Floor Statements

Mr. President, I understand that there is a bill at the desk, and I ask for its first reading.

Mr. President, I now ask for a second reading, and in order to place the bill on the calendar under the provisions of rule XIV, I object to my own request.

Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the Senate proceed to the immediate consideration of H.R. 1651, which was received from the House and is at the desk.

I further ask that the Durbin amendment at the desk be considered and agreed to; that the bill, as amended, be considered read three times and passed; and that the motion to reconsider be considered made and laid upon the table with no intervening action or debate.

Finally, I would ask unanimous consent that when the Senate completes its business today, it adjourn until 10 a.m., Thursday, March 25; that following the prayer and pledge, the morning hour be deemed expired, the Journal of proceedings be approved to date, the time for the two leaders be reserved for their use later in the day, and morning business be closed; that upon conclusion of morning business, the Senate resume the motion to proceed to Calendar No. 11, H.R. 1799, as provided under the previous order; finally, that the votes scheduled for 11 a.m. begin at 10:45 a.m.

For the information of Senators, we expect to have four rollcall votes beginning at 10:45 a.m. tomorrow. Additional rollcall votes are expected during Thursday's session.

Mr. President, if there is no further business to come before the Senate, I ask unanimous consent that it stand adjourned under the previous order following the remarks of Senators Sullivan and Sasse.

Mr. President, I was presiding on Tuesday. Sometimes my staff will give me a folder of things to review while I am presiding, and often they will be upset when I come back having not reviewed what they have given me. The reason for that is simple: When there are Members speaking before the body, I am, frankly, very interested to listen and to hear what our colleagues have to say. We don't do enough of that in this place. We are so busy during the day, we don't spend a lot of time on the Senate floor. We might have the floor on on our TV in our office, but we are not always paying attention to what our colleagues have to say. One of the benefits of being able to preside is that you do get to listen to the arguments that are being made right here on the floor.

In the hour or so that I was presiding on Tuesday, I got to hear about four or five of my Republican colleagues come down in sequence to make their case as to why they would be voting against the American Rescue Plan, and so I got to hear a number of themes being developed.

I don't think coincidentally a number of arguments were made repeatedly by many of our friends on the Republican side of the aisle, and so I decided it might be worthwhile to just spend a few minutes talking about the claims that are made about this bill by Republicans, the reasons why they are voting against it, and to talk about how some of these arguments may be a little bit more disingenuous than we might like.

The first thing that I heard was that this bill was just too expensive. It is $1.9 trillion. That is a lot of money, no doubt, but this country has never ever faced a healthcare crisis or an economic crisis like we do today. This is an unprecedented moment in our Nation's history, and it requires us to step up and do something that isn't just going to sound like it will work and help people but actually will.

What is, I guess, to me ironic about this claim that it is too expensive, that it is going to cost our kids and grandkids too much money, is that Republicans passed a tax bill that was almost to the dollar the exact same amount as this relief bill is. They passed a $1.9 trillion tax bill where the majority of the benefits went to the richest Americans who needed no more help. There was no crisis in 2017 amongst American millionaires and billionaires. Yet Republicans were very willing to draw down $1.9 trillion in debt-financed tax cuts; $1.3 trillion in corporate tax cuts; $83 billion to let heirs of huge mega- estates be able to inherit more money without taxation; $435 billion tax cut for the wealthiest 1 percent of Americans. So it is a little hard to listen to my Republican colleagues claim that this bill is too expensive when they were willing to spend the exact same amount of money in 2017 on tax cuts for their wealthy corporate and millionaire friends.

It is also hard to listen to this argument because just a year ago, Republicans were willing to spend $1.9 trillion to address this crisis. It isn't as if Republicans haven't understood, when they were in control of the White House and the Congress, that we needed to step up and meet this moment. Republicans have said: Well, this is different because we are turning the corner. Well, as Senator Durbin laid out very well, we may be able to see the corner, but we are not there yet.

March 24 was the day that we passed the CARES Act--almost the same amount of money as we are considering today. On that day, 737 people died of COVID-19. Yesterday, 2,369 people died of COVID-19. So in many ways, the crisis today is exponentially worse than it was a year ago when Republicans, to a person, were willing to spend $2 trillion on the crisis. Now, all of a sudden, when Democrats are in charge of the White House, when a Democratic majority leader sits here in the U.S. Senate, $1.9 trillion is too much money to spend on a crisis that is taking on a daily basis three to four times as many lives as it did when we spent this money a year ago.

By the way, the economic crisis is still acute. There may be technically more people at work today than there were in April or May of last year, but surveys suggest today 80 percent of Americans don't have enough money to pay their bills. Why? Because a lot of people are back to work, but they are working fewer hours, right? They have less reliable work. So there is still a crisis that exists amongst 80 percent of Americans today. This is no less than the crisis that existed in 2017.

Here is the second critique that is made over and over about this bill: It is a partisan bill, Republicans say. Well, that is a complaint of Republicans' own making because it is only a partisan bill in the U.S. Senate. Three out of four voters support the American Rescue Plan. This is a recent Morning Consult poll. It has been referred to before on the floor. Seventy percent of all voters support the American Rescue Plan. Not surprisingly, there is some difference between Democrats and Republicans but, frankly, not much. Ninety percent of Democrats support the American Rescue Plan, and 60 percent of Republicans support the American Rescue Plan. Why? Because everybody is hurting in this country. Everybody is hurting. Republicans and Democrats need an extension of unemployment benefits. Republicans and Democrats both want cash payments. Republicans and Democrats know that their kids can't get what they need in schools without additional support.

This is a unifying proposal in the American public. President Biden made a commitment to govern in a way that unified the country. He has done that. He has proposed a bill that has the broad support of Republicans and Democrats. I don't know that it is his fault that it can't draw Republican support in Congress despite the fact that it draws Republican support from the public.

Finally, this was maybe the most interesting theme of the complaints: It is not COVID relief. I have heard different statistics thrown out by my Republican friends. Some of them suggest that only 5 percent of this bill is COVID relief. I am not sure exactly how they come to that calculation, but what I understand them to say is that anything that isn't directly related to putting shots in people's arms or treating people with present cases of COVID is not COVID relief.

