Floor Statements

Madam President, I ask unanimous consent that the Senate proceed to the immediate consideration of Calendar No. 177, S. 1097.

I ask unanimous consent that the bill be considered read a third time and passed and that the motion to reconsider be considered made and laid upon the table.

Madam President, I ask unanimous consent that the Senate proceed to the consideration of S. Res. 479, submitted earlier today.

I ask unanimous consent that the resolution be agreed to; that the preamble be agreed to; and that the motions to reconsider be considered made and laid upon the table with no intervening action or debate.

Madam President, I ask unanimous consent that when the Senate completes its business today, it adjourn until 10 a.m., Wednesday, December 15; that following the prayer and pledge, the morning hour be deemed expired, the Journal of proceedings be approved to date, the time for the two leaders be reserved for their use later in the day, and morning business be closed; that upon the conclusion of morning business, the Senate resume consideration of the House message to accompany S. 1605; further, that at 11:30 a.m., the motion to concur with amendment No. 4880 be withdrawn and the Senate vote on the motion to concur; and that following disposition of the House message, the Senate proceed to executive session to resume consideration of the Sung nomination and vote on confirmation of the nomination; further, that at 2:15 p.m., the Senate vote on confirmation of the Elliott nomination; and finally, that if any of the nominations are confirmed, the motions to reconsider be considered made and laid upon the table with no intervening action or debate and the President be immediately notified of the Senate's action.

Madam President, if there is no further business to come before the Senate, I ask unanimous consent that it stand adjourned under the previous order.

Madam President, I know that we are expecting a vote shortly. I know the majority leader may come out and make some motions, and my colleague wants to speak so we are going to try to just move forward.

I have sent my condolences to the Dole family and thank our colleague for his heartfelt comments this afternoon.

Madam President, I thank the majority leader for moving forward on the Rosenworcel nomination and encourage my colleagues to vote yes.

I was mentioning the issues of disparity across our country for those who don't have access to broadband. The Makah Tribe, located on the northwest point of the Olympic Peninsula, 90 percent of those households don't have broadband.

I know Ms. Rosenworcel committed to both Senator Wicker and myself she would work with us on the issue of broadband mapping. I know in one county in Mississippi, the home of my colleague, that it is estimated the FCC broadband mapping overestimates internet coverage by a whopping 80 percent. This is unacceptable. We need accurate mapping, and we need the broadband funding to move forward.

I know the Biden administration understands the importance of affordability of broadband. I know they want to deploy broadband and make it more affordable, and we want to work with them to make that happen.

Chairwoman Rosenworcel also looked at the issue of healthcare and the fact that the internet is now access to doctors, to medical information, to monitoring patients, to delivering healthcare, and keeping the lights on. This is also why I think her nomination is so important.

She took time to firsthand visit telehealth in Washington--the State of Washington--and Seattle and saw how we were pushing forward. Yet the FCC is going to do more in this particular area.

Her leadership, I believe, will help ensure that our spectrum policies continue to spur innovation and economic prosperity. I know that she will be able to look forward to these developing technologies and how best to include innovation, including the next 5G wireless technology communications.

All of this, I believe, means that we in the United States have a desire to keep pushing the envelope and to have an FCC that understands how to resolve these problems.

I ask my colleague to support her nomination and to move forward on these important policies so we all can work on them together.

I yield the floor.

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

Mr. President, I come to the floor and join my colleague from Washington to support a woman's right to choose and to make sure that we are making our voices heard loud and clear about the discussion that is happening before the Supreme Court and why it is so important to have the full reproductive health care choices for women in the United States of America.

In 1973, the Supreme Court decided the Constitution protects a woman's right to privacy and, thus, the choice to have a safe and legal abortion without excessive government restrictions. And so now that these cases are before the Court, it is important for our colleagues to know that the majority of Americans support Roe v. Wade.

In my State in 1970, the people voted to legalize early abortions and in 1991, by a vote of the people in an initiative process, we supported that ``Every individual possesses a fundamental right to privacy with respect to personal reproductive decisions,'' codifying Roe v. Wade into State law. That was in 1991.

So it is concerning to people of the State of Washington to hear now that these other States, once coming here to talk about just certain restrictions, are now coming to talk about overturning Roe v. Wade. Women should be allowed to have these fundamental rights dependent not where they live, but to make sure that they have access. And my colleague from Washington just expressed why it is so important for women and families to have access to those full reproductive rights.

