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tv   U.S. Senate U.S. Senate  CSPAN  September 21, 2022 9:59am-2:00pm EDT

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titled "the coming soviet crises", during the first years after, she's been in and out of politics and worked with three presidential candidates, bob dole, ben carson and president trump. he voted her for the federal reserve and it was controversial and joe biden's administration withdrew in february of 2021. judy shelton on book notes plus. it's available on c-span now noble app mobile app or wherever you get your podcasts. >> the senate works on a global climate treaty speaking an amendment to reduce gases commonly used in air conditioning and refrigerators. this week expect today work on president biden disclosure
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patch which would require so-called dark money group to disclose donors who give $10,000 or more during an election cycle and live now to the floor of the u.s. senate here on c-span2. senate will come to order. the chaplain dr. barry black will lead the senate in prayer. the chaplain: let us pray. our heavenly father, you are our mighty fortress. continue to be for us, a bulwark that never fails. lord, inspire our lawmakers to do your will. direct them in their work, empower them to meet each challenge and shield them from discouragement.
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may they not depart from your purposes for their lives, in their thoughts, words, or deeds. lord, give our senators the discipline to relinquish the sprifort of self--- the spirit of self-importance for the spirit of self-sacrifice. give them also the certainty that you are guiding their lives. we pray in your merciful name. amen. the presiding officer: please join me in reciting the pledge of allegiance to the flag. i pledge allegiance to the flag of the united states of america, and to the republic for which it stands, one nation under god, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all.
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the presiding officer: the clerk will read a communication to the senate. the clerk: washington d.c., september 21, 2022. to the senate: under the provisions of rule 1, paragraph 3, of the standing rules of the senate, i hereby appoint the honorable ben ray lujan, a senator from the state of new mexico, to perform the duties of the chair. signed: patrick j. leahy, president pro tempore. the presiding officer: under the previous order, the leadership time is reserved. morning business is closed. under the previous order, the senate will proceed to executive session and resume consideration of the following treaty which the clerk will report. the clerk: calendar number 2, treaty doc. 117-1, amendment to montreal protocol, kigali amendment.
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and as we recognize national preparedness month, today's hearing on preparedness and resilience is timely. preparedness and resilience of infrastructure in particular water infrastructure
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hits close to my community of jackson, mississippi, suffers serious flooding last month which contributed to the failure of a water pumping station and left more than 100,000 of my constituents without clean water or appropriate managed wastewater. residents could not use the water coming out of their faucets to brush their teeth, bays or wash the dishes. the lack of water led to school and business closure, and tens of millions of gallons of untreated wastewater closed. the state has recently lifted boil water advisory but sporadic boil water notices continue in the city. this crisis is not over and will not be over until we fix the underlying problems that caused it, starting with a lack of investment in critical
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infrastructure such as our water systems. jackson is not alone. in the area around the country -- many areas have struggled with aging infrastructure, particularly in communities of color and low income areas. in fact, the water systems that consistently violate federal drinking water standards, 40% of them serve communities of color. that is not a coincidence. studies show black and brown communities are more likely to bear the brunt of natural disasters. to make matters worse, infrastructure investment and disaster assistance are often directed to areas that already have more resources rather than those that desperately need it. i have seen this time and time again as the dollars are steered away from communities like those i represent. fema and its partners must do a better job of ensuring that
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states provide federal funding to those communities most in need. for years i've been a champion of equity. this congress i was proud to see my legislation, the fema equity act, passed the house as part of the national defense authorization act. i intend for this legislation to be part of a concerted effort to address the lack of equity in infrastructure investment, disaster assistance funding and other federal programs. i applaud the biden administration's commitment to that work and no knowledge everything in my power to ensure that we make real progress for jackson and communities like mine across the united states. to that end i am looking forward to having a fruitful discussion today about how we can invest in infrastructure, improve preparedness and bolster resilience to our communities,
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so that all communities have the tools they need to weather the storms we face. without i look forward to the discussion today and i think the witnesses for their participation. the chair recognizes the ranking member of the full committee the gentleman from new york mr. katko for an opening statement. >> thank you very much, mr. char sentiments and before i begin i like to say i'm encouraged to hear mr. chairman, that the water service of been restored in jackson, mississippi. i realize there is more work to be done. it is my sincere hope the situation continues to move in the right direction. my understanding fema u.s. army corps of engineers and the u.s. environmental protection agency article he working with mississippi emergency management agency and the city of jackson to identify longer-term solutions to improve the water infrastructure in jackson. jackson symptomatic a lot of our
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communities nationwide. flint, michigan, for example, and many others. i'm heartened by the fact we have a massive infrastructure bill that we passed peer copeland will provide a lot more dollars to these jurisdictions and the life of the i do not understand how not everyone supported that infrastructure bill. it's times like this we realize how important it really is. hope for the process for jackson was quickly because access to clean water is critical to the overall health and economic security. i want to express my concerns for the ongoing situation in puerto rico. hurricane fiona has caused catastrophic flooding and islandwide blackout. his most recent hurricane comes about what puerto rico still recovering from previous hurricanes which devastated island five years ago. i lived in puerto rico as a prosecutor in the mid-'90s and i was struck by how dilapidated the infrastructure was then. from what i can see it is gotten worse and we need to help them
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as well. with this might want to thank the chairman crowley to support hearing and the threats facing our nation's critical infrastructure, with a particular focus on water infrastructure. america's aging infrastructure systems are increasingly susceptible to ransomware and cyber attacks and our water systems are no exception. in february 2021 hacker remotely altered the chemicals in water treatment system in florida here the plant operator noticed the attack, its estimated a city of about 15,000 people would have been exposed to highly poisonous levels of chemicals in their water. this incident demonstrated firsthand the real world and devastating consequences a cyber attack can have on our systems. unfortunately the attack in florida was not an anomaly. for this reason introduced the department of homeland security and astral control system enhancement act of 2021.
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legislation which was cosponsored by the chairman which i appreciate would solidify the savagery infrastructure security agencies or cisa lead role in protecting our nation's critical infrastructure. particularly industrial control systems from cyber threats. the committee cybersecurity also just held a hearing on industrial control system cybersecurity which further example files how congress has taken this issue very seriously. in addition to being susceptible to cyber attacks him aging water infrastructure also pose a growing threat to economic growth public health and our environment. in central new york we are no strangers to the challenges caused by water infrastructure. in the finger lakes region harmful algae blooms present health risk while sustained water levels continue threat homes and businesses in communities along lake ontario. that is why during my time in countryside led efforts to modernize our water systems and worked hard to provide safe clean and reliable drinking
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water to all of my constituents. most recently i was proud to introduce the water infrastructure modernization act of 2021. my legislation would expand on local efforts to develop and deploy smart water technology in central new york. i making this technology more widespread we will be taking meaningful steps to improve water quality and bow to the reliability and sustainability of our water systems. in addition to producing this legislation i've also worked with colleagues on both sides of the aisle to ensure robust funding for the primary federal programs that assist state and local government with water infrastructure needs. drinking water and the clean water funds. since the grecian these programs have provided billions in interest-free loans and grants to state and local governments with water infrastructure needs. i was proud to support the recent bipartisan infrastructure built as i mentioned to bolster these crucial funding streams and to maintain this advocacy for the congressional appropriations process.
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as demand continues to grow it is critical we month, every nation on earth came together for the first time in human history to sign on to a global accord to save the planet's dying ozone layer. it was a convergence unlike any before, uniting not just every member of the united nations, but in time also the european union and even the holy sea. that accord, of course, was the montreal protocol, hailed by then u.n. secretary general kofi annan as, quote, perhaps the single most successful international agreement to date. today the senate will finish the work of ratifying the kigali amendment to the protocol when we vote later today here on the floor. ratifying the kigali amendment will require two-thirds of the senate. i want to thank every member, democratic and republican alike, who voted yesterday to move forward on this measure. our country, our businesses, and
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our planet will benefit because of it. i hope we can see that same level of support today. in a year where we've already seen plenty of major bipartisan bills become law, the kigali amendment might just be one of the most important bipartisan achievements to date. less heralded, but maybe more important, because this measure will go a long way to lowering global temperatures while also creating tens of thousands of american jobs and deal with the fact that china rarely participates in global cooperation when it comes to putting their own economy and jobs ahead of ours. as i've explained, the kigali amendment will signal the u.s.' commitment to phase down the use of dangerous industrial chemicals, known as hfc's, by 80% over the next 15 wreers. hfc's are found practically in every home in america, and around the world. inside the vast majority of
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refrigerators, air conditioner units, aerosols, insulating foams and more. experts say if we can meet the goals set forth by the kigali amendment we can reduce global temperatures by about half a degree celsius by the end of the century. that's huge. we struggle to get that reduction down, to get that increase down. and this is a big, big step forward for that. half a degree might sound like a rounding error to some, but in truth it is very, very, very significant. but equally significant, however, are the tens of billions in new investments that will be up for grabs if we ratify this amendment. every year millions and millions of refrigerators and a.c. units are sold around the world, and the u.s. ranks near the top of refrigerator exports. all of these products will need viable hfc refrigerant alternatives move forward, and we need to take every step available to make sure those alternatives are provided by
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american companies and american workers, driven by american ingenuity. by one measure, ratifying the kigali amendment will generate nearly $39 billion in investments here in america in the next five years. when combined with other steps we've taken to transition away from hfc's testimony will create tens of thousands of new american jobs and increase u.s. heating, ventilation, and refrigeration export by 25% in a few short years, by 2027. let me say that all again. tens of thousands in new american jobs, nearly $39 billion in new investments, a surge in u.s. exports. all of that is on the table if we finish our work to ratify this amendment today. there is every reason in the world to say yes. there's really no downside to ratification. the kigali amendment will not overrule or change any current
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u.s. law. it will require no one to replace their appliances at home. the u.s. will be able to lead the international process of implementing kigali, ebb shorin. businesses will set the terms of implementation that benefit them. congress will be perfectly free to change domest domestic polico adapt to new technologies without having to worry about this agreement. even without the kigali amendment, the u.s. has already taken steps to transig away from hfc's and u.s. businesses have been the leading ones -- have been the ones leading the way. it's no surprise that groups like the u.s. chamber of commerce, the american chemistry council, the air-conditioning, heating and refrigerateiation institution, and even companies like walmart and honeywell all support the kigali amendment. in many ways, this is sort of a legislative layup. it's low-hanging fruit to secure billions in growth and tens of thousands of good-paying jobs. again, there's every reason in the world to say yes, and
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practically no reason to say no. so, for the sake of u.s. businesses, for the sake of u.s. workers, for the sake of u.s. exporters and u.s. investment, and for the sake of leadership in safeguarding our planet, i urge my colleagues to vote yes on ratifying kigali later today. now, on disclose, in 12 years, since conservatives on the supreme court ruled in citizens united, our elections have become rank, rank with the stench of dark money. soon the senate will vote to erase this foulness when we hold the first procedural vote to take up the disclose act. this has been a long time coming coming, and credit goes to senator whitehouse, perhaps the senate's most valiant enemy of dark money. i commend him. i thank him. and i stand with him in his efforts to shine a light on the
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corrosive power of dark money in our elections. no one has done more to shine the light on this evil, evil thing. in free and fair elections, one person, one vote, american voters should know, should alone have the power to determine the nation's leaders. without fear that their voices will be drowned out by powerful elites or special interests. sadly, unfortunately, dark money has rendered this ideal a fantasy. the idea of one person, one vote has been washed away by cascades of dark, undisclosed money pouring into our electoral system. today, the average american, someone who might chip in $30 or $50 every now and then to support a candidate is left practically powerless against billionaires and special interests who can cut million-dollar checks to promote candidates of their choice. who here thinks that is a
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healthy democracy? because of today's broken campaign finance laws, many of these donations happen entirely in secret. it is a veil cast over our democracy that leaves vast majorities of voters behind, and the problem is not just limbed to our elections, mr. president. oh, no. dark money has also corroded the judicial nomination process as special interest groups spend tens of millions to push extremist judges onto the federal bench. i believe that the awful decision in dobbs was greatly affected by the fact that dark money is undisclosed. the disclose act operates off a simple premise -- a healthy democracy is a transparent democracy, one where billionaires and megacorporations don't get at that free pass to exploit loopholes in campaign finance law in order to spend billions in anonymous contributions. that is the antithesis of
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democracy. this shouldn't be a democratic or republican view. after all, when was the last time any of us heard voters celebrate the spread of dark money? when was the last time any of us heard voters say it's better for billionaires and special interests to buy elections in secret, rather than be held accountable to the public? of course, the public doesn't think that, unless they themselves, the few, are cutting million-dollar checks. in secret. even the republican leader, who has dedicated much of his career, to killing many campaign reforms, used to say in the distant past that disclosure and transparency a is a good thing for elections. unfortunately, that was a long time ago. now all we hear from the other side are the be a sushed -- and these are -- is the absurd -- and these are truly absurd arguments -- that transparency somehow equates to suppressing freedom of elections. tying logic and fairness into a pretzel knot to say that
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transparency is like we're suppressing freedom of expression is absurd! imagine, imagine this, imagine being on the side of millionaires and billionaires who no longer have the luxury of influencing our election ares by cutting million-dollar checks in total anonymity. what a tragedy of isn't that a shame? these poor billionaires and millionaires might have to disclose what they're doing. of course, of course, imagining being on the side of those millionaires and billionaires is ridiculous. if a multibillionaire wants to spend colossal sums on candidates who are deeply antichoice, or who support insurrectionists, which some of these dark money special interest maga republicans do, shouldn't the public have a right at least to know, simply to know it? if someone wants to come here on the floor and argue otherwise,
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god help our democracy. louis d. brandeis said over a century ago that sunlight is the best of disinfectants. the disclose act would put that into practice. so if you agree that the american people have a right to know who is trying to influence their elections, support the disclose act. if you agree that america's representatives should only have one boss, the people, and not special interests, then support the disclose act. democracy cannot prosper without transparency. dark money, hidden secrets are the hallmark of dictatorships, left and right. we in democracy need transparency. i thank senator whitehouse for all he has done. i strongly support passing this legislation to keep the dream of our founders alive, alive in this century. i yield the floor and note the absence of a quorum. the presiding officer: the clerk will call the roll.
