Floor Statements

Mr. President, yesterday I was dismayed to hear the President of the United States suggest that a Russian invasion of Ukraine might not provoke a powerful response by the United States and our allies.

Now, I am grateful that the Press Secretary did issue a statement subsequently which seemed to clarify the strong commitment that the American people--from the administration to the Members of Congress-- have to assist our Ukrainian allies in their efforts to deter or defeat Russian aggression. I believe we have a duty to stand with Ukraine and our European allies as they attempt to defend their democracies.

Strong language and threats of sanctions have their place, but they are not enough to deter Vladimir Putin. We need to take concrete steps to deter the likelihood of a Russian attack in any form.

But it is not just the executive branch of the U.S. Government that

has a role to play. We in Congress have a role we can play, too, in sending a very clear message to Vladimir Putin that we will not stand idly by while he attacks a neighbor, a democracy, and a potential future member of NATO.

To that end, I have introduced bipartisan legislation called the Ukraine Democracy Defense Lend-Lease Act to ensure Ukrainian forces have the weapons that they need to deter that aggression and defend, if necessary, against a Russian invasion.

Of course, students of history remember the importance of lend-lease back in World War II, back when America was officially neutral in the conflict initiated by Nazi Germany in Europe and during a time when the American people were of an isolationist frame of mind.

Recognizing the importance of throwing a lifeline to Great Britain and our other allies, Congress passed on a bipartisan basis the Lend- Lease Act, which ultimately resulted in $30 billion worth of materiel being delivered to Britain and our other allies to help them defeat Nazi Germany.

So, in a similar vein, this legislation authorizes the President to enter into lend-lease agreements with Ukraine and provide the military equipment necessary to protect the Ukrainian people from Russian aggression. No one is suggesting that American troops should be on the ground, but we are saying clearly that it is our responsibility to provide the Ukrainians everything they need in order to defend themselves.

This legislation would once again, in the immortal words of Franklin Delano Roosevelt, allow us to serve as the arsenal of democracy, just as we did in World War II, and provide Ukraine with the lethal weapons they need to protect themselves against the Russian threat.

Make no mistake, America stands with Ukraine, and we will do everything we can, again, on a bipartisan basis--the executive branch, the legislative branch--to support our friends and to defeat a Russian invasion and allow them to protect their democracy.

Vladimir Putin's stated concerns about Ukraine are completely a false narrative, particularly with regard to his stated concerns about Ukraine becoming a part of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization, which, as we all know, is purely defensive in nature.

Vladimir Putin has called the fall of the Soviet Union one of the greatest geopolitical tragedies of the 20th century, and clearly he is of a mind to regain that lost territory as a result of the fall of the Soviet Union and, if necessary, do it by force. That is what Putin is up to, and we should not be confused about that.

I am proud to have worked with Senators Cardin and Wicker and Senators Shaheen, Graham, and Blumenthal on this legislation, and I hope more of our colleagues--again, on a bipartisan basis--will join us in advancing this bill and making sure that our Ukrainian friends have everything they need to deter, if possible, Russian aggression and, if that is not possible, to make sure that Vladimir Putin pays a heavy price for attacking Ukraine.

Mr. President, families in Texas and across the country are being pummeled by the highest inflation in 40 years. For everything from gasoline to groceries, to clothing, to utility bills, basic expenses have skyrocketed.

Groceries just don't cost more, they are also harder to find. Empty shelves have become a sign of the times as supply chain problems, staffing shortages, and severe weather have created a perfect storm.

On top of that, families are trying to stay safe and healthy in the midst of a surge in COVID-19 cases. There is an urgent need for testing and masks, both of which are increasingly hard to come by.

With so many urgent needs facing families in Texas and elsewhere, what does the Democratic leadership have teed up for the Senate this week? A partisan bill to take over the Nation's elections. Democrats apparently want people to forget about the fact that they can't keep their refrigerators or pantries stocked or that their kids are out of school again because of the pandemic and can't study in person or that it costs a small fortune to fill up your gas tank. Apparently, they are trying to convince the American people that there is somehow a coordinated assault on the right to vote and their partisan legislation is the only savior.

According to our colleagues, the evidence of this attack can be found in a number of State laws passed this last year, even though many of the reforms in those laws make voting easier than in a number of blue States. The Georgia law, for example, extends the early voting period to 17 days, giving voters more time than what is offered in the President's home State of Delaware, which, until this year, did not allow any in-person early voting.

When that argument fails, though, our colleagues say the need for this legislation stems from the attack on the Capitol on January 6, even though their bill was written long before a mob descended on this building. In fact, the first version of the For the People Act was introduced in 2019, more than 3 years ago.

The so-called voting rights crisis is nothing more than manufactured hysteria to justify our colleagues' longstanding attempts to take over America's elections.

Just to put a timeframe around the concerns, this is what 94 percent of respondents to a Pew poll, a nonpartisan poll, said about the 2020 elections. Ninety-four percent said it was easy or very easy to cast their ballot. Yet the legislation that is going to be considered today has its origins in a 2019 bill called the For the People Act, which obviously predates this poll from the Pew corporation.

While I have no doubt the Senate will reject this legislation once again, I never cease to be amazed at how far our colleagues are willing to go to enhance their own political power purely along partisan lines. As a matter of fact, they have done a complete about-face.

Less than 5 years ago, the majority leader said we should ``build a firewall around the legislative filibuster.'' He has now laid the groundwork and will call the vote to end it. The Democratic leader has tried to frame this radical move as a way to promote debate, but make no mistake, our colleagues aren't trying to blow up the Senate to force Republicans to explain our opposition to the election takeover bill. In fact, we have done that endlessly. We don't need this drama in order to explain our position. I, for one, have spent hours on the Senate floor explaining the dangers of this partisan legislation, as have many of my other colleagues.

The only conclusion I can reach is that our Democratic colleagues are trying to blow up the Senate in order to clear a path for purely partisan legislation, to take a body that was actually created to promote bipartisan consensus building and make it possible with purely Democrat votes to work their will in a body that represents some 330 million Americans. What a bad idea that would be, to promote purely partisan legislation and dissuade or take away the incentives that encourage us to do what doesn't come naturally, and that is to actually work together and build consensus.

Our colleagues apparently don't realize how shortsighted this move actually is. In the Senate, the door actually swings both ways. One day, you are in a majority. The next day, you are using every tool at your disposal to have a say in the process while representing your constituents.

No matter how much frustration and heartache the filibuster creates for the majority party, the shoe is always capable of being on the other foot. Those of us who have been here a while have been in the majority and in the minority and understand the frustration that a majority feels when they can't get what they want while complying with the Senate rules and the consensus-building requirement of the 60-vote cloture vote requirement.

But if our colleagues succeed in blowing up the filibuster, there is no question that it will be easier for them to turn their progressive wish list into the law of the land.

You can't just carve out one piece of legislation. Once we head down that slippery slope, the legislative filibuster is gone.

Taking over America's elections may be the first item on their agenda, but it won't be the last. They could pass the Green New Deal 2.0, impose sweeping gun control laws, legalize abortion from the time of conception until the time of natural delivery, and force every individual in the country into a one-size-fits-all healthcare plan. They could expand the Supreme Court and pack it with partisan Justices. They could even add new States--Puerto Rico, Washington, DC--and add to their majority in the Senate while doing so.

There would be no limit, no constraint, not even a speed bump on what our Democratic colleagues could do if they created so-called carve-outs for every bill they dub ``must-pass legislation.'' The entirety of the radical left's wish list could become law without having to gain a single Republican vote.

Of course, there is one big caveat here: Our Democratic colleagues can only do that if they retain the majority. As our colleagues know, power is fleeting, and at some point, the shoe will always be on the other foot. The sign on Senator Schumer's door may say ``majority leader'' today, but that won't last forever. In a year, Republicans could hold the majority in both the Senate and the House. Three years from today, we could have a Republican President-elect. I would like to ask my colleagues, what happens then? When Republicans control the Senate, the House, and the White House, as Democrats do now, how would our colleagues feel about the new rule book that they have created? Will they stand by their decision to silence the minority and ignore the millions of the people those Senators represent? Not a chance. If the filibuster is eliminated, it doesn't just pave the way to our Democratic colleagues' agenda; it clears the path for the majority's agenda, whichever party that may be.

Now, liberal activists may like the idea of nuking the filibuster today, but they will soon find themselves ruing the day their party broke the Senate. The next Republican-controlled Senate could make the 2017 tax cuts permanent and ensure that blue-State millionaires are required to pay their fair share of Federal taxes.

We could make sure that there would be investments in border security and immigration enforcement and craft reforms to reduce the immigration court backlog. We could withhold Federal funding from sanctuary cities and prioritize the deportation of violent criminals.

We could implement a 20-week ban on abortions and ensure that any baby who survives an abortion receives lifesaving care. We could expand school choice to give students and parents more options when it comes to a quality education. We could protect our constituents' Second Amendment rights and establish concealed carry reciprocity throughout the Nation.

We could pass right-to-work laws, expand natural gas production, and make even more investments in our national security.

In short, a future Republican-controlled Senate would be able to accomplish a lot, all thanks to a precedent that our Democratic colleagues seek to establish today. And while I would love to see many of these bills that I just

mentioned become law, I oppose any effort to eliminate or weaken the legislative filibuster, just as we did when we were in the majority working with a Republican President during the preceding 4 years.

There is no scenario in which partisan wins are more important than long-term stability for our laws and our public policy. It is not just the American people who would experience whiplash under this game of ping-pong. Imagine the chaos our economy would endure if laws were simply changed every couple of years because a new majority comes into place.

Without some degree of predictability, how could businesses, small and large alike, make investments that would pay off in the future and create more jobs and help grow our economy?

This is why we need the filibuster for every piece of legislation that comes out of the Senate. The much derided 60-vote threshold is there to ensure the stability of our country's laws and policies are not affected by the transitory majorities that we find here in Congress.

I know the Democratic leader and many of our colleagues are moved to action by their political base, and some may actually be worried about having a primary opponent unless they go to the mat trying to eliminate the filibuster. Well, some of our colleagues have experienced unbelievable pressure, particularly the Senator from West Virginia and the Senator from Arizona. And last night, if the press reports are accurate, when asked whether the majority leader would support a contested primary run against Senator Manchin and Senator Sinema, he didn't respond. The Senator from Vermont, Senator Sanders, did respond and said he would consider supporting a primary opponent to the Senator from West Virginia and the Senator from Arizona. I would make the point that it was the junior Senator from Vermont who made that statement, not the Presiding Officer.

So, in the Democratic Party, if you can't vote your conscience anymore, you either have to fall in line or your colleagues will make every effort to try to kick you out.

Well, I have some news for our friends across the aisle. If they think liberal activists are upset now, they haven't seen anything yet because, if the majority leader successfully blows up the rules of the Senate, the radical left will have a full-on meltdown when Republicans regain the majority, which could be as soon as next year.

Regardless of which party holds the majority, the Senate rules should not be bent or broken to achieve strictly partisan wins. Democrats' attempt to blow up the Senate is reckless and embarrassingly shortsighted. You wonder if anybody learned anything out of the debates and the nuclear option that was used strictly for judicial nominations, which resulted in three Republican nominees being confirmed to the Supreme Court during the last President's term of office.

Later today, all 100 Senators will go on the record. Each Member will vote on whether to silence 50 Senators and the tens of millions of people that those of us in the majority represent. All of my Republican colleagues support the filibuster, even when we have received a lot of pressure--like the Senator from Arizona and the Senator from West Virginia have had--from people in their own political party, including the President of the United States, because we have stood in favor of that requirement because of the stabilizing force that it provides and, again, forcing us to do something that doesn't necessarily come natural, and that is to work together and build bipartisan consensus.

Don't get me wrong. It is hard, in this polarized country, to work together and find common ground, but it is essential that we continue to do so where we can. Our Democratic colleagues used to agree. In fact, it has been less than 5 years since 27 of our current Democratic colleagues signed a letter arguing that the filibuster should be preserved. We will see if those colleagues and the many others who have defended the filibuster end up caving to the radical left in their political base and vote to blow up the Senate.

For the sake of the American people, our economy, and the long-term stability of our government, I hope this ends up being another failed vote.

I yield the floor.

Mr. President, I want to applaud the Republican leader, the Senator from Kentucky, for saying what needed to be said. If there is a unique role for the U.S. Senate in our system of government, it is to be the place where debate and deliberation, common sense and compromise, prevail over demagoguery.

And, unfortunately, what we heard from President Biden yesterday was sheer demagoguery. And I agree that it was not only unbecoming of the President of the United States; it was, frankly, embarrassing. Many of us were embarrassed for him that he would resort to that sort of rhetoric, particularly when Members of his own political party are not on board asking him to do what he wants to do, which is to break the rules of the U.S. Senate.

So until this debate began, many Americans probably didn't think twice about something called the filibuster. And as we have all tried to explain why it is important and what role the filibuster plays in our system of government, I think it is perhaps best described as a mechanism to force us to

do what doesn't come naturally, and that is to build consensus, to work together in the best interest of the country, and to pass laws that will endure, not those that will be reversed with the new majority, with the next election.

When you think about a country like ours, with 330 million people, as diverse as it is, it just makes sense for us to have fulsome debate and deliberation, because the risk of making mistakes, of unintended consequences, is great, and there is no body in America that can fix mistakes made by the U.S. Congress.

So deliberation is an important function, and that is why forcing us to do what doesn't come naturally, which means to work together and build consensus to get 60 votes to cut off debate, is such a critical role.

Well, unfortunately, our colleagues have--according to the Democratic leader and the majority leader--our colleagues have chosen to leave bipartisanship and tradition at the door in order to grow their own political power.

