ms. ernst: mr. president? the presiding officer: the senator from iowa. ms. ernst: yes, i want to thank my senior senator from iowa for being the lead republican on this bill, and i am rising today as well to support my colleague in her request today for consideration of the military justice improvement and increasing prevention act. our service men and women, all of them, are volunteers. they represent some of the best our nation has to offer. they choose to serve. they swear to protect against all enemies, foreign and domestic, and to defend the constitution. in this day and age, they face many risks, but they should not face the risk of sexual assault from within their own ranks. for years, the military has struggled to reduce the number of sexual assaults within the ranks, yet we have seen little progress in defeating this scourge. the stories from survivors are heartbreaking. service members who are attacked by their own teammates, service members whose lives are turned upside down, servic

ms. ernst: mr. president? the presiding officer: the senator from iowa. ms. ernst: mr. president, during my recent travels across iowa on my 99-county tour, i couldn't help but notice the number of help-wanted or now-hiring signs on the storefronts along nearly every highway and main street. in an era where we seem to live through one unprecedented occurrence after another, the dire job situation has become the latest extraordinary event, as millions of americans remain unemployed, despite an abundance of jobs that need to be filled. in fact, the number of available jobs has reached an all-time record high -- 8.1 million positions that need to be filled. 44% of all small business owners have openings they cannot fill. another record. what makes this all the more stun something that the nation's unemployment rate increased last month to 6.1%. there are now more than nine million jobless americans, and nearly a third of those have been unemployed for a year or more. in iowa, the number of unemployed slowly inched upwards in february and march, and we continue to have more

ms. ernst: mr. president? the presiding officer: the senator from iowa. ms. ernst: mr. president, for years prior to the covid pandemic, u.s. taxpayer dollars were being funneled into communist china's state-run wuhan institute of virology. after covid appeared in the vicinity of the wuhan institute, instead of cooperating with efforts to discover the source of the outbreak, chinese officials instead ordered the destruction of some of the coronavirus samples and blocked access to the lab. china continues to obstruct international efforts to discover the origins of the covid refusing to allow independent scientists to review the database of coronaviruses that were being studied in the wuhan institute. providing additional u.s. funds to subsidize any state-run lab in china, especially the wuhan institute of virology, goes against the very purpose of the underlying bill, which is to support more research in the u.s. to better compete with china. my amendment would assure that not another dime of taxpayer dollars goes spent to subsidizing communist china. with that, i yield

ms. ernst: mr. president, washington has been on a dizzying spending spree over the past couple of months passing trillion-dollar bills right and left. it's nearly impossible to calculate the total cost, and now president biden and the democrats in congress are proposing several trillion dollars and even more spending. with tax day approaching on may 17, the time has come to pay the bills for all of these government giveaways, and guess who will be forced to pay for it? well, of course, it's the american people. right now democrats are hoping to finance their ongoing spending splurge by increasing taxes on hardworking americans across this country. one of the key tax hikes included in the president's so-called american families plan would hit farm families especially hard. thed biden proposal would -- the biden proposal would eliminate a protection that allows iowa farm families to pass down their assets to the next generation without a tax penalty. the farm bureau says the end result would be a sig

ernst. >> thank you, mr. chairman. and thank you, ms. guzman, as well, for being here today to testify on the small business administration's response to the covid-19 pandemic. our nation's small businesses continue on their very long path to recovery. and it is critical that this committee continues its work with the sba to ensure that the covid relief programs we have worked on so hard over the past year, whether it's the paycheck protection program, our shuttered venue operators grant program are administered effectively and with transparency. and i know we're having a very lively discussion today. i am going to just point out that the planned parenthood issue that's being discussed is very important to a number of us. senator paul, the ranking member, has gone through a number of those issues. and we do want to make sure that these funds have been directed to small businesses. so i would just echo the thoughts we would love your participation in and to be able to sort through this and get to the bottom of it. so please let's continue

ms. ernstmadam president, i rise in support of my colleague and calling for the military improvement. this is a movement whose time has come for serious debate and consideration on the senate floor. for eight years the senate armed services committee on which senator gillibrand and i sit, has worked on countless efforts to seek justice for victims of sexual assault all within the chain of command. many of these were good provisions pushed by myself and others to reduce the barriers in reporting sexual assaults. provisions focused on both prevention and professionalization of military courts handling sexual assault cases, and efforts toll improve the -- to improve the culture and ensure all enlistees receive sexual assault prevention training before attendance at their initial training. this is just to name a few. what has brought me here today supporting this effort with senator gillibrand and senator grassley with 64 cosponsors in the senate is that while these efforts were well intentioned, o