Floor Statements

Mr. President, I just spoke an hour ago on the floor, and I am a very strong proponent of Sweden and Finland joining NATO. I am also a very strong supporter of NATO, and I want the alliance to endure for decades to come. But alliances can't endure if shared commitments and burdens are not met.

This is particularly true for democratic alliances, where there must be a sense among the free citizens of such countries that all are pulling their weight for the collective defense and shared goals they all agree to.

So the amendment I just called up an hour ago, No. 5192, is meant to make this clear. It simply states that the U.S. Senate expects all NATO members to spend a minimum of 2 percent of GDP on defense spending as agreed at the NATO summit in Wales in 2014. This will make NATO stronger, as will the accession of Finland and Sweden as new members.

And I ask for a voice vote on this amendment.

Madam President, I ask unanimous consent that the order for the quorum call be rescinded.

Madam President, I want to talk briefly about a very sacred place on our Nation's Mall, The National Mall, that I had an opportunity to visit yesterday. It is the Korean War Veterans Memorial that millions and millions of Americans have visited. Something happened last Wednesday that I wanted to talk about a little bit, a really important rededication of this very moving war memorial.

Now, I like to get out on The Mall most days, go for a run in the morning when I am in DC, and I love our memorials, like everybody in America does, particularly the memorials that are dedications to the service of our military members, our veterans. The Presiding Officer is a veteran, a war hero. I have a ton of respect for her and her service. But whether it is the World War II or the Vietnam Memorial, one of the most moving memorials that I like to visit is the Korean War Veterans Memorial. Why? Well, I think there is so much we can all learn from the Korean war.

In the Marine Corps, they really drill into you what happened during the Korean war. Unfortunately, not enough Americans know about the Korean war. But one of the big lessons is, you need to be ready. You need to be ready.

In 1945, the U.S. military was the most fearsome military in the world, probably in the history of the world, and in 1950, just 5 years later, we had a very difficult time stopping a third world army in the opening months of the Korean war. Now, we rebounded, as Americans always do, but that is a lesson. That is a lesson for our country. In my view, the uniformed civilian leadership of our military did not serve their country well, letting the state of our forces become very unready. That is

one of the lessons of that very difficult, brutal war.

There is another lesson, and it is the nobility of service from our veterans that really is epitomized by service in the Korean war. The memorial has many beautifully engraved sayings, but one, when you think about it, is so moving and, in my view, depicts the nobility of American military service, particularly as it relates to that war.

It says:

Our nation honors her sons and daughters who answered the

call to defend a country they never knew and a people they

never met.

Think about that--young men and women in America sent to fight halfway around the world to defend freedom. That is exactly what they were doing. And they didn't even know whom they were defending. A lot of them didn't even know where they were.

To me, those words capture the essence of nobility, and so does the Korean War Memorial. You see part of it here. The centerpiece is nine large statues--soldiers, sailors, airmen, marines. They are grunts, infantry grunts on patrol. You can see there is a cold, wet wind whipping their ponchos. Their faces are full of fear, when you look at the statues, but also pride and determination. And all of this, in my view, captures the nobility of our service and our sacrifice as a nation in this war.

Now, historians have referred to the Korean war as the ``forgotten war.'' I am kind of a Korean war history buff. I really, really dislike that term. I think we should just get rid of it. It is kind of a pejorative term in some ways. I have always thought it downplays the sacrifice and nobility and meaning of this very brutal conflict.

I have often thought and said that, instead of the forgotten war, we should call it the noble war because it was a noble undertaking. It was a noble undertaking. Anyone who knows the history of this war or visits the memorial or knows a Korean war veteran or their family members knows that this was a noble undertaking by our great Nation, saving a country--literally saving a country--and we sacrificed a lot for it.

That is the other thing that I think is very powerful on this memorial. Take a look at it--another depiction. You have heard it many times, but it is right there: ``Freedom is not free.'' ``Freedom is not free.'' Indeed, the freedoms that we enjoy in America, that so many countries around the world enjoy right now because of our military members over the course of history, decades--I always like to say, probably the greatest force in liberating mankind from oppression and tyranny in the world is the U.S. military. Think about it. Hundreds of millions of people. World War I; World War II; the Civil War, of course; but the Korean war, certainly. Over 37,000 Americans were killed in action, over 8,000 are still listed as missing in action, and over 103,000 Americans were wounded.

And, of course, the killed and wounded Korean veterans and military and civilians from that war are literally in the millions--in the millions. But what also resonates are the very, very tangible results of the war in terms of freedom.

Many of us have seen the famous satellite images at night taken over the Korean Peninsula--the whole peninsula. And if you look at the 38th parallel and what is north, it is literally dark and looks cold and looks lifeless. And if you look at everything south in that satellite picture, it is alive, bursting with life, and light.

In my view, there are very few better illustrations of the disparity between freedom and authoritarianism than the image of that Korean Peninsula at night with those two countries--one is bright and alive, and one is dark and literally dead. American citizens, American soldiers, American military kept an entire country free.

So what happened last week? I didn't think this war memorial, to be honest, could be improved--one of my favorites: powerful, as I have talked about; great words--but it was improved.

Last Wednesday, I had the opportunity to attend the dedication-- really, the rededication--of the Wall of Remembrance that was added to the Korean War Memorial last week. The wall now has engraved on it the 36,573 Americans that were killed in action--every one of them--like the Vietnam wall.

This is an example of what you will see at the new memorial. I encourage everybody, every American, if you are in DC, go take a look; go pay your respects. It is so moving. It is dramatically improved, this memorial, which I didn't think could be improved upon.

Importantly, intermixed in the names of the Americans are also the 7,200 KATUSA soldiers. These were the Korean Army personnel who served with American forces, right alongside them. So they are just here. They are not divided by American and Korean. Those are just the ones who served with the Americans. Again, the Korean military--their killed-in- action numbers are way higher than even these.

And here is the other thing that is so moving about this memorial. The names are actually laid out by service--Army, Navy, Air Force, Marines. And they are actually listed according to rank. So if you look at the Vietnam Memorial, it is mixed in. It doesn't matter what service. And it is the date in which somebody was actually killed, chronologically.

This is by military service and their rank. Why does that matter? What does it mean? Well, I will tell you what it means. It depicts the sacrifice of war, regardless of what the war is. Wars throughout history, up until now, always fall upon the young men and women of our great Nation--the 18-, 19-, 20-year-olds. They are the ones who do the fighting, and they are the ones who do the dying.

So, for example, this is actually a picture of the section after section after section after section, which is just U.S. Army Private First Class--U.S. Army PFCs. And it is just thousands, one group. Huge sacrifice. Huge sacrifice.

So I encourage everybody to go out, take a look at this newly improved Korean War Memorial that was dedicated last week. It was such a moving ceremony. It was made all the more moving by the beautiful voice of Miss America, Emma Broyles, who sang ``God Bless America'' in front of the thousands of veterans who were there--thousands-- Americans, Koreans.

By the way, Emma is a constituent of mine. She is the first Alaskan to win Miss America, first Korean American to ever win Miss America. So she did a great job.

And the final thing I just want to mention--and I think the whole Senate--I am working on a Senate resolution, and I would love to get some of my colleagues here on the floor right now to join this resolution with me. It is a simple resolution saying thank you to the Korean government and the Korean people, because guess who paid for this memorial. It wasn't the American taxpayer. It was the Korean Government and the people of Korea. Over 22 million. We had tremendous support from our Korean war American veterans associations. They did a great job. But the vast, vast bulk of the funding for this new, incredibly moving Korean War Memorial was from the people of Korea and the Government of Korea. And they sent their defense minister, they sent their veterans affairs minister, they sent a huge delegation of members of their legislature all for this ceremony. So I want to thank all of them.

And I want to thank our veterans, our Korean War veterans, who served in the noble war--not the forgotten war, the noble war, a proud moment of history between our two great nations--a history that has bonded us--the Republic of Korea and the United States of America--for decades.

And now our Gold Star families and Korean War veterans can visit the names of their friends and families and loved ones who did this, as the memorial says:

Answered the call to defend a country they never knew and a

people they never met.

That is why this should be called the noble war.

I yield the floor.

Madam President, I want to compliment my colleague from Delaware, whom I enjoy working with very much on the EPW Committee.

Normally at this time, the end of the week, I talk about the Alaskan of the Week. So stay tuned for next week when we continue that series. It has been going on for 6 years.

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

Madam President, it is Thursday, and we are back at it with

our Alaskan of the Week series. We have been doing this for, geez, 6 years now, I think.

For the new pages, this is usually kind of the signal of the end of the week but also some really cool stories about Alaska. We know it is your favorite.

We think some of the reporters in town like it because it signals kind of the end of the week for them. But I want to talk about, first, what is kind of going on in Alaska. Right now, the sun is high in the sky through much of the day. Some places up north are getting 24 hours of sunlight; midnight sun, we call it.

In Anchorage, we are getting about 18 hours, but that starts to decline real quick. But even when the sun sets, it is more of a twilight look than real night. So you have got to come up and visit; you will love it. It has been pretty rainy in parts of the State. We needed that rain.

But it can't dampen the magnificent grandeur of Alaska. So, again, if you are watching on TV, you want to come up, have the vacation of a lifetime, do it. The fish are running. We are having a banner year for sockeye salmon. The rivers all across the State are choked with them.

Last weekend, actually, I partook at a particular unique Alaskan tradition with my wife and a couple buddies of mine. We went dipnetting--dipnetting. That is on the Kenai River. That is actually when there is so much fish you actually put a pole with a net at the end, and you just put it in the water--boom. You just start to catch them.

And you know, people go, Well, can you tell if there is a fish in your net? I am like, Oh, yeah, you can tell.

So my wife and I and our friends, we caught 36 beautiful sockeye salmon yesterday--or last weekend, about 5 hours of fishing. It was great. We just loved it.

So fishing, hunting, feeding our families from our land and waters is a big part of our life in Alaska. These traditions bind us. They keep us together as a State, as a community, as families.

Our longstanding businesses are also part of the fabric of our State, particularly the ones that have grown up with our State. When the State's done well, they have done well. When the State struggled, they struggled; but they have hung in there. And we want to celebrate these businesses and the families that have run them.

And the great Alaskan we are honoring today as our Alaskan of the week is Betsy Lawer. And she is part of an amazing family in an amazing business in Alaska--First National Bank of Alaska, which this year is celebrating its 100th anniversary.

So it started in 1922. This amazing financial institution has been part of the landscape of Alaska--good times, difficult times--for 100 years. Betsy has been at the helm, a strong, sturdy force helping to guide this incredible business and, by extension, other businesses and communities throughout the State, part of her family tradition--the Cuddy family--for 100 years.

So let's talk about Betsy and the family. She is the president of the First National Bank of Alaska and also part of a really impressive family that has run this bank for decades in Alaska.

So here is the beginning: Literally with a vault full of gold nuggets and untanned animal pelts, that was their original deposits. In 1922, First National was founded then in what was part of the rough-and- tumble tent city of Anchorage. Anchorage was referred to as a tent city.

In 1930, the patriarch of the Cuddy family, Warren Cuddy, began buying stock in the bank. By 1941, he purchased controlling interest, and Warren became the bank's president. Then, one of his sons, at that time, joined the bank's board--this is Dan Cuddy, the legendary Dan Cuddy, Betsy's dad. His service was remarkable. First, I would like to talk briefly about Dan Cuddy's service as an Alaskan veteran in World War II.

He served as a captain in the 1255th Engineer Combat Battalion, which was attached to General George Patton's Third Army. Dan fought in the Battle of the Bulge in Luxembourg and was one of the troops who assisted in the discovery and then closing of the Buchenwald concentration camp. This is an American hero.

And, by the way, throughout his entire career, I was so honored to meet with Dan Cuddy before he passed away in 2015. Throughout his incredible career, one thing he talked a lot about was the unspeakable atrocities that he saw in World War II, so it would never happen again.

So Dan Cuddy comes back from World War II--warrior patriot, war hero. He becomes a lawyer, and in 1951, he becomes the bank president. And the Cuddy family's involvement, again, throughout our State is legendary.

The bank thrived after that under Dan's leadership. It grew with the State. It helped Alaskans rebuild after the huge 1964 earthquake.

By the way, do you want to read about a huge earthquake? It was 9.2 on the Richter scale, one of the biggest earthquakes ever recorded. It destroyed cities, tsunamis. It lasted almost 5 minutes. Think about that, sitting through an earthquake for 5 minutes.

And the bank the whole time kept supporting communities, and it continues to do that. It was among the first in the Nation to distribute check image statements to its customers in the 1990s. The only bank in America to welcome dog mushers through drive-throughs. Yes, think about that image.

And it is probably certainly the only bank in America that has a branch that is bilingual both in English and Yupik. That is the branch in Bethel, 1 of 19 branches across America.

First National Bank of Alaska--100 years of service--has received so many accolades and awards, including being named one of the top banks in America, and it was recognized in 2013 as one of America's most trustworthy companies by Forbes magazine.

You can see the Cuddy family integrity in this institution. But the most important thing about First National Bank of Alaska's mission statement is that it is what drives the bank: Success depends on taking care of the community, employees, and customers. If the community isn't strong, businesses won't be strong, the bank won't be strong.

So, Betsy, one of Dan and Betti's six children, was raised on those tenets that I just talked about. She saw how they worked firsthand.

On Saturdays, she would join her father Dan while he went on his outings visiting customers. Sometimes those visits happened in Anchorage, where she would politely listen to business being discussed and then grab a late breakfast at Peggy's, a mainstay in Anchorage. Sometimes they would jump into a prop plane and head out to rural Alaska, where she learned so much about that part of our great State.

Betsy said she loved those visits and she learned, in the ways that children do, that helping people realize their hopes and their dreams is what her father did, what their business did, and why it was so important to so many Alaskan communities.

Jump forward to September 10, 1969. Betsy was a college student at Duke, spending her summers, as she always did, working at the bank as a secretary at the bank.

Just down the street from First National in downtown Anchorage, the Prudhoe Bay oil lease sale was underway. This is the giant oilfield in Alaska--oil and gasfield. The first big lease sale by the State. It was a huge event for our Nation, huge event for Alaska.

Back then, the country needed Alaska oil and gas, just like today our country needs Alaska oil and gas.

On that day in September 1969, Betsy remembers looking out the window of the bank. She said the streets were completely empty, like the ``Twilight Zone.'' Everybody was huddled in front of their radios, listening to the lease sale that would change Alaska and, in many ways, America forever.

