Floor Statements

Mr. President, I rise today to recognize and congratulate Linda Wilson, who recently retired from the U.S. Department of Education after over 33 years of service to the American people.

Linda earned a degree from University of Arizona in 1980 before embarking on a career dedicated to public service. Linda began her service as a congressional staffer for Representative Millicent Fenwick from her home State of New Jersey. She then served the people of Illinois as a legislative aide for Representative Bob Michel. In 1989, Linda began her service at the U.S. Department of Education, engaging with State and local officials and congressional offices in both the Intergovernmental Affairs Office and the Office of Legislation and Congressional Affairs, serving 9 of the 12 U.S. Secretaries of Education across political parties.

Linda has been an indispensable resource in my work on the Senate Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions Committee and the Senate Appropriations Committee, of which I am a member. She assisted me to solve innumerable problems and concerns important to my constituents. She provided information about various administrations' implementation of important Federal programs, such as the Alaska Native Educational Equity Program, the Native American Language program, the State-Tribal Education Partnership program, and Impact Aid, in addition to providing insight into the Department's budget priorities. In addition to her expertise on these issues, she always approached my questions and concerns with the utmost diligence and attention, providing the support necessary for me to craft legislation that meets the needs of my constituents and the American people.

I am grateful for Linda's professionalism and dedication. I thank her and congratulate her on her upcoming retirement and wish her well in the future.

Mr. President, I have had an opportunity to listen closely to my friend Senator Kaine, who asked the important question about voting rights, about when--when are we going to act? And that is a question that is something that we, each of us, need to ask ourselves is ``when.'' But I think we also need to keep in mind the ``how'' we act because I think how we act is important--because I think we recognize that when we act unilaterally as a party on issues that are of great weight and great political debate in this country, that solutions to these difficult problems come best when we are able to be working together.

I know that we are very fractured in this body, and it has made it hard, but hard does not mean it is impossible. It is only impossible if we give up, and we say it can't be done.

To my friend from Montana--and I appreciate the commonsense words of a man of the earth, a good farmer--amen to what you said about this body and our dysfunctionality. We are not the same Senate that I came to close to 20 years ago. I beat you by about 5 years, 6 years. We are not that same body. We are not operating in the manner with which I think we really were designed to be--that tempering body, that deliberative body. We are supposed to be the world's greatest deliberative body, and we don't demonstrate that on any single day out there.

But I question whether or not changing the rules actually works to change the attitude because that is what I think we have going on here. The rules have been in place for a long while. It is just how we have chosen to utilize them to our advantage and to the disadvantage of the other side, and that is unfortunate.

I don't know how--it is much easier, I think, to change the rules than it is to change attitude. It is much easier to try to do things alone than to try to build consensus. Just ask any one of the 10 of us who worked tirelessly last year to advance a bipartisan infrastructure bill. There were so many points along the way where any one of us or any half of the group could have said: We are done. This is just too hard. We are never going to make progress.

But just because it is hard doesn't mean it is impossible.

The Senator from Montana urged us all to read the measure before us, the Freedom to Vote: John R. Lewis Act, now pending before the Senate. It has a few new things that have been added in, but much of it is what we saw previously with the Freedom to Vote Act.

I voted against that motion for cloture when it came before us because I looked at that as being a bill that was overly prescriptive. In my view, it really did work toward nationalizing elections. I come from a State where things are just a little bit different there. You hear me talk about it all the time. Part of it is dictated by the geography. Part of it is dictated by an indigenous population where the language that is on the ballot doesn't align with what they speak at home and how we address matters like that.

What has happened with this measure in front of us is it has been combined with the John Lewis Voting Rights Advancement Act, which I have worked on in good faith with good colleagues whom I respect enormously, and I appreciate that we have been able to sit down. In fairness, much of the good work goes to our respective staffs who sat down and said: All right, can we do a little bit over here? What do we need to do over here? And we made some progress. We made enough progress that I was certainly willing to vote to advance debate here on the Senate floor on that measure.

I recognize that not everybody sees the value and the benefits of preclearance. I recognize what the courts did in Shelby, but I also heard, as Senator Kaine said, the courts saying: All right, legislative branch, do something about it now.

So I have been willing to be part of that discussion, not only this Congress but in previous Congresses, where I have joined with Chairman Leahy to try to advance that conversation. We haven't been as successful as I would have liked, but I certainly think we made good progress with the John Lewis voting rights bill.

We had a substitute. As I look through this bill, it looks like much of that substitute has been incorporated, including the Native American Voting Rights Act, which I worked hard on in the Indian Affairs Committee with Chairman Schatz to try to make that as robust as we possibly can. I have done all this because I do believe--I do believe-- that this Senate should pass a reauthorization of the Voting Rights Act, but I also believe that it must be a bipartisan effort.

It has been 16 years since we last addressed the Voting Rights Act. We need to do more than just talk about it; we need to ensure that the ballot is equal for all Americans and free from any discrimination. It is pretty simple for me in that regard. And wherever you have uncertainty, wherever you have ambiguity in the laws that govern our Federal elections, we need to clarify these. We need to clarify these so that there aren't these open questions or perhaps cynical interpretations that would go with them.

So how do you do it? Because this is all hard stuff. We acknowledge that. We acknowledge that. You really do have to do it coming together to try to hear the objections.

As I look at the measure that we have before us, I am not convinced that we are there yet. I am not convinced that we are there yet with the product that we have. I will absolutely agree that there are some good--I think there are some important provisions in the measure that we have in front of us. But what we are faced with today, or later today, is going to be a take-it-or-leave-it vote and then an effort to change how we approach hard issues.

Before I get into my comments in that vein, I do want to look at and highlight what I think are some of the positives that we have in place because--I think of a collaborative effort, but because we have shared observations, we have shared views on what some of these solutions may be, and I think that these can help us in anchoring a more broadly supported bill.

The measure features transparency provisions that require public notice of changes to State voting rules for Federal elections. I think we would all say: Yes, this is important. This is common sense.

It has changes to electoral district boundaries for elections at all levels, information about precincts and polling places for Federal elections. These are things that I think there is consensus here. We have stronger protections, necessary protections for voters during registration and voting as well as protections for election workers, polling places, election infrastructure.

The measure emphasizes the security of voting systems. I think we recognize, again, this is imperative. It has to be a priority. If we are going to thwart any malign actors out there, maintain confidence in election results, we have to have this.

Important to me, it extends the bilingual election requirements of the Voting Rights Act for 5 years. It also includes the Native American Voting Rights Act, again, that we worked on in the Indian Affairs Committee to address, unfortunately, very longstanding obstacles to voting for American Indians and Alaska Natives.

So there is good stuff, if you will, good measures that are contained within the bill in front of us.

But we also have some negatives. I think you have heard my colleagues detail many of them--not only negatives within the text but in terms of this partisan effort that we have in front of us.

We have a measure that is 753 pages long. We can move through that. We are not going to say just because it is big doesn't mean that we can't do it again. But it has come over to us through a shell vehicle. It is now directly on the legislative calendar. You have, again, this combination of two bills, plus a few add-ons.

But, unfortunately, neither of these--even with my support of the John Lewis Voting Rights Act--neither one of these had sufficient support to pass cloture. Since then, we haven't done anything. I shouldn't say ``anything'' because there were a few additional provisions that were included. I don't want to dismiss that. But not much has been done to build support cooperatively in this body for the two combined measures, other than to build pressure to, not change the legislation, not to modify it, not to gain compromise--but to change the rules to take it up.

This is a big bill, but one of the things that we don't have contained in it that many of us have been talking about now for a period of time is we don't address the Electoral Count Act, which I think most of us would look at this and say that this is something that needs to be revised.

We do not need a repeat of 2020 when, by all accounts, our last President, having lost the election, sought to change the results of that election by demanding that his Vice President exploit vague statutory language that was written decades ago. We need to address this.

The bill before us has some gaps, but at the same time that it has gaps, it is also pretty prescriptive in many areas. Some of the previous objections that I had made to the Freedom to Vote Act remain.

I share with my colleagues that I want us to protect voting rights. I think we should all want to protect voting rights. But my concern is that, as we look at this measure, is that it is going to make any kind of a change--any kind of a change that States would make to their election laws for any reason--extremely difficult to do without being directly challenged in court.

And maybe--maybe--that is the goal here. But what it does do, in my view, is deprives States of the flexibility to design and implement their own laws as the Constitution provides.

Again, I look to my State for some of those very specific examples where, if I

have a small remote village with perhaps 100 voters and I have a prescription in Federal law that says a polling place must be open and available for a period of a week to 10 days with 2 weekends--if you are out in a village and you are living a sustenance lifestyle, Saturday or Sunday don't mean anything to you. It is winter. When are the animals moving? When are the fish moving?

Let's not put limits on our States so that they can't enhance opportunities for all voters.

So federalization is not the right answer here, and, again, whether we are talking voting rights or other issues, typically in my State a one-size-fits-all approach is not the right effort. So we have got to find an appropriate balance that doesn't result in a takeover of States' ability to run their own elections, and how we are able to achieve that balance is important.

So as I talk about my views on the legislation that we have before us, I am very, very well aware that the results of this effort to push voting rights was, unfortunately, determined before we began this debate. We are going to come to a vote on a motion to invoke cloture. We know what is going to happen. It is going to fail due to a lack of sufficient support. And then we are going to face some kind of a vote to change the Senate's rules and weaken the legislative filibuster, which we also understand will fail. And I guess the point here is to get folks on record, and that will happen.

