Blackwater Trading Post Land Transfer Act

Madam President, I ask unanimous consent that it be in order to call up the Crapo-Wyden amendment No. 1562, as modified with the changes at the desk; and that following disposition of the Rubio amendment No. 1802, the Senate vote on amendment No. 1562 with 60 affirmative votes required for adoption.

Madam President, speaking against this amendment, I know the Senator from Florida probably, given his intelligence work, wants to be well-meaning, but this amendment is not ready for the focus that we need to give on issues of counterintelligence.

This amendment, as drafted, literally says that the Director of National Intelligence should look at and certify whether any of the entities given this money--including NASA, which would be given money under this bill--that they would have to certify for a 10-year period of time.

So, literally, every institution, every organization that gets money under this bill would have to certify for a 10-year period of time that they didn't have anything to do with a Chinese investment.

I am all for investigating theft and intellectual property. In fact, the Senator from Mississippi and I added several provisions to our legislation. Other people have added things to this legislation. But do I want the Director of National Intelligence calling every university in the United States that might get money from this program and asking them to verify for the last 10 years what did they ever take as far as Chinese investment?

I have news for you. I want the Director of National Intelligence to be focusing on cyber security. If somebody didn't see, we have just had a major pipeline incident. It is not the first incident; it is many incidents in which foreign governments have threatened our Nation, our sources of power, basically, by infiltrating our system.

I want the Director of National Intelligence to focus on Iran, to focus on Russia, to focus on North Korea, to focus on Syria, to focus on threats of terrorism. I want them to focus on monitoring our organizations nationwide. I do not want them spending their time calling university presidents and NASA officials asking them what they have done for the last 10 years and to verify before they can get the needed research dollars.

Now, I know the Senator is trying to be well-meaning, and I am happy to work with him on this issue. But I know this: The race is on in semiconductors. The race is on in quantum computing. The race is on in AI. The race is on in other areas of manufacturing. And we cannot afford to have our Director of National Intelligence spending his time calling up these people when we have already implemented the securities in this legislation.

I am happy to keep working with anybody on this issue. But, by God, I am telling you, we are going to be committed to doing more on our international threats on cyber security because, as you can see from this recent pipeline incident, that is where we should be spending our time and our focus, from a security perspective.

I ask my colleagues to table the Rubio amendment.

Motion to Table

Madam President, I ask for the regular order. And I ask to table the Rubio amendment No. 1802 and ask for the yeas and nays.

Mr. President, I come to follow my colleague from Texas to talk about the very issue that he brought up, which is where is America going with semiconductor manufacturing, design, and development.

On this last point, I am pretty sure we see things differently. I am pretty sure that the majority--probably all of the Democrats would be enthusiastic about supporting both manufacturing in the United States as well as making sure that if Federal dollars are used, prevailing wage should be applied. I am sure we will differ on that point.

But I think that we are, at least on our side of the aisle, supportive of this concept that chip fabrication, chip manufacturing in the United States of America is an important sector and that we are facing a chip shortage and that we should do something about it.

If you think about it, semiconductors are like the oil of the 21st century. They have become an essential aspect. They can be found in children's toys, in appliances, computers, cell phones, our telecommunications networks, and advanced national security technology, as my colleague was mentioning. They enable healthcare, artificial intelligence applications, financial services, and certainly in the area of defense.

They have transformed how we communicate, how we learn, how we socialize. Yet they are so complex and manufacturing so expensive, it can cost anywhere from $5 to almost $20 billion--$20

billion is one number I have heard--just to build these facilities. This is why this issue has become so important.

The United States has had strong leadership in the semiconductor area, but massive investments from other nations put us at a disadvantage when it comes to manufacturing. They are subsidizing and getting tax benefits up to 40 percent to build in Korea than in the United States of America. The Endless Frontier Act tries to address that because it really is a national security and telecommunications policy

In the 1990s, the United States produced over 37 percent of the global chips supply. As you know, here in the United States, we have 48 percent of the world's aircraft production, but now with these challenges, as we look at the chip supply, they are down to 12 percent.

I noticed in the Wall Street Journal they said: Why do we care? Why do we care? They basically are saying that chips in fabrication have become a commodity and that we don't have to worry about it anymore. As long as we are winning on the design side, we don't care where it is manufactured.

Well, if you ask me, that is so 1980s--I mean, the idea that you could design a product here and then have it manufactured somewhere else. Maybe that works with shoes or outdoor clothing, but it doesn't work with something as sophisticated and changing as a high-tech innovation product like semiconductors. In fact, I would say, if you really think that type of thinking works, just look at what happened. It is really pro-COVID thinking. We thought we could have the design done here and, basically, some of these devices that we use here, like ventilators, we will just produce them overseas. What could possibly go wrong? Well, we figured out what could go wrong. If we are not manufacturing ventilators here in the United States, something could go wrong, and it did.

