Floor Statements

Mr. President, I rise to oppose this amendment, and I want to tell my colleagues why.

This amendment creates the illusion of solving our problem, while having very little political impact and likely doing more harm than good.

It is a legitimate worry to consider the amount of U.S. oil under our lands that goes and is shipped to China because in 2022, the United States did export over 83 million barrels of oil to China. That was a new record. It was a new record in part because 10 years ago, we didn't ship any oil overseas because we had a national security policy to keep U.S. oil here. But lobbying by the oil industry changed that policy, and so today, we are sending 83 million barrels of oil a year to China.

This amendment doesn't really change that because--do you want to know how much of that comes from the SPR? Less than 2 million barrels, 1 to 2 percent. So you are still going to have 80 million-plus barrels of oil from the private sector being sent to China every year.

ExxonMobil alone made $60 billion in profits last year, much of that off sales of oil to China. This amendment allows for the oil industry to keep making those billions off of selling oil to China, only stripping out sales from the SPR. That is a great deal for the oil industry, but it gets better.

When President Biden sold oil from the SPR last year, it helped cut the cost of a gallon of gasoline by up to 30 cents. That hurt oil industry profits. So, of course, the oil industry wants policies that restrict the sale of oil from the SPR, while letting them sell oil to whomever they want, including China.

This amendment claims to solve a problem while mainly having the result of padding and protecting oil industry profits, and I would urge opposition.

Madam President, I ask unanimous consent to be allowed to speak for 10 minutes prior to the scheduled vote.

I come to the floor to talk about one of the greatest citizens, leaders, and public servants in the history of my State, Lowell Palmer Weicker, Jr., who died June 28.

We held services for him in Greenwich on Monday, and I want to celebrate him for a moment with my colleagues, because they don't make them like Lowell Weicker any longer.

Lowell Weicker served virtually every capacity you could helping to lead our State. He was a first selectman. He was a State representative. He was a Congressman. He was a Senator here in this Chamber, and he was a Governor. But throughout his long, storied tenure as an elected official--for most of that time a Republican, as Governor an Independent--he led a life that was led by one simple axiom: Do what is right.

He put his principles, his convictions, and what he thought was right for our State above every other political consideration--certainly above party. He bucked his party here over and over and over again. His autobiography was titled ``Maverick.'' But he also made decisions for the betterment of the State that ran directly contrary to his own political interests. And I will talk about the most famous of those decisions, those calls that he made, in a moment, when he was Governor.

I got to know Lowell Weicker only in the last decade of his life, and I am sorry for that because he played a very big role in my decision to pursue public service as a vocation.

Lowell Weicker was born in Paris. He was raised on Park Avenue in Manhattan and Oyster Bay on Long Island. He followed his father's footsteps through prep school, to college at Yale. He graduated Yale in 1953, University of Virginia Law School in 1958. He served 2 years in the Army as an artillery officer.

He began his political career as a local representative serving his town of Greenwich. He was a State representative, and then he was first selectman. He ran first for Congress in 1968. He unseated a three-term Democrat representing Fairfield County. And from that first race, you could see that Lowell Weicker was going to be a different kind of political leader.

He ran to the left of his Democratic opponent on the issue of Vietnam. He ran for Congress as a Republican who opposed President Nixon's war. And as Congressman, he staked out a series of contrary positions to his party, earning him, early on, the reputation of someone who was just going to do what he thought was right over and over and over. Later in life, he said: There is going to be this crucial moment in your career. The question is whether you mature or whether you are going to be an ideologue. Lowell Weicker was never an ideologue. And there is no question of whether he matured. He was proud of the fact that he changed his stance on issues over the course of his career.

When he got to Congress, he supported prayer in schools. He ended up as a Senator, here, successfully leading the opposition to President Reagan's push for a constitutional amendment to allow organized prayer in public schools. He changed. He matured. He didn't run from that. He was proud of it.

In the Senate, he is probably best known to be the first Republican to call for President Nixon's resignation. Speaking about his Republican Party that he was so proud of, he said:

Let me [be] clear, because I have got to have my partisan

moment, Republicans do not cover up; Republicans do not go

ahead and threaten; Republicans do not go ahead and commit

illegal acts; and, God knows, Republicans don't view their

fellow Americans as enemies to be harassed. . . . I can

assure you, this Republican and those I serve with, look upon

all Americans as human beings to be loved and won.

In 1981, he was the only Republican to vote against President Reagan's first budget. As I mentioned, he fought hard against that constitutional amendment to allow organized prayer in schools because he came to believe very deeply in the separation of church and State. But maybe what defines Lowell Weicker's career in the Senate, more than Watergate, was his ability to see the future. He always talked about the fact that he was living for the future.

When standing up for people living with HIV and AIDS was controversial, Lowell Weicker was leading the fight on the Senate floor to put early money into AIDS research. When it wasn't a foregone conclusion that we would make sure that people with disabilities had access to buildings in this country, Lowell Weicker wrote the Americans with Disabilities Act. It passed just

after he left the Senate, but he was the originator of that legislation.

Today, Sheldon Whitehouse reminds us of our obligation to our oceans. Before anybody else was talking about the oceans, it was Lowell Weicker down here talking about the need to invest in oceans and oceans' research.

But I remember Lowell Weicker when he became Governor. Lowell Weicker ran as an Independent for Governor. He won a three-way race. And he was facing a State crisis, a fiscal crisis of epic proportions. He didn't like the idea of a State income tax. He, frankly, opposed the idea earlier in his career. But he surveyed every other option necessary to rescue Connecticut from its political and fiscal crisis, and he judged that an income tax was the only path forward.

And so he took a step that he knew would mean that he could only serve one term in office. He was a young man when he became Governor. He was in his late fifties or early sixties, but he stood up and said the only way for Connecticut to be fiscally sound going into the future is to have an income tax. He fought both Republicans and Democrats to get that done, and he got it done.

I was 17 years old at the time when Lowell Weicker became Governor and made that proposal. I don't think I had any thoughts on whether an income tax was the right or the wrong thing, but what I saw, for the first time, was a political leader standing up and doing what they thought was right, even though they knew it was unpopular, even though he knew it was likely going to be the end of his political career. And I was mesmerized. I was mesmerized by this act of political courage, by this act of political statesmanship, and it was one of the early examples that convinced me that there was honor in public service.

And so I am deeply grateful to the example that Lowell Weicker set for all of us, during his time in the Senate, the first Republican to call for Nixon's resignation, to the time as Governor, where he set the State on a course of fiscal sanity.

During those income tax debates, thousands of people would show up at the capitol. In fact, one day 40,000 people showed up at the State capitol. They hung Governor Lowell Weicker in effigy. He didn't sit in his office. He walked into the crowd to try to reason and negotiate with them. It didn't last long. He was pelted with cans and bottles of sodas. He had to be hustled out of the crowd as quickly as he went in, but it caused Howard Baker, one of his great friends in the Senate, to say: Lowell Weicker, ``[t]hat is the only man I ever met who would strike a match to look into a gas tank.''

It has been popular to say, over the last few days as we have been eulogizing Lowell Weicker, that he belonged to a different era in which you could just be for what you thought was right and not worry about the political consequences. But I think that is a copout, and I think my friend Lowell would say that is a copout. Doing the right thing should be timeless. Putting country over party should be timeless.

There is no reason why all of us can't learn a little bit about Governor Senator Lowell Weicker's record upon his passing and use him as a model for how we act as public servants as well.

Lowell Weicker died last week at age 92, one of the most consequential people in Connecticut's history, and I choose to remember Lowell Weicker and the example he set as timeless.

I yield the floor.

Madam President, I ask unanimous consent that privileges for the floor be granted to the following members of my staff through the end of July: Eleanor Schmutz, Clara Adams, Caroline Shinney, Nicholas Benvenuto, Stephanie Crocker, Bennett Gilhuly, Alex Page, Ritwik Bose, Elena Brennan, Nader Granmayeh, Hugh Cecil, Liv Birnstad, and Evan Maher.

Mr. President, first, I ask unanimous consent that, prior to the scheduled vote, I be permitted to speak for 10 minutes, Senator Marshall for 5 minutes, Senator Kennedy for 10 minutes, and Senator Schumer for 2 minutes.

Mr. President, America is crying out for this Congress to do something about the epidemic of mass shootings. We average more than a mass shooting a day right now. Kids are living in fear when they walk into school. People don't know where the next shooter is coming from. No place seems safe.

So what is the Senate Republicans' answer to this paralyzing fear and anxiety that Americans have about mass shootings?

Their answer today is to put a resolution before the floor of the Senate that would make legal a new class of semiautomatic rifles that has been banned for 100 years because they are too dangerous.

So the answer to the mass shooting crisis in this country is of more assault rifles, more dangerous weapons, and taking a class of weapons that has been illegal for a century and putting them on the open market.

That is outrageous, and it is completely removed from the conversation that families and kids are having all across this country. Instead of taking dangerous assault weapons off the streets, this resolution would put more of them into the commercial marketplace.

I want to talk for a few minutes today about how dangerous this resolution is and to ask my Republican colleagues to vote with us--to vote with us--against this resolution so that we can protect our families and our kids from criminal acts and mass shootings.