But what have we accomplished? What have we accomplished for the people that we serve? Instead of allowing us as a body to say, ``OK, what are we going to do to address this,'' we have brought cross-party relationships to yet another low--perhaps, an unprecedented low.

I was part of a very troubling conversation last evening, and it was shared that, you know, depending on which side you are on in this body today on this issue, you are either a racist or a hypocrite. Really? Really? Is that where we are? I find that so, so hard and so troubling, because when it becomes that deep and that divided where we cannot have the debate that my friend from Montana says we need--and I agree we need--but if we are so, so divided, this is not right. This is not good for the health of the body.

But what has happened here is we have devolved into a debate over voting rights versus voting rules, and you have got part of the country that thinks this bill is about protecting the right to vote. Another part believes that this bill will do nothing but undermine it. And so we are both sitting in a situation, I think, where both sides are now set to cast doubt on elections if they don't win. And that takes us to a very troubling place, because when people doubt whether their vote matters, when they doubt whether that individual who is sitting in the White House was freely and fairly elected, they will doubt all decisions. They will doubt what we do here, and they will doubt their own democracy. And that is troubling for our Nation.

So I refuse to believe that this is the best that we can do right now. As I said, this is hard, but hard is not impossible. I think that we can, if we are operating in good faith, as there are so many in this body who do that on a daily basis--it doesn't get noted because, quite honestly, it is far more interesting to write about the fur that flies around here, rather than us actually making things happen together.

But the effort to change our rules, to pass legislation on a party- line basis is not going to help us here. It is not going to help us here. I think we need to do everything that we possibly can to avoid further polarizing voting rights and election reforms.

It may be too late. I don't know. It may be just too late, but I think we have to try. I think that we have to try. And I think that there is an effort to try to do just that. There is a good handful of people in this body on both sides of the aisle who have been talking this, through kind of following the model of what we did with the bipartisan infrastructure group.

You know, when we first started that effort, nobody believed that we would be successful with that. Probably, most listening to the debate that is going on now and will go on later all throughout the afternoon don't believe that we can do anything. But let's prove them wrong. Let's prove them wrong. Let's sit down with those who have made that commitment--we have heard it here on the floor--made that commitment to work through some of these issues, some of these areas of common ground that I think we can build a base from, and work to build a foundation that will be enduring for this country when it comes to election reform and voting rights, because I fear greatly that if we are to advance measures that are solely, strictly party line--and that is what eliminating the legislative filibuster will allow us to do--we will take the easy way out.

Senator Tester suggested that maybe we are getting a little legislatively lazy around here. We will get even lazier, because we don't have to do the hard work of trying to find consensus. Elections and voting rights are so important. We understand that. Let's commit to resolving the issues that divide us, that will not only help bring this Congress closer together, but that just possibly, just hopefully--and maybe I, too, am naive, Senator Kaine--but that just possibly can help heal this country, because that is what we need right now.

I yield the floor.

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

Mr. President, there has been a lot of discussion on the floor, certainly today and the days leading up to this, as we talk about the importance of protecting minority rights here in the Senate and the consequences of weakening the legislative filibuster to a 50- vote, majority-serving threshold. There is a lot to say, and there has been a lot said already.

I was here listening to the comments from my friend from Utah and have had an opportunity to hear much of what has been said throughout the course of the day. But I am here perhaps as the sole Senate Republican who will vote to begin debate on the John Lewis Voting Rights Advancement Act because I happen to believe that it is important that we focus on improving our election laws, but I also believe very, very strongly that the way to do that is through the regular order process. It might sound kind of boring, but that is actually how you get the good work, the enduring legislation done.

I am also here, I guess, as a senior Member of the Chamber now. I have been around for almost 20 years. I have spent time in both the majority and the minority. But I am also here because I care--I really care--about legislating. I understand what it takes to

work across the aisle to bring good policy into law.

One of the things that I can tell you from firsthand experience is, it is hard. It is hard work. It is hard work to bring people together, particularly on some of these challenging and difficult issues that we have.

When the problems are hard, that means usually the solutions are equally hard. But that is our job as legislators--to bring sides together, to find that common ground.

That is what legislating is all about. And so with all of that in mind, I tell you I believe that weakening the current 60-vote threshold would be a major mistake, a damaging mistake, especially in light of the already deep division that we have within our country today and within the divisions that we have represented in this body today.

So the nuclear option is reportedly coming our way to change the threshold for cloture on legislation--on legislation to 50 votes and to do this with just 50 votes. But I would suggest to you that this will do nothing to cure what actually ails the Senate, and, therefore, we should reject it.

I mentioned that the job that we have as legislators is to come together to knit the good ideas from one side to the other, to really build that consensus that will allow for enduring policy and enduring laws. Gutting the filibuster is not going to do anything to bring both sides together. It will not help bring the parties together. It will, unfortunately, just serve to push them further apart, split us further apart. It would not lead to better or consensus legislation.

It effectively allows the majority to do what it wants to do, when it wants to do it, how it wants to do it without the minority. It effectively allows you to ignore the views from the minority. This rule change would not restore us as the world's greatest deliberative body.

I know that there are those who would suggest that we are far, far from that, but I would suggest that if we do this, it really obliterates that reputation forever.

There has been a lot of talk about the differences between the House and the Senate. We are different. We were designed different. The Framers designed the Senate as an institution where the rights of individual Senators as well as minority groups of Senators are protected. They are highly protected. That is what our rules reflect.

And that is why--why we can hold forth, why an individual--one person--can register objections, why we can place holds and offer motions and filibuster legislation when we deem it necessary. And I know we don't like it when it is being used against us--we don't-- because it slows things down. It is frustrating. But it is part of what has been built into our institution.

And some may say, well, it is obviously not working, it is obviously not functioning because I can't get my priority through. Perhaps we need to focus on how we are bringing people together to advance that priority.

This body, the Senate, was never meant to be the House of Representatives. Senator Robert Byrd, who served both as the majority and the minority leader--so I think he had pretty good perspective on things--he also reminded us about the saucer and the role that the House plays--excuse me, that the Senate plays.

The Senate is the proverbial saucer intended to cool the cup of coffee from the House. Nobody likes it, particularly the guys in the House. They don't like it when they say: Oh, you are so slow over here. But we were meant to be deliberative.

The more we become like the House, the less relevant, in my view, we are as an institution and the further we will have strayed from that balance, that careful balance that the Constitution envisions for our branch of government.

So we have been here before. As I was walking over, I was thinking this is like deja vu all over again. How many times have we had these battles over the filibuster? Should we exercise the nuclear option? Should we pull this trigger?

Well, back in 2017, I signed a letter, along with 60 other Members of this Chamber. There were 28 Republicans, 32 Democrats, 1 Independent. We came together as a pretty representative group of lawmakers, and we urged both Republican and Democratic leaders to preserve the 60-vote threshold for legislation--for legislation--because we knew where we had come from. The Republicans had used the nuclear option to eliminate the filibuster for Supreme Court nominees after the Democrats used it in 2013 for eliminating the filibuster for confirmation of the lower court and executive branch.

So it is kind of one of these where they did it, so it is OK for us to do it. Far be it for me to suggest that sometimes the analogies are like what we have when we have got the kids in the back of the car and somebody says: Well, he started it. And the other one says: No, well, then I get to do it. And my response is: Knock it off both of you.

Maybe we just need to have a detente here on whether or not we blow up the filibuster. Maybe we need to just step back from this and realize what it means to all of us because those of us who are in the minority today will one day be in the majority, and those who are in the majority today will one day be in the minority.

And so making sure that there is a balance, that it works, that minority rights are respected--this is why we are here today. I know that there are several Senators who signed that letter back in 2017 who are now seeing their words repeated against them. That has got to feel pretty uncomfortable. I don't want to be one of those who feels like I have to eat my words; that what was good for me when I was in the minority is no longer good for me when I am in the majority or vice versa. It has to work both ways.

So when as Republicans in the majority we were urged mightily by former President Trump to get rid of the filibuster, I was one of those who said: No. No. We should not do that. And that is why my advice today to the majority is be careful, be careful what you wish for because you may look at this and say this may help advance the immediate legislative agenda--what they are talking about now is voting rights. You may be able to advance the immediate legislative agenda there, but the long-term effects might look pretty different.

And I think we have seen a little bit of a suggestion of what that could look like when you don't have the protections in order for the minority. So I think it is good for us to be having this open discussion. I think it is important that we be thinking about the practical effects of weakening the filibuster.

What will happen if it no longer protects the minority and instead only serves to benefit the majority? A 50-vote threshold would allow the majority to push through, to rush through legislation without consideration of the minority views. And keep in mind that we may be in the minority now, a 50-50 minority--pretty skinny minority--but a minority that is elected with support from major portions of the country.

Removing the filibuster would reduce the need for the parties to work together to reach the broad consensus on policy, again, that can endure across elections. And I think that is important for us to just stop and take account of because when you don't have legislation that is enduring, when you move legislation that is wholly partisan, what happens when the tables are turned? The new majority spends all of its time trying to undo what the old majority got passed on a wholly partisan basis.

Now we are not giving certainty to the Nation. We are not helping the economy move along. It is a whipsaw. It is policy whiplash. Who is going to be investing in policies if they just think that what was just passed into law is going to be undone in the next Congress?

We owe it to our constituents, we owe it to the country to give them some certainty with policy, and that comes about when you are working to build consensus.