First National Bank of Alaska--the Cuddy family's bank where she was working, her dad was president then--was assisting Bank of America on the lease sale.

After the sale, get this image, Betsy got a ride back to the east coast on a jet with bank executives headed to New York to directly deposit the $900 million check that was made out to the State of Alaska--that is about 7 billion in today's money--that got our State up and moving. She was on that plane depositing that money. Imagine the excitement that she felt then.

The first thing Betsy did after that when she got back to Duke was to

change majors from interior design to economics, which was probably a good move for a future bank president.

Two years later--she didn't even wait for her graduation ceremony-- she came back to Alaska and immediately got to work. Now, because management programs back then were mostly for men, Betsy started from the bottom up--teller, clerk, secretary--which she said later in life gave her an advantage when she began processing loans for the bank because she knew exactly how it all worked and the people at every level in that bank. She knew the bones of the bank and the banking industry.

Throughout the years, as the bank has grown, our Alaskan of the Week, Betsy, has grown with it. She became president of the bank in 2013, CEO in 2018, and she is also the board president.

She is a mother, a wife, an active member of the community. She is a great community banker, and I will tell you this. During the pandemic, there was no financial institution that was more dedicated to getting the PPP loans out to small businesses in Alaska than First National Bank of Alaska and Betsy Lawer. They did an incredible job.

Betsy helps people in our State realize their hopes and dreams, and for Betsy, it all comes down to having a deep understanding and caring for the community--the many communities that they serve. ``You can't automate those relationships,'' she said.

So I want to thank Betsy, the Cuddy family, congratulate the First National Bank of Alaska--100 years of service to our great State, what an amazing record. And I want to congratulate Betsy on perhaps one of her most prestigious awards ever: being Alaskan of the Week.

CHIPS Act of 2022

Madam President, we have been discussing on the Senate floor the USICA bill, the America Competes bill, the bill that is supposed to focus on our ability to outcompete the Chinese communist economy, and I can think of very little legislation more important than this.

This is an issue that since I arrived in the Senate in 2015, I started talking about the importance of a broad-based strategy as it relates to China and outcompeting China and recognizing that they don't play fair, that they steal, that they subsidize, that they coerce, and yet they are a huge entity in the global economy so we need a strategy to deal with them.

And this bill that we are now debating on the Senate floor, the U.S. Innovation and Competition Act of 2021, USICA is something that I, with a number of other Senators, have worked hard on for literally over the last year and a half, and I want to thank a number of Senators who have put their heart and soul into this legislation, commend them: Senators Young, Schumer, Wicker, Cantwell, Warner, Cornyn.

This is important legislation. As I mentioned, I have supported it and its Senate iterations when we passed it out of the Senate, out of committee in the Commerce Committee, but I have concerns. I have concerns, and I am going to mention a few of them briefly and then one concern that permeates so much of what has been happening here in the U.S. Senate over the last year and a half that is really important to me and my constituents. And I am asking my Senate colleagues--my Democratic Senate colleagues--to help me on something that I don't think a lot of them maybe even know that they are doing, but let me get to the concerns.

First, on the chips provision--this isn't a concern. This is what Senator Warner, Senator Cornyn, and many others have focused on--really important to shore up semiconductor manufacturing in America.

Now, look, my State, unfortunately, is not one that is competing right now hard for a big fabrication plant. I understand that. We have other assets like energy I am going to talk about here in a minute, but wherever this government support for the chips industry is going to go in America, I think it is really important because this industry is like energy. It is so important to America, and we can't let China outcompete us in that area.

But let me talk about a couple concerns. First, on energy, one of the biggest areas that we can compete against China that they are scared about competing with us is our incredible natural resources, ``all of the above'' resources, all of our energy.

If you read the intel and you see what China's leadership is worried about, one thing they are worried about is American energy dominance.

So I have worked hard on this legislation for a year and a half to make sure that when we are looking at research--advanced research that this legislation is going to fund--it needs to include all energy.

It has been a struggle, I will admit. Some of my Democratic colleagues, certainly the Biden administration, have this thing where they don't like certain areas of energy--oil and gas in particular. They have targeted it. They want to put it out of business. It makes no sense. It is probably the biggest strategic blunder of the Biden administration across so many areas--targeting and unilaterally disarming American energy, when it is one of our greatest comparative advantages.

Unfortunately, some of the language coming back over from the House continues this trend, and I am very concerned that we would have a bill that could give Federal bureaucrats the opportunity to continue to target American energy, as opposed to help bolster it in our competition with China.

So that is one concern. It wasn't in the Senate bill. I made sure of that. But now after some of the far-left Members in the House got to put language in that came back over here, it is a concern, and it should concern every single American, every single Senator.

We need all of our strengths to compete with China, and to not use the strength of American energy--``all of the above'' energy--is nuts. Hopefully, this administration is waking up to that, but it hasn't been a great record at all in terms of that.

There is another provision, something that built on a provision that I tried to get that I did get in the original USICA bill that Senator Portman has now put forward with Democrats and Republicans, a provision to make sure that all of these Federal dollars that are going to be in this bill do not go to Chinese researchers working in our facilities-- in research facilities, in university facilities--and then take them back to China.

At a recent hearing, FBI Director Wray said this is one of the biggest threats our country faces, the counterintelligence perspective with regard to the Chinese Communist Party. He said:

They are targeting our innovation, our trade secrets, our

intellectual property on a scale that's unprecedented in

history.

So if we are going to spend all these Federal dollars on American research at American research institutions and American universities, we need strong guardrails to make sure it doesn't fall into Chinese hands.

Senator Portman has done a great job on this. It is a commonsense amendment. Apparently, some have had concerns that this amendment would be ``racist.'' That is ridiculous. We need to prevent China from stealing our intellectual property. Period. It is not racist; it is common sense. I hope we can make sure that amendment gets in.

But I want to go into a little detail on the final issue that I have with this bill. And to be honest, it is kind of shocking that a bill focused on competing with China--once again, from the Democratic side of the Senate or the House, I don't know where it comes from--has provisions that actually target in a negative way Alaska Natives. OK?

This is an issue that, to be honest, I am kind of flabbergasted. It comes up everywhere. It is discrimination. It is racial discrimination--good old-fashioned racial discrimination--that I thought we tried to get rid of in this country a long time ago, and it keeps popping up.

I am tired of it, and, remarkably, it popped up in the bill that competes against China. So I am sure a lot of you are saying: Well, jeez, how did that happen? I want to explain because I really want my colleagues, many of whom I am convinced have no idea what is going on, to understand what is happening. And it happens again and again, and to be honest, it shouldn't.

I hope some people in our media finally write about this. I think it is shameful.

But I am going to explain it here right now. Here is the issue. In Alaska, we have a very big indigenous population--wonderful people, incredible people, amazing people. It is almost 20 percent of the population of my State. They bring culture, heritage, values. By the way, they have been there for tens of thousands of years. This is really important to me and to Senator Murkowski. Congress--Congress, not the Native people, the Congress of the United States--over the course of many years, essentially, has classified--we in the U.S. Senate have classified--Alaska Natives into two broad categories. There are Tribal members, which is this circle here, and there are members of Alaska Native Corporations. They are in this circle here.

Now, a lot of the indigenous people of Alaska are both Tribal members and an ANC members. Some are not both. Some are just Tribal members. Some are ANC members.

But we are talking about tens of thousands of indigenous people. So whenever we work on legislation that benefits the Alaska Native people--but American Indians, writ large--what we always try to do is say: Remember, Congress did this. The Native people didn't do this. So let's make sure that we cover everybody. Let's make sure everybody is included. You wouldn't want to discriminate against one of these groups. They are all indigenous people.

So that is what me, Senator Murkowski, Ted Stevens--every Senator, every great Congressman, our great Congressman Don Young, whom we just lost--we have been doing that for decades.

All of a sudden this has become controversial to some Members, to some groups. This group, the ANC members, these are indigenous people of Alaska designated as ANC members, not by themselves but by the Congress, OK?

So here is what happened. Here is the beginning. It is sad, and I am going to talk about it. It shouldn't happen, and I really want my Democratic colleagues to help me stop this because if you put another minority group in and talked about what is happening to the Native people of Alaska, people would be shocked. The New York Times and the Washington Post would write front pages stories about official discrimination by the U.S. Senate against a minority population. But for whatever reason, it seems to be OK to do it against Alaska Natives. But it is not OK.

Here is what happened. In the CARES Act we had this historic funding, $8 billion for the Native people of America. We wrote a definition. I was very involved with it. Everybody cleared on it--Indian Affairs, majority, minority. That included all indigenous people of Alaska--OK, just like we include all indigenous people of Nevada and New Mexico. We wanted to cover with $8 billion in the CARES Act the very vulnerable populations, all the Native people.

Unfortunately--unfortunately--as opposed to being viewed as $8 billion, the biggest historic investment in Indian communities in history, there was a dispute, and certain groups said: Hey, we got this $8 billion, but we don't want this group to get anything. We don't want this group, ANC members, to get any of that $8 billion.

Remarkably, the majority leader in a tweet attacked the Assistant Secretary of the Interior, an Alaska Native woman of impeccable integrity, saying somehow that these members getting any of that money was corrupt. Of course, that was ridiculous. One of the Senate Democrats here, Senator Udall, launched an investigation of this incredible Assistant Secretary of the Interior, an Alaska Native woman, on this charge. It was refuted. It was ridiculous. It was sad.

By the way, Senator Udall apologized to her. Our Ambassador to New Zealand right now apologized to this incredible Alaska Native woman, saying: Do you know what? That was probably really bad. I am sorry.

It was bad.

So what happened is that you had a group saying: Let's exclude this group of tens of thousands of Alaska Natives from getting any CARES money.

Well, look, we wrote the language. We knew that the language was inclusive of everybody. So that, unfortunately, went all the way to the U.S. Supreme Court. The Trump administration and, to its credit, the Biden administration said: No, the language of the CARES Act included all Alaska Natives. Why would we discriminate one against the other?

So we won that. That was the way it was written. I had a lot to do with writing it. So I know. But that is just fair. OK, so that is what happened.

So then my Democratic colleagues write the American Recovery Act. The $2 trillion relief package, with $20 billion for American Tribes. But do you know what came out of that package? Express language written by my Democratic colleagues saying that of the $20 billion, every Native group in America gets some of that money, but this group--tens of thousands of ANC members in Alaska--we are going to make sure they don't get any of that.

That happened, right here on the Senate floor. I have no idea why.

Let me just pose a counterfactual. Imagine you had Congress say there are two groups of minorities. Let's say not two groups but Asian American minorities in New York, group A, group B--Congress categorized them, not themselves--or African Americans, group A, group B; or Hispanic Americans, group A, group B, in the State of New York--just in the State of New York. And a Republican Congress said we are going to do a giant relief package for that minority group across the country. But, group B in New York, we are going to expressly exclude you from getting any money.

What would you call that?

I would call that good old-fashioned racial discrimination.

If that happened, if a Republican Congress did that, to say a group of African Americans or Hispanic Americans or Asian Americans, the New York Times and the Washington Post would be going crazy--rightfully so, by the way.

This happened. This happened.

OK, I don't know why. I would love it if one of my Senate colleagues came down and said: Hey, Dan, here is why we went to great lengths to exclude tens of thousands of Alaska Native indigenous people from getting relief. Here is why we did that to you.

I would love for somebody to tell me that.

They haven't.

I think it is wrong. I think most people who know about it probably would be like: Jeez, I didn't know we had $20 billion for Tribes, but we specifically excluded this group. Was it because we were mad about the Supreme Court case?

I don't know. But here is the thing. Back to the USICA bill, there is a lot of money going to universities.

I am finishing up. So I am not going to yield. It is important to me, to my colleague from Maryland.

There is a lot of money going to universities.

This is really important to me, and I have been wanting to give this speech for a long time.

There is a lot of money going to institutions for research to compete against China. There are specific provisions that say: Hey, there is going to be money that goes to Native American groups. That is great. They have a lot to bring to this battle with China.

But that provision that came over from the House--guess what it did. It said: Not to this group. Not to this group.

So do you see where I am going with this?

I have no idea why Democrats in the House and Senate want to keep targeting this group of indigenous people. Imagine if Republicans did this to a minority group in Maryland or New York.

But it is happening, and it is happening even in this bill. So that is another big concern I have of this bill, this continuation of--I have no idea. I would love it for someone to come down and say: Hey, Dan, here is why we discriminate against tens of thousands of indigenous people in your State.

But it is happening. I sure hope my colleagues listen to this. Maybe the New York Times or the Washington Post would write about it once.

But just a ceasefire--when we are trying to help Native people in America, in Alaska we want to help them all. Remember, this is how Congress set up these groups, not the people. So all I ask is let's kind of do what we did

in the CARES Act for all legislation. But I and Senator Murkowski are going to scrub every piece of darn legislation that comes out of here, and we are going to start calling out people, asking: Why are you discriminating against tens of thousands of people in my State who are indigenous?

Wrong. It is inexplicable, and it is even in the darn bill to compete with China. And I sure hope my colleagues will work with me to start making sure this doesn't happen anymore.

I yield the floor.

Madam President, I want to join my colleagues here in an important discussion as it relates to American energy.

My colleague from the great State of Missouri said it well in so many different ways: Now we are pleading with dictators to import more energy. That is one element of what, certainly, has been the Biden administration's most colossal, strategic mistake of its entire first year in office. Trust me. There have been a lot of mistakes on the Biden administration's watch. There has been nothing that has undermined American interests in terms of working families, in terms of skyrocketing inflation, in terms of national security, in terms of energy security, and--yes, I am going to talk about it--in terms of environmental policy for America and the world. Nothing has been more harmful to America's interests and the interests of American working families than the reckless policies of the Biden administration's approach to American energy.

I have talked about this issue a lot because a lot of those policies are zeroed in on my State and my constituents, but as many have already said and as Senator Blunt has already said, it can be summed up, in my view, in kind of four key areas.

No. 1, from day one, they have come in and said: We are going to limit the production of American energy.

That is happening. It is certainly happening in Alaska. On day one, the President made an order on ANWR. We got ANWR done in this Congress, but he shut that down, and they are canceling lease sales. As for the National Petroleum Reserve in Alaska, they are taking half of that off the table. Everywhere you look, they are trying to limit the production of American energy. That is a fact. It makes no sense, but it is a fact. That is No. 1.

