necessities. the bottom line is this. the affordable care act is stronger now than it has ever been. [applause] and today -- [applause] we will leave this here to take you live now to the u.s. senate, keeping are over 40 year commitment to bring to live coverage of congress. you can finish watching this online at watching this online at our website c-span.org or with our free video app. c-span now. the u.s. senate is about to gavel back in following a recess further weekly caucus lunches. live coverage here on c-span2.

they haven't stopped. multiple court challenges you previous administration. over 70 attempts to repeal the law by republicans in congress. in fact, just last month i distinguished senator from wisconsin said if republicans get back in power, they should try to repeal the affordable care act again. again try. today, 12 years later, republicans have not stop their attacks on this life-saving law. so pay very close attention, folks. if republicans have their way it

means 100 million americans with pre-existing conditions can once again be denied health care coverage either insurance companies. that's what the law was before obamacare. in addition, tens of millions of americans could lose their coverage, including young people who no longer would be able to stay on their parents insurance policy until age 26. premiums will go through the roof. well, i've got a better idea. instead of destroying the affordable care act, let's keep building on it. [applause] let's extend it. [applause] and because of all the folks in this room and members of congress the american rescue plan, subsidies, subsidizes that are lowering premiums and extending coverage. and i got a little practice when

you gave me that other act, you know, when you were president. i was with you. look, close the medicaid coverage gap that locks nearly 4,000,000 americans out of coverage just because their states refuse to expand medicaid. lower prescription drug costs which was mentioned already, negotiate prices for drugs that are on the market. we can do this. we should do this. we have to do this. valenti close with this. 12 years ago at a bill signing the affordable care act president obama said quote, we are a nation that does what is hard, what is necessary, and what is right. that's exactly what he did, exactly what he did. and folks, that's what we have to do, what we do as americans. you know, it's what all of you did here, making the affordable care act possible. i really mean it. we just have to keep it going

and keep building on it. we need to keep the faith. we need to remember we are the united states of america, and there is simply literally nothing beyond our capacity when we are united and do it together. so god bless you all and may god protect our troops. now i'm going to sign an executive order and barack let me remind you, it's a hot mic. [laughing] [applause]

[inaudible conversations] >> can you see everybody? i have to admit, one thing i haven't gotten down, barack obama can sign his name using nine different pens. [laughing] [applause] all right.

♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ mr. cotton: the senate will soon vote on the nomination of judge ketanji brown jackson to be associate justice of the supreme court. i will vote against her nomination. judge jackson may be a fine woman, but she is a dangerous

judge. she built her career as a far-left activist, and it didn't change when she put on a robe ten years ago. she personifies activism from the bench. she has crusaded to undermine criminal sentences and she cannot be trusted to interpret the law or the constitution as written. judge jackson's record makes clear that her brief stint as a criminal defense attorney wasn't motivated merely by devotion to equal representation of all. it was part of a deep commitment to leniency for criminals. indeed, she has continued to act as a de facto lawyer for criminals from behind the bench as she did from in front of it. judge jackson's average sentences for criminals are 34% lighter than the national average for criminal cases and 25% lighter than her own court's

average, the d.c. district court. disturbingly, some of the most sensational examples of her soft on crime attitudes are cases involving child pornographers. she has given more lenient sentences than recommended by the sentencing guidelines in every single child pornography case where the law allowed it. every single one, every time. individual sentence by judge jackson for child pornography possession received on average 57% lighter sentences compared to the national average. for child pornography distribution, the sentence is 47% lighter than the national average. these aren't just numbers, these are predators. and they go on to commit more of the most heinous crimes imaginable because judge jackson lets them off so easy. in one case, judge jackson gave

child pornographer wesley hawkins just three months -- three months -- in prison when the sentencing guidelines recommended eight to ten years. three months versus a recommended eight to ten years. judge jackson even gave him a sentence that was one-sixth as long as what her own probation office recommended. and a few years later when hawkins should have still been in prison for his original offense, he did something else that got him six more months in custody. that's twice as long as his original sentence. when ■all 11republicans onth judiciary committee sent a letter asking for details of what happened to justify this new sentence, judge jackson

refused to provide any further information. so much, i guess, for looking at her record as she urged us to do. her leniency isn't limited to child pornographers either. in 2017, judge jackson apologized, she apologized to a fentanyl kingpin -- his own words, kingpin -- because she wouldn't find a way to sidestep the law to give him less than the mandatory minimum sentence. she was very sorry that she had to give him such a long sentence. but i guess where there's a will, there's a way. a few years ago she found a way to resentence this self-described kingpin below the mandatory minimum sentence through a completely made-up reinterpretation, judge jackson made the first step act retroactive for this fentanyl kingpin, something congress had explicitly tried to avoid when it passed the law. this was judicial activism, plain and simple.

in her testimony, judge jackson claimed that there were no victims in that case. she's wrong. fentanyl trafficking is not a victimless crime, and anyone who doesn't understand that doesn't belong on the supreme court. in another case, judge jackson granted compassionate release -- compassionate release to a man who brutally murdered a deputy u.s. marshal on the steps of a church at a funeral. while in prison, this cop killer threatened prison staff and was caught in possession of a dangerous weapon, not exactly a model inmate. he was repeatedly denied parole, yet judge jackson granted him compassionate release because he had high blood pressure. in yet another case, a career criminal assaulted a deputy u.s. marshal with a deadly weapon

while resisting arrest. this was the third time that this criminal had assaulted law enforcement officers, the very officers who risk their life to keep judges like judge jackson safe. judge jackson didn't just sentence him below the government's request or the sentence guideline range. she gave the criminal less time than even the criminal himself had advocated. you can't make this stuff up. in 2013, a sex offender who had repeatedly raped his 13-year-old niece was arrested for falsifying sex offender registration records to avoid telling the government where he was living and that he was working at a day care. the government sought a two-year prison sentence. judge jackson gave him just one year instead. and during that second year when he would have been in prison, he tried to rape again and then

bribed the victim with $2,500 to recant her testimony. this dangerous offender was charged with obstruction. yet judge jackson sentenced him to 24 months in prison. i wish i could say this was to her credit, because 24 months were what was recommended by the government, but she ordered that it be run concurrently with the local and d.c. circuit jails so he ended up serving one sentence. these are a few of the many outrageous cases in judge jackson's record. the takeaway is crystal clear. if you're a criminal, you'd be lucky to have your case assigned

to judge jackson. if you're a victim or anyone else seeking justice, you would hope your case is assigned to literally any other person. judge jackson could only help one criminal at a time. as a supreme court justice, she would be able it to benefit criminals nationwide in all cases. judge jackson's far-left activism extends beyond crime as well. not only did she engage in what the sixth circuit called an end run to end the sentence of a kingpin, she struck down a trump order expediting the removal of illegal aliens on equally specious legal grounds. the law passed by congress granted the department of homeland security, quote, sole and unreviewable discretion to

decide which illegal aliens should be subbed to expedited removal. judge jackson inserted herself to say, quote, a terrible policy by the department of homeland security. well, i regret to inform judge jackson, it is not her role in our system to decide whether immigration policy is good, bad, terrible or any other adjective she wants to use, only whether it is authorize by law. and, of course, the d.c. circuit court, which is not exactly a hotbed of conservative jurists agreed and reversed judge jackson's decision noting that there are, quote, could hardly be a more definitive explanation of content thank the language in that law that she disregarded. she didn't care, she had an anti-opinion op-ed.

judge jackson has shown real interest in helping terrorists. now, it's true that you shouldn't judge a lawyer for being willing to take on an unpopular case. but you can certainly learn something about a lawyer from cases they seek out. and for judge jackson and her friends in the liberal legal profession, these cases were not unpopular at all. judge jackson represented four terrorists as a public defender, one she continued to represent in private practice voluntarily and she voluntarily filed friend of the court briefs on terrorists while in private practice. to make it worse, she didn't bother when she was representing these terrorists -- she didn't bother to establish reasonably that what she filed with the court was factually true. tria of her -- three of her four case filings were identical. word for word, comma for comma.

she alleged identical facts and arguments in each case, the only difference were the names and the case numbers. in every one of those cases she claimed that terrorists had no affiliation with the taliban or al qaeda and accused the bush administration and american soldiers of war crimes. who were these supposed innocent victims of american war crimes, who, according to judge jackson, had nothing to do at all with terrorism? no, sir. one was the one to use a shoe bomb. another plan executed a rocket attack on u.s. forces in afghanistan. and a third was arrested in a raid on an al qaeda explosives training camp. in every case she claimed every one had nothing to do with

terrorism. totally innocent, goat hertd -- herders picked up by troops. judge jackson went to nuremberg -- this judge jackson might have gone there to defend them. judge jackson also refused to answer one commonsense question after another. for example, when senator blackburn asked her what a woman is, she pretended not to know. i asked her who has more of a right to be in the united states, new citizens who follow the rules or illegal aliens whose very first act in the united states was to break our laws. judge jackson refused to answer. when i asked a simple question of judge jackson, whether releasing guantanamo bay terrorists would make us more or less safe, she, again, pretended not to know the answer even though it's published by the biden administration. i also asked judge jackson if

criminals were more or less likely to commit a crime if they knew they would be caught, convicted, and sentenced. i asked this pretty basic question at least three times. it was not a hard question, and yet again, she refused to answer. judge jackson also refused to say whether packing the supreme court was a bad idea even though the judge for whom she clerked and seeks to replace, justice breyer and the late sainted justice ruth bader ginsburg, neither known for their conservative views, were both willing to denounce court-packing schemes by the democrats. judge jackson may feign ignorance not because she doesn't know these answers but because liberal, judicial philosophy is based on denying reality. as a judge, judge jackson has denied that reality again and again. judge jackson will coddle criminals and terrorists and will twist or ignore the law to reach the result that she wants.

that's not what we need in a supreme court justice and that's why i will be voting against her nomination. madam president, i yield the floor. mr. thune: madam president. the presiding officer: the senator from south dakota. mr. thune: thank you, madam president. madam president, if a budget is a set of priorities, here are the president's, an expanded federal government, a diminished national defense, higher gas prices, and an open border. those are the priorities reflected in the budget the president released last week which contains pretty much what you would expect, more taxes,

more spending, more borrowing and in all likelihood more inflation as a result. madam president, big tationz and big spending -- taxes and big spending have been the agenda for president biden since he tooks office. after signing a $1.9 trillion spending spree in march of 2021 that helped to create the biggest -- in his 2023 budget is just more of the same. the president's budget would kreefl average yearly spending by 66% as compared to the average of the last ten years. 66%. that is a staggering spending increase. yearly federal spending under the biden budget would average

$7.3 trillion. now, to put that in perspective, madam president, the total average spending in 2019 was $4.4 trillion. how is the president going to pay for this, if he even can? taxes. a lot of taxes. the biggest tax increase in history in dollar terms, according to bloomberg, the president, of course, attempts to sell the tax hikes he's proposing as something that won't affect ordinary americans. well, that couldn't be more wrong. that corporate tax hike that he keeps pushing, one study estimates that 31% of the corporate tax is borne by consumers. another big portion of it is borne by labor, otherwise known as ordinary hardworking americans. high prices, fewer jobs, lower salaries, we can expect to see all that and more if the president hikes taxes on companies.

i haven't even mentioned the fact that a corporate tax hike might hurt private pensions in the value of americans' 401(k). then there's the tax hikes on conventional energy companies, the oil and gas that americans use to heat their homes and their homes. the increasing tax is pretty much guaranteed to discourage the additional energy production we need to drive down gas prices. ironically, the proposals to go after traditional american energy production come from the same administration that is releasing oil from the strategic petroleum reserve to deal with high gas prices. you can't make this up. oh, and then there's inflation. democrats helped create our current inflation crisis by sending a lot of unnecessary money into the economy via the so-called american rescue plan. the president's budget would essentially do the same thing.

which means our already serious inflation crisis could get worse. madam president, i mentioned the spending increases in the president's budget, but what i actually meant are the big nondefense spending increases. because while on paper it may look like the president is hiking defense spending, his supposed funding increase would be canceled out by inflation. when you take into account democrats' historic inflation, it turns out president biden's supposed defense spending increase could actually turn out to be a spending cut. even in the best case scenario, defense spending would be flat which would leave our military dangerously underfunded and that, madam president, is a big problem. in a rapidly evolving threat environment, the last thing we can afford is a self-inflicted defeat from underfunding our military. given the war aggression in

ukraine and aggressive china, north korea's uptick in missile tests and the taliban taking over in afghanistan, among other things, president biden should be taking national defense spending at least as seriously as domestic spending. but he's not. the biden budget proposal would leave the army, navy, marine corps, air force and space force underequipped and undermanned and put our defense planning on a dangerously insufficient trajectory. the president's budget also fails to adequately address border security and immigration enforcement. almost since the day the president took office, we've been experiencing an unprecedented flood of illegal immigration across our southern border. in fiscal year 2021, the border patrol encountered 4.17 million immigrants tealting it to cross

our border. the highest ever. we've had an excess of 150,000 a month and the surge is likely to get worse now that the president are rescinded the title 42 border policy to immediately deport illegal immigrants attempting to cross the border. what is the president's answer? well $150 million cut to the u.s. immigration and customs enforcement for next year. that's right. we're experiencing an unprecedented surge of illegal immigration and the president's budget would cut funding to immigration and customs enforcement. madam president, perhaps the most outrageous thing about the president's budget is the way he misrepresents it. he's now trying to portray himself as somewhat physical kaly responsible -- physical kaly responsible as if a 66% higher yearly average spending

than the last ten years could be considered fiscally responsible. the president's talking a lot about deficit reduction, both the deficit reduction he has supposedly created and the deficit reduction his budget will supposedly produce. but the actual numbers, well, again, they tell a very different story. the deficit the reduction the president would like to take credit for is partly the result of the end of temporary covid spending measures, which were scheduled to end whether the president lifted a finger or not. and our current deficit would have been a lot lower if the president hadn't decided that we needed a partisan $1.9 trillion spending spree last year, a spending spree entirely -- entirely made up of deficit spending. when it comes to the president's 2023 budget, the administration claims, and i quote, deficit thes under the budget

policies -- under the budget policies would fall to one-third of the budget that the president inherited. end quote. the key phrase there, madam president, is the 2020 level the president inherited. 20 saw a huge but temporary surge in government spending to deal with the onset of the covid crisis. as a result it is grossly deceptive to take the 2020 deficit as a baseline. a more honest assessment of the prospects for deficit reduction under the president's budget would look at pre-covid deficits as a baseline and compare the president's future deficits to those. but that wouldn't suit the president's purposes. now that it's become apparent the american people are not in fact thrilled by far-left democrat governance, the president is eager to portray himself as a moderate. hengs his inflated -- hence his

inflated claims of deficit reduction. it's the same reason the president is touting his supposed spending hike on national defense while conveniently omitting the fact when you figure in real inflation, a spending hike may actually be a spending cut. madam president, no matter how the president tries to dress it up, his fiscal year 2023 budget is more of the same far-left priorities. more taxes, more unnecessary spending, and more economic paying for the american people. and i hope, madam president, i hope my democrat colleagues will think twice before foisting this budget on to hardworking americans. madam president, i yield the floor. i suggest the absence of a quorum. the presiding officer: the clerk will call the roll.

