Floor Statements

Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that when the Senate completes its business today, it recess until 3 p.m., Monday, April 4; and that following the prayer and the pledge, the time for the two leaders be reserved for their use later in the day.

Mr. President, if there is no further business to come before the Senate, I ask unanimous consent that it stand in recess under the previous order.

Mr. President, Vladimir Putin has continued to wage horrific war against Ukraine and the Ukrainian people. This invasion, waged upon the profits of Russia's oil and gas empire, has caused destruction and devastation beyond measure.

We must denounce Putin's war of choice, and we must call out profiteering and the ricochet effects of that conflict that affect Americans and others across the world.

This connection to conflict is only possible as a result of the fallacy of

American energy independence from oil and gas extraction--a lie that has been sold by the American Petroleum Institute or the ``American Prevarication Institute,'' as they should be called. For years, the oil and gas industry has sold Americans more snake oil than actual oil, promising security and safety in exchange for unlimited drilling, unlimited exports, unlimited profits for Big Oil and Big Gas in the United States. And after yet another year of price spikes caused by Putin and profiteering, it is time to say enough is enough with these false promises and crocodile tears from the American Petroleum Institute, from ExxonMobil, from Chevron, from all of these companies.

President Biden was right to follow my SPIGOT Act and the bipartisan consensus in the House and Senate to ban all oil imports from Russia. The only way to end Putin's oil- and gas-funded wars is to cut off his oil- and gas-funded piggy bank, which comes, unfortunately, historically, from American consumers at the pump buying Russian oil for their cars. That has to end. And, thankfully, President Biden has now made that decision.

And it is because we have a moral moment here to provide all possible humanitarian aid to the Ukrainian people. We have a moral moment here to cut off the money pipeline that is funding the missiles and the tanks that are destroying the homes of innocent people in Ukraine. And we have a moral moment that ensures that we take the action to build a better world that is safe from the climate-change-fueled crisis. But our ability to meet this moral moment hinges on what we do next on the floor of the U.S. Senate, what action we take to respond to this obvious crisis that we have on the planet, all related to this oil- and gas-fueled military invasion of Ukraine--the tanks, the planes, the soldiers--all paid for by oil and gas money.

We could fail to meet this moral moment by accepting the bad faith arguments from Big Oil, which is using this horrifying invasion to push for more drilling and money to fossil fuel companies with more lands and waters lost to extraction, more profit for Big Oil at the expense of American pocketbooks; or we can meet the moral moment that the United States is willing to lead with innovation, moving away from global oil chaos and closer to clean, cheap, domestic renewable energy sources--sources that will not fall victim to price hikes from despots, dictators, and criminals overseas.

Now, we have all heard the Big Lie from Big Oil, FOX News, and the GOP, the Gas and Oil Party. Their message is: All you need to do is give us a few more leases, cut a few more regulations, provide us with a few more subsidies, and then we will be on our way to energy independence.

Trust the oil and gas companies, they say, and FOX News says, ``Yes, trust the oil and gas industry,'' but that argument is leakier than an old oil tanker, and it has been proven again and again.

If Big Oil wanted to make us energy independent, they would have already done it. Instead, they resort to their Big Lie.

So here are the facts:

Big Oil is sitting on 11,000 unused oil and gas leases, and 9,000 of those leases are on Federal lands in the United States. They have already been purchased by the oil and gas industry, mostly for $2 an acre, but they have got them; and 2,000 leases are offshore, in the waters of the United States, and they have all been already approved for drilling.

Big Oil also has 6,000 partially drilled wells that they can use to drill right now. In other words, they have already done the drilling, and they are still not going there right now, on an emergency basis, to produce that additional oil and gas.

Why is that?

Because rather than using the resources they already have to drill, they are using this crisis as an excuse to get more leases, more wells, more profit for themselves while sitting on, squatting on, the existing leases they already have that could produce the additional oil and gas that they say they want to produce. Of course, they don't want to produce that oil or else they would be doing it already. They just want more leases that they can sit on and profit from in the years ahead.

In terms of solving this crisis that we have right now, they can do it if they want, but they don't want to because it might actually drive down the price of oil or it might drive down the price of natural gas if they produce more here.

So this is not a problem of governmental overreach. If you don't trust me on this, how about trusting the oil executives themselves. In a recent survey, 60 percent of oil executives said that investors are keeping them from drilling. Just 10 percent pointed to regulations. These are the oil company executives. They say it is the investors--the millionaires in their companies--who don't want to drill, not Federal regulations.

Remember the Keystone Pipeline--the pipeline that the Republicans wanted so they could be energy independent?

In 2015, every single Republican on the floor of the U.S. Senate voted against my amendments to ban the exports of that oil from the Keystone Pipeline. They kept saying then it would lead to energy independence, and when I said, ``Fine. Let's have an amendment that says it cannot be exported,'' every single Republican voted no--allow it to be exported out of our country.

These crocodile tears from the Republican Party--from the GOP, Gas and Oil Party--are just so predictable, and it comes back every single time.

Big Oil has kept up their export shenanigans. In 2021, we exported 8.6 million barrels of oil a day while importing 8.4 million barrels per day. Last year, we imported, on average, 600,000 barrels of oil a day from Russia. At the same time, we exported the same amount to China. That is what the Republican Party and the gas and oil industry got in 2015 when we lifted the ban on the export of American oil. That is not energy independence; it is profit dependence of the American people on the agenda of Big Oil and Big Gas.

The Gas and Oil Party doesn't want to drill for oil here in America to protect Americans from economic harm; they want to do it for their own economic benefit. Big Oil has a need for greed. The Republican Party, as we just heard in the confirmation hearing, kept talking about crime in the streets. No. The big problem is crime in the suites--crime in the oil and gas executive suites of our country--and the Republican Party's inability to stand up to them so that we have true energy independence in our country. In 2021, while consumers sacrificed at the pump, with gas prices increasing by 50 percent, Big Oil made over--get this number--$200 billion in profits.

That is what is happening. That is why they don't want to drill-- because the price of oil might come down; therefore, their profits might come down, but they have built all the leases they need right now. This isn't about energy supply for consumers; it is about Big Oil's demand for profits for their shareholders and for their executives. That is what the agenda of the oil and gas industry in America is all about, not American security, not American consumers, not American environmental and healthcare issues, but the profits of their executives.

We don't need sacrifice in our country. We need innovation. We need a way to ensure that we unleash all of the potential, which we have, in our country in order to tap into all of our rich natural resources. Instead of supporting energy independence and getting out of the way of a real domestic, clean energy boom, Big Oil would rather force consumers to sacrifice with high prices at the gas pump.

We don't need Americans to sacrifice by paying high gas prices. Instead, we need to innovate and install clean energy solutions. This is our short-term and our long-term solution to price disruptions, climate chaos, environmental injustice, and wars paid for with oil and gas profits--much of it war profiteering.

Here are some more facts:

An additional 16 million electric vehicles on the road would replace all of the oil that we currently import from Russia. Let me say that again. If we would just deploy 16 million all-electric vehicles, we would back out all the oil from Russia. The next 16 million all- electric vehicles would back out all the Saudi oil that we import into the United States. ``EVs'' just doesn't stand for ``electric vehicles''; it also

stands for ``ending violence''--getting the United States tied up into situations around the world because of all of the money that these wealthy oil states get from the United States.

Here is another way to break it down:

We can put 5 million electric vehicles on the road, 5 million heat pumps in homes, and replace 75 percent of our public bus fleet with electric buses and still back out all the oil we import from Russia. In the time it would take to implement these measures, we can release the already congressionally mandated sales of the Strategic Petroleum Reserve to give consumers relief at the gas pump.

We can accomplish all of this by passing my SAVE Consumers Act with Senator Heinrich, which would grant the President additional authority to implement energy efficiency standards and release another 265 million barrels of oil from the Strategic Petroleum Reserve by the end of 2023.

We can do this. We can deploy the Strategic Petroleum right now, invest in a renewable, clean energy agenda, and actually produce enough energy that substitutes for all the Russian oil and do so in a very brief period of time; but we have to commit to destroying the demand by Putin's dirty energy business model by powering our own country with clean, American-made renewable energy. We can power our way to peace. We can power our way to stopping the most dangerous effects of greenhouse gases that are creating climate change on our planet.

Putin banks on divisions in the West. What he found instead was our complete solidarity with the people of Ukraine. Imagine if we were to channel that same spirit of unity to unlock a safe, healthy future and untether ourselves from Putin's dirty profits. We should agree that no country continues to have a veto on our energy security or of our friends and allies.

The future lies not in the extracted fossil fuels of the Industrial Revolution but in technologies that will power the clean energy revolution.

It is in our interest to build a well-trained, well-paid battalion of American union workers to lead countries to look to their energy needs from the red, white, and blue of the United States instead of Putin's cronies who finance Russia's repression at home and adventurism abroad.

By passing a $555-billion investment in clean energy and climate justice, we can build a made-in-America clean economy that delivers real energy independence for our country, and we can export those technologies around the world. With tax credits and rebates in wind and solar, all-electric vehicles, offshore wind, battery storage technologies, heat pumps, and advanced domestic manufacturing, we can cut costs at home while cutting off Putin's money line from oil and natural gas. These investments would reduce our dependence on global oil markets and, instead, power our country through localized clean energy.

The solar from our deserts, the solar power from those States that have near year-round Sun, the wind off of our coast from Massachusetts down to Maryland, which the Presiding Officer represents, the wind off of the west coast, the hydropower from our Southeast, the geothermal from our Northwest--all of it can be tapped, and we can end an era wherein our country is held hostage by the need to import more oil.

Our Federal climate policies are exactly what we need--this national security moment, this environmental moment, this healthcare moment, this moral moment for our country and for the planet. There is no quick solution to this quagmire that Big Oil has drilled the United States into. There are only better and worse solutions, moral and immoral solutions. We can innovate and install clean energy that produces all of the energy which we need and that protects us, protects our allies, and protects our planet at the very same time or we can continue down the pathway of false promises and profiteering.

It is our moral moment. Let's stand in solidarity with those affected by oil and gas wars and seize this chance for a cleaner, safer, more affordable future for Americans, for our allies, and for the world.

There are doubters that we can make this transition, people who say: Well, wind and solar and all-electric vehicles and battery and storage technology--that sounds fine, but it just won't solve the problem. They are the same people who said that we could not deploy the spectrum.

I was the author of the bill that accomplished and that made it possible for everyone, by 1995, to have a flip phone in their pockets at 10 cents a minute. Then, in using that very same spectrum 10 years later, a young guy, Steve Jobs, invented a phone which is a computer that has the same power as the computers on the Apollo mission to the Moon. We innovated; we moved; and we can actually see the people, in their fleeing Ukraine, all holding smartphones invented in the United States because we put together the policies that changed us from black rotary dial phones to these powerful computers in everyone's pockets.

We can do the same thing with energy. We can create a revolution. We just have to get Big Oil and Big Gas out of the way and allow our young people to innovate, allow our entrepreneurs to innovate, allow for the deployment of all of these technologies, and then children will have to look to the history books to find if there ever was such a crisis that we are living through today.

So my hope is that the Senate will respond and that they will understand how much of this conflict is created by the globe's dependence upon oil and gas. Putin is proving that to us once again, and if we look at the Middle East, we can see that hole that we have dug for ourselves and our dependence upon that region.

We have the solution. It is innovation; it is optimism; it is unleashing the entrepreneurial spirit in our country. That will be the challenge of the U.S. Senate over the next 2 months.

