Floor Statements

Mr. President, the Committee on Commerce, Science, and Transportation has adopted rules governing its procedures for the 118th Congress. Pursuant to rule XXVI, paragraph 2, of the Standing Rules of the Senate, I ask unanimous consent that the accompanying rules for the Senate Committee on Commerce, Science, and Transportation be printed in the Record.

Mr. President, I rise today to applaud the Biden administration and their historic step to permanently protect Bristol Bay, AK. More than a decade after the Pebble Mine was proposed, the Environmental Protection Agency, today, is finalizing a Clean Water Act protection that will permanently protect Bristol Bay. No company will ever be able to stick a mine on top of some of the best salmon habitat in the world.

Salmon fishermen from Alaska and from my home State of Washington will continue to earn their livelihoods from Bristol Bay salmon, as they have for generations. No Bristol Bay salmon will ever have to swim through toxic soup just to get to its spawning grounds.

This scientific decision today by the Environmental Protection Agency puts a final nail in this mine's proposal.

It is difficult to understand and to really know the importance of Bristol Bay. In an average year, 40 to 60 million sockeye salmon swim into or out of the bay. Last year was a blockbuster run. Nearly 80 million sockeye salmon returned to Bristol Bay.

That is why Bristol Bay is known as the holy grail of salmon. Today, Bristol Bay salmon fisheries are a $2.2 billion annual industry. They support over 15,000 jobs in the Pacific Northwest and nationwide, and that is through commercial fishing, recreational fishing, tourism, seafood, restaurants, shipbuilding, and other associated industries.

I know the Presiding Officer knows this well because northern California also benefits from these salmon sectors and the salmon industry.

Salmon are one of the most important products that we in the Pacific Northwest have. It is the symbol of our region. So Bristol Bay salmon, being a powerhouse and supporting nearly half of the sockeye salmon harvested around the globe, is certainly worth fighting for.

So, as you can imagine, when a mining corporation decided to try to build a mine in the headwaters of this most powerful salmon run on the planet, fishermen in my State and in many other States were outraged. Estuaries and mines really don't mix, and they certainly don't belong together at the headwaters of one of the most important salmon runs and spawning grounds in the Nation.

For fishermen, the destruction wrought by Pebble Mine would have swept away their businesses and their way of life, and they certainly raised their voices and came to ask me and others in Washington for help.

In 2011, I was proud to stand with fishermen and Tribes from my State and from Alaska to speak out against Pebble Mine and to call for permanent protections under the Clean Water Act if the science showed that the mine would have irreversible impacts on salmon. Well, sure enough, the science is damning, and that is what is being released as part of this decision today.

In 2020, the Environmental Protection Agency found that more than 185 miles of streams and over 3,800 acres of wetlands would be permanently damaged or destroyed by Pebble Mine due to its toxic waste and habitat destruction, and that is just if the mine operated the way it was supposed to. That wasn't considering the kind of degradation that could happen if an accident happened. Those statistics don't account for a potential mine disaster that could really wipe out this irreplaceable ecosystem.

So despite the clear science, the mining company has continued to claim that protecting Bristol Bay is a partisan government overreach. Their executives believe that stripping all the gold and copper out of Bristol Bay is a worthy goal, more important than our wild salmon or more important than the generations of Washington and Alaska fishermen who earn their livelihood from that.

Protecting our fishing economy should not be a partisan issue, and that is why Congress created a fail-safe Clean Water Act provision called section 404(c). This provision says that if disposal or dredging in a waterway would destroy fisheries, municipal water, or have other serious impacts, the Environmental Agency could step in to stop the project.

It is a simple concept, really: Let's not destroy a profitable, sustainable industry that keeps the water clean for the sake of just temporary extracting.

Still, this authority in 404(c) isn't used lightly. Since 1972, millions of Clean Water Act permits have been approved, compared to only 14 times that this provision has been used to stop major projects like the one today that is being stopped at Pebble Mine.

Republican Presidents have used this Clean Water 404(c) authority 11 times. Let me say that again.

It has only been implemented 14 times in our history, and 11 times it was used by a Republican President. Ronald Reagan alone used the Clean Water Act 404 authority 8 times.

So there was a time when people believed in this conservation. They believed in making sure that we preserve what is so unique about our planet.