Well, let's just take a look at what was broadly part of the CARES Act that was supported by every single Republican and what is broadly part of the American Rescue Plan, because my Republican colleagues thought that everything in the CARES Act was COVID relief, whether it was designed to immediately attack the healthcare crisis or whether it was designed to address the economic crisis.

There were stimulus checks in the CARES Act--not as big as the ones in the American Rescue Plan, but they were COVID relief when we passed the CARES Act. Now, according to Republicans, they are not COVID relief.

There was an unemployment extension and a plus-up in the maximum benefit under the CARES Act. That was COVID relief back in March of last year, but now, according to Republicans, it is not COVID relief.

There was money for vaccines and for testing in the CARES Act. In the American Rescue Plan, there is money for vaccines and testing.

Small business relief was, of course, conceived in the CARES Act, the PPP program. That is a big part of the American Rescue Plan, but now it is not COVID relief, according to my Republican colleagues, whereas it was last year.

There was State and local funding in the CARES Act. There is State and local funding in the American Rescue Plan.

There was rent and mortgage relief in the CARES Act. There is rent and mortgage relief in the American Rescue Plan.

All of a sudden, since Democrats took control of the White House and took control of the Senate, all of these things, which were categorized as COVID relief by Republicans in March, are no longer COVID. You are just supposed to think of these as extras, as Democratic priorities.

Ninety percent--ninety-five percent of what is in the package we are voting on today is simply an extension of the same set of funding streams that we authorized in a bipartisan way a year ago. And so this idea that this is some Democratic wish list, when we are essentially just extending or increasing the same funding streams that were in the CARES Act, is nonsense. It is nonsense. Of course, this is all COVID relief. Of course, it is COVID relief when you are increasing nutritional benefits to people who can't afford to feed their kids because they have lost their job or they have lost hours because the economy melted down due to a pandemic. That is not, all of a sudden, not COVID relief today.

This one is maybe the most bizarre of Republican claims. This bill is expensive, but it is not too expensive. This moment is unique, and we are mandated by our oath of office to meet this moment. Republicans didn't have a problem spending $1.9 trillion to give tax breaks to their wealthy friends. I don't know why they, all of a sudden, have a problem putting money in the pockets of hard-working Americans who are suffering through the worst healthcare crisis this country has seen in a century.

Republicans say this is a partisan bill. Out there in America, guess what--it is not. It is not. Republicans and Democrats support this because it is full of commonsense ideas that make a lot of sense to people, no matter what their political ideology is outside of Washington.

Republicans say this bill isn't COVID relief but a Democratic progressive wish list. No, it is simply an extension of the things that were bipartisan priorities last year. We thought they were good ideas then. We think they are good ideas now, especially given the fact that four times as many people are dying today as were dying in March of 2020, when we passed the first bipartisan CARES Act, and as the economy today is in just as dire straits as it was.

I hope we are turning the corner. I hope we get vaccines into the arms of individuals such that we are soon back to the numbers of deaths per day that we saw in March of last year. I hope that we are on a road again to full employment. But I am confident that none of that can happen unless we make this investment in COVID relief and in economic relief. It is an obligation as stewards of the economy and

the welfare of the American people for us to step up to the plate and get this done this week.

I yield the floor.

I ask unanimous consent to complete my remarks before the vote.

Madam President, I come to the floor to echo Chairwoman Murray's comments, to suggest and commend to my colleagues the nomination of Miguel Cardona to be the next Secretary of Education.

There is no one better suited for this job in this moment than Miguel Cardona, and I couldn't be more excited on behalf of my constituents, on behalf of the people of Meriden, CT, to be here on the floor to tell you just a little bit about why Miguel Cardona makes so much sense for this moment.

As Senator Murray laid it out for us, this is obviously a moment of crisis in American education. Kids have been distance learning or in and out of classroom settings for the last year. We have had so many children fall behind, especially those with learning needs. We have a lot of kids in crisis. For a lot of kids, home is not a safe place. There is trauma today amongst America's children, and our education system is going to have to bear a lot of the brunt of making sure that these kids are taken care of.

We have a crisis in higher education without students in the classroom, without sources of revenue flowing into institutions of higher learning. We need to make sure that we don't lose classroom slots in colleges and universities, which, of course, is the only thing that allows us to be able to see a bright economic future for our country--expanding access to higher education.

Miguel is made for this moment because he knows how important college is. He was the first member of his family to complete college. He knows how important community is. He came right back to his community of Meriden after completing college and went to work serving his community by taking a job teaching fourth grade in Meriden.

He proved early on that he would go above and beyond the call when it came to the needs of his students. He was a teacher at Israel Putnam Elementary School, room 160. If his kids didn't have what they needed, Miguel would reach into his pockets to make sure they had it. One year, he spent $450 of his own money--money that he probably didn't have as a first- or second-year teacher--to make sure every kid in his classroom had a notebook, a writer's handbook, and a box of crayons. One student told the story of a classmate who moved back to Puerto Rico and of Miguel's organizing a packet of letters from all of his classmates to be sent to him so that he could still have a connection back to Meriden.

He was such an amazing teacher that he was promoted just after a few years in the classroom. He was actually Connecticut's youngest principal when, at age 28, he took over Hanover. Soon thereafter, he was promoted to help run the city's school district, and he was promoted again to be the commissioner of education in Connecticut.

It has been his work over the last year that, I think, caught the attention of educational policy leaders and advocates all across the country because Connecticut was one of the first States to reopen its schools. We did it through a consensus-building exercise that Commissioner Cardona led. He brought together students and parents, administrators, teachers, and teachers unions to come up with a plan to safely reopen our schools. Connecticut reopened our schools faster than many people thought we could, ahead of the curve nationally. He was able to do that because consensus building is a skill that Miguel Cardona has been working on for a very long time.

In 2013, one of his jobs, while he was helping to lead the Meriden school system, was to implement a new teacher evaluation system. You know this can always be very, very controversial, a new system evaluating teachers' performances, but he brought everybody to the table and developed a model that became used statewide. His model and his consensus approach became the standard in our State. He is the Secretary of Education we need right now--somebody who has experience in our classrooms, somebody who knows the value of college, especially to first-generation college families, and somebody who knows how to bring people together.

This is an incredibly important moment for America's educational system. We need to maintain and expand our commitment to equity in our K-12 system to make sure that every single kid--no matter the level of income, no matter the ethnic background, no matter the race, no matter if one is disabled or not--gets a quality education.

