Cardiovascular Advances in Research and Opportunities Legacy Act

Mr. President, I rise to speak in support of the ``Canal Conveyance Capacity Restoration Act,'' which I introduced today. Representatives Jim Costa (D-CA) has introduced companion legislation in the House.

The bill has two major provisions, benefiting both drought resilience and the environment:

First, it would authorize more than $653 million to restore the capacity of three canals of national importance. Restoring these canals would improve California's drought resilience and help the nation's leading agricultural economy comply with limits on groundwater pumping under the state's Sustainable Groundwater Management Act.

Second, the bill authorizes an additional $180 million to restore salmon runs on the San Joaquin River. The funding is for fish passage structures, levees and other improvements that will allow the threatened Central Valley Spring-run Chinook salmon to swim freely upstream from the ocean to the Friant Dam.

The bill authorizes a \1/3\ Federal cost-share for restoring the capacity of the Friant-Kern Canal, the Delta-Mendota Canal, and the California Aqueduct.

Coordinated legislation in the State legislature introduced by State Senator Melissa Hurtado would authorize a \1/3\ state cost-share for restoring the canals' capacity. Under the coordinated Federal and State legislation, the locals would also be responsible for a \1/3\ cost- share for the canal restoration projects.

This legislation would help California water users and California's nation-leading agricultural industry comply with a recent State requirement to end the overpumping of groundwater. The stakes are huge: bringing groundwater into balance will reduce the water supply of the San Joaquin Valley by about 2 million acre-feet per year.

Unless local water agencies and the State and Federal governments take action, a recent U.C. Berkeley study has projected severe impacts from these water supply losses:

798,000 acres of land would have to be retired from agricultural production, nearly \1/6\ of the working farmland in an area that produces half the fruit and vegetables grown in the nation; and

$5.9 billion would be lost in annual farm income in a region that is almost entirely reliant on agriculture and has been called ``the Appalachia of the West'' due to its severe economic disadvantage.

One of the most cost-effective and efficient ways to restore groundwater balance is to convey floodwaters to farmlands where they can recharge the aquifer. California has the most variable precipitation of any State. When we get massive storms from atmospheric rivers, there is plenty of runoff to recharge aquifers--but only if we can effectively convey the floodwaters throughout the San Joaquin Valley to recharge areas.

Here is where the challenge arises. For a variety of reasons, the ground beneath the major canals has dropped by as much as 10 to 20 feet, which has caused canals designed to convey floodwaters to buckle and drop in many places. Other parts of the canals have not subsided, so the amount of water that the canal conveys must be reduced so that the canals don't overrun.

As a result, these essential canals for conveying floodwaters have lost as much as 60% of their conveyance capacity. The bill I am introducing today would provide Federal assistance to help fix these Federal canals.

Specifically, the bill would authorize $653.4 million in a Federal funding-cost share for three major projects to repair Federal canals damaged by subsidence to achieve their lost capacity:

$180 million for the Friant-Kern Canal, which would move an additional 100,000 acre-feet per year on average;

$183.9 million for the Delta Mendota Canal, which would move an additional 62,000 acre-feet per year on average; and

$289.5 million for California Aqueduct repairs, which would move an additional 205,000 acre-feet per year on average. While parts of the California Aqueduct are state-owned, the majority of the repairs are on its federally-owned portion.

If the Federal government covers a portion of the cost of restoring these three essential Federal canals for conveying floodwaters, it will give local farmers a fighting chance to bring their groundwater basins into balance without being forced to retire massive amounts of land.

Critically, the ability to deliver floodwaters through restored Federal canals will allow the water districts to invest in their own turnouts, pumps, detention basins and other groundwater recharge projects. The South Valley Water Association, which covers just a small part of the Valley, provided my office with a list of 36 such projects for its area alone.

The Public Policy Institute of California (PPIC) has determined that groundwater recharge projects are the best option to help the San Joaquin Valley comply with the new state groundwater pumping law. PPIC projects that the Valley can make up 300,000 to 500,000 acre feet of its groundwater deficit through recharge projects.

A study commissioned by the coalition group called the ``Water Blueprint for the San Joaquin Valley'' estimates that required reductions in groundwater could cause a loss of up to 42,000 farm and agricultural jobs in the San Joaquin Valley. Another 40,000 jobs or more could be lost statewide each year due to reductions in Valley agricultural production, putting the total at approximately 85,000 jobs statewide. Most of these impacts will fall disproportionately on economically disadvantaged communities. These impacts will be significant unless we address them through collaborative planning, policies, infrastructure, recharge and necessary financial support.

