Respect for Marriage Act

Madam President, I would like to echo the words of our Senator from South Dakota about Veterans Day. We weren't here. In my State of Alabama, we have 400,000 veterans who have served our country and served our country well. A lot of them put their life on the line. We have a lot of injuries. And I just want to thank them for what they have done, being that we weren't here in the Chamber on Veterans Day. And I want to again thank them for their service. And, hopefully, in the future we can talk more about our veterans here in this Chamber because there is not a more special group than that.

Tribute to Stephen Boyd

Madam President, also, I want to start today by taking time to honor my departing chief of staff, Stephen Boyd, and thank him for his service to the State of Alabama and to our country.

For the past 2 years, Stephen has been at the center of every decision and every action we have taken on behalf of the State of Alabama in my office. And after nearly two decades of public service, we say goodbye to this integral part of our team.

When you run for Congress, you learn that people are quick to give you advice, especially when you have had a lifelong career in something outside of politics. One tip I heard over and over was hire a great chief of staff. But when I thought about what would make a good chief of staff, I decided I needed someone with three main qualifications: One, someone who knew the Federal Government; two, someone who knew the great State of Alabama; and, No. 3, someone who would lead with integrity. And that someone was Stephen Boyd.

Stephen brought a wealth of knowledge to my office from his time working in the House, in the Senate, and as a Senate-confirmed Assistant Attorney General for the Office of Legislative Affairs. Stephen has been quietly working in the background to help improve the lives of the people in Alabama. And I have no doubt that he will continue with that sense of service and succeed in his next endeavors.

So, Stephen, thank you for your service to our office; thank you for your service to the great State of Alabama; and thank you for your continued long service to the great country that we live in.

Midterm Elections

Madam President, meanwhile, our work here in Washington continues. Moving forward, Congress has a lot to do to get our country back on track, with a lot of division. Last week, millions and millions of Americans across the country took part in one of the most sacred traditions that we have here. It is called voting.

The right to vote in free and fair elections is the cornerstone of our democracy. I was proud to see so many Alabamians exercise that right and also people across our country. Voting is the best way for the American people to tell the government how they feel about our performance. That is how we are evaluated.

As expected, the people used that opportunity last week to send a message to us here in DC: No more one-party rule in this building. For too long, this Congress has been controlled by the Democrats and has ignored a lot of the issues facing the American people as inflation has skyrocketed.

My Democratic colleagues continue to spend trillions of dollars on partisan bills that have made the problem worse. My Democratic colleagues passed the so-called Inflation Reduction Act a few months ago. You know, the name of the bill, which was intentionally misleading--it really has nothing to do with contents. There is a lot of content in that bill, a lot of money being spent, a lot of money going to the so-called climate change. Is that going to help inflation? Is that going to help the American people as we speak? No, it is not.

My Democratic colleagues need to know that the legislation will do nothing--absolutely nothing--and has done nothing at the present time to help inflation. But it does spend nearly 750 billion--with a ``b''-- more dollars on radical leftwing priorities, many of them focused on green energy policies that have accelerated our economy's slide toward recession.

You know, we are all environmentalists. We all love our environment. But we also love the people in this country from top to bottom. And the people come first. The lives of the people in this country come first. As gas prices hit record highs and home utility bills are expected to go through the roof this winter--and they have already started--this administration has done nothing--absolutely nothing--to ease the pain. Our President last week said, after the election--What do you plan on doing to help in the future--to the American citizens--What do you want to change?--he said: ``Nothing.''

So we can take him at his word. This looming energy crisis has been obvious--very obvious--to all of us for months. Yet President Biden and his allies have nothing to stop it from happening. Prices will continue to go up. We have no answers. And that is why we are here. We are here to have answers for the American people. In fact, this administration has done the opposite: siding with climate activists and begging for foreign adversaries for oil instead of promoting and unleashing energy production right here at home.

Just a couple of weeks ago, President Biden promised a group of climate protesters that there would be no new drilling while speaking at a campaign rally. There are no answers in that statement for the American people whom we represent.

In addition to inflation, painful high gas prices, leadership in DC has done nothing to address the rising crime ravaging our communities. The wide-open borders--it is a magnet for cartels and deadly, deadly, deadly drugs.

I recently visited the southern border to see the madness taking place just a few weeks ago and what it is costing the American taxpayers. I visited Eagle Pass, TX. At Eagle Pass, which is the Del Rio Sector, they control 200 miles of the border. That is basically just a third of the border on our southern tip of the United States-- only one-third. We were spending $15 million a month just processing the illegal immigrants coming across the border. That is only the cost of processing. They come across, and they are released into our country no less than 72 hours after they are brought across our border. And they go to no-telling where--all over our country. It is a taxpayer's nightmare. We are talking about 14- to $15 million per month for just 200 miles. You could imagine what the rest of the border is having to pay out of the taxpayers' pocket.

One thing I want everybody to understand, I keep hearing about how our border is secure. Folks, our border is not secure. I was almost run over by the herd of people coming across the line early one morning, standing there. People are excited about being in the USA. We don't know who they are. Most can tell us where they are coming from, but they have no identification. As of today, we have taken people from 180 different countries. A lot of them are here doing no good.

I will tell you this: Just talking to the Border Patrol, we have a lot of people coming across maybe for a better life, but the ones coming across running from our Border Patrol which we do not catch, we do not see, which is 15 percent to 20 percent, when you are running-- running--from the Border Patrol at the border, when we are letting you come across no matter who you are and come into our country, if you are running from Border Patrol, you have something to hide. That something to hide usually is not going to be very good for our country.

In addition to the tens of millions of illegal immigrants already in the United States, we already had 5 million come across that we know of. So you can probably add, as the Border Patrol said, another million to that list--another million people here that include people selling drugs, human trafficking, terrorists. It is a scary situation. We will pay the price in the near future for this.

Right now, the American taxpayer is paying a financial price, but in the near future, we will pay a price that we will have to overcome. We don't know what that is yet, but we will pay the price. The fact that this administration has ignored the border is a difficult reality for me to accept, and it should be a difficult reality for all of us to accept.

We love people in this country. We are an immigrant country. We all come from immigrants. When you are born in this country, you hit the lottery. We live in, no doubt, the best country on the face of the Earth. We are very fortunate. A lot of people weren't born in this country, but we take a lot of people into our country from all different places. But they should come in the right way, the proper way, where we can recognize them, identify them, and understand that they are coming here for the reasons of having a better life where we can help them.

But right now, our border is overrun, and we better get control of this because it is going to be a sad day when something happens in our country and we are going to be on this floor apologizing to the American people of something terrible happening again.

I am going to continue to push back on the radical spending in these next 2 years in this Congress, our open borders, counterproductive energy proposals, and the policies that take place.

And we make our criminals victims in this country. We have to stop that. We have to make sure we put criminals in jail and don't make them the victim. When my new Republican colleagues come to Washington in January, our party will be united. We have had our problems. We work out our problems, and we hope to be more united than ever before.

We want to deliver lower costs, safer communities, and a secure border. We need to continue to talk about that. I would love to hear my Democratic colleagues get up and talk about what they see when they go to the border because it is one of the most important things that has ever happened in this country--one of the most important. And we have to have an answer to that. We can do this by cutting spending and unnecessary resolutions.

We can help the American people. People ask: What are the Republicans going to do? We want to cut spending, we want to cut regulations, and we want to lower taxes, put more money in American people's pockets to where they can live a better life.

Our Federal Government, the Fed now is raising interest rates. Their job is try to keep inflation down. I understand that. Why do they do that? They raise interest rates to slow down housing.

Folks, we have ruined housing in this country in the last 3 months. We have achieved our goal. We have achieved our goal of people not building homes. We have gone to almost zero in the State of Alabama. We have put thousands of people out of jobs. We accomplished our goal of putting housing on the back burner. I am for slowing down interest rate increases. Let's see what has happened in the Fed. Let's make sure they are working. We tend to raise them every couple of months now. Let's see what has happened. Let's help the American people. Let's don't keep kicking them to the back burner. We have slowed housing down. Let's put people back to work now. Let's put them back to work and give them an opportunity to live a better life.

We are in a tough time. It is going to get tougher. We will see a deep recession in 2023. It is coming. There is no way around it. We need to start making plans to help the American people overcome this recession that is going to hit us all right between the eyes in the next few months. We live in a great country, and this body needs to help the people that live in this great country.

Madam President, my office recently received a message from a woman named Amanda. She lives in Illinois and the Chicagoland area. She tells me that she and her wife Cally will be celebrating their fifth anniversary as a married couple. The two of them have actually been together for 8 years, but after the Supreme Court's 2015 decision in Obergefell, they decided it was time to tie the knot.

That ruling affirmed their love and, just as important, their constitutional right. The Court declared that their right to marry is a fundamental liberty under the Constitution--for every American, regardless of sexual orientation. So in 2017, Amanda and her wife Cally exercised that right, and today they are the proud parents of two beautiful young children: a daughter, Austin, and a son, Wren.

Really, that should be the end of the story. With Obergefell, Amanda and her wife were guaranteed the same rights as me and my wife, and it should be the beginning of a new story: a loving couple who can now focus on their family and taking care of their day-to-day responsibilities: paying the bills, feeding the kids, navigating life as working parents.

But, sadly, Amanda and many others are now living in fear. Like millions of Americans, she is facing the very real prospect that this Supreme Court could soon rule that her right to marry the person she loves is not protected by the Constitution. She saw what this radical, far-right Supreme Court did with the Dobbs decision just a few months ago, the decision that erased the constitutional right for the women of America to make their own reproductive health choices; and now she and Cally are wondering: Will they come for our rights to marry next?

Amanda wrote to my office:

Justice Clarence Thomas, in his concurring opinion in

[Dobbs] . . . wrote that the court ``should reconsider all of

this Court's substantive due process precedents, including

Griswold, Lawrence, and Obergefell.''

She said:

For the first time in our history, Americans are facing the

loss of civil rights--

by this Supreme Court.

Our two young children are growing up in a world where they

may, [and] in some cases [do], have less rights--

fewer rights--

than their parents and grandparents.

Amanda tells me she and her wife are taking every legal step they can to ``ensure that our recognition as parents to our own children cannot be challenged. This is emotionally and financially taxing,'' she said, ``and yet, something that we feel we must do.''

