Floor Statements

Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the Senate proceed to the immediate consideration of Calendar No. 80, S. 460.

I ask unanimous consent that the bill be considered read a third time and passed and that the motion to reconsider be considered made and laid upon the table.

Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the Senate proceed to the immediate consideration of Calendar No. 90, S. 1308.

I ask unanimous consent that the committee-reported substitute amendment be agreed to; that the bill, as amended, be considered read a third time and passed, and the motion to reconsider be considered made and laid upon the table.

Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the Senate proceed to the immediate consideration of H.R. 423, which was received from the House and is at the desk.

I ask unanimous consent that the bill be considered read a third time and passed, and the motion to reconsider be considered made and laid upon the table.

Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the Committee on the Judiciary be discharged from further consideration of S. Res. 246 and S. Res. 269, and the Senate proceed to the en bloc consideration of the following Senate resolutions: S. Res. 246, S. Res. 269, S. Res. 300, and S. Res. 301.

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.

Finally, Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that when the Senate completes its business today, it stand adjourned until 9:45 a.m. on Wednesday, July 19; that following the prayer and pledge, the Journal of proceedings be approved to date, the morning hour be deemed expired, the time for the two leaders be reserved for their use later in the day, and morning business be closed; that upon conclusion of morning business, the Senate resume consideration of the motion to proceed to Calendar No. 119, S. 2226, postcloture; further, that all time during adjournment, recess, morning business, and leader remarks count postcloture on the motion to proceed; finally, that the Senate recess from 1 to 2:15 p.m. to allow for the weekly caucus meetings.

As a reminder, Senators should gather in the Senate Chamber beginning at 10:20 a.m. tomorrow, and we will proceed as a body to the House Chamber at 10:30 a.m. for the address by His Excellency Isaac Herzog, President of Israel.

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

I ask unanimous consent that the order for the quorum call be rescinded.

Mr. President, yesterday, I moved to proceed to the National Defense Authorization Act. We will have our first vote on Tuesday.

This bill was reported out of the Armed Services Committee on a huge, 25-to-1 bipartisan vote. We are encouraging filing amendments for the managers' package before the close of business today.

Senator McConnell, the committees, and I will have our teams working over the weekend to see what we can include in the package of amendments. Undoubtedly, hundreds of amendments will be filed to this important piece of legislation. I am hopeful that all committee chairs and committee members will work together in good faith.

Obviously, both sides will want to have amendment votes. Just like we have in recent efforts, I am willing to ensure we consider and vote a reasonable number of amendments. No Senator wants a dilatory process. I know Senators Reed and Wicker, who have done such a fine job putting together a bipartisan bill, will work with Senator McConnell and me, and we will develop a list of amendment votes and hopefully can proceed from there.

There are important issues that I believe we must address while we are on the floor. We must consider a Chinese Government competition package. We must consider the Australia, United Kingdom, and United States submarine deal. I know there will be more to do here next week, and I look forward to the debate on the floor.

Mr. President, now on AI, last night, I informed my colleagues that we will hold our third all-Senate briefing on AI on Wednesday, July 26. Our first briefing focused on the state of AI as it stands today. Our second briefing, held earlier this week, was a classified presentation on AI's national security implications.

Our third briefing will turn to the future. We will hear from Federal researchers and developers about where AI is headed in the years to come and

how it will continue to change our world.

I encourage all Members to attend this important briefing. I am also pleased to announce that our presenters for that day will be Rick Stevens, from the Department of Energy's Argonne National Laboratory, and Dr. Sethuraman Panchanathan--he is the head of the NSA; he is known as Panch; it is easier to say--and Dr. Kathleen Fisher, from the Information Innovation Office at DARPA, the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency. Our moderator will be Dr. Jos-Marie Griffiths, a member of the National Security Commission on Artificial Intelligence and president of Dakota State University.

So it is a broad range of presenters from academic, defense, energy, and scientific backgrounds. It will be a great discussion and a truly important one because Senators have no time to waste learning as much about AI as possible.

AI is going to be a regular part of our lives from here on out. Rapid change may, at times, seem frightening, but if applied correctly, AI promises to transform life on Earth for the better.

But there are real risks too. We must now work to anticipate the risks, mitigate them, and ensure that AI innovation is safe in the decades to come. So I encourage all Senators to attend the briefing on the 26th. I thank our presenters who will join us that day, and I thank my colleagues--particularly Senators Rounds, Heinrich, and Young--for working together as a team in putting this briefing together.

