A resolution relative to Senate procedure in the 117th Congress.

I ask for the yeas and nays, Mr. President.

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

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 President, I ask unanimous consent that the order for the quorum call be rescinded.

Mr. President, as I understand it, there are discussions underway, and so I ask unanimous consent that the Senate recess until 12:30 p.m.

Mr. President, so now as we move to another matter, I am advised that the House managers have no objection to the admission of evidence proposed to be admitted by the former President's counsel under the provisions of section 8 of S. Res. 47 and that the President's counsel have no objections to the evidence proposed to be admitted into evidence by the House managers.

Pursuant to section 8 of the resolution, as agreed to by Leader McConnell and myself a few days ago, both parties have made timely filings of this evidence with the Secretary of the Senate and have provided copies to each other. I, therefore, ask unanimous consent that the Senate dispense with the provisions of section 8(a) of S. Res. 47; and that the materials submitted by both parties be admitted into evidence subject to the provisions of section 8(c) of that resolution, which provides that the admission of this evidence does not constitute a concession by either party as to the truth of the matters asserted by the other party; and that each Senator shall decide for him or herself the weight to be given such evidence. This request has the approval of both parties and the Republican leader.

Proceed.

Counsels' Closing Arguments

Mr. Counsel VAN DER VEEN. I will promise that I will be the only one talking, and it will not be so long.

Before I start my prepared closing, I really want to clean up a few things from the mess that was the closing of the House managers. I do not want to ruin my closing because I think the ending is pretty good.

What they didn't--they started off by misstating the law, and they started off by misstating the intent of our stipulation. What we did today was stipulate to an article that was published in a magazine, apparently, they have had for weeks, according to the documents they produced today, but for some reason this morning popped up with it.

The stipulation was that they can put that in. We did not stipulate to its contents for truthfulness, and they tried to portray that in their closing as the stipulation. The stipulation was read into the Record. The proponents of that conversation--the real ones--have denied its content, its veracity.

With respect to--and I am not going to talk much about the tortured analysis of our arson wars that started off or the truly sideways analogies that were used with fires. What I do want to talk about, though, is the doctoring of evidence.

First of all, they sent us their evidence on Tuesday the 9th at 2:32 p.m. by email. I was in the room trying the case already when they sent their evidence--due process.

They used evidence that was flat wrong two or three nights ago with Senator Lee and had to withdraw it. They tried to use it again today.

They tried to use evidence that they had never presented in the case in their closing argument. That is a very desperate attempt by a prosecuting team--nine of them--by a prosecuting team that knew that their case has collapsed.

Their closing did not mention one piece of law. They didn't talk about the Constitution once. They didn't talk about the First Amendment and its application. They didn't talk about due process and how it applies to this proceeding for my client.

The basic rule of any court is that when you close a case out, you close on the facts that were admitted in the trial. It is a basic, fundamental principle of due process and fairness. And that was violently breached today on multiple occasions. And you have to ask yourself why? Why did they resort to those tactics at this moment in time?

Senators, good afternoon. Mr. President.

What took place here at the U.S. Capitol on January 6 was a grave tragedy. Over the course of this trial, you have heard no one on either side of this debate argue that the infiltration of the Capitol was anything less than a heinous act on the home of American democracy.

All of us, starting with my client, are deeply disturbed by the graphic videos of the Capitol attack that have been shown in recent days. The entire team condemned and have repeatedly condemned the violence and law breaking that occurred on January 6 in the strongest possible terms. We have advocated that everybody be found and punished to the maximum extent of the law. Yet the question before us is not whether there was a violent insurrection of the Capitol. On that point, everyone agrees.

Based on the explicit text of the House Impeachment Article, this trial is about whether Mr. Trump willfully engaged in an incitement of violence and even insurrection against the United States, and that question they have posed in their Article of Impeachment has to be set up against the law of this country.

No matter how much truly horrifying footage we see of the conduct of the rioters and how much emotion has been injected into this trial, that does not change the fact that Mr. Trump is innocent of the charges against him.

Despite all of the video played, at no point in their presentation did you hear the House managers play a single example of Mr. Trump urging anyone to engage in violence of any kind. At no point did you hear anything that could ever possibly be construed as Mr. Trump encouraging or sanctioning an insurrection.

Senators, you did not hear those tapes because they do not exist, because the act of incitement never happened. He engaged in no language of incitement whatsoever on January 6 or any other day following the election.

No unbiased person honestly reviewing the transcript of Mr. Trump's speech on the Ellipse could possibly believe that he was suggesting violence. He explicitly told the crowd that he expected the protest outside the Capitol to be peaceful and patriotic.

They claim that is not enough.

His entire premise was that the proceedings of the joint session should continue. He spent nearly the entire speech talking about how he believes the Senators and Members of Congress should vote on the matter.

It is the words. The Supreme Court ruled in Brandenburg that there is a very clear standard for incitement. In short, you have to look at the words themselves. The words have to either explicitly or implicitly call for--the words--call for lawlessness or violence. Whether the speech--you have to determine whether the speech was intended to provoke the lawlessness and whether the violence was the likely result of the word itself. They fail on all three prongs.

The false and defamatory claim that Mr. Trump gave a speech encouraging his supporters to go attack the Capitol has been repeated so often, uncritically, without any examination of the underlying facts, that the American--the Americans--listening at home were probably surprised to learn it is not true.

Furthermore, some of the people in this room followed Mr. Trump's statements and tweets in the weeks leading up to January 6 very closely. We know that he was not trying to foment an insurrection during the time because no one--from the Speaker of the House to the Mayor of Washington, DC--behaved in a fashion consistent with the belief that violence was being advocated for.

Mr. Trump did not spend the weeks prior to January 6 inciting violence. He spent those weeks pursuing his election challenge through the court system and other legal procedures, exactly as the Constitution and the Congress prescribe.

To believe based on the evidence you have seen that Mr. Trump actually wanted and, indeed, willfully incited an armed insurrection to overthrow the U.S. Government would be absurd.

The gathering on January 6 was supposed to be an entirely peaceful event. Thousands and thousands of people, including Mr. Trump, showed up that day with that intention. A small percentage--a small fraction of those people--then engaged in truly horrible behavior. But as we now know, that those actors were preplanned and premeditated and acted even before this speech was completed, to which is the basis of the Article of Impeachment. It was preplanned and premeditated by fringe--left and right--groups. They hijacked the event for their own purposes.

The House managers' false narrative is a brazenly dishonest attempt to smear, to cancel--constitutional canceled culture--their No. 1 political opponent, taking neutral statements, commonplace political rhetoric, removing words and facts from context

and ascribing to them the most sinister and malevolent intentions possible.

Their story was based not on evidence but on the shear personal and political animus.

The flimsy theory of incitement you heard from the House managers could be used to impeach, indict, or expel countless other political leaders. Many leading figures in other parties have engaged in far more incendiary and dangerous rhetoric, and we played some of them. I am not going to replay it. I am not going to replay you the words. You all saw the evidence. I am not going to replay mob scenes. I don't want to give those people another platform, any more view from the American people as to what they did. They should be canceled.

Democrat politicians spent months prior to January 6 attacking the very legitimacy of our Nation's most cherished institutions and traditions. They didn't just question the integrity of one election; they challenged the integrity of our entire Nation--everything from our Founding Fathers, our Constitution, the Declaration of Independence, law enforcement officers, and the United States Military. They said that our society was rooted in hatred. They even said that America deserved--and I will quote--``a reckoning.''

As you heard yesterday, throughout the summer, Democrat leaders, including the current President and Vice President, repeatedly made comments that provided moral comfort to mobs attacking police officers. During that time, many officers across the country were injured. As we all know, two sheriff's deputies in Los Angeles were ambushed and shot at point-blank range.

Members of this very body have been in danger. Senators from Maine to Kentucky, and most points in between, have been harassed by mobs.

Last August, a menacing leftwing mob swarmed Senator Rand Paul and his wife as they left the White House, and they had to be rescued by police.

For months, our Federal courthouse in Portland was placed under siege by violent anarchists who attacked law enforcement officers daily and repeatedly and tried to set fire to the building.

Speaker Pelosi did not call the violent siege of the Federal building an insurrection. She called the Federal agents protecting the courthouse ``stormtroopers.''

