Floor Statements

Mr. President, when the Federal Government authorizes billions of dollars in grants to States, we have a duty to ensure that those dollars are spent in a responsible, effective manner. Accountability is essential to a healthy, functioning democracy.

And it is especially important when we discuss issues related to policing. In recent years, we have seen egregious instances of police misconduct, many of which have involved the unjustifiable deaths of Black people. Right now, it is vital that we prioritize initiatives that will improve public safety and strengthen public trust in law enforcement.

As mayor of Newark, I spent hundreds of hours with police officers riding along with them in their squad cars and learning about the daily challenges they face trying to make our communities safer. I have seen their bravery in the face of uncertainty and their fear knowing that their streets are filling up with deadly weapons of war. I have witnessed the enormous sacrifices they make in service of the public.

I have tremendous respect for our law enforcement officers. and I believe that they need support to be able to do their jobs effectively. I support improving officer training programs, hiring more officers in underresourced departments, and updating the outdated equipment law enforcement agencies are often left using.

Any resources provided, however, must be coupled with transparency. It flies in the face of responsible governance to invest significant resources into something without ever knowing what parts of that investment are paying dividends.

Transparency does not mean that every law enforcement program must come under the Federal Government's close scrutiny. Instead, it means commonsense data collection and reporting. It means tracking how Federal funds are spent and whether they produce positive or negative outcomes.

It means doing basic due diligence for the purpose of improving policing in this country and ensuring that taxpayer dollars are being spent as effectively as possible.

As Congress moves to increase Federal assistance to State and local law enforcement agencies, we must ensure responsible administration and oversight of grant programs and ensure resources are directed toward policing practices that actually enhance public safety and promote the dignity of all communities, especially Black and Brown communities.

One of the biggest pools of funding for our Nation's law enforcement comes in the form of grants from the Community Oriented Policing Services, COPS, Office. The amount of money given to State and local law enforcement through these grants has steadily increased over the last few years, from $222 million for fiscal year 2017 to $512 million for fiscal year 2022.

These grants fund the improvement of Tribal law enforcement agencies, school violence prevention, drug crime enforcement aria prevention, mental health and wellness services, equipment and technological capabilities, and community policing strategies.

All of these programs share the goal of improving public safety. Yet, despite the large increase in funding for the COPS grant program, Congress has not moved to measure the successes and failures of the program. As such, we cannot be sure that real improvements are actually being made with the more than half a billion dollars in taxpayer money being spent.

Reviewing how COPS grants are being spent and the outcomes they are producing will help realize the very goals that the COPS program aims to advance.

Ensuring that the Federal Government, through COPS grants, invests in best practices will help train officers in the most effective ways possible. Establishing performance metrics for COPS grants will allow law enforcement agencies to identify which initiatives make officers and the public safer and which reduce negative and dangerous interactions between law enforcement and the public.

As law enforcement agencies are called upon to bolster their data collection and reporting practices, it is also important to recognize that some agencies, particularly in underresourced communities, struggle to respond to those calls even with the availability of COPS grants. We must specifically dedicate more resources toward helping these law enforcement agencies meet these standards.

In particular, many law enforcement agencies have not been fully equipped to report data to the Federal Bureau of

Investigation's National Use-of-Force Data Collection. This dearth of data severely hinders our ability to analyze policing trends, develop best practices, and hold officers accountable for wrongdoing when it occurs.

These measures for transparency and accountability are basic, commonsense ways to invest effectively in policing and make our communities safer. All law enforcement agencies should be collecting and reporting data. All law enforcement agencies should be complying with civil rights laws. All law enforcement agencies should be using performance metrics to identify best practices. These are the building blocks of responsible, modern policing which we should all be able to agree on.

Today, I introduced the COPS Responsible Administration and Management Act of 2022, which will promote the kind of accountability and transparency that should accompany these important investments that the Federal Government makes in law enforcement.

This bill supports and complements the crucial investments we are making in police forces by reviewing COPS grants to ensure they are being effectively and efficiently administered, evaluating how COPS grants are being utilized and how well they are assisting law enforcement in making communities safer, offering grants to agencies to improve data reporting, and assessing agency compliance with civil rights laws.

This Congress has made historic investments in improving law enforcement and addressing violent crime in our communities. Let us also take the time to make sure that those investments are paying off.

Law enforcement agencies across the country are struggling to manage competing demands. Officers work incredibly hard every day to protect their neighborhoods, and they often do so without the equipment, personnel, and training that they need.

The good news is that law enforcement agencies will be receiving many of these important resources with COPS grant funding. At the same time, if the goal of this funding is to improve policing and public safety, which we can all agree it is, then we must also track and evaluate the success of these grants.

Our investments should produce positive outcomes for communities. They should reduce negative and dangerous interactions between officers and the public, including use-of-force incidents, and they should increase the public's trust in law enforcement.

Our officers deserve resources that will help them do their jobs effectively and keep them safe. Our communities deserve police forces that are well-trained and well-informed. The COPS Administration Act will help secure both of those goals.

Mr. President, when the Federal Government authorizes billions of dollars in grants to States, we have a duty to ensure that those dollars are spent in a responsible, effective manner. Accountability is essential to a healthy, functioning democracy.

And it is especially important when we discuss issues related to policing. In recent years, we have seen egregious instances of police misconduct, many of which have involved the unjustifiable deaths of Black people. Right now, it is vital that we prioritize initiatives that will improve public safety and strengthen public trust in law enforcement.

As mayor of Newark, I spent hundreds of hours with police officers riding along with them in their squad cars and learning about the daily challenges they face trying to make our communities safer. I have seen their bravery in the face of uncertainty and their fear knowing that their streets are filling up with deadly weapons of war. I have witnessed the enormous sacrifices they make in service of the public.

I have tremendous respect for our law enforcement officers. and I believe that they need support to be able to do their jobs effectively. I support improving officer training programs, hiring more officers in underresourced departments, and updating the outdated equipment law enforcement agencies are often left using.

Any resources provided, however, must be coupled with transparency. It flies in the face of responsible governance to invest significant resources into something without ever knowing what parts of that investment are paying dividends.

Transparency does not mean that every law enforcement program must come under the Federal Government's close scrutiny. Instead, it means commonsense data collection and reporting. It means tracking how Federal funds are spent and whether they produce positive or negative outcomes.

It means doing basic due diligence for the purpose of improving policing in this country and ensuring that taxpayer dollars are being spent as effectively as possible.

As Congress moves to increase Federal assistance to State and local law enforcement agencies, we must ensure responsible administration and oversight of grant programs and ensure resources are directed toward policing practices that actually enhance public safety and promote the dignity of all communities, especially Black and Brown communities.

One of the biggest pools of funding for our Nation's law enforcement comes in the form of grants from the Community Oriented Policing Services, COPS, Office. The amount of money given to State and local law enforcement through these grants has steadily increased over the last few years, from $222 million for fiscal year 2017 to $512 million for fiscal year 2022.

These grants fund the improvement of Tribal law enforcement agencies, school violence prevention, drug crime enforcement aria prevention, mental health and wellness services, equipment and technological capabilities, and community policing strategies.

All of these programs share the goal of improving public safety. Yet, despite the large increase in funding for the COPS grant program, Congress has not moved to measure the successes and failures of the program. As such, we cannot be sure that real improvements are actually being made with the more than half a billion dollars in taxpayer money being spent.