This is a moment to invest in accountability in higher education and make sure that we are not wasting taxpayer dollars funding programs and degrees that don't work, that may make money for for-profit investors but that don't end up in skill sets that are going to power our economy. Miguel Cardona is the right person to meet this moment. He is whip-smart. He is a consensus builder. He is a passionate advocate for kids and for teachers and for parents. He is the perfect person for this job and for this moment.

Lastly, let me just share with you how I got to know Miguel Cardona, which, maybe, will serve as a final advertisement for his unique qualifications. This was my old congressional district, and Meriden was part and is still part of the Fifth Congressional District. One of the biggest weekends in Meriden has become the Puerto Rican Heritage Festival, but that festival had sort of hit hard times. It was a decade ago when, maybe, only a couple hundred people came to it until the Cardona family took it over. Miguel Cardona and his family took over the Puerto Rican Heritage Festival in Meriden, CT. Today, 6,000 or 7,000 people come to this festival. You can find Miguel Cardona, on that weekend, every hour of each day of the festival, driving around on his golf cart, organizing bus transportation, working on the entertainment acts, and making sure that Meriden is able, on that weekend, to be able to celebrate its Puerto Rican heritage but then to offer something really constructive, really fun, and really empowering for the community.

Even as commissioner of education, it wasn't beyond him or above him to invest in his community in that way. It is, I hope, an indication of who he is and whom he will remain if the Senate chooses to confirm him into this role, as I hope we will do with a big bipartisan vote today.

I yield the floor.

Madam President, I ask for the yeas and nays.

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

Mr. President, I am here today to speak in favor of the underlying resolution and urge my colleagues to support it. I will be very brief.

I would like to tackle three topics, amongst many, in this package. I would like to talk a bit about the crisis that stands ahead of us with respect to summer learning and summer programming for kids all across this country. I would like to talk a little bit about the importance of expediting the pace of vaccinations and then, lastly, about the global fight that lies ahead of us to make sure that we are building a pandemic response infrastructure around the world that makes sure this never, ever happens again.

Before delving into those three topics, let me just say that we have an opportunity to pass programming to meet this moment that is wildly popular. There was a poll out yesterday that suggests that many of the most important programming in this package enjoy 70 percent support amongst the public. The relief checks, which will total $2,000--$600 from last year, $1,400 in this package--have 74 percent support among the American public. Only 13 percent of Americans oppose those checks. Increased Federal funding for vaccinations--69 percent favor that increased funding; 17 percent oppose it. Those are difficult numbers to get on any major area of policy in the United States today. To have 74 percent in favor of anything is pretty impressive.

But it speaks to the moment. It speaks to the expectations that Americans have. But it also speaks to the

fact that there is unity in the American public about what we need to do.

President Biden rightly talked about unifying the country around an agenda to build back this country better, and these polling numbers show that he has done that because you don't get to 74 percent support for an initiative without a whole bunch of Democrats, Independents, and Republicans supporting that measure.

So we hope--we want to get to a place where we have bipartisan support in the Senate, but we know we have bipartisan support for this agenda out in the American public. These polling numbers and polling numbers to come will prove that. The reason is that the crises we are trying to address don't really care what your politics are.

Let me talk about these three distinct areas.

First, I want to talk about what is happening in our schools. Others have done that in a far more articulate way, so I want to drill down specifically on what is going to happen this summer.

Schools are in crisis right now. I know that because I have two kids in public school--in a big, urban public school. They haven't been back in the classroom at all. They have continued to learn from home the entire time. But they have all the support that they need around them-- two loving parents who are willing and able to help in any way that we can. Not every child has that. So schools have been scrambling just to make sure that they are doing instruction right, that they are opening schools safely, that they are building support systems around students.

But come this summer, you are going to have all sorts of kids who aren't going to have programming ready for them, aren't going to have a safe place to go, and are going to have tremendous amounts of learning loss.

You are also going to have kids who are in need of a really healthy, safe place to be this summer. Some kids will need deep academic experience, but others kids are just going to need some emotional growth, are going to need something fun to do so that they have the ability to restart and be ready to reenter what will, hopefully, be a much more normal-looking classroom.

In this bill is over $100 billion for schools, to support the safe reopening of schools. And what we do in this plan that the President is proposing to us is to allow for some of that money to be used for summer programming.

I am going to make a pitch to have a set-aside, a portion of money dedicated to summer programming. But what we all agree on--those of us who support this package--is that the challenge ahead of us is not just how we keep schools open and open those that have had their doors closed, but what we do to support kids for 12 months of the year, not just 9 months of the year.

This is going to be a tough summer for a lot of kids, and we have to have a specific focus--as this plan does--on meaningful summer programming for kids--programming that is emotionally healthy, that addresses some of this learning loss.

In a typical year, middle-class kids--kids with families that have some means--are five times as likely as those living in poverty to attend a summer camp, twice as likely to visit a museum or go to a performance. We can't allow for that disparity to be present this summer, not this summer. We have to have funding in this bill. We have to pass funding through Congress to make sure that every kid in thi country, especially kids coming from limited-means backgrounds, can get into quality summer programming. This summer we have to make that promise to them.

Second, let me talk about vaccines. I know my colleague from Connecticut is going to talk about this as well.

We did well this past week. There were 1.36 million doses administered. I say ``well'' because that is 20 percent more than we did the following week, but it is not good enough.

In this plan from President Biden is $10 billion to operationalize the Defense Production Act. Senator Baldwin and I have been working on this issue for the better part of a year. If you want to produce more vaccine, if you want to produce more testing equipment, more PPE, then you have to organize America's industrial base better than what was happening under the Trump administration. You have to go out and find every potential manufacturing partner who can help Pfizer and Moderna and Johnson & Johnson and any vaccine maker that comes after them be able to make more and make it faster.

We are standing up capacity in Connecticut. We are doing well--No. 3 nationally in terms of the percentage of shots that we get into people's arms--but we can do a lot more. We just need that production to be ramped up. In this bill is specific money to operationalize the Defense Production Act so that we can make more vaccines. That is one of the most important parts of this bill.

Finally, I wanted to talk about the global challenge that we have ahead of us. This virus didn't start in the United States. But, man, it moved quick--from a wet market in China to the west coast of the United States to today, with 400,000 lives having been lost. And the question is: Why? Why was this virus able to move so quickly? Why weren't we able to contain it? Why didn't we learn more about it earlier? Why wasn't the world ready for this moment?