Make no mistake, they face an uphill battle. Two of our Democratic colleagues have stated their outright opposition, and I imagine others who hold the same view who have not wanted to catch the slings and arrows that have made their way toward the Senator from Arizona and the Senator from West Virginia.

There are many other Democratic Senators who hold the same concerns in private. Still, the majority leader is determined to light the Senate rule book on fire.

As this Chamber considers such an extreme move, I want to share some wise words from one of our former colleagues. That would be former Senator Joe Biden. The current President served in the Senate for three and a half decades and held a deep reverence for the rules and the traditions and the norms that govern this body--at least, he did. Back in 2005, the Senate was weighing whether or not to eliminate the 60- vote requirement for certain judicial nominees. At that time we had a Republican majority and a Democratic minority. The shoe was on the other foot. But Senator Biden--or then-Senator Biden--was absolutely clear about his feelings on the matter. He said: Eliminating the filibuster--the so-called nuclear option--is ``an example of the arrogance of power''--``the arrogance of power.''

Now, that is not an ambiguous statement. That is not a qualified statement. That is not a contingent statement. That is a declarative statement about what eliminating the filibuster is--an arrogance of power.

Back in 2005, then-Senator Biden believed that changing the rules to benefit yourself or your political party is an example of that arrogance of power. And he called it ``a fundamental power grab by the majority party.'' But now President Biden obviously holds the exact opposite view. In other words, he has done a spectacular flip-flop.

Now that his party is the one in power, he is not only OK with the idea of this arrogance of power, this power grab, he endorses it. He advocates for it.

He is willing to use some of the strongest rhetoric I have ever heard come from a President of the United States to condemn it, to condemn the filibuster and endorse its destruction. In Georgia, yesterday, President Biden made his new position on the filibuster crystal clear. He said: ``Let the majority prevail.''

The move he once called ``a fundamental power grab'' is now his new legislative strategy. And President Biden isn't the only one to have done a complete flip-flop when it comes to the filibuster, when it is opportunistic, when it is convenient, when it is expedient.

Senator Durbin, the Democratic majority whip, also used to have a deep respect for the traditions of the Senate. He said that, if the filibuster were eliminated, ``that would be the end of the Senate as it was originally devised and created going back to our Founding Fathers.'' But his respect for these traditions, these norms, these rules dissipated when it became a political inconvenience.

Last year, Senator Durbin, the Senator from Illinois, said the filibuster ``has become the death grip of democracy.''

I am not sure if he is proud of it now, but Senator Schumer was also an advocate for the filibuster in the not-so-distant past. Just a few years ago--again, when the shoe was on the other foot and Democrats were a minority, and Republicans were a majority--he said we should ``build a fire wall around the legislative filibuster'' to protect the Senate from ``the winds of short-term electoral change.''

Well, today, for sure, the winds have shifted. The Senator who once supported the filibuster now finds himself as the majority leader, trying to appease the most radical elements in his political base.

Where does he stand on the filibuster today? Well, he is whipping votes to eliminate it. Democrats who once hailed the filibuster as a vital stabilizing force in our government now call it a weapon of mass destruction, a mockery of American democracy, and even a Jim Crow relic.

Let's not forget that, just about a year and a half ago, Democrats used this Jim Crow relic to block an anti-lynching bill. That is right. I was here on the Senate floor when the now-Vice President of the United States, Kamala Harris, and Cory Booker from New Jersey, our colleague from New Jersey, participated in a filibuster to block a motion to proceed to a police reform bill that contained their own anti-lynching bill in it. Shocking to me. They didn't even want to begin discussion of the bill--their own anti-lynching bill.

Well, now that Democrats control all levers of government, they have tossed their previous convictions in the trash. Their agenda, securing a result that will result in a permanent partisan advantage, that is their sole focus. Our colleagues seem to have been blinded by the possibility of short-term victories, and they are ignoring the longer term repercussions, because, in the Senate, what goes around comes around.

Let's say that Democrats muster enough support to take a wrecking ball to the Senate rules. They blow up the rules and pass this so- called election bill with only 50 votes plus the tie-breaking vote of the Vice President. They would likely spend the rest of the year checking other items off of their radical wish list. This idea about a carve-out for one kind of bill is just malarkey, to use the President's term.

They would clearly use this to craft new laws to curb Second Amendment rights, expand access to abortion, and decimate important industries in the United States like the oil and gas industry. At the same time, the President is asking for Vladimir Putin and OPEC to pump more oil because the price of gasoline has gone through the roof.

Well, our colleagues like the sound of that--eliminating the filibuster--but they aren't prepared for what inevitably would come next.

The great genius of our system and of our country is that power is not absolute, and, ultimately, all power lies in the hands of we the people, and we are all directly accountable to the people we represent.

If voters reject Democrats' power grab and hand Republicans the Senate majority, Democrats would, if they were successful today or tomorrow, have zero impact on the legislative process. You could just ignore Democrats and plow your way to a certain result. They would have no way of stopping legislation they absolutely abhor from becoming law, and the States they represent, represented by Democratic Senators, those Senators would be irrelevant. Think about that.

All of us worked hard to get here. All of us are proud of the fact that our voters elected us to represent them in this most august body known on the planet, but if you happen to be in the minority, under the current position taken by the President and the majority leader and our Senate Democratic friends--almost all of them--those Senators elected in blue States would have zero impact. They might as well not even show up.

If voters reject the Democrats' power grab and hand Republicans the majority, they would have no say in the legislative process, if they are successful.

A Republican-controlled Senate could pass new laws to protect the right to life, secure the border, expand and enhance Second Amendment rights under the Constitution, and much, much more.

If that were to happen, would Democrats stand by the rules change that they are debating and advocating for

today? Would they stand by their decision to silence the minority party and minority Senators? Would they agree with President Biden's statement, ``Let the majority prevail''?

Well, we don't have to wonder because we have seen this movie before. Our colleagues have already expressed regrets over the previous filibuster carve-out.

Contrary to the strong statement Democrats made in 2005 advocating for the filibuster to be maintained, they started chipping away at it just 8 years later.

In 2013, Democrats eliminated the 60-vote threshold for judicial nominees, and the move has haunted them for nearly a decade and resulted in the confirmation of three Supreme Court Justices during President Trump's term of office.

Back then, when they invoked the nuclear option, Leader McConnell said:

You will regret this, and you may regret this a lot sooner

than you think.

Reflecting on that moment a few years ago, Senator Bennet, one of our Colorado colleagues, was clear. He said Senator McConnell was right.

Under the previous administration, the Republican-led Senate confirmed more than 230 conservative judges, all thanks to the Democrats' elimination of the filibuster when it comes to nominations.

The senior Senator from Colorado isn't the only one who has shown remorse after ending up on the losing side of that rules change. Senator Tester, our colleague from Montana, said voting on that rule change was ``probably the biggest mistake [he] ever made.''

Senator Shaheen, our colleague from New Hampshire, concluded that ``it has not served us well.''

Even Senator Schumer, the majority leader, has said that ``I wish it hadn't happened.''

And as a reminder, this is only in reference to Federal judges. These individuals hold tremendous power, no mistake about it.

But now we are talking about rule changes that stipulate how laws are made, not how nominations are considered. This is the so-called legislative calendar, and what happens in the wake of this change would impact every single family across the country.

When Republicans, inevitably, at some point, take the majority again, it would be a simple thing, with 51 votes, to dismantle all of the laws that our Democratic colleagues have passed if they were to eliminate the filibuster. Then, of course, when Democrats take control again, the reverse would happen.

You know, I think that the 60-vote requirement is forcing us to do something that doesn't come natural, and that is to force us to work together to build consensus. I think that is what the American people want us to do, to work together. And the filibuster, that 60-vote requirement to close off debate, forces us to do just that. It eliminates the possibility that we can, with a mere majority of 51 votes, have our way, only to see it reversed after the next election. That is not good for the country. That is not good for our constituents. That doesn't create the sort of predictable, enduring laws that the American people should be able to rely on.

Well, when it comes to eliminating the filibuster, Senator Biden's line about ``the arrogance of power'' is exactly that. At some point, the shoe will be on the other foot--it always happens--which is why no party, neither party, has been so shortsighted, until now, to try to eliminate the legislative filibuster. No party has ever been so power hungry and so shortsighted as to shatter the norms and traditions of this institution.

I would like to close with one more quote from then-Senator Biden back in 2005. He said:

What shortsightedness, and what a price history will exact

on those who support this radical move.

I yield the floor.

Mr. President, considering the way our Democratic friends talk about the state of voting rights in America, it is easy to see why some people have expressed concerns because if you took them at face value, you might be very worried about the state of voting rights in our country, but there is more to the story than that, which I will hope to explain here in the next few minutes.

For example, when it comes to the alarmism about voting rights, look no further than the Democratic majority whip, Senator Durbin from Illinois, who said there is an ``insidious effort to suppress the rights of voters of color.''

Senator Schumer, the majority leader, Senator from New York, has said the right to vote is ``under attack in ways we have not seen in generations.''

President Biden himself has said there is a ``21st century Jim Crow assault'' on the right to vote.

If you were to take these at face value and accept them, obviously, you would be very concerned about the state of voting rights.

But there is more to the story, as I said. If you just listen to these statements, you would think that the States--the 50 States--had just imposed literacy tests on voting. You would think the disgusting and subjective determinations of ``good moral character'' that existed before the civil rights movement had somehow sprung back to life. You might even wonder if the Supreme Court of the United States has struck down the Voting Rights Act itself.

(Mr. KELLY assumed the Chair.)

Obviously, none of these things are true. There is simply no concerted effort to attempt to prevent voters of color or any eligible voters from casting their ballots.

The Voting Rights Act--one of the most important pieces of legislation in our Nation's history--is alive and well. I think the Voting Rights Act has done more to change our country for the better than any other piece of legislation that I can think of.

So, to be frank, the facts simply don't support our Democratic colleagues' alarming rhetoric about the state of voting in America. This narrative of widespread voter suppression is nothing more than a scare tactic to achieve a political outcome.

Our colleagues across the aisle have introduced many different versions of their Federal takeover of State elections bill, but the justification seems to always change. First they said it was a matter of election security; then of voter confidence; and then and now, a way to remove obstacles that prevented people from voting. Today, our colleagues on the other side of the aisle claim that this legislation is necessary because the States have passed new laws that restrict voting access. So let's just take a look at what some of those laws entail.

One of those laws in my State of Texas, where the goal is pretty simple, which is to make voting easier and to make it harder to cheat-- Texas already offers 2 weeks of early voting in person, and the new law didn't make any changes in that. For 2 weeks, you can show up and vote in person before election day--hardly a restriction on people's access to the ballot.

This law did, in addition to making sure that people had 2 weeks to vote in person early, extend voting hours in more than 60 different Texas counties and clarify that voters who were in line at the time the polls closed would still be able to cast their ballot. It doesn't sound like voter suppression to me.

But the law also took some measures to reduce opportunities for fraud or mischief. Texas voting systems must now be tested before an election to ensure there are no technical difficulties. I am sure all of us are familiar with the occasional problem with voting machines, technical difficulties that need to be fixed to make sure it counts each legitimate vote. And we did make sure that voting rolls reflected only qualified voters. In other words, voters who passed away were removed from the voting rolls.

My State, like others, has clarified that the temporary, pandemic- related measures were not intended to be permanent. We did take some extraordinary precautions in the midst of COVID-19 to make sure people had access to the ballot. But these are hardly--restoration of the status quo before COVID-19 is hardly an example of voter repression.

I mentioned Texas and its expansive right to cast your ballot in person and to make sure everybody in line when the polls close could still cast their ballot.

Another State that has come under fire is Georgia. As a matter of fact, the Attorney General of the United States has sued Texas and Florida and Georgia under the Voting Rights Act. And, of course, President Biden is highlighting the Georgia laws because he is visiting today doing what I have never seen a President do before, and that is, villainize a State's new voting law, which, to me, is a bizarre thing for a sitting President to do, to travel to a State for the purpose of villainizing that State's law.

I doubt he will mention the fact that Georgia actually extended early voting to 17 days. That is not an example of voter suppression, of trying to restrict people's access to the ballot. As a matter of fact, that is much more generous than what President Biden's home State of Delaware has offered in terms of early access to the ballot.

So these clearly are not examples of Jim Crow voter suppression. These are commonsense measures designed to encourage people's confidence in the integrity of the voting systems and to make sure that they are both accessible and secure. These efforts should not be villainized; they should be applauded. They shouldn't be twisted beyond recognition, trying to manipulate the facts in order to achieve a political outcome.

If these State voting laws, then, are not designed to restrict access to the ballot, you might wonder whether there was a preexisting problem. So let's have a look.

Did voters actually have a problem casting their ballot during the last election? Well, following the 2020 election, the Pew Research Center conducted a poll of the voting experience, and it found that the vast majority of voters, 94 percent--94 percent--said that voting was easy. I don't think you could get 94 percent of people to agree that the Earth is round anymore, but here we have 94 percent of the voters who voted with ease in 2020. This is a stark contrast with the claimed assault on voting rights that we have heard so much about from our colleagues on the left.

Despite what the radical left might lead you to believe, there is no nationwide assault on voting rights. If there were, every person in this building would be lined up to defend the right to vote, not just Democrats. This is a manufactured crisis designed to achieve a political outcome.

There are plenty of safeguards already in place to prevent discriminatory voting laws from taking effect, the most important of which, as I have already said, is the Voting Rights Act. Because of this legislation, the Justice Department has the authority to take action against any State, any political entity that discriminates on the basis of race, color, or membership in a language-minority group. This has been the case for half a century, and no one--no one--wants to weaken or eliminate those protections.