To sum it up, a multinational corporation thought that it could go to one of the most iconic salmon runs on the planet and decimate those jobs that we rely on in Bristol Bay and tear a hole in the culture of our Northwest fabric. And fishermen and we here said: No.

I am proud of the scientific work done by the Environmental Protection Agency under President Biden, the University of Washington, and so many of the environmental partners that fought so hard to stop this project.

I am proud to have stood with the fishermen and Tribes of Bristol Bay in saying we need to protect this unique place forever.

I want to thank some of our greatest champions: The United Tribes of Bristol Bay, the Bristol Bay Native Corporation, and the fishing families in Alaska and Washington.

I want to thank my staff, Nikki Teutschel, Amit Ronen, and Jeff Watters, who, through a decade, all continued this fight to make sure that every administration was listening to this cause.

It seemed like a ``David and Goliath'' many times, this battle, but we know today that the voices of fishermen at Bristol Bay provided the leadership that we needed to preserve this area forever and said no to this project.

Fishermen know that the Pacific Northwest salmon is worth more than copper, and today, salmon is even worth more than gold. It is our Pacific way of life, and thanks to this administration, it will be protected.

I yield the floor.

I suggest the absence of a quorum.

Mr. President, for the Committee on Commerce, Science, and Transportation I report favorably the following nomination lists which were printed in the Record on the dates indicated, and ask unanimous consent, to save the expense of reprinting on the Executive Calendar that these nominations lie at the Secretary's desk for the information of Senators.

Mr. President, I come to the floor tonight to urge my colleagues to support the Respect for Marriage Act. Today, we took an important step by passing the procedural hurdle to make sure that marriage equality is put into law.

This legislation would ensure that both the Federal and State Governments will continue to recognize all marriages and continue to not discriminate based on gender, sexual orientation, national origin, ethnicity or race. These are strong protections that are long overdue.

I understand some of my colleagues do not see a need for passing this legislation, but I would ask them to stand in the shoes of someone in a marriage that is in danger of being dissolved overnight by a court decision. The same rationale for overturning Roe v. Wade can be used in this landmark Supreme Court decision we just saw that could erode further privacy rights and be used in same-sex marriages.

While marriage equality is constitutionally protected today, the Supreme Court's reasoning in Dobbs v. Jackson Women's Health Organization indicated the Court is open to reconsidering cases that determine certain fundamental rights are protected under the equal protection and due process clause of the 14th Amendment.

I believe it is our job here in the Senate to represent the voice of our constituents, and those voices are loud and clear. An overwhelming majority of Americans support marriage equality. According to a Gallup poll, 71 percent of Americans approve of same-sex marriage. In September, over 220 businesses, representing more than 8.5 million employees, called on the U.S. Senate to pass this legislation.

And this was not a bill that garnered support from just a few Republicans for the sake of calling it bipartisan. Forty-seven Republicans and over 20 percent of the House GOP Members recognized that this should be enshrined into law and supported the legislation. It passed the House by a large majority--267 to 157.

Americans support this bill. Businesses support this bill. And now some of my colleagues on the other side of the aisle have taken the step to also support this legislation.

The State of Washington was one of the first 10 States to legalize same-sex marriage and did so by a vote of the people.

I recently received a letter from a constituent from Everett, WA, saying that she and her wife moved to Washington in 2016 because ``they needed to be somewhere where our rights would be protected in the event that they would be threatened.''

She said: ``As soon as I arrived in Washington, I felt like I had come home.''

Marriage equality has been protected under Washington State law for a decade. It has been protected by the Supreme Court for 7 years, and yet, here in the Senate, there are some who don't believe that we need to take further protections.

At least 11.5 million people in this country are in an interracial or same-sex marriage. That is no less than 20 percent of all marriages in the United States.

With a number like that, we all know someone in one of those marriages, whether they are our friends, our neighbors, our colleagues. We know that we need to give them the same certainty, and we know that codifying marriage equality into law, they will not be in jeopardy of losing those rights.

Same-sex and interracial couples deserve the assurance that their marriage will be recognized. They need to know that they will continue to enjoy the freedom and privileges that are afforded to other couples, and we need to make sure that this is for generations to come.

The American people want this legislation passed, and I urge my colleagues to come together and support this very important Respect for Marriage Act.

