A bill to prohibit the Department of Defense from discharging or withholding pay or benefits from members of the National Guard based on COVID-19 vaccination status.

Madam President, it is Thursday, and it is usually the day I get to come down to the Senate floor. Usually, the Senate is kind of wrapping up things; we are still pretty busy right now. But it is the day I love to come down to the Senate floor and talk about somebody in my State, the great State of Alaska, who is making a difference either for their community, for their State, for the country; you name it. We call this person the Alaskan of the Week.

We have done it a lot. I usually like to give a little bit of an update. The pages typically really like this time of the week because we get to tell stories about Alaska, about the adventure of Alaska, but also about--typically, a little update about what is happening in the State.

Right now, we are in a bit of a cold snap pretty much throughout the State. We are getting a lot of snow throughout the State. We have seen some record low temperatures all across Alaska, from Homer, King Salmon, Bethel.

Monday in Fairbanks--so this is not even into December yet--it was 26 below zero. They are tough in Fairbanks, very tough. You get down to 50, 60 below in Fairbanks.

My wife is from Fairbanks. She is a wonderful volunteer for this organization called Covenant House. They did their annual ``Sleep Out.'' It is a homeless shelter for teenage youth. This was in Anchorage just a couple of weeks ago. It was 15 below for the ``Sleep Out.'' You get a cardboard box and say: Good luck. So, boy, she is tough.

Alaskans across the State are rugged, tough, individualistic, and we bond all the more for it. We are in it together when it is that cold. And it frequently is. And like one big community, one of the many things that brings us together--actually, one of the many things that brings Americans together--is bonding over sports: local sports, State sports, national sports, and your local newspaper as it relates to sports reporting. It is actually a universal instinct.

One of our most famous Supreme Court Justices, Earl Warren, said it best:

I always turn to the sports section first [in the morning].

The sports page records people's accomplishments. The front

page [usually] has nothing but [people's] failures.

I am not sure that is always true, but it is a good anecdote in terms of what binds us with regard to sports.

You know, over the holidays, in particular, everybody in America watches great football, other sports activities. I had a good chat over lunch today with Coach Tuberville about the really incredible Alabama Auburn game that just happened last week.

But sports is also the place in our local papers where we see the names of our children, our loved ones, our neighbors, our friends. In fact, it might just be the only time their names appear in the paper at all, when you think about it.

So our Alaskan of the Week this week is somebody who knows sports and sportswriting in Alaska better than anybody. We are talking about Beth Bragg, who recently retired after 35 years as a sportswriter for the Anchorage Daily News. She understood all of these attributes about sportswriting better than anybody.

During her 35 years at the paper, Beth always told cub reporters there was one rule they must always follow, no matter what. She said: Even if the person's name is something like Cindy Jones, ask that person for the spelling. It might be the only time their name appears in the paper, and it is very important that name is spelled correctly.

Now, let me talk about Beth, about her reporting and about her work and how it has added to our communities across the great State of Alaska.

Beth grew up in Billings, MT. Her father worked for the Billings Gazette. And she, too, while still in high school, joined the paper as a sports clerk so this is in her blood.

Now, it wasn't so much that she was crazy about sports back then, but it was a job, a good job. And then she said she began, bit by bit, to fall in love with newspapers and sports reporting. She liked the irreverence, the strict deadlines, the energy.

Importantly--and it is almost counterintuitive--covering sports allows more fun in the writing, the opportunity as a writer to take a little bit more in terms of chances and to be more creative than maybe on other beats. And throughout the years, Beth has brought so much of this kind of creativity, so much heart to her stories.

Without looking at a byline in Alaska, you always knew when you were reading a Beth Bragg story. So, in 1986, when she was 27 years old, she came to Alaska to write for the Anchorage Daily News. That is our State's biggest paper. She thought she would stay for a few years, then move on. Her dream was to cover professional sports, maybe even Major League Baseball in a city that has got a Major League Baseball team, but as the years progressed, she stayed in Alaska. She fell in love with Alaska, and her ambitions as a sportswriter changed. But, in some ways, they got even bigger.

She discovered that, in her words, ``the real reward, and the real challenge, is to find stories that resonate with everyone. And you don't have to be at the Super Bowl to do that.''

In fact, Beth said she found more interesting, more unique stories to cover in Alaska than probably anywhere else.

Now, we don't have big-time professional sports teams in the great State of Alaska, but we do have sports, loads of sports. And just like so much about Alaska, we have expanded the meaning of what it means to partake in sports.

Let's take one very famous sport in Alaska, the Iditarod--the famous 800-

mile sled dog race--as one big example. There is also heli-skiing, ice climbing, curling, and snowboarding. It didn't get its start in Alaska, but it reached its apex in Valdez, for those who participated in that incredible sport.

Beth is likely one of the few, if only, reporters in the country who reported on this incredible sport in Alaska at 3 a.m., seal-skinning. Yes, that is a sport. It goes along with the ear pull and other sports in terms of competition at the World Eskimo Indian Olympics, which are incredible to go to and watch in Alaska--great athletes, by the way.

She covered seal skinning, the competition. At 3 a.m. she was tired, but the excitement and the smell of the seals--first frozen, then thawed for the competition--kept her wide awake.

We may not have professional sports teams, but we certainly have athletic stars galore in Alaska. For 35 years, Beth has written about these stars and some of the toughest athletes anywhere in the world. Let me give you a couple examples.

She wrote about athletes running Mount Marathon. Now, I gave an ``Alaskan of the Week'' speech several months ago about Mount Marathon. It is what Outside magazine calls ``the toughest 5K on the planet''-- straight up a mountain and straight back down. We always do it on July 4 in Seward.

She wrote about the Alaska Wilderness Classic, the 150-or-so-mile ``secret race'' up mountains and across rivers in the Alaskan wilderness. Here are the rules of the Alaska Wilderness Classic: No outside support, nothing human-powered, leave no trace, and rescue is up to the racer. Pretty tough. Pretty tough.

She wrote about the Arctic Man, another incredible Alaska event that has been described as one of the world's toughest downhill ski races and an exciting snow machine race, all combined together. You want to see something amazing? Go to the Arctic Man.

She has written about swimming heats and cross-country track and field matches; skiing, lots of stories about skiing in Alaska; ice hockey; high school football; basketball games; and, as I mentioned, the World Eskimo-Indian Olympics, with the ear pull and the blanket toss.

She wrote a great story about a mother and son literally tied by rope together for 2 weeks climbing Denali, North America's tallest peak, in Alaska.

