Floor Statements

Madam President, as anybody who has been watching C-SPAN knows, the confirmation process for Judge Ketanji Brown Jackson is well underway.

Over the last few weeks, members of the Senate Judiciary Committee, on which I am honored to serve, have conducted a meticulous review of Judge Jackson's record and qualifications.

During this week's hearing, though, we have an opportunity to dig deeper and to hear directly from the nominee about her ability to serve as a fair and impartial Supreme Court Justice--somebody without an agenda, somebody who doesn't dabble in politics,

and somebody who doesn't use this position to enact policies that they prefer.

Many of our colleagues are familiar with Judge Jackson's experience because she was recently confirmed to the District of Columbia's Circuit Court just 9 months ago. She received her undergraduate degree and law degree from Harvard, certainly sterling credentials, and she worked for Justice Steve Breyer, who is the judge that she is succeeding on the Court.

She has had varied experience, which I think is to her credit. She has been a public defender. She later served on the U.S. Sentencing Commission. And she has spent the last 9 years as a trial court judge on the Federal bench. Judge Jackson is obviously smart, and she is quite accomplished.

But we know that a lifetime appointment on the Supreme Court requires more than just an impressive resume. Our democracy requires that judges rule based on the law. To use the words that Judge Jackson used this morning in the Judiciary Committee hearing, she said, Judges need to stay in their lane, which I actually appreciate, because under the separation of powers, obviously, a lifetime-tenured Federal judge who does not stand for election should not be making policy. That should be left to those of us in the electoral process to make those decisions, and then, of course, the Courts determine the constitutionality and legality of those policy choices. It is not appropriate for them to impose their own preferences instead.

Unlike previous nominees who had no experience on the bench, we don't have to make assumptions about Judge Jackson's decisions; we have the ability to examine hundreds of prior opinions that she has issued and to ask for clarity from the nominee herself.

In addition to her time on the Federal bench, we have a responsibility to dive into Judge Jackson's record as both a prosecutor and as a member of the U.S. Sentencing Commission.

Despite what some of our colleagues have suggested, none of these lines of questioning are out of bounds. It is really amazing to me that even though the President has a constitutional right to nominate whomsoever he chooses, we have a constitutional duty to provide what is called ``advice and consent.''

And so that means asking tough, but respectful, questions about her record and background. The Senate is not here to rubberstamp the White House's nominee. We have a responsibility to scrutinize her record, understand her thinking, her judicial philosophy, and, ultimately, to determine whether she has the right qualities to serve as a member of the Court.

That is exactly what advice and consent involves, and Judge Jackson's record--including her work at every point of her career--should be examined, and none of it should be out of bounds.

Beyond a thorough review of Judge Jackson's record, we also need to gain a clear picture of how she approaches her job of judging--what some people call judicial philosophy, what I call who decides. There are some questions that are decided by judges that should be decided by judges and not elected Representatives, like Members of Congress.

Conversely, there are some areas, as I suggested, where we should be making the decisions and be held accountable for those decisions, and the judge ought to be making a more narrow and focused review of those decisions for constitutionality and legality.

But that does not give her permission to impose her policy preferences over those of a majority of Congress when a bill is passed and signed into law by the President.

Judge Jackson previously suggested that she didn't really have a judicial philosophy--something I find very difficult to believe.

Today, she did not provide a lot of clarity beyond offering vague statements about the methodology by which she decides cases. I find it very hard to believe a judge with this kind of experience says she doesn't have a judicial philosophy, and I hope we can gain more clarity as the hearings continue. Again, she did talk about staying in her lane, not making political or policy decisions, which is a good start. But there is a lot more we need to hear about and a lot more commitments we need to get from the judge before she is confirmed to the Federal bench.

Judicial philosophy has always been of the central points of inquiry by the Judiciary Committee. And never more so than at this particular moment is it important.

The Framers of the Constitution, we know, had the wisdom to establish one branch that made policy decisions. And that would be the executive branch and the legislative branch--actually two branches of government--and another that would operate free of politics and elections and be given lifetime tenure.

Ultimately, all legitimacy of government comes from consent of the governed and so we don't have a group of nine overlords or wise men and women on the Potomac who are going to tell us how to live our lives. That is a decision that we the people make through our elected Representatives and through our Constitution and other laws.

In Federalist 78, Alexander Hamilton said that the courts would have ``no influence on either the sword or the purse.'' In other words, they wouldn't be responsible for national security or public safety or for spending tax dollars.

And he went on to say, ``It may truly be said to have neither force nor will, but merely judgment.'' That is another way of saying that judges decide cases and controversies. They don't make broad policy pronouncements. That is our job here in Congress for which we are held accountable every time we stand for election.

We do not need--nor do I want--a judge who will decide at the front end the result they want to reach and then cherry-pick the law and the facts in order to justify that decision. So it is important to understand the process by which Judge Jackson makes her legal decisions, and we got a little bit of a glimpse this morning, but over the next couple of days, we will have further opportunity to ask more questions about that.

One of the things I am concerned about is some of the outside groups that are advocating for Judge Jackson's confirmation. We are seeing activists that demand judges reach a particular result, regardless of the facts, or what the law prescribes.

Some of these outside rabble-rousers believe judges should deliver results that their party can't seem to accomplish through the deliberation, compromise, and rough-and-tumble of the legislative process.

And when the Court does not deliver these results, many of these outside groups will attack the integrity and legitimacy of the Court as an institution.

In recent years, these radical views have made it into the mainstream. In the summer of 2019, five of our Democratic colleagues-- including the current chairman of the Judiciary Committee--filed a ``Friend of the Court'' brief in the U.S. Supreme Court on gun rights. These Senators, in their brief, made a not-so-subtle threat that unless the Court ruled a particular way, the entire institution would be restructured.

Several months later, the leader of the Senate--the majority leader-- fired his own warning shot. He actually went to the Supreme Court steps and threatened two sitting Supreme Court Justices by name if they did not rule in a particular fashion.

But the Senate isn't the only place we are seeing these sorts of irresponsible attacks. Liberal dark money groups, like Demand Justice, have paid millions of dollars to promote Court packing and sow public distrust in the legitimacy of the Court.

And even the White House appears to be open to a Supreme Court overhaul. On the campaign trail, for example, President Biden refused to disavow reforming the Supreme Court. His administration even established a commission to study the issue.

The courts were not designed and are not designed to be a roundabout way to deliver certain results or invent new rights out of whole cloth. That is illegitimate, in my view, and I am not the only one who thinks that. That is why it is imperative that we gain a clear understanding of Judge Jackson's approach to judging and what she regards as in her lane and what she understands to be out of her lane in terms of policymaking or political decision making.

We need to know that if confirmed, she will rule without fear or favor; that she will follow the law as written, not as what she wants it to be, but what it actually is; and that she will defend the Supreme Court as an institution, as Justice Breyer has and Justice Ginsburg had when asked about Court packing.

The Senate's duty is to provide advice and consent, and it is absolutely critical to the integrity of the High Court and the health of our democracy. Judges, after all, don't have term limits. They don't serve for 2 years and stand for reelection or 6 years as we do here in the Senate.

They are not accountable in elections. They wield tremendous power as defenders of the Constitution and the last word in resolving contested lawsuits in the courts.

So we have a responsibility to the American people to get this right, to thoroughly evaluate Judge Jackson's qualifications, and do our best to ensure that, if confirmed, she will be an impartial and fair judge, not just for the people who nominated her, not just for the outside groups that are cheering on her confirmation, but for all Americans.

Before Judge Jackson was named to fill this vacancy and before there was even a vacancy to fill, President Biden promised to nominate an African-American woman to fill this bench. While the historic nature of Judge Jackson's nomination has been heavily reported, there has been far less attention paid to the fact that she is not the first African American who was considered for the Supreme Court--African-American woman.

When Justice Sandra Day O'Connor announced her retirement in 2005, one of the top names floated as a potential successor was Judge Janice Rogers Brown.

And, as we now know, Democrats filibustered Judge Brown, and she was ultimately never even given the opportunity to be nominated to serve on the Supreme Court. But that wasn't because of opposition by Republicans; it was because our Democratic colleagues, led by then- Senator Joe Biden, derailed her nomination. Janice Rogers Brown had the opportunity to make history by being the first African-American woman nominated for and confirmed as a member of the Supreme Court, but it is very clear that then-Senator Joe Biden led the effort to derail that nomination and denied her that historic opportunity.

I understand and appreciate the historic nature of Judge Jackson's nomination, but I hope our colleagues and members of the media do not lose sight of the mistreatment of the many nominees and should-have- been nominees who came before Judge Jackson. What the American people have seen over the last 2 days is a far cry from the way we have seen people like Justice Gorsuch or Justice Kavanaugh treated by our friends across the aisle.

Judge Jackson has been treated with courtesy, with civility, dignity, and respect, and I expect that trend to continue through the remainder of this process. As Republicans have said all along, this process will be thorough and exhaustive, but it will be respectful.

We have a busy week ahead of us, and I am eager to learn more about Judge Jackson, her judicial philosophy, and the qualifications she would bring if confirmed to the Supreme Court.

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 ask unanimous consent to complete my remarks before the next vote.

Mr. President, since Vladimir Putin's invasion of Ukraine, we have all been inspired by the courage and leadership of Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy.

As Russian troops invaded and brutally attacked his country, President

Zelenskyy did not do as others have done in the past. He didn't run; he didn't hide; and he didn't give in. President Zelenskyy did what every leader hopes to have the courage to do in times of crisis: He stood his ground, spoke out, and rallied the rest of the world to get behind him.

Yesterday, as we all know, Members of Congress had a chance to hear directly from President Zelenskyy.

First, he expressed his gratitude to the United States for the support we have provided so far to his country, but he also issued an urgent plea for more defense articles. He showed us a videotape of devastating photos and videos coming out of Ukraine, demonstrating what the Ukrainian people are being subjected to every day by Putin's cruel and unprovoked war against innocent civilians.

Ukrainian troops need more arms. They need anti-tank capabilities, and they need additional aircraft. As President Zelenskyy put it, the destiny of Ukraine is being decided now, as we speak.

I believe we have a moral obligation--not necessarily a treaty obligation since Ukraine isn't part of NATO, but we have a moral obligation as the leader of the free world--and I am talking about the United States as a whole--to support Ukraine and help them defend their sovereignty and their people.

For example, Poland, a member of NATO, offered to transfer an entire fleet of MiG-29 fighters to the United States for delivery to Ukraine. Ukrainian forces already know how to fly those Russian aircraft, and President Zelenskyy assured us that they are desperately needed, but the Biden administration rejected the offer out of fear that it might provoke Mr. Putin or, in terms of war, might escalate the conflict.

Winston Churchill, another great wartime leader, aptly said:

An appeaser is one who feeds a crocodile, hoping it will

eat him last.

This cannot be the policy of the United States. We cannot appease Vladimir Putin, and we can't afford to be timid in the face of the greatest threat to world peace since World War II.

Here on the Senate floor, several weeks ago, I shared a maxim of another Russian leader, Vladimir Lenin, the leader of the Soviet Union, of course, at the time. This is something I would suspect that Mr. Putin agrees with.

Lenin said:

You probe with bayonets. If you find mush, you push. If you

find steel, you withdraw.

In short, if people like Vladimir Lenin and Vladimir Putin are met with weakness, they are going to keep coming; if they are met with strength, they may withdraw.

President Putin clearly subscribes to this world view. He doesn't respect weakness. In fact, weakness is a provocation; it encourages him. A weak opponent is Putin's greatest desire. President Biden, unfortunately, in not acting more forcefully and taking the initiative as only leaders can do, is playing into his hand.

