Floor Statements

Madam President, Wisconsin has lost a great man. When I came to the Senate in 2009, I made an effort to sit down with each Member, and, of the 100 Members, the quietest individual, the most soft-spoken, was Herb Kohl. He sat behind his desk. We talked about the family farms, particularly the dairies of Wisconsin. We talked a little bit about basketball--the Oregon Trail Blazers, the Milwaukee Bucks, and, of course, the pride that we had when the Blazers won a championship back in the 1970s. But, really, it was just a comfortable get-to-know-you. Yet I knew the man across the desk from me had been so powerfully successful in business and in politics.

But unlike in virtually any other conversation here in the Senate, he didn't lay claim to a single accomplishment or talk about the great glories of his career. It was just a ``Welcome to the Senate. Here, you can help families out.'' That spirit really fits with what we have heard from Senator Baldwin about his legacy--a man who was humble, who was generous, who was disciplined, who was hard-working; a man who worked not just on agriculture but on housing, but on public education, but on cleaning up the Great Lakes, and on many other things that my colleagues have mentioned.

When he was pondering retiring, he talked about the individual that he hoped would follow in his footsteps, in his spirit here in the Senate--our own Senator Tammy Baldwin. It was almost a family connection--a powerful, heart-to-heart connection. So one of the most important legacies that he has left is continuing his vision of fighting for ordinary families, ordinary people, here in the Senate, with the woman who took his place.

Herb Kohl was modest in style but powerfully effective in practice. We miss him here in the Senate, and we know that the people of Wisconsin benefited enormously from his life and also miss him greatly in his passing.

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 President, I ask unanimous consent that the order for the quorum call be rescinded.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 legislative session and be in a period of morning business, with Senators permitted to speak therein for up to 10 minutes each.

Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the Senate proceed to the immediate consideration of H.R. 2839, which was received from the House and is at the desk.

I further ask that the bill be considered read a third time and passed and the motion to reconsider be considered made and laid upon the table with no intervening action or debate.

Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the Senate proceed to the immediate consideration of H.R. 1722, which was received from the House and is at the desk.

I further ask that the bill be considered read a third time and passed and that the motion to reconsider be considered made and laid upon the table with no intervening action or debate.

Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the Senate proceed to the immediate consideration of Calendar No. 263, S. 484.

I ask unanimous consent that the Peters substitute amendment at the desk be considered and agreed to; that the bill, as amended, be considered read a third time and passed; and that the motion to reconsider be considered made and laid upon the table.

Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the Committee on Environment and Public Works be discharged from further consideration of S. 1478 and the Senate proceed to its immediate consideration.

I ask unanimous consent that the bill be considered read a third time and passed and that the motion to reconsider be considered made and laid upon the table.

Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the Committee on Commerce, Science, and Transportation be discharged from further consideration and the Senate now proceed to S. Res. 423.

I ask unanimous consent that the Ernst amendment at the desk to the resolution be considered and agreed to; that the resolution, as amended, be agreed to; that the preamble be agreed to; and that the motions to reconsider be considered made and laid upon the table.

I suggest the absence of a quorum.

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

Madam President, a question: Do we want a government surveillance state in the United States of America?

Movies like ``Gattaca,'' where citizens are tracked through their DNA, or ``Minority Report,'' where citizens are tracked through their retina scan, warn us what can happen under a fictional government surveillance state. But we don't need to depend upon movies and fiction to understand what a surveillance state means because we have, right now, a real-life government surveillance state in China. China's government surveillance state already tracks more than 1 million Uighur citizens through facial recognition.

As cochair of the Congressional-Executive Commission on China, I have had a front-row seat on how China uses facial recognition technology to track and to enslave a million people. And I have watched with some alarm as the U.S. Government has begun to expand its own use of facial recognition technology tied to databases, especially because there has never been a debate, let alone a vote, here in the U.S. Senate about whether or not we want to have a national facial recognition system controlled by the government. We have never had a debate related to the risks that that involves in terms of its potential threat to our freedom and to our privacy.

So I want to force there to be such a debate. I want to force there to be a vote. A government with power to track us everywhere we go is a real threat to privacy, a real threat to freedom. That is why Senator John Kennedy and I have introduced the bipartisan Traveler Privacy Protection Act to curtail the use of facial recognition technology by

Madam President, I ask unanimous consent to complete my remarks before we break for the vote.

Madam President, it was bullets not ballots. Bullets were the way that policies were set when I visited Guatemala in the spring of 1980: a soldier with a gun on every corner of Guatemala City, the army going village to village killing indigenous young men, rebels attacking government officials, and rightwing death squads assassinating professors and students.