quorum call:

a senator: madam president. the presiding officer: the senator from massachusetts. mr. markey: madam president, are we in a quorum call? the presiding officer: we are. mr. markey: i would ask unanimous consent for the quorum call to be vitiated. the presiding officer: without objection. mr. markey: thank you. madam president, i have eight requests for committees to meet during today's session of the senate. they have the approval of the majority and minority leaders. the presiding officer: duly noted. mr. markey: madam president, i rise to speak in support of the

nomination of judge ketanji brown jackson to serve as an associate justice of the united states supreme court. when confirmed, judge jackson who currently serves on the u.s. court of appeals for the district of columbia circuit, will take the seat on the supreme court that justice stephen breyer has held for almost three decades. i would like to first offer a few words about justice breyer as he prepares to step down from the brerchl. justice breyer has served the court and the nation with grace, expertise, humility, brilliance, and an unwavering dedication to justice. he has worked tirelessly to build consensus among his colleagues. and he has always kept in mind the real world impacts of the court's decisions on the american people. justice breyer knew that justice for some was a failure of the

court. from his opinions on voting rights to reproductive rights to the affordable care act, he has been a key voice in many historic decisions that have affected so many americans. we owe him a great debt of gratitude. and i'm honored and privileged to call justice breyer a dear friend, and i wish him the best in his retirement. now in looking for justice breyer's successor, president biden said that he wanted to nominate a persuasive justice, someone in the mold of justice breyer. and with judge ketanji brown jackson, president biden has found that person. i am confident that judge jackson who clerked for justice breyer on the supreme court will follow in his footsteps as a justice who will make a lasting contribution on the court through her pragmatism, even-handedness, and deep

understanding of the constitution and the impact that the court's decisions have on all americans. and as the first african american woman justice on the bench, judge jackson's historic nomination is an important and long overdue step towards making the supreme court better reflect the nation whose people the court serves. 54 years ago yesterday our nation, our world lost the guiding light of dr. martin luther king, jr. to assassination. that loss was incalculable. we can only imagine the society we would live in if dr. king were still with us, preaching, marching, teaching. i have no doubt that dr. king would be on the steps of the capitol as the loudest and proudest voice in support of judge ketanji brown jackson to

be our next supreme court justice and the first black woman to serve on our highest court. he would know that with the appointment and confirmation of judge jackson, we would take the long overdue step to make the nation's top court look more like and better represent all of the american people. the legacy of the more just, more equal society that dr. king pushed us to create is alive and it's well in this confirmation and on the floor and hearing rooms of the united states senate this week. the judiciary committee held four days of hearings on judge jackson's nomination, including two days of testimony from the judge herself. as we all saw, some of the questioning of judge jackson from some of my republican colleagues was nothing short of offensive, distorting her record

and tinged with racism and sexism. but judge jackson responded with poise. she responded with brilliance. she calmly addressed and corrected her questioners' false and misleading prepare misses, and she did so while demonstrating deep knowledge of the law and the constitution, respect for precedent and displaying precisely the kind of temperament we expect of someone sitting on the nation's highest court. the hearings showed the nation that judge jackson possesses all of the essential qualities of a jurist committed to the words engraved above the entrance to the supreme court itself, equal justice under law. of course to anyone who knew judge jackson before her introduction to the nation as a supreme court nominee, none of

this was surprising. judge jackson's qualifications to serve on the supreme court are second to none. she holds broad experience across the legal profession as a supreme court clerk, as a federal public defender, and as an attorney in private practice and as a member of the united states sentencing commission, as a federal district court judge, and as a federal appellate judge. it was therefore surprising to no one that she earned a unanimous well qualified rating from the american bar association. let me speak for a moment about one aspect of judge jackson's background that stands out. and that is her experience as a public defender. when confirmed judge jackson will become the first ever justice with background as a public defender and the first

justice with significant criminal defense experience since the service of justice thurgood marshal who retired in 1991. that work as a term public defender has unjustly come under attack from my colleagues across the aisle who suggest that being a public defender meaning that she is soft on crime, but my republican colleagues who far too often focus singularly on the constitutional right top bear arms would do well to remember that among the constitution's other enshrined rights is the sixth amendment's right to counsel in criminal cases. without that right, criminal defendants who cannot afford an attorney would find it difficult or impossible to navigate the court system with their rights protected, including the

fundamental right to a speedy and fair trial. my republican friends may also want to consider that judge jackson comes from a law enforcement family with a brother, an uncle serving as police officers. and then she has won the endorsement of the fraternal order of police, the nation's largest police union. let me remind my colleagues that public defenders do not select their clients. they take on every assigned case because they are committed to preserving and defending constitutional rights for everyone. as a federal public defender, judge jackson represented the most vulnerable among us. she represented the clients other lawyers avoided. in doing so she followed a long and honorable tradition in the american legal profession that began with john adams. stepping forward in 1770 to

represent the british soldiers who committed the boston massacre because he feared that they would not receive a fair trial without adequate representation. by confirming judge jackson, we will affirm that the rights of those who cannot afford a lawyer are just as important as the rights of those who can pay lliarlawyers charging $1,000 an, that the rights of the indigent and powerless are just as important as those of the rich and the powerful. public defenders also experience firsthand and therefore understand better than other lawyers just how our justice system treats the accused, how it treats people of color, how it treats low-income people, everyday public defenders see the systemic biases and prejudices that permeate our

criminal justice system. at a time when the united states holds more people behind bars than any other nation on earth, including authoritarian regimes like north korea and china, the highest court in the land would greatly benefit from a justice with a public defender background. public defenders serve as a unique bulwark of liberty and racial justice. so we should welcome a public defender on the supreme court, especially one as well qualified as judge jackson. her singular perspective and voice are sorely needed. judge jackson's service as a trial judge on the united states district court for the district of columbia is also of particular note in this nomination. only one of the current supreme court justices, justice sotomayor, has ever served on a

trial court. and as a trial court judge, judge jackson worked to ensure that the parties before her understood her approach to deciding cases. judge jackson has explained that as a trial judge, she emphasized speaking directly to the individuals who appeared before her, not just to their lawyers. she used the parties' names and treated them with respect. see sought to ensure that those hospital her rulings would directly impact clearly understood the proceedings in which they were involved, what was happening, and why it was happening. this approach speaks to a judge who understands the importance of accessibility to the law, to a judicial process that isn't shrouded in mystery, and to a system that fulfills its promise of equal justice under the law

to everyone. we will be fortunate to have such a justice on the supreme court of the united states. i have had the opportunity to meet with judge jackson one on one. i came away deeply impressed and convinced that president biden has made a great choice. the senate has already confirmed judge jackson three times on a bipartisan basis, most recently in june of 2021 when she was confirmed to the d.c. circuit. the senate should again confirm her with bipartisan support. and when judge jackson is confirmed and becomes justice jackson, the first african american woman ever to take a seat on the high court, she will be an inspiration to so many across our country and around the globe. she will especially be a role model for young black girls everywhere, showing them that in

the united states of america, nothing is beyond their reach. supreme court justice thurgood marshall once said, sometimes history takes things into its own hands. history says, it's time for judge ketanji brown jackson, and i'm honored to help her and the court and our country make history with her confirmation. i urge all of my colleagues to vote to confirm judge ketanji brown jackson to the supreme court of the united states of america. madam president, i yield.

a senator: madam president? the presiding officer: the senator from arkansas. mr. boozman: thank you, madam president. i rise to speak on the victories on legislation to monitor breast cancer screening policies and the delivery of lifesaving care for women veterans. breast cancer is the second-most common cancer for women, for women veterans and servicemembers, the incidence of breast cancer is i want is ited to be up to 40% higher than the general population. given the dangerous environments in which military members serve and additional risk factors associate with these locations, it's long overdue for the

department of veterans affairs to update its policies for administering mammograms. we know early detection is crucial to preventing and treating breast cancer, so making sure those who are more vulnerable receive screenings at a younger age is not only reasonable but critical. this would have helped dr. kate hendricks thomas, a marine veteran, who was unaware of her increased risk for breast cancer. she shared her memories of deployment to fallujah in 2005 last year. she understood the risk associated with ied's. she wasn't concerned with the impact of what she called, quote, the flaming poison, end quote, surrounding her would have on her own health. in a routine medical appointment with her v.h.a. health provider

in 23018, kate thought it was odd she was recommended to undergo a mammogram. that exam subsequently led to her diagnosis of stage 4 breast cancer. she was 38 years old. that's devastating news for anyone to face, and i know the entire senate joins me in providing for kate as she continues her fight against cancer. nobody would blame her for focusing on her own health battle, but she knows her story wouldn't be the last if something didn't change. that's why kate has been an advocate for modernizing v.a. policies so other veterans don't experience the same struggles she's living with. we honored her activism by crafting and passing the dr. kate hendricks thomas supporting expanded review for veterans in combat environments act. it will broaden veteran access to mammograms and also require the v.a. to compile data

regarding the rates of breast cancer among members of the veteran and civilian population so we can continue improving procedures to better treat breast cancer patients. the senate also unanimously passed the mammo for veterans act to expand access to high-quality breast cancer screenings, improving image services in rural areas, and clinical trials through partnerships with the national cancer institute. the v.a. is uniquely positioned to be a leader in the prevention and treatment of breast cancer. taking full advantage of the department's unique capabilities, resorrieses, and outreach will help deliver the lifesaving care that verges deserve -- veterans deserve. passage of the act and the mammo for veterans act reflects the bipartisan support for improving

veterans' services and benefits. i appreciate senator wyden's support and leadership of the senate veterans' affairs committee and the leadership of the senate veterans veterans' as committee, chairman tester, has been my reliable partner in advancing reliable policies to improve the v.a.'s care and services for women. the v.a. estimates women make up 10% of our nation's veteran population and continues to be the fastest 46 growing population. the fastest-growing population. last congress we made significant progress to expand v.a.'s care and simplifyings for women. with the passage of the landmark deborah sampson act. this was an important first step and the legislation we passed last month continues to build on this foundation so we can fulfill the promise made to women who served in our nation's uniform. i am pleased the senate has approved these policies and i

urge my colleagues in the house of representatives to follow our example and quickly approve the dr. kate hendricks thomas service act and the mammo for veterans act so that they can be signed into law. the women who have servinged our country in uniform need to know that we're taking every step available to protect their health. these bills are an important down payment in that mission. and with that, a madam chair, i yield the floor. the presiding officer: the senator from illinois. a senator: i come to the floor to honor my good friend and a man who could put a smile on my face even in the tough of the times on one of the most painful days of my life, while i was recovering at walter read. among the peer visitors at walter reed hospital, two of the most beloved were tom and his wife eleanor.

tom was a gentle giant, a tall, smiling then-47-year-old veteran who showed up at my bedside while i was still sedated to talk with my husband and mother and who came to visit again soon after i regained consciousness. as a young army lieutenant in the korean war, tom had lost both his legislative session in a land mine explosion. his heroic actions saving his men on that day earned tom both the silver star in addition to the purple heart from his combat injuries. ms. duckworth: during his months of recuperation back in the states, eleanor -- or elle, as we all know her -- an army second lieutenant herself, had been one of his physical therapists. the couple remained married for more than 50 years. tom continued to serve our nation, this time as a civil servant achieving the ranking of senior executive service in the department of agriculture. when operations iraqi freedom and enduring freedom began and the wounded began flooding the

wards at walter reed, tom and elle decided that they needed to help. they became peer visitors and for the second seven years during twice-weekly visits, they changed the lives of countless veteran whose passed through that hospital, my own included. when i was at walter reed, tom made it his mission to talk with injured troops about the full lives they will lead after their devastating injuries. a lot of the wounded warriors around me were really young, just 19 to 24 years old, lying in their hospital beds with limbs missing, burns to their faces and bodies, consuls crushed -- skulls crushed. they were all facing a future none had planned for. like them, they had all thought they would die in combat or come home. coming home injured never occurred to the majority of us. tom would walk in with that gig

smile of his and say, hey, i was like you. lost my legislative session at 22 but i was recovered and have had a full understand regular life. i -- and regular life. i courted elle after i lost my legislative session and she and i have been married for 50 years and have wonderful kids and grandkids. he reassured them that they could still have the lives they dreamed of and his words had weight because he was living proof that that was possible. he had aide wink and joke, listen, having an amputation is better than having a puppy. trust me, you won't have any trouble getting the ladies. and then he'd answer any questions they had because he knew they needed to hear from someone who had already journeyed on road they were about to travel. for years, tom and elle came into walter reed every dawesly and thursday without fail. elle washings known as the cookie lady because she'd bring in cookies that she collected at her church. for to those of us who knew her

for a long time, elle knew our favorites a. when elle made her rounds, she'd make sure to leave a little bag of cookie by my bedside table. it was something to look forward to every week. tom and elle, elle and tom, the two of them became family for all of us. they would bring me and my husband to their lakeside home, feed us home-cooked meals and let me fall asleep in the hammock overlooking the water. as someone who loved and was desperately missing the ocean, i can't begin to describe how restorative those days by the lake were. there are no words for how right it felt to be drifting off to sleep to the sound of waves hitting the shore rear than to the beeps and buzz of the hospital machines that had been my nightly soundtrack for too long.