No. 2 is the slow rolling and killing of energy infrastructure, the ability to move energy through pipelines or LNG terminals. They are stopping it, slow rolling it, or killing it. That is a fact, OK? That is what they have been doing from day one.

No. 3, they are going to the American financial community--John Kerry, Gina McCarthy, and all of these far-left, crazy, policy folks-- and saying to American banks and insurance companies: Don't invest in American energy.

This is choking off capital to this incredibly important sector of the U.S. economy. When they are not doing that, they are appointing senior officials--just think Comptroller of the Currency, the Federal Reserve, the SEC Chairman--who are undertaking policies to choke off capital to the American energy sector. That is happening.

No. 4, when they have seen prices spike and hard-working American families paying hundreds, if not thousands, of dollars more to get to work in their cars or trucks, the administration is going around, begging dictators for more energy production.

This is an insult. We have the highest standards with regard to the environment and American energy production in Alaska and in other places. Do you think the Saudis care about their environment? Do you think the Venezuelans care? Do you think the terrorists in Iran care? They don't, but the administration is going and begging dictators for more energy.

So those are the policies of the Biden administration on energy, and we all know it is not working. It is having the predictable consequence of driving up energy costs on all American families--and, of course, giving pink slips to American energy workers, who I believe are heroic workers: union workers and others--and empowering our adversaries. So that is what is happening.

Today, the President is in Boston, so I want to talk about a couple of policies--energy policies--emanating from people and the communities of Boston that further show just how irrational the far-left Democratic Party is on energy.

Let me first talk about this issue, which I like to trot out a lot, on this chart. This is a factual chart of emission changes from major economies in the world from 2005 to the present. You don't hear about this a lot, but take a look. Take a look at this chart.

What does it show?

Of all of the major economies in the world, the one economy with the biggest reduction in greenhouse gas emissions is America, the United States of America, by far. Take a look. We have reduced emissions since 2005 by almost 15 percent. EU didn't do that. Germany didn't do that. Japan didn't do that. And here you go: In China, there is a new coal plant every couple of days, it seems. In India, it is the same thing.

Why am I bringing out this chart? A, people need to know that we are the leader; we are not the bad guy. I know John Kerry keeps thinking we are the bad guy; he goes around telling everybody we are. We are not. If every other country in the world had emissions profiles like we had, you would see a much, much cleaner and less emitting planet. That is a fact. So let me talk about a couple of these policies.

John Kerry, the climate envoy, has been reported as going to certain countries in Asia, saying: You know, we really don't like hydrocarbons in America, so don't buy any of that American LNG.

What? We are paying this guy's salary to say that? Whose side is he on?

By the way, exporting clean-burning American LNG to places like India or China or Japan is exactly what we need to do to reduce global emissions. So you have got this one guy out there--and I am not sure why he is being paid by the U.S. Government; he should be paid by the Chinese Communist Party Government. There are recent press reports that John Kerry's private jet--that he flies all around the world on--last year, emitted over 300 tons of CO2.

What? Yes.

Look, he is smug, hypocritical, and his policies are hammering the middle class--and now this. John Kerry is one of the single biggest polluters and greenhouse gas emitters in the world for an individual.

In Boston, one of the best things the President can do today is to either fire John Kerry or ask him to resign. That would be great. That would probably do a lot for climate in America.

Let me give another policy that should be raised in Massachusetts.

Madam President, I ask unanimous consent that this Boston Globe editorial--a very long one--from February 12, 2018, be printed in the Record. It is called ``Our Russian `pipeline,' and its ugly toll.''

Again, these are far-left policies that are having a negative impact on actual environment and climate issues. This is the Boston Globe editorial page, not some rightwing editorial page, and they are writing about how the Massachusetts State legislature said: We are not going to have any pipelines coming across Massachusetts to be able to take gas from Pennsylvania and let people in Boston use it.

Here is the editorial page on Massachusetts' reliance on imported gas. So what happens? They are importing all of their gas from Russia in the Arctic. How does that help America? You have American gas from American pipelines that is produced by Americans, with the highest environmental standards, coming across Massachusetts to Boston.

No. The Massachusetts State legislature says: We are too good for that. We are not going to build pipelines.

So what do they do? They import all of their gas from Russia.

This is an editorial that says: This policy is insane, and that is, in essence, the definition of what we are seeing by the Biden administration, by John Kerry, and by the Massachusetts State legislature--all of these woke pronouncements that actually have the impact of degrading our environment, empowering dictators, laying off Americans, and raising the price of energy on our economy, small businesses, and working families.

So I am hopeful that today, in Boston, the President starts to get serious about American energy policy and that he starts to reverse his administration's focus on shutting down the production of American energy, on permitting pipelines and infrastructure, and on helping to finance energy projects and production. That is the reversal he could make and announce today. That would help the American people. It would help my constituents.

Unfortunately, I think that it is unlikely to happen. The people of our great Nation are going to continue to suffer, and the environment is going to continue to suffer because of these policies on energy that undermine American interests everywhere you look.

I yield the floor.

Thank you to my friends from the great State of Utah and the great State of Florida, Senator Scott and Senator Lee.

Mr. President, I want to explain to any American who is watching just what happened here because, to be honest, it is kind of shocking what just took place.

Senator Scott came down to the floor. He had a bill, S. 3086. Normally when you have a bill that is considered pretty noncontroversial, you can come down and do what is called a unanimous consent, which is you ask the Senate: Do you want to pass the bill? And if anyone objects, they actually have to come down and object in the Senate Chamber.

So what does S. 3086 bill do? Here is the language: ``to require the Energy Information Administration to submit to Congress and make publicly available an annual report on Federal Agency policies and regulations and Executive orders that have increased or may increase energy prices in the United States.'' That is it. That is it. That is the bill. It is one page--less than one page. It is two paragraphs.

All we were doing was asking, why are energy prices in America going through the roof, and is the Federal Government contributing to that through its actions and regulations? It is a really important question. Why is it an important question? It is an important question because when you get out of this bubble in DC and you go home--like I was just home in Alaska last weekend--energy costs and inflation are the No. 1 issue hurting American families--the No. 1 issue. So shouldn't we in the Senate want to know why it is happening?

Now, look, what else happened here--a little bit of inside baseball in the Senate--when a Senator comes down and objects to a UC, usually he gives a strong reason why--strong: Here is my reason why this bill is bad for the country, and I am going to object.

You may have seen my colleague object and say ``I am getting the heck out of here; I am not going to explain this'' because there is no reason to object to this--none. So he objected and left. He didn't try to defend objecting to this, because every American wants to know.

It is the biggest issue back home, but here is another reason we need the bill: because this President has come up with excuse after excuse after excuse on why energy costs since he got into office have gone through the roof. Let me give you a couple of examples.

He first said: Well, we are emerging from the pandemic, and the supply chain couldn't keep up with demand.

All right, if that is really true, let the Energy Information Administration--of the Biden administration, by the way--see if that is one of the reasons.

OK. Then he said: Well, shoot, the pandemic is kind of over so it is Putin's invasion of Ukraine that is driving the increase in energy prices. Putin's unprovoked, brutal war--which it is unprovoked and brutal--has led to higher energy prices.

And President Biden then started to say it is Putin's price hike. No one is buying that one either because energy prices were spiking way before the brutal invasion of Ukraine.

So then the President started saying: Well, it is COVID and Putin. OK. Then he started blaming the oil companies. Then he started to say: Well, we have all these amazing permits that we want the oil companies drilling on, but they are not using them.

So we need Senator Scott's legislation because the Biden administration, the President himself, has put out all these ideas on why Americans are getting crushed by inflation and high costs at the pump. Yet the one thing the President hasn't done, has never talked about, is he hasn't looked internally and said: Hmm, maybe it is my own administration's policies that are driving up energy costs. Maybe. By the way, it is not maybe; it is certainly. And my colleagues have talked about this. Heck, I talked about this earlier today. I talk about it every day because it is crushing my home State and my constituents.

But what we want the Energy Information Administration to look at is possibly these reasons: Day 1, this administration came in and said: We are going to limit production of American energy.

Anyone who went to econ 101 in college knows that when you start to limit supply, prices go up. Well, that is a culprit.

No. 2, from day 1, they said: We are going to shut down, kill, and delay moving energy through infrastructure--pipelines, LNG terminals. They are doing that all the time. So that is a policy, those are Executive orders limiting the ability to move energy. That sends up costs.

No. 3 is that they have actively gone to the American financial sector--the Biden administration--and told them not to invest in American energy, choking off capital. That increases prices.

So Senator Scott's bill would simply ask the experts in the Federal Government, the Energy Information Administration, to just take a look: What is driving up the cost of American energy? What is crushing middle-class working families?

And the reason my colleague objected and then ran off the floor without saying anything is because everybody here knows what the answer is going to be: Joe Biden has done this. It is his policies that are driving up energy costs.

And here is the thing that Senator Lee touched on, and this is the thing that should scare everybody. It is likely purposeful. Pain is the point. They are all talking about this wonderful, glorious transition. Gina McCarthy talks about: Hey, if the prices go up, it will accelerate the transition to renewables. They don't give a damn about the people who are suffering. It is all this green utopia stuff.

All we are asking for is what is driving up the cost of energy on the backs of working-class Americans? That is it. A two-paragraph bill, and my colleagues came and objected to it. And

every American should know this. They don't want you to know what we all know, which is this: The pain at the pump is the purposeful policies of the Biden administration, and the American people are paying for it.

We want the Federal Government to look into the details of this, and the Democrats were just now objecting to that transparent information request. And, in my view, it is shameful.

I yield the floor.

Madam President, I just had the opportunity to host a lunch--the Thursday lunch--for a number of my Senate colleagues. This is an opportunity that Senators get to essentially brag about their State. It is kind of like what I do with the ``Alaskan of the Week'' speech that I give.

I know we have new pages here.

I am going to be putting out a Facebook post on the incredible bounty that we just had at the lunch--salmon, halibut, peonies flowers, which are now growing in abundance in Alaska. It was a really, really incredible meal, if I do say so myself, from Alaskans. So we are going to talk about that.

Next week I will be back to my ``Alaskan of the Week'' series, for the new pages. I promise you, this is going to be your favorite speech of the week because it is interesting, and it tells stories, and it is exciting about what is going on in Alaska.

Madam President, I want to talk about two other issues today that I care deeply about--I think most Senators do, and certainly Americans do--and that is two things that our country desperately needs: infrastructure and energy. Infrastructure and energy--and we all know that this is what is needed.

We talk about it here a lot in the Senate. However, some, especially in the Biden administration, talk a lot about these issues but, then, when it comes to taking action, maybe not so much. Maybe that is starting to change, maybe not.

But I am going to talk about something I introduced in the Senate yesterday that is going to be action, especially on infrastructure. So let's talk about infrastructure first.

Yesterday, I introduced a joint resolution of disapproval under the Congressional Review Act--it is what we call the CRA--which will nullify the Biden administration's new regulations that are remarkably going to bog down

the ability to permit infrastructure projects. It is going to add to the redtape that every single American who cares about this issue knows is a problem, and it is a new reg from the Biden administration-- remarkably, because they supposedly are for infrastructure, and I am going to get to that. It is a new reg to make it harder to build infrastructure projects.

So let me unpack a little bit of that because it is something that I think all Americans care about. I know they care about it, but it can kind of be boring and technical, with permitting and things like that.

When the National Environmental Policy Act, NEPA, was passed in the late sixties, it required an environmental impact statement, an EIS, as we call these things. In the old days, you would do an EIS. It would take about a year, maybe. You would get public input. It was maybe 100 pages. OK? The process worked. People were engaged. It didn't bog down things, and you would have a couple of hundred pages that the average American could read and then you would build, which is what we all want to do in a responsible way.

Fast forward to today. NEPA has been completely abused. This is a huge passion of mine because it hurts everybody. Too many people, too many Americans now know the numbers: 4 to 6 years on average to complete any EIS in America. Most cost millions of dollars. Most EISes are thousands of pages so no one reads them. How can you read them? And it is undeniably killing our ability to build infrastructure.

The only people, in my view, who really like this new system are, A, radical far-left environmental groups that don't want to build anything--OK, that is a group; it is not a big group in America, but, unfortunately, they have a loud voice--and probably the Chinese Communist Party. When they know they have to compete against us, they love the fact that it takes 9 to 10 years to permit a bridge in the

Madam President, I want to turn to energy now. You know the President is in Saudi Arabia. There is a lot of irony here, I believe, because his administration has clearly--clearly--made it harder for Americans to produce American energy with American workers, with American infrastructure. That is a fact. That is a fact, OK? I see it in Alaska every day--every single day. The Federal Government is trying to stop the production of American energy.

What are we seeing? Inflation, super high prices at the gas pump-- literally, everything. Senior administration officials are going to Wall Street. Senior administration officials who are Federal regulators for finance are all trying to choke off capital to the American energy sector. It hurts my constituents. It hurts the country.

So the President is going to Saudi Arabia to beg them to produce more. He should send an envoy to Texas or an envoy to Alaska and say: Hey, how can we produce more here? How can we produce more here? I hope they are starting to change their tune. I hope they are starting to change their tune so that we don't need to beg the Saudis, dictators like Iran and Venezuela, and all these other autocratic regimes in the world to produce. We should produce it in our country. We have the highest standards in the world by far on the environment--by far. It is not even close. We have high standards of labor in the world.

The Biden administration, in my State, has been a disaster. They have issued 26 Executive orders or Executive actions solely focused on my State, solely focused on Alaska, none of which has been helpful.

Lately--lately--there has been discussion, constructive discussion, on a big project in Alaska called the Willow Project. The Biden administration is showing signs that they want to support it. That would make sense. The country needs energy. This would be done in the National Petroleum Reserve in Alaska set aside decades ago by Congress for oil and gas development--again, the highest standards in the world. I pitched the President on this project over a year ago in the Oval Office. By the way, it has some of the lowest emissions in the world of any big energy project. I am going to talk about who supports it.

This has been in permitting for years. I won't go through the timeline, but this project, the Willow Project, has been in permitting for years. We could start building it this winter. As a matter of fact, we tried to start building it last winter.

Like I said, I pitched the President on this: 2,000 construction jobs; enormous support from the building trades, labor unions; lowest greenhouse gas emissions for a project this type and size in America. And it would help us not have to go beg from other countries.