Reviewing how COPS grants are being spent and the outcomes they are producing will help realize the very goals that the COPS program aims to advance.

Ensuring that the Federal Government, through COPS grants, invests in best practices will help train officers in the most effective ways possible. Establishing performance metrics for COPS grants will allow law enforcement agencies to identify which initiatives make officers and the public safer and which reduce negative and dangerous interactions between law enforcement and the public.

As law enforcement agencies are called upon to bolster their data collection and reporting practices, it is also important to recognize that some agencies, particularly in underresourced communities, struggle to respond to those calls even with the availability of COPS grants. We must specifically dedicate more resources toward helping these law enforcement agencies meet these standards.

In particular, many law enforcement agencies have not been fully equipped to report data to the Federal Bureau of

Investigation's National Use-of-Force Data Collection. This dearth of data severely hinders our ability to analyze policing trends, develop best practices, and hold officers accountable for wrongdoing when it occurs.

These measures for transparency and accountability are basic, commonsense ways to invest effectively in policing and make our communities safer. All law enforcement agencies should be collecting and reporting data. All law enforcement agencies should be complying with civil rights laws. All law enforcement agencies should be using performance metrics to identify best practices. These are the building blocks of responsible, modern policing which we should all be able to agree on.

Today, I introduced the COPS Responsible Administration and Management Act of 2022, which will promote the kind of accountability and transparency that should accompany these important investments that the Federal Government makes in law enforcement.

This bill supports and complements the crucial investments we are making in police forces by reviewing COPS grants to ensure they are being effectively and efficiently administered, evaluating how COPS grants are being utilized and how well they are assisting law enforcement in making communities safer, offering grants to agencies to improve data reporting, and assessing agency compliance with civil rights laws.

This Congress has made historic investments in improving law enforcement and addressing violent crime in our communities. Let us also take the time to make sure that those investments are paying off.

Law enforcement agencies across the country are struggling to manage competing demands. Officers work incredibly hard every day to protect their neighborhoods, and they often do so without the equipment, personnel, and training that they need.

The good news is that law enforcement agencies will be receiving many of these important resources with COPS grant funding. At the same time, if the goal of this funding is to improve policing and public safety, which we can all agree it is, then we must also track and evaluate the success of these grants.

Our investments should produce positive outcomes for communities. They should reduce negative and dangerous interactions between officers and the public, including use-of-force incidents, and they should increase the public's trust in law enforcement.

Our officers deserve resources that will help them do their jobs effectively and keep them safe. Our communities deserve police forces that are well-trained and well-informed. The COPS Administration Act will help secure both of those goals.

Mr. President, in reserving the right to object, I think the points that the Senator from Kentucky is making are worthy. We are facing a reality right now wherein there are lots of threats that are increasing against public officials all around our country, and I understand that.

This is not a bill that Senator Menendez and I just wrote and brought to the floor. This is a bill that we worked through the committee process. It was a long and arduous process that was done in a bipartisan manner. During the discussion that the committee had, the point that the Senator from Kentucky brought up was brought up as well. There is a real concern about the safety and security of the Members of this body. But with the understanding and the commitment that there would be a bipartisan effort to work on this issue, every Senator on the Judiciary Committee said we should let this go for right now. This bill has been vetted; it has been worked over in a bipartisan manner; and it is ready to pass.

Threats on the Federal judiciary have gone up 500 percent. I will grant you, threats on Members of Congress have doubled, but the threats on the Federal judiciary are rising, and we saw that in the case of Justice Kavanaugh. This body thought it enough not to hold up the protection of Supreme Court Justices in order to protect the 535 of us, and we passed a bill to protect the Supreme Court Justices.

So here we now have a bill that has been vetted in committee, that has been worked on in a bipartisan fashion, and has come out, and we have a commitment. For the Senator from Kentucky to say that nothing has been done is not right. We now have Senator Ted Cruz and Senator Amy Klobuchar working a bill through committee, through regular order, to make sure that we address the concerns that he is having.

This is my concern: Threats on the judiciary have gone up and are significantly higher than on this body. To grind this bill to a halt right now puts at risk members of the judiciary when we have the power in this body to protect our brothers and sisters in that branch of government.

Why would we stop when there is good will on the Judiciary Committee to work on the concerns?

There are two people who are committed to this bill, and there are verbal commitments from everyone. To stop this today creates a window of vulnerability that we know is real because we just saw a threat on a Supreme Court Justice.

For the sake of mercy, for the sake of caution, for the sake of the protection of the people in the Federal judiciary, let's pass this bill. I commit myself to joining with Senator Ted Cruz, to joining with Senator Amy Klobuchar, to joining with Chairman Durbin and with Ranking Member Grassley, who have also spoken of their willingness to work a bill through regular order. That is what we should be doing.

Our job as Senators, if anything, first and foremost, is to protect the lives of American citizens. We have a bill that is widely bipartisan, that has proven to be urgent--a bill with a name of a young man who was slaughtered in his home. To hold this bill up is cruel. It is creating risk and jeopardy to people who serve in the judiciary. It is wrong. It is wrong. It is wrong.

I ask my colleague, with all humility and with all compassion and empathy, to please let this go. I commit to him that I will fight and work with the bipartisan coalition that is working on ways to protect the people in this body.

I yield the floor.

Mr. President, I literally turned to my staff and asked: Has Senator Paul's staff reached out to us at all?

That is not the case.

Then, to characterize us as the opposition, we are not in opposition to this bill. We are trying to protect Federal judges as is the unanimous vote of the Judiciary Committee.

So this is very frustrating that we should stop this for the Supreme Court Justices--the Senator has no objection to that--but, for some reason, not for the other members of the judiciary. I just find that problematic.

I am willing to meet with the Senator. I am not in opposition to his bill. The meeting which would be had, I will do but with the two sponsors of the bill to protect the U.S. Senate. But to hold up the protection of other fellow citizens because we are not getting protection, to me, does not mark the nobility of this body and the self-sacrifice of this body.

I yield the floor.

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

I rise not expecting to give a speech today, but I want to, first and foremost, recognize the Chair, who is my ``mother'' Senator, and I want to thank her for her incredible service to this institution.

I want to thank, which I rarely do, the staff who works here and runs the Senate every day, but I rise today to talk for a moment about groups that we don't talk about enough on this floor. We usually talk about everybody from law enforcement to our military, but we don't talk about artists.

We are a nation that even from our founding during Revolutionary times, there were extraordinary artists who expanded the moral imagination of this country and helped us to see a nation that could be free from British rule and domination.

In every point of American history, from protest movements to battles for suffrage, we have had artists who have painted these pictures of an America, a vision for what could be, but even more than that, they have healed us during difficult times. They have pulled us together with their inspiration. They have called out injustices. They have brought light to the dark places of our country.

You know, Picasso talked about art being something that helps to shake the dust off the soul of humanity, but I think it does more than that. As an African American, I have seen art in the tradition of healing, of providing hope, of even calling out with specificity the instructions on how to be free.

We remember the song that Harriet Tubman pointed to:

Wade in the water, wade in the water, God is going to trouble

the water.

