address the high corporate tax rate and put american companies on a more competitive footing internationally. and so we cut the corporate tax rate and brought the united states international tax system into the 21st century by replacing our outdated worldwide system with a modernized territorial tax system. and it didn't take long to see the results. inversions ended. economic growth outstripped predictions. the poverty rate dropped. jobs increased. incomes grew. in fact, income growth in 2019 was the highest ever recorded in

meal -- i should say in real median household income for african americans, hispanics and asian american workers hit record highs. in other words, mr. president, tax reform worked. and importantly it worked for the very people the republicans wanted to help. ordinary americans. by improving the tax situation for american businesses, we improved the job and income situation for american workers. but now democrats want to undo all that. to pay for their preferred government programs, they want to substantially hike the tax rate on american corporations once again, once again, mr. president, putting american businesses at a substantial disadvantage next to their foreign competitors. if democrats impose president biden's suggested tax hike, the combined average tax rate on corporations in the united states would be higher than that imposed by every one of our major trading partners and competitor, including china.

it's difficult to understand why democrats think that it's a good idea to put american companies at a disadvantage next to chinese companies and next to british companies and japanese companies and fringe companies and german companies and the list goes on and on. it's especially difficult to understand why democrats would do this now at the very time our economy is trying to recover from a serious hit we took from the coronavirus. unfortunately, mr. president, it's become clear that democrats are either incapable of grasping or don't care about the economic consequences of their proposed tax hikes. democrats are fixated on imposing a whole host of new government programs and they're ready to tax americans and american businesses to pay for them, even if ordinary americans suffer as a result. presumably, they think that if ordinary americans start suffering, they can just offer them some help through a new government program.

but i'm pretty confident, mr. president, that most americans would exchange government assistance for the kind of job and income that freeze them -- that frees them from having to depend upon government programs. substantially increases the corporate tax rate -- and i'm talking substantially, mr. president. what is being talked about is a 33% increase. so one-third increase in the tax rate and putting american businesses at a disadvantage on the global stage is not the best way to encourage the creation of those kinds of jobs. mr. president, hiking the corporate tax rate will have negative consequences for our economy and for hardworking americans. it's easy to say tax -- to say tax the corporations, tax the rich people, but, mr. president, those businesses hire american workers. they'll have to pay more in taxes, they'll pay less in wages. what we saw, as i mentioned

before, was the highest wage increases that we've seen in decades, particularly for lo lower-income americans. but, mr. president, apparently what is being talked about with this tax hike is just the beginning. president biden and his democrat colleagues have a lot more government programs they want to push, and they have a whole raft of tax hikes waiting in the wings to fund them. a hike in the top individual income tax rate. that would hit small businesses hard, mr. president. most businesses, 99% of the businesses in my state of south dakota pay taxes at the individual rate. that's farmers and ranchers and small business people across my state. they are the people who create the jobs in south dakota. a hike in the top individual income tax rate hits every one of those small businesses who have incomes in excess of $400,000. that's money they could use to

hire more workers. a hike in the capital gains tax which would discourage investment and decrease the value -- value americans can expect from their 401(k)'s. a new death tax that would hit middle-class families and family farms and businesses. and so much more, mr. president. these tax hikes may help democrats usher in parts of the socialist fantasy that they've been envisioning, but they will do nothing to help american families gain financial stability and to secure the good jobs and lasting, rewarding koreas. working americans -- rewarding careers. working americans, mr. president, are the ones who will suffer the most from tax hike plans. mr. president, i yield the floor and i suggest the absence of a quorum. the presiding officer: the clerk will call the roll.

quorum call:

quorum call:

the presiding officer: the senator from nebraska. mrs. fischer: thank you, mr. president. i ask that the quorum call be vitiated, please. the presiding officer: without objection. mrs. fischer: thank you. mr. president, i like to think that infrastructure is in my d.n.a. my father was jerry stroval, a civil engineer who spent his entire career with the nebraska department of transportation. now, that was back when it was still called the department of roads. he eventually became director state engineer and served under two different governors, one republican and one democrat. my dad used to take my two brothers and me on weekend road trips across nebraska to check up on our infrastructure.

trips that he would call inspection tours. many of the photos that i have from my childhood are of my brothers and me standing on partially finished bridges, in front of bulldozers, and next to highways that were under various stages of completion. he taught me how to drop a plumb line and showed me how to handle his surveying equipment. those trips with my dad, they taught me that infrastructure takes a long time to plan. it takes a long time to permit, and it takes a long time to build. even short stretches of a single highway can sometimes -- well, it can take years to finish. to get the most out of our limited taxpayer resources, we must condense that process to save both time and money.

i learned that reliable infrastructure doesn't happen by accident, and when i was elected to the nebraska legislature, i brought that appreciation with me. as chair of the transportation and telecommunications committee, i introduced bills like the nebraska build act. the new revenue from that bill has funded over a dozen important infrastructure projects across nebraska. nebraskans and all americans know what actual infrastructure is. it's roads and bridges. but it's also ports and airports and railroads and pipelines and waterways and broadband. those things are a core responsibility of government.

