Floor Statements

Mr. President, I come to the floor today to oppose the nomination for Secretary of Health and Human Services of Xavier Becerra.

As I stand here today, America is still fighting the worst pandemic in a century. More than half a million Americans, as we have just heard, have died of this coronavirus. Life expectancy in our country has actually dropped by a full year. Now, as a doctor, I will tell you that is a significant drop of life expectancy.

In this time of crisis, our Secretary of Health and Human Services may be the single most important member in the President's Cabinet. There are many well-qualified Democrats, in my opinion, who could serve in this position. For example, I voted to confirm President Obama's last Secretary of Health and Human Services, Sylvia Burwell. She was confirmed by a large bipartisan majority.

That is not the kind of nominee that we have this time. In the middle of a crisis, President Biden has chosen someone who is, in my opinion, both unqualified and unfit for this specific job.

First, Attorney General Becerra is unqualified. Let me talk about that. As a doctor, I am deeply concerned that President Biden has nominated someone with no medical or public health experience. He is not a doctor, not a scientist, not a public health official. He is a trial lawyer and a career politician. A global pandemic is no time for on-the-job healthcare training. The Secretary must be ready on day one.

Attorney General Becerra is not only unqualified, I say he is radically liberal in his positions. Attorney General Becerra is the most leftwing nominee for this job, in my opinion, in history. He is an aggressive culture warrior from the radical left. He supports Medicare for All, which would ban private health insurance, and 180 million people who get their health insurance through their jobs would lose it. If his positions go forward and he has his way, American workers would lose that opportunity and that benefit of their jobs.

He has made a name for himself in the Democratic Party for his extreme positions on abortion. During his 24 years in Congress, Attorney General Becerra voted against every restriction on abortion. During his confirmation hearing, Senator Daines even asked him to name a single restriction he would support. He couldn't name a single one. This record has earned him a ``100 percent'' rating from Planned Parenthood.

As a Congressman, Mr. Becerra even voted against the ban on partial- birth abortion. The Supreme Court, rightly, upheld banning partial- birth abortions in the United States.

This wasn't the only time the attorney general's positions were at odds with that of the current Supreme Court as he was attorney general in California.

During his confirmation hearing, Mr. Becerra claimed he never sued any nuns. That is his quote: ``never sued any nuns.'' He also said he only sued because of California law. Well, both of these statements stretch the truth, to put it mildly.

In 2017, the Trump administration gave a group of nuns an exception from being required to pay for birth control. The nuns say that violates their religious beliefs, having to pay for birth control. Attorney General Becerra then sued the Trump administration to stop them from giving this exemption. Attorney General of California Becerra, the nominee to be Secretary of Health and Human Services, lost at the Supreme Court by a vote of 7 to 2.

One of the jobs of the Secretary of Health and Human Services is to protect the conscience rights of doctors and nurses. Mr. Becerra's record shows he can't be trusted to do that.

There is a well-known case involving Crisis Pregnancy Centers. Now, these are groups that help women facing an unplanned pregnancy. California said

they had to advertise where these women could go to get abortions. Attorney General Becerra brought the full power of the State of California against the pro-life groups. Once again, the Supreme Court of the United States stepped in to stop him.

Mr. Becerra also used the power of his office to criminally prosecute pro-life journalists. A pro-life activist went undercover to investigate Planned Parenthood for trafficking in aborted body parts. His revelations caused outrage across the country. Attorney General Becerra charged him, the undercover reporter, with 15 felony counts.

This was too much even for Attorney General Becerra's liberal hometown newspaper. The Los Angeles Times said:

It's disturbingly aggressive for Becerra to apply this

criminal statute to people who were trying to influence a

contested issue of public policy, regardless of how sound or

popular that policy may be.

So Attorney General Becerra is a radical liberal on a whole host of issues. As attorney general of California, he sued the Trump administration over 120 different times. That is quite a few. This includes filing nine lawsuits on the very last day of President Trump's administration--the very last day, nine more lawsuits added to the pile.

He sued to try to stop President Trump from building the wall on the southern border. He sued the Trump administration to try to stop fracking on Federal lands in California. This is just the tip of the iceberg. The list goes on and on. When you look at the record, it is clear: Xavier Becerra is out of touch with the views of the American people.

President Biden has chosen an extremely liberal Cabinet. He was forced to withdraw his nominee for Budget Director. His Vice President has been the least bipartisan, in terms of a Senator of record, of any Senator in 2019. And now Attorney General Becerra seems to be the most liberal of them all.

Frankly, his selection, I think, shocked a lot of people across the country. During this pandemic, we need a leader for the Department of Health and Human Services who brings us together as a nation. Instead, the President has chosen a nominee with no public health experience and an extremely partisan record, so I urge my colleagues to reject this unqualified, incredibly liberal nominee.

Thank you.

I yield the floor.

Madam President, last month, the American people created 379,000 new jobs across our country. The unemployment rate fell to 6.2 percent. Our economy is recovering. We are actually on our way back to normal.

In early February, the Congressional Budget Office published a report on this. The report says that our economy will reach the same size that it was before the pandemic, and it will do it in just a few months. It says this summer our economy will be back to normal.

Now, the CBO made that projection weeks before the Democrats passed and the President signed into law a $1.9 trillion wish list. In other words, our economy would be back to normal even had they never passed the bill. We would be back to normal without a dime of this incredible high amount of spending

We didn't need the liberal wish list. The country doesn't need it. Yet it is obvious why Democrats rushed--rushed--their liberal wish list into law. They wanted to stamp their name on the recovery that was coming, no matter what. I have no doubt that that is the goal.

Yet the truth is clear: This is not President Biden's recovery. President Biden inherited three vaccines--successful vaccines, vaccines that work and are safe. President Biden inherited 2 million tests a day for coronavirus. President Biden inherited falling coronavirus numbers. He also inherited a recovering economy.