That is the tradition that sourced my family. From enduring the pain of a nation that was unequal and divided, often in church with gospel songs, there was healing; there was hope. And even the poetry in the Harlem Renaissance spoke to an America that could possibly be if we just never stop believing.

As the great poet Langston Hughes said:

America never was America to me,

[But] I swear this oath--

America will be!

Who made America,

Whose sweat and blood, whose faith and pain,

Whose hand at the foundry, whose plow in the rain,

Must [make] our . . . dream [live] again.

O, yes, I say it plain,

America never was America to me,

And yet I swear this oath--

America will be!

I lean on poetry and song today just to get myself up in the morning. I have seen how artists have come to visit us here in the Capitol and Senators from

all backgrounds thanking them for providing for them the soundtrack of their lives. And God, humor, the comedians of old, I remember sneaking into balconies--in my house--and watching over the balcony my dad, quietly not thinking his children were listening, put on records by Richard Pryor, whose humor helped to heal his troubled heart, make him laugh at the absurdities of a nation that still had not fully fulfilled itself.

And so I bring this thought and this heart to say thank you to artists, thank you to this institution for what we did in a bipartisan way to make sure we were funding the venues of this country, the stages where so many artists were able to continue to work during the pandemic. We fund the arts. It is funding that often has to be pushed or fought for, but I say it is the funding that in many ways helps to sustain and source the soul of a nation because without art, we would have lost our way a long time ago.

Now, this week I had this moment where you have just got to pinch yourself, and I know that the Presiding Officer has had this moment, too, where you get this call from White House staff, and they say: Hey, we have got some extra seats in the President of the United States' box at the Kennedy Center to come see a performance by a group called Freestyle Love Supreme.

And I said no immediately. I am so busy. I have got so much work. I had a night that was ending relatively early. But my staff said to me, you know, a guy, Chris Jackson--he was George Washington in ``Hamilton''--is going to be there as well, and I had gotten to know him because he was so generous. I saw him in ``In The Heights.'' He invited me backstage, gave me such love. I saw him in ``Hamilton.'' Even when I had someone I was trying to date with me, he made me seem special in her eyes. I will never forget that. He was a good wingman.

So I went to go see them perform, and I was just blown away by the performance. I hope that while they are here, people get a chance to go. But what blew me away was how they reaffirmed that message to me. At a time that I am troubled with what is happening in our life, with decisions in the Supreme Court, with challenges, with the economy, they touched on a lot of those issues with humor and artistic genius, and I found my spirit being lifted. I found camaraderie with strangers.

You see a whole crowd of people being pulled together around ideals of empathy and love and affirmation of our most core, cherished values as a nation, like freedom and protest.

I am honored that this group is visiting the U.S. Senate right now-- for many, their first time being in this sacred space, this hallowed Hall--to get a chance to witness what we do every day.

And I just want to say thank you to them, and I want to give tribute to all of the artists in America who do so much for the soul of this Nation and inspire us every day not to stop believing in tomorrows that can be better than what we have in the present.

I yield the floor.

Madam President, the instruction by my colleague from Wisconsin directs conferees to reject bipartisan House language that addresses a serious public health concern related to mink farming.

Mink farms in Europe and the United States have spawned five COVID-19 variants that have collectively infected thousands of people. The next mink variant could infect millions of people. Vaccinations do not prevent infection or transmission in mink, and the risk of virus mutation on mink farms remains significant.

Today, there are only 60 mink farms left in the United States, and they sell their furs to buyers in China, not here. Americans have stopped buying fur because keeping these semiaquatic wild animals in cages and breaking their necks to kill them for fur is inhumane.

More than a dozen European countries have already phased out mink farming because of the serious pandemic risks they present. The United States should immediately follow suit.

I urge my colleagues, for the health of our country, to join me in voting no on this motion to instruct.

Vote on Motion

I ask for the yeas and nays.

Reserving the right to object.

Mr. President, I have to preface my remarks with my deep respect for the senior Senator from Iowa. I respect him not just because he slays it on Twitter, but I respect him because of his heart, because we have a great working relationship, and because we have worked together to deal with the drug crisis in America. We have worked together to make the judicial system more just.

What you hear from the senior Senator is passion that comes from the crisis, as he said. I have traveled his State considerably, and the opioid crisis is a crisis from New Jersey to Iowa--all over our country. He read the statistics, but you could hear from his heart that these are families he knows; that these are people who have seen the tremendous loss of young people through opioid overdoses.

We cannot in this country tolerate one more overdose. I agree with the Senator's sense of urgency in that we cannot tolerate one more death and that we have to address this public health crisis. But with this goal in mind, I cannot support the bill as it is offered today because extending the temporary scheduling of fentanyl analogs alone is a failed experiment.

We have seen this temporary scheduling. We are in it right now. Classwide scheduling has not curbed the overdoses. In fact, overdoses have increased during the period that fentanyl analogs have been scheduled by nearly 40 percent from June 2019 to May 2020.

Here is what makes it even worse.

As a result of just blanket classwide scheduling--this broad sweep approach--the FDA recently testified that there is a potential lifesaving antidote to these fentanyl analogs. It is basically a stronger version of naloxone. That stronger version has been placed, because of this blanket scheduling, as a schedule I. The FDA knows that this could actually endanger more people.

Why in the midst of a public health crisis are we criminalizing the next naloxone instead of rushing it to the hands of researchers for study and evaluation?

When you put something in schedule I, it is a declaration that doesn't even have any health benefits. This is bad science and, therefore, bad policy.

This bill, as it is now, would not prevent the steady increase of fentanyl-related overdoses that we are seeing nationwide. It wouldn't achieve that because we have had temporary scheduling, and it is still going up. It will not prevent the loss of one loved one that we see happening right now or the pain that motivates my friend and senior Senator from Iowa.

This is a public health crisis, and our strategies should be informed by the science as a public health response. It requires a response that is dictated by science- and evidence-based interventions. Temporary scheduling, again, is not simply that. Classwide scheduling impedes scientists' and impedes researchers' abilities to develop evidence- based public health solutions that are needed to overcome the fentanyl crisis and deal with these fentanyl analogs.

Look, right now, temporary scheduling has given this false impression that Congress is doing something to deal with fentanyl analogs while the death count goes up. What it has done, really, is allowed the government to neglect the deeper calling for us to really deal with the challenges as they are. There are a lot of evidence-based intervention strategies--things we know that work--that we are not investing in. There are things that could help these crises in our communities.

Fundamentally, research by the FDA has confirmed that what is being proposed--classwide scheduling--has improperly scheduled substances with therapeutic promise and low abuse potential. We need to submit all fentanyl-related substances to the same scientific evaluation that we have done for other controlled substances. We need to test for their dangerousness. We must identify those that might be lifesaving overdoses.

All we have done for nearly 4 years now is schedule these substances without thinking about the scientific and medical evidence. Kicking the can down the road by temporarily scheduling these substances, yet again now, without making any effort to follow the scientific process, is irresponsible. We are preemptively criminalizing substances that may not be harmful and may actually be antidotes, that might be the answer in helping to curb these horrific overdoses and these horrible deaths. The temporary scheduling of fentanyl analogs without testing for pharmacological effects means that people will be convicted and incarcerated for substances that may have no pharmacological effect.

