Floor Statements

I move to proceed to executive session to consider Calendar No. 599.

Madam President, I send a cloture motion to the desk.

Madam President, I move to proceed to legislative session.

I move to proceed to executive session to consider Calendar No. 600.

Madam President, I send a cloture motion to the desk.

I ask unanimous consent that the mandatory quorum calls for the cloture motions filed today, May 16, be waived.

I yield the floor.

I suggest the absence of a quorum.

Mr. President, last year, Congress faced a momentous choice: either watch from the sidelines as artificial intelligence reshaped our world or make a novel, bipartisan effort to enhance, but also regulate, this technology before it was too late. So, as majority leader, I convened a bipartisan working group of Senators last year-- Senators Rounds, Heinrich, and Young--to chart the path forward on AI in the Senate.

Today, after months of discussion, after hundreds of meetings, and after nine first-of-their-kind AI Insight Forums, our bipartisan Senate working group released the first ever roadmap for AI policy in the Senate. Our policy roadmap for AI is the first, most comprehensive, most bipartisan, and most forward-thinking report on AI regulation produced by Congress. Our roadmap lays out a panoply of policy priorities and guardrails that our group believes merit bipartisan consideration in this Congress and beyond.

Three words govern what we do: urgency, humility, and bipartisanship. Urgency because AI is so complex, so rapidly evolving, and so broad in its impact--it covers almost every aspect of society. The longer we wait, the bigger the gap becomes. Just this week, ChatGPT released a new model that can read facial expressions and translate spoken language in realtime.

Humility, this is hard to do because AI is nothing like Congress has ever dealt with before. It is rapidly changing. As we mentioned, every week, something new happens. It is all encompassing, and Congress has never really dealt with it before. In areas like health or defense, we have a long track record, lots of expertise, but not so in AI because it is so new.

And, finally, bipartisanship, because the changes that AI brings won't discriminate between left, right, and center, and we all know the only way to get things done here is bipartisanship. That means compromise by Democrats and Republicans. But, certainly, getting nothing done is a worse alternative.

As I have always said, innovation must be our North Star--innovation. America must take the lead in the world, continue to innovate, use the great nutrient agar of entrepreneurship

and doing new things and reaching out in new directions. We have been the most innovative country in the world. We should keep that.

But innovation has two senses, two parts. Both are very important to realize. One I call transformational innovation, and one I call sustainable innovation.

Transformational innovation is reaching the stars. It is the great stuff that AI could do. What if AI cures cancer? We have got to make sure we don't stand in the way of that happening.

What if AI dealt with climate change in a really strong new way or fed the hungry of the world or gave each person on Earth a teacher? Senator Young mentioned this yesterday--a teacher that could just talk to them. These are great opportunities that we can't afford to miss.

But we also need sustainable innovation. That means we need innovation to produce guardrails that minimize the damage that AI could bring. How do you deal with workers who might be displaced? We don't want to repeat the mistake of globalization, where globalization did a lot of good things--it took a billion people, probably, out of poverty in the world--but no one paid attention to those who were hurt by globalization. We have to pay attention to bias because many of these big systems have bias built into them, and we can't repeat that error.

We have to deal with the creative community and intellectual property. So we need innovation in these areas as well to make sure that the liabilities of AI are dealt with.

So we need both--transformational innovation and sustainable innovation--in a sense, to maximize the benefits of AI and minimize the liabilities.

It is no easy task. It is no easy task. But our insight forums were designed to be balanced, with the input of leaders from the industry. They operate these AI complexes. We needed to hear from them, but also leaders from civil rights and labor and the creative community, sitting right next to them. And our AI forums were amazing.

There were back-and-forths. People really didn't just make speeches but tried to come up with questions we needed to answer and solutions to those questions. It is a difficult job, but I believe we achieved that balance in our AI forums and certainly in the roadmap. Balance is important.

