Floor Statements

If there is no further business to come before the Senate, I ask unanimous consent that it stand adjourned under the previous order.

Madam President, I understand there is a bill at the desk that is due for a second reading.

Madam President, in order to place the bill on the calendar under the provisions of rule XIV, I would object to further proceedings.

Madam President, January 6 was only a few months ago. The memory is still fresh for all of us who experienced it firsthand.

A violent mob stormed the citadel of democracy, assaulted our Capitol police, and tried to halt the peaceful transfer of power. One hundred forty officers were injured. Five people would eventually lose their lives in connection to the attack.

I was within 20 feet of these hooligans.

It was one of the darkest moments in American democracy--the first time the Capitol was breached since the War of 1812, over 200 years ago. And yet, not 5 months later, many on the Republican side are trying to whitewash what happened.

Here is what one Senate Republican said about the attack last night: ``By and large, it was peaceful protests . . . except for a few agitators,'' he said. ``Even calling this an insurrection'' was wrong.

If there was ever a justification for creating a bipartisan Commission to study and report on the truth behind the attack of January 6, the comments of that Senator provide it.

Republicans in both Chambers are trying to rewrite history in fealty to or in fear of the former President, Donald Trump. Republicans in both Chambers are trying to erase the memory of January 6 and perpetuate the Big Lie. They are now likening the mob on January 6 to a group of ``normal tourists.'' Anyone who has seen the pictures of them breaking through the Capitol barriers knows that these weren't normal tourists.

They are calling the mob, not the police, the victims of the attack. We have dead and injured police officers, and they are calling the mob the victims?

Only a week ago, the House Republicans fired Congresswoman Cheney for the crime of merely repeating the truth about the election. It certainly wasn't about policy. Congresswoman Cheney voted with President Trump far more than the Member who replaced her. She was fired because she stood up to the Big Lie. It was a Thomas More moment here in 2020, and all of the shameful comments by Republicans

reveal that a bipartisan Commission is even more necessary than it once was.

We always needed to look into it, but the fact that there is such denial, there is such lying, and there is such obeisance to Donald Trump's Big Lie and to his fundamentally dishonest personality, makes the need for the truth, for a Commission greater than it ever has been. For the sake of our democracy, it is crucial to end the poison of the Big Lie, to establish an independent and trusted record of what transpired, and to make sure an event like January 6 never, never happens again.

Yesterday, the House of Representatives passed legislation establishing just such a Commission with a strong bipartisan vote. Thirty-five Republicans joined Democrats in approving the measure, defying their leadership, who turned tail at the eleventh hour in an act of utter spinelessness.

Last night and now--just now--I began the rule XIV process that would make this legislation available for consideration on the floor of the Senate. I just moved to place the legislation for a Commission on the floor under rule XIV. It is my intention to bring the bipartisan legislation for the January 6 Commission up for a vote.

My Senate Republican colleagues must now ask themselves: Are they going to join us in pursuing the truth or are they going to cover for Donald Trump and his Big Lie? I understand the Republican leader has decided to oppose the bill. The Republican leader, who called the January 6 attack a ``disgrace,'' who said he believed there was ``no question'' Donald Trump was ``morally responsible'' for the attacks, now finds this whole endeavor unnecessary.

Of course, that wasn't always the case. In the aftermath of the Capitol attack, the Republican leader, Senator McConnell, said we needed a ``serious and thorough review'' of the attacks, but very quickly the goalposts started to move. A few weeks after the attack, Republicans started complaining that the Democratic proposals for establishing a Commission were too partisan. When Democrats accepted all the changes--all the changes--requested by House Republicans, the Senate Republican leader said that his conference was undecided but ``willing to listen.'' But now, once again, the goalposts have shifted. Now the Republican leader believes we don't need a bipartisan Commission at all.

Let me be very clear to my Republican colleagues: There is no good justification for opposing the Commission. The Commission is not partisan. It will have a 50-50 split of Democrats and Republicans with subpoena powers requiring cooperation from both sides. It was negotiated on a bipartisan basis by both the chairman and the ranking member of the House Homeland Security Committee. It won the support of 35 Republicans on the House floor.

The Commission is not duplicative. The scope of the investigations into January 6 by our Senate committees is very focused. We need a dedicated bipartisan Commission to look at the whole picture. The fact that our committees can investigate didn't stop Congress from establishing a 9/11 Commission. A January 6 Commission is necessary for the same reasons that the 9/11 Commission was necessary.

The real reason it seems Republican leaders are suddenly opposed to this bipartisan Commission is they don't want to talk about the Big Lie at all. They don't even want to investigate how former President Trump instigated an attack on our democracy because he was angry about losing the 2020 election and lied to the American people about the results.

Even now, 5 months to the day after he left office, the Republican Party is still so terrified of Donald Trump that they are apparently willing to abandon the truth and the safety of our democracy on into the future.

