Floor Statements

Madam President, this is the third time that Senator Paul has made this unanimous consent request. It is the third time that I will come down to the floor to object.

We can continue to use the Senate's time to have this debate and argument or we can use our time more wisely and focus on topics that matter a little bit more to the American public than the vaccination policy for Senate pages.

I wish Senator Paul would stop dragging these hard-working Senate pages into his relentless campaign against vaccine science. I think it is pretty unsavory. These young men and women do a really good, important job for us, and to be dragged into the middle of Senator Paul's focus on trying to unwind and undermine vaccine science I don't think is good for the Senate, and I don't think it is good for the Nation's public health.

CNN reported earlier this year that COVID-19 is a leading cause of death for children in the United States. It is a fairly low mortality rate--Senator Paul is right--but there are children all over the country who have died from COVID-19. That is a fact. It is one of the leading causes of death for children over the course of the last 4 to 5 years.

So I do take seriously the idea that, as adults, we have a responsibility to protect the health and the safety of young people who come work for us, especially minors who are here under our care and protection. We owe a special duty of care to young people, students, who come and work in the U.S. Senate.

So, no, I do not think that the Senate should micromanage Senate employee health policy or the policy related to the healthcare and healthcare security of our pages. I think that we should allow that decision to be made by professionals. We are not vaccine scientists. We are not spending the entirety of our day thinking about the healthcare security of the workforce here in the Senate.

But I have two other reasons why I continue to object to this and I will continue to come down and object to this resolution.

First, Senator Paul says that the existing vaccine is not effective against transmission, and I won't dispute the fact that this vaccine is not primarily being used to prevent transmission. But this is a permanent resolution. This resolution doesn't apply only to this moment in time. It doesn't apply to this vaccine or to this strain of COVID- 19.

If next year there was a strain of COVID-19 and a vaccine that was more effective against transmission, then

there is no method by which we could require Senate pages to be vaccinated as a means of protecting the rest of us.

So the facts that Senator Paul references are relative to this strain and this vaccine, but this is a permanent resolution. It controls the Senate and Senate health policy permanently. But more importantly, all of the facts that Senator Paul references in terms of the low risk to children are all conditioned by a phrase that he, to his credit, continues to reference: that there is a low risk for young and healthy children. He said: If you just take out sick children--if you just take out sick children--then there is really nothing to worry about.

I don't think Senator Paul has access to the medical records of every single page who is working for us. Neither do I. But I can take a guess that there are probably young people who come work for us who have preexisting conditions, who have underlying health complications that might actually make them more significantly at risk.

Senator Paul will say: Well, that should be up to them. Well, we have a duty of care as their employer to make sure that when they are here, they are secure and they are healthy.

So I don't think you can just write this off, write the risk to the pages off by saying that if you are healthy, you are fine. You don't know the medical history of all these young people. There can be and likely is a risk of serious health complications.

Even if you come to the conclusion that that shouldn't be the responsibility of the Senate, to require the vaccine, this resolution is permanent. So even if you get a future vaccine that is more effective against transmission, this resolution controls.

So I will continue to come down here and object to this. I continue to be saddened by the fact that Senator Paul brings our pages over and over again into this debate that he wants the Senate to have over vaccine science.

For that reason, I would object.

Mr. President, I would like to thank Senator Warnock and others for coming to the floor today to raise this truly existential crisis, put it in front of our colleagues.

I have lost count of the number of times I have come down to the floor of the Senate to talk about this immoral anomaly in which you are subject to the risk of death by gunshot wound in the United States at a rate 10 times higher than any other high-income nation.

I wish there were a truly complicated set of factors that play into the reason why we have so much more gun violence here than in other nations, but it probably isn't that complicated. We don't have more mental illness in this country. We don't spend less money on law enforcement. We don't have angrier people. We just have a lot more guns, and we are much more permissive in this country about allowing felons, dangerous people, and the mentally ill to get their hands on guns, and we are much more permissive around the question of which kinds of guns get in the hands of private citizens, especially guns that are designed to kill as many human beings as quickly as possible.

As you can imagine, because I have a pretty high profile on this issue, when I am back in my State, I get confronted a lot by supporters of the Second Amendment, NRA members, who want to have a conversation with me about why I believe what I believe. That conversation normally starts with the assumption that I want to

take guns away or ammunition away from law-abiding gun owners.

Almost without exception, when I get confronted by somebody who wants to talk about guns with me, who comes from that gun-rights side of the debate, as quickly as I can get the debate to background checks is when we start agreeing. I have found very few of those conversations in Connecticut where, even in the most heated of arguments, we don't find quick agreement on the simple idea that before you buy a gun, you should have to prove that you are not a criminal or you are not seriously mentally ill. Why? Because law-abiding gun owners have gone through background checks. They know that in 90 percent of the cases, those background checks are processed instantaneously, while you are in the store. For most of the people who are talking to me who aren't mentally ill and who don't have criminal histories, that is their only experience, is that a background check is not a barrier to purchasing a gun.

So it is just not surprising to me to hear the data that Senator Warnock is talking about--90 percent of Americans supporting universal background checks, checks on every gun sale; 89 percent of Republicans, 89 percent of gun owners, 70 percent of NRA members--because even the gun owners, even the people who feel so fired up about this issue that they want to come talk to me in the middle of a county fair, were not disagreeing about that simple policy--just make sure that people who shouldn't have guns don't get their hands on them.

Some people will say: Well, it is a hassle. It is an unreasonable barrier.

Well, I just told you that in 90 percent of the cases, they are resolved instantaneously. In the 10 percent of cases where it takes more than 5 minutes, that is normally because there is something on that person's record that we need to find out. What we know is that there have been millions of gun purchases that have been denied because felons or seriously mentally ill individuals did try to buy those guns.

But we also know that 99 percent of Americans live within 10 miles of a gun store. There are 60,000 licensed gun dealers across this country who can perform background checks. That is four times the number of McDonald's restaurants in America. It is just not true that it is an unreasonable restriction of your liberty to just make sure you get a background check before you buy a gun.

Now, what are we talking about? We are talking about guns that are largely sold online and through gun shows, because the law today, the Federal law that I think we still all agree on--I mean, I don't hear a lot of my Republican colleagues proposing legislation to repeal the requirement that you should get a background check if you go into a gun store. All we are talking about is extending that requirement to the place where a lot of guns are now sold in a way they weren't when we passed the national instant criminal background check law in the early 1990s. Today, a lot more guns are sold in gun stores, and a lot more guns are sold online.

The studies that have been done about gun sales online are really troubling. One study showed that there were 1.2 million online ads offering firearms for sale that would not require a background check to be done. That same study showed that one in nine prospective buyers of guns online would not pass a background check. That is a rate seven times higher than the denial rate at gun stores. And the reason is the criminals are going online and going to the gun shows because they know they will fail the background check if they go to a brick-and-mortar store.

That is what Seth Ator did. He failed the background check when he tried to purchase a gun in 2014. But he went to a private seller online, he bought a gun, and then he used it to kill 7 people and wound 25 others in a mass shooting in Odessa.

This is not theoretical. This happens. How do you think all these guns get into our cities? It is because the criminal traffickers who have serious criminal records, who can't buy guns at a brick-and-mortar store, go to a State that doesn't have universal checks. The criminals, the traffickers, buy the guns online or at a gun show, and then they drive them up to Hartford, CT, and they sell them on the black market.

