>> moderator: mr. mateo, sports, broadway are what went you get a full reopening? mateo: i'm looking for dissing the jersey boys once again. i seen it three or four times. i loved love that play ane broadway to reopen. it's the lifeline of the city transit i love that, too. we agree. the jersey boys. >> moderator: on the note we're going to bring this to a halt, gentlemen. thanks so much for joining us for this debate and we want to thank everybody at home for watching. we want to remind everybody that the primary is just a month away, early voting starts june 12. primary date is june 22. if you want to register devote your time the deadline is this friday may 28. thanks to the candidates and to our partners, thanks to all your help and have a great evening. ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪

>> the u.s. senate about to come at a late night last of working on a site a technology bill. the expected number of votes on that today as well as a vote on january 6 commission to investigate the attack on u.s. capitol. live senate senate coverage here on c-span2. &c @&c 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. eternal god, the fountain of wisdom, you said in john 8:31, "if you obey my teaching, you are really my disciples.

you will know the truth, and the truth will set you free". as our lawmakers strive to be guardians of freedom, may these words in john chapter 8 illuminate their path. lord, remind our senators that history is strewn with the wreckage of nations that ignored liberating truth. we pray in the name of him who said in john 14:6, "i am the truth." 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., may 28, 2021. to the senate: under the provisions of rule 1, paragraph 3, of the standing rules of the senate, i hereby appoint the honorable christopher van holle, a senator from the state of maryland, 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. the clerk will report the unfinished business. the clerk: s. 1260, a bill to establish a new director yacht in the national science foundation and so forth and for other purposes.

mr. schumer: mr. president. the presiding officer: the majority leader is recognized. mr. schumer: so in a moment the senate will resume business. a few of our republican colleagues may continue their speeches. the senate spent two hard weeks working on this bill, we have every intention of sticking it out until the job is done. and that's what we're going to do. i look forward to passing this historic and extremely bipartisan bill later today. i yield the floor. mr. paul: i note the absence of a quorum. the presiding officer: the clerk will call the roll.

quorum call: quorum call:

quorum call:

the presiding officer: a quorum is present. the senator from kentucky is recognized. mr. paul: we are currently $28 trillion in debt. whose fault is it? republicans, democrats? the answer is yes, yes on both fronts. both parties are responsible for the debt. now, one side is honest about it. one side will tell you they don't give a fig about the debt. the debt be damned.

we're for new money taker theories. -- money taker theories. spend as much as you've got. borrow as much as you can. and the influence of china, borrowing more money from china. doesn't seem to make a lot of sense, but that's where we are. we have a bill that will simply add to the debt. we'll go further in debt. you might make the argument that we're actually less strong as a nation the more in debt we are. where's the opposition? there's no opposition on one side of the aisle. and on the other side, there's feigned opposition. republicans will feign opposition to the debt and they will say, yes, we care about the debt and the other side spends too much and borrows too much. you hear republicans throughout the land campaigning against the debt only to come to washington and vote for most of the debt. so what we end up with is a $28 trillion debt. we actually borrow more in a month than we used to borrow in a year. in march of this year we

borrowed $660 billion in one month. the proposals for spending are alarming. we have spent and borrowed more in the last two years than we did during world war ii. there are going to be repercussions of so much borrowing in such a short period of time. we are seeing a misallocation of capital throughout the economy. we are seeing a grossly inflated stock market. we are starting to see inflation throughout the supply chain, throughout the economy. there are going to be repercussions. the question we have to ask ourselves are, are we willing to look at the example of countries like venezuela or zimbabwe that completely destroy their currency. people say that couldn't happen in america. it largely hasn't happened because we've been the reserve currency of the world. we've been fortunate. people describe it as having the cleanest shirt in a closet full

of dirty shirts. the dollar is weakened by such extravagant spending and yet people still cling to the dollar because the other currencies are weaker. but this bill simply adds more to the debt. and we say we're going to combat china through this bill, but we're going to combat china by increasing a department of government, the national science foundation, that is actually probably one of the most wasteful agencies in government. william proxmire was a conservative democrat from wisconsin back in the 1960's and 1970's. he started out a ward called the golden fleece award. one of the first awards he gave -- the presiding officer: order in the chamber, please. mr. paul: one of the first awards william proxmire gave, the golden fleece award, was an award for a study about what makes people fall in love. you'd think with the lampooning through the years, the ridiculous lizards on treadmills of pandz mainian -- pand --

panamanian grogs, instead of giving them more money, we should give them less money. so perhaps if we wanted them to reform, we would say to the national science foundation instead of increasing your budget 68%, why don't reduce our budget 10% and say behave before. why don't we reform how they pick their committees. for example, if you want to study -- the presiding officer: we need order in the chamber. mr. paul: if you want to study cocaine and study japanese quail using cocaine and you want to know if they're more sexually promiscuous, you know how you get approval for your funding? you call up your buddies that study cocaine in animals and say hey, i've got this great new study. would you guys like to join in it and be my peer review committee. so it's actually the ridiculous studies that we discover, they're being voted on by people who are selected by the people doing the studies. so what they do is they select other people with ridiculous studies and they say, we'll vote

for yours if you vote for mine. how do we get half a million dollars spent studying panamanian frogs? they want to know whether the mating call of the country frogs in panama is different than the mating calls of the city frogs. coming from a rural state i can tell you the mating calls of the country folk is always different than the city folk. we could have polled the audience. our quail more sexually promiscuous on cocaine? i think we could have polled the audience. the thing is there could be some reforms. so, for example, as much as i'm opposed to government spending, there are some important diseases. let's say alzheimer's, cancer, diabetes, heart disease. why wouldn't we make the committees for the national science foundation, why don't we make the committees have someone on there from one of the big five diseases? why don't we put a taxpayer advocate on there or an inspector general process so this doesn't happen? we have to review this. this isn't an academic point.

we've now discovered that the n.i.h. was funding the wuhan lab. so we should have oversight on what happens. but after 50 years of abuse of the national science foundation, we're still studying will people eat ants to combat climate change. seriously. s that was a study. how many ants will people eat and how many ants do you have to eat to reduce the global warming by one degree? it's a lot of ants. but the thing is, that's the kind of studies we're having coming out of here and we don't make it any better by increasing their budget. if you are a wasteful agency and we give you more money, we'll get more waste. if you want less waste -- and this goes not only for this, it goes for the military. it goes for any other agency of government. if you give any agency more government money, you'll get more waste. you won't get less. so the cocaine was actually n.i.h., not n.s.f. n.i.h. has got some of the same problems. one of the ones from the n.i.h. in recent years was $2 million

to see if someone in the buffet line, when you're going through the buffet or lubey's cafeteria and someone in front of you sneezes on the food, are you more or less likely to eat the food. two million bucks. look, if you want to come to me and say we should study alzheimer's disease, i've got open ears. heart disease, diabetes, but if you want to study whether somebody sneezes on the food makes you more or less likely to eat the food, that's ridiculous. the american people know it's ridiculous. if the american people could see what we're voting on and say oh, we're going to combat china by giving more money to the most wasteful agency in the world. and where is the money coming from? is it out of a surplus? can we go over to the federal reserve and open this big safe. there's a big carb of money. is -- cache of money. is there a rainy day fund to say we're going to have government-funded research for china. think of the irony.

we borrow the money from china to put it into technology. we complain about chinese socialism which is the government running everything and spending all the money, and so what are we going to do? the same thing. we're going to borrow the money from china and then we're going to have government-directed research that we all say, oh, socialism is -- then we're going to do the same thing. we're going to be stronger than china. a good example of how -- and this is sort of a technical detail of how the committee process works and how grant funding works. there was $700,000 allotted for the national science foundation for autism. look, i know parents who have kids with autism. i can be convinced that the federal government can be involved in some way. but the $700,000 that was allotted for autism was then taken and subcontracted to a

bunch of egg heads who wanted to listen to a tape of neil armstrong on the moon. if you're as old as me and you can remember being in school and watching the black and white pictures coming from the moon and did neil armstrong say one small stop for a man? so a group of researchers -- i use the term losely -- at the national science foundation got $700,000 of autism money to study one word, the preposition a. did neil armstrong use the letter a or the word a or did he not? so they studied and they were diligent. they listened to this 20-second clip over and over and over again. i think it took them a year of listening to this. they wrote reports and had findings. you know what their conclusion was in the end? we just don't know. we just don't know. was it one small step for man or one small step for a man?

so this is something you could fix. before throwing and heaping more borrowed money on the national science foundation, maybe we could say you can't subcontract money that was meant for alzheimer's to ridiculous research. how would you stop it? maybe you would have a committee that reviews the grants that has someone on the committee from one of the big five diseases, that actually says should we be spending the money on autism or spend the money on neil armstrong's statement on the moon? should we be spending it on this versus diabetes? everything is a trade-off. everybody comes to washington and if you ask them, you know, the people who advocate for alzheimer's or diabetes or cancer, are you getting enough money? and when i tell them the autism parents that their money went to study neil armstrong, you know what i get? dropped jaws and people going you've got to be kidding me. my mother, father is dwindling away from alzheimer's and they spent money studying kneel arm

strong? -- neil armstrong? did he stay one giant step for man or one small step -- -- small step? this is lizards on the trea treadmill. dr. coburn liked to talk about weax as i did. and so this is a decade ago, maybe more that senator coburn was on the floor. wee talk about lizards on a treadmill. i think his was lizards under water on a treadmill. no it was shrimp on a treadmill i think. they've got lizards on a treadmill, fish, shrimp. think about t. we're a big, proud country but we're a trillion dollars in debt. before we get to all the extra stuff, before we get to all the covid bailouts, we're a trillion dollars in debt just from the institutional expenses of the country. so we bring in about $3 trillion

in revenue and we spend about $4 trillion. of the money that we bring in, $3 trillion is a lot. we could spend that on a lot of good things but we can't simply just say we're going to spend it on, you know, lizards on a treadmill that somehow we have enough money to do that. so of the expenses that we have, most of the money is consumed by medicare, medicaid, social security, food stamps and the military, a variety of welfare programs. but that consumes a trillion dollars more than comes in. we've been meeting over the last year just spending extra money beyond the trillion dollar deficit. so we have a trillion dollar deficit just from our ordinary expenses and then we add to that, you know, a couple trillion here for covid last year, a couple trillion more, we're going to do a couple trillion more for free college,

free day care, free this, free that. it's not free. there's no such thing as a free lunch. there is nothing in the world this you will get for free. you will either have the future paying for it. the presiding officer: order in the chamber. mr. paul: you will have the future paying for if or our kids and grandkids paying for it, or pay for it through inflation or default. you can default in a dramatic way, through destruction of a currency or a gradual way through price inflation. we are seeing the price inflation take off. there are people concerned about inflation that has hit the stock market and where this goes from here. but i don't think this bill makes it stronger. in fact, i think the chinese sit back and hold their hand up and laugh at america thinking they are going to be stronger by borrowing more money from china. i don't think it makes us any stronger at all. i think it makes us weaker.

