Floor Statements

Madam President, I ask unanimous consent that the Senate proceed to the consideration of S. Con. Res. 34.

I ask unanimous consent that the concurrent resolution be agreed to and that the motion to reconsider be considered made and laid upon the table with no intervening action or debate.

Madam President, I ask unanimous consent that the Senate proceed to the consideration of S. Con. Res. 35.

I ask unanimous consent that the concurrent resolution be agreed to and that the motion to reconsider be considered made and laid upon the table with no intervening action or debate.

Madam President, I ask unanimous consent that the Committee on the Judiciary be discharged from further consideration of S. Res. 652 and the Senate proceed to the en bloc consideration of the following Senate resolutions: S. Res. 652, S. Res. 671, S. Res. 672, and S. Res. 675.

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

Madam President, I ask unanimous consent that the Senate proceed to the consideration of S. Res. 674, which is at the desk.

I know of no further debate on the resolution.

I ask unanimous consent that the preamble be agreed to and the motions to reconsider be considered made and laid upon the table.

Madam President, I ask unanimous consent that the Senate proceed to the consideration of S. Res. 673, which is at the desk.

I ask unanimous consent that the resolution be agreed to, the preamble be agreed to, and the motions to reconsider be considered made and laid upon the table with no intervening action or debate.

Madam President, I ask unanimous consent that when the Senate completes its business today, it stand adjourned under the provisions of S. Res. 673 to convene for a pro forma session only, with no business being conducted, at 9 a.m. on Friday, May 3; further, that when the Senate adjourns on Friday, it stand adjourned until 3 p.m. on Tuesday, May 7; that, on Tuesday, following the prayer and pledge, the morning hour be deemed expired, the Journal of proceedings be approved to date, the time for the two leaders be reserved for their use later in the day, and morning business be closed; that upon the conclusion of morning business, the Senate proceed to executive session to consider Calendar No. 576, Donna Ann Welton, of New York, to be Ambassador Extraordinary and Plenipotentiary of the United States of America to the Democratic Republic of Timor-Leste, and that the Senate vote on confirmation of the nomination at 5:30 p.m.; further, that if the nomination is confirmed, the motion to reconsider be considered made and laid upon the table and the President be immediately notified of the Senate's action; that upon disposition of the Welton nomination, the Senate resume legislative session and resume consideration of Calendar No. 211, H.R. 3935.

Madam President, if there is no further business to come before the Senate, I ask that it stand adjourned under the previous order.

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

Mr. President, tens of millions of kids in America are anxious, depressed, angry, lonely, sedentary, sometimes insecure, and sometimes suicidal. And just about everybody--whether they are parents, teachers, mental health professionals, or even the kids themselves-- points the finger at the same culprit: social media.

We do not need more data to tell us what is so painfully obvious in schools and homes across the country. Social media platforms, with their wildly powerful, covert, and addictive algorithms are driving our kids deeper and deeper into a sea of despair that they can't find their way out of. Kids are being unwittingly sucked into rabbit holes that leave them in a constant state of panic and outrage--ashamed of their own bodies, lacking meaningful friendships and connections.

The idea that a young kid--a kid--can feel so unhappy and so unfulfilled at the tender age of 8 or 9--so much so that they seriously contemplate self-harm--is appalling. And it is a uniquely modern crisis created over the past decades by profit-chasing tech companies for whom nothing and no one is off-limits, not even very young kids. The math for them is very simple: Attention means money. And the best way to hold people's attention is to make them upset and keep them upset.

You talk to any parent--whether they are raising a toddler or a teenager, whether they are a voter or nonvoter, a Democrat or a Republican--they are worried and they are frustrated about all the ways that social media is harming kids, but they don't know what to do about it or if they can do anything at all. Some might work two jobs and not have the time to monitor what their kids are up to online. Others might lack the technical literacy to operate parental controls and set limits on screen time.