I want to again make clear that I am committed to ending this pandemic. I carry a picture in my wallet of someone who died from an overdose--it was given to me as I crisscrossed this country--so as to never forget the everyday emergency.

As the President mentioned in his speech to this body yesterday, confronting the opioid epidemic is something that Republicans and Democrats, united, can get behind. It should be bipartisan, but at the same time, our response should not be guided by the same old drug war ideologies that didn't stop the overuse of drugs. It should be guided by the scientific evidence. It should be guided by compassion. It should be guided by what works.

Classwide scheduling ignores the scientific and medical guidance. It sets in place a dangerous precedent, and it repeats mistakes we have made too many times in the past.

I have seen the drug war go awry. I have seen this body act in ways that have compounded problems and not helped people. I have seen the people with addictions--that are diseases--with nothing but jail and prison. We can get out of this crisis if we follow the science and if we follow what works, but it means Democrats and Republicans coming together.

I have tremendous respect for my colleague. I know we can find a way to move forward together. I know, if we continue to work together, we are going to find a way forward. I know, because of my experience with the senior Senator and his grace, that if we dedicate ourselves to working together, we can get good things done for this country. We have done it before. In this case, I think we can do it again.

So, with the deepest respect to my colleague, I respectfully object.

The Senator may proceed. I have nothing else to say.

Madam President, I have deep and tremendous respect for my friend from South Carolina. I am not a Senator from the South, but my family hails from the South, from Monroe, LA, to Alabama, to North Carolina. I know my roots, and I know the challenges of Jim Crow, and, thank God, we are not in a time of Jim Crow.

The history that my friend talked to, I know. I know his history, and I know my colleagues in the Senate know his history. We are all not blind to what happened in terms of racial oppression going back to the founding of this Nation. The Constitution that people have been waving around, it is hard not to read that and not see that many of the compromises were based upon an acquiescence to that original sin of this Nation--slavery. We know the violence of what he said and talked about.

I am frustrated that we can agree that there has been overwrought language on both sides of the political aisle around this issue, but we should be focusing on the facts. I have a hard time listening to people that want to talk about this issue and don't talk about facts.

In the United States today, it is more difficult for the average African American to vote than the average White American. That is not rhetoric. That is fact.

We know that Black voters, on average, are forced to wait on line twice as long as White voters.

We began this session today swearing an oath to that flag, saying that this would be a nation of liberty and justice for all. Where is the justice in a nation where there is, on average, for a Black person twice as long to vote? It is factual.

But let's keep going because I heard my colleague speak.

During the 2016 Presidential election, residents of entirely Black neighborhoods waited to vote. They were 74 percent more likely to spend more than 30 minutes at their polling place relative to residents of entirely White neighborhoods. That is a fact.

Similar racial disparities were observed right before the pandemic. In the 2018 midterm elections, the Brennan Center report found that Latino voters waited almost 46 percent longer than White voters and Black voters about 45 percent.

The report also found that Latinos and Black voters were more likely than White voters to wait in the longest of lines on election day.

You could go into State after State and you will see who waits, factually, on longer lines.

Georgia--are we going to reduce this to just being about water? I find that law offensive, but that is not the thing that offends me most.

Do you want to know what is going on in Georgia right now? They have a historical pattern of dwindling polling places in the diverse areas, with some voters in Georgia waiting up to 10 hours in predominantly Black neighborhoods.

Think about this for a second. Do you want to talk about voter suppression? You are working a job, you are taking care of young kids, and you are going to give up a day's salary in Georgia to vote? You want to talk about a modern day poll tax?

And my friends on the other side are saying that race is not an issue here?

I am going to continue with facts because I was flabbergasted that someone could stand up here and say there is not a different experience for Blacks and Whites when voting. I am just going to continue to read the facts.

Since Shelby v. Holder eviscerated the Voting Rights Act that people like Goodman, Chaney, and Schwerner died for, Black voters in Georgia have faced disproportionately longer lines and fewer polling places.

The average number of voters per polling place have grown 40 percent in diverse Atlanta Metro since 2012, and voters in Black neighborhoods waited nearly 10 times as long, on average, after polling places were closed in neighborhoods.

I am looking for an amen from my colleague from Georgia.

I mean, in what country are we, where a certain minority in predominantly minority communities has to wait 10 times as long?

And so when you read--and I have heard my colleagues read these laws. They read: Well, what is wrong with having no drop boxes because, hey, we didn't have them before the pandemic. What is wrong with not having that many days to vote by mail?

What is wrong with these things is obvious because they are not designed for voter protection. They are not designed to help voters have more access to the polls. They are designed to suppress the vote and create these longer lines. That is the obvious result, and if you can't see that, I am flabbergasted. I am sorry. It is hard. This is not my turn to speak, and forgive me to my colleagues. But I am flabbergasted that the Republican Party, the party of the 14th Amendment, the party that once fought for equal access to the polls is now creating this ruse that 19 States--that the States that are passing these laws, 19 States--this is not about voter protection.

Donald Trump's own person said the last election was the safest, most secure election in American history. This is not about in-person voter fraud. Study after study has shown that you are more likely to be struck by lightning.

This is about lies. I am sorry. This is about lies, and they are targeting groups.

I am going to go on with facts, but I just want to talk about students for a second. I heard Senator Jon Tester. I have heard my colleagues from New Hampshire, and they are not hiding the ball, folks. They are not trying to tell us: Oh, we are concerned about it.

As early as 2011, the State Republican house speaker at the time in New Hampshire--Senators, you know William O'Brien; can I get a hallelujah there--promised to clamp down on unrestricted voting by students calling them ``kids voting liberal, voting their feelings, with no life experience.''

I hear what you are saying, that this is--oh, these laws are innocuous on their face. But if you start looking at the legislative record, you see groups are being targeted in this country. Polling places are diminishing on college campuses. Voter ID laws are being created so complex in Midwestern States that they are saying you can't use a 4-year ID; it has got to be a 2-year ID. Those are some of the laws that are being passed.

Can somebody be a witness on that?

And I hear this rhetoric where people pull out one law: Well, look at this law. This is just about shrinking the days, or this is so innocuous on its face, and I know there are people at home thinking to themselves: Hey, that doesn't sound like a big deal. Maybe the Republicans have a point.

No. Let's return to the facts.

I am going to go to Texas because I heard the Senator from Texas accuse this body of creating rhetoric that was divisive.

Do you want to know what is divisive to a country that says ``e pluribus unum'' above where the presiding person is? Do you want to know what is divisive? It is telling people in the Congresswoman's State that if you live in a predominantly minority area, we are going to remove polling places and change laws so that Black folks disproportionately are waiting 5, 10, 15 times longer.

Facts. The burden of long lines in polling places, closures in Texas in the post-Shelby County areas often falls disproportionately on Black and Latino voters.

Congresswoman, of the approximately 750 sites Texas has closed since Shelby v. Holder, 542 were in the 50 counties with the fastest growing Black and Latino populations.

Don't lecture me about Jim Crow. I know this is not 1965. That is what makes me so outraged. It is 2022, and they are blatantly removing more polling places from the counties where Blacks and Latinos are overrepresented. I am not making that up; that is a fact.

I am not going to stop because I am tired of hearing that this does not have to do with singling out certain populations in our country-- students, Native Americans--and not others.