it would be one thing if it weren't so horribly wasted. lizards on a treadmill. they get a lizard on the treadmill and have active x-rays as to its joints. they wonder why a lizard waddles. so why do they waddle? what do their joints look like in x-rays? so we spent $1.5 million studying lizards on treadmills. one of the perennial problems in the third world is the black market. we have it in our country. it's a function when taxes and regulation in the official country become so onerous that had you need to escape the official economy, that's what the black market is. a good example is new york city. the taxes on cigarettes is so high in new york city that you have a black market. the sad death of eric gardner of

being choked to death in new york city had to do with taxes. some were offended. it was because of police brutality. of course it was. but it was police brutality because of exorbitant taxes that caused this man to sell cigarettes in order to make a living. in parts of africa, uganda in particular, there is a big black market. god knows why we're spending our money studying this, we decided to study gambling in uganda. we spent $30,000 studying gambling in uganda. they don't have good title to their land, they don't have good rule of law, they don't have the things that make our country great. instead of exporting ideas on how capitalism, we waste it on

government grants studying why ugandans gamble. this kind of goes back to the wuhan lab. this is what dr. fauci says. he says, who wouldn't want to study the sars virus. yeah, we should. then again, why do we pay the chinese to do it? there are all of these chinese with it. are they destitute? they are kicking our butt in trade, everybody's worried about china, so we're doing this stuff to combat china, yet we send money to a chinese lab. we have recently voted to change that. it has been going on for decades. dr. fauci said he trusts the chinese scientists. he seems oblivious that there is nothing done without the chinese military. oblivious to that.

so there's a space camp in alabama. my kids went to it one year. it's a great camp. i'm all for it and i would like to see more americans go if some american kids don't have the means, it would be nice if we could get american kids go to space camp. i'm not sure why we would borrow money from china to send kids to pakistan to space camp in alabama or to dollywood, $250,000. we spent a million dollars in afghanistan doing an antidrug program. unfortunately the drug problems in our country, they grow it, they grow it like corn, it's a crop for them. the problem is the demand comes from us. we spend a million dollars on a public relations programming in afghanistan and it was to

convince the afghanis not to use drugs, it was in english, so the vast majority of them couldn't understand or most of them don't have television sets any way. this is the kind of things that runs rampant throughout our government. so, you know, we talk about where would we find the resources to be a strong country again, to do the things that we could do to combat what happens in china, when woe look at that -- when we look at that and say where can the money come from? we spend $50 million a year in afghanistan. it is 18 years past having any usual mission at all. the mission was over probably once the taliban was defeated, there was still some mission for bin laden, but it denial require necessarily troops on the ground and nation building. we've been doing nation building in afghanistan. so our nation crumbles, we worry about china, the threat of the ascend ants of china, yet, what

are we doing? we're borrowing money from china to build roads in afghanistan. one of the things they did in afghanistan years ago is they were going to build a natural gas gas station. this was to reduce the footprint of afghanistan, the carbon footprint. so this is the absurdies we go to with climate change. this is a country that cooks their food on open fires, this is a country with an average income of about $800, most do not have a car. what do we decide to do for afghanistan to reduce their carbon footprint? we built a natural gas gas station. it was supposed to costs $800,000, sometimes government is not that efficient, so they had cost overs and it costs $80 million. my question, how many americans have a car that runs on natural gas? i think there's a handful of

people who have converted their cars into running on natural gas. there's a trucking company i'm aware of. you know, it's not a bad idea, but it's a boneheaded idea to build a gas station for natural gas vehicles in afghanistan. they don't have cars, much less cars that run on natural gas, but we did it. we spend $45 million in afghanistan on it. so my staff was over there looking at the waste, they said to the military, can we see the famous natural gas gas station? and as they wanted to go see it, the marines said, well, it would take two helicopters full of 30 marines in each helicopter to take you to the gas station, so we were told it was too dangerous and we didn't want to insist on something that dangerous. so we spent $45 million on a gas station that we can't visit because it's too dangerous to serve up gas on a car that nobody has natural gas, all i can imagine sort of cooper tubing sticking out of the

ground, people running off with cooper tubing. we built major highways and there are no cars, people put their camels in their tents. if you want a car to go up the road, you have to shoo the gam gam -- camels off the road. i think we had an overseas investment bank where we spent $90 million on a hotel in kabul. we didn't quite get finished. the contract built half of the hotel. he built the shell of the hotel with no walls. i think he sent pictures home. it was never built. the guy ran off with $60 million of the $90 million. it still sits there. it's a shell of a building. our people are worried about people crawling up in it and shooting down to our embassy. the thing is, i'm surprised it's

not in this bill. who knows what's in this bill. they need another $250,000 to destroy the building. the guy ran off, it's a shell of a building and we need to tear it down. we should have more money to tear down the luxury hotel we subsidize r diesed in -- subsidized in afghanistan. the list goes on and on and on. the frustration of the american people is, why does it never change? william proxmire studied about it in 1982, studying why people are happy or unhappy, studying whether or not if you take a selfy of yourself smiling and look at it later in the day, whether or not that will make you happy. seriously, half a million here, a million there. is there anything in this bill that will stop that from happening? it's been happening for 50

years. you know, we didn't even authorize these things. they just go on and on, there's no oversight. you ask any questions, nobody wants to give you any answers and it goes on and on. this just isn't one party. both parties do it and both parties are going to vote for this bill. i guarantee if you put up the different waste thiks that are going on in our government and you said that this is the agency that studying the mating call of the panamanian frog, these are the agencies studying whether someone sneezes on your food, do you think the american people would be with you, they are only with you because they don't know what you're doing today. they don't know that you're wasting more money, that you're shoveling good money after bad, they don't know this has been more of the same and this has been going on for 50 years, and nobody, republican or democrat is fixing the problem. we're just shoveling more money out the door. we're destroying our country, we're destroying our currency.

right now it's a little bit at a time. it's coming through inflation. inflation is out there. it's lurking. people are talking about it. there's another way to destroy your country. if you look the a the 20th century and look at the decline in the stock market, most of it is in like seven days, so those who think it we couldn't have a precipitous correction, that there wouldn't be a precipitous correction where everybody wakes up and the marketplace, oh, my goodness, the emperor has no clothes, we are $28 trillion in debt and we have companies 200-1 earnings to price ratios, we have companies worth hundreds and hundreds of dollars, thousands of dollars, what is their profit? come of them don't make profit. is there going to be a day where people wake up and say, oh, my goodness, the emperor has no clothes and there's a massive selloff? i don't know. but i do worry that the stock market is grossly inflated. i do worry when we pass out

$1,400 checks, which we did not have and give them to everybody, and do you know what everybody did with the checks? buy game stop, the money goes through the roof, everybody gets giddy on it because they get free money. there is no free money. ultimately the $1,400 we gave to people will be lost as wages don't keep up with inflation. it happens even as we speak. inflation has been low but over the last decade, the dollar lost 17% of its purchasing power. do you think everybody in america got a 17% gain? see, this is sort of the difference between the seen and unseen. frederick bostiot was a philosopher in france in the 19th century. he wrote about this and wrote a book called the law, and he talked about the seen and unseen. it is also the intended and unintended. i call it the big heart, small brain syndrome of washington.

everybody wants to help somebody. we have the same compassion, we want to help those out of work, if you give them too much not to work, they won't work. if they don't work for a long period of time, they won't be hired again. we extended unemployment to 99 weeks, it was done out of compassion. as we suspended it, what happened? anybody who stayed out out of wk 99 weeks and came back to look for a job, if there was another person who came back to work, guess who got hired. if around employer is faced with two employees, one out of work ten weeks, one out of work 99 weeks, guess who gets hired? if you pay more for people to work not to work, you get a permanent class of unemployed. there comes a class where they are not employable? what does that do to a people or a person? i think our self-esteem is tied

up in what we do for a living. i think there's self-esteem in everything, from designing the floors, to creating the carpet to laying the bricks to a doctor or lawyer, your self-esteem comes from work. you can't get self-esteem without work and you can't be given self-esteem. we -- johnny can't spell but we will give him a trophy because it will help his self-esteem. you have to earn it. but if we get a whole class of people, it doesn't work, it's a problem. the lack of self-esteem and the worry and concern that comes from this. the lack it takes to be a robust person is part of the problem with the sinking into despair and addiction that we have is a problem in our country.

this is another waste project. this comes out of our state department so, you know, we fund the state department for diplomacy. i'm for that. but we end up funding things in the state department. you wonder if they're useful for diplomacy or pork barrel politics. this was $850,000 that was given a a for-profit afghan television station to support the development of a national cricket league. really? so our state department which we have to pay ambassadors, we have to pay assistant ambassadors. we have to pay all the different personnel, those protecting the ambassador in our embassies. we've got to pay for the embassies, the electricity. all that stuff we have to do. i'm for that where do we get the money to pay for cricket. where is the bills of the u.s. government? but here's the point. does it ever get better? does someone go my goodness, someone stuck this earmark in

for the national cricket league. does someone say oh, my goodness we did this and we reform the process and say never again? no, we give them more money. every year, every agency in government gets more money. if you think there is a waste problem in government and you want to fix it, it won't get better if you give people more money. you would have to give them less. so what i do is i'd give everybody 99% of what they had last year. if it's a terrible agency like the national science foundation, i might give them 50% of last year. i would say to them prove to me that you're not going to do this again. they were studying dating back in 1972 and proxmire lampooned them. 50 years later they're studying selfies. they haven't learned their lesson. if you look at the process, they pick the people they want to approve their projects. you scratch my back, i'll scratch yours. you do cocaine studies, hey, me too.

you approve my cocaine study, i'll approve yours. that's what goes on with the national science foundation. close thome and you may have seen -- close to home and you may have seen it. we call it a streetcar named waste. it's about a couple of blocks from the capitol on h street. it's a streetcar they spent millions of dollars on. for years there was nobody on it and for years didn't go anywhere. it was a streetcar to nowhere basically. burr we spent $1.6 million -- but we spent $1.6 million on this and basically you could see it as basically a trolley car

with nobody in it. it was sort of this nostalgia. it's one thing to preserve but something that existed for 50 years. often you see it sitting vacant or not in use at all. now, we've decided that -- i don't know why they even think this anymore because i think climate alarmism has really penetrated all of our education. but just in case there's a child in the country that's not afraid that the oceans will rise and cover the land and that we're all going to drown and that the polar bears are going to drown, we need to make sure they know it through a special video game. so we spent half a million dollars on a video app to try to convince our kids that the polar bears are drowning sometime soon and that the -- the presiding officer: order in the chamber. mr. paul: -- around the corner.

will the chair inform me how much time i have remaining? the presiding officer: 28 and a half minutes. mr. paul: all right. i think at this point i would reserve the remainder of my time. you ready? mr. president, i reserve the remainder of my time. a senator: mr. president? the presiding officer: the senator from alabama is recognized. a senator: thank you, mr. president. today i would like to speak on some amendments very for this bill. mr. tuberville: i think it's important we all heard about this bill. everybody gets an opportunity to understand what we're doing here. i think the people back home in alabama would really appreciate that. i'm getting a lot of e-mails and letters about things that are going on with this bill. i just want the people back home to understand what we're laying out there to where we can -- our people back in alabama

understand the direction that we're taking. i spoke recently about how the president's skinny budget is disappointing and dangerous and a disservice to our men and women in uniform. china actively seeks to outpace the united states military and in some cases they're succeeding. this isn't a five or ten-year problem. the threat is right now. it is no secret that the chinese communist party or the c.c.p. wants to replace the u.s. as the world's top power. the american people need to be aware of how the chinese communist party is coming after us, not just with missiles and military might but with plans to subdue the american spirit. a significant part of what has made the united states a global powerhouse is the strength and

resilience of our private sector companies. whether it is in the technology, health care, or energy sectors, american innovation is unraveled. it's what made us the greatest economy in the history of the world. china's leaders know this. but rather than go ahead to head -- go head to head in an honest competition, they settle for stealing our intellectual property. chinese businesses at the instruction of their government lure american companies in. they offer cheap, very cheap labor. they promise an exchange of ideas. but they really want to steal our valuable intellectual property. china's strategy is to rob, replicate, and replace. china robs american companies of their intellectual property.

