promise of good conduct reductions in their sentences, that's a very important thing to do. we want these men and women, these law enforcement professionals to have the respect and to also have the law on their side. there are no federal offenses that disqualify you from good conduct time, not a single one. and for good reason. good conduct time is an incentive to follow the rules in prison. that's what we want people who have broken the law to do while they're in prison. learn to follow the rules. the threat of losing good conduct time is also a deterrent against breaking the rules. that helps prevent violence in prison, protects correction officerses and protects the other incarcerated people. it is a critical tool to maintain order. that's why we don't disqualify anyone from good conduct time based on their offense of conviction. this -- this bill would be the very

first time in history. we have never done it before and should not start. now is not the first time that this senator opposed efforts too rehabilitate prisoners. carjackers are secluded -- excld from the first-step act. he didn't support is it. it was a bipartisan measure introduced by the primary sponsor at the time, senator grassley and myself and senator leahy. it was signed into law by president trump. soft on crime. this bill passed by an overwhelming vote of 87-12 in the senate, signed in law by president trump. unlike most republican senators, senator cotton opposed the first step act. it established earned-time credit that allowed prisoners to

earn time off sentences by participating in programs. the bill included a compromise that excluded those from criminal offenses. carjacking was one of those offenses. the criticism that he is making in the first step act doesn't -- no matter -- no matter how many classes a prisoner takes or skills he learns, he cannot earn a day off his sentence under the first step act. exactly the opposite of what the senator from arkansas just said. that can compromise wasn't enouh for the junior senator from arkansas. he offered an amendment to the first step act that would have skewedded tens of thousands of prisoners. i knew and they know now, the purpose of a residcism is to reduce recidivism.

when we exclude people from these programs, we do not reduce recidivism. let's talk about what we can do to reduce carjacking. i've been working for month on a bill from senator grassley, republican from iowa. our combating carjacking act is based on recommendations from the experts who came to our hearing last year. i've discussed one key provision many times with the sheriff of cooke county. and here's what it does. almost any car manufacturerred today has some -- manufactured today has some kind of vehicle location built into it. it calls for help if you're in an accident. this is it a great way to locate cars right away, in real time, after they've been carjacked. if you take a car by threat of violence, law enforcement should be able to find the car right away right now law enforcement

has a hard time getting auto manufacture terse to provide the location. even if the victim is saying please help. why? some manufacturers are better than others, but they say they're worried about violating the federal driver privacy act and liability. the bill we're working on creates an exception to the driver privacy act. it says if a car manufacturer gets a reasonable request from law enforcement after a carjacking they can provide that location data without liability. because we want to make carjacking a crime that never pays off and it won't if carjacked vehicles are recovered. i believe that carjacking is a serious problem that needs local and federal solutions, i invite him to join me and senator grassley in our bipartisan effort. i don't agree that wiping out

good conduct credit for federal prisoners is a good way to do it. madam president, i object. the presiding the presiding officer: the objection is heard. mr. cotton: i'm disappointed. we should address how we can stop more carjacking. i don't think we should blame cars for carjacking the way some would blame guns for gun violence. the simplest way to stop carjacking is to lock carjackers away in prison for a long time and not to let them out early. and the senator from illinois, i have to say is right, i was not on board with the first step act. i'll walk free to continue my continue my advocacy against that law which has led to hundreds and hundreds of its beneficiaries from committing violent crimes. 87 senators committed a mistake,

including most republicans, president trump made a mistake in supporting the first step act. that law is dangerous to public safety. i yield the floor. the presiding officer: the senator from maryland. mr. van hollen: thank you, madam president. i rise in opposition to the resolution by congress to overturn a law that was duly passed and enacted by the elected representatives of the people of the district of columbia. i support self-determination. i support self-governance. i support full democracy for the nearly 700,000 residents of the district of columbia. citizens who pay more federal taxes collectively than the people in 21 states, citizens who serve their country in the armed forces, citizens who live in the capitol of the oldest

democracy deserve the same rights to full democracy an self-determination as the citizens who live in any other state or any other city in the united states of america. that's why i've long championed and supported the cause of d.c. statehood, but i want to the point out, madam president, that is a fight not only for voting representation in the house and the senate, but also for the principle of local autonomy, the principle of self-determination, also known as home rule. madam president, in my view, this resolution is an attack on the democratic rights of the people of district of columbia, which has its own duly elected democratic representatives. the mayor and the d.c. council, its residents, its citizens are fully capable of deciding their own law and deciding their own

future. the congress should not be overriding the will of the people of d.c. as reflected in their elected representatives. this process of directly overruling a law passed by the district of columbia has not been used for 30 years -- not for 30 years, and we should not start it now. this bill was passed by the d.c. council. it was vetoed by the mayor, and i share some of the concerns that have been expressed by the mayor. but then the city council overruled the mayor's veto by a vote of 12-1. here's what the mayor of the district of columbia says. that while she had differences with what the council did, she strongly, strongly encourages this senate to uphold the larger principle of democracy for the

people of the district of columbia. here's a letter she sent to all of us on february 23, and i quote, as mayor and the chief executive officer of the district, i call on all senators who call on basic democratic principles of self-determination to vote no on any disapproval resolutions involving duly enacted laws of the district of columbia. the mayor points out in this letter that she's in a back and forth with the council to try to address some of the concerns that she's expressed, concerns which i understand and share. but she is very clear that the united states congress should not be big footing the decisions made by the elected representatives of the district of columbia. no other jurisdiction in the united states of america has its laws subject to veto by the united states congress.

we all have governors of our state, we have state legislators, we have cities with mayors and elected councils. no one would appreciate the united states senate and house of representatives interfering and overturning decisions made by state or local representatives, even if we might disagree with some of those decisions from time to time, and yet that is what we are doing to the people of the district of columbia having elected their representatives, the mayor and council to represent them. we must ensure that the people who live in the capitol of the world's oldest democracy has the same democratic rights as people who live in every other part of the country. now, madam president, i do want to address some of the particulars here because we've

heard from lots of people, especially our republican colleagues, that what the d.c. council did and the d.c. government did was so egregious that we have really no alternative but to make a decision we haven't made for 30 years, which is to overturn a law that was duly passed by the d.c. government. so let's take a look at it. even opponents within the district of columbia acknowledge that the majority -- the great majority of revised criminal code is noncontroversial, providing essential updates and clarification to a criminal code that is in desperate need of modernization. the mayor herself who he vetoed the legislation said she supports 95% of it and offered concrete proposals to address the other concerns, but she points out that even though she

disagrees with 5%, that's no reason for the united states congress to overturn a law that was ee -- that was passed by the government of d.c. why did the district of columbia revise its code? because it's hopelessly outdated and confusing. it was written in 1290 -- 1901, more than 120 years ago. you our -- many of our states have updated our laws since then, most of them, if not all of them, but in washington, d.c., they have never taken a comprehensive look at the d.c. criminal code. we all know a lot has changed since 1901, and so the revised d.c. code is the result of an exhaustive effort led by the criminal code reform commission, an independent d.c. agency established in 2016 and

comprised of nonpartisan experts. the commission draft the code over nearly five years in a fully public process that included 51 public meetings, extensive public feedback and robust negotiations. the advisory group that unanimously approved of the recommended changes included representatives from the office of the u.s. attorney from the district of columbia and the office of the attorney general from the district of columbia. the new code removes some obsolete provisions, it ensures that sentences are more proportionate to the actual sentencing, it simplifies overlapping charges and addresses missing and inconsistent laws that create legal loopholes that people have been able to slip through. now, while i may not have supported every one of these hundreds of provisions in the

revised criminal code if i were sit og and the d.c. -- sitting on the d.c. council, i'm not sitting on the d.c. city council and neither is any senator in this chamber. none of my 99 other colleagues were there to hear all the system that was heard -- testimony that was heard by those who made these decisions on behalf of their constituents as elected representatives. let's dig a little deeper into some of the changes that were made because listening to some of the public discourse, you know, you would think, i know my friend, the senator from new jersey has heard this, you would think that, boy, the d.c. council just went wild with this leftist effort to loosen the laws and let criminals run free. well, let's take a look at what they did. they raised some penalties, in

some cases they looked at actual santses, -- sentences in not only d.c. and in other places, they closed legal loopholes hsm here is where they raised penalties, attempted murder. the current maximum sentence in the district of columbia is five years in prison for attempted murder. the maximum under the new d.c. law, 23 and a half years for attempted murder. how does this compare to other states in well, there are at least seven of our states that have max maximum penalties beloe d.c. maximum penalty for attempted murder. i see the republican leader is not on the floor. the state of kentucky has a lower sentence for attempted murder than the revised d.c. code has. maybe tomorrow i should introduce legislation to raise the penle itty for -- penalty

for attempted murder because i don't think that's good enough for the people of kentucky. that's what we're doing here. we're substituting our judgment for the considered judgment of the people of the district of columbia. let's look at another area, attempted sexual assault. the d.c. government increased penalties for sexual assault from five years to 15 years. again i surveyed some of our other states. we have senators from a number of states, at least six, that have lower penalties for attempted sexual assault than the current, new proposed d.c. law, including once again for the state of kentucky. the state of kentucky has a lower maximum penalty for attempted sexual assault than the new revised d.c. law has. federal assault on a police officer, they raised it from the current max 10 to 14 years.

misdemeanor sexual assault. the maximum will now be -- up from 180 days. the statute includes new offenses including nonvehicular negligent homicide and reckless endangerment with a firearm and new penalties such as for offenses against vulnerable adults to strengthen public safety in the district of columbia, having listened to their constituents. it also includes increased penalty enhancements for aggravating factors such as the presence of a firearm, such as property damage, or prior convictions in addition to the base penalties that are established for various crimes. now, that's where they've increased penalties. that's where they've closed loopholes. but when you're doing a comprehensive reform, you look at everything. you don't necessarily measure

justice just because a maximum penalty for something goes up. sometimes you measure justice by making sure that the penalty is proportionate to the crime. we've had lots of debates on this floor and the senator from new jersey, my friend senator booker, has been front and center? leading the charge when it comes to criminal justice reform because we have an absolute scandal in the united states of america about mass incarceration of people of color. so when the d.c. council passes some of these laws, people apparently ignore all the cases they're increasing penalty for for things like attempted murder and zeroing in on some areas where they are actually bringing in sentences in line of what judges are doing based on their discretion. a lot of attention has been given to the issue of armed carjacking because in this case the d.c. government lowered the

maximum penalty for armed carjacking. they did that to bring the maximum penalty more in line with what actual sentencing was. the current carjacking maximum after the change is 21 years. it went from 40 years down to 24 years. now, here's the thing. i looked again, as i know my friend from new jersey did, at what other state laws for armed carjacking have as their maximum penalties. and once again in many cases they're lower than the new d.c. statute, new d.c. penalty. in fact, a lot of states don't even have armed carjacking statutes. and so if you want a point of

comparison for those states, you look at armed robbery. now, when you look at states with armed carjacking statutes and you look at the penalties they apply for armed robbery and carjacking cases, you find that 15 states have lower penalties than the new lower d.c. maximum penalty for armed carjacking, 15 states represented by senators in this chamber who want to override the d.c. law, have sentences for armed robbery or armed carjacking lower than what the d.c.'s new penalty is. those states include alaska. they include kansas. they include north dakota. and, yes, once again they include the state of kentucky.

the state of kentucky seems to be an outlier here in terms of low sentences for many violent crimes, lower than the newly revised code passed by the d.c. government. madam president, i'm not going to go into all the other details here. i think my colleagues get the picture, which is that the elected representatives of the district of columbia after exhaustive review made some decisions about criminal justice reform. i don't agree with every single one of them they made, but i'll tell you this. what they did is entirely defensible and it certainly doesn't rise to the level of the united states congress for the first time in 30 years big footing their decisions. so that is also the testimony we received from a number of attorney generals of our states.

everyone got it including i'm proud to say my state attorney general, anthony brown, former member of the house. they wrote to us all and they point out in their letter that the question of public safety is best left to those who are closest to the community and who are in the best position to decide these laws. they say we know from experience that each of our jurisdictions is very different and at times requires different policy approaches. a law that makes sense for one community may not make sense for another. the state of kentucky wants to have lower criminal penalties than the district of columbia, that's their decision. as i said, based on today's action, maybe i'll get up tomorrow morning and introduce a bill to change the criminal penalties in the state of kentucky. but the bottom line is this. the people who live in the district of columbia deserve the

same right as people who live in every other part of our country, the right to self-determination and democracy. and that's what they did in passing this new law, and we should not be substituting our judgment for the duly elected representatives of the people of the district of columbia. i now yield to the senator from new jersey, senator booker. mr. booker: madam president. the presiding officer: the senator from new jersey. mr. booker: i want to just say i respect and grateful for the generosity of the chairman, senator -- from oregon to allow me to slip in and say some remarks. i want to thank senator van hollen for his incredible leadership on this issue. i have a distinction of being the only one of the hundred senators actually born in washington, d.c. this is the city my parents met in. this is the city they married in. my mom worked for the d.c. public schools. my father was one of the first black salesman hired in the

entire d.c. region by a company of ibm. i owe the city so much. and i am disappointed that there is nobody in this body who was officially elected to speak for this city. washington, d.c. is suffering as it has from a violation of one of our most sacrosanct principles as a country which is this idea that this democracy is rooted in representative democracy, separation of powers, and most certainly the idea of you can't have taxation without representation. in fact, d.c. residents pay more per capita in federal taxes than any other state but yet they have no say in the federal government. 700,000 americans in one of the daily expressions of -- available to them have 13 council people that were part of a process. as was said already by my colleague. the councilmembers completed a

monumental tank modernizing 120-year-old d.c. criminal code to make it more consistent, clarifying conflicting provisions, and bringing it in line not just with current best practices reflected in the majority of states' criminal codes but trying to address the urgencies of the moment where you have a city that is deeply concerned about the crime in its communities. d.c.'s efforts are not unique. 37 states have gone through similar processes, so-called red states, so-called blue states, purple states, and the process was spearheaded, as my colleague said, by an independent d.c. criminal code reform commission which was a nonpartisan agency that was very representative of prosecutors, victims rights advocates, and all of these nonpolitical people came and unanimously endorsed what we have before us today. now, the first time any partisan

politician got involved was the city council just voting to confirm this unanimous nonpartisan body's recommendations. that process is what the republican leader said oh, looks like what they did, they're in need of adult supervision. think about how patronizing and paternalistic for this body not being any part of this process now suddenly saying they need adult supervision as if they are children. the d.c.'s criminal code was about keeping d.c. safe. it's what the prosecutors involved said, the u.s. attorney's office said. we need to do this to crais a safer city -- to create a safer city, because the confusion in the code, the lack of having criminal penalties at all for certain crimes, all of these things open up opportunities for d.c. not to have the security they want. so this is about d.c.'s safety. but unfortunately, it is now

embroiled in scare tactics where political opportunistic actions are taking place to try to use this as a way to win political points. and even the need what who i have tremendous respect for their role has been more keen on asking questions about the political analysis than actually the facts of what d.c. has done. what d.c. has done in this bill is actually create a tougher element on crime, tougher laws on crime. look at the totallity of this bill, it's impossible to say that it isn't about making d.c. safer and having tougher penalties on crime. my colleague went through some of this. but it actually quadruples the maximum penalty for attempted murder. it triples the maximum penalty for sexual assault because people in d.c. see those as serious crimes and they want to

seriously increase the consequences for it. d.c. is pro-police officer. so what do they do? they doubled the maximum penalty for misdemeanor assaults on police officers and they increased by 40% the maximum penalty for felony assault on a police officer. washington, d.c. knows that there's too much gun violence and they need to take action against it. so it quadruples the maximum penalty for possession of assault rifles, for ghost guns, for restricted explosive devices. i know the nra doesn't want laws like this. but d.c. residents do. it doubles the maximum penalties for possession of a firearm or a bump stock. more serious penalties. d.c.'s criminal code actually modernizes and creates new categories of offenses that aren't currently crimes.

