Floor Statements

Mr. President, the methane problem is not a new one. It has quickly and drastically warmed our planet since the Industrial Revolution, and today it accounts for one-quarter of global warming.

We have no time to lose. In the short term, methane is more than 80 times more powerful and damaging than its better known cousin named

Madam President, I ask unanimous consent that the order for the quorum call be rescinded.

Madam President, I wish you and I wish everyone a happy St. Patrick's Day. It is a big day for celebration up in Boston and all of Massachusetts and all across the country and the world. On St. Patrick's Day, everyone is Irish. So I wish everyone a happy St. Patrick's Day today.

Mr. President, the essence of any American President's job is set forth in the oath he or she swears--an oath that the Founders considered so fundamental that they put it in the Constitution. And that job is to preserve, protect, and defend the Constitution of the United States.

A President who violates that oath has committed an impeachable offense. That is a truth. There can be no reasonable dispute that a President who fails at this basic responsibility is unfit to remain in office and cannot and should not be permitted to hold that office again.

Not only did Donald Trump fail to uphold his oath, he took steps intended to violate it. It wasn't mere negligence. It wasn't even recklessness. Donald Trump engaged in an active, willful, intentional attack on our Constitution and our democracy.

Donald Trump incited to violence and riot a mob that attacked the U.S. Capitol and our government. That is a high crime and misdemeanor. We all saw and heard the evidence during the trial. The video. The audio. The tweets. The statements. The affidavits.

Months before the election, Donald Trump laid the groundwork for this insurrection, arguing he would only lose the election if there were fraud. After he lost, he repeated over and over again the ``Big Lie'' that the election was stolen. He agitated his supporters who falsely and wrongly believed that the election was rigged.

Trump beckoned a mob to Washington for a rally when he knew the Congress would be counting the electoral ballots. Trump's people knew from law enforcement bulletins and intelligence that the mob was armed and dangerous. Yet, he riled them up and then sent them up Pennsylvania Avenue to the Capitol. That rally became an orgy of violence and hate. Mayhem and destruction ensued, all in Donald Trump's pursuit of staying in office beyond his term. Of ignoring our Constitution. Of preventing a peaceful transfer of power. Of promulgating the Big Lie. Donald Trump did not express horror or outrage at the scenes playing out live on television. He did not quickly and decisively urge his supporters to stop. He did not immediately call out the National Guard. He did not show any concern for the law enforcement officers being beaten, maimed, and even killed at the Capitol. He reportedly delighted in what was happening, unable to comprehend why others were not excited about it like he was. And he has never shown any remorse or an ounce of contrition or taken any responsibility. Instead, he

has maintained that he acted perfectly appropriately.

The Senate of the United States sat as an Impeachment Court, with Democrats and Republicans serving as jurors. But the vast majority of those Republicans were more interested in fealty to Donald Trump than loyalty to our country. They were more concerned about Trump's base than basic justice. They were willing to ignore the truth to embrace the Big Lie.

I had hoped the House managers would call witnesses. Clearly, there were individuals with direct knowledge of Trump's state of mind during the insurrection, the danger at the Capitol as it unfolded, and his support of it. But even before we debated potential witnesses, Republicans had made up their minds. They were unmoving in their fealty to Trump. Republicans were willfully blind to the truth and the facts of the case.

The rioters wanted to kill Vice President Pence and House Speaker Pelosi. They told us so. We know that the west side of the Capitol was breached around 2 p.m. and that the rioters had overrun the Capitol. We know that the mob was approaching the Senate floor when our session was abruptly recessed at 2:13 p.m. We know that Vice President Pence was whisked off the Senate floor and that he was in mortal danger, as were all Members of Congress in their Chambers doing their constitutional duty. We know that all this was playing out in real time on television and that Donald Trump had to know it was happening. And yet, about 10 minutes later, at 2:24 p.m., knowing all this, Donald Trump tweeted an attack at his own Vice President. ``Mike Pence did not have the courage to do what should have been done to protect our Country and our Constitution.'' And we know that around 2:26 p.m., Donald Trump called Senator Tuberville not to ascertain what was happening, not ask how the Vice President was or to offer aid and assistance against the insurrection. No, Trump called to ask Senator Tuberville to delay the certification. It is clear whose side Donald Trump was on.

