Floor Statements

Mr. President, yesterday, the Senate Commerce Committee, on which you sit, came together on a bipartisan basis to advance the Endless Frontier Act by a vote of 24 to 4--24 to 4.

We are now one step closer to passing a bill that will keep our country one step ahead in science and technology for decades to come. It is my intention for the Senate to take up the Endless Frontier Act next week in a package with legislation to strengthen our alliances and partnerships; invest in the American semiconductor industry; ensure that China pays a price for its predatory actions; and boost advanced manufacturing, innovation, and critical supply chains.

For decades, American prosperity has been anchored by our unmatched capacity for innovation and invention in science and in technology. American innovation propelled American industry, and an American workforce brought those innovations to the global economy.

But, unfortunately, Federal underinvestment in sciences has seen our country slip, exposing critical weak spots in our economy. If we don't fix them, we will no longer be the No. 1 economic leader in the world in the decade to come. So it is an imperative that we do this. This is for our future--our future for jobs, our future for economic leadership, and our future for world leadership.

It all boils down to science, something that was ignored, unfortunately, by the last administration, but, fortunately, bipartisan unity in this Senate is bringing us back on the page that we need to do science.

The Endless Frontier Act would right the ship by making one of the largest investments in American innovation in generations, allowing the United States to outcompete countries like China, create more good- paying jobs, and harden our economic and our national security as well because this bill is vital to national security as well as to economic security.

I want to really applaud Chairwoman Cantwell, Ranking Member Wicker, and my partner in the Endless Frontier Act Senator Young, all of whom worked hard, long, diligently, and effectively, in a bipartisan fashion, to move this legislation through regular order. The full Senate will consider and, I believe, should finish this important legislation before the end of the month with strong bipartisan support.

Mr. President, on judges and on nominees, over the past several months, the Senate has moved quickly to confirm nominees to serve in President Biden's Cabinet and throughout his administration. The Senate also has a constitutional duty to provide advice and consent on the President's judicial nominations, and the Senate will begin to fill judicial vacancies very soon.

This morning, the Judiciary Committee is holding the first markup for a slate of President Biden's judicial

nominations, including two circuit nominees and three district court nominees, who will all receive a vote in the committee next week. The Senate is now going to scale up our efforts to fill more than 80 vacancies in the Federal judiciary.

It is no secret that, lacking a robust legislative agenda, the Republican majority, under President Trump, focused on judges, confirming around 200. President Obama, in his 8 years, appointed 320. So even though, on a 4-year-to-4-year basis, Trump did more, overall, Obama had a greater effect on the judiciary than Trump.

Now, President Biden has the opportunity to fill more than 80 vacancies--likely more. Under this Democratic majority, the Senate will swiftly and routinely take up President Biden's appointments to the Federal bench. It will redress the imbalance that the Trump administration caused by choosing so many judges who were so far hard right, way out of the mainstream not just of the American people but even of the Republican Party.

Under this Democratic majority, we are going to swiftly and routinely take up President Biden's appointments to the Federal bench to restore some balance. And, I must say, President Biden's judicial candidates provide a stark contrast to the quality, to the caliber of President Trump's nominations. President Biden's nominees are qualified, mainstream, and actually reflect the diversity of the country. Many have spent years as public defenders, an experience that is sorely lacking on the Federal bench. They also include the first Native American to be nominated to the Federal court, the second-ever Puerto Rican, and the second Black woman to sit on the Second Circuit in my home State of New York. I am very proud of that.

That is a far cry from what we got under President Trump and then- Majority Leader McConnell. For 4 years, the Republican leader turned the Senate into a conveyor belt for inexperienced lawyers, many with deeply radical views on women's choice, voting rights, criminal justice, and civil rights. A few of them were so extreme on the issues of race and voting that Republican Senators joined with Democrats to reject those nominations.

With President Biden, we are going to bring balance back to the Federal judiciary by confirming judges who are beholden to the law, not some far-right agenda

Mr. President, on another issue in the Judiciary Committee, this morning the Judiciary Committee will also vote on a very important nominee to the Department of Justice, Kristen Clarke, to serve as the Assistant AG for Civil Rights.

The daughter of Jamaican immigrants, Ms. Clarke is an extremely well qualified and capable civil rights attorney who will be the first Black woman to ever fill her position at the Justice Department.