andness to way to express how grateful i have to tom and elle for making that a possibility. for giving me a taste of home right when i felt most like a stranger to myself. for enveloping me in something good and whole, right when i felt unfederal governmentered from what way felt was my life's mission, and for simply being who they were -- kind and fierce, as compassionate for the people they loved as they were passionate for the causes they believed in. they were our advocates, our heroes, our tom and elle. i am so sorry for your loss, elle. we miss tom every single day. thank you both for all you do for me and what you did for all of us. we miss you desperately. i yield back, madam president. a senator: madam president? the presiding officer: the senator from rhode island. mr. reed: thank you, madam

president. we're getting the nominee to be supreme court justice. as a law student i was fortunate to the have justice breyer as an advisor and i remain grateful for his guidance, encouragement and counsel ace began my legal career. i have immense respect and admiration for him as justice, but even more so as a person. when justice breyer announced his retirement, i stated my belief that the next justice on the supreme court should be someone with justice breyer's integrity, independence, and keen intellect, someone with real-world experience who reflects the depth and breadth of the american people. you could not find someone who better fits that description than judge ketanji brown jackson, and i rise today in wholehearted support of her nomination to the supreme court. the supreme court is a powerful arbiter of justice in our nation with few checks on the decisions

of the justices once they are on the court. therefore, a vote on a supreme court nominee is one of the most consequential that any senator can cast. the constitution makes the senate an active participant, along with the president, in the confirmation of a supreme court justice. article 2, section 2, clause 2 of the constitution states that nominees to the supreme court shall only be confirmed by and with the advice and consent of the senate. the senate's role in the confirmation process places an important democratic check on america's judiciary. as a result, this body's consent is both a constitutional requirement and a democratic obligation. it is in upholding our constitutional duties as senators, to give the president advice and consent on his nominations, that i believe we have one of the greatest opportunities and responsibilities to support and defend the constitution of the

united states. as i have stated before, my test for a nominee is simple and is drawn from the text, the history, and the principles of the constitution. a nominee's intellectual gifts, experience, judgment, maturity, and temperament are all important. but these alone are not enough. i need to be convinced that a nominee to the united states supreme court will live up to both the letter and spirit of the constitution. the nominee needs to be committed not only to enforcing laws, but also to doing justice. the nominee needs to be able to make the principles of the constitution come alive, equality before the law, due process, full and equal participation in the civic and social life of america for all americans, freedom of conscience, individual responsibility, and the expansion of opportunity. the nominee also needs to see

the unique role the court plays in helping balance the often conflicting forces in a democracy, between individual autonomy and the obligations of community. between the will of the majority and the rights of the minority. a nominee to the supreme court needs to be able to look forward to the future, not just backwards. the nominee needs to make the constitution resonate in a world that is changing with great rapidity. judge jackson passes these tests with flying colors. beyond her unquestioned intellectual gifts, her legal career over the past two decades demonstrates that she has the deep fail at this to be -- feilty to the constitution to be our next justice. we want justices committed to

the court system, judge jackson is. judge jockson -- jackson chose to clerk at three levels of the courts, gaining valuable insights into the courtroom and learning directly from incredible jurists, including judge bruce selya of rhode island, who was president reagan's nominee to the u.s. court of appeals for the first circuit, as well as for justice breyer himself. we want justices to understand that a guilty verdict involves a hard task of deciding the appropriate punishment. so while many of her law school classmates likely plodded -- plotted past the law firm partnerships, she chose instead to serve as assistant special counsel and later commissioner and vice chair at the u.s. sentencing commission, working to prevent unjust disparities in sentencing. we wants justices to embody the fundamental notion of fairness as the heart of our justice system, that defendants have a right to counsel and must be

proven guilty beyond a reasonable doubt. and so judge jackson chose to serve as a federal public defender. if confirmed, she will bring this valuable, real-life perspective to our highest court, where it is very much needed. over the past ten years, first as a district judge and then as a circuit judge, judge jackson has been even handed and impartial in her decisions from the bench, without regard to partisanship, personal views, or ideology. her opinions showcase and i admirable commitment not only to fairness, but to transparency. she takes the time to ensure that the parties fully understand her rulings and that the record clearly captures her thought process in deciding a case. she does not hide the ball. there are facts, there are arguments and everyone is

invited to read and understand them. beyond her career choices and accolades, she demonstrated her judgment, maturity, and ek win incorporate during her -- equinimity during her confirmation herings, -- hearings, and showed incredible patience, resilience and grace. her independence, integrity, and deep understanding of the constitution shine through in her answers. her coolness was not only admirable, it was inspiring. judge jackson is a trailblazer, not in the least because she's the first black woman and first federal public defender nominated to the supreme court. while her individual accomplishments are personal, judge jackson's elevation to the united states supreme court will bring america closer to the ideals our country aspires to. her service on the supreme court in the years to come will ensure

that the justices better reflect the diversity of our great nation and may help restore the people's faith in the fairness of the court and in our justice system. it is with great pleasure that i support her nomination to the highest court in the land and urge my colleagues to do the same. with that, madam president, i would yield the floor, and i would notice the absence of a quorum. the presiding officer: clerk will call the roll. quorum call:

>> i announced senator romney

and i reached an agreement for a $10 million supplemental appropriations package. it took many rounds of bipartisan talks, many days and nights and weekends of negotiation but we've shaken hands on a compromise the senate can and should move forward very soon. i thank senators on both sides of the aisle who participated in this and senators berger and blunt and graham were involved with senator romney, senator coons gets a special shout out because of his fierce determination to work on international, on getting an international thing done. senator murray as well was very helpful in our negotiations. the deal was announced yesterday has the support of speaker pelosi and president biden who urged congress to work to get a bill to his desk. we're going to work hard to get that done and i hope my republican colleagues will join us to move forward on this legislation. there's no reason we should be able to get thisfunding past . the administration needs it right now and we all know our

country is in great need of replenishing our covid health response funding, putting in the work today to keep our nation prepared against the new variants will make it less likely we get caught offguard by a new variants down theline so this is essential to america's well-being , it's essential to getting back to normal. all those who decried we didn't get to normal quickly enough should be supportive of this legislation because the longer we wait the more difficult it will be when the next variant hits . this $10 billion package will give the federal government and our citizens the tools we need, we depend on to continue our economic recovery, to keep our schools open, keep american families safe. the package we agreed to would provide billions more for vaccines, or testing capability and eight essential $5 billion for more life-saving therapeutics arguably the greatest need right now for the country.

these therapeutics are great drugs if we don't have them at the ready when the new variant hits , it will let the variant get its tentacles deeper into our society that this money will go along way to keeping our schools, businesses, churches and communities running as normally as possible should a future variant. nasty had . approving this package is the sensible responsible and necessary thing to do . republicans and democrats alike should now work together to make sure we can move this package through the chamber. now while this funding is absolutely necessary it's far from perfect. i am deeply disappointed that some of our republican friends could not agree to include $5 billionfor global efforts . but pushed hard to include this international funding as of course senator coons and graham and romneybecause fighting further abroad is connected to keeping

americans healthy at home . it's not just the right thing to do to help struggling nations though we certainly have an obligation to help. it's also good for our country so the inputting money overseas to prevent it from spreading here because remember, every variant, all three that had us started overseas and came here that is not only humanitarian and the moral and right thing to do but it's in our own self interest. i know it's sometimes sounds anomalous sending money overseas is in our interest where it germinates and starts the new variant inevitably overseas and then comes to hurt us is the right thing to do in our own self interest even humanitarian interest in doing it which of course manyof us to . we had a great deal of humanitarian interest. we don't help the developing nations of the world get vaccines and treatments we leave ourselves seriously at risk for potential new variants. electron after all started

more likely in south africa but today less than a thirdof the population is vaccinated . it's bus my intention for the senate to consider a bipartisan international appropriations package that will include funding to address covid-19 as well as other urgent priorities like in for ukraine and funding for global food security. i know many on both sides are serious about reaching an agreement on this issue. nevertheless, this week's agreement was carefully negotiated. we bent over backwards when our republican colleagues did not want to accept certain kinds of things which were we thought were appropriate and he thought it was so important to get this done that we did that. and we have to, it's a very important step for giving the country healthy and bringing life is close to normal in the future as we can. keeping it as close to normal

as we can. i want to thank you again senator romney for leading negotiations for the senate republicans and working in good faith to reach agreements. i also want to thank as i mentioned tunes, murray, berg, blunt and graham for their help to reach this bipartisan agreement and chairman lady for his staff for their assistance in putting legislation together. finally i want to thank the staff of the cbo, congressional budget office worked around the clock with us for this legislation. sowe've taken a massive step closer to getting this important funding done and i thank everyone for their good work to reach this point . another happy note , the judge jackson confirmation . last night we took our first steps on the senate floor to confirming the nomination of judge ketanji brown jackson to the supreme court. by motion of a motion to discharge judge jackson's nomination was reported out of judiciary by a, was put,

it wasn't reported out of judiciary. by a vote to discharge judge jackson's nomination was put on the floor by a bipartisan vote of 53 to 47. she now comes to the floor for consideration by the whole chamber. every day we moved closer to judge jackson's confirmation the case and likelihood of her confirmation grows stronger and stronger. and i thank my colleagues on both sides of the island who've approached this process with good faith. at the end of the day it will be our courts and american people will rely on our courts who would benefit most from having an amazing jurist like judge jackson elevated to the pinnacle of the federal judiciary. here is what happens next. later today i'm going to take the next step moving forward with judge jackson's nomination by filing culture that my colleagues should be advised we may have to take some procedural votes to do so but this will not affect the ultimate result of this

confirmation process.once i find closure the state will be set for the senate to close debate on the judge jackson's nomination by thursday. a vote on final confirmation will then follow. to confirm judge jackson fight justice as soon as thursday. as soon as this thursday. i hope

were in 2019. in yet, for the last 14 months, joe biden has been in the white house, he's done absolutely nothing to increase the supply of american energy. not sold one lease to produce energy on public lands. not one. president obama at this time into his first term had already held 47 federal lease sales in his first 14 months in office. for joe biden, the number is

still zero. now, this just shows that when it comes to energy, joe biden is to the far, far left of any previous american president. joe biden is already the most anti-american energy president that we've ever had. he refuses to do any of the things that would actually help our country in terms of our energy needs. he won't increase oil production by a single drop. now he wants to release some from the strategic be reserve but not produce any more american energy. what he's essentially doing is burning through our savings account. this is now the third time that president biden has released energy from the strategic reserve. he's on pace to burn through a third of our oil savings in less than two years in office. soon we're going to have the

smallest amount in our reserve, the smallest amount in our savings account since 1984. in november, joe biden conducted the largest release from the strategic reserve in history, released 50 million barrels. so what was the result? he made a big announcement of it. the secretary of energy did as well. the price of gas went down by two cents. two cents. the white house was so proud of themselves that they actually sent out a press release congratulating themselves. prices went back up almost immediately. the result was an utter failure. so now joe biden said he's going to release 180 million barrels over the next six months. a million barrels a day for the next 180 days. in other words, between now and right before the elections. the strategic reserves are meant

for emergencies. it's not meant for cynical political cover-up of what the president has done to our american energy policy. some people call it an election year gimmick. i call it dangerous. dangerous because we're going to be less prepared for emergencies, we'll be less secure as a nation, we will be less safe. 180 million barrels sounds like a lot. it's about the amount we use in an average of nine or ten days. we use about 20 million barrels a day in the united states. we're currently importing a lot more than that. even the president admits that it won't have a big impact, but he doesn't know what else to do. on thursday he said this would reduce prices by as little, he said as ten cents a gallon. we're still over $4 a gallon nationwide in terms of the national average. i expect it's going to remain that high, over $4 a gallon, through the summer.

so who do the american people blame for this? poll after poll, they blame joe biden because he's the one that proudly stood there and beat his chest and said i've killed the keystone x.l. pipeline. the day joe biden took office, gasoline, $2.38 a gallon. america was energy independent for the first time in 70 years. we were energy dominant. we were exporting energy. we were selling it to our friends instead of having to buy it from our enemies. joe biden took office, started attacking american energy, and things deteriorated ever since. that's why it's no surprise that energy and gas prices are up 13 out of the last 14 months. by the time vladimir putin invaded ukraine, the average price of a gallon of gas had gone up from $2.38 a gallon to $3.53 a gallon, so it was already up over $1.15 a gallon in just over that first year in office for president biden.

todayed average price of a gallon of gas is about $4.18. prices may actually go higher if joe biden gets his way in terms of energy policy. that's because when the president puts out his budget, he wants to raise taxes on american energy. the budget that the president has proposed for the next year contains 36 new taxes. 11 of them are directly on american energy. it costs about $45 billion which, of course, would be carried on to the people who buy american energy. they'd be paid by working families in the form of higher gas prices, higher oil bills. it costs more to heat your home. even nancy pelosi, when she looked at the budget, said, quote, consumers pay for that. on thursday joe biden asked congress to charge fees on oil and gas leases that aren't even being used. now, this is another gimmick.

people want to use those leases, but the administration is blocking the permission to drill to use the leases. this is just a continuation of the biden blame game. so if you want to explore for energy in america, the lease is just the first step, the first of many. you need to apply for a permit to drill. in wyoming, people know all about this. they call it a.p.d.'s, application for the permission to drill. you have to pay to apply after you've paid the rent on the lease. so, apply. somebody has to make a decision. those decisions used to be made at the local level. not any more. now the biden administration said we know better than any of you people out around the country. we'll make all the decisions out of washington, and the decision they made is they're not going to give any of these permits to drill. that's why the president can say well, they're not drilling. well, you're not letting people

drill. now we're not talking about a couple leases. we're talking about thousands and thousands, over 4,000 leases tied up that way. we have another group of leases that are tied up by environmental activists who love to sue to stop energy exploration. they want to keep it in the ground. so companies are paying their rental fees. they want to explore for energy. they're being blocked by the administration, and then they're being blamed by that same administration for not exploring for energy. the president says use it or lose it. that's the law of the land for now. if it doesn't produce oil within ten years, you lose the permit. he doesn't want to explain that to folks. if the lease does produce energy, does produce oil, the government reaps the benefit from that. they get tax money from that.

that helps pay for many of the things that we do as a government. in wyoming, in our state areas, we use it to help for paying for education, pay for health care, vital services in the community paid for by the successful exploration and recovery of energy that is currently under ground that joe biden wants to keep underground. now in the president's budget, he wants to charge an additional fee on top of all of this. he refuses to let them drill. he wants to charge them for not drilling. this is something out of alice in wonderland. more fees will mean produce less. we need to produce more. that's a way to get down the price at the pump -- produce more american energy. democrats refuse to admit that the percentage of leases that are actually being used today has never been higher. these are old leases.

democrats' excuses on this issue are what i would put in a category of the big lie. the big lie to support an anti-american energy agenda. it's an agenda of less american energy, more taxes, higher prices. it's the reason why millions of american families today are struggling to get by. they're feeling the pain. according to one estimate from the economist at bloomberg, american families will spend an extra $5,200 this year. that's $100 a week, compared to last year to just stay even. it's all due to inflation -- the cost of groceries, the cost of gas, the cost of goods. all of those things are squeezing the american families. people are getting crushed, their dreams are being crushed. potential savings to send kids to college, that's being gone away. savings for vacation, that's

going away. 0 you've got an empty wallet to fill your tank under joe biden's policies. the extra $100 a week, this is on top of last year's inflation where people across the country said they were paying more and more to get less and less. and even if they got a raise, they couldn't keep up. kept falling further and further behind. people across the country are already living paycheck to paycheck. they can't afford more price increases. they need real solutions, and they are not getting them from this white house. the answer seems pretty simple. stop the reckless spending here in washington, unleash american energy. so, president biden needs to do a couple of things right away to unleash american energy. first is a long-term commitment to produce more american energy. energy companies aren't going to invest if they think joe biden is going to shut them down tomorrow. and he said that's what his goal is in a recent speech.