For almost a century, the law has treated different types, certain types, of firearms differently than others; namely, those that Congress has seen as more dangerous and more closely associated with violent crime. Short-barreled rifles are in that category. They are more transportable and concealable than long rifles. They have a longer range, greater accuracy, and more firepower than pistols. It is kind of the perfect recipe for criminals. That is, in part, why they are more highly regulated than your standard handgun or your standard hunting rifle or even an AR- or AK-style assault rifle.

To own a short-barreled rifle in this country, you have to pay $200 for a tax stamp. You have to undergo a background check. You have to register that firearm with the ATF. You can have one, but you have to go through that process. That system--the courts have agreed--is consistent with the Second Amendment. It allows for responsible, law- abiding citizens to acquire these dangerous weapons while keeping them out of the hands of criminals, people who want to commit crimes with them.

Now, what has changed?

Well, in recent decades, gun manufacturers have responded to the widespread popularity of AR-15 rifles by selling a variant that they call either a large-format pistol, or a heavy pistol. It is a shorter version of an assault rifle. It has a shorter barrel, and it lacks a shoulder stock. These guns, theoretically, can be fired one-handed, but very few people want to do that. They are too large and heavy to control effectively, so they haven't been very popular in the marketplace. So the industry figured out a way to make them more popular.

In 2012, the first stabilizing brace was created to help a disabled veteran shoot an AR platform pistol one-handed. You kind of see a crude version of it here. It was sort of a rubber sling that slipped over the buffer tube at the rear of the weapon and then cinched down on the shooter's forearm with Velcro straps. This original design solved a very specific problem for a disabled shooter, but the gun industry saw an opening, and it wasn't about to let that opportunity slip by.

``The large format pistol really took off in 2014,'' says one article in the NRA's own magazine, Shooting Illustrated. What began as this rubber orthotic device turned into something that looked very different. It looked exactly like a shoulder stock.

Manufacturers started designing and marketing stabilizing braces designed for disabled individuals that would enable firing from the shoulder--firing short-barreled rifles, essentially, from the shoulder--and resources popped up all over the internet showing gun enthusiasts how to use these pistol braces designed for disabled shooters to turn their large-format pistols--not very useful--into short-barreled, shoulder-fired weapons.

Outdoor Life said:

The AR pistol of yesteryear is not the same platform that

shooters are enjoying today for one reason: the stabilizing

brace.

To be clear, it has always been illegal--for 100 years--to modify a large-format pistol by adding a stock or a brace for the purpose of firing it from the shoulder without going through that process I mentioned: getting the tax stamp, going through the background check. Whether knowingly or unknowingly, gun owners who modified their firearms in this way were creating short-barreled rifles. That is not allowed under the law, but manufacturers capitalized on widespread ignorance of the law to expand their stabilizing brace designed for disabled shooters and selling it as something intended to be fired from the shoulder by nondisabled individuals. Their advertising sometimes says that they weren't intending it to be fired that way, but over and over, you see marketing suggesting something very different.

So here is what happened. The ATF stepped in to correct this. The ATF stepped in to eliminate this ambiguity and just make it clear that, as you have not been able for 100 years to turn a short-barreled rifle into something you can fire from your--you can't take a pistol and use one of these braces to fire from your shoulder, that that needs to be the rule and the regulation going forward. So the ATF steps in with a pretty simple rule that basically says: If a brace-equipped pistol looks like a rifle, fires like a rifle, if the people who made it are trying to sell it as a rifle, then it is a rifle.

There is no ban on these braces or on weapons equipped with them, even short-barreled rifles. You just have to abide by the law to acquire one, which means a tax stamp, a background check, and registration. All we are doing, all the ATF is doing, is essentially reaffirming what has been the law for 100 years. If you want a short- barreled rifle or you want to convert a pistol into a short-barreled rifle, you just have to go through that process. Get the tax stamp, go through the background check, and register the gun.

At the same time, there is nothing in this rule to prevent a disabled veteran who wants to equip a pistol with a true stabilizing brace that is not designed to fire the weapon from the shoulder from doing exactly that or to prevent a manufacturer from selling a stabilizing brace designed to satisfy those specific needs of the market. But this isn't what the gun industry has been selling. The gun industry hasn't been selling true stabilizing braces to disable veterans; they have been selling an ability to convert a pistol into a short-barreled rifle.

The opponents of this rule will tell you that it is an unconstitutional gun grab. They are not likely to tell you that it is just law enforcement doing their job and enforcing a law Congress made almost a century ago. The courts have upheld Congress's authority to regulate some firearms more stringently than others because they are especially dangerous or unusual, which is

why there is no unrestricted right to own a machine gun or a sawed-off shotgun or a short-barreled rifle no matter how it becomes a short- barreled rifle.

When Congress passed the National Firearms Act, it chose to regulate these dangerous firearms by taxing them and requiring registration. Courts have agreed: Possession of an unregistered short-barreled rifle poses a danger to the community.

Events have borne this out. Over the last 5 years, unregistered arm- brace-equipped guns have been used in high-profile mass shootings in Dayton, in Boulder, and in Colorado Springs. Mass shooters like these unregistered arm-brace-equipped guns.

This is a good rule. It doesn't make any new law; it merely helps to enforce a law that has been on the books for almost a century. The ATF is just doing their job.

To pass this resolution would put onto the conventional commercial marketplace a new class of dangerous, concealable assault weapons that for 100 years we have had consensus in this country need to be regulated in a more comprehensive way.

The ATF is doing their job, and I would urge my colleagues to oppose this resolution.

I yield the floor.

Mr. President, I am on the floor tonight to talk about a topic that rarely, if ever, gets discussed on the Senate floor. I am here to talk about loneliness.

Every single one of us, over the course of our life, has felt lonely, maybe really intensely lonely. I certainly have. It is an awful feeling, right? It creates this pit in your stomach. It creates a consuming melancholy for many. Sometimes intense loneliness can make you physically ill. Often, it makes you really agitated and angry, right? Why is this happening to me?

Now, there are, frankly, a lot of reasons to believe that less Americans today should feel lonely than ever before. More of us live in densely populated parts of the country than ever before. Technology now allows us to connect to friends and family and communities that share interests more easily than ever before at the press of a button.

But evidence from psychology and sociology tells us that the opposite is true. In recent decades, we have seen rising levels of both aloneness, which is defined as having fewer social contacts, and high levels of loneliness, which is defined as feelings of isolation.

We live closer to each other than ever before. We have technologies that allow us to connect to people with more ease than ever before, but people are feeling lonelier. As we look out at a country that seems to be kind of coming apart a little bit at the seams--I mean, people are getting shot at just for ringing the wrong doorbell or pulling into the wrong driveway. Hundreds are dying every day from taking a drug that is designed to deaden their emotions. Thousands of people engaged in violent rebellion right here in the Nation's Capital.

We need to be engaged in this search for the reasons why people are feeling more pessimistic, more frustrated, and angrier than ever before. And so about 8 or 9 months ago, I started talking about what I believed to be one of the most important political issues of our time: loneliness.

Millions of Americans are feeling this way. People report feeling more intense loneliness than ever before in our lifetime. And it is irresponsible for policymakers to just keep ignoring it.

Now, there are a lot of explanations for how we got here, but a few stand out as particularly important for my colleagues to consider.

So it is true that technology does allow us to stay connected to family and friends and find new communities, but on the whole, technology has left many Americans, especially young people, feeling more alone than ever before.

During the height of COVID-19, we learned the hard way that digital communication cannot replace the value of in-person experience. For example, studies show that face-to-face interactions create faster connections to humans and build stronger, more enduring relationships than anything that you can create online.

Of course, staying in touch electronically is better than losing touch altogether, but when Facebook likes and Instagram comments replace in-person experiences, it actually can drive up feelings of loneliness.

Staring at your screen for 6 hours a day, no matter how many people you are looking at, it can be a very lonely experience.

And it doesn't stop there, because there are millions of users with developing minds--children--who spend hours staring at their screens, scrolling through an endless stream of pictures and videos that have been carefully curated to create an illusion of perfection, leaving young people feeling inadequate or wanting.

Constant comparison breeds--in young people especially but in all of us--and can result in more anxiety than fulfillment. Kids are feeling really lousy today, and it is not just because they are spending tons of time on their screens instead of engaging in real in-person experiences. It is also because the content that they are watching is dangerous and corrosive and making them feel more alone in the world because of those feelings of envy.

Now, the second really important factor contributing to this epidemic of loneliness in America is the erosion of local communities. Now, connection sometimes happens randomly; but, mostly, it is facilitated through local institutions: churches, sports teams, civic clubs, labor unions, business organizations. We derive personal meaning as well from those institutions, from the communities that we create or join. We get connection, but we also get meaning.

Those institutions help us construct an identity, a sense of purpose. It connects us to something bigger than ourselves. But in 2023, you would be hard-pressed to find a community with the kind of thriving local institutions of decades ago.

Globalization has erased thousands of healthy, unique downtowns, where people often met each other at local businesses. And that outsourcing of commerce online has also diminished local cultures that facilitate connection, identity, and meaning. Growing up, my identity was really strongly connected to the town that I lived in, and there was no shortage of ways that I could easily connect with the people I lived with.

Back then, we had thriving local newspapers where I could learn really easily about the people in my town, which made it easier to create that connection.

Those local newspapers are drying up by the day. We all get our news from national sources. It was my local grocer who used to slip me a free slice of American cheese when I would visit on the weekend with my grandparents that made me feel like I belonged to a community, that I wasn't alone. But now the local grocer is gone, driven out of business by superstores or food-delivery drivers.