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quorum call:
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quorum call:
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mr. mcconnell: mr. president. the presiding officer: republican leader. mr. mcconnell: i ask consent that further proceedings under the quorum call be dispensed with. the presiding officer: without objection. mr. mcconnell: on sunday's edition of "60 minutes," president biden made a bizarre attempt to deny the american people's pain from democrats' runaway inflation. after the latest nationwide data reported that consumer prices are rising at 8.3% year on year,
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the president suggested the country should be celebrating that they weren't rising even faster. working americans aren't buying that insulting spin. middle-class families aren't rejoicing that daily life costs 8.3% more than it did a year ago. in parma, ohio, one local grocer is working hard to keep her prices competitive but admits, quote, we've been getting hit with all of our suppliers with chicken, ground meat, everything. and in fairfield county, the head of one organization that helps feed folks experiencing economic hardship put it this way -- i think things are going to get a whole lot darker and a lot more bleak before they get a lot better. we're desperately worried about
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food. across the border in west virginia in fayette county, persistent high prices have one retired grandmother worried about how the rest of her family is making ends meet. she said i'm already stressed and stressed and trying to figure out how my daughter is going to pay to keep the lights on, get groceries, get school clothes for her kids' back. in pennsylvania one shopper told a reporter that besides cutting back at the grocery store, she'd taken on a second job working nights at a warehouse to help feed her family of four. this is what she had to say. clothing, gas, just about everybody has gone up and food is a large part of it. meanwhile, the head of a small manufacturer in big bend, wisconsin, reports that amid price hikes, stacked up supply
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chains, quote, trying to source products has been very difficult. in each of these states' cases, west virginia, ohio, wisconsin, and pennsylvania, one senator tried to spare working families from all this preventable pain. each of those states has one republican senator who warned about inflation, who voted against inflation, and who voted for amendments that would have reduced inflation. but unfortunately, each one of those states also had a democratic senator who decided to vote in a partisan lockstep to plow ahead with the trillions of dollars of reckless inflationary spending. one senator each from west virginia, ohio, pennsylvania, and wisconsin cast the tie-breaking votes to bring this pain down on their citizens' heads and now sadly they're all paying the price. working families in west virginia are paying washington
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democrats inflation tax to the tune of an extra $563 a month. ohioans are paying $666 more. in pennsylvania inflation is squeezing folks for an extra $ $605 and in wisconsin it's $673. families in these states are paying a painful price for the deciding vote that their democratic senators chose to cast. now, on a related matter, democrats' runaway inflation includes skyrocketing costs to keep the lights on or heat or cool homes. we're also witnessing the dangers of vulnerabilities in places like california, the dangers they have built into their electrical grids. california democrats have spent years putting green lifestyle preferences ahead of the basic needs of working families.
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the result is a grid that's both more expensive and less reliable. we've seen the same california democrats who spent years pushing their citizens to buy expensive electric cars now begging the public not to plug them in. and even as california teeters on the brink of an energy crisis of european proportions, washington democrats are pushing the rest of the country in the very same risky direction. they made their signature priority for this year's spending even more of the people's money to take us even farther in the wrong direction
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even faster. last month our democratic colleagues rammed through a gigantic party line bill that raises taxes on reliable domestic american energy in order to subsidize wealthy people buying electric cars or fancy new appliances. every democratic senator cast the deciding vote for that reckless spending spree. that includes the senior senator from for west virginia who claims he only did so because the democratic leader promised him that democrats would line up behind permitting reform to make it easier to build things and complete projects in our country. but now very predictably, this backroom deal is crumbling before our eyes. almost 60 days after our colleague from west virginia gave up his vote for this vague promise, it still appears that far left and house democrats want no part of this backroom deal that they didn't sign on to. as for the republican side, our
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colleague senator capito has put forward a real, actual substantive permitting reform bill that would make the commonsense changes our country needs. senator capito's substitute bill stands in stark contrast to what every indication thus far suggests will be weak reform in name only legislation from her home state colleague. as luck would have it, senator capito's real plan is also closer to passing the senate than senator manchin's reform in name only plan. senator manchin recently told reporters that his version may need 20 republican votes to become law, but senator capito's plan only needs senator manchin and nine other democrats to get on board. we're talking about real substantive reform that is already closer to becoming law. but so far our democratic colleague from west virginia has refused to back his colleague's
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commonsense proposal. he's shown little appetite to actually get something accomplished. so, mr. president, talk is cheap. if our colleague across the aisle wants real permitting reform, senator capito's fantastic bill only needs senator manchin plus nine more democrats to clear this chamber. otherwise it would appear the senior senator from west virginia traded his vote on a massive liberal boondoggle in exchange for nothing. now, one final matter. finally with all these national crises hammering families, the democratic majority is using the senate's schedule to demonstrate they do not care. the democratic leader is not spending floor time on a bill that combats democrats' inflation crisis or their migration crisis or violent crime crisis or their energy crisis. not on legislation to help american families' daily lives in any way. instead the democratic leader
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set up a vote to erode the first amendment and make political speech more difficult. instead of trying to address the root causes of their unpopularity, democrats are attacking the american people's ability to speak out against them. the democrats tried to ram through their political takeover bills like a zombie disclose act once or twice every year. this legislation would give democratic friends in the unelected bureaucracy even more power to police political speech and activism of private citizens. remember, donations to political action committees and election nonprofits are already publicly disclosed. that's already the law. what democrats want is a huge new step that would reduce private citizens' privacy and chill america's constitutional rights. the same democrats who wouldn't condemn angry mobs gathering outside the private family homes of federal judges now believe that a vastly, more -- that
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vastly more information about private citizens' political views should be made public. it's no mystery how these things fit together. even the liberal aclu warned years ago that what the democrats want to pull off, quote, unconstitutionally infringes on freedom of speech and the right to association of privacy. i don't often say the aclu has it right but they do here. instead of addressing the reasons why americans are upset with democrats, democrats are trying to legislate our citizens into sitting down and shutting up. the presiding officer: the senator from nevada. ms. rosen: mr. president, in the months since the conservative majority on the supreme court
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struck down roe v. wade, the assault on reproductive rights by antichoice, maga republicans has been relentless. antichoice states across the country have already enacted strict and rigid abortion bans that strip our rights away, threatened to jail women and their doctors, and put women's health at risk. and just as we have always known, this threat is not just at the state level. last week legislation was introduced in this very chamber that would enact a national abortion ban, one that would strip women of the fundamental right to control their own bodies. this abortion ban -- and that's exactly what it is -- a nationwide abortion ban -- poses a real serious and very real threat to the rights of women across this country.
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this is a dangerous nationwide government mandate that would threaten women, threaten their doctors, threaten with jail time, including those in my state of nevada. pro-choice states like nevada where the people voted overwhelmingly to protect reproductive freedoms as part of state law would be forced, forced to have abide by this federal mandate. because federal law supersedes state law, this legislation would override the will of nevadans and the freedom, the freedom that they've had for decades. if antichoice republicans in congress have their way and their national abortion ban passes, then listen to this. nevada doctors could be prosecuted. nevada women could be jailed. and nevada women could die as a result of lack of access to
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care. so let's be clear. the only thing standing in the way of their national abortion ban is a pro-choice majority in the united states senate. and i will do everything i can to fight this legislation threatening our reproductive rights not just in nevada but across the country. that's why i helped introduce the let doctors provide reproductive health care act along with senators murray, padilla, and presiding officer mr. president senator lujan to protect doctors in states like nevada where abortion remains legal from facing, from facing prosecution and potentially jailed by antichoice states. no doctor -- let me repeat this. no doctor should ever be jailed for providing women with reproductive and often lifesaving care they need wherever these women are from.
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no doctor should ever be jailed for providing care. antichoice republicans in the senate have blocked these efforts in the past as they continue to push for dangerous bans. today, today we have another opportunity to protect doctors and their patients by passing this legislation without obstruction or delay. because let's be clear. we will, we will not give up. we will not allow a national abortion ban to pass the senate. we will not allow doctors to face prosecution for doing their jobs. and we must, we must protect a woman's right to choose and continue fighting against this ban every step of the way. thank you, mr. president. i yield back.
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mr. thune: mr. president. the presiding officer: the republican whip. mr. thune: mr. president, on sunday the president appeared on 60 minutes where he was asked what he was going to do to help alleviate inflation. in light of august' continued grim inflation news and the resulting stock market nosedive. the president's response? and i quote, well, first of all, let's put this in perspective. inflation rate month to month was just -- just an inch. hardly at all. end quote. let's put this in perspective? mr. president, that might be something to say if the inflation rate had ticked up from, say, 2%, the target
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inflation rate, to 2.1%. but i'm pretty sure that's not the appropriate thing to say when you're talking about the sixth straight month of inflation above 8% and the ninth straight month of inflation at or above 7%. and the 11th straight month of inflation above 6%. and even more concerning than august consumer price index rising 8.3% from the same month a year ago was the increase in core inflation, a measure of inflation minus the volatile categories of food and energy. this measure increased to 6.3% in august, up from 5.9% in both june and july suggesting that inflation is sinking its roots even deeper into various sectors of our economy. or in the words of a cnbc headline from last week, and i quote, inflation isn't just about fuel costs anymore as
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price increases broaden across the economy. end quote. of course, you don't have to take my word for it about the mess we're in. here is what one of president obama's top economic advisers had to say last week after august inflation numbers came out. again, i quote. today's cpi report confirms that the u.s. has a serious inflation problem. core inflation is higher this month than for the quarter, higher this quarter than last quarter, higher this half of the year than the previous one, and higher last year than the previous one. end quote. let's put this in perspective in that's what president biden had to say? mr. president, here is the american people's perspective -- 57% of americans disapprove of president biden's handling of the economy. 37% of voters say president biden's policies hurt them
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personally, versus just 15% who say his policies have helped them. these numbers are no surprise. the president may somehow still believe he's creating an economy that will, quote, work for working families, but the reality is in the biden economy working americans are suffering. americans' utility bills are soaring. their grocery bills have ballooned. and they're paying $1.30 more a gallon every time they fill up their car than they were when president biden was elected. real wages have dropped every single month since democrats passed their $1.9 trillion american rescue plan spending speed, a bill that helped plunge our economy into our current inflation crisis. 40% of americans report having difficulty paying for their normal household expenses. americans are dipping into their savings or working side jobs to make ends meet. they're charging more day-to-day expenses on their credit cards.
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in too many cases they're having to visit food banks, which are seeing huge lines thanks to continued high inflation. what are democrats and the president doing about this? nothing. of course, last month, democrats did pass a bill they called the inflation reduction act. the problem? the bill will do nothing to reduce inflation. nothing. again, you don't have to take my word for it. the nonpartisan penn wharton budget model said this about the bill's impact on inflation, again i quote, the impact on inflation is statistically indistinguishable from zero. statistically indistinguishable from zero. or take the word of the democrat chairman of the budget committee, who admitted right here on the senate floor that the so-called infrastructure woonts reduce -- the so-called inflation reduction act would
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not reduce inflation. it's not just that democrats have done nothing to solve the inflation crisis. they're on track to make the swigs worse. in -- the situation worse. in august, president biden announced a massive student loan giveaway that could cost anywhere from an estimated $500 billion to more than $1 trillion. and that from the committee for responsible federal budget notes, and i quote, meaningfully boost inflation. this is the statement from the committee for a responsible federal budget talking about the president's massive student loan giveaway. they say it will, quote, meaningfully boost inflation. or as the president of the committee for responsible federal budget recently put it, amid 40-year, and i quote again, amid 40-year high inflation, and despite the administration constantly touting its fiscal responsibility, these changes will recklessly add to the debt
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and make the federal reserve's job in fighting inflation even harder, which will amplify our risk of entering a recession, end quote. many of us would argue we're already in a recession, two consecutive quarters of negative gdp growth. inflation has spent eight straight months at 40-year highs, and the president has decided that now is a good time to implement a policy that will, quote, meaningfully boost inflation. mr. president, the economy continues to show signs of weakening, driven in large part by the inflation crisis democrats helped create. major companies have recently announced job cuts. 63% of small businesses are putting a hold on hiring, and 10% of those are cutting jobs. we had economic growth, as i mentioned, for the past two quarters.
