September 11 Transparency Act of 2021

Before the Democratic whip leaves the floor, I just want to thank him for raising the three words ``Ohio State University.'' As a proud Buckeye for----

No, I never say ``The Ohio State.'' We want to be humble. But I used to be a Navy ROTC midshipman there for a number of years and have great memories of being a part of the student body there and part of the Navy ROTC unit.

Later, I had the opportunity, as my colleague knows, to join forces in the U.S. House of Representatives in 1982--one of the largest freshman classes ever. It seems like yesterday. He went on to come and serve in the Senate, and I went on to serve as Governor.

One of the things I never thought about as Governor is the job of the Governor to nominate people to serve on the courts. I never thought about that.

As it turns out, in Delaware, given the positions we have in corporate law and other parts of our economy and business, judicial appointments are over-sized. They are really extremely important.

And while I hadn't given it a lot of thought, I remember I had, I think, 45 joint appearances with my Republican opponent when I ran for Governor--45 in the year 1992, and not once did anybody ever ask of either of us: What would you look for in nominating judges?

It turned out to be hugely important. I studied economics and got an MBA, but I don't pretend to be an expert on legal matters. One of the things that I learned--and I felt it was important--was to have a judiciary that was diverse and that looked like Delaware. I think the same is true here for our country for district court judges, appeals courts, and the Supreme Court.

I wanted to nominate people who were bright and who were smart, and intellectually curious. I wanted to nominate people who were hard working, who brought a diversity of experiences to the bench. And mostly, I wanted to nominate people who were able to make good decisions--even tough decisions--and were fair and treated everybody in their court before them with fairness.

The reputation of the nominee whom you referred to, I think she checks all those boxes, and I want to thank you for raising her before us here today. Thank you.

We have our colleague from Louisiana here with us today. He has worked hard, along with 21 of our colleagues, to try to fashion a bipartisan consensus to build on the work of, among others, the Environment and Public Works Committee on infrastructure.

We worked hard in our committee--Shelley Capito, the lead Republican, and myself, and 18 others--to report and later to vote on legislation on water infrastructure here, drinking water and wastewater sanitation legislation. We voted on it a couple months ago after reporting it unanimously out of committee. And 89 to 2, the same bill came up here-- 89 to 2. And we have used that as one of the building blocks on which the bipartisan infrastructure package is fashioned.

We also have in the Environment and Public Works Committee the great support and leadership of our ranking member, Senator Capito, and the participation of every single U.S. Senator who gathered input to help us fashion legislation in the Committee on water, drinking water, wastewater, and roads, highways, bridges, and climate, in order to be able to put together a foundation, if you will, under which the Gang of--we affectionately call it the Gang of 22--have built this infrastructure piece along with the help of the administration and a lot of other folks who participated.

I go back and forth on the train. I literally went home last night to Delaware and was back here this morning. I am a bit weary, but I was encouraged. So many times over the years, people say to me, as I am waiting to catch a train in Wilmington or waiting to catch a train back home at the end of the day--people say to me: Why can't you guys just work together? Why can't you just work to get stuff done for this country?

I think they would be encouraged by what they would have seen and the work of not just the Environment and Public Works Committee but the work of the Commerce Committee, the work of the Banking Committee, and the work of the Energy and Natural Resources Committee--rather extraordinary, every one of them. Democrats, Republicans, a couple of Independents are all working together to fashion legislation that is going to help strengthen our economy and make our economy work better and help provide employment opportunities to literally millions of people at a time when we need that.

And, yesterday, I think we had the votes. Correct me if I am wrong. But more than a dozen votes we have had this week, and more than a score of votes on amendments to this package--this infrastructure package. One of the things I love about it is that a bunch of those amendments were bipartisan. It wasn't just Democratic amendments or Republican amendments. They were amendments we offered together.

And interestingly enough, we had any number of instances yesterday, including late last night, when we didn't have long, dragged out debate. We actually voice-voted a number of provisions that were being offered to us. The amendments were being offered. I am encouraged by that.

And I note that, tomorrow morning, a lot of us--I am not sure how many, but maybe a third of the U.S. Senate, will join together and get on a plane--I think an Air Force plane--and we will head for Gillette, WY, to say good-bye--say good-bye to a dear friend, and that is Mike Enzi.

I spoke about him on the floor in the last week. So I will be brief right here. Mike Enzi would love what we are doing. He would have loved to have been a part of this. He was the guy who first taught me about the 80-20 rule. The 80-20 rule--when I asked him how Mike Enzi, one of the most conservative Republicans we had here in the Senate, and Ted Kennedy, one of the most liberal Senators we had here in the United States, how could they work together on the Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions Committee and get so much done--and get so much done?

I will never forget what he said. He gave a speech on the floor here when I was presiding as a brandnew freshman Senator, years ago--20 years ago. He spoke of the 80-20 rule, and I asked him when he finished speaking: What is the 80-20 rule?

And he said: It is the secret to Ted Kennedy and I being successful in the Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions Committee--being so successful in taking on legislation and coming up with principled, bipartisan solutions.

And he said: Ted and I agree on 80 percent of the issues that come before our committee. We disagree on maybe 20 percent. And what we do on the Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions Committee is we focus on the 80 percent where we agree, and we set aside the 20 percent where we don't agree to another day. We come back to it, and we deal with that later on.

And it worked for them.

He would be delighted. My guess is he is tuned in today, somewhere up there. But he would be delighted to see that this week the 80-20 rule that Mike Enzi epitomized is alive and well on both sides of the aisle. I hope that the spirit that has infused our work, leading up to the work of our committees--the committees of jurisdiction--providing the foundation on which the gang of 20 and the administration went to work--my hope is that that spirit of bipartisanship and Mike Enzi's 80- 20 rule will continue to infuse our work here this week into the latter part of this evening, and, hopefully, not too late into the evening. Maybe we can wrap things up here in short order.

With that, I am going to yield the floor, and I just want to say to everyone who is working hard to make this

a productive week, a productive mission: I just want to say a real thank you, not just to the members of the relevant committees I mentioned but to everybody, all the folks who serve here, and especially our staff.

I like to say that people ask me sometimes--and I say this to my friend Senator Cassidy from Louisiana, who is a truly brilliant person and a great colleague to work with. I would like to say that about Senator Thune, with whom I will be joining in a Bible study later again today as we join with the Chaplain every day. There are a lot smarter people in the U.S. Senate than me, but I am smart enough to hire really smart people. They work hard and I work hard, and most days we get a lot done.

For all the staff here in this body and in this building and the committee staff out across the Capitol and around the world, we especially thank you for your efforts.

With that, I yield the floor.

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

Mr. President, I just want to say, earlier this week--I am almost at a loss for words. I know I normally am not standing where I normally stand.

Earlier this week, you gave your freshman year first speech--your first speech--and not everybody was able to hear it. A lot of people came up. Democrats and Republicans were here. I just want to say again how much I enjoyed it.

From an old Navy guy to a not-so-old Navy guy, we are very proud of your service in uniform and also proud of your service here. I am delighted that you are a member of our Environment and Public Works Committee. We have done some really good work on this issue. I thank you for your help and contribution.