The White House complex was besieged by mobs that threw bricks, rocks, and bottles at Secret Service agents, set fire to a historic structure, and breached a security fence to infiltrate the Treasury grounds.

When my client's administration sent in the National Guard to secure the Nation's Capital City amidst the violence, Democrat leaders demanded that the forces be withdrawn.

The Washington, DC, Mayor said the presence of the National Guard was an affront to the safety of the District. It must be fully investigated whether political leadership here in Washington, DC, took an inadequate and irresponsible force posture on January 6 because of their commitment to the false narrative of what happened last June.

Hopefully we can all now agree that the administration acted properly by taking action to stop a riotous mob, establishing an appropriate security perimeter, and preventing the White House from potentially being overrun.

The House managers argued this week that an alleged brief delay in issuing a public statement from Mr. Trump on January 6 was somehow evidence that he committed incitement or supported the violence. Yet for months last year Joe Biden and Vice President Harris and countless other Democrats repeatedly refused to condemn the extremists as riots were occurring daily, as businesses were being ramshackled, as neighborhoods were being burned, as bombs were exploding. They repeatedly refused to tell their violent supporters to stand down.

Some even suggested that the mobs' actions were justified. Vice President Harris literally urged her followers to donate money to a fund to bail out the violent, extreme rioters so that they could get out and continue to do it over and over again. She later said that those folks were not going to let up and that they should not.

All of this was far closer to the actual definition of ``incitement'' than anything President Trump has ever said or done, never mind what he said on the 6th. It is a hypocrisy. It is a hypocrisy that the House managers have laid at the feet of this Chamber.

The House managers suggested that this recent history is irrelevant to the current proceedings, but not only is Democrats' behavior surrounding last year's riots highly relevant as precedent and not only does it reveal the dishonesty and insincerity of this entire endeavor, it also provides crucial context that should inform our understanding of the events that took place on January 6.

Many of the people who infiltrated the Capitol took pictures of themselves and posted them on social media. To some, it seems, they thought that it was all a game. They apparently believed that violent mobs, destruction of property, rioting, assaulting police, and vandalizing historic treasures was somehow now acceptable in the United States. Where might they have gotten that idea? I would suggest to you that it was not from Mr. Trump. It was not Mr. Trump. It was not anyone in the Republican Party that spent the 6 months immediately prior to the Capitol assault giving rhetorical aid and comfort to mobs, making excuses for rioters, celebrating radicalism, and explaining that angry, frustrated, and marginalized people were entitled to blow off steam like that.

Let me be very clear. There can be no excuse for the depraved actions of the rioters here at the Capitol or anywhere else across this country. One hundred percent of those guilty of committing crimes deserve lengthy prison sentences for their shameful and depraved conduct. But this trial has raised the question about words, actions, and consequences.

As a nation, we must ask ourselves, how did we arrive at this place where rioting and pillaging would become commonplace? I submit to you that it was month after month of political leaders and media personalities, bloodthirsty for ratings, glorifying civil unrest and condemning the reasonable law enforcement measures that are required to quell violent mobs.

Hopefully we can all leave this Chamber in uniform agreement that all rioting--all rioting--is bad and that law enforcement deserves our respect and support. That has been Mr. Trump's position from the very beginning.

The real question in this case is, Who is ultimately responsible for such acts of mayhem and violence when they are committed? The House Democrats want two different standards--one for themselves and one for their political opposition.

They have carried out a grossly unconstitutional effort to punish Mr. Trump for protected First Amendment speech. It is an egregious violation of his constitutional rights. Since he uttered not a single word encouraging violence, this action can only be seen as an effort to censor disfavored political speech and discriminate against a disapproved viewpoint. It is an unprecedented action with the potential to do grave and lasting damage to both the Presidency and the separation of powers and the future of democratic self-government.

Yesterday we played you a video of countless Democrat Members of the Senate urging their supporters to fight. We showed you those videos not because we think you should be forcibly removed from office for saying those things but because we know you should not be forcibly removed from office for saying those things. But recognize the hypocrisy

Yesterday in questioning, House Manager Raskin admitted that the House Democrats had invented an entirely new legal standard. In fact, they have created a new legal theory: the Raskin doctrine. The Raskin doctrine is based on nothing more than determining protected speech based on the party label next to your name. Regardless of what you have heard or what you have seen from the House managers, if you pay close attention, you will see that any speech made by Democrat elected officials is protected speech, while any speech made by Republican elected officials is not protected.

The creation of the Raskin doctrine actually reveals the weakness of the House managers' case. Elected officials--and we reviewed this in- depth yesterday--under Supreme Court precedent Wood and Bond--by the way,

Bond didn't burn his draft card; he actually still had it. It was part of his defense. But in Bond and in Wood, the Court clearly directed all to know that elected officials hold the highest protections of speech, the highest protections, and I remind you why: because you all need to be free to have robust political discussion because your discussion is about how our lives are going to go, and that shouldn't be squelched by any political party on either side of the aisle, no matter who is the majority party at the time.

Why would the House managers make up their own legal standard? I will tell you why. Because they know they cannot satisfy the existing constitutional standard set forth by the United States Supreme Court that has existed for more than half a century. They argue Mr. Trump, as an elected official, has no First Amendment rights. It is the complete opposite of the law. We have shown you, without contradiction, that is wrong.

They also know that they cannot satisfy the three-part test of Brandenburg, as elucidated in the Bible Believers case.

There was absolutely no evidence that Mr. Trump's words were directed to inciting imminent lawless action. There was no evidence that Mr. Trump intended his words to incite violence. And the violence was preplanned and premeditated by a group of lawless actors who must be prosecuted to the fullest extent of the law, but it proves that his words weren't what set this into motion, what was the incitement.

With no ability and no evidence to satisfy the existing constitutional standard, what are the House managers to do? They had to make up their own law. This is not only intellectually dishonest, folks; it is downright scary.

What type of precedent would be set if the Senate did vote to convict? Can Congress now ignore Supreme Court precedent on the contours of protected free speech? Will Congress be permitted to continually make up their own legal standards and apply those new standards to elected officials' speech? This would allow Congress to use the awesome impeachment power as a weapon to impeach their fellow colleagues in the opposing party. This is not a precedent that this Senate can set here today.

If the Senate endorses the House Democrats' absurd new theory, you will set a precedent that will trouble leaders from both parties literally for centuries to come, but that will not be the only disgraceful precedent to come from this case.

This has been perhaps the most unfair and flagrantly unconstitutional proceeding in the history of the United States Senate. For the first time in history, Congress has asserted the right to try and punish a former President who is a private citizen. Nowhere in the Constitution is the power enumerated or implied. Congress has no authority, no right, and no business holding a trial of Citizen Trump, let alone a trial to deprive him of some fundamental civil rights.

There was mention of a January exception argument. The January exception argument is a creation of the House managers' own conduct by delaying. They sat on the Article. They could have tried the President while he was still in office if they really believed he was an imminent threat. They didn't. The January exception is a red herring. It is nonsense because Federal, State, and local authorities can investigate. Their January exception always expires on January 20.

House Democrats and this deeply unfair trial have shamefully trampled every tradition, norm, and standard of due process in a way I have never ever seen before. Mr. Trump was given no right to review the so- called evidence against him at trial. He was given no opportunity to question its propriety. He was given no chance to engage in factfinding.

Much of what was introduced by the House was unverified second- or thirdhand reporting cribbed from a biased news media, including stories based on anonymous sources whose identities are not even known to them, never mind my client. They manufactured and doctored evidence, so much so that they had to withdraw it.

We only had--we had the evidence after we started the trial. They went on for 2 days, so in the evening, I was able to go back and take a really close look at the stuff. Myself and Mr. Castor and Ms. Bateman and Mr. Brennan, we all worked hard and looked at the evidence, four volumes of books in little, tiny print. We started--we literally had 12, 14 hours to really look at the evidence before we had to go on, and just in that short time of looking at the evidence, we saw them fabricating Twitter accounts. We saw the masked man sitting at his desk with the New York Times there.

