ms. klobuchar: okay. mr. president, i come to the floor to speak in support of very important new legislation, the freedom to vote act. that i introduced yesterday with the members of the voting rights working group assembled by leader schumer which includes senator manchin, senator merkley, who is here with us today on the floor who has been such a leader on voting issues, including the for the people act, senator padilla, senator king, kaine, tester, and warnock. the freedom to vote is fundamental to all of our freedoms. following the 2020 elections in which more americans voted than ever before in the middle of a public health crisis, we have seen unprecedented attacks on our democracy in states across the country. these attacks demand an immediate federal response. the freedom to vote act will set basic national standards to make sure all americans can cast their ballots in the way that works best for them, regardless of what zip code they live in. i want to thank senator schumer for his leadership in pul

ms. klobuchar: mr. president. the presiding officer: the senator from minnesota. ms. klobuchar: suspending the debt ceiling isn't about generating new spending, it's to make sure that the government can pay for our spending. since 1960, congress has done this, raised the debt ceiling approximately 80 times. it's not unusual or uncommon or unaccept. what is unacceptable is that our colleagues won't even allow us to do it, the 50 of us are united in this and i say where are our republican colleagues? they know the fact. a default will impact everyone, the government will need to decide between sending out social security checks, ensuring we keep our propses to our -- promises to vets, paychecks to our active military, it's disasterous to our economy and small business. this year neil bradley said failing to act responsibly and increase the debt limit would endanger our economy. it would cause global markets, of course, to loose kdz h confidence -- looses confidence in the full faith of our country. our families, our workers, our seniors deserve better, democrats are unit

ms. sleiman, let me come to you first. i know you're aware that senators blumenthal, klobuchar, and i filed the open market app store bill so we could address google and apple and their stranglehold on that app market. very quickly how do apple and google's data practices factor in to this app store and limit the use there and do they incentivize the app store developers to continue the monopoly over this market that they have? how are they manipulating that marketplace, very quickly? >> thank you so much, senator blackburn. we were so glad to see the introduction of the open app markets act. i think that is going to be really important not just for big data but for gatekeeper power at large when it comes to app stores. but in particular, with regard to big data, i think the app stores and the operating systems have this privileged position where they can treat users' decisions about their data differently based on whether the app is owned by the app store company or the operating system company or whether it is a competitor. so one thing that is really important is to make sure those are being treated the same so that we h