Women across the country for 50 years have come to rely on these constitutional protections to make decisions for themselves, about their reproduction, their families, and their bodies. That is why it is important to realize that Roe is based on our privacy protections in the Constitution. The Justices wisely understood that, that a woman's right to choose was about privacy, a personal issue, a medical choice, one in which the State had very limited roles subject to the highest standards and scrutiny of the Court.

But some of my colleagues believe that it is their choice to make. They believe they should decide for all women; they believe that they should not make the decision for just themselves, but for other people and for other people's family when to have a child. I know that in Mississippi legislators have decided that rather than viability after 15 weeks, the State should take the choice away from women.

In Texas, the legislature decided that the choice should be taken away at 6 weeks, typically long before a woman might know she is pregnant. Why are these people who claim that they should be making decisions for women across the country now supporting efforts to take away these important rights. The Court in Casey said, ``The proper focus of constitutional inquiry is the group for whom the law is a restriction, not the group for whom the law is irrelevant.''

But let's look at what happened in Mississippi. In 2018, Mississippi enacted a State law which banned abortion after 15 weeks. Notably, there is no exception for rape or incest, and no exception for the health of the mother. They say that is their government's choice. Well, I asked them, where is the right of the mother and the individual? Where is the right for that family to ask about the life of the mother.

To quote an amicus brief to the Court on behalf of over 500 public health professionals, ``Any ban on pre-viability abortion such as Mississippi, carries major public health implications, because it forces a woman to carry pregnancies to term under adverse circumstances marked by substantially greater increases to their health and that of their families.'' Any ban, continuing to read from the quote, ``any ban will disproportionately affect young women, women of color, low-income women, and communities who are already vulnerable to elevated health and social risks and reduce access to necessary health care.''

This is what we are talking about. A woman's right to choose. Her family's right to choose. And people want to see these rights eroded. I think that these are public health concerns that we all should be concerned about. I think we should be concerned that a legislature wanted to change these laws. In 2018, some in the State legislature may have just had had the objective of narrowly undermining Roe. But now, they recently are changing their position and are asking that Roe v Wade be overturned.

So all of these are important decisions. As the Casey Court held, overruling precedent would come ``at a cost of profound and unnecessary damage.'' I couldn't agree more. Because of Roe and Casey, abortions are safe and are available. Women are in control of their bodies. Families can plan. These are important issues for every woman in America. These are their choices. This decision, a very difficult decision can be theirs and theirs alone. And that is why it is a matter of choice.

So I hope our colleagues will be paying close attention to what is happening at the Supreme Court. I guarantee you, the people of the State of Washington are who as I said, codified Roe v. Wade into statute by a vote of the people. The majority of Americans support Roe v. Wade. And this is now a law that people are trying to overturn and overturn our privacy constitutional rights.

I yield the floor.

I suggest the absence of a quorum.

Madam President, I ask unanimous consent to print the following letter in the Congressional Record.

Mr. President, for the Committee on Commerce, Science, and Transportation I report favorably the following nomination lists which were printed in the Records 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.

Madam President, on November 15, 2021, I was unable to be present for the rollcall vote No. 466 on the Motion to invoke cloture on Executive Calendar No. 401, the nomination of Graham Steele to be an Assistant Secretary of the Treasury.

However, had I been present, I would have voted in favor of the motion to invoke cloture. I supported Mr. Steele's nomination based on his strong track record as a respected expert on financial policy and consumer protection and his years of service in senior level positions here in the Senate.

Madam President, reserving the right to object, I know my colleague--well, I assume my colleague is sincere about his interest in doing something about our issues of port congestion and supply chain issues, but I disagree with his approach here today.

I have, personally, worked very hard on increasing the amount of investment in port infrastructure that was in the bill--just signed by the President on Monday--that helps to increase port capacity around the United States. Why? Because we have seen, even in a pandemic, an increase in trade and port activities. So, yes, we have to invest in our infrastructure.

I take disagreement with my colleague's characterization that the President hasn't done anything because the President has helped at L.A.-Long Beach in reducing the congestion, and he has put in place a better COVID response process. My colleagues need to understand that longshoremen died in the COVID pandemic while delivering goods and products to us in the United States of America. They died. So getting a better response in vaccination for people working on our docks is incredibly important. So the President has done something. He has got a better COVID response; he has basically helped at reducing congestion; and he has got a plan to invest in our ports all over the United States of America.

