Floor Statements

Mr. President, I rise today in support of the Let Doctors Provide Reproductive Health Care Act.

I am honored to be here with the Senator from Nevada, Senator Rosen. She is one of the sponsors of this bill, along with Senator Murray and Senator Padilla, who is also here, and Senator Ben Ray Lujan and myself in addition to over 20 of our colleagues.

We must pass this bill today. Almost 6 weeks ago--that is all the time it has been. It seems like it has been a lot longer. It has been only 6 weeks since the Supreme Court issued a rule shredding nearly five decades of precedent of protecting a woman's right to make her own healthcare decisions.

Now, because of that decision to shred 50 years of precedent, women are at the mercy of State laws or new State laws or Governors. They literally ran to the State capitols--a number of legislators--to see who could get there first to introduce and pass the most extreme bill. Literally, women are at the mercy of State laws that are a patchwork across the country and that, in many cases, leave them with fewer rights than their mothers or their grandmothers had.

This is in spite of what the American people want, as 70 to 80 percent of Americans believe that it is a decision that should be made by a woman and her doctor and not by politicians--not by my colleagues on the other side of the aisle. They don't want them making their decisions for them. They want to make their decisions with their doctors.

As if it were not proof enough, after having come here every single week since the Dobbs decision was issued to remind people of where the actual public is out there, look at what happened last night. We heard the majority loud and clear in the Sunflower State of Kansas. The people of Kansas, in a record turnout--doubling the number of Kansans who voted in the last midterm election--voted 59 to 41 percent to protect reproductive freedom. That is more than 530,000 Kansans who showed up at an odd election time. In the middle of the summer, on a hot day in August, they showed up to protect women's rights. For context, fewer than 460,000 Kansans even cast a ballot in the 2018 primary. That is what we are dealing with; yet we now have 530,000 who showed up to vote on one side to say: A woman's right should be protected in their State.

This is a wake-up call to my colleagues who have been resisting action when it comes to allowing women to travel, when it comes to allowing women to be able to make a choice about even contraception, when it comes to, in this bill, letting doctors provide reproductive healthcare.

This doesn't come down to red States or blue States, my friends. People across the country, as I have argued vociferously before--and now I have my proof point--whether they be Independents, Democrats, or moderate Republicans, when they show up, women's

rights are protected. And guess what. They are showing up.

Since this decision came down, I have come to the floor of the Senate again and again with my colleagues to push for commonsense bills to protect women in this post-Roe world. We have tried to preserve a woman's right to travel to other States; that was Senator Cortez Masto's bill. We brought a bill to the floor to give women reliable access to family planning services; that was my colleague Senator Tina Smith's bill. We tried to pass legislation to make sure everyone could access contraception as well as accurate information about contraception.

We thank all our colleagues for their work on these bills, and I want to specifically mention Senator Murray for her work. We are not giving up, not when so much is on the line.

Many of the biggest fights for reproductive freedom are happening on State and local levels. Women as well as their doctors are now in the crosshairs. Republican State lawmakers are drafting legislation that would make it a crime to provide abortion care to a patient in another State where it is legal.

Let's get this straight. They would make it a crime, where you can't get an abortion--like that little 10-year-old girl couldn't get an abortion, when she was raped, in her own State. She goes to another State, and now we have legislators in certain States who are trying to make it a crime for her to do that. State legislators in Texas and Arkansas have indicated they are considering these kinds of laws, and the Governor of South Dakota, which shares a border with my State, refused to rule out a similar law.

Doctors in Minnesota, where reproductive rights are firmly protected, could be prosecuted for providing completely legal medical procedures for people in maybe North Dakota or South Dakota or Iowa who come to the great State of Minnesota.

The Let Doctors Provide Reproductive Health Care Act is a straightforward solution. It protects doctors giving abortion care in States where it is legal and stops extreme attempts to investigate or punish them for doing their job.

Women and the providers who help them are already facing so much uncertainty because of the Dobbs decision. We should all be able to agree that, at the very least, States shouldn't be able to target, punish, or arrest out-of-State doctors who are following their own State laws.

Today, each and every one of my colleagues has the opportunity to make clear where they stand. They did that in Kansas last night; they were able to vote. Now, let's have a real vote on this--not stop the vote, actually get it done.

I see my friend Senator Blumenthal, who has been such a leader on this issue, out of the State of Connecticut is here as well as Senator Padilla.

I yield the floor.

Madam President, I rise today in support of Finland and Sweden's application to join NATO. I give my strong support to this application.

I disagree heartily with our colleague from Missouri. I know you know, Madam President, having worked on this issue, as I have--having visited these countries, we know how important they are to Minnesota and Wisconsin.

Minnesota has a special bond with the Kingdom of Sweden and the Republic of Finland, and at the core of this bond, at the core of the bond between our country and these countries, is shared values--values of democracy, values of freedom.

Yes, we have challenges--of course we do--in Asia, but I happen to believe that when you are a great power like the United States of America, you can do two things at once.

Let's look at what these countries add to our security by joining

Madam President, I rise in support of the Right to Contraception Act.

Thirty-three days ago, the Supreme Court issued a rule shredding nearly five decades of precedent protecting a woman's right to make her own healthcare decisions. Now women, as we have seen over the last weeks, are at the mercy--are at the mercy--of a patchwork of State laws governing their ability to access reproductive care, leaving them with fewer rights than their moms and their grandmas. So now a woman in Minnesota has different rights when it comes to her reproductive care than a woman in Missouri, and a woman in North Dakota has different rights than a woman in Indiana. That is what we are dealing with right now.

Two weeks ago, I joined several of my Democratic colleagues on the floor to push for legislation to preserve a woman's right to travel to other States to access reproductive care, led by Senator Cortez Masto. Unfortunately, Republicans on the other side of the aisle blocked us from that vote.

So we came back last week to push for legislation, led by my colleague Senator Tina Smith, to protect and expand funding for a program created under a Republican administration, a Republican Presidential administration, to fund clinics that support maternal care, conduct cancer screenings, and provide contraception, but, again, that vote failed because we were not allowed to move forward with it.

So we came back to the floor today because if the Supreme Court won't protect people's fundamental rights--that is why we have three branches of government. That was the concept of our Founding Fathers. So if the Supreme Court isn't going to protect people's fundamental rights, then everyone in this Chamber has to decide whether or not they are going to do it, and that includes making sure everyone can access contraception.

I am concerned that the worse is yet to come. Right now, State and local legislators are literally racing, along with Governors, to be the first to say: Which State can limit rights the most first? Which rights can we take away? Sadly, it is not too hard to guess.

In his concurring opinion in Dobbs, Justice Thomas actually laid out a roadmap with clear directions for how the Court could overturn the right to contraception. He said that the Supreme Court ``should reconsider''--``should reconsider,'' those two words--whether the Constitution protects the right to access contraception, as well as the right to marry whomever you love. Why? Because he talked about looking at other cases with regard to the right to privacy.

The Supreme Court has recognized the right to access contraception for more than 57 years, but the conservative Justices on the Supreme Court have shown they won't hesitate to overturn decades-old precedent no matter what they say at their Supreme Court hearings.

This threat is not hypothetical. Last year, the Missouri State Legislature tried to cut off public funding for widely used contraceptives, like IUDs and Plan B. Mississippi's Governor has refused to rule out banning contraception. A bill was introduced in Louisiana this spring that could be used to make IUDs illegal.

These radical proposals don't just hurt those in the States that implement the bans. Since the Dobbs decision, we have now seen how State bans create an uncertain legal environment for doctors and strain resources at clinics in States like Minnesota because the North Dakota clinic had to literally start a GoFundMe page to be able to get the costs paid for--the costs, of course, of moving the clinic from Fargo, ND, to Moorehead. That is what is happening right now in my State.

We cannot settle for a situation, as I noted, where people in my State have different rights than women in Mississippi or Missouri. And with so many extreme politicians out there racing to State capitals to be the first to take people's rights away, we need to explicitly protect the right to access contraception and information about contraception.

I will note that more than 80 percent of Americans support access to contraception. That is why I joined with Senators Markey, Hirono, Murray, and Duckworth in cosponsoring this bill to protect the right to access contraception and information about contraceptives. This bill safeguards a patient's ability to seek contraceptives and a healthcare provider's ability to provide those critical services.

The right to contraception can't just be an empty promise. That is why the bill gives the Department of Justice, as well as patients and doctors, the power to make sure that we don't infringe on the right to contraception.

I am proud to join my colleagues, and for the last 33 days I have been thinking about all the women in this country facing an unacceptably uncertain future. Today, each and every one of my colleagues had the opportunity to make clear where they stand, but, when given the opportunity, some seized the opportunity to protect the right to contraception, some did not.

I hope that some of our colleagues will change their minds and we can move forward with this and put in place these laws protecting the right to travel; protecting the right to contraception; and, of course, in the end, protecting a woman's fundamental right to make her own reproductive decisions about abortion.

I yield the floor.

Mr. President, I rise today to address my colleagues on the topic of competition policy, just as I did last week, and I will continue to do until we take action.

Now, I want to start out speaking briefly about one part of competition policy that is very important, and that has to do with prescription drugs.

As we all know, brand-name prescription drugs in the U.S. are more than 250 percent of those in other industrialized countries. In many cases, Americans pay the highest prices in the world for these drugs. Yet it is our country, our taxpayers, that have put in the money for the research.

The high price of prescription drugs has put treatments out of reach for many Americans, even those with insurance, and driven up the tab for taxpayers.

Examples: One of my constituents, Ramae, from Bemidji, was diagnosed in 2018 with an incurable blood cancer, multiple myeloma. She relies on a drug called Revlimid that costs about 15,000 a year. Ramae depleted her life savings, cashed out her 401(k), and sold her house in order to afford this drug she needs to survive.