it creates new offenses for negligent homicide. it creates new offenses for reckless endangerment with a firearm. it creates new expenses -- offenses by expanding liability for sexual assault, including the sexual abuse of a minuter. it expands liability for possession of sexual images of children. this is a city that came together that said we want to protect our children. we want to protect sexual assault victims. we want to better protect our police officers. we want to better protect people from murder. no, but this body now in a rush of politics is going to prevent a city from protecting itself. it actually increases protections for domestic violence victims. it criminalizes strangizations -- stranglation as a felony

which is difficult to prosecute. in fact every state except north carolina has closed this loophole but this body is going to stop them from doing it today. it criminalizes nonsexual conduct as a felony and quadruples the maximum penalty. it helps victims of domestic violence better obtain civil protection orders because the current law lacks clarity and makes it very hard to do this. let me say this again. by rejecting this law today, by voting against this, people in the name of being tough on crime are actually the people that are preventing a city from better protecting itself, better protecting its children, its sexual assault victims, its police officers. -- police officers. think about that. i have not, in my ten years in the senate, seen such a distortion of facts, such a misrepresentation of what something is. the rcaa sets new maximum

penalties for armed carjackings. my friend talked about that. and their carjacking laws now have a maximum penalty higher than georgia, kansas, north dakota, kentucky. maybe we should do a unanimous consent saying that kentucky is too soft on crime because d.c. wants higher maximum penalties. it sets new maximum penalties for unarmed carjacking, higher than georgia, higher than iowa, higher than north dakota, higher than tennessee and kentucky, the very senators coming down here to criticize laws, senators from tennessee i've seen today, from kentucky, from iowa, actually their states have lower maximum penalties than what d.c. is trying to do, but they're going to stop d.c. from doing it. armed robbery, the same thing. higher maximum penalty than north carolina, north dakota, ohio, the same for unarmed robbery, higher than kansas, higher than south dakota, higher than tennessee, the sponsor of this bill, and kentucky. yes, they may be lowering the

maximum penalty, but it's still higher than so many states of the republicans pushing this bill and not speaking to the facts of it. i'm a former big-city mayor. and there are communities like washington, d.c. all over this country that are trying to fight crime. many of them have significant numbers of african americans as a percentage of their population, who are higher, have higher rates of victimization. those cities are grappling with this. they feel a sense of urgency. that's why this bill actually is raising penalties, putting in new criminal statutes, and making sure that so many of their laws are tougher than even many of the red states like kentucky and tennessee here. that's what happens in a city that has elected representatives that know their number one job

is to protect the community, because those communities often are being more victimized than senators and their families are in their states. give d.c. what we believe was a revolutionary idea then, but not a revolutionary idea now, which is to let them protect themselves. don't strip them of their ability to protect themselves. don't take away their ability to protect their children. don't take away their ability to create laws that protect their police officers. don't take away their ability in this law to protect their citizens. 700,000 residents that do not have a voice in this body. 700,000 residents who are about to have a law that will better protect them overturned because of politics, because of tunism -- opportunism, because of the big divisions in our countries that -- in our country that tear us apart, but d.c. is

united for self-determination, representation, safety and security. those are the ideals that started america, and this body shouldn't interrupt a city trying to live its american ideals that we take for granted, but they obviously today are still fighting for. thank you. madam president, i yield the floor and give my apologies to the great senator from oregon. mr. wyden: i thank my colleagues and thank both of my colleagues for their very, very powerful remarks. the presiding officer: the senior father from oregon. mr. wyden: madam president, the senate this afternoon is going to vote on the nomination of mr. daniel i. werfel to serve as next commissioner of the internal revenue service. i want to say that i believe mr. werfel is superbly qualified. he is a good government nominee, and i urge my colleagues strongly to support him.

mr. werfel, and this is true of his professional life and it in his hearing, has made it clear he's going to make sure that the irs does its job consistent with the law, and that transparency will be a top priority for his service. he's focused on building trust. this means a lot because mr. werfel's done that at the irs before. he stepped up when president obama asked him to serve as acting commissioner during a very challenging time a decade ago. now, the issues were different then. danny werfel came in after the public learned that the irs had used some very sloppy methods of monitoring the political activities of tax-exempt groups. in the finance committee,

particularly, chairman hatch and myself, we did an extensive investigation and we found that, both left-leaning and right-leaning groups were affected. while mr. werfel served in the acting role, he worked effectively with both sides of the finance committee. he helped right the ship and improved the confidence in the irs. the late senator hatch, who was certainly conservative but somebody who always valued fairness and professionalism, spoke to me several times, and our colleagues, about his high regard for danny werfel. in my view, that is a big reason why danny werfel has bipartisan support today. a few comments on the big initiates he's -- the big initiatives he's going to lead

web confirmed. the inflation reduction act finally gave the irs the resources it needs to go after tax cheating by too many of the very wealthy and multinational corporations. and it's in a position to improve customer service for everybody else, the vast majority of americans who follow the law. i'll start with customer service, where the irs is making significant improvements. go back a few years and the irs was waibel to -- able to answer only 11% of the phone calls received. in 2022 it was 13%. this time last year there was a backlog of 24 million unresolved tax returns. as of a few days ago, the irs was answering 90% of phone calls, it's processed more than 90% of the returns filed so far this season, and the irs cut the backlog of individual returns b 292%. they've achieved -- by 92%.

they've achieved that by spending about 1% of the ira funding. in my view, that's a record that we ought to put a lot of focus on, because if it continues it will be a historic return on investment. we expect it to tib. we're count -- we expect it to continue. the long-term initiative is also stepping up the fight against, unfortunately, the fact is there are too many of those wealthy tax cheats and scofflaw corporations who rip off american taxpayers too easily today. the republican budget cuts over the years resulted in a double standard in tax enforcement. the irs' ability to go after sophisticated, wealthy tax cheats, and they're employing armies of lawyers and accountants, was severely limited for years. the burden of tax audits shifted far too heavily onto working pooh emin the middle class. and the reason that that was the

case, madam president, is for working people in wisconsin and oregon, nurses and firefighters and teachers, the government has most of the information about their life. so it's fairly straightforward, if there is something to question there. the wealthy tax cheats use their accountants and the lawyers to pay taxes very differently. billionaires can, to a great extent, pay little or nothing for years on end because they structure their affairs not to have an annual income. democrats have made clear from the very beginning that this isn't about increasing audits of people with incomes under $400,000. in fact, we wrote that limitation into the inflation reduction act. republicans struck the language from the bill during the debate. nevertheless, secretary yellen has ep sure that the -- lass ensured that the congress and everyone concerned knows treasury will stand by that

commitment. the planned laying out how the ira funding will be used is in the works. i want to be clear this afternoon, madam president, because i've been asked about this. colleagues on the finance committee, of both political parties, are insisting that we get that report on how the funds are going to be used, that we get it soon. frankly, that's one of the reasons to support danny werfel this afternoon, because he's experienced in this field. he stepped in for president obama. we're convinced that he is going to follow that directive, to focus on getting us the plan, and ensure that the focus is on better service and on wealthy tax cheats and multinational corporations paying their fair share. i think he's going to handle his position in a way that's transparent. he made it clear he would be open to talking to senators on both sides of the aisle, and that he would strongly favor

protections for confidentiality of taxpayer data. that is the kind of good-government approach both sides of the aisle should support. so, this is a highly qualified, highly experienced nominee. he's the right choice to lead the irs. he's earned bipartisan support. a number of our colleagues, both in the committee and here on the floor, on boat woat, support hie aisle, support him. i would urge my colleagues this afternoon, i think we'll vote in a couple of hours, to strongly support his nomination. madam president, on another matter, i would ask unanimous consent that the following members of my team be granted floor privileges for the remainder of the congress, marte silva, sophie sohn, robert walsh, jaikd medvi -- jacob medvitz and ver onanique brassa.

the presiding officer: without objection. mr. wyden: i rise today on behalf of all the people i have the honor to represent to honor the late bill shawnly, the portland trailblazers -- trail blazer's voice. bill passed in january leaving a timeless legacy for all of the fans in rip city, the name bill coined for my hometown. his wife, dottie, passed last month, leaving her legacy as an accomplished woman who radiated smarts and kindness to everybody she met in oregon. bill and dottie were the ultimate teammates, as the first couple of rip city. perhaps it's fitting they could not be separated for long. in fact, bill and i spoke last before his passing in january,

and he made sure to ask me if i was doing my level best to protect social security. i've kept it on my phone, madam president, with his resonating voice saying, ron, what are you doing to protect social security and the gray panthers? i'm really concerned about it. and make sure you also do it for dottie as well. that will be on my phone forever. like storied broadcasters johnny most for the celtic fans or chick hern for los angeles lakers fans, my friend bill was much more than an nba play-by-play guy for us trail blazer fans in portland and oregon. as the first broadcaster with the team's inaugural season in 1970, that was a world long before, madam president, espn or even before a team's games aired on local tv, bill became the soundtrack for generations of

portland fans. he connected our state's first big league franchise with oregonians in every nook and cranny of oregon. i've logged lots of miles getting around oregon for 1,040 open-to-all town hall meetings. in fact, i've got two more scheduled this weekend in central oregon. but i bet bill covered just as many miles as the blazers' ambassador to every part of oregon. i can't tell you how many times i'd show up at a radio station in a small oregon town, there are lots of those kinds of towns in wisconsin, and i'd see a photo of bill there from back in the day, when he was on a lom golf -- a local golf course for a local function. any elected official in oregon will tell you how fortunate we were that bill schonely never ran against any of us. in addition to coining the phrase rip city, that is forever tied with my hometown, bill had

an expansive basketball lexicon in his unofficial role of professor of basketball english for blazer fans. unlike me, he had a barry tone -- a baritone voice and taws us how -- taught us how rebounders climbed the golden ladder. as a former player myself, i always nodded my head in agreement whenever bill would intone, pausing theatrically with each word you've, god, to, make -- you've got to make your free throws. as rip city prepares to say goodbye to bill and dottie at a public memorial service in portland, i'll be out on monday the 13th, i'll close with this, oregon is said to have seven wonders, including mount

hood and crater lake. in my score book and the score book of blazer fans, the schonelys and dottie are the eighth wonder. today, on behalf of all oregonians, i extend my condolences to dottie and bill's loved ones. i'll always be forever grateful they leave so many wonderful memories as part of their unforgettable legacy for our community. -- community. on behalf of all oregonians today, a i close by simply saying, thank you, bill and dottie schonely. i yield the floor.

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

quorum call: quorum call:

mr. bennet: madam president. the presiding officer: the senior senator from colorado. mr. bennet: thank you, madam president. is the senate in a quorum call? the presiding officer: we are. mr. bennet: i ask that the quorum call be vitiated are. the presiding officer: without objection. mr. bennet: thank you, madam president. i wanted to come down here because a single senator in this chamber, our colleague from alabama, has put a blanket hold on every pending nominee and promotion of flag officers at the department of defense. as far as we can tell, and this might be the intention of the senator from alabama, and i don't know whether he knows this or not, there is no precedent for what the senator from alabama is doing. no precedent for what he has done. it has never been done, stopping the u.s. senate from taking up

promotions for uniformed military officers. these are promotions that happen for people as a group, flag officers at the department of defense that we have to ratify here in the senate and we asked the senate armed -- i con believe it when i heard it. couldn't believe it. but we asked senate armed services committee if this had ever happened in the history of america, the history of this senate, and the answer was they have no record of that ever happening before. and it's happening at an incredibly unusual and difficult time in the world's history with the biggest land war in europe since the second world war, china's sabre rattling in the pacific.

we just had an hour's long session of the intelligence committee to hear the report from the head of the fbi, the head of the cia, the head of the nsa, the head of the defense intelligence agency, all of these folks coming together to say, this is what the threat looks like. this is the global threat that america faces. a geopolitical landscape more unsettled than at any point in my lifetime, madam president. and my understanding is that the senator from alabama has placed this unprecedented blanket hold because he objects to the department of defense's new policies to help our service members access reproductive care. and i'll have more to say about that in a minute, but i don't think i should wait any longer to advance these personnel.

we should get this done today, madam president, and therefore, -- i'm sorry. let me find my glasses, madam president. i ask unanimous consent that the senate proceed to executive session to consider the following nominations en bloc, calendar numbers 46, 47, 48, 49, 50, 51, 52, that the nominations be confirmed en bloc, the motions to reconsider be considered made and laid upon the table, with no intervening action or debate, that no further motions be in order to the nominations, that the president be immediately notified of the senate's action and the senate then resume legislative session psm. the presiding officer: is there objection -- session. the presiding officer: is there objection? the senior senator from alabama. mr. tuberville: reserving the right to object.

the senator from colorado may have good intentions, madam president, but he's wrong on the facts. i'm holding the dod nominations because the secretary of defense is trying to push through a massive expansion of taxpayer subsidized abortions without going through this body, without going through congress. three months ago i informed secretary austin that if he tried to turn the dod into an abortion travel agency, i would place a hold on all civilian, flag, and general officer nominees. other than a couple of calls from staff to ask whether i was serious, the dod leadership has yet to call me directly and justify this action. in fact, they have not explained this decision to congress,

despite multiple letters, more than a dozen, from my colleagues on the committee. secretary austin's policy is immoral and arguably illegal. if he wants to change the law, he needs to go through congress. the dod refused to answer questions or justify this policy for months last year. when they finally answered our questions, after another nominee hold, the policy was exposed for what it really is, nothing but a political charade to appease the left. these holds have no real impact on military readiness or operations. the military wasting time an resources to koord -- and resources to coordination abortion hurts readiness. if my colleague cared about military readiness, maybe we'd go after more of the ridiculous policies that have led to our

lowest -- our lowest recruiting numbers in decades. but my hold does send a message that the secretary is not -- and i repeat -- not above the law. and he cannot ignore lawmakers who are demanding his organization abide by the law. i object and i will continue to object to any nominees as long as this illegal new abortion policy is in place. i'm holding the military accountable. others are holding our national security hostage by forcing their agenda where it doesn't belong. americans want a military focused on a national defense, and that's what i'm fighting for. for these reasons, i object. the presiding officer: objection is heard. mr. bennet: madam president. the presiding officer: the senior senator from colorado. bnt bent thank you, i -- mr. bennet: thank you, i appreciate the words of the senate from alabama.

he said, i'm mistaken on the fact, i think one thing we didn't hear at all any dispute at all that this is the first time in american history, that the united -- a united states sr has held up the promotion of flag officers, the first time in american history that any of the more than 2,000 people who served in this people have seen fit to hold up the promotions of people at dod. that's not a fact that's in dispute, madam president. as we sit here today on the floor. you know, i spend a lot of time when i come down to this floor, and i'm on the floor listening to people's speeches or thinking about my own, thinking about the

history of america, and broadly speaking, it's not always been true at every moment or every juncture, but broadly speaking, the american story has been a story of expanding freedoms and expanding opportunity for the american people. it's a story of one generation after another putting their shoulder to the wheel to make our country more democratic, more fair, and more free. and it can be easy, when you're on this floor, to think about those victories as ancient history, as old as the marble in this chamber. but it was only 100 years ago, our grandmothers' generation, when women in america didn't have the right to vote. that's just 100 years ago. it took 100 years for the people who were fighting for women to have the self-evident right to

vote to vote, and they didn't get it until 100 years after they fought and -- and it was only 100 years ago that they got it. it was only when i was born in the middle of the 1960's that we attempted, finally, -- finally after the civil war in the united states and reconstruction and the redemption after that, after the jim crow laws and the red lining happening in the united states of america, it was only after that that we finally tried to secure the rights of african american citizens to vote, a promise that had been made after the civil war was over, it never fulfilled. i would argue it hasn't been fulfilled to this day. when i was born in 1964, i was

at the african american museum the day before i got sworn into this body this time with my family and i said to one of my nephews, we were walking true the slavery exit. i said, you know, i was born in 1964, which to him, admittedly, that seemed like ancient history. but the year i was born was 100 years since people in this country still enslaved human beings, just two short lifetimes divided from when i was born from when we still enslaved human beings. and it was even more recent in our country's history, just 50 years ago, madam president, before we secured the constitutional right to an abortion in roe v. wade, putting an end to the days when women in this nation, when our mothers and our grandmothers were forced

into back-alley abortions in the united states of america, forced to carry pregnancy to term and forced to live without any freedom to chart the -- their own course about their lives or their family's life. that was just 50 years ago when the court in roe v. wade said, there's a constitutional right at stake here. there's a constitutional right that we're going to protect here. and in all of these cases, in my judgment, our fellow citizens have sought to broaden the horizon of freedom and equality in america, and our progress has never been in a straight line. the pages here should know that. we've always been in a battle. we've always been in a battle in this country between the highest

ideals that have ever been expressed on the page by human hands, the words in the constitution of the united states and the worst impulses in human history -- the worst impulses in human history. in our case, human slavery and the genocide that was perpetrated on the native american population that was here at a time when those incredible words were etched into the constitution that are etched all over the walls of this beautiful building, a building, by the way, itself, i say to the pages that are here, that was built by enslaved human beings. and we are in that fight today. today we face a decades-long campaign that stretches back at least to when ronald reagan was elected president. it's a battle that has been

mostly invisible to the american people even though it has trafers formed american -- transformed american life. and while that campaign had many objectives over its 40 or 50 years or so, those four decades, one of those objectives was to confirm a majority of justices on the supreme court who sub subscribe to a radical, constitutional interpretation called originalism, a legal doctrine that was invented in the 1970's. my colleague from louisiana is here today. he's a distinguished lawyer. he might disagree with some things that i would say, but i was at -- there at the origin of originalism. i was a lawyer trained at a -- a decade or so after this was something that, you know, was

perpetrated by the federalist society and justice scalia and the law and economics guys and martin phelps did was trying to do with the reagan administration and a huge part of that was originalism. it was the most amazing name. it's the most amazing name, i think, in political history. i don't think there has been greater branding in the history of mankind than originalism. because it makes you think immediately, that's what the founding fathers must have said. it's their original intent as if that could be divined across the decades or across the centuries or across the ages, as if they even agreed with each other. you don't have to go to a musical like hamilton to see the

disagreements these people had with one another. that's the beauty of the founding of our republic is to see the disagreements that they had with each other and the way they sorted through them, and the compromises that they made as a result of the disagreements, some of them american tragedies that we live with to this day. but they called it originals. and i just want the pages to know this and the law students that are out there today that might want to dispute this to just look up the history. there's a beginning of this. there's a beginning of this and it does not start with john marshall. it does not start with george washington or thomas jefferson would himself would be absolutely shocked to believe there are people in the 21st century who think that we should be dictated to by the hand of

the 18th century or the 17th century. there should be a revolution even less in every generation. and if you had told me -- i mean, we all knew about originalism when i was in law school. we certainly did. i did. professors who subscribe to it. certainly political people who subscribe to it. but if you had told me that when i was in law school i would live to see the day when a majority of the united states supreme court would subscribe to the originalist position of the federalist society, i would have said that is not believable. that is preposterous. i'm not saying there wouldn't be able that wouldn't have fundamental constitutional disagreements with me on all kinds of things, but the idea

that you'd have a court that would say originalism is where it's at, but that's what's happened. and it has been a 40-year campaign to do it. i actually had a moment on the floor of this senate once when i congratulated the leader of the republican party for having achieved his dream, having achieved his vision. i wasn't congratulating him because i agreed with him or that i felt positive about what he had done, but he had set out to carry that water and he did it decade after decade after decade. and i said earlier that this wasn't really noticed by the american people, this battle. in many ways it wasn't until eight months ago.