But there has been a lot of press in the last week on the Willow Project. Of course, our mainstream media doesn't get it. They love to tell their kind of slanted story on the Willow Project, so I am going to push back. And, boy, if you are a reporter, I really hope you write down some of the stuff that I am going to talk about here because it is all factual. And with all due respect, most of you guys never write about these things.

I am going to start with this chart. This is a really important chart in my mind, and it is important because this chart goes to an issue that really, really strikes to the heart and soul of why resource development in my State in particular is so important.

This chart is from the American Medical Association, and it looks at life expectancy from 1980 to 2014: 25 years. And in different parts of America, you see different life expectancy in these different colors. The blue, darker blue-purple is areas where life expectancy has increased dramatically in the last 25 years.

Unfortunately, there is yellow, orange, and even red. Life expectancy has slowed or even decreased in a few places. If you look at the map, that is mostly due to the horrendous opioid epidemic that we had as a nation.

But if you look at this chart, the one State where life expectancy has increased the most, by far, is the State of Alaska. The one area in the State of Alaska that has increased the most in terms of life expectancy are many of our rural areas: North Slope Borough, Northwest Arctic Borough, Aleutian Island chain--13 years, 13 years. In 25 years, people's life expectancy went up that much.

I have asked many times my Senate colleagues, Give me a policy indicator of success more important than are the people you representing living longer. Give me one. There isn't one. That is about as important as it gets.

And in my State, it has happened. It has happened. Why has it happened? Why has it happened? Well, I will tell you why it has happened. First, in a lot of these rural areas, unfortunately, the life expectancy in the early eighties was quite low.

These are primarily Alaskan Native communities, and they had some of the lowest life expectancies of any Americans--sometimes of any people in the world--because they didn't have things, like good jobs and flush toilets and clinics. They lived in real poverty. So we started really low.

And then what happened? What happened that in these mostly Alaskan Native communities people started living longer? I will tell you what happened. They started getting jobs. Resource development happened, responsible resource development: oil, gas, mining, fishing.

So when I talk about these issues, when Senator Murkowski talks about these issues, it is not just some kind of pie-in-the-sky issue of oil and gas. I mean, this is about life and death, which is why I come down here a little bit riled up sometimes because people don't have a clue. People don't have a clue.

The radical enviros who try to shut down the economies of my State all the darned time and some U.S. Senators--primarily the senior Senator from New Mexico--who come down here and try to shut this down, they don't understand.

So people are living longer in Alaska, much longer, more than any other part of the country because we have had responsible resource development, which brings me back to Willow.

So, again, you will see all these articles in the Washington Post, all these stories. Heck, there is three this week, I think, about this one project. And they are all slanted. And you have got some Lower 48 environmental group in New York City or San Francisco--oh my gosh, climate bomb--all this rhetoric that is hot air--pardon the pun--but not accurate. Who is supporting this project? Who is supporting?

You have an incredible diversity of people supporting this project. First, the unions, every major union in America--building trades, AFL- CIO--they are all supporting this project. They are all supporting this project.

But what I really want to emphasize is another group that is very special to me that supports the Willow Project. And you see here some of the symbols of these groups right here.

Some are the Alaska Chamber, Oil and Gas Association, Resource Development Council, but most of these symbols here are the Alaskan Native people--the Alaskan Native people, the leaders of a really important constituency in Alaska, the First Peoples of Alaska.

Why am I saying this? Because our national media never talks about this, right? They will pick one group, one leader--oh, we are against it--so they write about it. That is baloney.

The leaders of the Alaska communities, the Native communities are overwhelmingly supportive of this project. And here is my point: This administration loves to talk about environmental justice, environmental equity, communities that have been discriminated against to make sure they have access to proper environment, but you know what they do? They have been doing it for a year-and-a-half. When they talk about environmental justice, environmental equity, they always forget about Alaskan Natives.

They purposefully forget about Alaskan Natives. I see it all the time.

They can't do it this time. This project--and come on, media, write the story. This project has overwhelming support by the Native leaders and Native communities in Alaska.

So if you are for environmental justice and racial equity, all the things that the Biden administration says they are for, you better be a Willow supporter.

And for those in the Biden administration, Gina McCarthy and others, someone should ask her, Why are you discriminating against Alaskan Native people, because that is exactly what you are doing.

So you have, right here, some of our Alaska Native leaders in this statement:

The administration cannot proclaim to support meaningful

tribal consultation and environmental justice while at the

same time killing a critical resource [project] that supports

. . . the Inupiat communities of the North Slope [region].

That is right there from our great Alaska Native leaders, the Alaska Federation of Natives. I have their letter. That is the group representing every single Alaska Native organization in the State, the biggest group in the State, fully supports the Willow Project.

The ANCSA Regional Corporation leadership fully supports the Willow Project.

The Inupiat Community of the Arctic Slope fully supports the Willow Project.

Senator Murkowski just put out a press release.

I ask unanimous consent that the Senator Murkowski press release be printed in the Record.

Madam President, Alaskans Voice Strong Support for the Willow Project. She has a huge list of Alaskan Native groups and others who are supporting the Willow Project.

I ask unanimous consent that the AFN letter be printed in the Record.

Madam President, I ask unanimous consent that the ANCSA Regional Association letter be printed in the Record.

Madam President, I ask unanimous consent that the ICAS Community of the Arctic Slope be printed in the Record.

Madam President, so here is my point: The next time the media writes a big story on Willow and environmental justice and racial equity--which they love to do--and Alaska, they need to include this. This is the truth. They need to include the strong union support.

Go talk to the laborers, go talk to the building trades, go talk to Sean McGarvey, Terry O'Sullivan. See what they think about Willow.

There is one group that doesn't like Willow. It is the same group that doesn't like anything in America. It is the radical far-left environmental groups that are trying to shut down my State and keep Native Americans, Native Alaskans, impoverished in Alaska. I am not going to let that happen.

Here is one final thing. It is funny, not funny--Amusing, not amusing. Again, this is really important. This is about life and death.

You have all these stories about Willow in the national media, but what really, really kind of burns me up is there is a story--you know, they talk about the climate bomb, whatever the heck that means; it is not factual. But the one story I never see about Federal lands--real big increases in oil and gas production, real big increases in emissions--that never gets written about, again for our friends in the media--never--is what is going on in New Mexico, what is going on in New Mexico.

Well, we know some of the Members, the senior Senator from New Mexico, he loves to come after Alaska projects; I don't know why. Shut them down. Maybe to divert the media's attention from what is going on in his State. But I just want to give a couple stats.

Since 2019, New Mexico has increased production in its oil production by 700,000 barrels a day. It is pretty impressive. They were at 800,000 barrels; they have increased by almost 700,000. They have increased more than Alaska even produces in 3 years.

It is now the second largest oil producer in the country. The senior Senator from New Mexico recently bragged that is up 400 percent. OK. Good for him.

It is still amazing to me; he comes down here a lot, writes letters to try to shut down my State. But, whatever, I don't go after New Mexico. But I do want our friends in the media to just kind of ask the questions. Boy, oh, boy, you want to talk about climate bomb: 700,000 barrels a day. They have more carbon emissions than Alaska by far. Nobody is writing that story. But it is also how we do our environmental standards in different States. My State has the highest standards in the world on energy production--New Mexico, not so much.

Let me just give you a couple of examples: The average well in Alaska is 28,000 barrels a day because it is conventional. We are actually-- the resource is so rich there, we are not fracking like they do in the unconventional area. The average well in New Mexico produces 100 barrels--a hundred barrels to 28,000. So what does that mean? You have to drill 280 wells in New Mexico just to reach the equivalent of one in Alaska.

So the environmental footprint is much bigger. The carbon emission is much bigger. New Mexico flares its gas. We reinject our gas--again, highest environmental standards in the world.

We conduct our exploration and drilling activities only in the winter. You have to build ice roads, ice pads. Zero impact. I used to be in charge of this.

It is very expensive to do that. One little drop of anything--chewing tobacco--on the tundra, you have to report it. So where is the story about what is going on there?

Where is the carbon bomb story on New Mexico? Where is the story that the Secretary of the Interior has directed almost half the Federal permits to drill in the country to one State? Do you think it is Alaska? No way. They are trying to shut us down.

You think it is Texas? Nope. North Dakota? Nope. It is New Mexico. Golly gee, isn't that interesting?

I sure hope--look, it is terribly suspicious from my perspective that one State has received more Federal energy permits in the last 15 months than all other States in America combined. The Secretary of the Interior is from New Mexico. OK. Maybe there is something there.

But here is the bottom line: There have been barrels of ink spilled on every single project in Alaska--Willow, this week. But reporters shrug their shoulders, look the other way. Maybe it is because it is a blue State, they don't want to touch those guys, when it comes to New Mexico. No wonder Americans don't trust the media.

I am going to conclude with this quote. It is from a Wall Street Journal editorial written by the North Slope Borough mayor, Harry Brower, the Inupiat leader of the North Slope community and Josiah Paktotak, who is the State rep. These are two Alaska Native leaders elected. They are fully supportive of Willow.

It was in the Wall Street Journal, entitled ``Let Alaska Sell American Energy to the World,'' and it was written in March, as Russia was invading Ukraine.

They said:

Even as Russian tanks lined up on the Ukrainian border in

February, the Biden administration froze U.S. drilling on

Federal lands and issued rules making it harder to build

natural gas pipelines.

By the way, that is the rule that I am putting forth a CRA resolution to rescind.

They continue:

We may be Inupiaq Eskimos 5,000 miles away from the

Washington policy machine, but we know crazy when we see it.

And this is crazy.

And the American people know it.

Now, look, the President is in the Middle East, meeting with allies, asking for the Saudis to produce more oil. But as he would say: Come on, man. You got to start at home. You got to start at home.

The Willow Project in Alaska, supported by the Native community, supported by the unions--I would guarantee supported by probably 90 percent of Americans--it is time to get things like this done.

So our NEPA Congressional Review Act and our advocacy for commonsense projects, like Willow, supported by every single group in my State--and I sure hope the media writes about this--especially the Native people-- if they shut this down, that will be the ultimate injustice to indigenous people in Alaska, and they know it. And that is one of the many reasons why they shouldn't do it.

I yield the floor.

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

Madam President, it is Thursday, and normally, when I am giving this speech, our ``Alaskan of the Week'' speech--you notice we have a new, pro-energy ``Alaskan of the Week'' diagram here-- normally, when I give this speech, everybody has gone home. The pages love it because it is the most interesting speech of the week. Some of our reporters who like this speech, they are kind of viewing this as the end of the week.

Unfortunately, we are not at the end of the week. There is a lot more business to do for the next day or two or three--who knows?--important business, no doubt about it. But I still want to come down to the floor and talk about a really impressive man who has done incredible stuff for our State. His name is Jeff Streit.

Jeff has been a builder of the Trans-Alaska Pipeline--what we call TAPS--and then has helped run it for 48 years, almost half a century. We are going to talk about Jeff here in a minute. He has done an incredible job.

I always like to talk a little bit about what is going on in Alaska. All the people who watch this speech--we know there are millions who tune in every Thursday--come on up to Alaska. Come visit.

What is happening right now is really, really exciting. It is just a few days past summer solstice. Boy, did we celebrate in Alaska: parties, baseball games. The famous Midnight Sun Baseball Game took place in Fairbanks. I talked about that last week. It took place in Fairbanks on Tuesday. The Goldpanners, whom I talked about, the famous Alaskan baseball team, pulled out a 10-to-9 victory in the bottom of the 10th. The crowd of thousands went wild--Midnight Sun baseball.

So if you are visiting Fairbanks, as many tourists do right now, you might want to check out a baseball game. We have great baseball in Alaska, as I described last week.

You also might want to travel a couple of miles outside of Fairbanks to get a firsthand view of one of the engineering marvels of the world, the Trans-Alaska Pipeline, what we call TAPS. That is it right there, a big, beautiful, incredible engineering feat: 800 miles of steel pipeline crossing 3 mountain ranges--one about 5,000 feet high-- crossing more than 600 streams and rivers, and has transported over 17 billion barrels of oil to a thirsty America. That is energy security right there.

TAPS has provided countless benefits in terms of tens of thousands of jobs--good union jobs, I might add--not just to Alaskans but to Americans all over the country. I think even one of our Senate colleagues worked on this. It was the largest privately funded infrastructure project ever undertaken in America at the time it was built in the early seventies.

Here is the thing: It took 3 years to build--3 years; that is it-- this mammoth, huge, important energy project.

By the way, we need to get back to that in this country. I and many other Senators are working on that. You can't do an EIS in 6 years. We have to get back to this can-do American spirit, building things that benefit our great Nation in a timely manner. I am going to talk a little bit about that.

Our Alaskan of the Week, Jeff Streit, was one who did this. He helped construct this incredible engineering feat, and then he stayed on, and he worked for a company in Alaska, a very famous company called Alyeska, which is a consortium of companies that own and run and built the pipeline.

This week, Alyeska celebrated its 45-year anniversary--45 years of supplying a thirsty America with billions and billions and billions of barrels of oil. Everybody should applaud that.

I know we have some, unfortunately, who think that if you work in the energy sector, somehow you are a bad guy. Actually, you are a hero.

America needs energy. Alaska has a lot of it. Alyeska has produced it and sent it 800 miles down this incredible pipeline to the whole country. So I want to first congratulate Alyeska for their incredible work.

Jeff, our Alaskan of the Week, is the longest serving employee there. He has been working for Alyeska all of those 45 years and, as I mentioned, started work on TAPS even longer, 48 years in total, because he is one of the Americans--by the way, there were over 30,000 who came up to build this incredible work of energy infrastructure. Forty-eight years, Jeff Streit, Alyeska, building TAPS--what an amazing career. He is our Alaskan of the Week.

So let me tell you a little bit about Jeff. Jeff's father came to Alaska after World War II, where he flew for the Army Air Corps.

That is another theme you may have seen on our Alaskan of the Week: a lot of vets, a lot of veteran families. Alaska has more veterans than any State per capita in the country.

Jeff's father worked on projects across the State, married Jeff's mother in 1952 when they were both working on

the Alaska-Canada Highway--the ALCAN Highway, as we call it in Alaska.

By the way, you want to talk about building something efficiently in terms of infrastructure that we need in America? The ALCAN Highway-- 1,600 miles through Canada, all the way to the lower 48--built in 8 months. We can do that, America. We can build great things--ALCAN Highway, TAPS--efficiently. We have just got to get back to it. More on that later.