The data just tells us that people believe in background checks; they want us to pass universal background checks. And the data also tells us that it works. The numbers vary, but even the least generous studies tell us that in States that have universal background checks, like Connecticut, 10 percent fewer people are dying from gun homicides.

And, of course, my law can't fully protect the people in my State because those guns get trafficked into Connecticut from States that don't have universal background checks. And so the numbers would be even bigger if we didn't have all these loopholes.

So I agree with Senator Warnock. This just feels like a test of democracy. It really does. How does democracy survive if 90 percent of Americans--90 percent of Republicans, 90 percent of Democrats--want something and we can't deliver?

Do you want to know why people are flirting with autocracy and dictatorship? It is because, even when they agree at a 90-percent rate, they can't get what they want from their government.

I have got to tell you, something does seem pretty wrong if democracy can't deliver on a 90-percent consensus, and not a 90-percent consensus about whether your road gets paved--a 90-percent consensus on whether kids live or die, a 90-percent consensus on an existential question of survival.

So, Mr. President, as in legislative session, I am going to ask that we pass a bill that will require universal background checks in this country. I am going to ask my colleagues to respect the wishes of 90 percent of Americans and do something that we know works.

So I am going to ask, as in legislative session, for unanimous consent that the Committee on the Judiciary be discharged from further consideration of S. 494 and the Senate proceed to its immediate consideration. I further ask 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.

Madam President, I am so glad to join my colleagues on the floor today to really emphasize how a family's life falls apart when they don't have access to good childcare.

I am one of a handful of parents of young kids. I have no complaints. Obviously, my wife and I make enough money so that we have been able to provide quality childcare for our kids, as we have both been working throughout their lives. But when you are living on a more modest salary--not a poverty wage but just a modest, lower middle income salary--your entire world can fall apart when you lose access to a quality childcare environment. People have to quit their jobs.

They have to move back in with their parents. They have to move their entire family to a different city or a different State. Your entire life gets upended when you can't find care for your child because you will upend your entire life for your child. Nothing matters more than making sure your child is safe.

So what we are forcing our families to do simply because we don't choose to do the right thing and provide funding to make sure there is affordable, quality childcare available--it is sending our families into unnecessary crisis all over this country.

In my State, I have had 124,000 parents report that their work has been disrupted by childcare issues, that they have had to leave work, that they have had to leave employment because of an interruption in childcare.

Our childcare centers in Connecticut--and we are a high-cost childcare State. We are a high-cost State in general. Eighty-nine percent of them report that they have had difficulty hiring staff, 60 percent of them say that right now they are understaffed, and 70 percent of them say that they have wait lists for new families, which just shows you that all over Connecticut, we have a total mismatch between the number of slots and the number of families who need those slots.

Of course, that delivers enormous harm to families but also to our workforce. I met a young woman a few weeks ago who lives in Hartford. She has a very young child. They are on a waitlist for a subsidized childcare slot. She wants to actually be a childcare worker. She wants to help solve the workforce shortage. But she can't get into the workforce. Why? Because she has to stay home to take care of her young child.

So this cycle that ends up impacting not just families but our economy writ large is one that we have to break.

I just want to leave you with this one last piece of math to just explain how serious this situation is in my State.

In Connecticut, we have a program called Care for Kids, and this is a program that does for lower income families--tries to give them some subsidy so that they can afford childcare. But that program cuts off for a one-child family at $41,500 a year income. That is a lower middle income salary in Connecticut. That is a salary that is not unfamiliar in my State.

Let me just do the very quick math for you. For a family of three, a two-bedroom, one-bedroom house could be about $1,800 a month. Childcare in Connecticut on average is going to be about $15,000 a year. Total up just the costs for a family who makes just above the threshold to qualify for our subsidy programs. Let's say a family makes $42,000, doesn't qualify for our subsidy programs, is spending $22,000 a year on rent, and is spending $15,000 a year on childcare. That is $37,000 a year. They make $42,000. They have $5,000 left. That is $10 a week for everything else--for food, for your cell phone, for clothes for your kid. If you are making above the rate of subsidy in Connecticut, just the cost of childcare and rent leaves you with $10 a week to survive. In the richest, most affluent country in the world, how can we justify leaving families who are doing the right thing, who are working, in that position?

That is why I am so glad to be here on the floor with my colleagues pleading with our Republican friends to do the right thing and support the President's proposed plan to support affordable, quality childcare in this country, for the families I represent in Connecticut.

I yield the floor.

Thank you very much, Mr. President. I want to thank Senator Murray and Senator Reed for leading us in this time.

I want to make two relatively brief points to add to the discussion, and I will turn it over to others of my colleagues.

First, I understand that my Republican colleagues want to avoid the question of Republican priorities. The fact of the matter is, an Israel-only funding bill passed through the House of Representatives, and attached to it was a massive giveaway for the richest Americans: millionaires and billionaires who don't pay their taxes. So as we chart the path forward for a bill that only funds Israel, we know, in the House of Representatives, it has to be matched with a massive-- massive--giveaway for millionaires and billionaires.

I don't think you can ignore that fact that a large swath of the Republican Party is using this crisis in Israel in order to deliver yet another gift to the very small slice of Americans who don't need any more gifts. There are 700 billionaires in this country who have more net worth than 50 percent of all Americans. The rules are already rigged in favor of the superwealthy. So the idea that we would facilitate a plan in the House of Representatives to use Israel aid as a means to continue to rig the rules in favor of those ultrarich Americans, it is just incredibly distasteful, and it is a signal about where the Republican Party priorities are today.

Second, I do want to talk about what Senator Vance and others talked about, about the lazy precedent, referencing the sloganeering that they accuse Democrats of engaging in.

So it is correct that what is happening today in Ukraine does not have a modern precedent because never before in our lifetime, in the post-World War II order, has a large nuclear nation like Russia invaded another large neighboring nation with the purpose of annexation.

What Russia is trying to do is to fundamentally change the rules; to fundamentally shift international norms that have been in place since World War II. At the foundation of it is that big countries don't change their borders through force, through aggression. It is important to understand that these are the rules that have undergirded the last 70 years of U.S. growth and U.S. national security.

So we don't believe that we should support Ukraine because we just believe that Vladimir Putin is Adolf Hitler. We don't believe we should support

Ukraine to perpetuate some slogan about American greatness. No. We believe that we have an interest--as the most powerful nation in the world, as the nation that has benefited most from the post-World War II order--to defend those rules because, if we don't, no one else will.

And it just strikes me that my Republican colleagues who have this fatalistic view of what is going to happen in Ukraine just really view America as weak, as impotent, and as powerless in the face of this unprecedented aggression from Vladimir Putin. America's greatness is connected to our willingness to stand up and lead at moments of crisis, and this is a unique moment of crisis without precedent, which is why it requires the United States to stand against Russia's aggression.

Listen, for thousands of years--and we know this because you read about it in your history books while growing up--for thousands of years, prior to the establishment of the post-World War II order, this world was defined by state-on-state, civilization-on-civilization violence and conflict. People labored under the constant threat that their entire world would be ended by another one of these civilization- on-civilization conflicts. But this was back at the time when weapons were crude--they were swords; they were bows and arrows; then they were simple firearms. Millions died, but millions also survived.