Last year, we saw the fastest economic recovery in American history. The unemployment rate fell by half in 6 months. The American people created more than 12 million jobs coming back from the pandemic. They did it in just 6 months. That is more jobs than were created in the 8 years of the Obama-Biden administration.

Now, this was in large part because of the foundation laid by Republicans before the pandemic, with President Trump's economic programs in the White House. Republicans cut taxes for the middle class, on job creators. We cut regulations, and we cut government redtape. We made a better trade deal with our neighbors. Our agenda worked.

Just before the pandemic hit, the unemployment rate was down to 3.6 percent. The American people created more than 7 million new jobs under President Trump. We saw record-low unemployment for Hispanic Americans, Asian Americans, and African Americans. We reached the lowest unemployment rate for women in 60 years.

When America began to reopen, the success of that agenda helped us recover at a record pace. The economy is also recovering because we are making progress against the virus.

With Republicans in the White House and a Republican majority in the U.S. Senate, we passed more than $4 trillion in coronavirus relief. Unlike the Democrats' relief wish list, all five of our bills were bipartisan. They each got 90 votes in the Senate or more.

Operation Warp Speed broke records for vaccine development. A new vaccine typically takes about 10 years from the lab to people's arms. The previous record for a vaccine was for mumps. It took 4 years. Last year, we achieved two coronavirus vaccines in 10 months. We broke records, and it wasn't even close. The Food and Drug Administration made dozens of cuts to regulations in order to make this happen.

The Biden administration has not played it straight with the American people about coronavirus. We remember when Vice President Harris said that there was ``no national strategy or plan for vaccinations.''

We were delivering millions of doses of vaccines in December. President Biden said: ``We got into office and there was nothing in the refrigerator''--``nothing in the refrigerator.''

The Biden campaign and now the Biden administration has repeatedly misled the American people on the coronavirus. They have repeatedly taken credit for things for which they deserve no credit.

Mark my words. This summer they are going to try to take credit for our recovery. If they do, they will be flat-out wrong.

Our recovery was booming under the Republican agenda, and it was an agenda of low taxes and fewer regulations. That is the agenda that the American people need to get our economy booming again.

Mr. President, I come to the floor to talk about President Biden's runaway spending proposals.

Of course, as a conservative Republican, when I look at this thing, I have to say: Wait a second. This is not something that I can support in any way.

We have a 50-50 Senate here in the United States. The Democrats have won a narrow margin in the House, but the Democrats in Washington are acting like they have won in a landslide and have a national mandate. They do not. If there is any mandate when you have a 50-50 Senate and when you have such a narrow range in the numbers between the Republicans and the Democrats in the House, you would say it is a mandate to move to the middle. That is what the American people voted for. They said: Let's get to the middle. Let's find solutions to move our country forward.

It does seem, to me, what the Democrats are doing is an unprecedented overreach. The Democrats have only had control in Washington for about a month and a half, and it has already cost the American people $1.9 trillion. It is an astonishingly large figure. It was supposed to be for coronavirus relief, but 1 percent of the money went for vaccines, and only 9 percent went to actually fighting the coronavirus. Yet, before they passed the bill, that is what the Democrats said it was for. It does seem to be the oldest page in the Democratic playbook.

We all remember the old ObamaCare bill and debate and discussion. They said it was a tax. When they needed votes in Congress, they said it wasn't a tax. Then they realized they were going to lose in court, and they said it was a tax all over again. Well, we have seen the same playbook here. They said we needed more coronavirus relief, and then they passed this liberal wish list. Once they had the votes, they admitted the bill was not about coronavirus medical relief, healthcare relief or vaccines or fighting the disease. No--a liberal wish list.

Now, don't just take my word for it. The Democratic majority leader, standing right there, called it a ``turning point'' that transforms the United States. The White House Press Secretary called it the ``most progressive bill in American history.'' One Democratic leader in the House called it an ``ideological revolution.'' I guess they forgot it was supposed to be about the coronavirus. It doesn't sound like coronavirus healthcare relief to me.

After the bill passed, Speaker Pelosi admitted this was the same bill that she put forward last summer. Back then, the New York Times looked at it and called it ``more a messaging document than a viable piece of legislation.'' POLITICO called it a ``Democratic wish list filled up with all the party's favorite policies.''

This was never a coronavirus relief bill. They used the coronavirus to cover the payoff to all of the most powerful people in the Democratic Party: $85 billion to union pension plans, irresponsibly run; $26 billion for California Gavin Newsom; $12.5 billion for New York and Governor Andrew Cuomo; a big payoff for teachers unions and potentially millions for Planned Parenthood.

President Biden signed the bill, and then he gave a speech a few hours later. In effect, he admitted the bill doesn't get us 1 day closer to reopening our country. This is what this was supposed to be about--getting kids back to school, getting people back to work, and getting the virus behind us. President Biden said ``there is a good chance'' that small groups of people can get together outside in July. Well, he said, ``that doesn't mean large events.''

The Democrats spent $1.9 trillion, and, once again, they moved the goalposts. Congress has already paid for enough vaccines for every American to get vaccinated by the end of May. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention says that getting vaccinated means getting your life back. This is what they told us. It means you can have indoor gatherings without masks. America needs to be fully open before the Fourth of July.

The Democrats haven't even finished their victory lap over the spending bill, and they are already telling us they want more. Here are just a few examples of what they propose to do, not with their money but with the American people's money--the taxpayers' money, the hard- earned dollars of the people who go to work every day and send their tax dollars to Washington.

In their $1.9 trillion wish list, the Democrats tried to double the minimum wage by Federal mandate. They failed, but they are going to keep trying.