The Biden administration has time and time again eventually come around to doing the right thing when it comes to arming the Ukrainians. Unfortunately, it has only been after there has been a public outcry or more pressure from Congress or President Zelenskyy.

Last year, President Biden waived sanctions on the Nord Stream 2 Pipeline. This, of course, is a natural gas pipeline that goes from Russia to Germany. One of the things, even now, the Germans have recognized is their vulnerability to the monopoly that Russia has when it comes to providing oil and gas to Europe.

As Russia built up troops on Ukraine's border, President Biden suggested that some attacks on Ukrainian sovereignty would be ``minor intrusions'' and perhaps disregarded by the United States, he implied.

President Biden ignored the advice of virtually all of his advisers and missed the window to impose paralyzing sanctions on Russia before the invasion, and now the administration continues to refuse to facilitate the transfer of these Polish fighter jets.

In standard fashion, the administration seems to be a little confused by this crisis--afraid to say yes and too afraid to say no.

I am reminded of President Obama's statement of ``leading from behind,'' which appears to be an approach embraced now by President Biden.

Strong words are important, but they don't defend against rockets or cruise missiles. Sanctions are important, but they won't take out a Russian tank. Humanitarian aid is important, but only if it is delivered on a timely basis and when it is needed. And waiting and seeing what will develop next and then responding after the fact rather than anticipating the need is not particularly effective.

As I said, I believe we have a moral obligation to stand with Ukraine and help its people defend their way of life. We should not be in a position of telling President Zelenskyy: Yes, you have asked us for these defensive arms. You have asked us for these airplanes. We are going to give you just what we think you need.

I don't think that should be our position. We ought to ask President Zelenskyy what he needs and provide it forthwith.

We want to help Ukraine defeat Russian forces and repel them from their territory entirely, not just extend the length of this terrible war. The most effective way to do that is to supply Ukraine with the assets they need as quickly as possible.

To start with, the Biden administration should reevaluate its decision to reject Poland's aircraft offer. These airplanes are needed for Ukraine to maintain air superiority over Russian forces, and they need them now and not at some distant date in the future. And we need to continue to find ways to put American weaponry into the hands of Ukrainian soldiers.

Back in World War II, the United States was known as the arsenal of democracy. Again, in a bill that I have introduced called the Ukraine Democracy Defense Lend-Lease Act, we can do that again. I am proud to have worked with a group of bipartisan Senators, including Senators Cardin, Wicker, and Shaheen, to produce this legislation.

This legislation authorizes the President to enter into lend-lease agreements like we did in World War II, which probably saved Britain from domination by Nazi Germany. We can do this again by providing Ukrainian forces with the weapons they need to defend their country.

This legislation was included in various packages designed to support Ukraine, but, unfortunately, those packages never made their way to the Senate floor.

There is broad bipartisan support for this lend-lease provision, and it will give the United States the ability to send the exact type of military support Ukraine needs without a lot of redtape or unnecessary delays.

Our support for Ukraine is not a provocation for Putin. It is a necessary show of strength, and it is a deterrence.

As we search for additional ways to support Ukraine, it was great to hear from President Zelenskyy. As I said earlier, his bravery and leadership have galvanized the world and have inspired all of us to take action. And I hope his plea for additional aid will persuade President Biden to act with even greater dispatch.

This weekend, I will be traveling with a number of our colleagues to Poland to visit our friends and allies on the ground and to see for ourselves the sort of humanitarian crisis that Putin's invasion of Ukraine has created.

Poland, to its credit, has welcomed thousands of refugees--hundreds of thousands--and continues to deal with the Russian aggression along its borders.

I look forward to this opportunity to visit both Poland and Germany and learning more from our partners in Europe and eager to bring back their input to the Senate for further urgent action.

I yield the floor.

Mr. President, I have long been a supporter of the EB-5 program, which has been a significant economic driver in Texas. This merit-based immigration program has created thousands of American jobs and brought billions of dollars in investment to urban and rural areas across Texas and the U.S.

While it was unfortunate that the authorization for the EB-5 Regional Center program was allowed to lapse on June 30, 2021, I am pleased to have worked with my colleagues, Senators Chuck Grassley and Patrick Leahy, on the EB-5 Reform and Integrity Act, which was included as part of the Consolidated Appropriations Act, 2022.

The EB-5 Reform and Integrity Act reauthorizes the regional center program through September 30, 2027, and implements meaningful reforms and integrity measures that will ensure the viability and security of the program for the coming years.

This legislation provides the first multiyear authorization for the regional center program since 2015, so that regional centers, which have been in limbo for nearly 9 months, will have much-needed stability going forward. There is also a 60-day implementation period to allow USCIS to begin processing EB-5 petitions and applications that have been on hold since the lapse. Following that initial period, existing regional centers will be able to immediately get back to work driving investment into the U.S. and facilitating the creation of jobs across the country.

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

Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent to be able to complete my remarks.

Mr. President, as all of America knows, prices at the gas pump are skyrocketing. Over the weekend, the average gas price in Texas exceeded $4 a gallon, and we typically have some of the cheapest gasoline in the country. We didn't even cross that line during the great recession of 2008. But we know that gas prices are not the only

commodity that is growing and that family budgets are strained by. Consumers are also paying more for everything from groceries to clothes, to appliances.

Folks in Texas and across the country want to know, what is President Biden's plan to address high gasoline prices? Last week, the President was, appropriately enough, asked this very question. His response? He said:

Can't do much right now. Russia is responsible.

That is a quote--``Russia is responsible.'' Well, people across the country know that the price of gasoline, the spike that we are experiencing now, preceded the invasion of Ukraine.

Folks across the country can't afford to fill up their gas tanks to get to work, and the President points the finger at Vladimir Putin. Well, there is no question that the war in Ukraine exacerbated what was already an existing problem with the price of gasoline, but certainly it was not the cause of it. But the President conveniently omits the fact that gasoline prices were a problem long before Ukraine was attacked. For example, the week the President took office, Americans were paying an average of $2.38 a gallon. Month after month, those prices steadily climbed. By mid-May, the average price exceeded $3.10 a gallon, and by Thanksgiving, it was $3.30 a gallon. Just as a reminder, this was months before Russia invaded, which did not happen until February 24 of this year. Even in the last full week before the invasion, gas prices were painfully high at $3.50 a gallon.

So, yes, prices have risen since the invasion, and there is no question that the Russian aggression is a factor behind price jumps in the past few weeks, but this was a preexisting problem for which apparently the President had no solution. It is disingenuous for the administration to blame recordbreaking prices entirely on Russia. During Biden's first year in office, from January of last year to January of this year, gas prices increased 40 percent--40 percent. Those increases had nothing to do with President Putin and had everything to do with President Biden.

One of the President's first actions after taking office was to cancel the Keystone XL Pipeline. This pipeline would have given Canadian crude a quick and affordable path to refiners and processors in the United States and then to global markets through the Gulf of Mexico. This increased supply would add to the domestic markets and top off the Strategic Petroleum Reserve and even make its way to our friends and allies overseas. Given the state of the world's energy security today, it is easy to see how the Keystone XL Pipeline would have helped if the President had given it an opportunity.

This project would have also brought serious economic gains in the form of good-paying jobs right here in America, increased tax revenue, and benefits for communities along the pipeline's route. But with the stroke of a pen, the President killed the Keystone XL Pipeline and the many benefits that would have been provided in terms of our energy security and the price of gasoline at the pump.

Unfortunately, that was the beginning but not the end of the administration's flawed energy policies. Just a few days later, the Biden administration placed a temporary moratorium on all new leasing permits on Federal lands, effectively sending more business to Russia and OPEC producers whom he actually called upon to produce more oil. That is right. Before the Russian invasion, President Biden called on OPEC--of which Russia is a member and of which Saudi Arabia is a dominant producer--to produce more oil overseas rather than to unleash American energy right here at home.

Well, the administration later attempted to set the ``social cost'' of carbon, as they call it, at $51 a metric ton--a high and arbitrary figure designed to hamper fossil fuel production right here at home-- and then it suspended oil and gas production in both Alaska and New Mexico.

The administration even took aim at refiners. The United States relies on an expansive network of refiners to supply gasoline, diesel fuel, and other petroleum products. The renewable fuel standard requires refiners to blend a certain amount of renewable fuel, which is simply untenable for many small refiners. And small refiners disproportionately actually produce gasoline, which means that the pressure on these small refiners actually has a disproportionate impact on higher gasoline prices.

The Environmental Protection Agency has the authority to grant temporary exemptions to small refiners if compliance would cause them to suffer serious economic hardship. Those exemptions used to be pretty standard practice. President Obama and President Trump each granted dozens of exemptions while in office. But so far, President Biden has refused to grant a single exemption to small refineries. Small refineries are hurting, and unless President Biden finally grants some of these exemptions, some of them may be forced to close their doors, exacerbating again high energy prices. If fewer refiners are operating, gasoline prices will go up, not down.

President Biden and his administration aren't the only ones who have taken aim at oil and gas production here in America in the last year. Many of our colleagues who have argued that oil and gas production is somehow unnecessary or obsolete and could be replaced today with solely renewable energy have been misleading the American people in believing that we could make that transition today or anytime in the near future. While renewable energy is an important part of our energy sources--in Texas, we produce more electricity from wind than any other State in the Nation--we believe in an ``all of the above'' energy policy.

I actually have heard members of the administration say one of the solutions for eliminating the importation of Russian oil would be to move entirely to renewables. Well, the Energy Information Administration, which is the official spokesman on these matters for the U.S. Government, says that by the year 2050, 74 percent of our energy sources in America will still be fossil fuel. That is four times the amount of energy that can be produced by renewables.

That doesn't mean we are going to stay stuck on where we are now. We will continue to look for new and innovative ways to add to our energy diversity and improve our climate and environment at the same time. But to suggest disingenuously to the American people that one way we can deal with cutting off Russian imports is simply to do away with oil and gas in America is a ludicrous statement.

Other regulatory measures promoted by the administration have also discouraged American energy production, like the reckless tax-and- spending spree to pile even more costs and regulations on American oil and gas; for example, a methane tax on energy companies, banning offshore drilling, increasing onshore royalty fees, and putting domestic oil and gas producers in a choke hold.

Now that gas prices have gone through the roof, some of our colleagues have come up with another unhelpful solution. They want to temporarily suspend the gas tax through November, which happens to be the elections. That is no coincidence. This idea has been soundly rejected a number of times over the years by both Republicans and Democrats.

In 2008, gas prices were soaring and the then-Presidential candidate, Barack Obama, attacked his opponents for endorsing a gas tax holiday, as many of our colleagues here in the Senate have endorsed currently.

At the time, Candidate Barack Obama, Senator Barack Obama, said:

This isn't an idea designed to get you through the summer,

it's an idea designed to get [you] through an election.

In short, this isn't a fix for high gas prices; it is a talking point for political campaigns and candidates.

This is a gimmick to create the illusion of action, while really doing nothing but draining the highway trust fund that we rely upon to build our roads and bridges.

Still, a few of our colleagues in the Senate have offered a bill that would suspend the gas tax through the end of the year. I am sure it comes as no surprise that a majority of the bill's sponsors are on the ballot this year.

For more than a year now, Republicans have warned about the potential consequences of the attack on domestic energy production. We have highlighted the ways the policies could

drive up prices, harm our energy security, and threaten that of our allies. Even as gas prices rose month after month, the Biden administration did nothing. They didn't attempt a midcourse correction. They didn't open this topic up for debate. They just stayed the course.