Actually, nearly 20 percent of older adults have reported not taking their medicines as prescribed because of the cost.

The good news--and this gets to competition. Years and years ago, as you know, Mr. President, the pharmaceutical industry installed in law a provision that said Medicare was banned from negotiating less expensive prices for drugs--banned from negotiating.

Yet, we know from the VA, which is allowed to negotiate on behalf of our Nation's patriotic veterans, that we can get much less expensive but as high quality drugs for our veterans. Our 46 million seniors deserve the same kind of deal.

That is what we are coming into in this next week, finally. And I have led the bill that has over 30 cosponsors in the Senate to allow for negotiation of prescription drugs for a long, long time. Finally, we are going to get this done.

It is not going to cover all the drugs as I would, but it is a big beginning. We have enough votes in the Senate to pass a bill to fix that. Democratic votes--all Democratic votes. But it is the fight worth fighting. You see the Pharma ads running against this bill. They have got every incentive to stop this. Why?

Well, it is going to save taxpayers 288 billion over 10 years. Taxpayers are going to be able to get that money, instead of the prescription drug companies. That is why this is so important. It is going to allow Medicare to finally negotiate prices under Medicare Part

Mr. President, thank you so much. I join my colleagues. Thank you, Senator Wyden, for your on-point remarks and, of course, Senator Murray, for her incredible leadership, not only of the committee but on taking this issue on and making clear to the State of Washington, yes, but also to the country that this should be a woman's decision, a woman and her doctor, family's decision, and not a decision made by politicians.

And part of this is making sure there is access to family planning. Since this decision has come out, I could not believe the number of women that have come up to me at home or in airports, flight attendants, saying things like: Is this really happening? You mean, I am going to have to go to another State just to get reproductive healthcare?

So how about contraception? There are people talking about contraception. People all over the country have realized how extreme this decision is. And one of the people who has been leading

this fight--and, in fact, has been leading this proposal on expanding access to family planning is my colleague Tina Smith. And she is here in spirit today. She has a mild case of COVID. I know she is watching right now because she has been fighting for the rights of women to make their own decisions about their healthcare her entire life. She is the only Senator in the history of the U.S. Senate that actually worked at Planned Parenthood and has a firm understanding and has shown so much leadership in this area. So we thank her. I am speaking for my constituents, of course, to thank Tina Smith for her work and her leadership.

As I noted, 26 days ago, the Supreme Court issued this rule shredding nearly five decades of precedent protecting a woman's right to make her own healthcare decisions. Now women are at the mercy of a patchwork of State laws governing their ability to access reproductive care, leaving them with fewer rights than their moms and their grandmas.

Last week, Senator Murray and I joined several of our Democratic colleagues, including Senator Cortez Masto, who led this bill to preserve a woman's right to travel to other States to access reproductive care. Republicans blocked us. So we are back today because if the Supreme Court won't protect a woman's right to make her own healthcare decisions, if Congress can agree to put the protections of Roe v. Wade into law, then everyone in this Chamber has to decide whether they will protect women's healthcare or not. And that includes making sure women have a right to abortion services, but it includes having reliable access to family planning services.

Let's start by passing the Expanding Access to Family Planning Act to protect and expand funding for title X clinics, which support maternal health, cancer screening, contraception, and other essential healthcare.

In 2020 alone--get this number--1.5 million Americans received services through title X. But currently, Federal funding is not enough to serve the number of people who need care. And in the wake of the Supreme Court's ruling attacking the freedom and the autonomy of women, it is likely that there will be even more demand in the years ahead. That is why Expanding Access to Family Planning Act gives title X the funding needed to serve women and families for the next 10 years.

This legislation is far from radical. The title X program was actually created under a Republican administration. And the original bill passed with broad bipartisan support. This is about making sure women have a way to take care of themselves, especially when they are pregnant.

Right now, I am thinking about all the women in this country facing an unacceptably uncertain future. We should all be able to agree that, at the very least, we should make sure that they have access to the basic health services that title X provides--a provision that passed during a Republican administration, created under a Republican administration, that understood that women should be able to access to healthcare.

There is a better path forward: We pass this bill, fund family planning, and save women's lives. I call on my colleagues to join me in supporting this necessary and completely pragmatic and sensible legislation for the women of this country.

I yield the floor.

Mr. President, I rise today, as I will many times, to address my colleagues on the topic of competition policy, especially in our digital markets where we have a situation where a few Big Tech titans have grown into the largest corporations our country has ever seen.

Just today, there is new reporting that shows that Google and Amazon have used their gatekeeper power to eliminate their competition for years. I don't think we are surprised by this, but this is new information that I think is important, as we learn new things all the time, that my colleagues know.

According to a 2014 memo first obtained by the House Judiciary Committee, a Google executive described--this is what the memo says-- ``grave concerns'' about a new service from a rival ``competing with their core search experience.'' The documents also included an email from 2009 in which Amazon executives discussed ways to stop a company-- that would be Diapers.com, a company it later bought--from advertising on their own platform.

This gets to the core of what we are talking about here and why we must take action. This email that was made public today reads:

We are under no obligation to allow them to advertise on

our site. . . . I'd argue we should block them from buying

product ads immediately, or at minimum price those ads so

they truly reflect the opportunity costs.

What does that mean? Well, Amazon could charge their rival whatever they wanted for advertisements and try and keep consumers in the dark about lower prices. That is only two from the dozens of documents newly released today by the House Judiciary Committee.

I come to the floor today because the evidence is clear and continues to mount. These dominant tech platforms have abused their power for years, and now we are at a crossroads. Will America continue to be a place where entrepreneurs lead our economy forward or will we become a country where a handful of monopolists get to dictate who gets a chance to succeed?

Remember when they all started--whether they were in garages or whatever--they started with this idea that they were platforms for sharing this information. I don't think anyone ever conceived they would also own things on the platform and then preference those things over other competitors. That is what is going on now. This is where consumers go to make their decisions about what they are going to buy.

When you have situations where Google has 90 percent of the search market, that is a monopoly, clear as can be. The decisions we make and the actions we take today will set the trajectory for American innovation, for ingenuity, and prosperity for the next generation. I say we must meet the moment.

As a member of the Senate Judiciary Committee, I have had the opportunity to serve as chair of the committee's Subcommittee on Competition Policy, Antitrust, and Consumer Rights. From my vantage point, I can tell you it has become painfully obvious, as many of my colleagues--Democrats and Republicans--have seen, that we have a serious competition problem throughout our economy, especially in Big Tech but not only in Big Tech. This issue impacts all Americans every single day.

Why are there only two dominant smartphone operating systems? Why do social media companies face so few consequences for playing fast and loose with our personal data? Why does Amazon keep raising prices that consumers and small businesses pay? The answer is simple: They are monopolies. That is what monopolies do. They are the big guys on the block, and there is a lack of competition.

Despite the volume of evidence that supports taking action, Congress has yet to pass a single bill on online platform competition since the dawn of the internet. That is right. At the beginning, we were told we don't want to squelch these new products and competition. That made sense back then, but it doesn't make sense now.

This evening, I am going to talk about the problems consumers and small businesses are experiencing in the online marketplace and the cost of inaction. It is really easy around this place not to act, to say things are too hard to deal with, whether it is climate change, whether it is immigration reform, whether it is tech policy from competition to privacy. But at some point, you have to stop blaming other people and do something about it.

I am going to review how other countries are attacking this problem and actually taking it on. I will discuss the many examples throughout history when Congress and enforcers have stepped up to confront monopoly power. This has long been a problem in our country.

You go way back to the Founding Fathers. So many people actually came to America because they wanted to be entrepreneurs. They don't want to have to buy all their tea from the East India tea company. You think about the Senators from the past taking on monopolies. Whether it is the railroad trust, whether it is the sugar trust, they took on monopolies.

There are old cartoons in this very Chamber, our Old Senate Chamber, showing these big, bloated monopoly trusts looking down on the Senators because they controlled them. We don't want that to happen in our modern day because we know many times from the past, the Senate did stand up and do something. That is the case I am going to make today for why my bipartisan bill with Senator Grassley, the American Innovation and Choice Online Act, is necessary to level the playing field in our digital economy.

First, let me say a word about what we are up against. That is what everyone sees. I am trying to measure my audience today on C-SPAN versus what we believe is well around $100 million that the Big Tech companies have purchased for ads, especially in States where Senators are up for reelection where they have purchased ads all over the country. But people do listen. There are a few people here right now, and if I give this speech in different ways a number of times, I can win.

Let's talk about what we are up against. When I talk about the dominant digital platforms, I am talking about some of the most powerful companies in the world with armies of lobbyists and lawyers-- thousands and thousands of lawyers and lobbyists. I have two. They are sitting right here in the Chamber.

We do have kind of a David and Goliath situation, but the lawyers for Big Tech are everywhere, in every corner in this town, at every cocktail party, and all over this building. I tell my colleagues they don't even know sometimes when someone is trying to influence them because they may think they are just talking to a friend or someone who worked on their campaign a while ago. But once they talk about antitrust and Big Tech, they should ask the person if they are being paid by a tech company or if they are on the board of a tech company or if they have some affiliation with one of the Big Tech companies because, time and time again, they have been surprised to find the answer is yes.

But these Big Tech companies aren't just lobbying my colleagues; they are also lobbying the American people with astroturf campaigning and other dishonest PR tactics.

At the same time that I have been working with my colleagues in good faith on commonsense solutions to online competition problems, these companies have been telling anyone who will listen that acting to protect competition in our digital markets will sometimes or somehow cede our national security or it will outlaw Amazon Prime--claims that were disputed by the Department of Justice and Amazon's own lobbyists in the press. That is just two examples. We deal with this all the time. They will say anything and everything. Senator Grassley and I came down here together to the Senate floor to refute this a few months ago.