Jeff's parents then moved back to Illinois, where Jeff was born, but he might have been raised in Alaska because his parents talked about the great State of Alaska so much--their adventures there, what they did there. So he wanted to go back.

He went to pre-vet school at Iowa State for 2 years, and the first chance he got, in 1973, he moved to Alaska to work on a farm and go to college at the University of Alaska Fairbanks.

Now, Madam President, I am sure a lot of our Senate colleagues know this, but for the interns--the pages, I mean--you might remember in the early seventies, studying history, that we had this big energy crisis where energy prices were going up--a little bit familiar, unfortunately, today--going way up, primarily because there was an Arab oil embargo led by the Gulf Arab States, Saudi Arabia, against the United States and other countries. It was devastating. You couldn't get gas. There were lines at gas stations that stretched for blocks. States issued rationing based on odd and even license plates. Prices surged, a little bit like today. Motorists turned on each other. It was bedlam. By the way, it really hurt the economy, like today, in terms of inflation.

Enter the great State of Alaska and our vast, vast energy reserves for America. Congress said: We need to get Alaska moving. We need to get that Alaskan energy to the rest of the country.

So this body and the House debated the Trans-Alaska Pipeline Authorization Act--what we call, as I mentioned, TAPS--to build this for the country, and we did it.

It was drama, Madam President. You are sitting right there in the President of the Senate's seat. The TAPS act in the U.S. Senate was deadlocked. It was a tie vote here in the Senate, and the Vice President of the United States had to come and break the tie so America could build this for a country that needed energy--American energy, by the way, not energy from the Middle East.

Another incredible story as it relates to legislation and TAPS was the late, great Congressman Don Young, a freshman at the time. We just lost our dear Congressman a couple of months ago. He was a brandnew freshman in 1973. He got an amendment--and, boy, do we need amendments like this today--that said: On this big infrastructure project, we are going to stop any litigation. We are going to stop more studies. We are just going to build it.

We can do that here, by the way, the Congress. We can say: No more litigation; let's build. And that is what we did. That is what America did.

As the debate was happening here in the Congress, Jeff moved back up to Alaska, visited a local union hall, got on with the Teamsters, and his life's work in Alaska began.

As I said, Madam President, this was the largest private construction project in our country's history. At its height, we had over 30,000 Americans--great Americans, by the way--building this incredible piece of American energy infrastructure that transformed our State in Alaska, and it transformed America. At one point, this pipeline was producing 2.2 million barrels a day for our Nation. Over 17 billion barrels of oil have flown down that pipeline for America.

By the way, Madam President, Alaska has billions and billions of barrels of oil left, if our Federal Government would just help us produce it.

Eventually, Jeff got a job, after building TAPS, with Alyeska running TAPS, working at Pump Station 8. In the 48 years since, he has worked nearly every inch of that line as a technician at three pump stations, as a task force supervisor, as a project supervisor, as a pump station operations supervisor, and as a pipeline technician trainer. You get where I am going here, Madam President: He has done it all for Alyeska.

He has great stories and great memories. He remembers the mess halls filled with smoke and laughter and the hard work it took to build this pipeline. He remembers watching ``Jaws'' at a packed theater camp in the middle of the Alaska wilderness. He remembers the time a Russian delegation came to visit TAPS. The TAPS pump station was so clean.

By the way, Alaska has the highest environmental standards of energy production anywhere in the world.

He said: The Russians came, saw how we produced, saw pump stations, and thought that we were lying about how we produce and transport oil because it was so clean. They thought it was staged.

Jeff said: We were setting standards on the environment--cleanliness, environmental standards--that people across the world didn't think were possible. ``It made us proud.''

Well, guess what, we are still doing that in Alaska. Jeff still marvels at the engineers who designed one of the most complicated engineering projects ever built--before computers; using paper, pencils, slide rules. ``Every square inch of the system has to be intact to move even one drop of oil,'' Jeff said. ``If there is a leak anywhere, we shut the whole thing down.''

It is a testament to so many that this incredible system has kept oil flowing for America for 45 years. That is what Jeff just said about TAPS and Alyeska.

To keep it running, there are always upgrades, adjustments, installing enhanced monitoring, detection, surveillance, but, as Jeff said, ``The pipeline itself is still the same pipeline that was built in the `70s, still doing battle with the geological and meteorological forces,'' and still standing strong for our country.

Jeff has no plans to retire soon. He is still highly engaged. He is still highly curious. He is now taking on a greater mentorship role, including developing and teaching a hydraulics class, emulating those who taught him.

Jeff said: ``When I think about the last 48 years, I think about the thousands of people who have made a difference, who helped me and taught me. And I really think that that's what America is all about-- passing on values and work ethic[s]'' to each other.

That is what America is all about. That is the best of our country: people who work hard, who are loyal to their jobs, to their communities, to their State, to their country, and importantly, who produce important things like American energy, which we need to this day. Jeff is exactly one of those kind of people. He built this, ran it, still runs it, and our Nation still needs it.

So, Jeff, thank you for all that you have done.

Thanks to the workers at Alyeska who are currently working right now, 24/7, to keep hundreds of thousands of barrels of oil a day, which we need, coming down the Trans-Alaska Pipeline.

A big congratulations to Alyeska for 45 years and 17 billion barrels of oil for America.

That company, Alyeska, has produced many great leaders--Jeff being one and Tom Barrett, my good friend, being another. And I just want to say to him--to everybody at Alyeska but particularly to Jeff-- congratulations on being our Alaskan of the Week. You people who are producing American energy are American heroes. We need more of you, and we really appreciate all you have done for our great State and our great Nation.

I yield the floor.

Madam President, I want to thank my colleague from Missouri. And I will just mention here in the Senate his leadership on so many issues are really going to be missed. Maybe he will reconsider his decision to leave this august body, which is going to be a lot less--a lot less of an institution that thinks hard about these difficult issues when he is gone. So I want to thank Senator Blunt for all he has done. He is a great friend of mine, so we are going to miss him.

It is Thursday, and once again it is an opportunity for me to talk about our Alaskan of the week.

Now, I know that our pages--the new pages, they are going to really realize this is probably one of the most exciting, interesting speeches of the week. Some of our friends in the media even like it because it is end of the week. I get to brag about Alaska and talk about someone who is doing something really great for our State, maybe their community, maybe the country, maybe the world, right?

We have all kinds who do this.

I always like to talk a little bit about what is going on in Alaska first.

So it is amazing how quickly the seasons go by because it is almost summer solstice in the State. That is when the Sun rarely sets across any part of Alaska and the State is filled with life, filled with energy. You can feel it when you come up. Hopefully, we get a lot of tourists this summer. I know we are going to get a lot. A lot of people want to get up to Alaska, particularly after the pandemic. You can feel it in the air when you are there, this sense of energy and excitement.

So our tourists are there now. They are seeing spectacular scenery, wildlife, glaciers, our salmon-choked streams. They will be able to hike through thousands of miles of State and Federal parks, climb mountains, fly through the skies, and some are even there to watch baseball. Yes, baseball.

Now, maybe not the Braves, but still good baseball. Now, I know that is going to sound odd to some people. Now, wait a minute. Going up to Alaska to watch baseball probably isn't the first thing that comes to many people's minds when they think about Alaska.

But diehard American baseball fans know that Alaska has played a fundamental role in America's pastime. They know how important Alaska summers are and have been for decades, taking young college students with raw but exceptional talent and growing them under the midnight Sun into seasoned professional Major League Baseball players.

This is the Alaska Baseball League, one of the premiere amateur collegiate summer baseball leagues that anybody plays anywhere in America.

Let me give you just a few--and I mean a few--of those who have come up through the Alaska Baseball League. It has produced some of Major League Baseball's most well known All-Stars, including Mark McGwire, Barry Bonds, Tom Seaver, Dave Winfield, and Randy Johnson, just to name a few.

The Alaska Baseball League is sometimes composed of five teams, sometimes six--two teams in Anchorage, one in Palmer, one in Chugiak- Eagle River, one in Kenai.

And then there is a team, a very famous team, in Fairbanks--the oldest

and most storied of them all--which I am going to focus on today.

It is the Fairbanks Goldpanners; and the team's general manager, who is our Alaskan of the Week, John Lohrke, makes the baseball magic of Alaska happen.

So, first, a few words about John's background. He was raised in a baseball family. His father, Jack Lohrke--Lucky Lohrke, as baseball fans might know him--was a World War II veteran who landed on Omaha Beach 6 days after D-day, fought his way across Europe, survived many near-death experiences in combat and even back home; hence the name ``Lucky.''

After the military, Jack played baseball as a third baseman for the New York Giants and the Philadelphia Phillies.

After Jack Lohrke retired, his family moved to California, but, as I said, baseball is in the Lohrke family's blood.

Our Alaskan of the Week, John, had an older brother, who was drafted by the Red Sox, and John himself got into the game administratively. As a college student at Santa Clara, he began helping his college team behind the scenes.

In 1980, the Santa Clara coach was going to Alaska to coach the North Pole Nicks. John thought that that sounded great and asked if he could come. He did, he fell in love with Alaska and stayed, like so many in our State.

He managed the Nicks for 7 years, then was the president of another team, the Oilers, on Alaska's beautiful Kenai Peninsula; then it was back to the interior part of the State, where John stayed involved with baseball as a board member of the Goldpanners.

In 2016, he became president of the board, and now he is the general manager of the Goldpanners in Fairbanks, the person in charge of making it all happen. And what a responsibility and what a team and what a history and what a legacy of excellence John has been part of.

Since its founding in 1960, the Goldpanners have had over 211 players that have gone on to the major leagues. Isn't that remarkable--211 players? A pipeline into the major leagues from Fairbanks, AK. Who knew? And that doesn't include the countless others who went on to be coaches or general managers or scouts.

The current Cleveland Guardians manager played for the Goldpanners. The current pitching coach for the Red Sox is also a Goldpanner alumnus. As I mentioned, the Goldpanners are one of the premier pipelines into the major leagues.

One of the highlights of the season in Alaska, something that is happening very soon--actually, this Tuesday--is when the Goldpanners play their most famous game. It is the Midnight Sun game, and it is played every summer on the summer solstice.

The tradition of the Midnight Sun game in Fairbanks goes way, way back. The first one of these games was played in 1906. Americans have been playing midnight baseball in Alaska well over 100 years, and now this game is famous--worldwide. It is a must-do bucket list game for baseball enthusiasts all across America. Thousands of people, many of whom come from across the globe, will gather for this game this Tuesday, as they do every summer in Fairbanks.

Now, this game is a culmination of a dizzying array of activities that occur in Fairbanks. Right now, parties, street festivals, a famed Midnight Sun Run. Fairbanks--a great city. My wife was born and raised there--is known for its spirit, generosity, and on the summer solstice weekend, that spirit explodes. I will be heading there tomorrow. I am going to partake in some of these festivities, including taking in a Goldpanners game and maybe, as I usually do, join the many runners in the Midnight Sun Run, where I have been known to bring up the rear of all the runners. We will see what happens.

But for Tuesday night's Midnight Sun game this year, the Goldpanners will be playing the San Diego Waves. The game starts at 10 p.m. in Growden Park and goes until the wee hours.

With Fairbanks just 150 miles south of the Arctic Circle, the Sun just begins to set in the north a little bit as the game gets underway but never fully goes down under the horizon, and as the game ends, the Sun is actually starting to rise again.

As one sports writer put it: ``It is the stuff that baseball dreams are made of.''

And it is never dark. And throughout its century-long history, artificial lights have never been used ever--not once.

John Lohrke, our Alaskan of the Week, understands how important that particular game is to the larger culture of baseball, not just to Fairbanks and the interior. He understands how important the Goldpanners team is for all of Alaska, for Fairbanks, but for baseball writ large.

Since starting in as a manager, he has put more money into the stadium to spruce it up. There are a lot of pictures of some of the great alumni there that I mentioned earlier in my remarks. He is constantly in touch with members of the business community who help sponsor and support the team.

He is in charge of getting housing for the 24-member team and the coaches, many of whom are talented athletes who come up to Alaska from the lower 48 for the summer.

He is in charge of transportation needs. He is in charge of the vendors and ticket sales and the beer garden. He is in charge of making all of this run smoothly for Fairbanks, for the team he loves, and for the love of baseball.

``I love Fairbanks,'' he said. ``And I love baseball. It's in my blood,'' and this is where it happens.

So thanks to all the Goldpanner players and the community that supports the team. Thank you, John, for all you do to make it happen to bring us together to keep baseball alive. Congratulations for being our Alaskan of the Week.

(Mr. WARNOCK assumed the Chair.)

Tribute to Liz Banicki

Mr. President, I just talked about our Alaskan of the Week. I am going to mention another Alaskan who deserves really, really great praise. It is with a heavy heart that this week Team Sullivan will be losing a critical member of our staff in the wonderful staffer Liz Banicki, who is moving on to the private sector to help veterans, a group she has worked tirelessly for during her time in my office.

Liz is from Eagle River, AK. She is a Chugiak High School graduate. She graduated from the University of Portland with a degree in political science and German studies. She received two Fulbrights to study, first in Germany and then Austria, but her heart has always remained in Alaska.

She interned for the late, great Congressman Don Young before joining my campaign in 2014, my first election. She did a great job. Then she came to Washington with my team, and she is a member of what we call in our office the OG--been there from the beginning.

Liz's story is a story of success, and it has been an honor to watch her hard work and all she has done for me, my team, and most importantly, Alaskans.

She began with focusing on veterans and then expanded her role to take on foreign policy and homeland security and trade and fisheries.

In the process, she became one of the most impressive staffers in the whole U.S. Senate--I am a little biased, but I think it is true--on all of these diverse issues. It is a marvel listening to her explain, for example, fish import trade codes--so many of which she knows by heart.

She also understands and has worked the power of networking that has helped her do her job so well. She knows countless people in think tanks, the private sector back home, in embassies, and in the White House; and that has helped her get the job done for Alaska.

That is Liz's ethos: Getting the job done.

Now, we all know these jobs take a lot of hours. Liz puts in those hours. I can't tell you how many nights I have left the office 9:30, 10 p.m., and I will walk past Liz's office--she is still there working in front of her computer, on the phone, making sure our veterans get the help they need; working on banning Russian fish from being imported to the U.S.; assisting refugees trying to get out of Afghanistan, which she worked tirelessly on; working on my bill to deter China from invading Taiwan--I could go on and on and on.