Mr. President, now, on inflation, yesterday, we learned that inflation slowed down for the 12th month in a row, down to 3 percent--3 percent--the lowest that it has been in 2 years.

This morning, as American families stop for gas on their way to work, or check their pocketbooks, or go to the supermarket, they can continue to see throughout the country that we are turning the corner. They are seeing more money in their pockets; they are seeing inflation cool down; and they are seeing wages continue--continue--to go up.

Listen to this. This is important. Wage growth is now significantly above inflation for the first time since March of 2021. This is the work of a Democratic agenda in action, of President Biden's good work: lower costs for families, higher wages for workers, and millions and millions of new jobs created.

Republicans had claimed that if we passed the Inflation Reduction Act, inflation would only get worse. The Republican chairman of the Ways and Means Committee claimed the Inflation Reduction Act ``will prolong and make worse the current inflation crisis.'' It is becoming clearer and clearer that they were dead wrong. In fact, since we passed the IRA, inflation has been cut by more than half on an annual basis.

Let me say this again: Since we passed the Inflation Reduction Act, inflation has been cut by more than half on an annualized basis.

And if that is not enough proof that the Democrats and President Biden's agenda is working, the other major pieces of legislation we passed in Congress--like the infrastructure law and the CHIPS Act--are creating millions of good-paying jobs throughout the country and in my home State of New York.

Since President Biden took office, private companies have announced over $500 billion--$500 billion--in investments across industries like semiconductors, clean energy, EVs and battery manufacturing, and heavy industry. What does this mean? Jobs, jobs, jobs, and more jobs--so many jobs, in fact, that some of my Republican colleagues who voted against all these bills are claiming credit for the projects and the growth that they are generating in their own States and districts.

So we have a lot of work ahead of us, but yesterday's report makes clear the Democratic agenda is working.

Mr. President, I move to proceed to Calendar No. 119, S. 2226.

I send a cloture motion to the desk.

I ask unanimous consent that the mandatory quorum call for the cloture motion filed today, July 13, be waived.

I yield the floor.

I suggest the absence of a quorum.

First, Madam President, I want to reiterate a point I made yesterday about Senator Tuberville's military holds. The bottom line is very, very simple: Republican leaders and many of Senator Tuberville's Republican colleagues oppose what Senator Tuberville is doing because it puts at serious risk our military preparedness, our military security, our national security.

Very simply, the onus is on Republican Senators to prevail on Senator Tuberville and get him to back off his reckless pursuit. That is the crux of the matter. It is on the backs of his Republican colleagues to get Senator Tuberville to back off. It is hurting our military security. It is dangerous, unprecedented, and they have the power and the ability to stop him from doing it.

Madam President, on inflation, let me begin with some welcome news for the American people. This morning, reports came out with new signs that inflation came down last month. The price of gas has come down over 25 percent since last year, and wages are now up also. Wage growth is significantly above inflation for the first time since the spring of 2021, right after President Biden took office. This news means one thing: more money in people's pockets, greater financial security, and affirmation that Democrats' agenda is working. We made a promise to lower costs, and today we have proof that we are making progress towards keeping that promise.

Madam President, on the AI briefing, yesterday, the Senate held its first-ever--its first-ever--classified briefing on the national security implications of artificial intelligence. It was an eye-opening presentation. Many of us spent a lot of time educating ourselves on AI, talking to experts, and holding hearings, but yesterday's briefing was a candid wake-up call on how truly complicated AI is and how much work, hard work, we have before us.

This will be an ongoing effort. We want to move quickly but not too quickly. We need to move quickly so bad countries--authoritarian countries and bad actors, not countries themselves--don't get ahead of us, but we can't move too quickly because we have to get this right, and it is very complicated. Action on AI will not be a matter of weeks, nor of years but, rather, of months.

I want to thank my colleagues who attended yesterday's briefing. We had a terrific turnout of roughly 70 Members--even better than the first.

I want to thank the briefers by name: Dr. Arati Prabhakar, Director of the White House Office of Science and Tech; Avril Haines, Director of National Intelligence; Kath Hicks, Deputy Secretary of Defense; VADM Trey Whitworth, Director of the National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency; and Dr. Craig Martell, Chief Digital and AI Officer at DOD. Each briefer was clear, concise, and informative.

I was gratified my Republican colleagues came out of the briefing and said: Yes, this was a real back-and-forth, not just people reading a piece of paper and not just people answering questions.