Now, to help move forward on both forms of innovation--innovation, of course, being our North Star, transformational and sustainable innovation--we recommend a $32 billion surge in emergency funding to secure America's dominance in AI. And let me underscore: This is a bipartisan recommendation. Senators Heinrich and I, of course, care about it, but so do Senators Young and Rounds, and they were quite eloquent yesterday about how we needed to spend this money or the United States would fall way behind.

Now, where do we go from here? Our policy roadmap is intended to be used by our committee chairs and ranking members as a foundation to move on good, bipartisan AI legislation. It is the committees that do the legislating. That is what has always happened around here. We need our committees to continue the bipartisan momentum of the AI gang to achieve the hope of passing legislation by the end of the year.

We don't expect every piece of AI to be addressed, every problem that is in our roadmap to be addressed. Some will lend themselves to move more quickly than others, and we are not going to hold back on some that are ready because others are not yet ready. This is a very, as I said, difficult process that we have to approach with humility.

Let me just say this: Our AI committee chairs and ranking members are ready and eager to engage in AI. Our roadmap includes many areas of bipartisan agreement that the committees can use, and, already, we are making progress in the Rules Committee, which is marking up legislation today. The Commerce Committee is looking at legislation regarding AI innovation. The Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee is considering how to leverage AI in the Federal workforce. The Armed Services Committee is leading the way on AI in the military. And the list goes on. So our committees are getting actively involved, which is what we want.

Our policy roadmap also embraces action to protect our elections from the potential risk of AI. First, the 2024 elections will be the first elections ever held in the age of AI. If we are not careful, AI could jaundice, even totally discredit, our entire system of elections as we know it. So, today, I am joining the Rules Committee, which is marking up three bills--all three with bipartisan support--to address AI's impact on our elections. I strongly support these bills, and I commend Senator Klobuchar and her sponsors for their bipartisan work.

And that is just happening today, but we expect there will be other committees putting forth legislation in the near future.

Our policy roadmap also advocates for a host of regulatory recommendations that help maximize AI's potential and minimize its risks--risks like bias and job displacement and privacy invasion. These are all difficult issues to deal with, but move forward we must.

So our policy roadmap is an important step in AI regulation, and getting the committees here in the Congress to start figuring out the bipartisan legislation that they can move forward on is a good step. But I also plan to meet with Speaker Johnson in the near future to see how we can make Congress's effort on AI not just bipartisan but also bicameral.

So today is immensely satisfying for our bipartisan AI gang. It has been a long, long time and a culmination of months of listening and thinking and working on this issue. So with great sincerity and humility, I want to thank my colleagues in the bipartisan working group--Rounds, Heinrich, and Young. I thank my Senate colleagues who attended our insight forums. Over 70 Senators attended at least 1 forum, and many attended multiple forums. And they are beginning their work on AI through the committee process. And I thank all the staff who have put a lot of effort and a lot of hours into this policy roadmap. I have a great staff, and they have been so instrumental in getting us to the point we are at now.

Congress can't and won't solve every challenge AI presents today, but with this policy roadmap, we now have a foundation necessary to propel America into the age of AI.

Mr. President, now on the border, three things are true about the southern border: One, the status quo cannot continue. Two, Democrats want Congress to take action. Three, the only way we will solve this issue is with real bipartisan action, not partisan talk.

Instead of just making a lot of speeches, pointing a lot of fingers-- blame, blame, blame--we Democrats want to get something done to secure our border. Democrats showed we are serious about border security when we worked with Republicans to write the strongest border security bill in a generation, to hire more border agents and asylum officers, enhance drug enforcement, and fix asylum. We had the strongest border security bill in decades ready to go here in the Senate, with a lot of support from Republicans who, when they saw it, they liked it--they said, ``Wow, this is tough stuff''--until Donald Trump killed it to keep the issue alive on the campaign trail. He said it. He wanted chaos because it might help his election. Then he said: Blame it on me.

I remember when he said, ``Blame the shutdown on me,'' when Speaker Pelosi and I went to his office. I don't think that is a very successful strategy, and it is certainly not what is good for America.