Will we have the same courage to respond, to take on those energy titans, in the same way that the Ukrainian people, every day, are giving us the example that we should be following?

With that, I yield the floor.

I suggest the absence of a quorum.

Madam President, I ask unanimous consent that the Senate consider the following nomination: Calendar No. 643, Laura S. H. Holgate, to be Representative of the United States of America to the International Atomic Energy Agency, with the rank of Ambassador; that the nomination be confirmed, the motion to reconsider be considered made and laid upon the table with no intervening action or debate; that no further motions be in order to the nomination; that any related statements be printed in the Record; that the President be immediately notified of the Senate's action.

Madam President, I appreciate the concerns that my friend from Florida has raised. However, I am just struggling to see how the safety

and security of Ukraine's 15 nuclear reactors, in the midst of the largest reoccurrence of warfare on the European Continent since World War II, has any relationship to the issue which he raised.

Russia is blocking International Atomic Energy Agency access into Ukraine. The proper response by the Senate--by the Senator from Florida--is not to block our Ambassador to the International Atomic Energy Agency at a time when Putin, at a time when Lavrov, are talking about nuclear weapons.

We need a representative to the International Atomic Energy Agency. That is what the Senator from Florida is blocking right now on the floor--just did it.

All across our country Americans are right now wondering, is a nuclear war once again possible? What if the Russians launch a tactical nuclear weapon into Ukraine against a nonarticle 5 country; what is our response?

They are wondering, does the IAEA have access to the 15 Ukrainian nuclear powerplants that the Russians, with military force, are taking over?

What are the protections that are going to be put in place in order to ensure that we, in fact, have done everything that we can do to avoid a nuclear accident, either a nuclear weapon or a nuclear powerplant accident?

That is where we are right now, and what I hear from the Senator from Florida is a disposition on a subject completely unrelated to those issues, as Americans are all tuned in on a daily basis in a way that they have not since 1962 to the very real potential that there could be a nuclear exchange--nuclear weapons exchange--between Russia and the West.

So, from my perspective, this is a historic moment that we have to come together in a bipartisan way to provide a response--a response to Russia, a response to their allies--that we are deadly serious. Instead, what the Senator from Florida has done is to arrive to object to the confirmation of Laura Holgate so that she can be there.

She is fully qualified. She is an all-star in her knowledge of all of these issues, but she won't be on duty. She won't be there with our allies, with the technical experts on all nuclear issues, because of this objection which we just heard.

From my perspective, we are at a pretty big turning point here. We need to be talking to everyone. We are either going to know each other or we are going to exterminate each other. That is the point in time at which we are at. We are either going to talk to each other or we could potentially slip into an accidental nuclear catastrophe that historians and future generations of young people will look back and say: How did that happen?

Well, one of the reasons why it can happen is we can't even get an American to be confirmed by the Senate at this time of great crisis because of an objection from the Republican Party. I mean, partisanship should stop at the water's edge, but when you are talking about nuclear weapons, there shouldn't even be a discussion about it. We should just let this highly qualified woman get on the job to use her expertise in defense of our country and in defense of everyone on the planet because this could quickly--quickly--trigger accidents that escalate, and then the unimaginable could happen.

So that is where we are right now. We need an ambassador to draw attention to the danger of Russian forces, especially holding Ukraine's nuclear operations at gunpoint. We need an ambassador to demand that Russia accept the IAEA's offer to establish a presence in Ukraine to ensure the continued safe operation of Ukraine's nuclear facilities.

Russia knows from the aftermath of the Chernobyl nuclear accident, the worst in history, that deadly radioactive fallout does not respect borders.

And we need an ambassador at the IAEA to perform a wide array of duties outside of the Ukraine crisis, from keeping nonnuclear weapon countries nonnuclear and making sure that this doesn't trigger attempts by other countries to gain access to nuclear materials and then nuclear weapons. And we have to make sure, ultimately, that we confirm Laura Holgate.

First, she served the same role in the Obama administration. She hits the ground running. She knows these issues. Second, she is a protege of Senator Sam Nunn and Senator Richard Lugar, and like that legendary bipartisan duo, she has devoted her career to dismantling weapons of mass destruction and materials that could be used by terrorists as dirty bombs.

So how is it that we still don't have an ambassador seated at the International Atomic Energy Agency's meetings on Ukraine, given this body unanimously confirmed Ambassador Holgate in December to be our representative to the other U.N. organizations based in Vienna?

That is a good question and it has no good answer and we did not hear that answer on floor of the U.S. Senate just 5 minutes ago, when the Senator from Florida objected. We didn't hear a word about their objections.

I will tell you what, they are creating very risky conditions for all Americans when they deny our country a seat at the table at the International Atomic Energy Agency at this time in history.

I was the same age as the pages on the floor today when the Cuban missile crisis cast a shadow over our Nation. I remember what that was like.

We are slipping day by day into a situation where we could be confronted with similar conditions, and the least that we should be able to say is we tried, we really tried, to avoid that nuclear catastrophe. And the minimum that we should do is have an ambassador who is at the table who is talking to all of our allies and the rest of the world about these issues right now.

Ukraine and the whole of Europe averted disaster when a Russian munition fell just short of Ukraine's nuclear reactors just a couple of weeks ago. We may not be so lucky the next time if Russian forces move on the country's other facilities with the same reckless abandon.

What possible benefit is derived from keeping our ambassadorial post at the IAEA unfilled at a time like this? We make nuclear safety and nuclear security a partisan issue at our own peril and at the peril of every family in our country as well as Europe.

It is just absolutely irresponsible, for unrelated reasons, to deny our country that kind of protection right now.

So we are going to keep coming back with this, and the reason we are is that we can see a continued escalation. We can see, in Putin's own words, reckless intent. And it is not for us to judge whether he is sincere or not in terms of his consideration of the use of nuclear weapons or his lack of full consideration of what the consequences are of having armed attacks on nuclear powerplant facilities all over Ukraine.

We can't get inside of his brain, but the least we can do is have someone go to the table from America, someone who has dedicated her life--Ambassador Holgate--to this work.

That is what happened here on the floor right now. It was a partisan politicization of nuclear proliferation, of nuclear safety, at a time where we are seeing a peril that we have not seen in 50 years in the United States or the planet.

All I can tell you is history will not come back and well receive the partisan objection for the completely unrelated reasons for not allowing us to have that kind of representation at the nuclear table at this particular point in time.

I intend to return on this subject, as many times as it takes, so that we can have someone who is there protecting every family in our country.

I yield the floor.

I suggest the absence of a quorum.

Madam President, I want to join with the Senator from the Sunshine State, letting him know that the Senator from the Bay State, the Senator from the Ocean State, we share a common agenda. We bridge ideological divisions--liberal Democrats from the Northeast, conservative Republicans from Florida coming together to show that this institution can work.

And why is that?

Well, it is because we know that daylight saving time helps to turn the corners of people's mouths upward into a smile. It is sunshine and smiles.

We have only had daylight saving time so far for 2 days, but all across the country, people are out in the evening with the extra daylight. Little League can start. People taking their evening walks feel more safe. People can just walk down to the town square, knowing that the daylight is out there.

And so this is something that should be bipartisan. It should bring us all together, and I thank the Senator from Florida for his leadership on this issue.

And so many people are wondering, can the Congress work? And I think here is something that does have a big impact on every American life, and getting that extra hour of daylight of sunshine into people's lives is absolutely essential.

So we have been working, you know, together to, once and for all, deal with this issue of springing forward and falling back, and that is to make daylight saving time permanent.

This past Sunday, Americans had to once again change their clocks, all because of the outdated government policy on daylight saving time. This biannual ritual of toggling between daylight saving time and standard time isn't just an inconvenience to people everywhere, it has real repercussions on our economy and our daily lives.

Studies have found that year-round daylight saving time would improve public health, public safety, energy policy, mental health--an especially important commitment after this cold and dark COVID winter.

Seasonal affective disorder is real, and when they get that extra hour of Sun in the evening, it helps tens of millions of people all across the country to finally put the winter into a rearview mirror. But let's be honest. Spring really starts when we spring forward to daylight saving time.

So daylight saving time brings sunshine, smiles, and savings to every person in the country. And more evening sunshine also leads to fewer traffic fatalities, increased economic activity, and more recreation time. From afterwork shopping to Little League games and family bike rides, an extra hour of evening sunshine puts a spring in our step and offers a great reason to get outside and enjoy the outdoors.

The case for permanent daylight saving time is clear. So let's go from polar to solar. Let's finally make that change in our country because cutting back on the Sun during the fall and winter is a drain on the American people. We must pass the Sunshine Protection Act and make daylight saving time permanent once and for all.

This is an opportunity for Democrats and Republicans to come together and do something that really helps the American people feel better about themselves every single day of the year.

Mr. President, I rise today to decry yet again Putin's horrific actions against Ukraine and the Ukrainian people.

As we bear witness to this deadly war and the consequences of this fossil fuel-funded invasion, I stand here again to denounce our own addiction to fossil fuels, along with Big Oil's relentless attempts to sabotage clean and renewable energy with the support of the Republican Party.

We can see in the coverage on television that the corporate profiteering by Big Oil and the American Petroleum Institute--the American Prevarication Institute--has once again played a part in war and destruction. And all are enabled by the GOP's fealty to oil, gas, and the fallacy of American energy independence. It is a tale of Republican hypocrisy, all funded by the fossil fuel industry. It would be absurdly comic if it weren't so horribly tragic.

Oil profits are the engine of Russia's economy, and natural gas is the geopolitical weapon it wields to threaten Europe's energy security. Nearly 40 percent of Russia's entire revenue is derived from oil and gas exports. Russia's tanks, armored vehicles, and artillery are funded by dirty fossil fuels purchased by other countries, including the United States of America. We are part of the funding of Vladimir Putin's war of aggression against Ukraine. We import oil from Russia. That oil goes to Putin and his cronies.

We have a moral moment here to provide all possible humanitarian aid to the Ukrainian people. We have a moral moment here to cut off the money pipeline that is funding the missiles and the tanks that are destroying the homes of the Ukrainian people. And we have a moral moment here to reject the bad-faith arguments that are using this horrifying invasion to push for more drilling and money to fossil fuel companies, more lands and waters lost to the extraction of oil and gas, and more profit for Big Oil at the expense of American pocketbooks as our consumers are tipped upside down at the gasoline pumps all across our country, shaking money out of those pockets and sending it to Big Oil and sending it to Russia.

During 2021, Russia supplanted Mexico as the second largest exporter of crude oil and petroleum in the United States. On average, we bought more than 600,000 barrels of oil from Russia every single day of 2021. That is more than $17 billion in American money going to Putin and his oil-soaked oligarchs.

We need to shut that money pipeline to Putin off before it does any more damage. That is why I announced my Severing Putin's Immense Gains from Oil Transfers, or the SPIGOT, Act this week. This bill would conclusively lift the veil on the Russian fossil fuel industry's corrupt dealings, while requiring the United States to eliminate carbon-polluting imports from Russia, moving the United States toward a future that is no longer dependent upon Russian oil but dependent upon our own renewable resources.

Global oil markets will adjust in the short term and long term to our import ban on oil. In the short term, we can actually supplant any supply disruptions with an additional release from the Strategic Petroleum Reserve. A 10-percent release of the Strategic Petroleum Reserve would backfill all of our Russian imports for 100 days or, to put it another way, we have a Strategic Petroleum Reserve of 600 million barrels. If we deploy 600,000 barrels a day, we can do it for 1,000 days in a row in order to make sure the Russians understand that we are dead serious about this.

