Floor Statements

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

Mr. President, I am pleased to be here with my colleagues today to emphasize the incredible importance of voting rights as the foundation for our democratic Republic: Senator Klobuchar of Minnesota, who spoke with the perspective of the chair of our Rules Committee and her experience in her State of Minnesota; Senator Durbin, who so understands the challenges from his decades of public service and service in this Chamber; Senator Kaine of Virginia, who brought forth some of the challenges over time that have existed targeting Black Americans; and Senator Schumer, who just took us on a tour through history, bringing us to that point of saying: Let's make sure that our democratic Republic does not perish, that it endures; that that responsibility sits on our shoulders.

Mr. President, there are more than 4,500 words in the Constitution, but the three that matter most are the first three: ``We the People.'' Our Founders printed those words in supersize font, saying this is what it is all about, that we do not take our government's power and authority in America as descended from Kings or the elite or the powerful; that our government takes its authority and power from the people up. And that is accomplished through the ballot box.

We are a nation with a government, as President Lincoln so eloquently said, ``of the people, by the people, and for the people.'' That is why the ballot box is the beating heart of our democracy. It is the ballot box that is the physical manifestation of every American's sacred right to have a voice in their government through their vote because, as Lyndon Johnson told us, ``The vote is the most powerful instrument ever devised . . . for breaking down injustice.''

For 245 years, since our Declaration of Independence, through war and depression, through civil strife and terrorist attack, our democracy has persevered. It has weathered storms. Through those storms, it has continued to shine as a beacon of light to the world, as Ronald Reagan so fondly spoke of it, to serve as a beautiful, shining city on the hill.

All the while, through generation after generation, we have worked to expand access to the ballot box, recognizing that the vision of the Constitution wasn't fulfilled until every American had the ability to exercise their right to vote. And for most of our lives in this generation, we haven't really worried about the strength of our democratic institutions.

We have read about Presidents around the world writing a new constitution and throwing the old out without process, of wiping out the clause that limited them to two terms or to one term and continuing on, of shows that were put on in terms of legislative function that was just a cover story for authoritarian power.

But, here, we have thought we have practiced for more than 200 years converting the power of the people into representative democracy and decisions made through the House and the Senate and the President of the United States. We took for granted that they worked because they had worked for generation after generation, election after election, year after year.

But now, in recent years, we have come to realize that we shouldn't have taken the strength of our institutions for granted. We have come to see all too clearly that these institutions are fragile. We have seen the relentless efforts to undermine faith in our institutions. We have seen the attacks on our free press. We have seen the siloing of channels of information into different 24-hour cable news networks, and we have seen the echo chamber of social media.

We have experienced the impact that has occurred attacking the basic right to vote being torn away by the highest Court in the land, to political leaders deliberately lying to and deceiving the American people, and fanning the flames of hate and bigotry, of division and discrimination, for their political gain.

Then, just over a year ago, we saw it culminate in a violent mob of extremists stirred up and unleashed by a man who couldn't face the reality of his electoral loss, and that mob stormed this very building to stop the wheels of democracy from turning.

I was sitting here in this Chamber, and I well remember the agents rushing down the center aisle up to the podium to sweep away the Vice President to safety, wondering why they were running down the aisle because that doesn't happen here in the Senate. We heard the sounds of people outside these doors and wondered what was going on. We saw our Sergeant at Arms team start to lock the doors of this Chamber--all of it in just an extraordinary moment. Then, because we have smartphones, we started to understand what was going on outside of the Capitol and inside of the Capitol.

Later, we learned of the incredibly valiant acts of an officer named Eugene Goodman, who, as the first wave of the mob ascended the staircase that is just outside the Chamber in this direction, proceeded to essentially challenge the leader of that group, shoving him slightly and backing up away--down that hallway to move the mob away from entering the double doors that were closer by, buying more time for the security of this Chamber.

It is hard to believe that men and women in this building were chanting for the death of Nancy Pelosi and the death of the Vice President of the United States of America, calling for him to be hanged.

Because we started to understand the threat, I heard whispered phone calls to loved ones saying: I am OK. I think I am fine.

We saw fear and pain in the eyes of some of our staff, who were simply doing their job to help our democracy function that day.

We know how that day lingers in the hearts of our Capitol Police officers, and I continue to grieve with them for the trauma and loss they endured and to appreciate so much the service they rendered.

The insurrectionists on January 6, 2021, came all too close to stopping democracy in its tracks that day. Here in the Chamber, we were ushered into a safer location, and along with us went the three ballot boxes pictured here.

This is a picture that I took when I was so pleased to see these ballot boxes had traveled with us to safety, because the mob did enter this Chamber, and had these boxes still been here in the well of the Senate, they would have opened them and they would have destroyed those ballots because that was what they were intent on doing, was to destroy the ballots from various States to alter the outcome of the election. They couldn't get to them because they were safe with us.

These boxes were crafted by real artists who work here in the Senate, and there was a new box, a larger box, because some of the States were sending larger certifications of the ballots, the electoral college ballots, from their State.

Well, we were determined to return to the Chamber that evening, to come back here and reclaim this Chamber from the mob, replace these boxes in the well of the Senate, transport them to the House through the rhythm of counting the electoral college votes, and make sure the certification of the election went ahead. And it did. We completed our work, and the House and Senate certified the election results.

The physical attack on our national temple, our revered Capitol Building, was intended to prevent the counting of ballots--the most important act marking the transfer of power from one President to the next.

You know, our leaders in the early phase of our country weren't sure that this system would survive. Would the first President of the United States declare that he would continue beyond the bounds of the Constitution regardless of an election or prevent the election from happening? It was one of the motivations behind supporting George Washington as the first President, because people had faith that he would honor the vision in that Constitution and set the rhythm for the generations that followed. And he did.

So on January 6, 2021, 1 year and 1 day ago, democracy held--barely, but it held. Although it held on that day, the attack on our Federal elections has continued nonstop through the year that has followed.

This is the question we now face. In State after State, Republican legislatures are erecting barriers to the ballot box to make it more difficult for specific groups of Americans to vote--

making it more difficult for Native Americans to vote, for Black Americans to vote, and for college students to vote. It is our responsibility, in the face of these attacks on the right to vote, to say: Hell, no. We will not let any group in America be blocked from voting.

We will guarantee the right of every citizen to exercise the most fundamental act of a citizen in democracy: the act of putting a ballot into a ballot box. That is why we must pass, without delay, the Freedom to Vote Act and the John Lewis Voting Rights Act.

The 2020 election was free. It was fair. It was secure. In every analysis, in every court hearing, in every recount, in every audit, we have found that the election of 2020 was free and fair and secure. We have seen that proven time and time and time again.

It was the most scrutinized election ever held in this country. It was also the election with the largest turnout ever in this country. More than 159 million Americans cast a ballot. But instead of celebrating the integrity of that election--that beautiful display of democracy, the embodiment of the ``we the people'' Republic--some in our country have spent this past year trying to undermine our Republic, to lie about it, to tear it down, to tear down what so many have worked and fought for, marched and sacrificed for over 245 years. These forces cannot win by the power of their ideas so they want to change the rules. They want to rig the vote.

So how do you do that? Well, the States make laws to make it harder to register to vote. The States make laws to allow those on the voting rolls to be thrown off without them even knowing they have been thrown off, to purge the voting rolls in a discriminatory fashion. You make it harder for early voting. You make it harder to vote by mail, and the consequence of making early voting and vote-by-mail hard is you direct the voting to election day, and on election day, you have a set of time-tested tactics to block the ballot box. What are these tactics?

Well, one, you understaff the precinct voting location so the line is very long in places where you don't want people to vote. In Georgia, in the last election, in those precincts, where the electorate was 80 percent White, the wait time was an average of about 5 minutes. In those precincts where the electorate was 80 percent Black, the wait time was about 50 minutes, or 10 times longer. This did not happen by accident.

What else can be done? You move the location of the precinct voting location so people go to the wrong place in the places where you don't want them to vote. You put them in places where there isn't much parking so they have to walk a long way to get to the polling place. You let the machines malfunction and have no one around to fix them to increase the length of the line. You ban volunteers from giving food and water to the people who are standing in line, hour after hour after hour. You put out text messages saying, ``We are so sorry you missed the vote last week,'' when, in truth, the vote is the next Tuesday coming, but you make people think they missed the vote so they won't show up or you put out messages saying, ``We hope you will vote on this day,'' which is a week after the real vote so people don't show up on election day.

All of these things happen. And when I read about them happening, I think about how important early voting and vote-by-mail are. If you want to look at ballots being stolen--the right to vote being stolen, the corruption of voting--look to these corrupt activities on election day. Those are stealing the votes. That is where the crime is being committed, and that is the crime we need to stop.

Now, in Oregon, we were the first State to have vote-by-mail. And it started with the Republican Party saying: Let's get everybody signed up for absentee ballots because we know we can increase turnout. And then the Democrats said: That is a really good idea. Let's get all our folks to sign up for absentee ballots.

So when I first ran for the State legislature, half the State was voting by absentee ballot, and half was voting at the polls. And then in the next election, the State said: We liked voting by absentee ballot so much, let's give vote-by-mail to everyone. And it was embraced by both parties.