The question is, What is going to go wrong if we don't manufacture chips in the United States of America? The thing I don't think that the Wall Street Journal quite got right is that they don't understand that in today's innovation cycle, having a cluster of design, of manufacturing, of supply chain, of customers--everybody working together is the new way to have an economic advantage.

In fact, there is a recent study done by a Chicago research organization. I am going to read from this report. Basically, it is all about clusters and why clusters are so important:

An industry cluster is a group of firms, related

stakeholders, and supportive institutions that gain

productive advantages from close geographic proximity and

related economies of scale. As groups of related industries

grow and develop, clustering can help lower business costs

and increase the extent of benefits of specialization. Deeper

labor pools, better access to customers and suppliers,

knowledge spillover--these and other advantages are derived

from an environment of balanced competition and

collaboration.

I could go on. I will submit it for the Record. That is what is happening with semiconductors.

The Asian market has, basically, now become the epicenter for this level of production, and the question is, Are we just going to forgo that and end up, basically, with not 12 percent of market share here but 6 percent of market share? Then our suppliers are going to continue to go where the investments and the energy and the ideas are.

That is why in the United States of America, where we still have clusters in various parts of the United States--my colleague from Texas knows this well because he has a cluster in Texas. My colleague from Oregon, who was out here earlier, knows because they have a cluster there. There are clusters in places like Arizona. This is about whether the United States of America is going to continue to make this investment ourselves.

Chips are essential to our national security and to telecommunications. In 1990, we produced over 37 percent of global chip supply, and we need to continue to make sure that we are going to be an investor in chip fabrication today.

Today, as I said, we are at an inflection point because of what is happening in a global basis. According to Goldman Sachs, 169 industries in the United States have products with embedded semiconductors, and there will be a 20-percent shortfall of components needed for those products.

Last month, Caterpillar, headquartered in Illinois, said it anticipated the chip shortage impairing its ability to meet growing demand of construction and mining equipment. We are not just talking about kids' gaming consoles or computers. We are talking about many sectors of our economy that depend on this.

National security experts argue that if there were a greater trade war or military conflict, the United States would not be able to fill its demand for chips for national security and critical infrastructure needs.

That means people like car manufacturers, appliance manufacturers--if you think about 5G and new technology--the post-pandemic economy won't be able to keep moving forward.

The shortage also forced the auto sector to cut 27,000 jobs in April alone. Earlier this year, General Motors temporarily shut down three North American plants due to the shortage. Ford cut back Michigan production of F-150s and the popular Explorer. And Dodge is reducing worker schedules in a Nevada plant producing the Jeep Grand Cherokee and Dodge Durango. These are having real-life impacts on us today.

The question is, We had a ripple of this just because of COVID. What if we had a ripple of this because somebody decided not to supply things to us? These are things we have to worry about just in a national security perspective. You have to worry about whether we are going to get a supply chain that we can depend on. We really are at an inflection point. We are at an inflection point where we need to do something about this sector.

One of the issues also is that chip fabrication and private R&D make huge investments. What we are talking about here represents a very small R&D investment partnership with the private sector as it relates to this. We are talking about trying to get more manufacturing jobs here in the United States.

My colleague was just discussing this sector, overall, and one of the things that people should think about--and I am pretty sure people at home won't be able to see this--but these jobs in production and in various aspects of design and even on some of the other aspects, even in management and computer, these are all well-paying jobs. These are jobs that, literally, are the types of jobs we want to be producing in the United States.

I heard this story about Idaho. Micron, a big company that used to be a major chip fabrication--they are still doing chip fabrication--but the number of jobs in Boise, ID, has fallen off, probably in the thousands, because this production has gone to other places. Now we are replacing them with call center jobs.

The question is whether we are going to make this investment in a key technology critical to our national security--critical to a lot of applications of the technology future, whether it is 5G or AI or various things--and whether we are going to be a competitor in this area of a supply chain and cluster that continues to innovate.

We know for a fact that semiconductor jobs in the production area are literally $94,000 a year. That is why we are fighting for this because it is a sector, in just the production end, that is high-paying jobs.

So are we going to spend time letting things go overseas and basically saying, ``OK, they will allow us to have call centers,'' or are we going to fight for these high-paying jobs in the semiconductor space that we know will help us maintain our expertise and skill in the United States?

I ask my colleagues to just think about the fact that this notion that we design something here and ship it overseas for cheap production does not fit this bill. That is not what we need to do to maintain competitiveness, in the information age, on something as important as semiconductors.

I think our history is rich with people like Thomas Edison and the Edison Park, which is what we established in New Jersey, or Menlo Park, or what now exists in Seattle or in various places. People get that innovation happens in clusters. So, if we are going to innovate, we have to make sure the United States is attracting this investment. We have to make sure that we are doing this here, on our shores, with the expertise and support.