I am not accusing anybody. Please, let's not go around in defense, where we crouch into defensive postures. I am not accusing anybody of being racist. I am just speaking to the facts in our country that I know motivate everybody here. A hundred of my--ninety-nine of my colleagues know it is wrong to create barriers for some populations and not others under the guise of a lie that there is a voter security problem.

Let me continue. I am sorry, Congresswoman, to keep talking about Texas.

In the Presidential primary on March 3, voters at historically Black Texas Southern University in Houston waited not an hour, not 2 hours, not 3, 4, 5--waited 6 hours.

A poll of Texas voters conducted just in the 2020 election underscored the disparity non-White voters faced in casting their ballots.

I am sorry. Senator Kaine, you were very good when you talked about that sign of 98 percent of people happy. I sat here stunned. I was wondering who they were polling because they were not polling Black and Latino voters in Texas when they did that.

Let me give you the facts. Forty-eight percent of Black voters and 55 percent of Latino voters in Texas found it easy to vote, but that leaves a lot of folks who didn't think it was easy. White voters-- actually, 65 percent think it is easy to vote.

Everybody is not happy. People who wait in 6-hour lines are not happy.

I just want to give a couple more facts. Let's go to my dad's home State. North Carolina was one of the States most affected by poll closures. There were 158 fewer polling places in 40 counties with large Black communities, and African-American voter participation dropped 16 percent. Why? Well, my friend Bennet said this. We still live in a country where the economic disparities between Blacks and Whites is what it was in the 1960s. So if you are a Black, struggling family, and your option to vote means standing in line for 10 hours--compared to predominantly White counties--where the wait is longer, you don't go vote.

That is not just Black folks. The stories about disabled voters, with about 1 in 7 or 1 in 8 pointing out that it is hard for them to vote because of physical impediments--that is discriminatory against them. It doesn't mean people here are anti-disabled. We are not throwing those labels around; I am just talking about the facts.

So I just want my colleagues to know that I can pull story after story of these States--the 19 that are passing these laws--if you pull them out and want to read them absent context, you are going to try to obscure the larger picture of what is going on in our Nation, which is that we are seeing entirely Republican legislatures--entirely Republican legislators--passing laws that are disproportionately impacting certain groups, by the facts.

I want to close with this: On the march across the Edmund Pettus Bridge, they were stopped and beaten back. They tried to go again with King and were again blocked by Alabama State troopers. But they finally got to their destination to protest voting rights.

I love what King said there. He talked about those people whose hearts were discouraged because they hadn't passed voting rights. I know there are going to be a lot of people here on this day who are going to feel that kind of discouragement. But, Reverend Warnock, King gave one of his best speeches that day where he asked people ``How long are we going to have to wait? Not long'' because the truth--I am thinking about the lies we are hearing now, the big lies, the lies of in-person voting. The truth, crushed to the Earth, will rise again.

Don't lie and say there is not a disparate voting reality for Blacks and Whites in this country right now; the facts speak differently. Don't lie and say that these laws are not being done in a way to make it harder for students to vote. Don't lie and say that we are a nation that should be doing more to ease access as opposed to putting up more barriers because to go on more barriers is anti-democratic. Those lies will not live forever.

I do believe still that the arc of the moral universe is long and it bends toward justice. I still believe that the best of our democracy will come out if people do not give up and are not discouraged.

I ask my colleagues right now to continue on the floor today, to continue to

tell the truth of what is happening in your States, to continue telling the truth of what is happening in our Nation, because we will win this fight. I don't know how long it will take, but that will be determined by how dedicated we are to the principles of this democracy.

We must live in a nation where everyone is equal--not in rhetoric or in slogans or in salutes, but everyone is equal in the experience they have to participate in democracy. The vote is the bedrock of our Nation. It is the foundation of the country, and it does have cracks that need our repair.

Whether we get down on our knees in prayer or we stand tall, let's continue the work of this democracy so that freedom and justice do roll down like water and righteousness like a mighty stream.

Forgive me, colleagues, for speaking well beyond my time, and I apologize if I demonstrated too much emotion.

Mr. President, I stand here today with a sober heart. I am a big believer that if America hasn't broken your heart, you probably don't love her enough.

We are here on the 1-year anniversary of one of our great Nation's moments of shame.

We saw a violent attack on this Capitol, ignited and incited by demagogues who were trying to spread a lie; telling people their votes were stolen by a President who broke with our traditions of a peaceful transfer of power and told his supporters to come to this building.

(Mr. VAN HOLLEN assumed the Chair.)

On that day of that vicious attack, we saw heroic actions by men and women who stood in the breach to try to protect the 535 Members of Congress, their staffs--the people in this body who do so much good to keep this Nation's traditions moving. As a result of that conflict, lives were lost. Brian Sicknick from my State died as a result of his injuries.

The feelings of that day are still with me. I was sitting right here next to friends and colleagues as we were told to stay in our seats, as we were told that the Capitol was under attack. I watched the basic decency of people in this room as staffers came in, in tears and in pain, and the comforting that I saw of some of my colleagues, and I watched other staff members protecting historic artifacts, protecting the very boxes that would ensure that our tradition would continue; that here on this Earth, a nation would be formed that values that highest ideals of humanity; that the people can come together and form amongst them a system of government.

We were escorted out that door, and I think the gravity of it really hit me when we came right out that door, and one of the first things I saw was an officer down.

I rushed over, and I said: ``What happened?''

He said: ``I was hit. I was hit.''

All along our retreat in that ignominious moment, all along that retreat, we saw officers injured.

I eventually walked and worked my way to my office, and I will never forget this moment as long as I live. I felt not just my own pain, but I thought immediately of my dad, and I felt the pain of my ancestors because, when I turned on that screen, the very first thing I saw was the Confederate flag, and it all came rushing to my heart, and I felt an ache and a hurt. My heart was broken.

I know that day shocked a lot of people, but when I saw that flag, it connected to a current of the dark eddies of our Nation's history that have persisted because violent mobs from the beginning of our country have tried to stop our democratic traditions.

That flag in so many communities in this country is carried by Klansmen, carried by those who took democratically elected officials-- Blacks in Southern States--ripped them from their offices, dragged judges out into the street, beat them, lynched them. That was their flag.

As I watched from my office, I saw swastikas. I saw Muslim hate. I talked to Black officers here, and as they defended the country they loved, they were repeatedly called the N-word over and over again. You can't be surprised. You just can't.

As we have always, in every generation, tried to make a more perfect union, this is part of that story--people who want to stop the march of democracy. Do you think that the suffrage movement didn't face violence? It did, as people tried to intimidate and beat and stop the equal franchise. Do you think the civil rights movement didn't face violence? How many martyrs' names do we know, people who were shot down and killed because they did not want them to have equal representation?

Why did I ache for my ancestors? Because those were the stories of my grandparents, those were the stories of my father, of the fear and intimidation of just trying to exercise their franchise.

Why are we surprised by demagoguery and hate in our Nation? It is a part of our story. But the greatness of our country is not that that existed but the good people who have come together in every generation and said: Not on our watch. We are better than this. We will pull together, out of the great, vast diversity of our Nation, a rainbow coalition of people dedicated not to a race or religion but to a national ideal.