I yield the floor.

I suggest the absence of a quorum.

Madam President, I rise today to support the nomination of Dr. Arati Prabhakar to be the Director of the Office of Science and Technology. Since 1976, the Office of Science and Technology Policy has worked to ensure that the United States leads in science and technology, to promote STEM education, and to make sure that our science Agencies share the common purpose of benefiting all Americans.

Dr. Prabhakar is very well qualified for this job. As an engineer, physicist, leader, venture capitalist, and pioneer, she has had a trailblazing career, accomplishing a lot in a time period where she was Director of the Defense Advanced Research Project Agency, DARPA, and the first woman to lead the National Institute of Standards and Technology, NIST.

And under Dr. Prabhakar's leadership, DARPA kick-started the development of a rapid-response mRNA vaccine platform. This platform was the basis for the fast, safe, and effective COVID-19 development.

Under her leadership at NIST, she worked to expand the Manufacturing Extension Partnership to boost the competitiveness of small- and medium-sized American manufacturers.

Just last year, the Manufacturing Extension Partnership program helped our domestic manufacturers capture $3.9 billion in new sales. In my State alone, that translated into over $186 million and more than 2,000 jobs created or retained.

Perhaps even more impressive, back in the 1990s, when Dr. Prabhakar was just in her twenties, she helped launch DARPA programs that made essential leaps forward in semiconductor manufacturing technology. Dr. Prabhakar's programs laid the groundwork for five generations of chip manufacturing technologies to help demonstrate leadership right here in the United States.

Dr. Prabhakar is now ready to lead again, and now we are asking for her to lead this important Agency. We have just passed the CHIPS and Science Act, which is a renewed commitment to domestic semiconductor research and manufacturing and U.S. leadership in the next generation chip technology.

Dr. Prabhakar has the exact experience we need to advise the President on semiconductor manufacturing, on bringing the supply chain and security that we need here in the United States, and on continued growth in science and technology jobs that come along with it.

The CHIPS and Science Act directs the National Science Foundation to invest in translational research, including through a new NSF tech directorate.

Before her nomination, Dr. Prabhakar was an important voice in support of this effort of a tech directorate, reaching out to House and Senate colleagues and helping to shape the directorate in its focus on big national and security challenges.

And the CHIPS and Science Act reflects our commitment to diversity in science, to make sure that the engineering, math, and STEM fields are included and that we continue to grow a workforce that is needed.

The important aspect of science is not always thought of in every aspect of growing the next generation. That is why I am so encouraged that Dr.

Prabhakar is very committed to increasing the talent pool that we need in our country.

For the first time in our country's history, the President has elevated the Office of Science and Technology Policy Director to a Cabinet-level post, meaning there will be a scientist in the room for our Nation's most important discussions.

And for the first time in history, with the support of my colleagues here today, Dr. Prabhakar will be the first woman and person of color to serve as the Senate-confirmed OSTP Director.

Dr. Prabhakar will have a lot to do, including developing the whole- of-government science and technology strategies for issues ranging from security to commercial space exploration. And at a time of growing competition, OSTP needs to tell the President and advise our leaders what we need to do to maintain our competitiveness as a nation.

I know, coming from an innovation State, how important the Office of Science and Technology Policy strategies can be in helping our Nation attract and keep the best and brightest and prioritize collaboration between academia and industry. And since Washington has been a STEM leader--in fact, I think we are the most STEM-focused State in the Nation; that is, by number of people involved in STEM----we know that this partnership between the existing workforce and the workforce of tomorrow needs to grow.

I know that, as a former DARPA Director, Dr. Prabhakar will help us with this engine of innovation and growing STEM education in America. Moreover, I know that Dr. Prabhakar will, on many issues, help to improve the participation of women and girls in the issues of STEM.

This is such a big, important issue for us today. But just being at the helm of the Office of Science and Technology Policy, being a woman, being there at the Cabinet level, and advising the President of the United States, I know she will help to deliver a message that young women all across America need to be involved in the sciences to help our Nation in the next phases of innovation. I am so excited that she will be in this position.

I ask my colleagues to support her as a devoted, experienced, and exceptional public servant. These are the kinds of people who we need in government. These are the kinds of people who can make America stronger, safer, and more competitive. I urge my colleagues to support the confirmation of Dr. Prabhakar as the Director of the Office of Science and Technology Policy.

