Floor Statements

Madam President, I often come to this floor to be able to speak about news of the day, disagreements that we have, ways that we can solve a problem we have as a nation. Today, I come to tell a story.

In 1774, an Englishman met Benjamin Franklin. They spent a lot of time together in conversations, and Franklin convinced this young sailor and writer and young friend to move to America, to move to his hometown, to Philadelphia. A few months later, 1774, he did.

Franklin saw something in this young man that no one else saw. That Englishman who loved freedom and who saw the glaring injustice of the British Crown, 2 years later, on January 10, 1776, wrote a short pamphlet that changed the course of history.

The man's name was Thomas Paine, and the short work that he wrote was called ``Common Sense.'' It was the first publication that declared we should call for independence for these 13 Colonies. It didn't include his name because if it included his name, it would have been a certain death warrant from the King, but it made the case for freedom for each person, for an elected government rather than a monarchy, and the case for religious liberty. In short, he made the case for the United States of America.

He wrote these words:

The cause of America is, in great measure, the cause of all

mankind. Many circumstances have, and will arise, which are

not local, but universal, and through which the principles of

all lovers of mankind are affected, and in the event of

which, their affections are interesting.

He wrote about the rule of law and how that would be different than living under a monarchy, and he challenged the young colonists to be able to pursue more.

He wrote:

But where says some is the king of America? I'll tell you

Friend, he reigns above, and doth not make havoc of mankind

like the Royal Brute of Great Britain. Yet that we may not

appear to be defective even in earthly honors, let a day be

solemnly set apart for proclaiming the charter; let it be

brought forth placed on the divine law, the word of God; let

a crown be placed thereon, by which

the world may know, that so far we may approve of monarchy,

that in America the law is king. For as in absolute

governments the king is law, so in free countries the law

ought to be king.

He wrote:

As to religion, I hold it to be the indispensable duty of

[every] government, to protect all conscientious professors

thereof, and I know of no other business which government

hath to do therewith.

Suspicion is the companion of mean souls. . . .

He wrote and he said:

It affords us a larger field for our Christian kindness.

Were we all one way of thinking, our religious dispositions

would want matter for probation; and on this liberal

principle, I look to the various denominations among us, to

be like children of the same family, differing only, in what

is called, their Christian names.

He shared a lot of great ideals in ``Common Sense.'' He challenged the colonists to dream of an America that would set the example for the world.

Thomas Paine's ideas weren't all great, and we didn't accept all of his ideas. In fact, he wrote a long section in ``Common Sense'' saying that when we form our own Constitution, we should take these 13 Colonies and we should elect a President and alternate among each State, so each State would, in turn, have a different President for the whole group. It is a fairly terrible idea that we never implemented. But this passion about the law being king, we did; this passion about religious liberty, we did; this passion that America would be an example to all mankind, we did.

One hundred fifty thousand copies of ``Common Sense'' were printed. That is an enormous number for that time period. On that January day when the first printings of ``Common Sense'' started being passed around the Colonies, it fanned the flame of that spark of freedom in the hearts of the colonists.

By June 11, 1776, Congress had appointed a committee of five to draft the Declaration: John Adams of Massachusetts, Benjamin Franklin of Pennsylvania, Thomas Jefferson of Virginia, Robert Livingston of New York, and Robert Sherman of Connecticut--by the way, I think two redheads in that group.

The Declaration ended with this simple paragraph. We are familiar with that Declaration. It said:

We, therefore, the Representatives of the united States of

America, in General Congress, Assembled, appealing to the

Supreme Judge of the world for the rectitude of our

intentions, do, in the Name and by the Authority of the good

People of these Colonies, solemnly publish and declare, That

these united Colonies are, and of Right ought to be Free and

Independent States.

It ended with this:

And for the support of this Declaration, with a firm

reliance on the protection of the Divine Providence, we

mutually pledge to each other our Lives, our Fortunes, and

our sacred Honor.

And they gave their all. John Hart, one of the signers of the Declaration, from New Jersey, ended up hiding in the woods that December of 1776, just a few months later, while the Hessian soldiers hunted him across the countryside. He died before the war's end.

Richard Stockton, also of New Jersey, wasn't so lucky. He was dragged from his bed, thrown into prison, and treated like a criminal. His home was looted, his fortune stripped away.

Thomas Nelson of Virginia: He commanded the militia and served as a Governor during the Revolution. He had to instruct the artillerymen to fire at his own house when the British started using it as their headquarters. Nelson had used his personal credit to raise money for the cause. The Revolution left him in distress, and he was unable to ever recover what he had lost.

Thomas Heyward, Arthur Middleton, and Edward Rutledge were three South Carolina signers who served in their State's militia and were captured when the British seized Charleston. They spent the rest of the time in prison. They pledged their lives, their fortunes, and their sacred honor.

By that December, when all of this was going on to all of these signers of the Declaration, Thomas Paine wrote again, and this time, he wrote directly to the patriots serving with George Washington. In the freezing winter, on December 23, 1776, Thomas Paine wrote these words:

These are the times that try men's souls; the summer

soldier and the sunshine patriot will, in this crisis, shrink

from the service of [their] country; but he that stands it

now, deserves the love and thanks of man and woman. Tyranny,

like hell, is not easily conquered; yet we have this

consolation with us, that the harder the conflict, the more

glorious the triumph. What we obtain too cheap, we esteem too

lightly: It is dearness only that gives every [living] thing

its value. Heaven knows how to put a proper price upon its

goods; and it would be strange indeed if so celestial an

article as FREEDOM should not be highly rated.

It is a good thing for us to be able to stop and reflect on these simple words: What we obtain too cheap we esteem too lightly. Sometimes I am afraid that, as we approach the Fourth of July each year, we will have forgotten the sacrifices of previous generations. In our time period and in this wealthy moment in our Nation's history, we seem to esteem too lightly what was obtained too cheaply, and we forget the great sacrifices of the past.

Generation after generation of American history has set an example of how we have worked for a more perfect Union. Generation after generation has served each other and the children who have come after them so that they could have a better future. It is our generation's turn. The generation that I speak of could have never dreamed of the Capitol that stands on this hill. The generation that I speak of could have never dreamed of the 50 States that would cover this continent, but they did dream this, because it is in Thomas Paine's introduction: ``The cause of America is in great measure the cause of all mankind.''

This Fourth of July, we should recommit ourselves to the cause of freedom, the future of our Nation, and the service to our children and the children not yet born. We are still a great nation, conceived in liberty, born to greatness if we are willing to work and sacrifice and give for each other. No generation in the history of the world has inherited more than we have--no generation. We should not receive it too cheaply or hold it too lightly.

Ironically, as I end my story of an Englishman who became a writer and the inspiration of a nation, I must tell you the end. Thomas Paine died a bitter and broken man. He remained a revolutionary in the fight. He could never stop searching for the next revolution. He went off to France to support the French Revolution and almost lost his head for it. He ended up in prison there. He came back to America and determined that George Washington wasn't as loyal as he was. He spent his last years writing against President Washington: that he was the real traitor and that he wasn't strong enough. He ended up dying alone, isolated, rejecting his faith--and a bitter man.

My fellow Senators and fellow Americans, the war has been won. Freedom, that gift, has been passed on to us. Let's protect it. Let's cherish it. Let's pass it on.

Each generation should be passionate about passing that on to the next generation. That is why, on this Fourth of July, it is not just a day off; it is not just a day to be at the mall; it is not just a great day to be at a lake--it is a great day to contemplate how you will serve our Nation in the days ahead in this generation and how you can pass on the freedom that we have to our children.

Our Nation still needs people who will build on the foundation of liberty. We need writers and soldiers and farmers and moms and dads. We still need people who will run for city council and the school board, people who will pick up trash in the neighborhood, people who will march in a protest and then intentionally go love people and work for the reconciliation of broken relationships. We need people who will start new businesses, give to nonprofits, get involved in their churches, and love their neighbors as themselves.

We are free, but as the Bible says in 1 Peter 2, we should live as free people but not use our freedom as a coverup for evil.

Those of us who have freedom should help others to live in the same freedom we have and to serve with joy. That is the legacy that was passed on to us. That is the legacy we should pass down.

I yield the floor.

Madam President, next week looks like a busy week. That is fine. We have a lot of things we need to be able to cover and to be able to walk through as the Senate.

Next week will be particularly divisive, though, in some of the issues that are coming up. Let me give you two examples that I hear are on the docket for next week. One of them deals with how we vote in America.

In Oklahoma, we know how we vote. Each State determines its own structure of how they vote. In Oklahoma, you can do absentee mail-in voting, with no excuses. If for any reason you want to be able to mail in a ballot, you can do that. You can do in-person voting early. In fact, this year, our State legislature met, and they added another day of in-person voting. So there are lots of days of in-person voting in Oklahoma. You could actually go to the poll the day of the election and be able to vote then. It is up to you.

We have very straightforward voter ID laws. We have a system set up that if you do early voting or absentee voting, all the disputes on those are handled before election day itself, so that on election day, when the polls close at 7 p.m., we then finish all the voting--or the counting, I should say, on early absentee, on early in-person, and then we are counting the day of. Usually by about 10:30 at night on election day, we are done voting and everyone is watching all the final results in from the entire State.

It is a pretty straightforward, clean process that we have seen that is exceptionally reliable. In fact, it is so tough, in 2016, when the Russians were probing different systems to try to get into it, our State was one of the States the Russians tried to get into, couldn't get into our system, and they moved on to other States to try to get into those.

We have a secure system. We have a reliable system. But that is apparently not enough because S. 1 that is coming to the floor next week would say: Oklahoma, we are going to completely change your system. People in Washington, DC, don't like how you vote, don't like your clean, reliable efficiency. Regardless of complaints, we think we want to change it here in Washington, DC.

Interestingly enough, we have a system that can also verify if someone voted twice. In fact, in this past election, 57 people in Oklahoma voted twice. We could verify that after the fact based on all the records, and we can go back and be able to actually prosecute those individuals who chose to vote twice because that is not legal.

Here is what happens when S. 1 comes to the floor. The debate here on S. 1 will begin with no voter ID. Take away your voter ID in Oklahoma. Change the way you do early voting. In fact, change the way the ballots are actually collected entirely. No longer in Oklahoma will we know the winner of our election at 10:30 on election night. S. 1 changes that and said that ballots have to be able to be allowed to trickle in for 10 more days after the election is over. So we won't know at 10:30 at night on election night; we will know 2 weeks later who actually won the elections.

As far as a reliable system that we can all verify and check--oh, no, it changes that dramatically. It now opens up what is called ballot harvesting. Ballot harvesting would allow political operatives to go door-to-door to be able to engage with people who had mail-in ballots and to say to them ``Have you mailed your ballot in?'' If they say ``No,'' they can say ``Well, let's just fill it out right here on the porch, and then you can hand it to me, and I will take it in.''

So on election day, what happens is, political operatives show up with boxes full of ballots and turn in boxes full of ballots with the words ``Trust me; these are all good.''

I would tell you, in Oklahoma, we like it better when the postman carries that ballot or when you actually turn it in to that county or precinct official so we know where it has been, that there has been an accurate chain of custody, not someone showing up with a box full of ballots saying ``Trust me; I collected all of these'' because when that happens and someone is just collecting ballots, you have no idea if the person voting voted for one person and left the rest of them blank and the person carrying them just filled out the rest of the ballot for them. You have no chain of custody at all on it. That is why I say S. 1 makes voting easy, cheating easy, and verifying elections impossible.

This is not the direction we should go. If we want to build trust in our election system in America, let's let each State build trust in their election system for each State, like we do in Oklahoma, where we work together to make sure we can make it as easy as possible for every person to be able to vote and to encourage every person to vote, but when it is over, to verify that election and to be able to know that we can check it all off and to go, regardless of the outcome, we can trust the outcome because we know we can verify it.

Let's make it easy to vote, hard to cheat, and easy to verify--not having Washington, DC, folks here say DC is righteous and States are wrong. I think there are lots of great people all over the country who want to do their elections right and who aren't Republicans or Democrats; they are just people protecting democracies in the States. Let's keep that system.

That is the first of two divisive bills that are coming up next week, which will absolutely fail in this body and should fail in this body. There is a second bill that I understand is coming up next week, as well, and it is called the Equality Act.

Now, I will tell you that it is a great name, and I don't know of anyone on my side of the aisle or on the other side of the aisle who opposes equality. I will state frankly that no person should be discriminated against in America--no person. It is a basic constitutional principle: We are all equal under the law--all of us. We have different ideas about music and food. We have different ideas about sexuality. We have different ideas about occupations. We have different skin colors. We have different faiths. We are a tapestry, and that is one of the things that makes us strong in such a perfect way as to build a more perfect Union. I believe that every person should be protected from discrimination in America, but that does mean every person.

Today, the Supreme Court ruled 9 to 0--9 to 0 in the Supreme Court-- that Catholic Social Services in Philadelphia was being discriminated against by the city of Philadelphia because the city of Philadelphia said to Catholic Social Services: You cannot practice your Catholic faith in foster services.

Now, what is the story?

There have been Catholic services in Philadelphia since the 1700s. For the last 50 years, Catholic Social Services in Philadelphia, this particular organization, has served the neediest children in that area by providing foster services and placement for them. They are a religious organization, a faith-based organization--a Catholic organization--and they believe that God created man and woman and that this is God's design for marriage. So, in their placement of foster children, they place children in homes where there is a man and a woman who are present in marriage because of their profound belief.

There are 20 other foster services in Philadelphia that place foster children in any family situation: husband and wife or two men or two women. There are 20 of those services in Philadelphia, but the city of Philadelphia went to Catholic Social Services and said: You have to be like the other 20. You cannot practice your faith.

Even though, literally, Catholic Social Services had never had a gay family reach out to them for an adoption placement--they had gone to other places--the city of Philadelphia said: No, you have to change your practice.

Unfortunately, Catholic Social Services had to argue for their religious freedom all the way to the Supreme Court, and, today, they ruled 9 to 0 that a faith-based institution cannot be discriminated against because of their faith. They should be able to live out the tenets of their faith and be able to practice them. To me, that is a great decision to make--to say: Why can't we coexist? Why can't we honor everyone in their differences of opinion?