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so naturally, naturally, democrats decided this was a good time to raise taxes on businesses. yes, democrats' so-called inflation reduction act imposes new taxes on businesses to help pay for their green new deal spending. i'd say taxes on businesses, but of course, taxes on businesses largely fall on workers and consumers in the form of fewer jobs and opportunities, lower wages, and higher prices. in other words, pretty much the exact opposite of what we need right now. with prices soaring and wages falling -- or failing, i should say, to keep pace with inflation. the inflation reduction act also imposes new taxes on energy that will drive up energy prices for both american families and american businesses, imposing further pain on family budgets
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and likely prolonging our inflation crisis even further. mr. president, the president may have wanted to build an economy from the bottom up and the middle out, as he has described it. instead, he and his fellow democrats have helped create an economy in which working families are struggling to make it from one paycheck to the next. and thanks to the additional tax-and-spend policies the democrats have recently implemented, working families are likely to be struggling for some time to come. mr. president, i yield the floor. mrs. murray: mr. president. the presiding officer: the senator from washington. mrs. murray: thank you, mr. president. mr. president, last week republicans made clear that despite the clear outcry from people across the country overturning roe was just their
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first step. republicans want a national abortion ban. republicans want to force my constituents to stay pregnant, even when they do not want to be and go after the doctors who provide abortion care. well, i'm here today to continue to say, in no uncertain terms, democrats are not going to stand for it. while republicans are busy threatening the rights of women in every state across the country, and threatening doctors with jail time, democrats are here to defend abortion rights and defend the doctors that provide that care. because even before republicans dropped their national abortion ban bill, i was hearing there providers in my home state of washington who are facing a huge influx of patients due to republicans' extreme bans. just yesterday the texas trib yiewb shared -- the "texas tribune" shared the
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heartbreaking story of the woman who learned the pregnancy she had wanted so badly was incompatible with life. that her daughter was developing without a skull or brain. but because republicans in texas think they know better than this woman or her doctor, she had to travel for treatment, from dallas all the way to seattle, to get the care she needed. and providers on the ground in my state tell me there are so many more patients being forced to make a trek like that. they are worried about caring for them, and not just because it's for so many more patients, not just because republicans are straining resources and causing a health care crisis that puts women's lives at risk. health care professionals are also deeply worried about how republicans' extreme laws threaten their practices. they are terrified republicans will take away their livelihoods and even their freedom. just for doing their jobs, just
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for providing the care their patients need, care that is, once again, completely legal in my state. and they're right to be scared. when it comes to republicans' extreme no-holds-barred antiabortion agenda, the writing is on the wald, and it has -- on the wall and has been for some time. even before this latest bill, republican state lawmakers were already drafting legislation that would make it a crime to provide abortion care to a residents, even in another state where it's legal. and they were doing this while at the same time trying to claim they didn't want to throw doctors in prison. on top of all of that, they were standing in the way of the bill i will offer today to protect health care providers. now, this is a really straightforward bill. it simply protects doctors providing legal abortion care. last time i tried to pass it, the junior senator from indiana
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said he was concerned about this bill, quote, allowing abortions for anyone who crosses state lines and is not a resident of that state. in other words, republicans are worried about all the patients i mentioned earlier, who are traveling to washington state seeking abortion care that they urgently need. republicans don't think they should be able to travel to washington state to get health care, and they want to allow other states to target washington state doctors, to threaten them for providing legal abortion care. that is extreme. it's not what doctors want, and it's definitely not what the american people want. women and men across the country do not want politicians making their health care decisions and throwing their doctors in prison. they want to be able to make their own disingses about their own -- their own decisions about their own bodies, their own families, their own future. they want doctors to be able to focus on doing their jobs, not fearing a jail sentence.
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i urge my republican colleagues to step aside and allow us to pass the let doctors provide reproductive health care act. this legislation is so straightforward. it protects doctors providing legal abortion care, and ensures they can practice medicine and save lives without fear of legal threats and intimidation. it makes clear that the attacks we have seen on doctors are unacceptable, and that politicians should not be harassing or scaring or investigating, threatening, or punishing doctors for providing care that is perfectly legal, that patients want, and that in many cases is even necessary to save lives. now, if republicans have been doing what i've been doing, they've been actually listening to doctors and patients, then they should reverse course and let us get this commonsense bill passed. if they continue blocking these steps, if they continue ignoring the outcry from every corner of
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the country, if they continue to undermine the health of waishts seeking care and the -- patients seeking care and freedom of health care providers doing their jobs, they should know we are not going to stop pushing back. there is too much at stake. so mr. president, as if in legislation session, i ask unanimous consent the judiciary committee be discharged from further consideration of s. 4723, the senate proceed to its immediate consideration, further that the bill be considered read a third time and passed and the motion to reconsider be considered made and laid upon the tabling. the presiding officer: is there objection? mr. braun: mr. president. the presiding officer: the senator from indiana. mr. braun: reserving the right to object. i'm glad that the supreme court has returned the issue of life back to the people's elected representatives, where it should have stayed 49 years ago. this legislation denies state representatives the right to
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make laws protecting life. this bill is an attempt to undermine state laws that protect life by allowing abortions for anyone who crosses state lines and is not a resident of the state. moreover, it gives the department of justice $40 million in grant funding to help people sue states, to help people sue states that enact policies to protect life. the department of health and human services is given another $40 million in funding for any eligible center at secretary becerra's discretion. this funding is not protected by the hyde amendment, and most likely we're going to borrow every penny of it, like we do for most things in this place. we should not spend $80 million to undermine state laws on life
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or impose a legislative backdoor for abortion on demand across our nation. for these reasons, mr. president, i oppose this bill and i do object. mrs. murray: mr. president. the presiding officer: the senator from washington. mrs. murray: mr. president, i'm deeply disappointed. i'm not surprised. we continue to see republicans show their true, harsh colors, and the contrast with democrats could not be more stark. we simply want people to get the health care they need and let them make their own medical decisions. republicans want to ban abortion nationwide. we want to protect doctors. republicans want to threaten and penalize or even jail them, just for doing their job, even when they are following their state's laws. mr. president, rest assured i will continue speaking up for our health care providers, for families, for patients, and as we continue to see this
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extremism i want to assure everybody i'm not going to stop fighting. mr. president, someone should be allowed to travel out of their own state to get the health care they need. it is unbelievable that the republicans blocked this bill. thank you. i yield the floor. i suggest the absence of a quorum. the presiding officer: the clerk will call the roll. quorum call:
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you said just to secure the federal grant you talk about
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different things a lot of them are part-time and people working a part-time the only answer we need to have more people intercept utility, fema and the federal program and make it easier and more in line to take care of the problems, for the
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fact, during the bike they said if they can't hire certified operators whether they have the funding or whatever how many are they going to be dedicating cybersecurity and how are the cyber security personnel and the threat that we face today, is it just increase funding or tell me what else they can do. >> i don't have the full answer to that was small communities i could tell you a lot of communities around the country still don't have access to computers. not even rural areas, they don't have it people, the only thing i can describe for reasonable answer is national water association is the state affiliation the all 50 states have and provides the resources that we need and more people in
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the situation to educate them as best as we can in the resources they have, to have a 100% answer to that, i'm sorry ma'am i don't if i did i'd be a rich guy i don't have a lot of answers to a lot of situations i can only offer what we can do now objection. mr. barrasso: thank you. i come to the floor today to oppose the kigali amendment, that's the united nations treaty that's under consideration in this body today. two years ago this body, the united states senate, passed a bipartisan bill. the goal of the bill was to reduce hydrofluorocarbons, hfc's, and do it domestically. we passed it, signed it into law. now, these hfc's, these are gases that are used in refrigerators, air conditioners, fire ex-tipping wishers and in insulation. they also contribute significantly to greenhouse gas emissions. so i worked in a bipartisan way to build a coalition of senators
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to pass the bill. two years later, here we are. the law is now in effect in the united states. parts of the law are still being implemented. yet now today we are being asked to sign onto treaty obligations at the united nations that i believe are solely unnecessary. we've already passed bipartisan legislation to reduce hfc consumption, and it has already become the law of the land. many of the benefits and the jobs that are being touted are u.s. innovations, and it's a result of that you are domestic legislation -- and it's a result of our domestic legislation, not ratification of some u.n. treaty. we did it here. we did itreavement i say we don't need to get -- we did it right. i say we don't need to get
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entangled now in another united nations treaty. our law could be amended, if we like. it could be repealed, it could be replaced. the u.s. could make changes quickly. it is much harder if not impossible to do it with an international treaty. in fact, when you take a look at the kigali treaty and amendment, there's actually no way to withdraw from it if we ratify and join in. when i take a look at it, it is especially bad because it doubles down on the practice of treating china -- yes, china -- as a developing country, and the key word here is developing. china is is not a developing country. but this treaty says they are a developing country, and it makes a big difference in terms of the treaty and way that china is treated internationally. because it gives china special
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treatment, and tell you, mr. president, they don't deserve the kind of treatment that they would get with this. under this treaty, china would get an extra ten years, an extra decade, to produce hfc's. well, this places us, the united states, in a competitive disadvantage -- at a competitive disadvantage with china for ten additional years. interestingly -- and surprisingly to people when they hear this -- the u.s. would also be expected to give more american taxpayer dollars to a u.n., united nations, multilateral fund that is set aside to help develop nations. the key word here again is developing and they want to treat china like a developing country. so it would send more u.s. dollars to china because they have access toss this u.n. -- access to this u.n. multilateral
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fund. well, the united states is already the largest contributor to this fund. we've given over a billion dollars of american taxpayer dollars to this united nations so-called -- it's a slush fund. well, what about china? have they contributed? oh, no, mr. president. china has actually taken $1.4 billion out of the fund that we have contributed to. because we're a developed nation and china is still, thee -- theoretically and legal lay by this treaty, is still developing. when you take a look at the debt that we have as a nation and you go and talk to any high school class or junior high school class, as i've done in wyoming -- did it in wheatland, wyoming with a bunch of really smart kids. i said, when we have this debt, who are we borrowing the money from? they say, we're borrowing it from china. so we borrow from china to give
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to the multi-latter -- multilateral fund. what happens then? the fund gives it to china. the u.s. gives to the fund, the united nations gives is it to china. so we're further in debt to china. this makes zero sense, even to the high school kids it makes zero sense. with ratification with kigali to the u.n. treaty, more and more american taxpayer dollars will be going to communist china. this is happening despite the fact that everyone knows that china is not a developing country and shouldn't be labeled as a developing country or treated as a developing country. china is the second-largest economy in the world. china is our greatest economic and geopolitical rival. the united states should not let china play by a special set of
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rules that are designed to give a helping hand to truly developing nations. china doesn't fit, but this is exactly what is outlined in the kigali amendment, and that is why i have filed at the desk an amendment to what is being discussed on the floor of the senate today. my amendment says the united states will not ratify this treaty until china is defined rightly as a developed country, not a developing country but a developed country, because they truly are. no special treatment for china, period. everyone should stand up for that in this body, each and every member. so senators have some decisions to make. are you going to vote to allow china to play by a whole different set of rules? are you going to vote to put america at a competitive
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disadvantage? are you going to vote to continue to give american taxpayer dollars to china? members and colleagues on the other side of the aisle say this is not about china. this is about hfc, the chemicals involved. we have already passed bipartisan legislation to reduce hfc's. the law is still going neembgget. there is no excuse for any senator to give a handout at the is expense of taxpayer dollars. no excuse whatsoever. mr. president, we should not be outsourcing our environmental policy. i urge my colleagues to support my amendment and once again say no special treatment for china. thank you, mr. president. i yield the floor.
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the presiding officer: the clerk will call the roll. quorum call:
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the bill would add an amendment to reduce carbon gases that are used in air-conditioning and refrigerators. live coverage of the senate on c-span2.
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to improve the resilience of critical infrastructure for underserved communities. if the climate correction under crisis worsens it could be the lack of underinvestment in our infrastructure, we see it in puerto rico, hurricane fiona caused an islandwide power outage, we see in jackson miccosukee were residents of the
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year 2022 do not have access to clean water, this is also happening in my district a few years ago they saw brown water coming out of the faucets. as agencies like fema make investment improve the resilience of critical infrastructure, congress advocate for underserved communities. administrator. hurricane maria five years ago devastated puerto rico and was no access to water for months. in the recovery that still been ongoing. provided including irma improves the puerto rico power grid and strengthen their infrastructure. with additional steps do you recommend congress to make sure the residents of puerto rico are benefiting from the federal funds congress provided for the recovery from hurricane fiona
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over greater resilience so this does not happen again. >> representative, two things we have to be really be stringent on making sure that we rebuild to much higher standards not just putting it back the way it was. the second thing and the chairman knows this i've spoken this before we have got to speed up the recovery process. our recovery process has fema coming in at five years and barely scratch the surface on hurricane katrina. when i left i approved a billion-dollar project and wastewater repairs for the city of new orleans sewage system, ten years after katrina hit. we've got to speed up the process of getting capital and quickly, spent wisely in implementing the improve systems, the timeframe between disasters has increased was frequency that no one allows a decade of recovery. >> i thank you for that i know
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under the last hurricane led by speaker pelosi was there and we heard about the governor and we had a hard time with documents, i do hope that they can do everything that we can to assist. i will follow-up with you administrator about something i read about this morning, roughly 50000 rooftop solar have been installed across the island, the vast majority of which are hooked up to a battery fact under backup system. a year before maria only 5000 systems were in place and a few of them had batteries. hurricane fiona recently installed to the tests and reports have shown they help maintain power for building where i had been installed. mr. ministry dear how can congress with battery systems with cuticle infrastructure in puerto rico and throughout her country.