And I remember going door-to-door and people telling me: We really love not having to worry about the challenges of election day--of parking; of weather; I have a bad hip, and I can't stand in line; I have to pick up my children after I get off work, and I won't have time to stand in line.

Why did President Trump attack vote-by-mail? He hated vote-by-mail because it takes away the cheating on election day that he feels can be implemented to benefit Republicans across this country. President Trump is the primary proponent of cheating Americans out of their right to vote.

This Chamber has to act. We are seeing the strategies unfold in State after State. Last year, 440 bills were introduced in multitudinous States aimed at restricting the freedom to vote. Thirty-four of those bills have been passed into law in 19 States, restricting access to the ballot box, threatening the integrity of our elections.

The first week of this new year, 13 bills were filed in Arizona and New Hampshire. Eighty-eight bills were introduced last year that are carrying over into the 2022 legislative session in nine States, including swing States like Pennsylvania and Wisconsin.

We can see how prevalent the activity is. Now, when we were wrestling with the right to vote in the 1960s, it was primarily a challenge of the Southern United States using strategies targeted at Black Americans. But now, we have a challenge of strategies being enacted across the country targeting Black Americans and Native Americans and young Americans.

So let's take a look at this, at some of the key swing States. Arizona--for over a decade, voters have been mailed a ballot.

Now, currently, if you are an infrequent voter, and you don't vote early in two election cycles, you can be removed from the permanent early voting list--meaning you no longer automatically receive that ballot, meaning that you are expecting it, but you don't get it. When you realize that you have to get to the polls, it may be too late, making it harder for targeted voters to vote by having discriminatory purging of the voting rolls.

Seventy percent of Arizonans are on that permanent early voting list. Eighty percent of Arizona voters cast a ballot by mail in 2020.

It is estimated that under this law, 200,000 voters in the State of Arizona might be removed from the list, and many of them will not realize they have been removed until it is too late.

Think about how significant that is in a State that President Biden won by less than 11,000 votes.

What else in Arizona? You have the power being taken away of the secretary of state to control election litigation, to defend the ballot box, and it is being moved to the attorney general.

Now, why would Arizona move it from the secretary of state, where it has always been, to the attorney general? Well, they are moving it because the secretary of state is a Democrat and the attorney general is a Republican and they want a partisan angle on enforcement of voting laws.

I will tell you one bill that hasn't been enacted that really is something very scary to think about. It says, essentially, that the legislature can revoke the certification of the State's Presidential election by majority vote--meaning the State might vote for one person, but the legislature, which is Republican, could then vote to assign the electors to the person that the legislature wants instead of whom the people of that State want.

That is an incredible--incredible--perversion and shows you how far this conversation is going to create partisan control of the outcome. The election was won fair and square by one person, and the State legislature says: Too bad, we are assigning our electoral votes to the other person.

Florida--Florida has enacted an omnibus election bill. It attacks mail-in voting. It requires voters to continually renew their request for a mail-in ballot. It used to be that that was once every 4 years, but now it is continuous. One-third of Floridians voted by mail in 2018. One-half mailed in their ballots in 2020. An overwhelming majority of those were Democrats. So if you take away vote-by-mail, the thought is you can warp the outcome of the election.

Their omnibus bill puts up restrictions on drop boxes, requiring them to

be supervised in person. They make it hard to drop off your ballots. And the goal, of course, is if you make it harder to drop off ballots, maybe that ballot will sit on your kitchen counter and never get filed and never, therefore, have an impact. And Florida, like Georgia, has stopped volunteers from handing out food and water to voters waiting in long lines.

Every time I hear that, I think: Are we not familiar with the story of the good Samaritan who goes down the road, and he sees someone beaten up by the side of the road and goes over to help that individual and gets them to safety and covers the expenses for their lodging and their food? Well, here, good Samaritans are being outlawed from providing food and water to people trapped in line for a long period of time.

That is not just in Florida but in Georgia too. So let's turn to Georgia. They enacted legislation that attacks early voting. It eliminates 5 weeks of early voting in runoff elections--5 weeks. Over 1.3 million people voted in 2021's runoffs in Georgia that brought Senators Warnock and Ossoff here to the Senate. It attacks voting registration.

You can't register to vote when a runoff election is occurring. You have to already have registered for the general election. And why did they do that? Because 70,000 people registered to vote during the 2021 runoffs, and more Democrats than Republicans registered in that period. So, prejudicially, they want to cut that off. They want to virtually eliminate the drop boxes. They are relied on far more in the urban Atlanta metro area than in rural counties. And the law says you can have no more than one drop box for every 100,000 registered voters, meaning that four counties that make up the greater Atlanta metro area will now only have about 20 drop boxes, a reduction to one-fifth of the drop boxes that were there before.

About half of the absentee voters in the Atlanta metro area used those drop boxes. And then it says those drop boxes have to be inside early voting sites, meaning that they are only available during the hours those early voting sites are open. So if you are going to work at 6 a.m., you can't drop off your ballot. And if you are getting home and picking up your kids and getting home past 5 p.m., or whatever the early voting sites close, then you can't vote then either by dropping off your ballot at a ballot box.

Cobb County Elections Director Janine Eveler said, and refers to the boxes:

They are no longer useful. The limited numbers mean you

cannot deploy them in significant numbers to reach the voting

population.

In Georgia, also, the law gives power to interfere directly with people's votes. The legislature has been given power--the partisan legislature has been given power--over the State election board, and the State election board can replace the local election boards and, thereby, influence how they behave to the benefit of the Republican Party. It also gives ability of an individual to challenge countless numbers of voters' rights to cast a ballot.

To sum up, in Georgia, they are making it harder to get a ballot in the mail. They are making it easier to intimidate voters at the polls, and they are making it easier to rig the results after the votes have been cast.

How about Iowa? Iowa enacted omnibus election legislation that attacks early voting and takes away 9 days of early voting. It reduces it by a third, 29 to 20 days. It attacks in-person voting.

As Senator Klobuchar pointed out, it says you have to close the polls an hour earlier, making it harder for people who work late in the evening to be able to vote. It attacks vote-by-mail.

Let's turn to Montana. Montana has enacted HB 176, which eliminates same-day registration. It has been in place for 15 years. Nearly 8,200 Montanans used that option on election day in 2020--but, prejudicially, wiped out.

SB 169 also, as a matter of fact, requires voters who do not have certain specified IDs to get two forms of ID in order to vote at the polls, making it harder to vote at the polls.

HB 50, also enacted, prohibits the mailing of ballots to new voters who are eligible to vote on election day but are not yet 18, an attack on younger voters. Why? Because younger voters tend to vote more often for the Democratic candidate.

And SB 319 bans voter registration activities on public college campus buildings such as dorms, study halls, and athletic facilities, an absolute attack on the ability of college students to vote. Why? Because they tend to vote more Democratic.

This strategy of deliberately attacking the ability to vote of young Americans, college students, Native Americans, and Black Americans to vote is so wrong. It is unethical. It violates the very premise of our Constitution, which gives every American the right--the equal right--to participate.

New Hampshire--in one new law, the secretary of state is enabled to make up their own system of confirming voter residency so that it is easier to take voters off the rolls. Why is that important? Well, the Republican legislature is going to choose the secretary of state in New Hampshire, and ideas have been floated in regard to ``Let's require residency to be written so that your car has to be registered here if you are a student who is here.'' And students can't afford to reregister the car; so students won't be able to vote--another attack on college students, as an example.

Texas--Texas attacks the drop boxes. The new law eliminates ballot drop boxes for 16 million voters--16 million. The Governor limited counties to just one drop box in 2020. The 4.7 million residents in Harris County, where Houston is located, have to share one drop box for a population equal to the entire population of Louisiana. It stops 127,000 voters in Harris County who availed themselves of curbside voting to avail themselves of curbside voting in the future. The legislature eliminated it.

I think the point should be adequately clear at this moment that in State after State after State, Republican legislators and Republican- controlled legislatures are creating prejudicial laws to block Democratic constituencies--constituencies that tend to favor the Democratic Party--from voting. This is completely unacceptable, and it is up to us to defend the rights of every American to vote.

Now, there are three States where the Republicans control the House and the Senate but not the Governorship: Wisconsin, Pennsylvania, North Carolina. And we know that changes may well happen there in 2 years. Those Governors may be gone. Last year, the Democratic Governor of Wisconsin vetoed six bills that would have severely restricted citizens' ability to vote. So who knows what is going to come next?

Now, some have said: You know, all these measures won't make that big a difference. Don't worry about it.

Well, I can tell you, those who say that are wrong. Let's think about how it would affect this Senate. Let's say those measures could make a 3-percent difference in the outcome of the balloting. If that were the case, then we would have seven Democratic Senators who are here today who would not have been here. It wouldn't be a 50-50 Senate; it would be a 57-43. Senator Ossoff won by 1.2 percent; Senator Peters of Michigan, 1.7 percent; Senator Kelly of Arizona, 2.4 percent; Senator Kyrsten Sinema of Arizona, 2.4 percent; Senator Hassan of New Hampshire, 0.1 percent; Senator Cortez Masto, 2.4 percent, Nevada. Seven Senators would not be here today if you changed the outcome by 3 percent. There is a huge difference between a 50-50 Senate and a 57-43.