Now, we all know, having staff, they will push back on occasion when they don't agree with the direction of their boss. It is something that can be difficult but necessary. And I don't think

that anybody would accuse Liz of being shy from pushing back. She knows her mind, and she speaks it, and she has done an exceptional job in my office; and most importantly, she has helped thousands and thousands of Alaskans.

So I just want to thank her for her dedication to her State, her country, and to our office. We are going to miss her very much.

Good luck, Liz. You will always be a part of ``Team Sullivan.''

I yield the floor.

Mr. President, I am going to talk a little bit about the bill that we have been debating here all week on the Senate floor, the Sergeant First Class Heath Robinson Honoring our PACT Act of 2022.

Now, it is a very important bill. It is named after Sergeant First Class Robinson, an Ohio National Guard soldier who died in 2022 as a result of service-connected toxic exposure.

This bill that we are going to be voting for final passage on tomorrow would deliver immediate access to healthcare for toxic-exposed veterans, direct the VA to evaluate diseases for presumption of service connection, and streamline the process for toxic-exposed veterans seeking disability compensation for their illness that they gained while serving overseas defending our Nation.

I have supported the intent of this bill for years, and I intend to vote in favor of this bill tomorrow when it comes up for final passage.

There is nothing, in my mind, that is more important than taking care of our veterans, but I do want to raise some concerns about how we got to this point, the process of this bill, which, in my view, undermined the likelihood of this massive new program being implemented in a way that benefits all American veterans so we can take care of all American veterans.

Let me explain. Since my time here in the Senate, I have focused on these issues. I serve on the Veterans' Affairs Committee that was responsible, in large measure, for many aspects of this bill. I serve on the Armed Services Committee. I still serve in the military myself, in the Marine Corps Reserves, and I am honored to represent the State in our great Nation, Alaska, that has more veterans per capita than any State in the country.

So veterans and military affairs and their families have been a core focus of mine since I arrived in the Senate in 2015. And in particular, I have been focused on this issue of toxic exposure of our service men and women during wartime. In fact, one of my commitments as a candidate for the U.S. Senate in 2014 was to work to ensure passage of the Blue Water Navy Vietnam Veterans Act, which I cosponsored when I got here and was signed into law in 2019.

That was an outstanding commitment to our Vietnam veterans exposed to Agent Orange during their time, but it was belatedly fulfilled--years, even decades, after their service in Vietnam.

And I took lessons from that. As a matter of fact, I think many Senators took lessons from that, that when the next generation of veterans served overseas and were exposed to toxins during their service, that we needed to act.

So that is what I have done in my career here. I have worked, taking the Vietnam veteran experience, particularly with Agent Orange, to make sure we don't repeat that--the mistakes of Agent Orange where those exposed to toxic substances overseas during their service and later came down with diseases and suffered, that we needed to take care of them.

We know that toxic exposure during military service can add serious complications to a veteran's health, years and even decades after their service has concluded.

And there is science that can correlate certain diseases and symptoms to exposure. That is the model that we want. Veterans suffering from potential exposure understand too well that getting the VA to even recognize and concede exposure can remain a challenging bureaucratic and incredibly frustrating process that leads to denials often from the bureaucracy.

So early in my time here, I have been a relentless advocate on these issues. I will give you a few examples.

I introduced with Senator Manchin of West Virginia the Veterans Burn Pits Exposure Recognition Act, which was previously passed out of committee in the Veterans' Affairs Committee and enjoys broad bipartisan support. Close to half of the Senate--Democrats and Republicans--was cosponsors of our bill, and almost all of the Senate Veterans' Affairs Committee were.

This bill would recognize and concede exposure to toxic substances for those veterans who were deployed in areas where burn pits were in use: in Iraq, in Afghanistan, in Uzbekistan--all of these different areas and more.

This bill would do away with the paperwork that made it almost impossible to prove exposure by these veterans. It put the onus on the VA and that bureaucracy.

When crafting this bill with Senator Manchin, our offices worked extensively with the Senate Veterans' Affairs Committee and many of the veterans service organizations, particularly the Disabled American Veterans organization; and we worked with the VA on the language to make sure we were not getting ahead of the science, making sure that what was exposed and what were the diseases connect with science--not always easy, but the VA does have expertise in that area.

I then cosponsored with Senator Blumenthal the K2 Veterans Advocacy Act. This bill moved the needle on three things that are known systematically now: that toxic substances at the base that we call K2 in Uzbekistan, the medical conditions that K2 veterans have--and they are serious; something really bad was going on at the K2 base in Uzbekistan--and the links between the two.

Now, we worked with the Trump White House before President Trump left office in 2020, before our bill passed here on the Senate floor, to get them to issue an Executive order for the VA to essentially do those things for K2 veterans.

I introduced and had passed the bipartisan Burn Pits Accountability Act with Senator Klobuchar, which directs the Pentagon to include empirical health assessments and evaluation of whether a servicemember has been exposed to open burn pits or toxic airborne chemicals in their deployments. This bill was included in the fiscal year 2020 National Defense Authorization Act.

And I sponsored the Pandemic Care For Burn Pits Exposure Act of 2020 to ensure that servicemembers and veterans with previous exposure to burn pits received the care they needed during the COVID-19 pandemic.

I am listing these bills and the work and time and the bipartisan nature of them because on the Veterans Affairs' Committee there has been no issue I have been more focused on.

We are going to take the lessons from Vietnam, Agent Orange, and not say: You are going to wait three or four or five decades while you die of cancer.

And I am committed to this issue, and I have been. But I am also committed to passing legislation that is worthy of all veterans that we are serving. So I have had some reservations about the current bill and the process by which it has come to the Senate floor, because the process has thwarted opportunities to make this a better bill, to make it serve our veterans in a better, holistic way.

And, again, this is an issue I have been focused on since my first days in the U.S. Senate.

So what are the issues?

Well, as I mentioned, some of the things in there--a lot of the things in this bill are very necessary. The bill that I just mentioned that I cosponsored with Senator Manchin, the Veterans Burn Pits Exposure Recognition Act, was incorporated into the PACT Act that we will be voting on tomorrow, the Sergeant Robinson Honoring our PACT Act.

In fact, many bipartisan bills from the Veterans' Affairs Committee were included in this bill that we are going to be voting on tomorrow.

But ultimately, what we had going on in the Veterans' Affairs Committee was an agreement that when we brought this big bill--and it is big--to the Senate floor, we would have the ability to bring amendments to try to improve it, to try to make it better for all veterans in the entire VA system, a system that we know has challenges implementing sweeping mandates from Congress.

This is a sweeping mandate from Congress that we are voting on. As I mentioned, the issue of toxic exposure, which I have been focused on since my first year here in the U.S. Senate, has always been a bipartisan bill. Four bills I just mentioned that I have led on have all had Democratic cosponsors leading with me as well. But what happened this week and last week was the bipartisan nature of trying to tackle one of the biggest issues facing our veterans was shut down. For whatever reason, and I don't know why--somebody should ask the majority leader--all the amendments that we were going to bring to the floor to make this bill better were shut down. We have not had one amendment on this comprehensive bill, and, like I said, a number of us have been focused on this issue for years.

What were we trying to do with these amendments? We are trying to make this a better bill. Bring your ideas to the floor, debate them, vote on them. Why wouldn't we want to do that? Why wouldn't we want to do that? Don't we owe it to all of our veterans to do that?

My primary concern, as I have mentioned, is making sure that not just the constituency impacted by this legislation, which we need--those exposed to toxic exposure primarily from burn pits are taken care of-- but that the whole VA system remains robust and strong. And I think some of the amendments--I know some of the amendments that we were going to bring--as a matter of fact, on the Veterans' Affairs Committee there was a commitment to make sure we were bringing these amendments to the floor--would have made this bill better.

What are the biggest concerns? Well, I pressed the Secretary of the VA just yesterday in his testimony before the Veterans' Affairs Committee on one of the biggest concerns I have and one of the biggest concerns many Senators have and one of the biggest concerns our Veterans' Affairs Committee has, and it is this: This bill that I will be supporting tomorrow is estimated to bring an additional 2.5 million claims to the VA--2.5 million.

My question to the Secretary was simple but really important: Mr. Secretary, is the VA system ready to absorb the roughly 2\1/2\ million additional claims that are likely to be generated in the next 3 years by the PACT Act? Are you ready?

We have some ideas and amendments that we think can make it ready. But again, for whatever reason, the majority leader didn't want to hear about those.

In an already stretched VA, with a huge backlog already and challenges as we speak, the Secretary testified about them yesterday, about hiring qualified medical personnel across the country but especially in my State, in Alaska. The concern that I raised with the Secretary yesterday, the concern that we are trying to address with the amendment process here on the Senate floor is this: When you bring that many into a system that is not ready, you can collapse the whole system. You can collapse the whole system.

And then every veteran loses. A young marine with his legs amputated after an IED explosion in Afghanistan who needs help, he is going to be delayed. A Vietnam veteran who needs

care, he is going to be delayed. A Gulf war veteran, she is going to be delayed. If you are collapsing the whole system, every veteran loses. Every veteran loses.

Now, I have actually seen this in my State. And I know the Presiding Officer's State has had some challenges with the VA. Several years ago, I held a field hearing in Arizona on some of the challenges in the VA, but I have seen the system collapse in Alaska. In 2015, my first year in the U.S. Senate, due to legislation that had been passed the year before, we essentially had the system in Alaska collapse. Somehow, some way, legislation and ideas from the VA thought it was really smart to remove the ability to actually make appointments for veterans in Alaska not by officials from the VA who live in Alaska but somewhere in the lower 48--I think it was Louisiana or somewhere--not a good idea. The whole system cratered. I have seen it. And no veteran benefits. No one benefits.

In my first year here in 2015, it was my No. 1 priority to get the VA to fix the broken system in Alaska, and we have made huge progress. But I have seen it firsthand. When a system that is supposed to take care of veterans craters, of course, every veteran suffers.

So we don't want that to happen with the implementation of this important bill. And the Secretary of the VA assured me, assured Senator Tillis in questioning yesterday, that this won't happen, that the system won't be overburdened, that they are prepared for this.

Well, I hope he is right. I have my doubts, but I hope he is right.

But here is the point: A bipartisan amendment process, particularly from Senators--I will give you one example. Senator Moran, ranking member on Veterans' Affairs, has been working this issue like me for years. Particularly from Senators who actually know the issue, a bipartisan amendment process would have helped ensure that this possibility would be much less.

I will give you a couple of examples of what, for whatever reason, the majority leader didn't want to bring up on this important legislation. We had amendments to make sure that the VA didn't get ahead of the science. You need to connect the science and exposure to the disease. That is simple. That is what is expected--it is not simple. It is a complicated process, but it is just the rigor of a bill that you want to make sure that those who are exposed and sick and with a disease are the ones who get the care.

Right now, in this bill, there are 23 respiratory illnesses and cancers that will be added to the list of presumptive ailments that will allow a veteran to be diagnosed with toxic exposure and qualify for benefits and any other disease the Secretary of the VA determines is warranted based on a positive association with certain substances, chemicals, or airborne hazards. Some of those 23 presumptives, as we are calling them, are based on science. Some aren't. I have asked the VA; I have asked the Secretary: Hey, where did we get these 23? The answer, I am still waiting for.

That is what the amendment process is for, to make sure this bill has rigor to take care of all veterans.

Let me mention another amendment offered by Senator Moran, an amendment that he was promised to get a floor vote on that didn't happen and I think would have made the bill stronger. It would have preserved the Trump-era gains on community care access standards and, importantly, serve as a relief valve for veterans to receive care as millions are going to be added into the system. So, again, if you have 2\1/2\ million additional claims and the VA is overwhelmed and now there is a giant backlog for everybody, this amendment would have said: Well, the veterans in the system can go out and get community care. That is a good idea. It is actually how it works in Alaska because we don't have a full-service VA hospital, one of only three States in the country. But that is a really smart idea, a safety valve. If the system looks like it is going to crater because it is overwhelmed, hey, let some doctors in town help the veterans. We couldn't bring that amendment up.

So I pressed the VA Secretary on this because I have seen it when a system collapses, and my veterans were really hurt in Alaska when it did--the VA system in my State. And I am going to take his word for it now that the VA can handle 2\1/2\ million more claims in the next 3 years. But I am going to be watching like a hawk--watching like a hawk in my oversight role. Like I said, there is nothing I care more about than our veterans, our military, and their family members. We had the opportunity on an important bill that I will be supporting to make it better. And we sat in the Senate all week and didn't bring up one amendment to even try.

The Secretary is assuring us. OK. All good. Good to go. Well, some of us had ideas to make sure it would have been better to go. We couldn't bring them up.

I hope there aren't problems with this implementation. If the system is in danger of collapsing as a result of this bill, I hope that whoever is majority leader at that time--2, 3, 4 years from now-- understands that the care for all veterans is what the VA is all about, and I hope if we need it, we will have the opportunity to bring good ideas to the Senate floor to fix these kind of things because veterans are not a partisan issue in the Senate. They are not. I have seen it my whole career here. I sit on the committee. I sit on the Armed Services Committee. But for whatever reason, our ability, in a bipartisan way, to try to improve this bill that we are going to vote on tomorrow was not granted to other Senators. And I think that was a missed opportunity because I think we would have made this a better bill.

I yield the floor.

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

Mr. President, it is Thursday, and I normally come down on the Senate floor to give the ``Alaskan of the Week'' speech. And, unfortunately, I am not going to do that today.

Actually, last week, I named two Alaskans of the week. We kind of had a two-for-one last week. Just as a little wrap-up for that, it was quite a remarkable thing that took place just last week in Alaska on Memorial Day.

My two Alaskans of the week, a 92-year-old artist working with a detective, both Alaska Natives, both from the community of Unalaska out on the Aleutian Islands chain, worked together. Actually, Gertrude Svarny worked for decades to right a wrong and get a military burial on Memorial Day for a young man and also an Alaska Native from Unalaska who died fighting in World War II and was never recognized, no gravestone, no tombstone, nothing--for decades. And we had an amazing ceremony thanks to these two amazing Alaskans--Gertrude Svarny, as I mentioned, and Mike Livingston. And the memory of this young Alaska Native soldier, Private George Fox, was now finally recognized.