But even if you still had these local institutions to be a part of, who has time any longer? A few decades ago, one job could easily provide a family with a comfortable middle-class life. Today, adults are forced to maintain two or three jobs to match that same income, or work 50 or 60 or 70 hours a week. There is no time any longer for millions of Americans to go to church, to be part of a civic club, or just hang out with your friends or your neighbors or your family.

And so what are you seeing? Participation in youth sports is plummeting. That is in part because overextended parents are just too busy these days to shuttle their kids to games or practices, or they just can't afford the fees

or equipment costs. Yes, kids are more interested in online gaming and their screens, but it is also stressed-out parents who just don't have time to participate in all those extracurricular activities with their kids but also don't have time to join the kind of institutions that used to give them value back when 40 hours a week was enough.

And so here is maybe the most important question: Why should we care? What are the public policy implications of loneliness? Well, first, there are health consequences to loneliness. American suicide rates are rising at an alarming rate, most significantly amongst two key populations: teenagers and rural men, who are both disproportionately affected by the changing landscape of American culture and economics.

Researchers at NYU found a direct correlation between teenage girls' use of Instagram and the corresponding spike in teenage girls' self- harm rates; and teenage rates of sadness are higher than ever.

For rural white men--one of my favorites--Nobel prize-winning economist Angus Deaton, he argues that as the white male dominated ``blue-collar aristocracy'' of 50 to 100 years ago has vanished, with the loss of social and economic status that went with it, those men are struggling. And this feeling of isolation, specifically amongst that population, is rising to epidemic levels as well, with a record number of white men who are struggling in this new world, committing acts of self-harm.

Surgeon General Vivek Murthy does a great job of connecting the dots between widespread loneliness and individual health. It is not just suicide. Last month, he released a detailed advisory with shocking statistics: Social isolation is associated with a 29-percent increase in the risk of heart disease and a 32-percent increase in the risk of stroke. Chronic loneliness can increase the risk of developing dementia in older people by 50 percent. Do we think it is a coincidence that life expectancy rates in this country are falling at the same time that loneliness is spiking?

The second reason that we should care about this epidemic as policymakers is because this growing isolation of Americans is helping to fuel a growing culture of resentment and anger.

I mentioned that young woman who was shot because she pulled up to the wrong driveway; but we see this edginess all over in our culture today. People are strung out. Violence is more common as a means to settle disputes, and fringe groups and conspiracy theories are more popular than ever.

I think loneliness is a big part of the reason why all this is happening. I mentioned that loneliness is often accompanied by a sense of anger. Why do I feel like this? Who is to blame? This anger, coupled with this diminishing availability of positive identities like family, place, or institution, makes negative identities built on hatred and distrust all the more attractive.

And so the newly isolated, the lonely, become targets for demagogues who offer up scapegoats to blame for the decay of these traditional sources of meaning and identity.

In 2017, America was shocked when a huge White Supremacists rally in Charlottesville drew thousands, but this shouldn't have been a surprise. Loneliness drives people to dark, dangerous places. And those young White men carrying tiki torches are only the tip of a giant iceberg of isolated, angry Americans whose search for meaning might lead them to a seething anti-Semitic or racist mob.

Now, the picture I am painting--I get it--is pretty grim, but I am here to tell you, there are reasons to hope. One of the reasons why I really believe Congress can get something done attacking isolation and loneliness and building more social connections is because there is a growing consensus across the aisle about this set of problems that we are dealing with and the solutions, which this problem set may be a little less political than other problems we face in this body.

I think Congress is coming to acknowledge that the consequences of rapidly advancing technology are not value-neutral. We have seen how social media has deepened polarization and addicted a generation of kids to their screens, and in the past few months, we have been involved in a new conversation about generative AI and machine learning and how it has the potential to displace millions of jobs and a whole bunch of basic human functions.

Most Republicans and Democrats agree that we made a big mistake by sitting on the sidelines during the early days of the internet and the development most recently of social media.

The good news is that Republicans and Democrats are working together on this problem. There are a few good pieces of legislation that could start to hold social media companies accountable who are driving kids into lives of increasing loneliness and isolation.

Senators Cotton, Schatz, Britt, and I have proposed a bill to set a minimum age of 13 to use social media, to require parental consent. It also prohibits social media companies from using these highly personalized algorithms to drive dangerous, isolationist-inducing content to kids.

On the issue of AI, Senator Schumer has convened a bipartisan group that is beginning its work as well, and I am glad to be a part of it.

A second starting point that I really think really think has bipartisan potential would be to advance policies specifically aimed at restoring the health of our local communities and local institutions.

In Western Connecticut, in my old congressional district, we have got the ``Brass City,'' the ``Silver City,'' the ``Hardware City,'' the ``Hat City.'' For a long time in this country, identity, meaning, and connection were created because we really were proud of the things we made, of the jobs that existed. But the theory of economic neoliberalism sent most of those jobs overseas and assumed that better jobs would replace them. That is not what happened.

So I really believe that industrial policy is part of the solution to decreasing isolation and loneliness. Why? Because so many people get meaning and identity from the things that we make and used to make, from jobs that have meaning and good wages and benefits and pensions attached to them. That is why the CHIPS and Science Act paved the way for a new industrial policy to get the Republicans and Democrats to come together and work on creating more meaning in work which I think leads to isolation and loneliness.

But, as I said before, that only works if a full-time job provides a living wage and you have enough time in the evenings and on the weekends to be able to engage with your friends and your family and your community.

So I am also hopeful that we can make progress across the aisle driving up the minimum wage and incentivizing jobs to pay real living wages.

This week, a conservative group called American Compass released a report that was underlaid by a really scathing critique of modern capitalism. The conference was attended by a bunch of our Republican colleagues here. The report called for policymakers to remake capitalism so that our economic system works to build strong families, healthy individuals, and connected communities instead of just viewing families and individuals as mere pawns of the global market, the grease that makes the wheels of profit move. This is a really interesting development. Serious people on the right are starting to rethink the nature of capitalism to make sure that our economy works for families and individuals to make us more connected and less lonely. So there is real possibility that both parties, the right and the left, can come together to address this crisis of American isolation.

America's epidemic of loneliness is far from terminal. Our retreat into ourselves is a product of economic, cultural, and political choices we have made, but it is not too late to chart a new path. I get it. This is a Congress that has a hard time solving much more straightforward problems, so tackling a metaphysical crisis like loneliness might feel like a Herculean task. So, right now, I would argue that we just need a starting point, an organizing point for some of these discussions.

So I am working on legislation that would just start by establishing a national strategy, a national conversation around loneliness and how to promote connectedness. Every Agency

should have a role to play in this crisis. So I would argue that we just need to start with a dedicated office to coordinate a governmentwide strategy to tackle loneliness and strengthen communities.

I also think we should have guidelines and best practices for public entities to engage in trying to connect people. We have guidelines for nutrition and physical activity and sleep. We should have these guidelines for social connection.

Finally, we can't really address this crisis adequately if we don't understand it. So my legislation would also include some small amounts of funding to support research on the social and health impacts of widespread loneliness.

I look forward to talking to my colleagues about this legislation. It doesn't solve the problem, but I think it is time that we start organizing our work and our thoughts around what is, in many ways, a foundational problem, which explains a lot of the things that people are feeling that drives political instability, bad health outcomes, and just general unhappiness in this country.

Loneliness is one of the few issues that defies traditional political boundaries, cuts across almost every demographic, from teenage girls living in cities, to White men living out in rural areas, blue States to red States, unaffordable cities to left-behind manufacturing towns.

There is a ton of room for us to come together to combat this growing epidemic of loneliness, and I hope that my colleagues on both sides of the aisle are eager to be part of this solution.

I yield the floor.

Mr. President, one of the benefits of sitting in the chair, as the Senator from Maine is currently, is you get to hear a wide variety of views from our colleagues. And I have had the opportunity over the past several weeks, while sitting in the chair, to hear my Republican colleagues talk about their concerns regarding the lifting of title 42. They are concerns that are very often shared in many respects by Democrats as well.

But it is really important that we level set the facts when we are talking about what is happening at the border right now, as the pandemic authority to stop people from applying for asylum is--as required by law--being lifted.

It is really important that we understand that in this debate, there are a lot of spinning; there are a lot of myths; there are some just outright mistruths that are being spread about what is happening at the border and what has been happening at the border.

And so I am down on the floor just for a few minutes today to try to talk about a short list of those myths and untruths that are being spread, sometimes on this floor, but very often on social media and on cable news, so that we can find a way to have a functional conversation between Republicans and Democrats of good faith who actually want to make progress.

First, my sense is that there were a lot of conservatives out there and a lot of haters of President Biden who were kind of rooting for chaos at the border, who were hoping that there was just going to be this overwhelming flood of crossings and apprehensions at the border when title 42 was lifted.

Here is maybe the most important thing to say: It didn't happen. In fact, if you look at the number of people who were showing up at the southwest border right before title 42 expired--

and I will admit that number was elevated--we have seen half as many people crossing in the last 4 days as were crossing right before title 42 expired.

Four thousand, five thousand people--that is still a lot of people per day who are being apprehended at the border, but it does not match the doomsday predictions that many on the right were making.