Disparity Studies

Mr. President, I have a couple of unanimous consent requests. I ask unanimous consent to have printed in the Record a list of studies presenting a strong basis of evidence for the conclusion that discrimination against minority- and women-owned businesses continues to affect the construction, architecture, and engineering and related surface transportation contracting markets nationwide.

These disparity studies contain rigorous statistical analyses to determine whether business discrimination based on--whether it is based upon race or gender, continues to exist, and a review of these studies reveals that the answer, sadly, is a resounding yes, and, therefore, the current Disadvantaged Business Enterprise provisions are still warranted.

Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent to have printed in the Record those disparity studies

Mr. President, I have a second unanimous consent request I want to mention, and that is a request to have printed in the Record letters of support for electric school buses.

I would ask unanimous consent to have printed in the Record two letters--one from three American school bus manufacturers, and another from 125 nonprofit foundations, businesses, health and scientific organizations, and advocacy groups--in support of investments in electric school buses in this bipartisan package.

Both letters highlight the fact that no other school bus technology manufactured today reduces more emissions than electric vehicle school buses; and both letters highlight that investments in electric school buses would drive the demand for new electric buses and promote cost parity between electric school buses and older technologies.

The message from these diverse groups to Congress is clear: Investing in electric school buses supports American workers and American manufacturers. Not only that, it cleans up our air, protects our kids and our planet on which we live

Mr. President, I would like to point out I like to work out. I showed up at Pensacola at the age of 21 right out of Ohio State, invited by the Navy as a midshipman. Before they put us in airplanes, as you may recall, they put us through some really rigorous

conditioning. So I worked out, like, 6, 7 days a week then, and I come pretty close to that today.

And a couple of days a week I like to run. I always like to run outside. And all this work we were doing this last week--we were doing a lot of work not only on the Senate floor, but behind the scenes on electric school buses, to make sure that we would be able to provide funding for a lot of them going forward.

And one morning, I went out running, and it was still almost dark, and I was almost run over by two electric buses, and I said: Don't worry, I am on your side. And I had a nice chat with a couple of drivers.

So I came here to present this message and these unanimous consent requests today.

I also wanted to say that we did get to work yesterday--Democrats and Republicans working together. A bunch of amendments were adopted; one or two not. But it was a good spirit last night, well into the night, and good work has been done and has continued in through the evening and again this morning on both sides of the aisle to find some additional compromises.

I am told that several amendments are ready to be brought to the floor. I would just say to my colleagues: Bring them. If you got something you think is ready for prime time, whether it is Democrat or Republican, and it is a combined bipartisan amendment, bring it. Let's hear about it. Let's have a chance to discuss it and to vote on it.

We could be up late into the night. We are going to be up really early in the morning. I think there is a 7 o'clock flight, maybe out of Andrews. At least we leave from here to Andrews to go catch a 7 o'clock flight to attend the memorial service for Senator Enzi in Wyoming tomorrow.

I think we would be smart not to stay up half the night, and do as much as we can this morning, and then--oh, it is noon, high noon. Get started now. I think we will be glad that we did.

With that, I yield the floor.

I suggest the absence of a quorum.

Mr. President, for almost two decades, I have worked on policies to clean up dirty diesel engines, especially our Nation's schoolbuses.

And our Presiding Officer--as am I, a recovering Governor--has thought a lot over the years about schools and education and more than a little bit about schoolbuses and how to get kids where they need to go to get educated.

During a normal school year, I am told that more than 25 million American children--more than 25 million American children--ride a schoolbus every day--at least every schoolday to school.

Ninety-five percent of these buses are powered by diesel fuel; and the majority are old, dirty engines that pollute the air, in many cases make our kids sick, and impact our climate.

When we clean up schoolbuses, it is a win-win situation. Our kids get healthier air to breath, our businesses get the message that it is time to invest right here in America on the latest and cleanest technologies, and we add to our toolbox for tackling the challenge of climate change.

Electric schoolbuses make this win-win possible. Schoolbuses have a set

route and can be predictably recharged. Schoolbuses, unlike other heavy-duty vehicles, do not often travel more than 150 miles a day and, therefore, do not have the range issues with current battery technology.

However, electric schoolbuses today are expensive compared to diesel buses; and, too often, buying an electric schoolbus is hard for schools that are already strapped for cash, especially schools that serve low- income and minority populations.

The EPA Diesel Emission Reduction Act, known as DERA--the original cosponsors of whom were George Voinovich of Ohio and yours truly--helps schools replace dirty diesel engines with all types of technologies, including electric vehicles.

With the death of George Voinovich, gosh, close to a decade ago, Jim Inhofe, a colleague from Oklahoma, has taken up the torch from our good friend George to champion through the Diesel Emission Reduction Act, the focus of replacing dirty diesel engines, including for schoolbuses.

However, the DERA program is woefully underfunded and is not structured specifically to meet school needs. DERA also does not prioritize low-income schools, nor provide funds specifically for electric schoolbuses.

With a new EPA Clean School Bus program, we can build on the lessons learned from the Diesel Emissions Reduction Act and help make it easier for schools to buy zero-emitting schoolbuses and other schoolbuses to meet emission standards.

Through this new Clean School Bus program, we also will use the Federal purchasing power to increase the demand for electric schoolbuses, buses that are manufactured here in America in places, among others, like Georgia, which, in turn, will bring down the overall cost of schoolbuses for everybody.

Here is what the clean schoolbus language in this legislation does. The Clean School Bus program amends the EPA Clean School Bus program that was originally authorized in the Energy Policy Act of 2005, but never funded by Congress or implemented by EPA 16 years ago. EPA is authorized to create a national program to fund the replacement of existing schoolbuses with zero-emitting schoolbuses and other clean schoolbuses through grants and rebates.

The Clean School Bus program places a priority on schools that serve low-income students, are on Tribal lands, or are located in rural areas, and the program can fund up to 100 percent of the cost of a new schoolbus.

The legislation provides $5 billion in funding for this new Clean School Bus program over 5 years, with $2.5 billion allocated exclusively for zero-emission schoolbuses. The remaining $2.5 billion can be used on buses that run on liquefied natural gas, compressed natural gas, on hydrogen, propane, or biofuels, and can be used for zero-emission schoolbuses.

My Environment and Public Works Committee staff and I, along with the administration, worked hard to make sure that zero-emitting schoolbuses had dedicated funding in this program and would be eligible for all program funding. This agreement does just that.

I expect EPA to work to implement this program in a way that focuses on pushing zero-emission technology out into the market. Technology that uses fossil fuels is readily available and economic today and should not be broadly subsidized by taxpayer dollars.

My hope is that this is just a down payment, and that Congress will invest in the future even more in zero-emitting schoolbuses. Our kids and our climate can't wait. They deserve it, and we need to deliver it to them.

With that, I yield the floor to the Senator from Iowa.

Mr. President, I came to the floor today to make remarks in support of the bipartisan infrastructure modernization plan. But before I do that, I do want to take a moment to remember a real giant of the American working people, and that is Richard Trumka, the head of the AFL-CIO, who is somebody who got up every single morning thinking about how to make life better for working people in America.

He was passionate about it. He was a fellow Marylander. We are going to miss him, but I know that we will continue to be inspired by his example and his understanding that when working people ban together to form a union, that is the best way for them to be able to bargain for better wages and better benefits and a better retirement and a better life.