There is no First Amendment defense to what Donald Trump did. The First Amendment has no application in an impeachment proceeding, which does not seek to punish unlawful speech, but to protect the Nation from a President who has violated his oath of office.

But even if the First Amendment applied, even if we bought Trump's lawyers' bogus claims that the First Amendment can be a defense, the argument utterly fails. Trump's lawyers relied on the Supreme Court's decision in Brandenburg v. Ohio, but Brandenburg explained that the First Amendment protects advocacy, ``except where such advocacy is directed to inciting imminent lawless action and is likely to incite or produce such action.'' Once the Capitol was breached, the lawless action was no longer imminent, it was actual. And Donald Trump was still tweeting words of encouragement to the rioters. There was a siege actually happening in the Capitol. There was no longer rhetorical fighting; there was actual fighting. On television. Live for everyone to see.

The House managers proved their case with facts and evidence. Donald Trump incited and relished in an effort to violently overthrow our government. He invited. He incited. He delighted.

Anyone who is opposed to abolishing the filibuster need only look at the vote to acquit and see how Republicans willfully blinded themselves to truth and facts in fealty to Trump and their party. Their votes to acquit once again show our hurdles to progress: Republican political calculations and their dereliction to truth and justice.

The final tally on the vote to acquit does nothing to reassure me that Republicans are willing to work together and transcend party politics. Republicans had the opportunity to recognize that faith in the Constitution is a faith that we all share. Instead, they ignored the Constitution for a Big Lie. How can we expect them to work in good faith with Democrats to respond to the big challenges facing our Nation when they refuse to accept undeniable facts?

The only reasonable conclusion based on the evidence presented at the trial was that Donald Trump committed an impeachable offense, should have been convicted, and should have been barred from holding future office. Republicans refused to accept or acknowledge that. I fear that with their votes to acquit, they have sown the seeds of another violent attack on our Constitution and our democracy.

Mr. President, I send a question for the House managers to the desk because the President's counsel did not answer the question which was posed to them.

Mr. President, I am here to emphasize just how important this budget resolution is to unlocking opportunity for millions of children across our country. I am here to shine a bright light on a problem that predates the coronavirus but that has been severely exacerbated by the ongoing pandemic. I am speaking about the homework gap experienced by as many as 12 million children in the United States, who, right now, today, nearly a year into this public health emergency, still do not have internet access at home and are unable to participate in online learning.

This is a national disgrace, and it is going to come back to haunt our Nation for a generation. Children should not be missing the third grade because they are not connected. They should not be missing the fifth grade. They are going to pay a huge, long-term price because of that lack of connectivity. Before the pandemic, these students were at an educational disadvantage already because they could not complete homework assignments that required internet access after class, but, today, the problem is exacerbated with most schools being closed and household kitchen tables becoming virtual classrooms during the pandemic. Even as we try to safely reopen schools in the weeks and months ahead, distance learning is not going away both because of the continuing health crisis and the need to make up for severe learning loss during these past 11 months.

The bottom line is that, if a young student has no internet connection or device, she cannot learn. That means that those 12 million students in America, right now, without connectivity, who are disproportionately from communities of color, low-income households, and rural areas, are falling further behind in their studies every single day that this pandemic continues.

There is no reason the country that invented the internet cannot provide it to children who need it to learn and to develop. We as a society simply cannot allow an 8-year-old to miss the third grade because she does not have the internet at home. These vulnerable students are no longer facing just a homework gap; they are facing a learning gap, and it will likely become an opportunity gap for the rest of their lives because those opportunities come from a good education. To close this gap and correct this educational injustice, we must immediately connect these students to the internet. Given its history and success, it is just common sense that we use the E-rate Program as a guide to connect students where they are currently learning--at home.