So I think it is just important to acknowledge that fact. Because if you read the newspapers, if you paid attention to cable news, you would have thought that the minute that title 42 ended, there was going to be a doubling, a tripling of the number of people who showed up at the border. That didn't happen, in fact--52 percent less people are showing up.

Now, that may not hold. I can't promise that that is the future trajectory. But I am going to tell you a story today about why that happens, and it is connected to things Joe Biden did.

The second level-setting exercise I want to engage in is this idea that we should be in just lockdown fear of all these people who are coming to the United States at the southern border, that there is something uniquely dangerous about immigrants writ large, but, more specifically, undocumented immigrants.

Now, this is a trope that has been around for as long as the United States has existed, that we should fear immigrants coming to this country. But we now have data to tell us whether or not people who are coming to this country as immigrants or people who are even coming to this country as undocumented immigrants are a risk, a threat, to the United States compared to natural-born citizens.

This is a study that Donald Trump's Department of Justice released. This isn't Joe Biden; this isn't Barack Obama. This is Donald Trump's Department of Justice that released a study that found that ``undocumented immigrants had substantially lower crime rates than native-born citizens and legal immigrants across a range of felony offenses.''

That is the truth. It is Donald Trump's truth that, in fact, people who come to this country, whether they are legal immigrants or without documentation, are not committing crimes at a greater rate than natural-born Americans.

That doesn't excuse our broken system. That is not an argument to continue to allow so many people to come to this country without documentation. It just means that we shouldn't set on fire these arguments that we have something unique to fear.

Why? Because these people are coming to the United States for a better life, because people are coming to the United States to flee terror and torture, persecution, violence, and economic destitution.

There are criminals amongst their midst. There are individuals who end up committing crimes but at no greater rate of offense than people who are born in this country. It is just important to acknowledge that.

I want to talk about four of these myths very quickly.

The first one is that President Biden had the authority to keep title 42 in place. That is just not true. For the better part of the last 2 years, Republicans, conservatives, and the broader right have been pillorying President Biden for not lifting COVID authorities fast enough: The pandemic is over, the right says. Why do we still have restrictions on our movement? Why are there still restrictions on air travel?

Interestingly, the only restriction Republicans wanted to keep in place was the one at the border to stop people from coming into the United States who looked different from them.

The pandemic is over. Title 42 can't stay in place. The President doesn't have the legal authority to continue to turn people around and deny them the right to apply for asylum. So it is just not true that this is President Biden's choice. And if you are a constitutionalist, if you are somebody that believes that the President cannot and should not exceed his constitutional statutory authority, then you have to support the lifting of title 42. Now, we could change the law, and there are proposals to do that, but President Biden cannot keep title 42 in place any longer than he declares a public health emergency.

The second myth--and I have heard this from some of my colleagues here--is that everything was great under President Trump and it exploded under President Biden. In fact, sometimes you hear this stat: that crossings were at a historic low under President Trump.

Well, that is true to the extent that gas prices were at a historic low under President Trump, because crossings were at a historic low for 1 year, for 2020, when we were in the middle of the teeth of the pandemic, and nobody was going anywhere. Yes, during that period of time, when we shut down the border, when nobody in the United States was moving, when nobody in Mexico was moving, we did have a relatively low number of crossings. But just before the pandemic, when President Trump was in office, we had a historically high number of crossings.

In 2019, 800,000 people showed up at the border. That was twice the number for the previous decade, on average. During President Obama's time in office and the first few years of President Trump, 400,000 people were showing up. Then, in 2019, the numbered spiked to 800,000. They go down for 1 year, but they came back up as soon as the worst of the pandemic abated.

So it is just not true that this problem was a creation of President Biden's swearing-in. Numbers were abnormally high right before the pandemic, and they started jumping back up once the pandemic started to lessen in its severity.

The third myth is that President Biden didn't prepare for the end of title 42. That is also not true, and I gave you that statistic to show that. In fact, crossings right now are half what they were right before title 42 expired. I can't define all the reasons for that and maybe those numbers are temporary, but it is definitely true that President Biden has taken extraordinary steps to be ready for this moment.

Even while Congress refused to act and give him any help, President Biden surged thousands of troops to the border. He put more asylum officers there. He moved Border Patrol. He signed agreements with Mexico in which Mexico agreed to take a certain number of individuals who were coming from countries like Venezuela and Cuba. And he implemented a really tough new asylum rule--a rule that, frankly, many people on his political left say went beyond his statutory authority. That rule says that you actually cannot apply for asylum at the border unless you have applied beforehand in a safe third country or you made an appointment. That is a really innovative, tough new approach to try to reduce the number of crossings and presentations at the border--a step that, frankly, President Trump didn't even entertain.

So it is just not true to say that President Biden hasn't done anything. In fact, he has taken extraordinary steps to try to be as ready as he can, which leads me to the fourth and final myth, which is that this is all President Biden's problem. It is not. It is our problem. We haven't significantly updated the immigration laws of this country since the 1980s or 1990s. It has been 30 years since we have changed the law in this Nation to reflect the changing nature of migration globally and the changing nature of migration to the United States. We, through our inaction, have left President after President, Republican and Democrat, with a mess because our laws don't work; our immigration system is broken. Yet we blame the President for failing to be able to work miracles out of a system that has been fundamentally rendered ineffective.

Let's be very clear. Republicans have had ample opportunity to fix the laws of this Nation. In 2013, when the Presiding Officer and I got to the Senate, there was a deal on the table to fundamentally and comprehensively reform our immigration laws. Republicans in the Senate joined with Democrats to get that done, but the Republican Speaker of the House refused to have a vote on it in the House.

Since then, there have been a number of efforts to reach out and try to find compromise with Republicans, and it has generally been the Republican Party writ large that has decided that there is too big a political cost for them to take in trying to find common ground on immigration reform.

Now, I say that this is a position from the Republican Party writ large

because I do know and believe that there are individual Republican Senators in this body who do want to find compromise, who do want to recognize that this cannot be solved by any President so long as the laws of this Nation don't provide resources to move asylum claims faster, don't give Border Patrol what they need, don't allow enough people to come into this country through legal pathways.

Part of the reason that I am down here on the floor today trying to correct these myths and untruths is because I think it is a necessary predicate in order for us as a body, Republicans and Democrats, to sit down and talk about solving this problem.

The lack of action in Congress has left President Biden an impossible task. He has done the best that he conceivably can with a set of broken laws. But instead of spreading these myths and often outright lies about what is happening at the border and the consequences of lifting title 42, we should, as body, instead, do our job and fix our broken immigration laws.

I yield the floor.

Madam President, I rise today to congratulate the town of Southbury on its 350th anniversary. In 1673, 15 families seeking free religious expression traveled up the Housatonic River and settled on land that is known today as Southbury. Those humble beginnings have grown into a vibrant community of almost 20,000 people. As the only town in the Nation to bear its name, Southbury is truly one of a kind. I was grateful to be invited this past November to participate in the town's 85th anniversary of Southbury's residents coming together to stop the Neo-Nazi organization, the German-American Bund, from establishing a presence in the town. Their determination reminds us of the importance of standing with our neighbors and calling out hate and bigotry in all its forms.

During my 6 years as Southbury's Congressman and the past 10 years as its U.S. Senator, I have come to know many of the town's past and current citizens. Dr. Mark Taylor, a friend and mentor, became nationally known for his knowledge and passion about critical water sources from the Pomperaug River. Lieutenant Colonel Benjamin Hinman was a Revolutionary War hero who also took part in the Constitutional Convention. Gladys Taber was a prolific writer, best known for her series about life at Stillmeadow, her farm in Southbury.

Congratulations to the Town of Southbury on this impressive milestone of 350 years and counting. It is a privilege to represent a community with such a storied past and bright future, and I look forward to continuing to work together to strengthen Southbury for many years to come.

Madam President, I rise today to honor the 10-year anniversary of an organization that has been instrumental in our efforts to protect kids and families from gun violence: Giffords, the organization founded by former Congresswoman and gun violence victim, Gabby Giffords.

This anniversary is particularly important to me because Gabby Giffords and I were in the same House of Representatives freshman class in 2007. Our offices were right next to each other, and we became fast friends, dreaming up the idea for supermarket office hours called ``Congress on Your Corner.'' Four years later, on January 8, 2011, Gabby was shot in the head at one of those events. Eighteen others were also shot, and six died. She almost lost her life that day and began a very long road to recovery.

But my friend Gabby is a fighter, and she doesn't back down. Two years after she was shot and just 25 days after 20 children and six educators were killed at Sandy Hook Elementary School, she launched an organization dedicated to the fight to end gun violence. Today, that organization is known as Giffords.

Giffords and the gun violence prevention movement spent the next decade growing stronger, more determined, and more convinced that the righteousness of our cause would eventually prevail. Gabby and her organization channeled the outrage and frustration of millions Americans into action. Across the country, they helped to pass 525 lifesaving laws that make sure guns only end up in the hands of responsible, law-abiding Americans. They took on the gun lobby in State legislatures and the courts. They raised awareness, recruited volunteers, and registered new voters.

On May 24, 2022, at Robb Elementary School, an all too familiar tragedy struck, 19 children and 2 teachers shot and killed in their classroom. A weary American public once again called on Congress to act, and for the first time in 30 years, it did. One month later, President Biden signed into law the Bipartisan Safer Communities Act, legislation to tighten our gun laws, invest in mental health services, and make our schools and communities safer.