We live in a very different era today where we, frankly, have to be more worried--not less worried, not permissive and fatalistic--about the consequences of reentering a world and a paradigm in which states enter into conflict against other states. Why? Because we now live in a world filled with weapons of mass destruction, not just nuclear weapons but other highly sophisticated weapons.

So now this kind of conflict that Russia and Ukraine are engaged in is the kind of conflict that can wipe out millions in a day. That is why the United States of America has stood up for the post-World War II order. That is why we have fought and sometimes died to maintain it. And this is the most significant affront to that order--an order that has protected this country; an order that has protected our economy; an order that has saved millions of lives in our lifetimes.

It is hard. Ukraine's mission is difficult. In a short-term ``satisfy me now'' culture, I understand that many of my Republicans get phone calls from their constituents saying: If Ukraine hasn't won this war tomorrow, I am not interested any longer. But this conflict matters, and it matters that we stick with Ukraine, because if we lose--if we lose--we are living in an entirely new world: The cap is off state-on- state violence. Pretty soon, America will be in one of those conflicts with another nuclear nation, and we won't be talking about thousands of Ukrainians dying; we will be talking about millions of Americans dying.

So I appreciate my colleagues for being here today. I think this is as important as it gets. I think we really are deciding the future of this world and the rules that govern it, and I join my colleagues in objecting to this motion.

I yield the floor to Senator Schatz.

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

Mr. President, I wish this were not true--and it is true in the United States and nowhere else--but, on average, 70 women across this country are killed each month by an intimate partner, a husband or a boyfriend mostly, and most all of those murders are at the hands of a perpetrator with a firearm.

In the United States, women are 21 times more likely to be killed by a gun than women living in any other high-income nation. I get it that the numbers that we throw around when talking about the gun violence epidemic sometimes can get a little numbing and overwhelming, but that is a really damming, unconscionable statistic.

If you live in America as a woman--the most affluent, most powerful country in the world--you are not twice as likely to die as women in other countries at the hands of a firearm, you are not 5 times more likely, you are not 10 times more likely, you are 21 times more likely, living in the United States of America, to die from a gunshot wound as a woman than women living in any other high-income country.

I am not talking about comparing the United States to some war- ravaged, developing nation in the middle of civil conflict. I am talking about comparing the United States to other peer nations. That is unacceptable.

We made progress last year. We made progress last year because Republicans and Democrats came together and said you shouldn't be able to have a gun anywhere in this country if you have a judicial history, if you have a conviction related to domestic violence. So we changed the law. We limited something called the boyfriend loophole so that whether you are a spouse or an intimate partner or a dating partner, you now can't get your hands on a weapon--you can't buy one, can't have a weapon--if you have been convicted of a domestic violence charge. That was good news.

The reason that we did that, despite the fact that the gun lobby opposed it, is because the American public has just made up their mind on this question.

In general, on most questions about keeping dangerous weapons away from dangerous people, 89 percent of Americans have already decided that they just would rather we err on the side of caution.

Specifically, on this question of prohibiting abusers--domestic abusers--from owning guns, 83 percent of Americans support that. It is really hard to get 83 percent of Americans to support anything in this country. This is maybe the most popular public policy intervention in America today, stopping domestic abusers from getting firearms.

The gun lobby and the gun industry, which want to sell weapons to everybody, regardless of their criminal status, cannot win that fight here in the U.S. Senate. They lost that fight last year because the American public has made up its mind. You are likely not getting reelected to Congress from a swing State or a swing district if you are voting against measures to take guns away from domestic abusers.

But here is the problem with the state of American politics today: There are now two legislative lawmaking bodies. One of them is the U.S. Congress. The other is across the street at the Supreme Court. So over and over again, when an industry or a rightwing interest group can't move the laws of Congress in their favor because the American public is so wildly against their priority, they just shift the venue of the fight across the street to the Supreme Court. That is what is happening right now, as we speak, on this question of keeping guns away from domestic abusers.

Today, the Supreme Court is hearing the case of United States v. Rahimi. Let me tell you a little bit about Zackey Rahimi. He was a drug dealer with a history of armed violence toward intimate partners and a history of firing guns in public places.

In the winter of 2019, Rahimi had an argument with his girlfriend in a parking lot. She tried to walk away from the argument, knowing about his penchant for violence. But he grabbed her wrist. He knocked her to the ground. He then dragged her back to the car, picking her up and throwing her into the vehicle, causing her to hit her head on the side of the vehicle. Upon realizing that a person witnessed the assault, Rahimi retrieved a gun and fired a shot into the air, during which time his girlfriend escaped.

It won't surprise you that his girlfriend went and got a restraining order against him. He was vicious and violent, firing guns in public into the air as a means to threaten her. She went and got a restraining order. That restraining order required Rahimi to be noticed to the criminal background check system so that he couldn't own or buy guns. Eighty-three percent of

Americans think that is a great idea: Somebody with that kind of dangerous history, with an active restraining order against them, should not be able to buy a gun or possess guns. That was the law in Texas at the time. It worked for this woman who was being badly abused, and her life was unquestionably under threat.

Rahimi thinks that he should have the guns. He thinks that notwithstanding his long criminal history, the restraining order, that the Constitution requires him, a domestic abuser, to have weapons. So he has brought a case that has reached the Supreme Court asking to invalidate all laws that keep weapons away from domestic abusers who are the subject of restraining orders.

If this case is decided in his favor, it is not just an outrage, it is not just dangerous; it is a frontal assault on democracy because what it would say is that the Supreme Court--not the U.S. Congress, not the elected branch of government--is going to micromanage the decisions as to who can have a gun and who can't have a gun. They will decide who is dangerous and who is not dangerous. That should make you really nervous if the outcome of this case is to decide that Zackey Rahimi is a responsible individual, capable of owning and possessing more weapons.

Later in that year, Rahimi threatened another woman with a gun, which resulted, that time, in a charge of aggravated assault. Rahimi then participated in five separate shootings--five separate shootings--all of which were in public places. Rahimi was arrested and convicted of possessing a firearm. He was ultimately sentenced for these crimes for a long time in jail.

Restraining orders are designed to look at someone, assess their penchant for violence, and then take guns away from them to protect a spouse or a woman or a girlfriend. Rahimi was violent. He was wildly violent after the restraining order. This is exactly whom the law in Texas is designed to protect us from. Yet we are perhaps weeks away from the Supreme Court invalidating that law, invalidating Connecticut's law, invalidating Georgia's laws so that domestic abusers, with histories of vicious assault, can get their hands back on weapons.

But this should come as no surprise to Americans because we have won this fight, this fight to start moving the laws of this country toward common sense. We want people to have a right to own firearms. I believe in the Second Amendment. I believe the Second Amendment protects the right of private gun ownership. I do. But I think that there is a class of individuals--a pretty small class of individuals--who have demonstrated so clearly that they are so dangerous and so irresponsible with firearms that they should not have them. It is a small class of individuals. Zackey Rahimi is clearly in that class. And the idea that we are weeks away from somebody like him being able to get guns again should shake this country to its foundation.

Maybe the Supreme Court listens to America; maybe they don't. But this country needs to understand the gravity of the decision that is being made and the wholesale shift that will occur in legislating on the question of gun safety.