Now, of course, the Office of Management and Budget, which took a look at this thing, said: Well, if they had succeeded, it would have forced 1.4 million Americans who have jobs right now to be out of their jobs because, when you mandate a doubling of the minimum wage, small businesses are either going to have to close or lay off certain people so they can pay the wages to others in an effort to keep the doors open. It means less tax revenue overall for the country, and it means more spending for unemployment insurance. If you add it up, it would increase the national debt by about an additional $54 billion.

In their $1.9 trillion wish list, the Democrats also wrote a big check to the teachers unions.

Now, they actually didn't need the money because, in the five bipartisan coronavirus bills that we have passed in overwhelming majorities, we sent schools $113 billion. The schools haven't even spent most of that money yet. In fact, they have only spent about $16 billion of the $113 billion. There is almost $100 billion yet to spend. On top of that, the Democrats have just put up another $170 billion in their wish list. If you add it up, that is nearly $270 billion to spend with no promise--none--to reopen the schools.

The Democratic leader wants to forgive $1 trillion in student loans. Subsidizing student loans just lets colleges raise prices. That is exactly what would happen if Leader Schumer's plan were to become law. Colleges don't need to raise prices. They need to lower the cost of education.

Senator Sanders has an even more radical proposal. He wants to forgive

all Federal student loans, and that would cost $1.6 trillion. Forgive them all. Just forgive all of the loans. It doesn't matter. Rich or poor, forgive all of the loans. Well, that would drive up the price of tuition even higher. If it allows colleges to get the money directly from the Federal Government without having to go through the students, the costs will escalate dramatically.

Let me remind my Democratic colleagues that most Americans don't have college degrees. Yet, under the Democratic plan, all taxpayers--all taxpayers--would have to pay for the college tuitions for all of the students, including those who have families who can clearly afford to pay the tuitions to the colleges which they attend. It doesn't matter. If you go to the most exclusive college or if you go to your State college, if you have a debt, we are going to get rid of it, says the Democratic proposal, and the hard-working taxpayers of America are going to be stuck with the bill. Count me out on that one.

The Democrats want to take tax dollars from people who don't have college degrees or who never went to college and give it to the leftwing professors at so many universities, and this is wrong.

President Biden also wants to double down on ObamaCare. He thinks ObamaCare didn't go far enough. According to one estimate, President Biden's healthcare plan would cost about an additional $2.25 trillion. These are astronomically large figures. His housing plan would cost $640 billion. The Democrats have proposed another $2 trillion in infrastructure spending. One Democratic Senator even called for doubling that amount--$4 trillion in new infrastructure spending.

This is just the tip of the iceberg. I could go on and on. If you add up all of the new spending proposals by the Democrats and the White House and the Senate, it could cost nearly $12 trillion. By the end of this year, the national debt is going to be bigger than our economy, and we have the biggest economy in the world. Even before the Democrats passed their wish list, we were on track this year to have the second biggest deficit since World War II.

When the Democrats increase spending, we know what is next--massive tax increases on the American public. We heard it yesterday in the news. It was in the headlines. That is President Biden's plan--the first major tax increase in 28 years. He is proposing the biggest tax increase since 1993. He wants to raise taxes on businesses and on families, and he even wants to resurrect the death tax. Let me remind President Biden what happened after 1993. A year later, the Republicans took back the House and took back the Senate.

The 2020 elections were close. The American people didn't vote for this radical agenda, and it is a radical agenda. They didn't vote for $12 trillion in new spending and new taxes with increased tax rates and increased taxes on long-term investments like your home and increased taxes like the death tax--oh--and more money for the IRS so it can send agents to investigate the American public even further.

I would urge the Biden administration and my Democratic colleagues to listen to the people and to the people from whom I hear every weekend in Wyoming. It is time to put down the credit card. It is time to stop the spending spree. It is time to move to the middle to solve problems--that would be best for our Nation if we would address them-- for the people of this great Nation.

I yield the floor.

I suggest the absence of a quorum.

Mr. President, today the Senate is debating the nomination of Deb Haaland, a Member of Congress, to serve as Secretary of the Interior. If confirmed, she will be the first Native American Cabinet member in U.S. history. This is a historic moment, and it should be recognized.

I want to be very clear with you. Representative Haaland's policy views and lack of substantive answers during her nomination hearing, in my opinion, disqualify her for this job.

In May of 2019, Representative Haaland said unequivocally in an interview with The Guardian: ``I am wholeheartedly against fracking and drilling on public lands.'' On her campaign website, she stated she wanted to ``keep fossil fuels in the ground.'' On the same site, she pledged to ``vote against all new fossil fuel infrastructure,'' period.

I, along with many western Senators, have consistently opposed nominees who hold such views, and in my opinion and the opinion of my constituents, these views are extreme.

Representative Haaland's views aren't just statements; they are backed up by legislation that she has cosponsored. As a Member of Congress, she was a day-one cosponsor of the Green New Deal. Now we are talking about destructive legislation that would not just overhaul American energy but would impact almost every sector of society and cause great harm to America's economy. That bill was so extreme that when it was brought here to the Senate floor, it received no support. None.

She also cosponsored legislation to provide permanent Federal protections for the grizzly bear. I believe that legislation is also extreme, and I will tell you why.

The legislation that she proposed as a Member of the House completely disregards the scientific conclusions of the Bush administration, the Obama administration, and the Trump administration. How many things can we name that all three of those Presidents agreed upon? But the three of them did. They all concluded--the Obama administration, the Bush administration, and the Trump administration concluded that it was time to take the grizzly bear off the endangered species list.

Both Democratic and Republican Interior Departments determined that the grizzly bear was fully recovered, but Representative Haaland has chosen instead to ignore the science and the scientists of the very Department that she is now nominated to lead. Representative Haaland's policy views are squarely at odds with the mission of the Department of the Interior. That mission includes taking species off of an endangered species list when they are recovered, and the grizzly bear is fully recovered.