he wants them to produce more today so he can shut them down tomorrow. he does need to open up our federal lands. we should auction off leases right away. and joe biden should approve those 4,600 drilling permits which today are still stuck in limbo. he put them there, locked them in. takes months to get production up and running. got to get the right permits, got to tap the pipelines, need to speed up the process for pipelines as well. although we did see the federal energy regulatory commission, all of the commissioners come to the energy committee, and they don't seem to be very interested, at least the ones in the majority don't seem very interested in speeding up the pipeline process or allowing pipelines at all. and finally, joe biden needs to stop attacking the hardworking men and women of this country who continue to produce energy, who go to work every day, to

keep the lights on, to keep us warm in winter. we need these workers out there, and joe biden needs to stop attacking them on a daily basis. they are the ones who can get us out of the crisis. they are the ones we need for the economic recovery. instead of spending our savings, it is time to unleash american energy. madam president, we need more american energy, and we need it now. thank you, madam president, and i yield the floor. i suggest the absence of a quorum. the presiding officer: the clerk will call the roll. quorum call:

quorum call:

mr. schumer: madam president. the presiding officer: the majority leader. mr. schumer: are we in a quorum? the presiding officer: we are. mr. schumer: i ask unanimous consent the quorum be dispensed with. the presiding officer: without objection. mr. schumer: madam president, i ask that the senate resume legislative session and vote the motion to invoke cloture on the motion to proceed to h.r. 4373 under the previous order. the presiding officer: without objection. 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 of the standing rules of the senate do hereby move to bring to a close debate on the motion to proceed to calendar number 310, h.r. 4373, an act making appropriations for the department of state, foreign operations and related programs for the fiscal year ending september 30, 2022, and for other purposes signed by 17 senators. the presiding officer: by unanimous consent, the mandatory quorum call has been waived. the question the question is, is it the sense of the senate that to proceed to h.r. an act making appropriations for the department of state, foreign

operations and programs ending september 30, 2022 and other provisions shall be brought to the close. the yeas and nays are mandatory under the rule. the clerk will call the roll. vote:

vote:

vote:

vote:

mr. schumer: mr. president. the presiding officer: the majority leader. mr. schumer: for the purposes of

reconsideration, i change my vote to no. the presiding officer: on this vote the yeas are 47, the nays are 52, three-fifths of the senators not having voted in the affirmative, the motion is not agreed to. the majority leader. mr. schumer: i enter a motion to reconsider. the presiding officer: motion is entered. mr. schumer: and, mr. president, i ask unanimous consent to resume executive session. the presiding officer: is there objection? without objection.

mr. schumer: now, mr. president, i want there to be no mistake about what just happened here on the senate floor. republicans blocked a bipartisan bill that would provide vaccines, testing and therapeutics for the american people. yesterday a group of democrats and republicans announced we had reached a bipartisan agreement for covid relief funding, but today a majority of senate republicans have blocked this critical and much-needed funding from going forward. vaccines, therapeutics and testing were negotiated in good faith and it should not -- they should not be held hostage to extraneous unrelated issues. this is too important for the health of the american people. but that seems precisely what some republicans want to do. this is a potentially devastating vote for every single american who is worried about the possibility of a new

variant rearing its nasty head within a few months. it is devastating for any american who in the future looks for a vaccine and a booster shot only to be told supplies have run out. it is devastating for anyone looking down the line to get tested because they feel sick or want their families safe and discover no tests are available. it is devastating for anyone who, god forbid, falls seriously ill but can't access lifesaving therapeutics because the federal government can't purchase new supplies because of the vote our colleagues on the republican side of the aisle just took. too many republicans seem to want to play politics at a time when we need to work together to pass legislation our country desperately needs. republicans voted no on vaccines for kids. republicans voted no on tests

for new covid variants. republicans voted no on therapies to save lives and make us less sick. have we learned nothing from the last two years of living with this horrible disease? have republicans learned nothing about how lack of preparation could damage our economy? this money, the money that they rejected today will go a long way to keeping our schools, our businesses, our churches, our communities running as normally as possible. if we want to stay at normal, we need these dollars. without these dollars, the risk of schools closing, of businesses closing, of public transportation closing is too large. should a future variant rear its nasty head, should a future variant rear its nasty head, americans will know who voted against more funding.

an ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure. this was a $10 billion agreement fully paid for. if there's another surge, it costs us ten times that if we're behind the curve again. i hope republicans will get serious about this. it should not be so difficult for them to do something so good and important for our country. there's still some time. i hope my republican colleagues change their tune quickly. i yield the floor. a senator: mr. president? the presiding officer: the senator from colorado. mr. bennet: thank you, mr. president. i appreciate the opportunity to address the senate on an issue of real importance to our country and to families in colorado and all across the

united states. today 120 economists wrote an open letter in the face of the inflation that we're now facing as a nation as a result of the economic growth that we are having coming out of this very deep recession and the supply chain interruptions that have caused inflation. 120 economists sent an open letter saying that, quote, the expanded child tax credit is one of the easiest, most effective and direct tools currently at our disposal to help families deal with the impact of inflation on family budgets. the expert opinions about the causes of and solutions to rising inflation are as varied as the authors of this letter, they wrote, but we agree on this -- we agree on this -- the expanded child tax credit is too small to meaningfully increase inflation across the

whole economy -- that means the $100 billion a year that the child tax credit cost to lift half the kids out of poverty isn't going to drive inflation in a $21 trillion economy. that's one of the points these economists agreed on. but, they wrote, it will make an important difference for family budgets, especially families in the bottom half of the income spectrum. monthly child tax credit payments are a proven success at helping families keep up with the everyday costs of keeping a family afloat. mr. president, i'd ask to enter this letter into the record. the presiding officer: without objection. mr. bennet: thank you. thank you, mr. president. thank you. this is no surprise to me. i was for the child tax credit before we had covid because for the last 50 years, as i've said before 0en this floor, we -- as i've said before on this floor, we had an economy that has worked really well for the top

10% of americans and basically hasn't worked for anybody else. we have some of the lowest economic mobility in the industrialized world. we've got some of the greatest income inequality in the industrialized world. stunningly, stunningly, in the last two economic downturns, economic inequality has only gotten staggeringly worse in this country because of the massive asset inflation that's benefited the wealthiest people in the economy who are in a position to make money on their money, or in the case of a lot of people on real estate in colorado that's making it harder and harder and harder for working people to find a place to live. and i can tell you, mr. president, that our kids pay the highest price from this. i was the superintendent of the denver public schools before i was in this job. the majority of kids were kids of color. the majority of kids were kids living in poverty, and they are families were working --

contrary to what some people think, their families were working two on the one hand three jobs much the -- two and flee jobs. the problem wasn't that their families weren't working or working hard. they were killing themselves. no matter what they did, they couldn't get their kids out of poverty. that is is not a consequence of anything that is their fault. they're doing everything they can. for that matter, their kids are doing everything they can. going to schools that ought to do a better job for them, kids living in poverty all over this country. and some people think that we have to just accept this as a fundamental aspect of our economy or our democracy or our society, that somehow the united states of america is such a failure as a community that we have to accept being 38th out

of 41 industrialized countries in terms of childhood poverty, that we're willing to permanently accept the idea that the poorest people in our society are our children. i think there's something we can do about it. i know there's something we can do about it. i know there's a lot of skepticism is the federal government's ability to do anything well. mr. president, i share that skepticism sometimes. we thought two wars in the middle east that lasts for 20 years that cost about $5. 6 trillion. it seems like a set of bad decisions. we have cut taxes on the floor of this body by $8 trillion since 2001, almost all of the benefit of that has gone to the wealthiest people in the country when we've got the worst income inequality that we've had since 1928.

it's been staggering to watch. it's been staggering to watch people stay here at the end of a -- at the end of a legislative year, at the end of a congress and burn the midnight oil to make sure that we can extend the tax cuts for the wealthiest people in the country and for the largest corporations in america. that's how you know it's 2:00 in the morning in the united states senate. it's when we have to extend tax cuts for the richest people in this country. during a time of devastating income inequality that's perpetuated by the economic cycles that we continue to have. last year, mr. president, as you know, because you were a big part of this, we did something different. we adopted the expanded child tax credit, we adopted the expanded earned income tax credit. those bills were bennet-brown, brown-bennet, respectively, my friend, sherrod brown from the

state great of ohio. and here on this -- ahead of tax day, i wanted to come down to the floor just to give you a little report, kind of a book report, a status report on what has happened. and, mr. president, what i want to tell you, it worked. it worked. it worked. we discovered we didn't have to live in a society that was 38th out of 41 industrialized countries. we discovered that we didn't have to accept a world where the poorest people in our country were our children. we benefited 61 million kids in the united states, 90% of the children in connecticut, 90% of the children in colorado, and 90% of the children all across this country directly benefited from a bill we passed here. we cut childhood poverty nearly in half. we cut hunger by a quarter for

families with kids during a pandemic. which feels like a worthy thing to have done. we did it without adding a single bureaucrat to the federal government. we did it without adding one more federal agency. we proved we could do it. and then we didn't extend it. -- at the end of the year. and now predictably, childhood poverty is shooting up in the united states of america. hunger is shooting up in the united states of america. i was on the phone, mr. president, with the leaders of the food banks across colorado who have done such an incredible job during this recession and during the last recession, making sure people are fed. i visited some of those food banks. i know that people are saying that, to me that there are two-thirds of the people that are showing up are people that didn't show up before we had

this catastrophe of covid. but guess what's getting longer now as a result of our failure to extend the child tax credit? it's the lines in these food basing. it's the people coming to get -- in these food banks. it's the people coming to get food for their kids instead of going to the grocery store with the dignity of the expanded child tax credit. there is a shred of good news here that i wanted to speak about for a moment because this would be my chance to do it. i want to remind people that as families file their tax returns, they'll receive the second half of their child tax credit, which is worth up to $1,800 per child. that's still available. it's not coming into a monterey -- it's not coming in a monthly form anymore. it is not coming into your bank account anymore in that automatic way. but when you file your tax returns, you'll receive it. the other thing, because of the eitc work we did the earned income tax credit work, workers without children will receive the expanded eitc which we

troubled last year, we tripled last year. we finally decided we're not going to tax people into poverty anymore in this country, which is what we were doing before we spanned that. -- before we expanded that. i wanted to remind families to claim their child tax credit as well. we expanded that to armament of $4,000 -- to a maximum of $4,000 per child. we have to come down here and too fight to make these permanent. and to, in my judgment ashkind it is my goal for us to end childhood poverty. i think cutting it in half, that was an exciting thing. it's been a long time around here, decades, generations, generations since we've seen a reduction of poverty in this country like the reduction in childhood poverty we saw last year. generations since we seen a

reduction in hunger like we saw last year. and the good news is we now know that it's a fact that we can do it. there are a lot of countries in the world that haven't expanded -- that have an expanded child tax credit or child benefit like the child tax credit and in all of those countries, fewer of their kids live in poverty. and their workforce participation rates are actually higher which doesn't surprise me at all based on the stories i heard from families about what they were spending the child tax credit on, which was everything that had to do with their kids. from buying back-to-school clothes to paying for a bicycle so a young man in colorado springs could stay at school late so he could have extracurriculars that he otherwise wouldn't have had the ability to achieve, so that his

mom could stay at work for a few more hours so she could provide for the family. there is literally no data in america or anywhere else that doesn't support the idea that this is a pro-work policy, the child taft credit. -- tax credit. we didn't have any trouble, as i said earlier, extending the $8 trillion of tax cuts that we have cut for the wealthiest people in this country since 2001. for that money, we could have extended the tax credit for 50 years. we could have doubled it for 25 years and we could have ended childhood poverty in the united states of america. i guarantee you that would have been a better investment than sending money to people that need it least in our economy.

i'd say to my own party that i'm really grateful that we passed this last year, but i'm deeply, deeply disappointmented that we couldn't -- disappointed that we couldn't come together and extend it. i am deeply, deeply disappointed that we haven't fulfilled our promise to reverse the trump tax cuts for the richest people in america. it doesn't make any sense. it's completely upside down. but that's where we find ourselves. i wish i could express how different it felt at the end of the year when it was kids, many of whom living in poverty and their families who are getting on average $450 a month when the lights were going out on them and we just went home, we just

went home. there was nobody burning the midnight oil here to make sure that the kids got the benefit of this. and, by the way, even if you don't believe that living in a society where the poorest people are your kids and that it ought to be a purpose of a nation to lift kids who through no fault of their own find themselves in poverty, who through no fault of their own find themselves living in a country where we have less economic mobility than almost any other industrialized country in the world and, therefore, don't have the opportunity to rise that generations had before them and hopefully generations that'll come after them and that

our attending a system of education in this country because of the lack of early childhood education in the united states, because of the lack of quality of k-12 education in this country, because of the incredible expense of higher education, who are attending a system that is actually reinforcing the income inequality we have rather than liberating people from their circumstances. the best predictor of the quality of your education in this country is your parents' income, to the point of ruthlessness. to the point of ruthlessness. i want to mention that senator romney, who is a republican from utah, has a very similar bill to my bill to expand the child tax credit. in fact, it's basically the

same bill. he's a little more generous with kids under the age of six, and we've got a difference of view on pay-fors, but i think that's a bridgeable difference. and i have no doubt that in the long term, we will come to a bipartisan agreement in this chamber to make the enhanced child tax credit permanent, to decide that even if you don't care about the kids -- which you should -- that the country can't afford this level of childhood poverty, that our democracy won't be sustained with this level of income inequality. that's what i believe. that's what i know. childhood poverty costs the united states of america $1 trillion a year. that's why it's not surprising that columbia university did a study and found that we get an

8-x return, that the child tax credit would return back to the united states eight times of what it costs. instead of accepting the idea that we're going to to be at the bottom of the cellar when it comes to living in childhood poverty, what we said is no, we're going to cut it in half. let me assure you as a former school superintendent and -- well, as a former school superintendent, the cost of mitigating for childhood poverty far exceeds the cost of diminishing. and it's an amazing thing to me, on top of everything else that we're talking about today, that when families are in the grip of the kind of inflation

which is costing $200 to $700 a month depending on where they live and who they are, it wouldn't occur to us that the easiest thing to do would be to reinstate what we were doing last year, and allow people to have the benefit of $450 on average to raise their children, to pay for a little bit of extra child care, to pay for a little bit extra for transportation to fix the car that is broken so they can stay on the job. i know there's some colleagues here who who think that this poy dis disincentivizes work. mr. president, even before we passed this last year, every study that we looked at that i was aware of, with the exception of one outlier, said this wasn't going to negatively affect work.