There was a story about a sled dog that was cut loose and ran away from her Iditarod sled dog pack. Miraculously, this dog found her way home to her kennel through mountain ranges and hundreds of miles of tundra in the dead of an Alaskan winter. Pretty amazing.

She wrote a great story about an event I attended this past June, an inspiring USA Patriots-Amputee Softball Team event where almost every player on that team were some of our greatest American heroes. Almost all of them had lost a limb--all of them had lost a limb, mostly in combat.

Always at the center of Beth's stories are the people, even when those people are sled dogs. She has written about their victories; their struggles; their heart for the game, for their teams, for their communities, for their State, for their country, and for life itself.

Thinking back on her long career, a few events stay with her. She talked a lot about what it was like to watch Alaskans compete in the Olympics, four of which she attended--Olympic Games.

Now, we are a huge State. I talk about that a lot. We have a pretty small population relative to other States--730,000 people. But Alaska is really good in terms of Olympic athletes. We punch way above our weight, sending some of the top American athletes to especially the Winter Olympics but also the Summer Olympics.

Beth remembers, for example, the electricity in the Olympic stadium in Norway in 1994 when a little-known Alaskan named Tommy Moe shocked the world by winning the gold in the downhill and then, 4 days later, a silver, becoming the first American skier ever to win two medals at the same Olympics.

She remembers writing stories about the legendary and beloved cross- country skier from Alaska Kikkan Randall when Kikkan was just 13 years old. Then, like so many Alaskans, Beth swelled with pride and cried when Kikkan Randall won the gold in 2018.

Beth said she also cried just this summer when 17-year-old Lydia Jacoby from Seward, AK, shocked the world by winning the gold medal in Tokyo this summer in the 100-meter breaststroke. Remember that? Seward, AK, doesn't even have an Olympic-size swimming pool. And I will say, Lydia Jacoby is the only person in U.S. history to be Alaskan of the Week in the U.S. Senate twice. That is unbelievable.

Of course, there are heartbreaks, too--the losses, the illnesses, the injuries, and sometimes the deaths--all of which Beth has handled with the utmost sensitivity. Because she was at it for so long and has so much history with Alaskan athletes, she understood something about them that a new reporter might not. It takes a certain kind of grit to be an athlete in Alaska, to wake up at 6 a.m. and head off into the dark, subzero weather to train. It takes a certain kind of grit to travel outside of Alaska for competitions, often thousands of miles away from your home, to get noticed. As Beth said, ``You have to work hard to make it big'' in Alaska. As a result, she thinks Alaska athletes have a sense of home in a way a lot of other athletes don't.

As I said, Beth recently retired. She is going to clean her home; maybe travel some; of course, watch some sports, as a fan now, not as a reporter. She leaves behind a great legacy, thousands of stories charting some of our State's greatest moments in athletics, times when we all cheered and cried and came together to support the best of our people and competition and grit and determination--the reason Americans across the country love sports so much.

So, Beth, thank you for your great job. Congrats on an incredibly stellar career, and, of course--I am sure one of your biggest honors ever--congratulations on being our Alaskan of the Week.

John Kerry

Madam President, we are working on the NDAA. Is anyone watching what is happening on the Senate floor right now? It has been stalled in terms of amendments, and it has been stalled, reportedly, because of an amendment--a simple amendment that I think the vast majority of Americans would agree on--that Senator Rubio is trying to get a vote on.

But, as there are with so many stories in the last 6 months, there is something about the climate envoy John Kerry, who keeps coming into different stories, and he is in this story as well. He seems to show up everywhere, always when somebody in this administration is doing something to undermine American interests. There is something about John Kerry.

Let me give you the latest. Senator Rubio is trying to move forward with regard to an amendment on his bill, the Uyghur Forced Labor Prevention Act. It is essentially a pretty simple bill. Human rights communities agree with it. I think everybody in the Senate agrees with it. It, in essence, just says that we shouldn't be importing solar panels and other products made in China that are produced with forced labor or slave labor. What American wouldn't agree with that? What American wouldn't agree with that? I think every Senator agrees with that. But evidently there is one American who disagrees with that.

Here is an article today from the Free Beacon that talks about senior Biden officials are worried that this bill stopping slave labor products from China coming into America will undermine ``the White House's climate agenda'' and, unfortunately, ``limit solar panel imports from China.''

Presidential climate envoy John Kerry, among others, has

been lobbying House members against the bill.

Wow. Wow. That is remarkable. Why would he do that? Why would he do that? Someone needs to ask John Kerry that. That is just one example. Something about John Kerry--always in the mix undermining American interests.

This is an article from the Washington Post just about a month ago: ``In advance of climate summit, tension among Biden aides on China policy.'' In essence, it said John Kerry was in Beijing--a very dangerous proposition, by the way; you want to talk about selling out American interests--

and he was begging the Chinese to cooperate on climate change, but they said they are not going to commence--I am reading from the Washington Post--cooperation until the United States tones it down on human rights, Hong Kong, Taiwan, and trade.

So the Chinese are saying: Hey, we are not going to do anything on climate, John Kerry, unless you go tell the President to tone it down on Hong Kong, Taiwan, human rights--slave labor, probably. Dutifully, John Kerry came back to DC and delivered the message. It is all in the Washington Post right here, October 25.

To their credit, Jake Sullivan and others were pretty furious, according to this article, about John Kerry undermining U.S. interests. But, hey, there he goes again. Remarkable. I mean, whose side is this guy on?

Let me give you another example. One of the great things that have happened in America over the last two decades is this incredible revolution in terms of American energy. For decades, it has been the bipartisan policy of every administration--pretty much every Senator-- for America to become energy independent. Until the Biden administration came into office, we have achieved that. Again, every administration since World War II, Democratic or Republican: Being energy-independent would be good for us.

One of the ways we have done this is this incredible revolution in the production of American natural gas. It has made us the leader in reducing global greenhouse gas emissions in the world, by far. Since 2005 to present, the United States has reduced emissions by almost 15 percent--more than any other major economy in the world. China's emissions have gone like this.

So you would think the export of American LNG all around the world, which is happening, would be great for our workers--it is; great for our national security--it is; and really good for the environment--it is. In fact, we are even exporting to India and China. That will help them reduce emissions. This is a win, win, win, win, win.

So imagine my surprise when I met with foreign officials--I won't name them--who have said to me: John Kerry is telling us in our country, in Asia and in Europe, don't buy American natural gas.

What?

Don't buy American natural gas.

Why?

I don't know.

But there he goes again, undermining U.S. interests, undermining American workers, and, by the way, undermining the global environment on that one. If you don't buy American natural gas, you are going to be producing coal in China.