I yield the floor.

I suggest the absence of a quorum.

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

Mr. President, I come to the floor today to ask my colleagues to vote on the nomination of Admiral David Pekoske to serve a second term as Administrator of the Transportation Security Administration.

We recently commemorated the anniversary of the 9/11 attacks and the 3,000 lives lost here in the United States when tragically the Pentagon was struck, downtown Manhattan, and Shanksville, PA. In response to that, Congress created the TSA--Transportation Security Administration--to strengthen the Nation's security and our transportation system.

And every day that TSA works the frontlines to protect the traveling public, it is working to also prevent future attacks. It is safeguarding our Nation's infrastructure and certainly working every day to make sure that the flying public continues to move through a successful process.

TSA's mission lies in the commitment of professionals and highly skilled individuals. Admiral Pekoske's confirmation and continued leadership of this team will enable the TSA to further its ongoing and important mission.

Over the past two decades, the TSA has had to deal with many challenges: facing the continued threats of concealing weapons in shoes and underwear and even in soft drinks. And in 2010, the TSA began detecting explosives in electronics and countering attacks on the public side of airports.

Today, the landscape is even more sophisticated with state and nonstate actors and cyber attacks. Unique challenges posed to us during the COVID pandemic have made these challenges to the aviation security landscape even greater.

We know that we need to have continued experienced leadership. And Admirable Pekoske is well qualified for this position. He will continue to make transportation security and its modernization the Nation's No. 1 priority as it relates to the sector.

Each day, at over 430 airports across the country, TSA screens over 2 million passengers and 1.4 million checked bags for explosives and other dangerous items. This helps ensure the security for over 24,000 domestic flights and nearly 3,300 outbound international flights per day.

Security demands for the Agency are returning and every day are continuing to grow. Over the Labor Day weekend, TSA screened nearly 11 million people, or 3 percent more, over the corresponding period in 2019. In fact, TSA screened more people on 4 of the 5 days, from September 1 to 5, marking the first sustained period of checkpoint throughput during a holiday weekend above prepandemic levels.

So the traveling public is back, and, obviously, we need dedicated TSA officers and individuals to continue to work. We are not saying that there aren't improvements to that process--there certainly are-- but TSA has been charged with a critical, obviously, responsibility to make sure that we continue to work to ensure the safety of our air transportation system.

Last year's ransomware attack on Colonial Pipeline threatened nearly 50 percent of the east coast's fuel supply. So we must harden all of our targets and make sure the TSA has leadership to make sure that they, too, are helping us address these emerging threats.

Admiral Pekoske's experience in leading TSA in these critical missions deserves support for renomination to this position again.

I yield the floor.

I suggest the absence of a quorum.

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

Madam President, I come to the floor today to urge my colleagues to vote to confirm Judge Mendoza to the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit.

This is a historic moment. If confirmed, Judge Mendoza would be the first Hispanic judge to serve on the Ninth Circuit from Washington.

Judge Mendoza, whom I met before nominating him to the White House Counsel's Office as a candidate for U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Washington, has been somebody who, when you think about his childhood growing up in the Yakima Valley--an agricultural area in Eastern Washington--he comes from a family of farm workers and has worked in the fields himself.

As a young student at Prosser High School, it was not uncommon for him to wake up before dawn to work in the fields before rushing home to change and head to school. His hard work earned him admission to the University of Washington.

After graduating from the University of Washington, he left the State to get his law degree from UCLA. After earning his degree, he returned home to Washington, where he worked as assistant attorney general in the Washington State AG's Office.

He went on to serve the community he grew up in, first as a deputy prosecutor for Franklin County and then as a judge in the Benton- Franklin Superior Court. He has been an outstanding judge on the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Washington, where he has served since 2014. Clearly, my colleagues here in the Senate saw his potential since he was confirmed to the Eastern District 92 to 4.

Judge Mendoza is not just an outstanding jurist; he is a community leader as well. He has served on the boards of directors for numerous organizations in Central Washington, including the Benton-Franklin Legal Aid Society, the Benton and Franklin Counties Circle of Hope Foundation for Drug Courts, and the United Way of Benton and Franklin Counties.