Even the Supreme Court stated today, in its opinion, that there was no work from Catholic Social Services to stop gay marriages in Philadelphia or to stop couples from fostering children who are gay couples there. They just chose not to do it based on their faith. So they were not working against individuals. They were practicing their faith.

Now comes the Equality Act vote next week. The Equality Act would, for the first time ever in this Congress, take away the Religious Freedom Restoration Act in statute--it would remove it--and say there could be no protection for religious institutions. This is a direct shot against the Supreme Court, in its 9 to 0 decision today, which said: No, religious institutions have to be protected in their decisions.

Why can't both exist? Why do we have to get into a situation, as the Equality Act does, that says, if you don't agree with one particular expression, then you have to be canceled? that you have to be silenced? Why has it come to this in America?

The way the Equality Act is written is, with regard to any faith- based institution, if they did any public, outward-facing work at all-- if they fed the homeless, which many do; if they provided clothing; if they took care of individuals with food who needed it--that was considered to be of public accommodation, their labor laws, even if they were religious institutions, had to be exactly like large corporate labor rules as well. It literally imposes on religious institutions that you can be a private entity and be inward facing, but if you are going to do your mission to actually serve the needy, then you have to actually shift to be like corporate America. That is not providing opportunities for people of faith to live their faiths.

I have to tell you that I honor people of faith--people of different faiths, people of faiths that I disagree with. The nature of religious liberty in our country is to be able to honor people of different faiths. That is also what the Supreme Court reaffirmed today directly in contradiction to the Equality Act. Clearly, if this were to pass-- and I do not believe it will--the Supreme Court would hear it immediately, would align with this case from today, and would say: We have already ruled on these issues 9 to 0--that is, against not allowing people to be able to live their faiths.

Unfortunately, there are some in this body who not only vehemently disagree with the Supreme Court and with the opportunity for people to be able to live their faiths, but they are willing to do it in the most pejorative of terms.

When I spoke against the Equality Act in the Judiciary Committee, just weeks ago, and shared the issues that I had that were pragmatic labor issues and set those in front of it and also did a challenge on a religious liberty issue and said, ``Here are the obvious issues of religious liberty where I think it is unconstitutional,'' the response I got from a member of the Judiciary Committee was, This reminds me of the Ku Klux Klan, who burned crosses and used religious symbols to hide behind their bigotry.

The Supreme Court disagreed with that today and said: We are the United States of America. We honor people of faith to be able to live their faiths. We honor people who don't have faith or have differences in their faiths and choose to be able to live that out. This body should not try to cancel out every group of faith in the country that disagrees with people in this body who say: You cannot practice your faith if we tell you no. That is not who we are.

The Equality Act is not about equality. It is about imposing and prohibiting disagreements. We are Americans. We can respect each other and disagree. We can live next-door to each other and disagree. Let's prove it in this body by not passing the poorly named Equality Act but by actually demonstrating what this act says it wants to demonstrate. Let's treat each other with respect in our differences and honor us in that.

I yield the floor.

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

Madam President, I come to the floor today to give an update on what is happening on our southwest border. It seems a lot of the national media has stopped focusing on that area.

I talked to the people in Oklahoma and asked: What is going on on the southwest border? What has changed?

Interestingly enough, just 2 days ago, President Biden and his team released what is the current status of what they call the ``border challenge.'' They talked about it, and here is the update. This comes from the White House itself, their update. They stated this: There is improved processing of unaccompanied children. The administration successfully reduced the number of unaccompanied children in Customs and Border Protection custody.

The second thing they list is that the administration has reduced the average amount of time children are in Customs and Border Protection facilities.

The third thing they list is that the administration has reduced the number of unaccompanied children in the care of Health and Human Services.

Then they move on and say that they removed barriers to unifying children with parents and sponsors in the United States. And they go through and give the details of how much better they are at unifying parents and children here in the United States.

Interestingly enough, when you read through this and just look at the language, you think, gosh, the numbers are going significantly down-- until you slow down and ask the question. What they are really saying in this report is: We are moving people across the border faster than we used to. They don't spend as much time at the border as they used to. They are now in the interior of the country.

Why do I say that? Because the information came out, strikingly enough, the day after this was released, the update of what was happening on the border in May.

In March of this year, with the highest number of interdictions that we have had in 20 years--in March of this year--173,000-plus; only to be beaten in April by the highest in 20 years with 178,000-plus; only to be beaten, now we know, in May with 180,000-plus. The surge continues to accelerate while the administration puts out their notice saying: We are getting so much more efficient at moving people from the border into the interior of the country.

This is why President Giammattei of Guatemala spoke to the administration this week in a public setting, strikingly enough, saying: You are giving mixed signals to the people of Central America. For the Vice President to come to Guatemala and say ``Don't come; don't come'' but then for the administration to say ``But if you do come, we are a lot faster getting you into the country than we used to be,'' this is the mixed-signal problem. It is why coyotes continue to be able to move record numbers of people through Central America into the interior of the country

It is not just from Central America. We have had this year a more than 400 percent increase in migration from nations outside of the Northern Triangle in Mexico because the coyotes are learning--we know how to move people, and the world is seeing that if you want to be able to come to America illegally, now is the time to do it.

So if you go back to March, we had all these individuals who were coming from Guatemala, Honduras, and El Salvador. Now there is a 400- percent increase of people from outside of those areas who are coming into those same trafficking networks moving into the United States.

We have now had this year 23,000, that we know of, individuals who, when they were brought across the border under the new Biden proposal to be more efficient at moving people across the border, that if the line was too long to be processed at the border, they would be released into the United States and told: Whatever city you go to, turn yourself in to ICE and start what is called a notice to appear process to be able to request asylum, literally. This has never happened under any administration. No administration has done this. If the line is too long at the border when you are crossing illegally and it backs up there to be able to check in with the Border Patrol or CBP, then they are released into the country. As we know of, by the end of March--we don't know the numbers yet for April and May, but by the end of March, 23,242 people had been just released and told ``Turn yourself in, whatever city you get to.''

Now, I have asked the question: How many people have actually turned themselves in? How many people have actually done that? The latest number that we have that have actually checked in is about 1,800 people. Quite frankly, I was surprised it was that high. That is almost 8 percent of the people who have actually turned themselves in when they arrived at the city, meaning 92 percent of the people who were released at the border, we have no idea where they are anywhere in the country--92 percent. This is not what Americans expected.

Worse still, I have asked the basic question: What is happening with ICE? Why should I ask that question about interior enforcement in the United States? Because the first week President Biden was in office, he announced a moratorium on any deportations, even deportations that a Federal court has ordered removed. He was going to do no deportations at all. He was going to stop for 100 days.

A Federal court actually interceded in that and responded: If a Federal court has ordered what is called a final order of removal, they have to be removed. The Biden administration responded with: OK, we will do that. We will remove people if there is a final order of removal.

So I asked the simple question: What has happened since then? Here is what has happened since then. The Biden administration has changed the policy for ICE into a policy we have never done as a country. If an individual is going to be removed by ICE now, they have to contact regional leadership and ask permission to be able to remove that person. Regional leadership will go through a whole set of the criteria established by the Biden administration, and if they don't qualify, they cannot be removed regardless of their status.

What has happened since then? Last month, there were only 3,000 people in the country removed--3,000. That is the lowest number we have had on our records. To give you an example of this, we have 6,000 ICE agents in the country yet only 3,000 deportations in the country in a month. We are on record to be at a number we have never experienced before as a country for deportations of any President because we are not enforcing the law.

Not only do we have record numbers coming across the border, we have a record low number of deportations that are happening. What do I mean by that? Well, we contacted the ICE Council, and we asked specifically: What does it mean when we learn that people are not being deported? Who is not being deported?

When I talked to ICE leadership 2 weeks ago, I asked very direct, specific questions: Are all criminal aliens being deported? Their answer back to me was, no, we are making a case-by-case decision on criminal aliens.

My next question: Are all sex offenders being deported? The answer was, no, we are making a case-by-case decision on sex offenders on whether they should be deported.

Let me give a few examples. These are direct examples that come from the ICE Council of things that have happened in the last month under the new Biden policy to not deport individuals.

First option. This person was in local custody pending charges for aggravated assault. The detainer was carried over from the previous administration, from the Trump administration. Once the Biden administration took leadership, the ICE detainer was removed. They ordered a reevaluation of the case and said that they have to be actually convicted of aggravated assault charges before you can put a detainer. Now, a detainer doesn't actually remove them. That is just a detainer to say: Don't release them if convicted. That detainer was removed.

Case No. 2. This person had been deported four times before--four times before. They have had convictions for evading arrest, domestic violence, and multiple DUIs. They also have a pending DUI charge right now again. ICE officers requested permission to place a detainer on this person, and they were instructed that they could not put a detainer on this person. Even though they had been deported four times--domestic violence conviction in the past, evading arrest in the past, and multiple DUIs--they were told they could not put a detainer on him.

Case No. 3. This is actually an ICE fugitive who has a court-ordered final order of removal. Remember, I mentioned earlier that a Federal court said you do have to deport these individuals? Well, guess what. That is actually not occurring. ICE officials made a request for someone who had an aggravated assault, and they were told that they could not do it unless they went through a lengthy, long process. They started through the process, and by the time all the paperwork was done, that person had already bonded out, and they are gone. They are at large.

Case No. 4. This individual had illegally entered the country. They had local charges for rape of a child. ICE officers were prohibited from placing a detainer on them, saying that they hadn't been convicted yet, so they couldn't even put a detainer pending their conviction to remove them.

Case No. 5. This person had already been deported before, had a conviction for a sex offense against a child and sexual battery. ICE officers requested permission to make an arrest on this individual, but ICE management denied the request based on the new Biden priorities. That person is on the street right now.

Case No. 6. This person has been deported twice already. There are pending charges right now. Although they had been deported before, they have pending charges on them right now for distribution of heroin, aggravated assault, endangerment of a child, and failure to stop or to respond to a command of police.

Here is what happened. A criminal informant advised police that this individual had arranged to sell him a quarter-pound of heroin. By the way, that is a lot. When the subject appeared at the designated location, the police attempted to arrest this individual, but instead the person, illegally present in the country, attempted to ram the police with his car. He almost hit a police officer who was standing outside of his vehicle. The person was arrested. The subject did have a quarter-pound of heroin in their possession. They admitted also to selling heroin just moments before, and they had a child and an adult in the back seat of the car during the heroin sale and when that person had rammed the police vehicle. ICE officers requested permission to place an ICE detainer on this individual, and ICE management denied that request--denied that request. Though they had been deported twice, though they had attempted to ram a police officer's vehicle, though they were currently in the act of selling a quarter pound of heroin, they said:

Police work is inherently dangerous. Officers know the

risk. No detainer is warranted.

What are we doing? Three thousand people have been deported in our country in a month, and individuals literally selling heroin and attacking our police officers, ICE is not allowed to deport. Individuals in this country who are currently pending charges of sexual abuse of a child are not being deported, not even a detainer to be able to hold them.

Is this what America wanted? It is certainly not what the people of Oklahoma want. It certainly does not strengthen the morale of our ICE agents who currently cannot make an arrest or our Border Patrol and our Customs and Border Protection individuals who function more like hotel check-in staff at our border than they are law enforcement.

This is not creating a stable environment in America. It is unstable. This has got to stop.

This is not a radical request of the administration; it is a simple statement: Follow the law.

Article II of the Constitution, the President of the United States is the individual who is given the responsibility to enforce the law of the United States. The law is clear in all of these areas, and he can't just say: I have prosecutorial discretion. I am not going to deport sex offenders and people who try to ram their car into police officers and people with multiple DUIs. What in the world?

These are not possible cases. These are recent cases that are real cases happening in the country right now. And it is why our ICE agents are so incredibly frustrated because they want to enforce the law and protect our country. They have kids as well, and they don't want someone with multiple DUIs driving on the street.

This needs to be addressed by this administration--and stop just making brief statements in Guatemala, saying don't come but having doublespeak here at the border, saying but if you do, we will move you through quickly. And if you get into the country, we will not deport you, even for sexual battery.

Now, in the ``haven't I seen this movie before'' category, I noticed a couple other things this week that came up. There is a new leaked document that came out that was released by the press of tax documents that had been leaked out of the IRS that somehow miraculously got to individuals in the press who ran an extensive story about tax documents.

Now, we can all have our different perspectives on how people pay taxes and how much taxes they pay, but one thing should be clear for every person in this body; it is against the law to release tax documents. It is against the law to do that. But somehow, mysteriously, tax documents started getting released in the last couple of weeks.

This reminds me so much of a few years ago, when the IRS was weaponized for political purposes and Lois Lerner was actively shutting down conservative nonprofits, getting access to nonprofit status, but left-leaning nonprofits were expedited through. And we all expressed our frustration that the IRS was being politicized. The IRS, of all places that have all documents, should not be politicized. And now, suddenly, at the beginning of this administration, just as we saw in the Obama-Biden administration, now we see in the Biden-Harris administration the politicization of the IRS again.

Interestingly enough, in the President's budget that he released this week, he wants to give an additional authority to the IRS that has not been talked about much. He wants every bank transaction in America-- credit union or bank--of $600 or more to be sent to the IRS. So the IRS would have--every time you go to your bank or credit union, deposit or withdraw $600 or more, that transaction and all the details of it would have to be sent to the IRS not by you but by the bank or the credit union.

When I asked the IRS Commissioner about that earlier this week in my conversation with him, he said they literally do not have the capacity to handle that much information. They don't have the technology to do it. They don't have the manpower to do it.

But the Biden administration wants every bank transaction that you do of $600 or more of any type to be able to go to the IRS and to be kept there. Interestingly, that proposal comes out the same week that information comes out that the IRS is now suddenly leaking tax information to the press. I have seen that movie before.

I have seen the movie before on the Keystone Pipeline. That was news again this week. We saw that during

the Obama-Biden administration as well, and now we are seeing it in the Biden-Harris administration; that suddenly pipelines are bad news.

Well, when the Colonial Pipeline went down a couple of days, the whole East Coast panicked because they couldn't get fuel when one pipeline went down. We shouldn't be talking about how to not build pipelines; we should be talking about how to build pipeline redundancy to make sure that if a pipeline goes down, we are not trapped, as Americans, with no fuel in the situation that we are in right now.

But in the middle of this, to be able to please the environmental left, the President of the United States shut down the Keystone Pipeline, and the company finally gave up and said: We are not going to invest any more money on something that we can't finish.