they replicate our technology. they'll go after whatever they can to get their hands on. wind, turbines, airplane design, underwater drones, chemicals, or artificial intelligent technology. according to the department of justice, between 2011 and 2018, more than 90% of the department's foreign economickest naj case -- espionage cases involved china. their goal is to surpass the united states economy and gain a monopoly control over every major industry. we cannot allow them to succeed. even more alarming is what china is doing from within our own universities. confucius institutes currently operate at 55 american colleges

and universities. they actually serve as a beachhead for the chinese government with america's research institutions. often just the presence of a confucius institute on campus will enable chinese officials to stifle any criticism of chinese government at that university. the institutes also allow chinese government to harvest valuable data from research beyond -- being conducted at our country's world class institutions. i was also glad to see alabama a&m, a public land grant historically black university make the decision to close their confucius institute just last month. the united states and the entire western world have given china

valuable concessions for dec decades. we gave china a seat at the table thinking they would change, but they have played their hand ruthlessly. it's past time we recognize that despite all the good intentions, this strategy has failed and failed miserably. the chinese communist party has continually spied on its citizens, violently suppressed dissent and systematically persecuted religious and ethic -- ethnic minorities to the point of genocide. i sincerely hope president biden will continue to build on the trump administration's momentum in pushing back against china's aggressive rise.

the t.s.p. or the thrift savings plan is the 401(k) style investment plan that over six million federal government employees, both military and civilian, use for their retirement plan. the plan manages more than $700 billion in assets. back in 2017 the board of governors of the t.s.p. decided to invest billions in companies with direct ties to the chinese communist party. now, the people that put money in this are all of our military in this country, all our civilian government officials, including everybody in this r room, in congress, anybody that works for the federal government, this is their 40 401(k). do we want to be investing in

china? we need congressional action to make president trump's decision with the trump -- with the thrift plan permanent. i bet if you ask folks who work at these buildings or who served the united states overseas if they want their retirement savings going to chinese companies, you would hear a loud no. i'll be offering a solution on this to protect our national security and safeguard the retirements of those who have served our country with honor and distinction. the problem with the companies that are invested in china, they don't go by the same rules we go by. they commit corporate espionage. they don't go by the same standards of unity or same

standards in banking, and they take money from the federal government and from our employees to support the military of china. in october 2019, senator rubio and senator shaheen sent a letter to the federal retirement thrift investment board regarding the fact that the board had reversed a previous decision to keep t.s.p. investment out of china. the senators urged the board to maintain the previous decision citing human rights and forced labor violations in china among other issues. i will read that letter now and ask that it be included in the record. the presiding officer: without objection. mr. tuberville: thank you. to the honorable michael ken kennedy, chairman, federal

retirement thrift investment board, washington, d.c. dear chairman kennedy, we write in advance of the federal retirement thrift investment board's upcoming october 28, 2019, meeting to urge the reversal of the board's previous decision to track the msci all-country world x u.s. investable market index, acwi xumi fund for investment made in the threft savings -- thrift savings plan. international stock fund. as i noted in previous correspondence, this decision would effectively invest the retirement savings of amer amern civil sieve vanities and military personnel and constituent companies of the acwiximi that assist in the

chinese government's military activities espionage and human rights abuses. as well as many other chinese companies that lack basic financial transparency. the constituent firms of the msci acwi, x u.s. imi include military contractors to the people's liberation army. like the aviation industry corporation of china and the china unicom, which supply military aircraft and telecommunications support militarized artificial islands in the south china sea. it also includes firms like digital technology, which was recently added to the united states department of commerce list and produces surveillance

equipment the chinese government currently uses to detain uighur muslims and other religious minorities and other zte corporations, which was fined for violating u.s. sanctions, laws with u.s. activity in iran and north korea in which congress has enacted a law to prohibit the u.s. federal government from procuring. additionally, the basic financial hazards of investment in firms listed on chinese exchanges are well documented. a recent accounting scandal involving one of china's biggest accounting firms highlights the extent of the regular alerties in the -- regulatories in the financial markets in which federal employees may be exposed. it is our responsibility to

these public servants that the investment of their retirement savings does not undermine. we look forward to the board's reversal of this decision. signed united states senator marco rubio and united states senator jeanne shaheen, united states senator mit romney, senator gillibrand, senator hawley and united states senator rick scott. i wrote an op-ed a few weeks ago about this very situation -- very unusual situation where we're uplifting the chinese economy with federal tax dollars. i'd like to read that to you now. the wall street journal, may 27,

2021. if i walked into byron's smokehouse and asked folks if they wanted their retirement savings invested into chinese companies, i would get laughed out of the restaurant. why would we allow the federal thrift savings plans which includes six million government employees and the military to do just that. the board that invests for the t.s.p. wants to invest $700 billion in assets to companies with direct ties to the chinese communist party. president trump stopped that move last year, but with a new president in office, the order blocking the board's decision no longer carries weight.

this amendment says that in the future no matter who the president is that we will not invest pension money from the federal government and our military into chinese businesses. congressional action is needed to provide a permanent solution rather than relying on the whims of executive action. that's why i'm introducing the prohibiting t.s.p. investment of china act. the bill would bar t.s.p. funds from being invested any security of any entity based in china or in a subsidiary that is owned or operated by a chinese company. blocking investment of federal retirement savings in china companies is good for united states security and good for its investors. we shouldn't be funneling

capital to firms that routinely violate u.s. sanctions and law and activities, enable the chinese communist party, military expansion, and the persecution of religious minorities. chinese companies have a long history of putting investors at serious risk by manipulating financial reporting statements and failing to comply with basic audit standards to artificially inflate their performance. the lucky coffee company incident is a prime example. the securities and exchange commission found that lucant defrauded u.s. investors by lying about the firm's performance and inflating retail sales by more than $300 million. lucant settled with the s.e.c. by agreeing to pay a

$180 million fine. but americans who invested their savings and funds lost hundreds of millions of dollars. china-based companies whose stock is traded on u.s. exchanges are prohibited by beijing from complying with u.s. securities and financial reporting standards. the chinese government also blocks u.s. regulatory -- regulators at the public company accounting oversight board from conducting standard inspections of the chinese offices of international audit firms. congress put investor protections in place for a reason. if a company is not in compliance, investors are at risk. china's refusal to allow its companies to comply with basic investor safeguards is cause enough to prohibit the investment of government

employee retirement funds in china firms, but there are additional reasons to take pause. chinese contractors are supplying beijing's military buildup, enabling aggressive action in the south china sea and toward land-based neighbors like vietnam and india. these firms also supply the chinese government with equipment used to spy on its citizens and commit genocide against religious moorts like the -- minorities like the uighurs. not a single dollar should be contributed to the communist party's continuing human rights abuses. the american people recognize the economic and military threat china poses to the u.s. the prohibiting t.s.p. in china act would advance our national

security interest and restrict funds from flowing to firms beholding to china's communist regime. i've got one more article i want to read on the t.s.p. bill warning that u.s. investment props up the chinese mill, supports -- military, supports political and religious persecution. today an appearance on f.b.n.'s morning with maria, senator tuberville wants to stop investment to the -- from the t.s.p. to companies linked to the chinese company. this would stop, halt that investment which, according to

the alabama republican lawmaker, could be used in a way to further china's aggressive tactics on the world stage. i can remember back in 2017 you talked a lot about this and you said in president trump, you know, there's a board of five people that control the pension fund. the pension fund is a federal worker's such as congress, myself, all of us on capitol hill, government workers, and includes $700 billion. so what we want to do is make sure that we don't prop up the military of the chinese nor political or religious persecution. we want to go with companies that are going to go by the rules, fight for democracy, and at the end of the day, this legislation pretty much says that it sends a zero tolerance to the chinese to block their

aggression towards the united states and the rest of the world. on defense spending, our job as elected officials is to make sure those who have stepped up to defend our country have the resources they need to do their job. the president's recent budget proposal for the department of defense does not -- i repeat -- does not give our men and women in uniform the tools to do their job. it's clear that president biden thinks we don't need further investment in our military. if it's clear he thinks it's

okay to ask our men and women to do more with less, then that is impossible. the world has changed a lot in 50 years when president biden first came to washington in 1972, there were two superpowers, the united states of america and the soviet union. back then we spent 6.5% of our federal budget on national defense -- 6.5%. today we spend less than 3.5%. huge drop. secretary austin has said that china remains the top, quote, paifg threat for -- pacing threat for our military. simply keeping pace with china is not enough. we've got to outpace all of our adversaries, but doing that

requires smart, substantial, and strategic investment in our military. much more investment than the president and many people here in congress publicly propose. president biden says he wants his administration to trust experts on things like covid, but this defense budget shows he doesn't apply that same principle to the pentagon. here's what admiral clarke, charles richard, commander of the u.s. strategic command who looks over the u.s. submarine. here is what he said to the senate armed services committee. i have what i need today, the general says, but i need to modernize. there is no remaining margin of error. his warning is clear. we must modernize our greatest

deterrent and keep peace among our adversaries with our nuclear arsenal. the free world, meaning united states, works and sleeps under a nuclear um umbrella -- nuclear umbrella that hasn't been updated to the digital age. we are also in a new space race, and it's a race we have no choice. we must win. in the next 20 years the total cost of just arming space will be $2 trillion, and we have no choice but to win in space. the chinese want to weaponize this new frontier of war and we're falling behind. we're also falling behind

russia. we have got to make a change in attitude towards what we're doing in space and it starts right here in this room. i heard about the growing gap between us and the chinese when i visited army material command at redstone arsenal a few weeks ago in huntsville, alabama. these folks shared with me how desperately we need to modernize our space-based systems that contribute to our missile defense. the u.s. army is the largest consumer of space products and our military relies on military command to provide the resources to train our soldiers for research, development of new equipment, and defend our nation. they should not have to beg us or the president of the united states for the money to invest

in the capabilities that we need. at the end of the day, our generals' main report to -- generals main report to us was we can't afford to survive. think about that quote. we can afford to survive. we also need to invest in the safety of our service men and women, especially in aviation. currently the average age of an airplane in our military is older than the pilots flying them. alabama is home to fort rucker which every army helicopter pilot comes to get their training. when i visited the folks at fort fortrucker, they told me about e

real need for flight increase in hours, more investment and prayization in the -- prioritization. we need to maintain our status as a preeminent fighting force in the world. we have hundreds of contractors and more than 200,000 deployed in a defense sector across our state in alabama. those topnotch men and women support our world class military installations from the ship builders in mobile to read stone arsenal in huntsville -- red stone arsenal in huntsville and many places in between. telling our forces to fight a war without -- with outdated tools is like giving a football team some leather helmets and decades-old poorly fitted pads and expecting them to compete

against modern equipment. but that's exactly what this administration's defense budget is asking our military to do. frankly, it's a huge disappointment coming from our commander in chief. we cannot let our men and women down. in the coming weeks, i'll be working with colleagues on the national defense authorization act and budget that will enable our military to do the job better today and prepare for all the challenges tomorrow. i'm willing to keep fighting for the united states by investing in the men and women who keep us safe. i urge my colleagues and president biden to do the same. on supporting our law enforcement, being a law

enforcement officer is one if not one of the toughest jobs that there is. sometimes it's taken for gra granted. but it's also foundational to a functioning society, like the united states. we rely on these brave men and women to protect and serve our country every day. we're lucky to have many brave and honorable officers in all of our states across the country. i think about officer jonathan espanino. last year he responded to a medical call, a man trying to bring his mom back to life, trying to perform c.p.r. this officer took over for the man after he arrived and began c.p.r. just before medical personnel arrived, the woman's heart started beating again and she was gasping for air. this officer saved her life.