I know Judge Mendoza will make an excellent addition to the Ninth Circuit Court, and I urge my colleagues to support his nomination to the court of appeals.

I yield the floor.

I suggest the absence of a quorum.

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

Madam President, I ask for the yeas and nays.

Mr. President, I object.

Mr. President, pursuant to section 904 of the Congressional Budget Act of 1974, I move to waive all applicable sections of that act and any other applicable budget points of order for the purpose of the pending bill, and I ask for the yeas and nays.

Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that I be allowed to finish my remarks prior to the scheduled vote.

Mr. President, I come to the floor today to talk about the legislation before us and how it is an investment today for jobs tomorrow.

And I want to thank my colleague from Mississippi for his partnership on this legislation. It seems like a century ago that we had a markup in committee and passed this out--the science portion, which we are now voting on--24 to 4, more than a year ago. And yet here we are today, on the product of much negotiation, not just in our committee but in eight other committees--seven other committees.

We are here because we know that innovation is in the DNA of Americans, and we know that it helped us win the world wars; it helped us cure disease. We know it has helped create millions of jobs, and it has helped members of the business community on opposite sides of a phone call or an email connect to each other to get a product or a service.

So this bill embraces American innovation and our tradition of it, and I, too, encourage a ``yes'' vote.

After watching the COVID crisis mangle our supply chain and see semiconductors be a big part of inflation, the shortage of semiconductors has increased the cost of a used car by more than 40 percent, putting it out of reach of many families at a time when they just needed a car to drive to work.

So this bill is about making sure that we face our manufacturing challenges here at home and that we train and skill the scientists and the workers to get that done.

And so thanks start with Senators Schumer and Young for their hard work in introducing this legislation more than 2 years ago. Senator Schumer's great work with Senator Young on this was an eye-opening change in the way that we make investments in R&D. It was a concept novel then, but I think we have a lot of understanding of it now, and that is to move our R&D into faster translation into products and services. Why? Because the rest of the world is doing that and we need to hurry as well.

I also want to just point out that there are lots of contributions from Members in this bill: Senator Peters on AI scholarships, Senator Cortez Masto on national science technology strategy, Senator Rosen on critical minerals, Senator Sinema on our NASA authorization, Senator Warnock on semiconductor supply chains, Senators Brown and Coons on Manufacturing USA Institutes, Senator Ossoff on cyber security education grants, Senator Menendez on supply chain issues. So many, many things in this legislation were contributed by many different Members through a regular order process.

But let's get specific about it. There are about five or six things in this bill that really matter to our Nation at this critical moment.

First is a new mission at the National Science Foundation. That new mission is different because the National Science Foundation has been focused on basic research. So we are creating, for the first time, in a $20 billion investment over 5 years, the focus for that new mission at NSF to say that they have to focus on translating that science into faster discoveries in products and solutions that will help U.S. manufacturing here at home.

And while the United States has excelled at basic research, we have allowed other countries to excel at translational research, and that needs to stop now.

We need to make the investment in industries from aerospace to pharmaceuticals, to farming, to information technologies that will help increase the pace of innovation here in the United States of America.

Second, we say that NSF is not alone in its mission. We recognize that the Department of Energy also has a key role to play in translational science.

I want to thank the Presiding Officer, Senator Lujan, for his contribution of a $16.9 billion DOE investment that doubles down on the current work in key technology areas that we also have to do faster translational science to scale up in cutting edge energy R&D. This was a very large portion of the energy innovation that was funded in this bill.

This legislation also includes a 5-year, $50 billion, first-ever reauthorization of the Department of Energy Office of Science. And I want to thank Senators Manchin and Barrasso for working on this and its inclusion in this.

Combining these investments will go a long way in reversing the decline in Federal R&D that has dropped three-fold since 1978. We need to improve U.S. competitiveness, but we are only going to do it by investing today for those jobs tomorrow.

Third, the bill also says that we need to be smarter at how we make our investments. Now, I would say I represent a tech hub. It is already in existence. It took 30-plus years to create. There are places like Seattle, San Jose, San Francisco, Boston, and San Diego that you could say are tech hubs. They account for 90 percent of the growth in innovation sectors between the years 2005 and 2017. But is that all we are going to do in the United States of America, allow innovation to just continue to be more and more expensive because it is only produced in those areas?