Unfortunately, some of our colleagues on the left have misrepresented the picture of voting rights in America to justify this partisan power grab. The legislation they have introduced does more to enhance their own power than it does to address voting rights. These bills aren't about supporting disenfranchised voters or fighting voter suppression because, as we know, there is no nationwide assault on the right to vote, notwithstanding what some have claimed. This is simply about enhancing the political power of the Democratic Party. They want to seize States' constitutional authority to

manage their own elections and use it for their own benefit.

That is one of the most curious things about this debate that we are hearing from some of our Democratic colleagues. They want to actually vote for a nationwide, one-size-fits-all standard, to the detriment of their own States' voting laws.

It is pretty strange to come here representing a State--let's say I was in the shoes of the Democrats. If I were to come here to say ``Well, my State has passed voting laws. I represent my State, but I want the Federal Government to take over the voting laws and to suppress and supersede the voting laws in my State''--that is what our Democratic colleagues are asking for.

President Biden, apparently, rather than changing the voting laws in his home State of Delaware, wants the Federal Government to create a one-size-fits-all answer to voting rights in America--again, something that is inconsistent with the Constitution and makes no sense at all.

Well, to make matters even worse, some of our colleagues are even advocating blowing up the Senate in order to achieve their goals because they know they don't have 60 votes in order to close off debate.

Now, the 60-vote requirement is the subject of a lot of controversy, but, frankly, it makes good common sense. In a country as big and diverse as America, do you really want to have a partisan majority of 51 writing the laws that affect 330 million people, only to have, after the next election, the next majority undo those or change them in some other way? Wouldn't you want a mechanism that forces us to do what we might consider to be a little unnatural, which is actually to build consensus and build bipartisanship to make sure that the laws we pass are not only adequately debated and thought out, but they could endure beyond the next election because they enjoyed the support of bipartisan majorities?

That is what the 60-vote cloture requirement is really about. It is about making sure that purely partisan outcomes don't succeed and forcing us to do what I believe is in the best interest of the American people, which is force us to work together to achieve bipartisan consensus.

The election takeover bill may be the first one our Democratic colleagues try to pass if they eliminate or weaken the filibuster, but it won't be the last. This isn't going to be a one-and-done exercise. Anybody who says you can carve out voting laws and everything else will remain the same is just kidding themselves and the American people. If the Democrats created a carve-out for election-related bills, there would be nothing--nothing--stopping them from resurrecting early versions of the election takeover bill and passing them on a completely partisan basis.

Previous versions of this bill would have turned the historically bipartisan Federal Election Commission into a partisan body. They would have mandated ballot harvesting and seized States' constitutional authority to draw their own congressional districts. These are the types of radical measures that we could see under what our colleagues call a modest carve-out.

If our Democrat colleagues eliminated the bipartisan 60-vote requirement, the floodgates of partisan legislation would surely open. Last year, our colleagues tried to pass legislation that exploits the cause of pay fairness to send a wave of business to trial lawyers. They pushed for another bill that would impose crushing legal penalties on those who refuse to comply with woke social norms.

If the filibuster--the 60-vote bipartisan filibuster--were eliminated, Republicans would have no way of stopping these bills from becoming law. And it doesn't stop there. The threat doesn't stop there.

Think of the most controversial bills that our Democratic colleagues have proposed. They could add new States to the Union--DC statehood, Puerto Rican statehood. They could pack the Supreme Court of the United States with liberal Justices. They could pass laws that infringe on the Second Amendment to the Constitution, the right to keep and bear arms, or legalize abortion up until the time a baby is delivered in the third trimester. They could impose job-killing taxes and kick-start the Green New Deal.

So what is at stake here this week is far more than the fate of one or two bills. Our colleagues are proposing to put a thumb on the scale to benefit the Democratic Party.

If the filibuster, the bipartisan 60-vote requirement, is eliminated, our colleagues on the other side of the aisle will have unchecked power to write the laws affecting 330 million Americans. We know they are already willing to manufacture a voting rights crisis to increase their own power. If they are willing to do that, what aren't they willing to do? I know I am not alone in saying I hope we never find out.

Mr. President, I yield the floor.

I have yielded the floor.

Mr. President, would the Senator yield for a question?

Would you give me an example of one of the laws passed in Georgia or in Texas since the 2020 election which you believe suppresses the right to vote.

Mr. President, I have one more question to clarify your response.

Is the Senator suggesting that ballot harvesting should be required in all 50 States? That is the ability of a partisan or a participant in a political election to go around to nursing homes or to other vulnerable populations and collect ballots and turn them in.

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

Madam President, in recent years, our Democratic colleagues have taken their Washington-knows-best approach to governing to new and, frankly, frightening levels.

Our colleagues have tried to give the IRS unprecedented authority and manpower to snoop into the finances of virtually every American, not just what you make but how you spend your money.

They have attempted to control what type of childcare families can access, saying that if it is faith-based, that it is not going to qualify for the extravagant subsidies they have proposed, and are driving up the costs for average, hard-working Texas families.

When it comes to our Democratic colleagues and their Washington- knows-best attitude, they have tried to force every person in this country into a one-size-fits-all healthcare system that, yes, government controls. They have argued that the President of the United States has the power to force all Americans, including those in the private sector, to get a vaccine regardless of whether they have naturally occurring antibodies as a result of having gotten COVID-19.

Now, they are mounting a Federal takeover of America's State-run elections. That is what we will be talking about a lot this week.

As I said, this is consistent with this attitude that Washington knows best, not parents, not teachers, not business owners, not the workers, not even Governors, mayors, sheriffs, city councils, or local election officials. No. Washington knows best, is their attitude.

To state the obvious, that is not how the United States of America was designed under our Constitution. During the time of the founding, there was a lot of discussion of whether to have a national government or whether to have a Federal Government with the States as sovereign entities, subject only to national laws when the Federal Government preempted them with things like the Voting Rights Act, section 5. In fact, our very form of government was designed with checks and balances and dispersed authority primarily to protect the individual freedom of ``we the people.''

Our Founders had the wisdom to devise a system of government comprised of three separate branches--coequal--to ensure that no single person or single institution became too powerful because, again, they viewed it as, the more powerful that single entity or single institution became, the less accountable they would be to the people and the less freedom we would have to conduct our own lives as we see fit.

But, as we know, it is not just distributed laterally among the various branches; it is distributed vertically as well. The Constitution makes clear that the States retain all authority not delegated to the Federal Government. That is the Tenth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution.

Of course, the power given to the States is sometimes set forth explicitly. For example, the Constitution gives the States the authority to set the time, place, and manner of elections. That is in the Constitution itself. Others are reserved under the Tenth Amendment.

Now, make no mistake, the Federal Government has very, very important responsibilities. When it comes to our national defense, when it comes to regulating interstate commerce, international diplomacy, setting taxes,

managing our national debt and deficits, the Federal Government should and must take the lead. But this is simply not a monarchy. It is not an authoritarian form of government that we see in other parts of the world. Our government is not top-down; it is bottom-up when it comes to the distribution of powers. The Federal Government was not designed to authorize anyone, including the President of the United States, the authority to hand down sweeping mandates for the people of this country.

Thomas Jefferson famously said, ``The government closest to the people serves the people best,'' and that is how he described the benefits of this bottom-up form of government rather than top-down, Washington-knows-best form of government that our Democratic colleagues seem to embrace almost across the board. For everything from healthcare to elections, our colleagues across the aisle have attempted to make prescriptive decisions against every State, city, and community across the country. By ``prescriptive decisions,'' I mean to tie the hands or to say ``jump'' and expect the States and local governments to ask ``how high?''

But we are already beginning to see cracks in this strategy. When it has become clear that Washington doesn't really know best, the Democrats have another idea: Blame somebody else. Just look at the Federal Government's response to the pandemic of COVID-19. President Biden ran on a promise of a strong pandemic response by the Federal Government. He promised to make free testing widely available. He pledged to stop the misinformation that has led to widespread confusion about the virus, and he has vowed that public health decisions would be made by public health professionals and would not be based on political considerations.

Looking back, it is clear the American people were sold snake oil. As folks across the country can attest, free testing may exist, but you can't find an appointment to get one of those tests. Rapid tests are in short supply, and even then, the cost is too high for many families.

The information coming from the Centers for Disease Control is providing the American people with more questions than answers. In the words of one New York Times columnist, ``The highest-ranking public health officials are making statements that seem more aimed at covering up or making excuses for ongoing failures rather than leveling with the public.''

The administration has sided with political allies instead of the science. Last February, the CDC released a report that said schools are not breeding grounds for COVID-19, and as long as precautions are taken, schools can reopen safely. That was last February. But the science was at odds with the demands of teachers unions, so the administration refused to encourage State and local leaders to reopen their schools.

So how is the President reacting in light of these broken promises and a failed pandemic response?

In a debate in October 2020, then-Candidate Biden talked about the previous administration's pandemic response and the fact that more than 220,000 Americans had died. That was in October of 2020. He said anyone who is responsible for that many deaths should not remain President of the United States.

Well, today, we have lost more than 830,000 of our fellow Americans to this virus. That is nearly three times as many deaths as there were under the previous President's watch, but President Biden isn't stepping down. In fact, now he claims the Federal Government isn't even responsible. Just a couple of weeks ago, President Biden pushed responsibility on to the States, saying there is no Federal solution; this gets solved at the State level. This is enough to give you whiplash--the radically changing, diametrically opposed positions of this administration and the President of the United States.

As it turns out, our colleagues only want Big Government when Big Government is consistent with their political objectives. If the promise of a strong Federal response to a deadly pandemic can help them win an election, well, they are all for it, but when they fail to plan and execute a strong response, they are quick to pass the responsibility and the blame on to someone else.

Well, our Federal form of government isn't a system that can be gamed to benefit politicians when it is convenient and skirt responsibility when things go awry, but, unfortunately, that looks like where we are today, and the Democrats clearly view the calculus as leaning in their favor when it comes to their election takeover bills that we will be voting on this week.

Our colleagues have made repeated attempts to overhaul our Nation's elections and give the Federal Government unprecedented power to manage America's elections.

There was a Pew poll taken on November 20, 2020, asking people whether they found, in the election, it was easy or hard to vote, and 94 percent of the respondents said they found it either extremely easy or easy to vote--94 percent in the last election of November 2020.

In Texas, we had 11.3 million people vote--66 percent of registered voters--which was a consistent percentage across the country. There were historic turnouts in the election. Yet our Democratic colleagues want to fix a system that is not broken because it allows everyone, of every political stripe, of every race, of every ethnicity, and of every background, an equal opportunity to cast a ballot.

In Texas, you can vote for up to 2 weeks before election day itself, in person--2 weeks. The Justice Department has sued Texas, saying that it somehow discriminates against people getting access to the ballot. That is a lawsuit that the Justice Department will lose because the facts simply do not demonstrate it.

Again, 94 percent of the people in this Pew poll of November 20, 2020, after the last election, said they found it either extremely easy or easy to cast their ballot. So our Democratic colleagues are simply flying into a headwind when it comes to their argument that, somehow, it is not easy to cast your ballot.

But there are some places where it is easier to vote than in others. For example, it is easier to vote in Georgia and in Texas under current law than it has been in the President's State of Delaware, which, until this year, did not allow any early voting in person. You don't hear the majority leader and you don't hear Democratic colleagues talking about States like Delaware, which offered, until this year, zero opportunity for early voting in person; whereas Texas and Georgia, even after the election reforms they passed, still offer 2 weeks of early in-person voting.

So our Democratic colleagues' explanation has changed over time. They argue that Washington knows best and that all of the State-run elections should be subsumed into a Federal system of elections. At one point, they said it was a matter of election security. Then they said: Well, no; it is really about voter confidence. Then they said, which is, I think, their current position, that only a national system can remove obstacles that prevent people from voting.

Well, when I said this was a solution in search of a problem, I was referring to that November 20, 2020, poll wherein 94 percent of the respondents said they found it easy to vote or very easy to vote. Clearly, again, our Democratic colleagues are looking for a problem or have offered a solution in search of a problem.

Among the proposals they have made, this is not about just making it easier to vote and harder to cheat; they are saying that this is somehow in response to the horrific attacks that occurred on the Capitol on January 6 of last year. They just keep throwing the spaghetti on the wall to see what sticks. For example, among the many proposed changes that they have offered, they say they want to turn the bipartisan Federal Election Commission into a Democratic-controlled, partisan commission, and then they want to seize the authority given under the Constitution for the States to draw their own congressional lines, instead handing all power to an unelected and unaccountable redistricting commission.

They have also tried to mandate ballot harvesting on the States--a practice that allows paid campaign staff and political operatives to collect mail-in ballots, to perhaps go by the local nursing home and collect ballots from folks in the nursing home and to

turn them in. This has been shown to be a recipe for mischief and election fraud. Yet they want to institutionalize it, and they want to say that the States cannot prohibit it.

These proposals would do more to protect our Democratic colleagues' jobs than to safeguard American voting rights.

What really concerns me and, I imagine, the American people as they learn more and more about what is in these bills is how much damage the Democratic Party is willing to do in order to secure a partisan victory. Not only are our colleagues trying to seize the authority given under the Constitution to the States to manage their own elections, they are willing to take a wrecking ball to the U.S. Senate itself and particularly the Senate rules. Somehow, protecting the foundation of our democracy has turned into ignoring the Constitution and blowing up this institution.

I need to clarify that not all 50 Senate Democrats are on board with this plan. Thank goodness, two of our colleagues have been clear in their outright opposition to eliminating or weakening the filibuster-- the requirement that legislation, before it passes, must have bipartisan support rather than purely partisan bills like our Democratic colleagues want to pass without any support on the Republican side.