That Department also manages our Nation's oil, gas, and coal resources and does it in a responsible manner, not eliminating access to them completely.

Just as troubling as her policy views were her answers to questions during the confirmation process. She struggled or refused to answer the basic questions any nominee for the Department of the Interior would be expected to know and answer. She was unwilling or unable to respond to questions about the Department, about resource policy, and about the laws that she was asked to implement.

I asked her why the Biden administration wouldn't just let energy workers keep their jobs. She had no good answer.

American jobs are being sacrificed in the name of the Biden agenda, and Representative Haaland wouldn't defend it--couldn't defend it. Senator Risch had to ask her multiple times if she supported shutting down the Keystone Pipeline before she admitted that she did. He then asked her multiple times why she thought that was a good idea, and she never really gave an answer.

Her written answers to the questions for the record were equally vague and unacceptable. In one response to a question of mine, she refused to acknowledge that the United States has higher environmental standards for oil and for gas production than Russia or Nigeria--would not acknowledge that.

The American people deserve straight answers from a potential Secretary about the law, about the rules, and about the regulations that are going to affect so many lives and livelihoods. She gave very few of those at her nominating hearing and in her written responses.

Representative Haaland's extreme views, cosponsorship of catastrophic

legislation, and lack of responsiveness disqualify her from this important position as Secretary of the Interior. If she is allowed to implement her Green New Deal-inspired policies at the Department of the Interior, the results for America's energy supply and economy will be catastrophic.

So I cannot support and will not support her nomination, and I urge other Senators also to vote against the nomination.

I yield the floor.

I suggest the absence of a quorum.

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

Mr. President, I come to the floor today to oppose President Biden's Executive orders on immigration.

Now, there are more than 11 million illegal immigrants in the country today. This is a group equivalent to the population of the entire State of Georgia, and this number has nearly tripled in the last 30 years. In fact, some experts say the number is a lot higher than that. Folks at Yale and MIT and the researchers there said it could actually be twice as high; it could be 22 million people in the country illegally. Well, that is more than the population of the entire State of New York.

So it appears to me that illegal immigration is making a mockery of our borders. Yet President Biden and this administration refuse to admit, even as of this morning, that there is a crisis at the southern border.

Now, if you talk to law enforcement all across the country, they will tell you that many of the problems that they face every day are problems related to our open southern border. The Drug Enforcement Administration has said for nearly a decade now that the vast majority of illegal drugs in America come here across the southern border.

Now, I am a doctor. I will tell you, these drugs have killed thousands of Americans. They kill thousands of Americans every year. They tear families apart. They lead to heartbreaking stories. They rob people of their God-given potential.

Our law enforcement, our Coast Guard, our border agents, they do heroic work every day to intercept drugs, to stop human trafficking. They can't do it alone. They need the support of the U.S. Senate.

Well, during the debate last week over the spending bill, we had a chance to give them support. Senator Cruz introduced an amendment to prevent checks from going to illegal immigrants. Democrats blocked it. Senator Cotton introduced an amendment to cut the bailout funding to sanctuary cities. Well, these are cities that actively try to prevent Federal agents--actively try to prevent Federal agents from enforcing our immigration laws. Democrats blocked the amendment.

So no wonder we have a crisis at the border. Democrats seem to be advertising to the entire world: Come here now. If you come here illegally, you can get a check, possibly.

If you are an immigration enforcement officer, Democrats seem to block them from doing their own job. President Biden has already issued at least seven Executive orders on immigration. In just over a month in office, President Biden has already proven to be the most open-border President in U.S. history.

Now we face an entirely predictable crisis at the border. That crisis rests squarely at President Biden's feet. On his first day in office, President Biden shut down construction of the southern border wall. By the time the day was over, President Biden stopped all deportations for a hundred days. It didn't matter to President Biden what you were going to be deported for. No. Now, maybe you are a serious criminal. President Biden says: You can stay longer. A court has already stepped in and said this is illegal, this Executive order.

President Biden has, astonishingly, brought back the idea of catch- and-release--catch-and-release. He has ordered our immigration agents to release illegal immigrants into the United States, and he is doing it in the middle of a pandemic. Senator Cotton and I sent a letter to the President raising this concern. It is now harder to go to church in some parts of America than it is to cross the border into America.

Under President Trump, if you wanted to apply for asylum in this country, you had to remain in Mexico. That was the policy. The policy of ``Remain in Mexico'' was based on the standards of international law. To get asylum, you have to show that you can't live safely in your home country because of persecution--understandable. Yet the fact is that most illegal immigrants don't come here because of persecution. They come here for economic reasons. They want a better job. They want better schools for their kids. They are understandable motives; nonetheless, they are not standards for asylum.

Now, another requirement for asylum is that you have to go to the nearest safe country and seek asylum. You don't get to pick anywhere you want to go in the world. You have to go to the nearest safe country. Yet people around the world know that our asylum system here in the United States has become a sham. It is no secret that it is easy to game the system, and it is being gamed regularly in the Biden administration.

So they often stop in at least one other safe country, and they apply for asylum here. President Biden now says: You don't have to wait in Mexico. Cross the border. We will give you a court date years from now, years from now, and after they give you the court date, they release you into the United States. Even those who know they don't qualify and will not qualify for asylum, they come anyway because they know they get released into the United States. It happens all the time.

Just before the new administration took over, the Department of Homeland Security published a report about this. According to the Department, our border agents apprehended 3.5 million illegal immigrants along the southern border between 2014 and 2019. Only 8 percent of them--only 8 percent, 1 out of 12--ended up receiving legal protection from being deported, but the Department says half of them are still here in the United States. How does that happen? They didn't show up.