Then, of course, there is the money. I think this is actually the best evidence of just how big and dominant and bullying these companies are, running ads in States where people are in tough races. I think they get the message. They are showing they are out there. They are showing they are going to be able to put whatever money it takes into ads to stop this bill. How obvious can it be? Message received: We are out here, and we can hurt you.

And, by the way, they wouldn't be spending millions and millions of dollars to stop us if we didn't have momentum. Let me give you some numbers. In 2021, Big Tech companies spent more than $70 million combined lobbying Congress. That does not include these ads I am talking about. In the first quarter of this year, Facebook, Meta; Amazon; Alphabet, which is Google; and Apple spent more than $16 million lobbying Congress. That is in one quarter. And you see my two lawyers on the other side.

In just one recent week in May, one industry group, the Computer and Communications Industry Association, spent $22 million on TV ads against this bill. That is $22 million against one bill in 1 week. So when you see those TV ads, which they love running in Washington so that Members will see them, remember that number, $22 million, and think ``two lawyers.'' That is what we are up against.

But it doesn't surprise me. I am not trying to win a popularity contest with the tech companies. That ship has sailed. I am simply trying to do the right thing.

Since I am a Senator and not a tech-backed industry group, I don't get to spread my message with a multimillion-dollar ad campaign. I don't have paid actors, but Big Tech lobbyists can't stop me from standing here today on the floor of the Senate and tell you the truth. The truth is these companies will stop at nothing to protect their profits, even if it means stifling the innovation and ingenuity that has made our Nation's economy second to none. American prosperity was, of course, built on a foundation of open markets and fair competition. It is competition between companies that give consumers lower prices, drives manufacturers to constantly innovate and improve their products, and forces companies to pay fair wages to compete for workers.

Competition provides opportunities for entrepreneurs to start and grow new businesses, fueling future economic growth. But if you look at our markets today, we see big cracks in that free market foundation. We see bigger businesses and fewer competitors and more dominant companies using their market power to suppress their rivals and line their own pockets.

As an example, more than two-thirds of U.S. industries have become more concentrated between--and these are the last figures we had, 1997 and 2012, because our government doesn't really collect these figures because someone stopped them from doing it. The White House highlighted this problem a year ago in its Executive order on competition, pointing out that in over 75 percent of our industries ranging from agriculture to banking to healthcare, a smaller number of large companies now control more of the business than they did 20 years ago.

This is raising prices overall for Americans. The lack of competition is estimated to cost the median American household $5,000 per year. The problem, of course, is most obvious in the tech industry because that is a relatively new area compared to some of our more embedded industries. And while, over time, we did things with pharma, we have done things in other areas, there is, as I noted, no law passed since the advent of the internet involving tech competition.

Tech has given us some great products. I am wearing one, a Fitbit. I use Google Maps, order from Amazon and other places, carry an iPhone. Over the last several decades, companies like Google, Amazon, Apple, Facebook, Microsoft have created many great innovations. We went from the Wall Street Gordon Gekko days with his cell phone affectionately known as the Brick, that weighed 2 pounds and was 13 inches long, to cell phones the size of a watch.

But while these tech companies were once scrappy startups innovating to survive, they are now some of the largest companies the world has ever known. And when you get that big--guess what--you have responsibilities, you have to be accountable. You aren't just out there as a brandnew startup doing whatever you want. But that is the mentality.

They are still introducing new products; that is great. But they are also gatekeepers, and they use their power as gatekeepers to stifle competition and innovation by their competitors and the businesses that have no choice but to use their services. So that is a problem.

So if you want to sell something big time, you better get on the App Store. But when you get on the App Store, depending on the size of your company, as you get bigger--let's say you are Spotify--you have to pay 30 percent of the revenue you make on that App Store to Apple for the pleasure of competing with their own product, Apple Music.

So to my colleagues I say this: Yes, you can love the products; you can love the CEOs themselves; you can love the companies--but you also have to love competition and love and take seriously the unique role that we are supposed to play as Senators and as Members of Congress to ensure there is an even playing field.

You go back, way back, to the godfather of capitalism, Adam Smith, who said to always watch out for the standing army of monopolies. We knew from the beginnings of this country that we would have to step in time and time again to make sure that we rejuvenate capitalism. That is what this is about.

Throughout history, whether in telecom in the 1990s with the breakup of AT&T--which, by the way, made the company, according to one of their former presidents, stronger--or by passing the Hart-Scott-Rodino Act in the 1970s, to stopping sweetheart merger settlements, Congress has brought down prices over time by ensuring that there is competition. It is actually a uniquely American way to do things.

I am grateful for our friends in the House, Chairman Cicilline and Ranking Member Ken Buck, who led bipartisan hearings on Big Tech and its anticompetitive conduct. They gave us a whole treasure trove of information. They conducted an 18-month investigation in the House Judiciary Committee--18-months--focused on how the largest and most dominant digital platforms harm small businesses, quash innovation, raise prices, and reduce quality.

This is, by the way, what bothers me when some of our colleagues say, Well, we don't know enough.

Seriously? Eighteen months of an investigation. And anyone in this room--it is public--can go look at it: 1,287,997 documents and communications--this is on the record--testimony from 38 witnesses, a hearing record that spans more than 1,800 pages, 38 submissions from 60 antitrust experts from across the political spectrum, and interviews with more than 240 market participants, former employees of the investigative platforms, and other individuals totaling thousands of hours.

That doesn't even include what we have done in the U.S. Senate Judiciary Committee. So, please, spare me hearing that we have not learned enough about this.

The report is 450 pages, but let me read some excerpts that capture the harms to consumers and small businesses that we have seen as a result of our failure to update our competition policy.

Here we go. This is from the record:

To put it simply, companies that once were scrappy underdog

startups that challenge the status quo have become the kinds of monopolies we last saw in the era of oil barons and railroad tycoons. Although these firms have delivered clear benefits to society, the dominance of Amazon, Apple, Facebook, [and] Google has come at a price.

These firms typically run the marketplace in each of their areas. You all know that. Everyone in this room knows that because 90 percent of the people, when they are doing a search engine, they go to one that is Google. You know the dominance of Amazon. You all know the dominance of these companies.

These firms are in a position that enable them to write one set of rules for others while they play by another or to engage in a form of their own private quasi-regulation that is unaccountable to anyone but themselves.

[T]he totality of the evidence produced during this

investigation--

This is from the House--

demonstrates the pressing need for legislative action and

reform. These firms have too much power, and that power must

be reined in and subject to appropriate oversight and

enforcement. Our economy and [our] democracy are at stake.

The subcommittee identified numerous instances in which

dominant platforms engaged in preferential or discriminatory

treatment. In some cases, the dominant platform privileged

its own products or services. In [another], a dominant

platform gave preferential treatment to one business partner

over [the other]. Because the dominant platform was, in most

instances--

And this is what is key--

the only viable path to market, its discriminatory treatment

had the effect of picking winners and losers in the

marketplace.

That is us. We are supposed to pick the winners and the losers in the marketplace and decide what is the best product based on what is supposed to be the least priced or what is supposed to be the highest quality. But now they have inserted themselves while at the same time, in many instances, placing their own product above others, not because they are less money, not because they are better, but because they are theirs.

Google, for example, engaged in self-preferencing--

I am back to the report--

by systematically ranking its own content above third-party

content, even when its content was inferior or less relevant

for users. Web publishers of content that Google demoted

suffered economic losses and had no way of competing on the

merits. Over the course of the investigation, numerous third

parties also told the House subcommittee that self-

preferencing and discriminatory treatment by the dominant

platforms forced businesses to lay off employees and divert

resources away from developing new products and towards

paying a dominant platform for advertisements or other

ancillary services. They added that some of the harmful

business practices of the platforms discouraged investors

from supporting their business and made it challenging to

grow and sustain a business, even with highly popular

products. Without the opportunity to compete fairly,

businesses and entrepreneurs are dissuaded from investing;

and, over the long term, innovation suffers.

By virtue of functioning as the only viable path to the market--and that is what they are in so many instances--dominant platforms enjoy superior bargaining power over the third parties that depend on their platform to access users and the market.

Their bargaining leverage is a form of market power [in]

which the dominant platforms routinely use to protect and

expand their dominance.

Since 1998, Amazon, Apple, Facebook, and Google

collectively have purchased more than 500 companies. The

antitrust agencies did not block a single acquisition.

They did not block a single acquisition. And as I look back, I remember, just--in bright lights--that e-mail that was discovered during the House hearing in which Mark Zuckerberg wrote, ``I would rather buy than compete.''

``I would rather buy than compete.'' To me, that pretty much is exhibit A. The House report has far more information than I could ever share in a single speech, but I will be sharing it over the next few months.

But overall, the House report found that if there was true competition, we would have a more dynamic and innovative tech center with more small and medium-sized businesses. Maybe if Facebook hadn't bought them--remember, ``I would rather buy than compete''--an independent Instagram, an independent WhatsApp--because Meta now owns them--could have developed the bells and whistles and privacy controls and other things. We will never know.

Why will we never know? Because they bought them. But if you have big monopolies that buy up all of that potential innovation, that buy up smaller companies, you lose the ability to get at some of the major challenges that we see in our country.

I believe in the market. I was in the private sector for over a decade. I believe in capitalism, but if you don't have an even playing field for competition, you have got a problem.

Over time, if left unchecked, big companies dominate markets, exclude their rivals, and buy out their competitors.

As one of the witnesses at a hearing that I chaired with Ranking Member Lee said before our Subcommittee on Competition Policy, Alex Harman of Public Citizen put it:

When companies face less competition, either because of

consolidation, or from forces that make competitive threats

less likely, they invest less in research and development.