For sure, we are not done. Very soon, I will announce the timing for our third all-Senate briefing and again urge my colleagues to attend, especially those who couldn't make the first two briefings. Learning as much as we can about AI as quickly as possible is essential.

AI is unlike anything Congress has dealt with before. It moves and changes so quickly. It is going to affect our world so dramatically. It is so much deeper in its complexity and lies so far outside our expertise. Coming up with legislative solutions will be one of the most difficult things Congress has ever, ever faced, so these briefings are an important initial step.

I don't kid myself on how difficult this is going to be. Some people asked why did I decide to take this on. Well, just because an issue is difficult or unfamiliar to Congress is no excuse to turn away, especially when it is so important and is going to have such a huge effect on every American and every person in the world's life. We can't throw our hands in the air and hope someone else figures it out.

Of the many things yesterday's briefing made clear, one of them was that government must play a role in making sure AI works for society's benefit. The private sector has made stunning progress innovating on AI, and Congress needs to be careful not to curb or hinder that innovation. But we are going to need guardrails, and the only agent that can do that is government.

Yes, some companies may put guardrails on on their own, but when another company refuses to put on those guardrails, that company, the original company, will feel the pressure--political or, more importantly, economic--and say: Look, we can't have those guardrails either. Even if many developers have good intentions, there are always going to be rogue actors, unscrupulous companies, and foreign adversaries

that seek to harm us and discard any guardrails at all. We can't expect companies to adopt guardrails, as I said, if their competitors won't be forced to do so as well.

So it is only a task that government can do with help and input from the experts. That was made clear at the hearings yesterday. Even those AI companies that are way out front on this now admit that they need some government action, we need some kinds of guardrails.

Later this year, Congress will host the first-ever AI Insight Forums to bring the best developers, experts, and legislators in one room to identify the areas where we can take action and to make sure we are asking the right questions to begin with. Ensuring our national security and safety will be one of the most important issues we discuss.

I want to thank everyone who attended yesterday. It was bipartisan, and we must keep this issue bipartisan. How to deal with AI is not a Republican issue; it is not a Democratic issue; it is a national issue.

I really want to thank our little group of Senators--Heinrich, Rounds, and Young--for helping organize these briefings. I look forward to the third briefing soon.

Madam President, on forum shopping in the judiciary, our Federal judiciary is built on the trust and confidence of the American people, but right now, sadly, Americans' faith in the judicial system is at an alltime low thanks to the hijacking of our courts by the MAGA hard right and the unfair practice known as forum shopping.

Forum shopping essentially allows litigants in certain cases to handpick judges sympathetic to their cause. At its core, forum shopping undermines the spirit of a fair and balanced judiciary. That is why earlier this week I sent a letter to 18 of my Democratic colleagues and to the chair of the Advisory Committee on Civil Rights, calling on the Judicial Conference to consider reforms that would put an end to forum shopping.

If Americans want to see a clear example of why forum shopping is a serious problem, consider the Northern District of Texas. In that district, civil cases are often assigned to a single judge, if not one of just a few.

And it so happens, one of those judges is infamous--infamous--for his well-documented opposition to freedom of choice.

Do you know who knew that? The MAGA Republicans. So when MAGA Republicans sought to strip away access to FDA-approved abortion medication, widely available for decades, they intentionally targeted the Northern District of Texas, where only one judge sat. They knew which judge they would get.

To those who don't follow judiciary procedure, in most districts there are a bunch of judges. They put the case on wheel, and they spin the wheel around, and whomever the arrow lands on gets the case. You can't pick your judge.

But in this case, you can pick your judge, and in this case, it is an extreme MAGA judge, who we know has views that are so, so deeply held that no unbiassed bystander can think a fair trial will be held.

And, lo and behold, of course, that judge sided with the anti-choice extremists, marking the first time ever that a judge has ordered a drug to be taken off the market nationwide. It doesn't just affect Amarillo and northern Texas. It affects the whole country.

This isn't equal justice. This isn't a fair or impartial application of the rule of law. This is extremists using forum shopping to pull a fast one on the vast majority of Americans who opposed this ruling.

And, of course, women's freedom of choice isn't the only issue at stake. When extremists can manipulate our judiciary to get judges of their preference, it endangers everything from healthcare to immigration reform, to commonsense gun safety, to voting rights.

Forum shopping is a serious problem that will only worsen Americans' crisis of faith in the judiciary. The letter Democrats sent offers a path for sensible, good-faith reforms that will preserve an independent Federal judiciary, while letting in much needed fresh air into America's halls of justice.