The E-rate, which already connects schools and libraries to the internet, is a trusted program, deliberately designed to require an equitable distribution of funding to our most vulnerable communities, urban and rural, blue and red. I created the program more than two decades ago, and it has since invested more than $52 billion in the educational connectivity for children, especially in the poorest communities, and that has unleashed another $50 billion. From the State and local levels, which is $100 billion from that E-rate Program that I authored out of the House of Representatives in 1996, it is still the greatest educational technology program in the history of our country.

It has led to the deployment of this technology on school desks at the same rate for poor children as rich children. That is the first time that has ever happened. Yet, today, there is a gap because many of these children--millions of them--do not have it at home. That is the gap. In many instances, it is not a digital divide; it is a poverty divide that is leading to this crisis. It is a poverty divide. Because their parents cannot afford the connectivity and because they cannot have this service for their children, we are going to see an absolute disgrace which will befall our country when we look back and see what has happened to these kids.

That is why we need in this reconciliation package billions of dollars which are going to be included. We have to make sure that the funding is there for every city, for every school system, for every parent to have a kid who is connected for as long as this takes, and we don't know how long it is going to take. Children are only 20 percent of our population, but they are 100 percent of our future, and, right now, we

are leaving behind millions of them who will have much less of an opportunity to be able to maximize their God-given abilities.

I am here to say that the one thing we must do this time, which the Republicans forced out of the package in December, is put the billions of dollars in in order to make sure that all children have access to the internet at home for their educational opportunities.

Madam President, will the gentleman yield?

Thank you for rising because I do believe what you are saying about Senator Whitehouse is accurate. In my opinion, like Lou Gehrig, like Cal Ripken, he will go down in history in this longevity streak in highlighting, spotlighting like a true North Star the need for us to take action on these issues, and he is, without question, a climate change hall of famer.

And I agree with you, there is a new dawn which has now arrived, with our fingers crossed. And I share your hope, the Senator from Rhode Island, that we might be able to find a way to persuade the gentleman from Oklahoma that it is sunny most of the time in Oklahoma and it is windy most of the time in Oklahoma and there are tens of thousands of jobs yet to be created. And we can work in partnership in order to accomplish that goal.

But for today, I just wanted to come over and honor the great Sheldon Whitehouse for his incredible leadership during this time we have been going through with the climate ``denier in chief'' now gone, and there is hope alive. Your leadership is absolutely hall of fame and historic. Congratulations, Senator Whitehouse.

Mr. President, first, I want to thank all of the first responders who helped to protect this sacred Chamber today and protect those electoral college ballots.

Today is a special day. On a day when some 2,500 or more Americans will lose their lives to the coronavirus, when another 130,000 will be hospitalized with it, when hundreds of small businesses will close their doors and put thousands of Americans out of work--on this day-- the U.S. Senate is not debating how to get more lifesaving vaccines into Americans' arms or how to put 2,000 badly needed dollars into their pockets. No. Instead, we are using the first days of the new Senate and Congress to give time to our radical Republican colleagues' baseless and damaging claims of election fraud--all in an attempt to keep Donald Trump in office in violation of the U.S. Constitution. There is a word for this. It is called ``sedition.'' All of these unfounded objections to State electors are seditious. They are nothing short of an insurrection against the established order of the U.S. Constitution and our democratic Republic.

This is a historically shameful day for the Senate and for our country. To be clear, the notion that there is any meaningful voter fraud that has been identified in the 2020 Presidential election is a dangerous, anti-democratic, treasonous fiction. Joe Biden won. Donald Trump lost--period--but that hasn't stopped the President and his supporters from making allegations of voter fraud in some 60 legal challenges across the country, heard by some 90 judges, including Trump judicial appointees. Not one of these challenges succeeded--not one. Despite this reality, my radical Republican colleagues claim we must have a commission to investigate the fraud.