They in turn are less likely to produce new innovations [that

benefit consumers and the economy]. And, all too often,

companies across the economic spectrum that depend on these

gatekeeping firms to reach the marketplace slash jobs and cut

back on developing new products.

As one founder put it: ``It feels like we are treading water with cement blocks around our feet.''

This is what has been going on in our country. It describes the problems we are facing from these digital gatekeepers. We have also heard from many other companies, nonprofits, trade associations, about what has been happening to them as a consequence of the monopoly power wielded by the largest digital platforms.

Consumer Reports says this:

Multiple investigations and studies have found that the

largest online platforms have too much market power, and that

this is resulting in harm to consumers, businesses, and the

economy.

A group of 60 small and medium-sized businesses wrote a letter saying:

Gaining access to the dominant platforms and integrating

with their services has increasingly become a take-it-or-

leave-it process replete with anticompetitive demands. It

doesn't serve American consumers or small and medium sized

businesses when the tech behemoths use their platform

dominance to tilt the competitive scales.

In January, the National Association of Wholesaler-Distributors wrote:

Unchecked, Amazon's dominance threatens to cripple the

highly competitive B2B system in the United States.

The American Hotels and Lodging Association, not exactly a radical group, wrote:

Dominant technology companies give their own paid

advertising products and services preferential treatment and

placement within their platforms to ensure that, despite the

specifics of what a consumer may be searching for, they will

likely be steered down a booking path that benefits the

search provider.

Not that benefits you, but benefits one of the biggest companies the world has ever known.

From a group of 40 small and medium-sized businesses back in January:

Due to their gatekeeper status, dominant technology

companies can: use manipulative design tactics to steer

individuals away from rival services; restrict the ability of

competitors to interoperate on the platform; use non-public

data to benefit the companies' own services or products.

And I could go on.

So what do we have here? Google has 90 percent market share in search engines. Apple controls 100 percent of app distribution for iPhones, and Google controls the other app distribution, so they are what we call a duopoly. Three out of every four social media users--and there are 4 billion of them--are active Facebook users.

Amazon is expected to seize half of the entire e-commerce retail market this year. That is what is happening.

What are we doing? Let me repeat: We have done nothing. We have done nothing. We have had hearings; we have thrown popcorn at CEOs. But we haven't passed one bill out of the U.S. Congress to do anything about this competitive situation.

What do other countries do? Well, other countries are now leaving us in the dust. They look to our leadership because America has always been known as a country of entrepreneurs and a country that encourages competition, but now look what is happening. Canada introduced legislation in April to make the dominant digital platforms fairly compensate news publishers for their content, following Australia's lead, which took similar action about a year earlier. And Europe is moving forward with its Digital Markets Act, DMA, a broad and sweeping piece of legislation that will place many new obligations on digital gatekeepers. The legislation puts rules of the road in place for how the digital gatekeepers determine search rankings, set defaults, process and use personal data, negotiate with business users on their platforms, interoperate, and demonstrate the efficiency of their digital advertising programs and the effectiveness of them. It also required gatekeepers to notify the European Commission about intended mergers and other deals that include the collection of data.

If that sounds more intense than the bill Senator Grassley and I have put together, it is more intense. But the

point is that it has gone through the European Parliament.

In the European Union, we are seeing the effects of efforts to rein in Big Tech. Just last week, Amazon made a settlement offer to the European Commission in an attempt to resolve an antitrust case. The European Commission investigations into Amazon's conduct were launched in 2019 and 2020 and involved three key issues that implicate self- preferencing conduct in the United States too. First, the Europeans investigated whether Amazon used nonpublic data from sellers. Remember, the sellers have no choice if they really want to sell their stuff. They have to go on Amazon, right? So they have to give data to get on that platform. What they found out was that Amazon was using the nonpublic data from sellers to inform its own targets for new product development.

That is what monopolies do.

The little sellers have no choice but to sell on the Amazon platform. Then Amazon says: Oh, now we are going to see what products are good and how they are doing because we uniquely have all the information, and then we are going to copy that product, either directly, as they did with a four-person luggage carrier firm where they literally ripped off every detail of the product--based on reporting from the Wall Street Journal we now know that--or they just know this product is doing well so they do one just like it, and then they put it at the top of the search engine. Amazon has sworn under oath in the U.S. Congress that it does not do that.

Well, now let's look at what is happening in Europe. Amazon also tightly controls who wins the coveted Buy Box, often awarding that preferred placement to itself. Third, Amazon requires sellers who want to be Prime to use Amazon's logistics services even if there could be a better alternative.

We are not getting rid of Prime. We are just saying you have got to open the door so there could be alternatives.

Amazon's settlement offer is filled with elements from my bill. That is what is so interesting because around this place or if you watch the TV ads, you would think the world was going to end. If we did a modicum of things while investigations are going on--of course, we know that there are various investigations in the Justice Department and around the country at the FTC. We are just going to sit there and let this continue until every appeal is made?

Here is what is so interesting. In Europe, under the offer that Amazon just made in Europe, Amazon will stop using seller data to decide what private label products to launch, make it easier for third parties to win the Buy Box, and allow sellers to participate in the Prime program without using ``fulfillment by Amazon'' services to manage logistics like warehousing and shipping.

My bill with Senator Grassley and what was called the ``Ocean's 11 of cosponsors'' because everyone has such different political beliefs, but we come together in support of capitalism for this bill--this bill that we have here, that is what it would do. It would require Amazon to do the same things that I just mentioned that they put forward in their settlement offer in Europe. Yet Amazon has claimed, in its multimillion dollar ad campaign, that this will break Prime in the United States. The hypocrisy is simply stunning.

Why should consumers in Europe and small businesses in Europe have the benefit of the offer they are giving them, and we in the United States--we, who host their company--try to simply put the same requirements into law, and we are told: Oh, this is outrageous, when they are offering the exact same thing in other countries.

The British have been working on these issues, too, particularly when it comes to app stores. And I want to thank Senators Blumenthal and Blackburn for their leadership in this area. The Competition and Markets Authority in the United Kingdom just last month issued a final report on the app store ecosystem, reaching the following conclusions. This is in the United Kingdom, which is, of course, a government that is different than the one we have here.

This is from the Brits:

Apple and Google have each captured such a large proportion

and volume of consumers in the UK that their ecosystems are,

for practical purposes, indispensable to online businesses.

I think that is pretty fair to say that is what is going on around here.

Let me continue with the Brits.

Apple and Google act as gatekeepers to most UK consumers

with mobile devices, and as a result can set the rules of the

game for providers of online content and services.

The evidence demonstrates that in the areas where Apple and

Google generate the vast majority of their revenues from

their mobile ecosystems, there is room for greater and more

effective price competition. In the case of Apple's mobile

devices, both firms' app stores, and Google's search and

advertising services, the evidence strongly suggests the

prices charged are above a competitive rate. . . . Consumers

would get a better deal if Apple and Google faced more robust

competition, either from each other or from third parties.

The report continues:

Weak competition within and between Apple's and Google's

mobile ecosystems is harming consumers, and will do so to a

greater degree . . . absent [any] intervention. Most

importantly, we are concerned that consumers will miss out on

innovative new features or transformative new products and

services that are held back or discouraged by the power that

Apple and Google wield.

That is one report.

If we continue to fail to take action in this country, we will lose our leadership position when it comes to antitrust on the global stage. That actually is not that great of a thing because then we are letting other countries determine what is going to happen to the future of competition. That is a huge risk for our country. It is time to take action just as Congress has done before when facing significant evidence of market failures and massive consolidation.

So when Big Tech companies talk about this bill or really any serious antitrust effort, they try to make it sound like we are pushing for some kind of unprecedented action. And, as I just discussed, that is not true because we know they are getting all kinds of pushback in other countries and actually are making settlement offers that are exactly akin to some of the things we have in the bill.

But it also isn't true in the history of our own country.

I think everyone--while people don't think they have something in their background to do with monopolies or their dads or their moms or their grandparents had nothing to do, everyone has got something about competitive policy that affected their lives in the past or affected their relatives. For me, I think of the James J. Hill House in St. Paul. No, we never lived there. I will get to that in a minute.

Calling it a house is actually an understatement. The 36,000-square- foot mansion has 22 fireplaces, 13 bathrooms, and a 100-foot-long reception hall. It was constructed in 1890, which is the same year that Congress actually finally did something about competition by passing the Sherman Act.

The man who built this house, James J. Hill, was a railroad magnate whose railroad ran from St. Paul to Seattle. He consolidated multiple railroads across the country using a legal concept called a trust--that is why we have antitrust--in which the stockholders of multiple competitors transferred their shares to a single set of trustees. There were all kinds of trusts, as I mentioned--rail trusts, oil trusts. Standard Oil Trust controlled more than 90 percent of the country's refining capacity. The Sugar Trust controlled 98 percent of refined sugar. And we had trusts in everything from sewer pipes to thread.

When I was growing up, my mom would like to take me to see the Christmas lights by that house and other estate houses, and I remember at some of the houses, unlike this one, there were actually people in it and kind of ducking down. She loved to show me those things on my way from piano lessons in her red car. And she would remind me that in order to build that house, Hill needed workers. Hill needed the monopoly railroads that gave him the money to build this humongous mansion, and he needed cheap labor to do the work.

That is where my family comes in. That is where the Klobuchars fit in. My great-grandpa and my grandpa were both miners in the iron ore mines in Northern Minnesota, and they did the work that supported the monopolies. Over time, unions came in; wages got better; the mines got safer. But in the end, that is how he built his house.