Eliminating the filibuster would make primary elections into fealty tests, even more, even more than they already are, as each party sets its sights on candidates who are probably unlikely to act independently once in office. I mean, why bother? But, again, it would whipsaw-- whipsaw--the country on policy. And as I think about the state of our economy right now, where we need to be investing in--we have got a great infrastructure bill that we are

all poised to try to advance, lots of good things coming for that--we don't want to be undermining investment in our ability to address major challenges if we are looking at a situation where, again, the new majority coming in, they just work to reverse the work of their predecessors.

These aren't good outcomes for a divided nation, and they only take us further from what should be our goal. We have got to be focused. We have got to be focused on finding more ways to work together. And we have got good examples. We had an energy bill that we advanced in 2020, a good bill. We had been working on that for a long time, but it was a very bipartisan product.

I mentioned our bipartisan infrastructure bill. We have the CARES Act as another example. So many measures have shown us that this is absolutely possible.

As part of that, when we consider changing the rules, we need to focus on incentivizing bipartisanship, pushing Members to reach across the aisle, not making it less of a priority. Let's think about how we do that in a positive sense, how we are pushing one another to work to build things rather than dividing one another and just throwing things at one another.

I will vote against any motion to weaken the filibuster or create carve-outs within it. Legislation and legislating in and of itself, as I mentioned at the outset, it is not supposed to be easy. We don't have that red ``easy'' button on our desk here. It is deliberately hard.

But as I learned from somebody a couple weeks ago, I don't want to come to talk about the problems without offering up some solutions at the same time. I do have some suggestions for how we could perhaps move forward on voting rights legislation, potential changes to our rules. So for voting rights, the Senate doesn't need to change its rules here; the majority needs to change its approach.

You have me--basically me alone at this point--willing to debate one of the measures that was written. It was written on a partisan basis, but I did my homework. I looked at it. I weighed in. I worked with colleagues on the other side of the aisle and made some good, solid suggestions. I think we have had some good dialogue there. I think it is important. I want to reach a compromise on it. I think that that would be important, but I have acknowledged that there needs to be some changes that would need to be made to that, and I have worked to suggest it.

But what that does for right here right now is it makes it abundantly clear that we don't have agreement right now on voting rights legislation, so it is no wonder that the legislation is being blocked.

Partisan bills don't suddenly become bipartisan just because they have hit the floor. So instead of looking for ways around consensus, we have got to go back; we have got to actually start building it.

So let's take this back. Let's take it to the committee process. Let's look for areas of agreement, like some suggestion has been out in the past couple weeks here, reforming the Electoral Count Act. I don't know how far that can take us, but when something like this is put on the table, let's take a look at this.

Let's work through some of these proposals rather than just summarily dismissing it out of hand. Let's take that time, put in the effort, build a product that can pass and hopefully by more than just the smallest of margins. We did that before with Voting Rights Act historically. We have demonstrated that it can be done.

As far as rule changes, I agree we should be having the debate. But how we do the debate, I think, is also important. We want to have a thoughtful discussion. Both sides need to be involved. Any Member who wants to participate should be doing so.

But these discussions need to focus on the problem, and the problem is that there is not enough consensus building across parties. That is what we need to be focusing on, rather than focusing on eliminating the need for it altogether.

So instead of targeting the filibuster, one of the things that I have suggested to several folks is the development of a consensus calendar. Now, I am not saying it is going to solve everything, but if you have strong, bipartisan bills that have made it through the process, they have demonstrated that good, strong show of support, there ought to be a way that we can move things through on an expedited process, an expedited consideration.

There has also been a lot of talk about eliminating the filibuster on the motion to proceed.

So these are areas where, again, I think you have had thoughtful people willing to sit down and say: Can we reform our processes around here? Can we be more efficient? Can we still be that cooling saucer, that deliberative body, but be more efficient?

I would argue that no rules changes should take effect this year. Whatever we can agree to, let's set the effective date of January of 2023. Make these decisions based on what any majority in any year should have to govern.

We need to make sure that if we are changing the rules, we do it for the right reason. We do it because it is the right thing to do for the Senate, no matter who is in charge. And I think that is just a matter of fairness there.

We all know that filibusters can be so very, very frustrating, and those in the majority feel it directly. I know of which I speak. I have been there. It can be agonizing. It is like you are up against a brick wall.

As I mentioned, when we were advancing my energy bill several years back, I can't tell you how many times I felt like I had the rug pulled out from underneath us. But it was a good legislative product, and so we didn't give up. We kept working at it. And, in fairness, I think we actually worked to improve the legislation.

As difficult as it might have been, it was through that process that we were able to come to some terms on HFCs, probably as significant an effort that we have made when it comes to reducing emissions, and that came about as a result of that very deliberative process that you wanted to pull your hair out over, but it actually worked to advance that legislation.

But I think what happens is this forces us, as Members, to work together and to remember we can overcome these. And in these partisan times, they prevent the majority from simply running over the minority, which only serves to worsen our political divide.

The 60-vote threshold for legislation requires consensus to be part of the legislative strategy. Changing it to 50 votes to serve the narrowest possible majority will lose that essential benefit; it will have lasting consequences for the Senate and for the people that we serve.

So I absolutely think that we can do better than this, better approaches for both voting rights legislation and rules changes. They are available to us. We just have to work. Neither side is going to get everything that it wants out of them, but I absolutely believe that we will be better served, our country will be better served if we have a bipartisan path working together.

With that, I yield the floor.

Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that Maya Becker, a fellow with my staff, be granted floor privileges for the remainder of this Congress.

Mr. President, as my friend from Connecticut has pointed out, there are----

Oh, my goodness, my soul.

Mr. President, may I strike that erroneous introduction?

I thank my dear friend from Delaware--always Delaware--but truly a friend; a friend on many different issues, but a man whom I have come to know is motivated not by the politics of what goes on in this body but by the passion and his interest in doing good, doing good policy and doing good things for people.

And what we are speaking to today, recognizing the significant passage of the ACT for ALS Act that happened last evening unanimously, as he has pointed out, that this is not only good for the body, if you will, to say we were able to move good legislation forward, good policy legislation forward, but this is a gift. This is a gift of hope for those who live with ALS, for those families who are part of that journey of those who live with ALS.

ALS, as Senator Coons has noted, is an awful, awful disease. Some would suggest, and I certainly would, that it is probably the worst disease to be afflicted with, when your body literally closes in on you while your mind is still active and vibrant.

I have a very personal connection to ALS. I think many of us have very personal connections to ALS. I wish that we didn't have these personal connections to this hideous disease, but we do, and that connection allows us to learn and understand a little bit more about it.

And I think the most heartbreaking thing that I realized, when my family member was diagnosed with ALS, my cousin's husband, was that there was no treatment. There was no hope. There was no hope.

I am not suggesting that the ACT for ALS is the end-all be-all. I wish that we could stand here and say that. It is not, but what it is, is a glimmer of hope.

I want to read just a couple sentences from an email that I received last evening when I was able to share this good news that this bill was passing unanimously through this body, and my cousin Jen says:

The passage of this bill will bring real, tangible hope to

people living with ALS and those to be diagnosed. In this ALS

world, right now, there are no effective treatments. All we

have is hope. This bill changes everything. It will bring

real, tangible hope and treatments to people living with ALS.

We have never had that in this disease.

We haven't found the cure, we haven't found the treatment, but what we are providing today is that first step forward, a tangible step forward to the hope, because every day--every day--those who are living with ALS and their loved ones, who live through this disease with them, have to hope and pray every single day that today is going to be the day. Today is going to be the day that we can slow this, that we can halt this.

There are some extraordinary heroes that have been involved with this fight over the years. They are everyday people. They got into it not because they were paid lobbyists. Most of them got into it because they had lived through ALS. They had lost a loved one to this disease, and rather than to give up and give in and be too tired to carry on, they said: I am going to commit so that no other families have to feel this helplessness.

And so you have got some amazing people. You have got a group out there, the I AM ALS team--extraordinary, extraordinary advocates.

Senator Coons has mentioned Brian Wallach and Dan Tate. The two of them lead I AM ALS. You have got Megan Miller, Deb Paust, Sandy Morris, Christa Thompson, Nicole Cimbura, Becky Mourey, Michael Lecker, Shelly Hoover, Michelle Lorenz, Mayuri and Mayank Saxena--so many, so many more who were part of that effort.

The I AM ALS organization, working with the ALS Association, working with the Muscular Dystrophy Association and so many others were so critical in moving this forward. Think about what happened.

This was introduced over here in the Senate. We looked this up. It was May 25. May 25. And to get over 60 cosponsors in the U.S. Senate on any kind of a measure--I wish that the Senator from Delaware and I could say that we single-handedly got every single one of those cosponsors, but it was these advocates. It was these grassroots individuals. It was everybody that I just named--Dan and Megan and Jenny and Deb and Sandy, who made these calls, who were relentless.

And when the politics did intervene, they were unleashed and passionate in their advocacy. And I think this is a good lesson to us, that when those who are intimately and passionately involved, that you can make a difference, you can move legislation. You can move mountains.

The last thing I want to say before I turn back to my colleague here is that there are a lot of people who are not part of an organization but who have just felt compelled to speak up.

We heard voices from around my State: Marcel from Sitka; Douglas from Anchorage; a gentleman by the name of Mike, also from Anchorage. The calls, the letters, the emails that we got--I know all of our colleagues received the same as well.

So this, again, was an effort that was so personal to so many, but the leadership that I think we saw come together with Brian Wallach, his wife Sandra--

they were the founders there of I AM ALS.

Brian was only 37 years old when he was diagnosed with ALS--37--so super young. And he was told 6 months: You have got 6 months to live.