I had the unfortunate experience of coming around a street corner just after a death squad had assassinated a professor at San Carlos University and left his body lying in the street.

Well, four decades ago--that is a long time ago--and, fortunately, Guatemala has come a long way since I visited as a young man. Now, the battles over the country's future are being fought not with bullets but with ballots.

But maintaining the integrity of balloting, the peaceful transfer of power, which are the hallmarks, the foundations of representative democracy, is not inevitable. And in Guatemala, the system is being stressed. In Guatemala, the system is being tested.

The ballot box is beautiful because it creates the opportunity for citizens to call on their leaders to change direction, actually, to select leaders who are calling for a change in direction.

If the government isn't serving the people, the people can change the government. And every now and then, one of these elections is particularly exciting, and Guatemala's recent Presidential election has certainly been exciting.

The current Guatemalan Government is mostly a government by and for the powerful, rather than by and for the people, and the powerful blocked several candidates that they didn't want as the next President from even running in the election.

But one person they didn't stop was Bernardo Arevalo and his Semilla or ``Seed Movement'' Party. This gray-haired academic and anti- corruption advocate was running far back in the pack, virtually unnoticed, some eighth place just a couple weeks before the election, a campaign staff of only five people, so certainly not a serious contender--not a serious contender until he was a serious contender, and that happened because of two factors: The first was young people on social media. Nearly two-thirds of Guatemala's 17 million citizens are under the age of 30, and young people on TikTok flocked to the honesty of the man often referred to as ``Uncle Bernie'' and his campaign against corruption.

Soon Semilla's seedlings were spreading across social media. And one of the Semilla's leading advocates on social media was a young woman whom our delegation met this last weekend named Marcela Blanco. Ms. Blanco is a 23-year-old influencer who was arrested in November by the government for a tweet, arrested for her campaign activities, held for 11 days, and then released under house arrest and allowed to come to a meeting at the Embassy, which was fortunate because we were able to meet her.

She was a threat to the government because she was effective in spreading a message, a message of support for a man running for President who was running against the corruption of the existing government, her support for a democratic movement of development that was inclusive, meaning that it would support healthcare and housing and education, clean water, not just for the cities but also for the rural indigenous villages.

Well, when that first round of Presidential balloting was held on June 25, Mr. Arevalo came in second, which in the Guatemalan system is very important because first and second place have a runoff, assuming nobody got a majority in the first round. So that runoff was on August 20.

In the August election, that first and the second round, Mr. Arevalo didn't just barely win, he won by more than 60 percent of the vote, defeating the establishment candidate, Sandra Torres.

So a 20-percent victory is a pretty powerful message being sent from the people about whom they want to guide them in the future. And then what happened was the existing government went to work to try to invalidate the election, coming up with a series of spurious claims, and that triggered the indigenous communities to shut down roadways--so a protest--and it forced business leaders to call on the government to recognize the results.

So people, young people, indigenous people, Guatemalan people won a victory.

But they only won a victory if they can keep it. And Mr. Arevalo was here in Washington, DC, to talk about his upcoming service that would start on January 14 of next year, and he noted that he was still under intense attack--both him and his Vice President--and he wasn't sure if he would ever make it to be installed as President.

So a couple of us asked him whether it would be helpful to show that the United States was standing for the ballot box, standing for the peaceful transfer of power to come down before the election. And so a group of us went down this last weekend, led by Senator Tim Kaine, who is the chair of the Subcommittee on Latin America for the Foreign Relations Committee. And we were accompanied by Senator Butler, who is in the chair right now--and I gather this was her first congressional delegation--and by Senator Dick Durbin and myself and then two members of the House who are themselves of Guatemalan descent, which was enormously powerful.

So we advocated there in Guatemala to maintain the recognition of this election, which had a huge amount of oversight, which was certainly conducted with integrity, and to ensure that there was a peaceful transfer of power on January 14.

But in the morning, on Saturday morning, as we were meeting with members of the President's Cabinet and they were telling us everything is just fine, one member of the Cabinet who was not there, which was the attorney general, was preparing to release a statement that afternoon. And that statement she released declared that the election of President-elect Arevalo and Vice-President-elect Herrera and the party's--that is the Semilla party's--parliamentarians was null and void.