But her obvious quality did not stop a few of our Republican colleagues from trying to smear her record. The political right seems to relish in trying to score political points by connecting every Justice Department nominee, many of whom happen to be women of color, to hot-button partisan issues, whether or not they have any relevance.

In Ms. Clarke's hearing, it reached the point of absurdity when she was grilled on an obviously satirical piece she published for her college newspaper. Just like Ms. Vanita Gupta, who I am proud to say is now the Associate Attorney General, Ms. Clarke was treated by the minority on the Judiciary Committee like some hair-raising radical, despite her record, her qualifications, and her support from all sides. And just like Ms. Gupta, Ms. Clarke has been endorsed by the Nation's most powerful law enforcement organizations, including the International Association of Chiefs of Police and the Major Cities Chiefs Association.

Ms. Clarke is an outstanding, an outstanding nominee, and I urge all of my colleagues on the Senate Judiciary to advance her nomination today.

With that, I yield the floor.

I suggest the absence of a quorum.

Mr. President, now, later this morning, the four congressional leaders will meet with President Biden and Vice President Harris at the White House.

Speaking for the Democrats, our hope is to come together and find common ground where we can work in a bipartisan way to overcome the many challenges of our time. We cannot be small-minded or passive. We must be big and bold to meet the changes in the world, the rapid changes that are occurring in the world.

The world is rapidly changing and has been for some time. Just like the steam engine launched the Industrial Revolution and a century of tumultuous change and electricity changed things dramatically in the latter half of the 19th and early parts of the 20th century, the internet has launched the technological revolution.

We are living through that period of massive change everywhere: in media, communications, transportation, how we learn and work and live. The world is not going back to the old way that it was, and America needs to adapt so our workers, families, and businesses can compete and prosper in the 21st century.

There are so many different changes. Let me just point out one that our society has basically neglected, and that is about childcare. When I was a kid in the late fifties and early sixties, the typical American family had two spouses, only one of whom worked. I would get home from school every day, and there would be my mom for me, my brother, and sister, with milk and cookies, to make sure we drank our milk. She didn't care if we ate our cookies.

And she asked us: Did you have homework? We went out to play, but she was keeping an eye on us. We would play in the street. That was one of the places I learned the most, just playing stickball and other stuff in the streets of Brooklyn.

But, in any case, that is not true anymore. The typical American family is not the way it used to be. The vast majority are either single-parent families or two-parent families where both work. That means that childcare is much more needed to maximize both the happiness and productivity of our society in the 21st century.

Parents sweat over childcare. They need to go to work, but who is going to watch the kids? Can they afford childcare? Is it good enough for the children, of course, whom they love? Our children are our most precious possession. And if we don't dramatically change childcare, we are going to fall far behind, far behind. I read somewhere that of the 37 OECD nations, we are 36th in childcare. Only Turkey is lower.

In general, these things should not be partisan issues. Infrastructure and jobs, putting our economy on firm ground should be the work of both Democrats and Republicans.

Another change, obviously, is climate. In the fifties and sixties, we didn't even imagine a world with climate change. In the last 20 years, it

has become apparent that we had better do something about it or we could have worse times than this COVID year, every year, 10 or 15 years from now. The dramatic changes that will discombobulate our society and risk our health and our economy, just as COVID did, will happen if we don't do anything. So fighting climate change and making sure America leads the world in emerging industries that deal with climate should be the work of both Democrats and Republicans.

This Congress has proven that we can legislate in a bipartisan way, just most recently on the anti-Asian hate crimes bill and a bipartisan water infrastructure bill. I believe we will continue that trend by taking up and passing a bipartisan competition bill this work period.

So as we head to the White House today, I hope our other leaders are thinking about how we can come together to solve our Nation's problems in a bold and lasting way. One hundred percent of Democrats' focus--and I think I can speak for Speaker Pelosi as well as myself and President Biden--is on delivering help to the American people.

Mr. President, now, speaking of bipartisan legislation, today the Commerce Committee will begin marking up the Endless Frontier Act, one of the most significant investments in American innovation in generations. The bill will be at the core of comprehensive legislation to address American competitiveness and security in the 21st century.

Once again, for the information of the Senate, it is my intention for the Senate to consider and finish competitive legislation before the end of the month. There have been productive bipartisan talks over the last week to improve the Endless Frontier Act.