Let me now turn to the three critical canals that the bill would authorize assistance to restore. The Friant-Kern Canal is a key feature of the Friant Division of the Federal Central Valley Project on the Eastside of the San Joaquin Valley. For nearly 70 years, the Friant Division successfully kept groundwater tables stable on the

Eastside. This provided a sustainable source of water for farms and for thousands of Californians and more than 50 small, rural, or disadvantaged communities who rely entirely on groundwater for their household water supplies.

But unsustainable groundwater pumping in the Valley has reduced the Friant-Kern Canal's ability to deliver water to all who need it. Land elevation subsidence caused by over-pumping means that not all of the supplies stored at Friant Dam can be conveyed through the canal. In some areas, the canal can carry only 40 percent of what it's designed to deliver.

In 2017, a very wet year in which we should have been banking as much flood water as possible, the Friant-Kern Canal couldn't deliver an additional 300,000 acre-feet of water that it would have been able to convey had its capacity not been limited by subsidence. This significant amount of water would have been destined for groundwater recharge efforts in the south San Joaquin Valley, where the impacts of reduced water deliveries, water quality issues and groundwater regulation are expected to be most severe.

The California Aqueduct serves more than 27 million people in Southern California and the Silicon Valley and more than 750,000 acres of the Nation's most productive farmland. But despite its name, much of the California Aqueduct is owned by the Federal government and serves portions of Silicon Valley, small towns and communities in the northern San Joaquin Valley, and farms from Firebaugh to Kettleman City. The aqueduct represents a successful 70-year partnership between the Federal Government and the State of California.

In recent years, particularly recent drought years, the California Aqueduct has subsided. It has lost as much as 20% of its capacity to move water to California's families, farms and businesses. California is leading efforts to repair the aqueduct and is working to provide its share of funding, but the Federal government will also need to pay its fair share. The bill I am introducing today would authorize $289.5 million toward restoring the California Aqueduct.

The Delta-Mendota Canal stretches southward 117 miles from the C.W. Bill Jones Pumping Plant along the western edge of the San Joaquin Valley, parallel to the California Aqueduct. The Delta-Mendota Canal has lost 15% of its conveyance capacity due to subsidence. The bill I am introducing today would authorize $183.9 million toward restoring its full ability to convey floodwaters to farms needing to recharge their groundwater, and to wildlife refuges of critical importance for migratory waterfowl along the Pacific Flyway.

This bill responds to a potential crisis that very possibly could cause the forced retirement of nearly 1/6 of the working farmland in an area that produces half of America's fruits and vegetables.

These are Federal canals, and the federal government must help give these farmers and communities reliant on the agricultural economy a fighting chance to keep their lands in production.

In addition, this legislation helps to restore an historic salmon run on California's second-longest river, the San Joaquin.

I hope my colleagues will join me in support of this bill. Thank you, Mr. President, and I yield the floor.

Mr. President, it is painfully clear that existing Federal policies do not provide a comprehensive approach to address the national epidemic of gun violence. In fact, in 2019, for the third consecutive year, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention reported gun violence as a leading cause of premature death in the United States resulting in the loss of 39,707 American lives--that is 109 American lives lost each day. And unfortunately, 2020 was no different. Even as the Country was enduring an unprecedented global pandemic, communities across the country were left dealing with the ever-present threat of gun violence.

There is single legislative action that can eradicate the complex and deeply rooted issues of gun violence. However, we must undertake the correct approach by focusing on many issues, including improvements to our mental health system, better security protocols, and commonsense rules about gun use and safety, such that keep firearms out of the hands of dangerous individuals.

Virginians know all too well the heartbreaking consequences of gun violence. We have seen it in the tragedies of Virginia Tech and Virginia Beach and the countless drive-by shootings, domestic violence, and suicides by firearms. Yet the Commonwealth has chosen to acknowledge and address its unfortunate history of gun violence, and this past year adopted a series of gun violence prevention measures. These measures include legislation to enact an Extreme Risk Protective Order; an expansion of background checks on all gun sales; a mandate to report lost and stolen firearms; safeguards that prevent children from accessing firearms; and a reinstatement of Virginia's successful one- handgun-a-month policy. The Virginia Plan to Reduce Gun Violence Act of 2021 builds on the newly adopted Virginia framework by creating a comprehensive package of policies at the federal level to reduce gun violence across the nation.