Now, will that change America's use of oil by one drop? No, it won't. America will use the exact same amount of oil that it used before. But what it will do is make it more expensive to be able to move oil from the northern part of the United States to the southern part of the United States to raise prices on all consumers.

We will still have a use of oil; it will just raise prices. And the oil that moves will now move on a train or on a truck, which uses more carbon, which is more dangerous than using a pipeline. I have seen this movie before.

In the middle of canceling out the Keystone Pipeline, the President lifted sanctions on a Russian pipeline, the Nord Stream 2, which will cut off the United States from selling natural gas to Western Europe because that was Western Europe's alternative. They can either buy natural gas from us or buy gas from Russia.

The Trump administration had put sanctions on that pipeline, and so the pipeline had stopped construction. President Biden lifted sanctions on that so now we won't sell American natural gas; now Western Europe will be dependent on Russian natural gas.

How does that help the stability of Europe? How does that help American jobs? How does that help our future? I have no idea.

In the ``I have seen this movie before,'' I was fascinated this week to be able to see President Zelensky of Ukraine, when he found out about this pipeline shift, which, by the way, dramatically affects Ukraine, when he read about it in the press because the State Department and the administration didn't notify him that the pipeline that skips Ukraine and cuts them off, our administration--the Biden administration--approved.

President Zelensky stated to the press he has reached out over and over to President Biden to get a meeting with him and can't get a meeting with him.

When I read that, I had to laugh. I sat in this seat during an impeachment proceeding on President Trump because he wouldn't give a meeting to President Zelensky. President Zelensky is screaming in the media: I am trying to get ahold of President Biden, and he won't meet with me, and he is benefiting Russia and cutting off Ukraine--and everybody just yawns.

It is quite remarkable to see the difference in how our media and how individuals treat everyone.

And in the category of ``I have never seen this movie before,'' let me give you one. Today, I had the opportunity to be able to meet with our Secretary of HHS, Xavier Becerra. We were talking about the budget that he has presented for HHS, which is enormous. In fact, the President's budget is larger than any budget any President has ever given--not even close--in the overspending. The deficit total in it is epic, almost $2 trillion in deficit just from the budget, not including everything else this year.

But in my conversation with Xavier Becerra, I asked him a simple question: I noticed in your budget proposal you have changed the term that I am not familiar with. You have added a term, and the term that you put in your budget is you refer to some people as a ``birthing person.'' I said: I have to tell you, I don't know that term ``birthing person.'' What does that mean?

And he said: Well, I think it describes itself, is what he said.

I said: What is that? Is that a mom?

And he said: Well, yes, that describes itself. It describes the function.

I thought, the function? That is a woman. That is a mom. That is not a birthing person.

My simple question was: It sounds like you are trying to be politically correct here to be able to appease someone, but do you think it might possibly be offensive to some women and some moms to not be referred to as a woman or as a mom but to be referred to as a ``birthing person'' instead?

And he just said: I will look into it.

Just when I think it can't get weirder around this town and the terms can't get stranger, that is a new one on me.

I look forward to next May, when I walk down the aisle at a Hallmark store to look for the ``Happy Birthing Person Day'' card that I can send to my mom. What an odd statement to make.

What a demeaning statement to make to moms, to refer to them as a ``birthing person.'' What is wrong with just calling a mom a mom? It is a pretty great term that Americans are most certainly used to. And if it is the intent of Xavier Becerra to retrain Americans to stop calling their mom a mom, to call them a birthing person, I hope that he loses that one big time.

With that, I yield the floor.

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

Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the Senate proceed to the consideration of S. Res. 234, submitted earlier today.

Mr. President, I know of no further debate on the resolution.

Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the preamble be agreed to and the motions to reconsider be considered made and laid upon the table with no intervening action or debate.

Mr. President, Senator Inhofe and I and this body have just passed by voice vote a resolution recognizing the 100th anniversary of the 1921 Tulsa Race Massacre. It is a significant resolution not only to be able to recall what happened in that terrible time in 1921 but to also recognize the 13 Black towns that still remain in Oklahoma.

It is an interesting history that we have in Oklahoma, and I encourage folks to be able to find out more about us as a State. From the late 1800s to the early 1900s, Black individuals and families from all over the South were fleeing away from where they were being oppressed, and they were coming to Oklahoma, setting up vibrant communities. Over 50 all-Black towns rose up in Oklahoma.

In fact, there was some dialogue in the early 1900s about possibly having Oklahoma be an all-Black State even. These Black communities were rising up around our State looking for opportunities, freedom, and a chance for a better life. Thirteen of those fifty towns still remain today as communities. Many of the individuals in these towns are friends and people whom I know and Senator Inhofe and I have the honor of being able to represent in this great body.

I think about Dr. Donnie Nero, Sr. He is the President of the African American Educators Hall of Fame. He is the one who helped found and pull this all together. He has an attitude in wonderful Clearview, OK, and he says: ``One of the greatest motivational concepts accessible to mankind is `Recognition.''' He says recognition is about remembrance and acknowledgment.

We are taking a moment as a Senate today to be able to acknowledge these 13 Black towns that still remain in Oklahoma and to be able to look at some of the history of what happened during that time period. So let me walk through this somewhat.

Tullahassee was founded in 1883. It is regarded as one of the oldest surviving historically Black towns in Indian Territory.

Langston, founded in 1890, and was named after John Mercer Langston, an African-American educator and U.S. Representative from Virginia. Seven years later, the Oklahoma Territorial Legislature established the Colored Agricultural and Normal University, which would later be called Langston University. This historically Black college and university has grown from 41 students in 1897 to over 3,000 students today. Prominent Oklahomans such as Melvin Tolson, Ada Lois Sipuel Fisher, Clara Luper, E. Melvin Porter, Frederick Moon, Marques Haynes, Zelia Breaux, Isaac W. Young, Inman Page, and Zella Black Patterson all resided in the town of Langston or called Langston University home.

Tatums was founded in 1895. It was named after brothers Lee B. Tatum and Eldridge ``Doc'' Tatum. They found prosperity in 1929 when oil wells were drilled in Tatum. Norman Studios even filmed a silent movie called ``Black Gold,'' using the brothers in their film

Taft was founded in 1902 on land allotted to Creek Freedman. They changed their name from Twine, which they were originally, to Taft to honor the then Secretary of War and later President William Howard Taft.

Grayson was bustling with five general stores, two blacksmiths, two drug stores, a cotton gin and a physician shortly after it was founded in 1902. It was originally known as Wildcat. It was changed in 1909 to honor the Creek chief, George W. Grayson.

Boley was a town established in 1903 and named after J.B. Boley, a railroad official of the Fort Smith and Western Railway, and grew to be the largest African-American town in Oklahoma. Only 5 years after being founded, Booker T. Washington visited the town and wrote about the prosperity that he had witnessed. Boasting the first Black-owned bank, the First National Bank of Boley was owned by D.J. Turner. It received a national charter and rose to be one of the largest and wealthiest exclusively Black communities. Today, Boley still hosts the Nation's oldest annual Black rodeo.

Rentiesville, founded in 1903, was developed on 40 acres owned by William Rentie and Phoebe McIntosh. The Missouri, Kansas and Texas Railway developed a flag stop, putting Rentiesville on the map. John Hope Franklin, a scholar of African-American history who promoted dialogue that reshaped American views on race relations, was born in Rentiesville in 1915. The Franklins later moved to Tulsa, where John Hope Franklin graduated from Booker T. Washington. He survived the 1921 Tulsa Race Massacre, and he went on to become one of the most decorated historians. He inspired the John Hope Franklin Center for Reconciliation, Reconciliation Park in Tulsa, and an elementary school in North Tulsa. Rentiesville continues to host the Dusk Til' Dawn Blues Festival that attracts blues artists and all the folks who come in.

Clearview, a town I have already mentioned, was founded in 1903 along the tracks of the Fort Smith and Western Railroad, was widely known for its baseball team, but it is widely known now for the Hall of Fame for Black Educators. It is a place that I would encourage people to be able to stop in and to be able to see. And it is an annual tradition where individuals from around the State ride in to be able to recognize Black educators to be recognized that year in the Hall of Fame ceremony led by Dr. Nero, Sr.

Brooksville, founded in 1903, originally named Sewell, was renamed in 1912 in honor of the first African American in the area, A.R. Brooks.

Red Bird, founded in 1907 along the Missouri, Kansas and Texas Railroad, was built on the land allotted by the Creek Nation. E.L. Barber was one of the town's original developers and the first justice of the peace and an early mayor. Before Red Bird officially became a town, Barber organized the First Baptist Church in 1889, which grew to be the largest church in Red Bird.

Summit was founded in 1910 along the Missouri, Kansas and Texas Railway.

Vernon was founded in 1911 on Tankard Ranch in the Creek Nation and was home to many trailblazers such as Ella Woods, who was the first Postmaster, and Louise Wesley, who established the first school and church.

Lima, founded in 1913 along the Chicago, Rock Island, and Pacific Railroad. The Mount Zion Methodist Church was built in 1915 and still stands to this day.

And, of course, the most famous and prosperous of all of the Black communities was Greenwood. Greenwood District became a thriving community where Black business owners, schools, and churches flourished. By the late 1910s, it was the wealthiest Black community in all of the United States. The community earned the name ``Black Wall Street'' from the famed African-American author and educator I already spoke of, Booker T. Washington.

The history of these historically Black towns is interwoven into the history of Oklahoma and the history of the United States. The residents of these towns have achieved great success and faced tremendous challenges. The stories of these Black towns and communities in Oklahoma are also inextricably linked to the events of May 30 through June 1 of 1921, when the Greenwood District in North Tulsa burst into flames.

An important part of history is learning from the past. It is not looking at an incident in isolation. It is what came before and after. This weekend, the Nation will pause and reflect on the 100th anniversary of the 1921 Tulsa Race Massacre, the worst race

massacre in the history of the United States.

But we can't look at Greenwood as if it was a single weekend. It was a prosperous, thriving Black community. And it still has a history to be able to share in our future.

Maybe you have heard me share the story on the floor of the Senate before. In the past several years, I talked about the race massacre, here in committee meetings and in conversations around this body. There is a significance of the 100th anniversary, not just for Tulsa and my State, but for the rest of the Nation as well. So let me recount this again

On May 30, 1921, a young Black man named Dick Rowland was in downtown Tulsa. He entered the Drexel Building to use the only bathroom in the area that was available for Black people to be able to use in downtown Tulsa.

An incident occurred in the elevator between Dick Rowland and Sarah Paige, and Sarah Paige screamed. We really don't know what happened there, but as the doors opened, she screamed. The police did an investigation and the next day they went to Dick Rowland and they detained him at the Tulsa Police Department for questioning before removing him to the Tulsa Courthouse to be able to be confined.

On May 31, 1921, the Tulsa Tribune released a sensationalist story claiming that a young Black man had attacked a White girl in an elevator in the Drexel Building. That story and long, simmering tensions in the city led to a large group of White individuals surrounding the courthouse to demand that Dick Rowland be released so he could be lynched.

A group of Black men traveled to the courthouse to help defend Dick Rowland from the angry mob, many of them veterans from World War I who had served honorably there.

After a scuffle at the downtown Tulsa courthouse, White rioters pursued the men back to the Greenwood District and the violence escalated dramatically. Literally, as the violence increased, the White rioters that really became a mob were deputized to be able to handle the issues in Greenwood. They gathered firearms as they ran the few blocks from central downtown Tulsa into Greenwood just north of Tulsa.

Houses and businesses were burned and looted throughout the Greenwood District, and the attacks lasted well into the night and well into the next day before being quelled by the Oklahoma City National Guard. In less than 24 hours, 35 city blocks were destroyed by fires, 6,000 African American individuals were detained, and up to 300 lives were lost.

Out of the 23 churches that were located in the Greenwood area prior to the 1921 massacre, only 13 of the churches survived and only three churches were able to be rebuilt after being destroyed--Paradise Baptist Church, Mount Zion Baptist Church, and Vernon AME Church.

It was a horrific day, and 100 years later, the residents and businesses in the Greenwood District still carry on the legacy of resilience and determination.

For the past few years, I have been working to tell this story. For some--even some Oklahomans--it is a story that they had not heard before. Five years ago, I started telling the story in Washington, DC, and when I told it, hardly anyone knew about it. Now everyone I speak to is familiar with the story.

We have pulled this story out of the dark ages of history and lifted it up for our Nation to be able to see and our Nation is looking at it. In Oklahoma, many people now know about that terrible 2-day period when rioters set a community on fire and set our Nation back. But I also tell people that you can't understand Tulsa and Oklahoma unless you understand May 31 and June 1 of 1921.

So I worked to develop a curriculum to ensure future generations of Oklahomans learn the accurate historic events of 1921. Before we started working on the curriculum, our schools had a mandate to teach the 1921 massacre. But there were no materials to actually use to teach that accurate history. There were no visuals. There was no curriculum. Now there are. We pulled all those together and made that resource free to every educator in Oklahoma and every educator in America that wants to be able to teach that history accurately.

During this same time period, 5 or 6 years ago, I started working on something I called Solution Sundays, because when I started speaking about 6 years ago now to individuals all around Tulsa and around the State about the Tulsa Race Massacre, I usually started the conversation the same way: May 31 and June 1 of 2021, I would say, about 6 years ago, the entire country is going to pause. I don't know how long. They may pause for a minute. They may pause for an hour. They may pause for a day or for a weekend.

But the entire country will pause and will look at Tulsa and look at Oklahoma and will ask themselves one question: What has changed in America in race relations in the last 100 years? I said 6 years ago, that is a fair question for someone to ask; we had better be able to answer it when May 31 of 2021 comes.

Little did I know 6 years ago, when I started asking that question and continued to ask that question when it was 5 years, 4 years, 3 years, 2 years, and the next year--little did I know--about the events dealing with race that would happen in the last 12 months and the awakening that in the Nation really has happened to what is still left undone in the issue of race in America.

I started something about 6 years ago. At this same time, I started asking about what would we say. I started challenging families with something I called Solution Sundays. It is a simple idea, quite frankly. I would just ask people that I would encounter, of all races, of all backgrounds, a simple question: Has your family ever invited a family of another race to your home for dinner?

