mr. thune: thank you, mr. president.the end of may, facebook announced it would no longer censor claims that the virus was man made. the mainstream media which had savaged the story during the previous administration suddenly started back pedaling. and the biden white house which canceled the previous administration's investigation into whether the novel virus originated in a wuhan lab announced a 90-day inquiry into the origins. all this was reported in "the wall street journal" that three researchers who worked at the wuhan institute of virology sought long-term care for symptoms consistent with the coronavirus. in the wake of that report, it became impossible for the president or the mainstream media or facebook to deny what had always been a plausible theory, that the virus came from the virology lab in wuhan. journalists moved to explain their previous rejection of this theory, and some of them openly admitted what had been obvious, that they rejected the theory not because of flaws in the theory itself but because

mr. thune: mr. president? the presiding officer: the republican whip. mr. thune: is the senate in a quorum call? the presiding officer: yes. mr. thune: i would ask unanimous consent that the quorum call be lifted. the presiding officer: without objection. under the previous order, the leadership time is reserved. morning business is closed. under the previous order, the senate will proceed to executive session to resume consideration of the following nomination, which the clerk will report. the clerk: nomination, the judiciary. zahid n. quraishi of new jersey to be united states district judge for the district of new jersey. mr. thune: mr. president, last night the air force announced some historic news for south dakota, and today i'm proud to share that ellsworth air force base in western south dakota has been officially named main operating base one for the future b-21 bomber, home of the raider. this designation not only means that ellsworth will be the first base to host the b-21 raider but it w

. >> appreciate that, mr. thune. i join you in welcoming our panel itselfs and also future generations of leaders. it's good to see them today. in addition to both mr. louis vuitton and former commissioner adelstein as well, we're also joined by the senior vice president of public knowledge here from washington d.c. and the first panelist that we'll hear from today is chief jeffrey johnson who's the chief executive of the western fire chiefs association out of oregon. chief, you're recognized for five minutes. >> thank you, chairman lujan, ranking member thune and distinguished senators of this committee. thank you for the opportunity to appear in front of this committee and discuss such an important topic. my name is jeff johnson, as mentioned, and i serve as the chief executive for the western fire chiefs. we serve from guam and saipan to colorado's border and from alaska to the border with mexico. two of our top priorities at the western fire chiefs are wildfire, technology and the intersection of wildfire and tech

murkowski: mr. thune general, thank you for -- mr. attorney general, thank you for the work you are doing. when senator shaheen had led to her question with regards to the boko funds and a concern that we are seeing additional demand on those funds, certainly in alaska, we are, the increase of calls to sexual assault hotlines by 52% since the getting of the pandemic. shelters are experiencing overwhelming amounts of strain. the 30 some odd organizations that we have in our state are facing this 35% cut to their fund, which is absolutely frightening everybody. as we look at the president's budget with the 2.6 5 billion cap for the funds, in fy 19, congress put the cap at 3.5 billion. we have talked. we understand the structural issues relating to the deposit fund. we are trying to address vince through legislation. that -- address this through legislation. that is what has to happen. what we have is this decreasing cap is going to affect the effect on the ground for victim services. you have said to the chairman there was 400 million d

mr. thune touched on it.t's getting all of that approved in the topography that phwe face are significant so thk you so much for your testimony. i want to highlight one part of your written statement. you operate and deeply rural markets where they offer the networks to be higher and a tailored approach to managing risk resiliency and redundancy is necessary to create networks that provide services, customers can afford. how has fiber lead to more resilient sustainable networks? >> thank you mr. chair. first both the resiliency in terms of the durability and performance characteristics the second item is the scalability. so, we still use fiber that was deployed in the '90s and early 2000 and 2010. fiber hasn proven to be a very resilient medium to deploy, upgrade and scale throughout those times and we haven't needed to replace it going on 30 plus years. can congress support providers by constructing future proof networks that meet the highest standards of resiliency bypassing and infrastructure package that

. >> thank you, mr. thune. i join you in welcoming in the panelists and future leaders who are joining them as well, and good to see joining the family as well, and in addition to both mr. law and mr. aidlestein, we are also joined by mr. feld here from washington, d.c., and the first panelist that we will hear from is chief jeffrey johnson who is the chief executive of the western fire chiefs association out of sisters, oregon, and chief, you are recognized for five minutes. >> thank you, chairman lujan and ranking member thune and distinguished members of the committee. thank you for the opportunity to appear before this committee and discuss such an important topic. my name is jeff johnson as mention and i serve as the chief executive for the western fire chiefs. we serve from guam and saipan to colorado's border and from alaska to the border with mexico, and two of the top priorities with the western fire chiefs are wildfire, technology, and the intersection of wildfire and technology. the chiefs of the west