President Biden has also started an unprecedented expansion of the refugee program. The most refugees that this country has ever resettled in a single

year was 85,000 in President Obama's final year in office. President Biden wants to break the record. He wants to increase it to 125,000. It will be the most, by far.

President Biden has told his administration to bring back the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals, also known as DACA. Now, this is a program for people who were brought here illegally while they were children. It is not the children's fault. Yet DACA is illegal, plain and simple.

President Obama has admitted it. Liberal activists asked him to do it. At least 10 different times President Obama said: No, I can't do it. It is illegal. Then an election year came. He decided to do it anyway.

As you and I know, we are a nation of compassionate people. We are giving. We are generous. We have the most generous immigration system in the world. The issue before us is one that should be handled by Congress, not by Executive order--not through an illegal Executive order, and DACA is still illegal. I expect a court will ultimately strike it down.

So this is some of what President Biden has done by Executive order. At the same time, he is trying to cram an even more radical agenda through Congress. Last month, President Biden's immigration bill was introduced in the Senate. It already has the support of 26 cosponsors on the Democratic side of the aisle. It includes the majority leader, Senator Schumer.

Well, this bill will give illegal immigrants not just amnesty, citizenship--citizenship. Democrats in Washington tried that in 2007, the year I arrived in the Senate. The American people picked up the phone. They actually shut down the phone lines, shut down the switchboards here in the U.S. Senate. They were all calling in to say no.

Democrats in Washington tried it again in 2013. The American people picked up the phone again. The American people said no. And we said no in the Senate. We said no in 2007, no in 2013. The American people are going to say no again in 2021.

Now, President Biden has issued, signed a lot of Executive orders; many of them, the ones I talked about with people at home this weekend in Wyoming, very unpopular. Polls show his immigration order is the most unpopular of them all.

President Biden should keep in mind that it was a very close election in November. We have a 50-50 Senate, very narrow margins in the House. The American people, for the first time, are finding out just how liberal Joe Biden is. Many of them are already having buyer's remorse. They didn't believe he would be this radical and his actions would be this scary.

President Biden needs to listen to the American people. The American people don't want a radical, extreme, dangerous, scary agenda. We want safe communities. We want laws obeyed. We want a secure border. It is time to stand up to this radical agenda.

Our immigration system is broken. Instead of breaking it further, we should work together to fix it. Let's protect our communities, protect our American workers, and secure our southern border.

I yield the floor.

I suggest the absence of a quorum.

Mr. President, I rise today to submit for the Record a letter sent to the U.S. Senate from Cathy and Bill Schreiber of Wilson,

I ask for the yeas and nays.

Madam President, first, I would like to associate myself with the outstanding remarks from the senior Senator from Iowa, whose long experience in this body is one that we all look to with great admiration and respect.

When he speaks on this, he is well known for his fundamental focus on taxpayer dollars and making sure money isn't wasted, making sure money is directed to the areas where it is supposed to go, where it is needed the most. When he points out how this is a bill basically piled on with pork--and he is from Iowa; he knows about pork--he points out how misguided this effort is, how expensive it is, and how misdirected it is.

I just want to associate myself with these wonderful remarks of the senior Senator from Iowa, and it is a pleasure and a privilege to serve with him.

Madam President, I also come to the floor today to talk about the need for integrity in our elections.

In 2020, the American people voted for a 50-50 Senate. We are in that body today. And they gave Republicans nearly a dozen more seats in the House of Representatives.

In the Presidential election, 37 electoral votes were decided by less than 1 percent in those States. Without those 37 electoral votes, President Biden would have failed to achieve a majority in the electoral college. This was a close election. The reason it is a close election is it is a closely divided country.

I am home every weekend in Wyoming and the two things I hear about is, one, this massive bill in front of the Senate right now--a $1.9 trillion amount of money that is all going to be added to the debt--and the concern for that spending. And the other issue is the integrity of our elections.

So we have a close election. We have a closely divided country. If you would think anything, that should be a mandate to move to the middle, to find common ground, and to work for solutions. It is the kind of things that the President talked about in his inaugural address on January 20.

At a time like this, Americans want to make sure that our own elections are safe and secure and fair. I think voters, no matter what their political party or predisposition is--I think all voters deserve that, and they want it.

But when Republicans raise questions about the integrity of the election, well, we are attacked, and we have seen that now. In fact, earlier this very week, the majority leader of the U.S. Senate spoke of ``the pernicious and nasty guise of election integrity.'' ``Pernicious and nasty guise of election integrity''--the majority leader of the U.S. Senate. He attacked the motives of millions of Americans who want to be confident in our elections. Every American ought to want to be confident in our elections.

But it looks like though some Democrats may accuse us of this, many Democrats share our concerns. I hear that from both sides of the aisle.

Democrats in Iowa, right now, are contesting a congressional race, and as I stand here, Democrats in the House are considering the most sweeping changes--and this is reason I am here--to election laws in decades.

Their bill is nearly 800 pages long. It is called H.R. 1, No. 1. To me, that means it is their No. 1 priority. Otherwise, why would they introduce it as their first bill and label it as H.R. 1? H.R. 1, for Democrats in the House, is not the coronavirus. It is not jobs. It is not schools. It is a change in the election process for the American people and is a big mandate coming out of Washington. So the No. 1 priority of House Democrats is not those key issues. Their No. 1 issue is elections and changing elections in our country.

The bill, interestingly, didn't go through a normal committee process as bills are supposed to do in the House or in the Senate. It went straight to the floor--from Nancy Pelosi's desk to the floor of the U.S. House of Representatives. Hundreds of pages are in there of

new mandates, and it tells each of our States how to hold elections. It doesn't read, ``States, you do it.'' It tells the States how to do it. These aren't just any mandates. These are radical leftwing mandates that people in my home State of Wyoming view as scary and say would make the elections less secure. This bill is so radical that an earlier version of it was felt to be too liberal even for the ACLU, and the latest version is even more liberal than that. I am just going to mention a few of the mandates in this bill.