There are more than 700,000 married same-sex couples in America, couples like Amanda and Cally, whose love and legal status were recognized under the law and protected by a Supreme Court decision in Obergefell; couples who, along with their friends and families, are demanding the Senate do what we should have done years ago: codify marriage equality.

We can put their minds at ease before Justice Thomas and the far- right majority even have a chance to rip away yet another fundamental freedom. And this is not an abstract exercise. Early next month, the Supreme Court will hear oral arguments in a case called 303 Creative LLC v. Elenis. It is a case that, apparently, is concerned with free speech, involving a website designer in Colorado who wants to build wedding websites but with the disclaimer that proudly announces she will not build websites for same-sex couples.

She sued the State of Colorado, demanding the right to boast about her plans to discriminate against LGBTQ Americans. Such a disclaimer would violate a State's civil rights law, which prohibits business from discriminating or intending to discriminate against someone on the basis of their sexual orientation.

If the Supreme Court's last term and the Dobbs decision are any indication, this radical far-right majority on the Court could very well use this case to start the erosion of protections of LGBTQ Americans. It is exactly the kind of judicial activism that we have come to expect from this current Court's conservative majority.

Remember when they boasted about the fact that Donald Trump was going to put on three Justices who would rule his way in future cases? It was pretty clear from that day forward that the Supreme Court had a political bent. The Federalist Society had to give its stamp of approval.

The Federalist Society is a multimillion-dollar political arm of the Republican Party. And before any judicial nominee had a chance in my Senate Judiciary Committee under the Republican days, they had to get the approval of the Federalist Society.

The Federalist Society, from the start, was setting out to eliminate a woman's right to choose. They had their victory in the Dobbs decision.

But the American people spoke on November 8. Overwhelmingly, they said across America: You can't get away with eliminating rights already established under the Constitution for any American.

I hope that that sentiment grows and, eventually, we reverse the Dobbs decision.

What we have seen is exactly the kind of judicial activism we can come to expect from the Court's conservative majority. They twist the law and set aside longstanding precedent to establish the policies they prefer.

It is not the Supreme Court's role to make the laws. How many times have we heard that speech from Republicans? We don't want judicial activists, they say. That job of making the laws belongs in Congress.

And today we can defend families like Amanda's by voting for the Respect for Marriage Act, which passed just a few moments ago here on the floor of the Senate with a strong bipartisan vote.

It will protect marriage equality under the Federal law, not just for LGBTQ couples but also interracial couples, whose rights could also be in peril by the Court's far right majority.

The issue of marriage equality is too important to get bogged down in partisanship, which is why this bill is a bipartisan compromise. I hope that getting 60 votes for the Respect for Marriage Act is going to be an indication of more cooperation to guarantee that Amanda and Cally do not have to lose sleep over the future that they have as loving individuals married to one another and parents.

In last week's election, the American people sent a clear message to Washington and to the Senate: Get it together. Work together. No more toxic culture wars. No more divisive rhetoric. No more Big Lie. Enough.

If you want to stand for family values, let's start by enacting protections for every family in America. We can do it, certainly, with the Respect for Marriage Act, and even more.

To Amanda and Cally, I would like to say, happy fifth anniversary. I hope that by the time your sixth anniversary comes around, you won't even have to think twice about whether your rights are secure.

Madam President, as we head into the holiday season, parents and doctors nationwide are concerned about a dramatic surge in an illness called RSV, a respiratory virus. It can be especially serious for children and older Americans.

As a parent, there is no more terrifying or helpless feeling than knowing that your baby is sick. I know. I lived it.

Caitlyn Berg experienced that fear recently, too, when her 6-month- old daughter became ill with RSV and was struggling to breathe. The Bergs live in Mount Zion, IL, a small town downstate, near Springfield. Caitlyn Berg scoured the area looking for a hospital that would cure her sick daughter. After many frantic calls, she finally decided Springfield was the closest town with a hospital. She took her baby there and waited 8 hours in the emergency room before a bed finally opened up for her daughter.

Caitlyn Berg, incidentally, is a pediatrician. If a pediatrician has to struggle to find hospital care for her own sick infant, imagine the panic and fear other parents feel when their babies are struggling to breathe because of RSV. And it isn't just a problem in small towns or rural America.

Chicago is the third largest city in our country, with some of the best hospitals in the world, including some of the very best children's hospitals. The rate of emergency room visits for young children with RSV is now 10 times higher than in 2019--10 times higher than a normal season 3 years ago.

This chart demonstrates that. Look at this spike. As you can see, the number of children admitted for RSV has skyrocketed. In Chicago alone, there are hundreds of new cases each week, and nearly a dozen kids each day are being hospitalized.

Earlier this month, Comer Children's Hospital at the University of Chicago was full, with no beds for 53 straight days. And Lurie Children's Hospital of Chicago is also running at full capacity. Ninety-five percent of pediatric ICU beds across Illinois are full during this time.

This crush on pediatric hospitals isn't limited to Illinois. Over the border in Franklin, IN, little Ophelia--you can see her here in the bed--struggled to breathe after contracting RSV at preschool. She went to the local hospital, and they transferred her to the

large children's hospital in Indianapolis, where she was intubated for 5 days. Thankfully, she is home safely now and recovered.

Across the country, children's hospitals are being pushed to the limit, caring for infants, toddlers, and young kids sickened by RSV. In extreme cases, kids and babies may require ventilators to breathe.

The timing of this surge in RSV is especially concerning, coming from the worst flu season in a decade and while new COVID variants are circulating. Those three viral variants together pose what many health professionals argue could be a ``triple-demic'' of viral illness. So let's look for solutions.

The Children's Hospital Association and the American Academy of Pediatrics has asked this President to issue an emergency declaration to free up more resources. I support them.

At the top of the list, America desperately needs more nurses, more doctors, more staff. Hospitals plagued with worker shortage even before COVID now have a pandemic that made the crisis even worse. If our children's hospitals had more staff, they could immediately open more beds to treat the kids.

Congress made some headway in the American Rescue Plan, which passed on the floor of the Senate without the support of a single Republican Senator. It included my provision to invest $1 billion in the National Health Service Corps for scholarships and loan repayments for new nurses and doctors who serve in urban and rural areas in need.

But we need to do more to end the healthcare worker shortage. Senators Menendez, Boozman, and Schumer have a bipartisan plan, which I support. It increases funding for medical residency slots to train the next generation of doctors, nurses, and other medical professionals. I support putting that plan in the end-of-the-year package we will consider in the next few weeks.

It is also critical that we fund our public health system adequately and provide for data collection so we can track RSV. The HELP Committee has been working on this priority, and I certainly support their efforts.

We are all in this together. The hospitals are doing their best. Doctors and nurses are working extra-long shifts to keep kids safe. We all need to do our part, too. For all of us, that means staying home when we are sick, still washing our hands, getting COVID booster and flu shots. For those of us in Congress, it also means providing the resources to get safely through this current surge of RSV and building the strong public health infrastructure that American families require.

I yield the floor.

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

Mr. President, for the past 2 years, the COVID pandemic dominated every news cycle, and if the mainstream media is to be believed, it was the leading topic of conversation at every dinner table, whether it was Washington or Nashville or San Francisco. As the months wore on, it became glaringly obvious that, while the pandemic was a concern, people were less worried about the virus itself and more worried about how the Democrats were using it to justify one power grab after another.

Even in the face of catastrophic inflation, the employment crisis, the failure of public education, and the slow creep of lethal opioids into rural communities, the Democrats chose power over progress every single time and, in doing so, abandoned their duty to the American people.

And now, as this year draws to a close, my Democratic colleagues have declared that now it is time for everybody to just move on, move on from the pandemic. When Dr. Fauci appeared for a final press conference before his conveniently timed retirement, the White House made sure he wouldn't have to answer any questions on the origins of COVID-19.

The talking heads in the mainstream media have spun the harm done to students by virtual schooling as a tragedy rather than the completely predictable effects of forced isolation on our precious children, and the White House remains determined to blame inflation and shortages in the energy market on Vladimir Putin.

They want us to ignore their own self-proclaimed war on American energy independence. I suppose they think that if they just erase the mess that they have made from the daily talking points, the American people will just forget about it and move on. I hate to spoil their ending, but the American people are not ready for that. They want some answers. They will never ever forget the damage that these policies have done to their families and to their communities.

Now, the left tried their best to frame the debates over lockdowns and mask mandates and vaccine mandates as conspiracy fodder, but we all found out, no, it was not; it was personal, especially after it became clear that control was the Democrats' end game. Yes, control over you, over your life, over your children, over their education, over student loans. Control is what they want.

Now, the science changed but the narrative never did, and Tennesseans have noticed this. They have caught on to this. The ongoing fight over the military's vaccine mandate is particularly raw for Tennesseans because it is proof that the Democrats are willing to jeopardize our national security to score points against political rivals. This desire for power and control is in direct opposition to the Federal Government's sworn mission to provide for the defense of our Nation. This isn't a matter of opinion; it is a fact, confirmed by President Biden's chosen military commanders.

This year, the number of new servicemembers joining the ranks has hit an alltime low; so did academy applications for our Nation's prestigious military academies. The Army fell 15,000 soldiers short of their recruitment goal for 2022. The other services and the National Guard are also struggling.

The Pentagon doesn't expect the situation to improve even for the next few years. The Army predicts they will be down 21,000 troops in 2023, and the National Guard says they are going to lose 14,000 soldiers by the end of 2024.

The strongest, fastest, and most lethal fighting force on the planet is moving backward. Meanwhile, the new

axis of evil, they are marching forward. We know for a fact that Tehran is sending drones and military equipment to Moscow to support Putin's war in Ukraine. North Korea is conducting ballistic missile tests that threaten South Korean sovereignty. And the Chinese Communist Party is doing the exact opposite of what the Pentagon is doing: They are focusing on readiness and building up their military.

In June, they christened their first-ever aircraft carrier to be completely designed and developed in China. Their goal is to increase their fleet by 40 percent by the end of 2040 and quadruple their nuclear stockpile by the end of the decade. This is all consistent with Beijing's broader goal of becoming a military superpower.

They are focused on global domination. They are focused on readiness. They are focused on defeating us. Meanwhile, our Pentagon is focused on a vaccine mandate. The strong men in control of Russia, China, Iran, and North Korea--that axis of evil--are notorious for their aggression, and none of them have bothered to keep their hatred of the United States of America a secret.