and eight months ago, mr. president, we saw that majority take its most radical decision yet when it overturned roe v. wade, stripping the american people of a fundamental constitutional right to make their own reproductive choices, a right that justices appointed by republican and democratic presidents had upheld for half a century, for 50 years. i have a colleague in this chamber that i love named jon tester who's from montana. he's a farmer. he's one of the last farmers in this place. he said to me -- this was even before this happened. he said to me, my daughter is having to fight for things her mother never had to fight for

because her grandmother won this freedom. her grandmother won these rights. and she won these freedoms and these rights when roe v. wade was decided half a century ago. i read on the way home to colorado -- well, i guess in honesty i read the decision -- i'm sure my friend from louisiana read it earlier, too, when it got leaked by the supreme court somehow, something that should never have happened. something that should never have happened. that's when i first read justice scalia's opinion, but i had a chance to read it again on the plane on the way back to colorado, and i was hoping that it would be different because the opinion that i read, had

first read as a draft opinion, it just dripped, dripped with a cavalier dismissal of the right that it had destroyed. and when i reread it on the airplane, that's when i saw again justice scalia's opinion doesn't even have the courage to grapple with the fundamental nature of the right that it was stripping the american people of. it didn't contend with the simplest questions like what it would mean for millions of americans, including for millions of american women like my three daughters. justices breyer and kagan and sotomayor expressed this in their dissent. they wrote the majority opinion lacked, quote, any serious discussion of how its ruling will affect women. it reveals how little it knows or cares about women's lives or

about the suffering its decision will cause. that is a quote of the dissent in that opinion. instead of grappling with the consequences of his ruling which would have been, i'm sure, painful even for justice alito to deal with, just as it is for women all over this country and their families to deal with the aftermath of this decision every single day since it's been rendered. justice alito essentially wrote that if it wasn't right in 1868, it's not a right today. i mean, you've got to give him credit. that is originalism. although he's not going back to the constitution so to give him some credit -- he's going back to the 14th amendment. if it wasn't a right in 1868, it

is not a right today, mr. president. we ratified the 14th amendment in 1868. that is the depth of the analysis in that opinion, which if you were guided only by originalist ideology, i suppose that would be what you would say say. the dissenting justices pointed out that justice alito completely ignored that the men who ratified the 14th amendment in 1868 and all of them obviously were men, did not perceive women as equals, did not recognize women's rights. quoting them now in the dissent, when the majority says we must read our foundational charter as viewed at the time of ratification, it consigns women

to second class citizenship. of course it does. women had no right to vote. black americans had no right to vote. the dissent continued, quote, because laws in 1868 deprived women of any control over their bodies, the majority approved states doing so today. because those laws prevented women from charting the course of their own lives, the majority says states can do the same today. and that's exactly what we've seen, mr. president, with one state after another treating dobbs as a green light to obliterate access to reproductive care for millions of american women and families. and many of us have spoken about how the ruling has harmed the privacy, the health, the freedom of our fellow americans, and all of those are important. and let me say also, you know, this is a difficult issue in my

state. and i want the senator from alabama to know that and everybody know that. it's a difficult issue for all the families across america. it's difficult for anybody who's been through this. and i am certainly not cavalier about how difficult this decision is and the fact that different people have different points of view, different people have different religious perspective, different people come from different parts of the country. i thought about these things a lot over the years, and my conclusion is that it's best to leave this decision in the hands of a woman and her -- well, whomever she chooses to consult, her doctor or her family. that's my opinion. i respect the opinion of other people who disagree with me about that. and i realize that this is a heartfelt decision. but there's a reason why people have been out on this floor and other places talking about the effect on freedom, the effect on

the right of privacy, the effect on our fellow citizens because it has been unbelievable effect on all of those dimensions but i don't think we have focused nearly enough on how the ruling will harm our national security, and that's what brings us here today. that's what brings us here today, at this unprecedented moment when a member of this body for the first time in american history has said no, i'm not going to let a single person go through. i'm not going to let any of these flag officers go through because i am upset with the policy that the dod has pursued, that the dod is pursuing a massive subsidy on abortion care, the abortion travel agency that the dod has become. and because i don't like that, i'm not accepting those

characterizations of what the dod has become, but because i don't like that, i'm going to hold hostage the promotion of flag officers at the department of defense. over a million men and women serve in our armed forces supported by over 700,000 civilians in the department of defense. these are obviously moms and dads, sons and daughters who volunteer to risk their lives to protect ours. but when our men and women in uniform volunteer to serve, when at the heed the call and they say sign me up, they don't get to decide where they serve.

the pentagon -- mr. president, could we have order in the chamber, please. the presiding officer: the senate will be in order. mr. bennet: thank you. when our men and women in the uniform volunteer to serve, they don't get to decide where they're going to serve. the pentagon decides that. you can't sign up and say, well, i'd like to be in colorado or well, i'd like to be in alabama, or i'd like to be in a state where, you know, my reproductive health care is going to be covered or a state where it's not. before dobbs was decided, our troops had at least some assurance that wherever the pentagon sent them, they would have minimal access to reproductive care as a protected constitutional right. they knew that for 50 years, mr. president. for 50 years. for 50 years no matter where they serve. that is no longer true. the supreme court stripped that

right away, again without even bothering to consider what it would mean for our troops based in states with no access to reproductive care. justice alito doesn't deal with that in his decision. after dobbs, one of the first calls i received was from a woman who once served as a senior officer in the air force. she immediately grasped how dobbs was going to affect our military readiness, and that's what this is about, our military readiness. she understood as i would say thousands of women in this country understood, how disruptive it is to force women in uniform to travel from their duty station to access care, to say nothing of the cost to her privacy when every single person in her unit finds out about it. knows about it.

unlike any other -- any other medical procedure that we give people leave for, that people can get paid travel for. the privacy issues here are seismic and the military readiness issues as a result are seismic, too. women are the fastest growing part of our military. they are about a fifth of our total force. and over a third of our civilian workforce. it is not hard to see why they might think twice before enlisting about they know they're going to be stationed somewhere that doesn't respect their reproductive freedom. the senator from alabama talked about how the dod is having the worst recruiting they've had for generations. he's right. that's true. it's hard to see how this is

going to help. and you don't need to take my word for it. a recent study from rand concluded that dobbs could increase attrition, decrease readiness and hurt national security, and that's after the pentagon had its worst recruiting season, as the senator from alabama suggests, since the vietnam war. and in an attempt to deal with these issues, two weeks ago the pentagon announced three new policies, and here's what they were. by the way, i apologies to my colleagues who are here, because i know you are here to do this other speech. i delayed for 24 hours or more, so i'm going to just continue, and i will beg your forgiveness. but these are the three things that have brought the senate to a halt. these are the three things that have created an unprecedented

objection to flag officers of the department of defense being approved in a common way that they have been approved in this body for 230 years. the first of these policies authorizes travel allowances for service officers to access reproductive care, if it's unavailable at their duty station. and that's important because they may not be able to afford to travel, which is why we pay for procedures, other procedures like lasix eye surgery or to remove a bunion, which doesn't seem to have gotten the objection of anybody in this body. the second is to take access without leave. this recognizes the difficult choice a woman has to make in incredible bring, profoundly challenging circumstances -- incredibly, profoundly challenging circumstances.

lasic surgeries aren't banned in alabama or connecticut. the last policy extends the time before servicemembers have to tell their commanding officers before -- about a pregnancy. it gives them just a little bit more time to deal with the shock that can come when somebody has an unexpected pregnancy and is trying to make a decision about what to do. this says that rather than get you in a position where you might find yourself, you know, feeling like you can't tell your superior officer the truth. this says, take a little bit more time so you can think about it. that's what these three provisions do. that's what these three guidelines do, these rules do. it's about giving women in uniform the time and the privacy to decide if they want to carry

a pregnancy to term or not, a decision that anybody on this floor, no matter what they think about this, surely can understand has become more complicated in the wake of dobbs. so i applaud the secretary of defense, secretary austin, for taking these steps to protect our soldiers, our sailors, and our marines. he's in a difficult position. it's hard to do because, you know, i don't think many people were expecting that this would actually happen. and yet it has. and instead of welcoming this leadership from the secretary of defense, some of my republican colleagues have attacked these proposals. they've called them -- i'm now not quoting the senator from alabama. i'm quoting others that have written about this. they've called them disgusting. they've called them heavy handed. they've called them disastrous.

i could be wrong. i've certainly been wrong before. but i don't think the american people would consider it disgusting or disastrous that women in uniform don't have to dig into their own paychecks and use their limited leave to seek care that's unavailable because of where our government required them to deploy. i think fundamental fairness would say, that's a reasonable reaction to the disruption that's been caused by the supreme court. now, i am quoting the senior senator from alabama when i say, quote, the secretary of defense is following through with his radical plan to facilitate

thousands of abortions a year with taxpayer dollars, so i will follow through with my plan to hold all dod civilian flag, and general officer nominations that come before the u.s. senate. okay, let's just hang on there for one second. thousands -- the the senator was down here the other day saying, this is not a readiness problem because it's only 20 abortions that dod paid for. -- last year. well, i don't know the facts of every one of those abortions. i do know the facts of the dod with respect to abortion unpaid for, and that is cases where there's been rape, incest, or the life of the mother is at stake. and maybe that's what those 20 were. but the senator from alabama himself says that what we're talking about here in the context of the rule is what he calls thousands and thousands of abortions that he's saying are

subsidized by dod because the dod is willing to pay for the travel of women to go from a state that's ban -- that that is banned abortion to a state that hasn't. i don't see how -- how could that not be a matter of readiness when you're talking about thousands of people? the senator from alabama said the american people want a military focused on national defense, not facilitating a progressive political agenda. i could not agree more. i could not agree more. -- with the senator from alabama. the american people want a military focused on national defense. and for that reason, that's why i find it so hard to imagine that the american people would tolerate any senator holding up critical national security personnel to impose their ideology.

the senator from alabama correctly says that abortion is illegal in his state. i read some polling data that shows that 55% of alabamians actually support a woman's right to choose, but that's neither here nor there in terms of the law in alabama. the senator from alabama is right about that. abortion is banned there. in alabama, abortion is banned at any stage of a pregnancy. it has no exceptions -- for rape or for incest. under alabama lurks doctors can -- under alabama law, doctors can face up to 99 years in jail if they perform an abortion. last month an alabama state legislator announced that bill to treat abortion as murder. the state's attorney general suggested using a chemical endangerment law, a chemical endangerment law, a law designed

to protect kids from methamphetamines to prosecute women for taking a bill to terminate her pregnancy. that's the law, that's the debate that's going on in alabama. i recognize that alabama has made certain decisions about this issue that are different from the ones that colorado has made. we were the first state in america to decriminalize abortion in 1967. that was the state state of colorado, a western state -- that was the state of colorado, a western state, five years before roe v. wade was ever decided. in colorado, we believe these decisions belong between a woman and her family and her doctor, and we don't accept that the government should impose itself on that private decision. and, of course, that's not just what i believe. it's not just what colorado believes. that's what the large majority of american -- the american

people believe. that's what the american people believe. but i acknowledge that alabama has made a different choice. but what i can't accept is that its senator would impose that choice on every woman and family in our armed services who happen to be stationed in his state or any state that doesn't protect access to reproductive care. because it's not just alabama, mr. president. it is not just alabama. 18 states have banned abortion. nine of them -- nine of them have no exceptions for rape or incest. and many states have only begun their war on a woman's right to choose. just yesterday in florida, mr. president, which is home to 22 military bases, 22 bases

where men and women in the united states who signed up to fight or to join our military have no choice about whether to serve. governor desantis committed just yesterday to sign a six-week abortion began. he may be unaware -- i haven't talked to him about it. i don't know, he might be unaware that one in three women don't even know that they're pregnant until around six weeks. or maybe he does know that. i don't know which would be worse. texas is passing -- posting $10,000 bounties to any resident who successfully sues a doctor or nurse for performing an abortion after six weeks. or even someone who just drives their friend or relative or

neighbor to have a procedure, a procedure that for the last 50 years, until this radical originalist majority came into the court, that for the last 50 years, for almost my entire lifetime has been a constitutionally protected right in this country. and all of us can remember who's in this chamber in the aftermath of dobbs as state legislators all around the country wrote laws restricting the freedom of female citizens to travel from states like texas or alabama that have banned abortion to a state like colorado that had ratified a woman's right to choose. and now we have senators here who aren't content to merely deprive servicewomen of reproductive care if they're based in a state where abortion has been banned. they want to make it even harder

to travel to another state to avail themselves of that care. from the vantage point of my daughters from the nearly six million people who live in colorado and the vast majority of americans who support a woman's right to choose, i think there is a real question here who's position is radical. when the military pays for servicemen to travel from one state to another if they need lasik eye surgery or a sinus procedure for to remove a bunion on their foot, is it really radical to imagine that servicewomen should have the right to travel, have that travel -- the price of that defrayed so they could get

reproductive care? and that's just the debate that we're having. and that says nothing about why we're actually here today, which is the vehicle that the senator from alabama is using to delay the vote of every pending nominee and promotion at the department of defense, at a moment when we've got the biggest land war in europe since the second world war. china's saber rattling in the pacific. if you fold most americans -- if you told most americans that a single senator in this place was delaying every promotion and nomination at the dod all for the purpose of making it harder for servicewomen to travel for reproductive care or take leave for that care or shorten the time a woman has to make a choice about her reproductive health before she had as to tell

her commanding officer -- and those are the facts of what these rules do, if you told america that was happening on the floor of the senate, i don't think they would believe it t i don't think they would accept it. and maybe that's the reason why it's never happened before. coloradans wouldn't accept it. like the senator from alabama, we in colorado are honored to host a strong military presence in our state from the u.s. air force academy to fort carson to sleever, to peterson to buckley and space command. and the we're honored to protect the reproductive care for the men and women who protect us. and in the case of space command , we have a live example. i'm sad to say, of how the supreme court's decision could harm our national security. i will not go through the

whole story today. i will spare the senator from alabama and louisiana and everybody else who's here this painful, i describe it as the saddest story i know. but here is the essential point. in the waning days of the last administration, i think donald trump, president trump had nine days left. our top generals recommended colorado as the top choice for space command's permanent headquarters. but president trump overruled them and said it should go to alabama. he later went on the radio, and he said they all were against me. they all said it ought toking to, it ought toking to colorado, but i overruled them and i said it should go to alabama. i do not think that's how we should be making basing decisions in this nation. every single person who looked at this space command issue

knows what the generals recommended and they know they were overruled by the president of the united states for his own political purposes. wernt we need to to make these decisions according to the national interests of the united states, not in the political interests of the president. that's why i've called on the biden administration to restore nrgt -- integrity to this process. they should have made that decision two years ago after president trump made this decision in the last few days of his administration overruling these generals, the experts who know where space command should be. but my specific issue with space command has led me to a much broader concern as i've studied this issue. in the wake of dobbs, we literally have no policy to account for the harm of moving a base from a state that protects

access to reproductive care, like colorado, to a state that does not, like alabama. we're now living in a world where the pentagon makes basing decisions according to criteria like the number of parking spaces or the quality of schools or the availability of child care. all of those are relevant decisions, important decisions, questions to ask. but one question they're not asking, mr. president, is about basic reproductive health care in a country where it has been legal, where it has been a fundamental constitutional right for the last 50 years, where the majority of the american people, the majority of people in alabama support. they're not asking whether a state prosecutes women who seek an abortion or imprisons doctors for 99 years for performing, or

turns residents into bounty hunters against women. it is ridiculous that there would be county parking spaces and not reflecting on what this world looks like for people in our armed services, especially women and their families postdobbs. i can't agree that the pentagon should care about how much it costs to house a family when it makes basing decisions, but not whether the family has the freedom to plan its future. the supreme court may not have had because of its ideology the courage to grapple with the consequences of the ruling on our men and women in uniform and on our national security, but that doesn't give us the ability

or the department of defense reason to shirk its responsibility. we have to stand on the side of expanding rights and expanding opportunity for americans, not restricting them. so today i'm calling on the pentagon to codify the policies it announced last month and develop a new frame framework that accounts for access to reproductive care and its basing and its personnel decision. and i call upon my colleague from alabama to lift his holds so the senate can advance these national security personnel. because if the men and women, if our men and women in uniform can spend every day defending our freedom, surely, mr. president, we can defend theirs. mr. president, i yield the floor. a senator: mr. president. the presiding officer: the senator from alabama. mr. tuberville: mr. president, i think we got a little off track here.