I thought it was simple until, when I would ask people, I would get the same answer back. I would ask people: Has your family ever invited a family of another race to your home for dinner?

And the most common answer I got back was: I have friends of another race.

To which I would always smile and say: That is not what I asked. I asked: Has your family ever invited a family of another race to your home for dinner?

And what I found in my State was that most individuals of every race all answered it the same way: That has never happened in my house.

So I would ask them a simple question. A national conversation about race is not something that happens on TV. A national conversation on race happens at our dinner tables with our families.

We should not expect that the Nation will speak on race when our families are not. And the best way for our families and to show our kids that this is normal conversation is to have a family over of another race to sit around the table.

What I like to say to people is, we will never get all the issues of race on the table until we get our feet under the same table and just talk and just get to know each other as friends. The Nation will not shift on race relations until each of our families shifts on race relations.

I continue to be able to challenge this simple concept of Solution Sundays. By the way, if you want to pick a different day, that is fine with me. But Sunday seems to be a pretty good day just to invite someone over for dinner or for lunch.

In just a few days, people from all over the country will fly into Tulsa, some of them for the first time. They are going to participate in events to commemorate the hundredth anniversary. It is my hope that what they see will be a model of reconciliation for the rest of the country. But after the anniversary passes and the crowds leave and the national folks will go on to doing something else, we will still be around. Tulsa and all of Oklahoma will still need to finish the work that has begun on race.

I will still be around North Tulsa. I have lots of friends there. And I know there will be an ongoing dialogue, still, about reconciliation because the big event that the whole world turns the television cameras on for doesn't solve the issues of race. We solve that as individuals and as a family.

You see, I believe, like many do, that I have a calling toward reconciliation. As a follower of Jesus, as I read

through the New Testament, I bump into passages like Second Corinthians, chapter 5, where Paul wrote to us and said we have the ministry and the message of reconciliation.

Now, I understand that Paul first meant that was an ability to be able to come to God and be reconciled to God. And I do believe firmly that every individual can be reconciled with God, and I am glad to share that message of ministry. But I also believe it is a challenge to each of us to work toward reconciliation. Where relationships are broken, we are the reconcilers, and we have a ministry and a message of reconciliation.

My friend Robert Turner is the pastor of Vernon A.M.E. Church, in the heart of Greenwood. He and I were visiting last week on the phone, talking through the things coming up in the days ahead. As I was chitchatting with my friend, he said: I have to tell you about my sermon that I preached a couple of weeks ago.

So I said: Tell me all about it.

Pastor Turner said: I preached on Matthew, the tax collector, also called Levi.

And we spent some time talking about that.

And he said: What I told my congregation was that Jesus called Matthew, the tax collector, to be one of his disciples, but he also called Simon the Zealot to be one of his disciples.

Now, you may not know, but the tax collectors were loyal to the Romans. They were Jews who were loyal to the Roman authority, and the zealots were Jews who were adamantly opposed to the Roman authority. So, literally, Jesus grabbed two people from opposite political perspectives--opposite, if I can say it, political parties--and he grabbed both of them and said: I want you to be my disciple.

And Pastor Turner said: There is a lot that we can learn from Jesus, beginning with what Jesus said: Everyone is welcome, from every political perspective, to come and follow Him.

Pastor Turner, you are spot on. My friend, keep preaching it. But excuse me for noticing, Jesus is the one who set the example, and he called all of us to be able to follow it.

Now, I have to tell you, Pastor Turner and I don't agree on everything. We may not even vote alike, though, honestly, I have never asked him how he votes. But he is my friend, and he is my partner of reconciliation.

For 6 years, I have asked people across Oklahoma, when May the 31st comes and the Nation stops and asks, ``What has changed in the last 100 years?'' We should be prepared to answer. That weekend is here, and each of us should be able to answer that for our lives and for our families.

Let's finish the work. We are not done on racial reconciliation. Let's finish the work, starting with our own families, our own communities, and our own lives.

God help us to carry on the ministry and the message of reconciliation

With that, I yield the floor.

Madam President, in February of this year, there was bipartisan conversation about what is the next step dealing with COVID. We knew we were coming out of it. Vaccines were going in arms. States were opening up. My State in Oklahoma was rapidly opening in February, and there was this dialogue about what would happen in the economy.

Unfortunately, in the middle of that dialogue, my Democratic colleagues determined: We were going to go this on our own.

We still stay engaged. One of the big issues, though, was unemployment. Would there be additional unemployment benefits that would be done?

Now, myself and multiple others raised the issue on both sides of the aisle: How would this be handled?

If it was a year before--literally, in March of 2020, there was an extension of unemployment because unemployment was at 15 percent at that point, and there were no jobs to be had. But in March of this year, when the agreement was finally made and a straight partisan bill was passed, we weren't at 15 percent unemployment. It was at 6 percent and driving down to the floor. Now we are below 4 percent.

The challenge that we have is, there is additional unemployment benefits that have extended all the way until September.

Now, that bill passed--a straight partisan bill--in March. By the Sunday after Palm Sunday, when I was back in my State, I was already having businessowners catching me and saying: What in the world? I can't hire now because I am competing for wages with someone in the Federal Government.

What has that meant for right now? Now and May, what does that mean for us in Oklahoma?

In Oklahoma, there are 37 percent more jobs available now than there were a year and a half ago before the pandemic began, when we were at the best economy in 50 years. Literally, there are more job openings in Oklahoma now than there have ever been in the history of our records.

Let me run that past everybody again. There are more openings in Oklahoma right now for jobs than ever in the history of our recordkeeping for our State, but we can't fill jobs because people are making so much money on unemployment and they get the first $10,000 of that written off on their taxes. Those two pieces together incentivize people, literally, to be able to stay home.

Our State has had to take a pretty radical step, quite frankly. We have stepped in with 20 other States and have ended the unemployment assistance, but we have had to take it the next step because we have so many job openings in our State. We are literally giving a $1,200 bonus to anyone who will go back to work. For the first 20,000 people who will actually get off of unemployment benefits and go back to work, we are paying a $1,200 bonus to those individuals to return to work. What in the world? Why would we have to do this as a State? Our State is taking leadership, and I am grateful to Governor Stitt and his continued leadership to be able to help navigate our economy and our families. But why would we want to have a situation where we have literally disincentivized work and encouraged people to not return to work? What Governor Stitt has set up is an encouragement to actually get back to work. That is better for families. That is better for children. That is better for our economy.

Right now in Oklahoma, if you are going to build anything--and I mean build anything--good luck finding building supplies. And it is not because we don't have lumber. It is not because we don't have bricks. It is not because we don't have windows and shingles and all those things. Good luck getting it because they can't get enough labor to actually do the manufacturing. So everyone is running behind simply because there is a shortage of labor because we are incentivizing people to stay home rather than to be able to come back.

Shots are in arms. Our rates of COVID have decreased dramatically. It is time for us to return to work. But now we are going to have a situation where we have right now--where half the country is incentivized to stay home. Now you have 21 States--slightly less than half the country--that are trying to incentivize people to get back to work.

We need, as a nation, to incentivize work and to encourage families to be able to be engaged in productive activities. It is right for families. It is right for our economy. It is certainly right for us as a nation. And I thank Governor Stitt for his leadership in this area and for what we continue to do, but we have to get back to basic policies that don't disincentivize work.

I yield the floor.

Madam President, there is a lot going on right now. I have already spent time on the floor today to talk about some of the economic issues--inflation, unemployment--that are happening. There are a number of jobs that are open in my State. In fact, there is a record number of job openings in my State. There is unrest in the Middle East right now, and there are all kinds of things that are happening in the world.

Yet I can't help, just for a moment, pausing to be able to reflect on a friend of mine who, in a few days, will be sitting and hanging out with his 12 grandchildren and enjoying a moment of retirement.

His name is Roger Beverage. Roger Beverage just retired as the CEO of the Oklahoma Bankers Association. He is not the big banker guy. He is the community banker guy. For 30 years, he led our State in banking and engaged in issues from the smallest of the small banks in rural Oklahoma to family-owned community banks that are scattered around our State. He worked tirelessly to help individuals get access to banking who were blocked out, and he made sure that everyone had a shot. He has been a remarkable leader, and he is just a great grandpa.

In the days ahead, I celebrate his getting time with his 12 grandchildren because he has given so much to so many others. As he spends time with his five kids--just the five kids who carry around the 12 grandchildren at this point--and as he spends time with his bride of 43 years, Paula, I want to say thank you to him.

Roger wasn't born in Oklahoma; he was born in Nebraska. If you know Nebraska and Oklahoma's long heritage of football, you will know there has been quite a rivalry for a long time. Roger graduated from college and went to law school. When he finished up law school in 1971, he enlisted in the U.S. Army right in the middle of the Vietnam era. He served 2 years in the Army, working as a lawyer. He then served 6 more years in the Reserves after that. He retired as Captain Beverage. He is also a person who has never been shy or would walk away from a challenge and is one who has constantly been focused on service.

In the middle of times that people up here in Washington, DC, wanted to equate big banks and community banks the same and to say: Let's put the pressure on the big banks but ``leave the little banks alone,'' often the little banks got caught up in that fight, and he was one of the folks who was constantly stepping out and saying: Allow community banks to serve communities.

In rural communities, like many of mine in Oklahoma, that bank was essential to the economic development of what is happening in farming, in ranching; what is happening in every single person getting access to a car loan or a home loan or just being that friend when they need a chance to talk about financial advice.

Now, Roger is a leader, and you can imagine, with bankers, who all have

lots of opinions and lots of great leaders, he didn't agree with everybody all the time, but I would tell you something I know about Roger: He always listened. Always.

People would ask me about Roger and what I think of him, and I would say: He is a servant leader. He is a hard worker. He is a person who listens. He has strong opinions, but his strong opinions are based on his own experience in the facts of the day, but he is also a humble worker who is actually working for the best of everyone.

He will be missed in my State--21 years of serving in the State chamber and leadership in so many areas in our State--but I am grateful today and in the days ahead that he is going to finally get a chance to just be grandpa and hang out with those 12 grandchildren.

Enjoy those days, Roger. Thank you for what you have done to be able to help lead our State in this area and to be able to serve so many community bankers all across the Nation.

I yield the floor.

Mr. President, I want to be able to comment on my colleague, Senator Portman, and some of the comments he has made about unemployment.

My State is not one of those States yet that has made the decision to be able to end the additional unemployment benefits that are coming from the Federal Government, and it is harming workers and it is harming jobs and it is harming businesses in my State. And I hope in the days ahead, my State will be one of those States to be able to step up and will say--and I believe my Governor will--to be able to step up and say: Let's actually make sure we are benefiting families long-term.

There is a whole group of folks who believe that if you only give people enough money, that is going to help them rise out of poverty. People need a job. People need a purpose. People need a plan to be able to do that. Folks don't need long-term Government benefits to be able to help sustain that. They need a way to be able to help earn a living to be able to pass it on to their family to set a job record for them and to set a path for their kids and grandkids after them. That helps people rise--every study we have seen on how to help people rise out of poverty, graduate high school, wait till after marriage to have kids, and have a job of any type. Let's help people rise. Let's help people be employed and engaged. That is a helpful thing.

I think about some of the things that are happening even today. Secretary Mayorkas was in front of our committee today, and it was shocking to me to hear the Secretary of Homeland Security talk about how much more efficient they have become at processing people at the border and getting them into the country.

It used to be our evaluation for how we were managing Border Patrol and Customs and Border Protection was how many people we were stopping at the border and returning to their home country. He, literally, over and over again, articulated how much faster they are now at processing people at the border and releasing them into the country. Even at one point when I challenged him and said: I understand people are being released into the country without even a notice to appear; that they are just being released into the country and told to go to a place somewhere in the country, self-report themselves to an ICE office and say: I would like to get a court order to be able to have a notice to appear.

At that point, I said: How many people have been treated that way?

He said: I am not sure.

Well, I have already looked up the record on it. It is 19,000 just in the past couple of months who have been brought across the border, released into the country, and told just self-report yourself to whatever ICE agent you see somewhere in the country.

I asked the simple question: How many people have already done that?

Not only could he not answer the number 19,000, which we have confirmed, but he didn't know how many people had actually turned themselves in and actually done it. But we continue to do this. It was all about speed of moving people who are crossing the border into the country rather than actually managing our border. And even something as simple as just the gaps in the fence, they are still, as he said to me, ``studying'' whether they are going to close the gaps in the fence.

We have a gas pipeline that has gone down due to a ransomware attack. It reminded me, again, of how important gas pipelines are all over our Nation, and it is interesting to me that on day one, one of the first things that President Biden did was he stepped in and ended the Keystone Pipeline moving through here and is now actively working to be able to shut down all pipeline construction around the country.

Can I remind Americans, especially Americans on the East Coast, what it means to lose a pipeline

When the President says we are not going to do more pipelines, that means we have no redundancy; that if a pipeline goes down, there is not an additional backup one in construction to be able to get there. It is better to have multiple pipelines in the area so that if one goes down, you still have other fuel supplies.

What if this pipeline had actually been a larger scale issue even than a ransomware attack, as bad as that is? This whole fight that we are having about pipelines suddenly makes sense to a whole lot of folks on the East Coast who can't get gasoline. Pipelines are not evil. Pipelines are moving energy across the country, and it is the least expensive, safest way to be able to move that energy across the country.

This week, of all weeks, has been interesting to have a dialogue about S. 1. It was a long markup in the Rules Committee to be able to talk about voting in America.

Now, I was at the White House several years ago when the FIRST STEP Act was signed. It was a remarkable bill dealing with criminal justice reform. As I was at the White House signing ceremony and the gathering of all these different folks that had been engaged, it was interesting to me to stand in that room with President Trump and to have folks from the Heritage Foundation and folks from the ACLU in the same room shaking hands and smiling and saying that this is a good piece of legislation. In fact, it is the only time that I can remember sitting at a signing ceremony watching people from two different perspectives saying they both support something so strongly. That was the FIRST STEP Act.

I have now seen my second time that that has occurred, when both the Heritage Foundation and the ACLU both oppose S. 1 and H.R. 1. They have both come out in opposition to it.

Well, that is an interesting gathering of folks to be able to gather together from both political extremes to be able to look at a piece of legislation--all 880 pages of it--and to say: That is a bad idea. Why would they say that?