So I know that we will all carry on in his memory. And as we take up this bill to modernize our infrastructure, it was something that he worked with us on to ensure that as we modernize our infrastructure, we also create good-paying jobs. And I do think that this bill will modernize our infrastructure and generate millions of good-paying jobs for the American people.

Infrastructure

Mr. President, it was just about 6 months ago that I came to the floor to urge my Senate colleagues to heed the call of the American people and pass the American Rescue Plan. At that time, the country was being ravaged by the COVID-19 pandemic. The economy was in a slump. The country was hurting, and the American people were hurting.

The American Rescue Plan was designed to accelerate the deployment of vaccines to defeat the pandemic, to extend a hand to those who have been hardest hit, and to boost an economic comeback. We knew we had to be bold, we had to be quick, and we had to be decisive in our actions or risk a drawn out recovery and a weakened public health response.

That legislation, the American Rescue Plan, promised immediate action to meet the urgency of the moment, and that is exactly what it did. Thanks to the American Rescue Plan, we jump-started the deployment of the coronavirus vaccines in faster and fairer ways, distributed around the country. Thanks to the American Rescue Plan, millions of American households received a new round of direct payments, bringing their total relief payment--including the December relief bill--up to $2,000 per person.

The American Rescue Plan also expanded the child tax credit to cut child poverty nearly in half this year, with millions of American families receiving up to $300 each month for each child. And because of the American Rescue Plan, State and local governments are receiving the direct funding they need to keep frontline workers on the job and continue essential benefits to lift up our communities.

And thanks to the American Rescue Plan, we secured Federal funds to keep restaurants and small businesses afloat, assist children with disabilities, get our kids back in school more quickly and more safely, bolster childcare, and help more people get connected to the internet during this time when we had to experience so much social distancing, and much more.

That plan was a victory. It was a victory for our families, for our workers, for small businesses, for communities, and for the country. And while we know we have more work to do to defeat the Delta variant of the virus, today, more than 70 percent of the adult population has gotten at least one shot of the COVID-19 vaccine. And last quarter, our economy grew at an annualized rate of 6\1/2\ percent, and our gross domestic product rose for the first time from the beginning of the pandemic to the point where it had been before that started.

Thanks to the American Rescue Plan and the resilience of the American people, we are building back from this crisis. But while building back is good, it is not good enough. As President Biden has said, we need to not just build back but build back better. And building back better means not only growing our economy bigger and faster but providing for more inclusive growth and more shared prosperity. We cannot accept an economy where the already-rich grow ever richer while everyone else is running in place or falling behind. A rising tide must lift all boats, not just the yachts.

President Biden has laid out two important pieces to advance the better part of the Build Back Better agenda. One is the American Jobs Plan, and the other is the American Families Plan. Both of these plans, and more, are key to building an economy that works for everyone and not just those who are already at the top.

The bipartisan infrastructure plan that we are considering now contains many elements of the Biden American Jobs Plan. And while I wish it included even more, it is a very important start, and I strongly support it.

And I appreciate the bipartisan cooperation that helped advance this plan, including the efforts of the Presiding Officer. These combined efforts have produced a plan that will make key investments in virtually every part of our infrastructure.

It will include investments in our transit systems and railways and help repair our roads and bridges and tunnels and more. It makes the largest investment in clean drinking water and wastewater infrastructure in American history. And, very importantly, this legislation includes essential investments to build the backbone of the modern 21st century economy, including funds to expand broadband so we can bridge the digital divide and funds to start building out our clean energy grid and the deployment of electric charging stations.

I was proud to work with my colleague and friend from Maryland, Senator Cardin, to secure some key elements that will directly support our home State of Maryland and the people

who live there. I would like to take a moment to discuss the impact of this legislation here in Maryland, starting with the funds that it provides to repair and restore our roads, our bridges, and our tunnels.

Under this plan, the State of Maryland will receive $4.1 billion for Federal highways and $409 million for bridge replacement and repairs over the next 5 years. These funds will be absolutely vital as we work to restore 273 bridges and over 2,000 miles of Maryland highways that are in poor condition and in desperate need of repair.

This plan also makes a historic investment in public transit and rail systems in Maryland and the DMV area. Maryland will receive $1.7 billion over 5 years to improve public transportation options across our entire State.

And this legislation will make an important down payment on our Amtrak passenger rail systems by addressing the big repair backlog along Amtrak's Northeast Corridor and by supporting projects like the B&P Tunnel in Baltimore, which is used by 9 million travelers every year but has faced challenges of structural deterioration and fire safety concerns for far too long. Restoring this tunnel could slash the time it takes to get from Baltimore to Washington down to just 30 minutes and create 30,000 jobs. And it is a shining example of the type of projects that could be funded by this bill and we expect will be funded by this bill.

As you know, we are not just talking about heavy rail. This plan also authorizes transit monies and, importantly, it continues the $150 million annual Federal contribution to the Washington area Metro system, known as WMATA. We call it the Nation's Metro system.

This bill will extend the Federal authorization of $150 million for another 8 years. This is especially important since that authorization has now expired. It is also important because this new version includes provisions to strengthen WMATA's inspector general's authority in order to improve oversight and passenger safety. It is a big win for passengers and transit employees alike, and I am delighted to see that 8-year authorization in this bill.

That is good news for this part of the region and for this part of Maryland that is covered by WMATA, but in the Baltimore area, many residents don't have easy access to accessible, affordable transit that can get them where they need to go around the city or the region when they need to go there. That is why we also secured a provision in this bill to keep alive future Federal funding for the Baltimore Red Line Metro system.

This is a project that had been years in the making, and, if completed, would boost jobs and economic growth, reduce travel times in the Baltimore region, alleviate congestion, and reduce air pollution. The Maryland delegation fought for years to get this project to the front of the line, and, in 2015, we were pleased to secure $900 million in Federal funds for the Baltimore Red Line project.

But then something happened. The Maryland Governor pulled the plug on the entire Red Line project, turning down the jobs and improved transportation network for the Baltimore area. Other cities and regions around the country were celebrating when they got those funds instead of Baltimore. Senator Cardin and I have not given up. And while the Federal Government cannot, by itself, bring this project online, this bill states that the Federal Government is still a willing partner on the Red Line when State and local officials signal that they are ready and willing to move forward again.

At the end of the day, the transportation investments made in this bill will facilitate people and products moving more quickly throughout their regions and throughout the country. It invests in airports and ports, including $17 billion in ports like the Port of Baltimore and others around the country.

This funding will benefit our port, the Port of Baltimore, which is a key asset in our State and a powerful engine for economic and job growth. It is currently a hub for 15,000 jobs, with room for growth that can be fueled by this bill.

I was pleased to join others in welcoming our Secretary of Transportation, Pete Buttigieg, to Baltimore just last week where he underscored the Department's commitment to investing in our ports and the men and women who work there. This legislation helps us make good on that commitment.

I partnered with colleagues over the years to secure over $500 million in Federal funds for that port, including funds to dredge channels in the Chesapeake Bay and the Baltimore Harbor so that they are deep enough to accommodate the biggest ships.

Speaking of the Chesapeake Bay, every Marylander knows that the health of the bay is deeply bound to Maryland's local economy and Maryland's environmental well-being, and I am pleased that we secured $238 million in funding for the EPA Chesapeake Bay Program to help us meet the pollution reduction targets that are spelled out in the most recent multistate Chesapeake Bay agreement as part of this legislation.

