A resolution designating April 2023 as "National Native Plant Month".

Madam President, I want to take a moment to address some of what we have heard here on the Senate floor today.

There have been a lot of accusations made about what this CRA does, and I will clear that up in a minute, but first I would like to set the record straight on what this measure does not do.

My colleagues often talk about their work to protect human rights. I would ask this simple question: What could possibly be a greater threat to human rights than the United States of America's turning a blind eye to child slave labor? What message does it send to the world?

We have heard today that this measure will force American companies to pay for these tariffs. Not true. What this measure does do is rightfully punish foreign companies that are actively working to get around U.S. trade law and help import product made with slave and child labor into the United States. The only entities that will pay tariffs are Chinese-affiliated manufacturers.

If you are doing the right thing, this measure doesn't change a darned thing about how you do business, but if you are working with people who believe slavery has a role in supply chains, you are darned right I have a problem with that and will do whatever I can to stop it.

I have also heard today that the rule that this CRA would eliminate was negotiated by the solar panel industry. We have heard that the solar panel industry agrees we need this exemption and therefore it is good. Of course, the solar panel industry that supports the rule is the Chinese solar panel industry. American manufacturers do not.

Thanks to the Biden administration's waiver that we are working to repeal here today, Chinese companies have been given everything they need to dominate the solar market, just like how Russia has dominated cheap gas supply to Europe.

I have also heard some of my colleagues say that this CRA is unnecessary because we have already passed a law that says products made with slave labor cannot be sold in the United States. We did pass a good bill that prevents products made with slave labor from being sold here, and I thank God we did that. But since when has U.S. law meant anything to communist China?

We know companies controlled by the CCP lie, cheat, and steal. We know that companies in communist China are moving solar panels made with slave and child labor to other countries to circumvent our laws, and they aren't being caught.

President Biden's own Commerce Department has proven that to be true. When half the world's solar panels are coming from a region with well- documented child and slave labor, are we really expected to believe that the companies making these panels aren't using slave labor? No, we know that is not reality.

Finally, I have heard the claim that this CRA would somehow be terrible for American jobs. This one actually surprised me. Here is how that logic goes: Letting communist China dominate a market by using slave and child

labor is better than supporting American manufacturing and American jobs here at home. Let me know if you can figure that one out, see how that makes sense.

Some of my colleagues on the left claim that 30,000 jobs will be lost. That is not even close to being true. Guess who gave them that information? The Chinese-dominated solar lobby group. That is the same group that is perfectly happy to keep things the way they are so they can make a buck on the back of slave and child labor.

When I went to look at this report today, I couldn't find it. It is not on their website. This is what you get when you try to look at their so-called analysis: ``Sorry, we couldn't find that page.''

Honestly, I think our colleague from Pennsylvania got it exactly right when he told a news outlet this week:

Too often, China gets away with undermining our markets,

undermining our companies, and every time they cheat, we lose

jobs in Pennsylvania.

Senator Casey is right. It is not just true in Pennsylvania; it is true in every State across our great country.

Senator Wyden is right too. Discussing the same issue, he said:

Red, white and blue manufacturing, particularly now, when

people see we're serious about it, that's the key time in

this two year window when the Chinese can hit us.

To be honest, I am shocked by excuses from some of my colleagues. I note that it is only some because this CRA is actually a bipartisan bill.

The excuses for inaction by some on the left don't make sense to me. What we are talking about tonight is whether anything is worth turning a blind eye to slavery and child labor.

The Chinese-dominated industry has agreed that this waiver is a good thing. What a shocker. What some of my colleagues on the left are saying is that the endorsement of Chinese manufacturers is enough to turn a blind eye to slave and child labor. I clearly disagree.

With this rule repealed by this CRA, tariffs first put in place by President Obama's Commerce Department to hold Chinese manufacturers that violate our trade laws accountable will be reinstated, forcing companies to work with only those partners that aren't actively involved in slave and child labor. To that, I say what a good thing for the Senate to put it behind us and to support it.

President Xi is a dictator and human rights violator. He is yet another communist leader trying to be the dominant world player. The Chinese Communist Party has stripped the people of Hong Kong of their freedoms. They have cracked down on dissidents, militarized the South China Sea, threatened Taiwan and surveilled its citizens, and committed a genocide against the Uighurs simply because of their religion.

We know the Chinese Communist Party will do anything to destroy America. The national security threat of communist China cannot be taken lightly, and the human rights abuses against the Uighurs, including slave labor, child labor, and genocide cannot be ignored. The United States cannot tolerate communist China's horrific human rights abuses and genocide of Uighurs.

In addition to this, communist China will stop at nothing to exploit American markets and take advantage of U.S. investors and companies doing business within its country. Communist China poses a clear and present threat to the United States and the world.