With public support for commonsense rules at the highest it has ever been, we cannot wait until the next senseless tragedy before enacting commonsense gun policies. It is important to remember that gun violence is preventable and requires we take an evidence-based approach to create a more peaceful society, free of gun violence. I believe that the ``Virginia Plan'' will pave the way to advance meaningful gun reform and ultimately save lives.

Now is the time to act.

Mr. President, throughout his time in office, President Donald Trump repeatedly disparaged our NATO allies and reportedly threatened withdrawal from the NATO alliance, the bedrock of European and American security for over seventy years. Although our current President has recommitted the United States to NATO and our transatlantic partnerships, it is still necessary for the Senate to consider legislation that prevents any President from withdrawing the United States from this critical defense treaty. This legislation would not only help address present national security challenges by reaffirming the U.S. commitment to Europe, it would also provide clarity to important constitutional questions regarding the role of Congress in terminating U.S. participation in treaties and alliances. Particularly with a treaty obligation that is as central to U.S. security as NATO, no President should be allowed to unilaterally withdraw without the advice and consent of the Senate.

Over the past several years, NATO allies, many of whom we have fought alongside since World War II and earlier in some cases, have questioned our allegiance for the first time in the history of NATO. In response to the only invocation of Article 5 of the NATO Treaty following the 9/ 11 attacks, more than 1,000 servicemembers from these allied nations gave their lives fighting alongside the United States. While the United States must continue to press every country to increase defense spending to meet the agreed-upon goal of 2 percent of GDP by 2024, and ensure that our European allies contribute to their own defense, U.S. withdrawal from NATO should not be considered without Congressional input. For this reason, we must use our constitutional powers of advice and consent and of the purse to block any unilateral executive withdrawal, and preemptively authorize legal proceedings to challenge any decision to terminate U.S. membership.

The legislation I am introducing today with Senators Rubio, Collins, Blumenthal, Coons, Duckworth, Durbin, Feinstein, Graham, King, Klobuchar, Merkley, Moran, Shaheen, and Warner would provide the necessary tools to prevent a President from unilaterally withdrawing the United States from the NATO treaty without the consent of Congress. The Senate has repeatedly indicated its support for NATO through previous legislation, including the original vote of 82-13 in 1949 to grant the Senate's consent to join NATO, and the Fiscal Year 2020 National Defense Authorization Act, which called for the United States to ``remain ironclad in its commitment to uphold its obligations under the North Atlantic Treaty.''

I am proud to have bipartisan support for this bill to ensure that the safety of the American people is prioritized through our continued membership in NATO, and I look forward to working with my colleagues to ensure that this legislation is swiftly considered by the Senate.

Thank you, Mr. President.

Madam President, time and again, prominent Democrats show they are no longer content to work within the ground rules and norms of our institutions. They prefer to threaten the institutions themselves.

We have seen it in Presidential elections when Democrats say our democracy is sacrosanct when they win but illegitimate and broken if Republicans win.

We have seen it with the Senate's rules. Democrats just spent 4 years not only praising but using the legislative filibuster. But now that they hold the majority, they say it has actually been intrinsically evil all along and must be scrapped.

We are seeing it right now with voting regulations, where the mere fact that sometimes Republicans win elections has Democrats wanting to rewrite all 50 States' election laws right here in Washington and turn the Federal Election Commission into a partisan body.

And then there is the judiciary. In recent years, we have seen the Democratic leader stand on the steps of the Court and threaten that specific Justices ``won't know what hit them'' if they didn't rule the way he wanted. We have seen a number of Democratic Senators send a threatening brief suggesting the Court might need to be ``restructured'' if its rulings upset liberals.

Last week, President Biden, who was marketed to the country as a moderate and institutionalist, jumped in with both feet. He set up a pseudo-academic commission to study the merits of packing the Supreme Court. It is just an attempt to clothe this transparent power play in fake legitimacy.

But alas, the far left cannot even wait for the fake theatrics of the fake study to play out. Today, Democrats in the Senate and the House have announced they will once again threaten judicial independence from the steps of the Court. They are introducing a bill to add four new seats to the Supreme Court so that Democrats can pack the Court, destroy its legitimacy, and guarantee the rulings that liberals want.

Across the ideological spectrum, top jurists have been outspoken on what a terrible idea Court packing would be. The late liberal icon, Ruth Bader Ginsburg, explicitly warned against Court packing saying: ``If anything would make the Court appear partisan, it would be that.'' ``Nine seems to be a good number''--Justice Ginsburg.