Now, China has a lot to answer for. But, frankly, the whole world has to understand that we didn't allocate resources properly. The United States didn't allocate resources properly. We spent, last year, $740 billion on hardware for the Department of Defense and $12 billion on global public health. Nobody today, living in the United States, would tell you that that was the correct allocation. So inside President Biden's package is funding to start to rebuild the global pandemic prevention infrastructure.

I won't go into the details of how we do that today, but there are estimates suggesting that we are going to need over $20 billion globally in order to stand up greater capacities. That means more resources at a reformed WHO. That means more U.S. diplomats who are working in the public health space. That means doing partnerships with developing nations in which we put some money on the table in exchange for public health reform so that they can strengthen their own systems of pandemic detection and prevention.

But even if you drive this thing down in the United States, so long as there are outbreaks that exist on the other side of the world, we are still at risk. And there may come along a virus down the road that is even more contagious, that spreads even faster than this one, so shame on us if we don't, at the same time, lock down this virus domestically and set up a system of defense internationally to make sure that we are ready for the next one.

We can walk and chew gum at the same time. And President Biden's focus on rebuilding our alliances comes at the right time because we are not going to be able to do this by ourselves.

We have to meet the moment. We can't go small right now. The problems are too big.

Senator Blumenthal and I have spent lots of time at food banks in Connecticut. We have never, ever seen the desperate need that exists today in our State. Shame on us if we don't use the power that has been granted us to both take on this virus and deliver economic prosperity to people who have had it robbed from them through no fault of their own.

I urge my colleagues' support for the budget resolution.

I yield the floor.

Mr. President, rightfully, when we talk about the issue of gun violence in this country, we think about it through the prism of those lives that have been lost because the numbers are just stunning. They are hard to get your head wrapped around.

Here are the rough numbers in front of me. On an average year, we have 39,000 people who lose their lives through a gunshot wound. That is a suicide, a homicide, an accidental shooting, domestic violence crimes. If you break it down, that is around 100 people a day, and there is no other high-income nation in the world that comes anywhere close.

We talk about the issue of gun violence through the prism of people whose lives have been lost because it is so morally disrupting, cataclysmic, when you have a loved one--normally, a young loved one, a brother or sister, a child--who is there one instant and then gone the next because of a random shooting.

I always get drawn back to the people whom I have been lucky enough to have had access to and friendships with in Connecticut. One of them is Janet Rice.

Janet lost her son Shane, who was 20 at the time, to a gunshot wound back in 2012. It was actually only a month and a half before the Sandy Hook shooting.

Shane was just selling a car to some acquaintances, and the conversation went off the rails. There was some pushing and shoving. There was a gun fired, and Shane was dead.

It is really hard for Janet to describe how her life changed. She talks a lot about in those early months and years really not being able to even leave the house. She would drive a couple of blocks to the corner grocery store because she just didn't want to walk down the street and encounter friends and have to talk about what happened.

She had this habit of waking up in th middle of the night and driving her car down to where Shane was shot, which is only about two blocks from where I live in Hartford. She would arrive there in the middle of the night, she would pull up in the parking lot,

and she would turn on her high beams, half expecting that Shane was going to show up.

Her life is fundamentally different today than it was when Shane was in her life. And I have no idea what it is like to lose a child. I have no idea what it is like to lose a loved one to gun violence. But we talk about it in these terms because it is absolutely catastrophic when you lose somebody that way.

This week, though, is Gun Violence Survivors Week. This week we focus on those who survived gunshot wounds, and I think I hate to tell you this, but the numbers are much worse. More people survive gunshot wounds than are killed by gunshot wounds, and that wound can change your life as well.

It can inflict you with physical pain that you can never get over, render you unable to walk, and in our colleague Gabby Giffords' case, almost unable to speak. But it can also inflict you with an ongoing, cascading trauma from which you may never recover.

James Harris was shot in Hartford in 2018. He was shot while he and another friend were just hanging out in the hallway of the friend's apartment building, when a man showed up and shot James and his friend. The man was charged with a whole bunch of things, including possession of an illegal firearm. But they were just in the wrong place at the wrong time.

His friend lost his life. James survived and, to this day, he experiences post-traumatic stress disorder, chronic pain, and mental health challenges that I don't think anybody in this Chamber can get their head wrapped around.

Tyrek Marquez was shot in the head a decade earlier, in Hartford, when Tyrek was 7 years old, following a West Indian Day parade in Hartford in the summer of 2008.

Guess what. The three shooters who were arrested were all found to have illegal firearms. One of the guns they found in the perpetuation of that crime had been used in 14 other crimes.

It is a decade later, and Tyrek remains partially paralyzed on the left side of his body. But he is part of the anti-gun violence movement. He survived, and he wants to make sure that this never happens to anybody ever again. ``You've got to overcome obstacles and that's what I have been'' able to do, he says.

There are 100 people a day who die from guns, but there are just as many who survive gunshot wounds, and they are now demanding that something change.

Right now, as we debate a COVID relief package, our focus, rightfully, is squarely on trying to reverse the disturbing trend of this virus expanding all across this country and righting the economic ship of this country. But not coincidental to the pandemic and the economic meltdown, we saw a dramatic increase in homicides. Some cities reported 40, 50 percent increases in homicides in 2020 versus 2019. You saw record numbers of gun sales. Those two things are not coincidental. And those are just the reportable gun sales. Likely, we saw a dramatic spike in illegal gun transfers as well. More weapons equals more gun crimes in this country.

And so knowing that 20, 30 percent of guns get transferred outside of the legal system, knowing that, as in the case of Tyrek and James, it was illegal guns that ended up being used to shoot them, as it was for Shane Oliver in Hartford--that mother I talked about, Janet Rice; Shane was killed with an illegal gun--to honor Gun Violence Survivors Week, we have to make a plan this year. We have to make a plan to work on an issue that can bring us all together.

I hope that Republicans join us in voting for COVID relief funding. The things in President Biden's package are supported by 70 percent of the American public. That is impressive. It is really hard to get the American public to agree on anything at a 70-percent rate. They have actually done polling on things like kittens and baseball and grandmas, and it is hard to get 70 percent support for that stuff. So on Joe Biden's agenda, boy, it must be pretty popular to get 70 percent of the American public supporting it.