This is what I have heard.

And then let me give you one more. I came on the floor several months ago, only about 5 months ago, and called for the resignation of John Kerry after the interview of his friend the Foreign Minister of Iran, the largest state sponsor of terrorism, Foreign Minister Zarif, who was recorded in an interview that was leaked that said John Kerry told him a couple years ago, when Zarif was the Iranian Foreign Minister, about covert Israeli actions against Israeli interests in Syria.

Now, think about that. According to news reports, Zarif is heard saying--and we all heard the video--``It was former US. . . . Secretary John Kerry who told me Israel had launched more than 200 attacks on Iranian forces in Syria,'' selling out and betraying our biggest ally in the Middle East, Israel.

There is something about John Kerry, and every time that guy goes on a mission, you can be assured that American national security interests are being undermined. So here is a Christmas present I think the whole country would benefit from. For the good of this country, this former Secretary of State, former U.S. Senator, needs to ride off into the sunset in his private jet and retire, or resign, or maybe the President can just fire him. We don't need him to undermine American interests anymore.

I yield the floor.

Mr. President, we have a problem in our Air National Guard right now.

This body knows full well where I have been on vaccine mandates coming down from the President. I have adamantly opposed the vaccine mandates on private-sector employees, which I find absurd that the President is announcing to every company with 100 people or more: I am going to take over the contracts for employment in your company; and no matter how long that employee has been there and how valuable they are to the company, you need to fire them if they don't follow the vaccine mandate.

That is not the right of a President. It has formed chaos in our Federal workers. It has formed chaos in our contractors for Federal employees.

Now, let me tell you what is happening in the National Guard right now. Tuesday of this week, November 30, the Secretary of Defense sent out a letter saying that, by today, December 2, every person in the National Guard had to be vaccinated or they would no longer be paid.

Now, that applied to the Air National Guard as of today; but to the Army National Guard, that doesn't apply until June 30. Let me run this past this body again. If you are in the Air National Guard and you are not vaccinated by today, you won't be paid anymore. You also can't show up at drill this weekend. You can't go into any training at all, as of this weekend. But if you are in the Army National Guard, you have until June 30 to be able to fulfill this mandate.

Now, I have been clear I am adamantly opposed to the mandate, period. But to then make it unequal between the Air National Guard and the Army National Guard is even worse.

And on top of all of that, what the administration did as of this week--they sent out information for the Air National Guard members and, I assume, for the Army National Guard starting in June that this is going to be a different process.

Title 32 is the authority for the National Guard. Now, for folks who aren't following this or the folks in this body who do, some people get confused between the Reserves and the Guard. They are not the same. The Reserves are like Active Duty. The Guard actually work for the Governor of each State.

Each State has accountability for the Guard members, and there is a responsibility to make sure they are trained and ready and equipped for Federal service if they are called up for Federal service. But when they are under what is called title 32 authority, they work for the Governor of the State. If a unit is not prepared, the State is punished for their lack of preparation. So funds can be taken away from the State but not going down to individual members of the Guard.

What did the Pentagon do this week?

The Pentagon, this week, announced that not only are they not going to pay individual members, but they are literally reaching down into a unit, identifying members that have not received the vaccine, and they are not going to pay that person.

There is no authority in law for the Pentagon to do that. In fact, that issue was debated in this body several years ago, and this body voted no on that. The Pentagon does not have the authority to reach into the Governor's National Guard and determine who will be paid and who will not be paid in the National Guard, but that is exactly what the President is trying to do and what the Pentagon is trying to do.

Why is this a big issue?

Because the Air National Guard, as of tomorrow, that are not vaccinated will not be paid, and this weekend they cannot go to drill.

Why is that a big issue?

Many of the folks in the Air National Guard that are not vaccinated are the pilots.

Listen, if we are going to talk about military readiness, I understand the differences of opinion here in the vaccine mandates. And some people have no issue with the vaccine mandates. I do. But we should all agree on military readiness. We should all agree on following the law and not allowing the Pentagon and the President to deliberately violate the law that we wrote and the President has signed in violating title 32.

Last night, I was on this very same floor, at this very same desk, asking for amendment on the NDAA. Today, I understand I am not getting that amendment on the NDAA. I have taken that same amendment and I have moved it into language that we can use as a standalone bill.

This is a very simple, straightforward, no issues, no ancillary anything on the bill. It simply says that we cannot allow the administration or the Pentagon--any one of them--to violate the law, to be able to reach into a National Guard unit and identify individual members and not pay them.

That is already the law. We are just affirming the law that already is.

And the second thing is not allowing them to be able to cut off pay based on their vaccination status in the National Guard when they are in title 32 status. That means they are working for the Governor of that State; they have not been activated to Federal duty.

This is a big issue, and it is a big issue right now because the Air National Guard members and many of our pilots are about to stop training right now. And in the days ahead for the Army National Guard, I remind this body of a number that most of us know. Only 40 percent of our Guard members are vaccinated, meaning 60 percent are not.

Are we really ready to lose that much readiness over this issue?

I would hope not.

So, as if in legislative session, I ask unanimous consent that the Senate proceed to immediate consideration of Calendar No. 174, S. 3299. I further ask that the bill be considered read a third time and passed and that the motion to reconsider be considered made and laid upon the table.

Mr. President, I look forward to working with Senator Reed on this. He has been a good partner dealing with this. He is passionate about protecting our military and keeping our forces ready.

I very much appreciate his partnership in that, and I look forward to our ongoing dialogue on this. I have had multiple phone calls to leadership in the Pentagon and leadership in the National Guard. I am not getting clear answers on this.

As I have tried to be an advocate for the members of our Air National Guard, I want to be able to make sure that we provide them that opportunity to be able to serve and that we don't lose access to readiness. So I very much appreciate his partnership in that.

Government Funding

Mr. President, it is my understanding that in a short period of time we will be voting on the continuing resolution.

The continuing resolution has now been passed in the House. It has been delivered over to the Senate. This maintains our government operations for the next 2 months.

I have been a person who has expressed my frustration that we have not taken up the vast majority of the appropriations bills, even in committee. It is my understanding that even as of today, 9 of the 12 appropriations bills have not even been discussed in committee, and all 12 of those bills

should have been done by September 30. We are now well past that now.

On September 30, we passed a continuing resolution that went until tomorrow. Now we are passing another one that is going to go into February. As I read through it, as it just came over from the House of Representatives, and was scanning quickly through it when they actually released the language in it this morning, I was interested to be able to see a couple of things that popped out to me in particular, serving on the Homeland Security Committee. Serving that position in Homeland Security and some of the issues that we deal with on a day-to-day basis on oversight, I was fascinated to see two particular areas that popped out to me in this. One of them was dealing with unaccompanied minors.