While there are two of our Senate colleagues from West Virginia and Arizona who have been public about their opposition to blowing up the Senate and to breaking Senate rules in order to accomplish a partisan objective, I imagine there are others unnamed who share the same concerns privately.

I hope our friends on the other side of the aisle will remain steadfast in their commitment to our Constitution and the norms and rules of this institution. If our colleagues are willing to go this far in the pursuit of raw political power, I would hate to think about how they would use it if they were to succeed.

I yield the floor.

I suggest the absence of a quorum.

Madam President, earlier this week, the majority leader sent a letter to our Democratic colleagues, which has been widely distributed in the press even though he didn't send it to folks on this side of the aisle. We have all now had a chance to read it. He has outlined what the next few weeks on the Senate floor might look like.

Now that the so-called Build Back Better--or what some have called the reckless tax-and-spending spree--bill has been sidelined due to lack of support, Senator Schumer has shifted his focus to another dangerous and unnecessary bill. This time, rather than an attempt to spend trillions of dollars and to raise taxes on the American people, he is proposing that we overhaul the very foundation of our democracy.

Our colleagues on the Democratic side don't trust their own State legislators to pass voting laws that are in compliance with the Voting Rights Act and the laws of the land. The reason I say that, as shocking as it may sound, is, why in the world would they want to preempt their own State voting laws by passing a national law which would, under the supremacy clause of the U.S. Constitution, preempt their own State laws? Well, this power grab would give the Federal Government unprecedented power to make decisions about how elections are run in all 50 States.

This isn't the first time our friends across the aisle have shown an interest in hijacking America's elections. We have seen various versions before, each one relying on a slightly different marketing strategy. At one point, it was touted as a necessity of election security. Then, when that didn't work, they said: Well, this is about instilling in the voters confidence in our election laws. Then, when they failed to muster the political support necessary to pass that bill, they tried to figure out another way to sell it, and they said: Well, really what we need to do is remove obstacles that prevent people from voting.

Well, the 2020 election saw an unprecedented turnout. In my State, there were 11.3 million people who cast their ballots. Hispanics, African Americans, and other minorities voted in historically high numbers. Sixty-six percent of registered voters in Texas voted in the 2020 election, making it the highest voter turnout in 120 years when you look across the great expanse of this country. So now our colleagues across the aisle are going to have to come up with a new sales pitch.

As we know, in the wake of the 2020 election and concerns about some of the irregularities in those various States, States have passed legislation to make it easier to vote and harder to cheat. I can't imagine why we wouldn't all embrace that approach: Make it easier to vote and harder to cheat.

Senator Schumer has described these State laws as ``reprehensible'' and ``the most sweeping attack on the right to vote since the beginning of Jim Crow.'' Based on those extraordinary statements, you might think that the States have restored literacy tests. You might think the disgusting and subjective determination of ``good moral character'' before someone was allowed to vote--the kind of prohibitions that existed after the Civil War--had been reinstated.

The truth is different than Senator Schumer would portray. Many of these

changes in State laws were designed to reduce opportunities for fraud or roll back temporary protocols that were put in place during the pandemic.

The new Texas law, for example, requires voting systems to be tested before an election is held to ensure there are no technical difficulties. It is not unheard of that voting machines break or need to be repaired. That just makes sense.

The new Texas law also requires that voter rolls be kept up-to-date; in other words, people who are no longer alive--their names would be removed from the voter rolls.

Texas is no stranger to voting irregularities. In fact, the story of Box 13 in Jim Wells County, TX, was supposedly the reason why Lyndon Baines Johnson beat Coke Stevenson in the race for the U.S. Senate many, many years ago. Strangely enough, the votes on the voting rolls tended to go through the local cemetery and go in alphabetical order, providing LBJ the votes he needed in order to beat Coke Stevenson in that election. So removing dead voters from the voter rolls strikes me as a pretty good idea.

Other changes the State legislature made in Texas expanded voting access. We already offer 2 weeks of early voting in person, and the new law didn't make any changes to that, but it did extend voting hours in more than 60 Texas counties and clarified that voters who were in line at the polling place before polls closed will still be able to cast their ballots.

The Texas law was not the only one to actually improve voter access. Georgia, for example, expanded early voting in person to 17 days, which is more generous than what is offered in many Democrat States.

In New Jersey, by contrast, early voting only lasts 9 days--9 days in New Jersey, 17 days in Georgia. Has the Attorney General sued New Jersey for somehow suppressing the right to vote? No, he hasn't. He has sued Georgia, and he has sued Texas. And I will make a prediction right here today that he will lose both of those lawsuits because the facts simply don't support the litigation.

If you are from New York, you have 10 days before early voting in order to cast your ballot--less than you see in Georgia and Texas.

And this year, for the first time in President Biden's home State of Delaware, you can have 10 days before election day in which to cast your ballot. Before that time, including the 2020 election, in Delaware, if you wanted to cast your ballot before the election--like you can in Texas, Georgia, New Jersey, and New York--you couldn't even do it because in President Biden's home State of Delaware, they did not allow early in-person voting until this year.

Well, contrary to what Senator Schumer said, these changes are far from reprehensible; they are common sense. You don't hear Senator Schumer claim that Delaware is trying to suppress the right to vote by not having any early in-person voting before this year.

So it is very politically convenient for the majority leader to attack those States where Democrats aren't doing quite so well in the elections because it doesn't align with their goals here.

What are their goals? Well, it is purely partisan political advantage. Our Democratic colleagues have tried to spin this narrative of a blatant attack on the right to vote. How you could make that claim in terms of the historic turnouts in the 2020 election is beyond me.

I will just give you one personal example. When I was last on the ballot in 2014, there were 4.8 million voters. In 2020, when I was next on the ballot--that actually was the last time I was on the ballot, 2020--there were 11.3 million voters. So we more than doubled the number of people who cast their ballot in Texas in 6 years.

And the story could be told in other parts of the country, like Florida and others, where more and more people are voting, which is certainly something we endorse and we embrace. But we also want to make it harder to cheat.

Our colleagues have tried to spin this narrative of voter suppression. But the myth of widespread voter suppression in 2022 is a myth. Well, why is that?

Well, in 1965, Congress passed something called the Voting Rights Act, which was a historic piece of legislation that said you cannot deny people access to the ballot on the basis of race or ethnicity.

And the good news is, over the intervening years, the Voting Rights Act has worked magnificently. In fact, many States that previously were subject to preclearance requirements under the Voting Rights Act because of historic discrimination actually now have greater participation by minorities in their elections than other States that were not so covered.

And right now, the law of the land is, under section 2 of the Voting Rights Act, if any State or political subdivision tried to suppress people's right to vote based on race or ethnicity, they would be sued by the Attorney General, as they should be, and it would be declared illegal.

That law, section 2, has been part of the Voting Rights Act for more than a half a century, and no one is proposing to change it because it has worked exactly the way Congress intended when we passed it in 1965.

The Democrats are falsely claiming assaults on the right to vote for one reason and one reason only, and it is to achieve political ends because the facts simply do not support their arguments or their proposals.

Now, it shouldn't be of any surprise that Republicans don't want to turn over their elections to Washington, DC, and to the Biden Department of Justice. So the path forward for the majority leader is to try to eliminate the 60-vote requirement known as the filibuster in order to pass legislation.

In his letter earlier this week, Senator Schumer concedes that the Senate was designed to protect minority rights, but those rights, he said, have been ``warped and contorted to obstruct and embarrass the will of [the] majority.''

I can tell you from experience that the majority is always frustrated by the 60-vote cloture requirement known as the filibuster, but it is designed for a very specific purpose. It is designed to force us to do what maybe does not come naturally, which means to work together on a bipartisan basis to build consensus legislation that will stand the test of time.

But what Senator Schumer is proposing to do, because we have a 50-50 Senate, is to change the rules so that Democrats, and Democrats alone, can dictate what these new laws will look like. That is it. It is not any more complicated than that.

Senator Schumer is frustrated, no doubt, by everything that he and the Democratic colleagues in the Senate have been unable to accomplish, what they have promised and what they have delivered. But this is by his own design. He sets the agenda. He knows if he brings a bill to the floor like the infrastructure bill that passed earlier this year or the national defense authorization bill, that there is broad bipartisan support, and the chances are that they will pass with large bipartisan majorities, as both of those did.

But when they try to jam through things like so-called Build Back Better, which has zero support on the Republican side and actually doesn't even have unanimous support on the Democratic side, it should be no surprise that they are unable to get that passed, as we have seen in recent weeks.

So Senator Schumer sets the agenda. If he decides to continue to set the agenda on partisan legislation that doesn't even enjoy majority support of his own political party, he can expect the same results over and over again.

He himself is the reason why the President's agenda has not succeeded because he has given up on bipartisanship and consensus building in a 50-50 Senate.

The reason why it is important to build bipartisan consensus when it comes to legislation is because they will endure no matter what happens in the next election or the next election or the next election. This is good policy so people can plan.

It also assures that the States that elect Senators who happen to be of the minority party will have their views listened to and accommodated, where possible, as part of that consensus-building process.

The filibuster, which the American people probably did not widely hear much about before but have heard a lot about, was designed to ensure that each of these things occurs--bipartisan consensus building, legislation that

will stand the test of time, and legislation that will not change with each fleeting majority. That is what the 60-vote requirement known as the filibuster is designed to address.

Now, what has been so remarkable to me is how Senator Schumer's views on the filibuster have changed. Back in 2005, he said eliminating the filibuster would be the ``doomsday for democracy.'' He was in the minority then. He said eliminating the filibuster would be the ``doomsday for democracy.''

More recently, when it suited his political interests, he argued to protect it and said that we should--well, this is before he was in the majority. He argued that we ought to ``build a firewall around the legislative filibuster.''

During his days in the Senate, President Biden, who served a long time in this institution, said:

This nuclear option--

That is what he called eliminating the 60-vote requirement to close off debate known as the filibuster.

He said:

This nuclear option is ultimately an example of the

arrogance of power. It is a fundamental power grab by the

majority party.

That is what he called what Senator Schumer is trying to do today. He called it ``the arrogance of power,'' and he called it ``a fundamental power grab by the majority party.''

Our friends across the aisle used the filibuster numerous times to block majority-proposed legislation when they were in the minority. They filibustered countless bills on everything from pandemic relief to police reform.

Now, when it is politically convenient and expedient, they flip-flop. They have gone from defending this consensus-building rule to declaring it public enemy No. 1.

I could use a lot of examples, but I will just use this one from our colleague Senator Durbin, the majority whip.

Just a few years ago, Senator Durbin, a distinguished Member of this body and part of the Democratic leadership, said that if the filibuster were eliminated, it ``would be the end of the Senate as it was originally devised and created going back to our Founding Fathers.'' That was just in 2018.

Last year, he said the filibuster is ``not the guarantor of democracy. It has become the death grip of democracy.''

I guess we can be forgiven if we get whiplash trying to reconcile those two conflicting positions in a short period of 3 years.

The truth is, this isn't about some noble endeavor saving our democracy. This isn't about just policy differences. This is about gaining permanent partisan political advantage by nationalizing our State-run election laws, which, by the way, I believe would be unconstitutional.

Democrats simply think it is in their best interest to eliminate the 60-vote consensus-building rule and to secure an easy path for legislation, and that may be true--for now.

But what we have learned from hard experience is that there are inherent consequences to changing rules in a place where your power, where your majority is never guaranteed. Elections happen. Majorities come and go. Presidents change political parties.

In less than a year's time, Republicans could hold the majority in either or both Chambers. In 3 years, a Republican could be in the White House as well.

Ask yourself this: Would our Democratic colleagues still support eliminating the filibuster were that to occur? If Republicans were in the majority in the House and the Senate and there was a Republican in the White House, would they support eliminating the filibuster? Not on your life. Would they believe that the minority party should be silenced, as they apparently are arguing for now? Not on your life.

We don't have to speculate on hypotheticals because we have seen this scenario before. Less than a decade ago, our Democratic colleagues went ``nuclear.'' That is using the terminology that President Biden used when he was in the Senate, the ``nuclear option''--the rule change to breaking the rules in order to change the rules.

Less than a decade ago, Democrats went ``nuclear'' and eliminated the 60-vote threshold for judicial nominees. This was a precedent that they themselves had established. At the time, Leader McConnell said--who has been here for a while, who has seen majorities come and majorities go-- he said:

You will regret this, and you may regret this a lot sooner

than you think.

Unsurprisingly, he was right. Under the previous administration, a Republican-led Senate, with a Republican in the White House, confirmed more than 230 Federal judges--all thanks to the Democrats' nuclear option rule change.

If Senator Schumer were able to convince Senator Manchin and Senator Sinema to blow up the Senate and to break the rules, along with others--and that is a big if--it might clear the way for the legislation they want right now. But when the balance of power shifts, as it surely will, this rule change they are proposing today could make it easier for Republicans to pass legislation that our Democratic colleagues simply abhor--legislation that protects the right to life, legislation that secures the border and controls illegal immigration, legislation that balances the Federal budget, protects our Second Amendment rights, or--take your pick--any other changes Democrats would certainly oppose. That would be possible if they were to get their way temporarily.

Now, I have heard this argument about, well, this is just going to be a carve-out. There is no such thing as a carve-out under the Senate's rules and precedents. This would be applied broadly and allow Republicans to turn the tables and to pass legislation Democrats dislike by a simple majority if they were to eliminate the 60-vote filibuster requirement.