we're getting back to the objection a little bit. i don't think there's anybody in here who said anything to do with doing away with abortion. the department of defense has for years had a policy about abortion in the military. my problem is they've changed it, and the last time i looked the people who make laws are not the supreme court and not the pentagon. it's this place right here. we make the laws. and they've done abortions for years in the military for rape, incest, and harm to the mom through help. they want to change this to where a third party has said thousands and thousands would start getting abortions, and not just through the military personnel but also their dependents. now this is about who's paying for this. the american taxpayers are not

told or shouldn't be told they have to pay for abortions. that's not the way it's written. the military should not be paying for abortions. so as we got off track there a little bit about what we're talking about, we're talking about a new policy based not on facts, but on conjecture from the department of defense that they're going to do it on their own without coming through this body. and a little bit about space com, as the good senator from colorado brought up. it's unfortunate that members from states that weren't even running for space com headquarters are trying to tie completely unrelated political issues to a fact-based decision. space com and the dod abortion policy have nothing to do with each other. i don't recall abortion being

part of the air force selection process a couple of years ago when they called me and said coach, we're going to put space com in huntsville, alabama. the decision to put space com was based on facts and facts alone, and evidence of what the best for the military and for our country and our national defense, that's the reason they chose it. that decision was then reconfirmed by multiple independent studies for the last couple of years. the dod inspector general and the gao confirmed that huntsville was the number-one location for space com, based on things like workforce, existing infrastructure, education, and the cost of living. the arsenal in huntsville is far and away the best place for space com. this is not my opinion. it's fact. it's fact from several studies. attempts to change that with progressive talking points are shameful and purely political.

it's really a shame. i yield the floor to my colleague from louisiana. a senator: mr. president. the presiding officer: the senator from colorado. mr. bennet: thank you, mr. president. first of all, i would say with respect to my colleague from alabama, i appreciate his arguments here. he first says that dod doesn't have the ability to do this, that somehow this is up to congress to pass a law to make sure that servicemembers that need to travel for reproductive health care have it paid for them, not the abortion, by the way, which the senator from alabama said. that's inaccurate. but the travel is his argument. and the reality is that dod, it's clear can pay for servicemembers to travel for lay sick eye surgery. the current law doesn't say that.

they can pay to have a bunion removed. the current law doesn't say that either. but all that has happened without complaint. it makes sense the dod has discretion to provide the care it believes its servicemembers require, and they are making those regulations as part of the law that they have been granted from our branch of government to make sure they care for our servicemembers. i think that's point one. point two, the senator from alabama talked about, you know, this is about who's paying for abortion. this is not who's paying for abortions. this is about those three changes to the law i mentioned earlier. i won't, because i know my colleagues have lost, are going to lose their minds over my staying here. those are three things. one is travel. one is, you know, being able to take a little bit longer time to talk to your supervisor.

those kinds of things. it's not about paying for abortions. although i will say that in another, the senator from alabama has another piece of legislation that he has introduced that objects not to the dod, but to the v.a. he says this is radical. the v.a. has said we have noticed that our policies that allow us to pay for abortion when the life of the mother is at stake don't also include exceptions for rape and incest, and we're going to add those exceptions for rape and incest. and the senator from alabama has brought that to the floor and said he wants to have a vote. i want to have a vote on that too. i can't wait to see how every single senator in this chamber stands on the senator from alabama's position that protecting people having the

v.a. add cases of rape and incest to the exceptions allow it to pay abortions is not somehow abortion on demand. or abortion after people have already had the child. but it is simply adding two things that probably 80% of the american people agree with. and then on the last point on space command, decided on the facts, let me tell you something. here are the facts as i understand them. the general said they thought space command should stay in colorado. the generals and the secretary of the air force went to the white house with the recommendation of colorado. the president of the united states, donald trump, overturned that recommendation on their advice. he went on the radio, the ricky and bubba, i think it's called, in alabama, where he said everybody was for colorado or everybody was against me on alabama.

but i made the decision to send it to alabama. those are the facts on space command, and it's not off topic. it's not off topic. that was a political decision that should never have been made. if the politics had not entered in that decision, the generals would have gotten their way. space command would be in colorado, and we wouldn't be having the conversation we're having today because no one in colorado would be having their abortion rights stripped from them because they are being sent to another state that's banned abortion, where doctors can go to jail for 99 years because they perform an abortion, where laws that are meant to bring down folks that traffic in methamphetamine are being threatened to be used against women who use a chemical version of abortion. and this is not a complaint i have with the senator from alabama. this is my complaint with the

white house. you should have dealt with this two years ago. and now i hope this administration will deal with, in the wake of dobbs, this daily gray area. it's tearing at the emotions and the well-being of members of our armed forces who don't get to decide where they're stationed. alabama can have whatever law it wants. that's not up for me to decide. i respect that, the differences in this country. but people in this body have a duty and a responsibility to the men and women of this armed service, of the armed services, and we have a duty

and responsibility to fulfill our duty and responsibility, which is not to hold up the promotion of flag officers at the department of defense because i have a position that's different from what others may think. that's what i think. i yield to the senator from louisiana. mr. kennedy: mr. president. the presiding officer: the senator from louisiana is recognized. mr. kennedy: mr. president, i want to thank my colleagues from colorado and alabama for a very interesting and robust debate. i'd like to change the subject slightly, mr. president. germany and america are dear friends. and friends tell each other the truth.

on the first anniversary of russia's invasion of ukraine, german chancellor olaf scholz said that germany plans to continue supporting ukraine, quote, as strongly and as long as possible and as necessary. mr. president, i regret to observe that based on where we are today, that would certainly be a change of pace. by all measures. germany's so-called strong support is more lamb than lion. germany's current spending, mr. president -- the numbers don't lie -- germany's current

spending to help ukraine by share of gross domestic product, if you compare the spending of one country to another, it's not fair to use raw numbers because some countries are wealthier than others. so if you look at the current spending by our friends in germany to help ukraine by share of gross domestic product, germany wouldn't be -- even be in the top ten nations in terms of financial support for ukraine. and those are just the numbers. acetone ya, latvia, lithuania, poland, united kingdom have all outspent germany by share of gross domestic product. our neighbors in canada have outspent germany, too, both in

raw dollars and by share of gdp. and the same is certainly true of the american people. the american people have spent roughly double, double what our friends in germany have spent in ukraine fighting for freedom by share of gross domestic product. now, with an entire ocean and most of europe between america and ukraine, americans are wondering why the united states and canada have dug deeper to deter russian aggression than germany has. and that's a fair question, mr. president. germany as we all know, and i'm very proud of them for this, germany is the economic leader of europe. germany has the fourth largest economy in the world.

germany has the fourth largest economy in the world. but the fact is friends tell friends the truth that germany is failing to pull its weight in ukraine, and if we look back, mr. president, on the past year, it has -- it's very clear that germany's support of ukraine has been heavy on words and short on action. and i hate to have to say that. somehow germany's leadership has lost the urgency it had when putin began his march into ukraine. and at that time if we think back a year, germany could not have been in a more vulnerable position. germany's armed forces were dilapidated.

at the end of the cold war, germany had nearly 500,000 soldiers, roughly 3% of its spending by gdp was allocated to germany's defense. when putin invaded ukraine, germany's military was roughly one-third of that size, about 183,000 soldiers. and spending on defense by our friends in germany had plummeted to 1 boy 3% of gross -- 1.3% of gross domestic product. its airplanes couldn't fly, mr. president. its tanks were unusable. its bloated military bureaucracy appeared to be the only thing the german government properly maintained. were it not for the united states of america, putin would be in paris. but we stepped up and so did others, got -- god bless them.

it wasn't just germany's armed forces that were unprepared for putin's invasion. germany's energy grid relied on russian natural gas, as we both know, mr. president. for several decades, several, this goes back many years, germany became increasingly reliant on russia's energy. germany appeared to believe foolishly, naively maybe is a better word, than its energy trade with putin would yield friendship. instead it yielded dependency. and this trade -- these weren't some cupcakes that friends were exchanging as neighbors. what we're talking about here is the very security and dependability of the fourth largest economy in the history of the world or rather in the current history of the world and

its power grid, and germany placed its power grid in russia's hands. and putin knew that. and putin knew that germany's energy dependency would make it a lot easier for him to march into ukraine, not harder. everybody knew it. now, mr. president, with winter coming, i want to give our friends in germany a lot of credit. gem any did have some urgency in correcting its energy grid. germany built l.n.g. terminals to expand its gas reserves. the united states sold energy to our friends in germany who were happy to do it. germany expanded its renewable energy efforts. it still has not embraced nuclear energy as i hope it will, but germany did expand its renewable energy efforts.

it has now as a goal of reaching 80% renewable by 2030. and that's good. but there's just one problem. even that effort could lead germany exposed to reliance on an adversary because according to a report from the international energy agency, china is on track to be responsible for 95% of the global production of solar panels. china currently makes up 80% of the world's supply. so if it's not careful, germany may realize the new boss is the same as the old boss. but that same urgency that our friends in germany showed to address the power grid is nowhere to be found on the military front, nowhere.

in the wake of putin's rabd invasion, chancellor scholz -- rapid invasion, chancellor scholz made two promises. he called it a turning point in germany. he said defense spending is going to increase to 2%. he said he was going to create an extra military fund valued at $107 billion. he said his military was going to increase by 30,000 women and men by 2025. i regret, mr. president, that germany's urgency seems to have disappeared. military spending has barely noned above -- nudged above 1.5%, still short of the 2% commitment to germany -- that germany made to nato. germany did purchase 35 american f-35 fighter jets. you know when they're going to be ready?

2027. and experts a lot smarter than me doubt that germany will reach its 30,000 promised new troops by the date that it said it would. the truth is the cold, hard, unvarnished truth, since the invasion began, germany has been slow to provide weapons to ukraine. friends tell friends the truth. germany only agreed to send its help parred -- leopard 2 tanks after weeks with haggling with president biden during which chancellor scholz refused to send the tanks, his own tanks unless the united states also committed to sending its m-1 abrams after all we had done and will continue to do. i mean, even when offering up so

little, the german chancellor demanded that the united states of america do more. mr. president, one year ago as putin's invasion commenced chancellor scholz vowed to invest -- i'm quoting now -- invest much more in the security of our country and guarantee -- quoting again -- guarantee a secure energy supply. on the energy front, putin turned off the gas, and our friends in germany demonstrating extraordinary ingenuity managed to pivot. but on the defense front germany has failed to show any serious effort to grow its military. the fourth largest economy in the world has fallen short in its support for ukraine.

promises to recruit more troops, spend more money, reinvigorate its bundeswehr, they're nice but those are only words. germany seems to acknowledge, mr. president, that the bare barians -- barbarians are at the gate. i don't know how it can be any clearer. so why aren't our friends in germany willing to act? i just don't understand it. in every way, in every way putin poses a larger threat to germany than he does to the united states. and that's saying a lot because putin poses a threat to the united states, but he is a much larger threat to our friends in germany. yet the -- the united states of america, the people of this country, have outspent germany

seven times in helping our friends in ukraine. mr. president, you and i both know that what you do, not what you say, what you do is what you believe. and everything else is just cottage cheese. now, talk is cheap. and in this case it's literally cheaper than funding the bundeswehr but germany's natural gas was also cheap and that didn't end very well. if germany wants to be a leader in europe and gosh i hope they do, it needs to lead. that starts with footing the bill for its own defense. we're willing to share that burden, but the american people can't do it alone. and it starts with helping

ukraine. we've wasted a year, mr. president. it's long past time for our friends in germany to step up and meet the defense promises it made when putin invaded. i end as i begin. germany and america are dear, dear friends. and friends tell friends the truth. i yield the floor, mr. president. a senator: mr. president. the presiding officer: the senator from wisconsin. ms. baldwin: thank you, mr. president. across the country people are experiencing the ramifications and women are feeling the pain of roe v. wade being overturned and having lost fundamental rights and freedoms overnight.

in my home state of wisconsin, women are living with dire, real-life consequences. two constituent, erica and sky have been trying to get pregnant for many years, something many americans can relate to. and finally they were successful. but 13 weeks into her pregnancy, erica learned the heartbreaking news that the fetus had a rare condition that caused the skull not to fully develop and the fetus could not survive, an absolute nightmare for expecting parents. instead of being able to get immediate care and mourn their loss, erica and scott had to figure out the logistics of how to get the health care they

needed, an abortion out of state. let me say that again. expecting parents learned that they had lost the baby that they had tried years to conceive, and instead of being able to mourn their loss, they had to navigate a complicated medical landscape and play travel agent. they had a challenge even to get somebody on the phone and struggled to find an appointment sooner than two to three weeks out. in the end, erica was forced to stay pregnant for a week with a fetus that she knew could not survive. she said, every day i was still pregnant was just an ongoing reminder of our loss. sadly, erica is not alone. one wisconsin woman bled for

more than ten days from an incomplete miscarriage after emergency room staff said they would not treat her. another whose water broke at 17 weeks was sent home without the abortion care she needed, only to return two days later with a life-threatening infection. all of this is because wisconsinites have really been sent back to the year 1849. and what do i mean by that? in 1849, wisconsin's one-year-old legislature banned abortion making it a felony to provide abortion care in almost all circumstances. at at the time of the vote, exactly -- at the time of the vote, exactly zero women were present to debate that misguided law, let alone debate -- let alone vote against it.

yet, 174 years later, an activist supreme court ripped away the constitutional rights of millions of americans and last year this abortion ban in wisconsin that predates the civil war went back into effect, denying hundreds of thousands of wisconsinites the right and freedom to control their bodies. this archaic law has doctors and medical professionals afraid to administer the lifesaving care they are trained to provide for fear that they might be prosecuted. in fact, lawyers are now deciding what care request and cannot be provided -- care can and cannot be provided. this is leaving women with no good options and wondering how in 2023 they could have found

themselves in a position with fewer rights than their mothers and their grandmothers. women who have the means and the ability can seek care out of state, sometimes traveling hundreds of miles and often being forced to take off time from work. some others are being forced to self-administer medicine -- self-administer medication without medical supervision. those who cannot afford the cost of travel and lodging, child care, or time off work -- a reality for so many women, especially women of color and those in rural areas -- they are being forced to carry pregnancies that they did not choose. wisconsinites are not alone, unfortunately. across the country, 14 other states have already implemented

near total bans on abortion, leaving one in three american women without access toss a safe -- access to a safe and legal abortion. and antichoice extremists in states across the country are continuing their crusade. they are continuing to try to take away bodily autonomy by pushing bills that include medically unnecessary restrictions, that limit access to abortion care. this all flies in the face of an overwhelming majority of of americans who support women having control over their own bodies. and their futures and their families. and that's why i, alongside with a record number of my colleagues, am proud to be leading the introduction of the women's health protection act. this legislation would protect the right to perform and access

abortion care free from arbitrary waiting periods, biased and scientifically inaccurate counseling requirements, mandatory ultrasounds, and absolute bans on abortion earlier in pregnancy. our legislation makes sure that the life and health of the mother are paramount, just as it was prior to roe being struck down by the united states supreme court. and as the american people overwhelmingly support. the women's health protection act would return the life-altering decision to have a baby to women and their doctors without interference from politicians. for wisconsinites like erica whose rights and freedoms have

been stripped away, this bill is not just a political exercise. it is a necessary response to a very real crisis. having the freedom to control your health care, your body, and your future free from government interference is a fundamental right but in wisconsin it is no longer reality. it is time to pass the women's health protection act. thank you, and i yield back. a senator: madam president. the presiding officer: the senator from minnesota. ms. klobuchar: madam president, i rise today on international women's day in support of the women's health protection act. i would like to thank senator baldwin for her leadership from my neighboring state of wisconsin, senator blumenthal for his longtime leadership of this bill, as well as senator

murray and so many others, including yourself, madam president, for your work on this. i also wanted to mention erin chapman of our judiciary team who's here with me and my colleague tina smith who is the only senator to have worked at planned parenthood in the united states senate. last year the supreme court issued a ruling shredding nearly five decades of precedent protecting a woman's right to make her own health care decisions against the wishes of 70% to 80% of americans who believe this is a decision that should be made between a woman, her family, her doctor. in this past year, we heard that majority loud and clear in states where access to reproductive health care was directly on the ballot, from montana and michigan to kentucky