Universal background checks, requiring that everybody have to prove you are not a criminal or seriously mentally ill before you buy a gun-- that has 90 to 95 percent support. Think about that. That means that the vast majority of gun owners, of NRA members, of Republicans, Democrats, Independents, all support universal background checks. It is something that this body can come together on.

And just like in Tyrek and James's case, every single day we are presented with evidence of what happens when we let these illegal guns flow on to our streets. In Pennsylvania, a man purchased two handguns advertised in a classified ad. He used those guns to kill a person and wound seven others inside a psychiatric institute. He had failed a background check at a gun store just a few months prior.

In Illinois, a man killed a Chicago police commander with a gun he purchased online. He was prohibited from buying a gun because he had a restraining order.

Wisconsin, a man killed his wife and two other women and wounded four others with a gun that he purchased outside the background system. Why? Because he was prohibited from purchasing a gun because of a domestic violence restraining order.

In Texas, a man killed 7 people and injured 22 others after being fired from his job. He had failed a background check but was able to find an unlicensed seller.

I can go on. Over and over and over again, the victims of gun violence are very often put at risk and put in harm's way because there are so many guns being sold illegally or so many guns being sold legally to people who shouldn't have them, like people with serious, violent criminal records and people who have been arrested for things like domestic violence.

So, right now, our priority has to be COVID relief, but as we take part this week in Gun Violence Survivors Week, we have to recognize that the status quo is not acceptable and that there is something fundamentally wrong with democracy if a public policy measure can enjoy 90 percent support amongst the American public, and it can't get passed through the representative bodies that are assembled in the Nation's Capitol.

Thirty-nine thousand people die every year. More are injured and survive. And we owe them, in 2021, to pass legislation that finally starts putting these trajectories downward.

I yield the floor.

I suggest the absence of a quorum.

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

Madam President, this is a screen shot from a video taken during a school field trip on August 9, 2018. These are Yemeni schoolchildren going to school in a northern governorate inside the country, and they are on their way either to or back from a picnic that they were having with their classmates.

As you can see, they are schoolchildren of elementary age--around 8, 9, 10 years old. They don't look any different than what school children here in the United States would look like on their way to a fun-filled school field trip. There is a little boy catching a little nap somehow amidst all of the den of the rest of his classmates so excited.

They are excited because there isn't and there wasn't a lot of fun to be had for schoolchildren in Yemen today or in 2018. A civil war still plagues that country and plagues Yemeni children who are too often facing starvation and disease, but on this day, there was fun to be had.

This is that schoolbus hours later. Forty children died when a U.S.- made bomb dropped from the sky and hit this schoolbus. Not every child on that bus died, miraculously, but 40 children on the bus and around the bus did. It was a war crime.

The Saudis, in the aftermath of the incident, defended it saying that it was a legal action. They were targeting enemy leaders who were responsible for recruiting and training young children.

They hit a schoolbus in the middle of the day, right next to a crowded marketplace. It wasn't on a lonely road. It was in a crowded area. It is why not only people on the bus died, but children and families surrounding the bus died as well.

This was a military strike done, in part, as part of a coalition campaign of which the United States is a member. It is not just that we sold the bomb that hit this bus. We participated and still do participate in this military campaign in a myriad of ways

For years, we flew planes in the sky that put fuel into the Saudi and Emirati jets that dropped these bombs. We embedded U.S. personnel in the operations center that planned these bombing campaigns, and maybe, most importantly of all, we lent moral authority to the Saudi-led campaign inside Yemen.

But over the course of our time as a coalition partner with Saudi Arabia, the war in Yemen has been a national security apocalypse for the United States. Our bombs and our planes have been used to kill thousands of civilians; 17,000 civilians have died inside Yemen since the beginning of this war.

The war has caused the world's worst humanitarian catastrophe on the ground inside Yemen. Over 100,000 children have died of starvation and disease. Yemen, since 2015, has been the site of the world's worst cholera outbreak anywhere in the world during all of our lifetimes-- likely caused by the targeting of water treatment facilities by the coalition, of which the United States is a member.

And inside this country, Yemenis rightfully blame the United States for this cataclysm. They know that it is our equipment, they know that it is our bombs, and they know that it is that moral authority that the United States gives to this war through our decision to continue to take part in it, human rights crime after human rights crime.

It has radicalized a generation of Yemenis against the United States. It has made us part and parcel of repeated human rights violations, and it has created a chaotic environment on the ground in Yemen that has allowed for AQAP, the wing of al-Qaida with the clearest designs to hit the United States, again, room to govern and room to grow. AQAP and ISIS are able to operate and control territory inside Yemen because of the chaos created by this civil war.

Iran has grown stronger. At the beginning, Iran and the Houthis, who are on the other side of this civil war, had a slightly tenuous connection, but as the war has dragged on, the Houthis have had to become more and more reliant on Iranian assistance and Iranian expertise. Iran has grown stronger and stronger inside Yemen and inside the region as this war persists. In every way, it has been a nightmare, from a security perspective, for the United States.

But with the election and inauguration of President Biden, our participation in this national security cataclysm is coming to an end. I come to the floor today to thank the Biden administration and to thank the incoming Secretary of State, Tony Blinken, for their recognition that it is no longer in our security interest to be a part of this.

The Biden administration has made several very important decisions that they have announced at the outset of their term in office: one, the plan to withdraw from the military coalition; second, a decision to suspend arm sales to Saudi Arabia and the UAE, who are the primary participants in this coalition. UAE has dramatically scaled back their involvement--to their credit. The Saudis continue to fight this war on the ground and in the air.

And lastly--and, perhaps, most immediately importantly--the Trump administration announced that they were reserving an eleventh-hour decision by the Trump administration naming the Houthis a terrorist group.

Now, the Houthis are incredibly bad actors. The Houthis are also guilty of war crimes in and around this conflict. They recruit child soldiers. They deliberately hold up aid and don't allow it to get to the citizens in areas under which they control. The Houthis have a lot to answer for as well. But by naming them a terrorist group, what the Trump administration effectively did was to stop the international aid community from being able to deliver any aid into Yemen because the Houthis control some of the most important ports, and 80 percent of the aid is commercial food. That would have all stopped if you couldn't run aid through ports controlled by an organization named at the eleventh hour by the Trump administration as a terrorist organization.