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>> personally i would like to try to figure out how did other agencies had affordable housing, were not talking about solar everything were not talking about running hvac and were talking about enough solar to get the refrigerator cold that is not an outrageous cost, the technology or to exist, every opportunity we rebuild and funding the homes, we are to look at the opportunity to provide a backup emergency power source such as solar i've been to enough hurricanes, that first couple of days without power is about convenience, by the time you get to week five people start suffering and medical conditions get worse, the cost to us as responders continues to increase with the taxpayers providing services, things like rooftop solar not try to do a
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400% backup of providing a valuable amount of power and battery backup is like a no-brainer without a figure out how across the programs we can make it available when the power does go out we know it's going to go on hurricanes, it does not devastate our citizens whether waiting for restoration, our systems are not built to withstand the storms, and faster to rebuild resiliency across the grid. >> thank you i do think we need to invest in the clean critical infrastructure and the kind of investments my other question for the record. >> the young lady in the bacteria recognizes, the young lady from iowa ms. miller meeks for five minutes. >> thank you to all of our
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witnesses, this is an interesting discussion that were having on the cybersecurity front and some of the questions that have been asked and answered so i will ask for those to be expanded upon. but i'm in southeast iowa which has urban but a lot of rural areas, i met with my water association and in fact at monorail water association. i drink my tap water, cook with the tapwater. it's very interesting, it is not a question directed at you but i want to underscore something that you said. and too often this happens in congress in his state legislature as well and underfunded general mandates, what is the issue refer today about workforce of labor force in washington, d.c. it may not be a problem with cybersecurity, it certainly can be an issue another rural areas where there are it people that they don't
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want to, to rural area. the cost of supplying activity when i spoke with my rural water association, my state water association, the regulation that they have that come down from the federal government and epa, even if the chemical that is measuring whether measuring, the amounts of which they feel are unnecessary given the long history makes it more challenging for them to do the job that they are doing in increase the requirement, whether it is the challenge to workforce, the cost of supply and the time and travel necessary to do things in the long experience and keep water clean is unnecessary, i think we're talking about what credentialing we are requiring, what education we are requiring and are there other ways to provide trading to do these jobs especially in rural communities. in the united states 91% of active drinking water systems
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serve community with populations under 10000 people to your point. furthermore 60% of those populations of 500 or fewer, given this can you talk about how critical it is for small and rural water utilities to have proper resources and funding and i think also you mentioned not missing the opportunity to serve our rural system. >> the system that i take care of 360 i'm kinda familiar with happens in small systems, we are lucky we have resources to provide safe water and infrastructure for wastewater and we disperse water from the neighboring community the supplies us with water, i've been very active with educating our boards how crucial this is to keep up on infrastructure and putting money away for future
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developments and repairs. i think it is a planning thing i think it's a training thing, i think it's educating the people that you work for, boards, and forcefully new york state, the board and small-town communities and villages are not required to have board training, it's up to the weight hundred wastewater operator to not step on too many toes and educate the folks that really give us our orders and will how to do and what to spend your money on and what we have to create for the future, that is basically a network of monies to be utilized to keep our system as great as we can possibly make it, gray is not the great word i want to use but it's a word that came out. we are proactive in the community that we have we hundred 60 hookups are we in debt, the question answer is yes. i think the infrastructure was worth it i think they thought it was worth a long-term plan and the training from our rural
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water association has mitigated us not to get in trouble with the epa and doh, they hadn't been for those resources that we could utilize within our small community we would probably be in trouble. >> i would agree with that are local and state rural water association have done a tremendous job. in your testimony you stated, i know my time is running out, if you want to answer this question after the fact that would be great but when small towns like mine need help with operating utilities in understanding complex federal and receiving that required training to maintain our licenses in the latest preparedness and resiliency practices we call the state rural water association technical assistance. more to this point would you be
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able to elaborate and it's fine if you submit this in writing i know our time is limited, what are the federal regulations, water utilities deal with every day that you may find overreaching and further complicate your ability to keep our water clean and safe. if you would submit those after words or greatly appreciated. >> we will make sure the answers are responded accordingly. >> the chair recognizes the gentleman from michigan mr. meyer for five minutes. >> thank you, mr. chairman for being here today, i think the shared goal of this hearing is that we get out of the reaction i'm categorizing were talking about disasters that occur in impacts for the lack of preparation and those that occur because of neglect, and michigan and flint it was neglect, each time the federal government and the state government and federal
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resources had to come in after the fact, that while the problem is waiting to be addressed to disadvantaged communities that are suffering tainted drinking water means of what should be getting an expectation and the superpower in the 21st century and portable water comes out, you mentioned the lack of transparency around water quality and other public services that has engendered a sense of mistrust and declaiming belief that government is there to auto minutes up a level, i could not agree more, whatever challenge is nothing that we are talking about here on the infrastructure side is rocket science we've had these for centuries, there have been improvements in transportation been in improvements and cleanliness but we don't need to reinvent the wheel and i think the two most pernicious words
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and infrastructure are deferred maintenance and what happens as a result all too often reliving on investments in a country we were talking about our electrical grid and were talking about our highway system inner aviation transportation sector in the 60s and 70s in some case the 80s and there's no water infrastructure the presidit objection. mr. schumer: thank you, mr. president. i ask unanimous consent that at 2:30 p.m., today, wednesday september 21, all postcloture time in relation to treaty document 117-1, be considered expired, that the schumer amendment numbered 5503, be withdrawn and the lee amendment 5518 be the only amendment in order for ratification and the senate vote on adoption of
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the -- that the senate vote on the adoption of ratification if amended, all without intervening action or debate. upon disposition of the treaty, the senate proceed to consideration of the bennett nomination and at 5:30 the senate vote on the bennett and arati prabhakar nominations, if it is -- be amount a time to be determined by the majority leader in consultation with the republican leader. further, that the cloture vote on the motion to proceed to calendar number 4884, s. 48 it 2, be at 11:30 a.m. on septembe. the presiding officer: is there objection? without objection, it is so ordered.
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mr. sullivan: mr. president. the presiding officer: the senator from alaska. mr. sullivan: mr. president, there's been much made in the biden administration about the value of diversity, and i agree that having diversity in any organization is positive. you get different viewpoints, but diversity encompasses much more than race or gender or religious orientation. those are all important. diversity actually means having people around you with varied experiences. and, as i mentioned, in my mind that is certainly important, but
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it's particular important in the oval office. it's particularly important in the white house, it's particularly important in the leadership of our federal government. let's take the example of military experience in this administration. you'd think that the biden administration would think that it's important to have members in his cabinet or senior white house officials who served in the military. after all, he's the commander in chief, a very important part of his responsibilities, but, in fact, mr. president, virtually no one in this administration, with the exception of secretary austin, at the highest levels, cabinet officials, senior white house officials have any significant military experience at all. why does this matter? the president doesn't have it, of course, the secretary of the v.a., chief of staff, national
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security advisor, go down the list, nobody has any experience. in the federal government of the united states. why does this matter? it matters, mr. president, because it's obvious by the people this president surrounds himself, the people who are giving him advice on big decisions for america that this president doesn't prioritize military, our national defense, and our troops and their families. and this manifests itself in many, many ways. first, most importantly, it matters in how we fund our national defense. now, i was on the floor last week speaking about this very topic. this is president biden's first budget. you can see this here that he has proposed. it has increases through every federal agency, this was a
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multitrillion-dollar budget and it says this is what we're prioritizing as the biden administration. and you can see, heck, double digit, that's education, commerce, over 20%, interior, over 15%, on and on and on, all the greene. just a massive expansion of federal agencies, except two agencies, department of defense and homeland security. the two areas that protect americans. if you look at this line of inflation when the biden administration put out their budget last year at 4.5%, these are inflation-adjusted, real cuts, by about 2% to 3% of our budget. that was the biden budget. my view that is the number one job of this government. not the president's view, not his team's view. so in the interim, that was last
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year's budget. we've had a war in ukraine, we've had the chairman of the joint chiefs, the secretary of defense testify in front of the armed services committee that we're probably seeing the most dangerous time globally at any time in the last 40 years. so what about the biden budget this year? mr. president, he did it again. this is actually epa, 25% increase. wow. okay. but here we go, all the big double-digit increases, you get down to the department of defense, with now the 9% biden inflation, we're talking a 5% real cut to our military. so that is not prioritizing our military. and, mr. president, you're starting to see how this inflation and other things are really impacting our troops.
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the army last week in an article suggested that the american military members who are having trouble meeting -- making ends meet because of high levels of inflation should go on food stamps. you heard that correctly. we're going to give the epa a 25% raise, we're going to cut defense spending by 5%, real cut, and if you're a soldier struggling because of high inflation to actually put food on the table, you can go and get food stamps. that's the perfect example of not prioritizing our military. and i want to unpack this further, mr. president. the army is saying that if our troops don't have enough food to
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eat, they should look at going on food stamps, but the president finds it absolutely essential to forgive $560 billion in student loan debt just a couple of weeks ago. who are the americans who will benefit from that lawless -- bailout? they're going to get a half billion-dollar blackout and our -- bailout, and our troops are going to go on food stamps. we know the president and his team don't prioritize the military. look at these numbers, or our troops or national security, but it doesn't mean they don't find the military useful. mr. president, i'm going to put up a picture of a recent speech that i will tell you every time
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i look at it, my blood boils, and so should every american's blood boil. it's this picture. now, mr. president, every president gives partisan speeches. now i don't think it's wise for every president to give the kind of partisan speech that president biden gave on september 1 in philadelphia in which he vilified millions, tens of millions of his fellow americans who don't agree with his administration's policies. some of you may have seen that speech. the president told the country that many of his fellow americans, all of whom are republican, don't, quote, respect the constitution, are destroying american democracy.
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he gave this speech against a blood red backdrop, fists clenched. look at him. yelling that millions of fellow americans embraced anger, while he embraced anger in his speech -- and chaos. this president who continuously issues lawless executive orders like shutting down anwr in my state, his half a trillion-dollar student loan bailout. then says republicans are, quote, against the rule of law. he went on and on, the insults insults, very partisan, somewhat deranged, attacking tens of millions of his fellow americans. now look, presidents do that. i don't think it's a good idea. but here's the thing about this speech, mr. president. to make matters worse, look at this, he did all this, a clearly partisan speech, while
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being flanked by two active-duty marines as his political props. look at that. look at that. in my view, a sickening abuse of authority from a commander in chief who's in which served in the military. i think he got five vietnam deferments. and knows nothing about the marine corps' ethos of honor, courage, commitment. remember when general milley, the chairman of the joint chiefs, and was chairman under president trump as well, released a video where he apologizeed for standing beside the president, then-president trump, when that could have been perceived as political. this is what general milley said. i should have not been there. my presence in that moment and in that environment created a perception of the military being involved in domestic politics.
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i thought that was a good speech by general milley. he made a mistake, he apologized, and that's the right thing to do. mr. president, this is much worse. this is much worse. these marines, unlike general milley, they're being ordered to stand next to the president of the united states while he rants against millions of his own fellow americans. and the president certainly didn't apologize for this speech. in fact, when criticized by both democrats and republicans for the politicization of the military with these marines propped up next to him, the biden administration actually doubled down in terms of their use of these two active-duty marines as political props in a very partisan speech. here's what the spokesperson at
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the white house said. quote, the presence of the marines at that speech was intended to demonstrate the deep, abiding respect the president has for these servicemembers to the ideals and the unique role our military plays in defending our democracy no matter who is in power. this is orwellian doublespeak. what a bunch of nonsense. here's the fact, mr. president. the presence of these marines was meant to politicize the president's speech and politically benefit from the honor and respect the few and the proud have earned in the hearts of americans over decades, over millennium. this should disturb every single american whether you're a democrat or republican. this was just wrong.
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let me provide another example of the politicization of our military by the biden administration. now this is something, it hasn't gotten a lot of attention. some people are like it wasn't really a big deal. i actually think it was a big deal. we have some of the best service academies in the world. they are the best in the world. the u.s. naval academy, west point, air force academy, coast guard academy. each of our military service academies has board members, some of whom are appointed by the president of the united states for three-year terms. now i am honored to serve on the u.s. naval academy board. i was appointed as a member of the armed services committee. here's the tradition in our country, that every single
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president has abided by. when they come into office, they let the board members finish out their terms. so, for example, when president trump was elected, the obama administration officials who are president obama's appointees, finished out their terms on the naval academy board, the west point board, the air force academy board. that's what we do. the point is not to politicize the service academies. that has always been the tradition. every single president except for joe biden. when the president -- when president biden came into office, he looked at west point, annapolis, the air force academy, and somebody said to him you know what, mr. president? let's fire all the trump appointees. let's fire them right now, all 18 of them, to clearly
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politicize the service academies of america. so that's what they did, something that had never been done before by any president in the history of the country. and they did it regardless of qualifications of the current members serving on these boards. let me give you some examples. retired army lieutenant general h.r. mcmaster was fired off the west point board. ironically the same day he was fired by president biden's white house, he was honored by the west point association of graduates as the distinguished graduate of the year of west point. so one president fires him and west point gives him a great honor. general jack keen, former vice chief of staff of the army, fired from the west point board.
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retired army colonel douglas mcgregor, afghanistan war veteran, psychologist, clinical psychologist meghan mobbs. businessman david irvine, retired army general david swann. 18 qualified people all fired. the politicization of the service academies of america was undertaken by this administration. first president, first white house ever to do it, all fired by joe biden and not allowed to fill their terms. and of course, mr. president, the biden administration loves to use our military to push other agendas that have nothing to do with lethality and winning our nation's wars. many, many examples. let me give you just a couple.