Well, let me count the ways of why they would say that.

In my State in Oklahoma, we have great voting engagement. Good. We want to make it easy to vote. We want to make it hard to cheat. We want as many people as possible to be able to vote and as many people as possible to be able to engage in the process. It is the nature of a Republic like ours. You need people to be able to be engaged. But we also want to be able to follow up on that process as well, to be able to make sure that if somebody is actually breaking the rules on that, we follow up. And in our State, we do.

Recently, I followed up with our State leadership for voting to be able to find out what happened in our last election and what are we doing. We found 57 people as a State that voted twice in my State. All 57 of those names were turned over to local district attorneys, and they will start following up with those individuals because that is a violation of the law to be able to vote twice in our State. Fifty-seven names is not very many, but it is because we continue to enforce the law in our State to be able to make sure that we have as many people voting as possible but also accountability for people who want to be able to cheat in the system.

The interesting thing about S. 1 and H.R. 1 is that they make it much easier to cheat in the process. They set up a different system where you can actually have no voter ID. And it is not just no voter ID; it is no voter ID and same-day registration combined. So you can literally walk into a polling place that you are not registered for, not show an ID, and say ``I am not registered. I would like to vote'' and not show an ID and also vote that same day in that spot. There is no way to be able to verify, then, one way or the other if this person is voting twice because no one knows.

In my State that has great voter ID laws, it would gut them, and it would take it away from our State, though no one is complaining about voter ID in my State. You can show an ID. You can show a library card. You can show a utility bill. You can show anything in my State just to be able to verify that is actually you because we want people to be able to vote, but we want to make sure it is that person who is actually voting. That used to be a common, accepted practice.

Why would we want to create an environment where we would make it easy to be able to cheat?

This bill, S. 1, also creates ballot harvesting--forces it around the entire country. Folks may say: I have no idea what that is. Well, let me set up what it is. Ballots are mailed to your house, and if you haven't mailed it back in yet, you may have a knock at your door. They come to your door.

And if they come to the door--it would be a political activist from one of the campaigns, and they would say: Hey, have you filled out your ballot yet? I know they got mailed out yesterday. Have you turned it back in yet?

Oh, you haven't? Grab your ballot inside and bring it out on the front porch, and I will help you fill it out right here on your front porch. And, I tell you what I will do. I will also turn it in for you. You won't even have to mail it. I will deliver it for you.

That is ballot harvesting. In most States, that is illegal. They want to make that legal in every single State. That is an invitation to fraud.

Now, there is a difference between ``I want to help facilitate everyone to be able to vote and to be able to protect their right to vote'' and actually creating opportunities for fraud where everyone doubts every election. That is not the right way to go. I want to make sure that we all look at an election at the end of it and say we can trust that.

One of the ways we can trust it is through a Federal Election Commission that actually is bipartisan. We have a Federal Election Commission with an even number of Republicans and Democrats. They want to change that to where it is five members, not six, and the last member, who is the tie breaker, is someone selected by the President who would be ``independent.'' I am sure that is going to work out just fine, but that is not going to end up being a partisan individual.

In my State, all the ballots are done ahead of time--all of them. If you do a mail-in ballot, those ballots are opened up early on. There are Republicans and Democrats. There are poll watchers who are watching it. All of the evaluations for the quality of the ballots are all tested before election night. So that is all finished. So when election night is done, by 10:30 in the evening, all the ballots have been counted and election results are out.

Oh, no, that won't work. My Senate Democratic colleagues want to give an additional 10 days for ballots to continue to trickle in. So, literally, what we had in this last election where it was for days that no one even knew how many ballots were coming in, and the uncertainty that that creates in the process, they want to make sure that exists in every State, not just in a few States.

Listen, I would rather have every State be like mine, to say that everyone has to turn their ballot in early. It is not like election day is a shocking day that no one knew about. In fact, the majority of States around the country are like my State.

This is not just a partisan issue. Vermont has the same rule that we have in Oklahoma. This is a straightforward way to protect the integrity of the ballot, that you can turn in the ballots early, and that you can evaluate all of them so the ballots aren't trickling in for days.

If you love all those rules, let me give you one more quick one. Remember that campaign speech or that campaign commercial that you really, really hate, that you are sick of it by the time the election comes? Well, get ready for a whole lot more of them because the S. 1 bill gives Federal dollars, 6 to 1, to be able to fund more campaigns and to make sure campaigns have even more money.

So if someone raises $100,000, they are going to give--Federal tax dollars--$600,000 to that candidate, even a candidate you didn't vote for and don't like. They are going to get $600,000 for every $100,000. If they raise $1 million for their campaign, they will get $6 million of our Federal tax dollars.

I don't want to pay for campaigns I don't agree with. I don't think that is the right way to go. And I don't bump into many people in my State that get real excited about paying for someone else's campaign whom they disagree with.

I think this bill was the result of the 2020 election. They pulled it out and said: That election was such a shambles. We need to be able to put a bill out there to do that.

But you would be incorrect. Actually, this bill is exactly what they pulled out in 2017, saying that Russia took over the election in 2016 and so we need a big bill to be able to fix it. And for 4 years they have been pushing it and, now, after this election, they pulled it out again and said: We have to be able to do this.

It is the same bill. It used to be the bill to fight Russia. Now it is the bill to be able to fight whatever now.

Listen, let each State make those decisions, and when there is a challenge for that, take it to Federal court. That is why we have the court system. Allow those Federal courts to process through those challenges.

We want every person to be able to be protected, to be able to vote, and if some State is suppressing the vote, take that to Federal court, and let's solve that and make sure that does not occur. But don't tell everyone in my State that Washington, DC knows better.

We have Republicans and Democrats that have worked very hard on election law in my State. In fact, there was just an expansion of additional days for early voting in my State. It has been a nonpartisan issue in my State. Let's not make it a partisan issue now and tell everyone across the entire country that DC knows best. Let's put this bill aside and not pass the S. 1 bill.

With that, I yield the floor.

Mr. President, I have had the privilege to represent the great State of Oklahoma and the people of Oklahoma, to be able to sit in multiple Presidential addresses in the House of Representatives Chamber.

At that joint address that happened last night, I didn't have the privilege to actually get a chance to sit in on. As, clearly, anyone who watched the speech saw that there were 200 people in a room designed for 1,600 people, with the spacing and all of the things that were happening there. In some ways it seemed normal, and some ways it seemed ridiculous with the room of 200 vaccinated people all spaced out. But that is a different story for a different moment.

For that speech last night, as I listened, I thought about the other speeches that I have listened to as well. Many of these speeches are similar. The President comes and casts a vision. Says these are things that they want to be able to do, talk through different programs, talk through different tax issues, talk through where we are as a country, cast a vision. I get all of those things.

Last night, and every night, when one of those speeches occurs, there is usually something unique or different about the speech. It is a little different direction for where they want to go. Not all those programs will get implemented. I had people already contacting my office, panicked in some ways, saying: Are all those things going to be done? And I can smile at them and say: No, all those things won't be done, because it never is. It is a vision that is cast by the President that they have to convince the American people and Congress to be able to engage with as well.

But last night was epic in the sense of spending. I was even surprised at the amount that we are talking about at this point, and it seems to be just so flippant and normal at this point.

When you do the math of what just happened with the American Rescue Plan, that was just under $2 trillion of spending. Last night, one of the proposals was also about $2 trillion, and another one was about $2.5 trillion. So take those together--just over $6 trillion in proposed and spent government debt just in those three recommended.

What people aren't adding to this is that starting in June, in July, it is appropriations time. Our best understanding--we haven't received the budget from the White House yet--is that proposal will be about $4.5 trillion. So adding together what happened in the first 100 days and what is about to happen in the next 100 days that we already see coming, is a proposal to spend, this year, $11 trillion--$11 trillion. That far exceeds what was even spent during the pandemic time period, when we all determined that this is a rainy day that we definitely need to be able to help stabilize our economy--$11 trillion.

The size of government, the number of times that I heard, ``If there is a problem, government here in Washington, DC, can solve it''--it was epic.

Now, initially, at the beginning of the speech, there was a lot of talk about COVID, as well there should be. Our Nation is coming through this. But I was surprised how little conversation there was about the vaccines and the process, Operation Warp Speed, and the partnership between government and private industry that was done last year to be able to bring all these vaccines to place.

You see, all the vaccines were developed and ordered last year. All the needles and the alcohol wipes and the materials--the PPP that would be needed--were all ordered last year. This year was just a matter of getting shots in arms, which I am incredibly grateful we have had so many Americans that have stepped up and driven up, come and put their arm out there and said I want to be part of this solution for getting rid of COVID in our country.

Everyone knew that as we got shots in arms, we would see the numbers come down--at least we hoped. And we did. The numbers are coming down, and the economy is coming back up. That is the other thing that everyone predicted, as well--that as soon as some of the shutdowns happened, we would begin to see the economy begin to rise again, and, thankfully, we are.

It was interesting to be able to hear the President last night take credit for all that, which I assume every President sitting in that spot would. But I am grateful to President Trump and the leadership that happened in HHS and the work of career folks and the folks who are in science and private industry and pharmaceuticals and what they have done over the last year because it is remarkable what we actually have walked through and what we have seen.

What was not mentioned last night when talking about the economy is unemployment insurance. It is something I brought to this body before. When I traveled around my State the week before Easter and the week after Easter when we were not voting those 2 weeks--as I traveled around, every employer I talked to said the same thing: We are hiring, but we don't have people applying, or people who are applying are coming in and just applying and filling out a form, and when they offer them the job, they are saying: I don't want the job. I just need to be able to bring the completed form back to the unemployment office so I can continue to get my check.

I talked to employees who were frustrated because the person who used to work next to them is not showing up for work anymore because they are home getting unemployment benefits because the unemployment benefits in my State right now far exceed what the normal wage is. People aren't showing up. That is a problem in our economy.

My fear is that is a problem that is going to continue all the way until September because the unemployment benefits that were extended were extended all the way through the first week of September. Even though we pushed back and said this is a bad idea, the Democratic colleagues and the President said: No, let's keep moving forward.

There are lots of parts of the Green New Deal that were presented last night, but they didn't use the term ``Green New Deal.'' It was bits and pieces of elements of the Green New Deal separated in different sets of the ideas. The term ``Green New Deal'' has become very, very unpopular with folks as they find out what it is. Taking pieces of the Green New Deal, separating them in different spots, and trying to pass them doesn't change anything either.

I was surprised how little the President really talked about what is going on in the crisis at the border. He did mention it, and I was pleased to see that. Many people in my State really see that as a very serious issue that needs to be resolved. Our open borders right now and the literally hundreds of thousands of people who have crossed our border illegally just this calendar year, just in the last 100 days, is record levels.

I talked to the Border Patrol folks, and they talked about how in March alone, they had 172,000 encounters. It is a record number. But now in April, they are hitting or exceeding that record, just in April, again because the numbers continue to skyrocket to numbers we have not seen. The number of unaccompanied minors is at a 20-year high. We have not seen these numbers in decades.

It is a significant issue for us as a country. It is one that started on January 20 with the change in policy and issues.

We have more than 5,000 individuals who have been picked up by Border Patrol just this year who have a criminal record in the United States.

We have 15,000 individuals whom Border Patrol has just released into the country with no notice to appear at all, just a statement as they come through. The line was so long that Border Patrol leadership was telling them, from Washington, DC, that if the line gets too long, just release people into the country and tell them to check in with immigration folks in whatever part of the country they go to. Just check in. Literally, if they are coming across the border and the line is too long, just let them go and tell them to check themselves in when they get to wherever they are going in the country--15,000 people like that just this year

We have 150,000 people whom Border Patrol has reported that they saw crossing the border, but they literally didn't have the manpower to even get to them, what they call ``got aways''--150,000 this year who won't show up in anyone's numbers of people entering the country illegally.

These numbers are truly epic numbers.

Last night, the President's proposal was to allow us to do more in Central America and eventually this will get better. I would tell you from being down at the border three times just this year and interacting with folks, I would encourage anyone from the administration to go to the border and actually see what is going on and actually talk to law enforcement there. From being down in that area, their concern is that this is a very long-term issue because the administration doesn't seem to see it as a crisis or something that has to be fixed immediately; it can be fixed eventually, with hundreds of thousands of people coming across the border now every month.

In the last official report from Customs and Border Protection and Border Patrol, there were over 100 different countries represented by the individuals crossing the border just this year--over 100 countries. It is not just folks from Central America. Literally, people from all over the world are paying the cartels the money it takes to get through Mexico and traveling into our country and checking in or skipping across the border, and they disappear into our economy. I see that as an issue. I wish the administration would see that as an issue.

A conversation that came up last night was about voting. It is an important conversation for us. We are a representative republic. Voting is extremely important to us as a nation; that every vote counts and that every vote has the integrity that it needs. But with S. 1 and on the House side, what they call H.R. 1, I am stunned at the contents of that bill.

When President Biden said: Just pass that bill and put it on my desk, I thought, there is absolutely no way I would pass a bill like that; nor would the people at home even want me to pass a bill like that.

That is a bill that is intentionally designed to make voting easy and cheating easy. We want to make voting easy and cheating hard. That is the way we have done elections for a very long time. Why would we want to shift from that? I am all for making voting as easy as we can. My State has early voting. It has mail-in voting and all the characteristics you want to have to protect the integrity of the vote so when it is over, everyone can look at it and say: My person won or lost, but I trust the integrity of the vote. It has all those elements.

We worked very hard to make sure every community in every area has access to voting and doesn't have long lines and make sure we get to mail out ballots and all those things to be able to not only give the opportunity for people to vote but to protect the integrity of the vote.

S. 1 and H.R. 1 does things like same-day registration but also removes voter ID. You partner those two together, and that is a recipe for double-voting and fraud. You can't have those two together.

It mandates a third-party collection of ballots that could be done in any State. Individual political groups could literally go door-to-door and say: Have you voted yet? If you haven't, come out on the porch right now. I will stand with you, and we can vote together, and then I will turn your ballot in for you.

That violates everything we have done in voting about secret ballots and about the integrity of the ballot, and

only the folks in the post office would handle it or the folks in the polling place would handle it. Now, this is a third party whom no one has any connection to nor accountability to who can randomly grab ballots and collect them. How do we not think there won't be fraud in that system?

