Floor Statements

Madam President, I ask unanimous consent that the order for the quorum call be rescinded.

Madam President, the Space Command has been in the news lately. A final decision may be forthcoming soon, but the reported rationale behind that decision is misguided. There are rumors out there that ignore the fact that this basing process is about a variety of issues. But, really, there is only be about one thing: What is in the best interest of our national security?

The reports focus on the draconian laws of Alabama and Senator Tuberville's decision to bar military promotions. I have always been a strong advocate for reproductive rights, especially among servicemembers, and I vehemently disagree with Senator Tuberville and his decision to hold nearly 200 general and flag officer nominations hostage, a hold that directly affects military readiness.

These nominees are waiting to take their new commands, move their families, and carry out their missions that they were trained to lead. They need to sell and leave the homes they are in. They can't buy new homes. They can't do anything until their promotions are confirmed.

These are important issues, but we can't conflate these issues with the Space Command for the simple reason that our military should never be politicized. Senator Tuberville wants to make this about politics. Senator Bennet and I want to make it about national security.

And space capabilities are absolutely essential to our national security. Whether you are talking about GPS for ground-based operations or secure communications systems for maritime navigation, every single domain in which the United States acts in the name of national defense, be it on land, air, cyber or maritime--you name it--depends on our ability to operate in space.

The entity responsible for coordinating these operations is U.S. Space Command, which was first established in Colorado Springs back in 1985 and formally stood up as a full combatant command in 2019.

Over the past 3\1/2\ years, the brilliant team at Space Command headquarters in Colorado have set the standard for U.S. expertise in space. They are building out our understanding of the global threat landscape, investing in our response capabilities, and hitting keen readiness milestones, including reaching initial operating capability back in August of 2021.

This April, Space Command took another giant step forward when General Dickinson, who is in charge of leading these efforts, announced that U.S. Space Command will reach full operational capability by the end of the year at its current location in Colorado Springs--full operational capability. In other words, Space Command is on the verge of achieving full mission readiness in record time. That is an incredible achievement, and full credit goes to General Dickinson and the men and women on the frontlines of U.S. space leadership.

General Dickinson's announcement underscores just how dangerous it would be to rubberstamp former President Trump's reckless political decision to move Space Command from its current location in Colorado. Moving headquarters requires that we build new facilities, install secure communications infrastructure, and relocate or rehire our existing workforce.

Congress has never received an estimate for how much this would cost, even before factoring in the impact on national security. That is neither efficient nor strategic. It would take years--years--to replicate the milestone of full operational capability, and every single member of this body knows that we simply don't have that luxury.

We don't have that kind of time. We don't have years while Russia is waging a brutal and ruthless war in Ukraine. We don't have years while China is developing advanced hypersonic weapons and threatening to invade Taiwan. We don't have years while Iran and North Korea are attempting to undermine our cyber security.

Right now, the United States is being challenged from every angle. Now is not the time to tie our hands and announce to our rivals that we are intentionally stepping back from being fully operational in space. It is not the time to announce to the world that we will let partisan politics interfere with our military decision making.

The arrival of U.S. Space Command on the cusp of reaching full operational capability in Colorado Springs should be received by the entire Senate as a remarkable achievement, one that strengthens our national security and one that expands our military might.

Space command's formal establishment as a full combatant command in 2019 came not a moment too soon. Just over 2 years later, Russia conducted a direct-ascent anti-satellite weapons test, which created thousands of pieces of debris that Space Command has been tracking ever since.

A few months later, information gathered by U.S. satellites helped the intelligence community to sound the alarm as Putin was amassing thousands of troops on Russia's border with Ukraine.

Satellites have spotted the massive construction of suspected nuclear missile silos by China's People's Liberation Army, as well as the illegal buildup of PLA bases in the South China Sea--a brazen breach of international law and proof positive that the CCP's threat to Taiwan is real.

Satellites directly facilitate our communications, our critical infrastructure, navigation and banking systems, as well as countless other technologies that we use every single day without even thinking twice. There is no question that President Trump's decision to move Space Command to Alabama was political--no question. Don't take my word for it. President Trump said so himself on live radio.

Take it from Republican Mayor John Suthers, the former Republican attorney general of the State of Colorado who personally heard Trump say, in the presence of a four-star general, that he wanted to see how the 2020 election turned out before making a final decision on the location of Space Command.

That is politics interfering with military decisions.

Take it from our senior military leaders whose best professional judgment led them to all recommend Colorado. Colorado Springs is the best place for Space Command because it is already at work here with tangible results about which all of us should be proud.