The Biden administration has made a decision to suspend that designation to make sure that we are not going to end up with millions of people starving inside Yemen because the United States makes the decision to eliminate the ability of humanitarian groups to get food on the ground in Yemen. They are all incredibly important decisions that the administration has made--decisions supported by a majority of this body.

We have voted here in the Senate, on a bipartisan basis, to end the U.S. participation in the war in Yemen. We didn't have a veto-proof majority. So we couldn't overcome the President's veto. But there is a bipartisan coalition that believes the United States

shouldn't have anything to do with this, and President Biden is now effectuating that bipartisan consensus in policy.

Lastly, let me say this. Saudi Arabia is an important security partner for the United States. The UAE is an important security partner for the United States. We have an important counterterrorism relationship. The Saudis and the Emirates have been part of this groundbreaking detente with Israel, resulting in several recognition agreements. That is great for U.S. security interests in the region. But it is time for us to reset those relationships to make clear that if our Gulf partners are going to participate in actions inside the region that are terrible for our security interests, then we can't join them in those actions--a reset that includes an expectation that the Saudis and the Emirates address what is a very disturbing downward trend in the ability of individuals inside those countries to have political space with which to contest grievances with the regimes.

It is time for us to make sure that our relationships with our Gulf allies are always consistent with U.S. national security endeavors, and the Biden administration is off to a very good start in resetting those relationships by pulling ourselves out of a war inside Yemen that has killed 17,000 civilians, caused 100,000 kids to die of starvation and disease, and ends up with our bombs doing this to a school bus full of 8-, 9-, and 10-year-olds.

I yield the floor.

Mr. President, I have a request for one committee to meet during today's session of the Senate. It has the approval of the Majority and Minority leaders.

Pursuant to rule XXVI, paragraph 5(a), of the Standing Rules of the Senate, the following committee is authorized to meet during today's session of the Senate:

Committee on Banking, Housing, and Urban Affairs

The Committee on Banking, Housing, and Urban Affairs is authorized to meet during the session of the Senate on Thursday, January 28, 2021, at 10 a.m., to conduct a hearing on the nomination of the Honorable Marcia L. Fudge, of Ohio, to be Secretary, U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development.

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

Madam President, I am going to be joined on the floor over the next 45 minutes or so by a number of my colleagues to talk about an exceptional court case that is being heard today in New Orleans, LA.

This is a court case the Trump administration, along with a number of Republican attorneys general, has brought to obliterate the Affordable Care Act, all of it, overnight. The case, if successful, would result in a humanitarian catastrophe in this country.

Why do I say that? Because the plaintiffs in the case, backed by the Trump administration, are arguing that the court should throw out the entire Affordable Care Act, with nothing to replace it, despite the fact that for almost a decade now, I have listened to this President and my Republican colleagues in the Congress object to the Affordable Care Act on the premise that they will have something better to replace it with--in President Trump's words, a replacement that will insure more people, at lower cost, with all the protections the Affordable Care Act has. That plan has not materialized yet because it doesn't exist. It has never existed. It will never exist.

The choice today is between the Affordable Care Act, which insures over 20 million Americans, which guarantees that people with preexisting conditions cannot be discriminated against, and nothing--no protections, no expansion of Medicaid, no subsidies--for individuals to buy private insurance.

Right now, with the support of Republicans in Congress, the Trump administration today is making the argument that the entire Affordable Care Act should be struck down, with nothing--nothing at all--to replace it.

This is my friend John from Middletown, CT. I had breakfast with John last week. That is a picture of John in his younger years. John was 12 years old when he started to have flulike symptoms but was diagnosed-- coincidentally, on the day of the tragedy in Sandy Hook, CT--with a rare form of soft-tissue cancer in the back of his throat.

The treatment process for John was, in his words, horrendous, bringing him to as little as 70 pounds for a period of time, rendering him unable to speak, eat, or drink. He was out of school and in and out of the hospital for almost 2 years.

Six years later, he can only open his jaw a small fraction of the normal range of motion; he can only chew foods out of one side of his mouth; and he has very limited healing ability for any jaw injury.

These issues will never go away for John. He has become an advocate for the Affordable Care Act because he knows--he knows that if the Trump administration's lawsuit is successful, his life as he knows it is over because, once again, insurance companies would deny him treatment. No insurance company would provide John Carlson with insurance, knowing his history of cancer, if they were allowed to make decisions for themselves on who gets coverage and who doesn't. The only reason John gets coverage is that we have said, through the Affordable Care Act, we are not going to hold you responsible for your childhood cancer. We are going to make sure you get insurance no matter what.

These are the stakes right now. These are the stakes for millions of Americans like John whose lives will be upended if this heartless, thoughtless, cruel lawsuit proceeds. We should be talking about how to make the healthcare system better. We should be talking about ways to lower costs. We shouldn't be talking about going backward with no safety net.

What if this lawsuit is successful? I haven't heard a single Republican in the Senate talk about what they would do. I haven't heard the President talk about what his plan is if his lawsuit is successful.

What happens to John? What are you going to do to make sure he still gets the treatment he needs? The answer is, you don't know. The answer is, you are jumping without a net, and you are playing with the lives of millions of Americans.

John is a remarkable young man also because his eyes were opened when he was in the hospital. I want to read you his words. He said this to me a couple of weeks ago, and I asked him to write it down because it is really remarkable the capacity of young people to see beyond their own suffering. He said:

I wanted to take this opportunity today to tell one more

story about an experience I had in the hospital during my

cancer treatment. This is a story about a young boy who

received cancer treatment the same time as me. During my

daily physical therapy walks around the childhood cancer

floor, I started to notice a pattern. There was always one

room--directly across from the nurses station--with the same

patient inside. A small

boy, no older than three years old. I can remember asking my

parents and nurses, ``Why are that baby's parents not with

him?'' I felt so angry that such a tiny child was left alone

and forgotten in a hospital room while going through cancer

treatment. I remember seeing the tiny chemotherapy port

embedded in his head through the glass door.

``Why would they abandon him like that?'' I asked the nurse

walking with me that day. She explained to me that he had not

been abandoned at all, he was not forgotten nor neglected.

She explained that he was left alone due to pure necessity

and desperation.