The wolves are at the door, Mr. President, yet here we are, debating a military vaccine mandate that has zero--zero--basis in science or common sense. It will gut the ranks of the military and make us more vulnerable to the rising threat from the new axis of evil.

This isn't just my opinion; it is another fact confirmed by the people President Biden trusts to lead our Nation's military. The Army confirmed in a November 4 press release that the vaccine mandate has already separated 1,796 Active-Duty soldiers from their service.

Bear in mind, they raised their hand; they took an oath. They did this because they want to serve, protect, defend. And what has happened? What has happened to that service, to that loyalty? Look at what has happened. They are getting a slap across the face. As I said, 1,796 were shown the door because they would not take a COVID shot. They wouldn't take a shot. For the soldiers who remain, the Army has approved less than 4 percent of medical exemptions and just over 1 percent of religious exemptions. The Guard has only approved 15 percent of the medical exemptions and--get this--0.0047 percent of religious exemptions. And the Reserves, they have approved little more than 5 percent of their medical exemptions and 0.0044 percent of religious exemptions.

Leader Schumer left Washington for the Thanksgiving holiday without acknowledging this manpower crisis in our military and without offering a clear answer on when we will take up the fiscal year 2023 National Defense Authorization Act.

Now that we are back in session, I would hope that he has a plan to stop dangling this bill over the heads of our servicemembers and their families. But while we are waiting, I would like to offer a small improvement to what is already a very strong and bipartisan piece of legislation.

Mr. President, as you know, the Senate Armed Services Committee finished their work on this bill back in June. When we were debating the NDAA in the Armed Services Committee, I introduced two amendments that would have protected servicemembers from the arbitrary effects of the vaccine mandate. The first would prohibit the involuntary separation of any servicemember for refusing the COVID-19 shot until each service achieves its authorized end strength--good common sense. It is not saying you can't implement your mandate, just saying you can't do it until you have reached your goal, your recruitment and your retention goals.

The Second Amendment would make sure that members of the National Guard or Reserve maintain access to both pay and benefits while their request for a medical or religious accommodation is pending.

My Democratic colleagues on the Armed Services Committee killed these amendments, but I do hope they will change their mind and support them now that they have had the opportunity to hear from folks back home, to hear from our military, our Guard, our Reserves. I hope they will give this another look; but if they don't, they will have another opportunity to fix this mistake.

I have combined the amendments into a single bill called the Preserving the Readiness of Our Armed Forces Act, and I would be happy to add each and every one of them as a cosponsor. As we begin what I am sure will be a mad dash to the end of the year, I want to encourage my Democratic colleagues to keep preserving readiness at the front of their mind.

When the Pentagon first revealed this vaccine mandate, veterans, military experts, and Active-Duty servicemembers up and down the ranks told us exactly what would happen if the Biden administration went through with this. And do you know what? They were accurate in their assessment. Because of the Democratic actions, this White House's actions, they have fired thousands of servicemembers, and tens of thousands more are in jeopardy. Bear in mind, these are people who have chosen to serve. This chaos has prompted thousands of potential soldiers, sailors, airmen, and marines to decide against entering the service, and who knows how many will choose not to enter the National Guard.

The Biden administration is digging in their heels at the worst possible time. The new axis of evil--they are on the rise, and they are counting on the rest of the world to remain complacent.

Over the past few years, each of these nations has been exposed on the international stage as factories of repression, violence, and misery, but in the aftermath, nothing changed.

Just last week, the CCP reminded us how little value they place on human life. Ten people in Xinjiang burned to death when their apartment building caught fire. The firefighters couldn't get to them in time because of the barricades CCP officials had constructed to enforce their zero-COVID policy.

Protesters took to the streets and forced the international press to pay attention. In response, the CCP brutalized journalists, censored videos shot the night of the fire, and claimed that the residents who died were too weak to save themselves.

I would remind my colleagues that these are the same officials who claimed that the Uighur Muslims are comfortable in their concentration camps, that the Tibetans welcomed ethnic cleansing, and that firing missiles at Taiwan is part of normal military operations. Exposure will not stop them. Outrage will not give them pause because they are on a quest for global domination, and they are not going to take a timeout because the Democrats in control of our government decided to prioritize a shot over our Nation's security.

Let that sink in. They are going full steam ahead. They are increasing their military rights. They are building their navy. They are working to develop new missiles. And we are focused on removing military members because they will not take a shot. By the way, you can get vaccinated and boosted, and it doesn't keep you from getting COVID.

Unfortunately, our adversaries have decided to take advantage of weak leaders in the White House and in Congress and to exploit our vulnerabilities until we force them to stop.

Our military is not the only tool we use to keep this country safe, but it certainly has the power to be the most decisive, and I cannot think of anything more foolish than to sabotage it while the enemy watches and says: Look at America's priority.

I yield the floor.

I suggest the absence of a quorum.

Madam President, I rise today for my 286th ``Time to Wake Up'' speech, in this case to report back from the United Nations' 27th Conference of the Parties, or COP, the annual meeting where the nations of the world work to combat climate change. The Paris Agreement, for instance, sprang from the COP. Senators Cardin, Markey, and I went to this year's COP in Egypt. Speaker Pelosi led a separate House delegation, and President Biden traveled there with a large executive branch delegation to make some important announcements.

Our Senate delegation met with government officials from many other countries, with American officials, with UN leaders, and with dozens of business leaders, labor leaders, environmental groups, environmental justice advocates, and oceans advocates.

We consistently heard that the work we accomplished right here in this Chamber through the Inflation Reduction Act and by ratifying the Kigali Amendment brought our country back into global leadership on climate. But we know that our work to tackle climate change is not over--not by a long shot.

Emissions from fossil fuel are still growing. 2022 fossil fuel emissions will blow right past previous record highs. Things are not getting better yet; they are getting worse. We need additional ambitious climate policies, both at home and abroad, to reduce those emissions.

And because climate disasters so often fall upon the most vulnerable, particularly in developing nations, we need the wealthier nations and the ultrawealthy corporations responsible for the lion's share of climate upheaval to step up to finance the clean energy transition for those countries.

So, what are the things the United States and other nations should do? At the COP, I spoke a lot about the upcoming European Union carbon border adjustment mechanism, or CBAM. The EU already applies a carbon price to energy-intensive manufactured goods. That is one of the main policies that is driving decarbonization in Europe, and they will start, later this decade, imposing a carbon tariff on goods from countries that don't impose a comparable carbon price on those imported goods.

My message to the COP: The EU CBAM is good policy. It creates an incentive for lower carbon manufacturing, no matter where the goods are produced. The United States should not--I repeat--the United States should not complain about the EU CBAM. Our manufacturers are among the least carbon intensive in the world, and they will pay far lower carbon tariffs than, for instance, Chinese manufacturers. That makes American companies more globally competitive and will move jobs and manufacturing our way to our shores.

So instead of complaining, we should match the EU CBAM or beat it with our own carbon border adjustment plan. And, by the way, we should urge the British and the Canadians and the Japanese and the Australians, anyone else interested in lowering emissions, to do the same. We should all pull together.

The beauty of a well-designed carbon border adjustment is that it prevents cheating by polluters to cross borders and pollute elsewhere for free.

A carbon border adjustment regime will drive decarbonization everywhere--in China, India, and around the world. If their manufacturers want to compete, they will have to reduce their emissions. So, yes, let's meet or beat the EU CBAM, not fear it or resist it.

By the way, when we heard quibbles about our IRA incentives for clean energy and electric vehicles and low carbon manufacturing being unfair to our foreign trading partners, my response was the same: Meet us or beat us. Pass incentives as good as ours or better. Let our IRA be an example that can be replicated around the world. As I mentioned earlier, President Biden came to the COP with ambitious proposals. He unveiled a new EPA proposal to reduce methane emissions from oil and gas production and transport by almost 90 percent.

This is--as President Biden might say--a ``BFD'' as methane emissions are responsible for about 25 percent of observed warming. The EPA proposal is a huge step in the right direction. It would create a new process for third-party monitoring of methane emissions. There are already a number of private and public entities that monitor methane emissions around the world using satellites, aircraft, drones. Utilize this data to quickly identify and eliminate large sources of methane emissions.

We should stand up an enforcement task force to make sure leakers promptly face the best enforcement methods to stop their leaks. Combined with my methane fee, which was adopted into the IRA as the Methane Emission Reduction Program, we now have the platform for the EPA, the Department of Justice, the Department of the Interior, and interested State, local, and tribal authorities to, as they would say in the military, find, fix, and finish methane leak sources.

Given that methane emissions are a global problem, particularly in fossil fuel-producing countries like Russia, I also urged the U.S. and foreign officials with whom we met to stand up an international task force to identify overseas methane emissions and sanction parties, companies, and countries that don't eliminate them.

Buried within EPA's methane proposal is another important announcement, an updated social cost of carbon, pegged at $120 per ton, more than double the Obama-era estimate. This too is a ``BFD.'' But only if the Office of Management and Budget follows up and spreads its use beyond just the EPA and this regulation into rulemaking, procurement, grantmaking, investment decisions, leasing, trade policy, just to name a few. It would be transformative; and given the scale and scope of the Federal Government, it would have the power to move markets.

One note of warning, our success in the United States, as well as in countries around the world, will, in significant ways, be determined by the behavior of big corporations.

Corporate America has built the biggest political influence operation the world has ever seen. It surrounds this building, surrounds us here in Congress. Lobbyists, dark money, trade associations, political contributions, phony think tanks--it is an awesome apparatus, and it is one that corporate America has yet to switch on for climate legislation. They either sit out there doing nothing or they actually oppose it.

Despite often admirable corporate work to decarbonize their own operations and even their supply chains, much of the corporate political apparatus is actually actively hostile to real climate legislation. And on top of that, of course, is the fossil fuel industry's inveterate, ceaseless obstruction machine.

So I was pleased to see the United Nations Secretary General announce new criteria for assessing corporate climate pledges--criteria that will include their lobbying and advocacy behavior. The report states:

[Companies] must align their external policy and engagement

efforts, including membership in trade associations, to the

goal of

reducing global emissions by at least 50% by 2030 and

reaching net zero by 2050. This means lobbying for positive

climate action and not lobbying against it. [Companies]

should publicly disclose their trade association

affiliations. They should encourage their associations to

advocate for positive climate action and have an escalation

strategy if they do not, including the option of leaving the

association if the necessary changes are not made.