That is what this is about. It is about the targeting of swing States by Republican legislatures to seize control of this body against the voting will of the citizens of the United States of America.

This is why we have to set minimum standards that guarantee access to ballot, minimum standards for vote-by-mail, minimum standards for early voting, minimum standards for registration, minimum standards so folks are not purged off the voting rolls without their knowledge.

I think about democracy, which we sometimes assume is the path more traveled by countries around the world, and there was a period of a decade or two where we saw the birth of a lot of new democracies. Now, this last decade, we have seen many of them slide into authoritarianism around the world. The truth is, most of the world

is not governed by democracies. It is governed by authoritarian governments. Democracy is the road less traveled. It takes incredible vigilance to defend the ability of the citizen to participate.

And here we are at that moment where we have to defend the ability of the citizen to participate. That vigilance, that responsibility, that weight of preserving our ``We the People'' Republic is on our shoulders. So the Freedom to Vote Act needs to be passed to ensure 15 days of early voting; to ensure access to vote-by-mail; to provide relief for voters waiting in long lines; to ensure that poll workers exist in sufficient numbers for the polling places and have adequate training to operate them effectively; to take on gerrymandering through national standards so that the House of Representatives, down this hallway outside this door, reflects the will of the people instead of being rigged for the powerful.

And the bill is needed to take on dark money, money no one knows where it comes from. If you or I donated $100 to a campaign, it is recorded. Everyone knows that we donated that money. But if the billionaire spends tens of millions or hundreds of millions of dollars, it is done in secret, dark money. Americans of every political entity-- Democratic, Republican, Independent--know this is corrupt, know that it shouldn't happen, know that the same things should apply to the billionaire as to the ordinary citizen.

We need to pass the Freedom to Vote Act, and we need to pass the John Lewis Voting Rights bill. That bill restores preclearance. The 1965 bill, the Voting Rights Act, was a preclearance bill. It said that those States that have conducted violations of the rights of citizens to vote can't change election laws without getting them precleared to make sure they are not prejudicial on the basis of race.

The Supreme Court has gutted that. The Supreme Court has operated as a supreme legislature of the land and decided it wanted to legislate out what this body and the House of Representatives passed overwhelmingly in a bipartisan fashion.

The 2013 Shelby County decision opened the floodgates to voter suppression and voter repression with laws like the ones I have been talking about. Preclearance protects us against those corrupt strategies that are yet to come, while the Freedom to Vote Act protects us against the activities that have already occurred. We need to do both.

All of us, Democrats and Republicans, should be working together as the two parties did in 1965, as they did each and every time to renew authorization of the Voting Rights Act, until now.

But, now, under the sway of President Trump, who has become the chief champion of cheating Americans out of their right to vote, they have decided to abandon their responsibility to defend the Constitution.

You know, in July of 1963, about a month after President Kennedy unveiled his Civil Rights Act, Martin Luther King was here in Washington, DC, giving interviews, and his words today still ring true. He said: ``The tragedy is that we have a Congress with a Senate that has a minority of misguided senators . . . that want [to keep] . . . people from even voting.''

We thought that was cured in 1965. We have gone decades where we were completely united around defending the right to vote. And, suddenly, we have seen this past year the continuation. The assault on the Capitol to disrupt the counting of electoral votes has been continued as an assault in State after State after State after State to stop Democratic constituencies from exercising their right to vote.

Raphael Warnock, Senator from Georgia, elected by less than 3 percent, said it boils down to this: ``Some people don't want some people to vote.''

Well, if you have sworn an oath to the Constitution, you have sworn an oath to ensure every citizen has a full opportunity to vote.

So much depends on the makeup of this body. Whether you care about voting rights or attacking climate chaos or healthcare or housing, whether you care about living wages and safe conditions for workers, those decisions are affected by the makeup of this body. And the theory of a democratic republic is that if the majority viewpoint is honored, we will work to address those issues that the majority cares about.

And the majority does care about healthcare and housing and good working conditions and clean air and clean water and taking on the warming of this planet. The majority cares about that. If you take and assault the ability of the minority to express their viewpoints, you have destroyed that very premise of our democracy.

And voting rights is different than every other issue. On every other issue, if we go off track, then the citizens can say: What have you done? You lose my support. I am voting for the other party or the other candidate. You promised to take on that challenge, and then you didn't. You have lost my support, and I am exercising my ballot to put in people who will actually address issues we care about.

But voting rights is different because that issue is about whether or not the voters actually can exercise their outrage with us if we veer off track. If you compromise voting, then the voters no longer have the ability to throw you out--throw the bums out--and bring fresh voices to bear on the issues they care about. That is why this is so important.

I am going to pivot to a little bit of history because for us to be able to vote on voting rights in this Chamber, we have a problem, and the problem is, the current rule of the Senate requires 60 votes to allow us to get to a final vote, a final majority vote.

In essence, we have become a Chamber where policies cannot be passed except by 60 votes of support. Many think, Isn't this the way the Senate was designed? Isn't this the way that our Founders envisioned the Senate? Didn't they talk about the Senate being a cooling saucer-- an expression attributed to President Washington that historians say he never said, but still it captures the understanding of this Chamber-- that is, that this Chamber would be a little more steady than the House would because we would have longer terms, 6-year terms instead of 2- year terms?

Now, it was debated that maybe 12-year terms, maybe lifetime appointments to the Senate, but in the end, the Founders settled on 6- year terms to make this Chamber a little less rash to some current trend that might be ill-considered than the Chamber down the hall. That is the cooling saucer.

The Founders said that because Senators will have a larger territory than House members, they will have more diverse constituents. They won't just have a city or just a rural area; they will probably have both and have to be thinking about how laws affect the farm, the ranch, the suburb, the city, the manufacturing, all the different aspects of our economy. So Senators will have a broader view. That is the cooling saucer.

Then the Founders threw in something else and said: Furthermore, we are going to say Senators will be elected indirectly by State legislatures, not by the people. Again, give them a little more insulation from citizens being very upset about something that hasn't been well thought through.

But never, ever, ever did our Founders want this Chamber to have a supermajority barrier, and we know this so clearly because they said so. When they were writing the Constitution, they were operating under the Confederation Congress, and the Confederation Congress required a supermajority, and it was paralyzed. It couldn't even raise the money to take on Shays' Rebellion. So those who were working to design our 1787 Constitution said: Whatever you do, don't embed a supermajority.

Let's see what they said. Hamilton, in Federalist Paper No. 22, said that with the minority in control of the majority, the result will be ``tedious delays . . . and . . . contemptible compromises of the public good.'' He said the real impact of a supermajority will be ``to embarrass the administration, to destroy the energy of government.''

On another occasion, he summed it up this way. He said:

If two thirds of the whole number of members had been

required, it would . . . amount in practice to a necessity of

unanimity. And the history of every political establishment

in which this principle has prevailed, is a history of

impotence, perplexity, and disorder.

Why would he say that? Because the Confederation Congress was a setting of impotence, perplexity, and disorder.

I don't know what other places around the world he was thinking of, but he was certainly thinking of the Government of the United States at that very moment.

Madison, in Federalist Paper 58, said:

It would be no longer the majority that would rule: the

power would be transferred to the minority.

He was noting that the principle of free government would be reversed.

The principle of free government is that you go the direction the majority weighs in on, not the minority. But when you require 60 votes to go down path A, and without them, you go down path B, then you go the direction the minority wants. You have done exactly what Madison said we must not let happen. We are reversing the principle of free government.

So we have seen two things. We have seen that--as the filibuster is used more and more and eating up the time of the Senate, we have seen amendments decline dramatically. We saw, for example, in the 109th Congress some 314 amendments. That has declined to just 26 amendments in the last Congress, the 116th Congress. We are currently in the 117th. Why is it? Well, Senators can't come to the floor and offer an amendment.

When I was first here as an intern covering the floor for Senator Hatfield during the Tax Reform Act of 1976, I watched how one amendment was debated for an hour or so, voted on, and then half a dozen to a dozen Senators would say to the Chair ``Mr. President, Mr. President,'' and the Chair was supposed to call on whomever he heard first--at that point, it was always a man in the Chair--and that person would offer an amendment, and an hour later, they would vote on it. And then again, there would be a group seeking to get the next amendment, and they would go on until they were exhausted.

That debate on a bill might go on for days and days or be spread over the course of numerous weeks, with other intervening activity, as in the Tax Reform Act of 1976, but every Senator knew they could offer an amendment. If they cared about a tax issue, they could offer it, and this body would have to debate it, would have to take a vote on it, but not today--not today. We twiddle our thumbs while the majority and minority leaders negotiate over amendments. The minority leader wants to protect Republicans from having to vote on issues that they might be embarrassed by. The majority leader wants to protect majority Members from voting on issues they might be embarrassed by or that constituencies might not support. So we twiddle our thumbs while the leaders of the two parties debate. That is not how the Founders envisioned this Senate.

This process of requiring 60 votes--it isn't just the 60 votes; it is also the time it eats up because, in order to get that vote to close debate, you have to file a cloture motion and you have to wait an intervening day. So if you file it on a Monday, you have to wait until Wednesday. Then, if it should pass and you close debate, you have to have 30 hours of debate. Then, if a Senator wasn't allowed to vote during those 30 hours, they get another hour, so tack on a few more hours. So every cloture motion eats up a week of the Senate's time, even if it is successful.