now we've had a six-month experiment in the united states of america, and every study, including one by the american enterprise institute, which was a doubter about this policy, and i think probably still is a doubter about this policy, found that it had no effect on people's work habits. the problem in america is not that people don't work hard. that is not the problem that we have in this country. people are killing themselves. and it is true that wages are up about 5.6% since the biden administration went into office, which is awesome, it's great. but we've had the effects of inflation, and we're a long way from having an economy that when it grows, it grows for everybody, which, by the way, that is what we need to do. that's what we have to achieve.

this democracy will not survive another 50 years of an economy that when it grows, it grows for the top 10% and everyone else's wages are flat. or everyone else is effectively in a recession. there is no evidence in world history that that level of income inequality, that lack of economic mobility, that over 100 years you can sustain a democracy. and we don't have to do that. we don't have to do that. we could make it permanent, put it back in place, pay for it, by the way. i believe we should pay for it by raising taxes on the wealthiest people in the country like we said we were going to do, by reversing the trump tax cuts, the trump giveaways which were sold as a middle-class tax

cut. they were so smart because they gave people the lower levels of the income ladder a little bit. say there's your trump tax cut so he could go out to the mahoning valley, go out to youngstown, tell people you got your tax cut, you're welcome. what he didn't tell them was 52% of the trump tax cut went to the top 5% of americans. that after he left the people in the mahoning valley in youngstown, old steel town, and then he went to mar-a-lago where people were having new year's eve dinner or whatever it was they were having, and the first thing he said to them was you're welcome. that was a lot closer to the truth. you're welcome. you are welcome that i cut your taxes at a time when income

inequality is greater than any time since 1929. you're welcome that i cut the corporate rate to 21% even though no one in corporate america was asking for a 21% tax cut. you're welcome is what he said. i said earlier, mr. president, before you were here that there are people in the country that are skeptical of the federal government doing anything well, and that i have my own skepticism for the reasons that i said earlier. but, and there are people in terms of the child tax rate said it would never work. six months before we did it, four months before we did it i was getting stopped in the hallways by reporters every day, do you think they're really going to be able to do this. can the i.r.s. and the

department of treasury, can they really administer this? and the answer is yes, they did. they did a fantastic job. they didn't get everybody at first. they didn't get everybody at first, and we knew that would be a problem. we enlisted people all over the state of colorado that work with folks, that work with working families and work with families that are living in poverty. because remember, this thing, this wasn't just about kids living in poverty. 90% -- 90% of america's children benefited from this. that's why some people have called this social security for kids. some people have called it universal basic income for kids. i think it's a good thing because i can tell you 90% of the kids in colorado can use the help because 90% of the people

in this country and in my state have not benefited from economic growth the same way the top 10% of americans have for the last 50 years. and as i mentioned, i just want to say again on this floor because there are people out here saying people are going to drop out of the workforce, it did not happen. it didn't happen in other countries that have a tax benefit like this for kids, and it didn't happen during the six months that we were here. i understand maybe we'd have a different debate. maybe people would say my god, michael, all these people dropped out of the workforce. it didn't work the way you said it would. it did work the way i said it would. it did work the way the data said that it would. and moms and dads, very unsurprisingly to me, who were working hard to begin with

probably just worked harder, because now they had the chance to pay for a little extra child care. now they had the chance to fix a car or, as i said, let their kid go to extracurricular activities so they could stay at work. and that's what all the studies have shown. so i suppose one good thing has come out of this -- or maybe it's more than one good thing. it's that we now know that america is no different than any other place in this respect, that when parents get a marginal, an incremental amount of money, they don't quit their jobs. they feed their kids. but as a society, we're able to say we cut childhood poverty in half. we cut hunger in half by 25%. what good is it, mr. president, that now there are families lined up in soup kitchens today that weren't

there six months ago because they had the benefit of the child tax credit? as i said, parents spent this credit on all kinds of different things. i mentioned child care. i mentioned the bicycle for extracurriculars. i tell you the thing i heard from every single parent i talked to -- and there was a lot of them in colorado over the last six months, over the last six months of last year -- was the stress that it had relieved their families of. that grinding stress of being in a recession that, the grinding stress of being in the middle of a pandemic, the grinding stress of having your kids out of

school or having interrupted schooling, the grinding stress of living in an economy where people are saying to you no matter how hard you work that somehow it's your fault that you can't keep your family. and that the decisions that we've made over many years in this chamber and the chamber across there, and some of the largest institutions have made as well, unfortunately has created real headwinds for working people and for their families. we're in the middle here of considering the china competes bill, which i think, mr. president, gives us a real opportunity to reassess what we've been doing for the last 40 or 50 years. every single thing we set -- and we told the american people we were doing in their name with

respect to china and its presence in the world trade organization and what china would do as a result of that, none of that turned out to be true. when i say china, i don't mean the chinese people. i mean beijing. and we realize now that they weren't going to follow the rules of the road. we realize now that they were engaged in state-sponsored capitalism that's very hard to compete with. and that instead of just privileging the people in our society that want to make stuff as cheaply as possible in china, maybe we ought to be thinking about other things like our supply chain, protecting our supply chain, or our national security, or whether we're creating good-paying jobs here in the united states so that when the economy grows, it grows for everybody. we have an opportunity to do that now. and that's what i want, mr. president. that's what i really want is an economy that when it grows, it grows for everybody, because

that's the american dream. that's the story we've told ourselves about who we are as a people. and that's the way to strengthen our democracy. that's what i really want. in the meantime, what i would like us to do, since we now know how to do it finally, is lift half the kids of this country out of poverty so they have a chance to pursue the american dream themselves. i used to say that this chamber treated america's children like they were someone else's children because of the education system that we've provided for them. and when we did the child tax credit, i came out here and i said i can finally come to this floor and say we are now treating america's children like they are america's children.

but for the moment that's no longer true, and for the moment we're treating them like they're someone else's children, and we will rue the day that we did that. we will rue the day that we did that. this is a pro-work policy. it's a pro-family policy. is it a pro-democracy policy, and we now know it worked and it worked well and we've got to fight to make it permanent and that's what i'll do. and, mr. president, with that, i yield the floor.

mr. durbin: mr. president. the presiding officer: the senator from illinois. are we in a quorum call? the presiding officer: no we're not. the senator from illinois. mr. durbin: europe has seen its share of horror over the last century, the atrocities of world war i and world war ii and the bosnian war and ukrainians have suffered under the rule of stalin. millions of ukrainians died from

starvation, forced starvation. in the wake of some, if not all of these troforts, the world -- atrocities, the world responded by bringing the perpetrators to justice. there were the the nueremberg trial. sadly now in 2022, we are faced with a question. how will the world react to the crimes that are now being committed in ukraine? over the past week we have witnessed the reality of vladimir putin's genocidal rampage on the innocent people of ukraine. in the scenes of brutality in bucha are seared in our collective memory. today in bucha, ukraine, there are mass graves surrounded by

bodies hastily shoved into garbage bags, front yards and gardens lined with the dead bodies of innocent ukrainian people. one survivor, age 76, watched helplessly as russian soldiers murdered her daughter. without provocation, the russian soldiers opened fire on her home and the bullets ripped through the gates and fence as her daughter was standing in the yard. she was killed in an instant. yesterday "the new york times" ran a photo of her looking over her daughter's dead body. she had covered it with plastic sheets and wooden boards. it was lying in the same spot where she was killed last month. in the -- in her words, there was so much shelling, i did not

know what to do. there is nothing that will fill the void of loss and despair that she and millions of ukrainians feel at this very moment, but there is more, and much, much more that we as americans must do. the actions of vladimir putin harken back to some of europe's darkest days, the atrocities committed by the nazis during world war ii, the massacres in former yugoslavia, days that we must endure and days which we hope we never have it to relive. and as i mentioned after the allied forces liberated europe in 1945, the world responded. it came together at the historic nuremberg trials. when the trials first convened at the palace of justice in 1945, supreme court justice jackson delivered the opening statement and he said, the wrongs which we seek to condemn

and punish have been so calculated, so malignant, so devastating that civilization cannot tolerate their being ignored because it cannot survive their being repeated. civilization cannot tolerate and cannot survive the war crimes we've witnessed in ukraine going unpunished. president biden recognized that fact on monday in calling for a war crime trial after the horrors of ukraine. president lincoln said to congress, we, even we here hold the power and bear the responsibility. it is within the power and responsibility of this body to deny safe haven in america or anywhere to perpetrators of these heinous crimes. under existing law, foreign war

criminals who come to the united states, incredibly, cannot be prosecuted. they cannot be held libel in civil action or held for their heinous crimes. the war crimes act only applies if the perpetrator or victim is a u.s. service members or -- service member or u.s. national. in other words, it would not cover russian officials were they responsible for the commission of war crimes in ukraine or russian soldiers who committed those crimes. we also don't have a statute or law in america making crimes against humanity a violation of u.s. law. this was the primary offense prosecuted at nuremberg and it is a critical tool for holding violators accountable. genocide and torture are already crimes under u.s. law that cover any offender found in the united states. this should also be true for war

crimes and crimes against humanity. and that is why i will introduce the war crimes accountability act. the war crimes accountability act would ensure the united states has the tools to hold accountable the perpetrators of war crimes and other atrocities. the bill expands the war crimes act to cover all war criminals who are in the united states, regardless of where they're from and it fills the gap in our criminal code for prosecuting crimes against humanity so we can hold perpetrators who come to this country accountable. this is it not just a hypothetical idea. consider one example. after the massacre of thousands of innocent men and boys, a war criminal named marco boskich made his way to the united states. when law enforcement tracked him down, they could only charge him with a visa fraud, not a war crime or crimes against

humanity. we must bring war criminals to justice for their horrific crimes, not slap them on the wrist with a visa technicality. the united states must never again frief safe haven for -- provide safe haven it for war crimes. our nation led the prosecution of crimes at the nuremberg trial. ultimately the day will come when vladimir putin faces justice and his name and regime will remain in history alongside the worst of the worst. until putin and his sycophants are brought to justice, we cannot equivocate with bringing iewrk -- with bringing ukraine all that they need. the united states should not be a haven for war criminals. they should be held responsible

for their horrible conduct and what they've done to innocent people in other places and they should be held liable in a criminal basis. that is what this bill will do. it is to move forward for justice. when nations around the world adopt similar laws to the ones i'm proposing, we'll make it clear there are no safe havens left for war criminals. they will pay a price wherever they end up and that is where it will be when they need justice. i yield the floor.

the presiding officer: the senator from iowa. mr. grassley: today senator johnson and i will provide our third speech on the biden series. today we will focus on james biden, the president's brother. hunter biden wasn't the only

family member who had connections to the chinese communist regime. james biden did as well. before we begin our discussion, i think we need to mention the main company once again, the chinese company that goes by the initials cefc. in the first two speeches senator johnson and i established the connection between cefc and the communist chinese government. we established the connection between cefc and hudson west iii, we then established the connection with hunter biden's biden'sawascoe and cefc, we showed that hunter biden and james biden actively assisted

cefc as it worked to expand its its -- its footprint and its holding in the global and u.s. energy sector. and today we'll add james biden's lion hall group to the list of biden family companies connected to the communist regime. in my and senator johnson's september 23, 2020 report, we showed that hunter biden and james biden and their aligned firms received approximately four and eight-tenths million dollars from hudson west iii. the presiding officer: august 2017 to september 2018. during that same time frame,

hunter biden's owasco sent 20 or so wires to james biden's lion hall group. those 20 wires totaled just about one and four tenths million dollars. the liberal media and democrat colleagues originally tried to claim that johnson and my findings were russian disinformation. last week "the washington post" reported the following. quote, over the years of 14 months -- no. over the course of 14 months, the chinese energy conglomerate, here parenthetically they're

referring to cefc, and its executives paid $4.8 million to entities controlled by hunter biden and his uncle, according to government records, court documents, and newly disclosed bank statements as well as e-mails contained on a copy of a laptop hard drive that purportedly once belonged to hunter biden. end of quote. the "post" also reported this so the i start to quote. during that time period, about 1.4 million was transferred from hunter's account to the lion

hall group, the consulting firm that james biden ran according to other government records reviewed by the "post" and "the washington post" quote. senator johnson and i were right two years ago. we knew it then but it's been a long road to defend our work product. the liberal media and our democratic colleagues aggressively tried to make the case that we were peddling russian disinformation. now, what will the liberal media and my democrat colleagues say now in light of last week's "washington post" article that substantiated the work that

senator johnson and i have been doing. we still haven't received any apology from our democratic colleagues for their false claims against us these past several years. they haven't apologized to the american people, and i'm not going to hold my breath. when will the big time media in washington awaken to respect my reputation for the thorough investigative and oversight work that i do as a senator? and it's also my constitutional responsibility to do exactly that. now, we have more records to discuss today. today senator johnson and i will show you financial transfers direct from hudson west iii to

the lion hall group. in other words, in these transfers, hunter biden's owasco isn't the middleman. so let's look at the first poster here. this is a january 2018 bank statement from hudson west iii. now, there's a lot going on here so i'll just mention several items. first we've got two examples of more wire transfers from hudson west iii for $165,000. the underlying wire data which senator johnson and i will make public this very day shows that money went to hunter biden's owasco. that money was for the august

2017l.l.c. agreement -- 2017 l.l.c. agreement which by its terms saw james biden become a manager of hudson west iii. that agreement sent $100,000 to hunter biden and $65,000 to james biden every month. those transactions occurred after the $5 million wire from northern international capitol hudson west iii on august 2017. northern international was connected to yi jing ming connected to the communist regime. we explained all that in our second speech just last tuesday.

second, this statement shows several examples of wires from hudson west iii to cefc. as senator johnson and i have established, that company is an arm of the communist chinese regime. this new record shows how closely connected hudson west iii was with cefc while hunter biden and james biden received money from hudson west iii. third, we've got a january 17, 2018, wire to lion hall group. now that happens to be james biden's company. james biden received $18,000 from hudson west iii the same

month that company sent money to cefc. now, this is just one example of many. accordingly, the official bank record made clear the financial connections between and among james biden and the communist chinese elements. to the liberal media and my democratic colleagues, is this the official bank record? is that russian disinformation as you accused us of spreading. now let's go to the second poster. this is hudson west iii bank record from april 2018. here you see wire transfers from

coal harbor capital. that company was connected who is an associate of ye jianming. as we have already established, all of them are connected to the communist regime. these are the players in the game that i mentioned in the first speech last monday. and now we've established they appear repeatedly in bank records with high-dollar transfers. these transfers aren't by accident. no way. there's clearly a scheme here. there's a plan among and between all these individuals and their respective companies which then

begs the question has the justice department acquired these records? if so, what has the justice department done about these records? now moving to the next transaction, there's another $165,000 wire. again, that relates back to the l.l.c. agreement that connected hunter and james biden to the chinese firm cefc and its projects in the energy sector. then you have a $34,000 wire to james biden's lion hall group from hudson west iii. so what was this all about? let's take a look then at the third poster.