Well, we do know one of the most undeniable instances of substantial and significant election fraud ever. We even have a recording and a transcript of it. It is of President Trump, talking like a Mafia boss to the Georgia Secretary of State--a Republican no less--pressuring and threatening him to fix the election in Trump's favor, and holding out the prospect of criminal prosecution if he doesn't.

``Find me 11,780 votes,'' Trump said. Well, someone should find Donald Trump a real lawyer and measure him for an orange jumpsuit, because the list of statutes that this latest, shocking Presidential phone call may violate is too long to recite. The President's words on that phone call--indeed, his conduct since his election--demand a serious response, one much more serious than the sham before us today.

First, Federal and State law enforcement authorities should investigate Donald Trump for election fraud, extortion, conspiracy, and whatever other charges fit the bill and, if warranted, indict and try him for any crimes he has committed.

Second, we must recognize that Donald Trump is and will remain a danger to our Constitution and our democracy. So, while time is certainly limited, we should impeach Trump again and bar him from holding office in the future.

Finally, we should abolish the electoral college. It is a vestige of a racist Jim Crow America, and we have outgrown it. Every person's vote in every State should count just the same--one person, one vote.

Election fraud and reform are very serious issues. Election reform absolutely should be debated in Congress, which is why, instead of today's Kabuki theater, I invite my Republican colleagues to stand up and say: Yes, we need to protect and expand voting rights and election security. We need automatic voter registration. We need online voter registration. We need same-day voter registration. We should make election day a Federal holiday. We should restore voting rights to people with prior felony convictions. We should support independent redistricting commissions. Let's spend our time debating that on the floor--debating how to reduce the influence of big money in our political system, to slow the revolving door between government officials and lobbyists, to stop gerrymandering and voter suppression. That is the real election reform that we should be debating and supporting, not these shameful, craven, baseless objections.

More than 350,000 Americans have died from the coronavirus. That is the truth. Nearly 8 million people have fallen into poverty because of the economic crisis caused by this virus. That is the truth. Wearing a mask saves lives. Vaccines are safe and effective. That is the truth. Joe Biden won. Donald Trump lost. That is the truth.

I urge all of my Senate colleagues to vote against these objections, affirm our democracy, and recognize that Joe Biden and Kamala Harris will rightfully be sworn in on January 20 as the President and Vice President of the United States

Mr. President, I ask to be recognized for 7 minutes.

Mr. President, I rise in opposition to the nomination of Peter Wright for the position of Assistant Administrator of the Office of Land and Emergency Management at the Environmental Protection Agency. If confirmed to this position, Mr. Wright would be in charge of the office that cleans up hazardous waste, contaminated lands, oilspills, and environmental disasters. He would be at the helm of the Nation's Superfund Program, which is critical to keeping our communities and families safe from dangerous chemicals and other toxic substances.

As a former counsel for Dow Chemical Company, Peter Wright's resume looks eerily similar to the listing of parties responsible for contaminated Superfund sites across our country. For 19 years at Dow, he was known as the company's dioxin lawyer. He headed negotiations for a massive cleanup of this cancerous chemical at a time when the company was accused of delaying cleanup efforts and misrepresenting scientific evidence.

For the past year, Peter Wright worked in an unconfirmed capacity as ``special counsel to the EPA Administrator.'' Despite promising to divest all his equity interests in DowDupont, it was recently revealed that he held on to those stocks until just 4 months ago. Continuing to profit off of a chemical company while working for the primary Federal Agency responsible for regulating that company is unacceptable behavior.

Just as our lands need protection from toxic chemicals, our government needs to be kept safe from ethical dangers and toxic nominees--two things that have continually contaminated the Trump administration.

Early in my career, I worked with a mother in Woburn, MA, named Anne

Anderson. Anne worked tirelessly to expose the link between the industrial chemical TCE and the development of leukemia in Woburn, MA, and the children of Woburn, MA. Her work and the work of other Woburn families helped spur Congress to pass the Superfund law. I was a champion of that bill in the House, and I am proud to continue to defend and strengthen the Superfund Program today in the Senate.