And when we looked closely, we found that the date was wrong; the check had been added. They fabricated evidence. They made it up. They never addressed that in their closing--as though it were acceptable, as though it were all right, as though that is the way it should be done here in the Senate of the United States of America. Fraud--flatout fraud. Where I come from, in the courts I practice in, there are very harsh repercussions for what they pulled in this trial.

As we have shown, the House managers were caught creating false representations of tweets, manipulating videos, and introducing into the Record completely discredited lies, such as the ``fine people'' hoax, as factual evidence.

Most of what the House managers have said and shown you would be inadmissible in any respectable court of law. They were not trying a case; they were telling a political tale--a fable--and a patently false one at that.

House Democrats have denied due process and rushed the impeachment because they know that a fair trial would reveal Mr. Trump's innocence of the charges against him. The more actual evidence that comes out, the clearer it is that this was a preplanned and premeditated attack, which his language in no way incited.

Because their case is so weak, the House managers have taken a kitchen-sink approach to the supposedly single Article of Impeachment. They allege that Mr. Trump incited the January 6 violence. They allege that he abused power by attempting to pressure Georgia Secretary of State Raffensperger to undermine the results of the 2020 election, and they allege that he gravely endangered the democratic system by interfering with the peaceful transition of power. There are at least three things there.

Under the Senate rules, each of these allegations must have been alleged in a separate Article of Impeachment. I need not remind this Chamber that rule XXIII of the Rules of Procedure and Practice in the Senate when Sitting on Impeachment Trials provides, in pertinent part, that an Article of Impeachment ``shall not be divisible . . . thereon.''

Why is that? Because the Article at issue here alleges multiple wrongs in the single Article, it would be impossible to know if two- thirds of the Members agreed on the entire Article or just on parts of it as the basis for a vote to convict. Based on this alone, the Senate must vote to acquit Mr. Trump. You have got to at least obey your own rules if it is not the Constitution you are going to obey.

In short, this impeachment has been a complete charade from beginning to end. The entire spectacle has been nothing but an unhinged pursuit of a longstanding political vendetta against Mr. Trump by the opposition party.

As we have shown, Democrats were obsessed with impeaching Mr. Trump from the very beginning of his term. The House Democrats tried to impeach him in his first year. They tried to impeach him in his second year. They did impeach him in his third year. And they impeached him again in his fourth year. And now they have conducted a phony impeachment show trial when he is a private citizen out of office.

This hastily orchestrated and unconstitutional circus is the House Democrats' final, desperate attempt to accomplish their obsessive desire of the last 5 years.

Since the moment he stepped into the political arena, my client-- since my client stepped in, they have been possessed by an overwhelming zeal to vanquish an independent-minded outsider from their midst and to shame, demean, silence, and demonize his supporters in the desperate hope that they will never, ever pose an electoral challenge.

We heard one of the Congressmen on the screen: If you don't impeach him, he might be elected again.

That is the fear. That is what is driving this impeachment.

When you deliberate over your decision, there are four distinct grounds under which you must acquit my client.

First is jurisdiction. There is no jurisdiction. And if you believe that, you still get to say it.

Two, rule XXIII--it had to be divisible. Each allegation had to be singularly set out in front of you so it could be voted on and to see if two-thirds of you think that they proved that case or not. They didn't do that. You have got to ask yourself why. They know the Senate rules. They got them, and so did I. Why did they do it? Because they hadn't investigated, first of all. But, also, what they found out is when they were preparing all this, they couldn't do it. So if they threw in as much as they could and made as many bold, bald allegations as they could, then maybe two-thirds of you would fall for it. That is why the rules don't allow it to go that way.

Due process--I have exhausted that subject. It is a really good reason for all of you--all of you--in this Chamber to stop the politics, to read the Constitution and apply it to this proceeding and acknowledge that the lack of due process--way over the top, shocking. And you must not stand for it.

And, of course, the First Amendment--the actual facts of this case. There were no words of incitement.

Four grounds. Nobody gets to tell you which ground to pick, and nobody gets to tell you how many grounds to consider.

Senators, do not let House Democrats take this maniacal crusade any further. The Senate does not have to go down this dark path of enmity and division. You do not have to indulge the impeachment lust, the dishonesty, and the hypocrisy.

It is time to bring this unconstitutional political theater to an end. It is time to allow our Nation to move forward. It is time to address the real business pressing this Nation--the pandemic, our economy, racial inequality, economic and social inequality. These are the things that you need to be thinking and working on for all of us in America--all of us.

With your vote, you can defend the Constitution. You can protect due process. And you can allow America's healing to begin. I urge the Senate to acquit and vindicate the Constitution of this great Republic.

Thank you.

Mr. President, the Senate is now ready to vote on the Article of Impeachment. And after that is done, we will adjourn the Court of Impeachment.

Mr. President, I send an order to the desk.

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

Madam President, my friend and colleague Senator Manchin from West Virginia and I are on the floor today to talk about this issue of fentanyl.

This is a deadly synthetic opioid that is killing more people in our States than any other single drug. Unbelievably, Congress has only 15 days to act, and if we don't, some of these illegal fentanyl products are going to be legal again. This is exactly the wrong thing for us to do right now as, sadly, we are seeing a big increase in overdoses and overdose deaths because of the effects of the coronavirus pandemic.

We want to have bipartisan legislation that we have introduced, passed, that simply says: Let's not allow these illicitly manufactured and deadly synthetic opioids to suddenly become legal again.

If we don't act within 15 days, that will happen. Our bill would ensure that these deadly drugs continued to be scheduled--that is the technical term--scheduled by the Drug Enforcement Agency, meaning they would continue to be illegal.

Here is why we have to act. Fentanyl, a synthetic opioid, is more than 15 times more powerful than heroin, and it is incredibly addictive. For years, this has been coming to our shores from China, almost all of it through the mail until recently because we, frankly, passed legislation to cut down on mail deliveries, and instead, now much is coming through Mexico, across our southwest border.

It is a big reason overdose deaths in the United States surged to record highs during this COVID-19 pandemic, with more than 87,000 Americans--think about that--87,000 Americans died during the 12-month period between September 2019 and September 2020. That is a record. It is a terrible record.

When we have the actual numbers from 2020, it is going to be even worse. We just got these numbers from September 2019 until September 2020. When we have the numbers from January 2020 through December 2020, it will be even worse. That is what everybody says, and it makes sense. When you look at this data, the worst months are the months during the pandemic in 2020.

Again, we are very sadly, after several years of progress, looking at once again an increase in these overdose deaths. According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, CDC, synthetic opioids like fentanyl are the biggest drivers of this tragic surge. We can project that more than half of these deaths are from this class of drug based on what we know from the 2019 data. That is the latest information we have. In 2019, there were 70,630 deaths, and more than half of those-- 36,359--involved fentanyl. Experts believe that fentanyl, sometimes mixed with other drugs like cocaine or crystal meth or sometimes heroin, continues to be the No. 1 killer.

It is such an enormous crisis because these drugs are so incredibly dangerous. It takes only 2 milligrams of fentanyl to kill an adult, which is why the DEA, Drug Enforcement Administration, permanently classified fentanyl as a schedule II drug.

In order to avoid prosecution, drug traffickers started making slight modifications to fentanyl. You have some evil scientist in China or in Mexico who makes a slight modification to fentanyl, sometimes adjusting a single molecule and creating what are called fentanyl analogs. In other words, it is not precisely pure fentanyl, and so unfortunately, although it has the same narcotic properties as fentanyl, these tiny variations allow these traffickers and these scientists to evade prosecution. Oftentimes, by the way, these analogs, like carfentanil, are even more deadly, believe it or not, than fentanyl itself.

In response, in 2018, the DEA temporarily scheduled fentanyl analogs, but under law, that designation expires after May 6--again, only 15 days from now. If that deadline lapses, evil scientists and criminals who run labs in China and Mexico will be able to avoid law enforcement as they flood the United States with unlimited slight variations of this deadly drug.

That is why Senator Manchin and I are calling on Congress to do the sensible thing: Pass the FIGHT Fentanyl Act to make these dangerous substances permanently illegal. That is what law enforcement wants, that is what our communities demand, and that is what we deserve to give them. It is long overdue that we make this designation permanent.