He is a father to two little girls, and he just said: Got to keep fighting. We have got to keep fighting for a cure--a cure that will allow him to raise his daughters with his wife.

And I think it is fair to say that, 4 years later now, Brian is just as determined, just as tireless an advocate for ALS and the ALS community.

So, again, I think about people like Brian and Dan, my cousin Jenny, who lost Pat to this awful disease in 2013. He lived with ALS for 8 years. Our family lived with ALS for those 8 years.

And so the advocacy continues because of the passion for so many who have lived through a life that is almost difficult for us to imagine.

And as they have come out of losing a loved one to a disease like this, to know that they are willing to carry that flag, that they are willing to commit their time, their resources, and everything that they have so that others don't go through this, we honor them. We honor that commitment.

I am so pleased to be able to work with my partner on this and to know that this was a good success, but we are going to need to be doing more, and I will be doing it with him.

I yield to my friend from Delaware.

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

Mr. President, I think here in the Senate, so many of us have the privilege to occasionally host military fellows, congressional military fellows, and I would like to take just a minute here to recognize the great work of a former member of my staff, Air Force Lt. Col. Randi Ludington. She spent the last year working in my personal office as part of the U.S. Air Force congressional fellowship program. She just concluded that fellowship program just last week and has moved on to her next assignment, but I think it is important to be able to publicly express my appreciation for the work she did over the last year and really for her service to the Nation overall.

For 17 years now, Randi has served in the U.S. Air Force. She was first an enlisted financial technician before she earned her commission and worked her way up to the rank of lieutenant colonel. She had a level of exposure before coming to my office certainly. These experiences of being in different places around the world, leading airmen, advising commanders, really proved invaluable when she came to provide her expertise in my office.

Not only has she spearheaded efforts legislatively and prepped me for meetings and hearings, she really became a key member of our team, working with Alaskans, working with counterparts back here, but really serving them just as she would serve her own troops.

When we were faced with a very chaotic withdrawal from Afghanistan, Randi was one of those who was really burning the midnight oil. She was putting in long days and long nights, answering calls from constituents and veterans who were seeking help. She was doing just that. She was there around the clock, sometimes just listening, offering words of support; other times just really helping to synchronize the efforts between people on the ground in Kabul, lining them up with Departments and Agencies here in Washington, doing everything she could to try to help facilitate the needs of so many who were so desperate to get out.

In the end, Randi was honored by an Alaska Native Corporation, the Goldbelt Corporation. They had been engaged in an airlift, a significant airlift, and she was recognized by Goldbelt for her dedicated efforts assisting them throughout that whole ordeal. So it was nice to know that she had received not only the recognition and thanks from those here, fellows back in Alaska, but also the broader international recognition.

So I take this moment to just express my thanks to Randi. It was a pleasure having her in my office. She has a fabulous family. It was a great pleasure to be able to get to meet her husband Brad, an Air Force veteran himself. They have three super-great little kids: Charlee, Ryan, and Graham.

I wish Randi and her family nothing but the best as she moves forward with her military career.

I feel very fortunate that we get some of our Nation's best, who are able

to take kind of a little bit of a detour through their professional trajectory in the military to come here, work with us, share their level of expertise, and also educate themselves on the internal process we have here.

I was very fortunate to have her as part of my team. I think we should all be proud to know that it is leaders like her who comprise our military.

So, again, thank you, Randi, for what you have done for our country and what you have done to help Alaska.

Mr. President, I yield the floor.

I suggest the absence of a quorum.

Mr. President, I am pleased to be on the floor today with my colleagues, both the Senator from Iowa behind me and the Senator from California, because I want to thank them publicly for their leadership as they work to address these issues of domestic violence. They have been leaders in this arena for years, and I appreciate that.

I am pleased to have worked with them on this framework that has been discussed by both Senators and to acknowledge the work of Senator Durbin as part of this initiative as well.

I think as both of them have spoken, it is recognized that this is a matter of urgency. This is a matter for all of us, on a bipartisan basis. Domestic violence, unfortunately, knows no political bounds, and our response to those who are truly among the most vulnerable of us-- that response--should also be bipartisan.

So I want to commend Senator Ernst, Senator Feinstein, Senator Durbin for their work in really coming to find common ground on this very important matter. It has been years----

Please.

Well, thank you.

Again, it takes a lot of people, and the years that Senator Ernst has been working this initiative on this side of the aisle is something that, again, we want to build on, and we need to build on it together.

It has been years in the making. The last time we had a VAWA reauthorization was VAWA 2013, and so we are high past time to be addressing this very significant matter.

No compromise is perfect. I think everyone recognizes that. But what has been developed through this framework is a proposal that will really help to prevent violence, to support our survivors, and to hold perpetrators to account.

The effort to be here where we are today on the floor, speaking to this, is one thing, but we all want to get to that next step, which is filing the legislation so we can get it moving through this process, and I look forward to doing that in the new year.

I can tell you, as a Senator from Alaska, this is an extraordinarily pressing issue in my State. As the vice chairman of the Indian Affairs Committee, I can affirm that this is a very real need across Native lands, and it is the disproportionate victimization of Native people that I want to focus my comments on today.

By now, I would hope that every Senator understands the crisis of missing and murdered indigenous women and girls. We refer to this as MMIW. That is why we passed Savanna's Act and the Not Invisible Act.

I want to acknowledge my colleague, who has been working this issue with us for so long, Senator Cortez Masto.

I think we recognize that we have made good progress there, but to fully address the root causes of this crisis--the high rates of domestic violence, sexual assault, and trafficking, the violent crime in Native communities--we have an awful lot more to do.

The rates of violence experienced by Alaska Natives are particularly horrific, and the statistics should shock us all. I repeat them a lot, and they still shock me. According to a report prepared by the Indian Law and Order Commission, Alaska Native women are overrepresented by nearly 250 percent among female domestic violence victims around our country.

Putting it in context here, a couple years ago, there was an investigation that was conducted by Anchorage Daily News that determined that one in three Native communities in rural Alaska has no local law enforcement that is physically present, leaving Native women and children at greater risk of violence. Think about what that means for just a minute, to live in a community where there is no one to turn to, no law enforcement presence to turn to. Maybe you are able to share your story with a local health aide there, but that is about as far as you can go.

Beyond that, you have many Alaskan Tribes that lack the tools they need to address violence in their communities.

A couple years ago, the Attorney General at the time, William Barr, was invited to the State and came up, and we said: We need to get you out to one of these remote villages.

He saw firsthand, and he was so dramatically impacted after his just multiple hours on the ground there, he declared a law enforcement emergency--a law enforcement emergency--after hearing directly from those who had suffered due to lack of public safety. He said at the time that it was harder for him to imagine a more vulnerable population than the women and children he saw in rural Alaska. He took that back to DC with him and acted on it. His declaration was based on the fact that Alaska has the highest per capita crime rate in this country, and, of course, we face very unique geographic and jurisdictional landscapes.

Then comes COVID-19, and you have a pandemic where you have to be in your social bubbles, you have to be inside, and you have to be where it is safe to be away from the virus, but that safe place was not a safe place for far too many people.

Last summer, rural Alaska saw five domestic violence homicides in 10 days. Again, these are small, rural communities--five homicides in a matter of 10 days; domestic violence. In the 5 weeks after the State of Alaska declared a public health disaster due to the coronavirus pandemic, calls to our domestic violence shelter increased by 52 percent.

You cannot let this go unaddressed. We have an opportunity here in this Congress to build on our previous work with VAWA 2013, where we have taken steps to resolve jurisdictional complexity when it imperils the safety of people. The jurisdiction issues should not deny justice. It just should not.

In the 2013 reauthorization of VAWA, Congress recognized the inherent authority of Tribes to prosecute and punish certain domestic violence crimes committed by non-Indians against Indian people.

At the time, that was described as unprecedented, and some Members of Congress and the media as well pushed a narrative that Tribal governments somehow were not going to be fair, that they would not safeguard the rights of non-Indian defendants. We knew that was going to be far from the truth, and nearly 8 years later, despite all of the horror stories that were predicted, the record shows that non-Indian defendants experienced a Tribal justice system that treats them fairly and in some ways with more attention than State or Federal systems.

So I think now what we need to focus on, folks, we need to focus on the real horror story, and that horror story is the acts of violence being perpetrated against Native women and children. So I have set out to do that through the Tribal title that will be included in this larger VAWA reauthorization once it is introduced.

Chairman Schatz, on the Indian Affairs Committee, and I have worked on this together. We posted our text to the committee website last week. Our title closes loopholes and builds upon the success of the 2013 reauthorization, and we include specific solutions to protect Alaska Native people.

The Tribal title will further restore and improve the implementation of the special Tribal criminal jurisdiction over non-Indians who commit violent crimes in Native communities, and it will do so by allowing Tribes that exercise this special jurisdiction to charge defendants with crimes that are adjacent to domestic violence, such as violence against children or assault on law enforcement.

I think it is important to know that children were involved in 58 percent of all incidents of domestic violence in these VAWA 2013 cases. This is according to a report by the Federal Government a couple years ago, in 2019. By empowering Tribal courts this way, we can help combat this major public safety issue.

American Indians and Alaska Natives are the victims of rape, sexual assault, and domestic violence in numbers far out of proportion to the level these crimes are committed outside of Native communities. This is a moral imperative. It is a wrong that we must make right, and we also need to do it in a way that recognizes the unique situation we have in the State of Alaska.