the american people also know what infrastructure is not. if congress passes a bill to reform medicare, that's not infrastructure. that's health care. we all know that words don't change their meaning overnight to suit one party or the other's political goals. but president biden seems to think that they do. he is asking us to support an infrastructure proposal that could eventually stop $2.7 trillion, which redefines that word to mean policies such as climate research and federally funded home or community care services. things that have nothing to do with what we have traditionally called infrastructure.

less than% of the $2.-- less than 6% of the $2.25 trillion would go to roads and bridges, barely 4% would go to broadband, and less than 2% is for airports. at the same time, hundreds of billions of dollars would be funneled to things like housing, medicare, and electric vehicles. and the president, he wants to enact trillions of dollars in new taxes to pay for all of this. proposals being discussed include raising the capital gains tax to the highest level in history as well as forcing american businesses and then ultimately their customers to pay the highest combined

corporate tax rate in the developed world. congressional democrats have also proposed getting rid of the estate tax exemption, which would make the federal death tax apply to hardworking middle-class families for the first time in decades. this would hit our small-family main street businesses and our family farms, making it even more difficult to pass their life's work on to their children. mr. president, infrastructure has always been bipartisan, and it has always enjoyed widespread support. i would gladly -- i would gladly support a bill that takes our very real infrastructure problems seriously, and i told president biden that when i met with him at the white house a

few weeks ago. but his proposal simply doesn't do that. the president's plan, it asks the senate to vote for a policy wish list of priorities that no one -- no one -- outside of washington, d.c.'s bubble has ever dreamed of calling infrastructure. but when it comes to real infrastructure, the senate does have bipartisan roots. we passed the fast act by a vote of 83-16 under president obama in 2015. we passed an f.a.a. reauthorization 93-6 under president trump. and the senate unanimously approved water development bills and my pipeline safety bill last year. i see no reason why the administration can't tackle this

important issue in a bipartisan way once again. and the president, who represented delaware in the senate for more than 35 years, he knows better than most that we do this every day. we do it on bills like the act i reintroduced in march to provide more flexible for livestock haulers and which has one support from both republicans and democrats. there's also bipartisan support for my bill to establish an online portal for reporting blocked railroad crossings. my democratic colleagues and i, we find common ground on infrastructure more often than we disagree, and that includes bills like the rural spectrum accessibility act, which made internet access more widely available in rural areas. mr. president, history shows

that infrastructure is a bipartisan issue, and it can be once again. but right now our friends on the other side of the aisle, they're pushing this wish list of priorities for their progressive agenda and calling calling it infrastructure. for our part, senate republicans have made it clear that we are willing to work with the president on a bill that actually addresses our nation's ailing infrastructure, and it makes targeted investments to meet the needs that we have. we introduced our own framework last week. it draws on our past bipartisan successes, like the fast act, and it focuses on roads and bridges, broadband, and other actual infrastructure.

it matches or raises the funding levels in the fast act, such as $299 billion versus $226 billion for roads and bridges. and nearly twice as much funding for transportation safety programs. and rail and amtrak grants. we've spent enormous amounts of money in the last year to deal with covid-19, and republicans and democrats both voted for five bills totaling around $4 trillion to address that very real crisis. another $1.9 trillion passed on a partisan basis in january. that's $6 trillion of new spending in one year. $6 trillion of new spending in one year.

that level of spending is not sustainable. adding another $2.7 trillion that the president is -- is in his plan to this spending that we already have is not sustainable. our proposal is clear -- that funding for infrastructure should be fiscally responsible, it should use existing, proven formula programs as much as possible, and it should make regulations less burdensome. this is what president biden should be focused on, and i hope that he takes us up on our offer. thank you, mr. president. i yield the floor.

the presiding officer: the clerk will call the roll. quorum call:

the presiding officer: the senator from michigan. mr. peters: mr. president, i rise in support of confirming -- the presiding officer: the senate is currently in a quorum call. mr. peters: i ask unanimous consent that the quorum call be vitiated. the presiding officer: without objection. mr. peters: thank you, mr. president. i rise in support of confirming jason scott miller to be the deputy director for management at the office of management and budget. mr. miller has an extensive track record of tackling difficult management challenges and driving innovation, both in government and in the private sector. o.m.b. is and will continue to be central to the administration's efforts to combat the pandemic and spur economic activity in communities

all across our nation. mr. miller's diverse experience and commitment to getting results for the american people will be an asset to the o.m.b., as it takes on these current challenges and those challenges yet to come. i urge my colleagues to join me in supporting the congress fir nation of jason scott miller as deputy director for management at o.m.b. and i i ask -- and i ask for the yeas and nays on this nomination. the presiding officer: is there a sufficient second? there appears to be. under the previous order, all cloture time is expired. the question is on the nomination. the yeas and nays have been ordered. the clerk will call the roll.