it could have been you, your mom, or one of your family. and i think of over wesley harrison of abbeyville police department in alabama. officer harrison received a call that a woman was in a burning building. officer harrison arrived on the scene. minutes later going into the building carrying the elderly woman out of the structure, putting his life in danger with the help of another inves investigator. these police officers went above and beyond the call of duty and they saved her life. that's what police officers do. so when you get up every day and you put that uniform on of a law enforcement officer across this country, no matter who you are and you put that badge on your chest and you put that gun on your side, it could be the last

time that you walk out your front door. not many jobs have those things that could happen to you. most of us have jobs where you go to work and you are expected to go home every day. but not police officers. especially in this day and time. every day we're having problems across this country where police officers are even set up, they're set up by the criminals, and they're shot and some are killed. that's what's happened to these law enforcement officers every day of their career which is why i firmly believe we need not less but more support for law enforcement. they need more training so they can be better at handling difficult situations and this is especially true as we see an uptick of mental health,

addiction across this country. it is getting worse every day. they need targeted resources so they can recruit the best and the brightest for these important roles in the community and across our country. let's as a group invest in the resources that can assure all law enforcement officers are good for the people and across every state and across our country. we owe that to them. they keep us safe. right now unless state and law enforcement agencies have an agreement with the immigration and custom enforcement, if they -- rule law enforcement sheriff, city official encounters an illegal immigrant in the course

of performing their normal duties in their hometowns, they cannot arrest or detain that individual for immigration purposes. and i want you to think about that. this year we're going to have between one million and two million illegal immigrants come across our border. we don't know who they are. we don't know where they've been. we don't know if they have any skills, but they're coming across our border and it is an amazing sight. i spent a day down there watching this, watching our customs and border patrol agents not be agents or law enfor enforcement. they were doing custodial work. they were doing things that they had to do just to process these men and women across our border. now, i say our border.

i say that coming across our border, i need to change that because when i was at the border just a few weeks ago, that border does not belong to us anymore. it belongs to the cartel. it costs $3,000 to $10,000 to come across the rio grande. sometimes maybe more. they're coming from countries all over the world. some people think that they're just coming from countries south of our border, mexico and in south america. that's totally false. they're coming from china. they're coming from the middle east. they're coming from parts unknown and we have no clue who these people are. just a few years ago, i have a farm in auburn, alabama. i raise deer. i can show you how to lose

money. i have a high fence. i get a call one day from the police department, sheriff's department. coach, we need you to come down to the sheriff's department. so i go down. there had been a sting operation going on with a group of people that were not too far from my farm. they had a compound built. unfortunately for their group, they had gone to atlanta which is an hour and a half away to purchase some ar-15's on the street. so they were looking for gun sellers. so as they found -- so as i found out that they could buy these gun, they go back to their place just off my farm there in auburn. unfortunately for them, the f.b.i. was undercover. they followed them back and they busted them. i can't remember the number,

four, five, six, but they had a compound and what they were doing, they were teaching people how to make bombs. now this is in auburn, alabama. this is not new york city or chicago or orlando or miami. and they were building bombs and teaching people how to build bombs. obviously they were arrested. they were all from the middle east, had no papers. our country had no record of why they were here, how they got here, but they were here. we have these sales all over the country -- cells all over the country. that's the reason we need a secure border. so right now after they come across the border, we have what we call immigration police, better known as i.c.e. if you come across the border, people that have authority over

the people that come that are here illegally, i.c.e. has the authority, not the local or state law enforcement. now, they can work directly with them but if they come up -- state and local law enforcement come up on people that are illegal, they have no jurisdiction. that's what's wrong with our immigration laws. last year or this last five months, i.c.e. apprehensions have gone down 70% because of the rules and regulations that have been put on by this administration. we can't allow that to happen. we're losing the sanctity, the security, and the sovereignty of our country. and it's a domino effect. when they come in, they're sent all over the country. when i left mcallen, texas, a few weeks ago to fly back, half of the plane was full of people that were not americans. they were people from other

places, people here that were here illegally. they were here with young kids, there were young mothers, and they were here without any family. i sat next to a young lady who was probably 19 years old. she couldn't speak english. she had probably a four or five-month-old with her. is he cried the entire flight from mcallen, texas, to houston. i helped her try to find her gate. she was going from houston to denver. i tried to get somebody there to explain to me and to her to communicate of who's going to pick you up when you get there, trying to help her out. she had no clue. she was just going to denver with a four, five-month-old that had no clue about our country, about who to meet, who was going to feed her, what kind of job she was going to have, or what roof was going to be over her head. if that doesn't shake you up, i

don't know what does. i love people. i've been in education all my life. i love kids. and we're doing these people wrong at the border. and if we don't wake up and smell the roses, we're going to have many, many thousands of deaths on our hands. and we all live in great societies and great homes and have money in our pocket. we have food to put in our mouth and we take care of our kids. you imagine if this country went to heck in a hand basket and we had to go to mexico with no money, no i.d., no clue about their environment or their language, how would you make a living? how would you get by? i promise you, the people don't there could survive a lot better than us because they've had hard times. we are spoiled. we have everything given to us because we live in the greatest country on the face of the earth. and i know some people in poverty, but let me tell you

something. the poorest people in our country have it a hundred times better than even the middle class in some of these other countries, the middle class. so the federal government will not enforce these laws and our state law enforcement officers should be empowered any way possibly that they can. so my empowering law enforcement act is about common sense. it's about giving the right to local and state law enforcement officers across this country to help out the illegals that have come in this country, not that we are against them. we love everybody in this country. my god, folks, we've got to help them. we've got to help them. and if we just turn them out there with no sense of security and nobody can help them, law enforcement cannot help them unless it's i.c.e. they're on their own.

i can't imagine. i cannot imagine. the border has been dominating the headlines, but if you talk to a lot of people, even in this room, you would think that it was a fairy tale. we need to wake up and smell the roses. everybody in this room whether you're a democrat, libertarian, republican, if you're an american, we should care about this border. i am disappointed with our media in this country. they act like it's not even having. they will have blood on their hands if this continues to happen. we want to help. we want legal immigration. we're for people coming -- we're all at one point in time immigrants. my gosh, folks. we have got to wake up. we have got to wake up and understand that we need to help and not hurt. if they are coming in, give us

an opportunity -- give us an opportunity to help, not just put them on an airplane, send them somewhere and forget about them. ths that's not the american people do it. there is a high school in alabama, i went into that high school, we were talking about curriculum and finally someone said, coach, when you get to washington, d.c., i want you to understand this. we've got a great school system here. we want to help people. we've gone from 20% illegal immigrants in our school to almost 80% in a year and a half -- 80%. we want help them. we don't have enough people that speaks their language. if you can't communicate, you can't teach. if we're going to do this, if we're going to have immigrants in this country, my gosh, let's

put a plan together as a group of people that should care and help these people. help them get off to a life even half of what maybe might have. that's our responsibility. god put us on this green earth to help people, not to help ourselves. we're all fortunate, but there's millions and millions of people less fortunate than us. so as i say today, i want to help the people that's come across the border. but if we don't have dialogue and we don't have media down there processing what's going on to where we can put pressure on our public officials all over this country, we will not be able to help them and you're going to have people dying and you're going to have people that's going to have blood on their hands and i'm one to stand up and say i'm willing to do

anything to help the people coming across the border because it will make us a better country. that's what we need. we need a better country because we are a country of immigrants, but right now we're a country of spoiled brats is what we are. so let's help. the media needs to help. we all need to be on board with this. thank you, mr. president. i yield my time. mr. paul: mr. president. the presiding officer: the senator from kentucky. mr. paul: a group of us chose to filibuster this bill because we think it wastes money. we think it gives money to one of the most wasteful governments in government, the national science foundation, since william proxmire began to give the golden fleece award, for 50 years there has been waste from the national science foundation, i.n.f. and we discussed some of these and i have a handful more

that i think the american people should know about where their money is going to. the i.n.f. spent $2-rb -- $2 million to see if a hot top could lower stress. i think i could have agreed to that. we spent $2 million if soaking in a hot tub releaves stress. n.i.h. spent a million dollars to see if they could help people overcome their fear of seeing a dentist. almost $7 million was spent to create an automatic flushing smart toilet. that's right, $7 million for an automatic flushing toilet and here's the bonus, the toilet

will take pictures of your rear end if you wish. $7 million for a smart toilet. how does this go on and nobody does anything. you know what we do, we flush money down the smart toilet, give them more money and nobody bats an eye. this is the problem of government. nobody denies the waste. nobody denies the ridiculous projects that are being funded and year year in, year out, it continues. we need to reform the process. we need to have a taxpayer advocate on the committee that votes on the projects. we need to have somebody with a grain of salt that is voting on these projects, somebody who says that studying whether humans will eat ants to curb global warming, whether that's a useful expenditure of $3 million to study whether or not humans will eat enough ants to keep the

globe from warming. this goes on. the people at home are like, how could this happen? how could you spend money on this? but it happens year in, year out because we never vote for less money. it's always more. so a group of senators here today are filibustering this bill because somebody's got to point out that the waste -- the waste and abuse of money goes on. the n.s.f., the king of wasteful spending, spent $100,000 to teach social scientists how to apply for grants. it's not bad enough that we're just handing out money like it grows on trees, but we've got to teach people how to get more free money. there actually was another case of money that taught central american companies how to get more of our money. we are teaching foreigners how to apply to get grant money from

our government that's $28 trillion in the hole. we're annually a trillion dollars in the hole, in the last couple of years we're $3 trillion to $4 trillion because of all of the government bailouts and at the same time we're $2 trillion to $3 trillion in the hole, we're sending $200,000 to teach people get more grants. there was money to help disconnected youth to help them cope with modern society. coping is not easy for young people anywhere around the world but i guarantee that $48 million that we don't have that we have to borrow from china to send to tunisia is not a good spending of money, probably helped no one, probably enriched a contractor, there is always a skimming operation. it was once estimated that as much as half to 70% of foreign

aid was skimmed off the top either by a corrupt dictator in the countries receiving the money or simply by graft throughout the government throughout the countries that we send the money to. often the foreign aid money went to dictators for 20, 30, 40 years and we're giving money to dictators. the national science foundation spent $4.6 million to study the connection between getting drunk and falling down. you would think that would be obvious. you get drunk, you fall down, but, no, we had to study whether getting drunk and falling down was something that happens. we spent $4 million, if you get drunk if when you -- if you get drunk and fall down. the n.s.f. needs less money, not more. the national institutes of health spent $36 million to

research why stress makes hair turn gray. i'm at that age. why does stress make your hair turn gray? really? nobody would pay for this. if we got 100 assembled americans and say, vote on whether or not stress causes your hair to turn gray. this congress is going to increase the budget of the national science foundation by 68%. the national science foundation spent $.5 million -- $2.5 million to research the effects of daydreaming. i'm not kidding. you can't make this stuff up. so what are we going to do, increase their budget $29 million more. they should be ashamed. one side doesn't give a fig of what they are spending, but the other side of the aisle that i

reside on pretends to care about the debt, but the majority of them will vote for this monsterus bill. the national institutes of health spent $1.5 million to determine how to make tomatoes taste better. they spent a lot of money and time and wrote up reports. this is shocking, this is groundbreaking research, they found if you add sugar to tomatoes, they taste better. you can't make this stuff up. but it goes on and on and on. i'm glad to be joined on the floor by the senator from utah, and i will reserve the remainder of my time and pass the baton.