Back in November, the Secretary of Energy was asked about increasing U.S. oil production. She literally laughed and said:

That is hilarious.

Well, it certainly isn't funny now. Gas prices are now averaging $4.32 a gallon, and our allies are frantically trying to reduce their reliance on Russian oil and gas, which in many cases is their sole source.

President Biden has tried to pin these problems squarely on Russia and Vladimir Putin, but the American people are smart. They know the truth. They know that high prices predated Russia's invasion of Ukraine, and they know about the war being waged on domestic energy production by some of our colleagues across the aisle.

And they are smart enough to know that you can't believe President Biden when he says you can't do much about it because Russia is responsible.

I yield the floor.

Mr. President, government funding, as we all know, is set to expire tomorrow night at midnight, and the Senate has the responsibility not just to keep the lights on but also to make critical investments in our country.

I could only wish that we had come to this point through a more rational and more deliberative sort of way; but, unfortunately, this seems to be more the norm than the exception where four people get into a room and they write a piece of legislation, then they bring it to the floor, and your only option is to vote yes or no on it. We don't have a practice of making sure that on each one of these bills, people get to actually offer amendments and shape that legislation. I guess that is a quaint and old-fashioned notion, but that is how I thought the legislative process was supposed to work. Maybe that is a topic for another day, but it is unfortunate that this is where we are.

Last night at 10 o'clock, the House voted on an almost 3,000-page bill, and then we are expected to vote on it the next day or the next 2 days. This is not a way to run a railroad.

We all know that democracy is under attack in the world, and that means we need to do everything we can to provide for our defense and to support our friends and allies around the world.

We know that there has been a tug-of-war between our Democratic colleagues and this side of the aisle when it comes to prioritizing national security spending, and that actually is one reason why we find ourselves here at this late date, voting on this multithousand-page bill, because our colleagues on the other side of the aisle wanted to prioritize domestic spending, not national security spending.

Thank goodness that has been now negotiated where there is virtual parity. Thanks to the leadership of Ranking Member Shelby and our colleagues on the Appropriations Committee, the bipartisan bill includes $42 billion more in defense spending. I can't think of any time in our recent history where we need those additional resources more for our security and the security of our friends and allies.

This $42 billion increase in defense spending will provide our military commanders with what they need to respond to the threats that we are facing today and to prepare for those threats we see on the horizon.

It is ironic I find myself speaking to the Senator from Maine, whom I serve with on the Intelligence Committee, because he knows a lot of this subject matter as well--certainly well, maybe better than I do. But we all know that Russia's unprovoked attack on Ukraine was what we thought was a relic of the past.

My dad was a B-17 pilot in the Army Air Corps in World War II. He was shot down on his 26th bombing mission over Nazi Germany and captured as a prisoner of war, where he served for the last 4 months of that war. We thought--Europe thought, the world thought--that perhaps we had gotten beyond that sort existential threat to our way of life and that the autocrats of the world--people like Vladimir Putin, President Xi, the Ayatollah in Iran, Kim Jong Un in North Korea--that these individuals would be deterred from provoking a war like Vladimir Putin has provoked in Ukraine.

One thing Winston Churchill liked to say: If there is one thing for sure, it is that humankind is unteachable. We keep making the same mistakes over and over again. We keep thinking, well, we can cash the peace dividend because that is in the past, only to find ourselves, as Secretary Bob Gates said--he said, of all the military conflicts we found ourselves involved in, in the last several generations, we haven't planned for a single one of them. But we had to be ready, and we had to be able to defend our way of life and our values and our allies.

So Russia's unprovoked attack on Ukraine is a reminder of the threats

that remain to our freedom and the freedom of other democracies around the world. So there could not be a more appropriate time to plus-up our national defense spending, while at the same time providing additional resources, humanitarian and otherwise, to our friends in Ukraine who are fighting for their very existence.

We know that Ukraine is not a member of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization, so we have no legal obligation to come to Ukraine's defense, but I do believe we have a moral obligation to provide that assistance, both military and humanitarian.

Russia has waged an unmistakable war on that democracy, violated the sovereignty of the Ukrainian people. It has even targeted civilians and brought immeasurable destruction to Ukraine. The only question is, After Putin has miscalculated the will of the Ukrainian people to defend themselves and the commitment of America and our NATO allies and other freedom-loving countries around the world to support Ukraine--now that they are bogged down, Russia is bogged down in Ukraine, the question is, Well, is Putin going to give up? Is he going to try to come up with a face-saving device, or is he going to double down? I am afraid Putin is going to double down, which means we are going to see more attacks on innocent civilians. We are going to see more Ukrainian cities leveled to the ground, indiscriminate killing of men, women, and children. This is all that Putin knows. The question is, How does this end? That is a chilling question, but the answer is even more chilling.

As I said, I believe we have a moral duty to support Ukraine, and this legislation provides $13 billion in humanitarian, economic, and military assistance. We need to get this money out the door as soon as possible, while the United States and NATO needs to continue to supply the Javelins and other anti-aircraft, anti-tank weapons to help the Ukrainians defend themselves against this existential threat.

The good news is, this is a bipartisan effort. A lot of things we do around here we divide up along party lines--the shirts and the skins, I like to call them--but the fact is, we all support Ukraine, and we are all looking for ways we can help them during their time of need.

Another thing that this Omnibus appropriations bill does is it reauthorizes the Violence Against Women Act. This critical program has been defunct and moribund since 2019. For some reason, this was not a priority of this Chamber or of this Congress for the last 3 years, but thanks to the leadership of Senators Ernst and Murkowski--Senator Feinstein was an essential part of the negotiations--we were able to reach a bipartisan agreement to strengthen and modernize this law.

I am a proud cosponsor of the legislation, and I thank our colleagues on the Appropriations Committee for prioritizing its inclusion in this legislation. This funding will make critical investments for our country, including critical investments in our own people.

One of the good things about this Omnibus appropriations bill is it does exclude poison pills that included things like taxpayer funding of abortions. Those are not included in this bill.

While it is far from perfect, there is no question that a bill drafted solely by Republicans would look a little different. But the world does not operate on the basis of ideals. The perfect cannot be the enemy of the good. So despite its flaws, despite the crazy process by which we find ourselves here voting on this $1.5 trillion appropriations bill, notwithstanding all the reasons I could cite why maybe I should vote against it, I think there is enough good in this bill to support it.

Mr. President, on another matter, 2 weeks ago, President Biden nominated Judge Ketanji Brown Jackson--and I know I mispronounced her first name; Judge Jackson, let me just call her--to serve as an Associate Justice on the Supreme Court.

During his State of the Union Message, President Biden said that choosing somebody to serve on the Supreme Court is one of the most serious constitutional responsibilities a President of the United States has. Likewise, I believe our responsibilities under the Constitution of evaluating the nominee, going through the advice-and- consent process, is one of the most serious responsibilities we as Senators have, and I don't take that responsibility lightly.

Members of this Chamber are pretty familiar with Judge Jackson's qualifications, as she was confirmed to the DC Circuit Court of Appeals just 9 months ago--sometimes called the second most powerful Federal court in the land, right below the Supreme Court of the United States.

There is no question that Judge Jackson is an incredibly smart person and has all of the sort of pedigree that you would expect: graduated from the best universities, the best law schools, has had a broad range of practice. She received both her undergraduate and law degrees from Harvard. She clerked for a Supreme Court Justice, Justice Breyer. She served on the Federal bench for nearly 9 years.

I could say, as somebody who served on the State court bench for 13 years, I appreciate the President picking somebody who has actually had real-world experience on the trial bench. Too often, I think our Supreme Court nominees are academics and people who have very little real-world experience. But you can't argue that Judge Jackson does not have that kind of real-world experience, serving as a public defender, serving on the trial court, and serving on the court of appeals for the last 9 months.

We all know that a nomination for the Supreme Court requires a rigorous assessment of far more than just a resume, though. Our Framers set forth the role of the Supreme Court in article III of our Constitution.

Alexander Hamilton noted in Federalist 78 that the judiciary, he said, would have ``no influence over either the sword or the purse. . . . [i]t may truly be said to have neither force nor will, but merely judgment.'' Now, if I can interpret what Alexander Hamilton was really saying in modern language, it is that judges shouldn't be politicians. They are not policymakers.

That is why we appoint them--they are appointed--for lifetime tenure, to be protected from the pressures of politics or personality, and that is why they have such a critical and important role in our government. But it is not the same role as we serve as elected representatives. We are enmeshed in politics. We are directly responsible to the people-- not for the legal correctness of our arguments or our legislation or constitutional interpretation, although I think we do have some responsibility since we take an oath to uphold the Constitution and laws of the United States, but it is different, and I think most people recognize judges are different than politicians. Judges should not be politicians appointed to serve for lifetime tenure and be unaccountable to the public and yet make policy. That is why judges decide individual cases. We don't decide individual cases here; we make policy for broad swathes of the American people. But judges decide cases based on a controversy, a set of facts, and the application of the law to those facts, which is, again, the antithesis of politics. That is what judging is all about.

So the Supreme Court is not just another branch of government that you can go to if you don't get your desired outcome in the political branches. If you don't win the election, if you don't elect your like- minded representative, you are not supposed to just go to the Supreme Court and say: OK, now you give me what I want because I couldn't get it through the political branches.

The Supreme Court is not supposed to be a failsafe to be utilized to deliver results that can't be secured through the legislative process. Our democracy, equal justice under the law--that is what it says right above the door of the Supreme Court of the United States: ``Equal Justice Under Law''--can only be accomplished when the same law applies to all of us. Cases are therefore decided based on their unique facts-- not on politics, not on personal preferences, not even on strongly held personal beliefs. This is absolutely critical to our system of checks and balances and the health of our democracy.

So I look forward to meeting Judge Jackson in person. I saw her across the hearing room when she was before the Judiciary Committee just about a year

ago. But I want to ask her a little more about her judicial philosophy and how she views her role on the Supreme Court.

Now, some have suggested, since she has been confirmed to the circuit court, that this ought to be a rubberstamp. Well, I don't view it that way. Circuit court nominees and district court nominees have to apply Supreme Court precedent, but when you are a member of the Supreme Court, there is no higher court that dictates the decision or the precedence you need to apply.

Now, ideally, you are applying the statutes and laws passed by Congress and the Constitution itself, but there is admittedly more flexibility for the nominee, which means her philosophy is even more important to know now.

I tried to flesh out Judge Jackson's judicial philosophy during her confirmation hearing for the DC Circuit Court. A number of us submitted questions for the record asking her to clarify her judicial philosophy and the way she interprets the Constitution.

We have heard a lot of testimony over the years about originalists and textualists and different ways people approach their duties as a judge.

I don't think Judge Jackson was particularly forthcoming with her answers when we asked about her philosophy, and I ultimately voted against her confirmation for the circuit court. Now, that vote is not going to determine how I view her nomination to the Supreme Court, but I think the question applies with even greater strength because she will not be bound by Supreme Court precedent.

I know she will have plenty of time and plenty of opportunity to clarify her views during the confirmation process, and I hope to see an unvarnished look, beginning with our conversation tomorrow, on Thursday.

I am also eager to learn more about Judge Jackson's views of the Supreme Court as an institution, which has increasingly come under attack by partisans, again, who don't particularly like the decisions of the Court. But that is not supposed to be the test. The test is whether they apply the Constitution and laws of the United States to the facts found by the finder of fact.