You are going to hear later discussion about ANCSA. Two days from now is the 50th anniversary of the Alaska Native Claims Settlement Act. ANCSA created a new approach to Tribal land tenure that is very, very different from the lower 48 reservation system. While Alaska is home to almost 40 percent of the Tribes in the country, we have only one Indian reservation in the State.

After the Supreme Court decision in the Venetie case in which the Court held that ANCSA lands are not ``Indian Country,'' it became the State's duty, largely alone, to provide for public safety and justice for Alaska Natives.

The Tribal title that we have developed includes an Alaska solution to a complex jurisdictional situation. It includes an Alaska pilot program which builds on previous legislation that I have introduced and will empower a limited number of Alaskan Tribes to exercise special criminal jurisdiction over certain crimes that occur in villages in Alaska.

Similar to how the pilot rolled out for the lower 48 Tribes, Alaskan Tribes will have to meet certain criteria, including having a Tribal justice system that can adequately and appropriately safeguard the rights of defendants.

In addition to the provisions essential to bringing justice and safety to Alaska Native people, our critical legislation will ensure that VAWA's tools and resources will better serve the needs of survivors of domestic violence, dating violence, sexual assault, and stalking.

I am proud to have authored text that will help to address this ongoing epidemic that Alaska faces with violence, which has left long- lasting trauma for too many of our women, our children, and our families. Congressman Young on the House side has introduced similar language to help in this. We simply cannot allow survivors and the needs of the most vulnerable to go unmet.

Very quickly, I want to just outline a couple different provisions that are contained in this bipartisan framework that recognize some of the matters we have been working on in Alaska.

There is a provision named in memory of an Alaskan, Breanna Moore. Bree's Law is what we call it. In 2014, Cindy and Butch Moore experienced a tragedy that no parents should ever have to experience. They received a call that their 20-year-old daughter had been shot by her boyfriend in Anchorage. In the wake of that devastation,

they turned their energy to and they put their hearts and their passion into working around the State and now at the Federal level to ensure that education is provided to teens to prevent future tragedies. So Bree's Law drives education initiatives to enable youth, parents, and advocates to recognize, prevent, and mitigate teen dating violence.

Another provision addresses support services for victims. We know it is difficult to access the necessary medical forensic services in Alaska. These allow for evidence collection and aid in a survivor's journey to justice.

While we have very troubling statistics on sexual assault and domestic violence, Alaskans have also been on the frontlines of innovation, offering solutions. The Alaska Comprehensive Training Forensic Academy, which is a pilot program run through the University of Alaska Anchorage, is making a difference in the lives of Alaskans who have experienced interpersonal violence.

Built on the belief that all victims of violence deserve evaluation and care from forensically trained healthcare providers, I have been able to secure some provisions in our VAWA proposal that will allow other universities and States to model the successful program and expand access to trauma-informed care.

There is clearly a public safety crisis that we are dealing with in rural Alaska and across Indian Country, but we have an opportunity in this Congress to work together across the aisle to find solutions and to restore justice. I look forward to building strong, bipartisan support for VAWA reauthorization that will make a positive difference in the safety of Native communities and for victims of domestic violence and entire communities in Alaska and, of course, across the country.

We must let our women, children, and families who have been affected by devastating violence know that you are heard and that we stand with you.

I yield the floor.

Madam President, I have come to this floor to speak on a matter that is very local to Alaska, very important to Alaska. But before I begin my comments, I want to acknowledge a few of the comments of my friend from Minnesota.

Clearly, we share some of the same passions about the protections of our democracy, and I would absolutely agree that key and most fundamental is that right to vote. And I have clearly expressed that we, as lawmakers, need to be there to ensure that our elections are free, fair, and accessible to all, that barriers to voting need to be addressed.

She has noted that I have joined with others to try to address what I believe are some of those impediments to voting through a measure that has been proposed to the John Lewis Voting Rights Act. It is not perfect by any stretch of the imagination, in my view, but I do think that it is something that is worthy of the debate. I was going to call it grand debate on the floor, but as she appropriately points out, there is not a lot of grand debate that goes on. More often than not, it is individuals who are speaking to those who are taking the time out of their day to tune in to C-SPAN.

But these are important discussions for us to have. But I also recognize that enduring legislation comes about not because one party is able to make that happen on their own. Enduring legislation, whether it is the Civil Rights Act or whether it was the Voting Rights Act--the enduring legislation that stays with us for generations and decades--is that that is achieved when we have come together.

We will never--it is very, very difficult to get entire consent of the body. But when we can achieve that bipartisan support and a recognition that this is good for both parties, good for all areas of America, this is when we do our best, when we come together to address these.

And I hear the clear frustration that she has expressed, but I also recognize that how we do what we do is important. And if we peel away the last vestiges of protection for minority rights in the Senate, the Senate becomes a smaller version of the House, where you are able to effectively move things through just by the raw numbers.

And so these are hard, these are challenging, these are worthy of our further and additional efforts. But I would remind us that as we are seeking to make these generational differences, as we are seeking to provide for these enduring protections for democracy, that how we get there is also a matter of importance to this body.

(The remarks of Ms. Murkowski pertaining to the submission of S. Res. 482 are printed in today's Record under ``Submitted Resolutions.'')

I yield the floor.

Madam President, I mentioned that I came to the floor to speak about a significant matter for Alaska. It is a significant milestone for my State. Just 2 days from now, on December 18, we will mark the 50th anniversary of the Alaska Native Claims Settlement Act being signed into law by President Nixon back in 1971.

For those who are not familiar with Alaska's history, ANCSA, as we call it, is one of the foundational laws for my State. It settled aboriginal land names. It chartered hundreds of Alaska Native corporations to own lands and to empower their Alaska Native shareholders.

Now, this structure is very unique. I think most of us think about a corporation and you think about an IBM or a General Electric, but an Alaska Native corporation and the shareholders who are part of them are very, very different from the corporate structure that most know.

This approach that was arrived at with the Alaska Native Claims Settlement Act was new. It was a clear, clear departure from the reservation model in the lower 48. It ushered in a new level of economic self-determination through private land ownership.

Alaska Native leaders took a look at the reservation system that was throughout other parts of America, and in most of them--not all, but most of them--decided on another path, saying: That is not the route that we would take.

They wanted to manage their lands, manage their resources on their own terms, and to have greater economic prosperity and independence.

So in Alaska, we have 229 Tribes in the State, and, as someone who comes from a State where you do have many Tribes, I think it always gets people's attention when I say we have about 40 percent of the Tribes in the Nation that are located in Alaska.

ANCSA established more than 200 village corporations along with regional and urban corporations. And under this settlement, Congress transferred some 44 million acres of land in Alaska to the private ownership of these newly created corporations. They also appropriated $962 million in compensation. So there was the transfer of ownership, as well as the conveyance of dollars.

So as shareholders, the Alaska Native people would then be able to decide for themselves how to use, how to protect, and how to guide development of their lands and their resources. As Marlene Johnson put it, ANCSA meant that Alaska Natives ``were able to surround and put their arms around the land that belonged to their forefathers and will belong to their grandkids,'' and she said, ``That is really important.'' It really is.

Today the economic success of ANCSA is as self-evident as it is self- determined. ANCSA has positively impacted not just Alaska Native people but Alaska as a whole. ANCs, as we call them, have become key economic drivers, creating jobs and industry in Alaska but also across the country and even around the globe.

ANCs consistently rank as the top 10 Alaska-owned businesses by gross revenue, and many of the largest office buildings and employers in Anchorage and Fairbanks and Juneau are home to ANCs.

They also provide important services for their people, like scholarships and cultural stewardship, often through their nonprofit foundations. Because of ANCSA, significant investments have been made in real estate, construction, tourism, workforce development, professional services, and so much more.

We have also seen the very clear benefit of resource development. We see this up in the NANA region with the Red Dog Mine. We are hoping that can be replicated at prospects like Donlin Gold in the Calista region. Revenue sharing--very, very unique within ANCSA--revenue sharing with village corporations and leadership in the area of cultural resource protection--we see that down in the southeast region. These are just a few of the examples of where ANCSA really got it right.

As we look back at ANCSA, we recognize that there were many, many people who helped to make it happen--not just President Nixon, as I mentioned, the congressional delegation, of course, but more importantly, the many strong Alaska Native leaders, like Emil Notti, Etok Edwardsen, and John Borbridge, among many, many others.

We are fortunate that some of the key ANCSA advocates are still with us today, but, sadly, many of the visionary leaders who were so instrumental in the negotiations have passed on, and there are far too many to mention here, but I will share the story of one of them.

Don Wright, this individual right here, was born in Nenana back in 1929. He is shown here with Ted Stevens, over to the right. This is Don's wife Carol, and this is the Senator from Vermont, Senator Stafford.

Don was known for his charisma and his skill as a negotiator and a political leader. Many Alaska Natives at the time were just very, very personally invested in this effort, and he was one who really led in this. He personally contributed to the advocacy effort, both in time and money. Don led that, along with others.

He and others spent nights sleeping on the streets here in Washington, DC, or in the Halls of Congress. They maxed out credit cards to pay for the long trips all the way from Alaska to come here to DC to the Capitol. Don once paid the way for 20 Alaskans to travel with him to lobby for the legislation. He was really all in. He fought tirelessly to secure Native land rights.

He was president of the Alaska Federation of Natives when ANCSA actually became law. He was able to meet with President Nixon in 1971 to encourage passage of the bill and was truly a driving force behind the effort.

He framed it well by saying that year:

The President and the Congress must decide whether this

last chapter is to be written in dignity or dishonor.