It also takes away all voter IDs in every State, including my State, where there is not even a complaint about voter IDs on either side of the aisle because it is an incredibly fair system. It doesn't require a driver's license. It can require any piece of paper or any way to be able to show you are who you are. We have a straightforward system to be able to protect not only the integrity of the ballot but to make sure every person is not only allowed to vote but is encouraged to vote. Why would we take that away from places where it is already working and there hasn't been a complaint just because someone in Washington, DC, says we shouldn't do it?

Centralized control of voting in Washington, DC, seemed to be part of the theme of the night last night, where it was, everything would work better if it only came to DC. I tell you, I have met a lot of smart people in DC, but I can also tell you that I know a lot of smart people in Oklahoma who love their neighbors, who want to see the right thing done, who care about people in their community and in their State. And this sudden belief that if we are going to get things done right, we have to bring it to Washington, DC, and allow the folks in Washington, DC, to be able to run it, I will tell you, the folks in my State would shake their heads and say: We are doing OK. Let us take care of our neighbors at home, and don't make us sign a paper every time we want to do something and send it off to somebody we never met in Washington,

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

Mr. President, I bring news back from Oklahoma to this body and a request for dialogue. The COVID bill that was passed a little over a month ago--that bill provided all kinds of relief. As this body knows, we were deeply divided on that bill and some of the issues within it.

One of the issues stretched out the debate all the way to the last moment, and it was the additional unemployment assistance. The conversation about the additional unemployment assistance is this: The economy is reopening. Is this the time to extend additional money above and beyond State unemployment assistance, what we normally do? With unemployment rates going down, should we add more money on top of it?

No one really knew what would happen when that occurred, but we had some suspicions. The 2 weeks I spent traveling around the State, the week before Easter and after Easter, in town after town after town after town after town, I heard the same thing from employees and employers.

Employees would tell me that somebody who used to work next to them is now at home because they are making as much money at home on unemployment assistance as they would when working. So the person standing there working at the factory, the person standing there working at the restaurant is ticked off at the person who is at home watching TV, making as much money as they are.

The employer is just as frustrated or more because they have all kinds of orders coming into their business, saying: Can you send us more of this? And they could, except they don't have enough labor.

An additional $300 a week was added on top of the unemployment assistance and extended out all the way to the first week of September. At the same time, checks were sent out to every individual. Then they were told they would get a $10,000 tax break. The combination of those three things together has caused some folks to do what people do in a free market: They look to see where they are going to work based on where they can make the most money at that moment. That is what a free market is like. That is why employers continue to pay a little more to get good employees. But the problem is, in Oklahoma, where there is a low cost of living, many of our employers are struggling to find workers because they are competing against this body.

The employees are ticked because they are at work working, paying taxes, and the person who used to work next to them and probably will return this October got several months off and is making the same, except for the person working is paying for the person not working, and they are a little ticked off about it.

I bring this to you because this is not hypothetical. In Oklahoma, our unemployment rate dropped again to 4.2, but we still have 100,000 people. Our rates continue to rise for people filing first-time claims, but I promise there is not a town you can go to in Oklahoma that doesn't have ``help wanted'' signs all over town. I heard it from every single town that I went to, from employers in every single place that they cannot compete with what the government is just mailing to people for staying at home.

The very first day I was out a couple of weeks ago, I was in Tulsa at a business there that does manufacturing. He told me that for the first time ever--and he has owned the business a long time--for the first time ever, one of his managers came to him and said: You are not going to believe what just happened.

They had an employee who came up to them and said: I would like for you to fire me.

He said: Well, why in the world would I do that?

He said: Well, I just figured out, with the tax break and what I would get on unemployment assistance, I could make as much staying at home as I could working. But I need you to fire me so I can go file for unemployment.

He literally said to him: I am not going do that. Go back to work.

So the next day, the guy showed up 30 minutes late to work, and at lunchtime, he took an hour and a half off. He did the same thing the next day. The third day, according to protocol in their company, they called him in, talked to him, and wrote it all up. The fourth day, they did the same thing again--called him in, wrote it up. By the fifth day, they fired him.

His exact words to his manager on the floor: What took you so long?

There is a restaurant in Oklahoma City that told us they were preparing to reopen. Finally, the pandemic is over. We have a very high percentage of folks in Oklahoma who have received the vaccine. We are one of the top 10 States in the country for distributing the vaccines.

Our State, our county, our local offices, our hospitals, and our Tribal areas have done a fantastic job getting the vaccine out. We are open.

One of the restaurants trying to reopen in the Plaza District of Oklahoma City, a beautiful cultural district, couldn't reopen because they couldn't hire people because they got larger unemployment benefits, and they remain closed.

The mayor of Muskogee told me that most employers in their town are struggling to be able to get employees to get back to work.

In Northern Oklahoma, in Perry, there is a restaurant that was talking to one of my staff this week that said they are having to close early because they can't get enough business.

I would tell you, a couple of Sundays ago, my wife and I drove to go eat lunch after church, and we went to two restaurants before we had to go to a third to find a restaurant that was open. The second restaurant literally had a sign on their door: ``Closed Due to Labor Shortage.''

This is a real issue that was created in this room that is impacting my State trying to reopen. I have no idea if my Democratic colleagues will acknowledge this as a real problem or will just say: That is a hypothetical issue; it is not real. But this is going to continue all the way through September, and my State is not going to be able to reopen. This will get even worse in the days ahead when additional money will start being shipped out to families in the change in the child tax credit, when people will literally start getting checks in August on top of the other checks they are receiving.

I bring this to this body because I would like for us to have a conversation about it and for somebody in this body to acknowledge that a mistake was made and we need to fix this.

We all agreed last year to be able to help during the time of the pandemic. People needed help. Everyone was out of work, and there were no options for work. That is not true anymore; yet these larger benefits are still coming out.

This needs to be addressed. For the sake of getting our economy going again, this needs to be addressed. I would hope we could have a reasonable, rational, fact-based conversation about it.

U.S. Supreme Court

Madam President, for most of the history of the United States, we have had nine Supreme Court Justices--nine. Now, we started out originally with six, and then it dropped for just a little while to five and then went right back to six again.

When we added a seventh circuit court in 1807, it popped from six to seven, and there was some discussion about whether it would just continue based on the number of circuit courts. It was determined that, no, that was a bad idea.

Then it went to nine in 1837. Lincoln actually added 1 to make it 10, and they determined that was really too many and brought it back down to 7, actually.

In 1869, we went back to nine again, where we were most of the time before that and where we have remained, nine Supreme Court Justices. That is not just a random number; it seems to be a pretty good number-- nine--to be able to open up debate.

I don't just think it is a pretty good number. There is a rather famous and some would say ``notorious'' Justice named Ruth Bader Ginsburg. She made this statement in 2019 when asked about Court- packing and asked about increasing the size of the Court. In 2019, Ruth Bader Ginsburg said:

Nine seems to be a good number. It's been that way for a

long time. . . . I think it was a bad idea when President

Franklin Roosevelt tried to pack the court. . . . If anything

[it] would make the court look partisan.

That is not just one Justice. Early in April this year, Justice Breyer was speaking at the Harvard Law School, and he addressed this issue of Court-packing while this body is in the middle of a conversation about Court-packing--extremely rare for that to occur. Justice Breyer stated:

I'm an optimist. The rule of law has weathered many

threats, but it remains sturdy. I hope and expect that the

Court will retain its authority, an authority that my stories

have shown was hard-won. But that authority, like the rule of

law, depends on trust, a trust that the Court is guided by

legal principle, not politics. . . . Structural alteration

motivated by the perception of political influence can only

feed that latter perception, further eroding that trust . . .

There is no shortcut. Trust in the courts, without which our

system cannot function, requires knowledge, it requires

understanding, it requires engagement. In a word, it requires

work. Work on the part of all citizens. And we must undertake

that work together. . . . What I'm trying to do is to make

those whose initial instincts may favor important structural

change or other similar institutional changes--such as forms

of court-packing--think long and hard before they embody

those changes in law.

That was so well received, by Justice Breyer, that progressive activists started calling for him to take early retirement.

Court-packing is not a new conversation in this body, but it has not been well received in the past.

The Court has always ebbed and flowed in its liberal or conservative bents. President Obama spoke openly when he was President about the Court

in the 1960s. That was a very progressive Court in the 1960s that drove conservatives crazy with some of the decisions they made, but there was no packing of the Court to try to change the direction of the Court in the 1960s and 1970s. There was a frustration but a realization that nine was the right number.

Over time, the Court, as it does, as it ebbs and flows over the decades, has flowed to be more conservative. In the days ahead, at some point, it will flow to be more liberal. It just will. But the rule of law is important. It is not a new concept that is being addressed, but it is one this body should think long and hard about.

Quite frankly, I agree with Joe Biden on this concept, but not the President Joe Biden, the Senator Joe Biden.

With this body's permission, let me read Joe Biden's speeches when he was in the U.S. Senate and he stood right over there and spoke on this floor or spoke in committee hearings when he was in the Judiciary Committee, speaking often about this issue.

Joe Biden, once speaking, made this statement. He said:

President Roosevelt clearly had the right to send to the

U.S. Senate and the U.S. Congress a proposal to pack the

Court. It was totally within his right to do that. He

violated no law; he was legalistically absolutely correct.

But it was a bonehead idea. It was a terrible, terrible

mistake to make. And it put in question, for an entire

decade, the independence of the most significant body--

including the Congress, in my view--

The most significant body in this country--

--the Supreme Court of the United States of America.

The President had the right to do that. He was totally

within his power, and his objective was seen clearly.

Well, the President clearly has the right to do what he is

doing, in my view.

But he also called it ``bonehead.''

Joe Biden, as Senator, also continued with this statement. He was discussing the same issue. He said: ``The Senate again stood''--by the way, this was two decades later, after Joe Biden made that statement I just read. Two decades later, Joe Biden still has the same passion. He stated this:

The Senate again stood firm in the 1937 court-packing plan

by President Franklin Roosevelt. This particular example of

Senate resolve is instructive for today's debates, so let me

describe it in some detail. It was the summer of 1937.

President Roosevelt had just come off a landslide victory

over Alf Landon, and he had a Congress made up of solid New

Dealers. But the ``nine old men'' of the Supreme Court were

thwarting his economic agenda, overturning law after law

overwhelmingly passed by the Congress and from statehouses

across the country.

In this environment, President Roosevelt unveiled his

court-packing plan--he wanted to increase the number of

Justices on the Court to 15, allowing himself to nominate

these additional judges. In an act of great courage,

Roosevelt's own party stood up against his institutional

power grab. They did not agree with the judicial activism of

the Supreme Court, but they believed that Roosevelt was wrong

to seek to defy established traditions as a way of stopping

that activism.

In May 1937, the Senate Judiciary Committee--a committee

controlled by the Democrats and supportive of his political

ends--issued a stinging rebuke. They put out a report

condemning Roosevelt's plan, arguing it was an effort ``to

punish the Justices'' and that executive branch attempts to

dominate the Judiciary lead inevitably to an autocratic

dominance, ``the very thing against which the American

Colonies revolted, and to prevent which the Constitution was

in every particular framed.''

Our predecessors in the Senate showed courage that day and

stood up to their President as a coequal institution. And

they did so not to thwart the agenda of the President, which

in fact many agreed with; they did it to preserve our

system's checks and balances; they did it to ensure the

integrity of the system. When the Founders created a

``different kind of legislative body'' in the Senate, they

envisioned a bulwark against unilateral power--it worked back

then and I hope it works now.

Said Joe Biden during that time.

The noted historian Arthur Schlesinger, Jr.--

Joe Biden, continuing as Senator--

has argued that in a parliamentary system President

Roosevelt's efforts to pack the Court would have succeeded.

Schlesinger writes: ``The Court bill couldn't have failed if

we had a parliamentary system in 1937.'' A parliamentary

legislature would have gone ahead with their President,

that's what they do, but the Founders envisioned a different

kind of legislature, an independent institution that would

think for itself. In the end, Roosevelt's plan failed because

Democrats in Congress thought court-packing was dangerous,

even if they would have supported the newly-constituted Court

rulings. The institution acted as an institution.

In summary, then, what do the Senate's action of 1795,

1805, and 1937 share in common? I believe they are examples

of this body acting at its finest, demonstrating its

constitutional role as an independent check on the President,

even popularly elected Presidents of the same party.

That was from Senator Joe Biden. His challenge to this body was to think long and hard before they destroyed an institution of our government. It was right then; it is right now.

In a final statement from Joe Biden, he spoke about the filibuster-- often, actually, about the filibuster. Senator Biden stated this:

The Framers created the Senate as a unique legislative body

designed to protect against the excesses of temporary

majority, including with respect to judicial nominations; and

they left us all the responsibility of guaranteeing an

independent Federal judiciary, one price of which is that it

sometimes reaches results Senators don't like.

It is up to us to preserve these precious guarantees. Our

history, our American sense of fair play, and our

Constitution demand it.

Joe Biden continued. As Senator, he said:

I would ask my colleagues who are considering supporting

the ``nuclear option''--those who propose to ``jump off the

precipice''--whether they believe that history will judge

them favorably. In so many instances throughout this esteemed

body's past, our forefathers . . . stepped back from the

cliff. In each case, the actions of those statesmen preserved

and strengthened the Senate, to the betterment of the health

of our constitutional republic and to all of our advantage.

Our careers in the Senate will one day end--as we are only

the Senate's temporary officeholders--but the Senate itself

will go on. Will historians studying the actions taken in the

spring of 2005--

When Joe Biden stated this in the Senate--

[Will they] look upon the current Members of this Senate as

statesmen who placed the institution of the United States

Senate above party and politics? Or will historians see us as

politicians bending to the will of the Executive and to

political exigency? I, for one, am comfortable with the role

I will play in this upcoming historic moment.

Then he stated this, from Senator Joe Biden:

I hope . . . my colleagues [will] feel the same.

So do I. Less than the days ahead, history will look at the unwinding of the judiciary based on a season in the Supreme Court, as we have had seasons and cycles before. Don't unwind the judiciary for a season.

I yield the floor.

Madam President, let me read to you a section of the proposal on infrastructure that has been put out by the White House, just one section of many sections that are there. This particular section on national critical infrastructure reads this way:

Funds for schools to reduce or eliminate the use of paper

plates and disposable materials.