The truth is that in the Senate, the shoe is always on the other foot, eventually, which is why no party has ever been so shortsighted as to eliminate the legislative filibuster in the history of the U.S. Senate.

Fortunately, the Senate is designed to allow for deliberation and debate, and cooler heads usually prevail. I hope the Senators who, along with Senator Manchin and Senator Sinema, will remain steadfast-- and I do believe there are other Senators who are of similar views, that it would be shortsighted and foolish to eliminate the filibuster, but simply haven't attracted attention to themselves and let Senator Manchin and Senator Sinema take all the slings and arrows. But I hope those who oppose changes in the legislative filibuster will remain steadfast in their opposition to such a dangerous change.

A completely partisan overhaul of America's elections is hardly an effective way to improve public confidence in our elections. It is just the opposite. A partisan change in our election laws, by nationalizing them, won't lead to improved public trust or more secured elections. It is a recipe for fraud, abuse, and partisan distrust.

This rules change in the legislation would fast-track and may make some activists in the Democratic base happy, but it would instill lasting instability and distrust in our institutions, including our elections.

I would simply encourage our Democratic colleagues to reconsider their current position based on their past position and to consider the grave consequences before leading our country down this dangerous path.

I yield the floor.

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

The ACTING PRERSIDENT pro tempore. Without objection, it is so ordered.

Happy New Year. It is good to see you and everybody back at the beginning of a new year after, I hope, a few days of respite and relaxation with friends and families and, hopefully, we have all had a chance to recharge our batteries now for the work ahead.

One of the great things about taking a few days off during the holidays is you get a chance to reflect on your work, your life, your family, what you are doing right, what you are doing wrong. That is what New Year's resolutions are all about, changing some of those habits that maybe aren't serving us all that well.

But it is also to sort of reflect on the work here in the Senate. And I want to start by quoting one of the wisest men I knew, and that was my dad. My dad said--he had a whole list of aphorisms, most of which kind of embarrassed my brother and sister and me because they were so corny, but some of them were pretty shrewd and right on.

And one of them was that he said the hallmark of intelligence is to learn from your mistakes. The hallmark of intelligence is to learn from your mistakes.

And we are merely human and we all make mistakes--we all acknowledge that--but learning from our mistakes is perhaps the most important thing we can do to make progress, to get smarter, to learn from experience, and to do things better the next time.

I also thought of another wise man--you might call him a genius-- Albert Einstein, who supposedly said--and I can't vouch for this, but maybe it is apocryphal; maybe it is accurate.

He said:

The definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and

over again and expecting different results.

Insanity is doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results. I was reflecting on this--these two definitions of intelligence and insanity as I thought about the year past and our 50- 50 Senate. In 2020, we had a historic election, no doubt. Our Democratic colleagues captured not only the White House but the Senate and the House of Representatives.

But what is so amazing about that is the lessons that they learned from that 50-50 election in the Senate and a bare majority in the House was very different from what I think, historically, people have come to believe that that kind of message would send.

Ordinarily, you would think that--well, first of all, this is not the New Deal and Franklin Delano Roosevelt. Franklin Delano Roosevelt had huge majorities in the House and the Senate when he passed the New Deal legislation, historic legislation by any count.

Conversely, in 2020, when President Biden was elected, the American people basically said we don't particularly trust either one of the major political parties so we are going to divide power equally in the Senate and give you a bare majority in the House, believing, I think, maybe intuitively, if not consciously, that that would force us to work together.

That is not necessarily the first instinct we have when we come here to the Senate or the Congress. We want what we want. We all run for election. We campaign on a platform saying, if elected, I am going to do this or that--and it is frustrating to not be able to do it.

But the wisdom of our Founders was that with the various checks and balances that we have on unilateral or partisan power, that when the voters

say, well, we are going to divide power equally in the Senate, you would think the conclusion or the lesson that you would learn from that is what, historically, we have come to believe to be true, which is that they believe we ought to work together and not try to do things on our own.

So you would think that an equally divided Senate would encourage the majority leader--who is majority leader only by virtue of the fact that Vice President Harris is the Presiding Officer of the Senate. She is not actually a Member of the Senate, but she can break tie votes.

That is what gives Senator Schumer, the Senator from New York, his job as the majority leader, in spite of the fact that we have a 50-50 Senate.

So you would think that an equally divided Chamber would encourage the majority leader to prioritize bipartisan bills that could win broad support. That is what we did last year in the last year of the Trump administration. We worked together to pass, I think, close to $5 trillion of relief from COVID-19, this terrible pandemic that has gripped the planet for the last 2 years.

But, apparently, the majority leader reached a different conclusion because that is not the type of work that he has prioritized in the Chamber during this last year. It didn't start off very well. After a wonderful speech by Biden on January 20, when he talked about healing our country, coming together as a nation despite our differences, the first thing the Democratic-controlled Senate did is pass a partisan $2 trillion spending bill in the name of COVID-19 relief.

Well, they omitted to mention that only about 10 percent of the money, the $2 trillion, on top of the $5 trillion we had spent on a bipartisan basis--that out of that $2 trillion, only about 10 percent of it was really related to the pandemic, and only 1 percent supported vaccinations. Perhaps the single most important thing that we have done in response to COVID-19 is to make vaccinations broadly available, and we continue to encourage people to get vaccinated, as I do every chance I get.

But after that first $2 trillion partisan spending bill, our colleagues then repeatedly used the Senate's time, which is the most precious asset we have here in the Senate, which is floor time, to vote on smaller but no less problematic bills that really stood zero chance of becoming law in a 50-50 Senate.

There was one to--in the name of paycheck fairness that was, in fact, designed to line the pockets of trial lawyers, and it didn't pass.

Then our Democratic colleagues drafted an election takeover bill. They said the only way for us to restore the public's confidence in the voting process is for the Federal Government to take it over, to hijack it, notwithstanding the position in the Constitution that elections should be run at the State level. And this election takeover bill was so blatantly partisan that even Members of the Democratic Senate voted against it.

But they didn't stop there. They rewrote the bill and brought it up for another vote in October, and again it failed. Our Democratic colleague, the majority leader, has said this partisan legislation will resurface again later this month. But I don't expect the outcome to change because it is the same unconstitutional, partisan legislation that is not to advance the cause of access to the ballot or to enhance voter integrity, it is designed to enhance Democratic prospects to win elections in 2022 and 2024. That is what it is about.

And then there is the multitrillion-dollar tax-and-spending bill. And I know the Senator from West Virginia has been the chief spear catcher when it comes to all the criticism associated with this legislation, but I have told both the Senator from West Virginia and the Senator from Arizona that there are many Democrats, I believe, on the other side of the aisle who are grateful to them for preventing a vote on this terribly flawed bill in the face of rapidly rising inflation.

I mean, one reason why it costs more to fill up your gas tank or to feed your family or to buy an appliance is because of inflation. Prices have been going up dramatically. One reason is there has been so much money shoveled out the door, trillions of dollars. We never used to talk in terms of trillions of dollars here in Washington. We talked about billions of dollars.

Everett Dirksen famously said:

A million here, a million there, and pretty soon you're

talking about real money.

Well, maybe it was a billion, I can't recall specifically, but I know he didn't talk about trillions of dollars. That is an innovation of the last couple of years.

I want to commend our colleague Senator Manchin for his courage in stopping this terribly flawed bill for all the reasons he and others have mentioned. And I hope that is the end of this terribly flawed legislation and it will force us to do what the Founders believed that we would do in the event of a 50-50 Senate and that is to work together.

By definition, ``working together,'' means I am not going to get everything I want. The Presiding Officer and his political party aren't going to get everything he wants. That is what consensus means. That is what the Founders intended. And that is what the voters intended when they gave us a 50-50 Senate.

But it is not enough to vote against just bad legislation. We have a responsibility to work together when we can on bills that Senators from both political parties can vote for. That is the reason for the so- called filibuster rule, 60 votes.

We keep debating until 60 Senators say, OK, we are ready to vote. That is what creates deliberation and debate and consensus building, not eliminating that requirement and then just passing bills by a strict majority--bills which can, by the way, be undone after the next election.

And just as colleagues on this side of the aisle have identified legislation we don't want passed absent an ability to build a bipartisan consensus, there is a litany of bills that I know our Democratic colleagues would not want passed were the shoe on the other foot. And I have been here long enough to know that eventually the shoe will be on the other foot.

I have always said that I have been in the majority and I have been in the minority and being in the majority is a lot better, a lot more enjoyable, a lot more productive, from my standpoint.

But, eventually, the Democratic colleagues will be in the minority, perhaps as soon as after the 2022 election. And if 51 votes is all it takes to undo things that have been done, well, that is exactly what will happen. That has been the history of the filibuster that has been applied to nominations, not to legislation.

I was here when Senator Harry Reid invoked the nuclear option and said: We are going to require 60 votes in order to confirm judges with a 51-vote threshold. And then when that was used to block judges on the DC Court of Appeals, Senator Reid invoked the nuclear option and got them passed by a strict partisan majority.

The Senator from Kentucky, Senator McConnell, said: I have been here a while, too, and I know what goes around comes around. And what we have seen come around is three new Supreme Court Justices during Donald Trump's time as President of the United States. You might call it the physics of the Senate. I think it was one of Newton's laws said that for every action there is an equal and opposite reaction. You might call that political physics.

At the start of this Congress, I promised my constituents in Texas that I would push back against dangerous proposals when needed, but I also said, in the same sentence, that I would work with my Democratic colleagues whenever possible, whenever I believed it was in the best interest of my 29 million constituents.

And despite the partisanship that has gripped this Chamber, we actually have made some progress in some areas, not that you would read very much about it in the newspaper. The nature of news is in conflict; it is not consensus. When things are consensus, it is not news. It is not on cable TV. It doesn't swirl around social media or the internet.

So we have been able to make some progress in some areas. For example, last month, the Senate passed the 61st annual National Defense Authorization Act--the 61st. That means we have done it 61 times in a row every year for 61 years.

This was good, bipartisan legislation and an example of what we can do

when we work together. This legislation ensures that our servicemembers will have the resources they and their families need, both on duty and off. It makes investments in military construction and our military bases across Texas and elsewhere, and it gives our commanders and our military leaders the certainty they need to plan for the future.

Another example of bipartisanship last year, not that many people remember or talk about it or write about it or hear about it on TV or see it on social media, but last summer we passed another major bipartisan piece of legislation called the U.S. Innovation and Competition Act. This legislation makes investments in critical sectors to counter threats from China. One of the leading proponents of this bill was the Senator from New York, the majority leader, working principally with the Senator from Indiana, Senator Young, and others of us.

One important part of that bill that I worked on with the Senator from Virginia, a Democrat, the senior Senator from Virginia, Senator Warner, was funding for programs created by the CHIPS Act. It actually became law last year, but we had to find a way to pay for it, and the Senate stepped up and did so, and now we are hoping that the House will follow suit.

But as consumers learned over this last year, actually, COVID-19 exposed our vulnerability to supply chains from overseas. We saw that first with personal protective equipment, most of which--virtually all of which--was made in China, and when we needed it here, well, we had to try to get it overseas from China to the United States so that it could protect our healthcare heroes, our frontline healthcare providers, among others.

But we learned that the vulnerabilities of our supply chains did not stop with PPE. Semiconductor shortages, for example, have a very real and dramatic impact on all of our lives. We have seen this in empty car lots, more expensive electronics.

The global semiconductor or microcircuit shortage is very visible and has had a dramatic impact on our economy and threatens our national security because most of it is made overseas. Ninety percent of the semiconductors in the world are made in Asia. If you take South Korea out of the picture, 63 percent of them are made in Taiwan--Taiwan.

Yeah, you may have read a little bit about Taiwan in the news recently, that President Xi has said he wants to essentially unify Taiwan with mainland China, settling an old civil war between the Nationalists and the Communists that started many years ago.

But can you imagine what would happen if President Xi decided to invade Taiwan and what that would do to our supply chain of critical semiconductors that operate everything from our iPhone to our F-35, fifth generation stealth fighters?

Well, our national defense is at stake, obviously, too, not just our economic future. From advanced fighters, quantum computing, and missile defense systems, all of them rely on semiconductors.

We may have read in the public domain that Russia and China are now touting their development of hypersonic missiles--missiles that travel 10 times the speed of sound. Well, our ability to defend our Nation and defend our allies and help them defend themselves depends on our access to these advanced semiconductors that make things like missile defense systems operate.

But, just for example, a single rocket interceptor like the kind that the State of Israel has been using to intercept rockets coming into Tel Aviv and other major cities, each one of those interceptors, which is part of the Iron Dome missile defense system, contains more than 750 semiconductor chips. This is our Achilles' heel.

The funding from the U.S. Innovation and Competition Act will help bolster domestic semiconductor manufacturing and ensure that we won't be at the mercy of other nations for access to critical components of our supply chains. This bill is over in the House, and Speaker Pelosi and Majority Leader Schumer have entered into an agreement, which I hope will be consummated, that, in February, we will have a conference on that bill and pass, I hope, that CHIPS for America Act, together with the other efforts we have made to strengthen our defenses against a more aggressive People's Republic of China.

Well, we don't have much time to waste because we know one of the preeminent challenges that we have in the world today is not terrorism, like we experienced after 9/11. On 9/11 and thereafter we were focused like a laser on counterterrorism. Meanwhile, Russia and China continued to rebuild and replenish their arsenals and develop new and dangerous weapons that threaten our national security and, in the end, threaten our freedom.

In addition to these big, bipartisan bills that I have mentioned, I was glad that a number of bills that I introduced became law last year.

After years of fighting, we finally succeeded in making Juneteenth a national holiday. Juneteenth started in Galveston, TX, when, 2 years after the Civil War was over, the former slaves in Galveston were told: You are free.