China, by the way, implemented classwide controls over fentanyl analogs in 2019. China's law defines fentanyl-related substances more broadly than the U.S. Government defines fentanyl-related substances. How ironic. Here is China, a country sending us this poison and actually making these drugs illegal in China, and they are not illegal here. How could that be?

I know some colleagues oppose permanent scheduling of these fentanyl drugs because they are concerned about mandatory minimum sentences and also that it could hinder research into future medications to treat addiction. Let me address both of those.

First, I share this concern about the harsh punishments that don't fit the nature of the crime. That is why our legislation ensures that mandatory minimum sentences are not automatically imposed. In any criminal case, we want the judge to look at the severity of the crime and consider all relevant factors in sentencing. So that issue is addressed.

There has been a great deal of conversation about the impact of prosecutions and incarcerations on specific populations, including minority communities, but what is often lost in this debate is the growing impact of fatal overdoses in these same communities.

Since 2016, while White fatalities decreased through 2019--the data we have--overdoses from opioids among Black Americans, particularly Black men, have actually accelerated. From 2011 to 2016, Black Americans had the highest increase in synthetic opioid-involved overdose death rates compared to all populations. So it is getting worse, not better, in these same minority communities.

While from 2017 to 2018, overall opioid-involved overdose fatalities decreased--remember we were making progress for the last several years. Overall, it decreased by just over 4 percent. Rates among Black and Hispanic Americans actually increased.

Another issue my colleagues have raised, again, is concern that permanently scheduled fentanyl and its analogs somehow hinders research in treating addiction. First of all, I agree that we need this research and need it badly. One example of this is coming up with naloxone, a miracle drug based on heroin that actually reverses the effects of overdose. It is a miracle. I have seen it work, and it saves lives.

Researchers have told me there are barriers to being approved to legally research schedule I substances. There is also a stigma to conducting this kind of research even though we know that it could lead to development of new treatments. I am open to working with colleagues to address these barriers, and I believe we can do that through legislation creating flexibility in the registration system for scientists. But we cannot let these deadly fentanyl drugs become legal in the meantime, and certainly we can't allow this to happen in the next 15 days.

Just before we came to the floor this afternoon, the House of Representatives passed a temporary measure. It is a 5-month extension of the ability to schedule these deadly drugs. Why would we do it for just 5 months? Let's do it permanently.

Now I am told: Well, we have a take-it-or-leave-it from the House. I hope that is not the case. If so, of course I will be for extending it rather than having it expire in 15 days. But let's act. Let's act responsibly. Let's act now.

The U.S. Senate should be taking the lead here in saying let's permanently classify these drugs, as everybody agrees they should be classified in the sense that they are dangerous narcotics that are killing literally tens of thousands of our fellow citizens every year.

Let's do the right thing for those communities. Let's do the right thing for law enforcement. Let's be sure they have the predictability and certainty in law enforcement to know that they can prosecute these criminals--these traffickers. We need to act now to address the threat of these deadly fentanyl drugs coming into our communities, and I urge the Senate to pass the FIGHT Fentanyl Act this week.

I yield the floor.

Mr. President, I welcome the Vice President, the President of the Senate, to our Chamber this evening.

I am here this evening to discuss the infrastructure plan that has been proposed by President Biden and the plan along with it for massive tax increases.

The Biden infrastructure plan totals a massive $2.3 trillion, but only about 20 percent of it actually goes towards funding anything that Members of either party have ever considered infrastructure. I support more infrastructure investment, as do, I believe, most if not all of my colleagues on both sides of the aisle.

The question is, What is infrastructure, and how do you pay for it? Roads and bridges, as an example in this proposal, are only about 5 percent of the plan. In fact, it provides more money for long-term care than it does for roads and bridges, more money for electric cars than it does for roads and bridges, and more money for schools and daycare than it does for roads and bridges. Many of these noninfrastructure ideas are worthy ones, and they should be debated and they should be considered but not as part of a self-described infrastructure bill, in part because the funding sources should be very different.

The price tag, $2.3 trillion--soon to be $2.7 trillion, we are told-- and also the scope of the bill are bad enough, but what I want to talk about tonight is the equally concerning way the Biden administration plans to pay for this massive new legislation. They want to pay for the bulk of it by completely reversing the progress we made

over the past few years in making America competitive again and making our workers competitive again.

In the 2 years before COVID-19, we saw record growth in jobs and wages, in large part thanks to the pro-growth policies we put in place through the 2017 tax cuts and reforms. The nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office has found that 70 percent of the savings from the 2017 corporate tax cuts went into workers' wages. Seventy percent, they say, went into workers' pockets. It is one reason that, leading up to the pandemic in February, a year and a couple of months ago, we had the 19th straight month--19th straight month--of wage growth of 3 percent or more annually. That was great news in my home State of Ohio. We hadn't had wage growth like that in over a decade, maybe two decades. Most of that benefit, by the way, went to middle and lower income workers--exactly what you want.

During that time period a couple of years before the pandemic hit, we tied the 50-year low in unemployment at 3.5 percent and had the lowest unemployment ever for Blacks and Hispanics. In fact, before the pandemic, we had reached the lowest poverty rate--10.5 percent--since we started recording this data back in 1959. It was the lowest poverty rate on record.

Importantly, tax reform also stopped these corporate inversions. You will remember this. Companies were actually becoming foreign companies so they could get from under our Tax Code. This made no sense. It was happening during the Obama administration and during the first year of the Trump administration. We also ended the so-called lockout effect, caused by a Tax Code that made it too expensive to bring foreign earnings back home. So people kept their earnings overseas. In fact, during those couple of years, the $1.6 trillion in overseas earnings has now come back home to invest and create jobs here--$1.6 trillion. We want that money here.

As a result of those changes, the largest U.S. companies increased domestic research and development spending by 25 percent to $707 billion, and capital expenditures went up by 20 percent to $1.4 trillion. The Biden plan would throw all of that positive progress out. It would change our competitiveness to put us back where we were before or worse.

The administration's corporate tax increase raises the combined Federal and State corporate rates from an average of 25.8 percent to 32.8 percent. It would put us, again, as having the highest rate in the developed world. These tax hikes, by the way, when you include the international tax hikes, are actually five times as large as the corresponding cuts in 2017, based on the analysis that has been done. By the way, this would also, of course, give us not just the highest tax rate among the developed countries but also a far higher tax rate than countries like China with whom we are trying to compete.

It also changes the international tax code to make it much more costly for U.S. companies to operate outside of the United States, punishing American workers who have jobs here supporting international sales. I use the example of Procter & Gamble in my hometown of Cincinnati. They are headquartered in Ohio, but they do business all over the world. They have told me that it will be far more expensive for them to do that, even uncompetitive for them to be working globally, because we will be the only developed country in the world that will charge them a tax to do that, and that will hurt the jobs in Cincinnati, OH, that support international sales.

It just doesn't make any sense. Why would we want to go back to that and have that lockout effect where profits are kept overseas and where companies actually become foreign companies?

In the Biden plan, it also eliminates the so-called foreign-derived intangible income provision. This was a carrot that we put in the law very deliberately, a carrot for companies to bring their intellectual property back here. By the way, that is what Google did. So did Cisco. So did Qualcomm. So did Synopsys. So did Facebook. They actually brought valuable intellectual property back home, creating high-paying high-tech jobs here in the United States of America. Why would we want to change that?

The bottom line is that this tax plan that has been proposed would make us uncompetitive again in the global economy, and the Biden administration knows it.

That is why, when Treasury Secretary Yellen announced the proposal to increase these taxes, she actually asked other countries around the world to raise their own corporate taxes. She pleaded with them: We are going to raise ours. You need to now raise your taxes.

Of course, when she said we need to do that to create a more level playing field, other countries in the world said: This is great. We are going to get more American investment and more business for our companies. In fact, right after she made that announcement, the Minister for Finance in Ireland was asked the question. He said he had no interest in joining America in raising taxes--nor do others. China is not going to raise its taxes. In fact, these countries are continuing to do what they have been doing, which is to knock down barriers to jobs and investment in their economies, and that makes sense from their points of view. It makes sense from our point of view to continue to be competitive also.

The tax increases would leave America standing alone atop the corporate tax rate chart. Studies by the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office and others have shown that, again, it is American workers who will bear the brunt of these corporate tax hikes in the form of lost jobs and lower wages.