I think, thanks to Don Wright and many other Native leaders, it was written in dignity.

I am really very, very humbled by all of the incredible people who helped

shape ANCSA, many of whom I am fortunate to know and to call my friends. It is a privilege to be able to honor and thank them here on the Senate floor for their fortitude, their determination, and their perseverance.

I remain unwavering in my commitment to help today's leaders as we continue to improve ANCSA and ensure that the Federal Government upholds its promise to Alaska Native people.

Now, we say around here all the time that there is no law that we have written and passed that is perfect, and ANCSA is certainly no exception. It is really a living document, if you will, still changing, still evolving. There are gaps; we recognize that. There are shortcomings, and we still have unfinished business, important issues that we have to resolve. One of these is recent, unfortunately, and it does not involve amending ANCSA, but, instead, it calls for flexibility for the unique corporations it created.

After the COVID pandemic struck our country, those of us in Congress came together. We were seeking to pass the CARES Act to provide relief across the spectrum. As part of that--and I was really very pleased to be able to be part of that effort that was able to dedicate significant funding for Tribes and Tribal entities. It was $8 billion that was dedicated for Tribes, Tribal entities, including ANCs.

But ANCs' eligibility for that funding was quickly challenged despite the very clear intention here in Congress. The case ultimately went to the Supreme Court. It wasn't decided until June 25 of this year, when they ultimately prevailed.

As a result of that litigation, ANCs received their allocations under that CARES funding, but they only recently received this. So they got the litigation through, and they received their allocation but very late. But now we have a new problem. The new problem is, that CARES Act money needs to be spent by December 31--a matter of a couple weeks. That is just not right. That is not fair here. It is clearly not long enough to be able to responsibly utilize these very important funds, and it is really not fair as a result of the litigation they faced.

So the congressional delegation--Senator Sullivan, Congressman Young, and I--is seeking to extend the deadline through the end of next year. We are basically saying: Look, fair is fair. ANCs should have the time that they need and that others had.

While the Senate has agreed to pass a broader bill that includes this extension, it is stalled over on the House side and really has left us with no clear path forward, even at this very late hour. So that is something I am asking my colleagues and the administration for their support on in gaining this flexibility.

Another top priority for me is something that was left out of ANCSA all those years ago. Five communities in Southeast Alaska were missing from its text and therefore unable to create what we call urban corporations. Today, this is a 50-year injustice for these five Alaska Native communities of Haines, Ketchikan, Wrangell, Petersburg, and Tenakee. I have had the privilege to live in Wrangell and to be born in Ketchikan, so these are communities that are pretty close to my heart.

The situation in terms of being left out was challenging enough. It is not made easier by their location in the Tongass National Forest. But I would remind the Senate that they and their ancestors lived in this area. They took care of these lands long before the Federal Government came along and made the designation of a national forest.

That nearly all of their region has since been taken and classified as a Federal forest is no reason to refuse to acknowledge and work with us on this. So I have recently reintroduced legislation to allow those five southeast communities to receive their rightful land entitlements under ANCSA.

I would urge my colleagues, take a look at this. Recognize that this is a matter of the Federal Government making good on its promise to thousands of Alaska Natives. I would ask that you would join me and Senator Sullivan and Congressman Young as we work to advance this bill into law, as we, again, continue to address unfulfilled promises within

Madam President, I come to the floor this afternoon to speak also about the John R. Lewis Voting Rights Advancement Act. This is S. 4.

Listening to my friend from Virginia here describe some of the history that he and his family have been through, again, this is an important part of the discussion and debate when we talk about one of the very cornerstones of our identity as an extraordinary nation, this principle of democracy and freedom and fair and open elections.

The majority leader filed cloture on the motion to proceed on Monday evening, and despite some very real reservations that I have--and it is fair to talk about those reservations--I will be among those who vote to begin debate on this measure when we have this vote in a few minutes here. I will do so because I strongly support and I believe that Congress should enact a bipartisan reauthorization of the Voting Rights Act. We have done that. Congress has done that five times since 1965, typically--typically--by an overwhelming margin here in the Senate.

It has been about 15 years now since our last amendment to the Voting Rights Act, and I think it is fair to say that 15 years after passage, it is probably timely and necessary to look at updates.

In order to do that, I think that what we have to do is we have to step back from the partisanship. We have to step back from the politicization that is driving this conversation. I think we should be able to agree to meaningful improvements that will help ensure that all of our elections are free, they are fair, and they are accessible to all Americans.

Now, those who follow this issue know that it is probably no great surprise that I am involved in this discussion here today. I have been the lead Republican cosponsor of the voting rights reauthorization now for the last 6 years. I have worked with my friend from Vermont, Senator Leahy, as well as with Senator Durbin, Senator Manchin, and others to shape a framework that will allow us to make some progress on some very real and legitimate issues.

At this point, I feel that we have got a good foundation to help provide access to the ballot that is equal, again, for all Americans and free from any form of discrimination. We should all be able to support legislation to assure just that much--that much--because nothing, as my friend from Virginia has said, is more fundamental than the right to vote.

We have all heard that story of Benjamin Franklin being asked at the end of the Constitutional Convention about the type of government that the Framers had designed. His response, at least according to some sources, was, ``A republic if you can keep it.''

I recognize that one of the surest ways to lose our Republic is to allow the public trust in our elections to erode, and I fear that that is where we are--that that trust, that faith, in our own elections is eroding.

I have engaged in voting rights legislation because I want us to continue to reduce those barriers to Americans' ability to voting, whether it is geographic, whether it is logistical--and we certainly know about that in Alaska--whether it is partisan or some other form. I think we recognize that we have come a long way from the 1960s--I would, certainly, hope so--but I think we need to acknowledge that we can continue to build on that through reasonable and well-considered legislation.

The voting rights legislation that I support is not this sweeping overhaul that would take power away from the States in order to federalize the election process. There was a bill earlier on the floor this year, and I voted against that. I didn't like that very detailed, prescriptive approach that, I felt, was moving us toward a federalization.

Instead, the legislation that I support would provide greater transparency for Federal elections so that voters are fully informed, so that they know about the changes in voting procedures. It would protect voters from discrimination in all of its forms and continue to knock down the barriers that we know, in many places, still exist.

It would provide protections for voters, for election workers, and polling places to discourage the efforts to interfere, to intimidate, or to physically harm them.

It would provide for voting materials in relevant areas to be translated in our Native languages. This is very important for us back home in Alaska.

It would require States that have historically been found to discriminate against minority voters to, once again, preclear their changes in their voting laws, and it would uphold the many, many good practices and procedures that we have in States like Alaska, rather than burdening them with new mandates that aren't designed for a place, again, like Alaska where, geographically, logistically, it just might simply not work.

That is the kind of legislation that I can support, but I need to be clear here. That is not the description of S.

4, the bill that is being brought up for debate. I don't support S. 4 as it was written and as it was introduced. What I can support in its place and as a starting point is the substitute amendment that the majority has agreed to lay down should the Senate agree to begin debate. That substitute amendment contains more than a dozen significant changes that my team and I have been working with others to negotiate.

So the question, I think, needs to be asked: Is that enough? And I say: No, it is not enough. Even with those changes, I still have concerns, and I know that many of my colleagues on this side of the aisle have concerns. Substantive changes will be needed before this measure is ready to pass the Senate.

So, if this procedural vote fails today, where do I think we go next? We have to go back. We have to consider this legislation through regular order, through the committee process.

In the meantime, I mentioned just the politicization, the partisanship that we have seen with these issues. I think: Let's stop the show votes. Let's give ourselves the space to work cooperatively across the aisle to reach the level of consensus that I think is important. It is important for this issue, and it is important for this country.

The goal here should be to avoid a partisan bill, not to take failing votes over and over for political gain. It really doesn't get us anywhere. It gets us on record. It allows you to weaponize, if you will, a critically important issue. It doesn't go anywhere. It doesn't serve anyone. It, ultimately, accomplishes nothing. Our only real option here is to figure out how we are working together on this. Our goal should be to match what we did in 2006 when the last reauthorization of the Voting Rights Act passed the Senate 98 to 0.

Wouldn't that be a goal for us all? Wouldn't that send a signal to people across this country--from Alaska to Maine--to have faith in our electoral process, in our elections?

Now, some may be wondering why, as a Republican, I am willing to put my name next to this legislation, pretty publicly, and acknowledge that it is not where I want the bill to be right now. But at this point, I think, if we can step back from the political exercise, I think we can do good. I think we need to do good. I believe that those of us who want to find common ground need to be part of the process. We need to be willing to get in, mix it up, and work it out, instead of sitting back on the sidelines and saying: I just don't like your product, and I am not going to offer anything else. I just don't like your product.

So let's get in the arena. Given my role as vice chairman of the Indian Affairs Committee, I believe that I have an obligation to help resolve some of the longstanding issues that face our Native peoples in Alaska and around the country.

Finally, I believe it is simply dangerous to let voting rights become a wholly partisan issue, where our divisions just fester and take root in an area that is so central to our system of government.

So the vote in front of us today is procedural in nature on whether to open debate. It is not on final passage or anything close to it. There are even things in the substitute text that I, frankly, don't support and others that I have not been able to fully evaluate. But I also recognize that the framework within the John R. Lewis Voting Rights Advancement Act is the most viable that we have, and it is the best starting point at which to legislate. So I will vote to begin this debate in the hopes that this is a step forward, not a step backward, as we are seeking a bipartisan accord.

I yield the floor.