We have been celebrating that for 40 years in Texas, and I am proud to say we have now made this a national holiday. Hopefully, this will be a source of education and reconciliation, and so people will understand our history because, as the old saying goes: Those who don't remember their history are condemned to relive it.

This would not have happened without the support and the tenacity of advocates across Texas, including my friend Ms. Opal Lee of Fort Worth, who is widely known as the grandmother of Juneteenth.

By the way, the Dallas Morning News editorial board named her as the woman of the year for last year, quite an appropriate recognition.

But this bill and this holiday will preserve the history of Juneteenth for generations to come and ensure that we never forget the significance of that day when Major General Gordon Granger's troops declared that all slaves are forever free.

Then we passed bipartisan bills to strengthen the policies and procedures for reporting missing servicemembers, something very near and dear to those of us in Texas, given the terrible and tragic loss of Vanessa Guillen.

We also strengthened our defense against China by strengthening our relationship with Taiwan.

We passed bipartisan legislation ensuring that for Federal officers-- no matter where they serve--that their attackers, their killers can be brought to justice.

For border States, like the Presiding Officer's and mine, we have modernized and increased staffing at points of entry at our borders with Mexico, without spending taxpayer dollars.

We have also closed a loophole abused by some companies fueling the opioid epidemic.

Again, I could go on and on, but these are just a few of the bipartisan bills that I was privileged to work on and that were signed into law last year.

When you add the bipartisan bills introduced by our colleagues on both sides of the aisle, it adds up to a lot of bipartisan wins for the American people. Again, you don't read about it much in the paper, you don't see it much on cable TV or read about it on social media, but it is real and it is true. It is true, and it is what I think we were sent here to do.

So my conclusion is perhaps an obvious one: that even in an equally divided Senate, if we try, if maybe we resist our impulse to go it alone, we can actually work together and find bipartisan solutions.

One of our former colleagues, Mike Enzi, who passed away in the recent past--when I came to the Senate, he was on the Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions Committee with the liberal lion of the Senate, Teddy Kennedy.

You know, I came here to the Senate, and I was kind of in awe of the people I had seen on television, and, particularly, the Kennedy family, who had served our Nation in so many different capacities. But I asked Mike Enzi, who was perhaps one of the most conservative Members of the Senate, how he and Teddy Kennedy, one of the most liberal Members of the Senate, could work together and actually pass legislation.

He said: It is easy. It is called the 80-20 rule. You find the 80 percent of what you can agree on, and then you leave the 20 percent for another day and another fight. Depending on your viewpoint, it can either be a recipe for gridlock or a really big opportunity.

And I have subscribed to the wisdom of the 80-20 rule. From what I have seen, I believe the Presiding Officer agrees with that as well.

So instead of just focusing on the things we can't agree on and perhaps will never agree on, because we have different visions for the role of the Federal Government in our lives--that is OK. Those are the debates we have been having since the founding of this country, and we will have forever, as long as this great Nation lasts.

But let's not just focus on the 20 percent we can't do, which seems to be the obsession of the news media and others. Let's think more about the 80 percent we can do. Rather than waste floor time, which is coin of the realm here--I mean, if it can't come to the floor because there is no floor time, it is not going to happen. So rather than waste time on partisan bills that will ultimately go nowhere, let's find common ground and work on our shared priorities.

I have got one idea. How do we help families struggling to keep up with the highest inflation in nearly four decades? I have lived long enough to know when interest rates were close to 20 percent and we had double-digit inflation. It was a miserable time in this country because people's paychecks were eaten up by inflation and they couldn't afford to buy things, like houses, that they ordinarily might buy to increase their standard of living because interest rates were so high on mortgage loans.

Or let's work on supply chains that have been unable to keep up with demand. The vulnerabilities have been exposed by COVID-19. Again, the definition of intelligence, as my dad used to say, what he called the hallmark of intelligence, is learning from your mistakes, not doing the same thing over and over again, like Albert Einstein said, and expecting different results.

There is also a humanitarian crisis on the border that has led to the highest number of annual apprehensions on record.

I am not confident our colleagues on the other side actually believe in enforcing our immigration laws, but maybe I am wrong. Maybe there are some areas that we could work on. The Senator from Arizona, Senator Sinema, and I, and Henry Cuellar, a Democrat from Laredo, and Tony Gonzales, a Republican from Texas, we have worked on the Bipartisan Border Solutions Act, and we would love to be able to work with our colleagues across the aisle to find some way to address the uncontrolled access that people who have no reasonable grounds for asylum are getting and coming into our country and then fading into the great American landscape.

There are other things I would like to do in the immigration space, things like the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals. Ten years ago, President Obama issued an Executive memorandum saying that if you were brought here as a child, under certain criteria, you will be able to stay and you will be able to get work permits. But it has been in litigation for the last 10 years. The last decision by a Federal district judge in Houston, TX, Judge Hanen, said that basically the DACA and DAPA--in this case, the DACA, Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals--memorandum is unconstitutional and that only Congress can address this.

And I suggest we should. I have asked the chairman of the Judiciary Committee to put a bill on the floor in the Judiciary Committee that provides some certainty in the future for these young people, who are now young adults, living in uncertainty. Give them some certainty and some comfort knowing that they don't need to fear deportation or some other negative consequence, because I believe there is a broad consensus that we ought to give them some relief.

In America you don't hold children responsible for the mistakes parents make, and I believe that we could find a bipartisan solution to at least that part. And do you know what? Maybe--just maybe--by doing some things together, we can increase confidence among ourselves.

Yeah, we really can. We can work together. We can find bipartisan solutions. We don't have to just fight and emphasize the 20 percent we can't agree on. We can work on that 80 percent and make real progress.

I believe these are the types of issues that the American people sent us here to solve. Forget legislation that hands tax breaks to the wealthy or federalizes America's elections, notwithstanding the provisions of our Constitution. Let's work together to solve real problems where there is an opportunity for us to find that 80-percent solution.

So, as we welcome the start of a new year, I hope the Democratic leader, Senator Schumer, and our colleagues across the aisle will look at the 50-50 Senate with a fresh perspective. We do have an opportunity to deliver big wins to the American people this year, and I hope the Senate majority leader, who sets the agenda on the floor, will allow that to happen.

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 eyes of the world are on Russia as it stages a military buildup on the Ukrainian border. Russia could literally invade Ukraine at any time. And the United States and the international community need to take strong, decisive action to dissuade a Russian offensive from invading Ukraine. I was glad to see the Secretary General of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization, NATO, denounce Russia's action earlier today, but clearly words are not enough. Statements of support are not enough to counter an invasion. The United States and our NATO allies must provide additional support to Ukraine as they defend their borders, and time is of the essence.

Senator Durbin, the Senator from Illinois, and I have introduced a resolution to provide complete clarity on the U.S. Senate's position on this imminent conflict. Our resolution affirms the unwavering support of the United States for a secure, democratic, and independent Ukraine, but it also asserts the need for action. Our resolution calls on the Biden administration to provide additional lethal aid to Ukraine to counter ongoing Russian aggression.

Senator Durbin and I have been proud to notch a long list of bipartisan cosponsors, and I hope the Senate will pass this resolution before we break at the end of the year.

Biden Administration

Madam President, on another matter, the first year of the Biden Presidency and the Democratic-majority controlled Congress is quickly coming to an end. Looking at everything that has happened so far this year, it is tough to imagine the American people are happy with how things are going.

President Biden raised all of our hopes and expectations during his inauguration, as he built his campaign and then spoke at his inauguration on a simple theme: unity. He talked about the need for people across the country to come together and empathize with one another and to work together. He promised to be a uniting force in Washington, DC, and pointed to his service in the U.S. Senate as evidence of his ability to work across the aisle to broker bipartisan deals.

Clearly, this message was welcomed by the American people. After all, they gave him the job in the first place. But just because voters picked a Democratic President doesn't mean they signed off on a radical transformation of our country. The American people elected a 50-50 Senate and lessened the Democratic majority in the House.

In short, Americans selected a President who promised to work across the aisle and a closely divided Congress--and gave us a closely divided Congress to ensure that he kept his word, but the American people have not gotten what they expected.

Right from the start, there were clear signs of where things were headed. At the beginning of the year, the two party leaders negotiated an organizing statement to determine how the 50-50 Senate would function. In light of the far-left's newfound obsession with eliminating the filibuster, Leader McConnell asked for assurances from Leader Schumer that the filibuster would remain intact. After all, it is not unreasonable to ask your negotiating partner to commit to not breaking the rules.

Even though Senator Schumer once said we should ``build a firewall around the legislative filibuster,'' he refused to agree to leave it alone, which was not very encouraging. Fortunately, two of our Democratic colleagues have committed to protect the filibuster, which ensures that there will be something that maybe is a little unnatural for human nature--to try to force us to work together to build consensus to do things like we did yesterday: pass the National Defense Authorization Act. That is not necessarily our first instinct.

But protecting the filibuster is important. It provides stability and continuity and predictability in our Nation's laws and to make sure that we don't add to the chaos by, every 2 years, after every election, reversing everything that had been done the previous 2 years.

We saw how tempted our Democratic colleagues were to use their newfound powers in the majority. That meant, unfortunately, forget working across the aisle or striking bipartisan deals--Senator Schumer made clear he wanted an easy path for purely partisan legislation.

The first item on his agenda was a $2 trillion liberal wish list unconvincingly disguised as pandemic relief. It included things like backdoor funding for Planned Parenthood, a blank check for mismanaged union pension systems, and money for climate justice. This had very, very little to do with COVID-19 and the pandemic, which is how it was sold.

The Democratic leader got a taste of partisan legislating and decided that he wanted more of it, so he tried to break the two Democratic Members on his side of the aisle who were protecting bipartisanship and consensus building. He lined up votes on some of our colleagues' most controversial bills, all of which were designed to fail. There was a bill that exploited the cause of pay fairness to line the pockets of trial lawyers. Unsurprisingly, it did not pass.

Senator Schumer forecasted votes on two bills that were so unpopular among Democrats that they didn't even make it to the Senate floor. One was to erode the American people's Second Amendment rights, and another would punish

schools and hospitals that refused to comply with ``woke'' social norms.

But without a doubt, the most dangerous legislation Democrats have pushed is to overhaul America's election system. The version of the bill we voted on this summer was so bad that I was surprised Democrats even had the gall to hold a vote on it.

The bill would have turned the bipartisan Federal Election Commission into a Democratic-controlled, partisan body. It would have seized States' constitutional authority to draw their own congressional districts, instead handing all the power to independent redistricting commissions. It would have federalized ballot harvesting--literally vacuuming up ballots and delivering them to a paid campaign staffer and political operatives who had a stake in the outcome of the election. The only thing it would have done for the people is decide the outcome of virtually every future election and--spoiler alert--make sure that Democrats would never lose.

If this bill weren't so dangerous, it would have been laughable. It is no surprise that the only bipartisan thing about this bill was the opposition. In both the House and the Senate, Republicans and Democrats joined together to defeat this bill.

Still, our Democratic colleagues refused to throw in the towel. They rewrote the bill, tried to rebrand it, and brought it up for another vote in October. Once again, it failed. The Democratic leader has said this partisan legislation will resurface again sometime before the end of next year, but I don't expect the outcome to change.

Of course, amid all the partisan jockeying, there has been a large, dark cloud looming overhead known as the Build Back Better--or, rather, I think more accurately, ``Build Back Bankrupt''--bill. This legislation would drive up the cost of childcare for families and cut healthcare for the uninsured. It would hurt our energy security and increase the already sky-high energy costs. It would put taxpayers on the hook for massive handouts to blue State millionaires, organized labor, trial lawyers, wealthy media corporations, and a host of powerful friends of the Democratic Party.

Our Democratic colleagues have used every trick in the book to make the price of this spending spree look as small as possible. One of our Democratic colleagues even acknowledged the disingenuous advertising.

Fortunately, the Congressional Budget Office and the Joint Tax Committee have provided an honest score of the bill that passed the House and that has been proposed here in the Senate--one which ignores the gimmicks our colleagues initially tried to use. The Congressional Budget Office says that this bill would cost $4.9 trillion in the first 10 years alone--not zero, as President Biden has disingenuously claimed; not $1.75 trillion, as our Democratic colleagues have claimed; but $4.9 trillion, nearly triple the price Democrats have previously been willing to acknowledge. And deficits--money that would have to be repaid by the next generation and beyond--would increase by a staggering $3 trillion over the next decade.

As it turns out, spending trillions of dollars on unnecessary programs and dolling out handouts for the wealthy is not an easy sell. Senator Schumer apparently can't convince all 50 Democrats to vote for the bill.

While our colleagues have focused on these wholly partisan endeavors, they have ignored clear opportunities to work together in a bipartisan effort.

For example, Members of both parties agree that something must be done to bring down prescription drug prices for the American people. This was a major focus last Congress, and there are a range of bipartisan bills that support this goal, including one I have introduced with Senator Blumenthal from Connecticut. So far, we have made no progress for the American people on high prescription drug costs.

Then there is the crisis at the border. On President Biden's watch, annual border apprehensions have hit an alltime high. For most of the year, though, Democrats refused to acknowledge that any sort of problem actually existed at the southern border. They adopted the same rules as ``Fight Club''--they just didn't talk about it. Vice President Harris, named ``border czar'' by President Biden, didn't even visit the border until late last June, long after the humanitarian crisis had ballooned to unimaginable heights, and even then, she stayed away from the hardest hit sectors.