Because of the tax hikes, the University of Pennsylvania's Penn Wharton model, in analyzing this Biden plan, actually projects that we will see a nearly 1-percent decrease in the GDP and a 0.7-percent decrease in wages by 2031 over current projections. Now, this is extraordinary to me because that is despite the economic benefit--the obvious benefit--we are going to get from this infrastructure spending. So, despite all of that benefit, we are still going to see a reduction in our economy, or economic growth, and a reduction in wages. This harms American workers, particularly those toward the bottom of the economic ladder.

The bottom line is that the $2.1 trillion tax hike used to pay for this infrastructure bill will harm middle-class families and our businesses, and I believe the American people get that. They recognize that this is not the way forward for our economy or for our infrastructure.

Instead, let's follow the proven bipartisan model on infrastructure. Let's keep the plan to real infrastructure. Let's agree to what it is. Let's do it generously. Let's include broadband. Let's include water projects. Let's make it real infrastructure, though. Then let's come up with sensible pay-fors, including user fees. That is what the American people want, and that is what they deserve.

I yield the floor.

Mr. President, reserving the right to object, it is ironic that I come to the floor to be with my friend, the chairman of the Intelligence Committee, with whom I have proudly served and with whom I have worked on many different projects within the intelligence community and the jurisdiction of that committee. But this is one where we clearly see things differently.

Mr. Olsen, for most of his career--and it has been a distinguished career--has operated as a nonpartisan public servant. But as Senator Grassley, ranking member on the Judiciary Committee, said at the time he had his hearing there, once the previous administration took office, it was like a switch got flipped and he turned into a partisan warrior.

Over the last few years, Mr. Olsen has made a series of serious ultrapartisan statements. Prior to the 2016 election, he said that ISIS supported Donald Trump for President. Following the election, he claimed that the electoral college should be abolished because it is a national security threat. He signed on to a number of letters hysterically criticizing then-Attorney General Barr and the Justice Department, and he failed to disclose these writings and other critical information to the Judiciary Committee during the hearing on his nomination.

I believe now, more than ever, it is absolutely critical that the Justice Department and our intelligence community operate free from political influence and bias. But I have no confidence that, if confirmed, Mr. Olsen's partisan switch will get flipped back off. I fear he will continue to pursue his political objectives from within the Department, using the powerful tools of the Department of Justice to pave the way for his partisan political agenda.

And lest anybody think these concerns are unprecedented or groundless, let me just point out that we now have a former lawyer with the FBI that has pled guilty for falsifying an application to the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court in the process of investigating an American citizen. He has now pled guilty and is now serving probation, a lawyer with the FBI who erroneously communicated information to the court with which they relied upon to issue a warrant to surveil an American citizen, using the powers of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court.

And then, just this last week, another lawyer has been indicted by Mr. Durham, the special counsel--somebody who has a distinguished career as a former Federal prosecutor and has worked at a prominent firm that typically represents the Democratic Party.

He now has been indicted for lying to the FBI, and it rises out of a conversation he had with a general counsel at the FBI, suggesting that there was some link between the Trump administration--or Trump organization and a criminal-linked Russian lender called Alfa Bank.

The indictment says that Michael Sussmann lied about the capacity in which he was providing this information to the FBI. But, in fact, what he did is prepare white papers using confidential information obtained from a technology client and fed that to the FBI while he claimed to be just a good citizen wanting to pass this information along when he was actually on the payroll of the Clinton campaign.

And, obviously, then talking to the press, leaking this narrative to the press, this has, I think, contributed to this false narrative of somehow that the Russians colluded with then-Candidate Trump in order to win the election. There has been no evidence at all, whether if you look at the inspector general report--Inspector General Horowitz--about the now debunked Steele dossier, which supposedly was the basis upon which the FBI opened their investigation.

So what we are talking about is people in positions of trust and confidence in the U.S. Government abusing their power, lying to the FBI, and lying to the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court in order to pursue a partisan political objective.

Now, I have no idea what Mr. Olsen would do, but I don't think we can take any risks, given the fact he has now turned into a partisan warrior. We have got ample examples of people who, perhaps against their better judgment, have thrown into this resistance attitude and simply forgotten their professional responsibilities. And when it comes to the intelligence community and national security, we don't need any more partisan warriors in these positions of trust. These should be nonpartisan professionals.

So I don't think Mr. Olsen has certainly satisfied me or many of my other colleagues that he can flip that partisan warrior switch off. For that reason, I object.

Mr. President.

Mr. President, what I was referring to earlier are examples of abuse of power by people in the U.S. Government who are in a position to do things to average citizens that, frankly, if they can do them to powerful individuals like candidates for President or our sitting officeholders, what is the little guy supposed to do?

If people are so blinded by their partisanship or their desire to get somebody that they violate their oath, they violate the law, and abuse power, what is the average man and woman supposed to do?

You know, it reminds me a little bit of the hearing that we had just a couple of days ago in the Judiciary Committee, where this monster named Larry Nassar, an Olympic physician for 18 years, systematically and routinely sexually assaulted and abused young female Olympic athletes.

And for years, these Olympic athletes tried to get the FBI to investigate their allegations against Dr. Nassar.

And it took an extended period of time--I think it was a year and a half--before the FBI actually undertook the investigation. But it took a couple of our colleagues--people like Senator Blumenthal from Connecticut, Senator Jerry Moran from Kansas--in order to stay on this issue until, finally, this monster, Dr. Nassar, was charged with crimes and convicted and now is going to serve in prison the rest of his life.

But it haunts me to think, if these elite Olympic athletes whose names are known all around the world could not get the government to respond to their assault and to do them justice, what chance do the rest of us have? I am not worried about Members of Congress; I am worried about my 29 million constituents.

And so the examples I gave of Mr. Clinesmith, who lied to the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court in order to get a warrant to illegally surveil an American citizen--that is an abuse of power that causes me very grave concern.

And when I read the indictment of Michael Sussman lying to the FBI about his connection to the Clinton campaign, while he compiled information that was confidential, gave it to the FBI, claimed to just be a good citizen and not representing any client, when in fact he was on the payroll of the Clinton campaign, and he was systematically leaking this information to the press to feed this narrative about Russian collusion--which has obsessed Congress and the country for years.

And now we know there is no factual basis for the allegations against then-Candidate Trump or then later President Trump. The Russian collusion narrative was not true, but it was fed by partisans who abused their power in order to gain politically.

So I don't know Mr. Olsen that well. Like I said, I know he has had a distinguished career. But something clearly snapped when he became a partisan lawyer. And I simply do not have confidence that he will not abuse his power in pursuit of his partisan aims.

There are better people that the President could nominate to serve in this sensitive position, and I will not, in good conscience, agree to simply allow somebody with this sort of track record to be confirmed.

And as my colleagues know, the majority leader has all the tools he needs at his disposal to have a vote on the Senate floor on this nomination. But it shouldn't be done by unanimous consent. It shouldn't be done outside of the public attention because there are so many things competing for people's attention. I think this is a debate and a conversation we need to have about powerful public officials abusing their power for partisan political gain.

What chance does the average American have if they will abuse that power to go after powerful public figures like a candidate for President or an incumbent President of the United States?

Mr. President, I would ask unanimous consent to complete my remarks before the vote.

Mr. President, our friends across the aisle are moving full steam ahead with what I think is fairly described as a reckless tax-and-spending spree, which is chock-full of unnecessary, unwarranted, and flatout unaffordable policies.

Remember that we had to spend a lot of money--borrowed money--during the COVID crisis, which we did on a bipartisan basis because it was a national--indeed, an international and global emergency.

But as we continue to get people vaccinated and put the pandemic in the rearview mirror, our colleagues simply want to continue spending money that we don't have to pursue their ideological and political agenda, to grow the government, to intrude more in people's lives, and to take more of what they earn rather than let them spend it as they see fit.

Our colleagues want to impose crippling tax hikes on job creators at a time when many of them are still digging out of the recession that was part of the pandemic. They want to dole out permanent welfare without requiring able-bodied men and women to work. They want to discourage medical innovation through price fixing and implement a range of items from their far-left wish list.