All they really want is for their young kids to be off social media altogether, because there is no good reason that a 9-year-old should be spending hours every day scrolling through TikTok that has been programmed with no concern for whether the content is age-appropriate or not. There is no First Amendment right for an 11-year-old to be on Instagram while algorithm targets them with content glorifying starvation and fueling insecurities.

By the company's own admission, social media was never meant to be used by young kids. Yet any parent, or anyone who knows a parent, knows that young kids are on these platforms anyway. And the only way that it will stop is if the Federal law finally mandates that companies keep young kids off of their services.

Over the past year, my team and I have worked extensively with a broad range of advocates and stakeholders, as well as the Senate Commerce Committee leadership, to update my bill to protect kids on social media. Our updated bill, called the Healthy Kids Act, would do two simple things: It would prevent kids under 13 from being on social media at all; and it would ban algorithmic targeting on these platforms for kids under 17.

Delaying the onset of social media use is a straightforward and commonsense way to protect our youngest kids from the very worst of the internet's ills. Let them have a normal childhood in the real world-- play a sport, learn an instrument, read a book, go to the park, walk around with friends. And once kids are on social media at 13 or 14 or whenever, they need protection, particularly from the algorithmic targeting.

Just last year alone, social media companies made $11 billion from ads targeted at kids under 18 in the United States--$11 billion. So it is no wonder that they have no appetite to change their business model without a Federal law. It is working great for them--just not for the millions of young kids who are sad and lonely and angry because of it. Kids need help, and they need protection. And because the companies have shown time and time again that they will not step up, Congress must.

I am glad that we are seeing renewed momentum and urgency right now with a number of different proposals on this issue in the U.S. Senate. All of them, my bill included, share the same goal of keeping our kids healthy. But at the heart of this effort is an essential question of when our kids ought to be allowed to be on social media. At what age is it appropriate to use? If we are going to protect these kids online and act as a counterweight to the rich and powerful tech companies, answering that question and establishing an age minimum is essential. And that is what the Healthy Kids Act does.

It is our job here in the Senate to consider any number of difficult challenges facing the country and the world and to debate what to do about them. What is more fundamental to the role of the Federal Government than to protect the most vulnerable Americans, especially our children?

If you think what is happening to kids online is unclear, look at the data. The percentage of high school students surveyed who experienced persistent feelings of sadness or hopelessness in the past year is 36 percent to 57 percent females; 21 percent to 29 percent males in 10 years--in 10 years.

It might be the phones. It might be the phones. You can consult the data. You can ask the Surgeon General of the United States. You can ask all of the people who have studied this. And they know it is early use of social media where--look, we all use social media, and our adult brains are not powerful enough to overcome the negative impacts. You are 13, you are 9, you are 7, you are going to be overpowered by these algorithms. We have to protect these kids.

And if you don't believe the data, talk to any parent--Democrat, Republican, parent of a 2-year-old, parent of a 12-year-old--everybody wants this tool in their toolkit. And the idea that we should pass a Federal law mandating that all the social media companies have to do is have a little thing in settings where you can turn the dials on all the different aspects of your social media account is ignorant. It is ignorant. The idea that all we really

need to do is precipitate a conversation between a parent and child about social media use--no. What parents need is to be able to say: I am sorry. That is illegal. I am sorry. You may not use these social media platforms.

I think it gets really tricky and really complicated once a kid is 13, 14, 15, 16, 17. I understand that. And we narrowed the bill to be more precise because there is no First Amendment right, there is no public policy upside for a 9-year-old to be on TikTok. Nobody can make that argument with a straight face.

And so as we consider our options going forward on tech policy--but specifically protecting children online--the threshold question is, At what age is it appropriate for a child to use social media? If I had my druthers, I would have set it at 16, honestly. But, certainly, we can all agree that there is no advantage to a child's life, a prepubescent child's life--a 9-year-old, a 4-year-old, an 11-year-old--being on social media.

I am confident we will get this done. I am confident that if this ever received a Senate floor vote, that it would be a resounding bipartisan majority. And I am confident that the American people support us in this.