I don't know what your definition of ``infrastructure'' is, but I don't meet a lot of Oklahomans who, when I say ``infrastructure,'' they think school lunch trays.

We need to work on infrastructure, and I would tell you, I don't meet a Republican who is not engaged in this issue of infrastructure. And it is not the first time for any of us to work on infrastructure; we have had multiple bills. I remind people around my State that every time you are driving around my State and you see an orange construction zone and a flashing sign, that is a previous infrastructure bill that was done. In every direction that you go in my State, you are going to see infrastructure that is already happening and working because working on infrastructure is a common part of what we do.

Republicans have stepped to the table and have said: Let's work on infrastructure together. In fact, it was interesting--President Trump over and over again talked about working on infrastructure and tried to be able to get a major infrastructure proposal.

Our definition of ``infrastructure,'' though, doesn't include school lunch trays. We would like to work on highways. This particular package that the White House has sent us, we have just raised our hands and said: We have a few questions before you want to be able to move this forward.

This particular proposal spends $174 billion for electric vehicles but only $115 billion for the highways that they will drive on. We just believe we need to spend more on highways. We don't mind incentivizing electric vehicles, but, quite frankly, there have been a lot of incentives out there already.

Every Tesla that you pull up next to, when you turn over and see them at a stoplight, you should ask for your turn to drive because every one of those beautiful Tesla vehicles, the Federal taxpayers also kicked in $7,800 in Federal tax subsidies for that beautiful $60,000 automobile that someone else is driving.

There have been tax incentives that have been out there for electric vehicles; we just believe we need to spend more on actually dealing with our roads and bridges because they have major problems.

So what can we do? For those of us in Oklahoma, we know full well. I- 35, Interstate 44, Interstate 40 all cross in my beautiful State. We are the center of the country in trucking. We are the center of the country in railways. We have the farthest, northernmost inland port that is actually in Oklahoma, where a lot of wheat and fertilizer move through our State, coming from the north to get into the ports to be able to get out.

We understand the significance of what it means to be able to work on our ports, our waterways, our highways, our bridges; to deal with clean water, to deal with sewage water; to be able to deal with even broadband. All those things are essential for every farm to be able to operate and for every section of our economy to be able to function.

Let's work on this together. Let's find a way that we can actually hit common ground and agree that working on airports and working on highways and working on bridges is vital to us, and then let's talk about the rest of the other things on this because we have a lot of debt as a country, and adding another $2.5 trillion and having a debate about a corporate tax change that--quite frankly, in 2017, when we made that corporate tax change, 70 percent of the difference in those companies went to employees' wages. Now to go back and to raise that corporate tax again, we know exactly what that is going to mean for employees of those companies and future raises that they may or may not get.

So let's actually talk about this, and let's work on infrastructure together, but let's actually work on what is truly infrastructure.

I yield the floor.

Madam President, there is a problem with the Paycheck Protection Program. It passed with overwhelming bipartisan support last December, but the implementation has been botched.

Let me explain what I mean. If you are a small business owner, if you are an individual that is a sole proprietor of what is called a schedule C, if you had major issues in trying to be able to cover your employment last year, you would turn in--make a request for the Paycheck Protection Program. It was extended in December of last year for only the hardest hit businesses, those that had a 25-percent loss or more. Those businesses could not survive into the next year.

So we extended it out and allowed them to be able to get additional time and an additional couple of months of payroll to be able to make sure they make it. Now, for these extremely small businesses, these sole proprietors, and these individuals who are out there, this means just them or sometimes them and one other person whom they are actually covering the expenses for. These are not our megabusinesses. These are our backbone small businesses. This is the truckdriver in Oklahoma. This is the piano teacher in Oklahoma. These are folks who are actually trying to be able to make a living the best way they know how.

When it was passed in December, the Small Business Administration interpreted that rule to say you can only use your net expenses for that--your net expenses. Then, in March, the Small Business Administration reinterpreted that and said: No, you could use your gross expenses on that.

Now, for a lot of folks, they would say: What is the difference on that?

Well, the difference is usually about $5,000 or $10,000. That is an enormous difference. And for some folks in this room, $5,000 or $10,000 may not be very much, but it is a lot more for that truck driver and that piano teacher.

So the logical thing for the Small Business Administration to do would be to say: OK. We changed the rule in March from what it was earlier so let's make it retroactive. Then folks who apply early, the most desperate folks, could actually still get the difference.

But that is not what happened. The Small Business Administration said: No, if you received the loan earlier, you received the smaller amount. If you waited and applied later, you get the larger amount.

It is the exact same type of business, exact same situation, but basically the Small Business Administration said: This is too complicated to go back and redo this. So we will just allow folks who applied early, the most desperate, to get the least, and folks who applied later to get more.

We are bringing an amendment that would just fix that and would allow the folks who applied early, the most desperate folks, to be able to get the same level of help as the folks that applied later.

So, Madam President, I ask unanimous consent that it be in order for me to offer my Amendment 1402.

Madam President, I do want to thank my friend from Maryland. This is an important issue. It does need to be resolved. It has not had enough attention on this. As he and I talked about it the last several days, and several others joined in, this deals with partnerships, whether it be ag. This deals with individuals.

So my friend from Kansas, he and I worked together on this to be able to combine a piece of legislation to make sure we are dealing with all types of businesses that will be affected, and I do hope to be able to get this through by unanimous consent in the days ahead to get this resolved as quickly as possible as well as continue to reach out to the Small Business Administration and to see what they can to do to be able to communicate with those folks.

Madam President, about 4 weeks ago, it got cold in Oklahoma--really cold. My house was at negative 14 degrees. Now, Senator Steve Daines from Montana is used to that, but in Oklahoma we are not used to negative 14 degrees. It was overcast, snowy, cold. Then, the sun broke through, and we had a day when it got up to 30 degrees. It was like everyone was going to the park. It felt so nice because the sun was out, even though it was cold.

Sunshine has a great way of making everyone lift and look around and say: Where has that been?

I think that happens in the Federal Government as well.

I thank Senator Joni Ernst for hosting what she is calling Sunshine Week to be able to say: What are we doing to put a little light into the Federal process to be able to make sure people can see into some of these programs? Because all the time I hear from people, and when something comes on the news, they will say: Where did that come from

I will say: That was poked in some bill that probably no one read.

I will give you an example of it. Two weeks ago, when the ``COVID'' bill passed with almost $2 trillion in spending, I already had folks come back to me saying: I am grateful for that $70 million for the Small Business Administration to increase some of the loans by $70 million.

I said: Great. Do you know how much the administrative cost was on that $70 million program?

The answer is $390 million in administrative costs, $70 million in loans. That is in the bill.

Everyone looks at me and says: Oh, I didn't know that.

In lots of States around America right now, their legislatures are meeting, including mine in Oklahoma. They are suddenly finding out that that bill that was for ``COVID-related'' mandated that no State in America could reduce taxes on anyone. Lots of States are saying: Wait a minute; we were planning on reducing taxes on working families in certain targeted areas.

They are finding out that you can't do that, and they will say things like: I didn't know that was in the bill because there wasn't any sunshine on that bill.

I worked for years to pass a bill called the Taxpayers Right-To-Know Act. It is a commonsense bill. It asks a simple question: What programs do we do in the Federal Government? This body has heard about me talk about it year after year after year. Contrary to popular belief, it is not easy to actually move a bill in this place. Some things that are very commonsense take forever.

This was my simple bill. In the Federal Government, every Agency has to list every program that they do, how many employees they hire to do that program, what is the cost of the program, and is the program evaluated? If it is, just put the evaluation numbers with the program.

Why would I say that? Because I talk to Agency heads that start a new program and they get 2 years down the road from starting a new program and they find out a different Agency has already done that for 5 years. Then we get together and find out a third Agency started that 10 years ago. None of them knew about the other program.

Before you think that doesn't happen, oh, yes, it does. It happens all the time. Not only that, but I want to ask a simple question to say: How many options do we have for whatever it may be? How many programs do we have for STEM education, for instance? How many different incentives have we put out there, and how many Agencies are helping to provide greater STEM education? The Agencies can't tell me. They could eventually tell me what is in their Agency, but they don't know what other Agencies are doing.

And when I go to the GAO, the Government Accountability Office, and ask them, their answer is: I will get you an answer back in about 18 months--months--18 months before they can tell me how many STEM programs we have in the Federal Government. I should be able to do an internet search and get that in 18 seconds, not 18 months.

The Taxpayers Right-To-Know bill requires the Office of Management and Budget to actually work with every Agency to get a master list of every program across the Federal Government--how many employees they have, if it is evaluated, and what it does.

It is pretty simple. It is basic transparency, but it allows any American and all Members of Congress to be able to see what we do and if we have duplication in government.

Again, you may think that is simple and straightforward. It is, but it took years to actually pass. We finally got that passed and signed into law last December.

I met with Gene Dodaro, who heads up GAO, and asked him about it because he has also been an advocate of that for years. He said: We need an ``unequivocal commitment from the Office of Management and Budget to implement it properly'' because we have to actually get this done.

Sunshine helps. We can see how money is spent. We can see how duplication actually functions. We can't reform what we can't see. The American people perpetually get frustrated with what they didn't know was in a bill and find out later, and they don't like it.

In the days ahead, I will release my annual ``Federal Fumbles'' book, as we do every year. In that ``Federal Fumbles'' book, this year, we are going to outline where our debt comes from because I run into so many people who say: We have debt. Who is our debt? Is it all China?

I will say: Well, actually, $1.6 trillion of it is from China, and we are paying them interest every single year on that debt. But it is in a lot of other places.

A lot of people misunderstand what government debt really is. This needs some sunshine because if we are going to solve this, the American people have to be able to see it and so do we

I yield the floor.

Mr. President, on January 20 of this year, President Biden declared the repeal of an emergency action at our southwest border. He withdrew that and said there is no emergency that currently exists there and paused all funding for the border wall system construction--stopped it. Wherever it was that day, it ended that day.

The same day, he announced a 100-day moratorium on deportations in the country--stopped that. Within a few days, the courts stepped in and a Federal court said that you can't just stop actually executing faithfully the laws of the United States. The court halted

then his halt of a moratorium on deportations. In this case, his actual request for a moratorium on deportation halt was for those who had actually gone all the way through the court system and a Federal court had asked them to be removed from the United States. That is what President Biden was trying to stop.

Federal courts then stepped in and said that when the courts said they had to be removed, the executive branch can't just ignore that. They have to actually be removed.

That opened the flood gates. Those two announcements together--that we are not going to do any more border construction, that we are going to stop that, and the announcement of the moratorium--started the process of a stir in Central America among the human smugglers to get the word out to say this President is going to allow to let people in and it is going to be different.

Why would I say that and why would they say that? Because even in the time when I was sitting down with now Secretary Mayorkas in his hearings before he was actually confirmed, I asked him in those hearings: If there is a caravan coming to the United States right now with hundreds of people in it and growing, what is your message to them if you became the Secretary of DHS? What would you want to make sure those folks heard?

His response to me in that hearing was: I would tell them to wait. Not yet. Not yet.

The coyotes didn't hear it that way. They accelerated pushing people.

What is actually happening on the border?

Last weekend, I spent the weekend in Arizona just south of Tucson in Nogales, a small little town of 26,000 people that sits right on the border with Mexico. It is 26,000 on the American side, but on the Mexican side it is a city of 450,000. It is a very large community on that side and, literally, they have built up the community directly against the border.

Much of that border fencing has been there a very long time. They built properties directly against that fence. They are Mexicans. They can do that. That is their property to be able to do that. That is not the issue.

The interesting thing was to visit with folks from HHS taking care of the unaccompanied minors in the area, to visit with Customs and Border Protection that are actually handling the cross-border transition, and with Border Patrol leadership to go through that area and see it.

Let me tell you a couple of things I saw this weekend to help you get the context. The folks who I visited with at HHS, who are there taking care of the unaccompanied minors coming in--and we are seeing a significant surge of unaccompanied minors because the Biden administration has changed the policy and said that if you are 18 years old and up, because of the pandemic, we are not going to allow you in. It is called title 42 authority. The Trump administration actually put that in place and said: During the time of the pandemic, we are trying to limit cross-border traffic. You can't just come in.

The Biden team changed that and said: If you are 18 and up, you can't come in immediately. If you are 17 and down, you can

So we are seeing a massive surge of unaccompanied minors right now. It is literally an invitation to say: You can come, but don't bring your family with you.

When I sat down with the folks at HHS there, who are doing a fantastic job with the best they can to be able to take care of those kids, I asked them: What are you seeing?

The vast majority of the kids that they are seeing coming across the border are 16- and 17-year-old males. When you hear the term, ``We've got all these kids coming across the border,'' sometimes, as Americans, we think these are 5-year-olds crossing the border. They are not. The vast majority of them are 16- and 17-year-old males coming across the border. They are also being transported to individuals who are here in the country who are family members and who are already present here in the country. Most of those are also illegally present in the country. They are uncles and aunts. They are cousins and brothers and sisters who are already here because we have separate categories of how we actually transition those kids to someone who can take care of them before we have the court hearing. Most of those court hearings will take 2 the years. They are crossing the border, these 16- and 17-year- old males, and being connected with an uncle who is already here and many times, illegally, as well. They will have the next 2 years to be here before they have a court hearing and be able to go through the process--if they come to the court hearing.

When I visited with the folks at Customs and Border Protection, they were frustrated with the lack of funding that has been given to them to be able to take care of the needs for that particular facility and help manage the number of people who are coming through. They need additional assistance because in that very old facility, they need additional barriers to just help them manage the flow of people as they come through.

When I visited with Border Patrol, we drove just a couple of miles out into the desert, just to the west of this town of 450,000 people, to go see the new fence that is being constructed. It may be hard to see it in this, but miles and miles of new fencing are going in.

But on the day of January 20, construction was halted. In this particular area, there are miles and miles of fencing except for these gaps in the fence. Those gaps were put in there to be gates. So if they have to take care of the fence, they can get access to both sides of this. These miles and miles of fencing are done except for the gate area, and, literally, the steel for the gates are laying on the ground.

Why in the world would you do construction and have it stop to say you can build everything except close the gates?