and kansas, voters turned out to protect a woman's right to choose. it was almost as if those that authored some of these resolutions, like in kansas, that tried to limit a woman's right forgot that women were going to show up and vote. and in kansas, they did in record numbers right in the middle of the prairie. this doesn't come down to red states or blue states or purple states, as you know, madam president. this is about freedom. as voters across the country have made clear, it is unacceptable for women to be left at the mercy of a patchwork of state laws governing their ability to access reproductive care, leaving them, as senator baldwin just pointed out, with fewer rights than their moms and grandmas a. that's right. my daughter has fewer rights right now than her mom and her grandma did. and you think about what's been

happening. you think about the hardbreaking story of a 10-year-old girl in ohio who had to go to indiana after being a victim of rape and had to go to indiana just to get her health care. i remember when that story came out, people, including news organizations, some of them said it was a hoax and then they had to go back, they had to go back and apologize to that little girl because it wasn't a hoax. it really happened. and those are the stories we are sadly seeing across the country. so what can we do in the face of this threat to women's health and freedom? all three branches of government have a responsibility to protect people's rights, and if one branch doesn't do its job, then the other branches are supposed to step in. that is why we are introducing this bill. congress must act to codify the

principles of roe v. wade into law and we have the opportunity and the obligation to do that with the women's health protection act. we have updated this bill to make clear congress' intent to restore the rights the supreme court took away in the dobbs decision. the bill also protects a woman's right to travel to another state to receive reproductive health care, something that i know you, madam president, have been leading on during this past year. all of this comes down to one question, and i will end with this -- who -- who -- should get to make these personal decisions for women? the woman herself or politicians? i think the answer is clear. i do not think that a woman making these decisions wants to see our republican colleagues in the waiting room. that's why i urge every senator to get behind the majority of americans who support a woman's

right to choose and support the women's het protection act -- health protection act. thank you, madam president. i yield the floor. a senator: madam president. the presiding officer: the senator from vermont. mr. welch: thank you. i rise today to express my strong support for the women's health protection act, to restore abortion access to women all across our country. -- all across our country. i first want to address what at court did in dobbs. it is a truly astonishing and tragic decision. what the court did is for the

first time take away a constitutional right, in this case a right that women had enjoyed to make their own decisions about reproductive choice, something that the court had enshrined in roe v. wade. in the whole history of making a more perfect union in this country, it has been about expanding that we all are created equal, that we all have rights under the law that will be protected. and the supreme court in the dobbs decision reversed that, where the court played this destructive role of taking away a constitutional right that our women in this country have enjoyed. the reasoning in that case referred to by justice thomas suggested that if there wasn't a right that was enumerated very

specifically in the constitution at the time it was written, then that right cannot be protected. it really implies, according to that reasoning, that interracial marriage could be struck down, that contraception should be struck down. so the decision that the court made in dobbs and the reasoning in dobbs is a real threat to the privacy rights that each and every american enjoys to make decisions about their own autonomy. we have reacted it around the country -- we have reacted around the country with some states stepping up to protect abortion rights, and other states enacting significant abortion restrictions. so what has happened with the court decision in dobbs is that we've created this immense division. for 50 years all the women in this country had a right to make

their decision and respect the decision that another woman made. and that might be to terminate a pregnancy, it might be to take that pregnancy to term. but that was an individual decision that the individual woman had to make herself in consultation with whomever it is she chose to consult with. it created the opportunity for unity and for acceptance by respecting the individual nature of that decision and the individual right of that person affected to make that decision. not to have a decision made, as senator klobuchar mentioned, by politicians. in vermont, we voted across the state to constitutionally protect the right of a woman to make her own decision, so we enjoy in vermont on a bipartisan basis, something supported by

our republican governor as well as constitutional officers, we protected the right of a woman to choose. but when i talk to vermont women, as happy as they are that vermont stepped up to protect their right to make their decision, they believe as i do that any woman's right should not be based on the zip code that they live in. it should be universal. the women's health probing -- protection act makes the right of every woman in every zip code to make her own personal decision. and, by the way, that creates unity because it's not telling a person what decision they should make. it's accepting their right to make the decision and respecting the decision that they make. now women have been the leaders in this, and rightly so, because the women in this country have been most affected. but men have a very big

responsibility to stand up in solidarity with our women who have to protect, who have a right to protect their own bodily autonomy and to make their decision. what we see with this patchwork of laws is not just confusion, but peril and anxiety. it's peril and anxiety for a woman who may run afoul of that state law made by politicians, and it's also created enormous uncertainty and anxiety for our providers who have to navigate what is the decision they have to make about providing a service is legal and whatever decision they make can be challenged by some citizen seeking a bounty to hold that person to account for essentially stepping forward and providing services to a woman that they're entitled to receive. so the women's health protection

act is absolutely essential both to protect the individual right of that woman to make her own decision, and it's also essential for us to create unity rather than division on something that's so essential, so personal, and so important. so along with my colleagues who are speaking on behalf of this legislation today, i urge all of our colleagues in the senate to support this bill and protect and preserve the right of women in this country to make the decision that they deem best for them. i yield back. a senator: madam president. the presiding officer: the senator from washington. ms. cantwell: madam president, i join my colleagues this afternoon to come to the floor and speak about the intrution of the introduction of the women's health protective act. it has been a little over eight months since the radical supreme

court overturned 50 queers of landmark -- 50 years of landmark ruling guaranteeing the right to privacy and right to obtain an abortion. i want to take this time to highlight the impacts of this decision that it's had not just on our country but even in my state, in the state of washington. we in washington voted in 1991 to codify abortion as a legal right. we did that by a vote of the people. but we still need to worry about this issue because the problems that are causing the erosion of abortion rights in some parts of the united states is even causing hardship in our state. abortion clinics in washington are facing rising caseloads and rising codes. planned parenthood in spokane reported in january their clinics saw a 75% increase in the number of idaho patients craflg across the line to get abortions. physicians are rightly concerned they could be arrested or sued for providing reproductive care

for patients from abortion restrictive states and pregnant women have it worst of all if they go to a clinic for any reason they can face a gauntlet of protesters. there is protesters right outside the clinic in spokane that they are trying to set up fake clinics with fake names to divert women into their facilities instead of the actual care that they need. i will note that it wasn't that long ago, just a few years ago that the planned parenthood clinic was bombed in whitman county south of spokane. these issues are a problem. we even have had health care officials tell us that washingtonians trying to get access to the morning after pill had to go to four different pharmacies only to find that it was not available. this drug has been an fda- approved drug for decades,

but all of a sudden in washington it's not available. since this ruling was released last summer, 24 states have enacted near total bans or stringent restrictions on the ability to get an abortion. people are still getting pregnant, and they're coming to washington to exercise that opportunity, and we want to make sure that we have a health care system that can deliver. you know, employers are starting to avoid these abortion restrictive states. i don't know if someone has thought through this issue, but i recently spoke to the cofounder of a very successful aviation company that just had one of the best demonstrations of the future of aviation. they're building a new facility, and he told me point-blank he won't even consider locating in a state that doesn't provide reproductive freedom. he said he couldn't imagine having to ask an employee who is enjoying that right in the state that they live in now to transfer to a state where that

freedom was lost. he said it's absurd. but we know that people are aggressively trying to restrict access to abortion. they are aggressively pursuing even more anti-choice policies such as restricting the use of the fda-approved abortion drug even though 5.6 million patients in the united states have used that drug successfully since the year 2000. it's plain to see that they're not going to stop, and that is why we are introducing this legislation and continuing the fight and awareness for reproductive health for women in the united states of america. we must put an end to these practices by passing women's health protection act which makes this decision left up to women and their families and allow the future to be decided by them and not the interference of our government. madam president, i know you know because you've been a law enforcement officer in the state that you represent, you know the challenges of having the

individuals' privacies protected. this now is up to us to make sure that we're protecting these rights and protecting women's access to reproductive freedom. i thank the president. i yield the floor. a senator: madam president. the presiding officer: the senator from new hampshire. mrs. shaheen: i'm pleased to be on the floor protect -- expressing my strong support to health productive rights. since the supreme court's decision in dobbs we have seen our worst fears realized. a wave of abortion bans have been passed by republican state legislatures and signed by republican governors. these bans put at risk, as we've heard so eloquently from those who have spoken, the health of women across this country. and we have to look no farther than my state of new hampshire where our republican governor has ensured that women are banned from accessing an

abortion after 24 weeks. our doctors face jail time for helping women access an abortion. our family planning providers can't make ends meet because elected officials continually block access to federal and state funding that's vital to ensuring that vulnerable populations have access to care. that care includes basic reproductive education, breast cancer screenings, and sexually transmitted disease treatment, all of which are at risk because those family planning clinics are in financial difficulty because the republican legislature and the republican governor continue to deny them funding. just today republican representatives in new hampshire state legislature are considering new abortion bans, bans that are so early that most women don't even know they're pregnant. these bans don't include exceptions even for rape or

incest. the women's health protection act ensures that a woman's access to care is not unnecessarily restricted by where she lives. i want to thank senators baldwin and blumenthal, senator murray and so many others who have been such stronger supporters over the years for their leadership in drafting this legislation. i know you know, madam president, and certainly all women know that one of the most important personal decisions a woman faces in her lifetime as if and when to start a family. and that decision should be made by a woman with her family, with her medical provider, and with whoever else she wants to include in that decision. but it should not be made for

her by her state representative, by her governor, by a member of congress, by her president, and certainly not by any unelected jurist. that decision belongs to a woman and a woman alone. it is time for us to restore that right to women all across this country. thank you, madam president. i yield the floor. a senator: madam president. the presiding officer: the senator from connecticut. mr. blumenthal: i am proud but i'm also saddened and angry to be here introducing a measure that should never be necessary in the united states of america, the women's health protection act will, yes, offer protection to women who need and deserve it. but it is only because of a

hideously misguided decision of the united states supreme court that we are here today. when i first introduced this measure ten years ago, the thought of overruling roe v. wade was unimaginable. it was a figment of fear dismissed by realistic scholars and advocates. it was unthinkable. and here we are. the united states supreme court has handed down a death sentence to women across america. it has overturned 50 years of precedent which i know well because i was a law clerk to the united states supreme court justice who wrote that opinion in the year afterward. and we thought then, and so did

most people in america, we've dealt with this issue, we've disposed of it. it's done in terms of jurist prudence. but this measure is now necessary to protect the rights of all people to seek the health care that they need and deserve. and i'll tell you why i believe that this measure should be passed. i trust women. i trust women to make decisions about their own future. i trust women more than i do elected officials or judges or government bureaucrats to decide what is right for them individually. and this measure is necessary to stop all of the bans, prohibitions, medically unnecessary restrictions that have no purpose except to cut

off care and stigmatize women seeking health care services and the dedicated health care providers who serve them. now i have a mental to the men -- to the men of america. this fight is yours too. this isn't a women's issue. this is an american issue, it's a family issue. and if you think you are spared the conscience and conviction that should require you to stand up and speak out, you're wrong. this issue is yours too. we've seen horror stories just in the months since dobbs. you heard one from my colleague, senator baldwin. i have a similar one. amanda zarowsky in texas who sadly learned that her baby would not survive, but doctors

would not treat her as she might have done in other states. they told her to go home. she almost died, sepsis. they brought her back to the hospital, rushed her to intensive care, and her husband josh learned that as a result, they might never have children. and he said, quote, amanda almost died. that's not pro-life, he said. amanda will have challenges having more kids. that's not pro-life. end quote. he called it barbaric. that is the texas law, barbaric, inhuman. protecting access to abortion through the women's health

protection act, would not only help women like amanda, it would help families, it would help countless women who simply choose access to abortion care because it's right for them and for their families, for other children, that are already part of those families. a woman simply should not be forced to carry a pregnancy to term because some government bureaucrat decides she should. there is a kind of dirty little secret here, and that is that black, latina, indigenous, and other people of color have always faced inexcusable

inequities in health care access, due discrimination, racism, and oppression. and the result is that the practical effect of these abortion restrictions and needless requirements fall disproportionately on them and communities of color. this point is so important because it goes to the heart of the women's health protection act at. at its core, this bill is about justice, it's about reproductive justice. it was a term conceptualized in 1994 by a group of black women who rightfully saw an urgent need for a national movement to highlight and focus on the most marginalized women, families, and communities. abortion bans and restrictions continue to force women in communities of color who don't

wish to carry or deny them the care they need and deserve in moments when their health care is at risk. so this bill is critical for communities which are disproportionately harmed by the bans and medically unnecessary restrictions that the women's protection act would prohibit. and i want to finally thank, in this fight, some of the health care providers, advocates, lawyers, and staff who have been on the front lines in these past ten years. people like jack-in blank, sarah -- jackie blank and license, monica edwards, dr. par rot, at physician -- parrot, amy

navero and karen stone and nina, and lay leila at the women's law center and so many across the country, and amanda skinner and gretchen, liz guferston. make no mistake, this fight will continue. the women's health protection act will pass it may not -- will pass. it may not be in the next couple of weeks or next couple of months, maybe not in this session, but it will pass because the conscientious of america demands it. that's why referendum 1 passed,

and that's why voters showed where they stand. that's why we need to fight rulings from the court, hard-right republican judges who have declared a war on women as soon as next week a judge in texas may rule mifer mifer pris- mipherstone is illegal, despite 25 years of safe use of that drug. a nationwide ban that will affect women in connecticut if he does it. and we've seen also that walgreens will not sell or make available of

mifepristone whose states attorneys general have threatened to sue walgreens if they make that drug available. they have succumbed to bullying. they said, okay, women lose, you win. i urge consumers to vote with their feet, do their business elsewhere, and show where they stand. i'm proud to be here with my colleagues to continue this fight for the women's health protection act. thank you. mr. schumer: madam president. the presiding officer: the majority leader. mr. schumer: first i want to thank senators murray, baldwin and blumenthal who have spoken on this issue, so vital to our country, to the women of our country and to all of us in this country. now for nearly 50 years roe v. wade safeguarded america's fundamental right to

choose. from the moment roe was decided in 1973, the most extreme elements of the republican party made it their mission to reverse roe and eliminate freedom of choice. last summer, tragically, that doomsday scenario became true when the maga supreme court overturned roe and declared there was no constitutional right to access abortion. eight months later, the consequences of the court's decision have been severe. one in three women have lost abortion access and over 17 million individuals can no longer access the full range of reproductive care. the maga supreme court's decision means our children will grow up in a world where they have fewer liberties than previous generations. today, as i mentioned, senator baldwin and blumenthal, along with many others of us, are reducing a fix for this terrible

injustice. senate democrats have a record number of cosponsors, 49 in total. let me say that again. the legislation only dropped this morning, but senate democrats already have a record number of cosponsors, 49 in total. this is the most united senate democrats have ever been on pro-choice legislation while republicans remain hell bent on eliminating women's choice. after americans rejected maga republicans antichoice agenda last fall, you'd think they would have gotten the message, but they have not. today 14 states have enacted near total abortion bans, florida republicans meanwhile introduced a bill this week to ban abortions after just six weeks before many women even know they are pregnant. how can you say the florida bill is anything but cruel, inhumane? and for those who think republicans' abortion hostility is about states' rights, nearly

every republican in the senate sponsored and voted in favor of a nationwide abortion ban. that's what this is all about, republicans, deep down, want to ban abortions for everyone everywhere. and as bad as all of this is, the worst injustice is that those who suffer most are often low-income americans, rural americans, people of color, lgbtq americans, particularly the transcommunity, and black americans. in fact, research here shows that states with the harshest abortion bans have some of the highest rates of black maternal death, as much as 38% higher in states with abortion restrictions. there's only one word to describe this -- shameful. it's a stain, a blot, a blemish on america's soul. so passing the women's health protection act is the right thing to do for our country. i want to thank all of the

senators who helped lead this bill, the women members of our leadership and all of our women senators and so many others, including senator blumenthal, senator whitehouse, and many more who worked so hard on this legislation. i will work with them to push this bill forward. i yield the floor. mr. whitehouse: madam president. the presiding officer: the senator from rhode island. mr. whitehouse: i'm delighted to follow leader schumer for whom this is such an important issue and i'm sure will gather our caucus together to be as effective as we can. today is international women's day, but this year it is shadowed by the freedom that women have lost in america to make their own choices and to shape their own lives, a radical supreme court captured by deep-people of the district of columbia special interests --

deep-pocketed special interests have shepped arded their -- they went into the back rooms of the federalist society, hand picked supreme court justices, put them on the supreme court, spent millions of dollars orchestrating that and putting tv ads behind them, all run through phony front groups and now instruct them what to do through a bunch of other phony front groups that go in as ami krirch -- it is an unfortunate situation behind this horrible decision. what i want to talk about is how hurtful and harmful this is when things go wrong. everybody hopes an prays that their pregnancy will be -- and plays that their pregnean will e

healthy. but things can go wrong and when they go wrong, these extreme legislation puts doctors into impossible situations. we hear about doctors who have postponed care until a patient's health or pregnancy complication had deteriorated so much that their life was in immediate danger many you could have predicted it. you could have taken the prudent course, but the shadow of these criminal pelts of this -- penalties of assault on women's freedom have made doctors postpone this decision, and it does, be in fact, put patients' lives at risk. there are committees have been set up to determine whether a doctor making a decision about a woman's care should be allowed to proceed. you have to go through the hospital committee because of the risk of liability. sometimes these things happen

fast and sometimes people feel very privately about them and the idea of having to go to a committee is both a cause for delay and a huge lack of privacy for the women and family involved. so in texas, on comingists say -- oncologists say that they wait for women who have cancer to get sicker before treated them. some doctors reported that they're unable to get other professionals to come and assist them with procedures because the other professionals are frightened of liability, and that too fouls up the ability of the patient to get care. even the forensic nurses who care for sexual assault victims. so you're battered and you're raped and the police respond and the emt's respond and they take

you to the emergency room and there are forensic nurses who provide specified care for sexual assault victims, they do the rape kit, they know how to deal with paibts who are still -- patients who are still very traumatized and they usually also provide morning-after contraception. right? the woman has been raped, why would you not do that? now they're anxious about doing that for fear it will be considered an abortion drug. that woman who has been through that experience deserves better than to have politics intrude into her care on that terrible night. it's not just me sig that. an emergency -- saying this. an emergency physician in houston who was the chairman of the board of physicians said we're no longer basing our judgment on the clinical needs of the women, we are basing our decisions on what we judge the

legal position to be. another expert said this is happening every day all the time in these freedom-burdened states. he said some others have said these are incredibly rare situations. he said that's not true. this is happening every day all the time in these states. i had a grim meeting with a group of ob-gyn doctors who practice in rhode island who are hearing from colleagues in states who have been burdened by this freedom being removed for the women in their states, that professional colleagues, doctors are beside themselves at the way this interfered into their practice, particularly at those most dangerous time when a pregnancy is in trouble and a woman needs the full attention of the doctor and the care is determined based on her medical needs not on something that some republican legislature hobbled together.