If Rahimi wins this case, we are no longer in charge. The Supreme Court will now, on a case-by-case basis, decide who can have a gun and who can't. Frankly, that is bad for progressives and supporters of gun violence prevention. That is bad for conservatives as well because once the Supreme Court gets in the business of that kind of micromanaging, we are all out of jobs. We will just show up to work, punch our clock but have really nothing to do because they ultimately will pull the strings. They will substitute themselves as the new governing policymaking body in this country.

With the stakes so high for women's safety in this country, with 70 women dying every month at the hands of an intimate partner, we cannot let that happen.

I yield the floor.

I ask unanimous consent that I be permitted to speak for up to 5 minutes and Senator Stabenow be permitted to speak up to 1 minute prior to the scheduled vote.

Mr. President, on the merits, this resolution is just absurd. The Department of Agriculture is not, as Senator Cruz alleges, punishing schools based upon how they label bathrooms or what they teach in health classes. The offenses that Senator Marshall and Senator Cruz are alleging here are just made up.

What the Department is saying is simple: If you are feeding poor kids, it shouldn't matter whether that kid is straight or gay or transgender, whether they are Black or White, whether they are Catholic or Protestant. You can't choose not to feed a kid because of their ethnicity, their race, or their sexual orientation. That is just common sense. I will guarantee you, 90 percent of the Americans agree with that sentiment.

The reason we are debating this resolution, though, isn't because there is a problem that needs to be solved. We are debating this resolution because the rightwing in this Nation has launched a relentless and unceasing campaign to marginalize, demonize, and bully kids who are gay, transgender, or nonbinary.

All across the country, the Republican State legislatures are introducing bills designed to demonize gay children, to make people believe that these kids are a threat to others, hundreds and hundreds of bills all centered on the same lie as this resolution: That it is not OK to be gay, that it is abnormal to be transgender, and that society should rally around efforts to bully and shame these children and their families.

A few weeks ago, I finished up my annual walk across the State of Connecticut. I do it each year. I spend a week walking about 20 miles a day, talking to hundreds of people--most of them totally nonpolitical-- about what they care about and what they want their leaders to be working on. Do you know what nobody talked to me about on that walk? Children's sexual orientation, drag shows in schools, bathroom labeling. Do you know what they did talk to me about? Wages not keeping up with costs, the safety of their neighborhoods, Israel, opioids, drug costs.

This obsession that Senator Marshall and Senator Cruz and their rightwing allies have with the sexual orientation of our kids is so divorced from what people are actually talking about in this country.

It is no wonder the candidacy of Ron DeSantis--really founded on his relentless similar campaign of attacks against gay kids and adults in Florida--is floundering because even primary voting Republicans think that this obsession that Republicans have with children's sexual orientation or gender identity is just super creepy and super weird, and it has nothing to do with the actual set of problems this Nation is facing.

But there is one problem attached to this resolution: There are consequences to what Senator Marshall and Senator Cruz are proposing. When leaders choose to make bullying and marginalizing gay kids a top priority, kids listen. Fuel gets given to their bullies. People like the Senators who are sponsoring this resolution legitimatize attacks on gay kids and make those kids feel inferior and alone.

The students at Seth Walsh's school were systematic in the way they targeted him because he was gay. They pushed him down the stairs. They kicked him until he was badly bruised. They screamed at him. They called him names. No doubt these bullies took direction and inspiration from adults who paved the way, who endorsed this kind of behavior.

Then one day after one of these incidents, a frightened Seth called his mom, and he said, ``Mom, you have to come get me right now.'' His mother could feel the fear in his voice, so she grabbed Seth's little brother, and they rushed out the door, they went to the school, and they brought him home. His mom was so supportive. That afternoon, they just sat and they talked.

Seth went upstairs and took a shower to calm himself down. Afterwards, he came downstairs and asked his mom for a pen, told her he was going outside to play with the dogs. Ten minutes later, his mom went outside to continue this conversation with her son, but it was too late. Seth had hung himself from a tree, and the pen he had asked for was for his suicide note.

Seth Walsh was 13 years old.

A recent survey of transgender youth showed that half of them--52 percent of them--have contemplated suicide over the last year. Just think about that for a second. Half of the kids who are transgender come to the conclusion at some point in their young lives that they would be better off dead--dead--than to live in a world that believes they are threats to be marginalized or expunged.

How small, how tiny do you have to be to reach a position of political leadership and choose to use that position to bully or shame kids like Seth.

This campaign of targeting and marginalizing gay and transgender kids, trying to convince the country that they are threats to this country, it is just wrong on the facts, it is wrong morally, it has lethal consequences, and it should stop.

Madam President, I thought one of the few things that we agreed on with firearms was that people with serious mental illness-- people who are judged to be mentally incompetent--shouldn't be able to buy guns. That is what we are talking about here today.

We are not talking about people who just can't balance their checkbooks. We are not talking about people who just need some assistance with their financial affairs. The standard that the VA uses is the standard of mental incompetence. These are veterans who have been judged to be mentally incapacitated. And let me put a finer point on it. One-third of the veterans we are talking about in this category are diagnosed schizophrenics, and this amendment allows for every single one of them to have their gun rights restored.

Some of the most mentally ill people in this Nation--people to whom we owe a duty of care; people who are, frankly, more prone to suicide than the general population--are now going to be able to get their hands on a weapon to kill themselves or others if we pass this. This is a death sentence for scores of deeply mentally ill veterans.

What it does not do is set up some process by which to have a court judge whether or not they should own a gun. In fact, there is no current cause of action for that to occur. We didn't have to be at this point where our only choice is to restore gun rights even to actively suicidal veterans. We made an offer to sit down and try to work out a compromise--a better appeals process, a mechanism for these veterans to go to court--but that did not happen. That offer was not accepted.

So, instead, we are voting on an amendment that gives gun rights back to every single seriously mentally ill veteran who has been judged to be mentally incompetent, even those who are actively suicidal. That is a death sentence--a death sentence--for thousands of seniors, for thousands of veterans all across this country if this becomes law. This is a terrible idea, and we should defeat it.

Madam President:

Today, our fellow citizens, our way of life, our very

freedom came under attack in a series of deliberate and

deadly terrorist acts . . . Thousands of lives were suddenly

ended by evil, despicable acts of terror . . . These acts of

mass murder were intended to frighten our Nation into chaos

and retreat.

These were the words of former President George W. Bush speaking to the Nation on the evening of September 11, 2001. But they could have been repeated word for word by Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu in the wake of the heinous terrorist attacks by Hamas that left more than 1,400 dead in Israel on October 7.

As Americans, we know the horror of living through the mass murder of our fellow citizens in a shocking terrorist attack; to be overcome with these intertwined feelings of insecurity and fear, fury, and grief; to be filled with the deep righteous desire for justice and retribution a need to reconcile the moral universe by making the perpetrators of these crimes pay a heavy price. And we know that, even as the impulse to avenge may subside, there remains a need to deter, to show your enemies that aggression against us will be met with overwhelming force.

Nine days after September 11, President Bush presented an ultimatum to Afghanistan's Taliban government:

[H]and over the terrorists, or . . . share in their fate.

The United States moved swiftly to mobilize the support of the international community and the overwhelming capabilities of the U.S. military to destroy al-Qaida and wrest control of Afghanistan from their Taliban hosts. It was a just mission. Neither America's security nor the moral order of the world could have been preserved if the Taliban remained in power, having made possible al-Qaida's training and planning to execute the September 11 attack. Americans rallied around the invasion of Afghanistan--so did the world.