The administration earlier this year took some of the COVID money that had been allocated in March and used that COVID money to deal with unaccompanied minors. We have yet to get a full accounting of how much that was. But then when the continuing resolution was passed just September 30, 2.5 billion with a ``b''--2.5 billion additional dollars were allocated just to deal with the surge of unaccompanied minors for this year.

Well, that was a few months ago now. This continuing resolution is allocating another $1.5 billion to unaccompanied minors. So they took we don't know how much money of the COVID money for unaccompanied minors, and then if this bill passes tonight, which I assume it will at this point, it is another $4 billion just on the unaccompanied minors. Let me remind you how large of a figure that is, an additional $4 billion.

Before we lose track of that, what jumped out at me first when I went through this was a surprising number. In the continuing resolution that just came over from the House just minutes ago, there is a request for an additional $7 billion for Afghan refugees. When you say ``OK, I understand,'' in the September 30 continuing resolution, there was $6 billion for Afghan refugees over there. That is $13 billion for Afghan refugees. The best that we can tell, we have 69,000 Afghan refugees who are in the process, and we are allocating $13 billion for it.

Now, we all thought--and we had the conversation here--that $6 billion that was allocated was an enormous amount of money that was allocated, but now, 3 months after the refugees started being able to move out of Afghanistan in that debacle of a withdrawal that happened, now we are talking about not $6 billion but $13 billion. That is around $200,000 per person so far.

If that was not bad enough, in the continuing resolution done September 30, because of the enormous size of this amount of money and because of how little information has actually come to this body, there was a demand in it that by November 30--that was 2 days ago--the Department of Homeland Security would have to turn over a report of actually what is happening with the Afghan refugees. Has anyone in this body read that report from DHS now on how they are handling the Afghan refugees? I would go ahead and preemptively answer no because none of us have seen the report yet.

Here is what we don't know but yet this body demanded in the last CR to be able to get from DHS. We demanded to know crazy things like this: the number of lawful U.S. permanent residents who were evacuated out of Afghanistan. We don't have that number yet. We don't know how many were special immigrant visa holders. We don't know how many were actually applicants for special immigrant visas. We don't know the number that had any other immigrant status. We don't know the number who actually worked for our government who were actually evacuated. We have not been told although we demanded to have it by November 30.

We don't know the number of people who work for a partner government or any other entity that we were affiliated with although we asked for that. We don't know the number of people who actually came through the process and then were later determined to be security threats to the United States and had slipped through the process. We asked for that. We asked for that to come in by November 30. That has not been turned over.

We asked for the number of people who were getting paroled and their parole was then terminated because of some other criminal activity or something else. We asked for that. That is a number they have. They have not turned that number over.

We asked for even the number of interviews that had been conducted. We have yet to receive that. In fact, there has not been a single public hearing in the Senate on Afghan refugees--not one. So not only have we not received anything in writing, we have not even received any testimony from anyone from DHS on this.

Listen, we gave DHS $6 billion and said: We are going to allocate this money to you. We just want to know who we are allocating it to and what it is going to be used for.

That doesn't seem unreasonable. But not only is this body not holding DHS accountable for not answering our questions, we are handing them $7 billion more tonight. Does anyone else see this as an issue?

I am all for keeping the government open, but this body has a responsibility of oversight. We have pretended we are doing oversight, but we are actually not doing oversight--not a hearing, not a report, nothing. Thirteen billion dollars.

So, yes, I am going to oppose the CR tonight. I am not holding up the vote. I understand full well the responsibility of all 100 of us to put ourselves on the record. But if we are going to actually say we are going to do oversight, let's actually do oversight.

It is not unreasonable, when we all agree these are the facts and figures that should come from DHS to just tell us what is going on with the Afghan refugees, that we actually expect they are going to turn those things over.

So in the days ahead, I hope we will actually hold a hearing and actually get the facts. I hope we will actually demand that they turn over to us what we have required, and I hope we get a full accounting of how they are spending $13 billion on what we understand were 69,000 people, most of whom have not even been moved in and across the United States yet--$13 billion.

With that, I yield floor.

Madam President, in a couple of hours, Senator Schumer is bringing to the floor one of the most dangerous pro-crime, anti-cop U.S. nominees in American history. The Senate floor leader wants to ram through President Biden's extreme nominee to be the U.S. attorney for Massachusetts, the current Suffolk County district attorney, Rachel Rollins. In doing so, the Democrats are showing they don't care about crime as a crime wave crashes across the country, they do not support law enforcement, and they have a wanton disregard for the safety and security of Americans.

Now, it is true that we rarely have record votes of U.S. attorneys in the Senate. In fact, I think it has been 28 years.

It is also true that Rachael Rollins is so radical that she is without precedent as a nominee to be the U.S. attorney.

Rachael Rollins is the very epitome of a Soros prosecutor, although it is generous to call her a prosecutor at all.

For those of you who do not know the term, ``Soros prosecutor'' refers to the wave of so-called progressive political activists backed by wealthy liberal mega donors like George Soros, who have run for local district attorney and State attorney positions throughout the country with the express purpose--the express purpose of igniting revolution and destroying our criminal justice systems from within.

They have left a trail of death, pain, suffering, and misery in their wake. Chicago has already had more than 1,000 murders this year--1,000 murders, with a month to go. Philadelphia has already had more than 500--already an all-time record. Crime is so bad in San Francisco, they closed downtown on Black Friday to avoid gangs of armed robbers smashing into retail stores and stealing everything in sight. They closed it on Black Friday because Chesa Boudin, the radical Soros prosecutor in San Francisco, has helped a crime wave destroy public safety in San Francisco so much that the liberals in that city have already announced a recall petition against him.

And perhaps most notoriously, just last weekend, in Waukesha, a career criminal with a rap sheet as long as your arm committed mass murder--one of the deadliest massacres in recent years--while he was out on $1,000 bail; $1,000 for a career criminal who consistently committed violent crimes for 20 years. And the Soros prosecutor in Milwaukee who let him out acknowledged that it may have been inappropriately low.

But that is not the unintended consequence; that is the intended consequence: to destroy our criminal justice system from the inside, to let violent, repeat felons out immediately and not keep them on bail, and then to not charge them with the appropriate crimes, and then to reduce their sentences when they are convicted.

What do they all have in common?

They are all pro-criminal, Soros prosecutors, just like Rachael Rollins--the first one to be nominated for U.S. attorney.