so really important for us to get together and pass the women's protection act and thank you for so much leadership getting us to this day. i yield the floor. the presiding officer: the senator from new hampshire. ms. hassan: madam president, i rise to join senator baldwin and senator blumenthal and all of my colleagues who are speaking in support of the women's health protection act, and i want to thank senator whitehouse for his eloquence just now in describing the real life and death consequences of the dobbs decision. i want to thank advocates from planned parenthood, and other organizations who have been tirelessly pushing for this legislation and standing up and speaking out for reproductive freedom. the grave threat to the health and freedom of women all across our country makes clear that it is more important than ever for senators regardless of political party to come together and

support this critical legislation. nothing less than the freedom of american women and the future of our democracy itself depends on us doing so. for more than two centuries, each successive generation of americans have enjoyed more than the last. by extending the promise of democracy to all americans, our country has only become stronger. but the supreme court's decision to overturn roe v. wade brought that story of progress to an abrupt halt taking away a fundamental freedom from millions of women, a freedom that most have known for their entire lives. now, when women across the country raised the alarm following the supreme court's decision, there were those who suggested that we were overreacting. they suggested that life for most women would continue as it

did before. well, it has become very, very clear that those who espoused that view were wrong. since the supreme court's decision, legislatures across the country have passed abortion bans into law. just last week wyoming's legislature passed a new law which will ban abortion in all trimesters, in nearly all cases, and would threaten doctors who perform abortions with jail time. other states have imposed even harsher criminal penalties. this has had a chilling effect on women's health care providers and countless women can no longer access the reproductive care that they need. partisan politicians who believe women are incapable of making their own critical health care decisions have made clear that their ultimate goal is to ban abortion in all 50 states.

in statehouses and here in washington, these partisan politicians have demonstrated that they are not only committed to dismantling women's health care but that they do not believe that women have the capacity or conscience to make their own personal decisions. like many of you in the last ten months i have heard from women at rallies, in letters, and in quiet conversations who are fearful of these attacks on reproductive freedom. the question before this senate is whether or not we believe that we have an obligation to listen to their voices, whether or not our government should be accountable to the people, including women. what is at stake is the principle that american women are free and equal dozens in our democracy and that they should be able to chart their own futures. that's why i urge my colleagues from both sides of the aisle to

join me in supporting the women's health protection act which would once again protect a woman's fundamental freedom in every part of the country. we can't stand idly by as women across america become second class citizens. we should stand united in the belief that our daughters deserve the same freedoms as everyone else. if we want to ensure that our country remains a place where the promise of our democracy belongs to all, where our daughters are free to make their own choices and reach their fullest potential, where we remain a government by, of, and for the people, then we must listen to american women and support the women's health protection act. thank you, madam president. i yield the floor. mrs. murray: madam president. the presiding officer: the senator from washington. mrs. murray: thank you, madam president. and i rise with my colleagues

today to continue the fight for women in every part of our country to once again be able to make their own health care decisions. because ever since republicans succeeded in their decades-long effort to overturn roe v. wade and drag our country back a half a century and rip away the right to abortion for women across the country, we have heard one horror story after another, women left suffering waiting for the care that they need, doctors worried that they could face jail time for doing what is best for their patients. abortion providers who are overwhelmed by patients who are having to wait weeks for limited appointments and travel hundreds of miles for care. republicans have ushered in a crisis. it is a nightmare for women, for patients, and for doctors alike. and make no mistake, it is a choice extreme republicans have made. they fought for decades to

overturn roe. they passed the dangerous abortion bans that are causing this pain for women and families. and they are choosing to continue their nonstop efforts to strip women of control over their own bodies. every day extreme republican politicians come out with some new, awful idea to make women's lives worse. here in congress senate republicans introduced a national abortion ban last year. this congress one of the first bills the republican house voted on was a federal abortion ban. in just the few months since roe was overturned, extreme abortion bans have gone into effect in 14 of our states stripping over 20 million women of reproductive age the ability to get abortion care in their own state. and by the way, transgender and nonbinary patients who already

face so many challenges getting the health care they need in this country are being harmed by these bans as well. we are talking about truly cruel bans that set bounties for information about anyone that gets an abortion or helps provide one. and bans that even lack exceptions for rape or incest or the life and well-being of the mom. republican bans have tripled the average time -- travel time for patients to get the abortion care they need since roe was overturned. and they have been especially challenging for communities that already face barriers for the care they need, patients with tight budgets who cannot afford to pay for travel and lodging hundreds of miles away from where they live. black women who already suffer much higher maternal mortality rates. patients in rural and tribal areas who aren't close to providers to begin with.

and patients with disabilities to just name a few. and now they are going further seeking to pass new bans to try and get around state court rulings and laws to get around the fact that their own constituents backed the right to abortion in statewide votes just last year. and when extreme republicans can't convince the american people to get on board with their extreme agenda, they have shown that they will try to force it on women across the country with threats and intimidation and outrageous lawsuits. extreme republican attorney generals, for example, are suing the biden administration because they told pharmacists they can't discriminate against pregnant patients and because they made it clear when a woman's life is at stake, doctors are required to provide lifesaving abortion care. and of course there's the extreme republican lawsuit that seeks to take away an important

abortion medication for patients nationwide, nationwide effectively creating a nationwide ban on the most common way patients get an abortion. 22 republican attorney generals and by the way, 67 republicans right here in congress, have filed a brief supporting that lawsuit, supporting overriding experts at fda to take a safe, effective abortion medication away from women nationwide, to take it away from my constituents in washington state. madam president, people across the country have already made it crystal clear they will not stand for republicans' extreme agenda. in fact, last november abortion rights won in every single place they were on the ballot. every single place they were on the ballot. and, madam president, democrats won't stand for republican attacks either. we are committed right here to

being a firewall in the senate against the house republicans' extreme attacks on abortions. we refuse to accept a future where our daughters and granddaughters have fewer rights than we did. we refuse to accept that any patient's right to control their own body depends on a state that they live in or the money in their bank account. that's why today democrats are reintroducing the women's health protection act because the dobbs decision was not the beginning of this fight and it was not the end. far from it. we have to restore roe for women in every corner of our country, and that's exactly what this bill does. it follows the constitution and nearly half a century of precedent and gives patients the right to get an abortion. and doctors the right to provide that care no matter where they are in america. some republicans want us to just

get used to women being forced to stay pregnant no matter their circumstance, no matter what it means, for their health or their family or their hopes for the future. some republicans are hoping this will all become normal. well, i've got one word for them. never, never will that happen. we will not be quiet. we will not give up. we are going to keep coming back as many times as it takes to end this chaos and return control of women's bodies to women. and i promise every single time we have to come back to this floor to lay the horrors that these extreme abortion bans are inflicting on women and patients in this country, we will get louder. so i urge all my republican colleagues start listening to the american people. start acknowledging the pain that these abortion bans are causing. let's pass this critical bill to make things right. i can't say that i expect them

to listen today, but i can guarantee you if they don't, we will be back. thank you, madam president. i yield the floor. the presiding officer: the senator from oregon. mr. wyden: madam president, i rise in strong support of the women's health protection act. this legislation needs to be a centerpiece in the battle to defend privacy rights in america. this is the third week i stood on the senate floor to talk about it extraordinary assault on privacy and bodily independence that's taking place in america. and it started, of course, with the horrendous dobbs decision. and when that decision came down, republicans all over america said that this was going to be a matter of states' rights. they weren't telling the truth to the american people. shortly after the decision there was a full-court press by republicans at the local level,

the state level, and, yes, the national level to claw back the rights of women and deny access to reproductive care. months after the dobbs decision, a bill to enact a six-week abortion ban to ban abortion before most women even know they're pregnant was introduced in this body. that was a national ban, madam president, every single state. every single state. so much for states' rights. antiabortion activists are not only working senate republicans, they're working the court system as well. i call it court-washing. it goes way beyond the issue, and i know we've got an expert lawyer in the chair. it goes way beyond the so-called judge shopping that everybody's heard about in the past. it's not simply a matter of looking at a judge's long record of soundly reasoned opinions and hoping for an outcome. republicans, particularly talking about this -- texas,

this case, this one in amarillo, texas. republicans picked him because he was a lifelong right-wing activist who was planted in a district court to deliver the decision they wanted. the verdict that they have been scheming to deliver. we're talking about banning mifepristone nationwide, a drug approved by the food and drug administration. madam president, something i care about deeply as i held the first congressional hearing on the role of the fda and particularly mifepristone. it's been safe. it's been effective. it's been the law of the land for years and years. you throw that out, you take away women's independence, and the government puts itself front and center in the exam room in the private decisions about when and whether to start a family. so, as women grapple with restrictive state laws that take

away their right right to privacy and threaten their health, they're also facing a crisis of digital privacy in what i call the threat of uterus surveillance. we have long been concerned about location data leaching from phone apps and how ripe for abuse it is. in states where extremists have restricted abortion, the whole issue of women having their personal data weaponized against them is now front and center. shady data brokers have already track women two and from planned parenthood health centers, sold their information basically to anyone who's got a credit card. in states where abortion is illegal, anything women read or say online can be used them. updating a period tracking app, even carrying a phone into a doctor's office may become weaponized against you.

it could be evidence for the prosecution, the most personal and private data about women's bodies and their health. and just imagine how much worse it could get if more states passed draconian laws or the republicans get their nationwide ban. so that is why we are here to pass this legislation to ensure that every woman in every state is in a position to make private medical decisions where that woman is in the driver's seat with respect to their privacy and their independence. to do otherwise is going to keep health care providers from doing their jobs. to do otherwise is going to mean more delaying care for women, more bullying pharmacies out of providing medication that are completely legal and fda-approved. and these providers ought to be able to do their jobs based on science. that's what the fda decision was all about, madam president. it wasn't a political decision.

it wasn't made here on the floor of the united states senate, having people go back-and-forth about their opinion. it was an fda decision based on science. these policies are common sense, and they're popular. i'm going to close with just a couple of quick points. once women lose the ability to make private health care choices about their reproductive health care, i think we ought to make sure everybody understands, there will be women who will die. and i think we need to understand that what this is about is whether freedom is going to mean the same thing for women as it does for men. women do not have the same privacy rights right now. they don't have the same freedom. if women are subjected to uterus surveillance, they don't have true freedom. if republican politicians dictate what guess on -- what goes on in a n exam room, they don't have freedom. if women cannot make decisions

about when to get pregnant,ie have freedom. and if republicans want to force women to give birth, those women do not have true freedom. so if there is one word, one word, that this debate is all about, for women what is at stake, that one word is freedom. and our legislation ensures they'll very it. the urge colleagues to support t mr. president, i yield the floor. ms. hirono: mr. president. the presiding officer: the senator from hawaii. ms. hirono: mr. president, i rise today on international women's day to urge my republican colleagues to join us in protecting our individual

rights and freedoms and support the women's health protection act. you have heard from a lot of us on the floor today, and we're going to repeat certain things, but these are things that bear repeating, because this issue of abortion is all about who gets to decide. is it the individual or a bunch of politicians? we can see where i'm coming from. so in the right wing, ideologically driven supreme court overturned nearly 50 years of precedent in abolishishing and individual's right to get an abortion, that was just the beginning. the dobbs decision opened the doors for extremist republicans who have made clear that they will stop at nothing to control our bodies. it hasn't even been a year since the supreme court upended our right to bodily autonomy and already abortion is entirely banned in 12 states, meaning

more than 20% of the u.s. population live in states where abortion is illegal. 21 states have enacted 36 bills to restrict or ban abortion. and 12 states -- 12 state constitutional amendments have been proposed to limit abortion access. and just this week, florida republicans filed a six-week abortion ban. six weeks, before many women are even aware that they are pregnant. after the dobbs decision, republicans claimed abortion would be dealt with in the states as states' rights. this is what we in hawaii would call a shibi argument. clearly abortion has never been about states' rights. so their unrelenting efforts to limit bodily autonomy is about taking away the very individual

rights and freedoms that republicans claim to care so much about. beyond state legislatures, republicans in the senate have introduced a nationwide abortion ban. any day now we are waiting for one extremist trump-appointed federal judge in texas to decide whether to institute a nationwide ban on mifepristone. the safe and effective medication that americans have relied on for more than 20 years, for more than two decades, and that accounts for more than half of the abortions in our country. regardless of this decision in texas, after threats from gop attorneys general, from 20 -- 20

-- conservative states, walgreens stated they will no longer dispense medication abortion pills in numerous states, including states where medical abortion remains legal. although they now appear to be walking that back after provoking a public outcry. what's next? banning contraception? there are even republican state lawmakers introducing bills to allow the death penalty -- the death penalty -- for women who have abortions. there is no end to what extremist republicans will do to control our bodies. whether you live in states like hawaii, california, or new york or states where republican legislatures have already passed laws, our freedom is at risk. our bodily autonomy is at risk.

for pregnant people across the country, that means their health and even their lives are at stake. pregnancies carry many risks, and the u.s. already has highest maternal mortality rate of any developed country. unbelievable that a country like the united states has the highest mortality maternal rates in the world. now, these risks are even greater for women of color, women with disabilities, and transgender and gender nonconforming individuals. people will die without access to safe, legal abortions. a recent study found, if republicans institute a nationwide abortion ban, maternal deaths will rise by 24% across the country. so today i urge my colleagues to

stop pandering to the political extremism in our country and join us in passing the women's health protection act to codify the right to an abortion in federal law and protect all people across the country. mr. president, i yield back. ms. stabenow: mr. president. the presiding officer: the senator from michigan. ms. stabenow: thank you, mr. president. i am really proud to join today with my colleagues to speak on behalf of american women, the fundamental rights of all pregnant persons, and our freedom to make our own health care decisions. thanks to a radically conservative supreme court, reproductive freedom is no longer a constitutional right in the united states for any

american. roe v. wade protected our freedoms for 50 years, until it didn't. and now today's young women have fewer freedoms than their mothers and their grandmothers ever did. and we're furious. you want to know how furious? in fish we turned our ankh -- in michigan, we turned our anger in action. in november we had the largest voter turnout for a midterm election ever. and one of the measures on the ballot enshrined a right to reproductive freedom in our state constitution. it passed by a strong 13-point margin because michiganders understand that health decisions should be made by individual people, not by judges, not by politicians. unfortunately, a lot of folks

didn't get the message. republicans in congress have pushed for a nationwide abortion ban. state legislatures across the country are making it harder and harder for people had in their states to receive reproductive care. 24 states have already banned abortion or probably will. -- soon. and any day now a federal judge -- one man in texas -- let me repeat that, one man in texas is expected to hand down a ruling that could ban a medication that's been used to safely end pregnancies for 23 years. that decision would prevent patients from getting the health care they need, even in states where abortion is legal. that's why it is so incredibly

important that we pass a law that says once and for all that women in america have the freedom to make our own health care decisions. and that's just what the women's health protection act will do. and i am ape very proud -- and i'm very proud to join my colleagues in introducing this bill. it will protect all americans from state laws that limit access to abortion services. right now your freedom to make your own health care decision depends on on on the zip code our happen to live in, and that's simply wrong. women in michigan and mississippi and montana all deserve to make decisions about our own health care, our own lives, not extreme republican lawmakers, not extreme members of the supreme court, not one extreme judge in texas.