now look at the sixth line from the bottom. i want to quote. it says office expense and reimbursement. that's the same reason given for the first poster that i showed you. we'll make all of these records public again this very day. for those of you who may still doubt my and senator johnson's oversight work, i'm going to present one last transaction to bring all of this home. so look at the fourth poster. in my and senator johnson's september 2020 report, we found that james biden and hunter biden went on a $99,000 global spending spree courtesy of who?

another chinese person that i've mentioned so many times in these three speeches, gongwen dong. the spending spree included airline tickets, purchases at apple stores, hotels and restaurants. this bank record next to me shows a $99,000 transaction in september 2013 -- or 2017. but that's not all that we have. let's turn to the final poster. this is number five. this is a credit card authorization form for $99,000. so look at the bottom. there's the signature block with hunter biden and gongwen dong.

now, to the liberal press and my democratic colleagues, are these official records russian disinformation? so what's the point of all these records? not only have senator johnson and i illustrated through new records that hunter biden was financially connected to the communist regime, these records show james biden was as well. these new records show direct financial links between companies connected to the communist regime and james biden through lion hall group. these new records support the findings in our report to the last congress. remember, those reports were put

out in september and november of 2020. and everybody was saying it was -- it was russian disinf disinformation. forget the facts. forget the evidence. forget the investigative journalism. the liberal media participanted to -- media wanted to provide cover for then-candidate joe biden. they did whatever they could to smear our investigations. with these new records, there can be no doubt that james biden was financially connected to the corporations and individuals with extensive link to communist china and that he and hunter biden were in it together working to help a chinese

government linked energy company pursue deals and expand its reach in the energy sector. now it's senator johnson's turn. a senator: mr. president. the presiding officer: the senator from wisconsin. mr. johnson: thank you, senator grassley. what senator grassley and i have shown over the course of six speeches are the actual bank records of financial transactions tying president biden's son hunter and his brother james to businesses that have essentially the arms of the communist chinese regime. but the biden business ventures include activities in many more countries than just china. in our september and november 2020 reports, we showed a vast web of biden family foreign financial entanglements that were largely ignored by the media and falsely labeled

russian disinformation by our democrat colleagues. as outrageous as the suppression of the reports and the false attacks were, perhaps the most egregious behavior came from 51 former intelligence agency officials who let their names and reputations to an effort designed to convince the american public that hunter biden's labtop had, quote, all the classic earmarks of a russian disinformation operation, unquote. without any evidence backing their assertion, they engaged in their own, quote, information operation, unquote, by signing a public letter right before the election. the letter was actual disinformation, coming from what are supposed to be trusted former members of our u.s. intelligence agencies. they should all be ashamed and held accountable for spreading

this disinformation. by signing that disinformation letter, they reinforced false claims that the records on the laptop were not legitimate. by casting doubt on evidence of the biden's corrupt practices, these former intelligence officials interfered in the 2020 election to a far greater extent than russia could have ever hoped to achieve. their willing accomplices in the press amplified this disinformation letter and by doing so were equally guilty of egregious election interference. in august 2020, i wrote a public letter detailing the history, purpose, and goals of my oversight investigations. in that letter, i laid out the timeline of joe and hunter biden's involvement in ukraine.

the timeline is very revealing. it starts in february 2014. that was the month of the revolution of dignity in ukraine. two months later on april 16, 2014, then-vice president biden met with his son's business partner, did he von archer,s -- devon archer who is now a convicted felon, at the white house. i just want to pause and let that sink in a little bit. devon archer is is now a convicted felon. he got a meeting in the white house with the vice president of the united states. that's kind of a big deal. the press didn't ask many questions. five days after that meeting in the white house, april 21, joe biden visited ukraine and the media described him as, quote, the public face of the administration's handling of

ukraine. the next day on april 22, devon archer joined the board of burisma. what a coincidence. six days later, british officials seized $23 million from it the london bank accounts of burisma's owner. let that sink in a little bit. six days after devon archer joined the board of burisma, a day after vice president biden visited ukraine, which was five days after he met with devon archer in the white house, british officials seized $23 million from the corrupt owner of burisma. on may 13, 2014, three weeks later, hunter biden joined the board of burisma. what a coincidence.

because the findings in our reports and the excellent investigative journalism on the part of john solomon, we also know that the hunter was also involved with the corrupt and now sanctioned wife of the former mayor of moscow during the exact same period of time. on february 14, 2014, batarina wired $3.5 million to rosemont seneca thorton, an investment firm cofounded by hunter biden. between april 4 and april 5, 2014 -- you have the same month that joe biden met with devon archer in the white house, devon became a member of the board of burisma, they sent e-mails about meeting with batarinna potentially about a business deal in new york.

nine days before devon joined the board of burisma, archer wrote to batarina, quote, confirm green light to fund, unquote. continued, just spent two hours on the phone with kiev. i am confident at this point this is a good, if not life-changing, deal if ukraine doesn't collapse in the meantime. it's quite interesting to see how much significant activity involving the bidens and corrupt actors in russia and ukraine occurred within a six-week period only two months after the ukrainian revolutionary dignity. it sure looks like they intended to catch in on the turmail in -- turmoil in ukraine. in my august 2020 letter, i listed add number of questions about then-vice president

biden's interaction with hunter biden's business partner and other family members' foreign financial dealings. in making this letter public, my hope was that the press, the very uninquisitive press, would begin to ask then-presidential candidate joe biden these important and legitimate questions. it should come as no surprise that the corporate media was completely uninterested and failed to conduct any investigative journalism. nearly two years after i wrote this public letter, the mainstream media has still not adequately pressed president biden for answers to these very legitimate questions. for example, number one -- why did joe biden meet with devon archer at the white house on april 16, 2014? what did they discuss? did they discuss anything related to ukraine, hunter biden, or burisma?

number two -- was joe biden aware that devon joined the board of burisma six days after that meeting, one day after he visited ukraine? three -- does joe biden believe burisma and its owner are corrupt? number four -- when did joe biden first become aware that hunter biden also joined the board of burisma? five -- when did joe biden first become aware of how much money hunter biden was being compensated by burisma? senator grassley and my report showed its close to $4 million. number six -- what does joe biden know about hunter or james biden's dealings with china? number seven -- what does joe biden know about financial benefits his brother and sister-in-law have obtained because of their relationships

to him? investigative reporter john solomon has added a few more questions to my list, including what -- number one, what did joe biden know about dealings with batarina? in 2017 series of memos included a 10% equity for the, quote, big guy, unquote, what did joe biden know about the specific deal and who was, quote, the big guy, unquote? number three -- e-mails on hunter biden's laptop now in the possession of the f.b.i. refer to shared accounts or bills between joe biden and hunter. did hunter ever give biden any money, gift, or financial benefit from hunter's business dealings? after a long overdue analysis, "the new york times" and

"washington post" have finally admitted that records from hunter's laptop are authentic, which means, although they will never admit this, that senator grassley and i were right and they were wrong. it is interesting to read how limited and muted their mia culpas are. my questions is that they learned a -- my guess is that they learned a lot about the watergate scandal cover-up. they learned that when you have been caught in a catch-up, and that is what happened here, you try to limit the damage by telling a little bit of the truth. in the intelligence world, this strategy is called, quote, a limited hangout, unquote. the watergate coconspirators called it, quote, a modified limited hangout, unquote. regardless of what you call it, what "the new york times" and "the washington post" are doing is not telling the whole truth. i doubt they ever will.

but just in case they decide to pursue the truth with a little bit more rigor, they can use the above list of relevant questions as a good starting point for what they should be asking president biden. for our part, senator grassley and i will continue to ask tough questions, review more information and records, and transparently provide that information to the american public. we intend to pursue and uncover the truth. i will now turn the floor back over to senator grassley for his closing remarks. mr. grassley: mr. president, i ask permission to put my closing remarks in the record. the presiding officer: without objection. so ordered.

mr. johnson: i suggest the absence of a quorum. the presiding officer: the clerk will call the roll. quorum call:

quorum call:

is. the presiding officer: the senate stands in a quorum call. a senator: thank you, mr. president. i ask that the quorum be lifted.

the presiding officer: without objection,so ordered. the senator from connecticut. mr. blumenthal: that you -- tha, mr. president. i would like to request that my very able legislative fellow alexander nebabi be granted floor privileges until the end of august, 2022. mr. blumenthal: thank you very much, mr. president. i come here with real pleasure and pride, excitement, joy, real exuberance not often felt on the floor of the united states senate because we're going to be making history this week. as confident as i am of anything ever in the united states senate happening, this week we will confirm judge ketanji brown jackson as an associate justice of the united states supreme

court. let me first of all thank president biden for nominating her. his wisdom and courage are one of the reasons that she is before us as a nominee in this historic vote. and to all my fellow members of the judiciary committee, we have labored a long time through many hours, and i particularly thank senator durbin for his leadership. historic is a word that's often overused, even in this chamber where a lot of history is made, but judge jackson's nomination truly merits that word. it is a joyous, exciting moment for all americans because justice jackson will make the united states supreme court look

more like america and hopefully think more like america at a time when black women and people with diverse backgrounds, races, religions have broken many barriers, her confirmation will be a giant leap into the present. she stands on the shoulders of many who have come before her, as she recognized so explicitly in our hearing. one of them is constance baker motley, a daughter of new haven, connecticut, the first black woman to argue before the united states supreme court and the first black woman to be appointed as a judge on the united states district court. now, she was also instrumental in the well-known and profoundly

significant case of brown vs. board of education, argued by thurgood marshall, and she won every one of the cases that she argued before the united states supreme court. i've argued four. she argued ten. her record surpasses almost any of the litigators who have become judges. not only will she be the first black woman on the united states supreme court, justice jackson will be the first public defender. what does that mean? she's represented people who couldn't afford a lawyer. there's nobody on this court who has represented people who couldn't afford a lawyer as a

full-time professional or a public defender. she has more experience as a trial lawyer and a trial judge combined than anybody on the united states supreme court now and probably over the last century. she has academic credentials that are superlative. she has written and taught and counseled in ways that give her insights into the real-life meaning of the law, it's real impact on people. and it has also given her an emotional intelligence. there is no question that she is qualified by virtue of intellect and intelligence. booksmart, no question she is

book smart. but she is also people smart. she understands, as justice breyer has as well, that all of these legalisms, all of the abstract concepts in law, all the technical distinctions, all the verbiage, they have a real-life impact when they are words in a statute, when they are words in a legal opinion, when they are words from the mouths of judges or justices, federal or state. she understands that real-life impact, which gives her more than intellect. it gives her emotional intelligence. and i will say i've talked to judge jackson about her feelings, instincts at critical decision points as a judge.

in sentencing, when she knew that another person's life was in her hands metaphorically, when another person's future was within her decision-making power , and she has looked at sentencing decisions with all of the data points, all of the emotional intelligence, all of the judgment that she has evinced so movingly in her conversations with us as well as in her appearance before our committee. she has that capacity for empathy that very few people have. a lot of people can go to school, they can graduate with honors, they can be book smart smart, but she understands the impact of law on real lives and real people.

and it's those people whose lives are touched by the justice system, whether they are victims or criminal defendants or litigants dealing with personal or professional conflict, their stories shown through their conversations with us and her testimony before our committee and her enthusiasm for the law. because judges are the face and voice of justice, and representation matters. it matters for the legitimacy and credibility of our judicial system that our judges look like america, that somebody coming into a courtroom sees that justice has that face and voice that can relate to them. judge jackson will bring to the united states supreme court all

those immensely important qualities, and certainly she will bring a lot of patience and perseverance. she's shown those qualities plus grace and dignity in the way that she responded to some of the abusive, demanding questions that she was asked during our hearing. she has weathered that storm with extraordinary distinction and diligence. when some of our colleagues went low, she went high, to paraphrase michelle obama. when she was attacked for not claiming a judicial philosophy, she pointed to the decisions and opinions and disclaimed a judicial philosophy, just as chief justice roberts did when

he was asked in his hearing about judicial philosophy, and he said he had no, quote, overarching judicial philosophy philosophy, and instead described his role as, quote, calling balls and strikes. she said she knew her lane. she does indeed know her lane. she maybe didn't use the same terminology, but it is that objectivity and impartiality that chief justice roberts described that will also guide her as a matter of principle and philosophy. now, there were other criticisms of judge jackson, and one conservative commentator described them, these attacks, as, quote, meritless to the point of demagoguery.

he was right. the concocted outrage, the straw men, the old grievances, the ancient complaints about past hearings and treatment of nominees all will fade and be forgotten because what shone through her performance was her dignity, her depth and warmth, her grace and dignity. far from being soft on crime, very movingly she described what it is like to have a family member who walks a beat, because her brother's a cop and her uncle a chief of police. she described the worries, concerns, even fear that family members have when their

relatives are police, when their brother or uncle puts himself in harm's way. and that's probably the reason that she's been endorsed by the largest rank-and-file enforcement agency in the country, the fraternal order of police, as well as the international association of chiefs of police. high-ranking officials from the department of justice and nearly 100 former assistant united states attorneys, many of whom observed her work as a judge firsthand. some may have tried to smear her, but they failed abysmally abysmally, fortunately. she had a reversal rate of about 2%, well below the rate that the average district judge has in the d.c. circuit.

and she has been endorsed as well by former colleagues who were appointed by republican judges, well-respected conservatives, judges who disagreed with her in the outcome of cases but who deeply respected the way she called those balls and strikes in the best and truest sense of the term. and she's shown her independence. she'druled for and against -- she's ruled for and against the trump administration. she's ruled for and against labor and collective bargaining, for and against qualified immunity, for and against class certification, because her philosophy and her methodology, to use her word, is to follow the facts and the law, and that's what she will do as a justice on the united states supreme court.

now, le -- let me just finish finally with what i think is going to be most important about justice jackson. she's a un unifier and a con sense you builder. she's someone who can build bridges among colleagues, and even adversaries. she's been confirmed on a bipartisan basis three times already by the senate because she is a bridge builder. and the court needs a bridge builder now more than ever. it has been politicized and polarized in a way that undermines respect and trust in the american people, and partly it is the self-inflicted wounds of the court, which has been dominated in many decisions by a far-right coalition that have made it look political.