Now, she is not simply a Soros prosecutor, she is one of the most preeminent legal arsonists in the country. She is a founding member of an organization of Soros prosecutors called the Truth, Justice, and Reconciliation Commission, which claims that the American justice system--and this is a quote; this is a direct quote--has ``been a cruel and oppressive force of injustice for . . . all marginalized communities.''

And she also claims--this is, again, a direct quote--``this isn't a bug in the

system, but a feature. It's operating exactly the way it was designed and built to function.''

That is her view of our criminal justice system, that it is a cruel and oppressive force of injustice for marginalized communities; that is not a bug; that is a feature.

That is textbook critical race theory.

Rachael Rollins believes that the American criminal justice system is racist and rotten to its core, and the Democrats want to put her in charge of prosecuting criminals in the largest State in New England. Rollins hopes to destroy the criminal justice system from within. That is not hyperbole. She has not been shy about her views, until she was nominated for this office, of course.

When asked why she became a prosecutor last year, she answered-- again, this is a direct quote. I am not making it up. You may find it hard to believe. This is her own words why she wanted to be a prosecutor: ``I chose to jump into this job to dismantle the system from the inside.''

Soon after being sworn in as district attorney of Suffolk County, MA, she declared that she was going to battle--going to battle--against the U.S. attorney on offenses like opioids, marijuana, and immigration.

Just think about that. A newly elected prosecutor in the largest city of the State decided that her mission was not to stop criminals, not to protect innocent civilians, but to stop the U.S. attorney in that State from prosecuting criminals, and now she wants that job for herself.

I don't think so.

Mrs. Rollins also published a list of 15 crimes that she would refuse to prosecute except in special cases, sending the clear message to criminals that it was open season to commit these crimes.

Among the crimes on Rollins' presumptive do-not-prosecute list are not just things like jaywalking, but things like drug trafficking with intent to distribute, including fentanyl, malicious destruction of property, criminal threats, breaking and entering, trespassing, resisting arrest, and more.

This isn't an exercise of prosecutorial discretion in a case with exceptional circumstances. This is prosecutorial nullification. The Legislature of Massachusetts passed criminal laws that prosecutors are elected to enforce, and she refuses to enforce them.

What do you think she will do to our Federal criminal laws?

What do you think she will do to you if you are a homeowner in Suffolk County and someone trespasses on your yard and walks up to your window to see if you are home or not?

And if you are not, they will break and enter because you won't be prosecuted. And if you are home, well, they will just walk off the lawn and wait until you leave. And you dial 9-1-1, and the police won't even answer because they know Rachael Rollins won't prosecute you.

And this is the woman that Joe Biden nominated to be a U.S. attorney in this county. I don't think so.

Rollins has tarred police officers as murderers, causing the Boston Police Patrolmen's Association to condemn her for ``undoubtedly incit[ing] violence against the proud men and women of the Boston Police Department.''

Her response, naturally, was to accuse the Boston police of ``white fragility.'' That is not a summary; that is an exact quote. She accused the Boston police of ``white fragility.''

There is a word for what Mrs. Rollins traffics in, and that word is ``racism;'' presuming that every officer in the Boston Police Department is guilty of ``white fragility,'' presumably the Black and the Hispanic and the Asian ones too.

The truth is that Rollins has nothing but contempt for the rule of law. If she is confirmed, the citizens of Massachusetts and New Hampshire and all of New England will suffer the dangerous consequences. We have already seen these consequences in her own county.

In 2020, the first full year in which her policies have been in force, Boston's violent crime rate surged, and the number of murders skyrocketed by 38 percent.

When Rollins took office, Suffolk County had the fifth highest opioid overdose death numbers in Massachusetts, with 39 percent fewer deaths than the leading county. By the end of 2020, not surprisingly, Suffolk County's opioid overdose deaths had increased by 32 percent, and Suffolk County had become the second deadliest county for opioid overdoses.

If Rollins' abysmal record is brought to Massachusetts as a whole, it also poses a significant threat to the health and safety of the people of New England, especially New Hampshire--a threat that extends beyond the 100,000 Granite Staters who work in Massachusetts.

Rollins' insane drug policies would worsen the drug epidemic, which is already ravaging New Hampshire. The opioid crisis, which is fueled by narcotics smuggled from Massachusetts, is responsible for over 80 percent of drug overdose deaths in New Hampshire. Cartels and traffickers use Boston and its ports as a staging ground to smuggle vast quantities of heroin and other drugs into New Hampshire.

Rollins' failure to vigorously enforce Federal drug laws in Massachusetts will severely harm families and communities not just in her own State, but in New Hampshire and across New England.

Rollins' appalling statements, actions, and records caused Republicans on the Senate Judiciary Committee to unanimously-- unanimously--oppose her nomination. That is a nearly unprecedented action for a U.S. attorney nomination, and it is not one that we took lightly.

By contrast, for example, Republicans have allowed President Biden's other 15 U.S. attorney nominees across the country to go through committee with a simple voice vote. It goes to show that Mrs. Rollins is uniquely unfit for the role of U.S. attorney and deserves no deference from the Senate and no confirmation.

If the Democrats vote to confirm Rachael Rollins, they will be responsible for every action she takes. It is not a secret. It is right here in her record. And when crime spikes in Massachusetts and crime spikes in New Hampshire, Democratic Senators who are on the ballot next year are going to answer for it.

And I promise I will be there to make you answer for it if you vote for her today.

And if you are a Soros prosecutor around the country watching this nomination today and you think maybe you are next if Ms. Rollins is confirmed, maybe you can be the U.S. attorney, maybe you can be the attorney general in your State, I promise you, this will not be the start of a trend. I will stop at nothing to make sure none of you ever achieve higher office and none of you get reelected, because you are a danger to the families and the communities of this country.

President Biden should immediately withdraw Mrs. Rollins' nomination and should consider submitting someone who would actually be a prosecutor rather than a pro-crime, defund-the-police activist to serve as a U.S. attorney in Massachusetts.

I yield the floor.

Mr. President, for the record, I would object on behalf of anyone who is not here, and so the question is moot.

If the Democrats really wanted all these nominees to go forward, maybe you should talk to the President about the fact that he caved in on Nord Stream 2 sanctions.

I know the Senator from New Hampshire has been strong on that, but she could have stopped any single bill or nominee going forward by insisting that the President impose Nord Stream 2 sanctions.

Now we are in a situation where all of Western Europe is hooked on German gas and Vladimir Putin is about to invade Ukraine, and the best we can get is stern words.

So, yes, I would object on behalf of any Senator who is not present, and I don't even know what I am objecting to.