Putin's $630 billion central bank reserve that he thinks is going to protect him and his economy--well, that chest is filled with the spoils of oil and natural gas. A lot of it is money from American consumers. It is not just the sales to the United States or Europe but the interconnected dirty energy markets that feed off this fuel-soaked firestorm.

If we want to truly dial-up the pressure on Putin and his oligarchs, we need to end our deadly addiction to Russian fossil fuels and help our allies to do the very same thing. If we want to truly say no more to fossil-fueled war, we need to pursue the pathway to peace that is powered by domestic clean energy--international clean energy revolution led by the United States.

But instead what I hear from Republicans and on FOX News and from the

American Petroleum Institute is the same classic refrain of: ``Drill, baby, drill.'' Their insidious answer to war, to rising prices, to any crisis that they can use for their own purpose is more drilling and more leases.

Well, where has the ``American Prevarication Institute'' argument gotten us so far? One, skyrocketing exports, which hike up our prices to American consumers and feed into the global fossil fuel addiction; public lands and waters the size of Indiana that are locked down by unused fossil fuel leases, which companies squat upon to pad their own asset base and prevent renewable development; wars and national security threats, driven and paid for by Big Oil's craving for more profits; climate chaos with more than $700 billion worth of damages caused by extreme weather disasters in the United States over the last 5 years alone--$700 billion worth of damage to us, to the United States, from climate in the last 5 years.

In 2015, Congress repealed the crude oil and gas export ban that had been in place for 40 years in our country so that we would keep our oil here. It was repealed with unanimous support of the Republican Party, on the other side of the aisle, and it allowed for the sale of U.S. crude and natural gas on the global markets.

I warned at that time it would be a huge mistake for our country to take that action. It was the worst of all worlds. It led to recordbreaking amounts of U.S. oil going to foreign nations without benefiting U.S. consumers. Pain at the pump was not eased and neither was our dangerous dependence on illicit foreign oil. And every time-- every time--the Republicans call for more leasing, for more pipelines, for deepening our addiction to fossil fuels, they cry crocodile tears. They said we need to plunder our own lands and waters in order to lower prices for Americans, in order to ensure national independence from foreign oil sources, and then they exported that oil overseas. That was their plan all along. It wasn't so secret. It was obvious because that is how the American Petroleum Institute--the American Prevarication Institute--works.

But that argument is now leakier than an old oil tanker, and it has been proven again and again. Every bill that came up approving the Keystone XL Pipeline--drilling for oil off our coast, selling off our public lands to whatever bidder showed up--I just asked the same thing every single time. In 2011, in 2012, in 2015, every time, I asked Republicans if they would agree to ban any exports from these projects and keep Americans from bearing the environmental and health burden from projects that provide no benefit to their own families, to their own States. And every time, the Republicans blocked or rejected my amendments--every time. That proved their arguments won't hold water.

The Big Oil-backed push to extract more and more from American lands and waters was never about helping Americans at the pump. It was about pumping up the profits of Big Oil by getting a higher price out on the international marketplace for American oil, for American natural gas. That was their plan.

I am sick of the hypocrisy. I am sick of letting the American Petroleum Institute's prevarication triumph over the truth. I am sick of watching Americans deal with the climate crisis with dirty air, with dirty water, with high gas prices just to help the oil companies make a buck by getting the highest price they can on the international market exporting American oil.

The Republicans' push to use the crisis in Ukraine to line Big Oil's pockets isn't about addressing inflation at home. It is about inflating fossil fuel profits for Big Oil and big gas. In 2021, as gasoline prices increased by over 50 percent, ExxonMobil, Chevron, Shell, BP and Total Energies recorded their biggest profits that they had seen in 8 years.

In 2015, before the Republicans lifted the export ban--before the American Petroleum Institute got the Congress to vote to lift the ban on the export of American oil--China imported 191,000 barrels of oil from the United States. Now we send four times as much oil to China as we did back in the beginning of 2016 after the ban was lifted. To put it another way, we now import from Russia 600,000 barrels of oil a day, and we export to China 600,000 barrels of oil a day. What is wrong with that picture?

Our natural resources go to China, which they then use to fabricate products, which then they sell back to us undermining our own industries. And meanwhile, to make up for it, we import 600,000 barrels of oil from Russia and line the pockets of Putin, which allows him to buy the tanks, the planes, the infantry to assault and destroy a democracy in Ukraine.

This is a formula for failure of historic magnitude. And it was all so clear in that debate in 2015 when the Republicans led the effort to lift the ban on the export of our oil. It was oh-so clear what was going to happen, which is why I led the fight here on the Senate floor to block the lifting of that ban.

But I don't want to hear from the Republicans with their crocodile tears how much they care about importation of oil from Russia because the bottom line is, we now import 8.6 million barrels of oil a day into the United States. We now have a crisis on our hands that we have to ultimately deal with. We export 8.6 million barrels of oil a day. We export out of our country 8.6 million barrels of oil a day.

So I hear from Republicans, ``Oh, we need energy independence.'' Well, what are we doing exporting 8.6 million barrels of oil a day? What is that all about? We know what it is all about. It is about the American Petroleum Institute. It is about Big Oil and Big Gas getting a higher price on the international market than they get on the domestic market. That is what it was all about from the very beginning. We have an opportunity here to stop, finally, Big Oil's relentless quest for profit, which is funding Putin's war at the same time it undermines our competitiveness with China.

More leases are not going to help our allies in Europe. We are already sending our oil to the highest bidder. Oil and gas companies already have leases the size of Indiana. Let me say that again. The oil and gas industry has bid for, over the last two decades, leases to drill on the property owned by the American people. And 53 percent of those leases have yet to be drilled upon. That is the truth. If they are serious--which they are not--they should start drilling. If their crocodile tears are real, in fact, they should just start drilling.

But, of course, they are not going to because they--by squatting on those lands--keep the price of oil high. They keep the price of natural gas high. And Japan and South Korea and China right now get more of our imports than any other country. If oil companies really wanted to help Europe get off Russian gas, they could do that right now with the resources they have. Let me say that again. Oil companies could help Europe get off Russian natural gas right now with the resources they have, but that is not what they want. They want unfettered profit, more public lands, and more power on the global market. And that profit-- that oil-soaked power--has directly fueled Putin's war on Ukraine.

So there is a different pathway, and we have to commit to destroying demand for Putin's dirty energy business model by powering our country with clean, American-made renewable energy. And we can power our way to peace. An additional 16 million electric vehicles on the road in the United States would replace all of the oil that we import from Russia on a daily basis.

By passing the $555 billion investment in clean energy and climate justice, we can build a ``made in America'' clean energy economy that delivers real energy independence. We can unlock a safe, healthy future and untether ourselves from Putin's dirty profits. With tax credits and rebates in wind and solar, offshore wind, transmission, electric vehicles, heat pumps, and advanced domestic manufacturing, we can cut costs at home while cutting off Putin's money pipeline. These investments would reduce our dependence on global oil markets and instead power our country through localized clean energy.

Our Federal climate policies, our Federal energy policies are exactly what we need in this moment--this national security, moral, and economic moment. We don't need to power our Nation on Russian oil and sell off our forest and seas for an unnecessary Big

Oil land grab when they already have an area the size of Indiana that they are not drilling on because that increases their profits right now. We don't need to pay for Russia's invasion of Ukraine through Russian imports while paying higher prices at the pump to support profiteering and exports.

Let's wake up and win the renewable race to the future. Let's reject fossil-fueled greed for what that is--just greed. Let's protect our allies by destroying Putin's business model and delivering a future powered by domestic clean energy. That is the promise of peace. That is the promise to the whole world, to live on a safe planet. This is the promise we must make to the next generation of American young people and young people of the world, that we are going to power a clean energy revolution of wind and solar and all-electric vehicles and battery storage technologies, and we are going to destroy the business model of Russia and destroy the business models of other petrostates around the world with American innovation.

That is what the young people of our country and the world should expect from this generation and this Senate in 2022 on the floor of the United States Senate. That is the debate which we should have this year on behalf of a safer, more peaceful, more healthy, and more moral world.

I yield the floor.

Mr. President, in reserving the right to object, I rise today to object to the motion from the Senator from Montana to pass this bill through unanimous consent.

This push to put every square inch of Federal land up for sale is not a new one. It has been the plan of the American Petroleum Institute from the beginning of recorded time. It is not helping the Ukrainians in their fight, and it is not helping our European allies. It is helping inflate the profits of big oil and big gas companies.

In 2021 and 2020, we exported more crude oil and petroleum than we imported. Since 2015, when every Republican on their side lifted the ban on the exportation of American oil--that is what they wanted is their plan, that of the American Petroleum Institute--we now export 8.6 million barrels of oil out of our country every single day. Without question, whenever I have heard anything about energy independence, well, that was the natural consequence of lifting the ban on the exportation of our oil, and now, it is up to 8.6 million barrels a day.

As a matter of fact, in 2021, we actually exported 650,000 barrels of oil a day to China as we were importing 600,000 barrels of oil a day from Russia because that is what the American Petroleum Institute wanted--a globalization of this oil market--with the American consumer and the American economy just caught, ultimately, in an economic crossfire, which is where we are right now. We give China our natural resources so that they can produce a finished product. Meanwhile, we have to import 600,000 barrels of oil from Russia to make up for that, which they then use to pay for the planes for the navy and for the infantry, right now, working to destroy the democracy of Ukraine.

So the answer is for the United States to chart a new course. In 2021, 2020, 2019, and 2018, we exported more natural gas than we imported. We don't have a fossil fuel supply problem in the United States at all. We are supplying fossil fuels all around the world right now. We are sending our fuel to Japan, to China, to South Korea. Fossil fuel companies are sending their products anywhere they can get the highest price--raising costs for all of us at home.

By the way, again, understand that that is the key. Once they get it out of the United States and put it on a ship--natural gas or oil--they then get the highest price in the world for it, but they leave behind less oil and natural gas in the United States. With that diminished supply, that leads to an increase in prices for consumers for home heating oil, for gasoline, and for the natural gas to heat their homes. That has been their plan since 2015, to lift the ban on the exportation of American oil and natural gas.

Still, they are unfinished, and they want to be able to drill and frack every single inch of our national forests, our public lands, our coastlines. They want to add to their stockpiles of leases that they are squatting on already. Here are the numbers. It is absolutely astounding. Again, it is all part of the American Petroleum Institute's control of our domestic and foreign policy.

Right now, onshore, in our forests and fields and plains, 53 percent of all of the leases that the American Petroleum Institute--Exxon, Chevron, you name it--already has one. By the way, it is 2 bucks an acre--2 bucks an acre. They are not drilling on them, and they have had their leases for 5 years, for 10 years, for 15 years, for 20 years.

Then we hear from the American Petroleum Institute that we need more land that you will lease to us on public lands that we can buy for a couple of bucks, and we promise--we promise--we will start drilling on it, but just give us more land--even though they already have an area the size of Indiana that they have bid for and now, from the American people, on public lands, have the right to drill. But they are not doing it.

Offshore is even worse. On our pristine coasts from Maine to Florida, 77 percent of the existing leases which the American Petroleum Institute has, they haven't even drilled on them yet. They are sitting there. Yet they are coming here and saying: We need even more that we can get at this bargain basement price of a couple of bucks an acre.