mr. lee: mr. president. the presiding officer: the senator from utah. mr. lee: mr. president, i've got significant concerns with this legislation. i've made no ambiguity about that. i've been concerned from the outset this bills concerns me, it involves an attempt by the united states of america to compete with china but on terms that don't favor us, on a playing field that isn't ours, in areas that play to our weaks, not our strengths. we ought to play to our strengths, not our weaknesses, unfortunately this bill doesn't get it right. separate and apart from the concerns of the merits of this legislation, which we'll get back to in a moment, i want to talk for a moment about the procedural concerns that i've

had. there have been a number of people in the senate arguing over the last few hours, some in the senate chamber, some in the media, that we have had a very thorough floor process, that this has been regular order at its best. i appreciate the fact that we've had two weeks of floor consideration time, two weeks, that is, on senate time of -- which is not two actual weeks. it's not two calendar weeks. not even two business weeks. it's a shorter subset of that. never mind, it's a good thing that we at least had two weeks set aside on the senate floor. so that's -- that's a good thing. it is not sufficient, however, to suggest that because we've had hundreds of amendments filed and because we've had a number

of votes on amendments and because a few weeks have elapsed since this bill came out of committee, that that somehow means it's regular order and regular order of a sort that we ought to try to replicate. you have to remember that regular order needs to be evaluated, it needs to be measured against several things. in other words, a simple resolution designating national sofa care month probably need not receive a lot of floor time or a lot of opportunities for amendments. but the more substantive and the most costly economically or otherwise of a -- a particular bill might be, the more demanding regular order ought to be. regular order is not satisfied, particularly in a bill like this one, that is likely to costs

$200 billion or more and that's 2,000 pages-plus long and that deals with some very significant geopolitical and economic issues. it's not something that you can really call regular order when you're addressing a bill like that when you're constantly making changes to it. we talked last night about the fact this legislation started out in committee a few weeks ago. it started out in committee where i believe it was somewhere in the range of 150 to 200 pages. it came out of committee and it was longer than that, it was a few00 pages and -- a few hundred pages and then over time it has gotten bigger, it grew to 1,400, 1,500 pages, by yesterday afternoon, it grew an additional 900 pages and then by 10:59 p.m.

last night, it grew by a few00 more pages. it's not just the addition of an additional page of text that triggers more concern. one has to understand how the entire piece of legislation interacts. how the various provisions, including the late-breaking amendments that we received for the first time at 10:59 p.m. last night, how those affect everything else. just as importantly, mr. president, one has to -- ought to certainly have the ability to communicate to one's constituents what's in the legislation, seeking input from them so that any votes can be informed by having the voters informed and having them aware of what's in the legislation. so one cannot make very significantly drastic changes to

legislation in the middle of the night and then claim that it's regular order and that regular order demands an immediate vote on that measure. what i and a number of my colleagues have been focused on as we've debated this through the night and starting in early -- early this morning when we reconvened has been simple. we just want more time before being asked to vote on this measure. it's not an unreasonable request given that you're dealing with legislation that's over 2,000 pages long and that's likely to cost somewhere in the neighborhood of a quarter of a trillion dollars. that is a lot of money. and the way in which we spend it will undoubtedly have profound implications not just for years but for decades to come. we need to, we ought to, we really must endeavor to understand to what exactly this is going to do.

in order to do that, we have to have text and that does in fact matter. so it's not -- it's not something that you can easily dismiss as an argument that says this has been regular order because it's been on the senate floor for two weeks. when it changes as much as this one has, it expands as much as this one has, when it's as long as this one is and involves this amount of money and this many very significant far-reaching ramifications, it is not unreasonable for us to want more time to vote on it, to consider, to receive public input, and to allow the american people to know what's in it before we cast our votes. that is a simple common courtesy that we ought to have extended to ourselves automatically rather than trying to rush to a final vote in the dark of night. on the merits of the legislation

itself, it's important to remember that we got here because we're at something of a crossroads with china. we've got all kinds of potential threats, some of them economic in nature, some perhaps cultural, some perhaps military, and some maybe involve cybersecurity, but we have an awkward relationship with china and it's one that we've got to be focused on. that's why it's not a bad thing in and of itself that we consider legislation to try to deal with that. that doesn't mean that every piece of legislation designed to deal with the problem is itself something that must be passed. you see, if we're going to try to pass something telling the american people that what we're

passing will lead to a better outcome with china and our ability to compete with china, if we're going to make that argument, then we've got to be able to back that up. and in order to be able to back that up, we've got to put ourselves in a position where we can be our best selves, where we know we're poised for success. we've got to consider exactly what kind of strategy we're deploying and what kind of competitor we want to be. so the legislation before us, the legislation that's been renamed but that started out as and to this moment includes the endless frontier act is something that aims to counter china primarily by boosting technology research and

development. i think that's fair to say that that's its primary aim. this is something that nobody dislikes. nobody dislikes research and development, to my knowledge. these are good things. undoubtedly our ability to compete with china will depend on the nature and extent of our investments in research and development. but that does beg the question what is the best kind of research and development? is it best when it follows from and is directed by -- it could be modified along the way as a result of self-interest rightly understood, free markets, the decisions of individuals who have something at stake, or is it best when government acts, when government directs it, when

it's done by federal bureaucrats instead of innovators, technology experts, and people who have something that belongs to them, an idea, an ability to make something, people who actually know how to see their ideas all the way through the end? that are willing to make the necessary sacrifices along the way to see to its success? you see, when you start to confuse government research and development with actual research and development, that is, private nongovernmental research and development, you run into some problems. some of this i think perhaps stems from a misapprehension, a misunderstanding of the nature of government itself and the capabilities of government in

any system to do things. we have to remember that government ultimately is best understood as the official use of coercive force. that's what government is. it's force, force with the imprimatur of official authority, force and taxation backed up by force. that's what government is. i don't mean to say that in a dismissive waip. we need government -- dismissive way. we need government. government can't operate without force. it can't collect taxes without force. it can't enforce laws without force. we need government for that reason, to make sure first and foremost that we don't hurt each other, that we aren't harmed by outside aggressors who would harm us, and that we don't take that which doesn't belong to us.

we need governments to do that. only governments can do that. that's why we have governments. political philosophers going back centuries, including many of those who influence the founding of the united states of america, who influenced the documents including the declaration of independence and the constitution of the united states. and those who influenced the wawaging of america's -- waning- waging of america's revolution area war. and that the fundamental reason is to protect life, liberty, and property. human flourishing wouldn't occur in that circumstance if everyone had to be the law for him or herself. human dplowrishing -- human flourishing wouldn't occur. when government exists, it frees

people. it frees them not just freedom sounds great in the abstract or because it's fun to yell at a rally or it looks good on a bumper sticker. but we like freedom because of the things that free people do when they're allowed to be free. when they're able to come together and form what i refer to as the twin pillars of american exceptionalism. in fact, i would go so far as to call them the twin pillars of any thriving human civilization. those twin pillars are free markets in voluntary -- and voluntary institutions of civil society. when you have robust free markets and voluntary institutions of civil society, human beings do better. they can't, of course, function in a state of anarchy, nor can they function in the absence of

government because that always involves anarchy necessarily. but when there is government and that government properly understands its role of protecting life, liberty, and property, it's freeing and liberating, and human beings in that setting can do amazing things. it's what's led to the development of the greatest civilization and the strongest economy the world has ever known. it's what led more people out of poverty than any government program ever came, ever could, ever has, or ever will. when we lose sight of what government is, when we start to forget that government is just force and taxation backed up by the use of force, it can easily be manipulated for nefarious ends. it's not that government is bad. government isn't inherently good

or evil. government consists of that principle of force backed up with the legitimacy of the imprimatur of the state or in our case a union of states. it's that force that is necessary, that same force that's necessary can become destructive of the very ends that it was created in order to uphold and protect and defend. so we can't lose sight of it. we can't lose sight of the fact that government is neither inherently good nor inherently evil. you see, government doesn't have eyes to see you. it doesn't have arms to embrace you. it doesn't have a heart with which to love you. it's neither omnipotent nor only

mish shents -- omiscient. not all knowing or all powerful. it's just force and taxation backed up by force. so the further afield you take government authority and you take it away from the protection of life, liberty, and property, quite ironically and very tragically it can become destructive of the very ends that it was created to serve. one of the ways in which we see this man test from time to time is when people will harness the immense power of government and the immense financial resources that can be accumulated by a government through the power of taxation backed up by force for their own political ends, even worse for their own economic ends. and when you see people's political ends marrying up with the financial interests of those who want to capitalize off of

government itself, bad things can happen. you see, because ultimately the american people become poorer as a result of government action. that is, every dollar that we spend is a dollar that won't otherwise be spent. it could otherwise be spent in the free market doing good, resulting in everything from charitable contributions to job creation and many, many other things that support our ability to be free and prosperous as a nation. china, importantly, doesn't quite see it this way. they didn't get the memo. they're not steeped in hobbs

lock montesquieu. they're not steeped in the stories we know about our american revolution. they weren't raised understanding that their country became a country as a result of their conscious choice to depart from a mother country after that mother country had proven itself to be menacing, had proven itself to be a government that was taxing them too much, regulating them too aggressively, sending them off to war, and then making them pay for those wars all without allowing them fair representation within that system of government. they weren't steeped in that. they were steeped in different traditions, and they've chosen a very different set of paths. they have essentially a command and control economy because that's what a country that's run by a communist party does. it commands and it controls.

it's a very different mindset. it's a mindset that focuses not on free markets and civil society. in that kind of system, in a system run by a communist party with a command and control economy, the state is everything. the government is imbued culturally with almost a sense of reverence. entitled to deference. and people assume that it has or they are at least asked to assume, and many are forced to play along with the assumption that they have got a degree of some nip -- of omnipotence and always the best interests of the people. the ability to foresee and prepare for the future and use the immense force of government to bring about their aims.

so in every single respect, the chinese regime grows and centralizes the power of government, always at the expense of free markets and free citizens. this is an experiment that has expanded into dangerous and even deadly territory. let's just consider for a moment china's record on human rights. china has gone so far as to enslave and subject the tibetan and uighur people into forced labor, reeducation, and torture. under china's infamous one-child policy, it's brutally and barbarically forced families to undergo i.u.d. implantation, sterilization, and abortion. china, of course, has a long, dark history of religious persecution and of silencing

dissidents of every stripe under president xi jinping, chinese authorities have detained millions of muslims and arrested thousands of christians. they have seized control of tibetan monasteries and closed or demolished dozens of buddhist and taoist temples. you see, the destruction of sacred places not built by the government, not designed by the government, that seems to be a hallmark characteristic of communist systems because sacred places must be for the betterment of the government, and if they are not, communist regimes don't like them and often do everything they can to destroy them and the communities that form them. they have even practiced forced organ harvesting of members of the falangong religion.