Mr. President, 8 months--for 8 months any Senate Democrat could have stepped forward and demanded the President impose Nord Stream 2 sanctions. For 4 years--for 4 years--we stood together and cast votes--with 85 votes, 90 votes, or 95 votes--in defense of Nord Stream 2 sanctions when the Democrats were discovering their inner Jack Ryan when it came to Russia.

But now that Donald Trump is gone from office and Joe Biden is in office and he is appeasing Vladimir Putin at every turn by extending the New START Treaty and by not imposing sanctions on Nord Stream 2, suddenly the Democrats have reverted back to their old, conciliatory ways toward Russia.

The simplest way to deter invasion of Ukraine, the simplest way to deter Russian aggression is to draw clear red lines of enforcement-- something that Joe Biden will not do; something that, apparently, the Democratic Senators will not force him to do.

Mr. President, I did not make any personal insult. I simply observed that, for 4 years under the Trump administration, we repeatedly took action on a bipartisan basis to try to stop Nord Stream 2.

One of the reasons we didn't have a vote on amendments last week on the Defense bill is because the Democrats were carrying water for the Biden administration, refusing to have a vote on Nord Stream 2. And that is consistent with the Biden administration's record on Russia, which can get all chesty in its rhetoric but always appeases Vladimir Putin.

One of the first actions he took was to give a no-strings-attached extension to the New START Treaty, something that Donald Trump never did--the very first priority of Vladimir Putin.

The second priority was Nord Stream 2. We have been trying to have votes in

this Senate all year long, and we haven't had them because the Democrats won't insist on a vote because Joe Biden doesn't want it.

Mr. President, I want to spend a quick moment saying a fond thank-you and farewell to a staff member of mine who is leaving.

My deep gratitude to Ashley Harrington, who is off to great adventures. Our sadness at her leaving is matched only by our excitement for her as she starts her next chapter.

Thank you for your dedication, your humor, your invaluable skills. We are going to miss you throughout our entire office.

Nomination of Rachael S. Rollins

Mr. President, I come here today to speak in support of Suffolk County District Attorney Rachael Rollins, nominee to serve as U.S. attorney for the District of Massachusetts.

The fact that I and my Senate partner, Senator Warren, have to come to the floor at all in support of this qualified, respected, effective law enforcement official is a testimony to the unprecedented partisanship of my Republican colleagues. It is truly outrageous.

Before I share more about District Attorney Rollins' record of accomplishment--a record that my Republican colleagues have intentionally distorted and mischaracterized--I want to explain how politically partisan this U.S. attorney nomination process has become.

In September, the Judiciary Committee held a rollcall vote on Rachael Rollins' nomination to serve as U.S. attorney for the District of Massachusetts. She was voted out of committee on an 11-to-11 vote. All Democrats voted aye; all Republicans opposed the nomination.

With this vote, Judiciary Committee Republicans eviscerated a three- decade precedent of voice votes for U.S. attorney nominees for all 50 States--every single time. The committee had last held a rollcall vote on a U.S. attorney nominee in 1993. And based on a review of available materials, before the 117th Congress, the Judiciary Committee had only ever held a rollcall vote on three U.S. attorney nominees: in 1993, 1982, and 1975.

The Senate last required cloture on a U.S. attorney nominee in 1993 but ultimately confirmed that nominee by voice vote. And--listen to this--the Senate last held a rollcall vote on the floor of the Senate on a U.S. attorney nominee in 1975. We have held more impeachment votes on the floor of the Senate than votes on U.S. attorney nominees since 1975.

This obstruction of District Attorney Rollins' nomination is unwarranted, unfounded, and unprecedented. Let me underscore that last point. During the Trump administration, Judiciary Committee Democrats agreed to voice vote all 85 U.S. attorney nominees who came before them, despite disagreements with multiple nominees' records and ideology. All 85 of those U.S. attorneys in the Trump era were processed by the Judiciary Committee and received a voice vote with no recorded opposition. And the Senate, likewise, confirmed all 85 by unanimous consent on the Senate floor during the Donald Trump era.

The opposition to Rachael Rollins is nothing more than a deeply partisan ploy to score political points at the expense of the record of a respected, qualified, courageous, Black, female, progressive district attorney. It is offensive, and it is not in service to public safety-- in Massachusetts or across our Nation.

Let me tell you about District Attorney Rachael Rollins and why her record has garnered supported from all corners of the law enforcement community in Massachusetts and New England and from Republicans and Democrats alike.

District Attorney Rollins has public safety in her blood. Her father, a second-generation Irish American, fought in the Vietnam war and later worked as a corrections officer. Her maternal grandparents are from Barbados, and her mother is a first-generation American.

She represents the very best of what this country is all about: opportunity, public service, and plain old hard work.

As the district attorney for the county encompassing Boston and surrounding cities, District Attorney Rollins has a demonstrated record of success as a prosecutor. She leads an office of 300 employees, including more than 150 lawyers who handle 25,000 new criminal case filings and 1,000 criminal investigations annually. She leads a very busy office efficiently and effectively.

On the most serious crimes, her record is unassailable. In 2019, Rollins' first full year in office, the homicide unit's number of completed trials increased by 21 percent. Boston homicides declined by 31 percent in 2019, making it the lowest number in decades.

And she aggressively prosecutes drug trafficking. Between January 1, 2021, and October 12, 2021, just this year, the Suffolk County DA's office has prosecuted 147 trafficking cases. Of those cases, 98 involved charges of trafficking fentanyl, accounting for 67 percent of total drug trafficking prosecutions. District Attorney Rollins has prosecuted more drug traffickers than her predecessor.

I have personally met with and talked with District Attorney Rollins on multiple occasions about the opioid epidemic that is being fueled by fentanyl. There is no one more dedicated to ending that scourge than she is. She is committed to using the DA's office to hold fentanyl drug traffickers fully accountable, and her record proves that.

Her record on investigations is equally remarkable. In 2020, the homicide unit expanded its investigations by 44 percent. The major felony unit increased its by 22 percent, the human trafficking and exploitation unit by 19 percent, and the special prosecutions unit by 33 percent. Under District Attorney Rollins' leadership, her office is as active as it has ever been in going after the most serious crimes in Suffolk County.

But her excellence doesn't end there. District Attorney Rollins has demonstrated a commitment to working with law enforcement to advance community safety and build trust between the community and law enforcement officers. She and her office are a true partner for colleagues, and it is reflected in the coordination that they prioritize.