While this legislation provides important investments to modernize the infrastructure for this century, we, the Federal Government, should also take responsibility to help eliminate some of the past projects that, rather than helping unite communities, divide them and harm them. And there is no clearer example of such a project than what is known as the ``highway to nowhere'' in West Baltimore.

As many Marylanders know, the ``highway to nowhere'' was a project conceived in the 1960s as a way to link Baltimore with the growing U.S. Interstate Highway System. Instead, it tore West Baltimore apart. Developers started dividing up the community to make room for the highway, residents were evicted from their homes, businesses were shut down, and a Black community was split down the middle by that ``highway to nowhere.'' It is estimated that 971 houses and 62 businesses were destroyed, and over 1,500 residents were displaced.

And that has been the story of several other Federal infrastructure projects from the 1960s, projects that too often place pavement over people. I am pleased that this bipartisan plan makes at least an initial down payment for the first time to put Federal dollars toward removing harmful infrastructure projects like the ``highway to nowhere'' so we can reconnect these communities and make them whole.

This provision was based off a pilot program I authored in 2019. I want to thank my colleagues, Senator Cardin and Senator Carper, for helping make this vision a reality, and President Biden for including it as part of his American Jobs Plan. While we didn't get the full amount of funds that we would like, this is a very important first step.

As we dismantle some of the harmful legacy from the 1960s and 20th century projects, we must build out and meet the new needs for the 21st century, like universal, affordable access to high-speed internet.

I am very pleased that Maryland will receive a minimum of $100 million from this legislation to help provide broadband coverage across the State, including providing access to the at least 148,000 Marylanders who currently lack it--they are not connected--and it would provide over 1 million Marylanders access to the affordability connectivity benefit plan to help lower income families afford internet access. It doesn't do you much good to be connected to the internet if you can't afford to use it.

This bill also will make important progress, a first step, toward building out clean energy grid and a network of charging stations to facilitate long-distance travel and provide convenient charging options for electric vehicles.

In short, and for all of these reasons, this bipartisan bill is an important step to helping us build back better and stronger than before the pandemic.

That work starts here with this bill, and I strongly support it. But while that work starts here, it does not stop or end here.

To pass this legislation and then call it quits would be to leave a big part of our job undone. We still have urgent work to do in our mission to enact all of President Biden's Build Back Better agenda and address the profound challenges facing our communities that have been exacerbated by this pandemic.

While this bill provides important downpayments in many areas, it does not do everything we need to do. That

is especially true when it comes to infrastructure in the area of clean energy. We need to make sure we take up the other big pieces of the clean energy agenda in President Biden's American Jobs Plan and other proposals that many of us have put forward here in this body, including the clean energy standard, including a clean energy accelerator financing system, and many other provisions, in order for us to be true to the science and really confront the climate crisis that is upon us.

And as we take those next steps to fully modernized our physical infrastructure, we also have to dramatically expand opportunities for every child and every family and every worker in America. Much of that is laid out in President Biden's American Families Plan, including universal access to early education so every single child, regardless of ZIP Code, has a chance and a good start in life; making workforce training more affordable and college more affordable, whether it is 2 years of community colleges or more.

And we also have to make sure that we continue to provide support for families in the form of affordable childcare and, very importantly, extend the child tax credit payments that so many families are now receiving up to $300 a month. That ends at the end of this year if we don't extend it.

While it is always a good thing to reduce child poverty in America-- and that reduces it by about half--that would only be true to the end of this year. We need to finish the job and keep going.

We also need to reduce the costs that are squeezing the pocketbooks of every American family. We need to reduce the skyrocketing costs of prescription drugs. We need to reduce the costs of childcare. We need to make sure that families don't have to spend more than 8.5 percent of their budget on their annual healthcare premiums. And we need to provide more security for everybody, including our seniors, by expanding Medicare coverage to cover dental and vision and hearing needs.

Those are just some of the additional things that we need to do as part of the American Families Plan and as part of passing the overall Build Back Better agenda.

I look forward to working with my colleagues to do all of that. But every journey begins with a big step, and this is a very important big step forward on that Build Back Better agenda.

So I am pleased to join many of my colleagues, and I urge my colleagues to support this bipartisan infrastructure modernization bill as part of a very important first step to implement the Build Back Better agenda and make sure that we truly build an economy that works for every American.

I yield the floor

Mr. President, I would like to ask unanimous consent to speak as if in morning business for, let's say, 22 minutes.

Mr. President, these speeches on the scheme by dark money interests to seize control of the Supreme Court are designed to describe it in all its repulsive intricacy.

My last speech discussed an operation in this scheme within the Federalist Society. This speech will take you literally down the hall from the Federalist Society to something called the Judicial Crisis Network, or JCN. They share the same purpose, the same hallway, and likely the same controlling donors.

Remember David Koch's disastrous bid for Vice President on the Libertarian Party ticket that showed how unappetizing his rightwing extremism was to normal people. And remember the Lewis Powell playbook, which advised:

Strength lies in organization . . . and in the political

power available only through united action and national

organizations.

No one corporation or wealthy individual needs to, as Powell said, ``get too far out in front and . . . make itself too visible a target.'' Let intermediaries do that work.

Corporate interests like Big Tobacco and the fossil fuel industry have, for a long time, used coordinated webs of national front groups in their plots to fend off accountability for the dangers of tobacco and carbon emissions.

These front group webs grew and multiplied and specialized, all while concealing their true interests and funders. They got more numerous, and they also got smarter and more strategic over time, polishing up front group names, like the not-too-subtle Tobacco Institute, to names like the more wholesome-sounding Heartland Institute.

It is quite a web. They created science groups to counter real scientific research on public health and climate change with fake science; think tanks to churn out white papers and hire sound bite- friendly fake experts; legal organizations to challenge and delay government regulation of harmful products; academic hothouses in which to grow donor-friendly, rightwing judicial philosophies; identity- laundering screens to hide the true donors and controllers and their interests; and political attack groups to pressure elected officials. People who study this have reported these groups numbering in multiple dozens, and their backers play the front groups like keys on a piano.

Apply this method to the scheme to capture the Court, and you see that the dark money donors needed more than just the nominations turnstile that they ran out of the Federalist Society. They also needed a bare-knuckle political brawler.

One night in early 2005, at an upscale Italian dinner, with special guest Justice Antonin Scalia, major donor and corporate lawyer Ann Corkery, California real estate tycoon Robin Arkley, and Federalist Society executive vice president Leonard Leo got together and celebrated George W. Bush's second term. The political importance of the Supreme Court would have been on everyone's mind there as it was the five Republicans on the Supreme Court who gave George W. Bush his first term.

According to reporting by OpenSecrets and the Daily Beast, this dinner linked to the creation of a 501(c)(4) dark money group, then called the Judicial Confirmation Network. By the end of that year, this group would spend money--lots of money, lots of big donor money--and they would spend it anonymously, first to boost John Roberts as Chief Justice and then Samuel Alito as Associate Justice, cementing rightwing corporate control over the Court and shifting its decisions further in big donors' favor.