in true imperialist form, china is pushing its belt and road initiative, a massive predatory infrastructure project stretching from east asia to europe, designed to massively expand its coercive economic and political influence. it has spread confucius institutes across american campuses, entangling american universities with chinese state policies and turning them into megaphones for chinese propaganda. in multicultural -- in multilateral organizations, china continuously undermines long-standing democratic norms, instituting policies that instead benefit the chinese communist party's authoritarian values. and it has held a tight command and control grip over its economy, heavily subsidizing industries with money that it's taken through its power of

taxation backed up by its use of force and ultimately picking winners and losers, which tend to be more reflective of those close to leadership within the chinese communist party than those who build a better product or work better to serve their fellow beings. well, china has picked up some steam through these actions. we must not, we can't ever ignore that whatever momentum it may have acquired is of dubious success and doubtful sustainability over the long run. china under the control of the chinese communist party has in reality one of the least efficient economies in the world. in terms of g.d.p. per capita, it's not at the top of the heap. in fact, one could say that it's very close to the bottom of the

heap. next to cuba and kazakhstan. it turns out that political corruption and state-owned enterprises come with some financial dead weight, too. now, the financial costs, the financial costs alone of enslaving, sterilizing, and brainwashing 12.8 million uighurs and other oppressed groups is steep. even as the human costs of this indefensible moral depravity is far worse and infinitely steeper. of course, killing future generations' potential through abortion is also as foolish as it is inhumane. as a result of its decades-long abortion and one-child or two-child policies, china is on track to lose a third of its workforce, a third. and age out faster than any society in modern history.

the ratio of workers to retirees in china which is currently 8-1 is projected to whittle down to just 2-1 in the coming decades, with only two employees for every retiree. china's pension system which is already showing very significant signs of buckling will inevitably crack under pressure. now, it's true that china is aggressive, and it's true that china is really big, but it's not ironclad in its position of global strength. as its population ages more and more and as more of its landfalls into wasted, polluted squalor, it will have neither the inhabitants nor the resources to continue on its current course. so, mr. president, there is nothing about china's principles

or china's trajectory that we should seek to emulate. no, not in the slightest. in nearly every single way, nearly every single way, the chinese regime consolidates power to trample over the rights of men and women and quash free expression, the free exercise of religion, and free enterprise. all of us in america who know of our own struggles know of the bad things that can happen when human beings and governments combine to take undue advantage of difficult circumstances of minorities, whether racial, ethnic, language, religious, or otherwise. bad things happen. china has not only allowed bad

things to happen, it's made them happen. it's directed that they happen. it's been the reason why they have happened. nothing could be more antithetical to the american system of government or to the american way of life or to our values. in fact, it's just the opposite formula that has made us the greatest civilization the world has ever known, with the strongest economy, with the greatest opportunities, with immense upward economic mobility. this is uniquely a land in which someone can be born into poverty , and in most circumstances carry the reasonable hope and expectation that if they work hard, one day they can retire comfortably. the founders gave us a constitution precisely to disburse and limit the power of the federal government and to keep the power in government as

close and accountable to the people as possible. we focus on this, and we focus on principles of freedom and of liberty. not just because they sound nice. we do these things because it's how human beings thrive. we do these things because it's the best way to protect life, liberty, and property. we do these things because it's the only way to allow for upward economic mobility and the thriving of the human condition. we should continue to double down on those things. we should continue to make sure that our markets are free, that our institutions of civil society are voluntary and robust. we do that not by expanding government, but by allowing human beings to do what they do best and allowing them to be free. thank you, mr. speaker. i yield the floor.

mr. schumer: mr. president. the presiding officer: the majority leader. mr. schumer: mr. president, i ask unanimous consent that notwithstanding rule 22, at a time to be determined on tuesday, june 8, the senate resume consideration of s. 1260, that all postcloture time be considered expired and the senate vote in relation to the cornyn amendment 1858. that if a budget point of order is raised and a motion to waive is made following disposition of the cornyn amendment, the senate vote on the motion to waive. that if waived, the senate vote on substitute amendment 1502 as amended. that the cloture motion with respect to s. 1260 be withdrawn, and that the bill be considered read a third time, the senate vote on passage of s. 1260 as

amended, if amended, with 60 affirmative votes required for passage, all with no intervening action or debate. further, that the senate now vote on the motion to invoke cloture on the motion to proceed to calendar number 60, h.r. 3233. that following the cloture vote, notwithstanding rule 22, the senate proceed to executive session an the cloture motions with respect to executive calendars 111 and 134, withdrawn, and that the senate vote on confirmation of the nominations in the order listed, that if confirmed, the motions to reconsider be considered made and laid upon the table, and the president be immediately notified of the senate's action. finally, that following the disposition of calendar 134, the senate resume legislative session. the presiding officer: is there any objection? seeing no objection, so ordered. mr. schumer: thank you, mr. president. i ask consent -- consent to use

leader remarks and that senators klobuchar and peters be permitted to speak up to two minutes each before the vote. the presiding officer: without objection. mr. schumer: now, mr. president, let me tell the public and the members what this does. it's something we proposed. it assureses a vote on -- assures a vote on the january 6 commission in the next hour, it assures it occurs in the light of day, not at 3:00 p.m. morning and it assures that the vote on the u.s. competition act will take place when we return in june. this is a good solution because we get to vote on the commission and let me just say this to my republican colleagues and to the country. this commission is desperately needed. what has been perpetrated by

president trump over the last several months is the big lie -- the big lie that the elections were fixed, that he is rightfully president. nothing is more corrosive to our democracy than a view that elections are not on the level. yet that has been propagated by donald trump and many of his allies. a commission can get to the bottom of this in a clear way. it is a bipartisan commission, it is down the middle commission, there was significant republican input by the republican leader in the house and the ranking member of the republican -- the republican ranking member of the relevant committee. so this is right down the middle. if our republican friends vote against this, what are you afraid of? the truth? are you afraid donald trump's big lie will be dispelled? are you afraid that all of the

misinformation that has poured out will be rebutted by a bipartisan, down the middle commission? this is about a democracy. this is about the future of our democracy. the big lie has eroded that democracy. and we must do everything we can to rebut it. this is not a democratic or republican obligation, this is an american obligation. our democracy, our beautiful, more than two-century old democracy is at more risk because of the lies that have been perpetrated by donald trump and his allies and it has been for a very long time and this commission is a great antidote to that. -- i hope that ee can get broad -- i hope that we can get broad support on that. i yield the floor. ms. klobuchar: mr. president. the presiding officer: the senator from minnesota. ms. klobuchar: mr. president, as chair of the rules committee, i implore my colleagues to vote

for this commission. on january 6, we all walked over that broken glass. we all saw the spray paint on the walls. we all stood huddled together in shelter and most of us -- most of us -- the vast majority of republicans and democrats voted to uphold democracy late into the evening. it doesn't end there. i give to you the words the words of slain officer brian sicknick's mother, a woman who has never -- she had lobbied members of this body. she said this, not having a january 6 commission to look into exactly what has occurred is a slap in the faces of all the officers who did their jobs that day. for months national security experts have called for a

bipartisan commission. yesterday the department of homeland security former secretaries from the bush and obama administrations, chertoff, ridge, napolitano, johnson, all called for this commission. this commission is modeled exactly after the gold standard of investigations and relations of the 9/11 commission. it is modeled in the words of how the staff is chosen, it is modeled in the words of getting to the bottom of something and get something done. but, yet, so many of our colleagues sadly on the other side of the aisle are refusing to move on this. colleagues, we owe it to the heroic capitol police, to the first responders, to the staff members who sat in closets for hours and hours and hours, to the police officer who was called the n word 15 times and then sat in the rotunda and looked at another officer and

said, is this america? we owe it to them that put themselves in harm's way to protect the capitol and the sacred democratic process in action -- inaction is not an option and, no, the report i'm doing that i'm so proud of with senator peters, senator portman, and that is an immediate response of bills we have to pass and things we have to do and mistakes that were made. it's an important report and we're proud of our work, but it's no subs future a 9/11-still commission and i implore our colleagues to vote with us to get this done. i yield the floor. a senator: mr. president. the presiding officer: the senator in michigan. mr. peters: mr. president, the january 6 attack on the u.s. capitol remains a dark stain on our nation's history. americans deserve to have all of the facts about that day in a fair, balanced -- and a fair,

balanced, and independent commission will give us those answers. this commission would complement the current investigations into this deadly attack, including my homeland security committee's own investigations in conjunction with the rules committee. after the devastating september 11 terrorist attacks, congress came together to create a bipartisan independent commission. january 6 marks a singular event in hour -- in our nation's history similar to what we experienced on 9/11, and there is simply no logical reason to oppose its creation. the brave law enforcement officers who stopped this attack and every american who watched in real time as our free and fair democratic process was attacked, they deserve answers and accountability for the actions that occurred on january 6. i urge my colleagues to support this commission and get the american people the answers that they deserve.

i yield back. the presiding officer: the clerk will report the motion to invoke cloture. the clerk: cloture motion, we, the undersigned senators, in accordance with the provisions of rule 22, do hereby bring to a close debate on the motion to proceed to calendar number 60, h.r. 3233, an act to establish the national commission to investigate the january 6 attack on the united states capitol complex, and for other purposes, signed by 17 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 motion to proceed to h.r. 3233, an act to establish the national commission to investigate the january 6 attack on the united states capitol complex, and for other purposes, shall be brought

to a close? the yeas and nays are mandatory under the rule. the clerk will call the roll. vote:

vote:

vote:

vote:

vote:

the presiding officer: on this vote, -- on this vote the yeas are 54, the nays are 35. three-fifths of the senators duly chosen and sworn not having voted in the affirmative, the motion is not agreed to. under the previous order, the senate will proceed to executive session to consider the following nomination, which the clerk will report. the clerk: nomination, united states postal service an taiwan to be governor. the presiding officer: under the previous order, the motion is --

the question is on the nomination. all in favor say aye. those opposed, no. the ayes appear to have it. the nomination is confirmed. under the previous order, the senate will proceed to the consideration of the following nomination which the clerk will report. the clerk: executive office of the president, eric s. lander of massachusetts to be director of the office of science and technology policy. the presiding officer: under the previous order, the cloture motion is withdrawn. the question is on the nomination. all in favor say aye. those opposed no. the ayes appear to have it. the ayes do have it. the nomination is confirmed. under the previous order, the motions to reconsider be considered made and laid upon the table, and the president will be immediately notified of the senate's action. the senate will resume legislative session. mr. schumer: i move to proceed to executive session to consider

calendar number 130. the presiding officer: the question is on the motion. all those in favor say aye. those opposed nay. the ayes appear to have it. the ayes do have it. the motion is agreed to. the clerk will report the nomination. mr. schumer: i send a cloture motion to the desk. the presiding officer: the clerk will report the nomination. the clerk: the judiciary. julien xavier neals of new jersey to be united states district judge for the district of new jersey. mr. schumer: 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 executive calendar number 130, julien xavier neals of new jersey to be united states district judge for the district of new jersey signed by 17 senators as follows. mr. schumer: i ask consent the reading of the tsunamis be waived. the presiding officer: without objection. mr. schumer: i move to proceed to legislative session. the presiding officer: the question is on the motion. all those in favor say aye. those opposed nay.