Anne Anderson's son Jimmy died from exposure to TCE and other chemicals. She had to do the job because the Federal Government was not doing the job. She had to be the one to put together all the other mothers who had children who were also going to die.

You may have seen the movie or read the book ``A Civil Action.'' It is a very good movie, but it is about her. It is about what happens when the Federal Government turns a blind eye to the impact that large chemical companies and others have upon the lives of ordinary citizens if there aren't proper protections.

Those sites are cleaned up. Her son Jimmy has passed. The site now has a transportation facility on it. It is named the ``Jimmy Anderson Transportation Center,'' in his name. He died. Superfund is meant to make sure there are no more Jimmy Andersons.

Right now, there are tens of millions of acres of contaminated land in America and in places with long industrial histories, like Massachusetts, and we have nearly a century's worth of toxic materials that have accumulated across our State and across the country. That is why we need an Assistant Administrator who will fight to protect American communities from these toxic exposures and make sure polluters pay for that cleanup.

Recently, Congress has been debating how to handle a class of chemicals known collectively as PFAS, which are everything from Teflon to firefighting foams and are often called forever chemicals because of how long they stay in the environment, cycling through soil, water, and air, until they build up in our food and in our bodies. Certain PFAS chemicals are associated with a host of dreaded diseases: cancer, thyroid hormone disruption, low infant birth rates, and immune system problems. PFAS should really be ``poisonous for all species'' because it poisons fish and it poisons cows. It poisons the water. Ultimately, it begins to affect human beings as well. PFAS--``poisonous for all species.''

Massachusetts has documented PFAS contamination in Ayer, Barnstable, Mashpee, Shirley, Middleton--all across our Commonwealth. Polluters should pay to clean up their messes, but right now, it is the public that pays. This could change if the EPA would follow up on a promise made by Scott Pruitt to designate PFAS as a hazardous substance under the Superfund law. More than a year later, we are still waiting.

We need a champion at the head of the Superfund office. There are many Anne Andersons around this country trying to keep their little Jimmys protected. Mr. Wright hasn't committed to giving our communities the weapons they need to fight back against chemical contamination. That is why today I will oppose his nomination on this floor.

Mr. President, with that, I yield back.

Mr. President, I ask for the yeas and nays.

Mr. President, it has been said many times before, but it bears repeating today more than ever, on World Refugee Day--ours is a country built by immigrants. We have a proud tradition of welcoming foreigners to our shores.

The first European settlers in North America--those who founded our original Thirteen Colonies--were fleeing religious oppression and persecution. Over the following decades, America became, in the words of Thomas Paine, ``the asylum for the persecuted.'' We welcomed Irish Catholics fleeing starvation and British rule, Germans fleeing political turmoil, Eastern European Jews fleeing the pogroms, and countless others. Over the generations, America welcomed Europeans displaced by war, and later, millions of refugees seeking political asylum from Communism during the Cold War.

In 1980, we passed landmark legislation--the Refugee Act--which provided a permanent and systemized procedure for admitting refugees. This law established the concept of a Presidential determination on refuge admissions, by which the President can set the number of refugees that the United States may admit in a given year. For the past 40 years, both Democratic and Republican administrations demonstrated a commitment to robust resettlement. Prior to the Trump administration, the average annual refugee admissions cap was 95,000 refugees. Administration officials of both parties took seriously the Presidential determination and worked to maintain a resettlement rate on par with it.

At nearly every juncture in history since its founding, America has been called upon to be a leader in welcoming the persecuted. More often than not, we have answered that call and today, it sounds to us louder than ever. With more than 24 million refugees around the globe, America must step into our historic leadership role, not away from it.

Now is the time to increase the refugee admissions ceiling, not cut it. Now is the time to build up our resettlement infrastructure, not decimate it. Now is the time to open our door, not close it. But the Trump administration betrayed the foundational values of this Nation by slashing our annual refugee admissions ceiling to a dismal 30,000 refugees. This was an unprecedented low, both in number and humanity. That is why I introduced the GRACE Act. This bill prohibits any U.S. President from setting an admission ceiling below 95,000 refugees each year and requires administration officials to treat that figure as a goal.