That historic piece of legislation would not have been possible without Gabby Giffords. In the face of unimaginable adversity, Gabby spent a decade helping to build a gun violence prevention movement more powerful than the gun lobby. The Bipartisan Safer Communities Act is just the beginning, and we will keep fighting to end the scourge of gun violence in this country together.

In reflection of Giffords' 10-year anniversary, I ask my colleagues to join me in recognizing their tireless advocacy to end gun violence and honoring my personal hero, Gabby Giffords.

Mr. President, late on the night of November 2, 2012, Theodore Wafer was woken up by a loud sound. Somebody was knocking on his door--pounding on his door. He looked for his phone to call the police but couldn't find it. So, instead, he picked up his shotgun and went to the door. He saw on the other side a figure. He thought the person, maybe, was trying to break into his house, and so he fired a shotgun blast through the screen door to his porch.

A couple of hours before that, Renisha McBride had gotten into a car accident not far away from Theodore Wafer's house. She was intoxicated. She was disoriented after the crash. She wandered around the neighborhood, late at night, looking for help. She couldn't find any, and she found herself knocking on the door of Mr. Wafer's home, looking for assistance. The shotgun blast hit her in the face, and she died.

Jordan Davis was in Jacksonville, FL, a teenager out with his friends. They pulled into a gas station. As a lot of teenagers do, they were playing loud music. Michael Dunn was at the gas station as well. He didn't like the fact that the teenagers were playing their music too loud. He asked them to turn it down. There was an argument that took place. Michael Dunn said: I am not going to let anybody talk to me like that. And he pulled a handgun out of the glove compartment of his car, and he started shooting at Jordan Davis and his friends. Jordan Davis died as his friends sped away, trying to get away from the killing scene. Michael Dunn continued to shoot at the fleeing car.

His girlfriend came out of the convenience store. She didn't know what had happened. Michael Dunn didn't tell her. They went to the hotel they were staying in, and they ordered a pizza. That happened 1 year before the death of Renisha McBride.

This week, this country is convulsed by a series of horrific shootings where mistakes and minor slights are being met by gunfire. You know these stories by now. Ralph Yarl, 16 years old, went to go pick up his siblings, went to the wrong house, and Andrew Lester fired at him. Ralph Yarl is now clinging for life right now.

Kaylin Gillis, 20 years old, and her friend pulled into the wrong driveway--just pulled into the wrong driveway--and Kevin Monahan fired his gun at them, killing Kaylin Gillis.

And, just this morning, we are hearing news of another stunningly similar incident in Austin, TX, where a cheerleader, by accident, got into the wrong car after cheerleading practice and apparently that slight was so serious that the man in the car fired a gun at this cheerleader and her friend. One of those young women is critically injured.

My friends, there is a toxic mixture in this country today of hate, of anger, and a population that is increasingly armed to the teeth with deadly weapons, many of them with no training, many of them with criminal records. This mixture is leading to our neighborhoods becoming a killing field. Minor slights and indiscretions, small arguments, even simple wrong turns are becoming potentially deadly.

We are becoming a heavily armed nation, so fearful and angry and hair-trigger anxious that gun murders are now just the way in which we work out our frustrations.

This is a dystopia. I am here to tell you that it is a dystopia that we have chosen for ourselves.

And before I challenge my colleagues to do better, I just want to tell you a quick short story of how we got here, because this combination of anger and fear and guns is actually not new. It is worse now. Our rage is bigger. The number of guns on the street today is dizzying compared to just a few decades ago. But I have to be honest with you. The underlying problem of this combination is actually not new.

In our early years, after our founding, America actually wasn't a fundamentally more violent place than our European neighbors. But a few things happened, about 50 years into the American story, that set America on a very different course--a course that, beginning in about 1840, made America an outlier of global violence, and we have never come back down to Earth.

I think it is just interesting to sort of talk for a minute about those three things because they are relevant to today's discussion.

First is the creation of America as a true melting pot. Waves of immigrants came to America beginning in the early to mid-1800s, looking for jobs and living space and partners. The competition amongst those groups, combined with demagogues and provocateurs who would pry on this friction, became explosive. People began to think that they needed to be suspicious of people who were different from them--a different race or ethnicity or religion. And, over time, if you look at American history, it is when these big waves of new immigration come to this country that we tend to have spikes in violence because those demagogues or those provocateurs tell us that we should be fearful of each other, and, all of a sudden, violence increases.

The second thing that happens in that period of time is the invention of the cotton gin. Why is that important? America was a slave nation at our founding. In 1800, we only had about 850,000 slaves. The cotton gin explodes the need for slaves. In 40 years, we go from 850,000 slaves to 2.4 million slaves, and the amount of violence that is necessary to keep that number of people in bondage is extraordinary. And the country--you can imagine this--just becomes anesthetized to violence. So, all of a sudden, violence rates go up amongst all Americans--not just White-on-Black violence, but White-on-White violence goes up, because violence is part of how we keep our economy running.

Then, third, in the same period of time, the early to mid-1800s, we see the invention of the modern mass-produced handgun. The cotton gin is a Connecticut invention, and so is the modern mass-produced handgun.

Now, other nations figured out how dangerous this was--the ability to slip into your coat pocket the means of lethal violence. Other nations decided to regulate the access that their citizens had to this instrument, but not in the United States.

So, quickly, shortly after the explosion of access to the handgun, violence rates began to increase. And given this history I talked about prior--our history of racial and ethnic violence--the decision not to regulate handgun access in any meaningful form was kind of like throwing gasoline on this raging fire.

I am saying all of this because we have known for 200 years that this combination of violence between ethnic groups, violence as a means of subjugation, all supercharged by unlimited access to guns, is a uniquely American problem.

Throughout our history--and this is the most important part--we have assiduously and purposefully, as a nation, tried to turn the dials of laws and norms and customs to have less hatred; to have less animosity toward each other; to have less oppression and less access to guns, at least for people who shouldn't have them.

It is not a coincidence that the rates of violence in this Nation spike when we have waves of new immigrants, but then it settles out; it flattens. It often decreases as time goes on, and we learn how to live with each other. We change our norms and our customs. It is also not a coincidence that the biggest drops in lethal violence in this country tend to happen right after we make major adjustments to our Nation's firearms laws.

What I am saying is that America is definitely set up to be a place more violent than other nations. We shouldn't expect that we are going to, with any set of changes, become as violent as European or Asian countries.

But it doesn't have to be like this. Cheerleaders don't need to be shot when they walk into the wrong car. Teenagers don't need to be murdered because their music is too loud. Kids shouldn't fear for their life when they go to school or when they pick up their siblings from a house in the neighborhood. We can do better. We can adjust the dials in order to decide not to live in this dystopia.

Everybody here knows what I feel about American gun laws. I am not going to litigate that question again here today. I think we can do better. I think we can just make it a little bit harder for irresponsible people, people with criminal records, people with serious mental illness to get their hands on deadly weapons.

I want universal background checks. I want bans on the weapons that were designed for the military. But we also need to have a more apolitical discussion about the level of fear and hatred and mistrust in our society today that puts so many people on the edge, ready to fire a gun at somebody over the smallest threat or insult. There is just a collective anxiety in this country that we need to deal with and, frankly, doesn't require us to have debates that fall on easy political or partisan lines.

Everybody in this body has an obligation to take steps so that today's demagogues and provocateurs--the same ones that convinced people in the 1840s that they should be fearful of new immigrants--have less air time and less influence. We shouldn't elevate political leaders who lead with messages of hate and division. That is part of what is driving America to fear everybody, to fear their neighbors.

But we should also pass laws that incentivize our national dialogue to just be kinder and less hateful. Social media companies are making money off of hate and polarization, and we don't need to accept this. Holding them accountable for the ways that they have pit us against each other, that is not an impossible task and, frankly, not one we necessarily need to fight about along partisan lines.

I will leave you with this. We also just need to ask some deeper questions about why people in America are just so unhappy and so alone that they would resort to violence this regularly and this casually.

A detective in Bridgeport, CT, told me the other day he barely ever responds to fistfights any longer. Everything, every beef ends up in gunfire.

We have lost so many pathways in this country to positive meaning and positive identity and fulfilling connection to each other. People have less opportunity today to build healthy, economically secure, and personally fulfilling lives. We need to talk about why this is and what government can do to spiritually jump-start this Nation. It is not all about the gun laws. I think the gun laws should change, but there is also an anxiety of fearfulness in this Nation that we can have a collective conversation about.

I get it. It is a big, huge, weighty conversation, but something stinks out there right now. We shouldn't accept this shoot-first culture--at kids, at cheerleaders, at students, at people shopping at grocery stores--as our new reality. It is a choice.

America has always been a more violent place. That is true. But the degree of that violence has always been up to us. We have always had dials that we can turn. We should realize this, and we should do something about it.

I yield the floor.

Reserving the right to object, as I understand, the Senator has two unanimous consent requests. I will object to both, and I will make my comments when the Senator makes his second unanimous consent request.

For now, on this first objection on this first request, so as to save time, I will wait for my comments on the second and simply object to this one.

I object.

Mr. President, the Senator is right--I have very little interest in engaging on the merits of these proposals in a dialogue on the floor of the Senate because they are not serious attempts to make our kids safer.

These unanimous consent requests that Senator Cruz makes--they are going to get a lot of clicks online. The confrontation that he is looking for will probably lead to a bunch of cable news appearances being booked, but it is not going to save any kids' lives.