Maybe, despite the opposition of the Republican leader--the unfortunate and sad opposition of the Republican leader--enough of my Republican colleagues will step up and join with Democrats to establish the Commission. They will get a chance to do so very soon

On another matter, the Senate continues to make great progress on the modified Endless Frontier Act, now called the U.S. Innovation and Competition Act. Yesterday, we considered two amendments and added one of them to the bill, a bipartisan amendment led by Senators Hirono and Tillis. Today, we will consider another two amendments.

As my colleagues know, the bill itself is the product of at least six Senate committees and already includes input of nearly every Member of the Senate. And, as promised, we are working in a bipartisan way, in a much more open way than the Senate used to act, to allow amendments and have debate.

This is an issue where our two parties are working together with a great deal of cooperation. Down to a Member, I believe we all want to see the United States maintain its position as the global economic leader in the 21st century. We all want to see America stay No. 1 in science and technology. It is so important for jobs, for our economic security, for our national security.

We have an extraordinary opportunity to set our country on a path to outinnovate, outproduce, and outcompete the world in the industries of the future. Let's keep working and deliver a strong bipartisan result by the end of next week.

I yield the floor.

I suggest the absence of a quorum.

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

Mr. President, I move to proceed to executive session to consider Calendar No. 117.

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

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

Mr. President, I move to proceed to executive session to consider Calendar No. 124.

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

Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the mandatory quorum calls for the cloture motions filed today, May 20, be waived.

Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the Senate resume legislative session.

Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the text of the bill be printed in the Record.

Mr. President, so the Spanish philosopher, Jorge Santayana, is credited with the saying, ``Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it.''

When it comes to January 6, we would all do well to heed that advice. But right now, there is an effort on the part of the House Republican leadership to make sure we forget that that fateful day ever happened.

Later today, the House will vote on establishing an independent Commission to investigate the events of January 6, a complement to the investigation in the House and Senate committees. Both sides negotiated for months. The House Republican leader made three specific requests in February. All three were granted by House Democrats. Modeled after the bipartisan 9/11 Commission, it will have equal representation from both Democrats and Republicans. Subpoenas can only be issued if Members from both sides agree.

It appeared we had reached a consensus with the support of rank-and- file Republicans and, frankly, I thought the Speaker was being very generous because subpoena power is so important when you look into something, but she did that. I salute her for it. But even when she went that far, at the eleventh hour, the House Republican leadership turned tail, threw its own negotiators under the bus, and decided to try to sabotage the Commission. Once again, they are caving to Donald Trump and proving that the Republican Party is still drunk off the Big Lie.

Just one week after House Republicans fired Congresswoman Cheney for simply telling the truth about the election, their new leadership is trying to kill a bipartisan investigation--a very down-the-middle bipartisan investigation--of the attack on our Capitol.

At the root of both efforts is the shameful desire to protect Donald Trump and perpetuate the Big Lie, even though it undermines our democracy, because when people don't believe elections are on the level, that is the beginning of the end of a democracy.

What the Republicans are doing--the House Republicans--is beyond crazy. To be so far under the thumb of Donald J. Trump, letting the most dishonest President in American history dictate

the prerogatives of the Republican Party, will be its demise. Mark my words. Whatever that means for Democrats, it is bad for America.

We all know there needs to be a thorough and honest accounting of what took place on January 6, the greatest attempt at insurrection since the Civil War. We have to make sure such a despicable event never repeats itself. That is why we need the investigation.

Getting at the truth is more important now that some Republicans are trying to rewrite history. It is just incredible what they are doing. How dishonest can they be, in abject fear of the most dishonest President who has ever sat at the White House, Donald Trump, who will tell lies at will? He doesn't care. It is only his own ego. We know that. One Member said it was a ``boldfaced lie'' to call it an insurrection and likened the mob to a ``normal tourist visit.'' Give me a break.

Several Members have spread the lie that it was actually Antifa that stormed the Capitol and so have some commentators on one of our leading news networks--shamefully, shamefully.

One Republican went so far as to say the mob, not the police, were the real victims of the violence that day. Can you imagine being in the family of one of the police officers who died or was injured? It is bad enough, but hearing that? How far will they go in obeisance to the lying President Donald Trump? How far?

These are dangerous lies rooted fundamentally in the Big Lie that has seemingly enveloped the Republican Party. Shame on them. Shame on the Republicans for choosing the Big Lie over the truth--not all Republicans, but the majority who seem to be doing it. Shame. Shame on them for defending the mob over our Capitol Police officers. And shame on the House Republican leadership for punishing Republicans who tell the truth, instead of those who poison faith in our democracy.

Here in the Senate, we will have a vote on the January 6 Commission. The only way to stop these lies is to respond with the truth, with facts, with an honest, objective investigation of what happened that day.