Well, we are about to see in the charts I am going to put up how this is destroying the Senate.

After 1965, after the Voting Rights Act, the filibuster, the cloture motion lost its racist taint because we had passed the 1965 Voting Rights Act. So Senators started to think, Well, we can use this on other issues. But, still, it was pretty much under control until the early seventies.

In the early seventies, you saw an increase to about a dozen motions per year, in 1971, 1972, 1973. In 1974, it exploded to almost three dozen, and if you think about that eating up 36 weeks of the Senate's time, people yelled: This is terrible. This is terrible.

So they reformed it in March of 1975, but that reform actually backfired after a few years, and Senators started to use this cloture motion--this cloture requirement in ways it hadn't been used but rarely in times past. It hadn't been used on motions to proceed with bills to the floor. It hadn't been used on amendments. It hadn't been used on nominations.

But let's take a look at how that has changed. Let's look first at the amendments--actually, cloture on nominations.

That one didn't make it through the printer in time, but here is the story: On nominations, there were only three cloture motions in the history of the United States before 1975--three. After 1975 to now, 852 times cloture has been filed on nominations; 852 weeks of the Senate's time potentially obstructed.

Let's look at motions to proceed. Before the reform in 1975, only 16 times in our history had cloture motions been filed to keep a bill from being debated on the floor of the Senate. Think about it. If the filibuster was about enhancing debate, extending debate, here it is being used to prevent debate, prevent a bill from ever being debated. That is very relevant to the election bill we have been talking about because, as Majority Leader Senator Schumer pointed out, four times now, Republicans have voted to prevent an election bill from being debated, ever getting started, a debate occurring on the floor of the Senate.

It is the most anti-democratic thing to do, and both parties have done it, but it is a practice that needs to end, and it is a practice that exploded in the eighties, in the nineties, in the 2000s, in the 2010s--blocking bills from ever getting to the floor 175 times in the decade 2010 through 2020.

Looking at cloture motions on amendments, it was considered unacceptable to prevent votes on amendments until the 1970s, and then the practice expanded. So you couldn't actually get your amendment up because of the filling of the tree and the negotiating between the two bodies, but if you did get it up, you could end up with it being blocked because it was blocked by a 60-vote requirement to close the debate on the amendment. The practice has continued and gone up and up and up.

How about on final passage? Final passage before 1975, that is virtually the only place where cloture was used, and that expanded as well.

So we are seeing that the cloture motion that takes up a week expanded in every single realm, and now, we are at an average of more than 100 per year--more than 100 per year. We don't have a 100 weeks in a year.

So the filibuster in its best form--its best form--is the ability of the minority to stand here on the floor and speak to delay action while they use that leverage to negotiate amendments or to negotiate compromise, and both sides have an incentive to reach a deal.

They have an incentive to reach a deal because those who are filibustering--it takes time and effort. That is difficult, so they have an incentive to reach a deal. And the majority, which is responsible for getting things done, has the goal of not having lots of time eaten up by filibuster. So both sides have an incentive to negotiate.

But under the current 60-vote requirement, that is not a filibuster; it is a 60-vote requirement. It is a minority veto, and because it is a minority veto, it doesn't incentivize negotiation. It does the exact opposite, especially with the polarized tribal politics of today. The base of both parties wants us to stop the other party, and so we paralyze each other.

It is Mahatma Gandhi to whom it is attributed the phrase ``An eye for an eye makes the whole world blind.'' It is the same challenge here. If Democrats do everything they can to prevent Republican ideas from getting into law to be tested and Republicans do everything they can to prevent the Democratic ideas from being tested, then no ideas are tested, and no issues are addressed, and the legislature fails in its responsibility to the people of the United States of America, and that is what is happening right now.

We are failing in our responsibility to the people of the United States of America.

Now, there are two ways that we can get that election bill--so vital to our responsibility under the Constitution, so vital to defending the rights of Americans to vote--to the floor of the Senate and off the floor.

One is to create a carve-out that says we will not apply the 60-vote standard to the election bill because the election bill is too vital.

The second is to rehabilitate, reenergize the filibuster, return to the vision

that if you want to slow things down, you have to be on the floor speaking. The way that it worked was that you kept that power in place by making sure there were continuous speeches, one after the other, because if there was a break, the Chair could call the question. That means it comes before the public. That is a good thing. The public of the United States will see us arguing the pros and cons of whether to defend or not defend the voting rights of Americans. They would see us debating whether to stop billionaires from buying elections or not with dark money. They would see us debating the finer points of stopping gerrymandering so the principle of equal representation would either be honored or not honored. That debate would be healthy for the United States of America.

Those are the only two possibilities right now to have an election bill enacted to protect the rights of Americans: a carve-out or restore the filibuster.

I powerfully believe the best path is to restore the filibuster. The Senate is better off by having the rights of the minority honored, the ability of minority Members to be heard; to slow things down to seek amendments; to slow things down to seek compromise; to slow things down to make sure a complicated bill has been weighed in by experts; to slow things down to make sure the press has been able to examine what is in the bill. That is all positive. That doesn't happen with a carve-out.

So I hope we will reinvigorate the filibuster; that all 50 of us will say: Let's restore the balance in the Senate where the minority can slow things down for those valuable reasons but ultimately cannot block a final vote being taken.

This idea was here from the start. The initial Senate--26 Members-- they had a motion to move the prior question in the rule book, but they never used it. So in 1805, when Aaron Burr directed the rewriting of the rules, he said: We never use this rule, so let's take it out because we all listen to each other before we vote.

That is a big positive. Every Member should be heard in this Chamber. Every Member should be able to participate and have the ability to put amendments forward, have their voice heard. We should not become the House. The House of Representatives--the majority runs over the top of the minority.

It is a better Chamber for having the voices of minority and majority weighing in on legislation, having amendments from both parties being considered. That is the reinvigoration of the filibuster in its best light.

You know, a year ago and 1 day, a mob attacked the Presidential election, but in the ensuing year, we have had 19 States attack Federal elections for House and Senate Members by changing the rules in their State prejudicially to try to block the young, the college students, the Tribal members, the Black Americans from voting. It is wrong, but it is happening, and it is on our shoulders, our responsibility, to stop that.

Earlier, I referred to the fact that the path of democracy is not the road most taken. Most of the people in the world operate under authoritarian governments. We have been the shining light to the world to say the right thing in human rights is for governance to flow up from the people, not down from the powerful. We have been that light. But if we cannot make this Chamber function, then the world does not look at us and say, That is the model we want to follow. If we cannot protect the rights of Americans to vote because their names are stripped out of the voting rolls or they are blocked from registering to begin with or blockades are put around the ballot box to make it hard for them to participate, then we are not in a position where the world looks to us and says, That system works. So it is incumbent on us to fix it.

As I was thinking about these roads, the authoritarian road and the democratic road, the role of the Republic and the Republican road being the road less taken, it brings to my mind the poem by Robert Frost, ``The Road Not Taken.''

Two roads diverged in a yellow wood,

And sorry I could not travel both.

He goes on to say at the end of the poem:

Two roads diverged in a wood, and I--

I took the one less traveled by,

And that has made all the difference.

That is how his poem ends.

We have taken the road less traveled, the road of power flowing up from the people. It is the right road to take, and it makes the difference.

Look at the vast difference between human rights being crushed by China, enslaving a million people in Xinjiang Province, stripping the democratic voice of the people, the right to free speech in Hong Kong, versus the freedom we have in our Nation. Our road is the right road. We have to make it work. To make it work, we need to pass the Freedom to Vote Act and the John Lewis Voting Rights Act, and we need to do it now.

Mr. President, we have started a new year, 2022, filled with opportunities and possibilities. Yet, even as we contemplate new beginnings, many things remain the same, especially when it comes to the crimes and atrocities being carried out by the Chinese Communist Party.

The genocide against the Uighur Muslims is still ongoing--a million individuals enslaved. The attacks on democracy and the silencing of free speech in Hong Kong continue. In fact, it was just announced that one of Hong Kong's last remaining pro-democracy news outlets, Citizen News, is shutting its doors because it cannot continue operations under the current climate of repression under China's national security law. In spite of all that, just 31 days from today, leaders and athletes from across the world will gather in Beijing to celebrate the opening ceremonies of the 2022 Winter Olympic Games.

The Olympic Games are meant to inspire and to bring people together to build a better world, using sports to foster what the Olympic movement describes as a peaceful society, concerned with the preservation of human dignity, but China is not using these games to advance human dignity; it is using the games to polish its international image and hide its crimes and abuses. A peaceful society, concerned with the preservation of human dignity, would not idly stand by and allow its government to silence those who speak out for the rights of their fellow workers. Yet we see that happening time and time again in China.

This picture is of Fang Ran. He is a 26-year-old Ph.D. student in Hong Kong University's Sociology Department, where he studies Chinese labor relations and the Chinese labor movement. It is reported that Fang, while conducting fieldwork on his thesis about labor empowerment in China, in his hometown on the mainland last August, was taken into custody by the Chinese authorities under the phrase ``residential surveillance at a designated location.''