The Senator knows this is not how the Senate works. This isn't an autocracy. It is not a dictatorship. You don't come down here and introduce a piece of legislation and 2 minutes later demand that the entirety of the Senate agree to it without any debate, any negotiation.

The Senator says these are the same bills he introduced last year, but as far as I can tell, he introduced the bills he is making unanimous consent requests on minutes ago. They are not even fully formed pieces of legislation. This thing is so ham-handed--one of the bills--that there are literally brackets and question marks in the text. The legislative drafters--at least in the version I see--haven't made decisions on when the money is being spent.

The Senator says there is this pattern that plays out after these shootings in which Democrats make demands about taking people's guns away but aren't serious about making our kids safer. Is that how it played out after the shooting in Uvalde? Is that what happened last summer? No, that is not what happened. What happened last summer after the shooting in the Senator's State is that serious Members of this body--Members of this body who are more interested in legislating than enacting political theater--sat down together and negotiated a bill to save children's lives. Did it solve all of the problems in this country? Did it guarantee every child's safety? No, it did not. But let's be clear. Senator Cruz never expressed one iota of interest in being part of those negotiations. Other Republican Senators did.

While I understand he objects to the gun provisions in that bill, guess what--that bill also put $15 billion into school safety, into mental health, into hardening our schools, into community anti-gun- violence programs.

I can't speak about the other Members of the group who authored that bill, but I never got a single phone call from Senator Cruz during the month of negotiations suggesting that we add the language he is talking about to that proposal. Last summer, there were serious legislators who came to this floor to enact legislation, to set aside our differences and pass legislation that makes our kids safe--willing to make compromise. Senator Cruz didn't even sniff that room.

He references the unanimous consent requests he made later last year that I objected to. I think I suggested then, as I suggest now, that the result of that unanimous consent request was to create political theater and book cable news hits. The result was not going to be a piece of legislation being enacted. I figured that if I was wrong about that, if the Senator's purpose was to pass a piece of legislation, that the result of my objection would have been to get outreach from the Senator's office, to try to figure out a way forward, to try to find a compromise. And I waited. And I waited. And I waited. And I waited. And I waited. But not once did Senator Cruz reach out and say, ``Let's work together to get this

done,'' which confirmed my suspicions that these unanimous consent requests are not about passing legislation; they are just about creating conflict for the sake of conflict.

This legislation was introduced minutes ago, so I am not able to debate the merits of it on the floor of the Senate right now. It appears to make a whole bunch of changes to the not-for-profit Security Grant Program, which the Presiding Officer knows very well, changes that have little to do with school safety. It seems there are a bunch of processes changes to the not-for-profit security grant program. That is probably something worth having a conversation with the chairman of the committee about before we pass it by unanimous consent.

It makes broad structural changes to title IV, which is a very important program to schools. They use that money for school security, but they also use that money for a host of other important programs. That is probably worth having a conversation with the members of the Education Committee about.

A very quick look at this bill suggests it likely opens up the use of those funds to arming teachers in our school. I think that is a terrible idea.

This is all to say that this isn't how the process works. You don't drop a piece of legislation on the floor of the Senate and 2 minutes later demand that the whole Senate pass it. You do that if your intent is to create conflict for the purposes of publicity. I don't know what the Senator's intentions are, but if that was your intention, this is what you would do.

If you were interested in actually passing something, you would have dialed up the authors of the Bipartisan Safer Communities Act and asked to be part of that negotiation. You would have reached out to my office after the objection last year and said: What is your objection? Let's sit down and do something together.

That is how legislation gets passed in this place. I know because I have done it on this topic.

I am not saying the Bipartisan Safer Communities Act solved the problem. I know we have more work to do. I know it because I spend time with those same families every single week. I know it because I live in a dangerous neighborhood in South Hartford. I talk to those kids who have to fear for their life when they go to school. That is why my purpose for being in the Senate is to work like hell across the aisle, through compromise, not by coming down here, dropping a bill on the floor and then immediately demanding that the entire Senate vote for it. That is not how we save kids' lives--compromising, working toward compromise, behind the scenes, not always in front of the cameras.

I object.

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

Mr. President, later today, we are going to vote on an amendment offered by my colleague Senator Lee, and this is a really important amendment. And this is a really important debate for us to have: the question of how long authorizations of military force should last.

We are able to have this amendment vote because of the great work that Senator Kaine and Senator Menendez have done to bring to an end authorizations of military force that have been on the books for decades, authorizations of military force that most Americans didn't even know existed. So, first, I am grateful to my colleagues and to Senator Young as well for having brought us to this moment where we can make the collective decision, Republicans and Democrats, to take off of the books these expired authorizations of military force that are dangerous so long as they allow a President of the United States to pervert the original meaning of the authorization of force--to go to war against Saddam Hussein in Iraq--for other means and mechanisms.

I think this is really important, both spiritually to show that Congress is still in the game of setting foreign policy alongside the executive branch but, practically, because we have seen these authorizations occasionally be sort of picked up, unearthed from the grave, and used to justify military action that can't find a justification in article II power or in other AUMFs. So I couldn't be more supportive of the underlying measure.

But Senator Lee is asking us to look prospectively and to take a step to not repeat the mistakes of the past. His amendment would suggest that every future authorization of military force--and we pass very few of them on this floor--would be limited to 2 years.

Full disclosure: I have introduced that legislation with Senator Lee as part of a broader piece of legislation that he and I have introduced to reform the War Powers Act, to reform our arms sales processes, and to reform a President's emergency powers to try to right-size the balance of authority between an outsized executive branch and, I think, an underwhelming legislative authority.

I think Senator Lee's amendment is a good idea. The only reason I wouldn't support it is if it jeopardizes the underlying bill; but if it doesn't, then I am going to support Senator Lee's amendment, in part, because I have introduced legislation to do the same thing alongside him, but because I think it is time that we started putting this Congress in the position to flex that muscle that is given to us in article I, which is to be codeterminants of American foreign policy alongside the executive branch.

Notwithstanding the good work of Senator Menendez and Senator Kaine, we have, over the course of the last several decades, completely outsourced that responsibility to set the national security policy to an executive branch and a national security apparatus inside the executive branch that has become bigger than the Founding Fathers' wildest dreams.

There is a wonderful book by Walter Isaacson called ``The Wise Men.'' It is about the individuals who set up the post-World War II order, but it is also an interesting examination of how things used to be when Congress was doing its job: regularly passing legislation, setting the parameters of American foreign policy.

One of the most extraordinary stories that is told in ``The Wise Men'' is the story of Robert Lovett, who at the time, I believe, was the Deputy Secretary or an Under Secretary at the Department of Defense. He eventually went on to become Secretary of Defense. And on a regular basis--I believe it was multiple times a week--Robert Lovett, on his way home from work, would stop and have a drink or dinner with Arthur Vandenberg, the then-Senate chairman of the Foreign Relations Committee. Every single week, multiple times, the administration would send one of their most important policymakers to sit down with the chairman of the Foreign Relations Committee to work together on setting American national security policy in the wake of World War II.

Senator Menendez is a very powerful chairman, but I don't think he gets that kind of deference from the administration because the administration knows that they can make national security policy largely without or around the U.S. Congress because we have made a collective decision to outsource that responsibility.

Now, that has become convenient in a world in which our enemies are a lot harder to define. They are shadowy. They are diffuse. They change names.

It is an era where victory is just as hard to define. We don't have peace treaties any longer with our enemies--our nonstate-actor enemies, at the very least. So we have been content to just let the administration decide whom we fight, when we fight them.

We have let the Department of Defense get so big that we can barely track what they do. We don't even demand much information from them.

I learned last week that the Department of Defense sees very little responsibility to engage Members of Congress when it comes to briefing us on contract award decisions, despite the statute mandating that Congress receive information when requested.

There is just an imbalance of power, and it is created by our decision to only have debates on national security policy every long, random, infrequent ``once in a while.''

Senator Lee's amendment says this. If you are going to pass an authorization of military force, every Congress, you have to come back and debate that authorization of military force.

When you are talking about our most sacred responsibility--putting the men and women who protect us in harm's way--I think we owe it to them, I think we owe it to our voters, to make sure that those authorizations of military force are not being expanded or perverted beyond their initial scope.

The 2001 AUMF is still on the books. It is important because it is our sole authorization of military force against extremist groups.

Let me tell you, I cover the Middle East on the Foreign Relations Committee. There are still groups there that are thinking about plotting attacks against the United States. We need to chase them. We need to keep them on the run. But the 2001 AUMF has a scope and a size today that would be shocking to most Americans. The 2001 AUMF, which everybody at the time knew was about fighting al-Qaida and those that harbored al-Qaida, which at the time was a fight in Afghanistan, has been used to justify airstrikes, operation, and support for counterterrorism in Afghanistan, Iraq, Djibouti, Libya, Pakistan, Somalia, Syria, Yemen, Cuba, Cameroon, Chad, Eritrea, Ethiopia, Georgia, Kenya, Kosovo, Jordan, Lebanon, Niger, Nigeria, Philippines, and Turkey.

I don't think anybody who voted for the 2001 AUMF believed, at the time, that it was an authorization for military force and counterterrorism operations in that many countries. And if we were required to come back and have the debate on the 2001 AUMF, or other AUMFs, we would be able to check with our public, to check with the people we represent, and see if they still believe that it is necessary to send American forces that far and wide.