There have actually been a number of calls here on the Senate and in our political system in general to change the makeup of the Supreme Court, to actually add additional Justices to the Court--something that used to be called court packing back in the days of Franklin Delano Roosevelt. But Justice Breyer, to his credit, whose seat Judge Jackson has been nominated to fill, has been a steadfast defender of the Supreme Court as an institution, and I hope soon-to-be-Justice Jackson takes her cues from her mentor.

Justice Breyer echoed the comments of the late Ruth Bader Ginsburg and warned about a potentially dangerous politicalization of the Supreme Court and the consequential loss of public confidence in its judgments. Well, I would like to know whether Judge Jackson agrees with Justice Breyer and whether she shares Justice Ginsburg's assessment that nine seems to be a good number when it comes to the Supreme Court.

In the coming days and weeks, the Senate will thoroughly review Judge Jackson's qualifications, just as this body has done for every other nominee to the Federal bench. This is a familiar process to most of us. Judge Jackson is the fourth Supreme Court nominee we will have considered in the last 5 years.

But I hope there is something we do differently this time than has been done in the recent past, particularly in the case of Justice Kavanaugh. Frankly, the confirmation process for Justice Kavanaugh was an embarrassment and, I believe, a black mark on this Senate. Conversely, I think we have an opportunity to show the American people how to do it the right way and treat Judge Jackson with civility and dignity, even when we disagree. We know that outside groups launched a full-on character attack against Judge Kavanaugh. Even Justice Barrett, more recently, was attacked based on her religious beliefs.

I can assure you that will not happen this time around. We will meticulously review Judge Jackson's record. We will ask detailed questions to understand her judicial philosophy. We will read and review her opinions and carefully evaluate her ability to serve. Through it all, there is no question that she will be treated with dignity and respect.

I think the confirmation process must be thorough and it must be civil. The American people and, frankly, the nominee deserves nothing less. I am prepared to fulfill my advice and consent duties as a Member of this body and as a member of the Judiciary Committee.

As we know, there is no particular timeline for this process. In some cases, it moves quickly, and in others it has taken significantly more time. Chairman Durbin has announced that the Judiciary Committee will begin its confirmation hearing in the week of March 21, which doesn't allow much more time for our colleagues to meet with Judge Jackson before evaluating her record, and I know she has prioritized meeting with Members of the Judiciary Committee. I hope she will have adequate time to meet with other Members who are not on the Judiciary Committee, as well.

I know our colleagues are anxious to expedite this process, but we all know Justice Breyer will stay on the Court until the end of this term, which will be the first week or so in July.

Justices do not have term limits. They are not held accountable on elections, but they wield tremendous power under our Constitution. So we have a duty, not necessarily to get it done fast but to get it done right and thoroughly evaluate Judge Jackson's qualifications and ensure that, if confirmed, she will serve as a fair and impartial member of the Supreme Court.

I yield the floor.

Madam President, over the last few decades, globalization has completely reshaped the international economic order. Economies around the world have become interconnected, relying on one another from agricultural products to energy, to manufacturing capabilities.

It seemed to be the rule of thumb that whoever could produce a product at the lowest price got the business and the jobs that went along with it.

But we are increasingly seeing vulnerabilities that this interdependence creates with some of the clearest examples surfacing during the COVID-19 pandemic.

The United States, for example, leans heavily on China for masks, gloves, and gowns, personal protective equipment, and for ventilators-- all of which were absolutely necessary during the beginning of the pandemic and continuing on until today. But for a long time, that wasn't a problem, until COVID-19 showed up.

I still remember the phone call I had with the Governor of Texas, my friend Greg Abbott. At the beginning of the pandemic, I said, ``Governor, what do you need?'' He said, ``We need testing and we need PPE,'' personal protective equipment, almost all of which is made overseas in China.

China, as it turns out, held on to most of the supply for its own hospitals and healthcare workers, leaving the rest of the world to compete for the limited supply that remained.

Suddenly, we were unable to provide our healthcare providers with the personal protective equipment they needed to protect themselves while they served others--namely, the rest of us, their patients.

As supply chain struggles grew and expanded, it wasn't just medical equipment that proved to be a problem. Everything from cleaning products to automobiles were impacted.

We began to realize that one of the biggest vulnerabilities is semiconductors, which are critical components for our most used products: things like smart phones, computers, televisions, cars, airplanes, cell towers, and just about everything else with an off-and- on switch.

Again, the source of our chip supply didn't used to be a problem. About three decades ago, the United States manufactured 37 percent of the world's semiconductors. But as our reliance on these chips has gone up, our production has gone down; and today, instead of 37 percent of the world's semiconductors, the United States produces only 12 percent of the global share.

Again, these microcircuits have become invaluable in this technological age because, literally, everything with an off-and-on switch requires semiconductors--and I mean everything.

The lion's share of semiconductor manufacturing--more than 60 percent of the world's supply--is in Taiwan, which, as we know, is being threatened with invasion by the People's Republic of China. But it is not just the threat of armed invasion that risks that supply chain; it is also the possibility of another pandemic or a natural disaster.

This flashing red light has prompted the Senate to take action by passing the CHIPS for America Act, which I introduced along with the senior Senator from Virginia, Mr. Warner, which was designed to incentivize U.S. semiconductor manufacturing.

And in the coming weeks, I hope we can finally get a bill to the President's desk that funds these critical programs and puts us on a path to more domestic semiconductor manufacturing because of those risks to the supply chain.

In short, a crisis hit, it exposed our vulnerabilities, and we acted.

That is exactly what we need to do now regarding energy security. Let me explain.

In many ways, the risks we are seeing with the global energy supply today are similar to those risks we experienced with critical components like semiconductors. Much of the world relies on a single country for a critical product, and decisions made by a dictator could lead to that supply being cut off at a moment's notice.

When our allies are looking to adversaries for our most basic needs like heating, electricity, fuel, it creates huge vulnerabilities and sky-high prices at the same time.

This was underscored in January of 2009, when Russia effectively turned the gas off to Ukraine for almost 3 weeks. This affected at least 10 countries in Europe whose natural gas traveled through Ukraine. Russia is still the dominant gas supplier for Europe, including Ukraine. Last year, Russia supplied 40 percent of Europe's natural gas.

In 2020, Russia was the third largest producer of petroleum and other liquid fuels and the second largest producer of natural gas. This gives Vladimir Putin a tremendous amount of not only power but ready cash. And as we are seeing on our TV screens, that money is being used for the most nefarious of purposes: to kill innocent Ukrainian civilians.

After coming under intense pressure by both Democrats and Republicans, I am glad that the administration has finally announced a ban on Russian oil imports into the United States.

We know exactly where the money they get from selling this commodity is going, and we cannot continue to supply Putin with blood money.

I am disappointed it did take a while for the President to see the merits of this action and only after it was clear that Congress, on a bipartisan basis, was prepared to act.

Our colleagues in both Chambers have produced numerous proposals to ban Russian imports, while pushing the administration to take action.

Over the weekend, Democrats on the House Ways and Means Committee announced a bipartisan bill to do just that, but the press release, once posted on the website, was quickly taken

down, strangely enough. Reporting indicates that the White House intervened to get that press release taken down off the House Ways and Means website because it didn't want to look like it was being boxed into taking action on Russian oil imports.

But to his credit, once the President saw the writing on the wall, he decided to take action, but he made it seem like it was his idea, even though we all know his hand was forced by bipartisan support in the Congress.

There has never been a more critical moment to reevaluate our reliance on rogue regimes for our energy supply. If we want to protect ourselves and our allies from the whims of a power-hungry dictator, we need to get serious about energy security.

In recent years, conversations about energy policy have been consumed by debates about the environmental impact of fossil fuels, which are important, but often, they are not well informed.

Some of our colleagues have proposed everything from fracking bans in the Green New Deal to net-zero carbon deadlines.

Well, those efforts may bring down America's share of global emissions, but it would come at a grave cost to global energy security. And the truth is, whether it is the Russians or the Chinese or India, developing nations with growing economies, they may pay lip service to some of the goals of a carbon-free future; but this is at the same time that China is building more coal-fired powerplants than any other nation on Earth.

So they really say one thing and do another, for fairly obvious reasons. They understand that constraining your own energy supply will have a negative impact on their economy and job growth and stability in each of those countries.

But I want to be clear: I support efforts to diversify our energy sources and reduce emissions. That is why in Texas we embraced what is called ``all of the above'' as an energy strategy that includes oil and gas, nuclear, wind, solar, you name it. We embrace all of it.

But we have learned a long time ago that solar and wind energy are dependent on the weather, for example, or the time of day, because the Sun doesn't always shine and the wind doesn't always blow. That is why you need a reliable base load of electricity and energy, primarily fuel from natural gas, some from nuclear and the like.

On top of that diversification of your energy supply which has proven to be so important and so successful in reducing emissions yet maintaining energy security, Texas companies are also making serious strides in energy innovation. We are finding new ways to sequester carbon emissions, for example, and other ways to make our most available and affordable energy sources cleaner.

I believe we need to do more to encourage innovation and diversification of our energy sources, but those efforts must not come at the cost of security.

Our top priority must be to ensure that the United States and our allies have reliable access to energy needed to keep the lights on and their economy running. And we need to stop Putin and other dictators from getting rich off of our dependence and holding democracies like Ukraine hostage.

Suffice it to say that the Biden administration has not addressed a plan to do that. From day one, the administration has taken actions that undermine America's energy security and send even more business to Russia and Saudi Arabia.

Only hours after being sworn in, President Biden cancelled the permit to the Keystone XL Pipeline and halted all new energy leasing and permitting on public lands and waters.

His administration has effectively discouraged investments in new production here at home, and the U.S. is producing significantly less oil. It is now down by 1.2 million barrels per day from pre-Biden administration days.

Without question, the most logical response to the current global energy crisis is to boost production of U.S. energy sources. We can reap the economic benefits of strong production here at home and supply our friends and allies with reliable energy around the world and, in the process, enhancing their energy security, making them less dependent on people like Vladimir Putin.

But producers aren't able to turn on a dime. They are not able to increase their capacity overnight; but it is important for us to begin to take the steps now to strengthen our domestic energy production in light of the developments in Ukraine and in Europe.

The sooner the Biden administration views oil and gas producers as necessary rather than expendable, the better off we will all be.

That is not what the White House has suggested, by the way. In fact, they seem to be suggesting a completely different route.

The Biden administration doesn't want to supply Europe with more American energy; he wants to help them shift their reliance from one oil-rich dictator to another. Good-bye, Russia; hello, Iran; hello, Venezuela. The administration is looking to other rogue regimes to supply the energy that should be produced here in America.

The White House is trying to revive the ill-considered Iran nuclear deal, and the White House press secretary acknowledged that a new deal would mean more oil from Iran for global markets.

It is reportedly considering a trip to Saudi Arabia to ask the Kingdom to pump more oil--not here in America, but go to Saudi Arabia, hat in hand, and say: Will you please produce more oil to help us bring down the price of gasoline?

We even hear that the Biden administration is trying to ease sanctions on Venezuela and funnel Putin's profits to Maduro.

The fact the Biden administration is beating down the doors of the Ayatollah, the Crown Prince, and Maduro rather than easing burdens on American producers is a bad joke. It is absurd. It makes no sense whatsoever.

Now, ideologues may oppose American fossil fuels, but the administration's reflexive opposition to U.S. producers is creating serious risks for our security, not to mention the high prices that consumers pay at the pump.