What is ``residential surveillance at a designated location''?

It is a coercive measure that allows authorities to hold individuals for up to 6 months, with no access to lawyers and no access to family at all.

Apparently, his research, as well as frequent social media posts about workers' rights, sexual harassment, and the displacement of migrant workers, put him on Beijing's radar.

According to one article, this young man roamed the factory towns of southern China, immersing himself in workers' lives and supporting them while they tried to strike or seek compensation for work injuries.

Even the fact that he is a loyal member of the Communist Party did not save him from officials' ire. One of his friends said that, in the months leading up to his disappearance, Fang had repeatedly been asked to drink tea. ``Drink tea'' is a code word for being summoned for questioning and harassment by Chinese security services. It has now been 4 months since the last time he was invited to ``drink tea,'' and he has not been seen again. He has been detained because of his advocacy for workers in China--workers, in fact, like 31-year-old Chen Guojiang, a gig delivery worker. Gig delivery workers were essential during the pandemic to deliver food, groceries, and other needed items.

While delivering scores of takeout orders a day, Chen would film short videos that showed the dangerous working conditions of the delivery workers, and he used those videos to advocate not just for better pay but for action against powerful Chinese e-commerce companies that benefit from fostering dangerous work conditions. Whether he intended it or not, this man, driving along on his electric scooter, wearing his bright, windproof jacket, became a rarity in China--a labor leader and organizer.

Then, suddenly, last February--almost a year ago--he disappeared. Over the course of the COVID pandemic, a movement for labor rights had begun to grow and gained mainstream traction, and delivery workers like Chen, who were lifelines for untold millions, could be seen outside every apartment building and every office building. There were symbols of this growing movement.

So, in the eyes of the Chinese Government, individuals like Chen had to be stopped--stopped from advocating, in even the smallest way, for any sort of collective effort to improve the condition of Chinese workers. So, almost a year ago, he was detained and given the catchall charge of ``picking quarrels and provoking trouble.'' So many dissidents in China have been detained over the last few years for picking quarrels and provoking trouble because Chen believed, as he said in one of his videos, that ``delivery workers are humans, too, not robots, though the system wants to make us like cogs in a machine.'' His case is being handled with great secrecy by authorities.

About a month into his detention, friends and supporters began collecting donations to cover his legal fees. They raised about $20,000, but then the Chinese officials contacted every person who donated, warning them not to help Chen. When the officials visited his parents to deliver a notice of his detention, they demanded his father sign the notice even though it was impossible for his father to read what was on the notice because of several lines being smudged out. So the father had no idea what he was actually acknowledging on that paperwork. Chen, for advocating for improvements in worker conditions, is facing up to 5 years in a Chinese prison.

His status and his future are unclear, but I call on the Chinese Government: Release those you have detained, like this young man who was working to make conditions better for workers in China.

Well, here we are, just 31 days from the start of the Winter Olympics in China--Olympics that the International Olympic Committee says are about a peaceful society concerned with the preservation of human dignity.

I say to the Chinese Government: Wouldn't it be the right thing to do for human dignity to release individuals who have simply spoken up like these two young men did for their fellow workers?

I say to the International Olympic Committee: Wouldn't it be the right thing for you to call on the Chinese Government to release individuals like these two young men who have simply spoken up to improve the condition of their fellow workers? Wouldn't that be consistent with human dignity?

I will tell you what is not consistent with human dignity, and that is Chinese genocide against the Uighur community, enslaving near a million people. What is not consistent with human dignity is striking down the free press in Hong Kong. The slogan of the Washington Post is, ``Democracy Dies in Darkness,'' and that is the goal of the Chinese Government--to drive a stake through the democratic rights of Hong Kong citizens.

As we approach these games, let us not allow the Chinese Government and the Communist Party to hide their repression behind the glitz and glamour of Olympic Gold. Let's, instead, dedicate ourselves to calling out, time and time again, the oppression the Chinese Government is engaged in and demand justice that delivers human dignity.

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

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

I join with my colleague from Florida, Senator Rubio, in calling out genocide in China. It is a terrible term describing horrific acts in which humanity assaults humanity.

Just 7 weeks from now--7 weeks from this Friday--there is going to be the opening ceremonies of the Olympic Games in China, and there is going to be fancy dances by minorities from across the country. And China will be saying to the world: See what a beautiful country we have, with all this diversity, including people from Xinjiang Province, the Uighurs.

Behind those fancy performances in the opening ceremonies, there is a very, very ugly truth. That ugly truth is that the Chinese Government is committing genocide against the Uighur population. More than a million Uighurs are enslaved, and they are enslaved to produce products for the world for the profit of China.

And I don't think anyone in America wants us to be complicit in genocide by buying these products. That is what this bill is all about.

It is to say: Companies, when you produce things in Xinjiang, make sure that the supply chain is investigated and is untainted by these horrific acts.

This is bipartisan. This is bicameral. This is the best of the American spirit. And so I strongly, strongly support passage of this act. We passed it before. As my colleague just mentioned, we passed it unanimously. And now we have a version that has been worked out with the House version. It is ready to roll.

So, colleagues, let's get this done as a powerful statement of where America stands on human rights, a powerful statement that we are against genocide, a powerful statement that, when it comes to these human rights principles, we stand together--Democrat and Republican, House and Senate.

I extend my appreciation to our colleagues in the House, Congressman Smith and Congressman McGovern. We all worked together on the Congressional-Executive Commission on China. We held a series of hearings to understand better not just the horrific acts that are occurring in Xinjiang but also horrific acts that are happening in Tibet and Hong Kong. But this bill focuses on the genocide against the Uighurs. Let's get this done. It matters. Let's act now.

Madam President, in 1948, the world came together to adopt the United Nations Declaration of Human Rights to declare with one voice that every single person on Earth is ``born free and equal in dignity and rights.'' They declared that ``no one shall be subjected to arbitrary arrest, detention or exile''; that ``everyone has the right to freedom of thought'' and everyone has a right to ``freedom of opinion and expression.''

This is Yu Wensheng, a human rights lawyer based in Beijing. His rights are being denied to him because he is arbitrarily detained after being arrested for exercising freedom of expression and freedom of opinion.

Yu has a history of ruffling feathers in Beijing. He is known for criticizing the Communist Party, for supporting the ``Yellow Umbrella'' movement for rights in Hong Kong, and for taking on politically sensitive cases. Beijing has retaliated by destroying his legal career and making it impossible for him to practice law.

Yu Wensheng has been in Chinese custody since January of 2018 because he dared to publish an open letter calling for political reforms, such as holding fair elections.

The day after he published that letter calling for fair elections, law enforcement officers, including police and armored vehicles, confronted him while he was walking his son to school and forced him into a police vehicle on suspicion of ``picking quarrels and provoking troubles.'' Police had no regard for his son's safety at that moment. Authorities later added the charge of ``inciting subversion,'' a charge often used against human rights advocates and typically carrying a sentence of up to 5 years.

Two years would go by before Yu was allowed to speak to his wife; 2 years before he was allowed to speak to his son; 2 years before he was allowed to meet with his defense lawyers. During those 2 years, he was secretly tried and convicted. In June of 2020, he was sentenced to 4 years in prison--all without any defense lawyers present, without his family being even informed.

He suffered greatly during this incarceration. He was beaten up by a group of inmates and sustained injuries to his head. His right hand suffered nerve damage--damage that occurred in a previous detention-- and is now shaking so violently, he can barely use it. He has had to learn to write with his left hand.

His appeals have been denied. He was sent to serve his sentence in a prison 600 miles away from Beijing despite repeated requests from his wife that he serve out his sentence closer to home so his family could visit.

That type of action is the exact opposite of the U.N. Declaration of Human Rights, that declaration that no one should be subjected to arbitrary arrest, detention, or exile. This man was subjected to arbitrary arrest, detention, and exile simply for expressing the opinion that there should be fair elections. He is not alone.

Today, I will also highlight a Chinese journalist. Her name is Haze Fan. She worked in Beijing for Bloomberg, covering global business issues. Before

working with Bloomberg in 2017, she worked for other major international outlets, household names like Reuters, CNBC, CBS, and Al Jazeera.

On December 7, 2020, just over a year ago, Ms. Fan was being escorted from her apartment by security officials. She was detained on suspicion of endangering China's national security, although a year later, the investigation into Ms. Fan is still ongoing, with no details of what she is accused of or even where she is held. She was a journalist, and a message is being sent.

Certainly, this is not consistent with the U.N. Declaration of Human Rights that says that everyone has the right to freedom of thought and to freedom of opinion and expression because for being a journalist, she is being detained.

As I stand here at this moment, 127 journalists like Haze Fan are detained in China, according to the statistics compiled by Reporters Without Borders. It is no wonder that China is at the very bottom of Reporters Without Borders' World Press Freedom Index, right there with North Korea, Turkmenistan, and Eritrea.

This is what is happening in a country that just 7 weeks from now will be hosting the Olympic Games--Games meant to be a celebration of camaraderie, physical achievement, and lifting up the human spirit. But it is Yu Wensheng and Haze Fan and all others like them detained by the Chinese Government for demanding the recognition that all are ``born free and equal in dignity and rights'' who deserve to have their spirits lifted up. They deserve to know where the world stands. Does the world stand with them?