Maybe some of the most disastrous military engagements of our history, like the war in Iraq, would have come to an earlier close had this Congress been required to debate those measures on a regular basis, instead of just allowing those AUMFs to persist.

And so I come to the floor to, frankly, thank Senator Lee for bringing this piece of our bigger bill before the Senate. I am going to certainly consider voting for it. I want to make sure it doesn't compromise the underlying legislation. These amendments are moving fast.

But my last hope for our body is this: that this isn't the last time that we have a debate on this floor about the scope of American military operations abroad. We should repeal and rewrite the 2001 AUMF. It is way too broad and cuts Congress out of some the most important decisions about where our troops fight.

That is a complicated endeavor, but I know Senator Menendez is committed to it. I know there are many Republican colleagues committed to it.

But I think history has shown that without a forcing mechanism, it is unlikely that Congress is going to make those very difficult decisions, which is why a sunset on AUMFs is a worthy idea of consideration.

I yield the floor.

I suggest the absence of a quorum.

Madam President, I rise today to honor the memory of Mr. Dan Camilliere, who passed away earlier this year. Dan was a beloved husband, father, grandfather, pharmacist, State senator, and mayor who spent his

life dedicated to improving his beloved communities of Wethersfield and Hartford.

Born in Hartford in 1922, Dan spent his childhood there, attending Hartford Public schools, and graduating from the University of Connecticut College of Pharmacy in 1943. Shortly after his graduation, Dan enlisted in the U.S. Army. He was deployed to Paris, France, to the 217th General Hospital where he served on a medical train that carried wounded soldiers from Germany to France. After his service in World War II, Dan was honorably discharged in 1946 and returned to Hartford to continue serving those within his community as a pharmacist.

Upon his return to Hartford, he met his wife Rose DiSilvestro. After a short courtship, Dan and Rose would go on to marry, forming a lifelong bond that would continue for 66 loving years and would see them raise their daughter and son. Wherever he lived, Dan made a lasting impression. He was always immaculately dressed even when mowing the lawn, had a knack for building positive relationships with people from all walks of life, and was a great conversationalist.

In 1948, Dan and his brother-in-law opened their own pharmacy in Hartford, Rialto Pharmacy. Besides providing his knowledge and expertise to the public, Rialto Pharmacy turned into a hub for the area's Italian immigrants. Dan helped explain what each medication was and provided flexible payment plans for any immigrants that needed it. Dan's work in retail led him to pursue a second passion: retail politics. Dan was tapped by the Hartford powerbrokers to run for the city council. He was elected and became the youngest person to hold the seat at the time. This began Dan's long career in service to the community which would continue until his final days.

As a public servant, Dan was truly exceptional. After ably serving on the Hartford City Council, Dan was elected to the State senate, becoming public health chair where he championed the fluoridation of drinking water and screenings for newborns. He later became chief of the drug division for the State of Connecticut's Department of Consumer Protection.

The Camillieres moved to Wethersfield in 1970 where Dan and Rose raised their family. After Dan sold the pharmacy, he ran for the Wethersfield Town Council, serving as secretary for 17 years and, later, proudly served for two terms as mayor. Dan's trademark smile presided over town meetings on building new schools, repairing old buildings, and setting water rates. He was a regular sight at town Memorial Day parades and was a mentor to many in politics, serving on the Democratic State Central Committee.

I count myself as very lucky to have met Dan during my formative years in politics. I was probably only 16 when I first shook his hand, and I remember with perfect clarity being put in charge of campaign lawn sign distribution as a 17-year-old volunteer for the Wethersfield Democrats. It was in that job where I discovered that no one had more friends--and more prime front lawn sites--in Wethersfield than Dan Camilliere. He treated me wonderfully during those early years. To me, he was the model American man--invested in his community, putting service over self, modeling responsible entrepreneurship. I think I decided to go into politics as a profession because of the example Dan Camilliere set in my hometown.

In reflection of the loss of a decorated public servant, veteran, husband, father, grandfather, and advocate for the communities of Hartford and Wethersfield, CT, I ask my colleagues to join me in recognizing and honoring the life of Dan Camilliere.

Mr. President, I rise today to offer some words in support of Ukraine as we approach the 1-year anniversary of Russia's full-scale invasion.

Although the U.S. Government made public warnings about this premeditated attack for months in advance, it is still, frankly, shocking, in retrospect, when you think about what has occurred over the last 12 months: Russia trying to expand its borders through invasion.

Now, maybe we were naive to think that this practice went by the wayside after World War II. It was common practice for powers for centuries beforehand, but the world has seen a level of brutality and devastation that is hard to contemplate. How unthinkable it was that in 2022 a major power would

launch a land war, a war of aggression, in the middle of Europe.

Now, pundits and analysts, right, said that Kyiv would fall within a matter of days. That was the expectation. But the Ukrainian people had different plans. They fought back bravely, and we watched in awe--we still watch in awe--as President Zelenskyy stayed in Kyiv and rallied his country in defiance of Russia's attempt to recolonize Ukraine.

The world responded, practically overnight, thanks to President Biden, who saw this coming, who rallied the world to Ukraine's defense, getting them the aid that they needed, especially in those early days, and treating Russia like a global pariah.

It was clear from the beginning that Russia's aggressions was not going to be able to be rationalized or minimized. We didn't have the luxury as the United States, the world's preeminent power, of sitting on the sidelines. The American people got this then, and they still get it now. Across the political spectrum in this country, progressives, moderates, and conservatives understand how much is at stake in Ukraine, both morally and strategically.

Because what have we seen? We have seen Russia launch this unprovoked barbaric war of conquest against its democratic neighbor. We have watched how they deliberately target apartment buildings, hospitals, churches, electricity grids, to try to bring the maximum amount of misery to Ukrainian families; how the Russian military uses murder, rape, and torture as systematic tools against the Ukrainian civilian population; and how Russian propagandists boast of kidnapping Ukrainian children and threaten to wipe out Ukrainian language and culture.

There are 40 camps with upward of 6,000 children who have literally been kidnapped out of Ukraine and brought to Russia.

The scale of this barbarity is hard to explain. The images that we have seen from Bucha and Mariupol are seared into our collective conscience.

Americans also--I really think this--understand the strategic consequences that would come to America if Russia was just allowed to crush Ukraine, if we hadn't stood in their way along with the Ukrainian people. What would have happened is that Putin would have been emboldened. It would have given him the green light to march on other NATO allies, potentially drawing the United States into a longer, far more costly war and putting American troops in harm's way.

That is what I believe, and that is what most Americans believe. But this is important stuff, right? This is war and peace. We are talking about tens of billions of American taxpayer dollars that are being sent to Ukraine for the defense of Ukraine. So, of course, those of us who support Ukraine should welcome a debate over whether the United States should be involved in this war.

But I am just going to tell you that the growing chorus of opposition to supporting Ukraine from Republicans--mostly radical Republicans in the House of Representatives--does not feel to me like on-the-level criticism of U.S. support for the war.

Listen, I am going to be honest with my colleagues. I think Democrats probably got too wound up in trying to figure out if Donald Trump was involved in some hidden conspiracy with Vladimir Putin. All of this focus on intrigue kind of made us blind to what was right in front of our face: that Donald Trump had this huge crush on Vladimir Putin and his authoritarian rule of Russia, and he still does.

Donald Trump wanted to turn himself into a quasi-dictator here in the United States. That is what January 6 was about. That is why the floor of the Senate was occupied by his supporters. And Trump was jealous when he watched how easy it was for Putin to stay in power permanently and what a hassle it was for Donald Trump to have to go through these pesky, free elections.

Now, Trump's admiration for Putin has turned into a collective rightwing obsession. Turn on Tucker Carlson virtually any night, and you are going to hear him lionizing Putin and pushing--often, line for line--Russian disinformation. Elon Musk uncritically blasts out Russian propaganda about the war to his 120 million plus followers. Steve Bannon says that Putin is the leader of the ``anti-woke'' fight globally. Donald Trump, Jr.--I follow him on social media--is relentlessly making fun of Zelenskyy online. QAnon sites say that Russia's war on Ukraine is righteous because it is just the next front in the war against these global sex traffickers that apparently are operating out of pizza parlors in northwest DC and Ukraine.

I could go on and on, but you get it, right? And Putin, he gets it too. He is counting on the right wing to advance Russian propaganda and exploit our internal divisions.

It is not surprising or shocking. The hot new thinkers on the right aren't really for democracy any longer. The new right, the alt-right-- whatever you want to call it--they think that democracy has outlived its usefulness and needs to be destroyed, replaced by something else, like a quasi-monarchy or a CEO-style government.

The conservative movement today is awash with proponents of doing away with participatory democracy, and so it is really no secret that there is a growing affection for the most prominent dictator in the world.

Now, I want to be careful about how I talk about this because, often, opponents of a war are accused of being anti-American or unpatriotic or parroting our enemies' talking points. But in this case, there is literally a wing of the Republican Party that is lifting up Putin as an example to follow and is claiming that he is involved in a righteous fight.

That same element of the Republican Party is trying to destroy American democracy. They are not hiding that fact. They are being transparent about it. Some of the most influential thinkers on the right today are literally monarchists.

And I guess a defense of the anti-Ukraine strain of Republican thinking today would be that their opposition to Ukraine is part of a coherent world view. I might not agree with that world view, but it would be a defense.