I yield the floor.

I suggest the absence of a quorum.

Madam President, it has been more than 5 months since the President submitted a domestic supplemental appropriations request to Congress. And, among other things, it called for funding recovery efforts in communities across the country struck by disasters, including Lahaina Maui.

Every one of these affected communities in Florida, in California, in Vermont, in Mississippi, in Alabama, in Arkansas, in Alaska, in South Dakota, in Georgia, Illinois, Indiana, and Tennessee need help. Each one of them is in the middle of a long and difficult process of rebuilding and getting back on its feet.

Recovering from a disaster--whether natural or manmade--it is hard, it is time-intensive, and it is incredibly expensive; surveying the damage in the immediate hours and days following the event; undertaking the complex and often dangerous process of debris removal; rebuilding homes and roads and schools and other essential infrastructure that were destroyed; providing financial assistance to people, families, and small business owners who lost their jobs and livelihoods overnight. It takes months and years and tremendous effort from thousands of people to return these communities to anything close to normal.

Today, another community is, unfortunately, confronting the colossal task of rebuilding--this time in Baltimore in the wake of the tragic collapse of the Francis Scott Key Bridge. Our hearts go out to the families of the six men who were lost that day. They were fathers; they were husbands; they were brothers; immigrants who worked day and night to provide for their families. And their losses break our collective hearts.

As Baltimore recovers, we stand ready to support all of the communities and businesses that relied on that bridge and the Port of Baltimore every day to get around and move goods through. And as the Chair of the Senate Appropriations Subcommittee on Transportation, I am committed to doing everything I can to help pass the necessary funding to rebuild.

As we do that, we also have a responsibility to support every other community that has been devastated by a disaster because we are all in this together. No State or county--big or small, red or blue, wealthy or not--can shoulder the burden alone.

When a disaster is so big, so catastrophic for any one State or locality to handle, it falls on the Federal Government to step up and help. It is central to the promise of the Federal Government. We can argue about the size and the scope of the Federal Government all we like--which programs to fund, what levels to fund them at--but even the most libertarian among us can agree that helping our fellow Americans when they are in crisis, when they have lost everything, when they are desperate for support--helping them is patriotic and essential to our roles in the Congress. It is why funding disaster recovery has historically been bipartisan--because people on both sides of the aisle have recognized, rightly, that disasters do not discriminate between red and blue and purple areas. Accidents don't pick and choose their victims. Every community that has had the misfortune of being struck by a disaster needs and deserves help.

Maui is just one example of what these communities are facing. Eight months on from the devastating fires, the needs remain enormous. Thousands of people are still living out of hotels and vacation rentals, unable to rebuild their lives. Roads and water systems have yet to be repaired. Small businesses and their employees continue to struggle without tourism.

For Lahaina to recover, thousands of homes will need be to be rebuilt. Critical infrastructure will need to be restored. Businesses will need to get up and running again. So Congress needs to step up and help. That includes providing funding for the Community Development Block Grant Disaster Recovery--or CDBG-DR--Program, as the supplemental request calls for. CDBG-DR funding has long been a lifeline for families and small businesses recovering after disasters. Maui and many other communities nationwide are waiting on this aid.

It has been nearly 6 months since the President called on Congress to help communities recover from disasters. We have waited a long time, and we can't wait much longer. The disasters keep piling up and, with them, the urgent needs of the survivors. People need help.

We need to pass this supplemental and make sure all the survivors are getting the relief they need. This is not each against all; we are truly all in this together. Every community that has been hurt by a natural disaster deserves help, and Congress must provide it.

I yield the floor.

I suggest the absence of a quorum.

Madam President, I ask unanimous consent that the following legislative fellows in my office be granted floor privileges for the remainder of this Congress: Nancy Connolly, Nico Fairbairn, Will Poff-Webster, and Ashley Nagel.

I suggest the absence of a quorum.

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

Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that we start the 12 noon vote now.

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

I yield the floor.

I ask for the yeas and nays.