An independent Commission can be the antidote to the poisonous mistruths that continue to spread about January 6. That is what our Founding Fathers believed in. They believed in a fact-based nation, and they believed the facts will come out. People will have different views when they see those facts and assemble those facts, but they believe in the truth.

I can't think of a time when a political party has been so abjectly far away from the truth than the perpetuation of the Big Lie.

So again, the Senate will vote on the January 6 Commission. It ought to gain bipartisan support. There are reports--sad, unfortunate reports--that the Republican leader here in the Senate might be following his House colleagues down the rabbit hole and will oppose the Commission. I hope that isn't true.

But the American people will see for themselves whether our Republican friends stand on the side of truth or on the side of Donald Trump's Big Lie

Voting Rights

Mr. President, on voting rights, the Texas State Senate recently passed a bill that repeals all requirements for carrying a handgun, including a valid license, registering fingerprints, and 4 hours of training. Texas would be the sixth State to pass a permitless carry law, with Louisiana waiting in the wings. If both Texas and Louisiana pass these laws, fully a third of Americans would live in States where it was legal to carry firearms without training or a license.

Just one week after the Texas legislature advanced that law to make it as easy as possible to carry a handgun, it advanced another law to make it harder to vote. You need stringent identification to vote and no identification to carry a handgun. What the heck is going on in Texas?

Just think about that for a moment. Across the country, Republican legislatures are removing all barriers to carry firearms, while at the same time putting up barriers around voting. The political right wants to make it easier for felons to get a gun but harder for younger, poorer, and non-White Americans to vote. It is hard to think of a more reactionary vision for our country, a more backward-looking vision, a vision that eventually will be repudiated not only in the history books but in our Nation's politics.

Sadly, as voter suppression laws sweep through Republican State houses from Florida, Montana, and everywhere in between, the political right is actually bragging about how successfully they are restricting the franchise.

Last week, a spokesperson for Heritage Action, the lobbying arm of the far-right think tank, told a group of Republican donors that Heritage Action was drafting new voter restrictions and literally handing them over to State legislatures in order to give the laws ``that grassroots feel.'' She went on to crow about how ``quickly and quietly'' her organization managed to get new limits on voting passed in Iowa. She told the donors that she looked at her team of rightwing lobbyists and said: ``It can't be that easy.''

That is how the far right is talking about making it harder for Americans to vote. Behind closed doors, with well-heeled donors, they are laughing about how easy it is to limit American voting rights, and that is because Republican legislatures, from one end of the country to the other, are eagerly and willfully going along. It is despicable.

In this country, in a democracy, when your side loses an election, you try to win more voters over. You don't try to stop the other side from voting.

But seizing on that Big Lie that the election was stolen, Republican legislatures are orchestrating the greatest contraction of voting rights since the end of reconstruction and the beginning of Jim Crow.

These laws cannot go unanswered. Senate Democrats are moving forward with legislation, S. 1, to combat this rash of voter suppression laws. It has gone through the Rules Committee, and it will receive a vote here on the Senate floor.

Our Republican colleagues need to decide if they are going to stand up for democracy or not.

Clean Cars for America

Mr. President, on one final matter, clean cars, yesterday, at an event in Michigan, President Biden declared that the future of the auto industry is electric. He is absolutely right.

But even though the transition to electric vehicles has already begun, it is progressing too slowly. China is outpacing the United States in the electrical vehicle market, and the only way we are going to meet our ambitious climate targets is to accelerate the transition to zero-emission vehicles.

That is why I was so glad to hear President Biden get into the specifics and talk about the many ways that government, industry, and labor can partner up to put more electric vehicles on the road and create more jobs in the process.

At the heart of that effort is legislation called Clean Cars for America. It is a proposal I drafted and introduced several years ago, and now it has become a central component to the American Jobs Plan and President Biden's Build Back Better agenda.

Through a mixture of point-of-sale incentives for consumers, charging infrastructure investments, and support for American manufacturing of electric vehicles, it would make electric vehicles affordable for all Americans and create thousands and thousands and thousands of good- paying union jobs in automaking, construction, and battery manufacturing.

We need a large-scale effort to achieve an electric vehicle future. Clean Cars for America is the way to get there.

I yield the floor.

I suggest the absence of a quorum.

Mr. President, a landmark report from the International Energy Agency says countries need to move faster and more aggressively to cut planet-warming pollution.

That is from the New York Times this morning. The International Energy Agency, for the first time, is recommending specific steps to accomplish the drastic cuts in carbon emissions that nearly every developed country has pledged to achieve. One of the principal recommendations is ``the rapid phase-out of gasoline-powered vehicles.''

It just so happens that this report lands on the same day that President Biden is in Michigan to celebrate the release of a new line of electric pickup trucks. As one of the best-selling cars in America, replacing gasoline pickups with electric pickups could save us huge amounts of carbon.