In thinking back on those early days in the fall of 2001, America was looking for partners, not second-guessers or critics. We would not have taken kindly to lectures about how we should go about meting out justice or keeping our Nation safe. Either you were with us or you were against us. With 3,000 Americans dead, that was our mindset, and it was an entirely understandable one.

Israel must seek justice for the 1,400 of its citizens murdered by Hamas on October 7. Israel must bring to justice those who planned and executed the attacks, and it must seek to destroy Hamas as an armed group or, at the very least, destroy its capability to carry out terrorist violence against Israelis. Israel must defend itself, just like we had to do in 2001. This is the state's obligation to its people.

And I, for one, will be there to support Israel, just like our friends were there for us 20 years ago. And I, for one, am glad to see this body, the U.S. Senate, coming together--Republicans and Democrats, who fight over a lot of things--in our joint show of support for Israel's defense.

But here is what I also believe. I believe that part of the way that we support Israel is providing them with funding and with arms in order to destroy Hamas's military capabilities, but I also believe that we should be sharing the lessons that we learned

from our response to September 11 and the successive two decades of wars waged in the name of counterterrorism.

If we are going to be honest with our friends in Israel, then we need to admit that we often failed to see beyond our fury and that we made mistakes by not understanding what came next after the invasion of Afghanistan and the decapitation of our enemy. We had a day-one strategy, but we did not have a day-two strategy, and we paid a horrible price.

After al-Qaida fled and the Taliban government collapsed, we spent 20 years trying to ``win'' without a clear idea of what ``winning'' was, how it would be accomplished, or how that was actually linked to making America safer.

Now, let me be clear. The challenge Israel faces from Hamas is different in really important ways from the al-Qaida threat to the United States, and the lessons of America's global counterterrorism campaign do not neatly map onto Israel's current crisis. For one, the physical proximity of the threat is meaningful. Hamas does not operate from a safe distance. It exists right next door, in Gaza.

America had no experience in or with Afghanistan before the invasion--not so for Israel and Gaza. They know each other. They have an intimate history, and that history impacts the effectiveness of the fight to come.

Another key distinction is the disposition of the enemy. Hamas is not hiding in caves in the Tora Bora. They are both a military and a political entity. They live in a tightly packed corridor that is home to more than 2 million people. Many of them have nothing to do with Hamas.

So there is no perfect comparison between Afghanistan and Gaza, but there are enough similarities that we should be confident in sharing with our friends in Israel the lessons that we learned, the mistakes we made--mistakes that Israel could avoid.

The first of those mistakes was lacking a realistic conception of success. In Afghanistan, we set about the total and complete elimination of ``ungoverned space'' and ``terrorist safe havens''; but after 20 years of fighting, of raids, of targeted strikes, we finally came to terms with a really harsh reality: Our tactics were often producing more terrorists and insurgents than they were eliminating. We were far too cavalier about civilian casualties and the humanitarian cost of our pursuit of the Taliban, and it ended up simply making the Taliban stronger.

Today, Israeli leaders talk about totally eliminating every last Hamas fighter. It is an understandable objective, given the terror that Hamas rained down on Israel. But is it realistic? Can the Israeli military destroy an entire movement--not just a terrorist organization or an armed group but a political entity that administers territory? Is there a risk of our fate in Afghanistan--creating more terrorists than we eliminated--repeating in Gaza?

Another mistake we made in Afghanistan was believing that every proposal we put down on paper could, through the sheer force of American will, become a reality on the ground. We drew up a viable plan to replace the Taliban's kleptocratic theocracy with corruption-free parliamentary democracy. But Afghanistan was not a fit for that plan, and our plan, which looked good on a PowerPoint, was destined to fail.

What was an achievable outcome that we eventually, 20 years later, settled on was eliminating al-Qaida's ability to attack the United States and creating the political conditions on the ground in Afghanistan so that al-Qaida would never again be granted safe harbor. But, of course, that outcome didn't need to take 20 years. It was likely available to the United States much earlier in the conflict.

If Israel does mount a ground invasion, the question is, of course: What comes next?

Hamas administers Gaza. So if Hamas is eliminated, who takes their place? Does Israel reoccupy Gaza in the long run and run Gaza directly? That would seem like a recipe for perpetual conflict. Or does Israel imagine that the West Bank-based Palestinian Authority could step up and administer Gaza? I won't go into a full analysis, but there are very few Middle East watchers who bet that that is a long-term, viable arrangement.

Some Israeli leaders suggest that the question of the future status of Gaza is a matter to be addressed after Israel has ``won the war.'' But what we learned in Afghanistan is that the very concept of ``winning'' is meaningless if it is not built around the conditions of a sustainable peace.

And what is the realistic possibility of building a post-Hamas governing structure in Gaza, particularly when the only immediate alternative would seem to be a renewed and indefinite occupation?

If there isn't a satisfactory answer to these questions, then the military planning is incomplete.

But, make no mistake, America is going to support Israel in its time of need, with funding, with weapons, with whatever they need.

But I raise these questions only because there are important lessons that can be drawn--not perfect parallels but important lessons that can be drawn--from both our successes and our failures.

We had to invade Afghanistan. We had to take out the Taliban. It was the only way to square the moral universe. Israel must strike at Hamas. Israel must destroy their military capabilities. It is the only way to restore the balance of the moral universe. But supporting Israel also means helping them learn from our successes and our failures and to not reflexively repeat the same mistakes we made 20 years ago. Friends support friends, but friends also level with friends.

I yield the floor.

Mr. President, reserving the right to object, no one is proposing lifting sanctions on Iran. This is a legislative proposal seeking to solve a problem that simply does not exist. So let's make that clear from the outset.

Second, the Biden administration has been incredibly tough on Iran. Frankly, the Biden administration has drawn a lot of criticism from people like me for not reengaging in the JCPOA. Instead, the Biden administration decided to drive a harder bargain with the Iranians.

It is also not true that the Biden administration has not implemented new and additional sanctions on Iran. In fact, just a month ago, the Treasury Department announced the 13th round of new sanctions on Iran, mostly relative to the brutal suppression of the protest movement inside of that country.

And so it is important to get the record straight in terms of what this administration's record has been on Iran. And it is also important for us to not create some fantasy world in which the prior administration's Iran policy was working.

President Trump's Iran policy was an unmitigated disaster. An absolute disaster. Whatever you think about the JCPOA, there is just no question that after we withdrew from the JCPOA, a set of very bad things happened: One, Iran started shooting at American troops inside Iraq and inside Syria, something that was not happening during the Obama administration while we were in the JCPOA. Second, their support for proxy groups continued to increase, including to groups like Hamas. Third, they restarted their nuclear research program. They are now 1 month away from a nuclear weapon. And fourth, the coalition that had been assembled to organize efforts to contain and to isolate Iran fell apart.

And so let's not put a gloss on what was a disastrous Iran policy under the previous regime. But as to the Senator's proposal, even if we have disagreements on the JCPOA or on Iran policy, this proposed legislation is just really bad policy. It is really bad policy, and it will make American sanctions much weaker and much less effective.

