Floor Statements

Madam President, now, on Senate business, it will be another busy week here in the Senate as we confirm more nominees and address pressing issues like AI. Tomorrow, the Senate will convene the first of three Senators-only briefings on artificial intelligence.

These briefings are the first all-Senators briefings ever on AI. Tomorrow's briefing, provided by Antonio Torralba of MIT, will focus on the state of AI today, providing an overview of AI, where it is being used right now, what it is currently capable of, and other recent developments.

Professor Torralba is one of the top machine-learning experts in the country, someone exceptionally skilled at breaking down all the complexities of AI in an accessible and simple way.

I strongly urge all my colleagues on both sides to attend tomorrow's briefing because elected representatives in the 21st century cannot ignore AI anymore than we can ignore our national security, job creation, or civil liberties. It is imperative that we Senators take time to educate ourselves on AI and its implications so that we can ensure it becomes a force for human prosperity while mitigating its very real risks.

I also urge my colleagues to attend the other two AI briefings happening in the coming weeks. Our second briefing will focus on where AI is headed in the future and how America can remain a leader in the field.

Our third classified briefing on AI, the first ever classified Senate briefing on the subject, will focus on how our adversaries will use AI against us, as well as how the DOD and the intelligence community are using this technology to keep Americans safe.

I look forward to attending the briefing tomorrow, and I thank Senators Rounds, Heinrich, and Young for their work on this issue.

On the nominations front, last week, after confirming several highly qualified nominees like Dilawar Syed to the SBA, I filed cloture on two more executive nominees and two district judges.

On the judicial front, we will soon consider the nominations of Hernan Vera to serve as a district judge for the Central District of California and Casey Pitts to serve as a district judge for the Northern District of California. And for the information of Senators, I will be filing cloture on more nominees later this evening.

Now, on the Republican tax plan, with the predictability of a metronome, Republicans are back doing what they do best: pushing tax giveaways that benefit the wealthy, large, huge corporations, while telling working families to take a hike. Last Friday, the House Republicans released a sweeping array of new tax giveaways that double down on some of the worst parts of the 2017 Trump tax law.

This latest GOP tax scam feels like a bad rerun. Once again, the biggest winners are billion-dollar companies, Big Oil polluters, and very high-income households. Once again, the biggest losers in this Republican tax scheme are vulnerable families and anyone who worries about protecting our planet for future generations.

The bulk of these new business tax giveaways will flow directly to the largest corporations in the country. Half of the 10 billion in interest deduction benefits, for example, will flow to companies with revenues of over a billion dollars annually.

Republicans' latest proposal will also gut billions in clean energy investments, essential for lowering our carbon emissions and creating millions of good-paying green jobs. In just 10 months, the Inflation Reduction Act has created over 142,000 new good-paying jobs, and more are coming in the next few months and years.

But Republicans want to gut those investments. Big Oil polluters, meanwhile, under the Republican plan, would get a $10 billion tax break. It is almost too perfect that Republicans unrolled this Big Oil tax giveaway right as millions of Americans endured the hazards of toxic air pollution exacerbated by climate change.

And, of course, this tax giveaway by the Republicans will mean next to

nothing for too many Americans who aren't among the top percentage of earners.

And for all the consternation we have heard from Republicans about lowering the deficit, this latest tax package will do what Republican tax packages have regularly done in the past: blow another hole in our deficit.

Independent forecasters say Republicans' proposals would increase the deficit by a trillion dollars. These are the same Republicans who nearly defaulted us because they were worried about the deficit and about debt, and now they are making a proposal that increases debt by a trillion dollars. What hypocrisy.

Republicans love to sing from the hymnal of fiscal responsibility and deficit reduction when it suits them. But whenever they push tax breaks for the ultrarich and the big corporations that increase the deficit, suddenly they switch their tune. Republicans claim that these tax cuts pay for themselves, as if by magic, but the GOP has been claiming for decades that their tax cuts pay for themselves only to have the actual economic facts repudiate them over and over and over again. Americans know by now that cutting taxes for the rich while ignoring working families is a failed approach--the trickle-down approach that Republicans seem to love. But Republicans seem remarkably impervious to learning from experience. After all, the last time the Republican tax scam was passed under President Trump, we know what happened: The winners turned out to be wealthy shareholders and corporations, not families. And then big corporations used their windfall from the GOP tax scam to spend trillions of dollars on corporate stock buybacks.

The latest Republican tax scam is more of the same: giveaways to large corporations, giveaways to Big Oil, and another massive hole in the deficit. The good news is, the American people saw through the GOP tax plan when Republicans passed it in 2017. When they were running in 2018, they hardly mentioned it because Americans were aware it was not for them but for the wealthiest people. The American people, once again, see through this tax scam just as clearly today.

Madam President, I move to proceed to legislative session.

I move to proceed to executive session to consider Calendar No. 26.

I send a cloture motion to the desk.

I move to proceed to legislative session.