H.R. 1 would force every State--force every State--to give the vote to convicted felons. This would not be a State choice but a Federal mandate. One group of Democrats even tried to give the vote to felons who are still in prison right now, but that amendment failed.

H.R. 1 would force every State to allow same-day voter registration, online voter registration, and even automatic voter registration. Automatic voter registration? Voter registration is something somebody should have to do, register to vote. If the bill were to become law, you would be registered to vote automatically, without even knowing it, and when the States automatically register you, you are not allowed to find out how they got your information. They can't tell you. In effect, voter registration would be a thing of the past. A thing that we all did as young people, register to vote, would be a thing of the past.

H.R. 1 forces States to count provisional ballots statewide. So, if you vote Democrat in one district and are from another district, they will count it as a vote for the Democrat in your district. Mistakes like this shouldn't happen, let alone should your vote be able to be changed from the vote you actually cast.

The bill also doubles down on mail-in voting. The problems with that, I think people would agree, are obvious. Amazon--and many of us shop on Amazon, if not everyone--recently tried to restrict mail-in voting for a union election at one of its facilities. That is not because Amazon has conservative leadership; it is because they say it is harder to secure mail-in voting than it is to secure in-person voting. If you want an accurate vote, in-person voting is more accurate. The reason mail-in voting was expanded last year was because of the pandemic, but now the Democrats want to carve it into stone forever.

H.R. 1 would also take government funding and give it to political campaigns. The American people have some thoughts on that. The bill actually has a 6-to-1 match for campaign donations under $200. So, if you were to donate $100 to your favorite candidate, the Federal Government would take taxpayer dollars and give an additional $600 of taxpayer money to that candidate who just got a $100 check. Hard- working people would pay their taxes knowing that their hard-earned dollars would go to fund political activity, even activity that they would not necessarily agree with.

Like so many liberal government programs, this is a system that could easily be defrauded. We see that now with the coronavirus bill as well. The Democrats know that they would still get their big corporate donations in New York and in San Francisco, but now they would get an added bonus--a 6-to-1 match--from taxpayers.

H.R. 1 would also give government-funded vouchers for people to donate to political campaigns. Political campaigns do not need taxpayer subsidies. People can decide how they want to spend their own money. The government shouldn't be redirecting it toward the party in power. The Democrats complain about money in politics all of the time. The solution, in seeing H.R. 1, apparently, is for there to be more money in politics as long as it is the taxpayers' money.

H.R. 1 ends the equal balance between the Republicans and Democrats on the Federal Election Commission. It ends it. The Democrats want to politicize the Commission that enforces our election laws. They want to make it a partisan organization. That is just another idea that would make it easier to commit fraud.

H.R. 1 doesn't just politicize the Federal Election Commission; it politicizes the Internal Revenue Service, the IRS. The Democrats want to break down the guardrails that currently keep the IRS out of politics. H.R. 1 gets rid of any of the limits on the IRS when giving tax exemptions to nonprofits. Now, think about this. Remember the scandal at the IRS under the Obama-Biden administration--a scandal, headlines. People are well aware. Well, H.R. 1 enshrines that into law. H.R. 1 gives a big stamp of approval to Lois Lerner and her behavior in the way she worked the IRS. Every Democrat who votes for the bill is saying that he or she will endorse what happened at the IRS under President Obama.

There is more, a lot more. The bill goes on and on. It is 800 pages. It is hard to believe too many Democrats have actually read it.

The bottom line is this: H.R. 1 would not reform our elections; it would deform our elections, change them dramatically. H.R. 1 makes our elections harder to secure, easier to defraud, and will cast doubt on every election into the future. That is the last thing we need in this country.

This is no time to sow doubt about our elections. People want confidence in the elections. That is why I am joined with Senator Scott of Florida, Senator Hyde-Smith, and Senator Lummis to introduce a better proposal. Our bill would make our elections safe and secure and fair. It would give people more confidence in our elections.

Our bill says: no automatic registration. The House bill repeals all voter ID laws. Our bill says, if you want to register to vote, let's make sure you are a citizen. We need to make sure of your identification. Let's make sure you have a Social Security number. Those are the sorts of things to provide integrity in the election process.

Under our bill, States can't just send out ballots in the mail based on old information, and that happened all around the country this year. You can still vote by mail. You just need to request a ballot so your information is up to date. It is the way we have done it in Wyoming. We send out requests to say, if you would like a ballot, apply for your absentee ballot, and people do. There is no question about the integrity of that system. It was in a number of States in which ballots were mailed out based on old information and without a request by a voter for that ballot that led to so many concerns about the abuse and fraud.

Our bill bans vote harvesting. It means you can't drop off somebody else's ballot.

The collection boxes they have need to be monitored. When you turn in your ballot to a ballot box, that ought to be monitored.

When votes are being counted, our bill makes sure that both sides are watching.

Our bill prohibits delays or pauses in ballot counting.

We require an audit of ballot counting systems within 30 days after the election.

Now, these are basic, commonsense measures to protect against fraud and error. You want it to be accurate. You want it to be fair.

The differences between our bill and the House's 800-page bill could not be more clear. The Republican bill makes it harder to commit fraud. The Democratic bill makes it easier to commit fraud. The Republican bill costs almost nothing. The Democratic bill costs billions. The Republican bill strengthens the protections of our elections. The Democratic bill weakens those protections and even gets rid of some of them.