That is their business plan, and it is just so disingenuous for the American Petroleum Institute to just continue to try to exploit crises while they, themselves, are not doing their own job, because it is inconsistent with the huge profit-making goals which they have.

Using the crisis in Ukraine and rising oil prices to push for more pro-oil policies doesn't make sense. Our oil addiction is what added more than $17 billion to Putin's pockets last year. Let me just say that again. We in the United States, at the gas pump, sent $17 billion to Putin for his war machine just in 2021.

So let's just not pretend that we need to plunder every inch of our country in order to protect our allies or to lower gas prices. Oil and gas companies want to frack and extract so they can continue to send American fuel abroad while they plead energy independence and send that to China as the highest bidder.

That is not our plan. It can't be our plan. We have to have a true, clean energy independence that helps rid the world of Putin's business model and leads the way to an American-led, international clean energy revolution. The Republicans right now are blocking the clean energy package that we have in the U.S. Senate.

For every 16 million all-electric vehicles we deploy, we back out the equivalent of all the oil we import from Russia. With the next 16 million, we back out all of the oil we import from Saudi Arabia. That is the plan for young people in our country and for young people around the world. If we do that in coordination with our allies, that destroys, in the long term, the business model of Russia and of the Middle Eastern nations that have us addicted to their oil.

I just think that we are at a critical time, and we need big plans; but one of them cannot be that we are saying to the oil industry that you can exploit this crisis, because if they are serious--and I will just finish on this note.

When we debated in January of 2015 the Keystone Pipeline, I made the amendment here on the Senate floor, saying, if we build this Keystone Pipeline, that we have to keep all of the oil here in the United States--it is the dirtiest oil in the world, the tar sands of Canada. In a straw that they wanted to build right through the United States, with all the environmental risks taken by the American people, they would then export it. So my amendment said, if we build this pipeline and take all of the environmental risks, that the oil should stay here.

Every single Republican voted not to keep it here. They all said that that oil can be exported to any country in the world.

Secondly, back when I was in the House of Representatives, I would make the amendment each year. If you want to drill off the coastlines of the United States, then any oil which is found has to stay here in America; otherwise, the beaches and the fishing industries of the United States take all the risks, and the oil companies reap all of the profits by putting that oil and natural gas on the international markets.

Every Republican voted no. We are not going to have a ban on the exportation of that oil and gas even though it endangers the drilling and would endanger the beaches and the fishing industries of the United States.

So it has always been about an export strategy, and that is all this is as well. It is an attempt to get more leases that they would then hoard--squat on--wait for the price to go higher, and then in their own good time, they would begin to drill, but it would only be in their interests, not our national interests.

As a result, because of the long, unfortunate history of the relationship between the American people and the American Petroleum Institute, I object.

Mr. President, just in response to the Senator, we have never had an ``all of the above'' strategy, truly. We have had an ``oil above all'' strategy. That is the problem that we have. That is the hole that we have dug for ourselves.

It is time for the United States to finally put a plan in place that backs out the imported oil from Russia, backs out the imported oil from the Middle East, and the only way we can do it is if we pass the climate provisions in President Biden's plan.

By 2030, the goal is to have 40 percent of all of our vehicles being all electric--no oil, no gasoline. Do you know what that does? It destroys the business model of Russia. It destroys the business model of the countries in the Middle East that need that petrol dollar from the American consumer in order to fund all of their nefarious activities.

Germany is going 65 percent all-electric vehicles by the year 2030--9 years from now, 65 percent all electric.

So if we put this together and we are serious about it right now, we will destroy the long-term threat fueled by our own addiction to energy, Europe's addiction to fossil fuels, and it will just send us on a clean energy future.

But in order to do it, we need a true ``all of the above'' strategy, not ``oil above all.'' That is how we got here. And if we are going to do it, we have to pass that comprehensive clean energy package out of the Senate this year and put it on President Biden's desk.

That will scare Putin and his cronies vacationing in Sochi. That will put a fear into the hearts of the oil monarchs of the Middle East because they will know once and for all that we are serious about not allowing our American consumer dollars to fuel conflicts around the world.

Again, I appreciate the time.

I yield the floor.

I suggest the absence of a quorum.

Mr. President, as I speak here today on the U.S. Postal Service Reform Act, Russian President Vladimir Putin is waging a cruel, unjust, and barbaric war of choice, financed by a global addiction to fossil fuels, an addiction which Russia is only too happy to exploit right now.

And the most effective way to reduce the long-term security threat to Ukraine and Europe and the United States and the whole world is to say that we are going to empty Vladimir Putin's oil-and-gas-funded piggy bank, setting ourselves and our allies on the course to a future powered by domestic clean energy.

We can use the power of our Federal Government to not only apply sanctions but also destroy Putin's dirty energy business model.

The U.S. Government has 700,000 vehicles in its fleet, and 160,000 of the U.S. Government's vehicles belong to the U.S. Postal Service. Our Postal Service could play an important role in destroying the Putin business model by committing to clean instead of dirty energy to fuel its fleet. And it should start by reversing Postmaster General Louis DeJoy's short-term decision to buy dirty, new postal trucks, energy- inefficient postal trucks, gas-guzzling postal trucks.

As we import oil from Russia, we don't need a new fleet of gas- guzzling postal vehicles in the United States because if we don't get a truly next-generation electric fleet of postal trucks, we need the next generation of Postal Service leadership delivered express to the American people.

This is just the latest stop in DeJoy's disastrous postal route, and it is time for him to resign. This is just a leftover agenda from the Trump years, this commitment to inefficiency, to the consumption unnecessarily of oil and natural gas in our country.

The Postal Service Board of Governors and the Biden administration just can't let this bad business, bad-for-climate, bad-for-health decision stand. If DeJoy won't get rid of this decision, the U.S. Postal Service should get rid of him, especially at this moment where Russia is fueling an unconscionable invasion of Ukraine with oil money from the United States.

It is the American people who have been paying $20 billion a year for Russian oil coming into our country to put in the gasoline tanks of the United States. And then he takes that money and uses it to buy tanks and planes and weapons to invade the Ukraine.

A new fleet of electric postal trucks would receive a stamp of approval from the American people as it would lower costs, reduce pollution, and provide public health benefits while backing out the Russian oil that comes into our country every single day.

Louis DeJoy wants to claim he doesn't have the money to go electric, but that false statement should be marked ``return to sender.''

One study found that full electrification would save the U.S. Postal Service $4.3 billion over the lifetime of the fleet. In other words, going all electric saves money for the American taxpayer because going all electric is cheaper than going all gasoline or all diesel. We just save money, but we don't have to send any money to Putin to run our Postal Service because that just doesn't make any sense in 2022.

Since taking office in 2020, Louis DeJoy has tried to pinch pennies at the U.S. Postal Service, so why is he now proposing a fiscally irresponsible plan that leaves $4.3 billion on the table instead of in U.S. Postal Service's budget?

If our new postal fleet is made up of vehicles that get less than 10 miles to the gallon, no better than the vehicles already in use, we are going to be tying our mail delivery system of the future to the dirty oil, inefficient oil, inefficient vehicle strategy of the past.

We shouldn't be proposing the Postal Service use the same energy from the time of the Pony Express, and these vehicles that we are using today move at about the same speed as the Pony Express.

It is time for us to just think smarter and not harder. That is all electric. That is backing out oil. That is just saying that we can have an infinity sign next to the efficiency of these vehicles which we are driving and not this 10-mile-a-gallon, 1930s, 1920s view of how efficient the postal vehicles in our country should be.

So this is simple. Electric postal trucks are cheaper. Electric postal trucks are cleaner. And this isn't charity; it is business. And you don't have to take my word for it. Ask some of our most successful companies in the mail delivery industry.

These are the competitors to the Postal Service. The Postal Service is constantly coming up here saying that we need more subsidies; we need more help to compete against these private-sector competitors. Well, UPS just placed a 10,000-vehicle purchase order for electric trucks. FedEx is moving to achieve a fully electric fleet by the year 2040. And Amazon is purchasing 100,000 new electric delivery vehicles; that is 20 times more than our U.S. Postal Service is planning to get under Louis DeJoy.

These trucks also would work for UPS routes today. Ninety-six percent of USPS routes are compatible with electric postal routes. Electric vehicles aren't the future; they work for us, for our budgets, and for our energy security right now.

We need to protect our planet, and having all electric vehicles just dramatically reduces the greenhouse gases that we emit. But we also have to protect our national security. We have to be telling Russia that we don't need your oil any more than we need your caviar.

And the only way to do it, ultimately, is for the United States--you just find a way to break our addiction. And the way to break our addiction is to just move to the kinds of transportation, automotive, U.S. Postal Service vehicles that don't need oil and still get you just where you want to go.

So that is our challenge right now. And we need to protect everything--everything--our health, our environment, our economy, our national security, and our own morality by ensuring that we move in this direction.

And we need to protect our planet and our Postal Service by putting a ``Forever Stamp'' on our transportation future, a fleet of battery- operated electric vehicles that will usher in a clean vehicle revolution in America and destroy the demand for oil and gas so that the business model of Russia is destroyed.

This is the weapon that we can be using. This is the message we should be sending to the rest of the world. So I urge the White House, the U.S. Postal Service, and the Congress to take any and all possible steps to right this wrong decision from Louis DeJoy. The U.S. Postal Service needs to tear up this deal and buy a clean fleet, and if it doesn't, it needs to get a clean start without Louis DeJoy, who is looking at the world in a rearview mirror.

You have to look straight ahead to this all-electric vehicle future. Let's ensure that the Postal Service's next-generation delivery vehicles create a livable world for the next generation, not only of America but as a model for what the rest of the world has to do.

What I hear from my Republican friends, what I hear from the American petroleum industry is, well, the Biden administration should just open up more leases to drill for oil, open up more leases immediately for more drilling.

Well, here is the problem with the Republican Party; here is the problem with the American Petroleum Institute: The oil industry, the oil giants, have hoarded thousands and thousands of leases on public lands all across the United States, and they have not drilled on them.

I have introduced legislation for years saying: Use it or lose it. You want the lease? You say it is imperative? You are going to pay for that lease and then you don't drill on it?

Do you know what they are doing? They just hoard all of that land, and the land is the size of huge States in our country. That is how much land they have right now or that is owned

by the American people and leased to the oil companies.

So they want to start drilling? Why did you bid for all those leases in the years gone by? Do you want to know why? They want to use this whole Russia situation as an opportunity to get even more leases that they won't drill on and to get them cheap and to create a false sense of emergency here, when, if they want to drill, they have already got all of the leases they would ever need. They have a backlog of 20 years they haven't even started on.

So when you hear these crocodile tears from the American petroleum industry, from the American prevarication industry, that is what it is all about. If they wanted to drill, they would be drilling right now-- onshore, offshore. They have the leases. All they want to do is just get more and more and more and cheaper and cheaper and cheaper from the American people, while fighting to stop an all-electric vehicle revolution, stop a wind and solar revolution in our country. That is what their agenda is. That is what the American Petroleum Institute is all about--it is stopping an all-electric revolution; it is stopping a wind and solar revolution; it is stopping a battery revolution--because it destroys their business model as well, while hoarding leases, not drilling on them, and then coming in here hat in hand, demanding, in a lot of ways, that we give them even more leases that they are not going to drill on. They are just going to hoard it and save it for years, decades, generations to come. It is sad. It is a sad commentary on American corporate greed, but that is where we stand right now.