In 2022, the Department of Commerce caught communist China circumventing U.S. trade laws. To avoid American tariffs, Xi's regime started sending Chinese-made solar products made with slave labor to Southeast Asian countries, claiming they are made in the corresponding nation.

Here is what they are doing. It was made here. They shipped them down here and said they were made here and shipped them here so they didn't have to pay their tariffs.

These Chinese-made products--again, made with slave and child labor, and you can see, there are not a lot of pictures that come out of this area, but these are some of the Uighurs, and they are clearly being put to work to do whatever the Communist Party wants them to do.

These Chinese-made products--again, made with child and slave labor-- were then imported into the United States.

Despite his own Department of Commerce investigation, President Biden issued an emergency declaration exempting these Chinese-made solar products--again, made with slave and child labor--from our trade law for a full 2 years.

President Biden's solar emergency declaration is a giveaway to President Xi and the Chinese Communist Party. It is a massive gift to a regime that is using slave and child labor, a favor to an evil regime that wants to destroy our great country. There is no other way to describe it.

The declaration allows communist China to circumvent U.S. trade laws with impunity and continue to dominate the solar industry at the expense of American manufacturers and American jobs. It is an approval of slave and child labor. It is anti-American jobs.

Communist China's solar manufacturing is based on forced labor, government subsidies, and trade abuses. Communist China isn't doing the United States any favor through their dominance of the solar industry. We are building dependence on them.

Even today, communist China is using forced labor to produce solar panels. Purchasing these solar panels is helping fuel these human rights abuses. Because of this, the Uyghur Human Rights Project has announced its support of this CRA, so this is why we are taking this vote today.

This CRA would reinstate the Department of Commerce's own findings that certain companies in Southeast Asian companies are acting in violation of U.S. law by importing Chinese-made solar products--again, made with slave labor. Therefore, tariffs should apply to these specific bad actors.

The tariffs would only apply to these companies. It would not apply to any other industry or to any companies that are lawfully importing solar products not made with slave labor into the United States.

This measure is pro-American jobs and anti-Chinese forced and child labor. It is that simple.

Passing this CRA will send a message to President Xi and communist China: When you break American trade laws and use slave labor, you pay the price.

Under the leadership of my friend and fellow Floridian, Congressman Bill Posey, this CRA has already passed the House with bipartisan support. Now it is time for the Senate to finish the job in Congress and send this to President Biden's desk. This isn't partisan. It is about human rights.

I will not stand by, and I hope the U.S. Senate will not stand by, and accept excuses to turn a blind eye to communist China's human rights atrocities.

The United States is a beacon of freedom to people all over the world. Voting tonight against holding accountable those who enslave others, including children, will be a stain on our Nation that the freedom-loving people of the world will not soon forget.

I look forward to all of my colleagues supporting this CRA.

I yield the floor.

Madam President, I ask unanimous consent that the Senate Committee on the Judiciary be discharged from further consideration of S. Res. 152 and S. Res. 185 and that the Senate now proceed to the en bloc consideration of the following Senate resolutions: S. Res. 152, S. Res. 185, S. Res. 192, S. Res. 193, and S. Res. 194.

I know of no further debate on the resolutions en bloc.

Madam President, I ask unanimous consent that the preambles be agreed to and that the motions to reconsider be considered made and laid upon the table, all en bloc.

Madam President, I will speak briefly. I know we are expecting a vote at 5:30. I will not speak nearly that long, but I know we are about to vote on the Congressional Review Act on an issue that I happen to disagree with the President on.

My whole career has been standing up for workers. My whole career has been standing up for, sometimes, the Presidents--the Presidents of both parties.

I think, if you look at the history of trade in this country and what we have done, we have seen, frankly, that this body, that down the hall in the House of Representatives, and that the White House have historically not stood up for workers.

I grew up in Mansfield, OH, in a small, industrial city of about 50,000 people. It was a very industrial city, less so now. I went to Johnny Appleseed Junior High School, and I remember walking the halls with the sons and daughters of machinists who worked at Tappan Stove and rubberworkers who worked for Mansfield Tire and steelworkers at Empire in Detroit. ``Empire-Reeves,'' I believe, was the company's name then. I remember the autoworkers who worked at General Motors, a number of electrical workers at Westinghouse, and also the sons and daughters of people in the trades, who were electricians and carpenters, insulators and pipefitters, plumbers and operating engineers and laborers--people highly skilled who built America.

Companies and corporations--particularly in my part of the country but also in Nevada and everywhere--began to shut down plants in the industrial Midwest. They moved those plants to low-wage areas--Alabama, Mississippi, Louisiana, Georgia, North and South Carolina especially. Because those wages weren't quite low enough to satisfy the greed--I think there is no other word other than the ``greed'' of corporate America--then those same companies began to lobby Congress.