Wow. So the attack on democracy by the existing government was still in full force this weekend. We responded by holding a press conference to stress the integrity of the election, underscore the need for democratic continuity, recognizing that the message carried by the President had been supported by an overwhelming majority of the country. And other organizations and other countries condemned the decision too. The Organization of American States called it an attempted coup d'etat that constitutes the worst form of democratic breakdown and the consolidation of a political fraud against the will of the people. And the Supreme Electoral Tribunal declared that the results are validated, formalized, and unchangeable. And Mr. Giammattei, the current President, called for the passage of power to Mr. Arevalo in January.

We have to admit that decades ago, it was not unusual for the United States to undermine democracy in a number of countries in the world--a couple of examples: In 1953, the United States helped engineer a coup against a democratically elected Prime Minister of Iran, Mohammad Mosaddegh, to install the Shah to power. Some 20 years later, Henry Kissinger in the Nixon administration supported and helped a coup d'etats by the military against the democratic-elected President of Chile, Allende; and what followed were the worst kinds of repressive regimes with unforeseen consequences, including the Islamic Revolution in Iran and terrible oppression in Chile.

So I was pleased to be part of a team from this Chamber in Latin America working to support and defend democracy, defend the ballot box, defend the will of free peoples. That is the stand we should always be taking when their election is held with integrity.

And right now, it is important that the United States and the international community continue to stand arm in arm with the people of Guatemala, arm in arm with President-elect Arevalo, arm and arm with Vice-President-elect Herrera and their campaign for democracy, their campaign for the rule of law.

Madam President, 44 years ago when I arrived in Guatemala, it was governed by bullets; and 4 days ago, I arrived in a country governed by ballots. But their democracy is at risk. We must continue to do all we can to support the will of the Guatemalan people, the Guatemaltecos, and the will of democratic people around the world. Let's ensure that the form of government that triumphs is that of representative democracy, channeling a government of, by, and for the people, not the powerful.

I ask for the yeas and nays.

Mr. President, reserving the right to object, our colleague from Kansas has come to the floor and asked for unanimous consent for a bill of some major significance.

We have heard a lot of my colleagues explain why this Israel-only bill would be a disaster, because it throws Ukraine overboard.

And then I heard his rebuttal. His rebuttal was, ``Well, why not do Israel alone?'' as if we hadn't had this conversation for the last hour and a half. We know the answer: because the House has said it will pass an Israel-alone bill, leaving Ukraine abandoned.

So this UC is about abandoning Ukraine. That has powerful international consequences. Allow Ukraine to be torn apart by Putin's brutal invasion--that is what this UC does. It makes a group of American Senators Putin's best friends. This bill--this UC, this unanimous consent for this bill--will shatter the Atlantic alliance, deeply, deeply damaging the power of democracies working together. This bill will fracture NATO because if we don't stand with Ukraine, how many doubts creep in about any enduring effort to defend a smaller country assaulted by a dictator next door?

This bill will destroy American leadership in defending democracies. This bill will empower dictators around the world. They will conclude that they can outlast the attention span of a coalition of democratic republics as long as they stay the course.

Some of my colleagues in support of this bill say it is costing a lot of money. The budget that Russia is dedicating to this battle is, some estimate, 30 percent--30 percent--of their defense expenditures. Our GDP here is 1\1/2\ percent--1\1/2\ percent versus 30 percent. If we can't stay the course when the question is $1.50 out of every $100, when would we ever stay the course?

The last time this globe saw such complicity blockading a vicious conqueror was when Chamberlain went to Munich.

In Munich, Chamberlain told Hitler: You can take that massive slice of Czechoslovakia, and England will look the other way. We will simply declare peace in our time.

But that appeasement by Chamberlain didn't produce peace in our time. Instead, that appeasement of Hitler stoked Hitler's appetite for conquering adjacent lands. That appeasement of Hitler set the stage for the Second World War, with massive loss of life and treasure for the United States of America and nations around the world.

Appeasing Putin today is as wrong as appeasing Hitler 85 years ago. We must instead stand with the freedom-loving, fierce-fighting, democracy-defending people of the Republic of Ukraine.

If you come to this Chamber and you have followed former President Trump's lead in loving Putin, then say yes to this unanimous consent request and throw Ukraine under the bus. If you love China, love their authoritarian conquests, love their desire to invade Taiwan, then come to this floor and support this unanimous consent request for this bill and throw Ukraine under the bus. But if you care about freedom; if you are a champion of democracy; if you believe that democracies must stand together against tyranny, against autocracy, against imperialist invaders; if you respect the courage and fortitude of the people of Ukraine, then absolutely say that you object to this UC request, that you object to this bill.