This is an issue I have worked on with my friend the Republican Senator from Indiana for the past few years. He has been a great help, a great partner, and I appreciate his work. And, of course, Senator Cantwell, our chairman of the Commerce Committee, and Senator Wicker, our ranking member, have come together. And everyone had to give a bit here, there, and everywhere, but I think we have a strong bill that should get strong bipartisan support.

The simple truth is very simple. The Endless Frontier Act is legislation our country desperately needs. For decades after the Second World War, our country led the world in science and technology, from healthcare to computers, from telecommunications to manufacturing, to defense. Our workforce brought these innovations to the global economy, and it produced more than half a century of prosperity.

People in the last 50 years, from 1950 to 2000, thought the future was going to be better even than the present, and it created the usual American optimism. But things have changed, and one of the things that has changed is years of Federal investment in sciences, and they have exposed long-term weak spots--serious weak spots--in our economic competitiveness. This could hurt us dramatically in the next 50 years.

The longer we put off investing in sciences, the likelier it is that other countries, like China but others too, will overtake America as the global leader in innovation, and that will have profound consequences for our economy, our national security, even the future of human liberty, and it will have a lot to do with whether Americans believe that the future economically will be better for them than the present, which is part of the American hallmark and trademark, our sunny optimism, which we must restore. There has been a sourness in the land lately. It is our mission to restore it.

So to take the initiative back, the Endless Frontier Act provides $100 billion for basic research through the National Science Foundation, focusing on the critical technologies of tomorrow, where we have to stay the leader: AI, advanced manufacturing, renewable energy, quantum computing, cyber security, 5G, battery storage, and so much more.

This bill will nurture tech labs and tech hubs across the country in places where they are not now. We have to spread the wealth. The clock is ticking on the need to make these critical investments.

The Chinese Communist Party has gone to extraordinary lengths to steal a generation of American intellectual property and cheat their way to innovating and economic growth. We do not, we definitely do not--Democrats, Republicans, liberals, conservatives do not want a future where the Chinese Communist Party dictates the global order and how the world uses 5G, artificial intelligence, quantum computing.

That is why the Endless Frontier Act is resoundingly bipartisan. We already have six cosponsors from each side--six Democrats, six Republicans--because these issues affect the future of our entire country. I greatly look forward to the good work that Chair Cantwell and the Commerce Committee will do to advance the bill this week.

Mr. President, on a final topic, I am not in the habit of commenting on the House Republican minority, but today they have reached a new and very dangerous low point. Earlier this morning, the House GOP ousted Liz Cheney from the party's leadership. Her crime? Telling the truth--telling the truth that Joe Biden is the legitimate President of the United States and Donald Trump is lying when he says the election is stolen.

Congresswoman Cheney spoke truth to power, and for that she has been fired. Make no mistake, the Congresswoman and I disagree on so many policy issues, but we both agree that truth matters. And she, like so many characters in history--I am just thinking now of Sir Thomas More-- had the courage to tell the truth and paid a big price for it.

So this is sad--a very dark moment for the Republican Party. Republicans are seeking to perpetuate and act upon the big lie that the election was stolen, simply to placate the most dishonest President in American history. This President lies at will. He doesn't care of the consequences for the future of grand, great, and wonderful democracy. He only cares about himself and feeding his ego, and truth has nothing do with that. It mattered--what happened matters a great deal, and what the former President is trying to do hurts our country dramatically. The former President's lies, right now, are poisoning our democracy, eroding our faith in government, and exciting a plague--often nasty, sometimes racist--of voter suppression laws.

I had thought that January 6 revealed the devastating consequences of the big lie. I thought that the invasion of our Capitol by an armed mob--a mob that sought to delay the peaceful transfer of power; a mob that I was within 15, 20 feet of at one moment--would demonstrate to all of my colleagues on both sides of the aisle, both ends of the Capitol, the awful price of Donald Trump's lies. But after a brief and all-too-short period of introspection, it appears that the big lie is no longer on the retreat among Republicans but, instead, is spreading like a cancer.

Far be it for me to tell House Republicans who should lead them, but it is truly a dangerous--dangerous--sign of our times that the price of admission in today's Republican Party is silence in the face of provable lies.

I yield the floor.

I suggest the absence of a quorum.

Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the Senate proceed to legislative session and be in a period of morning business, with Senators permitted to speak therein for up to 10 minutes each.

Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the Senate proceed to the consideration of Calendar No. 18, S. Res. 81.

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

Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the Senate proceed to the consideration of Calendar No. 28, S. Res. 120.

I ask unanimous consent that the resolution be agreed to; the committee-reported amendment to the preamble be agreed to; the preamble, as amended, be agreed to; and the motions 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. 32, S. Res. 114.

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

Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the Senate proceed to the consideration of S. Res. 209, submitted earlier today.

I know of no further debate on the measure.

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

Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the Senate proceed to the consideration of S. Res. 210, submitted earlier today.

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

I ask unanimous consent that the Senate proceed to the consideration of S. Res. 211, submitted earlier today.

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.

Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that when the Senate completes its business today, it adjourn until 11 a.m., Thursday, May 13; 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; further, that upon the conclusion of morning business, the Senate proceed to executive session to resume consideration of the McReynolds nomination, postcloture; that all time on the McReynolds nomination expire at 12 noon; and following the confirmation vote, the Senate recess until 1:45 p.m.; further, that the cloture motion on the Graves nomination be withdrawn, and at 1:45 p.m., the Senate vote on confirmation of the Graves nomination; finally, that if any nominations are confirmed, the motion to reconsider be considered made and laid upon the table with no intervening action or debate and the President be immediately notified of the Senate's action.

I suggest the absence of a quorum.

First, let me thank our chair of the Banking Committee, someone who has fought against the abuses in the financial services industry throughout his career, Senator Brown. Let me also thank Senator Van Hollen, who, again, has been one of those leaders doing great things to help people who are often taken advantage of.

Now, for millions of working Americans, one of the most dangerous things that can happen is falling victim to predatory lenders. Unscrupulous actors have always promised quick cash or credit to people with unexpected expenses or financial difficulties, only to trap them with crippling interest rates that can erase a person's life savings or even claim their homes. They are in trouble. They reach out to the lifeline, and the lifeline is a trap. Often they are trapped for years and even some for their whole lives.

That is why more than 40 States have passed laws that prohibit this behavior and placed limits on interest rates made by nonbank lenders. It runs the gamut from liberal California to conservative Texas.

Inexplicably--inexplicably--the Trump administration decided to give these predatory lenders a massive loophole to circumvent State law and once again prey on low-income Americans. Under the Trump administration's rule, so long as payday lenders found a bank to provide the cash upfront and attach their name to the transaction, interest rates in the triple digits were suddenly OK, even if the States explicitly banned it.

It is despicable and so typical of the Trump administration not caring about average folks at all and just listening to the special interests. It had devastating consequences for working families and for small businesses.

In New York, the owner of a southern food restaurant in Harlem took out a $67,000 loan from a fraudulent lender to make renovations to their restaurant. They fell behind on payments and tried to work with their lender when COVID hit and realized that their loan had an APR of 268 percent. Rather than work toward a solution, the lender went to the bank to try and foreclose on their property--their property in which they had put blood and sweat and tears--stating that the Trump rule gave them the grounds to do so. It mattered little that New York State law had a 268-percent interest rate as blatantly illegal.

So today's vote is simple. It would revoke the Trump administration's so-called true lender rule that permits predatory lenders to exploit small businesses and working Americans. In the middle of a pandemic, the last thing we should be doing is perpetrating a rule that makes it easier for payday lenders to scam working people and business owners.

With today's vote, the Senate stands up for working families and small businesses all across the country by repealing this terrible, essentially Scrooge-like rule pushed by former President Trump and his allies.

And one final point for those who say elections don't make a difference. Just look at this. Here was a rule protecting people-- States protected people. The Trump administration comes in and rips away those protections, leaving so many people bare and defenseless because they were desperate; they need the money.

Elections occur. A new Democratic President, a Democratic Senate, and this horrible, horrible rule change by the Trump administration is undone. We go back to giving some help and protection to working families and small business people.

This story could be repeated not just with CRAs but up and down the line--up and down the line. Elections do make a difference, and today's vote shows one of many examples.

Vote on S.J. Res. 15

I yield the floor and, Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that all remaining time be yielded back.

I ask for the yeas and nays.

Let me first commend my colleague from Ohio for the excellent work, not only moving this forward but the vote counting that he did, which worked with a little bit of margin of error.