vote:

vote:

vote:

the presiding officer: are there any senators in the chamber wishing to vote or change his or her vote? if not, the yeas are 81, the nays are 13. the nomination is confirmed. under the previous order, the motion to reconsider is considered made and laid upon the table, and the president will be immediately notified of the senate's action. mrs. capito: mr. president? the presiding officer: the senator from west virginia. mrs. capito: thank you, mr. president. i ask unanimous consent that senator did officerster one second. can we get order in the chamber, please. the presiding officer: the senator from west virginia. mrs. capito: thank you, mr. president. i ask unanimous consent that senator carper and i be allowed to speak for one minute each before the next cloture vote. the presiding officer: is there objection? without objection. mrs. capito: thank you, mr. speaker. we are about to vote cloture on

janet mccabe, the number two at the e.p.a. i vehemently oppose her nomination. she is the architect of the clean power plan that basically wracked my economy in west virginia. she worked and she has not backed down from that in her testimony. she's very supportive of that plan and, even more, her boss at the e.p.a. at the time was gina mccarthy. guess where she is now? in the white house. she again will be janet mccabe's boss in the white house, dictating from there. during her time at the e.p.a., she wouldn't listen, she wouldn't come to west virginia and basically showed very little interest in what happens to the people most deeply affect by the policy that she put forward. given her past actions and present statements, i cannot support someone who would work to destroy a state's economy such sasse ours was destroyed and our communities and their livelihoods.

thank you. mr. carper: mr. president? the presiding officer: the senator from delaware. mr. carper: i rise and ask my colleagues to join me in voting for janet mccabe to serve as deputy administrator of the environment protection agency. it requires that person to work and serve people regardless of their political persuasion. some people strive to be bipartisan. janet mccabe has a proven record of being bipartisan. that's one of the reasons why nine former e.p.a. deputy administrators and administrators support her nomination, including four republicans who served in the reagan, the george h.w. and george w. bush administrations. she's served as an e.p.a. manager. she is a good listener. that comes from no small part from her hoosier background where she spent time with pragmatic people. that's what she'll bring with you -- with her to the role of

deputy administrator if confirmed. i urge my colleagues to join me in voting yes on this nomination. thank you very much. the presiding officer: the clerk will report. 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 executive calendar number 54, janet garvin mccabe of indiana to be deputy administrator of the environmental protection agency signed by 18 senators. the presiding officer: by unanimous consent, the mandatory quorum call has been waived. the question is, is it the sense of the senate that debate on the nomination of janet garvin mccabe of indiana to be deputy administrator of the environmental protection agency shall be brought to a close. the yeas and nays are mandatory under the rule. the clerk will call the roll. vote:

vote:

vote:

the presiding officer: are there any senators in the chamber wishing to vote or change his or her vote? if not, the yeas are 52, the nays are 42h the motion is agreed to. the clerk will report the nomination. the clerk: environmental protection agency, janet garvin mccabe of indiana to be deputy administrator. the presiding officer: under the previous order, the senate the previous order, the senate

senators have recess for the weekly party lunch meetings. more votes expected this afternoon as the senate works in president biden's nominees. live coverage when senators return at 2:15 p.m. eastern here on c-span2. >> c-span is your unfiltered view of government. we are funded by these television companies and more including comcast. >> are you thinking this is just security center? >> it's way more than that. >> comcast is partnering with 1000 community centers assistance from low income families can get the tools they need to be ready for anything. >> comcast support c-span as a public service along with these other television providers giving the front was seat to democracy. >> as he approaches his 100th day in office president biden

will give his first address to a joint session of congress wednesday night. live coverage begins at 8 p.m. eastern with the president addressed at 9 p.m. eastern on n c-span, online at c-span.org or listen c-span.org or listen live on the c-span radio app. >> sunday night on q&a investigative journalist lawrence roberts talks about his book may day 1971 which examined the spring offensive when tens of thousands of anti-vietnam war protesters including vietnam war veterans came to washington, d.c. in an effort to shut down the federal government. >> this story tells a much larger one. story about how we as a nation, as a people, as individuals dealt with one of those periodic eras in american democracy. does justice deliver justice? do people stick by the principles or are they caught up in their own self-preservation

and the fear to stand against the tide. it's a story between the clash between an and battle president come in this case richard nixon, who confronts a social movement in the streets, in this case the antiwar movement just as he's fighting get to reelected? what constitutional lines did he cross, did the administration cross in an effort to stay in power? >> invested gated -- investigative journalist lawrence roberts on c-span's q&a. >> now a conversation about china's funding in north america and europe and the possible u.s. response. the discussion hosted by the atlantic council. >> good afternoon and welcome everyone. i am just so. >> atlantic council. we're excited to host a time the conversation today in partnership with the atlantic council joint