This is John talking. He said:

I learned that both of his parents were working day and

night to be able to afford his cancer treatment. Nobody

deserves to go through this alone, especially not a three-

year-old infant. I shared my story so that his story will not

continue to take place in America. I shared my story so that

patients fighting for their life will no longer be taken

advantage of by the hospitals and insurance companies.

What a miracle that this young man, going through his own cancer treatments, would think of a 3-year-old child who has no parents there with him because his parents are working multiple jobs in order to afford the cancer treatments for their son.

Before the Affordable Care Act went into effect, 750,000 people in this country went into bankruptcy because of medical costs. That does not happen any longer. It doesn't mean our healthcare system is perfect. It doesn't mean it doesn't need more improvement, but why would we want to go back to the day in which a family lost everything simply because their 3-year-old son got cancer? Why would we take this chance with these people's lives?

I, once again, come to the floor to beg my colleagues to stand with us, to stand with us and oppose this lawsuit--this careless, thoughtless lawsuit. At the very least, if you support it, then come to the floor with a real plan for how you are going to take care of John and the millions of Americans who rely on the Affordable Care Act for coverage.

I yield the floor.

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

Mr. President, on July 9, the Trump administration will be in court defending the Texas v. United States lawsuit. Let me rephrase that. They will not be defending the lawsuit. They will be arguing on the side of the plaintiff in that lawsuit.

This is a virtually unprecedented move. Administrations traditionally defend the statutes of the United States, no matter what they feel about the politics of the underlying statute. But the Trump administration has made the decision to join with 22 Republican attorneys general to argue that the entirety of the Affordable Care Act should be dismantled, with nothing to replace it.

There are those of us who believe that it would not be wise policy to kick 20 million people off of insurance and get rid of all of the insurance protections in the Affordable Care Act, with no idea as to what comes next. We have begged our Republican colleagues to join us in telling the Trump administration--demanding that the Trump

administration argue against the attorneys general in this case.

I have listened to my Republican friends, and I have listened to the President himself over and over again say that they don't like the Affordable Care Act. They want to replace it with something else, something that insures more people, and something that continues to protect people with preexisting conditions. If that is your position, it stands to reason that you would oppose a lawsuit that seeks to invalidate the entirety of the Affordable Care Act with nothing to replace it.

The bewitching hour is upon us. The oral arguments are the week after next. This lawsuit was successful at the district court level, so there is no reason not to believe there is a substantial possibility that it could be successful at the appellate court level as well.

I wanted to come to the floor, as we head into this week while we will be back in our districts, just to make sure that everybody understands what the stakes are on July 9 when the Trump administration will argue in court to get rid of insurance for 20 to 30 million Americans and what the stakes are for this Senate--in particular, Senate Republicans refusing to stand up to the President in his perpetuation of this lawsuit.

If the Affordable Care Act is struck down, there are 130 million Americans with preexisting conditions who could see insurance rates increase by up to 50 to 60 percent. Others will have their insurance withdrawn when they go through open enrollment next because no insurer will cover someone with serious, very expensive preexisting conditions. That was the way things worked before the Affordable Care Act was passed.

Gone is Medicaid expansion, which today covers 17 million people across the country--and I have been happy to see more and more States with Republican Governors or Republican State legislators adopt the Medicaid expansions and become a source of bipartisan agreement that more people should have access to Medicaid--but those 17 million people will lose their coverage.

There are 12 million seniors who will immediately pay more for prescription drugs because the Affordable Care Act gets rid of, over time, essentially the entirety of the Medicare part D doughnut hole.

There are 2.3 million adult children who are on their parents' insurance until they become 26, who would potentially lose access to that insurance. The Affordable Care Act requires insurance companies to cover those kids. Many insurers, without that requirement, would no longer cover those children.

Then many of the other protections in the marketplace, like bans on lifetime caps or annual caps, can be lost. Insurers would once again be back in the practice of saying to a very sick child, a patient with cancer: You only get x amount of insurance coverage from us, and once you go beyond that number, then it is on your dime.

Again, remember, before the Affordable Care Act was passed, there were 1.5 million families every single year in this country who declared bankruptcy. Today, there are half as many families who declare bankruptcy in this country. It is not coincidence that studies have shown us that of those 1.5 million, half of them were declaring bankruptcy because of medical costs. When you don't go bankrupt any longer because of medical costs because you have access to affordable insurance and your insurance company can't kick you off because you get sick, you don't face the kind of destitution that families faced before.

So I think it does make sense to run through the lineup of who has weighed in in favor of this court case to invalidate the entirety of the Affordable Care Act and knock 20 to 30 million people off of insurance to jack up rates for millions more and who has weighed in against it.

Well, the President wants this lawsuit to succeed. Attorneys general want this lawsuit to succeed. And by the silence of my Republican colleagues, you would infer that many Republicans may want this lawsuit to succeed.

But here is who hates this lawsuit. I am not going to run through the whole list here, but this is essentially anybody who knows anything about healthcare. This is essentially every organization that represents people who have serious diseases, every association that represents doctors, and every association that represents hospitals. You don't really find all of those groups aligned on much at all because when you are moving around pieces in the healthcare system, often you will do something that benefits patients that insurers will not like or you benefit something at hospitals that single-practice offices will not like. This is pretty much everybody who says: If you kick 20 million people off insurance like that and you have no plan to replace it, that is a humanitarian catastrophe.

Here is what the AARP says in their filing opposing this lawsuit:

If this Court finds that the ACA is invalid, millions of

older adults will lose the healthcare coverage and consumer

protections they have relied on for years. They will also

throw the Medicare and Medicaid programs into fiscal and

administrative chaos, which will disrupt the nation's

healthcare system and economy. It will plunge the more than

100 million people with preexisting conditions into an abyss

of uncertainty about whether they can obtain coverage.

That is the AARP.

Here is what the American Medical Association says: ``The decision below, if affirmed, would have devastating effects on the quality, cost, and availability of such care.''

Families USA says: ``Among those whose coverage rates increased due to Medicaid expansion are young adults, people with HIV, veterans, rural residents, and racial and ethnic minorities.''

For many of our most vulnerable citizens who are covered by Medicaid, eliminating the expansion would leave them without healthcare.

I mentioned the insurance companies are against this lawsuit. They say this: ``Invalidation of the ACA--irrespective of the continued operation of the so-called individual mandate--would wreak havoc on the healthcare system.''