This shouldn't be a partisan issue. We should all be against voter fraud. We should make it as hard to commit fraud as we possibly can. So I urge my colleagues to join me with Senators Scott and Lummis and Hyde-Smith. Let us stand for integrity in our elections. Let us give every American citizen confidence and the peace of mind that our system works

I yield the floor.

Mr. President, I have come to the floor, on several occasions now, to talk about this $1.9 trillion spending bill that will be soon before this body.

I have talked about different parts of the bill on different occasions. I have talked about the mandates, the bailouts, and the billions and billions of dollars of spending completely unrelated to coronavirus. Now, these are all reasons enough to oppose this piece of legislation.

Today, I would like to talk about another problem that I see with the bill,

and that is that this bill would now subsidize health insurance far beyond what was ever imagined when the House and the Senate passed the Obama healthcare law--way beyond the subsidies ever envisioned in that.

One analysis shows that this bill would give a family of four making close to a quarter million dollars a year--family of four making close to a quarter million dollars a year--up to $9,000 in free subsidies for healthcare.

Now, that is not four times the poverty level; that is almost four times the average income of a household in the United States.

You know, government aid is supposed to be for those who need it, people who can't make it on their own, but that has not been the focus of the Democrats with this legislation.

This legislation is not about coronavirus, not about coronavirus testing and vaccinations. They have already been paid for, so that someone who wants to get a test or get the vaccine, they get it. It was paid for previously. The vaccines are free. We don't need additional money to pay for the shot. We voted on that last year. It is the law of the land.

This new proposal, with these additional subsidies, is just going to get us this much closer to one-size-fits-all, socialized medicine.

Now, Democrats have realized for many years that the Obama healthcare law has failed America. They know it is unaffordable for working families. People understand that the copays are so high, the deductibles are so high that people who have been mandated to buy it found that they didn't really get any value for their money.

Many people I have talked to said, with ObamaCare, the premiums were so high it was actually higher than their mortgage at home.

Well, Republicans want to lower healthcare costs, actually the cost of care. Democrats seem to just want to raise what government pays.

And Democrats are also trying to pressure States to expand Medicaid. There are about a dozen States that have chosen not to expand Medicaid.

Now, I am a doctor. I know the importance of Medicaid. I know the importance of providing care for people who cannot care for themselves. Often, that is families, low-income families, pregnant women, patients with disabilities. You look at the original intent of Medicaid--huge value for the American people but not what they have seen with the ObamaCare expansion.

We should work together for these most vulnerable of individuals so that they can get the care that they need. Yet it is not what Democrats are doing with this proposal, not with the additional subsidies, not with the additional expansion of Medicaid. They are trying to bribe States--bribe States to give free care to able-bodied, working adults; not to people who were originally intended to be helped by Medicaid but for able-bodied, working adults.

Those are people who ought to be getting their health insurance through their job, through work. That is the best way this works for them, insurance that they can use without these extraordinarily high deductibles and copays that we see with ObamaCare. The contrast could not be clearer.

Republicans are offering the American people a stronger economy and opening schools. That is what we ought to be focusing on. Democrats and the healthcare law are subsidizing health insurance for the rich. It is astonishing. You wouldn't think it would be that way. It doesn't make sense. It is not coronavirus relief.

People need relief now. They want their kids back in school. They want to get back to work. They want to put the virus behind them. That is not what I see in this $1.9 trillion bill that the Senate will soon be considering.

I think only 1 dollar out of 11 of this $1.9 trillion bill actually goes to help get people back to work, kids back to school, focuses on the healthcare components of coronavirus.

The kids-back-to-school component, you say: Well, there is money to put kids back to school, but 95 percent of that money doesn't even start to get spent until 2022. The coronavirus crisis is going to be behind us by 2022.

We should be working together, targeting support for the American people who need it the most, not subsidizing people who don't actually need the subsidies.

I yield the floor.

I suggest the absence of a quorum.

Mr. President, I would like to join my friend and colleague from Oklahoma, as well as the Senator from Iowa, who has previously spoken, and the Senator from Indiana in opposing the Democrats' $1.9 trillion spending bill.

The Democrats want to call it the sixth coronavirus bill. In fact, that is false. It is not a true statement because only about $1 out of every $11 being spent on this monstrosity is really focused on coronavirus health. The rest is a partisan liberal wish list that the Democrats have wanted to pass for a long, long time--long before the pandemic, long before anyone in this country had ever even heard of coronavirus.

I remember President Obama's Chief of Staff, Rahm Emanuel, famously said: ``Never let a good crisis go to waste.'' Well, that is what they did under President Obama. They saw a crisis. They passed laws that had nothing to do with what had caused it. And now here we are a dozen years later. President Biden is in the White House, and he is using that playbook once again.

President Biden's Chief of Staff calls this bill, the one coming to the floor right now--he described this on MSNBC the other day as--``the most progressive domestic legislation in a generation''--``the most progressive domestic legislation in a generation.'' More progressive than ObamaCare, more progressive than the Obama-Biden stimulus--that doesn't sound like a coronavirus relief bill to me.

The White House Chief of Staff admits this isn't mainstream. This is radical. And you know, he is absolutely right about that. In the House, not a single Republican voted for this bill. Actually, Democrats joined every Republican in opposing it.

President Biden ran for President as being mainstream, as being a unifier. That is how he got to the Oval Office. But ever since then, it has been scorched-earth partisanship every day since that time.

Last week, President Biden gave a speech about the bill. He talked about Senate Republicans, those of us who are on the floor today and coming up next. He said: ``What would they cut?''

I am very glad he asked. President Biden can start by cutting $350 billion of bailing out States and local governments. State tax revenues are down less than 0.1 of a percent, as we just heard from the Senator from Oklahoma. Most States actually have more tax revenue than before the pandemic. Actually, 44 States have more tax revenue than before the pandemic.