thune. senator carper is next. >> thank you, mr. chairman. madam secretary, thank you very much for joining us today and your extraordinary leadership over all these years. my colleagues have heard me say more than a few times, whenever someone is offering changes in the tax code, i ask four questions with respect to those changes. one is, is it fair? the second one would be, does it enhance or diminish economic growth? the third, does it simplify the tax code or make it more complex? and lastly, i ask what is the effect on budget deficit in our fiscal situation? the first of those guiding principles deals with fairness. it is my opinion that people are willing to pay their fair share of taxes as long as they're convinced others are doing the same. i appreciate the treasury department. our budget is designed to express that position of fairness. i've been providing greater funding and resources for irs operations. the return of investment is at least $5, maybe higher. that's a pretty decent return on our investment, and i submit those proposa

thune. >> thank you, madam chair. mr. tupper, help me understand a little bit here.ou've heard some of your colleagues on the panel talk about the prices are being simply a function of supply and demand. i think i heard you say that the live stock producer in many cases generating a margin may be 1% and that packers were generating margins are 80%. i think that was, if i heard you right, if your opening remarks. so, if you've got a supply -- a food chain, a food chain that consists of a producer, maybe in our part of the country, it goes to a feeder, but to a processor, ultimately to a retailer and a consumer. the consumer, i think it's pointed out in record high prices and the producer is going out of business, which means that the profitability in the middle of that food chain is hardly evenly distributed at all. now, if there's a true market, supply chain, supply and demand regulating this, you would think that there would be some benefit that would accrue to the folks who are in that supply chain and maybe at the end of the supply chain or the start of it, howeve

mr. thune: mr. president? the presiding officer: the republican whip is recognized. mr. thune: thank you, mr. president. mr. president, is the senate in a quorum call? the presiding officer: yes. mr. thune: i would ask unanimous consent the quorum call be lifted. the presiding officer: without objection. mr. thune: mr. president, let me begin by saying that i'm grateful to senators klobuchar, blunt, peters, and portman and the two senate committees that they lead for their bipartisan investigation into the events of january 6 and for producing a detailed report in a short amount of time. the report makes clear that there is more work ahead for the committees. more importantly, it also highlights the immense bravery of the men and women of the u.s. capitol police who defended the capitol complex on january 6. in the coming days after a thorough review of the 100-page report,ly discuss its recommendations with my colleagues and work to institute reforms that will make a meaningful change to better pro

mr. thune: mr. president, unfortunately, predictions about the economic effects of the so-called american rescue plan seem to be coming true. in march, democrats pushed through this massive partisan spending bill. they claimed it was urgently needed covid-19 funding. in reality, the bill was filled with unnecessary spending from a staggering $350 billion slush fund for states, a majority of whom didn't need any more government money to weather the rest of the pandemic to almost $129 billion for schools even though schools had spent just a tiny fraction of the tens of billions of dollars congress had already given them. at the time, republicans warned about the bill's level of spending. more than just one liberal economist warned about the size of democrats' spending plan with former obama advisor larry summers noting that the bill could, quote, set off inflationary pressures of a kind we have not seen in a generation, end quote. well, it turns out he was right to be worried. last week, the bureau of

mr. thune: mr. president, is the senate in a quorum call? the presiding officer: we are. mr. thune: i would ask unanimous consent that the quorum call be lifted. the presiding officer: without objection. mr. thune: mr. president, later today the senate will vote on senate bill 2093. senate bill 2093 is the new senate bill 1. it's the latest version of the so-called for the people act, which is a massive, massive takeover, federal takeover of election law. so why are we taking up a massive federal takeover of election law? well, that's a good question. two years ago democrats told us that we immediated to pass this law -- we needed to pass this law because our electoral system was broken. well then came 2020. we had a record voter turnout, largest voter turnout since the election of 1900. largest turnout in 120 years in american history. and democrats won the white house. after that, after that it got a little awkward to complain that our electoral system was broken, so democrats found a new argument. now we have to pass this legislation to stop states from taking away voting r

quorum call: mr. thune: mr. president. the presiding officer: the republican whip. mr. thune: i ask unanimous consent that the quorum call be lifted. the presiding officer: without objection. mr. thune: mr. president, last week we learned that global meat processing company, j.b.s., responsible for more than 40% of america's beef processing, had -- it shuddered, leaving ranchers wondering once again whether they would be able to sell their cattle. mr. president, the j.b.s. attack highlights two important issues, the first is cybersecurity. the rise of ransom wear attacks on critical industries and infrastructure represents a serious threat. less than a month before the ransom wear attack, ransom wear criminals hacked the pipeline, which supplies gasoline and jet fuel to the east coast. it caused fuel shortages and drove up gas prices with many consumers facing gas station lines that harken back to the oil crisis of the 1970's. in today's society where almost everything we do have a -- this could seriously disrupt our way of life. cybersecurity needs to be a top priority.