So just be prepared to hear more lies from the American oil industry, lies that go right to the heart of what we really have to do as Americans for the next generation, and that is to stand up to those oil companies, stand up to the Russian oil oligarchs, and say: We are moving away from you historically. That is what young people in our country want. They want us to unleash our technological innovation genius in order to solve this problem, and it is wind, it is solar and all-electric vehicles and battery storage technologies. And it is a moral challenge for us. It is a national security challenge for us. It is an environmental challenge for us. It is an economic challenge for us.

We can already see the impact this oil control of the global economy has upon ordinary consumers in America and the rest of the world. Inflation is spiking--oil. Russia is invading Ukraine--oil. A new U.N. report says that we now have an evermore dangerous warming of our planet--oil. And what did they do? They continued to lie. They continued to try to control our agenda so that we cannot pass the legislation to unleash our technological genius. That is our greatest strength. Their greatest strengths are their natural resources, but ultimately, our greatest renewable resources are the brains of the American people, especially the younger people, because if they were unleashed to invent and deploy all of these new technologies, it would revolutionize not just our country but revolutionize the whole rest of the world.

We gave the young people in our country in the 1990s and the early 2000s a chance to do that with our telecommunications system. It is now called the internet. It is called broadband. Young people did that. We have to give the same opportunity to young people to do the same thing so that we back out the oil, we revolutionize the way in which we transport ourselves, and we give hope to the rest of the planet that the United States is going to use all of its resources to accomplish that goal.

I yield the floor.

Reserving the right to object.

Mr. President, I reserve the right to object and to explain why to my colleagues here in the Senate.

This is an unfortunate, terrible exploitation of a crisis in Russia by the oil and natural gas industry of the United States of America. They have no shame. They have no conscience. They have no sense of decency.

This industry, this unscrupulous industry led by the American Petroleum Institute--really the ``American Prevarication Institute,'' which is what we are hearing here today and what we have heard on airways with tens of millions of dollars of television ads saying we have just got to ``drill, baby, drill'' here in the United States, that that is the answer to the invasion of Ukraine by the Russians.

Well, a few facts might be helpful so that the American people can understand, once again, that all the American Petroleum Institute is about is tipping consumers upside down at the pump and shaking money out of their pockets. That is who they are.

So just a few facts here: The oil industry in the United States has bid for leases on American public lands. Right now, 53 percent of the leases that the oil industry, the natural gas industry of the United States have onshore in our country--in our forests, in our fields--they are not drilling on them.

Fifty-three percent of all the leases that they have from the American people, have they been drilling to protect us against this day? No, they have not.

What about offshore? Well, offshore, the oil industry is not using 77 percent of all of their existing leases off our shores. Right now. And what do they do? They come in here with crocodile tears, if only you would give us more leases, if only you would take more of the American people's land and give it to us, then we will drill.

Well, this is just hypocrisy on stilts. This is just, again, the American Petroleum Institute engaging in exploitative profit-making actions, and the Republican Party, sadly, is cooperating with them in this time of crisis for the short-term benefit of the American Petroleum Institute--which should hang its head in shame about this debate that we are having right now, when 77 percent of all the leases offshore they haven't drilled yet; 53 percent of all the leases onshore they haven't drilled yet.

And by the way, that area, you want to know how big it is? It is just slightly smaller than the State of Arkansas. In other words, they have got almost an Arkansas of public lands that they already own, they are already leasing from the American public, and they are not drilling on it. That would be every square inch of Arkansas. They are not drilling.

What they do is they bid low for all the leases. They keep them. They wait for the day when the price goes high. Then they start drilling. They just hoard them. And they are looking for this as another opportunity to hoard more--to hoard more.

Now, the President has responded by deploying the Strategic Petroleum Reserve in the short term. There are 600,000 barrels of oil a day that come into the United States. Thank God our Strategic Petroleum Reserve has 600 million barrels; in other words, you can deploy 600,000 barrels every day for 1,000 days out of our Strategic Petroleum Reserve to make up for the Russian oil. We can do that right now.

But one thing that we should never do is just get stampeded by this oil and gas industry greed. This industry that has blocked our movement to all-electric vehicles, blocked our movement to wind and solar, blocked our ability to blunt the need to have oil for our vehicles, natural gas for our homes because it is inconsistent with their business interests, their profit-making. They should just be ashamed of what they are doing here today--ashamed.

And the Republican Party should have no part of it. GOP should not stand for ``Gas and Oil Party.'' That is what we are hearing here today. That is what I am listening to.

And if we are going to respond, let's respond together as a nation. Let's not break this down into partisan politics, special interest politics in our country. Let's come together as a nation. Let's work to ensure that we are protecting ourselves, that we are protecting consumers.

And if the American Petroleum Institute wants to be part of this, there is nothing stopping them from bringing out 2 or 3,000 rigs this week, starting to drill on an area the size of Arkansas, waiting for them, so the oil can start pumping--not waiting to go through a whole leasing process, bidding process. They can do it right now. And you know what is going to happen? They are just going to sit there because they are making a bundle. They are tipping people upside down. They are exploiting this.

And by the way, let's not understate the partnership which American companies--some key oil companies--have with the Russians. That is real, too, right now. Let's just not forget the whole history of this. How do we get here? How do we get bad foreign policy? How do we get bad national policy? How do we get bad oil and gas policy? How do we get it? Well, ultimately, behind the curtain in almost every instance you find an oil and gas interest somewhere involved.

And we are hearing it here today. We are hearing it here today. They want to drill off the coast of Florida. They want to drill off the coast of Maine or, at a minimum, they want the leases so they will be ready someday to be able to do it. That is their goal. And meanwhile, they just sit on their hands, not drilling, not drilling on an area the size of Arkansas because they know the less they do that is the more that we can create a panic in our country, with false answers--answers that may work on FOX, but it doesn't work in reality. It just doesn't work. It is just wrong--plain wrong--to be using this as an issue right now for the benefit of the ``American Prevarication Institute.'' And behind this whole curtain of dark

money in our country looms the largest voice, which is the oil and gas industry of our country.

So we have got a chance here. We have got a chance to respond in the short run with the Strategic Petroleum Reserve, getting our allies to produce more oil, asking our own American companies to produce more oil, and then passing out here on the floor the tax breaks for all- electric vehicles.

Now, I will give you a little number. If we just deploy 15 million all-electric vehicles, we would back out all the oil from Russia, just 15 million all-electric vehicles. The next 15 million backs out all of the Saudi oil. The next 15 million backs out all of the oil from the Middle East.

You want to do something? You want to terrify them? You want to destroy their business model in Russia or the Middle East? That is what you should be doing. But, no, what we hear from the Republicans is we are not going to support any of that agenda: no money for wind, no money for solar, no money for all-electric vehicles, no money for new battery storage technologies--no, no, no, no to the long-term solution for the next generation of Americans, young people, pages here in the well who want to know what is the plan for the long term.

So that is the sad fact of what is happening here today on the floor. So, from my perspective, we don't need to be throwing good land and waters at bad actors in our society. It just is wrong. We shouldn't do it. And as a result, I object to the motion of the Senator from Arkansas.

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

Mr. President, I want to begin my remarks today with a few words to specifically urge American seniors and the immunocompromised to continue to protect themselves against COVID-19 by ensuring that you are fully vaccinated, including a booster shot and by wearing a high-quality mask.

As States around the country begin to unwind mask and vaccine mandates, I implore America's seniors to remain vigilant against this virus. First, get boosted. The vaccine is the most powerful tool we have to protect yourself against COVID-19 infection. We know that the vaccine continues to be highly effective at preventing serious illness and death from COVID-19, but we also know that thousands of Americans have died from breakthrough cases of COVID-19, and the vast majority are over the age of 60.

In Massachusetts alone, 2,200 vaccinated individuals have died of COVID-19, and more than 93 percent of those deaths were over the age of 60. We are 2 percent of America's population. So you can multiply that 2,000 to get an idea as to what has happened with people who are ``fully vaccinated'' but who are older and who still contract the coronavirus.

So we have to just make sure that everyone gets this message straight. For many Americans, they are going to be told: You don't have to wear masks. But for many others there has to be a strong message: You should continue to wear your mask to protect yourself.

And although I have called upon the CDC to track and share this data about the deaths over the age of 60, they just haven't done so. So if we extrapolate the Massachusetts number, there may very well have been already over 100,000 Americans--overwhelmingly, seniors--who have died, despite the fact that they have received two shots of the vaccine. So let's just make sure that we deliver that message correctly. Keep your mask on.

This is a very good mask. There are KF94s. We have a very good N95 mask here that is absolutely certified by NIOSH. But many of these other masks that people are wearing just aren't going to give you the protection, which you need, so we need a strong message that goes out to seniors especially but to anyone who is immunocompromised and to children who have not been vaccinated. When this ``You can take off your mask'' era begins, let's just understand that there are going to be very many vulnerable people out there.

So from my perspective, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention has also reported that the unvaccinated seniors were 90 times more likely to die of COVID-19 than those who received the vaccine booster. But I will say it again: If you haven't already, get vaccinated and get a booster.

An average of 2,300 people died from COVID nationwide in the past week per day--overwhelmingly, people over the age of 60--and each death is a tragedy for their families or their communities. They are our grandmothers, our grandfathers, our parents, our veterans who fought for democracy. They are irreplaceable members of our lives, and we have already lost too many to COVID-19.

But we have a powerful way to help, and that is to wear a mask. Again, if you put on these masks--here is a KF94--this will give you most of the protection you need. But please do not take it off because everyone else is indoors now saying the mask mandate indoors is off-- not if you are in this vulnerable category. It should not be. Understand that the risk is still there.

Here is the second point. I am urging you to continue to protect yourself, wear a high-quality mask. The CDC updated in January its masking guidance to recommend that the general public and especially seniors and those who are immunocompromised use higher quality masks, like the N95s, the KF94s, and the KN95s. We are seeing welcome decreases in rates of new infections right now, but these populations are still the most vulnerable to COVID. Just because younger people may be using their masks less, it does not mean that those at higher risk should stop being vigilant. Continue to use a high-quality mask to protect yourself when you are indoors and around others.

Getting a high-quality mask should be an easy thing to do, but with less-than-robust information, sometimes limited supplies, and a lot of counterfeits abounding, it has been harder than it should be for consumers to stay educated and protected. That is why I am pleased to see the Biden administration distribute 400 million nonsurgical N95 masks from the Strategic National Stockpile to the public. The masks are available at retail pharmacies and community health centers, so go get one. Ask a friend or a family member to bring one to you.

Make sure you are wearing a protective mask. Understand that surgical masks give you less protection. A cloth mask gives you much less protection. Just understand that, especially if you are in a vulnerable category.

I want to say this over and over again. If you are over 60, you are in that category, so just protect yourself. That small item can be what it is that protects you and your family members.

Just make sure the masks we use are the best, the most accessible, the most affordable, and the most reliable that they can be. It is not always convenient, but we need to continue to protect ourselves. I urge those Americans over the age of 60 and those who are immunocompromised to continue to mask up.

Ukraine

Mr. President, now I would just like to move on quickly to a different topic.

As we watch President Putin amass tens of thousands of soldiers on the border of Ukraine, we must confront the fuel that powers this show of military might--specifically, fossil fuels.