We are blessed to live in a resource-rich country, and there is no reason to put the energy security of the United States and our allies at risk because President Biden worries about angering the progressive radical left of his own political party.

If the Biden administration continues to wage war on American fossil fuels, it will create huge vulnerabilities for the United States and our allies.

Now, I am not suggesting we revive the 1970s oil export ban and implement isolationist energy policies, but we do need to take decisive action to reduce the world's reliance on authoritarian regimes.

Just as the pandemic led us to reevaluate vulnerable supply chains, this war in Ukraine has opened our eyes and, hopefully, given us the opportunity to reevaluate global energy security.

I hope this crisis will serve as a reset button for those energy security efforts, and I hope we can find some common ground between Democrats and Republicans to reconsider the ideological and reflexive opposition to American fossil fuels because the consequences in terms of world peace and energy security are too serious not to revisit those preconceived notions before the Ukrainian invasion.

I yield the floor.

Mr. President, Russia's brutal and unprovoked attack on Ukraine intensified over this last weekend, bringing even more death and destruction to the Ukrainian people and more uncertainty to the rest of the world. It appears that Russia is now targeting noncombatant evacuation routes--the latest blatant war crime and a clear escalation following targeted attacks on civilians.

Russian forces fired on civilians as they fled for their lives, killing a mother, her two children, and a family friend. Over the last couple of weeks, hundreds of Ukrainians have been killed, and countless others have been wounded. More than 1\1/2\ million people have fled the country, making it the fastest growing refugee crisis in Europe since World War II.

Through the immense suffering Russia has inflicted, the bravery and resolve of the Ukrainian people has shown bright. The world has been awestruck at the courage of teachers, architects, grandmothers, Ukrainians from all walks of life who have taken up arms in defense of their democracy.

We have all been moved by the leadership of President Zelenskyy, who is fighting alongside of his fellow Ukrainians while pleading with the rest of the world to take action. We have admired the strength of those who were forced to say goodbye to loved ones, abandon their homes, and search for safety beyond Ukraine's borders.

People around the world have rallied around Ukraine, offering support in ways big and small. Families across Europe are welcoming refugees into their homes. People around the world have organized fundraisers and donation drives to get food, blankets, first-aid kits, and other critical supplies into the hands of the Ukrainians.

People all over the free world have cheered on and generously supported Ukraine at this critical moment, but now it is time for Congress to act. Since Ukraine is not a member of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization, we have no legal obligation to support its fight against Russia, but we do have a moral obligation to help them defend themselves.

Russia has waged an unmistakable war on a sovereign democracy. It has targeted civilian areas and brought immeasurable destruction to Ukraine, and it continues to threaten further death and destruction outside and beyond Ukraine, even rattling its nuclear saber at the heart of Europe.

Yes, we have a moral duty to support the Ukrainian people as they defend their sovereignty in their beloved country. So far, the United States has provided military, humanitarian, and economic assistance for Ukraine. These resources have been critical in the fight so far.

The United States and our allies have also imposed harsh sanctions on Russia's economy, sending its currency into a downward spiral. This has, no doubt, made life harder for the Russian people, with whom we have no quarrel, but we should continue to use every tool at our disposal to impose costs on Vladimir Putin for his aggression in the hope that his own people will eventually rise up and say ``enough.''

Many businesses have suspended operations in Russia, inflicting even more economic pain on the Kremlin. I am encouraged by the global response so far, but we need to do more.

This is a seminal moment in American history and in human history, reminiscent of events most Americans today only know about from their history books and wars fought by our parents and grandparents. After this extended holiday from history, the United States must now take every possible step to stop this war by all available means.

This week, I expect the Senate to vote on an emergency funding bill to send even more resources to the fight in Ukraine. The White House has requested $10 billion in military and humanitarian assistance, and there is strong bipartisan understanding that we need to move that quickly, as we just heard from the majority leader. The traditionally slow pace of legislation won't cut it.

This is a reminder of the importance of not only preserving but growing our military strength. Authoritarian leaders like Putin, Kim Jong Un, President Xi, and Iran's Supreme Leader are watching this test of the free world's resolve.

Our Democratic colleagues have consistently fought to shift funds from our national defense to domestic programs. When the case of inflation is accounted for, President Biden's first budget proposed an actual decrease in defense spending. We need to turn that around, especially in light of recent developments.

The war in Ukraine has proven that a well-funded and well-prepared military isn't a luxury; it is a necessity. Germany's dramatic reversal on defense spending illustrates how clear this point has now become. Our colleagues on the Appropriations Committee are still working through the details of an omnibus appropriations bill, and I hope they are able to reach an agreement before the funding deadline this Friday.

While short-term bills are better than government shutdowns, they only hamper our ability to plan for the future. Our military leadership needs a predictable budget in order to prepare for the many threats we are experiencing now and those that are on the horizon. That was true before Russia invaded Ukraine, and it is absolutely critical now.

In a recent Washington Post op-ed, former Defense Secretary and CIA Director Robert Gates wrote about the need for ``a new American strategy'' to safeguard security interests. That includes predictable funding, strong alliances, new technologies, and reforms within the Pentagon. Bureaucracy and redtape come with a lot of overhead, and those dollars would better be spent on advanced technologies and equipment. As former Secretary Gates said, ``Our executive and legislative branches must understand the new world we live in, set aside business as usual and embrace dramatic change to ensure that we and our democratic allies prevail in that contest.''

Investments and reforms in our national defense will be critical to America's security for years to come, but there are immediate steps we should take to increase the cost of this unprovoked war by Russia.

The United States and our allies have imposed crippling sanctions on Russian banks and oligarchs, but the country's lucrative oil and gas industry remains virtually untouched. Russia continues to export energy to the rest of the world. In fact, many parts of Europe are completely dependent on Russian energy exports, and Putin is happy to use the revenue that he generates from those sales to sustain the attack on Ukrainian civilians.

The embarrassing truth is that the United States is one of Russia's customers. We cannot continue to supply Russia with the blood money they get from their exports to the United States. That is why there is strong bipartisan support for a ban on Russian oil imports.

I am proud to be a cosponsor of legislation that was introduced by our friend from Kansas, Senator Marshall, to ban the purchase of Russian oil in the United States.

We have the great fortune of living in a resource-rich country, and there is no reason why we should rely on anyone else--let alone a power-hungry dictator--for our basic energy needs.

Putin's aggression has lit a fire under the United States and our allies, and we need to take concrete steps to end our reliance on foreign oil and continue our pursuit of energy independence, at the same time making sure that our friends and allies around the world have access to more than just one choice when it comes to their energy needs. Again, we need to take that noose out of the hand of Vladimir

Putin when it comes to dissuading these countries that are dependent on Russia. We need to give them more choices and the freedom to make those choices.

Strangely, there are media reports today the administration is considering easing sanctions on Venezuelan oil to compensate for what nations import from Russia. But I have to ask, why on Earth would we trade one oil-rich dictator for another?

Instead, here is a novel concept perhaps the administration would consider: Why don't we boost our own production from here in the United States and sell it across the globe?

It is truly shocking that this administration is so against and so opposed to American oil and gas that they would rather make it easier to buy oil from the Maduro regime than from here at home in America. It is simply unfathomable and inexcusable. Energy security is something we have taken for granted here in the United States--so has Germany and so has Europe. But now they are learning that there are bitter lessons to be learned from that dependency on imports from a country like the Russian Federation. We simply cannot ignore the fact that energy security is national security, and we can't ignore the grave risks that accompany our reliance on foreign oil for our most basic needs or those of our allies.

Over the last couple of weeks, people around the world have rallied in support of the people of Ukraine. In ways big and small, the global community has sent an unmistakable message that Russia's attack on the sovereignty of Ukraine will not be tolerated. It is time for Congress to step up to the plate and provide even more support to our friends in that country.

As I said, we may not have a legal obligation, but we do have a moral obligation to supply Ukrainian forces and civilians with the resources they need in order to resist Russian aggression. That is the task before us this week, and I hope we can take strong bipartisan action that sends an unmistakable message to the world.

I hope we will also consider other more harsh actions against Russia. For example, I support our colleagues on the Finance Committee to strip Russia of its permanent normal trading relations status. This will place Russia in the same pariah category as North Korea and Cuba.

The Wall Street Journal made the point this last week that nothing can be the same after the Russian invasion of Ukraine. There are few seminal points in our life where we remember that everything changed thereafter, whether it is September 11, 2001, the assassination of a President, and now, after this post-Cold War holiday from history, the invasion of another democracy in Europe.

This is a watershed moment, and the United States must take every possible step to stop this war before the cost grows even higher and spreads to other countries outside of Ukraine.

I yield the floor.

I would suggest the absence of a quorum.

President, I ask unanimous consent to print my bill for introduction in the Congressional Record. The bill prohibits U.S. persons from engaging in transactions with foreign persons who purchase or transact in gold from the Russian Federation.

President, I ask unanimous consent to print my bill for introduction in the Congressional Record. The bill prohibits U.S. persons from engaging in transactions with foreign persons who purchase or transact in gold from the Russian Federation.

Mr. President, 15 years ago, an environmental group called the Clean Sky Coalition launched an ad campaign targeting coal. The ads featured faces covered in soot, with the headline: ``Face it, Coal is Filthy.''

Of the many controversial ad campaigns we have seen over the years, this doesn't seem particularly noteworthy, but these ads at the time sparked so much outrage that they were eventually pulled.

You might wonder why. An environmental group attacking coal is hardly front-page news. Why was this ad campaign different? This wasn't a matter of what was being said; it was a matter of who was saying it and why.

It quickly came to life that the group behind the ad was only about 2 weeks old, and the entire ``pro-environment'' effort was sponsored by a natural gas company seeking market share over coal.

As they say, politics makes for strange bedfellows--in this case, environmentalists and natural gas companies were both anti-coal, though, for very different reasons.

Knowing that the American people wouldn't respond to the argument that coal is bad because it means less business for the gas companies, this particular company found a deceptive and manipulative way to help shape public opinion.

Today, we are seeing a similar push but with much greater reach and far higher stakes. Just as one company used the guise of environmentalism to attack its competition, Russia today is using the same tactic to boost its own profits and enhance its power.

The Office of Director of National Intelligence released a report in 2017 outlining some of Russia's disinformation campaign, on everything from U.S. elections to U.S. energy policy.

Of course, one of the Kremlin's favorite tools is its intentional propaganda outlet known as RT, formally known as Russia Today.

According to the report, RT ran anti-fracking programming in the United States that highlighted environmental and public health concerns. That is right. The propaganda arm of the Russian Federation, RT, was running anti-fracking programming in the United States. And you might ask yourself: For what purpose?

Well, the Director of National Intelligence report in 2017 said: This is likely reflective of the Russian Government's concern about the impact of fracking, which is a device to release natural gas from shale. The report said this is likely reflective of the Russian Government's concern about the impact of fracking in U.S. natural gas production on the global energy market and the potential challenges to Gazprom's profitability--Gazprom, of course, being the Russian Federation's energy company.

In short, all of this propaganda on Russia today and the opposition to fracking that they were encouraging would be good for the sale of Russian gas as opposed to natural gas produced here in the United States.

Russia can't seem to dominate the global energy market on its own, so it tries to take down the competition. It is not just a matter of dollars and cents; it is a matter of geopolitical power. This isn't a farfetched conspiracy theory that was crafted to combat the Green New Deal. As I said, it comes from an unclassified report from the Director of National Intelligence Office 5 years ago--2017.