That was in a Memorial Day ceremony last week. I was trying to get there. Unfortunately, they sometimes get a lot of bad weather out there. I flew halfway out to the Aleutian Islands, and we had horrible weather. We couldn't land.

But the ceremony happened. So there were two Alaskans of the week 2 weeks ago that I just wanted to highlight again. It was an incredibly moving ceremony.

So I figured that was two for one. So, unfortunately, I am not going to do an ``Alaskan of the Week'' today. I know we like to end the week on a high note.

Infrastructure

Mr. President, I am going to talk about a mystery that has really been, certainly, flummoxing me and, I think, so many people in our Federal Government on a matter that especially impacts millions and millions of Americans suffering from high energy prices. It is a mystery for the American people.

And, you know, our Federal Government can sometimes be so opaque that you often don't know who is up to what in this Big Government of ours, particularly when people are trying to do

things that are so obviously harmful to the American people. So I am going to talk a little bit about this mystery because I think we finally solved it. There is a culprit who is usually the culprit in a lot of bad things happening in our Federal Government, and I am going to talk about that.

So here is a little bit of background on the mystery. We passed a bipartisan infrastructure bill in November. Now, I voted for it. Some of my colleagues didn't. I voted for it primarily because I come from a resource-rich, infrastructure-poor State.

Alaska has resources--oil, gas, minerals, renewables--that can help our State and can help the country and, really, help the world, but we have very little infrastructure.

Think about this. My State is 120 times bigger than Connecticut, and we have less road miles than Connecticut. And I know we have less road miles than Maryland.

So, we need infrastructure. So Senator Murkowski, Congressman Young, and I participated, certainly in our own ways, on getting this infrastructure bill written and then over the goal line in terms of votes.

Overall, I thought it was a positive bill. It wasn't perfect, but especially with the focus on roads, bridges, ports, harbors, and broadband--and there is actually a provision in there for Federal loan guarantees on a huge Alaska gas project--an LNG project. So in my view, this bill was a win-win-win for jobs, infrastructure, and energy infrastructure to help bring down energy prices, and, of course, on the environment.

I like to show this chart a lot. It has gotten a lot of attention. Some of our national media folks have seen it, and they say: Gee, that can't be true. Let's PolitiFact or fact-check Senator Sullivan's emissions chart. So they have, and they have come back and said: Hey, gosh, he is actually right.

It shows annual emissions from the major economies in the world since 2005 to present. Who is the leader in reducing emissions? Who is the leader? We are. America is--actually, by far; not even close--with almost a 15-percent emission reduction since 2005.

Who is the main culprit of spewing emissions out into the global atmosphere? Well, you guessed it--our good friends, the Chinese communists--China, India, Iran, and Russia.

So we are the leader on this. I had the opportunity during a confirmation hearing recently for one of the Biden administration's EPA nominees in charge of air quality. I showed him this chart. He didn't seem to know a lot about the chart, but he seemed like a good guy. I asked: Hey, why do you think this happened? He kind of trotted out initially the EPA regs. Wrong answer. This is because of the revolution in the production of American gas. That is a fact, OK? You can check it all you want.

So you would think that infrastructure, part of the infrastructure bill that can help us actually produce more energy with more energy infrastructure, that everybody would be for it--helps the environment, global emissions, certainly helps workers, and helps build out infrastructure, which we sorely need.

As I mentioned, Mr. President, big supporters of the infrastructure bill were all the trade unions in Alaska and America because they know they are going to get the jobs from the build-out of this infrastructure bill.

Now, one of the things the bill had that I thought was actually really important--it was something I worked on in the Environment and Public Works Committee--were provisions to streamline our Federal permitting system to be able to get infrastructure projects deployed and built. That was a big element of this bill--not as much as I wanted, but certainly a good start.

This has been an issue I have been working on since my time here in the Senate. It is a bipartisan issue, as the Presiding Officer knows. When you talk to mayors and Governors in America anywhere--it doesn't matter what party they are--they want the ability to have the Federal Government permit infrastructure projects so we can move them out. That is not controversial.

And here is the thing. As a country, we used to be really good at building stuff--building stuff on time, building stuff that is impressive. Just to give you a few examples--I think a lot of people know this--but our country used to be the envy of the world building great projects responsibly, efficiently, and on time. The Pentagon was built in 16 months. The Empire State Building was built in 1 year 45 days. With the 1,500-mile Alaska-Canadian Highway--what we call the ALCAN Highway, connecting the lower 48 all the way through Canada up into Alaska, 1,500 miles--it took 8 months to do that. So we know how to do this as a country.

Let's fast-forward to today. A new U.S. highway construction project, to build a highway, usually takes 9 to 19 years. That is according to the GAO. Let me just give you a couple of examples of those.

The Gross Reservoir in Colorado, which is going to offer clean water to the people of Colorado, has taken two decades of planning and permitting. To expand the Gross Reservoir northwest of Denver has taken two decades--20 years--to get this important project in Colorado permitted.

The California bullet train project was approved in the late 1990s. It is still not built. Its costs, because of permitting delays, have gone from $33 billion to $105 billion.

The Mountain Valley Pipeline in Virginia and West Virginia began in 2015 to bring natural gas. There are only 20 miles left to complete. It might not ever be completed because of permitting delays. The Federal courts are delaying, delaying, and delaying energy projects.

The Kensington mine in Alaska, which now employs over 400 people--it is a gold mine with an average wage, by the way, of over $100,000, the average wage--took 20 years to permit if you include the litigation. The list goes on and on and on.

When NEPA was originally passed, the EIS, the environmental impact statement, was to take less than a year. It usually took less than a year and was usually a couple hundred pages. Now the average EIS takes 4 to 6 years to complete on any project in America, and it usually costs several millions of dollars. We are killing ourselves as a country in our ability to build or to not build infrastructure projects.

What did we do in the infrastructure bill? It was bipartisan. We worked together and put together some pretty good permitting reform provisions. They are not nearly as good as I would have wanted them, but they were pretty good, pretty good, to get the infrastructure that is in this bill--roads; bridges; ports; yes, energy projects of pipelines for oil and gas, which we need--built quickly or at least in a reasonable amount of time, not in 20 years.

So here is the mystery. That all happened. The President said he liked it. The unions really liked it. The building trades--the men and women who build stuff in this country--liked it. I have worked with Terry O'Sullivan, the great leader of the Laborers, on permitting reform--this very issue. We have got some good things in there. So what is the mystery?

Here is the mystery: After all of this work and the President touting the infrastructure bill and our getting ready to build and having good impacts in terms of natural gas, not just on environment and emissions but in continuing to make us the global leader, the White House set out new rules in April, under NEPA, for infrastructure projects.

What did they do? They made the NEPA rules much harder to actually build infrastructure, not just for oil and gas, but it targeted oil and gas. This is for all infrastructure--roads, bridges, ports, renewable projects, LNG projects, natural gas projects.

The White House put out new NEPA rules rescinding the Trump administration's rules, which were quite good and similar to some of the reforms we got in the infrastructure bill, and everybody knows that these White House rules are going to delay infrastructure projects. Why in the heck would we do that as a country? We just passed a big infrastructure bill with permitting reform in it, and somebody over at the White House said: No, let's make it harder.

Here is an editorial from the Wall Street Journal that talks about the infrastructure NEPA regs. It is called: ``How to Kill American Infrastructure on the Sly. The White House revises

NEPA rules that will scuttle [the ability to build] new roads, bridges and oil and gas pipelines.''

(Ms. CORTEZ MASTO assumed the Chair.)

Madam President, I ask unanimous consent to have printed in the Record this editorial.

So the new rules come out. They are clearly meant to kill infrastructure, especially oil and gas but kind of everything. The President is touting this infrastructure bill as one of his big achievements. It was bipartisan. A number of us, myself included, voted for it, but there is somebody out there who is trying to make sure the infrastructure doesn't get built. Hmm. That is the mystery. That is the mystery. Who would do that? Well, heck. I am trying to find the answer because I really care about this issue--permitting reform--in order to get infrastructure projects built. My State has been ground zero about projects being delayed. So who is it?

So I am starting to ask around the White House. Secretary Granholm was testifying in front of the Armed Services Committee 2 weeks ago.

I raised this issue with her: Madam Secretary, who the heck is doing it? Are you?

Senator, I didn't know anything about this CQ rule.

It is a little surprising. I mean, there was a lot about energy, but that is what she said in the hearing. Go take a look at it. I believe her. I don't think she was pushing to delay infrastructure.

Would it be the Secretary of Labor, Marty Walsh? He is a former laborer, a LIUNA guy, right? I supported Marty Walsh strongly because I talked to him before his confirmation about--Hey, look. There is a group in the White House who hates energy even though it has great jobs, and there are some in the White House who think that they want to help the building trades build stuff. If you are with that group, Marty Walsh, I will support you as Secretary of Labor. He said he was. So I don't think it is he.

As a matter of fact, when these regs came out, the Laborers' International put out a statement, saying:

Once again, communities in need of vital infrastructure and

the hard-working men and women who build America will be

waiting as project details are subjected to onerous reviews

[by these new rules].

This is the Laborers' International. The men and women who build stuff are not happy about this new NEPA rule.

Americans will continue to bear the expense of NEPA-related

delays, which cost taxpayers millions of dollars annually.

Lengthy review processes and unpredictable legal challenges

[will result from these new NEPA regs. They will have] a

chilling impact on private investment in infrastructure.

Of course, when we need energy, these new NEPA rules will make it harder for Americans to get energy, and the price of energy is going to continue to go like this: on the backs of working families.

So was it the Secretary of Labor pushing this? I doubt it. I doubt it.

Who was it?

Well, as I have said on the floor of the U.S. Senate many times before, if there is something bad happening to the national interests of our country either domestically or internationally, it is probably not farfetched to assume John Kerry is near it. There is nobody in the Biden administration who so regularly tries to undermine America's national interests than John Kerry's kowtowing to the Chinese Communist Party or kissing up to Iranian terrorists. When Putin began his barbaric invasion of Ukraine, John Kerry publicly voiced his first concerns not about people dying and not about a democracy being overrun by a dictator; it was how Vladimir Putin might take his eye off his climate change goals.

This is embarrassing as Americans. He is a senior official. Now, he has no power in terms of being confirmed by the Senate. Yes, he is a former Secretary of State and a former Senator, but on these issues, he is so out of touch with the average American.

So who was pushing these new NEPA rules to delay energy projects for America? It is the big mystery. Heck, I don't even think it was the President. He seems proud of this infrastructure bill. He has told all of the unions he wants them to get to work and build, but now we have a new rule that is going to delay the building of infrastructure.

The mystery is solved. The mystery is solved.

This is a headline from a TIME magazine news story that just came out yesterday of John Kerry saying:

``We Have to Push Back Hard'' on Efforts to Build New

[Energy] Infrastructure in Response to Rising Gas Prices.

We have to push back hard. You can't make this stuff up. This is the guy. This is the guy. So we have a new bunch of Federal rules right now, driven by this guy--and probably Gina McCarthy--who want to drive up energy prices and make it harder for infrastructure to be built, which is exactly what this will do. Nobody is even arguing against that. It will drive up energy prices on the backs of working-class Americans, and now he is out publicly saying that we have got to do it--stop infrastructure.

We have this new revisionism suggesting we have to be producing more energy. Well, yes, we do. It is amazing. You never know whose side this guy is on, but he is not on America's side, I will tell you that.

So this is a new regulation, a NEPA reg. We have the authority here in Congress to use what is called a Congressional Review Act, a CRA. We have the power, when a new reg comes out, to say: No, we don't like that in the Senate. We are going to have a vote, a Congressional Review Act vote, on whether to rescind an amendment that is clearly driven by this guy--a regulation by

this guy--that will delay energy projects; that will delay renewable projects; that will make sure Americans continue to pay record high energy prices.

So we are going to have a vote on that. I plan on bringing that resolution to the floor soon. It is a privileged resolution, so we will get a vote whether Majority Leader Schumer wants to vote on it or not.

I am assuming the President will like my CRA because he can't want delays to his infrastructure bill. He can't want delays to getting energy relief for American families. This guy does, right? So we are going to have a little test, and we will have another mystery solved here on the Senate floor.

Two weeks ago, in the Commerce Committee, I had a little debate with a couple of my colleagues, friends of mine, but I made a statement, which I think is very true. It is certainly true in my State, and it is this: At the national level, my Democratic colleagues, when they have a choice between supporting guys like this and his radical environmental allies and the working men and women of America who want to build stuff, they always choose him and his allies.

My colleagues--some of them--really got upset: How can you say that, Dan? That is not true.

Well, it is true in Alaska. I see it every day.

So my CRA is going to just ask a simple question: Whom are you for? Whom do you stand with? Do you stand with the American working families, the laborers, the people who build the infrastructure that we need, the families who are suffering from high energy costs or this guy and his radical environmental ally and special interests who have a lot of power in this White House and who are clearly behind this reg that I am trying to rescind to make it harder to build infrastructure, especially American energy infrastructure?

For my colleagues who say no, we are with the working men and women of America--we will see. We will see. I hope you vote with me to rescind this reg that is only harming our country, only harming working families, only harming working Americans, and promotes the radical, out-of-touch agenda of John Kerry, Gina McCarthy, and the far-left, woke environmental interests that they answer to. It is going to be an interesting vote, and the American people are going to be watching.

I yield the floor.

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

Madam President, it is Thursday, and it is the time of the week that I like to celebrate an amazing person or people in my State who are doing something great for Alaska, great for America, great for the world. It is someone I like to refer to as our Alaskan of the Week--or Alaskans of the Week, plural.

So we are doubling up this week because we have two Alaskans that we are going to be commemorating. And I want to acknowledge it has been a couple of rough weeks for America--we all know that--for reasons that are quite obvious. Some tempers here in the Senate have been flaring a little bit. So I wanted to end the week on what is really an incredible, uplifting story, an epic story. It is a bit complicated, so you have to pay attention if you are wanting to hear about just a remarkable course of events in Alaska.

And it is a particularly poignant story as we head into Memorial Day weekend, a time when we honor those who have made the ultimate sacrifice. And I am going to tell, as I mentioned, a very special Memorial Day story--a

complicated one, but one for the history books.

This story has twists and turns, dark spots, highlights, and literally a Hollywood ending, one that involves a hero who gave his life for America, what we are celebrating on Monday, but whose heroism and service was only recently acknowledged and even only recently remembered.