Our global addiction to oil and natural gas from Russia and from Saudi Arabia keeps us locked into dangerous cycles of conflict and corruption, but we have a way out. We can build a pathway to a more prosperous future, a more peaceful future. We can build cities powered by cheap, clean electricity, build all-electric vehicles for our roads, and build homes that are healthier and more energy efficient than ever before.

By putting 25 million new electric vehicles on our roads, we can stop all oil imports from Russia and Saudi Arabia into the United States of America. That is 25 million all-electric vehicles. That is a direct message to the business model of Russia and of Saudi Arabia. That is the U.S. Congress passing legislation that propels the all-electric vehicle revolution here and sets a model for the rest of the country.

But rather than invest in that clean, affordable, healthy future, our country and the global economy are being held hostage by the American Petroleum Institute and their Big Oil buddies. Rather than supporting energy policies that secure our independence and our future, Big Oil pushes policies that secure their profit margins. At the same time that we get crocodile tears from Republicans over American fossil fuel leases, those same leases are feeding the American Petroleum Institute and not the United States of America.

In 2021, we exported one out of every four barrels of oil we produced, and we are exporting them abroad because in 2015, the Republicans voted to end the decades-long oil export ban in the United States. It was the Republican votes that put company profits over consumer protections and climate policies. So our energy prices rose at home while we were left to deal with the

health and climate crisis created in this rush to export and profit. At the same time, we continued to import Russian and Saudi oil. That is what we are doing right now--propping up those regimes and supporting their financial reserves.

The journey to energy independence simply does not run on fossil fuels. How does it run? It runs on solar; on wind; on battery storage; on clean, zero-carbon energy; on a clean energy future for our country. We can reimagine a future that is free from fossil fuel conflict. We can reimagine a future powered by the light of the Sun, not by oil controlled by the barrel of a gun. We can tell Russia we don't need their oil any more than we need their caviar. That is a message we can send by passing legislation that unleashes this clean energy revolution. We can reimagine a future where American ingenuity, manufacturing, and jobs drive our allies forward into a global clean energy revolution.

This future isn't far off beyond the horizon. It is right in front of us, and it is already putting Americans to work and keeping lights on across this country.

In 2010, we had 1 million jobs in solar, wind, and energy efficiency. By 2020, that more than doubled to more than 2 million jobs. Now we have all of those millions of workers out there, and we can double it again and double it again. We can create millions of new clean energy jobs for millions of Americans across this country.

In 2008, we only had 26,000 megawatts of solar. Today, we have upwards of 264,000 megawatts of solar and wind capacity combined on our grid.

The electric vehicle revolution is already on its way. Automakers are pledging to produce 40 million new electric vehicles just in the United States. That is 2 million barrels of oil that are out of our system forever that we don't need. That is the oil from Russia that we import today. That is the oil we import today from Saudi Arabia. That is what we have to do in our country. To put that in context, just 10 years ago, there were only 73,000 electric vehicles sold all year in the United States.

We can do this. Our opportunity is great. We have a chance to use the Build Back Better bill to send a message: We are going to save money, save energy, save industrial communities, save all of us from a world made unstable through fossil fuel creating crisis after crisis on this planet.

This is the power of the American-led clean energy revolution. Looking at the alternative, with troops paid by fossil fuel money on the border of Ukraine, I know what kind of future I want and I think the American people want to fight for.

We have to destroy the business model of Russia and Middle Eastern countries that have been sources of problems for American national security for more than a generation. That is the opportunity we are all presented with right now. That is why Build Back Better--that is why President Biden's vision of wind and solar, all-electric vehicles, battery-storage technologies, and clean energy technologies by the millions being deployed in our country, will create millions of new jobs, reduce greenhouse gases, and improve our national security.

This is the healthcare, the environmental, the national security, and the moral issue of our time. If we haven't learned another lesson from Ukraine, it should be that the time is now for us to act so that 10 years from now, the next generation of young Americans can look back and say we did act, we did destroy that business model.

I yield the floor.

Reserving the right to object.

Madam President, I just want to say that I sincerely respect the Senator from Alaska's concerns about the Russian seafood imports, and I believe it is unfair. I believe it is improper that Russia has banned American seafood imports since 2014. So I agree with you. And Alaska and Massachusetts are the two fishing giants of the United States of America. We are.

However, I have heard from seafood processors in my home State with concerns about potential sudden effects of a new immediate ban on imports on their workforce, including hundreds of union workers in the seafood processing industry. That would be right now.

So, with that in mind, I am going to object to passage of this bill at this time, but I would say to my friend from Alaska that I would invite a collaboration on this subject because I think we can resolve it so that it benefits not just Alaska, which is very important, but also Massachusetts and every other State. And, again, I think we can, in fact, bring all the stakeholders together, do it very briefly maybe over this break that we are about to begin here in the Senate.

I am very grateful to the Senator from Alaska for raising this very important issue, and I want to assure him and all of the Alaska fishing industry that we want to have conversations that protect the American seafood industry and its workers and I want to partner with him toward that goal and maybe just use the next 10 days or so to accomplish that goal. So at this point I would object to the motion.

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

Mr. President, as I speak here today, Russian President Vladimir Putin has amassed 130,000 to 150,000 soldiers on Ukraine's doorstep in a show of force that could be a dress rehearsal for an invasion of Ukraine. But Putin's inventory of tanks, infantry, and missiles is enabled by another dangerous weapon: Russia's export of dirty energy, oil and gas.

Our global addiction to fossil fuels, an addiction which Russia is only too happy to exploit, is kindling this potential conflict. Without a worldwide clean energy revolution, we will never be able to quit this cycle of fossil fuel corruption and conflict. We will never be able to experience true independence from foreign interference. And we will never be able to protect our friends and our allies or ourselves from wars spurred by dirty energy profits.

As long as Vladimir Putin can wield natural gas and oil as a threat against our country and our European allies and partners, we will always be on the defense. As long as Putin can wield gas prices and oil prices as a cudgel to remake borders, these crises will become a repeating drumbeat on the battlefield of history. As long as Putin can rely on global economic systems that are dominated by dirty fossil fuels instead of clean renewable energy, we will all remain vulnerable.

The most effective way to reduce the long-term security threat to Ukraine and to Europe and to sovereign nations everywhere is to stop the spigot that puts billions of Euros and dollars into the hands of Vladimir Putin and his oligarch cronies in return for dirty fuels.

In 2021, more than 36 percent of Russia's Federal budget revenues came

from oil and gas sales. This could fund annual Russian military activities more than twice over.

The United States itself participates in these dirty profits. Seven percent of our oil imports come from Russia. We send billions of dollars a year to Putin, to those oil giants in Russia. We do it ourselves.

Since 2015, Russia has used these oil and gas revenues to expand its currency reserves to $631 billion, the fourth largest reserve in the world.

Why does this matter? Because the massive revenue chest dilutes the impact of nonmilitary options to respond to Russia's aggression.

President Joe Biden is right to seek a diplomatic off-ramp to the current crisis over Ukraine. This crisis has no military solution, but a long-term solution has to include a comprehensive strategy that ends the globe's deadly addiction to Russian fossil fuels. That strategy will only happen through an American-led clean energy revolution that frees the West from dependence on Putin's pipelines.

Many of my Republican colleagues think that the only way to address energy security is by building more pipelines or drilling for more oil and gas. That is just plain wrong. Instead of doubling down on investments that align with Russia's dirty energy business model, we must lean into the innovation of clean energy technologies to fight against Russia. That is our competitive and strategic edge. Their vulnerability is that we are the technological giant of the planet, but we have to act like that and implement policies that reflect the fact that we are the technological giant.

My Republican colleagues often come to the floor and attribute their fealty to oil and gas as a quest for energy security and independence when we know their calls for more domestic drilling are nothing more than a ploy for profits by the Big Oil companies. While families and workers are getting tipped upside down at the gasoline pump every single day, oil companies are stuffing billions into their pockets. Exxon, Conoco, and Chevron made more than $45 billion in profits last year as gas prices increased by more than 40 percent.

Republicans call these price increases ``supply constraints'' and incorrectly blame President Biden's energy policies. But here are the actual facts: Daily domestic oil production remained constant between 2020 and 2021, at 12 million barrels of oil a day. We are producing as much today in the Biden administration as we were producing during the Trump administration. So I just don't want to continue to hear this from the Republican side. What they are saying is not true.

Here are some more facts that the American Petroleum Institute, or the ``American Prevarication Institute,'' and my Republican colleagues seem to omit: In 2021, 3 million of those 12 million barrels were exported to foreign countries.

Let me say that again. Of the 12 million barrels of oil that we actually drilled for here in the United States, 3 million of those barrels were exported around the world.

Who wanted to export those barrels of oil? The American Petroleum Institute. And we are exporting them abroad because, in 2015, Republicans voted to end the decades-long export ban on sending oil overseas. It was their votes that paved the way to send American oil overseas. It was their votes that aligned with the American Petroleum Institute that results today in 3 million barrels of oil a day leaving the United States, as we see these crocodile tears about oil imports and exports from the American Petroleum Institute, from the Republican Party.

So you can't say, out of one side of your mouth, ``energy independence'' but, out of the other side, ``export, baby, export.'' That is what the Republican Party has stood for; that is what the American Petroleum Institute advocated for and got as a new American policy after four decades, in 2015. And the more oil we drill for here at home, the more likely Big Oil will sell American consumers out to the highest bidder abroad for our oil.

Republicans owe Americans at the pump an apology for putting us in this situation. We cannot support a business model where Big Oil drills for energy in the United States, only to sell that product to China at the expense of the American consumer.

In November of 2020, I requested a Federal report that revealed that the repeal of the 2015 crude oil export ban increased U.S. crude exports--while imports remained largely unchanged--and resulted in higher oil costs.

The first step to true energy independence is to reinstate the ban on exporting American crude oil and natural gas abroad. The other step must be equally aggressive: aggressive investments in clean energy, in wind, in solar, in all-electric vehicles, in battery storage technologies, in new metals, new inventions, so that we don't have to import that oil from Russia or from any other place in the world, so that we can break our addiction to the Russian oil that comes into our country right now, even as we speak on the floor of the U.S. Senate, because that hurts American working families. It hurts vulnerable communities in our country.

Our fossil fuel addiction is a catalyst for conflict. A clean energy Green New Deal would be a pathway for peace. The position of my Republican colleagues represents the kind of short-term thinking that will harm our long-term national security, the security of our European partners and allies, and the health of our planet.

If we export more American natural gas to our allies in Europe, fuel prices would increase for American consumers and the Russian Government would continue to profit by simply redirecting its fossil fuel supply to Asia. Putin would still be able to use his oil and natural gas revenue to threaten the sovereignty of free and democratic countries. And as a top three oil and natural gas producer, Russia will continue to have significant influence on energy supply and pricing as long as there continues to be global demand for its oil and gas exports, whether that demand is Eastern Asia or Eastern Europe.

This is not theoretical. Just last week, Russia and China inked a 30- year deal through which Russia will send natural gas worth $80 billion a year to China. In addition to whom Russia sells its oil and gas, we must start focusing on why Russia has a market for its oil and gas in the first place.

This is a demand-side problem. Let's demand some answers. If we are serious about addressing fossil fuel demand, let's switch to clean energy and make smart investments in electric transportation. We don't need more gas pumps; we need more heat pumps for heating and cooling. We don't need more pipelines; we need more transmission lines to deliver safe, secure, and reliable clean energy. And we don't need more mass destruction; we need mass construction of clean, industrial facilities, clean manufacturing, clean cars here in the United States and worldwide.