We shouldn't risk our national security. We should keep Space Command in Colorado Springs where it belongs.

I yield the floor.

Madam President, in 1963, Americans could be arrested in some States simply for buying birth control pills. Sixty years later, if many States have their way, Americans may face that reality once again.

The Supreme Court's overturning of Roe v. Wade is so sweeping, so unprecedented that it now threatens the right to contraception. IUDs, emergency contraceptives, and other birth control could well all be banned, which seems hard to imagine. We are going backward in time to when women did not have control of their own bodies, nor the freedom to decide how and when they wanted to begin their families.

Who really believes that a woman shouldn't be able to use birth control; that a woman shouldn't be able to decide whether or not she wants to get pregnant; that a couple can't decide they aren't ready for a family? How many children should each woman have? Should it be as many as possible? Are they allowed to stop reproducing or is it a lifelong duty? Politicians should not be making these decisions.

This is a bill that guarantees a woman's right to access legal contraception. That is it. There is no trick, no sleight of hand. We can pass it into law today. The House has passed it already.

Starting a family is among the most private and personal decisions a person can make. It changes your life in ways that most of us can't even imagine. Yet there are people who want to force this restriction on women.

For women everywhere but especially in rural and low-income areas, birth control is essential healthcare. If you want to prevent unintended pregnancies, well, that is where you start.

When I was Governor, Colorado made long-acting, reversible contraception, like IUDs, available at little or no cost. That reduced unintended pregnancies by 54 percent--54 percent. Yet, now in Colorado, some Republicans are campaigning to put an initiative on the ballot this November that could make contraceptives illegal. Many other States are considering similar moves with bills or amendments waiting in the wings.

I think this is far, far beyond the mainstream of what most Americans believe. In fact, 92 percent of Americans, in a recent Gallup poll, said that contraception is morally acceptable.

My mother was born in 1921, a child of the Great Depression. She scrimped and saved every penny, but she always, always made it a point to make some donation to Planned Parenthood. Some years, it might only be $10. But she believed there were few burdens harder for a woman to bear than being compelled to start a family before she was ready. As a mother of four, she knew how important it was for women to be able to make that decision for themselves.

Who are we, as politicians, to tell American women who has children, how many, and when?

I yield the floor.

Mr. President, the Senate should absolutely support the Freedom to Travel for Health Care Act.

Currently, abortion is banned in 10 States, with many more set to follow--now, not in Colorado, where we acted strongly to support access to reproductive care. Like other pro-choice States,

we are seeing a large influx of patients. Yet we have heard tragic stories of women sleeping in their cars overnight outside of clinics, after traveling hundreds of miles, as they wait for appointments.

After the Texas abortion ban took effect, one woman had her water break at 19 weeks--actually, on her wedding day. She had moved up her wedding day. The doctors recommended terminating her pregnancy to protect her life, increase the possibility, the likelihood, she could have children in the future. But it wasn't allowed in Texas, so she flew to Colorado for emergency care. Her doctor had her make a plan for this travel, make a plan in case she went into labor on the flight. The plan was to sit near the bathroom.

That is what it will soon come to for women in half of America. Without this legislation, a woman could face prosecution for traveling across State lines. Let that sink in: Her choice would be possible jail or probable death.

This bill will protect every woman's right to travel to seek reproductive care--basic freedom. It would also protect doctors who would practice in States like Colorado and protect them from prosecution and lawsuits for helping out-of-State patients.

Fundamentally, as my fellow Senators have said, this is about freedom. In this new post-Roe era, women can be forced into government- mandated pregnancies. States are stripping women of the freedom over their bodies and their future. The least we should do is protect every patient traveling to receive care that just a few weeks ago was permitted nationwide.

Threatening millions of women and doctors with jail time for seeking or providing reproductive healthcare would be a stain on this Nation. I hope we can find 60 Senators to support this bill.

I yield the floor.

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

Mr. President, next month marks an anniversary that nobody wants to celebrate: 10 years since 70 people were shot and 12 killed while sitting in a movie theater in Aurora, CO.

At the time, it was the largest mass shooting in American history. Since then, several shootings, like the Pulse Nightclub and the Las Vegas shooting, have surpassed that grim milestone.

Most Senators have a similar story of some sort of a mass shooting in their State that killed people who were trying to enjoy a movie or worship God or shop for groceries like the 10 people murdered last year in a supermarket in Boulder or sitting in a fourth grade classroom. Mass shootings have become uniquely American, a problem that has grown consistently in the 23 years since the Columbine school attack shook us all. There were seven school shootings that year. Last year, there were 42.