Knowledge of this practice likely predates that report by a number of years. Reporting indicates that even Hillary Clinton spoke about those malign activities in a 2014 speech. She warned about what she called ``phony environmental groups'' that were funded by the Russians.

Russia is no stranger--in fact, they are expert at disinformation campaigns, and it doesn't abide by the same moral and ethical codes as the rest of the world.

The past several days have shone a light on how far Putin is willing to go to increase his own power. I am not suggesting that all environmental groups are funded by the Russian Government--not in the slightest--but we need to be clear-eyed about Russia's efforts to shape U.S. policies and European policies for their own benefit. We need to be hyperaware of the ways decisions made in Washington could benefit Moscow and empower Putin to the detriment of our allies in NATO and in Europe.

Unfortunately, the energy cards in Europe are currently stacked in Russia's favor. From day one, the Biden administration has taken hostile actions toward American energy suppliers and sent even more business to Russia.

Only hours after the President was sworn in on January 20, 2021, he canceled the permit for the Keystone XL Pipeline and halted all new energy leasing and permitting on public lands and waters. His administration effectively discouraged investments in new production, and now the United States is producing less oil and less natural gas. Production is, in fact, down about 1.2 million barrels a day in the United States, and that has to be made up somewhere because the world continues to consume energy. It needs energy in order to survive and to thrive. Where does it get that energy when the United States does not produce it? Well, you guessed it--it gets it from Russia, and it gets it from OPEC, including the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia.

Sadly, the buck doesn't stop there. In light of Russia's invasion of Ukraine, the Biden administration hasn't taken any effective action against Putin's energy weapon. Even though the administration has imposed sanctions on Russian banks and oligarchs, the country's lucrative oil and gas industry remains untouched. This is their primary financial asset.

I remember our friend John McCain, when he was still alive, used to joke that Russia is a gas station masquerading as a country, making the obvious point in a humorous way.

Russia continues to use these oil sales and natural gas sales and the captive markets that it has in Europe and in other places around the world in order to finance its war against innocent Ukrainians. There is no question but that the revenue from these exports--and we have seen the price of oil since Putin invaded Ukraine again--the price of a barrel of oil go up to $115 a barrel. And there is no question that he is using the revenue derived from the sale of that $115 barrel oil to kill innocent Ukrainians and to violate their sovereignty and to commit war crimes. We simply cannot continue to supply Russia with the blood money it needs to carry out its nefarious actions.

I am proud to cosponsor legislation that was introduced by our friend from Kansas, Senator Marshall, to ban the purchase of Russian oil in the United States. We have the great fortune of living in a resource- rich country, and there is no reason we should be importing Russian oil, now more than ever.

The President said he does not want to target Russian oil and gas because of the impact it will have on prices here at home. Well, we already know that because of inflation--because of shoveling money out of Washington, DC, out into the great American economy, inflation has already caused prices at the pump and prices in the

grocery stores to rise. Given the fact that gas prices have already risen 40 percent since President Biden took office, I understand his concerns, but that doesn't mean Russia should get a free pass.

Rather than identify ways to offset global demand for Russian energy, President Biden is inadvertently playing into Putin's hand. He is not calling for any more American-made oil and gas; he is calling for less.

Tuesday evening, President Biden said he wants to double America's clean energy production, including sources like wind and solar. I want to be clear, I support an ``all of the above'' energy policy. As I have said time and time again, Texas produces more energy from wind than any other State in the country, and it is an important part of our energy mix.

Every day, though, Texas is also making serious strides in energy innovation. This is the way to solve the problem; it is to innovate-- not to regulate, not to tax, not to punish, but to innovate. We need to continue to find ways to innovate cleaner sorts of energy as we eventually transition, as we must at some point in the future--maybe decades from now--from petroleum-based products to some other source of energy.

I believe we need to continue to encourage innovation and diversification of our energy sources, but the fact remains today that renewables are not close to being able to supply the energy needs that our country demands. As it stands today, renewables--solar, wind-- comprise less than 20 percent of our electricity generation. We know the Sun doesn't always shine and the wind doesn't always blow, and when Mother Nature fails to deliver an adequate supply of energy, we need some other source of that energy, which means American-produced natural gas and oil.

If the President continues to wage a war on American oil and gas companies, we won't be able to protect ourselves or our allies.

One of the great things about the shale gas revolution is our ability to ship energy overseas to our friends and allies around the world. Unfortunately, the infrastructure has not kept up with the demand, leaving our friends and allies dependent on Vladimir Putin and the Russian Federation for their only choice. We need to provide them more choices, and that means produce more here in America of clean-burning natural gas and then exporting that LNG to our friends and allies around the world so they aren't subject to Putin's extortion and demands.

Our top priority needs to be, when it comes to energy, to pursue independence. If we are able to bolster renewables, invest in carbon capture technologies, and take other steps along the way to reduce emissions, that is a great goal for us to pursue. But our No. 1 priority here, today, and now should be for the United States and our allies to be energy secure. Right now, Europe is not energy secure; it is energy insecure because of the intentional acts of Vladimir Putin to make Russia the sole source of energy needs for countries in Europe and the policies restricting the development of our American-made energy here in the United States.

Just a few years ago, we were almost there when it came to energy security. In 2019, the United States became a net total energy exporter for the first time since 1952--a net total energy exporter. The last time we did that, it was 1952, and we maintained that status through the year 2020. But President Biden has, for reasons that are inscrutable to me, turned back the clock, taking us from an era of energy independence back to the oil crisis of the 1970s.

For decades, leaders in our country fought to reduce our reliance on foreign oil in anticipation of a global crisis exactly like the one we are facing now. We can't erase all of this progress we have made at the exact moment when we need that progress and that production the most.

Russia will always use energy as a weapon to tear down and intimidate its adversaries. The United States, conversely, must use it as a tool to lift up our allies and improve global energy security.

I yield the floor.

Mr. President, last night, of course, we all listened to President Biden's prime-time opportunity to explain what his administration is doing to address the many challenges that our Nation is facing.

Here at home, we know family budgets are being plundered by the worst inflation in four decades. We are paying higher prices for everything from food to gasoline. We also know that there have been spikes in violent crime that have created public safety concerns in communities across the country. After a year of hearing folks on the Democratic side of the aisle, the progressive base of the Democratic Party, calling for defunding the police, it was welcome to hear the President say last night that we should fund the police. It is long overdue.

Of course, there is the humanitarian crisis at the southern border. As I have said before, Texas has 1,200 miles of common border with Mexico, and, of course, we have seen records shattered month after month of people coming across the border, claiming asylum, and then being placed by U.S. authorities into the interior of the United States, given a notice to appear for a future court hearing, which, in all likelihood, will never occur.

The human smugglers and drug cartels have figured out the weaknesses in our own laws and policies, and they are exploiting them, to the detriment of the American people.

On drugs alone, 100,000 Americans died of drug overdoses last year, the overwhelming amount of which those drugs came across the southern border into the United States. And the cartels are smart. They figured out that if you flood the border with people, that is going to take the Border Patrol off the frontlines, and here come the drug cartels moving their poison across the border.

Of course, the trials we are facing now abroad are not any easier. The precipitous withdrawal from Afghanistan without any kind of warning or consultation with our NATO allies has caused the world to doubt the future of American leadership, and then the Chinese Communist Party over in the People's Republic of China continues to commit genocide against the Uighurs and threaten attacks against a democratic Taiwan.

Of course, very much on our minds today is the fact that Vladimir Putin is attempting to seize a sovereign nation and redraw the maps of Europe and testing the resolve of the United States and other democracies around the world.

I, of course, like many, attended the President's address last night and listened closely as he spoke about each of these challenges, beginning with the conflict--or I should say war--in Ukraine.

When it comes to Russia, our allies are not strong enough on their own to deter Vladimir Putin or the Russian Federation. They are looking to the United States as part of NATO--the North Atlantic Treaty Organization--for leadership.

I was pleased to hear President Biden deliver a clear message to the world that we stand with the democracy in Ukraine and we will do everything we can to help the Ukrainians deter Putin and to defend their country. The President said we will continue to send military, economic, and humanitarian assistance to Ukraine, and it is clear that there is bipartisan support for that. But the fact of the matter is, most of our allies in Europe have been the ones who stepped up to the threat--of course, it is in their neighborhood--and we could have but did not impose sanctions before Putin invaded rather than after the fact.

I was disappointed that the President did not speak about what is at stake in Ukraine. It is something I talked about here on the floor a few weeks back.

With so many challenges in our own backyard, it is easy for folks in Texas or Colorado or New Jersey or anywhere else around the country to wonder, why should I care about what is happening in Ukraine?

Americans want to know, what difference does a war or a military conflict on the other side of the globe--what relevance does it have to me, and if it is important, how can we best help?

Well, we know the answer to that question here in the House and the Senate. We know that this conflict is key to preserving our rules-based international order, that if Putin can get away with this, he can get away with anything. If Putin gets away with this, President Xi is waiting for his opportunity to unify Taiwan with mainland China. So this is a global geopolitical crisis. We know China and Iran, as I mentioned, and other adversaries are paying close attention.

If Texans want America to stay out of another world war, then we better slam the door on Vladimir Putin now.

President Biden had a window to remind the American people and our allies around the world what is at stake in this conflict. Vladimir Putin has even put his nuclear forces on active reserve. He is rattling the nuclear sabre in order to threaten and intimidate NATO and the United States and the rest of the world, but he is also finding an incredible amount of courage and resilience and leadership by people like President Zelenskyy in leading the courageous Ukrainian people in their effort to resist this invasion.

So this is a very serious and very dangerous moment. Many of the things that Vladimir Putin has done are eerily similar to what happened in Nazi Germany in the late 1930s and 1940s.

On another topic, the President alluded to inflation last night, but he didn't instill much confidence that he had a concept of what was at stake or how to solve the problem. When he talked about his plan to address inflation, he said we need to cut our expenses and overhead. Well, I talked to some of the cotton producers in Texas last week when I was home, and they told me that one of the biggest problems they have are the increasing costs of their inputs, things like diesel and energy, fertilizer, and the like. They don't have any room to cut their overhead unless they go out of business entirely.

So the President did not inspire much confidence when it came to dealing with the scourge of inflation. But one thing we can do is quit making it worse by trying to continue to shovel more and more money out the door, chasing fewer and fewer goods and services.

The President did try to recycle some of the elements of the Build Back Better--or, as I like to call it, the ``Build Back Broke''--bill, but that bill, that policy is dead and buried. The President couldn't even get support among his own political party. But he did try to rebrand it and respond to it in a way--rebrand it in a way that appeared to deal with the concerns that everybody has about increasing costs and inflation, but it just did not make any sense.

The President repeated the same line that has already been shot down a number of times. He talked about raising taxes on the American people, and he says no one earning $400,000 a year or less would pay a penny more under his plan. But, of course, this is the same President who said that the price of the $5 trillion Build Back Better bill was zero. I think the President has lost a lot of credibility when it comes to talking about taxes and spending.

Well, what the President talked about last night was really a laundry list of his liberal agenda. This isn't a new plan. This is the same old plan with a new name broken down into smaller pieces. None of this is going to address what is confronting the American people today when it comes to inflation or crime or the border or regaining America's leadership and credibility in world affairs.

While I mention crime, when it comes to crime, the President did affirm that defunding the police is not the answer.

I see our friend, the Senator from New Jersey, on the floor of the Senate. I think he led an effort for us to have a vote on funding the police rather than defunding the police.