Our Nation, as I noted, has a very, very rich and difficult history of dealing with monopolies. But every single time, whether it was the East India tea company and throwing that tea into the harbor--yes, it was about taxation without representation, but it was also about a monopoly company. Every single time we have found a way to push back, whether it was farmers in the Granger movement with their pitchforks taking on the cost of rail, whether it was in Chicago, the Pullman strikes, strikes by workers against monopolies in the beef industry.

Finally, in 1901, Republican President Teddy Roosevelt rode his antimonopoly horse right into the White House. He finally did something about it. He used the first passed antitrust law, the Sherman Act, and was able to actually take on the trusts. And since then you have seen this rejuvenation over time. Sometimes, there is a lull, and then things get so bad--like what happened with AT&T--that between Democratic and Republican administrations, people come in and do something about it.

I know a little bit about this because my first job out of law school was representing MCI at a law firm, and that is when they were fighting to get into the monopoly market. Finally, when AT&T was broken up, what happened? Long distance rates went way down, and we finally got a cell phone industry because one company wasn't controlling everything because they did not have at that time--after a while--they were cool at first, and then they didn't have any kind of incentive to innovate. Then they finally did.

That gets us to the present where we have been hanging out and waiting and doing nothing for now decades and decades since the advent of the internet. And it is time to act--hence, our legislation.

January 1, 1983, is considered the official birthday of the internet. So it has been 40 years since then, and we still have not passed, as I noted, competition legislation. That is why our group of Senators have come together. And that includes Dick Durbin, Lindsey Graham, Richard Blumenthal, John Kennedy, Cory Booker, Cynthia Lummis, Mazie Hirono, Mark Warner, Josh Hawley, Steve Daines, Sheldon Whitehouse, and several more who are supporting the bill and said enough is enough.

Our bill creates rules of the road for these platforms. That means, first of all, that they can't abuse their gatekeeper power by favoring their own products or services and disadvantaging rivals in ways that harm competition. In other words, in the examples I have used, Amazon will not be able to use small business's data in order to copy their products and then compete against them. Apple won't be able to stifle competition by blocking other companies' services from interoperating with their platforms. And Google won't be able to bias their platform's search results in favor of their own products and services without merit. That is what our bill does.

Amazon should rank products based on price and quality, not based on their own profit margins. The world's largest and most powerful platforms shouldn't be allowed to copy a small business's private data. I used the example of luggage carriers. There are many, many more.

Another challenge to cracking down on antitrust violations is how difficult and time consuming it can be to try these cases in court. Currently, the government has to spend millions on economic experts and years in the courts, and even after all that, the likelihood of victory because of very conservative Supreme Court cases in the last few decades is small.

This bill streamlines things in this area. It doesn't break up the companies. Some people would like to do that. That is not what this bill does. It doesn't stop mergers. I think we should put in stronger merger guidelines, but that is not what this bill does.

This bill simply gives us rules of the road for these companies to be fair going forward, while we figure out the other things that need to be figured out.

So support for this bill:

The Boston Globe, October 2021, said on their editorial page that ``[i]f the largest platforms can't be trusted to enforce even their own anticompetitive policies, then Washington has little choice but to act.'' They noted that the bill I have with Senator Grassley represents ``a chance for Congress to turn concern over Big Tech's sway into action.''

The Seattle Times, March 2022, wrote that ``[a]s antitrust efforts ramp up in Congress, Big Tech is fighting back, unleashing an army of lobbyists, enlisting business groups to apply pressure and engaging in fearmongering to avoid critical legislation.''

Let me tell you, a lot of our Senators have proved that fearmongering.

Lawmakers must forge ahead and support legislation that

reins in the tech giants' worst impulses, ensures fair

competition and protects consumers and small businesses. But

no matter what the tech companies say, antitrust legislation

will not slay these giants or kill innovation . . . that is

not its goal. What it will do is limit Big Tech's ability to

run roughshod over competitors and consumers. Enough

Democrats and Republicans agree, but time is running out.

Congress needs to act.

The Washington Post editorial, in April of 2022, called our bill a ``sound'' bill and pressed for movement on the legislation, including by writing as follows:

Antitrust . . . needs revisions that prevent dominant

companies from building barriers to a marketplace where those

consumers will have both choice and protection. Legislators

should view the bills before Congress as an opportunity to

achieve this aim at last.

The bill also has support from Agency experts who have enforced antitrust laws and worked to protect competition in the U.S. markets.

The Department of Justice has endorsed the bill. I know this is after the Department of Justice under the previous administration--under the Trump administration, with Bill Barr as the Attorney General and Makan Delrahim as the head of Antitrust--actually started the initial lawsuit--the major, major lawsuit--against Google and after the FTC, under the Trump administration, started the lawsuit against Facebook. They filed major lawsuits that are being continued by this administration.

The Department of Justice wrote this:

The Department views the rise of dominant platforms as

presenting a threat to open markets and competition, with

risks for consumers, businesses, innovation, resiliency,

global competitiveness, and our democracy. By controlling key

arteries of the nation's commerce and communications, such

platforms can exercise outsized market power in our modern

economy. Vesting the power to pick winners and losers across

markets in a small number of corporations contravenes the

foundations of our capitalist system, and given the

increasing importance of these markets, the power of such

platforms is likely to continue to grow unless checked. This

puts at risk the nation's economic progress and prosperity,

ultimately threatening the economic liberty that undergirds

our democracy.

The Department of Justice continued:

If enacted, we believe that this legislation has the

potential to have a positive effect on dynamism in digital

markets going forward. Our future global competitiveness

depends on innovators and entrepreneurs having the ability to

access markets free from dominant incumbents that impede

innovation, competition, resiliency, and widespread

prosperity.

And Commerce Secretary Raimondo testified before our Senate Commerce Committee--I was there--saying:

I applaud your efforts and . . . clearly agree that we need

to improve competition, which increases innovation.

She said:

Last month, the DOJ released a views letter--

That is what I just read--

on behalf of the administration in support of the American

Innovation and Choice Online Act and the [Commerce]

Department and I . . . support . . . and concur with the aim

of [that] legislation.

It is not just officials currently in these roles who support this bill. Roger Alford, who served as a Deputy Assistant Attorney General in the Antitrust Division from 2017 to 2019, wrote to us, saying:

Bills such as S. 2992 provide hope that Congress will

restore competition to digital marketplaces.

And while people may have seen the disingenuous ads on TV against the bill, I think it is worth reading portions of the letters that we have received.

The Consumer Federation of America wrote:

To maintain a healthy economy, it turns out we need both

sensible regulation and antitrust enforcement. . . .

The American Innovation and Choice Online Act addresses the

key issues in a sector of the digital economy that has not

been addressed by competition policy and antitrust law. It

targets big data platforms, which can abuse their market

power as gatekeepers and vertically integrated firms, using

self-preferencing and data to block competition. . . .

Antitrust legal scholars wrote--and I will put all of this in the Record. More than 60 small- and medium-sized businesses wrote, and YELP, DuckDuckGo, Y Combinator, and other businesses wrote that S. 2992 will ``help restore competition in the digital marketplace.''

Small Business Rising wrote that the legislation ``is a critical part of the solution to the harms caused by the outsized power of the tech giants.''

As the president of Hobby Works, a Maryland hobby shop, said recently, ``All that any small business asks for is a somewhat level playing field and a somewhat fair environment in which to compete.''

I will end with this: Monopoly power, consumer choice, and reduced innovation aren't topics that came up for the first time when we marked up and passed this bill. I just read to you the thousands and thousands of pieces of documents and testimony from the House for 18 months that our colleagues Representative Cicilline and Representative Buck put together. So don't tell me this is the first time, when that went on for 18 months and when we have had hearing after hearing in the U.S. Senate.

It is time to stop throwing the popcorn at the CEOs and actually do something. We got this bill through the Judiciary Committee with a 16- to-6 vote just 6 months ago. Now it is time to bring this bill to a vote on the floor.

We have monopoly problems. You can still like the products. You can like the companies if you want--OK--but at some point they have gotten so big that you have to put some rules of the road in place to ensure that we can have the next Google or that we can have another competitor to Google or that we can have a true competitor to Amazon or that we can find, finally, social media platforms that protect our privacy and our data and our democracy. This isn't going to happen if you just let four big platforms control the day. As long as they do, which looks like it will be for the well foreseeable future, at least let's protect capitalism by putting some rules of the road in place.

I yield the floor.

Madam President, I rise today in support of the Freedom to Travel for Health Care Act--something that Senator Cortez Masto, our colleague from Nevada, is leading.

I do want to take a moment, however, to note that there are many things we need to do to reduce costs. I appreciated the words of my colleague from the neighboring State of South Dakota, and I think he is well aware that pharmaceutical prices are No. 1 on the minds of people in many of our States. I ask Republicans to join us in pushing Medicare to finally negotiate lifting the ban so we can negotiate less expensive drugs under Medicare Part D--something that every Democrat is committed to in our caucus and we hope to get done in the next month.

I also note that the President recently came out for E15--something Senator Thune and I have worked together on for years, and that is now in place as one competitive fuel that should help--not alleviate everything but be a major help--and the release of the oil from the Strategic Petroleum Reserve and so many other areas where we are working together.

I don't think anyone thought we could emerge from a 2-year pandemic and everything was going to be the same. Obviously, there is work left together for the country to bring down costs, and that is on all of our minds.

Madam President, also on our minds is what has recently happened with the Supreme Court and the decision in the Dobbs case. Twenty days ago-- only 20 days ago, and you can see everything that has happened since that time--the Supreme Court issued a ruling shredding nearly five decades of precedent protecting a woman's right to make her own healthcare decisions. Now women are at the mercy of a patchwork of State laws governing their ability to access reproductive care, leaving them with fewer rights than their moms and their grandmas.