I am here as a Senator, just the fourth Black person ever elected popularly in our Nation's history. I am here because White folks and Black folks and Asian folks and all Americans didn't just hope for a better democracy, didn't just condemn violence; they worked to preserve and protect and advance our Nation.

What are we doing now? Is this going to be a day where we just condemn what happened? Is this just going to be a day where we point fingers of blame and feel good in our contempt for those who were at the core of that? If that is what this day is about, it is for naught because we fail then to recognize this is not about a day. This was not 1 day. It was not one moment. It is a part of our story, and the threats continue. How can we be blind to the violence that has continued since that day?

Threats on Federal judges--we had a Federal judge's family shot and killed in my State. They are up 300, 400 percent. Threats on Members of this body, threats on all 535 Congresspeople are up around twofold.

Do you think this is about a day, when election officials, nonpartisan people, all across this country are now seeing threats? Reuters documented more than 850 threatening, hostile messages aimed at election officials. In Philadelphia, a Republican who dared to tell the truth about the election, mirroring the words of then-President Donald Trump's highest official that the election was fair--what happened to him? Threats and intimidation. People calling his home, literally threatening to murder his three children.

You think this is about 1 day in time?

A survey from the Brennan Center for Justice in April of 2021 found that one in three U.S. American election officials feels unsafe because of their job, and about 20 percent listed threats to their lives as a job-related concern.

This is not a foreign country. This is the United States of America, and our election officials, nonpartisan individuals--Republicans, Democrats, fellow Americans--are afraid to do their job because they tell the truth.

This is not about 1 day. This is not. This is a story of the founding of our country. As our Founders tried to break with the course of human events and establish here the greatest experiment of humanity, there were people who wanted authoritarianism; there were people who wanted bigotry; there were people who wanted to protect with violence the kind of despotism that we broke away from.

We make a big mistake if on this day, we just talk about what happened here. We have protection. We have security. But all across this country right now, there are believers in this democracy who have the same fears that my grandparents did, the same fears that my father did, the same fear that Blacks and Whites who joined arms to march across the Edmund Pettus Bridge for voting rights did. This is a cancer. It has always been here. And we make a tragic mistake just by talking about this day, because when I survey the United States of America, I am so worried. There has never been a time in my life where I have been more worried about this democracy.

I grew up with stories of family members who talked about the preciousness about what it is to vote. They love the heroes of John F. Kennedy and Medgar Evers and these people who fought for them from all backgrounds. My parents taught me to love people--Jewish people, like Abraham Joshua Heschel and Joachim Prinz; people who knew that in America, if you just fight for your own rights, who are you? This is a nation where we know we are all in this.

But I stand here today to ask you, why aren't we talking about the fact that in States right now, laws are being passed specifically designed to

disenfranchise people? Don't take my word for it. The year I came to this body, in 2013, a Federal judge in North Carolina looked at that voting law and said it was designed ``with surgical-like precision'' to disenfranchise Black Americans.

But I don't need to go back to 2013 to see reason for us all to be concerned. When early voting started in the fall of 2020 in Georgia, some voters had to wait up to 10 hours to vote in six metro areas in Georgia counties--six metro areas.

At polling places where minorities constituted more than 90 percent of active, registered voters, the average wait time in the evening for those Black communities was 51 minutes. When Whites comprised 90 percent, in those communities, the average wait time was 6 minutes. Think about this for a second. Are we satisfied with a democracy where in some communities, the Black communities will have to wait eight times longer to vote? Is that what we mean, equal justice under the law? Is that what we mean when we look at our flag and say ``liberty and justice for all''?

There are States right now passing voting laws to make it harder to vote. What happens when a working mom with three kids shows up, and the line is a 1-hour wait or a 2-hour wait? What does she do? Is it fair to her? Then they go as far in Georgia--say that person does want to wait and brings a folding chair and sits there for 2 and 3 and 4 hours. They make it illegal, for that person who might have diabetes, illegal, for that person who might have a mental condition, for someone to bring them water.

I am sorry. I grew up--and I confess it on the Senate floor--with the naive belief that the stories of my father and the stories of my grandparents were history; that we wouldn't live in a country where Black people are waiting eight, nine times the wait of White people; that in some communities, the wait would be 5, 6, 7 hours--a day's work for families who can't afford to give up a day's work.

You think this was about a day? I tell you it is about the cancer in our democracy that has been here from its start. This country's very survival has to be faced every generation. Democracy is not certain. It is not automatic. Democracy is hard.

Democracy takes work. Democracy takes sacrifice, but as we sit here now, in dozens of States, laws are being passed that disproportionately impact the disabled, that disproportionately impact Native Americans, and that disproportionately impact people of color.

So when I go back to the Confederate flag I saw waving just feet from where we stand right now--a flag that got so much currency during the backlash after Reconstruction and that got so much currency during the backlash after Brown v. Board of Education--I know it is part of a larger problem and that none of us who love our Nation and love this democracy can ever rest.

There are two people I want to mention before I conclude, both men I have come to admire. Both men risked their lives for this country. They weren't like our great, great veterans who fought nobly--and many of them died--but I hope we don't cheapen the truth of their stories because they did the work here at home, evidencing our highest values when our Founders wrote in the Declaration of Independence that we must mutually pledge our lives, our fortunes, and our sacred honor.

Both of these men happen to be Black, but it is a value that is evidenced in all backgrounds and all people. I am here because of that truth. Both of them were riddled with hateful words, called the N-word over and over and over again. One of those men I had the privilege of serving with, and both of these men were violently attacked. John Lewis was violently attacked as he tried to advance this democracy. He was beaten and had his head cracked open on the Edmund Pettus Bridge. He was spit on at sit-ins, and he won battles with others. He came to Congress, and he worked and fought and defended.

Republicans and Democrats supported the voting rights bill, but then it was gutted by the Supreme Court. Maybe you will have the experience I have had of when your heroes become your friends. I would ask him how it felt to watch part of his life's work be torn apart and have these new voting laws that disproportionately impact African Americans. How did it feel?

John Lewis, who was this man of peace and this man of grace, just said to me: You cannot stop the work of this democracy. One generation's gains don't pass on like an inheritance to the next. They have to earn them.

The other person is a guy named Harry Dunn. Like John Lewis, he put his life on the line in defending the Capitol. He is a Capitol Police Officer. When I read and saw his interviews after battling to save our lives against a mob incited by a demagogic President, he was sitting under the Rotunda and turned to another person after being called the N-word over and over again and said simply: ``Is this America?''

I hope all of us see that we have a responsibility to answer that question.

The John Lewis Voting Rights Advancement Act and the Freedom to Vote Act will be part of the answer to that question of whether a little Black boy and a little Black girl and a little White girl and a little White boy who go to vote with their parents can see an equal voting opportunity. That is going to be an answer to that question. Every generation has got to make this country live up to its promise. We are losing ground, and it didn't start on January 6 of last year.

I end with an answer, an inadequate answer, to Officer Dunn, in a poem I learned from my parents and in a poem I shared an affection for with John Lewis that calls upon every American not to point fingers of blame to others but to accept a responsibility not just to be satisfied in your contempt for some but to rise up as a force of light and love for all.

I end with Langston Hughes' poem:

O, let America be America again--

The land that never has been yet--

[But] yet must be--the land where [everyone] is free . . .

the poor [man], [Indian], [Negro], ME--

Who made America . . .