Why is that? What this proposal suggests is that for Iran sanctions, every time you lift or waive a sanction, you have to come to Congress. Now, we have sanctions levied against, I would guess, thousands of Iranian institutions, organizations, and individuals. And the purpose of sanctions is to change behavior, right? It is not just punishment. Sanctions are about delivering a consequence to an individual, an organization, or a country for their bad behavior as a means of trying to get them to change that behavior. And once they change that behavior, the sanction is lifted.

That is why Congress, traditionally, does not require a separate congressional review process, a separate congressional vote every time an administration lifts a sanction because you need for an administration to be nimble in applying sanctions and also lifting sanctions because if a foreign individual in Iran or any other place understands that in order for a sanction to be lifted not only does the administration have to lift it but Congress has to have a debate and a vote, it is no incentive to change behavior.

So I just think this is really bad policy. Whether or not you like President Biden's Iran policy--and I do--whether or not you supported the JCPOA, tying the administration's hands on sanction policy in this way just makes the sanctions much less effective. I get it. The Republicans don't like Joe Biden, and they don't like Joe Biden's foreign policy, but this would be bad under a Republican President as well.

I am very glad to work with my colleague on increasing the role that Congress plays on broad foreign policy decisions, but I think that there are some day-to-day administrations of foreign policy, like the decision as to when to waive or lift a particular individual sanction, that would become far too burdensome and contrary to national security interests if Congress got involved to the degree that this legislation suggests.

And so for that reason, simply because I think this is bad policy-- whether this was about Iran policy or Venezuela policy or Russia policy, I just think it makes our sanctions policy much harder to effectuate and ultimately makes our sanction regimes weaker, not stronger.

For those reasons, I would object.

Madam President, right now we are working through a bipartisan proposal to keep the government open and operating, at least for the next several months. But those who study the Constitution might ask: Why is the Senate beginning debate on a continuing resolution? Isn't it the responsibility, constitutionally, of the House to begin debates on spending measures?

That is true. But the reason the Senate is using certain procedural maneuvers to begin the debate on the continuing resolution is because the House refuses to do its job. The House of Representatives is currently pretending like the government isn't shutting down in 3 days.

Instead of doing their job, House Republicans are spending the week impeaching Joe Biden, even though they admit they have no grounds to do it. They are setting this country on a course toward ruin. Shutdowns cost the economy billions of dollars. Starting on Saturday night, our military won't get paid; Head Start teachers won't get paid; our wildfire firefighters won't get paid; Federal prison guards won't get paid; NIH and CDC scientists won't get paid; border agents won't get paid. And yet the House is pretending that this isn't happening.

So we are attempting--the Senate--to come together, Republicans and Democrats, to solve this problem. But it is absolutely extraordinary-- extraordinary--that the House is refusing to do their job. And the reason for that is that there is this cabal of Republicans in the House who want the government to shut down, who hate the government so much that they want to burn it to the ground. And they are willing to compromise the safety of this country. They are willing to put hard- working Federal employees out of work. They are willing to force our military and our Border Patrol to forgo their paychecks. They are willing to lose $10 billion in revenue to the economy.

So this is a pretty sad moment. The Senate is going to try to come together, Republicans and Democrats, to do our job; but House Republicans are causing this shutdown. They admit it. They go on TV every day--House Republicans go on TV every day and admit that it is their caucus that is causing this shutdown. And, hopefully, sometime between now and this weekend, those arsonists in the House of Representatives will come to their senses and put this country above their politics, above their hatred of government, above their hatred of Joe Biden. The consequences are pretty enormous otherwise.

Gun Control

Madam President, this past February, a woman by the name of Maria Zapata Escamilla was startled out of her sleep in her home in a relatively small city in Mexico. She was startled out of her sleep because a band of men armed with powerful weapons and wearing military fatigues broke into her family's home. They looked like soldiers, but they weren't soldiers. They were, in fact, drug cartel members. That night they dragged her husband away, and they dragged her 14-year-old son, still in his pajamas, out of the house.

Two weeks later, 10 bodies were found in this town, all dead at the hands of the cartel. One of them was Maria's husband. She still, to this day, has no idea where her 14-year-old son is, but she presumes that he is dead. Maria's story is the norm in this city, Fresnillo, which, for much of this year, has been a war zone between Mexico's two biggest cartels as they battle for space to make and transport drugs to the United States.

Maria says:

Every day there are kidnappings, every day there are

shootouts, every day there are deaths. It's terror.

These cartels act with impunity in Mexico because they buy off local officials and police because of endemic

corruption inside Mexico but, also, because these cartels are very often more heavily armed than the police. And this ability of the cartels to control so much space inside of Mexico because of corruption but also because they are often carrying more firepower than law enforcement, this is not just a nightmare for Mexico; this is a nightmare for the United States of America. There is a straight through line between the power of the cartels and the fentanyl trade that is killing American citizens.

Fentanyl is a plague in my community in Connecticut, in my colleagues' communities. And it is not enough for us just to tell Mexico to do better. No doubt, Mexico does not have clean hands. Mexico needs to get in the game to take on these cartels.

But on this question of heavily armed cartels, Mexico has actually acted. It surprises many people to know that there is one single gun store in all of Mexico. Mexico has essentially eliminated the commercial trade of firearms. You can't buy a firearm in the commercial market, for all intents and purposes, in Mexico today.

So why on Earth is Mexico flooded with weapons? Why on Earth do the cartels trade weapons like water? It is because somewhere between 70 to 90 percent of the guns that are found in crime scenes--mostly crime scenes connected to the cartel business--in Mexico can be traced back to the United States.

This is absolutely stunning. It is U.S. guns bought here in the United States, transited to Mexico that is fueling the violence that ends up in fentanyl being made, produced, and transported freely into the United States.

So it is time for the United States to recognize that if we want to do something about fentanyl coming into the United States, if we want to save our citizens from ruin, then we have to do something about the guns that move from the United States into Mexico.

Now why is this happening? Why have the cartels been able to get their hands on these weapons?

Well, there is a handful of reasons. First, without a universal background check law in the United States, these cartel members, most of whom have criminal records, can easily buy guns at gun shows and online, even though they are criminals, because in those settings there are not background checks applied in many of our States. So the cartel members go into these gun shows in places like Texas; they buy the guns; and they bring them to Mexico.

Second, there is no comprehensive effort to stop the trafficking. It is largely Americans that are doing the trafficking--dual citizens, often. We do lots of checks of cars and trucks going from Mexico to the United States, but we don't do significant serious checks on vehicles going from the United States to Mexico. And so the guns, along with the cash, move freely north to south.

And so as long as this gun trade continues, the Mexican authorities, even if they clean up their act, have very little chance to stop these cartels. And what is so maddening is that this is just a choice. We know what to do to stop these guns from being trafficked to the cartels in Mexico, but we choose not to do it.

So for those of us that have relationships with leaders in the Mexican government, we have very few good answers when the Mexican government looks us in the eye and says: Do your part. Stop these guns from moving into Mexico.

The things we can do are all politically popular. Universal background checks are supported by 95 percent of Americans, first and foremost because it will cut down on crime in the United States. But 41 percent of the guns that go into Mexico come from Texas; 15 percent come from Arizona; the lion's share of these weapons comes from States that don't have universal background check laws on the books and so they have all of these loopholes and these ways for criminals to buy guns and transfer them to Mexico.