A lot of my colleagues might say: Well, do you know what? Let's just have the private sector do this R&D.

As I said, the private sector spends a lot on R&D. In fact, we think the private sector spends about $377 billion a year on R&D. Yet, as we know, R&D isn't just done by the private sector for its specific interest. Basic science and lots of advanced research and applied science are done by the United States. That is why this bill is plussing up this number here from the National Science Foundation. We had discussions here about plussing up the number from the Department of Energy. Obviously, we had a vote in the Senate of even increasing the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency and its dollars.

What works about the United States of America is that we are an ecosystem. We are not a top-down. It is not like we are basically the government, saying: This is what is going to be done. We create an ecosystem that is really based on American know-how--our ingenuity in how to get things done.

What we are asking for, as it relates to not only NSF funding in order to continue the work of R&D as it relates to semiconductors, is also to make sure that we are going to continue the focus of manufacturing and design and R&D and development and clustering and supply chain and companies working together.

I know how important this is because, in the Seattle area, in Washington State, we are a leader in aerospace technology. We are 49 percent, in the United States, of aerospace manufacturing. If you don't keep manufacturing, do you think the supply chain will stay in Seattle? Do you think the supply chain would stay in Seattle forever--all of those companies? We have hundreds of companies that make products for Boeing. Do you think they would stay there if it were not there? They will end up moving where the manufacturing is.

That is what the information age is about, and it is certainly about that when it comes to technology products. The technology products are developed faster, quicker, and with the innovation and the input from their customers. That is why, if you look at these centers around the United States, they are also the places at which you will find the biggest users of this technology. They are there, and they are there because they want to be close to their customers. They want to understand their customers' needs. They want to have interaction. They want to have collaboration.

That is what innovation is today. Innovation is doing design and manufacturing close together. That is how we win. That is why we need to pass this legislation as it relates to an investment in chip design and manufacturing R&D and so we continue to attract manufacturing in the United States.

Back to my colleague from Texas, who I know agrees with this principle in an underlying way, when the Federal Government wants to make an investment in actual construction, we say that we should apply prevailing wage. I have talked to many of these people in the semiconductor manufacturing-design space. They say: Do you see how expensive it is to do these plans? Do you see how expensive the equipment is? It is very expensive; so we need the best workforce. So guess what. We pay prevailing wage.

So we are saying, because we are putting Federal dollars on the table, we should pay prevailing wage. They think we should also pay prevailing wage. I am not speaking for them, but, in general, they feel like that is when they get their best product.

I know where my side of the aisle is. We are going to be here to make an investment in this particular sector. We are going to figure out how to be competitive against Asia in semiconductor manufacturing. We are going to continue, as Andy Grove said, to be paranoid because we know that this is a changing landscape, and we are going to follow our colleagues who have made these decisions and make an investment for the future.

I ask our colleagues to turn down the motion to strike the underlying bill, as the underlying bill already has this provision in it, and let's get about this business of waiving a budget point of order and deciding to make the investment that we need to make to be competitive in a key sector of the U.S. economy. If we do that, I guarantee you we will be well-positioned to continue to move forward, and our national security will be more secure because we will have made this decision.

I yield the floor.

Mr. President, I am thrilled that we are passing this legislation. It is amazing to me--and I am sure the Presiding Officer would agree--that the Senate has actually returned to regular order. We are passing amendments on both sides of the aisle, and I think we are going to have a big bipartisan vote here in the Senate. In having been here for a number of years when the Senate didn't operate that way--it was incredibly dysfunctional--it is a great, great privilege to be here at a moment when it is working. So I want to express my sense of gratitude for that.

January 6 Commission

Mr. President, I also want to call the Presiding Officer's attention to news reports this afternoon that say that our colleagues on the Republican side of the aisle have decided they are going to block this bipartisan Commission to examine what happened on January 6 and that they are going to use the filibuster here to block a Commission that some of them actually called for and a Commission that, I think, 35 Republican Members of the House of Representatives supported.

I wanted to come to the floor to appeal to their conscience and to ask them to consider the damage that it will do to our democracy to not have this Commission, as we have done at other important moments in the country's history.

And, Mr. President, you were here on January 6. I was here on January 6. We had been sent here--we came here--to accomplish the ministerial task that we are required after a Presidential election is concluded, to certify the results of that election, to certify the ballots of millions and millions and millions of Americans who voted in the last election. That is why we were here.

Unfortunately, we had a President at that time who denied that the election had actually happened.

The President will remember that we also had colleagues that came to this floor and said that we were disrespecting the President's base or their base because we were certifying the election, instead of having enough respect for their base to tell them the truth, which was that the election had been decided by millions of voters, and by every court that looked at it and by incredibly brave local officials, many of them Republicans, who wouldn't allow the President to push them around.