the ayes appear to have it. the ayes do have it. the motion is agreed to. mr. schumer: i move to proceed to executive session to consider calendar 127. the presiding officer: the question is on the motion. all those in favor say aye. those opposed nay. the ayes appear to have it. the ayes do have it. the motion is agreed to. the clerk will report the nomination. the clerk: nomination, the judiciary. regina m. rodriguez of colorado to be united states district judge for the district of colorado. mr. schumer: 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 executive calendar number 127, regina m. rodriguez of colorado to be united states district judge for the district of colorado signed by 17 senators as follows. mr. schumer: i ask consent reading of the names be waived. the presiding officer: without objection. mr. schumer: i move to proceed to legislative session. the presiding officer: the question is on the motion.

all those in favor say aye. those opposed nay. the ayes appear to have it. the ayes do have it. the motion is agreed to. mr. schumer: i move to proceed to calendar 46, h.r. 7. the presiding officer: the clerk will report. the clerk: motion to proceed to h.r. 7, an act to amend the fair labor standards act of 1938 to provide more effective remedies to victims of discrimination in the payment of wages on the basis of sex and for other purposes. mr. schumer: i move to proceed to calendar 46. 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 -- on the motion to proceed to calendar number 46, h.r. 7, an act to amend the fair labor standards act of 1938 to provide for effective remedies to victims of discrimination in the payment of wages on the basis of sex and for other purposes signed by 17

senators as follows. mr. schumer: i ask unanimous consent the reading of the names be waived. the presiding officer: without objection. mr. schumer: finally, i ask unanimous consent that the cloture motions with respect to executive calendars 130 and 127 ripen at 5:30 p.m. on monday, june 7, that the cloture motion with respect to the motion to proceed to h.r. 7 ripen upon disposition of s. 1260 and that the mandatory quorum calls for the cloture motions filed today may 28 be waived. the presiding officer: is there objection? without objection. mr. schumer: now, madam president, i have a brief statement on the vote on the january 6 commission. my colleagues, this was a case of good news and bad news about the republican party in the senate. the good news -- republicans worked with democrats on comprehensive legislation to strengthen our commitment to scientific research which will pass the senate when senate resumes session. the bad news -- the republican minority just mounted a partisan

filibuster against an independent l commission to report on january 6. both efforts should have moved forward in a solidly bipartisan way. but out of fear or fealty to donald trump, the republican minority just prevented the american people from getting the full truth about january 6. the republican minority just prevented the senate from even debating the bill. no opportunity for amendments, no opportunity for debate. there was an attempt by the republican minority to shunt this vote into the dark of night. but because of today's senate time agreement, it was done in broad daylight. the american people will see how each republican senator voted. this should have been simple. the commission was bipartisan, independent, straight down the middle. house democrats accepted every change that house leadership requested. speaker pelosi and i supported and still do support the changes

senator collins proposed, and we told that to other senators. senate republicans for months publicly supported the idea of a commission, but now all of a sudden the senate minority and the senate i don't recall waged a partisan -- senate minority leader waged a partisan filibuster against the bill. this vote has made it official. donald trump's big lie has now fully enveloped the republican party. trump's big lie is now the defining principle of what was once the party of lincoln. house republicans canned congresswoman cheney for the crime of telling the truth of joe biden as president. sequin state leches seizing on the big lie are conducting the greatest assault on voting rights since the beginning of jim crow. republicans in both chambers are trying to rewrite history and claim that january 6 was just a peaceful protest that got a little out of hand.

and now this, a partisan blockade of a simple, independent, bipartisan commission. i've heard all the excuses why republicans are opposing this bill. it's too early, it goes on too long, it's not needed. almost all of these excuses are meritless and were invented in the past two weeks. we all know what's going on here. senate republicans chose to defend the big lie because they believe anything that might upset donald trump could hurt them politically. we've all lived through the horrors of january 6. i was no farther than 30 feet from those white supremacists hooligans. do my republican colleagues remember that day? do my republican colleagues remember the savage mob calling for the execution of mike pence, the makeshift gallos outside the capitol, men with

bullet proof vests and zip ties breaking into the senate gallery and rifling through your desks, police officers crushed between door ways. shame on the republican party for trying to sweep the horrors of that day under the rug because they're afraid of donald trump. our democracy has long endured because leaders of good faith, even if they disagreed even at political cost, shared a fidelity to the truth. not so today. i hope this is not the beginning of an effort by senate republicans to prevent this chamber from debating reasonable commonsense legislation. we will soon see. after the state work period, i will bring forward legislation that would help provide equal pay for women. will our republican colleagues let the senate debate the bill or will they engage in another partisan filibuster of urgent legislation? we will soon see.

now, madam president, i've got a lot of pages here. a lot of business to conduct. i ask unanimous consent the senate proceed to executive session to consider the following nominations -- calendar 132 and all nominations on the secretary's desk in the foreign service, that the nominations be confirmed en bloc, the motions to reconsider be considered made and laid upon the table with no intervening action or debate, that no further motions be in order to any of the nominations, that the president be immediately notified of the senate's action and the senate then resume legislative session. the presiding officer: without objection. mr. schumer: i ask unanimous consent that the senate proceed to executive session to consider the following nomination, calendar 133, that the senate vote on the nomination without intervening action or debate, the motion to reconsider be considered made and laid upon the table with no intervening

action or debate, that no further motions be in order to the nomination, that any statements related to the nomination be printed in the record, that the president be immediately notified of the senate's action and the senate then resume legislative session. the presiding officer: without objection, the clerk will report. the clerk: nomination, department of defense, ronald s. moultrie of maryland to be under secretary for intelligence and security. the presiding officer: is there further debate? hearing none, all those in favor say aye. those opposed nay. the ayes appear to have it. the ayes do have it. the nomination is confirmed. mr. schumer: i ask unanimous consent that the committee on veterans' affairs be discharged from further consideration of h.r. 2523 and the senate proceed to its immediate consideration. the presiding officer: the clerk will report.

the clerk: h.r. 2523, an act to amend the american rescue plan act of 2021 to approve the covid-19 veteran rapid retraining assistance program and so forth and for other purposes. the presiding officer: without objection, the committee is discharged. and the senate will proceed. mr. schumer: i ask unanimous consent that the bill be considered read a third time. the presiding officer: without objection. mr. schumer: i know of no further debate on the bill. the presiding officer: is there further debate? if not, all those in favor say aye. those opposed nay. the ayes appear to have it. the ayes do have it. the bill is passed. mr. schumer: i ask that the motion to reconsider be considered made and laid upon the table. the presiding officer: without objection. mr. schumer: madam president, i ask unanimous consent that the e.p.w. committee be discharged from further consideration and the senate now proceed to senate res. 13195. the presiding officer: the clerk will report. the clerk: senate resolution

195, recognizing the 50th anniversary of the mcclel len-kerr arkansas river navigation system. the presiding officer: without objection, the committee is discharged. and the senate will proceed. mr. schumer: i know of no further debate on the measure. the presiding officer: is there further debate? hearing none, the question is on adoption of the resolution. all those in favor say aye. those opposed nay. the ayes appear to have it. the ayes do have it. the resolution is agreed to. mr. schumer: i ask unanimous consent that the inhofe amendment to the preamble be agreed to, the preamble as amended be agreed to and the motions to reconsider be laid upon the table with no intervening action or debate. the presiding officer: without objection. mr. schumer: i ask unanimous consent the senate proceed to the move to reconsider of calendar 61, s. 921.

the presiding officer: the clerk will report. the clerk: calendar 61, s. 921 a bill to amend title 18 united states code to further protect officers and employees of the united states and for other purposes. the presiding officer: without objection, the senate will proceed. mr. schumer: i further ask that the committee-reported substitute amendment be agreed to, the bill as amended be considered read a third time and passed, and that motions to reconsider be considered made and laid upon the table with no intervening action or debate. the presiding officer: without objection. mr. schumer: i ask unanimous consent the senate proceed to the consideration of senate res. 255 submitted earlier today. the presiding officer: the clerk will report. the clerk: senate resolution 255, designating may 2021 as a.l.s. awareness month. the presiding officer: without objection, the senate will proceed. mr. schumer: i know of no further debate on the measure. the presiding officer: is there further debate? hearing none, the question is on the adoption of the resolution.

all those in favor say aye. those opposed nay. the ayes appear to have it. the ayes do have it. the resolution is agreed to. mr. schumer: i ask unanimous consent that the preamble be agreed to and that the motions to reconsider be considered made and laid upon the table with no intervening action or debate. the presiding officer: without objection. mr. schumer: i ask unanimous consent the senate proceed to the consideration of s. res. 256 submitted earlier today. the presiding officer: the clerk will report. the clerk: senate resolution 256, expressing the sense of the senate regarding the need to conduct a comprehensive investigation to determine the origins of covid-19. the presiding officer: without objection the senate will proceed. mr. schumer: i ask unanimous consent the resolution be agreed to, the preamble be agreed to, and the motions to reconsider be considered made and laid upon the table with no intervening action or debate. the presiding officer: without objection. mr. schumer: madam president, i ask unanimous consent that the senate proceed to the consideration of senate res. 257 submitted earlier today.

the presiding officer: the clerk will report. the clerk: senate resolution 257, commending and congratulating the marshal university thundering herd men's soccer team for winning the 2020 national collegiate athletic association division 1 men's soccer national championship. the presiding officer: without objection, the senate will proceed. mr. schumer: i ask unanimous consent that the motion be greed to, the preamble be agreed to, the motions to reconsider be considered made and laid upon the table with no intervening action or debate. the presiding officer: without objection. mr. schumer: madam president, i ask unanimous consent the senate proceed to the immediate consideration of senate rest 258, submitted earlier today. the presiding officer: the clerk will report. the clerk: senate resolution 258, expressing the sense of the senate regarding the life and work of senator john w. warner. the presiding officer: without objection, the senate will proceed. mr. schumer: i further ask the resolution be agreed to, the preamble be agreed to, and the motions to reconsider be considered made and laid upon

the table with no intervening action or debate. the presiding officer: without objection. mr. schumer: madam president, i ask unanimous consent that the committee on agriculture, nutrition and forestry be discharged from further consideration of s. 409 and the senate proceed to its immediate consideration. the presiding officer: the clerk will report. the clerk: senate resolution 409, a bill to amend the commodity exchange action for the customer protection fund and for other purposes. the presiding officer: without objection, the committee is discharged and the senate will proceed. mr. schumer: i ask unanimous consent that the stabenow-boozman amendment be agreed, the motion to reconsider be considered made and laid upon the table. the presiding officer: without objection. mr. schumer: madam president, i ask unanimous consent that the committee on veterans' affairs be discharged from further consideration of h.r. 711, and the senate proceed to its immediate consideration.