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from the beginning issuing executive orders not focused on how we have a stronger military, but using taxpayer dollars to establish a committee within the pentagon to do what ended up being witch hunts on so-called extremists in the military of which when they came back with their report, they said they had actions of .005%. they also issued executive orders to use taxpayer dollars to mandate transgender transition surgeries for activity-duty soldiers. importantly, they become nondeployable when that happens. so, mr. president, back to my original point. no one in senior positions in the white house or the cabinet, with the exception of secretary austin, has significant military experience, and on so many of these issues there's no
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adult in the room. think about these white house conversations where they're talking about, hey, let's cut the defense budget and we'll grow the epa by 25%. that's a great idea, mr. president. let's make sure we give a partisan speech at independence hall. and, oh yeah, let's grab a couple of active-duty marines to stand right next to the president as his props. that's a great idea, mr. president. let's come in and politicize the service academies and fire all the trump administration appointees, even american heroes like h.r. mcmaster, general keen, despite the fact that no president had ever done that before, great idea, mr. president. this is really problematic what we're seeing right now.
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that lack of prioritization extends here in the u.s. senate, unfortunately, as it relates to our military. as we know with regard to defense budget cuts. in the 2020 ndaa we had a debate right here on the senate floor where my colleague, the junior senator from vermont, proposed an amendment to dramatically cut our military almost by 15% across-the-board cuts. he even actually wrote an op-ed in "politico." remember, this is when the democrats were pushing defund the police. here's the op-ed. it's called "defund the pentagon: the liberal case." i'd like to submit this for the record. the presiding officer: without objection. mr. sullivan: so that was the liberal case, defund the pentagon. the junior senator from vermont wrote that. the majority leader put out a tweet saying he was a proud
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supporter of the defund the pentagon amendment. that's right here on the senate floor. and of course, mr. president, there is the national defense authorization act, the number-one bill that focuses on national defense for our nation, that passed out of committee, the armed services committee in june in a very strong bipartisan vote, 23-3, passed the house in july, will have pay raises for our troops so the army doesn't have to tell them to go line up for food stamps because they're hungry. and we need to bring it to the floor right here. so what are we doing? as far as i can tell, the majority leader doesn't want to bring up the defense authorization act until december december. that's why i joined a letter led
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by senator tuberville, who i serve on the armed services committee with, signed by 20 of my colleagues to say to the majority leader, mr. majority leader, we have a dangerous world right now. bring the ndaa to the floor. it's going to pass. it's got great support. by the way, mr. president, i know the democrat senators feel this way too on this topic. so we need to get this body back to what's important for our country: bolstering our economy, fighting inflation, bringing down energy costs, unleashing american energy, and definitely passing the legislation that funds our military, that provides pay raises for our troops during this very dangerous time. so i ask again the majority leader to bring the ndaa to the floor. we need it. and i call on the president and
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his administration, the president of the united states, the commander in chief, to truly prioritize our military and their families, and that begins with putting an end to using them in a disgraceful way as political props for your partisan agenda. i yield the floor. a senator: mr. president. the presiding officer: the senator from kansas. mr. moran: mr. president, thank you. american aviation, something we care about greatly in kansas, but across the country is entering a new era of innovation and of growth and industry and
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government in this circumstance needs to work together to make certain the united states stays competitive and remains the leader in this arena. in today's technology and research and development, there are unmanned vehicles, they are autonomous, they will be flying passengers and cargo from point to point in the united states. these vehicles will take off vertically and land vertically. and it's important for us to begin the preparation for that development in our airspace, at our airports, in our communities, and across the country. bipartisan legislation of which i've introduced, along with senator sinema, the advanced air mobility coordination and leadership act has been waiting senate approval for weeks. this legislation would instruct the secretary of the u.s. department of transportation to
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lead a working group comprised of members of different government agencies and will be a public-private effort. they will need to review the steps needed to ensure they pass initial operations, ensure a robust, domestic supply chain, identify current policies to leverage this industry. i thank senator sinema for her help in moving this bill forward. it has been approved by our commerce committee, and the advocacy groups have been engaged in helping us develop the legislation and helping us work its way through the committee and through the senate. i also thank a number of kansans who have provided information and support for this endeavor. this legislation is crucial to ensuring the united states remains a leader in the aviation sector for years to come and i'm anxious for it to become law
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with the president's signature. therefore, mr. president, as if in legislative session, i ask the chair lay before the senate, the message to day company s. 516. the presiding officer: the chair lays before the senate the following message from the house. the clerk: resolved the bill from the senate s. 516, compiled an act to plan for and coordinate innovate aircraft do pass with an amendment. mr. moran: i ask unanimous consent that the motion be agreed to and the motion to reconsider be considered made and laid upon the table. the presiding officer: is there objection? without objection. mr. moran: thank you, mr. president.
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mr. carper: mr. president. the presiding officer: the senator from delaware. mr. carper: good afternoon, mr. president. i rise today to remind my colleagues of the incredible opportunity that we have before us today. incredible opportunity that we have before us today. later today this body, the united states senate, will have the opportunity to vote to ratify the kigali amendment to the montreal protocol. what does that mean? kigali, as it's affectionately known, it is to phase down hydrofluorocarbons, also known as hfc's. it is known as a refrigerant and is in refrigerators and other cooling products. the united states is trangsing
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away -- transitioning away from hfc. why? one reason is the american companies are at the forefront of developing the next generation of coolant technology. this transition away from hfc's is expected to stimulate literally billions of dollars in economic investment in this country. billions of dollars, create tens of thousands of jobs, and significantly increase u.s. exports, all using technology developed in this country. all by using technology developed in this country. putting americans to work, using technologies developed by americans. now, first on the history of how we got here. hfc's came about to replace ozone defeating substances, which created a hole in our
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ozone layer. i sat with some of my colleagues at a lunch, i first remember hearing about the hole in the ozone i think when i was in the navy overseas and reading about it in "time" and newsweek and wondered what this is all about. it turned out to be a big deal and one that -- that still plays out to -- today in the debate. in 1988, the united states voted to ratify the montreal protocol to phase out ozone depleting substances under president ronald reagan's leadership. since then ozone depleting substances has depleted by 90%.
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the hfc's that have been used for years now to replace the ozone-depleting substances is also bad for our environment. in 2016 the gloabl community got together -- the global community got together and lowered hfc's. this is not the first time we ratified an amendment to the montreal protocol. the kigali amendment before us is the fifth amendment to the montreal protocol ratified by the united states. the kigali amendment was transmitted to -- to the united states senate on november 16, 2021, almost a year ago, 300 days, in fact, ago. each day that it has passed without ratification represents
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a further delay in supporting american businesses, in supporting american workers, and in growing our economic and national security interests and protecting our economic and national security interests. thanks to american innovation, we now have hfc alternatives that are cleaner and more energy efficient than hfc's, and the best part -- here's the best part. these cleaner, m more efficient hfc alternatives are being manufactured right here in the usa. the american leadership on transitioning away from hfc has created bipartisan action at the federal level. to that end our friend and colleague senator kenly and i put together the manufacturing act, that was in 2019.
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our bill proposed phasing down hfc's in our country 85% over 15 years. not in one night or two or three years, but phased it down by as much as 85% in 15 years, the same time as the kigali amendment before us. 16 democrats and 16 republicans joined us as cosponsors. a broad coalition of organizations from the u.s. chamber of commerce to the ameamerican chemistry council endorsed our bill with other american companies. in december 2020, the amac became law and it was a bipartisan win. it was an american win as well. now it's time to build on that success. now it's time to seize on the
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opportunity before us and ratify the kigali amendment. the kig amendment is good for our economy, implementing the amac paired with ratification will help generate nearly a $40 billion new investment -- growth and investment in the u.s. economy by 2027. it will also create roughly 150,000 american jobs -- 150,000 new american jobs, and it creates the u.s. heating ventilation and refrigeration exports across the world by at least 25% over that same time period .in addition the kigali ratification is good for consumers. transitioning away from hfc's means average prices will be lower for consumers, not higher. something i think we all support in this body, mr. president.
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ratifying kigali will build on our bipartisan success in the amac by allowing the federal government to better protect u.s. companies from illegal dumps of hfc's into our country from adversaries like china. lastly, kigali ratification will ensure u.s. companies continue to have access to international markets so that modern, efficient and economical air conditioners an refrigerators across the world will be stamped made in america, not made in china. so today we, the united states senate, have an opportunity to make that vision a reality, to build on the decades-long bipartisan record of success from the montreal protocol to the passage of the amac a couple of years ago, to show our nation and show the world yet another time bipartisan solutions are
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lasting solutions. this is a bipartisan solution. this is a bipartisan solution and it demands bipartisan support. i hope our colleagues will join senator kennedy and myself and many of our colleagues, and frankly a whole ton of businesses across the country and organizations to support what we're doing. join us in supporting the ratification of the kigali amendment. let's seize the day, or as we say in delaware carpe diem. with that, i yield the floor, and i note the absence of a quorum. the presiding officer: the clerk will call the roll. quorum call:
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mr. cotton: mr. president. the presiding officer: the senator from arkansas. mr. cotton: i ask consent to end the quorum call. the presiding officer: without objection. mr. cotton: tens of thousands of iranian citizens are taking to the streets in dozens of cities across iran as we speak. the chant that's echoing across that ancient land is death to the dictator, yet joe biden and the democrats in washington would rather make another disastrous deal with the ayatollahs and those who declare death to america and who are at this very moment working to asass -- assassinate american citizens on american soil, barak obama's deal of the green revolution is playing before our eyes. the latest revolt by inspired by
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another reprehensible crime against the dictator against its own people, the ayatollah's thugs known as the reality police arrested a 22-year-old woman on the street for the heinous crime of allegedly not wearing a head scarf in public. they threw her into a police van, they brutally beat her on the way to the detention center, they inflicted terrible injuries on her from which she soon died. countless iranians were immediately horrified by this cold-blooded murder and are now taking to the streets to protest their illegitimate outlaw regime. they are burning -- protesting the oppression they have suffered every day for 43 years.
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in the murder of this young woman, we see the true face of the ayatollahs, a regime which our president hopes to enrich with hundreds of billions of dollars and to appease with yet another terrible nuclear deal. in fact, just minutes ago, president biden stood before the world at the u.n. general assembly stating at great length that he would continue negotiations towards this dangerous deal. while offering only the briefest and emptiest of words to approach the ayatollahs for the murder of this young woman for the grave crime of refusing to wear a head scarf in public. and only
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the briefest of words for the thousands of protesters. at latest reports seven of which have been murdered and many more shot and beaten. i'd say this does feel a lot like deja vu, a replay of barack obama's betrayal of the 2009 green revolutionaries. and why did he betray them in 2009? was he caught flat-footed? was he overwhelmed by events? was he simply new to the job, naive, even incompetent? no. he betrayed those green revolutionaries in cold blood because his one overriding objective was his terrible nuclear deal with iran. he wanted a deal because he
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believed america was to blame for the decades of tension and conflict with iran, that america had sinned and we needed to atone for our since against iran and to -- sins against iran and to pull in our horns. therefore, he stood idly by so as not to offend them and their street militias as they beat the iranian people. and today for the very same reason, democrats are once again selling out those brave iranian protesters so they can once again try to buy the friendship of the oppress i've toll las -- oppressive ayatollahs. we should stand with the iranian people and prevent another betrayal by a democratic president. you wouldn't think it would be that hard. on face value you would think self-professed progressive democrats would stand up as one against a so-called morality
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police who arrested a woman for the grave crime of not wearing a scarf over her hair in public. and then beat her so severely that she died in custody. imagine what would happen if this had occurred in, say, saudi arabia. imagine what these democrats would be saying if a country in western europe enforced its laws in this way. you would expect that democrats could marshal just a tiny bit of outrage, the tiniest bit of outrage possible when the ayatollahs arrest a woman for not wearing a head scarf in public and then beat her to death. but no, they don't. and to be honest, you don't even have to imagine these things
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either. we see how the democrats have treated iran for 13 years. as if america is at fault and we are the problem and iran deserves an apology and hundreds of billions of dollars and to be brought in to the civilized world. look how they treated saudi arabia as a pariah for years. in fact, look at barack obama's entire response to the arab spring in 2011. it was just like his response to the green revelation -- green revolution in 2009 in iran. the iranian people rise up in protest? silence. the people of egypt rise up in protest? barack obama withdraws political support for egypt's leader and demands immediate resignation. protest in libya where moammar
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qaddafi had been scared straight by george bush and come out of the cold. barack obama attacks his government and overthrows him militarily. protest in syria, silence. what's the common thread in those responses in 2009 in iran, 2011 in egypt and syria and 2022 in iran it's very simple. if you are pro-american, you get condemned, maybe overthrown. if you're anti-american, you get rewarded with hundreds of billions of dollars and a blind eye towards your grave crimes against your people and your aggression against america and our allies throughout the region. again and again the democrats
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excuse the crimes of our enemies while they obsess over the flaws of our friends. as jane kirkpatrick, the legendary ambassador to the united nation once said, it is true today of so many democrats. they always blame america first. we cannot allow joe biden to repeat the mistakes of barack obama and once again betray the brave people of iran who i would remind you is a mortal enemy of the united states. so i call on my colleagues to join me in standing with the people of iran, with the brave people of that ancient nation who stand in the streets today chanting death to the dictator,
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not with the dictator and the ayatollahs who still to this day chant death to america. mr. president, i yield the floor. a senator: mr. president. the presiding officer: the senator from utah. mr. lee: mr. president, china is not a developing nation. china is the world's second largest economy. china is the world's largest manufacturer. and china is the world's number one creditor. yet this body, the united states senate, is poised to ratify a treaty that ignores those facts and treats china with kid gloves. simply put, the kigali amendment
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places america at a competitive disadvantage using american taxpayer dollars to subsidize chinese companies. mr. president, the kigali amendment restricts supplies of compounds called hydrofluorocarbons or hfc's which are refrigerants used in most air conditioning and refrigeration systems. the rationale is hfc's leaking out of equipment and into the atmosphere add to climate change. however, even the epa admits that hfc's contribute only five 100ths of 1 degree celsius, projected increases in global temperature. as a developing nation designated as such under the kigali amendment, china is eligible to receive funding from the 4.5 -- $4.5 billion multilateral fund of which the united states is not surprisingly the largest contributor.