In just 20 days, over 20 States have laws in place that could be used to restrict access to abortion. Twenty-five States in total are expected to ban abortion in the days and the weeks ahead. But, colleagues, I am afraid the worst is yet to come.

Legislation was introduced in Missouri to allow private citizens to act as vigilantes and sue people who help women cross State lines for reproductive care--vigilantes, just like we saw in Texas. In Texas, legislators are working on a bill to criminalize businesses that provide resources simply to help their workers obtain abortion services in other States.

These proposals don't just hurt those in need of care; they are also creating an uncertain environment for doctors and straining resources at clinics in States like Minnesota where reproductive rights are protected, two major States in the Midwest--that is it--Illinois and Minnesota.

I spoke on the phone with the head of the Red River Women's Clinic out of Fargo, ND, who had to resort to a GoFundMe page to get the money she needs to move her clinic across the river to Minnesota to a safe place.

Planned Parenthood in Moorhead, MN--I met with them only a week ago about the services and the work they are doing right now.

In Montana, clinics have already begun requiring proof of residency from women seeking abortion pills because they are afraid they might be pursued by out-of-State prosecutors.

Of course, we should never settle for a situation where women in Minnesota have different rights than women in Missouri or where women in Illinois have different rights than women in Texas, but with so many extreme Republicans racing to State capitals to be the first to take away women's rights, it is clear we must explicitly protect the right to travel to other States to access reproductive care. We don't have to imagine why this might matter. We don't need to conjure up hypotheticals. We already know what has happened.

Think about the heartbreaking, enraging story about the 10-year-old girl in Ohio who had to go to Indiana to get an abortion after she was impregnated by her rapist. When that story came out last week, some people doubted it. Now, in clear print in the criminal complaint out of the State of Ohio, we saw yesterday that, yes, this happened. This man raped a 10-year-old girl, and she got pregnant, and then she couldn't even get the care she needed--at age 10--to get an abortion. She had to go across State lines to the State of Indiana just to get her care.

Should the next little 10-year-old's right or 12-year-old's right or 14-year-old's right to get the care that she desperately needs be put in jeopardy? What about her mom? What about her doctor? Where will this end?

That is why we must not just codify Roe v. Wade into law with the bill that we voted on just last month, but we must also pass the Freedom to Travel for Health Care Act by unanimous consent right now. That is a bill that our great colleague Senator Cortez Masto is leading.

Our bill protects women and girls from being punished for traveling to another State to access abortion services. It also ensures doctors won't be punished for providing reproductive care outside their home States. As clinics across the country struggle to navigate this post- Roe nightmare landscape, they should not have to add to their list of worries whether they will be criminally prosecuted for serving patients in a nearby State. This is an issue, as I noted, that hits close to home because of Minnesota being in the neighborhood that includes the States of North Dakota, South Dakota, Iowa, and Wisconsin, all of which have various issues with reproductive healthcare.

The freedom to travel cannot be an empty promise. That is why the bill gives the Department of Justice, as well as women and doctors, the power to sue people who infringe on the right to travel for healthcare. Women in States with abortion bans already face enough obstacles to care. We can't wait to see what anti-choice State legislators criminalize next. We have to act now.

All of this comes down to one question: Who should get to make the personal decisions for a woman or for a 10-year-old girl? Should it be her family? Should it be a woman herself? Or should it be politicians, our colleagues on the other side of the aisle who supported these Justices, put them in place in the Supreme Court, and got us to where we are right now? I think the answer is clear.

Today, each and every one of my colleagues has the opportunity to show where they stand. Will we come together to protect this essential right to seek healthcare across State lines for the sake of the women and, yes, the young girls across this country? I hope we do.

I thank Senator Cortez Masto for her leadership.

I yield the floor.

Thank you, Senator Cornyn, for the work you are doing and working with Senator Murphy and so many other Senators. You and I have done so many bills together, including the historic Save Our Stages bill, which made such a difference. And I am very pleased that we are finally advancing gun safety legislation. And a lot of these provisions are things that we have been working across the aisle on for many years, the boyfriend loophole--something that I introduced in 2013, 10 years ago--to close the boyfriend loophole. That is a part of this negotiation, part of the framework. We have so many women killed, 1 every 14 hours, from domestic partners--1 every 14 hours from domestic partners--with guns in this country. And, sadly, half of those involve dating partners, people who aren't married to someone, but they are in a romantic relationship with them in some way. And the way the law works in all but 19 States where it is fully closed, in many of these States, you get convicted of domestic abuse, and you can still go out and buy a gun the next day.

So I am really pleased that we are moving forward on this provision. This isn't the first time we have heard the call to action from America when it comes to guns. We heard it after 23 people were killed at a Walmart in El Paso; after 17 people were killed at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland; after 59 people were killed at a country music festival, just out there on a beautiful evening enjoying the music; after 59 people dead in Las Vegas; and after 49 people were killed at the Pulse nightclub in Orlando.

Today, we hear calls for action because of more tragedies: a White supremacist murdering 10 people who are simply shopping for groceries; one guy out buying a cake for his little boy, a birthday cake for his son, who never returned; 10 people killed.

The American people are demanding that we do something after the senseless murder of 19 children and 2 teachers who died putting their very lives up to protect those children in Uvalde, TX. We have seen the pictures of those kids in their confirmation-communion dresses, in their sports uniforms, the Converse green sneakers, the glasses, the smiles. In some photos, they were actually holding awards they had won just that morning.

But today, after too many of these tragedies to name, I rise with renewed hope that we are finally working together to help keep Americans safe from gun violence. While there is so much more work to be done, reforms outlined in the bipartisan framework, like encouraging States to enact risk protection orders, which are also known as red flag laws, expanding access to mental health services, and supporting school violence prevention--Senator Grassley and I led that bill after Parkland that we passed with significant funding for schools. Clearly, more must be done.

As I noted, I am particularly pleased to see that the framework will include my bill to finally close the boyfriend loophole. Every year, more than 600 American women are shot to death by intimate partners. We understandably focus on the horror of these mass shootings, but think of those numbers: 600 women shot every year by intimate partners.

We know that preventing convicted domestic abusers from getting guns saves lives. We know that because we have seen the numbers in the States that have the laws in place.

Currently, Federal law only prohibits domestic abusers from buying a gun if they are currently or formerly married--think about that: currently or formerly married--or if they have ever lived together or if they have a child. That is despite the fact, as I noted, that half of these homicides--half of the women killed are killed by dating partners. That is why in 2013 I introduced this bill to close this dangerous loophole, and now, I am so pleased that there is growing bipartisan support for the bill.

By the way, we have shown that support in the past. It was part of the Violence Against Women Act that passed in the House, and it had 29 Republicans vote for it. That included an even more broad version of the bill, which also included stalking and was broader than what we are going to see in this bill.

Obviously, I support my original bill, but the fact that we are making progress to close the loophole in the States that so far have not gotten to where the other 19 are is incredibly positive. It did not pass last time when we passed the Violence Against Women Act in the Senate. Sadly, it didn't make it in there. But, again, it got 29 Republican votes in the House, and that just shows the kind of growing momentum we have for this.

I come from a State with a proud tradition of hunting and fishing, like yours. I always think about my Uncle

Dick and his deer stand, and I always ask, when I look at these proposals--from closing the boyfriend loophole to putting in better background checks, to doing something about better checking the records of 18- to 21 year olds--I think, does that hurt my Uncle Dick and his deer stand? Of course, the answer is, it does not.

This is our moment to act. It is not just one killing, and we all know that. It has happened in every single community. Every single Senator in this Chamber knows of a moment where they thought ``How could this happen in my community?'' when they meet with a family.

What I remember the most, actually, is a case involving a police officer out of Lake City, MN. He was a good cop doing his job. He was called to a domestic violence incident.

What people don't often know is that for police officers, these domestic violence calls can be some of the most dangerous because you have someone who is very angry, and you don't know what you are walking into. It is in the moment.

He gets there to the door. He has his bulletproof vest on, but the perpetrator--clearly mentally ill--who had been beating up his young, young, young girlfriend, meets him with a gun, shoots him in his head, and he dies.

I was there for that funeral. There was an outpouring of support from the community. The funeral was held in the very same church where the officer and his wife and their three little kids had gathered for the nativity play just a few weeks before for Christmas, those two little boys and a little girl. The father had sat in the front row to watch his boys in that nativity play only a few weeks before, and the next time the family is in that church, it is the widow, the two little boys, and this little tiny girl in a dress with blue stars on it walking down the aisle of that church at his funeral. That is a moment I won't forget.

I just shows you how domestic abuse and those kinds of cases--yes, there is one immediate victim--most likely the woman--but it is a whole family who is the victim. Kids who witness domestic abuse through their lives are so much more likely to get into crime themselves. Statistics have shown it. But it is even more than the family, it is the whole community, as that family who lost their dad and lost their husband would tell you if they were standing in here right now.

So I am so pleased we are finally moving on this. I thank Senator Murphy. I thank Senator Cornyn and all those involved. I am also so grateful that my 10 years of work leading this bill with Representative Debbie Dingell in the House has not gone for naught. We kept it moving. It is probably a sign for anyone that perseverance matters in this place. I am very pleased that it is part of the final negotiations, and it will make such a difference for saving lives.

I yield the floor.

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

Mr. President, I come to the floor today on behalf of 9 million Americans who directly benefited from very important health insurance credits in the American Rescue Plan--credits that are set to expire at the end of the year if Congress doesn't act. I don't believe enough attention has been focused on this issue.

Last year, in March of 2021, we came to this very Chamber and passed the American Rescue Plan, which provided a crucial lifeline for so many families. We eliminated health insurance premiums for low-wage workers making less than 150 percent of the Federal poverty level, expanded eligibility for health insurance tax credits to middle-class families, and guaranteed that health coverage would not cost more than 8.5 percent of a person's income. The American Rescue Plan also increased the size of the tax credit for all eligible income brackets, putting more money in workers' pockets.