I know my colleague wishes that it would be so simple, but these shipping companies are reporting more than $200 billion in profit--$200 billion in profit even during the pandemic. So they are not lacking for money. And, if they wanted to go to those ports, they would go to those ports. We heard from one of the big shipping associations that going anywhere, just to say that you want to go there when there are logistical and cost reasons that don't likely bear out, eventually, the customer really just wants to go where the customer wants to go.

That is why it is so important to invest in our ports. That is why we led the charge for a $2.25 billion investment. Why? Because 95 percent of consumers live outside of the United States. And if we want to be involved in the trade economy, we should invest in our infrastructure to get product to and from our citizens, to other citizens of the world, the 95 percent who live outside of the United States.

So I don't think giving shippers--who are having a recordbreaking profit year--more money is going to make them go to other ports. So I do hope that we continue to look at ways to catch up from the fact that production in many areas of our economy were off. There is no bigger example than the 8-percent reduction in oil from OPEC in 2020.

Talk about something we need to address, my colleagues and I sent a letter to President Trump about high oil prices in 2018, and we recommended these various things that the President should do: leverage a relationship with the Saudi Crown Prince to urge them to increase capacity in world oil supplies, make sure the energy Secretary

is communicating that with Vienna and OPEC nations, initiate world- trade disputes regarding countries' anti-competitive practices, work with our European allies and China and make sure that they are working on this issue. We just had a hearing this morning asking the FTC, if they do see any kind of manipulation or moving of supply, please investigate it; and, in this case, we said, Abandon the Trump administration's rollback of fuel economy standards.

Because guess what Americans want when there are high oil prices? They want fuel-efficient cars.

That also is what we just legislated, and that is why we need to keep working on this issue, because as long as we are in a world oil market, and as long as we are under these pressures of OPEC, we are never going to win the day. The best way to win the day is to get an economy that is less dependent on those prices being impacted by OPEC.

Now, I may shock some people here this afternoon, but I am for getting rid of the Trump 301 tariffs. These have cost us enormously in the Pacific Northwest--higher seafood costs, higher equipment costs, higher cost on agriculture products, higher costs on aerospace.

So we have had the two dilemmas of a COVID pandemic taking a workforce out of production, literally. I don't know if my colleague supported the aid to the airline industry or not, but basically COVID hit, it ended up costing over 15,000 jobs in the aerospace sector in my State--gone, gone, gone. So not here today.

If you imagine, if that happened with the airline production--why? Because what airline was going to buy a new plane? It wasn't going to happen.

People are saying now they don't think it is going to happen until 2023 or 2024, even though there are some announcements happening now. In general, people don't think that the airline sector is going to recover to where it was before for several years.

So just imagine if every other sector did the same thing, that reduced their workforce in response to COVID, and now we are seeing the impacts of that.

So what do we do? Let's be smart about each of these cost areas and figure out what we can do to reduce those costs.

Giving $125 million to basically the shipping companies of the world that basically have made record profits--one company said that was the biggest profit last year that they have made in 117 years. OK. So they don't need more money to just go from LA, Long Beach to Miami.

But I want the Senator of Florida to know I actually believe in his port economy. I don't know what is going to happen to the port economies of the world. I don't know if we are going to switch dynamics.

We have supported freight investment because freight can't wait. If you don't have good freight movement, you are going to lose to some other country. So we supported that.

In fact, I see my colleague from Maryland here. The director for the Port of Baltimore came and became the director of the Port of Seattle. And I said: Do you think if we invest in freight, moving freight, somehow we might lose to the west coast and other places?

He said: The business is just going to continue to grow, and everybody will lose if we don't increase more efficiencies.

That is the objective: increase more efficiencies at every port.

I know the Presiding Officer from the Great Lakes wants to do the same thing, increase the capacity and efficiency of the Great Lakes. Let's get an icebreaker. Let's invest in port infrastructure. We led the charge. Why? Because I know that the Presiding Officer today knows that the competitiveness of your State in Wisconsin depends on manufacturers getting those products made and outside your State and on to a world market.

That is what is going to help us with our economy and reducing price, is to get production up and to get product moving efficiently.

So if my colleague--and I sincerely offer this--wants to help me, because I guarantee you not everybody on my side is going to call for this, but I am definitely calling for a repeal of the 301 Trump tariffs. I didn't approve them when he did it the first time because these kind of punitive tariffs just basically exacerbated the problem with retaliatory tariffs, and those retaliatory tariffs are costing us right now.