I am a firm believer in distributed generation, whether that is electricity or whether that is innovation. And the more dispersed the innovation is, you never know where the next Bill Gates or Bill Boeing is going to be from and what innovation they might come up with.

So this bill also has a new mission in the Department of Commerce in technology hubs, where it will focus on trying to foster new collaboration between

universities, businesses, labor, and local government to accelerate economic growth and opportunity in innovation. These tech hubs will focus on the key technology areas that are in this bill and help us move faster at innovation.

I want to thank my colleague Senator Tester, from Montana, who is a very big advocate in making sure that there was geographic diversity to the tech hubs. And we know that while we want to grow more technology advancement in the United States, that we also want to see it not just in Seattle, but in places like Spokane or Indianapolis or West Virginia or Wichita.

We also increase in this Act the Manufacturing Extension Partnerships. During the pandemic, we saw that many companies could not survive without supplies that were no longer available to them. And we know that with the manufacturing extension ecosystem, that we have to stay competitive by innovating. This bill delivers $76 billion over 10 years to develop the next generation of chips and to reestablish chip manufacturing in the United States.

Now I know my colleague from Vermont and my colleague from Florida and many others have criticized this part of the legislation. I know that they think that this is somehow--I wish, trust me, I wish that--I would probably agree more with the Senator of Vermont on the prioritization within our budget on the various things that will help American families. But we can't ignore that chip production has gone overseas and that the United States has lost its share of that production to the point that we are now down to as little as 12 percent--or could go to 12 percent, at which point, who wants to manufacture when the ecosystem is somewhere else? We know that just last year alone, chip shortages cost the U.S. economy $240 billion. That is the automobile industry that didn't have chips; that is part of the electronics industry that didn't have chips. You can say it is even in the cost of every product that you buy because we certainly didn't produce the transportation system to even move products throughout the United States in companies like PACCAR that are from the Northwest, because they too did not have chips to put into their trailers to move products across the United States. So we know that with every dollar of chip R&D investment, that increases GDP gains by $16.50.

So I know my colleagues would like us to make other investments, but I would say that chips are just as essential as wheat is in America. People think about our farm investments and with no hesitation say: Let's make sure that we keep wheat production in the United States of America. I guarantee you, chips are no less important. And we have to have an increase in the United States, or we are going to continue to fall behind on national security issues and on economic development issues that are so critical.

We also, in this legislation, make one of the most significant investments in STEM over the last many years. It puts $13 billion into science, technology, engineering, and mathematics workforce development. It creates $2 billion to minority-serving institutions, including Native American institutions, to encourage their research and innovation.

And I want to thank Senator Wicker for his leadership on the F-score provision, probably one of the more hotly debated conversations between our colleagues here in the Senate and in the House. But I would say to my colleagues, this is about innovation everywhere. This is about growing opportunity everywhere. And that is exactly what we are saying with F-score. You never know what the next innovation is going to bring.

So these key provisions, from diversifying our investment in education and job training, from making investments in tech hubs, to the investment in R&D by both DOD and NSF through faster translational science, we are improving the ecosystem that we have in the United States of America. This ecosystem has been built over a long period of time. It represents competing and collaborating organizations. That is what the strength of our R&D is.

So I want to thank Senators Schumer and Young, Senators Cornyn and Kelly, and many other people who helped introduce and move this legislation. I want to thank Senator Warner for his contributions and thank, again, Senator Wicker and his team for the many advances in this legislation. I also would be remiss if I didn't thank retiring Chair Eddie Bernice Johnson and Ranking Member Frank Lucas who worked hard to craft the legislation before us.

I want to thank on my staff: Lila Helms, Melissa Porter, Mary Guenther, Amit Ronen, Stacy Baird, Nikki Teutschel, Christi Barnhart, Jonny Pellish, Rosemary Baize, Erica Holman, and Emma Stohlman for their help; and on Senator Wicker's staff, as he already mentioned, James Mazol and many other people. I want to thank on Senator Schumer's staff Jon Cardinal, Mike Kuiken, and Meghan Taira for their hard work. But no one deserves more focus and attention than Richard-Duane Chambers from my staff, who literally worked on the last COMPETES bill and then worked at DARPA, so clearly knows seriously the challenges that we faced in getting this legislation done and getting it over the goal line.