If we are serious about ending Russia's oil and natural gas blackmail, we should invest in energy-efficient technologies that get us off the fossil fuel that threatens our planet and threatens the security of Europe. We need to build electric cars and trucks so Americans and Europeans will never again be at the mercy of global energy markets led by Russia and OPEC.

We need to build electric heat pumps so our European allies no longer have to rely on Putin's natural gas to heat their homes in the winter.

And we need to build clean energy manufacturing facilities here in the United States so that we can export clean energy technologies to Europe and create jobs here at home. We need to make the wind turbines here in the United States. We need to make the solar panels here in the United States. We need to make the battery technologies here in the United States. We need to make the all-electric vehicles here in the United States. That has to be our plan.

That will frighten Putin. That will frighten all of the rest of his petrol buddies right now having a little confab in Sochi. That will frighten him. But we cannot preach temperance from a barstool. So the United States must lead our European allies in the clean energy revolution to protect us all from Russia, yes, but also from the existential threat of climate change caused by dirty fuels.

If the United States leads with government investment in clean energy, we will drive down the cost curve for these clean energy technologies and spread this widespread adoption in the United States and Europe and across the planet.

Just look at the power that clean energy already has in our country. The clean energy sector was one of the Nation's fastest growing job sectors.

Solar jobs: In 2010, we had 93,000 workers. By now, we have 345,000.

Wind jobs: In 2010, 75,000 employees. By 2020, up to 114,000.

Energy efficiency jobs: 830,000 in 2010. Now, it is up to 2.1 million people working in energy efficiency in our country.

That worker power is matched by actual power. Just listen to these generation achievements. We have gone from 1,200 megawatts of solar in 2008 to 120,000 megawatts today.

For wind, it has gone from 25,000 to 143,000 megawatts. All-electric vehicles--there were only 2,500 all-electric vehicles in the United States in 2008. That was a crime, that we had fallen so far behind, that the auto industry in the United States just sat down on the job, but by 2030, we are now expecting 18 million new jobs--18 million new electric vehicles on the streets of our country.

This is America's strength. This is where we can dominate the world-- the clean energy economy. We will not free ourselves from Putin's energy clutches by staring down the dark barrel of a gun but by harnessing the clean energy of the Sun.

If Vladimir Putin's market for fossil fuel shrinks, so does his ability to finance threats and sow division around the world. In order to defuse tensions around Europe, we need a revolution--a clean energy revolution.

Our wind turbines are weapons against Russia's pipelines. Our solar panels are shields against Siberian oil. Together with the EU's European Green Deal, that is how we will fight and win the clean energy revolution that will finally disarm Putin's dirty regime.

Our first step is to pass the climate justice and clean energy provisions from the Build Back Better bill. That $555 billion investment includes tax credits and rebates in clean energy, heat pumps, all-electric vehicles, advanced domestic manufacturing, wind and solar, which will be made in America. A clean economy will be created.

Those credits are coupled with a technology-neutral climate and clean energy bank that will help finance the clean economy and a Civilian Climate Corps, which will train the next generation of young people and workers to bring jobs and justice to our local communities.

We need to deploy one of our greatest assets against Putin: American ingenuity and the American workers, a well-trained, well-paid battalion of American workers who will build our clean energy revolution with jobs that cannot be outsourced. This clean energy revolution is worth fighting for, and I know we can do it.

Now we need to build on the past 12 years of domestic clean energy success and help build European economies that no longer have to rely on Vladimir Putin to heat their homes and power their cars.

The United States imports Russian oil. Europe imports Russian gas. What if, instead, we exported climate innovation and leadership to the world? That is the clean energy revolution that could stem the possibility of war and climate catastrophe.

We don't need Russia's oil any more than we need Russia's caviar if we are serious in our country. We need a new NATO that comes together and forges an alliance to deploy all-electric vehicles, to deploy wind and solar, so we back out the oil and gas--not only in Europe, not only in the United States, but all around the world--that we use.

This is our moment. We have a chance here in the U.S. Senate to respond. But I don't want to hear anything more from the American Petroleum Institute--the ``American Prevarication Institute.'' Their policies are the ones that we are living with today. Those are the policies that must change. That is the only way in which we can meet this healthcare, environmental, national security, and moral issue of all time. If we do it, generations in the future will look back and say that we responded to that challenge.

I yield the floor.

Mr. President, I rise today to speak in opposition to the nomination of Dr. Robert Califf to lead the Food and Drug Administration.

For more than two decades now, the United States has suffered a devastating epidemic of opioid use disorder, overdoses, and deaths. Since 1999, almost 1 million Americans have died of drug overdoses, with the vast majority of those deaths attributable to opioids.

As our country continues to deal with the COVID-19 pandemic, we must remember and prioritize this other deadly public health emergency.

In 2020, overall drug overdose deaths reached an alltime high for the year, with approximately 93,000 Americans losing their lives. More than 60 percent of those deaths were from synthetic opioids like fentanyl. That is a staggering 69,000 Americans dead from an opioid-related overdose--more than gun violence, more than car accidents, more overdose deaths than ever before in our history.

We cannot let the tragedy of COVID-19 overwhelm the daily suffering of the opioid epidemic. Sadly, for the scourge of opioid misuse and overdose in our country, there is no vaccine.

My home State has been hit especially hard. In Massachusetts, more than 2,100 residents died from an opioid overdose in 2020--a 5-percent increase from the previous year--and many more struggled with opioid use disorder. Early data from 2021 shows this unfortunate trend continued through the first 9 months of last year, where 1,613 people died in Massachusetts from opioid overdoses.

We cite these numbers with outrage and disbelief, but for impacted families and loved ones, it is an ever-present mourning for lost opportunities, futures gone too soon, and unanswered questions; all the while, for each and every community, there is the growing challenge still to be addressed.

In Congress, my colleagues and I have worked to respond to this crisis, passing several bipartisan packages--the Comprehensive Addiction and Recovery Act, CARA, and the SUPPORT Act to help bring relief to our communities.

I am proud several pieces of legislation I authored to fund and expand opioid use disorder prevention and treatment programs became law in those packages. Those investments are important, and we must continue to build on them, but we cannot forget how we reached this epidemic in the first place or we are doomed to repeat it for those families.

Those failures started at Big Pharma and were aided and abetted by the Food and Drug Administration. The FDA is supposed to be our Nation's pharmaceutical gatekeeper, but over many years, it repeatedly rubberstamped new prescription painkillers that increased the risk of misuse and dependence.

As evidence of the deadly harm those opioids caused became clear, the FDA did almost nothing. It acted too slowly to remove them from the market, to limit access to those supercharged opioids.

What started as an OxyContin prescription for back pain became full- blown dependence on heroin for countless Americans. Even well into the crisis, the FDA continued to approve powerful new opioids, either over the express objections of its own advisory committees or without convening an advisory committee at all. The FDA became the country's biggest pill pusher, and Big Pharma made billions in profits.

The Nation's pharmaceutical watchdog became the Nation's pharmaceutical lapdog, and the country became the ``United States of Oxy.'' I consistently raised concerns about the FDA's egregious mishandling of opioid approvals when Dr. Califf was first nominated to be Commissioner in 2015.

At that time, I opposed Dr. Califf's nomination until the Agency took steps to rescind approval for pediatric OxyContin--yes, OxyContin for kids. I demanded the FDA commit to impanel advisory committees for all opioid regulatory decisions and consider public health factors in opioid regulatory decisions, in particular the impact of new opioids on opioid misuse and dependence.

When the FDA did attempt to address its failures in regulating opioids after strong criticism from me and many of my colleagues, Dr. Califf and Dr. Janet Woodcock requested a National Academy of Sciences study of FDA's policies for evaluating opioids--not a major step but at least an effort to recognize its participation in the epidemic.

That study emphasized many of the efforts which I urged Dr. Califf and the FDA to undertake back in 2015; in particular, the need to include public health factors at every level of FDA regulation of opioid drugs. But to date, the FDA still has not implemented many of those recommendations. And where it has taken steps to do so, it has not gone far enough to address its past failures.

There was no real commitment to reforming the FDA or to learning from the mistakes that enabled this public health crisis.

At this point, the opioid epidemic has evolved from being driven by prescription drugs to being fueled by the illicit synthetic opioids, like fentanyl. But that does not dismiss the FDA from accountability or the need for reform.

When I met with Dr. Califf last year, I asked him to commit, if confirmed as FDA Commissioner, to finally change FDA's processes to ensure it does not make the opioid overdose epidemic worse than it already has. During our meeting, Dr. Califf did not commit to the decisive and comprehensive action which we need.

After years of Agency failures and in the midst of a worsening opioid epidemic, we need FDA leadership that is fully committed to using all of the Agency's oversight authority to protect public health.

I cannot support Dr. Califf's nomination in light of that critical mandate which we need. We need a leader at the

FDA who will center public health and implement reforms to its review of opioids.

And, specifically, we need the FDA to conduct a full, comprehensive review of approved opioids as the National Academy of Sciences study recommends. We need to finalize strong rules for opioid approvals that require analysis of the impact of new drugs on opioid dependency and misuse. And the FDA needs to be aggressive in mitigating the risks of approved opioids by requiring robust prescriber education on opioids and performing regular, formal reviews of approved opioids.

These are not all the steps that must be taken, but with these, we can at least be sure that we are on the road to opioid misuse disorder reform; that there won't be another FDA green light in front of it.

Here in the Senate we must also commit to doing more to addressing the opioid overdose epidemic. Prescription opioid medications still lack a clear, concise, and consistent warning label informing patients of the risks of the drug for dependence and misuse.

Some physicians still lack the education and tools necessary to identify and help patients with substance use disorders. And, critically, treatment remains inaccessible and stigmatized for many people in need, especially those ensnared in the criminal justice system.

We have to pass legislation to address these concerns, and I stand ready to work with my colleagues. I recently introduced legislation with Senator Rand Paul that would modernize the outdated and burdensome Federal regulations on methadone, one of the most effective forms of treatment for opioid use disorder.

We can do a lot. And working with Senator Cotton, I worked to promulgate and now we need to implement the recommendations of the Commission on Combating Synthetic Opioids Trafficking, and we need to do that this year.

We need leaders in all branches of the Federal Government to bring this aggressive, intentional approach to their work, if we have any hope of ending the epidemic of opioid overdose deaths.

Dr. Califf is simply not that person for the FDA, and I will vote no on his nomination.

Mr. President, first, I want to thank Senator Booker for his powerful, powerful statement. The whole country has to hear what he said.

I want to thank Senator Kaine for your powerful words as well. It is just so important that people of your stature speak to our country on what we should be aspiring to do. Thank you for your leadership.

Thank you to Senator Klobuchar for organizing this incredibly important moment on the first anniversary of the insurrection against the Capitol.

One year ago, my colleagues and I started the day in this Chamber, ready to ratify the electoral college votes and declare Joe Biden the next President of the United States. Instead, Members of Congress were forced to take shelter under their desks and under Gallery benches, place gas masks over their heads, and pray that they would make it home to their families that day. Our staffs, journalists, Capitol workers wondered if they would live through the day, and their views of their workplace changed forever.

Instead of a day celebrating the workings of our democracy, our Nation was met with anti-democratic, White supremacist forces storming their way inside this building, violently attempting to overturn the results of the 2020 election. It was an insurrection.