The Aurora shooting happened when I was Governor, and it has stayed with me, as those things do. Friday, July 20, 2012, almost 10 years ago--it was a local premiere of ``The Dark Knight,'' and it was a packed house. Every seat had a person in it, a person with loved ones and ones who loved them who expected them to come home that night.

I arrived the next morning at the scene and walked into the command center that the FBI and the police were using. Aurora Police Chief Dan Oates showed us a video of the crime scene that had been taken by police shortly before, using a hand-held camera. The images haunt me still: popcorn everywhere mixed with bullet casings, random clothing, and blood. There was blood all over the seats and the floor.

Aurora Mayor Steve Hogan and I spent the afternoon visiting hospitals all over town. We visited almost every surviving wounded victim. In the days and weeks and months after that day, we had the gun debate in Colorado. Of course, we had the debate. What kind of a State would we be if we were too scared to go to a movie? The debate was difficult and hard to find agreement.

Guns are a tradition in the West, and Colorado is no exception. We became the first purple State to successfully pass gun safety laws. Coloradans, including the vast majority of gun owners, wanted to get something done. That led to universal background checks and a ban on high-capacity magazines; not everything--not everything--that we wanted but steps that made a real difference. We didn't want dangerous people to have guns.

One night while I was Governor, I came home tired and cranky in the midst of working on these gun laws. I made the mistake of complaining to my 11-year-old son Teddy. Teddy couldn't find it in him to understand why it was so hard. He asked me: Dad, why don't you just make the decision? It is easy. Get the facts, make a decision, check, next.

I started to explain, and he repeated: Get the facts, make a decision, check, next.

He said: Every day I go into school, and I have to learn something completely new that I didn't know existed the day before. If I don't get it completely right, the next day is misery because everything is based on the day before.

Teddy was right about one thing: The facts do matter. Part of our problem has been not having good data. Many assume passing new laws like background checks or magazine limits wouldn't work because crooks don't buy guns from legal dealers. The facts proved that they very much do. In 2013, 2,782 convicted felons tried to buy a gun in Colorado and were stopped. Even last year, nearly a decade later, 3,539 convicted felons were blocked from buying a gun. Laws can work to keep guns out of the hands of dangerous people.

The solutions are often straightforward. Nonpartisan facts and basic data help us cut through the noise of division. Guns can be a divisive issue, to say the least, but we don't accept that there is no room to get things done.

The Bipartisan Safer Communities Act proves that. For the first time in three decades, Congress is poised to pass gun legislation that will make Americans safer, and it is based on the very simple principle: We all agree we should keep guns out of the hands of dangerous people.

The bill will give States the resources to implement red flag laws to prevent people who are a danger to themselves or others from buying or having guns. It will finally close the boyfriend loophole that allows convicted domestic abusers to get firearms. It will strengthen background checks for 18- to 21-year-olds and take mental health into account and will crack down on strawman purchases that allow criminals to dodge background checks altogether.

Now, these are commonsense proposals, and I am heartened to see that they are going to pass with bipartisan support, but we all know there is more that needs to be done to reduce gun violence in America.

The question is, What is next?

For that, we can turn to Teddy's wisdom as an 11-year-old. What we need is a common set of facts that both sides can accept and can act on.

In 1970, Congress created the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration to respond to the public outcry over fatal vehicle crashes. By 2019, there were 60 percent fewer vehicle fatalities than in 1970. So in that period from 1970 to 2019, fatalities were reduced 60 percent, even though there are now 2\1/2\ times as many cars on the roads.

The Agency's strength is in its strictly nonpartisan research. It conducts a survey and a detailed analysis of vehicle fatalities across the country and forms an objective basis to evaluate vehicle safety standards and procedures--things like whether airbags and seatbelts can make a difference or what size and shape child restraints should take, essentially every safety feature in our cars today.

Why can't we have something similar for guns? We now have more gun deaths in America than we have deaths from car crashes, and yet for years, we could barely discuss possible solutions.

So while this Chamber is working together, let's make sure we measure the success of these bills that we are about to pass. Let's think about establishing a research body that will create an objective baseline of hard facts, not conventional wisdom. The path forward is as simple as my 11-year-old son knew it to be a decade ago: Get the facts, make a decision, check, next.

I yield the floor.

I ask for the yeas and nays.

I suggest the absence of a quorum.

Mr. President, I recently introduced the RECHARGE Act, S. 2241, with my friend and colleague, Senator Whitehouse, and we are very pleased that this bill, as amended, is included in the Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act as Section 40431.