So I urge my colleagues to support this important legislation. We don't know exactly what innovations will come out of this, but we do know this: America will be more competitive because of it. And we do know this: that we will be able to grow our economy for the future because of the investments that we have made today.

I yield the floor.

Amendment Withdrawn

Madam President, reserving the right to object, no one could be more disappointed than myself in the fact that we don't have a conference report before us at this point in time.

With so many different committees and the four corners working to resolve so many issues, I had hoped that we would get over the goal line and be here with that conference report.

Unfortunately, events overtook us and objectives of the calendar and a variety of issues that narrowed the discussion we have before us today to two focus points: one, the Science Committee's work with the Commerce Committee in the Senate and language that basically would incent the semiconductor industry.

And our colleagues voted to proceed on those two measures, and there was a lot of discussion on what the definition of a ``skinny bill'' was. Not sure, exactly--I mean, I know a lot of the events that got us to that discussion.

But I will say to my colleague that he is correct. When USICA left the U.S. Senate, it included this language, and this language was very much debated in conference, and it was part of the jurisdiction of several committees, but primarily the HELP Committee, whose content is now not part of the legislation we are considering.

So I am hopeful that we will get those committees that have jurisdiction over this language to rectify their differences between the House and the Senate, but that is what four corners is. It is rectifying these issues between the House and the Senate, and I hope that my colleague will work with me on a conference that will continue after this point.

I hope that we get this legislation done, and then I hope that we literally return to finish up the rest of the conference work because there are so many important issues, like this, that we should include in the legislation.

So I hope my colleague will continue to work with us, knowing that these are not all of the issues that had been discussed, but a more narrow issue.

So, therefore, I object.

Mr. President, in reserving the right to object, I say to my colleague from Ohio that I know how hard he and Senator Peters from the Homeland Security Committee have worked on this language. I know because I have consulted with them many times over the last month and a half, wondering about its progress and wondering about various issues involving people on both sides of the aisle to resolve what they were concerned about in definitions. I, too, felt like the Senators' hard work and language had gotten to a point where it could be included in a package of legislation.

We were very, very hopeful that the various committees' work--that of the Finance Committee, the Foreign Affairs Committee, the HELP Committee--the Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions Committee--the Intel Committee work, and the work that we just discussed from the Homeland Security Committee--could all be included in a conference report. So the words ``pins down'' did not come from my side of the aisle. The words ``pins down'' did not happen. For me, I have been doing nothing but diligently working with all of my colleagues--most of the time when they don't agree--in trying to get them to agree.

I very much appreciate the subject at the heart of what Senator Portman's work is. He is trying to say to us that we have to understand the reality of the world that we live in now and make sure that we are protecting all of our research dollars as we move forward.

Again, it wasn't my decision to decide the narrowness of this bill. It wasn't my decision to say that these are the two subject areas that people are going to include. I know because I thanked the Senator for his help in getting the Science Committee's legislation included in this package. But you could see that even that was a very tough lift in that there were a lot of people around here who didn't want to do that.

So I say to my colleague from Ohio that I am going to work with him in whatever capacity to get this language accepted.

Now he is saying that he has streamlined this language from, probably, what the four corners has agreed to. I do know that the Senator worked very hard trying to get a four-corner agreement from the Science Committee, which we didn't have, to include this language. And why? Because there had been a big fight in the House between the Science Committee and their Homeland Security Committee about what this language said. Then you had the Judiciary Committee weighing in in both the House and the Senate as to what this language said. Since all of those people have been part of that discussion, that part of the four corners did not happen.

My colleague is earnest, and his work is real. The reports that he is referring to in the Homeland Security Committee are real, and we should honor them and honor that work. I am committed to getting that legislation passed, and we will confer with the Senator from Ohio about where that goes and if it goes in the conference report because I am committed to finishing the conference report, because as I said, the Finance Committee, the Foreign Affairs Committee, the HELP Committee, the Judiciary Committee, and your Homeland Security Committee--five committees--would still all like to have language as part of this conference report.

While we aren't able to cover every aspect of this jurisdiction, I am very hopeful that our colleagues will take the impetus of this legislation's passing and double down on getting the rest of the conference report done and signed and on the President's desk. Then we will have a robust policy, not just the incentives, not just the R&D but a variety of issues addressed as they relate to our competitiveness.