Senator Sinema, a Democrat from Arizona, and I have introduced legislation with commonsense reforms to address the crisis, but the chairman of the Judiciary Committee, Senator Durbin, has declined to mark up the bill or even convene a hearing of the Judiciary Committee to investigate the border crisis and explore possible responses to it.

Democrats and Republicans have shown a willingness to work together to put DACA recipients on a strong legal footing. These are young people known as Dreamers but frequently referred to as DACA, deferred action on childhood arrival, which is the name of the administrative process used by the Obama administration to provide them some legal standing in which to stay in the country. But they have been embroiled in 10 years of unnecessary litigation, and they are uncertain about the outcome of their case. I think this is an area where we could work together to provide them some certainty and some finality.

There are other things we could and should be doing, like securing our most critical supply chains, encouraging innovation in the energy sector, and solving many of the challenges American families are facing every day. But rather than work across the aisle to address these bipartisan priorities, our colleagues have wasted a year on purely partisan exercises. Again, this is not what the American people thought they were getting when they elected Joe Biden President and when they gave the Senate a 50-50 split.

The 2020 election wasn't an invitation to codify a liberal wish list; it was a call to work together. And there is no better place for the work that can be done than in the U.S. Senate. There is a lot we can and should accomplish next year, but this sort of partisan, unilateral approach to governing has made that nearly impossible. You can only hope for better next year.

Our colleagues on the other side of the aisle got what they wanted, which was a Democratic majority, given the tie-breaking vote of the Vice President. They have been given the keys to the kingdom, and now, next year, we will see how long they can hold on to them, or perhaps they can change course and return to bipartisan legislating and consensus building for the benefit of the American people.

I yield the floor.

I suggest the absence of a quorum.

Madam President, as the Senate's schedule for this calendar year begins to wind down, hopefully with the anticipation of spending time with our friends and families during this holiday season, I want to look back over some of the deadlines that the majority leader, the Senator from New York, has set for Senate action and to ask whether these sort of arbitrary deadlines and attempts to do legislation essentially along party lines is the right way to actually get things done in the Senate.

We have excellent examples of how to get things done. Today, we passed the Defense authorization bill with a strong bipartisan vote. But we know that when either political party decides to do things unilaterally, especially in a 50-50 Senate, it makes the work immeasurably harder, and that is for a good reason.

The Founders of this country and our Constitution and the creators of this Senate looked to the Senate to be a deliberative body and looked for us to do what sometimes doesn't come naturally, which is to work together to build consensus. But, as I said, when one party or the other attempts to do things unilaterally, it usually means what you see here, which is one blown self-imposed deadline after another.

First of all, the majority leader set a July 21 target for Senate action on a budget resolution.

He laid out an August deadline for a partisan election takeover bill, which would have preempted State and local laws, which are responsible, under our division of responsibility in the Constitution, under our Federal system, for conducting elections.

Then he proudly announced his goal to get two bills to President Biden's desk by the end of October. He said those would be joined together--a bipartisan infrastructure bill that is the exception to the rule--actually like the Defense authorization bill that actually enjoyed broad bipartisan support--but the hangup was the other part of that proposition, which was the Democrats' multitrillion-dollar partisan spending bill.

Of course, not one single one of these deadlines was met--again, because it is hard to do things in a 50-50 Senate when you try to do it unilaterally without doing the hard work of building consensus, which is the way the Founders wanted this institution to work.

So our colleague from New York kept setting deadlines and blowing right past them, and it looks like he is about to add another one to the list. Senator Schumer's latest deadline for the ``Build Back Bankrupt'' bill is December 25. That is Christmas. While he has yet to make an official announcement, news reports are starting to confirm what we have known all along--that the Senate will not vote on this bill by Christmas because it is just not ready for prime time.

Before our colleagues can bend the rules of the Senate to pass their partisan, multitrillion-dollar spending bill, they have got a lot of roadblocks to overcome. The most obvious is they need a bill to vote on. This bill is not even in final form yet. As a matter of fact, the Senate Finance Committee, on which I have the pleasure of serving, released about 1,100 pages of new text on Saturday, and there are at least 20 different issues that have been raised with the Parliamentarian which need to be litigated in a deliberative process, but the version of the legislation

that passed the House started getting picked apart even before reaching this side of the Capitol. The committee chairmen here were still deciding which provisions to keep, which ones to alter, and which ones to throw away.

It is tough to know how things are progressing because all of these conversations happen not here on the Senate floor, with open debate, but behind closed doors, completely out of view of the American people. That is dangerous because this bill will touch virtually every aspect of Americans' daily lives and stick them with a massive invoice-- without any visibility into the process.

We are told that the Build Back Better bill is immensely popular. Well, that may be true until you start looking at the details, at the fine print. Right now, we have to rely on vague statements from our Democratic colleagues to understand where things stand, and I will tell you, right now, it doesn't sound too promising.

Following severe blowback from the American people after the details of this bill began to become public, Finance Committee Democrats began making changes to one extremely controversial part of the bill. The Washington Post headline says it all: ``The second-biggest program in the Democrats' spending plan gives billions to the rich.''

No wonder they went back to the drawing board. After all, there is a sharp contrast from how our colleagues have tried to sell this bill-- really, an effort of false advertising. They have harped previously--or some sections of the Democratic caucus--on the need to stick it to the rich, to tax the rich, but when given the opportunity, they hand out massive tax breaks for the rich.

It is unclear how long it will take our colleagues to finalize changes to the millionaires' tax breaks and the countless other provisions that are being retooled, but once they lay down their pens, the work is not done. As I suggested, they have the substantial and difficult process of vetting a number of the provisions with the Senate Parliamentarian to determine whether these provisions can pass the Byrd rule.

The Byrd rule is simply the name given to the process to see whether it complies with the 1974 Budget Act, which provides for an expedited process and 51 votes for passage because it is limited strictly to budgetary matters. When our colleagues try to stick into the bill other substantive law changes which require a 60-vote requirement, that is where the Byrd rule comes in, and that is where these provisions get kicked out.

According to the chairman of the Finance Committee, the Finance Committee's proposal alone has more than 20 different issues to resolve with the Parliamentarian in the so-called Byrd bath, and that is just one committee. Our colleagues on various other committees are presenting arguments on provisions of all sizes. We have heard that our Democratic colleagues are trying to make massive changes in our immigration law on a party-line vote at 51 votes--50 votes plus the Vice President. Well, that has not succeeded on two previous occasions for good reason, and now we are awaiting the verdict of the Parliamentarian on those immigration proposals on the third try.

But we know that this massive legislation, once it is written, presumably, will go from everything from technical changes to major issues like whether the budget rule can be used to legalize millions of undocumented immigrants. Again, these conversations are happening not out here in the Senate, with an opportunity for full debate and amendment; they are happening behind closed doors. So we really don't have a good sense--nor do the American people--of what has been decided or how long it will take to resolve pending disputes.

If our Democratic colleagues receive adverse guidance from the Parliamentarian, it is still unclear whether they will accept the outcome or light the rule book on fire, as some have suggested, and try to overrule her. It is tough to imagine a world in which our Democrat colleagues would put this Frankenstein's monster on the Senate floor before Christmas. Christmas is, in fact, 10 days away. Even if our colleagues were able to iron out every issue with the Parliamentarian and were able to present finalized text and receive a score on the final legislation at that time, Senator Schumer doesn't have the votes to pass it. Again, we are an evenly divided Senate, with the Vice President casting the tie-breaking vote.

Colleagues on the other side of the aisle are not on board entirely with this proposed massive spending-and-tax bill. Unlike the majority of our colleagues who have blindly fallen in line or aired their concerns in private, we know that the Senator from West Virginia, Mr. Manchin, has consistently expressed his reservations about the bill.

In September, for example, he wrote an op-ed, titled: ``Why I Won't Support Spending Another $3.5 Trillion.'' He has hardly been quiet or hidden his concerns. He shared his concerns in that op-ed about the scale and scope of this legislation, and he encouraged his colleagues in his own political party to take a strategic pause.

Some of the reasons he cited included the growing threat of inflation, which has only increased since September. Inflation, in fact, has now reached a 40-year high--just last month. He warned about the possibility that the virus might mutate and take a new turn and that we ought to really save our powder in case we had to address either the public health or economic consequences flowing from a new variant. Well, today, all of our eyes are on the Omicron variant, and we have yet to know how that will play out. He asked how we could respond to another financial crisis like we experienced in 2008 during the great recession or, heaven forbid, a terrorist attack or a major international conflict.

If we spend trillions of dollars on unnecessary programs today, we will hardly have those reserves available to us should we need them. I think the questions and issues raised by the Senator from West Virginia were valid then, and they are even more pressing now.

Over the last several months, the winds haven't shifted in favor of this massive tax-and-spending bill. In fact, we now have more reason to believe this legislation would add to, not solve, the problems that the American people are facing. The Senator from West Virginia told one of our Republican colleagues that the score proposed by his own political party--$1.75 trillion--is full of gimmicks, and he even acknowledged that that pricetag is a form of deceptive advertising.

We now have an honest score, one that acknowledges that massive programs cannot be started and stopped on a dime and that, if you are really going to be honest about the cost of the bill, you need to look at a score that spans the full 10-year budget window. We now have that score, one that avoids the gimmicks that are meant to disguise the true cost of the bill. Now we can quantify how disingenuous this so-called $1.75 trillion pricetag really is, and it is about as disingenuous as the President's claim that the bill costs zero. Nobody believes that. It really undermines the President's credibility when he says something like that.

The Congressional Budget Office now says this legislation, if in place for a full 10 years, would cost $4.9 trillion. That is on top of the almost $2 trillion our colleagues spent unilaterally earlier this year. Well, that is certainly higher than the $3.5 trillion redline that Senator Manchin drew earlier this year, and it is a whole lot more than the $1.75 trillion pricetag that our Democratic colleagues are claiming. It makes the repeated claim that this bill costs zero seem even more bizarre and out of touch.

Under this bill, as it is shaping up, we know deficits would increase by a staggering $3 trillion over the next decade. Now, last year, when we passed COVID-19 relief bills with huge bipartisan majorities, we did so because it was a public health emergency and an economic emergency, and we did it together. Yet, on top of all of that necessary spending, our colleagues are insisting on spending another $4.9 trillion--adding another $3 trillion to the debt over the next decade. Our children and grandchildren would never have a chance to dig out of the hole that our Democratic colleagues are now drilling.

This legislation doesn't just fall short of solving problems; it actually makes them worse. This bill would fuel

the red-hot inflation that is already burning up the paychecks of the American people. People who are on fixed incomes are finding their purchasing power shrinking by the day because of the threat of inflation. We know this bill would also hurt our energy security. It would give massive tax breaks to the wealthy while increasing taxes on the middle class. It would literally cut funding for safety net hospitals and drive the national debt to unimaginable heights. Finally, and maybe most importantly, it would hand to the Federal Government decisions that should be made by families.

I hope our colleague from West Virginia will continue to hold strong against the dangers of this bill. At a minimum, we need to tap the brakes and take what he called a ``strategic pause.''

So it seems the Democratic leader is on track to miss yet another deadline. For the country's sake, I hope this bill does not arrive after Christmas. I hope it never comes at all.

I yield the floor.

Mr. President, for months now, American families have struggled with the growing burden of inflation. New data shows just how bad things have gotten.

Last month, consumer prices increased at the fastest pace in 40 years. Now, I would like to take a little walk down memory lane. The last time the American people endured price spikes like this, ``Eye of the Tiger'' was one of the top songs on the radio. I am sure the Senator from Delaware remembers that very well. The world had yet to be introduced to Nintendo and Mario. Consumers were anxiously awaiting the release of the first cell phone, which weighed in at a whopping 2 pounds. I remember those unwieldy telephones well.

Over the last four decades, of course, a lot has changed, and I am not just talking about technology--the attacks of September 11, wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, the great recession.

Even during the first year of the pandemic, inflation didn't come close to hitting the heights that it has today. Between March 2020 and February 2021, the inflation rate never topped 2 percent.

There were countless reasons for us to be optimistic. We had three highly effective vaccines, with shots going into the arms of millions of people every day. Schools were reopening. Employees were returning to work. The American people began to discover a new semblance of normal post-COVID.

But the administration ignored all of this progress because they had another plan in mind. They seized on what one House Democrat described as a ``tremendous opportunity to restructure things to fit [their] vision.'' They crafted a nearly $2 trillion piece of legislation that included their ideological priorities and tried to brand it as necessary pandemic relief. But we know that only about 10 percent of that $2 trillion expenditure went to COVID-19. Less than 1 percent went for vaccines. What it did include was backdoor funding for Planned Parenthood, a blank check for mismanaged union pension plans, and money for climate justice. It was easy to see through the COVID relief facade.

Well, as our colleagues pushed this bill forward, they ignored warning signs from leading economists that this kind of spending chasing limited goods and services could trigger inflation. Larry Summers, who served as Secretary of Treasury during the Obama administration, even predicted that this package could ``set off inflationary pressures of a kind we have not seen in a generation.''

Our colleagues couldn't be convinced to change course, and look where we are now as a result. We are experiencing inflation of a kind that we have not seen in a generation. Last month, prices jumped a whopping 6.8 percent from the previous year, marking the sixth consecutive month in which inflation has topped 5 percent.

When concerns were raised about this, the Federal Reserve claimed that this inflation was transitory--in other words, it was a passing moment--but the longer and longer inflation continues to rise and continues to be a problem, it is looking less and less transitory and more and more frightening. The reason it is frightening, of course, is because particularly people on fixed incomes are seeing less and less buying power for each dollar they spend. It is, some have said, a hidden tax on the American people, which describes its impact very well.