Second, we can fund DHS to actually do the checks on the cars and the vehicles that are moving into Mexico. Last year, for the first time, because of an initiative that I pushed, we funded 200 more CBP officers to do these outbound inspections. Yet we are still only doing the inspections at a handful of ports of entry, and we should be doing them all across the border. That is something that Republicans and Democrats can come together on.

Last year, we did make progress. With the help of Senator Cornyn and others, we made gun trafficking a crime in this country. It is amazing that it wasn't. We made straw purchasing a crime, which makes it a little bit harder for the traffickers to move weapons from north to south, but it is just a start.

It is really important for us to own the mistakes we have made that have allowed for these cartels to get so big and so powerful. There is no doubt that the lion's share of work lands squarely with the Mexican Government. The corruption there that is endemic is the biggest gift to the cartels.

Second to the corruption is the flow of weapons that the United States has permitted and, at times, facilitated. We need a massive, laser-focused effort to stop the flow of fentanyl into the United States. It is killing thousands of Americans. In my State, there have been 10,000 overdose deaths just in the last 10 years.

We can't just lecture the Mexican Government to do better; we need to do our part. So I am here on the floor today to ask my colleagues to join me in taking some big, bold steps to stop the flow of these weapons from the United States to the Mexican drug cartels.

I yield the floor.

Mr. President, reserving the right to object, I heard a very similar speech last week when Senator Paul came to the floor to offer this exact same resolution, and I came to the floor to offer the exact same objection. I guess we are going to be here next week and the week after having this same back-and-forth on the Senate floor.

I don't know that this is the most important problem facing the country today, the question of whether a small number of Senate pages has a vaccine or not. I think Senator Paul's obsession with the page vaccine policy is a little weird and not squared with the actual priorities of the American public. But I will continue to come down here and object because it is important to know that there is no legal mandate that pages be vaccinated. It is a policy, not a mandate. Senator Paul is proposing a mandate--a mandate--through this resolution that under no circumstances can pages be required to have a vaccination as a condition of their employment here.

I find Senator Paul's recitation of his body of evidence interesting. I don't dispute the fact that the vaccine today is much more efficacious on preventing serious illness and is not, like prior vaccines, effective at preventing transmission. But here are two things to say about that. Senator Paul says over and over again that if you are a healthy kid, you have nothing to worry about, that no healthy kids are dying. OK, that is broadly true. It is true that healthy children have very little risk of dying of COVID. But the assumption, then, is that every single page that is part of this program has no preexisting conditions, that every single page comes here with a clean bill of health. That is not true.

There are pages here--just like our employees--who have preexisting conditions, and we have a responsibility for the young people who work for us. We have a long history in this country of requiring vaccinations for young people. Senator Paul objects to that policy, but it is long accepted that young people, during their school-age years, should have a set of vaccinations to keep them healthy. And if you have a preexisting condition, even as a child, you have a potential of dying from COVID.

Guess what. COVID is the eighth leading cause of death for young people today. That is not insignificant. And so it is perfectly consistent with the general policy we have in this country of requiring students to get vaccines to require the same of the page population-- who, by the way, are students.

The second thing to say about this resolution is this: Even if Senator Paul is correct--and I broadly would submit that he is--that this vaccine is really about preventing serious illness, not about preventing transmission, this resolution is permanent. This says that under no circumstances should a Senate page be required to have a vaccination.

But what if a follow-on vaccine is more effective at preventing transmission? What if the next COVID variant is a more significant threat to children?

This is a mandate. This says: No matter what the scientific recommendations are, under no circumstances--under no circumstances, no matter what the scientific recommendation is--can you mandate, can you require that a Senate page, as a condition of working in the Senate, have a vaccination.

That is bad policy. I would rather have this question be up to the Attending Physician, to the adults who run the Page Program, than have mandates from the U.S. Senate about the healthcare policy of our pages.

I think this is really bad policy, but I also think it is super dangerous because, really, the question of whether a handful of pages in the Senate have a vaccine is not worthy of a half an hour of back and forth between two U.S. Senators. What this ends up being is yet another wedge to try to drive apart the American public from a belief in science and vaccines.

This is a longstanding effort by Senator Paul and others to question the efficacy of vaccines. It feeds into a broader narrative about the efficacy of science writ large, and that has devastating consequences for this country because, as people lose faith in medical recommendations, as fewer people get vaccines because they come under the belief that the vaccine will do more harm than good, people die.

And so, by itself, this is bad policy, because this is part of a broad consensus in this country that students should get vaccinated for significant conditions, and this policy stands no matter what the future recommendations of medical professionals are.

But I object to it just as strongly because of how it fits into this broader, incredibly dangerous narrative to try to undermine people's faith in science and vaccines. And for that reason, I would object.

Mr. President, I want to paint a picture for you just for a moment. It takes place on a tarmac in the Zambian capital of Lusaka, just a few weeks ago, in fact.

A small private jet arrives from Egypt. It lands there, hoping to go unnoticed because of what is on board that jet. But it does get noticed by Zambian authorities. They board the plane, and they find inside a cargo that sounds like something out of a James Bond movie. On board that plane is $5.7 million in U.S. currency, 602 bars of gold, five pistols, and 126 rounds of ammunition.

To make the story even more bizarre, it turns out that the gold was not actually real. It was fake bars of gold. The currency is real, the ammunition is real, but the gold is fake.

Zambia arrests 12 people, 6 of whom are Egyptian citizens. Immediately, as you can imagine, speculation begins about what is exactly going on.

That is an interesting story, right? But the reason I tell you this story isn't because of what happened in Zambia. It is because of what happened next in Cairo. Six of these individuals were Egyptian citizens. The plane came from Egypt. So, of course, journalists in Cairo start to do some digging. A fact-checking platform named Matsadaash--I am probably butchering the pronunciation, but it is Arabic, roughly, for ``don't believe it.'' They report on the alleged involvement of former Egyptian security officials in the incident, but this kind of truth telling is just not allowed in Egypt today.

Egypt is a closed society. It is a dictatorship in which political dissent is crushed. The free press is essentially nonexistent, and as a consequence, top officials are allowed to enrich themselves without any accountability.

So what happened to the journalists at Matsadaash is interesting, but it is, frankly, par for the course in Egypt. Here is what happened. In response for doing this reporting, Egyptian security officials went straight to the home of the journalist. They raided his home. They forced him to log onto his computer as they were there, and they forced him to delete the Facebook posts about the issue at hand.

Egypt just wanted this story to disappear, and they were willing to do whatever it took to make this happen. We may never know the full story of what happened in that airport--what was going on with that plane--but what we do know is that the Egyptian Government's reaction is part of a completely predictable pattern to muzzle and silence the truth tellers by force.

Beyond these attacks on Matsadaash, two other journalists covering the episode were also detained immediately after without charge. One of the last remaining independent media outlets in Cairo, Mada Masr has repeatedly been refused a legal license to operate.

Websites that report on this kind of activity of Egyptian officials are shut down as soon as they appear. Activists are regularly jailed for ``spreading false news'' about human rights violations. Over and over again, the government's playbook is just the same: Shut down voices that are critical of the government and throw in jail people who don't comply.

Around this same time last year, I came down to the Senate floor to make a very similar speech, to talk about an annual decision that the administration has to make with regard to our aid to Egypt.

Now, Congress, in a bipartisan way, cares about this campaign of brutal repression against the press and political dissent in Egypt. That is why our annual appropriations bill limits the amount of money the administration can send to Egypt, depending on the government's human rights record.