One of my first votes as a Member of Congress many years ago was in opposition to the North American Free Trade Agreement. Those of us who opposed NAFTA predicted with almost certainty what was almost certainly and inevitably going to happen. Once you pass a trade agreement giving these companies the opportunity to go to Mexico and then to China with no tariffs and to go for very low wages to exploit workers in those countries, which is what they did, you begin to see plants shut down.

We know what happened. We know that far too many of our colleagues in the House and Senate were willing to pass these free-trade agreements, like NAFTA. We also know that, down the hall, the House of Representatives did the same thing; the Senate did it; and, frankly, we had Presidents of both parties who sold out American workers. The lobbyists were here, pushing for NAFTA and pushing later for the PNTR with China, weakening the rules there so that these companies were up and gone. They left. They left Ohio. They left Indiana. They left Illinois. They left so much of the industrial Midwest because this Congress and the Presidents of both parties, from Trump all the way back to Clinton--I would include Obama and both Bushes and

Clinton and Trump--were willing to sell out American workers to the lobbyists who pushed for these trade agreements as they could seek cheaper wages in China.

There is another thing that happened with China. What we did when we moved all of these jobs to China was we built up the Chinese military because we provided the technology and the wealth to the Chinese Communist Party that then was able to build up a high-tech military-- not quite rivaling ours, but it was certainly dangerous enough that we paid attention.

My vote against NAFTA was one of my proudest votes and my vote against the PNTR with China, the most favored nation status with China. So we are seeing what that has yielded.

In the end, it is a simple choice: Whose side are you on? Are you on the side of the Chinese Communist Party or are you on the side of American workers? That, to me, is what this vote is about today with the Congressional Review Act about solar tariffs.

I would add full disclosure. One of the biggest solar manufacturers-- I believe still the biggest single solar manufacturing plant in America--is near Toledo, just south of Toledo, in Northwest Ohio. Those workers will benefit if we vote yes and then override the President's veto.

It is what I urge my colleagues to do today--to pass this simple resolution to continue these tariffs on China--because as long as they keep cheating, as long as American companies are willing to take the products from slave labor and underpaid labor and exploited labor and bring them into this country, these problems will continue for our industrial base.

I heard the President of the United States down the hall, I believe, in his last State of the Union, saying the term ``Rust Belt'' and that we are burying the term ``Rust Belt.'' I have talked to the President about burying that term. He mentioned it that day, in the State of the Union that evening.

Mostly, we are starting to see in this country a reindustrialization of America. We are seeing chips now. Chips were invented in the United States, but 90 percent of them are made mostly in Taiwan and China. The light bulb was invented by an Ohioan, Thomas Edison. He grew up not far from where I grew up. Now 100 percent of LEDs are made overseas. So if we are going to reindustrialize this country and bring these jobs back, that is what the CHIPS legislation is all about, and that is what we are doing with Intel in Columbus.

This sets us back. The President's veto of this bill sets us back a couple more years in redeveloping and bringing these jobs back and doing the kind of in-sourcing that Senator Casey and others have fought for here.

As I wrap up, I am asking my colleagues to vote yes on this Congressional Review Act on solar tariffs because, again, whose side are you on? Are you on the side of the Chinese Communist Party or are you on the side of American workers? To me, it is as clear as day which side to be on.

Madam President, I ask unanimous consent to use a prop during my remarks.

Madam President, today, I rise in support of S.J. Res. 9, providing for congressional disapproval of the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service's rule regarding the lesser prairie-chicken under the Congressional Review Act.

Since I was 10 years old, my family has enjoyed hunting prairie chickens. As a matter of fact, the first bird I ever shot, the first time I ever went hunting, 10 years of age with a 20-gauge single shotgun, I was able to down one of these beautiful birds.

But last November, the Fish and Wildlife Service ignored decades of voluntary conservation efforts and published a rule lifting the lesser prairie-chicken species as endangered and threatened under the Endangered Species Act.

Enacted in 1973, the Endangered Species Act, the ESA, was created to protect species believed to be on the brink of extinction. Today, the consequences of this law reach far beyond its original intent. If saving species were the only

consideration, then this administration wouldn't be listing the lesser prairie-chicken whose population is considered stable in my home State of Kansas.

I ask you, was the ESA made for the good of human kind or was human kind made for the good of the ESA?

Make no mistake about it, the listing of any species adds more rules, more hoops to jump through, more time and costs from everyone, from our farmers and ranchers, our oilfield workers, and our utility linemen who are building out new power poles and electric lines to get wind- generated electricity out to more populated States.

The ESA is just another weaponized tool that this President uses to attack rural America. This move is not surprising, considering the President recently vetoed the bipartisan resolution to strike down the WOTUS rule. This White House continues to push policies and resurrect taxes that disproportionately hurt rural America.

For over 20 years now, Federal, State, and private landowners have voluntarily collaborated with Fish and Wildlife Services to conserve the lesser prairie-chicken and its habitat.