In June of 2020, she organized a key discussion with law enforcement executives from Greater Boston to have an open dialogue about policing practices in light of the racial reckoning that followed the murder of George Floyd. With her leadership, District Attorney Rollins and the law enforcement executives signed a letter committing to change and ensuring that there would be open communication on that topic.

District Attorney Rollins recognized the historic moment law enforcement was confronting in the wake of the Floyd murder, and she actively reached out to her law enforcement partners to show a united front in their commitment to justice. Rachael Rollins is proof that you can enforce laws and promote justice and that the community wants both.

As a result of this leadership, the Suffolk County law enforcement executives wrote a letter in support of her nomination to serve as U.S. attorney for the District of Massachusetts. In that letter, they highlighted the respect she has for the work they do to keep communities safe.

And in the wake of two incidents of hate against the Jewish community that occurred this summer, District Attorney Rollins led the response, using the resources of her office to investigate the incidents transparently and fully. She personally ensured that there would be a focus on this issue. She attended vigils for both events to ensure that there would be a commitment that was heard that the safety of the communities that had been directly impacted would be protected.

In a letter from the Anti-Defamation League of New England, it said of her actions: In the aftermath of the incidents . . . she demonstrated true allyship and solidarity with the affected communities. The importance of her commitment to this ideal cannot be overstated.

Rachael Rollins is a prosecutor at her core, but she also believes in restorative justice and is one of Massachusetts' greatest advocates for victims of crime. The local organizations that advocate for the rights of victims and their families--including Mothers for Justice & Equality, the Children's Advocacy Center of Suffolk County, the Boston Area Rape Crisis Center, and the Boston Medical Center's Violence Intervention Advocacy Program--all wrote letters in support of Rollins' nomination.

Mothers for Justice wrote that District Attorney Rollins' ``determination to bring [to justice] those who commit crimes against community is needed at the highest levels of Federal prosecution.''

The Children's Advocacy Center of Suffolk County describes her as ``a leader who clearly prioritizes the needs of children and families-- bringing an approach which is both victim-centered and squarely focused on offender accountability.''

District Attorney Rollins is clear-eyed in her commitment to justice--justice for victims, justice for families, justice for children, and justice for the communities that have not historically benefited from a system that has punished color, class, and creed. She is working to restore faith in the system by building a system that works for everyone.

Before she was district attorney, from 2007 to 2011, she served as assistant U.S. attorney for the District of Massachusetts. There she prosecuted civil and criminal cases, defended the Federal Government and Agencies in civil suits, and recovered damages for fraud and false claims submitted to the government.

Based on this record, she has the support of many law enforcement organizations and political leaders.

About District Attorney Rollins, a group of several current and former major city police wrote:

We do not always get along. In fact, we have disagreed

strongly on issues. What we can say is that she respects us

and the work we do to keep our communities safe. She can

admit when she is wrong. She can also be incredibly

persuasive when she is right. The constant throughout every

encounter we have is a mutual respect and a willingness to

learn from each other.

So, for my Republican colleagues, let me share the bottom line statistic: Crime is down in Boston. Despite the continued rise in crime nationwide in 2021, murders in Boston have dropped by one-third so far this year. According to data from the Boston Police Department, there have been 32 homicides in the first 9 months of 2021, down from 45 homicides this time last year. Murder is down in Boston. The city also saw a decrease in many types of violent crime, including domestic assault. Property crimes, such as auto thefts and burglary, are also down in the city of Boston during her tenure as our district attorney.

We know there is much more work to be done to ensure public safety and to promote justice, but under District Attorney Rollins' leadership, Boston is on the right trajectory.

Most of what we have heard from my Republican colleagues--in the committee hearing and out here on the floor--is simply untrue. Suffolk County District Attorney Rachael Rollins is a strong Black woman, committed to racial justice with a better record on crime than other old-school prosecutors, and it just plain scares them.

Her approach scares them because it is working in Boston. It can be a model for the rest of the country. Rachael Rollins is not soft on crime; she is smart on crime. Yes, District Attorney Rollins is a progressive prosecutor. But more importantly, she is an effective prosecutor. Her extensive law enforcement credentials and proven track record of reducing crime and supporting victims is clear, and it is undeniable. She is the right candidate for U.S. Attorney in Massachusetts, and Senator Warren and I deeply and proudly recommend her to the Senate for confirmation.

I have known District Attorney Rollins since she babysat for my brother's family. She is a dear friend and a loved friend, and I have been so fortunate to know her. And Massachusetts has been so fortunate to have her as one of our top law enforcement officials. She is one of the smartest, most effective, most respected leaders in the Commonwealth of Massachusetts, and her record proves that, unequivocally.

Despite the Republican effort to politicize her nomination and mischaracterize her record, I am confident that she will be confirmed as our next U.S. Attorney.

I urge all of my colleagues to vote yes on this discharge motion, as unnecessary as it should be, and to support the confirmation of Rachael Rollins as the next U.S. Attorney for the District of Massachusetts.

I yield the floor.

Mr. President, I am here on the Senate floor today to talk, once again, about the so-called Build Back Better legislation that the Democrats are trying to force through this system on a purely partisan basis under what is called reconciliation.

I strongly believe that this massive tax-and-spend bill is the wrong way to go. I think it is irresponsible, particularly at a time of high inflation, uncertain economic growth--driven a lot by the uncertainties around the new COVID concerns--and record levels of debt.

This is the ninth consecutive week that the Senate has been in session that I have come to the Senate floor to talk about specific reasons I believe the Build Back Better legislation is a bad deal for America.

As we have talked about before, this massive new spending bill represents the largest amount of spending of any legislation ever passed by the U.S. Congress. Now, the official score is something like $1.7 trillion. You could argue that the one that passed in March, the $1.9 trillion, was the largest one, and that this is the second largest one.

In fact, when you look at what is in it, a lot of the spending is, in effect, camouflaged, as has been said by the folks at Penn Wharton, who analyzed this. When you take into account the programs that are relatively popular and unlikely ever to be ended--like the child tax credit--or that are likely to continue, they are sunsetted in this legislation.

If they weren't sunsetted, the cost of the bill would go from about $1.75 trillion to about $4.5 trillion. One analysis from the Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget has it a little higher than that, but let's say it is $4.5 trillion. That would be, by far, the largest piece of legislation that would have ever passed the U.S. Congress.

Much of that spending is what is called stimulus spending--adding to the demand side of the economy, adding to inflation. Remember, inflation is demand chasing supply. If there is not enough supply and there is more demand, you have inflation. That is what many of us predicted would happen with the $1.9 trillion legislation. Unfortunately, that is exactly what happened.