Finally, Americans with disabilities say:

The result is a cruel irony: the population that needs

healthcare the most has the hardest time obtaining it. For

the last nine years, the ACA has helped change that.

Stripping away its protections now will reverse the positive

gains that people with disabilities have realized and will

return this community to the same grim reality as before the

ACA, if not place people with disabilities in an even worse

position.

So let's not forget where we were before the Affordable Care Act was passed. I am not saying that it is perfect. I am not saying that we shouldn't work together to try to improve it. We just finished a debate in the Health Committee in which we passed a whole bunch of reforms to our healthcare system that Republicans and Democrats agree on.

But the American Cancer Society, in their filing, reminds the court: ``A 2009 Harvard Medical School study found approximately 45,000 deaths annually could be attributed to lack of health insurance among working- age Americans.''

The Heart Association said this: ``Even during a heart attack, uninsured patients were more likely to delay seeking medical care because of the financial implications.''

I could go on and on, reading from these filings or reading from the testimony that all of these groups have submitted. Again, that is not to say that these groups don't want changes in our healthcare system. Nobody on this list, as far as I know, is arguing for the status quo, just as no one in this body is arguing for the status quo. But to rip away Medicaid expansion, to rip out from the roots of the healthcare system the exchanges and the tax credits, to get rid of all of the insurance protections, to reverse the gains we have made on lowering prescription drug costs for seniors--to do all of that with nothing to replace it is to invite misery, destitution, and chaos.

Let's just be honest. We are not ready to ride to the rescue. I offered an amendment in the Health Committee today just asking for the Department of Health and Human Services to provide us with a report about what the landscape would look like in the healthcare system if Texas v. United States were successful. I didn't get a single Republican vote for that one. All I was asking was that we just get a report on how bad it is going to be so

that we can start doing a little bit of advance planning, and not a single Republican was willing to vote for that in committee today.

So we are deliberately boxing our eyes and ears about what the effects on our constituents could be if this lawsuit is successful. We are not in a position to ride to the rescue. There is no chance that this Congress is going to pass a new healthcare reform proposal that will restore healthcare to everybody who lost it. That is not happening, and I know that is not a surprise to anyone here.

You also shouldn't delude yourself into thinking this lawsuit will not be successful. There are lots of very smart legal scholars who suggest that this argument that the plaintiffs are making, which the Trump administration has endorsed, is nonsense. I tend to agree with them. The argument is that because you got rid of one section of the Affordable Care Act, then the court needs to invalidate the rest.

Well, Congress made its intent pretty clear. Republicans decided to get rid of the individual mandate for the penalty that is assessed if you don't have insurance and deliberately did not choose to get rid of the rest of it. I think that is not a smart decision, but the intent of Congress is pretty clear.

It is my belief that this argument doesn't hold water, and that is the belief of many smart legal scholars, but the district court ruled in favor of the plaintiffs. So you already have a Federal judge who invalidated the entire Affordable Care Act.

Since then, the Trump administration has upped the ante. The district court finding in favor of the plaintiffs, which invalidates the entire Affordable Care Act, didn't convince the President to say: Let's pull back the reins a little bit here. Let's maybe change our position. This feels too real. Let's hedge our bets. No; after the district court ruled in favor of the plaintiffs, the administration changed their position to go all in on the plaintiffs' side. Their initial lawsuit only backed up some of the plaintiffs' claims.

So the district court ruled that the Affordable Care Act has to disappear overnight. The Trump administration has changed their position to weigh in and to support the entirety of the lawsuit, and we are not having a serious conversation about what happens if the fate that all of these groups are deeply fearful of comes to pass.

Finally, this is not about numbers. This isn't about statistics. This is about real people. Michael from New Fairfield, CT, says:

This is . . . personal to me, the ACA literally saved my

life in 2016. I have pre-existing, recurrent skull base

disease for most of my adult life. I underwent an 11-hour

skull base neurosurgery to remove a benign tumor that

involved my brain arteries, nasal passages, jaw and a total

reconstruction of my middle and outer ear canals. My surgeon

said I was a month away from a much more debilitating

surgical outcome. As it is, my recovery and rehabilitation

period has been a full two years with resulting partial

physical impairment.

My spouse and I both run our own businesses and the ACA is

still our family's only option for healthcare. Without the

operations and the ACA coverage, the disease would have

continued to progress--I would have eventually died and my

family would have had to sell the house and/or go bankrupt to

manage the medical expenses.

David from Southport said:

In July of 2011 I was diagnosed with Colon Cancer. At the

time, I was covered under an individual policy with Blue

Cross Blue Shield. It was a very comprehensive policy and,

after my deductible was satisfied, it covered all my doctor

and hospital expenses, surgeries, chemotherapy, medications,

etc.

However, a couple of years later I was advised that due to

my preexisting condition I would not be able to renew my

policy. . . .

At that time I enrolled in [the Affordable Care Act] Access

Health CT and without this policy . . . [through Access

Health CT] I would not be able to be insured and would face

prohibitive costs for even basic care.

David's story can be told thousands of times over: a diagnosis followed by denial of coverage from an insurance company because of a preexisting condition.

There is no free market response when it comes to very sick people who want insurance. The free market tells the insurance company: Do not insure somebody who is going to cost you a lot of money. The free market would tell the insurance company to keep that person on the outside of insurance. So there has to be a public sector response. We provided that response with the Affordable Care Act and now, in a matter of weeks or months, it could all be gone.

So I come down to the floor this afternoon to once again engage my colleagues and ask them to work together. Let's try to find a common ground here, at least behind the premise that you shouldn't rip out the foundation of the modern healthcare system without a plan for what comes next.

I assume we will continue to offer unanimous consent requests to try to withhold funding for the Trump administration's perpetuation of this lawsuit. I would hope we can get Republican support for that motion, not because Republicans support the Affordable Care Act--I get it; I am not going to get Republicans to support the Affordable Care Act--but because my Republican friends need to make good on what they have said for years; that they want the Affordable Care Act to go, but they really want something else to replace it that will insure the same number of people and protect folks who are sick. That cannot happen if this lawsuit succeeds.

As we head back to our districts for this recess period, I wanted to make sure everybody knows how many groups that know something or anything about healthcare are standing against Texas v. The United States.

I yield the floor.