So this bill is such a strong bill. It is a bill that would add more than 1,500 new Customs and Border Protection personnel, 4,300 asylum officers--a bill Democrats and Republicans spent months negotiating and fine-tuning and revising.

Unlike the vast majority of bills in Congress that are dubbed as ``border security,'' this wasn't a messaging bill. This was a product of months of bipartisan negotiation, written with the goal of reaching the President's desk--a bill supported by the people who know, perhaps better than anyone else, what it takes to address border security, the National Border Patrol Council, a very conservative group. Their president called our bill ``a step in the right direction'' and ``far better than the status quo.''

Donald Trump's sabotage of the strongest border bill in decades makes

it obvious he cares only about this issue so long as he can exploit it for political gain, not about solving the problem that Americans want solved. If Donald Trump was genuine about wanting to fix the border, if he actually believed this was an emergency, he would have supported the Senate's bipartisan bill.

Still, Democrats have not walked away from this debate. We want to secure the border. We know it will take bipartisan action in Congress, and we call on our Republican colleagues to join us to advance border security legislation, bipartisan legislation that the people demand.

Mr. President, finally, on nominations, today, the Senate will continue processing more of President Biden's outstanding nominees. This morning the Senate will vote on cloture on the nomination of Judge Sanket Bulsara to serve as a district judge in the Eastern District of New York. I was proud to push President Biden to nominate this amazing New Yorker and exceptionally qualified legal mind.

Judge Bulsara made history in 2017 as the first South Asian-American judge to serve in any court within the Second Circuit when he was appointed magistrate judge for the Eastern District. New York's South Asian population is one of the fastest growing in our State and in our country. So I am proud to support Judge Bulsara because he will make our courts a better reflection of the communities they serve.

And, once confirmed, Judge Bulsara will represent a milestone for the Senate. He will be the 195th--the 195th--judge confirmed by this body since President Biden took office, and we are going to keep going. Americans deserve jurists they can trust to be fair, to be qualified, and who will appreciate the human impact of their decisions. Judge Bulsara perfectly fits that noble idea.

I yield the floor.

Madam President, I have eight requests for committees to meet during today's session of the Senate. They have the approval of the Majority and Minority Leaders.

Pursuant to rule XXVI, paragraph 5(a), of the Standing Rules of the Senate, the following committees are authorized to meet during today's session of the Senate:

Madam President, I thank my colleagues. I will be brief.

I want to thank my friend Senator Murphy for bringing us to the floor this evening to talk about the need to fix our southern border with bipartisan--bipartisan--action.

Senator Murphy did outstanding work earlier this year, along with Senators Sinema and Lankford and others, by doing what many thought impossible: producing a real, necessary, and bipartisan border bill.

When our bill was first released, a lot of our Republican colleagues were surprised with how strong it was. But then, as we all know, Donald Trump came barging in and told his MAGA supporters to kill the bill.

Democrats have not walked away from this issue. We believe, if you are going to call something an emergency, then we cannot wait to act. We hope, despite Republicans' opposition a few months ago, that our colleagues are willing to join us to secure the border, as they said they wanted to do. After all, how many times have we heard from our Republican colleagues through speeches, press conferences, letters that fixing the border cannot wait? They said it cannot wait. Well, we don't want to wait any longer.

Just listen to the words from the other side going back years about the need to act.

This crisis requires swift, serious, and substantive

action.

That was what my colleague from Wyoming said recently.

How about this:

[T]he time to act on it is yesterday.

That is what Speaker Mike Johnson said, standing at the border at the beginning of this year.

How about the words of Donald Trump:

Tonight, I am asking you to defend our very dangerous

southern border out of love and devotion to our fellow

citizens and to our country.

That is what Donald Trump said in his 2019 State of the Union Address.