After charging nearly $2 trillion on the taxpayers' credit card earlier this year, our Democratic colleagues are back at it for round 2. And this time, they are going all out. That is especially true when it comes to the energy sector.

Over the past few years, we have seen no shortage of unrealistic and downright harmful policies to reduce carbon emissions. Now, there is a smart way to do it, and there is a self-defeating way to reduce emissions. One is to reduce the use of coal and increase the use of things like natural gas, which has much lower carbon content than coal. And we are doing that, and we have reduced emissions as a result.

But our colleagues have proposed everything from the socialist paradise that is the Green New Deal to more targeted but no more realistic net zero emission bills.

This reckless tax-and-spending spree compiles the most outlandish proposals into one of the greatest hits albums. The hallmark of this legislation is a full range of tax increases on the fossil fuel industry, which ultimately are passed along to consumers and contribute to inflation and the increased costs that they have to pay in order to fill up at the pump.

Whether we are talking about energy, agriculture, or any other industry, higher taxes always mean higher prices for consumers. It is inevitable.

Businesses can't just take the increases as a hit to their bottom line. They might raise taxes, lay off employees, postpone expansion plans, or implement all of the above, but that is exactly what this proposal would spur when it comes to the energy sector.

It increases taxes already paid by energy companies on income earned in the global marketplace and subjects energy employers to double taxation of their foreign income. It also adds a brand new tax, the Superfund excise tax, which was eliminated 25 years ago--all in pursuit of more revenue to grow the size of the government.

Our friends across the aisle want to resurrect this tax and force energy companies to pay more on every barrel of crude oil that is sold. Once again, the ultimate burden won't be on those companies. It will fall to consumers who are already struggling to keep up with inflation.

Gasoline prices are up 42 percent over last year. Natural gas is up 21 percent. Families in Texas are paying more on everything from electricity to groceries, to vehicles. This smorgasbord of higher taxes will only drive up costs for working families and hurt the very job creators we have been trying to help, over the last year and a half, dig out from under COVID-19.

You have to wonder, if these policies are going to hurt working Americans and the economy, who benefits? Well, for starters, our geopolitical adversaries will benefit. The higher cost on domestic crude would, once again, make the U.S. reliant on imports of oil and gas from overseas, from countries like Russia, Saudi Arabia, Iran, and Venezuela perhaps.

President Biden unintentionally demonstrated the hypocrisy of this approach when he pushed, earlier this year, to beg OPEC, the Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries, to increase production overseas to bring down oil prices here in the United States. In other words, he doesn't want American oil and gas producers to produce oil and gas. He wants the Russians and the Saudis to do it to help us bring down prices here in America.

It is just crazy. It makes no sense. If the President is worried about affordable energy, he needs to quit pushing policies that will drive up the cost for consumers at the pump.

Other big winners include wealthy electric vehicle drivers. The sort of subsidies that are contained in this proposed package includes a tax credit for electric vehicle purchases, even if these cars are made--you guessed it--in China. And it is subsidizing--it is taking middle-income taxpayers' money and giving it to people who are buying expensive cars because they are incentivized by the tax credit. Meanwhile, we have 280 million cars on the road in America that still depend on oil and gas in order to function because they have, yes, an internal combustion engine.

On top of that, a bigger tax credit is given to electric cars built in union shops. Now, why would you favor a political supporter like organized labor?

Well, I think the answer may be pretty obvious. Maybe union-built electric vehicles are more green than other electric vehicles or maybe it is a favor doled out to a special interest group by my friends on the other side, to a political constituency.

As a reminder, unlike gas-powered vehicle drivers, EV drivers don't even pay anything for the highways that they drive their car on. They don't pay into the highway trust fund, which comes out of the cost of a gallon of gas, to help maintain our roads and bridges.

So our friends across the aisle just keep on coming with tax breaks for the well-off and the well-to-do in a way that will burden hard- working Texans and Americans.

I support efforts to reduce carbon emissions to preserve our air, land, and water for future generations, but these efforts shouldn't pick winners and losers, especially when wealthy Americans are reaping the benefits at the cost of blue-collar workers.

Like the rest of the reckless tax-and-spending spree proposal, the cost of this energy proposal far exceeds any benefit. It will drive up costs for American families, hurt our global competitiveness, ultimately hurt our allies that depend on exported LNG to provide energy diversity, and it will empower our adversaries.

So there is no reason to stick taxpayers with the bill for these unnecessary policies when there are better ways to keep costs for consumers low while protecting our environment.

I yield the floor.

Mr. President, I would like to ask the Chair for clarification. It is my understanding there is 4 hours of debate, evenly divided between the Democrats and Republicans, on the discharge petition.

And either side can yield back; is that correct?

Thank you.

Mr. President, let me be the first to rise today on our side and say that I am in strong support of the nomination of Vanita Gupta to be the Associate Attorney General.

The Justice Department has not had a Senate-confirmed Associate Attorney General in over 3 years because President Trump never put forward a nominee. The No. 3 position in the Department of Justice has been virtually vacant of a Senate-confirmed nominee for 3 years.

That position, by definition, oversees the Department's civil litigation components. This is no small deal. It is a big deal. The Department of Justice needs and deserves to have full leadership in place.

Vanita Gupta will be the first woman of color and the very first civil rights attorney to serve as Associate Attorney General. This historic nominee is also exceptionally well qualified. She is a veteran of the Justice Department. She has a proven record of working across political and ideological lines to uphold the rule of law in a nonpartisan fashion. I don't believe President Biden could have picked a better nominee.

Vanita Gupta first joined the Justice Department shortly after the shooting death of Michael Brown by a police officer in Ferguson, MO. I remember it. I am sure many of my colleagues do as well. It was a difficult moment for many. As the head of the Department's Civil Rights Division, Ms. Gupta worked closely with all of the stakeholders involved in police reform: community leaders, civil rights leaders, and law enforcement.

Not only did Ms. Gupta implement meaningful reforms in Ferguson, MO, and other cities, but she did so by helping to repair the relationship between law enforcement and the communities they serve. Can you think of a better qualification at this moment in time in our history?

Sadly, in recent days, our Nation has been rocked by controversial police shootings. Vanita Gupta is exactly the type of person we need at the Justice Department at this very moment. One strong piece of evidence is the incredibly broad range of support her nomination has received. When you say the words ``civil rights lawyer,'' you say, ``Oh, way off on the left. I will bet she is out of touch with reality.''

Not so. It is not just the civil rights groups that support her. Her nomination has the support of virtually every major law enforcement organization in the country. I want to repeat that because in the ensuing several hours, when we will discuss the discharge of her nomination, there will be assertions made which do not acknowledge the obvious.

Vanita Gupta has the support of virtually every major law enforcement organization in the country, including the Fraternal Order of Police, the National Sheriffs' Association, the Major Cities Chiefs Association, and the International Association of Chiefs of Police, just to name a few.

I can read numerous quotes from law enforcement groups praising Ms. Gupta. I am going to read one. In a letter to the Senate, David Mahoney, President of the National Sheriffs' Association, said:

``I strongly believe that Ms. Gupta is exactly the type of leader who is needed in the Justice Department today. She possesses immense credibility among law enforcement leaders and community leaders.''

Immense credibility, with both law enforcement and community leaders. Isn't that exactly the type of person we need in the Department of Justice at this moment in history?

It comes as no surprise when you look back on her background. Throughout her career, Ms. Gupta has worked across the partisan divide, forming broad coalitions to get things done when people said it was impossible. A great example of this is criminal justice reform. Over a number of years, Vanita Gupta partnered with numerous conservatives-- certifiable, reported conservatives. Let me give you a couple names: Grover Norquist; Mark Holden, the former general counsel of Koch Industries.

These efforts helped lay the groundwork for the passage of the FIRST STEP Act, a bill which I worked on with Senator Grassley, Senator Lee, Senator Whitehouse, Senator Cornyn, a number of Democrats, Cory Booker included. We put together a bipartisan bill, signed into law by the President of the United States.

Vanita Gupta was part of that effort. She knew how to put Republicans and Democrats at the table and come up with a reasonable compromise. Isn't that exactly what we need at this moment in history?