But the same Republicans who are trying to defund Ukraine are often the loudest voices clamoring for a confrontational and reckless approach to China. Many of them criticized President Biden mercilessly when he withdrew from Afghanistan. If their opposition to Ukraine was part of a broader theory of nonintervention, maybe it would look more on the level, but that is not what is happening here. Ukraine is being singled out, and all signs point to this rightwing Republican affection for Vladimir Putin as one of the primary reasons.

But here is the good news. The good news is that, in spite of this turn inside the Republican Party against Ukraine, support for Ukraine remains popular among the American people. Nearly two-thirds of Americans support the United States continuing to send aid to Ukraine. Seventy percent of Americans just supported the recent decision to send M1 Abrams tanks to Ukraine, and less than 10 percent of Americans--a bigger number are of the Republican Party, but less than 10 percent of Americans--have a favorable view of Putin, showing, frankly, how deeply out of step Trump and these extreme MAGA Republicans are.

And while there are more Republican Senators questioning whether we should stick with Ukraine today than there might have been 6 months ago, it is still true that most Republicans in this body--in the U.S. Senate--still support Ukraine.

A year ago, nobody was predicting that Ukraine would still be standing today, beating back Russian forces out of Kyiv, Kharkiv, Kherson. It is equally difficult to predict what is going to happen in the year ahead, and we should all admit that.

But I will say this: We should be clear-eyed about the likelihood that either side is going to achieve all its political objectives on the battlefield.

Like most of my constituents in Connecticut, I would like nothing more than for this war to end and for diplomacy to secure a free Ukraine. But Ukraine can't negotiate a peace settlement with itself, and right now Vladimir Putin is not interested in negotiations or a peaceful settlement.

For those people telling Zelenskyy that he should sit down with Putin, today, any agreement they write wouldn't be worth the paper it is written on. The day may come when Putin judges that continued aggression no longer serves his personal interests,

and our job as the collective West is to convince him of that by demonstrating the limits of his power.

And that is essentially what I believe--that you have to show Putin, demonstrate for him, the limits of his power, and I just suspect that there is still some way to go before we reach that point. The new contemplated Russian offensive tells us that much.

So while there will come a time for diplomacy, right now Ukraine must fight for its existence, and, right now, despite what these pro-Putin Republicans say, it is in our interest to continue to support Ukraine.

I yield the floor.

Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the Senate proceed to the immediate consideration of S. Res. 21, submitted earlier today; that at 3:30 p.m., the Senate vote on adoption of the resolution; that if the resolution is agreed to, the preamble be considered and agreed to and the motions to reconsider be considered made and laid upon the table with no intervening action or debate.

I yield the floor.

Madam President, if you were working for the sandwich shop Jimmy John's--I don't know if the Presiding Officer has ever had a Jimmy John's sandwich. It is a pretty good sandwich. If you were working for Jimmy John's sandwich shop in the middle of the last decade, around 2014, 2015, 2016, you might have been required to sign a contract with Jimmy John's to make sandwiches. Buried in that contract, as a fast food worker at Jimmy John's in 2014, 2015, 2016, was something called a noncompete clause.

A lot of Americans have heard of noncompete clauses. They think of them as applying to executives, individuals who make a lot of money, who possess really intricate, detailed information about a product. But Jimmy John's made everybody who came to work in many of their sandwich shops sign a noncompete agreement. The noncompete agreement for Jimmy John's sandwich makers said that if you ever left Jimmy John's, you would not be able to work at any business within 2 to 3 miles of any Jimmy John's for any company that made over 10 percent of its revenue from selling ``submarine, hero-type, deli-style, pita, and/or wrapped or rolled sandwiches'' for 2 years. Low-income, minimum-wage workers at Jimmy John's, if they tried to leave that job, were prohibited from going to work for Subway or going to work for D'Angelo's or maybe even, according to this definition, McDonald's or Burger King.

Of course, that sounds patently ridiculous. Why would you need to protect the intellectual secrets of sandwich making at Jimmy John's by applying noncompete agreements for these low-income workers? But this wasn't and isn't an anomaly. In fact, one out of six hospitality restaurant workers, by some studies, has a noncompete agreement. Today, noncompete agreements apply to one in five American workers. That is 30 million workers.

Amazon warehouse workers were required for a long time to sign noncompete agreements. I read a story the other day of a company called Camp Bow Wow that pays people to pet-sit. They required their pet sitters to sign noncompete agreements.

The reason that noncompete agreements are being used at industrial- level scale today is not to protect the trade secrets of sandwich making or pet sitting; it is to keep wages down. It is to prevent low- income workers from being able to go out and get a better job and thus pressure their existing employer to increase wages. This practice has become pervasive throughout our economy, and it is just a fundamental restraint on free trade.

Now, many of these noncompete agreements end up being nonenforceable. A lot of State laws don't allow you to have a noncompete agreement for a low-wage worker. But in practice, it doesn't really matter because when that individual tries to leave and they get told they can't because of a noncompete agreement, they don't know that it is nonenforceable in State law or if they do know, they don't have the resources to contest the cause in a court of law. So what do they do? They just end up staying.

The FTC filed a complaint in January of this year against two Michigan-based companies that required their security guards to sign noncompete agreements prohibiting them from working for a competing business within a 100-mile radius. Despite the fact that these security guards were making very low wages, the company's noncompete included a restriction that required the employee to pay a $100,000 penalty for any alleged violation of the clause. The intention here is simply to bind the employee to the company, to give them no ability to bargain for a higher wage because they might be able to get a better wage somewhere else. There is no proprietary information that those security guards possess.

What is equally interesting is that there is increasingly great data to show that there is actually no reason to have noncompete agreements even for higher income workers. The imposition of noncompete agreements on low-wage workers is primarily about just trying to restrain wages, but the imposition of noncompete agreements on higher income workers is about impeding innovation. It is about a company that doesn't want competitors, so they bind their executives to noncompete agreements such that their executives can't go work for a competing company or can't go out and start a company that may compete.

What is so maddening is that there are plenty of protections in our existing law that protect companies from intellectual property theft or patent theft. If what you worry about is your trade secrets being appropriated by a competitor, well, the law already protects you from that. You don't have to deny your employees or your executives the ability to go work for another company.

California rightly has the reputation as probably the world's center of innovation, right? More startups, more world-changing companies have come out of California than any other State and probably than any other part of the world. California was the first or one of the first in this country to ban noncompete agreements. California decided it didn't need noncompete agreements to protect intellectual property in a State that probably has a greater interest in protecting intellectual property than any other State. In fact, California's economic engine is dependent on their prohibition of noncompete agreements because by prohibiting noncompete agreements, California has a culture in which startups are encouraged, in which executives can leave one company and start another.

Eric Yuan was an executive at Cisco Webex. If he wasn't working in California, he might have had a noncompete agreement applied to him, but he didn't, and so he could leave and start a company that was arguably competing with Cisco Webex--a company called Zoom.

To many economists on the right and the left, this is becoming a no- brainer. Noncompete agreements are bad for wage growth. Noncompete agreements are bad for innovation. Noncompete agreements are bad for low-income workers. Noncompete agreements are bad for high-income workers.

So today I am on the floor to talk about what the data tells us about noncompete agreements as a means to encourage my colleagues to take a look at a piece of legislation that we are introducing today, the Workforce Mobility Act, a pretty simple piece of legislation that would ban the use of noncompete agreements for both high-income and low- income workers.

It is a bipartisan piece of legislation. Senator Todd Young, Senator Kevin Cramer, Senator Tim Kaine, and I are introducing this bill today. I don't know that there is another policy that the four of us can find common ground on, but we find common ground on this issue because maybe if you are a progressive, you come to this issue through the rights of workers and boosting their wages. If you are a conservative, you come to this issue through the restraint on free trade that exists through the perpetuation of noncompete agreements. But all across America, this is a pretty bipartisan issue, and here in the Senate, it is bipartisan as well.

I am glad that the FTC, just a week or so ago, announced that they were going to undertake a rule to ban noncompete agreements. I congratulate the Biden administration and the FTC for taking a leadership role. It may be that that rule, once it is adopted and in place, will do the work of this legislation, but we know that rules are only as good as the commitment of one particular administration.

So my hope and my recommendation is that no matter what the FTC does when it comes to restrictions on noncompete agreements, that we pass the Workforce Mobility Act so that we provide a guarantee in the law that noncompete agreements are not going to stand in the way of wages rising or small businesses starting.

There is a lot of public support out there as 92 percent of voters think that it is way too hard today to start or grow a new business and as 80 percent of voters--again, across party lines--support policies that allow people who want to start a new business more freedom by reducing the restrictions that come when you try to venture out on your own. Increasingly, one of the primary restrictions that exists for people who want to start a new business, who want to become entrepreneurs, are these noncompete agreements.

So I am coming to the floor today to recommend this bipartisan piece of legislation to my colleagues, to point to the States that have already adopted these restrictions, and to show how not only does the sky not fall when you get rid of noncompete agreements but that startups flourish and that wages increase.

Finally, I come to recommend to my colleagues that, in an environment where it is going to be a little harder to find agreement between Republicans and Democrats, this is a place where we can find that common ground. In one piece of policy, we can stick up for low-income workers and the free market. This is something that we can do together to help raise wages and to help power our economy.