Whose faith and pain,

Whose hand at the foundry, whose plow in the rain,

Must [make this] mighty dream [live] again.

O, yes,

I say it plain,

America never was America to me,

And yet I swear this oath--

America will be!

I yield the floor.

Mr. President, on rollcall vote No. 499, I voted aye. It was my intention to vote nay. Therefore, I ask unanimous consent that I be permitted to change my vote since it will not affect the outcome.

It is frustrating, I know, to see such an incredible action taken, where we have made a difference, where the child tax credit already has had a significant impact. The Columbia Center on Poverty found that the October payment of the expanded child tax credit helped ensure 3.6 million American children--3.6 million American children--are no longer living below the poverty line.

What does that mean? When a child is raised above the poverty line, their horizons are transformed. It actually saves an incredible amount of taxpayer dollars. For every dollar we spend bringing a child above the poverty line, we return $7 back to our economy.

But it is deeper than that. There is a moral urgency. Children below the poverty line have so many more challenges. Their horizons are constrained, their life outcomes are lessened.

Above the poverty line, our children start to exhibit their genius. Children raised above the poverty line have higher lifetime earnings. They have lower medical costs. Children above the poverty line are less likely to go to the hospital, less likely to get in trouble with the police. Children above the poverty line have less inhibitions with their contributions to this country.

I, too, like my dear friend Senator Brown, have heard lots from people in my State about what this little bit of money in their bank accounts--how that little bit of investment makes a transformation in the lives of those families.

Take Kelly in Pitman, NJ. She was forced to quit her job when her children's school and daycare closed due to the pandemic. She hasn't been able to return to work without reliable childcare, and the child tax credit is helping her family. It is helping to make up costs that were lost when she lost her income. It is helping her provide for her children. It is that little bit of help by returning those tax dollars which she has paid in--she is getting more out now--and helping that family.

Take Stacey in Kearny, NJ, the child tax credit payments were a lifeline and helped her and her husband keep their family afloat during this pandemic, during this crisis. She was indefinitely furloughed, and Stacey used those payments to send her two daughters back to preschool.

Well, we know the evidence is in. Sending her two daughters back to preschool means her children will do better in school, are more likely to go to college, have higher lifetime earnings, more success that inures to the benefit of us all in society.

Senator after Senator, on both sides of the aisle, has thousands of these stories about what getting more of their hard-earned tax money back means. In a nation where we have seen the tax cuts of the last decade inure overwhelmingly to the richest of the rich, this was the first tax cut in my lifetime--the biggest of the tax cuts in my lifetime that went overwhelmingly to middle-class families, working- class families, low-income families.

And now it sits on a precipice. As many people are aware, tomorrow is the last day that these payments are scheduled to go out to families like Kelly's and families like Stacy's and millions of families across this country.

The changes we made to the child tax credit will expire. Struggling Americans, working Americans, middle-class Americans will not receive that payment in January, unless this body acts.

To prevent this from happening, to make sure families continue to get more of their tax dollars back and have greater security, hope in challenging times, Congress can pass the Build Back Better Act, which includes the extension of the child tax credit payments, which are lowering costs for American middle-class, working-class, and low-income families.

Now, I know there is concern being raised about the Build Back Better legislation today, but I urge my colleagues to understand the high cost of inaction.

First and foremost, letting this program expire will raise costs for families at the very worst time. With the cost of gas and groceries going up, a tax increase, which is effectively what

this would be, would mean millions of families in difficult times would have it be harder to make ends meet, to make those kitchen table economics work out.

It will add burdens to people at a time we should be lifting them, at a time that we should be providing relief. And, again, it is not just working-class families, middle-class families. It is children living in that moral obscenity, that dark place within our society that is termed ``child poverty''.

The cost of inaction for all of those children, the cost to our society overall of having children grow up in poverty is $1.1 trillion--$1.1 trillion. That is what poverty costs.

But there is a moral cost that is greater than that. There is a moral obscenity that we are experiencing right now, a stain on the soul of our Nation that we have without this tax credit--the highest child poverty rates of all of our industrial peers.

This is a moral moment in America. Our inaction will plunge our Nation back with millions of families facing crisis. We have seen this body act in difficult times before. We have seen us invest in people. We have seen us stand up for children. My worry now is that tomorrow will be the last day, unless we stand up and act.

I join my colleagues Senator Brown, Senator Bennet, and I join my colleagues Senator Kaine, Senator Warnock in calling us to meet this moment, to meet the moral urgency of now, and to please make sure that before this body leaves for the holidays, that for those families who are in stress and economic strain, those families who are worrying about what will happen next month, that we show them that we care, that we show them that we are fiscally prudent, and we make the best investment possible in America. It is not a stock or a bond. The best investment we can make is making sure the child tax credit continues because it is an investment in our children.

I yield the floor.

Mr. President, I suggest the absence of a quorum.

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

Madam President, today should not be a normal day. Today should be a day of national grief and pain and horror at what happened yesterday.

Yesterday, in Oxford, MI, there was yet another school shooting. Within the span of just 5 minutes, four children were shot dead by a fellow student; seven more people--six students and one teacher--were wounded.

Reports are that more than 100 9-1-1 calls were made in the span of minutes. Imagine the horror, imagine the fear, imagine the terror, imagine the pleas for help on those 9-1-1 calls as students listened to gunshot after gunshot ring out, killing their fellow students. The students huddled in corners as their teachers desperately tried to lock doors, barricading them with desks, fearful of what was happening outside--some escaping through windows and sprinting and running for safety.

And what should outrage every single American is that this is not unusual in our country. This was not a one-time occurrence. We know the names--that should be hallowed names of pride--of our children, but, no, they are names that speak to horror when we think about Parkland and what happened there, when we think about Newtown and what happened there, and so many other communities that have been ripped apart by that nightmare that happened yesterday.

We live in a distraught present in America. More people have died in my lifetime from gun violence than have died in all of our American wars combined--from the Revolutionary War to the Civil War, to World War I and II, and Vietnam and the 20-year war on terror. More have died in gun violence in just the last 50 years.

Our gun murder rate is 25 times higher than the next closer country-- not double, not triple, not quadruple, but 25 times more high than the next closest country. And 90 Americans are dying every day from gun violence, not to mention the many more like the seven from Oxford, MI, who have had their health shattered by gunshot wounds tearing through their bodies.

And our kids, our American children. According to Everytown for Gun Safety, firearms are the leading cause of death for American children and teens--the No. 1 cause of death. We know that teens are dying at alarming rates due to gun violence and suicide rates, which are rising faster and faster than in any other group, near an all-time high.

So the question that I must ask today--the urgent question that we must ask is: What will be our response?

We cannot keep telling our children that we will protect you and then the only thing we are doing throughout our schools is teaching them how to hide--these drills that are now as common as fire drills, that are teaching our children that we won't stop the gun violence but we are going to teach you how to barricade yourself in, how to hide under desks, how to shelter for cover if someone comes through your school that should never have had a gun in the first place.

I am tired of hearing the simple utterance of ``thoughts and prayers'' but there being no action. I am a person of faith, and I know, as it teaches, that faith without works is dead. And we have seen enough death.

But now, after what happened in Oxford, what will be our response?