The Border Patrol team has literally drug over some of the steel just to be able to stack it in front of the gaps that are in the fence here to keep vehicles from driving through and try to put different barriers there and try to slow down the traffic.

For every one of these gaps along these miles and miles of fence, they are having to assign a Border Patrol agent there just to be able to sit at that gap because it is the obvious place to literally be able to walk through the fence.

There is only one reason that you would have a fence like this for miles and miles and leave it open as a gap--to allow people through. Worse than that, all the way through this construction area is just a dirt path they used for construction. But in the contract itself, it was set up to allow for the fence construction first. Remember, this is a wall system. There is technology and wall.

Walls are medieval, I get that, but there is a reason we still use fences in our backyard and still a reason we use fences as barriers because they work. They slow people down from actually crossing that barrier.

But it is a wall system in place. For miles and miles and miles in the contract and as it is written, they put up the fence first, close up the gates second, and then they finish the road so Border Patrol can actually pass through here, even when it rains in this area, to have a simple road passage there. Then they put in ground-based sensors so they can detect when people are walking across. Then they put in lights and cameras--all the technology we talk about in this room. I can't remember how many times I have heard my Democratic colleagues say: Fences are old. Let's just do the technology. Technology can help manage this.

In this situation, the contract is out and done. The fence is already installed, except for the gates, but no technology is there. So, literally, the Biden team stops before what even they claim is the effective part to stop people illegally crossing the border. The $1.6 billion was paused--that $1.6 that goes to simply closing the gates and installing the technology. That is what remains. This is nonsensical.

I understand the Biden team and some of my Democratic colleagues want a more open border. They have been clear on that. This does not provide security for our Nation. This is the result of saying: I don't want any more wall.

This is a nonsensical system on our southern border, with literally open areas that you could drive a truck through and where Border Patrol agents have to then sit at. Rather than

monitor large areas, they are stuck monitoring the open door.

Listen, we can have arguments about immigration, but, supposedly, we all agree we should have border security--at least we used to. This doesn't make sense. But this is now the reality, and it will sit like this for we don't know how long--maybe forever--until we as a nation determine this has to change.

It is an open invitation.

Have things really changed significantly on the border? Let me give you an example that is pre-COVID--pre-COVID, February of last year, before COVID came through. So don't say that things have changed in COVID. In February of 2020, we had under 40,000 people who were apprehended crossing our southern border that month--under 40,000 pre- COVID. That is a transition and an arrest process.

This February, with the only thing changing being the change of Presidents, we had over 100,000 people illegally crossing the border. One year later, we go from less than 40,000 to over 100,000.

This is a manufactured crisis that is happening on our border: a halting of closing up the holes in the fence; statements that we are going to do a moratorium, that we are not going to have anyone deported anymore; changing the rules on unaccompanied minors to basically invite them to come into the United States; and, again, statements like, ``Caravans, I will just tell them to pause; we are not quite ready for you yet.''

That is really not going to be a pause at all. That is going to be an invitation. That is not me saying that. It is the thousands and thousands of people who are coming to be able to connect with relatives who are already here and to be able to walk through a process, to be able to go around our visa application process and go around legal immigration.

I remind us as a country that we allow a million people a year to legally come to the United States and become citizens--a million people a year. We are not a stingy nation in engaging with legal immigration. There is a right way to do it, and we welcome people to do it the right way. This is welcoming people to do it the wrong way, and that does not help our security as a nation.

I yield the floor.

Mr. President, we are a year into the COVID epidemic--a year. If you think about it, this week a year ago, in Oklahoma City there was a basketball game going on between the Utah Jazz and the Oklahoma City Thunder. They were 2 minutes away from tip-off, and the announcer came on the speaker and said: Ladies and gentlemen, there has been a case of COVID-19 that has been discovered by one of the players. This game is postponed.

And with that one announcement, a year ago this week, all professional sports stopped across the entire country, and the country, for a moment, woke up and realized: This is more serious than we thought. And everything shifted. Within a week, the United States had shut down for 8 weeks, and we went into lockdown.

At the beginning point of that, this Congress came together in a bipartisan way and passed something called the CARES Act, $1.6 trillion, an enormous relief bill, because we were walking into uncharted territory. We created things like the Paycheck Protection

Program. We created ways to be able to assist behind the scenes. We even created a way to be able to help not-for-profits, knowing that if the not-for-profit sector collapsed, there is no way government could possibly keep up.

Lots of work went into that, in a bipartisan way, to be able to resolve that, and that CARES Act stabilized our economy--$1.6 trillion. It was one of five bills that we passed in this body last year, all bipartisan, all of them with us working together to try to find out what are the essential things we have to do, knowing that every single dollar that was spent on COVID was not budgeted. Every single dollar was borrowed, all of it from last year, a total of $4 trillion.

Only $3 trillion of what was actually allocated last year has actually been spent. There is still $1 trillion allocated in last year's five bills that is still unallocated--$1 trillion. Over the weekend, this body passed on a straight partisan vote--and then the House did the same--to be able to add another $2 trillion to the spending for COVID-19. But this bill was different. There was no bipartisan conversation. In fact, 10 Members of the Republican conference went to the White House and tried to sit down with President Biden and say: Let's do a bipartisan issue. There are issues that are unresolved. But, thankfully, we are on the back side of this pandemic. We are not at the same spot we were a year ago. We can now see the end. We know that we are going to have every adult have access to the vaccine by the end of May. The economy is turning around, and things are shifting dramatically, thankfully. So let's do the things that we have to do now and keep the same commitment we had last year.

Last year's commitment was simple: Do the things we have to do, knowing every dollar was borrowed, but not more than we have to do because none of this is budgeted, and none of this has gone through committees. Let's try to do what needs to be done and not more than what needs to be done--until now. Starting the next couple of days, the Treasury will begin to process borrowing another $2 trillion.

I had an Oklahoman whom I talked to this morning who said: How are you doing spending my money at this point?

I laughed, and I said: Actually, this time, it is not even your money. It is not even tax dollars that are coming down; it is borrowed money--from the Chinese, from the open market, from everywhere that we can go get $2 trillion of additional spending to be able to spend it.

While many people will be eager to be able to receive a check for $1,400, because there are a lot of people having a hard time right now coming out of the back side of the pandemic, getting back to work, paying some bills--they may be a little surprised to be able to find out that they are getting a $1,400 check, but so are prisoners. They are also getting a $1,400 check. They are also finding out that people who are not legally present in the country are getting a $1,400 check.

There was an interesting interchange here on the floor on the night of that debate on whether people were getting checks or not getting checks who are not legally present, and so Newsweek magazine did a fact check on, are people not legally present getting a $1,400 check? Just yesterday, they published their fact check and came out--true, people not legally present in the United States are about to receive $1,400 checks in the mail based on the bill that was just passed on a partisan basis.

There are billions of dollars in this bill that are allocated for vaccines. Republicans were audacious enough to be able to raise their hands and say: What are those billions of dollars going towards? It says vaccines, but the problem is that the Biden team has already announced they have done the purchase for every single vaccine for every single adult in America.

In other words, for every single person who can actually get the vaccine, the vaccine purchases have already been done. Those are set and ready to go by the end of May because we still have $6 billion left in the vaccine fund from last year. But this bill that just passed this week, adding another $2 trillion in debt, also includes tens of billions of dollars for vaccines. So the immediate question is, Is that for international vaccines? No; that is a different account. There is money for international vaccines to be sent out, but this is supposedly for the United States, for the purchase of vaccines. Where is that money going when we have already purchased ahead of time all of the vaccines for every single adult in America? We don't know. Unfortunately, this bill was not taken through committee, so no one even had the conversation or time to even find out why.

There is a lot of money for education in this bill, and there is a lot of need in education across the country. In fact, the bill that just passed, this $2 trillion, actually spends almost three times--in this one bill, almost three times--for education what typically the U.S. Federal Government does for the entire year for education. I would say there is a great need, except when you actually look at the unspent money for education from the five bills that were passed last year, there is still $68 billion unspent from the education funds from the five COVID bills last year.

There is no requirement that the schools actually open or use that money to open the schools. In fact, 95 percent of the money allocated for COVID relief for education CBO has said can't even be spent this year at all. The earliest it could even be spent would be next year. And it is well in excess of $100 billion.

There is a provision in this. The Small Business Administration, as I was reading through the 600-plus pages of this bill--that is a real picture of really what this bill is shaped like. One provision of the Small Business Administration allocates $390 million to administer the loan program, but the loan program itself disburses $70 million.

Let me run that number past us again. The program cost for the administrative Washington, DC, cost of running the program is $390 million; the actual amount that they anticipate that they will actually distribute is $70 million, totaling a $460 million program total. Just $70 million of it actually gets to people; $390 million of it stays in Washington, DC, for the bureaucracy.

All of those things could have been fixed if we actually went through committee.

In this COVID bill, there are things like new customs duties for South Korea. I have yet to figure out what South Korea and customs duties have to do with COVID.

There is also slipped in, for the first time ever, Federal funding for abortion. I have yet to see what abortion has to do with COVID, but this bill, for the first time in 44 years, uses Federal tax dollars to start paying for abortion. That has not been done before. In fact, when Joe Biden used to sit in that chair right over there, he often spoke about that we should not use Federal funds for abortion funding. Yet, in the COVID bill, somehow abortion funding has become relevant to fighting off COVID.

I have had some people ask questions about whether this bill could have been better if we had actually done it in a bipartisan way. It could have been significantly better. If you ask how I know that, it is because I saw the five bills we did last year, and they didn't have problems like this in them last year because we worked it out together. This one is different.

This bill could have been significantly improved in a major way. One of them is the way we deal with charities. You see, in previous bills, we sat down and talked about our not-for-profits.

I have a very strong belief personally that we have three safety nets in America. Families are the first safety net; nonprofits, churches, faith-based houses of worship are the second in society; and the third safety net is government.

Government can never keep up with all of the needs in America. If families collapse and if our not-for-profits collapse, government will never be able to keep up. So in previous versions, we have actually addressed that with not-for-profits. We did that in the Paycheck Protection Program to make sure that not-for-profits could get assistance and get help to be able to survive through this.

We also added in a way that we would encourage individuals to be able to donate to not-for-profits. We gave them a write-off. In the very first bill, we

added in $300. If you gave to a not-for-profit, you get to write that off your taxes right away. In the December bill, we reupped that--$300 for an individual and $600 for a family that you could write off on your taxes immediately if you would donate to a not-for-profit.

Why did we do that? Well, I brought that issue up, quite frankly, and we had wide bipartisan agreement to say that was a good idea because we should encourage not-for-profits because we need them for that safety net. Not-for-profits are the faces that take care of the hungry and the homeless and the hurting in our society, and we need them to be strong. But in this bill that came out, we didn't address the not-for-profits. We didn't have the option to be able to bring it up and debate it and say: What should we do? So it just got left out.

Why should we continue to be able to push on this issue? Because we need them to be strong. They are a remarkable part of our economy, our safety net, and our community. They are Americans doing what we do best--serving each other, serving our neighbors, and helping in every possible way that we can.

So a group of us have gathered together to be able to drop a bill dealing with these not-for-profits and encouraging us, again, to accelerate this issue of giving Americans the ability to be able to write off on their taxes, whether they itemize or not, a below-the-line deduction for their taxes to be able to make sure that we encourage people to be able to give to not-for-profits. And it matters. If you want to be able to help do something significant, help those close to you and the ongoing work that they are doing.

Those folks have felt it a lot. According to a study by Johns Hopkins Center for Civil Society Studies, between March and May of 2020, our nonprofits have projected job losses around 1.6 million workers. They leaned in and helped anyway, even though they were in real trouble. As of December 2020, the nonprofit workforce still remained down by about 930,000 jobs.

We have a long way to go to have that sector actually fully recover. They are such a significant part of our economy. According to the latest data--again, available from Johns Hopkins--it was found that nonprofit organizations employed the third largest workforce in the U.S. economy; nonprofits, a group that people just drive past all the time, but many people drive to or walk to because they need real help.

What happened when we actually passed the CARES Act and we added this deduction in and encouraged Americans to start donating to not-for- profits to help them survive this year? What happened with that? Well, I can tell you what happened because now we can look back and see the data. The most recent data we have for the fundraising effect for this project shows that there was an increase in the third quarter of 2020 of charitable giving--a 6-percent increase in donors and an 11-percent increase in new donors when compared to 2019.

We put that incentive out, and people saw the need across the country and the opportunity to do that, and people gave. We saw increases in all donor categories in the third quarter of last year, the largest increase in giving coming from donors giving $250 or less. That increased by 17 percent just in the third quarter of last year.

I understand there are a lot of factors to that. There were a lot of needs, and people were doing what they do best and engaging. But we need to continue to encourage the strength of our not-for-profits because if there is a focus to say ``Well, government should do that,'' government can send checks, but government has a hard time actually meeting human needs. That requires a face and a person and a commitment, and that is done differently when it is a not-for-profit.

We have great Federal workers all across the country who work really hard, but they also work often from a distance. Local not-for-profits in small, rural communities will have a much greater connection to individuals to be able to help in their time of crisis than someone 1,000 miles away who means well but doesn't see them on a daily basis. If we want to help human needs, we will find ways to be able to help not-for-profits.

Tuesday of this week, Senator Coons, Senator Lee, Senator Shaheen, Senator Scott from South Carolina, Senator Klobuchar, Senator Collins, Senator Cortez Masto, and myself--we all introduced the Universal Giving Pandemic Response and Recovery Act. We are just asking a simple question: Can we continue to strengthen our not-for-profits and encourage Americans to give to those not-for-profits with their time, with their money, and with their passion and joy? When you actually engage with a not-for-profit, you will find you are the one who really receives.

There is not a moment that I talk to somebody who serves in a not- for-profit that they don't tell me how hard the work is and how draining the work is, and then with a smile, they will say how rewarding it really is. There is not a time that I walk into a homeless shelter or a food bank and they don't tell me about the people they meet on a daily basis and the joy for them going home, talking to their own family, and remembering the blessings that they have, and the joy they have to get up the next day to be able to help those in greatest need. Let's encourage that.

If you want to have a Biblical example, Biblically, the calling for government is to encourage those who do good and punish those who do wrong. We have a lot of nonprofits around the country that are doing good. Let's encourage them, and let's encourage Americans to be able to be engaged in volunteering and in giving.

With that, I yield the floor.