So I will continue to work with my colleague from Ohio on this important language and with all of my colleagues on those various committees who have asserted their interest on this subject, but at this time, I object.

Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that if Senator

Scott of Florida makes a budget point of order and a motion is made to waive, at 4:55 p.m. today, the Senate vote on a motion to waive the budget point of order; further, that if Senator Sanders raises a budget point of order and a motion to waive is made, that at 11:30 a.m. tomorrow, Wednesday, July 27, all postcloture time expire and any remaining amendments except Senate amendment No. 5135 be withdrawn and the Senate vote on the motion to waive the Sanders point of order and the motion to concur with respect to H.R. 4346, with an amendment; further, that following the vote, the Senate resume consideration of the message to accompany S. 3373, the PACT Act, and notwithstanding rule XXII, at 4:30 p.m., the Senate vote on the motion to invoke cloture on the motion to concur, all without further intervening action or debate.

Mr. President, pursuant to section 404(b) of the fiscal year 2010 budget resolution, S. Con. Res. 13 of the 111th Congress, as amended by S. Con. Res. 11 of the 114th Congress, I move to waive section 404 of S. Con. Res. 13 for purposes of the pending measure and ask for the yeas and nays.

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

Mr. President, I know we are expecting a vote soon here, and I know that our colleagues know that we will have two votes-- one on a nominee and the second one on a motion to proceed to what has been known as the Innovation and Competition Act. I just wanted to say, because I know there have been a few people out here on the floor--and I won't spend a lot of time now--that, hopefully, we will proceed on the motion to proceed and that we will have a much larger discussion.

I do want to clarify that today's vote is really about whether we are going to stop shipping jobs overseas and instead invest in American R&D. If we invest in American R&D, then we will see the plant, like is being talked about in Ohio, get built instead of getting immediately built in Europe. We will see other companies make investments in States like Texas and Arizona and Idaho and in many other parts of the United States. We will help build an ecosystem here in the United States of technology and next-generation development.

I encourage my colleagues to vote for a bill that makes an investment and competes with the next-generation semiconductors so that we can go even faster with innovation than we are currently doing because so much of that development is happening overseas. It is happening in Taiwan, and it is happening in Korea. They have had ``game on'' for a while. They have had ``game on'' and have literally taken a page out of what the United States has done to attract and keep industry here. Innovation is in the DNA of Americans, and if we want to create the economy of the future, we need to invest in the R&D of today. That means passing this next motion to proceed, getting on the bill, and passing as much of it as we can today. That way, we can be assured that we are not going to lose out in this round of investment that is, yes, very challenging on a global basis.

We should be really realistic. We have a chip shortage today, and it is costing our economy, and it is increasing inflation. We know that there is going to be a chip demand that is going to be threefold from where we are today in the very near future. That means, if we don't start building here, we are not going to catch up. More importantly is the national security element of making sure that the United States is making the most advanced semiconductors.

So today's vote is to say to our colleagues that we believe in the R&D ecosystem of the United States--we believe in the NSF; we believe in our universities; we believe in the DOE--and that we believe that we can do translational science and help our manufacturing base be more competitive whether it is autos or airplanes or other aspects of the tech sector.

This underlying bill invests in 10 key technology areas that we need to make investments in, and it makes sure that we in the United States of America are saying: We want to see that innovation here. We want to see these in tech hubs and in tech centers. We want our universities to translate that science faster and keep our patents and make sure that we are, obviously, continuing to lead the world in innovation. If we fail to do this, I guarantee you that more jobs are going to go overseas.

American R&D can create the hub of innovation that we would like to see for the future. We have done it many times over. We just need to proceed to make sure that we are aware of the competition that exists around the globe. The United States is up to it; it is capable of competing; and this institution is also capable of making decisions and proceeding by working together. Trust me. That is what people are looking at around the world. Whether they are in Europe or Asia, they want to know whether we know how to get things done.

Let's show them that American innovation is here to stay; that it is the top of the game; and that we can compete with anyone given the right investments in STEM, job training, education, and in taking that ecosystem that is so unique and making an investment in it.

I yield the floor.

I suggest the absence of a quorum.

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

Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the Senate vote on the confirmation of Executive Calendar No. 968, the nomination of Julianna Childs, under the previous order.