The 6th was a terrible day here. The people who invaded this Capitol, the people who stormed the platform that had been set up for the peaceful transfer of power on January 20, when Joe Biden took the oath of office--the people who came here on January 6 cursed the Capitol Police. They bludgeoned the Capitol Police. They speared them. They hurled racial epithets, leading some of our African-American police officers here to ask what had happened to America. They broke windows in the Capitol. They looted the Parliamentarian's office--the people who would bravely carry the ballots out of this Chamber, when we were led to the Hart building, and protect those ballots that could have ended up getting burned out on the National Mall, if they hadn't had the presence of mind to do their job--just like the Capitol Police, who were in mortal danger that day doing their job.

And I remember, when we were all together in one of the Senate office buildings, after they had rushed us out of here, we would later see that the mob was just a hallway away from here, and, actually, they were misdirected by another Capitol Police officer, who put his life in jeopardy to move them out of the way.

We were taken to another building, a Senate office building, and it was in that room--we were crowded in that room. It was in that room that I saw a scene that I never thought I would ever see as an American, on the TV sets that were on the walls of that room. While we were inside the room, we were watching the scene that everyone else in the country and everyone else across the world was watching of the U.S. Capitol being invaded by our own people.

I know the President will remember that when he was growing up, when I was growing up, that was not an uncommon sight to see in countries all over the world. There are a lot of countries that have had events like January 6 over the world, especially when there have been transitions of power or a tyrant unwilling to give up their power.

But in a million years, I would never have imagined that it would happen here. And it did happen, and it sent a message all over the planet.

While we were in that room, unable to certify this election, the Chinese Government had the greatest propaganda win that you could imagine, and in the weeks that followed, they have said democracy is in decline, democracy is failing. That is what the Russians are saying. That is what the Iranians are saying.

And when I was there in that room that day, I thought a lot about my mom and her parents, who were Polish Jews, who survived the Holocaust. The whole family was killed except for them and an aunt, and they were lucky enough that, after the war was over, they went to Stockholm, Sweden, for a year. They went to Mexico City for a year, and then they came here to the only country in the world where they thought they could rebuild their shattered lives. And they did.

And so even worse for me than the thought of our adversaries using this to undermine democracy was the understanding that people all over the world situated just like my mom and her parents would lose hope in the American ideal, would lose hope in democracy and in the rule of law.

Now, the good news is we actually had a January 20. A lot of countries that go through January 6 never get to January 20, and we had that, and Joe Biden took the oath of office and he became President of the United States, and Kamala Harris became the Vice President of the United States. We had, notwithstanding all of the prior President's efforts to the contrary and the efforts of some of his allies in Congress

to the contrary--we had--a peaceful transfer of power.

But consider how close we came, not just on the 6th, but consider what would have happened if elected officials, many of them Republicans in Georgia and in Arizona and in Michigan hadn't fulfilled their obligations to the rule of law, hadn't lived up to their oath of office, bent to the will of a President who didn't want to relinquish power. Where would we be then?

Imagine if the Democrats, instead of winning a narrow majority in the House of Representatives, had lost the majority in the House of Representatives, and 140 or more--148--Republican votes to decertify the election, to overturn the will of the voters, to disenfranchise millions and millions and millions of Americans all of a sudden was a majority doing that, as the former President would have wanted.

Imagine if 60 judges, many of them Republicans, appointed by President Trump, who howled the President's lawyers out of courtroom after courtroom, after courtroom because, instead of doing what the President wanted them to do, instead of finding them ``a few more votes,'' as he said to the secretary of state in Georgia, recorded on the phone, they did their job as judges and they withstood the pressure. They swore an oath, and they fulfilled their oath, and that is the only way democracy can actually work. It is when elected officials and judicial officials apply the rule of law, fulfill their oath and their obligation.

And what I want to say to my colleagues today, I want to implore them and appeal to their conscience, because the responsibility to the democracy is not over. The democracy is still at risk. We still have a President of the United States--a former President--who refuses to concede the election, who, on a daily basis almost, says that the election was stolen. We still have Members of Congress who are saying the election was stolen. We still have Members of Congress who won't face the facts and tell their constituents the truth.

I want to say again: Respect your constituents enough that you are going to tell them the truth, and that is why, at difficult moments in our history, like after President Kennedy was killed or the Challenger exploded or 9/11 happened, we have had a bipartisan Commission to make sure we understood what led us here and how we can do better coming out of this.

It has never been perfect, but it has worked pretty well, and that is what we need here. We need to understand what led millions of Americans to believe conspiracy theories about our own country and what led thousands of people to storm the Capitol of the United States, to attack police officers, to attack police officers, leading to their death.