I could not agree more. At COP, I repeatedly made the argument that companies should actually be required to file audited climate political footprint statements. Too many companies have been two-faced for too long. That climate political footprint statement should be the ticket that admits companies to COP and to other environmental gatherings.

But instead of corporate transparency about their political activities, more than 600 fossil fuel lobbyists swarmed this COP. Coca- Cola, the world's largest plastics polluter, was a leading sponsor. That ``worst climate obstructor''--the U.S. Chamber of Commerce--hosted the big dinner and put on a speech by a fossil fuel services company president. It is hard for people around the world to take COPs seriously when the fossil fuel industry and other large polluters have such a prominent presence at the COP and they haven't had to even disclose their political efforts to undermine that very COP.

Instead of welcoming the big polluters to COPs, we should hold them accountable for the damages their pollution is causing. A windfall profits clawback on global excess fuel profits, just like the conservative Tories did in the UK, could help fund remediation, transition, and adaptation efforts in developing countries. It is a commonsense principle that polluters should pay for the harm that they cause.

At the end, I left this COP with a sense of pride that the Senate and the U.S. Government are finally getting going on climate, but also a sense of the awesome difficulty of the task ahead to bend that global emissions curve, to hit nature's emissions reduction targets.

Our work is not close to done. In fact, it has only just begun. After decades of delay, deliberately caused by the fossil fuel industry's multibillion-dollar campaign of denial and obstruction, we are now in a marathon that we will have to run as a sprint. But this past year proved that we are finally up and running, and the announcements at COP will pick up our laggard pace. Our joints may be stiff from disuse, our breathing may be ragged from years of lassitude on the couch, but we have at last begun to run. And, boy, does it feel good. We will only speed up and do better. Powered by the energy and enthusiasm of legions of young voters, we are, I dare to say, at last coming awake.

I will close with this last slide which shows how important it is to see this as a global problem.

Those are emissions from China, from the United States, from India, and from the EU. When you add them up, you see the global figure. If we address each of these or just our own, it does not help enough to avoid the consequences of that continuing upward emissions trajectory.

So that is where an internal social cost of carbon that cuts across every aspect of government, buttressed by a carbon border adjustment of the world's major economies--that is what can drive that line down and put us on a pathway to safety.

I yield the floor.

Madam President, I rise today as our country takes an important step forward to protect the rights and freedoms of all Americans. Together with broad bipartisan support, the Senate will provide certainty to millions of Americans in loving marriages and enshrine into law the basic protections afforded all Americans while respecting our country's critical principle of religious liberty.

This historic milestone builds off of years of incredible strides we have made advancing freedom and equality, including hard-fought victories I have been honored to help lead.

Nearly two decades ago in 2006, at a time when our country was just beginning to debate marriage, Arizona proposed a ballot proposition banning same-sex marriage in our State's constitution. This issue was personal to me and to many other Arizonans. Similar ballot provisions had passed in States across the country, red and blue States alike, and the stakes were high. The pundits didn't give Arizona much of a chance.

I knew that in order to buck the trend and win, we would need to run a different kind of campaign that expanded the conversation, cultivated a diverse group of unlikely partners, and moved past the tired, partisan talking points.

That is why I worked across the aisle and teamed up with my good friend Steve May, a Republican. Now, we faced some criticism at the time for how we chose to run our campaign. Some wanted us to run a partisan campaign, convinced that highlighting the divides in our community and focusing exclusively on the LGBTQ community would put us over the top.

But I knew we couldn't do it just by talking amongst people who already agreed with our position. The polling showed it. And, frankly, we felt that in order to do right by our friends, our neighbors, and our fellow members of the LGBTQ community in Arizona, we had to do more than run a campaign that made our core supporters feel good but ultimately didn't build the broad-based coalition of Arizonans needed to win.

That is why we expanded the conversation to include how the proposition would harm all unmarried couples across Arizona, not just those in the LGBTQ community but people in domestic partnerships, people in common-law marriages because here is the truth: When we reach beyond partisan talking points to find common ground, we expand what is possible in Arizona and in our country.

We had open and honest conversations about the hopes and dreams that unite us, instead of the superficial differences that divide us.

In Arizona, we value our independence. We are proud of our families and our communities, and we work hard to protect them. We have our differences, but we share a strong sense of service, hard work, and self-determination.

We believe that everyone has the right to define his or her own destiny and that no one should be treated differently under the law. By focusing on these shared values, we found success. We defeated that ballot proposition--the first State in the country to do so--and I learned lessons that have shaped my work for Arizonans ever since.

Since 2006, we have seen long-term progress that makes today's important debate in the U.S. Senate possible. This work is ongoing. But the work can't and shouldn't be attributed to any one politician, any political party, or any piece of legislation. This work happens because people choose to be their most authentic selves and live their lives freely.

Being gay is normal. Being yourself is normal. Showing up to life every day happy to be who you are is normal. And being authentic with your friends, your family, your colleagues, and your community, that is also normal. That normalcy is what helps us listen to each other, understand each other, and grow in our community together. It is what changes hearts and minds in Arizona and around the country, and it is what, little by little, piece by piece, delivers sustainable progress.

Whether at home in Arizona or here in the U.S. Senate, in order to deliver real results to the Americans we serve, we need to work together. Working together means listening with open hearts, bridging divides, shutting out the noise, and focusing on our shared goals.

I have seen time and time again how this approach helps us overcome tough challenges.

A little over 6 months ago, it was thanks to that same approach that I stood here on the Senate floor and delivered remarks on the passage of our Bipartisan Safer Communities Act, a historic law we negotiated and passed with broad bipartisan support that makes our schools and communities safer and saves lives.

And before that, this same approach helped us pass our landmark legislation, the Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act, into law, strengthening America through upgrades and repairs, creating good- paying jobs, and expanding economic opportunities across the country. Beyond these historic accomplishments, our approach of focusing on common goals and shared ideals has helped us pass a number of other lasting solutions, including long-awaited and necessary postal reform, support for Ukraine in its fight against Putin, and most recently, the passage into law of our bipartisan CHIPS and Science Act, legislation that boosts America's global leadership, spurring job creation and addressing our supply chain challenges.

As we can all see, this approach has proved successful, and right now we need this approach more than ever. You know, this summer Arizonans and Americans across the country were confused, and some were scared, following the Supreme Court's decision to overturn Roe v. Wade. Women felt their health and well-being was endangered and our own abilities to make critical decisions about our futures were suddenly thrown into question. This fear trickled into other communities--including the LGBTQ community--as leaders with extreme ideologies mused about what other challenges could come next. But sadly, in response, we saw elected officials on both sides of the aisle exploit this fear and use it to fuel clicks, book cable news appearances, and drum up outrage to further their own partisan political agendas.

Outrage can help propel political stars, but it doesn't solve problems. It doesn't make life better for everyday people.

But amidst the noise, a few hard-working Senators from across our country and across the political spectrum understood there was a need to provide certainty to the American people, and we came to the table to get something done.

Senator Tammy Baldwin, our groundbreaking leader on this issue, partnered with my old friends Senators Susan Collins, Rob Portman, Thom Tillis, and myself, all of us no strangers to bipartisan success in a divided Senate. Together, we Senators all focused on the same goal, to help ensure married same-sex couples across the country are afforded the same protections as all other married American couples.

Along the way, we overcame obstacles; we made certain our language respected religious liberty; and we were careful to ensure that in shoring up some rights we did not infringe upon others.

We made our case to colleagues on both sides of the aisle. We listened to those who disagreed with us. We didn't pick fights. We didn't call names. We

just kept moving forward. And I am proud to say that by refusing to demonize each other and by focusing on our shared goals, we will deliver real, lasting results for the LGBTQ community.

We will make our country stronger and safer for American families in a way that honors and respects our diverse viewpoints on marriage, on family, and society.

I thank the many faith communities that helped us expand this policy conversation and ensure that our amendment would include robust and commonsense religious liberty protections.

In particular, I thank the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints that provided thoughtful suggestions and contributions. They summarized our holistic outcome when they wrote in their statement:

We believe this approach is the way forward. As we work

together to preserve the principles and practices of

religious freedom together with the rights of LGBTQ

individuals, much can be accomplished to heal relationships

and foster greater understanding.

Not every American agrees on marriage or lots of other issues, and that is OK. Honest disagreements don't make us any less decent or honorable, especially if we see that disagreement as an opportunity to learn and grow.

If more of us dedicate ourselves to better understanding one another and our lived experiences, if we strive to see an issue from another person's point of view, and if we all work to practice a bit more patience and grace, I know we can continue finding paths forward together.

It may not seem like it in today's partisan world, but there has always been more that unites us as Americans than divides us.

The bipartisan support we have garnered in the Senate today proves this issue isn't a matter of one party being right or the other party being wrong. This issue is bigger than angry tweets and bombastic fundraising emails. This is about ensuring American families, who share the ideals of all marriages--love, devotion, and sacrifice--can continue to count on the basic rights and responsibilities that come with their marriages. It is about protecting the beliefs that unite us as Americans: the right to define our own destinies, the understanding that no one should be different in the eyes of the law, the freedom to reach for every opportunity and fulfill our greatest potential.

The truth is, if we allow our basic values of honor and dignity to become just another political football, we all lose.

As I learned back in 2006 in Arizona, we have to work together. We have to find willing partners in both parties, and we must bridge our divides before they rip us apart for good.

Our work is not done. As a body, we must resolve to do the right thing to continue this mission and keep working together to deliver lasting results. Our country deserves it, the American people deserve it, and the stakes are too high to stop our progress now.

I yield the floor.

Mr. Speaker, pursuant to House Resolution 1232, I call up the bill (H.R. 8404) to repeal the Defense of Marriage Act and ensure respect for State regulation of marriage, and for other purposes, and ask for its immediate consideration.

Mr. Speaker, I ask unanimous consent that all Members may have 5 legislative days to revise and extend their remarks and insert extraneous material on H.R. 8404.

Mr. Speaker, I yield myself such time as I may consume.

Mr. Speaker, H.R. 8404 the Respect for Marriage Act would reaffirm that marriage equality is, and must remain, the law of the land.

Over the past several decades, millions of LGBTQ people in loving and supportive relationships have married and formed families, particularly after the Supreme Court ruled, in Obergefell v. Hodges, that the Constitution protects marriage equality.

An estimated 2 million children are being raised by LGBTQ families today. An enormous body of research shows that stable and loving families are the foundation for children's well-being and success, and children do best when their families have the critical legal protections to care for one another.