My Republican colleagues in the Senate seem content with the status quo. There doesn't seem to be an urgency to save lives, to end the nightmare, to stop the fear and terror--the continued work to block compromise gun safety laws that the majority of Americans, including most Republican voters, including most gun owners, including most NRA members--blocking compromise laws that are supported by the majority of us Americans that would keep more guns out of the hands of people that would do our children harm.

What is our response?

We can pass universal background checks that are supported by 84 percent of voters. We can provide resources and support to help cities across America implement evidence-based gun violence intervention, proven programs that keep our children safe.

We can start to heal the communities that have been shattered by gun violence by not just expressing our thoughts and prayers but investing in their healing and their help.

It is no longer acceptable to have a culture of fear of gun violence in our country. It is no longer acceptable to teach our children just to hide while we do nothing. It is not acceptable that we are normalizing gun violence in our country at rates that have never before been seen in humanity.

This is not normal. It demands a response. And what will be our response?

Now is the time not to surrender to fear. Now is the time not to accept this as normal. Now is not the time just for thoughts and prayers. It is the time to act. It is time to lift our voices to take more collective responsibility, to stand up to the corporate gun lobby.

It is time to work tirelessly to show our children that love is a demanding, active verb; love is sacrifice. And if we are willing to truly love our children, we won't just teach them fear; we will show them our strength.

Are we going to wait?

This is a cancer, and it is spreading. It is being seen in cities and churches and synagogues and nightclubs, concerts.

Are we going to wait?

Is there such a poverty of empathy that gun violence has to visit upon us, our communities, our schools, our places of worship, our families before we think this is an issue enough for us to stand up and fight for change?

Will we wait? What will be our response? How many more times will Members of this body have to come to this floor and speak to the unspeakable, talk about children murdered in

the greatest nation on the planet Earth, to know that our children's greatest threat to their lives, their top cause of death is gun violence?

I pray. I do have thoughts and prayers not just for the victims but for this body. I hope more will join together not in a do-nothing caucus but join together to pass laws that reflect the will and the majority of the American people and end this national nightmare once and for all.

This is a moment that demands a response, not business as usual. This is a moment that demands the best of who we are, not to cower in fear but to stand for change.

I yield the floor.

I suggest the absence of a quorum.

Mr. President, I first want to say before my colleague leaves--I know he has a packed day--when I came to the U.S. Senate, I found a friend, I found a mentor, and I found a leader on issues of justice. The incredible friend I have in the Senator from Illinois--he has been leading on issues from immigration reform and fighting for Dreamers all the way to being the principal leader on the Democratic side for the passage of the First Step Act.

I will never forget that he invited me to the White House in my earliest days with then-President Obama, centering me on that table. I had just gotten here, and he then was talking about these issues--the issues of mass incarceration, the issues of racial discrimination and incarceration. What I rise to talk about really is an issue that my colleague has been dealing with for 35 years. He gave important history.

It was a bipartisan issue 35 years ago when the Senate and House of Representatives voted to pass the Anti-Drug Abuse Act of 1986, and the President signed it into law that year. He said, very specifically, one of the things it did was create a massive sentencing disparity between crack and powder cocaine. The bill made it so that five grams of crack cocaine--the example that my colleague gave--carried the same mandatory minimum prison sentence as 500 grams of powder cocaine. That is a 100- to-1 disparity.

What is very powerful to me is what Maya Angelou said. She said:

Do the best you can until you know better. Then when you

know better, do better.

And that is the leadership of Senator Dick Durbin. Understanding that this was a failure, that the policy did not achieve its intended purpose--in fact, it created, as he described, the opposite--Dick Durbin then led this body towards the long process of making reforms happen.

I was proud that when I got into the Senate, Senator Durbin told me the story of how we got it from 100 to 1 down to 18 to 1. It wasn't necessarily based on science. It wasn't necessarily based on law enforcement evidence. It was a negotiation between Senator Durbin and another Republican colleague. I love the story because Senator Durbin pushed for what we are asking for right now. He then fought for 1 to 1. He couldn't get it but was able to negotiate down from 100 to 1 to 18 to 1.

So what I would like to do is read real quickly the research that looked at cocaine use in the United States from right before this bill was first passed up until 2013. I want to quote:

Despite harsher ADAA penalties for crack compared to powder

cocaine, there was no decrease in crack use following

implementation of sentencing policies . . . although both

powder cocaine use and misuse of prescription drugs (the

negative control) decreased.

The report concluded that ``these findings suggest that mandatory minimum sentencing may not be an effective method of deterring cocaine use.''

This has been the growing consensus about the War on Drugs on both sides of the aisle. It has been one that has been changing policy.

I am so grateful for Senator Durbin's work chipping away at the mistakes that were made.

During the time between when I was in law school in the 1990s and mayor of the largest city in my State in 2006, we saw the prison population explode in this country. In that period, we were building a new prison or jail--about 1 every 10 days. We became the place on the planet Earth with the most incarcerated people. One-third of all the women incarcerated on planet Earth are now in the United States of America; one out of every four incarcerated people, period--in the United States of America.

A growing consensus of bipartisan work led by Senator Durbin with his wingman from Jersey has been beginning to undermine that, with our partners. So we saw the 2018 passage of the First Step Act, a bill which was made retroactive, and we saw thousands of people liberated from Federal prison who were unjustly sentenced under that 1986 law. The bill Senator Durbin and I wrote and introduced, the EQUAL Act--this is again Senator Durbin's leadership--is now our opportunity to do better.

It must feel good for everyone who understands the good intentions but disastrous results of the crack cocaine-powder cocaine disparity. For all those who understand that we say equal justice under law, but the disproportionate impact it had on Black and Brown communities, further punishing African-American communities in a disproportionate way--in fact, incarcerated Black men at rates that we now have more Black men under criminal supervision in America than all the slaves in 1850. So we are working to do better.

The bill that I picked up to partner with Senator Durbin on passed the House of Representatives. And Senator Durbin hinted at this--I would have never expected it--it passed with overwhelming bipartisan support. The bill was championed by Democrats and Republicans. It passed with 149 Republicans voting for it, and now it is over here. The great thing is, our list of cosponsors, which Senator Durbin read, is growing. I think we will have an announcement over the next few days of other Republicans joining this bill.

We can't change the past, but we can make for a better future. We can't undo the disparities that have disproportionately sent African Americans to prison, but we can make for a more equal and more just future.

There is an old saying that ``the arc of the moral universe is long, but it bends towards justice.'' It was a Martin Luther King quote. But he also said that ``change does not roll in on the wheels of inevitability.'' It must be carried in on the backs of people who are willing to struggle for it, people who still believe that this Nation can be a symbol to this world about justice and its justice system.

A terrible mistake was made 35 years ago. I was a teenager. There are people right now unjustly incarcerated--an affront to our most sacred ideal in this country, that of liberty. They are there because of this mistake. We have not fixed it. It was grievous. We have not fixed it. It is wrong. This is our moment. It is a moment of redemption to right past wrongs, to set this Nation on a more just course, to bend the arc of the moral universe more towards justice.

I urge my colleagues to support this bill. I urge them to be arc benders. Together, we can make this a more perfect Union.

I yield the floor.

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

In order to place the bill on the calendar under the provisions of rule XIV, I would object to further proceeding.