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if this treaty is ratified, the united states will be required under the treaty to meet strict deadlines for phasing out hfc's while china is given an additional ten-year timeline to come into compliance with the same standards. it's doubtful given its track record that china has any intention of actually meeting its environmental obligations under this treaty. treating china as a developing country gives it an unfair advantage in the existing hfc market and allows china to continue production allowing that country to continue to undercut the hfc market well into the 2040's. as the world's largest emitter of greenhouse gases, china has a long history of disrespecting and disregarding environmental standards and has continually increased its emissions and
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investments in coal-fired power plants since the 2015 paris climate agreement. under this treaty, chinese-based hfc producers will get the largest share of the controlled market in future supplies needed to keep existing cooling systems running. as it has done under past environmental tr treaties. china will continue to produce supplies that are not allowed under the updated environmental standards. this is part of a conspicuous trend on china's part. china wants to get ahead by playing by a different set of rules than the rest of the world. and certainly a different set of rules than the united states has to live under. we know china ignores the rules and has little respect if any for international norms. and yet we continue to allow china to dominate markets with the financial support of
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american taxpayer dollars. this is a point where it just goes too far. we can't give them that. they haven't earned that. there's nothing about their behavior that suggests that they deserve this treatment. we shouldn't give it to them here. to that end later today, the senate will likely vote on an amendment offered by senator sullivan and me. now, it will not fix all the flaws in the kigali treaty. it will, however, begin to address the issue of china receiving special treatment at the expense of the american people. it will require the secretary of state to propose the removal of china's designation as a developing nation to the vienna convention. i urge my colleagues to vote in favor of our amendment and acknowledge the fact that china is not a developing nation.
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thank you, mr. president.
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a senator: mr. president. the presiding officer: the senator from texas. mr. cornyn: mr. president, are we in a quorum call? the presiding officer: we are not in a quorum call. mr. cornyn: i appreciate it. mr. president, the crisis at our southern border continues to break records. for the first time ever the united states has encountered more than two million migrants at our southern border in a single fiscal year, and that doesn't even include data for
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the month of september. now, my state, the state of texas, has a 1200-mile common border with mexico where most of these migrants show up, although some go to arizona, some to new next next and some to california. but the vast majority of these two million migrants have shown up on our backdoor step. this includes a hodgepodge of people from asylum seekers to economic migrants to criminals to drug smugglers. in each of the last six months the u.s. customs and border protection has logged more than 200,000 migrant encounters for each of the past six months, 200,000 a month. the media used to lose its collective mind when 100,000 immigrants arrived in a single
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month. but i guess the public has begun to be desensitized to these numbers because they're so huge and we've now been operating at twice that level for six consecutive months. communities in my state of texas have struggled to carry the weight of president biden's border crisis, and nobody seemed to care. but the moment the burden reached the liberal enclaves of manhattan and martha's vineyard, the outrage machine fired up. earlier this year, texas governor greg abbott began transporting mieg rapts to other states -- migrants to other states and cities to ease the burden on communities in texas. after all, what are we supposed to do? two million migrants show up at the border. are they supposed to stay there? well, most of them have been in contact with relatives and other
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people in other cities around the country. so they eventually make their way to their destination. and if they're asylum seekers they're given a notice to appear for a future court hearing, which probably will never occur because of the huge backlog in our immigration courts. so governor abbott did what any reasonable person would do and began sending these migrants to other places where they eventually will end up at their final destination, wherever that may be. but you can imagine two million migrants showing up on your border, what the strain on local health systems is like, what the strain on emergency response services. the more migrants that show up on our backdoor step, the lower
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the capacity to care for taxpayers who've paid taxes to make sure those services are available. at the same time, nongovernmental organizations, we call them ngo's, along the border are expected to pick up the federal government slack and care for the migrants, which harms those charities' ability to support more texans and other americans that rely on them. to state the obvious, the burden of this crisis should not fall on our border communities. the federal government, after all, is charged with the responsibility of managing our international borders, and that includes migration. but simply stated, the biden administration has refused to deal with this crisis or, frankly, even to really acknowledge it. but that doesn't change the fact that my state, or any other state for that matter, should
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not be left to manage the fallout alone. now, sips april, more than 11 -- since april, more than 11,000 migrants have voluntarily boarded buses from texas to washington, d.c., new york, and chicago. in the past, the leaders of these cities made it clear they would welcome migrants with open arms. they self-designate as a sanctuary city. well, now this is their opportunity to provide that sanctuary and those services and relief some of the burden on the border states that have borne the disproportionate burden for all this time. but you would have thought that something nefarious was going on or a genuine public emergency had occurred. they don't care a wit about two million people showing up on the texas border. but when they show up on a bus
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in washington, d.c., chicago, or new york, they howl like a dog that's been hit with a rock. after ignoring the border crisis touring can the -- during the entirety of the biden administration the arrival of a few thousand migrants in these sanctuary cities put them in a absolute panic. the democratic mayor of washington, d.c., for example, declared a public health emergency after her city received only a few thousand migrants. two million migrants at the border in my state, arizona, new mexico and california? they didn't raise a peep. but a few thousand migrants show up here in washington, d.c., roughly the same number that arrive on the southern border every single day, you would have thought there was an emergency.
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the democratic mayor of new york said that his city is, quote, nearly to the breaking point. this is a city of 8.5 million people, yet the mayor said his city is near the breaking point, even though it has welcomed only a few thousand migrants. give me a break. our colleague from illinois, the majority whip, called the transportation of these migrants cruel and inhumane. giving people a bus ride to their ultimate destination strikes me as not cruel and not inhumane. the white house press secretary had the temerity to say it was shameful and reckless. well, what's shameful and reckless is the biden administration's border crisis that it simply ignored for the last two years.
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vice president kamala harris even went so far as to call this, quote, the height of irresponsibility, and a, quote, dereliction of duty. i doubt vice president harris recognizes the many layers of irony in that statement. after all, last march she was designated as the border czar for the biden administration. but she wouldn't visit the border. she was charged by the president of the united states with finding solutions to address this ongoing crisis. if she wants to talk about dereliction of duty, he had refusal to acknowledge, much less address, the border crisis is a prime example of irresponsibility and dereliction of duty. but what's even more misleading about her statement is the fact that transporting migrants to
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cities far from the southern border is nothing new. in fact, the biden administration has been doing it all along. here's a chart that shows the cities that have been received migrants from the biden administration since the president basement president of --since the president became president of the united states since 1921. washington, d.c. state, yakima, minneapolis, denver, phoenix, yuma, even atlanta. white plains, scranton, baltimore, harrisburg, allentown, jacksonville, florida. birmingham, alabama. houston, texas. brownsville, san antonio, dallas. all of these cities have been the recipients of migrants
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transported by the biden administration. in april of last year, the associated press published a story with the headline, quote, unaccompanied children from border arrive in pennsylvania. the following month, the local news station in chattanooga, tennessee, posted a story with the headline late night flights carrying migrant children arrive in chattanooga. here's another headline from october of last year, biden administration quietly flies illegal immigrants to new york in the middle of the night. we didn't hear the howls of protest from mayor adams or the governor when the biden administration is doing -- was doing what they are now complaining about. they don't talk about it very
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often, the biden administration has a history of transporting migrants to cities far from the u.s.-mexico border. and they didn't call it shameful or reckless then. just to be clear, when somebody claims asylum at the border, and passes an initial test of a credible fear of persecution, they're then given a notice to appear for a future court hearing that may be years off, with millions of cases in the backlog. that's called a notice to appear. and it shouldn't surprise anybody that over the years, after people have already made their way into the interior of the united states, that many of them don't show up for their court hearing. this is part of what the border patrol said is a lack of consequences associated with entering the united states in an
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irregular fashion. oh, by the way, 90% of the people who do show up for their court hearing are not granted asylum. they don't qualify. as i've stressed on many occasions, mr. president, communities in my state do not have the capacity, the infrastructure, or the resources to handle this crisis alone. as new york city, the largest city in america, raises alarms over a few thousand migrants, i can't help but think about what happened when 15,000 haitian migrants showed up under a bridge in del rio, texas. a town of 3500 people. the group of migrants that showed up under that bridge in del rio equated to more than 40%
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of the city's population. can you imagine what a challenge that was just to feed people, provide them humane treatment, sanitation? but if you extrapolated that 15,000 in a city of 35,000, that would be the equivalent of more than three million people showing up in new york city. or 280,000 arriving in washington, d.c. in the course of just one week. so, whether they intended to do so or not, the mayors of washington, d.c. and new york city, and chicago for that matter, have shown that the weight of this crisis is extraordinarily heavy, and they are only experiencing a tiny fraction of what texas communities have faced every day for the last year and a half.
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and you know what -- apparently, the biden administration simply doesn't care. as these mayors now know, kage for these migrants who cross our border is a herculean task, because of the sheer volume of people coming across. legal immigration is part of our secret to our success as a country. we naturalize a million people a year. but these are people who've chosen to jump ahead of those waiting in line to enter the country lawfully, and we simply don't have the resources in place at the border or other places to deal with this vast tsunami of humanity. food, clothing, shelter, medical care, translation services, legal services, sanitation. communities in texas apparently have been expected to bear the entire brunt and the entire burden.
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it's time-consuming. it's labor intensive. it's extraordinarily expensive. and it is dangerous. the criminal organizations that are getting rich moving these migrants into the country for $5,000, $10,000, $15,000 a person are flooding the border patrol with these migrants, diverting necessary resources from the border patrol from interdicting the drugs that are entering our country that killed 108,000 american last year alone. 71,000 of those 108,000 died of fentanyl overdose, synthetic opioid. precursors come from china, get to mexico, manufactured there, smuggled into the united states. and fentanyl has taken far too many lives in every state and
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every city in this nation. and yet the biden administration has not awakened to the fact that they're being played, that part of this business model, if you want to call it that, of flooding the border with migrants is to divert the border patrol, law enforcement officials from stopping these drugs, this poison from coming into the country. and then, yes, in every city in the nation we've seen a spike in crime. do you know who the distribution network is in the united states for the drugs that the cartels smuggle across the border? it's gangs, in every city and every state in the country. and who's responsible for most of the gun violence and crime in our cities? it's these gangs that are the principal distribution network for the drugs that come across the boarder.