Thankfully, marriage equality remains constitutionally protected, and there is no indication that it will be overturned in the foreseeable future. It is--and should forever be considered--settled law.

Nonetheless, the Supreme Court's recent position in Dobbs v. Jackson Women's Health, which extinguished the constitutional right to abortion, has raised concerns among some people that other rights rooted in the constitutional right to privacy may be at risk, notwithstanding the Court's assurance that Dobbs was limited to abortion. This includes the right to marriage equality.

In fact, in a concurring opinion in Dobbs, Justice Clarence Thomas explicitly called on the Court to reconsider its decisions protecting other fundamental rights, including the right to same-sex marriage. And although Justice Thomas did not mention the right to interracial marriage, that right relies on the same constitutional doctrines as the right to same-sex marriage, and, therefore, it could be vulnerable to a legal challenge in the future as well.

Even if we accept the Court's assurance in Dobbs that its decision does not call other rights into question, Congress should provide additional reassurance that marriage equality is a

matter of settled law. All married people who are building their lives together must know that the government will respect and recognize their marriages--for all time.

The Respect for Marriage Act, which I introduced with the co-chairs of the LGBTQ+ Equality Caucus, the chairs of the Congressional Tri- Caucus, and the House Democratic Caucus chair, Hakeem Jeffries, is an updated version of the bill that I first introduced in 2009.

The first provision would repeal the odious Defense of Marriage Act, or DOMA--the 1996 law that discriminates against married same-sex couples. While that law was ruled unconstitutional, it remains on the books, and it must be removed.

The bill would also enshrine marriage equality for Federal law purposes and would ensure that States give full legal effect to valid out-of-state marriages regardless of the sex, race, ethnicity, or national origin of the individuals in the marriage.

This legislation would provide additional stability for the lives that families have built upon the foundation of our fundamental rights. Congress must pass the Respect for Marriage Act to dispel any concern or any uncertainty for families worried by the implications of the Dobbs decision. And it must pass the Respect for Marriage Act to enshrine in law the equality and liberty that our Constitution guarantees.

Mr. Speaker, I reserve the balance of my time.

Mr. Speaker, I yield 2 minutes to the gentleman from Rhode Island (Mr. Cicilline), the chair of the Equality Caucus and a member of the Judiciary Committee.

Mr. Speaker, I yield 2 minutes to the gentlewoman from Texas (Ms. Jackson Lee), a member of the Judiciary Committee.

Mr. Speaker, I yield myself such time as I may consume.

Mr. Speaker, much of what the prior two speakers said was absolute nonsense. Some was true.

Unfortunately, pregnancy crisis centers have been the targets of terrorism, and that is deplorable. But so have abortion clinics. They didn't mention that. Abortion clinics have also been the targets of terrorism.

The murder of Dr. Bernard Slepian comes to mind. That is equally deplorable, and we should stop both of them if we can.

The rest of what they said was nonsense.

The Supreme Court logic, the substantive due process logic by which the Court overthrew Roe v. Wade, applies equally to Obergefell, to Loving, and to Lawrence, in other words, to the right to contraception, to the right to gay marriage, and to the right to interracial marriage, for that matter.

Justice Thomas mentioned all that specifically. Yes, he said, this case doesn't involve that. We are not deciding that yet, which is the portion of his concurrence that Mr. Johnson read, but read the rest of his concurrence where he said specifically that we should overrule or reconsider Obergefell and Lawrence, which is gay marriage, which is consensual sodomy.

He didn't mention Loving, though, for some reason, which is interracial marriage. Maybe the fact that he is intermarried and so is Senator McConnell had something to do with it. But the same logic applies there, so that is not nonsense.

Note that they offered no argument against this bill at all. We didn't hear anything about the merits of the bill.

Mr. Speaker, I yield 1 minute to the distinguished gentleman from Tennessee (Mr. Cohen), who is a member of the Judiciary Committee.

Mr. Speaker, I yield myself such time as I may consume.

Much of what the gentleman from Texas just said was irrelevant; but he made one correct point. He said that the bill before us today codifies Obergefell. It does, and if Obergefell is not overruled by the Supreme Court, it is not necessary, but it is also not harmful.

If Obergefell is overruled by the Supreme Court, as Justice Thomas hints it might be, then passing this bill becomes vital.

And as to recognizing marriage in one State or another State, obviously, if you get married in Texas and you go to Nevada, you don't get unmarried. You can't be married in one State and not in another State.

Mr. Speaker, I yield 1 minute to the gentlewoman from Texas (Ms. Garcia).

Mr. Speaker, the Supreme Court, in the Obergefell decision, reversed the actions of the people in those 30 or 35 States.

Mr. Speaker, I yield 1 minute to the gentlewoman from Texas (Ms. Escobar).

Mr. Speaker, I yield 1 minute to the gentlewoman from California (Ms. Pelosi), the distinguished Speaker of the House.

Mr. Speaker, I yield 2 minutes to the distinguished gentleman from New York (Mr. Jones), a member of the Judiciary Committee.

Mr. Speaker, I yield 1 minute to the distinguished gentleman from New York, (Mr. Sean Patrick Maloney).

Mr. Speaker, I yield an additional 30 seconds to the gentleman from New York (Mr. Sean Patrick Maloney).

Mr. Speaker, I yield 1 minute to the distinguished gentlewoman from California (Ms. Chu).

Mr. Speaker, I yield 1 minute to the distinguished gentleman from Wisconsin (Mr. Pocan).

Mr. Speaker, I yield 1 minute to the distinguished gentleman from Texas (Mr. Allred).

Mr. Speaker, I yield 2 minutes to the distinguished gentleman from New Jersey (Mr. Norcross).

Mr. Speaker, I yield 1 minute to the distinguished gentleman from Rhode Island (Mr. Langevin).

Mr. Speaker, I am prepared to close, and I reserve the balance of my time.

Mr. Speaker, the Respect for Marriage Act provides additional stability for the millions of American married couples and families that have ordered their lives around the constitutional guarantee of marriage equality. It has nothing to do with attacks on abortion clinics. It has nothing to do with attacks on so-called pregnancy crisis centers. It has to do with marriage.

This legislation repeals an unconstitutional and discriminatory statute that the Court has effectively rendered inoperative, but which remains on the books. It is time to appeal this abhorrent law and fix the mistake that Congress made a generation ago while we reinforce and cement current law.

As I pointed out before, the Obergefell decision is a decision of the Supreme Court. If that decision is not overturned, this bill is unnecessary but harmless. If that decision is overturned, this bill is crucial, and we don't know what this Court is going to do. Despite what Justice Alito said, Justice Thomas suggested that the decision on gay marriage ought to be overruled.

We have seen this Court overrule other precedent in Dobbs, so who can be confident that the Court will not overturn the Lawrence decision or, rather, the Obergefell decision? Who can be confident of that? The answer is no one.

As to the gentleman from Ohio's comment that the people in, I think he said, 33 States or whatever have decided that gay marriage should not be, and it should be up to the people of each State, that is absurd. And that is why we have one of the provisions of this bill. You can't be married in Texas and not be married in New York or vice versa. You can't lose your marriage status by crossing a State line.

This legislation is very necessary to make sure that people have the right to remain married, that gay couples have the right to get married, have the right to stay married, and that is why leading national organizations have endorsed the bill, including the ACLU,

the Equality Federation, Family Equality Council, Freedom for All Americans, GLAAD, the Human Rights Campaign, Lambda Legal, The Leadership Conference on Civil and Human Rights, the National Black Justice Coalition, the National Center for Lesbian Rights, the National Women's Law Center, and PFLAG. They know what is going on. They know what is at stake.

Mr. Speaker, this is a long overdue bill. I urge my colleagues to support it, and I yield back the balance of my time.

Madam President, I rise today to express my strong support for the Respect for Marriage Act, a bipartisan bill that Senator Baldwin and I have introduced with our colleagues Senator Feinstein, Senator Portman, Senator Sinema, and Senator Tillis.

Madam President, this bill recognizes the unique and extraordinary importance of marriage on an individual and societal level. It would help promote equality, prevent discrimination, and protect the rights of Americans in same-sex and interracial marriages. It would accomplish these goals while maintaining and indeed strengthening important religious liberty and conscience protections.

I am proud to be the lead Republican sponsor of this legislation, and I am grateful that a similar bill passed the House with strong bipartisan support.

As the Senate considers and prepares to vote on this historic legislation, I would be remiss if I did not begin by recognizing the tremendous progress that LGBTQ individuals in this country--in our country--have made in recent times in achieving equal rights.

It was not long ago that patriotic Americans could not be honest about their sexual orientation while fighting to protect our country-- our freedoms--in the Armed Forces. I led the fight with former Senator Joe Lieberman of Connecticut to repeal the discriminatory don't ask, don't tell law.

It was not long ago in America that a person could be fired merely for being gay. I strongly supported the Employment Non-Discrimination Act, known as ENDA, which passed the Senate in 2013 and would have prohibited such discrimination. Seven years later, the Supreme Court in Bostock held that the Civil Rights Act protects employees from discrimination based on their sexual orientation or gender identity.

And it was not long ago in America that individuals could not marry the person whom they loved if that person were of the same sex. The Supreme Court's landmark decision in Obergefell found that the fundamental right to marry is guaranteed by our Constitution.

Madam President, let us remember that we are talking about our family members, our friends, our coworkers, our neighbors. I am proud to have stood with them, and I will continue to stand with them in efforts to protect and secure their rights, while at the same time steadfastly protecting and respecting religious liberty.

The Respect for Marriage Act would accomplish two primary goals. First, it would guarantee that a valid marriage between two individuals in one State is given full faith and credit by other States, meaning that States must recognize a valid marriage for purposes of public acts, judicial proceedings, and rights arising from a marriage regardless of that couple's sex, race, ethnicity, or national origin. That means that same-sex and interracial couples can rest assured that their marriages will be recognized regardless of the State in which they live.

We need to remove the cloud that is now over these couples that is causing them such consternation, as my colleague from Wisconsin has mentioned.

Second, it would require the Federal Government to recognize a marriage between two individuals if the marriage was valid in the State where it was performed. It would do so by getting rid of a law that is on the book, known as the Defense of Marriage Act, which has been invalidated by the Supreme Court's ruling yet remains on the books.