There are a few things to note about the Judicial Confirmation Network's early days:

One, it began work fast. Just months after starting, JCN ads hit the air in support of Bush nominees.

Two, it had lots of money. Beginning in 2008, Ann Corkery took control of something called the Wellspring Committee--a dark money, identity-laundering group, seeded with funding from Charles and David Kochs' donor network. Thereafter, Wellspring funneled seven- or eight- figure dark money donations to JCN every year--millions of anonymous dollars.

Three, they brought on a lawyer with heavy rightwing chops to run the place. Wendy Long, a former clerk to Justice Clarence Thomas, became chief counsel and mouthpiece.

Thus, in just a few months, JCN appeared and became a polished, powerful, anonymized campaigner for the big donor scheme to take over the Court.

And then came the election of Barack Obama, and JCN had to go from offense for nominees to defense against nominees. That ``C'' in JCN, for ``confirmation,'' no longer made much sense, and the scheme now faced a crisis--the crisis for it of a President nominating judges who had not been screened by them, judges whose fealty to the corporate rightwing could not be confirmed, judges who might even rule against the rightwing donors' agenda. So they quickly rebranded JCN as the Judicial Crisis Network, but even in the Obama years, the Republican 5- to-4 majority on the captured Court delivered big things for JCN and its secretive backers.

In the administration's first term, the Roberts Court handed down Citizens United and other decisions opening donor pipelines to 501(c)(4) groups like JCN. This caused the tsunami of slime we saw in our politics, and corporations and rightwing donors rushed to the feast. Anonymous money flooded in. Annual donations laundered through Wellspring to JCN rose from millions of dollars to many millions of dollars. JCN even expanded the scheme to seek to influence State supreme courts and State attorney general seats. The scheme was flourishing.

Then, on a 2016 all-expenses-paid trip for Justice Scalia to a luxury hunting ranch in Texas, the Justice died, leaving a Supreme Court vacancy, with the better part of a year left before the Presidential election. Now there really was a crisis. The big donors suddenly faced the prospect of a Democratic President appointing Scalia's replacement, shifting the balance of the Court 5 to 4 against them, taking away their precious majority, undoing the scheme.

So the donors swung into action. Within days, Mitch McConnell quickly pledged to hold the seat open, and within days, Republican Senators uniformly lined up behind that decision--a decision very possibly explained by the overlay between dark money donors to the scheme and dark money donors to Republican Senate political operations. History will have to judge the extent of that overlay.

In any event, dark money funding of JCN hit escape velocity during this period. According to tax records obtained by OpenSecrets and others, JCN received big donations in fiscal year 2015 to 2016. One single anonymous donation alone totaled $17.9 million. Wellspring separately channeled $23.5 million in dark money to JCN in 2016, then another $14.8 million the next year. When Wellspring dissolved in 2018, big slugs of dark money continued to flow through other conduits. JCN received four separate, individual, anonymous donations, each of $15 million or more following Justice Scalia's death. We cannot say for sure because the donors hide behind the dark money screen, but these donations, over $60 million in all, could well have all come from the same donor.

And one wonders, what are the odds that someone willing to spend $60 million anonymously to influence the makeup of the Supreme Court is someone who has business before the Court?

Pretty high, I would say, but dark money scheming keeps this information secret.

How did JCN spend all this money? Attack. Leonard Leo's Federalist Society operation had handed Trump a list of approved nominees. JCN spending poured into TV ads, pressuring Senators, and to media blitzes to sell the Federalist Society list. The group spent $7 million to attack Merrick Garland; $10 million to boost Neil Gorsuch; $10 million or more to prop up Brett Kavanaugh's deeply troubled nomination with its--now we know--fake FBI tip line; and $10 million in under 2 months to support Amy Coney Barrett.

On its own, this anonymous $37 million barrage smells terrible, but it is only part of the Judicial Crisis Network operation. JCN has a corporate twin, the Judicial Education Project, each group backing up the actions and finances of the other. Let me walk you through this setup because it is a capsule summary of how political scheming is accomplished in our corrupted dark money era.

First, you pair a 501(c)(3) and a 501(c)(4). The Judicial Crisis Network was chartered as a 501(c)(4) social welfare group, the Judicial Education Project as its allied 501(c)(3) nonprofit organization. Under a perverse reading of the law, the 501(c)(4) organization is allowed to operate as a dark money political attack group. We see this arrangement commonly now in the clandestine world of dark money politics.

In fact, a recent Supreme Court case about dark money was brought by a group called Americans for Prosperity Foundation, which was the 501(c)(3) associated with Americans for Prosperity, which is the Koch brothers' 501(c)(4) that spent millions of dollars to help Amy Coney Barrett get her seat, and yet she didn't recuse herself from the case involving the 501(c)(3).

So, second, you operate the two as one unit: Judicial Crisis Network and

Judicial Education Project are connected by staff, by dollars, and by location.

According to the most recent tax records, long-serving JCN staffer Carrie Severino is also the sole and principal officer of--you guessed it--the Judicial Education Project. Severino is not listed on JCN's tax forms, but she serves as its public-facing ``chief counsel and policy director.'' JCN and JEP tax records both list the same address in Washington, DC, which, by the way, is right down the hall from the Federalist Society at the same address, and both groups share day-to- day staff. There is a doctrine in the law called piercing the corporate veil. In this case, the corporate veil between these two is a web of holes.

What is the next thing you do? You soak up dark money together.

It is hard to know much about these two groups' dark money funding-- that is why they keep it dark--but we know the Wellspring Committee has funded both groups. Both have also paid money to something called BH Group, which is a mysterious LLC that Leonard Leo once disclosed as his employer, that made a $1 million mystery donation to Trump's inaugural. It seems to do no other business. They used the 501(c)(3) and 501(c)(4) status precisely because it lets them hide their donors and controllers.

And the last thing is that you get to play shell games with your name. A couple of years ago, those two organizations formally changed their legal names in Virginia. Now, follow this for a minute. Judicial Crisis Network changed its name, and it became the Concord Fund. Judicial Education Project changed its name, and it became the 85 Fund.

The Concord Fund then registered its old name, Judicial Crisis Network, as what is called a fictitious name, a kind of corporate alias under Virginia law, and continued to operate as the Judicial Crisis Network.

Here is the Virginia law that allows them to do that:

A fictitious name is a name that a person (individual or

business entity) uses instead of the person's true name,

usually in the course of transacting or offering to transact

business.

It also registered the name ``Honest Elections Project Action'' as an additional fictitious name to carry out a new voter suppression project. The 85 Fund likewise registered its old name, the ``Judicial Education Project,'' as a fictitious name, and it separately registered as the ``Honest Elections Project'' as an additional fictitious name.

It gets even better than this because, as I said before, when the Washington Post exposed the $250 million scheme that Leonard Leo was at the center of to pack and control the Supreme Court, to capture it like a captured agency, he wasn't much use any longer. He was like a blown agent in a covert operation. He had to go someplace. Where did he hop to? He hopped from the Federalist Society to the Honest Elections Project so he could get to work on the Presiding Officer's favorite cause, voter suppression. Same guy, same corporate network, new name, and new purpose: voter suppression.