Mr. President, I have come to the floor to recognize an Alaskan who I have come to know over

the years through his compelling correspondence. Bill Stokes is an artist, a man of deep thought and many talents. Among his many traits and skills, he does incredible woodworking and water systems, and he is an author and a poet. In honor of Veterans Day, Bill has asked me to submit two of his poems to the Congressional Record.

The first poem is entitled ``Tears.''

I have pondered long and hard for more than fifty years.

And it is my belief that the two most important gifts you

will ever know are life and freedom because the price

of both is a Mother's tears.

Both require an entire lifetime of hard hard work.

And you cannot, dare not, avoid and shirk.

Birth is the hardest work a mother will ever do.

And freedom also requires an excruciatingly painful birth

with unending protection from both me and you.

Make no mistake that freedom comes at great cost of life.

Because tyrants are as thieves that are totally committed to

stealing your freedom with a bloody knife.

The description is exactly real.

Because if you don't aggressively protect your freedom, the

knife you will feel.

Freedom absolutely requires an honest government with a

standing army of those unafraid to die.

To ensure that every future generation has the ability to

follow its dreams to the far edge of the sky.

Falling in battle is clearly the Soldier's lot.

But that is how the freedom you enjoy is bought.

Those fallen in battle cannot ever become nameless and lost.

And regardless of culture or clime, a national day of

remembrance, ensures that every warrior's name is with

honor, remembered, that they paid for your freedom's

cost.

I have pondered long and hard for more than fifty years.

And it is my belief that the two most important gifts you

will ever know are life and freedom because the price

of both is a Mother's tears.

The second poem is called ``Son.''

As I walked by a young man was standing in front of his home

wearing his desert camouflage waiting for his ride and

as I walked up to him he cradled his gun.

And I couldn't help myself from asking ``What's your name

son?''

I did not understand why he stood there alone when I heard

his mother's wails of despair as she cried.

And his father's voice cracking as he tried to comfort her

from the house somewhere inside.

His eyes were red from his own tears as he to his family he

had said his goodbye.

And everyone knowing full well that this might be the last

time they see him alive from fighting in a war he did

not contrive.

I told him that as a father and a vet.

How proud I was and his name was indelible in my mind and I

would never forget.

As I only came this way every month or so I would look and

see.

That upon his return if he tied a bright red ribbon on a

branch of the front yard tree.

Before I left I came to full attention and saluted him with

all the honor he was due.

And with a calm determination looking straight into my eyes,

he returned the salute understanding exactly what we

both already knew.

I made many trips walking by that house looking for a ribbon

to let me know he was back.

And just about a year later there was a ribbon tied to the

tree but it wasn't red, it was black.

As I walked by a young man standing in front of his home

wearing his desert camouflage waiting for his ride and

as I walked up to him he cradled his gun.

And I couldn't help myself from asking ``What's your name

son?''

Thank you, Bill, for your incredible tribute to our veterans, just as we prepare to mark Veterans Day in 2021 and honor the sacrifices they make on our behalf.

Mr. President, this afternoon I come to the floor to recognize the life and the contributions

of a friend, an Alaskan, a gentleman: Chuck Bundrant. He was the founder and the majority owner of Trident Seafoods and a fisherman who really forever changed the seafood industry in Alaska.

Employing thousands of people across Alaska and the country and processing hundreds of millions of pounds of finished seafood products each year, Trident is the largest vertically integrated seafood harvesting and processing company in North America today.

The company--and, really, by extension, Chuck Bundrant--has been critical in giving the rest of the United States and the world a taste of Alaska's delicious and, of course, sustainably managed wild seafood.

Chuck has a pretty interesting story. He didn't grow up in Alaska. He didn't even grow up near the ocean. He was born in Tennessee. He was raised there and in Indiana. He had initially hoped to pursue veterinary medicine and enrolled in a pre-veterinary program at Middle Tennessee State University.

But by the winter of 1961--19 years old; he has $80 in his pocket--he and a few friends drove from Tennessee to Seattle with the thought that they would make it up to Alaska. At that point in time, he didn't have any experience, any exposure to the State. Apparently, he had watched the John Wayne movie called ``North to Alaska,'' and that kind of spurred him.

But he had heard that there were some pretty lucrative opportunities within the fishing industry, but he also knew that finding a job wasn't going to be an easy task. So, apparently, his buddies reconsidered the merits of the trip, but Chuck doubled down and continued on his way to the dream of working in The Last Frontier.

So, according to legend, he spent his first summer in the State working wherever he could in the Bristol Bay fishing industry, even sleeping under a boat on the docks. He eventually got a job busting freezers--which, for colleagues, means literally banging metal pans to knock loose the blocks of frozen shelled crab--and he was out on a floating processor anchored near Adak out in the Aleutians.

Like so many who have the chance to come and visit Alaska, Chuck wasn't satisfied with just one quick stint in the State. He turned his journey north into a 12-year learning experience--and, really, a lifelong business.

By 1965, he had worked his way up from the freezer hold to buying his first crab fishing boat. As Chuck gained more experience in and understanding of the crab fishery, he noticed that there was an inefficiency in the way that the industry operated. After bringing in the harvest, most fishermen would then head back to shore to hand it off to the shoreside processing outfits, where the crab meat would be removed from the shells and then sent to market. And just a lot of back and forth here meant that the fisherman loses valuable time at sea. And this is where Chuck's ingenuity really struck.

In the early 1970s, he and two other crab fishermen, Kaare Ness and Mike Jacobson, used whatever collective earnings they had at that point in time and they built the Billikin, which was a 135-foot boat with both crab cookers and freezing equipment that allowed for immediate onboard processing. So this was new. This was novel at the time.

Chuck pushed on. He kept fishing and processing on the Billikin. There were protests from other Bering Sea crab fishermen who were in the middle of a strike to secure better prices from processors. Around this same time, he, Kaare, and Mike partnered with another individual, Edd Perry and his Bellingham-based company San Juan Seafoods. And this was, really, the beginning of Trident Seafoods in 1973.

Trident's early years coincided with a phaseout of foreign fleets from the North Pacific harvest due to the enactment in 1976 of the Magnuson-Stevens Fishery Conservation and Management Act--we know it as the MSA--and, also, a burgeoning Japanese market for Alaska frozen fish, salmon, and herring. So Chuck and his colleagues took advantage of this opening. They built a fleet of mobile processing vessels that, really, very quickly made their mark on Alaska fisheries.

Chuck's competitive, resourceful mentality, again, proved useful as king crab numbers and harvest started to decline in the early 1980s. In the seventies, he had watched giant Japanese, Korean, and Norwegian trawling vessels rake in billions of pounds of pollock from the Bering Sea. And then with the enactment of the MSA in 1976, it extended U.S. fisheries jurisdiction to 200 miles offshore, giving American fishermen priority access to stocks of abundant fish, like pollock, that inhabited Alaska's coastal waters.

There was a significant market opportunity for pollock in Japan, but in America at the time, pollock was kind of considered a junk fish, a trash fish. And what is more, American boats and processors did not have the equipment to harvest pollock, to extract its roe that was very popular in Japan, and to transform its flesh into commonly consumed surimi paste and fillets.

But Chuck saw things with a vision. He saw this as an opportunity and not pollock as a trash or poor investment. He studied Japanese methods for catching and processing pollock. He strategized about how Trident could enter this market and, in 1981, he took a pretty bold move. He built a plant on a very remote Aleutian island, Akutan, for onshore processing of crab; salmon; and, of course, pollock.

So Chuck really took a risk there. He, after years of trying to convince food wholesalers and restaurant owners to take a chance on pollock, was able to secure a pretty pivotal deal between Trident and Long John Silver's. This was the first major contract to bring the fish to U.S. market. And this deal didn't take place in some fancy restaurant in some major city. This deal took place out in Akutan--the Akutan processing facility that he had taken this chance on back in 1981.

So companies like McDonald's, Burger King soon followed Long John Silver's in replacing cod and whiting with very tasty, and now cheaper, pollock. And these companies have grown to become some of Trident's biggest customers. Odds are that if you have tried their fish and chips or fish sandwiches, you have probably tried Trident product.

Today, Seattle-based Trident operates a fleet of 40 vessels, including catcher processors, trawlers, crab boats, tenders and freighters; 11 processing plants in Alaska--so good jobs in Alaska--5 processing plants in Washington State, Georgia, and Minnesota. It offers a host of frozen, canned, smoked, and ready-to-eat seafood products; and its harvest-and-business model means they know exactly where its products come from. That is important to us.

But as Trident has grown and propelled the industry forward, Chuck remains steadfast in his commitment that Trident remain a family business that supports its employees and the independent fishermen that it partners with. Chuck's son Joe now serves as the company's CEO. He has continued his dad's efforts to seek out new value-added products that can be created from Alaska fish.

It is always a good story, I think, to know of these very successful businesses that keep grounded with the base from which they began; and with Chuck, it was really important that his family continued to be part of this success story.

I am told that Chuck had some pretty strict rules, that if any of his grandkids--and I think he has about 13 of them--if any of them decide that they want to work for the family business, you first have to earn a college degree, which Chuck did not have; but they also had to spend at least 4 years working someplace else other than Trident; and they had to have cut their teeth and fished at least two summers in Alaska.

So he wanted to make sure that you weren't just going to get the job just because you were a member of the family. You worked for it; you knew what this was all about.

It really is difficult to overstate the impact that Chuck has had on his fellow fishermen. Beyond the industry innovation that he drove, he always sought to pay it forward, to offer younger fishermen the same mentorship and support that allowed him to get his start in the 1960s and the seventies and to make Trident the company that it is today.