As a result, ACA health insurance premiums were brought down by an average of $50 per person per month, and people in both New Mexico and in Minnesota took great advantage of that. As a result, a record number of Americans--14.5 million Americans--are enrolled in the Affordable Care Act health insurance plans. That is 2.5 million more people who signed up in a

single year than ever before. In my home State, that translated to a record-low uninsured rate of just 4 percent. That means 96 percent of Minnesotans have health insurance, which is a great improvement over where it was.

Millions more Minnesotans and Americans now have the peace of mind that comes with affordable, quality health coverage. Eligible households in Minnesota have an annual average ACA tax credit of $3,600. That is $3,600 freed up for housing, gas, and groceries, while maintaining access to healthcare. But unless Congress acts to make the enhanced, family-friendly tax credits currently set to expire at the end of 2022 permanent, millions of Americans will have the rug pulled out from under them, likely seeing a double-digit hike on their health insurance premiums. Karen Tumulty, a columnist for the Washington Post, called it a ``ticking time bomb.''

If these tax credits are not made permanent, 70,000 Minnesotans--or 61 percent of Minnesota families--purchasing health insurance on their own could see a 35- to 41-percent increase in their health insurance premiums, and over 10,000 Minnesotans could lose their health insurance tax credits in 2023 unless Congress acts.

In my State, Americans between the ages of 55 and 64 would be most affected, and you think about this with cost issues and inflation and all the things people are already facing. Right now, a 60-year-old Minnesota couple with a household income of $75,000 is saving $773 in monthly premiums. Taking away those tax credits would increase their annual health spending by at least $9,000. That is like taking away multiple paychecks.

It is no wonder that Americans overwhelmingly support making these tax credits permanent. Doctors and patients have called on us to protect these historic gains in affordability, coverage, and equity. Families can't afford to go back to paying upwards of 20 percent or more of their monthly income toward healthcare premiums.

This is important for patients, and it is also important for providers. We know--hearing when we are back home--that many hospitals are stretched thin right now, and putting millions of Americans' healthcare in jeopardy is going to create a lot of volatility as patients are forced to disrupt their care and cancel procedures.

At a time when so many families are struggling to make ends meet, we just can't sit back and let those ACA tax credits expire. More Americans insured is good for patients, good for families, good for communities, and good for our country.

I would note one other thing I would do when it comes to healthcare, and that is making sure that we allow Medicare to negotiate prices under Medicare Part D for pharmaceuticals. While our communities are facing the potential of this--what the Washington Post called a ``ticking time bomb''--we also must act when it comes to pharmaceuticals because those prices are also going up.

I have just presented two really straightforward ways that we can help families with costs when it comes to healthcare. One is making sure we keep in place the tax credits that protect middle-class families in this country, and the second is to make sure we allow Medicare to negotiate better prices under Medicare Part D because when you look at what is happening right now, we continue to see major drugs--major drugs--go up, doubling, go up 200 percent, 300 percent, to the point where we are already paying double what they pay in Canada for a significant number of drugs. For Minnesota, that is right across the border.

We must allow, in my mind, reimportation of less expensive drugs, but the biggest game changer would be to lift the ban that the pharmaceutical companies got in place in law that says Medicare, representing tens of millions of seniors, is not allowed to negotiate cheaper prices. That is what the VA does, and it has been really good for our veterans. We should allow the same help for 46 million seniors. It will be good for all Americans because it will bring down the taxpayer expense in part of the payment of drugs, and it will be good for individual consumers. So let's get these two things done.

I yield the floor.

I suggest the absence of a quorum.

Mr. President, today, I am proud to stand with my colleague, Senator Smith, to recognize an organization that has meant so much to the people of Minnesota.

On June 4, 2022, the Minnesota YMCA Youth in Government Program celebrates its 75th anniversary. The Minnesota YMCA Youth in Government Program is a youth-led, nonpartisan, experiential learning program that develops and promotes lifelong, active, responsible citizenship in our youth. Annually, the program brings middle and high school students from across Minnesota to create a mock State government in the State capitol, complete with legislative branches for upper and lower classmen, a court, an executive branch, lobbyists, and a press corps.

The program has been developing tomorrow's leaders since 1946 and, since that time, has served over 54,000 middle school and high school students. Today, the Minnesota YMCA Youth in Government program stands as one of the largest and longest running Youth in Government programs in the Nation.

Through Youth in Government, students learn to write bills, debate issues, argue court cases, elect their own leaders, and actively participate in an authentic model of real-life legislative, executive, and judicial processes and structures. Youth in Government students learn about the importance of accountability, responsibility, and the value of getting involved in civic affairs while developing self- confidence and learning their voices matter and need to be heard within the State's--and Nation's--policy and decision-making process.

This vital program creates an environment for students to have meaningful and respectful conversations where students can learn from each other about today's issues while fully acknowledging that each student brings a different life experience to the table, a skill that they will carry with them for the rest of their lives. It is through this experience that Youth in Government teaches young people that they have an important and immediate stake in the decisions that shape the future of not only the State of Minnesota, but of their Nation and the world.

The program motto for Minnesota Youth in Government is ``Democracy must be learned by each generation,'' which is more important today than ever.

I ask that my colleagues join Ms. Smith and myself in honoring the Minnesota YMCA Youth in Government Program.

Mr. President, I rise today in support of Dara Lindenbaum's nomination to be a Commissioner on the Federal Election Commission--FEC--the independent agency responsible for enforcing Federal campaign finance laws.

Ms. Lindenbaum is an experienced nominee who is respected on both sides of the aisle; that is why earlier this month her nomination was reported out of the Rules Committee with bipartisan support, including from Ranking Member Blunt. I hope more of my Republican colleagues will join us in supporting her nomination today.

I would also like to note that the last time the Senate considered the nomination of FEC Commissioners in December 2020, we confirmed two Republicans and one Democrat, who--importantly--restored a quorum to the Commission.

Ms. Lindenbaum's confirmation will simply maintain the Commission's current partisan balance, since she has been nominated to fill the seat being vacated by Commissioner Walther after many years of service.

The FEC is charged with a critical role in ensuring accountability in our system of government, and it was established by Congress in the wake of the Watergate scandal to restore the public's faith in our electoral processes, to make it clear that, in America, politicians must play by the rules, so that the votes of the people decide our elections.

Now, 47 years later, the work of the FEC is as important as ever. The 2020 election cycle was the most expensive in history. Total spending was over $14 billion with $8 billion spent on political advertisements alone. And too many voters feel like their voices are being drowned out. At the same time, the Commission is facing the challenges that arise given rapidly evolving technologies and the ongoing threat of foreign interference in our elections.

It is a big and important job, but Dara Lindenbaum is more than capable of taking it on. Ms. Lindenbaum has extensive experience in election and campaign finance law, with years of experience working for a civil rights nonprofit and in private practice. She also has firsthand experience at the FEC where she worked as a law clerk early in her legal career, and her work representing clients before the FEC will allow her to bring an important perspective to the Commission.

Throughout the confirmation process, Ms. Lindenbaum has shown that she will be a fair and effective Commissioner. In her testimony, she stated that ``[t]he consideration of the facts and the law in front of me will be my guideposts as I seek to provide clarity to the regulated community, increase transparency, and collaborate with my fellow Commissioners[.]''

She is both well qualified and well respected. Before Ms. Lindenbaum's nomination hearing, the Rules Committee received a letter from 30 of the Nation's top campaign finance lawyers. The letter ``enthusiastically'' recommends Ms. Lindenbaum's confirmation, and it is signed by Republicans, Democrats, and Independents, including Lee Goodman, a former Republican Chairman of the FEC, and Karl Sandstrom, a former Democratic Commissioner. In the letter--and these are their words, not mine--these attorneys praise her as a ``thoughtful and conscientious advocate'' and ``a genial and inclusive colleague.'' I agree with their conclusion that she would be ``an excellent addition to the Commission.''

The fact that Ms. Lindenbaum has support from top campaign finance attorneys in both parties is no surprise, since she learned about getting along across the aisle at a young age--from her own family. Growing up, her parents supported different political parties, and so every election day, she would take two trips to their polling place, one to watch her mom vote and then another with her dad. Her parents' example will serve her well on the Commission, which in recent years has often suffered from partisan divides and stalemate.

As we know, no more than three Commissioners can be from the same political party, but it requires four votes to take most actions. So when votes consistently fall along party lines, very little gets done. For example, the FEC has not enacted any major disclosure rules or internet regulations in over a decade. Hundreds of enforcement cases have been left unresolved. This is not fair to candidates or to the public.

While I continue to urge my colleagues to pass legislation to address some of these issues, it is also up to the Commissioners to figure out ways to work across party lines and find bipartisan agreement. I know that Ms. Lindenbaum is up to the task and that she will work to find common ground with her fellow Commissioners on these difficult issues.

Our Nation was founded on the ideals of democracy, and we have seen for ourselves in this building how we can't afford to take that for granted. We are reminded every day, as we see the people of Ukraine putting their lives on the line to stand up for their democracy, that it is up to all of us to protect our system of government here at home. At its core, that is the job of the FEC, to ensure the agency fulfills its mission to ``protect the integrity of the Federal campaign finance process'' and, in doing so, to keep our democracy strong.

I am confident that Dara Lindenbaum is up to this challenge, and I urge all of my colleagues to vote for cloture and support her confirmation.

Vote on Lindenbaum Nomination

I ask for the yeas and nays.

Madam President, I rise in support today of Mary Boyle, the nominee to serve as Commissioner at the U.S. Consumer Product Safety Commission.