With these changes, Federal law will provide that all married couples are entitled to the rights and responsibilities of marriage. This includes, for example, making medical decisions for an ill spouse and receiving spousal benefits from programs like Social Security and Medicare, as well as those benefits earned from service in our Armed Forces.

To remove any ambiguity about the intent and scope of this bill, I have worked with my Senate colleagues on both sides of the aisle, as well as with a coalition of religious organizations, to develop an amendment designed to clarify the language and address concerns that have been raised with the House version of our bill.

First and foremost, this legislation would not diminish or abrogate any religious liberty or conscience protections afforded to individuals and organizations under the U.S. Constitution and Federal law, including the First Amendment and the Religious Freedom Restoration Act. Through our amendment, this fact is now stated explicitly in our bill.

The amendment also makes clear that this bill only applies to valid marriages between two individuals. In other words, it does not authorize or require recognition of polygamous marriages. They are already prohibited in all 50 States. This really was a straw argument, but we have made it clear nonetheless in our amendment that in no way would the Federal Government or other States be required or authorized in any way to recognize polygamous marriages.

Moreover, the amendment clarifies that the bill could not be used to deny or alter the tax-exempt status or any other status--tax treatment, grant, contract agreement, guarantee, educational funding, loan, scholarship, license, certification, accreditation, benefit, right, claim, or defense not arising from a marriage--for any otherwise eligible person or entity. In other words, no church, no synagogue, no mosque, no temple, no religious educational institution would have to worry that somehow their tax-exempt status would be in jeopardy if they do not perform same-sex marriages that are contrary to their religious beliefs.

Let me repeat that because this has been coming up time and again. For the first time and consistent with the First Amendment and the laws of many States, this legislation would make clear in Federal law that nonprofit religious organizations and religious educational institutions cannot be compelled to participate in or support the solemnization or celebration of marriages that are contrary to their religious beliefs.

Madam President, I ask unanimous consent to have printed in the Record at the end of my statement an excellent analysis by the 1st Amendment Partnership.

Some have said that this bill is unnecessary because there is little risk that the right to have a same-sex or interracial marriage recognized by the government will be overturned by the Supreme Court. Regardless of one's views on that possibility, there is still value in ensuring that our Federal laws reflect that same-sex and interracial couples have the right to have their marriages recognized regardless of where they live in this country.

I strongly believe that passing this bill is the right thing to do, and the American people agree. Indeed, more than 70 percent of Americans support marriage equality, including a majority of Democrats, Republicans, and Independents.

As I wrote in a Washington Post op-ed with my colleague Senator Baldwin, ``Millions of American families have come to rely on the promise of marriage equality and the freedoms, rights and responsibilities that come with making the commitment of marrying the one you love. . . . Individuals in same-sex and interracial marriages need, and should have, the confidence that their marriages are legal.''

Simultaneously, we must also recognize that people of good conscience may disagree on issues relating to marriage. For many Americans, marriage is more than just a legal union; it is a religious institution grounded in their faith.

As Justice Kennedy, writing for the majority of the Supreme Court, explained in the Obergefell decision,

``[M]arriage, in their view, is by its nature a gender-differentiated union of man and woman. This view long has been held--and continues to be held--in good faith by reasonable and sincere people here and throughout the world.'' He went on to explain that ``neither they nor their beliefs are disparaged here.''

The same principle applies to our legislation, and that is explicitly acknowledged in the amended bill. Thus, it is important to me that our bill would not affect or diminish in any way religious liberty and conscience protections. Any interpretation of this legislation that would limit the applicability of these protections for individuals or entities because they have religious objections to same-sex marriages would be contrary to the plain language of our bill.

Madam President, I ask unanimous consent to have printed in the Record at the conclusion of my statement a series of letters from religious organizations that endorse the religious liberty provisions of our bill.

They include letters from Elder Jack Gerard from the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, Melissa Reid from the Seventh-day Adventist Church, Nathan Diament from the Union of Orthodox Jewish Congregations, and from a host of other organizations: the Council for Christian Colleges and Universities, the AND Campaign, the Institutional Religious Freedom Alliance, the Center for Public Justice, and Tim Schultz of the 1st Amendment Partnership. We have worked very closely with all of them.

Madam President, in closing, let me once again salute the leadership of Senator Baldwin, as well as Senator Portman, Senator Tillis, and Senator Sinema, for their tireless efforts on this important legislation.

Let's do the right thing. Let's vote to proceed to this important bill, and let us pass it. I urge all of my Senate colleagues to join me in supporting the Respect for Marriage Act.

Mr. President, I suggest the absence of a quorum.

Mr. President, I couldn't agree more with the words of my colleague from Ohio, Senator Sherrod Brown.

It is unbelievable how long it took to do basic justice for our veterans serving us in some of the most difficult conditions in Iraq and Afghanistan to get their illnesses treated without them having to basically solicit legal help to connect that illness to their work.

The fact that these 23 illnesses are now automatically covered for a veteran who served near a toxin is just a terrific step forward.

And I am so pleased that we are making encouraging progress on veterans' housing. For our veterans to come back and be in the situation of facing the stress of return, the stress of reentering the workforce, and not have basic housing is unacceptable, and it is one of the ways we show that we are, in fact, a grateful nation for their service.

Tribute to Jennifer ``J.P.'' Piorkowski

Mr. President, I am pleased to be on the floor tonight to say thank you to one of my team members who has been part of my Senate team for 14 years and is now headed over to work with the Peace Corps, and I want to say a little bit about the critical role that she played in my office and on my team.

When I first came here for orientation in 2009, I heard wise words, and that was that perhaps the most important person on your team is not your chief of staff, it is not your legislative director, it is not the head of your communications. It is your scheduler, the person who monitors and controls your time, because time is what you can't make any more of, and everyone will want a piece of it. The key person on your team--the hub of your team--is your scheduler.

The scheduler has to figure out how to fit in meetings with organizations, both from your home State and from national organizations, into already busy days, and has to figure out which policy conversations need to take place and how many are urgent today and how many can wait until tomorrow or next week, and which networking meetings with other legislators are essential to get onto the calendar.

The scheduler is also essential to our family lives. We have to have a scheduler who understands that our spouses are a key partner in serving in a legislative body, who have to understand that our time spent with our children is a critical part of our responsibilities as a parent. The scheduler has to ensure that the family has its appropriate presence in a Senator's life.

So you need someone who can take all of these competing demands and make sure that attention is paid to them and there is a balanced strategy to address them. Otherwise, serving in the Senate can become an absolutely miserable experience for all involved.

Well, 14 years later, I can say that this piece of advice that I received at orientation was the best piece of advice I heard, the best piece of advice that can be there for an incoming Member.

Over time, the person who schedules your hours, your meetings, makes all those judgments in consultation with you becomes not just a member of the team but a friend, a confidant, a member of your extended family.

And my wife Mary and I, along with our two children, have been blessed to have Jennifer Piorkowski as a member of the Merkley family, and I am so pleased she is able to be with us here tonight.

In fact, Jennifer, who goes by J.P., was part of Team Merkley before there was a Team Merkley.

In 1998, J.P., who had a passing interest in international affairs, called me out of the blue to ask for an informational interview when I was head of World Oregon. So we got together, and I was immediately impressed by that conversation. So I immediately recruited her for a project that we had funded to archive 50 years' worth of World Oregon's records.

It takes somebody with a real organizational mind and energy to accomplish that kind of task, and once we saw her at work on our team, I knew I would have to do everything I could to keep her with us, and she ended up staying with us in many different roles--from bookkeeper to office manager to programming speakers on international issues.

But we couldn't keep her forever because the international world called to her. The Peace Corps called to her, and she started a new chapter in her life of service when she joined the Peace Corps and headed to Albania as part of the first group of volunteers to reenter the country after civil unrest broke out in 1997.

During her 2 years in Albania, she worked with civil society organizations and with children living on the streets and survivors of human trafficking. She worked on enrichment programs to help at-risk Roma girls, a minority population in the country. She secured $65,000 to increase participation of disabled citizens in municipal decision making.

Her time in-country was so transformative that after her Peace Corps stint ended, she remained in Albania for another year, working as deputy head of mission for a transnational project to combat child trafficking in Kosovo, Greece, and Albania. In that role, among a whole host of great accomplishments, J.P. struck a memorandum of understanding, or MOU, with the Albanian Ministry of Labor and Social Affairs and the Ministry of Education, which led to the opening of child protection units--child protection units that are still in place and operating to this day.

I can only imagine how many young children have led better lives because J.P. helped open those centers.

So Mary and I arrived here in 2009 and started on this adventure of serving in the Senate, and we pondered: Who can fill this key role, this essential role of scheduling? Who would be the bridge between our office life and our family life? Who would be the extraordinary individual who would serve as a hub for the entire team?

And then we suddenly realized that J.P. was back from Albania and that she was right here in Washington, DC, continuing her terrific work on human trafficking at the Labor Department. It is pretty important work, and we were not sure we could pry her away, steal her away, from that to be on our Senate team, but, fortunately, we held our breath and she said yes, and we are so lucky to have had her with us this last 14 years.

It was J.P. who initiated my ``Good Morning, Oregon'' meetings. Every Thursday while we are in session, we open the doors of our conference room to welcome Oregonians who happen to be here in DC for a discussion and a good cup of Stumptown Coffee.

It was J.P. who initiated our Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion Committee to address unconscious bias, to work to ensure greater inclusivity, to better integrate diversity, equity, and inclusion into all aspects of our team's work, internally and externally.

It was J.P. who organized our annual staff retreats, both in Oregon and in DC, with unique exercises, including this last year's Scrollathon that made us all ponder our key mission and shared commitment to public service.

And when COVID upended life as we knew it, she stepped in, took charge, and innovated new human resource strategies and helped our team pretty seamlessly transition to the scary world of Zoom and Skype and Teams and other countless tools to ensure we could continue to function on behalf of the people of Oregon.

It was J.P. who strived, year after year, to set the atmosphere of competence and graciousness and supportive connectedness as team members navigated the challenges of both our work life and our home life. She loved nurturing team members as they sought to grow and thrive in their careers.

And I think you would be very hard-pressed to find a member of my team over the past 14 years who did not, at some point, go to J.P. for insight or sage advice.

Over time, J.P. grew in her career, taking on ever-newer and expanded parts of our team work. She was no longer doing the day-to-day scheduling, but was our deputy chief of staff, keeping our whole operation running smoothly.