We must not be silent. We must continue to meet the global crisis of displaced persons head on, and like our forefathers, we must extend a hand to those fleeing persecution around the word. Thank you.

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

Mr. President, I rise today in defense of net neutrality. In April the House of Representatives took an important step in passing the Save the Internet Act, legislation that would overturn the Trump administration's Federal Communication Commission's wrongheaded decision and restore net neutrality protections. Another way of saying it is that net neutrality is nondiscrimination online. That is what it is. It is the principle of nondiscrimination online so that large companies just can't discriminate against smaller voices, smaller companies, and startups.

In the Senate, we have already successfully passed the same proposal last year. In April of 2018, my Congressional Review Act resolution passed in the Senate on a bipartisan vote of 52 to 47. In April 2018, on a bipartisan basis, we debated net neutrality and the Senate decided to join the majority of Americans and support a free and open internet.

In that vote we sent a message to President Trump about what that means: an internet, free of corporate control and open to all who want to communicate, engage, and innovate. We made it clear that Congress will not fall for President Trump's special interest agenda and his broadband baron allies who just want to block, slow down, or discriminate against content online just to charge Americans more on their cable bills.

Unfortunately, the rules for the Congressional Review Act that allow just 30 Senators to force the majority to schedule a vote is not an option in this Congress. So, instead, on this, the 1-year anniversary of President Trump's net neutrality repeal going into effect, we will call for an immediate vote on the Save the Internet Act. Unfortunately, our Republican colleagues are failing to listen to the voices of their constituents and plan to block the vote from happening.

Let's be clear. Net neutrality is just another way in which the Republican Party refuses to side with the ordinary people in our country--regular families, small businesses, and startup software companies. How do they get access to the internet in a way in which they cannot feel that corporate pressure restricting their ability to use this incredible invention to further the democratization of access to opportunity or, at the same time, to innovate in a way which continues to change not only our own country but our own world?

We can't let big companies discriminate against individual consumers. We can't let big companies stifle speech. Once you pay your monthly internet service bill, you can go anywhere you want on the internet without your provider slowing down or blocking your path to a website of your choosing.

This is a fight. It is a fight for innovation, for entrepreneurialism, for the American economy, and a fight for free speech--the cornerstone of our democracy--and a fight for the most powerful platform for commerce and communications in the history of the planet. The Save the Internet Act does exactly what the American people want. It restores the rules that ensure that families aren't subject to higher prices, slower internet speeds, and even blocked websites because the big broadband providers want to pump up their profits.

Under Senator McConnell's leadership, the Republicans are trying to bury this bill in a legislative graveyard. Instead of acting on legislation, which, again, passed the Senate a year ago--it just passed in the House in April of this year--Leader McConnell has been doing little but confirming unqualified, extreme-right nominees for the Trump administration.

Just listen to the bills the Senate Republicans refuse to act on: the Violence Against Women Act, no votes out here on the Senate floor; voting on democracy reform, no votes out here on the Senate floor; gun background checks, passed in the House but no vote here in the Senate; paycheck fairness; the Paris climate agreement--no, no, no.

But the Senate majority leader and his Republican colleagues can keep populating the legislative graveyard at their political peril because this is the agenda that the American people want to see the Senate debating, and they want to see these laws put on the books to protect families in our country. That is because the issues they are blocking are enormously popular, most with strong bipartisan support.

Take net neutrality. Now, 86 percent of Americans do not approve of the

Federal Communication Commission's action to repeal net neutrality rules, including 82 percent of Republicans, and we are not going to have a vote out here on the Senate floor.

On background checks for gun purchases, 97 percent of Americans support requiring background checks for all gun buyers, but we are not going to have a vote out here on the Senate floor.