The Judiciary Committee has received so many letters from Republicans supporting Ms. Gupta's nomination that I only have time to scratch the surface. Former Republican Congressman Tom Coleman, whom I served with in the House, put it very well. He represented Missouri's Sixth Congressional District for 16 years. He understood the challenge of Ferguson, and he understands the record of Vanita Gupta. Here is what he wrote: ``Ms. Gupta is a person who seeks the common good, without concern for partisan gamesmanship.''

He added: ``I urge you, my former colleagues, to recognize the truth with respect to Vanita Gupta: She is an ideal public servant. She possesses wisdom and an ability to work across partisan lines.''

Ms. Gupta has spent her career fighting to uphold the rule of law, almost always on behalf of those who had little power or little money. In her previous tenure at the Justice Department, Vanita Gupta undertook critically important work. In addition to police reform, she led efforts to prosecute human trafficking, combat religious discrimination, and protect the rights of servicemembers to ensure that they didn't have to be worried about being taken advantage of financially while they were protecting our Nation.

More recently, during her tenure at the Leadership Conference on Civil and Human Rights, Ms. Gupta led initiatives on voting rights, criminal justice reform, and the census.

Ms. Gupta began her career as a civil rights lawyer with the NAACP Legal Defense and Educational Fund. One of the first matters she worked on as a young attorney involved nearly 40 wrongfully convicted individuals in the small town of Tulia, TX. The individuals who had been wrongfully convicted were almost all African Americans, and they had been convicted of drug charges based solely on the false testimony of one corrupt, blatantly racist undercover police officer.

How about walking into that situation, trying to resolve that situation. She did. Despite being completely innocent, these individuals were sitting in jail, and their appeals had been rejected. Vanita Gupta took their case anyway.

As a result of her work, not only were these individuals exonerated, but they received pardons from the Republican Governor of Texas, Rick Perry, and Texas eventually paid out a $6 million settlement. That is nothing short of a political miracle, and she achieved it by hard work, being smart as can be, and reaching out to both sides to find some area of agreement.

Ms. Gupta's commitment to ensure the equal protection of the law has been praised by Republicans and Democrats alike. Michael Chertoff, former Secretary of Homeland Security under President George Bush, said about Ms. Vanita Gupta in a letter to the Senate. ``She is a relentless advocate for fairness and the rule of law.''

How would you like to have that as the lead sentence of your legal biography: ``a relentless advocate for fairness and the rule of law.'' How would we like to have a person like that in this administration, in the Department of Justice? Obviously, we would jump at the chance.

She is the right person at the right time. She will bring experience, dedication, and a nonpartisan approach to the role of Associate Attorney General, and I urge my colleagues to support her nomination.

Now, if you heard what I just said about Vanita Gupta, you might think: Why was this a tie vote in the Senate Judiciary Committee? First, it is an evenly divided committee: 11 Democrats, 11 Republicans. And there are a lot of things going on, on both sides of the table, when it comes to the final vote on nominees like this.

Several Republicans told me they might be leaning in her direction but they couldn't vote for her in the committee. I hope they will reconsider when it comes to the floor

And there was another thing going on too. Rightwing groups were spending millions--millions--of dollars on television in Washington trying to attack the reputation and character of Vanita Gupta.

I think I have made it clear. Vanita Gupta is highly qualified and historic, with broad support from law enforcement and civil rights organizations, advocates across the political spectrum. She, clearly, on the merits, will be an outstanding Associate Attorney General.

But every step of the way, her detractors have tried to delay and obstruct her nomination. We saw that in our Judiciary Committee markup on March 25. I allowed committee Republicans to speak for 94 minutes about Ms. Gupta's nomination at markup. One Senator from Texas spoke for 29 minutes himself. I didn't cut him off.

But someone on the Republican side made the decision to invoke the 2- hour rule, a Senate rule that says that a committee cannot operate more than 2 hours after the Senate comes into session, to try to cut off the markup for the vote even before the vote.

I had received assurances earlier that the 2-hour rule would not be invoked, but at 11:55, with barely 5 minutes to spare, I was told the other side had changed their mind. Just as the previous two chairs of the committee, Senators Graham and Grassley, had done in the past, I ended debate, notwithstanding committee rule IV, and called for a vote on the nomination.

I won't go into a debate over committee rule IV other than to say it is a doomsday filibuster. Any Senator can object to the business in the Senate Judiciary Committee and virtually stop all proceedings indefinitely. There is no recourse.

I gave Republicans ample time to make their arguments in the committee. I was prepared to give them even more time until the 2-hour rule was invoked. But someone on the other side decided to force my hand. I had to act quickly.

I told Republicans in writing in a March 24 letter that we would hold a vote on Ms. Gupta's nomination the next day, and I meant it. In the future, I would be happy to limit the number of minutes that Senators can speak in order for all Senators to have an opportunity, but at this moment in time, we have to accept the obvious.

Vanita Gupta has been subjected to blatantly false attacks from many rightwingers and conservative, dark money groups. Republicans have falsely claimed that she supports defunding the police. Be prepared. You are going to hear this mantra again and again.

In reality, Gupta has the support of virtually every major law enforcement organization in America. Republicans have made false claims about Gupta's position on drugs. For example, the senior Senator from Texas alleged that Gupta previously advocated, ``All drugs should be legal.'' In reality, Vanita Gupta has never advocated that all drugs should be legal. As the senior Senator from Texas knows, Gupta did write, 9 years ago, that she favored decriminalizing the ``simple possession'' of ``small amounts'' of marijuana and other drugs.

Take a look at what we have done with sentencing and drug crimes in America, even under the Trump administration.

At her hearing, Ms. Gupta was completely forthright in explaining that she changed her mind over the years in terms of decriminalizing drug possession, due in part to a family experience with opioid addiction.

Republicans have criticized Ms. Gupta's past statements on Twitter, despite the fact that they strongly supported President Donald Trump and many of his nominees, many of whom were just White males, who made such harsh statements in speeches and social media posts that they were legendary.

Republicans have argued that Gupta is radical and dangerous. In reality, Vanita Gupta has a career-long record of working closely with conservatives, business leaders and community leaders and law enforcement. That is why she has the support of so many prominent Republican leaders now.

I am looking forward to voting for her and to watching her serve in the Department of Justice. She will follow the trail that she set in her legal career, looking for solutions, bringing us together. Can you think of a moment in history in this country when we needed that more? I can't.

Every day we have these conflicting stories coming at us, from the courts in Minnesota on a question of George Floyd and the culpability for his death to a situation here in the Capitol, where we are honoring law enforcement when Officer Billy Evans of the Capitol Hill Police gave his life serving this country.

We are torn trying to find the right combination for law enforcement that is sensible and principled and humane. We need someone like Vanita Gupta at the table in the Department of Justice, leading. I hope her critics will have second thoughts.

Give this outstanding woman an opportunity to serve her country even more than she has in the past.

I yield the floor.

Mr. President, I want to thank my colleague from Montana who just talked about the impact of this tax-and-spend bill on his constituents in Montana. I will say the same is true in 49 other States, including my State of Ohio.

This is, we are told, the biggest tax increase on America in over 50 years. So this is a big deal. In terms of the spending we have been hearing today, it is the largest spending package ever. In inflation- adjusted terms, it is probably the largest social spending package since the New Deal. That is what we are talking about here. This would fundamentally change our country in so many ways.

It is good that Mike Crapo, who is the top Republican on the Finance Committee, asked us to come on the floor today just to kind of talk about it because our constituents need to know what is going on. They need to understand what the impact would be on them, their lives, their futures.

There are new taxes being proposed in this on pretty much everything--small businesses. That was just talked about. Most businesses in Ohio and around the country are not what they call C corporations. They are passthroughs, like subchapter S--sole proprietors, partnerships. That is about 80 percent, 90 percent of the businesses. It is the smaller businesses. They get hit.

There are actually taxes on marriage because of the marriage penalty.

There are taxes on death because of the increase in the estate and gift tax. There are taxes on capital gains, which that is the part of our Code where you try to give people a little lower rate on longer term investment, try to encourage risk-taking and investments so that you can grow the economy, create jobs.

There are also a bunch of other taxes in here.

But the one that I want to talk about today is the tax on corporations because it gets less attention. People think: Gosh, they are big corporations. They can handle more tax increases. Some of them aren't paying taxes.