Now, life often travels in circles. J.P. was an integral part of my team at World Oregon; and after serving in the Peace Corps and returning from Albania, she again became an integral part of my team here in Washington, DC.

And now, J.P.'s life is completing a circle. Seventeen years after her Peace Corps work in Albania, she is returning to help the Peace Corps thrive in the position of Executive Secretariat in the Office of the Director. And I could not think of a better person to help organize that team leading the Peace Corps. Their mission is to help build a better world for all, and my dear friend, my family member, J.P., is just the right person to undertake that mission.

J.P., I cannot begin to thank you enough for all you have done in each chapter of service throughout your life: your service at World Oregon, your service in the Peace Corps, your service following up in that extra year in Albania, your work at the U.S. Labor Department combating human trafficking and, of course, here in the Senate as a founding member of our team. Thank you for all of that terrific work. And we know that the work you are going to continue to do to contribute to making the Peace Corps an incredibly effective organization will be a significant way to help build a better world. Thank you.

Mr. Speaker, I yield myself such time as I may consume.

Mr. Speaker, we thought the Democrats were obsessed with President Trump, but Justice Thomas is a close second. This bill is simply the latest installment of the Democrats' campaign to delegitimize and attempt to intimidate the United States Supreme Court.

It started when President Trump nominated Brett Kavanaugh--that was just too much for the left to bear--and they launched a smear campaign in an attempt to derail his nomination.

Then we saw Senator Schumer stand on the steps--remember, a leader in the legislative branch--stand on the steps of the Supreme Court, a separate and equal branch of government, and threaten Supreme Court Justices. He said: I want to tell you, Gorsuch; I want to tell you, Kavanaugh, you've released the whirlwind, and you will pay the price. You won't know what hit you if you go forward with these awful decisions.

Just last month, a crazed individual attempted to assassinate Justice Kavanaugh in his home. An assassination attempt on a sitting Justice of the United States Supreme Court.

For months, Democrats on the Judiciary Committee have pursued this narrative that the Supreme Court is somehow illegitimate. Members of the committee, including the chairman, have introduced a bill to pack the Court to add four associate Justices to our highest court.

The committee has held hearings that can only be interpreted as an attempt to lay the groundwork for an effort to impeach Justice Thomas. Today, the Democrats bring forward a bill that is completely unnecessary.

Why are the Democrats going down this path?

Because, frankly, they have nothing else. We are debating this bill today because it is July of an election year and inflation is at a level not seen in 40 years. It is the highest inflation rate in 41 years. The price of gas, the price of food, the price of daily necessities have skyrocketed. We are debating this bill today because illegal immigration is at unprecedented levels.

Last month, Customs and Border Patrol reported that we have already surpassed the prior years' total for encounters at our southern border, and we still have 3 months left in the fiscal year.

We are debating this bill today because they can't talk about the fact that our country is gripped by an epidemic of violent crime in every major urban area in this country. Every day, Americans are being assaulted, robbed, and murdered in our cities.

We are here because the Democrats have no answers and desperately hope that a manufactured crisis will help them in November. The Democrats want Americans to believe that the Supreme Court at any moment could step in and overturn its opinions in Obergefell and Loving--that is simply not true.

The very decision that Democrats say creates this threat explicitly denies it--explicitly disclaims it. Here is what the court said in the Dobbs decision. The Dobbs decision should not be misunderstood, mischaracterized to cast doubt on precedents that do not concern abortion.

The court condemned the idea that the Dobbs decision would lead to an overturning of other cases, stating, ``Perhaps this is designed to stoke unfounded fear that our decision will imperil other rights.''

It is this unfounded fear that brings us here today. We are here for a charade; we are here for political messaging. The Democrats can't run on their disastrous record, they can't run on any accomplishments. It is less than 4 months before an election and all Democrats can do is stoke unfounded fears, and so that is why we are here with this bill.

Mr. Speaker, I hope we can defeat it. I hope it doesn't pass. As I said, it is unnecessary and wrong. Mr. Speaker, I reserve the balance of my time.

Mr. Speaker, I reserve the balance of my time.

Mr. Speaker, I yield myself such time as I may consume. The gentlewoman used the word ``violence.'' Violence? Fifty crisis pregnancy centers and churches have been attacked in the last 11 weeks--50 in 11 weeks. Think about that.

As I said in my opening statement, the leader of the Senate stood on the steps of the Supreme Court and said to two specific Justices: You have released the whirlwind, and you will pay the price. The Speaker of this body waited 4 weeks to give protection to Supreme Court Justices' families after the left had posted online where her kids go to school, where their family attends church on Sunday morning. And in that interim, during that time after that bill had come out of the Senate unanimously, we had the assassination attempt on one of the Justices-- one of the very Justices that the Senate Democrat leader had referenced in his comments on the steps of the Supreme Court.

And, of course, the Attorney General of the United States refuses to prosecute anyone who has protested at those Justices' homes in direct violation of the statute while the case was still pending in front of the court. Directly on point.

So concerns of violence--yeah, we all have concerns. She is right about one thing: We all have concerns about violence. But I just want everyone to understand what is going on as we speak. Fifty pregnancy centers and churches in 11 weeks. I don't know if we have ever seen anything like that--that kind attack on the pro-life community.

Even so much that a witness who came in front of our committee for the second time--she was here a few months ago and came back the second time. The second time she had to bring security with her because of threats against her life.

Mr. Speaker, I yield such time as he may consume to the gentleman from Louisiana (Mr. Johnson), my good friend and the ranking member on the Constitution, Civil Rights and Civil Liberties Subcommittee on the Judiciary Committee.

Mr. Speaker, I yield 5 minutes to the gentleman from Texas (Mr. Roy), who is a member of the Judiciary Committee.

Mr. Speaker, I yield an additional 2 minutes to the gentleman from Texas.

Mr. Speaker, I yield myself such time as I may consume.

The chairman of the full committee is right. This legislation would, in fact, codify Obergefell. But what it would also do is reverse the law in 35 States, where those States have said, marriage should be what--you know--traditional marriage. In fact, in 30 of those 35 States, the people of those respective States went to the ballot and voted for that.

So let's be clear. He is right. You can codify what the Court said in that decision, but it would undo what the people in the respective States, 35 States, either in 5 of those States through their elected Representatives in the legislature, or in 30 of those States where the people went to the voting booth and voted, it would undo that.

Mr. Speaker, I reserve the balance of my time.

Mr. Speaker, the Speaker of the House just said, ``Republicans knew the Defense of Marriage Act was unconstitutional when they passed it.''

Did the 118 Democrats who voted for that legislation know the same thing? Did the President of the United States, President Clinton, when he signed it into law, did he know it was unconstitutional?

I mean, I have heard some ridiculous things said on the House floor in my time here in the United States Congress, but that one--that one-- was right up there.

Mr. Speaker, I yield 2 minutes to the gentleman from Louisiana (Mr. Johnson), my good friend.

Mr. Speaker, I yield an additional 1 minute to the gentleman from Louisiana (Mr. Johnson).

Mr. Speaker, I yield back the balance of my time.

Mr. Speaker, as I said at the outset and the gentleman from Louisiana (Mr. Johnson) and the gentleman from Texas (Mr. Roy) have said, we think this legislation is unnecessary.

Justice Alito was very clear--again, it has been read several times-- the Dobbs decision should not be misunderstood or mischaracterized to cast doubt on precedents that do not concern abortion.

The Court couldn't have been clearer. The Obergefell decision undid what 35 States have as law in their respective States. Thirty of those States it was the vote of the people, as I said before. But this legislation is going to, I guess, just go after the decision of the respective States, and, as I said, the voters in those States.

I think it is also, as we have indicated, a further effort to intimidate the Court. We have had Senator Schumer's statements on the Supreme Court steps, we have had the AG's inaction with regard to protestors at Justices' homes, and, of course, we have had the Democrats' introduction of a bill to add four Associate Justices to the Supreme Court to pack the Court, and not focus on some of the things that are so pressing.

I mean, Mr. Johnson was right when he talked about 50 attacks on churches and pro-life crisis pregnancy centers in 11 weeks. That last clause is important. In that short a time frame, that sustained effort by the left to go after the pro-life community and places of worship is as wrong as it gets. I would love to have a hearing on that issue and what actions we might be able to take to help stop that because that is not supposed to happen in our great country.

Mr. Speaker, I urge a ``no'' vote on the legislation, and I yield back the balance of my time.

Mr. Speaker, on that I demand the yeas and nays.

Madam President, I have spoken repeatedly about the many ways my Democratic colleagues' crusade for power has been disastrous for the American people. We have recordbreaking inflation, a chaotic southern border, and the collapsing energy industry. This is the world that the Democrats created in just 2 short years.

What is worse, this Democrat-led government has ignored the ripple effects of their reckless agenda in favor of maintaining a political narrative about progress. But to Tennesseans and to so many Americans, it feels like the country is not moving forward; it is moving backward.

I have come to the floor again today to talk about the ripple effects of the COVID-19 vaccine mandate that threatens to gut the ranks of the U.S. military. This body has had multiple chances to avert disaster, and each time the Democrats have decided to take the wrong path.

I introduced two amendments to the National Defense Authorization Act that would have kept politics out of the military's use of vaccines. They are simple. Each amendment is about one page long. The first of these would have prohibited involuntary separation of any servicemember for refusing the COVID-19 vaccine until each service achieves its authorized end strength.

You see, it makes absolutely no sense that we would be removing people from military service simply because they do not get a shot--a shot, by the way, that does not prevent you from getting COVID.

Now, the second amendment would make sure that members of the National Guard or Reserve maintain access to both pay and benefits while their request for an accommodation--a medical accommodation or religious beliefs accommodation--is pending. But, of course, my Democratic colleagues have blocked these two amendments. They are common sense. They protect our men and women in the military.

But it is my plan to offer them another opportunity to do the right thing. I have combined these amendments into a bill. That bill is called the Preserving the Readiness of our Armed Forces Act. It is filed. It is ready for more cosponsors. I am also going to give them another opportunity. When the NDAA finally comes to the floor, they are going to have the opportunity to consider these two amendments, and I am asking my colleagues to support me in this. I stand by my call to Leader Schumer to bring the NDAA to the floor for a vote and hope that my Democratic colleagues will change course and support these two amendments to protect our men and women in uniform.

But, right now, the ripple effect is seen as another reckless power play by this administration and their Department of Defense.