These partnerships have already resulted in conservation agreements covering roughly 15 million acres of potential habitat for species. To list the bird now, after all the conservation effort, sends a message to stakeholders that no matter how much good work you do, the hammer will still fall, the heavy-handed government will still step in and list species under the ESA and attempt to regulate your industry out of existence, all in the name of climate.

The Federal Government thinks it knows best when it comes to conservation, but this law continues to fail its most basic mission: recovering and delisting species. Despite billions of dollars spent in the name of the ESA, less than 2 percent of all listed species have been removed from its ESA protection since 1973--just 2 percent.

Through a combination of public and private efforts, the lesser prairie-chicken is better protected now more than ever. Listing them as threatened or endangered will not provide any additional conservation benefits above what already exists.

As this chart shows, while the prairie chicken numbers tend to follow rainfall, they have been growing since the Obama administration first attempted to list the bird in 2014.

No one in this body wants to see this beautiful bird go extinct. As a matter of fact, we are fighting to preserve it. My hope is that one day, once again, my grandchildren can hunt lesser prairie-chickens like their great-great-grandfathers did.

No oil producer, no rancher, no farmer, no wind energy producer wants the demise of the lesser prairie-chicken. That is why voluntary partnerships have worked and are working. Just like all my fellow Kansans, I am committed to saving our environment for future generations.

To share some wise words from one of my friends:

We are passengers on this planet, not captains.

We need to continue to work with Mother Nature, not punish hard- working Americans. A listing of this species now will only slow down and drive up the cost of our wind energy exports from Kansas, which shares many of the same range. The listing will also push oil and gas development to countries that have long track records of violating human rights or the extraction of these important and necessary energy sources in a manner much more harmful to the environment than those utilized by American producers.

Whether it is gas or diesel or wind energy, this decision to list the chicken would increase the cost of energy. It would federalize millions of acres of ranch lands and expand the regulatory burden on our farmers and ranchers, ultimately, increasing the cost of food. But for what? An attempt to protect the species by an Agency that has only successfully recovered 2 percent of the species that it has listed.

No, thanks. The local communities have and will continue to do what is best for the bird and, more importantly, for the environment through ongoing, proven conservation efforts--conservation efforts passed on from one generation of farmers and ranchers to the next.

This administration ignores the impact that overregulation has on American industries. And I hear this from everyone who visits my office. The costs of this administration's rules and regulations already outpace the last two administrations combined, with $363 billion in rules so far. Since January 1 of this year alone, that number is $148 billion.

Under this administration, the annual paperwork burden on businesses has increased to over 220 million hours. Since January 1, that number is approaching 50 million hours--indeed, a redtape of nightmare for businesses.

This resolution is one of many vital steps the Senate GOP is taking to unleash the economy from the bureaucratic harassment that the White House has deployed. I am asking you to join me in applauding, rather than punishing, voluntary conservation efforts and support the joint resolution for congressional disapproval of the lesser prairie-chicken listing.

I yield the floor.

Madam President, today--in fact, in a few minutes from now--the Senate will act in an effort to protect farmers, ranchers, and producers from the unnecessary consequences of listing the lesser prairie-chicken.

Even as I say the words, it brings back so many instances in which we have had this conversation on the Senate floor, going back to my earliest days in the Senate. This issue has been with us now for a long number of years.

Range-wide studies over the last decade have shown that conservation efforts are helping bird populations in the five habitat States, including Kansas. So the lesser prairie-chicken is a native bird to five States in our part of the country, and its populations are important to us in Kansas and to those other States and to the country.

What strikes me is that this administration claims that American agriculture is at the heart of needing to list the lesser prairie- chicken as either an endangered species or as a threatened species because agriculture is causing harm to the populations.

A quote from the rule states:

Grazing by domestic livestock is not inherently detrimental

to lesser prairie-chicken management and, in many cases, is

needed to maintain appropriate vegetative structure.

That is a pretty good paragraph to indicate the value of production agriculture when it comes to the well-being of the lesser prairie- chicken.

In other words, what that is saying is that agricultural management practices and voluntary conservation practices of grasslands, including grazing by ranchers, improve--improve--their habitat.

Listing the bird as a threatened or endangered species is not the answer. Plain and simple, we need more rainfall. We need moisture in Kansas and in other States in the West. We need more rainfall, not more regulations.

I conclude here by saying that farmers and ranchers have always been and will always be the original conservationists. Their livelihoods depend on the continued conservation efforts of the soil and water they use to produce crops and raise livestock. I am confident there are ways to conserve the species without hindering economic opportunity in rural communities, and I will continue to push for what Kansans have been pursuing for years now--voluntary solutions.

I yield the floor.

I announce that the Senator from California (Mrs. Feinstein) and the Senator from New Hampshire (Mrs. Shaheen) are necessarily absent.