Well, they use the Tax Code sometimes that we set up here to avoid paying the full amount of taxes, but they pay plenty of taxes. When you increase the taxes, everyone says the same thing--whether it is the Congressional Budget Office, which is the nonpartisan group up here in the U.S. Senate, or whether it is the Joint Committee on Taxation, which is a nonpartisan group up here in the U.S. Senate or House, or outside groups looking at it--you increase those taxes on these companies, who pays it? Workers, primarily, and, second, consumers.

We just talked about inflation. Think about it. All this new stimulus spending--because that is what it is--will add to inflation. But so will these higher taxes because part of what happens is, if you have a higher tax on you, and you are trying to sell something, you have the same costs--maybe even higher costs coming in--you are going to charge more. Therefore, when you go to the store to buy something, there is going to be more inflation.

All of this encourages more, not less, inflation at a time when inflation is already unacceptably high. I think everybody agrees with that.

When the Democrats did the $1.9 trillion package back in March--$1.9 trillion, that used to be a lot of money--we just sort of say ``$1.9 trillion.'' But when they did that, everybody said: Oh my gosh, that is too much stimulus spending. It is going to cause inflation. The promoters of that said: No, it won't. It won't do that because the economy is so weak. It will be good for the economy.

Well, it overheated the economy. And Larry Summers at the time, who was the former Secretary of the Treasury in a Democratic administration and economist on the other side of the aisle--he warned about it as did others. He said: Look, this is going to fuel inflation.

Boy, has it.

So, yes, people are getting some wage gains right now, higher pay. I like that a lot. I think it is great. Before 2019--before COVID hit-- thanks to the tax reforms of 2017, primarily, in my view, wages were going up. February of 2020 was the 19th straight month of wage gains over 3 percent annually. My gosh, that was great--mostly lower and middle-income earners, by the way.

Some of that is happening now, but it is all being eaten up. If you have a 5-percent pay wage raise this year, you probably got nothing because you are going to have about 5 percent inflation. Your dollar is not going as far. So these are all issues that we have got to make sure the American people understand.

In terms of the corporations and what the problem is there, remember that before the tax reform in 2017, we had a lot of companies that were leaving our shores--literally. They were saying: Do you know what? Our Tax Code is so bad in America that we are going to invert--that is the name the economists gave it--literally move their headquarters overseas to escape our uncompetitive Tax Code.

I hated that, and I hope all Americans did. I hope all Members of the Senate did. I think they did. They said: Why would we want to encourage companies to go overseas? That way, their investments and their jobs are tending to go overseas as well.

But it wasn't just that. We had a lot of companies in the United States being bought by foreign companies. If you think about it, that made all the sense in the world. The foreign governments had a much better Tax Code for them, so they could buy a U.S. company and make more money on it than a U.S. company could under our Tax Code. Again, it is not what we wanted.

We had a situation where the companies were going overseas in every sector of our economy. I am a beer drinker, so I was particularly concerned about the beer companies, and every single one of them went foreign. They were big. The largest U.S. beer company was Sam Adams, which had about a 1.4-percent market share. The rest of them all went overseas. So that is what was happening.

There is some new data out showing that since the 2017 tax reforms were put in place, there was a 50-percent increase in American companies buying foreign companies and a 25-percent decrease in foreign companies buying our companies. That was good. That was good. But now we are talking about going right back to the bad old days.

One significant factor in companies going overseas and U.S. companies getting bought out by foreigners was our high tax rate of 35 percent-- the highest in the developed world. Everyone heard about that. But, also, there was a lack of enticements to keep valuable intellectual property here in the United States; whereas, other countries provided that. Also, unlike other countries, we were in what was called a worldwide tax system, where we were requiring U.S. companies to pay taxes on their foreign earnings at the high U.S. rate, the 35-percent rate. Almost all of our competitors don't do that. They use the so- called territorial system, where you only tax in the foreign jurisdiction where you did the business. You are not taxed twice. That is

one reason we were losing, so we changed that.

The 2017 Tax Cuts and Jobs Act took bold steps to reassert our competitiveness as a country. We lowered the corporate tax rate to 21 percent. We went to a territorial-type system--not entirely territorial, as we still had a minimum tax, but we created an incentive to stay here. We created jobs and investments here. We lowered the corporate rate, but we also had other incentives to create more intellectual property here in America.

As a result, by the way, the corporate inversions stopped. They stopped. Instead of losing companies overseas, again, we started to buy more companies overseas and bring that investment to America.

The foreign-derived intangible income provision, which provided a reduced tax rate for U.S.-based businesses on high-return foreign market income served by U.S. operations, resulted in companies like Cisco, Qualcomm, Synopsys, Google, Facebook, and others bringing back intellectual property that was overseas. So it actually worked in the way we had hoped it would. It brought IP back here. That means jobs. That means research. Others retained their intellectual property here in the United States, like Intel and Disney and General Mills and others, because of these tax laws, because they were coming to us and saying: Why are we here in America, doing this? We should do it overseas based on what Congress has provided as a tax environment for us.

The largest U.S. companies during that time period increased their domestic research and development spending by 25 percent, to $707 billion. They increased their capital expenditures by 20 percent, to $1.4 trillion. That is all good. Again, workers saw real benefits: a 50-year low in unemployment; strong wage growth, particularly for low- and middle-income workers; the lowest poverty rate in the history of the country. We started to keep track of it back in the fifties. This follows an earlier study by the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office, or CBO, that found that 70 percent of the tax cuts ended up going into workers' wages and benefits. So workers and businesses both benefited in this opportunity economy. It was driving a lot of promising growth in the United States.

The Democrats' tax plan would systematically dismantle so many of these pro-growth tax cuts and reforms that Congress put in place in 2017. Under this new proposal, the corporate rate would be raised from 21 percent to about 28 percent. When combined with the average State and local corporate taxes in America, U.S. businesses will be on the hook for an average tax rate of about 32 percent--once again giving us the highest rate of taxation in the developed world.

The Democrats would also increase the global intangible low-taxed income rate, called GILTI, and the base erosion and anti-abuse tax rate, called the BEAT, which would punish U.S. companies that work to serve foreign markets. We should like that. We want U.S. companies to create jobs here to support their international sales. The proposal would modify this GILTI calculation to a country-by-country basis, making it even more difficult to compute and track U.S. tax liabilities for companies operating overseas--again, a disincentive that discourages investment in new and emerging markets. Why would we want to do that?

Through these policies, Democrats would be creating a tax environment hostile to businesses and harmful to workers. According to the International Tax Competitiveness Index, the Democrats' plan would cause the United States to drop steeply down the rankings from 21st to 28th in the world among developed countries. It is the same ranking we had, by the way, before the 2017 tax reforms.

Many businesses will make what is unfortunately a completely rational decision to move their headquarters again. We will see inversions again, taking with them thousands of good-paying jobs and billions of dollars in assets. Others that choose to stay here will nonetheless become prime targets for acquisition, as they were before, by businesses in other countries, like China, that would have a lower tax rate than we.

But who ultimately bears the brunt of these Democratic tax hikes on businesses? Again, it is the workers. Just as the Congressional Budget Office found that 70 percent of the corporate tax cuts go into workers' wages and benefits, the Tax Foundation found that 70 percent of tax increases are borne by workers. It is no surprise, then, that the nonpartisan Joint Committee on Taxation, right here in this Congress, found that two-thirds of the Democrats' corporate tax hike would fall on lower and middle-income taxpayers. Let me repeat that. The JCT, a nonpartisan committee here in Congress, found that two-thirds of the Democrats' corporate tax hikes would fall on lower and middle-income tax taxpayers.

By the way, that is about 100 million taxpayers who make less than $400,000 a year. So much for the pledge that no one under $400,000 in income would possibly be affected.

So I look at these facts, and I just can't understand why we would want to move to this kind of a tax plan. Why would the American people support tax hikes that are going to be bad for workers and bad for our competitiveness as a country? Why are we punishing workers? They are the ones who get the short end of the stick here.

Let's focus on what works--on encouraging investment and growth here in the United States of America. That helps workers. Let's not go down a path that will once again send U.S. jobs and U.S. investment overseas.

I yield the floor.