Now, the United States and the United Kingdom, joined by Canada and joined by Australia--they have declared diplomatic boycotts of February's Games. I am very proud that the Government of the United States has declared this boycott. They said that they will not join the fanfare of the Games, helping China to disguise the egregious human rights abuses against individuals like these; that we will not stand with our diplomats at those opening ceremonies when China has stripped the political rights of every single citizen in Hong Kong. We will not have our diplomats there in opening celebrations, helping China cover up its genocide against the Uighur people. But tonight, I am wondering where the rest of the free world is.

You know, I was thinking a little bit about the history of France-- the history of France being very engaged in human rights issues. France stood with the United States as an ally when we fought for our freedom. France gifted our Nation with the symbol of freedom, the Statue of Liberty, whose torch is held up to the world. France authored the Declaration of the Rights of Man and of the Citizen not in 1990 but in 1789--one of the very first documents laying out the foundations of human rights, defining individual and collective rights. Where is France tonight--standing with the United States and Canada and Australia? They are not there.

I am really disappointed to hear President Macron saying that any such boycott would be ``insignificant.'' Do you know what is significant? Going to the opening celebrations and helping China cover up genocide and stripping Hong Kong of political rights. It is not just significant and substantial, it is wrong.

France, we call on you to continue the tradition of fighting for freedom, the tradition that led you to stand with us, that led you to send us the Statue of Liberty, that led you to craft one of the first documents in the world for human rights in 1789.

The Education Minister of France argued that sport should be separate from political interference. When you put the Games in a nation engaged in genocide, you put the athletes in the middle of the worst of world horrors and ask them to be complicit in covering up by engaging in the Games as if nothing else was going on.

You know, it was 1936 that the Olympic Games were held in Hitler's Germany. He was already engaged in serious human rights violations. He turned down those violations during the Games, and the world said: Germany is coming back into the family of nations. We did not as a world highlight his ongoing crimes at that time, which emboldened him to horrific acts that followed soon upon the close of those Games. That was a mistake, to help Hitler cover up the human rights abuses of the Nazis, and it is a mistake for us now to help China cover up its horrific human rights abuses.

So I call on France to join us in this boycott, this diplomatic boycott, to say: Yes, it is too late for the Games to move. I regret that. I called on them to be moved. But it is not too late to strip away the pomp and circumstance of the opening Games. It is not too late to call out the serious, egregious conduct occurring in China--not some petty serious problem but genocide and the crushing of the entire state of Hong Kong, the entire entity of Hong Kong, in terms of their political rights.

France, join us, as you have over time, in standing for human rights.

Madam President, a powerful tornado stretched across 200 miles, never leaving the land, and perhaps the longest streak of tornado destruction we have ever seen in the United States of America. And my heart goes out to all those families who have been so impacted, all those who are lost, all those who are without a home, all those whose lives have been turned upside down.

We, the Senate, must act to be supportive of our fellow Americans who have faced such incredible destruction.

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

Mr. President, few things are harder in this job than when you have to say goodbye to a member of your team. With all of the time we spend together, it is impossible not to grow close to the men and women who make up that team. The team members become our colleagues, our friends, our families.

I am here on the floor today to recognize and bid farewell to a valued and integral member of my Senate family who, after more than 5 years, is leaving to start the next chapter of her career. She is my State communications director, Sara Hottman.

During her time on Team Merkley, Sara has not only helped communicate my message to the people back home in Oregon about the work I am doing on their behalf here in DC, but she has used her well-connected ear to the ground to help keep me in the loop on issues evolving back home.

I have come to depend on her to keep me on the right track. She never shies away from delivering hard truths when they are needed. She has used her vast experience in all different facets of the communications world--as a reporter, as the communications director for a municipality, as head of strategic communications for the Oregon Zoo-- to help deliver our message to the people of the State. It doesn't hurt that in her spare time, Sara is a prolific kickboxer. So when she tells me something, I listen. She has been a real leader in our team, including participation in our Diversity, Equity and Inclusion Steering Committee.

She has done an amazing job time and time again putting together State events. We have traveled all across our sizable State for events that included press conferences to announce policies; press conferences to hear from stakeholders in our State--for example, roundtables with nurses and medical professionals who are on the frontlines fighting the pandemic. Our events included townhalls--a gathering with community leaders in every county every year, followed by a public townhall with people who will ask any question they want. Our events included tours of State disasters. She expertly organized every event, ensuring media exposure and successfully striving to bring together a wide variety of expert and local voices to ensure that I was always learning more insights and perspectives on the issues that face us.

At the end of the day, as we prepared to overnight somewhere around the State in preparation for another long day, she always knew the perfect local watering hole for the team to post up at to reminisce on how things had gone and to recover in preparation for the day that followed.

When something went off the rails unexpectedly, she found a way to turn

it into an opportunity. When I was surveying damage to a town incinerated by the 2020 Labor Day fires, I became so immersed in examining the fire damage that the rest of the delegation went on to the next event, and suddenly I realized we were left behind. She didn't miss a beat. She used that time to gather more local community members who had been so impacted by the devastation of losing their homes. She managed to find a reporter who had also been left behind and arranged an impromptu one-on-one exclusive. So I utilized that opportunity to learn more and to communicate more when it could have just been a misstep. Well, that is what she does--turns missteps into opportunities.

Cool and calm under pressure, she has a way of making everyone feel important and seen. She connects with folks everywhere she goes.

I was thinking back to one townhall we did in early 2020 before the pandemic hit and shut things down. It was a small gathering in a classroom of a local school, but in that group was a young girl who was simply entranced by Sara. Throughout the townhall, she was following her around, imitating when Sara would take photos and asking questions of Sara even though the townhall was underway. Sara, being the person she is, kept answering those questions, kept letting the girl shadow her, still managing to get all of her work done while also inspiring this admirer. That is kind of just the charming ability to connect with folks and to stay calm in unexpected situations that have made traveling around the State long, busy travel days a real joy for the entire team.

When the pandemic turned our world upside down in March of last year, she used her leadership and organizing skills to help me and the entire team transition to the new virtual world we were suddenly thrown into. She turned our townhalls and our weekly sessions of local Oregon reporters and television stations into virtual events so I could continue to provide information and connect with constituents during this extraordinary national crisis. She led the charge in updating our website to provide a one-stop shop of resources for residents and local businesses for information on how to get the help they needed.

To say that Sara will leave a large hole in our team when she heads off to her new responsibilities would be an understatement. Every member of our office, whether in Washington, DC, or back home in Oregon, is going to miss her bright smile, her sharp wit, her infectious energy, and her brilliant mind--not to mention that we will also miss her border collie, Liz, who has been a therapy dog for all of us.

Sara, if you are watching, and I hope you are, know that we all, the extended Team Merkley family, wish you well in the next phase of your career. Thank you for all you have done these past 5-plus years, and thank you for all you will continue to do to help build a better world for the people of Oregon and the people of our Nation.

I suggest the absence of a quorum.

Madam President, not too long ago, we had a vote on whether or not to start a debate on the John Lewis Voting Rights Act. And the majority said, yes, start the debate.

Then why aren't we here in that debate?

Well, the simple answer is we have a process whereby you have to have 60--a supermajority of the Senate decide to start a debate. In other words, there is ability to exercise a veto over whether or not a bill is worthy for consideration on this floor, even if it is supported by the majority of legislators.

That effort is really about destroying the ability of this Senate to address the big issues facing America.

What bigger issue is there in a Republic than stopping billionaires from buying elections; to stop gerrymandering from destroying equal representation; to stop State laws that create prejudicial barriers designed to target specific groups to keep them from voting; barriers at the ballot box to steal the right to vote? What bigger, more fundamental issues are there than that?

Yet we can't even start a debate. In fact, we spend a lot of time debating whether to debate, and that is wasted time on the floor.

So, truly, that vote we took was symbolic of two things. The first is that we are failing to address one of the biggest issues we face in this Nation: the integrity of our election system, the corruption of our election system.

And, second, that this Senate has become dysfunctional.

When Ben Franklin was walking out of the Constitutional Convention, he was asked by a woman what kind of government they had created--a Monarchy or a Republic? And he is reported to have responded: A Republic, if you can keep it.

We have strived through 234 years to keep that Republic through war, through depression, through social unrest, through global pandemic. We fought for 234 years to ensure that, as expressed by Lincoln at Gettysburg, ``government of the people, by the people, for the people, shall not perish from the earth.'' But, as the American philosopher John Dewey once said, ``Democracy has to be born anew every generation.''

It is up to each generation to take up the cause and fight to protect the foundations of our Republic. We are facing a moment of crisis once again when this institution has veered far afield from that time when it was declared to be the world's greatest deliberative body. Now it is perhaps the world's most dysfunctional legislative body--unwilling and unable to even debate, let alone vote, on the biggest issue of our time: the defense of our Republic from the corrupting forces of power, of billionaires buying elections, of gerrymandering, and certainly of barriers at the ballot box.

So we have a responsibility to take up this cause, to understand its source, and to address it, to restore the Senate as a deliberative body.

One of the ways to evaluate our dysfunction is to look at the trend and number of amendments considered on the U.S. Senate floor.