Justice Stephen Breyer reaffirmed his own opposition just last week. The public, by the way, agrees. They see through this discredited concept. One survey late last year showed that a clear majority of Americans opposed packing the Supreme Court.

But the farthest left activists aren't interested in the common good. They want power. And the same Democrats and the same corporate media that spent the last 4 years hyperventilating and declaring a new constitutional crisis was under way every 30 seconds seem to be perfectly content to play along.

Now, if Republicans had introduced a bill to add four Supreme Court seats for the last President to fill, there would have been weeks of wall-to-wall outrage on every newspaper and cable TV channel nonstop. Now it seems the main strategies are either to shrug off, look the other way, or to actively play along and somehow lend credence.

It is not about whether this insane bill becomes law. Part of the point here is the threats themselves. The left wants a sword dangling over the Justices when they weigh the facts in every case. As the Democratic leader threatened just 2 years ago, Democrats want the Justices to know that they will ``pay the price'' for rulings that Democrats don't like.

The left wants these swords dangling over the Senate and State legislators and independent judges. The threats are the point. The hostage-taking is the point. And responsible people across the political spectrum have an absolute duty to denounce this.

(The remarks of Mr. McConnell pertaining to the introduction of S. 1133 are printed in today's Record under ``Statements on Introduced Bills and Joint Resolutions.''

Mr. President, now, on an entirely different matter, colleagues in Congress and my fellow Kentuckians were heartbroken last June when our dear friend, Carol Leavell Barr, suddenly and unexpectedly passed away.

She left behind two beautiful young daughters and an adoring husband in Congressman Andy Barr. She was only 39 years old. Since then, we have learned her fatal heart attack was likely the result of an underlying condition called mitral valve prolapse.

Carol was diagnosed at a young age. Like millions of Americans with heart valve defects, she lived for many years with no apparent symptoms. Tragically, it only took an instant for her condition to turn deadly. Approximately 25,000 Americans each year lose their lives from this heart valve disease. Her passing deprived the Barr family of an extraordinary wife and mother. We all lost a warm and uplifting friend.

One of the most troubling aspects of this syndrome is just how much we still don't know. So Congressman Barr is taking action. He introduced the Cardiovascular Advances in Research and Opportunities Legacy Act, the CAROL Act. It would encourage new research into valvular heart disease, help us better understand the risks, and bring together top experts to identify potential treatments.

With this legislation, we can help prevent more families from enduring this tragedy. More than 120 House colleagues have already cosponsored the CAROL Act. It has also earned the support of major health advocacy groups.

So today, I am proud to introduce the CAROL Act here in the Senate. I am grateful to partner with Senator Sinema, one of Congressman Barr's friends from their days serving together in the House. This important legislation is a fitting tribute to a wonderful Kentuckian. It embodies Carol's lifetime of service to others, and I look forward to its passage.

Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the text of the bill be printed in the Record.

Mr. President, now, on an entirely different matter, colleagues in Congress and my fellow Kentuckians were heartbroken last June when our dear friend, Carol Leavell Barr, suddenly and unexpectedly passed away.

She left behind two beautiful young daughters and an adoring husband in Congressman Andy Barr. She was only 39 years old. Since then, we have learned her fatal heart attack was likely the result of an underlying condition called mitral valve prolapse.

Carol was diagnosed at a young age. Like millions of Americans with heart valve defects, she lived for many years with no apparent symptoms. Tragically, it only took an instant for her condition to turn deadly. Approximately 25,000 Americans each year lose their lives from this heart valve disease. Her passing deprived the Barr family of an extraordinary wife and mother. We all lost a warm and uplifting friend.

One of the most troubling aspects of this syndrome is just how much we still don't know. So Congressman Barr is taking action. He introduced the Cardiovascular Advances in Research and Opportunities Legacy Act, the CAROL Act. It would encourage new research into valvular heart disease, help us better understand the risks, and bring together top experts to identify potential treatments.

With this legislation, we can help prevent more families from enduring this tragedy. More than 120 House colleagues have already cosponsored the CAROL Act. It has also earned the support of major health advocacy groups.

So today, I am proud to introduce the CAROL Act here in the Senate. I am grateful to partner with Senator Sinema, one of Congressman Barr's friends from their days serving together in the House. This important legislation is a fitting tribute to a wonderful Kentuckian. It embodies Carol's lifetime of service to others, and I look forward to its passage.

Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the text of the bill be printed in the Record.