From all over the country, they came to invade this Capitol, and if we don't want it to happen again or we want to be able to protect ourselves, and I am not just talking about the poor Capitol Police, although that, at a bare minimum, ought to be enough to warrant a Commission. I am talking about the danger of political violence in this Nation going forward if we don't address this and the American people don't have the chance to understand what happened.

As I mentioned, that night on January 6, standing at this desk on the floor, political violence is what brings these republics to an end.

I am going to finish because I know there are others who want to speak, but let me just finish by saying how agonizing it was to watch Officer Sicknick's mom here today, going door to door to door, to ask people: Please vote for this Commission.

I hope that people will reconsider. I hope they will search their conscience. The people around the world who watched January 6 are watching us today, and they want to know if democracy is up to the challenges of the 21st century.

I believe it is. I believe it is. I think democracy is the highest expression of humanity on Earth, and we are being tested in all kinds of ways right now, externally and internally. This would give us the chance to at least deal with the internal question. And I think at a moment like this it is important for us not to stand for a party or for a President but for the truth and for common sense and for our exercise in self-government.

For all of those reasons, I hope that when we have the vote tonight, that it will succeed and the American people will have the benefit of a bipartisan Commission to examine what happened on January 6 and help us understand how we can strengthen our democracy.

With that, I yield the floor.

Mr. President, I have the opportunity to chair the U.S. Helsinki Commission.

I am taking this time--I understand there is a break in the action in regards to the underlying bill. If I am wrong on that, I will yield the floor to someone in regards to moving us forward, but I understand that we are not ready for the next issue yet.

So with that in mind, let me just take this time as the Chair of the U.S. Helsinki Commission representing the U.S. Senate. In the Helsinki Commission, my Republican counterpart is Senator Wicker. Senator Wicker, by the way, is the vice president of the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe's Parliamentary Assembly, and I am the Special Representative on Anti-Semitism, Racism, and Intolerance.

The Helsinki Final Act speaks very clearly against all forms of intolerance and discrimination. And we have seen in recent months current events trigger latent bias in our community.

We go back to 9/11, where we saw the uprise of hate against the Muslim community, which was translated into violence against Muslim Americans.

We saw during COVID-19 latent bias against the Asian-American community. As a result, we saw a rise of hate, of anti-Asian activity, bias, and violence, and this body took action.

And, once again, as a result of recent violence in the Middle East, we see a rise of anti-Semitism here in the United States and around the world.

I mention all of that because we need to speak out whenever we see the rise of intolerance in our community. So let me just talk about anti-Semitism and what has happened recently.

A 29-year-old Jewish man was punched, kicked, and pepper-sprayed last week in New York in broad daylight, as a group of men yelled anti- Semitic statements. People in cars began throwing bottles and yelling anti-Semitic slurs, including words like ``dirty Jew,'' at a dinner party in Los Angeles. In Skokie, IL, someone shattered a window at a synagogue. In Bal Harbour, FL, men yelled, ``Die Jew,'' at a man in a skull cap, and then threatened to rape his wife and daughter.

These instances are compounded by an uptick in anti-Semitic speech online, with the Anti-Defamation League finding 17,000 tweets between May 7 and May 14--1 week--with some variation of the phrase: ``Hitler was right.''

These attacks follow the January 6 Capitol insurrection earlier this year, where White Supremacist and extremist groups displayed anti- Semitic and racist symbols and recited conspiracy theories blaming Jews for the pandemic. These conspiracy theories have proliferated alongside anti-Semitic stereotypes and images being mainstreamed by some political leaders and public figures.

While these events are shocking, perhaps we should not be surprised. The ADL Global Index on Anti-Semitism, updated in 2019, found that more than 1 billion people--nearly 1 in 8--around the world harbor anti- Semitic attitudes.

Over 30 percent of those surveyed said it was ``probably true'' that Jews have too much control over financial markets; that Jews think they are better than other people; that Jews are disloyal to their country; and that people hate Jews because of the way Jews behave. A full 41 percent think Jews are more loyal to Israel than the country they live in.

Such sentiments too often translate into violence, leaving 40 percent of European Jews to report in 2018 that they live in daily fear of being physically attacked. Here at home, Jews make up fewer than 3 percent of the American population, but the majority of reported religious-based hate crimes targeted Jewish people and institutions.

I strongly agree with ADL's CEO Jonathan Greenblatt, who said last week:

[W]e are witnessing a dangerous and drastic surge in anti-

Jewish hate. . . . To those who choose to indulge in age-old

antisemitic tropes, exaggerated claims and inflammatory

rhetoric, it has consequences: attacks in real life on real

people targeted for no other reason than they are Jewish.

This is antisemitism, plain and simple. And it's indisputably

inexcusable in any context.