Of course, this is a complete reversal from what we have heard from many of the President's nominees, including those at the Department of Justice--people like Vanita Gupta who for months, if not years, chanted this mantra of defunding the police and criticizing the men and women in law enforcement who are the thin blue line between us and chaos. But there are some shining examples that I think the President could have pointed to. One is Dallas, TX. It is a shining example of how supporting our police both financially and with moral support and with smart plans can make a difference.

In most major cities across the country today, crime is up in all categories. In Dallas, TX, violent crime is down by 8.5 percent, and that is no accident. It is thanks to the great leadership of Dallas's mayor Eric Johnson and Chief Garcia, chief of the Dallas Police Department.

I asked Chief Garcia yesterday in a hearing in front of the Senate Judiciary Committee, I said: Is there any reason, Chief Garcia, that the plan you implemented in Dallas couldn't work elsewhere around the country? And he said: No, there is no reason.

Of course, every plan needs to be adapted to local conditions; but what the Dallas Police Department and the city council and mayor have done is something that can be replicated in other parts of the country.

Chief Garcia and other witnesses also testified to the importance of Project Safe Neighborhoods, which is a Federal program designed to go after gun criminals, particularly people who are felons in possession or people who use firearms for carjacking, drug transactions, and the like.

The fact of the matter is that Federal law with its mandatory minimum sentences for using a firearm illegally in violation of Federal law is a huge deterrent. And if you can't deter people from using firearms, you certainly can lock them up for an extended period of time which, I think, sends a strong message that this sort of activity will not be tolerated and will deter future criminal activity.

So there is a lot we can do when it comes to crime. We can also make sure that people who are suffering from mental health challenges aren't diverted to jails and denied the treatment that they need that can help them on the road to recovery. Those are the kinds of things that I wish we could have heard more about from the President last night.

I was shocked when the President said we need immigration reform last night. I have been in the Senate for quite a while now, a member of the Judiciary Committee. I am the ranking member on the Immigration Subcommittee. When my party has been in the majority, I have been the chairman of the Immigration Subcommittee. For the President to say immigration reform is something we ought to do struck me as a throwaway line. And the reason I say that is because he has done nothing, zero, zip, nada, to stop the flood of migrants across our southern border, together with the illegal drugs that come right behind them.

I have tried to do my best on a bipartisan basis working with people like Ms. Sinema, a border State Senator from Arizona, to come up with some modest suggestions for the administration to deal with the crisis at our border. Unfortunately, we have not heard a peep out of the administration, at the same time that the President's poll numbers, when it comes to border security and immigration, are in the cellar. You would think that they would be looking for some sort of bipartisan opportunity to register a win and make some progress, but that would be wrong.

Well, I was hopeful that we would hear more about the President's plan to work with Republicans in a 50-50 Senate to build consensus for bipartisan solutions. Other than the bipartisan support for Ukraine, we didn't hear much about that last night. What we heard was a long laundry list of partisan legislation that has been tried and failed during this last year.

The Biden administration needs to do more to address inflation in a smart way--in an effective way. They need to do more to support our men and women in uniform who are the thin blue line between us and criminals; and they need to do something--anything--to address the humanitarian crisis at the southern border.

I was hoping this could be a reset moment. You know, we all make mistakes in life, but the real test is whether we learn from those mistakes. But from the comments that the President made last night when it comes to these failed policies, it appears that he has learned nothing.

The American people elected a 50-50 Senate expecting to force us to work together, and we should do that. We should put the tried-and-true formula of building consensus and passing positive legislation to help the American people. We should use that formula again. It just simply blows my mind that the President and his party, with the prospect of an evenly divided Congress, has tried to do so many things on a purely partisan basis, and, as you might expect, has failed to do so when he has been unable to unite even his own political party.

Well, we need a stronger and a safer and a more prosperous country. As Governor Kim Reynolds said yesterday

evening, we can't project strength abroad if we are weak at home. And we can't support our allies, NATO, and our own military to deter authoritarian thugs like Putin if our economy isn't strong here at home as well.

So I continue to be an optimist and hope for the best, but last night's message was not encouraging.

I yield the floor.

Mr. President, Russia is waging war, the likes we have not seen since World War II. They are waging war on freedom and democracy.

Over recent days, the world has watched in horror as Russian troops have invaded and brutally attacked Ukraine and Ukrainians. So far, estimates are that 350 Ukrainians have been killed. We really don't know what the number is, but we do know that countless civilians have been injured, and more than half a million Ukrainians, including women and children, are now refugees.

This invasion was not weeks or even months in the making; this has been Moscow's plan for years. Putin has made no secret of his desire to redraw the maps of Europe and to restore the Russian Empire. That is why in 2008, Russia invaded the nation of Georgia. In 2014, it invaded Ukraine, for the first time since the end of the Cold War, taking the Crimea region. So the current invasion of Ukraine is really the second invasion we have seen from Vladimir Putin's Russian Federation since 2014. Putin's appetite has not been satisfied. If anything, these invasions have made him hungrier for power.

The people of Ukraine have lived under the shadow of Russian aggression for years, and it has always been a question of when, not if, Russia would finally act. For months, Russia has amassed hundreds of thousands of troops on Ukraine's border, with numbers growing from a few thousand to more than 150,000.

Defenders of freedom and democracy everywhere look to the United States for leadership. But, sadly, they were let down. That is because when it comes to projecting strength to authoritarians like Vladimir Putin and President Xi, to the Ayatollahs in Iran and Kim Jong Un in North Korea, the Biden administration repeatedly projects not strength but weakness.

First of all, when it comes to Europe and Ukraine and Russia, President Biden should not have waived sanctions on the Nord Stream 2 Pipeline last year. He should have never suggested that certain Russian attacks would be disregarded by the United States. A minor incursion, he said, might be overlooked.

And he should have taken swift action and imposed paralyzing sanctions on Russia before--before--an invasion to give them a taste of what might come, in an effort to deter Putin from invading in the first place. And we should have earlier sent greater defensive weapons to the Ukrainians. Strong action was called for before the war started, but unfortunately, we have been playing catchup since it did start.

But now, we have a critical task ahead of us. Between this crisis and the disastrous withdrawal from Afghanistan stranding thousands of Americans without consultation or communication with any of our NATO allies that were discouraged and shocked to find out that we would leave them hanging, President Biden has repeatedly given our NATO allies reason to doubt our commitment and our credibility.

I am sure Vladimir Putin is taking notice. I am sure President Xi and the People's Republic of China has as well. In fact, Xi Jinping has already expressed approval of the Russian invasion of Ukraine.

Putin has now put Russia's nuclear forces on high alert, threatening to escalate to the unthinkable--something that hasn't happened since 1945--the discharge of a nuclear device. He has also ordered his soldiers to fire on residential neighborhoods, a clear-cut example of a war crime.

There is need of decisive action to counter Russian aggression. With the eyes the world looking at the United States for leadership, it is time for us to step up in defense of this democracy. President Biden needs to follow through on his promise to make Putin a ``pariah on the world stage.'' The Biden administration has put harsh sanctions on Russia, but its most valuable asset remains virtually untouched, and that is Russia's oil and gas sector.

Even as Russia wages a brutal war against the people of Ukraine, it is exporting energy to the rest the world and using the profits--$100 oil and higher--to fund the war against innocent Ukrainian citizens. Sanctions against banks and oligarchs are crucial, but we should not ignore Russia's single largest economic asset.

The United States must identify ways to offset the global demand for Russian energy, both here at home and with our oil-producing allies abroad, so we can cut off Putin's biggest stream of revenue. That would be the biggest and best sanction of all.

Our friend John McCain used to joke that Russia was a gas station masquerading as a country to make the point that their oil and gas sector is the single most important part of their economy. And yet so far, the U.S. Government has left it relatively untouched and unscathed.

In addition to economic penalties, we must provide additional materiel support for Ukrainian forces to sustain their heroic and inspirational fight against Russian aggression. A few weeks ago, I began working with a bipartisan group of colleagues on a far-reaching bill to counter this aggression. This package included legislation that I introduced called the Ukraine Democracy Defense Lend-Lease Act, reminiscent of what the United States did when Britain was hanging by a thread under Nazi aggression in World War II.

Just as we did in World War II for our allies in Britain, this bill would ensure that Ukrainian forces and the Ukrainian citizenry had the defensive weapons, the air power, the ships--whatever they needed--in order to defend their sovereignty. It also included security assistance, as well as sanctions on Russia.

And even though we agreed on a bipartisan basis on the vast majority of what was being discussed, the administration's oppositions prevented us from reaching a final agreement.

I am disappointed that we were unable to act and send a strong and united and bipartisan message as Congress to Vladimir Putin, but the fact that we were unsuccessful then doesn't eliminate the need for us to take further action now.

Thanks to the leadership of the ranking member of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, Senator Risch from Idaho, I was proud to join my Republican colleagues in introducing legislation that will kneecap Russia's efforts. The Never Yielding Europe's Territory Act doesn't just support Ukraine or impose economic consequences on Russia on counter Russian aggression, it does all of the above.

This legislation includes a range of measures to strengthen Ukraine's ability to defend itself, including my lend-lease bill. It imposes harsh economic consequences on the Russian economy through far-reaching sanctions.

As we all know, Senator Menendez, the chairman of the Foreign Relations Committee, and Senator Risch, the ranking member, negotiated for days and indeed weeks upon weeks, but were unable to come up with a bipartisan package.

I am especially disappointed that today, when Senator Risch offered to take up and pass this bill by unanimous consent, that it was blocked by one of our Democratic colleagues. I wonder what kind of message that sends to Vladimir Putin--not a good one.

America stands with Ukraine, and we must do everything in our power to help Ukrainian forces defend their freedom and their democracy. Through the devastation that we have seen over the past couple of days, we have all been inspired by the strength and courage of the Ukrainian people. They are on the frontlines of the war against our values, against their sovereignty, against democracy, and they deserve our unequivocal support.

As the conflict--indeed, as the war--in Ukraine wages on, strong American leadership is desperately needed on a bipartisan, monolithic basis.

This evening, President Biden will have a chance to provide his State of the Union message, and I hope that he sends a clear message to the world that Russia's belligerence and hostility will not be tolerated. The American people, our friends and allies, and our adversaries will be paying close attention,

and President Biden should not pull any punches. He should not mince words. He should say that America stands with Ukraine, and we will not tolerate as civilized nations--as democracies--a blatant attack on a fellow democracy.

In addition to the many challenges abroad, the American people are facing the failures of the President Biden's domestic policies here at home. Families are being battered by the worst inflation in 40 years, up 7\1/2\ percent so far this year alone. It is more expensive in Texas to heat your home, to stock your pantry, or fill your gas tank.

I spoke to cotton producers in Abilene, TX, just last week. They told me their single biggest problem is the cost of inputs, of fuel, fertilizer, and other things they need in order to grow their product, their commodity.

Anyone who has a need to make a big purchase--things like a car or home appliances--has likely experienced extreme sticker shock.

Business owners, too, have been hit with a double whammy as supply chain issues make it even more difficult and more costly to produce, sell, and ship their products.

Wages have increased some, which would normally be good news, but wage growth is still being outpaced by inflation; meaning that for the average American family, their purchasing power is shrinking, not growing because of inflation. That means our workers have essentially gotten a pay cut because of the flawed policies of the Biden administration.

Economists said that if our Democratic colleagues had proceeded with their nearly $2 trillion partisan spending spree at the beginning of last year, that it would cause inflation. I still remember Larry Summers, a Democratic-leaning economist who served in Bill Clinton's Cabinet, warning that all of this money that Congress is spending--not the money we were spending for public health purposes or to mitigate the economic consequences of COVID-19, but the money spent on other items in our Democratic colleagues' outbox--he said that we are risking the return of inflation like we haven't seen in the last few decades. Despite the warning from people like Larry Summers and others, our Democratic colleagues forged ahead and now America's working families are paying the price.