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if the biden administration has not connected the dots, i don't know why. the dea, the drug enforcements administration, the fbi director, there are a lot of people in the administration who could inform the president and vice president of what the facts are, but they apparently are not even curious. or if they know, they don't seem to care. well, from el paso to the rio grande valley, as i said, texas shares a 1,200-mile border with mexico, out of our total border of 2,000 miles. the communities situated along that border simply cannot handle the monumental job of dealing with this flow of migrants and the failure of the federal government to live up to its responsibilities. but this isn't a partisan matter. my friend, oscar lesser, who is
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the mayor of el paso, texas -- he is a proud democrat -- he's been busing migrants to get them off the streets of el paso to the cities where they want to go. he said a few days ago, people are not coming to el paso. they're coming to america. it's only fair for other parts of the country to bear the burden that we have borne alone in my state, and other border states. as long as the federal government is simply abdicating its responsibility to deal with illegal immigration and to fix this crisis. they know what to do. they simply are refusing to $it. -- they simply are refusing to do it, presumably because some of their political supporters don't believe in anything except open borders. the biden administration has completely abdicated its duty to secure the border and it's failed to supply border communities with the resources
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they need to try to manage this fallout. but the truth is, no matter what the resources were, the numbers are just overwhelming, and that's the point. cartels get rich, they smuggle drugs and additional migrants, and that's the point. so it's not going to stop until the biden administration wakes up out of its deep sleep and deals with the reality of what's happening at the border. in the last 12 months, customs and border protection have encountered more than 2.3 million migrants at the southern border, and that total grows every single day. all you have to do is turn on your tv set and see people streaming across the border, many of them turning themselves in, getting into this asylum system where they ultimately melt into the great american
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heartland, never to be heard from again. successfully making their way into the country. our amazing men and women of the border patrol are grappling with staffing shortages and poor morale. how would you like to be a police officer where the mayor and city council say, well, we had to hire a police force, but we're really not going to fund that police force, or we're not going to do anything to recruit more people to serve in that police force, and, you know what? we really don't know whether they enforce the law or not. that's the message that the border patrol is receiving from the biden administration. so of course morale is bad. of course it's hard to recruit. the agents are outnumbered. they're overwhelmed. and, frankly, they're disgusted with the lack of leadership. border communities are buckling
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under the weight of vast humanitarian needs. and now even the self-proclaimed sanctuary cities don't seem to want to help. unfortunately, the biden administration appears to have no intention of fixing the problem, and it sure seems like they don't think anybody else should have to help either. it's leaving texas and other border states to buckle under the weight of a crisis that we had no hand in creating. it's forcing texas taxpayers to make up for the failure of the federal government to perform its responsibilities. and what's worse, president biden, vice president harris, members of this body are trying to paint my state as the enemy for trying its very best to deal with a hand that it has been dealt while they continue to
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refuse to lend a helping hand. mr. whitehouse: mr. president? the presiding officer: the senator from rhode island. mr. whitehouse: mr. president, i have nine 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. whitehouse: thank you, mr. president. with that business out of the way, i wanted to come to the floor and kick off the process
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that will culminate tomorrow with our vote on the disclose act. the disclose act will get rid of dark money in our politics. president biden gave a good speech about it yesterday to help stir interest and progress in this area, and there are problems with dark money in and of itself. it contributes to what has been called the tsunami of slime in our politics, because when the slimey ad has a fake, phony front group's name on it and no actual real entity or company or association is accountable for that, well then you can lie to your heart's content, you can smear to your heart's content, and there's no accountability. so there are reasons for getting dark money out of our elections on their own -- just giving disproportionate power to special interests, sliming up our elections, allowing a lot of
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bad actors powers that they don't deserve, and putting enormous power in the hands of people who are, a, politically active enough to be able to spend that kind of money and have a motive in legislative outcomes to spend that kind of money that regular citizens can't begin to match. but there's a lot more to it than that. there's a lot more to it than that. because, like corruption, dark money is used to achieve other goals, and those other goals have had very important policy effects in our country. climate change we are dealing with daily now in floods, in fires, in droughts, in species moving about, particularly in rhode island our ocean fisheries
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moving about, the oceans are acidifying, we are putting essential operating systems of our planet in danger and onto a course that mankind has never seen before in the entire history of humankind. and when i got here in 2007, this was addressed as a bipartisan problem. there were three different bipartisan senate bills, all of which were very consequential, would have made a huge difference. senator mccain ran for president carrying the republican party banner with a significant and serious climate platform, and it looked like democracy was responding to this problem in a responsible way. all of that activity came to an instant shuttering halt in january 2010. what happened in january of 2010? what happened in january of 2010 was that the united states
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supreme court let loose one of the worst decisions it has ever rendered, the citizens united decision. and that decision allowed unlimited money to flow into politics. and, of course, if you can spend unlimited money in politics, you suddenly have an unprecedented motive to hide it. if the most you can give is $3,500 or $500 for your pack, it is not worth the effort to hiding that. plus, nobody really cares. but if you can give $35 million plus, let's say you're a polluting fossil fuel company, you don't want people to know that, now it's worth putting quite a lot of money into the apparatus of hiding who you are. it's an expensive apparatus. it is a real apparatus. senators have gone to the floor before to describe it. we've used this graphic. this is the web of climate denial that has been chronicled
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by scientists who study as a phenomenon climate denial and how the money flies around through these different groups and hugh they use it to -- and how they use it to hide what they're doing on climate. well, once that got launched, that was the end of bipartisanship on climate. we lost a decade. and i think history will show that the lost decade from january 2010 until now is one that these pages and children across the country will pay a very steep price for. why would they be willing to do it? well, the fossil fuel industry has an annual subsidy of $660 billion basically from being allowed to pollute for free. $660 billion. if you are protecting a $660 billion subsidy, how much would you be willing to spend any given year to protect it? if you spent $6.6 billion a
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year, you'd still be earning 100 times your investment. and, sure enough, we've seen dark money explode into expenditures by the billion. and as that happened, climate progress ended. look at voter suppression. across the country, there was a wave of republican state legislatures passing voter suppression laws. was it an amazing coincidence that they all happened to do that at the same time? evidently not because there's actually a tape from heritage action, one of the dark money groups behind those voter suppression campaigns, where the person briefing the big donors admitted this. we're working with these state legislators, she said. in some cases we actually draft the bills for them. or we have a sentinel on our
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behalf, give them the model legislation so it has that grassroots, you know, from the bottom up type of vibe. the whole thing was a dark money fake fed into these state legislatures by dark money. and no small amount. this is a $24 million investment, the speaker said. we started right after the november election. we've driven hundreds of thousands of calls, e-mails, placed letters to the editor, hosted events and run television and digital ads. so voter suppression is an artifact of dark money. appeared, last, court capture. i've got a series of speeches that i've given so far -- 18 of them. what i do -- when i do, i put my scheme poster up, because this was a scheme, indeed, a scheme and a half. at this point, what we know is
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that at least $580 million was spent on phony front groups using dark money out to capture the court. we don't know how much additionally went into political coffers to reward people for their court-packing enterprise or to threaten to push people if they -- to punish people if they didn't go along with the court-packing enterprise, but it was quite a show. this is just one little node of that $580 million court-capture enterprise, and it shows two groups, which is the current sort of best practices, worst practices better to say, in political influence. you have a 501c3 and 501 (c) 4. they pushed fictitious names so
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their phony front groups this phony front groups that had names like judicial education act and honest elections project action. but here is one, judicial crisis network. judicial crisis network took $15 million checks, $17 million checks and turned that money to tv ads to stop the confirmation of justice garland and to push through the confirmation of justices gorsuch, kavanaugh, and barrett. so dark money flows into all these other areas. if you like climate denial, you love dark money. if you like voters having their votes suppressed by partisan legislators, you love dark money. and if you like a captured court that dances to the tune of the dark money donors who stocked
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it, you love dark money. and that's before we even get to its pernicious is insidious, clandestined effect in our elections. with that, i see that my time has expired. with senator grassley here for his time, so i yield the floor to my friend, senator grassley. mr. grassley: mr. president. the presiding officer: the senator from iowa. mr. grassley: today roughly 175 americans will die from fentanyl poisoning. many of them won't even know that they've taken the fentanyl. they'll think they've taken xanax for anxiety or oxycodone for pain. that's what deven anderson -- you'll see his picture here in a minute -- of shelby, iowa,
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thought when he took a fentanyl pill marked like an oxy. deven had fought hard for his sobriety. he had enrolled in treatment and moved back home, but he was struggling with anxiety. to cope, he took a pill from a friend. deven's coworker came to pick him up for work in the early morning of february 24 this year deven wasn't ready. so his coworker called him. when deven didn't answer, he called again. deven's 14-year-old brother heard the phone ringing. he went downstairs to investigate and found deven unresponsive. deven was 23 years old when he died. his mom wants you to know that deven was a kind person, and he
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was loved by his friends. in 2021, fentanyl killed more americans between the ages of 18 and 45 than any other cause. that is more than covid 19, cancer, or car accidents combined. six months ago i stood where i am now and asked for a permanent solution for fentanyl scheduling. today we're absolutely no closer to a permanent solution than we were back then six months ago. and while congress has been waiting to take action, the cartels have not. the cartels have simply rebranded, coloring fentanyl
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like candy to addict america's children. fentanyl is in our schools, like blackwood, new jersey, for a 12-year-old overdosed on a school bus after his uncle made him clean a fentanyl trap house. or chipman high school, california, where a 13-year-old brought 150 fake pills laced with fentanyl with four out of every fake pill containing a potential legal dose of fentanyl. both of these schools are hours away from the mexican border. but despite custom border patrol's efforts, fentanyl has reached our children's hands.
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so when the vice president tells the press that our border is secure, we all know that's just plain wrong and irresponsible. and that attitude that the border is secured ends up killing. in the federal government's absence, parents like arletha and robert gilliam have been left to fill the void. their daughter sierra died last month because of fentanyl. and you see sierra right here. by all accounts, sierra had a big heart, as her dad puts it. if you were in a bad mood,
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sierra would make sure that that bad mood didn't last very long. and even though she graduated from iowa's ankany central high school and lived on her own, she still faced -- still face timed her mom every day. but on august 23 this year, no one could get ahold of sierra, so her grandparents drove by her house. her car was in the driveway. sierra's grandparents knocked both on her doors and heroine heroine -- both on her doors and her windows. sierra's grandfather climbed through her bedroom window. there he found her dead on her bedroom floor.
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fentanyl shut down her organs and she went to sleep. she never woke up again. she was only 22 years old. sierra's parents are now searching for answer they never should have to find in the first place. they've offered a $50,000 award to locate the dealer who supplied the fake pills that would kill her daughter. they deserve better than that. they deserve congressional action, and they deserved it in 2017 when the dea, drug enforcement agency first scheduled fentanyl. grieving parents are the unsung heroes of the fight against fentanyl. time after time they push through their heartbreaks to share their stories that you've
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heard me tell for two families, and now they demand action so that more kids don't die. it's time for congress to match the efforts of those parents. the department of justice has been very clear. quote, the permanent scheduling of frs is critical to the safety and health of our communities. and classwide scheduling provides a vital tool to combat overdose deaths in america. end of quote from the department of justice. for those that we've lost like sierra and devin, and for the countless lives that we will save if we take action, it's time that we give them the tool that they need, and that's the
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scheduling of fentanyl, and on a permanent, long-term basis. mr. president, on another subject and a shorter subject for anybody waiting to talk, it's dangerous to live in many places in america, especially in blue cities like inflation, violent crime remains very high. for example, compared to 2019 midyear figures, america's largest cities have seen 50% increase in murders and 36% increase in aggravated assaults. and it's no mystery what is causing this spike in crime. blue city progressives, procriminal prosecutors, and radical bail reform laws fuel
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this spike, a spike in violent crime by letting dangerous repeat criminals go unpunished and in some cases even uncharged. the recent tragedies in memphis memphis, tennessee, earlier this month underscore the dangers that families face at the hands of chronic criminals. and remember that word chronic criminals, because the fact is the majority of violent crimes are committed by a relatively handful of repeat offenders like the two in memphis. for example, criminals in chicago charged with shootings and murders have on average 12 prior arrests.
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in oakland, california, only around 400 people, or just one-tenth of one percent of oakland's population were responsible for a majority of the city's murders. remember. just think, .1% of the population of that city is responsible for a majority of the murders in oakland. federal law enforcement has a unique and very vital role in targeting repeat violent criminals. but for the last two years the senate's ability to actually pass bills that expand criminal law, to reduce violent crimes and target repeat violent criminals have hit a brick wall. just impossible to get any
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consensus, even though we all know it's a very major problem. in july, as part of my effort to promote a solution to this problem of major crime caused by a very small number of people in each community, i introduced a bill that i entitled combatting violent and dangerous crime, which is cosponsored by 26 of my republican colleagues in the senate. the house companion bill was introduced september 15 with seven republican cosponsors. the bill has seven simple solutions that will help to reverse this violent crime spike by putting dangerous criminals in jail and keeping them there. these commonsense solutions will fix real problems and bring
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immediate relief and increase safety to communities plagued by this scourge of violent crime. given the unprecedented increase in murders, we can and we should make it easier to prosecute murders. this bill will do that. 2021 was the deadliest year to be a law enforcement officer since 9/11. we should make it easier to prosecute people who attack law enforcement. this bill will do that. carjackings are way up nationwide. 200%, 300%, even 400% in some cities. we should deter carjacking with sufficient sentences. this bill will do that. dangerous drugs are being
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marketed to young people as colorful candy. i just spoke about that. and these children are dying from overdoses. we should make it so that no children die from fentanyl made to look like candy. this bill will do that. bank robbery, kidnapping, the list of violent crimes that would be strengthened by this bill goes on and on. i stand ready to work with democrats who want to provide relief to their constituents from this crime wave. so if any of them are open to any of these provisions, i want them to know that i'm ready to work with them. let's partner together to make the american people safer. i yield the floor.