President Biden could cut the $85 billion that is earmarked for union pension funds, to bail them out. This has nothing to do with coronavirus. Unions have been mismanaging their members' money for decades.

President Biden can cut the $4.5 billion for the New York City subway system. He could cut $111 million for a subway system in Silicon Valley for Nancy Pelosi, $270 million in funding for the arts and humanities. He could cut $200 million from museums and libraries. That is not coronavirus. He could cut $12 billion in foreign aid. He could cut $36 billion in subsidized health insurance for people making over $100,000 a year. It is a lot of income to additionally get health insurance subsidies.

We all know President Biden loves Amtrak. Well, he could cut $1.5 billion in funding for Amtrak in this bill. That has nothing to do with coronavirus. He could cut $1.5 million for the funding for the bridge from New York to Canada. It is probably a pet project for the majority leader.

To answer the President's question of what could we cut, we could cut a lot. Thankfully, the Senate Parliamentarian already cut $67 billion from the bill. That is how much Democrats' national wage mandate was going to cost. Yet there is still a lot we can cut.

Here is the bottom line. The people of Wyoming, whom I visit with every weekend while I am at home, don't want to live with wish lists. They want to make sure they can stay at work, their kids can stay in school, and they get the virus behind them.

When I say ``stay,'' that is because the kids in Wyoming have been in school since last August, in spite of the fact that it seems like only half the kids in America are back in school.

You can either get to yes or you can get to no. And the people in Wyoming wanted to get to yes when it came to getting kids back to school. What we see President Biden doing is saying yes to the teachers union. He has paid the ransom note, and this is the money being paid to them, not to get our kids to school but to keep the teachers unions happy.

I believe teachers want to get kids back to school. Teachers want to teach, but not the unions who pull the strings and are certainly pulling the strings of Joe Biden in the White House.

Working families don't want politicians to exploit a crisis for political gains. They want to protect their physical health and their financial health and well-being. So it is time to stop trying to exploit a crisis, which is what I see every Democrat doing. Let's give the American people what they really need all across the country-- getting back to work, getting kids back to school who aren't there already, and putting the disease behind us.

I yield the floor

I ask unanimous consent that the Senator from West Virginia and I both be allowed to complete our remarks before moving to the rollcall vote.

Mr. President, when Governor Granholm came before the Energy and Natural Resources Committee for her nomination hearing, she said she was committed to American energy dominance. She stated she understood the importance of having a broad energy mix and supporting energy innovation.

Now, I asked her if it was a good thing that the United States is the world's leading producer of oil and natural gas, and she said it was. I asked her if low energy prices and high-paying American energy jobs were good things, and she agreed that they were. And when I asked her if America exporting its energy influence around the globe was a good thing, she again affirmed that it was. She has demonstrated that she is dedicated to supporting carbon capture, nuclear power, and American uranium production.

For these reasons, she cleared our committee with broad bipartisan support and will soon be confirmed by the Senate. I expect we will work together closely on these efforts when she leads the Department of Energy.

During her nomination hearing, Governor Granholm also said that she didn't want to see anyone lose their job or get left behind. Yet this is exactly what the Biden administration is doing to thousands of American energy workers.

On Inauguration Day, the President spoke of unity and bringing our Nation back together. Once he arrived at the White House, however, he threw that rhetoric out the window, picked up his pen, and started signing radical Executive orders.

His orders to ban oil, gas, and coal leasing on Federal lands and to kill the Keystone XL Pipeline will throw thousands of Americans out of work. These workers' livelihoods are being sacrificed in the name of the Biden agenda. Leaders in the administration are telling these oil rig and coal mine and pipeline workers that they can simply get new jobs building solar panels.

Actually, John Kerry said that the Biden administration policies will give these workers better choices. In 2019, the average salary of a solar panel technician was about $30,000 a year less than the average salary of a worker in the gas, oil, and coal industry. So John Kerry flies around the world, private jet, but is asking American energy workers to each take $30,000 a year less in income. And that is if these green energy jobs even exist.

To that point, the Washington Post Fact Checker took a look at what John Kerry had said, and they said he was offering ``false hope with a misleading use of statistics.''

Look, we have heard it all before. When President Biden was Vice President, the Obama administration promised thousands of green energy jobs--jobs that never materialized. Millions of taxpayer dollars were wasted on green energy companies that went belly-up.

Now the ``Solyndra Syndrome'' has returned. The Washington Post Fact Checker said it expects just a little over 10,000 new wind and solar jobs over the next 10 years.

In Wyoming alone, the long-term leasing ban would result in 33,000 workers losing their jobs. And where are these Wyoming workers supposed to go?

Hundreds of thousands more workers are going to lose their jobs in New Mexico, Colorado, Texas, and other States. How will they provide for their families?

The Biden ban won't just hurt workers; it is going to hurt kids too. A long-term leasing ban is going to eliminate hundreds of millions of dollars in State revenue--the dollars which go for essential services, for public schools, for roads, bridges, and hospitals. A long-term leasing ban is going to hurt teachers, students, and the communities they call home.

America needs all the energy--the oil, the gas, the coal, the uranium, the

wind, the solar--all of them. Banning fossil fuels will hurt our economy and force more workers out of work.

President Biden has declared war on American energy and American energy workers, and I just can't stand by as this administration tries to crush Wyoming's economy. I can't support an administration that throws my constituents out of work and hurts the schools and the hospitals in the communities and the teachers who teach the children.

Energy is a force multiplier. American energy is--America is an energy superpower. We need to act that way.

President Biden seems to want to pull the plug on American energy dominance. So I cannot in good conscience vote to approve his nominee for Secretary of Energy

I yield the floor.

Madam President, I ask unanimous consent that I be allowed to conclude my remarks before recessing.