Specifically, this year, Congress has said that $320 million of the aid we send, which is roughly about a quarter of the aid, can't go to Egypt unless the administration certifies that Egypt has made real progress on these questions of political climate, $85 million of which is tied to the release of specific political prisoners and the remaining $235 million on broader improvements on questions of human rights and democracy.

Now, I just want to be honest with you. In the past, the Bush administration, the Obama administration, the Trump administration, they just routinely waived these conditions and sent the full amount without any real progress. They said it was about American national security, without any actual evaluation as to what the consequence of withholding the money would be to our national security. But

to the Biden administration's credit, over the past 2 years, they have withheld a portion of Egypt's military aid because of these human rights violations.

And last night, as I was writing this speech, the administration rightly decided to withhold that first tranche--$85 million tied to the release of political prisoners--because there is just no question, there has not been enough progress.

Why do we know that? Because while Egypt released and has released more than 1,600 political prisoners since early 2022--that is good news--during that same time, they have jailed 5,000 more.

So for every political prisoner Egypt releases, three more are jailed. That is one step forward and three steps back. That is not the kind of ``clear and consistent progress in releasing political prisoners'' that the law requires. The administration was right to withhold the $85 million.

But what about the remaining $235 million? I would argue that the answer is just as simple. The Biden administration needs to hold the line. As evidenced by the response to the fake gold-filled plane, political repression is getting worse, not better, in Egypt.

Now, every year there are some people who argue that even though Egypt really hasn't made any progress on human rights, they should get the money anyway, in the name of national security; that if we dare to withhold even a small portion of that money, Egypt is going to stop cooperating with us and they are going to run to Russia or China instead.

But as we have seen in the last 2 years when the administration did withhold a portion of the $1.3 billion, the sky did not fall. Yes, I will admit to you our diplomats in Cairo probably had some very tough conversations, and the Egyptians certainly have made life a little bit more difficult for our diplomats around the edges, but the core security relationship remains intact. Why is that?

It is because the things that we want Egypt to do that are good for our national security--like working to keep the situation in Gaza as stable as possible through its relationship with Hamas, ensuring the free flow of commerce and U.S. warships through the Suez Canal, keeping counterterrorism operations going in the Sinai--President Sisi does all those things because it is in Egypt's independent national security interest to do so, not because we pay them to do it.

Maybe when we started giving them a billion dollars in aid back in the 1980s, Egypt, in fact, complied with our national security requests because of that monetary relationship, but today Egypt engages in those activities because they have an independent reason to do so.

In fact, it is telling that even though the Egyptians continue to receive a billion dollars per year in military aid, even with that money, they are reportedly, and have been reportedly, seeking to do deals with the Russians and the Chinese.

Earlier this year, reporting on leaked documents revealed that Egypt had made a secret deal to provide Russia, in the middle of the Ukraine war, with 40,000 rockets. Now, only after a flurry of high-level diplomatic interventions did the Egyptians change course.

And despite a reported request in March of this year from Secretary Austin for Egypt to help Ukraine, the Egyptians have not yet done so. And so the question is, Is this the behavior of a country that we call a key security partner?

And let me be clear, this decision that the administration is going to make, it matters far beyond Egypt. If we say human rights and democracy matters to America, then it has to matter in more than words. When we cut corners and we fail to hold our partners accountable for human rights abuses, people notice.

Now, I am not naive. I know that the question of whether we withhold a couple hundred million dollars in security assistance from President Sisi is not going to convince him to end his brutal campaign of political repression. But when we walk the walk, not just talk the talk, on human rights, another audience hears us: activists, the people who are doing this work on the streets in places like Cairo. Those who are fighting for democracy and human rights in countries with little of either, they gather courage from knowing that the United States is on their side. And it is those forces, those organic, domestic forces, that truly make change. But when we keep on doing business as usual with Saudi Arabia or Tunisia or Egypt, despite their behavior, we send a signal to democracy activists that we aren't serious, that we don't have their back.

And so I am glad for the administration's decision last night to withhold a part of the funding that Congress has required to be withheld unless we see significant progress on human rights. And my belief is that there is only one decision to be made on the remaining dollars because the record is clear, Egypt continues to help us on national security priorities where our interests align, and there is good reason to continue a security relationship with Cairo to preserve those interests.

In other areas like the war in Ukraine, Egypt has not been a helpful partner, and we need to be clear-eyed about our security relationship with Egypt and also about Egypt's human rights record.

The decision the administration will make this week about holding the Egyptians accountable for progress on human rights, it is critical to American credibility. And for that reason, I would urge the administration to finish the job and withhold the full $320 million as required by the fiscal year 2022 appropriations act until Egypt's human rights and democracy record improves.

I yield the floor.

Mr. President.

Mr. President, reserving the right to object. First of all, I want to assure the pages that we normally don't spend this much time debating you guys.

At the end of the July session, there was a verbal assault on pages who were in the Rotunda, which caused both Senator Schumer and Senator McConnell to rise to the pages' defense.

We have now spent an inordinate amount of time this week debating healthcare policies related to the pages.

Second, while Senator Paul and I often find common cause, I am continually stunned at his unseriousness about the scope of this ongoing tragedy. No matter how many times I hear Senator Paul rail against vaccines, I am still heartbroken by the fact that so many of my colleagues don't understand the devastation that has been wrought in this country, as 1.1 million Americans--1.1 million Americans--have died from COVID, in large part, because of the ongoing attacks against vaccines that work that has undermined the public's confidence in one of the very best tools that we have to combat the worst of this disease and this virus.

I am looking at a scientific study from earlier this year naming COVID-19 as the eighth leading cause of death for children in this country. It is true, it is rare for a child to die from COVID, but when you have 1.1 million people dying of COVID in this country, of course there is going to be an unacceptable number of children who die from

Mr. President, as you know, we are at an unprecedented moment in the history of the Senate. There are hundreds of brave, courageous leaders in our military who are being denied--promotions being denied--the rank that they deserve because of the actions of Senator Tuberville and Senate Republicans.

And Senator Tuberville was out on the floor just moments ago defending his actions. I think most Americans believe that his hold on all of these promotions is indefensible. But what probably won't get covered is an additional idea that he presented to the Senate in his remarks.

Senator Tuberville said today that he thinks that our military leadership should be fired for failing to defeat the Taliban. That is pretty extraordinary. For those of us who have served in the Senate and in the House during the time that we have been in Afghanistan, we had the opportunity to see that mission on the ground. It was a difficult, hard mission. Some might say it was an impossible mission, badly underresourced, right from the beginning.

But the idea that our soldiers or our military leadership--captains, lieutenant colonels, generals--should be fired because they couldn't perform a mission that was likely impossible, that, frankly, will have an even bigger chilling effect than Senator Tuberville's hold on military promotions.

There is no doubt that there should be consequences for gross negligence on the job in any profession, including the military, but for any of us who saw the work being done in Afghanistan, our military from the top down, they were doing the best they could under difficult circumstances.

Refusing military promotions apparently isn't cruel enough. Now, Republicans want military leaders fired when they can't complete impossible, underresourced missions.

This is a growing attack, a growing set of attacks on our military, and all in the service of a bunch of old men telling young women what healthcare they can get and what healthcare they can't get.