I know that Secretary Yellen is looking at this, I know that USTR is looking at this, and I would just encourage the President to look at this. And I would encourage the President to do everything he can to work with our nation countries to put pressure on OPEC, just as we did before, to try to address this issue on price. But let's work not on reducing the cost to shipping companies that don't need anything because they have seen record profits; let us instead invest in our ports and our ports economy.

So, Madam President, I object.

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

Mr. President, I come to the floor to talk about the Local Journalism Sustainability Act.

And before the majority leader leaves, I want to thank him for his leadership on such an important piece of legislation. From the very beginning, he understood the fact that diversity in resources is about competition and is a key part of our democracy, and we wouldn't be at the precipice of getting support for local journalism without his help. So I thank him for that.

We originally introduced legislation here in the Senate that Senators Wyden, Kelly, Schatz, Markey, Murray, Klobuchar, my colleague Senator Schumer, Manchin, Cortez Masto, Sinema, Baldwin, Lujan, Leahy, and Blumenthal all supported.

This is important legislation. We hope our House colleagues will take this up this afternoon or tomorrow, as it is included in the Build Back Better program, to make sure that we have the free press that is essential to our democracy and that we have true competition.

Local news is a trusted source of news. Working to high journalistic standards, local newspapers and broadcasters play a critical role in holding our elected officials accountable, shining a spotlight on important news, and challenging the issues of our community to come to light. As one friend of mine said, local news is like hanging a lantern on a problem so that the light shines through.

That is exactly why we want to make sure that we continue to support having this diversity of voices, especially while we see in the online world unfair and uncompetitive practices that we know will be discussed by our colleagues, looked at by the Department of Justice, and certainly legislation proposed about. But in the meantime, we want to keep this diversity of voices working.

We know that since 2005, newspapers have lost more than 40,000 newsroom employees--about 60 percent of their workforce. Most States have lost more than 50 percent of their newsroom workforce. We cannot let regional and community news organizations continue to die as we navigate very challenging information-age business issues. That is why this legislation is so important.

Local journalism is highly trusted in communities around the country. According to a 2019 study from Gallup and Knight Foundation, Americans trust local news over national news by a 2-to-1 margin to ``report the news without bias.'' Local journalism has developed that trust based on transparency, accuracy, ethical reporting, and shining a light on important issues, including crime and corruption, and holding public officials accountable.

Local news reporting takes national news stories and translates them into their community news, and America's newspapers and online journalists and radio and television broadcasters are at the heart of this media landscape.

During the pandemic, broadcasters continued to provide essential information to audiences, reporting the news and helping us keep connected on such an important issue.

The Local Journalism Sustainability Act is essential to maintaining that trust, that diversity of voices, and that local perspective. The tax incentives in this bill will help local newspapers and digital-only news journalists and broadcast newsrooms remain financially viable to retain and hire local-based journalists to cover local news stories.

This bill helps incentivize newspapers and broadcasters, including those owned by larger entities, to invest in reporting local news to their relevant communities.

Local and regional minority-owned businesses and outlets also benefit from this provision, which is one of the reasons why the association representing the Black press, the National Newspaper Publishers Association, and the National Association of Hispanic Publications also support this legislation.

America's democracy really does depend on ensuring that we have access to information and that we have informed decisions. Doing so also means that we have true competition and information and news that can be verified.

So I am pleased that the House has incorporated this important provision into the Build Back Better reconciliation program. I hope that when this comes to the Senate, our colleagues will join in supporting this, in helping local newspapers, radio and television stations, and digital journalists continue to help us get the news.

I yield the floor.

I suggest the absence of a quorum.

Mr. President, I come to the floor this afternoon to talk about the affordable housing crisis in the USA.

Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent to have this letter printed in the Record. It is from 44 different mayors representing 20 different States and the District of Columbia, talking about those housing priorities that we need to see in legislation that we will be voting on, including, No. 1, strengthening and expanding the low-income housing tax credit.

Mr. President, I come to the floor because many of my colleagues--29 have joined a bill that myself and Senator Young sponsored, and, I think, 132 Members in the House of Representatives joined, all saying we need to incent more affordable housing.

Why do we need to incent more affordable housing?

If you don't incent it with the tax credit, people won't build it, particularly in a place like Seattle, where you can build other things and get a whole lot more money.

We need a workforce and we need the workforce to be in Seattle. We don't need them to be four counties away and drive in every day and clog our roads with added traffic that didn't need to be there. We need to build people close to their homes and need the flexibility of the affordable housing tax credit, which has been, in my mind, very helpful in being very specific in every community.