I went into detail earlier this week about how this would hamper the readiness of the U.S. military, and I want to focus on the death blow today that this has dealt to our recruitment. Keep in mind that this is information that is available to each and every Member of this Chamber. My Democratic colleagues have this information.

Here is what we have to consider: the number of new servicemembers who are joining the military is, right now--right now--at an all-time low. Academy applications for our military academies are also at an all-time low.

See, even high school students know something is wrong with this picture. So they are not sitting there thinking: ``I want to go to West Point'' or ``I want to go to Annapolis'' or ``I want to go to the Air Force.'' They are not thinking that. What they are saying is, Why is the military focused on all this other stuff other than on their core mission--keeping this country safe?

Now, again, statistics prove the point.

The Army has fallen 15,000 soldiers short of their goal for 2022, and they don't expect this situation to improve. In 2023, they think they are going to be 21,000 troops short. I want you to think about this. Think about what we are facing, whether it is attacks from the axis of evil--Russia, China, Iran, North Korea--or whether it is China's aggressiveness.

Think about this. Think about the difference that 10,000 troops, 15,000 troops, 21,000 troops make, and then ask yourself, why is it that men and women, citizens of this country, are not wanting to raise their hand and take the oath to protect and defend? If you are honest with yourself, you know that a big part of the problem is the way the military has been treated over the last couple of years.

We didn't have this problem previously. This is a problem that has been made for our military, for this Nation's security. It has been made by this administration.

The National Guard is missing their recruitment goals. Why is that? Could it be that having to take a shot--and bear in mind, it is not a vaccine like a polio vaccine or other vaccines; it is a shot for a certain strain of COVID. What you have is a Department of Defense that is willing to say ``You are fired'' to people who have volunteered to serve this country, and they are going to do it over a shot. They don't expect anybody running over the southern border illegally, I might add, to have the shot, but they expect members of the U.S. military, students at our academies, those who are on Active Duty, those who are reservists, those who are in the National Guard to get this even though President Biden has said the pandemic is over--it is over.

So you have to ask, why is it that they are continuing to beat down on the military? Why are they willing to pummel them over a shot? Why are they not willing to put the NDAA on the floor? We have done it for 61 years. Are we going to miss on year 62? Why is it not a priority? Could it possibly be that the NDAA is not a priority for my

Democratic colleagues, that the men and women in uniform protecting them and their families are not a priority? Could it be it is not at the top of their to-do list?

The choice to enter military service is a serious choice. It is a choice that people do not make lightly. But this hesitancy to serve should raise alarm bells in this Chamber. Looking at these numbers that are falling so far short of our recruitment goals, our retention goals, should ring some alarm bells. It is symptomatic of a much larger problem.

The past few years haven't been easy for anyone, but we all have the benefit of hindsight. We all have the benefit of lessons learned. But it appears that some people are just not willing to learn from those lessons, and anyone willing to be honest about how the Democrats have handled this can see two things pretty clearly:

First, turning the debate over the COVID vaccine into political warfare--that is a choice that the Democrats in this Chamber, the Democrats in Washington, DC, and this administration--that is a choice that they have made. Let's take this vaccine mandate, and let's turn it into political warfare.

Secondly, getting political about this particular vaccine or shot, as it is, in the context of military readiness--that was a choice; I might add, a very bad, a very inappropriate choice. The military is supposed to be apolitical. Servicemembers count on that when they sign up to serve, when they raise their hand, when they take that oath, but now punditry drives policy at the Pentagon, and this has eroded trust between the military, the servicemembers, and their families.

The Democrats are in charge of the Senate. If they had allowed it, we could have had an honest debate about my two amendments. As I said, they are each about one page long. They are there specifically to protect our men and women in uniform, to say we have to have them serve. We lost 5,700 to this COVID mandate. We are short--I have given you the numbers--15,000 this year and 21,000 for next year. That is what we are short. Recruitment is low. We are not hitting our marks there. Signing up for our military academies--the numbers are the lowest ever. We are not hitting the mark there. Why is it? Be honest with yourself and ask yourself, what has caused this change in attitude? You know, if you are honest with yourself, if the President were honest with himself, he could rescind that mandate. That would be a very good thing. But to ignore reality and pretend that these low recruitment numbers, these firings, these retention numbers are all OK--it is unconscionable.

It is time for my colleagues--my Democratic colleagues--to stop ignoring the reality, stop ignoring the ripple effects of their political agenda before it puts our Nation and our military in danger.

I yield the floor.

Mr. President, I come to the Senate floor today to correct the record, really. Some of my colleagues in the Chamber voted yesterday to begin consideration of this chips package that we have talked about a lot because they believed it included legislation called Safeguarding American Innovation Act, or SAIA, the bipartisan, Senate- passed, White-House supported, essential legislation to protect taxpayer-funded research and intellectual property from being taken, stolen, by China and other adversaries and then used against us.

It is understandable people thought that because the SAIA research security provisions were in the broader USICA bill that passed the Senate last year. In fact, as the coauthors of USICA know, it was the reason I was one of the then-original Republican cosponsors of USICA and only because of that. At that time, we needed Republican cosponsors. And it is understandable because, this week, all Republican offices were emailed a list of items by the lead Republican on this bill which included chips-plus legislation, including SAIA.

So Republicans, when they voted yesterday, thought SAIA was part of it. Even today, Democrats and Republicans alike have come up to me and said they thought SAIA was in this bill.

By the way, they want it in this bill, but it is not. It was stripped out of this USICA. I filed an amendment to get it back into this package because it is so crucial to the goal of the overall effort, which is, of course, to improve our country's competitiveness, especially with regard to China. To do that, we must not only invest in more American research and innovation, which I support, but we have to protect that taxpayer-funded research and intellectual property from being stolen by our adversaries and used against us.

Given the current realities, without such protections, I believe this chips-plus bill, with significantly increased levels of Federal funding for research, may well become a giveaway to Beijing.

China's made no secret of its goal to supplant the United States as the global economic leader, and China has been willing to use every tool at its disposal to be able to do that. As FBI Director Christopher Wray has warned:

The greatest long-term threat to our nation's information

and intellectual property, and to our economic vitality, is

the counterintelligence and economic espionage threat from

China.

Director Wray has characterized China as the largest threat to our ideas, our innovation, and our economic security, noting that the FBI has opened 2,000 cases focused on China stealing our research, with one case being opened approximately every 12 hours.

A number of us, in a totally bipartisan process, have been working on protecting research for the past 4 years. In 2019, an investigative report of the Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations of the Committee on Homeland Security, which I chaired with Senator Carper as the ranking member, documented, after a yearlong investigation, how China uses talent recruitment programs--like the Thousand Talents Plan--to target the science and technology sectors. Talent recruitment plans recruit high-quality overseas talent--primarily from the United States--including academics, scientists, engineers, entrepreneurs, even finance experts. The plans provide monetary benefits and other incentives to lure experts into providing proprietary information or research to China. This is in violation of our laws and conflict of interest rules. China, in turn, exploits American research, intellectual property, and open collaboration--often U.S. taxpayer- funded--for its own economic and military gain at our expense.

Really, when you think about it, the rise in China's military and economy over the past couple decades is, in part, being fueled by American taxpayer-paid research, where they have essentially leapfrogged us and commercialized it more quickly than us and used it against us.

In just one of many examples, recently, a researcher in Kansas hid his full-time employment with a Chinese research university to obtain Federal grant funding for six different Department of Energy and National Science Foundation contracts.

Remember, the funding in this bill primarily goes to the National Science Foundation. In fact, the Department of Health and Human Services inspector general recently released a report that found that two-thirds of the NIH grant recipients--another place a lot of research is done, NIH--failed to meet Federal requirements regarding foreign financial interests including instances of U.S.-funded researchers failing to disclose ties with the Chinese Government.

In fact, since our investigation and hearing, there have been at least 23 different researchers that have been arrested by Federal authorities for research theft. In testimony before the Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations, John Brown, then-assistant director of the FBI's Counterintelligence Division said:

The Communist government of China has proven that it will

use any means necessary to advance its interests at the

expense of others, including the United States, and pursue

its long-term goal of being the world's superpower by 2049. .

. . The Chinese government knows that economic strength and

scientific innovation are the keys to global influence and

military power. So Beijing aims to acquire our . . .

expertise, to erode our competitive advantage and supplant

the United States as a global superpower.

Then-commander, U.S. Cyber Command, General Keith Alexander described intellectual property theft and cyber espionage in general as ``the greatest transfer of wealth in history.''

The sentiment was underscored by former national security adviser, retired LTG H.R. McMaster. When asked about China's growing and intertwined military and economic threat at a March 2021 Armed Services Committee hearing, Lieutenant General McMaster stressed the need for the United States to defend itself saying:

It's gut-wrenching to see how much has been stolen right

from under our noses. And much of that research [is] funded

by Congress. . . . I think the financial dimension of this is

something worth a great deal of scrutiny. We are, in large

measure, underwriting our own demise.

That is why Senator Carper and I introduced the Safeguarding American Innovation Act and insisted it be included in the Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs title of USICA. And, again, it was, and it passed. And it is part of the research funding--additional research funding to have these protections around it. It would be necessary even if there was not additional research funding, but now we are spending tens of billions of dollars of more taxpayer money and not providing this security.

Based on feedback from the law enforcement and research community, the legislation goes directly to the root of the problem. It makes it punishable by law to knowingly fail to disclose foreign funding on Federal grant applications.

The FBI wants that badly. It requires the executive branch to streamline and coordinate grant-making between the Federal Agencies so there is continuity, accountability, and coordination. It allows the State Department to deny visas to foreign researchers coming to the United States to exploit the openness of our research enterprise and requires research institutions and universities to do more, including telling the State Department whether a foreign researcher will have access to export-controlled technologies.

The State Department wants this badly. The career people at the State Department helped us write these provisions. They need this authority. They don't have it now.

So a vital component of any competitiveness bill must be this commonsense, noncontroversial, extensively negotiated, bipartisan bill. It is a matter of our national security. I have described the extraordinary theft of taxpayer-paid research under current funding levels. Again, it is unthinkable that we would add tens of billions of more taxpayer dollars to sensitive research, as we propose, in the CHIPS-plus package and not protect that research from China and other adversaries.

I strongly urge my colleagues to support this amendment to ensure that it is part again--as it has been in the past; we all voted for it--of the underlying package.

I yield the floor.