As if this weren't enough, both of these groups have now filed new fictitious names. This is to help them wade into the rightwing fuss over what the rightwing likes to call critical race theory. So the Concord Fund has now added the fictitious name ``Free to Learn Action,'' and the 85 Fund has now added the fictitious name ``Free to Learn.'' Again, you see the pairing of the 501(c)(3) and the 501(c)(4) as part of the basic structure for dark money political influence operations.

By the way, the same person filled out all these forms for both organizations and is listed with various titles on each.

So now we have one group that calls itself the Concord Fund that operates simultaneously as the Judicial Crisis Network, the Honest Elections Project Action, and the Free to Learn Action, and we have a sister organization, the 85 Fund, that operates simultaneously as the Judicial Education Project, the Honest Elections Project, and Free to Learn--all with overlapping staff, locations, and funding.

By the way, when you are the funder of these groups, you are their controller.

Now, imagine this level of complexity multiplied many times over, because that is what the Washington Post disclosed. And I borrow a photograph from their video of their investigation.

That Washington Post expose on the covert court-capture operation exposed the Judicial Crisis Network as one part, just one part of a massive--there it is, Judicial Crisis Network--one part of a massive web of groups, a web of groups that took in over $250 million in dark money between 2014 and 2017.

This effort to capture the Supreme Court? They are not kidding around. Spending $250 million in dark money is a serious investment that demands a serious return. And guess what. Expert testimony before my Senate Courts Subcommittee has since raised that number to $400 million through 2018.

Through all these allied and coordinated front groups--the keys on the dark money piano that the big donors can play in chords and singly as they wish--dark money donors can, from hiding, covertly channel tens if not hundreds of millions of dollars in anonymized money toward the scheme's court-capture goals.

Colleagues, this is a scheme akin in complexity and trade craft to an intelligence agency covert operation--only this one is not being run by one country against another; this one is being run in and against our own country by a handful of creepy billionaires and their foundations, trying to impose their self-serving ideology on the rest of us through our least democratic branch--the branch that doesn't care if normal people hate this stuff because they are in robes for life. That is our Federal courts, and particularly, it is our Supreme Court.

The big dark money donors have pretty well pulled it off, too, following Lewis Powell's old admonition to use ``strength . . . in organization'' and ``united action'' of all of this complexity. They have just made it all clandestine, which is why I am going to keep digging.

To be continued.

I yield the floor.

Mr. President, this week the Senate will vote on Eunice Lee's nomination to serve on the Second Circuit Court of Appeals. If confirmed, Ms. Lee would be the only--the only Black woman--and the only former public defender to serve on the Second Circuit. With her nomination, the Biden administration and Senate Democrats are continuing our efforts

to build a Federal judiciary that looks like America.

I would like to take a moment or two to discuss Ms. Lee's qualifications and what she will bring to the bench--a perspective that is sorely needed.

Ms. Lee has dedicated her entire legal career to public defense work, most recently as an assistant Federal public defender with the Federal Defenders of New York.

Graduating from Ohio State University and Yale Law School, Ms. Lee began her legal career clerking with the Southern District of Ohio and then with the Sixth Circuit Court of Appeals.

She then joined New York's Office of the Appellate Defender, where she spent more than 20 years advocating for indigent criminal defendants at all levels of the New York State court system. During that time, Ms. Lee taught and mentored a new generation of lawyers when she served as an adjunct assistant professor of clinical law at New York University.

She then joined the Federal Defenders of New York, where she has briefed and argued criminal appeals in the Second Circuit, the court to which she is now nominated.

In short, Ms. Lee has dedicated her entire life to upholding the Sixth Amendment right to counsel, representing defendants who cannot afford to hire a lawyer.

Now, some of my Republican colleagues have claimed, without any evidence, that, as a former Federal public defender, Ms. Lee would be biased as a judge in favor of defendants. It is curious to me that these concerns of her bias didn't seem to crop up over the decades when former prosecutors were nominated to the Federal bench, and for good reason. It is as flimsy an argument as it is offensive to the lawyers who represent defendants--a representation mandated under the Constitution.

Let's be clear: Both prosecutors and public defenders play essential roles in our justice system, and their jobs give them extensive courtroom experience, which is something we demand of all judges.

Additionally, Ms. Lee has made it clear she understands the difference between being a lawyer and a judge. As a lawyer, she is an advocate; as a judge, an arbiter. At her hearing before the Judiciary Committee, Ms. Lee explained that she ``critically recognize[s] the importance of [being] a fair decision-maker.''

What is more, 70 former prosecutors--those are the women and men sitting at the other table in the courtroom--in the Southern and Eastern Districts of New York, the very prosecutors that she squared off with in the courtrooms, have stressed the importance of having her perspective as a public defender represented on the Second Circuit.

In a letter to the Judiciary Committee, these prosecutors wrote: ``[W]e enthusiastically support Ms. Lee not just because of her sterling credentials. We believe that after a career as a public defender serving indigent clients in criminal cases, Ms. Lee would bring a unique and under-represented perspective to the job of hearing and deciding federal appeals.''

Then they added that Ms. Lee was ``an incredibly talented lawyer and public servant, whose career representing the most vulnerable among us will bring a critical, unique perspective to the bench.''

Finally, I want to share a passage from a recent op-ed written by Clark Neily, a scholar at the Cato Institute, and Devi Rao, a counsel at the MacArthur Justice Center.

They wrote: ``Judges with a greater diversity of professional experience would improve judicial decision-making overall. A judiciary with members whose formative professional experiences span the legal profession will be best equipped to handle the diverse range of cases and issues presented to them.''

Legal experts across the ideological spectrum agree. Professional diversity on the Federal bench is beneficial to our system of justice.

With Eunice Lee's confirmation, this Senate can continue bringing balance to our Nation's courts and elevate a professional perspective severely underrepresented today. I will vote for Ms. Lee's nomination, and I urge my colleagues to do the same.

Let me just add in closing, I want to thank the Members of the Senate, both political parties, for proposing nominees to the Biden White House for consideration for lifetime appointments to the Federal judiciary. They have brought those nominations to the Senate Judiciary Committee, where I chair the proceedings, and it is remarkable. The women and men who have come to us, prepared to serve, make a lifetime commitment to serve our Federal judiciary.

The diversity in that group is amazing, remarkable, and the quality is without exception. Nearly all of them have been found at least ``well qualified'' unanimously by the American Bar Association--in many cases, and certainly in others, very positive reports as well.

I want to continue bringing these women and men to the floor of the Senate. I pleaded even this morning with the majority leader, Senator Schumer, who has the toughest job in the world of trying to move all the things we want to do onto this calendar and off again. I thank him for his cooperation.

I would like to say a few words on a separate topic.

Eviction Moratorium

Mr. President, I listened carefully to the Senate Republican leader this morning, Senator McConnell. I struggle to understand one aspect of his speech. He referred to the notion of helping those who are facing eviction as some form of socialism.

What we are doing, of course, is trying to make certain that all of these people have a roof over their heads, and some of them are going through extraordinarily difficult economic challenges and extraordinarily difficult public health challenges.

The money that we are sending their way is not just for them, obviously, but also to benefit the landlords, the people who own the property that they occupy.

Now, that is not unusual for this Congress in the midst of this pandemic to step up and help small businesses like landlords who are trying to pay their mortgages during this difficult time when they have tenants who are going through economic distress. I don't think that is socialism.