One year ago, the people's Houses changed, but even though the ratification process, which recognizes the will of the American people, was interrupted, it was not defeated. On the night of January 6, 2021, as Members of Congress returned to the Chamber to ratify the results of the election of 2020, our democracy prevailed.

We thank the Capitol Police. We thank them for what they did that day. Some lost their lives. Some were injured. Some still suffer from the traumatic impact of what they had to do in order to protect these Chambers, in order to protect the electoral college votes that were in the well of this Chamber. The whole country owes a

debt of obligation to those police officers and what they did to stand here and to protect all of us--the staff, the Members, the Parliamentarians--but to, more importantly, protect democracy because we were able to return here after 8 p.m. that night in order to cast those votes. We owe a great debt of gratitude to those police officers who sacrificed so much on that day.

Tragically, former President Donald Trump's Big Lie has turned into the Big Threat to our democracy. The insurrectionists were unsuccessful in overturning election results, but the death, injury, and breach of national security they caused must be held to account.

I want to thank the House of Representatives' Select Committee to Investigate the January 6th Attack for their commitment to that ongoing mission as well as the hard-working men and women of the Department of Justice who have already brought charges against more than 725 individuals for their involvement in the insurrection.

Donald Trump does lie, but the video, texts, and messages from January 6 do not lie. We all saw what happened that day, and anyone who orchestrated, abetted, or participated in the January 6 attack must be held accountable. That includes those at the very highest level of our government. It means, as Attorney General Merrick Garland said yesterday, ``follow[ing] the facts wherever they [may] lead.'' If the facts lead to Donald Trump's criminal responsibility for the insurrection, then he should face the same consequences as anyone else, even if it means the only place he will be in 2024 is in jail.

Even as we now reflect on this day 1 year later, we must understand that investigation and prosecution alone will not prevent another attack on our democracy. This problem is larger than any one person or candidate or election cycle. We cannot forget the role that online platforms played during the lead-up to the insurrection. Make no mistake, social media platforms have become hotbeds of disinformation, hate speech, and dangerous conspiracy theories. Today, the seeds of offline harms are planted, grown, and spread online.

In the days before insurrectionists attacked the building, social media platforms, black boxes, algorithms promoted election misinformation and political groups that spread Trump's Big Lie. We need to open the hood to the online systems that are pushing toxic content to the public and feeding dangerous social movements online.

But the January 6 mob was fueled not only by the Big Lie but by the global rise of authoritarian and nationalist movements that reject the basic principles of American democracy of quality, freedom, and the peaceful transfer of power. The attack on the Capitol revealed the growing fragility in our democratic processes and institutions and a systemic weakness caused by years of falsehoods and policies meant to undermine our right to vote in free and fair elections. It is unbearable to think that a big part of America no longer believes in any kind of democracy. They no longer believe in the rules that we all live by and the pursuit of goodness and fairness and progress.

Donald Trump is gone from the White House, but we know that the hate and division that defined his corrupt tenure has been with us since our founding. So many were willing to believe lies about the legitimacy of President Biden's victory because they had lost faith in the integrity of our democratic system. Some were even willing to engage in horrific violence because they believed elections could be stolen. The architects of the January 6 authoritarians, White nationalists, and those who stand to benefit from the continued undermining of our democracy want us to feel this way.

For years, the dangerous coalition has worked to limit access to the ballot box, undermine fair voting districts, and continuously spread disinformation about voter fraud. In the wake of their attack on the Capitol, they now have accelerated their efforts. In 2021 alone, 19 States have passed 34 laws restricting the access to voting, continuing the assault on our electoral system. These efforts have eroded Americans' faith that they can actually choose their own elected Representatives, sabotage public truth in electoral outcomes, and disenfranchise countless voters, especially communities of color, indigenous people, the poor, young Americans, and individuals with disabilities.

The Big Lie is that the election was stolen from Donald Trump in 2020. It was not. The Big Truth is that Donald Trump and his allies have put in place a process to steal the election of 2022 and 2024. That is the Big Truth of what is going on in this country, right now. And the way they are going to accomplish that Big Truth is by having State after State in the United States pass laws which restrict the access to vote for Black and Brown and indigenous, and poor and disabled Americans. That is the Big Truth about what is going on in our country right now--a systematic plan to steal the election of 2022, to steal the Presidency in 2024.

And the Republican Party has become a wholly owned subsidiary of Donald Trump on the issue of voter suppression, on the issue of making it impossible for this body, for the U.S. Congress, to pass laws which protect the rights of every American to vote.

But we do have a chance, right now, on the Senate floor, to stand up to this anti-democratic movement and to banish these discriminatory policies and put them in the political dust bin of history.

The Senate can and must take action to pass the John Lewis Voting Rights Advancement Act and the Freedom to Vote Act, and we must abolish the filibuster, if just for this issue, to protect the right to vote for every person in our country.

With these bills, if we modify the filibuster, American voices will no longer be drowned out by special interests, by redistricting that keeps Black and Brown communities marginalized, and by voting laws that are reminiscent of poll taxes and literacy tests that were used for centuries to stop Black voters, minority voters from participating in our democracy.

We need expanded early and mail-in voting. We need automatic and same-day voter registration. We need to make election day a national holiday. We need to get rid of hours-long voting lines. We need to ban partisan gerrymandering. We need to get dark money out of our elections. We need to end the discriminatory voting laws that restrict access to the ballot box on the basis of race and age and income and more.

We now have the opportunity to make sure that every voice is heard in our democracy: the 85-year-old Black woman in Georgia who has waited hours to cast her ballot without even a bottle of water; the newly naturalized family in Arizona who took the bus 45 minutes to the closest voting location, energized by the chance to fully participate in American democracy; the mother of four in Massachusetts who works two jobs just to make ends meet and desperately needs that mail-in ballot. These are the voices that the ugly mob of hate and violence and division that attacked the Capitol on January 6 do not want to be heard in American politics, in 2022, in the United States of America.

But will we stand up? We have to ensure that at our moment in American history, there is enough evidence to convict us of having stood up for democracy, of having fought for all of those who will otherwise be disenfranchised this year, 2022, in the United States of America. Otherwise, we will have been found wanting in preserving the foundations of our democracy, that we will have fixed this broken system of government that is being dismantled by Republicans across this country, State after State, with Republicans here in Washington unwilling to cast a single vote--not one Republican willing to stand up and say: We must pass laws to protect against what is happening in State after State to suppress the votes of Black and Brown and disabled and poor and indigenous Americans.

With the John Lewis Voting Rights Advancement Act and the Freedom to Vote Act, we will not only guarantee that all Americans can exercise their vote--their right to vote in free and fair elections--we can also counter the distrust and the disenfranchisement that the insurrectionists exploited on January 6. These reforms can restore Americans' faith in the peaceful transfer of power and prevent another attempt at insurrection by ensuring we have a government that is truly of, by, and for the American people.

One year after the attack on the Capitol, we understand how fragile our democracy is and that the fight to protect it requires vigilance and clear-eyed determination. The very least we can offer the American people--all American people--on this day is our commitment to protect their right to vote.

Former Attorney General Ramsey Clark, who helped draft the original Voting Rights Act in 1965, once said:

A right is not what someone gives you; it's what no one can

take from you.

Let us pass this historic legislation so that no one can take the fundamental right to vote away from those who rightfully have it today.

The job of building and protecting a healthy and strong democracy is the sacred duty of this institution. The fate of the United States depends on us doing our jobs. May this day, January 6, always remind us that we must never give up that fight. And, here, in 2022, let us win this fight on the floor of the U.S. Senate to protect the right to vote for every American, regardless of the State they live in, regardless of their color, their religion, their country of origin. That is our historic responsibility.

God help the Senate if it does not respond to this historic challenge.

I yield back.

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

I rise today in opposition to the latest effort by Republicans to undermine Americans' health and safety. COVID-19 remains a grave danger. We have lost more than 775,000 Americans to this virus, and cases are rising yet again.

Despite this clear and present danger, millions of workers across this country have been showing up to their jobs every day since this pandemic began. Essential workers, nurses, doctors, janitors, security guards, retail employees, and countless more were never able to work remotely. They can't Zoom to the cash register, checkout, or the driver's seat of a bus. But these workers faced and continue to face on-the-job exposures and the hazards those exposures entail.

We are lucky to have tools to mitigate these dangers for workers. Testing works. Vaccines work. Booster shots work. Masks work. And as these new variants begin circulating around the globe and as vaccine effectiveness begins to wane, for those who were among the first vaccinated, especially for older Americans and the immune compromised, it is incredibly important that everyone get their boosters now.

Let me just say that again: If you are eligible, don't wait. Get your booster shot now. If you have two shots already and you got them 6 months ago, you are not fully vaccinated. If you don't have your third shot right now, you are not fully vaccinated. If you have two shots already, and it is more than 6 months after you got those first two shots, just understand that, when you say ``I am vaccinated,'' it is not accurate. You need the third shot.

Not only do the vaccines work, but vaccine requirements work. They increase vaccination rates and improve worker safety. We have seen in Massachusetts that, as the State government implemented vaccine requirements, vaccination rates approached 95 percent of State employees.

We aren't just the Bay State; we are also the ``Brain State.'' We listened to what scientists and medical experts are telling us.

So to protect workers, the Occupational Safety and Health Administration, or OSHA, at the Department of Labor, published a rule known as an emergency temporary standard--an emergency temporary standard, or ETS. That emergency temporary standard will keep employees safe by requiring large companies to ensure that each of their workers is fully vaccinated.

And if employees cannot or will not be vaccinated, they simply must test negative for COVID-19 at least once a week before coming into work. It is as simple as that: Get vaccinated or get tested.

The ETS also requires that employees protect their coworkers by wearing a mask in the workplace. This requirement is not onerous. In fact, it is flexible for all workers to require employees to provide paid time off to workers to get vaccinated and ensures that paid leave is provided for recovery from any side effects of the vaccinations that keep employees from being able to work.

These are simple, commonsense rules that will save lives--testing, masks, vaccines, boosters. OSHA estimates that its emergency temporary standard will prevent 6,500 people from dying and 250,000 people from having to go to become hospitalized over just a 6-month period.

But while Democrats and the Biden Administration are doing everything possible to maintain an economic and health recovery, Republicans are doing everything they can to undercut science and confidence in this administration. This latest attempt--trying to overturn the OSHA emergency temporary standard and threatening to undermine the health and safety of millions of workers--is outrageous and the worst kind of political stunt.

We mandate vaccinations for our children so that they can be healthy and go to school. We mandate vaccinations so our servicemembers are protected in the line of duty. Let us protect our workers in our workplaces so that they can stay healthy and stay on the job.

But there is a terrible irony here from my Republican colleagues. At the exact same time that the Grand Old Party is bemoaning this OSHA worker protection effort as a so-called mandate, they are celebrating mandating government control over women's reproductive freedom at the Supreme Court. They would rather mandate government control over a woman's body than mandate worker safety.

If we want to end this pandemic, we need to get as many people vaccinated as we can. Unfortunately, Republicans see a political benefit to prolonging the pain and the suffering from the virus and preventing vaccinations where possible.

This is wrong. This is immoral. And I urge my colleagues to support the OSHA emergency temporary standard. I urge my colleagues to support that emergency temporary standard and oppose this effort by Republicans to overturn this critical, life-protecting regulation, which is on the books, if we can keep it there.

So we need to ensure that we are saying to every family: We have your back. We are going to be protecting you. We are going to make sure those safeguards are in place.

I yield the floor.

I suggest the absence of a quorum.

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