But we shouldn't stop there. Transportation still accounts for roughly one-third of America's carbon output. There is no way the United States can reduce its greenhouse gas emissions without looking out how Americans drive.

So I have put forward an ambitious, comprehensive proposal to accelerate our country's transition to zero-emission vehicles. We call it Clean Cars for America. The goal of that plan is that by 2040, all vehicles on the road should be clean. The International Energy Agency, by the way, recommends the world reach that target by 2050. So we beat them by 10 years, if this proposal goes into effect.

My plan would help us get there 10 years ahead of time. It is one of the many reasons that President Biden put Clean Cars for America at the heart of his American Jobs Plan, something I hope and expect he will discuss today in Michigan.

I want to thank the Biden administration. They have been open to many new ideas: the American Competitive Innovation Act that we will be debating today and Clean Cars for America, which they have more or less adopted in whole and put into their Build Back Better plan.

The benefits would be far-reaching, far beyond the subject of climate change. For a long time, critics have been saying you can't help the environment without hurting the economy or costing jobs. Not so, it is actually the reverse.

We negotiated the Clean Cars for America proposal with the unions, with the environmental groups, and with the auto companies, and all three are onboard. The good news is that Clean Cars for America would create tens of thousands of good-paying union jobs in battery manufacturing, construction, and auto making. Through targeted investments, it would put Americans to work all across the country building charging stations for a new fleet of electric cars. Right now, China leads the world in the electric vehicle market, overtaking us in 2015. We need to take back the initiative and create thousands upon thousands of good-paying jobs as we do.

I am very glad that the Biden administration has taken this proposal and adopted it. We worked, as I said, long and hard, for the first time on a major

environmental proposal to bring our friends in the union movement onboard so that workers saw that their future--a bright future, a prosperous future--was with clean energy, that we weren't excluding them but including them.

That is why, unlike many proposals in the past, my Clean Cars for America proposal unites the environmental community, the labor movement, and major automakers. The Sierra Club, UAW, Ford, and GM are all supportive. Isn't that amazing? Isn't that great?

When you want to get something done in Washington, you need to build a broad and powerful coalition for support. That is what we did with Clean Cars for America. The Senate and the country should prioritize it this year.

Now, on the Endless Frontier Act, last night the Senate voted to move forward with the Endless Frontier Act with a vote of 86 to 11. It is likely that today the Senate will take another step to begin debate on the bill. It is my intention to have an open, bipartisan amendment process.

The Endless Frontier Act already includes more than 20 bipartisan amendments from the Commerce Committee, under the leadership of Senator Cantwell and Ranking Member Wicker. I will expect we will consider several more here on the floor of the Senate.

Later today, I will file a substitute amendment that pulls together more bipartisan legislation from across Senate committees into our comprehensive bill that we are now calling the U.S. Innovation and Competition Act.

In addition to Chairwoman Cantwell and Ranking Member Wicker, I want to thank Chairman Menendez and Ranking Member Risch of Foreign Relations; Chairman Brown and Ranking Member Toomey of Banking; Chairman Peters and Ranking Member Portman of HSGAC; Chairwoman Murray and Ranking Member Burr of HELP; and Chairman Durbin, Ranking Member Grassley, and Senator Klobuchar of Judiciary.

Finally, I want to thank the bipartisan group of Senators working on the CHIPS and 5G proposals throughout the process--not only Senators Cantwell and Wicker but Senators Warner, Kelly, Cornyn, Cotton, Leahy, and Stabenow.

Restoring America's competitive edge should unite Senators from both sides of the aisle. The foundation of the past century of American prosperity has been our leadership in science, technology, and innovation. If we are going to win the next century, the United States needs to be the one discovering the next groundbreaking technology.

We had that opportunity, for instance, with tech, and we lead the world because of early investments by NSF and DARPA. We have the opportunity now to set our country on a path to outinnovate, outproduce, and outcompete the world in emerging industries of the 21st century, with profound consequences for our economic and national security. If we don't lead in science and innovation, we will fall way behind. If we don't lead in science and innovation, millions of good- paying jobs that will be available to this generation and the next one will go poof--gone. We have no choice. We have no choice.

We have always led, and now we have fallen behind. Other countries are investing more than we are. They are not as good at it as we are. They are not as innovative as we are. But if they put in the dollars and we don't, woe is us. Woe is us.

So when you ask Americans why they are upset and they say: We are not sure about our future. We are not sure if our children will have better jobs than we will. We are not sure that our jobs will grow. This is the way to do it. This is the key. This unlocks our future to a bright, sunny America, the way we have always had, but we may have lost in the last few years, at least to some extent.

I am so glad that this legislation, which we worked so hard on, has bipartisan support. It is a place where we can unite America and say we will stay No. 1, and we are giving our country, our universities, our businesses, our workers tools to do it