I hope President Biden has a plan he will announce tonight on how to attack inflation. But that plan cannot--cannot--involve his ill- conceived ``Build Back Broke'' agenda. This is another $5 trillion spending bill that, thanks to bipartisan opposition, did not go anywhere, but which threatened huge tax increases and huge inflationary spending. This is not time to pile on and make the American people's pain worse. We need to do everything we can to reduce inflation, to increase their buying power.

I would like to also hear the President's strategy to address another crisis, and that is the crisis at our southern border. My State has 1,200 miles of border with Mexico, and, last year alone, we have seen 2 million people show up at the border, either to be returned to their country of origin or, more likely, to be welcomed into the United States and be given a slip of paper that says: Show up for your immigration court hearing in a year or 2 years.

We know that the human smugglers are getting rich smuggling people into the United States. They understand our system. They know how to exploit the flaws in our system, and they are getting rich doing so. And by flooding the border with so many people, including unaccompanied children at one time, it takes Border Patrol off the frontlines while the drug smugglers move their illicit cargo into the United States. And it is those drugs that have contributed to the loss of more than 100,000 American lives due to drug overdoses last year alone.

I want to hear President Biden's answer: Why haven't you done anything about it? Why haven't you welcomed or asked for the help of bipartisan Members of Congress to try to address this crisis at the border?

Instead, the Biden administration made it worse. They revoked many of the policies of the previous administration that deterred an influx of migration, and they failed to anticipate the obvious consequences. When you lay out the welcome mat on the U.S. border, people will come, and they come not just from Mexico and Central America. They come from around the world.

I remember early on during the Biden administration talking to the chief of the Border Patrol in the Del Rio Sector. He said: In the last few weeks, we have detained people from 150-plus countries.

The reason for that is obvious. Illegal immigration is the way that international criminal networks get rich and do business. And if you have enough money, they will get you across the southern border, exploiting the laws that we know need to be changed but we cannot seem to muster the support from President Biden nor our Democratic friends to fix.

Local governments and my constituents in the Rio Grande Valley and along the border, who are largely Hispanic themselves, understand the difference between legal and illegal immigration, and they are being inundated with illegal immigration and the burdens that are associated with that. They are looking to Washington to do something about it, but those calls are not being answered. So the burden falls on State government--Governor Abbott and the Texas Legislature--to try to step up. But this is the Federal Government's responsibility, not the State government's responsibility. Leaders in Texas have begged the Biden administration to step up and do its duty. They have asked for more staff, better resources, and policies that put an end to these pull factors, but the administration has done nothing. The only conclusion I can draw after all this time is they just don't care.

As we head into the spring, which is typically the busiest time at the border, the Biden administration needs to take action. The President cannot continue to ignore this humanitarian crisis. We need a concrete plan to address this chaos and ensure that migrants are treated fairly and humanely in accordance with U.S. law.

But, sadly, the border crisis isn't the only problem the administration has shown complete and utter disregard for. Communities across the country are worried about alarming increases in violent crime.

This morning alone, we had a hearing in the Judiciary Committee on carjacking, the violent theft of an automobile using a gun or other weapon to steal it from a person who may be driving their kids to school or to work or to church, only to have their car stolen and their life threatened or taken.

In 2020, murders rose nearly 30 percent from the year before--30 percent--the single largest increase on record. We are still waiting for the rest of the data from 2021, but, so far, the picture is no brighter. A number of major cities experienced their deadliest years on record. Of course, this was in the wake of this boneheaded idea called ``defund the police,'' which destroyed support for the police at the local level and demoralized the men and women who are doing their duty in an honorable and necessary way each and every day. This is the price that you pay for such misguided efforts as defunding the police.

The American people are paying attention, as you would expect. A poll in November found that more than half of those surveyed believe that local crime had gotten worse--a 13-percent jump from the previous year. Concerns at the national level are even higher. Nearly three-quarters of Americans believe that crime is up nationally. They believe that because it is. This is bad news for families, for communities, for businesses, and for our dedicated law enforcement professionals, and the administration needs to take action.

American families are facing a host of crises at home, and democracy is taking a beating abroad. Tonight, I hope President Biden will outline a clear plan to address these many challenges and come up with answers that we can work on together in a bipartisan way. Trying to do things in a 50-50 Senate or at the 4-vote majority in the House of Representatives is destined to fail, as we have seen time and time again. The only way to get things done in a 50-50 Senate is to work to build consensus and get bipartisan support.

I hope we will see a midcourse correction from the administration on these many challenges that I mentioned

today. I hope the President will finally acknowledge and commit to helping address the humanitarian crisis at the border, which he has ignored for more than a year now. I hope and I trust he will send a strong message to the world that America condemns Russian action and stands with solidarity with Ukraine. The American people deserve to hear their President explain his plan to address each of these looming challenges, and I hope he doesn't let them down.

I yield the floor.

I suggest the absence of a quorum.

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

Madam President, the aggressive and hostile actions of the Chinese Communist Party pose a massive threat to the global order. The Chinese Communist Party's strategy can be summed up in four Rs: resist, reduce, replace, and reorder.

China resists American economic influence by manipulating American businesses and industries and stealing intellectual property.

It reduces internal dissent and free expression of ideas through surveillance and censorship of its own people. It is essentially a police state. And it seeks to assert its power and influence in the United States by various means.

The Chinese Communist Party intends to replace America as the world's technology leader through its Made in China 2025 initiative, which seeks to achieve Chinese dominance in high-tech manufacturing.

And, of course, it hopes to reorder international norms and institutions around itself.

The CCP's mantra can best be described as ``Win at all costs.'' And, make no mistake, its reckless actions paint an alarming picture for the United States and our allies. For everything from national security to economic policy, there is a clear and urgent need to reorient our way of thinking on how we should respond to this threat from China.

Despite the partisanship that has sometimes gripped this Chamber for more than a year now, this is one area where, thankfully, there is broad bipartisan agreement. Our colleagues on both sides of the aisle recognize the growing threats posed by the CCP and the need to act.

So last summer the Senate took a major step forward by passing the U.S. Innovation and Competition Act. This bipartisan bill was the result of intense bipartisan negotiations, with our friend Senator Young from Indiana leading negotiations on our side of the aisle. This legislation addresses a range of issues to help the United States reduce its reliance on China and to counter looming threats from the Communist Party.

Without question, the cornerstone of USICA, as it is called, is funding for programs created by the CHIPS Act, which I introduced with the Senator from Virginia, Mr. Warner, in 2020 and nearly every Senator in this body has supported. Semiconductor chips, which we have all had to learn a lot more about, are everywhere--from cell phones to cars to agricultural equipment to missile defense systems. Despite our need for a strong supply of these semiconductor chips, we overwhelmingly rely on other countries--most of them in Asia--to produce them. Taiwan alone produces about 63 percent of the advanced semiconductors in the world.

If, for some reason, our supply of these semiconductors was cut off as the result of a natural disaster or another pandemic or military conflict, it would lead to very serious consequences for both our national security as well as our economy. When we talk about the need to address threats to our supply chain and threats coming from the People's Republic of China, semiconductors are front and center.

Now, USICA provided the CHIPS program with $52 billion to bolster domestic semiconductor manufacturing and to secure this vulnerable supply chain. This legislation passed the Senate last summer by a vote of 68 to 32, which is an incredible bipartisan accomplishment these days.

Unfortunately, the House of Representatives refused to act on this bipartisan bill. They said they wanted to pass their own version, which they have every right to do, of course, but they also should have been working at it diligently and acted quickly. The Chinese Communist Party simply isn't sitting around waiting on House Democrats to get their act together.

So it took 8 months before the House of Representatives passed a bill aimed at competition with China; but, unfortunately, they chose to go the easy way, which is to pass strictly a partisan bill, which virtually no Republican supported. Instead of mirroring the bipartisan process here in the Senate, Democrats only negotiated among themselves and excluded Republicans from that process.

Democratic committee chairmen refused to consult with their Republican ranking members, and they ran off with the pen and crafted a partisan and unserious bill. Sure, this legislation does include a few bipartisan measures like CHIPs funding, as well as a proposal I led with Mr. Casey, the Senator from Pennsylvania, to review limited outbound investments in China.

But House Democrats don't deserve a lot of credit for including a few bipartisan bills that they already support. They kept some of the overwhelmingly partisan pieces of USICA and tacked on a laundry list of unrelated and controversial provisions. The House-passed bill sends a whopping $8 billion to a U.N. climate slush fund, which has provided more than $100 million to China alone. So if the purpose of this effort is to counter threats from China, it doesn't exactly accomplish that goal when we end up sending money to China.

Democrats also added provisions in the House related to immigration, from creating new types of visas to removing green card caps. Now, immigration is a serious and important issue, but these can't expect to see the light of day being haphazardly tacked on to this legislation. They need to be debated and marked up by the appropriate legislative committees and negotiated.

Well, in true fashion, House Democrats added a range of handouts to their political supporters, especially labor unions. From massive slush funds to burdensome new labor requirements, unions would win big with the House bill. The labor bosses apparently were promised some pretty big benefits in the Democrats' reckless tax-and-spending spree bill.

Since that bill is now dead and buried, it looks like this was their way to try to appease their political supporters.

As we have learned over the last year, our colleagues in the House can't seem to resist any opportunity to sneak in ridiculous partisan pet projects. Their bill would also establish a coral reef task force-- you heard me correctly, a coral reef task force--and put $6 million toward a national coral reef management fellowship. Believe it or not, the term ``coral reef'' is mentioned more than 300 times in the House bill. No wonder it took them so long to put the bill together.

Of course, it is not just what is in this bill that is a problem; it is what was left out. The bill's trade title--which was one of the most important parts of what the Senate did, championed by the Senator from Idaho, the ranking member of the Finance Committee, Mr. Crapo--but the House trade bill is entirely inadequate. It extends and expands trade adjustment assistance, which is normally something we do when we approve of a trade deal, like the USMCA, the United States-Mexico- Canada Agreement. But they left out the most important part, which was trade promotion authority.

We know trade promotion authority is absolutely critical to brokering strong trade agreements without extraordinary delays. What the House did by including trade adjustment assistance without trade promotion authority does nothing to advance our goals to open up markets to American-made goods and services and agriculture.

Well, the House bill also fails to push for a digital trade agreement and identify countries, like the People's Republic of China, that use censorship as a way to limit access to our tech industry, and it doesn't narrow relief from tariffs for businesses experiencing severe economic harm that has broad bipartisan support.

So it is no surprise that the House bill was passed almost entirely along party lines. Unlike the bipartisan legislation here in the Senate, the House bill is an unserious attempt to help America compete with China. It just simply doesn't cut the mustard.

House Democrats wasted about 8 months while they waited and waited and waited before even acting in this totally inadequate manner. And there is no chance, of course, the Senate will pass anything that resembles the House bill. We do need legislation to confront growing threats from China, but we need to do it correctly. That means what we need is a formal conference committee between the House and the Senate and to ensure ultimately that the final product looks a whole lot like the Senate bill, which passed, as I said, with strong bipartisan support.

This is really nothing to be toyed with. This is a matter of national and economic security and something far too important for partisan jockeying such as demonstrated by the House of Representatives in their totally inadequate and unserious piece of legislation.

I yield the floor.