And, you know what, Democrats agree Congress should act. We believe the status quo cannot continue. But here is the thing: The only real, long-term solution to the southern border is bipartisan legislation. That is the only way you get things done around here--bipartisan-- bipartisan legislation like the bill we had here in the Senate 3 months ago, bipartisan legislation like the one we wrote to hire thousands more border agents and thousands more asylum officers and invest billions to stop the flow of fentanyl and other drugs.

The conservative Wall Street Journal editorial board--hardly a friend of this side of the aisle--here is what they said:

A Border . . . Bill Worth Passing.

The head of the U.S. Chamber of Commerce called it ``a commonsense measure.''

Maybe most importantly, the president of the National Border Patrol Council--a union, extremely conservative, very close with President Trump--called it ``far better than the status quo.''

I ask my Republican colleagues: If a border security bill was good enough to win the support of actual border agents, shouldn't it have been good enough to win the support of the Republican Senate?

If we want to fix asylum and stop fentanyl and hire more agents, shouldn't we pass a bill that actually fixes asylum, stops fentanyl, and hires more agents? That is precisely what our border bill would have done. That is precisely why we made such a strong push to pass it in the Senate 3 months ago. And that is precisely the bill that Donald Trump killed in a vain attempt to gain an edge on the campaign trail. He was clear about what he did. He said, ``Please, blame it on me,'' as if it were all a game to Donald Trump.

I am used to Donald Trump saying it. Speaker Pelosi and I were at the White House when he was thinking about shutting down the government, and he said: Blame it on me. It didn't work out so well for him. It is not going to work out so well for him this time either.

The American people do not have the luxury of playing partisan blame games. They want bipartisan action to secure our border. Democrats stand ready to work with Republicans to pass bipartisan border security. We hope our Republican colleagues stand ready to take action too.

Madam President, I want to thank my colleagues for being here. Democrats are going to continue to pursue this issue. We believe the public agrees with us.

Passing a bipartisan bill is a lot better than making a lot of speeches, doing a lot of finger-pointing, and getting nothing done on the border.

I again thank my colleagues. I thank Senator Murphy for his great leadership. We have a number of our colleagues here tonight. I thank them for coming. It shows the importance we give to this issue.

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

Madam President, I ask unanimous consent that notwithstanding rule XXII and 5 USC 802 and at a time to be determined by the majority leader in consultation with the Republican leader, no later than May 24, 2024, if S.J. Res. 58 is discharged from the Committee on Energy and Natural Resources, it be in order for Senator Cruz or his designee to move to proceed to the consideration of S.J. Res. 58; further, that if the motion is agreed to, there be 10 hours of debate, equally divided, between proponents and opponents of the joint resolution; further, upon the use or yielding back of that time, the joint resolution be read a third time and the Senate vote on passage of the joint resolution; and, finally, that all other provisions under chapter 8 of title 5, United States Code, remain in effect except the 60-session-day clock.

Madam President, I ask unanimous consent that notwithstanding 5 USC 802, that upon the conclusion of morning business on Thursday, May 16, the Senate proceed to the consideration of H.J. Res. 109, which was received from the House and is at the desk; further, at 11:30 a.m., the joint resolution be considered read a third time and the Senate vote on passage of the joint resolution, with all other provisions under chapter 8 of title 5, United States Code, remaining in effect except the 60-session-day clock; further, that following the disposition of the joint resolution, the Senate proceed to executive session and execute the order of May 7, 2024, with respect to the Theeler nomination; finally, that upon disposition of the Theeler nomination, the Senate resume consideration of the Aframe nomination.

Madam President, for the information of the Senate, as a result of this agreement, Senators should expect two rollcall votes tomorrow beginning at 11:30 a.m. and one rollcall vote at 1:45 p.m.

Madam President, I ask unanimous consent the Senate proceed to the en bloc consideration of the following Senate Resolutions: S. Res. 689, S. Res. 690, S. Res. 691, S. Res. 692, and S. Res. 693.

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

Madam President, I ask unanimous consent that when the Senate complete its business today, it stand adjourned until 10 a.m. on Thursday, May 16; that 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.