On staying in the Paris climate agreement, nearly 70 percent of registered voters believe the United States should keep its promise and stay in that historic agreement to combat climate change, but the Republicans will not allow us to even have a vote on that out here on the Senate floor.

The only place where these issues don't have Republican support is in Senator McConnell's office. Across the country, there are huge bipartisan numbers on each and every one of those issues. It is time that we do right by the American people, and we can start with the Save the Internet Act to protect the internet as we know it.

More than 100 outside advocacy organizations wrote to Senate leadership today urging a vote on the net neutrality legislation. They want action now, and Democrats are committed to fighting on their behalf.

I am joined today by some of our greatest fighters for net neutrality in the Senate and across our country. The ranking member of the Commerce Committee, Maria Cantwell from Washington State, will be out here in a few minutes, but now I am joined by Senator Ron Wyden of Oregon.

Senator Wyden and I introduced net neutrality legislation 15 years ago in the House and in the Senate. Nobody understands this issue better than Senator Wyden does. Partnering with Senator Cantwell, we are going to continue this battle. Whether it is on the floor of the Senate or in the House or whether it is in the courts, we will not stop fighting until net neutrality is restored.

So, from my perspective, right from the very beginning, Senator Wyden and I have been on the right side of history. We have been fighting for an issue that has overwhelming public support, and we are not going to give up until we have won this fight.

At this point, I yield the floor.

Mr. President, I think Senator Cantwell and Senator Wyden have done an excellent job in laying out the parameters of the problems that exist if we do not have net neutrality enshrined as the law of the land.

We believe the principles of nondiscrimination--the principles that ensure that the internet is open and accessible to the smallest voices as well as the largest voices. We need laws to protect the smallest voices. We need protections to ensure that they are going to be heard, that they can innovate, that they can take their entrepreneurial zeal, their insights into the additional changes that can be made in this longstanding--now a 20-year history of dynamic changes that have taken place in the online commercial world and that they will be able to innovate.

They should not have to get permission to innovate. They should not have to get permission to be able to change the way in which people communicate in our country. We shouldn't have to hire lawyers to negotiate with the lawyers of the biggest companies in the United States in order to ensure that investors aren't going to lose all their money as the small company gets tipped upside down and has all of their resources absolutely devastated by anticompetitive activity. That is what this is all about--democracy and capitalism, entrepreneurial spirit, the ability to innovate, the ability to be able to go to the marketplace.

In order for capitalism to work, it has to have a conscience. Capitalism without a conscience allows for unfettered large corporations to take advantage of small companies, startups, and individuals in our society. It has to have a conscience. Net neutrality is the conscience for the online world we live in. It ensures that there is fairness, openness, and it ensures that the apertures that are there cannot be narrowed just because of the corporate agenda of an individual huge company.

That is the essence of this whole debate. It is something we believe is at the heart of what this 21st century platform of commerce should include. It will be, in a lot of ways, the defining issue of whether this entire era is one that is characterized by fairness or one that is characterized by monopolistic or duopoly practices.

Mr. President, despite the Republican objections today, Senator Cantwell, Senator Wyden, and I, and tens of millions of people across this country will not stop fighting until net neutrality is fully restored. Whether in the Halls of Congress or in the courts of our country, this is going to be a fight that is fought until it is finally won.

I yield the floor.

Mr. President, I was necessarily absent, but had I been present, I would have voted no on rollcall vote No. 141, the confirmation of Susan Combs to be Assistant Secretary of the Interior.

I was necessarily absent but had I been present, would have voted no on rollcall vote No. 142, the motion to invoke cloture on Ryan T. Holte, to be a judge of the U.S. Court of Federal Claims.

I was necessarily absent but, had I been present, would have voted no on rollcall vote No. 143, the motion to invoke cloture on Rossie David Alston, Jr., to be U.S. district judge for the Eastern District of Virginia.

I was necessarily absent but, had I been present, would have voted no on rollcall vote No. 144, the motion to invoke cloture on Richard A. Hertling, to be a judge of the U.S. Court of Federal Claims.