We here in the U.S. Senate must not countenance Putin appeasement. We must not countenance complicity and another Munich moment. So I join my colleagues today in preparing to object to this bill.

I yield to my colleague from Washington State.

Mr. President, reserving the right to object, our colleague has come to the floor and asked for unanimous consent for a bill of some major significance. This bill deliberately throws the Republic of Ukraine under the bus by ripping Ukraine out of the emergency supplemental. This bill would have a very powerful, consequential impact. It will allow Ukraine to be torn apart by Putin's savage invasion.

In the process, it will shatter the Atlantic alliance; it will fracture NATO; it will destroy American leadership in defending democracies; and it will empower dictators around the world, dictators who conclude that they can outlast the coalition of democratic republics when a dictator seeks to conquer a democratic neighbor.

The last time our world saw such complicity placating a vicious conqueror was when Chamberlain went to Munich. In Munich, Chamberlain told Hitler he could take a big slice of Czechoslovakia, and England would look the other way.

Chamberlain declared peace in our time, but his appeasement did not produce peace in our time. Instead, it stoked Hitler's appetite for conquering adjacent land and set the stage for the Second World War, with a massive loss of life and treasure of Americans and life and treasure of many nations around the world.

I tell you this: Appeasing Putin today is as wrong and mistaken as appeasing Hitler was 85 years ago. We must stand with the freedom- loving, fierce-fighting, democracy-defending people of the Republic of Ukraine.

If you love Putin, then by all means, support this bill. If you love China and want to stoke China's appetite to invade Taiwan, then by all means, support this bill.

But if you love freedom, if you love democracy, if you respect the courage and the fortitude of the freedom-loving people of Ukraine, if you oppose democracy-crushing authoritarians wherever they are found, then oppose this bill.

There must be no Putin appeasement on the floor of the Senate. There must be no complicity in creating a Munich moment. And so I join my colleagues in preparing to object to this bill.

I yield to my colleague from Maryland.

Madam President, the great American labor organizer Delores Huerta said:

Every moment is an organizing opportunity, every person [is

a] potential activist, [and] every minute [is] a chance to

change the world.

In that spirit, I rise to bid farewell to a member of my team, Dan Mahr.

Dan sees every constituent as an opportunity to connect and every townhall meeting as a chance to change someone's world.

I host a lot of townhall meetings in Oregon--one in every one of our 36 counties every year. One time, Dan and I were hosting a townhall meeting in rural eastern Oregon, where an older, conservative rancher was waiting in line to talk to me and had that look on his face where he just knew he was pretty unhappy and wanted to let me know why. Well, Dan noticed him too. He started chatting with him, and pretty soon, that stony expression began to crack, and the conversation began to warm up. By the time that stern rancher had made it to me, he was chuckling and patting Dan on the back.

As we left that meeting, everyone, including our church ladies and our ranchers and our farmers--everyone--to our rural hippies, was giving Dan extra handshakes on the way out the door. That is how it was in townhalls where Dan was staffing.

He joined my team in 2016, 7 years ago, after a decade of fighting for unions and working families across America. As my senior labor adviser, he has stood up to the powerful on behalf of the working people all across our State. He has been one of my field representatives, serving folks in North Central Oregon, in Clackamas County and Wasco and Hood River and Sherman and Gilliam Counties. But he didn't just get the job done in those counties; he was always the first person to volunteer to staff a townhall meeting for his teammates no matter how far away it is across the State. He just loves being out on the road in Oregon. He has driven thousands of miles, set up thousands of chairs, met thousands of Oregonians. Whenever a new field representative joined our team, he was the first to welcome that individual to Team Merkley, to go with him or her to their first townhall, to lend a helping hand at the events.

Our work is important to him because if folks are taking their time out of busy lives to come to a townhall meeting, he wants to give them the respect that goes with feeling welcome and feeling heard. And, of course, that is exactly the attitude I take to those meetings.

Well, Dan's dedication to constituents' services is renowned on the team, not just for his personal touch but also for his personal tenacity. There is a saying--a saying I like a lot--that tenacity is a superpower. I experienced that a few times in my life. I certainly believe it is true.

Ever since I was first elected to the Senate in 2008, I have been hearing about funding for economic development in the Columbia River Gorge.

That funding had been authorized when the Columbia River National Scenic Area was established in 1986. In that scenic area, every community had restrictions on what additional buildings they could create, so they felt for sure the Federal Government would hold up its side of the deal and deliver that money for economic development in compensation. They did get some of that money in the 1990s but not the full amount. They were millions of dollars short. It came up at meeting after meeting after meeting: Where is that money the Federal Government promised us? It was an issue folks were not going to let go of.