Section 40431 amends section 111(d) of the Public Utility Regulatory Policies Act of 1978, 16 U.S.C. 2621(d) in order to establish a new requirement that all public utilities--investor-owned utilities, customer-owned cooperatives, and public power utilities--must consider establishing EV-specific rates for residential customers, EV drivers, and commercial customers, who operate public and fleet EV charging stations, to promote greater electrification in the transportation sector.

Lowering emissions in the transportation sector will hinge upon the electrification of our country's motorized vehicles. Large investments in electric vehicle, or EV, charging infrastructure of the type included in other sections of this legislation will provide a catalyst for mass EV adoption.

The successful adoption of EVs will depend not only upon modernizing America's grid and charging infrastructure, but also upon updating our electricity sector rates, so that the infrastructure funded by this act can operate in an economically sustainable manner for decades to come. The commercial rates present today were not designed with the unique electricity load profile of a growing EV fleet in mind.

Public EV charging stations, and particularly high-powered DC fast charging stations designed for highway corridors and for heavier-duty EVs like buses and trucks, face a distinct set of hurdles imposed by the current regulatory system and traditional, demand-based electricity rates.

Most prominent among barriers to deploying commercial EV charging are demand charges, which are electricity rates set by public utilities on their customers, including EV charging station owners, based on the maximum amount of power, kW, drawn for any given time interval, typically 15 minutes, during the billing period, multiplied by the relevant tariff demand charge.

Demand charges are designed to capture the marginal costs imposed on the grid by high-capacity, high-utilization infrastructure such as factories. However, when traditional demand charges are levied upon high-capacity, low-utilization infrastructure such as EV charging stations, they can place a disproportionate cost burden on the station owners.

The high-powered, fast-charging stations our Nation needs to serve the EV driving public, public and private fleet vehicle operators, and the trucking industry have different load profiles than most commercial entities, with periods of dormancy punctuated by spikes in activity. And unlike most commercial operations, their demand profile is driven by real-time customer activity. So it is difficult for these stations to optimize their load profiles.

The burden of demand charges varies by State and by region and can fail to accurately reflect the marginal costs imposed on the system by EV charging stations. For example, in the Colorado PUC Electric Vehicle Working Group Report published in 2019, the Colorado Public Utilities Commission found that demand charges result in the annual cost to operate a direct current fast charging, DCFC, station in one Colorado utility territory being 35 times higher than the cost in a neighboring service territory. The problem will only worsen for the still higher- demand and lower-utilization application of EV truck charging.

Demand charges, if not reformed, may also introduce new issues of inequity as America electrifies transportation. For example, homeowners are able to charge an electric vehicle on very affordable residential utility rates, which currently average $1.16 per gasoline gallon equivalent according to the Department of Energy. But those who live in multiunit housing and rent their abode, a population that is disproportionately low-income and minority, often cannot charge an EV at home. They will charge their EVs at public charging stations, and those public charging stations must pay much higher commercial utility rates, including commercial demand charges, which make up as much as 90 percent of public charging station's utility bills according to RMI.

In recent years, some States and utilities have recognized this inequity and taken steps to reform their utility rates, to reduce and reform commercial demand charges and to adopt rates designed for low- load or electric vehicle charging infrastructure. These utilities and regulators should be commended for their forward-leaning approach to a complicated issue. Utilities in Colorado have begun to do this, as have utilities in quite a few other States.

Section 40431 requires only those States and utilities which have not already done so to take up the issue of how demand charge rates affect EV charging in order to encourage new private-sector investment in EV charging stations.

These States and utilities are allowed 2 years to consider the establishment of new rates that A, promote affordable and equitable EV charging options; B, facilitate deployment of faster charging technology that improves the customer experience; C, accelerate third- party investment in EV charging infrastructure; and D, appropriately recover marginal costs.

Our intention is to ensure that alternatives to traditional, demand- based electricity rates are made available to EV charging station owners with appropriate oversight by State public utility commissions. To remove any doubt, section 40431 does not empower, encourage, or allow State public utility commissions to regulate the prices that third-party owned EV charging stations charge their customers for EV charging services. Those prices are set in a competitive marketplace that benefits consumers, and this legislation does not affect that marketplace.

Section 40431 should prompt forward-looking change at the State and utility level which appropriately reflects and accommodates the real differences in geographies, electricity markets, and business environments which exist between and within States and utility territories. It ensures that attention will be paid to this problem nationwide, but also that each State and utility can decide how to address the problem its own way. Ultimately, it should lead to new rate designs that enable the private sector to make economically sustainable investments in the high-powered charging stations that will help drivers, fleet operators, and truckers go electric, while more appropriately reflecting the actual marginal costs added to the grid by EV charging stations.

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