the presiding officer: the clerk will report. the clerk: h.r. 711, an act to amend the west los angeles leasing act of 2016, and so forth and for other purposes. the presiding officer: without objection, the committee is discharged and the senate will proceed. mr. schumer: i ask unanimous consent that the feinstein amendment at the desk be considered and agreed, to the bill, as amended, be considered read a third time and passed and the motion to reconsider be considered made and laid upon the table. the presiding officer: without objection. mr. schumer: and now, madam president, finally, i ask unanimous consent that when the senate adjourn today, it stand adjourned to convene for pro forma sessions with no business conducted on the following daylights and times and following each pro forma, tuesday, june 1, 11:30, thursday, june 3, at 11:00 a.m. when the senate adjourns on thursday on june 3, it convenience on monday, june 7,

following the prayer and pledge, the morning hour 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 morning business be closed. further, upon the conclusion of morning business, the senate proceed to executive session to resume consideration of the neals nomination as provided under the previous order. the presiding officer: without objection. mr. schumer: if there is no further business to come before the senate i ask that it stand adjourned under the previous provisions of -- s. 258 as a further mark of respect to the late john warner, the former senator of virginia, following the remarks of senator cantwell. the presiding officer: without objection. ms. cantwell: i wanted to talk about one aspect of the u.s. competition act that we haven't had a chance to discuss on the

floor although we had some discussion during the amendment process. and that is that the underlying bill in 1260 also reauthorizes nasa and puts support in for the artimus program. on october 5, 1957, our nation's relationship with space changed forever with the launch of the soviet sputnik 1, with satellites flying overhead, the geostrategic importance of outer space was undeniable and within a year there was the defense advanced research projects agency, darpa, and the national aeronautics and space administration, nasa. that ignited the competitive spirit and inspired the nation to rapidly develop its race to space capabilities.

only 12 years from that moment, an american was on the moon and. we like the fact that seattle and the region is now called the silicon valley of space. i know there's many aspects to our country where space is a key industry, whether that's in florida or alabama or other southern states, texas, we know, but the innovation and the next phases of innovation, a lot is happening in the nexus between software and space in the pacific northwest. so we're here again for a great competition about the future of space. we must again make the strategic investments needed to win. space is even more used strategically important today than it was in 1957. there are more countries in the space race, our competition is more advanced, new nasa

administrator, our former colleague, senator bill nelson testified before the house appropriations committee last week about china's advanced space missions. the united states landed the perseverance rover on mars earlier this year and shortly after china landed their own rover on mars. as administrator, nelson told the committee, quote, they are going to be landing humans on the moon. that should tell us something about our need to get off our duff. end quote. spoken like our colleague as we knew him, blunt and to the point. i personally believe that the power of competition to spur innovation and push our nation to get more serious about making investments in space will also catalyze economic growth. i do believe we should rise to the occasion, that's why we should be specific in an

innovation and competition bill of what it is going to take to fund the artemis program, that means returning americans to the moon and sending our astronauts to mars in partnership with commercial and international partners. these are the candidates here for that artemis mission, they are like our new colleague, commander kelly, who are preparing and takes years to prepare for this mission. i want to give them the certainty that we're going to make the right investments. that means taking a hard look at the intellectual property extension that is essential, we need to make sure that our i.p. and intellectual property won't being stolen by other countries and it means providing nasa with the needs they have to carry out the science, space, and

technology missions. we can't afford to lose momentum within the artemis program, the chinese are making progress on a heavy-lift rocket with its ambitious exploration mission. we too, i believe, should be doing all we can to understand and harness the power of this market and make sure that congress does its proper oversight role. i recognize my colleagues and i may have a disimmigration reform about the -- disagreement about the role of commercial sector in space. it's been a long time since congress made this decision, but i certainly respect my colleagues' ability and interest in disputing here. commercial programs can deliver lower prices and allow industry to bring about innovation and also help catalyze other ideas. that is why it has been nasa

policy since 1908 to have the fullest commercial use of space. that's when we really took off on this concept. i do understand that some probably have an idea that nasa should still control all of this i.p. and be in a position of funding all of this ourselves, but i think our policy to move towards the commercialization of space has given us some benefits. a bill focused on competition and research and development cannot leave nasa out of the conversation. that is why ranking member wicker and i did bipartisan legislation to authorize nasa in the endless frontier act as it came out of committee. the exploration and science work nasa carries out is important in and of itself, but their capacity to spin off additional inventions and other benefits to

also return investments. nasa has generated more than 2,000 spinoff technologies since 1976. and on average these tech transfers from nasa generate generally one million per year each for the spinoff enterprise. the gear that keeps our firefighters safe was originally developed as part of the space program as nasa developed astronaut clothing and gear, lasser eye surgery, cellphone cameras and even memory foam all came out of nasa programs. so now let's talk about this next project, that is the artemis project that is obviously an indication that we plan to send some women to the surface of the moon. this time, under nasa's artemis

program, it will be a woman who takes the first steps. these are two candidates from this mission who i'm proud to say are from the state of washington and hopefully will be competing for one of those spots. going to the moon will allow us to develop the assets we need to go to mars and the assets to reduce the risk of what a crude martian mission would look like. this includes the largest rocket ever built, that rocket will be able to carry 38 tons of crew and cargo which nasa needs to enable a sustainable presence on or around the moon. fasa will be oort -- nasa will be orbiting the moon that will have a space station that will

help to get astronauts and material to and from the station. so nuclear power services, human landing systems, all of these things are part of the critical legislation. so we'll demonstrate the ability to build and live in a habitat on the surface of another planet. that's what the artemis program is all about. the space launch system and its capabilities will be complemented by rocket launch science, experts of our -- experiments on how to operate on the bill and how to build things in and around the moon. getting to the moon will open up new opportunities for more commercial state industry and once we set up a camp on the moon, our astronauts will demonstrate the technology needed to extract resources like

fuel, water, oxygen, and opening up new economic opportunities. the university of washington has a lab devoted to technologies for extracting water from the martian atmosphere and they are ready to do more. and in 2020, the nasa challenge -- nasa challenged the commercial sector that would help to mine lunar resources. this is a critical partner. the commercial sector brings their best ideas and the best technology to the table for nasa programs. commercial capabilities enables the mission at lower costs with greater capabilities than could have been dreamed of during the apollo era. however, nasa should be held accountable for how it manages these commercial programs. president trump and his budget

requested $3.4 billion for the lander system. in fact, i think the vice president at the time, mike pence, was an enthusiastic supporter of the artemis program and talked about the need for our investment. the agency made it clear that they need $10 billion for the lander system over the next several years. this program investment, i believe, is critical to the mission but it's also critical that it follows nasa's best practices. one of the lessons learned from the assembly of the international space station is the importance of having multiple space transportation providers. nasa carried out that best practice in programs that developed the commercial space system that carried cargo and crew to the international space station. the american taxpayers invest too much in these space programs not to apply these lessons about

the importance of resiliency and redundancy. the same lesson should be applied to the programs developed here as we approach this new project to land people back on the moon. thes -- these are complex systems with multiple components that need to work together to the get astronauts down to the lunar surface and back safely. building and resiliency and redundancy increases nasa's chances of successfully landing humans on the moon and bringing them home safely. the commercial cargo program is a perfect example where building in resiliency and redundancy through competition paid off. the program was created to transport cargo like supplies for astronauts and science missions to the international space station. during that program, one company's rocket blew up on the way to the international space station and had to be removed from service for a whole year.

but because the program built in resiliency and redundancy, the nation was able to continue to supply the station with the supplies that it needed. when the second commercial company suffered a launch failure months later, the first company stepped back in. and the importance of maintaining competition within nasa program to protect our investment and maximize our chances for success were clearly there and we were able to keep going. as a former nasa official put it , quote, technical redundancy and market competition are central to the principle of commercial space contracting. any system would -- any one system would just leave us with the vulnerabilities that had plagued the space shuttle program, end quote. and we all know the complexities and challenges and the disaster

that did happen there. this is our opportunity now to invest as we're making this big decision about america's competition and our innovation. nothing could be a greater symbol than our return to the moon and our exploration of mars and the competition we face than galvanizing americans in support of this, just as we were in the 1960's. this is our opportunity to invest in american space capabilities for the leadership for decades in the future. we are going to make sure that we get this right. we're going to make sure we protect the taxpayer and their investment, and we're going to make sure that we have redundancy now. i think this underlying bill helps us by clarifying to nasa what we expect out of the artemis program and what we need to do to make sure that nasa follows best practices in its management program. returning americans to the moon and landing people on mars will

do wonders, and certainly i'm excited about the iconic nature of a woman returning, being the first to return for us to the moon and all the things that it will help us in educating women in the areas of science, technology, engineering, and math. nasa does great work promoting these missions and getting young people interested in the stem field, and it can inspire a whole generation of women to take up the sciences and to be involved. we saw this during the apollo era. many scientific and technical professionals went into the fields because they got excited by watching the apollo mission. so as we steer down the potential for millions and millions of unfilled stem jobs for the future, i think this is the kind of inspiration that can be quite helpful to us.

also, from earth science to solar science to atmospherics, the scientific work of nasa helps us understand our universe. nasa's climate work is particularly impactful. their data on sea level rises, carbon dioxide rises in the atmosphere are critical to understanding the ability to fight climate change ■and thatis why the earth science opened up so much data for us that we want to make sure we're moving forward with this nasa authorization. it will require nasa to make its earth science data as interactive, interoperable and accessible and feasible to academics and industry so they can utilize this information more usefully. i actually think this is a very exciting element of the program and progress that nasa is making. it's a no-brainer that it would allow us to squeeze more value

out of the incredible work that nasa already does. and we also can't forget the first a in nasa -- aeronautics. the aviation industry is 5.2% of our g.d.p. and supports ten million jobs. keeping that industry competitive, especially as the nation comes out of covid pandemic and keep us on track with meeting our international mission standards is critical. nasa's experimental work developing x planes in partnership with industry drives major innovations in aeronautics. their current work is focused on reducing the noise and emissions in aircraft, developing electronic pulsion, demonstrating super sonic aircraft that could one day fly over land, each of these are not incremental changes much they are fundamental changes, and i hope that we will move forward on this legislation. this legislation also requires

nasa to continue to collaborate with industry to develop next-generation materials like composites, come pot sits, light white material are so important. i guarantee i in the race for aviation, advanced composite manufacturing and whoever conquers this field best will be the leaders in aviation manufacturing. the agencies advanced composite project was a great success in seeking to reduce the time needed to develop and certify new composites. it would be a loss to the nation if the agency were to lose momentum on this important work. so, madam president, as you can see, i believe this nasa provision that is in the underlying legislation is critical. the senate has twice passed nasa authorizations only to have it fail in the house. it's time that we get this legislation through the entire congress, that we make this

artemis mission a true priority with true committed resources to help us be successful and to be proud some time in the near future to see that woman standing on the face of the moon. i thank the president, and i yield the floor. the presiding officer: under the previous order and pursuant to s. 258, the senate stands adjourned until 11:30 a.m. on tuesday, june 1, and does so as a further mark of respect to the late john warner, former senator from the commonwealth of senator from the commonwealth of >> and so this then heads into the memorial day break after having voted to block action on the house-passed bill establishing a commission to investigate the generous six attack on the u.s. capitol. u.s. capitol. the vote was 54-35 and six votes shy of the 60 votes needed. six republican senators joined

democrats in voting yes, and senator blackburn, blood, burr, enough, shelby did not vote. senators agreed today to delay action on a bill that supports you with science and technology efforts to compete with china. that bill expected to be considered after lawmakers return from the memorial day break it senate lawmakers to be approved a couple of biden administration nominees. live coverage of the senate when the gavel back in on c-span2. shortly we take you live to remarks of senator majority leader chuck schumer. we will have that live in a couple of minutes here on c-span2. >> c-span is your unfiltered view of government. we are funded by these television companies and more including comcast. >> comcast is partnering with 1000 with 1000 temerity senators to great