It wasn't socialism when we created the PPP program in 2020 on a bipartisan basis, with recordbreaking sums of money, to give to small businesses to help them through the treacherous times of this pandemic. It was just common sense. Our economy was taking a hit, and they were too.

We wanted the day to come when we could deal with this pandemic effectively and also that they could return to their businesses. Was that socialism, that we would have that kind of an effort? I don't think so.

As a matter of fact, when it came to passing that legislation, it was bipartisan and virtually unanimous--President Trump supporting it as well as Speaker Pelosi when it all came to pass. I mean, that is an indication of bridging the vast political differences in this country when an emergency demanded it. I don't think that is socialism.

When it comes to those tenants who are struggling to get by in these difficult times, helping them and the landlords whose property they occupy is not socialism; it is what America is all about. It is, of course, an involvement of the government, and we all voted for that, but it is in a specific context of helping people.

What the President has now proposed beyond this infrastructure bill that we are facing is that we look to other aspects of family life where we can help families cut the cost of the basics that they face, whether it is childcare or sending a child to college.

I don't think it is socialistic to say we want 2 additional years of education for the graduates of high school in America so they are prepared to compete in the 21st century. That is just common sense. Socialism? I don't believe it is even close to socialism. It is really preparing them for a competitive, entrepreneurial economy and for success in life. That, to me, is a noble goal, whatever party is behind it.

When it comes to the debt ceiling of this country, I just hope we can find a way to deal with this responsibly. It has always been a political football, depending on which party was in power, but to risk the possibility of a default on America's debt at this moment in

our economic history is a dangerous, dangerous undertaking. We need to do the right thing. We have to concede the obvious.

Certainly the previous President, Trump, didn't win any accolades for fiscal conservatism. And we have to come together to recognize, whoever the President may be, the important thing is that this Nation move forward--move forward to our cures for the illnesses that we face but also to an economy that is expanded.

I yield the floor

The Ohio State----

Madam President, let me say a word of support for the Senator from Connecticut as well as the Senator from New Jersey. I couldn't agree with them more. There is no reason why this information--full disclosure of this information--has not been made known first to the families but certainly to the people of this country at this moment in history, 20 years after that terrible tragedy. It is time for the truth to be known.

I support your efforts completely, Senator Blumenthal, and I will help you in any way that I can.

remembering richard trumka

Madam President, when I grew up in East St. Louis, IL, I knew I was from a railroad family because, well, both Mom and Dad worked for the railroads. I knew we had a pretty comfortable life. I have come to learn that we weren't by any means rich, but we did well enough--two older brothers and myself. I knew that my mom and dad worked for a railroad, and eventually all of us in the family did in some capacity.

I also knew that we were a union family, and I didn't realize until much later in life a couple facts: No. 1, there were a lot of families around us who weren't that lucky. We were fortunate to be a union family. Secondly, what the union did for my family in East St. Louis, IL, it did for millions of families across America throughout our history. Those labor unions could stand up and fight for people who couldn't fight alone and have a chance to win.

I have a healthy respect for unions. I believe that, more than any other force in American history, the American labor movement, the union movement, created the middle class in America. I am living proof of that. My mom and dad had eighth grade educations. My mother was an immigrant to this country. But hard work, a good work ethic, and a strong support of a labor union gave them a chance to earn a decent living on a safe job and to raise a good family.

I reflect on that at this moment because we have lost one of the pillars of the union movement in the United States of America, Richard Trumka.

What an amazing biography. I used to think back. I had heard he was the son of immigrants, and I knew that he worked in the coal mines, but then I knew he also went to law school, and he became head of the AFL- CIO, the largest gathering of unions in our country.

If you ever met him, with his little brush mustache and the gruff way about him, you knew he was no pushover. How could you be a pushover and head of the United Mine Workers union which he was at a very early age? How could you be a pushover and be head of a national labor organization like the AFL-CIO? He did that, and he was an amazing advocate for the women and men whom he represented in the labor movement.

I can't even start to count the number of meetings that I attended with Richard Trumka. When we wanted labor's voice, we called Richard Trumka, and we knew that when that door was closed, he was going to be brutally honest with us. He would spend a few minutes thanking us, and then he would spend the rest of the meeting telling how we needed to do better: The working families of America were expecting us to stand up and fight for them. And he took no prisoners when he went through the roster and the rollcall of how people had voted and where they stood on union issues. It was an amazing performance by a man who had the credentials to deliver it, a man who was part of the labor movement from working in those coal mines, and a man who had developed the skills and talents at law school and beyond to be able to fight for those men and women.

It is stunning to think that we lost him today at age 72. That is way too young. He did such an amazing job as the son of a coal miner himself. You never had to ask ever which side Rich Trumka was on--ever.

I have got to be honest with you. There are some people who are fighting for causes in Washington, DC, because there is a paycheck at the end of the day, but there are some people who are fighting for causes who couldn't give a damn about a paycheck. They are there because they believe it. Trumka was one of those people. He was fighting for working people across the United States night and day, endlessly, 24/7. He was on the side of workers who built America's roads and bridges and of the men and women who were not in the labor movement but trying to become part of it. He fought for the men and women who kept our powerplants running and our schools, homes, offices running.

He always asked for one basic thing: respect and fairness for working men and women.

He was with me on the Dream Act. He understood, as the son of immigrants, that immigrants are a vital part of this country, and they should be for years to come.

Trumka was on the side of growing this American economy the right way, not from the top-down, not trickle-down, but from the bottom-up. He believed, growing up in Pennsylvania and the life that he led, that it was critical that we be there for families when they made the basic decisions about whether or not they were going to buy a new home, buy a new car, be able to pay for their kids to go to college. He believed, as my old friend Paul Wellstone would say, ``We all do better when we all do better.''

He was a giant who led the labor movement in America through one of the most challenging periods in our history, when his leadership was needed the most.

It is on us now--isn't it?--those of us who think about Rich and what he said to us so many times privately, publicly. The responsibility that we have is to stand up for the men and women who work in this country who don't have a voice otherwise. Our responsibility is to give those in the labor movement the respect they deserve for fighting for the right cause.

My wife Loretta and I send our condolences to Rich's wife Barb and their son and family.

I understand that he was with his grandson when he was stricken this morning. As a grandfather, I will tell you it is a happy moment when you are with your grandkids, and that is the way it should have been for Rich.

President Trumka's friends, his sisters and brothers in the labor movement, and to all the families to whom Rich Trumka devoted his life, they and we have lost a true champion.

America is better for Rich Trumka having lived and been part of fighting for those who worked to make America a great nation.

I yield the floor.

Mr. President, I want to address an opportunity that we have in this body to fix a flaw in a provision in this infrastructure bill.

I want to thank my colleague from Oregon and our colleague from Wyoming. The three of us have been working on this, and I really hope we get this done. I am going to insist on having a vote on this.

Let me just give a little context here. So we are all aware of this new category of assets some describe as currencies, which are also called cryptocurrencies. And this is a fascinating development. Actually, some have been around for some time now, but they have come into the public eye in a much, much bigger way in recent years--very recent years.

And while sometimes we think of this as some kind of unit of value that is traded and has some pretty spectacular volatility sometimes, for me, while that is very interesting, what is much more interesting is the underlying technology and what that might make possible. I am still trying to understand. I am still on a steep learning curve about all the possibilities of the distributed ledger technology, the methodology by which cryptocurrencies can be exchanged without an intermediary. There is no bank that the money has to go through.