and that perception is deeply important, because the court's trust and respect depend on the public perceiving it to be above politics. so the court has inflicted wounds on itself, but so has the congress, and the political branches inflicted wounds on the court by dragging it through a seemingly political process and making nominations and appointments seem to be the result of partisan politics so that it may be perceived as just another political branch. i said at the very start, i have reverence for the court and deep respect for it as an

institution. it has no army or police. it has no power of the purse. its authority depends on its credibility. and my hope is that judge jackson, as justice jackson, will help elevate it in a way that it needs now more than ever. i asked her about a code of ethics for the united states supreme court, and she said she would talk to her colleagues about it. i feel she has an understanding of the need now for the court to adopt a code of ethics. it is the only judicial body that lacks a code of ethics. it has none. unlike the apellate courts, the district courts, the u.s. magistrate, the court of claims,

all of the minor judicial bodies in the united states. it has no code of ethics because it has resisted a code of ethics. and its credibility now depends on its having a code of ethics. recent events have severely imperiled credibility and trust, and that peril will grow as more becomes known about some of these events. but the court can help itself by supporting a code of ethics rather than resisting it. and judge jackson's commitment to talk to her colleagues about it is a very welcome and important step. she said it in response to a

question that i asked. i was the only member of the committee to ask about the code of ethics, surprisingly to me, but restoring credibility and trust will be important to our nation. her service will help restore and inspire confidence. her presence and active participation on the court will help that task of reib vig rating -- reinvigorating credibility and trust, and her cemplation will be indeed a -- her confirmation will be indeed a giant leap forward into the present and the future, and it will inspire lots of young girls, lots of young women, lots of black women, lots of

americans to believe in the american dream, and to believe and see the law in different ways. that is what one of the young girls who wrote to judge jackson said in her letter, indeed, that she would look at the law in a different way. we will look at the law in a different way. and we'll look at the court in a different way, because the court will look and hopefully think more like america. i am looking forward to that vote. i will never cast a vote in this body that i am more proud and excited to do, and i thank all of my colleagues both sides of

the aisle, and hopefully there will be more on the other side of the aisle joining us before then for this historic achievement for our nation. thank you, mr. president. i yield the floor, and i note the absence of a quorum. the presiding officer: the clerk will call the roll.

by virtue of emotion judge jackson's nomination was reported out of the judiciary committee out of the judiciary by a vote.

it really wasn't reported out of the judiciary. by a vote cloture motion to discharge judge jackson's nomination was put on the floor by a bipartisan vote of 53-47. it now come to the floor for consideration by the whole chamber. every day we will post judge jackson confirmation and the likelihood of her confirmation grows stronger and stronger and stronger. i think my colleagues on both sides of the aisle who did this process for good faith. beat a today will be our courts and the people who rely on our courts who would benefit from having a judge like judge jackson to the judiciary. .. ms. ernst: mr. president. the presiding officer: the shall senator from iowa. ms. ernst: i ask that the quorum

call be vitiated. the presiding officer: without objection. objection. thank you, mr. president. mr. president, in the last few weeks we heard a lot about and k fraught object from judge ketanji brown jackson. i would like to start off by congratulating judge jackson and i had a wonderful meeting with the judge last week. she is a highly qualified attorney. i would also like to congratulate her for making it through the senate judiciary committee. the hearing process can be grueling, but it is extremely important. judge jackson demonstrated grace i have concerns about and will not be supporting her to the

supreme court by perhaps my greatest issue with the judge jackson is a lack of adherence to a judicial philosophy. i have been very clear with eaco supreme court nominee since i took t a nominee office judge jackson explained during the senate judiciary hearing that she abides by a judicial, quote, methodology instead of a philosophy. this means, according to her, that she begins at a neutral position to understand the facts and to interpret the law, receives all of the appropriate inputs and then interprets the law. well, i would hope that all

judges, no matter which court they sit on, approach their rulings from a neutral position and evaluate all applicable court filings. judge jackson's methodology says nothing about the way she understands and subsequently interprets the law. in my mind there are three areas of the law a judge must evaluate the meaning of the constitution, statutes and case precedence. different theories of interpretation sometimes lead to different answers about the meaning of each of these different areas which is why it is vitally important to know what a supreme court nominee's philosophy is. for example, justice breyer,

whom judge jackson clerked for and is nominated to replace on the court, often described his own judicial philosophy as pragmatic. as a result, justice breyer balances the interests and values surrounding a case. and while i don't agree with justice breyer's method of interpretation, judge jackson won't even commit to abiding by this judicial philosophy and this is very troubling. if a justice's legal interpretation has no philosophical grounding, that provides flexibility for a justice to bend their thinking to achieve a desired outcome instead of following a

structured analysis. we have enough politicians in the legislative branch. we don't need in the courts, especially the supreme court. my concerns with judge jackson's apparent lack of a judicial philosophy is magnified by her other progressive and activist choices. case in point, her lax stance on the sentencing of pedophiles. the laws she applied simply hold those who distribute child pornography accountable considering how often these offenders recidivate. instead judge jackson went out of the way to articulate her discomfort with imposing sentences based upon, in her

words, outdated laws, because the nature of child pornography distribution has changed. for the children depicted in these heinous images, it really doesn't matter how they are distributed. judge jackson afforded leniency to offenders and previewed for all of us how she applies outdated laws to modern problems. going further when asked if she supports expanding the number of justices on the supreme court, judge jackson refused to reject that position. perhaps echoing this thought process during the senate judiciary hearing, judge jackson commented that she would be, quote, thrilled to be one of

however many, quote, justices. this tells me everything i need to know. in addition, judge jackson's unverified stance -- on life issues gives me great pause. during the exchange of the hearing, judge jackson refused to acknowledge when the life of an unborn life begins. i can only evaluate in her previous decisions in a massachusetts law that created a buffer zone preventing sidewalk counselors from approaching expecting mother. i have no reassurance that the judge will not take an activist stance.

i cannot and will not accept this answer. finally, i'm deeply concerned at judge jackson's response when asked to define a woman. the judge responded that she's not a biologist. well, folks, i'm not a biologist either, but it seems pretty common sense to me. i can tell you the voters of iowa didn't have to think about that answer to this question when they elected me as the first woman to represent iowa in the united states senate. i can tell you the taliban didn't have to think about the answer to this question when they closed the doors of schools to female students two weeks ago. and i can tell you president biden didn't have to think about

the answer to this question when he nominated judge jackson as the first black woman to the supreme court. while i'm grateful judge jackson believes science is the basis for determining a woman, i'm deeply concerned that is a fellow woman who is set to define the contours of laws that are specific to women has to even think about an answer to that question. so, mr. president, judge jackson's language, or lack thereof, speaks volumes for me, and i cannot support her nomination for a lifetime

appointment on our nation's highest court. and with that, mr. president, i yield the floor and note the absence of a quorum. the presiding officer: the clerk will call the roll. quorum call:

the constitution makes the president and the senate partners. in selecting supreme court justices. as a practical matter, each senator gets to define what advice and consent means to them. for much of the 20th century senate typically took a different approach senator's tent did to lots of leeway as long as nominees check to basic professional and ethical boxes. but then the political left and senate democrats initiate a series of major changes.

in the late 1980s, democrats thrust into a more aggressive posture towards nominations with an unprecedented smear campaign that took aim at nominees judicial philosophy. the "washington post" editorial boards had back at the time, the formerly conventional view that partisans would get right difference had not fallen into disrepute. they worried highly politicized future for confirmation mock mild lie ahead following democrats actions. just a few years later, personal attacks on then judge thomas did the previous hysteria over judge seemed like lofty debate by comparison. and when you're after that, in 1992 then senator biden proclaimed if another vacancy occurred toward the end of president bush 41's term the judiciary committee should not hold any hearings before the

presidential election. while that situation did not arise that year. and once president clinton took office republicans did not try to match democrats behaviors simply out of spite. we tried actually to de-escalate justice ginsburg and breyer both one outside of votes with opposition in single digits. that was during a time when republicans were in the majority. the very next on the democrats lost the white house the tactics came roaring back. during the bush 43 administration, senate democrats and especially the current democratic leader took the incredibly rare tactic of filibustering judicial nominations and made it routine. the press at the time describe the change they said it was important for the senate to change the ground rules there is

no obligation to confirm someone just because they are's fatherly or erudite. democrats decided pure legal qualifications were no longer enough. they wanted judicial philosophy on the table. so, 20 years ago several of the same senate democrats who are now trumpeting the historic nature of judge jackson's nomination used these tactics to delay or block nominees including an african-american woman and a hispanic man. both of course and nominated by republican president. in one case, democrats suggested their opposition was specifically, listen to this, specifically the nominees hispanic heritage with actually make him a rising star. half of senate democrats voted against chief justice roberts

the best appellate advocate of his generation. all but four democrats voted against justice who had the most judicial experience of any nominee and almost a century. there was no question about the basic legal qualifications of either. but democrats opposed both. but our colleagues recoiled at the taste of their own medicine and broke the rules to escape it. they preferred to get nuclear option for the first time ever, rather than let president obama's nominees face the same treatment they had just invented, and vented for president bush. democrats did not then change the rule for supreme court because there was no vacancy. but the late democratic leader harry reid publicly he would do the same thing so supreme court

with no hesitation. by 2016, democrats had spent 30 years radically changing the confirmation process. now they had nuked the senate's rules. obviously this push republicans into a more assertive posture ourselves. so, when a election ear vacancy did arise be applied to biden's standard and did not fill it. and then went democrats filibustered a stellar nominee for the next year we extended the standard to the supreme court. and 2016 and 2017 republicans only took steps that democrats publicly declared they would take themselves. yet our colleagues spent the next four years, four years trying to escalate even further justice course edge, impeccably qualified receive the first successful partisan filibuster of the supreme court nominee in american history.

justice kavanaugh got an astonishing and disgraceful spectacle. justice barrett received based lists delegitimizing attack on her integrity. now mr. president, this history is not the reason why i oppose judge jackson. this is not about finger-pointing or partisan spite. i voted for a number of president biden's nominees when i can support them. and just yesterday, moments after the judiciary committee deadlocked on judge jackson, they approved another judicial nominee by a unanimous vote. my point is simply this, senate democrats could not have less standing to pretend, pretend that a vigorous examination of a nominees judicial philosophy is somehow off-limits. my democratic friends across the aisle have no standing whatsoever to argue senators should simply glance, it just

glanced at judge jackson's resume and waiver on through. our colleagues intentionally brought the senate to a more assertive place. they intentionally began a vigorous debate about what sort of georgia's prudence actually honors the rule of law. this is the debate democrats wanted, now it is the debate democrats have. and that is what i will discuss tomorrow. white judge jackson's apparent judicial philosophy is not well-suited to our highest court. >> mr. president. >> mr. president i rise today to urge the senate to take action, to cracked out on child pornography offenders. and to protect our children. this is a growing crisis and it is one that is near to the heart of every parent in america. i can attest to that as a father

of three small children myself. got a 9-year-old, a 7-year-old and a 16 month old baby at home. but i can also attest to it as a former prosecutor. as the attorney general for the state of missouri, one of the first things i did was to establish a statewide antihuman trafficking initiative and task force because what i saw as attorney general that human trafficking and child trafficking, is an exploding epidemic. in my state and around the country. children are exploited. children are trafficked. those who work in this area, those who prosecute in this area, law enforcement work day in and day out will tell you the explosion of child pornography is helping to drive this exploding epidemic of child sexual exploitation and child trafficking. the problem is child pouring itself is exploding. "new york times" investigative report found that in 2018 there

were 45 million images of children being sexually exploited available on the internet. 45 million for just a few years before it had been 3 million. 2018, 45. and then last of the national center for missing and exploited children found that number had grown to 85 million. 85 million images on the internet of children being brutally, sexually, exploited. and every prosecutor every law enforcement advocate and every law enforcement agent who works in this area will tell you that explosion of this material, which by the way is harmful in and of itself it's explicated in and of itself is driving a crisis of child exploitation and child trafficking in this country. now, the nomination of a judge ketanji brown jackson to the supreme court has helped bring this issue front and center.

her record of leniency to child offenders has been much the center of her hearings in a startled the public. a recent survey found following her hearings, 56% of all respondents said they were troubled by her record. on child offenders that include 64% of independents. and they are right to be troubled but her record is indeed startling. in every case involving child pornography will she had discretion, sheet sentence below the guidelines below the prosecutor's recommendations and below the national average. we now know the national average for possession of child pornography the national sentence imposed is 68 months. judge jackson's average, 29.3 months. the national average sentence for distribution of child pornography, one to 35 months. judge jackson's average, 71.9

months. it's true for criminal sentencing across the board. the national average of all criminal sentences imposed in the united states, 45 months judge jackson's average 29.9 months. this is a record of leniency and they were at their public and later leniency to the extreme to child offenders and on criminal matters in general. but we are told and have been told for weeks on end now it is not really her fault. were told by the white house and senate democrats it's not her fault the federal sentencing guidelines those guidelines are not binding. thanks to the supreme court justice breyer and justice stevens those are only advisory. until we were told repeatedly if we really want to get tougher sentences for child pouring offenders we're going to have to change the law.

i see my friend to senator durbin here today at the chairman of the judiciary committee he said this to me multiple times during the committee, on march choice i could said to me i hope we will all agree that we want to do everything in our power to lessen the incidence of pornography it exploitation of children. i would like to tell your congress does not have clean hands we have not touch this now for 15, 16, or 17 years pretender durbin went on, we have created a situation because of our inattention and unwillingness to tackle an extremely controversial area and congress and left it to the judges but i think we have to accept some responsibility. when he went on, i don't know if you comment meeting me, sponsored a bill to change this, i will be looking for if we are going to tackle it we should. i agree with that one 100%. i agree we should tackle it. this is the time to tackle it i am here to do that today. i am proud to sponsor introduced legislation along with my fellow mike lee and thom tillis and rick scott and ted cruz to get

tough on child pouring offenders. let's be clear and congress wrote the child pornography federal sentencing guidelines and it is congress that wrote them substantially way back in 2003, congress wrote them they wanted them to be binding. congregant meant for these to be finding the supreme court struck that part of the guidelines down. now it's time to put it back into place. my bill would create a new, mandatory minimum sentence of five years for every child pouring offender who possesses pornography, five years. to do this crime, you ought to go to jail. it would make the guidelines and binding for any and all facts that are found by a jury or found by a judge in a trial. restore the law to a congress intended back in 2003. take away discretion from judges to be soft on crime and get tough on child offenders that is what this bill would do.

now, i've called this built the protect act of 2022 because it is modeled on the protect act of 2003 when congress wrote these guidelines. and i notes for the record i believe every senator voted for it back in 2003. including the chairman of the judiciary committee, senator durbin and every member of the judiciary committee republican and democrat who was serving at the time. that act to back in 2003 toughen penalties for child pouring offenders, made the guidelines mandatory and explicitly took away discretion from judges to sentence below the guideline pretty think it was a pretty good law. and i think now's the time to act. our children are at risk. the epidemic of sexual assault, sexual exploitation or victimization is real it must be clear it child pornography is, it is an industry, an industry that feeds on the exploitation of the most vulnerable members of our society.