Well, month after month, the data has now demonstrated that this is not just transitory and it isn't just a blip on the radar of our economy. Inflation is running much hotter than expected, and things are not expected to cool down anytime soon.

As families prepare for the Christmas holiday season, they are bracing their wallets for higher than normal expenses, and one of the biggest hits is for grocery bills--hardly something optional. Breakfast on Christmas morning is sure to cost a lot more than it

did just a year ago. Egg prices are up 8 percent. Bacon costs a whopping 21 percent more than it did just a year ago. Dinner--it won't be any cheaper either. Prices are up for everything from ham to salad dressing to pie.

Cooking that meal will cost you a lot more too. Electricity prices are up 6.5 percent, and anyone cooking on a gas range will shell out 25 percent more than they did last year.

If you are traveling to see your extended family this year, you better start saving for it now. Gas prices are up a whopping 58 percent, the largest increase since 1980.

Of course, this ignores the rising cost of gifts sitting under the Christmas tree, if you can get them because of broken and delayed supply chains. So the new cars and the washing machines and sofas that countless families have purchased this year, all of those cost more.

You would think that our Democratic colleagues who are proposing another $5 trillion in spending under the so-called BBB--or Build Back Better bill--you would think they would view this with caution and back off of their plans or at least tap the brakes for a second round of unnecessary spending. Unfortunately, that does not appear to be the case. In fact, the Senate majority leader, Senator Schumer, is trying to double down on this next round of inflationary spending.

We know that every trick in the book has been employed to try to make the BBB, the Build Back Better--``Build Back Broke,'' ``Build Back Bad,'' ``Build Back Bankrupt,'' you call it what you will--our Democratic colleagues have used every gimmick in the book to make the price of this bill look as small as possible. Of course, they started with the chairman of the Budget Committee. Senator Sanders wanted to spend $6 trillion more. That was pared down to $3.5 trillion. Now, they claim it is only $1.75 trillion. In order to achieve that number, they have gamed the Tax Code to fund part of the bill while handing out tax breaks to millionaires and billionaires in relief for State and local taxes. They have strategically chosen start dates, sunsets, and expiration dates that make these programs appear deceptively to cost less.

One of our colleagues acknowledged that this is disingenuous advertising and even told Mr. Graham, the Senator from South Carolina, that he knew that this score they were promoting was full of gimmicks.

Of course, that is a lot different than the President himself, who said this bill will cost zero. Now, everybody knows that is not true.

But there had been some debate about what the honest score would be even with all the gimmicks. If the temporary provisions were extended, as we all know they would be--there is no such thing as a temporary government program around here or, as Ronald Reagan said, the closest thing to eternal life is a temporary government program--this legislation will cost a lot more than they admit, and we now know how much that will be.

Senator Graham, who serves as a ranking member on the Budget Committee, asked the Congressional Budget Office to provide a more accurate cost estimate for this legislation. Others like me asked the CBO and the Joint Committee on Taxation to give us an updated estimate. There have been a lot of requests made to come up with an accurate, truth-in-advertising score for this huge bill.

Last week, we got what we asked for. We finally received the true score for this legislation, and it is a whole lot more than the American people were told and much more than they have bargained for. Let's start with the cost provision of just one part of this bill, the expanded child tax credit. This expansion initially came on the scene as a temporary measure in the first partisan spending bill just 9 months ago. So this actually builds on the $2 trillion our colleagues passed at the beginning of this year. The very first payments had barely gone out the door when our friends on the other side of the aisle called for these temporary provisions to be made permanent. Our colleagues knew that a permanent expansion would have been far too expensive so they opted for a temporary extension.

Earlier drafts of this bill would have extended this policy through 2025. As time went on, the pricetag was still too high so Democrats scaled it back to a 1-year extension, but still nothing has changed. Calls to make this temporary provision permanent have not gone away, and I see no indication that our colleagues will ever be content to let this extension expire after just 1 year.

Our colleagues on the other side of the aisle say this provision will cost taxpayers $185 billion, as if that were a bargain. The latest estimate from the CBO places the actual cost at roughly $1.6 trillion. You heard that right. Our colleagues across the aisle said it would just cost $185 billion, but the latest estimate from the Congressional Budget Office placed the actual cost during the 10-year budget window at roughly $1.6 trillion, nine times higher than what Democrats have been telling the American people. The true cost of this one provision is nearly as high as what our colleagues said the entire package would cost.

Then you add in the other higher-than-promised expenses. The true costs of payoffs and subsidies to organize labor, allowing dues to become tax deductible will cost taxpayers billions more than advertised.

But I will give them credit about one thing. They are transparent when it comes to subsidizing more frivolous lawsuits against small businesses by giving a permanent tax cut to trial lawyers. When you add up all the not-so-temporary provisions, the Congressional Budget Office says this bill will cost $4.9 trillion during the first 10 years--not $1.75 trillion, not zero, but $4.9 trillion. Deficits and debt would increase by a staggering $3 trillion; in other words, borrowed money that the next generation or maybe next two generations will have to repay, which makes President Biden's comment about ``zero'' even more bizarre.

When it comes to solving our country's biggest problems, our colleagues across the aisle have proven themselves to be a one-trick pony. Whether the American people are facing a pandemic, a sluggish economic recovery, red-hot inflation, or any combination of crises, President Biden and our Democratic colleagues here in Congress think trillions of dollars in new spending is the best path forward.

The first round of reckless spending hurt our economic recovery and sent the American people on a wild inflationary ride. Our colleagues continue to ignore clear signals from the economy, including warnings by Democratic economists about the consequences to unchecked spending.

And we are now experiencing the highest inflation in a generation. This second round of spending would usher in more inflation, higher deficits, and even greater financial trouble for the American people. The American people have clearly suffered enough, and it is time to simply put the ``Build Back Bankrupt'' bill out of its misery.

I yield the floor.

I suggest the absence of a quorum.

Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent to have my bill printed in the Congressional Record. The bill requires the Secretary of Veterans Affairs to submit to Congress a report on the Veterans Integration to Academic Leadership Program of the Department of Veterans Affairs.

Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent to have my bill printed in the Congressional Record. The bill requires the Secretary of Veterans Affairs to submit to Congress a report on the Veterans Integration to Academic Leadership Program of the Department of Veterans Affairs.

Mr. President, I want to take just a few moments to go back to March of this year. After a very tough year fighting COVID-19, the American people had many reasons to be optimistic about the future. Millions of people were being vaccinated every day. The winter surge was fading away, and travel was slowly ramping up. Families were able to get back together who hadn't seen their loved ones, particularly those who were the most vulnerable to the virus. People were able to visit face-to-face and resume their lives, gradually discovering what I will call the new normal.

We knew the war against the virus was not over, but our communities were well-resourced to keep up the fight, thanks to the five bipartisan bills that were signed into law in 2020.

Yes, it is true. Just last year, we passed five bipartisan relief bills with broad bipartisan support--in some cases, unanimous consent support. My, how quickly things changed. After President Biden was sworn into office, our friends on the other side of the aisle began to view things quite differently. Where Republicans saw progress, Democrats saw, as one House Member put it, a ``tremendous opportunity to restructure things to fit [their] vision.'' Democrats tried to capitalize on the pandemic to check items off their liberal wish list. They crafted a nearly $2 trillion bill that included some of the far- left's highest priorities and tried to brand it as pandemic relief-- backdoor funding for Planned Parenthood, a blank check for mismanaged union pension funds, money for ``climate justice''--whatever that is. Less than 10 percent of the money for COVID-19 was directly related to the pandemic, and less than 1 percent supported vaccination efforts.

In addition to being wasteful and irresponsible, this level of spending has brought with it serious risks. Leading economists who are Democrats, like Larry Summers and Steve Rattner, warn this level of spending could trigger inflation. Most of the young people who were not alive during the seventies, during the tremendous inflation in the country, have never experienced anything like that or even like what we are experiencing today. But Larry Summers presciently warned that this level of Federal spending could ``set off [some] inflationary pressures of a kind we have not seen in a generation.'' Still, our Democratic colleagues couldn't be persuaded to change course.

They moved forward with their nearly $2 trillion spending bill, and lo and behold, guess what happened. Well, Larry Summers was right, and the Federal Reserve that called inflation transitory was wrong. We are now experiencing inflation at a level we have not seen in a generation, exactly as Larry Summers predicted.

In October, inflation hit a 31-year high. Consumer prices jumped 6.2 percent compared with a year ago, making this the highest inflation rate we have seen since 1990. If you were to ask the average Texan if they were surprised by this news, they would say: Not at all.

Month after month, families have adjusted their budgets as prices ticked up. They are now paying more for everything from gasoline to groceries, from cars to Christmas gifts.

And our Democratic colleagues seem to think the only solution is to add more fuel to the fire. They put together a second partisan spending spree, which will cost approximately $5 trillion. That has already passed the House of Representatives.

Taxpayers will be disappointed by what they get for so much money: tax breaks for millionaires and billionaires--that is in the House bill--cuts to healthcare for low-income and uninsured patients, special favors for organized labor and union bosses, and taxpayer-subsidized electric vehicles for the well-off.

Our colleagues have worked diligently, I must confess, on this bill all year, and this is what they have come up with. Meanwhile, they have ignored some of the most basic responsibilities of governing.

So far, the Senate has not passed any regular appropriations bills. There are 12 of them that routinely we pass. They are deliberated in the Appropriations Committee, voted on, on a bipartisan basis, and ultimately come to the floor and pass as part of the most basic function of governing.

We haven't done that this year. Our colleagues have delayed the National Defense Authorization Act, and we are just 1 week away from a deadline that Secretary Yellen has given us for a potential debt crisis. Our colleagues have failed to do the bare minimum.

Why on Earth are they pouring every ounce of their time and energy into this damaging partisan spending spree when they can't even cover the fundamentals of governing?

One thing is for sure: It is not because of a lack of opportunities to advance bipartisan legislation.

In fact, over the last year, I have been proud to work with a number of our Democratic colleagues on legislation to address some of our biggest challenges, so it is not impossible. For example, Senator Warner, the Senator from Virginia, and I have partnered on the CHIPS for America Act, which became law earlier this year, and now we are working together to provide the funds to fund the programs that the bill created.

Then there is Senator Sinema, the senior Senator from Arizona. She and I teamed up on legislation to deal with the humanitarian crisis and security crisis at our border and to make sure that migrants are treated fairly and humanely.

Senator Padilla, the junior Senator from California, and I have worked together on legislation to make big investments in infrastructure projects across the country without increasing the deficit by a dime.

Earlier this year, State and local governments received huge sums of COVID-19 relief money--more than they could use--and they found themselves with more cash than they did eligible expenses. So the idea behind our bill was pretty simple: give State and local leaders more flexibility to invest in the most critical projects for their communities--largely, infrastructure and disaster relief.

In some places, this still means pandemic-related expenses. We don't require them to do anything; we just merely give them an option. Cities can continue to use Federal dollars to expand hospital bed capacities, increase staffing, or support vaccination campaigns.

The flexibility granted by this bill wouldn't interfere with any plans to bolster the fight against the virus. It simply gives States and local governments the ability to invest excess funding in infrastructure projects: constructing bridges, extending railways, modernizing ports, expanding broadband. This particular bill includes a long list of qualifying expenses.

State and local leaders know their communities best, and they should be able to use excess COVID-19 relief funds in a way that makes the most sense for their State and their community.

Senator Padilla and I were happy to work with our colleagues on both sides of the aisle to make changes to the bill to gain bipartisan support. We added additional qualifying infrastructure projects to ensure unique but no less important infrastructure projects in some States were eligible. And we placed a cap, working with the White House, on the amount of funding that could be used because of the White House's concerns that it would take away from necessary COVID-19 expenses.

In October, this bill passed the Senate with unanimous support. Now, nothing passes this Senate with unanimous support without a lot of hard work and a lot of input from a lot of people on both sides of the aisle. At a time when something as simple as K-12 curricula are controversial, the full Senate supported this legislation. Local officials, highway safety groups, and the transportation infrastructure construction industry all support this commonsense legislation.

Leaders from three dozen organizations representing these groups sent a letter to House leaders earlier this week encouraging the bill's passage. As they said, providing State and local leaders with flexible resources is the surest way to see that our Nation's preparedness and responsivity continue. And it is important to note that this money had already gone out the door, so all of these projects, all of this new infrastructure, can be funded without increasing the deficit by a dime.

As I said, all 100 Senators supported this legislation, and the bill currently has more than 120 bipartisan cosponsors in the House. So we would encourage our House colleagues to delay no longer and take up and pass this commonsense, bipartisan bill.

So my point is, even in times when we seem irreparably polarized, where some colleagues decide it is my way or the highway when it comes to trying to pass legislation in a 50-50 Senate--which is, admittedly, very hard to do--the truth of the matter is there are real opportunities to address some of the biggest challenges facing our country in a bipartisan way.

But none of these opportunities are contained in the Democrats' partisan spending bill. This legislation would, as Larry Summers predicted, continue to fuel the red-hot inflation that is already burning the American people. It will harm our energy security. It will give massive tax breaks to the wealthy while increasing taxes on the middle class. It cuts funding to our safety-net hospitals that provide charity care and care for Medicaid patients. And it will drive our national debt to unimaginable heights.

It will also hand the government control of decisions that should be made by families on everything from childcare to healthcare--basically hand those decisions to the Federal Government. This is not the type of legislation that should be on our Senate's agenda at all, let alone at the top of the list.

There are plenty of opportunities to work together to notch big bipartisan wins for the American people. It is a shame, though, that our colleagues across the aisle have chosen not to do that and that this partisan spending spree has prevented real progress from being made in so many other areas.

I yield the floor.

I suggest the absence of a quorum.