In the 109th session of Congress, 2005 to 2007, there were 314 amendments. In the 116th, the 2 years just passed, there were 26. So 314 amendments to 26. And most of the amendments that were allowed of those 26 went to just 2 Members, so most Members had no opportunity to offer amendments.

The trends in cloture filings--that is a motion to close debate--give us some understanding of what has happened. They were extremely rare in the past because the Senate understood it was a simple majority body. That is the way the Founders designed it. So very rarely there had to be an effort to actually close debate because Members went on forever speaking, but it was rare--in 1910 through 1919, just three times; in 1930 through 1940, four times; and in 1950 to 1960, two times. But then, in 1970 forward, things changed. From 1970 to 1975, there were 57 filings to close debate in 4 years versus 34 from 1910 forward to 1970.

This explosion--and that was just on policy legislation--led to a reform in 1975. The rule for closing debate--the old rule of two-thirds of Senators voting was changed to three-fifths of Senators duly chosen or sworn. That is 60 votes regardless of how many people were on the floor voting.

That rule change was started, if you will--generated just in those years from 1970 to 1974 where you had these 57 cloture motions, which is nothing compared to today--nothing--which I will expand on.

But that 1975 rule change--because instead of saying it was a percentage of those present and voting, instead, it was a percentage of the Senate, it means that, unwittingly, we transformed the way that you delay things in order to exercise leverage.

We had, under the old rule, a public process where you had to take the floor as I am right now and speak at length in order to delay while your teammates worked to negotiate an amendment, negotiate a compromise, make sure the public had read the bill, make sure the press had seen the bill, make sure the Senators had vetted the bill. All those are valuable. That delay in order to improve the process is valuable.

Under the old rule, it was a public process. The whole Nation saw it, and they could judge whether you were a champion or whether you were a disaster, and you got that feedback. Under that old rule, it was not just a public process, but it took enormous energy.

Under the new rule--a no-show. It is not necessary to show up for debate and not necessary to show up to vote. It is a no-show, no-effort veto that transformed this Senate. Well, the result was that it made it so easy to obstruct that people decided to obstruct a lot. That 1975 cloture rule backfired by creating this no-show, no-effort obstruction.

Let me give you a sense of this. During the period 1960 through 1970, there were some 25 cloture motions to close debate, but in the next decade, over 100 in the seventies; in the eighties, over 200; in the nineties, over 300; in the 2000s, over 400; and in 2010 through 2020, 1,029 motions to close debate. That is the disaster we are living in right now. Instead of it just being ``Let's slow things down on final passage,'' it became ``Let's slow things down on amendments.'' So we went from zero cloture motions on amendments from 1920 through 1960 to 143 just in one 10-year period. It expanded to nominations. We went from zero from 1910 through 1960 to 545 during 2010 through 2020. In motions to proceed to legislation, we went from zero during the fifties to 175 in 2010.

So this process of a supermajority vote to proceed expanded from being rare to being common. It expanded from being on final passage of legislation to everything--amendments, motions to proceed--every aspect of the work we do here.

Now, here is the very strange thing: This use of a supermajority would absolutely have astounded and appalled our Founders. Our Founders were operating under the Confederation Congress at the time they were writing the Constitution. The Confederation Congress had a requirement for a supermajority, and that supermajority paralyzed the Confederation Congress. They were not able to raise an army to put down Shays' Rebellion. They were not able to raise money to pay for the Revolutionary War veterans.

So our Founders said: Whatever you do, don't adopt a supermajority.

We have Hamilton writing:

If two thirds of the whole number of members had been

required . . . the history of every political establishment

in which this principle has prevailed, is a history of

impotence, perplexity, and disorder.

Hamilton, in another Federalist paper, wrote:

If a pertinacious minority can control . . . [the] majority

. . . tedious delays; continual negotiation and intrigue;

contemptible compromises of the public good [will result].

Then we have Madison, who said:

In all cases where justice or the general good might

require new laws . . . or active measures . . . the

fundamental principle of free government would be reversed

[under a supermajority]. It would be no longer the majority

that would rule: the power would be transferred to the

minority.

He is pointing out that it stands the very structure of a legislative body on its head.

He went on to note that the result of the supermajority--remember, they were experiencing this under the Confederation Congress--is to produce the

following: that the ``minority might take advantage of it to screen themselves from equitable sacrifices to the general weal, or, in particular emergencies, to extort unreasonable indulgences.''

Here, are our Founders saying: We experienced the supermajority. Don't ever do it.

They wrote the Constitution so a supermajority was reserved only for special circumstances, like evicting Members, like considering a treaty, like overruling a Presidential veto.

So why are we here today doing exactly what the Founders said not to do and experiencing exactly the results that they had experienced under the Confederation Congress?

My friends, we have a responsibility to restore the function of this body. We need to streamline the nomination process. Think about how a nomination works. You vote to go to executive session. You have a motion to proceed to a nomination. You vote on proceeding. You hold a debate, you hold a vote, and then you proceed it, and then you hold a debate, and then you vote, and then you have 2 hours of postdebate, and then finally a vote. That is a crazy system to be able to consider a nomination. It takes up huge amounts of our time when a simple vote to proceed, limited debate, simple vote to proceed to on the floor, simple time to consider it, and a vote on whether or not you are going to allow the person to fill the position the person has been nominated for--this sort of streamlining would save us all a tremendous amount of time that could be dedicated to actual debate and actual amendments.

Then there is this use of a supermajority on motions to proceed to legislation, using a blockade to prevent debate, not to facilitate debate, as is sometimes argued for the supermajority--that it can slow things down, facilitate debate, make sure bills are read, make sure there is a chance of negotiation--no, to prevent debate. We shouldn't spend time debating whether to debate. Let's just have a set hour to consider whether to move to a bill, and then we either move to it or we don't.

How about amendments? I noted the collapse of the ability of Senators to amend. Senators in the minority want to do amendments. Senators in the majority want to do amendments. We all have ideas and thoughts on how to change things and improve things. We want to make our case, but we don't get to do it here anymore.

Don't we have a bipartisan, vested interest in restoring amendments to the deliberations of the Senate? You know, I was pondering this question because we seem to be locked in a cycle where, given partisan differences in the Nation--partisan differences that are increased by social media and increased by cable television--we just can't seem to come together to be able to make this place work as it is supposed to, as it is our responsibility to do. But we have gotten to the point where we are utterly--utterly--damaging the United States of America.

You know, the President of China, President Xi, is saying: Hey, there is a world competition between democratic republics and an authoritarian world. Look what we have done in China. We went from bicycles, and then we had cars and traffic jams, and now we have bullet trains, 16,000-mile bullet trains. Look what we are accomplishing. Look how many millions are lifted out of poverty. Look how paralyzed the United States is.

Why is the United States paralyzed? Because this Chamber cannot discuss a simple debate and vote like every State legislature across this country does.

Colleagues, let's come together. Let's restore debate. Let's restore amendments. Let's save and savor and improve the ability of the minority to participate in the process, but let's also remember that balance of the Senate involves getting to a final decision, a simple majority vote as the Founders had intended.

Madam President, I come to the floor today to introduce the Department of the Interior, Environment, and Related Agencies Appropriations Bill for Fiscal Year 2022. Of course, that is the fiscal year that began on October 1.

Like my colleagues on the Appropriations Committee, I am thrilled about the great work that has been done over many months to craft spending bills that lift up the ideals of our country and put the needs of workers and families ahead of the desires of special interests.

As chair of the Interior and Environment Subcommittee, I can say that this is certainly true for the Interior bill that Senator Murkowski and I, along with members of the subcommittee, have worked so hard to create.

And I want to especially thank Senator Murkowski and our fellow subcommittee members for their contributions to this bill.

The Interior bill raises some of the more complex and challenging issues facing America, so we are delighted that it has been filed today.

Together, we have crafted a bill that recognizes not only the danger that hotter, more devastating wildfires, longer fire seasons themselves pose, but the dangers of smoke from them. That smoke is making a bigger and bigger impact back home on our crops and on our entertainment because of outdoor venues being shut down and certainly upon people's health. The bill makes critical investments to lessen the peril.

It doubles the funding for hazardous fuels reductions. When you hear that term, you may not be sure what it means. What we are talking about is the buildup of fuels in the forest that make the wildfires so much worse. So it doubles the funding to take out those fuels to $360 million so the Forest Service can treat more of the highest risk acres of forest lands.

We particularly want to see a concentration of the wild land-urban interface so that the fires are slowed down and can be attacked more aggressively when they are close to our towns.

I will never forget the Labor Day fires of a year ago, where I drove 600 miles up and down our State and never got out of the smoke, and town after town after town was burned to the ground.

This is why we have to invest in reducing the fuels in our forest and making them more fire resilient.

The bill doubles the funding for the Collaborative Forest Landscape Restoration program to $80 million instead of $40 million to help fund critical projects that will improve forest landscapes and add to the resiliency while also removing limitations on how many projects could be in each region each year.

You know, the thing about these landscape restoration programs, it brings together the stakeholders from the entire spectrum--from the timber companies, the environmental groups, the local elected officials, the Indian Tribes--to work out a prescription on how to treat the forest, and then that treatment stays out of the courts.