Mary will bring to this role more than a decade of experience on the Consumer Product Safety Commission, where she previously served as general counsel and currently serves as the Executive Director. She is deeply knowledgeable about consumer product safety and the functioning of the CPSC. I have every confidence that she will be ready to lead on day one.

But it is not just her professional background that makes her perfect for this role. As a mom who raised three kids, she knows firsthand how important it is for parents to be able to trust the products they use every day. She understands the stakes and the devastating consequences of unsafe products.

Just yesterday, the Commerce Committee took an important step forward toward protecting kids and infants by passing the STURDY Act, which will prevent harmful and ultimately heartbreaking furniture tip-overs. Senators Casey and Blumenthal and I have been working on this for quite a while. It resulted in the largest furniture recall ever in the history of America with IKEA. But we need standards in place across the board. I know that we can count on Mary to be another critical partner in preventing unsafe products from hurting our kids.

Mary is clear-eyed about the responsibility of the CPSC. In her words, it provides a safety net for the public, and in order to carry out that crucial task, it needs a full roster of Commissioners. Currently, four of the five slots are filled. To truly address pressing product safety issues, we have to fill that fifth seat. We can't afford to play politics here. This is about everything from the hazards posed by crib bumper pads to the use of toxic chemicals in everyday consumer products.

I got involved in this way, way back before I was a Senator, when we had a young child swallow a charm that he got with a pair of tennis shoes. It was a giveaway. He didn't die because he choked on that charm; he died over a period of days because the lead in that charm, which was from a foreign country, got into his system, and he died in just a few days. That is how I got involved in the lead standards on foreign toys, that is how I started working with the Consumer Product Safety Commission, and that is when I saw the difference it can make.

We passed a bipartisan bill named after Jim Baker's granddaughter-- the Virginia Graeme Baker pool safety bill--after a young kid named Abigail Taylor in Minnesota was in a kiddy swimming pool and her intestines were ripped out just sitting in the pool because there were so many faulty drains in this country.

I went and visited her in the hospital, and she said: I don't want this to happen to any other kid.

She lived for a year, and during that time, we worked together.

Then Ted Stevens and I passed a much stronger pool safety bill. And I know that the last time I heard testimony from the Consumer Product Safety Commission, over a period of a decade, after we lost a number of kids every year, not one kid had died because of a simple change to how the pool drains worked. That is what the Consumer Product Safety Commission can do at its best--make sure it doesn't happen to any other kid again.

The American people are counting on us to get this right, and with Mary, we have the opportunity to do just that.

As Mary said in her testimony, consumers need to be able to go about their daily lives without worrying that products they interact with every day--washing machines, cell phones, batteries, toys, and treadmills, to name just a few--do not injure, maim, or kill them. Throughout her impressive career, Mary Boyle has shown that she is wholeheartedly dedicated to that mission.

I am voting in support of her, and I urge my colleagues to do the same.

I yield the floor.

Madam President, reserving the right to object, my friend and colleague Senator Lee is well aware that I am supportive of this bill. We worked together. I am a lead Democrat on this bill to get it through the committee.

I simply believe that this bill must go hand in hand with another bill that would look at this issue in a much bigger way; that, yes, this is about allowing State attorneys general to do their jobs and enforce the law, and that is why he and I have joined forces on this bill. But it is also about putting some rules of the road in place on a Federal basis.

We are very close to having a vote on Senator Grassley's and my bill, with a broad range of authors and support, which would be the only and first Federal competition response to tech monopolies since the advent of the internet.

I have been watching this movie for way too long. We have hearings, we throw popcorn at CEOs, we get sound bites on TV, but we don't do anything on a Federal basis. We had the Facebook whistleblower come forward, tell of the horror, the American people are with us, and we dither and do nothing. This is actually the first time that we have a coalition across the aisle of people who are ready to move forward on a Federal response.

So my view of this is that, as we work to get our enforcers more funds--that is a part of it; Senator Grassley and I have a merger fee bill that is moving as part of the competition bill, which is currently in conference committee--and as we work on Senator Lee's very worthy legislation to focus on allowing the State attorneys general to keep their cases in their own jurisdictions, we simply cannot pretend that we don't have some role in this.

If Members don't know about it, maybe they have talked to one of the 2,700 lobbyists whom the tech companies have hired or maybe they have been subject to the $70 million effort on the Federal level. And this is not Senator Lee that I am talking about; he is a true maverick and is willing to take on special interests. But what I believe is going on in this building is that there are a lot of people trying to wait this one out and hope we don't have a vote on this bill.

I appreciate Senator Schumer working with me and leadership on the Democratic and Republican sides of the Judiciary Committee to make sure that we get this vote.

So Senator Lee will have a vote on this bill. I would certainly not concede at this moment giving tech something they want in this bill when we can't even have a vote on the Federal legislation, but we will have a vote on Senator Lee's bill. I just believe they have to go hand in hand.

I think he is well aware of Senators doing all kinds of things procedurally to be able to get votes, but I think it is really important that we don't have a State-only approach when it comes to what is going on with tech.

To again remind my colleagues and those watching this, what our bill--this big, bipartisan, important bill--does, it doesn't tear apart the company. It doesn't even take on the fact that they are all monopolies--and they are monopolies. Google has a 90-percent market share. Apple and Google basically, when it comes to app stores, are duopolies in dominating the market.

While Europe is set to vote on their own digital market bill on Monday and move this ahead--I was just speaking with them--while Australia has taken on the issue of the news organizations, while Great Britain is moving ahead, we sit back. It is time to at least take on one issue.

As the Justice Department looks at what is a monopoly, is it a monopoly when you have 90 percent market share? The very least we can do is put some rules of the road in place.

What Senator Grassley's and my bill does--and we have taken several comments from Members and made changes to that bill--what the bill simply does is it says: Hey, monopolies or gatekeeper companies, if you own your own companies--which they are increasingly doing--you can't use your monopoly status to self-preference your own products in front of other products.

No. 2, you can't copy nonpublic data that you have because of the virtue of the fact that you are the gatekeeper and then rip it off and make your own products. That is exactly what Amazon did, as the Wall Street Journal reported, with a four-employee luggage organizer firm when they gave them the data. The next thing you know, it shows up on Amazon Basics.

The third thing you can't do is make companies, small businesses, buy a bunch of stuff just to put yourself at the top of the platform.

The American people are with us on this, poll after poll, including a poll that Google accidentally--accidentally--put out there before they were able to pull it back that showed 68 percent of people want to use the antitrust laws--68 percent of people in their own polling--to be able to rein in this problem.

This is a uniquely American approach, but it must be done hand in hand with State enforcement.

So, all I am asking my friend and colleague to do here--and we wouldn't be here if we could have reached an agreement on this--is, I will assure him that we will have a vote on his bill; but we must also have a vote and finally move ahead on what is only a slice of what we could be doing.

We are not doing some of the things I would want to do, which is look back at some of these mergers, which is actually take that email that Mark Zuckerberg wrote that said I'd rather ``buy than compete'' and look at what they bought in their zest to be able to avoid competition. Right now, that is going on with the Justice Department and the FTC. But we are simply trying to set some rules of the road, and it is more than overdue after an 8-month investigation in the House of Representatives--an 8-month investigation.

What Federal bills have we passed that would put any checks and balances on these companies? They just keep getting bigger and bigger and bigger. And I am so pleased that some of the State attorneys general are taking this on.

I am eager to get Senator Lee's bill and my bill up for a vote, but it will come close to when the vote on the actual Federal rules takes place. For these reasons, I object.

Again, I look forward to working with Senator Lee to pass this bill, and I also look forward to passing a bill on the Federal basis and not just deciding that this should be in the province of 50 different States, and I thoroughly plan to work with him to pass this bill, and I hope it will be soon.

I suggest the absence of a quorum.

Madam President, I thank Senator Blunt for his statement.

I join him in opposing this resolution.

As chair of the Rules Committee, with oversight of the Sergeant at Arms who helps manage the Senate Page Program, I know, like Senator Blunt does and everyone here does--I see Senator Leahy is here, the Presiding Officer, and Senator Paul--how hard the dedicated pages, who come from States across the country, work to help us do our jobs here on the Senate floor. We are so excited when we have someone from our States come and join us as a page. They are, too, as are their families.

As we continue to reopen the Capitol, which I strongly support, we must also take into account the health and safety of everyone who works and visits here, including our pages. This resolution would reverse the Page Program's--as Senator Blunt noted--current policy and prohibit any requirement for pages to be vaccinated against COVID-19.

It would also prohibit requiring pages to undergo COVID testing or wear a mask regardless of guidance from the Office of the Attending Physician or the CDC. This includes reversing the policy that all pages must wear a mask if one tests positive--a commonplace rule to protect healthy pages, who all live in the same dormitory, which, I think, is the defining part of this.

In light of recent events, we know that staff, Senators, as well as pages, have tested positive in the past few weeks. In light of these recent events, the Attending Physician, Dr. Monahan, has recommended that all pages wear masks. I believe in science. I believe we should listen to Dr. Monahan. Local public health officials have also decided, by the way, to require vaccines for certain eligible students in Washington, DC, including those attending our page school here in the Senate.

I agree with Senator Blunt in that the Page Program needs flexibility to set its own policies to protect the health and safety of pages. We should not put these young people who have come here to work in the heart of our democracy at risk unnecessarily.

We all know that the vaccine helps greatly if someone gets sick. I know that because my husband got really sick before there was a vaccine. He is healthy, and he ended up in the hospital for a week on oxygen. That might shape my response here, but I believe that if he had had the vaccine, we wouldn't have come that close to losing him.

I believe in science. And so I join Senator Blunt in this objection. And we look forward to seeing these pages and many pages serve us well in the coming years; therefore, I object.

Thank you.

I yield the floor.