In 2004, I had the opportunity to represent America at the Berlin Conference on Anti-Semitism, where we developed an action plan to stand up against anti-Semitism. The very first recommendation coming out of the Berlin conference is that leaders must speak out against anti- Semitism in any form; that leaders need to be heard. They cannot be silent. So I was very pleased when our President, Joe Biden, stated this past week:

The recent attacks on the Jewish community are despicable,

and they must stop. I condemn this hateful behavior at home

and abroad--it's up to all of us to give hate no safe harbor.

Thank you, President Biden.

I was proud of our colleague Senator Mazie Hirono, a leader in the Asian-American community, who posted on social media:

I've said it before and I'll say it again--an attack on one

of us is an attack on all of us. We all must condemn the

recent surge of antisemitic attacks in our country. Each of

us needs to stand up, speak out, and confront this hatred.

At my last in-person OSCE meeting before COVID-19, I hosted an event with my European colleagues entitled ``Lessons From the Past, Leadership for the Future,'' where we spoke about the lessons from the Holocaust, including early warning signs from the past--some of which have been rising to the surface again. These early warning signs include the rise of populist leaders, demonizing of minorities, propagandizing of hate, and the neglect of refugee protections, which ultimately became the factors that resulted in genocide.

This month, I chaired a Helsinki Commission hearing on preventing mass atrocities with Professor Timothy Snyder and the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum's Center for the Prevention of Genocide director, Naomi Kikoler. This Center's Early Warning Project provides an innovative risk assessment tool using quantitative and qualitative methods to spotlight countries where mass atrocities have not begun, but where the risk of such violence is high.

The warning signs are there. My colleagues, we are painfully reminded of our past. The OSCE has repeatedly reaffirmed that hate crimes pose a threat to the security of individuals and society, given their potential to lead to conflict and violence on a wider scale. The spread of hateful ideology and recent acts of hate crimes and extremism across the OSCE region attest to this.

In response, I have called for a plan of action to address violence and discrimination across the OSCE region, including here in the United States, so that we may have a more strategic and cross-border approach to addressing hate. I have also supported the OSCE initiatives that address security concerns of Jewish communities, including by improving relationships between law enforcement and justice institutions and vulnerable communities, educating communities on anti-Semitism and how to counter it, and building alliances with other communities to counter hate.

Over the past decade, I have also worked to ensure that the State Department's budget annually includes funding to fight anti-Semitism globally by creating civil society partnerships between the United States and Europe to work as allies to fight against anti-Semitism, racism, xenophobia, anti-Muslim bigotry, hostility to the LGBTQ-plus community, and other forms of hate. The United States should be a global leader in fighting such intolerance.

It would be hypocritical for us as a nation to preach to the world against hate if we let it fester and grow here at home. Like a virus, as we all know too well, if hate exists in one country, it has the capacity to spread around the world.

Therefore, I ask all my Senate colleagues to join me in supporting these efforts at home and abroad to achieve safe and just societies for all. Hate takes many forms, but none of them should be acceptable here in the United States of America or anywhere else in the world.

With that, I yield the floor

I suggest the absence of a quorum.

Madam President, I ask unanimous consent that the order for the quorum call be rescinded.

Madam President, from the beginning, the story of the U.S. auto industry has been one of ingenuity, of taking risks, and of pushing forward.

At the dawn of the 20th century, most Americans could hardly comprehend the idea of the automobile. Yet, 20 years later, they had become nearly ubiquitous in American life, thanks to the insistence of entrepreneurs like Henry Ford on making the automobile affordable for the majority of Americans.

The democratization of the automobile, rather than the invention of the automobile itself, is, in my opinion, one of most remarkable and uniquely American success stories.

Automobiles allowed Americans to capitalize on the economic dynamism of the roaring twenties and helped Americans move and adapt during the Great Depression.

They contributed greatly to the American industrial base and the know-how needed to fight and win the Second World War and help propel the United States to its current status as a preeminent global economic and military power.

Visionary investments like the Interstate Highway System made cars a staple in American economic and cultural life. And cars certainly made it a lot easier to get to and from rural America. In a place like rural South Dakota, with limited public transportation, the automobile, often a pickup or an SUV, is typically the only way to get around.

Today, the automobile industry stands on the brink of a new technological revolution, which promises to dramatically transform mobility once again.

Over the past three decades, the internet has transformed our economy and our way of life, and the next generation of the internet, 5G, which is currently being deployed across the Nation, will enable a host of new innovations, including a revolution in vehicle technology: automated vehicles or what we call AVs.

AVs will change the way that we move in numerous ways, making the transportation system safer, more efficient, and more accessible.

Individuals whose mobility is currently limited, for example, Americans with disabilities, could gain new independence with the deployment of automated vehicles, allowing them to work or visit friends and family safely and easily.