So it brings an end to the timber wars that have so often frustrated so many on all sides while thereby being successful in treating the forests, producing more saw logs for the mill, producing more jobs in the forests, more jobs in the log trucks. So it is a win for fire resiliency; it is a win for jobs; it is a win for our timber industry.

Funding in this bill goes a long way to transitioning to a larger, permanent forest fighting--firefighting force where firefighters risking their lives now get a minimum pay of at least $15 per hour. And that doesn't sound like very much, but it is an elevation from the minimum wages of the past.

And it provides $10 million to create a new EPA grant program to help States, Tribes, local governments, and others prepare for and protect against the hazards of wildfire smoke.

In recent years, whether it is the impact of air quality on those with breathing and health issues or the tourism industry or industries like our wineries and our vineyards, the smoke that can blanket Oregon from fires during fire season has been nearly as devastating as the fires themselves.

Our subcommittee has also crafted a bill that takes on the climate crisis with the seriousness it deserves while we are striving to preserve our lands and our natural wonders. There is no question the planet is getting warmer. Our oceans are getting more acidic as carbon dioxide is transformed into carbonic acid. That is having a big impact on our ecosystems on the Oregon coast. We are facing more extreme weather--droughts, storms, flooding, heat waves--but for too long, we haven't come anywhere close to doing enough to confront this crisis.

We are starting to make changes through the Interior appropriations bill. The bill makes major investments in EPA's climate and enforcement programs, including a 46-percent increase in the clean air and climate program to tackle the crisis, restore clean air capacity, and expand and modernize air quality monitoring. And it provides an extra $56 million for the Agency's enforcement and compliance efforts and over $40 million for the Climate Conservation Corps that will create jobs while jump-starting efforts to dramatically expand on-the-ground conservation work to address the impacts of climate change; conserve and restore public lands and public waters; bolster resilience, increase reforestation, protect biodiversity, and improve access to recreation.

There is also $73 million in new funding to the start the process of transitioning the Interior Department from fossil fuel vehicles to zero-emission vehicles. It is something that has to happen across our entire government.

Finally, we have worked together to craft a bill that makes unprecedented, long overdue investments in Tribal communities, in their health systems, their education systems, social services, water resources and infrastructure, and in law enforcement. For far too long, our Tribal communities haven't received the help or the investments that they deserve. In this bill, we are starting to right that wrong.

The Bureau of Indian Affairs is getting a 15-percent increase in funding. The Indian Health Service is getting a 21-percent increase in funding. And for the first time, the Indian Health Service is getting an advance appropriations status. What that means is if the government shuts down, we don't shut down the health services for Native Americans. When that happened in the past, that was an egregious failure. You can't let that happen. This bill puts an end to that, creating peace of mind for everyone that the health service will be there when needed.

We are increasing the Bureau of Indian Education budget by 8 percent, the Native American and Alaska Natives housing programs by 18 percent. We certainly can't make up for centuries' worth of disastrous policy and chronic underfunding when it comes to Indian Country overnight, but I believe this bill and its unprecedented investments should begin to make a large stride toward fulfilling the government's treaty and trust responsibilities, showing Tribal communities that their needs are a priority.

There is a lot more in this bill. The Interior appropriations bill covers a lot of territory. But I wanted to come to the floor to share some of these highlights.

It is important that we get our funding bills for fiscal year 2022 to this floor, to the President's desk, and take all the expertise that has gone into these bills into action by bills that have passed and been implemented.

I want to provide a sense for all my colleagues that the real investments that these bills are making in our Nation are the kind of investments we need to make to ensure strong foundations for families, for our communities, and for our Nation to thrive in the years ahead.

I am grateful for the countless hours of hard work from the Members and, very importantly, from the staff who put these bills together, raising the salient issues, helping to communicate between the Republican side and the Democratic side and the House side and the Senate side and the expertise from the executive branch. The staff work that goes into a bill like this is enormous. So thank you to the staff teams on both the majority and minority side, without whom this bill would not exist.

On my team, we have Melissa Zimmerman, Ryan Hunt, Anthony Sedillo, and Martha Roberts. And on Ranking Member Murkowski's team, we have Emy Lesofski, Nona McCoy, and Lucas Agnew. To each and every one of them, thank you for your tireless efforts. And I must say that the Republican and Democratic team members worked so well together on complex and difficult issues involved in the Interior bill. So I salute them for forging that effort to have a very professional analysis and attitude as we work to solve the challenges facing America.

I look forward to joining with all my colleagues in the Chamber in passing this bill and the other appropriations bills that will put America on a path to a much better future.

Mr. President, on behalf of myself and Mr. Wicker, I rise today to recognize and celebrate the 51st anniversary of the Emergency Nurses Association. Made up of 51,000 members from all across the globe, the Emergency Nurses Association, or ENA, is the only professional organization dedicated to advancing excellence in emergency nursing and is the world's premier organization for emergency nurses.

Founded in 1970, ENA has worked successfully to raise awareness and improve outcomes for the Nation's trauma patients. Traumatic injuries, including car crashes, falls, head injuries, burns, and firearm injuries, are currently the leading cause of death for Americans aged 44 or younger. Working to improve outcomes for those who have suffered a traumatic injury, ENA offers courses for emergency nurses that provide them with the knowledge, skills, and hands-on training needed to deliver high-quality trauma care. Since 1986, ENA's trauma nursing core course has been taken by more than 2 million emergency nurses and is now considered the gold standard for the education of nurses in lifesaving trauma care techniques. Alongside their outstanding educational courses, ENA has been a fearless advocate at all levels of government for safer work environments in medical facilities and has pushed for stronger criminal laws that hold those accountable for violence against medical employees.

Especially in times of crisis, ENA has been on the frontlines of our medical profession. During the COVID-19 pandemic, when emergency rooms have been turned into battle zones against this virus, ENA has worked time and time again to ensure that nurses across this country were prepared and equipped to deal with this unprecedented crisis. Their tireless dedication to protecting and saving lives, while risking their own, should be recognized and commended by this body.

On the occasion of the Emergency Nurses Association's 51st anniversary, we ask our colleagues to join us in extending our deepest gratitude to the ENA and all its members for their commitment to improving the quality of emergency care that has continued to save the lives of millions of Americans across our country.

Madam President, Build Back Better invests in families, the foundations for our families to thrive--in education, in childcare, in healthcare, and in housing. So much is needed. It makes huge investments critical to taking on the biggest challenge facing mankind: climate chaos.

Earlier this summer, the U.N. climate panel released a report they called ``code red for humanity'' because the science shows what a dire path we are on right now.

Another report, this one coming from Save the Children and published in the journal Science, titled ``Born into the Climate Crisis,'' shows how much harder life is going to be for our children. Let me say it again: for our children--not our children's children, not our grandchildren's grandchildren; our children. On average, they will experience 2\1/2\ times more droughts than we did, three times as many floods, three times as many crop failures, twice the number of wildfires, and so forth. This is the dangerous and unforgiving world we are willfully leaving our children if we do not act now to control methane and carbon dioxide that are heating up our planet and causing these catastrophes. This is a collective effort of humankind, but America has to act and help lead the world to action.

Now, some say we simply cannot afford the investments, but the truth is, we can't not afford to act. Last year alone, America confronted 22 separate billion-dollar disasters. That came with a $95 billion pricetag to the American people. Winds and flooding and severe storms accounted for $35 billion. Hurricanes over the last 5 years cost $400 billion. Those numbers don't account for the droughts, the wildfires, the impact on sea life, ocean ecosystems, the fishing industry. They don't account for any of that.

We are facing massive economic disasters if we don't act on climate, and the way we act: We pass Build Back Better. We set ourselves on that path to net zero in the next 30 years, reducing our emissions over the next decade to half of what they were in 2005, ensuring that 80 percent of our American electricity is carbon-free by 2030, and ensuring that half of America's auto fleet is electric by the same time. We have the tools. We have to have the political will to act. So we must pass Build Back Better.

Thank you, Madam President.

Mr. President, Rube Goldberg was an American sculptor, cartoonist, and inventor best known for his cartoons that created very complicated machines to do very simple tasks.

Today, we have heard from Mitch McConnell that he wants to emulate Rube Goldberg and put our entire national economy at risk by an extraordinarily complicated method to do a simple task, and the simple task was laid out so clearly in 2006. The minority leader said we are in exactly the same position now as we were then. Well, yes. The Republicans asked the Democrats to not filibuster so that they could raise the debt limit. The tables are turned. The simple same courtesy takes away the risk to our economy.

The risk is great for disaster relief, for Medicaid, for payments to our veterans, for payments to our currently serving forces; and there are broader risks, risks that Mark Zandi has laid out, in saying a recession could result in the loss of millions of jobs, that it could result in the loss of a half a billion dollars in family wealth, that it could be--or $15 trillion in household wealth--$15 trillion.

There are moments when the political games have to stop, when the partisan warfare has to stop. The Democrats did what the Republicans suggested in 2006. We also took an alternative method that Mitch McConnell suggested in the past, which was to let, in 2011, the President raise the debt ceiling subject to an override by Congress. We have twice worked with the Republicans, at their request, for a simple method. This is not the moment for a Rube Goldberg disaster with the wealth and health of Americans at risk.

I thank the Presiding Officer.