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a senator: mr. president. the presiding officer: the senator from mississippi. mrs. hyde-smith: that you -- th, mr. president. the american people got more evidence with just how out of touch the white house and congressional democrats are to the damage inflation is doing to families across the country. we were all hoping president biden's crushing inflation might show signs of easing and give
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folks a chance to catch their breath after months and months of watching their paycheck shrink. that is not what happened at all. inflation is up 8.3% from a year ago, a disastrous number. we are feeling the inflation in every aspect of our lives, from paying utility bills to gassing up cars to rent and insurance, and especially to the basics like food. grocery prices respect up 13.5% from this time last year, which is a crushing blow to most americans who visit their local store once a week, like i do. milk is up 17%, bread and chicken are up 16%, eggs are up an outrageous 40%, and the list goes on and on. i do my own shopping for my family and i see this weekly, and it is incredible. this is a reality, but president
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biden appears to be living in a very, very different reality. when the latest bad inflation numbers were released last week, the president and washington democrats threw a party on the white house lawn -- that's right, a party, a lawn party. the president and the democrats celebrated while the rest of us watched the dow plummet and received an inflation report confirming that this is the worst inflation since president jimmy carter. what did they celebrate? their latest big spending bill. a year ago the democrats ram through a $2 trillion spending spree. economists warned us then and they are warning us now about the misnamed inflation reduction act, namely that it won't do anything to ease inflation but
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it will certainly add to the deficit. apparently hostings a big party is preferable than heeding had these nonpartisan warnings and getting to work to get our nation back on the right track. when the inflation act was on the floor, republicans tried countless times to adopt solutions to tackle inflation, crime, and secure our border, but our efforts were consistently shut down because not one senate democrat could spare a penny from the green new deal. they had their own priorities and they are out of touch with the priorities of american families. on sunday we were given more evidence that the president is living in a completely different world than the rest of us. the president appeared on "60 minutes" where he discussed several challenges facing our nation, only according to him our nation is doing swell. the president seemed to paint a
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rosy picture of little to no inflation and suggested we should be relieved by the new inflation numbers. when asked what he could do better and faster to help americans get some relief at the grocery store checkout line, he claimed inflation was hardly at all up. hardly at all? say that to parents paying 40% more for a dozen eggs just to feed their children breakfast. say that to workers who are watching their savings dwindle month after month because their paychecks can't keep up with these prices. say that to the americans who are just barely getting by in this economy. president biden, you may not have to visit the grocery store or pay an electricity bill, but my constituents do. time and time again, the president and his allies in congress have proved he is out of touch with american priorities and in denial about real suffering and fears for the american people. they are right to question
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whether they can still afford the leadership they're getting out of the white house and democrat-led congress. it's high time for the democrats and the president to align their priorities with those of the people, allow real solutions to be considered on the senate floor, and get our economy back on its feet. i yield the floor. the presiding officer: the senator from iowa. mr. grassley: i think you all might remember when the biden administration's so-called experts claimed that inflation was transitory. it ended up they couldn't have been more wrong by using that word. since president biden took office, iowans have seen prices rise 13.7%. that adds an extra $666 to their
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monthly budget. couple that with falling real wages, iowans have been strapped very thin. this combination of rising prices and falling real wages has hit rural iowa communities particularly hard. as a result, according to a report issued by iowa state university, the disposable income of rural iowans fell 33% over the past 12 months alone. it's no wonder then that the high cost of living is the number one concern that i hear about from iowans as i travel all of our 99 counties. however here in d.c., and remember d.c. is an island
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surrounded by reality. here in this town, the primary concern of president biden and congressional democrats has been enacting their very partisan agenda. they have refused to work with republicans on sensible policies to tame inflation and provide targeted relief. in the process of doing that, they haven't even followed the good advice of their own brethren, and i'll use larry summers as an example, that harvard professor, former secretary of treasury, he said way back in january, before this president was sworn in, that the economy was turned around. don't spend anymore money or you're going to have inflation. and immediately within 60 days of being in office, this new president and this new congress
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passed a $2 trillion appropriation bill to feed the fires of inflation. so instead of taming inflation, they rebranded the reckless tax and spending spree that they had pursued for more than a year as the bill recently passed called the inflation reduction act, which i call the inflation enhancement act. never mind that outside experts uniformly concluded the bill's hodgepodge of green new deals and the subsidies that go with that program and tax hikes would do nothing to address inflation today. of course, if you want to stop inflation now caused by expessive government spending --
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excessive government spending, the first thing you should do is stop spending or another way you can say it and common sense dictates, when you're in a hole, stop digging, instead democrats double down with big spending and coupled with tax-killing jobs. democrats' policy decisions made even less sense given only a week before we learned our economy had shrunk for two straight quarters, indicating recession. and everyone knows, as president obama once said, and this seems to be the third term of the bawm presidency, -- obama presidency, but this is what he said when he was president. quote, the last thing you want to do is raise taxes in the
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middle of recession, and yet it was done in that bill in august by $300 billion. more than $300 billion. the last thing our economy needed was another tax-and-spending spree, but democrats just couldn't let go of their wish list. once more, in light of hypocrisy, at the height of hypocrisy, democrats touted the inflation reduction act as an example of fiscal responsibility. yet, the supposed savings they claimed will result from the bill was then immediately dwarfed in one day of actions by president biden's unilateral student loan announcement which
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will cost american taxpayers at least $500 billion and some people are saying it could cost up to $1 trillion. when president biden announced he was wiping out $10,000 to $20,000 of student loan debt for people making as much as $150,000 or $250,000 for a household, that's like -- that likely illegal action will send the bill for this student loan giveaway for americans who did not attend college or people who graduated from college already paying off their college expenses and at the same time it's going to fuel the fires of inflation. so much said for the lip service about deficit reduction and flaiks, -- inflation, we now
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know that inflation is not transitory. it's persistent. iowans are sick and tired of paying the price for the failures of this biden economy. i yield the floor and i suggest the absence of a quorum. the presiding officer: the clerk will call the roll. quorum call:
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she serves on the education and labor committee and also the transportation and infrastructure committee. thank you for joining us. >> guest: thank you for having me. >> host: you were sworn in earlier this year. talk about your process of coming to congress. >> guest: it was a really quick process, i -- can it was pretty much be here in who days and hit ground running. it's an exciting moment for if us. >> host: talk a little bit, you ran in the seat that was previously alcee hastings, if i'm correct. >> guest: yes. i ran in that special election, and we just ended another primary, so it seems like we've been running for the last year. >> host: and so aside from the now and the day-to-day workings of congress, what has it been like? what have you learned since being here? >> guest: a lot. long days, long nights studying, catching up, but right now the american people have been the priority. when you're working night and day and and you know you're
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doing good, you end kind of don't feel it. >> host: you're the first haitian-more than elected to congress. talk about that. >> guest: it's been an important journey, especially with what we see going on in haiti and the instability. i think the height and the climax really came after the assassination, and now with the gangs that are emboldened in haiti, we're seeing killings, murder, rape throughout the entire country. so when we saw the combination going on this weekend, it was no surprise, it just showed the urgency of us acting to help haiti stabilize itself. >> host: the headline here in the papers morning about this turmoil, it's being connected to fuel prices, if i understand. can you explain what's going and give the back story? >> guest: haiti has a huge inflation issue, so once the announcement came over fuel prices, there were more protests. before the protests we said that the gang members were actually leading protests, violence. it's the same gang members who are now leading these protests,
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but it's also attached to violence. and that's where it's becoming very worrisome. we see some of these gang leaders who are trying to change status to be more of a civil rights leader. but when you have so many atrocities, killings and you're actually organizing people and bringing violence, then we have to be really sure that we don't allow this to escalate any further. >> host: this prompted you to write a letter directly to president biden over these issues. what are you asking in this letter? >> guest: what we're asking is that we impose if sanctions because right now haiti has over 200 gangs. these gangs are actually funded by wealthy families who are actually in haiti and vacation in the u.s. so we believe that sanctions are important because they're actually fueling these gang members. a lot of the gang participants are young people who don't have access to guns. they don't even have shoes, so are hay getting these military-style weapons that are coming into the country? so to help stabilize, we need to put sanctions on anybody who's
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helping the instability. in addition to that, i believe we need a terrorist designation for these people also. because if you see the amount of rape, the amount of killing that is directed into neighborhoods, over the weekend we saw a bigger outbreak when we i saw more than 40 houses burned, people being shot in the streets. people are leaving just to find security, and we need to make sure that we're being good partners to haiti and actually assisting them in find stability. >> host: your letter was to president biden, the treasury secretary, janet yellen, over these requests. have you heard from from either of them? >> guest: well, we drafted the letter, we haven't sent it out yet. we've been talking with chairman meeks, and next week he'll be holding hearings to find out what's going on in haiti. but one of the biggest things we want to make sure we're doing is highlighting the human rights violations. it's something we're not hearing a lot about, but when we're reading the reports about the atrocities going on in haiti, it's astounding that we're not
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taking action even at this point. >> host: in the area of human rights, a lot of discussions these days about the actions of both governor ron desantis and governor greg abbott of texas sending migrants to various places in the united states. what was your reaction to these actions in. >> guest: it angers me because he talks a lot about lawlessness and and following the law, but there was nothing legal about intentionally sending people who were -- validating saying, oh, they had the intention with of coming to florida. the last time i checked there's no legal procedures that a governor can take because you were thinking. there's no standard, right? it's subjective. and him using so much of our funding, florida taxes, $950,000, to actually send hem to martha's vineyard, he needs to make sure that they're -- the the asylum-seeking process. when you have -- the. [inaudible] putting addresses they know nothing about, this is a very serious issue because now you
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have the governor and other participants engaging in illegal activity to stop a person from seeking asylum. at this point we've crossed every barrier, we've crossed every place of human decency. and so i think we have the actually stop these action as immediately and make sure this is not precedent. >> host: has there been a discussion on the source of funding for these trips rather by plane or other means? >> guest: we've been looking how much money has been spent. as of today, we see it was $950,000 that was sent, and these migrants weren't even in the state of florida. and so that's where it becomes, well, why are they intervening in their processesome if they actually have a right to try the seek asylum, even though they keep trying to say these are illegals. they're trying to attempt to have that pathway so they can seek asylum, and him impeding on that process using taxpayer funding especially at a time like this when we see so many people need help when it comes to the housing crisis, it's problematic for everyone in the nation but specifically
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floridians. >> host: representative mccormack joining us, democrat from florida, here to talk about these issues. 202-748-8000 for democrats, 748-8001 for republicans, and 202-748-8002 for independents. text us, 202-748-8003. as far as the house is concerned or at least democrat cans in the house, will there be investigations or some type of look into these actions particularly with your above? >> guest: well, i hope there is. we can't allow this precedent to continue. especially governors, i think, can take these steps with such a broad scheme. it's one thing that you're deporting or flying people to martha's vineyard, but we see there was an actual scheme to stop the process of these individuals actually trying to get asylum, and that's what i think is egregious is. >> host: republicans on capitol hill said it highlighted the issue of immigration. in fact, your governor spoke
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about this at an event. play a little bit about what he had to say about what he did and then get your reaction. >> so when biden is i flying these -- flying these people all over the fruited plains in the middle of the night, i didn't hear a peep out of those people, okay? [cheers and applause] i haven't heard a peep about all the people that have been told by bide biden you can just come and they're going, they're being abused by the cartels, they're drowning in the rio grande. you had 50 that died in some shed in texas. i heard no outrage about any of that. i haven't heard outrage about all the fentanyl that's come across the border that's killing americans in record are numbers. [applause] if i don't hear, i don't hear outwith rage -- outrage about the criminal aliens that have gotten through and victimized people not only many florida, but all throughout the country. i didn't hear any outrage about
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that. the only thing i hear them getting upset about is you have 50 that end up in martha's vineyard, then they get really upset. [cheers and applause] and i'm sorry -- [applause] those migrants were being treated horribly by biden. they were hungry, homeless, they had no opportunity at all. the state of florida -- it was volunteer, offered transport to sanctuary jurisdictions because it's our view that, one, the border should be secured. and we want to have biden reinstitute policies like remain in mexico and making sure that people aren't overwhelming. but short of that, if you believe in open borders and sanctuary jurisdictions should have to bear the brunt of the open borders. [applause] so that's what we're doing. >> host: that's governor desantis' response. your response to that. >> guest: i think this is just another example of the policies and the rationale that extreme
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call? the presiding officer: yes, sir. mr. hoeven: i ask that it be vitiated. the presiding officer: without objection. mr. hoeven: thank you, mr. president. i come to the floor to discuss how consumers are paying more for less reliable energy as a result of the policies of the biden administration and congressional democrats. north dakotans are paying 60% more for gasoline since january of 2021, and diesel remains at nearly $5 a gallon. now, plieses are high because we have a supply problem. our friends and allies in europe are facing an even worse supply crisis unless the biden administration changes its approach, american families and businesses will continue to face these ininflationary pressures. fortunately the solution is clear. more energy supply means consumers pay less. more supply is what helps us get prices under control, get
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inflation under control, and coupers relief. in 2019 the u.s. was producing nearly 13 million barrels of oil a day. today that production is down at about 11.8 million barrels a day. that's because the policies of the democrats in congress and the biden administration include blocking energy production on federal lands, and that's curtailing supply. our vast supply of taxpayer-owned oil, gas, and coal resources on federal lands are a national strategic asset. yet president biden and his, quote, keep it in the ground, end quote, allies treat our energy reserves as a liability. recent analysis by "the wall street journal" shows that the biden administration leased only 130,000 acres for new oil and gas production in the first 19 months of its administration. let me repeat that number. the biden administration has
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only leased 130,000 acres for new oil and gas production in its first 19 months. for comparison, president reagan leased 47.6 million acres during the same time period. biden administration in just under two years, 130,000 acres leased. ry began administration -- reagan administration 47.6 million acres leased during the same amount of time. that's the point. we need to take the handcuffs of our producers if we're going to produce more energy here at home. and nobody produces energy better, more cost effectively, more dependably, and with better environmental stewardship than america. we do the best job of anybody in the world. new energy leases are needed to grow oil production and supply for the long term. otherwise production will continue to fall and that means higher energy costs for our
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consumers. instead of defunding previously-held lease sales -- excuse me. instead of defending, defending previously-held lease sales, the biden administration is relying on litigation from environmental allies to block permits needed for energy development. this only further increases our reliance on adversaries like russia, iran, and venezuela, countries with little or no regard for environmental stewardship, human rights. they're our adversaries. how in the world can we put ourselves subject to their energy production? energy production is part of national security. energy security is national security. natural gas prices also remain high and families are being hit with higher utility bills. electricity prices are up nearly 16% compared to last year. and as we approach the winter months, natural gas bills are up
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33% over the same period. and with winter coming on, they're going to go up more. the biden administration's policies are undermining our energy security and because the cost of energy is built into our entire economy, inflation has been driven to record heights. every -- everything you buy has an energy component in it. when energy costs go up because the administration won't let us produce more here at home, it causes inflation in everything you buy. everything you buy, not just at the gas station but in the grocery store or anywhere else because of the energy component. despite these challenges, president biden and congressional democrats doubled down by passing their partisan tax-and-spend bill that will make it nor expensive to produce energy in the united states. the bill includes a new tax on natural gas. that doesn't make natural gas cheaper. that doesn't make energy cheaper. that makes it more expensive. the bill include as new tax on natural gas and also makes oil
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and gas production on federal lands more expensive through higher fees and royalty rates. so they're driving up the cost of energy. in addition to levying $739 billion in new taxes on hardworking families, the bill was loaded with $370 billion in green new deal spending. instead of tax hikes and wasteful spending, president biden needs to take the handcuffs off our domestic energy production. instead of higher taxes and fees, more mandates and less energy development, we need to take the handcuffs off our domestic energy producers to lower energy costs and help reduce the burden of inflation which harms every american but particularly those low-income americans who are struggling with the higher cost of everything from putting food on the table to gas at the pump to anything and everything they
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buy. we need to change this policy direction, mr. president, and it needs to happen now. with that i thank you and i yield the floor. i also note the absence of a quorum. the presiding officer: the clerk will call the roll. quorum call:

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