I move to proceed to executive session to consider Calendar No. 29.

I send a cloture motion to the desk.

I move to proceed to legislative session.

I move to proceed to executive session to consider Calendar No. 23.

I send a cloture motion to the desk.

I ask unanimous consent that the mandatory quorum calls for the cloture motions filed today, June 12, be waived.

I yield the floor.

Mr. President, as everyone knows, this week, the United States has suffered through some of the worst wildfire air pollution in the entire history of our country.

North of the border, over 400 wildfires continue blazing across Quebec and many parts of Eastern Canada, and winds are sending smoke and toxic air across the border and into our cities, into our communities, into our lungs.

To walk through New York City yesterday was to walk on another planet. The orange fog of wildfire smoke left our city unrecognizable. Sadly, New York City had the worst air quality of any major city in the world yesterday, even more than such cities as Delhi or Jakarta, which always rate at the top for the worst air quality. And even as New York City had the worst air quality, the pollution was even worse for Upstate New York. From Bayside to Brooklyn, from Buffalo to Binghamton, my home State looked like the scene of a scary movie.

Across the Northeast, schools canceled outdoor activities and afterschool programs. The Yankees, the Phillies, and the New York Liberty all postponed their games. People as far west as Indianapolis and as far south as South Carolina have been impacted.

I urge all people here in Washington and across the United States to listen to local health officials and take every precaution to stay safe.

The climate crisis is real, and it is here to stay. We must take action against the climate crisis, both short term and long term.

In the short term, this morning, I am calling on Secretary Tom Vilsack to double the number of Forest Service personnel deployed to fight these fires in Canada. I am calling on the Secretary of Agriculture to double the number of personnel to mitigate the risk in the air for millions of Americans. I am sending a letter to him, asking him to double the Forest Service personnel.

Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that this letter be printed in the Record.

These unprecedented wildfires are a crisis for both Canada and the United States, so both nations must respond speedily and forcefully to contain the blazes. The best way to ensure the United States does not suffer another wave of wildfire air pollution is to contain these fires up in Canada as soon as possible. That is getting at the source, and that is what we need to do. It won't be easy, but the Federal Government--our Federal Government--must explore all options on the table to keep Americans safe.

We must send personnel. We must send equipment. We must offer any assistance that our friends north of the border need. Over the last 2 years, the Senate passed billions in funding to mitigate and respond to wildfires. We did it when we passed the bipartisan infrastructure law and the Inflation Reduction Act. The American Rescue Plan also provided huge sums to help schools improve their air filtration systems. Today, these investments are paying off. Many schools are safer and cleaner because of the legislation we passed, but there is much more to do.

In the long term, there is little doubt that climate change has exacerbated both the depth and breadth of these fires in Canada. We cannot fully account for these fires without recognizing that climate change is making disasters like this far more common and far more destructive. Temperatures in May reached record levels in Canada, and warmer temperatures mean that forest fires often burn faster, burn hotter, burn bigger. We are seeing this play out in realtime. Canadian officials say their country is now on track for their worst season of wildfire destruction on record.

What we consider freak accidents today could become the norm tomorrow, and the more we ignore our obligation to lower carbon emissions, the greater the risks of these disasters. That is why Democrats passed the largest package of clean energy investments in American history last year through the Inflation Reduction Act, but both parties have an obligation to do more, both to reduce our carbon emissions and make sure we all have the resources necessary to respond to natural disasters--so many of them caused or exacerbated by climate change.

In the coming days, I will continue to reach out to the administration to ensure that we are doing everything we can to help contain the fires up north. That is the best thing we can do to keep American citizens across the country safe and healthy.

Now, on nominations, Mr. President, today, the Senate will vote to confirm Dilawar Syed to serve as the No. 2 person at the Small Business Administration.

Mr. Syed's confirmation is great news for small businesses across the country because there is no better person to serve the interests of small business than someone who is a successful business owner himself.

The SBA has not had a Senate-confirmed Deputy for more than 5 years, and Mr. Syed is exactly the right person for the job. His nomination is backed by more than 200 civic, government, higher education, and business groups and leaders, including the U.S. Chamber of Commerce and the Small Business Roundtable.

Mr. Syed is an American success story. He came to this country from Pakistan and amassed a remarkably successful career as an executive at Yahoo!, as the president of a software company, and most recently as the CEO of a healthcare AI company. So Mr. Syed is more than qualified to assume the post of Deputy SBA Administrator, where his job will be in helping millions of small businesses get the resources they need to start, to grow, to expand.

And, once confirmed, Mr. Syed will add to the dynamism and diversity of the Biden administration as the highest ranking Muslim official in the executive branch.

This is a very good day for small business because, after today, the SBA will have an exceedingly capable, experienced, and accomplished small business champion in Dilawar Syed. So I will vote yes on his nomination, and I urge my colleagues on both sides of the aisle to do the same.

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

Mr. President, I move to proceed to legislative session.