I am proud that my proposed AV amendment to the Endless Frontier Act was recently endorsed by the National Federation of the Blind, and I ask for unanimous consent that the letter of endorsement be inserted in the Record

Madam President, imagine a farmer in rural South Dakota who can no longer drive to get to town for appointments, prescriptions, or groceries--enter the automated vehicle.

This technology has potential to keep people in their homes and communities longer.

Moreover, AVs have potential to greatly increase roadway safety. Currently, there are an average of more than 35,000 traffic fatalities on our Nation's roadways each year, including pedestrian, motorcycle, and bicycle fatalities. Automated vehicles could dramatically-- dramatically--reduce that number. Distracted driving, driving while impaired--automated vehicles could eliminate those dangers.

For automated vehicle technology to advance, it is imperative that the regulatory framework catch up with private-sector innovation. That is why I have pushed for the enactment of AV legislation over the years and why I had hoped--I had hoped--that we would be voting to add my automated vehicles amendment to the legislation before the Senate today.

I have spent nearly 5 years--5 years--working in a bipartisan manner on a legislative framework to govern the testing and deployment of automated vehicles. The amendment I offered to the bill before us today is an amendment that I had hoped to be able to offer with bipartisan support. It would have paved the way for expanded testing and deployment of automated vehicles in the United States under the oversight of the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration.

And let me emphasize that oversight point. My amendment would ensure that automated vehicles would not--not--touch pavement without the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration's certification that they are at least as safe as a conventional vehicle. The data gathered from the vehicles deployed as a result of this amendment would be crucial to the development of future motor vehicle safety standards for AVs.

Unfortunately, bipartisan agreement on my amendment collapsed when special interests expressed their opposition, despite major efforts to accommodate their concerns. And I am deeply disappointed that, once again, Democrats yielded to pressure from special interests against the best interests of our economy and the American people.

Advancing AV technology is not just a vehicle safety issue. It is also an issue of U.S. leadership and global competitiveness. Investing in the production of AV technology here in the United States would not only strengthen the resilience of the auto industry but also the Nation's industrial base and our national security.

The auto industry touches nearly every American State. For example, Horton in Britton, SD, manufactures engine cooling systems, providing steady, good paying jobs for that community and strengthening the local economy. The same story repeats itself countless times in communities all across the Nation.

Providing millions of jobs and investing billions annually, the American auto industry is a critical component of the nation's economy. Right now,

U.S. companies lead the world in AV technology, but other nations, like China, are seizing upon regulatory inaction and striving to take the lead. If we don't move forward with automated vehicle technology, we will soon see some other nation leading the AV revolution.

The legislative package before us today is designed to bolster the global competitiveness of the United States.

It is pretty difficult to understand why this reasonable and, I might add, no cost AV amendment that would lead to untold benefits for our Nation's transportation system, does not fit in. How can a bill making strong investments in artificial intelligence, quantum computing, and advanced manufacturing exclude a legislative framework for AVs?

Are we really going to back down from leading the world in automated innovation and technology and cede the future of this industry to nations like China? Will we really ignore the enormous--enormous-- safety benefits of these vehicles just to suit Democrats' political convenience?

More than a century ago, when the automobile was invented, there were plenty of skeptics, but America's automobile pioneers did not let that stop them. They seized the moment and pressed forward and ushered in a transportation revolution. We can do that again today or we can cede this moment to nations like China and let the American automobile industry fall permanently behind. That is the choice in front of us. I hope we will choose to seize this moment and pass the legislation we need to usher in another American transportation revolution.

I yield the floor.

I suggest the absence of a quorum.

The following Senators are necessarily absent: the Senator from Tennessee (Mrs. Blackburn) and the Senator from Missouri (Mr. Blunt).

(Mr. KING assumed the Chair.)

(Mr. VAN HOLLEN assumed the Chair.)

The following Senators are necessarily absent: the Senator from Tennessee (Mrs. Blackbrun), the Senator from Missouri (Mr. Blunt), the Senator from Indiana (Mr. Braun), and the Senator from North Carolina (Mr. Burr).

The following Senators are necessarily absent: the Senator from Tennessee (Mrs. Blackburn), the Senator from Missouri (Mr. Blunt), the Senator from Indiana (Mr. Braun), and the Senator from North Carolina (Mr. Burr).

Madam President, I call up the Rubio amendment 1802 to the Cantwell amendment 1527.

Madam President, I ask that the reading of the amendment be dispensed with.

Madam President, I want to take a moment to speak on my amendment, and I won't take very long.

First of all, really, my comments are geared toward somebody who might be watching or will maybe watch a video of this later because usually there aren't a lot of mysteries here on the floor of Senate. And when these amendments come up, everybody kind of knows the way it is going to go. And this amendment that I am about to put forward here is probably not going to pass. I am pretty certain it won't or we wouldn't have gotten a vote on it. That is just the way it is.