And this dovetails, really, with Chuck Bundrant's commitment to charitable giving. He was generous in so many, many different ways. He

raised and donated money for the victims of the Tohoku earthquake, the tsunami in Japan, Hurricane Katrina, Superstorm Sandy, and contributed to multiple cancer research foundations.

I have certainly seen his generosity as he has shared in ways that demonstrate his compassion, his care. His influence on the fishing community is really clear from the outpouring of love and support that he has received since he was diagnosed with an atypical form of Parkinson's.

In September of 2019, four of the captains from the TV show the ``Deadliest Catch''--all of whom considered Chuck a mentor, a friend, and, really, an inspiration--co-hosted what they called Captains for a CURE fundraiser. It was an auction for the northwest chapter of the American Parkinson's Disease Association. They raised nearly $380,000 at the event, and this money goes towards a Parkinson's disease research grant in Chuck's honor--again, trying to shine a light on the specific form of disease that Chuck lived with.

I received a note from Joe Bundrant on Sunday, when Chuck Bundrant passed from this Earth, and I wanted to share just a couple sentences from a personal email. He says:

Dying is not easy, but Chuck was up to the task and faced

death on this earth as he faced rogue waves in Alaska: head-

on with dignity, determination and with the faith that he

would be safe in God's hands.

He goes on further to say that ``he lived each day fully, driven by the values of integrity, loyalty, hard work and most importantly faith.''

And so as I have reflected on the life of, really, an extraordinary man, it strikes me that, at the end of the day, this individual, Chuck Bundrant, was a family man, cared for his family deeply; but he, at the base of it, was a fisherman. And he lived his life in a way that really speaks to the values of integrity; loyalty; hard work; and, most importantly, faith.

To his family, to his wife Diane: Know that our hearts are with you. We thank you for sharing a truly honorable man with so many of us.

With that, I yield the floor.

Mr. President, I have come to the floor this afternoon, unexpectedly. I had anticipated that I was going to be taking the long trek home, for even a short weekend, going back to Alaska. That is not the case this weekend, unfortunately.

Our COVID numbers are at alltime highs, and most of the events and meetings that I would have had back home canceled. They are on Zoom. So life is just a little bit different. You roll with it. And it means that I am here in Washington, DC, on this Friday afternoon.

But I opened up the paper this morning, the Anchorage Daily News, our largest statewide newspaper, to, again, headlines that have just kind of unfolded over these past weeks with more just grim and difficult news. The headline today is: ``Alaska infection rate remains high with over 1,200 new COVID cases.''

We are leading--we are leading the Nation right now in our COVID rates, and it is interesting. Alaska has--we are separated enough geographically, but through the advantages of air travel and road travel, we mix, we mingle, we get around, and the virus knows no bounds, as we all know. But as we are seeing, thankfully, the case counts beginning to decline here in the lower 48, Alaska is doing just the opposite.

I am quoting here from our paper:

On average, the U.S. saw a 26% decrease in cases over the

last two weeks while Alaska recorded an 84% increase.

They go on to say:

If Alaska were a country, it would be the nation with the

world's highest per capita case rate, according to data from

the Center for Systems Science and Engineering at Johns

Hopkins University.

The article proceeds to state that:

Alaska's 171 average daily cases per 100,000 over the last

seven days is nearly double the rate seen in West Virginia,

which . . . [is currently] second in the [Nation]. Bermuda

and Serbia, at the top of the global list, have a case rate

of 99.

So we are at 171 average daily cases per 100,000. It has been challenging. We are a State that has limited capacity. We have got a smaller population, obviously. But that also means that we have fewer hospitals. We have more limited means, in terms of our ability to care for those who have become very, very sick, and it is straining--it is really maxing out our hospitals to levels that we really just could not have even anticipated could happen.

As our hospitals are maxed out, it is not just the capacity, the number of people that you can put into your ICU; it is those who are daily doing the work of caring for those who are coming into our hospitals, coming in sicker and staying longer. We have maxed out our hospitals, and when I say ``maxing out,'' in the Alaska vernacular, basically that means there is no room at the hospital. Our largest hospital is Providence, Alaska Regional, Mat-Su, Alaska Native Medical Center, Fairbanks Memorial Hospital, Bartlett--they are at capacity within their ICUs, and let me share with you what it means to be at capacity in your ICU.

I will share. I was at Alaska Regional just a weekend ago--actually, now two weekends ago--and I was told that their ICU, which is a 16-bed ICU, had been expanded to 20; and 100 percent of the beds, when I was there on that Saturday, were occupied by COVID patients with no room for anyone else to come to that particular medical facility.

I had been at Fairbanks Memorial Hospital--actually there on an emergency, not myself but with another individual. We go to the emergency room, and as we were waiting for the doctors to come and address this non-COVID-related medical emergency, I was advised by the evening supervisor that Fairbanks Memorial Hospital was at capacity within their ICU. And what that meant was that Fairbanks Memorial was at capacity and, as of that evening, all of the other hospitals in Alaska that could care in an ICU capacity were filled. So I was told that my loved one may be in a situation, if he needed to be in the ICU, that I needed to prepare myself and others that he may be sent to Seattle or Portland that night. For those of you that don't know your geography there, that is a 3, 3\1/2\-hour flight by jet. It would have been a medevac. It is thousands of miles away.

That is what is happening in Alaska right now. When your hospitals are full, you just can't put them in an ambulance and take them to another town. We are taking these folks to another State. And, again, keep in mind, the reason that I was there that evening with this individual was not COVID-related, but that is the squeeze. That is the pressure that it puts on the rest of your system.

Just this week, the State is dealing with crisis standards of care guidelines as it relates to how individuals may receive monoclonal antibody treatments because the supplies are scarce out there.

So it is tough right now. It is tough. Beds are hard to find, and the extraordinary men and women who every day are going in and doing as best they can to provide for the level of care that is needed are doing so, but they are tired. They are tired. They can't get enough help. You have those who are exposed. You have to quarantine. It puts pressure on everybody else. People are running themselves to the ground.

But we have good news that is happening. Our Governor has been working to bring additional health workers in, and we are starting to see, just this week, as many as--we were hoping 500 but maybe a little bit less than that--nurses, respiratory therapists are starting to come to the State as part of a Federal contract. So you have got State- contracted healthcare workers. The Alaska Native Medical Center is going to be receiving additional support from a disaster medical assistance team. Again, we are at a point where you just can't take it on anymore. And our numbers have not yet peaked.

I don't share these statistics and I don't share the front page of the Daily News just to bring people up to speed as to what is happening in Alaska. That wasn't necessarily my purpose here.

My purpose this afternoon is, in the midst of this, in the midst of this real crisis in my State, when it comes to the availability of healthcare and responding to this virus that is killing--killing-- Alaskans, killing Americans, killing people around the world, that we show a little kindness because right now that seems to be in as limited capacity as some of the hospitals that we have in Alaska. It is kindness and respect for where people are.

Your healthcare workers are giving every ounce of what they have to be there, to leave their families. They are worried about everybody. But they are there for us, and they are doing the best job possible. And some of what we see in return is not the best of America. It is not the best that Alaskans have to offer.

We have had some just horrible, horrible confrontations in our public meetings in Anchorage. The top of the fold in the Anchorage paper is about an assembly meeting where individuals wore yellow Stars of David to protest the mask ordinance that the Anchorage assembly was taking up, comparing the mask mandate to the Holocaust. It is shocking. At some of the assembly meetings--and it is not just in Anchorage, we are seeing it in other communities as well--it is neighbor against neighbor.

We have had providers go to provide testimony before in these public meetings, and not only have they been ridiculed and mocked, but we hear the stories, we read the stories that they have been spit upon. This is not how we show appreciation for those who are trying their absolute best to be there for us. And they will literally turn the other cheek and make sure that the care that they are providing in that ICU, in that ER, is without discrimination as to whether or not you have been vaccinated or not. They are going to be there to take care of you. So, please, can we please show some kindness to one another at these times of stress and of anxiety to families?

We in Alaska are pretty hardy. We are independent. We can handle things on our own, but we are better because we are also good neighbors to one another, more often than not.

When somebody's car breaks down by the side of the road, and it is cold and it is dark, we stop. We help them. We are there for them. When somebody is sick, we deliver the food. We are good neighbors. So we, in Alaska, need to remember to be that good neighbor to one another. We can have disagreements. We can have differing points of view. We can express them without degrading one another, without denigrating one another, without humiliating, and mocking one another.

So I know that we will be beyond COVID. It is not coming soon enough for any of us. But I just ask that as we go through this, in this State and around this country and around the world, that we remember that we are all better when we care for one another and we show a little kindness.

I yield the floor.

I suggest the absence of a quorum.

Mr. President, there has been a lot of impassioned words about a nominee that we will have before us in just a matter of less than an hour, Tracy Stone-Manning. Know that I join my colleagues in the concerns that they have expressed, as we look to those individuals that we asked to take the helm of some of these very important Agencies--Agencies, as my colleague from Alaska has pointed out--that have extraordinary impact on the activities and the actions that go on in our State. We need to have only the highest caliber of men and women. And in what we have seen, the background that we have seen with this particular nominee, I would hope, would shock us all.

And so as we move forward with this nomination process and consider the impact to, again, not just an Agency, not just to a department, but the impact that then comes to our communities, our States, the people who we work for, it is only appropriate and fitting that we speak to the issues that we have learned of; we speak to the truth of the matter; and the truth of the matter is that this nominee is not an individual who should be in this position.