it is critical we pastrana the -- -- it is critical we pass the women's health protection act now. our freedom depends on it t and let's be clear. we will continue to fight until our reproductive freedom as americans is restored. i yield the floor, mr. president. the presiding officer: the senator from nevada. ms. cortez masto: thank you, mr. president. i've had the opportunity now to listen to all of my colleagues as they rightfully come to the floor here to really talk about the erosion of women's rights in this country by the far right extreme. and i have to thank senators baldwin and blumenthal and so many of my colleagues -- murray and so many who have been on the forefront of protecting women's rights and freedoms. and let's not mistake this.

this is about women's freedom. that's what this is about. it's been less than a year since the supreme court overturned roe v. wade. and it's been a dark time for women in america since then. because by dismissing 50 years of precedent that protected women's freedom, the supreme court emboldened far-right republicans to go after women's rights in increasingly extreme ways. one of the first things some of these republican leaders did after the dobbs decision was work on legislation to ban abortion nays wilde, and -- nationwide, and until they can pass that, denying states their ability to keep abortion legal they will continue their attacks on reproductive freedoms and make it as difficult as possible for women to access essential reproductive health care. in texas, arizona, wisconsin,

and other states with strict abortion bans, doctors who provide women with reproductive care could be prosecuted, heavily fined, or imprisoned, and in some cases all three. these states have threatened to revoke providers' medical licenses, putting their politics above what's best for patient health. and for women, confusion and fear over abortion bans has led to denied access to necessary and potentially lifesaving reproductive care. imagine the distress, the burden these women and their families carry. pregnancy decisions are deeply personal. it's not a legal debate up for discussion in the courts. we must do everything we can to ensure women have the tools they need so they can decide what's best for their lives, for their health, and for their families.

since the court overturned roe, women have begun traveling, as you've heard today, to pro-choice states like nevada for the abortion care they need. but that's not enough, because anti-choice policymakers are working on ways to take that freedom away. states' rights isn't enough. their latest attacks on women's rights is through a lawsuit to restrict nationwide access to the abortion pill. even for women in states where medication abortion is one of the few legal options left. extremist republicans' war on reproductive freedom didn't stop with overturning roe. it didn't stop with punishing doctors. and it won't stop with going after medication abortion. let's get one thing clear -- for the far right, this is about controlling women. well, i trust women, and so do a

majority of americans, including nevadans. nearly two-thirds of americans believe women should have the right to make their own choices about their reproductive care, and i stand with them. that's why i am proud to join my colleagues today to reintroduce the women's health protection act. as you've heard, this bill defends women against the extreme politicians who are working to strip away those rights, guaranteeing that women can seek the vital reproductive care they need without having to answer to the government. under this bill, women would see an end to abortion bans and burdensome restrictions to accessing abortion. women would be able to get the health care they need without being subjected to medically unnecessary ultrasounds, excessive waiting periods, and other obstacles that far-right

politicians have put in their path. women and their families would be able to plan for their futures on their own terms. the alternative is to watch a minority of extremists continue to strip away women's rights across the country. we must protect a woman's right to choose and pass the women's health protection act. and i will say one final thing, and i would hope my colleagues on the other side would listen to this, we've heard conversation about the impact this issue has had on this past election cycle. i am proof. i am back here because not just democrats but republicans and independents, nonpartisans in my state, care about this issue. they care about the rights of women and their freedom to make this decision, and a majority of americans do as well. so that's why it is important for all of my colleagues, i

don't care what aisle you sit in, i don't care what party you are or you're not a party, the goal here is when we come to this congress, when we stand here together and try to solve the problems that matter to this country, we are listening to the american people, and we are not letting a minority determine, and we are not about taking away the freedoms and rights of people in this country, including women, and turning them into second-class citizens. that's not who we are. so i would invite my colleagues at all times, i don't care where you are, what party you stand with, where you are, stand with women in this country. this is such an important issue. pay attention to the american public, what's at stake here, and i would ask you to support us with the women's health protection act. thank you. and i yield the floor.

mr. hagerty: mr. president. the presiding officer: the senator from tennessee. mr. hagerty: thank you, mr. president. the senate will soon take up my resolution to nullify the revised criminal code act recently passed by the d.c. council, a measure that becomes more essential every day as the harrowing reports of lawlessness and deadly violence in our nation's capital steadily accumulate. carjackings in d.c. increased five consecutive years, and have more than tripled in the past three years. for the first time in 20 years, d.c. has experienced back-to-back years with more than 200 homicides. car thefts are up 111% this

year. it's got be so bad that the city recently announced it's giving away free steering wheel locks to owners of frequently stolen cars here in the district. instead, how about just enacting laws that stop crime in the first place? sadly, violent crime has become an epidemic in our nation's capital, where our constituents, americans from across the country, and people from around the world, come to live, come to work, and come to visit. from schoolchildren to world war ii veterans. yet unbelievably, despite escalating crime and palpable unease from all who visit or live in d.c., the d.c. council recently passed legislation to reduce penalties and eliminate minimum sentences for violent criminal offenses, including carjackings, robberies, and even

homicides. d.c.'s crime bill also dramatically expands jury trials in misdemeanor cases, which may sound good to a law school classroom, but in practice whether overwhelm the system and force dropped charges and crippling delays in countless criminal cases integral to preserving order and public safety. the d.c. crime bill reduces penalties on violent crime in the midst of a violent crime wave. it's the opposite of good policy, and will make the crime wave even worse. it sends the wrong message that d.c. is not serious about fighting crime. d.c.'s own police chief recently concluded that one of the main reasons for rising crime in the district, especially among youth, is the perception among criminals that they will suffer no consequence. yet the council proposes to reduce the consequences even further.

make no mistake, this d.c. crime bill would deliver the wrong results. under these soft-on-crime policies, public safety will deteriorate further. this is common sense to most people. it should be no surprise, then, that mayor bowser recently vetoed the d.c. crime bill, just this january. she said, and i quote, this bill does not make us safer. i couldn't agree more. yet putting woke ideology over public safety, the d.c. council overrode the mayor's veto. that's why i'm bringing forth this resolution to block the d.c. crime bill. washington is a federal district, and the constitution puts congress in charge of governing it. this makes sense. countless americans from all over the country visit our nation's capital each week to meet with their federal representatives and to enjoy our national history. congress has a constitution

obligation to make sure vees visitors can walk -- these visitors can walk down the sidewalk or enjoy a meal without fear of becoming victims. this resolution passed with significant bipartisan support in the house of representatives, and i'm confident that an even larger bipartisan majority of this body will support it tonight. numerous law enforcement groups, including the d.c. police union, are supporting. polling shows 72% of d.c. residents believe that the d.c. crime bill sends the wrong message. a few weeks ago, the white house put out a statement of policy opposing my resolution. based to the president's support for d.c. statehood, i presume. last week, the president indicated he would support my resolution. i'm glad the president has recognized congress has a legitimate constitutional role in reviewing and in rejecting d.c.'s harmful legislation. to this point, given the now

widespread recognition this is a bad bill, imagine if congress did not have the authority under the constitution and the d.c. home rule act to block d.c. laws. this dangerous bill would become law. plairnlt, seeing the writing on the -- apparently, seeing the writing on the wall this week, the chairman of the d.c. council cooked up a desperate and legally baseless employ to unsubmit the bill to congress in abe attempt to a-- an attempt to avoid a vote of disapproval. the d.c. home rule act is clear. there's no valid action of this nature. no matter how hard they try, the council cannot avoid accountability for passing this disastrous, dangerous, soft-on-crime bill. violent crime has become an epidemic in america. this resolution is a referendum on it. do you want to decrease jail time for violent criminals? do you want to prioritize the interests of law-abiding citizens or the interest of

criminals? this will be one of the only opportunities during this congress for this body to send a broad message on violent crime, a message that may impact the safety and security of americans throughout our nation. i appreciate that many of my colleagues have cosponsored or indicated their support for this resolution, and i urge all of my colleagues to support it tonight. stopping violent crime should not be a republican or democrat objective. it should be a commonsense one. i hope that the senate sends that message today by adopting this resolution and by sending it to the president's desk. thank you, mr. president. i yield back all time. the presiding officer: without objection, all time is yielded back. the clerk will read the title of the joint resolution for the third time. the clerk: h.j. res. 26,

disapproving the action of the district of columbia council and improving the revised criminal code act of 2022. the presiding officer: is there a sufficient second? there appears to be. the clerk will call the roll. vote:

vote: vote:

vote:

vote: vote:

vote:

the presiding officer: on this vote, the yeas are 81, the nays are 14. one senator responded present. and the joint resolution is passed. a senator: madam president. the presiding officer: the senator from south dakota. a senator: i ask unanimous consent that the senate be in a period of morning business with senators permitted to speak therein for up to ten minutes each. the presiding officer: without objection. rounds rounds -- mr. rounds:

madam president, i rise to ask unanimous consent request on s. 650. this is a bill that i've introduced with senator hirono that would extend the federal communications commission spectrum auction authority until the end of the fiscal year, september 30 of 2023. currently this authority is set to expire tomorrow night. our legislation would prevent this expiration and allow the department of defense and the national telecommunication and information administration to focus on a statutorily required study which is to be completed by september of this year. this will define dod's spectrum requirements and articulate the risks should the department lose access to portions of the 3.1 to 3.45 gigahertz that are home to systems that are used to defend our country from attack.

the extension of this authorization until september 30 will allow time for the dod and the ntia to complete their study, which, as i say, is expected in september. we cannot allow potential authorizing spectrum legislation to affect any decision making related to the lower 3 gigahertz ban before the dod and ntia release their study which is expected, as i say, in september. madam president, the fcc spectrum auction authority was previously extended less than just three months ago. unfortunately each time this auction authority expires at short and ash -- arbitrary intervals we find additional language imposed that would modify the current process by which any sharing of this spectrum would be determined. the department of defense finds itself responding to proposals that include offering up for

auction critical bands of spectrum before this study has been completed. the infrastructure investment and jobs act of 2021 requires the department of defense to conclude the spectrum study by september 2023. importantly, the study mandates examination of the feasibility of dod sharing the 3.1 to 3.45 gigahertz band of spectrum which is a very limited resource, with the industry. the extension which i call up today would make certain that the analysis of the study is completed before taking actions or before actions could be taken which may potentially harm the national security of the united states. while the development of 5g networks is important to both the economic prosperity and national security of the united states, the premature auction of spectrum must not jeopardize

the systems that depend on radars and other critical sense source to protect -- sensors to protect our troops and our citizens from air or missile attacks. madam president, many of the reasons that make an extension until the end of the fiscal year vital simply can't be discussed here on the senate floor because they need to be taken in a classified setting. over the past several months i've hosted a series of classified and unclassified briefings for my colleagues, their congressional staff members, the telecom industry, and the defense industry. these briefings were delivered by both the department of defense and the ntia. madam president, i think we all want to see the fcc's spectrum auction authority extended, and i am offering a solution that extends that auction authority and protects the national security of our country. i would hope that the industry

and those who support the continuation of 5g would agree that an extension until the end of the year would be very appropriate. and with that, madam president, i ask unanimous consent that the committee on commerce, science, and transportation be discharged from further consideration of s. res. 650 and senate proceed to its immediate consideration. further that the bill be considered read a third time and passed and that the motion to reconsider be considered made and laid upon the table. the presiding officer: is there objection? mr. welch: madam president -- the presiding officer: the senator from vermont. mr. welch: reserving the right to object. madam president, the senator is working very diligently to achieve a goal that all of us share, and the basic question right now is going to be whether

to have a 60-day extension that agreed to by the house or to have an extension, as the senator is proposing, until the end of the fiscal year. bottom line, it's the judgment of many that sticking with the 60-day extension is beneficial to achieve the goal of having the parties that are now negotiating come to a longer-term resolution even beyond the end of the fiscal year. we've got to extend, ultimately, the spectrum authority beyond 60 days or beyond the end of the fiscal year. we have to extend it for a greater period of time in order to achieve the goals that are shared between all of us. the -- the -- senator rounds' bill would extend things until

september 30. we think it will take pressure off negotiators and if we do that, they will get to the long-term goal. the house has made it clear they're not going to take up any bill that moafs the date to september 30. so that's just a reality we have to deal with. others may agree with senator rounds to push it to september 30, but the best information we have is the other body has no intention of taking up that bill. if that were the case, we pass a bill extending to september 30, the house doesn't take it up, then the spectrum authority expires and that's bad for everybody. so it sends the wrong signal, obviously as well, to our allies and competitors. we just can't afford to risk a lapse of authority. and given the reality of the time constraints we're under,

even if the senate were to pass senator rounds' bill, we'd have a situation where it's rejected by the house, that's our best judgment, and there would be a lapse in authority which would be very threatening to the well-being of all of us concerned. so on that basis, we -- i offer this objection to the unanimous consent request of my colleague from north dakota. the presiding officer: the objection is heard. mr. rounds: thank you. madam president. i'd like to thank my colleague from vermont for his comments. i think we all want the same thing many we want the auction authority to be able to move forward. i do believe that it is very appropriate because there are negotiations which are ongoing, but none of them can be completed until the report, the study is completed on september 30. if we did a short-term

extension, we simply are back in here again, but once again the department of defense finds itself in a position to once again they are being asked to modify the appeals process in this existing statute, which we already have on the books, and we find ourselves under, as the senator from vermont indicates, a very serious time constraint to try to get this done within 60 days. my question is, if 60 days is good enough, wouldn't it be better to go until the end of the year when we actually have the data available to make a good decision about whether or not there is the availability of additional spectrum for a sharing or a sale that could be used perhaps for 5 g, but at the same time we could be assured would not impact our national defense priorities. and with that, madam president, i thank you. i thank my colleague from

vermont, and i yield the floor. a senator: madam president. the presiding officer: the senator from vermont. mr. welch: madam president, i rise today to ask unanimous consent that the senate proceed to consideration of h.r. 1108 to extend the federal communications commission authority to auction spectrum. congress has never let the spectrum authority lapse before. we can't do it now. as i noted earlier, spectrum is critical to our communication system, something that senator rounds spoke so eloquently to. we've got to keep it going, we need an fcc and ntia that uses all of spectrum, especially those uses that protect our national security. again, i acknowledge the comments of senator rounds. as we consider the fcc's auction

authority, it is important to know that we had entering a new era in the united states spectrum strategy. that it has to be comprehensive to ensure our remaining spectrum is put to its highest and best use and we must ensure that we don't impact or interfere with our own security as we try to get further benefits in the civilian sector for spectrum utilization. the two-month extension would allow for further development of this comprehensive approach. as i mentioned earlier, folks are really working on that. we don't want to take the pressure off. we want to company's the peddle to the medal. this does not slow down or otherwise limit the department of defense's study of the lower three gigahertz ban over the infrastructure law. the dod can continue with its

study. it will remain on track to complete its study by september 30. the extension doesn't change the requirement that any reallocation decisions for the ban must wait until after the dod finishes its study. so there's consensus here that we've got to make certain that dod national -- national security equities are front and center. what this extension would do is ensure that the critical work of our agents and wireless ecosystems continues uninterrupted, maintaining the fcc's auction authority will allow forward-thinking spectrum policy that protects our national security and encourages the development of new technologies. it's very important, especially now that -- now that time is of the essence for us to develop our own spectrum strategy and stay ahead of our -- our

competitors. so every month that we stall on a comprehensive spectrum bill is more time for our rivals to get ahead of us. for all of those reasons, i'm asking my colleagues to support h.r. 21108 of the fcc's auction authority as my colleagues work towards a comprehensive spectrum package to ensure that the united states continues to lead in spectrum innovation and policy. madam president, i yield back. i ask unanimous consent that the senate proceed to the immediate consideration of h.r. 1108, which was received from the house and is at the desk. further, that the bill be considered read a third time and passed and that the motion to reconsider be considered made and laid upon the table. the presiding officer: is there

objection? mr. rounds: madam president. the presiding officer: the senator from south dakota. mr. rounds: reserving the right to object. i appreciate my friend and colleague from vermont and his offer. my concern is that the spectrum study, which the senator has acknowledged, will not be done until september 30. there is no reasonable explanation as it to why we would not be able to extend until september 30 the auction capabilities that are available at the present time. however, there is an appeals process which is very important to the department of defense, and every time we have a discussion about the -- about the process moving forward, the risk of an appeals process modifying or being changed is incorporated or at least is being pro proposed. for those of us that are very concerned about the ability to

protect the -- the very clear and important portions of the spectrum that the department of defense utilizes, it is important that there be no modifications to any appeals process between now and september 30th. until such time as we have that available to us, it is simply not appropriate, i believe, to allow for and a modification or new legislation to be proposed that does not take that into account. and so because of that, once again, i don't want to see this lapse either many i would love to see it moved on, but i cannot think of a reason why we would not be able to extend the existing auction capabilities of the fcc, the ntia, and so forth, and still protect the spectrum

capabilities of the department of defense until september 30 at which time the complete report is available, but until such time, i believe that it would be inappropriate to once again have the risk of modifications to any appeals process and any additional legislation that might be included in a further extension. therefore, with all due respect, i must object. the presiding officer: objection is heard. the presiding officer: the senator from vermont. mr. welch: just a remark. here's the dilemma we have, much of what the senator from south dakota is saying i agree with. but we've got two things that are relevant on a very practical

level. one is the pressure that continues to be brought to bear on the negotiators with the 60-day extension to get a final agreement, which would solve the problems that all of us face our concerns to the senator from south dakota. the second one is a political one. it's been conveyed to us very clearly that the house will not take up anything beyond a 06- -- 60-day extension. we think they may be wrong, but they have the authority to reject an extension beyond the 60 days. that would result in a lapse in spectrum authority, which would be devastating to all of us and all of the goals we are striving to achieve. so that's the practical question we face. i yield back.