Of course, I wanted to deliver that funding, but I had to have a key staff member work on it, and that key staff member was Dan--working on it for 5 years, finding strategies in which we could get additional pieces of funding delivered until every single dollar had made it through tricky local politics, bistate politics, to help the stakeholders who live throughout the Columbia Gorge. There was no silver-bullet moment; it was just year after year of planning and pushing and seizing key opportunities to fulfill promises to ordinary Oregonians. In the end, fulfill they did. Dan secured those millions of dollars in economic development for the Columbia Gorge.

He was just as tenacious about protecting local services, too, like when he kept open the West Linn Post Office. After 2 years of searching for a permanent site, one day in August, we heard that the U.S. Postal Service had decided to just close the doors on the post office in September, right before the November election. Just 6 weeks before the 2020 Presidential election, in a State where we vote by mail, in the midst of COVID, right before the holidays, the post office is going to close the doors on that post office. They had just given up on finding a new location. That post office serves a city of 26,000 people.

Dan went immediately to work, organizing our delegation, our local officials, working with the Postal Service to find a better solution, insisting that no way those doors could be closed, making sure that everyone felt the urgency, and ultimately secured the extension of that post office and kept it open. At the election, people could cast their ballots. People could receive their medications, and they could mail their gifts to their loved ones during the holidays.

But there is more to the story because the post office continued to insist on closing. Well, again, Dan helped organize. He helped carry the message that that was unacceptable, and eventually the U.S. Postal Service got the message, found a suitable location, and the people of West Linn, OR, were overjoyed. But it took tenacity, and that is what Dan brought to the ballot.

He is also tenacious, by the way, when he is trying to win a game of table tennis. I can neither confirm nor deny that he ripped a pair of suit pants in a table tennis match with an unnamed U.S. Senator.

He has been tenacious as my labor adviser. Whether working with bakers, the building trades, nurses, teachers, timber workers, public employees, everyone knows that Dan is a partner they can trust. He has navigated countless labor issues to ensure the working families of Oregon get the pay and benefits they earned.

A few years ago, there was a difficult discussion about a major project in Oregon. It would have created a lot of construction jobs, but it also would have done a lot of damage to the climate. In that situation, with this benefit and this problem, Dan was a supreme professional, the supreme diplomat, ensuring that full and accurate information was brought to bear and that everyone's perspectives was carefully considered and weighed. In the end, of course, not everyone agreed with the ultimate outcome, but so many were impressed by the thorough and transparent process that Dan facilitated.

Dan is the kind of guy who brings a positive angle to every situation. One time, my team members, after driving 8 hours across Oregon--big State; I know that is hard to envision here on the east coast--they were driving 8 hours to host an event and discovered the local motel rooms were out of commission, so they would have to drive after the event an additional 3 hours to find accommodation. The team really was exhausted and just wanted to climb in bed and go to sleep, but they couldn't. But Dan said:

Hey, let's use this as an opportunity to see Oregon's only

geyser.

The water table had come up, and the geyser was back in action. So they went in search of the geyser before hitting the road, and they found it, and they were thrilled to see it because few in Oregon ever have. It was an effective pivot for an exhausted and quite cranky crew. As one of them said afterward:

It was very, very cool. I'm so grateful that Dan made us

slow down a bit. He always encourages us to enjoy the trip,

enjoy the sights, and enjoy each other's company.

I know he has done that for me. I remember a day after many miles and many events when we had a little bit of time before our next stop. We went by his house in Hood River, sat on his porch--sat on his rocking chairs on his porch--hung out, laughed, relaxed, and played with his dog. It was just what we all needed, and Dan knew it.

I began these remarks quoting Dolores Huerta, who said that ``every minute is a chance to change the world.'' She also said:

I think the importance of doing activist work is to engage

people and give them hope. Hope for a better world, hope for

a better tomorrow. Hope that change is possible, and that

they can be part of that transformation.

Dan has engaged and given hope to so many ordinary people--hope for a better Oregon, hope for a better community, hope for a better tomorrow. Most importantly, he has shown folks that, working together, change is possible and that they can be part of that transformation.

So many people I met have a great story about Dan and some way he has helped them or helped their town or just that they have enjoyed knowing him. He embodies the best spirit of Team Merkley. So it is with deep gratitude that Team Merkley and I thank Dan Mahr for his service to the people of Oregon, and we wish him all the best in his next chapter.