So, once again, at a time of devastating high inflation already, record debt, and so much uncertainty on COVID and the possible need for more Federal resources there with regard to COVID, massive new spending--it seems to me right now--is the wrong thing to do.

On the revenue side, the massive tax increases are also irresponsible, in my view, and not well thought out.

Today, I would like to focus on one new tax increase proposal in particular, and this is the Democrats' plan to propose a new 15-percent minimum tax on the domestic side. They call it the minimum book tax. It is not a tax on books; it is a tax on companies and on workers and on pensions, which we will talk about, based on the financial statement. It is not based on income as we traditionally think about it or as the Tax Code traditionally defines it, but it relies on so-called book value, and it has several negative consequences that I want to talk about today.

The new book tax, if it were to be put into effect, would drive inflation even higher. It would discourage investment in key sectors of the economy, and it would jeopardize the state of businesses that provide pension funds for their employees.

The book tax proposal is, essentially, a new corporate alternative tax. But, again, it taxes the adjusted financial statement income of a large corporation, not its IRS tax analysis; and that is the income that might be reported to, let's say, the SEC through a Form 10-K.

This makes it very different than the existing corporate income tax, which is determined based on the income that these companies report to the IRS. Because these two taxes are calculated using very different base amounts, the 15-percent book tax can end up being a lot larger for companies than the 21-percent income tax.

The line that you will likely hear from some of my colleagues on the other side of the aisle is that this tax is designed to make big companies pay their fair share of taxes because it only applies to companies with a 3-year average adjusted book income of more than $1 billion, but studies from the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office, the Tax Foundation, and more show that it is actually the workers who bear the brunt of these types of taxes in the form of lower wages, lower benefits, lost jobs, and higher prices. I am also hearing about a number of specific unintended, perhaps, consequences, and I am certain there will be others as well.

Let's start with its effect on workers' retirements. Under this proposal, a qualifying company ends up paying a new tax on certain investment gains, potentially due to just a change in interest rates, in their employees' pension funds. So this is a new tax. Right now, if the pension fund has an income gain, that would not be taxed, but under this proposal, it would be--under the book tax proposal. So it is basically a tax on the pensions.

First, these gains shouldn't result in a tax to the company at all. Companies do not have access to these pension investments. They sit in a segregated account. Companies can't touch them nor should they be able to touch them. Obviously, they make money for the retirement accounts of the employees. That is the whole idea. For good reason, pension funds should be invested, and they should grow over time because it benefits the workers to strengthen their retirement security.

Second, companies could be forced to pay more in taxes on the pension gains than the company makes in actual profits.

Let's take an established company, and I can tell you some of them have contacted us with specific examples of this, but they tend to be companies that are pretty well established because they have pretty big pension plans.

If you have an established company with a large pension plan, let's say that company makes a profit of 100 million bucks in a year. They could see their long-running pension fund gain a lot more than that-- say, $2 billion--over that same period.

So, under this tax plan, that company would have to pay a 15-percent tax on that $2 billion in pension income, or about $300 million on top of any normal income taxes. That business then has to make a tough choice because, remember, the business has only made $100 billion in profit, and you have a tax bill of $300 million because of your pension income.

Are you going to go bankrupt? Are you going to take out loans to pay these taxes?

This is money that would otherwise be invested in people, in plants, equipment, in our economy. Instead, it is going toward paying a potentially large tax that is entirely counterproductive.

Third, of course, is that it discourages companies from investing in their workers' retirements. Having more invested in pension plans is good for workers. I think we should encourage employers to do the right thing, and that is to have a defined benefit plan. There are fewer of them these days. Of those that are left, we don't want to drive employers out of those, in my view.

By the way, that is the view of almost all of my colleagues, I think, on the other side of the aisle and certainly a lot of union members who have these pensions. Let's not forget that this tax could threaten the retirement of tens of thousands of union and nonunion workers alike.

But this tax proposal doesn't just jeopardize pensions; it could have a significant negative impact on how industries, particularly manufacturers, invest in growing their operations. According to data from the nonpartisan Joint Committee on Taxation, the manufacturing sector leads all other sectors in the economy when it comes to the use of what is called bonus depreciation. That is where you get to have an immediate writeoff if you expand, again, plant or equipment.

That is something that was part of the 2017 tax legislation. It has been very helpful to help grow the economy, very important to retailers, very important to hospitality, and very important, of course, to manufacturers, who lead the way in terms of taking this deduction. It allows them to quickly and affordably invest in equipment, in new machinery, leading to higher productivity, leading to more jobs--what economists think is the most important thing we can do right now in our economy, which is to grow the supply side of our economy.

Under this new book tax the Democrats are proposing, that deduction would not be able to be paid, as it is now, immediately as bonus depreciation but, rather, it would have to be paid over a longer period of time, making these critical investments a lot less likely and leading to fewer new hires and lower productivity.

By the way, less investment in capital assets, of course, puts more pressure on inflation because it increases on the demand side of the economy if you don't do it. If you do it, it would increase on the supply side. So you want to encourage investments in capital assets. That is good because it helps in terms of the supply side.

So this bill has stimulus spending, as we talked about, on the spending side, and more demand and lower investment is exactly the opposite of what we ought to be doing in terms of countering inflation.

Taking a broader view, both of these immediate negative impacts on the economy and workers--the taxes on pension funds and less financial incentive for investment--are going to lead to higher prices for consumers, which also increases inflation.

It is even worse. From what I am hearing, some of the biggest sponsors of pension plans are logistics and delivery companies. I hope my colleagues are talking to these same companies that are reaching out to talk to us. To pay for these additional costs, particularly the pension costs, they have told us they are likely going to have to increase costs, reduce customer services, and suspend investment in new technology. These are logistics companies. At a time when many Americans are already experiencing inflation and supply chain bottlenecks, this is exactly the wrong prescription.

The book tax proposal is just one of a lot of policies in this reconciliation bill that I think would be bad for the economy and bad for workers. Maybe these specific problems we talked about today were just overlooked in the rush to produce a bill without going through any of the normal committee processes, including the Finance Committee, which hasn't looked at this--those issues would have emerged, I am sure, had the Ways and Means Committee and the Finance Committee had the opportunity to review it and to analyze it--or maybe the plan is to just overwhelm the American people with so many dramatic changes to our Tax Code that they won't notice how irresponsible any single one might be. Whatever the case, it is clear that this book tax has not been properly vetted.

It is time for Congress to slow down this process so that we can properly understand the consequences of these policies on the American people. These massive tax-and-spend proposals are bad for the economy, certainly bad for inflation, bad for business, and most importantly, bad for workers and their jobs.

I yield the floor.