the presiding officer: the clerk will call the roll.

mr. hassan: mr. president. the presiding officer: the senator from new hampshire. mr. hassan: mr. president, i ask unanimous consent that the appointment at the desk appear separately in the record. the presiding officer: the senate's in a quorum call. mr. hassan: could the quorum call be dismissed, please? the presiding officer: without objection. mr. hassan: i ask unanimous consent that the appointment at the desk appear separately in the record as if made by the chair. the presiding officer: without objection. mr. hassan: i understand there is a bill at the desk. i ask for its first reading. the presiding officer: the clerk will read the title of the bill

for the first time. the clerk: s. 701, the ability to protect a person's ability to continue or end a pregnancy and so forth. mr. hassan: i now ask for a second reading and in order to place the bill on the calendar under the provisions of rule 14, i object to my own request. the presiding officer: objection having been heard, the bill will be rf its -- receive its second reading on the next ledges lative day. ms. hassan: i ask unanimous consent that the senate proceed to the immediate consideration of s. 721, which is at the desk. the presiding officer: the clerk will report. the clerk: s. 721, a bill to protect children against sexual abuse and exploitation and for other purposes. the presiding officer: is there objection to proceeding to the measure? without objection. ms. hassan: i further ask that the bill be considered read a third time and passed and the motion to reconsider be considered made and laid upon the table with no intervening

action or debate. the presiding officer: without objection. ms. hassan: mr. president, i ask unanimous consent that the senate proceed to the consideration of s. res. 100, submitted earlier today. the presiding officer: the clerk will report. the clerk: senate resolution 100, to honor the life and death of james thomas broihill, former senate for the state of north carolina. the presiding officer: is there any objection to proceeding to the measure? without objection, the senate will proceed. ms. hassan: i ask unanimous consent that the resolution be agreed to, the preamble be agreed to, and the motions to reconsider be considered made and laid upon the table with no intervening action or debate. the presiding officer: without objection. ms. hassan: mr. president, i ask unanimous consent that when the senate completes its business today it stand adjourned under the provisions of s. res. 100 until 10:00 a.m. until thursday, march 9. that following the prayer and pledge, the journal of proceedings be approved to date,

that following the prayer and pledge, the journal of proceedings be approved to date, and the time for the two leaders be reserved for their use later in the day, and morning business be closed, that upon the conclusion of morning business, the senate resume consideration of the werfel nomination postcloture. further, all postcloture time be considered expired at 11:30 a.m. and the senate vote on confirmation ever the nomination, followed by confirmation of the simmons nomination. further, following disposition of the simmons some nation, the senate consider the kahn nomination and at 1:45 p.m. vote on that nomination. finally, if any nominations are confirmed diewrt thiewrt -- during thursday's nomination, the motion to reconsider be considered made and laid upon the table. the presiding officer: without objection. why. ms. hassan: if there is no further business before the senate, i ask it stand adjourned under the previous order, following the remarks of senator sullivan. the presiding officer: without objection. mr. sullivan: mr. president.

the presiding officer: the senator from alaska. mr. sullivan: mr. president, i'm coming to the floor for the final time to give remarks about the willow project. i won't explain it. i'll explain it in a little bit in my remarks. the president is getting ready to make a decision, a huge decision, on a big project in alaska, really an inflection point for our state's future. he's likely to make that decision any day, mr. president. so i'm going to come down and kind of wrap up the arguments that we've been making. i really want to thank a number of folks, senator murkowski, of course, who with me we've been focused on this issue for two years, the entire time of the biden administration. two years, arguments every day, including a meeting with the president last week, last thursday. congresswoman paltola, who has done a really strong job,

particularly in the meeting last week with the president. some of my democratic colleagues have been weighing in. i really appreciate that. i know it takes courage. i'll talk about the far-left, lower 48 environmental groups who don't support it, based on nothing, no facts, no data. to stand up to them, go to the white house, and say, come on, mr. president, come on, biden administration, you got to give this -- you got to make sure alaska has this. so my democrat colleagues, i'm not going to name you, i don't want to get you in trouble, but thank you. really, really appreciate this. as i mentioned, mr. president, we had a meeting with the president last week, and i did at the beginning of the meeting in addition to handing the president a unanimous resolution from the entire alaska legislature, the entire state senate and statehouse, democrats, republicans, independents, native, nonnative, all passed a resolution to say to the biden administration please support the willow

project, three pads. handed that to the president and also handed him this map that describes really the context to the president of what's happening in alaska under this administration. was respectful. we were in the oval office. of course, you're going to be respectful with the president and his team in the oval office, a very historic place, obviously. i said respectfully, mr. president, every region of the state, every industry -- oil, gas, mining, hunting, fishing -- you name it, there's been 45 executive orders and executive actions, it's now 46, there's been another one since the meeting last week, looking to shut down alaska. it's exhausting, to be honest. no other state is getting that kind of attention. i walked through some of these, but again, respectfully i wanted the president to know, that's it, every time we meet with

senior white house officials and say these are the dates we've met with senior white house officials, saying, hey, how about a ceasefire? we just get more, more. no other state in the country getting this kind of attention. it's unwanted attention, as i've told many of my democratic colleagues, hey, if a republican administration came after you like this, singling your state out, putting thousands of people out of work, and you came to me, said, hey, dan, can you help me, i'd help you. every democrat here knows, i would help you. i appreciate the help we are getting. that was the context of the meeting. again, it was respectful. we appreciated it. we had over an hour with the president and his team. he's a busy, busy man, leader of the free world, so we appreciated that. madam president, i was also recently down in houston, at this very big energy conference called cera week.

it's not an exaggeration to say all eyes are on the willow project, because it's essentially the question being posed in our energy sector is this -- it was a very good "wall street journal" editorial last week calling the willow project the test for president biden, where it led, this editorial led, by saying the president says the only barrier to more u.s. oil production is recalcitrant companies. okay. a lot of us don't believe that, by the way. here's an opportunity to say, is that true or not? because if the biden administration, the president approves willow, tonight conocophillips will start moving people to build it tomorrow. so we are ready. state's ready, the private sector's ready. i think that's the key question. so, -- and it was the key question in sierra week. biggest energy conference probably in the world, almost

8,000 attendees. this is a really important question. not just for alaska, for america. madam president, i think the key arguments are here, give be the -- given the president's priorities, what the president emphasizes, what he and his administration talk about, the willow project is actually exactly the kind of project president biden and his team should support, because it reinforces so many things that they talk about and care about. let me just mention four of those, madam president. number one, which of course is really important, is this project has the highest environmental standards of any major energy projects in the world by far. not even a close call. how do we know this? because the biden administration's own environmental impact statement, that came out a month ago, says

this. it says this. the trump administration passed this project, and their environmental reviews, with flying colors. then it was five pads. the biden administration's eis, environmental impact statement, took it down to three. we didn't really like that, but that's about the minimum it could go. and they explained in this administration's own environmental impact statement, the scientists, the career staff, were saying things like the greenhouse gas emissions would be, quote, minimal. not a climate bomb like these lower 48, far-left groups keep talking about. minimal. here's the number -- emissions from this project, according to president biden's own environmental impact statement, 0.15%. for 2019 emission levels. they call it minimal. they also said if you don't do

the willow project, the market substitution analysis in the biden administration's own eis says that we likely, we, america, will have to go to other countries -- saudi arabia, venezuela -- to get oil, and their environmental records and standards are so bad that the emissions globally from not doing this project will actually rise. that's in the eis. i've talked about the high standards for alaska with regard to the high standards in the world on impacts on the environment. by the way, this project is next to existing infrastructure, so you don't have to build a lot of infrastructure. trans-alaska pipeline. just plug it in. so, highest environmental standards in the world. how do i know that? because the biden administration's environmental impact statement lays it out in about 1500 pages. so madam president, that's one

very important argument. let me -- that fits with the biden administration's priorities. let me give you another one. the biden administration frequently talks about racial equity, racial justice, environmental justice for people of color, indigenous people. okay. they talk about that all the time. well, the indigenous people in my state overwhelmingly support this project. there az few people -- there's a few people, and that happens in every state, every country, who are opposed. they're getting a lot of press, by the way. but the vast majority of the people, the first nations people, alaska native people in our state, strongly support this. we held a press conference last week, here in the capitol, some of the most famous alaska native leaders in our state's history flew thousands of miles just to be here to support this.

all this rhetoric from the administration on racial equity, racial justice is going to be very empty if they say we're going to choose the center for biological diversity and greenpeace's priorities in the lower 48 over the priors of the -- priorities of the people who live there. madam president, i want to go into this a little deeper. this is a quote from the voice of the arctic inupiat. this a group of tribes, native leaders, broad-based group of the people who live where this project would be. here's a quote from nagiruk harcharek, outside activist groups opposing willow have drowned out local perspectives, that's for sure, is and are actively working to supersede the views of the alaska native people, that's for sure. this is not environmental justice or any kind of justice. it is a direct attack on alaska native self-determination.

so madam president, some of our native leaders last week were saying you know what really is infuriating? these lower 48 environmental groups are all driving the opposition to this project, are trying to tell alaska natives who lived in alaska thousands and thousands of years how to live and what's good for them. you know what some of our native leaders are starting to call this? the second wave of colonialism. ecocolonialism. condescending, lower 48 environmental groups, who don't know anything about alaska, coming up to our state, telling the native people how to live. eco-colonialism. by the way, that topic came up in the oval office meeting. the administration is going to listen to lower 48 environmental groups, who condescendingly tell alaska native people how to live, that's certainly not racial equity. that's certainly not racial

justice. that is the definition of eco-colonialism, and i hope that they're not going to go there. madam president, one other area, another great group of americans who i love to talk about on the floor, who support this project, are the great men and women who build things in america. and there's been no better champion of that in the entire country than the president of the laborers, my good friend terry o'sullivan, who just two days ago wrote another letter to the president. he has been such a great advocate. the laborers are the biggest construction union in america. this project will create 2,500 jobs. 75% of which are union jobs. building trade jobs. madam president, i'd like to submit for the record another great letter from terry o'sullivan, this one dated marct

of the united states. i'd like to submit it for the record. the presiding officer: without objection. mr. sullivan: i'm going to read a few lines from this letter. but terry o'sullivan is a very astute man. he's seeing what's happening in washington this past couple weeks. here's what he said, quote, administration officials are considering limiting willow's scope to only two of the proposed pads. by the way, there's no environmental analysis of that at all. in the eis, in the trump administration or the biden administration. if they do that, it won't be based on any science, any data. i want to be clear, said terry o'sullivan, a limited approval of this, of two pads, in fact is a rejection of the project. this is what we told the president. this is what we've told his team. many, many times. they know that. opponents of this approach are

displaying the congame that have the liuna turning away from established political norms. this great american terry o'sullivan is a working man, he leads working men and women. he's saying don't play these games. two pads is a denih that was our respectful message last week. what else did terry o'sullivan have to say in his final letter to the president? it is time to listen to local leaders. check. workers for sure. residents and reject the game playing that press reports indicate is happening behind the scenes in the administration. keep your commitments, biden administration, to a rational energy policy that allows for responsible development of domestic energy resources while the nation transitions to a lower emission economy. terry o'sullivan.

once again, madam president, weighing in. i can't thank him enough. sean mcgarvey. by the way, when we held this press conference last week, every union in alaska supports this project. the trades, of course, but all the public unions, every single union 100%. again, this administration likes to talk about we're, we really care about the working men and women, the men and women who build things, the unions. okay, okay, let's see where you're at on willow. finally, madam president, i want to talk about an issue that again came up in the oval office, and that's just the foreign policy ramifications of this upcoming decision. we are in a new era of authoritarian aggression that i talk about a lot.

the brutal dictators, vladimir putin, xi jinping. maduro. they're on the march. but the one thing they fear is american energy power. xi jinping is scared to death. the dictator of beijing scared to death of american energy power. so is putin, by the way. so, in the last two years, like i said, senator murkowski and i have been raising this issue about daily. i have asked in dozens of hearings on the armed services committee, military experts, biden administration officials, biden administration military members, do you think it matters, and you think it's good for our national security if we have more energy in a project like this? by the way, willow and max production will produce about 200,000 barrels a day. every single official in this administration who deals with national security for two

years, for two years has said yes. not one has said no. i'm not going to name names. i don't want to get anybody in trouble. but it's obvious. this is one of the great strengths of our nation, and our adversaries, the dictators in moscow and the dictators in beijing fear it. so why do i have this slide up? there's something going on right now, madam president, that's unbelievable, and every time i've asked anybody and i've raised it with anybody in this administration, they look at me with a blank stare and don't answer my question. and my question is this. this administration came in, they wanted to limit the production of american energy. full fully disagree with that approach but what happened? the predictable approach happened. you limit supply, prices go up. so prices on energy have gone up

on working families for the last tboo years -- last two years like this. we all know it. inflation like this. so what have they been doing? they have been going overseas begging other countries to produce more oil and import it into america. why on earth would you do that when you can do it here? the latest and greatest, they did it in saudi arabia. they were rejected, by the way. they were flirting with iran. my goodness, the largest state sponsor of terrorism in the world and you're flirting with those guys with the blood of american soldiers on their hands? ridiculous. but they went to venezuela after the election, and they said let's lift sanctions on you. so we are now importing over 100,000 barrels a day from venezuela. can you believe that? that's a fact.

venezuela pollutes in its processes to produce oil, it's a production of greenhouse gas emission process, it's 18 times, with an x, times more polluting than in america. and certainly way more polluting, probably 30 times more than the great state of alaska's willow project. so you really care about the environment? why did you lift sanctions on one of the dirtiest producers in the world? they are a terrorist regime. they have a horrible human rights record, horrible worker rights record, a well-known u.s. adversary, and we're already importing 100,000 barrels a day from them -- just started -- and we don't want to produce in alaska with the highest standards in the world on the environment and workers? when i asked the question why would you do that and not let us produce in the great state of

alaska, like i said, i've never gotten an answer to that question. hopefully the answer is going to be we are going to help the great state of alaska with this willow project. do it, because right now, madam president, with regard to energy policy, my state is being treated worse than a terrorist regime, and that is not a hyperbole. that is a fact. so in my final appeal before this decision is made, respectfully asking this administration, this is exactly the kind of project that we think should be easily supported by this administration given their priorities. high standards in the world on the environment, no doubt about it. lowest greenhouse gas emissions, negative gibl -- neck -- negligence jibl.

racial equity, racial justice. the native people of alaska want this. listen to them. don't listen to the ecoterrorists, down in the lower 48 coastal elites who don't know anything about alaska and are trying to tell the native people how to live their lives. insulting, by the way. don't listen to the ecoterrorists. listen to the union members like terry o'sullivan all of whose members support, and help, enhance the national security of america with strong energy policy in the great state of alaska. i hope the biden administration does the right thing. so many of my colleagues have helped. i want to thank senator murkowski again for her relentless, relentless advocacy on this with me. we'll see. big stuff for america, giant stuff for my state. i hope they do the right thing for our country, for our workers, for the native people, for our national

security. i yield the floor. the presiding officer: for the information of the senate, the bill passed in wrap-up this evening was s. 724, not s. 721. under the previous order, and pursuant to senate resolution 100, the senate stands adjourned until 10:00 a.m. on thursday, march 9, and does so as a further mark of respect to the late james thomas brayhill, former senator from north former senator from north the senate today voted to feel a lot reducing criminal penalties. the house passed the resolution last month and it now heads to president biden who has said he would not be to show it. tomorrow senators will vote on the confirmation of daniel to head the irs. watch live coverage of the senate when they return here on

cspan2. thursday, norfolk southern railway ceo alan shah will testify about the recent derailment of one of his companies trains in east palestine. watch live a coverage from the senate environment and public works committee at 10:00 a.m. eastern on c-span three, c-span now our free mobile video app or online at c-span.org. ♪ c-span is your unfiltered view of government. funded by these television companies and more including media comment. >> @media, we believe whether you live here, or right here, or way out in the middle of anywhere you should have access to fast, reliable, internet. that's what we're leading the way. >> media, support c-span as a public service along with these other television providers. give you a front receipt to democracy