You can build affordable housing just for returning veterans. You can build affordable housing for workforce needs. You can build affordable housing just to house previously homeless people. You can build affordable housing to take students who are still going to school and don't have a place to live, making them have affordable opportunities.

The affordable housing tax credit is the primary tool with which we build housing. Let me say, 90 percent of the affordable housing that gets built in the USA gets built with the tax credit. That is right. Ninety percent of the affordable housing that gets built in the United States with the tax credit is built with--90 percent of affordable housing gets built with the tax credit.

That means even if we have other programs in the legislation that we have been talking about between the House and the Senate--like the home grant program or vouchers or things of that nature--if you don't use this aspect of the program, you are not going

to be able to build that housing, so it has been incredibly popular.

That is why we have to increase the amount of capital we are going to put towards the tax incentive. The reason why we have to do that is that the United States has a supply shortage.

You can ask: Why did we get to this supply shortage?

If you ask me, it was really accentuated in the downturn of 2008, when so many more individuals fell out of the job market, creating more demand for affordable housing at that price point. We also, at that point, had a lot of returning veterans, and we had really some very big changes in the diversification of our economy. We had a lot of mental health that had been deinstitutionalized and pushed in a different direction. And we had changes in policy as we saw the challenges of an aging population, really, living a lot longer than people anticipated and they are also needing housing.

We had all these issues combined to this dramatic effect of 6.8 million affordable housing shortage in the United States of America. That is the amount of units that we actually have to build.

I wish I could say these problems go away if you just don't--if you say: Well, if they don't build the housing, it will just take care of itself.

No, it doesn't take care of itself. If these people end up being homeless, it costs 30 percent more to deal with them in our hospitals and in jails. In various places, the people who are truly homeless and living on the streets are extra costs.

We actually had hospitals support building affordable housing just so people wouldn't be in their emergency room every day. That is how much it was worth to hospitals to have affordable housing.

So the crisis, as we know in America, is that there are now 10.5 million Americans who pay more than 50 percent of their income in rent. That means they are rent-burdened. This number has just continued to go up in the charts for years in growth and, basically, continued to exacerbate the problem. Why? Because people will tell you, you can't spend 50 percent of your income in rent.

These dynamics are what is plaguing us in the United States; and it is a problem that, until we increase the affordable housing tax credit, you are not going to get the relief that you think you can get out of this situation.

Our legislation--myself and Senator Young's legislation--would have increased the tax credit by 50 percent over a 10-year period of time. That would have helped us build a million more units of affordable housing and try to address this problem in the near term.

I hope our colleagues will--as we work through both the proposals that have been part of our infrastructure bill and the reconciliation act--will look and see that we need to include the low-income housing tax credit as part of that proposal. If we don't have the affordable housing tax credit as part of that proposal, we are not going to have the robust solutions that we need.

While I understand there are very geographic differences across the United States--the East Coast may have some particular aspects that will be very benefited, and the West Coast has other aspects that would benefit--we all can benefit from the low-income housing tax program. That is what is so unique about it.

Every State has used it with great flexibility. Every State has used it to solve their problems, and the incentives have helped us stimulate the economy. It is literally worth billions of dollars of economic activity, and that is why we also should be making this investment.

Many times when our country has faced a downturn in the sixties or seventies or eighties, you would hear a shout-out for housing. People would say: Let's build housing.

Well, you haven't heard that shout-out in the last decade or so. You literally haven't for a bunch of different reasons. No one has been trumpeting: We need more housing.

I tell you, Mr. President, we need more affordable housing for those individuals. And I have met so many in my State whose lives have been changed--literally changed.

A woman basically got out of an abusive relationship and moved in with her father in Walla Walla, but knew it wasn't sustainable. She lived in Billingham. Basically, the affordable housing program in Walla Walla got her and her son into a home. She started school. She got a job, changed her life.

I have seen it recently in Spokane. Take a couple who basically had become homeless. They separated. They had children that couldn't all live together. They brought them back together under one roof. And in this particular housing project, the promise was made by the partners that everybody in that particular housing would get access not only to help them get a high school education, but a college education as well.

That is what you can do with these projects. You can tailor-make them with community partners to address the needs of your specific community.

So this tax credit is bipartisan. It worked successfully. I would say it is one of the most successful programs that we had in the United States for getting affordable housing. Let's not leave it off the table. Let's put it in this legislation and make sure it gets to the goal line of the President's desk and is signed into law.

I yield the floor.

Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent to speak for up to 2 minutes.