But that is OK because--it is not OK, but it is OK in the sense that I still want to take this opportunity to talk about this and have a vote on it.

Let me just say this: If you go back 2, 3 years, I believe not the first but one of the first people here who talked about the need to do what much of this bill does was me. I have been talking now for 2 or 3 years about the need for the American Government to step forward and partner with the private sector. I have been talking about the need for industrial policy.

You can't compete with a nation-state if the nation-state is not involved in the competition. And that is what we are involved in--a nation-state competition. And it does involve a massive amount of Chinese investment in research and development.

And we have to step up to the plate. The days of believing that on some of these items the private market on its own will solve it, it is not possible at this scale and scope.

I point to Operation Warp Speed. Would the private market have eventually given us a vaccine? It would have. But we needed it now. We stepped forward. We provided the money. The private sector responded. And today we are standing around here with no masks on, and much of the country is getting back to normal because we have vaccines.

You could criticize a lot of things about what America did in the beginning of the pandemic, but we have done vaccines better than anyone in the world, and that would not have been possible without industrial policy, which is the partnership of government and business to solve an urgent crisis of a national concern.

Well, when it comes to research, development, technology, that is perhaps the single greatest requirement before us today in terms of the future. The 21st century is going to be defined by this definition between China--this competition between China and the United States. And it is a competition we simply cannot win unless we step forward and match it.

But another part of the Chinese approach to this is not simply to invest but to steal. As many of you know, I have been on the Intelligence Committee now for 10 years. I was acting chairman of it for a number of months and now the vice chairman in a committee that I think--maybe I am prejudiced in this view, but I think it is the best functioning committee here. I am sure some would disagree. But I think we do a lot of good work.

And it comes on topic--and I spend a lot of time reading all of the intelligence every single day. Let me just describe my experiences over the last few years. It is a horror show.

The Chinese are stealing our intellectual property. And it is not just, oh, they reverse engineered someone's software; they steal the money the taxpayers are investing in basic research and development.

We have a graph here. I have it up. The print is too small to see on camera, but I will describe it to you. Here is how they operate, use our universities. They prioritize--they steal priority technologies, leverage international openness of U.S. markets, universities, and institutes. They play scientists, researchers in universities, U.S. National Labs, for access to emerging and foundational research and access to dual-use export control technologies.

It goes on to say, Chinese state-owned enterprises' front and shell companies partner with universities for access to IP, research data, technology, penetrate U.S. company supply chains. This is their strategy.

Now, we were about to put $200 billion of American taxpayer money in more of that, in more of those activities. And you don't think that they are going to do all of that against us? They are. And so it is incumbent upon us to make sure that we have in place safeguards so they cannot keep doing this to us.

What is the point of putting up $200 billion of American public taxpayer money on pursuing all of this research if we are going to allow the Chinese to steal it? Nobody here wants them to steal it.

And I know there have been improvements done in terms of upping the security. What I want you to understand is that this is not a minor security threat. This is the No. 1 priority of Chinese intelligence. This is their No. 1 priority. This is what all of their agencies and all of their government is geared toward doing. And we are going to put all this money in there and hope that the safeguards we put in place are going to work.

I hope they do. But what if they don't? What if a year from now we find out, or you are going to read in an article 2 years from now, whatever, that says: The Chinese have stolen a quarter--25, 30 percent of the IP developed by the money that has been put forward in the bill that was passed? Then we are all going to feel pretty stupid around here.

That is the only thing I am aiming at. All I am asking in this amendment is that, at least in the initial stages of this program, that the Director of National Intelligence, the DNI, the DNI's office, and the FBI have an opportunity to review these grants to ensure that they do not have embedded, in the place we are giving the money to, a scientist, a researcher at one of these National Labs or that there isn't some shell company involved.

Now, I know the argument. I have heard the argument against it from those who want to do the research. This is going to slow it down. It is.

TSA slows down our ability to get on airplanes. Who wants to get rid of TSA? Cyber security slows down our ability to access our networks. But we need more of it, not less. Yes, security becomes burdensome. It slows things down. But I would rather do it slow or slower and own it than faster and have them steal it. And that is what this amendment does.

I don't know what the opposition to it is other than I understand that there are a lot who just want to get their hands on this money, and they want to get going very quickly. That is what they want to do, and that is great. That is what researchers want to do. They want to move fast. We need them to move fast. But our job is different. Our job is to see the problem holistically and understand, let's move as fast as we can without allowing the Chinese to steal it

So, look, I am asking everyone to vote against this motion to table because, frankly, I think we expose ourselves to a vulnerability. We are placing the faith that this existing system we have, and whatever new one we are starting up, is going to be able to withstand the force of the intelligence agencies of an entire nation-state and their No. 1 objective, and that is how can we get our hands on whatever these $200 billion are helping to innovate.