It is an amazing and fascinating technology where individuals scattered around the globe actually validate the legitimacy of a transaction and it becomes immutable. And there is a permanent record in some cases. There are other models where it is different. But this is an amazing technology. It has tremendous potential.

We had a hearing in the Banking Committee just last week, at my request--the chairman agreed to a hearing--where we talked about some of the use cases for this underlying technology, and we heard some amazing things.

So the most common activity now is trading in these digital currencies, whether it is Bitcoin or Ethereum or others. There are many, many of them. And that is the biggest single activity, but there are very, very important and interesting additional use cases that are occurring.

One of the things that I am fascinated by is the potential to have this dispersed mechanism for validating ownership. Think of all the amount of time and money and effort we spend on all kinds of transactions where, ultimately, we are trying to validate someone's ownership: the title to their house, the title to their car, your ownership of the stocks that you bought from your broker.

We have developed very expensive, actually, and sometimes time- consuming processes by which we do this. This can all be done on a blockchain. This can all be done almost instantly, at almost no cost, and I think that this is the direction that we are going to be heading in.

That is just one example. There is another whole category that is fascinating to me, which is what people refer to as programmable money.

Think about it, programmable money; what is that? Well, here is a great example that we heard at our hearing from a witness who works for a company that actually provides these kinds of services. But here is an example. You know, one of the things that has always been a challenge is, how do you ensure that, say, a person who has a copyright is properly compensated when that copyright is used in one form or another?

I used to have a restaurant. And when we played music in the background to create a certain ambiance in our restaurant, how do you make sure that the people who have the copyright on those songs gets paid properly for that? I will tell you, it is a terrible system. It is completely arbitrary, and there is no precision to it. There is no way to monitor it.

Well, how about an idea where you have a programmable capability where, if I listen to a music app on my iPhone, for every second of a particular artist's music I listen to, it automatically sends a corresponding tiny fraction of some currency to the person who owns that copyright? That is completely doable in the context of this kind of technology.

I just mention these two things just to provide a little, tiny glimpse and illustration of the kinds of amazing things that I think this underlying technology is capable of, and it is likely going to change the way we do an awful lot of things in the coming years.

I say that as background because in this legislation, there is a very reasonable intent, but I think the drafting doesn't get it quite right. The intent is to say: for those exchanges, for those places where people go to buy and sell cryptocurrencies--and there are centralized exchanges where that happens every day in huge, huge volumes--we want to require these exchanges to have the same kind of reporting requirements that a conventional broker would have when a security is bought.

So, in other words, we want the folks who run the exchange to report the name, some identifying number--maybe it is a Social Security number--the dollar amount. And all of this is because people buying and selling these cryptocurrencies are generating capital gains and losses. It is an asset. If you sell it later after a gain, you should have to pay a capital gains tax on that asset, depending on how long you have held it. If you have lost money on it, then you ought to be able to take that loss against gains that you may have elsewhere.

It is completely reasonable to have a provision that requires the reporting of the transaction. That, I think, is the intent of this legislation. But, unfortunately, the way it got drafted, to my reading, and to--I am certainly not alone; I think this is almost universally acknowledged--the language would impose this reporting requirement on people involved in the cryptocurrency world who don't even have the information about the person making the purchase or the sale.

So, for instance, it might very well be interpreted to impose this reporting requirement on the miners, the people who are involved in the arithmetic process by which you validate transactions. They don't even know the names. They have a numerical representation of the transaction. They don't know who is buying it. They have no idea. They have no way of knowing. So it is not a reasonable--not an even slightly reasonable burden to impose on them.

That is one little example of how badly flawed this language is. It wasn't intended that way. The good news is, it can be fixed. And Senator Wyden and Senator Lummis and I have come up with language that fixes this problem. It would make sure that the reporting requirement on a centralized exchange, the folks running that who have this information, would, in fact, have to report it. They don't right now. There is no statute. There is no regulation that requires that. This would require the reporting.

And the industry is fine with that. They recognize that they should have to report this. But they also recognize that it should only be imposed on people for whom it makes sense, right? The people who actually have that information. So our amendment addresses this. It fixes this. It solves this problem. I think it achieves the intent. And we are having a little trouble getting the ability to offer this as an amendment here on the Senate floor on this bill.

I am not here to ask that we simply adopt it by acclamation. I welcome debate and welcome a vote, but we ought to be able to have a vote. We absolutely should have this debate and have a vote before we go ahead and impose this requirement. And if we were not to adopt this amendment, then we could be doing a lot of damage. We could have a very chilling effect on the development of this technology, and that is what I am most concerned about. That is what I want to avoid.

This technology is very, very exciting. It has tremendous potential. And the last thing we should do is allow a flawed drafting exercise to have this chilling effect on the further development of this technology.

I see the Senator from Oregon is here on the floor, and I want to thank him for his leadership on this effort, for his work. He and I, I think, have a very similar way of viewing this. And if he would like to make some comments, I will yield some time to him

Reclaiming my time.

I want to thank my colleague from Oregon for his thoughtful leadership on this.

I thank the Senator from Wyoming. Senator Lummis, is on her way down. She is going to join us, as she has been an integral part of this effort to just correct this.

This is a big deal in a number of respects. I would point out--I want to stress, right now there is no statutory reporting requirement in this whole space. There is no regulatory requirement. I don't think you could have a regulatory requirement without a statute authorizing it.

So this is a big deal. It would require the companies operating these exchanges to report this financial information so that it dramatically enhances the likelihood that capital gains taxes would be collected. This provision scores as a source of revenue because it increases the likelihood of compliance.

I don't know why anyone would object. I am not aware of any objection of the substance of this on my side of the aisle. I know Senator Wyden has like-minded folks on his side of the aisle.

It is really important that we not overreach, that we not do this wrong. We have not gone through the ordinary process for developing tax legislation. Tax legislation is notoriously complicated and difficult to get exactly right and prone to unintended consequences.

Normally, we have hearings in the Finance Committee. We get input from all kinds of experts. We make drafts. We circuit the drafts. It is a long process to make sure you get it right. This has gone through none of that, zero.

What we are trying to do is say let's restrict this to where it belongs, let's clean this up the best we can.

You know what?

This space is changing. A year from now, there will be new innovations we haven't thought of, that probably nobody has thought of, and we will probably have to go back and revisit this. What we wouldn't want to do--shouldn't want to do--is have an overly broad mandate, a reporting requirement on people who can't possibly comply with it because they don't have the information. We wouldn't want to impose that and have a stifling impact on the development of a really, really exciting and potentially powerful new technology. That is what this is about.

As I said earlier, I am going to insist on having a vote on this. I don't know why we wouldn't win by a big margin since, after all, we are just ensuring that we get the intent of this legislation rather than a miscarriage of it.

As the Senator from Oregon pointed out, Senator Portman from Ohio, who has worked so long and so hard on this infrastructure bill, supports us getting a vote on this. He supports the amendment that we have drafted.

I am hopeful that this is going to pass. I will be insistent that we get our vote. That is something we ought to do.

I yield the floor.

I suggest the absence of a quorum.