So, first, I am going to begin the story about a young man who made the ultimate sacrifice for our Nation, an Alaskan native, an indigenous man from Unalaska--Private George Fox.

Now, Private George Fox is not our Alaskan of the Week, but the whole story that I am going to tell revolves around Private George Fox, who was killed in action fighting Nazis in World War II in Italy in 1944 and, since 1949, was buried on the island of Unalaska--that is out on the Aleutian island chain in Alaska, the islands way out that go out towards Japan. But he was buried in an unmarked grave and essentially forgotten--no record of military service, no awards for heroism, nothing, forgotten by literally almost everybody but one person, for nearly 80 years.

I am also going to talk about two very special people who are our Alaskans of the Week; that is Mike Livingston and Gertrude Svarny, who worked over the years to make sure that Private George Fox's exceptional service is finally going to be officially recognized. And that will happen Monday, on Memorial Day on the island of Unalaska in the Aleutian Island chains back home in Alaska in a ceremony that will take place on Monday.

So, as you can tell, this is actually a story of three people: one of them a young soldier killed in action for our country in World War II; one of them a still-living 90-year-old woman, a childhood friend of the young soldier, one of our Alaskans of the Week, Gertrude; another, a man on a mission, a detective with a public servant's heart.

It is a story of the invasion of the United States by the Japanese. Many Americans don't know that Japan invaded parts of Alaska. It is a story of racism, discrimination, service, honor, heroism. It is the story of how two people worked to keep history alive and to honor another who was forgotten for his heroism fighting and dying for our country.

It is an epic of Alaska--an epic of Alaska--fitting to be memorialized here on the U.S. Senate floor, and, more importantly, memorialized Monday when we honor our veterans and those who died in the service of our country.

So, it is a little complicated, but bear with me. Let me start this remarkable story in a remarkable place.

This is Unalaska on the Aleutian Island chain. So if you are looking at a map of Alaska, the Aleutian Islands go way out west, actually the Aleutian Islands cross the international date line, way further west than Hawaii. The Aleutian Island chain of Unalaska is a beautiful island about 800 miles southwest of Anchorage in the Bering Sea. It is home to walruses and sea lions; tens of millions of birds migrate through the area.

Right now, it is the largest fishing port in the country, and it is home to an incredible group of patriotic people, the Unangan native people, living in an area steeped in fascinating and sometimes very tragic history.

So here is a short version of that history. First, when Alaska was a colonial possession of Russia, Russian fur seekers decimated the Aleuts, the native populations on these islands, through warfare, disease, even slavery.

Then, 75 years after the United States purchased Alaska from Russia, during World War II, Japan actually bombed Unalaska, June 3 and 4, almost 80 years ago today.

Then the Japanese invaded and occupied nearby islands on Alaska's Aleutian Island chain. Many Americans don't know that history.

The United States--Alaska--was actually occupied by our enemy, Imperial Japan. Eventually, American forces had to drive out the Japanese in a brutal campaign on the Aleutian Islands area. About 1,500 American servicemembers were killed in those battles, 600 missing, and almost 3,500 wounded in action.

So that is some of the history of Unalaska and the Aleutian Islands chain during World War II.

So, George Fox--at about the same time the Japanese were literally bombing his hometown of Unalaska in 1942, George Fox had volunteered as a patriotic young American Alaska Native to fight for his country and was sent to the other side of the world--Europe, North Africa.

Now, we don't know a lot about Private Fox's service, but because of the work of Mike Livingston, our other Alaskan of the Week, who is alive and doing great, we do have some basic information.

Here is some of what we know about Private George Fox. He was born January 20, 1920, in Unalaska--again, the Aleutian island that we are taking about on the Aleutian Islands chain. When he was 22 years old, like so many patriotic Alaska Natives, he signed up to serve his country in World War II.

By the way, it should be noted and cannot be overstated that throughout history, even though so many Alaska Natives were discriminated against--and still are in some ways--Alaska Natives, certainly in Unalaska but all throughout the whole State, have served at higher rates in the military than any other ethnic group in the country--incredible patriotic service.

So Private George Fox from Unalaska goes to war for his country in World War II. At the same time, his hometown is being bombed by the Japanese. He was assigned to Company G in the 179th Infantry Regiment of the 45th Infantry Division. His unit was first sent to fight the Axis Powers in North Africa, then to Italy, where he landed in Italy on Anzio Beach--a very famous battle--to fight the Germans in the famous Battle of Anzio, where roughly 7,000 Allied servicemembers were killed in action.

He survived that and fought his way heroically toward Rome, fighting the Nazis the whole way. Unfortunately, on June 1, 1944, a Nazi bomb exploded near him, and he was killed in action as a young American serving his country--killed in Italy.

He is the only known Alaska Unangan from his region to be killed in action during World War II.

So about 5 years later, after the war, his remains were removed from Italy and returned to Unalaska in 1949. We now know there was a small funeral at the Russian Orthodox church, where his ashes were buried next to his mom, but his grave was unmarked--unmarked--and it stayed unmarked for decades.

Now, that is what we know about Private Fox's military service, not much else. Why? Because there was a fire where all his military records were in the lower 48, and his service records were destroyed. So, frankly, his record in the military was essentially forgotten-- forgotten.

Now, I think--you can't prove this, but the fact that he was Alaska Native--that there was probably some discrimination here, like, ``Hey, whatever, he is Alaska Native. We are not that worried.'' And so nobody in authority kept his memory alive, his service alive. It was all forgotten, that he was even a soldier.

So his memory and his service and his heroism--because these are serious battles in World War II--all faded almost completely to nothing, if it wasn't for our heroic Alaskans of the Week that we are recognizing today.

So enter our first Alaskan of the Week, Mike Livingston, also a Native Alaskan, Unangan, and he was determined to remember this vague memory of this guy he had heard about, Private George Fox.

Here is a little bit of Mike's story, which is another great story.

He was born in Cold Bay, AK, which is another island in the Aleutian Islands chain. He moved to Unalaska, the town we are talking about, in 1978, as a college student to learn the art of building traditional kayaks from the Native elders in the community, and he began to work as a public safety officer.

From then until 2003, when he retired, he was an emergency medical technician, a firefighter, a dive rescue specialist, a police officer, a detective in various places throughout Alaska, much of it in Anchorage at the Anchorage Police Department, and he is currently a captain with the Alaska State Defense Force.

Along the way--now, this guy is really impressive, what Mike did. He received a master's degree in anthropology and a doctorate in education,

all of which he uses as a specialist in his job, also at the Aleutian Pribilof Island Association, and he uses his education and skills also as a detective and fuels his passion for helping people help solve mysteries, particularly in his interest of genealogy and family trees that involve stories that are untold mysteries. A tree nut--a family tree nut--he calls himself, as do his group of friends who dig deep to solve puzzles, the kind of which involve people, historic places, lapses in historic knowledge that have faded into history, which is exactly what happened to Private George Fox.

Around 2005, Mike Livingston, our Alaskan of the Week, and his friends started to take on that mission. What happened to Private George Fox? They had heard about him--a fellow Alaska Native who they knew from stories was killed in action fighting somewhere in World War II--but they needed more information. Where was he buried? Nobody seemed to know. Why was he not listed as killed in action in service in World War II?

In the U.S. military, when a servicemember is killed in action, the survivors get benefits, and they are entitled to receive full military honors at funerals.

And in Mike's culture and in Private Fox's culture--the Unangan culture--when a warrior died protecting their village, statues were carved, songs were written and sung. It has always been a huge honor in the Native culture to be a fallen warrior, but Private George Fox got none of this from America, from his Federal Government, and even from the amazing Alaska Native people.

Mike Livingston, the detective with a servant's heart, wanted to right this wrong. He wanted to do it for Private Fox, for his community, for his people, for his State, for his country. So he got to work on this mystery. He began to dig deeper.

He called every Federal Agency he could think of to try to get more information about this mysterious Alaska Native whose memory had faded, whose heroism wasn't recognized. But Mike ran into brick wall after brick wall calling Federal Agencies. He was able to get a few tidbits, like the basic information mentioned above, and he also discovered that George Fox's remains were returned to Unalaska in 1949, but nothing else--little else.

The mystery of where those remains were--in a grave, an unmarked grave; where Private George Fox was buried--it haunted Mike Livingston.

As he said, ``When you compare some of what occurred during World War II, or shortly after World War II, people who were white were highly honored,'' he recently told a reporter, particularly if they were killed in action during the war--but not so for so many Alaska Natives.

Eventually, Mike heard that another resident on the island--now we are back on Unalaska--had a piece of the puzzle, a woman who happened to be related to Mike through marriage.

Enter our second Alaskan of the Week, 91-year-old artist Gertrude Svarny. Let me spend a few minutes talking about her incredible patriotic story.

Gertrude was born in 1930 on Unalaska, the island out in the Aleutian Islands chain, the island bombed by the Japanese. She was also Alaska Native.

Her family lived next to the Fox family. George Fox was about 8 years older than she was. George and Gertrude's older brother were good friends. So Gertrude remembers George. She said the whole island loved him. He was kind, funny, full of life, and obviously brave.

As I mentioned, in 1942, George Fox left to go fight World War II for our great Nation, right at the time George and Gertrude's village, Unalaska, was bombed by the Japanese.

And here is another story most Americans don't know about. After that happened, the U.S. Government took the Alaska Native people on the Aleutian Islands chain and put them into internment camps--not White people, only Alaska Native people.

The treatment of these great patriotic American citizens in these camps is a dark spot in American history that, as I mentioned, not many Americans are aware of. Camps were basically abandoned buildings. The conditions were awful--crowded, unheated, unsanitary. Many died in the camps as a result of these horrendous conditions.

Three years later, when the war was finally over, the people of Unalaska--the Native people of Unalaska--were allowed to go home to their community after being in these internment camps, but their homes were ransacked and burned. Many of their villages on the island were destroyed, another dark spot in our country's history.

Remember, these were our citizens, our country, and the Native people, if they weren't at home, many of them were fighting overseas in the Pacific and in Europe, like Private George Fox.

So Gertrude comes home from the internment camp. She is at Unalaska now, and she marries another patriot named Sam Svarny, her husband, who was in the Army, originally from Chicago, and he was stationed in Unalaska. Another patriot in this story, Sam served in World War II and later served in Vietnam.

Gertrude became an artist--a renowned artist in Alaska. She is actually very famous for her work that she makes out of traditional materials, and she is in collections all over the world.

And even though her childhood was marked by the wrongs inflicted on her family and her by her own country, she and her husband have remained fiercely patriotic. Even interment hasn't dissuaded the patriotism of the Alaska Native people. And one of the ways Gertrude displayed this patriotism, which still burns in her to this day-- remember, she is 91 years old--was that every Memorial Day, they put flags on the grave sites on the island of Unalaska to those who served in the military.

Gertrude and her husband Sam always remembered when she was a young girl the small service that she had attended, a funeral service in 1949, of the young, spritely teenager George Fox, a friend of Gertrude's who died fighting the Nazis more than 5,000 miles away from Alaska in Italy.

The service was in the winter, she remembers. It was very cold. After the service, the small procession walked in the frigid winds to the cemetery where George Fox's mother was buried.

So, every year, this patriotic Alaska Native woman, for decades, has quietly visited the unmarked grave of Private George Fox to place a flag on this unmarked grave to remember his service, and that is the only living memory of what this young patriotic Alaska Native soldier did for his country.

When her husband Sam passed away in 2014, Gertrude continued this tradition even to this day, as I mentioned, at 91 years old. What a patriot.

So here is how it all comes together. When our detective, another Alaskan of the Week, Mike Livingston, finally learned that his own relative through marriage, Gertrude, actually knew where Private Fox was buried, he got to work. The mystery was coming together. He felt like he had enough information to make the official case to the U.S. Government to finally get Private George Fox, this American hero, recognized.

He wrote up an affidavit. Gertrude signed it, stating how she had been putting a flag on the unmarked grave site for decades. But still, request after request was ignored by the U.S. Government.

So what did they do, Mike and Gertrude? Well, to all Americans and Alaskans watching this, here is what they did. They called their U.S. Senator.

This was now in 2020, at the height of COVID. When my office heard about this, my former head of casework, Rachel Bylsma, got immediately onto the case. We all said that this is so important to make sure Private George Fox got the honor and recognition he deserved. So we worked together.

And I am proud to say, he is going to be getting that recognition. Here is what is going to happen on Unalaska in the Aleutian Island chain this Monday, 2022 Memorial Day for America: The top military officials in my State, so many members of Private George Fox's family, so many members of the community, myself, and my team are going to gather in Unalaska, and we are going to gather to honor a warrior, a hero, an Unangan Alaskan, an American, on Memorial Day.

Gertrude will be there, and Mike will be there, our two Alaskans of the Week. Hundreds of people will be there. There will be a procession from the

Russian Orthodox church to the cemetery, and we have now a beautiful 4- foot-high gravestone to be unveiled.

Taps will float from a bugle. There will be a 21-gun salute from the 4th Brigade of the 25th Infantry Division. And on Memorial Day in Unalaska, in the Bering Sea, the man who fought and died in World War II as a hero for his country in North Africa, in Italy on Anzio Beach, this American hero who has been forgotten will be recognized because of the work of so many but, in particular, the relentless work of our Alaskans of the Week Mike Livingston and Gertrude Svarny.

Private George Fox's service and sacrifice and heroism will finally be recognized on Memorial Day by our Government, and we will have a gravestone befitting of his incredible patriotic service.

On that gravestone, which I have seen--it is beautiful--at the bottom there will be engraved three words. These words came from George Fox to his family in his last letter that he wrote from Anzio Beach in a heroic battle a world away from Alaska when he was fighting to save the soul of the world from tyranny. There are three words in that letter-- that are now on a gravestone--that meant so much then and, I would argue, mean so much now for our country to this very day. The three words on that headstone are ``Wish all love.'' ``Wish all love.'' The last words of a patriotic Alaska Native, sent home from Italy to his family, who on Memorial Day will finally be recognized due to the heroic, relentless hard work of our two Alaskans of the Week, Mike and Gertrude. Thank you for all you are doing, all you have done for your community, for your State, and for your country.

Thank you to George Fox's family and to Private George Fox for his incredible service.

I look forward to seeing you all in Unalaska in a few days. It is going to be a great ceremony. Congratulations on being our Alaskans of the Week as we head into Memorial Day weekend.

I yield the floor.