that feeds on the spectator sport of child abuse and child victimization. if you have a lot of images of child pornography you ought to go to jail for a long time but if you possess child pornography ought to go to jail for at least ten years it's time to tell every judge in america to get tough on child pouring. that is what this bill would do and i urge the senate now to take this opportunity to act. i ask unanimous consent the committee on the judiciary be discharged from further consideration s3951 and the senate proceed to its immediate consideration. i further ask the bill be considered read a third time on past and the motion to reconsider be considered made and laid upon the table. >> is her objection? works mr. perez and precooked majority whip requests observint to object. i have to ask myself, why now? what is a junior senator from missouri bring this bill to the floor of the united states senate today?

when you think back, this matter has been considered originally the guidelines were considered in 1984, the question of child pornography came back to us in 2003. in 2005 there was a supreme court case about applying the guidelines on sentencing to these types of cases, case known as booker. wedo in 2005 that decision was handed down. we know in 2012 the sentencing commission said to congress and the world you need to do something here. these guidelines eat do not reflect the reality of today we know as well the guidelines were written, some were written in an era when the materials we are talking about were physical materials. we now live in a world of internet and access to not just tens and hundreds but thousands

of images if that is your decision. and all of these things have happened and we come here today, today. i do not know exactly how many years the senator of missouri has been the senate pay but to my knowledge this is his first bill on the subject that he has presented in the last few weeks. and i wonder why? why now? : : : >> this is the first time to my knowledge this is the firm under missouri really republican senators try to on this subject and why now and well, i know why and you said as much, it is because we are now considering e nomination of judge ketanji

brown jackson to the supreme court and the senator suggested that over the course of the last two weeks, then hearings before the judiciary that somehow this judge, this judge inspired the spring court is out of the mainstream when it comes to sentencing in child pornography cases is no coincidence that the senator from missouri comes to the floor today while judge ketanji brown jackson has been discharged from our committee by a bipartisan vote in the senate, last night rated as no coincidence that is raising this issue within hours or days before her confirmation vote that it is one more very transparent attempt to link judge ketanji brown jackson, confirmation with a highly emotional issue federal

sentencing when it comes to the child pornography or child exploitation and there are some political groups at least one, the manufacturers that child pornography and pedophilia and the like you, and even spires deadly reaction to them in there cheering for so on and i have seen the reaction already this morning the newspaper in there watching this and hoping that someone can keep this issue alive on the floor the united states senate floor and the senator from missouri is even gone so far as to make the outrageous claim that this moment,, and the mother of two wonderful girls what had a meet a mother who comes to this issue, not only as a judge but as the daughter and niece of law enforcement officials part of the family, and it works of the senate from missouri that this woman,

endangers children mr. van hollen: i ask unanimous consent that the quorum call be lifted. the presiding officer: without objection. mr. van hollen: thank you, madam president. later this week, the full senate will take up and vote on the nomination of judge ketanji brown jackson to be an associate justice of the supreme court of the united states. over the last several weeks, the congress and the country and indeed the world have gotten to know judge jackson. we have learned about her broad life experience, her exceptional career, her deep love of the law. judge jackson endured a verbal marathon of intense questioning from members of the judiciary committee. she endured challengeing and sometimes specious lines of questioning from some of our colleagues on the other side of the aisle, but through it all she shined.

she approached every moment of the hearing with grace, with wisdom, and with brilliance. her good judgment and sharp mind were on full display for all to see. she was unshakeable, she was inspiring. if confirmed she will make history as the first black woman to sit on the highest court of the land. with judge jackson on the top bench, we will get one step closer to ensuring that the supreme court of the united states looks like the nation it serves. and with judge jackson on the highest court we will be even closer to realizing the noble ideal inscribed on the face of the supreme court building, equal justice under law. madam president, her confirmation will be a victory for all of america. my state of maryland is also proud to have a small connection with judge jackson. not only did she reside in maryland for a beard of time --

period of time, but her brother served on the baltimore police department for seven years, and he has also served two tours of duty as a member of the maryland national guard. other members of her family also pursued careers in public service. two of her uncles were police officers, her parents were public schoolteachers. like her family members, ketanji brown jackson has taken up the mantle of public service, as a public defender, as a member of the u.s. sentencing commission, as a district court judge, and as a federal circuit court judge. it's no mystery why her nomination has been met with widespread praise. she's been lauded by the fraternal order of police and by the international association of chiefs of police. prominent republican-appointed judges and lawyers have spoken in favor of her confirmation.

the american bar association listed her as well qualified for the position to which she has been nominated, their highest rating. there is no question in my mind that she will serve our nation well and with distinction as the newest justice of the supreme court. and i will vote in favor of her confirmation this week, proudly. i've watched many of my colleagues on the other side of the aisle strain to find some justification for voting against judge jackson. they know she's highly qualified. they know she's a person of integrity. they know she has the training and judgment required of a supreme court justice. last week, one republican member of the senate judiciary committee called judge jackson, quote, a person of exceptionally good character, respected by her peers, and someone who has worked hard to achieve her current position, unquote. another republican member of the

committee noted that she has, quote, impeccable credentials, and a deep knowledge of the law, unquote. so, you would think these were words leading up to state support for justice jackson. but in both those cases, those senators have announced their decision to vote against her. the pattern is the same for too many of our republican colleagues -- come out and praise judge jackson, and then announce they're voting against her. so the question is why, what's the reasoning here. and i've been listening carefully. many of our colleagues tie their opposition to what they have called her, quote, judicial philosophy. they say judge jackson will push her own political ideology at the expense of the law. they say she's going to be an activist instead of a judge. they say she will create new

rights from the constitution out of whole cloth. in fact, that was a quote from my colleague, the senior senator from texas, who took to the floor last week opposing senator judge -- judge jackson's confirmation. when my friend from texas made that statement, i happened to be sitting where the presiding officer is right now, as presiding over the senate, and i listened very closely to his arguments, and others that were made along similar lines. and none of the claims that i have heard hold water when you look at the facts. because here's what judge jackson herself said during her confirmation hearing when asked about judicial restraint, quote, i am acutely aware that as a judge in our system i have limited power, and i'm trying in every case to stay in my lane, unquote.

this is not just a hollow promise. judge jackson has explained to this senate her clear methodology for ruling on cases to ensure that she stays in her lane. the methodology is simple -- step one, start from a position of neutrality. we've all seen the scales of justice. we want them to be evenly balanced. everybody walks into a court should get a fair shot. that's step one. step two, evaluate all of the facts from various perspectives. step three, apply the law to those facts. that's it. she was clear -- that's how she makes decisions. that's how she rules from the bench. so, what about the constitution itself, that great document? what about this notion that she would be a runaway justice, creating new rights from the constitution out of whole cloth

to use the language, expression of some of my colleagues? that too is just plain wrong. here's judge jackson again. she said, quote, i believe that the constitution is fixed in its meaning. i believe it's appropriate to look at the original intent, original public meaning of the words when one is trying to assess, because again that's a limitation on my authority to import my own policy, unquote. madam president, judge jackson understands the boundaries of her authority as a judge. she has stayed within those boundaries for over a decade on the federal bench. so enough of the spurious arguments that she's going to be an activist on the court. her method is clear, it's fair,

it's balanced, and honest, and i'm confident that her rulings will be clear, fair, balanced and honest. let's not forget this -- there are certain rights that most americans would acknowledge are central to our nation's traditions and values, but are not specifically and expressly enumerated in the constitution, not each and every one with its own sentence. i have a short list here -- the right to travel, the right to vote, the right to privacy, the right to marry. none of these rights are explicitly, expressly referenced in the text of the constitution, but all of them have been derived by a close analysis of the letter and spirit of our constitution and laws. these are rights we all embrace.

these are rights the american people don't want elected officials to be able to take away from them. and let's not forget that the first amendment as written only protects americans from federal action, from congressional action that would violate their right to freedom of religion, press, speech, and assembly. over the time the court has taken action to protect these rights in face of all government action, whether federal or state or local, to make sure that those rights are protected against all government action no matter what it's source. justices appointed by presidents of both parties have worked to protect rights americans hold dear. president reagan's appointee, justice anthony kennedy, wrote the majority opinion in the case

of obergefellv. hodges which protects the right of same-sex couples to marry. sandra day o'connor joined in the case of planned parenthood v. casey, which protected the liberties guaranteed under roe v. wade. let's be clear -- the supreme court considers the most challenging questions in american law. judge jackson will have to take on these challenging questions, like her peers on the court if she's confirmed. but one thing is crystal clear from her testimony and from the record -- she will apply the law based on the facts. she will not be a partisan in a robe. she will be a fair, independent justice of the supreme court. and she is very deserving of that title. madam president, i had the great

privilege of meeting with judge jackson just yesterday. during our conversation i was struck again by her brilliance, her intelligence, her kindness and resolve. that comes across on television during the hearings, but it was very evident in our one-on-one meeting. and i thought about another supreme court nominee who broke barriers nearly 55 years ago. a man from maryland, from baltimore, maryland, thurgood marshall, the first black man to serve on the supreme court of the united states. so, during my conversation with judge jackson i invited her to join me in west baltimore at p.s. 103. this is public school building 103. it's in west baltimore. it's the school where thurgood

marshall learned to read and write. it's no longer an active school. the building is in bad condition. just this year as part of omnibus appropriations bill, senator cardin and i were able to secure some federal funds to help renovate that building and to turn it into a living memorial to justice thurgood marshall. and to expand opportunities for people in west baltimore. and so i told judge jackson that once she gets settled, it would be a great honor and privilege to bring her the first black woman on the supreme court to the place where the first black man on the court grew up and went to school. justice marshall inspired a generation of leaders.

soon justice ketanji brown jackson will do the same. young people from all across our country will look at supreme court of the united states and feel more included. her presence on the court will be a victory for we -- for we the people. in 1978 justice thurgood marshall said to a group of university graduates, i quote, this is your democracy. make it, protect it, pass it on. madam president, i'm deeply honored to work alongside my colleagues in the senate to advance that vision as we all strive to form a more perfect union. and there is no doubt in my mind, no doubt at all, that elevating judge jackson to justice jackson will make our union a little more perfect. i yield the floor.

mr. van hollen: madam president. the presiding officer: the senator from maryland. mr. van hollen: madam president, i ask unanimous consent that the senate consider the following nomination, calendar number 659,

katherine vidal to be under secretary of congress to be director of the united states patent and trademark office. that the senate vote on the nomination without intervening action or debate. the motions to reconsider be considered made and laid upon the table. that any statements related to the nomination be printed in the record. that the president be immediately notified of the senate's action. the presiding officer: without objection, the clerk will report. the clerk: nomination, department of commerce, katherine vidal, of california, to be secretary of commerce for intellectual property and director of the united states patent and trademark office. the presiding officer: the question occurs on the nomination. all those in favor say aye. all opposed, no. the ayes appear to have it. the ayes do have it. the nomination is confirmed. mr. van hollen: madam president, i ask unanimous consent that the senate proceed to legislative

session and be in a period of morning business with senators permitted to speak therein for up to ten minutes each. the presiding officer: without objection. mr. van hollen: madam president, i understand that there is a bill at the desk and i ask for its first reading. the presiding officer: the clerk will read the title of the bill for the first time. the clerk: s. 4008, a bill to provide covid relief for restaurants and so forth. mr. van hollen: i now ask for a second reading and in order it to place the bill on the calendar under the provisions of rule 14, i object to my own request. the presiding officer: the objection being heard, the bill will be read for the second time on the next legislative day. mr. van hollen: madam president, i ask unanimous consent that the senate proceed to the immediate consideration of calendar number 277, s. 2123.

the presiding officer: the clerk will report. the clerk: calendar number 277, s. 2123, a bill to establish a clearing house on safety and security and so forth and for other purposes. the presiding officer: without objection, the senate will proceed. mr. van hollen: madam president, i ask unanimous consent that the committee-reported amendments be agreed to, the bill, as amended, be considered read a third time and passed, and the motions to reconsider be considered made and laid upon the table. the presiding officer: without objection. mr. van hollen: madam president, i ask unanimous consent that the senate proceed to the immediate consideration of h.r. 5681, which was received by the house and is at the desk. the presiding officer: the clerk will report. the clerk: h.r. 5681, be a act to authorize the reclassification of the tactical enforcement officers commonly known as the shadow wolves and so forth and for other purposes. the presiding officer: without

objection, the senate will proceed. mr. van hollen: madam president, i ask unanimous consent that the bill be considered read a third time and passed and the motions to reconsider be considered made and laid upon the table. the presiding officer: without objection. mr. van hollen: madam president, i ask unanimous consent that when the senate completes its business today, it adjourn until 10:00 a.m. on wednesday, april 6, and that following the prayer and pledge, the morning hour be deemed expired, the journal of proceedings be approved to date, the time for the two leaders be reserved for their use later in the day, and the morning business be closed. that upon the conclusion of morning business, the senate proceed to executive session to resume consideration of the nomination of ketanji brown jackson to be associate justice of the supreme court. that at 11:45 a.m., the senate execute the previous order with respect to the o'brien nomination and vote on the confirms of the nomination.

finally, if any nominations are confirmed during wednesday's session of the senate, the motions to reconsider be considered made and laid upon the table, and the president be immediately notified of the senate's action. the presiding officer: without objection. mr. van hollen: if there's no further business to come before the senate, i ask that it stand aid understand under the previous order. the presiding officer: the senate stands adjourned until 10:00 a.m. tomorrow. >> this is what has gaveled the day after spending much of today debating the supreme court nomination of judge ketanji final confirmation vote expected by the end of the week and the republican susan collins, and emery and also support the nomination, and also today senators advance the nomination of julia gordon to be an assistant secretary for housing and urban development, vice president here's will be - 50/50 type vote results in an effort to move forward with $10 billion

in covid-19 relief that vote failed to meet the required 60 vote special majority leader chuck schumer changes smoke from yes to know in order to bring that legislation back up again at another time and as always you can follow the senate live when they return here on "c-span2". >> the recent increase in fuel prices, health energy in congress committee has testimony from the oil company executives throughout their business practices in the fossil fuel industry's roll in here from the, chevron, devon energy exxon mobil and pioneer national resources and shall, wash live and wednesday at 10:30 a.m. eastern on c-span three, alina cspan.org or watch full coverage on c-span now free video app. to echo this month watch the top 21 videos from our c-span student kim video competition it every morning c-span's washington journal one student

winter documentary how the federal government impacted the lives and you can watch the student camp documentaries anytime alone, a student kim .org. >> c-span john filter to view of, funded by these television companies and more including charter communications. >> broadband is a force for empowerment, that's why tarter has invested billions, building infrastructure upgrading technology and empowering opportunity in communities big and small. charter, is connecting us. >> charter communications support cspan it is a public service, along with these other television providers, giving a front row seat to democracy. >> today the u.s. senate officially began it debate on the nomination of judge ketanji brown jackson it to the u.s. supreme court, next we will show